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Vivian Zayas Discusses Lawsuit Over Mother's Death in Nursing Home & Cuomo Aides Rewrote Nursing Home Report to Hide Death Toll; Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) Discusses COVID Relief, Getting $15 Minimum Wage, Possible Communications Between Congress Members & Capitol Riot Mob, Accountability for Khashoggi Murder; Nancy Navarro, Montgomery County Council Member, Discusses 2 Unmuted Staffers Mocking Her Latina Accent in Zoom Meeting. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired March 05, 2021 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And I wonder, when you hear this report accusing the governor's office of intentionally changing a health report so that the number didn't appear as bad as it was when it came to nursing home deaths, you know, what it's your reaction to that?

VIVIAN ZAYAS, LOST MOTHER TO COVID & CO-FOUNDER, VOICES FOR SENIORS: Now we see that the void he refers to is avoid in honesty. We knew all along the numbers weren't correct and feeling a little vindicated at this moment.

KEILAR: How do you feel about, overall, Governor Cuomo's handling of the state's coronavirus response?

ZAYAS: Well, to be honest, we felt insulted. All of these months, hearing him talking about writing a book, going on "The View, and parading different events, touting his success.

And here we are the families holding on to what's left of the dry grass and needing numbers and accountability to maybe fix this situation going forward.

KEILAR: Do you think he should resign?

ZAYAS: Not only him. I think he should resign. His top staff should resign. And definitely, Howard Zucker should resign.

KEILAR: You are right now suing your mom's nursing home. We did reach out to them for comment. We have not heard back. I want to be clear about that.

Tell us why you're suing them, and what happened while your mom was living there.

ZAYAS: Completely two different issues. Andrew Cuomo had his play in this situation but my mother's nursing home was cited previous to this pandemic 31 times for not being adequately prepared for infectious disease protocols. My issue is, had they been prepared previously, then maybe my mother

would still be alive today. But the reality is that they weren't. And we would like them to hopefully change the situation so that other senior perishes in their facility.

KEILAR: We saw from the A.G.'s report there were a number of nursing homes in New York that were not doing well even before the pandemic. And that was a precursor to them doing very poorly in the middle of the pandemic.

The Cuomo administration has pointed to nursing homes making incorrect decisions about bringing in patients who knowingly had COVID.

They say that order that went out in March should have been, in a way, followed with -- with law in the state that said nursing homes should only bring in patients they should properly care for.

When you hear that argument made what do you say?

ZAYAS: My mother was in a facility that could not properly care for her. Reality, once she became sick, we were not informed or told.

And with a hospital 100 feet away they did nothing to send her to get proper attention.

So we're just baffled as to why he would mandate, when we read this correctly, that they would have no choice but to take COVID-positive patients and turn around and give them immunity. We want answers to those questions.

KEILAR: Many families like yours, who are suing nursing homes, are finding it's going to be very difficult. Immunity put in place for nursing homes and hospitals.

What is your reaction to that?

ZAYAS: We won't be deterred. While accountability and justice may not be exactly what we're expecting but the fact we have this conversation and hopefully can fix nursing homes going forward is a victory in itself.

No matter what the victory looks like, we'll continue to go forward, push forward. My mother deserved it and the 15,000 seniors that died deserve it as well.

KEILAR: Vivian, thank you so much. We are so sorry, again, for the loss of your mother, and for all of the folks in New York State.

Thank you.

ZAYAS: Honored to be here. Thank you.

KEILAR: Next, Democratic Congresswoman Ilhan Omar joins me live. We'll talk COVID relief and how progressives plan to resurrect their efforts to get a $15 minimum wage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:37:59]

KEILAR: Right now, a marathon-voting session on the president's massive $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill is under way in the Senate. But the process has ground to a halt over jobless benefits.

There's concerns Senator Joe Manchin could break ranks and side with Republicans.

It wouldn't be the first time today. In the Senate's first big vote, eight Democrats voted no on Senator Bernie Sanders' amendment to increase the minimum wage to $15.

Let's talk about this now with Minnesota Democrat Ilhan Omar, joining us now.

When you look at this, and this -- specifically this agreement when it comes to reducing the cap on the relief checks, do you see this as Joe Biden abandoning progressives?

REP. ILHAN OMAR (D-MN): I see it as a really disappointing development.

