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Forty Percent of Hotel Workers Unemployed Due to COVID-19 Closures; Joe Biden Nominates Janet Yellen as Treasury Secretary; Russian Vaccine Claims 95 Percent Efficacy. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired November 24, 2020 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Jesus Morales looks forward to the bustle of the holidays at Chicago's historic Drake Hotel. Customer demands and long hours are tiring but financially rewarding.

JESUS MORALES, FURLOUGHED SERVER: Last year, I was making good money but it's gone. I don't know where I'm going back to work.

YURKEVICH (voice-over): This year, there's no holiday bonus. Morales worked here for 33 years, but was furloughed in March.

The Drake is one of Chicago's top hotels, where highly trained employees serve an elite clientele. But this year there are very few of both.

MORALES: My savings is gone, my under-the-pillow money is gone.

YURKEVICH (voice-over): The hotel industry has lost more than 650,000 jobs during the pandemic. Four in 10 hotel workers, like Morales, are still out of work. These last few months have been taxing emotionally and financially. His daughter is recovering from an accident, and his wife needs daily medication.

MORALES: I don't have health insurance right now. My insurance ran out like a month ago. To get my insurance, it costs about $1,200 a month and there's just no way I can pay that.

YURKEVICH (voice-over): In New York, iconic hotels are shutting their doors. The Plaza is temporarily closed, the Roosevelt permanently and the Fitzpatrick Grand Central hotel is running at 15 percent occupancy. Its sister hotel is shuttered.

YURKEVICH: What is it like to be sitting in your closed hotel right now?

JOHN FITZPATRICK, OWNER, FITZPATRICK HOTELS NORTH AMERICA: It's fairly eerie. It is costing a lot of money to stay closed, and every month it's just drain, drain, drain. It's just in your blood as a hotelier, you never close your front door. YURKEVICH (voice-over): Just 25 of John Fitzpatrick's 175 employees

are working. Bilal Yayla was recently called back to bartend, but he says without regular tips his income has dropped by more than 50 percent.

BILAL YAYLA, BARTENDER, FITZPATRICK GRAND CENTRAL HOTEL: I was out of work for almost three months, also we lost our insurance. And I have two babies at home.

YURKEVICH (voice-over): In Miami, Jenny Brody has won awards as an elite concierge at the St. Regis Bal Harbour. But she and her husband were both furloughed from their hotel jobs in March. He found a temporary job in October, she's still looking.

JENNY BRODY, FURLOUGHED CONCIERGE: You just kind of go into panic mode, like, did we save enough for this rainy day, so to speak? But really, 2020 has become a rainy year.

YURKEVICH (voice-over): At the end of this year, dozens of federal protections for those out of work expire. For millions of Americans like Morales, it's not the New Year he was expecting.

MORALES: Since I was 17, I've been working at least two jobs until now. So I've been paying taxes for 46 years, trying to be the best citizen of the United States as you can. And it's just tough, it's just frustrated that the government is not doing much for the hardworking people.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

YURKEVICH: Now, the hotels workers that we spoke to say that they are hopeful on news of a potential vaccine, but they know that their industry is not going to come back like flipping on a light switch. People are going to have to get the vaccine, and then people are going to have to feel comfortable traveling again. That is why this federal stimulus is so critical for them.

And, Jim and Poppy, listen to this number. The American Hotel and Lodging Association is reporting that two out of three hotels say they will close if they do not get more federal aid. And just imagine all of those jobs that will go with them if that happens -- Jim and Poppy.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: Yes, well this is on Congress' shoulders because they could have acted on this yesterday. Vanessa, thank you.

[10:33:49]

President-elect Joe Biden, expected to roll out key cabinet positions in his administration. More of them coming up, what it says about his plans for American foreign policy.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: We've got some of the big names, the rollout of nominees for key foreign policy positions. President-elect Joe Biden is presenting a framework for how he will challenge -- tackle, I should say, the challenges facing he U.S. and our allies.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, lots of signals, you might say, in these appointments. Joining us now to discuss, Ambassador Richard Haass, president of the Council of Foreign Relations, author of "The World: A Brief Introduction," and formerly a senior position in the George W. Bush administration. Ambassador, always good to have you on.

RICHARD HAASS, PRESIDENT, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS: Good to be with you.

SCIUTTO: All right, so when you look at this list, nominees includes a lot of candidates who have already held Senate-confirmed positions in previous administrations. Can't really describe any of them as radicals. I wonder if strategically you see President-elect Biden looking to avoid early fights with a Senate that could be controlled by the GOP?

HAASS: That's clearly one thing. I don't see anyone who has a confirmation issue unless there's something we don't know. But more important, let's assume they all get through. This is not a team of rivals, this is a team of colleagues, it's a team of veterans, it's a team of safe hands.

