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Delta Variant of Coronavirus Spreading in States Across U.S. Especially Among the Unvaccinated; Democrats on Senate Budget Committee Announce Agreement on Budget to be Passed Through Reconciliation; Fed Arrest 5 Family Members Accused of Storming Capitol. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired July 14, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Coronavirus cases surging this morning in the United States fueled by the fast-spreading new variant and driven by the unvaccinated.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: That's right. More than 40 states are seeing a sharp rise in new infections because of this Delta variant, and that is a 10 percent higher -- it's 10 percent higher than what we have seen the previous week. In 34 states, new cases are 50 percent higher than last week. We have some alarming new numbers about who is getting hit by this new variant.

BERMAN: All right, joining us now, CNN senior data reporter Harry Enten. Harry, you have been preparing this up until four seconds ago.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICS WRITER AND ANALYST: Four seconds, I think it was three seconds ago.

BERMAN: Four seconds ago. So I'm anticipating great things here. I want to talk about cases. It is just undeniable at this point that cases in the United States are rising fairly quickly.

ENTEN: Yes. Look, I think it's important to point out that we are rising right here. You can basically see this, right. We hit basically the trough right here in June. And we've been seeing this rise over the last seven days. Again, it is not as high as we were earlier on this year in February, but we are clearly seeing a rise. And what we are really seeing is a rise in hospitalizations, right. We see this is the change in new coronavirus. Hospitalizations, seven-day average. We had been dropping for most of the year, and now all of a sudden we're seeing the rise again. That is far more worse than --

BERMAN: And I'm just going to walk up here. And it's important, right, because we talk about cases, and that's one thing. That's symptomatic, asymptomatic. This is people getting sick. More people are getting sick, so sick that they have to be hospitalized now. And the rate of them getting sick is increasing pretty quickly at this point. What do we know about the age of people getting sick, Harry?

ENTEN: Right. So look, these are the cases. This are percentage of all coronavirus cases. And I think this is the big take away, right. Those under 50, they did make up the clear majority of new cases back in December of 2020 at 65 percent. But now we see them rising to 72 percent in June of 2021. The idea that it's basically this old person disease really does not bear itself out in the numbers. It's, in fact, the vast majority of the people who are getting coronavirus at this particular point, they are under the age of 50. It's a young person disease, John.

BERMAN: What about people being hospitalized?

ENTEN: Yes. So I think that this is also key, right. Look at this. So back in December of 2020, what do we see in the coronavirus hospitalizations? Those under 20 were just 22 percent. But look at the preliminary June data. And I should point out that this is across selected hospitals in 14 states by the CDC. But look at the late June data, the late May to late June, 2021. Look at this, up to 45 percent. A doubling percentage. The portion is double for under 50s. They were making up just 22 percent of hospitalizations back in December of 2020. They're now up to 45 percent. So again, the idea that this is just an old person illness really isn't true. It's not true of cases, and it's really not even true anymore in hospitalizations, which of course are really, really bad. It means you're really, really sick.

BERMAN: Double the percentage of people now in the hospital under 50 from before.

ENTEN: Correct.

BERMAN: That is notable.

Let's talk about the percent of the younger population -- depends what we mean by younger -- that's been vaccinated at this point.

ENTEN: Right. And if you're basically looking for a reason why we may have seen this change around, look at this. This is fully vaccinated, the proportion of each group, that is. Obviously --

BERMAN: They're not eligible.

ENTEN: They're not eligible. But look at age 12 to 49. Look at that. Only about 45 percent are fully vaccinated. Look at those age 50 and older. Around 72 percent are fully vaccinated. So when you see rising cases among young folks, you see rising hospitalizations among young folks, and you see that a lot lower portion of their population is fully vaccinated, I don't think it's that hard of an equation to figure out. And if nothing else, we know the vaccines work. This number needs to go up, because this is crazy, folks. Folks in my age bracket, I believe even your age bracket --

BERMAN: Barely.

ENTEN: Barely, but still there. We need to get more vaccinated otherwise you're going to see results like we did in the earlier slide.

BERMAN: I've said, this is the optional part of the pandemic. It's the optional and younger part of the pandemic clearly we're in now. And I just want to put up. This is something that Dr. Anthony Fauci said before, but this is such an important number, Harry. Explain this.

ENTEN: This is insane, right. Look at this. June coronavirus deaths by sheer vaccination, just 0.8 percent of those who died in June were fully vaccinated. Look at that -- 99.2 percent were unvaccinated. My goodness gracious, could you find a clearer statistic than this, that the vaccines work? I don't believe you can. This is why it's so important for folks to get vaccinated, because we know they work, and this number clearly, clearly shows it. And we see it in the other numbers as well. The younger age groups, a lot fewer of them are vaccinated, and a lot more of them have higher cases and higher hospitalizations.

