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October Jobs Numbers; Preparations to Vote on Capitol Hill; Pfizer's Experimental Pill Highly Effective; Dr. Carlos Del Rio is Interviewed about Pfizer's New COVID Pill; John Negroponte Remembers Colin Powell. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired November 05, 2021 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

SHIRLEY RAINES, CNN HERO: Because I have a fresh cut.

Good to see y'all. Happy Saturday, team.

I address them as kings and queens, because that is who they are. We want to make them feel beautiful.

What you want? Hair? Haircut? Hair? OK.

When they say they're broken, I am too. They're, like, how did you get fixed? I'm not. I take Prozac, 20 milligrams, every day! What the heck? I ain't fixed, child. I ain't fixed at all. I'm not going to lie to you and tell you things are going to be better now, but what I am going to do is feed you while you're out here. What I am going to do is do your hair. What I am going to is give you a hug. What I am going to do is encourage you and speak life into you. And that's what I can do.

That was Miki (ph) on the mic, you guys, give her a hand! Give her a hand! Give her a hand!

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN BERMAN: Go to cnnheroes.com right now to vote for any of your favorite top ten heroes. Again, that's cnnheroes.com.

And CNN's coverage continues right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good, busy Friday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Erica Hill. It certainly is a busy Friday morning.

Let's begin with some breaking news on the U.S. economy. The Labor Department announcing the U.S. added 531,000 jobs last month. That's a pretty significant increase from a disappointing August and September. We should note too, numbers for those months were actually revised higher. This jobs report beating analysts' expectations. The unemployment rate, as you see there, now down to 4.6 percent. Just ahead I'm going to speak with Labor Secretary Marty Walsh about those new numbers. That's coming up this hour.

SCIUTTO: That's right, big numbers this month, revisions upward for the last two months.

We are also expecting to hear from President Joe Biden this morning. He's set to address the impressive jobs numbers, as well as the prospect that his economic agenda could -- could become a reality today. We're going to have important votes during our hours. Right now, debate around the Build Back Better plan, as it's known, happening on the House floor. Today could finally be the day that its sweeping social safety net package and crucially the bipartisan infrastructure bill get a vote.

HILL: Yes, so, overnight, lawmakers resolving we know at least one major sticking point. And the White House released its estimate of just how this would impact the deficit. So, they're close, but, again, they're not there yet. We're going to take you live to Capitol Hill with much more on that ahead in just a moment.

SCIUTTO: All right, so lots of stuff to cover today. Thankfully, we've got lots of reporters who cover this stuff standing by to bring you the latest.

Let's begin with CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans.

So, Christine, I mean, first of all, a big number above forecast after several -- several numbers below forecast.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Yes.

SCIUTTO: But also revisions upward for the last couple of months.

ROMANS: The picture here is very strong for hiring in October. And it's nice to see that that summer lull was not as bad as we thought. In normal pre-COVID times, this kind of a jobs report would have been historic, 531,000 net new jobs added back into the economy in October across the spectrum, and wages up 4.9 percent. That means people are go back to work and they're getting bigger paychecks.

When you look at the trend of the year, you can see that summer stall really and then roaring back here in October. These are numbers that economists tell me they expect will continue to pick up as we move into the later parts of the year as the delta variant is behind us and more and more people are vaccinated and people feel more comfortable going back to work and getting out there.

Looking at the unemployment rate, 4.6 percent, this is a very good number. At some point here we'll start to see the participation rate get a little bit better as people come off the sidelines, going -- trying to get into the labor market. But this is a very good number, and that is basically right back to where we were in March 2020, before the pandemic, we had a 3.5 percent unemployment rate. Guys, let me give you the big picture on the economy. This is the jobs

part of this picture. You have a stock market at record highs right now. You have home equity at record highs right now for so many people. Wages are gaining and we are on track for the best year for economic growth in a generation. So take the whole big picture here, we talk about the supply chain, we talk about gas prices. The big picture here is that the American economy writ large is back.

HILL: That is a picture that a lot of people would like to embrace this morning.

SCIUTTO: For sure.

HILL: Christine, thank you.

So that's one part of the morning.

A House vote, meantime, on President Biden's sweeping social safety net package and that bipartisan infrastructure bill could happen just a few hours from now.

Let's get straight to CNN Washington correspondent Sunlen Serfaty, who's on Capitol Hill.

So what's happening there on The Hill this morning, Sunlen?

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Well, Erica, right now, the wheels are starting to turn on the House floor. They will start by taking a series of procedural steps this morning, starting with debating on the rule for the social spending plan, then moving to a vote on that rule, then a vote on the final passage of the social safety net bill. Then moving for final passage on the infrastructure bill.

But this is going to certainly be an hours long process today.

