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Biden Hopes for 1.5 million Vaccines Per Day; Millions Struggle while Lawmakers Debate Relief Package; Biden Administration Weighing Trump's Tax Returns. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired January 26, 2021 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Still want to stick with that 100 shot -- million shots in the first 100 days and that that itself is an ambitious but achievable goal.

But, you know, as we have talked about, it is unclear if that is actually an ambitious goal.

I do want to note, though, we did hear from top executives at both Pfizer and Moderna yesterday. They were talking during a panel, talking about what it would take to actually scale up production. They said that people need to be patient, that these kind of things do take time.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: OK. Kristen Holmes, thank you for the reporting.

Joining us now to discuss, Claire Hannan, executive director of the Association of Immunization Managers.

Boy, is your job important right now. Thank you for being with us.

CLAIRE HANNAN, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, ASSOCIATION OF IMMUNIZATION MANAGERS: Thank you for having me.

HARLOW: I was so -- I think Jim and I were so stunned to hear the CDC director on Sunday say I cannot tell you how many vaccines we have.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Yes.

HARLOW: And if I can't tell you that, I can't tell the governors and the state health officials. You deal with the states on this. How severe is the crisis of just knowledge that we're facing right now?

HANNAN: Yes, I mean, I think that the communication is so critical for planning for states to get a good sense of, you know, what's coming our way, the allocations that coming week by week. And then you see that trickle down, you know, to counties, to hospitals, as far as being able to plan clinics. Really that critical piece is knowing exactly how many doses you're going to get and exactly when you're going to get it.

You know, I think with our data and our recording systems, once that vaccine is shipped, we know where it's going, you know, we can plan out the clinics. We just have a timeline of exactly where the dose is as far as when it gets administered, when that gets reported back. So we can't put our fingers on exactly where every dose is, but we know it's going into arms.

And then with the supply, yes, I mean we just -- we just need to get our arms around how much is coming and how much states are going to get so that planning piece can really be solid and is critical.

SCIUTTO: Sure. I mean, well, goodness, I mean you'd hope that you at least knew how many, right, so you could make planning on top of that.

So that's supply. Let's talk about delivery here because there are so many challenges to getting those shots into people's arms. I mean one is a reliance on private pharmacy chains, right? But also even political resistance. You have the governor of Florida pushing back on a Biden administration proposal to have mass vaccination sites. I wonder, is there a plan to overcome the delivery issues here? I mean how are most of us going to get vaccinated in the end?

HANNAN: Well, I think a solid infrastructure has been built. Tens of thousands of private providers have been enrolled. You know, states are really learning lessons from phase 1A as they expand into phase 1B, doing a much better job of setting up large-scale high through-put clinics where they can really manage inventory and really get doses into arms on a routine basis. Hopefully as supply grows then, you know, the supply can be spread across these tens of thousands of providers and the vaccine can be more accessible.

I do think President Biden has his work, you know, cut out for him as far as getting that supply to set up these coordination centers and then, you know, working with all the politics involved, working with all these governors. Some governors are going to be, you know, requesting these FEMA sites and other governors are going to be say, hey, we've got it going on, we just need supply. So it's a coordination, it's a communication, as well as getting more doses out.

HARLOW: There is also this real problem of inequity in terms of not just vaccine distribution but coverage. CNN did this analysis this morning and 14 different states showed that vaccine coverage for white residents in those states was twice as high than black and Latinos. Mayor Lightfoot in Chicago is doing something interesting with a real sort of targeted task force to get more minority vaccination. But I wonder how you think about that and what needs to be done in all states so that there's really equitable vaccination.

HANNAN: Yes, I mean, this is so critical. As we improve our efficiency and we start getting doses out into arms more quickly, we need to make sure that we're also looking at equity. And a big piece of this is spreading the vaccine as wide as possible into communities, getting them into local pharmacies, getting them into community health centers.

But it's also about building trust and confidence in the vaccine.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HANNAN: And so there's a lot of community engagement going on. We haven't necessarily done the best job of this with flu vaccine and others. So we have our work cut out for us here, too.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HANNAN: Building that trust, community engagement and making supply accessible and affordable, those are really the keys.

[09:35:01]

SCIUTTO: There's a lot of anecdotal evidence of just what you put your finger on there, which is, right, building trust in this and lack of trust in it, of people who don't want to take it, right?

HARLOW: Right.

SCIUTTO: And we need, as a country, to get to herd immunity somewhere in the range of 75 percent, 80 percent, you know, whatever the figure is. But is there any good data on how many people are refusing to take the vaccine or will refuse to take it?

HANNAN: I think states are getting some data in about that. And it does, obviously, look very good right now because demand is very high. And so some polls are suggesting 60 percent, 70 percent of people want to take it and definitely don't have that high of a percentage in African-Americans and others.

