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Flu & Pneumonia Now Killing More People Than COVID in U.K.; Fox Propaganda Host Pushes Dangerous Anti-Vax Lies; Congresswoman Liz Cheney Writes Op-Ed in "Washington Post" Criticizing Republican Party for Supporting Former President Trump's Claim that 2020 Presidential Not Legitimate; Former Republican Presidential Candidate Carly Fiorina Interviewed on Liz Cheney's Likely Removal from GOP House Leadership Position. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired May 06, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

MICHAEL D'ANTONIO, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Giuliani is running up millions of dollars in bills. You have to remember that he's also defending his law license, because the New York Bar is considering taking it away from him. So the pressure is quite enormous, and I think of all folks, Rudy Giuliani knows where the bodies are buried.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Michael D'Antonio, always great to see you. The piece is "Will Rudy Giuliani flip against Donald Trump" on CNN.com. Worth a read. Thanks so much for joining us.

D'ANTONIO: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: NEW DAY continues right now.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. I'm Brianna Keilar with John Berman on this NEW DAY. Liz Cheney lays it on the line. Her dire warnings to Republicans who have all but forced her out.

Plus, Joe Biden's tough call on vaccine patents, sharing American trade secrets to close the global shot gap.

BERMAN: Texas, the new front on the war on voting. Today, new restrictions could pass there in just a matter of hours.

And California's recall circus, we talk to the candidate campaigning with 1,000-pound bear.

KEILAR: Good morning to viewers in the United States and around the world. It is Thursday, May 6th. Liz Cheney is not going quietly into the night. The most powerful female Republican in the House of Representatives delivering a stark warning to her party -- it has no future on its current path. Cheney's future is also in doubt this morning. She is about to lose her leadership position for choosing the truth over Trump when it comes to the outcome of the 2020 election. In a new op-ed in "The Washington Post," she cautions that the GOP has reached a turning point, and that lies about the election will only provoke the kind of violence that we witnessed during the Capitol riot. We're going to read you sections of what Cheney wrote. Quote, "The

question before us now is whether we will join Trump's crusade to delegitimize and undo the legal outcome of the 2020 election with all the consequences that might have." She says "I have worked overseas in nations where changes in leadership come only with violence, where democracy takes hold only until the next violent upheaval. America is exceptional because our constitutional systems guard against that. At the heart of our republic is a commitment to the peaceful transfer of power among political rivals in accordance with the law." She says "President Ronald Reagan described this as our American miracle."

BERMAN: Cheney writes, "While embracing or ignoring Trump's statements may seem attractive to some for fundraising and political purposes, that approach will do profound long-term damage to our party and our country. Trump has never expressed remorse or regret for the attack of January 6th, and now suggests that our elections and our legal and constitutional system cannot be trusted to do the will of the people. This is immensely harmful, especially as we now compete on the world stage against Communist China and its claims that democracy is a failed system."

KEILAR: Cheney says "For Republicans, the path forward is clear. First, support the ongoing Justice Department criminal investigations of the January 6th attack. Those investigations," she says, "must be comprehensive and object objective. Neither the White House nor any member of Congress should interfere. Second, we must support a parallel bipartisan review by a commission with subpoena power to seek and find facts. It will describe for all Americans what happened. And finally, we, Republicans, need to stand for genuinely conservative principles and steer away from the dangerous and anti-democratic Trump cult of personality. In our hearts," she says, "we are devoted to the American miracle. We believe in the rule of law, in limited government, in a strong national defense, and in prosperity and opportunity brought by low taxes and fiscally conservative policies."

BERMAN: Cheney goes on to say "There is much at stake now, including the ridiculous wokeness of our political rivals, the irrational policies at the border, and runaway spending that threatens to return to the catastrophic inflation of the 70s. Reagan," she says, "formed a broad coalition from across the political spectrum to return America to sanity, and we need to do the same now. We know how. But this will not happen if Republicans choose to abandon the rule of law and join Trump's crusade to undermine the foundation of our democracy and reverse the legal outcome of the last election."

KEILAR: She says "History is watching. Our children are watching. We must be brave enough to defend the basic principles that underpin and protect our freedom and our democratic process. I am committed to doing that no matter what the short-term political consequences might be."

BERMAN: That was all from Liz Cheney in "The Washington Post."

