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New Day
Men Haven't Learned Lessons of Me Too; Jobs Report For Last Week; Struggle for Small Businesses; Coronavirus Support Group; W. Kamau Bell Combats Vaccine Misinformation. Aired 8:30-9a ET
Aired March 04, 2021 - 08:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[08:30:00]
NANCY ERIKA SMITH, CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY: The idea that I'm 63 years old, I'm the governor of New York, I'm a lawyer, and I go around hugging and kissing strangers, subordinates, 25-year-old women who work for me? I discuss strip poker. I ask women about their sex lives, specifically, I ask a 25-year-old if she likes to have sex with older men, and I discuss women's looks, the subordinate's looks with my co- workers and they feel really safe telling women, oh, we think you're prettier than so and so. You're hotter than so and so. If this governor truly didn't understand that that was wrong, that's another reason to -- for him to resign.
And, under the law, his intent is irrelevant. If men still don't get it, it doesn't matter, it's still illegal. It's not a defense to say, I thought it was OK, thank God.
ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: Nancy, one more question for you before we get back to Irin (ph). That's about the investigation.
SMITH: Yes.
CAMEROTA: You know, there's talk that this could take months. But I remember, from the Fox News Channel investigation of Roger Ailes, I think that was over and done with in what, the space of two weeks. I mean can't this happen quickly?
SMITH: That's a ploy, hoping it passes over. If it doesn't happen quickly, that's a political decision and a decision by -- I assume it's going to -- it's usually a corporate defense law firm that they're going to, you know, maybe do a favor for the governor, whose very known to be retributive, or they're going to bill the hell out of it and put 15 lawyers on it and spend six months. I could finish this investigation by the end of the week. You talk to the women. You see their evidence. You see what happened when the chief of staff was told by Ms. Bennett. If Governor Cuomo claims that he never knew, that means he created an environment where his chief of staff felt comfortable not telling him.
CAMEROTA: Yes.
SMITH: And covering it up and transferring the woman. CAMEROTA: Irin, you know, the governor seems to be saying that this is
a teachable moment for him. He now understands it. It has now been brought to light. He will do better. He has regret and he's embarrassed.
You know, in this moment of cancel culture, is that enough? Should we give him a second chance now that he knows better, he says?
IRIN CARMON, SENIOR CORRESPONDENT, "NEW YORK MAGAZINE": You know, Alisyn, I want to, for a moment, just take this away from Andrew Cuomo and how he feels and what chances he should have and just shine a spotlight for a moment on the women who were brave enough to come forward.
Andrew Cuomo is one of the most powerful politicians, certainly in the state, perhaps in the country. He is someone who many people, for a long time, have felt bullied by but said nothing about or didn't do anything about. And so for these two young women and the third young woman as well, but two young women who worked for him, to come forward the way that they did, took a lot of courage.
And the reason sexual harassment is illegal is because it inhibits women's participation as workers in the workplace. These are people who came to work because they wanted to contribute. And so let's -- rather than focus on Andrew Cuomo's political career, let's focus on how we can create a workplace, whether it's New York state or whether it's McDonald's, in which every worker can come to work, contribute, be safe and not be treated a certain way because they happen to be a 25-year-old woman.
CAMEROTA: Point well taken.
Irin Carmon, Nancy Erika Smith, we always appreciate talking to both of you and getting your perspectives on this. I predict we'll talk again.
CARMON: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: John.
JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Here's what else to watch today.
ON SCREEN TEXT: 10:45 a.m. ET, Speaker Pelosi holds news conference.
12:45 p.m. ET, White House press briefing.
2:00 p.m. ET, President Biden holds infrastructure event.
BERMAN: We have brand-new jobless numbers. The breaking news, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:37:51]
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.
BERMAN: New jobless numbers just in.
Chief business correspondent Christine Romans joins us now with that.
Romans, what does it look like?
CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: And 745,000 people for the very first time filed for first-time unemployment benefits this most recent week. You look at the visual aid I gave you there, John. That's better than earlier this year but still really bad. Each one of those people is a family that has now lost a source of income here. A real problem.