BERMAN: So Harry, you say the number in politics, in weather, in sports, baseball, a 99.2 percent --

ENTEN: You never see it. You never see this type of number. You never see such clear correlations. I wish when I ran my statistical program and data that essentially we would see numbers like this because it shows such a clear correlation. You try and get numbers that show such clear correlations. You never see it. This clearly shows.

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Folks, get vaccinated. It clearly works. My God. My God, I run out of words because it's just so clear, and people are being so freaking silly. It works, get vaccinated. It works.

BERMAN: Harry Enten, thank you very much for that.

ENTEN: Thank you.

BERMAN: Brianna?

KEILAR: I love it. You know, coronavirus vaccines, they're almost batting 1,000, right? Unheard of.

ENTEN: There it is.

KEILAR: Thank you for imploring people. Harry, thank you.

BERMAN: Thank you, Brianna.

KEILAR: I want to bring in the chief medical officer at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami. Dr. Hany Atallah is with us now. Thank you so much for being with us this morning, especially from Florida, which is one of the states that is currently experiencing a rise in new hospitalizations. Give us a sense of the situation there at Jackson Memorial.

DR. HANY ATALLAH, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, JACKSON MEMORIAL HOSPITAL: Thank you. Good morning, Brianna. So, we're seeing exactly what was mentioned earlier. We've had in the last seven to 14 days roughly a doubling of the number of patients hospitalized with COVID infection. And the age group is exactly what was mentioned earlier as well, which is that sort of 30 to 50 age group is being hospitalized as well. The biggest thing we're noticing really is the people who are being hospitalized are those who are unvaccinated. And we think that that's come with a lot of the unmasking, and that everyone is unmasking, even those who are still at risk. So exactly we're seeing the national trend.

KEILAR: So, you said the mostly unvaccinated. What percentage of the people would you say that you are treating in the hospital are unvaccinated?

ATALLAH: I don't have the exact number with me, but I think it's upwards, over 90 percent. The other thing we're certainly seeing is that those who are vaccinated who are being infected, which is certainly the minority, are having much more milder disease than those who are unvaccinated who are being infected.

KEILAR: What kind of disease are the unvaccinated folks having?

ATALLAH: I mean, all the things that go with sort of a more severe coronavirus infection. So they're having a lot of difficulty breathing, their oxygen levels are falling. So what we saw prior to the vaccine and the severity of illness is what we're essentially seeing in the unvaccinated.

KEILAR: Do these patients who are unvaccinated -- what do they say to you about why they made that decision?

ATALLAH: It's -- our job is to take care of patients when they come. We certainly don't want do shame anyone or -- at the same time, we do educate them on the safety of the vaccine and the effectiveness of the vaccine. But at the end of the day, it is everyone's choice. We can strongly encourage it, and we can ask them what their concerns are and address those concerns. But ultimately it is up to the individual patient whether or not they get the vaccine.

KEILAR: Sure, but are any of them saying, like, I just hadn't gotten around to it? Or does it seem like there are personal objections? I understand, look, they have COVID. You are in no business of shaming them for whatever decision they made. But are they giving you a sense of that, that this was something they just hadn't gotten to? They thought they weren't at risk?

ATALLAH: It's not so much that they hadn't gotten to it. It's that they may be concerned about the safety of the vaccine, or they may be concerned that it's not fully FDA approved and still under emergency use authorization. So those, I think, are more of the comments we're hearing. The vaccine is fairly widely available. We had a huge drive early on where we're giving so many vaccines to the community. It was a very effective, and we're very happy to do that. But the desire or the need -- the desire for the vaccine has certainly cooled off in the interim.

KEILAR: So there's a discussion about whether employers should require employees to be vaccinated, especially in the medical field. Is Jackson memorial requiring workers get vaccinated? ATALLAH: We are not currently requiring it. Obviously, we have more

stringent requirements regarding masking inside the hospital to keep our staff safe, our patients safe, our patients' families who are able to visit safe. So it is not required here at this time, but it's something we're constantly looking at. It's --

KEILAR: I think unfortunately Dr. Dr. Atallah has frozen there as we still deal with some gremlins here. Thank you so much, Dr. Atallah, for being with us. We appreciate it.

Today President Biden has a lunch date on Capitol Hill with Senate Democrats. This is his first with the caucus since taking office. And there is a heaping portion of party unity that will be on the menu. Democrats on the Senate Budget Committee actually just struck an agreement. They struck this deal on a $3.5 trillion budget resolution, and it includes spending for President Biden's sweeping social agenda. The hurdle, the big one, is going to be getting everyone on board.

