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Novavax Has Started Phase Three Clinical Trials Of Its COVID-19 Vaccine; The Government Shutdown Is Averted; December Is Now The Deadliest Month In This Pandemic With More Than 63,000 Americans Dead; Millions Of Americans Unemployment Lapsed Over The Weekend. Aired 9- 9:30a ET

Aired December 28, 2020 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN SENIOR GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Good morning. I'm Bianna Golodryga in for Poppy and Jim.

After the delay, the damage. Today a government shutdown is averted but the president's hold-up on signing the massive relief bill means some benefits for jobless Americans have lapsed. Millions could lose a week of critical aid.

Struggling Americans caught in the middle of the president's chaotic final days in office, even if he doesn't think they're his final days.

Even The New York Post telling the president to give it up and quote, "stop the insanity" and all of this in the middle of a health crisis gripping our nation. December the deadliest month in this pandemic with more than 63,000 Americans dead so far. But after the holiday season, Dr. Fauci says he's worried darker days are ahead.

We'll get all the angles covered coming up.

But we begin with the White House Correspondent Boris Sanchez. He is in West Palm Beach this morning.

Boris, good morning to you. There was no signing ceremony. The president clearly not touting this bill that he signed but he still has his own demands, what are they?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, good morning, Bianna.

After several days of delays, numerous Twitter rants and several rounds of golf, the president ultimately relenting and signing this COVID relief bill last night. He says that he got several assurances from Congress that they will give in to some of his demands, including that they cut what he describes as unnecessary spending.

Keep in mind in a statement put out by the White House and several statements the president has made recently, what he's pointing to as so-called pork are items that the White House called for in their budget, ostensibly items that the president approved Congress should spend money on.

Secondly, he is asking lawmakers to work toward increasing those stimulus checks going directly to Americans from $600 to $2,000. Of course keep in mind, so far lawmakers have given no indication that they actually intend to pursue these items.

But here's a piece of the statement that the president put out yesterday. He writes, quote, "I will sign the Omnibus and COVID package with a strong message that makes clear to Congress that wasteful items need to be removed. I will send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal recession request to Congress insisting those funds be removed from the bill."

Keep in mind, Congress doesn't really have to do anything with that formal recession request. After a certain amount of time the bill that he signed goes into law.

He also asks that Congress review Section 230, liability protection for social media companies, as well as quote, focusing strongly, on what he described as voter fraud. Again, there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and I think it's really notable that yesterday, after he signed this bill, the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, praised the president in a statement, but he didn't mention any of these issues.

There's really little incentive for Republicans to go after these demands from the president now even though the president has gotten some support from Democrats for that rise in the stimulus checks from $600 to $2,000. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talked about potentially putting that up for a vote in the House later today. Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: Interesting that the man who wrote the art of the deal doesn't realize he has no leverage given that he has already signed that bill. Boris, thank you so much.

Well now let's get to Capitol Hill, Suzanne Malveaux is there. And Suzanne, as Boris mentioned, the Senate majority leader making no mention of repealing Section 230 or starting an investigation into his voter fraud in his statement. What does that suggest to you?

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning.

I mean, it's no question that there is some political gamesmanship that's going on here on the Hill, not surprisingly of course as many Republicans who are put in kind of a tight bind, a fix if you will, as they had negotiated in earnest they thought along with the president's secretary of the treasury only to find out that in fact he basically just whipped the rug from underneath their feet.

And so, yes, people are trying to save face here, and it is up to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. He's the one who sets the schedule in the Senate on what gets voted on and what doesn't and it was very clear, very telling what he didn't say in his statement yesterday, the statement in part saying he applauded the president's decision to get hundreds of billions of dollars of crucial COVID-19 relief out of the door into the hands of the American families. He went on to praise the president although he had been criticized by

the president just in the previous week. But no, he is not committed to putting this vote for the 2,000 direct payment on the floor.

Also this investigation of voter fraud, that is something that was taken up by Senator Ron Johnson.

[09:05:00]

He has publicly said he will continue that investigation, but there's no sense that it will go beyond that.

And in terms of the House commitment, the House Appropriations Committee, they're the ones who are responsible for whether or not there are any changes or cuts in spending when it comes to the federal spending bill. They have already put out a statement, the Democrats, saying there will be no changes in that area. Bianna.

GOLODRYGA: Look, it's pretty clear that Mitch McConnell has his eyes on that Senate runoff, both of them coming up next week. Suzanne Malveaux, thank you so much.

And joining me now is Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office. Doug, always great to have you on. Thanks so much.

DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN, PRESIDENT OF AMERICAN ACTION FORUM AND FORMER DIRECTOR OF CONGRESSIONAL BUDGET OFFICE: Thank you.

