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Biden Takes Action to Ease "Deepening" U.S. Economic Crisis; Prominent Republicans Lobbying McConnell to Convict Trump; U.K. COVID- 19 Variant May Have Higher Mortality Rate. Aired 12-12:15a ET
Aired January 23, 2021 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello, everyone, and welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. I am Michael Holmes. Appreciate your company.
How so, how do you pull a nation from the jaws of multiple crises?
It all starts with a fully loaded pen. Two days after he was sworn in, President Joe Biden signed executive orders expanding food aid and relief checks for low income Americans, raising the federal minimum wage.
He is hoping we won't see things like this much longer. Look at that, a long line for food. People needing the very basics to get by.
He says the U.S. mustn't let people go hungry or lose their jobs during this national emergency created by the pandemic.
Remember Donald Trump?
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is set to deliver the article of impeachment against the former president, to the Senate, on Monday. Mr. Trump's second Senate trial isn't expected to begin until February 9th.
That delay will give the Senate more time to confirm the president's cabinet. Mr. Biden says the more time he has to get his team up and running, the better. CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports.
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KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President Biden signing another round of executive orders today, as he attempts to use the power of his office to blunt the economic fallout from the pandemic.
JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We have to act. We have to act now.
COLLINS (voice-over): By expanding food stamps and speeding up stimulus checks for eligible Americans who haven't received them yet, Biden is hoping to deliver desperately needed relief. BIDEN: We cannot, will not let people go hungry. We cannot let people be evicted because of nothing they did themselves. They cannot watch people lose their jobs.
COLLINS (voice-over): Today, Biden's top economic aide, Brian Deese, spoke bluntly about the challenge that is facing them.
BRIAN DEESE, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL: Our economy is at a very precarious moment. If we don't act now, we will be in a much worse place and we will find ourselves needing to do much more to dig out of a much deeper hole.
COLLINS (voice-over): Deese adding that Biden's executive orders should not be seen as a replacement for the $1.9 trillion relief package he's called on Congress to pass.
DEESE: The single most important thing economically right now is to take decisive action.
COLLINS (voice-over): This impeachment announcement from Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has some White House officials worried that Biden's early agenda could be left in limbo.
SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): I have spoken to Speaker Pelosi, who informed me that the articles will be delivered to the Senate on Monday.
COLLINS (voice-over): That means President Trump's trial could start as soon as next week. But, today, Biden seemed to side with Mitch McConnell's proposal they wait until next month.
QUESTION: Mr. President, do you support Mitch McConnell's timeline for a February impeachment trial?
BIDEN: The more time we have to get up and running and to meet these crises, the better.
COLLINS (voice-over): Privately, White House officials have voiced concern about whether an impeachment trial would affect passing a relief package or confirming Biden's Cabinet nominees, given only two have been confirmed so far.
Today, the White House press secretary declined to say if President Biden ultimately believes his predecessor should be barred from holding office.
JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Well, he's no longer in the Senate and he believes that it's up to the Senate and Congress to determine how they will hold the former president accountable.
COLLINS (voice-over): One Biden official was more candid, telling CNN, "We need to move past this. The only way for that to happen is for the trial to begin."
Coronavirus remains the top challenge facing the Biden administration. And, tonight, there are new questions about this campaign trail promise:
BIDEN: At least 100 million COVID vaccines shots into the arms of the American people in the first 100 days, 100 million shots in the first 100 days.
COLLINS (voice-over): Data from the CDC says the U.S. has already reached that goal of vaccinating one million people per day, leading some experts to say Biden's plan is too modest.
BIDEN: God willing, not only do 100 million, we're going to do more than that.
COLLINS: We've seen President Biden try to steer clear of weighing in on this impeachment trial, although he did today and, shortly after that, we got an announcement from the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, saying that they are going to delay that trial for a little over two weeks from now -- Kaitlan Collins, CNN, the White House.
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HOLMES: A two-thirds majority in the Senate is needed to convict Donald Trump. Most Republicans feel that there are not enough votes to do that -- or at least, not yet.
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HOLMES: Some GOP sources says there is more of an appetite to punish the former president than is publicly apparent. CNN has learned dozens of influential Republicans, including former top Trump administration officials, are quietly pushing GOP members to vote for conviction.
They're focusing on Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who has signaled that he has not yet ruled it out.
One Republican member of Congress, telling CNN this, quote, "Mitch said to me he wants Trump gone. It is in his political interest to have him gone. It is in the GOP interest to have him gone. The question is, do we get there?"
The U.S. is beginning to see a decline in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations. Some good news. The COVID Tracking Project said that over 116,000 people in hospitals, the lowest figure in about a month. The deaths still quite high, averaging over 3,000 a day.
