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November Jobs Numbers; Baldwin Interviewed about Shooting; Michigan School Shooting Update; U.S. Ramps up Sequencing of Variants; Dr. Megan Ranney is Interviewed about Covid. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired December 03, 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]

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CNN's coverage continues right now. Have a wonderful weekend.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Good Friday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

Breaking news this morning on the U.S. economy. The Labor Department announced in just the last hour that the U.S. added 210,000 jobs to the economy last month. That coming in far below expectations. The unemployment rate, however, is down 4.2 percent. President Biden will speak next hour on those numbers. We will bring you those comments live. I will also speak to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh later this hour.

Plus, this morning, actor Alec Baldwin, very emotional, as he talks about Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer who was killed after a prop gun he was holding went off on the set of his film "Rust."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEC BALDWIN, ACTOR: She was someone who was loved by everyone, who worked with and liked by everyone who worked with her, and admired -- sorry -- but admired by everybody who -- who worked with her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: We'll have much more ahead on what he says happened in the moments just before the gun went off and what he makes of the lawsuits that have been filed.

Also, new detail about the Michigan high school shooting that has left four students dead, seven others injured. Prosecutors say there is, quote, a strong possibility the accused shooter had the gun in his backpack as he and his parents met with school officials just before the attack. The big question this morning, could his parents face charges as well?

Let's begin, however, with CNN chief business correspondent Christine Romans, as well as CNN White House correspondent Jeremy Diamond.

Christine, let's begin with you. Again another miss on -- a big miss, frankly, on the forecast for these numbers.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Sure.

SCIUTTO: What do they show us, particularly as you see this being lower than expected, but revisions upward in previous months.

ROMANS: Yes, that's a really good point. It's a bit of a riddle here and you've got economists really debating this morning what went on here. A reminder, when the government puts these monthly jobs reports together, there are two surveys. The government surveys businesses and says, how many jobs did you add in a month? The government surveys households and says, are you employed, are you not employed? The household side of that survey shows 1.1 million new jobs. That's why the jobless rate fell to 4.2 percent. That's a terrific number, 4.2 percent, the lowest on the right-hand of your screen there, the lowest since before the financial -- or the Covid crisis and a very good number.

But the jobs added back, the survey of businesses was only 210,000, and that was a disappointment. Economists thought there would be a lot more. When you look at the trend for the year of the jobs added, you can see, this is the weakest since December of last year. But you're right, Jim, to point out those revisions. October was revised higher. So was September. And we do know that in the summer, when we thought there was a big lull in hiring, in fact, it was more robust than we'd expected. So, the past four or five months have all been revised higher.

That jobless rate, 4.2 percent, a terrific number and a big one-month move here, four percentage points, four-tenths of one percent down. And that's really, really a big number for the jobless rate, 4.2 percent.

And we do know, Jim, almost 600,000 people entered the workforce in the month. So that's an important thing to note too, more people participating.

SCIUTTO: Just briefly, you have said, Christine, this is a jobs -- this is not a jobs problem, it's a worker problem. What do you mean by that?

ROMANS: I mean that companies might be actually hiring more if they could find the workers. And one thing we've seen, 400,000 or 500,000 people the past year have started their own businesses. They have decided not to go back to their employer but starred their own business anyway. And so that means employers are hungry to find people, they have open jobs and workers are finding creative ways, like starting their own businesses, not to go back to the way it was before.

SCIUTTO: OK.

Jeremy, so the president set to speak in just over an hour on this latest report. It's not the number that they wanted. What's the president going to say about this?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's one number here that they did want, and that is the unemployment number going down to 4.2 percent. So you'll certainly hear the president tout that number next hour. But certainly on the jobs growth front here, it's problematic for the White House. But I think one thing we'll certainly hear from them is talking about trend lines overall, talking as we've heard the president in the past, that this is an economic recovery that has been uneven, that is -- has no historical comparisons because of the pandemic.

[09:05:03]

And, frankly, he also does have some other good news on the economic front to be able to tout. White House officials have been telling us that they believe they've made significant progress in addressing supply chain issues over the last several weeks. And then earlier this week we saw new unemployment insurance claims hit a new low, lowest new unemployment insurance claims since March 7th of 2020. That was something that we saw the president put a statement out about and tout. And I think you'll hear him talk about that again, as well as the overall number, nearly 6 million jobs that have been created.