So what happens to a political party when telling truth is grounds for expulsion? John Avlon with the "Reality Check."

JOHN AVLON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There was once a fear that took over the Republican Party and the nation.

[08:05:00]

It was spread by a bullying demagogue who accused his opponents of being traitors and communists. He leveled fact-free attacks, said he represented Americanism with its sleeves up. His supporters embraces a cult of personality drenched in conspiracy theories, sure that God was on their side. Their intensity, their crushing certainty, intimidated most politicians into silence. They didn't want the trouble of being attacked by the party's activist base. They knew it was wrong but worried that if they told the truth they can use a primary election.

But one woman decided to speak up. Her name was Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman popularly elected to the U.S. Senate. The time was 1950 and her target was Senator Joe McCarthy. She stood alone on the floor of the Senate and issued what she called a declaration of conscience. No cameras captured the speech that day, but here's part of what she said. "Today our country is being psychologically divided by the confusions and the suspicions that spread like cancerous tentacles of know nothing, suspect everything attitudes." And election was looming, and Chase wanted the GOP to win, but she said, "I don't want to see the Republican Party ride to political victory on the four horsemen of calumny -- fear, ignorance, bigotry, and smear."

Her lonely stand inspired more of her fellow senators to find the courage to speak up. McCarthy became isolated, consumed by lawsuits and scandals, ultimately revealed as a petty, paranoid narcissist. He died widely reviled.

The fact that Joe McCarthy's lawyer, Roy Cohn, later went on to mentor Donald Trump is more than a coincidence of history. Doubly ironic because of Trump's refusal to ever condemn the Kremlin. But the most relevant echo is the lonely stand of Congresswoman Liz Cheney and her looming purge from House leadership for the sin of refusing to back the big lie. But Trump will look no better than Joe McCarthy in the eyes of history, and neither will his spineless apologists. Republicans Kevin McCarthy and Steve Scalise, they've found a young Congresswoman named Elise Stefanik to check the box and fill the slot for a woman in leadership, a word that has apparently been redefined to mean unquestioning follower.

The divisions inside the Republican Party used to be about ideology, but that's not what's at work here, because Liz Cheney is far more conservative than Elise Stefanik by every policy measure. Cheney voted with Trump almost 93 percent of the time, Stefanik just under 78. Cheney has a 78 percent rating from the American Conservative Union while Stefanik is just under 44. And the fiscal conservative Club for Growth fired off a tweet saying that Stefanik has the fourth worst fiscal conservative record among House Republicans.

So this isn't about ideology. It's about a cult of personality in a party consumed by fear, and it can cause opportunistic people to shed their principles like a snake's old skin. Because Stefanik worked for the Bush-Cheney administration. She was an accolade of Mitt Romney of Paul Ryan. The Harvard educated upstate New Yorker became the youngest woman elected to the House. She promised to work across the aisle and modernize the Republican Party. In 2016, she was a supporter of John Kasich.

So what happened? It looks like the age-old siren song of power and money over ethics. Because when Trump was impeached the first time, Stefanik saw an opportunity to play partisan ball. She was rewarded with $13 million in donations for her reelection campaign. Sucking up to Trump paid. She won praise from the president on FOX News. So when it came time to vote to overturn the election after the attack on the Capitol, Stefanik was a willing soldier in the sedition caucus. She became just another Ivy League populist who attacks democracy and then complains when she's called out.

Now she sees an opportunity to ride the big lie to more power. Her reelection might as well be "liars prosper." Liz Cheney has chosen another path and a higher reward, writing "History is watching. Our children are watching. We must be brave enough to defend the basic principles that underpin and protect our freedom and democratic process. I'm committed to doing that no matter what the short-term political consequences might be." That's a declaration of conscience for our times, a reminder that our political differences don't matter much compared to whether we defend the truth and democracy itself.

And that's your "Reality Check."

KEILAR: John Avlon, thank you so much.

And joining us now, 2016 GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. Thank you so much for being with us.

CARLY FIORINA, 2016 GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Good morning.

KEILAR: Good morning to you. This is a very tough time for Republicans like you who are watching what is happening to Liz Cheney in the House of Representatives. What's on your mind as you're watching this all go down?