So as we work to get herd immunity, we're really going to have to continue to advocate and educate about the value of the vaccine, the importance of getting vaccinated for yourself, for your loved ones, for the community, for all those reasons, and the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine.

You know, we're continuing to monitor and look at safety. That's so critical. And just getting that information out, assuring people this vaccine is safe and effective and you really should get it. It's not only going to help you, it's going to help the entire community.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, it helps to see leaders getting it themselves as well, right?

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Right on up to the president.

HANNAN: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Claire Hannan, thanks so much.

HANNAN: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, President Biden inherited an economy just struggling to hang on in the midst of the pandemic with millions of Americans still out of work, many families facing eviction and outright hunger in America in 2021. Will Congress pass Biden's trillion-dollar relief bill? A look at who needs the help right now is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:40:50]

HARLOW: When it comes to economic stimulus and COVID, President Biden says he is willing to negotiate on his $1.9 trillion COVID relief package, but he insists time is of the essence.

SCIUTTO: Yes, interesting there. That's because the initial unemployment claims are hovering still around the 1 million mark. I mean the number's just off the charts.

CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich talks to Americans who say they need that relief right now.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Michelle Bennett and her children are living in fear. Her landlord is trying to evict them after she lost her job and can't pay rent.

MICHELLE BENNETT, FACING EVICTION: I don't really have anywhere to go with me not having the income to pay during the pandemic, because I don't want to be homeless.

YURKEVICH: The eviction crisis is just one of the economic disasters facing the Biden administration, including historic job loss and a growing hunger crisis. Last week, President Biden signed an executive order extending a ban on evictions through March. But that doesn't help Bennett, whose lawyer says her landlord is using a loophole that's becoming more common during the pandemic.

BENNETT: I already started packing.

YURKEVICH: Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus plan proposes about $30 billion in additional rental assistance. For months Bennett's tried applying so she can stay in her home, with no luck.

BENNETT: When you call it's like no -- no money, you know, or -- or call back next month. You know, maybe there will be money then, you know. And then you call back that next month, it's still, oh, we're out of money.

YURKEVICH: Gabbie Riley is also out of a job. Weekly unemployment claims are back hovering around 1 million and last month the economy shed jobs for the first time since April. Every single one of those 140,000 jobs lost was held by a woman. Riley is one of them.

GABBIE RILEY, LAID OFF IN DECEMBER: It's maddening. It's frustrating. It's defeating. YURKEVICH: Riley worked in sales at the Loews Hotel in Minneapolis.

Leisure and hospitality lost more jobs than any other U.S. industry last year. Riley, a single mom, is worried her career is over.

RILEY: We have a long way to go yet before our economic society is really feeling and appreciating what females have to contribute to society.

MELODY SAMUELS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST HUNGER: What is a food pantry without food?

YURKEVICH: As COVID-19 cases continue to rise, food banks across the country are running out of critical government funding. The Campaign Against Hunger in Brooklyn, New York, says their money is nearly gone.

SAMUELS: It's frightening. I don't know what I'm going to do because I still have food to buy.

YURKEVICH: President Biden signed an executive order to address hunger, directing the Department of Agriculture to give families more money to replace school lunches and increase food stamps for about 12 million Americans. But some on the brink will still fall through the cracks and food banks need federal funding to feed them.

SAMUELS: I need assurance from all our policymakers that, listen, you started, you -- we need to finish this thing. We started helping families. We can't leave them in thin air.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

YURKEVICH: Another element to economic recovery is addressing economic racial inequality. This has been going on well before the pandemic, but it's only been made worse by it. Small business owners of color are losing their businesses in greater numbers and minorities who are unemployed are unemployed at higher rates than white Americans. And we know that the Biden administration is going to be addressing race and the economy. However, it's really about addressing those two things together in order to try to close this gap.

Jim and Poppy.

HARLOW: The reporting you're doing on this, Vanessa, is so, so important.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Especially for the lawmakers making these decisions to see.

Thank you very much for that.

Well, for weeks, the Supreme Court has been sitting on several key cases involving former President Trump. Today, critical news could come. A big question remains, what's going to happen with his tax returns?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [09:49:22]

SCIUTTO: Well, as soon as today, the Supreme Court may begin acting on several controversial issues including the question of the release of former President Trump's tax returns.

HARLOW: The high court is set to decide if his returns can go to the Manhattan district attorney and the Biden administration is determining whether or not they will turn over Trump's federal returns to Congress.

Our Kara Scannell and our Ariane de Vogue join us now to discuss.

Two separate tax related issues here. And what's interesting, Kara, is I believe it's a Trump appointed judge making the decision on the House request for the documents, right, and it's like giving it a two- week delay here.

[09:50:02]

KARA SCANNELL, CNN REPORTER: Yes, right, Poppy. So there is -- this is a Trump appointed judge who is overseeing this lawsuit since 2019. And what he has said is that he wants to hear from all the parties next week, by February 3rd, from the Biden administration, from the president's private lawyers and from the House Democrats to see where they all stand on this issue of will the Biden administration comply with the subpoena from the House Ways and Means Committee and turn over the president's taxes.

