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As Biden Promotes Democracy Abroad, Advocates Urge Him To Focus On Keeping U.S. Elections Safe; Supreme Court Allows Texas Abortion Law To Continue But Allows Abortion Providers To Challenge Law; COVID Hospitalizations Increase 40 Percent Compared To Last Month; Jan. 6 Committee Issues Six Additional Subpoenas. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired December 10, 2021 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: David, let me start with you.

Because one would not fault the attendees at the Summit for Democracy to peek over the president's shoulder and look at fight for democracy in his own backyard.

Maybe he wants to hold this summit in Atlanta next time because we know that David Perdue is saying he wouldn't have certified the 2020 election.

This is the running commentary of the president, saying we need to spread democracy around the country. Instead, we have problems here, too.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: I don't think Biden was hiding from the problems here at all. You heard him just pointed to legislative efforts.

The problem is that at the end of that and we're going to get it done, but there has been no movement to actually get those domestic protection efforts legislatively done.

Not with the 60-vote threshold in place, not with Senators like Manchin an others opposed to any filibuster reform.

So Joe Biden is out there touting the importance of having to protect democracy here at home but without a real path to how to go about doing that.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Yes, Mara, therein lies the rub, which he's put so much sweat equity into the Build Back Better plan and infrastructure, none of that matters if we lose our democracy to autocracy. None of it matters.

But I'm not sure what else the president -- clearly, people are calling for him to put as much energy into things like, as he just talked about the Freedom to Vote Act. But can he change the filibuster and do all of that?

MARA SCHIAVOCAMPO, HOST, "RUN TELL THIS" PODCAST: Yes, that's the problem. That's the problem with the optics of what is happening right now.

Because he's now going on a global stage presenting the United States as the self-appointed voice for democracy when you hear this valid criticism. People are saying you can't get voting rights legislation passed and your party is in control of Congress.

There's a real optics problem there.

There's also the issue of people saying, How you could be the leader for democracy less than a year after an attempt to overthrow the government?

So the problem is, on the global stage, they presented themselves as these leaders. And also they're the ones that put together the list.

So you have countries like China and Russia saying, wait a minute, who made you the arbiters to decide what -- who is eligible to come sit at this table.

And there are so many issues taking place as home. So that is the rub that he's up against right now.

But you certainly understand why you would want to have this pep rally at this time. And the Biden administration would argue that you want to reaffirm these values at time when they're most under salt and the democracy is most vulnerable.

BLACKWELL: Ron, we love having you on because you're the statistics guy.

We know these laws, these voter restriction laws disproportionately impact black and brown people. You have focused on how the Democrat Party can support among the blue-collar blacks and Hispanics has slipped.

I wonder, is this central to that kind of loss of support, no progress on something like this?

RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: It is an interesting question, Victor. Look, this is absolutely a hinge point in American history.

There's no question about the trajectory we're going to see if the administration and Democrats in Congress cannot establish a nationwide floor of voting rights.

It is pretty clear that in the coming years we're going to see the biggest retrogression of those rights and the biggest divergence among the states in how those rights are available since the Voting Acts right of 1965.

There's no question about the direction states are going.

There's no question, you know, in effect we're watching a conspiracy being organized in plain sight with Trump consolidating his control over the Republican Party and moving to put people in place in terms of election administration that will try to tilt the next election.

And this is really just a fundamental choice that looms far, I think, beyond even what happened to the Build Back Better Act for Democrats.

Phil Mattingly said there's an audience of one. On the Build Back Better Act, you could say the same thing on the prospects of legislative action to create this nationwide floor of voting rights.

But beyond that, there's also the question of whether, administratively, the Justice Department is doing enough to kind of parallel what the January 6th commission is doing in terms of looking to impose legal accountability on those, who the evidence shows more clearly every day, plotted to overturn the 2020 election.

So, yes, it is a big legislative question. Is Joe Manchin willing to be the grave digger of a nationwide set of voting rights?

But there's also a legal question for the administration on questions on matters that with within their own purview.

CAMEROTA: And, David, at the same time, we're seeing these Trump loyalists, people who have propagated the Big Lie being installed in important positions of election oversight in different states.

So that whatever happens in '22 and 2024, that, you know, the outcome -- there might not be as many guardrails. That is the first thing.

But as Ron is also talking about and has written about, that Democrats are losing the culture war. So many of the demographics that used to be in their camp, such as Hispanics, some blacks, a chunk of white voters.

