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Top Doctors Give Blistering Assessment of Trump Pandemic Response; Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) Blasts Georgia's Voting Overhaul. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired March 29, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN NEW DAY: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. John Berman is off. John Avlon joins me. Thank you for accompanying on this very busy morning.

So this morning, there're explosive new claims from the leading pandemic doctors pointing to the dysfunction and chaos inside the Trump administration's response to the coronavirus. Former White House task force coordinator Dr. Deborah now says hundreds of thousands of deaths were preventable.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. DEBORAH BIRX, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: I look at it this way. The first time we have an excuse, there were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them in my mind could have been mitigated or decreased substantially if we took the lessons we had learned from that moment. That's what bothers me every day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: This is from a new CNN documentary. It aired last night. It will air again. Former CDC Director Robert Redfield says he believes the virus originated in a Chinese lab. Now, the World Health Organization will soon release its report tomorrow on the origins of coronavirus. It might say something very different, we expect.

JOHN AVLON, CNN NEW DAY: And across the United States, the next wave of the pandemic may already be here. 27 states are reporting increases in new cases, deaths arising in 17 states. Cases are spiking in states like Michigan and in Florida, where spring breakers packed cities over the last few weeks.

Joining us now is CNN Political Analyst Maggie Haberman. She's Washington Correspondent at The New York Times. Maggie, it is good to see you.

That blockbuster documentary last night really is stunning stuff, and then CNN learning that the World Health Organization is going to release its report tomorrow on the origins of the virus. I want to ask you, on the documentary, given your reporting by the Trump administration, what surprised you?

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: What surprised me, John, is the mere fact that it exists. The fact that there are all of these health officials who served until a couple of weeks ago in the previous administration who are just speaking openly about the failures, about what we all saw, really, right, what we reported on in real-time, which was former President Trump's refusal to take the virus seriously, refusal to push people to wear masks over and over and over.

The culture within the White House among some, as Dr. Birx said in the documentary, that the virus wasn't very serious. It was also noteworthy that they were, at some points, turning on each other in what they said. Anthony Fauci had some failed criticism for Dr. Deborah Birx. Others had criticism for Alex Azar, the HHS secretary. Just watching this play out in public while it did not reveal anything explosive, it was new, it confirmed what people were being told by the White House wasn't true from their reporting in real-time.

CAMEROTA: Maggie, I totally agree with you. It was so stunning. Often, you have to wait a lot longer for a retrospective like this. I mean, often, these look-back, these so-called autopsies, post-mortems, they don't happen while we're still in the middle of this tragedy. But it felt last night like all of these six health officials really wanted to peel off the muzzle of what they'd seen.

HABERMAN: I think --

CAMEROTA: Go ahead.

HABERMAN: No, I think you're right. Sorry to cut you off. I think that's correct. I think that they wanted to peel off the muzzle. I think it spoke to their incredibly frustration about what had happened. I think it spoke to their feelings on their own part that could they have done more, was there something else that could have been done, how much were things hampered or impact the impacted by the fact that they were, in many cases, kept from talking or told to deliver happy talk or faced efforts to try to meddle with reports.

I think you saw that over and over again, to your point. It is breath taking how quickly this happened after the administration ended, and, as you note, while the country is still in the middle of this pandemic.

AVLON: You mentioned Deborah Birx who spoke extensively and very revealingly about the frustrations she felt about being muzzled and the chaos and the lack of seriousness in the Trump White House. I want to play S14 just to give folks a reminder of what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIRX: There was a feeling in the White House from the beginning.

[07:05:01]

And I don't know if this is true or not because I never confronted the president, because I didn't have access to him by that time, that the president was not supportive of mask wearing in the White House. And that trickled down through every single leader.

I would say the majority of the people in the White House did not take this seriously.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: That's what jumped out to me is that this wasn't just the president setting a tone. It's that the majority of the people in the White House, according to Deborah Birx, did not take the pandemic that has killed more than 550,000 seriously. Did that surprise you? Did that -- go ahead.

