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The Lead with Jake Tapper
Challenging Georgia's Voter Restrictions; CDC Director Warns of COVID Surge; White House to Brief Dems Tomorrow on Situation at Border. Aired 4:30-5p ET
Aired March 29, 2021 - 16:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[16:32:13]
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: In our health lead today: a candid moment today from the CDC director, who threw out her script to address the recent spike in COVID cases in the United States.
Cases are up in 27 states right now. The national average jumped 16 percent in just one week. That's the highest spike since mid-January. And with more Americans vaccinated, the Biden administration is considering guidance on vaccine credentials, or a kind of vaccine passport, so people can prove they got their shots, as CNN's Alexandra Field now reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: Now I'm going to reflect on the recurring feeling I have of impending doom.
ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A desperate and emotional appeal to all Americans.
WALENSKY: So I'm speaking today not necessarily as your CDC director, not only as your CDC director, but as a wife, as a mother, as a daughter, to ask you to just please hold on a little while longer.
FIELD: Dr. Rochelle Walensky pleading for the public's help as new COVID-19 cases start climbing in more than half the states.
WALENSKY: Right now, I'm scared. I know what it's like as a physician to stand in that patient room, gowned, gloved, masked, shielded, and to be the last person to touch someone else's loved one because their loved one couldn't be there.
FIELD: A similar plea this afternoon from President Biden, calling on all states to pause reopening efforts.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm reiterating my call for every governor, mayor and local leader to maintain and reinstate the mask mandate. Please. This is not politics.
FIELD: The Biden administration trying not to repeat past mistakes, as former President Trump's former coronavirus response coordinator lays bare some of those failures. DR. DEBORAH BIRX, FMR. WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS RESPONSE COORDINATOR: There were about 100,000 deaths that came from that original surge. All of the rest of them, in my mind, could have been mitigated or decreased substantially.
FIELD: Twenty percent of American adults are now fully vaccinated, progress accelerating, with more than three million shots on each of the last three days, according to the CDC. Every state but Arkansas now says it plans to meet or beat President Biden's May 1 deadline to make vaccines available to everyone 16 and up.
And a new CDC study shows just how effective the vaccines really are out here in the real world. When given to 4,000 health care workers and first responders, Moderna and Pfizer's vaccines were 90 percent effective at preventing infection, 80 percent after the first dose.
JEFF ZIENTS, WHITE HOUSE COVID-19 RESPONSE COORDINATOR: As we increase the number of people vaccinated, we know some people may have a need to demonstrate that they are vaccinated.
FIELD: The administration now working to develop guidelines for people to prove they have been vaccinated, while some states like New York push ahead with their own system, vaccine passports.
[16:35:02]
ANDY SLAVITT, SENIOR WHITE HOUSE ADVISER FOR COVID RESPONSE: The government here is not viewing its role as the place to create a passport, nor a place to hold the data of citizens. We view this as something that the private sector is doing and will do.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FIELD: And, Jake, set aside that issue of vaccine passports for a moment and what you can do once you are vaccinated, because the bigger issue is what people are doing before they get vaccinated.
On Sunday, we saw another pandemic era travel record set. And health officials in some states are saying that they are seeing a growth in cases among young people. Young people, of course, have had less access or perhaps no access at all to vaccines at this point -- Jake.
TAPPER: All right, Alexandra Field, thanks so much.
Let's bring in Dr. Megan Ranney. She's an emergency physician at Brown University.
Dr. Ranney, thanks for joining us.
As you heard, the Biden administration does not want to discourage people from getting a shot, as they're also working to create guidelines for a vaccine passport. Could you see people will really need this to travel or return to work?
DR. MEGAN RANNEY, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: You know, already, there are universities and workplaces across the country that are asking for proof of vaccination before you can return.
There's one university that's already said it's going to be required for students before coming back to campus next fall. Vaccines protect not only those of us who get them, but they protect everyone around us. And I can imagine a world in which, once these vaccines get full FDA approval, once they make it past this emergency use authorization, when they are indeed going to be required not just here at home, but also across the world.
