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The Lead with Jake Tapper
U.K. Approves Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID Vaccine; U.S. Rollout Behind Schedule With 1 Day Left in 2020; McConnell Looks to Tank $2,000 Stimulus Checks with Poison Pills in Bill; Kemp Responds to Trump's Call for Him to Resign; Attempt to Force Vote on Election Results Setting Up Nightmare Scenario for GOP Leaders. Aired 3:30-4p ET
Aired December 30, 2020 - 15:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: In our WORLD LEAD today, the United Kingdom taking a big step forward today in vaccinating more of its population against COVID, becoming the very first country to approve the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine which is cheaper and easier to distribute than the two vaccines approved for use in the U.S. CNN's Phil Black is live in London with the details for us.
Phil, thanks for joining us. The U.K. says it's going to implement a new immunization strategy for the vaccine. So what does that mean? What's it look like? When will the vaccine be available?
PHIL BLACK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So it's going to start going into people's arms next week, Jake, but instead of focusing on getting two doses to people as the course requires, they're going to prioritize the stock as it becomes available on getting that first dose to as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
The idea is that you then build up a level of immunity in a wider section of the population and hopefully cut down on severe infections, save lives and ease pressure on distressed hospitals. The second dose will follow. It's important for longer term protection authorities here say, but that could be, say, three months after the first dose.
Now there's been some controversy over the efficacy of this particular vaccine, but the authorities here point to a key finding of the trials conducted by Oxford University and AstraZeneca, and that was the finding that 14 days after the second dose, not one of the trial participants experienced a severe infection or required hospital treatment.
They believe that sort of protection applied broadly in the population will be a game changer. In addition to that, it is logistically convenient. It can be moved around, rolled out more widely because it doesn't need to be stored at ultra-low temperatures. A frig will do. The government here is so confident that this will be key part of
ending the pandemic. They're now saying that could happen as early as spring. But it would require a really big, significant ramping up of the vaccination program here in order to achieve that, but they believe they can do it.
It is welcome news, inspiring hope in what is otherwise a very dark time for this country and its experience with the pandemic because cases are really soaring and threatening to overwhelm parts of the country's health system -- Jake.
TAPPER: All right, Phil Black in London, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Joining us now to talk more about the AstraZeneca vaccine, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor of medicine at George Washington University.
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Dr. Reiner, thanks for joining us, so you just heard Phil there, the U.K. government says its going to prioritize giving the first dose to as many people as possible before administering any second dose, up to 12 weeks later. What do you make of that strategy? Is that a better way to distribute the vaccine than the way most states seem to be doing it? Which is focus on one individual and make sure they get both shots instead of two people, one shot?
DR. JONATHAN REINER, PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: Yes, thanks for having me, Jake. The problem with the U.K. strategy is it really wasn't the way the drug was trialed in the large clinical trials. There's been some suggestion about the Moderna vaccine and the Pfizer vaccine about just giving the first dose as well and not worrying about the second dose for a while, to again, expand the availability of vaccines.
And indeed, it does look like the first dose of both those vaccines does provide significant, maybe not as robust protection, but significant protection out at 14 days as well. The problem is that the clinical trials were not conducted to do that and we don't know how durable that protection would be at the outset.
But I'm more concerned about getting vaccine out to the public than I am about availability of vaccine. We know we're going to have, by the end of February, the ability to vaccinate about -- to get about 100 million doses. I am not convinced we have the infrastructure to give those doses. So I think more attention in this country needs to be paid on innovative ways to deliver vaccine to the public. I'm worried less about the availability of actual vaccine.
TAPPER: Well, I just interviewed Admiral Brett Giroir of HHS, who's really more in charge of testing than he is in charge of Operation Warp Speed. But he was talking about this and he said that he thinks the holdup so far, it's about 2.6 million individuals have received that first shot, 2.6 million, even though HHS Secretary Azar was saying in October that 100 million vaccines would be ready to go by the end of the year, which, of course, ends tomorrow.
He said it's really just a matter of getting up to speed, because it's obviously not an easy thing to vaccinate, you know, up to 80 percent of 330 million people. It doesn't sound like you agree with that?
