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Coronavirus Outbreak; Trump Impeachment; Controversy Surrounds Music's Biggest Night. Aired 5-5:30a ET

Aired January 26, 2020 - 05:00   ET

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

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NATALIE ALLEN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Ahead here on CNN NEWSROOM, as medical teams worldwide scramble to limit the spread, China is cracking down on the suspected source of the deadly coronavirus. We'll go live to Beijing for all the latest developments.

Also, Donald Trump swears he doesn't know him but a just-released recording suggests the U.S. president and Lev Parnas spent almost an hour and a half together in a closed door meeting. Hear the conversation coming next.

Also the Grammy awards are hours away. But music's biggest night is being overshadowed by controversy. We have the details for you.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to our viewers all around the world. We appreciate you joining us. I'm Natalie Allen. CNN NEWSROOM starts right now.

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ALLEN: Our top story comes from China, the country's all-out effort to stop the Wuhan coronavirus from spreading has led the government to ban the sale of wild animals. A market in Wuhan that sold wild animals is the suspected source of the coronavirus outbreak. More than 50 people have now died.

Meantime, the country's transportation lockdown has been extended to the southern port city of Shantou. Those lockdowns cover 63 million people in 16 cities. President Xi Jinping ordered all infected people, approximately 2,000 patients at this point, to be treated in centralized quarantine.

And globally, almost 40 cases have been confirmed in more than 1 dozen countries and territories.

Let's go to David Culver following the developments in Beijing.

All of these steps to try to curb this virus but it continues to grow, David.

DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It continues to grow, Natalie. You have President Xi Jinping, who issued an urgent decree to local officials to stop the spread of the virus.

Health officials are moving forward with that. Within the past couple of hours, they held a press conference where they shared incredible numbers as to the efforts they're now putting towards stopping this spread. And that includes sending some 1,600 medical personnel as of today deployed within Hubei province.

That's in addition to the roughly 1,500 on the ground, military and civilian medical personnel. These numbers are incredible: 3 million hazmat suits. That's what they estimate will be used in one month. They say that's roughly 1,000 a day. They're only producing 13,000 a day.

What are they going to do to meet the demand?

During this holiday season, they're bringing workers back into the factories and starting up production again. That is how critical this is. We have spoken to some of the healthcare workers, who have told us that it is like going into battle without any armor. That's what they're dealing with, with this shortage of resources. It is a dire situation.

Anytime you mention the number of folks within that lockdown zone, that number, tens of millions and folks who are there are out trying to figure out ways out. And we know that the U.S. is working with its embassy and working with Chinese officials in particular, Beijing is cooperating, according to U.S. officials and helping them get U.S. citizens who want to leave Wuhan out.

A flight will take place on Tuesday; that's going to leave from Wuhan and will go to San Francisco. They've got a limited number of seats. So they have to have folks apply for a seat on that aircraft. And then also extending to the U.K., France, Japan, Korea, Jordan, all of those countries, likewise, trying to find ways to get their citizens out of Wuhan -- Natalie.

ALLEN: So much going on to try to prevent this. I want to ask you about the government's response there in Beijing. There has been some criticism about a slow response because oftentimes we do see in China at a local level things -- they try to keep things quiet.

Is there criticism of how Beijing has responded in that regard?

CULVER: OK, so there is. And here's how you have to look at this. The criticism is rising, we're seeing on social media and hearing it from folks we're speaking with.

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CULVER: But it seems to be a criticism directed towards the local government, the provincial leaders there, not necessarily towards the central government. In fact, some people have praised the central government for how quickly they're now essentially cleaning up the local government's mistakes, as they put it.

But that is something that explains how quickly Xi Jinping, the president here, is moving forward with this. And it seems that he's frustrated and angry. I mean, that's the tone you can glean from his message to top party leaders in pushing forward with all efforts now to stop the spread.

ALLEN: All right, David Culver, thank you.

This is not the first time China has targeted the sale of live animals to curtail an outbreak. The coronavirus that caused the deadly SARS outbreak was traced to the civet cat.

After the outbreak in 2003, China banned their slaughter and consumption of these cats. The respiratory disease killed 774 people and sickened more than 8,000 in 30 countries.

Now in February of 2017, a number of provinces in China shut down live poultry markets to prevent the spread of avian flu.

Two years later, China slaughtered almost 1 million pigs over a six- month period as the country battled African swine fever.

