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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Interview with Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina; Police Still Searching for Motive in Boulder Shooting; Brazil ICU Units Overwhelmed by COVID Patients; Study: Winter is "Vanishing" from Lake Michigan Due to Rising Temps. Aired on 4:30-5p ET
Aired March 26, 2021 - 16:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: That's according to data compiled by CNN and the Brennan Center for Justice.
[16:30:03]
One of these states is North Carolina and its Democratic Governor Roy Cooper joins me now to discuss.
And, Governor, Republicans in your state have introduced legislation which would restrict when people could obtain and return absentee ballots. Is this predicated on the big election lie that Trump and his allies pushed? Or is there something else going on?
GOV. ROY COOPER (D-NC): Well, that seems to be the latest excuse. We know what this is all about. Jake, we should be making it easier for people to vote and not harder, and under the guise of election security, you're seeing all kinds of legislation being proposed across this country to make it harder for people to vote.
And my legislature in North Carolina, the Republican legislature does not have a good history, and, in fact, in -- in legislation that they passed that was struck down by the courts, they actually looked at when and how black people voted and passed laws to try and curb that, and the courts struck it down saying that they had discriminated against African-Americans with, quote, surgical precision, and you're seeing the same kind of thing happen in Georgia.
Here in North Carolina, we're going to stop that. We have enough forward thinking Democrats in the legislature who would sustain my veto of that kind of legislation. Unfortunately, Georgia does not have a Democratic governor. It's one of the reasons that I'm going to be working really hard in 2021 and 2022 to get strong Democratic governors elected across the country.
We've seen how important governors are during this pandemic. They are important to stop this kind of regressive legislation that hurts people's right to vote.
TAPPER: So, Governor, one of the things that's so odd about this to me is perhaps the biggest proven instance of voter fraud in the last ten years in the United States took place in North Carolina but it was done by Republicans. It was done by Republicans. So --
COOPER: Yeah.
TAPPER: -- if they are so concerned about vote fraud, why are they doing -- taking these steps instead of the steps that would have prevented their fellow Republicans from being so fraudulent that it actually required a whole new congressional race to happen.
COOPER: That's right. You saw some absentee ballot harvesting by Republicans.
You do need security to make sure that people's vote counts and that people aren't cheating, but the problem is you don't see widespread problems with things that they are trying to attack, like voter ID.
People don't pretend to be someone else to go in and vote. You just don't see that kind of fraud, yet you have legislation that is making harder and harder and harder for people to vote. They have to have more stringent voter ID requirements.
The same thing -- we should be letting people vote on Saturday and Sunday and making it easier for people who are working, and when you restrict those times, when you say you can't give water and food to people in line to vote, I mean, what you're trying to do is to win elections by restricting people that you don't think are going to vote for you.
TAPPER: Yeah.
COOPER: And that's wrong on so many levels, and I'm concerned with this U.S. Supreme Court that Trump has now appointed are we going to be get relief as we have in the past from the federal courts?
TAPPER: Yeah.
COOPER: You don't know.
So, it's deeply concerning and one of the reasons we need to pay attention to governor's races across this country and state legislative race across this country.
This is a redistricting year. You're going to see a lot of shenanigans going on, and it's so important, these elections that we have coming up in 2021 and 2022.
TAPPER: Governor, I want to ask you about coronavirus because you moved up the timeline in the great Tar Heel State, and announced that anyone 16 and older can get the vaccine starting in April 7th. But you also say that the state does not have enough supply right now for everyone who wants to be vaccinated, to be able to.
Are you worried about a surge in demand overwhelming your supply?
COOPER: We're in constant contact with our providers across the state, and we're listening to them as to what they are seeing. We're so proud of what we've done in North Carolina. We've done this in a way that's fast and fair.
My instructions to providers are to make sure you get these vaccines off the shelves and into arms before the next shipment comes and make sure those arms look like North Carolina.
We've been cited by the CDC in the top ten states for equity. We've built our own databases so that we can see the race and ethnicity of everyone who gets a shot. You can't tackle a problem until you see it.
And so, we're going after people, making sure that they get vaccinated.
Right now, we have 57 percent of people 65 and older fully vaccinated, 71 percent of them have gotten at least their first shot so we feel pretty good that by April 7th and the predictions that the supplies that we're going to get before then that we'll be able to handle it and get people vaccinated.
What I'm concerned about is when the demand falls below the supply.
TAPPER: Yeah.
