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Biden to Focus on Getting COVID Relief Bill; Pelosi: 9/11-Style Commission to Investigate Capitol Attack; 3 Dead after Tornado Strikes North Carolina Coast; Historic Winter Storm Leaves Nearly 4 Million Without Power in Texas. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired February 16, 2021 - 06:00   ET

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


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KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Biden returned to the White House with one item at the top of his list: getting his COVID relief bill through Congress.

[06:00:07]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's urgent that we get it. A lot of the current relief will expire the middle of March.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): The American people want to raise the minimum wage to a living wage. It is popular. It is what justice demands.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Here in Texas, residents are experiencing some of the worst winter weather of their lives.

JUDGE LINA HIDALGO (D), HARRIS COUNTY, TEXAS (voice-over): I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The next few days are going to be very tough.

GOV. ANDY BESHEAR (D-KY) (voice-over): We did not make it through almost a year of a pandemic to lose people to a snow or an ice storm.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: My gosh. Look at that video of what people are experiencing through much of the country.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. It is Tuesday, February 16, 6 a.m. here in New York.

First, President Joe Biden will take part in the first presidential town hall tonight with CNN. That's live from Milwaukee. The president will make his case directly to the American people for his $1.9 trillion relief package to be passed next month when existing benefits expire.

President Biden is certain to face questions about vaccinations and the state of the pandemic. A bipartisan group of governors wrote a letter to Biden, saying that the administration's handling of coordination with the vaccinations needs to be much better.

How about reopening schools? That's also facing scrutiny.

And while Mr. Biden is eager to move forward, it is clear that questions about the Capitol insurrection will continue. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announcing the creation of an independent commission to investigate this deadly siege, similar to the 9/11 Commission.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So overnight, Senator Richard Burr from North Carolina became the latest Republican to be censured by his state party for voting to convict the former president.

Congressman Adam Kinzinger's own family wrote him a scathing letter, published by "The New York Times," saying that they're embarrassed to be related to him. They accused him of being in, quote, "the devil's army."

We're going to begin, though, with the business of the country. President Biden's first presidential town hall. Tonight from Milwaukee, CNN's Jeremy Diamond at the White House for us this morning to give us a preview -- Jeremy.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

Nearly a month after taking office, President Biden finally hoping to get the country and Washington's undivided attention. But remember, Washington itself is still very, very divided.

And so the president taking his pitch for this $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package on the road. All of this happening as the clock is ticking down. Twenty-six days until those federal unemployment benefits expire.

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DIAMOND (voice-over): President Biden's agenda taking center stage this morning, in a Washington no longer consumed by his predecessor's impeachment trial.

Looking to drum up support for his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, today Biden is taking his message directly to the public. Biden taking his first official trip as president to Wisconsin, where he'll make the case for his relief package during a CNN town hall.

And on Thursday, it's off to Michigan to tour a Pfizer vaccine manufacturing plant.

Back in Washington, the Biden administration is still playing catchup on safely reopening more schools and boosting the national vaccine and testing plans.

A group of bipartisan governors sending the president a letter, asking for better coordination on distributing vaccines between the federal and state governments, an issue Biden noted in a meeting with local leaders at the White House last week. JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What I found when I got

here we thought was available in terms of everything from vaccine to vaccinators was not the case. So I thank them for the work they did in their cities and their states in order to respond to the crisis.

DIAMOND: The president is also still struggling to get Republicans on board with his relief bill. But with pandemic relief and vaccines on the line, Democrats are growing impatient and ready to move forward without Republican support.

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): We are going to rush to get this done to help deploy more vaccine, to help get kids back into school safely, and to provide the other important benefits in this rescue package. And if Republicans are willing to join us in that effort, we will work with those who want to join us.

DIAMOND: Another major hurdle: a provision to hike the federal minimum wage to $15, a proposal opposed not only by Senate Republicans but also two Democrats.

And with enhanced pandemic unemployment to expire March 14, Senator Bernie Sanders says there's no time to waste.

SANDERS: Congress has to the go move forward vigorously. Do what president of the United States campaigned on and wants to do. That's what we've got to do. Not only to help Americans people but to restore faith that government, in fact, can respond to the needs of ordinary Americans.

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DIAMOND: And House Democrats have been easy actually drafting this $1.9 trillion proposal into legislative text. This week the House Budget Committee expected to assemble all of that into one piece of legislation.

[06:05:08]

And President Biden not only wants to pass this quickly, because he believes it is urgently needed relief for the American people, but also because it's holding him back from pursuing other policy priorities, like immigration and infrastructure. None of those things can get done until President Biden gets this relief package passed through Congress.