GOLODRYGA: Let's begin with the President Trump's delay in signing that relief bill, let (ph) critical unemployment benefits for millions of Americans lapse over the weekend. Explain what exactly this delay means for Americans who are struggling right now and lost one week's worth of benefits.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Well, first and foremost, those unemployment insurance benefits are the best targeted piece of this piece of legislation. Those are the American families who are hardest hit by the pandemic and the recession.

And we've seen in the past when they tried to start up federal payments, that it was hard for the states, that there were long delays, there were processing difficulties, and so every day they had to get started on that in advance of paying the benefit would have been to their benefit. And so this is going to harm the ability of the states to get these checks out quickly and it's going to harm the people who are waiting for that aid.

GOLODRYGA: Do we have any idea as to whether these lost benefits can be retroactive or is that week just gone?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: No, they can get those benefits. They're entitled to them but the difficulty the states have had in adding an additional federal benefit, something that the systems really aren't made -- ready to do automatically, has been a problem in the past and I expect it to be a bit of a glitch going forward. GOLODRYGA: I mean (ph), clearly this is the last thing that so many

millions of Americans who have been struggling need to hear right now is yet a further delay.

We know Treasury Secretary Mnuchin had target this week as when Americans could start seeing the $600 direct payments. Clearly that was before the president called this bill a disgrace. He finally signed it yesterday, but is that still doable, given the delayed signing?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: No. It will still take a little bit of time for the IRS to program this up, most of this will come in the form of direct deposits. The information's on file. It will happen by historic standards very rapidly. It was -- I was very impressed with the last round of direct payments. But it won't happen this week. It'll take into next year.

GOLODRYGA: Can you explain the mindset of the president delaying and not being involved at all in the negotiation? I know -- I mean, this -- we know this president so well that this, you know, garners humor, but it really -- you've got millions on the line here. You had months where the president could have weighed in. He chose not to. Now at the final moment he threw his treasury secretary under the bus.

Explain how this benefits the president.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: I don't think it benefits the president. The nature of these large packages is that nobody is happy with the results. Everybody would like to get something different on the particulars, and it was naive for him to think that he could pull out one or two items and say I want those changed because those are part of the negotiation and it was just never going to happen that easily.

So he was never going to really get this changed. He can't now, he has no leverage and all he will get is a legacy of having disrupted things and harm the speediness with which these payments will go out.

GOLODRYGA: President Trump in his statement said that the Senate will now go forward with the vote on these $2,000 direct payments. We know the House and Democrats are eager to do so today, no word from Mitch McConnell.

Is there a chance in your view? There are some Republicans who say they will vote in favor of these $2,000 checks to go out to individuals. Do you think that that will ultimately transpire, and is it even an appropriate amount, in your opinion?

HOLTZ-EAKIN: So on the first, I don't think it will transpire, because if $2,000 was politically feasible it would have been in the first bill and it wasn't. And so what we know is that there are tradeoffs involved and the tradeoffs didn't get to $2,000.

I also don't think it's the right thing to do. If you think of those direct payments as relief for those who most hard-hit by the pandemic especially the long-term unemployed, then moving to $2,000 makes sense but it should be targeted on those people and these payments are not targeted. People who have never lost a day's work, people who have financial security will also get a payment, and so it's not targeted well as a relief bill.

If you think of it is as, quote, stimulus where the benefits go to more than the people who receive it because they go out and spend, I think that's naive. Stimulus means that we somehow get to produce more and to do that, we have to put people at work and it's not safe to. It's just not going to happen.

So either from a stimulus or a relief point of view, it doesn't make sense to ratchet up this benefit. It's not well designed.

GOLODRYGA: Doug Holtz-Eakin, a rare moment where it looks like you and Larry Summers are in agreement here. We appreciate you coming on.

[09:10:00]

Happy New Year to you. Thank you.

HOLTZ-EAKIN: Thank you, happy New Year.

GOLODRYGA: Let's bring in Washington Post White House reporter and CNN political analyst Toluse Olorunnipa. Toluse, great to have you on.

A busy few weeks it has been for you. You have written in the past about how when President Trump fails at winning his way, he will then tout some sort of plan B or a secondary option and call that the real victory. Was there ever a plan B here?

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER FOR THE WASHINGTON POST: There was no plan B. There was no strategy behind this. The president caved. He essentially wasted a week worth of drama, and ended up doing what he was supposed to do in the minds of all of these Republican and Democrat lawmakers, in the beginning.

He signed the law. It's going to go into effect. The only impact was that there are millions of Americans who may have lost out on a week's worth of unemployment benefits but the president huffed and puffed about this bill. He said it was a disgrace and then ultimately he signed it without getting anything in exchange.

