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Trump Throws COVID Relief Bill in Doubt After Asking for Changes; Trump Administration Buys Additional 100 Million Doses of Pfizer Vaccine; U.S. Daily COVID Death Toll Tops 3,000 for Fifth Time This Month; Anthony Fauci Warns of Possible COVID Surge on Top of Surge Due to Travel; Trump Pardons Blackwater Military Contractors Involved in Iraq Massacre. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 23, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:01:05]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to you. I'm Pamela Brown. Jim and Poppy are off this morning.

And the clock winding down but the president ramping up the chaos in his final days at the White House, throwing the stimulus deal in doubt, asking for changes to the $900 billion COVID relief bill already passed by Congress and negotiated by his own administration. What this means for millions of Americans on the brink of financial crisis and how Capitol Hill is responding.

And on the same night the president using his power to unleash a string of controversial pardons, including two for men who pleaded guilty in Robert Mueller's investigation and military contractors involved in a deadly shooting of Iraqi civilians.

And new this morning more vaccines are coming. The administration just announcing it's buying an additional 100 million doses of Pfizer vaccine as the nation's daily death toll tops 3,000 for the fifth time this month.

We are following all of the very latest. Let's begin at the White House with John Harwood.

All right, John, the president really stayed on the sidelines while this bill was being negotiated, right? He wasn't very involved from what we know from our reporting. Now he's trying to hold up the bill it seems. What is he trying to accomplish here?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Pam, we're going to find out in the next few days. You know, the backdrop is the president is choking psychologically on his defeat, so injurious to his ego and his image as a winner, as he likes to frame it. It could be that the president is just saying, as attention shifts to Joe Biden, hey, look at me, I'm still president, I'm still relevant here, I can still get in the way of this process. It's also possible that he has a darker purpose, that he actually

wants to take this thing down and say in effect to the American people, yes, you didn't want to reelect me as president, and to Mitch McConnell, you're not going to defend me against the election -- electoral vote count on January 6th, I'm going to break a bunch of things that you want. That of course is not how he's framing it. He's framing it as saying I want to be more generous to the American people. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I am asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2,000 or $4,000 for a couple. Send me a suitable bill or else the next administration will have to deliver a COVID relief package and maybe that administration will be me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARWOOD: Now, of course, the problem with that is, first of all, the next administration is not going to be Donald Trump. Second of all, it is too late to amend this package. Nancy Pelosi quickly came out and said, yes, we'll take the president's bid for $2,000. We wanted that all along. Senate Republicans do not support that. The votes are not going to be there for that. And so really the question is, is the president just making noise or is he actually trying to destroy this bill and we don't know the answer yet.

BROWN: And what's interesting is just getting the reaction, Phil, from sources not only in the White House but on Capitol Hill, of course, it was the president's Treasury secretary, Steve Mnuchin, who was on the hill negotiating this, making this proposal for the numbers.

What has the reaction been on Capitol Hill to this and what is next for this bill?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, not only the lead negotiator for the administration who regularly briefed the president or at least somewhat briefed the president, the $600 level for the direct payments that has upset the president so much was the Treasury secretary's idea. That was his number that he entered into the negotiations here.

In terms of what's next, I think John hits it. This is a really big day. Everybody is in wait and see mode right now. I think everybody on Capitol Hill over the course of the last three or four years has gotten used to moments like this, chaos, sometimes the president backs down, sometimes he cools off.

[09:05:03]

Sometimes people are able to maybe perhaps get to the president and brief him on the importance of why they think this should be passed, allies of his. I think the biggest question is, do those allies still exist to some degree? You've seen him attack Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell for saying he lost the election. You saw him last night attack Mitch McConnell's top John Thune for saying he lost the election.

So who are the people that explain to the president -- Pamela, this is important. This isn't just COVID relief. Obviously the $900 billion COVID relief is essential, it's essential because of the direct payments, it's more essential because of the unemployment programs that expire on December 26th, but this is also funding the government.

Attached to the COVID relief bill and in fact a large number of the items the president listed off as being offensive to him are just straight spending bill measures, measures he signed into law in the past.

There is a government shutdown that is looming as well here. So I think on Capitol Hill everybody is waiting, everybody is holding their breath, everybody is kind of in the hope and pray mode right now, but I think there's also a reality, Pamela, that they know this president particularly at this point in time is kind of capable of going any which way.

BROWN: That's right. I mean, so what you just laid out is you have the government now hanging in the balance, you have the lives of millions of Americans who are really anxious right now after a really tough year left wondering what's going to happen.

Just how many Americans, Matt, are relying on this to pass?

