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Early Start with John Berman and Zoraida Sambolin
4 Killed, Including Child, In Southern California Mass Shooting; George Floyd Witness Scarred By Harrowing Guilt and Grief; President Launches Push for $2.25 Trillion Infrastructure Plan; J&J Factory Mix-Up Ruins As Many as 15 Million Vaccine Doses; Myanmar Military Offers Ceasefire, But Not to Protesters. Aired 5-5:30a ET
Aired April 01, 2021 - 05:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[05:00:26]
LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR: Regret and helplessness. Witness after witness sharing feelings of guilt for not being able to save George Floyd.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN ANCHOR: President Biden details game-changing plans to reshape the American economy, but are his huge infrastructure ambitions a road to nowhere?
JARRETT: And 15 million potential doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine ruined. What the mishap means for FDA approval and future shipments.
Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is EARLY START. I'm Laura Jarrett.
ROMANS: Good morning. I'm Christine Romans. This is Thursday, April 1st, first day of April, first day of the new month and a new quarter. It is 5:00 a.m. in New York.
And breaking overnight, another mass shooting in the U.S. This makes eight in March alone. Four people including a child killed at an office complex in Orange, California. One woman survived and is in the hospital in critical condition.
JARRETT: The suspect also hospitalized in custody. It's not clear if he was shot by police or himself.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
LT. JENNIFER AMAT, ORANGE POLICE DEPARTMENT: Over the next hours, days and weeks, we will be attempting to determine and get as much information on the victims, our suspect and the relationship between those, as well as the type of business which this occurred at. My understanding it's an upstairs and down stairs with a courtyard area. It is a situation that was moving from different areas so it is my understanding that it's throughout that area.
(END VIDEO CLIP) JARRETT: It's unclear at this point whether the attack was targeted or random. California Governor Gavin Newsom calling the shooting horrifying and heartbreaking, in a statement overnight. We are staying on top of this all morning.
ROMANS: All right. Now to the trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin where the jury on Wednesday was forced to watch disturbing new footage from Chauvin's own body cam.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE FLOYD: I cannot breathe. I cannot breathe.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ROMANS: The man in handcuffs there, George Floyd, pleaded for his life until he stops talking. The jury also heard from Chauvin directly about what he was thinking in this never seen -- before seen video.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DEREK CHAUVIN, FORMER POLICE OFFICER: That's one person's opinion. We got to control this guy because he's a sizable guy. It looks like he's probably on something.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JARRETT: The man that Chauvin is talking to from his squad car there, Charles McMillian haunted by what you saw that day. The jury heard him on the body cam telling Floyd to take it easy, quote, you can't win. Watching it all unfold in court, George Floyd's family.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTONIO ROMANUCCI, FLOYD FAMILY ATTORNEY: They're suffering through this. This is very hard for them now to see new footage, new angles and they're hearing the visceral groans and grunts, the grueling aspect of George fighting for his life. It's just unimaginable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JARRETT: CNN's Sara Sidner is covering the trial for us in Minneapolis.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Laura, we no doubt heard the most emotional and powerful testimony so far in the trial against former Officer Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd.
We heard from 61-year-old Charles McMillian. He said that he normally walks around the neighborhood and that on this day, he kind of started with a funny anecdote, he said he was just being nosy when he heard a commotion near Cup Foods on 38th and Chicago here in Minneapolis. And then he watched the situation devolve after being sort of jovial on the stand, he suddenly broke down, sobbing, unable to control his tears as he watched video of what was happening to George Floyd at the hands of police.
FLOYD: I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. I can't breathe. Momma, momma, momma!
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stop moving.
FLOYD: Momma, momma, momma!
(CRYING)
CHARLES MCMILLIAN, EYEWITNESS: Oh my God.
[05:05:01]
I feel helpless. I don't have had a momma either, I understand him.
SIDNER: As you might imagine, that was extremely difficult for anyone to hear. We also heard very early on in the morning from a cashier who was inside Cup Foods who said that he, himself, felt guilty about having to get a manager to call the police because he was the one who noticed that the $20 bill that he was handed by Floyd for some cigarettes didn't look right. He believed that bill was fake.
Later on he said, I wish I would never have taken it because this ended up in a death of George Floyd -- Christine, Laura.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: Just a harrowing day of testimony.
