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Somber White House Vigil Marks 500,000 Americans Died Of Coronavirus; Scotus Hands Defeat To Trump In Tax Records, Election Cases; CNN Gains Rare Access To ICU In Baghdad Ravaged By Coronavirus. Aired 5:30-6a ET
Aired February 23, 2021 - 05:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[05:31:10]
LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, and welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Christine Romans. Good morning, Laura. Good morning, everyone. Exactly 31 minutes past the hour.
And we're here this morning with a painful reminder of everything Americans have lost and will still lose to coronavirus. The nation pausing to remember the half-million parents, siblings, cousins, and friends -- all the loved ones killed by a pandemic -- more than the number of American troops killed in action in World War I, World War II, and Vietnam combined.
JARRETT: The president and the vice president and their spouses standing there in somber remembrance.
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We often hear people described as ordinary Americans. There's no such thing. There's nothing ordinary about them. The people we lost were extraordinary.
They spanned generations, born in America, immigrated to America. But just like that, so many of them took their final breath alone in America.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JARRETT: Five hundred thousand dead, double the toll of any other country. The U.S. has just four percent of the world's population but 20 percent of the death toll.
CNN's Jasmine Wright is live for us at the White House this morning. Jasmine, good morning.
JASMINE WRIGHT, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Good morning.
Well look, President Biden sought to tap into the collective grief of Americans who are mourning those more than 500,000 deaths from coronavirus. President Biden, in his remarks, also acknowledged his own past tragedies, using it as a way to signal to Americans that he understands what it is like to lose a loved one.
In these remarks, President Biden made his usual call for unity, saying that it is only when Americans come together that they can beat this pandemic. Take a listen.
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BIDEN: We must end the politics and misinformation that's divided families, communities, and the country, and it has cost too many lives already. It's not Democrats and Republicans who are dying from the virus, it's our fellow Americans. It's our neighbors, our friends, our mothers, our fathers, our sons, our daughters, husbands, wives.
We have to fight this together as one people -- as the United States of America. And some of them are going to beat this virus -- I promise you.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WRIGHT: Now, we know that President Biden inherited this pandemic but a large part of his presidency is going to be defined on his administration's response. So he continued to make those calls for people to remember that this pandemic is still going on and that they should mask up and social distance, and wash their hands.
Now, of course, we are starting to see some encouraging signs as we get more and more into the year. Hospital admissions are cut in half. Vaccinations are happening, especially to those frontline workers, hospital workers, and health and high-risk adults, as well as cases are starting to go down -- Laura.
JARRETT: Jasmine, at the same time, the president's nomination of Neera Tanden to lead his budget office seems like it's hanging on by a thread this morning. This is the office that would oversee transparency for COVID spending. But now, even some Democrats seemed concerned that she won't get the job.
What are your sources saying? How did this fall apart?
[05:35:00]
WRIGHT: Look, frankly, Neera Tanden's standing is in trouble and her pathway to confirmation is looking very, very shaky. After West Virginia Democrat -- Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin said that he would not vote for her, other Republicans came out and said that they would not vote for her either. And those are those more moderate Republicans that sometimes Democrats look to to support their initiatives and support their agenda. This, right now, is not happening.
So now it is up to Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska who still has not said how she would vote. She said that she hasn't spoken to the White House. But she is really going to be the last thing that could likely save this nomination. Now, Manchin, speaking to CNN's Manu Raju yesterday, said that it was, in part, he's not supporting Tanden -- even though he spoke to her and she was very nice, he's not supporting Tanden because of her past record, but also because of those tweets that she sent about Republican members that they found derogatory, that they found offensive.
So again, the White House is still standing by Neera Tanden. Publicly, they are making calls on her behalf trying to shore up votes, but it is not looking good right now -- Laura.
JARRETT: Yes. Sen. Murkowski, of course, a critical vote here as Democrats would need 50 with, obviously, the vice president breaking the tie in order for Neera Tanden to get confirmed. So we will see what happens.
Jasmine, thank you.
ROMANS: All right.
The vaccine rollout in the U.S. back on track after progress was slowed by severe winter storms. About 85 percent of vaccine that has been distributed is in people's arms. That number, of course -- that percentage will decrease this week because the supply will be increasing.
