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Liz Cheney, Mulling 2024 Run, Says Cruz & Hawley Are Disqualified; President Biden to Make First Address to Joint Session of Congress; Coronavirus Cases and Hospitalizations Spike in India; Family of Andrew Brown Jr. Show Police Body Camera Footage of His Death. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired April 27, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, BIDEN CHIEF MEDICAL ADVISER: -- do anything, because when you get an overwhelming majority of the population vaccinated, the virus has no place to go.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: The country is at a tipping point. With coronavirus variants on the rise, the next 100 days and beyond will still be a tough race, with the final finish line not yet in sight.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And Gloria Borger joins us now. Great to have you on NEW DAY. Nice to see you.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Great to be here with you guys.

BERMAN: So Gloria, the administration now has to walk this fine line between saying be careful, don't let your guard down, but also, we have great news about how things are opening up. So how do they pull that off?

BORGER: With great difficulty. They have a problem with vaccine hesitancy. And I think what they decided, and we'll see that later today with the mask -- with what they say about masks, they have decided they have to show people that there's a reward if you get vaccinated, that there are things you can do that you could not do before.

So on the one hand, they're saying to people, look at this. There's a new sense of freedom for you because you've done the right thing and gotten vaccinated. On the other hand, there are these variants out there, and they have to say, but wait a minute. You still have to be vigilant here because we have to watch this very, very carefully. And so it's kind of a mixed message. It's very delicate. But they have no other choice other than to do it.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: It's a great piece, Gloria. As you know, I would just like to spend basically all my time watching Law and Form Gloria Borger. We've talked about this before. BORGER: Thank you.

KEILAR: Was there anything that you found really surprising as you were talking to officials about how things have gone or about the challenges before them?

BORGER: I think what I found surprising was the fact that Jeff Zients who coordinates this right now said to me absolutely flatly, I was left with no plan, and Paul Mango from the Trump administration said they are using our plan. We gave them a plan. And there was no kind of meeting of the minds except for Tony Fauci saying, well, it was somewhere in between because there was no long-range plan. And it kind of stunned me looking back on the situation we were in. People knew you were going to get vaccines, and that there wasn't a longer range plan to get those shots into arms was kind of remarkable.

BERMAN: Gloria Borger, great reporting.

BORGER: Thanks, guys.

BERMAN: So nice to see you.

BORGER: Good to see you.

BERMAN: CNN's special live coverage of President Biden's first address to a joint session of Congress, that begins tomorrow night at 8:00. And NEW DAY continues right now.

KEILAR: I am Brianna Keilar alongside John Berman on this NEW DAY. President Biden announcing new guidance for masks in just a matter of hours here. Will fully vaccinated people have to wear them outdoors? Plus, the family of a black man killed by police, they say he was, quote, executed. Two people who saw the bodycam video will join us live here in minutes.

BERMAN: A Florida private school orders teachers who've had a coronavirus shot to stay away from their students while spreading a bunch of false claims about vaccines. And will Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney run for president in 2024? The new interview that has plenty of people speculating this morning.

KEILAR: A very good morning to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Tuesday, April 27th. And we're about to get some new guidance from President Biden on mask wearing outdoors. These are new rules for vaccinated and unvaccinated Americans. Plus, what activities we may be able to resume, which I know we're all looking forward to.

BERMAN: This comes ahead of the president's first address to Congress, that's tomorrow night. As of this morning, nearly 29 percent of Americans are fully vaccinated, more than 42 percent have received at least one shot.

We want to get straight to the White House and bring in CNN's John Harwood. John, what are we expecting from the president today, and kind of why? Why are we getting this today, the day before the joint address?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: John, we're expecting the president to once again demonstrate the strategy that's guided him throughout the first 100 days, which is make modest promises, make damn sure you can meet those promises, and you hope you can overdeliver. So they said, as you heard in Gloria's piece just now, 100 million shots in arms. That was something that they could easily achieve, and in fact midway through they upped it to 200 million. The president has said hopefully we can get to small outdoor gatherings together by the 4th of July. Many of those things are happening now as we've gotten to 29 percent of the American public being fully vaccinated.