[09:05:01]

And we're already seeing some moves by Republicans just in the hour that the House has already been convened this morning to gum up the works procedurally, essentially to try to slow down the process even more. So going to be a long day.

Now, going into the day today, Democratic leaders are confident, they feel good at where this is all headed, but there still are concerns out there and certainly very, very close margins. There are concerns among moderates who are unhappy at having to vote on this bill, the social safety net today, having to vote on it without having an official score from the nonpartisan CBO.

But one major sticking point that was resolved overnight in the flurry of last minute negotiations is over state and local tax deductions, which will now be capped at $80,000 a year according to sources.

Now, to note, where things are headed today. If and when the infrastructure bill passes, that is final passage. This was already passed in the Senate. So this will be sent to President Biden's desk for his signature and potentially signed into law later today.

But on the social spending package, that certainly has a longer road ahead. If it passes out of the House, it will be sent to the Senate, where they expect major changes to be made. So a long track road for that piece of legislation, even if it gets out of the House today.

Erica.

SCIUTTO: Sunlen, just quickly, given it's complicated up on The Hill how this stuff works, is the rules vote in effect the equivalent of passing the measure?

SERFATY: Absolutely. It's a great note, Jim. That is basically a key vote. That is what we are watching for today. If the rule gets passed through today, very likely it will be final passage of the social spending bill. So that is an important moment, a test vote ahead of the final one.

SCIUTTO: Understood. Important. We always have to translate how things work up on The Hill.

Sunlen Serfaty, thanks very much.

SERFATY: Thanks.

SCIUTTO: Let's go now to CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins.

Kaitlan, listen, it's shaping up, potentially, to be a very good day for the Biden administration. Not just the jobs figures, but possibly, right, finally moving on infrastructure and Build Back Better.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and if the president gets both of those, of course, this is going to be one of the most significant days of his presidency because it would not just be that bipartisan legislative victory that he'd likely get if they do pass this infrastructure bill as the House says they are on set to do -- set to do so right now, but also in addition with this jobs report.

And we know that we are going to hear from President Biden here in the next hour on the jobs report numbers. He is already scheduled to give those remarks. And, obviously, this is going to be something where the White House is really looking forward to these remarks compared to in the past where they've tried to spin them when it's been months where it's undercut the assessment. And so this is some really good news for the White House if they can get both of these today.

And, of course, importantly, it comes in the context of several weeks that have not been good for the president. So it is very welcome, I think, inside the West Wing to not only see this jobs report, but also if they can get this infrastructure package passed because this has been something that they have been working on for months. They have come close to having this vote for final passage, only to back away from it in the end. And so if they can actually get this passed, right now it seems almost second thought compared to the other bigger bill that they have been negotiating over for weeks. But this would be something significant for this White House to get this on the day of a very good jobs report.

HILL: Yes, it would certainly be quite the day.

In terms of that Build Back Better bill, the social safety net bill, the White House putting out this preliminary cost estimate to really try to get more Democrats on board, specifically some moderates, because we know there is still this call from a score from the CBO, they won't have on time.

Is there a sense this morning from the White House on whether that effort did enough to bring enough votes on board?

COLLINS: Yesterday they seemed to be saying, this isn't really something that we think is necessary, but, of course, several of the moderates have said they want to see the final financial impact this bill is going to have before they vote yes on it today. Whether or not it actually stops them from voting in the end remains to be seen. It is certainly what was a big holdup yesterday because House Speaker Pelosi wanted to vote on this last night. That is what she told her caucus behind closed doors yesterday morning. Obviously that vote proved to be elusive because we know she was on the phone all day yesterday talking to members. So was President Biden and several members of his cabinet. And so that, obviously, did not work last night. They worked late into the night on this, trying to get those votes from a maybe to a yes. And so we'll see if it actually comes to fruition today and how that -- how that works.

I do think it's going to be a pretty long day, though, as they are still clearly navigating this since they did not immediately take action this morning.

SCIUTTO: Finally, Kaitlan, the jobs numbers here, because, listen, part of the expectation for the Biden administration had been a Biden boom, right? A Biden economic boom. The delta surge put that on pause, but it does now, looking at these numbers, plus the revisions the last couple of months, look to be a pause rather than, you know, an end to that boom.

How does the White House see it?

COLLINS: And that's what they have been arguing. When you heard from President Biden after the September jobs report, which was so bleak, where he was saying, you know, this is going to be something that takes time, it's going to ebb and flow.

[09:10:02]

Of course, now we've seen those revisions for the last two months and now this has far exceeded economists -- what they had predicted by about 100,000 jobs and so that has kind of been the argument. And so I think today he's going to hammer home the American Rescue Plan, of course, which was passed earlier this year, talk about the successes there. And I do think it will help strengthen his hand at a time when the president critically needs it, especially coming out of Tuesday, and you saw how this blame that was essentially been circulating around Democrats for the last several weeks, they started making it public and saying that the president needed to be focused on inflation, supply chain shortages, not trying to be FDR. Those were the words of a Democrat in Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, saying that this was not what the president was elected to do.