But, nonetheless, this 200,000 number does present a problem for the president, particularly as we look at this uncertain future with the omicron variant that could potentially present another setback to the president in his attempts to jump start the American economy and get it back on track. And, again, there is a disconnect between what the analysts on Wall Street are saying about the economy going forward, and how Americans are actually feeling about it in the polls. That's certainly something the president will want to address today.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and oftentimes those feelings can be disconnected, right, from what the statistics show.

Christine Romans, Jeremy Diamond, thanks so much.

Other story we're following this morning, in his first formal interview since the fatal on set shooting, the actor, Alec Baldwin, telling ABC News that he never pulled the trigger of the prop gun that fired a live round killing cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. And while he does feel a range of emotions, he says that guilt is not one of them.

Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Do you feel guilt?

ALEC BALDWIN, ACTOR: No. No. I feel that there is -- I feel that -- that -- that someone is responsible for what happened, and I can't say who that is, but I know it's not me.

STEPHANOPOULOS: You're not worried about being charged?

BALDWIN: I don't -- I've been told by people who are in the know in terms of even inside the state that it's highly unlikely I would be charged with anything criminally.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Lucy Kafanov joins us now for more on this.

Lucy, did he have anything more to say about how this happened? How a live round got on to a Hollywood movie set?

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, Jim, this was a raw and emotional interview, but it was also one in which Baldwin denied responsibility, saying he would have killed himself if he believed that this was his fault.

Now, in the interview he described the moments before the gun discharged. They were rehearsing. He says Halyna Hutchins, the cinematographer, told him to point the gun right below her armpit for what he described as a completely incidental shot, an angle that he says may not have even ended up in the movie at all.

Now, he says he began to cock the gun. He let go of the hammer. But insisted that he didn't pull the trigger.

Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: So you have this Colt 45, you just pulled --

ALEC BALDWIN, ACTOR: The hammer as far back as I could without cocking the actual gun.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And you're holding on to the hammer?

BALDWIN: I'm holding -- I'm just showing -- I go, how about that? Does that work? Do you see that? Do you see that? She goes, yes, that's good. I let go of the hammer. Bang, the gun goes off.

Everyone is horrified. They're shocked. It's loud. They don't have their earplugs in. The gun was supposed to be empty. I was told I was handed an empty gun. If there were cosmetic rounds, nothing with a charge at all, no flash round, nothing. She goes down. I thought to myself, did she faint? The notion that there was a live round in that gun did not dawn on me until probably 45 minutes to an hour later.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAFANOV: You heard him there, he says he was told the gun was safe by crew member in charge of checking weapons, saying that he would, quote, never point a gun at anyone and pull a trigger at them. Jim.

SCIUTTO: As you know, there are already two lawsuits filed by members of the crew. Did Baldwin respond to those?

KAFANOV: He did. The two lawsuits were filed by Serge Svetnoy, who's the chief lighting technician. He filed the first lawsuit. Script supervisor Mamie Mitchell filed the other. You may remember her voice from that chilling 911 call.

Now, Baldwin said one of those two, immediately after the shooting, told him that he had, quote, no responsibility for what happened here. He denied -- declined to say who made that comment, but he said that it was unsettling, in his view, that the suits were filed before Hutchins' husband had a chance to sue and get a settlement from a limited pool of insurance funds.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEC BALDWIN, ACTOR: Those two people are lunging toward making sure their suits are filed before the husband files his suit? They couldn't wait until Matthew, on behalf of his son, filed his suit first?

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS: Do you expect Matthew to file a suit?

BALDWIN: Oh, how could it be otherwise? His wife -- his wife was killed as a result of someone's -- I mean I don't want to say negligence, it's not for me to use that word, that's a legal term, but, you know, something happened here that resulted in his wife's death, he's entitled to something as far as I'm concerned.

I just found the filing of the two lawsuits, civil lawsuits, in advance of Matthew filing his lawsuit, I found that to be unsettling.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[09:10:14]

KAFANOV: Svetnoy's attorney spoke to CNN earlier this morning saying his client was focused on bringing awareness to the problem of films taking cost cutting measures at the expense of safety protocols. Baldwin, however, said that he wasn't even involved in the budget discussions, adding that his production responsibilities were strictly creative. His focus, how that live round ended up on set.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: That's a big question.

