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Biden Makes Bold Vaccine Promise, Says Go Big on COVID Relief; Biden Says, I want to Focus on the American People, Not Trump; Trump Slams Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) after Impeachment Acquittal. Aired 10-10:30a ET
Aired February 17, 2021 - 10:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: A very good Wednesday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN NEWSROOM: And I'm Poppy Harlow.
more vaccine doses and a timeline for when we might return to normal, just a few of the promises President Biden made at a fascinating CNN town hall last night. Watch this.
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JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: By the end of July, we'll have over 600 million doses, enough to vaccinate every single American.
As my mother would say, with the grace of God and the goodwill of the neighbors, that by next Christmas, I think we'll be in a very different circumstance, God willing, than we are today.
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SCIUTTO: That's hopeful, that's looking ahead. So what about right now?
So, some promising news for parents with children who are still learning from home, the president suggesting that children will be back in school five days a week, not one day a week, five days by the end of April, all this as he pushes to go big with his $1.9 trillion COVID relief package.
Let's begin with CNN's John Harwood at the White House. So, John, a big promise from the president as well on vaccine, 600 million, so enough with two doses for most of the population by the summertime.
JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right. And what we saw from that town hall with Anderson last night, Jim, was an attempt by the Biden White House to do a couple things, first of all, to sell Biden's personal qualities as the new president just on month in. He was trying to show empathy, as when he connected with that second grader, he was trying to show a sense of candor as when he told bluntly, the one questioner, that he wasn't going to wipe out $50,000 in student debt, and also to lower the partisan temperature, so he did not criticize Republican senators for voting to acquit Donald Trump. He said he didn't want to talk about Trump at all.
He used those personal qualities as a way to make the case for his package, which is the way of getting America back to normal, the $1.9 trillion package, and he urged people not to shrink from that price tag.
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/BIDEN: In order to grow the economy a year, two, three, four down the line, we can't spend too much. Now is the time we should be spending. Now is the time to go big.
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HARWOOD: Now, of course, President Biden has not gotten Republican votes -- public support for a package of that scale, but his most important issue is getting that package passed. He appears to be on track to get it passed in the House next week and the Senate after that. He wants to get it done by mid-March, to try to achieve those goals that you indicated at the top of the segment. That is, schools opened by the end of the first 100 days, at least K-12 schools, vaccines for every American by the end of July, back to normal by Christmas.
His hope is that he is underpromising and will overdeliver as he has on vaccinations, set a goal of 100,000 vaccinations a day for the first 100 days. They're now exceeding that goal. The test is going to be in the results and whether he can keep the American people patient behind him as he tries to achieve them.
HARLOW: Yes, and some real clarity on what it all means for teachers, I think, especially, John, and vaccines. They don't have a totally clear answer on that. Thank you for the reporting at the White House.
Congress expected to vote on the huge $1.9 trillion stimulus package that the Biden administration would like to make it through. Our Manu Raju is on Capitol Hill with the latest. Good morning, Manu.
What do we expect to see here? I mean, are these negotiations with the Republicans active and ongoing?
MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: The short answer is no. We expect Democrats to move on this on their own. And the first step will be a voted in the House Budget Committee that will happen over the next couple days. The chairman of that committee told me yesterday he expects his panel to send the sweeping $1.9 trillion proposal from his committee to the House floor, either the end of this week or early next.
That would set up a vote in the full House to approve that bill by the end of next week, maybe a Friday vote, maybe a Saturday vote of next week. And then at that point, they would go on to the United States Senate, assuming it passes the House.
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The Democrats have a narrow majority in the House but it's expected that Democrats will be able to keep most, if not, all of their members in line, maybe pick up a couple of Republicans. We'll see.
And then when it goes to the Senate, that is one of the big questions about whether it will go from there, because the Democrats are using a fast-track budget process that to move this bill through. Essentially, it would prevent Republicans from filibustering this bill. A filibuster requires 60 votes to overcome. But since you can do this here on this particular piece of legislation, they can pass it with a simple majority of 51 senators. That means they need to keep all senators in line.
