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Nation Celebrates Christmas as Pandemic Rages Across U.S.; CDC to Require Negative COVID-19 Test for All Passengers Traveling to U.S. from UK; Millions Face Benefit Cliff as Trump Upends Stimulus Deal. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 25, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

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[09:00:40]

ALISON KOSIK, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning. I'm Alison Kosik. Jim and Poppy have the holiday off. Merry Christmas. But this Christmas is like none other.

A day meant for gathering, upended by a pandemic, telling us to keep our distance. Will Americans listen to the warnings? We've already seen a record number of pandemic era travelers just this week. On Christmas Eve alone, the U.S. reported over 192,000 new cases of coronavirus and 2,899 deaths. There are growing fears we will see another surge on top of the one we're seeing right now.

Also, this morning, the CDC says it will require negative coronavirus tests for all passengers traveling to the U.S. from the UK. The new policy is set to take effect on Monday in response to a new strain of COVID that is said to be more transmissible.

And in the middle of this health crisis a financial cliff, millions of Americans face deep uncertainty at the end of this very difficult year with key jobless benefits on the verge of expiring. President Trump's call for changes to the stimulus bill throwing relief in doubt for so many this holiday.

But let's start with the latest on the coronavirus. CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now. Good morning, Elizabeth. Talk with me about how effective you think the CDC's testing requirement will be for people travel to the U.S. from the UK.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Alison, I've got to say after taking a look - excuse me - a look at these requirements, they feel pretty porous and I will tell you what I mean in a sec.

Let's take a look at what the requirements are. The requirements are the passengers have to get tested within three days of leaving the UK. So, not the day they leave the UK, not the day before, not two days before, they can do it within 72 hours. And passengers have to provide documentation of a negative test to the airlines.

Let's take a look at what the CDC says about this requirement. "This additional testing requirement will fortify our protection of the American public to improve their health and safety and ensure responsible international travel."

Here is why they're pretty porous. If you get tested but you contracted COVID the day before it's not going to show up on that test, it's too soon. Even two days before or even longer than that. So, it doesn't cover that time period. Even if you are negative that day, what if you contracted COVID the next day or later that afternoon or the day after that. There's a big chunk of time, several days in which you could get COVID and still have a negative test. So, there's a lot of wiggle room in these requirements.

KOSIK: And by the way, the variant could already be here in the U.S. anyway, right? Because of the delay in requiring this test anyway that you say would be ineffective, 72 hours before. So, there's that element.

Let's talk about what Pfizer's CEO says, though, about how optimistic he is about how the vaccine will work against this new variant. I understand you have more on that.

COHEN: Right. So, these requirements are because there's this new variant in the UK which appears to be much more transmissible. The question is, will the vaccine work against this new variant? So, let's take a listen to the CEO of Pfizer. He's optimistic. Let's take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ALBERT BOURLA, CEO, PFIZER: We are doing specific studies that will be completed within 10 days from now or something like that let's say two weeks, that we are testing to see if this new strain is equally sensitive to our vaccine and also would be neutralized by the vaccine.

I am optimistic but we'll have to wait to see the answer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: Now, I have to say it's not terribly scientific to be optimistic about something before the testing is done. So, it's not clear why he's optimistic when the testing hasn't been done yet.

I've been speaking with scientists who have studied the genome of this variant and they say they're seeing concerns. There's a lot of mutations in this variant. There's a combination of mutations we have never seen before. They're concerned that the vaccine may be - may - may be slightly less effective but if so, it would only be slightly. Alison?

KOSIK: That's discouraging. Elizabeth Cohen, thanks very much.

[09:05:00]

Joining me now is Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Center for Vaccine Development at Texas Children's Hospital and the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine. Good morning. DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN, TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Good morning. How are you, Alison?

KOSIK: Doing well. Merry Christmas to you. So, let's go ahead and start with the coronavirus variant that was found in the UK. What's your reaction to the new CDC guidelines requiring travelers from Britain to have a negative COVID test before returning to the U.S.?

