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Inside Politics
Man Charged in Capitol Riot Claims "Foxitis" Made Him Believe U.S. "Was Being Robbed of a President"; Dr. Anthony Fauci: Can Return to Normal "Very Soon" If Vaccine Rates Continue; CDC Chief: "Trends Give Me Hope" But "Variants Could Set us Back"; U.S. Cybersecurity Official: Colonial Pipeline Slow to Provide Info on Ransomware Attack; Biden: Russia Has "Some Responsibility" to Deal With Pipeline Cyber Attack. Aired 12-12:30p ET
Aired May 11, 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]
KATE BOLDUAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: It's good to see you Brian. Thank you.
BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: You too, thank.
BOLDUAN: I really appreciate it. And thank you all so much for joining us today. I am Kate Bolduan, John King picks up our coverage right now with Inside Politics.
JOHN KING, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Hello, everybody and welcome to Inside Politics. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you so much for sharing a very busy news day with us. Pain at the pump and demands on Capitol Hill this hour, a major American pipeline today still mostly offline because of cyber pirates.
The company CEO warns of coming fuel shortages. Lawmakers up on Capitol Hill are asking why infrastructure that heats American homes and keeps Americans driving is so vulnerable. In Israel today panic and terror rockets, criss-crossing between Israel and Gaza nearly nonstop over the past 24 hours police clashes growing more frequent and tenser.
The death toll is now climbing we will take your live to the region a bit later in the hour. And next hour President Biden meets virtually with six governors the focus of that meeting, vaccinating hard to reach and hesitant Americans.
The Biden Administration's top two health officials Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Rochelle Walensky are up on Capitol Hill this morning. They are urging parents to vaccinate their children calling it the gateway back to normal; normal school normal sports the prom the hearing feature another tense clash between Dr. Fauci and Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): Dr. Fauci do you still support funding of the NIH funding of the lab in Wuhan?
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, CHIEF MEDICAL ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT: Senator Paul with all due respect, you are entirely and completely incorrect.
SEN. TINA SMITH (D-MN): What is the impact of conspiracy theories peddled by Senator Rand Paul and others on Americans willingness to take this vaccine?
DR. FAUCI: Not helpful in what we're trying to do. I guess I can say that with some degree of confidence.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Back to that clash and the hearing other details in just a moment, let's walk through some of the latest numbers just to get you up to speed. If you look at the case timeline here, look across the top, the seven day average of new COVID infections in the United States under 40,000 for the first time since back in September, first time since before the horrific winter surge.
Back there you see down there, it's just a very dramatic improvement. In the case count the question is can you keep it under 40,000 and continue to push it down? One of the big reasons the case count is down is because of this 35 percent of the American population is now fully vaccinated.
46 percent nearly half have at least one dose of those 18 and older 44 percent fully vaccinated and among those 65 and older 72 percent fully vaccinated so progress especially among the most vulnerable.
If you look at this by race right now 66 percent of those fully vaccinated are white 8 percent are black that means that's running behind percentage of the population 11 percent Hispanic 15 percent multiple or others.
The pace of the vaccinations up a little bit now after a law 2.1 million on average right now. You see it was up about 3 million came down starting to trickle up just a little bit now as the administration tries to push states to do more to get people vaccinated. Interesting poll, maybe you're facing this question at home.
If you are asked to return to work should people be required to approve a vaccination? 55 percent in this AXIOS/IPSOS poll say yes you should have proof of vaccination to go back to work. Let's map out the vaccines as you see right now across the United States of America.
You want to be darker on this map. That means the higher percentage of your state is fully vaccinated. 42 percent in New Mexico, 38 percent Colorado you see the lighter lot of it here in the Southeast Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia in the mid 20s, Georgia up to 28 percent, so the high 20s there, Utah 26 percent.
You see the difference in states getting their populations fully vaccinated as quickly as possible. Let's bring on that point to share her expertise and insights our CNN Medical Analyst, Dr. Celine Gounder.
Dr. Gounder, I want to start with it's become a recurring thing at these hearings. But Dr. Rand Paul was going after Dr. Fauci tried to suggest that the United States government somehow funded the Wuhan lab and that was not doing enough now to figure out did the virus originate in the Wuhan lab? Dr. Paul likes to clash with Dr. Fauci. What did you make of that?
DR. CELINE GOUNDER, INFECTIOUS DISEASE SPECIALIST AND EPIDEMIOLOGIST: John, Senator Paul is a known conspiracy theorist and like many other conspiracy theorists that are especially effective on the question of vaccines. He's also a doctor. He's not an infectious disease doctor. He's not even an internist.
