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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Right-Wing Media Hosts Slam 10 Republicans Who Voted to Impeach; Days Before Inauguration, Biden Tries to Shift Focus from Impeachment Trial to COVID Agenda; U.S. Reports 40K COVID Deaths in 2021, CDC Estimates 90K More Deaths in Three Weeks. Aired 4:30-5p ET
Aired January 14, 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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REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): So on January 21st, I will be filing articles of impeachment on Joe Biden. The American people need hope. They need to know that there are Republicans in Congress that are willing to stand up and fight for them.
CROWD: USA!
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Still, much of the fire has been aimed at the ten Republicans who voted with Democrats to impeach Trump. Some are calling for Wyoming's Liz Cheney to be stripped of her leadership role in the party, others want her canceled altogether.
SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: Liz Cheney, I have a message for those ten Republicans. Good luck in your new Democratic Party.
FOREMAN: To be sure, in the recently besieged Capitol, some Republicans met the impeachment charge with cries for a political cease-fire.
REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): Instead, we must unite.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's time to focus on unity.
REP. MADISON CAWTHORN (R-NC): Dividing America will not save this republic.
FOREMAN: But all three of those lawmakers, indeed a majority of Republicans in the House, still voted to reject the results of the election. And others keep blasting away.
REP. LAUREN BOEBERT (R-CO): When I hear the Democrats demanding unity, sadly, they are only unified in hate.
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FOREMAN (on camera): This isn't just a national thing. In swing states across the country, Republicans are pushing for new restrictions on voters to fight the nonexistent fraud. They say so many Trump supporters are afraid of and worried about. And they say to restore faith in democracy, faith that they just keep undermining every day -- Jake.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: It's really unbelievable. Tom Foreman, thanks so much.
Let's bring in our panel.
Ron, these words from MAGA media, they have real consequences as we've seen not just from MAGA media, we should say also from Republican colleagues. Republican Congressman Peter Meijer, freshman from Michigan, he's one of the 10 Republicans who voted for impeachment. He told MSNBC today he feels he needs to purchase bulletproof vests, alter his route to work. He's getting security around him.
I talked to other Republicans on Capitol Hill doing the same thing all because they're afraid of more violence from Trump supporters.
What does that say about where we are and really more where the Republican Party is today?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah, we're in an ominous place. I wrote that the 2020s could be the most difficult decade for America since the 1850s, and largely for the same reason. I think the fear -- it's pretty clear that the fear of demographic eclipse is eroding the commitment to democracy in the Republican Party, both among leaders and among followers.
I mean, you remember that famous quote immediately after the election when some anonymous figure in the White House said to "The Washington Post"," well, humor him a little bit. How much, you know, what -- how much trouble could it be to humor President Trump on claiming he's going to have to leave eventually?
And you see that a large portion of the Republican electorate, three- quarters or more, have been willing to buy this fundamentally racist conspiracy theory that the election was stolen in cities with large African-American populations, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Detroit, even though Trump's vote declined more from '16 to '20 in white -- mostly white or diverse suburban areas.
And so we've heard from law enforcement officials in that intelligence memo that you mentioned, the previous guest member mentioned from the FBI and DHS, that the single most important thing that could defuse the mounting threat on more Republicans coming out and saying it was a lie, the election was not stolen, I was complicit in the lie, and, yet, not only did they not vote to impeach Trump, but they -- I don't know if any -- any single Republican on the House floor say, it was wrong, I lied to you.
TAPPER: Abby, there's been no contrition anywhere that I can see. Not just from Republican officials, but also from MAGA media.
Abby, I've talked to Republicans from Capitol Hill, elected officials, who are afraid for their lives from Trump supporters after the attack on the Capitol. And yet, President Trump's trade adviser, Peter Navarro, is on Fox continuing to lie about the election. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETER NAVARRO, WHITE HOUSE TRADE ADVISER: The Democratic Party did violence to this country by attacking a president who I believe was legally elected on November 3rd.
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TAPPER: That's a lie. That's not true. And there was actual violence at the Capitol where five people were killed, two have subsequently died by suicide because of that lie, Abby.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, it's a scary reality that Peter Navarro, well, until Wednesday, is working at the White House right now. And he is a White House adviser. But it's also, Jake, an indictment of the Republican Party. That dissent, political dissent, telling the truth, is something that will provoke violence.
That's a reality that the Republican Party has not dealt with. We saw that yesterday on the House floor when speaker after speak wanted some way to excuse what we saw last week, excuse the violence, excuse the anger.
They keep calling the violence anger. Almost like a code word for what we actually saw happen last week.
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And so, until they come to terms with that, you're going to see this kind of thing, but I think it's important for everyone to recognize, I do think reasonable people recognize, it's not a normal thing in a democracy when if you disagree with someone or if you speak about something that is truthful, that you receive death threats and you're afraid for your life. That is a sign that something is broken and I don't see any sign yet that the rank -- the vast majority of Republicans are willing to say so.