And so while you can expect the president to talk about vaccines, talk about his coronavirus response and the need for this relief package during CNN's town hall this evening, you can also expect him to look forward to the other policy priorities that he has on his agenda.

BERMAN: It will be very interesting to watch how he lays things out before the American people. This is, since the inauguration, in a way his first chance to have unfettered access, I think, to the American people without quite so many distractions.

Jeremy, thank you very much. Developing this morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced a proposal for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

CNN's Jessica Dean live on Capitol Hill.

Now, the September 11 Commission was passed by an act of Congress and signed by President George W. Bush, Jessica. Do we know if Nancy Pelosi is going to put this in legislation?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's what it would have to do in order to set this commission up, John. So this is considered the next step in investigating exactly what happened and how it happened here at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.

And to your point, it would come in the form of a statute that would have to be passed by both chambers and then signed into law by President Joe Biden in order to be created.

Now, Pelosi's announcement of this 9/11-style commission comes after a security infrastructure review by Lieutenant General Russel Honore. And she says that now, knowing what she knows from that review, here's what she said in a letter to her colleagues just yesterday. She said, "It is clear from his findings" -- Lt. Gen. Honore's findings -- "and from the impeachment trial that we must get to the truth of how this happened to protect our security, our security, our security. Our next step will be to establish an outside independent 9/11-type commission to investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the January 6, 2021 terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol complex."

Of course, noting there she does call it domestic terrorist attack among the -- on the United States Capitol complex, which is what it was here, John.

And we are also learning a little bit more about who would be on this type of commission. It would be not elected officials, not people within the government. So it would be people outside of the government.

And another important note is that Pelosi, in comparing it to the 9/11 Commission, she complimented what the commission's work but said in this case, there will be an eye on diversity. They want much more diversity with this commission that would look into exactly what happened during this deadly insurrection -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: OK. Really interesting details, Jessica. Thank you very much.

Now to this breaking news, at least three people are dead and ten others hurt after a tornado tears through a coastal town in North Carolina overnight. Search-and-rescue crews are looking for people who may be trapped at this hour.

CNN meteorologist Chad Myers has the breaking details. So what -- what happened, Chad? CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Alisyn, a storm came on shore on the

warm side of our snowstorm and made severe weather. In fact, it's not the only tornado that was on the ground yesterday. But this one happened after dark, somewhere between about 11:45 and midnight when most people were asleep.

Zoom you right in. These are towns you talk about in hurricane season. Little River, North Myrtle, Myrtle Beach, Oak Island. Those are the areas that we talk about when it comes to a landfalling hurricane or storm surge. Not a tornado during the month of February. But, there it was.

It was a tornado on the ground for quite some time. There were a total of four tornado reports yesterday. And we're not done.

Now, today we take a little bit of a break, but as we move you ahead into Wednesday, there's more severe weather along the Gulf Coast. The humidity is down there. The cold air is back here. Warm and cold don't mix, just like oil and vinegar.

And then back up here for Thursday, another chance of severe weather from the hurricane -- from the severe storms forecast center, talking about the potential here. Behind it, the cold continues, brutally cold. More snow coming down, as well. And Ed Lavandera is going to have more on that.

CAMEROTA: Oh, absolutely. How many people are freezing this morning? Thank you very much, Chad.

So now to that. This morning, nearly 5 million Americans are waking up without power for the second day in a row after a huge winter storm paralyzed the south. In Texas, residents are experiencing single-digit temperatures, and scores of them are without heat.

CNN's Ed Lavandera is live for us in Dallas with more. What's the situation, Ed?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Alisyn.

Well, it has been a brutal night for millions of Texans across the state, as you mentioned. Temperatures in single digits, and nearly 4 million people here in this state without power. And the finger pointing is intensifying about what has gone wrong.

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[06:10:11]

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Freezing temperatures and power outages are pummeling areas from Texas through the Plain States. More than a third of the country reached temperatures below zero on Monday. Texas is receiving the brunt of the storm, with millions across the state left with no power and no heat.

HIDALGO: We all see the current situation. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. The next few days are going to be very tough. There's a high chance the power will be out for -- for these folks until the weather gets better, which will not be for a couple of days.

LAVANDERA: The city of Abilene, that has a population of more than 100,000 residents, was forced to shut off water last night due to power outages. The lacking infrastructure for these conditions is a major concern for hard-hit areas, with some families freezing in their homes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's like a walk-in freezer. It's like 34 to 36 degrees, I would say.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It depends on which room you're in. Forty degrees is at the lowest end to 55 at the highest.

