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White House COVID Response Team Holds Briefing; Biden and Harris Get Update on Economy from Treasury Secretary Yellen; Democrats Call for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) to be Ousted. Aired 11:30- 12p ET

Aired January 29, 2021 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:02]

ANDY SLAVITT, SENIOR ADVISER TO WHITE HOUSE COVID-19 RESPONSE TEAM: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Dr. Walensky, do you want to add anything?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: I was just going to add our current data from schools, from summer camps have also suggested the children not only have decreased rates of symptoms but decreased rates of transmissibility. Those estimates for herd immunity are very based on rates of transmissibility. And so what pertains to herd immunity among adults may be different among children.

SLAVITT: Thank you. Next question.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Great. We have time for two more. We are going to go to Sharon LaFraniere at New York Times.

SHARON LAFRANIERE, INVESTIGATIVE REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Thank you. Can you hear me?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

LAFRANIERE: So, Dr. Fauci said that we're going to have to make new versions of the existing vaccines to combat the variants and the vaccine makers have shown that they could design vaccines, but where is the extra manufacturing capacity going to come from? Aren't the vaccine makers already tapped out making the existing vaccines? So what is the plan for making revised vaccines and booster shots on top of that?

SLAVITT: Thanks for the question. I think this question speaks to a larger issue because I think you could have asked that question with a number of different permutation, and that is the issue of contingency planning and making sure we have sufficient vaccines, sufficient manufacturing capacity and enough in our contracts to be able to make adjustments on the fly. And I would tell you that the Department of Health and Human Services, the FDA, the team led by Dr. Kessler, are currently hard at work answering all of those questions.

So I will not use the briefings to talk about non-public information about specific companies. All I can tell you is those are exactly the right factors that we are thinking about. And I think that to make a broader point, the team work between everybody here, between the NIH, the CDC, the FDA, and then our ability to understand what those factors are and turn it into actual actionable plans with the manufacturers is really important and I've been incredibly impressed at least so far with that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Great. And we'll send our last question to Yamiche at --

SLAVITT: You cut off.

YAMICHE ALCINDOR, PBS WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Hi. It's Yamiche Alcindor with PBS. Thanks so much for taking my question. Can you hear me?

SLAVITT: Yes, I can.

ALICINDOR: Okay, great. I have two questions. The first is it sounded like you were saying that we're vaccinating about a million people daily. I wonder if you can talk about what the goal would be, the average goal would be and how quickly we ramp up to that average, like what would be a better average?

And I have a second question after that.

SLAVITT: Well, so our seven-day average is 1.2 million per day. As I said, we view where we are today as a floor not a ceiling. What we have tasked our team with is as many vaccines as possible into as many arms as possible.

There are two constraints right now. The first is just continuing week after week to press the increased productions and find opportunities as they exist. That is a slow process. That doesn't happen overnight. The second, where I think there is opportunity, is to turn those vaccines produced into actual vaccinations more rapidly. And we've announced a number of steps to do that.

So I'm not going to put out a different number today on what I'd like to see other than to tell you that every day when the number comes out, all of us are breathlessly awaiting the number and looking for as high of a number as possible, of course.

I know you have another question, Yamiche.

ALCINDOR: And then I wanted to ask about the -- two-thirds of cases in Los Angeles County, it is been reported, came out in the last two months, have been reported in the last two months. One study said that that the factor was this recent coronavirus surge of a new variant CAL.20C. What more do we know about the L.A. variant and what does this tell us about other big cities? Should we expect maybe in New York, a New Orleans variant? How does -- what is L.A. teaching us about what our big cities might be experiencing? SLAVITT: Thank you. Dr. Fauci, do you want to take that one?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Yes, sure. Well, what it tells us to is what I alluded to in one of my prior comments, that when you have a significant amount, and we certainly have that now and we've had that very much so over the past couple of months with the very steep slope of acceleration of cases that we've seen, is that the virus will continue to mutate and will mutate for its own selective advantage.

So if you have a lot of cases in Los Angeles and you have this mutant that you referred to, you can be almost certain that as long as there is a lot of virus circulating in the community, they will be the evolution of mutants because that is what viruses do, particularly RNA viruses.

