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New Day

Hillbilly Elegy Senate Candidate Says, Sorry about Trump Criticism; Doctor Pleads to Get Vaccinated after Intubating 30-Year- Old; Ex-Senator, Manchin of Obama Era, Questions if Senate can be Saved. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired July 06, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY: What kind?

WOLFGANG PUCK, CHEF AND RESTAURANTEUR: I love chocolate. I love caramel, pastries, ice cream, you name it. I love sweets.

KEILAR: And your favorite dish to cook?

PUCK: My favorite dish to cook actually is when I cook some great pasta for my wife and business partner, Gililea (ph), and we have dinner together. I think it's a moment where it's really amazing, where we can talk about business, what we're going to do together. I think that's really a great time for me.

KEILAR: It's about the company and the food, right?

PUCK: Exactly, yes.

KEILAR: Well, thank you so much, it is wonderful to see you, Wolfgang Puck.

PUCK: Thank you.

KEILAR: Hello. I'm Brianna Keilar alongside John Berman on this New Day.

An American crisis gets worse, 400 shootings over the weekend with dozens of Americans dying.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: A doctor pleading with patients and anyone who will listen to get vaccinated as coronavirus cases rise.

KEILAR: Plus, a Republican congressman says he's not responsible for his own rallying cry to a mob of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol, and a judge just weighed in.

BERMAN: And details on a huge new cyberattack targeting hundreds of businesses and who's behind it.

KEILAR: Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. It is Tuesday, July 6th. And Americans shot off more than just fireworks on July 4th. They also shot off guns, a lot of them, at each other. At least 150 people were killed by gun violence in more than 400 shootings across the country during the 4th of July weekend.

From Friday through Sunday, there were at least four mass shootings with four or more victims from Texas to Virginia to Ohio, some victims as young as five years old.

BERMAN: Big cities, including New York and Chicago, struggling with a significant surge in gun violence. So far, in 2021, gun violence incidents in New York have spiked almost 40 percent year-to-year.

Adrienne Broaddus joins us now from Chicago where it was obviously another very violent weekend, Adrienne.

ADRIENNE BROADDUS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: John, it was. And investigators here in Chicago have something in common with investigators across the country. Many investigators at police departments are trying to determine a motive for these shootings, shootings that left at least 150 people dead.

Among those killed, 16 here in Chicago, and among the 16, a member of the Illinois National Guard. His family identified him on social media, and they said he recently completed basic Army training. He was among those who died here in Chicago. But at least 80 people were also shot, not only here in Chicago, as you all mentioned at the top of the hour, it's happening in other large cities across the country.

Since Friday, at least 500 people were shot. In Norfolk, Virginia -- excuse me, 400 people were shot. In Norfolk, Virginia, four children, the youngest a six-year-old girl. Also shot, two 16-year-olds, a boy and a girl. As far as that four-year-old, investigators say her injuries were life threatening. She's listed now in stable condition.

Moving to Dallas, that's where police responded to two separate shootings on the 4th of July, one where there were five men who were shot.

And coming back to Chicago, we heard from a doctor who's in one of the local hospitals. He sees trauma on a daily basis. And if you think about it, this is nothing members of the health community or any community, in general, should get used to. They are treating multiple gunshot victims daily. And he talked about the number of gun sales going up in 2020, and he said something has to be done to address this problem. John and Brianna?

BERMAN: Adrienne Broaddus, thank you very much, a violent summer not even half over at this point. Thank you.

So, a new about-face from Ohio Senate candidate and Hillbilly Elegy Author J.D. Vance, once critical of former President Trump, Vance has since deleted tweets in which he called Trump reprehensible, and now he's publicly asking for forgiveness.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE (R), OHIO CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump in 2016 and I asked people not to judge me by based on what I said in 2016 because I have been open about the fact I did say critical things and I regret them and I regret being wrong about the guy. I think that he was a good president. I think he made a lot of good decisions for people. I think he took a lot of flak.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining us now is CNN Political Commentator and Host of CNN's Smerconish, Michael Smerconish.