[14:35:05]

CHALIAN: Yes, I mean, I don't know -- maybe Ron will disagree -- I don't know that I would put voting rights into culture wars necessarily in this context.

But there's no doubt, as Ron has long identified, the political divide in our country being one where you have a college-educated group of voters who are more and more in line with the Democratic Party and a non-college educated group of voters more in line with the Republican Party.

And now things like race are sort of subset to that. It is the defining line to so much of this.

But let's just deal with what you started with, Alisyn, about allies being installed and 2022 and 2024.

We could look back at the attempts of Donald Trump and his allies to overthrow a legitimate election in 2020 could end up looking like child's play.

Because, in the future elections, if, indeed, those people are put in place and the guardrails are removed, they could be successful at the coup.

We've been covering an unsuccessful coup in the 2020 fallout. But there could actually be a successful one here. And that is a real concern.

Victor, you mentioned David Perdue. As an example, think about this. Here is a former Senator running for governor, a serious contender to be governor of a major state like Georgia.

And his entire rational for his candidacy, according to his interviews he's done, is that Brian Kemp can't win because he certified a legitimate election in 2020. And David Perdue now said he would not have certified that election.

That was counted and recounted three times. That is a major cause for concern about the path forward here.

BLACKWELL: And we should remind people, and I said it yesterday, I'll say it again, what David Perdue is saying is that he would have broken the law to try to appease former President Trump.

David Chalian, Mara Schiavocampo, Ron Brownstein, thank you all.

The Supreme Court said that the controversial Texas abortion law could stay in place but providers could still fight the law in federal court. We'll explain all of that ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:41:52]

BLACKWELL: Well, today, the Supreme Court decided to leave in place that controversial Texas abortion law that bans procedure after six weeks of pregnancy.

CAMEROTA: But the justices also ruled that abortion providers have the right to challenge the law in federal court.

CNN's Supreme Court analyst, Joan Biskupic, joins us now.

So, Joan, what does this actually mean?

JOAN BISKUPIC, CNN SUPREME COURT ANALYST: Good afternoon, Alisyn and Victor.

For starters, it means that this law that conflicted with the 1973 Roe v. Wade will stay in effect in Texas for more days, more weeks, maybe even more months.

Since September 1st, this law that bans abortions after about six-week pregnancy has been allowed to take effect and driven many women from the state to get medical care to neighboring states.

The justices today said that the abortion providers who are challenged the law do have some ability to sue to get protection from the law. But they did it on very -- if a limited way. The whole case will go

back to a lower court young that will decide what kind of protection the clinics will have.

The state passed a law that essentially deputized private individuals. It said that state officials have no responsibility for this law. But still, there's this prohibition on abortion after six weeks.

And anyone who successfully sues someone who helps a woman obtain an abortion could win, at minimum, $10,000. So that has had a very chilling effect on abortion clinics.

And Chief Justice John Roberts even referred to that in his partial dissent today, saying look at what has happened to a right that the Supreme Court, you know, had enacted, and allowed for back in 1973 and just look what it's done to chill -- to chill abortion providers in the state.

Very strong statements from the chief justice, who is normally against abortion rights and has supported abortion regulations.

But it shows how far the balance of power has gone on this Supreme Court toward the right.

BLACKWELL: The dynamic has certainly changed.

Let me ask you about the Mississippi case. It is not that long since we heard the oral arguments there. The ban at 15 weeks. What do you think the impact is on that case?

BISKUPIC: That is really the bigger question here. Because right now, this is a Texas dispute. How this unfolds will only effect women in Texas.

Significant, but not as significant as the Mississippi case that is a full-scale attack on a nationwide right to abortion that the justices had declared was part of the Constitution.

And that case really is going to, you know, have many more reverberations nationwide.

I think is means, Victor, that Chief Justice John Roberts, who appeared during oral arguments for that dispute from Mississippi on December 1st, to be looking for a compromise.

Trying to pick up at least one justice to his right to have a ruling that would certainly roll back abortion rights but not completely, completely gut Roe v. Wade.

[14:45:07]

And seeing what came out today suggests that there's a momentum that is certainly going very hard against Roe v. Wade and against the 1992 precedent that upheld it.

So I think the chief justice has a very tough task. And even when he was trying to go for, Victor, was not even anything that would have affirmed the essential right to abortion but would have at least minimized the change in America to reproductive rights.

CAMEROTA: Joan Biskupic, thank you --

BISKUPIC: Thanks.