TAPPER: Both President Biden and the CDC director today said that states reopening too soon, lifting their mask mandates and more, may be contributing to the recent spike in cases.
You're an E.R. Physician. What do you think's going on?
RANNEY: That is absolutely what's going on.
I mean, I will tell you, my last week of shifts in the E.R., I saw more COVID patients than I'd seen in the prior month. It's because we are letting more people into restaurants unmasked. We are allowing bigger public gatherings, often unmasked.
It is absolutely, incontrovertibly true that, when you get together people who are not yet vaccinated in a public setting without masks on, COVID spreads. We have been through this movie before. And it boggles my mind that governors across the country are unwilling to hold on just a little bit longer in order to protect people.
Jake, I admitted a 40-something-year-old to the ICU just a week ago. He had not had the chance to be vaccinated yet. And now his life is forever changed because he caught COVID at work from someone who had been socializing.
It isn't fair to our populations to be lifting regulations so quickly, when we haven't gotten vaccines out to everyone yet.
TAPPER: Not time to -- for people to let up yet.
We have been hearing a number of former officials from the Trump administration blaming the Trump administration for problems early on in the pandemic. The former White House testing czar now admits the testing was not as widely available as the Trump administration made it seem. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ADM. BRETT GIROIR, FORMER U.S. ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: We said there were millions of tests available. There weren't, right? There were components of the test available, but not the full meal deal.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: All right, so that's what Admiral Giroir told Sanjay Gupta for the special last night.
But take a listen to Admiral Giroir when I had him on "STATE OF THE UNION" last summer, and I was pressing him on the lack of testing.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GIROIR: And in terms of the number of tests that we have available, look, we're able to achieve almost all our goals right now. We want to improve our testing, but we have enough tests right now, if we use them in the right way, to achieve the goals that we need to achieve.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: What do you make of all these former Trump administration officials now saying that things were much worse than they were saying at the time?
RANNEY: You know, I wish to God that they had spoken up last spring, last summer or last fall. We were being gaslit as a nation.
Those of us on the front lines were sounding alarms that we had no PPE, that we had no tests, that we were running out of beds. And we were being told by the administration that we were lying.
I am glad they are telling the truth now, but I wish they had spoken up earlier. I wonder how many lives would have been saved had they done so?
TAPPER: Well, Dr. Birx says hundreds of thousands, potentially.
Dr. Megan Ranney, thank you so much.
A new challenge has been filed to the restrictive Georgia voting laws. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:44:04]
TAPPER: In our politics leads: Several civil rights and voting rights groups, including the Georgia NAACP, the League of Women Voters, and Common Cause, have filed a lawsuit challenging Georgia's new voting rights law.
The law limits voting drop boxes, shortens in person voting hours, and even makes it a misdemeanor to offer food or water to people waiting in line to vote if you are not with the polling officials there.
President Biden last week slammed the Republican-backed law as sick and said it makes -- quote -- "Jim Crow look like Jim Eagle."
Let's discuss.
Nia, let me start with you.
The suit claims that Republican officials included specific changes in the law to target voters of color after the record turnout and Democratic victories in the November 20 presidential election and the two Senate run-offs in January 2021. We should note that the final legislation is far less draconian than a
lot of the earlier proposals we heard, but, still, obviously, the goal is to limit voting in many ways.
Do you think that they have a case here?
[16:45:02]
Do you think that they have a case here?
HENDERSON: Listen, you know. We'll see. As you said there will h been kind of a rollback of some of the more draconian, you know, approaches that many of these lawmakers wanted because of public pressure, because of public scrutiny as well. So we'll see what the NAACP and other groups that are certainly looking at what's happening, what they are able to do as well as there's being pressure put on some of the businesses there as well.
The big businesses, places like Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Georgia has been transformed, right, into the new South because of the presence of those businesses so there are some pressure points being applied, and we'll see if any of that is able to effect any change with these laws.
TAPPER: Zolan, Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, he was asked by President Biden comparing this new law to Jim Crow. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Every time a Republican does anything we're racists. If you're a white conservative, you're a racist. If you're a black Republican, you're either a prop or Uncle Tom. They use the racism card to advance a liberal agenda and we're tired of it. HR- 1 is sick. Not what they're doing in Georgia.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
TAPPER: HR-1 obviously is the Democratic package of voting reforms, the goal of which is to open up voting as opposed to restricting voting.
