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Shutdown Looms As Leaders Struggle To Reach Stimulus Deal; Feds Tell Some States To Expect Fewer Pfizer Vaccine Doses Next Week; Security Officials Confirm Massive Hacking Of U.S. Government Is Ongoing; Trump Silent After Suspected Russian Hack Of U.S. Agencies; U.S. COVID-19 Hospitalizations Hit New Record For 12th Straight Day. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired December 18, 2020 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Hello, I am Dana Bash in Washington. Thanks for joining me. Another day of more than 3,000 Coronavirus virus deaths pushing nightmares like 9/11 and even D-day further down the list of deadliest days in U.S. history as the first vaccine is distributed across the country. We're now awaiting a second vaccine approval this one from Moderna. Health Secretary Alex Azar says it could come as soon as today and when it happens, distribution starts immediately.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEX AZAR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: Trucks will roll planes will fly this weekend, 5.9 million doses of Moderna vaccine allocated for next week.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Meanwhile, as the Pfizer vaccine continues to go out, our own Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a practicing surgeon, got it this morning as did Vice President Mike Pence. Some members of the house are starting to join them.

But even as those first shots are given, they're too little too late to help thousands dying each day, thousands still in ICUs, each of them as will keep saying not just a number, a person with a story with a family with a history.

And as the virus spreads and more and more people need help, congress is facing a looming shutdown. Relief talks are dragging on, possibly into the weekend, with no clear end in sight. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is staying optimistic.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): Even more optimistic now than I was last night that a bipartisan, bi-camera framework for major rescue package is very close at hand.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BASH: And if the health emergency and a financial catastrophe aren't enough to worry about in one day, a huge national security threat is revealing itself a wide reaching, an ongoing cyber hack threatening government agencies and private businesses, likely coming from Russia.

One congressman briefed on the attack called it a modern-day cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor and yet, at the White House, no day of infamy speech, in fact nothing at all from President Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE ROGERS, (R) FORMER HOUSE INTELLIGENCE CHAIRMAN: We're going to have to show that there are consequences for doing what you've just done to the United States of America. Other people who want to do are harm is getting better. They're going to watch what's the consequences are? And this need to happen soon the president should come out and say something.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: We're going to have a lot more on that story in a bit. But we begin with the latest on the Moderna vaccine. And we go now to CNN Political Correspondent Sara Murray. Sara, how could these additional vaccinations happen, how soon could they happen, rather?

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, they could happen very quickly. I mean, the goal is to get this stuff out the door, and just start providing protection to as many health care workers and as many long-term care residents as possible. Here is Dr. Anthony Fauci talking a little more about just how quickly they want to move?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: I believe we'll see shots in the arm by the very early part of next week. I would hope Monday or Tuesday, but we just have to wait to see for the final decision, but very soon, literally within a few days.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MURRAY: When you add in this Moderna vaccine assuming it's authorized to the Pfizer vaccine you're really doubling the capacity of supply the U.S. can have to push out in the short term. The goal for Moderna is to have 20 million doses out the door here in the U.S. through December, looking into this first quarter, they want to get another 80 million doses out and then by the second quarter of 2021, 100 million doses.

Now of course we know everyone needs to get two doses in order to get full protection. But the more vaccines that we can bring online that are proven safe and effective, obviously the quicker we can get more people vaccinated in the U.S., we're starting with health care workers, nursing home residents, and then hopefully in a couple of months, the rest of us. BASH: So that's what's to come and we are waiting for the FDA to make

an announcement on that. But currently, the Pfizer doses are out the door. We've seen it happen all week but there is a hiccup of sorts with distribution. What are you hearing?

MURRAY: You know a hiccup is a good way to put it. And nobody thought that this was going to go 100 percent seamlessly with zero problems. So we are starting to hear from states across the country, Iowa, Illinois, Washington, Oregon, saying that they're hearing from the federal government that they are going to get a smaller allotment of Pfizer doses in this upcoming week than they initially expected.

And we're seeing frankly a little bit of finger pointing going on between Pfizer and the federal government over exactly what's going on here. Pfizer released a pretty pointed statement yesterday that included this line. We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouses, but as of now we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses.

