Return to Transcripts main page

Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin

Trump's Trial for Inciting Riot Starts Today; Biden Keeps Focus on COVID Relief During Impeachment Trial; Pfizer Increases Production to Double Vaccine Output; Facebook Says It Will Crack Down on Anti-Vax Posts & Pages. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired February 09, 2021 - 05:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[05:00:24]

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. This is EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Laura Jarrett. It's Tuesday, February 9th. It's 5:00 a.m. here in New York.

And in just a few hours, the historic second impeachment trial of former President Donald Trump begins in the U.S. Senate. But unlike his first trial, this time the jurors are also the victims. A hundred senators will confront the violent and deadly riot at their workplace and decide whether Trump must answer for inciting the mob. Unwilling to confront the facts, many Senate Republicans are leaning on process claiming the trial is unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president, a claim that's dubious at best.

ROMANS: Overnight, a sobering reminder of just who Trump is accused of inciting. A Virginia man who faces conspiracy charges claims in a court filing he worked for the FBI and held a top secret security clearance for decades.

And security at the capitol was extra tight for the trial. National Guard troops still patrol the outside of the capitol complex. House impeachment managers are flanked by a security detail. Officials say they aren't tracking any specific, incredible security threats but enhanced precautions are in place out of an abundance of caution.

So, what will this trial look like and how long will it last?

CNN's Jim Acosta has details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JIM ACOSTA, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Laura, Senate Democrats and Republicans have reached a deal on the time line of the trial. Under the agreement, the Senate will vote on the constitutional question of holding a trial while the president is out of office. That's expected to pass. Then we will see 16 hours of arguments over two days from both sides meaning this trial could potentially continue until early next week before a vote on conviction or acquittal.

He's been out of office down here in Florida, former President Trump has been reaching out to allies and advisers, telling them he believes he'll be acquitted because there aren't enough Republicans he believes to vote to convict him at his trial.

In the meantime, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer he has a deal on how this will play out. Here's more of what he has to say.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): The structure we have agreed to is eminently affair. It will allow the trial to achieve its purpose. Truth and accountability following the despicable attack on January the 6th. There must, there must be truth and accountability if we are going to move forward, heal, and bring our country together once again. Sweeping something as momentous as this under the rug brings no healing whatsoever.

ACOSTA: And sources tell us Trump has been fixated on punishing Republican lawmakers who voted to impeach him in the House, like Congresswoman Liz Cheney. A Trump advisor said the former said sees his efforts as seeking, quote, accountability -- Christine and Laura.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ACOSTA: All right, Jim. Thank you so much for that.

The Trump legal team has withdrawn its request to recess the impeachment trial on the 7th. That could shorten the length of the trial by a day. Yet pre-trial defense filings suggest the trial is shaping up for disputes over basic facts. The former president's lawyers plan to argue their client did not incite the capitol riot but they gloss over the fact that he used the actual word "fight" close to 20 times during his pre-riot rally.

The lawyers also noted that Trump told rioters to go home but it took the ex-president hours to release that video. And it's the same one where he said the election was stolen from us and told the rioters, we love you and you're very special.

One former senior official tells CNN the president was, quote, loving watching the capitol mob.

JARRETT: The partisan fallout faces a real challenge for President Biden as he's on a mission to conquer multiple crises even as this trial unfolds.

CNN's Jasmine Wright is live at the White House for us this morning.

Jasmine, nice to see you.

Advisers acknowledge the next two weeks will be dominated once again by Trump, but they think there will be an opening for President Biden to make a case for COVID relief outside of Washington. Tell us more.

JASMINE WRIGHT, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: That's right. The White House is really digging in and President Biden will be pushing his $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill that is as Congress turns to the Senate impeachment trial of former President Trump. Now, President Biden will continue to sell this plan outside of D.C., as you mentioned, he'll be talking to mayors, governors, business leaders all across the country.

But one thing one advisor tells CNN that the president won't be doing is watching a lot of TV, watching a lot of TV on this impeachment trial.

[05:05:03]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president himself would tell you that we keep him pretty busy and he has a full schedule this week. I think it's clear from his schedule and from his intention he will not spend too much time watching the proceedings, if any time, over the course of the week. He will remain closely in touch with Speaker Pelosi, Leader Schumer, a range of officials about his plan and that's exactly what they want him to do, is to remain focused on that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WRIGHT: Now, the White House is trying not to make any headlines on impeachment. President Biden was asked about it multiple times by reporters and continued to say it is up for Congress to decide the outcome.

