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New Day

New Cases Rising in 14 States; North Korea's Weapons Test; Truth Behind Border Crisis; Yeshiva's Winning Streak. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired March 17, 2021 - 08:30   ET

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

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[08:30:04]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, 14 states are seeing an increase in new coronavirus cases when compared to last week. All the states there in red seeing an increase. Michigan in deep red. That's up more than 50 percent since last week.

So, nationwide, overall the numbers are still trending down. But as we look at those specific states, the question is, in those places, are we starting to see signs of a new surge?

So, I want to bring in Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's Chief medical correspondent.

Sanjay, you know, you don't like seeing any red on that map, and Michigan, which I know holds a special place in your heart, to see it up 50 percent in a week, how alarming is that?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is -- this is concerning. I mean a lot of people have obviously been talking about these potential surges, you know, going into this time of the year. I mean this is what we saw last year around this time.

There's a couple things I think that are important and I've been talking to some folks even this morning about it. What it -- what really is driving these surges? I think it's important to know what's driving it, what's not driving it.

So, for example, a lot of people talking about these variants. This variant from the U.K. has been here since probably mid, early December. In some states -- we know it's in 49 states now. In some states we know it's become more dominant than others. But in Florida, for example, where it's become dominant, cases continue to go down.

And I just point that out to say, what exactly is driving the surge? It may not necessarily be the variants. So these states have to understand what exactly is going on there.

But also, you know, looking at Italy, for example, we -- we're talking about this last year around St. Patrick's Day and saying, hey, if you see what's happening in Italy, the numbers over there are starting to go up. We're not going to become Italy, are we? And then we did. And then there was another surge and a few weeks behind that surge, again, we followed. You can see that in the middle of the screen.

So look at the right side of the screen. Here's the big question, are the numbers going to go up like they have in Italy or not? They may.

Now our vaccination in this country around 12 percent. In Italy, around 3 percent to 4 percent. I think that's going to help a lot in the United States because it's not only 10 percent to 12 percent, but it's also people who are elderly, people who are more vulnerable are more likely not to have been vaccinated.

So numbers may go up. We'll see what happens with hospitalizations and deaths.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Sticking with vaccines for a moment here, Sanjay, President Biden was asked this morning about just how political things have become. I want to play that moment for you.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS CHIEF ANCHOR: How do you get the politics out of this vaccine talk?

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I honest to God thought we had it out. I honest to God thought that once we guaranteed we had enough vaccine for everybody, things would start to calm down.

Well, they have calmed down a great deal, but I just don't understand this sort of macho thing about, I'm not going to get the vaccine, I have a right as an American, my freedom to not do it. Well, why don't you be a patriot, protect other people?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: There's the message from President Biden. We heard from former President Trump last night who said, listen, this is safe, it's effective.

Are they the best messengers at this point to deal with the hesitancy that we're seeing?

GUPTA: That's a really good question, Erica. I think the really important messengers, and I've done this reporting in the United States and around the world, and oftentimes it does make a difference when you hear and then even see your leaders taking these vaccines.

I think when you look at overall data, in terms of hesitancy, you find the people's primary care doctors, you know, their pharmacists, people like that are probably the better messengers because they're the ones who interact with people on a regular basis. So you really got to make sure there's not hesitancy among those providers.

But what's interesting is now you have this incredibly effective vaccine and you're -- it's not so much vaccine hesitancy you're seeing as vaccine fade where people are saying, hey, look, you know, things are getting better. The weather's getting warmer. We see people getting on planes and going to Hawaii. Do I really need the vaccine? And that's a problem because the numbers will continue to get better, I think, going into the summer. But going into the fall, you could have resurgences if not enough people are protected. So that's the real concern here.

BERMAN: You know, Erica and I were talking about my reading of specific journals.

HILL: Yes. Yes, actually, we were.

BERMAN: No, I saw -- I saw Dr. Fauci quoted with a sentence that really struck me, Sanjay, which he said, one of the central components of virology, or tenets of virology, is that replication leads to mutation. And that is why it's such a concern when people refuse to get vaccinated because it means -- well, explain what that means to our viewers because you can do it better than I can.