TAPPER: Congresswoman Diana DeGette of Colorado, she's one of the Democratic impeachment managers. Take a listen to what she told CNN today about the upcoming trial against President Trump in the Senate.
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REP. DIANA DEGETTE (D-CO): Even if the Senate doesn't take the case up until after he's left office, still, number one, they would be convicting him and number two, they could prevent him from ever holding office again. They could prevent him from getting all of the perks of a retired president.
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TAPPER: Ron, are those the real stakes here, given that President Trump is going to be out of office by the time the trial happens?
BROWNSTEIN: Yeah, I think the stakes are bigger than what happens to Trump and whether he runs again in 2024. I mean, to some extent, Biden has been very lukewarm about the idea of holding Trump accountable. You emphasize it, doesn't want it to get in the way of his agenda.
But the trajectory of this white nationalist extremism is very clear under the last four years. President Trump has provided an enormous amount of oxygen to this very dangerous ideology and unless everyone involved, law enforcement, the Justice Department, Congress, is very serious about imposing consequences and taking the threat seriously, this could become a steady drumbeat through the Biden presidency.
I mean, someone said to me this week that unless we get a handle on this, what is it going to look like in four years? Is it going to be Northern Ireland with regular episodes of political violence?
So, seeing this as what happens to Trump, I think, is looking at it through too narrow a lens.
TAPPER: Yeah.
BROWNSTEIN: The question is, can we more broadly send a signal that says we are not going to tolerate and look the other way as this metastasizes?
TAPPER: And yet, Abby, there's attempt to whitewash and change subject. Kevin McCarthy, the White House minority leader on the floor of the House yesterday said that it was not the American way to say that Biden wasn't elected legitimately. He's been saying it for two months. He, himself, has been saying it.
He voted to disenfranchise voters from Arizona and Pennsylvania. He signed on to that crazy Texas lawsuit. And it's not just him. It's most of the House Republican caucus.
PHILLIP: Yeah, Kevin McCarthy should have started yesterday with an apology for his role in pushing this conspiracy theory. One of the big challenges that will face this country as we try to move forward is that until there's a recognition that the lie that undergirds the violence of last week was, in fact, a lie, and is not true, we're never going to get past this. These folks are going to continue to come back. They're going to continue to believe what they believe.
And no President Trump hostage video is going to change that. We all saw what we saw last week. It's because he's been lying to his supporters for two months and he has yet to recognize that.
TAPPER: And his supporters in Congress have been doing things that are undemocratic. Trump made honesty and decency into political issues. Now he's making democracy into a political issue.
Abby Phillip, Ron Brownstein, thanks so much. Appreciate your time and expertise.
BROWNSTEIN: Thank you.
TAPPER: One president on trial as another inherits a public health disaster. How President-elect Biden plans to keep his agenda on track with the Trump cloud still hanging over Washington.
Stay with us.
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TAPPER: In our politics lead, President-elect Joe Biden has made it clear he does not want the impeachment trial of President Trump to derail his first weeks in office.
CNN's Jeff Zeleny covers the president-elect for us.
Jeff, Biden trying to focus on COVID, trying to roll out a big plan. How worried is he that he will not be able to get that done if there's an impeachment trial in the Senate?
JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Jake, there's a significant concern. I mean, an impeachment trial as we've seen is all consuming. It requires all of the senators' time and certainly, it creates divides in the chamber. Well, this is something that's happening when the president-elect, then-president by next week at this time wants to move through his COVID relief package.
And, for the first time tonight, we're going to hear them talk about what specifically he intends to do. Some $2 trillion in programs here. Now, this is something that he's been talking about for months. Help is on the way.
Now he must deliver on that. First and foremost, I'm told, Jake, we're going to hear tonight how he plans to fix the vaccination rollout in this country. So look for some very specifics about that. But all this comes to a head, of course, because it needs money from Congress.
So that is at issue here. Congress needs to approve all this and his nominees at the same time trying a president. Or that point, I guess, a former president come next week.
TAPPER: All right. Jeff, thanks so much.
Huge stadiums now being used as mass vaccination sites. Why that still might not be enough.
Stay with us.
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TAPPER: In our "health lead" today, New York state opened its first drive-thru COVID vaccination center in Long Island. Sites such as this are popping up across the country but not fast enough.
The CDC estimates that some 92,000 Americans could die of COVID in the next three weeks, as CNN's Nick Watt now reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) NICK WATT, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The home of the Houston Texans opens today. Well, a parking lot. It's a mass vaccination site. Roughly 13,000 slots thro Sunday, everyone already filled. Meanwhile, some rural hospitals in Texas say they still haven't received even a single dose of vaccine.
In New Jersey, even the elderly face a long wait, up to eight weeks.
GOV. PHIL MURPHY (D), NEW JERSEY: The biggest reason is we don't have the supplies from the feds that we need or that they had indicated we'd have.