[11:35:18]

And that is what I was referring to just a moment ago. You're giving the virus an opportunity to adapt. So when people make an immune response against it, particularly in someone like that might be immunosuppressed where the virus stays in that person for a longer period of time, it gives the virus the chance to adapt to the forces, in this case, the immune response, that is trying to get rid of it, and that is where you get mutations.

So if the question you were asking, which is very relevant, is that what do we think is happening in other cities? I think what the underlying issues that are going on in California, and Los Angeles, very likely are taking place throughout the country, which is one of the reasons why, as Dr. Walensky has said, that we are really ratcheting up our genomic surveillance capability and our ability to get that information in real-time.

SLAVITT: Dr. Walensky, anything you would like to add or is that --

WALENSKY: No, I think we got it.

SLAVITT: Okay. So I think what we're saying collectively, let's not be such polite hosts to this virus. Let's turn the tide and do like other countries who would do everything possible to shut out the growth of this virus and make sure that it is not welcome.

Well, thank you all for attending the briefing. I hope that this is useful to you. We intend continue to do these every Monday, Wednesday and Friday with the same group and we will bring others on as well. So if you have any feedback, now we can continue to share this information with the public. Please let us know.

Thank you and have a great weekend.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. You're listening there to the latest briefing from the Biden administration's COVID response team, and we're also just learning that they're going to be coming more often, Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A lot to get to as we've heard from Dr. Fauci and the head of the CDC, Dr. Rochelle Walensky as well. Let me bring in Dr. Leana Wen as well as CNN's Dana Bash.

Doctor, let me start with you. Just -- what is your big takeaway from what we heard from this briefing?

DR. LEANA WEN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Well, first of all, I'm glad that these briefings are occurring to learn about the science, to get the state of the pandemic and also to know what is going on with vaccine distribution. I thought my two big takeaways, one is about these variants. I think there is a lot of concern.

But as Dr. Fauci and Walensky really emphasized, the best thing to do to stop the variants is to stop the spread. Because as long as we're going to have replication, we are going to get more of these variants that we don't even know about, and the more that these concerning variants of the U.K., South Africa and Brazil may become dominant here in the U.S.

The other point is about the Johnson & Johnson trial, which I think is, again, very promising. And even though it looks like the results may be less efficacious than Pfizer and Moderna, there is real benefit to having a single dose vaccine and one that can be transported a lot more easily. And, frankly, 85 percent protection against severe disease is really good and so I think all this underscores the importance of getting the vaccine out as quickly as possible, and in the meantime, for us to double down, intensify, as Dr. Fauci mentioned, our public health efforts of masking, social distancing and avoiding indoor gatherings.

BOLDUAN: Yes, that is right. Dana, there was a real sense of urgency during this briefing as well about a push for the need for the COVID relief package to move in Congress. And they had examples of we need -- we need the COVID relief package to move because we need to be able to test for these variants throughout the country more effectively.

Do you get it? Is that similar -- is the urgency similar on the Hill? I don't sense it as much.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, there is a partisan divide about that, even among the Republicans who are willing to work across the aisle who are part of this bipartisan group that have helped get the relief bill into law at the end of the Trump administration. You just -- Mitt Romney told me on Sunday that he doesn't believe, say, for a couple of -- or a few really importance exceptions, like vaccines, like other issues, that the big giant $1.9 trillion even close to that price tag is really necessary.

And so there is a reason why you heard the scientists and the man who is coordinating the scientists make that push, make a political push even though it was so beyond that, so largely devoid of politics and refreshingly about the science and about what we need to know and we're not used to that, as Dr. Wen was just alluding to, because we didn't get to have those briefings in earnest without political players, you know, changing the interpretation very often as opposed to just letting the scientists talk science.

[11:40:13]

BOLDUAN: Yes. And that is exactly what we are looking at right now. Dr. Wen, one of the things that Dr. Fauci said is that when it comes to the variants, as you were discussing, that this is a wake-up call for all of us, that we're going to continue to see this, just the concept of that the virus, as we know, it would, but the fact that it is, that there are these variants, that they are more contagious and, in some cases, probably likely more deadly.

