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Biden Seeks Bipartisan Support for New Pandemic Relief Package; House to Send Impeachment Article to the Senate Tonight; President Biden Plans Busy Week of Executive Actions. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired January 25, 2021 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:13]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. Thank you so much for joining us this hour.

It has been less than one week since President Biden's inauguration. This morning, his administration is facing its first big test with Congress. The president's $1.9 trillion COVID relief package is running into resistance from some of the very Republicans that it really needs to get over the finish line quickly with bipartisan support.

Republican senators like Mitt Romney and Susan Collins already voicing concerns about the size and the scope of this package. All of this as the second impeachment trial for Donald Trump looms over everything and takes a major step forward today.

Later this evening, the House of Representatives will deliver the article of impeachment to the Senate. And two weeks from now, the trial begins.

Clearly, most of the focus is on the Hill at this very moment for the Biden administration. But President Biden is also rolling out more executive actions today.

And in this hour, he and the Vice President Kamala Harris are meeting with the new Defense secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley.

So where are things headed as we kick off this new week.

CNN's John Harwood is joining now from the White House, as well as Manu Raju on the Hill.

Manu, let me start with you. Where do things stand with this COVID relief package this morning?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, there is definitely resistance among Republicans in the Senate. In order to get the bill through the United States Senate to the regular order, it would require at least 10 Republicans to join with 50 Democrats overcome any efforts to try to derail the legislation to get 60 votes and advance at legislation through the Senate.

But on a bipartisan call that happened yesterday, a number of senators raised concerns about the scope of the $1.9 trillion legislation. Senators like Susan Collins of Maine, someone whose vote will be critical in trying to get this bill passed.

What the concern is about how that relief legislation is structured and whether or not the money is going to people who need it most according to people who are on the call told me about it afterwards.

So, the big question for the Biden administration and for the Democratic leaders in Congress is whether they try to continue to court Republican support in the Senate or try to move it on their own, under a budget process. They can try to fast track legislation and avoid getting Republican support because that process cannot be filibustered in the Senate.

So, that means a simple majority of 50 senators plus Kamala Harris, the vice president, breaking the tie can get that legislation through. But the question for the Biden team too is, do they want to make that part of their initial push here, doing something on a party line basis which is why they're still reaching out to Republicans.

And at the moment, Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, is indicating she's willing to go that route as a push to go that route to the budget process. And there are still questions about whether they break off any pieces including vaccine -- money for vaccine distribution which is a bipartisan priority.

So those decisions still have to be made but certainly resistance coming from Republicans of the overall price tag here, Kate.

BOLDUAN: And John, how does the White House plan to get reluctant Republicans onboard. Are they confident they can?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, they know that they want to try. And Joe Biden is better positioned than almost any other Democrat by virtue of his experience, his personal qualities, the nature of his agenda to make that attempt. There are various ways they could try to bring Republicans on board and Democrats honestly, there are some Democrats who are not ready to affirm this plan in total.

You could break parts out, the $15 minimum wage for example. There is separate legislation moving on the child tax credit, you could break that out. You could adjust the deadlines. You know, one of the things this package does is extend some of the federal unemployment benefits longer than is existing in current law.

You shorten some of those deadlines, you reduce the price tag and also, those checks for individuals, the $1,400 added on to the $600 from December. There are Democratic economists who think that is not well targeted just like some Republicans are complaining about that. You could turn that dial down to get the cost down. There are a lot of approaches they could take.

BOLDUAN: And Manu, this evening another major moment is about to playout when House lawmakers walk over the article of impeachment to the Senate about the former President Donald Trump. What is going to happen here?

RAJU: Yes. We'll see the impeachment managers. The House Democrats who plan to prosecute the case in the Senate, formally take that article of impeachment charging Donald Trump with inciting an insurrection that led to that deadly Capitol riot here in the Capitol more than two weeks ago. They are going to bring that article over. Then the lead impeachment manager Jamie Raskin will read aloud that article of impeachment.

And then tomorrow will be the formal summons that will be issued to the former president. Also, the senators who are jurors in the case will take their oaths. And then after that, there will be much efforts that will happen behind the scenes.

[11:05:03]

Pretrial briefs will be written on both sides before the actual arguments happen in public on the week of February 8th. The question is how long does it last? Do Democrats bring in witnesses? There is expectation it won't go as long as a 2020 impeachment trial which lasted 21 days because in large part, Democrats want to try move on the Biden agenda. Get his nominees confirmed. And the impeachment trial will eat up almost all the time in the Senate, absent cooperation from Republicans.

