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Hours Away from Second Trump Impeachment Trial; Biden Focusing on COVID Relief, Not Impeachment; U.S. Ramps up COVID Genome Sequencing; U.S. May Require COVID-19 Tests for Domestic Air Travel; Global Oil Prices Have Fully Recovered from Pandemic; Protesters in Myanmar Defy Military After Coup. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired February 09, 2021 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us here in the United States and all around the world. You are watching CNN NEWSROOM, and I'm Rosemary Church.

Just ahead, the rules of engagement for Donald Trump's second impeachment trial are finally decided. What we can expect when proceedings begin later today.

Then, tracking the variants. The U.S. is stepping up its COVID genome sequence being to give the vaccines a fighting chance.

And later, defiance in Myanmar after a military coup. Thousands of people take to the streets despite a curfew.

Good to have you with us. Well former President Donald Trump is about to enter the history books again. In just hours from now he will become the first U.S. president ever to face an impeachment trial twice. All the action takes place in this building today. First up, Senators will debate whether the proceedings are constitutional. Trump faces a charge of incitement to insurrection for his role in the riot on Capitol Hill back on January 6th. Senate leaders say they are ready to go.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY) SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: The second impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump will commence. Only the fourth trial of a president or former president in American history. And the first trial for any public official that has been impeached twice. For the information of the Senate, the Republican leader and I in consultation with both the House managers and former President Trump's lawyers have agreed to a bipartisan resolution to govern the structure and timing of the impending trial.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY) SENATE MINORITY LEADER: This structure has been approved by both former President Trump's legal team and the House managers because it preserves due process and the rights of both sides.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: In the coming days, Democrats will get to make their case first. Then the former president's defense team will take to the floor. CNN's Manu Raju has more on the looming legal showdown.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): House Democrats making their final preparations at a case expected to vividly detail the deadly insurrection at the Capitol last month and accuse Donald Trump of intentionally inciting it. The Democrats' case will rely heavily on video.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We won the (BLEEP) day.

RAJU (voice-over): And court filings from charged insurrectionists claiming they were taking their cues from the president.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Donald Trump asked everybody to go home. He just put out a tweet. It's a minute long. He asked everybody to go home.

RAJU (voice-over): Trump's team provided their most detailed argument to date, and even defending these remarks from the January 6th rally right before his supporters stormed the Capitol, seeking to stop certification of Joe Biden's victory.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore.

RAJU (voice-over): His attorney downplaying those remarks. Writing, "Of the over 10,000 words spoken, Mr. Trump used the word "fight" a little more than a handful of times and each time in the figurative sense that has long been accepted in public discourse."

Democrats responding in their own brief today, writing, "This is not a case about protected speech. The House did not impeach President Trump because he expressed an unpopular political opinion. It impeached him because he willfully incited violent insurrection against the government."

While it still hasn't been decided whether there will be witnesses, Democratic sources tell CNN that is unlikely. The two sides will argue whether the trial is constitutional before the full Senate votes on that question. Democrats got a boost when conservative attorney Charles Cooper wrote in "The Wall Street Journal" that the constitution doesn't bar Trump's impeachment trial.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): That's no liberal. That's Chuck Cooper, a lawyer who represented House Republicans in a lawsuit against Speaker Pelosi, a former adviser to Senator Cruz's presidential campaign, driving a stake into the central argument we're going to hear from the former president's counsel.

RAJU (voice-over): Already, five GOP senators have indicated they believe the constitution gives the senate the authority to try a former federal office holder.

[04:05:00]

SEN. BEN SASSE (R-NE): The president lied to you. He lied about the election results for 60 days.

RAJU (voice-over): But to convict Trump, there will need to be 17 Republicans joining all 50 Democrats, something incredibly unlikely amid the vocal Trump wing of the party looking to punish anyone who defects.

Congresswoman Liz Cheney, one of 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump last month, censured by the Wyoming state GOP this weekend. Cheney offering no regrets.

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): We've never seen that kind of an assault by a president of the United States on another branch of government, and that can never happen again.

RAJU: And Congresswoman Liz Cheney warned the party not to embrace Donald Trump, the former president. There are some Republican Senators who agree with that, including Senator John Thune, the number two Republican Senator, who told me on Monday that the party should be envision ideas not a, quote, cult of personalities. Something he believes will not be durable for the future of the party. Senator Lisa Murkowski who is one of five Republican Senators who might vote to convict Donald Trump said she's looking for the Republican Party, not the party of Trump.

Manu Raju, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: CNN legal analyst Elie Honig joins me now to talk more about all of this. Good to have you with us.

