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Economy Adds 210,000 Jobs In November, Jobless Rate Drops To 4.2 Percent; South African Health Minister: New COVID Cases Up 300 Percent In The Last Seven Days; Omicron Variant Detected In Five U.S. States; Alec Baldwin On Fatal Shooting: "I Didn't Pull The Trigger"; Alec Baldwin Says Nothing "Rust" Armorer Did Raised Red Flags; Senate Averts Shutdown Amid GOP Threats Over Vaccine Mandates. Aired 10- 10:30a ET

Aired December 03, 2021 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:00]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Unemployment rate fell to 4.2 percent, the lowest since the pandemic started. Plus, the Biden administration announces when it's stricter, COVID-19 testing requirements for travelers internationally will begin as efforts ramp up to trace and follow the Omicron variant.

And actor Alec Baldwin speaking out, following the tragic shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of his film "Rust." He says he is not to blame, and that his finger was not even on the trigger when the gun went off.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEC BALDWIN, ACTOR: Someone put a live bullet in a gun, a bullet that wasn't even supposed to be on the property. And this is the thing I hope that the sheriff's department doesn't give up on that they follow this to the ends of the earth. Where did that bullet come from? Somebody brought live rounds plural onto the set of the film, and one of them ended up in that gun.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Let's begin our coverage with those latest job numbers, what they mean. CNN Chief Business Reporter Matt Egan, CNN White House Correspondent John Harwood, both standing by. Matt, let's begin with you. There's some good in here, including revisions to prior months, but still undershot the forecast, what happened?

MATT EGAN, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS REPORTER: Yes, Jim, you know, at first glance, this did look like a big budge (ph), just 210,000 jobs added in November. That is less than half of what the consensus was on Wall Street from economist. It's also the weakest number of the entire Biden presidency. Job growth was supposed to be up in leisure and hospitality, but it barely budged. The retail sector actually lost jobs.

But, you know, when you dig into the numbers, there are some positives, starting with the unemployment rate, which fell to 4.2 percent. That is the lowest of the pandemic. Keep in mind, unemployment was nearly 15 percent in April of 2020. There's been enormous progress since then. Also, wages are up very sharply.

They're not keeping up with inflation, but that does show really strong demand for workers. Also, more Americans are getting back into the workforce. The labor participation rate climbed to the highest rate -- highest level since March of 2020. That is very encouraging.

Women, a lot of women have also gone back into the workforce. Although there's still about 1.5 million women missing from the job market, they dropped out and they haven't returned. One other positive that we have to point out is that the prior two months were revised higher by 82,000. We've seen that happen time and again this year, where the government initially underestimates job growth.

And then as more information comes in, they revise those figures higher, we could very well see that happen again with today's number. Jim, we have to remember, though, this is a backwards looking number. Going forward, the risk is that Omicron undoes some of the progress in the jobs market.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

EGAN: We just don't know enough information yet about the variant --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

EGAN: -- to know whether or not that's going to happen.

SCIUTTO: Yes, exactly. And some of the worst prognostications so far have not borne out, but we're watching closely.

John, the President set to speak on these numbers in a matter of minutes. So what's his message? How does he explain it?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Look, it's a huge challenge for him in trying to talk about the economy at this moment because it's such a mix of positive and negative indicators. Obviously, we've had tremendous amount of concern about inflation in recent months. On the other hand, the economy has been growing at a fairly rapid clip.

We've been adding jobs month to month. However, as Matt was just outlining, we had this disappointing jobs number today, but we don't know how accurate it is. Clearly, the government's having problems measuring job growth, which is why we consistently go back and add jobs to previous months. A lot of that is because businesses aren't responding as rapidly to the business survey, that is where those jobs numbers comes from. So as later data comes in, it gets revised up.

Point is we don't really know. And we also don't really know what the course of the pandemic is going to be. A whole lot of question marks, a whole lot of unpredictability. And that makes it very difficult for politicians and the President of United States to describe a clearer picture for Americans of the economy. Clearly, there are cross cutting elements to the situation, the American economy. There's no singular way to describe it. But the one thing everyone can agree on is getting a handle on the pandemic and putting that behind us is going to be positive for the economy in 2022. If they can do that, Omicron, of course, has raised for us questions.

SCIUTTO: We'll see how the President addresses. Matt Egan, John Harwood, thanks very much.

So now to U.S. efforts to track the Omicron variant, cases have been flagged now in at least five states, something health officials anticipated would happen. They are now ramping up programs to use genome sequencing to identify cases more quickly so they could track this.

