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President Biden On The Brink Of His First Potential Cabinet Defeat; No Decisions Yet From Senate Parliamentarian On Whether $15 Minimum Wage Stays In COVID Relief Bill; Biden Faces Challenges On Capitol Hill With Cabinet Nominee, COVID Relief; Partisan Battle Happening Over Commission Aimed At Digging Into January's Capitol Insurrection; Number Of New Cases Decline Or Holding Steady In Most States. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 25, 2021 - 12:00   ET

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

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ANNOUNCER: Inside Politics with John King, next on CNN.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Hello everybody and welcome to Inside Politics. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you for sharing a very busy news day with us here in Washington.

Some big early tests for President Biden his COVID relief package hangs in the balance, as does the fate of a big cabinet pick. Out in the states fresh examples of an alarming Republican trend effort to rollback your right to vote.

Efforts sadly still based on the big Trump lie about massive 2020 fraud, getting a vaccine and fighting COVID is something that should unite us all. Vice President Harris is running point for the White House effort now to overcome vaccine skepticism among black Americans. You see her there stopping by a DC supermarket pharmacy this morning.

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KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: There have been many theories about populations that are experiencing vaccine hesitancy for legitimate reasons that are based on historical experiences that we should never forget.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The pandemic warps the way we look at a lot of things. 730,000 Americans filed for first time unemployment benefits last week. Now in normal times that would be a shock it would crater financial markets. And these times though, it was an improvement over last week and better than expected.

Still prove to the president though that the economy needs big COVID relief and needs it fast. The house loads Friday. That's tomorrow on a nearly $2 trillion package that includes raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Whether that wage hike remains in the Senate version hinges on a decision that could come any moment now from a woman. Most of you have never heard of the Senate parliamentarian.

Also today new testimony that contradictory intelligence led to the lack of preparedness by security officials ahead of the Capitol insurrection and at that hearing bipartisan frustration over what happened.

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REP. JAIME HERRERA BEUTLER (R-WA): You guys are in charge of the security on the house floor. Are you just there to make sure that we take our coats off on we're on camera.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Back to the security challenges in a moment. But today and tomorrow will give us some important early clues about the new president's ability to keep his party together and get his team approved and his agenda enacted.

14 of the 23 cabinet level picks on team Biden you see them there still waiting for Senate confirmation. The two women on the right of your screen are in focus today. Jennifer Granholm the former Michigan Governor her confirmation is energy secretary likely this hour.

But near attendance nomination to run the office of management and budget is stuck in committee because she simply does not have the votes. We should know by tomorrow, if not today whether the president and his team can find a way meaning find votes to save Tanden. Tomorrow is also when the house votes on a nearly $2 trillion COVID relief bill.

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REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): And I feel that we have a very, very strong argument and we have a very big need in our country. To pass the minimum wage we will pass, we will pass a minimum wage bill.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: With us to share their reporting and their insights Nia-Malika Henderson, our CNN Senior Political Reporter and Melanie Zanona, Congressional Reporter for POLITICO.

Melanie, let me start with you with these challenges on the hill. On the one hand, the near attended nomination has nothing to do with the Biden COVID relief package. On the other hand, on day 37 here, these are early tests for the new president as to whether he can keep momentum on Capitol Hill and keep his party together.

You hear the speaker there talking optimistically about the house passage tomorrow of the COVID relief bill. But we are awaiting word from an obscure but important official in the Senate, the parliamentarian about whether the minimum wage survives when the package reaches there.

MELANIE ZANONA, CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER, POLITICO: Yes, you're absolutely right. This is a huge test for Joe Biden and his prowess on Capitol Hill, which of course is something he ran on. I don't think of near attendance nomination fails, it's going to be the end all be all for Biden here obviously is a huge setback.

The bigger deal is whether he can get this COVID relief package through. And a lot of it is going to depend on how the parliamentarian rules on the $15 minimum wage. But either way, Democrats are going to have to do some maneuvering and some muscling.

It's a bit like a Rubik's cube because if the parliamentarian rules in favor of the $15 minimum wage, then Democrats have a moderate problem. You have Joe Manchin and Kristen Sinema who have said they do not support that in the package. And in the Senate, they cannot afford to lose a single Democrat.

But if the parliamentarian rules against the $15 minimum wage, then you're going to have progressives who are upset. Some of them have drawn a red line and said we're not going to vote for this without it in there. But I will say Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez yesterday did send a signal that she'd be willing to support the package without the $15 minimum wage.

If the parliamentarian rolls against it, not if Democratic leaders strip it out to sort of appease the moderates. So we'll have to see but either way, it's still going to be a huge, huge, huge task for Democrats on Capitol Hill.

KING: Right. And to that point Nia that Melanie just notes that's where you see the Biden leadership challenge. On some issues he's going to have to bring Democrats into a room and say I need this.