GUPTA: So the more times the virus sort of spreads and replicates this tiny piece of genetic material, the more mutations it accumulates. That's just sort of the evolution of the virus.

Now, most of those mutations are innocuous. They really don't have any consequence. But every now and then the virus will mutate in a way that we see with these variants.

[08:35:05]

The -- it makes it more transmissible, for example. That's typically how it mutates.

By the way, that's what happens with the flu virus. I mean the flu virus and the flu vaccine, the flu virus has been around at least, you know, I mean this one strain, 100 years, and it's accumulated lots of mutations and turn into these different strains along the way which is why we need a flu shot every year. Same thing they think could happen with the coronavirus.

HILL: Sanjay, always appreciate it. Thank you.

GUPTA: See you guys. Thank you.

HILL: On Saturday, we hope you'll join us for an important, emotional hour about loss and survival from our colleague Miguel Marquez. The new CNN Special Report, "The Human Cost of COVID" begins at 9:00 p.m. Eastern right here on CNN.

There is a new warning from U.S. intelligence about North Korea. We are live at the Pentagon, next.

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BERMAN: U.S. intelligence officials believe North Korea could be preparing for its first weapons test since President Biden took office. The Biden administration has tried reaching out to Pyongyang but the move failed triggering a threat from Kim Jong-un's sister. [08:40:02]

Barbara Starr at the Pentagon with the latest developments.

Barbara.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John.

Today there are fresh worries across the Biden administration that North Korea indeed may be preparing for its first weapons test of the Biden era. Not clear whether it might be a missile test, an engine test, what it might be, but serious enough that U.S. satellites now are watching sites in North Korea to get any information they can about all of this.

It comes at a very sensitive time, of course. Secretary of State Tony Blinken, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveling in the region, meeting with South Korean officials to reaffirm the alliance that they will defend South Korea and to press for denuclearization of North Korea.

But how concerning is all of this? I want to read to you something a top U.S. general in charge of defending the continental United States told Congress just yesterday. General Glen VanHerck saying, and I quote, the North Korean regime has also indicated that it is no longer bound by the unilateral nuclear and ICBM testing moratorium announced in 2018 -- of course during the Trump administration -- suggesting that Kim Jong-un may begin flight testing an improved ICBM design in the near future.

Of course, that being an intercontinental missile with potentially, some day, a nuclear warhead that could reach the United States. That has been Kim's goal.

And as you point out, just the other day one of the most powerful figures in North Korea, Kim's sister, threatened the United States in a statement, warning that the Biden administration shouldn't, in her words, cause a stink.

Now the question is, what does Kim's sister really mean by that and what could, if anything, be next to come.

Erica.

HILL: Yes, absolutely.

Barbara with the latest for us.

Barbara, thank you.

Well, right now there's a lot in right wing media about Joe Biden's border crisis. So when did it start and what is really going on at the southern border?

Here's John Avlon with a "Reality Check."

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That's right.

Look, this St. Patrick's Day, it's worth recalling that one of the first anti-immigrant movements in American politics, the so-called no- nothing party, channeled its anger at Irish and Catholic immigration. Now we have an Irish Catholic president. But the politics of immigration panic are still very much with us.

Remember the migrant caravan that dominated coverage before the 2018 midterms and then largely disappeared from the air waves after Election Day? Well, Republicans are beating the border crisis drum again, halfway through Joe Biden's first 100 days.

But just how much is fact and how much is partisan fiction? Let's dig into the data.

First, there is a spike of apprehensions at the southern border. Over 100,000 in February alone. And that included nearly 9,600 kids, many unaccompanied by adults.

Now, the recent rise began in the final months of Trump's term, but it's escalated since Biden took office.

Now, the border is not open, that's false, but it is fair to say that Biden's retraction of a Trump policy, which made people seeing asylum wait on the Mexican side of the border has contributed to the rise.

