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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Cyberattack Fallout Continues; COVID-19 Relief Bill Negotiations Drag On; Moderna Vaccine Nears Approval. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired December 18, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:29]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

We begin today with the health lead.

Today, top officials of the U.S. government are beginning to receive their coronavirus vaccinations. Vice President Mike Pence, second lady Karen Pence, and Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams all received their first doses of the Pfizer vaccine this morning. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had their shots administered by the Capitol attending physician as well.

And we are now learning the president-elect Joe Biden and incoming first lady Jill Biden will receive their vaccines on Monday. When and if outgoing President Trump gets the vaccine remains an open question.

In addition, any moment, the FDA commissioner is expected to green- light a second coronavirus vaccine from Moderna, though the CDC will still need to give its authorization before vaccinations can happen, possibly on Monday.

This is all a landmark moment in the fight against coronavirus. But, of course, the fight is nowhere near over. This week alone, one in 216 Americans tested positive for coronavirus just this week, one in 216. For the 12th day in a row, a record number of Americans are in the hospital with coronavirus, more than 114,000.

And, on Thursday, for the third day in a row, the U.S. had more than 3,000 deaths from COVID, an average of more than 2,600 deaths a day over the last week. In total, more than 312,000 people in the U.S. have lost their lives to this virus.

Despite this all, there remains a steady flow of disinformation about the virus and mask-wearing and the vaccine, including from the president, various Republican elected officials, and MAGA media. And tens of millions of Americans continue to ignore health warnings and safety guidelines.

And now the influential coronavirus model from the University of Washington is projecting more than 560,000 Americans will have died from coronavirus by April 1. It's a projection we hope will prove wrong.

But, as CNN's Randi Kaye reports, this COVID surge is bad, bad everywhere, but especially brutal in one particular state.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The United States now in far worse shape than at any point during the pandemic, deaths reported Thursday, 3,270. And the IHME is predicting roughly 560,000 U.S. deaths by April, a significant increase since their last projection.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're at 100 percent ICU capacity.

KAYE: Cases too rising faster than ever, more than 233,000 on Thursday. About one in every 216 Americans has been infected this week alone, hospitalizations also mounting nationwide, more than 114,000 Americans hospitalized as of Thursday.

And all eyes are on California, which seems to be offering a grim preview of what the rest of the country can expect.

MARCIAL REYES, CHARGE NURSE: There's so much cases that are coming in, so regardless of how much staffing, how good the staffing is, it's still not enough.

KAYE: The state's health department says two people are dying from COVID every hour. It's so bad, there are now zero ICU beds left in Southern California, forcing some hospitals to set up tents and parking lots.

DR. TROY PENNINGTON, ARROWHEAD REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER: We're drowning in COVID patients right now. And we're literally kind of up to our net. Our big concern is that, if we can't get people to do better, we literally could go under.

KAYE: The director of the L.A. County Health Department says their hospitals are under siege, though more help is likely on the way. The FDA's advisory committee voted Thursday to recommend emergency use authorization of Moderna's coronavirus vaccine.

The FDA could issue that authorization any moment. The CDC is expected to discuss distribution plans for Moderna's vaccine over the weekend.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We likely will see shots in the arm by the very early part of next week, I would hope Monday or Tuesday.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a practicing neurosurgeon, and the dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine got their shots in the arm earlier this morning live on CNN.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's done.

KAYE: Vice President Mike Pence and Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams also vaccinated for all to see, the surgeon general doing his part to encourage people of color to get vaccinated. DR. JEROME ADAMS, SURGEON GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES: And, as the

U.S. surgeon general and a black man, I am equally aware of the symbolic significance of my vaccination today.

KAYE: The vaccine rollout also getting some help from pharmacy chains Walgreens and CVS. They are expected to help vaccinate millions of residents in nursing homes and long-term care facilities.

[16:05:06]

PAT JOHN, VACCINE RECIPIENT: I think everyone should be willing to take it, after all the billions they have spent to make us well.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAYE: Meanwhile, one note about our story. It's actually L.A. County that is seeing on average two people die every hour from COVID-19.

But Jake, in Michigan, things are looking better, so much so that Governor Gretchen Whitmer is looking to lift some restrictions there. Starting next week, she says that, in high schools, they will start to have in person learning once again. Also, some indoor venues like movie theaters can reopen. They're allowing some indoor fitness.

