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Milley Faces Questions on The Hill; Pfizer Gives FDA Data on Vaccine for Children; GOP Blocks Bill to Fund Government. Aired 9- 9:30a ET

Aired September 28, 2021 - 09:00   ET

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

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[09:00:45]

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good Tuesday morning to you. I'm Erica Hill.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

This morning, the demand for answers in the aftermath of a chaotic withdraw. Just minutes ago, top military leaders arriving, as you see there, on Capitol Hill. Senate lawmakers expected to challenge them about the U.S. withdraw from Afghanistan and much more.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley and U.S. CENTCOM Commander General Frank McKenzie all set to give their first public testimony since the Biden administration officially pulled all U.S. forces out last month.

HILL: And all three men will face tough questions starting with the terror attack at Kabul's airport that killed 13 American service members, as well as the botched drone strike that killed ten civilians, including seven children, in the final days of the evacuation. General McKenzie ultimately admitting that strike was a tragic mistake.

But the hearings focus likely to go far beyond the end of America's longest war. General Milley also expected to address revelations from a new book that detailed actions he took in the final months of the Trump presidency, including calls to his Chinese counterparts to assure them the United States was not planning an attack.

Heading into today's hearing, some Republicans have accused Milley of treason, called for his resignation for what they see as going out of the chain of command.

Let's begin on Capitol Hill this morning, CNN's Jessica Dean is there.

So, Jessica, General Milley will certainly be at the center of today's hearing. What more are we expecting this morning?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, you really laid out such a perfect map there, Erica, because we are expecting this testimony and this hearing to be highly charged because of all the reasons you just addressed. First, of course, they're going to talk about the withdraw from Afghanistan. This is the first time that lawmakers, Senate lawmakers, are going to have the chance to ask General Milley those questions that they have been wanting to ask him now for several weeks. And you said, some have called for even his resignation over some of these things and also some of the revelations in this new book from Bob Woodward and Robert Costa called "Peril."

We do expect for this hearing to widen out and include some questions, probably a lot of questions, about various stories and incidents that are involved in that book, including two back channel calls that were reported that General Milley made to his counterparts in China when intelligence revealed that China thought the U.S. was going to attack. Milley says he was calling his counterparts to calm them down, to reassure them. These kind of chaotic days, final days of the Trump presidency.

Now, former and current defense members have said that this is pretty standard, that this did not go outside the chain of command, that this was -- he was just trying to calm down the Chinese at this moment. But lawmakers really want to dig into this and they want to know more about what happened in these last days of the Trump presidency and why Milley was doing this, and if he acted appropriately.

We also know that there were exchanges between Milley and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. There's an excerpt in the book, I'll read you a short part. It says, and this is Speaker Pelosi now speaking, she says, what I'm saying to you is that if they couldn't even stop him, that's former President Trump, from an assault of the Capitol, who even knows what else he may do. And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt over this? Pelosi continued, you know he's crazy and he's been crazy a long time, to which Woodward and Costa say that Milley continued, Madam Speaker, I agree with you on everything.

So, Erica, there is a lot to cover. I know we'll be taking this live and that people will be able to watch as this unfolds. We'll certainly be keeping an eye on this as well.

HILL: Yes, absolutely.

Jessica Dean, appreciate it.

Joining us now to discuss, chief political correspondent Dana Bash, CNN international correspondent Clarissa Ward, joining us live from Kabul, and also with us Brigadier General Mark Kimmett, former assistant secretary of state for political and military affairs.

SCIUTTO: Dana, why don't we begin with you on the question of China here, because there is a legitimate question as to what exactly former President Trump was planning or considering during the final days of his presidency here. I know that the focus has been on General Milley perhaps planning to defy an order from the president for military action that he did not want to carry out.

[09:05:05] But there was a separate question here, knowing what the president seemed to be willing to do to overturn an election, was he willing to start a crisis to somehow stay in office?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Could be, and it is going to be the first time that anybody has been able to ask General Milley that very question, and others.

Look, the bulk of this hearing is going to be on the 20-year war that ended in Afghanistan. But I have been in touch with some sources, some committee sources, and one said to me the following on China, most wars start by accident, miscalculation or misunderstanding. Preventing that is a major responsibility of our military leaders.