So, the question is, how long will it go. And of course, will 17 Republicans break ranks, vote to convict Donald Trump with 50 Democrats preventing him from ever holding office again. But I could tell you, at the moment, Kate, those 17 votes clearly are not there. Maybe a handful but outside of that, certainly not 17. Kate?

BOLDUAN: And as Manu points out, John, there could be a huge wall in the way of the Biden agenda in the short-term. So, do you have a sense how big of a test the White House views this COVID relief effort especially against the backdrop of what Manu just laid out?

HARWOOD: It is an enormous test and it's the most important thing for the beginning of his presidency. Because getting on top of the COVID pandemic is the key to re-energizing the economy and getting unemployment down, getting growth ratcheted up. So, they got to figure out an approach and there is going to be a tradeoff.

It is clearly a promising political message if you could say I got Democrats and Republicans to work together. And if do you that by hiving off parts of it and try to pass it separately, that is one approach. On the other hand, if you think you can't get what you need on state and local governments on testing, on vaccine distribution, to get control of the pandemic, you're submarining your own prospects for reviving the economy.

That is the argument for then cutting bait on the effort to get Republicans going with an all Democratic approach. It is not optimum from a political messaging point of view, but the key thing is, can you get the substantive progress on the pandemic that you want and need to get the economy back in shape and that is going to be something that the Biden team is going to have to figure out after exploring the bipartisan option for at least a couple of weeks.

BOLDUAN: We'll see how much time they actually have on that. Good to see you, guys. Thank you so much.

All right. So, President Biden, he isn't waiting for Congress to get everything done. Today, he's continuing to lean on his executive power to push forward some of his priorities.

Let me bring in CNN's Jeremy Diamond. He's following this for us. Jeremy, what are we going to see today?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, we just got a press release from the White House saying that President Biden has now used his executive authority to revoke the transgender military ban that President Trump had enacted.

So, this executive order that President Biden just signed according to the White House, this will essentially allow all transgender service members to serve openly in the military, allow any transgender individuals who want to enlist to do so, including those who are actively transitioning. That was something that President Trump had revoked. A discriminatory policy to be clear that he had put in place and now that will be revoked under this executive order signed by the current president.

That is just one of the executive orders that we expect to see from President Biden today. The president is also expected to focus on increasing the federal government's purchases of goods that are made in America. This will be a buy America executive order from the president and a few key top lines from that executive order will be that it will change the amount of content that actually has to be in a product for it to be considered made in America.

There will be a position added at the Office of Management and Budget to enforce these regulations. And essentially, it is tightening those rules so that the federal government purchases more goods that are made in the United States. That was something that President Trump also tried to do but really the biggest provision that he had put in place in regard to that didn't actually take effect until a couple of days before President Trump left office.

But to be clear, as you said, Kate, more executive actions are still on the way. We are seeing this White House approach this first week in office. Thematically, we saw that first day focus on legislation related to the coronavirus. The next day, it was focus on the economic crisis. And going forward, you're also going to see health care, immigration, climate. That will be coming in the coming days.

One more piece of executive action coming today from the president will be an executive order reinstating travel bans on the European Union and the United Kingdom, as well as adding South Africa to that list.

President Trump in his final days in office had revoked those travel restrictions where he had put in place. They were set to take effect tomorrow in terms of revoking those restrictions and they now will stay in place effectively. Kate?

BOLDUAN: A lot going on. Jeremy, thank you for running through it. I really appreciate it.

Coming up for us, the new CDC director says, she doesn't know how many vaccines are available in this moment. We're going to get a status update also on the vaccine rollout from a major player in the effort, the chief medical officer for CVS.

[11:10:04]

Plus, new reporting about how far Donald Trump was willing to go to try to overturn the election. Could these new revelations impact the Senate impeachment trial? We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: New this morning, Moderna answering one of the critical questions surrounding the new coronavirus variants. The company announcing today that its COVID vaccine is expected to be effective against the new variants first detected in the U.K. and South Africa but still more tests are underway. At the very same time, top Biden administration officials are putting it pretty bluntly that the vaccine rollout across country is still not where it should be.

[11:15:02]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RON KLAIN, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: The process of getting that vaccine into arms, that is the hard process. That is where we're behind as a country. And that is where we're focused in the Biden administration on getting that ramped up.

