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Iran's President-Elect Says He Won't Meet with Biden; U.S. to Announce New Round of Russian Sanctions over Navalny; Florida Governor Beats Trump in Straw Poll; American Airlines Cutting Flights as Demand Jumps; Airlines Ask Justice Department to Handle Unruly Passenger Cases; Steve Edwards, President & CEO, CoxHealth, Discusses Low Vaccination Rates, Rising Hospitalizations in Greene County, Missouri. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired June 21, 2021 - 13:30   ET

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

[13:30:00]

MARK MAZZETTI, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, there's no question that the in-coming president is an extreme hardliner. He has come up through the ranks of the Iranian bureaucracy since the revolution. And his views on the West, his views toward others in the region are well-known.

But interestingly, you know, in terms of the prospects of the nuclear deal, both sides being the U.S. and Iran, do want to have some kind of a deal.

Recall that when the Trump administration ripped up the deal, they made this argument that we're going to impose extreme sanctions on Iran. Had a so-called maximum pressure campaign.

And this is going to bring Iran to the bargaining table and we'll get a better deal. That didn't happen, of course.

Here we are in the Biden administration, and the administration wants to get broadly a similar deal they had during the Obama administration. They'd like to lengthen it and make it stronger.

And Iran does wants to get relief from some of the sanctions.

Even with the hardline president, it appears there's an opportunity for the different sides, and, of course, the Europeans as well, to negotiate some kind of new framework for a longer-term deal.

ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: You touched on this a little bit, but when we look at what's happened since the U.S. pulled out of the deal, Iran has returned to enriching uranium at the highest levels ever.

Do you see this new deal being different from the previous one? And do you feel like one side or the other has leverage?

MAZZETTI: Well, the -- I mean, certainly the U.S. knows that Iran wants to get out from under the weight of these sanctions.

At the same time, Iran knows that the Biden administration does want to put a deal in place that the predecessor ripped up. So there's leverage on both sides.

Of course, the other actor we haven't named here is Israel, which has spent the last several years with this covert campaign to try to sabotage the Iran nuclear program.

But, as you said, Iran has only bolstered the nuclear capability since the nuclear deal was torn up by the Trump administration. Even despite the Israeli setbacks.

So, yes, Iran has pushed. Recent intelligence assessments say Iran is closer to having enough highly enriched uranium. That doesn't mean they have the technological capability to do it.

But Iran does have leverage here because they have proceeded apace with the nuclear programs since the Trump administration decided to pivot the deal.

CABRERA: Let's pivot to Russia for a moment. The Russian ambassador to the U.S. returned to Washington last night.

And this, as national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, is telling CNN the U.S. is preparing more sanctions against Russia over the poisoning of Alexei Navalny.

What do you make of the timing of this announcement on the sanctions? Do you think President Biden gave this up and gave Putin an ultimatum during the summit?

MAZZETTI: President Biden sort of said publicly he challenged Putin on Navalny. And he said that if Navalny dies in prison, this is going to be very bad for Russia.

CABRERA: Devastating.

MAZZETTI: They are on the record saying they intend to impose more sanctions on Russia regarding the Navalny case.

The Biden position is well-known. Of course, we know what the Putin position is about internal domestic disputes that he can do what he wants.

I mean, I think there's an interesting element here where we're beyond the sort of bizarro world of the last four years where you had a Republican president being very nice to a Russian president and calling the Democrats out for being Russia hawks.

And polls show that Republicans actually had a better attitude toward Russia than Democrats.

We're kind of resetting to sort of a more normal politics here where the Biden administration is looking for some outreach to Putin. And it's Republicans, Republican lawmakers, who are basically criticizing for being soft on Russia.

So there's an incentive for Biden to keep up the pressure on Putin. Some which they wanted to already do. But now there's now Republican pressure to do that, which we didn't have during the Trump administration.

CABRERA: It still feels like a bizarro world in so many ways.

Mark Mazzetti, thank you for joining us.

MAZZETTI: OK, thank you.

[13:34:28]

CABRERA: Florida's governor trumps Trump in a new 2024 straw poll. That election, of course, is still years away. But does it signal anything about the Republican Party now? That's next.

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CABRERA: The talk about 2024 Republican contenders began as soon as the last election ended. So much of the conversation, of course, has been centered around another possible run by former President Trump.

But the results of a new poll may actually steer the conversation in a different direction.

CNN's senior political writer and analyst, Harry Enten, is here to break down the numbers.

Are you surprised by the results?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL WRITER & ANALYST: I have to admit that I am.

You know, look, this is a straw poll. It's not scientific. It's a poll of activists. But activists oftentimes lead the way of how the rest of the public feels.