All right. President Biden convening his cabinet at the White House for the first time today in the East Room with space for social distancing. A lot to discuss, but Mr. Biden plans to keep the focus on his huge infrastructure plan. The president's push kicked off in earnest yesterday with a speech framing the more than $2 trillion plan as a crucial investment in jobs, technology, the climate and America's future. The president saying this is not tinkering around the edges. The question is how to pay that ten-digit price tag.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: We're open to having that conversation. We expect this to be a bit of a journey.
BRIAN DEESE, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR: We're open to conversations, if people have other ideas about how to pay for it.
PSAKI: Once he proposes that, our focus is also on having that engagement and discussion with members of Congress.
PETE BUTTIGIEG, SECRETARY OF TRANSPORTATION: Look, the president laid out a clear vision and a big vision, but is open to hearing ideas from every corner of our party and the other party, too. MARTY WALSH, SECRETARY OF LABOR: I had conversations last night with
some Republican senators and some Democratic senators and everyone is open to the idea of having a conversation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
JARRETT: So that's a lot of conversations, a lot of discussions. But let's be clear here, the president saying he's trying to get Republicans on board will not stop him from doing what he thinks is right even if it means no GOP support. Senate Democrats already preparing to use the same budget rule they used to pass Biden's COVID rescue package just with a simple majority.
Senior White House correspondent Phil Mattingly reports now from Pittsburgh.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Christine and Laura, President Joe Biden has made very clear with this administration whether it's coronavirus relief or what he's moving on to now, infrastructure and beyond, it's not just physical infrastructure, he is willing to go big and he is not willing to trim back the very ambitious proposals that his administration is putting on the table. None more so than perhaps the $2.25 trillion package he laid out here in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.
Yes, there is physical infrastructure in this package, $621 billion for things like roads and bridges, waterways and ports, but it is so much bigger than that, hundreds of billions of dollars for education infrastructure, for water, for power grids, for a fleet of electric vehicles, really kind of reshaping the United States' economy and how it operates. It's through that historic prism which the president is citing the effort right now.
Take a listen.
JOSEPH R. BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's a once in a generation investment in America. Unlike anything we've seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago. It's time to build our economy from the bottom up and from the middle out, not the top down. It hasn't worked very well.
MATTINGLY: Administration officials know that this is just the smarting gun, there is a very heavy lift to come. If you think back to the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that moved through Congress, won quickly but also relatively easily. Most of what the president put on the table ended up being signed into law. This is going to be a very different process.
Now, the president said he will reach out to Republicans. He plans on having Republicans into the Oval Office. He even spoke to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell by phone to brief him on the plan on Tuesday night. There is no expectation Republicans are going to come on board in the end. And part of the reason why is how the plan is financed, the $2.25
trillion is financed largely by increasing corporate taxes, 21 percent up to 28 percent on the corporate tax level, also a global minimum tax, 13 percent bumping that up to 21 percent, ending fossil fuel subsidies.
Many of these issues are complete nonstarters for Republicans, which puts a huge emphasis on the very narrow to almost no room for error margin that the Democrats have on Capitol Hill in the House and the United States Senate. They have to keep Democrats together, they can't afford to lose them, and this is an area whether we are talking about tax policy, energy policy, all the climate elements of this plan where Democrats disagree a lot on several issues, some Democrats saying on the progressive kind of things the plan is too small already.
The White House will have to try to figure that out over the coming weeks and months. And that is how long this is expected to take. This isn't going to be done in weeks. It's going to be done in months if it gets done at all.
But, right now, President Biden, White House officials making clear they are willing to go big, they believe they are going bold and they believe that is the answer to a crisis that really several administrations have tried to address with no success up to this point.
[05:10:12]
President Biden making clear he believes this is the time and this is the moment for it to finally be different -- guys.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: All right. Phil, thank you so much.
You know, the powerful chamber of commerce business lobby called raising taxes on companies, quote, dangerously misguided. It said we strongly oppose the general tax increases proposed by the administration which will slow the economic recovery and make the U.S. less competitive globally.
Now, a lot of economists point out companies have been paying less for years, even before those 2017 tax cuts, while Americans have been asked to do more. This is the effective corporate tax rate taxes as a share of earnings. It's been falling for 50 years and is at historic lows here.
At the same time, public spending on infrastructure has been at a bare minimum for years. Domestic spending to fix our roads and our infrastructure has been so low hardly enough to keep up with maintenance, let alone build out investments that make the U.S. more competitive and which, by the way, are good for American business and help them make more money.
President Biden's infrastructure push could create a jobs boom in the fossil fuel industry, by the way. The plan calls for a $16 billion investment to close unused oil and gas wells and reclaim abandoned coal mines, that could make the overall $2 trillion plan more palatable for Republicans and some Democrats in West Virginia, home to Senator Joe Manchin.
