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Trump Signs Massive Bill Only after Some Benefits Lapse; Novavax Begins Phase Three Clinical Trial for Vaccine in U.S. and Mexico. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired December 28, 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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BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN NEWSROOM: Good morning. I'm Bianna Golodryga in for Jim and Poppy.

Well, the suspense is over but the pain isn't. The president has signed the massive stimulus deal after days of signaling he might not. But the delay means a lapse in benefits for many jobless Americans. And the president's final strategy is clear, create chaos as his time in the White House runs out.

Also running out, 2020. But as we close out December, a tragic fact. This has been the deadliest month in this pandemic so far. And Sunday was the highest day for air travel. Now, health officials are bracing for case numbers to surge again.

So let's start in Washington. White House Correspondent John Harwood joins me now. John, the president is still pushing for a vote that increases checks to $2,000, repeals Section 230 and start an investigation into voter fraud. Is this just falling on deaf ears at this point now that the bill is signed?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, just keeping it real here, Bianna, what the president is actually pushing is the go button on his golf cart in Florida. What he has written down on this piece of paper and issued in his signing statement are things that he says he is pushing.

What are those things? Well, he says he is going to send back a redlined version of the spending bill identifying elements he wants cut. He says he has got a commitment from Congress to look at voter fraud. He says they're going to consider upping the stimulus checks from $600 per person for families under $75,000 a year to $2,000 a year.

If the president were actually pushing for those things, like the $2,000 checks, he would have pushed them in the negotiations that his treasury secretary was conducting. If he actually wanted the spending for foreign aid not to take place, he wouldn't have put it in his budget, which he did. The voter fraud, of course, goes without saying, we've had it amply proven that there is no voter fraud. These things he wrote on the piece of paper are sort of the equivalent of his aides and associates acting as babysitters, telling the problem child, you eat this piece of broccoli and I'll tell your parents you can have ice cream all day long when they come back. And the babysitters are just trying to get out of the situation, knows the parents are about to come back and those things are not going to happen.

GOLODRYGA: Well, look, thanks for keeping it real, John. And it's important to put into perspective just to give our viewers a sense that the president is out playing golf at his resort. The vice president is in Vail, Colorado. And you've got millions of Americans who have been waiting for any federal help for months now.

And after nearly a week, I guess the last question I have for you, John, after nearly a week of holding out, why did the president decide to give up on his temper tantrum and sign the bill now?

HARWOOD: It's a good question. I think in the end, people probably appealed to him having succeeded in compelling the attention of a lot of people, creating the suspense, as you referred to it, in the open, having people recognize, yes, I'm still president what, I still do matters. They conveyed the message that what you're going to be remembered for from this moment is immiserating, impoverishing millions of the people that you're serving and that's not necessarily the best thing for your reputation.

So he got the attention, and then they convinced him it was going to be terrible attention, and so he relented and backed off.

GOLODRYGA: Also throwing his own party under the bus along the way as well, not the first time he's done that. John Harwood, thank you.

Now, let's go to Capitol Hill where CNN's Lauren Fox is. And, Lauren, President Trump is still hoping that the House can work on getting the $2,000 stimulus checks. What's the latest on that? Any chance that those checks reach Americans' pockets?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Well, the House is going to vote tonight, Bianna, on a bill that essentially would change the amount of money in the negotiation from $600 to $2,000 per individual.

Now, this vote is going to happen under a suspension of the rules, which means it will require two-thirds majority in order to pass. But its future in the Senate is much less certain. We still don't know if Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would bring it up for a vote.

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Notably, his statement last night applauded the president in actually passing and signing the stimulus agreement. But what it did not do was make any of the promises the that the president alleges were made to him in this discussion with Republican leaders on Capitol Hill to get him to actually sign the bill.

I want to read part of McConnell's statement to you. It says, quote, I applaud President Trump's decision to get hundreds of billions of dollars of crucial COVID-19 relief out the door and into the hands of American families as quickly as possible. The bipartisan rescue package that Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration negotiated with the Democrats will extend another major lifeline to workers, invest billions more in vaccine distribution, send cash directly to households.

Now, one thing to remember about the statement is it so carefully points out the fact that Mnuchin was in the room all along. And like John Harwood said just a few minutes ago, if the president wanted a $2,000 stimulus check, he could have pushed for it. He could have considered making that a sticking point in the negotiations. He never did. Whether it happens in the U.S. Senate is still to be determined. Bianna?

GOLODRYGA: Instead, he humiliated his treasury secretary while doing that. Lauren Fox, thank you so much.

And joining me now is Kevin Hasset, former Senior Economic Adviser to President Trump and CNN Economics Commentator.