And that's because the state's numbers are really improving. It seems their seven-day average for their positivity rate is now about 10.8 percent, and just about 17 percent of the all the state's hospital beds are being used for COVID-19 patients. So, this governor likes what she sees. And she's looking to open the state just a bit next week, Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Randi Kaye, thanks so much.

CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, joins me now live.

Sanjay, you received your vaccine live on CNN this morning about nine hours ago. How are you feeling? Any side effects at all?

GUPTA: No, I feel really good, maybe just a little bit of a soreness in the arm. But I would describe it as even less than when I get a flu shot, so really nothing.

I waited about 15 minutes after the shot just to see if there'd be any sort of allergic reaction or anything, and basically have been fine. It's -- I feel like nothing. I don't feel anything different right now.

TAPPER: There are a lot of Americans, disproportionately people of color, who are anxious about taking a vaccine, skeptical, for a variety of reasons.

Now, you took this vaccine on live TV. So did the vice president. So did the surgeon general. What message does all that send, you think?

GUPTA: Well, it's a good question, one that I have been thinking about quite a bit, Jake.

I mean, first of all, I think it's tough to measure the impact of these sorts of things. Doing something like this live on TV, does it lead to people being more willing to take the vaccine? I don't know.

But I think so, perhaps. I think we know that there's lots of reasons why people are hesitant. It's not one main reason. Sometimes, it's a distrust in government. People may have thought that the process was too rushed. People are worried about side effects.

For me, it was a collision of my worlds. I mean, as a health care worker, it was my turn to get a vaccine. There was -- there's going to be some 8,000 people vaccinated at our hospital system.

But, as a journalist, Jake, I have been covering the story for a year, alongside you. I saw the beginnings of this vaccine. I saw the early data. I talked to the vaccine makers. I talked to the FDA. I reviewed the data myself. And, in some ways, it was a more informed decision because I was a journalist covering this than even if I was just a health care worker.

So, I say that, and I decided to get it. Perhaps that makes a difference in terms of people who are thinking about this themselves. I went through the whole metric of thought on this.

Valerie Montgomery Rice, the president of the Morehouse School of Medicine, she did it alongside me. And I asked her specifically about black Americans and why -- what the hesitancy -- could this be addressed, the hesitancy?

Listen to what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VALERIE MONTGOMERY RICE, PRESIDENT, MOREHOUSE SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: There are black scientists in the room where decisions are being made. So, we clearly are not going to go against ourselves, right, because we understand how critical this is for black America and Latinx America, who has been disproportionately impacted by the virus.

I would not actually recommend anything if I did not believe it was safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: One thing she really reinforced to me, Jake, was that black Americans have been part of this vaccine process all along, including as part of the trials.

We will show you the trial participation from black Americans. And you will remember, Jake, in the beginning, it was not clear that they were getting enough people recruited into these trials that made up different demographics. But now you can look, and you can see how many black or African-Americans were in each of these trials.

So, does this allay some of those fears? I don't know, going back to the original point. But I think it might make a difference, Jake.

TAPPER: We're now on the cusp of a second vaccine from Moderna getting emergency use authorization.

We were told to expect the process with Moderna to go faster than it did with Pfizer. Is that still the case?

GUPTA: It could.

I mean, we have kind of gone through this at this point. So you have many committee members who were part of the Pfizer committee, the FDA advisory committee, who are also doing Moderna. So I think that they have just been through this process and are able to shortcut a little bit.

But the calendar that we put together, we can show it to you. It's pretty similar to what we saw with Pfizer, which did move quickly. Get an authorization potentially and then, over this weekend, you will probably have meetings from the CDC that are going to look specifically at, again, who should be getting the vaccine first.

[16:10:01]

We know health care workers and long-term care facility residents, but how about next? Essential workers. Which essential workers? People over a certain age. How will they fall in line?

But when you put it all together, Jake, next week, again, like we saw with Pfizer, it is quite likely we will see the Moderna vaccine being utilized in this country again before Christmas.

TAPPER: Sanjay, the situation in California has particularly spiraled out of control. The Los Angeles mayor says there are no ICU beds available in Southern California. He says regional morgues are out of space, because so many people have died.

And yet our president's retweeting a conservative talk radio host who questions the efficacy of masks and public health restrictions. It's unbelievable.

