Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Cruise Ship Held Off California After Coronavirus Death; Airlines Could Take $113 Billion Hit As Coronavirus Slams The Industry; Administration's Apparent Failure To Distribute Enough Kits For One Million Tests By The End Of This Week. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired March 05, 2020 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Seventy-nine cases as we begin this broadcast. In California, another cruise ship is not being allowed to dock so that Federal health officials can screen the people on board.

A man who traveled on that ship's previous voyage and just died from the virus marking California his first death and the nation's 11th.

Meantime, over in New York, officials are scrambling to trace the contacts of the now 22 people who are infected with coronavirus. At least 57 schools across the country are mandating that parents keep their kids home from school, and around the world rapidly spreading illness is keeping nearly 300 million kids away from school.

Amazon is telling workers in its Seattle area business that it is best to work from home until the end of the month, and some major airlines are now cutting back their domestic flights.

And the Senate is right now voting on a multibillion dollar spending bill aimed at fighting the outbreak. It is expected to pass. It will then of course, go on to the White House. But all of this is happening is the administration falls short of its goal of distributing enough kits by the end of the week to conduct a million tests.

Plus, the President is downplaying the mortality rate of the coronavirus, and we will get you more on that in just a moment. But first, let's talk about this Coast Guard helicopter delivering test kits to the Grand Princess cruise ship off the coast of California, about a hundred passengers are expected to be tested.

So let's go straight to Dan Simon in San Francisco where this new ship was supposed to dock and Dan, I know you've been talking, you've been texting with some folks on board. What are they saying you?

DAN SIMON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, hi, Brooke. This is not the way you want to end your two-week vacation sailing to the Hawaiian Islands.

Right now, this cruise ship is parked off the coast of San Francisco awaiting the helicopter to drop these coronavirus test kits. This is going to be a memorable vacation, but maybe not for all the

right reasons. I can tell you that people are starting to feel anxious. They don't know how long they're going to remain on that ship. They're wondering if this is going to be some type of extended quarantine situation.

For the record, this is a ship that left San Francisco on February 21st headed to the Hawaiian Islands. It was supposed to come back on Saturday, and then they decided to come back a little early. But it's not going to come back to shore, it is going to remain offshore until authorities know what they're dealing with.

I want you listen now to one passenger who explained what the situation is like on board. Take a listen.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

SHARON LANE-SIMON, GRAND PRINCESS CRUISE SHIP PASSENGER: Everybody's just chatting about, you know, what's going to be happening. They've cancelled lots of shows and things because they don't want a lot of people being in the theater together.

Spirits on board are starting to get quite low, you know, people are worried about what's happening so at the end of the day, they've just got to deal with it and get on with it.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

SIMON: So here's the thing. If some of these testing kits come back positive, nobody really knows what is going to happen next. Will this be some type of mass quarantine situation like what we saw in Japan with its sister ship? That we do not know.

What we can tell you, Brooke, is that at least three people who were on the previous voyage did test positive for the coronavirus. One person died and then another 60 people who were on that previous voyage, they are currently on this ship and they are now isolated to the rooms they cannot leave -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: We will be watching them very carefully. I'm sure they're wondering what's going to happen -- Dan, thank you very much-- for the folks on board that cruise ship.

How about in the skies, a leading airline industry group says that the coronavirus outbreak is crippling the airline's financial future. In fact, insiders say the airline business could take a multibillion dollar hit in lost revenues.

Several U.S. airlines including United and JetBlue have already cut back on domestic and international routes. Analysts say if the outbreak is not contained, those losses will only skyrocket and the fear is so great that U.S. airline executives asked the White House not to discourage commercial air travel.

Cristina Alesci is our CNN business and politics correspondent at Newark International Airport there in New Jersey. And so what kind of losses are we talking? What areas of, you know, the airline industry would be impacted hardest?

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN BUSINESS POLITICS AND BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: So industry -- that industry trade group says it is estimating about $113 billion in potential loss ticket sale revenue. And to answer your question, Brooke that is for right now predominantly focused on European and Asian carriers.

But today is the first day we are talking about U.S. domestic carriers and how they are grappling with this crisis as it unfolds here in the U.S.

United and JetBlue became the two U.S. airlines that announced a pullback in domestic flights for the first time during this crisis.

United is saying that's going to reduce flights by 10 percent domestically, JetBlue five percent decline in domestic flights.