He's an eye doctor, but he uses that credential to spread his conspiracy theories. And unfortunately, we wasted time during this hearing, listening to him grandstand and try to attack Dr. Fauci again, when we should have spent time speaking about the public health emergency at hand.
KING: I want to get through another exchange. This is Senator Bill Cassidy, also a doctor, Republican Senator from Louisiana during the - he was essentially pushing saying is the CDC being quick enough is all of the government but especially the CDC moving quickly enough to update its guidance when we learn more about the Coronavirus. He was exploring the question of masking and getting back to work. Listen.
[12:05:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. BILL CASSIDY (D-LA): The reimmunization merely mimics what would happen if somebody were exposed to the virus. All it does is kind of mimic that which would occur.
DR. PETERS MARKS, DIRECTOR, FDA'S CENTER FOR BIOLOGICS EVALUATION AND RESEARCH: Senator, this is a different virus, each virus--
SEN. CASSIDY: It is a different virus doctor marches their research going to explore that which I'm referring to, because the research so far shows that within four days, you get a significant increase in antibody titer.
DR. MARKS: There's research that's been done to show that after vaccination, the nature of the immune response gives sufficiently high titer antibodies that the post vaccination--
SEN. CASSIDY: That's with everybody.
DR. MARKS: And immune response--
SEN. CASSIDY: That's with every virus that is not unique to this.
DR. MARKS: It's likely superior to natural infection in this case and preventing against some of these variants. And I think that's what Dr. Fauci was getting to. (END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Dr. Gounder the back and forth, there was over Dr. - Senator Cassidy is also a doctor was saying, look, if you had COVID, you don't need a vaccine. When the recommendation of the government is even if you had COVID, you should get a vaccine should you?
DR. GOUNDER: John, this is a really important point, which is that natural infection does not give you the same level of immunity in terms of the strength of immunity or the duration of immunity as compared to vaccination, vaccination is far superior and more reliable and giving you immunity.
And secondly, in the phase of variants that are more infectious, some of them are immune evading, you really want to be vaccinated. We are seeing re infections among people who had earlier forms of the virus and are now exposed to the variants.
This has led to a massive surge of infections in Brazil. So you really want the protection of vaccination in the face of the variants.
KING: Another issue that came up and parents are very interested in a lot of these questions, but this one is about summer camp. And there have been even Dr. Fauci has said he believes the CDC will relax soon. It's right now the guidelines for sending kids away to summer camps, Dr. Walensky defending her actions not just as the head of the CDC, but as a parent, listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: I have a 16 year old every day every year he comes home from camp and he writes the number of days until he returns to camp the next year. This year, it got to zero and I told him he wasn't going. I want our kids back in camp.
We now have 38,000 new infections on average per day, last May 11 it was 24,000. And we sent a lot of kids home and camps were closed. The camp guidance is intended to get our kids to camp and allow them to stay there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Some of the tension Dr. Gounder revolves around right now; the CDC guidelines still says if kids are out playing soccer, for example, they're going to be in close proximity outside. The CDC recommends they still wear masks a lot of people saying they don't believe that it's necessary because the incidence of outside outdoor transmission is so low.
Dr. Walensky said, essentially my translation, I might be being cautious, but I want to get kids back to camp.
DR. GOUNDER: I think the other news here is that Pfizer just submitted and got emergency used authorization for its vaccine for 12 to 15 year olds. And so you know, the CDC can't really get ahead of another agency, in this case, the FDA in making recommendations. So now that kids in that age group can get vaccinated, I do think
you're going to see a change in mask requirements in places like camps. But these things have to happen in a certain sequence. And the guidance will continue to evolve as we get more science and as the agencies work together.
KING: Dr. Gounder is somewhat of a political question, but I'm going to ask it anyway, I'm going to ask the staff to put up on the screen, a map of vaccinations. The states that are highlighted are the 20 states with the lowest percent of their citizens fully vaccinated.
You see them in the green there. Nine of the 10 states at the bottom have Republican Governors. 17 of the 20 worst performing states have Republican Governors, 16 of the 20 worst performing states were carried by Donald Trump in 2020.
And three of them, Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona were carried by Biden, but those are the states the most among the most competitive states in the presidential election. You're a public health expert, not a politician.
But what does that tell you about? Is it vaccine hesitancy? Is it a failure? So far, we need to re invigorate the vaccine distribution programs, the advocacy programs in those places? What is that?
DR. GOUNDER: I think you're observing a combination of the impacts of not good enough access. So these are states that may not have tried to get to certain hard hit vulnerable populations as aggressively. So I think that's part of it.