About six percent of the country is fully vaccinated. That's still a long way to go to achieve herd immunity.
Meantime, an executive from Johnson & Johnson will testify at a House hearing today that the company will make enough doses by the end of March to vaccinate 20 million Americans.
JARRETT: Now, J&J had previously changed its timeline for an early rollout of its vaccine. The CDC also plans to hold an emergency meeting of vaccine advisers next week, presumably to consider Johnson & Johnson's request for emergency use authorization.
More vaccine means more eligibility. Connecticut plans to give the vaccine to people over 55 beginning on March first. People as young as 16 could be eligible by early May. That would be a huge development.
And states are loosening more restrictions. Movie theaters in New York City can reopen on March fifth at 25 percent capacity with assigned seating.
ROMANS: All right.
The first Senate hearing on the Capitol riots today will focus on who was responsible. Three committees, including Homeland Security, will conduct this hearing jointly. Now, witnesses include the Metro Police chief, former Senate and House sergeants at arms, and the former chief of the U.S. Capitol Police.
Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland says his top priority will be prosecuting Capitol riot cases. More than 250 people from 40 states and D.C. have already been charged.
JARRETT: The U.S. Supreme Court making a clean break with the Trump era on Monday as it focused not on his policies but on cases deeply personal to the former president himself.
The justices dealt critical blows to Trump's efforts to shield his tax records from a New York City prosecutor, and the former president's often-repeated false claims that there was widespread voter fraud during the last election.
The court also dismissed a defamation case brought by Stormy Daniels.
Yet, one justice gave the highest level of endorsement to date of former President Trump's baseless voter fraud claims. Justice Clarence Thomas said fraud is more prevalent with mail-in ballots. Yes, that is a quote from the justice. Now, there is no evidence of that.
He added this. "An election free from strong evidence of systemic fraud is not alone sufficient for election confidence."
As a longtime conservative justice, Thomas' legal views often aligned with the Trump administration, but Monday's dissent stands out for how much it subscribed to the former president's fictional narrative on voter fraud while the notion of widespread fraud has been debunked by election law experts for years and failed overwhelmingly in dozens of court challenges brought by the former president.
ROMANS: All right.
Coronavirus hospitalizations have been cut in half in the United States since October -- in half. But in places like Iraq, the highly contagious U.K. variant is ravaging the country, and a lack of trust in the Iraqi healthcare system is making matters worse.
Let's bring in Arwa Damon. She joins us live from Baghdad.
Arwa, talk to us here. You were able to get access to a local ICU. What are you seeing?
ARWA DAMON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, Christine, despite all of the suffering we also saw something that, in many ways, is uniquely Iraqi. There was a warmth inside this intensive care unit. There was the human touch.
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DAMON (voice-over): The constant beeping of the machines is mind- numbing, but a least here there is something rarely seen inside a COVID-19 intensive care unit. Those struggling for each breath are not alone.
[05:40:10]
(INAUDIBLE) laugh is muffled, an inside joke shared with the doctors about how her daughter Naba'a is constantly hovering over her. The family went to a wedding -- no masks and no social distancing, a
decision they all bitterly regret. "I have also had COVID but I've forgotten about it with the state my mother is in," Naba'a says as her voice starts to crack.
"We filled the house with oxygen tanks but it wasn't enough, and then we brought her here. (INAUDIBLE) she is doing much better now."
(INAUDIBLE) family also tried to treat her using oxygen at home. They did not want to bring her to a hospital, not an uncommon occurrence in Iraq.
DAMON (on camera): Why do you think people are reluctant to come to the hospital initially?
DR. HASSAN ALAA, CHIEF RESIDENT: Maybe because of culture -- Iraqi culture.
DAMON (voice-over): For some, it's fear of being stigmatized, having caught a virus that has brought the world to its knees.
"There are people even now who say what is this coronavirus," (INAUDIBLE) daughter Niran tells us. They don't believe the virus exists until it hits them. But it's also a misunderstanding that oxygen and vitamins are enough to treat the symptoms of the virus.