[07:05:00]

Michael, great to see you this morning. I saw you last night. This time, we actually get to talk a little bit more.

Listen, people remember the space that J.D. Vance occupies here. In his book, Hillbilly Elegy, he described, I think, the economic conditions that may have helped lead to the rise of Donald Trump, people who felt left behind by the economy. But while he was doing that, he was very specifically critical of Donald Trump himself. Now that just hasn't changed, he's now basically apologizing for ever saying anything bad about Trump. What does it say to you?

MICHAEL SMERCONISH, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It's so funny that you frame it that way because I had a conversation with my radio producer just last week when he announced his candidacy. We went back to our archives and we replayed the Hillbilly Elegy interview that I did with J.D. Vance, because I wondered aloud, is he the guy we thought he was when he first happened on the scene, and was embraced, by the way, by the mainstream media.

Here's my reaction. Never scrub your Twitter file, okay, because that's worse than whatever is necessary in terms of an explanation. It looks deceitful. And, by the way, the K-file or somebody else is always going to find those tweets. Instead maybe you should bury them. Just tweet more often and hope that no one ever finds it.

What it really speaks to is the featly that many, including J.D. Vance, still feel to Donald Trump, the belief that you can't survive a contested Republican situation, a primary, unless you're on the Trump team. And then somehow in the general election, you need distance. So I'm sure J.D. Vance wishes that at times of the general election is when this all would come it light.

KEILAR: Do you think you can survive, Michael, if like J.D. Vance has criticized Trump in the past, tried to hide it, and now apologized for it? Do voters who he's trying to attract accept that?

SMERCONISH: I think voters that -- well, maybe not that he's trying to attract because, Brianna, in a Republican primary, you have got to be lockstep with the former president of the United States.

I think that most Americans do fluctuate on many, many issues, and that there would be a tolerance for a change in opinion, at least I hope so, because my opinions certainly have changed over time. But the hiding of it, I think, is more problematic than whatever it is he may have said initially.

I thought it was kind of funny that Tim Ryan said there's one -- Tim Ryan, presumably, his Democratic opponent in Ohio in the general, said there's one thing that J.D. Vance and I agree on, neither of us voted for Donald Trump. I thought that was funny.

BERMAN: Michael, last night, when you were hosting here on CNN, you had a conversation with an Arizona election official that was contacted or attempted to be contacted during, you know, the whole big lie run up by both Trump and Giuliani. I want to listen to part of that conversation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CLINT HICKMAN, MARICOPA COUNTY SUPERVISOR: It wasn't stonewalling. We weren't in litigation at all of these points.

I wanted to make sure that I was not having conversations outside of that, whatever needed to be said needed to be said in a courtroom in front of a judge or a jury.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: He knew. He knew it was wrong when they were trying to reach out to him. That's what that says to me, Michael.

SMERCONISH: John, Brianna, this is really interesting. Clint Hickman is this fellow's name, and he was a Maricopa County supervisor, a Trump supporters. I mean, it's not as if he were a detractor. What's most significant to me is he was supportive of Donald Trump, had met him on the tarmac. He had even gotten one of those campaign rally shout-outs. But he's in a position now of authority relative to counting the ballots.

And on two occasions when the White House operator reaches out for him, one of them interestingly was a new year's eve phone call, he refuses to take the call. And meanwhile, in Georgia, Brad Raffensperger does take the call and we all got to hear the sum and substance of it.

So this was a guy who voted for Donald Trump, wanted Donald Trump to be reelected but knew enough to stay away when the former president, who was then the president, tried to meddle in the election outcome.

KEILAR: I want to get your thoughts on something that I know has been weighing on your mind, Michael, and that is something that is especially relevant here post-4th of July, the politicization of the American flag.