We obviously are now ultimately sending money to less people than the Trump administration and the, you know, Senate majority Republicans, willing to, there are going to be about 17 million people who will get less money.

This is not the promise that we made. This is not who we are, given the opportunity to be as majority in the Senate and have the White House.

So ultimately, it is a failure when we compromise ourselves out of delivering on behalf of the American people in keeping our propositions.

KEILAR: I mean, just to be clear. You're saying that Trump wanted to deliver more in the way of checks for Americans than Biden?

OMAR: Yes. So the last checks that we were able to send had given, you know, 17 million more people than we were ultimately doing with the caps now.

And that, you know is going to be something that we're going to have to explain.

[14:39:59]

And I don't know if many of us have a logical explanation on why we are delivering less than what the Republicans were willing to compromise us on, delivering on to the American people.

KEILAR: Moderate Democrats, part of why it got cut down. What do you say to those Democrats? OMAR: Again, I just want to remind them that, you know, you are given

the opportunity to have the majority in the Senate, because the people believed that you were going to fight for them.

There were promises that were made and they ultimately have to be kept. We are legislators entrusted to deliver.

And, you know, we're not going to be able to blame Republicans for our inability to deliver on the promises that we made.

This is just us now negotiating amongst ourselves. The House is controlled by Democrats. The Senate is controlled by Democrats. The White House is in the hands of an administration that is Democratic.

And so, you know, I don't know how this makes any political sense, and it certainly does not make any policy sense.

KEILAR: I want to listen to something that the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said. He said people won't work if they get $1,400 checks.

Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNEL (R-KY): So I want analysis of the Democrats' extra bonus for workers, who stay home, will result in more than 60 percent of workers earning more money staying home than they would earn from returning to work.

More money by staying home than they'd earn from returning to work. What a great idea.

This isn't state unemployment insurance. It's barred from our kids and grandkids to pay yet an additional cash bonus for not working.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: What do you say to that?

OMAR: I mean, that's just a really foolish statement to make. We know that there are more Americans that are working when they were back last year in May and June.

Giving support to people who have been economically struggling and you are faced with dire financial situations. It's not us deciding that we are not giving people the opportunity to go to work when they have that chance.

This is just Republicans being out of touch with what, you know, regular Americans go through every single day, struggling to feed their children, keep roofs over their heads and pay their basic bills.

KEILAR: I want to turn to a different subject now, because federal investigators are examining records of communications between members of Congress and the pro-Trump mob that attacked the capitol. No wrongdoing uncovered so far. But this is in progress. And we don't

know what the findings are going to be exactly.

But what do you know about this?

OMAR: I mean, we don't know much. We are, you know, learning bits and pieces.

You know, this investigation into the events of January 6th. The insurrection and the rebellion against our government is not something that is going to happen in a month or two. It might ultimately take a year.

But, you know, what we're learning right now is quite disturbing. It's something that many of us have feared. And I -- I'm hopeful that the investigation will be done diligently and, ultimately, we will know what the results of that investigation are.

KEILAR: Do you have reason to believe that any of your fellow lawmakers may have communicated with the members of the mob?

OMAR: So we know from reports and their presence in the events prior to January, the January 6th insurrection, that many of them have been credited by the folks who have organized the march for helping get people there.

And so you can make some sort of correlation to, you know, whether those people who have been mentioned in previous reports will be indicted or indicated in some of the investigations that are happening right now.

We ultimately, you know, have to reserve our opinions on this and just wait for the results of the investigation, because we don't want to jeopardize, you know, this investigation that's taking place.

[14:45:06]

But it's been really alarming to learn. And it's been alarming to see just the number of Republicans that are condemning the fact that there's even investigations into members of Congress, in this regard.

KEILAR: You've been calling for accountability from Saudi Arabia.

The Biden administration concluded that the Saudi crown prince is responsible for the death of "Washington Post" columnist, Jamal Khashoggi, yet President Biden passed on the chance to otherwise hold him accountable.

What message does that send to you?

OMAR: I think every minute that MbS escapes punishment is a moment where the United States interest in human rights and Saudi citizens are at risk.

You know, if the United States truly supports freedom of expression, democracy, human rights, there's no reason not to sanctions MbS. And our own intelligence found approved a murder of a U.S. resident

and a Saudi journalist by the crown prince.

Khashoggi's murder is something we already decided to sanction others for. And in any measure of law and order, we don't just punish those who carry out the murder. We also punish those that sanction the murder.