If that is so concerning, and almost feels then dissatisfying that the real response on the the ground in real-time still is the mitigation efforts that have been suggested all along in order to avoid getting it. Did you hear any -- is there any more clear guidance of how short of everyone getting the vaccine, which we know is going to take time, how you better protect or what the government is doing any differently in face of these new variants?

WEN: I think one additional thing that Dr. Fauci mentioned is about the science being nimble. As in the manufactures are already looking into developing a booster shot that may cover these new variants better than the existing vaccines.

But I think the important thing to emphasize here, because I don't want people who are listening to be saying, well, in that case, I'm just going to wait until this booster, I'm not going to get the vaccine at all. I'm going to wait until we get this better vaccine. That is really not the right takeaway.

The takeaway should be we need to do everything we can to suppress the spread of the virus right now. So whatever vaccine you have access to, get that into your arm right now because that is what is going to help us stop the spread of the viruses.

We don't want for these more contagious variants to take hold. We also do not want more variants that we don't even know about to develop. And the best thing we can do in the meantime is to get the vaccine, continue to keep up these mitigation efforts and then if we end up getting a better booster shot or a better vaccine, we can still take that. But don't let perfect be the enemy of the good right now.

BOLDUAN: Yes, it sure seems that way. And you took part and you volunteered with the Johnson & Johnson trial. I'm curious, one thing that Dr. Fauci wanted to make clear was that while the overall efficacy of the J&J result that they're seeing come from this trial is lower than what we saw when we see in Pfizer and Moderna, but what Fauci clearly wanted to express, Dr. Fauci, is that the most important thing right now is to keep people from getting severe illness and keep people out of the hospital. And he says the numbers there with J&J are promising. Why is that so important today when we are -- as we're learning more about this new vaccine?

WEN: Well, ultimately the most important thing, I think, that people care about is whether you are going to bet severely ill if you get coronavirus. If all you get a mild cold, you don't really care. You care about whether you're going to get severely ill and land in a hospital and, of course, some people have succumbed, many people have succumbed and died from COVID-19. And so if the Johnson & Johnson vaccine results prove to be true, that they appear to be 85 percent effective at preventing severe disease, that is really important.

Now, it does appear that Moderna and Pfizer are even more effective, nearly 100 percent effective. But the fact is that we don't have enough of those vaccines. And if we can get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine online a lot faster and many millions of people are able to get this one dose vaccine, I think that makes a big difference.

BOLDUAN: Yes, there is value added is exactly what Dr. Fauci said in this. Dr. Wen, hold with me just a second. We have some new tape coming in that I want to get to, which is President Biden, Vice President Harris as well as the new treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, together in the Oval Office. Let's listen in.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: -- rescue plan. There is an overwhelming consensus among economists, left right and center, that this is a unique moment in this crisis. And the cost of inaction is high, the cost of inaction is high and it is growing every day.

The crisis itself has accelerating, 900,000 more Americans filed for unemployment insurance and this week alone. (INAUDIBLE) many don't have enough food to eat this week. Interest rates are starting to go up and the return on some investments in the economy have never been higher. And it is not just me saying this, it is the consensus among the vast majority leading economists, the left right and center, and the advisers to former President Trump and George Bush.

And so I've been meeting all morning with other folks as well.

[11:45:03]

The notion here is that we will have to act now. There is no time for any delay. And so we could end up with 4 million fewer jobs this year, according to Moody's, a Wall Street firm, and it could take a year longer to return to full employment if we don't act and don't act now.

We could see an entire cohort of kids with a lower lifetime earnings because they're deprived of another semester of school. Millions of parents and maybe some of you, millions of parents, particularly moms, are forced to stay home, reducing the family wages, and if you're a single wager, it is really difficult and future job prospects that they have no choice but to stay home and take care of their children. Millions of people are out of work, unemployed, future millions are held back for no good reason other than our failure to act.

So the choice couldn't be clearer. We have learned from past crises, the risk is not doing too much, the risk is not doing enough. And this is a time to act now. I've asked Secretary Yellen in leading this effort to come in and we're going to go into some detail among ourselves. But I think she has a statement to make as well.

JANET YELLEN, TREASURY SECRETARY: Thank you, very much, Mr. President. Well, there is a huge amount of pain in our economy right now and it was evident in the data released yesterday. Over a million people applied for unemployment insurance last week. And that is far more than in the worst week of the great recession. And economists agree if there is not more help, many more people will lose their small businesses, the roofs over their heads and the ability to feed their families. And we need to help those people before the virus is brought under control.

