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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Winter Storms Slowing Vaccine Rollout; Andrew Cuomo Under Fire; Dire Situation In Texas; White House Wants Vaccines For Teachers, But Leaves It Up To The States Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired February 17, 2021 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:00]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Can you give us a reality check of how bad the situation is there right now in your immediate area?

MARK HENRY, GALVESTON, COUNTY, TEXAS, JUDGE: It's pretty bad, Jake.

You're right. Monday morning, only 10 percent of my county had power. This afternoon, we're up to 23 percent. But that's 23 percent of people have power. And we have been in this situation for three days, going on four now.

And they keep telling us, maybe tomorrow, maybe tomorrow. I don't think I really believe that at this point.

TAPPER: Parts of Galveston County are also under what's called a boil water order because of issues with the water supply. Explain what that means and how much longer you think people are going to be without clean water and power, if you have any idea.

HENRY: I really don't. The county is not in the water business. That's really up to individual cities or municipal utility districts.

The water had to go offline because of massive leaks as a result of the freezing temperatures. We were down to 10 or 11 degrees, which I know for up North, isn't all that bad, but we're not used to that down here. So it really played havoc with our infrastructure.

We do believe the water will come back online fairly quickly. But we have got to have the power in order to turn the pumps and make everything work with respect to cleaning the water.

TAPPER: I was in Greece one time when they had like their first snowstorm in decades. So, I understand what it's like when someplace that isn't used to snow experiences it.

But the forecast was pretty clear that an impending winter storm was coming. So, why do you think it is that people are still without power three days in? Is this the fault of the power companies. Is it the fault of the governor? Who do you blame?

HENRY: You're absolutely correct.

Everyone knew this was coming. We had at least a week's advance notice. One of the aggravating parts that I have had to deal with, we were told Sunday to message out that rolling power outages would occur. OK, we can live with that. Your power is off for an hour, it's back on for three.

That's not at all what happened in Galveston County. The power went off and it stayed off. We do not know what the total fatality count is going to be. But, as of right now, we're aware of about 20 fatalities since Sunday night. So, I'm very upset.

I expect an investigation to occur as to what happened to cause these people to perish, when we were told one thing and delivered something completely different.

TAPPER: And I also heard that I think it was San Antonio had over the last decade weatherproofed their equipment. So, it's not as bad there. Is that right?

HENRY: I don't know anything about San Antonio. But weatherproofing doesn't really help if you have no power.

TAPPER: Right.

HENRY: So, when you have a home that's got no power or heat for three days, there's nothing you can do insulation-wise to keep that temperature at a livable, safe temperature.

TAPPER: Yes, no, I meant to protect the power.

So, Texas Governor Abbott, he's called for the leaders of ERCOT, which runs the state's power grid, to resign. He is also at the same time politicizing this situation with comments such as this. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America. If the Biden administration is going to try to eradicate fossil fuels in the United States, every state is going to constantly have challenges like what America has seen take place in Texas right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: We should note, Texas gets nearly 70 percent of its electricity from coal and natural gas.

What did you make of his attack on the Green New Deal in the middle of this crisis?

HENRY: That's above my pay grade, as we said in the Air Force.

I'm concerned about getting power on in the homes in Galveston County. And I'm for whatever power source does that. Unfortunately, the wind and solar assets went offline before this started. So, it doesn't appear, from where I sit, that that's a terribly reliable answer to our energy issues.

TAPPER: Galveston County, Texas, Judge Mark Henry, thank you. Stay in touch with us.

We want to continue to shine a light on the suffering of the people of Texas, who deserved so much better.

HENRY: Thank you, Jake.

TAPPER: Coming up next: the New York governor reportedly pleading with and in some cases even threatening members of his own Democratic Party.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:38:23]

TAPPER: Here is some breaking news for you in our politics lead.

Compounding the scandal surrounding the revelations that New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo's administration concealed the full extent of nursing home-related deaths during the COVID pandemic, a New York Democratic assemblyman now tells CNN that Governor Cuomo threatened to -- quote -- "destroy him" if the assemblyman did not show his support for Governor Cuomo.

Democratic Assemblyman Ron Kim told CNN's M.J. Lee that a loud and angry Governor Cuomo called him directly last week and threatened his career, saying he did not yet know Cuomo's wrath. There are growing calls for investigations of Cuomo's office and for the governor to be stripped of some expanded powers he's had since the pandemic started.

CNN's M.J. Lee joins us now live.

M.J., you spoke with Assemblyman Kim. What did he have to tell you about this call from the governor?

M.J. LEE, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jake, remember a top aide to Governor Cuomo, Melissa DeRosa, told state lawmakers in a private virtual meeting that the state had delayed sharing with the legislature the full scope of COVID-related deaths of New York nursing home residents because of concerns about a potential federal investigation.