[08:05:00]

So you don't want to disappoint as a new president the American people, and now on the subject of outdoor mask wearing, we expect to hear first from CDC Director Rochelle Walensky that, in fact, as scientists have been hinting in recent days, some saying outright and others saying, Tony Fauci hinted over the weekend, that they're going to relax the notion that when you're outside, you need to wear a mask when you're around other people if you've been vaccinated and if you can keep some distance for them. This is a virus that is spread through aerosol and close contact with people, not so much outside when you have some distance. And we expect Joe Biden to affirm that as a way of going into this 100 days commemoration at this joint, speech to the joint session of Congress, showing, yes, we are making progress. We are getting back to normal. Joe Biden trying to take credit for that and use that as part of the sales pitch for the next phase of his agenda, which is his big infrastructure plan.

BERMAN: John Harwood, great to have you, thanks so much for being with us.

The head of the World Health Organization calls India's mounting coronavirus outbreak beyond heartbreaking. The United States and the United Kingdom leading the international effort to help. Hospitals in India are running out of oxygen and ICU beds, and the surge of deaths has forced families to wait in line to have their loved ones cremated. CNN's Vedika Sud is on the ground in New Delhi.

(BEGIN VIDEO TAPE)

VEDIKA SUD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: These raging fires will continue all day and through the evening. The surge in cases has been so much that there's a waiting, really, for these bodies to be put on the fire by family members. There's a queue outside just waiting for the final rites to end for family member who has died of COVID-19.

Body after body being brought into this crematorium in India's national capital New Delhi that has seen a huge surge not only in cases but in fatalities as well. Family members pulling out bodies such as this one from ambulances lined up in this crematorium ground and taking them for cremation. They've grown up with these people. They've lived with them, and now it's time to say the final goodbye. NEERAJ PAL, NEPHEW OF DECEASED (through translator): My uncle died at

about 11:15 p.m. on April 24th. The hospital didn't inform us. When we called the help desk, we were told he's no more.

SUD: One of the more heartbreaking scenes I witnessed was when a 27- year-old was picking up the ashes of his 49-year-old mother. His brother is still in hospital recovering from COVID-19 while his father has just got home after recovering from infection.

(END VIDEO TAPE)

KEILAR: Vedika Sud, thank you for that.

Joining us now is Fareed Zakaria, who is the host of CNN's "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS" and the author of "Ten Lessons for a Post-Pandemic World." Fareed, thank you so much for being with us. As we are hearing these horror stories out of India with the pandemic, overwhelmed hospitals, a lack of oxygen supply, you're also talking to us today about your personal experience for which we are so sorry. Your mother Fatima passed away in a hospital in Aurangabad, India. Can you tell us about your mom, and tell us about your experience with what she faced here?

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": So my mother was 85. She was, in generally good health, but she was a bit overweight. She had diabetes. She had some heart trouble. So not a good candidate to get COVID. And once she got it, the doctors were clear that this was a serious condition. So she was pretty much kept in the ICU, the intensive care unit from the start.

The doctors did a very good job. They did what they could. The cocktail of drugs they gave her is essentially the same as you would get in the United States. And the drugs were working. In her case, and this often happens with elderly patients, the body just gave up. She had a massive heart attack. And I think that's one of the reasons why, with COVID, you see this overwhelming number of people who die in their 70s or 80s. It's because even if the drug is working, the disease ravages the body enough that something else gives way. You get an infection. You get a heart attack.

In the hospital she was in, and again, as I said, the doctors were doing the best they could, there were stretchers outside. They had set up makeshift units outside. This is now two, three weeks ago, but already the hospital was completely overwhelmed. I remember when she was admitted, they said 50 percent of the patients here are COVID patients, going to 100 percent. Now imagine what that does also in a poor country with lots of diseases. Nobody else is getting treated for anything. So it's a pretty grim situation. My mother, unfortunately, got COVID in the situation where she was not strong enough to battle it. But it seems to be ravaging even young, healthy people.

[08:10:09]

BERMAN: Look, Fareed, you've said your mother is the single person most responsible for making you who you are. So we are so sorry for your loss. I spoke to a doctor in Delhi who said, this isn't complicated. This is just a numbers issue right now. We are flat-out overwhelmed. And when you look at the curve of new cases, it's just skyrocketed. It's not a curve. It's just a flat-out wall with more than 300,000 cases a day. How did this happen after India had been bragging that it had all but eradicated it?