And this administration is going to inherit a world -- to use one of my favorite words -- of considerable disarray, in part for historic reasons, in part because of what Mr. Trump did. So the idea that you have some capable, safe hands who can get along with one another sounds pretty good to me.

[10:40:06]

HARLOW: You wrote in your foreign policy piece just a little bit over a week ago about the inescapable fact that presidents only have a limited amount of time to do really big things, especially in their first term. So on the foreign policy front, what is the really big number-one thing that Joe Biden needs to do?

HAASS: It's not something we think of as foreign policy, but it's get on top of COVID. Unless we do that, we're not going to have the bandwidth or the resources to get anything else done here at home or in the world, plus we won't be able to project an image of competence in the world. So that really is number one.

But at the same time, we've obviously got to begin the process of repairing our alliances, which have been badly damaged; we should re- enter some of those arrangements and institutions that we left. All we did was forfeit our influence.

SCIUTTO: So much of the Trump administration approach was reversing Obama-era decisions: getting out of the Iran nuclear deal, right? Killing TPP, trade deal in Asia; getting out of the climate accord. I wonder, do you see President-elect Biden reversing course again, getting back in the Iran nuclear deal, trying to resurrect something along the lines of a TPP and the approach to climate change, too?

HAASS: Well certainly on climate change. I don't know if we'll go back into the Iran deal or simply revive some type of diplomacy. I would simply make the point that reversing a lot of what Mr. Trump did is necessary but not sufficient. We can't go back, the world has moved on.

And I think the real challenge for the Biden administration will be once things are settled down, once the United States -- if you will -- is back on the field, what do we do about climate or Iran or North Korea? Because simply re-entering the existing agreements or the old agreements is not enough. They were inadequate, they are inadequate. The World Health Organization was proven to be inadequate. So we've got to move the ball forward, we can't simply go back to where things were.

HARLOW: When it comes to Tony Blinken, his pick for secretary of state, and lessons learned when he was key in the Obama administration, here is what Tony Blinken said just in May about Syria.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTONY BLINKEN, FORMER DEPUTY SECRETARY OF STATE: The last administration has to acknowledge that we failed. Not for want of trying, but we failed. We failed to prevent horrific loss of life, and it's something that I will take with me for the rest of my days.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Saying "We failed," and he'll take it with him for the rest of his days? What is the lesson learned there, whether it be about doing what you say -- as Bill Daly just said to us -- or when (ph) you draw a red line and it's crossed you have to act? Do you think that the Biden team has learned a lot from that?

HAASS: Well first of all, can I just say how refreshing it is to hear a senior official talk about mistakes they've made and learn from them, a degree of humility, shall we say --

HARLOW: That's a really good point.

HAASS: -- has been missing in Washington? I mean, it's just -- it's nice to see again.

Look, I think one obvious thing is, yes, you've got to -- when you say things, you've got to be prepared to back them up. But the bigger question, I think, that's out there is what ought to be the ambitions of the United States in the Middle East and other places. In particular, when it comes to trying to remake these other societies. What are the limits to what we can and should do? I think that's the big lesson that has to be learned after Iraq --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HAASS: -- given things like Syria, given Libya, given Yemen.

SCIUTTO: China is one place where there's largely bipartisan agreement now, right? That this relationship is, at a minimum, competitive, right? And this hope of China somehow changing -- unlikely. How do you expect Joe Biden to approach China or are we going to be vaguely similar to where we were with Trump?

HAASS: I think there is a bipartisan consensus up to a point, that China is a problem, that integration of China hasn't brought about a more mellow, more open country. I think the biggest difference might be that rather than a unilateral approach, you see a much more collective approach, working with allies vis-a-vis China.

I don't think you'll see the same emphasis that you saw with Mike Pompeo on regime change, getting rid of the Communist Party. Instead, it's going to be let's narrow our areas of disagreement on trade, let's improve Chinese behavior, let's push back a bit on Taiwan and the South China Sea. Also much more critical, I would think, on human rights and on the political trajectory of China, for example Hong Kong.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Always good to have you, Ambassador Haass, thank you. And Happy Thanksgiving, enjoy.

HAASS: And to you, have a good and safe holiday.

HARLOW: Thank you.

Well, if confirmed, Janet Yellen will become America's first female Treasury secretary. It's a job that has been routinely held only by white men --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: -- for more than 230 years. She would be filling a critical position at a critical time, particularly for women and for working mothers. The economic downturn that has accompanied this pandemic has been called a "she-session." In August and September alone, 80 percent of employees who stopped working were women. The situation, I should note, even more dire on the unemployment front for women of color.

[10:45:14]

SCIUTTO: CNN politics and business correspondent Cristina Alesci joins us now. Cristina, Yellen, she'll bring her experience as a former Fed chair up to 2018 -- and of course as a mother -- to this position. How significant is that background?

