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Fed Chairman Says Economic Recovery Depends on Containing Virus; Airbus to Cut 15,000 Jobs Over 12 Months; EU Closed to U.S. Travelers as Borders Open Up; 17 Vaccines in Human Trials Worldwide; St. Louis Man Responds After Pulling Gun on Protesters; Mississippi Getting Rid of Flag with Confederate Emblem; Actor and Director Carl Reiner Dies at 98. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired July 01, 2020 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:30:00]
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ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: The chairman of the Federal Reserve has a warning for U.S. lawmakers. Jerome Powell says the economic recovery will depend largely on how well the U.S. can contain the coronavirus and whether Americans believe it's safe to resume their former lives.
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JEROME PAUL, CHAIRMAN, U.S. FEDERAL RESERVE: The economy has entered an important new phase and done so sooner than expected. While this bounce back in economic activity is welcomed it also presents new challenges, notably the need to keep the virus in check.
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CHURCH: While many Americans may still be wary, investors are feeling optimistic. U.S. stocks just recorded their best quarter in decades rebounding from historic losses in the first three months of the year due to the pandemic.
Well the U.S. Senate has extended a lifeline for small businesses just as it was about to expire. Tuesday's unanimous vote would keep the $660 billion lending plan known as the "Paycheck Protection Program" operating through August 8th. The House must also approve the extension. It's part of an effort to help cash-strapped companies make rent and keep workers employed.
Airbus is cutting thousands of jobs over the next year as it deals with the fallout from the pandemic. After the company's announcement the French finance ministry called the cuts excessive. Anna Stewart has our report.
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ANNA STEWART, CNN REPORTER: Airbus is going to shrink its workforce by over 10 percent and it's going to do so by next summer. The majority of the 15,000 job cuts will be felt in France and Germany. The restructure was certainly expected. As early as April the CEO warned the company was burning through cash. It burnt through $9 billion just in the first quarter and we know that thousands of the staff have been on furlough in recent months. But those furlough schemes cannot run forever. And I think today what we're seeing is a recognition from Airbus that it's not an issue of cash, it's an issue of the outlook for the whole industry. Here's what the CEO had to say.
GUILLAUME FAURY, AIRBUS CEO: This is, of course, a matter of deep regret and something that as a management team we would have preferred to avoid. However, it's our duty to face reality as it stands. We do not take this step lightly. But we have come to the conclusion that we must act now to safeguard Airbus and protect its future.
STEWART: Airbus doesn't expect air traffic to recover until at least 2023 and possibly not until the end of 2025. So a very grim outlook for the industry. It's provoked a very strong reactions from unions and also from the French government. The French government had pledged $17 billion to support the aerospace sector in France, including Airbus. And this is where Airbus has announced job cuts of 5,000. The French finance ministry has told CNN that these job cuts announced by Airbus are excessive and it says the company must minimize forced departures.
In a statement, Airbus has said it will focus as much as it can on voluntary departures, on early retirement schemes and long-term partial employment programs. But of course, this will still come as a huge shock to thousands of workers at Airbus across Europe.
Anna Stewart, CNN, London.
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CHURCH: The European Union will reopen its borders to a list of countries today but the U.S. is not one of them. Diplomats spent days wrangling over who could be let in based on criteria like infection rates and social distancing measures. Fourteen countries have made the cut, as well as China where the virus originated, as long as it reciprocates.
And Fred Pleitgen is live in Brussels. He joins us now. Good to see you, Fred. So rising case numbers and deaths as a result of COVID-19 has not helped the U.S., of course.
[04:35:00]
But the absence of American tourists, that's going to hit some European countries hard. What's the latest on that?
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well you're absolutely right, Rosemary. I think it is going to hit a lot of European countries very hard. We were looking into this yesterday. I mean, American tourists in cities like Paris, and cities like Rome and cities like Lisbon, there's millions of them and they bring in billions of dollars every year. So it's certainly is something that does hurt the European Union a great deal. But at the same time, the European Union and its member states have
been saying the only thing that would hurt it more would be a second wave of coronavirus infections and certainly another lockdown as well. That's something they want to avoid. But clearly at this point in lime, they believe allowing American tourists, American visitors back here on to the continent is something that would simply be a public health risk that they don't want to take.
