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January Jobs Report; Putin Gets China's Support; Winter Storm Paralyzes Parts of the U.S.; RNC Votes on Resolution of Censure; Mayor Eric Adams is Interviewed about Gun Violence. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired February 04, 2022 - 09:00   ET

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

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[09:00:00]

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everybody. I'm Bianna Golodryga.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Jim Sciutto.

We do begin with the breaking news this morning. A surprise, frankly.

The U.S. economy added 467,000 new jobs in January. That growth far outpacing expectations, even as the omicron variant sidelined millions of workers last month.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, a surprise number this morning.

CNN's Jeremy Diamond joins us from Washington with the White House reaction.

But let's begin with CNN's chief business correspondent Christine Romans.

Christine, we had been warned, even from the White House, that we could perhaps see a lower than expected number.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: This may have been a blip because of omicron. This number, though, came as a real surprise. What does the data show?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: It shows surprising strength in the job market. It shows there are still more open jobs than people to fill them and companies are hungry for workers. It shows that even with absenteeism because of sick-outs and people taking care of sick kids and family and out of work in that second week of January because of omicron, you still had strong hiring.

And the hiring was across the board, 467,000 net new jobs added. And you also had revisions in the latter half of the year that showed even more strength in the fall and winter than we had thought. A little bit weaker than we had thought in the summer. So a lot of revisions in these numbers.

I also think that goes to the difficulty we have in actually measuring what omicron and what Covid has done to the American economy. The unemployment rate up a tiny bit, but relatively unchanged at 4 percent. That is still down significantly from the worst of the crisis and nearing what many economists consider full employment.

Let's talk about where there were jobs added. You guys, in leisure and hospitality, this really surprised many, many economists. Big gains there. In professional and business services, these are office jobs, these are IT, these are tech jobs. In retail. I mean in hobby shops and in retail locations they were adding workers in January. And in transportation and warehousing. So, you saw some broad gains in jobs added here.

I'll remind you, wages, 5.7 percent. For some workers, that's not going to keep up with inflation. But for people, for some categories, it will. You've seen even better wage gains for low wage workers here because, again, so many of these employers are so hungry for workers. So, again, a very big surprise here.

And I think this is what the Fed chief has been telling us for some weeks, right? Tremendous strength in the American job market. One of the reasons why the Fed is going to start raising interest rates to try to cool things down.

SCIUTTO: One thing, Christine, the reason the White House had been concerned about these numbers is as exactly as you addressed, a lot of people were home, right?

ROMANS: Yes.

SCIUTTO: They had positive Covid tests and therefore they couldn't work or they were taking care of people who couldn't work. And yet you still had this growth. Does that mean that the next month points in a more positive direction, right? I mean if you got through a month like that, or are they just having trouble measuring how many jobs are actually out there?

ROMANS: I think it shows resiliency in the recovery. But I think it also shows the difficulty in getting our hands around just the historic churn happening in the labor market.

We know so many people are quitting their jobs for better jobs. That is a real hallmark of this. I heard it yesterday called the great upgrade, not the great resignation. And I think that's something to think about here.

People are on the move in a way that we have never seen before and we're trying to capture that accurately. I think here, bottom line, that absenteeism we saw the second week of January, some 12 million people were not working because they were sick or taking care of somebody who was sick or were quarantining. Remarkable that you could have job creation even with that backdrop.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, I'm still stunned that we saw such an uptick in leisure and hospitality, right?

ROMANS: Me too.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: As people were being diagnosed at the same time you would imagine that they were staying home. Clearly that wasn't the case.

Jeremy Diamond, it's rare that the White House gets positive surprises at this point. They had been preparing for a lower number. What is the statement and the sentiment out of the White House now?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, listen, we're going to hear from the president later this morning, but you can make no mistake that they are, obviously, thrilled to see this better than expected jobs report. Over the last week we have heard a slew of White House officials, whether it was the White House press secretary, Brian Deese, the president's economic adviser, or Jared Bernstein, another economic adviser to the president, all of them making -- trying to set the bar very low for this week, warning that this jobs report was going to be low, that it could even potentially show net losses. And, instead, you see a growth of 467,000 jobs.

One thing that I think won't change, though, and hasn't changed, frankly, over the last year is that this is a White House that even when they do get good economic news, yes, obviously they want to trumpet it, but they always come back to the fact that this is a very uneven recovery, it's a recovery that's very hard to capture, and they like to focus on the bigger trend lines.

