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Vaccine Rollout; Republicans Meet With Biden to Propose Smaller COVID Relief Bill; Blizzard Slams East Coast. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired February 01, 2021 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:27]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: You are watching CNN on this Monday afternoon. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being here.

After the deadliest month on record, efforts to defeat the coronavirus pandemic are facing a new challenge today. As if the vaccine rollout in this country needs any more complications, well, you're looking at it. Severe weather is shutting down vaccine sites and canceling long- awaited appointments across the Eastern Seaboard.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BILL DE BLASIO (D), MAYOR OF NEW YORK: The storm is disrupting our vaccination effort. It's not safe out there today. So, vaccinations are canceled today. They're also going to be canceled tomorrow.

Based on what we are seeing right now, we believe that, tomorrow, getting around the city will be difficult. It will be icy. It'll be treacherous. We do not want seniors especially out in those conditions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: There is some promising news when it comes to testing, the White House announcing it has awarded a massive contract to an Australian company by the name of Ellume, which makes it simple at- home test kit.

The test can detect COVID-19 with 95 percent accuracy with -- listen to this -- roughly 15 minutes.

Also today, a critical meeting at the White House to address the financial burden of this pandemic. You have 10 Republican senators. They're all about to sit down with President Biden to discuss their counteroffer to his $1.9 trillion COVID relief plan. But their proposal's price tag is less than a third of the administration's package.

And we will talk so much more on just how soon struggling Americans can actually get what they need from all of this. But first, to New York, we go, where CNN anchor and national

correspondent Erica Hill reports the winter storm is wreaking havoc on vaccination efforts.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You just want to relax your arm just like that.

ERICA HILL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): New month, same old problem.

GOV. ANDY BESHEAR (D-KY): It's supply, supply and supply.

GOV. JIM JUSTICE (R-WV): If we have got vaccines that are sitting on a warehouse shelf, I mean, they need to be in somebody's arm.

HILL: A massive nor'easter forcing New York and New Jersey to reschedule appointments.

DE BLASIO: It's not safe out there today.

HILL: But not at Boston's Fenway Park.

SAM KENNEDY, PRESIDENT AND CEO, BOSTON RED SOX: I'm surprised by how emotional it was walking in here this morning.

HILL: Officials say the new mass vaccination site can eventually process more than 1,200 people a day. Just under 2 percent of the U.S. population is now fully vaccinated. Johnson & Johnson's one-dose vaccine, which shows a slightly lower efficacy rate of 72 percent in the U.S., could seek emergency use authorization in the coming days.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: I don't think we should be put aback by the fact that there was a difference in the initial number of any kind of efficacy, because there's a lot more to protection than just preventing from getting infected.

We want to keep people out of the hospital and we don't want people to die.

HILL: Hospitalizations dropping below 100,000 over the weekend for the first time in two months, as January became the deadliest month yet for COVID.

Masks mandatory for travelers across the country starting at midnight, as more transmissible variants spread.

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: CDC has been working on multiple fronts to improve our ability to vet and understand these variants.

HILL: The variant first detected in the U.K. now identified in at least 32 states, the mutations discovered in South Africa and Brazil also now in the U.S.

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED, FORMER DIRECTOR, DETROIT HEALTH DEPARTMENT: This is the broader race right now. How fast can we vaccinate people vs. how fast is the virus could mutate and take on the capacity to potentially evade our vaccines?

HILL: Those variants prompting renewed calls to use every available dose now.

DR. ASHISH JHA, DEAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: The single most important thing we got to do is get people vaccinated. It's possible that one dose would provide some benefit, but we really just don't have any data to prove that at this point.

HILL: As experts warn of a long road ahead.

DR. WILLIAM HASELTINE, INFECTIOUS DISEASE EXPERT: This is going to be a long, long battle, not a year-long battle, a decades-long battle.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HILL: Brooke, you mentioned some promising news when it comes to testing.

So, it's that -- as you said, a rapid at-home test. Takes about 15 minutes, 95 percent accuracy. If this sounds familiar, it should. It was granted emergency use authorization by the FDA back in December.