HOTEZ: Yes, I mean, as Elizabeth Cohen points out it's a pretty porous mechanism. Just because you can still be positive the day before you travel, number one. I think the real emphasis needs to be placed on better virus genome surveillance. So, one of the things that we've just learned although maybe the information was out there before but it's only becoming apparent to the general American public is we've only been sequencing around 50,000 virus genomes through the CDC sphere project which is the project for sequencing all of the virus isolates that we can to getting the full sequence. That's how the UK scientists found this B1.1.7 variant a few months ago.

So, the issue is this, we could easily have this variant in the United States, but we are under testing for it. So, once again we're coming up small or coming up short in terms of testing but in a new light with respect to virus genomes. So, in contrast the UK has already sequenced 157,000 virus genomes. So, for a country of the size of the U.S. we should be doing about 10 times more testing. So, not only could this variant be here, the South African variant could be here that we're -- that we're also concerned about, and there could be homegrown U.S. variants that are here that we're just not looking for.

So, I think the emphasis really needs to be on fortifying our genome testing and that we have the capacity for doing and there should be a Manhattan-style project to really ramp that up right now.

KOSIK: Of course, and all this is happening as millions are traveling for the holiday. Right now, on Christmas Day, the virus is exploding across the country. What does this mean for a potential after- Christmas surge and how bad could things really get?

HOTEZ: Well, Alison, you know, the level of transmission in the U.S. is so screaming high already that even if there is a surge following the Christmas holidays, which there almost certainly will be, it's going to be hard to actually measure the specific impact of the travel. So, therefore, I think, you know, despite all of our attempts to put out a lot of strong messages we still have a lot of holiday travel and over the New Year's as well. So, this is really disconcerting.

So, this epidemic has already spiraled out of control, we are at 250,000 new cases a day, which remember what that really means, that's an underestimate times four, these are a million new cases a day. So, we're going to have to put a lot of emphasis on getting vaccines deployed as quickly as possible, we have to greatly expand our virus genomic surveillance.

I'm not as worried about the vaccines protecting against these new variants because of the 17 mutations it looks like only three or four are in the part of the virus that docks with the host receptor, that's the receptor binding domain, that's the basis of most of the COVID-19 vaccines including our vaccines.

So, all of the laboratories including ours are scrambling to confirm that the neutralizing antibodies against the vaccine will neutralize this new COVID-19 variant, but the bigger issue is we know this virus is a plastic genome and has the ability to mutate quite a bit. So, even if we do OK with this particular variant it's only a matter of time before other variants merge in the coming years. So, we have to have an additional program in place to rapidly develop new vaccines and new universal coronavirus vaccines and that's got to be a top priority as well.

KOSIK: OK. Dr. Peter Hotez, great talking with you today. Thanks.

HOTEZ: Thank you so much.

KOSIK: Now to the economic pain millions are facing this Christmas. Tomorrow roughly 12 million unemployed Americans could lose key benefits. Next week, a protection put in place against evictions expires. And on Monday, the government runs out of funding.

But there is of a solution, President Trump could sign the $900 billion relief bill. He could have days ago. He could have done this days ago. Instead he demanded last minute changes to a deal that took months of congressional bickering to reach. But Republicans will not agree to changes that he wants. Overnight, the bill was flown to the president in Florida, the question is will he sign it?

With me now is Ken Rogoff, Harvard University economist and former chief economist at the IMF. Good morning.

[09:10:01]

KEN ROGOFF, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS AND PUBLIC POLICY, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: Good morning.

KOSIK: So, it really is the question, what is President Trump going to do. Is he going to veto it? Will he sit on it and let it die before the new Congress is in session January 3rd or will he actually sign it?