Kevin, great to see you, happy holidays.

KEVIN HASSETT, CNN ECONOMICS COMMENTATOR: Good morning, thank you.

GOLODRYGA: Let's put the $2,000 discussion aside for just a second. But you can't -- let's talk about the reality of the bill that we now have. You can't overstate how needless President Trump's delay in signing this relief bill was. Millions of Americans lost unemployment benefits for a week because of this. Can you walk us through the process of what's going to happen now in terms of getting the money out to those who need it most.

HASSETT: Right, well, you hit it on the head. The fact is that because the unemployment insurance lapsed, then instead of the extension being 11 weeks, it's going to be 10 weeks. And so, honest to goodness, if I were talking about the $2,000 tonight, I know he said, move on that, I would definitely want to add that week of unemployment insurance back in there as well because the president's delay took a week of unemployment insurance benefits away from folks.

Now, I think that, in his mind, I know him pretty well, as you know, that he really, really wanted the $2,000 the whole time, he wanted big checks. I was still in the White House last summer, he wanted $2,000 last June. So the idea that he never asked for it, I think, is unlikely. I think he probably did.

GOLODRYGA: But, Kevin, where has he been? Where has he been? He has not asked for this publicly. He had his own treasury secretary --

HASSETT: He's been saying he wants checks for a long time. But my point is just that he's fighting for the $2,000 checks. So, the irony is, by doing that, he ended up creating this unemployment insurance lapse, which is a serious problem, and that needs to be addressed by Congress, hopefully, today. GOLODRYGA: But my question is, where has he been in terms of publicly advocating for $2,000, instead of sending his treasury secretary, who was his representative, who did meet with Speaker Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, and had been negotiating all of this for months who came up with a $600 deal that he said was on behalf of the president?

HASSETT: Yes. Well, in a negotiation, right, like what happened is you don't always get everything that you want. And what the president has done, long before he was president, right, is that he's constantly doing real estate deals, where at the closing, he tries to squeeze every little last bit out of the bill or out of the deal, and that's what he was doing right here, as he was basically pushing hard to get the $2,000 at the end thinking he had leverage but the leverage didn't move things much.

And, again, it created this negative consequence, which I think we absolutely have to address, which is that there's one week of U.I. benefits that have lapsed.

GOLODRYGA: Do you support sending $2,000 checks out to every American household?

HASSETT: I think that the bill that they just passed -- I think the answer is yes. But the bill that they just passed is enough to get us through to March or so. And so my expectation, what's going to happen is that the new Congress and the new president will give you the $1,400, that will be in the next stimulus. There's definitely going to have to be another one because COVID cases are so high, we expect a very first quarter. The stimulus bill is going to do a good job of creating a bridge to the other side of that but we don't want a second quarter cliff.

And so my guess is that the very, very first item that President-elect Biden is going to have to address when he gets there is expanding those checks. So, the fact that President Trump says that he really supports the $2,000, Nancy Pelosi says she supports the $2,000, I think that will put a lot of pressure on Republicans to give President-elect Biden the $2,000.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, it really puts them in a bind. Obviously, all eyes now focused on what's going to happen in the Georgia runoffs as well because you have two candidates who have been pressing for $600 and now you have the president pressing for $2,000.

I want to go back to your idea of needing a large enough stimulus to get us through March, because, as you said, that those are going to be some dire months. And you've got an incoming administration this -- I want to just stick on one issue, and that's the eviction moratorium, which in this current bill would end, expire, January 31st.

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that gives an incoming administration just days, once he's inaugurated, for President Biden to address this issue in particular. What's going to happen there? Is this an issue where the CDC can step in and extend it or are we going to see millions of Americans facing eviction days into a new administration?

HASSETT: No, I don't think that that's going to happen. And I think the way to think about it, I know we can think bad things that can happen if things lapse and so on. But don't forget that President Trump and the House, they didn't have the best relations last year, the last couple years, we had impeachment and everything else. But when the COVID recession happened, they moved really quickly on massive stimulus with pretty much everybody voting for it.

And so in a national emergency, the history of American politics is that people kind of put their differences aside for a moment and do what's right. And that's what I expect will happen. And so my guess is, in a day or two, people will be able to address things like what you said, adding the week of U.I. at the end and so on. I think that those things will happen quickly.

And if they can happen last year with a Congress that impeached the president, the president really didn't like them so much, one can hope that things will happen next year too, maybe even a little quicker.

GOLODRYGA: Look, I hope you're right, but we're sort of dealing a situation where the president doesn't seem to be liking his own party that much these days. I don't know the last time that he's spoken with Mitch McConnell.