So, I would expect, at least one or some of the senators, to come at it that way and not just, you know, how hard was it to deal with then President Trump, but what did you have to deal with and how did you and why did you make this decision? If he'll go there, if he'll go there, because, you know, look, he is going to be under oath.

But this is oversight. And part of congressional oversight is to learn what exactly goes on in the executive branch. And this is a big one.

SCIUTTO: Yes. No question.

BASH: Yes.

HILL: To Dana's point there, General Kimmitt, how -- how forthcoming do you expect them to be today?

BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Well, they'll be under testimony, they'll be under oath. They swore at their confirmation hearings that they would be objective and they'd be honest with congressional committees if asked. That's asked of everyone that is being considered under the advise and consent rules. So, I would expect them to be candid, but I also would expect them to be guarded.

SCIUTTO: We also have Clarissa Ward with us, we should note, from Afghanistan, from Kabul today. And as we've noted, this is the first time they will be speaking under oath as well on the withdraw from Afghanistan.

And, Clarissa, it's been notable that no Biden administration official to this point has owned this, frankly, or admitted any degree of failure. They continue to describe the evacuation as a great victory, right, and the withdraw as necessary, which may be true, there are some who support that. But the scenes we saw, people clinging to the sides of airplanes, some of them falling to their deaths, no one can describe that as a success.

I wonder, as you look at the situation on the ground there, what is the hardest question that Milley, Austin and McKenzie must face today?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, I think that the question that many Afghan people very much want to ask, Jim, because there is still a huge amount of bitterness and a lot of heartache and a lot of anger, how did this happen? Were the appropriate preparations made? Was the U.S. military caught completely off guard? Had it anticipated, had it created a worst-case scenario in the event that the Afghan army would crumble as quickly as it had? How is it possible that people around the world had been told by President Biden that we would not see chaotic scenes like the one -- like the ones in Saigon at the end of the Vietnam War again, and, yet the scenes that we saw and that we witnessed firsthand on the ground were much more chaotic, were much more horrifying. People killed in stampedes. People killed in drone strikes. People killed by terrorist attacks. Women with small babies being crushed, throwing their children over the razor wire in their desperation to get their children out safely to a better future. These were scenes of absolute chaos.

And I think the question everybody wants to know is, how can we call this an extraordinary success, as the Biden administration has done? Obviously, the understanding is that a huge amount of people, the largest airlift evacuation in history, were rescued safely, and that is certainly something to tout as an achievement. But that does not detract from the horrors that we saw on the ground as this withdraw was happening. And I think a lot of people want to know how on earth could this have happened. Who was responsible and how can such a thing be avoided ever again from happening in the future?

Obviously, there's no easy answers, Jim, when you're talking about ending a war. And hindsight's 20/20 and it's easy to be an armchair critic and all of those things. But, nonetheless, today is a day to try to get some accountability for how this was executed in a way that really was chaotic, and for many people traumatic.

HILL: You know, Dana, to that point, with so many serious questions, that as Clarissa pointed out, aren't always easy to answer, but with so many serious questions that have been raised by lawmakers on both sides, and everything we're hearing, not surprisingly, about how, in Jessica Dean's words, highly charged, how tense this is expected to be, is there a sense, Dana, that we're going to see a little bit less grandstanding and politicking today at this hearing than we have in recent times?

[09:10:11]

Will this be, you think, more substantive? Will the questioning be more pointed?

BASH: The first, possibly. The second question, yes. According to sources I'm talking to on this committee, we should expect very pointed questions. Pointed and grandstanding go -- could go hand in hand.

But I think what you're trying to get at is that, you know, a lot of times in these hearings, unfortunately, they're meant for oversight and we -- we hear speeches that members can clip off and use for -- for political purposes. This might be one of those cases where they're not mutually exclusive, where you will see points of view from -- from the dais, but real fact finding, because there is -- there are a lot of facts to be found, as Clarissa was talking about. One GOP source I was -- I was talking to said, look, we don't know

even, and I'm not sure they're going to actually get this from Milley, even if it is true that the military was on board with this withdraw, the way the Biden administration says they were, or the opposite, or maybe somewhere in the middle, those are the kinds of questions that you're going to see asked and -- and those are facts that the American people really want and deserve.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I mean the big question, will it be fact finding or meme finding, right, in these questions?

