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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Rudy Giuliani No Longer Trump's Lawyer; COVID Numbers Dropping; Top Democratic Congressman Files Lawsuit Against Trump, Giuliani; Biden Set to Hold Town Hall in Wisconsin. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired February 16, 2021 - 16:00   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: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

In the next hour, President Joe Biden will leave the White House to go to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he will face questions from anxious Americans in a CNN town hall. Many Americans are eagerly, desperately waiting for a stimulus check, for a coronavirus vaccine.

Students and their parents and caregivers want to know, when will the schools open? And President Biden, well, he's now the one responsible for delivering all three.

This afternoon, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki announced that the weekly supply of vaccine doses is increasing from -- to 13.5 million, up from 11 million last week. But a bipartisan group of governors is now saying that the Biden administration needs to do better when it comes to getting that supply into American arms, the nine governors pleading in a letter to the president for better coordination and better communication.

Plus, Dr. Anthony Fauci today on CNN see said it will take until May or June before vaccines are widely available to the general public, May or June. That's later than his previous prediction of April, this in part because the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is way behind when it comes to production.

Vaccinations are desperately needed to get the economy and life as we once knew it back on track.

And as CNN's Phil Mattingly reports, tonight, President Biden will attempt to reassure the public that he and his administration are up to this daunting challenge.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Tonight, President Joe Biden center stage, answering voter questions for the first time since taking office, and focused on one thing.

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president is going to continue working on getting the American Rescue Plan passed. That is his top priority. MATTINGLY: His $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package to address the dueling public health and economic crises. But even with coronavirus cases, hospitalizations and deaths down across the nation, top administration officials still urging caution and warning of their greatest fear, the influx of deadly new variants.

ANDY SLAVITT, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE ADVISER FOR COVID RESPONSE: I don't think we're anywhere close to out of the woods.

MATTINGLY: But with vaccine supplies still woefully short of demand and mounting frustration from governors, a bipartisan group even sending a letter to Biden expressing concern about the vaccine rollout, the pressure is mounting on the White House.

And, today, the press secretary was quick to point the finger at the Trump administration.

PSAKI: Certainly, the president of the United States owns the response to the COVID pandemic. However, it's important for the American people to know what we inherited when the president came into office, and what he inherited was not enough supply, not enough vaccinators, not enough places for vaccinations to happen.

MATTINGLY: So, tonight, White House officials say Biden will use the CNN town hall in Wisconsin to press the urgency of the moment for that $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan.

PSAKI: This is an opportunity, as you noted to go out and have a conversation with the people of Wisconsin, people who agree with him, people who disagree with him.

MATTINGLY: Biden moved Tuesday to extend to June foreclosure protections for millions of homeowners. But the legislative clock is ticking, with key unemployment benefits set to expire on March 14, and key state officials warning extensions must be in place weeks beforehand to avoid any lapse.

PSAKI: It remains critical that Congress passed the American Rescue Plan.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MATTINGLY: Democrats are listening to the president when it comes to urgency.

House Democrats plan to pass their version of the plan as soon as next week, the Senate to follow shortly thereafter. The House will probably have to vote once again, trying to get the bill to his desk before that March 14 benefit cutoff deadline.

One thing you're not hearing a lot about, Republican support. White House officials and congressional Democrats both acknowledge right now any Republican jumping on board is unlikely. That is why you will likely hear the president talk not about GOP support on Capitol Hill, but broad support across the country tonight. That is the focus of tonight, of later this week, when he goes to

Michigan, trying to raise support throughout the country, not just here in Washington -- Jake.

TAPPER: Yes, that's generally not what people mean when they say bipartisan support. They usually refer to Capitol Hill. But that's how the Biden folks are spinning it.

Phil Mattingly, thanks so much.

CNN's Sara Murray has been covering the distribution of vaccine doses across the U.S.

And, Sara, this afternoon, the White House said that the weekly vaccine supply is increasing. But states, governors are out there saying they need more help to get that supply into the arms of the American people. What are you learning about all this?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's right, Jake.

