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Interview with CDC Director Rochelle Walensky; Representative Liz Cheney Faces Possible Ouster from House Republican Leadership Position Dur to Criticisms of President Trump; Photos Surface of Juror in Derek Chauvin Trial Wearing Black Lives Matter T-Shirt. Aired 8- 8:30a ET

Aired May 05, 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]

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Biden administration, the challenge they are facing when it comes to the Russian threat. And Antony Blinken, President Biden, have spoken repeatedly about how they're going to not let Russia get away with escalating matters, to stand up to countries like China and Russia that confront the rule-based order in the world. Ukraine regards itself as the eastern frontier of democracy. That's how it characterizes itself, and it wants the United States to treat it as a democratic ally in the east, right up against the Russian threat.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Matthew Chance, I have to say, extraordinary reporting once again. Thank you so much, as always.

NEW DAY continues right now.

I'm John Berman with Brianna Keilar. On this NEW DAY, hunger games in the House. Liz Cheney looks doomed for defying the big lie with another Republican lined up now to replace her.

Plus, the new legal move by Derek Chauvin's lawyers. Could a juror's t-shirt be enough to get George Floyd's killer a new trial?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Mixed messaging on masks continues to cause confusion. The head of the CDC joins us to try to clear that up.

And an Army veteran who almost died in Afghanistan speaking out on President Biden's pull out of troops. Why he said it's time for America to leave.

BERMAN: And good morning to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Wednesday, May 5th. Liz Cheney chose truth over power, and it's about to cost her a leadership role in the House, and quite possibly her elected political career. Republican sources tell CNN that minority leader Kevin McCarthy is planning to vote for next week to remove her. This hot mic moment on FOX capturing McCarthy's blunt assessment of Cheney's future, and we should note that the audio was edited and does not contain the host's question.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY, (R-CA), HOUSE MINORITY LEADER: I think she's got real problems. I've had it with -- I've had it with her. I've lost confidence. Well, someone just has to bring a motion, but I assume that will probably take place.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Sources tell CNN the favorite to replace Cheney is New York congresswoman and fierce Trump ally Elise Stefanik. Stefanik is already working behind the scenes to fill Cheney's leadership role. And a source tells CNN McCarthy is making it clear to members he backs Stefanik, making it all but certain the job will be hers.

BERMAN: Joining me now, former Republican congresswoman from Virginia, Barbara Comstock. Thank you so much for being with us. It really does seem the verdict is all but in here. So what message do you think it sends?

BARBARA COMSTOCK, (R) FORMER U.S. REPRESENTATIVE: Well, I agree with "The Wall Street Journal" editorial board this morning that it really sends a bad message. It says you can't speak the truth. All Liz Cheney did was say what Attorney General Bill Barr said, that there wasn't election fraud, and she would not embrace the big lie.

And I think how the House is approaching this is very different from how Mitch McConnell and the Senate has approached things. In the Senate, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, Shelly Moore Capito can be independent and have their own views and be strong women and not be struck down. And so I think this is a mistake. It's a bad message. And I say woe to any woman who wants to be a handmaiden to this and to get a leadership spot on the heels of really something that is unseemly, to embrace the big lie.

Why do you have people who are more upset with Liz Cheney saying what Bill Barr said, a man, but they aren't upset about Matt Gaetz? They aren't upset about Marjorie Greene? I think that's a real problem. But it is a two-thirds vote, so I think while they're all trying to declare this over, I think no matter what happens, this strengthens Liz, and you never can go wrong standing on principle and speaking the truth.

BERMAN: You said a lot of different things there that I'd like to actually address. You said woe to any woman who wants to be a handmaiden to this lie. So Elise Stefanik, who I know you know from Bush world, back when the Republican Party was --

COMSTOCK: Yes, I consider her a friend, yes.

BERMAN: Man, was it a different party then, though. So you think Elise Stefanik, a woman taking over for Liz Cheney is, I guess the word you used is cynical. Why?

COMSTOCK: Look, it's like, oh, they're just interchangeable. If we have a woman, it's OK. But really what it is, you have to be a Trump sycophant. You can't speak your own mind. And I think it's a distraction because the party needs to unite everybody. Trump divided the country. Now he's dividing the party.

[08:05:01]

He only got 47 percent of the popular vote. And even if you give him 70 percent of Republicans now, if you give him 80 if you give him 90 percent, that's a lot less than 47. So trying to build a majority on that does not make a lot of sense, and I think Mitch McConnell understands that, and Mitch McConnell and senators also respect the right for each individual senator to approach this in a different way even within their own leadership.

BERMAN: Congresswoman Liz Cheney is getting thrown out of her leadership job for refusing to lie about the election. Matt Gaetz, there's an investigation into whether or not he paid for sex with a 17-year-old, but keeping his committee assignments. What world has the Republican Party in Congress become here?