ELIE HONIG, CNN LEGAL ANALYST: Thanks, Rosemary.

CHURCH: So we are just hours away from Donald Trump's historic second impeachment trial, and Trump's legal team argues he didn't incite riots by using the word fight, instead he used it figuratively. And central to their argument is that this trial is unconstitutional. And that received a direct hit Monday from respected conservative lawyer Charles Cooper who wrote in the "Wall Street Journal" that the constitution does not bar Trump's impeachment trial. So where will that argument go? And of course the rest of their case.

HONIG: Ultimately, I think the argument that you cannot try a former official will lose. However, it could give a cover to enough Republicans who want a reason to justify why they might end up voting not guilty. We don't have a specific definitive answer on this question of whether you can impeach and try a former official, to the extent that the supreme court has never addressed it. It's not specifically stated in the constitution. But all legal authorities, the great weight of legal and common sense say, of course you can try a former official. We've done it before, 1876, a long time ago. But the same legal precedent.

And it just has to be. It can't be the case that a president can essentially abuse his power however he pleases in his final weeks and days in office with no consequence. By the way, the Constitution gives us a specific remedy for this situation. It tells us even if someone has already been removed, they can be disqualified from holding office in the future. There's no way for that punishment to really make any sense if you can't disqualify a former official.

So I think ultimately, this motion to throw the case out based on this constitutional ground will fail. But again, it could give enough Republicans an easy way to vote not guilty in the end.

CHURCH: Yes, absolutely. And of course, the task of the Democrats is to convince at least 17 Republican Senators that Trump willfully incited a violent insurrection. And they will use video and the words of the mob to prove their argument. How overwhelming will that evidence be?

HONIG: I think it will be really compelling if this was a sort of ordinary courtroom scenario. Where you have a jury made up of 12 people who don't know anything about the case and have sworn to be impartial. The jury here is very different, of course, it's the 100 Senators, all of whom are already assigned to a team, so to speak, a political party.

But I think the video is going to be really compelling evidence here. I mean, you have the video, not just what President Trump said at the rally on January 6th, but what he said for the months leading or the weeks leading up to that where he was pushing this big lie, and sort of, you know, moving his people to come down to D.C. on January 6th by the way. He didn't pick that day randomly. That's the last day that the election results will be certified.

And then finally, you're going to have the video of all the violence and the carnage that happened inside the Capitol. I think that's really going to strike home. It's going to remind us all really how dangerous that situation was directly to the people in there and more broadly to our democracy.

CHURCH: Elie Honig always a please to chat with you, many thanks.

HONIG: Thanks. Thanks very much.

CHURCH: And as Donald Trump gets ready for his second impeachment trial, President Joe Biden will be focusing his attention on his COVID relief proposal. CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Returning to Washington, President Biden immediately faced questions about his predecessor's looming impeachment trial.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Look, he's got an offer to come and testify. He's decided not to. We will let the Senate work that out.

COLLINS (voice-over): For weeks, Biden has gone out of his way to avoid weighing in on former President Trump's fate, as aides say he will be too busy to watch the proceedings.

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I think it's clear from his schedule and from his intention he will not spend too much time watching the proceedings, if any time, over the course of this week.

[04:10:00]

COLLINS (voice-over): Biden is set to counterprogram Trump's trial, as he attempts to keep the focus on his legislative debut, a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package.

PSAKI: We've already announced his plans to go visit the NIH, to go visit the Department of Defense.

COLLINS (voice-over): Biden has moved on from courting Republican support and is now focusing on fast-tracking the bill with only Democrats on his side.

PSAKI: Obviously, it's the most likely path at this point is through a reconciliation process.

COLLINS (voice-over): But now Democrats must battle it out over the bill and whether to include Biden's $15 minimum wage proposal, which he hinted in an interview Friday wouldn't make the final cut.

BIDEN: Apparently, that's not going to occur because of the rules in the United States Senate.

NORAH O'DONNELL, HOST, "CBS EVENING NEWS": So, you're saying the minimum wage won't be in this --

BIDEN: My guess is, it will not be in it.

COLLINS (voice-over): But that was before the Senate parliamentarian had ruled whether the minimum wage requirement could be included.

COLLINS: Who had told him that he wasn't going to make it through likely?

PSAKI: Well, as the president was in Congress for -- in the Senate for 36 years. Again, it still has not worked its way through the process. And that can take a bit of time. And we certainly defer to the parliamentarian.