Now, one person who was on that call was New York Democratic Assemblyman Ron Kim, who represents Queens. What he has now told CNN is that last week, after the "Post" story first broke, Governor Cuomo called him wanting him to put out a new statement.

Kim told CNN -- quote -- "Governor Cuomo called on me directly on Thursday -- called me directly on Thursday to threaten my career if I did not cover up for Melissa DeRosa and what she said He tried to pressure me to issue a statement. And it was a very traumatizing experience."

[16:40:00] Now he went on to say that Cuomo said: "'We are in this business together and we don't cross certain lines.' And he said I hadn't seen his wrath and that he can destroy me."

Now, CNN also spoke with Kim's wife, who said she overheard parts of the phone call and heard Cuomo saying things like, who do you think you are, and that her husband told her immediately afterwards that Cuomo had threatened to destroy his life.

I also want to point out we have also spoken with other New York legislators who wouldn't go on the record like Kim, who said they were also aware of Cuomo making threats of political retaliation to others who did not stand by him.

TAPPER: So, walk us through Governor Cuomo's office's response to these really shocking claims from the assemblyman.

LEE: Yes, so, CNN first reached out to comas office for comment yesterday.

And initially, in their written statement, they didn't directly respond to or deny Kim's allegation of the threats. They also didn't deny the allegations of threats from the other legislators, but instead accused those legislators of making threats of their own.

But then they sent another statement from a senior adviser earlier today which said Kim's assertion that the governor said he would destroy him is false. This adviser said that Kim agreed to put out a new statement, something that Kim denied, and that Cuomo's words to Kim were to the effect of -- quote -- "I am from Queens too, and people still expect honor and integrity in politics."

Now, we also saw Cuomo hold a press conference call today. And during that presser, he talked about Kim, saying that they have had a long and hostile relationship and that Kim has political animus dating back years.

Kim has been one of the most outspoken critics of the nursing home scandal. His uncle is presumed to have died from COVID in a nursing home. And he has called on Cuomo to be stripped of some of the expanded executive powers that he has had since the pandemic started -- Jake.

TAPPER: Right. And this all dates back to the March 2020 order of Governor Cuomo's administration telling nursing homes that they had to take in people even if they had COVID. They released it -- they reversed that order in May 2020.

M.J. Lee, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

In the health lead: what may be an added benefit of the COVID vaccine. Not only can it prevent a person from feeling symptoms, but now Dr. Anthony Fauci says new studies show that the vaccine might also slow the spread of the virus.

More urgently, vaccine supply is, of course, the problem. More state leaders now say severe weather is slowing down their expected deliveries of vaccine, as Alexandra Field now reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF ZIENTS, WHITE HOUSE COVID-19 RESPONSE COORDINATOR: The weather is having an impact.

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The awful winter storm crippling much of the nation is also threatening the progress of vaccinations.

ZIENTS: It's having an impact on distribution and deliveries.

FIELD: Mass vaccination sites shutting down in some states.

ZIENTS: What we're encouraging governors and other partners to do is to extend hours once they're able to reopen.

FIELD: The deadly storm also delaying shipments of vaccines across the country, from Florida, where 200,000 Moderna doses haven't arrived, to New York.

BILL DE BLASIO (D), MAYOR OF NEW YORK CITY: We're going to have to hold back appointments that New Yorkers need because the vaccine isn't arriving.

FIELD: Bad weather not the only slow down.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: By the end of July, we will have over 600 million doses, enough to vaccinate every single American.

FIELD: By July, a change from previous estimates, which had enough doses for everyone by April or May.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: We were hoping that it would be by the end of April. But what has happened is that the doses that we were expecting earlier from the J&J likely will not be available for another couple of months after that.

FIELD: Health officials say early shipments of a single-dose vaccine from Johnson & Johnson expected to receive FDA authorization soon will be smaller initially than anticipated.

Even so, vaccination numbers are climbing, with an average of more than 1.7 million doses daily, way up from just four weeks ago.

Dr. Fauci today pointing to studies showing vaccinations may also reduce the spread of the virus. His message?

FAUCI: When your turn to get vaccinated comes up, get vaccinated. It will have a very important impact on the dynamics of the outbreak in our country.

FIELD: More good news, hospitalizations dropping by half from a month ago, deaths still strikingly high, falling by about a third in just two weeks, and new COVID cases are plummeting, down precipitously from the peak in early January, but still averaging more than 80,000 new cases daily.

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: And we continue to have more cases than we did even during last month's -- last summer's peak.

FIELD: And two new reports from the CDC warn new variants could also lead to a rapid rise in those numbers.

WALENSKY: And the continued spread of variants that are more transmissible could jeopardize the progress we have made in the last month if our -- if we let our guard down.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[16:45:00]

FIELD: And, Jake, given that concern about the new variants, a group of the president's former coronavirus advisers have drafted a memo urging more widespread use off N95 masks, or even a mandate to that effect.

