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Russian Invasion Of Ukraine Increasingly Possible; Kentucky Hits Its Highest COVID Positivity Rate Of Pandemic; Fashion Icon And Former Vogue Editor Andre Leon Talley Dies At 73. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired January 19, 2022 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[14:30:00]
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Thanks so much for being on.
MICHAEL COHEN, FORMER SPECIAL COUNSEL TO DONALD TRUMP: Yes. You got it, Alisyn, be well.
CAMEROTA: Talk soon.
VICTOR BLACKWELL, CNN HOST: America's top diplomat is in Ukraine as Russia continues to amass troops at the border. He says Ukrainian leaders should prepare for what could be difficult days ahead.
CAMEROTA: And Kentucky is seeing the highest COVID positivity rate since the start of the pandemic. We'll take you there to see how hospitals are scrambling.
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[14:35:07]
CAMEROTA: Secretary of State Tony Blinken is in Ukraine and warned that Russia could double its number of troops on the Ukrainian border quickly.
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ANTONY BLINKEN, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: We know that there are plans in place to increase that force even more on very short notice, and that gives President Putin the capacity also on very short notice to take further aggressive action against Ukraine.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: Now earlier today the Russian deputy foreign minister told reporters his country will not, quote, "attack, strike or invade" Ukraine, but Blinken told Ukrainian leaders that they should prepare for, quote, "difficult days ahead."
BLACKWELL: CNN military analyst General Wesley Clark joins us now. He's former NATO Supreme Allied commander and senior fellow at the UCLA Berkeley Center for International Relations.
Sir, welcome back. I want to start here with, is there any potential maybe more robust signal that the U.S. can send to deter an invasion? And I want to play for you first, this is Congressman Mike McCaul. He is the ranking member on the House Foreign Affairs. Here's what he says.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REP. MICHAEL MCCAUL (R-TX): We can arm Ukraine with lethal weapons, but it takes time to, you know, train and prepare for that. We're talking a very aggressive short timetable. In the classified space -- I can't go into detail -- this plan is very specific and very aggressive in its timetable, and so we need to send a very bold message of deterrence.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
BLACKWELL: Bold message of deterrence. So do you think there is any deployment of resources or training that can happen now to deter an invasion, if Putin wants to go in?
GEN. WESLEY CLARK (RET), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, absolutely there are things that can be done. Now whether they deter or not of course that's unknowable. I think there's three general things that can be done. First we could deploy more defensive weaponry, lethal weaponry ammunitions to the Ukraine. We could do that very, very quickly. I'm told some of that's in the pipeline. I'm told it's being approved. I don't know why it's not there yet.
But it's certainly -- we know what the Ukrainians need. There is training going on. British, French, U.S. elements have done some training there. Could more be done? Yes. But the training is -- training there is mostly over at this point. More hardware? Yes. But what else could be done? One thing is you could take Russia to the United Nations. During the Cuban missile crisis, the United States took the Soviet Union to the United Nations, showed the pictures, said you can't do this. Alarmed the whole world and the world turned against the Soviet Union.
And what Vladimir Putin is doing, whether he admits the threat or not, and promises not to invade or not, those troops are a threat. And the intent is to convey that threat to the people of Ukraine and more to NATO itself. And to deliver such a threat is a violation of international law. Russia is acting like a rogue state in this case, and it should be called for.
The third thing that could be done is to immediately implement some additional financial sanctions. That could be reversible. But as Russia builds up its troop strength to increase its threat level, we should be proportionally increasing our ability to inflict punishment on Russia should it act. And the best way of increasing that credibility of that punishment is to implement some of those additional sanctions now.
CAMEROTA: General Clark, also, Senator Chris Murphy who's on the Foreign Relations Committee met with President Zelensky of Ukraine this week. And I just want to quickly read to you what he said afterwards. Basically he was trying to suggest that this would be a very bad move militarily for Russia. He said, "The Ukrainians are going to fight for their lives. There will be a long-term counter insurgency. It will be bloody. It will be drawn out. It will be a black mark on Russia that could end up leading to Russia's downfall, as the Afghanistan invasion arguably contributed to the Soviet Union's downfall."
Do you agree with that assessment?
CLARK: Well, I certainly agree the Ukrainians are going to fight and try to fight. But it depends -- you know, Ukraine is not Afghanistan. Ukrainians are not Afghans. And this is not a country where men have grown up and families and tribes are growing up settling scores and killing each other for generations. This is essentially a Western country. So yes, there will be some resistance. But it depends on how Russia handles that resistance if it invades.
Just think of it this way, if it's very difficult for the United States to consider putting those additional military resources in now, or deploying a NATO air force to Romania and Bulgaria to stop any over, any spillover from Russian action.
[14:40:06]
If that's so difficult to contemplate now, think how much more difficult it's going to be if Russia does use force and we see that Russian military machine rolling across Ukraine and when Russia says, then, stop. You know, this is our country. You're directly fighting against us. What are we going to do then? So the time to stop this is now. It's just the strength in the deterrent, to go to the United Nations to call the illegal activity out and to strengthen Ukraine's ability to defend itself.
And I would recommend putting a NATO composite air force into Romania and Bulgaria to increase allied resolve to show NATO's capacity to make a decision and (INAUDIBLE) the direction of attack, contain any spillover.
CAMEROTA: General Wesley Clark, thank you. We appreciate your time.
