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Biden Inherits Non-Existent Vaccine Plan; Jobless Claims Released; Biden Presidency Ushers in Reset. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired January 21, 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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[08:31:36]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Breaking news.

Sources tell CNN that President Biden is inheriting a nonexistent vaccination distribution plan from the Trump administration. The Biden administration will essentially have to start from scratch.

This news comes as the U.S. reports its second deadliest day, 4,229 new American deaths overnight. The CDC projects another 102,000 Americans will die in just the next three weeks.

Joining us now is CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

So, Sanjay, obviously we knew the vaccinations were not going well. They were nowhere near what was projected. But I don't know if we really had ever gotten our heads around that there was no plan whatsoever. And so what are your thoughts as we hear that Biden today has to start from scratch?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDIAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, it's disturbing but not that surprising. I mean we've known that Operation Warp Speed, you know, they basically saw as their mandate to get the vaccines to the states, to deliver these vaccines to the states. But as we've seen all along, I mean it was sort of left up to the states after that to sort of figure it out. And, you know, they're just not equipped for this sort of thing. This is the largest vaccine rollout, obviously, that we've ever seen in our -- in our lifetime. Some of these are very complicated vaccines. They needed help. There's no question about it.

What do I think, you know, as I -- as we go forward? You know, first of all, we have to be ahead of the curve, not behind the curve, meaning, we have to project where the vaccines are going to be necessary and have those vaccines in place ahead of time. President Biden talked about the idea of having FEMA set up these community centers where that can happen and then having liaisons from those community centers actually reaching out to the community to figure out how to best distribute the vaccine. That will start to happen and I think that will make a big difference.

We also have to figure out, you know, these variants, this is getting ahead of the curve, the variants that are out there. Are we sequencing enough to really understand what is happening with these mutations? Are they going to be a concern? Hopefully they won't be. But, again, you don't want to get caught surprised by that where all of a sudden you have a variant that's escaped from the existing vaccinations.

So there's work to be done. And it will take time for this to have an impact. But it will have an impact. And a significant one.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: You know, Sanjay, the White House released before dawn this list, this COVID strategy, 21 pages. And item number one is to restore trust with the American people. And on that front we just learned that Dr. Anthony Fauci will be at the White House briefing today. The significance?

GUPTA: Yes, no, I -- well, we haven't really had these briefings for some time. And I think two things got eroded as a result of that. One is trust and the second was seriousness. I think there's a lot of people who I've been talking to, reporting on over the past several months, who kept saying, OK, look, this is -- this is sort of behind us now. You know, they thought given that there wasn't as much that we were hearing about it from the White House, that the worst had passed. And I think that only amplified the problem. So it will be good to hear from Dr. Fauci, to know that he's there.

But, again, there's a lot of work to do here. There's going to be a lot of specifics that really need to be executed. And, you know, they talk about spending $400 billion. I was talking to somebody early this morning. What does that mean exactly in terms of the vaccines?

[08:35:00]

These community centers, yes. The outreach, yes. Defense Production Act to make sure there's enough reagents for these vaccines. Defense Production Act potentially to make sure there's enough supplies to actually inject these vaccines, syringes, all those sorts of things.

Testing. Again, testing is something we don't -- we haven't talked about much. They want to spend $50 billion on testing. I want to hear more about that because does it mean that kids can get tested on a regular basis when they go to school? Are we going to have these rapid antigen tests in people's homes so that on a regular, if not daily basis, you can be testing yourself to figure out whether or not you're contagious that day? These are all things that sort of got, you know, they got sidelined because the discussion wasn't happening around these things. They just focused on vaccines and just federally producing the vaccines, but not the actual implementation.

So there's a lot of -- a lot of catch up that we have to do here.

CAMEROTA: We just talked to Kate Bedingfield of the Biden administration who said that today President Biden is directing agencies to enact the Defense Production Act. So we'll see if that is able to up the speed of some of the resources.

But, Sanjay, what I want you to tell us is where we are right now with COVID because the numbers are confusing. The deaths seem to be skyrocketing. That new CDC projection is terrifying of what's going to happen over the next three weeks and yet we also see in the graphs of hospitalizations and cases maybe it's dipping a little bit? I might be able to pull this up for you. This is the new confirmed cases. It looks like we might not be at the peak? We may have come down, in other words, from the peak?

So is this a blip or what's happening right now?

