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Dr. Fauci Says, New Variant May Already Be In The U.S.; Senior Military Commanders Worry What Trump Will Do. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired December 22, 2020 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:08]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: It's a good point. Nima, it's wonderful to see you. Thank you very much.

And thank you all so much for joining us. Bianna Golodryga picks up our coverage right now.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN HOST: Hello, I'm Bianna Golodryga in for Brianna Keilar. I want to welcome viewers here in the United States and around the world.

And we begin this afternoon with a warning that a new variant of COVID may already be in the United States. We know that it's in the United Kingdom and a few other countries. And now, Dr. Anthony Fauci says it is probably in the U.S. as well.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: When you have this amount of spread within a place like the U.K., that you really need to assume that it's here already. It may not and certainly is not the dominant strain, but I would not be surprised if it is already here.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: The new variant spreads more quickly and is more contagious but is not more dangerous. Quick spread is what we are seeing. The United States passed the 18 million case mark yesterday and it took just four days to get from 17 million to 18 million cases. That's the quickest jump yet.

But there is some relief on the way. Vaccines are getting where they need to be, the Health and Human Services secretary today joining more than 600,000 others who have received their shots.

And economic help is also coming after Congress passed a new relief bill. Here are some of what's in the $900 billion package. There's the $600 direct payment some people will receive. There's also increase in unemployment benefits for 11 weeks, an extension of eviction protections until end of January, and a 15 percent increase in the SNAP Program for six months.

Dr. Anthony Fauci also had his chance to get the vaccine today at the same event where we saw the HHS secretary, Alex Azar, and the director of National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins. They all received the Moderna vaccine, which was developed as part of the government's Operation Warp Speed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FAUCI: I feel extreme confidence in the safety and efficacy of this vaccine and I want to encourage everyone who has the opportunity to get vaccinated so that we could have a veil of protection over this country that would end this pandemic.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: Our Alexandra Field is in Voorhees Township in New Jersey, where frontline health care workers are also set to receive the Moderna vaccine today. And, Alexandra, what are you seeing out there today?

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Bianna. About 30 frontline workers were able to get the vaccine this morning. They got the Moderna vaccine. The shipment was sent here yesterday. One of some 4,000 shipments of both Moderna and Pfizer vaccines that are going out both yesterday and today, a massive movement of these vaccines. Most critical right now is getting the frontline workers vaccinated.

So this is the first opportunity for frontline workers from three hospitals in Southern New Jersey to get their shots. First up was Rene Stephens. She is a nurse who works on the COVID floors. She volunteered to do it. She said she felt blessed to get that first shot. And she said, a big part of the reason why she volunteered was because she wants to set an example for others.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RENE STEPHENS, CRITICAL CARE NURSE: Never in your mind's eye could anyone imagine what health care professionals have been going through the last nine months.

We were not winning the war and it is not even close to being over but I feel like the vaccine is a very essential part of this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FIELD: Stephens says she witnessed devastation and despair in the last nine or ten months when she has been working directly with COVID patients in the hospital. She says, at the same time, while she is here, she was eager to get that vaccine and she knew it would give her a much greater measure of protection.

She says she's heard some hesitancy not getting the vaccine, particularly in her church community. She says, she hopes people will see her getting that shot in the arm on T.V., perhaps, and that they will rethink this, that they follow the science. And she says, if they do that, it will lead them to where she ended up today. Bianna?

GOLODRYGA: We are so thankful for the work that she and her peers are have been doing throughout this year and, obviously, the example they're setting for being so public about their vaccinations as well.

Alexandra Field, thank you so much.

Well, a new study released today is looking at the efficacy of masks and stopping the spread of coronavirus. CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins me now.

So, Elizabeth, we're all wearing our masks now. What are we learning about this new data?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: So, first of all, we need to say that masks work. This data shows that masks work. What they show is that if they don't work perfectly and you really need to pair it with social distancing.

[13:05:01]

Think of the two as always going together. Wear your mask, practice social distancing.

What they found is that when they tested all sorts of masks, from surgical to cloth masks to N95s, basically, everything except the N95 would actually let some germs through. They actually -- these are physicists, and they actually made this machine that kind of simulates coughing and sneezing.

And what they found was that some things did indeed seep through. So, unless you're wearing an N95, you should assume some things are seeping through. And if the people around you aren't wearing N95s, which they probably are not, know that you are not completely protected and you still need to keep your distance. The two always need to go together. Bianna?

GOLODRYGA: Yes, masks and distance, hand in hand, some great advice there. Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much.