But that memo comes just days after the CDC updated its guidance, recommending double masking instead. They continue not recommend N95 to the general public, instead reserving those for the medical community. They said that's because of a shortage in supply. They also cite other factors like cost, comfort and practicality -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Alexandra Field, thank you so much.

President Biden says teachers should move up in the vaccination line. Should more states be doing that to kids get back into classrooms? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our health lead today, the White House says teacher vaccinations are not a requirement in order to reopen schools. The president and the Biden administration have insisted teachers should be vaccinated as frontline workers, but they are not committing to making it mandatory.

[16:50:05]

They say that will be up to the states.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The states make the decisions on who is in what order. I can make recommendations, but I can't tell the state you must move such and such a group of people up.

SYMONE SANDERS, SENIOR ADVISER AND CHIEF SPOKESWOMAN FOR VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: The president and vice president believe that teachers should be prioritized for vaccinations. And in 22 states, at least, and the District of Columbia, that's exactly what is happening.

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The president and vice president both believe that teachers should be prioritized. And as you all know, that is up to states to determine.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Joining me live, Dr. Dimitri Christakis, the director of the Center for Child Health Behavior and Development at Seattle Research Institute.

Thanks so much for joining us, Doctor.

So, President Biden said last night that he wants a majority of K-8 students back in schools five days a week within his first 100 days. Does his administration need to vaccinate teachers in order to make that happen?

DR. DIMITRI CHRISTAKIS, SEATTLE CHILDREN'S RESEARCH INSTITUTE: I don't think that we need to vaccinate teachers because we've already shown that schools can reopen even in the red zones by the CDC's criteria, whether it's New York or rural Wisconsin, without there being significant risk of spread in schools.

But having said that, I would say that for the peace of mind it will afford teachers, yes, they should be vaccinated. Look, by my estimate, we have 4 million teachers in the United States. We're delivering about 1.7 million vaccines a day. What does that means? That means in two days if all us stepped aside, every teacher could have their first vaccine within the next two days, and within a month, they could all be vaccinated.

If that would help them get back in a month, I'm fully supportive of it. But that pre-supposes that the teachers will get the vaccine and we don't know the vaccine hesitancy amongst teachers and that getting a vaccine will be -- provide them the necessary assurance that they would go back.

TAPPER: Yeah, and you're talking about peace of mind, not necessarily that they have to do it in order for it to be safe. I want you to take a listen, take a look at this new data, because CNN did an analysis of state level data. COVID-19 case rates among children, they say consistent with the overall case rate in a state and they are more consistent with that than they are with whether or not schools are open to in-person learning.

So this means according to this analysis of the data, there does not seem to be a correlation between schools opening in-person learning as they are in Florida for example and what the pediatric infection rate is for kids under 14. Again, this science would seem to suggest that with the proper precautions, masking, improved circulation, distancing, cleansing, et cetera, the schools should be open.

CHRISTAKIS: Jake, I agree. And I think rather than doing sort of these theoretical modeling experiments with arbitrary cut points, as we've been doing, we should let science guide our decision-making and, in fact, learn from situation where schools have opened safely.

And as you rightly point out, many districts have done just that, they have shown that kids can go back with mitigation strategies in place, the most important of which by the way being mask wearing. And I'll state with some humility that year ago when I was advocating getting kids back to school, I was somewhat circumspect about whether young children could successfully wear masks in the United States. They were doing it in Asia, I wasn't sure doing they could do it here. But they are doing it. They can do it.

Masks just need to be part of the new dress code for schools, the same way other dress codes are enforced. And we can do it. We can get kids back.

And rather than having a passive strategy of waiting and hoping for community levels to fall, we really need an active roadmap for how to get children back, how to get as many kids back as soon as possible, starting with primary school kids and kids with special needs for whom distance learning is just not working, even in a hybrid way.

TAPPER: And there's just -- as you and I have discussed before and I'm sure we'll discuss again, the effects on children of remote education, it's more difficult to educate them, the psychological issues, the emotional issues.

CHRISTAKIS: Right.

TAPPER: The kids in single parent families or in families where there isn't a parent there, who are just slipping through the cracks, this is a serious health issue as well in addition to COVID.

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, thank you so much. We'll continue to have you back to talk about this.

CHRISTAKIS: Thanks, Jake.

TAPPER: The Republican Party eating its own, fighting between Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell. Coming up, a key Republican governor weighs in.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:59:30]

TAPPER: Before we go today, we want to remember one of the almost 490,000 lives that have been lost in the U.S. to coronavirus. Today, we're going to talk about 49-year-old Ty Scroggins. He was a legendary high school football coach in Louisville, Kentucky, most recently at DeSales High School.

The head football coach there says Scroggins had a tremendous, tremendous influence on his players. And the Louisville mayor sharing in a tweet with Scroggins, quote, help countless young people as a coach, teacher and mentor.

What a tragedy to his three children, his family, his friends, and the players for whom he coached. Our condolences. May his memory be a blessing. 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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