CAMEROTA: -- for walking us through all of that.

BLACKWELL: Health care workers in COVID hot spots are exhausted and again on the brink of burnout heading into the winter months. COVID-19 hospitalizations have increased 40 percent over a month ago.

Scientists are still working to figure out the effect of the Omicron variant as some early data is starting to come in.

CNN's Athena Jones has the latest.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): U.S. COVID-19 cases on the rise again. Now averaging nearly 120,000 new infections a day. Up more than 50 percent over a month ago.

Case numbers increasing in 26 states, hospitals strained, in hard-hit Michigan, Ohio and Arizona.

Indiana now the latest state to call on the National Guard to help overwhelmed hospital workers.

DR. PAUL CALKINS, ASSOCIATE INTERVIEW CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, INDIANA UNIVERSITY HEALTH: The hospital beds and the monitors don't feel that our -- we are tired. Our people are incredibly tired.

GOV. CHRIS SUNUNU (R-NH): The surge is definitely upon us.

JONES: And in New Hampshire, the governor warning --

SUNUNU: It is going to be a rough winter, there's no doubt about it.

JONES: The nationwide surge driven almost entirely by the highly contagious Delta variant.

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: We need to be a war-time footing because we are at war and with an enemy killing 1200 Americans a day and I don't see it.

JONES: Doctors say most of those hospitalized are unvaccinated. And with the virus marching steadily across the country --

REINER: You're either going to be vaccinated or recovering from COVID or dead.

JONES: As the U.S. prepared to mark one year since the first shots went into arms, the pace of COVID vaccinations is up almost 40 percent over a month ago.

With nearly 460,000 people getting their first shots each day, and some 2 million total doses administered a day. About half of them booster doses.

Early studies suggest boosters increase protection against a new Omicron variant.

Dr. Fauci telling CNN the National Institutes of Health will likely have data early next week from lab tests on vaccine effectiveness.

Meanwhile, in South Africa, where Omicron was first detected, evidence it is spreading faster than Delta.

SALIM ABDOOL KARIM, AFRICAN TASK FORCE FOR CORONAVIRUS: We have about two weeks of data now that show the doubling time is faster than what we saw with the Delta variant or the Beta variant. So there's now stronger evidence that it is more highly transmissible.

JONES: But there are encouraging signs.

KARIM: The cases tend on the whole to be milder with fewer requiring oxygenation. So it is emerging and confirming what we know and no red flags at this stage.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JONES: So no red flags at this stage.

Now a new CDC report out today shows most of the 43 people known to have been infected in the U.S. had mild symptoms but some 80 percent of them had been fully vaccinated and 14 of them had already had booster doses.

The most commonly reported symptoms were cough, fatigue, congestion or running nose.

Of course, this is early data. And the clinical severity of the Omicron variant will become better understood as more cases are identified and investigated.

CAMEROTA: OK, Athena, thank you.

JONES: Thanks.

BLACKWELL: Let's bring in now Dr. Peter Hotez, professor and dean of tropical medicine at Baylor College.

Dr. Hotez, thank you so much for being with us.

Before we get into Omicron, I want to talk about Delta and the surge we're seeing. A 50 percent increase over the last month of new cases, 40 percent increase over the last month of hospitalizations.

Is this the seasonal surge that we should expect, or is something else at play here? DR. PETER HOTEZ, PROFESSOR & DEAN, NATIONAL SCHOOL OF TROPICAL

MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Yes, that is it. I mean, Mother Nature told us what she's going to do.

She gave us a big Delta wave across the south in the summer. And then it went down in the fall. And then there was a big surge in the winter.

So there was -- I'm sorry there was a surge in the south last year. In the summer went down. And it went up again in the winter. And now it is doing it again, except this time it is Delta, which is more transmissible.

And unfortunately, Victor, we've only vaccinated 60 percent of the country. That is fully vaccinated. That means 40 percent is not. And so that is what is happening right now.

Delta just sweeping through all of the northern Midwest and now moving down into Indiana and Ohio. It is going to be another terrible winter from Delta alone, not to mention the fact that now we've got the Omicron variant here.

[14:50:07]

You know, Doctor, Miguel Marquez, throughout the course of these two years going into hospitals around the country, particularly in Michigan, and talking to patients and talking to doctors. And it's so stunning his findings.

BLACKWELL: It's heartbreaking.

CAMEROTA: It's heartbreaking. It's revealing.