But this new contract announced today will really allow them to boost production. So, right now, about 100,000 tests a month are set to start being shipped to the U.S., those test kits starting this month through July. This new contract, we're told, could bring that up to some 19 million test kits per month being shipped here by the end of the year.

BALDWIN: Good. Roll them out.

[15:05:00]

Erica Hill, thank you so much.

I want to talk vaccines here with Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath. She is the president and CEO of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization.

So, Dr. McMurry-Heath, good to see you. Welcome back.

DR. MICHELLE MCMURRY-HEATH, PRESIDENT AND CEO, BIOTECHNOLOGY INNOVATION ORGANIZATION: Good to see you.

BALDWIN: I want to start with this push today for the second doses of the vaccine to be delayed, so that they can maximize the number of people who actually just get that first dose. Obviously, people still need the second dose of the vaccine. But do you think placing a higher importance on the first dose is the smart move?

MCMURRY-HEATH: Brooke, at this point, I think it is.

The variants have made everything much more urgent. The emergence of the South African variant in two states in the U.S., as well as seeing the Brazil variant come out strong, this means that we're in a race against time, as the segment said, and we have to get as many people vaccinated as possible.

Now, we do not know for sure sitting here today what the ideal timing separation is between that first and second dose for either the Pfizer or the Moderna vaccine. We just know what was tested in the initial clinical trials.

But it does seem to suggest that we have a little bit of play there. But it's still important for people to get two doses of the vaccine eventually. But, at this point, we just need to spread it to as many people as possible.

BALDWIN: And I know, understandably, we're all thinking of ourselves and our loved ones here in the U.S.

But Dr. Fauci also just reiterated the vaccinations must be a worldwide push. He said, if we don't get a global effort, without a doubt, this thing is not going to go away and you're going to continue to have it come back, to your point, with different forms of mutants, mutations.

You are the vaccine expert, Doc. So how do you balance increasing the supply here in the U.S., which we so badly need, but also making an impact globally?

MCMURRY-HEATH: Well, we must do both at the same time.

Unfortunately, with infectious diseases, no one is safe until everyone is safe. And so we have to have a multipronged approach. And I'm so happy to see that the Biden administration has rejoined the WHO, has reinvested in our global efforts to try to stop this.

As we have seen this week. the variants that are so threatening to us today are coming from the U.K. and from South Africa and from Brazil. And so all of these hot spots across the globe must be addressed if we want the U.S. population to be truly protected.

So, it's important to do both. We also have to use every tool at our disposal. There was some very promising data last week from Regeneron showing that their antibody cocktail, so not a vaccine, their therapeutic, can actually act as a short term vaccine and prevent people from getting severe infections of COVID, perhaps bridging them to that availability of that vaccination that everyone is aiming for.

So, we have to look broadly. We have to do everything we can do to try to stop this spread.

BALDWIN: Good. Good. We need all the help we can get.

Dr. Ashish Jha, he is the dean of Brown University School of Public Health. This is what he told "The New York Times." I want to quote him back for you.

He said: "I don't actually care about infections. I care about hospitalizations and death and long-term complications."

And so he's essentially agreeing with other health experts who are saying that that the key to eliminating this pandemic is ensuring that people get -- when they get infected, that they don't wind up in the hospital.

Dr. McMurry-Heath, help us just understand how these vaccines are going to get us to a place where cases don't even really matter.

MCMURRY-HEATH: Well, if we think about it, Brooke, the difference between how we respond to COVID and how we respond to influenza every year, it's not just the fact that COVID is more transmissible, which it is, but it's also the fact that it produces these devastating consequences, these serious hospitalizations, these sequela that we see with stroke and with heart ailments that follow and sometimes lag the initial infection.

That is what makes COVID so vexing and troublesome. And so any tool that we have that stops those serious effects is good in my book. And so vaccines that perhaps give you -- change a serious infection to a mild infection is something we should all be applauding, because we just want to avoid people getting seriously ill, from taking up the complete capacity of our ICU beds, from really taxing the ability and the strength of our health care work force, and also having such a high viral titer that they're passing it on to more and more people.