Among other measures, the government in Beijing closed live pig markets in affected areas.

This is only a part of the list. By no means is China the only country where you will find live animal markets. But this latest outbreak is, again, focusing attention on the risk these operations pose.

CNN has obtained video filmed inside the Wuhan market where it is believed the outbreak began. But we want to warn you, the video is disturbing.

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ALLEN (voice-over): These images of the market were filmed in December by a concerned customer. They show that live wild animals were also for sale. It is believed the virus was transmitted from an animal but unclear what type of animal might be the source. There were so many animals clustered together in cages in this market.

The market declined CNN's request for comment.

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ALLEN: Now people around the world are concerned, we all want to know how dangerous is it and what is being done to stop it. Here is CNN's chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

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DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: In those markets, animals to humans, that is how most new viruses enter the human population, coming from animals. Then it started spreading humans to humans and then we now know it spreads fourth generation humans, which is exactly what it sounds like.

The first human spreads to a few, those humans spread to more and so forth. So that transmissibility we kind of anticipated. We have seen this sort of thing before. But I want to show you this quick box to give you an idea of exactly what public health officials focus on.

Two things: it is that transmissibility on the X axis and it is the lethality or how deadly this is on the Y axis. So the transmissibility, we know it is probably in that B category, that's the high. But we don't know how lethal this is.

We hear about many of these patients who are being tested, who have come back as confirmed, carrying the virus but aren't that sick.

What they -- public health officials don't want is this to mutate into that D box, where it is both spreading quickly and is very lethal.

Right now that doesn't seem to be the case. Obviously, again, that doesn't, you know, mitigate the panic and concern but the idea that there may be a lot of people that have this, not that many people are getting very sick or dying.

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ALLEN: All right, Sanjay Gupta for us there. We'll continue to bring you any developments during this newscast.

Next here, U.S. president Donald Trump's defense team begins to make its case for acquittal in the Senate.

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ALLEN: U.S. president Donald Trump's impeachment defense strategy is beginning to be unveiled. His lawyers took center stage in the Senate trial Saturday. Chief among their arguments, the proceedings are merely an attempt by the Democrats to overturn the last election and derail the next.

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PAT CIPOLLONE, WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: We don't believe that they have come anywhere close to meeting their burden for what they're asking you to do. In fact, we believe that when you hear the facts and that's what we intend to cover today, the facts, you will find that the president did absolutely nothing wrong.

They're asking you to remove President Trump from the ballot in an election that is occurring in approximately nine months. They're asking you to tear up all of the ballots across this country on your own initiative, take that decision away from the American people.

MIKE PURPURA, DEPUTY WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: The fact that President Zelensky himself felt no pressure on the call and did not perceive there to be any connection would, in any ordinary case, in any court, be totally fatal to the prosecution. The judge would throw it out, the case would be over.

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ALLEN: The president's defense team will continue making that case on Monday. And if the White House gets its way, an acquittal won't be far behind. Here is our Phil Mattingly with more on the state of play.

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PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN U.S. CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Now it is the White House's turn, the White House defense team's turn. We saw through the course of the week the House managers use almost 24 hours of their allotted time to make their presentation, their case for why they believe president Donald Trump should be removed from office.

We got a taste of the White House presentation on Saturday. Just two hours, not one of those eight-hour sessions that we have seen over the course of the last couple of weeks, making the points as to why they believe the Democratic case just doesn't measure up, it certainly doesn't measure up to removing the president from office and it doesn't even measure up to what is coming after the White House lawyers are done.

That's probably most important thing to move forward to at this point in time.

Here's what's going to happen over the course of the next week. The White House still has almost 22 hours to present. Our understanding is they will not use all of that 22 hours.

However, on Monday, they will continue their presentation; it may continue into Tuesday to some degree. After they conclude, senators will then have 16 hours to ask questions, both the defense team and the House managers.

Senators right now in both parties starting to prepare for that, working through their own questions, working through their leadership in terms of how they structure those questions.

And it is after that point where the most important element of what everybody has been working towards over the course of the last several weeks, the last several days in the trial, will take place.

That's a debate, four hours long, and then a vote on whether or not the Senate will continue on to consider subpoenas for witnesses and documents.

Here is the bottom line on this. Democrats are pushing for a yes vote on that. They have made clear, they want to hear from specific administration witnesses, they want a series of documents, thousands of pages of documents related to Ukraine and the withholding of U.S. security assistance.