WATT: In Mississippi, only CVS and Walgreens are allowed to give the shots. Long-term care facilities, Walgreens just doesn't have the manpower.
ROY ARMSTRONG, REGIONAL HEALTH CARE DIRECTOR FOR WALGREENS: We had staffing challenges in Mississippi before COVID vaccine was ever available.
WATT: Both vaccines currently available require a double dose. Johnson & Johnson's single dose offering appears safe and effective in early trials.
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They could apply for emergency authorization around the end of the month.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Having a single-dose vaccine will be a game changer.
WATT: Meantime, here's the reality -- by New Year, we were told 20 million shots in arms. Two weeks later, still just over half that.
And since New Year, more than 3 million new confirmed COVID-19 cases across the country and nearly 40,000 more lives lost. We're now averaging well over 3,000 deaths a day.
DR. JONATHAN REINER, PROFESSOR OF MEDICINE, GEORGE WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY: Until we see hospitalizations drop, and until we start to see a sustained drop in daily cases, we're going to see this terrible toll.
WATT: And today in California, there are fewer ICU beds available than ever, about a thousand in a state of 40 million. And here in Los Angeles County, officials believe that one in three Angelinos have already been infected.
The irony: that might actually help to slow the spread because so many people have already had this virus -- Jake.
TAPPER: All right. Nick, stay safe, my friend.
Moments ago, education officials in France announced plans to test 1 million students and teachers every month in an effort to keep schools open in that country. It's one of the biggest issues of this entire pandemic.
And in part three of our series on education in a time of COVID, CNN's Max Foster now examines how other countries are handling this debate.
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MAX FOSTER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): British Prime Minister Boris Johnson made it a national priority to keep schools open during the pandemic.
BORIS JOHNSON, BRITISH PRIME MINISTER: I do want to stress for everybody the efforts that we're making as a government to try to keep primary schools open.
FOSTER: But those efforts weren't enough. Just hours later, he was saying this.
JOHNSON: Primary schools, secondary schools, and colleges across England must move to remote provision from tomorrow.
FOSTER: It was a switch U-turn, in the face of this, a precipitous surge in reported cases since December. The highly contagious new variant of the disease had changed the game.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What is happening to him? And how is he becoming a gentleman?
FOSTER: Johnson's scientific advisers counseled three weeks ago that it was impossible to control the variants without school closures. But he's still sticking to his default position on schools. And he wants them to re-open as soon as possible.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I was in year seven, the first lockdown came, oh my gosh, this is so good. We don't have to go to school. And now, I'm just like, oh, please let me go back to school.
FOSTER: Ella is now learning from home. I visited her school just before the holiday break.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: At home, there are lots and lots of distractions such as phones, et cetera.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Children could still learn if they're from their home but it's not as good as going to school.
FOSTER: Teachers tell me nothing can truly replace face-to-face learning. But they only want to return when it's safe. And they're critical of the government for not acting more decisively.
The education regulator says she's weighing the health benefits of schools closing against the harm that can do to student wellbeing.
AMANDA SPIELMAN, CHIEF INSPECTOR, UK SCHOOLS: There are real problems with motivation. There are real problems for younger children trying to learn through screens. We can see effects across the board. FOSTER: So, if the U.K. lockdown works and virus rates stabilize,
will re-opening schools undo that progress? Well, research in the "Lancet Medical Journal" based on the last lockdown suggests not. It concludes schools don't drive virus rates up, rather, they reflect what's already happening in the community.
SHAMEZ LADHANI, PUBLIC HEALTH ENGLAND, LEAD AUTHOR OF LANCET RESEARCH: When you look at the data, what you do see is there a lag in school- aged children compared to adults. So when adult rates started going up, children's rates started going up. And during the lockdown when adult rates came down, it took a week, but children's rates started going down as well. So there is a very close correlation.
FOSTER: Some form of prioritizing in-person learning has been used around the world.
In Denmark, schools got creative in using any space available, even a church cemetery.
In South Korea, the government has been willing to close schools in response to rising cases but has also tried to maintain normalcy. From temperature checks in May, to sitting high school exams in December.
Masks played a big role in France where, first of all, children over 11 and later everyone over 6 had to wear one. But as winter set in and the new variant took hold, governments had to reassess.
Denmark has kept schools closed for now.
In Italy, high school openings have been delayed again and again, only slowly allowing students back.
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German schools are shut until at least the end of the month.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let's just take a moment --
FOSTER: Europe, a continent that prioritizes face-to-face learning above almost all else in this pandemic, forced to yield at least for now.
Max Foster, CNN, London.
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TAPPER: And our thanks to Max Foster.
We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.
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And next week, join CNN for all-day live coverage of the historic inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. It's all day Wednesday.
Until tomorrow, you can follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @JakeTapper. You can tweet the show @TheLeadCNN.
Our coverage on CNN continues right now.
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