HABERMAN: It certainly conform with our reporting, John. This was what we were all hearing at the time. We reported in real-time soon after the pandemic was clearly a pandemic, and not something that they were trying to figure out if it was flu-like or would it follow the pattern of SARS and so forth. We knew that were people, say, at the National Security Council who were taking it very seriously, who were pushing others to take it seriously. They lost that debate at the end of the day.

By summer, Donald Trump was clearly, you know, not interested in seeing this being treated as an ongoing threat. He was concerned about the closing down of the economy. He was concerned about what all of that meant for his reelection prospects, which we reported over and over again. But it was still striking, again, as you say, to hear Dr. Birx saying this, that this was not taken seriously.

I should note, part of why it's striking is it's so at odds with what was being said publicly, really, by any of these officials in real- time, particularly about President Trump, I would say, that Dr. Fauci did the least of that in terms of trying to sort of promote the idea that President Trump was taking it seriously during the actual moments this was happened.

But Dr. Birx had a number of moments where she could have said what she's saying now. Would it have mattered? I don't know. Would she have been shut down or drowned out by other voices if she had done it publicly? I don't know. But it is a lot easier to do it now in retrospect than it would have been then.

CAMEROTA: I mean, she talked a little bit about that, Maggie, how basically she was trying to encourage him. You know, when he would do something that she thought was scientifically on the right path, like shutting down the country for 15 days, she would go on the air and be like, he is following the science, he is listening to us, he is listening to the data. You know how it worked. I mean, you know better than anybody, that everybody had to already give him this positive reinforcement and that sometimes that made the message quite muddled.

And the question is since they all, to a person, felt so frustrated with the dysfunction and the lack of following science, why didn't they resign sort of on principle while all of this was happening? Do you have a sense of that? HABERMAN: I think, Alisyn, my sense of reporting at the time and since is that almost everybody connected to this issue, the issue of the pandemic, like people who are related to other issues, like Department of Justice matters and so forth during the Trump White House years, felt as if their presence there was more important. It was important than they could do more good than harm if they were there than would be done if they weren't there.

And I think what that they all learned, one of the other -- and Dr. Birx sort of said that at one point during the documentary, she believed she could make a difference. That's why she went to the White House. And I think they all learned one after the other that none of them was going to change former President Trump. And I think that because that they had never met him previously, many of them, or they didn't know him well, they underestimated how impervious he is to efforts to change him and I think they all came to see it.

AVLON: One takeaway, Maggie, is that a number of the -- Dr. Redfield, Dr. Hahn said that they believe that those positions should not be political appointees. They should be actually set up for terms. Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Should the FDA director be politically appointed position?

DR. STEPHEN HAHN, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: Having a set term potentially that's outside of the political schedule, if you will, I think there are some real benefits to consideration of that.

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, FORMER CDC DIRECTOR: I personally had felt, and I will, as a former CDC director, share my opinion to those who will listen that this job should be a seven-to ten-year appointment. I feel the same way about NIH and the FDA. I think these are important jobs to get out of the political cycle, for sure.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AVLON: Do you think that that's a reform that we should take away from this, that that would have made a difference?

HABERMAN: It's pretty striking, John, to hear both of them, Dr. Hahn and Dr. Redfield, said this, that this was a reform that was necessary. I do think it is an important discussion to have on how to restore public faith in the science and in the public health positions after what has happened in erosion of confidence over the course of the last year. I'm sure there are other ideas to discuss, but, certainly, the idea of taking these critical jobs outside of the realm of political appointments, I think, is a worthy discussion to have after the last 12 months.

[07:10:10]

AVLON: Maggie Haberman, thank you very much, as always.

All right, CNN has learned the World Health Organization will release its report tomorrow on the origins of coronavirus in China.

Joining us now is CNN Medical analyst Jonathan Reiner. He's Professor of Medicine and Surgeon at George Washington University. Dr. Reiner, it's great to have with us.

I want to know what you think or expecting from this WHO report. Nick Paton Walsh earlier basically laid out what we know to-date, and it does seem as if they're going to put the focus on this transmission from animals to humans through an intermediary as opposed to any focus, meaningful focus from the Wuhan lab. What are you looking for in this report?