MATTHEW EGAN, CNN BUSINESS LEAD WRITER: Yes, Pam, this last minute move by President Trump really is shocking and yet it's kind of a fitting end to this insane year and this unpredictable presidency. As Phil just mentioned, not only was the president's own Treasury secretary, you know, negotiating and he came up with the $600 figure, but he was on television just Monday praising the package and talking about how stimulus payments could be sent out early next week. Now we don't know if that's going to happen.

Also we should point out that the $2,000 stimulus check payment that President Trump is talking about, that was actually the signature issue in the $2.4 trillion stimulus package that the Democrats wanted. We just don't know that Republicans are ever going to go for that. We do know, though, that the economy and millions of people really need help right now. And this package would do that.

Let me take you through some of the numbers. The number of Americans who have fallen into poverty is up by eight million just since June, 12 million people could lose their unemployment benefits if Congress does not act. Millions of people could get evicted and more than 27 million households -- more than 27 million adults are in households where there sometimes or often wasn't not enough food.

I mean, these are staggering numbers. Just this morning we learned that another 803,000 Americans filed for first-time unemployment benefits. While that is down from the previous week thankfully, it is still way too high. It's actually higher than at any point during the great recession.

So, Pam, the economy needs more help and the risk is that if President Trump blows up this deal millions of people will be starting 2021 in a bad place.

BROWN: And they're already in a bad place as it is. And as you all pointed out, it's anyone's guess which direction this will go right now. We're going to be keeping an eye on it as I know you guys will.

Joe, Phil and Matt, thank you very much.

Well, the U.S. is bolstering its vaccine supply. HHS Secretary Alex Azar announcing this morning that the administration is purchasing 100 million additional doses from Pfizer.

Let's bring in CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen.

So when are we going to see this new supply show up, Elizabeth?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know what, Pam, it might not be for months. Let's take a look at a tweet that Secretary Azar did earlier today. He said, "Operation Warp Speed has now signed contracts for an additional 100 million doses of both the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccines. This means the U.S. has agreements to secure 400 million doses of U.S. FDA authorized vaccines by mid-2021."

And he went on to say in a press release that this gives confidence that every American who wants a vaccine should be able to get one by June of next year, but that's June of next year. These doses aren't coming until June or some of them even in July. So we do have to still be patient and remember every time you see a number, for example, 200 million doses cut it in half, 100 million because every person needs two doses -- Pamela.

BROWN: That's an important point. Also travel restrictions continue to tighten around the U.K. as we try to learn more about this new variant.

What have we learned so far, Elizabeth?

COHEN: So, Pamela, we know that many other countries including really basically most of Europe has told -- has placed travel restrictions on people coming out of the U.K. but the U.S. has not done that. The incoming CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky was on CNN earlier this morning and she said that that's under consideration but other things are under consideration as well. For example, quarantining people or testing people or doing some combination after they arrive from the U.K.

[09:10:05]

I think it's important to remember what she said which is, look, we're supposed to limit our mobility, period. Now what's interesting is that this U.K. variant is likely already here. Tony Fauci and others have told us that. Scientists tell me they think that probably hundreds of people with this variant are already in this country which sort of does call into question, do we really -- should we really have a travel ban? However, it is interesting to note that no one has actually found it

in this country. They just think that based on the fact that so many people come here from the U.K. But we haven't spotted it in the U.S. surveillance system yet.

Let me show you why not. It's because basically the surveillance system in this country is not very good. If you look starting mid- November which is likely when this U.K. variant would have come to the U.S., there have been more than seven million new cases of COVID-19, but only 292 of them underwent genetic sequencing. If you don't genetically sequence it you don't know if the mutation is here. You have to do that sequencing.

And to show you sort of how much worse our system is than the U.K., if you look at this time period from November 15th until now, in the U.S. we've sampled, as I said, 292 sequences, we've done 292 sequences. The U.K. has done 9,230 sequences and they have far fewer people with COVID than we do. So there is a long way to go. The CDC says they're improving their system. They hope to have a new system in place, fully in place, next month -- Pamela.

BROWN: But that really puts it all into context right there.

Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much.

And now let's bring in Dr. Esther Choo, a CNN medical analyst and professor of emergency medicine at Oregon Health and Science University.

Hi, Dr. Choo. Thanks for coming on. First question to you, you got your first doze of Pfizer on Monday. How are you feeling?

DR. ESTHER CHOO, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: I feel good. I had a day of muscle aches and a tiny bit of fatigue and that was it. And now I feel back to normal. Thank you.

BROWN: OK, great. So let's talk about this news coming in. The Trump administration just announcing plans to purchase an additional 100 million doses of the coronavirus vaccine. As we just heard there from Elizabeth Cohen, Secretary Azar is saying this means that anyone in the U.S. who wants to get a vaccine can get one, who wants to get vaccinated.

How significant is this development?