Well, let me bring in Dr. Grace Lee, she is Professor of Pediatrics at the Stanford University Medical Center and Associate Chief Medical Officer at Stanford Children's Health. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon, Doctor.

I want to start with the new variant seen in the United Kingdom as well as a few other countries. We know Dr. Fauci says that he wouldn't be surprised if it was already here in the United States. Dr. Peter Hotez on CNN said this morning that the CDC should already know if the new variant is here because they have a program called Spheres that should be tracking these types of changes.

So what is your take here? Is this likely something officials knew of but just didn't make public yet?

DR. GRACE LEE, PROFESSOR OF PEDIATRICS, STANDFORD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Well, I think our genomic surveillance systems that are available will be able to pick up on these variants and it will be really important for us to make sure that we take a look at that information closely before making judgment about how to manage that from a clinical and operational perspective.

But I do think it is super helpful to have data from the U.K. coming in, and it allows us to more efficiently look for this particular variant in the U.S.

GOLODRYGA: And we know that the U.K. tracks this data arguably better than anyone else in the world. And a lot of people are asking why this was happening in the U.K. first, but we know that they've been on top of this throughout the year.

Let's move on to another question though, because as somebody who works in pediatrics, I want your thoughts on something that really jumped out at me last night as I was reading about this new variant, that it may actually make children as or equally susceptible as adults. That is alarming, because we know that children, for the most part, have been spared so far with the coronavirus. What more can you tell us about this?

LEE: Well, you know, it is important to remember that the data we hear about that's in vitro can be different than what we see clinically. So, I anticipate while no more sooner and we are waiting for that rigorous epidemiologic data to come forth.

There have been suggestions by others that this is possible. But, again, I think we need to make sure we're making decisions on best possible data. The full impact of this new variant on children and transmission needs further study. And, hopefully, that will come along in the coming weeks.

GOLODRYGA: This is coming at a time, obviously, when there are and more advocates for reopening schools after children have been out for so long.

You are on the CDC advisory board that voted on the new vaccine guidelines about who should be next in line to get vaccinated after frontline health care workers and people that work and live in nursing homes. Local reports say that Texas is not going to follow the CDC's recommendations and will actually vaccinate everyone over 65 years old and people of any age with underlying medical conditions next in line before essential workers. So, what effect will that have if states are sort of going at their own way?

LEE: Well, I think that's a really challenging situation. So, first, I'll say that the rationale for ACIP prioritizing vaccines in phase 1b to frontline essential workers as well as those 75 and older, were to balance the need to prevent the risk of -- or protect those who are at greatest risk for infection given that occupation and those at greatest risk for hospitalizations and deaths.

And our intent, I would say, is to vaccinate the U.S. population with safe and effective vaccines. These are only short-term recommendations that we hope will support efficiency and equity in every phase of vaccination. But, clearly, it's going to be challenging if every state has its own unique approach to it.

I will say that national recommendations are national and they are intended to be adapted at the local level, but our hope is that we have had nine public meetings, over 28 COVID vaccine workgroup meetings, and have delivery of science, ethics and implementation very thoroughly, and that the recommendations from the ACIP will be considered.

GOLODRYGA: Look, I read that one board member said it was the most difficult decision he would have to make in his life. This is not something easy at all and nothing we expected prior to this year. So I can understand the frustration that so many had in making these decisions.

We're also seeing members of Congress getting vaccinated, that includes Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, who openly questioned experts on how dangerous the pandemic was.

[13:10:04]

She's 50 years old. Others like Congresswoman Ilhan Omar are foregoing their shots so that others who are in actual risk groups can be vaccinated first.

So, of course, no surprise, this is becoming political as well. Should members of Congress be at the front of the line here?

LEE: So, again, hard to answer that question. What I will say is vaccine allocation is hard for all of us at the national, state, county and local levels, none of this is easy. We have to adopt the principles that have been put forth and make sure that we are focused on reducing disparities that are important in the allocation plan, because we do know that certain populations have been disproportionately affected.

I will say that if lawmakers are considered frontline essential workers, and I would argue that some may consider that essential. I think the important thing is that we are going to all be able to get vaccinated and we should focus in on that message. The vaccines are coming soon. We anticipate being able to vaccinate everybody in phase 1a hopefully in the next few weeks, we'll be able move to phase 1b soon, and then after that, phase 1c. So, hope is on the way.

GOLODRYGA: And you could make the argument that these politicians are doing this publicly because there are many skeptics out there. So, anytime they see a public official that they trust getting their vaccine helps as well. That argument is valid and important one to make.

Dr. Lee, thank you very much for your expertise. We appreciate it.

LEE: Thank you.