GUPTA: Well, you know, I study these models all the time. And, you know, I do want to see a few more days of a trend to really know. But I think you could be right. You know, this is -- this is cautious, very cautious optimism. But when I look at the models, you see deaths sort of peaking around middle of next month. So, you know, about, you know, three, four weeks from now deaths should be peaking.

What does that mean? Because that's a lagging indicator. If that's when deaths peak, that likely means that hospitalizations and, obviously, new infections, new cases of infections have already peaked because deaths usually follow about four weeks behind. Three to four weeks behind.

So it is possible and, you know, we'll have to see. Obviously, if we continue that trend and the weather gets warmer and the vaccines roll out, that's exactly what we want to happen.

But I -- you know, I -- don't take anything for granted. This is the third and worst peak right now that we're going through. I hope it continues to go down. I hope we don't plateau at this level for some time, but we'll see.

BERMAN: All right, Sanjay, thank you very much. Obviously we have a lot more to discuss with you in the coming days.

In the meantime, we want to remember some of the more than 406,000 Americans lost to coronavirus.

Patty Segcal (ph) interpreted Hawaii state government coronavirus briefings into American sign language. The state senate president remembers her as having wonderful expressions and a great passion for her job. She died while in California visiting a daughter in the military who was about to deploy. She was 62 years old.

Burt and Carol Stevenson (ph) met and married later in life. They loved to camp and boat at a lake near their home in Selina, Kansas. Carol helped take care of Burt as he fought Alzheimer's. "The Selina Journal" reports they died less than two hours apart while holding hands in bed.

Ramon Garcia (ph) had survived two kidney transplants, leaving the Long Island man more vulnerable to the virus. His brother describes him as the strongest and purest soul. He was just 29 years old.

We'll be right back.

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[08:42:46]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

Our breaking news is that the Labor Department has just released the latest jobless numbers and President Biden inherits the worst job market of any modern president.

Chief business correspondent Christine Romans joins us now.

OK, what's happened with these numbers?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's a devastating picture. I mean these are the numbers for the final week of the -- of the Trump administration and it was 900,000 first time unemployment benefits. You have five million people who are what we call getting continued claims. That means for at least a couple of weeks. Altogether some 15 million people are receiving some sort of benefit.

And if you add on the special programs to last week's number, you've got about 1.3 million people for the very first time filing for unemployment benefits. That is just a shockingly high number.

And it has been 44 weeks now of these sorts of numbers. Just unheard of. That's why it is the worst financial situation for any president going all the way back to FDR. So this new president, this new administration inherits a really difficult job situation.

You know, the president has a pretty robust plan here, $1.9 trillion that he'd like to pass, more stimulus checks, rental assistance, money for state and local governments. Really key here, billions for a national vaccine program which we're learning this morning didn't even exist. There was no strategy, really, that this new administration even inherited here. All of that will be key, key to getting the economy and the job market back on track.

Beware the deficit hawks. You can see that the deficit and the debt, the national debt, exploded under the Trump administration, even before coronavirus the debt exploded. You will start to hear people in Washington say, oh, we don't want to spend too much money because of the debt. This is not the time for that kind of talk right now when you look at these job numbers, guys.

CAMEROTA: Do the deficit hawks think we don't remember two weeks ago? We do.

ROMANS: We remember.

CAMEROTA: Thank you. Thank you very much, Christine.

OK, so the Biden presidency ushering in a reset for America. Van Jones shares his thoughts with us, next.

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[08:49:02]

AMANDA GORMAN, NATIONAL YOUTH LAUREATE: Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true. That even as we grieved, we grew, that even as we hurt, we hoped, that even as we tired, we tried, that will forever be tied together, victorious. Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.

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BERMAN: That was Amanda Gorman. It takes your breath away. She told our Anderson Cooper that words matter. And after years of words being used as weapons, she wanted to reclaim them. To take words back. And what a moment it was.

Joining us now is CNN political commentator Van Jones.

Van, you know well that there is such a huge difference between a campaign, the inaugural party, and then the, oh, my God, we're waking up and it's January 21st and there's a country to run.

[08:50:00]

As you wake up this morning, after that day yesterday, what do you think is most important?

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I just think that there was a massive, collective, global sigh of relief yesterday that took the form of concerts, it took the form of fireworks, it took the form of poetry. But it was just a -- we had a near death experience for our democracy. And we all lived through that. And some people will see it differently, but I think for the majority of people, 80-plus million voters, people believed that something existential was at risk in terms of our democratic norms and values. And we've come through it strengthened. And people from, you know, Silicon Valley to black voters in Georgia, you know, stood up and said, enough.