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: I'm not looking for clarity. I think the World Health Organization likely will come down on sort of natural zoonotic transfer from a bat to human maybe through an intermediary.

I was struck by the former CDC director's accusation. He still holds a very tall soapbox. And when the former CDC accuses the origin of this world's worst pandemic from coming out of a Chinese lab, he'd better have support for that, he'd better have data to support that. And he said that this was just his opinion. And the opinion of a former CDC director matters a lot. And it was an explosive charge, which I thought should have been either backed up or should have been held inside and said rather than publicly articulated.

It also comes at a time in the United States when there's a lot of anti-Asian bias and hatred, and these kinds of accusations, if they're not based on fact, can be very damaging.

CAMEROTA: I'm glad you're bringing that up. Obviously, there can be a ripple effect from saying these things, but I think what Dr. Redfield was saying to my ears was it stands to reason. It stands to reason, and that, yes, the evidence right now of it coming out of a lab is not concrete, it's circumstantial. But part of that is because the Chinese have not opened their doors and they have been, you know, completely untransparent in this.

And, basically, what he was saying was -- and I'll quote him -- it's not unusual for a pathogen to infect a lab worker and it would be unusual for it to go from a bat to an intermediary animal to a wet market in Wuhan when we know it's not a food-based virus. So what was the intermediary animal? Was it alive and it bit somebody? I mean, that one that strains (ph) fragility, I think, maybe even more than a lab theory. Your thoughts.

REINER: When the presence of the Wuhan lab was first disclosed back in the spring, people who studied the genome structure of these viruses commented on the structure of this pathogen, and the people who really are qualified to understand how these viruses are constructed did not find anything in the genome that appear to be purposely manipulated.

Now, having said that, is it possible that it came out of the Wuhan lab? Absolutely. My point is that when a CDC director, a former CDC director makes that kind of accusation, it should be based on fact, not on opinion. Science is based on fact, not on opinion. And, you know, I hear what he's saying. You know, oh, it's a big coincidence that there happens to be a coronavirus lab in Wuhan. I get it. I'm suspicious also. But I wouldn't make that accusation without the facts.

AVLON: Dr. Reiner, I wonder just as a doctor, how it felt personally for you to listen to all these doctors, these medical professionals, sort of as Maggie said, take the muzzle off and say what they said to Sanjay last night in that documentary, what did you learn? How did it make you feel to hear them speak so frankly about the failures.

REINER: It was really painful, John. This country, this world has been living this every day for the last year. Half a million people are dead. People I know are dead. What really bothered me, frankly, about Dr. Birx is that she portrayed herself as a victim. She sort of portrayed herself as like an ill-fated passenger on the Titanic when, in fact, she was an officer on the bridge charged with watching out for icebergs.

[07:15:01]

All of the people that were interviewed in that fabulous documentary last night had an obligation to speak out when things weren't going right. This administration sidelined her with Scott Atlas. She refused to attend meetings with him, but she never said publicly that what he was saying was dangerous and damaging to the pandemic effort. She had opportunities over and over and over again, as did they all, to speak out.

The only person who spoke out sometimes was Dr. Fauci, interestingly because he could actually not be fired by the White House chief of staff. He would have been fired by the NIH director, which would not have happened.

But I was bothered by the lack of -- by the consistent lack of -- sense that they had a responsibility to tell the public the truth over and over and over again.

CAMEROTA: Well, I mean, I guess I would just say, listening to what Dr. Deborah Birx said last night, was that there were times that she tried, there was a time on State of the Union with Dana Bash, where she actually told the truth and said it's really bad, it's really getting the rural community and many states very hard, it's getting worse and she was completely taken to the woodshed, as she says, and called and then she didn't use the word, threaten, but she didn't deny that when Sanjay asked if she was threatened by the president. The president called her. We can only imagine what that conversation phone call was like.