CHOO: Of course it's overall good news. There's a lot of anxiety I think now that a vaccine has hit the U.S. but still so many people are waiting for it. So knowing that we will get an influx like that is helpful. But there's a lot of caveats like Elizabeth just said. It may take months for us to get that supply. Even an impressive number like 100 million is cut in half because everybody needs two doses. And there's just infrastructure limitations as well.

You know, states are really struggling. They were already working overtime before the vaccine hit and now we need new infrastructure so that we can track doses of vaccine. They are one and two doses, there's a lot of public health training, there's training of a huge workforce of health care professionals who can administer the vaccine. And so this lift is very heavy. We're all waiting for this $9 billion in public health efforts for vaccine distribution to hit, but states are very burdened and the funding has not been there to support this effort.

BROWN: And all of this comes amid this new variant that was discovered in the U.K. that health officials believe is likely in the United States right now.

If you would, just put it in perspective how concerned we should be that this variant is -- appears to be more easily contagious?

CHOO: Yes, I mean, that's certainly a possibility but we don't know yet and, you know, there have been mutations of virus since the very beginning of this pandemic because that's what the virus does and periodically this topic has come up before where people say we're observing a new variant and it has potential to affect more young people, to be transmitted more rapidly. So we've been through a couple cycles of this on the scientific end just to reassure people that this is not a brand-new development that's so shocking.

This is what viruses do. So scientists are watching this very carefully. It's also likely that human behaviors have been, you know, contributing to what we're seeing in terms of spikes of cases and that this variant just happens to be there kind of the wrong place at the right time. But I think the most reassuring thing is that there's no indication that this variant will make the vaccines that we have less effective.

They stimulate antibodies against a number of different places on the spike protein so I think we're feeling pretty good. Tests are ongoing to make sure that that is the case that we have serum from people with the new variant and that antibodies are still effective against them, but from available evidence it seems like we can still feel confident that we will be protected with this vaccine moving forward.

[09:15:00]

BROWN: OK, so you put that into context for us, but as you see on our screen right now, the U.S. daily COVID death toll tops 3,000 for the fifth time this month. This is happening as we're seeing people flooding the airports, traveling before the Christmas holiday. And when we look at this death toll, when we look at the record number of hospitalizations, that timeline lines up with people who were infected around Thanksgiving, right?

CHOO: It really does. And we were bracing for this and hoping that we were wrong, but every holiday has been similar, and Thanksgiving, we saw the kind of travel that happened then and people who are hospitalized in ICUs and dying now, many of them are because of the Thanksgiving surge.

And of course, now we have an extended holiday between Christmas and new year's. And according to AAA estimates, even though this year's travel is about 30 percent less than last year, it still means that 84 million people are going to be traveling over the holidays, and it's not just the travel, it's what's happening on the other end of where they're traveling to, which is a lot of family and friends gatherings.

So, I think we are already bracing for the outcome of that which will be well into end of January and into February. Those months are going to be incredibly difficult, and I have no doubt it will be surge on top of surge on top of surge. Like you said, we're already hitting record-breaking days multiple times in a row, that's been the story of November and December, and there's no reason this won't continue. So, it's a very sobering time for people in health care. For us, you know, the fact that the vaccine is here changes nothing for the upcoming months.

BROWN: That's really important to keep in mind that the healthcare workers, the hospitals are already so strained right now, they're at the brink and yet the worst is yet to come as you just pointed out. Dr. Esther Choo, thank you very much.

CHOO: Thank you, Pamela.

BROWN: And still to come, President Trump announcing a wave of lame- duck pardons including GOP lawmakers, and two men who pleaded guilty in the Mueller investigation -- even military contractors involved in a massacre of Iraqi civilians. Who could be next? Plus, coronavirus cases in Texas exploding. We'll take you inside a hospital there that has transformed three of its wings into COVID-19 wards.

And President-elect Biden slamming President Trump, saying he is responsible for the massive cyber attack affecting dozens of government agencies. We'll be back.

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[09:20:00]

BROWN: Well, President Trump announced a flood of pardons before Christmas. He is granting clemency for a man who pleaded guilty in the Russia investigation, corrupt former GOP Congressmen and military contractors involved in the killing of Iraqi civilians. CNN White House correspondent John Harwood back with me following these latest developments. So, tell us more, John, about who the president is pardoning here.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: There are a couple categories, Pam, as you indicated in the open. There are the corrupt Republican congressmen who supported him in the beginning. Remember, Donald Trump is completely transactional, he doesn't do things on the basis of what's right and what's wrong. He does things on the basis of is this person or thing helping me. So, he pardoned Steve Stockman, Duncan Hunter and Chris Collins.

