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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Senate Opens Debate on COVID Bill, After VP Harris Breaks Tie; Some Businesses Confused and Worried as Texas Lifts Mask Order; Sources: Diplomatic Official Loses Role Over Racist and Offensive Comments About Biden, Harris. Aired on 4:30-5p ET

Aired March 04, 2021 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:05]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: But as CNN's Jeff Zeleny reports, President Biden's focus is already turning to the next priority for him, infrastructure.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: In the Oval Office today, President Biden looking ahead to the next big item on his agenda, rebuilding the nation's ailing infrastructure.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's -- not only creates jobs, but it makes us a hell a lot more competitive around the world if we have the best infrastructure in the world.

ZELENY: But first, the White House is making one final push to pass the COVID relief bill in the Senate over the objections of Republicans. Vice President Kamala Harris presided over the Senate this afternoon and casted a tie-breaking vote to open the debate.

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Senate being equally divided, the vice president votes in the affirmative.

ZELENY: The $1.9 trillion package now has more limits on stimulus checks, meaning some Americans who received payments under President Trump will not from the Biden administration. The bill spent 628 legislative pages and is now being read aloud in full.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The American Rescue Act of 2021, section two. Table of contents.

ZELENY: A stall tactic demanded by Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson.

SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): All I'm trying to do is make this a more deliberative process, you know, obviously shining the light on this abusive and obscene amount of money that's going to put -- mortgage our children's future.

ZELENY: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called it obstruction that could take up to ten hours, followed by what is expected to be a long debate.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): We all know this will merely delay the inevitable. It will accomplish little more than a few sore throats for the clerks.

ZELENY: The White House has abandoned any hope of winning bipartisan support for the American Rescue Plan, but the president said he has no doubt it has the strong backing of the country.

BIDEN: Each piece isn't just defensible, it is urgent and overwhelmingly supported by the people. It's good policy and it's good politics.

ZELENY: The outcome of the Senate debate and what happens when it goes back to the House for a final vote is the biggest test yet for Democratic unity in the Biden era.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZELENY (on camera): And, Jake, on the Senate floor right now, they're about an hour into reading that 628-page legislative bill. But interestingly, perhaps not surprisingly, only a small handful of the senators were actually listening to this going on. Of course, they have the opportunity to read this at their own leisure, but they are reading all of this right now. It could last into the night. The votes come after that -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Jeff Zeleny, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Let's discuss with our panel.

Mary Katharine and Bakari, welcome.

Mary Katharine, let me start with you. Here's who is going to get stimulus checks in this bill now -- individuals who make less than $80,000, or families making less than $150,000. That's according to an estimate from the Penn Wharton budget model. Seven million families will not get a check because they no longer qualify. They would have, but now they won't.

What do you make of that, Mary Katharine? Lawmakers risk alienating 7 million families here.

MARY KATHARINE HAM, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, I think to some degree, yes. I think what you saw in the fight in Georgia, that it's a very easy argument to make that, hey, I'm bringing you $2,000 checks and this guy's not going to bring you $2,000 checks. So, there will be blame attempted to be placed over this.

However, I do think it's a responsible argument that aid should be targeted. When you're talking about $1.9 trillion, it's not crazy to say, hey, let's make sure that this goes to the people who are most in need. And to make decisions about where we put resources, that actually in a little bit of pulling in battleground districts like Alison Spanberger in Virginia that's very swingy has shown to be a decent message, because you've got 65 percent of so saying, hey -- they agree that it should be targeted versus this wide, wide, wide, wide, going so big.

Now, the broad thing is pretty popular and will probably go through, but that's an argument to make in battleground states that I think is not a bad one.

TAPPER: And, Bakari, the Democratic caucus has been pretty united from the right, and Senator Joe Manchin and to the left Bernie Sanders, the whole gamut of Democrats. If this bill passes -- well, it looks like it will -- how long do you think Senate Democrats can stick together? How much can they accomplish with a pretty fragile coalition? Do you think they could do infrastructure, immigration?

BAKARI SELLERS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I don't know if the coalition is as fragile as one would like to make it seem, but the fact is, you do have Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin on the same page. And I think that people recognize that there's fierce urgency of now in passing this $1.9 trillion stimulus package. But even more importantly, this is an extremely popular and bipartisan package.

Now, mind you, I say bipartisan. That doesn't mean that a single United States Republican senator may vote for it, but this has a lot of support from Republicans throughout the country. Maybe they didn't get the message in Washington, D.C.

The biggest problem that Democrats have is a problem we have had and we really haven't been good at it since Bill Clinton was president, and that's messaging.

[16:35:01]

I mean, we can't really message our way out of a wet paper bag. The fact is, I mean, as Mary Katharine was pointing out, Democrats are in a position right now where, you know, voters are saying, we sent you with a mandate to Washington to pass a $15 minimum wage that's extremely popular. You even got 60 percent of the vote in Florida and with only people who take that mandate and say, OK, we'll give you 11.

You know, we have to message properly about the good things that are in this bill and we also have to go big.