Another little snippet. In Michigan, the vast majority of people who are hospitalized and the huge majority of people who are dying are unvaccinated.

Here's a little snippet of a conversation Miguel Marquez had with one of the patients.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I didn't want to be vaccinated.

MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You didn't want to be vaccinated?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

MARQUEZ: Do you think you'll get vaccinated after this?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No.

MARQUEZ: Why?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I should be OK now. MARQUEZ: You think?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CAMEROTA: I think that she was there for a week.

So obviously, you have to leave people to their own devices, Doctor. You know, if they choose at some point, it's personal responsibility getting sick, even dying.

But as a doctor, what do you think when you hear that?

HOTEZ: You know, Alisyn, since June 1, we've now lost, looking at the numbers 150,000 unvaccinated Americans to COVID. And 150,000 people threw their lives away because they refused to get vaccinated. That is the depth and breadth of this problem.

I don't know what you call it anymore. Some call it misinformation or disinformation. This is mass self-immolation on a scale we have never seen.

And it's all coming mostly coming from anti-science, anti-vaccine aggression from the political right, from members of Congress, conservative news outlets, and the contrarian intellectuals, and pseudo intellectuals.

And guess what? It's just about to get worse again because we're getting another Delta wave. And I predict that number of 150,000 unvaccinated Americans who died is about to double.

And what that means is we're looking at 800,000 deaths by the end of this year. We could hit the million mark by the first or second quarter of next year, almost all unvaccinated.

And that's not even thinking about Omicron. And now we just got some new data in from the British U.K. Health Security Agency. And unfortunately, it confirms some of the things that we were worried about from South Africa.

One, it confirms that, in the U.K., Omicron is more transmissible than Delta. We were kind of hopeful maybe that was a one-off with South Africa, it wouldn't hold up.

Doesn't look like that way. Looks like it's being reproduced in the U.K.

We got our first vaccine effectiveness data, that's preliminary, from symptomatic illness.

It looks like, if you get that third immunization -- and I stress it's critical that you get that third immunization to get that big rise in virus neutralizing antibiotics.

You're looking at a 70 percent to 75 percent effectiveness from symptomatic illness. So not as good as it was versus the Delta variant.

And then one last piece is we have some additional data out of Germany showing that that rate of protection may decline pretty quickly after you get the third dose versus Omicron because you're getting a drop in virus neutralizing antibodies.

So this is going to be a pretty hellish winter, I'm sorry to say, based on people refusing to go get vaccinated and the fact that now we're going to have this mixed infection of Omicron and Delta.

BLACKWELL: And a terrible tragedy for the health care workers who are climbing this peak again.

Miguel introduced a woman in his story, a nurse there, who went home and had to hide from her children because she cried at the end of these days, going up that mountain, as we saw the cases grow, hospitalizations grow.

(CROSSTALK)

HOTEZ: We all do, Victor.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

HOTEZ: We're all exhausted. We're just wiped out.

BLACKWELL: Yes.

And, Dr. Peter Hotez, thank you so much.

CAMEROTA: We appreciate you, Doctor. Thank you.

HOTEZ: Thank you. Thank you.

[14:54:08]

CAMEROTA: We're also following breaking news. The House Select Committee investigating the January 6th insurrection just issued six new subpoenas. Who they want to talk to now, we have that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

CAMEROTA: We do have some breaking news just into CNN. The January 6th committee just issued six new subpoenas.

BLACKWELL: One of those subpoenas is for a former Trump aide now running for Congress.

Let's get right to CNN's Paula Reid in Washington. She has the list.

Who's on it?

PAULA REID, CNN SENIOR LEGAL CORRESPONDENT: This list targets people involved in staging the rallies on January 5th and January 6th. They are not household names, but there's former Trump aide and current Ohio congressional candidate, Max Miller.

Also, according to the committee, some of these people had direct communication with the former president about the January 6th rally.

Now, this latest batch of subpoenas comes among the dozens of subpoenas the committee has sent out.

And it's interesting, over the past about 48 hours, we have seen a real show of force by the committee.

They have hit some roadblocks over the past couple of weeks with several Trump loyalists throwing up various roadblocks, different ways they did not want to cooperate.

[14:59:55]

Asserting their Fifth Amendment right or saying they're going to assert executive privilege. Mark Meadows, of course, sued the committee.

It's interesting, yesterday, we saw four key figures in the investigation paraded up on Capitol Hill in front of cameras.