But there are still some procedural hurdles they need to go through because the rules in the Senate require that any proposal that is part of this budget plan cannot be extraneous. It needs to be related to the budget. And there are big questions about whether Biden's push for a $15 minimum wage can meet those Senate rules, known in the Senate as the Byrd Rule.
I talked to senator Joe Manchin, the Democratic from West Virginia, about this a couple of days ago. He made very clear that he would not support any efforts to skirt those Senate rules. He told me that he would fight, quote, hell or high water moving forward if there's any effort to gut the Byrd Rule. He said that, my only vote is to protect the Byrd Rule, hell or high water. Everybody knows that. I'm fighting to defend the Byrd Rule. The president knows that. And he said that he told the president that as well.
Now, after though it passes the Senate, assuming they're able to keep their caucus together, if it's amended, the Democrats are planning March 8th as that final vote to get it to the president's desk before jobless benefits expire.
HARLOW: So, Manu, my question remains, even if the $15 minimum wage gets taken out of this thing, which it's going to, I think, from what Biden has said, and the Byrd Rule issue with Manchin, Manchin still wasn't happy with the way it was. He still wanted more targeted aid. I mean, is that a guarantee you get them on board even if you take out the minimum wage?
RAJU: I think it's very possible you can get him on board with that. I've asked about that, the threshold providing stimulus checks to individuals. He wanted much narrower for individuals and family. He seems open to that idea that the House Democrats are pushing for more expansive stimulus checks. We'll see though when the rubber hits the road in the Senate.
HARLOW: Yes.
SCIUTTO: And then, of course, the key is get it done before the currents expanded unemployment benefits run out in mid-March. We'll see. Manu Raju, thanks very much. Well, Vice President Kamala Harris, she is doubling down on the need to prioritize educators, teachers to get vaccinations, saying that President Biden's $1.9 trillion relief package that he was talking about is crucial, a lot of money in there, to reopening schools.
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SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, MSNBC HOST: Is it safe for them?
KAMALA HARRIS, U.S. VICE PRESIDENT: Well, I think that we have to decide if we can put in place safe measures. This is why it's so important we pass the American rescue plan.
Why does this connect with what we're talking about right now? It's going to be safer for our schools to reopen when we get our schools the infrastructure needs, like helping them with their ventilation systems, helping them create social distancing with barriers.
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HARLOW: So let's bring in our Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta. Sanjay, good morning. Glad you're here.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.
HARLOW: We've got a lot to get to, but the answer that the vice president gave to Savannah Guthrie in that great interview wasn't actually an answer to Savannah's question. Savannah's question was is it safe to send them back if they're not vaccinated.
What does the science tell us about that? Because I think if I were a teacher watching this right now, I would be very confused.
GUPTA: Yes, no doubt. I mean, and this has become a point of provocation. What does the science show? The science shows that it is possible to open schools safely without teachers having necessarily been vaccinated. And I realize that there are a lot of people who are confused by that and maybe even a little frightened by that, but that is what the science is showing.
And I will also say that a year ago or several months ago when I had to make decisions, and everyone was making decisions about sending their kids back to school, we didn't have a lot of data on this. There was a lot of uncertainty, and many people, myself included, said, you know what, without the adequate data, I'm going to err on the side of not sending my kids back to school. I'm worried that they could potentially get sick or their teachers and staff could potentially get sick. And that was the sort of thinking. We now have data.
The study that the CDC talks about out of Wisconsin, they put this on their website, it was 17 schools in the fall of last year. What they found, as you guys know, was that there was very low rates of transmission within the schools. There was only seven documented cases of transmission throughout the entire term. But what's also important to add to that, as we analyze that data, is that the community in which those schools exist, the community was actually in a very high, transmissible sort of state, in the red zone, so to speak.
So despite the fact that the community was hot, the schools were able to be a safe haven and that was without teachers having been vaccinated.