So, if we can limit the impact of COVID in one individual, we are moving in the right direction.

BALDWIN: Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath, thank you for your expertise and just also your sense of calm. Thank you.

MCMURRY-HEATH: Take care.

BALDWIN: The powerful nor'easter that is bearing down on the Northeast right now could end up being one of the top five heaviest snow falls New York City has ever seen.

More snow will likely fall today than has fallen in the past five Februarys combined. And that is just New York. Washington, D.C., the Baltimore area, they just saw the most snow they have seen in nearly two years, and more than 10 inches blanketed Chicago over the weekend. That's the largest snowfall for the city since 2015.

[15:10:04]

Bill Weir is our CNN chief climate correspondent. He is out and about in New York.

And so, Bill, how many inches so far, my friend?

BILL WEIR, CNN CLIMATE CHANGE CORRESPONDENT: I don't know what we have got so far, Brooke.

The forecast is 18 to 24. We're getting about an inch, inch-and-a- half, two an hour, the all time record, 2016, 27-and-a-half inches. And a lot of people say, gee, this does not look like global warming. How does climate change fit into this? Well, what you just talked about is exactly what happened. Three of

the 10 driest winters happened in the last 20 years, right? So we're not getting as much winter. We're getting mild winters. But when the storms come, they're powerful. Six of the 10 biggest in history have happened in the last 20 years.

And we have records here that go back 150 years. So, if you do the math, we should be getting a storm like this every 15 years. We're getting a much more frequently. As the oceans warm up, all that warm ocean energy, meaning the cold air coming down from the Arctic, bam, you get all that atmospheric energy, which creates scenes like this.

And New Yorkers are hearty. We're getting through it. They're making snowmen. The trash trucks have the plows on trying to keep the streets clear. State of emergency declared in New York today, so no school. And the biggest blow, as you just talked about, is what this does to the vaccination problems in the city.

BALDWIN: Vaccinations.

Yes, I know so many people waiting so long, and today was the day, and, nope, not today, maybe even not tomorrow.

Bill Weir, thank you in New York with your snowman. Thank you.

Pretty soon, President Biden will meet with 10 Republican senators at the White House over the GOP's much smaller COVID relief proposal. Will the president incorporate any of their suggestions or will Democrats just decide to push this thing out alone?

Also, an ultimatum for Republicans on the loud conspiracy theorists in Congress, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Democrats calling on the GOP to strip her committee assignment within 72 hours, or they will hold their own vote.

Also ahead, former President Trump replacing his entire legal team days before his second impeachment trial, because his former lawyers refused to focus on his election lies.

So much to talk about. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:17:09]

BALDWIN: Welcome back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Thank you for being here.

On the 13th day of his administration, President Biden will face a critical first test of his promise to be able to negotiate with Republicans. In less than two hours, President Biden and Vice President Harris will meet with 10 Republican senators at the White House.

And they will be discussing a much less expensive counteroffer to this administration's White House COVID relief bill. So, let's go to CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins,

who is there at the White House.

And, Kaitlan, other than the obvious price tag, what are the key differences between these two plans? And what is it that this that the Biden administration says that they absolutely won't except?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the price tag is a big difference, given just how big the numbers are and how far apart they are, really. That's something that the White House focused on today.

But even when you look inside these packages, you can see differences. Well, they have some similarities, what they're laying out in the proposals and the allotments for certain areas are pretty different, Brooke.

And one of those is these stimulus checks that, of course, we have seen laid out, $1,400 checks in the proposal from the White House. But what these Republicans are suggesting in there are more narrow, more limited stimulus checks. That's something you have heard even concerns from some centrist Democrats over what those sides are going to look like and who exactly it would be that would qualify for them.

But what these Republicans, this group that's being led by Susan Collins, say they're doing by putting this forward is saying that there is a path to a coronavirus relief bill that could get bipartisan support. It's just not the one that the White House has laid out so far.