Republicans, led by Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, close ally of President Trump, don't want that to occur. They want the acquittal to occur as quickly as possible. Here is what Democrats need. They need four Republicans to join the 47 Democratic senators in order to make that happen.

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MATTINGLY: A simple majority of the 100-member Senate, that's what would get the job done. Here is what Democrats have right now, those four Republicans. Senator Mitt Romney said he's likely to vote yes. Senator Susan Collins is also likely to vote yes.

While they have prospects, Lisa Murkowski, Republican from Alaska; Lamar Alexander, Republican from Tennessee, they don't have any firm commitments. That's what they're working towards for the next couple of days.

If they get those votes, the trial will go a lot longer and will get wilder as well. Probably more interesting, I would say. If they don't, get ready, the Senate Republicans have made clear they will move quickly to that final vote to acquit the President of the United States.

Why?

Well, there is something called the State of the Union. The president is going to have quite a stage to proclaim and tout that acquittal if it occurs. Keep an eye on all of these things. This next week could move fast or it could be a very long trial if Democrats get the votes -- Phil Mattingly, CNN, Capitol Hill.

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ALLEN: Now we want to look at that new recording featuring U.S. President Trump, CNN has obtained nearly 90 minutes of audio which captures the conversation at a dinner in 2018 between the president and Lev Parnas.

Parnas, an indicted associate of Rudy Giuliani, who says he was part of the Ukraine pressure tactics. Earlier we played for you the part where Mr. Trump calls for the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, to be removed. Now listen to this where he and a man we believe to be Parnas talk about Ukraine's conflict with Russia.

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LEV PARNAS, RUDY GIULIANI ASSOCIATE: They have everything there. They, just right now, are waiting for your support a little bit to make sure because obviously if they go on their own Russia won't let them do it. Because they'll cut off a lot of their revenue.

TRUMP: How long would they last in a fight with Russia?

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Not very long.

PARNAS: I don't think very long. Without us, not very long.

TRUMP: Without us.

PARNAS: Without us, yes. But Russia, also keep in mind, talks a big game, but they're not ready to -- he's not -- they're not ready to play.

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ALLEN: Of course, Parnas is someone who Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed he doesn't know, though acknowledges he may have been photographed with him as you see here. This tape suggests otherwise. The full recording was just released by Parnas' attorney Joseph Bondy. He spoke with our Anderson Cooper earlier about its significance.

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JOSEPH BONDY, PARNAS ATTORNEY: First off, we hear the president himself say get rid of the ambassador, we're going to fire her, get her out of there. And this is one of the first occasions in which he attempts to remove the ambassador.

Lev Parnas, as he has explained it to me, was shocked he might raise that of the chief ambassador and he would say get rid of her, fire her. He never thought it possible the president could literally take that step.

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ALLEN: The attorney says he has shared the audiotape with the House Intelligence Committee, he also says Parnas has more recordings of the president. Let's talk more about these developments with Richard Johnson, a lecturer at Lancaster University. He joins me now via Skype to discuss this.

Thanks for coming on. We appreciate it. Good to see you.

RICHARD JOHNSON, LANCASTER UNIVERSITY: Good morning.

ALLEN: Well, let's start with this Parnas story.

How do you think this will be handled or not handled by the Trump defense team in the impeachment trial?

JOHNSON: I think they're going to want to try and keep as far away from this as possible.

What has clearly been the tactic has been to diminish Lev Parnas' credibility, to present him as someone that, you know, might have been sort of peripherally in the president's orbit but wasn't a key player, to present him as self-serving and so on.

So I think that what they're in some ways trying to do is to try and undermine the messenger such that the message doesn't -- the content of the message itself doesn't have to be dealt with. ALLEN: What do you make of the fact that however President Trump has

repeatedly said, don't know the guy and now there is evidence that he does know him and had a small dinner party discussing Ukraine with this man?

JOHNSON: Yes, I mean, it really does strain credulity there. I think the president earlier this week denied in one moment 14 times, I think the number counted, knowing Lev Parnas.

And I think the volume of pictures and now this video and audio really puts that into considerable doubt. I think at the end of the day, what they want to do is to try and present Lev Parnas as some kind of hanger-on.

ALLEN: Groupie.

JOHNSON: Yes, a groupie, exactly.