But going back to the bill specifically, we're starting to see some outlines of how the actual legislation could look. Yesterday, House Democrats revealed that $1,400 direct payment check to Americans and they rejected a Republican proposal to narrow who is eligible to receive this bill.

So as it stands in this -- in this proposal yesterday, those who make up to $75,000, couples up to $150,000 can receive the full payment and that begins to phase out and caps off for single people who make $100,000 and couples who make $200,000 -- Laura.

JARRETT: All right. Jasmine, thanks so much for laying all of that out. We'll see you back in a little bit.

ROMANS: A new report finds raising the federal minimum wage would give 27 million workers a raise and pull 900,000 people out of poverty, but at a cost. The Congressional Budget Office says raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour would increase the federal budget deficit by $54 billion over a decade.

Now, the minimum wage has been stuck at $7.25 for more than a decade. Voters in many cities have passed laws themselves to raise the minimum wage. The report found raising the wage would help lower income Americans, many essential workers, people of color and women. President Biden included a way to increase in his American rescue plan. The measure has run into resistance including from some Democrats like Senator Joe Manchin who wants a smaller increase and others say raising it during a pandemic with the job crisis is not the right time. But a wage increase seems to be on the back-burner here at the moment as Democrats work to fast track other parts of the president's stimulus package, Laura.

JARRETT: Christine, does it have to be an either/or, though? Does it have to be the case that jobs are lost for sure?

ROMANS: So, the theory here -- the economic theory is when you raise the wage, it costs businesses more to make the product they're doing or the service and they pass that onto the consumer and that cuts demand. But there have been cases where in some cities and states where they've raised the minimum wage in a strong economy and jobs go up and wages go up.

So I'm watching these states and localities state by state because they've been doing it without really any negative impact in some cases.

JARRETT: Yeah, that's why it's worth digging into --

ROMANS: Yeah.

JARRETT: -- the numbers and facts here on the ground.

All right. Still ahead, the best defense against coronavirus variants, as many vaccines as possible. Now one company is doubling their production so supply can start to meet demand.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:12:23]

ROMANS: New overnight: Pfizer announcing it has ramped up production in the last month to double the amount of vaccine it can make in a single batch. Right now, it takes 110 days to produce 1 million to 3 million doses of the vaccine. The company expects the time to go down to 60 days. The coronavirus variants however still a big concern.

JARRETT: But the U.S. is seeing marked improvement. Fewer than 87,000 cases were reported on Monday. Now that's still a lot. It's still too much, but it's the lowest daily number since the beginning of November and as cases go down, vaccinations are up. About 10 percent of the U.S. population has now received at least one dose of the vaccine and nearly 3/4 of what's been shipped has been used.

CNN's Erica Hill reports for us.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERICA HILL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Laura, good morning.

Cases and hospitalizations continue to move in the right direction. That's the good news. CDC director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, stressing now is not the time to get complacent. DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: You know, though hospital

admissions and cases consistently -- are consistently dropping, I'm asking everyone to please keep your guard up. The continued proliferation of variants remains of great concern and is a threat that could reverse the recent positive trends we are seeing.

HILL: Keep in mind, more than 30 states are reporting cases of the variant first identified in the U.K.

And while Dr. Walensky says the CDC is stepping up, it's tracking efforts for these variants, experts stress the best way to beat them is to boost vaccination. There's improvement on that front. The U.S. averaging $1.4 million doses a day.

There are more mass vaccination sites coming on line. We just learned that Citi Field here in New York will open on Wednesday morning with a focus on not just Queens residents, that, of course, is the borough where Citi Field is located, but also in taxi drivers and food service and delivery workers.

One other note, some questions about domestic air travel after Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said there is a, quote, active conversation with the CDC about requiring negative tests. In response, CDC director Dr. Walensky said if the capability was there, it would be in her words another mitigation measure. However, she and other White House COVID officials stressed this is just not the time to travel, period.

Christine and Laura, back to you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JARRETT: Erica Hill, thank you for that.

Republican Congressman Ron Wright of Texas has become the highest ranking U.S. official to die of coronavirus. Wright's office said the congressman was admitted to Baylor Hospital after contracting the virus back on January 21st. His wife Susan who was also hospitalized with COVID was by his side when he died.

[05:15:01]

Wright was also battling cancer.

President Biden remembered the 67-year-old lawmaker as a fighter and vowed to beat the virus in Wright's memory.

ROMANS: All right. Just about 15 minutes past the hour. Some news just into CNN about the origins of the coronavirus.

Our Nick Paton Walsh monitoring what the World Health Organization and Chinese officials are saying right now.