But, beyond that, why are things so bad in California? I mean, the governor and the mayor there, people have been pretty -- officials have been pretty aggressive in terms of pushing health regulations.

GUPTA: Well, one thing that it isn't, Jake -- and I just want to make this point clear -- is, I think it isn't that the virus is different.

And, obviously, that's an obvious point. You understand that. But I -- the reason I say it that way is because I think people find these situations and they say, well, here's an example where obviously masks don't work or the virus isn't spreading.

The virus doesn't care where it is, and it doesn't care who it's possibly infecting. So, it is a contagious virus, it is out there. If there are policies in place, and in those places, the virus -- you're still running into critical situations like this, it's because there's clearly situations where the virus is being allowed to spread, gatherings of people.

For example, in California at the end of the summer, it was -- you had these spikes at that point as well. It was unclear why. And then you realized that there were so many in-home private gatherings that were going on that were likely fueling the spread at that point.

TAPPER: Yes.

GUPTA: So, I don't know what exactly sometimes is fueling it. But it is clear that people are coming together in unprotected situations, and the virus is finding lots of homes as a result.

And we know how to prevent that from happening, staying home as much as possible, wearing a mask, all the things you and I have been talking about since February.

TAPPER: Sanjay, on a new health subject, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention today reported that the largest number of drug overdoses for a 12-month period ever recorded, more than 81,000 drug overdoses in the 12 months leading up to May 2020, so before the pandemic began, although including it as well.

The CDC blames this largely on deaths involving synthetic opioids. What's going on? I mean, the opioid crisis was something that seemed to be going OK. The numbers seemed to be going in the right direction. Now they're going in the exact wrong direction.

GUPTA: Well, Jake, I think that the -- in part, if there was any sort of signs of hope with regard to the opioid epidemic before, it is because, in some part, opioids were being replaced, the other opioids were being replaced by these synthetics

We started to see the increase in fentanyl abuse and fentanyl overdose over the past couple of years. In fact, a couple of years ago, we saw these significant spikes, so much so that life expectancy in the United States as a whole was actually coming down at that point.

Top three reasons were some opioids, including synthetic opioids, suicides and liver cirrhosis, typically due to alcoholism, the depths of despair, as they have been called. And that is a trend that has continued. You do see different drugs that are being used. And we don't obviously have the data for this most recent time period.

But it's been a concern for a while. And my guess is, it will continue to be for some time.

TAPPER: All right, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much.

Vice President Mike Pence got the coronavirus vaccine today, while President Trump did -- well, it's not really clear. The president has been AWOL as coronavirus has been spiraling out of control.

Then, ticktock, ticktock, time quickly running out for Congress to reach an agreement to help the Americans desperate for financial aid. What will it take for lawmakers to strike a deal?

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:18:36]

TAPPER: Turning now to our politics lead.

As Vice President Pence led the parade of top government leaders today trying to build confidence in the coronavirus vaccine by getting it, President Trump was on Twitter spreading lies about both the pandemic and the election, as the nation faces several emergencies.

As CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports, the president's latest desperate attempt to undermine the will of the American people seems focused on pressuring Republican senators to help him attack democracy.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With the stick of a needle in his left shoulder, Vice President Mike Pence became the most high-profile member of the Trump administration to receive a coronavirus vaccine today.

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I didn't feel a thing. Well done.

COLLINS: President Trump hasn't gotten the vaccine yet and was noticeably absent as his V.P. did. Minutes before Pence received his injection, Trump was tweeting about "the Russia hoax" on the one-year anniversary of his impeachment.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Article two is adopted.

COLLINS: Instead of taking a major role in his own administration's campaign to build confidence and reduce skepticism in the vaccine, Trump has instead been almost entirely consumed by his election loss.

BRIAN MORGENSTERN, WHITE HOUSE DEPUTY COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: President Trump is working very hard. There's a lot of work that goes on that isn't necessarily public.

COLLINS: He spent the morning lavishing praise on Alabama's newest senator-elect, Tommy Tuberville, after he refused to rule out objecting to the election results when Congress needs to ratify them next month.

[16:20:06]

TOMMY TUBERVILLE (R), ALABAMA SENATOR-ELECT: We have got to fight for this country and our kids.

COLLINS: Trump hailed the Republican and former Auburn football coach as a great champion and man of courage and said more Republican senators should follow his lead.