[09:05:11]

And I think you'll hear the president later this morning once again talking about those bigger trend lines, including, for example, that based on all of the revisions over the last year, you now have 87 percent of jobs that were lost because of the pandemic recession that have now been regained under this economy. Also looking at the fact that the jobs report from last month was revised upwards to 510,000 jobs added.

So t here's a lot of positive, economic news that the White House can talk about. But, again, important to remember, though, that inflation is still top of mind for so many Americans. And even though the economy looks good, it may not feel good to many Americans who are dealing with those inflation issues.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, that may be the administration's biggest problem right now because the sentiment and the data doesn't necessarily match at this point.

SCIUTTO: And as Christine was saying, inflation is still outpacing wage growth at this point.

GOLODRYGA: Right. Right. Nonetheless, a really surprising positive news headline for the White House and for America.

Christine Romans and Jeremy Diamond, thank you.

And we'll discuss this and more with Bill Ford, the executive chairman of Ford Motor Company, later on this hour.

SCIUTTO: Now to Beijing, where the 2022 Olympic winter games are now officially underway. The opening ceremonies, they're still going on right now. Some competitions began as well overnight, including team figure skating.

China's pair team set a world record with their short program. American Nathan Chen easily topped the men's category. Right now, the U.S. is in the lead with 28 points. The ROC, or Russian Olympic Committee, and China, just behind.

GOLODRYGA: I caught some of Nathan's performance last night. It was incredible.

SCIUTTO: He's good.

GOLODRYGA: He is amazing.

Well, Team USA says it hopes to keep the burden of politics off of its athletes. This despite a U.S. diplomatic boycott of the games. The U.S. Olympic Committee president saying the athletes should focus on, quote, what they do best, while letting the U.S. and Chinese governments work to resolve their differences.

SCIUTTO: One of those differences, NATO expansion. This morning, Chinese President Xi Jinping hosted Russian Leader Vladimir Putin. The two discussed several issues, including Russia's buildup of forces in and around Ukraine, their opposition to any expansion of NATO. To see the two leaders together in lockstep, it seems significant.

GOLODRYGA: A quite stunning statement from the two as well.

CNN correspondent David Culver is in Beijing with more.

And, David, Xi said Putin's visit fulfilled a promise the two made to each other years ago and that lengthy joint statement saying that the friendship between the two states has no limits. Clearly, they are trying to send the world a message by this meeting.

What more can you tell us about it?

DAVID CULVER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Bianna and Jim, all the propaganda that has surrounded this, trumpeting the arrival of Putin even days before he got here earlier today, it has been about showcasing this as a very cozy, warm relationship between, not only these two leaders, but the countries that they're the head of.

And China has repeatedly, throughout all of this, slammed the U.S. for politicizing these games. They point specifically to the diplomatic boycott, which was, of course, done over China's human rights record. And yet one of the biggest moments ahead of the opening ceremony is what you were just talking about, that in person meeting between President Putin and President Xi, who, by the way, has not left this country since the start of the pandemic.

Now, right now they are both at the opening ceremony here in Beijing. The meeting, though, it sends, as we were discussing, this major geopolitical message. Not necessarily to the west, yes, in part to the U.S., but also, and this is where it's perhaps more important, to nations and democracies that have relied on the U.S. for global stability. Some of the readouts are just coming out as well, and state media, of course, pumping these out. This, no doubt, going to be echoed consistently here in the days, weeks, months, perhaps even to come, saying that Putin and Xi have vowed to deepen their strategic coordination, adding that it will have a far reaching impact on both China and Russia and the world at large.

This meeting coming as the Ukraine crisis and concerns over a possible Russian invasion. That remains tense. And yet Putin here at ease, taking in the ceremony right now. And as for that diplomatic boycott, as you know, it essentially means U.S. officials are not here. Team USA is.

Bianna and Jim, interestingly enough, they have a record number of Team USA athletes, 177, about 80 percent of them, just walking in the opening ceremony a short time ago.

SCIUTTO: Notably Xi, in his statement, joint statement, in effect endorsing Russia's position as it relates to Ukraine and NATO.

David Culver, good to have you there in Beijing.

GOLODRYGA: Well, this morning, the Kremlin is also firing back with U.S. claims that Russia is planning an elaborate plot to stage a fake attack by Ukrainian forces, calling the accusations, quote, delusional.

Here's Pentagon Spokesman John Kirby describing the alleged plot.