Look, every governor is excited when they hear they're going to get more vaccine doses in the coming week than they did last week. But they're also complaining to the Biden administration that this is becoming a convoluted process.

Initially, the plan was, send these vaccines to states, get them into people's arms. That didn't work as efficiently as people hoped. So, the federal government layered on new processes to put these in long- term facilities, to send these directly to pharmacies.

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And governors and state health officials are saying, look, this is getting complicated. It's hard for us to keep track of exactly where vaccine doses are going and to make sure that those are getting out efficiently.

Certainly, states don't want to send vaccines to the same pharmacies the federal government is sending them. And they're saying there are blind spot -- blind spots in the communication, as well as in the data tracking, and they're trying to iron this all out.

Now, everyone I have talked to still says this is better from where they were under the Trump administration. But the big issue is, there's still not enough vaccine to go around. And that is not expected to change anytime soon. It's still going to be weeks.

As we heard from Dr. Anthony Fauci this morning, he's saying May or even into early June before the general population can get vaccinated. This is a point of frustration. It's frustrating for Americans, and it's frustrating for governors, who hear from their constituents, who say, hey, we heard the vaccines are coming, but I can't make an appointment to get one.

TAPPER: Yes, it's frustrating for a lot of people.

Sara Murray, thank you so much.

Let's bring in CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

And, Sanjay, Dr. Fauci today said it's going to take longer than he previously expected for vaccines to be widely available. And even if we have enough vaccines by the spring, he says it's going to take a while to get those shots into arms.

Take a listen to Fauci on CNN earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: You hear about how long it's going to take to get the overwhelming proportion of the population vaccinated.

I don't think anybody disagrees that that's going to be well to the end of the summer, and we get in the early fall.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: What's the problem? I mean, that is a lot longer, a lot farther away than we were told.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. And Dr. Fauci himself said open season would sort of be in April.

Part of it, I think, is what you had mentioned at the top of the show, Jake Johnson & Johnson, we don't know if this vaccine will be authorized. It looks promising. But how many doses would be available right away? We're hearing it may be a smaller amount than originally thought, closer to 10 million doses.

We know that they promised 100 million doses by the end of June. So, it will be roughly 30 million doses a month after that. It's probably just going to -- I think the end of summer, midsummer has always sort of been what the math showed; 13.5 five million a week now, that's roughly 55 million doses a month of the Moderna or Pfizer vaccine.

But by the end of July, there will be 600 million doses. So there's clearly going to be a ramp-up at some point in there as well, Jake.

One thing I want to point out, case numbers in hospitalizations and deaths all coming down, that's not because of the vaccinations as of yet. So, what is it? In part, it's coming off the surge of the holidays. But, also, when we look at the number on the screen, Jake, 27 million people confirmed to have been infected, it's probably three times that.

And a lot of those people have some degree of immunity. So, the question is, when are we going to get to sort of more widespread population immunity? It's not just the vaccines. It's those naturally infected people as well.

TAPPER: Almost 75 percent of the lower 48 states are covered in snow right now. That's a record. We're already seeing shipments delayed. Tell us more about the potential problems in vaccine distribution.

GUPTA: Yes, I mean, this is one of the big concerns when you're dealing with super cold storage-dependent vaccines, like the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

The Pfizer one, as you know, needs the super cold storage, I think negative 75 degrees. Don't have power, that's obviously going to be a problem.

Two sort of maybe non-intuitive issues arise. One is that, oftentimes, you don't want to ship to a location that you know doesn't have power or is at risk of losing power. Number two is, if you have vaccine, and you have lost power, all of a sudden, it becomes a mad scramble to try and get those doses out.

That's been happening in Texas, where they basically say, OK, we got 1,000 doses, they will expire, given our power issues here. So let's just distribute as quickly as possible, not in a very sort of strategic fashion. It's basically, can you walk here, because you can't even drive to some of these locations, given the weather, and get the vaccine? So that's what's happening in some places now, Jake.

TAPPER: Sanjay, let's talk about schools.

One of the major ways to make classrooms safe is to improve ventilation. How can schools do that?

GUPTA: Well, I mean, it can be as cheap as, you know, opening windows to as expensive as completely retooling your HVAC systems, your heating, ventilation, air conditioning systems.

