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CDC Chief Warns Delta Variant Likely To Be "Dominant Strain" In U.S.; Critical Race Theory Spurs Heated Debate Among Lawmakers; Mike Pence Heckled At Conservative Conference. Aired 12:30-1p ET
Aired June 18, 2021 - 12:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[12:32:07]
JOHN KING, CNN HOST: President Biden later today is delivering a COVID pandemic update amid signs he will fall a little short of a major vaccination goal. This as global health leaders, including the President's own CDC Director warn against the highly transmissible Delta variant of COVID.
With us to share his expertise and insights Dr. Amesh Adalja, he's a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security. Dr. Adalja, grateful for your time today. If you look at the case perspective here in the United States right now. The average of new COVID infections is way down 12,000 new cases per day right now. That is half what it was a year ago, right, before the summer spike. And then obviously we had the horrific winter spike. But even though it's down, well down, listen to Dr. Walensky here at the CDC saying she's worried. We do know that the Delta variant is now responsible for almost all, 99 percent of the new cases in the U.K. Dr. Walensky is worried something like that is coming here. Listen.
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DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: It's more transmissible than the Alpha variant or the U.K. variant that we have here. We saw that quickly become a dominant strain in a period of one or two months. And I anticipate that is going to be what happens with the Delta strain here.
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KING: And the worry seems to be Dr. Adalja, just showing our viewers, the county map of vaccinations. And if you look down here in the southeast, you look out some places in the West, the places that are lighter where the vaccine rollout is lagging. The concern seems to be that in those places, you could have regional spikes, is that right?
DR. AMESH ADALJA, SR. SCHOLAR, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIV. CENTER FOR HEALTH SECURITY: It's definitely the case that you're going to see the Delta variant take hold in populations that are unvaccinated and have little natural immunity from prior infection. You know, what's going to happen is you'll see this kind of go through different waves in different timescales in different parts of the country. And the thing about it is, it's completely preventable, because if we can get vaccination rates higher, we're not going to see those spikes.
I do feel a little bit better about these spikes than what we've seen in the past because so many high risk individuals, those above the age of 65 have been fully vaccinated even in some of those low vaccinated counties, the people that are most likely to be hospitalized, a lot of them have been vaccinated. So it won't necessarily translate into hospitals and crisis. But it could definitely be uncomfortable. And it's something that should be avoided if we can.
KING: And the President later today is going to talk about the fact that we've reached over 300 million vaccine doses in the United States. And that is significant. The vaccine rollout has ramped up considerably. But we also do see a slowdown of late. And the President is unlikely to reach, you'd have to double the rate of vaccinate -- first shot vaccinations to get to his goal of 70 percent with at least one shot by July 4th. Why is that so important?
ADALJA: Well, the higher the vaccination level is in the population, the less of an issue COVID-19 is to us. And I think that that was a bold goal. It was something that most of us thought probably wouldn't occur because we were hitting walls of vaccine hesitancy. But in general, when you want to make your country as resilient as possible to this virus, the higher the level of population immunity and you have to add both vaccines to natural immunity, the better off you're going to be because COVID isn't going to go anywhere and our goal has been to really tame it, to remove of its ability to cause a public health crisis or to put hospitals into dire straits again.
[12:35:04]
And I think we're getting there. But the higher the vaccination number is, the easier it's going to be moving forward.
KING: Dr. Adalja, grateful as always for your expertise and insights, Sir. Appreciate it.
ADALJA: Thank you.
KING: Up next for us, critical race theory and why Republicans are taking aim.
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KING: Juneteenth, the new federal holiday celebrating the end of slavery is being observed today. It is proof of some progress in America's conversation about race. But that debate very, very much continues even intensifies as an academic concept known as critical race theory comes under republican attack. Multiple states now banned critical race theory from being taught in classrooms and at least a dozen other states are considering bans or sharp limitations.
[12:40:11]
With us to share his insights is Peniel Joseph. He's professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. Professor Joseph grateful for your time today, I'm hoping you can help our audience understand what critical race theory is, and what it isn't because of the political debate about this, including just today on Juneteenth of all days, for some reason, the former president of the United States decided he wanted to weigh in on critical race theory.
Donald Trump writing this, instead of helping young people discover that America is the greatest, most tolerant, and most generous nation in history, it teaches them that America is systemically evil and that the hearts of our people are full of hatred, and malice. Is that what critical race theory does, Sir?
