Return to Transcripts main page

The Lead with Jake Tapper

Will Senate Republicans Block $2,000 Stimulus Checks?; Biden Promises to Speed Up Vaccine Rollout. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired December 29, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:00]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: And, Joe, how does the president-elect plan to get all of this done?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's the question.

And a lot of people have been asking, because he has floated that idea of 100 million vaccinations in 100 days before. If you talk to the experts, they make it pretty clear that it is at least realistic -- I think Dr. Fauci has, in fact, said at one time or another that it's doable, but it's certainly ambitious.

So, the question is, how do you do that? It's really in three parts. You have to deal with the geography of the United States, which is enormous. You have to deal with the supply and you have to deal with the demand.

The supply, of course, is the big question. If you're going to vaccinate that many people, you have to have enough vaccines. So, the way he's going to solve that, he says, is the Defense Production Act. He also addressed the question of demand, that educational program that has already sort of been started by the Trump administration, but he's going to push now even more to try to get people vaccinated, especially those communities of color, African-Americans and so on, who are skeptical about it.

So, it sounds like something he can do. It was also very striking, I think, just to hear the way he approaches this compared to Donald Trump. It's bad news first with Joe Biden, which is a pretty realistic point of view, as opposed to a lot of the cheerleading that we did get from the Trump administration, at least certainly in the early days of the pandemic, Jake.

TAPPER: Yes, not just cheerleading, but just downright lies. I remember the president saying that the vaccine would be distributed before Election Day. That obviously did not happen.

Dr. Ashish Jha and CNN's Kristen Holmes join us now.

Dr. Jha, president-elect Biden says we need to ramp up vaccinations to one million a day, so that would be 100 million shots in his first 100 days. Is that realistic?

DR. ASHISH JHA, DEAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Yes, Jake, thanks for having me on. It's hard.

I think it's realistic, I think it's doable. Is it within our capacity as a country? Absolutely. We do big things, or we used to be able to do big things. I have no doubt that we can do it, but it will take real federal leadership. And that's what I heard from president-elect Biden, that he's committed to that leadership.

TAPPER: I saw you had a Twitter thread yesterday in which you were expressing frustration at the failure of the Trump administration.

They first promised 100 million vaccine doses by the end of the year. Then they most recently promised 20 million doses. But, as of right now, according to official government records, only 2.1 million Americans have been vaccinated.

What went wrong? Like, why have we not even come close to reaching the administration's goal, even though they kept lowering the goal over and over?

JHA: Yes, Jake, this is -- it's really frustrating, because this is the one part of the response that the administration had largely gotten right, which is getting vaccines -- basically, vaccines through the regulatory process, a lot of doses built.

And I thought that they had also, in their Operation Warp Speed, really thought through the last mile problem. This is not just about getting vaccines to states, but getting vaccines into people's arms.

It's really become clear in the last couple of weeks that their entire strategy is, get the vaccines to states and then let the states all figure it out on their own, with no support, with very little help. And, obviously, that's not a strategy that's a winning one for the American people.

TAPPER: President-elect Biden warns that the next few weeks may be the toughest yet, things are going to get worse before they get better.

Trump's never been this direct about the state of the pandemic. He hasn't even said anything about it recently, as horrible records were broken one after the other. Do you think that his frank messaging will get through to people who might not be taking COVID seriously enough, Dr. Jha, or do you think these battle lines have already been drawn?

JHA: No, look, what I heard from president-elect Biden was, he spoke to the American people like we are adults. He laid it out. He was pretty straightforward. He talked about what was going to happen and he talked about what needs to be done.

I think most Americans are ready for that. I think a year of confusion, of understating, of this virus is going to go away by April, by the summer, by the Election Day, all of that stuff, people have known that that stuff is not right. It's really helpful to have a leader who just says what's likely to happen and what we need to do about it.

And I think that's going to make the response much, much easier in the weeks and months ahead.

TAPPER: Kristen Holmes, you have been covering for CNN the vaccine distribution program.

What is the problem? You know, first, they said 100 million. Then they said 40 million. Then they said 20 million. We're at two million, and we have 330 million Americans. Why are we so far behind, according to your reporting?

[16:05:02]

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right, Jake.

I mean, keep this in mind here. When you're talking about all of these numbers and shifting, when you really break it down, when I talk to medical experts, they say a lot of this is overpromising. That is the big problem here.

You have a messenger like Donald Trump who is saying 100 million doses, 40 million doses, 20 million doses, and overpromising something that is a slow rollout here.

Now, according to senior administration officials that I have spoken to, these low numbers are expected. They say that it's just a data system, that it's a usual lag in reporting. In fact, one senior administration official, part of Operation Warp Speed, told me that there is an expected lag because of the data reported to CDC coming from the states. They have to get it to their areas, so they can get it to CDC.