You know, the last point I'll make briefly is that nobody came out and voted for Joe Biden in November to simply say, we want an agenda that's palatable for Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Nobody did that. So, Joe Biden has to take this bull by the horns and bring this caucus together.

TAPPER: Well, Manchin and Sinema might have voted for Biden with that in mind.

But let me ask you, Mary Katharine, I want you to take a listen. One of Andrew Cuomo's sexual accusers, Charlotte Bennett, did an interview with our friend, Norah O'Donnell, at CBS. Take a listen to this quick excerpt.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NORAH O'DONNELL, CBS ANCHOR: Do you believe that he was propositioning you?

CHARLOTTE BENNETT, GOV. CUOMO ACCUSER: Yes.

O'DONNELL: For what?

BENNETT: Sex.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Now, Cuomo said he wasn't propositioning anybody and said he was sorry if he made anybody uncomfortable. He's also denied ever touching anyone. But there was this aid who worked for him saying he was propositioning me for sex. What do you make of it? How problematic could this be for the governor?

HAM: Yeah, look, I think it's problematic, particularly it's getting national coverage now. I use a kind of a rubric with these allegations so I can test myself and make sure I'm not making decisions based on my ideological or personal leanings, which a lot of people would think about before they work on this.

But look, a couple of things -- is it a named accuser? Is there an M.O.? Are there contemporaneous reports and physical details that line up to this person's employment and where they would have been and where the governor would have been at the same time?

And I think we have all three in some of these cases. Obviously in these cases where it was an employee, there's a power dynamic that's very bad there. And he has to answer for that.

I would also to say that I would like to see some of the families who lost loved ones in nursing homes also on the national network newscasts in the evening to tell their story, but that's an equally if not more problematic scandal for Cuomo that really deserves attention.

TAPPER: It is. I mean, I do think it's more difficult to pinpoint exactly the nursing home regulation, any specific death it would have caused, but I hear you, and we obviously have covered that issue on the show.

Bakari, the allegations against the governor are not going away. The accusers are not going away. There's going to be an investigation into his actions.

At this point, only one Democrat in Congress, Congresswoman Rice, has called for him to resign. Do you think it's going stay like that?

SELLERS: I think a lot of Democrats have their faith and a lot of people should have their faith in Tish James, who's the attorney general of the great state of New York. And the fact is, Tish James said that Governor Cuomo was not going to have any interference in any investigation as we go forward. And so, a lot of people are waiting to see what that investigation holds.

And there are a lot of people out there like Al Franken and others who wish they would have gotten the same due process. But I think what Mary Katharine said was absolutely correct. The governor has to handle these charges, has to deal with them, has to face them, and he can not lie or squirrel his way out of Tish James being the attorney general and leading this investigation.

TAPPER: Last word, Mary Katharine?

HAM: I was going to say, like, as usual in these situations -- and again, I think it's something we should examine -- if you have this amount of evidence against a Republican I think the coverage would look different. I think it would look different for a long time.

And I think the evaluation from people who -- with Kavanaugh went with very, very little evidence, straight to, you got to drop out of this process and denigrating due process in really extreme ways, certainly feel differently about Cuomo. I'm pro due process in both cases.

TAPPER: Yeah.

Mary Katharine Ham, Bakari Sellers, thanks to both of you. Good to see you both of you.

HAM: Thank you.

TAPPER: Coming up next, growing concerns among Texas business owners as the state says no more masks required. Their biggest fear is not contracting COVID. What is it?

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:43:34]

TAPPER: The money lead. As we mentioned earlier, Texas is leading the way as states decide to re-open businesses at full capacity and ditch mask mandates -- a reckless move right now according to the CDC.

And while some small businesses are chomping at the bit to fully re- open, others that want to still play it safe are afraid that Texas Governor Abbott just unleashed a potential karenpalooza (ph) on them as CNN's Ed Lavandera reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ED LAVANDERA, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Several days a week, you'll find Humbelina and Florencio Gonzales working inside this thrift store in the south Texas town of Alice. The shop's profits fund a food pantry that feeds hundreds of people. The couple is bracing for next week's end of the state-sanctioned mask-wearing mandates. They're volunteers, not mask-wearing police, but they know exactly how they're going to handle their customers.

HUMBELINA GONZALES, VOLUNTEER, TRASH & TREASURE IN ALICE, TEXAS: If they don't want to wear a mask, they're not allowed to come in. That's the way I see it and that's how -- I'm going pursue it that way.

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R), TEXAS: This must end.

LAVANDERA: Without consulting most of his medical advisers, Republican Governor Greg Abbott says because of lower positivity rates and the vaccine rollout it's time to fully re-open the Texas economy and lift the mask mandate. While the number of people hospitalized with COVID-19 is dropping, the state still has one of the highest hospitalization rates in the country.

[16:45:00]

ABBOTT: Texans have mastered the daily habits to avoid getting COVID.

LAVANDERA: Missy Herring says in this southwest Texas embroidery and print shop, the mask mandate was always ignored. She's celebrating the governor's announcement.

MISSY HERRING, TEXAS SMALL BUSINESS OWNER: I'll step (ph) with it, yeah.

LAVANDERA: If you're going to a grocery store, and the grocery store requires a mask, will you be wearing it?