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SCIUTTO: Yes. And that was Dr. Fauci's view yesterday, right, that you want to prioritize teachers, but you don't have to have them all vaccinated before reopening schools. Of course, the question is whether teachers listen to that, right? I mean, we've seen in Chicago the battles.
I want to ask about vaccinations, because the president said 600 million doses, enough for 300 million Americans by summertime. You have questions though about the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Will it be rolled out quickly enough? Will there be enough supply? Not a lot of information there. I wonder, are those hiccups potentially standing in the way of that goal of the Biden administration?
GUPTA: Well, you know, I don't think so. I spoke to the executives at Johnson & Johnson right before they released their phase three data. And at that point, they said they're going to have several million doses that they've been manufacturing at risk. They will be ready to roll out if an authorization is given and then they would scale up production.
I think that the thinking was that they would have more doses by March and April than it sounds like they're going to have. It sounds like they'll have 20 million doses by April now, according to Kaitlan Collins. But they still say 100 million doses by June, the Johnson & Johnson.
As you correctly point out, 600 million doses of the two-dose regiments of Moderna and Pfizer by the end of July. When we do our back of the envelope calculations and say, look, even if we stay at this pace right now, about 12 to 13 million doses going out every week, you should get to the point before you have most adults in this country vaccinated by June. That's just the math. If something goes wrong or they don't have the same production for some reason, that could be a problem. But what we're hearing from everyone is that the production and the manufacturing amounts should actually be going up steadily over the next several months.
SCIUTTO: That's good to hear. That's good to hear. Thank you, Sanjay.
HARLOW: The N95 mask discussion, Sanjay, so the Biden administration word, the advisory board is now saying more widely they should be used. Does that mean everyone, because there was a supply issue for a while there?
GUPTA: This is something I've been digging into a lot and there're two sort of big headlines, I think, just overnight. One is that there's this organization called the ASTM. It's a society for textures and materials that are now going to have standards for masks. That's the first headline. So you buy a mask and how well does that mask work? I mean, up until now, we really haven't had those standards, they're going to now exist. We can show you what some of those standards are. But, basically, how well does it filtrate how easily can you breathe through it? That's the first headline. So you're going to have some confidence you actually know what you're buying.
But the second thing, Poppy, to your question, I think is a fascinating sort of point that's going to keep coming up. N95 masks, you hear from people, such as Barbara Coran (ph) that if people wore these types of masks in high-risk situations, when you have to go into a population-dense area for a little bit, if you wore those masks, you could quickly start to bring an end, significant downward trajectory of the pandemic.
As far as supply and demand, you're right, the standard tag line has been we just don't have enough. Well, that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. In fact, I think there's a disconnect. There's manufacturers who were saying, you know what, we have plenty, but because they're not being recommended, we're not selling them. So there's a problem here. And if these masks are so important, we should be getting them out there to people, at least for high-risk situations.
HARLOW: Yes.
SCIUTTO: Yes. And it speaks to the need for consistent advice and guidelines on these things, right, because it goes to the supply chain so that people can get them when we need them.
HARLOW: That's why we have Sanjay to clear it all up for us every morning here. Thank you.
GUPTA: We'll keep hammering it.
HARLOW: All right, thanks, Sanjay.
SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, President Biden staying on message, steering away from bashing, really even talking about former President Trump and standing squarely in the center of the political spectrum, or at least trying to. Is this the leader that this country can expect for the next four years? Is that how he's going to govern.
Plus, power outages across Texas leaving much of the state in the dark and people dealing with just unbearable cold in their homes. I mean, look at some of these pictures here. In some cases, that's turned deadly. We're going to speak to a business owner who is offering shelter to those in need.
HARLOW: Sad reporting for you, violent, racist attacks on elderly Asian-Americans all caught on camera. How this anti-Asian bias is not only continuing to happen, it is surging and it is becoming more deadly.
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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: He got injury very bad, his brain bleeding, and he never wake up again. I never see him again.
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HARLOW: President Biden says he is focusing on the future and the wellbeing of the American people, and there is one person he is not focusing on, and that is his predecessor. Listen to this.
