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Biden Focuses on Pandemic; Impeachment Mangers Present their Case; U.S. COVID Deaths Remain High. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired February 10, 2021 - 06:30   ET

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

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[06:31:01]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: As Donald Trump's second impeachment trial gets underway, President Biden moves forward with his agenda, promising to boost the vaccine supply to states and vowing to stay focused on pandemic relief.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond is live for us at the White House with more.

So what's happening, Jeremy?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Alisyn, while most of Washington is focused on this impeachment trial of the former president, the White House is doing its best to show that they are focused on the business of governing. President Biden saying just yesterday that he's not watching the impeachment trial, instead, focusing on the coronavirus pandemic and the economic crisis the country is facing.

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DIAMOND (voice over): With his predecessor's impeachment trial underway, President Joe Biden is keeping his focus on his administration's coronavirus response.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I have a job. My job is to keep people we've already lost, there were 450,000 people. We're going to lose a whole lot more if we don't act, and act decisively and quickly.

The Senate has their job. They're about to begin it. I'm sure they're going to conduct themselves well. And that's all I'm going to have to say about impeachment.

DIAMOND: Biden forging ahead with his $1.9 trillion COVID relief package. Meeting with business leaders in the Oval Office, Biden throwing his support behind House Democrats' bill, which would send $1,400 checks to Americans making less than $75,000 a year, rejecting republicans' $40,000 income threshold.

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: He supports that, where the status of the negotiations is at this point, yes, of the $75,000. DIAMOND: On the vaccine front, the administration nearing Biden's

unofficial goal of 1.5 million shots a day. And officials announced Tuesday that vaccine shipments to states will increase to 11 million doses per week.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: So that is a total of a 28 percent increase in vaccine supply across the first three weeks.

DIAMOND: On a call with the White House, governors still expressing concerns about supply.

GOV. ANDREW CUOMO (D-NY): We now have about 10 million New Yorkers waiting on 300,000 doses. The big question on the call with the White House coordinator, by the governors, is supply, supply, supply.

DIAMOND: The administration also boosting its effort to reach underserved communities. A million additional doses will be allocated and sent directly to 250 community health centers starting next week.

DR. MARCELLA NUNEZ-SMITH, CHAIRMAN, CORONAVIRUS HEALTH EQUITY TASK FORCE: Equity is our north star here. You know, this effort that focuses on direct allocation to the community health centers really is about connecting with those hard-to-reach populations across the country.

DIAMOND: The CDC still hasn't released its guidelines for reopening schools, even as Biden pledged to reopen most schools in his first 100 days. That guidance still expected this week.

PSAKI: His goal that he set is to have the majority of schools, so more than 50 percent, open by day 100 of his presidency. And that means some teaching in classrooms. So, at least one day a week, hopefully it's more.

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DIAMOND: And this afternoon, President Biden is expected to head over to the Pentagon, where he will take note of the fact that Secretary Lloyd Austin is the first African-American to serve in that position. President Biden is also expected to pay special tribute to the contributions of black service members in the military.

Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK, Jeremy, thank you very much for all of that.

We have a quick programming note for you.

Join Anderson Cooper for an exclusive CNN town hall with President Joe Biden. This will be live from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is next Tuesday night at 8:00 p.m. Eastern.

All right, House impeachment managers will reveal more evidence today in their case against Donald Trump. So we're going to take you through their strongest evidence point by point, next.

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CAMEROTA: House impeachment managers begin their opening arguments at noon. They will have 16 hours to make their case against former President Donald Trump. Here to take us through their strongest evidence is CNN legal analyst Elie Honig.

Elie, great to see you.

OK, where would you start?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes, Alisyn, I would love to prosecute this one because there's an exceptionally strong case to be made here. Now, I would go about presenting this evidence to the Senate jury really in four pieces. First of all, Exhibit A, the buildup.

Now, this story did not start on January 6th. This was really the culmination of a week's long effort by Donald Trump to undermine democracy and to steal this election. So I would play that infamous phone call that Donald Trump placed down to the Georgia secretary of state, where he asked the secretary of state to find, his word, 11,780 votes so he could steal Georgia by one vote.

I'd also use Donald Trump's own words and tweets against him. If there was any question about what his intent was during this time, I'd show his tweet from December 9th where he put it in one word, overturn.

And, finally, I'd remind the jury that the whole reason these rioters were in Washington, D.C., on January 6th is because Donald Trump promoted this effort, he tweeted out to his millions of followers over and over again, and he started to fan the flames.

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In particular, he sent one tweet where he told his people, be there. Will be wild.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And then January 6th itself had several components, beginning with the rally. What evidence would you use there?

HONIG: Yes, John, so January 6th would be my Exhibit B, the rally itself on the ellipse.

Let's remember, by the way, Donald Trump had a couple of warm-up acts before he took the microphone. And I would show the jury this, Rudy Giuliani got up on that stage and screeched trial by combat. Representative Mo Brooks got up there and he said, time to take names and kick ass. And then I would show really the heart of the case, Donald Trump's own infamous words to that crowd on January 6th in the ellipse.

Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: We're going to walk down to the Capitol.

Yes, we're going to walk down to the Capitol.

CROWD: Yeah!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Invade the Capitol Building!

TRUMP: Do the right thing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's take the Capitol!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Take the Capitol!

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's take the Capitol!

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HONIG: Yes, those audience reaction videos are so key because you talk about cause and effect. I mean there it is, Donald Trump speaks and the crowd reacts. We talk about incitement. That's what incitement is. Donald Trump says it, the crowd acts.

CAMEROTA: I mean they're taking direct instruction right there. That one just links it together perfectly.

And then what about, Elie, all of the grotesque video from inside the siege at the Capitol? How would you use that?

HONIG: Yes, Alisyn, that would be Exhibit C for me, what happened inside the Capitol that day.

This is the House manager's chance to really hit the audience in the gut with a visceral reminder. They need to take the audience back to what it was like to be inside the Capitol that day. This is going to be the most dramatic part of the trial. Remind everyone of the terror and remind the audience why that crowd was there that day. That wasn't just some nice Wednesday in January. That was the day the electoral votes were being counted.

The evidence is out there. The rioters themselves created that evidence with their own cell phone footage, putting it in social media. Big question to me is, will we see even more of these videos? We've heard reporting that there will be more evidence. So I'll be looking to see if there's even more of those inside videos.

BERMAN: And then if you're -- if you're piecing through the timeline here, what happens next, Elie, is the former president's response as all this is going on. Now, in theory, this is where a witness, someone who was in the White House, could be crucial. Barring that, what do you think the exhibit is?

HONIG: You, John, so Exhibit D is going to be the reaction. The key issue here is, what was Donald Trump's intent. His lawyers said in their pre-trial briefs that he was horrified. Well, guess what, this is the single most important piece of evidence to me, the tweet that Donald Trump sent on 6:01 p.m. on January 6th, a couple hours after the Capitol insurrection, this is where Donald Trump told his followers, you are great patriots and we'll remember this day forever.

Does that sound horrified to you? It sounds delighted to me.

And, finally, I would want the jury to hear from the rioters themselves. Why did they do what they did? We have tape on that.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's your message to everybody now? Like, what are you yelling at?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, Donald Trump asked everybody to go home. He just said -- he just put out a tweet, it's a minute long, he asked everybody to go home.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The president told people to go home. So, people are going home.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HONIG: We talk about cause and effect. We talk about incitement. There it is. Why did they do what they did? They did it because of what Donald Trump said.

So that will be the case. I think there's really a powerful case to be made. We'll see how the House managers go about that today.

BERMAN: Counselor, as always, thank you for your incite. We'll see how close they hue to the Elie Honig method here.

Thank you.

HONIG: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: So 800,000 doses of the coronavirus vaccine administered yesterday. We're going to give you the very latest on the effort to get more and more Americans vaccinated, next.

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[06:48:07]

BERMAN: Three thousand and thirty-one Americans reported dead from coronavirus overnight. Those are new deaths. California will surpass New York today as the state with the most coronavirus deaths. More than 45,000 total.

Now, new cases and hospitalizations continue to decline, now at their lowest level since November. And that curve headed very much in the right direction. The question is, how low will it go? You can see, we were just talking about the number of hospitalizations there, below 80,000 for the first time in months, but that number is still higher, much higher than the two previous peaks.

Joining us now, CNN contributor and epidemiologist, Dr. Abdul El- Sayed.

Dr. El-Sayed, thanks so much for being with us today.

We are seeing some positive trends. Just, unquestionably, cases going down, hospitalizations going down, and that's terrific news.

In terms of vaccinations, the Biden administration says it wants to get the average up to 1.5 million a day. We're not far from that at this point.

Is that enough? Where should the numbers be right now?

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, if you step back and look at it, John, about 10 million people have received one dose and -- excuse me, 10 percent of people have received one dose and 3 percent of people have received both their doses. And if you think about where we need to go, particularly considering the fact that we've got these new variants that are spreading quickly and that some of them may, in fact, be less susceptible to our vaccines, we've got to rush to get those vaccinations out. And so 1.5 million a day, given the infrastructure that we have to do it, is both a push, but it's also not enough. We need to get a sizable number of people, a sizable proportion of Americans to that vaccine -- to that vaccinated level, right, so we're getting to that herd immunity of about 70 to 80 percent that people agree upon.

So it's not enough, but it's also as much as can stress the infrastructure that we have, which reminds us that the problem here is that we built this amazing vaccine, right, that is kind of like putting a V-12 engine into a Ford Pinto that's been driven for 125,000 miles straight.

[06:50:10]

And that's where we are right now. Our public health infrastructure just hasn't been there and so it's not meeting the need that -- that we have for it.

