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Unvaccinated Cases, Hospitalizations Rising as Variant Spreads; Florida Sets Grim New Record for Daily Total COVID Cases; Trump to DOJ, Just Say the Election was Corrupt, Leave Rest to Me. Aired 7- 7:30a ET

Aired August 02, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Scared for their lives, frankly.

[07:00:01]

They know that the Taliban is targeting them. I talked to some of them last week. And some of them were worried that they wouldn't be accepted to the programs with the certain restrictions that are in place, so this expands some of those who cannot fly.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY: Yes, they have reason to be scared as well. Kylie, thank you so much for that reporting.

And New Day continues right now.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: I'm John Berman with Brianna Keilar on this New Day.

The crisis of the unvaccinated takes a new turn as hospitals fall victim to the refusals by many to get the shot.

KEILAR: Plus, can employers and governments mandate that you take the vaccine? We'll have legal answers to that ahead.

BERMAN: The Donald Trump alternate universe as his former chief of staff says the cabinet is meeting together for something big.

KEILAR: And Kevin McCarthy making jokes about assaulting Nancy Pelosi with the speaker's gavel once the Republican Party gets it back.

BERMAN: Good morning to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. It is Monday, August 2nd.

The pandemic of the unvaccinated accelerating, 35 states have seen cases rise by more than 50 percent since last week. Hospitalizations are rising, nearly 44,000 Americans are hospitalized right now. That's the highest number since April.

Dr. Anthony Fauci says he does not expect lockdowns but he is warning that there are dark days and weeks ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We're looking to some pain and suffering in the future because we're seeing the cases go up, which is the reason why we keep saying over and over again the solution to this is get vaccinated and this would not be happening.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: The CDC is stressing more than 99.999 percent of people who are fully vaccinated against COVID have not had a breakthrough case resulting in hospitalization or death. That kind of messaging and a healthy dose of fear may actually be working because the pace of vaccinations is actually picking up. The seven-day average is up 26 percent from three weeks ago. We have reporters covering the latest developments across the country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: I'm Randi Kaye in Palm Beach County, Florida, where we are seeing a spike in coronavirus cases in the last week or so, more than 110,000 cases here in the state of Florida. The average daily average is about 15,000 that we've seen in the last day or so. There's also a lot of concern as students return to the classrooms.

The governor here has said there is no mask mandate allowed. He's issued an executive order banning a mask mandate in the classrooms. He wants parents to be able to decide.

Meanwhile, over the last week or so, more than 10,000 children under the age of 12 have tested positive for COVID.

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Natasha Chen in Atlanta. Several school districts in the metro area are resuming in- person classes soon, including DeKalb County here today and Atlanta public schools and Gwinnett County public schools later this week. Those school districts do have a mask requirement. But some other school systems, including ones that start class next week, do not.

Meanwhile, a charter school in Atlanta that started their school year last Tuesday already have more than dozen positive test cases resulting in more than 100 students in quarantine. That charter school does have a mask requirement. But now there are conversations about whether to mandate vaccines among employees at that school.

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I'm Elizabeth Cohen in Atlanta. Health officials in Austin, Texas, say that are reaching, quote, a critical point in ICU availability, availability for beds in the intensive care unit. They say there are very limited number of beds available in an 11-county region.

Other hospitals in other parts of the country also saying they're seeing shortages and, of course, the vast majority, nearly all of the people who are sick in the hospital with COVID are the unvaccinated.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: All right. As you heard from Randi Kaye at the beginning there, Florida is now the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. Over the weekend, the state set a new record with more than 21,000 daily new cases. That's the highest number since the beginning of the pandemic. The previous record was over 19,000 cases set way back in January.

Joining us now is Nikki Fried. She is the Florida agricultural commissioner and she is seeking Democratic nomination for governor to take on Republican Ron DeSantis. Commissioner, thank you for being with us.

What went wrong in Florida?

NIKKI FRIED (D), FLORIDA AGRICULTURAL COMMISSIONER: Well, a lot of things, unfortunately, have gone wrong. We have a governor who has put his head in the sand from day one when it comes to the coronavirus and he just does not operate well under crisis.

[07:05:03]

And that's what's happening here in the state. So at a time when we needed leadership to be giving daily reporting numbers, which he stopped two months ago, he's traveling around the state, working on his 2024 presidential bid.

