Return to Transcripts main page

CNN Newsroom

Pandemic Raging; Vaccine Access in Minority Communities?; Trump's Pardon Spree. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 24, 2020 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:00]

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN HOST: Hello, and welcome to a special edition of NEWSROOM. I'm Bianna Golodryga.

Whether you have already begun celebrating Christmas or you will soon, please take a moment to think of the people who are directly affected by the pandemic today. Nearly 120,000 Americans are spending Christmas Eve in the hospital, and another 3,359 people just died of COVID.

That's why there is such an urgent effort to vaccinate as many Americans as possible. Doctors at Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., today volunteered on what would have been their day off, so that they could give the potentially lifesaving shots to other hospital staff.

CNN's Lucy Kafanov has more on where this country stands ahead of Christmas.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm Santa Claus. He is definitely an essential worker, because he is the one that brings the joy and keeps everybody's spirits up.

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's a Christmas like no other.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You ready to open presents?

UNIDENTIFIED CHILD: Santa Claus!

KAFANOV: Holiday cheer dampened by the coronavirus pandemic.

On Wednesday, the nation reporting more than 228,000 new COVID-19 cases, the death toll surpassing 3,300, cases on the rise across six states, the number in California alone surpassing two million, deaths also on the rise in 18 states.

DR. PETER HOTEZ, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Right now, COVID-19 is the single leading cause of death in the United States on a daily basis. That's how tragic this is.

KAFANOV: A preventable tragedy.

DR. ALI KHAN, FORMER CDC OFFICIAL: More lives would be saved in January if every state did a mask mandate than will be saved by vaccine in January.

KAFANOV: And there are more dark days ahead. The University of Washington's influential coronavirus model projects more than half-a- million Americans will die of COVID-19 by April 1, despite the vaccine.

Meanwhile, those shots of hope keep on coming. More than a million doses administered. U.S. officials have promised 20 million would be vaccinated by the end of the year, but they're expecting to fall short of their goal, with the head of Operation Warp Speed acknowledging those doses probably won't get there until January.

Despite the warnings, Americans keep hitting the skies. The TSA says it screened nearly 1.2 million people on Wednesday, a new pandemic record.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We weren't really torn. We want to see our family.

KAFANOV: The nation's top infectious disease expert leading by example, celebrating his 80th birthday today virtually.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: I definitely feel sad. This is the first holiday season of Christmas and my birthday that I have not spent with my daughters since they were born. I need to practice what I preach to the country. And my message has been, for the holidays, we should curtail travel to the extent possible.

KAFANOV: In California, were hospital ICUs remain near or at full capacity, doctors are worried about another surge following the holidays.

DR. RODNEY BORGER, ARROWHEAD REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER: We have two very large holidays where people mix and travel. And I really don't see them -- or the people I talk to, I really don't see them curtailing some of those activities.

KAFANOV (on camera): Yes. So, you're prepared for some dark weeks?

BORGER: We're prepared for the worst, hoping for the best.

DR. MARK GHALY, CALIFORNIA SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: Our number one defense is that people don't travel.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KAFANOV: So, as you heard there, California surpassing two million COVID-19 cases. That's just a staggering number.

And new numbers out from the state moments ago, more than 39,000 cases reported today alone, deaths also up more than 350. And all of this is from that Thanksgiving surge. There's a lot of concern what's going to happen after these upcoming holidays. Enjoy your Christmas Eve, but please do it safely -- Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: More dark days ahead, unfortunately.

Lucy Kafanov, thank you.

Well, as we mentioned, thousands of Americans are lying in the hospital infected with COVID.

Joining me now is Dr. Chris Pernell. She's a public health physician. And she participated in one of the coronavirus vaccine trials.

Dr. Pernell, thank you so much for coming on with us.

You have suffered a very personal loss and this pandemic, when your father passed away from COVID this year. What is your message right now to those who are traveling for the holidays and not heeding officials' advice?

DR. CHRIS PERNELL, PUBLIC HEALTH PHYSICIAN: You know, it's the same message that I gave for Thanksgiving.

I would give anything to have my father still with me. And I would give anything for the hundreds of thousands of Americans who have lost their lives, and then the even more who are struggling with the morbidity of this disease.

[15:05:08]

And I will only say these pure simple words: Hold the line. I have said that before. And I'm sure people are saying, Dr. Chris is a broken record. But there is nothing else we can do what to hold the line, because the alternative is just too catastrophic.