SMERCONISH: So, it's funny because on radio recently, going into the holiday weekend, I wondered aloud whether you could discern the political stripe of a neighbor by whether they were displaying the American flag. And, Brianna, I had a great conversation with the radio audience, and people would call and they would say, if I see one on the back of the pickup truck, I presume it's a Trump supporter. I'm not sure I want to be perceived as a Trump supporter, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Lo and behold, the New York Times writes about this over the weekend, and, of course, it becomes a meme over on Fox, oh, the New York Times, can you believe now, they're critical of those who wave old glory.

[07:10:07]

That's not what it was about at all.

The polling data suggests that Republicans more apt, it was 80 percent to 53 percent than Democrats, to be displaying an American flag. It's just an observation of whether, like so many other things, now even the American flag has become a symbol of the partisan divide.

BERMAN: It's a shame in a lot of ways that the flag has become a divisive symbol in some people's minds, but, really, not in everybody's, and it shouldn't be.

Michael, I want to ask you something crucial here, and that's Matthew McConaughey and puberty. Listen to what he said about America.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEW MCCONAUGHEY, ACTOR: As we celebrate our birth as a nation, a day that kick-started a revolution to gain our sovereignty, let's admit that this last year's trip around the sun was also another head scratcher, but let's also remember that we are babies, you know, as a country. We are basically going through puberty in comparison to other country's timelines.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. A, time is a flat circle, B, apparently, America's body is changing, and having uncomfortable thoughts? No. What he's saying there, Michael, actually, I think isn't unserious, though because he uses the puberty word and it's Matthew McConaughey in sunglasses, I think a lot of people were snickering.

SMERCONISH: Two things, number one, you're popular up until the point when you formally decide to get in the race, and then all of a sudden your numbers change. So be careful, Matthew McConaughey, love your work but those numbers don't remain where they are today.

Secondly, puberty, no, I think it's midlife crisis, and let's all buy the Porsche and move on.

KEILAR: I have found this whole conversation interesting, though, I will tell you, the fact that he used the word, puberty, I think, has gotten the conversation going in a way that people are trying to think about where is this moment that we are in as a nation. And I will say, I don't know, I don't know about buying the Porsche, that's kind of crazy, Michael Smerconish.

BERMAN: Yes, the wispy mustache.

KEILAR: As a wife, I will say that is nuts. BERMAN: Michael, great to see you. Thank you so much.

SMERCONISH: See you, guys.

KEILAR: Bye. So, after months of progress, coronavirus cases, they are rising again in parts of the country despite the vaccinations, as highly contagious delta variant spreads. This is according to new data from Johns Hopkins University that, states with below average vaccination rates have almost tripled the rate of new COVID-19 cases compared to states with above average vaccination rates.

Let's talk about this with someone who has seen this on the ground firsthand, Dr. Nick Sawyer, who is an emergency medicine physician at U.C. Davis Health. Sir, thank you for being with us.

You caught our attention because just a few days ago, you tweeted this. You said, I intubated an incredibly sick patient with COVID-19 today, age about 30. I feel like this shouldn't be happening. Get vaccinated. Tell us, you know, what that makes you think when you see it and what you are thinking about people getting vaccinated writ large.

DR. NICK SAYWER, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR EMERGENCY MEDICINE, U.C. DAVIS HEALTH: You know, it's been an incredibly long 15 months, and we had this patient come in, who was incredibly sick, and very young, and really confused, altered mental status, didn't know, ultimately, I mean, initially what was wrong with this patient, And, you know, wearing the protective gear just in case it was coronavirus. And it turned out in the end after the breathing tube, that the patient came positive for COVID.

And it's just -- you know, we're all shaking our heads in the emergency department thinking why is this still happening. We have vaccinations that are readily available. We're the envy of the world. You know, everybody has the opportunity to get vaccinated. And still there's people out there who are not getting vaccinated and getting really sick and it's just this far into it, it's a real shame.