Now, you may have heard accusations of hypocrisy in the detention of underage migrants. So is this just a redux of the kids in cages policy from the Trump years? No. And there's an important reason why. The Trump administration intentionally pursued a policy of separating children from their parents when they crossed the border. As then Attorney General Jeff Sessions said, we need to take away children. The cruelty was the point. The kids now held in detention came across the border without their parents, so this is not a child separation policy. But it is a humanitarian crisis and FEMA's been dispatched to help.

Here's more context. Current levels of undocumented immigration lag behind a major spike in 2019 when Trump was in office, when 977,000 people were apprehended at the southern border, including roughly 80,000 unaccompanied minors, the highest in more than a decade.

But many of the migrants think that Biden's less punitive approach means they're welcome to cross the country illegally. They're not. The Biden administration needs to make that clean. And that's the cleanup Biden tried with ABC's George Stephanopoulos.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I can say quite clearly, don't come.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: This is a political vulnerability. While Biden's approval rating is 51 percent in a CNN poll last week, only 43 percent approve of his handling of immigration.

And, consider this, Donald Trump increased his vote total along the Texas/Mexico border against Biden in 2020, flipping eight Latino heavy counties Hillary Clinton won in 2016.

Now, if Republicans want to help solve this problem, a big if, they could try to work with the Biden administration to pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill. This would need more enforcement than progressives would be happy with and a pathway to citizenship that many conservatives would balk at.

But here's the bottom line, whether or not they want to call this a crisis, Biden has a practical problem brewing at the border, and he can't afford to ignore it.

And that's your "Reality Check."

[08:45:00]

BERMAN: You know, it was interesting when I had Congressman Tony Gonzales on, a Republican, before, though, he wasn't actually against one of the major policies that Joe Biden had changed, which is accepting unaccompanied minors over the border, which just goes to show how complicated this is when the accusations are going back and forth.

AVLON: Especially when you represent those folks. Don't want to, for political reasons, give a direct answer, but you back end into the policy.

BERMAN: All right, John, that was terrific. Thank you very much.

So here's what else to watch today.

ON SCREEN TEXT: 11:00 a.m. ET, White House COVID briefing.

1:00 p.m. ET, Biden hosts Ireland's prime minister.

3:00 p.m. ET, White House press briefing.

BERMAN: So the hottest team in college basketball right now from a small religious school you've probably never heard of. The story behind this historic winning streak, next.

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[08:50:19]

BERMAN: So it is tournament time, but even some of the most rabid college basketball fans wouldn't know which team has the longest current winning streak in the nation. It's not Gonzaga. It's not Michigan. It's Yeshiva University.

CNN's Jason Carroll joins us now with this story.

This is awesome, Jason. JASON CARROLL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's really great. And

actually the team is playing against Sarah Lawrence tonight and they're hoping to add another win to their winning streak.

This is a team that's finally, finally getting the attention it deserves.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL (voice over): March Madness is taking hold of fans eager to once again obsess over brackets, stats and wins. But if you're talking basketball this season, you can't mention wins without talking to these players.

RYAN TURELL, MACCABEES GUARD: We just started winning one game at a time. And we -- we took every game like it could have been our last.

CARROLL: Ryan Turell is a guard on the team with the distinction of having the longest current winning streak in the NCAA. He plays for the Maccabees at Yeshiva University, a private Jewish college in New York City.

TURELL: We wanted to show that Jews can play basketball and we want to make the Jewish community proud.

CARROLL: After losing their first game, the Macs swept the rest of last season.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Turell (INAUDIBLE) a double. Count it in the basket!

CARROLL: And are undefeated so far this season. To date, the team has 36 consecutive wins.

GABRIEL LEIFER, MACCABEES FORWARD: We won the first game of the series, a six-game winning streak. We were thinking, let's get to 36. We were thinking, let's win tonight. And that's why I think that all the -- all the wins just they added up.

CARROLL: Yeshiva University is a Division III school, but coaches cringe at comparisons to a little engine or school that could.

ELLIOT STEINMETZ, MACCABEES HEAD COACH: You know, we're not the little engine that could anymore. We're kind of that big engine that we're hoping can stay consistent.