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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: Before the Senate voted to acquit the former president in the impeachment trial, you said you were anxious to see if Republicans senators would stand up. Only seven did. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called them cowards. Do you agree with her?
BIDEN: I'm not going to call names out. Look, I -- for four years, all that's been in the news is Trump.
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The next four years, I want to make sure what's in the news is the American people. I'm tired of talking about Trump.
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SCIUTTO: Applause line there.
Let's bring in David Axelrod, CNN Senior Political Commentator, former senior adviser to President Obama. David, always good to have you on.
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning, guys.
SCIUTTO: Biden is tired of talking about Trump. The crowd last night was. And, listen, Trump was voted out of office and you can reasonably say a majority of the country is. His party, however, no, majority of self-identifying Republicans still see him as the leader. And I wonder, do you see the Republican Party actually moving away from Trump or is just that a minority, frankly?
AXELROD: Well, look, right now, the answer is no. Right now, Trump is very dominant in the Republican Party. He's got an 80 percent approval rating. Most Republicans say they see him as the leader of the party. He is the frontrunner for the nomination if he were to run again. There's a long time between now and then.
But, yes, he has -- listen, those 43 senators didn't vote for Donald Trump out of love. They voted for him out of fear of the base that supports him. And so he does have -- he does hold a lot of sway in his party. But in the country, a majority of voters rejected him.
And I actually thought that that bite from Biden was such a brilliant bite. It's sort of the reason -- he's the antithesis of Trump, it's sort of the reason he got elected, because he resisted the temptation to take the cheap shot and said, look, I want this to be about you and not me. And my guess is not just the people in the room but a lot of folks in the country stood up and cheered when they heard that.
HARLOW: Yes. I mean, it's such a good point, David. Trump is betting that Machiavelli was right, it's better to be feared than loved. And Biden is betting that it's better to be loved than feared. I wonder what you think though as the man that you've known for so long, having worked on the campaign all the way back seems like so many years ago, the first campaign with Obama and Biden, what the most important thing is that you heard from him last night, not for the Democratic Party but for the American people.
AXELROD: Well, look, what you heard -- first of all, what I saw last night was the guy I know, but I think he's changed a little bit. I think Biden is a more confident person.
Politicians are very ambitious, they're driven by their ambition. It seems to me at this stage in his life, his ambitions are more about the country than himself. And he's very comfortable with who he is. He articulated some positions last night that were not going to make everybody in the Democratic Party happy on issues like student debt and the willingness to compromise on a couple of issues, immigration and the minimum wage, but that's what he believes and that's who he is. And he is governing based on what he believes.
And I think, Poppy, based on your previous comment, it's not so much that he wants to be loved, but he wants to be a unifying figure. He doesn't want to add another log to the fire after we've had a raging inferno for four years.
So I think he very clearly sees what his role is and he's comfortable with who he is and he's going to proceed that way. And it's not always going to make Democrats happy, not always going to make Republicans happy, but the tone is right.
SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this though. You have a tone and you have a desire there for unity. That was the campaign message. But you know the politics in this country right now. And beyond the politics, the political incentives, right, because sitting lawmakers don't have a political incentive to compromise. They don't. The House districts are so drawn to the point of crazy, senators as well. We're seeing that.
And you see his decision right on the stimulus plan, right, in that he's basically said, I'm going to do this without Republican votes. I wonder, are the facts of the politics in Washington, do they prevent him from really following through on that unity message at the end of the day?
AXELROD: look, I think you're right about your observations about where our politics are and the misaligned incentives, Jim, but I think he's going to test and probe the possibilities here. And what he's really betting on is that you can disagree on some things and still find partners on others. I think the test will come when they talk about issues like infrastructure where there's interest on both sides to get something done.
But that's why I think it's so important when Anderson invited him to join Nancy Pelosi in calling those senators cowards, he demurred, he said, no, I don't want to call names, because he understands there's always a fight around the corner where you might need some allies and you might get some allies. And I think he could get some allies if he keeps this in the realm of policy and not personality.