BERMAN: Look, it sounds awful, but we have now reached the optional portion of the pandemic at this point. This is the optional part. Anthony Fauci yesterday said, 99.2 percent of deaths are coming among unvaccinated people. That is an extraordinary statistic. And the vaccine are available. You can choose to get them in your own county, right? It's only 50 percent of the people in Sacramento are vaccinated at this point. I mean, that shows you the danger.

SAYWER: Yes. I mean, it's amazing, at this point. I actually worked yesterday and we had three patients who were positive for coronavirus yesterday. We just went through weeks and weeks and weeks without any coronavirus positivity. And everybody that I talked to had decided not to get the vaccine.

And the thing is that when we speak with patients, what really needs to happen is the doctors and the nurses and other health care professionals really need to step up to answer people's questions.

[07:15:05]

I took part in a phone bank in our local news where people could call in and just talk to doctors from U.C. Davis Health. And people have legitimate questions, because they were concerned about, you know, coronavirus vaccine side effects. And just a lot of it was conspiracy theories, but a lot of it was legitimate questions people wanted to know before they got vaccinated.

And I think there's a lack of communication out there that people have time to spend time talking to health professionals, and after spending time, really investing people and learning about their situation and answering their questions. Many of them told me that they were willing to get vaccinated that next day, they just need to have a few things cleared up.

KEILAR: And good for you for engaging people outside of the hospital in a way like that to answer some questions. It's really good feedback that you're getting.

I do want to ask you about what we're seeing with this delta variant. An Israeli study shows that the Pfizer vaccine was somewhat less protective against severe disease and hospitalization than before, and linked this drop to the spread of the delta variant. You know, what are your concerns as you're looking at these numbers and how it's interacting not as well with the vaccinations?

SAYWER: Yes. I mean, the first thing I'll say is that it's still protective to the point where if you get sick with the delta variant, it's going to reduce the illness that you do get. It's kind of like the flu vaccine. Each year, they forecast what the flu will look like and then come up with a new booster shot. And so if you get the flu, you're not quite as ill as you would be if you didn't get the flu shot at all. And that's how it is when you get the COVID vaccination.

And that's incredibly important that people understand that it's not like, oh, there's this delta variant out there, may as well not get vaccinated at all. The vaccines still provide a level of protection. So we say, please get vaccinated.

The major thing that we need to be very, very clear about is that these vaccines are incredibly safe, they're incredibly effective and all of these conspiracy theories that are flying around in the social media stratosphere are just not true.

And we have looked at the data. We have read all the reports, and I just want to make sure that it's very clear that people understand that these vaccines are incredibly safe and effective. Delta variant or not, get vaccinated. And if we need to get a booster, then we will get boosters.

KEILAR: Yes. The delta variant is even more reason to get vaccinated. It's certainly a doozy there. And you may be seeing that in your emergency room soon. Dr. Nick Sawyer, thank you.

SAWYER: Thank you.

KEILAR: Another cyberattack targeting hundreds of businesses, why we may not know the full scope of the damage here.

BERMAN: And Republicans going after President Biden's agenda. One former senator who has been called the Joe Manchin of the Obama-era joins us on why saving the Senate may be too late.

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[07:20:00]

BERMAN: Voting rights, election reform, police reform, even the infrastructure bill all on hold in the evenly divided Senate with so little getting done in these hyper-polarized times. Is the upper chamber, is the Senate broken?

Our next guest thinks so. Ben Nelson, former two-term Senator from Nebraska, a Democrat, has a new book coming out called Death of the Senate. So, Senator Nelson, thanks so much for being with us.

That title, Death of the Senate, it gives us a sense of how you think things are going there. What's biggest obstacle right now in the Senate?

FMR. SEN. BEN NELSON (D-NE): Well, first of all, thanks for having me this morning. I think everybody understands that the way the Senate is behaving that, at best, it's on life support because of the inability to come together and work.

Now, there are some efforts underway, but I don't know how significant they are in terms of numbers. If you can't count votes in D.C., you're in La La Land. So, if the votes are there and they can come together, then we'll see the Senate resuscitated. But the way it is right now, it's on life support.