What's interesting, Jake -- and I have talked to lots of school administrators over the past several months about this particular issue. How do you objectively know that you have enough ventilation is the big question.

One of the things you have heard about, I'm sure, Jake, are these CO2 monitors. I have one here. It's about 120 bucks. But, basically, what you're doing is, you're trying to measure how much exhaled breath there is in a room. That's what CO2 is.

And as a rough measure, if you have several people in a room, and your CO2 levels are above 1,000, that basically means that 2 percent of the air is exhaled air. Every 50 breaths, you're likely to breathe in someone else's air.

I know that's a lot of information. But, basically, that's how they arrive at these sorts of ventilation questions. Is it enough ventilation? How many people is the right number of people? How many -- how long should the classes last?

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Do you need to have a flush period in between classes, sort of let CO2 sort of dissipate? All these things. But there's all sorts of different strategies to improve ventilation. TAPPER: Sanjay, the CDC has just raised the bar, making it more difficult to open schools; 89 percent of kids, according to a CNN analysis, live in what the CDC is calling a red zone, where the levels of community spread are high enough that they say many schools don't have to reopen, can opt out.

One expert says there's two big problems with this. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOSEPH ALLEN, HARVARD T.H. CHAN SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: The community spread metrics are not good predictors of what's happening in the school.

You can have a school open safely, even if community spread is high, if you have good infection control measures in place. The problem also in the CDC guidance is that it's too strict, in the sense that, to get to the blue level, which is the safe level, the safest level, it's one case per 100,000 per day.

We may not have that ever.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Do you agree?

GUPTA: Yes.

I have talked to Joseph Allen about this in the past. And there's two things I will point out. Everyone's been citing this Wisconsin study, Jake, you will remember. It was 17 rural schools. And they kept open during the fall of last year. They had lower transmission than the community, 37 percent lower.

What we also found, as you dig into the numbers in that study, is that, in fact, the community where those schools were located, would have been considered in the red zone. They had significant community spread. And despite that, the school was able to open and have much lower viral spread than the community. So, that's just data.

And that is data that was on the CDC's Web site. So, I agree with Joseph Allen for that.

And then, if you take a look at this graph, I mean, one case per 100,000, that is a -- that is basically what's known as containment mode. That's the blue line. That's a really low number. And we have a widely circulated coronavirus. If we wait that long before we think about opening schools, I think -- again, I think Dr. Allen's right. We may never really get to that point.

TAPPER: Well, and that's issue. The Biden administration is -- they're moving the goalposts to making it so that it doesn't look like schools will be OK to open until everybody's vaccinated.

The science shows, schools are not a primary driver of spread. The CDC director admitted that science was not the only factor behind these recommendations. Take a listen to her.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: We have also engaged with many education and public health partners to hear firsthand from parents and teachers directly about their experiences and concerns.

These sessions were so informative, and direct changes to the guidance were made as a result of them.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

TAPPER: Sanjay, I get why the White House would want to factor in feedback from stakeholders like teachers and teachers unions. But isn't the CDC just supposed to focus on the science? This sounds like it's being politicized.

GUPTA: Yes, I mean, I -- it's unfortunate, Jake. I mean, you're right.

I mean, if you got to have your specific science-based guidance, that has to be what's driving it. You understand why they want to talk to these other groups, because, obviously, everyone is affected by these decisions.

And part of that, ultimately, is going to be, what is your tolerance of risk? I mean, it's not like math, like you can absolutely say two plus two equals four here, there's an absolute right answer. It's going to be what the tolerance of risk is.

I would have been even more concerned, Jake, if Dr. Walensky had come out and said, OK, we are now going to say that all teachers need to be vaccinated before we open schools, because that was something that was being discussed as well. She didn't say that. She said that that's another strategy.

But you get the idea of -- I mean, it's complicated, Jake. I have been writing about this for a year.

TAPPER: Yes.

GUPTA: And it remains difficult to sort of sort out.

TAPPER: I get it. It just seems like they're changing the standards right in front of us.