COLLINS (voice-over): While Biden seemed ready to move on without the minimum wage increase included for now, other progressives are still pushing for it.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): I can tell you, as chairman of the Budget Committee, we have a room full of lawyers working as hard as we can to make the case to the parliamentarian that, in fact, raising the minimum wage will have significant budget implications. COLLINS: And on top of that, Democrats are now talking about extending the child tax credit, putting that as part of this coronavirus relief proposal. That would grant up to currently in its state right now $3,600 per child under the age of 6. It'd be about $3,000 up to the age of 17. Of course, that would depend on how much money the parent made, whether it's $75,000 or $150,000 for those joint filers.

But of course, that is far from certain of what's actually going to end up in the end of this. But it does show the efforts that Democrats are taking following the steps of Senator Mitt Romney also unveiling something similar, proposing something similar last week. So we'll wait to see what is in the actual final text of that legislation. We know that the House is crafting that right now.

Kaitlan Collins, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: And while President Biden considers the economy, the virus is still a huge health risk across the country. Now the U.S. is ramping up its COVID genome sequencing in an effort to keep a closer eye on variants. The CDC director says the U.S. has increased its sequencing about tenfold in just the last three weeks. And although we've seen a decline in coronavirus cases across the U.S., health experts are urging Americans not to let their guard down.

And some good news on the vaccine front, Pfizer says it's increased production and doubled the output of its COVID vaccine in the last month. The company expects to deliver 200 million doses in the U.S. by the end of May. CNN's Erica Hill has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ERICA HILL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fewer new cases, fewer COVID patients in the hospital, more shots in the arms. Can these trends last?

DR. JORGE RODRIGUEZ, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Things are better, but, baby, it ain't over yet, not by a long shot.

HILL (voice-over): Swift-moving variants now identified in more than 30 states.

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: The continued proliferation of variants, for me, is a great concern and is a threat that could reverse the recent positive trends we are seeing.

HILL (voice-over): The CDC says it's stepping up tracking efforts.

DR. PETER HOTEZ, PROFESSOR AND DEAN OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: What we need to do as quickly as possible is obviously vaccinate the American people.

HILL (voice-over): So far, current vaccines appear to be effective against the variant first identified in the U.K. DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Less so against the South African, the 351, but, hopefully, we will get the virus under much better control by the time there's any indication that might become dominant.

HILL (voice-over): The overall pace of vaccinations is improving.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Saturday was a remarkable day. We had 1.8 million vaccines administered in the United States. If we can do that every single day, then we'll stay ahead of this.

HILL (voice-over): 72 percent of distributed doses now in arms. More than 9.5 million people fully vaccinated. New York's Citi Field set to open as another mass vaccination site Wednesday morning, for the focus on taxi drivers, food service and delivery workers.

MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO (D), NEW YORK CITY, NY: These are folks who we all depend on.

HILL (voice-over): Average daily reported deaths stuck above 3,000, rising in nine states.

DR. CELINE GOUNDER, INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPECIALIST AND EPIDEMIOLOGIST: What we're really seeing is still the aftermath of the winter holidays, of Christmas and New Year's. So it's, you know, six to eight weeks later, people are dying from the disease.

[04:15:00]

HILL (voice-over): Texas Representative Ron Wright, the first sitting member of Congress to die after being diagnosed with the virus, passed away on Sunday. Wright was 67.

More states easing restrictions, no more mask mandate in Iowa, despite top experts urging otherwise.

WALENSKY: We really need to keep all of the mitigation measures at play here if we're really going to get control of this pandemic.

HILL (voice-over): In Tampa, Super Bowl fans partying like it's 2019.

The CDC promising new guidelines for schools this week, after a week's long standoff, a tentative agreement to get teachers and kids back to the classroom.

MAYOR LORI LIGHTFOOT (D), CHICAGO, IL: I am confident, confident, that the measures that we have and will put in place will make our schools even safer than they already are and will be a model for other systems in Illinois and throughout the country.

HILL: New questions today about domestic travel after Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says that there is an active conversation with the CDC about possibly requiring a negative test for domestic air travel. But in response, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said that would be yet another mitigation tool. However, she and other White House officials stressing now is not the time to travel. In New York, I'm Erica Hill, CNN.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CHURCH: And you just heard it there in Erica's report. The travel industry bracing for a potential shakeup as the Biden administration considers requiring COVID-19 tests for air travel within the U.S. We'll have reaction on the other side of the break. Stay with us.