Nick, what's happening?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Interesting developments here. This is a key WHO investigation into where coronavirus came from. Now, obviously, the accepted story until this point by most people has been that it emerged in China, in Wuhan from a Huanan seafood market where a super spreader event has occurred.

There are a lot of studies saying it may have emerged before that, possibly coming from bats into humans.

Why is it important to find out the real source? Well, to stop this from happening again.

Now, we've just been listening to a key press conference at the end of a two-week long mission by the WHO in China finally to try to work out the answer to this question.

And, first of all, we heard from the top Chinese expert that's working with the WHO on this. Now, I paraphrase here. There are some caveats, but essentially this Chinese expert said that all the studies they did of samples of cases of influenza, of other things looking for the possibility that they missed an earlier emergence of this virus before December 2019, when everyone thinks it first emerged.

But they so far say they concluded that there was no substantial evidence that it began before December. That's important because it suggests the Chinese didn't sort of drop the ball so to speak earlier. Importantly also too, the same Chinese top official goes on to point to the Huanan seafood market, and say, while we studied there, we found lots of contaminated samples on surfaces. But some of the contamination could have been from cold food chain produce, i.e., frozen foods, frozen things within that seafood market, not necessarily live animals.

That's important because it feeds into a broader Chinese state government narrative that we've been hearing quite a lot over the past few months, that perhaps this somehow emerged from frozen food, and that leads China to say maybe it wasn't from China, it was from outside of China.

That potentially also feeds into something else we just heard in the press conference, suggestion there may have been unreported cases of SARS-CoV-2. That's the technical name for the novel coronavirus, COVID-19. The unreported cases that occurred outside of the region of Wuhan, that might mean outside of China.

So, while we're still listening to the WHO expert, Peter Bannon Barrick talking about this, and I should point out, he's corroborated some of these Chinese preliminary findings by saying what they discovered has not substantially changed the picture of what they thought happened in China with the origins of the virus December 2019.

China is essentially pushing out a narrative here that suggests maybe it was frozen food. Maybe it came from somewhere that wasn't China and also we saw nothing, we did nothing amiss ahead of December 2019. All very important here because, remember, the former Trump administration suggested in fact a laboratory leak may have been behind the origin of this virus, although they had no evidence to back that up.

This vital question being answered here by what sounds this far to be a pretty pro-China narrative.

Back to you.

ROMANS: All right. Well, let you get back to listening to that World Health Organization briefing. Thank you so much for that, Nick.

JARRETT: Well, social media has been a haven for misinformation, including about vaccines. Facebook now says it's going to make changes, but the question is, how can they be enforced?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[05:2311]

ROMANS: Facebook is taking another shot at fixing its anti-vaccine problem. Facebook says it's cracking down on claims that vaccines, including COVID vaccines are not effective. That's something CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in September the company would not do.

But given Facebook's past failures, the obvious question is whether it will be able to effectively enforce the latest restrictions.

CNN's Donie O'Sullivan has the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Deja vu. Facebook announced on Monday that it is going to take further action against anti-vaccine misinformation on its platform. Now this all came just a day after CNN published an investigation where it found that the company, including its platform Instagram, was recommending very prominently in search anti-vaccine accounts.

Now, Facebook has been dealing with this issue for a very, very long time. We have seen anti-vaccine misinformation on the platform and on Instagram for years. So while this is a welcome move that Facebook is cracking down in this way, a lot of people will rightfully be asking why just now, why are they only taking these steps more than a year into this pandemic, knowing that there would be a vaccine rollout across this country and around the world.

While the company has made announcements like this in the past and as CNN has shown in its recent reporting, you know, anti-vaccine misinformation was all across the platform. So, whether these new steps they are taking will actually work, it will remain to be seen. We, of course, will be keeping an eye on it -- Christine and Laura.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JARRETT: Donie, thank you for that.

Some sad news to report this morning, Motown legend Mary Wilson has died.

(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)

[05:25:06]

JARRETT: Wilson was a founding member of the group the Supremes. The iconic Motown group with Diana Ross and Florence Ballard rose to fame in the 1960s with a string of number of hits.

Berry Gordy, the founder of Motown, calls Wilson a trail blazer. Wilson's publicist says she passed away suddenly Monday night at her home in Las Vegas. Mary Wilson was 76 years old.

And, Christine, it's so hard when you hear all of these songs, it makes you think about what's your favorite one. There's so many to pick from.

ROMANS: There are too many to choose. What, larger than life, what a contribution to American history and American pop culture. Amazing.

JARRETT: An icon for sure.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)