And if we look at that list, you just mentioned some countries that are on there, like for instance, China, that is quite interesting. But it's also interesting for instance, that the European Union clearly seems to believe and clearly seems to see that countries like, for instance, Rwanda, Serbia and Algeria, which of course are far less wealthy than the United States, have done a more efficient job of dealing with the coronavirus pandemic than the Trump administration has done so far.
And essentially the European Union is saying look, none of this has anything to do with politics, they are saying all they are doing is looking at the numbers and they want to see a significant decrease in novel coronavirus in the countries where people are really coming from.
But if we put up our graphic that we have, we can see that the trajectory of new coronavirus infections in the European Union and in the United States is clearly going in very different directions. And that certainly also is something that the European Union did have to take into account, and there is actually a very good article on our website by our digital folks outlining that graphic and how that means that the European Union really couldn't have come to a different decision. And final thing, Rosemary, the earliest that the European Union could take a look at this again and possibly make a new decision is about two weeks from now.
CHURCH: Yes, it's a wake-up call for the U.S. government to do something about the pandemic in this country. Fred Pleitgen, many thanks to you. Appreciate it.
Well any new coronavirus vaccine will have to work at least 50 percent better than the placebo in preventing infection in people. That is according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. But where do we stand on the search for a vaccine? Well CNN's Elizabeth Cohen brings us up to date on that.
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ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Half a year into the coronavirus outbreak, and the best bet to stop it, a vaccine. 17 teams around the world now testing COVID-19 vaccines in humans according to the World Health Organization. Three supported with U.S. funding. Yet there is no published data on how well these three vaccines are working in human studies so far. Dr. Anthony Fauci says data is coming out any day now.
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: What I've seen thus far looks good. COHEN: Final trials are expected to start this summer with the goal to deliver 300 million doses by January. But the Army general in charge of the government's vaccine effort, dubbed "Operation Warp Speed", offering no assurances.
SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): Those numbers of doses are a possibility and a hope, but you can't make any promises or commitments as to the number or when they'll be actually available?
GENERAL GUSTAVE PERNA, COO, OPERATION WARP SPEED: I'm working on the goal to achieve as you articulated but I cannot promise its end state right now.
COHEN: And there's a potential problem. Dr. Fauci tells CNN it's possible that a COVID-19 vaccine will only be 70 to 75 percent effective. That might not be enough to stop the outbreak, given that a CNN poll shows that about a third of Americans don't intend to get a COVID-19 vaccine.
FAUCI: There is a general anti-science, anti-authority, anti-vaccine feeling among some people in this country and an alarmingly large percentage of people relatively speaking.
COHEN: Six months into the outbreak we do have new treatments. There's Remdesivir, an IV drug that a large study shows cuts down on hospital stays by about four days. Supply has been limited and the U.S. government plans to continue managing shipments of the drug to hospitals until the end of September. The company that makes Remdesivir is working to make a version that can be used outside of hospitals. Steroids also showing success with a study showing they reduced the risk of death by a third for the sickest patients.
ALEX AZAR, U.S. HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: We now have promising therapeutics that are benefiting tens of thousands of American patients and in all likelihood have already saved thousands of lives.
COHEN: Doctors are studying several other treatments, blood transfusions from recovered patients, antibody cocktails, a drug for heartburn, another for gout, to see if any of them will work to help people with COVID-19.
Elizabeth Cohen, CNN reporting.
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CHURCH: And you're watching CNN NEWSROOM.
It was a video seen around the world. A couple pulling weapons on protesters outside their home.
[04:40:00]
Now the man you see here is speaking out. We'll have that in just a moment.