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So let's bring in CNN White House correspondent John Harwood. All right, he has his work cut out for him, John.

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: He does. But this agreement that they announced last night is a signal that they will be able to get every Democrat on board. This is a very significant moment in the Biden administration, Brianna, because it's not the finish line for the president's agenda on infrastructure and help for struggling families, but it gives you an indication of what the finish line is going to look like.

President Biden proposed more than $4 trillion between the physical infrastructure part and the help for families. That's early childhood education, free community college, expansion of Medicare, big checks that are going already from the provisions of the American Rescue Plan of up to $300 per month into the bank accounts of the parents of 90 percent of American children, cutting child poverty in half. Those are the big achievements that Joe Biden wanted to get to. He got a piece of it with the rescue plan. This is the completion of that agenda if they can get there.

And the framework means that people from Bernie Sanders to Joe Manchin on the right have provided at least tentative, initial buy-in for this number. They wouldn't have announced it otherwise. So there's a lot of work to do, a lot of specifics to be hashed out, tough votes to be cast. But the administration is pretty hopeful this morning.

KEILAR: How does Biden navigate Republicans who came to a smaller infrastructure deal? How does he navigate them looking at what's happening on the side here without them and perhaps having issues with that?

HARWOOD: Well, they are going to have issues with that, and that's one of the challenges. There was a controversy a couple weeks ago when Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, and President Biden, indicated the linkage, explicit linkage between the two packages. Of course, they are linked. Everyone knew that. They sort of said out loud what people had known in the background. And so some Republicans may look at this agreement as an excuse to say, well, if my smaller bipartisan deal is going to make it possible for them to pass this big tax and spending package, I want out.

So we're going to have a test of how much they are in support of the things that they negotiated on physical infrastructure. Do they really want those things, and do they want to be associated with those things? If they don't, Democrats are likely to try to fold those into the reconciliation package.

But this is an indication of solidarity within the Democratic Party. They know that they can get a big portion of the president's agenda even without Republicans. They would rather -- President Biden would rather do some of it with Republicans. And so this is going to be on the table for both parties. But Joe Biden can see some of the changes that he hopes to bring to the country, and sees the prospect that you could have significant action on that this summer.

KEILAR: We will be looking towards this lunch today as he is trying to send his message loud and clear to Senate Democrats. Harwood, thanks so much.

HARWOOD: You bet.

KEILAR: Should the trump supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th be charged with insurrection? We're going to going to put that up for debate next.

BERMAN: Plus, the American journalist who says the FBI kept her from getting kidnapped by Iranian spies.

And will Britney Spears stick up for herself again in court later today.

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[08:17:09]

KEILAR: In Texas, five members of the same family have been arrested in one of the largest single-day sweeps of defendants in one Capitol riot case to date. Officials say a tipster led FBI investigators to parents and their children after spotting several social media posts on their accounts appearing to confirm that they were inside the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.

The family members face charges including entering a restricted building without lawful authority, and disorderly conduct in the capitol building.

BERMAN: So, should Capitol rioters be charged with insurrection, which is a crime? Under Title 18 of the U.S. Code, punishable by a fine, maximum sentence of ten years in prison or both.

Joining me now, one of the nation's preeminent legal scholars, Harvard Law School Professor Laurence Tribe and his student, CNN chief legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin.

Professor, I'm going to start with you here.

You think -- you actually wrote that you think some of the insurrectionists should be charged for insurrection. Why?

LAURENCE TRIBE, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR, HARVARD LAW SCHOOL: Because that's what they're guilty of engaging in. You know, charging them with simply entering a federal building without permission or causing a disturbance or engaging in theft would be like charging John Wilkes Booth with disturbing a play at the Ford Theater when, in fact, he was guilty of assassinating a president.

This law making it a crime for people to engage in or incite or give aid or comfort to an insurrection against the laws of the United States was passed in 1862 to help Abraham Lincoln preserve the Union. It hasn't been applied because we haven't had an insurrection since then.

But this was an insurrection, and a bipartisan majority in the House of Representatives on January 13th, by a vote of 232-197, said exactly that.

Now, even though the Senate acquitted the president because they thought, having left office, he could no longer be put on trial, there's no doubt that a bipartisan majority of Congress believes it was an insurrection, and everybody who fomented it, including perhaps the president of the United States, should be charged with the crime that they committed.

BERMAN: So, Jeffrey Toobin, if it was an insurrection, why should the people involved be charged with insurrection?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, I revere L.T., but I do disagree with him here.

He made the key point here, which is that this is a law passed in 1862. It's almost never been applied. It is unclear what the word "insurrection" means, how it would work with the jury instruction. To charge insurrection would be to invite a legal fight, which would jeopardize the convictions that are likely to come out of this case.

