Return to Transcripts main page

New Day

Taliban Rapidly Taking Territory in Afghanistan as U.S. Troops Sent in to Evacuate U.S. Embassy in Kabul; Four Teachers from Broward County, Florida, Die of COVID in Single Day; Hospital Where Don Lemon Was Born Full of COVID Patients. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired August 13, 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]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. I'm John Berman with Brianna Keilar. Fast moving developments, lightning fast. And now Afghanistan is a country on the brink. Overnight, more cities fell to the Taliban, including the country's second largest, Kandahar. Insurgents have now taken at least 14 provincial capitals in a weeklong blitz, and military experts now say they expect that the Afghan government will lose control of the capital soon.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: The Biden administration is scrambling in the face of this stunningly fast, unexpected fall after the U.S. withdrawal. U.S. at this point now sending some 3,000 troops to help safely evacuate staff from the U.S. embassy in Kabul. And that is where CNN's Clarissa Ward is joining us from this morning. This is -- this is something to behold how swiftly this is moving, Clarissa.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It truly is. I don't think anyone could have predicted this in their wild imagination. And the thing that is so striking here on the ground in Kabul, Brianna, is the deafening silence from the Afghan government. We haven't heard any from them -- anything from them literally as this country is unraveling.

You mentioned all these provincial capitals have fallen. Kandahar, the second largest city in the country, a city with huge strategic significance, huge spiritual symbolism for the Taliban. That used to be the capital of their Islamic emirate, and yet we are not hearing anything from the government about how they plan to deal with this situation.

As a result of that, we're seeing the U.S. taking swift action. We know those 3,000 U.S. troops arriving in country here today and tomorrow. They are going to be withdrawing U.S. embassy personnel on military aircraft to get them out of here as the security situation continues to deteriorate. We don't know yet how many of them are being evacuated, and they're

not using the word "evacuate," but from here on the ground, that's very much what it looks like, an evacuation. And there is widespread panic here in Kabul as people really try to work out what on earth they're going to do next, whether they can stay, how can they leave, where can they go for safety. We've been contacted by a number of people desperate to get out of the country. A lot of also international actors, NGO workers, et cetera, already boarding planes and leaving the country. So there is very much a sense right now, Brianna and John, that this is a country on the brink of collapse.

BERMAN: We talk about the Afghan government. You talk about Afghanistan as a country. But for the official Afghan government, what country exists at this point? I mean, how much more is it than Kabul where you are, Clarissa?

WARD: Well, that's just it. Really what you're talking about now is an island which is Kabul here, the capital city. It's a large city, and I want to make it clear from what we're seeing on the ground, it's relatively calm at the moment. It's an eerie, tense, bizarre calm, but nonetheless, it is calm.

We're hearing from U.S. intelligence officials, though, that this city could be surrounded within 30 days and completely isolated. So the question now becomes, what does the Taliban want to see happen next? They are clearly very much in the driving seat. And for all those parties who are now in Doha, Qatar, trying to hash out not just a peace agreement, but also some kind of an agreement whereby the U.S. can get Taliban permission, essentially, to bring those 3,000 troops in to withdraw those U.S. embassy personnel safely, the question then becomes, what does the Taliban want to see happen next? Does Afghan president Ashraf Ghani find himself in a situation where he now has to resign? Will that be enough to satisfy the Taliban?

There are still so many questions. A stunning lack of clarity right now. And I think many Afghans on the ground feeling a real lack of leadership.

KEILAR: Clarissa, it is obviously a dire situation there. Clarissa Ward live for us in Kabul. And joining us now to talk more about this is Fareed Zakaria. He is of course the host of CNN's "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS." What's your reaction to what you're seeing, Fareed?

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS": There's no question the collapse of the Afghan forces is happening much faster than people predicted. But it's worth pointing out that there was a kind of an unreal calm for the prior two years, which is, we thought, with just a few thousand American troops, we were somehow holding this country together. That wasn't ream really the case.

[08:05:00]

The Taliban had decided not to fight, because when Trump agreed to withdraw troops down to about 3,000, the Taliban agreed to negotiate. So, there was a period there where it looked like the place was calm, but the real story is that for 10 years the Taliban had been making inroads, and for 10 years the Taliban had been taking towns. American forces were able to go back when they were 50,000, 60,000, 70,000, and retake them. But I think what you're seeing is the reality that after 20 years of training, after God knows, $1 trillion, there is no real Afghan army that is able to defend its country.

BERMAN: Fareed, the question is, even if this may have been inevitable at some point, was this inevitable now, this quickly, and in this fashion? Because the Biden administration and the president himself didn't seem to think so just several weeks ago. Let's listen to what the president said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Is the Taliban takeover of Afghan now inevitable?

JOE BIDEN, (D) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, it is not.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Why?