The president's American rescue plan will help millions of people make it to the other side of this pandemic. And it will also make some smart investments to get our economy back on track. I want to emphasize the president is absolutely right, the price of doing nothing is much higher than the price of doing something and doing something big. We need to act now. And the benefits of acting now and acting big will far outweigh the costs in the long run.

REPORTER: Mr. President, what do you think of the Johnson & Johnson results.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

BIDEN: I'm waiting to hear from the team on a detail of it. I saw the news report this morning. I haven't had a chance to speak with Dr. Fauci.

One point I want to make, that the secretary made, and let's get this straight, it is not only that people will be badly, badly hurt if we don't pass this package, in terms of increased rate of death, in terms of poverty, a whole range of things, but we will also be hurt long- term economically, economically. We need to make this investment so the economy can grow the remainder of this year and next year. The investments now will help the economy grow. It will not, in fact, put a drag on the economy of spending this money. It will do the exact opposite.

So thank you all very much.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you, guys.

REPORTER: Did you discuss GameStop?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

BOLDUAN: All right. They are looking to the Oval Office, the president and vice president and his top economic adviser. They are with the treasury secretary, the new treasury secretary, Janet Yellen.

Let me bring in CNN White House Correspondent John Harwood for just a little bit more on what we're looking at there. When you take these two things in conjunction, John, the COVID briefing that we just received from the health side of it and what we just saw in the Oval Office on the economic side, it really does seem that today it is now become very apparent and publicly a full-court press for multiple facets of the administration on pushing for this COVID relief package.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No question about it, Kate. And it is a remarkable set of circumstances that we find ourselves in that are providing political momentum to this package. We've got a terrible public health crisis that we see the light at the end of the tunnel on with the vaccine development. We have a terrible economic crisis that we could see the light at the end of the tunnel on, because if we get the pandemic under control and get some assistance to bridge people while we get it under control, you're going to see a significant economic payoff.

And as Joe Biden, the president, just said, you've got a consensus on that people from like Kevin Hassett, who is the economic adviser to President Trump, from Jay Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, Democratic economists as well.

[11:50:10]

And what that means is that it is easier for Democrats to now say, yes, we need to do something very big. They have the ability to do that through the budget reconciliation process. And the very fact that they're able to do that encourages Republicans then to negotiate, because if they can't stop it, if it's going to happen anyway, that fosters negotiations. So they are on two tracks but there is a lot of momentum for getting something big done and getting something big done pretty rapidly.

BOLDUAN: It seems that the ball is in their court, that is for sure. It is great to see you, John. Thank you so much.

And we've got a lot of breaking news coming in this hour and we've got a lot more to get to.

Coming up for us, a new effort in Congress to try to expel one of its own, details on how some Democrats are trying to push Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene from their ranks.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BOLDUAN: There is a new effort this morning to hold one freshman member of Congress accountable, kicked off committees or even expelled from Congress over her rhetoric and actions from before and een during her time in office.

We're talking about Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi unloaded on Republican leaders yesterday, as you saw here on the show, for putting Greene on the House Education Committee knowing her previous positions, calling the Parkland School shooting a fake and also after a video had surfaced of Greene confronting one of the students who survived the shooting, badgering him as he was walking down the sidewalk on Capitol Hill back in 2019. Now, some top Democrats want her out of Congress entirely.

CNN's Manu Raju is with me. He's on Capitol Hill, as always. Manu, Pelosi called it actually absolutely appalling how the Republican leadership has turned a blind eye to Greene's behavior. What are you hearing this morning?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, the Republican leaders haven't been saying much about it. In fact, the House has been out of session this week. They've had private conference calls, but they have not even discussed this on their private conference calls on Wednesday.

[11:55:05]

They had one, it was a political call. She did speak up, Marjorie Taylor Greene, on that call, but actually because she was asking to give money to the party committee that is in charge of re-electing republicans in 2022, said she would give $175,000, I'm told, according to multiple additional sources.