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: You know, I would say one of the biggest problems right now is I can't tell you how much vaccine we have. And if I can't it to you, then I can't tell it to the governors. And I can't tell it to the state health officials. If they don't know how much vaccine they're getting not just this week but next week and the week after, they can't plan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: No kidding. One new update this morning, CVS has announced that they have finished the first round of vaccine doses to nearly 8,000 skilled nursing facilities across the country. The company is in charge of servicing 40,000 facilities nationwide.

Joining me now for more of an update is the chief medical officer for CVS Health, Dr. Troy Brennan. Doctor, thank you for coming back in. With this announcement that you made this morning, at this rate, when will CVS do you think be complete with the vaccine program for all of the care facilities that you're under contract to service? DR. TROY BRENNAN, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, CVS HEALTH: Well, Kate, it depends on exactly when we started the process. Each of the states designates when they want us to basically go into the skilled nursing facilities and the assisted living facilities. And they pause the assisted living facilities usually after the skilled nursing facilities started.

What we're seeing is on an entire round, it takes us about three weeks, three and a half weeks. So, we've completed now the first round of all of the skilled nursing facilities and we're about halfway there on the assisted living facilities. Many of the skilled nursing facilities will be done in two to three weeks, with a second dose will go back a third time to catch new people who are in the skilled nursing facilities and also to catch the staff who still haven't gotten their vaccinations.

So, I would say the entire process will probably take us through mid- February. To the end of February. But the lion's share of people who are in skilled nursing facilities will be finished within two to three weeks.

BOLDUAN: You and I have talked kind of throughout this process, some from the beginning of the contract to this point. And I noticed last week, there are some governors that are voicing frustration with the pace by CVS and Walgreens. New Jersey's governor said on Friday that he thought it was going too slow. And let me play for you what Utah's governor said about this to CNN the same day.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. SPENCER COX (R-UT): That Walgreens and CVS partnership with the federal government, that is where all of the backlog is, in virtually every state right now. They've gone through 85 percent of the long- term care facilities in Utah. And they have way too much vaccine. We estimate they've 15,000 to 16,000 extra doses that they don't need and can't use right now. So, we're taking that back and we're giving it to our local health departments. And it will be gone next week.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Utah governor, Doctor, says that you were given way too many shots. Are shots going to waste?

BRENNAN: No, they're not going to waste. We were given the shots that were based on the number of people who were in the skilled nursing facilities estimated by the states and the number of people who work at those skilled nursing facilities. The sense is the skilled nursing facilities is actually lower than the states expected.

And at least on the first pass, the workers in those skilled nursing facilities are not getting as many vaccinations as we thought that they would. So, we did end up with excess and with a number of states where basically, we're giving that back so it could be used for general purposes. Because we've got our own calculations about how many we need to get the second dose in and how many skilled nursing facilities will still have to go. With regard to the job we were supposed to, we basically identified what the schedule was. And we've kept to that schedule. Each of the governors knows since January 6th. We've been posting on a daily basis exactly sort of how many shots we've given and where we are. We're finished with all the skilled nursing facilities now. And we're on the first run. And we're going to be starting the second run right away.

BOLDUAN: So, Doctor, do you think the -- their frustration is misplaced? Why do you think they're kind of coming after you?

BRENNAN: Well I think everybody is under a lot of pressure and especially the governors. And so, you could understand that they want to try to get as many people vaccinated as quickly as possible. We all do. But this was all part of the program that's well understood by everyone who was involved from the State Department to public health, to the federal authorities.

And we're certainly not withholding and we're certainly not wasting any vaccine. And we're being very careful about the use of the vaccines in the individual skilled nursing facilities. So, I think you could rest assure the job is getting done and that we're going to complete the task on the schedule that we were set for by the states.

BOLDUAN: Walgreens has said that up to 80 percent of staffers at some facilities are declining to get the shots offered. Are you seeing that same, really, I think it is an astronomical rate of people saying no to shots?

BRENNAN: No. I would say, we were more at the sort of 40 to 50 percent range on the first one.

BOLDUAN: But still.

[11:20:01]

BRENNAN: Well, on the second run, what we're seeing is that there are more people who are coming forward. I think there with - that people knew that we're going to be visiting three times and the vaccines we're using Moderna and Pfizer. Obviously, both take sort of two doses.

