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Trump Throws COVID Relief Bill in Doubt after Asking for Changes; Trump Signals He may Veto Newly-Passed Relief Bill; Nearly 1 Million People Flew Tuesday Despite CDC Warnings. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 23, 2020 - 10:00   ET

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

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[10:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN NEWSROOM: Good morning to you. I'm Pamela Brown in for Jim and Poppy this morning.

And President Trump is throwing out the lame-duck playbook and he is throwing his final days in office into chaos, which could impact millions of Americans. So, it took months for Congress to finally finalize and pass a stimulus deal. And now the president is signaling that he won't get behind it, never mind that this deal was negotiated by his own administration, and that the government could be shut down and benefits for millions of Americans could expire. How will lawmakers respond? That is a big question this morning.

And the president is also unleashing a wave of pardons, many controversial, including for men who pleaded guilty in the Mueller investigation.

Also new this morning, on the battle against the coronavirus, the U.S. is buying another 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine. But experts warn the key to stopping this virus now is to scrap those big holiday gatherings. But so far, it seems people are not heeding that warning based on what we are seeing at the airports right now.

Our team is tracking the latest developments, but let's begin at the White House with John Harwood. So, John, why is the president suddenly so interested in this bill now when he stayed on the sidelines in large part for months while it was being negotiated?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, we know Pam it's not because of the content of the bill itself. The president could care less about that. If he did, he would have been involved. We also do not know whether the president is simply harmlessly making noise, trying to make himself look good, trying to smack around political adversaries, the people who understand that they're going to be working with Joe Biden very soon, or whether he's actually trying to be destructive, cause a government shutdown, cause the American people to lose this relief.

The president is erratic, he's unpredictable. We know that he can't handle, in a sensible, mature way, the fact that he was defeated by Joe Biden. So he's been pushing this delusion that he actually won the election. That's not going anywhere. At some level, he knows that. And we're just going to have to wait and see. Is this a one-off or is he actually trying to take it down? We will be watching.

BROWN: Senior Political Analyst John Avlon is also here. John, it is true that it's anyone's guess which way this will go because of the erratic behavior from this president. What are the millions of people sitting at home who are looking forward to some relief after a very stressful year now anxious, not knowing what's going to happen, what are they supposed to think this morning?

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: That we have a completely incoherent, borderline, incompetent and delusional person as president, undercutting his own party, the administration's negotiations in this deal in a speech full of lies, where he ends up speaking and acting as if he will have a second term when he will not.

But this is a very dangerous time for our country. I mean, he can be swimming around the lap of luxury at Mar-a-Lago while people are suffering in the wake of Christmas in the absence of this bill. If he wanted a better bill, if he wanted a higher number, he should have negotiated for it. But, instead, the House passed its own version in the summer. This finally got through the Senate because of a bipartisan effort but his team negotiated. So to attack it and undercut it now is simply cruelty as we face Christmas for all of the people depending on something to help them through this period as the COVID gets worse.

BROWN: And the timing of this, John, last night, I was reporting on the latest wave of pardons and in around 15 minutes, this video was released that had us all sort of scratching our heads, but what can you tell us about the latest wave of pardons issued by the president? I imagine this is just the beginning from what I'm hearing.

HARWOOD: It is just the beginning, Pam. And what this first installment shows is that the president is determined to use the power of office as he gets ready to leave to protect his friends, his allies and himself. So he pardoned these three corrupt Republican congressmen who were early endorsers of his campaign. He does this at a time when he's trying to get House Republicans to back his bid to challenge the election results.

He pardoned those four Blackwater guards who worked for Erik Prince when they murdered those people in Iraq. Erik Prince later tried to -- led a scheme to try to bribe Iraqi officials to cover up what happened. That ended up not working. Erik Prince is also the brother of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary under President Trump.

But most importantly, Pam, he pardoned these two people convicted in the Mueller probe of Trump and his relationship with Russia.

[10:05:01]

His overarching goal is to escape political and legal accountability for his relationship with Vladimir Putin for the help that they provided him and whatever he has done in return for that. Of course, we're ending his administration on a massive hack of U.S. government agencies and business, which the president has tried to absolve Russia of and point to China.

But the -- Alex van der Zwaan and George Papadopoulos are just a continuation of what happened with the commuting of the sentence of Roger Stone, with the pardoning of Mike Flynn. We expect more with Paul Manafort, his campaign manager, and the president may even try to pardon himself.

BROWN: We'll have to see.

What sings out to you, John Avlon, with these pardons, especially with them being handed down hours before Attorney General Barr leaves?

AVLON: Well, that's an indication that this is not just the beginning but these might be the most palatable of the pardon spree the president is about to go on. But you see a couple clear themes in addition to what John Harwood just laid out.

Look, he is pardoning people who have tried to make money, steal money out of politics in their campaigns, people who have lied to investigators or Congress. These are clearly things that the president is reflecting a degree of projection on. He lies all the time. There are questions about how much money he has made off the office of president and, obviously, the pardoning of political cronies against the backdrop of the Russia investigation. This is going to get worse.