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TOMIKA MILLER, WIDOW OF RAYSHARD BROOKS: My husband did not deserve to die. And I shouldn't have to live in fear while waiting for a man who killed my husband to be tried in court.
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CHURCH: That tearful plea coming from the widow of Rayshard Brooks, asking a judge to deny bail to the man who killed her husband. But a judge did grant former Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe release on $500,000 bond, and he has been released from jail. Rolfe is facing murder charges in the death of Brooks who was fatally shot in Atlanta last month. The judge said the former officer is not a flight risk, and has ordered Rolfe to wear an ankle bracelet, surrender his passport and not carry a weapon. Rayshard Brooks died just two weeks after George Floyd was killed and his death fueled more protests in Atlanta.
A St. Louis homeowner says his life has been ruined since a video of him and his wife pointing guns at protesters went viral. This video captures the moment the couple brandished weapons and yelled profanities at a crowd walking outside of their home. The protesters were on a private street and were allegedly heading to demonstrate outside of the mayor's house. My colleague Chris Cuomo spoke to the man you see , Mark McCloskey and his attorney.
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CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST, CUOMO PRIME TIME: They did not go up your steps. They didn't go to your house. They are didn't touch you. They try to enter your home. They didn't try to do anything to your kids. But you say you were assaulted. You're using the civil definition of that which is that you had the apprehension that something bad was going to happen to you. But nothing did.
[04:45:00]
But to call it terrorism when people are there protesting how the community is treated by the police is a little bit of reverse psychology at a minimum, is it not?
MARK MCCLOSKEY, ST. LOUIS RESIDENT: No, you're absolutely wrong. The reason why they did not get up my steps was that my wife and I were there with weapons to keep them off our steps. When we confront --
CUOMO: How do you know?
MCCLOSKEY: Because they were coming at us until I displayed the weapon and that stopped them. I came out --
CUOMO: I'm sure a house like that has cameras. Do you have video of them coming up the steps and being in your house?
MCCLOSKEY: I'm not going discuss the level of my private security on national television.
CUOMO: Oh, but do you have proof of them actually approaching your house.
ALBERT WATKINS, MARK MCCLOSKEY'S ATTORNEY: You know, Chris, this is not a Black Lives Matter movement issue. This is a matter of not just one discussion that we have to have. You said we have to have this discussion. We do. And every challenge by an old man like me is to listen and hear the message. The message of Black Lives Matter.
What the second part of this discussion is and it's not mutually exclusive is the rights, constitutional rights of each and every citizen in this land that can't be compromised without recognizing that the message of Black Lives Matter will cease to have any meeting at all.
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CHURCH: And St. Louis police tells CNN they are investigating.
Mississippi's Republican governor signed a bill on Tuesday to remove the confederate emblem from the state flag. Mississippi's flag was the last to feature that emblem. Calls for racial justice have forced the removal of a number of controversial symbols across the country. So why are Confederate statues still up on Capitol Hill? Here's Sunlan Surfaty with that report.
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SUNLAN SURFATY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): With symbols of the nation's painful past coming down across the country under the dome of one of the most revered buildings in the nation still sit nearly two dozen tributes to Confederate soldiers, officials, and known racists.
Throughout the capitol complex of the 100 statues sent by states, 12 percent of them glorify the confederacy honoring the likes of Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, many wearing their Confederate uniforms. The belt buckle of this general marked with CSA for Confederate States of America. His statue stands right next to the office For House whip Jim Clyburn, who participated in the civil rights movement as a young man.
But it's not only the statues. Two rooms on Capitol Hill are named in honor of former Senators Thurmond and Robert Byrd both former segregationist. And there's a whole Senate office building name for former Senator Richard Russell whose legislative legacy is marked with white supremacy. In the old Senate chamber there's a bust of Chief Justice Robert Brooke Taney. The man who wrote the majority opinion in the Dred Scott case which declared that African-Americans could not be citizens of the U.S. There have been efforts to address these questionable relics before. Some have been rearranged, moved to less prominent places on Capitol Hill.
REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), U.S. HOUSE SPEAKER: I could move things around. I couldn't actually take them out. That requires something else.
SURFATY: But there is a renewed focus in the wake of the national uprising against systemic racism pushing to get them out altogether.
SEN. COREY BOOKER (D-NJ): We cannot separate the Confederate statues from this history and legacy of white supremacy in this country.
SURFATY: Speaker Pelosi this month had paintings of four former speakers in the house who served in the confederacy taken down. But when it comes to removing the statues her hands are nearly tied. It's up to the states to choose which two statutes they want to send to Capitol Hill.
PELOSI: Can you imagine Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stevens, treason, they committed treason against the United States of America and their statues are still here because their states put them here.
SURFATY: Several states had already been making plans to swap out their statues before this moment. Like Arkansas pulling their controversial statues, swapping them out soon for country singer Johnny Cash and civil rights leader Daisy Bates. Replacing the rest of the statues, not to mention the other questionable displays would take a hefty legislation effort.
SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): The make that decision.
SURFATY: But with many Republicans choosing to look the other way --
MCCONNELL: And what I do think is clearly a bridge too far. Is this nonsense that we need to air brush the capital and scrub out everybody from years ago who had any connection to slavery.
[04:50:00]
SURFATY: There is little chance that these relics could be a thing of history on Capitol Hill.
Sunlan Surfaty, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Well tributes are pouring in after the passing of a legendary Hollywood comedian. Up next, we will take a look at the legacy of Carl Reiner.
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CHURCH: Legendary comedian Carl Reiner died Monday at the age of 98. The Emmy winning actor, screenwriter and director was the creator of "The Dick Van Dyke Show." Jeanne Moos has more on his legacy.
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JEANNE MOOS, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: At the image of 98 a guy who loved to making a joke about obits is now being remembered in them. CALL REINER, ACTOR, COMEDIAN AND DIRECTOR: I pick up my newspaper,
get the obituary section and see if I'm listed. If I'm not I have my breakfast.
MOOS: His son Rob Reiner, tweeted, my heart is hurting. He was my guiding light. Guided in vintage routines.
Like the 2,000-year-old man asking Mel Brooks to explain the origin of the word cheese.
MEL BROOKS, COMEDIAN: And he sniffed it and went cheese.
[04:55:00]
MOOS: Reiner became a big cheese after creating an starring in a sitcom flop. His agent told him --
Reiner: We'll get a better after to play you.
MOOS: Dick Van Dyke became the star but Reiner ran the show while playing a smaller role. Hundred percent pure mensch is now Dick Van Dyke remembered Reiner.
He directed movies like "Oh, God" with George Burns and "The Jerk" with Steve Martin.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Inspiration to jerks everywhere.
MOOS: Martin tweeted, good-bye to my greatest mentor.
STEVE MARTIN, COMEDIAN, AUTHOR, ACTOR: He was like a father to me. Although I wouldn't let him bathe me like he wanted to.
MOOS: Reiner was bathed in applause when he ran off with the Mark Twain prize for humor.
REINER: When I was standing backstage, I did the same thing that I did when I was 17 years old making my first stage appearance, I checked my fly.
MOOS: When he wasn't being funny, he was political. Taking a knee, donning a Black Lives Matter tee and scorching President Trump.
REINER: Probably the worst President that any country has ever had.
MOOS: He hoped to see the President voted out of office.
Reiner: My personal goal will to be stick around until 2020.
MOOS: Reiner missed that marker but left his mark. His wife of nearly 65 years will be remembered as a deli customer in Rob Reiner's movie "When Harry Met Sally."
ESTELLE REINER, ROB REINER'S WIFE: I'll have what she's having.
MOOS: Now both husband and wife are gone when it comes to a life well lived, we'll have what he seemed to be having.
Jeanne Moos, CNN.
REINER: I'll have what you're having, mama.
MOOS: New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: It's a lovely tribute there.
And thank you so much for your company. I'm Rosemary Church. "EARLY START" is up next. Have a great day.
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