GOLODRYGA: Well, just ahead, we'll have all of the details on who qualifies for a COVID relief check and when you can expect to see that money.

Plus, new concerns inside the Pentagon about what President Trump might do in his final month in office. Hear how senior military officials are planning.

And CNN is at the U.K. border where travel bans tied to that COVID variant have caused chaos and thousands of long haul truckers are caught in the middle of it.

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GOLODRYGA: A message today from a conservative icon and Trump supporter aimed at an audience of one. Televangelist Pat Robertson says the American people have spoken and the result is definitive.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PAT ROBERTSON, TELEVANGELIST: With all his talent and the ability to raise money and draw large crowds, the president still lives in an alternate reality. He really does, has done a marvelous job for the economy but at the same time he is very erratic and he has fired people, he's fought people and he's insulted people and keeps going down the lines. It is a mixed bag. And I think it would be well to say you've had your day and it's time to move on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GOLODRYGA: It's time to move on. Well, move on is something the president seems unwilling to do. And Robertson's plea comes amid anxiety inside both the White House and now the Pentagon over what President Trump might do on his way out.

Nearly a dozen military officers in senior roles tell CNN that the unease has ramped up in recent days after the president hosted an off- the-rails White House meeting in which his former national security adviser floated the idea of invoking martial law.

Joining me now is CNN's Jeremy Diamond and CNN's Barbara Starr. Welcome to you both.

And, Barbara, let's begin with you and this new reporting. You're hearing a lot of concern from senior military officials uncertain at how to navigate the president's final few weeks. Tell us more.

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think, Bianna, what you just said is exactly right, how to navigate it all. Look, if the president were to issue some kind of order to the military, it has to be legal or they will not do it. There are only legal orders to the United States military.

But that said, they are watching so many of them this conversation, Mike Flynn, the retired general, fired national security adviser, talking about using military capabilities to change election results in swing states. The military has been adamant from the beginning that they have no role in the elections. We are even now seeing the head of the army, both the civilian head and four star general Chief of Staff of the Army putting out a statement that the military has no role in election outcomes. They are adamant about making this point. Are they concerned? Absolutely.

And I think the undercurrent here at the Pentagon is they want to focus their worry on national security threats, not on partisan politics, and they are counting -- there's just no way around it, they're counting down the days until this commander in chief leaves office. Bianna?

GOLODRYGA: And, of course, a reminder that, shortly, after the election is when the president fired his defense secretary, Mark Esper, and just last week, we heard that acting defense secretary abruptly cut off any sort of transition meetings with the Biden team as well. So this is even more alarming.

But, Jeremy, we have seen the president turn now to a fringe group of advisers in the west wing and away from others, including the Republican Senate majority leader who Trump now claims won his state's reelection because of him. Of course, that's not true. He won in a landslide.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. And you're seeing the president sending over that slide via personal assistant to Republican senators, essentially accusing Mitch McConnell of disloyalty. It also seems to be a shot across the bow and a warning perhaps to other Republican senators who haven't come to grips with reality to not do so, and to stand by the president as he continues these sometimes often, frankly, outrageous efforts to try and contest results of a democratic election that he lost.

[13:20:03]

And so what you are seeing now is the president turning away from anybody who tells him, no, who tells him that he has lost the election, and turning towards the fringe of the fringe who will still indulge many of the president's fantasies about trying to overturn the results of this election. That is why he is leaning on folks like the conspiracy theorists, Sidney Powell, the disgraced former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, and Steve Bannon, who was indicted over the summer on money laundering and fraud charges and is also perhaps seeking a presidential pardon.

And this is alarming folks around the president. You are seeing, including folks who have been around the president a long time inside and around the White House, people close to the president who are really concerned about what these next 29 days will hold in terms of how the president comes to grips with the end of his presidency, and whether he will do so in a manner that, of course, many of them certainly hope he will.

GOLODRYGA: When Trump sycophants are worried, that really does tells you something. Jeremy Diamond and Barbara Starr, thank you so much for your reporting.

And joining our conversation is Toluse Olorunnipa from The Washington Post. Toluse, thanks so much for joining us.

A lot to cover these last few weeks of this administration, so CNN along with others are reporting a deep worry in both the Pentagon, as you heard, and the west wing over the president's actions in recent days. Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell both at the White House again last night, the president reportedly lashing out at anyone that won't support his nutty, dangerous ideas, what more are you hearing with your reporting?

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, we're hearing just that, that the president wants people around him that are going to give him a pathway to victory, even though no pathway exists.