Then you've got those Blackwater guards who murdered people in Iraq in 2007, their boss at the time was Erik Prince who is the brother of Betsy DeVos, his Education Secretary. So that's helping another ally there. But the most important one are the pardons for the two figures in the Mueller investigation. Remember, the arc of Donald Trump's presidency and political career is

Russia was his financial benefactor before he was a candidate, then they helped him get elected. The president has helped Russia as president by weakening NATO. We are ending his administration with a massive hack by Russia of U.S. business and U.S. government which he is defending Russia on and suggesting it's China.

What the president has been trying to do throughout his term is avoid accountability politically and legally for that alliance with Russia. And so he's trying to wipe out the effects of the Mueller investigation, very good chance having pardoned Mike Flynn, commuted the sentence of Roger Stone, that he will pardon Paul Manafort who knows things about him that he didn't tell Robert Mueller, he may even try to pardon himself, and this fits in that pattern.

BROWN: Right. I mean, one of the things you see in his pardons for those involved in the Russia investigation who were charged is loyalty, really rewarding them for their loyalty. You saw it with Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos who investigators said was not very cooperative.

All right, John Harwood, thank you very much. Well, let's bring in former deputy assistant Attorney General and CNN legal analyst Elliot Williams. All right, so, let's break this down, Elliot. You have 15 pardons, five commutations, for the Mueller-related pardons, there are now four cases of clemency for four people charged and sentenced. What message is this sending?

ELLIOT WILLIAMS, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT ATTORNEY GENERAL: Well, again, this is exactly as John was reporting, the president has spent a tremendous amount of energy with these pardons, rewarding individuals who are, one, personal supporters of his or number two, speak to his own legal or political interests.

And you know, to some extent what he has done is tried to undermine the Mueller probe from the beginning, and pardons are quite literally the ultimate trump card where he can go around the legal process, go around the convictions, go around the guilty pleas and reward individuals who have been with him from before.

[09:25:00]

Now, we should be careful here because presidents do have a tremendous amount of power to issue pardons with very little guardrails on them, and just about every president in modern history has stepped in it a little bit with pardons. Bill Clinton with Mark Rich, Bill Clinton with Susan McDougal and so on. And there's a political price to pay. The problem here is that, what the president is doing is rewarding his personal friends and allies.

BROWN: So then, do you see that as an abuse of power even though he does have wide latitude when it comes to pardons?

WILLIAMS: Again -- it's -- abuse of power is very much in the eye of the beholder. I think the bigger issue here is, there is an Office of the Pardon attorney in the Justice Department whose sole function is to advise the president on the legal wisdom of issuing pardons, and it seems that once again, the president has just gone around that process. And the kinds of questions that the Office of the Pardon attorney would consider are things like, number one, what's the conduct or the character of the person that we're rewarding?

Number two, how long has it been since the offense? Number three, is someone influential like the president of the United States going to bat for the pardon? All of these things were normal process followed, would have cut against these pardons being issued, and what it looks like has happened is the president has just disregarded the advice of attorneys at the Justice Department and gone and done his own thing. This is exactly the kind of thing that Congress either today or next January when the new one comes in can investigate and look at the extent to which the president acted on his own.

You can even -- Congress even has the ability to, you know, open up -- to request a criminal inquiry into whether any laws were violated in the issuance of these pardons.

BROWN: So, if you would, why does it matter that many of the high profile pardons were pushed by Trump's GOP allies on the Hill and conservative media? Why is that significant here?

WILLIAMS: Well, again, the whole point of the pardons is to correct a wrong not to curry favor with someone's political supporters. You know, that's why this power was written into the constitution in the first place. That, you know, years after a pardon in which you know, some old person had done their time or someone, you know -- a non- violent criminal, a non-violent drug offense is sort of the today what's come into favor for these, not to reward political supporters. And you know, that's sort of the issue here.

And it's almost poetic that on the day that the attorney general was resigning or stepping down, almost four not serving the president's personal needs, what the president is doing is demonstrating how much he expects the law to serve his personal needs, and by pardoning people that benefit him personally.

And so, you know, what I'm referring to is Bill Barr's final day is today, and he's sort of fallen out of favor with the president of the United States for not doing the kinds of things that step outside the law that would seem to make this president consistently happy as we've now seen for four straight years.

BROWN: We have seen. All right, Elliot Williams, thank you.

WILLIAMS: Thank you.

BROWN: Well, hospitals in Texas, they are overwhelmed. We're going to take you right inside a COVID-19 ward where one doctor says they're facing the darkest six weeks in modern American medical history. And we are just moments away right now from the opening bell on Wall Street.

Futures are relatively flat this morning as we learn another 803,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits just last week. That was a drop off from the week before, but still a high number and yet another sign that the U.S. job recovery has run into serious trouble. We'll continue to follow the latest moves on Wall Street. Stay with us.

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