But what we are seeing hours ahead of this meeting that's expected to happen in the Oval Office shortly, Brooke, is the White House really tamping down expectations for what's going to come out of that, because you heard Jen Psaki earlier in that press briefing saying this is not a forum for President Biden to make or accept any kind of offer from these Republicans.

So it's just raising the question of really where this is going to go, this pursuit of bipartisanship. And so the White House was touting the support from people like West Virginia's Republican Governor Jim Justice, who was saying he could get behind a bigger relief package earlier, but so far, they have not gotten that from congressional Republicans.

So that's going to be the big question. But I do think it's notable that this is the first group of lawmakers we have seen Biden invite to the White House in front of cameras. It's a group of Republicans who have put this counteroffer out there. It doesn't mean he is going to take this offer, though.

BALDWIN: Correct.

And you also mentioned centrist Democrats. So, speaking of, West Virginia Democratic Senator Joe Manchin is really a key player in getting this whole thing passed. And last week, the vice president appeared in a local TV interview in Charleston, West Virginia, likely meant to increase the pressure on Senator Manchin, and Senator Manchin says, well, wait a second. He wasn't told about this. He wasn't too thrilled about it.

What does the White House say about that, Kaitlan?

[15:20:00]

COLLINS: Yes, he's not happy about this at all. He said he did not get a heads-up that the vice president was going to be doing local news in his state.

He saw it as what you said there, an attempt to put pressure on him to get behind this package, when he's, of course, going to be a critical vote for Democrats. They only have the majority by a thread right now. And so anything that he says is going to be something that the White House is listening to.

So, you did see Jen Psaki say that there's been outreach from the White House to Senator Joe Manchin. She didn't say whether or not that's coming from President Biden himself or what other official it is that's reaching out to him. But he's not only critical to what they're going to do on coronavirus relief, but if they ever try to take another stab at it again down the road, any other proposals that the White House is going to have, what Joe Manchin says is going to be critical to that.

So, with the White House not giving him a heads-up apparently about what this interview was going to be, he did not respond kindly to that. So we have seen the White House say they're in touch with him. They're fielding his concerns. They know how important his vote is going to be to whatever it is that Biden wants to get accomplished over the next four years.

BALDWIN: Kaitlan, thank you so much on all things COVID relief.

What about now Marjorie Taylor Greene? CNN is learning that House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is preparing to tell Republican leadership to strip the controversial Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments within 72 hours, or else he says Democrats will bring the issue to a floor -- to a vote on the House floor.

All of this comes after the Georgia Republican tweeted over the weekend that she will never apologize, that she will never back down from her dangerous behavior and baseless conspiracy theories, oh, and that she spoke with former President Trump and that she is grateful for his support.

So, now you have the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy. He's in a bit of an awkward position. He is supposed to meet with the congresswoman this week to talk to her about her outrageous remarks and actions.

So, let's start the conversation there.

Ron Brownstein, Francesca Chambers, both are with me. And, Ron, you know the deal. She is under fire for anti-Semitic comments, for expressing support of the assassination of Democratic leaders, for bullying a Parkland shooting survivor. And that's just the PG version of it all.

Yet he or she is. Out of this weekend, she comes out more emboldened. She says she will never apologize, all because she has this -- quote -- "great call" with former President Trump.

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Yes.

BALDWIN: What does that say to you?

BROWNSTEIN: Well, look, I mean, put a point on it, I mean, they are putting -- the Republicans placed her on the Education Committee after she has alleged (AUDIO GAP) the school massacres in Parkland and in Sandy Hook were staged to generate support for gun control.

And I think her prominence really is symbolic of the larger change that we have seen under the Trump presidency. For four years, Trump razed -- razed, R-A-Z-E-D -- the barriers between the Republican coalition and far right extremists. And he gave enormous oxygen to white nationalists.

And he, in a variety of ways, from very fine people, to having Marjorie Taylor Greene appear with him on stage the night before the Georgia run-off, has tried to legitimize those movements.