I think the other part is there is less confidence in the vaccines, particularly among conservatives, more rural Americans. And look, I don't think this is the way to approach this is by belittling people by being judgmental.
I think many of these folks essentially have a lack of trust in government and public health institutions, but also have very legitimate questions about safety and effectiveness. And really the way to turn that around round is to hear their questions and answer their questions.
[12:10:00]
KING: Dr. Gounder grateful for your time and your important insights on this busy day. I appreciate it very much. Shift now to another related pandemic issue. The Biden Administration today begins distributing $350 billion of pandemic aid to states.
Now rare is the Governor who says no to free money from Washington. But some Republicans are drawing what they believe is an important line. Arkansas now among six states, you see them there were Republican Governor say bonus COVID unemployment benefits are keeping people from going back to work.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) GOV. ASA HUTCHINSON (R-AR): We have jobs of plenty we have employers that are begging workers to come to their place of business. And we cannot pay extra compensation for workers to stay home, get a vaccination go back to work. It's not that complicated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: With us to share their reporting and their insights CNN's Phil Mattingly, and Julie Pace of the Associated Press. Great to have you up close and personal here. What - that is a dividing line now.
You have Republicans and some economists not many yet, say, you know what, you're giving people these extra benefits in the middle of pandemic right idea. But now you have all these help wanted science and job listings and people aren't coming out quickly enough. Is--
JULIE PACE, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF & ASST. MANAGING EDITOR, ASSOCIATED PRESS: Well, we were starting to hear this from Republicans even before last week's jobs report. But when we saw that jobs report come out, you really saw that messaging from Republicans start to escalate. And that's because that jobs report showed that there are people who are sitting on the sidelines.
Now there are complicated reasons why some of those people are sitting on the sidelines, some of that has to do with fears of actually contracting COVID still. Some of that has to do with parents of kids, particularly women who are still dealing with childcare issues and don't feel like they have the capacity to get back into the workforce.
But I do think that this is an area that certainly economists are starting to explore Republicans from a political messaging point though, think that this is a good argument because it allows them to argue against one of Biden's biggest successes at this point, which has been the pandemic relief package.
KING: Right, and Phil you're at the White House yesterday. So let's just listen. The President says I don't see the linkage. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I know there's been a lot of discussion since Friday, since Friday's report, that people are being paid to stay home rather than go to work. We don't see much evidence of that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: But if you have - normally Governor's would be saying thank you, Mr. President, who cares what your party is just you're sending me money? Great, I can give it to people, great. How - does this complicate as they - can you try to roll out their federal money?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, if you want to know how it complicates things you just had to listen to the entirety of those remarks yesterday. Yes, he's made that point. Treasury secretary Janet Yellen made that point to White House reporters last week; their economists believe that it is not a pervasive issue that they're dealing with right now.
However, the president also pointed out that he has directed his labor department to work with states on re implementing work search requirements for those who are receiving the expanded unemployment benefits.
This is traditionally part of UI law as it stands, but a lot of states suspended those requirements because of COVID. The president basically saying we're going to work with states to put those back into place.
That underscores, they wouldn't be talking about doing that if they didn't think this was a problem, either on the messaging side or if they're seeing at least some sense of things in the data. I think, look, I've talked to business groups, I've talked to Republicans, I've talked to business owners who've made clear that at least anecdotally, they are experiencing this right now.
It might not be to the level that maybe some believe it is I think, to Julie's point; I think there are a lot of factors converging that led to what we saw on the jobs report on Friday. This wasn't the sole factor; it probably wasn't even the most prevalent factor.
But it's something that's out there. And it's something that clearly Republicans have seized on, because they're hearing it from back home. And the White House recognizes that one, yes, it probably is a factor.
And two, from a political perspective, they need to start trying to address it, particularly when just today it was announced 8.1 million jobs, job openings in March, there's something going on here. And obviously, we don't have a roadmap post pandemic for what an economy looks like or how people decide to go back to work. But this is a factor.
KING: Right, there are a number of pieces of it. And if this is one another challenge for the president's trying to sell the next step, which is the big infrastructure plan. The White House just saying, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, one of the Democratic moderates who says I don't want to change the rules.
I want to do this through official procedures. She's got to see the president today. So that's more progress, we can show you some headlines from yesterday, Joe Manchin and Tom Carper, two Democratic Committee Chairs were over to see at the White House for meetings yesterday, GOP ways, bigger infrastructure from political science, the Republicans are willing to move.
Already Newsweek, Bernie Sanders urges Democrats to pass infrastructure without GOP support. So welcome to the tensions here in Washington. Again, the president bringing in Sinema he had Manchin in yesterday.
