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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Does McConnell Back Trump Impeachment?; Companies Respond to Insurrection; Trump Admin Changes Policy on Vaccines, Now Wants States to Vaccinate Adults 65+; Virtual Learning & Strain on Parents, Especially Mothers. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired January 12, 2021 - 16:30   ET

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

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TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Other companies are also pledging to stop donations to lawmakers who attended the rally before the insurrection and supported Trump's election fraud charade.

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Hallmark called out two my name and asked for the return of previous donations: "The reason actions of Senators Josh Hawley and Roger Marshall do not reflect our company's values."

It is a serious warning to the president's allies and encouraging to his critics.

FMR. SEN. JEFF FLAKE (R-AZ): I'm glad to see that the political marketplace is working out there, with organizations, companies, individuals saying, we're simply not giving any more contributions to those who held up the election -- or tried to hold up or overturn the election.

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FOREMAN: People everywhere say money talks, but here in D.C., sometimes, it positively shouts.

And, right now, there is a roar rising from some moneyed interest, telling Republicans it may be time for a withdrawal -- Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: I have never seen Hallmark pissed off before.

TAPPER: Tom Foreman--

FOREMAN: Hard to do.

TAPPER: Tom Foreman, thanks so much.

Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman, FBI agent and Republican Congressman Mike Rogers joins me now.

Mr. Chairman, always good to see you.

I have to ask. Two-thirds of your party in the House voted to undermine the election, based on these lies that led to the terrorist attack, and they did so after the attack. Are you embarrassed to be a Republican today at all?

MIKE ROGERS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CONTRIBUTOR: Well, I'm certainly embarrassed by those actions.

I see a lot more self-interest than public interest going on, a lot more self-service than public service going on. And I think we have got to shake ourselves out of it.

Listen, I think this spell was broken when Donald Trump helped -- and, by the way, he told the leader of the House today, Kevin McCarthy, apparently in a phone call being reported, that he did understand that he had some responsibility for this.

Well, you're damn right you had responsibility for this. This is important for people to take a collective deep breath here and see the future. Remember, the people who did this, Jake, the 3 Percenters, the Proud Boys, those are not Republicans. They're extremist groups.

And we shouldn't get them confused.

TAPPER: Right, but -- OK, a couple things there.

First, McCarthy tells a lot of things, says a lot of things that are aren't true. He tells a lot of lies. And Trump in front of the cameras refused to take any responsibility.

I see lots of House Republicans -- and, again, this isn't you, OK? I'm not holding you responsible. But I see a lot of House Republicans who spread these lies who are now calling for unity and saying impeachment would be divisive.

I'm not really sure they're reading the room. There needs to be a reckoning here by House Republicans, don't you think?

ROGERS: Well, I do.

But, listen, I am not one of those -- my wife says it's a genetic defect that I'm an eternal optimist. But if you look at the politics around the country, lots of Republicans rejected Trump and still voted for Republican principles and Republican policies. We have more women, more minorities elected.

In seats that he lost, we won, the Republicans won. And so I think there's the makings of that reckoning that's coming back. I think, again, for the people who work for a living who are outside of Washington, D.C., that spell got broken when the president contributed to violence at the Capitol to try to overturn an election.

And just because we don't like an election is exactly why this is the greatest democracy in the world. That's not why you march the Capitol and break windows. You actually prepare yourself for another election to try to get your views and policies back and in good stead.

TAPPER: Yes.

ROGERS: I think we are going to move through this.

I do say this, Jake. I apologize. But when Biden -- president-elect Biden came out and said, I don't know if Congress should do this, I agreed with him at that time. I thought, you know what, that's probably right. Give this guy the chance to try to put things back together.

I would do the censure. I would absolutely do that. I would be as tough on criminal charges on these people who actually committed these crimes.

TAPPER: But here's the thing.

(CROSSTALK)

ROGERS: And then I think we have to say, is the right thing for the future of the country? And I don't know.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: So, Congressman Tom Massie, he's a Republican of Kentucky. He told The Dispatch -- quote -- "People did mislead the folks that came here and Trump was among them. I think Trump is at fault here. I watched almost all of his speech. I felt like it was inevitable. I told my wife it was like a 50-pound feed sack, and I just heard the first few stitches pop. The next thing that happens is, all the stitches popping and all the feed is on the ground."