Meanwhile government officials at Operation Warp Speed and HHS say they're getting doses out the door as quickly as they can. They insisted states won't actually receive less than they were promised; it will just come out over the course of maybe a few more days.

But Dana, as you ran through those numbers, their timing is imperative, the sooner we can get these doses out the door, the sooner we can begin to offer some protection to these folks who are still vulnerable.

[12:05:00]

BASH: It's very true, quite a statement from Pfizer there, Sara. Thank you so much for that reporting as always. And joining me now is, CNN Medical Analyst and Former Baltimore Health Commissioner Dr. Leana Wen.

Good to see you Dr. Wen. Let's listen to a little bit more of Dr. Fauci talking about how the rollout is happening and how it affects the timeline for how the majority of Americans will actually get the vaccine? Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. FAUCI: It really is going to depend on how successfully and effectively we roll out the higher priorities. Once you get through the priority list, then you can say it is sort of open season for anyone who is not necessarily on a priority list like the normal man and woman in the street who was no underlying condition. That likely will be somewhere Marchish, I said March, April, February, March, and it's going to be a close call on that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Dr. Wen, what's your take on that?

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, I certainly agree with Dr. Fauci, Dana that we need to see how the rollout is occurring right now. And I am very worried about the hiccups that we're already seeing. We always knew that there were going to be bumps in the road, but frankly right now we have more than 3,000 soon to be, more than 4,000 people dying every single day.

It's just unconscionable that we will have vials sitting in storage when they should be getting out to people as soon as possible. And I would worry that if we cannot even get those vials out right now when we are talking about relatively small numbers of people.

If we're just talking about health care workers and nursing home residents, how are we going to then vaccinate essential workers, and people with chronic illnesses and older individuals, that's a much larger segment of the population that's still in that priority group before we even get to the general population at large. So, I really hope that whatever problems there are get worked out.

BASH: And just real quick as somebody who has been part of a health care bureaucracy, nothing obviously like what we're seeing attempted here. What do you think the reason is that it's sitting in a warehouse and not getting to hospitals where people can start getting them in their arms?

DR. WEN: I mean, from what I'm hearing, it sounds like there is a massive coordination challenge, so that whenever there are people saying different things, Pfizer and the federal government are disagreeing about what's happening, clearly there is a communication problem and there is a distribution problem.

And what I am hearing from state governments and from hospital employees and nursing homes are extreme frustration, because they're ready to go. There are many employees and residents who really need this vaccine ASAP and again, just not - we need a much better explanation of what's happening here.

BASH: Yes, yes, we do. I agree with you on that. So, let's talk about what we could see maybe later today, which is an approval, emergency approval from Moderna. There are big differences, some big differences I should say between the Pfizer vaccines that people are currently getting and Moderna.

Moderna doesn't need to be ultra-cold. There is some hope it could prevent infection in addition to disease and it got a pretty strong endorsement from FDA advisers as they were meeting yesterday. Are we any closer to knowing if one vaccine is more advantageous than the other, even though people should know that they'll not likely get a choice which they take?

DR. WEN: So in terms of the effect on individuals who are getting the vaccine, they seem to be equivalent, they both seem to be very safe and extraordinarily efficacious and I think that's the most important thing. So anybody who is able to receive either the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine should take whatever vaccine is available to them, because there isn't a difference once it reaches you.

Now how it reaches you, there is a difference because as you mentioned the Pfizer vaccine needs to be stored at much lower temperatures. Once it's in the refrigerator, it can only be kept for five days, versus the Moderna is stored at the temperature of a normal freezer that you might have in your home and once it's refrigerated, it can be kept for 30 days.

So there are real advantages for distribution, but again not a difference once it reaches you as the individual taking the vaccine.

BASH: Dr. Leana Wen, thank you so much. I appreciate it.

DR. WEN: Thank you, Dana.

BASH: And nearly two years ago, Senator Angus King had this to say about the growing threat of cyberattacks.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ANGUS KING (I-ME): This is not a threat. This is happening now. We are under attack. This isn't something that may happen next year or two years from now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And it really is happening now. Security experts are revealing details about an ongoing cyber hack targeting government agencies, companies and critical infrastructure. I'm going to speak with Senator King after a quick break.