ROGOFF: I'm only grateful that there's only 25 more days of asking this kind of question. I mean, this is no way to run a country. It's a good bill. Yes, there are things both sides could have wanted, but it really does a lot as a stopgap measure to try to pull us through this very difficult situation.

It's not just the millions of unemployed. People are being evicted from their homes. It's also, all the small businesses and restaurants that are really not being helped by the Federal Reserve programs, they need direct aid, education, vaccine distribution. There are so many things in this bill that we need now, we need to get going on. It's just a terrible thing that we're being held hostage.

KOSIK: What do you think the president's motivations are in holding Americans hostage essentially?

ROGOFF: I'm sorry, I mean, I just -- you know, I've given up. I mean, obviously he has a certain me versus them mentality. I just don't know. I think he's hurting himself. He's hurting the country. I think it's really a remarkably good bill, it could be better, but I was really very pleased along a lot of dimensions of it.

Yes, some of the things he would like actually are not bad ideas, a larger stimulus check, great idea. Why didn't you speak up about that two months ago? So, I think in the end it will go through because frankly if it doesn't it's all going to happen and more in 25 days I would assume he wants to take a little bit of credit for it, but, you know, I have long given up on trying to read his mind.

KOSIK: So, let's talk about what's coming next. On day one what do you think President-elect Joe Biden has to do to address the economic crisis that just seems to be getting worse, especially with now this delay in getting these -- these benefits to Americans?

ROGOFF: Well, I think it's pretty clear cut that he first and foremost needs to deal with the virus, your previous guests were talking about that. This isn't the end even when we get the first round of vaccines. This is not the end. We need to deal with that. That's the most important thing to normalize.

There are many things that need to be done but one area where I think there is a lot of agreement is to do something about our infrastructure, our education climate, and I think he's going to take bold initiatives and I think that's where there is room for bipartisan agreement.

I don't know why that didn't happen the last four years because it seemed like there was agreement around that. So, I expect to see a lot of initiatives along those lines, in other words, not just playing defense, but also, some offense in moving the economy ahead.

KOSIK: OK. Ken Rogoff, great getting your perspective this morning. Thank you.

ROGOFF: Thank you.

KOSIK: We're Also, following breaking news out of Nashville this morning. Reports of an explosion happening Downtown. At this point no word on what exactly exploded or if there are any injuries. Emergency crews are on the scene and we are working to gather all of the information we can right now. We will bring you an update as soon as we can. You're looking at live pictures there.

Still to come, the president is paving the way for a destructive and chaotic final stretch in the White House. It's unprecedented and sources tell CNN he's resolute in fighting this election.

And while you celebrate the holiday at home, thousands of healthcare workers are on the job right now on the frontlines of this pandemic. Jean Casarez is at one New York City hospital. JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Governor Andrew Cuomo is asking health care professionals to continue to administer the vaccine today on Christmas and throughout the rest of the holidays. I will have more in just a minute.

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[09:18:22]

KOSIK: Let's get back to that breaking news out of Nashville this morning. Emergency crews there are responding to an explosion in the Downtown area. Our Shimon Prokupecz is following this story right now. Shimon, what are you hearing?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So, we don't really know much at this point, Alison. We know that there is what appears to be a very large explosion in the Downtown Nashville area, the police are there, the fire department are on scene. We don't know if anyone has been injured, but it seems as you can see from the pictures here that this was a pretty rather large explosion, a lot of smoke, certainly some fire.

And now it would appear that officials there have it under control. We don't know the cause. This is really -- I mean, to just say it bluntly, it's kind of a weird area. This is in Downtown Nashville, it's unclear why something would explode there. Obviously, we don't know the details.

The mayor we know is on his way to the scene and he's saying he doesn't even know if there are any injuries. So, they're trying to gather as much information as possible. This happened just a short time ago. So, there are a lot of information is not yet known, but certainly the pictures that are coming out from Nashville are somewhat disturbing, Alison.