When you add in pandemic unemployment benefits, you still have something like more than 1.1 million, 1.2 million people who have filed for the very first time for unemployment benefits. And these benefits will start expiring middle of March, in about ten days.
I wanted to show you another really important graphic I made for you here. This is a crisis of low-wage working people. You can see that low-paid workers have lost almost 8 million jobs here. But the k- shaped recovery we've talked about, if you are in the top quarter of earners in this country, jobs are growing. You have the chance to negotiate for better pay and salary. You're not seeing the job crisis that we're seeing on the lower end.
So, Alisyn, even as we're starting to hear people worry about gangbusters economy later this year, that it will be so strong it could spark inflation and maybe be a bubble for the economy that the Fed will have to tamp down, that is not the case for low-wage workers, why this -- this stimulus, which is really relief that they're talking about in Congress, is so important. This has been a crisis for low- wage people in this country and there's no sign that that's abating.
CAMEROTA: Christine, we learn something every time that you come on.
ROMANS: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: We really appreciate that.
Small business owners are still struggling, of course, to make ends meet as they desperately wait for a third round of loans from the Paycheck Protection Program.
CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Getting there.
VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Barbara Thigpen's business is in limbo. The fate of her hair salon hinging on a paycheck protection program loan. While she waits, her son's college fund is keeping the lights on.
BARBARA THIGPEN, OWNER, JAMES ROSE SALON: There was definitely a moment where I was trying to decide if it had to be my child's college fund or the business.
[08:40:03]
And then I soon realized that without the business being here, there would be no way to replace his college fund.
YURKEVICH: Which has drained 50 percent. And her PPP application hit a roadblock. With six employees, she's eligible for the current two-week application period the Biden administration set aside for small businesses with less than 20 employees. But as the sole proprietor, she had been waiting more than a week on new application rules the Small Business Administration just announced in order to move her loan forward.
THIGPEN: What I can't actually understand is that the government would make new rules and not understand that this two-week window and these new rules would cause a conflict.
YURKEVICH: Until then, she waits, and so does Diane Bondareff. She's a one-woman photography company with a 25-year career in New York City.
DIANE BONDAREFF, OWNER, DIANE BONDAREFF PHOTOGRAPHY: My photography business definitely relies on people gathering.
YURKEVICH: Without that, she's down 88 percent in revenue. She's been waiting over a month for news of her PPP loan.
BONDAREFF: These are the things that keep me up at 3:00 in the morning wondering what I'm going to do. And if I don't have the funds to stay here, I may -- you know, I may have to leave.
YURKEVICH: The SBA, which processes PPP loans, says delays in funding are due to additional compliance checks introduced by the Biden administration. For some, it's too late.
Fortuna Sung and Matthew Garrison, own ShapeShifter Lab, a jazz club in Brooklyn, they were ineligible for a PPP loan but could access the new shuttered venue operator grant for live venue spaces. It was introduced in the December stimulus bill. The SBA has yet to open applications.
MATTHEW GARRISON, CO-OWNER, SHAPESHIFTER LAB: We're down to the wire. We knew we were going to be down to the wire by this time. And now it's here. And the funding has not come through.
YURKEVICH: Without it, they will close for good at the end of the month, joining hundreds of other independent venues who have met that same fate.
FORTUNA SUNG, CO-OWNER, SHAPESHIFTER LAB: Having the venue close, I would be very upset because it's basically our lifetime savings that we've put into it and everything is evaporating.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
YURKEVICH: And some good news. Just yesterday the governor of New York announced that live event spaces can open in April with audiences of 100 people. But that, of course, does not make up for all the lost revenue of this last year. That's why this special grant is so important.
And hundreds of chambers of commerce's business owners and lenders are warning that they have hundreds of thousands of PPP loan applicants that they don't think that they will be able to process by the deadline of March 31st. They're calling on an extension. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Alisyn, even going so far as to call on Congress to extend this deadline until the end of this year to make sure that every small business who wants it gets access to this critical, federal funding.
Alisyn.
