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McConnell is done with Trump; Texas' Energy Crisis; China Peddles Coronavirus Conspiracy; Williams' Emotional after Loss. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired February 18, 2021 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:30:29]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We have some new reporting on the feud between former President Donald Trump and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. A source tells CNN's Manu Raju that when McConnell read Trump's statement that attacked him as dour and sullen, McConnell laughed. The source said that, quote, going forward, you probably are not going to hear McConnell utter the name Donald Trump ever again. He's moving on.

Joining us now is CNN political commentator Scott Jennings. He's a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and he has worked on several of McConnell's campaigns. He knows the senator well.

Scott, great to see you.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning.

CAMEROTA: Moving on and pretending that Donald Trump doesn't exist and never uttering his name, is that going to be effective?

JENNINGS: Well, I guess it depends on, you know, to what end and to what purpose. And McConnell has to get up and go to work every day. He has governing responsibilities in the Senate and he is laser focused on getting back the Senate majority. And so I don't think he sees much utility in having a tit for tat or some sort of a, you know, public -- a hate feud, you know, where they're exchanging statements with Donald Trump.

He's going to do two things. Number one, try to unify the Republicans with a reasonable alternative to the Biden agenda, which I think most Republicans think has gone too far to the left too fast. And, number two, he's going to focus on getting the absolutely best candidates the Republican Party can get to run in these numerous Senate races in 2022.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: "Politico" is reporting this morning that Steve Scalise, the number two Republican in the House, went for the pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago, much as Kevin McCarthy did a couple of weeks ago. So as far as the leadership on the House side, right, I mean they're staying very much in Trump's bubble, good graces. And I just wonder politically, you made the point to me many times that the extent of Trump's winning, right, has been reached, right? And, by the way, lost the White House, lost the Senate.

I just wonder, do these folks believe he's the winning political strategy?

JENNINGS: Well, I think they believe that he has energy that they need to be part of a winning coalition. And mostly I think it probably revolves around fundraising. If you look at the way the Republican Party fundraising changed over the years, under Trump, you know, finally the Republicans caught up to some degree in small dollar donors. In fact, I think Trump did better than Biden even on small dollar donations. That trickled out throughout the rest of the party. That's an undeniable fact. And I think there is a fear among some Republican leaders that, you know, how do we fund this party and our candidates without that Trump energy?

But at the same time, you know, on the raw vote total side, Jim, and you guys can see the numbers. Look at the analysis from the Georgia Senate races. Look at what happened in the presidential campaign. Trump has brought some new folks into the party and he's driven just as many or more away.

CAMEROTA: I mean therein lies the rub. It's that, do you want the fundraising and the energy of his base or do you want a track record of winning? And those two are at odds.

And so, Trump, as you know, blame -- is now blaming Senator Mitch McConnell for the Georgia loss. What does Mitch McConnell -- what would his reaction be to that?

JENNINGS: Well, I talked to him yesterday, actually, and he mentioned the big "Atlanta Journal-Constitution" analysis of what happened in the Georgia Senate races. I mean it's pretty clear what happened. I mean a whole bunch of Trump people didn't turn out because, you know, shockingly, they were listening to Donald Trump when he told them their votes didn't count anymore. I mean it was a sabotage. And it's obvious to anybody who has a -- even a little bit of political professional expertise.

And so I think it's pretty clear that Donald Trump, overall, was a net drag on the Republicans because we don't control anything now. He lost the White House. And that was before January the 6th. And so what I think the party has to do is find a way to hold the coalition together. You know, there are the more traditional Republicans, there are the new Trump Republicans, but they can't win without each other. The question is, is Trump's entrance into all this, is his continued ability or attempt to sit at the top of all this enough to hold it all together? And I don't think we know the answer to that yet. I have my doubts. But that's really the challenge for the party moving forward.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

CAMEROTA: Scott Jennings, great to talk to you. Thank you for all the insight. That's really helpful.

JENNINGS: Of course. Thank you.

CAMEROTA: So Texas is at a breaking point this morning. Millions of people are still facing power outages and water shortages because of the weather there and just how the electrical grid failed.

[06:35:04]

So is this the fault of green renewable energy and windmills? John Avlon says no. His "Reality Check" is a must see and it is next.

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SCIUTTO: Just millions of residents of Texas are suffering this morning. If you're one of them, we're watching. We're trying to get the word out as the power and water crisis there grows. More than 600,000 customers are still without power in just frigid temperatures. As many as 12 million people in the state are facing water disruption. The cities of Austin and Houston are now under boil water orders. Getting bottled water is extremely hard to come by and food supplies are running low. Just look at these lines here. Many Texans sleeping in their cars just to stay warm. Others going so far as to burn their belongings to try to stay warm.

CAMEROTA: And a slew of Republican officials are trying to blame windmills and solar panels for this catastrophe in Texas.

John Avlon is here now with a "Reality Check."