ZAKARIA: The lesson is pretty clear. Don't get complacent and don't get arrogant. What happened is the government in India actually handled the first wave well with a draconian lockdown, came to the conclusion the lockdown was probably too draconian because, remember, in India, the government doesn't have money for COVID relief payments and things like that, so you really put a lot of people in very difficult economic hardship.

So they decided, OK, we're going to ease up. But then they eased up way too much. And they started to believe that Indians had some kind of exceptional immunity to COVID, which was, of course, crazy. Then the prime minister decides he wants to engage in a lot of electioneering, campaigning, and he wants to be able to hold large outdoor rallies. If he's going to hold large outdoor rallies, he has to then start allowing other large outdoor gatherings, like cricket matches, which are huge in India, like this Kumbh Mela, which is a 10 million-person gathering, which sounds crazy if you think about it now in terms of its dangers for COVID. All of that was allowed. And guess what? Indians did not have any natural immunity. The spike went way up.

Now, it's worth pointing out, the real spike in terms of numbers is in cases and infections. The death rate is still relatively low. It is still, for example, fewer people have died in India from COVID than in the U.S. But the problem is the one you pointed out, John, which is the hospitals and the health care system are crashing. And unless they can get a grip on this, you're going to have a lot of people dying of lots of other things because the hospitals are just so full that they can't deal with anything but COVID.

BERMAN: Fareed Zakaria, again, we're sorry for your loss. Thanks so much for being with us this morning. Really appreciate your time.

ZAKARIA: My pleasure.

BERMAN: So new this morning, CNN has obtained video taken by a neighbor of Andrew Brown Jr. shortly after he was fatally shot by sheriff's deputies in North Carolina almost a week ago. You can see his car stopped with several officers gathered around the vehicle. Yesterday the family was finally allowed to watch a short clip from one deputy's body camera.

Joining me now is Andrew Brown's son Khalil Ferebee and Chantel Cherry-Lassiter, the family's attorney. Kahlil, I'm so sorry that you had to watch video of your father being killed. I can't imagine what that was like and how difficult that was, but I am still going to ask you to describe what you saw.

KAHLIL FEREBEE, SON OF ANDREW BROWN JR.: It was an execution. It's not -- it's video that no son should see dealing with his father at all. BERMAN: And again, I'm so sorry that you had to see it, but it's

important, and it's important for us to know, counselor, what was on the video. Can you walk us through what the 20 seconds does show?

CHANTEL CHERRY-LASSITER, BROWN FAMILY ATTORNEY: Well, good morning. What the 20 seconds shows is that Andrew Brown was not a threat to the officers. He was in his driveway. He was parked in where the front of his vehicle is facing the street and the sheriff's car blocked him in the front part. He could still exit out the back part, which is what he ultimately had to do to get away from the shots being fired at him.

Sitting there with Kahlil while watching it, it was very, very difficult because, as you stated, no one should have to see, especially a son, to watch the execution of his father. And we had to watch it numerous times to make sure we had a clear understanding.

So as he was being shot at, Andrew was trying to back away from the officers and save his life, save his own life. He backed out and then he went through the -- he went through the yard in attempts to get away from the officers, and still at no time threatening the officers. He did not go forward towards them. He was just constantly trying to get away from them, and he ultimately hit a tree. And as he hit the tree, they were still firing shots at him through the back of his wind shield.

BERMAN: Now, you saw 20 seconds. That's all in 20 seconds. We've been told the total video is only 30 seconds, but what's the reasoning you were given for not showing you the other 10 seconds?

[08:15:00]

CHERRY-LASSITER: They said that they showed us the pertinent parts.

Although they said it was a 30-second encounter, we don't have any information to validate that. We have only seen that one snippet. We have seen one bodycam video, although there was numerous officers on the scene. And we're actually not 100 percent sure that it was only 30 seconds. We haven't seen but the 20 seconds.

BERMAN: So you're not satisfied with what you've seen, the amount you've seen at this point?

LASSITER: Definitely not. It was redacted. The officers' faces were redacted. The guns and the weapons were redacted. You could tell they were ARs, and at one point, seemed like one officer was reloading. That was kind of redacted out.

So they did not show the family enough to give him any type of assurity that this was transparency.