CAMEROTA: Vanessa, thank you very much for bringing all of that to our attention.
So, W. Kamau Bell uses his comedy to get serious about coronavirus vaccines. He's going to join us to explain, next.
But first, a coronavirus survivor helps so-called long-haulers cope and heal.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta has this week's "Human Factor."
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DIANA BERRENT, FOUNDER, SURVIVOR CORPS: I'm on day 11 of having COVID- 19.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Diana Berrent is a photographer who traveled the world before the pandemic. Then early last year, the mother of two got the virus. She's been struggling for months now with symptoms.
BERRENT: Incredible pressure on my chest. A splitting headache. The GI issues started maybe four days in. And didn't sleep for months.
GUPTA: Diana kept a video diary of her symptoms and just two weeks after her COVID diagnosis, she did something incredible, she started a COVID support group and citizen science online portal called Survivor Corps.
BERRENT: I started Survivor Corps with the mission of mobilizing an army of survivors to donate plaza and to support science in every way possible.
GUPTA: The group's FaceBook page has more than 150,000 members who share symptoms, console each other, donate precious antibodies and take part in medical research studies.
BERRENT: I think it can be so lonely for people whose friends are saying, I don't know what you're talking about. I had a mild case of COVID. I got over it in a week.
We are partners with the Mayo Clinic. We are partners with Mt. Sinai and Columbia.
GUPTA: Now, today Diana is dealing with another potential diagnosis, glaucoma. She hopes Survivor Corps will be her life's work to serve others struggle with long-haul symptoms.
BERRENT: I consider myself extraordinarily lucky.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[08:49:29]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
W. KAMAU BELL, CNN HOST AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, "UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA": Hello, black America. There's good news out there. There's a COVID-19 vaccine. Yeah! But the bad news is, as black folks, it's hard to trust what's going on. So what do we do? Well, we turn to people we can trust, black doctors and black nurses.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BERMAN: That's a new campaign aimed at fighting misinformation about the vaccines among African-Americans.
Joining us now is W. Kamau Bell, host and executive producer of CNN's "United Shades of America."
Kamau, great to see you.
Look, every time you're on I wonder, why isn't Kamau on every day with us?
[08:50:01]
CAMEROTA: Yes, what's the answer to that?
BERMAN: And the answer is, because you're out there saving the world. Too busy. Too busy doing good everywhere to come on and talk to us in the morning.
W. KAMAU BELL, CNN HOST AND EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, "UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA": Yes.
BERMAN: Tell us about this campaign. What -- what its aim is.
BELL: Well, you know, we know there's a lot of misinformation out there. There's a lot of misinformation out there no matter what race you are. But specifically with black folks and how we've been impacted by COVID-19, we have to get good information out there because there's a lot of suspicion in the black community about the COVID-19 vaccine. Well-earned suspicions, and I say.
CAMEROTA: And, in one of these PSAs, you talk about where you go for all of your medical information. Here's that moment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BELL: Like a lot of people, I like to get my medical information from bizarre, dark corners of the Internet that haven't been vetted. Is that a good idea?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, dear.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Please do not continue to do that.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is definitely not a good idea.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Unfortunately, on the Internet, pretty much anyone can post anything.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There are no microchips. There's no stealing of your DNA. No, none of that is happening.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CAMEROTA: I mean, it's funny, except that it's true that that is where people go to get their medical information nowadays.
BELL: Yes. Well, yes. And I think that we want to honor the fact that whether we're not -- some of us judge that or whether some of us think that's ridiculous that that happens, it is true. And we've -- and this -- and the thing that's great, all these black doctors and nurses were very patient with me and answered all these questions because they know they need to. You know, it's easy to dismiss people who have suspicions about the COVID-19 vaccine. It's easy to condescend. But the fact is, especially for black folks in this country, America has earned our distrust over the -- over our whole entire history here. And this video series, there's 50 videos with different black doctors and nurses who are actually addressing the concerns in a very serious and hopefully light-hearted way sometimes.
BERMAN: And did they convince you? I mean do you find these arguments -- or -- I mean it. I mean are these arguments working?