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There are not minor charges pending here. There are conspiracies that have been charged. There are assaults. There are, you know, destruction of federal property.

There are chances to -- for the legal system to punish the people who broke the laws in a very severe way, but without inviting the legal mysteries that a very rare insurrection prosecution would present.

And I think prosecutors who are naturally reluctant to invite appeals and legal challenges, they're right to stay away from this particular law.

BERMAN: Professor, you mentioned the former president himself. Do you think the former president should be charged with insurrection?

TRIBE: Well, he certainly gave aid and comfort to this group. He said that he loved them. He rallied them on. He cheered them on from his safe perch in front of the White House.

I'm not going to judge the evidence in advance, but it seems to me that the Department of Justice would be remiss, and my other former student Merrick Garland, would be remiss if he didn't take seriously the possibility of charging the former president with insurrection. After all, he has been sued under related statutes, both by Eric Swalwell and by Bennie Thompson, members of Congress. Those lawsuits I think are very strong.

And with all respect to one of my favorite former students, Jeff Toobin, I think the fact that there would be legal problems in doing this for the first time is not a reason not to do it. There's always a first time, and this was the first insurrection that we've had since the Civil War. Besides, all of the issues could go forward at the same time.

BERMAN: Do you think it would give the former president political ammunition, though, if he were acquitted, as student Toobin suggests he might be, and Donald Trump can walk around and say I was acquitted of insurrection, there was no insurrection?

TOOBIN: Isn't there a civil liberties question here, Larry? I mean, isn't -- criminal law is a very blunt tool. I mean, you're not talking about criticizing someone. You're not talking about charging them with money damages. You're talking about locking them up in prison. I mean, that's what criminal cases are about.

TRIBE: Right.

TOOBIN: To do so in -- with a law that, you know, has almost never been applied, that is, you know, written in archaic language at the heart of its word "insurrection" is not something that is commonly in parlance and that we all know what it means.

Isn't that troubling to think you could lock people up for that when, you know, we don't really know what it means?

TRIBE: Jeff, I think I taught you pretty well. You're making a good argument, but you're not convincing me. It seems to me that no one is above the law. And a law like this may have some blurry edges. There may be some close cases where it's not clear there was an insurrection.

But we were all watching an insurrection on January 6th. Whatever an insurrection is includes storming the capitol, killing guards, squeezing them behind walls, threatening to hang the vice president of the United States, and interrupting the conduct of a serious constitutional role by the Congress of the United States, namely, carrying out the Electoral Count Act of 1887.

The fact that these laws were passed long ago seems to me to have no significance at all. They were passed long ago. They have served their purpose, but finally, there was an insurrection. And unless we punish it as such, we are going to invite more such chaos and perhaps the end of democracy.

TOOBIN: Well, let's be clear. I am not suggesting immunity for these folks. Our disagreement is about what precise charges that should be filed.

There are lots of charges that have been filed, should be filed, will be tried or result in guilty pleas from these cases. The issue is, should that include insurrection? And at this point, I don't think so.

TRIBE: The reason it should is that, guess what? It was an insurrection. We are living through the era of the big lie where we refuse to call things what they are.

It seems to me that the only way to survive as a democracy is to start telling the truth. This was an insurrection by anyone's definition, and that's what makes it peculiarly dangerous. It's not dangerous just because there was some assault and battery and theft. It's dangerous because it was an attack on the very functioning of our democratic system, the selection of a new president.

Unless we treat that as a distinctive thing which Congress long ago decided we should, we are not living up to our responsibilities as citizens.

[08:25:01]

BERMAN: Professor Laurence Tribe and your one-time young padawan, Jeffrey Toobin, thank you both fore being with us this morning.

TOOBIN: What's a padawan?

BERMAN: "Star Wars", "Star Wars." Professor Tribe knows that.

All right. Thank you both very much.

Just in, George W. Bush speaking out about the exit from Afghanistan he calls it a mistake. This is unusual language from George W. Bush. You'll want to hear this.

KEILAR: And two tales of Mike Pompeo. What the secretary of state was saying publicly versus privately about the election. We roll the tape, next.

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KEILAR: He was America's top diplomat in the Trump administration, but we're now learning that Mike Pompeo was singing a different tune in public than he was behind the scenes, when the integrity of American democracy was at stake.

In Michael Bender's new book about the weeks after the election, Bender writes, quote, Pompeo expressed concern to one official that Trump might view a foreign conflict as a way to strengthen his hand in his fight to stay in the office. Pompeo suggested regular calls with Meadows and Milley so that they could keep the temperature down in hot spots down overseas.

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