Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Pfizer Suggests American Get Booster Vaccine Shot for Delta Variant of COVID-19, But FDA and CDC Deny This is Necessary; Republican Lawmakers in Texas to Try Passing Voting Restriction Legislation During Special Session; New Book Reveals Argument between President Trump and Mike Pence. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 09, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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


BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: George Conway joins us in a moment.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Spectators banned from the Tokyo Summer Games. How disappointing is that for athletes who have trained so hard for a shot a glory. Olympic Gold Medalist Ryan Lochte joins us live.

And can you spell "history"? The first-ever African American winner of the National Spelling Bee joins us live.

KEILAR: Good morning to viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Friday, July 9th, TGI Friday to you. And there is a cluster of confusion this morning after Pfizer says booster shots may be beneficial because there are signs that immunity from its two-dose vaccines is waning over time. But both the CDC and the FDA are saying, hold on, wait a minute here, no, there is no need for a booster shot right now.

BERMAN: The agencies say that the hyper-transmissible Delta variant is a growing threat, but only to those, or mostly to those who are not vaccinated. It is driving cases up in nearly half the country. The states you see there in red are the cases arising the fastest, and they are the same states largely where vaccination rates are the lowest.

Joining me now, Dr. Jerome Adams, former surgeon general in the Trump administration. Thank you so much for being with us this morning. So, Pfizer and Biogen, they are applying for -- BioNTech I should say -- are applying for emergency use authorization for a booster shot. And they say this may be beneficial to Americans right now because of waning immunity.

And then it's something I, frankly, haven't seen before. The CDC and FDA say, wait a minute, Americans don't need this now. What is your reaction to this back and forth?

DR. JEROME ADAMS, FORMER U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: Well, my first reaction is it's troubling that there is such a lack of coordination on communication between the companies and the federal government. But here's what people need to know. The companies are thinking about where the hockey puck is going, to borrow a Wayne Gretzky analogy. And we know that immunity does tend to wane over time as we're going into winter. In particular, we want to make sure we are in the best possible position to protect vulnerable people in nursing homes, remember, who were the first vaccinated. So they're the ones who are going to be most at risk for waning immunity in the face of the Delta variant.

Whereas the government, FDA and CDC, are looking at where the hockey puck is right now. And they want to assure Americans your best protection still is a vaccine. And you still have got great protection, better than for the flu shot in any given year, even in the face of variants and waning immunity.

BERMAN: Are you concerned people may look at this and get confused?

ADAMS: I am absolutely concerned about the confusion. And again, I hope that they can get on the same page. One of the things we did last year, Dr. Fauci, Dr. Collins, myself, we met with the companies weekly to make sure we understood what they were saying and we could coordinate messaging, because this whiplash really is troubling to the American people.

But understand, vaccinations are your best bet right now. They're still incredibly effective. And if we have to get a booster, we just have to get a booster. We do that for the flu every single year, so people shouldn't get too worked up about that.

BERMAN: Right. But as of right now, you don't think Americans need to run out and get a third shot?

ADAMS: Not at all, not at all. Again, the protection even in the face of Delta variant and waning immunity is 60, 70 percent. Flu shot in any given year is 40 to 60 percent. We're still way better than the flu shot in any given year. You're still protected.

What I'm worried about, quite frankly, are those pockets that you mention that are under vaccinated. And I'm worried about the fact that the FDA, quite frankly, hasn't yet given us an update on full approval of these vaccines which we know is causing hesitancy in many people and which also is causing companies and businesses and schools to delay their decisions about vaccine mandates.

BERMAN: How concerned are you about the impact of the Delta variant? We're seeing cases, hospitalizations rising in certain places, L.A. County, Missouri, other places. What are your concerns there?

ADAMS: Well, I'm very concerned, but I'm concerned because the Delta variant is COVID's new offense, and our defense is vaccinations, testing and masking. And we're not where we want to be on any of those measures. We really need to continue to improve our ground game on vaccinations. But I do want to applaud the Biden administration for the announcement this week about increased efforts at the community level. We really need to make sure we're funding and empowering efforts at the community level and worksites, school-based vaccination clinics, and again, putting mobile vaccine sites in communities so people can avail themselves of these great vaccines which are our best protection. Otherwise, we're going to be forced to rely on masking, on shutdowns, when you look at the U.K., when you look at other places that are being overwhelmed. BERMAN: I'm glad you brought up the community efforts here,

essentially one of the things the Biden administration has announced is sending people door to door in some communities to educate people on vaccinations, not compel, not force, but to educate people on vaccinations.