OK, fine. But Massie was also among those lying about the election, sharing debunked election lies. And even if he didn't vote to overturn the elections, don't House Republicans and Senate Republicans and MAGA media, people who lied to Trump supporters, don't they need to own up to what they did?

Because that's part of the problem.

ROGERS: Well, absolutely, I do.

I mean, again, that's why I have said I think that smacks of self- service, not public service. Sometimes, leadership is doing things when it's hardest. It's not leadership when it's easy. It's leadership because it's hard to do.

You have to go home and say, listen, we lost. The president of the United States lost. And here's what we can do to regain our footing and move forward.

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They didn't want to do that. They didn't want to have hard conversations. And, yes, I get it there's some extremist groups out there who are preaching violence. And, again, those aren't Republicans. These are folks who are extremists. They're anarchists.

They're white nationalists. Those are the groups that we should stand as far away from, all of us, as a country. And we should -- that's the one thing we should unite around right up front.

TAPPER: Sure.

ROGERS: These folks are not welcome in our political structure.

If you're going to carry a gun and break a window, guess what? You're not welcome here.

TAPPER: You and I have talked about this before. They may not be Republicans, but they sure do love Donald Trump, and he sure has played footsie with them for years now.

Chairman Rogers, thanks so much. Really appreciate your time and your integrity, as always.

President Trump just weighed in on possibly becoming the first president in history to be impeached the second time -- what he said next.

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

TAPPER: We have some breaking news for you now.

"The New York Times" is now reporting the Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has told associates that he believes President Trump has committed impeachable offenses. And sources tell "The Times" that McConnell has said that he's glad Democrats are moving to impeach Trump because he thinks it will make it easier to purge the president from the Republican Party.

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Let's discuss.

Abby, let's start with you. Your reaction to this news. I'm not sure exactly what McConnell means. Why would this make it easier to purge President Trump from the party, unless the Senate is going to vote to convict him?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's a good question.

I mean, whether the Senate votes to convict President Trump is a completely different question from whether or not McConnell supports moving forward with impeachment proceedings.

But if you look at this from Mitch McConnell's perspective, Republicans a week ago today lost two Senate seats that could have been winnable because of President Trump's antics and his lies. And Mitch McConnell has been obviously frustrated with that. Now, I think it's clear Mitch McConnell could have earlier in this

process shut down all of this ridiculous talk about fraud, and did not. But at the same time, where he's standing right now he is looking at a Senate majority that is gone, and looking at the prospects of Republicans retaking power.

And he sees President Trump standing in the way of that, and I can't say that he's wrong.

TAPPER: Gloria, your reaction?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, my reaction is that Mitch McConnell, having lost the Senate, and having seen what happened in the Capitol the other day, and having seen how the president failed to react, did not even react to protect Mike Pence, is furious at this president and wants to get beyond him.

I was talking to a Republican even before this happened who said, nobody's going to be happier to see Donald Trump go than Mitch McConnell. He has done his bidding, but they are nothing alike.

And I think McConnell has just about had it. And I think he's kind of -- if he were to be more honest about it, he's a lot more like Liz Cheney than Leader McCarthy here. And so I don't know. I spoke with somebody in a leading Democrat's office in the Senate just before I came on the air who said he didn't have any high expectation that McConnell was going to bring anything to the floor for conviction on impeachment.

But now this puts a little daylight into that question, and you sort of think, well, could he really bring it to the floor? Could he decide to bring it to the floor, because he can? And now I'm thinking, well, maybe he might.

TAPPER: I mean, Abby, we have the former attorney general for President Trump, Bill Barr, who I think we can agree was pretty loyal to President Trump -- he did like 98 percent of what Trump wanted him to do.

He has accused President Trump publicly of organizing a mob to pressure Congress, which is the very least of what I think we all saw Trump do. But I have to say, I just generally don't believe that 18 Senate Republicans are going to be willing to vote to convict President Trump.

I just think that they're that far gone. And you will get Romney. Maybe you will get Sasse. But, after that, I don't know.

PHILLIP: Yes. And I tend to agree with you, Jake.

I don't see an avalanche of Republican senators, enough to convict President Trump, speaking out about this. And if they were going to speak out, they would have spoken out by now. And, on top of that, I mean, I do think that, with Mitch McConnell, watching him, talking to people close to him and his aides over the years, he is very careful to kind of just walk a very fine line, especially with President Trump.