BERMAN: Is it possible --

LASSITER: There was not enough being shown to them. Uh-huh?

BERMAN: Is it possible they are withholding it because they would want to use the withheld video as part of a prosecution, they don't want to prejudice perhaps some ultimate jury pool? Is that -- is that conceivable?

LASSITER: So this is what the family. We were not -- we had not gotten to that point yet. You know, this was just family members watching it.

I understand that part. But we -- we want the family to be able to see it. They're not going to be on the jury.

BERMAN: Khalil, tell me about your father.

FEREBEE.: He was a caring person, and everything he did was for his kids. You know, he really loved all of us. And it's just sad that my baby brothers, my baby sisters got to grow up without him now, you know? He was an awesome person, funny, and all about his business.

BERMAN: Hmm. And, Counselor, what happens next as far as you're concerned?

LASSITER: We are still trying to get transparency. We are still trying to obtain the rest of the -- if it is just ten more seconds, we would like the whole ten seconds and see all the bodycam footage, any dashcam that's available. Just any information that we can provide to this family so they can know what happened to Andrew.

BERMAN: All right. Chantel Cherry-Lassiter and Khalil Ferebee, we appreciate your time. Thank you so much for being with us this morning.

LASSITER: Thank you.

KEILAR: Just ahead -- a private school in Miami is telling teachers, if you get vaccinated, you cannot be around children. We'll have that story ahead.

Plus, she's gone head-to-head with her male colleagues and now, Congresswoman Liz Cheney is mulling a presidential run it appears. We'll have that next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:21:22]

BERMAN: In a new interview with "The New York Post," the number three Republican in the House, Liz Cheney, says she's not ruling out a potential presidential run in 2024.

CNN's Lauren Fox live on Capitol Hill.

I wonder if she would even win a primary within her own caucus, Lauren.

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, I think the big question, John, is she's been a counterbalance to Trumpism for the last five years since being on Capitol Hill. The key question is, if she were to run for president, would she be able to win back that important Trump base that you need in the Republican Party to be successful?

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FOX (voice-over): Congresswoman Liz Cheney considering a possible 2024 presidential run, telling "The New York Post," quote, I'm not ruling anything in or out. Ever is a long time.

The third ranking House Republican has been an outspoken critic of some Republican leaders since the January 6th attack on the Capitol, and voted with nine other congressional Republicans to impeach President Trump.

Monday, Cheney punted when asked whether President Trump should be charged criminally for his comments before the insurrection.

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): That's a decision that the Justice Department is going to have to make.

FOX: But despite recent criticism of members of her own party, Cheney says she's confident Republicans can win back the White House in 2024.

CHENEY: I think that's where we've got to attract back the voters that we lost in 2020 by conveying to them that, in fact, you know, we are the party they can trust. We're the party of competence and conservative principles.

FOX: Since her impeachment vote, Cheney has raised about $1.6 million, according to "The Washington Post", which said five current GOP senators have donated to Cheney directly, including Mitch McConnell and longtime Trump ally Lindsey Graham.

Despite Cheney's groundswell of support from establishment Republicans, she remains isolated from Trump and his supporters.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT: Hopefully, they'll get rid of her with the next election.

FOX: In February, House Republicans held a closed door vote on whether to strip her of her leadership position, after her vote to impeach Trump.

According to "The New York Times," in that meeting, Congressman Ralph Norman claimed Cheney had a defiant attitude. Congressman Mike Kelly of Pennsylvania saying you look up into the stands and see your girlfriend on the opposite side. That's one hell of a tough thing to swallow. To which a female colleague yelled out, quote, she's not your girlfriend.

Cheney also vowing to hold lawmakers accountable for the events of January 6th, saying in a "New York Post" interview, quote, I do think that some of our candidates who led the charge, particularly the senates who led the unconstitutional charge not to certify the election, you know, in my view, that's disqualifying.

Cheney's relationship with the House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy has also fractured since Trump left office. The two disagreeing that the scope of the commission to investigate the Capitol attack should widen to include other violence.

REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): Since Good Friday, we just had Officer Evans killed in the Capitol. For the last year, we've had political violence across this country and in this city. I think we should look at all of that.