MICHAEL SWEETNEY, MACCABEES ASSISTANT COACH: I'm just glad that, you know, these guys are really given the respect that's much needed. These guys come in and they work hard every single day. They don't really care about the outside stuff of, you know, the win streak.

CARROLL: Assistant Coach Michael Sweetney played his rookie year for The New York Knicks. Head Coach Elliott Steinmetz is a Yeshiva alum.

STEINMETZ: These guys were just chasing the letter "w" every single game. CARROLL: Winning hasn't come without challenges. Yeshiva University

had one of the earliest coronavirus cases in New York last year. The school canceled classes and switched to remote learning. The Macs' season cut short last year when the NCAA tournament was canceled and playing just eight games this year.

Still, players kept up with practices along with their required religious and academic studies, all while racking up wins despite playing in nearly empty gyms. COVID restrictions forcing fans to cheer on their team from home.

VATYA SCHREIER, YESHIVA UNIVERSITY GRADUATE/MACCABEES FAN: This team proves game in and game out, practice after practice, that they play with so much heart and they genuinely care about team.

CARROLL: Division III's NCAA tournament canceled again this year due to the pandemic. No matter, given the team's sense of pride, representing the Jewish community on the court.

LEIFER: You think of it in a larger -- larger scale and you realize that you're representing the people. You've got all -- all of a sudden now people are excited to come to our games. That's just something bigger than basketball.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CARROLL: And one of the players that you saw his profile there in the piece, Ryan Turell, he is playing actually so well he's getting the attention of the NBA. But, for now, he's just a junior. For now his goal is to keep playing for the team and hopefully next year, if the team can keep playing as it's been playing, to actually get a chance to play in a championship.

Erica, John, back to you.

BERMAN: Maybe the first Jewish star in the NBA since Amar'e Stoudemire.

HILL: There you go. This is just recent, I learned through you.

BERMAN: He just completed his conversion last year.

HILL: I love it.

BERMAN: That's a great story. Our thanks to Jason Carroll.

HILL: Such a great story.

Jason, thank you.

We're sticking with basketball for a minute. Georgia Tech will take on Loyola Chicago in the first round of the Division I men's basketball championship on Friday. And the Ramblers will have a very special guest in attendance, 101-year-old team chaplain Sister Jean. She got the green light from the NCAA yesterday to be at the game. She's now fully vaccinated, but hasn't sat in the stands with the students at all this season because of, understandably, coronavirus protocols.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SISTER JEAN DOLORES SCHMIDT, CHAPLAIN FOR THE LOYOLA UNIVERSITY CHICAGO RAMBLERS: First of all, these young people keep me young, because I'm 101. I consider myself young at heart. And they do keep me young. They keep me informed of what's happening and I learn new words all the time from them. And some good, some (INAUDIBLE) not so good. But, anyhow, I learn them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Sometimes you have to know the words that are not so good, too.

Sister Jean, of course, became a household name in 2018 during their Ramblers' improbable run to the Final Four.

[08:55:00]

BERMAN: I feel like this is the godly edition of March basketball here.

HILL: It's kind of a lovely moment right now. I'm here for all of this.

BERMAN: But -- I had -- somewhere I have a pair of Sister Jean socks from a couple --

HILL: You do?

BERMAN: Yes, it was a big deal a couple years ago. Dave Briggs gave me a pair of Sister Jean socks, which I will come -- I will wear next week.

We want to show you a picture here.

OK, do not be alarmed. It's not like a -- it's like the Simpsons, the lake in the Simpsons version, nuclear power plant. This is not atomic water.

HILL: Not Springfield. It's D.C.

BERMAN: The fountain is green for St. Patrick's Day at the White House. A really bright green, I might add, or maybe it's like the slime on Nickelodeon.

HILL: It does look like slime green, you're right. I'm sure that was the plan.

BERMAN: It's green for St. Patrick's Day. President Biden will host a virtual meeting with Ireland's prime minister this afternoon.

That's a cool picture.

HILL: It is.

BERMAN: All right, our coverage continues, next.

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