COOPER: And we're out working trying to get people vaccinated. I don't know what that percentage is going to be. It looks like it's going to be throughout all kinds of demographics, and we're going to have to have different strategies to convince different kinds of people, but it's really important to get vaccinated because that's our path to recovery. It's our road to normalcy.
TAPPER: Absolutely.
COOPER: It's the most important thing we have going on right now.
TAPPER: Absolutely.
Governor Roy Cooper of the great state of North Carolina, thanks so much for your time today, sir.
In Boulder, Colorado, why that grocery store? Why some victims and not others? How investigators are handling these key questions about the suspected gunman and his motive. That's next.
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[16:40:38]
TAPPER: In our national lead, police say that the suspect in the Colorado massacre passed a background check before he bought gun used in the grocery store massacre, but five days after the attack, police say they still do not know why he did it -- as CNN's Kyung Lah reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With flowers and emblems of grief covering fallen Officer Eric Talley's police vehicle, the boulder police chief says what is haunting investigators, the killer's motive still unknown.
CHIEF MARIS HEROLD, BOULDER POLICE DEPARTMENT: Like the rest of the community we, too, want to know why, why that King Soopers, why Boulder, why Monday? And, unfortunately, at this time, we still don't have those answers.
LAH: What they do know, Ahmad Alissa purchased the semiautomatic Ruger AR556 pistol here at the Eagles Nest Armory, six days before the shooting. The owner says the sale was legal, adding: Regarding the firearm in question, a background check of the purchaser was conduct as required by Colorado law and approval was provide by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
The gunman also carried a .9 millimeter handgun, but police say he did not use it in the rampage.
DISPATCH: 136, we have multiple shots being fired.
LAH: The first responding officers did exchange gunfire.
MICHAEL DOUGHERTY, BOULDER COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: They charged into the store and immediately faced a very significant amount of gunfire from the shooter who at first they were unable to locate and they put their lives at risk. That will be reflected in additional attempted murder charges that will be filed by the district attorney's office the next couple of weeks.
LAH: Funerals will begin next week for the 10 victims, people who were just in their neighborhood grocery store where officers are now counting the bullets one by one.
DOUGHERTY: You picture a supermarket. Picture all the shelves, all the products, everything. They are going through every single shelf pulling everything off the shelves, looking in the walls, and that is going to continue throughout the weekend.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
LAH (on camera): Now, the district attorney says that they do have a preliminary number on the number of bullets that they have recovered here at the scene, but that sort of detail, they're going to hold off on sharing for now.
The police chief said that one officer has been placed on administrative leave, Jake, but she would not confirm if that are officer was the one who shot the gunman -- Jake.
TAPPER: All right. Kyung Lah in Boulder, thank you so much.
Also in the national lead today, at least six people were killed and entire homes ripped to shreds after tornadoes in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. One town near Atlanta, firefighters today went door to door there to rescue others trapped in homes where trees fell. Three people who died in Alabama were from the same family.
Authorities say another man killed was in a mobile home. In all, there were at least 23 reports of tornadoes in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Teams are now surveying damage to confirm that number.
In the money lead today, a view from space shows the traffic jam in the Suez Canal from a cargo ship and every hour the ship sits there, the global economy misses out on an estimated-$400 million in trade, every hour. The ship's crew lost navigation Tuesday during sandstorm.
Now, tug boats and dredgers are trying to dig out 700,000 tons of sand to unlodge the ship. The whole ordeal may force the U.S. Navy to reroute an aircraft carrier all the way around the continent instead of taking the shortcut between Asia and Africa. .
The pandemic may be easing in the U.S. but the global health emergency is getting worse by the minute in Brazil and CNN is there as the health care system is collapsing in the largest country in South America. The images inside those hospitals, that's next.
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[16:48:12]
TAPPER: Our world lead. While countries begin to see relief from vaccinations, it's a very different story in Brazil where its health care system is collapsing, overwhelmed with new COVID cases, hovering around 100,000 a day. Nearly every single Brazilian state has ICUs at or above 80 percent capacity. Doctors there are being forced to make the unimaginable decisions of who to save and who to let die -- as CNN's Matt Rivers now reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
MATT RIVERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): When the system collapses, it starts here -- paramedics rushing to respond to seemingly unending cries for help. This time, it's a grandmother short of breath, another COVID case limping towards a hospital system that cannot handle more patients.
So it's easy toe spot ambulances like this one racing all over the city going on call after call after call, and in some cases going to multiple hospitals before they actually find one that can admit the patients that they have in the back.
Here, a dozen ambulances with patients wait outside a Sao Paulo hospital, hoping a spot opens up inside. These days though, getting inside might not help.
