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Biden Declares "America is Back," Pledges $4 Billion toward Global COVID-19 Vaccine Aid; U.S. Willing to Resume Talks with Iran on Nuclear Deal; Vaccine Doses Backlogged Due to Weather. Aired 12-12:15a ET
Aired February 20, 2021 - 00:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome to CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Michael Holmes.
And we start with U.S. President Joe Biden leaving no doubt, America first is the foreign policy of the past and not the present. He drew a line between himself and his predecessor in speeches to the international security conferences held virtually because of the pandemic.
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: America is back. I speak today as President of the United States at the very start of my administration and I am sending a clear message to the world. America is back. The transatlantic alliance is back. And we are not looking backward. We are looking forward together.
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HOLMES: The president also pledged billions to help in the global fight against COVID-19. CNN's Nic Robertson with more from London.
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NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: The big headline from the G7 commitment to get COVID vaccines to the poorer nations, to speed the development and deployment of the vaccines, to increase manufacturing capacity of vaccines and to share more information about the variants of COVID-19 that can potentially be more deadly, more infectious.
That was a priority, committing more money so that those vaccines could get to those poorer nations, $7.5 billion committed. President Biden came with his own money as well.
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BIDEN: We must cooperate if we're going to defeat COVID-19 everywhere. My first presidential mass security memorandum focused on surging health and humanitarian responses to defeat COVID-19 and to better prevent and prepare for the next pandemic.
Today, I'm announcing that the United States is making a 2-billion- dollar pledge to COVAX with the promise of an initial $2 billion to urge others to step up as well.
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ROBERTSON: And the G7 is not the only event of the day. The Munich Security Conference virtual as well. President Biden speaking there, talking about an inflection point in history, where you can go with democracies or you can go with autocracies.
He says he wants to work with other democratic nations to develop diplomatic plans to work together and hold China to account, to hold Russia to account. He said the United States is back on the world stage, wants to earn its place back in a leadership role, welcomed by Boris Johnson.
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BORIS JOHNSON, U.K. PRIME MINISTER: As you've seen and heard earlier, America is unreservedly back as the leader of the free world. That is fantastic. And it is vital for our American friends to know that their allies on the side of the Atlantic are willing and able to share the risks and the burdens of addressing the world's toughest problems.
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ROBERTSON: Angela Merkel also offering support, saying it's important to get a joint transatlantic plan of how to deal with China, how to deal with Russia.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said, we agree on all the shared interests and values. Sometimes the priorities might be a bit different, he said. But we can work together.
That is the very clear message emerging at the end of the Munich Security Conference. The message also for President Biden is not all European nations are perhaps going to go along with him as easily as perhaps he would like, specifically on China and Russia, too. So not plain sailing.
But the United States, President Joe Biden, back on the world stage, leading, as he wants to -- Nic Robertson, CNN, London.
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HOLMES: President Biden also reiterated the U.S. is willing to resume talks with Iran on a nuclear deal. It's a significant move toward ending a stalemate between the two nations.
The U.S. has condemned Iran for enriching uranium beyond what was allowed under the 2015 nuclear deal. Of course, former president Trump pulled out of the deal and imposed sanctions on Iran. Biden officials say talks at this point are just the beginning.
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JAKE SULLIVAN, U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: One of our concerns right now is that Iran is presently threatening to move even further out of compliance, to refuse to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency and the work it is trying to do to ensure nothing in Iran's program is being used for weapons purposes.
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SULLIVAN: So I think the first order of business here would be for the Iranians to take the decision to stop the process of moving further out of compliance.
And then I do believe that there is a diplomatic pathway to getting to an ultimate agreement in which we can all have confidence that Iran's nuclear program has a lid on it, the kind of lid that was on it when we were actually all in the joint comprehensive plan of action together.
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HOLMES: Now Thursday the Biden administration said it is reversing efforts by the Trump administration to reimpose U.N. sanctions on Iran. Iran says it wants all sanctions imposed by the Trump administration lifted.
Parts of Texas are facing another night of freezing temperatures in the wake of a severe winter storm that caused power outages for millions. Power is back for most, but this crisis is far from over. Ed Lavandera reports the biggest issue now is access to clean drinking water.
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ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A military plane transporting 84,000 bottles of water from California landed in Galveston, Texas. Thousands of people are driving through massive food and water distribution sites in Houston and San Antonio.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't think any of us was expecting this. For it to be like this. So it's all about survival right now until we start getting warm.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No water?
It's getting real bad. And I have a 7-year-old. And it is like, it's tough.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Some 14 million Texans are battling water shortages as more than 1,200 public water systems across the state are fighting to fix disruptions caused by the winter storm and power grid failure.
The worst of the Texas freeze is over. State officials say the power grid emergency is now under control.
GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): We want to make sure that whatever happened in ERCOT falling short never happens again.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Governor Greg Abbott is now calling on state lawmakers to pay for power plant weatherization upgrades.
ABBOTT: To ensure that all the machinery that froze up and was unable to generate the power you need, that may require funding. The state of Texas should step up and provide that funding.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): There are still tens of thousands of people without power in Texas but getting those people back online will require utility crews to prepare damage inflicted by the historic winter storm and that could take several more days to repair.
BILL MAGNESS, ERCOT: I really want to acknowledge just the immense human suffering that we saw throughout this event. When people lose power, there are heartbreaking consequences.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Seven people around the town of Abilene died from weather related causes. A volunteer found an elderly couple in their home. It was 12 degrees inside.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They had been reluctant to leave their home. And so it was 24 hours later. She went back to take them food and found the husband deceased in bed.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): As if battling a massive power outage and frigid temperatures was not enough, residents like Melissa Webb in the San Antonio area apartment complex could only watch as fire destroyed their homes.
MELISSA WEBB, SAN ANTONIO RESIDENT: I haven't been able to go to work all week long. And now everything that we have in there is gone.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: As the water pressure was -- as you mentioned that --
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Part of the building collapse as a reporter interviewed a firefighter, frozen fire hydrants and failing water supply hampered efforts by firefighters to put out the flames.
Cities are battling crisis after crisis. Del Rio mayor Bruno Lozano says his city's wastewater system was knocked offline for an hour this week, which sent sewage seeping into some low lying parts of the city.
MAYOR BRUNO LOZANO (R-TX), DEL RIO: This is something that is beyond historical, beyond unprecedented. It's a chain reaction of worst-case scenario of worst-case scenarios.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Texas governor Greg Abbott has renewed calls for an investigation of ERCOT, the agency that runs the state's power grid system and has also called for its executives to resign. Bill Magness, the CEO of ERCOT, answered those questions on CNN.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: How can you keep your job after a week like this? MAGNESS: We are accountable to the people and the leadership of Texas. We are going to go and explain the steps we took and how that played into the entire situation on the electric grid. If that is the outcome, that is the outcome.
LAVANDERA: This is the last kind of frigid temperatures below freezing before temperatures fully warm up this weekend. But at the end of this miserable week, it's important to remember that 26 people died here in this catastrophe this week, most of them from hypothermia and exposure to carbon monoxide -- Ed Lavandera, CNN, Dallas.
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HOLMES: The White House says the severe weather this week created a backlog of 6 million coronavirus vaccine doses. Extra shipments are being sent out Saturday to help things get back on track. Even with the disruptions, about 1.8 million doses were added to the CDC's tally on Friday --
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HOLMES: -- bringing the total doses administered in the U.S. to more than 59 million.
Meanwhile President Joe Biden visited a Pfizer vaccine plant in Michigan. The company says it will expand production in the coming weeks. Mr. Biden sharing his hopes for how the pandemic will improve.
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BIDEN: I can't give you a date when this crisis will end. I believe we will be approaching normalcy by the end of this year. And God willing, this Christmas will be different than the last. But I cannot make that commitment to you.
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HOLMES: Johnson and Johnson says it's asking the World Health Organization to grant its single dose coronavirus vaccine emergency use. That would make the vaccine available in more than 190 countries and be part of the COVAX facility, which hands out doses as quickly, safely and fairly as possible across the globe.
A lot of countries have been struggling to get their hands on any kind of coronavirus vaccine. And Canada is one of them. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says restrictions will have to continue for weeks because of the slow vaccine rollout and new variants of the virus. He warns this could cause yet another massive wave of infections.
Wales is also being cautious. The first minister says the lockdown that's been in place since December will last another 3 weeks. But some measures would be relaxed a bit.
Protesters in Myanmar are paying tribute to a young woman who died after being shot by police. Mya Thwe Thwe Khaing is the first person to have been killed since pro-democracy demonstrations began two weeks ago. She died from her injuries Friday after 10 days in critical care.
Mya has become a rallying symbol for the pro-democracy movement, her sister urging every Burmese citizen to protest until the military junta restores power to elected leaders.
Now you are about to see what Mars looks like in full living color. NASA's Perseverance rover sending back these stunning photographs of the Martian surface from about 60 million kilometers away. Just have a look at the detail there.
It looks like Earth, doesn't it?
The rover landed on the Red Planet on Thursday and the area you are looking at their highlighted. The main goal is to find signs of ancient life and the mission is supposed to last one Mars year at least. That is 687 Earth days, to be exact.
I am Michael Holmes, thanks for your company, see you a bit later with more CNN NEWSROOM. Meanwhile stay tuned for "MARKETPLACE AFRICA."