It is a complete insult to the intentions of the founders when they came up with pardon power, who worried explicitly not only about constraining a tyrannical executive but whether if a president would try to pardon people, they put up to crimes.

And what the president has been talking around in all these corruption that surrounds his administration, the conversations in the Oval Office directly relate to sedition, trying to overthrow an election, and in the case of the Russian hack, which he has refused to condemn the Kremlin for. One of dozens of times he has refused to accuse the Kremlin, got asked why he is giving a hostile foreign power comfort. In effect, he is aiding the enemy.

And so these are very serious times and the president is capable of doing anything. He's constrained by the Constitution on January 20th. He's constrained by the fact the administration a lot folks are getting orders to move on, but he is doubling down with conspiracy theorists and plotting in the White House to still overturn our election, every democratic norm that he can possibly destroy before he leaves town.

BROWN: And the connected tissue with some of the more high profile pardons are the fact they have been brought to the attention of the White House or have been pushed by GOP allies of the president on Capitol Hill and conservative media. This is a president who ran on this idea of draining the swamp, but, John Harwood, is this reflective of that?

HARWOOD: The president never had the slightest intention of draining the swamp. The ethos of Donald Trump is what's in it for me. When he said drain the swamp, what he meant was, I'm going to go get mine and do what I can to help people who help me get mine. So you can't take that term at face value.

The president's tried to make money off the presidency and here we see with these pardons he's trying to protect his friends and allies.

BROWN: All right. John Harwood and John Avlon, thank you very much.

Well, this morning, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar announced the U.S. is buying an additional 100 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine and they expect to receive all of those doses by August.

Let's bring in CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen. So, Elizabeth, how significant is this?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Oh, it's definitely significant. Way back, Pam, I remember you and I talking sort of back in the spring or summer, they were sort of preordering these vaccines. They didn't know how much to order of which because some of them might not work. Well, Pfizer's and Moderna's turned out to work better than anyone expected. And so now, they're buying more.

So, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, has said with Pfizer and Moderna, those two purchases together add up to 400 million. You have to cut that in half when you look at how many people that takes care of because everybody needs two doses, so enough for 200 million people.

And let's take a look at something that Secretary Azar put in a press release, because I think this was sort of the bottom line here. He said, this new federal purchase could give Americans even more confidence that we will have enough supply to vaccinate every American who wants it by July 2021. So what he's saying here is the intention is that if you want it, you'll be able to get it by July of 2021. So not immediate, people are going to have to wait, but that we can look forward to hopefully a summer where everyone who wants a vaccine will be able to get one. Pam?

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BROWN: Hopefully. All right, and then there are these travel restrictions that are continuing to tighten around the U.K. as we try to learn more about this new variant. What have we learned so far?

COHEN: So we know that other countries, many other countries, have said we don't -- basically, we don't want flights coming in from the U.K. and the U.S. has not chosen to go that route. CNN spoke earlier this morning with Dr. Rochelle Walensky, who is the incoming CDC director under President-elect Biden, and she said that's a consideration. Maybe it sounds like it's on the list of possibilities but she said there might be other things that could be done as well, quarantining people coming in from the U.K., testing them, doing some combination of that. So I don't know that we are going to see a travel ban. The U.S. may stand not alone but almost alone in not putting in restrictions. But consider this, it appears that this variant is already here. So do you really need to have a travel ban when we know it is likely already here? I have spoken to scientists who say probably hundreds of people in the U.S. have this U.K. variant, which we know is likely to transmit more quickly.

Now, we don't have documentation that Americans have this U.K. variant but, really, that's because of the surveillance system in this country is not so great. So we haven't caught it yet but we know that it's likely here. Pamela?

BROWN: Okay, Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much.

And still to come this morning, President Trump calls the carefully crafted stimulus bill a disgrace. Could his position put relief for millions of Americans in jeopardy and cause the government to shut down?

And President-elect Biden laying the blame for the massive cyberattack squarely on President Trump. I'll talk to a top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, up next.

And President Trump has pardoned military contractors involved in the massacre of Iraqi civilians. A survivor of that attack is now speaking out. Stay with us.

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BROWN: Well, the $900 billion question this morning right now, as we speak, will Americans facing evictions and food shortages get the help that they desperately need? 12 million Americans, in just a few days, lose key unemployment benefits. And now, the president now says he won't sign a compromised bill that finally passed after months of congressional bickering unless changes are made. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is in favor of one big change that he wants.

With me now is Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier of California. Congresswoman Speier, thank you for coming on. Let's talk about this.

President Trump said that he wants more money to go directly to Americans, something Democrats want too. Were you surprised when he did this and do you welcome it?

REP. JACKIE SPEIER (D-CA): So, we're surprised and gleeful about it, but he has been AWOL during these negotiations for the last two weeks while he was trying to overturn the elections by the American people. So, coming out with this magnanimous offer is terrific. It's exactly what we wanted, but we weren't allowed to get it because of the Republicans in the Senate in particular. So they were only interested in doing this package at all because of the Georgia elections and that is what has motivated them. BROWN: So let's just talk about that. Because, as we know, Speaker Pelosi thumbed her nose to a proposal from the White House, a $1.8 trillion package before the election. Now, Democrats seem to like the idea of putting money more in Americans' pockets and is what the president is proposing. Why is that? Why was she against it before the election and now for this?