[08:05:04]

Yet, the reaction to it has been extraordinary and dishonest. You had Marjorie Taylor Greene calling the people going door-to-door medical brown shirts, which is just absurd and offensive. But you have Governor Mike Parsons in Missouri which has seen a rise in cases and hospitalizations. He went nuts over this. He's said "I've directing the health department to let the federal government know that sending government employees or agents door-to-door to compel vaccinations would not be a welcome strategy in Missouri." What's going on here?

ADAMS: John, you and I have talked about this frequently. And one of the things that I lament is just how politicized this conversation has become. Your viewers need to know, the authority lies at the state and local level for public health. And that's where these decisions should be made. And there's always been a distrust of government, particularly federal government in certain parts of the country. People are concerned when they hear or think that the federal government is going to be knocking on their doors.

That is not the case. What we want are for local community groups, institutions that people trust, to be able to help engage, empower, answer questions. It's OK to have questions. I've long said it's not OK to let misinformation lead you into making a bad decision for your health. And that's what we want to do. We want to give you answers to your questions, give you access to these life-saving vaccines.

BERMAN: I want to ask you one last question about Senator Rand Paul who is now saying he's going to submit legislation to force airlines to stop having a mask requirement when people fly. He says, "When the Senate returns in session, I will be introducing an immediate repeal of the mask mandate on airplanes. Enough. Time to stop this farce and let people travel in peace." Again, Delta variant working its way through a lot of unvaccinated people. Your thoughts?

ADAMS: John, I'm wearing my periodic table shirt and my science forever pin. And what I would say to anyone in Congress is I hope you let science lead the way. Again, we know we're fighting against a new emerging Delta variant which is wreaking havoc on the globe. We know our defenses are vaccinations, masking, and other mitigation efforts. And I hope that we don't run away from these defensive protective measures if we see cases continuing to go up. So I hope we let science lead the way.

BERMAN: By the way, people should know that everything matches with the periodic table shirt, really.

(LAUGHTER)

BERMAN: It's very useful. Dr. Jerome Adams, thanks so much for being with us.

ADAMS: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: Republican lawmakers in Texas now launching a second effort to pass sweeping voting restrictions at a special session called by the governor. Texas Democrats blocked Republicans' first attempt in May by staging that dramatic walkout. The Republicans there did concede two of the most controversial provisions this time around, limits to early Sunday voting hours and language that would make it easier for courts to overturn election results, measures that make casting mail-in ballots harder, banning drive-thru voting centers, empowering partisan poll watchers all still in the proposal they're talking about in this special session.

Joining us now, attorney and contributing columnist at the Washington Post, George Conway.

GEORGE CONWAY, CONTRIBUTING COLUMNIST, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Hi.

BERMAN: Nice to see you here.

CONWAY: Thanks.

BERMAN: What's going on in Texas, inevitable that Governor Abbott was going to call this special session to push this through. The courts in Georgia and other places have said, we're not going to touch this right now. Will we see this march through the country?

CONWAY: I think that's what we are seeing. We are seeing that lots of states are doing this. It's unclear to me, at least, to what extent this will have a negative effect on voting. Some of them -- some of the provisions are bad. Some of the provisions are so-so. The things that concern me, though, are the provisions that try to restrict or place limitations or change how votes are counted and how votes are tabulated and the rules about challenging the results, because that to me is where the rubber meets the road.

I think at the end of the day, people who want to vote are going to vote. But the provisions that are designed to overturn potentially have partisan officials overturning election results are the ones that are most disturbing to me. And it's hard to gauge because you have to know the exact structure of each state's voting rules and election commissions. But it just strikes me that none of that can be good.

KEILAR: George, I wanted to get your take on a fascinating vignette from a new book out by Michael Bender at "The Wall Street Journal." It talks about this encounter between then President Trump and then Vice President Mike Pence, and it says this was actually something that happened after Pence's political committee had hired Corey Lewandowski, who was the president's adviser. And he writes this. "He," meaning Trump, "crumpled the article and threw it at his vice president. "So disloyal," Mr. Trump said. Mr. Pence lost it. Mr. Pence picked up the article and threw it back at Mr. Trump. He leaned forward toward the president and pointed a finger a few inches from his chest.

[08:10:04]

"We walked you through every detail of this," Mr. Pence snarled. We did this for you as a favor, and this is how you respond. You need to get your facts straight." I just wonder what you think about this, because obviously this challenges the very public face that Pence put on where he was so complimentary and so differential to Trump.

CONWAY: Well, I think the moral of the story is you can only take so much, even Mike Pence. I can only say, though, that I wish that we had seen a little more of that Mike Pence publicly and not heard it after everything was over when people are trying to rehabilitate their reputations. The fact of the matter is there should have been more pushback on the president and more pushback publicly on the president when President Trump -- when he did outrageous things. And I just wish we had seen more of that from Mike Pence.