Hi, John.

[06:40:00]

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Hey, there.

So you know the slogan, don't mess with Texas. Well, right now, unfortunately, Texas is a mess, facing some of the coldest conditions in memory. The great lone star state is suffering. Millions have gone without power for three days. Half of those in the city of Houston alone. For many folks, as you just heard, water is out as well, while at least 16 people in the state have died.

Look, this is a natural disaster compounded by a man-made disaster, but it's not the one that Governor Greg Abbott's blaming.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): Well, this shows how the green new deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America. Our wind and our solar got shut down and they were collectively more than 10 percent of our power grid. It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: OK, the green new deal is a proposal that hasn't been enacted or even backed by President Biden. And the problem is not primarily wind and solar. In fact, almost two times the decline has come from natural gas, coal, and nuclear. But renewable energy is a great bogeyman if you're in the conservative confirmation bias business.

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TUCKER CARLSON, FOX NEWS: It got cold last night and the windmills froze. And, as a result, millions of Texans are freezing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: Again, the problem is not frozen windmills, people. If you want to blame bad policy, it's actually because of a conservative ideological project and Texas-first policy decisions that go back to the new deal. Get this, the U.S. has just three electrical grids, East Coast, West Coast, and Texas. You see, back in 1935, the U.S. established the Federal Power Act which regulated power sharing between states, allowing shortfalls to be made up by neighbors. Texas opted out, which leaves it vulnerable when demand is unexpectedly high. So they're ready for heat waves, but not severe snow and ice. And now wholesale energy prices are spiking 10,000 percent in Texas.

Now, this isn't on the governor. It's on the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, ERCOT, which operates the power grid. And, get this, the top two people at ERCOT don't even live in the state. So the real culprit is extreme weather courtesy of climate change, which Governor Abbott and most Texas Republicans still deny, as well as deregulation and lousy planning. As Tucker Carlson said with unintended irony, we've allowed lunatic ideologues to have a lot of control over our power grid. Yes, ideology usually isn't good at solving practical problems on the left or the right, which is why former Governor and Energy Secretary Rick Perry's suggestion that, quote, Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business, is just bonkers bluster.

If we're going to take a lesson from this mess, it should be that we need a new national energy grid strategy and climate crisis contingencies. That would be an excellent part of any big infrastructure reform plan the Biden administration might put forward. And maybe now it will get more bipartisan support, if the deep brain freeze of disinformation doesn't cloud more people's judgment.

And that's your "Reality Check."

CAMEROTA: John, thank you so much for that because facts help when you're trying to actually solve the problem.

AVLON: The facts help. I think that's an established fact.

CAMEROTA: Indeed. Thank you very much.

So, here's another story, similar in category. China now trying to shift the blame for coronavirus by pushing a conspiracy that it actually started in the United States. We have a live report, next.

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[06:47:26] SCIUTTO: Well, China remains under scrutiny for its initial handling of the coronavirus, including deliberately shutting down doctors who were warning about it. Now, nearly a year into this pandemic, Beijing is pushing a conspiracy theory that the virus originated where, in a lab in the United States.

CNN's David Culver is live in China with more.

David, the timing of this propaganda push, and let's be clear, there's no evidence of this, appears strategic. What have you learned?

DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jim, we can't overlook the timing of this. It coincided with the arrival of the WHO field team whose mission is to find the origin of COVID-19 as they came here to China.

What we tracked through data analysis of some of the online searches, as well as some of the propaganda push that was coming through social and state media, is that they were putting forward, Chinese officials that is, their own narrative, trying to craft essentially how this virus may have started.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you know about the U.S. (INAUDIBLE) labs. Did you know they research of data (INAUDIBLE) for decades.

CULVER (voice over): Chinese officials carrying out a propaganda- fueled war of words and tweets. The apparent intention, to muddy the waters in the search for the origin of COVID-19 and to potentially deflect responsibility for the virus' global spread.

CNN combing through months of digital data analysis that shows a combined push of conspiracy theories, carried out by official Chinese government accounts, state media, and a broader group of Chinese online influencer.

The propaganda push coinciding with the highly politicized World Health Organization's source tracing mission.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you find anything inside?

CULVER: Last month, as the WHO's international team of experts traveled to Wuhan, CNN found that China's sophisticated propaganda machine flooded both social and state media with several origin theories, include one to counter the Trump administration's own unsupported allegation that the virus leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virology Lab, a theory the visiting WHO scientist essentially ruled out before leaving China last week.

PETER BEN EMBAREK, HEAD OF THE WHO MISSION TO CHINA: The laboratory incident hypothesis is extremely unlikely.

CULVER: But in recent weeks, Chinese officials have doubled down on their own lab origin theory, renewing a conspiracy that the virus began in the U.S., specifically here at the U.S. Army's Ft. Detrick Medical Research Lab in Maryland. [06:50:00]

Inspectors for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention briefly halted work here in 2019 to investigate safety concerns.

