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GOP Primary To Test Trump's Endorsement Power; GOP's Perdue & Kemp Square Off At Continuous Debates; Poll: Voters Trust GOP More Than Dems On Economy, Inflation, Crime; Maksym Borodin, Mariupol City Council Deputy, Discusses Mariupol Evacuations Amid Russian "Obstacles"; U.S. Warned To Prepare For Summer Surge Of Cases In The South. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired May 02, 2022 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[14:32:34]
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN HOST: Republican voters in Ohio head to the polls tomorrow in the state's GOP Senate primary. This is a race that will test Donald Trump's kingmaker status.
The former president is backing J.D. Vance, who is squaring off against a handful of rivals, including Josh Mandel, who is backed by Ted Cruz.
CNN political director, David Chalian, joins me now.
David, great to see you.
This will test, obviously, President Trump's endorsements. How are those candidates doing?
DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes, this is the first of a whole series of tests that the former president has sets up for himself in the month of May, making very high-profile endorsements in key races.
And tomorrow, in Ohio, all eyes are going to be on J.D. Vance, the famed author of "Hillbilly Elegy," now running with Trump's backing. Is that the thing that will get him over the finish line in Ohio?
The most recent polling there, Alisyn, last week showed that it's still a pretty unsettled race. I think about a quarter of the electorate says they're still undecided in this Ohio Republican primary.
Donald Trump was out on the campaign trail for one of his preferred candidates in Nebraska yesterday. And he actually talked about his endorsement in Ohio and he mangled his preferred candidate's name.
Give a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We've endorsed Dr. Oz. We've endorsed J.P., right? J.D. Mandel (sic), and he's doing great. They're all doing good. They're all doing good.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHALIAN: Probably not the ideal way that J.D. Vance wanted his name out there. The former president did fix that going forward. I'm sure Vance would rather have his support than not, no matter how he says his name in the race.
CAMEROTA: Maybe he should change his name to Dr. Oz.
So tell us what's happening with another Trump-endorsed candidate, Perdue.
CHALIAN: Yes, so at the end of the month, on May 24th, is this key Georgia Republican primary in the governor's race there.
You know there's nobody in America, I think, who is sort of in Donald Trump's sight more than Brian Kemp, the incumbent Republican governor in Georgia who did not sign on to Trump's pleas to overturn the legitimate election that Joe Biden won in that state in 2020.
David Perdue, the former Republican Senator, is running with Trump's backing precisely because he signed onto the former president's big election lie.
And that has been at the center of many of their debates recently.
Here is a little example.
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[14:35:02]
DAVID PERDUE, (R), GEORGIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: He allowed the dissent decree. He allowed 7.5 million absentee ballots to be mailed out. He allowed for illegal drop boxes. He allowed for the Zuckerberg money. All of that is outside the law.
The reason he continues to lie about me and my background is he's complicit in this fraud.
GOV. BRIAN KEMP (R-GA): David, again, that's simply not true. And you know it's not.
But I'll tell you what I have done. I was as frustrated as anyone else with the 2020 election results. And I actually did something about it, working with the Georgia general assembly to address those issues in Senate Bill 202, the Elections Integrity Act.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHALIAN: In that race, Alisyn, a lot of the polling indicated that Kemp has a pretty substantial lead as the incumbent. So that could be one where Donald Trump ends up on the losing side.
And as you noted at the top, that will certainly be part of assessing his ability to have this Midas touch or not inside the GOP.
CAMEROTA: Now, David, tell us about the polls for Democrats. Because we know that President Biden's poll numbers are not great.
So when they're polled in terms of their top issues, how does it look for Democrats?
CHALIAN: Yes, this is sizing up to be a really brutal sort of climate electorally, politically for the Democrats.
Take a look at this recent ABC News/"Washington Post" poll on what you described, which party do you trust to handle a certain number of issues.
Look at the top three issues, crime, inflation, the economy. The Republican Party has significant advantage, double-digit advantage over the Democrats on those issues.
And they are the dominant issues in the campaign on voters' minds right now when you look at various surveys.
And don't take my word for it. Give a listen to Maggie Hassan, the Democratic incumbent Senator in a tough re-election battle in the state of New Hampshire.
She launched her first television ad and she takes on her own party's president.
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ANNOUNCER: Gas prices, we know the story. And while all of us are paying the price, one Senator is fighting to lower your costs.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Senator Maggie Hassan is on a mission to try to ease the pain at the pump.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: She wants to suspend the federal gas tax for the rest of the year.
SEN. MAGGIE HASSAN (D-NH): I'm taking on members of my own party to push a gas tax holiday. And I'm pushing Joe Biden to release more of our oil reserves. That's how we lower costs and get through these times.
I'm Maggie Hassan and I approve this message.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHALIAN: When your first ad out of the box, Alisyn, is taking on your own party, your own president, you know that the climate is one in which your party is not currently favored to do exceedingly well this November.
CAMEROTA: Really telling.
OK, David Chalian, thank you very much.
CHALIAN: Thanks a lot, Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: Now back to Ukraine. Evacuations are under way in Mariupol. But the city's mayor describes the process as, quote, "very difficult," with the Russians creating obstacles. We're going to speak to a member of the Mariupol city council about what's happening next.
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ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: In the besieged city of Mariupol, a Ukrainian commander at the steel plant says the complex has been under constant fire all day.
About 100 civilians left the plant over the weekend. But another planned evacuation for Monday apparently did not take place.
The mayor there says the Russians are, in his words, "creating obstacles." He added, in the past two months, the Russians have killed a staggering 20,000 civilians in the city.
If that's true, that's double the number of Mariupol civilians that are killed by the Nazis during their two-year assault on the city during World War II.