BERMAN: Inability to come together and work. Whose fault is that?

NELSON: Well, it's easy to say it's the system's fault, but it isn't necessarily the system's fault. People want to blame the filibuster as being the reason. That's not the case. The Senate has worked in the past with the filibuster. So that isn't the answer.

I think what's happened, I think the leaders of the caucuses, the Democratic leader and/or, in this case, the Republican leader can have too much power seeded to it, and in particular, the leadership on the Republican side, Mitch McConnell, only has one Republican vote for him as the leader of the Republican caucus, and that's from Rand Paul, his colleague.

But people -- you know, when you go to the Senate, you're there for the same reason that your colleagues are. You got more votes in the last election than your opponent did. You won the election. Nobody back home necessarily voted for somebody to be leader. So you have to be careful that you don't seed too much power to the leader and that the leader doesn't become autocratic and threaten you to take away your leadership positions or your committee assignments. So the leadership has way too much power. The leaders are there to make sure that the trains run on time and that the business of the Senate is accomplished, not to obstruct and assert at the very beginning of a presidential term that your number one goal is to make sure that that president doesn't get reelected.

[07:25:17]

That's the problem, I think, we have in the Senate today.

BERMAN: I want to pick up on the last point there, because you suggest that there are too many senators now who go to Washington to stop things from happening --

NELSON: That's right.

BERMAN: -- instead of going there to get things done. How much of a change is that?

NELSON: Well, you know, when I was running for the Senate the first time, I said that, with respect to the president, for example, I'll support the president when I think the president is right, I won't when I don't, but I'm not going to obstruct. I'll try to look for solutions. That's what has to happen. They have to look for solutions and stop obstructing.

Now, if you're doing something like I think Joe Manchin is doing at the moment, he's not obstructing, he's holding things up to try to bring bipartisanship back into the mix of things. Bipartisan solutions are almost always better, and almost more lasting and everlasting than an absolute partisan slam dunk.

BERMAN: There are people on this article in the New York Times which mention you where you talk about in advance of your new book suggest that you are the Joe Manchin of your era. I'm not sure it's a one-to- one comparison there. Times were different then. And Joe Manchin is holding out for -- people suggest maybe holding out for an ideal that doesn't exist anymore. What do you think of that?

NELSON: Well, you know, I hope that's not the case. I hope that's not the case that it doesn't exist anymore. I don't think it's as prevalent as it was when I was there. We had a pretty large contingent called the centrist coalition, and it was bipartisan. And people -- you know, sometimes it's 20 people, sometimes more, sometimes fewer. But we have people who are willing to cross the aisle and work with one another to try to find an answer, try to find a solution, move the ball forward, get to the ten-yard line finish, the score. So, that was where we were back then.

I think that there's too much intimidation now with a leader on the Republican side who says, you do it for me, do it as a favor. I don't understand the power that the leadership has today. It certainly didn't have it back then with a gang of 14 on judicial nominations, getting up or down votes. Seven Democrats, seven Republicans took the ball and decided we were going to get judicial nominees, up or down votes and that not everything was going to be filibustered or have to go to cloture, as they say. So it's possible for maybe to take the ball away from the leaders just a bit and work on your own to bring about bipartisan solutions. I don't think it's dead. I think it's on life support. But I think the Senate is going to die if they eliminate the filibuster and turn it into a raucous group, like the House, that is slam dunk, whoever is in charge, whoever has the majority wins, as opposed to recognizing the rights of a minority to work things out in a cool, calm, collected fashion.

BERMAN: Of course, that does assume there is a solid center of people who want to get things done and reach compromise. We'll see. Senator Nelson, great to see you again, thanks so much for being with us.

NELSON: Thank you, John. I appreciate being on.

BERMAN: So, he spoke to a crowd of Trump supporters just hours before the Capitol mob. Here the defense from Republican Congressman Mo Brooks.

KEILAR: And the GOP's latest line of attack on President Biden is blaming him for high gas prices.

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[07:30:00]