So if you believe that you're in your job and you're doing best for the country, then, you know, it has this completely silencing effect when you are yelled at by the boss afterwards for speaking the truth.

REINER: You know, the public needed to know from the very beginning how bad this was going to be. Dr. Nancy Messonnier from the CDC held a press conference on February 25th of last year where she said schools are probably going to close. She had a conversation with her kids this was going to get bad. That was the last time she was heard, ever.

CAMEROTA: Bingo.

REINER: Everyone got that message and everyone kept their mouth shut. When the president was slow-walking, testing or telling the country that he wanted to slow the testing down, please, no one spoke up, all right? When the president told Virginia and Michigan to liberate -- people to liberate those states, very few people spoke up. When the president hired somebody who believed actually in natural herd immunity, in letting the virus burn through the community -- that was Dr. Atlas -- nobody spoke up. When the president held dozens of mass rallies during the pandemic, no one spoke up.

CAMEROTA: Yes. I hear your frustration, Dr. Reiner. We hear your frustration. And that's part of why hearing them in that retrospective last night was so interesting of just the conflict and what they wrestled with every single day amid the dysfunction at the White House.

Dr. Reiner, thank you very much for your candor. We really appreciate talking to you.

REINER: My pleasure.

CAMEROTA: We want to take some time now to remember some of the nearly 550,000 Americans lost to coronavirus.

Gennaro Annunziata and his partner, Andrew, on La Pizzeria in the coastal resort town of Ogunquit, Maine, the police department paid a tribute to him as part of the Ogunquit community and family for more than 25 years. His family says he would want to be remembered as happy, joking around, wearing a tank top or no shirt and smiling.

When Montclair, New Jersey, suspended its recycling program because of the pandemic, Jordan Tassy with entrepreneurial zeal. He hold bottles, cans and cardboard to the city's recycling depot making friends along the way. He was only 22 years old.

In early February, Victoria Gallardo cam down the coronavirus along with her husband and all five of their children, including their 11- day-old new born. They all recovered except for Victoria, who died earlier this month. She was just 33 years old.

The virus is hitting younger people now. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:20:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA): Unfortunately, Georgia has a long history of voter suppression. And when I say a long history, I mean, in recent years. And, certainly, it has ramped up with this bill that he's signed into law. This is really about preserving the voices of the people in their democracy, and I honestly think that politicians focus on their own political ambition. It's what's gotten us here in the first place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: That was Georgia's Democratic senator, Raphael Warnock, vowing to expand voting rights in Congress while blasting his state's sweeping new voting law that restricts access. Among many things, the law really restricts mail-in and absentee voting and outlaws giving food and water to people waiting for hours in line.

Joining us now is Georgia's Republican Lieutenant Governor Geoff Duncan. Good morning, Lieutenant Governor.

LT. GOV. GEOFF DUNCAN (R-GA): Good morning.

CAMEROTA: Okay. So I see that you're not in that picture of the signing ceremony. Why weren't you present for that?

DUNCAN: I was on the Senate floor. I was the presiding officer in the Senate. You know, we have two days left. Today is day 39 and Wednesday is day 40, so we've got a pretty aggressive schedule in front of us.

CAMEROTA: I know you say you're not a supporter of everything in the law. On balance, do you support this new law?

DUNCAN: Well, unfortunately, the outside edges of both parties have controlled the messaging here. We've got folks on the far-right that are trying to claim this as some sort of calculated response to the great hoax that played out for ten weeks, and you've got folks on the left that are claiming this to be some great overreach of voter suppression.

The reality is it's a culmination of both Democratic and Republican ideas that have been sponsored in the Senate and the House.

[07:25:04]

But there're things I like, there're things I don't like.

CAMEROTA: What don't you like? What don't you like in it?

DUNCAN: Well, I think the first thing that sticks out to me is the reach into power that Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger has and removing him from the chair in the elections board. I think that was just -- well, look, the only thing that Brad Raffensperger really did wrong in this was he was the scapegoat of President Trump. So I didn't like that.