SPEIER: Well, first of all, she was always for a minimum of $1,200 in economic stimulus and Republicans said that was out of the question. They were more interested in a three-martini lunch 100 percent deduction when restaurants are closed and people are not going out for lunch, nor is that one of the priorities of Democrats.

Before the election, she was also fighting tooth and nail to get money for state and local governments because we've had so many people that have been laid off, and we're talking about police, fire, teachers as a result of the pain and suffering that states and local governments have endured. So that's what she was fighting for.

After the election, we were still negotiating for that and they made it absolutely clear that that wasn't going to be the deal. The only way we were going to get anything was this pittance of $600 per person, and that was a tradeoff for not giving money to state and local governments.

BROWN: So, where does this go from here? Will you be voting on a new measure today given where things stand with the president's message?

SPEIER: We will take this -- the president, who had no interest in negotiating or being part of helping Americans, but now that he's offered $2,000, we will actually take that bill up on the House floor tomorrow and give the Republicans the opportunity to embrace it. They have typically not done so.

BROWN: Okay. I want to move on to another big development that came out last night and that was this pardon spree, including two men who pleaded guilty in Robert Mueller's investigation, three former U.S. congressmen who had been convicted of corruption and four Blackwater guards involved in the Iraq massacre.

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These are just some of the people the president pardoned, along with several non-violent drug offenders. What is your reaction?

SPEIER: It turns my stomach, to be quite honest with you. The president will pardon you if you lie for him. The president will pardon you if you are one of the first members that endorsed him. The president will pardon you even though you killed 17 civilians in a non-combative setting and a trial that took place three times.

This is a president who does not provide pardons based on mercy and repentance in the sense of people who have kind of paid their dues. He does it because it reflects on him. If you're going to lie for him, you're going to get a pardon. So, look forward to seeing Paul Manafort pardoned soon and others within his orbit who have been willing to lie for him or who have been aggrandizers to him.

BROWN: I want to get to the Russian hack before we let you go. There was a massive Russia-linked hack of the U.S. government agencies and private companies. Here is what Joe Biden said last night.

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JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: This has all happened on Donald Trump's watch when he wasn't watching. It's still his responsibility as president to defend American interest for the next four weeks. But rest assured that even if he does not take it seriously, I will.

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BROWN: So, what does the incoming Biden team need to do to deter them, stop them, when sanctions have already been ramped up so much?

SPEIER: Well, there's so much more we need to do. And the president has been absolutely silent and putting our national security at great risk. This is like an act of war. We know that they've gone into our networks. We don't know if they're just occupying the networks or if they have taken control of the networks.

I mean, this is so serious and yet the president hasn't said a peep. He didn't a peep when it was alleged that Russia put bounties on American soldiers in Afghanistan. He didn't say a peep when the Russian opposition leader was poisoned. This president loves autocrats and he loves those who have shown him an interest in wanting to do business with him, whether it's a hotel in Moscow or Trump Hotel in Istanbul, where Erdogan was given the opportunity to go ahead and invade Syria and go after the Kurds, who have been our allies in shutting down ISIS.

This man has no moral fiber and it is time for us to get a real president of the United States, thank God, January 20th --

SPEIER: You called it an act of war, Congresswoman Speier. Joe Biden was asked about that specifically if he viewed it as an act of war. I mean, he used forceful language but he didn't come outright and say, yes, this was an act of war. Would you have liked to see him been more forceful on this hack that everybody in intelligence community appears to think came from Russia?

SPEIER: I think the President-elect will be very forceful once he has the reins of power. It's very difficult when you are a president in waiting. We always only have one president at a time. So I think he is using language that -- he's very careful about the language he's using. I would be very surprised if he doesn't characterize this as an act of war. It clearly is.

BROWN: Okay. Congresswoman Speier, thank you.

SPEIER: Thank you. BROWN: Well, despite several warnings against holiday travel, the TSA says more than 5 million people passed through airport security checkpoints since Friday. Why experts are raising the alarm, up next.

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BROWN: The TSA says nearly 1 million people traveled through U.S. airports again on Tuesday. This marks the fifth straight day that around a million people pass through security checkpoints despite several warnings from the CDC against holiday travel.

CNN's Pete Muntean joins me now from Reagan National Airport in Arlington, Virginia. So, Pete, what are you seeing there? How are the crowds?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, it's possible we can see another big bump in air travel numbers today and health experts are worried that could lead to another surge of the virus. The TSA says more than a million people passed through security at America's airports on Friday, on Saturday and then, again, on Sunday, nearly a million on Monday and Tuesday.

But it's that three-day streak that's so interesting, something we have not seen before since the pandemic, not even around the Thanksgiving holiday.

[10:30:02]

We know the Thanksgiving holiday led to a surge in the virus and Dr. Anthony Fauci says these new numbers are concerning.