KOSIK: Can you tell yet if the explosion impacted any of those high- rise buildings or I think that was a hotel over there?

PROKUPECZ: Yes. We don't know specifically if it -- it certainly seems so from the pictures -- from what we can see in these pictures here that there is some impact to nearby buildings, but we don't know the extent of it yet. Obviously, the police are there, and the fire department are there, and everyone is trying to figure out exactly what the cause of this explosion was.

KOSIK: OK. Shimon, we're going to continue to follow this and get back to you when you have some updates. Thanks very much.

[09:20:02]

Before leaving for Florida, President Trump met with Vice President Mike Pence. Then hours later, retweeted a message that called for his VP to refuse to ratify the election results. Trump has recently complained that Pence isn't doing enough to support his bid to overturn the results. CNN's Joe Johns is in West Palm Beach this Christmas morning. Merry Christmas, Joe. What more about -- what more can you tell us about this meeting?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, merry Christmas, Alison, to you also. Look, this is reporting from CNN's Pamela Brown and Kevin Liptak.

They report that on Wednesday hours before the president retweeted a message calling for the vice president to act by stopping ratification of the Electoral College vote, the president and the vice president had a meeting in the Oval Office, not clear exactly what was discussed, but it is clear that the president has been critical of the vice president. He says he hasn't done enough to try to overturn the election.

The significance of that, of course, is that the vice president of the United States traditionally presides over the counting of the electoral votes on January 6. I'm sure we will have follow-up to that, Alison.

KOSIK: Joe, President Trump also went after Senate Republicans on Twitter.

JOHNS: That's absolutely right. And as you know it was just a few days ago that the administration staff put out a statement saying the president was going to have meetings and calls while he was down here in Florida. Well, last night the president tweeted out that he did, in fact, have a meeting apparently last night.

Now, that meeting was not about the stimulus, it was not about signing the defense authorization act or any of those other pressing issues. Apparently, that meeting was about overturning the election. The president complained and he said that people in the meeting talked about the fact that eight senators who the president says he saved during the election are not helping him now, including Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, and he said in all caps that he will never forget. So, a bit of mean tweeting from the president on Christmas Eve. Alison?

KOSIK: All right. Joe Johns, live from West Palm Beach. Thanks very much.

I'm joined now by Elie Honig, he's a former assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York and David Gergen, the former adviser to four presidents.

Good morning to both of you, I want to ask both of you the same question. Bur Elie, I'll start with you. Yesterday, the president went after Senate Republicans but does this play to anyone outside of Trump's base?

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Yes. So, I don't believe so. I think he's playing only to the hardest of hard-core followers and believers. I mean, look at all the people who have been loyal to President Trump who have carried out his agenda sort of without question for the last two years who he has now turned on or beginning to turn on.

I would point to the Attorney General William Barr who spent almost the entirety of two years doing nothing but supporting Donald Trump until just in the last couple weeks he started to show a little bit of independence by, for example, calling out the president's false narrative on voter fraud. The president turned on him.

Mike Pence, could he actually be turning on Mike Pence, the guy who has been so loyal by his side only because Mike Pence refuses to do something that's unconstitutional and illegal and just say I don't accept the electoral vote count. That's not up to the vice president. He is there as a formality not to reject the election.

KOSIK: David, who is this playing to?

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Very, very few Americans. Most Americans right now are in deep distress. We can't emphasize enough how joyless the season has been created here so that to repeat again, you know, this weekend more than 12 million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits unless we get this bill signed. On Monday night, the government itself will shut down. Next Friday, the ban on evictions, people will be evicted from their homes. We are going to have millions of Americans on the verge of being evicted from their homes, having their cars dispossessed and they're going to be out on the streets for the first time in their lives.

You know, this is a -- on this Christmas morning, one is really reminded of a couple things, that the old favorite carol in a Bleak -- it's a Bleak Midwinter but perhaps more aptly scrooge. And who is scrooge this winter but the man who is down in Mar-a-Lago. He ought to wake up and help the Tiny Tim's of the world and get off his horse, his narcissistic horse and really help Americans who are hurting. This is a painful, painful Christmas for millions of Americans.