LAVANDERA: In Harris County, power outages nearly spoiled more than 8,000 coronavirus vaccine doses. Moderna advised the county that 3,000 of those doses could go back into storage, and the rest were distributed throughout the county.

Historic lows in Dallas, Oklahoma City and in Kansas City, the coldest since 1989. The wind-chill factor reaching temperatures as cold as minus 32 degrees.

In Tennessee, authorities reported two fatalities from the storm on Monday.

In Kentucky, the governor is warning that another storm is on its way. He tells residents not to run your gas ovens to generate heat, and be careful using generators and camp stoves.

BESHEAR: Again, I can't stress the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning, which is absolutely avoidable. Those are casualties we don't want to see. We did not make it through almost a year of a pandemic to lose people to a snow or an ice storm.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA: And Alisyn, we can't stress enough just how dangerous this situation is across the state. As we mentioned, so many people without power.

This is the Dallas Convention Center you see behind me. It has been opened up as a temporary warm shelter for hundreds of homeless people here in this city -- Alisyn.

CAMEROTA: Oh my gosh, Ed, when your House gets down to 55 or below, you just can't get warm. I mean, it's bone chilling. I remember during Hurricane Sandy, when that happened here on the East Coast. And the idea that they're living in 34-degree, 30-degree temperature in their house, it is obviously a dire situation. So please keep us posted throughout the program.

LAVANDERA: absolutely.

CAMEROTA: President Biden will make his pitch to the American people tonight for his pandemic relief bill and his plan to combat COVID. What does he plan to say? That's next. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:17:11]

CAMEROTA: President Joe Biden will take part in his first presidential town hall tonight on CNN, live from Milwaukee. The president is expected to talk about his first-term priorities, his ambitious $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package, and efforts to accelerate vaccinations in America.

Joining us now is Anna Palmer. She's the founder of Punch Bowl News. Also with us, CNN political commentator Errol Louis. He's the political anchor for Spectrum. Great to see both of you.

So Errol, is this -- is he in sales mode? Is that -- is that what's happening tonight? Or does he need to just explain it? Or what's he trying to accomplish tonight?

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: There's a certain amount of salesmanship. It's mostly, though, I think, a matter of reassurance and consolation.

The country has been through and is in the middle of great trauma, not just all of those dire situations that you just reported out of the Midwest, but also the -- the situation involving the economic recovery that has yet to really kick into gear. A lot of people are really hurting. A lot of people have yet to mourn the loved ones that they've lost to the pandemic.

There's still a lot of anger out there, not just about what happened on January 6 and the attempted coup, frankly, but also the fact that we have incompetent government response up 'til now. People have every right to ask, what have we seen over this last year as this pandemic struck, and how can we do better?

So Joe Biden has got to -- got to explain what all of this means and what the path forward is going to be, Alisyn.

BERMAN: To me, this is the president's first chance since the inauguration to speak to the American people on his own terms in his own way without the shadow of the other guy hanging over him, now the impeachment trial is over.

And Anna, I'm just reading Punch Bowl News, the "A.M. Report." You've got some new reporting out just now about where this big relief package is headed and how Republicans plan to treat it.

ANNA PALMER, FOUNDER, PUNCH BOWL NEWS: Yes. I mean, I think this is truly Joe Biden's moment to say, This is bigger than Republicans and Democrats. It's time to come together as a country.

But what we're reporting this morning is he is going to face an uphill battle convincing pretty much any Republican in the Senate or the House. He might find a handful that do support this bill, but the vast majority are now coalescing around being against this bill. I think it's one of the few times, where Republicans are kind of in

disarray post-Trump. They're trying to find their rallying point. And like the 2009 stimulus bill, they feel confident that they are -- you know, in their attempt to block it or say this is too big; and they're not going to support Joe Biden in this effort.

CAMEROTA: I don't know, Errol. It's not like fewer Americans are suffering now. I mean, you know, I certainly understand the debate about whether to put the minimum wage in there and whether it should be $15. There's obviously debate on both sides of those.

But in terms of Americans, the food scarcity, the food lines at food banks that we have seen wrapping around. I mean, here's where we are, OK?

So 11.2 adults in households went hungry in the last seven days. OK, compared to October, that was 12 percent. Yes, 12 percent, and in August it was 10 percent. Nothing has changed. So something has to happen, like now.

LOUIS: Well, that's right. You're -- you're thinking rationally, and you're thinking from the point of view of what will help the people.