And it's always in the direction of not opening the schools.

Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much. Appreciate it, as always.

You don't want to miss President Joe Biden with Anderson Cooper live from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in an exclusive presidential town hall tonight. It starts at 9:00 p.m. Eastern only on CNN.

We have some breaking news out of former President Trump's office, a familiar face on his legal team not there anymore. We will tell you who.

As for the other attorneys, they might want to grab a history book. Up next, the law enacted when Ulysses S. Grant was president that's now being used to take Donald Trump to court.

Stay with us.

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TAPPER: We have some breaking news for you. Rudy Giuliani is no longer acting as a lawyer for President Trump, according to a spokesman for the former president. This announcement comes just hours after a new lawsuit was filed against both Trump and Giuliani, this one from the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee over the deadly Capitol insurrection, Congressman Bennie Thompson accusing Trump and Giuliani of conspiring with the far right racist groups Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to incite the January 6 attack.

CNN's Jessica Schneider joins us now live.

Jessica, what do we know about Giuliani's departure and about this lawsuit that he and the president are now -- former president are now facing?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Jake, the statement was a fairly short and curt statement from Trump's team, saying that Rudy Giuliani is not representing Trump in any current legal matters.

It's unclear at this point if the announcement is at all connected to the lawsuit that was filed by Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson today, but, in this complaint, Thompson is laying out this alleged conspiracy against Trump and Giuliani.

In the lawsuit, it traces Trump's words and actions in the months leading up to the insurrection. And it details how Trump and Giuliani really, in the terms of this lawsuit, spouted misinformation, angry rhetoric for weeks before the election, as well as after, and then linking all of that rhetoric to the attacks from the hundreds of people that included members of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.

Now, this lawsuit, Jake is definitely an uphill battle, because Congressman Thompson is suing under a statute that was intended to combat the violence of the KKK in the late 1880s.

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But, crucially, if this case moves forward, it could subject the president and others, potentially Giuliani as well, to depositions, disclosure of other information that could potentially expose more details on what exactly Trump knew about this attack.

Now, as for the reaction to this, we have not yet heard from Rudy Giuliani. But Trump's team, of course, is pushing back, his spokesperson Jason Miller telling us the former president did not incite or conspire to incite any of the violence.

But, Jake, this lawsuit could only grow. I'm told that additional members of Congress are planning on signing on to this in the days to come as plaintiffs -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Jessica Schneider, thanks so much.

Let's discuss.

Gloria Borger, let me ask you.

I wouldn't be surprised if there was coordination among some of the more unsavory folks in the Trump orbit, with the Proud Boys or the Oath Keepers, whatever. But we don't know anything for a fact. That's for law enforcement to investigate. Is there anything to this lawsuit?

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I think one of the reasons they're doing this lawsuit is to expose these hate groups, put them front and center, keep talking about them, and then expose the funding for the hate groups, the people who keep them going.

And I think you can do that perhaps through discovery here. And I think that's one of the reasons that the NAACP is so involved in this. It may be in a way less about Donald Trump himself, although they obviously want to look at any kind of coordination that may have existed.

And I think you're right. Police ought to do that. But they really want to talk about the funding of these hate groups and make Americans aware of just who they are and how they behave.

TAPPER: Meanwhile, Ron, Republican lawmakers, not all of them, but some of them are trying to find new ways to rewrite the history of the attack on the Capitol that we all saw with our own eyes.

This is a group of Republicans led by Congressman Jim Jordan sending a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, somehow suggesting that she's partly to blame for the insurrection.

They write -- quote -- "Five weeks have passed since the January 6 attack on the Capitol Building, and many important questions about your responsibility for the security of the Capitol remain unanswered" -- unquote.

Now, obviously, there's legitimate questions that need to be answered about all of this stuff. But, A, they didn't write a letter like that to Mitch McConnell, who was just as responsible as Nancy Pelosi was for security in the Capitol. And, B, are they really trying to blame Nancy Pelosi for her own potential assassination? I mean, they were trying to kill her.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, right.