And what you're seeing is a reluctance upon -- among the Republican leadership in Congress to draw a clear line against that kind of extremism. And, as a result, I think there are a lot of previously Republican-leaning voters, white-collar voters in big suburban counties around the country, who are kind of looking at this -- at this coalition with Marjorie Taylor Greene and guys in pelts and horns and carrying zip ties, and saying, is this the coalition where I still belong?

BALDWIN: Given everything you just said, if you're Kevin McCarthy -- Francesca, this is for you.

If you're Kevin McCarthy, and you know that you are supposed to have this conversation with Marjorie Taylor Greene this week, what do you do? Because, again, context is key. Last week, he just hopped -- went down to Florida, Mar-a-Lago, kissed the proverbial ring of the former president.

Is he really going to throw the hammer down on Greene, who said that she just had this great call with Donald Trump?

FRANCESCA CHAMBERS, MCCLATCHY D.C.: Well, Brooke, it's largely symbolic of what we see taking place in the Republican Party right now.

They have this opportunity to have a break from former President Trump and move in a different direction, which many Republicans, including those in Congress, have said that they are looking forward to doing, and now they actually have to make that choice.

Do they want to follow Donald Trump's lead and continue to go in that direction after just having lost the White House? They don't have the House. They no longer have the Senate. Or do they want to take the party in a different direction?

And now this is largely falling on the shoulders of Kevin McCarthy this week to make this decision.

BALDWIN: So, what is -- Ron, what do you think Kevin McCarthy does?

BROWNSTEIN: Look, McCarthy has sublimated himself to Trump from the beginning. And I have a hard time imagining that he will -- after -- for example, after his initial comments on January 6, he has completely backed off and, said, we're all responsible for the for the attack on the Capitol.

I mean, it's hard to imagine that McCarthy is willing to fundamentally break with Trump, because, as I think -- as I have said to you before, Trump has addicted the entire party to the drug that he is pushing.

[15:25:05]

And what I mean by that is that it's not just Trump. It's Republicans up and down the ballot who are losing support in these white-collar suburbs that they used to dominate.

And, as a result, pretty much all of them now need massive turnout from the Trump base, those non-urban, non-college, evangelical base.

BALDWIN: He holds the power. That wing of the party holds the power, to your point.

BROWNSTEIN: And so, as a result, they are dependent on him.

BALDWIN: Yes.

BROWNSTEIN: What's that? Yes.

BALDWIN: No, I do remember, we talked about it before. And I mean, even though the man's out of the White House, he does wield a lot of power. The Trump base, the Trump wing of the party wields a lot of power.

And this, to me, will be the harbinger of where we see the Republican Party go, dependent upon what Kevin McCarthy does with regard to this congresswoman.

BROWNSTEIN: Absolutely.

BALDWIN: Francesca, there is a chance that nothing happens to Marjorie Taylor Greene, and there is also a chance that Trump gets acquitted in this upcoming second Senate impeachment trial.

What kind of precedent does this set for future officeholders in either party? CHAMBERS: Well, Republicans, of course, they're making this argument

that it would set a bad precedent to impeach someone who is no longer in office.

But there is precedent, as Democrats have said, for this to have happened in the past. But, again, I just want to come back to the question of where the GOP is in this.

And this does -- will play out in the Senate as well. Do Republican senators, who also issued condemnation immediately after the attack on the Capitol of former President Trump, do they break with him here? Do they vote for this?

Now, they signaled in their initial vote that was not something that they plan to do, right? We saw Mitch McConnell voting with Rand Paul on this. And as we head towards a Senate trial, it's possible that they could take a different vote.

But the early signs that we're seeing is that they're continuing to go in this direction, and that even though former President Trump does not have a Twitter account currently, they are very concerned about the power, as you said, that he still wields.

BALDWIN: In the short term, we will see how this ultimatum that Steny Hoyer has placed upon Republican leadership, we will see where that goes and what happens with the congresswoman, and then we see what happens with the former president.

Ron and Francesca for now, thank you both so much for all of that.

Just days before former President Trump's second impeachment trial, and he has a new legal team. And it's all because his previous lawyers didn't want to use his big lie about election fraud as a defense.

We will talk about that next.

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