CAMEROTA: I had a Chevette, OK, so I understand that analogy perfectly that you just used, OK?

But -- but, Doctor, what's the impediment? I mean I know that you're saying infrastructure. How do we fix this in the next few weeks?

EL-SAYED: Well, here, the reality of public health is that you want to be prepared. The minute that you're responding and you don't have the things that you need, you're behind the eight ball. And we've been behind the eight ball in this country for -- for the past year plus. And so what's needed is a large bolus of funding right now and to be thinking about institutions like the National Guard as public health institutions in ways that they're not necessarily trained to do, but because they have to supplement the resources that we have available. And so I think it is important to be thinking about where you can put

this vaccine, all the different places that you can be deploying it, but you need the personnel and you need the funding to be able to supplement our Ford Pinto of public health system.

BERMAN: And you say that coming from Detroit or coming from Michigan, at least.

Look, and you straddle the medical and political worlds here. And what's happening as the case counts drop, the hospitalizations drop, is there's political pressure on state and local leaders to ease some of the restrictions. And we are seeing restrictions eased around the country, whether it was to allow in-person dining, things like that. Too early? I mean do you think that -- what do you think the calculation should be about when to start opening some of those things up, Dr. El-Sayed?

El-SAYED: Point blank, John, it is way too early. We can't keep playing this yo-yo game of watching the case numbers go down and pretending like COVID-19 is gone. Every day we hear news about these variants that are more transmissible. And it is good news that cases are dropping. That is fantastic news. But if we let up too early, just like we did in the spring and into the summer, we risk having a new onset of new cases. What we have to do right now is we have to keep cases low by continuing the kind of physical distancing that we've been doing and getting those vaccines out there. If we can do that, we have a real shot.

I'm worried, right, that the existence of these variants isn't just the variants themselves, it's the fact that this virus can evolve as fast. And every single body that the virus enters is a new potential opportunity for that virus to take on a new mutation that may, in fact, make it fully resistant to our vaccines. We don't want to get there. And so let's not make the mistake of letting up too early, once again, and being back to another peak. Let's keep riding this trend downward.

CAMEROTA: So here's some good news, at least on paper, which is that Eli Lilly just got Emergency Use Authorization for its antibody therapeutic, OK? But what I don't understand is, how readily available is -- are these with Regeneron? Like, if somebody is sick today, very sick, and goes to the hospital, do they get the antibody therapy or is it just in short supply?

El-SAYED: No, Alisyn, this is the problem. So, a, they're in short supply, but, b, they have a very limited use window that's not altogether obvious because given the fact that we've had so many hospitalizations in this country, usually we don't just rush somebody to the hospital and say, well, if you get bad enough, you'll be in the hospital already. Hospital beds are at a minimum. And so people don't really get to the hospitals until they're really quick sick.

Now, the problem with that is that these antibodies are most effected before you get to that point of serious illness that prevents you from getting there. And so you have this problem where you're not really in the place where you can get these important medications even when you need them and yet once we get you to the place where you can get those medications, it's kind of too late. And so there really is a problem. And that's why a lot of these antibody cocktails have sort of gone on the shelf, although they could be doing really, really great by a lot of the patients who really need them.

CAMEROTA: Yes, that's what I feared. I mean that's what we have heard and we have to fix, obviously, that big problem.

Dr. Abdul El-Sayed, thank you very much for all of the information.

El-SAYED: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: OK, now to schools. Thousands of students in Chicago are set to go back into the classroom. We have new details about the long battle that got them there, next.

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[06:58:22]

CAMEROTA: Breaking overnight, the Chicago Teachers Union approving a deal to reopen public schools for in-person classes, thereby averting a strike and ending weeks of tense negotiations. The coronavirus safety plan passed with 67 percent support. The first students could return to the classroom as soon as tomorrow.

BERMAN: One man is dead, four others hurt after a gunman opened fire at a health care clinic in Minnesota. Police say the suspect, Gregory Ulrich, is very familiar to law enforcement and was upset with his treatment. Ulrich is in police custody. Officials believe he acted alone and was targeting the facility or someone there. Officers also found a suspicious package in the lobby and suspicious devices at his motel. He's set to appear in court tomorrow.

CAMEROTA: And trending this morning, Aunt Jemima finally has a new name. The brand's owner, Pepsi, says it's replacing the old name with a name dating back to the brand's founding, The Pearl Milling Company. This amid a national reckoning over racism. The new packaging replaces the long-criticized caricature of a black woman with a 19th century water mill. The Pearl Milling Company refers to a 1988 business that is credited with creating the original ready-made pancake mix.

And NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You cannot have presidents inciting and mobilizing mob violence against our government.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Prosecutors unveiled a documentary-style video that meticulously constructed the timeline of events on January 6th.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Presidents can't enflame insurrection in their final weeks and then walk away like nothing happened.

[07:00:03] UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President Trump no longer is in office. The object of the Constitution has been achieved.