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JOHNSON: What is clear is that, you know, there is a mounting evidence to suggest he was not just that. But he was someone who was operating on behalf of the president's closest advisers, namely Rudy Giuliani.

ALLEN: Yes, so let's talk about the effect with this Parnas revelation here and those few -- those handful of Republican senators that no one knows quite what they're going to do.

Will they stand with Mitch McConnell and the president?

Or will they want more to come from this impeachment trial?

Do you think this Parnas story will have an impact there?

JOHNSON: I think it makes it -- makes it much harder for the -- some of those waverers to say, oh, well, there is clearly nothing to see here. The smoke is mounting, you know, in the sense that it is not -- there's no smoke without fire.

But I think, you know what is interesting is people keep talking about four senators. I think they actually need more than that. I think no one wants to be the fourth. No one wants to be the pivotal senator.

So I think they would, you know, they would want to have strength in numbers, so would need to be thinking more sort of like five or six senators so they can all kind of share the blame among each other when, you know, the Republican base is probably going to be unhappy with them if they voted to call witnesses.

So it will be an act of political courage but not one that I think any one senator wants to take the blame for being the one who pushed the vote over the line.

ALLEN: Yes, we will see about that, won't we? All right, so out of the gate Saturday, the president's lawyers look to poke holes in the Democrats' case. They even talked about it took the Democrats 24 hours to do what we're doing in two hours. Democrats versus Republicans here.

What do you think about how the president's defense team did in poking holes in the Democrats' case.

JOHNSON: I think what the Democrats tried to do is really try to maximize their time to make the case to the country. So they're not only thinking about senators in the room but trying to think about what the public -- how the public is going to react to this -- to these allegations. They really want to get the details out to the public.

The Republican strategy, the Republican defense counsel strategy is trying to get this out of the way as quickly as possible, nothing to see here. Let's get on to that vote of acquittal and move on.

And so completely opposite strategies in a sense, one which is lengthy and get those details out to the public and the other one is, we just want this to be a flash in the eye, blink and you miss it.

ALLEN: Right. And they condemned Democrats for the lack of evidence; the Democrats say, well, we were looking to bring evidence but the Republicans, the White House, blocked it. So off we go here. Monday is a new day for this trial.

We appreciate it. Richard Johnson, thanks so much.

JOHNSON: Thank you.

ALLEN: Next here, music's biggest night may be overshadowed by controversies. The lawsuit stealing the show ahead of the 2020 Grammys

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ALLEN: Well, music's biggest night is just hours away. But it is the controversy surrounding this year's Grammy awards that has the music world buzzing. From allegations of favoritism to the suspension of the Recording Academy's CEO, CNN's Stephanie Elam has more about it for us.

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STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): From Lil Nas X, to Billie Eilish and Lizzo, who has most nominations, Sunday's Grammy awards are all about new stars. LISA FRANCE, CNN ENTERTAINMENT CORRESPONDENT: It very much feels like

the Grammys is saying, look, we get you, fans.

ELAM (voice-over): But love for the new left some superstars out. Taylor Swift has only three nominations, the Jonas Brothers one and Bruce Springsteen was shut out. It has changed the Grammys push for in bringing new blood to the top.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It is my first Grammy.

ELAM (voice-over): But that shift comes with controversy. New Recording Academy CEO Deborah Dugan was suspended just 10 days before the Grammys, accused of bullying in the workplace. She denies the claim and filed an EEOC complaint, claiming she was the victim of sexual harassment and that the Grammy board manipulates the nomination process with what some call secret committees.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just know there are conflicts of interest that taint the system.

ELAM (voice-over): The academy is investigating and called Dugan's timing "curious," given the accusations against her.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It throws the legitimacy of the process into a bold light, OK, because there is not a ton of transparency in terms of how the nominees are decided.

ELAM (voice-over): The Grammys will pay tribute to Nipsey Hussle, the late hip-hop star gunned down last March in Los Angeles. He's also nominated for three awards.

FRANCE: It is just very sad that it had to take his tragic murder for people to discover his music.

ELAM (voice-over): In Hollywood, I'm Stephanie Elam.

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ALLEN: A footnote to this story: because of the controversy, Taylor Swift says she will not attend the Grammys.

That is CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Natalie Allen. "AFRICAN VOICES CHANGEMAKERS" is coming up next after my headlines, right after this.

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ALLEN: Back with our top stories here.

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