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Soon: President & First Lady Arrive In Texas To View Storm Damage; Today: House To Vote On Biden's $1.9 Trillion Pandemic Relief Bill; Today: FDA Advisers To Vote On Recommending Single-Dose J&J Vaccine; CDC: "Declines May Be Stalling, Potentially Leveling Off At A Very High Number"; Biden Airstrike Tests Limits Of Diplomacy First Approach. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 26, 2021 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: And we will see that first hand here in Houston in just a short while.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Yes. I'm going to be touching down in just a couple hours. Arlette thank you so much. And thank you all so much for joining us this hour. I'm Kate Bolduan. John King picks up our coverage right now.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Hello everybody and welcome to Inside Politics. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you for sharing your day with us. It is a big day a very big day in the fight against COVID. And for President Biden's plan to help you deal with the pandemic fallout.

The house votes - the house votes tonight on a nearly $2 trillion Coronavirus rescue plan. One piece of that plan though will be ripped out when it gets to the Senate. The parliamentarian ruling increasing the minimum wage is not allowed under the procedure Democrats are using to pass that big COVID package.

Progressives want to fire the parliamentarian or at least overrule her. But the White House prefers setting the minimum wage side aside - fight aside for another day. And the truth is this really makes it easier to get the president's signature first legislative initiative through the 50-50 Senate.

President Biden right now on route to Texas to survey the damage from a lone star state freeze that left millions without power and without clean water. And a very important FDA review right now this morning. Its vaccine committee will decide if Johnson & Johnson single shot vaccine gets a green light.

The president's Coronavirus task force last hour promising more mass vaccination sites will come online in the coming weeks. But it also warns a surge in Coronavirus and variants may already be happening.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: Things are tenuous. Now is not the time to relax restrictions. We may now be seeing the beginning effects of these variants in the most recent data.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: More vaccine doses should speed up the road to COVID recovery. The pandemic relief package getting a houseboat tonight is designed to help you along the way. It does a lot of big things.

$1400 stimulus checks, months more of pandemic unemployment benefits, billions for vaccines and for school upgrades Democrats are unified on those provisions. One thing to watch now though is progressive anger over the Senate minimum wage ruling.

With me to share their reporting and their insights this hour CNN's Phil Mattingly and CNN's Lauren Fox and Lauren let's start up on Capitol Hill now let's focus first on the big picture. We'll get to the anger about this minimum wage ruling especially among progressives.

But if for people watching at home who are unemployed or trying to stretch through this pandemic, small business environment $1400 in direct payments per person increasing your federal unemployment boost to $400 through August, increasing the federal minimum wage that's in the house version.

We'll get to the Senate issue in a minute extending to unemployment programs through August. Billions and vaccine school funding state and local aid small business aid, expanding tax credits for family low income workers. It does not reinstate mandatory paid and family sick leave though.

How important for the house Democrats despite their frustration of progressives about the minimum wage side on the Senate is tonight's vote.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well there is no room for air or hardly any room for air John. Remember how Speaker Nancy Pelosi has her most narrow majority ever in her tenure as speaker. But they still expect to have unified democratic support. And that is in part because this is a popular bill.

The provisions that you just listed things like giving people direct checks that they make less than $75,000 a year. That is a popular provision. And so Democrats despite the fact that they might have individual grumblings about this provision or that provision the way something was structured in this bill, they feel confident they feel good going into this vote tonight that they're going to have the support they need in part because it's popular in part because you have Democrats not wanting to disappoint their very new president in his first big legislative push on Capitol Hill.

KING: But so Phil, what happens next? Is it in a way this is what the president were told he predicted the parliamentarian would say this doesn't fit. In a moment we can talk about some of the backup plans if you will. But right now this is what happens from progressive Ilhan Omar who will talk to you later in the program replaced the parliamentarian Congresswoman Ayanna Presley. Arcane Senate process means nothing. Congresswoman Cory Bush of

Missouri people don't care about listening to the parliamentarian. Newly elected Congressman Mondaire Jones of New York unelected parliamentarian.

Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal of Washington very important to the progressive the Senate parliamentarian issues and advisory opinion, the VP can overrule them has been done before.

They won't say this publicly, the White House privately thinks this helps them get this bill passed. How do they deal with the progressives though because this bill is going to have to come back to the house?

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think it gets to the point of what Lauren was saying is they make the broader point of what's actually in this package. The enormity of what's in this package, the necessity of this package. Obviously you have a very crucial deadline March 14, a lot of that unemployment, emergency unemployment programs expire.

That's the deadline they've been going for. If you want to draw this out or you want to sync this bill, what are you going to tell those millions of people who benefit from that. The reality is and it's not just what President Biden is alluded to over the course of the last couple of week's kind of nodding to the fact that this was likely to come out in the Senate process.

This was put in back when this plan was put together and released on January 14. With the expectation it wasn't going to make it across the finish line either due to Senate rules or because Democrats themselves weren't behind it.

And in the Senate there are not 50 votes for a $15 minimum wage. So to your earlier point, the White House last night had a bit of a sigh of relief this they needed this not to be in the package.

[12:05:00]

MATTINGLY: Their expectation was this wasn't going to be in the package when it comes to the Senate. And when it comes to progressives, they are going to make a big show of getting behind a push for a standalone $15 minimum wage bill.

They understand that keeping progressives in the family, keeping them in the tent and making sure they're not only heard, but action is taken related to the initiatives that they want to move through or at least they want the White House to get behind will be a crucial focus for the White House going forward.

But I think there's recognition now that this is too big to fail. For Democrats for the White House and the White House believes that what happened last night is actually helpful. And they'll work with progressives and see if they can help them down the line.

KING: And Lauren on the minimum wage question, is it too complicated to fix to borrow Phil's language there in the sense that Senator Ron Wyden says he's going to try an amendment on the Senate side, that if you can't raise the minimum wage, because it's against the rules.

He wants to put in a tax penalty. Essentially if a big business does not pay its workers a certain amount of money, they would pay a tax penalty. Is that a viable plan or is that just a way to try to let allow the progressives to vent?

FOX: Well it's another question of course for the Senate parliamentarian typically a tax credit or a tax penalty would have an easier time getting through those complicated budgetary rules in the U.S. Senate.

So they're going to be taking a look at that. Certainly this is sort of a plan b option. And it is not an across the table effort that would actually raise the minimum wage to $15 for American workers. In fact widens plan right now does not lay out what the marker would have to be that a corporation meets in order to avoid this tax penalty.

And I do think that that is an important question for progressives moving forward. What is that number? But I think largely this is an effort to kind of redirect all that energy that you're hearing from progressives in the house of representatives.

Here's what you can do is essentially what Wyden is laying out here. He is someone who is pragmatic even though he's a very liberal member of the U.S. Senate. He is the chairman of the finance committee. This is the direction that you're seeing Senator Bernie Sanders, the Chairman of the Budget Committee also get behind.

So I think those discussions about getting rid of the parliamentarian those are a little more in the vein of what house progressives would like to see. But what Senate progressives are talking about right now is this tax credit.

KING: All right. And it's important for us to follow these details. It's also important to note in the big picture as both of you have noted a signature achievement for the new president and the Democrats look like they'll get it through the house tonight.

Then we'll follow it on further. Phil is going to stay with us. Lauren Fox grateful for the live reporting up on Capitol Hill. Up next for us a third COVID vaccine up for government reviews today and could be at a hospital or pharmacy near you as early as next week.

And as we go to break a little Friday flashback one year ago today, then President Trump said this about COVID and how it compares to the flu.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: And the flu is higher than that. The flu is much higher than that.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are more people who'll get the flu. But this is spreading. It's going to spread maybe within communities. That's - expectation - does that worry you?

TRUMP: No, because we're ready for it. It is what it is, we're ready for it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:10:00]

KING: Underway right now and FDA committee deciding whether to recommend authorizing Johnson & Johnson single dose Coronavirus vaccine for emergency use. Thumbs up today could soon add a third vaccine to the U.S. COVID fight.