Those are the two Democrats who mostly get mentioned when it comes to well, if we have to do this alone, they're the ones who say no, let's make at least make a good faith as long as you can effort on bipartisanship. What does that tell us? PACE: I think there are a couple of dynamics at play here. You know,
Biden is getting pushed from both the left and the right of his party. And for Sinema and Manchin, you know, I think there is an expectation in the White House that eventually they would go along with an infrastructure bill, even if it was going to be passed with only democratic votes.
But it is really important to them that this process looks bipartisan. And it looks like Biden put in a good faith effort that he didn't just sort of say come for one meeting Republicans and then we're going to move on our own.
[12:15:00]
PACE: They want to see him really try to see if they can put a package together because in their states, that matters to them politically, that they look like they're part of a bipartisan process. I think ultimately, getting to a number that both Republicans and the Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party can agree to is going to be very difficult.
But I do feel like they'll know this better than I do, having covered the hill for so long. You do feel like Republicans, at least some Republicans are showing some signs of wanting to be invested in this process.
KING: They just raise their price before - counter. The Republicans say they're willing to go up in money even before the president counters, but they also keep saying we're not going to pay for it the way the president wants to do.
So which way do you interpret that the Republicans want to keep talking or the Republicans are genuine?
MATTINGLY: So my sense for talking to Republicans is it's the latter how many Republicans is also a pretty big question here. Obviously, Senator Shelley Moore Capito is kind of leading the Republican effort here put a $568 billion counter proposal on the table.
Mitch McConnell said last week, I'm willing to talk from a range of 600 to 800 billion are moving up on the top one. I don't think there's a lot of disagreement on the fact that they're willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure that is bipartisan.
To your point, the thing I can't figure out, I've asked White House officials about it. I asked Jen Psaki yesterday at the White House briefing about this is the pay for is that the president wants in terms of the tax increases on the corporate side are non starters for Republicans.
The pay for is that Republicans have put on the table, primarily user fees and increasing the gas tax is a non starter for the Biden Administration. And if you can't square that, there is no deal to be had. I would just say one other thing.
And this goes to Julie's point here is my sense from talking to White House officials. The president is genuine about this. Not only does he think that there's a space here for a deal, he also thinks I've been told that it's good for the country to try and pursue some type of bipartisanship here.
But there's a lot of pressure from the left that you're wasting time here. We've been through this before. The window is small and your proposals are quite large and we want to move on them now. But they recognize they need to show some bipartisan effort and I think you're going to see it on the hill too.
I think Democrats are going to also put bills on the floor that they believe should be bipartisan. And if they fail, say Senators Manchin, Sinema see, we tell you it's time to move on.
KING: We'll watch all that play out, you guys stay put welcome back to the minute. Up next for us urging questions on Capitol Hill this morning about U.S. pipeline now held hostage yes hostage by cyber criminals.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[12:20:00]
KING: Today now day five, day five, nearly half the east coast fuel supply is still under the control of cyber pirates, the weekend cyber attack on a major U.S. pipeline is still an ongoing active event. On Capitol Hill this morning a few answers explaining why the government and the private sectors response is so slow and so incomplete.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. ROB PORTMAN (R-OH): Did colonial contact?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did you not contact CISA directly?
SEN. PORTMAN: So you still don't have the technical information. You need to be able to be responsive and to provide support to critical infrastructure. Is that what you're saying?
BRANDON WALES, ACTING CISA DIRECTOR: Yes, but that is not surprising.
SEN. PORTMAN: The FBI had not brought you in would colonial do you think have contacted you to ask for your assistance?
WALES: No.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: Let's get some more details now from our CNN Security Correspondent Josh Campbell, Josh, an important hearing. What are we learning?
JOSH CAMPBELL, CNN SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well as federal investigators, John and outside experts continue to deal with the aftermath of this, this hostage this attack on this pipeline, congress also asserting its role, its oversight role of these federal cyber agencies trying to ensure that the government is talking to each other and also working with the private sector in order to stop some of these threats.
Now this was the Senate, this was not the House, there were no fist banging on tables. But through their question, you could sense the frustration of these Senators, they were able to elicit on this colonial pipeline hack that the federal government still doesn't know how these attackers made their way into that system.
They haven't received those key vulnerabilities, which again would help authorities to ensure that other companies are not attacked. And that actually mirrors with some something that we heard yesterday, our colleague Geneva Sands talked to a top DHS official who talked about the importance of information sharing.
He said that we are deeply focused on sharing information with other organizations to protect themselves both from this specific actor, the dark side, ransomware group and since we know that ransomware actors often use similar techniques and procedures, making sure that all organizations understand the steps that they could take to protect themselves.