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KING: But on the question of the minimum wage, he understands he's got competing interests on both ends of his party. So he's like, I'm going to leave that to the parliamentarian. I'm not getting involved in that until I have to.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: That's right. And he has already signaled in his comments about this $15 minimum wage. This could really be a problem that it might not be able to survive this process and actually qualify under reconciliation. So in many ways, that's probably the off ramp he wants.

That you know he would want the $15 minimum wage ideally. But guess what, it's not allowed under the rules. And then you can get this thing through the house as folks have signaled they'd be willing to go along with it.

And in the Senate, you wouldn't have the problem of appeasing Joe Manchin, appeasing Senator Sinema. But listen, I think it is interesting. You know you had Joe Biden come in and say he was somebody who could make deals; he is somebody who can work across the aisle of the idea that he would really have to wrestle to get his own caucus together.

The Democrats to stay together with this slim majority they have that wasn't necessarily in the calculus. And you see that now. This is something he's certainly going to have to do with both the moderate wing and also this progressive wing, which is dominant in the house.

KING: In an odd way winning makes it more complicated.

HENDERSON: Yes.

KING: Because the balance is so that you have the evenly divided Senate. Now the Democrats have the majority, you'd rather have that problem, but it gets it is a very complicated problem. And to that point, Melanie's you know what are you saying?

If the near attendant nomination collapse is not the end all be all? You know these things do happen almost every president loses somebody in the cabinet. However the fact that the administration I want you listen here, this is the Press Secretary Jen Psaki.

The administration says it's going to call out all the stops the presidents on the phone, chiefs of staff on the phone, other people on the phone. She says we will fight this to the end.

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JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Look we're fighting our hearts for Neera Tanden. You know, I know her personally. The president is pretty proud that he has nominated and many of them are confirmed some historic nominees are also qualified. And he is hopeful that the Senate will continue to consider nominees.

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KING: And we're now hearing from Gary Peters, who's the Chairman of the Homeland Security Government Affairs Committee that this is going to get pushed off to next week that there won't be any votes until at least next week.

So on the one hand, it's not the end all be all as you say. But on the other hand, when we were talking earlier, whether it's minimum wage, whether it's climate change down the road, whether it's other issues down the road, progressives are watching this administration closely.

And one thing they're watching is, is Joe Biden willing to get his hands dirty to fight for our issues and in this case, our people?

ZANONA: That's right. And I think that's why you're seeing the White House not backing down just yet. But I do think at some point Biden is going have to make a decision. How much political capital is he willing to expend at this point on a nomination that is all but likely doomed to fail?

I mean, he has other nominees he's trying to get through some of those nominees like his health and human service secretary nominee as well as his interior secretary nominee. They're on more stable grounds than what we're seeing with Neera Tanden, but still not a slam dunk.

He has to get those through. He's behind the pace of his predecessors when it comes to confirmation that's causing a lot of jitters on Capitol Hill among Democrats. And not to mention the COVID relief package as we were talking about earlier.

So he has a lot of things he's trying to do this Tanden nomination is sucking up a lot of oxygen on Capitol Hill. But right now they're still fighting. They're trying to show the progressives that they are willing to get their hands dirty and go to the math for some of their priorities and some of the progressives picks.

KING: And it is interesting at the beginning of every new administration. The rules change the ground changes here in Washington Nia-Malika Henderson. Look, Neera Tanden is guilty of mean tweets.

HENDERSON: Right.

KING: She is guilty as somebody who was a partisan for Hillary Clinton partisan at a Democratic think tank of sending mean tweets about Republicans. Some mean tweets about Bernie Sanders, OK that hardly isolates her in Washington in recent years.

But all of a sudden, more so among Republicans, but even among some Democrats who excuse this during the Trump years are just walked away from it during the Trump years. Now they're saying this is a horrific thing. Is that sexism, double standard hypocrisy all the above?

HENDERSON: Listen, you certainly have Democrats saying what is the issue here? Is this an issue that sexism, that's racism. If you look at the people who could have the most problems, Neera Tanden is on that list. A Javier Bursera is on that list, Jeff Holland is on that list as well.

And you have in Joe Biden someone who wants to come in and have the most diverse cabinet in history the most women, the most people of color and that could be a problem now.

If somebody like Neera Tanden ends up not being confirmed. And these other folks who also are people of color also run into some problems. But certainly you do see some hypocrisy on Republicans who are all of a sudden outraged by somewhat mean tweet when they pretended that Twitter didn't even really exist when Trump was in office, but we'll see what happens here.

You know, Tanden does seem to be probably not likely going to get this position. You've heard from the White House that you could maybe get some other position that doesn't require Senate confirmation. But Javier Bursera in Dub Haulin interior, we'll see what happens with him. And in this other, I mean look at all those folks who still have got to go through this process.