General Kimmitt, we do know that at least early on that some of the president's most senior military leaders advised keeping at least a small footprint there, the bottom, the floor that they had recommended, around 2,500, counterterror, intelligence gathering, also to back up the Afghan military, sort of confidence building.

KIMMITT: Sure.

SCIUTTO: I wonder, if it's a fair question, as this hearing begins, was General Milley right to recommend that?

KIMMITT: I think so. And I think the obvious example of that is in Iraq. When we came back in, in 2014, we had a very light footprint, about that same 2,500 troops in Iraq, doing the same thing, providing intelligence, providing advisory support, providing logistic support. And look at the tremendous work that was done by the American military. But, more importantly, by the Iraqi security forces in destroying ISIS inside. A small investment, high payoff.

SCIUTTO: That's the theory.

General Kimmitt, thanks so much.

Everyone, please stay with us.

HILL: Again, just moments away now from what is expected to be this tense hearing. We are going to bring that to you live as soon as it begins.

SCIUTTO: But, first, another step toward getting vaccines approved for five to 11-year-old children. Pfizer just submitted its initial data to the FDA about the shots. That's an important step.

And on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi changed her strategy, notably. She's called for a vote on infrastructure this week, even though Democrats still don't have a deal on President Biden's larger budget proposal. And now former President Obama is weighing in on the negotiations as well.

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[09:17:33]

SCIUTTO: New this morning, and some good news for parents, Pfizer has submitted initial data to the FDA on its COVID-19 vaccine for children ages five to 11. We should note, however, that the company is holding off for now on requesting Emergency Use Authorization, saying that could come in the next several weeks.

HILL: CNN's senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joining us now.

So, Elizabeth, how are we supposed to read this, this previous data released on the trials for the vaccine showed, of course, it was both effective and safe. They submitted data, but they're not officially asking for the EUA. What do we make of it?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: That we're on our way. And that this will happen, but that it hasn't quite happened yet. So, as you said, Pfizer says that over the next couple of weeks, in the next few weeks, that they expect to be applying for Emergency Use Authorization from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but they haven't done that yet. All they've done is submit data, and we don't even know what that data is.

So, let's talk about what we do know and what we don't know.

Here's what we do know. Pfizer, last week, put out a press release saying that they did a clinical trial with more than 2,200 participants, those children ages five to 11 were given one-third the dose given to adults and that the vaccine was safe and that the children had a robust antibody response according to Pfizer.

But here's what we don't know. The real thing, the thing that we really want to know here, is when children got the vaccine, were they less likely to contract COVID and get sick from it compared to children who were given a placebo, just a shot of saline that does nothing. That's what's going to be interesting to the FDA. The antibody stuff, I mean, that's good to know, but what you really want to know is, did the vaccine work, did it protect children? And, of course, everyone is asking, what's the timeline here?

So, again, Pfizer says they are a few weeks away, or could be within the next few weeks, applying for Emergency Use Authorization.

Let's look at what happened with adults once they did apply for that Emergency Use Authorization. So if we look back at the end of last year, on November 20th, Pfizer applied for Emergency Use Authorization, and the FDA gave them that authorization just three weeks later on December 11th.

So once Pfizer applies, it's -- it could be just really quite quick for them to get the authorization and won't necessarily be just like the adults, but it could happen in a matter of weeks.

Erica. Jim.

SCIUTTO: Elizabeth, though, there had been talk about approval before Halloween. If it's weeks before they ask for the Emergency Use, and it takes about three weeks afterwards, it doesn't look like before Halloween.

[09:20:08]

COHEN: Well, you could -- it's kind of -- it's hard to read the tea leaves. The way that Pfizer has worded this, it's something to the effect that we could, within the next few weeks. I mean if they applied tomorrow, could they have it by Halloween? Sure. If they apply a month from now, no, they're not going to have it by Halloween.

SCIUTTO: OK.

HILL: Elizabeth Cohen, appreciate it, as always.