The Biden administration also announced a series of new measures to curb the viruses spread this winter. This includes new testing requirements that will begin on Monday for all international travels -- travelers as well as a renewed focus on boosters. Everybody agrees that boosters -- great idea right now in all -- with all this happening.

[10:05:01]

In South Africa, there are concerns that the country is entering a fourth wave now as a result of this. The Health Minister says that infections are up 300 percent in just the last seven days, noted the Omicron variant's high transmissibility, something that WHO's chief scientist is repeating this morning.

South Africa's Health Minister continues to stress that infections are caused -- causing in most cases, mostly mild disease especially, this is crucial for those who are vaccinated. Researchers in South Africa have also indicated there is a higher risk of reinfection with Omicron than with other variants with more than 35,000 people with two suspected infections through the end of November.

Joining me now to discuss, Theodora Hatziioannou, she's a Research Associate Professor at Rockefeller University. Good to have you on this morning.

THEODORA HATZIIOANNOU, RESEARCH ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, ROCKEFELLER UNIVERSITY: Thank you for having me.

SCIUTTO: So folks at home understand you and your colleagues, you've been able to produce mutant spike proteins in your lab that make the virus highly resistant to COVID-19 antibodies. And you say that Omicron, which has been noted, has a lot of mutations along those spike proteins, basically, the way they lock onto your cells has many of those same mutations. What does that teach us about the danger of this?

HATZIIOANNOU: Correct. First, to clarify that we didn't do this in the context of the real virus, because that would obviously be very dangerous. We used a different virus that is not pathogenic for humans, so it's very safe. And we just provided it with a spike. So you'd behaves in terms of infection and neutralization properties like SARS-CoV-2, but it's not SARS-CoV-2. So we were able, as you mentioned, to test how far we could push mutation in the spike, and how far we could push antibody escape.

SCIUTTO: Right.

HATZIIOANNOU: And as you pointed out already, Omicron has the same -- a lot of the same mutations, but even more than our synthetic resistance spike. And I will point out that our spike had about 20 mutations, the final version, and was resistant to almost all plasma samples from vaccinated and infected individuals. So since the Omicron has a lot more mutations, and as we said, a lot of them overlapping either exactly the same or very similar or very close --

SCIUTTO: OK.

HATZIIOANNOU: -- then I think I can be quite confident in predicting that it will be very resistant to neutralizing antibodies.

SCIUTTO: OK. To -- and great (ph) that it's early. We don't know that -- everyone says we need more data over a couple of weeks to see the real effect on existing vaccines. But it is notable that vaccine makers have seemed to say to this point, they are concerned that the vaccines will be less likely to prevent infection in the face of Omicron. But they still remain confident that it will be able to hold off severe disease hospitalization. Why is that? Why that distinction, and do you agree?

HATZIIOANNOU: Yes. So I think that is a safe assumption to make, so far, in terms particularly of transmission and the ability of vaccines to prevent infection. Because prevention of infection, I think, relies largely on these neutralizing antibodies. They're the first part of the immune system that see the virus and stop it from ever infecting yourselves.

The other responses act a little bit later, and they do also target infected cells, but it's after the virus has entered your body. So I think the prediction that you might see an increase of infections in vaccinated people and previously infected people, people that have already been exposed to the virus, is relatively safe. Now, we're hoping that the vaccines still hold very well against severe symptoms, but we'll just have to wait and see.

SCIUTTO: The WHO, to your point, chief scientist said today that the variant -- Omicron variant appears very transmissible. Should we, therefore, be expecting to see another wave like we saw with Delta? I mean, if you see this kind of consistent pattern here kind of burns out a little bit, then you have a new variant, Delta comes up and then it burns out, and now you have Omicron. Is that the path of this that folks should be preparing for?

HATZIIOANNOU: I think so. Again, I would be very cautious in making statements about how transmissible this new variant is. You need a lot of data to be able to make that statement confidently. And it's, I think, as I mentioned, a little bit too early to tell. Then I don't -- yes, of course, there are various discussions about why we're seeing these variants come and go. But I think the major driver is our own immune system and, in particular, neutralizing antibodies (ph).

As we mount responses against, them the variants mutate to escape them. And then as more people --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HATZIIOANNOU: -- get exposed and get you antibodies, then that variant is not as good. And the next one appears that's more resistant and more resistance.

SCIUTTO: OK.

HATZIIOANNOU: And that's how we go to (INAUDIBLE).

[10:10:04]

SCIUTTO: Well, to your point there, there's a lot more that needs to be learned, so, so far, too early to make any gigantic conclusions, but we do appreciate you joining us. Theodora Hatziioannou, thanks so much.