I think people are fatigued. I think people don't think coronavirus will happen to them. They think coronavirus will happen to another family. But there is no safety, other than those public health measures that we have been preaching from the mountaintops.

So, I could only just -- hopefully, that they will prevail.

GOLODRYGA: Hold the line, such an important message.

And, again, our condolences for the loss of your father.

The Pfizer CEO just said and came out saying he's cautiously optimistic that their coronavirus vaccine will work against this new variant that's emerged in the U.K. You were part of a vaccine trial. Does that give you confidence when you hear that?

PERNELL: You know, I'm confident. I'm cautiously optimistic, just as he is.

What we're actually seeing is mutations in the amino acid sequences. And we have seen these mutations before. There was a mutation back in the spring. And we're really confident that the vaccines that are out to market right now, both mRNA vaccines both able to produce a polyclonal antibody response.

So I think we will be covered. But what's going to be really important for us, as we wait to get that vaccine out to the broader public, is that we do those things that we know work. Many people don't have a vaccine yet. I don't know if I got placebo, or if I got the active candidate. I will know that soon.

But what I can do to keep myself safe and what others can do, even as these mutations happen, we can wear our masks, we can practice physical distancing, and we can practice frequent hand hygiene, as well as avoiding indoor gatherings that are very crowded and cramped.

GOLODRYGA: Look, these are not hard asks, right? And so much is on the line here.

Dr. Pernell, thank you so much for being public about this and speaking out. And I know this must be a very difficult holiday season without your father, so our condolences again. Thank you.

PERNELL: Thank you.

GOLODRYGA: Well, with a pandemic raging and millions of Americans struggling to get by, the president has fled Washington for Florida. His trip comes after throwing the bipartisan COVID relief deal in jeopardy, issuing new demands in the 11th hour that run counter to what the GOP is asking for.

It's far from the first time he's split with his own party in recent weeks. And he's refused to acknowledge Biden's election victory. He's gone after Republican governors over their state's election results and vetoed a massive defense bill. That's just to name a few things that have happened over the past few days.

With me now is Seung Min Kim, White House reporter for "The Washington Post."

Seung, always great to have you on.

You have new reporting now that the COVID relief bill is actually being flown to Mar-a-Lago today for the president. Obviously, the message being that he can sign it right away from wherever he is to end this all. What more can you tell us?

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Exactly.

The ball is literally kind of in the White House's court now. So, the president can take his pen and sign it as many -- at any moment that he chooses. But the -- but what we don't know is whether he's actually going to do that. He has shown no signs of stepping down. He has shown no willingness to back off his position from that extraordinary video earlier this week where he called this bill a disgrace.

We know of -- there's just so much confusion all around. We know we saw House Republicans try to move a little bit this morning to placate Donald Trump by pushing a measure that would reassess the foreign aid measures in that separate spending package that was tied to the COVID relief bill that the president was so angry about.

But we don't know whether he will sign this bill or not. And what -- and, usually, while a bill has typically 10 days to be signed once it is submitted to the president for his signature, that time frame doesn't really apply here, because, remember, the government shuts down after this Monday.

And even with that major deadline, we have jobless benefits expiring for millions this coming Saturday. We have a really important moratorium on evictions for renters expiring on the 31st. There are all these little deadlines, these little time bombs that are coming, and the president is really the only one at this point who could prevent that from happening.

GOLODRYGA: And the consequences, obviously, are dire. I don't have to tell you that.

You wrote in "The Washington Post" yesterday that this fight between the president and the GOP doubles as a fresh political weapon really for Democrats in the two George's Senate run-offs.

How much is chaos on Capitol Hill fueling Democrats' chances in Georgia?

[15:10:00]

KIM: It's certainly something that worries Republicans working on those races right now, particularly on the economic relief issue, because the political upside that Republicans saw could benefit their candidates and Georgia was one of the motivators in getting them to agree to even $600 level stimulus checks in that package in the first place.

And the two Republicans in that race, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, really proudly touted their ability at securing those checks for Georgia voters. And then, with one message, the president undercut what they were saying and handed the Democratic candidates -- saying, we told you all along that those checks were too small. Donald Trump agrees with us. What are you going to do?