PENIEL JOSEPH, PROFESSOR OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND HISTORY, UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AUSTIN: No, it's important, John, thank you for having me to say what is critical race theory and what isn't it?
First of all, it's not being taught in K through 12 curriculums all across the country. So that is just the straw object that has been created. What critical race theory actually is, is just a branch of critical legal studies. It's what people learn in law school. And it was a group of black scholars and students and academics, who argued that race was a central element of the law, the way in which the law was constructed in American history and the way in which it was applied.
And we know this to be true when we think about the Three-fifths compromise and Three-fifths clause. We know this to be true in terms of the Jim Crow system. We know this to be true even after formal Jim Crow ended when we think about racial disparities in the criminal justice system between for example, crack versus powder cocaine and the disparate impact.
So when we think about critical race theory, what conservatives are doing and what the GOP is doing is using this to stop the teaching American history. Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921 is not critical race theory, Selma, where John Lewis had his skull fractured is not critical race theory. It's just the American history. And Juneteenth is our prime example of that. Juneteenth shows us both the grand juror and the travail of American history. It's both the birth of a new freedom in America. But it also shows you how paralleling that new birth of freedom, we continue to see white supremacy and anti-black violence.
In Galveston in 1865, the very day that emancipation day in Galveston, Texas, where formerly enslaved African Americans found out about the end of the Civil War and about freedom that they had helped enact through their service, both as enslaved Africans, but also in the war. There were some who were shot down and who were killed for trying to leave plantations in East Texas.
So when we think about American history, American history has grand juror and it has travails, but teaching that history actually makes all of us stronger and not weaker. So we can't have this 100 percent positive take on American history, American exceptionalism, where when you talk about racism, we're talking about sexism, we're talking about queer phobia, it means that somehow you're unpatriotic or you hate the country. That's far from the truth. As we know, black Americans have fought in every single war this country has ever had. They're the most loyal, patriotic, pro- Democratic people the world has ever known. And they've always loved the country, even when the country has failed to love them back in catastrophically spectacular way.
KING: You say, Sir, that this is not rather a critical race theory is not really being taught much in the K-12 curriculum. I just want you to listen here. This is just today. And these are just three of the Republican critics who are raising the alarm as if parents should be worried about letting their kid get on the school bus. Listen.
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SEN. RON JOHNSON (R-WI): They are propagandizing to our children. They are turning our children away from faith and family and our founding principles and ideals.
SEN. RICK SCOTT (R-FL): How about these school boards across the country they're trying to teach critical race theory, treasure history, present our founders as racist, and divide us by our color of our skin.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): Critical race theory is bigoted. It is a lie. And it is every bit as racist as the Klansmen in white sheets.
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KING: Since the last gentleman there was from Texas, where, you know, Juneteenth is based, if you will, you just told the Galveston story there. Is critical race theory as racist as the Klansmen in white sheets?
JOSEPH: Absolutely not. What they're doing by saying this about critical race theories, what the Republican Party is trying to do is really resurrect the loss cause history that got us into this mess. And the loss cause is the idea that white supremacy, the confederacy, the Klan, these were all good things. And this was institutionalized in K through 12 education as late as the 1960s and '70s in some places.
[12:45:05]
So when we think about that loss cause, it's why we have "Birth of a Nation," the 1915 silent film that is considered a classic that has white actors in black face, trying to rape white women. It's why we have "Gone with the Wind," which was the biggest box office hit of all time in 1939, having this mythology about racial slavery. It's why when we think about the 1940s, and the 1950s, and the '60s, during the heroic period of the civil rights movement, southern states resurrect the confederate battle flag, because when the prospect of racial integration is at hand, they go back to the confederacy of the 19th century.
And remember, the Civil War was fought over racial slavery. It wasn't fought over states' rights. But even though the North with the aid of 180,000 black soldiers won that Civil War, they lost the narrative war in the aftermath of the conflict. And that narrative war is what justified and continues to justify the politics of punishment, racial segregation, violence against black bodies, the super exploitation of black people, and say that that is American history.
What we're seeing right now is American history is being reconsidered from the perspective of black Americans who have fought and died and struggle for this country. I argue that that black Americans during that the generations who were enslaved are really the greatest generation America has ever had. We wouldn't be the country we are today. We have no CNN, no computers, no technology, but for the enslaved black Americans who toiled, who toiled for free for this country.