But let me ask you a question as somebody who knows this president well and has advised him on economic issues. The people in this country who are victims here are the millions of Americans being deprived of much needed aid. That we know. But I would say the person most humiliated is Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who has been at the center of this negotiation, as we said, for months, speaking on behalf of the administration. He's the one that proposed the $600 stimulus check, which the president, the day after, called a disgrace before just signing it yesterday.

As a former adviser to the president yourself, what do you say about this and the level of respect or lack thereof that he has for even his most loyal aides? I know a lot of people would have just resigned, had they done that.

HASSETT: No, you've got to understand again. In a negotiation -- I'm sure Secretary Mnuchin wanted the checks to be larger but he also wanted there to be a bill. And so in the end, there's a compromise. And when you've got a compromise that's pretty far away from your target, then, of course, going to be dissent from the president, and that's what we saw. But I know he thinks the world of Secretary Mnuchin. I don't there's an aide that he's closer to. And I think the world of Secretary Mnuchin, but he's got a difficult negotiation job and he didn't get everything that he wanted.

The president was disappointed the checks were too small. I know, for sure, that he wanted them to be large for as long as I've known him. And so I don't really think that it humiliates Secretary Mnuchin, who has a really, really strong track record of four years of accomplishment. And so having to cave on a bill and give up some of things that the president wanted is sort of politics. That's happens. It's a negotiation.

GOLODRYGA: He has a funny way of showing his appreciation and respect for Mnuchin, but we will leave it there. Kevin Hassett, always great to have you on, thank you so much, we really appreciate it. Happy New Year to you.

HASSETT: Same to you.

GOLODRYGA: Thank you.

Well, still to come, the U.S. has now administered nearly 2 million coronavirus vaccine doses. Now, another potential vaccine is on the horizon as Novavax enters phase three of clinical trials.

Plus, Dr. Anthony Fauci warning of another surge in coronavirus cases, as millions of Americans travel for the holidays.

And new details on the Nashville Christmas Day bombing. Investigators have identified the suspect involved as new surveillance video is released. We have a live report from Nashville straight ahead.

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GOLODRYGA: This morning, we learned that Novavax has started phase three clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine in the United States and Mexico.

CNN Senior Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins me now. Elizabeth, what more do we know about this vaccine and its trial?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: This vaccine, it's a little bit different than Moderna and Pfizer, but it's very exciting to have a fifth company enter a phase three, a large scale clinical trial. This is the last phase before the FDA will review it and see if it ought to be given to people across the country.

So let's take a look at what we know about Novavax, about this clinical trial. It's up to 30,000 people aged 18 and up. That's how large the trial is going to be. 25 percent of their participants, they hope or they plan, to be aged 65 and up. That's important because those are the people who, unfortunately have some of the worst reactions, responses to COVID-19. 15 percent will be black or African- American. 10 to 20 percent will be Latino. And 1 to 2 percent American Indian. And so that's what we know so far about what's going to happen. It's going to be a phase three trial where they're going to have two doses three weeks apart.

Now, let's take a look at where this fall sort of in comparison with other ones, sort of the history of things here. Pfizer and Moderna, well, they've already been authorized by the FDA. AstraZeneca, their phase three trial started August 31st. Johnson and Johnson, their phase three started September 23rd. And Novavax, as we know, their phase three trial started today. Sanofi, they are in phase one and two. So, Bianna, that is a list of the ones that have gotten Operation Warp Speed funding, so, in other words, federal government funding to do these trials, which are very, very expensive to do. Bianna?

GOLODRYGA: And it's very impressive just to see how quickly this has all come about too, a historic pace.

How does Novavax compare to the vaccines, the Moderna and Pfizer, that are currently available in the U.S.?

COHEN: It really is quite different, and I'm going to get nerdy here on you, Bianna, a little bit.

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COHEN: So in order for these vaccines to work --

GOLODRYGA: Bring it on.

COHEN: Bring it on, okay.

So in order for these vaccines to work, essentially, what has to happen is the immune system has to see a part of the virus and say, oh, my gosh, I'm under attack, and then it learns how to respond. But since it's only a part of the virus, it's not a big threat but it learns to respond so that if you ever are threatened by the real virus, your immune system says, I remember this, I know what to do.

What Pfizer and Moderna did is that they give the -- their vaccine gives the instructions for how to make this part of the virus, just the instructions. What Novavax does is it actually sends an actual part of the virus, a part that they manufactured. So they kind of make this fake part of the virus and they send the actual part in.

So, phase three clinical trials tell us that the Moderna and Pfizer approach works, we'll have to see about this one.