And so I think this will help them with the messaging front. We'll see how they actually message it because President Biden is scheduled to leave the White House later today to go to Rehoboth Beach for the weekend. Whether or not they try to do a signing ceremony today for the infrastructure package if it gets finally passed by the House, or early next week, you will try to see them highlight that because of clearly what they believe Tuesday showed them in the wake of those elections is that they need to be highlighting things like this more.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: Kaitlan Collins, appreciate it. Thank you.

We are also following breaking news this morning on the COVID front. Pfizer says it has a new drug that can reduce the risk of COVID hospitalization or death by 89 percent. What does that mean? Is it really a game changer?

Plus, the former DOJ official who wrote the memo trying to justify stealing the 2020 election, sitting down for an interview with the January 6th committee, and the chair says he signed another 20 subpoenas.

SCIUTTO: Later this hour, we'll be live in Brunswick, Georgia, as opening statements set to begin in the trial of three men accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery. Here why tensions have flared between the judge and the defense attorneys.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:16:14]

SCIUTTO: New this morning, another weapon to fight COVID-19. The drugmaker Pfizer announced its experimental pill designed to fight coronavirus reduced the risk of hospitalization and death by 89 percent, this among people at high risk of severe COVID-19. It is important to note that this data has not yet been peer reviewed or published, but Pfizer says it will share specifics in a peer reviewed paper and with its submission to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. So early data, but a good indicator.

HILL: Yes.

CNN's Elizabeth Cohen joining us now.

So, Elizabeth, what more do we know about these trials, participants? You know, what is the information that's out there?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Erica, so the results of this trial with an antiviral drug to treat people in very early stage COVID, they were so good that the folks who were monitoring the trial said, you know what, let's stop it so that these folks, so that Pfizer can go to the FDA and try to get authorization. That's how good the results are. That doesn't happen very often, but it's happened with this antiviral and also with the antiviral that Merck has applied for Emergency Use Authorization for. So it may be that in the future we could have two antivirals to treat COVID, which would be amazing, especially since these are pills.

So, let's take a look at the results from this Pfizer trial.

What they found was they had 774 patients. These are very early stage COVID patients. Divided them in half. The half that received the placebo over the next four weeks or so, 27 of them ended up in the hospital, and seven of those people died. So when you got a placebo, 27 in the hospital and seven died.

When they got the pill, when they got the antiviral pill, only three ended up in the hospital and zero died. That is, obviously, a big difference. And so this data, this is going to be poured over by advisers to the FDA, by the FDA itself. And a crucial question will be, you know, the way that these pills work is that they basically mess with, for want of a better term, the virus' DNA. It sort of stops it from replicating.

When you do that, you want to make sure you don't have what are called off target effects. You want to make sure you're not messing with anything else in the human body. So they really will be looking to see if there were any side effects.

Erica. Jim.

SCIUTTO: Elizabeth Cohen, thanks so much.

So let's dig a little deeper. Dr. Carlos Del Rio joins us now.

So, Dr. Del Rio, just for clarification, for me and for a lot of folks watching, this is not preventative, like the vaccine, this is a pill, if you get infected, to prevent that from becoming severe disease. Do I have that right?

DR. CARLOS DEL RIO, EXEC. ASSOC DEAN, EMORY UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, GRADY HEALTH SYSTEM: Absolutely correct, Jim. And I want to emphasize that. I mean still the best approach is to get vaccinated so you don't get infected. But if you get infected, having available medications, oral medications, is critically important.

So this medication would be combined -- it was combined in trials with another antiviral drug. And as Elizabeth pointed out, this is really similar to what we saw from Merck. Merck has already applied for Emergency Use Authorization for its pill that would essentially work in a same way. U.K. regulators actually approved that yesterday.

When we look at how this would be used, is it, I go, I get tested, I'm positive, and then the doctor would prescribe a pill to me and that's what would prevent severe infection, or would it be more tailored depending on whether I had underlying conditions? Do we know yet?

DEL RIO: Well, we don't know, but what -- who -- what's enrolled in the clinical trials are people with high risk of progression. So, you know, if you happen to be a young person with a low risk of progression, you probably don't benefit from getting these drugs unless there's evidence that I haven't seen yet that getting this drug prevents transmission, because if it prevents transmission it may be actually a useful thing to do. But at the -- at the data we have with the clinical trials, enrolling people that have high risk of progression.