[13:40:04]

This is in the west. And what it essentially found was that -- it asked do you approve of this person going for president. You could list many different things.

Look at this. Ron DeSantis, up ahead, 74 percent approved of him for president in 2024. Just 71 percent approved of Donald Trump. Look at Mike Pence, all the way back at 22 percent. For a former V.P., that's awfully weak.

The national polling picture gives you a pretty good understanding of what's going on.

Look, Donald Trump is still ahead when you ask about Donald Trump, 50 percent. Mike Pence back at 10 percent. DeSantis back at 8 percent.

But look at the polls when Donald Trump is not asked. Look at that. Ron DeSantis ahead of Mike Pence. He's at 24 percent.

For something, just a few years ago, really not particularly well known and is just the governor of Florida but ahead of a former V.P.? That's a quite a strong showing, at least in my opinion.

CABRERA: What's that all about? Why do you think the Florida governor is getting so much traction?

ENTEN: Well, for one thing, he's getting mentioned a lot in the media. Right? If we learned anything from 2016, what we know is that the media can oftentimes drive momentum.

And Ron DeSantis, on FOX News and FOX Business, 456 mentions over the last two months. That's ahead of Ted Cruz. That's well ahead of Mike Pence, 116, or Nikki Haley, with just 55, who is another person getting mentioned.

I think part of what's going on here is there are a lot of folks very upset with Mike Pence. And I think we have a little sound from that from a little speech he was giving.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm deeply humbled by it.

(SHOUTING)

PENCE: The referee knows me well enough to know --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ENTEN: Oh. That is something for you right there.

And I think this gives you an understanding of that Mike Pence, there's a little portion within the Republican Party right now who is not very happy with him.

And why is that? I think this slide will give you an indication of it.

What do Republicans want? Well, look at this, 61 percent of Republican voters think the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump. Just 40 percent say the January 6th protesters were not mostly peaceful.

Remember, Mike Pence led over the Senate when they were basically confirming Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election.

Versus somebody like Ron DeSantis. What is he talking about? He's talking about cancel culture, if you bring up that slide again. He's talking about the fact that we're not going to have vaccine passports. And both of those are very popular with Republican voters.

And so DeSantis is talking about the things Republicans like, while Mike Pence, not in the good stay with them at this point.

CABRERA: The numbers and those topics that correlate with the percentages are very interesting.

Thank you, Harry Enten. And we'll keep watch on how that develops moving forward closer to 2042. Travel is making a comeback. But it's forcing one airline to make a

cutback. We explain, next.

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CABRERA: Air travel is back up to the highest level since March of 2020. More than six million travelers were screened at U.S. airports this weekend.

So why is American Airlines cutting hundreds of flights?

CNN aviation correspondent, Pete Muntean, is with us now.

Pete, why so many cancellations?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION ANALYST: Well, Ana, passengers should not really be caught by surprise by this because airlines have been caught by surprise by just the sheer volume of people coming back to commercial air travel right now.

The TSA screened 2 .1 million people at airports across the country on Sunday. That's a new record of the pandemic, the highest number we've seen since March 7, 2020.

And the fifth time this month that we've seen numbers higher than two million. And that's so significant because that two million number is about 75 percent of where we were back in 2019 pre-pandemic.

But American Airlines is struggling to keep up with the surge in demand. Also other factors, maintenance problems, weather problems, they've been bad in June. Also some staffing issues.

So it had to cancel about 6 percent of the flights on Sunday, 188 flights in total.

And now the airline is going one step further, taking a proactive measure by canceling some flights through the middle of July -- 1 percent of all flights. That's about 50 to 80 flights each day.

And that's so significant because it's a bit of a targeted approach. The airline wants to simply catch its breath, make sure people can get on the flights.

It can rebook you on a different flight earlier or later. And it's trying to give people a lot of notice here.

But you could be entitled to a refund if your flight is different by more than a few hours.

It's something to keep in mind, these growing pains as airlines are struggling to get back to normal after they were severely depressed by the pandemic. The airlines got a lot smaller.

CABRERA: Gosh, if people are going to a wedding, a few hours could make or break your ability to participate.

You have information about the surge in unruly passengers. Fill us in.

MUNTEAN: It's interesting here. The airline groups, trade groups and the labor groups, are telling the FAA and the Department of Justice that it should be the Department of Justice handling this big uptick in unruly passengers.

Three thousand incidents reported to the FAA. And it's initiated enforcement action in a small fraction of those, about 57 individual cases.

And the FAA says it's up to local law enforcement to press charges in most of the cases. Usually, they meet an unruly passenger at the gate.