Laura, you know, you look at the corporate tax rate at 21 percent where it is right now, that was lowered from 35 percent, too high, everyone agreed, but it's so interesting. Corporate America was lobbying for about 25 percent corporate tax rate, they got less than that. One wonders if there is not a lot of negotiating room to maybe go back up to a 25 percent corporate tax rate, which is still way below what it was before the Trump years and then everybody wins.
JARRETT: Just in terms of public support, it seems like having corporations pay for this is something that the president might have more success with than trying to get individuals to pay for it.
ROMANS: That's right, absolutely.
JARRETT: That would never go over well.
All right. Still ahead for you, 15 million vaccine doses ruined, gone. What happened and what it means for the future of Johnson & Johnson's one-shot dose.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:16:44]
JARRETT: This morning a major production setback for Johnson & Johnson's vaccine, a mix-up of ingredients contaminating as many as 15 million potential vaccine doses at a manufacturing plant in Baltimore. Still, the company says the mistake didn't affect its goal of delivering 20 million doses in March, which it met.
ROMANS: The Biden administration says the foul up won't affect its plans to have vaccines available to all Americans by May. The spread of variants may be the biggest threat. They make up 70 percent of coronavirus cases in New York City now.
CNN has the pandemic covered coast to coast.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BRYNN GINGRAS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Brynn Gingras in New York.
The University of Pittsburgh is in a shelter in place situation on its main campus until health officials deem it safe for that to be lifted. The reason, well, more confirmed coronavirus cases on its campus including some cases of the U.K. variant of the virus. That's according to an email sent to staff and students.
Now, students are being told to stay inside their dorm rooms, they can only leave if they have class, can attend a lab, need to exercise, go get food other limited activities. NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Nick Watt in Los Angeles,
home to the second largest school district in the nation and most kids have not been inside a classroom now for over a year.
An advocacy group just go did a study of the impact of all of that and they say two out of three kids are falling behind in literacy and math. And they say if those kids can't catch up, there's a risk that 20 percent of the class of 2021 will not graduate.
ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Alexandra Field in New York City.
It's opening day for Major League Baseball and the Yankees are getting ready to welcome their fans back to the stadium, but under new COVID protocols. The stadium can only be filled to 20 percent capacity, fans will sit in pods separated by empty seats and the stadium will continue to be used as a vaccination site through April 30th.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
JARRETT: Thanks to Alex and the rest of our correspondents for those updates.
Two months after a coup, Myanmar's military announcing a nationwide ceasefire with a key exception. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[05:23:26]
ROMANS: Welcome back. Twenty-three minutes past the hour.
The State Department has ordered nonemergency personnel out of Myanmar two months after launching a coup with a growing death toll. The military is offering up a ceasefire but there is a huge caveat.
CNN's Ivan Watson live in Hong Kong.
We've been following this from here, Ivan. I mean, it seems like every development is more alarming than the last.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I think it's pretty frightening how quickly things are falling apart. In just the two months, Christine, since the February 1st military coup swept an elected civilian government from power, you have a growing number of countries calling on their citizens to please leave as soon as possible. The U.S. is saying that it's evacuating nonessential personnel and their family members.
You have the growing death toll and you've had days of airstrikes in a border region that have been taking place by the military and now after like five days of airstrikes that have killed dozens of people allegedly, the military now suddenly declaring a unilateral ceasefire but addressing it to ethnic armed groups in the border jungle regions and mountainous regions that have been battling the military for decades, not addressing people in the cities who are still protesting every day and being shot and killed on a daily basis.
I'm hearing increasingly calls from the protest movement to stop the peaceful protest out in the streets and just get armed, create improvised weapons to fight back.
[05:25:02]
And almost everybody I've talked to in Myanmar in the past couple of days talks about the prospect of an impending civil war there -- Christine.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ROMANS: Just awful.
All right. Thank you so much. Keep us posted.
Laura?
JARRETT: Well, another day of gut-wrenching testimony in the Derek Chauvin murder trial. So many witnesses racked by a sense of guilt for not being able to help George Floyd. We are live in Minneapolis next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ROMANS: Good morning. This is EARLY START. I'm Christine Romans.
JARRETT: And I'm Laura Jarrett. Almost 30 minutes past the hour here in New York.
The trial of former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin resumes this morning. No doubt, we will see more of this, witness after witness reliving the visceral trauma of George.