But when we hear from doctors like Dr. Fauci on air today, we hear him saying things like, if it is an underestimate, if it is an undercounted situation, how undercounted could it be? If we're at two million in these state databases, in the CDC database, we would have to multiply, multiply, multiply to even get near to that 20 million doses.

And I do want to note, though, that Operation Warp Speed, an official told me today that, as of today, 19.88 million doses have been allocated for states. Now, that still does not mean anything about vaccines in arms and it doesn't mean anything about shipments.

What that means is that states can order those vaccines, but they are inching closer and closer to that 20 million number. Now, of course, we're nowhere near that 100 million doses. And one thing I want to point out here, because we heard Biden say this -- this is something that we have not actually heard from him before -- is the idea of taking a federalized approach.

This is something we have heard from numerous health officials as something Biden was looking at, that they were pitching these ideas, they were tossing it around, trying to figure out what the best kind of way to take over this vaccine distribution would be.

And the things he noted specifically, mass vaccination sites. That is something that would be federally run. That is not something that is happening right now. The other thing he noted was taking mobile units to hard-to-reach communities.

That has been a huge issue for the Trump administration for this vaccine rollout, is actually getting those vaccines into the hands of the people that need them, particularly when they are in hard-to-reach communities, rural areas.

So, that in itself is a big change. Now, one thing to point out here is, I have spoken to health care workers, health care experts across the field who all say the same thing. The Biden/Harris transition team, the new administration, has to be very careful with the changes that they make when this happens.

The transition is not a good thing for a vaccine rollout and it could cause potential problems if they make any sort of large changes to try and get to that higher number quicker.

TAPPER: Dr. Jha, Biden just laid out plans for vaccines, schools, mask mandates. What other priorities do you think he should make when he takes office?

JHA: Yes, I think those are the big ones.

And one other that I have been sort of harping on since March, which president-elect Biden just mentioned as well, is testing. Look, the way we get our lives back, the economy open, schools open safely, everything back to some version of normal, is if we have widespread testing available.

That, combined with vaccines, are -- and masks are going to be the credible issue here. And, again, I think we need -- there's a lot the federal government can do to ramp up testing and make it widely available to the American people.

And we have gotten that as a signal from the Biden team. And I think it's the right signal. I think that's what we need to be hearing about.

TAPPER: All right, Dr. Jha, Kristen Holmes, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

It may be a first. President Trump is taking jabs at his own party, while agreeing with Democrats. That's next.

Plus: what the first lady did at Mar-a-Lago that one source says President Trump was not happy about and is already trying to change. That's ahead.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:13:59]

TAPPER: In our politics lead today: President Trump is taking to, where else, Twitter, to rail against his party in the strongest language we have seen yet, demanding Senate Republicans vote in favor of $2,000 stimulus checks -- quote -- "unless they have a death wish," but making no known other effort to persuade those Republican senators himself.

The president also calling Republican House leadership weak and tired for voting to override his veto of the defense bill.

CNN's Boris Sanchez now takes a look at the growing divides between the president and his party during his final weeks in office.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): I object.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Objection is heard.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As lawmakers spar over stimulus checks on Capitol Hill, President Trump spending yet another day on the golf course and teeing up a tweet spree, attacking his own party, Trump calling Republican leaders weak and tired, writing: "We need new and energetic Republican leadership. Our leaders, not me, of course, are pathetic. They only know how to lose."

The president angry over an effort to overturn his veto of the defense spending bill, despite strong bipartisan support for the measure.

SEN. PAT TOOMEY (R-PA): I'm not very surprised about tweets that are critical of people who are overriding the president's veto.

SANCHEZ: A senior Republican also telling CNN: "Hill Republicans share Bill Barr's assessment. These tweets are the ravings of a deposed king."

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It really is a disgrace.

SANCHEZ: New details also emerging about how key Republican lawmakers narrowly avoided disaster by carefully persuading Trump to get behind the coronavirus relief bill, Georgia Senator David Perdue trying to survive a difficult run-off one week from today traveling to Florida to personally lobby the president for his signature, while House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Senator Lindsey Graham, who golfed with Trump this weekend, also nudging Trump, who relented on Sunday, signing the bill, despite days of threats to veto it.

[16:15:00]

And more than seven weeks since Joe Biden was declared the winner, Trump today still (AUDIO GAP) lies about voter fraud and fuming over a lack of Republican support for his claims of election rigging, though Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert is trying a last-ditch effort to overturn the election by filing a lawsuit against Vice President Mike Pence, attempting to force Pence to ignore the Electoral College results from five states when he oversees the congressional certification on Capitol Hill next week.

Legal experts say the lawsuit stands no chance, Democrats calling it a spectacle.