I mean, they -- look, I mean, people who spent months feeding the misinformation, actively participating in what you have called the big lie that the election was stolen, which was so critical to providing the fuel here for this attack, and then turning around and saying, well, whoa, you didn't you didn't do enough to protect the institution from the riot that we help to incite all the way through with our rhetoric.

Look, if they genuinely believe there are questions here to answer, and it may well be, let's see if they support the call from Pelosi and now Schumer for a full-scale 9/11 Commission that would examine -- a 9/11-type commission that would examine the riot.

I mean, like the lawsuit we -- that you were just discussing, there just needs to be more understanding of what happened, how we got to that point, what Trump did that day. And it may be that the legal system is not fully capable of doing that. And if they believe there are questions about Pelosi and everyone else, let's have a commission.

TAPPER: And, Gloria, now we have Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. He says that the attack wasn't even an armed insurrection. Take a listen.

BROWNSTEIN: Yes.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): This didn't seem isn't like an armed insurrection to me. I mean, armed -- when you think here of armed, don't think of firearms?

Here's the questions I would have liked to ask. How many firearms were confiscated? How many shots were fired? I'm only aware of one. And I will defend that law enforcement officer for taking that shot. It was a tragedy. OK?

But I think there was only one.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

TAPPER: Just absolutely insane.

BORGER: Insane.

TAPPER: I mean, we all saw the violence.

And we should just also note, Senator Johnson, who had words with Senator Mitt Romney on the floor, he accused Mitt Romney of incitement, because he voted for witnesses. For that, for voting for witnesses, he said that's incitement.

BORGER: Look, it's crazy. He's lashing out. I mean, has he not heard about the truck full of explosives? Are explosives firearms?

Did people die? What is he -- what is he talking about? What would have happened if those insurrectionists had gotten into the chambers? I mean, it's absolutely absurd.

I don't know what he's trying to defend here or who he's trying to defend. But the more he talks, the more inane it is, and he ought to stop it.

TAPPER: And then, Ron, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey, he's the latest Republican lawmaker to face a threat of censure from his home commonwealth party, after he voted to convict President Trump.

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But listen to this. This is the chairman of one of Pennsylvania's local GOP affiliations -- affiliates. This is what he had to say about possible censure and Senator Toomey.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVE BALL, CHAIR, WASHINGTON COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA, REPUBLICAN PARTY: We did not send him there to vote his conscience. We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing.

We sent him there to represent us.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: I mean, is this -- this is now the Republican Party's anthem? We did not send him there to vote his conscience? We did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever?

BROWNSTEIN: Right.

This is the bookend to what we're talking about with Ron Johnson. And I think they both point us in the same direction. As I wrote this week, Ron Johnson's comments are very revealing, because they show -- they're a way -- they're a tangible measure of the extent to which the extremist caucus, the extremist wing in the Republican Party is becoming too big for the party to stand up to.

I mean, if you look at the polling, it's not that millions or thousands of tens of thousands of Republicans are willing to commit violence themselves. But the poll shows that there is a growing sympathy in the party for those who do, kind of an understanding of those who do, and a growing receptivity to the conspiracy theories that feed all of this.

That polling from the American Enterprise Institute last week, a conservative think tank, that 55 percent of Republicans say the American way of life, the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast, we may have to use force to save it. Half said Antifa, not Trump supporters, executed the attack. Almost a third said they believe in the QAnon conspiracy.

And I think you see kind of the tectonic pull of all of this in the kind of comments from Ron Johnson, and then, the flip side, all of these Republicans who stood up being castigated by local parties.

Don't forget, though, Jake, even though three-quarters of Republicans are still defending Trump, roughly 20 to 25 percent of the party (AUDIO GAP) polls say what he did was wrong after November 6, especially after the November election, and especially after January 6...

TAPPER: Yes.

BROWNSTEIN: ... and what the party did was wrong.

And all of these state and local parties are sending a very clear message to them. Do they still belong in this coalition?

TAPPER: It's just so dispiriting.

Ron Brownstein, Gloria Borger, thanks to both of you.

Coming up next: As Dr. Fauci changes his vaccine availability prediction, there's something else causing vaccine delays across the country.

Stay with us.

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