But now the groups are telling the FAA and DOJ that the federal government should get involved in a larger way, even though the FAA has had a zero-tolerance policy on this since earlier this year.

[13:50:03]

CABRERA: Pete Muntean, thank you.

We turn now to the dangers of low vaccination rates in communities. Greene County, Missouri, is one of the areas. Right now, only 36 percent of people there have had at least one dose. And hospitalizations are spiking.

June, so far, seeing more COVID patients than any of the three previous months.

One hospital CEO says his facility is now more full than it was in the peak of winter.

With us now is that CEO, Steve Edwards, CEO of CoxHealth.

Thanks for being with us.

Why do you think things are so bad right now? Describe what you're experiencing?

STEVE EDWARDS, PRESIDENT & CEO, COXHEALTH: Well, we've seen now, in four and a half weeks, almost a six-fold increase in COVID patients. We were sitting around 14. We're at 83 this morning.

It appears to be related to the Delta variant. We began to get news of it about five weeks ago. Maybe three weeks ago. It is 10 percent of those sequenced. And as of last week, it appeared to be 90 percent. So I think it is the Delta variant.

And there's a lot of kindling with low vaccination rates so we're seeing it expand rapidly. And we're seeing this sort of unexpected increase in cases. We never imagined this big of an increase.

CABRERA: And 90 percent due to the Delta variant, which we know is more transmissible and also leads to more severe infection. What can you tell us about the patients you're seeing? Are they

younger? Are some of them vaccinated? What are they telling you?

EDWARDS: Yes, we're seeing younger patients. We're seeing them sicker. And we're seeing them arrive at our facility later in the disease process, which limits some of the therapies we can do.

We are seeing some breakthrough infections. But almost always, those breakthrough infections are patients that are asymptomatic or really nothing much more severe than a cold.

I think we've had one patient with a breakthrough infection with COVID pneumonia. And that patient's immune system was severely compromised. So a very unique case.

But almost all of our cases are unvaccinated people that, in my opinion, have put themselves in harm's way during the pandemic.

CABRERA: Shocking to hear that your hospital is fuller now than in the peak of winter when we know our country as a whole was going through a really difficult time because of the pandemic.

The following winter, you also had traveling nurses to help with the patient load. Do you have the staff you need right now to face this new surge?

EDWARDS: We don't. We had 290 traveling nurses and respiratory therapists this winter, which augmented our staff. We didn't turn away any patients. We're a regional referral center so we really couldn't.

We have the benefit now of having regional hospitals that are not going through the surge so there's that help.

But our staff is exhausted. I think the culture, the morale has changed.

I would say, in January, there was a sense that we are going to battle to protect people that are vulnerable. We will risk our own wellbeing.

And it is harder to know that you're risking your wellbeing for someone who chose not to vaccinate and then puts you and them at risk. So that is sort of heartbreaking for our staff.

And we find that -- and this is really new information. That seasonality of traveling nurses. They just aren't available. So many take the summer off to be with their kids. So we're having a hard time getting staffing.

So there's two major hospitals in Springfield. We work together. We're both full. We're full.

Our COVID sense is lower than in January, although it is rising quickly. But we also have a lot of deferred cases. People that were reluctant to seek care and now they've come in for more routine medicine. And they're more acutely ill.

So --

(CROSSTALK)

EDWARDS: -- as well.

CABRERA: A tweet of yours caught my eye. You wrote this, "If you could simply take a shot that would eliminate your chance of dying from cancer and it was safe, would you do it?"

That seems like no brainer, right? Why do you think vaccine rates are so low in Greene County?

EDWARDS: Yes. That tweet originated -- I was looking at the leading causes of death in America, knowing that we're dealing with a lot of cancer patients. And knowing we've lost more people to COVID than to cancer. So how wonderful it would be to have that vaccine.

The Missouri Hospital Association did a polling data to look at reluctance and hesitancy of our population and identify those groups that seemed most hesitant.

They answered the question: Unlikely to take the vaccine. It is rural, white, white evangelicals.

Uninsured and people without a college education seem to be the highest risk in our area, the highest hesitancy. And that does describe a lot of our rural area.

Although, we're based in Springfield, Missouri, three quarters of our business comes from the counties outlying us, which are more challenged socioeconomically.

[13:55:08]

CABRERA: Wow!

Well, Steve Edwards, let's keep in touch. Wishing you the very best as you continue through this trying time with the COVID pandemic.

EDWARDS: Thank you.

Thank you.

EDWARDS: Thank you, Ana. Appreciate it.

CABRERA: And thank you all for being with me today. I'll see you back here tomorrow at 1:00 p.m. Eastern. In the meantime, please follow me on Twitter, @AnaCabrera.

The news continues next with Alisyn and Victor.

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