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Biden Combats Climate Crisis; Police Raid Opposition Leader's Home in Moscow; Biden Confronts Putin; China Accuses Trump of Provoking Trade Wars; Gamestop's Stock Surges. Aired 9:30-10a
Aired January 27, 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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[09:31:46]
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: So the focus for President Biden today is the climate and climate crisis. Set to announce several executive actions today.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A key move, a ban on new oil and gas leases on federal land. Existing ones go forward. But if significant change is going to happen, this administration has a lot of work to do, particularly in Congress.
Here's CNN's chief climate correspondent Bill Weir.
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BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT (voice over): During a 2020 filled with broken record-breaking fire and drought, massive swarms of locusts and so many hurricanes they ran out of names, Joe Biden promised to help avoid planet cooking, climate-changing, fossil fuel suicide.
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: A cry for survival comes from the planet itself.
WEIR: And within hours of his oath, he signed an executive order for every agency in government to be guided by the best science while undoing the many results of Donald Trump's fossil fuel fetish. The first target listed involves places like the Permian Basin of Texas, where a certain kind of heat-trapping pollution belches unchecked and invisible.
WEIR (on camera): Unless you have a special infrared camera like this, which can turn a Texas bluebird sky into this. And this is methane, a greenhouse gas 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If CO2 is a blanket of average thickness, methane is as blanket as thick as LeBron James is tall.
WEIR (voice over): The gas does lose its potency much faster than CO2, but the volume is staggering. Along with all the active oil and gas production, the U.S. has millions of abandoned wells leaking methane.
Biden's strategy to stop this may become clear with Wednesday's second batch of climate orders, when he's also expected to halt any new drilling and fracking on federal land and water. And since he also rejoined the Paris Accord, the whole world is watching.
JOHN KERRY, U.S. SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL ENVOY FOR CLIMATE: While we come back, I want you to know, with humility for the absence of the last four years, and we'll do everything in our power to make up for it.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm so happy to hear John -- John Kerry say this because we need the U.S. to be back at the center of the action.
WEIR: Not so happy? Republicans like Ted Cruz, whose already turned Trump's line about representing Pittsburgh, not Paris, into a bumper sticker. But the evenly divided Senate also has a Democrat.
SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): I'm Joe Manchin.
WEIR: Who once shot a literal hole through his own party's climate plan.
MANCHIN: I sued the EPA, and I'll take dead aim at the cap and trade bill, because it's bad for West Virginia.
WEIR: In a statement, the senator from coal country now says the Paris Accord must be improved so all countries are held to the same standard and that every resource must be used in the cleanest way possible.
WEIR (on camera): Who do you think is a bigger obstacle to the goals of real climate action? Is it Republicans like Ted Cruz or is it a coal state Democrat like Joe Manchin?
VARSHINI PRAKASH, CO-FOUNDER, SUNRISE MOVEMENT: It's hard to substantiate, you know, which one is more or less of a threat.
WEIR (voice over): The Sunrise Movement had twice as many members arrested for their 2018 Capitol Hill protests than the mob on the day of the incursion.
[09:35:02]
And their co-founder vows to keep the pressure on everyone, including the man she helped get elected.
PRAKASH: I think the key here is that Joe Biden cannot litigate these issues behind closed doors with obstructionist Republicans. He cannot immediately moderate or temper his vision. There's this false sense that just taking a policy and moderating it or making it milk toast will make it apply to a broader swath of people. But that's simply not true.
WEIR: And for Biden, this test is timed. And every day this invisible problem goes unsolved, the results get a lot more visible.
(END VIDEOTAPE) WEIR: Now, when it comes to getting around congressional obstruction, the new president has one other tool in the box. That is declaring climate a national emergency. And that is actually what Republicans feared back a couple years ago when President Trump used border security to get extra money to build that wall. Many would argue that this is an actual emergency now because it does affect immigration and food and transportation and every other part of our lives.
Jim. Poppy.
SCIUTTO: I was thinking exactly of that, the border wall, national emergency declaration as a precedent.
Bill Weir, thanks so much for drawing attention to this.
Well, President Joe Biden is taking a tough approach to Russia, confronting Vladimir Putin on several key issues that Trump never did during their very first phone call.
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[09:40:37]
SCIUTTO: In his very first phone call, President Joe Biden confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin on several issues that Trump never did, or refused to do, the Solar Winds cyberattack, Russian aggression in Ukraine, the poisoning of Alexey Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, as well as his desire for a new nuclear arms treaty. Big change, Poppy, from what we heard from the former president.
HARLOW: Total reversal certainly in tone.
Our senior international correspondent Fred Pleitgen is with us.
