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Wuhan Lab Illnesses Raise New Questions about COVID Origins; Half of U.S. States Have Fully Vaccinated at Least 50% of Adults; 'Big Lie' Audits Spread as Georgia Set for Ballot Counting. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired May 24, 2021 - 06:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: I'm John Berman alongside Brianna Keilar.

[05:59:32]

On this NEW DAY, a new twist in the mystery over the origins of the pandemic. New reporting that several scientists from the Wuhan lab were sick enough to be hospitalized in November of 2019.

Plus, quote, "evil lunacy." That's how one colleague describes Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene's comparisons of mask restrictions to the Holocaust.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: And a dramatic standoff 30,000 feet in the air. Did a strongman order a flight down in order to detain an activist.

And Father Time has got nothing on Phil Mickelson. Why old is the new young in a history-making year.

BERMAN: Careful what you're calling old, Brianna Keilar.

Good morning to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Monday, May 24.

And this morning, new revelations are fueling fresh debate over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. According to a U.S. intelligence report, several scientists at a lab in Wuhan in China had to be hospitalized with an unknown illness in November of 2019. That's just before the pandemic began.

Overnight, the director of the Wuhan lab told Chinese state media the intelligence report is, quote, "a complete lie."

KEILAR: In the meantime, the World Health Organization is expected to discuss the next phase of its origin investigation at a meeting currently underway. Dr. Anthony Fauci, who has previously been skeptical of the Wuhan lab theory, recently said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KATIE SANDERS, MANAGING EDITOR, POLITIFACT: There's a lot of cloudiness around the origins of COVID-19 still. So I wanted to ask, are you still confident that it developed naturally?

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASE: No, I'm not convinced about that. I think that we should continue to investigate what went on in China until we find out, to the best of our ability, exactly what happened.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. Joining us now, CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen and CNN's David Culver in Shanghai. David reported from inside Wuhan as the pandemic began.

Elizabeth, let's start with you and this intelligence report. Scientists hospitalized in November, which we didn't know.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we didn't know. We knew that they were sick, but to hear that they were hospitalized takes it to a different level.

So let's take a look at what we've learned. So a big thing that we've learned here, CNN has learned from intelligence sources, is that these folks were hospitalized. There's reason to believe they were hospitalized in the fall of 2019.

Accidental lab infections have happened in previous outbreaks. For example, SARS in 2004.

Also, that China interrupted, sort of impeded the ability to do an independent investigation.

Now, one thing I want to make very clear, which is that we don't know that these workers had COVID. They had symptoms that were sort of similar to COVID, but lots of things are similar to COVID. We don't know whether they tested for the flu, whether they tested for other things.

One thing is that a U.S. investigator who works with W -- with the WHO, with the World Health Organization, has said that they did not have antibodies to COVID. They were tested and did not have antibodies. But you have to ask, were they given the right tests? Not all antibody tests work well. Who did that test? Can we trust the results of that test?

BERMAN: Can we see those tests? The answer is no so far.

COHEN: Right, exactly. If you can't verify it, can you trust it?

So there's so much mystery in this, not really for medical reasons. This stuff is all discernible. It's trust reasons.

BERMAN: Yes.

KEILAR: So I wonder, David, how are Chinese authorities responding to this?

DAVID CULVER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, this is quickly becoming one of the most sensitive issues here. Any talk about the origin and suggestions that this leaked from a lab does not go over well.

In fact, just a couple of years ago, we heard from the Chinese foreign ministry. They're refuting this. They point to statements that they made in the recent months, saying that this is not likely to have been the origin.

And they go back to the WHO visit, and we were actually in Wuhan back in January when that field team was in Wuhan. And the conclusion from that WHO visit was that it was extremely low, the likelihood that it leaked from the lab.

The problem with that is there's been criticism from the U.S., from the U.K., from European nations about just how transparent the Chinese were with the WHO field team. And it goes back to what you guys and Elizabeth were talking about. Trust, transparency.

And it's something that, obviously, we have faced here. When I was just down there in January, trying to get close to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, next to impossible. I mean, it's fortified now. And you can argue it's because it's a secure lab. But you could also question whether or not they just don't want people nearby.

KEILAR: Yes, I mean, you've covered politics and things involving politics and policy in the U.S. So I wonder, David, for you, how do you compare trying to get that information to what, say, you would find here?

CULVER: I'm not holding my breath that we're going to get access to any of that or even that the experts would get access to that.