Now, both of these changes taking place in April. This is the month that President Trump suggested that the crisis might be over by. Clearly, airlines not feel that way and that's why, as you noted, the CEOs of these companies asked the administration not to discourage people from traveling.

Look, this is all happening because consumers are doing what's called nesting. They are staying home because they are concerned, if they go out, if they travel, it could lead to a higher risk of infection.

And we saw this during 9/11 when consumers basically pulled back and this is going to play out in other sectors of the consumer economy, not just travel, but potentially restaurants, hotels, other segments of the retail and consumer landscape could change over the next few weeks -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: What about the markets? I mean, it's been up and down and a lot of down. Markets rally yesterday, but back in the red today down about a thousand points, what's going on?

ALESCI: Well, look investors are digesting a huge amount of information yesterday -- late yesterday, California declared a state of emergency. Today, United and JetBlue are pulling back on flights.

And as the hours go by, investors are watching the number of cases go up because more people are being tested. But at the end of the day, we're going to see volatility continue for the foreseeable future until investors really understand what's happening here.

Look, even the airlines don't know how this is going to play out. So until they get some clarity, and until they have faith that, you know, all the government officials are handling this in the appropriate way that investors are going to keep, you know, going in and out of the market. And we're going to continue seeing these wild swings every day -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Cristina, thank you. And I mentioned off the top about those coronavirus tests, now to the administration's apparent failure to distribute enough kits for one million tests by the end of this week. So let's go straight to CNN senior congressional correspondent, Manu

Raju. Manu, what happened?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, behind closed doors, there was much discussion about this at the House, a briefing that occurred earlier today and what members came out saying was that afterwards, what was made clear to them is that the actual the number of people that will actually be covered by the end of this week are 75,000 people and 400,000 people by the end of next week.

Now, what they're saying is that there will be a million tests distributed, but since people need to be tested more than one time to determine whether or not they've actually contracted the coronavirus, that those individuals will only amount to about 400,000 indicating, this is not widespread in any way if people want to get tested all across the country. There'll be a fraction of the people who could actually get tested.

And this led according to one Congressman who I spoke to, ample frustration among the members.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. RAUL RUIZ (D-CA): Let this be a lesson learned. You have to have those tests early and you have to deploy them early and you have to educate the American people early and you have to not dismiss this or be contradictory. You have to be honest, straightforward and start preparing the people, and not calling it a hoax.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: Now, Congress is still moving through passing a sweeping spending package, $8.3 billion, just passing the Senate right now going to the President's desk.

And that effort, both Democrats and Republicans say -- they hope could it lead to more testing that would occur in the coming weeks and months. But the criticism that members are leveling right now, Brooke, is why weren't those developed earlier particularly when China and the Chinese government was acknowledging that this virus had infected the people -- the Chinese people -- why was the United States ahead of it? That's a criticism that we're hearing right now.

But at the moment, what they're saying is that the by 400,000 people will be -- could get the test by next week, not a million as a lot of people the administration initially suggested -- Brooke.

BALDWIN: Manu Raju. Thank you and on all of this coronavirus, I know you have questions. So we'll answers.

Just a programming note for you, Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta will be hosting the CNN Global Town Hall. We're calling it "Coronavirus: Facts and Fears." So please tune in tonight. It will be live at 10:00 Eastern and Pacific only here on CNN.

Breaking news today in the 2020 race, Senator Elizabeth Warren officially drops out. What she has just said about gender, her mistakes and the big endorsement question.

Plus, President Trump suggests that Senator Chuck Schumer should be arrested for his verbal attacks on conservative Supreme Court Justices. We are going to talk about that.

And why is President Trump disputing the experts on critical coronavirus information based on his own -- and I'm using his word -- hunch.

You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:14:01]

BALDWIN: Now to the 2020 presidential race, Senator Elizabeth Warren is officially out. Warren making the emotional announcement outside of her home just a short while ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: One of the hardest parts of this is all those made promises, and all those little girls who are going to have to wait four more years. That's going to be hard.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: With Senator Warren bowing out, it is now a one on one battle between Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden, with results from California still trickling in. Joe Biden holds on to a slight lead over Bernie Sanders.

So let's go straight to CNN's chief political correspondent, Dana Bash, and so Dana, you know, here she goes, she was the first major Democratic candidate to step into the 2020 race, and so since Tuesday, the question hasn't been, you know, will she drop out but when and who will she endorse? And we still don't know the answer to that.

Why do you think she's waiting?

[14:15:03]

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's a great question. You know, it seems as though from our reporting she's torn, and she's also getting conflicting advice from people who are close to her.