And there's also a lack of faith in Iraq's healthcare systems which have yet to fully recover from sanctions dating back to the Saddam Hussein era and then, non-stop war.
ALAA: This is very bad thing to keep patient in a home -- at home -- treatment at home.
DAMON (voice-over): Iraq's first COVID-19 wave devastated the country. Hospitals were overwhelmed. This particular infectious diseases hospital in Baghdad that the government facilitated our access to saw its patient numbers triple in the last two weeks.
DAMON (on camera): Are you ready for maximum capacity or more?
ALAA: We have beds. We have doctors. We have nurses.
DAMON (voice-over): And they do not have a choice.
ALAA: Two months ago, the virus nearly, from Iraq, deleted from all the Iraq people. So all people leave face mask, leave sterilization, leave everything and neglected everything -- neglected all protection.
DAMON (on camera): Does this make you stressed? Does this make you worried?
ALAA: Sure We are afraid for our family and ourselves from this new virus. But we should do what we can to the benefits for the patients.
DAMON (voice-over): By new virus, Dr. Alaa means new variant. Iraq's Ministry of Health recently stated that 50 percent of the new infections are of the highly contagious B117 variant first identified in the U.K. The government only just made face masks mandatory and reimplemented stricter restrictions like nighttime and weekend curfews.
"It should have happened before, not now at the end," Niran says of the government's measures, as her mother's chest heaves with each labored breath. She won't leave her side no matter the risk, no matter the circumstances. In Iraq, no one stays in the hospital alone.
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DAMON: And Christine, there is a certain level of frustration among the doctors and the nurses that vaccinations have yet to begin. We did reach out to the Ministry of Health, which says that they are expecting to receive their first batch at the beginning of March.
ROMANS: All right. Arwa Damon for us in Iraq. Thank you so much.
We'll be right back.
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[05:47:51]
JARRETT: Welcome back.
A rogue nation with nuclear ambitions and a history of hacking, so why not invite its leader aboard Air Force One?
CNN's Will Ripley is live for us in Hong Kong. Will, explain what a source says former President Trump did and why it matters.
WILL RIPLEY, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Laura, it's hard to believe. But then again, the last four years, for many people, have been hard to believe.
You think about the very short list of world leaders who have ridden on Air Force One, like the former Soviet president Leonid Brezhnev with Nixon in '73, or the former British Prime Minister David Cameron with Obama in 2012.
Well, in 2019, President Trump, after canceling abruptly summit talks in Hanoi, Vietnam with Kim Jong Un, wanted to add him to that list, just casually offering to fly him back to Pyongyang without consulting with his aides, without considering the logistical and security nightmare that would involve, without considering that Kim had several days left of summit talks with Vietnamese government officials after their summit.
No -- President Trump said come on board, kind of like, as one source put it, a teenager trying to show off his flashy new car.
And obviously, Kim Jong Un, according to John Bolton's book and according to our CNN source, a high-ranking former Trump administration official, kind of laughed it off and said that wouldn't be possible.
But it just underscores the lack of preparation, the lack of knowledge, the tone-deafness that President Trump brought to that summit in Hanoi, which many analysts argued was probably the best, if not only, opportunity to fundamentally transform the relationship between the United States and North Korea.
But when Kim Jong Un was humiliated when President Trump walked out and left the lunch table empty -- he even canceled their working lunch -- it basically was the end of diplomacy with North Korea under Trump. Despite the face-to-face visit at the DMZ later that year and the love letters it never recovered.
And now, you have a nuclear-armed North Korea -- arguably, more heavily nuclear-armed than ever before -- that President Biden has inherited, Laura.
JARRETT: Just a baffling anecdote, as you said, representative of a lot more than just this one instance.
Will Ripley, thank you so much for that. Appreciate it.
[05:50:00]
Well, the wife of notorious drug kingpin Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman now faces her own drug trafficking charges. Thirty-one-year-old Emma Coronel Aispuro due in federal court today after her arrest Monday at Dulles airport in Virginia. She's accused of distributing heroin, cocaine, marijuana, methamphetamine. She's also accused of aiding El Chapo's escape from a Mexican prison back in 2015.
ROMANS: All right.