BELL: Oh, no, I was already convinced. That's why I laughed. No, these arguments are -- these -- I am the person who -- despite what I said in the video, I go to the Internet and try and find trusted sources. I mean I like to watch a lot of crazy YouTube videos too, but I do settle with trusted sources. So when I sat down in that chair, I had already been convinced. I'm just waiting for my vaccine. If you've got a hook-up, John, I'll take that hook-up.
BERMAN: I was going to say, when are you getting -- I mean I don't want to presume anything about your age. I assume 29. But when --
BILL: Yes, I'm Hollywood 29, John Berman.
BERMAN: But when do you -- when will you get vaccinated? BELL: I mean, here's the thing that's sort of the problem. Black
folks, even though we've been hit -- one of the hardest groups hit by COVID, also indigenous folks, we're also the lowest group to get access to the vaccine. And right now I feel like, as I see people around me, many white folks getting the vaccine, I do have this feeling of like, when's my turn? I'm not trying to reveal too much, but I'm a black man in America. I have a walking co-morbidity. I am ready for my turn. But the access is not there yet, even for someone like me.
CAMEROTA: And why is that? I mean since you have -- if you have a co- morbidity, why -- why aren't you in the queue?
BELL: There's -- so there's two issues here. One, can we get black folks to trust the vaccine? Two, how do you navigate the system to get the vaccine?
I live in California. The group that is currently -- has access to the vaccine, I am not in that group.
Now, do I think that I should be in that group? I think I should be in that group. Do I think that as a black person that should be part of our reparations? Yes, I do. But, unfortunately, I'm not in that group right now, so I have to wait my turn.
BERMAN: How hopeful are you, Kamau, in terms of how life will change over the next two months as more of us get vaccinated?
BELL: Two months -- I'm not two months hopeful, John. I'm -- I'm hope -- I'm a year hopeful. I think that if over the course of the next year -- because I think some people are going to, unfortunately, wait until they see people around them get it. And I think it's important for -- you know, I plan on getting mine on Instagram or whatever I need to do to show people that it's safe. I think it's important that more people -- as more people see people get it, they will get more comfortable with it. But, yes, I -- I do think that we can't expect things to change in two months.
CAMEROTA: Speaking of access, there's also, as you know, this battle underway about voting rights access in the country. And o after all of the gain that activists like Stacey Abrams made for this 2020 election, now there are 40-plus states that are just chipping away. They have bills that are making their way through state legislatures at restricting voting access.
What do you see here?
BELL: I mean, I'll say this, Stacey Abrams and the group she's worked with -- the group she works with, the New Georgia Project and Black Voters Matter and other groups, they all knew this was coming. So none of those groups are surprised that these Republican-led states are trying to do this. So they were prepared for this, but it doesn't make it any more easy the fact that it is happening.
So, I mean, Republicans found out, the more access there is to voting, the less likely they are to win. And so they're very clear about the fact they would like to strict -- restrict access to voting so they will win. But we know that. So we have to -- we have to work hard to make sure that doesn't happen.
BERMAN: How do you do that, though? I mean it really is a race at this point, right? Because the way to way it is to win elections. So how can you make it a motivating factor to get out and vote?
[08:55:05]
BELL: I think the way it changes, not only to win elections, is then to do the things that the people who got you there wanted you to do. So right now we're talking about $15 minimum wage, possibly going down. Where a lot of people heard the Biden administration talk about that $15 minimum wage and they voted for Biden because of that. And so once you get in there, you have to do the things that people who elected you, and he certainly knows that black folks in Georgia were a key part of who elected him. If he does the things they want him -- if he does the things that those people want him to do, they will turn out to vote in bigger numbers.
BERMAN: W. Kamau Bell, next time you get a break from saving the world, please come back on NEW DAY. We always love seeing you.
BELL: Thank you.
CAMEROTA: OK.
And CNN's coverage continues, next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[09:00:05]
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: A very good Thursday morning to you. I'm Jim Scioto.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: And I'm Poppy Harlow.