Now, China argues that they have been fully transparent. What we know is that there has been cover-up. There has been mishandling. Things that we have reported, including the silencing of whistleblowers, going back to the start of this.

But the origin that suggests that it leaked from a lab, that is what they are really trying to push away from.

And part of that has to do with an image thing. And you heard from state media, "Global Times," and I'll read you some of that, what they're putting out there from their publications, from state- controlled media is that, according to the director of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, the report is a complete lie. "The claims are groundless. The lab has not been aware of this situation." He goes on to say he does not "even know where such information came from."

[06:05:13]

Again, this also is a really concerning part for their P.R. The public image that they're trying to put out, not necessarily to the western world but to developing countries where they have had a lot of influence. And China has tried to counter some of the bad press, so to speak, with regards to the initial mishandling that has been pointed to the outbreak. And they've been doing that for even vaccine diplomacy. So distributing many of the Chinese vaccines that are really suffering, that's not necessarily out of goodwill. It's also been perceived by many as trying to counter some of the bad press -- Brianna, John.

BERMAN: Obviously, this raises all kinds of questions on China and what they're telling us in just how opaque they've been from the very beginning here, Elizabeth.

Separately from that, there is just phenomenal news about this pandemic in the United States right now. If you look at the numbers, they have never been this good. Not really since everything began.

If you're looking at cases -- that's the average case count -- we're down below 30,000. Hospitalizations, lower than they've been in a year. Deaths lower than they've been in a year. This is more than headed in the right direction right now. We're crushing this.

COHEN: It certainly appears that way. It really does appear that way, that we are headed in a direction where maybe by the summer, we'll say, "Gee, you know, remember when COVID was so terrible?" I mean, actually, we can sort of say that now, but yes, these numbers are the lowest that they have been since June of last year.

Now, the weather is getting into -- we're getting into a season where often these viruses do go down, not go away. There are the variants out there, so you always want to be cautious about that, but this downward trend has been consistent.

And let's talk about vaccinations, because really, that effort in this country is going quite well. President Biden has said he wants 70 percent of U.S. adults to get at least one shot by July 4 while nine states -- you can see them there. Nine states have had -- met that metric. Nine states have given at least one shot to 70 percent of the adults in their state.

BERMAN: And that's great.

COHEN: We're headed in the right direction.

BERMAN: And all the states we saw there in black were over 50 percent. We have a lot of states headed in the right direction. Not everywhere. Well, we're getting there.

COHEN: There are pockets where we need to do better. But there are several states that are really doing quite well.

BERMAN: Elizabeth Cohen, thank you so much for that.

We have new reporting this morning on evil lunacy. That was how Republican Liz Cheney described new statements from Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Evil lunacy.

And to be honest, Cheney was being polite. Because Greene, whose understanding of comparative religion includes the belief of Jewish space lasers, equated mask requirements in the House to the Holocaust. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): You know, we can look back at a time in history where people were told to wear a gold star, and they were definitely treated like second-class citizens, so much so that they were put in trains and taken to gas chambers in Nazi Germany. And this is exactly the type of abuse that Nancy Pelosi is talking about.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Well, this is not only historic. It's abhorrent, John.

BERMAN: It is not only historic, it is abhorrent, it's also apparently allowable under House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who hasn't commented on it and refused to punish Greene for past anti-Semitic statements she made.

Wearing a mask, compared to the murder of six million people. It's so far beyond the realm of decency, it could only possibly be made worse by comments by Marjorie Taylor Greene.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GREENE: I stand by all of my statements. I said nothing wrong. And I think any rational Jewish person didn't like what happened in Nazi Germany, and any rational Jewish person doesn't like what's happening with overbearing mask mandates.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Any rational Jewish person? I'm Jewish. I'm not at all religious. And thank God my family made it to this country decades before the Holocaust. But that's my heritage. And I promise you that Congresswoman Taylor Greene, she thinks I'm Jewish.

So as a rational Jewish person, let me just say to Marjorie Taylor Greene, don't you dare speak for me. Not if you're going to compare health measures or anything to the Holocaust.

In a tweet last night, she said, "I'm sorry if my words make people uncomfortable." No, they don't make me uncomfortable. They make me sick.

KEILAR: Yes. People don't think, if they're rational, that this is a decent comparison, just like you could say that referencing Romeo and Juliet while admitting to impregnating a minor when you legally were an adult probably isn't the best way to gain support for your congressional run.