What do you make of Lindsey Graham's response there?
ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, NEW YORK TIMES: Well, look, we're going to see more members of Congress, Republican senators as well as on the House side trying to use the president's word, taking this subject to criticized HR-1, the House effort, the Democratic effort to expand voting rights.
We have heard more members of Congress continue to say that it is as matter of infringing on states' rights. But as you (AUDIO GAP) expanding voting access.
It's interesting, in that same interview, Senator Graham criticized one part of the legislation that's moving in Georgia, that'd be the restrictions on providing water bottles and other supplies to people in line. So, even there, Senator Graham having some criticism (AUDIO GAP) what's going on in Georgia.
It's (AUDIO GAP). This isn't isolated to Georgia. It's not just going to be the state. There's Republicans in 40 different states, Jake, that are pursuing similar kind of legislation.
TAPPER: Yeah. His signal is going out there a little. Let take a quick break.
Stick around. They are both coming back. Nia-Malika and Zolan.
The Biden administration saying they need 34,000 of this item to keep up with the cries on the border. What is it?
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:52:00]
TAPPER: Also in our politics lead, the White House will brief House Democrats tomorrow on the situation at the southern border. The Biden administration will need an estimated 34,100 additional beds to keep up with the projected number of migrant kids arriving at the border through September, according to internal government estimates obtained by CNN.
Let's bring back our panel.
Zolan, let me start with you. Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas released these images from his visit to a border facility in Texas of kids on the ground covered with Mylar blankets. Biden continues to deny press access to see how the kids are being treated. They are being treated in taxpayer-funded facilities under policies bearing our name.
I think Senator Cruz has a point. We should have these open to journalists, yes?
KANNO-YOUNGS: The Biden administration thus far has allowed access into a shelter managed by HHS, Jake. But what's important for viewers to know it that is not enough to really fulfill transparency here.
The facilities that are holding children, the facilities currently pushed beyond capacity where roughly 5,000 children are being held, facilities that were initially designed for the short detention of individual adults, those are the facilities that we have put requests in to tour at this time.
You also mentioned that there will be a briefing soon. It will be interesting to see where the Biden administration goes forward and whether they continue to use that pandemic emergency rule to rapidly expel single adults back south across the border.
TAPPER: Nia-Malika, your take on how the Biden administration is handling this crisis. HENDERSON: Well, listen, it's hard to point to really any
administration that has handled this well. You have the Biden administration saying that this was a surge that was expected in some ways, that it's seasonal, that there was also a surge under Donald Trump in 2019.
Well, if that is the case, they probably should have been much more prepared for it. We're going to see more of these migrants coming up from Central America because of what's going on in those countries, so they have a big complicated problem on their hands as have other administrations, and we also know that Congress hasn't done much about this either.
TAPPER: Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Nia-Malika Henderson, thanks to both of you. Appreciate it.
We pulled it off. A look at the rollercoaster ride in the Suez Canal to free that huge cargo ship.
Stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[16:59:05]
TAPPER: In our world lead today, after six long days, very expensive days, the massive cargo ship blocking the Suez Canal has finally been freed. But there are still 422 ships waiting to pass through the waterway. Officials say they will be able to cross on a first come, first served basis, except for ships carrying livestock, which will get priority.
Even though the Ever Given has been freed it could take three and a half days for the backlog to clear the canal.
We want to take a moment to remember just one of the 549,000 lives lost to COVID in the U.S.
Today, we remember Fred Posavetz. He was the police chief of Clinton Township near Detroit, 64 years old. He spent almost his entire adult life with this one police department, even becoming its first K9 officer in the 1980s. Posovitz was big on family and community. He was set to retire in June but he died of complications from COVID-19 one week ago today.
To his wife and his six family and his former colleagues, our deepest condolences. May his memory be a blessing.
You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @JakeTapper. You can tweet teh show @TheLeadCNN.
Our coverage on CNN continues right now. Wolf Blitzer is back.
