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Pressure on Social Media to Ban Trump; Right-Wing Media Distancing from Trump; Deadliest Day of the Pandemic; Jobs Numbers for December; Biden Has No Interest in Impeachment. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired January 08, 2021 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:33:36]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: This morning there is growing pressure on social media companies to ban President Trump permanently from their platforms, not temporarily as some of them have done. That pressure now intensifying as the former first lady, Michelle Obama, joined the call. Her words, we're quoting, now is the time for Silicon Valley companies to stop enabling this monstrous behavior.

CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter is with me now.

Brian, so we have seen something of an 11th hour response to this here. Twitter took him down for a number of hours. FaceBook has taken him down for, well, an indeterminate amount of time.

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Right.

SCIUTTO: We've seen some other restrictions on YouTube, et cetera.

STELTER: Yes.

SCIUTTO: How far and wide are these restrictions now and are they considering a permanent ban?

STELTER: Well, they are across the entire technology industry, including smaller services like Twitch, even shopping platforms like Spotify. The president, his campaign, have been restricted by these technology platforms. But, as you said, at the very last inning of this, not a game at all, but of this game.

What we are seeing are these platforms concerned the president will use their platforms to cause further violence. But where were they years ago when he threatened North Korea with his nuclear button, where were they six months ago when the president said, when the looting starts the shooting starts? It's a lot easier to take action in the final days of an administration than it was back then.

I think there's also questions, Jim, about mainstream news organizations -- not mainstream but about book publishers, about fringe media outlets like OAN that are distributed by cable and satellite platforms.

[09:35:07]

This issue about using media platforms to discriminate lies and threats of violence. That's not just an issue for technology. It's also an issue for "Newsmax," for One America News. Look at what Simon & Schuster did overnight, taking away Josh Hawley's book deal. Josh Hawley was going to release a book with that book publisher. That book's been canceled.

SCIUTTO: Well, the question is, you know, when it's deliberate, disinformation, deliberately misleading people, I mean this is what we've seen so often.

OK, so let's talk about right wing media here. Some notable breaks with the president in the last 24 hours.

STELTER: Yes.

SCIUTTO: "The Wall Street Journal," of course owned by Trump friend and longtime supporter and enabler Rupert Murdoch, it said this morning that his actions on Wednesday were impeachable. It said that straight out. It does recommend that he resign rather than Congress pursue impeachment.

You have Tucker Carlson even criticizing the president.

You know, I call these 11th hour changes. Maybe I should say 13th hour, right, Brian, given the years of support here.

STELTER: Right. Right. It's 11:58. Yes, it really is. But this is what's happening in the last -- in the last I'd say 24 hours, a real shift in right wing media that I've not seen before. It's as if these people are trying to leave the party, they're looking for an exit because they know that this is all ending and in a very ugly way.

Here's part of "The Wall Street Journal" editorial saying Trump has refused to accept the basic bargain of democracy, which is to accept the result, win or lose. It is best for everyone, himself included, if he goes away quietly.

They are urging him to resign.

Now, the rhetoric on Fox News is not going that far, but stars like Tucker Carlson, Stuart Varney, others on Fox are saying Trump's time is up. His time is over. They're all expressing concern about Trump's voters instead. Well, if you respect Trump's voters, you should not lie and deceive them and hurt them for years and years on end.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

STELTER: Trump's presidency was done a grave disservice by these propagandists who spread misinformation for years and years and years. And I think, Jim, it's going to be really important that none of us forget that.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

STELTER: There's going to be an attempt to go down the memory hole here, to blurry all of these lies and misrepresentations. There's going to be an attempt to move on, to pretend like some of the horrible things that happened never happened. And the rest of us can't allow that.

SCIUTTO: And, by the way, the damage remains. You have tens of millions, the majority -- the vast majority of Trump voters who still believe the lie that this election was stolen. It is still there. That has consequences.

STELTER: It is still there.

SCIUTTO: Very briefly, before you go, Brian, there's been all this talk about, oh, Trump post-presidency, he's got a grand future as the head of a media company or his own radio station or frequent guest on right wing media. Has that potential been damaged here or taken away?