And unless we understand that history, right, we are never going to move forward. So Juneteenth provides us a context for a unified American holiday contrary to this kind of opinion.
KING: Professor Joseph, grateful for your insights. We'll continue this conversation because as we head into an election year, I suspect this is going to come up more and more. Appreciate your perspective today, Sir, very much. Thank you.
JOSEPH: Thank you.
KING: Up next for us, the issue that has Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Trump allies Jim Jordan and Matt Gaetz on the same side.
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[12:51:59]
KING: Just moments ago, quite an interesting moment for the former Vice President Mike Pence. He was heckled at the Faith and Freedom Coalition Conference. Listen.
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MIKE PENCE, FORMER VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican in that order. And I'm honored to stand before you again.
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KING: A correspondent on the scene says that there were a number of people in the crowd wearing MAGA hats, who were heckling the former Vice President and they were escorted out by law enforcement. That tells you everything you need to know about the difficulty for him navigating the political environment now because his former boss says he was disloyal because he was following the Constitution and the law.
JULIE HIRSCHFELD DAVIS, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, and the difficulty for anyone who would dare to, you know, challenge Trump or take a different position than Trump. You know, one of the things that was very clear in the run up to January 6th was that former President Trump was saying that Mike Pence had the power to overturn this election and hand it back to him. That clearly wasn't the case. That's clearly was what fueled a lot of the fewer we watched earlier. And, you know, his supporters are not going to forget. It's not going to be good for him if he has higher aspirations, which we all know he does.
KING: Congressman -- yes, Trump has a friend, Congressman Mike Pence, Governor Mike Pence, Vice President Mike Pence was always very welcome as a Christian conservatives, he is one of them, he is truly one of them.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: He's more one of them than Donald Trump ever was. Or ever has been.
DAVIS: Inspired to be.
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right.
DIAMOND: This is going to be a rough road to 2024 for Mike Pence, because this is going to keep happening. And when you think about the extent to which he, you know, aligned himself so closely with Trump only to be rejected and completely tossed aside and now to be the guy saying, well, we'll never see eye to eye on January 6th, just an insurrection. But I mean, it puts him in an impossible position.
JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: But to your point, he brought those people behind Donald Trump. That's --
KING: Right.
KUCINICH: -- the main reason he was brought on the ticket to neutralize --
KING: For Ted Cruz, it was the convention.
DIAMOND: For the conservative --
KUCINICH: Exactly. And now, as we see there, it appears that some members have just turned against him.
PHILLIP: What's amazing to me is that Mike Pence really did the bare minimum. All he did was say, I'm not going to actually try to overturn the election in the Congress.
DAVIS: Yes.
PHILLIP: He kind of was behind Trump at every other step. And even after the Capitol insurrection, just kind of stayed on the sidelines didn't want to say too much to denounce what happened on January 6th, didn't want to across Trump. So even after all of that, it's a lose- lose situation for him. And you have to wonder, what is the point of continuing to try to ingratiate himself with a group of people who wanted him to do the one thing that he thought was a red line which was anti-constitutional, which was overthrow an election. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
KING: It's the only possible point the hope that somehow Trump is sidelined by 2024 and that the dynamics change and you take the abuse until then hoping? I don't know. We will see.
[12:54:46]
Up next for us, we'll tell you about the hero, absolute hero, throwing out the first pitch tonight at the Mets Nats game.
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KING: Topping our Political Radar today, Friday falling flat at the New York Stock Exchange. The Dow dipped more than 400 points around 1 percent. You see right there down 440 plus. The slide coming after the St. Louis Federal Reserve President James Bullard told CNBC he thinks the Fed should raise interest rates as soon as the end of next year speeding up its plan.
One of the heroes of the January 6th insurrection, the Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman is scheduled to throw out the first pitch tonight at the Mets Nats game here in Washington. You'll remember Goodman led the rioters away from the Senate chamber and later showed Senator Mitt Romney how to get away from the violence. Back in February the Senate unanimously voted to award Officer Goodman a gold medal for his actions.
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Thanks for joining us today in a very busy Inside Politics. Hope to see you back here on Monday. Have a great weekend. Ana Cabrera picks up right now.
