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Governors of Texas and Mississippi Announce Lifting of Mask Mandates; Congress Continues Negotiating over COVID Relief Bill; Infrastructure Projects for New York and San Francisco Removed from COVID Relief Bill; Biden Vows Enough Vaccines for All Adults By End of May. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired March 03, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: FBI view as domestic terrorism.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The violence that the FBI is worried about is about racism.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Director Wray saying very clearly that there's no evidence to indicate the participation of any left-leaning or Antifa protesters.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. And this morning, vaccine for every adult American by the end of May, months earlier than previously projected. That announcement from President Biden as he revealed a really unusual deal between pharmaceutical competitors to speed the process. It comes as we're hearing alarm from doctors and local officials about decisions announced from the governors of Texas and Mississippi to lift mask mandates, joining a list of states that have done the same thing.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Meanwhile, FBI Director Christopher Wray shooting down Republicans who are trying to rewrite history about the Capitol insurrection. The Trump-appointed FBI chief unequivocally says there is no evidence that so-called fake Trump supporters or Antifa participated in the attack on the Capitol. And 270 people have already been arrested, none of them masquerading as Trump supporters. They were real Trump supporters.

Wray also says there is still no evidence of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. And that's the lie that led to this deadly attack on your screen. Wray warning lawmakers that domestic terrorism is metastasizing across the United States.

BERMAN: So joining us now, Dr. Joseph Varon. He's the chief of staff at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston, and Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins. He's the chief elected official and director of emergency management of Dallas County. Dr. Varon, how many straight days have you worked now?

DR. JOSEPH VARON, CHIEF OF STAFF, UNITED MEMORIAL MEDICAL CENTER: Today is day 349.

BERMAN: So 349 straight days. So you are putting your life on the line every day to save lives in this pandemic. So how does it feel when your state's governor announces that he is lifting the mask mandates?

VARON: To be honest with you, yesterday when I found out about this, I saw those 348 days yesterday go down the drain. I felt frustrated because I've been working nonstop, and actually I had seen a light at the end of the tunnel. I was hoping by the time I get to 365 days I was going to be able to take some time off, like at least, as has been suggested many times on your program. And unfortunately, it doesn't look like that's going to be happening. I actually got very concerned yesterday when that was announced.

CAMEROTA: Dr. Varon, I feel like crying when I hear you say that, because I feel like crying that you are bracing yourself, after all the exhaustion, after everything that you've put in, for yet another surge and for what your doctors and nurses in the ICU are going to have to be dealing with. Are you guys having -- are you sitting down, are you having meetings about this?

VARON: As soon as we heard that, we had immediate board meeting. I met with the president of the system. I met with nursing. I met with everybody so that we can get more PPEs, talk to nurses, because towards the end of March, if we open the state on the 10th, I'm telling you, before the end of March, we're going to have problems. And we have a precedent for that. Remember what happened last year when we opened the state at the end of April. My worst months were June and July last year. So unfortunately, this is starting to look like a deja vu.

BERMAN: Judge, your view of this and what recourse can you take?

JUDGE CLAY JENKINS, CHIEF ELECTED OFFICIAL DALLAS COUNTY: Well, this is a political move on the part of the governor to take the attention off the power grid collapse that he and his cronies caused, because we're about to start getting those bills in for those sky-high energy bills, those broken pipes, and he wants to change the conversation. I wish he was more imaginative and had a better way to change the conversation than doing something dumb like this. I do think most Texans will listen to smart people like Dr. Varon and they will look at what they need to do to keep themselves and their communities safe, not listen to the governor about what they can get away with.

CAMEROTA: I think we have a graph of the new cases of where we are in Texas today. So let's look at that. The new cases had come down just as they have in every state since January -- since mid-December and January. And now we see with that red line, it ticking back up a little bit. And part of the irony, or I guess just the incredible contradiction

here, Doctor, is that the way you get businesses to reopen successfully, the way that that could happen, is by wearing masks. Everybody understands wanting businesses to reopen. Of course, we want to save the economy. Of course, people like to go out to businesses. And the reason, correct me if I'm wrong, but in the past six months, we haven't seen superspreading events at nail salons and hair salons and retail stores is because everybody going in is wearing a mask. So why do both at the same time?

[08:05:04]

VARON: To me, it doesn't make any sense. I really don't know what -- where the scientific basis that he based his decision on, but I am very concerned. And maybe contrary to what the judge says, I think that people are going to probably not wear mask, even though Texas don't like to be told what to do. But if somebody tells you, I'm lifting the mask restriction, I think that a lot of Texans are not going to wear the mask. And I hope I'm wrong. I hope the judge is right, and I hope that everybody is paying attention and they have common sense. But we know that common sense does not prevail in this state.