Now, he says that Congress is going to look into voter fraud and is going to hold this vote on $2,000 checks and is going to look into Section 230, this provision that he says protects social media companies, all of that is just sort of window dressing because the president wanted to cover up the fact that he had to cave, he essentially knew it would make no sense for him to shut down the government on the way out the door and as a result he is caving on this bill, signing it into law and getting nothing in exchange other than a week worth of drama.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. And Mitch McConnell's silence on all of these asks from the president speak volumes, right? What has been the mood from aides and those in the White House about all of this?

OLORUNNIPA: Well, they are concerned about the president. A lot of them have kind of checked out mentally and they're already looking at new jobs and looking at brushing up their resume. There isn't a lot of support around the president.

I'm in West Palm Beach. I've been covering the president here on his holiday and there aren't very many White House aides that are actually here. It's the president and a couple of aides, a few lawmakers that he's on the phone with and a lot of people are out of the loop.

A lot of the White House aides that normally would have known what's going on, they're out of the loop, they're checked out, they don't know what's happening end inside the president's orbit and they don't realize that the president is kind of doing his own thing and not really following any strategy.

So it's hard for there to be a government that works when it's really just one man, it's really just the president going off of his gut instinct and not really having the apparatus of government around him with aides that have largely checked out and are moving on and other aides that want to be involved but have no idea what's going on.

If you look at the treasury secretary, he negotiated on behalf of the president for several months, and then the president undercut him by saying that the bill that he negotiated was a disgrace and had too little in terms of stimulus for the American people.

So that's sort of the mood within the White House, people not knowing what the president's going to do from one day to the next and there not being a lot of trust that if they negotiate on behalf of the president that anyone will believe what they're saying.

GOLODRYGA: Yes. The president has long had this sort of me, myself and I mentality, but do we know if he's at all concerned about this having an impact on the Georgia Senate run offs? Does he care at all about this?

OLORUNNIPA: Well, we do know the president is going to be heading to a rally in Georgia in a few days. He has said that he wants to save the Senate but he wants to protect these Republican incumbents. He wants to also show that he continues to have sway over Republican voters.

He's going to a ruby red part of Georgia, Dalton, Georgia, very conservative area. He wants to be able to bring out large crowds to show that he is still the party leader, he's still a person within the Republican Party that can bring out thousands of people to a gathering, potentially a super spreader event, but gathering people in ways that other Republicans can't do. And he wants to be able to show that even though he is on his way out the door, that he is still the king maker within the party.

And for that reason, he does care what happens to these Georgia senators, in part because it's a reflection on him, it's a reflection on his standing within the party and he wants to continue to have that standing whether he decides to run again in four year or whether or not he just decides to hold sway over the party and continue to pull the strings over the Republican Party going forward, even while he's out of office. So that's his interest in this race, not so much in the personal

stakes of theses senators. More so in his own personal stakes and seeing them win and seeing his own presidency validated by the results that happened in this race.

GOLODRYGA: A unique way of showing that he cares. As always, Toluse Olorunnipa, thank you so much for your insights. We appreciate it.

Well, still to come --

OLORUNNIPA: Thank you.

GOLODRYGA: -- December is the deadliest month since the pandemic started, and Dr. Fauci warns that it could get even worse. The latest on the nation's fight against this virus.

And a high stakes showdown on Capitol Hill today as Republicans face a major decision on a defense spending bill. Stick with the president or defy him.

Plus investigators looking at any and all possible motives after they identified the Nashville bomber. The latest from Tennessee, straight ahead.

[09:15:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GOLODRYGA: Just in to CNN, we've learned that Novavax has started phase three clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine in the United States and Mexico.

Joining me now is Dr. Carlos del Rio, executive associate dean of Emory School of Medicine in Atlanta. Doctor, thank you so much for coming on.

Clearly, this is good news but how long do phase three trials typically last?

Yes. Unfortunately we lost your audio. This is typical in the Webex world. We're going to reset right here. Let's see if that can come back up. I apologize to viewers at home. This has happened to me numerous times as I've been --

DR. CARLOS DEL RIO, INFECTIOUS DISEASES SPECIALIST: Can you hear me?

GOLODRYGA: -- calling in.

[09:20:00]

There we go. There we go, Doctor.

DR. DEL RIO: (INAUDIBLE) --

GOLODRYGA: I know how it feels. Yes, we got you.

DR. DEL RIO: OK. Well, sorry about that.

GOLODRYGA: No problem. Can you go ahead --

DR. DEL RIO: (INAUDIBLE) --

GOLODRYGA: -- and give us a sense of how long these trials -- phase three trials typically last?