Maksym Borodin is the Mariupol city council deputy, Maksym Borodin, who joins us now live.
Let me start by trying to get the latest on the evacuations that you know about in Mariupol. First of all, do you know about these new reports that the steel plant has been under constant fire all day today? Is that accurate?
MAKSYM BORODIN, MARIUPOL CITY COUNCIL DEPUTY: Yes, the shots have not stopped for a moment. Putin says that they stop attacks on Azovstal, but they won't stop for a moment.
Only for the last two days it was a little bit of stopping, but for now it's continuous, the shelling and from warships. So it's no great change in situation.
COOPER: Do you know how many civilians are still left inside the steel plant?
BORODIN: There are no numbers of the people here because it's a big plant and a lot of rooms are not directly connected with each other, so we don't know the exact number.
Even the people evacuated from Azovstal plant, we don't know if they get -- as we know, they don't get to Ukraine-controlled territory right now. And we wait for it.
So the Russians make a lot of obstacles to this rescue mission.
[14:44:58]
COOPER: Yes, a reporter who we just talked to said that the people have not arrived yet. According to Russian forces, they are claiming that a number of the people who did leave the steel plant are now in Russian territory and wanted to go to Russian territory.
Do you know anything about that? Do you believe that people were choosing to go to Russia?
BORODIN: Maybe some people can choose Russia because of Russian propaganda. And because there are people in the Azovstal plant, they don't have a lot of information, they don't have connection or mobile cellular connection.
So Russians can make them believe that Ukraine leaves them and the only chance is going to the Russian territory for some of them. I think it can be.
But we can't believe Russians in any way. We see every day the propaganda films where they make the narrative that not Russians destroyed Mariupol, but Ukrainians destroyed Mariupol.
It's terrible to see how they use propaganda. It's worse than Nazi propaganda for now.
And there's only one job in Mariupol for citizens who live in the city now and can't get out. The job is to clean the territory from rubble and destruction.
And to take out from the rubbles corpses of dead citizens. And for this they promise to pay only $120 in the month.
And other news, they want to make the work obligatory like the concentration plants.
And so it's terrible situation. And people cannot choose what they want to do in Mariupol. They are like hostages today. And there's no law in Mariupol. Only the law of the gun.
COOPER: Maksym Borodin, I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us as we continue to follow the developing situation in Mariupol.
Thank you very much.
Alisyn, obviously, it is an incredibly grim situation and a lot of conflicting reports about exactly how many people have been able to get out.
And as we know, earlier in the program, we talked to Nick Paton Walsh, who is standing by waiting to see when those people may show up.
CAMEROTA: There's just no good options for them. And when they do get out, Anderson, as you know, from seeing the photos and the video, they're so overwhelmed, and devastated from having been in darkness for two months.
Obviously, we'll stay on it minute by minute of what's happening there. So we'll check back with you.
So a former member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force warns that the U.S. should prepare for a possible summer surge across the south. We're already seeing an uptick in cases. So is this surge going to be different? That's next.
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[14:52:57]
CAMEROTA: COVID infections are on the rise across the U.S. And according to the former White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, another surge is around the corner.
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DR. DEBORAH BIRX, FORMER COORDINATOR, WHITE HOUSE CORONAVIRUS TASK FORCE: Each of these surges are about four to six months apart. That tells me that natural immunity wanes enough in the general population after four to six months that a significant surge is going to occur again.
And this is what we have to be prepared for in this country. We should be preparing right now for a potential surge in the summer across the southern United States because we saw it in 2020, and we saw it in 2021.
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CAMEROTA: Well, the U.S. is now averaging nearly 46,000 new cases per day.
CNN health reporter, Jacqueline Howard is here.
Jacqueline, aren't we currently in a surge? Is Dr. Birx predicting something different than we are seeing across the country right now.
JACQUELINE HOWARD, CNN HEALTH REPORTER: Alisyn, I think we might be seeing the potential beginning of a potential summer surge.
When Dr. Birx made her comments she was really referring to two different factors. Number one, we have seen this seasonal pattern when it comes to tracking new coronavirus cases.
If you look at this graphic here, I believe we should have a timeline of new coronavirus cases on average over the past year, from May 2nd of 2021, up to today, May 2nd of 2022.
And it looks like we have the wrong graphic there.
But if you look at the past year, we had a summer surge last year, and that was between July and September. Cases then went down. Then they went up again in the winter of last year, between December and February.
They went down again. And now we're at May 2nd. And we could potentially see cases go up again.
This seasonal pattern of summer surges followed by a huge winter surge has been seen in other places around the world and here in the U.S.
And then, number two, Alisyn, when you think of the coronavirus surges of the past, they were mostly driven by variants. The summer wave last year driven by Delta. Our most recent winter wave driven by Omicron.
And those two factors, the seasonal patterns and the variants are what are kind of encouraging Dr. Birx to give this warning of a potential summer surge.
[14:55:07]
But we do have more people vaccinated now, right, Alisyn? And adults are 50 and older, now eligible for a second booster. Hopefully, vaccines will help reduce our risk.
CAMEROTA: And how about vaccines for kids, Jacqueline? Because when will we know if the FDA will authorize this vaccine in.
HOWARD: The latest from the FDA, we did hear that their advisory committee on vaccines is planning to meet this June. They have held the dates of June 8th, June 21st and June 22nd.
So following those advisory committee meetings, we could next hear from the FDA. And potentially, based on the data and based on how the advisory committee meetings go, we could hear more from the FDA on a potential authorization -- Alisyn?
CAMEROTA: OK, Jacqueline Howard, thank you very much.
So a special grand jury is now set in the investigation into whether Trump and his allies committed any crimes in their efforts to overturn Georgia's election results. We go live to the courthouse, next.
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