And the timing here is critical. Yes cases are trending down. But that progress is at risk. The CDC Director just said because new COVID variants popping up across America, some of them gaining steam. Let's just take a look through the case line here right now.

If you look at this trend map this confirms to you essentially a plateau. 27 states in beige that means holding steady about the same number of new COVID infections right now compared to a week ago. Remember there was a lot of green in the map.

If you go back a few weeks, that's the states trending down, 15 trending down, 27 holding steady and eight starting to trend back up. The red and orange more new infections this week than last week that's heading in the wrong direction.

If you look at the vaccine map here, this is the percent of the U.S. population fully vaccinated. Most states still in single digit some of them starting to get in the high single digits 9 percent in South Dakota for example.

7 percent Minnesota, Alaska, West Virginia in double digits, 12 percent in Alaska, and 10 percent of West Virginia main percent of their population already vaccinated. This is the increase the acceleration the administration wants to kick in.

If you look at the seven day average just without a doubt the bad weather of last week heard it. They were up to about 1.7 million vaccines a day right now averaging 1.5 million vaccines administered a day the administration concedes it needs to push that up in the days ahead.

If you look at the percentage fully vaccinated, 14 percent of Americans have been partially vaccinated. Both vaccines currently on the market two shots 14 percent have one shot, just shy of 7 percent fully vaccinated.

Again watch those numbers as we head in to the next couple of weeks. Whereas the united states in the global vaccination rates well, more doses than any other countries 68 million doses administered.

But if you look at it this way in terms of vaccine doses per 100 people, Israel in the UK, Israel dramatically so smaller country. But Israel dramatically so in the UK outpacing the United States in terms of the percentage of the population getting a shot in the arm there.

This is the vaccine the FDA committee is considering right now. Johnson & Johnson is a single dose against moderate and severe turns of people who took this vaccine and developed modern severe cases. 72 percent effective in the United States, less so in Latin America and South Africa, we have the variant.

This is why J&J says its vaccine is so great though. 85 percent effective in preventing severe cases of the Coronavirus, no hospitalizations, no death. So a third weapon in the fight on that point. Let's bring in our Chief Medical Correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay we have been waiting number one another effective vaccine. Number two a single shot vaccine and no cold storage issues. So to get it to rural America to get one dose and you're done, this would be a big help.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And to people who may just have a hard time showing up for that second shot John, I mean some of the most vulnerable people that we've been talking about people who may be homeless, they don't have resources. They live more transient lifestyle. So the one shot option has lots of advantages.

[12:15:00]

GUPTA: And John I think you've zeroed in on the exact thing that we know the FDA is going to be zeroing in on as well that 85 percent number. That is a number that basically no matter where you were in the world, whether variants were spreading where the trial was happening or not.

No deaths, no hospitalizations at 28 days. And you know 85 percent protective against severe death. One other piece of information John, I'll share with you. I don't know if you saw this. But we know the vaccines help prevent illness questions long been do they also prevent infection?

Because you could still be infected and carry it. What will we see in the Johnson & Johnson data, its early data, and small data? But they found that it's about 70 percent effective in terms of preventing infection as well get the vaccine. And you are far less likely to carry the virus in your nose or your mouth.

KING: Right. And so A, another weapon on the battlefield as one way I'll put it. Number two, the consumer matters too. And this is an interesting sentiment. I know you've been looking at this. This is from Kaiser. If you go back to December 34 percent of Americans said they either had been vaccinated or would get one ASAP when they could get vaccinated.

34 percent back in September. We're up to 55 percent now. U.S. adults who say they want to be vaccinated as soon as possible or who have been vaccinated. Why is that important that people seem much more open to getting that shot?

GUPTA: Yes. I mean, this - it's very interesting. And John said it's a sort of a human psychology sort of thing. But one that we've seen before even if you go back to h1n1, you do see people's willingness to have the vaccine go up as time goes on.