But look, this is going to maybe sound painfully obvious, but she has three options. One is to endorse Joe Biden, one is to endorse Bernie Sanders, and the other is to do nothing, which could be a viable option.

There's no rule that says somebody dropping out has to endorse another candidate. I mean, Kamala Harris hasn't endorsed anyone yet. Cory Booker has endorsed anyone yet. And you know, the speed with which we saw the others is more the rarity than is more typical. But when it comes to the state of the race, it seems to be pretty

clear that the campaign see her voters as the majority than not Bernie Sanders voters, and that might matter or not matter, depending on where she says that she wants her voters to go.

I can tell you that both campaigns obviously want her endorsement. The Biden campaign very much would like it for all the reasons that we saw on Tuesday how much momentum it helped give him.

BALDWIN: Big picture. Let's just think about where we all were eight months ago. Guys, throw the picture up.

This was a photos, it was tweet from Mina Harris. This is Kamala Harris's niece, and so she's just reminding us about all of the excitement around you know, the history of six women made, running for President, you see most of them there.

Why do you think Elizabeth Warren or any of these ladies just didn't fare better?

BASH: I'm sure there will be books and books and books written about it. I want to -- I want to believe that it has nothing to do with their gender, that their gender was, you know, secondary to the kind of candidate that that they have been.

But, you know, just look at what Elizabeth Warren said or didn't say when asked about that question this afternoon. She said -- she gave the perfect answer for a woman, which is if I complain about it, I'm a complainer. If I don't complain about it, women are like, what planet are you living on? But the fact that she said, there's more to come is noteworthy.

The one thing that I will say and I think we've talked about this before, Brooke, and it bears repeating, that I have been happy about as somebody who has covered so many campaigns, and you know, in recent times with more and more women is that nobody care what they wore.

I mean, you remember? Hillary Clinton, it was all about the pantsuits. People were --

BALDWIN: We're moving forward slowly, but surely, aren't we?

BASH: I mean, has anybody ever talked about, you know, their outfits and that's a good thing because nobody ever talks about men's outfit.

BALDWIN: Yes. Preach, sister. Let's, let's listen to what the senator had to say about her place in the party.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WARREN: I was told at the beginning of this whole undertaking that there are two lanes, a progressive lane that Bernie Sanders is the incumbent for and a moderate way that Joe Biden is the incumbent for, and there's no room for anyone else in this.

I felt that wasn't right. (END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, a Sanders surrogate suggested in a tweet, Warren's presence in the race was stopping progressives from being able to overtake the moderate wing of the party. Do you think, Dana, that she was right? Or is that underestimating the nuances of a Warren supporter?

BASH: So many nuances. It's completely underestimating. I mean, just anecdotally, I'm sure you have had the same experiences talking to people throughout this process and before the voting even began in Iowa. How many people I met who said that they're an Elizabeth Warren voter, or a Joe Biden voter; an Elizabeth Warren voter or a Pete Buttigieg voter.

There was -- there's so many factors that go into the complexity of who a voter likes as a candidate and it isn't a clear lane.

Having said that, you know, the belief among many people who look at the data on this is that not all Elizabeth Warren voters are Bernie Sanders voters, but they're more likely to go with him than Joe Biden.

But it is not -- it is absolutely not clear cut at all, but I will also tell you that those kinds of tweets are the reason that you know, that people who really like Elizabeth Warren and were angry about the way that they felt that she was treated by people around Bernie Sanders, pointing to those kinds of -- those as examples.

BALDWIN: Yes. All right. Well, everyone wait to see if and when to your point, she endorses, maybe she holds out. There's no rule she has to just yet -- Dana Bash.

BASH: That's right.

BALDWIN: You are the best. Thank you very much.

BASH: You, too. Thanks, Brooke.

BALDWIN: The battle over the future of the Supreme Court getting very ugly. Senator Chuck Schumer attacking two conservative justices and now President Trump is suggesting he should be arrested.

Plus as coronavirus cases and deaths rise in the U.S., we will talk live to someone who was inside a simulation of a global pandemic last year. Lessons learned? What happened? That's coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:24:54]

BALDWIN: Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer under fire right now after he said this.

[14:25:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): I want to tell you Gorsuch, I want to tell

you, Kavanaugh, you have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price.

You won't know what hit you if you go forward with these awful decisions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts took offense calling Senator Schumer's comments dangerous.

The Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stood on the Senate floor this morning, calling Schumer's words "astonishingly reckless and irresponsible." And then President Trump took to Twitter writing this, "This is a direct and dangerous threat to the U.S. Supreme Court by Schumer. If a Republican did this, he or she would be arrested or impeached. Serious action must be taken now."

So let's get right into it with CNN legal analyst, Elie Honig and CNN contributor, Irin Carmon. So she also wrote the bestseller on the Supreme Court Justice, "Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg." So Irin and Elie, thank you for being here.

And let's just begin first to you, when you first heard what Senator Schumer said.

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. First of all, potentially dangerous and definitely inappropriate for Chuck Schumer to say what he said.

His office tried to walk it back, but not really. They just tried to change what he said and said, well, he is really talking about the electoral consequences to the Republicans who put him on the bench.

But that's simply not what he said. We just saw the clip. He said, Gorsuch, he said, Kavanaugh, he said, you know, you haven't -- you'll pay the price.

By the way, almost identical to what Donald Trump said about Adam Schiff a couple of months ago, which was he has not paid the price yet. So both of those things are irresponsible.

I don't know how, by the way, Mitch McConnell can condemn one, but not the other. They're both on equal footing.

BALDWIN: We're going to come back to that point in just a second. But to you, covering the Supreme Court, what do you make of the fact that Chief Justice John Roberts did speak up on this?

IRIN CARMON, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, it's really interesting to see when it is that the Chief Justice chooses to use his megaphone because he very rarely makes these kinds of public statements.

He did not speak for example, last week, when Trump said that Sotomayor and Ginsburg should recuse themselves. However, it was different. Trump did not use threatening language.

That said, you know, Trump has said that a judge cannot rule fairly because of his Latino ethnicity. He has said that Justice Ginsburg should resign, this was during the campaign because her mind was shot.

That said, you know, two wrongs do not make a right.

BALDWIN: You can understand why and I appreciate you pointing out the nuance. But why people are saying, well, how is it okay for you to jump in and help your conservative colleagues today and not to those to the liberal justices.

CARMON: And you know, Brett Kavanaugh in his confirmation hearings used strikingly similar language to the extent that maybe Chuck Schumer with intentionally calling back to reaping the whirlwind. That's something that Brett Kavanaugh said in highly political rant during his confirmation hearings.

But again, I do think that it behooves Chuck Schumer, particularly on a key day where a major abortion case requires getting John Roberts' vote to determine the outcome.

It's not a good day to antagonize ...

BALDWIN: Using that language.

CARMON: ... the Chief Justice when he has such a finely tuned sense of propriety and appearances and not a good time to make it seem like the Democrats are joining Republicans in a race to the bottom in politicizing the courts.

BALDWIN: What do you think?

HONIG: Yes. And to Irin's point about Chief Justice Roberts and the politicization of the court, two very important things are happening right now in the Supreme Court.

One, we are seeing the ideological gap widen. You have four staunch liberals. You have four staunch conservatives now aided by Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, and now the swing vote is Chief Justice Roberts, who may not be all that much of a swing vote.

CARMON: Yes.

HONIG: He's been mostly conservative most of his career. The other thing is, we have a historic monumental docket ahead. I mean, the fourth is the biggest abortion case we've seen in years, gun rights, equal rights for LGBTQ people, DACA - the DREAMers, the Trump taxes, and just a few days ago, we learned that the Supreme Court will soon be ruling on Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act.

This is monumental stuff, and I think Chief Justice Roberts does not want to go down in history as the Chief Justice under whom the court splintered ideologically.

BALDWIN: Just because -- last question -- you wrote the book on her and I read your piece in the "Time 100" today, what do you think Justice RBG is thinking?

CARMON: Well, we're just about a week and a half from Justice Ginsburg's 87th birthday, and I think she is thinking that she's going to try to keep the legitimacy of the court together.

But how many more years can she continue to serve? She's committed to staying on there as long as she can go with full steam. She's got a remarkable resilience.

But we are looking forward to an election that's going to determine the course of the court and she knows that and everybody who is going to vote, you know that as well.

BALDWIN: Irin, thank you. Elie, thank you -- for all things SCOTUS.

Now to this for the first time, the State of Nevada is announcing a case of coronavirus, so next I'll speak with a man who witnessed a simulation of a global pandemic. What he says we can all learn from it.

Also ahead, the President is disputing health experts on just how deadly this virus actually is. Why is he doing this? Because he says he has a hunch. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:30:00]

END