The other thing that we have a problem with here in the state is our rate of vaccination. Despite being a huge state, we have less than seven percent of vaccination. I don't know why he didn't wait until we have more percentage of the population vaccinated before he came with this move.

BERMAN: That is an important point to note right there. It's only a little bit more than six percent of the population is vaccinated. He actually pointed to the vaccinations as the reason you can do this. I'm not quite sure where he's getting the math there if 94 percent of the people still are not fully vaccinated. I'm not sure exactly how that works. So Judge, tell me what you can do locally. What are still allowed to do? Are you allowed to have a local, a county-wide max mandate? Can stores still require masks for people to come in? What happens if someone walks into a store and refuses to wear a mask but that store wants you to have one?

JENKINS: So the stores can still refuse service to people who don't wear a mask, and I think most stores will. When you go into an establishment, you want a safe, good experience. And so people don't want strangers in a global pandemic walking around next to them without a mask on. Also, as an owner, you want your employees to believe in you, that you care about them. And having everyone wear a mask does that.

I agree with Dr. Varon, there will be selfish people who will take that mask off, and there will be people who hear the governor's announcement and jump to conclusions that things they weren't comfortable doing last week, they can now be comfortable doing. It will lead to more spread, ultimately more death. And it will make it longer before we can get to herd immunity and really get our economy going again. And all this to change the subject from a failed job of keeping the power grid going. CAMEROTA: Judge, that's such an interesting perspective. But I also

think we do trust our elected officials, we do trust that they know more than us. So when somebody lifts the mask mandate you think, oh, good, maybe they have some data. They're seeing some new numbers that things were out of the woods. But that's not what's happening, of course.

And Dr. Varon, something really interesting, while we've all been focused on, obviously, COVID, the flu this year. The flu that normally kills scores of Americans, here's where we are in terms of last year, on the right side of your screen, the red, the deep red, the purple. That's all of the intense flu activity exactly a year ago. The left side green means extremely little or no flu cases. So isn't this incredible? The social distancing and the masks have had this fringe benefit of very few flu cases that anybody can find.

VARON: Yes, I mean, in 2018, more than 60,000 Americans died from flu. Last year, maybe a couple of hundred. And what is amazing to me is that since the beginning of this pandemic, I have not seen a single case of the flu by itself. I have seen COVID and flu together, but flu by itself, I have not seen. And that is because we have been wearing masks.

BERMAN: Judge, this announcement from the president about vaccines, 300 million doses available by the end of May, enough for every adult American. How will that help in the efforts in Texas and around the country, do you think, to get everyone vaccinated?

JENKINS: Oh, it will be tremendous. We've got to build that capacity, get that out. Here in Texas, the governor's got to quit diverting shots from urban areas that vote blue to rural areas that vote red. For instance, where he made his announcement yesterday, 25 percent of the population of Lubbock County have had a shot, but only 14 percent of the populations of Dallas and Tarrant County, or DFW, have had a shot, because he keeps diverting our portion of those shots to those more Republican areas. That's got to stop. We've got a partnership now going with the Biden administration to get us shots directly, and that's going to help us tremendously.

BERMAN: Judge Jenkins, Dr. Varon, thank you both so much for being with us. Dr. Varon, thank you for continuing to work, and hopefully you will get that --

CAMEROTA: I don't know what to say, anymore, Doctor. I'm going to find a new date for you.

VARON: OK. Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Thank you both very much.

[08:10:07]

The U.S. Senate is expected to begin debate on the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill as soon as today. Two infrastructure projects that were in that legislation have now been pulled. CNN's Lauren Fox is live on Capitol Hill with these developments. So what's out, what's in?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Well, essentially, Alisyn, these two controversial projects, one of them a bridge in upstate New York to Canada. The other a railway project outside of San Francisco. They were both removed from the bridge. And if you remember, Republicans have been arguing for the last week or so that these projects represented the kind of waste, fraud, and abuse that they thought was in this COVID relief bill. And they were using those two transportation projects as a reason why their members had voted against the relief bill to begin with.

Now Democrats are removing those items in part because they are hoping to make it more difficult for Republican senators to vote against this package, but also because some of their own members were opposed to those items. So that's why they have been removed.

Now, I am told from Democratic lawmakers and aides who are still working on finalizing the COVID relief bill that negotiations are ongoing among Democrats on other key provisions as well. Moderates met with the president on Monday and asked him for more money for rural health care, more money for broadband and Internet access, and they were also asking him to lower that unemployment weekly benefit from $400 a week like it is in the House bill to $300 a week. Now that could be a nonstarter for many progressives in the House of Representatives, I'm told, but it is something that moderates view as a potential way to expand those unemployment benefits beyond just August and into the fall, potentially past September.