Part of it is sort of the - you know I'll let the other guy do it first. See how it goes; make sure they work out any kinks and the rollout whatever it may be. But the numbers continue to go up.

And if you do the math John and you add in the immunity that the country also has from people who've also been naturally infected, that are when you start to see some real numbers. You know people always say 70 to 80 percent for this herd immunity, somewhere around 25 to 30 percent of the country probably has antibodies now and then you layer in the vaccines.

And you know within a couple of months, you can start to understand why people say by summer, by midsummer, end of summer, we could start looking at herd immunity.

KING: I certainly hope so. Let's go through some more numbers as we go through this year. Number one, I know you took an interest in this. The Coronavirus rollout, the vaccine rollout among older adults. This is the percent who have received at least one shot.

Those half of people over the age of 65, 60 percent of those over the age of 75 is significantly 75 percent of the people in long term care facilities. Why are those numbers so important?

GUPTA: I think this is - this is the critical point John frankly, because not only do you want to get vaccines out and do it as quickly as possible. But you want to give it to the people for whom the vaccines are going to benefit them the most.

Again what do the vaccines do? They help prevent severe illness. They dramatically reduce hospitalizations and deaths down to zero in this trial. Who is most at risk of developing those things? It is people who've been living in long term care facilities, about a third of the deaths more than a third of the deaths sadly John in this country came from residents in long term care facilities.

75 percent have now gotten some immunity from these vaccines. That's a really big deal because they were really the most at risk. Same thing goes with age. So you not only want to get the vaccines out there.

But if you understand fundamentally what they accomplish, you better target who would most benefit.

KING: And Sanjay let's talk about the potential issue here. A lot of good news cases down and hospitalizations down, deaths beginning to level off, we need to shove it down more. If you look right here, if you go back to the beginning of the year, you see that red line dropping.

Just looking at that graph, you say wow, we're in better shape here, and we're coming right down. But if you look at the seven day moving average, we've hit a plateau. We've hit a plateau essentially 77,000 new infections just yesterday.

Dr. Walensky, the CDC Director just talked about this. She said this is proof; the variants are beginning to impact the case count out there. So you have this leveling off when you know you want to shove it down more. And the case count impacts the projections about what is to come.

I know you talked last night; we talked to Chris Murray of the IHME, this important model we've watched for the past year now. This is the IHME model about projected deaths. And here's where we are today. And then you see the line split down here.

The purple line is the current projection. The green line at the bottom is if everybody massed up right, you'd shove the deaths down even more. And then the red line on top is a worst case or a bad case scenario.

If things take a turn for the worse including because of these variants walk us through the importance of this.

GUPTA: Well you know, I'll preface by saying as has been said to me so many times, all models are wrong but some are useful. And you know, it's just - you know we got to take that into account. We're looking at these models.

And I think that's something Chris Murray you know, agrees with as well. Here's what - I mean, I think there's some good news in here in the sense that there has been a more rapid descent of some of these numbers.

And I think the original model sort of suggested. We thought there was going to be a decrease after the sort of winter surge. But you know according to Dr. Murray we've also seen improvements in overall behavior with masks and things like that. Mobility is still up. But you know, it's improved more so than we thought.

[12:20:00]

GUPTA: And there's a fair amount of immunity that exists in the community. I mean, people always talk about we need to get to 70, 80 percent. But it's not like a switch goes up at that point, you do get benefits as you go along the way working up to that 70 to 80 percent.

And I think all of that has taken sort of driven these numbers a little further down than we thought. Your point about we've plateaued, I think is a good one. I want to see another week's worth of data.

But I think it's - there's a good chance that the overall case numbers might go back up because there are more transmissible virus out there. Maybe you got away with it before you know going - doing, you know your activities. You're wearing your mask, but you've been OK so far.

Now you have a more contagious virus, you may not get away with it. And that's why the numbers go up. But John I think the critical point is do those lagging indicators that we've been talking about for a year, the hospitalizations follow a few weeks later, the deaths follow a few weeks later.