STELTER: I think that was hard before January 6th and now those opportunities are shrinking even further. But if you take a look online, you're still going to find, in the darker corners of the Internet, lots of support for the president.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

STELTER: Cult-like support for the president. And we know, in the end, cults always end very badly.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

STELTER: But there's a period in the middle where you can profit off of them.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

STELTER: And that would be a concern in the months to come.

SCIUTTO: Listen, I was on The Hill yesterday. They were still out there. They were -- they were confronting me with these lies. I saw them doing, you know, reports and interviews still talking about the lies. They're still out there.

STELTER: Right.

SCIUTTO: Brian Stelter, thanks very much.

STELTER: Thanks.

SCIUTTO: Well, for the first time the U.S. reported 4,000, that's right, 4,000 new coronavirus deaths in a single day. This is what's been going on in the background of the violence on Capitol Hill. Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us next.

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[09:42:50]

SCIUTTO: Sadly, the pandemic is still happening. It's getting worse. For the first time the virus has claimed more than 4,000 American lives in a single day.

The president is not talking about this at all. What is his administration doing to save lives?

This alarming death toll comes as COVID infections and hospitalizations continue to skyrocket as well nationwide.

Here with us is CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. His new book, "Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age," is available now.

Sanjay, always good to have you on.

This graph, right, of this crisis is just going up like this. I mean it's like Mt. Everest on deaths, infections, hospitalizations.

How bad is it and is the vaccine rollout to help control it getting any better?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Well, I mean, the numbers are awful, Jim. No matter how you look at it. I mean we are so many months now into this pandemic and this is as bad as it's been. Let me just be very clear about this.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GUPTA: And so much of this did not need to happen. I haven't been -- I've been trying not to look in the rearview mirror so much, Jim, because we have so much that we have to be talking about going forward. But so much of what I'm about to tell you did not need to happen. Some of our worst days that we've had throughout this pandemic have just happened over the last two weeks in terms of numbers of people dying.

Jim, I want to show you this graphic. This is the IHME model that we've been paying so much attention to. And there's two points that I really want people to pay attention to. There's several lines on there. They're based on different scenarios.

When you look at those two lines that go down sort of to the bottom right corner, that's sort of assuming that a peak would occur in this country around January 21st and we would quickly come down after that. What we are starting to see now is the worst-case scenario, which is that far larger peak over there, which occurs sort of mid-February timeframe and stays up much longer.

And, Jim, at that point you would be having 5,500 to 6,000 people dying per day. And that could happen for a period of time. Again, I hate saying these numbers, but that -- that is where we're headed.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

[09:45:01]

GUPTA: We've avoided giving the worst case scenarios throughout, you know, this pandemic on your program because, you know, we didn't want to unnecessarily alarm people.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GUPTA: But that -- that is where the numbers are headed right now.

The vaccine will have an impact, to your second question, but that's going to be a while away. I mean the vaccine is going to help bring the death rate down first, then hospitalizations. But it takes weeks, if not months for that to actually happen. Maybe by spring we'll start to see significant impact from that. And then when we get to herd immunity, even more impact.

But the basic public health measures are what are going to make the biggest difference now.

SCIUTTO: Now you received your second dose of the vaccine early this morning. You are a health care worker, right? I mean you are rightfully at the head of the line here.

Of course, the problem is that the administration grossly missed its goals on this. Has that gotten better after the start of the year at all? Is the vaccination rate picking up?

GUPTA: I -- the overall percentages in terms of percentage of vaccines actually being administered to vaccine available is right around the same, you know, 25 to 30 percent. There is more vaccine going out and the numbers of people getting inoculated is increasing, but it's clearly been disappointing. I mean you wanted to have most of the vaccine that goes out be administered very quickly. The problem is that that -- that is not happening in most states, just about every state in the country.

You know, it's interesting, Jim, you have a situation where there's obviously a huge demand for these vaccines, but people have a hard time understanding, where do I go to get it, where do I stand in line? There hasn't been a lot of communication. The states haven't been equipped to be able to handle this, you know, in so many ways. They asked for $8.4 billion to create the infrastructure. They got closer to $480 million. The right number is probably somewhere in between.

But the point is that they're just -- it was like we got the vaccine done and that was sort of the mission accomplished moment. A very big moment, don't get me wrong --

SCIUTTO: No question.