FIORINA: I recall back to 2015 when I called out Trump then as corrupt and corrupting and dangerous. You know someone by the way they live their lives. Trump has been a liar, a cheat, and wanted to be the center of attention his whole life.

[08:10:00]

And that's how he won the presidency, and that is how he has behaved as president. And it has been tragic to me to watch the Republican Party go along with this. And so here we are all these many years later, with Liz Cheney, who represents everything that the party says it stands for, being drummed out of leadership because she refuses to say that the election was stolen. It's really a tragedy. Not just for the Republican Party, however, it's a tragedy for the nation, because our democracy depends on having two strong political parties to push against each other and to bring us to a workable solution.

KEILAR: Cheney writes in this op-ed which I know you have read, and it is quite the read. I encourage everyone to take a look at it. She says "Reagan formed a broad coalition from across the political spectrum to return America to sanity, and we need to do the same now. We know how. But this will not happen if Republicans choose to abandon the rule of law and join Trump's crusade to undermine the foundation of our democracy and reverse the legal outcome of the last election." She says if Republicans choose to abandon the rule of law and join Trump's crusade. Haven't they already chosen? Is the die cast here?

FIORINA: Well, when you have virtually everyone in Republican leadership either going along actively with Trump's claim that the election was stolen, or choosing to be utterly silent while he continues to claim the election is stolen, then, yes, they have abandoned the rule of law. They've abandoned obvious fact. The thing that I think is really troubling is they might win in 2022. And I think it will take massive losses for Republicans to understand that this is not the way forward. Liz Cheney is correct. This is terrible for the party in the medium and long run, and it's terrible for the country in the short run. But between now and 2022, I think a lot of Republicans think they're going to win. I think they think they're going to win back the House. I believe that's why they're doing this.

KEILAR: And they think Trump is the key. And one of the people who clearly believes that is Ted Cruz. You were his running mate in 2016. And he has gone full Trump mode. He kissed the ring at Mar-a-Lago last week. We actually have -- I think he took a photo of that. You guys campaigned on conservative principles. Has he sold out?

FIORINA: Well, I have to say I'm very disappointed in Ted. I've been disappointed in Ted for some time now. I tried to help Ted's candidacy because I thought it would be tragic and terrible if Donald Trump were the Republican Party's nominee. Turns out I was right about Donald Trump and, sadly, it appears I was wrong about Ted Cruz.

KEILAR: What happened to him, do you think?

FIORINA: I think the same thing that has happened to so many. And it's an age-old siren song, as we just heard -- access to power and money and influence. The trouble is a lot of politicians care mostly about winning, and they are willing to abandon their principles in order to win. Thankfully, Liz Cheney is not one of those politicians.

KEILAR: We've seen it. It's a litmus test we're seeing in a way between a Ted Cruz on one side and Liz Cheney, obviously, with a different result. You said on Julie Mason's morning show on Sirius XM watching this likely purge of Cheney unfold, you said it's doubly ag aggravating because Liz Cheney is a woman, and a whole set of distinctly not humble men have complained about the fact that she lacks humility. You see sexism in this.

FIORINA: Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, honestly, men are complaining that it's like having your girlfriend cheering for the wrong team. Really? Or she's not humble enough? What that means is we'd like a woman so that we look right. We want a woman, but we don't want the woman to speak up. We don't want the woman to have an opinion of her own. We want the woman to go along to get along with all the men. Of course it's sexist.

KEILAR: Is that perpetuated by someone like Elise Stefanik who you heard John Avlon explain her roots, which are very different from what we are seeing her express now. Is she playing into this, positioning herself to replace Liz Cheney?

FIORINA: Of course she is. She's behaving like a politician, man or woman. She's behaving, unfortunately, like too many politicians in the Republican Party right now. Let me say what I have to say, let me do what I have to do to win and to gain access to power and influence.

KEILAR: And so, what would you say to her? What would you say to other Republican women?

FIORINA: First of all, I think it's very difficult to be a Republican woman who isn't prepared to go along with Trump right now.

[08:00:03]

I know that personally. I feel that personally.

I would say to Elise, the same thing I would say to Ted, the same thing I would say to Kevin McCarthy, or to Mitch McConnell -- people expect leaders, even political leaders, to stand for something besides power and winning.

George Washington warned us in his farewell address, the trouble with political parties is they will come to care only about winning. But, boy, it's depressing when you see it play out in real time.