Just take Wyoming state Senator Anthony Bouchard, who's currently running to unseat Liz Cheney in the House.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANTHONY BOUCHARD (R), WYOMING STATE SENATOR: It's a story when I was young. Two teenagers, girl gets pregnant. You've heard those stories before. She was a little younger than me. So it's like the Romeo and Juliet story. Lot of pressure, pressure to abort a baby. I got to tell you, I wasn't going to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[06:10:14]

KEILAR: Now he married that girl, reportedly when she was 15, and they divorced a few years later, and shortly after, she died by suicide. And yet, he's still romanticizing being an 18-year-old impregnating a 14-year-old.

This kind of crazy is also informing voting reforms as a number of Republican-led states push for Arizona-style audits of the last election, including Georgia, where a judge last week decided to allow another audit to move forward, all of this to perpetuate the big lie that the election was stolen, despite the mountains of evidence against it.

BERMAN: Joining us now to talk about all this, S.E. Cupp, CNN political commentator; Mara Schiavocampo, host of "Run Tell This" podcast; and Kirsten Power, CNN senior political analyst and "USA Today" columnist.

S.E., the comments of Marjorie Taylor Greene, they make my blood boil. I mean, I -- I don't know where to begin on that. I just don't.

S.E. CUPP, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, let's begin with the disappointment that the GOP and Kevin McCarthy have not condemned what is so easily condemnable. If you can't come out strongly against this, I'm not sure what you could.

But this is what anti-Semitism looks like. And this is not the first time she's trafficked in anti-Semitic tropes and ideas. If you take the comparison, it works both ways. Not only is she comparing mask mandates to the Holocaust; she's also comparing the Holocaust to mask mandates. That's how little she thinks of the persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust.

I think looking at it that way is more revealing than simply the vulgar and obscene comparison she's trying to make. This is real rooted, a really rooted problem that the GOP cannot just ignore.

BERMAN: I think you actually identify the one part that I can wrap my arms around. Because I really can't fathom that there was a person in Congress --

CUPP: Who believes that.

BERMAN: -- who said that out loud, OK.

Mara, the fact that Kevin McCarthy, he hasn't said anything about this yet. And by the way, she said stuff within this spectrum before, and he was against her losing her committee post. McCarthy is letting this happen. MARA SCHIAVOCAMPO, HOST, "RUN TELL THIS" PODCAST: Absolutely. No

question about that. Because this isn't the first time we've heard things like this.

You know, this goes to show yet again there are very few political consequences for Marjorie Taylor Greene in making these kind of reckless, inflammatory, dangerous, hurtful statements.

But there are political benefits from her. Let us be -- let's be clear about who she is. This is a clap-chasing Trump wannabe. She knows that controversy sells. She's seen what it's done for Trump's political career, and she is taking her cues from that playbook. So that's why we're seeing her with this. That's why we're seeing her double down on this.

It's no coincidence that she continues to pick fights with AOC, I would argue not because of AOC's policy positions but because she's one of the biggest political stars in the country, right? So Greene is punching up, and she's seeking that attention, and that's what we keep seeing over and over again.

And there are no bounds to what she will do to get that political attention, because it continues to benefit her. We're talking about her now.

CUPP: It's worse because -- because with white supremacy on the rise and the anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic attacks on the rise, the GOP is using her to speak to those voters. They might publicly pretend they're ashamed of her, but they want her supporters. And they want to satisfy and placate that growing wing of the Republican Party.

KEILAR: It's such a good point, I think, that Mara's making there, that she's punching up and that S.E. is making there, as well, Kirsten.

KIRSTEN POWERS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I mean, so first of all, I think she's also -- we have to remember she's harassing AOC, right? I mean, she's literally stalking her and harassing her.

And I really think Nancy Pelosi needs to do something about this. I mean, it's not OK for one member of Congress to be harassing another member of Congress. I mean, that has to violate some sort of basic comedy rules, right, in Congress you would think.

And then the -- I think Kevin McCarthy has to deal with the fact that he has someone who's making these outrageous, disgusting, sick comments about Jews. It's just -- we have to remember pre-Trump, this is unimaginable, right?

KEILAR: Completely.

POWERS: This is unimaginable that this would not immediately result with some sort of suspension or losing your committees or everybody distancing them, trying to get you to resign.