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JOHN KIRBY, PENTAGON SPOKESMAN: As part of this fake attack, we believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners and images of destroyed locations, as well as military equipment, at the hands of Ukraine or the west.

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[09:10:21]

Natasha Bertrand has been covering this.

And, Natasha, we've spoken a number of times about how part of Russia's plan, according to U.S. intel assessments, is political disruption, it's the psychological operations, disinformation. This seems to be part of that plan.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: That's exactly right, Jim. So in the last couple weeks we've seen the U.S. and its allies come

out and issue a range of warnings about potential false flag attacks by Russia, potential destabilization campaigns inside Ukraine in order to create a pretext for a Russian invasion.

And this accusation yesterday about this video is kind of the latest and very elaborate and detailed warning about what Russia may be planning to do here. The lengths that it might be willing to go to create a pretext to attack Ukraine.

Now, John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, did say there that there is evidence that they may be preparing to make this video that includes actors that are corpses in this video, that include fake mourners, that include explosions. All of this to make it seem like Ukraine has actually attacked Russia, or Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine, and giving Russia an excuse then to move into the country.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, of course this morning, called these fabrications, said that it was delusional, said that these accusations are coming out more and more every day. The Russians are flat out denying this, although the Russians have denied things before that have turned out to be true.

While the U.S. does not actually have this video in their possession, and say that it has not actually been made yet, they say that all the preparations for it are being made right now.

GOLODRYGA: Yes, and the novelty here not necessarily being these false flag operations at the hands of the Russians. We've seen that in the past. The novelty is how the U.S. and the west and in the United Kingdom have been approaching this information and sharing it and being so transparent about it with the public.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

GOLODRYGA: Trying to, I think, get a -- in front of Vladimir Putin here.

SCIUTTO: Declassifying intelligence, yes.

GOLODRYGA: Yes.

Natasha Bertrand, thank you, as always.

Well, right now, a powerful winter storm is blanketing much of the nation, leaving behind a trail of heavy snow, icy roads and tornado threats. More than 300,000 people currently without power in six states. And the weather has forced more than 8,000 flight cancellations since just yesterday, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Winter weather advisories just expanded as the storm moves northeast, promising more disruption today.

CNN's Rosa Flores, she joins us now from Houston.

Rosa, tell us how conditions are there. I mean it's been remarkable to see so much snow in Texas.

ROSA FLORES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. Right now the precipitation has ended, as you can see around me. But the windchill, Jim and Bianna, is in the teens according to the National Weather Service. And I confirm that because it's hitting me in the face right now.

But the good thing here is that there are a lot of differences when it comes to this weather storm here in the state of Texas compared to the deadly storm last year. And the biggest thing is that the temperatures are not going to be as low and that the weather event is not supposed to last as long.

Now, the bad thing this year is the amount of ice that is expected, so much so that Governor Greg Abbott calling this particular event one of the most significant ice events in the last few decades in the state of Texas. That's why he activated 27 state agencies, deployed 4,000 Texas Department of Transportation personnel. These are the crews that are out on the streets in the roadways treating them, de-icing them to make sure that they are as safe as possible. But the conditions, they say, are treacherous.

The governor also activating 127 National Guard members. These crews are deployed in strategic areas around the state to respond to specific emergencies. We haven't heard of any of those emergencies just yet. But Governor Greg Abbott saying that the power grid this time is not only going to hold, he says that it is going to have excess power.

Take a listen.

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GOV. GREG ABBOT (R-TX): At the expected peak demand, there should be about 10,000 megawatts of extra power capacity. To put that in context, that is about enough extra power to supply about 2 million homes.

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FLORES: Now, more than 15,000 people are without power right now here in the state of Texas, Jim and Bianna, but according to the governor, and based on what we've seen by monitoring the power grid here in the state of Texas, those are localized events. In essence, power lines down, things like ice pulling some of those power lines or wind events in certain areas across the state.

[09:15:01]

The power grid does appear to be holding this time.

Jim. Bianna.

SCIUTTO: Yes, we remember when it went -- when it went down last year. Enormous consequences.

Rosa Flores there, thanks so much.

Coming up next, the Georgia prosecutor investigating former President Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election there says she has now become the target of frequent racial slurs.

Plus, coming up, my conversation with New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Hear his takeaways after meeting with President Biden and how he plans to combat rising crime.

GOLODRYGA: Also ahead, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg just personally lost $30 billion as shares of its parent company took an unprecedented nose-dive. We'll have details on what's driving that massive sell-off.