He may allow this to go forward. But I don't know that he's going to be whipping votes for an impeachment. I don't know that he's going to be encouraging his members to vote for this.

There -- also in "The New York Times" report, they reported that McConnell and Biden had a conversation about whether it could be possible to move forward with nominees and also move forward with an impeachment, and McConnell kind of kicked it to the parliamentarian.

So I don't think he's really bending over backwards to try to make this happen. But, sure, perhaps, in his private -- in his interviews, he certainly believes that what President Trump did was impeachable, because he basically said so on the day that this happened. He was very clear that he felt like what his Republican colleagues were doing was completely beyond the Constitution and wrong.

And he said as much last week.

TAPPER: Yes, but that -- and that's not even including the terrorist attack in which five people were killed.

BORGER: Right.

PHILLIP: Exactly.

TAPPER: But, Gloria, this is where -- so, that's where the Senate is.

In the House, they just put up metal detectors outside the chamber of the House, the floor that people see on C-SPAN. And they did that in the wake of House Democrats talking about their fears of their Republican colleagues, not all their Republican colleagues, but, A, the group that is gun-toting, so like the Congressman Cawthorn and Congresswoman Boebert, or however you pronounce her name, and then also the people that they are legitimately worried were complicit, maybe even coordinating with the terrorists.

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That's where the House Republican -- that's where the mood is, the zeitgeist in the House Republican and Democrat conference right now.

They're actually -- Democrats are actually afraid, I don't know if these people aren't going to bring in terrorists to assassinate one of us or during inauguration somebody else.

BORGER: They're afraid for their own safety. Imagine this, Wolf -- Wolf, sorry. Jake. They're afraid for their own safety, sitting in a congressional chamber, wondering whether the person sitting next to them is going to -- is going to draw a firearm on them. I mean, it was bad enough that you saw some Republicans refusing to wear masks the other day.

TAPPER: There are now three Democrats have tested COVID, have positive for COVID, yeah. BORGER: Have been infected. And so, this just gives you a sense of

the unease in that chamber and also in the Senate chamber, because people privately want to get beyond Donald Trump, but there are so many who are just afraid to stand up and do it.

TAPPER: I mean, talk about a hostile work environment. I can't imagine having to go to work if my colleagues were literally trying to get me infected or literally possibly complicit in trying to get me killed.

BORGER: Unbelievable.

TAPPER: I can't even imagine it. But that's the state of the House of Representatives right now.

Gloria, Abby, thanks to both of you. Appreciate it.

Coming up, no holding back. The Trump administration making a big change to the vaccine rollout. What it means for you and your parents. Stay with us.

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TAPPER: In our health lead, a major change to the COVID vaccine rollout. The Trump administration is now telling states to expand who can get vaccinated to include 65-year-olds and older, and others with pre-existing conditions. The administration is also releasing all available doses instead of keeping half on hold -- as Nick Watt now reports.

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NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): After four weeks of faltering vaccine rollout, a new phase.

ALEX AZAR, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: The next phase has several components. First, we're expanding the groups getting vaccinated.

WATT: Everyone 65 and over can get one, and anyone under 65 with a comorbidity.

Next?

AZAR: We are releasing the entire supply we have.

WATT: No more holding back second doses. Team Biden also planned to release them.

Next up? Where vaccines will now be given.

AZAR: States should move on to pharmacies, community health centers and mass vaccination sites. WATT: Plans already in place for Citi Field in New York, Dodgers

Stadium in L.A. Also, time today for buck passing and Trumpian praise for the federal distribution effort.

AZAR: Which has now successfully delivered to over 14,000 locations essentially without a hitch. State restrictions on eligibility have obstructed speed and accessibility of administration.

WATT: Latest data, more than 27 million distributed, just over 9 million actually administered. The pace must pick up now.

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, DIRECTOR, CENTERS FOR DISEASES CONTROL AND PREVENTION: As we're seeing the post-holiday surge surge.

WATT: Pre-Thanksgiving on average, around 1,000 people were killed by COVID every day in this country. That daily toll has now tripled, never been higher.

The president hasn't uttered a word in public about COVID since December 8th. The domestic terrorists who stormed the capitol are almost certainly spreading this virus and the mobilization of the National Guard to stifle them.

REP. TIM RYAN (D-OH): This is also probably going to take away from some of the vaccine distribution issues in some of these states where the National Guard was involved.