[04:20:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHURCH: Welcome back, everyone. Well the Biden administration is considering a rule that would shake up the travel industry. Officials may soon require a negative COVID-19 test for domestic air travel. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says the CDC will help drive the decision, and he spoke earlier to CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE BUTTIGIEG, U.S. TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: There's got to be common sense, medicine and science really driving this. And what we know is that it's the appropriate measure for international travel. People traveling into the U.S. giving some of those considerations. You know, I'd say the domestic picture is very different. But, you know, the CDC is always evaluating what can best be done to keep Americans safe.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHURCH: A major travel industry group opposes the move. The U.S. Travel Association calls it impractical. Two senior officials and airplane giant Boeing went a step further. In a letter to the White House they say this, and I'm quoting them.

Imposing such a burden on the already financially beleaguered airline industry has the potential for severe unintended consequences that will ripple across the entire economy.

And while the U.S. travel industry worries about its future, the energy sector is enjoying some positive news. On Monday oil prices hit their highest level in more than a year. CNN's John Defterios joins us now live from Abu Dhabi to talk more on this. Good to see you again, John. So oil prices returning to normal after an extreme slump during the pandemic. Talk to us about the latest on that and just how sustainable it might be.

JOHN DEFTERIOS, CNN BUSINESS EMERGING MARKETS EDITOR: Well I tell you we came out a full blown recovery in 2020, remember it, Rosemary. And now we're now in the stage of rebuilding demand going forward. But there's a real concern in the market to your question to me and that is, is it really about the restoration of economic growth and demand for road transport and airline transport or is it the hedge funds driving this rally, banking on a rebalancing in the oil market at the tail end of this year? If you look at the latest crisis, we did cross $61 a barrel which is a

new 12-month high. But we're hovering around that level right now for the international benchmark. But if you roll back the clock a year ago, we started at $54 a barrel in February. It was slightly higher before that. But it quickly unraveled, and I'll tell you why. It was unclear about how much demand was going to be eroded by the pandemic.

Then we had an OPEC plus meeting that had Saudi Arabia and Russia have a dispute about how much should we cut at this stage or not. They had a price war. Five weeks later, for the first time in history, prices went negative in the United States, below zero for 24 hours and below $20 a barrel on the international benchmark.

Now a lot of work took place thereafter. Global economy stepped up at $10 trillion of stimulus. That helped. The OPEC plus players settled their differences and cut nearly 10 million barrels a day. And that's why we see demand starting to recover with the vaccine distribution.

The key question mark here right now, Rosemary, is can you get global distribution for the vaccines and dealing with the variants. This cannot just be a developed world solution. The developing world has to heal at the same time to restore this demand.

By the way, we usually use 100 million barrels a day pre-pandemic when it comes to oil. It got down to 90 or about 95 million right now. But 5 million barrels a day can make a difference between $40 oil and $60 oil. So we have to see the growth restored in the second half of 2021 -- Rosemary.

CHURCH: Yes, that's definitely right. John Defterios joining us there. Many thanks. I'm going to take a short break. We'll be back in just a moment. Stay with us.

[04:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHURCH: All right. We are following a developing story out of Myanmar right now. Police have reportedly arrested at least 27 people in protests against a last week's military coup. Police have used water cannon to try to disperse the crowds as authorities crack down on the demonstrations imposing a curfew and restrictions on public gatherings. But thousands of people are defying those bans and turned out for a fourth straight day in cities across Myanmar.

CNN's Paula Hancocks joins me now live from Seoul. So Paula, arrests have now been made at these protests. What more are you learning about that?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well Rosemary, what we're hearing as well now from Reuters news agency is in Naypyidaw, in the capital of Myanmar. We're hearing police fired gunshots into the air to try and disperse protestors. Now the reports said that they weren't firing towards protesters. That they had all day been using the water cannons to try and disperse these protesters. And they simply weren't going home. So they say that now they have started to fire into the air. Now this is really a show that things are escalating somewhat. Now

there isn't lethal force being used by police as we understand it up until this point, but the water cannon has been used a lot more today than yesterday, on Monday, and certainly firing into the air is a step further as well.

So of course the concern is as there were still thousands of people out on the streets in Myanmar protesting that military coup and many of them not wanting to go home. They're calling for the members of the NLD, National League for Democracy who won power back in November of last year, to be released, to be reinstated as the democratic government, as protesters are not going home and staying on the streets. We do see this incremental step in the way that police and military are handling them -- Rosemary.

CHURCH: All right, Paula Hancocks, I know you'll continue to monitor this developing story. Many thanks.

Well here in the United States the Biden administration is facing a major challenge following the coup in Myanmar. Most notably how can the U.S. speak with authority on democracy when people around the world saw the Capitol attacked last month. CNN's Wolf Blitzer posed that question to Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

ANTHONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: There's no doubt that our ability to speak with that strong voice for democracy and human rights took a hit.