REINER: No. And in fact, listening to Admiral Giroir as sort of the uncomfortable echoes of how horrible our testing rollout was, where it took over 50 days to vaccinate a grand total of 20,000 people. Right now we vaccinate about a million and a half people a day or more. So it took almost two months to vaccinate 20,000 people --
TAPPER: You mean, you mean tests, not vaccines.
DR. REINER: Right, exactly, tests. I'm getting the same vibe now. Look, it'll be great to have the vaccine in, you know, Walmart and CVS pharmacies around the country, but that's the way we give influenza vaccine where, you know, we're trying to get people vaccinated but there isn't this sort of fierce urgency to do that.
And in our best year, using that as our mainstay method, we only vaccinate about 160 million people in this country in our best year. Now we need to deliver over 500 million vaccinations with a two-dose vaccination strategy, so we need to think different. We need to have mass vaccination events. We need to have drive-thru events. We need to have vaccination events arenas. We need to take vaccines to churches and schoolyards. We need to go out into the community and proactively vaccinate people rather than just say, oh just go to your nearest CVS.
A lot of folks don't live so close to pharmacies. In big cities there are --- excuse me, pharmacy deserts. We need to be different and there needs to be a sense of urgency and I don't feel it right now.
TAPPER: It sounds like you're quite skeptical that the Trump administration prepared for this even though President Trump had been for instance falsely claiming the vaccine would be ready by election day. And Alex Azar in October was saying 100 million doses would be ready to go by the end of the year. Those were obviously not accurate predictions, to be nice about.
But even with the 20 million or so that they have been allocated, ready to go, and 14 million or so that have been distributed, it sounds like you think they haven't really thought about how to actually get them in the arms other than to bring them to the state capitals and saying, OK, go ahead.
DR. REINER: Exactly. Outsourcing it the states. So let me give you an example, Israel has vaccinated about one-fourth the number of people as the United States has. The problem is Israel is a country one- thirty-fifth the size of the United States and they've already vaccinated 20 percent of their population over the age of 60.
They're well on their way to dramatically cutting mortality in that country, because most of the risk comes in the older group of the population.
[15:40:00] We haven't started other than in our long-term care and nursing facilities, we haven't started to vaccinate people even over the age of 75 in this country.
TAPPER: Yes.
DR. REINER: We need to think differently, we need to be more aggressive about it, and the longer it takes, the more people die.
TAPPER: Dr. Jonathan Reiner, thank you so much for joining us, appreciate it.
The poison pill that could prevent those $2,000 relief checks from hitting your bank account. Stay with us.
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TAPPER: In our POLITICS LEAD, despite the fact that it passed the House of Representatives and a majority of the Senate including Democrats and Republicans support it, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is doing everything in his power to ensure that that bill to increase stimulus checks to $2,000 will not be passed.
He's now adding poison pills, measures added to the legislation that all but guarantee the bill will not get enough support. Including demands from President Trump regarding voter fraud and revoking the provision that gives legal immunity to social media companies for items posted by third party users.
CNN'S Phil Mattingly joins me now. So Senator McConnell and Senator Schumer just spoke on the floor of the Senate about this. What did they have to say?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jake, Senator McConnell's fond of saying that the real power that he has as Majority Leader is, he gets to determine the schedule of what comes up on the Senate floor. And he made very clear that the House passed bill, the $2,000 in direct payments is not coming up on the Senate floor any time soon. Just lambasting the bill in its entirety. Take a listen
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SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY) MAJORITY LEADER: Speaker Pelosi and Leader Schumer are trying to pull a fast one on the President and the American people. The Senate's not going to be bullied into rushing out more borrowed money into the hands of Democrat rich friends who don't need the help.
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MATTINGLY: Now, Jake, what he's referring to specifically on the policy side is the phase out for the larger bill as it pertains to $2,000 versus $600 but the kind of baseline that actually it matters right now. McConnell is making clear this is not going to happen the U.S. Senate before this Congress is up on Sunday.