And I think all of these people, they may win in 2022. Kevin McCarthy may become speaker of the House. But I think over the medium to long term, the record will be clear, the verdict will be clear, and I think they'll come to regret their spineless posture right now.

KEILAR: Because, why? Do you see another party emerging, a party that would -- you would find yourself happily the umbrella of?

FIORINA: Well, wouldn't that be great?

It's very, very difficult in our two-party system to form a third party, although I know there are a lot of people looking at it, thinking about it, talking about it, myself included.

I think Liz Cheney, by the way, just like Mitt Romney, they do have an opportunity possibly to run and win as independents. They have the resources. They have the name ID, but not everyone has that opportunity.

I think over the medium to long run, the Republican Party, if it continues down this path, will be a permanent minority opposition party. And that's bad for our republic.

In the near term, though, sadly, I think they may win a few seats.

KEILAR: Carly Fiorina, thank you so much for joining us.

FIORINA: You're welcome.

KEILAR: Up next, we're going to take you to the one-time pandemic hot spot where more people are now dying of the flu and pneumonia than COVID.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And the new restrictive voting bills in Texas on the verge of becoming law.

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[08:20:40]

BERMAN: In the United Kingdom, more people are dying from an illness other than coronavirus for the first time since the second wave. The new data suggests that lockdowns and the vaccine rollout helped stop the spread.

CNN's Cyril Vanier has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CYRIL VANIER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Cyril Vanier in London with this remarkable turnaround here.

In England and Wales, preliminary data suggests that more people are now dying from flu and pneumonia than COVID-19. The COVID death toll in England and Wales last week was 260. Compare that to more than 8,000 deaths the last week of January at the peak of the third wave. Since then, a strict lockdown and a rapid vaccination campaign have brought COVID-19 deaths to their lowest level in seven months.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Our thanks to Cyril for that.

Joining us now, chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, you know, in the U.K., the vaccines are one of the reasons why deaths have gone down so much. Yet, a new survey in the U.S. shows that willingness to get a vaccine is leveling off. So tell us about that.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's leveling off. And that's not surprising, but it's still improving a bit. There's a little bit of good news in here. We can show you what's happened over the past few months in terms of people willing to get the vaccine. That's in the dark blue on the left. But also the third column over, the light blue one, is also shrinking. That's the wait and see population of people.

So, overall, yes, leveling off. But maybe, you know, still possibly enough to get to that point where we want to get of getting enough people vaccinated to really bring viral transmission down. One thing I'd like to point out, when you look at the U.K., you look at Israel, you really start to see the plummeting numbers when they got to around 60 percent of people getting at least one shot.

That's probably because there's a lot of native immunity out there. People previously infected to have antibodies. I think we're seeing a rapid drop here as well. When you add existing immunity to vaccinated immunity, it's going to put us in good position for the summer.

BERMAN: So, Sanjay, look, I have asked this question before about Tucker Carlson. Does he want his viewers to live?

Last night he went on TV and, you know, he flowered it up with, oh, I'm just asking questions. I'm just asking questions. But if you watched it, you were left with the impression that this guy with no medical degree was suggesting that vaccines are killing thousands of people.

Now I don't know why he did it. Again, maybe it's just to get attention. But I think we need scientists who he could have had on to talk about it. Doctors like you.

Please set the record straight.

GUPTA: It's so reckless, John. It's so dangerous what he is doing. And I am glad you didn't show the clip because I think that's the wrong thing to do. I can't tell with him whether he's just so smart or so dumb. I'm just not sure at this point but it's very reckless and dangerous.

What he's talking about is this system that's an open label system where anybody can basically report an adverse event from the vaccine. Anybody can do that. And what he's done is basically looked at these open system adverse reporting systems and said, hey, look. This suggests that 30 people a day are dying of the vaccine. Absolutely not true.

First of all, let me show you the graphic of the impact overall of these vaccines. We know that certain number of people die every day for all sorts of different reasons. We also know, if you take a look there at that right curve that the -- after the vaccination program started, death rates plummeted among the elderly. We know the impact of that.

This is the same reporting system that basically found a 1 in a million likelihood of someone, you know, having an adverse event from the Johnson & Johnson vaccine. That's how they usually found that.