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KING: Still have got through the process. This is day 37. It's time to pick up the pace have the votes happen up Nia and Melanie going to stay with us. Up next for us the acting Capitol Police Chief says officers did not receive good updates in orders as the insurrection unfolded.

In part she says because of the commanders who should have been directing the response, we're instead overwhelmed trying to physically block the rioters from advancing.

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KING: Hearing is underway right now up on Capitol Hill to assess and correct security failures during the January 6 insurrection. We learned at a hearing earlier this week about an FBI warning that I had before that some protesters were coming prepared to wage war.

But the acting Capitol Police Chief says the advanced intelligence came nowhere close to predicting what actually happened that day.

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YOGANANDA PITTMAN, ACTING U.S. CAPITOL POLICE CHIEF: Although we knew the likelihood for violence by extremists, no credible threat indicated that tens of thousands would attack the U.S. Capitol.

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PITTMAN: Nor did the intelligence received from the FBI or any other law enforcement partner indicates such a threat.

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KING: CNN Climate Justice Correspondent Shimon Prokupecz is standing by for us in tracking this hearing. Shimon, what's the most important thing we're learning?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well I think the most important thing in what is completely different from what we heard in that Senate hearing from the former chief and the two sergeant at arms is that the acting chief has actually taken a look inside inward to see what mistakes the Capitol Police made that day.

A lot of blame has been put on this intelligence. We're going to learn a lot more about that intelligence in the coming weeks. But she is taking a very different position looking at the police actions on that day, specifically when she talked about how the commanders who were supposed to be in charge of what was going on.

And the police response was on the ground in the middle of the riot fighting off the rioters because so many of the officers were so overwhelmed and it just led to more chaos. There was no command. There was no infrastructure.

She said that they did not follow the emergency protocol. And that to me seems to be one of the key things from this here today so far. The other thing John on this intelligence, so called intelligence that the FBI shared with the Capitol Police the day before the insurrection, she kind of downplayed that. She said that that wouldn't have changed anything. The information that came to them was that there was something of a thread about people wanting to wage war. She said they had already known that.

The other thing she said was that they knew, they knew that white supremacists were coming. They knew that militia members were coming, but still knowing all that they still didn't change their posture on the day of the insurrection job.

KING: That is a question that is going to continue to linger as the hearing goes on today and then in future investigations Shimon Prokupecz grateful for the reporting and insights there. And again those are the questions that because of these questions, that's the reason you have calls for a bipartisan 911 style commission to dig deeper into the insurrection.

Those calls though for a bipartisan commission caught up right now in a very partisan fight over the scope and membership of such a panel. The Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell says any such panel should have a broad scope including the right to look at violent attacks on federal buildings during racial justice demonstrations last summer.

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SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R- KY): Speaker Pelosi started by proposing a commission that would be bipartisan by design. We cannot have artificial cherry picking of which terrible behavior does and which terrible behavior does not deserve screwed me.

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KING: The House Speaker takes issue.

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PELOSI: Then I'm disappointed in what I heard the minority leader yesterday, McConnell say on the floor of the Senate said we could do something narrow that looked at the Capitol. Or we could do potentially do something broader to analyze the full scope of political violence problem in this country.

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KING: Politico's Melanie Zanona, CNN's Nia-Malika Henderson still with us. Nia-Malika Henderson, you want to have a bipartisan even a nonpartisan look at these very significant issues.

But right now the partisanship, the speaker's view is Republicans want this broad, so they can focus on Portland; focus on things that happened last summer. So they don't focus on the big Trump lie that led to the insurrection in the first place.

HENDERSON: Anyways this isn't surprising given what we have heard from Republicans anywhere from somebody like Ron Johnson saying well, this was really not even Trump supporters who were to blame here. It was really ANTIFA.

And then you have a Mitch McConnell somewhere in the middle saying well, you know, let's look at this more broadly. This is dangerous because you do need something of an accounting of what actually happened to prevent it from happening again.

We obviously saw that with the 911 commission. There have been other commissions throughout history. And you also need society to know what happened and to remember what happened. So there is no attempt to rewrite what happened.

And we've seen that throughout you know, periods in our history, people sort of forgot what the civil war was about. And there was a sort of rewriting of that. And so we'll see what happens here. But it does look like so much else in Washington.

Even important matters that should be a bipartisan should be nonpartisan really devolve into partisanship. And again I think this is an example of the Republican Party still being beholden to Trump in Trumpism. And not really being able to separate their party from some of these terrible elements of white supremacists and conspiracy theorists.

KING: And to the conspiracy point Melanie, there was a lot of flack directed at Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin who read into the record, "eyewitness account" that included the fact that this eyewitness who was a panelist and conspiracy said that some of the people who stormed the Capitol "fake Trump supporters, fake Trump supporters".