CRISTINA ALESCI, CNN POLITICS AND BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It's really groundbreaking, Jim, if you think about it. Not only will she become the first woman Treasury secretary, but she will become the first woman to have held -- if confirmed, of course -- three very powerful economic policymaking positions in the U.S. government.

She was Federal Reserve chair under Obama from 2014 to 2018; she was also one of Clinton's -- actually Clinton's chief economic policy adviser back in 1997 through 1999. And for women, they will have someone advocating for them at a time when they need it the most. And we know that she is passionate about helping women and equality

because this is something that she spoke about very publicly as Federal Reserve chair back in 2015. She was actually in front of Congress, testifying in front of the Hill, and she took some heat from Republican lawmakers back then.

Specifically Mick Mulvaney, who was one of Trump's former White House chiefs of staff. And he was a Republican lawmaker back then, and he criticized her for talking about inequality and sticking her nose where it didn't belong. Whereas now, it's very different. We have Powell, who's a current Fed chair, speaking about issues of inequality all the time he speaks.

HARLOW: I remember that moment so well and it's so appropriate to bring up now in this moment, to deal with that inequality that has only been exacerbated by this pandemic. How, though, Cristina, can she actually get more done with Mitch McConnell on stimulus than even Treasury Secretary Mnuchin's been able to?

ALESCI: I think that's a great question, Poppy. But we've already seen, just in the response to her nomination, the two sides come together. Elizabeth Warren is tweeting, you know, glowingly about her, and then Pat Toomey just told one of our colleagues, you know, despite that -- their differences at times, that he thinks that she's a strong pick.

So you're seeing, you know, both sides kind of say positive things about her. That doesn't mean it's going to be easy. Of course Republicans and Democrats still remain very far apart on the topline number when it comes to a stimulus deal so she's going to have to do some real work there. But there are positive signs that she could bring the two together.

SCIUTTO: YEs. Even if those Georgia seats go to Republicans in the Senate, you would only need a few Republican votes to come over for confirmation. Anyway, lots to come down the line. Cristina Alesci, thanks very much.

Well, Russia claims that its coronavirus vaccine could be very effective. They say it will be cheap too.

[10:48:07]

HARLOW: Plus, it's a place where all are welcome: another powerful season of "THIS IS LIFE WITH LISA LING." It premiers with back-to-back episodes, Sunday night, 9:00 Eastern, right here on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Welcome back. All right, so we're getting new information, new data on Russia's vaccine.

SCIUTTO: The country is saying a vaccine it calls Sputnik V is at least 95 percent effective -- the calculations, based on nearly 19,000 volunteers who received both a first and second doses of the vaccine or a placebo in trials. Matthew Chance in Moscow with more. Matthew, what do we know about this data? Because even, you know, with Pfizer and Moderna, other drug companies, doctors have wanted to see the data so they could make their judgment. Have outsiders been able to look at this?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: No, they haven't. I think we're in a similar situation, in fact, when it comes to the other drug companies that have got their vaccine candidates as well in the sense that this is interim data, it hasn't been published yet, it hasn't been independently verified, it hasn't been peer reviewed.

So I'm assured by the Russians that the publication of this latest data is going to be early December, although in the past it's my experience that that deadline sometimes slips with them, although they have published in the past in prominent, you know, medical journals, particularly "The Lancet." So we will see it eventually so there'll be a proper discussion of what the Russians have actually achieved.

But on the face of it, those results are right up there with Pfizer and Moderna and AstraZeneca. They're saying that, you know, 28 days after the first dose of the Russian vaccine -- called Sputnik V -- was administered, you're seeing efficacy of 91.4 percent, which is pretty good. If you wait 42 days, they're saying it's over 95 percent.

And so yes. I mean, look, it's pretty encouraging data. That adds to all the other encouraging information we've been getting over the past couple of weeks.

I mean, on the side, they're also issuing pricing information about this Russian vaccine as well. They're obviously aiming at the cheaper end of the spectrum of vaccines that are going to be out there, available to the world, you know, shortly. They're saying it's going to be less than $10 a dose, which is not as cheap as AstraZeneca but it way undercuts, you know, Pfizer and Moderna.

And you know, they're going to be selling this vaccine not just in Russia but in South America, in Africa, in the Middle East, you know, in Asia, you know, a lot of countries have already signed up for tens of millions of doses of this Russian vaccine -- Jim, Poppy, back to you.

HARLOW: We hope that it's incredibly effective, and being affordable is very important for folks. Matthew Chance, you've been great at keeping us posted on this all the way through the development. Keep us posted in the future, thanks so much to you.

[10:55:08]

And thanks to all of you for joining us. We'll see you tomorrow morning, I'm Poppy Harlow.

SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto. NEWSROOM with Kate Bolduan will start right after a short break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [11:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR, NEWSROOM: Hello everyone, I'm Kate Bolduan. Thank you so much for joining us this hour.