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HARLOW: Yes, it's a really good point. But you guys made that effort, David, in the Obama White House trying to get out of the great recession on stimulus to get some allies, in the other party, mainly three Republican senators on board, even though you didn't need them. But you wanted that bill, the rescue bill to be bipartisan. And the argument that Biden made last night is that, ultimately, it hurt the economic recovery, right?
And I remember I'm just in the middle of reading Obama's memoir and he quotes you. And you described it as the house was burning and those four senators had the only fire hose. Is there a lesson in that for Biden now?
AXELROD: Well, first of all, let me just correct a little bit of history, Poppy, because I lived it and it was painful. We didn't just need Republicans, we needed Democrats. We needed 60 votes.
HARLOW: Right.
AXELROD: And there were several Democrats who didn't want to -- who were insistent that it be -- that the stimulus be no more than $800 billion. So that was a problem. And Biden faces that as well here on the minimum wage, for example. Joe Manchin does not support a national $15 minimum wage. Biden needs all 50 votes to pass this reconciliation. So beyond the parliamentarian, he has issues with his own caucus that may force that out of this reconciliation package.
But, you know, this is not easy stuff. And the question is whether the Republicans will do what they did in 2009 and when Democrats had large majorities and say, you handle all this yourself and we'll run against you in 2010 and see what happens. And --
SCIUTTO: The words of McConnell --
AXELROD: He's betting that he can pick a few off.
SCIUTTO: The words of McConnell at the time, right? I want to make Obama a one-term president. Of course, he failed in that, but he did do his best just to stifle the agenda.
David Axelrod, always good to have you on.
HARLOW: Thanks, David.
AXELROD: Good to see you guys.
SCIUTTO: President Biden may be tired of talking about Trump, but the former president isn't going away too quietly.
HARLOW: Trump publicly ripped last night into the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, in a scathing statement, blaming him for just about everything. Of course, that's after Mitch McConnell voted to acquit the president, but also condemned him on the floor.
This is part of the letter that Trump wrote last night. Quote, Mitch is a dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack, and if Republican senators are going to stay with him, they will not win again.
Jessica Dean joins us on Capitol Hill. Good morning, Jessica. What does the feud mean (ph) bigger picture for the party?
JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning to both of you. Right now, Republicans have their eyes, of course, on 2022. They want to take back majorities in the House and the Senate. And they know that they need to be unified in order to do that or at least that's what they'll say publicly, that they need to unify to win in 2022.
The fact of the matter is, though, there is quite the rift. It's really seismic, going on in the party. And this is a perfect example of it, to see Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a longtime stalwart of the Republican Party, who did vote to acquit the former president, but then came out and said that he believes former President Trump is responsible for what happened here at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th and laid that responsibility at his feet. He talked about looking forward. He is interested in electability and finding candidates who can win both the primaries but also the general elections in 2022.
And then you have former President Trump with this scathing personal attack against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. And you have former President Trump pledging that he's going to be backing primary candidates who side with him.
So here is Senator Lindsey Graham, of course, a longtime supporter, fervent supporter of former President Trump, and Senator Susan Collins who voted to impeach former President Trump. Take a listen.
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SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): What I would say to Senator McConnell, I know Trump can be a handful, but he is the most dominant figure in the Republican Party. We don't have a snowball's chance in hell of taking back the majority without Donald Trump.
SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): I think we need to get away from the idea that the Republican Party is just one person and adherence to just one leader.
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DEAN: And when I talked to senators here in the Capitol on the Republican side, you do get the sense that there is that rift back and forth about is it loyalty to one person and his set of ideas or is it a broader set of ideas. You saw Senator Richard Burr, who also voted to convict former President Trump, he was censured by his party, Poppy and Jim, which we talked about, but he said something similar, which is this is an alliance to one man, not the Republican Party principle.
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So, again, moving forward, this is something the Republican Party is going to see battle out as we head into this next election.