[09:20:04]

I would say, though, that the two drugs, the Merck drug and the Pfizer drug, are different in their mechanism of action and the Pfizer drug is something called -- we call a protease inhibitor. So it inhibits a step in the viral replication in which an enzyme called a protease, cuts down the virus. I think about it as, when you're making cookies, you're making cookies and you try to cut them so you finally have the final shape. These drugs are very similar to drugs that we use for the treatment of HIV.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

DEL RIO: So a lot of the research that (INAUDIBLE) in advancing HIV research has actually led to these drugs for the treatment of COVID.

SCIUTTO: OK. So, everybody loves a pill. It solves a problem. It's easy. Just, you know, pop it, everything's good.

Just to be clear here, you're saying folks should still get vaccinated to prevent getting to this point, right? Make it less likely that you are infected even in the first place.

Just -- I want to make that clear because people can sometimes confuse pill versus vaccination.

DEL RIO: You know, at the end of the day, the best thing you can do is get vaccinated and prevent -- avoid getting infected. And, more importantly, avoid getting very sick and dying if you get infected with a vaccine.

The pills are there -- are available, are a good thing to have. But, at the end of the day, prevention is much better than cure for any disease.

HILL: And to your point, a vaccine can also help, in some ways, prevent the spread, as we know. So that -- that is important.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HILL: Dr. Carlos Del Rio, always appreciate you joining us. Thank you.

DEL RIO: Delighted to be with you.

HILL: And just a quick programming note. We all have a lot of questions still about these vaccines. And we are excited to be answering some of them for you. Tomorrow morning right here on CNN, a special town hall, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and I are teaming up once again with our friends from "Sesame Street" to answer questions that you or your children may have about getting vaccinated.

Here's a little sneak peek.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIG BIRD: My grannie bird says that since I'm 6 years old, I can get the vaccine.

HILL: Oh, yes, that's right, Big Bird.

BIG BIRD: But, well, I have a lot of questions. Like, what is a vaccine? And does it have to be a shot? And will I still need to wear my mask?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HILL: Just a few of the questions we will answer for you tomorrow morning, 8:30 Eastern, right here on CNN.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I'll be watching.

In just a few hours, a who's who of American political leaders from both parties will gather to remember the legacy and the man, General Colin Powell. I'll speak to a man who worked with him for years, knew him well, Ambassador John Negroponte. That's next.

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[09:27:00]

SCIUTTO: Today, in a matter of hours, the funeral for General Colin Powell will begin at the National Cathedral here in Washington, D.C. President Biden and the first lady both expected to attend the memorial for Powell, as well as three other presidents. Powell died in October from complications related to COVID-19.

Here with me now, Ambassador John Negroponte. He's also going to be attending the services. Negroponte was deputy national security adviser under Colin Powell going back to the Reagan administration. Also served together in the Bush administration.

Ambassador, thanks so much for taking the time this morning.

JOHN NEGROPONTE, FORMER DEPUTY NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER TO COLIN POWELL: Thank you very much.

SCIUTTO: On days like this, I suppose the best thing to ask is, just tell us, for folks listening right now, a little bit about the man. What do you remember most about him?

NEGROPONTE: Yes. Well, of course, I loved him and I loved working for him. And he -- for some reason I guess we just clicked together. He invited me to have three different jobs in two different administrations.

I was thinking, in preparing to talk to you today, Jim, about, you know, what was it that made Colin the unique man that he was. And what I came up with in my mind was, first of all, the fact that he was the son of immigrant Jamaican working class parents. And I would put the emphasis on working, because Colin was a very hard worker. And he wasn't class conscious. He could get along with anybody, from the top to the bottom, from anywhere in our society. So that was one thing.

Second, he was a New Yorker. And I think growing up in New York taught him a lot. A lot of street smarts. And a lot about different ethnicities. I remember him spending time recalling, you know, the Greek kids he'd known and the Italian kids, of course we mean Americans, but of that origin.

And then lastly, of course, the Army. The Army, as he said in his own autobiography, that really shaped his life. And, above all, most importantly, gave him a sense of purpose. So he was a wonderful person.

SCIUTTO: Character, bipartisan appeal, right, things that are all too rare today. He had a moment back in the '90s, specifically 1996, when there was a movement to recruit him to run for president. I wonder, in your interactions with him, did he ever express regret that he didn't take that step?

NEGROPONTE: You know, I never talked to him about that. I just -- I just never raised the subject. I think he might have done well. Although I think there's always the difficulty for someone like that when they are tempted to do -- to run -- and run -- I guess he would have been running against Mr. Clinton, the man who'd, you know, appointed him to certain jobs. He was working for Clinton. So running against your boss or former boss is, I think, always a difficult proposition.

SCIUTTO: For sure. His career spanned two major wars, of course, right, in leadership positions, the Gulf War, but also the Iraq War.

[09:30:02]

And two very different wars, right, in terms of America's experience there. What do you think his legacy is?