So again, the key focus there for Senators today was ensuring that information is flowing as it should. Now on that colonial pipeline hack, the latest that we know is that four main pipelines remain offline at this hour; some of the smaller pipelines are being put back online.
We also know that the White House is collaborating to mitigate any fair effects of the attack. Obviously, there are economic concerns here and national security concerns as well. But the key takeaway here today, John from this hearing, both on this colonial hack and this so called solar winds hack from last year is that there may not be a lot of bipartisanship on congress right now.
But one thing is clear. They were united today and their sense of frustration that the federal government isn't doing what it should be doing in order to protect critical infrastructure here in the United States.
KING: Josh Campbell, appreciate the update and important hearing. Still with me in studio, Julie Pace and Phil Mattingly so you go through these issues, there's how did this happen? Are the private sector and the federal government coordinating enough? The answer is no.
And then what more do you have to do when it comes to these issues? Then you have a president who's had a pretty healthy economy for his first 100 plus days, who has to deal now we can just show you the numbers.
Potential supply shortages at a time gas demand is going up the national price right now watch it. That's what it is at the moment to see if it goes up a gasoline demand nationally is up 20 percent. It's up 40 percent in the states, you see right there. So you have a national security issue and a criminal issue and you have a potential political issue.
PACE: And this is part of the job of being president, you have your best laid plans and then things like this happen and they really kind of forced you to have to deal with issues that you would rather not be dealing with at this point. I do think this critical infrastructure question though, is so crucial.
We've been seeing signs for the past few years that this is where the cyber attacks are going that this is what some of these cyber gangs and state actors are going to start targeting.
[12:25:00]
PACE: And it is actually really remarkable that we don't feel like we, as a country, both on the private sector and on the federal government side and certainly at the state level are prepared for these types of things.
It's an opportunity for the Biden Administration to get ahead of this now, to put a plan in motion to try to offset some of these attacks in the future. But I think it's very clear that there's a lot of work that needs to be done within the government to get to that kind of point.
KING: And you put the question to the President of the United States yesterday, dark side is a group that operates in Russia. You can't operate in Russia without at least you know the ascent or the nod of the government, which controls everything. And you put this question to the president saying sir, what can you do about essentially?
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. President, if you can't protect critical infrastructure from a criminal actor, helping possibly protect it from a state actor?
BIDEN: We can do both. We will.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Do you think Russia is involved at all implicitly, with that attack?
BIDEN: I'm going to be meeting with President Putin. And so far, there is no evidence based on from our intelligence people that Russia is involved. Although there is evidence that of actor's ransomware is in Russia, they have some responsibility to deal with this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KING: He will not be the first American president to look at Vladimir Putin and say, I never want Europe to bad things. And number two, as lot of people who you could crack down on if you wished up to bad things. The question is will he do anything different?
MATTINGLY: You know, I think, one, the idea that one of these groups can operate in that country and without the knowledge of the Kremlin or without the knowledge of the president seems a little bit unlikely. But I do think it's important that the president is walking in pretty careful line here and trying to separate the two but making clear he's still going to bring it up to Vladimir Putin. I was struck obviously, everybody's trying to figure out if there's a government length, the intelligence community's made very clear. They don't believe this is a state actor.
But the question I asked and I didn't get a very fulsome response. But you know if a criminal syndicate can do this, what on earth could a state actor do in this case? And the president obviously very current and saying we can deal with both and we will.
And the question is how, how, because you heard Senator Portman nailed the primary issue. And this was something that was brought up yesterday by Neuberger, one of their top cyber officials who said, unsolicited that the company had not reached out for them and asked for cyber support.
And this is the long standing tension on this issue between a private firm and the federal government. And if you can't figure out a way to thread the needle to figure out a way to get into that gray area, then there is no solution here on critical infrastructure, which is run by the private sector.
There needs to be more cooperation, there needs to be information exchange, this is the oldest story in the book, everybody knows that when you talk about Cyber, no one has figured out how to do it. And so if you as the president claims, you can do both.
And we will how if you cannot solve this issue that has been long standing administration, after administration, after administration, we'll have to see they've got a ton of initiatives working and believe that they might have some pathways forward.
But until you figure out how to bridge that gap, there's no clear answer to how to protect critical infrastructure run by private companies.
KING: Maybe, maybe this event will be the shock to the system to get those conversations to move forward. We shall see there. And I hold these guys hostage just a little bit longer, up next, the demand and the questions now that the Pfizer vaccine is now approved for younger teams.
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