And so right now, he's not pushing vaccines, he's not pushing testing, and instead doing just the opposite, almost having an anti-mask, anti- vaccination tour around our state, trying to make sure that people are getting misinformation.

So, what's happening here in our state is that people are not getting vaccinated, they're not understanding the severity, what is happening right now. And I'm really encouraging everybody to do their part, go out, get the shot. It's really easy. Start taking those precautions again. We know how to beat this virus. We have the tools in our shed. We need to start using them.

BERMAN: To be fair, Ron DeSantis is not anti-vax, per se. And he has received the vaccine and supports people getting the vaccine. I understand your argument he may not be doing enough to get people vaccinated but to call him anti-vax I don't think is particularly fair.

I want to know what you specifically would do differently. Governor DeSantis has barred schools from instituting mask mandates. What's your feeling about kids wearing masks in schools?

FRIED: Look, we know that right now we're seeing increases in cases all across the country with our children under the age of 12. And we're seeing it here in the state of Florida. We know that hospitalizations are up across the state, that we're seeing more and more cases of our children testing positive, which we hadn't seen in the first rounded of COVID outbreak last year.

So it's up to us to let our local school boards, ones that are elected from their local communities, to be making these decisions with the parents. Because my concern is this, we start schools in a couple of weeks. We already know that schools are a hot bed for bacteria and for other types of illnesses. And so it's going to spread like wildfire into our school systems. And it's one thing I'm going to choose to put my children in a mask and another family chooses not to, the problem is those families are going to be exposing other children to it.

So it's really important that the local school boards would have had the power to do this, and same thing with our local governments. Our local governments and our corporations are the ones that got us through this pandemic in 2020. But, unfortunately, this governor also has handicapped our local governments by not allowing them to do any kind of restrictions, whether it's mask mandates or curfews or trying to put out correct information. We're not even getting daily reporting here in this state.

BERMAN: Let me ask you this, so, again, would you favor a statewide mask mandate for schools?

FRIED: I have, last year, had talked about mandating mask mandates and making sure that everybody was moving forward together with mask mandates. And right now, that's really important. Every county needs to make up their own decisions.

BERMAN: Okay. So no statewide mask mandate?

FRIED: No statewide mask mandate but I certainly would want every school board to have the power to make what's right decisions for their own communities.

BERMAN: Were you elected governor tomorrow, which I know is not the case, the election is still some time away, if you were governor today, would you require state employees in Florida to be vaccinated?

FRIED: No, and I have the power to do so inside my Department of Agriculture. And so we would not be requiring vaccinations but we would really be doing more to encourage, to incentivize, to make sure we're having those hard conversations with individuals who are not getting the vaccines, to make sure they understand you're putting your colleagues, your friends, your family members in jeopardy by making a what I consider a selfish decision unless you have a medical reason why you can't get the vaccine, you're putting other people at risk for decision that you are making. So --

BERMAN: The federal government is requiring vaccinations, if you're not, you have to go through a strict testing regimen. So, you're not supporting that?

FRIED: You know, I'm supporting is again still personal choice but I certainly would want people to be vaccinated, have those conversations, really being encouraging. And right now, that is not what we're seeing here in the state of Florida. We're not seeing our governor going out there, opening up vaccine sites, talking about it, going around the state encouraging people to get the vaccines.

You know, and so he is spreading a lot of misinformation out there, including about masks, in general, and making fun of Dr. Fauci, selling campaign merchandise.

BERMAN: Yes, he's campaigning against Anthony Fauci instead of right now campaigning against you or the other Democrats who might be running against him.

Last question, as you said, he canceled the daily updates in terms of coronavirus. You started giving daily updates here in your department. What exactly are you doing?

FRIED: Yes. So, every single day, we've been having an update, whether it's from our capital in our cabinet room or my office yesterday, because the people of our state want to know what's going on. And information is key in order to be able to be proactive in making sure we're working together.

So we have been stepping up to the plate to fill the void that the governor is right now left our state and not talking about coronavirus. So we are taking every single opportunity to give information from the Department of Health, from the CDC, giving advice about when to wear masks, how to get vaccinated and to really be encouraging people of our state to be doing everything possible to get in front of this outbreak before we start seeing more deaths.