Meanwhile, vaccinations are starting to ramp up. The CDC count increasing by more than 1.6 million doses. States have 72 hours to report those numbers. That is the biggest jump so far and it does bring the total number of doses administered to 19 million.
But many say their vaccine supply is running low. The Biden nominee for surgeon general says that the issues, likely, will be resolved soon.
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DR. VIVEK MURTHY, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL NOMINEE: We have been deeply involved in conversations with the companies, on a very regular basis and those conversations started, frankly, before the election to try to understand this more closely, what the supply was, what the challenges were, what the roadblocks were to getting in more supply accelerated and what the potential failure spots would be to look out for and plan for.
Those conversations, I, think have given us more confidence that there is more supply coming, they will continue to steadily increase over the next few months. Part of what we've talked about, also, is the importance of making that data as clearly available and transparent, so that mayors and the general public can also see a lot of what we are seeing as well and we can some confidence about what the supply looks like over the coming weeks.
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HOLMES: The United Kingdom is now the worst hit country on Earth for COVID-19 deaths per capita. That is from Johns Hopkins University. It broke its daily death record this day on Wednesday, with more than 1,800 people losing their lives to the virus. CNN's Nic Robertson is in London.
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NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Stark news from the British prime minister, saying the U.K. variant of COVID-19 may have a higher mortality rate than the original COVID-19 virus.
That is a huge concern for the hospitals here in the U.K. that are filling up; the ICU units are full and almost in some cases, to essentially, overflowing, almost to capacity in some hospitals.
Of course, it has global implications because the U.K. variant of the virus has spread. The chief scientific adviser then gave his detailed explanation of how to understand this preliminary data the prime minister was talking about.
One of the key caveats, he said, is that the mortality rate, if you compare the new variant with the old one, for people in hospital, the mortality rate in hospital was the same. However, he gave this explanation to understand why there is so much concern about the data they are seeing.
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PATRICK VALLANCE, U.K. CHIEF SCIENTIFIC ADVISER: If you took somebody in their 60s, a man in their 60s, the average risk is that, for a thousand people who got infected, roughly 10 would be expected to unfortunately die with the virus.
With the new variant, for a thousand people infected, roughly 13 or 14 people might be expected to die.
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ROBERTSON: If we take one example of one country -- and there is believed to be about 50 different nations now that have the U.K. COVID-19 variant detected -- if we take the example of Ireland, around Christmas they had a little bit less than 10 percent, 8 percent or 9 percent, roughly, of the U.K. variant virus detected there.
A few weeks later, that was up to the mid-40 percentage points that Irish experts, scientists believe the number would climb and it would become the dominant variant. That was Ireland's experience. If it's the experience of other nations -- and no reason to believe it, definitely, will be.
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ROBERTSON: But this is early data recorded and explained here in the U.K. The implications for Ireland and other nations as troubling as it is here -- Nic Robertson, CNN, London.
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HOLMES: Across Europe, most countries are seeing fewer new cases this week compared to last week with a few exceptions, Spain and Portugal. The surge started in early September and hasn't started to ease yet.
Elsewhere, the trend line is falling, good news. Italy in green, Germany in red, the Netherlands in orange and the U.K. and blue.
Today, marking one year since China put the city of Wuhan on total lockdown. The world was just seeing how chaotic the coronavirus would be. Wuhan was the case study in how to deal with it. David Culver shows us what it is like there now.
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DAVID CULVER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Here, back in Wuhan, China, when you mention its name, people around the world know it as the original epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak.
The city is marking one year since an unprecedented lockdown took place, a lockdown that lasted 76 days. Essentially, it sealed off this city of 11 million people from the rest of the world.
If you notice, business is back open. Face masks, no longer required in public and if you are a good distance away from others. However, while business may be going back to normal, you may also notice there's a deep agony felt amongst folks who lost loved ones, wounds that have yet to heal.
Many of them, actually still angry with the local officials who, they blame, for not doing enough early on. Our visit here coincides with a source tracing mission of the WHO, a fealty that is, likewise, in Wuhan, to find the truth of the origins of this virus -- David Culver, CNN, Wuhan, China.
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HOLMES: The baseball icon and civil rights activist Hank Aaron passed early in his sleep on Friday. Nicknamed Hammering Hank, the Braves' Hall of Famer broke Babe Ruth's all-time mark for career home runs in 1974. That was the hit that did it.
He faced down death threats, racist taunts and hate mail, persevering through it all with determination and class. His close friend, civil rights leader Andrew Young, says that he never let racism deter him.
Former President Barack Obama calls him, quote, "One of the best baseball players we have ever seen and one of the strongest people I've ever met."
Hank Aaron was 86 years old.
I am Michael Holmes, thank you for watching, I will see you a bit later. For now, "MARKETPLACE AFRICA" coming your way.