GUPTA: But vaccines don't matter, vaccinations matter. And that was the big -- that was the big difference here.

So, yes, I'll give you a quick anecdote, Jim. My parents live in Lee County, Florida. They are, you know, over the age of 75. They wanted to get vaccinated. They've been watching, you know, the coverage of this. They stood in line from 1:30 in the morning, told that there would be 300 doses available. 1:30 in the morning they waited in line.

They got tickets number 288 and 289 out of the 300 doses they were told were available. That's what they had to do. Ten hours essentially outside. You know, I mean it's like waiting in line for concert tickets except they're in their late 70s and it was no fun for them.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GUPTA: In other places it's gone much more smoothly. Point is, it is uneven around the country and that's got to even out. It will get better. It's just a question of, will it get better fast enough?

SCIUTTO: Senior citizens waiting in lines for hours. It is remarkable scene in America in the year 2021. Just remarkable.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, so good to have you.

GUPTA: You got it.

SCIUTTO: We appreciate it.

And we'll be right back.

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[09:52:25]

SCIUTTO: The U.S. job market shrank in December. The final jobs report, the final one under President Trump, far worse than economists had predicted.

CNN's Christine Romans joins me now with the details.

Christine, they were expecting job growth.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

SCIUTTO: It went in the other direction.

ROMANS: It's alarming. The coronavirus slamming the brakes on the American job recovery. And it really underscores the big challenge for Congress and for the incoming administration to try to rescue. I mean companies are not going to last as long as COVID is. I mean look at the numbers, 140,000 jobs lost. And when you look at the recovery here, I can -- I can illustrate for you exactly how it has slowed.

We lost those 22 million jobs in the summer. You see that. In the spring, rather. And then slowly tried to crawl out of that hole. That is not a v-shape recovery, Jim, that is a reverse square root and it's going in the wrong direction here.

So you have pandemic jobs still down 9.8 million from the beginning here of the -- of the pandemic and for the Trump administration a dubious, dubious record here. The Trump administration, the president's presided over 3 million job losses. That is a record. We've never seen anything like that. That is the pandemic, of course, but it just underscores how much work is ahead for Joe Biden and Congress.

The unemployment rate now steady at 6.7 percent, but the government took pains, Jim, to say it would be maybe 7.3 percent if they had counted all the classifications the way they needed to. It's just so chaotic even counting all these people.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ROMANS: And big job losses in bars and restaurants. Just devastating there.

SCIUTTO: Wow.

ROMANS: Jim, they're down 11 million jobs since the pandemic and it just doesn't look good there.

SCIUTTO: Half a million there in one month. Just so much hardship.

Christine Romans, thanks very much.

ROMANS: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Well, President-elect Joe Biden will be inaugurated in 12 days, it's a fact, because he won the election. Sources tell CNN that he is focused on taking over the office and has no interest in talking about impeachment or the 25th Amendment. That's notable.

CNN's Jessica Dean is following the Biden transition from Wilmington, Delaware.

And, Jessica, I wonder, given what we're hearing from the House Democratic leadership about possibly moving to a vote next week on impeachment, is Biden in touch with them saying he doesn't want to go there?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, he may talk about this today, he may not, Jim. He is very focused on assuming office. And that's the message we've gotten from our sources is that he wants to keep the focus on assuming office on January 20th. He doesn't really have an appetite to be discussing impeachment and the 25th Amendment right now. And, in fact, at an event introducing his justice team yesterday, he started that by saying to the reporters in the room, I was in there, he said, I know you all want to talk about this.

[09:55:06]

I want to keep the focus on the justice team today.

He's got another event today introducing other cabinet nominees. Will he take questions? Will he talk about this? That remains to be seen.

But what we do know, Jim, is that he wants the focus on assuming office and that he and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are of the belief that this really lies with Vice President Pence, the cabinet and Congress to decide which is the best way forward and act in that way, that they really want to keep their eye on the ball, and that's taking office on January 20th, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DEAN: But we'll keep our eye -- we're going to keep our eye on what comes this afternoon.

SCIUTTO: Jessica Dean, thanks very much.

In just a little more than an hour, House Democrats will hold a conference call. Could a second impeachment vote for President Trump come as early as next week? That's what some on in the Democratic leadership are saying. We'll have more.

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