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WATT (on camera): The National Guard is, right now, helping out with vaccines in 12 states from New Hampshire to here in California, and that's something that the Biden administration might look to expand upon. Jake?

TAPPER: All right. Nick, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

We have some breaking news. The first Republican House member says he will back impeachment. More after this quick break.

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TAPPER: Breaking news: we now know the first House Republican who will vote to impeach President Trump tomorrow. Congressman John Katko of New York said in a statement to Syracuse.com, that the president's incitement of the Capitol terrorist attack is quote threat to the future of our democracy, unquote.

No House Republicans joined Democrats in voting to impeach President Trump back in 2019.

This pandemic is creating huge problems when it comes to educating our children. Today in our series on education in the time of COVID, we're looking at the strain virtual learning puts on families, especially on women, who are three times as likely as men to leave their jobs during this pandemic, to help their kids with their education.

So, CNN's Bianna Golodryga now reports.

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MEREDITH DODD, PASTOR, BRYN MAWR UNITED METHODIST CHURCH: Let us rejoice and be glad in it.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): For the congregation of Bryn Mawr United Methodist Church in Seattle, the virtual sermon on Sunday, November 1st, began like most others throughout the pandemic.

MEREDITH DODD: My name is Pastor Meredith Dodd, and I'm happy to join you for worship.

GOLODRYGA: Then the church's pastor of more than two years made this announcement.

MEREDITH DODD: This is my last Sunday serving as pastor of Bryn Mawr. I'm taking family leave from pastoring to spend more time with my kids.

GOLODRYGA: For months, she tried to balance work and remote learning from her three children, each with special needs. Until it just wasn't sustainable.

MEREDITH DODD: For a while then I was trying to be available all day and do all the demands of ministry basically before 8:00 a.m. or after 10:00 p.m. So, it was starting to have a huge demand on my body and my mental health.

GOLODRYGA: She and her husband, Mike, an engineer, spent hours crunching the numbers and doing a lot of soul searching.

MIKE DODD, HUSBAND: It was going to make economic sense, although it was still a struggle to decide, is this really the right thing for everyone? Is this the right thing for the family?

GOLODRYGA: Before ultimately deciding she should step down from the pulpit.

MEREDITH DODD: We just decided that the church could find another pastor in this moment but my kids could not find another mother.

GOLODRYGA: Meredith is not alone. In addition to millions of U.S. women ages 25 to 44, losing their jobs in 2020, they are also three times more likely than men to leave the labor force because of child care demands during the pandemic.

BETSEY STEVENSON, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC POLICY, UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN: They're just disproportionately likely to hold the kind of jobs we need to send people home from. You know, women do a lot of caring jobs, in-person jobs and then we have the fact that all the kids got sent home.

GOLODRYGA: Months without play dates and socializing have also taken a toll on families.

MEREDITH DODD: It's had a huge psychological impact. It's heartbreaking as a parent to say there's nothing I can do to make this better. This is how it is right now.

STEVENSON: There's going to be a lot of adjustment. You know, we have a vaccine, the kids are going back to school, but the kids have been kind of -- had a hard time in this particular situation.

GOLODRYGA: Returning to any form of normalcy for the Dodd families means waiting for both the school to reopen and a vaccine.

MEREDITH DODD: I can't make commitments professionally right now, which is also challenging.

GOLODRYGA: A challenge Meredith says she intends to overcome.

MEREDITH DODD: The call has not gone away. The job has for the moment. I fully anticipate returning. I love preaching. I love teaching.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GOLODRYGA (on camera): Here's a stunning statistic for you, Jake. Of the 140,000 jobs lost in the U.S. in December, all of them were held by women, all of them.

And I just want to read to you a quick note that I received from Pastor Dodd after I interviewed her. Here's what she said: My great grandmother died in the 1918 flu epidemic. The trauma of that loss affected my family for generations but it didn't have to. And ultimately, that is why I quit my job as a pastor. I do miss showing people that God sees them, knows them and loves them.

But for now I'm showing my children that same thing. It will not end the pandemic for them, but it will help them heal when it is finally over.

Jake, just one of the sacrifices millions of parents are making right now.

TAPPER: Bianna Golodryga with the latest installment of education in a time of COVID. Thank you so much for that report.

You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter @JakeTapper. You can tweet the show @TheLeadCNN.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now. I will see you tomorrow for our special coverage of the House impeachment of President Trump.

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