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KING: So Republicans maybe they won't believe a Democrat who says that's conspiracy. How about this? This is Anthony Guerrero. He's a conservative live streamer, a close ally of Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. He was there that day. Here's his take.

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ANTHONY AGUERO, ALLY OF GOP REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE: We were all there. It was not - fun. It was not BLM. It was Trump supporters that did that yesterday. On the first admit it - being one myself.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: This is one of the issues. One of the problems at the moment is we can all - if we can all agree on a common set of facts, then we can have a political debate, we can all have our views and interpretation of those facts. But first, you have to agree on common facts, which in today's Washington is somehow a problem.

ZANONA: And in today's GOP, I mean, look, this is at the root of why we're not seeing any agreement right now on this commission. It's very different than after 911 when we had this moment, unity and everyone came together. But in this case Republicans are just so reluctant to revisit this issue. They don't want to have to be on the record or go into these hearings and talk about Trump and his role. And even yesterday at a press conference, Kevin McCarthy and Liz Cheney were both asked about this.

And Kevin McCarthy refused to say whether he thinks Trump should be investigated as part of this commission. Whereas Liz Cheney did say that she thinks that President Trump, former President Trump should be looked at his role.

She doesn't think he should have a role in the party. And so this is causing divisions not just between Democrats or Republicans, but also within the Republican Party. And those have been on full display this week.

It will be on display at sea pack this weekend at the political action conference for conservatives. And especially going forward as we start to look at the midterms and these things are heating up, it's going to be tense. And these divisions are going to be very, very real.

KING: And you have some reporting about this on a follow up on this because it also affects policy. It's not just you know, CPAC - which you can if you want to you can wave your hand and say it's a bunch of politicians speaking at an event.

In effects policy you have some important reporting about Stephen Miller was invited up to talk to some of the more conservative House Republican members about immigration. Stephen Miller, the architect of most of the Trump immigration policies.

And a newly elected Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar who beat a Democrat in the Miami area in Florida she showed up and she says source this is from your reporting. "Sources say the Floridian Salazar pushed for immigration policies that would broaden the GOP tent while challenging Miller on how Republicans can attract Latino voters given the ultraconservative policies he is advocating."

So again a very important policy issue for this congresswoman for a lot of newly elected Republicans and for the country and a reminder that there are some of the Republican Party who still believe the Trump way is the right way.

ZANONA: Right. And that's what the GOP is wrestling with right now is what is their identity in the post Trump world. And we're getting conflicting responses even among the leadership about what that should look like.

And the RSC, the Republican Study Committee is something of like a preview stage for what we're going to see in 2024. They've been hauling in people from Mike Pompeo to vice - former Vice President Mike Pence earlier this week.

But it just goes to show that not everyone agrees with that. Maria Elvira Salazar came in and said, the Stephen Miller way on immigration is not the way the Republican Party should be going forward.

If we want to attract more Hispanic and Latino voters, if we want to keep the suburban swing districts, if they want to keep seats like her that she flipped in the November election. So these are the types of things we're going to keep seeing going forward in the Republican Party.

KING: It's important that we focus not just on the personalities, but on these significant policy debates that they engender, if you will Melanie Zanona and Nia-Malika Henderson, grateful for the reporting and insights today. Up next for us a new enemy in the COVID fights. A mutation found in New York City now making its way throughout the northeast.

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KING: Coronavirus vaccine manufacturers say they're already now working out ways to increase their vaccines effectiveness against the new COVID-19 variants quietly spreading throughout the United States and throughout the world.

Each day, we can lower the number of new cases - no new cases. It saves us time it saves lives and buys time. And I want you to show the 50 state map right now. And you see a bit of a plateau we've been talking recently about progress pushing the case count down.

If you look right here 26 states that's the base holding steady, 21 states in green trend down three states trend up. If we went back several months ago, this was a map that would make us happy.

However if you look just one month ago, we were at 49 states trending down. We'd begun the drop from the horrific winter peak. One month ago 49 states trending down here you see it on the case timeline and you see just what's happening.

The horrific winter peak, a drop throughout late December and through the month of January and you see a bit of a plateau at the end right here. A leveling off right here 74,502 new infections just yesterday so a bit of a plateau right here.

That is the race against the variants if you will in a race to convince people a) get a vaccine if you can, but b) stay safe. In the meantime, here's the vaccination map 88 almost 89 million distributed just shy of 66 and a half million administered only Alaska in double digits.

This is fully vaccinated. 12 percent of Alaskans fully vaccinated, just shy of 10 percent in West Virginia, most states in the five and the six is 9 percent in South Dakota. So the rush to get people fully vaccinated continues.

But you see the numbers are still percentage wise pretty low across the country right now. One of the issues was the bad weather in recent days and last week, the administration was up to about 1.7. Then it dropped down a little bit.

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