But that is the opposite of what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is telling his party, after warning them in a private call this week not to object on January 6. Trump tweeted that McConnell should "get tougher or you won't have a Republican Party anymore."

One thing the president hasn't tweeted about is the suspected Russian hack of the U.S. government and private companies, even though a White House official told CNN he was briefed on it yesterday.

REP. JASON CROW (D-CO): The president is not just not leading on this, but he's actually creating barriers and standing in the way of dealing with this in the way that a commander in chief should.

COLLINS: Lawmakers were also briefed by intelligence officials over the phone today, but said afterward they did not get sufficient answers.

REP. STEPHEN LYNCH (D-MA): No, no. Quite frankly, I think the level of specificity that I found in "The New York Times" or "The Washington Post" or "The Journal" is much better than what they brought this morning. Very disappointing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Now, Jake, there has also been some confusion happening at the Pentagon today after those transition meetings with the incoming Biden team were called off today.

The defense secretary, Chris Miller, said in his statement that was because there was a mutually agreed upon two-week delay because of the holidays, and that they would pick those meetings back up in January.

But the Biden transition team said that is not the case, and they never agree to that, and actually think it's important to continue those meetings right now, given there was such a delay to the transition after the president held it up.

And then a defense official told my colleague Ryan Browne that it wasn't a formal agreement to pause for two weeks, but it was an understood one that they were going to slow down the number of meetings and briefings that they were having -- that they were having.

So, basically, just to sum it up, a lot of confusion about what's going on, when those meetings are going to pick back up. But the Biden team says they do believe that right now they are more critical than ever.

TAPPER: Yes, I'm starting to get the impression that the Trump administration doesn't always tell the truth.

Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

In the money lead today: Both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill say they're very close on a stimulus deal. But close does not mean final, of course, and no deal could mean no $600 stimulus checks to Americans who desperately need the funding for food or for rent, no extra funding for COVID testing, no federal loans to help keep small businesses open. CNN's Suzanne Malveaux is live on Capitol Hill.

And, Suzanne, you tell me that we could have some breaking news in the next hour or so. What are you anticipating?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, we're just looking at less than eight hours away from a potential government shutdown.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said that, in the 5:00 hour, they will make some sort of announcement in terms of where this is going. I mean, they could announce that there's some sort of breakthrough in the COVID relief package and that this $900 billion plan will go through.

That is not likely. We're not getting any indication that that would be the announcement. He said, potentially, he could say that leaders need more time. We know that Speaker Pelosi, as well as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as well as their staff, have been horse-trading and trying to negotiate, and have been talking to each other throughout the day.

Perhaps we will give them a little bit more time this evening. But then the third likely possibility is that they will introduce this continuing resolution, keep the government open for another 24 to 48 hours, keep it funded, so they can continue talking.

Jake, what we understand now is that -- even that looks like that that is an uphill battle. The number two Republican, Senator John Thune, saying that he does not now think that is really likely. We know that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is sending around to all of the senators, will you sign on for this quick pass C.R., this continuing resolution?

If there are any objections to that, then that will not go through and that will mean there will be a government shutdown, Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Suzanne Malveaux, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

One member of Congress called it a modern-day Pearl Harbor, the enormous cyberattack by a Russian group targeting multiple government agencies that use Microsoft. We're going to talk to the president of Microsoft next.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:29:00]

TAPPER: In our world lead today: The scope of the suspected Russian cyber-hack on the United States is getting wider by the day.

Congressman Jason Crow, a Democrat from Colorado, said that our nation is under assault. And he said the hack is the modern day cyber- equivalent of Pearl Harbor. And now Microsoft has joined the growing list of victims, identifying

more than 40 organizations that have been compromised. This comes after at least five government agencies and hundreds of private firms also confirmed they were attacked in this hack.

Joining me now is the president of Microsoft, Brad Smith.

Mr. Smith, thanks for joining us.

Do you see this the way Congressman Crow does, a modern-day Pearl Harbor? Does there need to be a response once it's clear who was behind it?

BRAD SMITH, PRESIDENT, MICROSOFT: Well, I do think that those kinds of words are appropriate.

This was really an attack of extraordinarily broad scale. I think it was a reckless attack, because it impacted ultimately around 18,000 institutions around the world.

At Microsoft, we were fortunate. It didn't impact any of our products or services. Our products and services weren't