Now Chuck Schumer as you noted, the Senate Democratic leader, was on the floor at the same time, and he made clear the bill you outlined, from Senate Majority Leader McConnell, is a nonstarter. The only game in town for increasing the direct payments is that House passed bill. He attempted to set up just a straight-up up or down vote on that bill. McConnell objected, right now those checks do not seem like they're going to expand any time soon -- Jake.
TAPPER: Yes, and the bottom line is the majority of the majority, most Republicans don't want that bill to pass, and that's what he's doing, trying to kill it on their behalf and his own.
What are you hearing on The Hill in response to Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri going against McConnell and saying that he will, in fact, contest the election results when they're brought to the joint session next week? My understanding is that most Republican Senators are not happy about this.
MATTINGLY: Yes, there's a lot of frustration. Look, I think there's some sense that it is inevitable. There were enough Senators who weren't tipping their hand on what they were doing on the Republican side. That one or two were likely to join with House Republicans.
But the reason Mitch McConnell in a closed-door conference call with his members earlier this month, made clear that joining with House Republicans in trying to object would be a bad idea is because of protecting the conference. McConnell's really sole focus at all times.
This means that some Republicans are going to have to eventually vote against President Trump. That's what McConnell wants to stop. That is what they're going to have to do. Hawley, in some degree at least, according to a lot of Republicans I'm talking to, is putting his own members, his own colleagues in a bad position and that's where the frustration comes from.
TAPPER: It's pretty short-sighted to make an enemy out of Mitch McConnell if you to be a Republican presidential nominee someday. Phil Mattingly, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
President Trump, President-elect Joe Biden and former President Obama all have the same thing on their minds, Georgia. Stay with us.
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TAPPER: We have breaking news in our POLITICS LEAD for you now. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp just responded to President Trump's call for him to resign. Trump seemingly more focused on the November election in which he lost Georgia and many other states to President- elect Joe Biden than he is on next week's pivotal Senate runoff elections to say nothing of the coronavirus. The runoff elections could determine whether Trump's party retains power of the Senate or not. Let's bring in Ryan Nobles in Atlanta. And Ryan you were at Kemp's press conference, this is very conservative Republican who supported President Trump but has not supported Trump's deranged attempts to flip the election result. What did Governor Kemp have to say?
RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You know, Jake, under normal circumstances, if a sitting United States President called on a sitting governor of any state to resign, especially if both of those two people were from the same party, it would be major break into coverage news for. But here in Atlanta, Brian Kemp, who is that governor who President Trump asked to resign via tweet today, simply brushed it off. And called it nothing more than a distraction. Take a listen.
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GOV. BRIAN KEMP (R-GA): But I've got to stay focused on the issues of the day in Georgia. Not what somebody's tweeting. But that horse has left the barn in Georgia and it's headed to D.C. right now. The next vote is going to be there, not here.
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NOBLES: So to be clear, Kemp basically acted that what Trump had to say didn't really matter at all, he said he had much bigger things to worry about including deal with the coronavirus pandemic here in Georgia. And also that important Senate runoff that's coming up and getting the two Republicans reelected to their posts.
And he basically said that all of Trump's claims about the election are just wrong. He said they looked into many of them and every single one turned out no evidence of any kind of fraud including a signature match audit in Cobb County which just completed yesterday, Jake. The results of that is that it was 99 percent accurate and there was simply no fraud found -- Jake.
TAPPER: All right, Ryan, thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Breaking today, a Republican Senator announcing that he's on board with President Trump's attempt at a bloodless coup, threatening chaos next week in Congress, though it will not change the results of the election.
One of the strongest conservative critics of President Trump, George Conway, will react to that news next, stay with us.
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TAPPER: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper. And we start today with our POLITICS LEAD. And another last ditch effort by Republicans to overturn the results of a free and fair election.
Today Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri who has hopes of running for president, he announced that will join colleagues from the House and object as Congress certifies the electoral college results next Wednesday.
Now to be clear, this is all performative. This measure has no chance of stopping Joe Biden from becoming president on January 20th. This is instead about fueling the election grievances based in large part on lies that President Trump, his supporters and MAGA media have been spreading to Republican voters across the country. It will no doubt further inflame the anger that those lies have fueled.