Trading app Robinhood says it will add live phone support so customers can speak by phone to a registered financial representative when they need help with trading and transfer issues. The trading app facing intense scrutiny over how it handles questions about accounts and complaints.
This, after a 20-year-old college student died by suicide when he mistakenly thought he owed more than $700,000 over a risky bet. His family says Robinhood provided zero guidance and customer service was non-existent.
JARRETT: A father-to-be in Upstate New York died when a device meant to be used at a gender reveal party exploded. State Police say 28- year-old Christopher Pekny was building the device on Sunday when it went off. The blast also injured his brother, who was taken to a local hospital.
The tragedy is just the latest incident involving these gender reveal events gone bad, including one last year that triggered a wildfire in Southern California.
ROMANS: A top official in Florida defying the governor's order to lower flags to half-staff for Rush Limbaugh. The conservative radio host who died last week was a longtime resident of Palm Beach. But Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried doesn't believe Limbaugh is worthy of such an honor and says she'll direct state offices she oversees to disregard that order.
She said in a tweet Monday, "Lowering our flags should always reflect unity, not division -- and raising our standards, not lowering them."
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First sounds from Mars.
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JARRETT: That is the sound of Mars. NASA's Perseverance rover beaming back to earth the sounds of the red planet in a first-of-its-kind audio captured on the surface. It was released along with extraordinary footage there of the rover as it descended on Thursday. The images are the most sophisticated yet taken of Mars.
ROMANS: All right. Looking at markets around the world this Tuesday morning, Asian shares closed mixed. Europe has opened lower. Frankfurt down more than 1 1/2 percent.
In the U.S., stock index futures at this hour also leaning lower. A big sell-off in the Nasdaq, worst day since late-January, down 2 1/2 percent. That's a big one-day move. Way down by rising bond yields weighing down there on tech. The Dow closed barely higher.
The Fed chief Jerome Powell testifies later today in his semi-annual report to Congress. Powell has been clear the Fed will keep interest rates low while the economy tries to recover.
The Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen making the case again for a big, bold effort to rescue American families from the economic damage of coronavirus.
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JANET YELLEN, TREASURY SECRETARY: Success to me would be if we could get back to pre-pandemic levels of unemployment and see the reemployment of those who have lost jobs in the service sector, particularly. I would also consider that a measure of success.
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ROMANS: Getting back to full employment.
On paper, the unemployment rate, at 6.3 percent, is the lowest of the pandemic. But Yellen, the fed chief Jerome Powell, and many top economists say that number there you're seeing understates the pain.
The real employment rate closer to 10 percent. That's when you add in the millions of people who lost jobs since February and are not looking for work right now. Also, workers who are misclassified. These are not counted as unemployed.
So the unemployment rate really 10 percent or higher. That rivals the worst point of the Great Recession.
Yellen also sounded the alarm about Bitcoin, saying it is a quote "extremely inefficient way of conducting transactions." Bitcoin tapped a trillion dollars on Friday.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's "THE MUPPET SHOW" with tonight's guest star, Mr. Joel Grey.
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ROMANS: All right. Disney+ adding the 70s classic "THE MUPPET SHOW" to its streaming service. And you know what? There's this curious byproduct of the rush to get vintage material on new platforms -- context warnings.
Disney+ is warning viewers some episodes of "THE MUPPET SHOW" feature negative depictions and mistreatment of people and cultures. They already slapped a disclaimer on other content, including "Dumbo."
HBO Max added a disclaimer to "Gone with the Wind" after WarnerMedia had pulled the movie, citing the need to address its racist depictions.
Now, I have heard people screaming about political correctness run amuck and what are you doing with our vintage classics -- this is cancel culture. It's not cancel culture. You can still see it, it's just context culture. I think that's interesting.
[05:55:05]
JARRETT: Yes, just a warning about racism. But we are more of a "Baby Shark" household in my camp, so it's a safer choice.
ROMANS: Thanks for joining us. I'm Christine Romans.
JARRETT: I'm Laura Jarrett. "NEW DAY" is next.
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NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Half a million now dead in America.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES, NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH: We've done worse than most any other country. The kind of disparate responses of states rather than having a unified.