KEILAR: And pre-Trump, I mean, let's look at what's happening in Wyoming, because pre-Trump, this state senator who's challenging Liz Cheney, who said what he said, he impregnated a 14-year-old girl when he was 18. And we played the sound earlier, but you know, let's just play this again.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOUCHARD: It's a story when I was young. Two teenagers, girl gets pregnant. You've heard those stories before. She was a little younger than me. So it's like the Romeo and Juliet story. Lot of pressure, pressure to abort a baby. I got to tell you, I wasn't going to do it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[06:15:24]

KEILAR: The point here, to be clear about you need know and you don't get from the sound bite, is what we said before, he marries this girl. They end up getting divorced, and just a few years later, she dies by suicide. And this is what he is saying about it.

POWERS: Well, what he's trying to do, it seems to me, is he's trying to appeal to the pro-life people, right, by saying we did the right thing. We didn't get an abortion. We got married. And oh, well, I guess she killed herself.

It's just -- The whole thing is repulsive also. And, you know, the Romeo and Juliet, I mean, OK, Romeo and Juliet were teenagers. It was written in the 1500s. You know, so what does that have to do with anything? Don't romanticize what happened.

But I think that he is trying to turn this around to -- somehow to this benefit, and I feel like the Republican Party is so far off the rails it may just work.

BERMAN: Ick. Ick.

POWERS: Totally ick.

SCHIAVOCAMPO: And he's also -- he's trying to position this as, you know, kind of opposition politics, right, dirty politics, opposition research. You know, there's a very big difference between pushing, you know, a lie that Barack Obama was not born in this country, that's dirty politics. This -- this is raising legitimate questions about whether a candidate for U.S. Senate committed statutory rape. So this is a very legitimate political story, and he's trying to position it as him against the media, which again, is a narrative that we see a lot on the right.

CUPP: It's a tragic story all around. Romeo and Juliet was a tragedy. This is a tragic story. Absolutely. And I would hate to think that he is trying to use it to appeal to voters or to virtue signal in some way.

BERMAN: All right. Stand by, one and all. New evidence the big lie spreading to other states as Republicans in another county, in another state, start an "audit," again, air quotes, of the election. KEILAR: Plus, Liz Cheney says there is no link between the election

lies and the GOP's restrictive voter laws.

And an FBI analyst accused of taking what the feds are calling an astonishing number of classified documents over a decade. Hear what was in them.

This is NEW DAY.

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[06:21:53]

KEILAR: There's now a ballot audit moving forward in Georgia's most populous county again, a judge allowing Fulton County's absentee ballots to be unsealed and then examined for evidence of fraud.

There have been three recounts in Georgia since President Biden won the election there. No evidence of fraud has been found.

Back with us now, Mara Schiavocampo, S.E. Cupp and Kirsten Powers. What Georgia election official Gabe Sterling said about the new audit, let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GABRIEL STERLING, GEORGIA ELECTIONS OFFICIAL: The claims are they're pristine ballots, that they're unfolded ballots that were just inserted, that they're machine-marked ballots. There's no evidence for any of that. Our law enforcement officers and secretary of state's office spent literally thousands of hours examining ballots in Fulton County and other counties, trying to track these kinds of claims down. So far we've seen nothing give any merit to it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: It's like deja vu with Arizona. You have state Republicans, election officials who are saying there's no reason to do this.

POWERS: Right. Well, so the political reason they do this is the same reason the Republicans have been trying to make voters think that there's voter fraud for the last decade, at least probably. And so it's to make people think that Democrats are cheating in the elections.

And so the more that you do these -- these recounts and you create this kind of sense that something isn't quite right, and that you can't really trust the election process, the easier it is for people to believe that maybe they can't trust, you know, what's happening and that Democrats are trying to cheat.

It's -- people don't follow it closely enough to know. All they know is, like, Oh, they're doing another recount, so obviously something is wrong. Right?

And so this is -- this is something -- like right now, we hear a lot about the old Republican Party that was so great, but the old Republican Party actually is the one who started this of constantly you have this drumbeat. The Democrats are always trying to steal elections, which has actually never happened.

BERMAN: You bring up the old Republican Party, the party of, say, the Bushes and the Cheneys, right? And it's interesting that you bring that up, because Liz Cheney was asked about some of these restrictive voting laws that are being passed around the country, and listen to what she said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JONATHAN SWAN, REPORTER, AXIOS: How much culpability do Republican elites have for fertilizing the soil for the big lie?

REP. LIZ CHENEY (R-WY): That is -- that's not at all how I think about it, you won't be surprised to hear.

SWAN: Why?

CHENEY: When you look at things like voter fraud, it certainly exists. I will never understand the resistance, for example, to voter I.D. I think you ought to have to show I.D. to go vote.