KOSIK: So, we've got David calling President Trump a scrooge, Elie you say President Trump has now reached a level lower than even Richard Nixon. How so?

[09:25:00]

HONIG: Yes, and I would be interested to hear Mr. Gergen's perspective on this because he is part of history, but Richard Nixon even considered -- considered pardoning some of his political aides and associates who were involved in the Watergate scandal. Donald -- he didn't do it ultimately because Richard Nixon concluded that this would be too damaging to the body politic, to our democracy and to Nixon's own political future and legacy.

Donald Trump has said, forget about it, I'm doing it. And so, he has just gone on this pardon spree this week of Christmas that I think is unlike anything we've seen in our history, pardoning basically just a bunch of crooks, cronies, people who are sort of these right-wing causes with no regard whatsoever to the use of the pardon power to promote justice and mercy and fairness, which it's there to do. So, I think we're at a new historical low when it comes to that particular presidential power. KOSIK: David, the president left Washington yesterday for Florida amid his threats to veto important relief to millions of Americans as you spoke about, he vetoed the NDAA, he is pardoning war criminals. Has President Trump abandoned his responsibilities as commander in chief?

GERGEN: He has abdicated his responsibilities across the board. He hasn't had a national security briefing since October 2nd in a world that continues to be dangerous, our adversaries are trying to take advantage of us, he sits there unplugged in effect and taking actions that he may favor, but he hasn't persuaded anybody else. So, yes, I think these -- and with regard to COVID, he hasn't done much.

We're running into some glitches as magnificent as the breakthroughs are on vaccines, there are some glitches in the distribution, he ought to be on top of that. You can just go down issue after issue after issue which he has shoved aside, left to his successor, tried to undercut his successor, delegitimize Joe Biden before he even gets into office, make it much harder for him to govern and unloading all this junk and craziness on him and saying, OK, why you are turn, buster, you do it and by the way, I'm going to try to stop you.

KOSIK: And Elie, Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse called the president's pardons rotten to the core. You say they're fundamentally that these pardons are historically self-serving and corrupt. Do you expect even more pardons in his final three weeks in office?

HONIG: Oh, absolutely. I mean, bet on that. You can see he's building up to something.

One thing that I do want to stress is let's not get overloaded with pardons. Let's not have sort of pardon fatigue. Because just two days ago, we learned about the pardons to Paul Manafort and Roger Stone which I think are wildly offensive, potentially even obstruction of justice. But the day before that, let's not forget, and Mr. Gergen talked about this. The president pardoned convicted war criminals who were convicted by a jury of murdering, slaughtering Iraqi civilians, but that already seems to have been sort of receding into the background with the next wave of pardons.

So, let's keep a broad picture here and see what the president is doing. He's abusing the pardon power. I believe in an unprecedented fashion.

KOSIK: All right. Elie Honig, David Gergen, great conversation. Thank you.

Oh, sure. Go ahead.

GERGEN: I just want to say let's remember some good things are happening, too, on this Christmas Day. One of the good things in politics is the moderates are actually starting to find their voices in Congress. There are going to be some good things coming. These vaccines can save a lot of lives. You know, we see the dark side all the time and we see it more and more, but there are some glimmers of hope.

KOSIK: That's a good way to end, David Gergen, with some hope, right? On a happy note. Thanks very much to both of you.

HONIG: Thank you.

KOSIK: All right. More on the breaking news out of Nashville this morning. Metro Nashville police tweeted that this morning's explosion is linked to a vehicle and they are investigating with their federal partners. Nashville Mayor John Cooper told CNN by phone on Friday morning that the explosion occurred in an old historic section of the city. We are working to gather all of the information we can right now. And we will bring you an update when we get it.

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