These reports came in. CDC evaluates it. Whoa, something going on here. Let's pause Johnson & Johnson.

What Tucker Carlson is saying that dozens of people are dying every day and the CDC and FDA are turning a blind eye to it. It's absolutely 100 percent false. The problem is that it continues to stir up this vaccine hesitancy or outright vaccine reluctance.

It is so frustrating because, you know, we've been stutter starting our way through reporting on this pandemic for a year because instead of continuing to build a knowledge tree, we've had to continuously fact check and correct misinformation.

[08:25:09]

It's been so frustrating as a scientific reporter and it's still happening. In the midst of what is arguably one of the greatest scientific achievements that we've had in maybe ever, these vaccines, we are still stutter stopping our way through, you know, what is happening here. We could be in much better position if it were not for people like Tucker Carlson who continue to embolden this vaccine hesitance.

It's really -- it's really very irritating. COVID, a disease that didn't exist two years ago was the second or third leading cause of death in the United States. We have a chance to dramatically change that around.

I have relatives in India who are sick. I have a relative who died for want of vaccines in other parts of the world. People are on their hands and knees begging for these vaccines and here we are throwing shade at it in order to embolden this vaccine hesitance.

So, look, look at the science, look at the numbers, understand what that reporting system is, a reporting system that caught a one in a million problem. That's not turning a blind eye to 30 deaths a day which is what Tucker Carlson seemed to be suggesting.

KEILAR: I want to ask you about relaxing vaccine patent rules. And as you mentioned, you have family in India. You've lost family in India. You know the effects of doing this so that other countries can make their own generic versions of the vaccine instead of just being shipped doses. The president is now talking about this idea, endorsing this idea.

The medical director of BioNTech just told us that they will not increase available doses because they will not, through this, be able to increase available doses in the next 12 months. Is that what you understand?

GUPTA: I think the rate limiting step that Ozlem Tureci and others have talked about is this idea that what is really problematic here is, do we have enough of the ingredients to actually make some of these vaccines? I mean, opening up the patent protection so that people have access to that intellectual property could be helpful, but when you play it out and I've talked to many people about this, does it translate tangibly to more vaccines for people?

So, two issues. One, that's not clear. You need to have the stuff, if you will, to make the vaccines. But two, and I think this is a really important point, if you look at India right now, and we can show how much of the first world has been vaccinated versus the third world. I mean, it's not even close in terms of access to vaccines.

But the reality is what is happening there is more of an acute crisis in terms of actually needing to stop viral transmission. Need to stop it in the sense that, look, over 81 percent versus 0.3 percent. It's a number people should stick in the back of their minds in terms of the equity of the vaccine rollout.

But right now, what needs to happen in India is stopping the transmission of the virus which is why there's this stay-at-home orders right now. They need things like oxygen, hospital beds, the patient is coding essentially.

Vaccines are helpful, no question as we just talked about. But in the short term, these other things are probably going to be more important.

KEILAR: Yeah, so acute right now as you point out. Sanjay, thank you so much for answering our questions.

No, John, go on.

BERMAN: I am going to say, I wanted to thank Sanjay but also say how heartbreaking and infuriating to hear you talk about losing relatives or having relatives sick for want of a vaccine that some guy goes on TV and throws shades on it. Really, you know, and, Sanjay, you don't get mad. But I can see that it really -- it really is pushing you over the edge.

GUPTA: It's so infuriating. I have to say, I look at the number of lives that have been saved and it's something to really celebrate these vaccines. Again, we showed that graph of the plummeting death rates in nursing homes. I mean, they were -- they were where so many of these deaths were happening.

And then I'm still getting questions from people who probably hear from Tucker Carlson or others even who then ask me, was it true the vaccine is causing people to die? And I just -- it's constantly correcting the record. How do we grow as a society and grow our knowledge tree if we have to keep doing that?

It's -- yes, it's maddening. It's very frustrating.

BERMAN: Look, the Murdochs have to answer for this. Paul Ryan has to answer for this. A lot of people have to answer for this at this point because this is happening every night.

Thanks, Sanjay.

GUPTA: Yeah, yeah.

KEILAR: Just ahead, the state that could move today to make sending unsolicited vote by mail applications a crime.

BERMAN: And Caitlyn Jenner's first sit-down interview in her race for California governor.

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