There's a big difference between that and a president of the United States who loses an election after he tried to steal the election and refuses to concede.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: So Liz Cheney, who has refused to lie about the outcome of the election and lost her job because of it, says these new laws are all OK.

CUPP: Well, congrats. We've arrived at the part of our story when our hero, you know, reminds her newfound friends on the left, yes, she's still a Republican.

And I think there is this tendency to look at any Republican who briefly or, in a prolonged way, disavows Trump, that they're somehow moderating or moving to the middle or even the left.

[06:25:08]

And in fact, the rejection of Trump is that he wasn't conservative enough. And so you know, I don't think we should at all be surprised when we watch Liz Cheney act like a Republican and sound like the Republicans around her.

But to the voter fraud stuff, I mean, how much longer are we going to continue to perform this theatrical nonsense of recounts and -- and audits? I mean, it feels at some point like, I don't know if I can say this. It feels like masturbation. I'm sure it feels good to people in, you know, this wing of the party, but it does not actually end with anything.

SCHIAVOCAMPO: You know --

CUPP: It might be my last day here, I don't know.

BERMAN: No. I just want to tell you that -- that in that three seconds where you said that, there were 100 things that went through my head, and I decided that I couldn't say one of them out loud, so -- but I know exactly what you mean.

CUPP: Oh, good.

SCHIAVOCAMPO: Well, it is certainly performative outrage about a non- existent problem.

BERMAN: So exactly what S.E. just said.

SCHIAVOCAMPO: Exactly what S.E. just said, right. And as Kirsten noted, you know, these recounts give some legitimacy to this non- existent problem.

What we're seeing with Liz Cheney, she was very clear. She said she wasn't going to go along with the big lie, but now she's making it clear she will go along with a big lie. Maybe not the big lie. But this is a pretty big one.

Because she has said that the big lie is a threat to democracy, right? What's a greater threat to democracy than unnecessarily limiting access to voting? And that's what she is -- is not able to distance herself from right now.

KEILAR: We're going to follow that somehow, amazingly, here. But you know, you bring up such an interesting point when it comes to voter fraud, Kirsten, that this origin story of it, real -- I mean, I think back, covering it as a journalism years and years ago where, you know, you would say Republicans say this is about voter fraud.

Now we're at this point where it's very clear what this is actually about. And it's not actually about voter fraud.

POWERS: Right, no. And they have -- they have been doing this for a very long time. They've been claiming that Democrats steal elections and that, yes, all this -- even the idea of the I.D. somehow -- she's making it sound like the only thing that's happening is I.D. laws.

I mean, the Republicans are systematically undermining our voting process in all sorts of different ways, right? They're making it more difficult for people to vote.

KEILAR: She's making this point that some things are OK and some things aren't.

POWERS: Yes.

KEILAR: But I think a lot of people who have studied this over the years, see you're connecting the dots between these things, right?

POWERS: Yes, absolutely. I mean, they're undermining the process by convincing people that something is going on that is not going on. It just isn't happening. Voter fraud is not a problem.

And so it's not a problem to the point -- does somebody every now and then do something? Sure. Is it in any way changing the outcome of an election? No, that's not happening.

But they keep claiming it's happening, because they want to undermine people's trust in the election.

And then what happens? Donald Trump comes along and says it. And they're all primed for believing this. Because they wouldn't have believed this.

There's two things that the good -- old Republican Party that we now say was so perfect and amazing. There's two things they did. They did that, and then they demonized the media to the point that, actually, their voters will not believe anything that doesn't come from FOX News or right-wing radio hosts. So between those two things, it's very easy for Republican voters to believe this kind of stuff, right?

KEILAR: It certainly is.

Kirsten, so wonderful to have you. S.E. and Mara, as well, at this early hour, which we have just learned is when S.E.'s filter completely breaks. Always on a tenuous sort of line, but it is gone. It is gone, gone, gone. Guys, thank you so much for being with us.

CUPP: Thanks for having me, maybe for the last time.

KEILAR: It's been wonderful, S.E. It's been wonderful.

So, you know, they say that 50 is fabulous, but don't take my word for it. Take Phil Mickelson's, because Lefty's historic performance at the PGA championship, amazing. And we'll have it next.

BERMAN: Plus, Belarus accused of hijacking a plane in order to resist -- arrest an opposition activist. The dramatic account of what happened and how other countries are responding this morning. That's ahead.

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