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[12:10:00]

BASH: U.S. security officials warn a massive cyber security breach into U.S. government agencies and private companies allegedly by a Russian linked group is still going on and that the extent of the damage done is still not clear.

CNN Senior National Security Correspondent Alex Marquardt joins me now and Alex, so many questions, I don't think we know a lot of the answers but first it seems as though these attacks were, are very sophisticated.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Extremely sophisticated, Dana. And that is why there are limits on what we understand the actual impact to be. Of course, we are learning about new victims every single day. We've learned in the past 24 hours that the State Department that the Energy Department were also compromised.

This is very much as you say an ongoing intrusion. These attackers who are suspected to be connected to Russian intelligence have been inside these U.S. federal government systems since March. We heard an alarming new alert from the U.S. cyber agency which is known as CISA they said that there is a great risk to all levels of government, state, local, tribal as well as critical infrastructure and companies.

[12:15:00] MARQUARDT: They said that there's more out there that they have not yet released. We know that the Russians got into the systems through a software update. CISA is saying that they got in other ways as well that have yet to be revealed, that there are techniques and procedures that have yet to be determined.

So there's so much that is still not known. We know that the software update that I was talking about, there are 18,000 different clients who used to that software, which means there are that many potential victims is going to take a long, long time to figure out the full extent of what the Russians were able to see, get access to, spy on, and perhaps steal.

So this is very much an ongoing affair that frankly President-Elect Biden is going to inherit as soon as he comes into office. Dana?

BASH: And President-Elect Biden has commented on it as far as of right now, the current President Donald Trump has not. Alex, thank you so much for that important reporting.

And joining me now is, Senator Angus King of Maine who sits on both the intelligence and armed services committees and he is Co-Chair of the Bipartisan Cyberspace Solarium Commission.

Thank you so much Senator. You said that this may be "The most serious cyberattack this country has ever endured". What can you tell us at this point how deep this goes, and why did we miss it for so long?

KING: Well, number one, this really is a real time disaster unfolding as we are talking, Dana. But here's why it is worrying me for two reasons. One, we now know, it started in March, and we didn't know about it until this week that's pretty troubling in and of it.

Secondly, we don't really know what these intruders are up to. Are they simply stealing information or are they planting malware that could affect critical functions of the government or the private sector?

Dana, we're in the middle of winter. What if this attack was on the gas pipeline system, or on the electrical grid, or on the air traffic control system? This just underlines how critically important the issue of cyber is and how we really aren't there yet in terms of preparation?

BASH: And when you say was, maybe you mean is, right? Meaning the intelligence community doesn't yet know if there could be a disruption because of this very lengthy cyberattack that is going on. It could happen tomorrow. We're not out of the woods yet, is that correct?

KING: That's absolutely correct. As I say, were they simply going after information or were they doing things that will allow them to disrupt the functioning of our critical infrastructure networks. That's what we don't know and that's what makes this so scary.

BASH: And when you say we didn't know, this started in March, but we didn't know. Are you talking about me as a journalist, as a member of the public? Are we talking about you, somebody who is briefed up on intelligence matters dealing with and facing American national security?

KING: You and me, but unfortunately also the agencies of our government who are charged with dealing with issues like this. That's the real problem is, one thing if you or I know, if I know as a member of the intelligence committee, the answer is no, we didn't.

We knew about cyber threats for sure, I've been working on it for almost two years with a great deal of time and energy. But what we didn't know was this attack was going on and as near as I can tell, our agencies that are set up to protect us as good as they are, as good as they are, also didn't know about it that's what's so disturbing about this.

BASH: Senator, how is that possible?

KING: And Dana, I've got to say one more thing. The defense bill that's now sitting on the president's desk happens to be the most important piece of cyber defense legislation ever passed by the U.S. Congress. The work of our commission is in that bill.

And the president is trying to decide whether to sign it. Mr. President, if you're listening, please sign it. We need these protections. And if ever we had any doubt about it, we've learned this week that how serious this is and so, I just - I had to get that out, Dana.

BASH: Yes.

KING: Because literally our protection from cyberattack is hanging in the balance in the next few days.

BASH: Are you confident that Russia was behind this extended attack that is going on as we speak?