Lucy Kafanov, thanks very much.

Well, there are new details this morning on what led up to the school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, that has left four students dead, seven others seriously injured. The prosecutor in the case says she believes it's a strong possibility that the suspected shooter had the gun with him when he and his parents were called to meet with officials at the school that morning, the morning of the shooting.

CNN's Shimon Prokupecz joins us now live from Oxford, Michigan.

Shimon, prosecutors believe that the shooting could have been prevented. Does that mean the possibility of charges against the parents and for what exactly?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Right. And that we will know at noon today. The prosecutors saying that they will have a press conference to update the investigation. But also a decision will be made and announced at that point about whether or not they're going to charge the parents. That's a good question in terms of what charges could they face.

Look, investigator here believe at this point that the parents likely purchased this weapon for their son, right? We've heard the sheriff come out and say that the gun was purchased by the father, four days before the attack. So that is a key, significant piece of evidence for investigators. There's Instagram photos of the alleged shooter saying this is my gun. That investigators believe is the gun that was used in this shooting. So they have a lot of information that they're working on. So that is why they believe perhaps that the father bought this weapon for their -- for their son. So that is something investigators are working on.

In terms of charges for the parents, it could range from anything, their failure to secure this weapon, perhaps even more serious and severe charges. So we will hopefully know around noon what that will be.

The other thing here, Jim, that's going on is there's a lot of questions about what the school knew and what the school did. The sheriff here raising issues and questions over why the police were never brought in to those meetings. Remember, there was concern over his behaviors, there was something that went on that was significant at the school where the school called the parents in. The sheriff this morning saying that he would have liked for the school to call them and let them know, let the sheriff know.

Here's what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHERIFF MICHAEL BOUCHARD, OAKLAND COUNTY, MICHIGAN: The one thing that comes to our mind is that we would have liked to have been looped into that conversation, either in the room or told about it immediately. They may not have certain authorities or they may not have wanted to do certain things, but that's different for us. We have a different role and a different process.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PROKUPECZ: And, Jim, there is a sheriff, a deputy sheriff who was assigned to the school that could have easily have dealt with whatever this issue was and, obviously, the sheriff here raising the issue that perhaps maybe the school should have brought the police into this situation and they didn't. That that could be a key part of this investigation as well.

SCIUTTO: Missed opportunity, it seems, to prevent this.

PROKUPECZ: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Shimon Prokupecz, thanks so much.

Still to come this hour, as new travel restrictions set to take effect on Monday, a new CNN analysis finds the risk of dying from Covid-19 is more than 50 percent higher in states that voted for former President Trump in 2020. Why is that? It comes down to vaccination. Details, next.

Plus, government shutdown averted, but big questions remain for President Biden's larger economic agenda, Build Back Better.

And, this morning, I have new reporting about a growing buildup of Russian troops on Ukraine's border. Fears of a potential invasion growing.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:18:40]

SCIUTTO: The Biden administration says its stricter new testing requirements for inbound international travelers will take effect starting Monday at midnight. These new rules call for airline passengers coming to the U.S. to test negative one day before departure instead of where it was before, three days before-hand. The changes come as health officials ramp up their efforts to identify coronavirus variants using genome sequencing.

CNN health reporter Jacqueline Howard joins us now with the details.

So, Jacqueline, how's this going to play out in the coming days?

JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: Well, it will be interesting to see how this plays out, Jim, especially because we know that we have definitely made progress as a nation when it comes to our genome sequencing efforts. When you look at public health labs alone, we know that public health laboratories sequence between 15,000 and 20,000 coronavirus samples per week. And that's about four times greater than it was a year ago. And that's just looking at public health laboratories as you see on this screen here. And the CDC says across all labs in the U.S., not just public health laboratories, we sequence about 80,000 samples per week. So that's where we are now with genome sequencing. And as we do more testing, we can expect to see more sequencing.

But where there's room for improvement, Jim, is in how quickly we test, how quickly we get results, and how quickly we sequence. [09:20:07]

I looked at data from the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and I looked at how quickly other nations go from collecting a sample, so let's say getting a nasal swab, to then testing to then sequencing and then reporting the results of that sequencing. So reporting the variant result.