So, a lot of people waited to sort of see what the reaction was from their friends who did get vaccinated and I think they're coming forward.

So, we're getting more and more people on the second run. I'm hopeful that we're going to see reasonable completion rate amongst the workers.

BOLDUAN: OK. In November, when you were on, you said that you would hope by late February or the beginning of March that the general population would be able to be making appointments and getting shots at you know your local CVS pharmacy retail location. Is that realistic at this point?

BRENNAN: It's going to depend on how much vaccines available. You heard the CDC director saying that the federal government was really trying to sort of assess exactly sort of how much vaccine is available. We are now providing shots in stores in certain states that have asked us to do it on the so-called state-based program.

So, any state that wants us to begin to vaccinate in stores can ask us to do so. And then we talk to them about which stores we should use and how much vaccine they're going to allocate from their state-based allocation. Like the Utah governor was talking about.

But there is also going to be a federal program that will open up. And the Biden administration is trying to decide when to open up that federal program. And you really want to open that up as there's a reasonable amount of supply available because we don't want to frustrate people by saying we have some vaccine but it's only a few stores. There are only a few vaccines per store.

So, it's all going to depend on how much vaccine is available from the manufacturers. And I know they are working as hard as they can to pump out those vaccines.

BOLDUAN: So, should I not be making a bet that I'm going to be able to make my appointment at CVS come early March?

BRENNAN: Well, you're a young, healthy person so you're going to be sort back towards the end of the line if I could be presumptuous about that. People who are over the age of 65 or 75, depending on individual state, I think we'll begin to see it in the local retail pharmacies. And as we've seed in the past, we feel like we could do 20 to 25 million vaccinations per month at our pharmacies with the other retailers are set up to the do the same thing. So, once there is enough vaccine supply, I think it's really going to will start rolling.

BOLDUAN: Dr. Breanna, thank you for coming on again.

BRENNAN: Thank you for having me, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Coming up for us, ousting the acting AG, plotting with a little-known DOJ attorney, pressuring the Department of Justice to take his election fraud lie to the Supreme Court. The flood of new details about Trump's desperate attempts overturn the election, that is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:27:22]

BOLDUAN: Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the election went further and farther than anyone really knew. The details of what he tried to pull off are just now coming to light. "The New York Times" first reporting and CNN confirming, Trump planned to fire the Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen and replace him with a little-known Justice Department official who had devised the plan to force Georgia to overturn its election results. And the reason is wasn't put into action was the threat of mass resignations by other top DOJ officials. And that is not all. CNN's Jessica Schneider, she is here with all of it. And it is a lot. Walk us through everything that's come out in the past couple of days.

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: It is a lot, Kate. This is an extensive and weeks long effort by then-President Trump and a top Justice Department official that really took other leaders at DOJ completely by surprise. So much so that they agreed to band together and resign if the president's plot went into effect.

And it really all center starting on December 14th because that's when "The New York Times" says - of course, that was the day that electors secured Joe Biden's win, the day that Bill Barr announced his resignation.

And it turns out, that is when Trump really started prodding the new Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen to file legal briefs, overturn the election and also, to appoint special counsels to investigate this nonexistent voter fraud. And he also wanted a special counsel to investigate Dominion, the elections equipment company that Trump falsely said changed votes.

Rosen wouldn't do it, Kate. But Rosen didn't know is that the acting head of the Civil Division, Jeffrey Clark, was secretly meeting with Trump and these all cascaded to days before that insurrection at the Capitol when Trump had to be convinced not to fire Jeffrey Rosen. He didn't. But this is all coming out now about this big plot that Trump tried to replace him just so he could get what he wanted when it came to the election.

BOLDUAN: And then you mentioned Dominion. New this morning, one - Dominion which is essentially one of the biggest victims of the president's conspiracy theories of him and his allies. Dominion has filed this enormous defamation lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani.

SCHNEIDER: Right. Enormous indeed, Kate. Defamation suit for $1.3 billion, with a "b." That's what they're suing Rudy Giuliani for. And it is all comes down to this conspiracy theory that the president or former President Trump and Rudy Giuliani had been repeatedly railing about. They said that Dominion, the maker of this election's equipment, they said that they were somehow working in conjunction with the Venezuelan government to change votes.

Of course, that is completely false. Dominion had previously sued Sidney Powell, a former Trump attorney as well. And now they're suing Rudy Giuliani. They're terming it this big lie that Giuliani has been propagating.