So people that try to level with the president, saying, listen, you have a month left in office, try to squeeze out the final gains that you can get, try to have some kind of a victory tour sometimes to reflect on what you have accomplished during four years in office and end this sort of mad attempt to stay in office beyond your term. Those people are being tossed out of his orbit, and he is inviting all kinds of fringe elements into his orbit to try to figure out if there's a way for him to stay in office.

Obviously, we know that he lost the election. We know that January 20th is coming and he's not going to be able to stay in the White House after that.

But he is still in denial about this and he still looking for people who can help him. He is looking at this January 6th date where Congress is supposed to certify the election as normally a pro forma set of events. But the president is trying to sort of stage some kind of mutiny where Republicans in the Congress will sabotage this attempt to certify the election, rise up against these results and see if they can overturn results.

The most that the president is likely to be able to do is delay the inevitable but he is focused on this and really seizing on this as his final last stand to try to get Republicans to side with him against the democracy, against the will of the voters. And that's what he's doing. That's how he is spending his final days in office.

GOLODRYGA: And for someone who hates the word, loser, he is constantly having to be reminded of that through these actions that he did lose the election. But you're also seeing a number of House Republican lawmakers say that they will try to overturn the Electoral College results. This, of course, will fail. The White House chief of staff tweeting last night that they're prepared to, quote, fight back against mounting evidence of voter fraud.

This is getting a much more tepid response, thankfully, in the Senate, but Ted Cruz, Tommy Tuberville haven't ruled out challenging the results. How serious is this possibility and how is this all going to play out come January 6th?

OLORUNNIPA: This is a huge loyalty test. The president is trying to see who is willing to be loyal to him even as he sees his political power starting to evaporate. He is going to be out of office soon and he's not going to have the power to pull the levers of government to get things done. And fewer and fewer senators are starting to stay with the president. They're essentially realizing that it doesn't make sense to try to delay the inevitable.

This process of trying to contest the results is going to fail. The House is controlled by Democrats who are going to pass this. There's an overwhelming number of Republicans and Democrats in the Senate who believe that the results of the election were fair and free, and that there's no reason to try to gum up the works or ultimately overturn the will of millions of voters who chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump.

So, the president is trying to get this loyalty test. He may be able to get a handful of senators or a handful of ultra right wing Republicans in the House to side with him, but he is not going to be able to reverse his fate. And it's really a futile effort at this point. And what he is doing is delaying the inevitable, undermining democracy and essentially trying to say that the millions of voters who voted against him were fraudulent while the millions who voted for him are the only ones that should count.

GOLODRYGA: Undermining democracy and also undermining their leader. Senator McConnell also had warned them not to do this. And you have at least a couple of senators saying that they're going to do that and defy him anyway. It is just mind-boggling.

[13:30:00]

But you wrote this week about the crises that the president is leaving for the Biden administration, and the ways in which he is trying to actively undermine the president-elect. Talk about that.

OLORUNNIPA: Yes, look at all of the crises facing the country. President Trump is not sort of pushing forward a smooth transition to help his successor succeed in facing these crises. Instead he is undermining everything from trying to push forward foreign policy on a very abrupt basis, withdrawing troops from the Middle East without a lot of forethought in a way that is going to lead Joe Biden to have to deal with the aftermath, of any conflagrations that come out of that.

He is also looking at making it hard for people to believe that Biden is a legitimate president. There are tens of millions of Americans who don't agree that Biden is legitimate in part because the president is saying that Biden stole these votes and he stole the election.

And so President Trump is essentially undermining a peaceful transfer of power, he's making it harder for his successor to do what is necessary to protect the country. And, just quickly, to mention the Russia hack the president hasn't really spoken out against, this is a huge thing that's going to be facing the new president, and the current president is not even speaking out against it.

GOLODRYGA: The largest hack in U.S. history, I'm so glad that you brought that up, and such a good point you made earlier. He could be taking a victory lap. The fact that Joe Biden is congratulating Operation Warp Speed publicly and you don't see the president doing the same is quite striking.

Toluse Olorunnipa, thank you so much. We appreciate it. Well, just in to CNN, the governor of California has named a replacement to fill Senator Kamala Harris' seat. Alex Padilla, who is currently the secretary of state of California, will be the first Latino to hold a Senate seat from that state. He is a former state senator and L.A. City councilman.

In a statement, Padilla said that he is, quote, honored and humbled by the trust placed in him by Governor Newsom.

And up next, popular ski area hit hard by coronavirus. We'll talk to the mayor of Aspen, Colorado, about his decision to put red level restrictions in place.

And we'll go inside a California hospital that's running out of ICU beds. The nurse in charge says it's a disaster.

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