[07:10:11]

Our hospitals are at capacity.

And it's unfortunate that we just don't have leadership right now that is really making our state very vulnerable right now without that type of leadership.

BERMAN: Well, it's a dangerous situation in Florida. We certainly hope the numbers turn around at some point soon. Commissioner Nikki Fried, we appreciate you being with us this morning.

FRIED: Thank you.

KEILAR: Our next guest was hesitant about getting the vaccine. He said, I am from Tuskegee, Alabama, we don't do vaccines. His fears stemming from the Tuskegee experiment performed unethically on hundreds of black men over the decades in his hometown.

But our guest changed his mind as coronavirus began to take the lives of his loved ones, including his beloved god brother who was not vaccinated and died of the disease two weeks ago. Timothy Moore is joining us now.

Timothy, I'm so sorry for your loss. I know that you and your family are really struggling. I know you miss him very much and very glad to talk with you about this.

So, let's start at the beginning. I think historically with where you're from, it makes a lot of sense that you would have some vaccine hesitancy. Tell us about it.

TIMOTHY MOORE, TEACHER AND POET, VACCINE HESISTANT UNTIL COVID CHANGED HIS LIFE: Yes. I'm Timothy Moore from Tuskegee, Alabama. And I'm very proud to be from Tuskegee. And in Tuskegee, of course, we had the experiment that happened and most people don't understand the concept and the totality of what really happened there.

The government wasn't injecting black people, they were willingly watching black people and specifically black men respond to syphilis in their bodies, in their black bodies. They were going back to their wives and their girlfriends and they became totality of the community because now there's a whole community affected.

So there became a real hesitancy around anything that was (INAUDIBLE) or a vaccine to the black community because of what had happened, because of first-hand accounts of what we have seen.

So, going forward, my mother and father, they just recently opened up to the idea of having a flu vaccine. And we're talking about a 60 and 59-year-old just now getting around the trauma of being in Tuskegee and hearing those accounts and seeing the actual affects of that over my lifetime.

So, growing up, we always had totality and holistic aspects of how to treat our bodies with care and vitamins and water and natural herbs, such as mint, and in (INAUDIBLE) they would heal the body. So we tried to stay away from vaccines and anything that was injected or anything foreign from our bodies. So, in the back of my mind, that was always something that just kind of lingered into my adulthood.

KEILAR: Yes. And I think that makes a lot of sense when you explain the history and how it affects the community still. You got COVID. It swept through your family in December, the end of this last year. And you watched -- it ravaged your family. Tell me about that.

MOORE: I mean, absolutely ravaged my family. I am a very outgoing person. I live on the stage. I spoke where our artists in Memphis are traveling through the nation. So, it immediately took a hold on my personal life and my personal finances because now I can't tour, now I can't take care of my family. I'm in education. I love educating young people and seeing young people grow.

And now I can't be in the classroom because I'm stuck in a bed and I'm just trying to struggle for my life being asthmatic. No, I'm just trying to breathe. And people don't understand how damaging and how vicious this disease is. This coronavirus is just a massive blow to your body and to your mind, because in those days, I couldn't even get up out of the bed. And what's worse is now when it spreads to your kids, my three daughters -- I'm proud to be like Kobe, I'm a girl dad.

And I'm very proud of being a dad girl. I'm seeing these three girls go through it. I'm watching my baby that's less than two at the time, she was one, struggle and have a fever and I'm trying to break it and watching my girlfriend, Andrea Finchen (ph), who I absolutely love can't get out of the body and she's a warrior. She takes care of family and our girls and she couldn't get out of the bed.

And my baby girl, my big girl, I love to call her Yanni (ph), she's a model and just a beautiful woman, just sitting in the bed and just struggling and being to go forward from not even sickness to death to losing my god brother, Ulysses Jones, as I officially call him June, June baby, and to bury him just Saturday, this Saturday, from two weeks ago he passed away.

[07:15:04]

And watching just such a steady rapid decline of him passing away is devastating. I miss my brother so much, and then my best friend, Darius Models (ph).

KEILAR: And, look, I know you have parallels, right? You were about the same age. You see yourself in him.