I think that we have to remember now that it's not just the character of the president, which I think we've all celebrated, but it's also the character of the people's movement that he kind of discovered and tapped into that has to be continually fed.

This cannot be fixed, all these problems, just by McConnell and Biden sitting down in a room some place. That's not how it works. It took a people's movement to get us here. It took young people standing up. It took black voters in Georgia, black women. It took Latinos and Latinas. It took Native Americans in Arizona. It took white suburban voters. It took Silicon Valley finally saying, enough with the hatred. It took a massive people's movement to get us here. If everybody now just goes home and says, you know, Biden's a nice guy, it's -- we're going to be fine, that is not going to work.

And so I thought yesterday was so important because after the ceremonies we had the celebration. And the celebration showed the full rainbow potential of the America that we could become, the America that Biden has committed to, but that America has to continue to stand up. CAMEROTA: It's really interesting that you say that. We had La Tasha Brown (ph) on in our last hour. She's one of the black women from Georgia who you reference who pounded the pavement to turn out the black vote. She caught COVID in the process. She recovered, but she's received death threats. She's lost friends to COVID.

I mean, to your point, none of this happened just by luck or by accident.

JONES: That's right.

CAMEROTA: You know, democracy is sort of the result of action. And so what is the call to action today?

JONES: Well, look, you know, what I would say is that Biden has to do a couple of things and we have to help.

On the one hand, you do have to deliver for the people who came out for you. And so, you know, the black voters matter. You know, now black pain should matter. Biden owes his success in the primary to African-American voters coming out, Clyburn coming out for him early. Black voters powered his successful election and, frankly, gave him Georgia. So he has the Senate.

So, politically, you've got to repay your base the same way that evangelicals came out for Trump and he gave them all those judges. That's just how politics works. It shouldn't be considered weird if you do something to help African-Americans now any more than it was weird for Trump to support his base.

But also you have a legitimate claim that the African-American community and other communities of color have fallen off the table in this COVID crisis, hit first and worst by the crisis. Essential workers getting hit first and worst. And then, economically, the African-American businesses have been closing, the barber shops, et cetera. So he's got to help his base.

But he also, while he's bringing African-Americans up, has to calm a lot of white voters down on the other side and bring them in. And so we can help in both directions. People who -- you know, we should be supporting policies and help the people who are suffering the most, who are disproportionately people of color. And we should be putting forward a rhetoric and a tone and a temperament that says the America that we want, the Biden era, has a better place for everybody, not just the Biden voters.

Biden's been very clear, he wants to be a president for everybody. Well, there's pain in red America, too. You've got folks in Appalachia, you've got folks in the industrial heartland that are suffering too. And so as Democrats it's progressives, it's people who want to see the country come together. We've got to stick up for our base, but we also have to say, those policies like broadband for all, which would help people in Appalachia, as well as the hood, those policies that would move the ball forward on addition, on criminal justice, on mental health, on infrastructure, that would help everybody, let's champion those as well so he can do both things he's got to do, reward his base and bring the country together.

[08:55:10]

BERMAN: You know, Jeff Merkley, progressive from Oregon, told us moments ago, he said, it's important that this administration not simply adopt. We're going to talk to the middle of the spectrum as their strategy.

What do you make of that?

JONES: Well, look, very much because you do have this problem which is that we are justifiably outraged. And not just progressives and Democrats, just regular, ordinary Americans with any pride, with functioning brain stems, very distressed and angry with this right wing, white nationalist, terrorist movement that is growing up in our country. And the tendency is to say, screw those people, we hate those people, we want to unify only against those people. We would never do anything with those people.

And the problem you have with that, you know, as sound as that is at one level, the downside of that is you're now taking a bunch of people and throwing them away permanently and saying, you -- you are now permanently outside. Well, guess what, your trash will be the Nazi's treasure. Your trash you just threw away becomes the Nazi's treasure. And so as someone who's worked, you know, in prisons and worked with lots of populations that people want to write off, I say, hold high standards but don't give up on anybody. If there is a pathway back to polite, civilized society, we need to make sure that pathway is brightly lit. So we shrink the number of people who wind up falling prey to these white nationalist groups, these cult-like groups, and reduce their ability to recruit so that you hit hard the ones that won't move but the ones that could move you create a pathway back from them. You can't just talk to the people who agree with you or the people who you like.

BERMAN: Van Jones, thank you very much.

A lot going on this morning. Our breaking news coverage continues next.

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