And in this situation, we must do everything that we can to keep those values and principles intact.

KEILAR: Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, thank you so much for being with us.

OMAR: Thank you so much for having me.

KEILAR: Next, a Latina councilwoman was right in the middle of talking about COVID's racial disparity when two people in her Zoom meeting started mocking her accent while they were unmuted. She'll join us live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:51:35]

KEILAR: An investigation is now under way after a Zoom call to discuss racial disparities in one Maryland county's COVID vaccine rollout allegedly turned racist when two Montgomery, Maryland, County staffers left themselves unmuted and mocked a Latina council member's accent as she led the conversation.

I want you to hear this. And it's hard to understand what the two unseen staffers are saying on the recording, so we had it captioned. You can read their comments as you listen to the council member speaking.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NANCY NAVARRO, (D), MONTGOMERY COUNTY, MARYLAND, COUNCIL MEMBER: We're still perceived as a totally -- it's like -- we're like some other hologram of a county that doesn't look anything --

UNIDENTIFIED STAFFER: I love how her accent comes out.

NAVARRO: -- of what actually -- who we actually are.

UNIDENTIFIED STAFFER: And pronounces words that she thinks that they're pronounced.

NAVARRO: And for some reason, it gets perpetuated at the state level. I mean, we're the most diverse county. We're the large one.

UNIDENTIFIED STAFFER: I heard "hologram," and I was like, that's good.

NAVARRO: We understand that these issues have proceeded and we've responded to that.

(LAUGHTER)

UNIDENTIFIED STAFFER: So cute.

NAVARRO: We've done that without guidance or support from the state.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: I am now joined by that Montgomery County, Maryland, council member, Nancy Navarro.

It looks like you didn't hear them at the time, Council Member. How did this come to your attention?

NAVARRO: Well, you know, you're right. I did not hear it as I was speaking. I was actually responding to a comment made by our health officers where we were discussing the glaring disparities in vaccination rates among our black and Latino population.

At this moment, only 11 percent of our black population and 8 percent of the Latino population have been vaccinated. And when you compare that to our white population at 53 percent, we have a lot of work to do.

But it's been difficult because our vaccine distribution, of course, is guided by the state. And so I was making that comment. And I was, you know, pleading with the state to please pay more attention and allow us at the local level to lead our counties because we know our communities.

And when we then paused for our lunch recess, because this was our weekly legislative session, my staff contacted me and said, listen, something happened.

Because actually some people did notice. People that were listening did notice. But they were also laughing when someone else was speaking.

So that's how I learned about it. And it was -- it was just a very -- it was a startling situation at first.

Because, of course, I am very passionate about these issues of racial equity and social justice --

KEILAR: Yes.

NAVARRO: -- especially in light of this pandemic and -- and having led the work to pass the racial equity and social justice legislation in 2019.

KEILAR: Yes, yes.

NAVARRO: And we have done a lot to address these issues. And at this point, it's a matter of life and death.

KEILAR: It certainly is.

Look, we've covered that a lot on this show as well, hugely important issues.

I do want to ask you because, unfortunately, I'm running out of time here. I want to know what you want to come of this.

H.R. is investigating. The council is supporting you in a statement. The media company that employed the man at least has condemned his actions.

What do you want to come of this?

NAVARRO: Well, I think that the investigation and the process should run its course, and I think appropriate disciplinary action should be put into place.

But I also think that we need to be very serious about things like staff diversity and things like, you know, actual training and spaces that are safe for our black and brown staffing.

[14:55:01]

Because these are analysts. These are people that also have an influence in how decision-makers go about their business, how we serve our residents this. All is very connected.

And it struck a chord because people are actually writing to me from all over the country expressing support. But also, they see themselves reflected in this particular moment in terms of how they are perceived, how their accent is perceived or how people are otherized.

So, I think for us, as policymakers, is things we have to take very seriously because they are additive. People talk about microaggressions and these are additive. And the result in this particular decision making informs policy.

But I'm not surprised right now we are encountering such disparities during this horrible time with COVID-19. This is nothing new.

And I think that there are dots here that we are connecting so it is my hope that, you know, the leadership of the council, the staff leadership as well, that they take appropriate measures to ensure that this doesn't happen again.

And that our, you know, staffers of color are treated with respect and that there's a safe environment for them as well.

KEILAR: Council Member, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this.

We're back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)