HATZIIOANNOU: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Still to come this hour, in a matter of hours, we will learn if the parents of the suspected gunman behind the deadly school shooting in Michigan will face charges themselves as the sheriff details why the team should not have had access to that gun in the first place.

And next, Alec Baldwin, breaking his silence. We're going to talk to a movie weapons expert on how that gun not only could have gone off but how do live bullet in it, even though Baldwin says he never pulled the trigger. And we're waiting for President Biden to speak on that November jobs report. We're going to bring you those comments as soon as they happen.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:15:26]

SCIUTTO: Alec Baldwin is speaking out about the chaos that followed the fatal shooting on the set of his film "Rust." In an interview with ABC News, the actor revealed that he did not know until hours later that cinematographer Halyna Hutchins had died from a live round. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: No one could understand. Did she have a heart attack? We can remember (ph), the idea that someone put a live bullet in the gun was not even in reality.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS, ABC NEWS HOST: Did you go up to her? Did you back -- BALDWIN: I would up to her and then we were meeting, they were told to

get out of the building.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you didn't know exactly how serious it was.

BALDWIN: And finally, one of the police officer is at the conclusion of my interview. I was there for like an hour and a half or so. She takes her phone, she slides it across me. She says that's what came out of Joel's (ph) shoulder. A 45 caliber slug was a real bullet. They said to me, we regret to tell you that she didn't make it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Lord. CNN's Lucy Kafanov joins me now. So Lucy, Baldwin, he also spoke about the conversations he's had with Hutchins's husband and son. What did he say?

LUCY KAFANOV, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right. We know that Hutchins's husband and her young son came too. They flew down to Santa Fe immediately in the aftermath of the shooting. There was a private memorial service, Alec Baldwin was photographed with the pair (ph).

He talked about how deeply emotionally impacted he was from this experience. And he also talked about a moving conversation that he had with her husband. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Her husband comes to town, her husband, Matthew. And I met with him and their son. And he was as kind as you could be. He was as kind as you could you be.

STEPHANOPOULOS: What can you possibly say to him?

BALDWIN: That -- I didn't know what to say. He hugged me and he goes like, I suppose you're not going to go through this together, he said. And I told him, I said, I don't know what to say. I don't know how to convey to you how sorry I am and how I'm willing to do anything I can to cooperate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KAFANOV: Baldwin also held back tears when speaking about how loved and admired Halyna Hutchins was by crew and everyone who knew her. He also said he would have killed himself if he believed it was his fault. In the interview, he also described the moments before the gun discharged, saying they were rehearsing, saying that Halyna actually told him to point the gun right below her armpit for an incidental shot and angle that might not have even ended up in the film.

He says he began to cock the gun. He let go of the hammer but insisted he did not pull the trigger. Now, some folks, one specific person, the attorney for Serge Svetnoy, the chief lighting technician, is disputing the allegation by Alec Baldwin that he did not pull the trigger, saying that as the producer of the film, Baldwin is responsible. But Baldwin said he wasn't involved in budget discussions. He added that his production responsibilities on this specific film were strictly creative. He says the only question that needs to be resolved here, Jim, is how that live round ended up on set.

SCIUTTO: Well that's a big question. Lucy Kafanov, thanks very much.

So to try to answer that and others, here with me now Prop Master Patrick Storey. He's worked on the TV show, "Homeland," also the latest scream film. So Patrick, I do want to start by playing you some of the interview here where Baldwin describes his account of what happened that day and I want to get your reaction. Have a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BALDWIN: Now in the scene, I'm going to cock the gun. I said, do you want to see that? And she said, yes. So I take the gun and I start to cock the gun. I'm not going to pull the trigger. I said, do you see the shot? Well just cheat it down and tilt it down a little bit like that.

And I cock the gun and I go, can you see that? Can you see that? Can you see that? And she says -- and I let go of the hammer of the gun and the gun goes off. I let go of the hammer of the gun, the gun goes off.

STEPHANOPOULOS: At the moment.

BALDWIN: That was the moment the gun went off. Yes, that was the moment the gun went off.

STEPHANOPOULOS: It wasn't in the script for the trigger to be pulled.

BALDWIN: Well the trigger wasn't pulled. I didn't pull the trigger.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So you never pulled the trigger.

BALDWIN: No, no, no, no, no. I would never point a gun to anyone and pull the trigger at them. Never. Never. That was the training that I had. You don't point a gun to anyone and pull the trigger.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Patrick, based on what you know about firearms, your experiences, is that possible? Can you not pull the trigger? Let the hammer go. What do you believe?