Do they still follow or because of this immunity do case numbers go up? But hospitalizations not go up as quickly or as significantly as they did. And if you look at the models even more carefully as we've been doing, that's what we see.

Case numbers may go up, but hospitalizations and deaths hopefully will not go up correspondingly.

KING: I think as we move from February into March, that's exactly what you just highlighted will be the challenge. You do not want to start going back up from a plateau of around 80,000. Hopefully that continues to go down.

Dr. Gupta I appreciate your time and your insights today. When we come back, the new president, the new commander in chief orders airstrikes against Iranian assets in Syria and gets immediate pushback from some in congress.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:25:00]

KING: The first known military strike of the Biden presidency reminds us yet again that just about everything in the Middle East is complicated. The strike was last night in Syria. The pentagon says seven 500 pound bomb struck compounds used by an Iranian backed militia.

Deliberate and proportionate is how the pentagon describes this strike. Its goal was to punish those responsible for a rocket attack earlier this month on the U.S. installation in Iraq. The timing is noteworthy.

Just last week, the Biden White House, the president himself sink signaled he is open to resuming talks with Iran about trying to revive and refine the Obama era Iran nuclear deal.

And the strike reminds us the day to day decisions faced by any commander in chief often challenge that same commander in chief's overarching foreign policy roadmap.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: The message I want the world to hear today. America is back. America is back. Diplomacy is back at the center of our foreign policy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Joining our conversation, our CNN Global Affairs Analyst and Staff Writer for the New Yorker, Susan glassier, and Phil Mattingly with us still as well. So Susan, what does this tell us if anything about the Biden administration and its approach? Number one, the White House in the pentagon would say they needed to

punch back here. Number two, as I know you would - but yet it comes at a sensitive time with Iran. So you're trying to send a message, but you're not trying to derail conversations?

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well that's exactly right. First of all, Joe Biden like his predecessor, Barack Obama before him I hope not to be talking about the Middle East endlessly when it comes to foreign policy to be pivoting to Asia as it were.

And certainly you saw just yesterday, his CIA Director Nominee, Bill Burns saying China was the top global priority, a message we've heard over and over again from the new Biden officials.

But you know geopolitics has a way of roaring back and the Middle East has too many entrenched U.S. interest for it not to be a focus of American foreign policy. I think you're right to spotlight right now you know, the diplomacy around returning to the Iran nuclear deal which has been a key aspect of what Biden says he wants to do, coming at this moment when there's also a need to reassert that he's not just going to be pushed around in the Middle East that U.S. interests.

This was this attack was in response to an attack on U.S. interests, the U.S. contractor injured by Iranian proxy militias in Syria. And so I think what you're hearing here is the complicated nuance also by the way of the president speaking yesterday for the first time with this Saudi king.

The Saudis are very concerned that the U.S. is going to focus too much on diplomacy with Iran, the Saudis complete regional enemy. So it's a very complicated moment.

KING: Very complicated moment and always feel every new president gets this the push and shove the give and take with congress over calling the shots. Bipartisan reaction, Nancy may say freshman Republican Congresswoman, I strongly oppose POTUS meddling in Syria.

I can think of better ways to ensure no one can strike our forces in Iraq stop the endless wars. Ro Khanna a Progressive Democrat, we cannot stand up for congressional authorization before military strikes only when there was a Republican President.

The administration should have sought congressional authorization here. This is a recurring debate, but an important one.

MATTINGLY: And what we've seen repeatedly as you noted, administration after administration particularly on the issue of the Middle East Iraq and in this case Syria as well. And keep in mind before the strikes occurred. The president was getting public pressure from Republicans.

And I'm told behind the scenes some pressure from Democrats to do something because of the rocket attacks over the course of the last couple of weeks. You can't necessarily win particularly with all members of congress.

I think the interesting element here that I'm interested to see play out the administration has released their legal justification. They said it was done under article two grounds. They're not citing any of the past authorizations for you.

[12:30:00]