You see here, in the United States it takes us, on average, according to the data, up to 28 days to go through that process. In the U.K., it takes about ten days. So you see the gap here in speed, Jim. And I think that's where there's room for improvement for the nation.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Jacqueline Howard, thanks so much. We'll be watching closely.

Joining me now to discuss, Dr. Megan Ranney. She's emergency physician and associate dean of public health at Brown University in Rhode Island.

Dr. Ranney, good to have you back here.

First, as these new steps roll out, including this travel restriction, what we have restrictions from some countries and now you have this travel requirement for people coming in from all countries, do you think those changes make sense, particularly as we continue to monitor the presence and significance of omicron?

DR. MEGAN RANNEY, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN: So, President Biden is certainly following the science in putting these changes in place. They don't, unfortunately, go quite far enough. They are better than where we were. The closer the testing is done to the time of travel, the better, because certainly you could get infected and turn positive that same day.

The more people that are on a flight who are vaccinated, the better. Even better would also be testing people after they arrive in a new destination because you know you could travel, be infected, not know it yet and then turn positive a couple of days later. But each step towards that perfect scenario is better than what we have now.

SCIUTTO: We are now sequencing omicron, and there is a lot more to learn, of course, with that proviso. But based on what we know now, in your view, is the omicron variant as serious a threat as initial fears were or are we learning that perhaps vaccines likely offer better protection, this causes milder symptoms, what do we know?

RANNEY: So I'll say that what worries me most about the data that we're seeing about omicron is watching the hospitals fill up in South Africa from cases that are identified omicron variant. It has completely displaced delta and it has created a whole new wave of hospitalizations.

I don't yet know whether those of us who are vaccinated are going to be at risk of hospitalization. So far I am reassured that this will be just a mild illness, if any illness at all for those of us that are fully vaccinated. But there are a lot of people in the U.S. who are unvaccinated and our hospitals cannot take that kind of surge again.

SCIUTTO: There is new data out in the U.S., and this is something we've seen consistently so far, and that is that according to a CNN analysis that since February 1st of this year, the average risk of dying from Covid in this country is more than 50 percent higher in states that voted for Donald Trump than in states that voted for Biden. I mean this is no punishment for how people voted either way, but it gets down to vaccination rates, does it not?

RANNEY: That is exactly right. What it reflects is that when vaccines are administered, you decrease your risk of dying by somewhere between 10 and 15 times. So if you have a state where only 30 percent of adults are vaccinated, you're going to have a much higher death rate than a state where most people have gotten their shots. It is -- it is an absolute travesty that vaccines have been politicized.

SCIUTTO: What I fear here, right, is that omicron, and particularly if it challenges the existing vaccines, perhaps requires another booster at some point or a vaccine more tailored to the particular qualities of the omicron variant, that that feeds this issue, right? I mean the wise outcome would be that people are more likely to get vaccinated with boosters, because that's what the science shows, but you wonder if given the politics and so much disinformation out there it does the opposite.

RANNEY: So there is certainly going to be a rise in disinformation and misinformation from political leaders, from hucksters who are looking to make a quick buck on a (INAUDIBLE) treatment or fake prevention strategy, but we did see during the delta wave that people that have held out against getting vaccines showed up and got their primary series for the first time. That may be the one small blessing from omicron.

SCIUTTO: Right.

RANNEY: I'd also say that if those vaccine mandates go into place from OSHA, that will make a huge difference and will overcome some of this unnecessary political divide.

SCIUTTO: We'll see. A lot of court challenges to those as well.

Dr. Megan Ranney, thanks so much for joining us.

RANNEY: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, there are new questions for Biden's social spending bill, Build Back Better, with Democratic senators, you might have heard of them before, Manchin and Sinema, weighing in yet again.

[09:25:04]

They sound reluctant. What they're saying, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) SCIUTTO: Another shutdown averted on Capitol Hill, only just. Last night, both chambers of Congress passed a stopgap bill to keep the government funded through mid-February. But the future of President Biden's larger economic agenda remains uncertain. Democratic Senator Joe Manchin told colleagues he is skeptical that Build Back Better can pass before Christmas.

CNN's Capitol Hill reporter Melanie Zanona standing by now.

[09:30:02]

Melanie, is this about changing it, trimming it back a little bit, from Manchin and Sinema.