COMSTOCK: Well, listen, we certainly know from Donald Trump world that Republicans have a problem with educated women, with suburban women, with women who speak their mind. And to so blatantly attack somebody like this, who really usually was just asking questions. I know when I get, say, emails, what goes out to the caucus from Liz Cheney, it's all filled with policy issues. She is very conservative. She actually has a much more conservative record than Elise does. So this isn't about policy. This is about Trump loyalty. And that is not where we should be at this point.

Certainly, in the Bush administration, where all three of us served, you were allowed to actually challenge the views within your own party and speak out about them, and then you got everybody together. Again, that's how things go on in the Senate. So Susan Collins is able to make statements and not get attacked by her own leadership and by the men in her party.

But this is really -- the Freedom Caucus has always done that. And interestingly, the Freedom Caucus manner allowed to be difficult men. Certainly, Matt Gaetz is a difficult case, and he's allowed to be difficult. But if a woman speaks her mind, she is considered difficult, and I've had it with her -- that's how you speak about children. And I think that's a really bad message, and I think "The Wall Street Journal" editorial board got it right, and I think the Senate has gotten it right.

BERMAN: Barbara Comstock, former Republican member of Congress from Virginia, we appreciate your time this morning. Thank you so much.

COMSTOCK: Thank you.

KEILAR: Lawyers for the ex-cop convicted of murdering George Floyd have filed a motion to try to get him a new trial. This is a move by Derek Chauvin's legal team, and it comes after this photo that you see here surfaced online. It shows one of the jurors in the case wearing a Black Lives Matter hat and a shirt that says "Get your knee off our necks." That juror, Brandon Mitchell, also participated in last year's March on Washington rally. Let's bring in criminal defense and civil rights attorney Mark O'Mara

to talk about this. OK, let's first start -- jury selection took almost as long as the trial here, and there was a jury questionnaire that these potential jurors had to answer. And this is what it said, quote, "Did you or someone close to you participate in any of the demonstrations or marches against police brutality that took place in Minneapolis after George Floyd's death?" Mitchell told the "Star Tribune" that he answered no. Perhaps a key word there, in Minneapolis. Should he have answered yes, in your opinion? Is there a problem with the question?

MARK O'MARA, CRIMINAL DEFENSE AND CIVIL RIGHTS ATTORNEY, REPRESENTED GEORGE ZIMMERMAN: There's a problem with the question. Good morning, Brianna. There's a problem with the question in that it's way too specific. If they are trying to get to whether or not that juror has some bias, some predisposition, you asked a great question, if you have a predisposition. The idea that it was focused on Minneapolis made very little sense.

There was a second question, a broader question, that got to more of that bias, or maybe predisposition, but remember, the questionnaires are just the beginning. As you said, they spent an enormous amount of time on the jury as a whole and the jurors as individuals. It is up to and on the shoulders of the defense attorney to vet through those jurors to find out if there are any predispositions, with the reality that everybody has predispositions in how they're going to look at a case like this. You're going to not do away with those predispositions. You just want to talk about them a bit. And they had a perfect opportunity to do that with Mr. Mitchell.

KEILAR: And so, look, the defense had a chance to challenge any pick for the jury. Should they have caught this?

O'MARA: Well, that's multifaceted. Don't forget that good defense counsel -- I'm not saying that about the defense team here. I thought they did a very good job on juror selection. But we have the opportunity to look into social media inquiries for our potential jurors.

[08:10:02]

And that should have been done. I'm presuming it was done. And if this wasn't caught, almost shame on the defense team. But even beyond that, whatever Mr. Mitchell brought to that trial, there are a couple of other issues to look at. One, he was one of 12. So the question is not the having a predisposition or thought about this. If you remember in his cross-examination -- in his examination as potential juror, he said that he believed in the Black Lives Matter event and movement. And that was vetted through by counsel. So Brianna, we know that motions for new trials are always standard. You have to file one including everything. This is one of those facets that a judge is going to have to look at. Remember, a judge is going to protect his trial and protect his jury as best he can at this stage of the proceeding.

KEILAR: Mark, do you think that ultimately this picture is going to change anything in this case?

O'MARA: Overall, a judge and the appellate court's review of everything, including that picture, is looked at through a lens of what we call harmless error. If there was an error, let's say that for argument's sake there was an error that should have been looked into more. But then you look at the overall picture of the trial, and if it's harmless, meaning there was enough other evidence to suggest that guilty was the appropriate verdict, then it's not going to be overturned just because of that one concern.

KEILAR: Mark O'Mara, it is great to see you this morning. Thanks for being with us.

O'MARA: OK, be well.