REP. ADAM SCHIFF (D-CA): This crazy, frivolous lawsuit, of course, will fail. Whatever stunt they have planned for the joint session of Congress will fail.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: And, Jake, there are two things here that are glaring, number one, that the president is spending his days mostly on the golf course, the White House giving no indication that he's personally lobbying these Republican senators to taking his side on this issue.

We have gotten no indication from White House sources that he's actually personally reached out to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. All that we have seen are these tweets, where he doesn't actually name McConnell. He just goes after the generic Republican leadership.

Secondly, important to point out, President Trump still upset with McConnell because he's accepted that Joe Biden is president-elect. This rift dates back to when McConnell on the Senate floor accepted the results of the Electoral College and the 2020 election -- Jake.

TAPPER: Ah, yes, the price for acknowledging reality.

Boris Sanchez, thanks so much.

We have some breaking news from Capitol Hill, where Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is urging the Senate to vote to override President Trump's veto of the defense bill. Moments ago, he announced the Senate will plan the first vote on the defense bill tomorrow, with a final vote potentially as late as Friday or Saturday.

Senate Majority Leader McConnell is offering much less clarity on how he wants his members to tackle increased stimulus checks that President Trump and Democrats are advocating.

CNN's Lauren Fox joins us now live from Capitol Hill.

And, Lauren, we're hearing very little from McConnell on how he's going to proceed when it comes to bumping up the stimulus from $600 to $2,000. What are you hearing from Republican leadership?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Well, essentially, right now, Jake, it looks like McConnell is just trying to run out the clock when it comes to those $2,000 stimulus checks.

Interestingly, before he closed the Senate for the day, he did give himself a little bit of an option for further down the road if he has to bring something to the floor. Essentially, what it would do, it would be the $2,000 stimulus checks, plus a repeal of Section 230.

Now, of course, that is a poison pill, something Democrats likely wouldn't vote for. But it is interesting. It's not a guarantee, of course, that McConnell would bring this up. It is just something that he has at his disposal if he gets into a situation where something has to come to the floor.

Now, taking a step back, we have been talking to other Republicans today on Capitol Hill. In fact, my colleague Ted Barrett talked with John Cornyn, a leadership Republican, who told us that essentially there were still options on the table for how they move forward on these $2,000 checks.

And another option would be tying liability insurance, another poison pill for Democrats, with those checks. So, right now, it doesn't appear that there's going to be a stand-alone bill on those checks coming to the floor any time soon.

But, as you noted, Majority Leader McConnell very focused on this vote to override the president's veto on the National Defense Authorization Act. The process will begin tomorrow. But would any agreement from all senators, this process could get dragged out into the weekend, New Year's Day, and perhaps even Saturday, Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Lauren Fox, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Let's discuss.

Mary Katharine Ham, let me bring you in here.

Mitch McConnell urging his party to vote to override President Trump's veto of the defense bill. How much fire is McConnell willing to bring down on the heads of Republicans over this or any other issue, do you think, in the last few weeks of the Trump presidency?

MARY KATHARINE HAM, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think, because there's bipartisan agreement on defense, and defense is an area where Republicans are willing to flex, I think the question also is, how much fire is Trump going to bring down and for how long?

I think one of his objections is the Section 230 stuff not being in the defense bill. If that's his strongest objection, and McConnell is discussing it elsewhere, like along with these $2,000 checks, Trump might sort of lose interest in the defense bill. I think that might be the case.

Then there's the issue of Bernie being able to throw a wrench in this, as he wants to populist together with Trump on blocking the defense bill and doing the $2,000 checks. And so that may pose a problem as well to everyone.

And can I just say, like, nobody really -- we don't unite on very much anymore, but there's a good reason not to, like, be glad about anything that Congress has done this year, to be really proud of them.

So, can I say that one thing we might be together on is the idea that these guys are blowing up all their own deals and having to work the week after Christmas? Not mad at it, and you shouldn't be either.

[16:20:03]

(LAUGHTER) HAM: They haven't missed one...

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Yes. No, I take your point.

Paul, Mary Katharine raises an interesting idea, which is, how likely do you think it is that McConnell is just going to attach these $2,000 checks, which he does not want to pass, to that provision that Democrats hate, which would revoke Section 230, which provides immunity for social media companies for posts by third parties?

I mean, looking at McConnell, isn't that the likeliest course of outcome in terms of how his mind works?

PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes, he will do anything to keep $2,000 out of the pockets of middle-class families. And I think you will hear a lot of it from the Democrats.

For once, Mitch McConnell is standing up to Donald Trump. We have always wondered when he would get off the Trump train and the rest of the Republicans in the Senate. It's taken 1,438 days. And they didn't get off the train when he put children in cages. And they didn't get off the train when he sucked up to Vladimir Putin. And he didn't get off the train when he called our soldiers suckers and our war dead losers.

But this is too much. Giving money to working-class people who are in desperate shape, through no fault of their own, that's too much for the Republicans.