SCIUTTO: Well, it is crunch time in D.C. on Capitol Hill, yet again. The next two days critical for President Biden's economic agenda. Life or death, perhaps, politically.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi relentless in her push to get a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill as progressives still threaten to torpedo that if the House fails at the very same time to take up the multitrillion dollar budget bill.

HILL: So, this morning, President Obama, yes, President Obama trying to rally Democrats and sell Biden's Build Back Better plan.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: When you look at the overall package, you know, it's got a headline price tag of $3.5 trillion, but that's not a single year. This is spread out over a number of years.

As far as Democrats are concerned, I think President Biden is handling it exactly right.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: So you feel confident it's going to pass?

OBAMA: I believe that it will get done. It will be messy, as it's always messy to get big, serious legislation done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Definitely feeling a little messy.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: All of this, of course, as a government shutdown looms.

CNN congressional correspondent Lauren Fox following all of the latest developments.

Keeping you on your toes there, Lauren.

So, where do we stand this morning? LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, on this bipartisan

infrastructure bill there was a little bit of a shift last night from the House speaker. In that private meeting with her caucus, she really relayed the message that, look, at this point, given what we know about those Democratic moderates in the Senate, we may not be able to pass reconciliation through the Senate and get it to the House floor in time before this bipartisan infrastructure bill.

If you've been reading the tea leaves, you knew that that was likely going to be the case for a couple of days now. But she said that. That was her message to her caucus. But she's still urging progressives to vote yes on that bipartisan infrastructure bill.

At this point, many of them are still holding out, saying that they plan to vote against that bipartisan infrastructure bill when it comes to the House floor on Thursday for a vote. That's significant, right, because this is something that was hard fought in the Senate to get through. Then, of course, it had the blessing of the president. A lot of questions about how much muscle is Biden going to put into this. Is he going to start calling progressives? Is he going to make sure that folks are coming to the White House, meeting with him, making it clear that this is his agenda and, yes, they are hoping to get to the bigger bill, but not yet.

Meanwhile, this is all happening within that backdrop of the government shutdown that's looming. And I think that that has been a major thing this week because, as the end of the day, if the bipartisan infrastructure bill doesn't pass, nothing happens to the country per se in the immediate aftermath. If the government funding bill doesn't pass, you have a government shutdown.

Last night in the Senate, there was that vote that Republicans blocked that would have increased the country's borrowing limit and funded the government to mid-December. Now, of course, we know that there is going to be a question of how quickly Democrats can move in the Senate to try to do this as a standalone bill. Will it pass? Can they accidentally fall into a government shutdown? These are the questions because there's only about 60 hours until we get to that shutdown.

Jim and Erica.

SCIUTTO: Notable to see at least two progressives yesterday say that they would vote infrastructure first, but many others digging their feet in.

Lauren Fox, on The Hill, thanks very much.

We are just learning that another progressive, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, told reporters as she walked into the Democratic caucus meeting, that she is still a no on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, quote, unless I get some new information here. The question is to how much, how specific? Just a framework? We'll see.

Next, we're going to take you back to Capitol Hill as General Mark Milley is set to answer tough questions, or at least be asked them, about the Afghanistan withdraw and revelations that he made several calls to China in the final days of the Trump presidency.

HILL: Plus, we are also just moments away from the opening bell on Wall Street. Stock futures lower this morning amid growing concerns about inflation. Crude oil prices continue to rise. Natural gas prices are soaring as many parts of the world are in an energy crunch. Investors will also be watching to see if Democrats can get any of President Biden's agenda across the finish line this week.

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[09:29:31]

SCIUTTO: You're looking at live pictures now from Capitol Hill. Any moment now senators on the Armed Services Committee will get their first chance to ask hard questions, under oath, to senior military officials about the chaotic U.S. withdraw from Afghanistan and lots of other questions, Erica.

HILL: Yes, absolutely.

Tensions expected to be high on both sides of the aisle. Both Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin already facing calls from some Republican lawmakers to resign.

[09:30:00]

Let's bring everyone back in now.

As we look at what could be coming in terms of questioning, Dana, I'm curious, based on what we heard from Secretary Blinken.