HERRING: No, no, because it's against my rights.

LAVANDERA: Do you think mask-wearing has kept the pandemic from getting worse?

HERRING: No. Everybody that I know who's been sick they wore their mask faithfully. Faithfully. I've never worn the mask. I don't have people come many my store wearing a mask. I'm not sick.

LAVANDERA: But the governor's controversial decision has sparked a tidal wave of local leaders sending out pleas for Texans to keep wearing their masks, scenes like this is what many officials and business owners fear.

JUDGE NELSON W. WOLFF, BEXAR COUNTY, TEXAS: It's a real burden on the business owner.

LAVANDERA: Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff says sheriff's deputies will be called on to help San Antonio business owners enforce their mask mandates.

WOLFF: If it's required and a person will not put it on, if they call us we'll send the sheriff out there and we'll remove that person if they want us to.

LAVANDERA: Back at the thrift shop, Florencio Gonzales lets us know everyone in this small town knows him as smiley. He's hoping the charm behind the mask will disarm defiant customers who refuse to wear a mask.

FLORENCIO "SMILEY" GONZALES, VOLUNTEER, TRASH & TREASURE IN ALICE, TEXAS: We're not going to -- anybody upset, and hopefully, everybody will understand, our point of view that it's going to be required in this building. (END VIDEOTAPE)

LAVANDERA (on camera): And, Jake, the governor's executive order goes into effect next Wednesday, March 10th. Big chain stores like Target, CVS, Walgreens have announced they will continue to require masks by customers entering those stores. There have been a handful of others who are saying that it will be optional, and, of course, it's exactly that kind of inconsistency and confusion as you so eloquently put it at the beginning of this that many people fear about unleashing this Karen-palooza across the state of Texas.

TAPPER: Yeah, it's going to be rough.

Ed Lavandera, thanks so much, live in San Antonio. We appreciate it.

Coming up next, the Facebook message posted by an American diplomat that got him removed from his role.

What was the message? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:51:40]

TAPPER: In our world lead, a top U.S. security official working in Afghanistan has been removed from his role, sources tell CNN, because he made racist and offensive comments on social media after President Trump lost the election.

In a post reviewed by CNN, Nick Sabruno wrote, quote: Sad day in American history. A fraudulent election that ushered in a senile idiot and a woman that claims to be black, but she's not. You're witnessing the death of America as we know it and just stand by as all our freedoms are eroded, unquote.

CNN's Kylie Atwood joins us now live.

And, Kylie, comments like this will get you fired from most jobs but Sabruno still works for the State Department?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, that's right, Jake. Sabruno made these comments late last year after the U.S. election, very offensive comments. As you said, calling President Biden a senile idiot, going after Kamala Harris with racist comments, declaring the end of America because President Trump had lost.

The foreign affairs manual prevents U.S. diplomats from using their social media platforms to engage in partisan political activity. Clearly, that is what this is. And he was removed from Afghanistan. He still works here at the State Department, however, and that's really important to note.

Now, I asked the State Department about this situation. I want to read to you what his spokesperson said to me. Quote: We will not comment on internal personal matters beyond saying that these are personal views and do not represent those at the State Department. As a department, we embrace and champion diversity, equity, and inclusion as a source of strength.

So, Jake, there's still questions about why he's still here. But he was overseeing hundreds of U.S. officials in Afghanistan. That is a place where they were looking up to him to provide safety.

TAPPER: And what are his coworkers saying about these racist comments?

ATWOOD: They're devastated. They say that there are some folks at the department who have views like this. They keep them private and they said that this went way too far.

Now, this was a Facebook post that was really being spread amongst folks here at the department, and folks were outraged, particularly because so many people look up to him and because there were foreigners, his foreign counterparts who saw he had made these remarks -- Jake.

TAPPER: Yeah, it's regrettable.

Kylie Atwood, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Conspiracy theories led to stepped up security at the Capitol today. Talk of making the show of force the new normal? That's coming up.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:58:36]

TAPPER: Before we go today, we want to take the time to remember just one of the 519,000 people in the U.S. who died of the coronavirus.

Today, we remember Leonard Davis (ph). He was 88 years old. He died just days before he was scheduled to get a COVID vaccine. He live in the Cleveland, Ohio, and had four daughters, two stepsons, 14 grandchildren, and six great grandchildren.

His family says he was larger than life, extremely generous, and so very, very funny. He was also quite accomplished in his working years. He was lawyer, a pharmacist, a city councilman, and an Army veteran.

His daughter told CNN's Randy Kaye that her father did everything right, and took all the necessary precautions.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SALLY SHORE, FATHER DIED FROM COVID-19: He was careful. He was careful for so, so long and then this happened. But my father had so many plans. He got up every morning. He loved life. He wanted to live life every minute.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Davis died after ten days in the hospital and five days before he got meet his seventh grandchild.

To the Davis families, our condolences. May his memory be a blessing. Everybody, be safe out there. It is still dangerous, especially for vulnerable populations. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @JakeTapper. Tweet the show @TheLeadCNN.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now. I'll see you tomorrow.