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[09:20:04]

In Georgia, an Atlanta area district attorney investigating Donald Trump for his interference in the 2020 election there says she's endured more racist attacks now than ever in her life. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis spoke in an exclusive interview with "The Atlanta Journal-Constitution" on her work in this grand jury investigation.

Have a listen.

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FANI WILLIS, FULTON COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: You know, I get called the "n" very regularly. It's really silly to me that they believe that by hurling those kind of insults, that it's going to impact the way that we do our investigation. It's not going to impact me to do something faster. It's not going to impact me in treating the former president or anyone else unfairly. And it's not going to make me stop what I have a lawful duty to do.

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SCIUTTO: Earlier this week, Willis asked the FBI to help provide security for buildings and staff after Trump called prosecutors investigating him racists.

GOLODRYGA: Willis also gave a timeline for when the case will start to see more activity.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

FANI WILLIS, FULTON COUNTY DISTRICT ATTORNEY: We realize that we're coming to a place that there are enough people that will require a subpoena for us to speak to or for us to be able to get information. And so, yes, we're headed into phase two, and phase two, I believe, starts when we actually start with a special purpose grand jury.

(END VIDEO CLIP) GOLODRYGA: The Fulton County D.A. is investigating whether Trump and his allies committed any crimes in their campaign to convince Georgia officials to find fraud that didn't exist and hand Trump a victory. The probe was launched last year following Trump's call with Georgia's Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger after he pushed the Republican to find votes to overturn the election results. Willis went on to say that although the special grand jury can continue its work through the spring of 2023, it's possible the group will wrap up before then.

And later today, the Republican National Committee will formally vote on a resolution to censure Representatives Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger. Their offense, investigating the January 6th insurrection. This really doesn't make sense.

SCIUTTO: CNN's Gabby Orr joins us now live from Salt Lake City, where the party is holding its winter meeting.

Gabby, this is a modified, some saying, watered down proposal from earlier in the week, but still remarkable to see the party, in effect, excommunicate, right, two members for taking part in this committee.

GABBY ORR, CNN REPORTER: Well, good morning, Jim and Bianna.

This is indeed a watered-down version of the resolution earlier this week that would have called for the expulsion of Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney and Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger from the House Republican Conference. Sources tell CNN that the new version, which will instead formally censure both Republican lawmakers, was drafted after some Republican National Committee members were concerned that the party would go too far if they called for both of these lawmakers to be removed from the GOP caucus. Obviously, something that they could only do ceremoniously given that the RNC does not get to control who does or does not serve in Congress.

Now, in statements about this censure, both Kinzinger and Liz Cheney suggested that they have no plans to back away from their involvement in the House panel investigating January 6th.

Here's what Liz Cheney had to say. If the price of being willing to tell the truth and get to the bottom of what happened on January 6th and make sure that those who are responsible are held accountable is a censure, then I am absolutely going to continue to stand up for what I knew was right. And I think that it's a sad day that the party of Lincoln -- for the party of Lincoln if that's where we are.

Jim.

SCIUTTO: Gabby Orr, thanks so much.

Well, President Biden and New York Mayor Eric Adams worked hand in hand to combat crime and gun violence. Mayor Adams, you're going to hear from him next, discussing how they and he plan to tackle rising crime.

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[09:28:48]

SCIUTTO: The leader of America's largest city is teaming up now with President Biden to try to curb violent crime. Mayor Eric Adams hosted the president in New York City on Thursday. The two shared their visions for combatting the rising crime numbers.

I'm joined now by New York Mayor Eric Adams.

Mayor, thanks for taking the time this morning.

MAYOR ERIC ADAMS (D), NEW YORK: Thank you for having me.

SCIUTTO: The president's plan to address gun violence nationally includes a couple of steps including trying to get a handle on ghost guns, also address violent drug crime. Which of these moves, what of these moves do you think will make a difference and why?

ADAMS: It's so important. You know I say this over and over again, I use the analogy that there are many rivers that are feeding the sea of violence in our city and really across America. We have to dam each river. And the federal government, that is one of the rivers that we must dam. And it's the flow of guns. What we have witnessed, a countless number of guns are flowing into the inner cities across America.

We took 6,000 guns off the street last year, close to 400 this year since I've been in office, yet they continue to flow.

[09:30:00]

SCIUTTO: Yes.

ADAMS: But we also need the coordination. President Biden promised after I met with him, after the primary, that he would come and look at.