The person who gave CNN this footage from another Sao Paulo hospital told us it feels like a war zone. The rampant viral spread, its own mass casualty event and across the country, a lack of medical supplies is crippling the ability to care for patients.
In this footage given to us from Brazil's federal district, a nurse says this oxygen tube is leaking, taped to a wall, they're strung up all over the hospital this way. In some places draped between windows, it's the only way to get the limited oxygen they have from its source to the patient. Overflowing rooms are the norm in Brazil now. This Sao Paulo hospital
was designated this week as a COVID-only facility but it's plain to see as we walk through that it's filled beyond capacity, unable to accept any new patients.
[16:50:13]
This facility is designed for 16 patients. There's roughly double that number inside there right now.
Crowded ICUs across the country have created impossible choices. This nurse who fears he could lose his job for speaking with us says one older patient this week was the victim of a zero sum game -- his life for another.
Did you even think that that was possible?
The nurse says the patient wasn't getting better, so we extubated him and gave his ventilator to a younger patient with a better chance to live.
And for those watching this all up close, like paramedic Luis Eduardo Pimentel (ph), the health care collapse is unbelievably painful.
I'm sorry, I'm sorry, he says, crying. There is this cycle taking a patient to the hospital, then the hearse arriving to get another body. It just hurts too much.
This video given to CNN from inside the city morgue shows coffins, bodies inside waiting to be cremated. There are so many, demand is roughly triple what they can handle in a single day, so the coffins are stacked waiting their turn.
So many people have died in Sao Paulo recently, this week, there's been burials every few minutes, enough that they can't get them all done during the day. Cemeteries now busy even at night.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
RIVERS (on camera): And, Jake, we've been on the ground here in Brazil for more than two weeks now and what we tried to show in the piece is what we've been seeing consistently, signs of collapse across every level of Brazil's health care system and consider this. Over the last two weeks of all the coronavirus deaths recorded around the world, Brazil has accounted for roughly a quarter of those deaths -- Jake.
TAPPER: Horrific. Important reporting, Matt. Thank you so much. Appreciate it.
Coming up next, what seems to be vanishing in the Great Lakes that could have a profound impact nationwide. That's next.
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[16:57:07] TAPPER: In our "Earth Matters" series, the temperature of Lake Michigan was ten degrees above normal last summer and according to a new study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the rising temperatures could have far-reaching impacts for the entire Midwest. The study going as far as to say winter is, quote, vanishing from Lake Michigan all together.
CNN's Bill Weir joins us now.
Bill, tell us what that means and what the study found.
BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's staggering new science, Jake, because it's a big data set. Thirty years, they have had basically really long thermometers in Lake Michigan so they can test the water all the way down, and they have seen a real alarming trend, as you can see, ten degrees above normal this summer which means that only 3 percent of the Great Lakes were covered in ice.
That's the worst kind of record to have because this ecosystem has evolved over millions of years to overturn that cold water beneath turns over seasonably. A lot of species like white fish, they depend on the ice to protect their eggs from waves, and all of that seems to be rapidly, rapidly change.
And it's not just a $9 billion fishing industry that's at stake here. There's something like 30 million people that live around the Great Lakes like here in Chicago, that depend on the health of these waters. And NOAA is saying we need more information but most importantly we need a wake-up call. It's not just oceans heating up at an alarming rate, it's the biggest freshwater systems in our world in our Great Lakes.
TAPPER: And, Bill, is there anything that can be done to stop the water from warming or is it too late?
WEIR: Well, it's not going to cool off unless, you know, until the earth stops -- humanity stops burning the kind of fuels that burn and create that greenhouse effect which is heating up the planet. And even then it will only get warmer because this is a slow motion disaster that's sort of baked in after over a century since the Industrial Revolution.
In Australia, for example, they are looking at radical solutions to try to save the Great Barrier Reef including pumping cold water down to cool off those delicate corals now. You can't air condition lake Michigan obviously.
And so, really, the only wild card in how bad it gets, how warm it gets, how radically this ecosystem changes comes down to human nature and how fast we get our fossil fuels.
TAPPER: All right. Bill Weir with our latest in "Earth Matters", thank you so much, my friend. Appreciate it.
Coming up, join my college Dana Bash for "STATE OF THE UNION" on Sunday. Her guests include Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Democrats from Georgia, Senator Raphael Warnock and Congresswoman Nikema Williams, as well as our own Sanjay Gupta. That's this Sunday morning at 9:00 Eastern and again at noon.
Our coverage on CNN continues right now. I will see you Monday.