MOORE: Yes. And so you decided that you were going to get vaccinated. Tell us your message -- look, it's not that you don't have your concerns, it's that you now seem to be weighing your concerns and the virus seems to be so concerning to you that the vaccination makes sense. What is your message for what people who are in your shoes should do as they try to make this decision?

MOORE: You know, when you start talking about decisions and medical and HIPAA and everybody's right to their own personal health and their own personal body, I completely understand. I'm an advocate of women's rights to have their right to their body. I'm advocate of black people having access to their body and just having the wherewithal to be able to make those choices.

But when you're making those choices, you're also making the choice for community. And I think being somebody from the community that always advocates for the community, always advocates for love, then we have to love our community more than ourselves. And when we sacrifice like that, that is the true epitome of love.

So, what my advice to people would be to love. I had to watch as we buried a good friend of mine. Darius Models (ph) is leading football and watching young men progress their lives from poverty to nothing through academics and football, and we had to bury him, couldn't go to the funeral because of COVID. I had to bury my brother because of COVID.

So, when we start talking about the effects of COVID upon the body and the mind and the spirit, that's what we're really looking at. So, my only advice is we have to have hard conversations about community. And when we start having hard conversations about community and loving and loving community and loving self, then you have to look at the facts and the facts are this vaccine is very safe and the coronavirus has been around for decades.

This is just a variant. So it's not just a popup of some random vaccine that just came out of nowhere. This is time tested over time with some of the best minds got together.

So my own hesitancy, I still get nervous about the long-term effects of what may be later on down the line because we're not sure yet. But what I am sure of is we're burying people right now. Families and loved ones are being devastated and completely destroyed by this pandemic. And because of a virus that we can control by being loved, by being masked up, by being vaccinated, by caring about people, by loving our community and sacrificing.

KEILAR: Timothy, it is a beautiful message from you as you're going through just a devastating period of grief. And I thank you for coming on this morning.

MOORE: No, I thank you for everything you do, for -- if I can just help one person not go through the sorrow that I'm feeling -- like I'm fighting back tears right now because I'm thinking about the people that I've lost. I'm thinking about how many other people around the nation. I'm thinking about the black people that I represent right now and everyone that has been devastated by this pandemic, and I just send love to everybody.

And just spoken word of arts, I feel that my platform is we have to show love and sacrifice and just be there. I appreciate you. Thank you for having me on New Day.

KEILAR: Thank you, Timothy. I really appreciate it.

He certainly has a way with words, John, I will say, as he's giving his message to people about a different way to think about this, that hopefully will get through to some people.

BERMAN: Yes. He says sending love. He's doing more than sending just love, right? He's helping. He's sending help. He's doing his part to get the message out. And it's such an important message at this point, you know, when people don't need to learn the lesson with the pain that he had either.

KEILAR: Yes. The pain is incredible. I mean, his god brother, losing other family members and watching his kids struggle. That was the other thing, watching little kids struggle. I think a lot of us think, oh, kids are going to be fine. But he's saying, look, I was watching my daughter have a really tough time and it was very difficult, as you can imagine.

Tomorrow, these are some of the things we're going to be talking about, a very special edition of New Day in our 8:00 hour, answering your questions about the new coronavirus surge. You can tweet your questions to us directly. You can also submit them online at cnn.com/coronavirusquestions.

And there are some new disturbing revelations on how far Donald Trump went in attempts to get the election overturned. And what one lawyer calls the worst crime committed by a president ever.

BERMAN: Plus, the violent joke that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy made over the weekend about House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

[07:20:04]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: Former President Trump pressured the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, to say that the 2020 election was corrupt, hoping it would help Republicans in Congress try to overturn the results. That's according to notes taken by then Acting Deputy A.G. Richard Donoghue on a December 2020 phone call, which reflects that Trump said, quote, just say that the election was corrupt and leave the rest to me and our congressmen.

Joining us now, CNN Political Analyst and Washington Correspondent for the New York Times Maggie Haberman.

Maggie, that doesn't leave much to the imagination there.

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: It's not subtle.

BERMAN: No.

HABERMAN: Look, this is very, very serious.

[07:25:00]

This is the most blatant thing that we have heard so far that former President Trump tried to do to influence parts of his government to undermine the election.