BERMAN: The book also suggests that after the election, the former president wanted to replace Bill Barr as attorney general with John Ratcliffe. What do you think of that?

CONWAY: What I find most interesting about that is Ratcliffe had the smarts not to take the job. And, again, it just shows you that you can only -- you can never please the man. Bill Barr did so much to humor Donald Trump, and yet it wasn't enough. I mean, it wasn't enough, because as described in, I think, Jonathan Karl's excerpt which covers some of the same material, it wasn't enough for Trump because Trump -- Barr didn't, at the end of the day, engage in litigation on behalf of the fake election fraud claims. He didn't indict Hunter Biden. He didn't issue the Durham report. He didn't indict Jim Comey. Nothing was ever enough for Donald Trump.

And the reason why it got so out of hand was people didn't push back at the interim steps. They acceded to some of his desires and wishes in certain ways, and Barr was the biggest -- one of the biggest people humoring Trump. And it just gets worse and worse and worse, and that's what happened. AND that's why I said just a moment ago, I wish Mike Pence had pushed back a little more. But then again, he wouldn't be renominated in 2020, and that's the risk he was pushing. And with Barr, he runs the risk of being fired. And that was the moral of the story in a lot of ways about the Trump administration, is that people were more concerned about their jobs than about principle and about pushing back on the president, and about doing the right thing. And that's one of the reasons why we are where we are today.

KEILAR: So, I wonder what you think about Mike Pompeo's portrayal here, because he certainly would fit into the category here. This book reveals he warned colleagues, quote, "the crazies have taken over" as Trump's fraud conspiracy theories were growing after the election.

CONWAY: That's really nice that he thought that and that he said that privately. Why didn't he go -- come here, go onto FOX and say that? Why? And we're all hearing it now. Oh, the crazies were there. There was nobody there to push back. It's terrible. Look, it's Rudy Giuliani's fault. Well, you could have said something at the time, all these folks. And they didn't. And that's the most outrageous thing about it. They knew better. We're

just going to say privately, he lost the election. They didn't do it publicly. They needed to do it publicly. At least I could give Barr some credit and McConnell, who put Barr up to it, give him some credit for saying we didn't see enough fraud. But that was basically the extent of it. Everybody else just kept their mouth shut. Oh, it will just run its course. He'll -- sooner or later he'll accept the results. No, he won't. That's not who he is.

KEILAR: Do you think we'll ever get answers, George, here? I imagine it will take years, but do you think we will ever get answers from people who are in these positions to do this and will reflect on this years from now in a historical way and answer that question -- why didn't you stand up?

CONWAY: I'd like to hear that. I really would. I'd like to hear that, because a lot of people knew better.

BERMAN: Look, it's lingering. It's the same thing that's connected to where we are today.

CONWAY: Absolutely it is.

BERMAN: It's the same connection to Republicans in office who were afraid of losing their jobs.

CONWAY: Right. And it goes to the same reason why you see just minor pushback against Marjorie Taylor Greene as it was reported last hour. They say, could you do this little show on TV just to make up for it? And they don't punish her for saying outrageous things. And yet, on the other hand you've got Liz Cheney, who loses her leadership position because she simply told the truth. It's the same thing. Nobody -- people are not willing to basically tell, not just Trump, but the Republican base generally that, you know, here's the truth, and we have to accept that truth. And we have to accept the truth that Donald Trump lost, we have to -- and here are the reasons why.

[08:15:01]

And, you know, it's not -- it's not brown shirt tactics to make people or to urge people to take the vaccine that, you know, Donald Trump brags about having created, right? It doesn't even make any sense. And yet there's not that pushback. There is not that leadership because people are more concerned about their individual political careers, McCarthy becoming speaker -- than they are about doing the right thing for their own constituents, and for their own party.

And it's just -- it's self-destructive. It's the reason why they lost the presidency and the House and the Senate, and it's not going to get them anywhere good in the future.

KEILAR: It's not going to change any time soon, that is clear.

CONWAY: That's true.

KEILAR: George, if you could stick around for us for just a moment. Coming up, what could be the real reason for former President Trump

suing Facebook, Twitter and YouTube?

BERMAN: Plus, did Trump and his allies try to meddle with the 2020 election in Arizona?

And a 12-time Olympian tells us what he thinks the summer games will be like without fans.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:20:05]

BERMAN: This week, former President Trump announced he is suing Facebook, Twitter and YouTube for suspending him from their platforms. It's clearly a fund-raising ploy because they sent out fund-raising messages the minute the lawsuit was filed.