I think the one --

CAMEROTA: And on that point, just -- sorry to interrupt you. But on that point, isn't this just direct retribution? Isn't this punitive? How else could we see it? DUNCAN: Well, look, I don't think it was the best move forward. I think the water and food elements are complicated. It's definitely harder to understand than just what you see on the surface, but, look, I think as Republicans we have a hard time getting credibility when we walk in a room and talk about election reforms just because of the way the ten weeks played out. I think we could have waited some time.

But, certainly, there's some other things I think the bill does really well.

CAMEROTA: But just for one second, the water and food, what's wrong with giving somebody a bottled water on a hot day in Georgia?

DUNCAN: Yes, or a warm cup of coffee on a cold day. That's where my head was at. I think trying to create some organization around it with 150 feet away from the line. But it's a tough message to sell and I don't think this was the right day to sell it.

CAMEROTA: I think you've said that some of this -- well, let me pose it a different way. What problem is this law fixing? Because as you just mentioned, Secretary of State Raffensperger, all he did wrong was run a really good election. There was no vast voter fraud. Gabe Sterling said it. Raffensperger said it. I believe you said that. There were not -- there was no evidence of vast voting fraud. So what is this really designed to fix?

DUNCAN: Yes. So other the day, I was sitting there thinking about our state motto as the debate was playing out on the floor, and it's wisdom, justice and moderation. I think if both sides look through that lens of wisdom, justice and moderation, they'd get to the conclusion that there were some things that we need to modernize.

The voter I.D. situation where we now have the opportunity to not have 1.3 million signatures show up and have to match them, and now we have the opportunity to just handwrite your driver's license number and if you don't have a driver's license, the four digits of your birth year and last four digits of your social security.

I think we also realized that there was a need to be able to start processing absentee ballots well before the close of the poll so that we don't have to wait three and four days.

There were some things that both sides, I think, really agreed on that we needed to happen. But, look, I think Republicans have to -- the best way to start the conversation around election reforms for a Republican is to walk in a room and say former President Trump lost the election fair and square. Now, let's talk about ways to improve elections going forward. That's the best way to gain credibility.

CAMEROTA: And do you believe that some of the tenets of this law are predicated on a lie?

DUNCAN: Well, certainly, I think there's overreach on both side in the messaging. I think there're folks that showed up that early on in session, we saw some things show up in the initial versions of the election reform bill that were overreaches. And I made that very, very known, that I didn't think it was a good idea. We did finally see a much watered down version, but one that still consistently is going to be repudiated by both sides.

But, look, I'm ready to move past this election cycle. I'm ready to kind of put our head down in Georgia and go back to doing the things that we know Georgians wants us to do, and that's to continue to navigate us through a pandemic and try keep an economy strong, get our kids back on track with their education. These are issues that we need a real solution for.

CAMEROTA: I mean, the problem with moving on right now, as you say, is that there is a ripple effect. This will be felt -- this law, whether there are good tenets or bad, will be felt for years to come in Georgia, and that's one of the things that State Rep Park Cannon says that she was trying to have her voice heard that day of the signing ceremony. As you know, she was knocking on the governor's door. She was arrested for that. Did that have to happen, this incident here?

DUNCAN: Well, I've only seen social media videos that have been posted of the incident, and I've not read the police report. But it looks as though the Georgia State Patrol Troopers followed the exact rules. They followed protocols. And, certainly, I don't like to see that conflict in the capitol.

But I think whether it was me or you or her, the same result would have happened. They gave a number of warnings and had to do what they needed to do.

CAMEROTA: I mean, I think that -- look, we're talking basically about the optics here, the optics of the governor sitting with this small group of white men, male lawmakers, and, you know, somebody like Park Cannon not feeling represented there. And then there is some question about that picture, that painting behind him. Do you know what that's a painting of, the history of that?

DUNCAN: No, I don't have any sort of knowledge of that. But, look, my hope is that we continue -- that we get back to work.

The interesting thing at the state level, and I think not only Georgia, but other states are like this, we get along in a bipartisan format a lot better than Washington, D.C., does.

[07:30:08]