CLARK: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: All right, the U.S. sets the record for COVID hospitalizations. And a new study shows again it reveals the importance of vaccinations in preventing these hospitalizations. So we have the details of it, next.
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[14:45:50]
BLACKWELL: More than 150,000 Americans in hospitals across this country have coronavirus. The numbers we've seen this month have been among the highest we've seen throughout the pandemic.
CAMEROTA: CNN's Miguel Marquez is in Kentucky where hospitals are struggling to keep up with the surge of these unvaccinated patients. Tell us what you're seeing, Miguel.
MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, look, Kentucky, you know, it's as hot as hotspots get. It's been hot for quite some time and it just doesn't seem to get any less cool.
Kentucky now the positive rate of those getting tested for coronavirus about a third, over 30 percent of people getting tested for coronavirus are coming up positive for the coronavirus. Just a massive number. They are breaking through records across the state right now.
They're not sure how far it's going to go. How much more this wave has to go. We went to a hospital, we went to, in September in Morehead, Kentucky, St. Claire Healthcare and the CEO there says that his staff is flat-out tired and the public, at least part of it, doesn't really seem to understand what they're dealing with inside those hospitals.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD LLOYD, CEO, ST. CLAIRE HEALTHCARE: There's still two worlds, there's the world from COVID's perspective out there. And then there's the reality of COVID here. And my greatest fear right now is not managing the disease. It's having -- it's keeping the resilience of our clinicians and our nurses and our therapists and all the teams. They are exhausted.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
MARQUEZ: So the last count that the state took of weekly cases was up over 72,000 cases of coronavirus in the state. During the Delta phase, when we were here in September, that number was up over 30,000. So a much bigger number. They're not seeing the hospitalizations that they had. The hospitalizations under Delta, but they are still seeing a lot of sick people. They don't know how far it goes, and it goes without saying, the vaccinations make a huge difference.
The unvaccinated or partially vaccinated make up about 80 percent of those cases. And up over 80 percent of hospitalizations and deaths. The simple reality is if you want to avoid it, get vaccinated. Back to you guys.
BLACKWELL: We know this is a pandemic, especially as it relates to those hospitals of the unvaccinated.
Miguel Marquez for us there. Thank you so much.
Well, he was a fashion icon, often draped in a couture kaftan. The fashion world is mourning the death of Andre Leon Talley. We're going to take a look at his trailblazing career. That's next.
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[14:53:14]
CAMEROTA: The fashion industry has lost a pioneer, Andre Leon Talley, the former longtime creative director for "Vogue" has died at the age of 73.
BLACKWELL: His influence was captured in this 2018 documentary, "The Gospel According to Andre."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILL I AM, ARTIST: He's the Nelson Mandela of couture. The Kofi Anan of what you got on.
ANNA WINTOUR, VOGUE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF: His bombastic personality gave people energy themselves, and to take risks.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And Andre tosses out all of these different words, a lot of people think, oh, my god, this guy is crazy.
WHOOPI GOLDBERG, ACTRESS: People's hands went -- he was so many things he wasn't supposed to be, and they couldn't get around it.
ANDRE LEON TALLEY, FASHION ICON AND FORMER VOGUE EDITOR: Fashion should have (INAUDIBLE).
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But why don't we see it on the screen?
TALLEY: Darling, it depends on what street you're walking on and going down and what time of day.
(END OF VIDEO CLIP)
BLACKWELL: The director of the documentary Kate Novack joins us now.
Kate, thank you for your time. Let's start here. Just help people who don't follow fashion or the business of fashion understand how big of a loss this is.
KATE NOVACK, DIRECTOR, "THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ANDRE": I mean, I think that Andre Leon Talley, in addition to being an icon in the fashion world, you know, in addition to being the first black man in his position at "Vogue" magazine, and really shaping the images that we saw for so many years and see now still today, I think is a really important figure in American history, even beyond fashion history as someone who really redefined what was acceptable or even possible.
And so I think his influence, while it's huge, and we're all feeling it today at such a loss, I think he's going to become even more influential as opposed to sort of a diminishment.
[14:55:07]
CAMEROTA: Yes, explain that, Kate. I mean, how did he become such a force, and what do you mean that his legacy will grow bigger?
NOVACK: Yes, I mean, I think that -- so I filmed with Andre for a little over a year, and I think that part of the way that he became a force is because his passion for not just style and fashion but also for beauty and story and humanity, it was so pure. It was so unadulterated. It was -- he could kind of notice the detail in a collar on a shirt and be in awe in the way that a kid might be seeing the beach for the first time.
And, you know, he always said you need to see the world with the kaleidoscope eyes of a child, and I really think that that's how he tried to live his life every day, and that energy really propelled him. You know, and he had a very loving upbringing with his grandmother. He was raised in the black church that sustained him in many ways. You know, and was kind of allowed at home in this sort of unlikely place in Durham, North Carolina, in the '50s and '60s to kind of explore his love and his interests.
CAMEROTA: Well, Kate Novack, great to get your perspective on this, and everybody should check out the documentary. Thanks for sharing your memories of him.
NOVACK: Thank you so much.
CAMEROTA: Well, in just about an hour from now, President Biden will hold a news conference at the White House on the eve of his one-year anniversary in office. So how will he address the multiple crises that he is facing? We have all of that next.
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