Now, we knew he was talking about fraud. We knew that he was making allegations that the election was rigged. We knew that he was making all kinds of statements, you know, or at least he was saying these things to people behind the scenes because he wasn't seeing that publicly. But this is the starkest example that we have of what he was trying to do to use the levers of his government to keep himself in power.

And, again, this is -- we're just hearing about this now. This is now several months after this call took place. We don't know what is yet to come out. And more, significantly, people around Trump also don't necessarily know what is yet to come out because he doesn't tell everybody these phone calls that he has.

KEILAR: And, Maggie, what could have happened if the DOJ didn't hold on this?

HABERMAN: Look, this is I think a really important piece here, because what we have seen over time is a number of officials were pressured in one way or another to do something of this nature. Now, we saw in Congress a number of members voted not to affirm the election that President Biden won. But, look, if DOJ had not gone along -- excuse me, if DOJ had not stood strong, if DOJ said, sure, we'll say, yes, there is something wrong with this. A, it would be unprecedented ground, we have not seen anything like this, and B, it would have had not just impact on the past election but it would have so undermined confidence in elections in this country going forward.

There are a number of officials who pushed back on what Trump was asking. This is yet another bucket in which we're learning of it. But it is significant and it followed what Bill Barr had done, which was investigate, you know, quote/unquote, investigate, claims that former President Trump was making about election fraud. And he said to Trump very bluntly, these are not true.

And so what we saw over time was not just Trump sort of trying to push one person but Trump going from one person to another hoping that he was going to find a weak point where he could press.

BERMAN: Trying to find a weak point to use the levers of government power to overturn an election, all right.

Over the weekend, the former president's final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, gave an interview where he talked about a meeting that he was part of with the former president and other people and the language here, and we're going to play it, very curious. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARK MEADOWS, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: I wanted to join you to talk about, really, a president that is fully engaged, highly focused and remaining on task.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Chief, do you want to break any news from your meetings with President Trump?

MEADWOS: Well, we've met with some of our cabinet members tonight. We actually had a follow-up member meeting with some of our cabinet members. And as we were looking in that, we're looking at what does come next.

We wouldn't be meeting tonight if we weren't making plans to move forward in a real way and with President Trump at the head of that ticket.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right. The language choice there seems very specific, very intentional and curious, Maggie. In light of a few things, one, it raises questions about whether or not Donald Trump will run for president again, but it also plays into this notion, right, that this conspiracy, this QAnon notion that somehow he could be reinstated. It's all in present tense. The president is doing this. He's meeting with his cabinet now. What do you make of it?

HABERMAN: Look, the most charitable explanation is that Mark Meadows is playing to the audience of one, which is Donald Trump. Knowing that Donald Trump is watching this, Mark Meadows is actually one of the people who I think has spoken less about the idea of fraud. Publicly, he seems to me to be trying to straddle a line.

And while that's fine and, you know, I understand that he has his constituencies with president -- former President Trump, there are a bunch of people who believe -- a bunch of Trump supporters who believe this conspiracy theory, which is false, that he could get reinstated. Trump himself has tried to push his own aides to keep talking about that idea publicly. A bunch of them have resisted doing it.

So, Mark Meadows is not a dumb man, knows if he is saying something like that. There is a risk that people are going to hear it and they're going to take it seriously. I realize that harkens back to the whole literally seriously debate with Donald Trump, which was always pretty meaningless. The reality is that former presidents don't have cabinets and they don't have cabinet meetings.

And this creates this -- that's not how we describe re--election meetings in this country or election meetings in this country. And this just creates this expectation for some of Trump supporters who are looking for permission structure to keep believing that there's some alternate universe going on.

KEILAR: Exactly. It was very much welcome to the alternate universe where Donald Trump is still the president, which, of course, many people, many of his followers believe. He does, going forward, at least have the money for a political future, Maggie. He went into July, his political operation did, with over $100 million in cash reserves.

HABERMAN: Yes. So, Trump has enormous war chest right now. And that is going to look -- it's not a campaign war chest. It is money that is in a PAC. And there are different rules for how it can be spent, but certainly makes him enormously formidable, it makes him hard to ignore.

[07:30:04]

And it's going to give pause to a number of Republicans who are looking at running for 2024.