And so far, they have been relatively silent. And whenever there's this chasm in the Republican Party, it's an easy thing for Democrats, both on Capitol Hill and on the campaign trail, to exploit.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. It's as if the president is saying to those candidates, look, it's either Mitch McConnell or me. Who are you siding with?

KIM: Right.

GOLODRYGA: Seung Min Kim, never a dull moment. Thanks for breaking news with us. We appreciate it.

(LAUGHTER)

GOLODRYGA: Well, up next, a look at the unprecedented nature of Trump's pardon spree. Historian Tim Naftali, who once ran the Nixon Library, joins me live with some perspective.

Plus: concerns about getting the COVID vaccine to the people who need it most. What happens in communities where a pharmacy just isn't close by?

And it's Christmas Eve, so we're tracking Santa on NORAD's live feed, of course. We will give you a live update coming up.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:15:53]

GOLODRYGA: The immediate consequences of a pardon-filled week is the president's allies and supporters get free passes.

But the potential long-range impact on the American government and the functioning of American democracy is a different question.

Joining me now, CNN presidential historian and former director of the Nixon Presidential Library Tim Naftali.

Tim, thanks so much for coming on.

What was your initial reaction when you saw these latest pardons come down?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Well, I wasn't -- Bianna, I wasn't surprised, I have to say.

President Trump has been signaling for some time that, when the moment was right, he would start issuing pardons for people he thought were victims of the -- of a so-called witch-hunt. So I wasn't surprised.

Of course, I was dismayed. They fit into a category of bad pardons. There are historically some bad pardons in the modern era. But Donald Trump has managed to a set -- to accumulate in a short period of time more bad pardons than any previous modern president.

And by bad pardons, I'm using the -- I'm using the definition that was written by Chief justice William Howard Taft in 1925. And, basically he didn't call it bad pardon, but he talked about pardons that would undermine the deterrence that's built into our judicial system. In other words, if you use the pardon to give mercy to someone who has done something very bad and does not deserve mercy, you're undermining our judicial system.

And Donald Trump, by pardoning Manafort, Stone, and Flynn, is undermining our judicial system.

GOLODRYGA: And, look, you talk about bad pardons in the past. Of course, Marc Rich comes to mind, right, pardoned by President Clinton. Most people frowned upon that pardon, but it was just a sliver of the rest of the pardons that President Clinton handed down.

The difference here is, I believe somebody took a toll recently and said that some 80 or 90 percent of all the pardons that the president has doled out so far have related directly to some sort of nefarious investigation that he's directly involved in.

What kind of precedent does this set? And in terms of president-elect Biden, who chooses to sort of look past this and move forward, should he, or should something be done about this?

NAFTALI: Well, the only way to fix this problem is to amend the Constitution.

There is a system in place that previous presidents set up, which, for a normal president, would be enough. Ordinarily, the Department of Justice oversees the whole pardon process. Now, only the president can decide to issue a clemency or a pardon.

But, usually, the Justice Department receives applications from people. And, usually, the president doesn't even know the people they're pardoning. The president is pardoning people on the suggestion or at the suggestion of the attorney general. That's the way the system has been throughout the modern era.

Most presidents pardon people, not routinely, but regularly. And most of the people, they don't know. What makes the Trump era so different is that Donald Trump is personally connected to so many of the pardons he's issued. And all of them are for political reasons.

After Bill Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich, there was discussion in Congress about amending the Constitution to fix this problem of last- minute and pardons. A last-minute pardon is a problem, because the president who's leaving office doesn't have any more -- there's no restraint anymore on the president. He's not going to run for office again. It's done.

And Barney Frank, a member of the Democratic leadership, suggested a constitutional amendment to make it impossible for presidents to pardon after an election.

Well, of course, that went nowhere. And it's very hard to amend the Constitution, but it's not like this is the first time people have been talking about it.

[15:20:00]

What makes the Trump moment so different, though, is that he's doing it on such a scale never before imagined. Richard Nixon dangled a lot of pardons to firm up the cover-up after Watergate. He didn't issue a single one of them. He used it as a tactic.

Donald Trump has not only dangled pardons, but he's actually authorized them in order to maintain a cover-up. That is just unprecedented in our history.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. Yes.

Yes, it appears that -- we always look for precedents, right, when we're talking about these things. And we may have hit a wall where there is just no precedent, not even in comparing with Richard Nixon.

Tim Naftali, thanks, as always, for coming on and offering us a perspective. We appreciate it.