[12:20:00]

KING: Well, it has all of the earmarks, I'm not ready to say that conclusively, A, I don't have that classified information. If I did, I wouldn't tell you but no. I think it's likely, but I don't think anybody is prepared. That's one of the problems, Dana; in this field is what they call attribution. If your adversaries are smart, they have ways of covering their tracks, but all the modus operandi looks like this was Russian intelligence.

BASH: Democratic Congressman Jason Crow who as you know is a decorated war veteran. This morning he tweeted this could be our modern-day cyber equivalent of Pearl Harbor. Do you agree with that, is this an act of war?

KING: I don't think it is - I don't want to go that far. Act of war is a meaning that has all kinds of weight to it and I think that may be a little extreme. But my view is it's an attack and it's something and here's one of the issues, Dana. We can't patch our way out of this. Cyber is so complicated that we have to be working on a deterrent of

some kind. I want if these characters are sitting around the table at the politburo in the Kremlin; I want somebody to say we better not do this, boss, because they're going to whack us somehow.

And right now, there isn't much of a deterrent. We are a cheap date. They don't feel that there's really any cost to doing something like that to us and that's a major problem with our cyber policy and strategy over the last 10 or 15 years.

We're trying to protect ourselves and we should be resilient and all those kinds of things. But we also have to tell the world we're not going to allow you to strike us without costs being imposed.

BASH: Yes. And that goes to what I started to ask you before which is people watching this are going to wonder what I'm wondering, which is how is it possible that the United States of America was caught so flat footed that this country and people who are in charge of this didn't know about it?

And the question is do you think based on what you're seeing that the hackers took advantage of an election, of a bumpy presidential transition?

KING: Well, no, I don't think that's the case, because this goes back to March. I think what they took advantage of was what they call a threat factor. They didn't hack into our networks directly. They went through this software firm in Texas and that's one of the real dangers is that the government itself may have pretty good protections.

But when you have a software firm that you're contracting with and they send you a patch and you install it, it turns out to not really be a patch but a back door for the Russians or the Chinese or whoever wants to do something like this.

So yes, it is disturbing that we didn't capture this. And what I think we need to do is a much better job of what's called threat hunting or penetration testing where we test our own networks. Hire hackers to try to hack us. The Pentagon did this some time ago and it was very successful, it's called a Bug Bounty Program. They paid people to find vulnerabilities. We have to do much more of that kind of thing.

BASH: I want to quickly turn to another huge story obviously that's being going on since March, which is the pandemic and the effects of the pandemic that it is having on people's health and their economic well-being.

Some of the headlines we're going to put up on the screen from your home state, the kind of - second case record in two days, Portland Press Herald, state jobless claims reach highest point in five months. How close are you and your colleagues to a Coronavirus relief deal?

KING: Everything I've heard, Dana, is that it's very close but I have been hearing that for a couple of days. This is complicated stuff. As you know, I worked with a bipartisan group over the last months to come up with our own plan, because we were frustrated that nothing was really happening.

But our plan took 600 pages of legislative language to put into a bill, so the execution, even when they reach an agreement in principle is difficult. But having said that, my sense is that we are very, very close. Should have made it last night I know that they're still working this morning.

Everybody knows that we've got to do this. Everybody knows we aren't going home until we do this. And so, it's close but, you know, I've learned as I know you have, you don't bet on congress and the president until it's passed and signed. But I am cautiously optimistic this morning, Dana, that we're going to have something by the end of the day and will be voting on it over the weekend.

[12:25:00]

BASH: OK. Real quick, I have to ask you about the fact that you wrote a letter to the streaming services, Netflix, Amazon Prime, HBO Max which I should say has the same parent company as CNN, asking them to allow their programming to be out there for free to encourage people to stay home. Have you heard back?

KING: Have not heard back. It's a pretty simple idea. This is going to be a heartbreaking holiday for a lot of people and my idea was simply these companies can help people to stay home and have a little uplift during a very hard time. I'm hoping they'll spring for it. I think it's something they could do in the public interest that would be pretty easy.

BASH: Senator Angus King, thank you so much. As always, appreciate it.

KING: Thanks, Dana. Always a pleasure.

BASH: Thank you. And up next, how effective the newly approved COVID- 19 home test is and when will it be available? Stay with us.

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