CHENEY: I am very concerned as all my colleagues are about the violence that we saw, the BLM, the Antifa violence last summer. I think that's a different set of issues. A different set of problems and a different set of solutions. So I think it's very important the January 6th Commission focus on what happened on January 6th. And what led to that attack.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FOX: And McCarthy spoke to "Politico" on Monday telling them that he had a private conversation with Cheney where he asked her to tone down her rhetoric.

[08:25:08]

He also said it creates difficulties when leaders do not work together. Asked if McCarthy's approaching Cheney had any effect, he told a reporter, you be the judge -- Brianna.

KEILAR: All right. Lauren Fox, thank you.

Let's talk now with Elizabeth Neumann, former assistant secretary of homeland security and co-director of the Republican Accountability Project.

Elizabeth, thank you for being with us.

Former GOP Congressman Joe Walsh gave Cheney a bit of a reality check. This is what his reality check was about running for president. Quote: This is silly. No one who opposes Trump in Trumpism has a prayer to be the GOP nominee in 2024.

Is that the truth?

ELIZABETH NEUMANN, CO-DIRECTOR, REPUBLICAN ACCOUNTABILITY PROJECT: Hi, Brianna. You know, I think it's definitely an uphill battle, but I think the Trumpists in the party are really over -- overestimating the hold and the power that Trump has four years from now, a lot can happen in four years. There are pending court cases and criminal potential criminal charges.

You already have seen a softening of support for Trump. There are about 20 percent of the Republican Party that supported him originally, and are ready to move on now. So when you add in the Never Trumpers, that's 35 percent. It's a small minority of the party, but when you have so few people willing to be the representative, the lead for that segment of the party, meanwhile, you have a very packed field of people vying for becoming the next Trump. You know, she has a shot. So it's kind of interesting to see how this might play out.

KEILAR: Very interesting.

So I want to ask you about what's going on in Arizona. There is a Republican-led recount of 2020 presidential ballots from Maricopa county, which is the most populous county and this is pretty interesting because there have already been two audits there. This is 2 million ballots. There were no irregularities in those other two audits, and this all started because of the big lie. How do you see this?

I mean, this is what the GOP in Arizona is championing. How do you find the place where maybe the Republicans who feel actually kind of disenfranchised by their own party but also don't consider themselves Democrats, where do they go in Arizona?

NEUMANN: Yeah, I mean, this is lunacy. I think Governor Hogan used that word to describe what was going on in Arizona. It's absolute lunacy.

It's actually really dangerous. I don't think any of us think that the results of the audit are going to be fact-based. They are already spreading messages on OAN which is the only media outlet that's allowed to observe that they found systemic fraud. I mean, this is going to serve as nothing more than fodder to rile up a percentage -- a strong percentage. It's 50 percent or 60 percent of the Republican Party still believe the election was stolen, and that's what led us to January 6th.

So adding more fuel to that fire is likely to lead to political violence. It's very irresponsible, and it's sad because it's just going to continue us down this very unhealthy path. And I was hopeful that we might be able to start to rebuild but we're clearly not there yet.

KEILAR: Your group which is the Republican accountability project, just issued report cards for every Republican in Congress. It's ranking in your view, who has acted to undermine American democracy and who has worked to uphold it.

There are 14 Republican lawmakers who received a grade of "A." Among them, you have Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski and Congresswoman Liz Cheney. But then there's more than 100 Republicans who got an "F" and that included the house minority leader Kevin McCarthy, as well as Congressman Steve Scalise and Mo Brooks.

What other names jumped out to you here in I guess either the "A's" or the "F's"?

NEUMANN: Right. It's really sad. As you pointed out, there are so few "A's." You know, when you add the A's, the B's and then the C's, you know, it ends up around 80, 90, 100, it's still -- it's still less than the F's. It's kind of -- it tells you the state of the party, right, that we have so many irresponsible Republicans that are sitting in our branch of government that's supposed to be representing the people. It's very dangerous and we need to hold them accountable.

The group that jumps out to me the most is actually the C's and C- minuses. If you look through that list, it's a large number of Republican senators. In fact, most of the Senate leadership for Republicans fall in that category with the exception of Rick Scott who falls -- he scored an "F."

And it tells me this is the group of the squishes, right? They tried -- they are trying to walk.

[08:30:00]