Here's the problem politically. He's got a run-off in Georgia that will determine control of the Senate, two seats down there. Trump has asked for $2,000. David Perdue has said he supports -- the senator in Georgia says he supports it.

Well, will he vote with Trump with the $2,000 or will he vote with Senator McConnell, his leader, who wants to tie it to this bill on the Section 230, the Communications Decency Act, to limit Facebook and other social media?

I don't know. That puts him in a terrible position. What about the defense bill? Georgia is full of defense installations, one of those patriotic states in the nation, home of Fort Benning. Do you vote with Trump or the troops, David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler?

So, McConnell is too cute by half here. He's putting his most vulnerable senators and the entire Republican majority the Senate in a terrible bind.

TAPPER: Mary Katherine, do you agree with that? I mean, I know people who think that none of what's going on in Washington really has much to do with the Senate race, Senate races, I should say, for the run- off. What do you think?

HAM: Well, I think to some extent, it's a blur, because it is the week after Christmas. And there's a lot going on here that gets a little confusing.

But I think that Paul is right in the idea that look, a $2,000 check sounds good to folks. That is an easy pitch, right, although I would note, as he well knows, that it is not targeted to people who have lost jobs or lost paychecks. And I think that that is maybe not the best use of the money, because I'd like to help people who actually lost their jobs and not just shotgun it to everyone.

But it's a good pitch from somebody who's running for office right now, which is why the folks who are running in Georgia are going with that. I think they will likely vote for it, if given the chance, and stick with Trump, as they have on many other issues, because that, I think, is the ultimate appeal to base voters in Georgia.

And doing it with that part, that part of the legislation, even if I don't think it's the most targeted or great idea, is probably going to work for voters. A lot of this, though, the machinations are going to become a blur, and it's not going to be very clear what's going on, except that these folks said, I want to give you $2,000.

TAPPER: Right.

HAM: And that's a safe place...

TAPPER: Paul, I want to ask you, what do you make of the images of all these lawmakers on Capitol Hill getting vaccinated before health care workers or police or teachers?

I mean, I understand the idea of continuity of government, so Speaker Pelosi, et cetera. And I understand the idea of wanting to set examples, but, at a certain point, is there a risk here for Congress?

BEGALA: There is, especially for those who have said COVID is no big deal, who mocked the wearing of masks, who did -- who attacked all the sensible steps that public health officials, Dr. Fauci and others, have been asking us to take.

Particularly those folks, for them then to get the vaccine, when they wouldn't wear a mask, or they told other people not to wear a mask, I think there is a hypocrisy here.

But most fundamentally, though, I do want everyone to get vaccinated. I'm glad that the president -- I guess he's gotten one. Or Mike Pence certainly has gotten one. And the president-elect and vice president- elect have now.

I do want to see people get vaccinated, and I want to try to take away some of the fear people have about it. But the hypocrisy, oh, my gosh, particularly for these people who I think have -- have helped make the pandemic worse by undermining our public health officials, I think the hypocrisy there is pretty ripe.

TAPPER: Mary Katherine, I'm kind of concerned that members of Congress -- and they're also -- they're allowed to get some of their staff members vaccinated. Don't you think that some of them might then feel less urgency and addressing this huge calamity, in both health and economic and scholastic, in terms of our kids and everything?

I mean, if they're vaccinated, they don't have to worry about it, maybe they won't feel the urgency that we haven't really seen them acting with much this year anyway.

HAM: I think this is a really hard line to walk, because you do want people to embrace the vaccine publicly. You want people to be seen doing that.

I think, if I were in Congress and I were a young and healthy person, as I am, and not in the demo, as it were, that I might hold off a while until others got it. I think that's that maybe not a bad position to take.

[16:25:08]

And as far as hypocrisy goes, look, this -- we can play this game both ways all day, which is like people like Kamala and the president- elect, Joe Biden, who down-talked the vaccine before he became the president-elect, and had some not-great rhetoric on it, they are getting them, as they should.

But the hypocrisy stands, as it does for Gavin Newsom, who flouted his own rules, for Muriel Bowser, who traveled to Delaware when she was telling everybody else to stay in D.C., for Nancy Pelosi goes and gets her haircut, when nobody else in California can. Those hypocrisies stand as well.

And those people should also get the vaccine, because there's nobody out there who's qualified to carry the moral calculator who says, no, your behavior was bad, so you don't get the vaccine. If you're in the groups that get the vaccine first, you get the vaccine. And that's why the continuity of government plan was written.

And that's why (AUDIO GAP)

TAPPER: OK, Paul Begala, Mary Katharine Ham, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Merry Christmas and happy new year.

Breaking news out of California right now: The COVID crisis is getting so bad, millions of people there will have to stay home longer, as we find out the unbelievable number of Californians testing positive every minute of the day.

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:30:00]