GOLODRYGA: And we will be following it closely. Elizabeth Cohen, thanks for bringing all the nerdy to us. We appreciate it.

COHEN: Thanks.

GOLODRYGA: And with me now is Dr. Seema Yasmin, a former CDC disease detective and author of Viral B.S., Medical Myths and Why We Fall for Them. That's a new book that's out next month. Doctor, thank you so much for coming on.

Another vaccine one step closer to approval, that's good news. But there's a long way to go before that happens. 63,000 Americans have died so far in just December, making this the deadliest month since the pandemic. What do you expect in terms of what January may look like?

DR. SEEMA YASMIN: So, Bianna, good morning. And I don't think it's a coincidence that December has been the deadliest month for COVID-19 here in the states given it's happening -- the highest number of deaths are happening three, four weeks out of Thanksgiving, when we did see millions of people travel, also people having gatherings in their home and lots of intermingling happening. And this is why, unfortunately, we have mathematical modelers, places like the University of Washington, kind of doing these projections for us, trying to tell us what January and April could look like in particular, both good case scenarios but also worst case scenarios.

And we really are sitting up and paying attention to some of those grim numbers, those worst case scenarios, because, let's be honest, in the past few months, we've seen some of those worst case scenarios actually pan out. They are warning us that by inauguration day, January 20th, one of the worst case scenarios is that we're seeing around a million Americans infected each day.

And by April 1st, they're also warning us that we could have passed the half a million mark when it comes to Americans who have died from COVID-19. So, really, we're paying attention to the fact -- I mean, I'm talking to you from the Bay Area here in Northern California where ICU bed capacity is about 11 percent. But talk about Central California, Southern California, it's 0 percent.

So adding all these things in, the health care system being overwhelmed, people traveling again for Christmas, the New Year could look really bad.

GOLODRYGA: Well, I'm just stunned by the numbers of travelers just yesterday alone and listening to Adrienne Broaddus reporting from the Chicago O'Hare airport talking to travelers who said that they have COVID fatigue, that they want to go outside, that they will be distanced from others, but they're traveling to different countries, different states. They're well intentioned. But can you talk about the danger in doing just that?

YASMIN: Absolutely. And I think we're paying the price for that right now, right, with the deadliest month when it comes to COVID-19 a month after Thanksgiving. This is the price we way for people not hunkering down and taking this seriously.

And, honestly, I just find it really frustrating and surprising sometimes that people are even willing to go on camera and say, yes, I'm just fed up, I'm just going to travel, especially in the context of new variants of the virus spreading, variants that we think can be more easily transmitted. And that we're just really worried about not understanding these newer versions of the virus.

So let's keep in mind, folks, that we are in this for the long run. Yes, there's good news about vaccines, Elizabeth just updated us and helped us geek out a little bit about the science but, really, we need millions, tens of millions of people to be vaccinated with these vaccines before we can kind of let our guard down and we are months away from that.

GOLODRYGA: And let's keep in mind the thousands of people spending the holiday in the hospital as they are suffering with COVID right now. You mentioned the vaccines. About 2 million coronavirus vaccines have been given thus far and have been administered out to over 10 million have been distributed. That's about 20 percent in shots in two weeks. Do you consider that good or bad and what needs to be done to get these vaccines into arms faster?

YASMIN: So it's better than nothing, right? We're just shy of the 2 million mark. I think the CDC is reporting around 1.9 million Americans have received their first dose of a vaccine but it's way shy of the 20 million doses Operation Warp Speed were saying we'd have seen people having accepted by the end of this month.

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So we're way shy of that target.

And the thing to remember here is that we are talking about vaccines that require two doses. And those two doses are spaced out by either three or four weeks depending on if you're receiving the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine or the Moderna one.

And even then, it's another one or two weeks, Bianna, before your body mounts an appropriate immune response to make sure that you are protected against the vaccine. And so that's why this is a game of time, as well as patience because it's not like you get that first dose and, well, hey, we have 2 million Americans who are fully immunized. That's not how this works.

And that's why I'm optimistic, but cautiously optimistic, and really hoping that people take this seriously in the next few months while -- that's the time it's going to take to get enough people vaccinated to reach herd immunity.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, the light is at the end of the tunnel but it's still pretty far away, months away. Dr. Seema Yasmin, thank you, we appreciate it. Happy New Year to you.

YASMIN: Thank you. Happy New Year to you.

GOLODRYGA: And we'll hear -- you too. And we'll hear from President- elect Biden later today on what his team says are national security challenges he'll inherit from the Trump administration. A live report on what this means for U.S. foreign policy, coming up next.

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