KEILAR: Many Americans confused over the new mask guidance and the re-openings that are happening across America. In moments, we will ask the doctor in charge at the CDC for the answers.

BERMAN: Plus, a wounded warrior who served in Afghanistan gives us his very personal take on the president's decision to pull troops out.

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[08:15:34]

BERMAN: Fewer than 1 million COVID-19 vaccines went into arms yesterday. That's the lowest number of shots administered in one day since February. And the slowdown comes as the White House sets an ambitious new goal of 70 percent of the adult population at least partially vaccinated by July 4th.

Joining us now, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky.

Dr. Walensky, Director, thank you for being with us.

Fewer than 1 million. Why so low?

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: Good morning, John. Thanks for having me.

Well, we knew at the end of April, early May, that we would have a different kind of work ahead of us. Until now, we've had over 240 million vaccines into people's arms. So, we have 40 percent of the population fully vaccinated over the age of 18.

We knew that we would have a lot of supply by the end of April, early May. But we also knew this would be the time that we had people who were more hesitant, that people wouldn't be rushing to get the vaccine.

So, we have hard work ahead of us. We know what we need to do. But we really need to reach people one at a time in the communities and understand why they might be hesitant.

We have that work ahead of us. We are getting vaccines into pharmacies, over 40,000 pharmacies. Ninety percent of people will be within five miles of a vaccine, are within five miles of the vaccine. We have walk-in appointments that are becoming available.

We have rural clinics where we're shipping vaccines straight to rural clinics and providing resources to do outreach in these rural areas. We're providing resources to community based organizations so they can do the outreach.

Now, we have to reach the people where they are. We have to understand why they might be hesitant and we have to have trusted messengers delivering information on why they might be hesitant.

BERMAN: So, Dr. Paul Offit says that we need to reach 80 percent immunity that has to do with the vaccines, and then people who've been previously infected, else he worries we're going to see a surge in cases next winter.

We're not really close to 80 percent now. I mean, as well as things are going with vaccinations, we're nowhere near 80 percent.

So, how concerned are you about a possible surge, and what would that look like?

WALENSKY: You know, I think we need to do this one person at a time. We need to get more and more people vaccinated. We've seen from other experiences in the U.K. as well as in Israel, that the more people vaccinated, the less disease you have.

I do believe as our disease rates are starting to come down, which I'm cautiously optimistic about, it is because our vaccine efforts in part are railing -- are rising up. And so I am -- I do think that we need to be cautious and to make sure we get as many people vaccinated as we can.

I'm hesitant to put --

BERMAN: But is a winter surge --

WALENSKY: I'm sorry?

BERMAN: Is a winter surge -- is a winter surge possible if we're not careful?

WALENSKY: I think we have to be humbled with this virus. I think we have variants ahead of us. We have, you know, not full immunity in this population yet.

So I think anything is possible, which is why I think we should focus on getting people protected and vaccinated now to do as much as we can to prevent that from happening.

BERMAN: So, walk us through the next few days or weeks in terms of getting the emergency use authorization or extending it for Pfizer, for 12 to 15-year-olds. What I'm really asking specifically, to put a fine point on it, is when can my 14-year-olds walk into Walgreens to get a shot? (LAUGHTER)

WALENSKY: Well, I'm not going to get ahead of the FDA and I don't get to control when they make their authorization. But I will say is that it sounds like from the news everyone is reporting that it will be some time next week. Soon after that, the ACIP will meet and make a recommendation based on the data that they see.

The vaccine is already in these pharmacies at the dose that we need, and so, soon after ACIP, I think you'll be able to take your 14-year- old and bring them in to get vaccinated.

BERMAN: We're talking like two weeks, right? Just I mean -- if you do that math, if they meet next week, we're talking a matter of a couple of weeks at this point?

WALENSKY: If not a bit sooner.

BERMAN: That's great news.

All right. You obviously -- you know, you know the criticism that's been floating out there from all different sources on mask guidance. Some people say it's been complicated or there are many different levels to it. Why not just say, if you get vaccinated, you can do almost anything?

WALENSKY: Right. It's a really good question. So, first thing to note is we at CDC have to put guidance out for individuals and for populations. We have to do it for all regions of the country, whether they have high rates of vaccination or low rates of vaccination.

And so, we have over the last several months put out three iterations of our guidance, as we've seen more people get vaccinated and less disease.

[08:20:06]

And so, as we have more and more people vaccinated and less disease, we will continue to put out further iterations.

And we are cautious for that reason because there are still some places, some communities that have less than 20 percent vaccination and still a lot of disease. We still have some places in this country that have over 200 cases per 100,000, really extraordinary case rates.