Now, this has come about because, as I said, the case has languished in the courts for quite some time but Trump's lawyers, knowing that the new administration was coming in, had asked the judge for a hearing last week out of concern that the Biden administration would change its mind and quietly turn over these records. So the judge agreed to give the Trump team 72 hours' notice if the Biden administration changes its mind so they would have an opportunity to object.

And the issue that is so paramount for the Trump legal team here is that they've wanted to keep these tax returns secret. And once they're in the hands of the House Ways and Means Committee, it's up to the committee to decide what to do with them. And there is precedent for them making them public. They did it in 2014, so it's possible they could do it again.

Poppy.

SCIUTTO: I mean it's interesting, even with him out of office, he's still doing everything he can to keep those from being public.

Ariane, is this -- I mean does the Biden administration need the court here or can it unilaterally decide to release them without the prospect of court challenge?

ARIANE DE VOGUE, CNN SUPREME COURT REPORTER: Well, what's interesting for me, from my perspective, is this is all about the Supreme Court wanting to stay out of the political fray, right, because there are lots of really interesting hot-button issues, abortion, immigration, that the court just simply has put in a kind of holding pattern during this fraught time.

And as you said, one of the most important cases has to do with those tax returns because it was back in October, right, near the end of the election, when Trump was still president, that his private lawyers raced to the Supreme Court and asked the justices to put this subpoena on hold. And usually those emergency requests, they happen pretty quickly. But the Supreme Court, instead, sat on it during the rest of the election and during the rest of his presidency. And now they're going to be poised to act.

And in a way, Jim, that was a good thing for Trump, right, because it put in this holding pattern, it delayed it.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DE VOGUE: But those justices know, just as Kara said, that now that he's no longer president, it is going to be a lot easier for that prosecutor and for the Biden administration to move on those tax returns. And that will have left the Supreme Court kind of out of it.

SCIUTTO: Interesting.

HARLOW: Ariane, just a follow-up on that for you because it does appear at least part of the argument by the president's legal team in his second impeachment trial, the former president, is going to be a process argument. There is no jurisdiction here. You can't impeach, you know, a former president, et cetera.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: So if that's the case, isn't it all but certain that this will in some way end up before the Supreme Court?

DE VOGUE: Well, you look at it -- one thing that's fascinating, right, is that we learned yesterday that Chief Justice John Roberts was -- is not going to preside over this, presumably because he's an ex- president. But Chief Justice John Roberts, we asked him for comment on that, and he didn't even give his comment. And now you're looking at the people who say that this is unconstitutional, that he can't be impeached and there is a school of thought that that very question could end up going to the courts in short order as you said.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Kara, before we go, you have the Manhattan D.A. -- the Manhattan D.A.'s own investigation into Trump Organization, possible fraud, et cetera.

Where does that stand and what's the timeline on that in terms of when we might see something result from that investigation?

SCANNELL: Well, Jim, it's so tied to what we're talking about. It's tied to the Supreme Court's decision here on the subpoena. Because the D.A.'s office has been investigating this since 2018. They first issued the subpoena to Donald Trump's accounting in September of 2019. It has been tied up in litigation for some 16 months.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

SCANNELL: And while the D.A. has been interviewing people, it's collected documents, it is still needing the tax returns and (INAUDIBLE) associated paperwork in order to determine whether a crime was committed. So as soon as they get these tax returns, I think we'll see this investigation really escalate.

Jim. Poppy.

SCIUTTO: All right, we'll be watching. The fight goes on.

Kara Scannell, Ariane de Vogue, thanks very much.

Well, Joe Biden tells CNN that former President Trump's impeachment trial, quote, has to happen, but he even admits it's unlikely there will be 17 Republican senators voting to convict. We're on top of new developments on Capitol Hill next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:59:05]

HARLOW: Good morning, everyone. Top of the hour. I'm Poppy Harlow.

SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

A busy news week yet again.

Right now, senators are convening. Just hours from now they will be formally sworn in as jurors for the second impeachment trial of the former president, Donald Trump. President Biden tells CNN the impeachment trial, quote, has to happen, in his words.

HARLOW: That's right. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell announced he will advance the power sharing deal in the 50/50 chamber. This agreement clears the path for President Biden to move forward, or try to with his legislative agenda.

Let's get right to CNN congressional correspondent Lauren Fox on Capitol Hill.

Laruen, take us through what we can expect from impeachment today as the jurors get seated, the senators, and then what happens over the next few weeks.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, today is really a procedural move. This is the moment when you will see senators take an oath as jurors in this Senate impeachment trial.

[10:00:02]

You will see the president pro temp, Senator Pat Leahy, presiding over this swearing in.