And, Fred, a lot has happened this morning there when it comes to the developments with the Navalny case, his apartment, his wife's home, studio raided by police this morning.
What do we know?
FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Poppy, in fact, those raids, at least until a couple of minutes ago, still seems to be ongoing. And you're absolutely right, this comes only days, of course, after mass protests to try and free Alexey Navalny, or calling for the freeing of Alexey Navalny came across all of Russia, much bigger than anybody would have expected.
And his wife's apartment, you heard the cops there, knocked very heavily on the door. She said she wouldn't open the door until her lawyers would come. Then the studios were actually raided. We saw police there knock the door down with a warrant in their hands.
And his apartment is an interesting one. It's where he's registered officially. He hasn't actually been there in a while. His brother apparently was in that apartment. Now, Navalny's organization is saying that on the face of it all this is allegedly in relation to some sort of violations of coronavirus restrictions here in this country. But, of course, we do know that Navalny and his organization has been getting a lot of pressure from Russian authorities.
And there's a lot of folks here in Russia, quite frankly, who are not very happy with him. We saw those mass protests last weekend and we saw especially a lot of young people that we spoke to at the protests. And they said they not only felt Alexey Navalny was being treated unfairly, obviously said it was absolutely unacceptable that he was poisoned allegedly by the Russian state, they also have big grievances with Vladimir Putin and they feel their time to stand up and speak up is now.
Let's listen in to some of what folks said.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Generally, I'm happy about how things are going in Russia. And as well I'm really -- I feel sad for us. I feel sorry for Navalny because he definitely doesn't deserve it.
PLEITGEN (voice over): Russian state media is trying to portray the protesters as radicals, but especially the younger ones also as shallow and naive, brainwashed by content on social media. But political science student and TikToker Michael Petrov (ph) says their grievances are real.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They don't want to be under Putin's regime anymore because they've been living under this regime their whole life and they want something better.
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PLEITGEN: So there you have the folks around Alexey Navalny. And they feel quite emboldened right now, guys. They're calling for big protests again on Sunday. And those protests are set to happen here in Moscow right at the headquarters of the intelligence service, the FSB, guys.
SCIUTTO: Those are brave people considering the way Russia treats people who protest against its government.
HARLOW: Yes.
SCIUTTO: I mean they deserve our respect.
Fred Pleitgen, thanks very much.
Well, joining me now to talk about this, David Sanger, national security correspondent for "The New York Times" and CNN political and national security analyst.
David, good to have you on this morning.
DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Great to be with you, Jim. SCIUTTO: So, quite a marked difference between the communications between Trump and Putin and Biden and Putin from the very get-go yesterday. I mean he confronts Putin on a whole host of things that President Trump either refused to or even, you know, denied, right? I mean, for instance, the Solar Winds hack. Trump, you know, said, well, maybe it wasn't Russia, the poisoning of Alexey Navalny.
Trump was silent on that. Aggression in Ukraine. Trump often kind of waffled on that. And yet he's moving forward, the U.S. and Russia, with an extension of the START treaty. I mean the whole idea of Trump's, you know, detente with Russia was that he was going to get something from it. So Biden confronts, still gets the extension. What does this teach us about the two approaches to Russia?
SANGER: Well, I think the first thing it teaches, Jim, is that, as many people have noted before, you get Vladimir Putin's attention by pushing back. And President Trump's constant line was, what's wrong with having a good relationship with Russia? Nothing's wrong with having a good relationship with Russia.
[09:45:00]
But his view of the way to do it was to be completely non- confrontational. Basically to fold to Putin. You saw that in their first meeting in Hamburg where he basically took Putin's position that Russia had nothing to do with the 2016 election interference.
SCIUTTO: Exactly. So I'm wondering, how do we expect Russia to respond here? Do they push back harder, right? Are they going to look for compromise here? I mean already they -- I don't know if relented is the right word, but they've given something here. Something that both sides wanted, which is to extend the arms treaty.
SANGER: That's absolutely right. But that was something that would be incredibly damaging to both sides had they not gotten this extension when the new START agreement runs out next week. It would have really started an arms race that would have been pretty bankrupting for both sides.
The theory of the case for the Biden administration, and we're not sure how this will work out, is that if you're going to confront Russia, confront them at a moment when you don't have an arms race underway so that they don't have the leverage of building more and causing that to go up.
We don't know if that's going to work. The Navalny raids you were just describing suggest that, you know, Putin listened to this and said, OK, now go raid the apartment.
SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean, well, he's got a real threat to his leadership now given the extent of those protests.