Now, Kevin McCarthy, the House Repoublican leader, through his spokesperson, has said he is deeply disturbed by some of her comments and wants to have a discussion with her. It's not clear that discussion has even happened yet. It's also not clear if she'll be kicked off the House Education and Labor Committee, which has raised a lot of concerns given her posts on social media suggesting that she believed in this flase flag conspiracy behind the Parkland shooting, suggesting it might not have been a real event.

Kate, the big question too is what will happen when these Democrats are pushing to get her expelled altogether in Congress. That requires a two-thirds majority in the House to get that done. It's highly unlikely that that will happen. Also unclear if Nancy Pelosi supports expelling her from Congress. I asked her that yesterday. She didn't answer the question.

BOLDUAN: That's a minefield to answer right there. Manu, I also want to ask you about Congresswoman Liz Cheney. She's the number three House Republican. She's facing so much blowback within her party for, and I would say, for simply voting her conscience, because that's what she said she was doing as she said everyone should and that she supported impeaching Donald Trump over the riot.

Now, even Donald Trump is reportedly joining in in an effort to, I don't know, kick her out, get her out of leadership? I mean, what can you tell us?

RAJU: Yes, this is going to come to a head on Wednesday. There is a Republican conference meeting. It's a standing meeting to discuss a variety of issues. We're expecting, according multiple Republicans, this to become a venting meeting of sorts about the ten Republicans who voted to impeach Donald Trump, Liz Cheney being one of them, probably discussions about Liz Cheney's leadership role in that. And there is a push among some conservatives to strip her from that position.

Now, it's unlikely they're going to have a vote on that Wednesday to actually get rid of her from that spot. There are procedures that are in place that take a little bit of time to play out before there is an actual vote internally to determine whether or not she can be pushed out.

At the moment, even the conservatives who are trying to get her out of that position believe that Cheney will probably have enough support to hang on, but it will be a fight, an ugly one at that, because a vast majority of the Republican conference still sides with Donald Trump even though he's out of office and we saw what he did in the run-up to January 6. Kate?

BOLDUAN: All right. Manu, thank you so much.

All right, so Joe Biden, he started his administration, he came into office with one clear message, his call for unity. But they seem to be so much further from that than ever, especially if you look in Congress.

Let me bring in right now CNN's Chief Political Correspondent Dana Bash, she's back with me.

So, Dana, Manu is laying, obviously, perfectly, kind of some of the state of affairs. I thought Sarah Ferris and Melanie Zanona from Politico, they summed it up really well in their piece and kind of like the state of affairs. They wrote, some House lawmakers are privately refusing to work with each other. Others are afraid to be in the same room. Two members almost got into a fist fight on the floor and the speaker of the House is warning that the enemy is within. Forget Joe Biden's calls for unity. Members of Congress couldn't be further divided.

We say this a lot. Have you ever seen anything like this?

BASH: No, and it's on a totally different level, because when President Biden calls for unity, obviously, he was talking about the country coming together in a social way to kind of lower the temperature, lower the rhetoric.

BOLDUAN: Exactly.

BASH: But for the most part, his calling card was that he has been in Congress, he was in the Senate for 36 years, he knows how to work across the aisle, and I can do that. The jury is obviously very much out on whether he can accomplish that. But what we're seeing now, the discord that we're seeing now is personal when it comes to security and safety.

Kate, I know you and I covered Congress together. I'm sure you still talk to members, I do as well, who tell me they are personally afraid of going in and doing their job because of colleagues that they have, elected by their districts who -- Marjorie Taylor Greene, obviously is the most prominent, who, in the past, have said that they want to do harm, and she has said that she wants to do harm to the people she now serves with. That is unbelievable. And that is what Nancy Pelosi was talking about when she used the term enemy within.

BOLDUAN: Yes. And it speaks to -- it's not just tone, it speaks to -- and then getting anything done.

BASH: Exactly right. I mean, getting anything done is almost -- the notion of that is almost a luxury when you're actually worried about your physical safety. And this isn't hyperbole, this is real, and that is what we're seeing.

[12:00:00]

BOLDUAN: Yes, that's exactly right. Dana, thanks for sticking with me throughout this show today. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much.

BASH: Great to be here, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Great. And thank you all so much for being with us this hour. I'm Kate Baldwin.