Politicians, of course, think very differently. And in this case, you've got Republicans on sort of this -- this kind of downward spiral into pure negativism, you know. I mean, this is -- this is what we saw after the mortgage crash in 2008, 2009, where in the absence of any kind of a positive program, they simply say no, right?

So acting as the party of no, they delayed stimulus back then. They're going to do it again.

Back then, they got in the way of what would have been an otherwise really popular, according to all polls, Affordable Care Act. And they fought, and they fought, and they fought, and they fought, and they tried to shut down the government over it. This is where they are.

And frankly, Alisyn, this is the true crisis within the Republican party. They've got a lot of problems over there. They've got a lot of problems that involve Donald Trump, and we often get distracted by that.

But at -- at the core of it, the problem is there's no governing philosophy that enables you to take something like a pandemic, an ice storm, climate change, infrastructure needs, mass hunger, mass unemployment. They don't have any way to deal with it. They go right back to the same talking points, which is always cut government and attack anything the Democrats attempt to do. It's not a very sound policy.

That's why in the last two years, they lost control of both houses of Congress and the White House.

BERMAN: And again, starting tonight, we'll see how President Biden, the White House, deals with this situation as this bill gets passed, which it likely will with Democratic support. But how it gets passed and in what form will be interesting to see.

Anna, you've also got some new reporting. I'm really interested in this 9/11-style commission that Nancy Pelosi is now calling for publicly. Because if it is like September 11, it will require legislation and a signature from the White House. How much bipartisan support will this get, and what are the potential vulnerabilities here?

PALMER: I think it's going to be -- Those are all really good questions. We've been reporting for the last couple of weeks this was likely that she was going to take this step.

But a couple of big questions, you know, that I have, in particular, surround the fact of will this panel have subpoena power? That's an outstanding question that she's going to have to answer. And I think a lot of people will wonder, are they going to have the ability to refer what they find to the DOJ?

There's clearly a big division among some Republicans and where Democrats are about wanting to actually dig in and find out what happened. We saw this with the impeachment. But what is the White House going to say? Are they going to be on board with this?

I expect that there will be large support among Democrats for some style of a, you know, January 6 Commission. But the actual details are going to be very important for how much they can actually investigate, how much they can uncover, particularly when it comes to finding out information around the Capitol Police, which is one of the most opaque police forces in the country. They don't have to -- you know, they don't have to be submitted to FOIA requests for journalists, and a lot of other kind of transparency and sunlight issues that remain there.

So it's going to be something we're going to be covering very closely.

CAMEROTA: Errol, if they don't have subpoena power, what good are they?

LOUIS: Well, listen, the known facts are mindboggling enough. If all they did was compile what we already know, that would be -- and put it in a nice bound volume, that would be a great service to the country.

We've seen lots of different snippets. We've seen images of gallows. We've heard testimony from lots of people. We know that hundreds of court cases, criminal court cases have been launched all around the country. Just pulling it together and creating a kind of coherent timeline would, I think, really help people understand what happened on that day.

The larger meaning of it, of course, as we've already seen, is going to be adjudicated in lots of different forums. We saw one forum in the form of the impeachment trial. We'll see others in the form of these -- these criminal cases that are going on around the country. And this will be a third forum in which to have some kind of a discussion. It's going to take time to make sense of all of this, Alisyn.

BERMAN: One reason to have it is so people don't deny what happened. And I know you've been looking at what Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin said.

CAMEROTA: Senator Ron Johnson says, I don't think this was an armed insurrection. What other definition could there ever be, Senator? He doesn't think people brought firearms. Well, they did. They were confiscated by police. They also brought spears and weapons and swords and their fists and, you know, all --

BERMAN: Swords not arms. Doesn't count as arms.

CAMEROTA: It goes on. I just -- that was -- that was stunning.

BERMAN: It's a "D and D" exemption for Ron Johnson there.

CAMEROTA: Stunning.

Thank you both very much for all the insight.

[06:25:04]

And be sure to join us tonight. Anderson Cooper moderates the first presidential town hall with President Joe Biden. That's live from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at 9 p.m. Eastern only on CNN.

All right. For the first time in a long time, the U.S. is seeing encouraging coronavirus trends. Our next guest says he thinks we may be seeing a breakthrough moment. Other experts say not so fast. Who's right? That's next.

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BERMAN: This morning the seven-day average of new coronavirus cases is down 72 percent from the peak in January. Hospitalizations at the lowest level since mid-November. What is driving the decline?

Joining us now, Dr. Paul Offit. He is the director of the Vaccine Education Center of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and a member of the FDA's Vaccine Advisory Committee.