NAFTALI: Thank you, Bianna. Happy holidays.

GOLODRYGA: You too.

Well, coming up: The Pfizer vaccine has now arrived in several Latin American countries, the first shots in Mexico being administered today to health care workers.

But here in the U.S., there are concerns that communities without easy access to a pharmacy could miss out when the doses are sent nationwide. CNN is in one of those neighborhoods in Chicago up ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:25:51]

GOLODRYGA: Despite the fact that more than nine million doses of coronavirus vaccines have been distributed across the United States, experts are concerned that access to those doses will be limited in minority neighborhoods.

CNN's Omar Jimenez has the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: How long have you lived in this neighborhood?

ROCHELLE SYKES, CHICAGO RESIDENT: All my life, 55 years. It's changed a whole lot.

If they're going to roll out a vaccine, and they're going to roll it out to grocery stores and pharmacies, I see a problem.

JIMENEZ: You feel, just because the vaccine is available, it's not necessarily going to be accessible?

SYKES: That is correct.

JIMENEZ (voice-over): Rochelle Sykes lives in the predominantly black West Side Chicago neighborhood of Austin and is in a zip code that has among the highest COVID-19 death rates in the city.

And the barriers to getting a vaccine are already taking shape, ranging anywhere from distance to pharmacies, confidence in health care, and even personal safety, as Austin is also among the city's most violent neighborhoods.

SYKES: Is it even worth the time, OK? You hear gunshots. You got to get out and get in your car. They're doing carjackings. And if you don't feel safe, then you just don't do it.

JIMENEZ: Just down the street, Loretto Hospital was host to the city's first COVID-19 vaccination and the first to set up a West Side community testing site back in April, one they plan to soon turn into a community vaccination site.

DR. AFYA KHAN, DIRECTOR OF INFECTION CONTROL, LORETTO HOSPITAL: In order to stop this virus eventually, we all have to do our part. And we want to make sure we involve everybody.

We're experiencing three types of pandemics. And that's violence, racism, as well as COVID-19.

JIMENEZ: It's an issue leadership continues to wrestle with.

DR. ALLISON ARWADY, COMMISSIONER, CHICAGO DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Where any part of the city is not supported enough, it indirectly impacts the entire city, not just that this is a, let's make sure that we treat COVID. It's about, what are the root causes that have made these neighborhoods, these subgroups in Chicago more vulnerable.

JIMENEZ (on camera): Parts of the downtown Chicago area have a life expectancy of up to 90 years old, according to an analysis out of NYU. Then, just about 10 miles down the road, near here on Chicago's South Side, the life expectancy goes down to 59.9. That's a difference of about 30 years, which that same NYU analysis says is the largest gap in the country.

EMMA WASHINGTON, SISTER OF CORONAVIRUS VICTIMS: All of a sudden, this virus came and took my sister away.

JIMENEZ (voice-over): Emma Washington is almost 80 years old. She lost her sister to COVID-19 in September and her brother to COVID the day before Christmas Eve.

And now she's considering what getting a vaccine is going to look like with her pharmacy over a mile away and no car to get her there.

WASHINGTON: I have to take one bus, and then I had another bus, because there was only one place around, Walgreens, around my area.

JIMENEZ: Now she mostly has her medication delivered. But this isn't a new phenomenon. One study, based on data from 2002 to 2012, found over 50 percent of the city's black communities were so-called pharmacy deserts, low-income neighborhoods where pharmacies are far from the population, and people don't have regular access to vehicles, compared with just 5 percent in white communities.

ARWADY: This is not something that's going to get solved in a year or in five years. But how do we take the COVID conversation and turn it into the conversation that links to chronic disease and homicide and infant mortality and HIV and opioid overdose?

Those are the five main drivers of our disparate life expectancies in Chicago. And COVID has indirectly impacted all of those.

JIMENEZ: But when it comes to COVID, for Sykes, along with those in Washington's community, the vaccine shot is about more than medicine. It's about getting a fair shot, without it being a long shot.

SYKES: We are in a lifeboat. They are on a cruiser. If you can come up with a vaccine within a year, why are we sitting in

a community where there is no grocery store with fresh fruits and vegetables?

JIMENEZ: Omar Jimenez, CNN, Chicago.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GOLODRYGA: And our thanks to Omar for that important reporting.

Joining me now to discuss, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jorge Rodriguez.