All right, let's talk about China here because one thing that has become bipartisan, right, is a more confrontational approach to China since Trump, in effect, made that turn. And you don't see a lot of Democrats pushing back on that. You know, Biden, you know, either. So how does Biden approach China now? I mean does he dial back --
there has been some discussion of perhaps dialing back some of the tariffs given the cost on U.S. importers and so on. But do we basically see status quo on China going forward?
SANGER: Well, by and large, I think you'll see status quo on the policy in a somewhat different tone. I mean here it's the complete opposite of the Russia approach. I mean Biden came in promising to get tougher on Russia.
In the case of China, what was notable during the confirmation hearings we've seen so far is that many of the officials said, hey, look, in the Obama administration we were wrong when we said that the Chinese would begin to moderate their behavior as they joined more western institutions. And, of course, you've seen the Chinese have gone anything but from the South China Sea, to cyber and so forth.
So I think you're going to see continued confrontation. But as you suggest, Jim, probably not using tariffs that the American people end up paying for. That seemed a backward approach from the start. The Chinese knew that that would hurt American consumers more than it would hurt the Chinese.
SCIUTTO: Understood. And maybe not lie about who actually pays for those tariffs, unlike the previous administration.
SANGER: That would be a change, yes.
SCIUTTO: Yes, one of many.
David Sanger, thanks so much.
SANGER: Great to be with you, Jim.
HARLOW: It would be a welcome change.
All right, there is something remarkable, stunning, jaw-dropping happening right now, and it all centers around a video game store. Seriously. How the frenzy over Gamestop may just signal something so much bigger happening on Wall Street and beyond, next.
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HARLOW: Wait until you hear this. The Internet takes on Wall Street. This story is stunning. The stock price for Gamestop, which is a retail video game store, has been surging more than 600 percent. But it's the reason that this is happening that has everyone's jaws on the floor.
Christine Romans, our chief business correspondent, is here with more.
We're going to get to the bigger implications of this, I think, in a moment.
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Sure.
HARLOW: But just explain to anyone who doesn't know what has happened what is going on.
ROMANS: So this is -- I mean it's being sort of billed by the people who are doing it as a David versus Goliath thing, right? So you have this army of small traders who are using a Reddit message board called Wall Street Bets and they're putting pressures on the short sellers of Gamestop. Gamestop is accompany that's not expected to make money this year. It's closing a lot of stores. It's had some trouble. Trying to restructure here.
But you have this Internet army that has made it a cause celeb and has driven the stock from like $17, $18 at the beginning of the year to, my last count was $302. You can see -- it's -- it's just -- this morning it's just been -- it's even -- it's even more than that right now. It's gone up -- it's up 100 percent this morning because these small traders are using these Reddit boards to talk up this stock.
And so whose feeling the pain? Well, so far it's these big, rich hedge funds, these big investors who were selling this stock and didn't own it. The short sellers, now they're getting creamed by the little guy. So it's this really flip, upside down -- it's like an episode of "Billions," or paging Michael Lewis (ph) to write the -- to write the screenplay because it's really interesting.
HARLOW: Well, yes. This is the next Hollywood blockbusters, the big short squeeze for sure.
But in serious terms, there's questions about, is this legal. And also, Romans, little folks -- you know, I mean -- I don't mean little folks. I mean average people at home thinking about investing in this --
ROMANS: Yes.
HARLOW: What should they do? And I think doesn't it signal something bigger here?
ROMANS: Yes.
HARLOW: The power of the individual to almost take down -- almost take down a huge hedge fund.
ROMANS: There's so many big threads. You're right.
But also the idea that populism -- trader populism on the Internet could tackle these big -- big hedge funds and the voice that they had together.
The other thing though, and what are regulators going to say about that, because, you know, is that manipulation of a stock?
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This is not about the fundamentals of the company at all. This is about froth, you know? This is about exciting people and pushing the stock up almost as a game in a way.
So I think that regulators will for sure take a look at this and see what they can do. About -- essentially also the quiet parts of the Internet, where maybe we can't see where people are trying to talk about stocks and move stocks in a certain direction. If you're a small investor, though, you should not be buying a stock because it's up 600 percent in three days. That's a very bad, bad investment idea.
HARLOW: Yes, well, look, if the hedge funds can short it, why shouldn't the regular joe be able to squeeze that short. That's the question. Do regulators have the answer.
ROMANS: You know, the smart kids are calling it the gamma squeeze.
HARLOW: Yes.
ROMANS: So, trading nerds out there, google the gamma squeeze.
HARLOW: OK, Romans, thank you very much. We'll keep an eye on it.
Jim.
SCIUTTO: Sounds like a sci-fi movie.
Next, bold action in the fact of the pandemic. President Biden planning to buy $200 million more coronavirus vaccine doses as the country hits a new record in the number of coronavirus deaths in a single month.
CNN's live team coverage is next.
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