BERMAN: You know, the flip side of how I asked that question. And I don't think it's asked this way quite enough, and I do hear frustration among vaccinated people who say, why am I being prohibited from doing stuff because there are others who refuse to get vaccinated? So why not say to people who won't get vaccinated, okay, fine, but you can't do stuff.

WALENSKY: Yeah, you know, right now, we're not saying you can or you can't. These are recommendations. And for the most part if you're vaccinated, we have recommended that you can do almost anything.

We're asking that people who are vaccinated remain -- remain in masks when indoors.

BERMAN: Indoors?

WALENSKY: When they're indoors. But, you know, we also say that --

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: But if I'm working with -- if I'm working with -- everyone in my office is also vaccinated, why?

WALENSKY: So I was going to say, indoors and really in public settings. So, you know, in our private settings guidance, we say if you know for certain that everyone around you has been vaccinated, they're not at risk of -- they have no high risk people in their households, then we say in those settings that you can take off your mask.

BERMAN: You know, a matter of local interest to you. Brookline, Mass, down the road from where you lived and worked for years, they're not lifting the outdoor mask mandate despite your guidance.

You know, what's your message to Brookline?

WALENSKY: You know, this is going to be community by community. And some communities may be more conservative. I will tell you, I was there not too far -- distant back and I saw more and more people outdoors not wearing their masks.

BERMAN: I'm going to ask you about summer camps. The CDC has issued guidance on summer camps for the summer that advises kids to wear masks except when eating or swimming. You know, outdoor activities and sports, they need to wear a mask, avoid close contact sports.

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, who's an epidemiologist and editor in chief of one of the leading journals for pediatric medicine, JAMA Pediatrics, he says this is unnecessarily draconian.

What's your reaction?

WALENSKY: You know, I read that comment. You know, here's what I think. I think that we saw last summer that there were outbreaks in summer camps and the kids had to go home. They had to not attend these summer camps.

We're trying to make it possible for these kids to be able to have as normal of a summer as possible. If people are playing tennis and they're far away, we can -- we can say their masks can come off.

But if they are crowded on a soccer field, on top of each other, they're heavily breathing, we don't really think that's a good idea right now. These are kids who likely will not be vaccinated.

BERMAN: But doesn't the science say that you're so much less likely to pass it outside at this point? Doesn't the advantage of kids being able to do things, more things, doesn't that outweigh the very low risk? WALENSKY: So, you know, I think not all outside is the same. So,

outside playing tennis, outside swimming, all of those things where you're far apart from one another. If you have a group of 10-year-olds crowded trying to get over a soccer ball and they're all breathing heavily, I think you need to wear a mask, because, yes, there's decreased infection risk outside, but if you're all breathing heavily on top of the singular soccer ball, that has the potential.

And we've seen a lot of outbreaks associated with youth sports.

BERMAN: I want to ask you. There's this report out of the University of Pennsylvania that talks about the role of conservative media has played. And it said that the report by conservative media have increased people's willingness to believe conspiracy theories and reduced mask wearing and vaccinations basically.

How much do you blame conservative media in this regard?

WALENSKY: You know, I think this is less about populations and more about people and individuals. You know, when we say this population will get vaccinated and that population won't or this population heard this and this population heard that, you know, I think there's a lot of mis and disinformation out there and I think that's really quite unfortunate and we're doing a lot that we can to combat that.

But what I will say is when it comes to vaccination, these are individual choices. And so, we need to talk to individuals one at a time, trusted messengers, getting them, the information that they need. So in their individual choice, regardless of how they vote, regardless of what they listen to, their individual choice makes -- has them select to get a safe, effective vaccine.

BERMAN: Well, one last question, it's somewhat technical. But it has -- a lot of people are watching this now as case rates skyrocket in some places like India. There's a debate inside the White House, we understand, about whether lifting patent restrictions on the vaccines.

Where do you sit on this? Do you think -- how advantageous would it be to lift some of these restrictions?

WALENSKY: You know, what I think is that we need to make -- what -- the WHO has said, no one is safe until everyone is safe. I believe that. We need to make sure that we, in addition to vaccinating people in this country, we need to be able to provide support across the globe to ensure that all nations have access to vaccination, and I am an advocate of making sure that happens.

BERMAN: Dr. Rochelle Walensky, thanks so much for joining us. Nice to see you.

WALENSKY: Good to see you, too. Thanks.

BERMAN: Up next, an army veteran who lost both arms and legs fighting for the U.S. in Afghanistan. Why he agrees with President Biden, it is time for U.S. troops to leave.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And the Republican secretary of state who says Trump suppressed his own vote in 2020.

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KEILAR: The U.S. military's formal withdrawal from Afghanistan is already under way, after nearly 20 years of deployment there. President Biden has promised to complete the withdrawal by September of -- September 11th, which is a plan that's drawn concern from a wide range of leaders.