PATRICK STOREY, PROP MASTER: I believe that you can do that, if you can verify exactly what is in the weapon. And in this case you, could definitely do that if there were absolutely no rounds inside of the magazine. And that's, you know, that's what I know from experience. Even from last week on the show that I'm on now, we did that exact thing.

[10:20:10]

SCIUTTO: Are there any reasons to have live rounds on a set? And are there any restrictions against having those?

STOREY: Yes, I mean, it's just a -- it's administrative (ph) code.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

STOREY: It's just not. It's at them to what we do. But also, there's really not a lot of need for that now anyway with digital, you know, digital augmentation. I mean, it's just -- it's -- the technology is there.

SCIUTTO: Yes, that's one of the sad facts of this, right, is that so much is done in post-production that there's even less need to have, you know, the blank rounds. There are reports that the live rounds could have come from a previous set. Again, I -- you know, you -- there have to be ways of, I imagined, standards that you follow so that doesn't happen?

STOREY: Well, inspection.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

STOREY: Inspection of every -- and double check, triple check, shell everyone, make sure that everyone is absolutely aware that, you know, this is something that cannot go wrong. We have to know.

SCIUTTO: It is, I imagine, more than one person's responsibility on a set to check. Is -- I mean, you have an armorer who I imagine would have the first responsibility, but when you've been on sets before, do you have multiple fail safes, right? So it's not just one person who checks, you have others to prevent this kind of thing from happening.

STOREY: True. And you know this well from the amount of times that you've visited this topic. You know, it's something like I said, when I was on, it -- I feel like a broken record.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Questions have been raised about the experience of the armorer for this production, Hannah Gutierrez. Have a listen to Alec Baldwin's comments on this and I want to get your reaction.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: Did you think she was up to the job?

BALDWIN: I assumed because she was there and she was hired. She was up for the job.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And nothing she did raise any red flags with you?

BALDWIN: No. She said things like remember this is a black, brown. She said, you know, when we're done, put the gun down. When we're done, you give the gun to me or to Haul (ph). So only those two people.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Why Haul (ph) is not Hannah? Some people have said that only the armorer should be --

BALDWIN: No, no, no, no, no, no, that's inaccurate, meaning, in the protocols of the business, meaning, that Hannah will -- to hand me the gun 99 percent of the time, whatever, the preponderance of the time. But when we would say cut, if Hannah was away from the set, I would hand Haul (ph) the gun.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: It was notable to me in there that he said was hired. I mean, he was a producer on the film, who hires the armorer, who makes sure that an armorer has sufficient experience to do -- to oversee weapons on a set like this.

STOREY: Well, it's, you know, there's a consensus and usually an armorer is going to be hired. It's spoken about throughout, you know, the producers that that deal with hiring. And, you know, a lot of time, its reputation and -- that is a very important thing, a safe reputation that you've -- the crew over years and years and years of experience, you know, makes it so that -- it's your trusted element.

SCIUTTO: Yes. Well, let's hope there are changes made so this kind of thing can never happen again. Patrick Storey, good to have you back on the show.

STOREY: Thanks. Have a good day.

SCIUTTO: We are standing by to see President Biden speak at any moment about a jobs report out earlier this morning, not the figure the administration hoped for. There's also another economic challenge ahead, why West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin says the Build Back Better plan likely won't pass this year.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:28:45]

SCIUTTO: So they did it on Capitol Hill. Congress did manage to avert a government shutdown. Both the House and the Senate passed a stopgap bill last night to fund the government through mid-February. There are still major questions surrounding President Biden's greater economic agenda, Build Back Better, including some stonewalling from members of his own party.

CNN's Melanie Zanona is on Capitol Hill this morning. So Melanie, Republicans back down at least on shutting down the government based on this fight over vaccine mandates, but that particular battle will likely come back, won't it?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Fighting Biden's vaccine mandate has become a prominent rallying cry in the GOP. Republicans did secure an amendment vote yesterday on a provision to defund these mandates. It failed, but they are promising to keep the issue front and center.

Just take a listen to what Mike Lee, a conservative from Utah, had to say about this yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) SEN. MIKE LEE (R-UT): I think it's difficult to understand why anyone would want to use the overpowering force, the federal government, to tell someone that if they don't cooperate with the ordained presidential medical orthodoxy, they will be fired. This isn't going away, it's going to come back up again. It'll come back up in any future vote-a-rama. It's going to come back again every time we get the opportunity.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[10:30:00]