Now those changes could potentially still come today. They are still working on this final piece of legislation. They are still working through the bill. I'm told they continued that work throughout the night with the White House. But just a sign of how these negotiations are still ongoing. And we expect to see this final piece of legislation at some point today. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Lauren, I love the term Vote-a-rama. I feel like I should get my go-go boots out to partake in it. How are the Republicans going to be using that?

(LAUGHTER)

FOX: I am told that Republicans are going to be trying to extract the maximum amount of political pain from this vote-a-rama. That is an old-school thing that they have done time and time again. As Senator John Cornyn told me, the goal here is to create some kind of campaign ad against Democratic colleagues who might be unwilling or unwilling to part from their Democratic colleagues on these tough votes.

Now, they could vote on everything from immigration issues to energy issues, things like building the Keystone XL Pipeline. Those are some things that Democrats have been supportive of in the past. And so a Republican will introduce an amendment, and Democrats are going to have to decide, are they going to stick together potentially at a political cost to themselves, or are they going to vote with some Republicans on some of these amendments? Now Biden and Schumer have made it very clear to their Democratic

colleagues, they want them voting no on all of these poison pill amendments. But that's going to be hard for people like Joe Manchin, for people like Kyrsten Sinema for whom they are viewing themselves as moderates. They sometimes may even be willing to support making this bill more targeted. They're going to have to resist that urge to make their leadership happy, but that's going to be the delicate balance. And that's what Republicans are hoping to extract over the next couple of days, because they know that ultimately they know this COVID relief bill is expected to pass, and they can't stop it given the fact that Democrats can pass it with just 51 votes. Alisyn?

CAMEROTA: Lauren, thank you for bringing us up to speed on all of that. Great reporting.

BERMAN: If you're wearing vote-a-rama go-go boots, I'm going gold lame.

CAMEROTA: Please. That sounds fantastic.

BERMAN: I knew you'd like that.

CAMEROTA: Tomorrow morning we'll do that.

Meanwhile, President Biden is flexing his wartime powers to speed up his vaccine timeline. So we will share the optimistic new date that Americans can get their shots. That's next.

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[08:17:49]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When we came into office, the prior administration had contracted for not nearly enough vaccine to cover adults in America. As a consequence of the stepped-up process that I've ordered and just outlined, this country will have enough vaccine supply, I'll say it again, for every adult in America by the end of May.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That's President Joe Biden accelerating his timeline for vaccines, speeding it up by two months from that administration's previous goal.

More than 51 million Americans have received at least one dose now of the vaccine, which is more than half of the 100 million that President Biden pledged to have in his first 100 days. For those keeping track at home, today is day 38 of his administration. Feels longer.

Joining us now, Jonathan Allen, senior political reporter for NBC News, and Amie Parnes, senior correspondent for "The Hill."

Great to see both of you. BERMAN: They have a new book.

CAMEROTA: Yes, they do. Thank you very much.

This new book is called "Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency." And we can't wait to talk about just how narrowly this didn't -- this could have gone the other way. We'll get to that in a second.

But, Amie, first, is this a strategy of sort of underpromising and overdelivering? Like why was he able to move up -- I mean, I remember thinking, OK, by the end of July, we'll have enough vaccines, by the end of July. Now it's the end of May.

So what's happening?

AMIE PARNES, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, THE HILL: Well, I think the White House understands there's a lot of fatigue going on. The White House is seeing what's happening in states like Texas and they know they have to act quickly. People are getting tired of staying home, tired of not having their kids in school, and I talked to some White House aides who say that they realize, they understand that pressure and they had to do what it takes to move up their timeline.

And if President Biden can pull off this victory it will be a good thing for him. I think a lot of people will credit him and his administration for taking action and moving quickly. So I think that's why they are doing exactly what they are doing.

BERMAN: I think this dovetails a little bit with your book. This idea of underpromising and overdelivering in a way you make your own luck, you know?

[08:20:05]

And he's done that consistently. To me, if he's saying now, Jonathan, that we're going to have enough doses for every adult by the end of May, the White House probably thinks we're going to have it by the end of April. I'll see what come out and said it because he wants to be -- consistently beat expectations.

JONATHAN ALLEN, SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER, NBC NEWS: Absolutely, Joe Biden's been in politics for a long time and he absolutely, 100 percent knows when you can see that in this book, time after time that if he sets the bar low, he can exceed it and people will be happy with him and they'll reward him for that. And for that reason, sometimes people underestimate him.

Barack Obama didn't think he was going to win the presidency. Hillary Clinton didn't think it. John Kerry didn't think it. Donald Trump surely didn't think it and those other two dozen Democrats that ran against him in the primary didn't think it.