DR. DEL RIO: Well, again, it really depends. We were able to do the Pfizer and the Moderna trials fairly quickly for two reasons. Number one, people worked very hard and volunteers rapidly came forward. And number two, there was an ongoing pandemic and as more cases are occurring, then you reach end points a lot faster, right?

So the bad news is we have a raging pandemic. The good news for the trial is that we reached the end points fairly quickly. So it really depends on those two things; how quickly can we recruit people into the study and, number two, how much transmission there is to (ph) the community because as more transmission happens more end points will be reached.

Now, the Novavax study has been modified and it's going to be randomized, every two people will get the vaccine per one person getting the placebo so it's going to be a little bit longer to recruit the number of people necessary to really reach the end points. I suspect it's going to take us about three to four months to get a result of that study.

GOLODRYGA: Three to four months, and that would gives us three vaccines on the market, if approved. In terms of how many of those who would be the volunteers to enroll, they are calling for up to 30,000 volunteers approximately at 115 sites in the U.S. and Mexico. So significant number there.

But do we know how the Novavax vaccine compares to the two vaccines that are currently available in the U.S., the Moderna and the Pfizer?

DR. DEL RIO: No, we really don't. And that's why the study needs to take place. But, again, it's -- we predict it's going to be fairly good. But again the clinical trial -- the efficacy study is going to give us the answer.

There's (inaudible), as you know, the Oxford -- the AstraZeneca vaccine as well as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine which probably will reach approval and end points a lot faster than the Novavax vaccine.

GOLODRYGA: Dr. Fauci yesterday said that viruses continue to mutate all the time. Of course, this is in following-up to the concerns of that variant out of the U.K. and South Africa that we're seeing detected in different countries throughout Europe.

What do we know about the new strain, this variant of COVID-19?

DR. DEL RIO: Well, we know a couple things. The new strain that emerged in the U.K., we know that it attaches better to the ACE2 receptor, and therefore is more easily transmissible. We think that therefore the transmission potential increases from about 2.5 to 2.9.

Now, that may not sound like a lot, but what that means is, after 10 cycles of transmission, instead of one person leading to approximately 9,000 infections, after 10 cycles of transmission, one person will -- leads to 42,000 infections. So the reality is that little increase could mean a lot more people infected.

We also know that it doesn't cause a more severe disease, we also know that it's not more lethal, and we also are pretty certain that the vaccine works just as well for that strain.

GOLODRYGA: That's reassuring to hear but of course we don't want to see this vaccine -- I mean, the strain multiply here in the U.S. as well, if it is in fact more contagious and spreads quicker.

Do you suspect it is already here in the U.S., as many other doctors do?

DR. DEL RIO: I do. I think it's likely here, and we will only pick it up later on because, unfortunately, we're not doing as much genetic sequencing as we should be doing. Hopefully CDC will step up the genetic sequencing and we'll be able to detect that a lot faster.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, that is something that the U.K. really has been doing well, the genetic sequencing, which is why they were able to detect this as soon as they did.

Dr. Carlos del Rio, always great to have you on. Thanks for rolling with the punches with the technical difficulties. I've been there, this is modern times. We made it work.

DR. DEL RIO: Thank you very much.

GOLODRYGA: Thank you.

DR. DEL RIO: Happy holidays.

GOLODRYGA: You, too.

Well, officials have identified the man behind the massive blast in Nashville, but why did he do it? We have the latest.

And we are moments away from the opening bell, Futures are up this morning, as Wall Street enters its final week of the year. President Trump's signature on a massive COVID relief bill helping to fuel that bump. That bill also averting a government shutdown.

The president's signing was a bit unexpected after he signaled days ago that he may veto it.

We, of course, will keep an eye on all of the developments.

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[09:25:00]

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GOLODRYGA: This morning, federal investigators still searching for a motive, after identifying 63-year-old Anthony Quinn Warner as the bomber in the Christmas morning explosion in downtown Nashville.

They say Warner was there when the bomb went off and died in the blast. Overnight Nashville police releasing new surveillance video showing the moment Warner's RV exploded, injuring at least three people and damaging dozens of buildings.

CNN's Natasha Chen joins me now with more. What's the latest that you've learned, Natasha?

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bianna, investigators will be still going through this site today, just several blocks behind us. Anthony Quinn Warner, they announced his name yesterday after going through one of the homes that he'd lived in previously. The day before, we saw federal agents for hours going through taking out evidence from a home in Antioch, Tennessee, that's just about 10 miles southeast of where we're standing right now.

Now, it's a tip about the RV that led them there and keep in mind, the blast --

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