Most legal experts say this is questionable as well.

Now, Trump is defending the legal action in a new op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal". He writes: One of the greatest threats to our democracy is powerful group of big tech corporations that have teamed up with government to censor the free speech of the American people. This is not only wrong, it is unconstitutional.

George Conway is back with us.

George, you said this lawsuit is as stupid as you think it is. What do you mean by that?

CONWAY: It is every bit, when you actually read the complaint, it is every bit as illogical and irrational as you would think it would be, because the essential thrust of the claim is that the social media companies are violating the First Amendment by deplatforming Trump. And the First Amendment doesn't apply to these social media companies. In other words, you don't have a right against these companies the way you have the right against the government not to have them cut you off.

And, for example, I mean here, CNN, if I say something that somebody doesn't like and they say, he's a terrible guest, it's CNN's First Amendment right to take me off the air because CNN is not the government.

If the government said, no, you can't have Conway on the air, that would violate the First Amendment. And there is a doctrine that distinguishes between public actors and private actors on that. It's called the State Action Doctrine, and it's a very important doctrine, particularly with regard to the First Amendment.

And it says that the only way that a private actor can be treated like the governmental actor is that if they are performing an exclusive and traditional government function. If the action by the private entity is coerced or if they're acting in cahoots jointly with the government. None of that happened here. And the allegations are essentially particularly ridiculous because in claiming that twitter and Facebook were acting as the government on January 6 or January 7, whenever it was when Trump was deplatformed, acting as the United States government and coerced by the United States government and acting jointly with the United States government, guess who was president of the United States? Donald Trump.

The story makes no sense in any number of levels. It's not going to be -- it's not going to last very long in court. The defendant should make a motion to dismiss, maybe even a motion for monetary sanctions for having to defend such a frivolous lawsuit, and it will get this message very quickly.

KEILAR: Constitutionally, we all have the freedom to say what we want to say, but you don't have that freedom actually right now if you are in -- I mean, in politics in general, but especially in the Republican Party.

We're seeing that when you look at this Ohio Senate race, candidate J.D. Vance has apologized, George, because he criticized Trump as reprehensible in tweets that he has now deleted. What do you think about this?

CONWAY: I think it's absurd. He deserved credit for -- he did more than I did. I actually supported Trump. He didn't because he saw bad things in Trump.

And I don't know how after watching Trump, even after one, or one and a half or two years, you could conclude that, oh, he was better than I thought he would be. He was worse than everybody thought he would be. He was worse than J.D. Vance thought he was going to be.

And this is all about political ambition, because today, the litmus test for being a Republican is not whether you're for less regulation. It's not for whether you're for a free market economy. It's not whether you're for the constitution and so on. It's about whether you are fealty to Donald Trump. And that's just an ongoing problem with the Republican Party, and it's getting -- it seems to be getting worse, notwithstanding the fact that he has been removed from office and he's been deplatformed.

It's just getting worse. And I think, you know, on the edges of the Republican Party, it's going to cause Republicans to bleed more support and lose more elections like they did in Georgia where there are people convinced their votes didn't matter because the president was saying that the elections were fraudulent.

And it's just going to get worse for the Republicans and it's a downward spiral. It's very sad.

KEILAR: It's a test, but there's certainly only one answer there. George, it's great to have you with us this morning. George Conway, thank you.

CONWAY: Thanks for having me. KEILAR: CNN sitting down with First Lady Dr. Jill Biden about her

efforts to boost the country's vaccination rates and whether she's still planning to go to the Tokyo Olympics.

BERMAN: First -- plus, the first black American to win the national spelling bee. Wait until you see what else she can do.

She joins us live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:28:58]

KEILAR: New this morning, Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs wants the state attorney general to investigate whether allies of former President Trump violated state laws by conducting a pressure campaign against county officials in the wake of the 2020 election.

This is happening as we learn that the Arizona Senate is planning to recount every single one of the nearly 2.1 million votes cast in Maricopa County, the most populous county in Arizona in last fall's election.

Let's talk about this now with the former attorney general of Arizona, Grant Woods. He is also the former chief of staff to the late Senator John McCain.

Grant, thanks for coming on this morning.

First, I just want to get your reaction to this investigation that Secretary Hobbs is seeking into Trump and his allies.

GRANT WOODS, FORMER ARIZONA ATTORNEY GENERAL: I think it's a great idea. I mean, if I was attorney general, I would investigate it. So we'll see what happens here.

I've been calling for the Justice Department to step in here for a long time. I think they need to step into this ridiculous fraud-it that's been going on for months and months and months.