So, you know, we talk about the book "Lucky," you can see in this characteristics of Joe Biden that are going to play out for the American public in more detail on policy as we're seeing right now with this vaccine rollout and other policies.

CAMEROTA: Amie, yesterday while we were on the air, we got the news that Merck was going to be helping to manufacture the J&J vaccine which was just a really interesting development. They are normally competitors. And it's this sort of wartime model that's similar to the manufacturing campaigns of World War II.

And so now we know that the White House was involved in brokering this. So tell us more about Biden's role.

PARNES: I think, like I said before, he understands in a very palpable way what is happening. He knows that people are getting frustrated. There are people who are, you know, dialing in every day and trying to find vaccines and can't do it and it's frustrating to people.

And especially child care workers and teachers and I think that's why he's really making an effort to push for a reopening of schools but first to vaccinate teachers and vaccinate child care workers. And that's kind of like at the front -- at the forefront of this push.

They think that if they can sort of create all of these vaccines right away, then they can -- everything else will sort of fall into place. Schools will reopen. The country will, obviously, take a deep breath and things will get better.

BERMAN: Jonathan, the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill, which is a huge -- will be a huge piece of legislation. I mean literally huge in terms of the money being spent but also just thematically. It's a big piece of legislation that affects a lot of people's lives.

Where does this fit into the Joe Biden ideology that you report on in the book?

ALLEN: It's a great question, John, and I think what you're seeing now is something that in a way departs from what he would normally do which is to reach across the aisle, try to get something done in a bipartisan fashion. But what you see in the book about Joe Biden and certainly about what he was thinking, he talked about to vice presidential candidates about, what he was going to do in the first 100 days.

And he sort of had this view expressed by Chris Dodd, the former senator, who was one of his VP vetters, that you couldn't waste a crisis. It was very important in the first 100 days to get as much done as possible because after that it was going to be much harder, that there'd be less of a political honeymoon. And so, we report on that pretty deeply here.

CAMEROTA: OK. So, let's talk about the book, "Lucky," and how it almost didn't go Joe Biden's way, again this time. So, you have -- let me read a portion of James Clyburn's role in making this happen.

You write, Clyburn wanted to endorse Biden. In fact, he had no intention of endorsing any other candidate but he could also see how badly the wheels had come off Biden's campaign and he was a savvy enough politician to know there wasn't much point in endorsing someone who was going to lose.

He also knew he would have more leverage with Biden before an endorsement than ever after one. So, about those wheels coming off Biden's campaign, what -- what went wrong and was almost, you know, catastrophic?

PARNES: Well, in Iowa, first of all, they -- they had no game plan, it seemed. And they were losing money quickly. And we talk about how the then-vice president and his team were even talking about refinancing his home to get through things. You know, the lights went out in their hotel room -- their hotel one night. It was sort of a metaphor for what was going on in New Hampshire. He had to get out and go to South Carolina.

But we talk a lot about how things really had to fall into place for him. And he had to sort of -- even after the things worked out in Nevada, he came in second, and in South Carolina, he really had to sort of move forward and come up with a game plan. We have an anecdote in the book where people were worried behind the scenes, really, really worried.

John talked earlier about Barack Obama, everyone else. People around him were worried about how the campaign was going. And then COVID happened. And he is stuck in his basement and people -- that is sort of a good thing for him. We have one adviser, Anita Dunn, was saying this is the best thing that could have ever happened to Joe Biden.

And so, we have all of these sort of anecdotes in the book that talk about how lucky he got from the Clyburn endorsement, which wasn't certain it would happen, and so we kind of detail all of that in the book. And this is very much a playbook. It's not just a postmortem about what happened.

If Democrats want to do better in 2022 and in 2024, they have to sort of analyze what happened here and why it was so close. Everyone wants to focus on 81 million votes. What happened, it was really 43,000. We elect presidents by the Electoral College.

And it could have gone either way. And, you know, someone told me the other day, we were very close to having another Donald Trump presidency if you go by the Electoral College.

BERMAN: Amie Parnes, Jonathan Allen, I'm so glad you wrote this. And, by the way, "Lucky" you don't mean in a pejorative way. You make it clear lucky doesn't just happen. There's a skill behind it, but also, you know, when Joe Biden won Super Tuesday and accomplished something so stunning like the pandemic started six minutes later. And we didn't have any time to figure out what happened.

I'm so glad you've written and explained what happened here. Thanks so much for being with us.

PARNES: Thank you.

ALLEN: Thank you, guys. BERMAN: So, the head of the FBI debunking the revisionist conspiracy

theories being pushed by some Republicans about the capitol insurrection. You'll hear from him, next.

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