There is no evidence the virus originated in the U.S., but China's state media saw an opportunity. Beginning in March of last year, as the virus started sweeping across the world, they published stories surrounding the Fort Detrick lab and a possible leak. A foreign ministry spokesperson went a step further, tweeting last March that it might be the U.S. Army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan.

Soon after, China's government-controlled broadcaster began airing mini documentaries on the Fort Detrick conspiracy theory. For ten months, China's foreign ministry has relentlessly pushed the conspiracy. And just as the WHO field team arrived in Wuhan in January to investigate the origin, Chinese officials once again voiced their version of a possible lab leak.

I'd like to stress that if the United States truly respects facts, it should open the biological lab at Fort Detrick, give more transparency to issues like its 200-plus overseas bio labs, and invite WHO experts to conduct origin tracing in the United States, the spokesperson said.

That clip of the foreign ministry spokesperson went viral online, circulating on both western and Chinese social media. CNN reviewed data analysis of Internet searches in China. It shows that after the initial push of the conspiracy theory in March 2020, search interests in Fort Detrick remained relatively flat for nearly a year, only to surge once again in January, just as the WHO source tracing field mission got underway in Wuhan. During that time, more than 230,000 posts using the Fort Detrick hashtag were viewed more than 1.48 billion times on social media platform Weibo. And the foreign ministry hashtag attracted more than 210,000 posts with 790 million views.

China has also floated the theory that the virus originally got into Wuhan through imported frozen foods, as CNN uncovered late last year, and that theory has led to hazmat-like handling of international cargo and its encouraged Chinese state media to label the virus as an imported threat, suggesting it even started that way.

The range of origin theories, an attempt to seemingly deflect blame and sow doubt in ever uncovering this devastating and deadly pandemic's true source.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: This is classic propaganda strategy, right? Create a lie. You don't have to -- you don't have to convince everyone or even most people, just muddy the waters.

CULVER: Right.

SCIUTTO: The trouble is, David, you're seeing this getting a lot of attention in China. Is it resonating? Are they buying it? CULVER: It's interesting, one study out of the U.K., an organization

there, surveyed people from around the world. And it may sound shocking, but 30 percent of those surveyed here in China believe that the virus originated in the U.S. So it is seeming to get some attention here.

Now, we should also point out, that same survey shows that more than half of those -- more than half of those who were surveyed actually believe it started in China. So some of those Chinese nationals likewise believe it may have started here.

All of that aside, though, Jim, it's about muddying the water, as you put it. It's about raising enough questions and sowing enough doubt. That seems to be the intention.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Listen, 30 percent. The same percentage in this country believes the election was stolen, right? I mean, lies work. It's a sad fact.

David Culver, great reporting, thanks very much.

Serena Williams knocked out of the Australian Open by Naomi Osaka. What's next for the tennis legend? The "Bleacher Report" is next.

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[06:58:01]

CAMEROTA: Serena Williams getting emotional after her loss at the Australian Open.

Andy Scholes has more in the "Bleacher Report."

Hi, Andy.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Alisyn.

Yes, with the way Serena left the court and how emotional she was, many people are wondering this morning if this match was the last time we are going to see Serena at the Australian Open. About 7,500 fans were back in attendance for the first time in five days to see that semi-final showdown between Serena and Naomi Osaka. But this one was all Osaka. The three-time grand slam winner just blowing away Serena. Her serve was amazing. She won the match in straight sets, improved to 3-1 against her childhood hero.

And when Serena was walking off the court, she took her time, waving to the crowd. She was clearly emotional. She put her hands over her heart, leaving many to wonder what the future is for the 23-time grand slam winner. And after the match, Serena was asked if that was a farewell to the Aussie Open.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SERENA WILLIAMS, 23-TIME GRAND SLAM WINNER: I don't know. If I -- if I have to say farewell, I wouldn't tell anyone. So -- so -- UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Was it just one of those bad days at the office?

WILLIAMS: I don't know. I'm -- I'm -- I'm done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCHOLES: Yes, you see Serena getting emotional, walking off there, Alisyn.

You know, she's still so amazing. Made it to the semifinals. But she's 39 years old now. You know, many are wondering if this year is the farewell tour because, you know, tennis, it's not a -- we've never seen someone play this great at this age in their career. It's tough going up against people like Naomi Osaka who are 23 years old in their prime.

CAMEROTA: If John Berman were here, you know what he would say. He would have a Tom Brady reference. But I'm not going to make that right now, Andy. I'm going to let this just be focused on Serena.

Thank you very much on all of that.

SCHOLES: All right.

And NEW DAY continues right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Unlivable conditions in Texas. Flooding homes in bitter temperatures.

[07:00:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The bitter cold has now turned to heated anger over the catastrophic failure of the state's power grid.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every source of power the state of Texas has access to has.