BIDEN: Because you have the Afghan troops have 300,000 well equipped, as well equipped as any army in the world, and an air force against something like 75,000 Taliban. It is not inevitable. The jury is still out. But the likelihood there is going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Well, it looks highly likely -- in fact, it looks inevitable and inevitable soon, Fareed. So, again, my question is, even if you think this was going to happen at some point, could the U.S. have done something to make it less disorderly, less chaotic, less lightning fast?

ZAKARIA: I think that the real decision, as I said, was made by Donald Trump. That is, at 3,000 troops I don't think so. Look, at most, 3,000 troops can do force protection of themselves. But if you were at 15, 20, yes, probably there were ways to stop it. Remember that would have come with a bunch of coalition forces as well.

But again, the real story -- listen to what Joe Biden said. It reminds me so much of what you read and heard about South Vietnam. American official would keep pointing out that the South Vietnamese army on paper had these many troops and so many weapons and a sophisticated air force. It didn't matter because fundamentally they weren't willing to fight. And what you're seeing in many of these Afghan towns, the most telltale sign is the Taliban is taking them over without much of a fight. The Afghan troops just melt away.

Now, if we stayed there, could we have kept this all together another few years, if we stayed in large numbers? Probably. But isn't that telling, 20 years, $1 trillion, and an army of 300,000 just melts away in town after town?

BERMAN: Melts away, and fast. Fareed Zakaria, we are watching this unfold, and it may just be unfolding over the next days. We're not talking months anymore -- days or weeks. We appreciate you being with us. I'm sure we'll talk to you again.

ZAKARIA: Pleasure.

BERMAN: All right, more breaking news. We have a sad development we just learned of out of Florida. WFOR is reporting that four teachers from Broward County have died of COVID in a single day. The teachers' union chief told the affiliate that three of the four, at least three of the four, were unvaccinated. The status of the fourth not currently known. The county, of course, in a tense standoff with Governor Ron DeSantis over masks. DeSantis is threatening the district for requiring masks to be worn in the schools. Since August 1st we're told Broward County had 138 employees test positive.

KEILAR: That is stunning, right, that number. And as we understand it, two of these teachers are from the same school. I think this is going to -- this is going to be met, obviously, with a lot of grief by that community, and it's just showing the cost of COVID there, especially for the unvaccinated.

BERMAN: In one day. And this is the context with which these officials in Broward County are asking for the freedom to make the decision that they think are right for their schools.

KEILAR: Yes, to protect not just the kids, right, but the teachers as well.

And up next, CNN's Don Lemon is returning to his hometown to find a harsh reality -- pain and regret at the very hospital where he was born.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:13:32]

KEILAR: New overnight, the FDA approving a third dose of the coronavirus vaccine for millions of immunocompromised Americans. And this authorization is coming as hospitals grow more overwhelmed by the day. Nearly 80,000 Americans right now hospitalized with COVID. That is the most we have seen in six months, by the way. And half of all of these COVID patients are in eight states that you see here on this map.

BERMAN: One of those states, Mississippi, is seeing its highest hospitalization numbers ever. Republican Governor Tate Reeves is extending a state of emergency but says there will be no lockdown or mask mandates. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is deploying a rapid response team to fight his state's coronavirus surge with antibody treatments, but he's still refusing to allow schools and local communities the freedom to make their own decisions about how to battle COVID in their areas and they are threatening to withhold salaries of schools districts that try to make those decisions.

Louisiana now has the second highest rate of new infections in the country behind Florida, and its low vaccination rate means that hospitals there are overwhelmed. So CNN's Don Lemon went back home to Baton Rouge. He visited the

hospital where he was born. He's going to join us live in just a moment. But first, this is what Don found.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DON LEMON, CNN HOST, "DON LEMON TONIGHT": Baton Rouge General Mid City is bursting at the seams.

You have more patients here with COVID than without?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: That is correct.

LEMON: At General Hospital in your lifetime, you haven't seen anything like this?

[08:15:03]

DR. VENKAT BANDA, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, BATON ROUGE GENERAL HOSPITAL IN MID CITY: I have never seen one illness occupying 90 percent of the resource and 90 percent of the beds.

LEMON: What's going on?

BANDA: The delta. That's the new virus. It's more contagious, it's more virulent and now it's catching people that have not been vaccinated.

LEMON: Before I speak with any of the COVID patients being treated, I suit up.

BROOKE HUE, NURSE PRACTITIONER: Everyone does this to go into patient room. They have some type of covering for their clothes.

LEMON: So every day, all of you guys are doing this.

HUE: Yes, sir.

LEMON: This is a lot.

HUE: It's a lot.

LEMON: Here is 53-year-old Jim. He's unvaccinated, and so is his brother. Until yesterday, Jim and his brother were in here together. The brother got well enough to be discharged, and Jim hopes he'll be as lucky.

How are you doing?

JIM, COVID-19 PATIENT: Doing good.

LEMON: Yeah?

JIM: Doing a lot better.

LEMON: You and your brother were here? JIM: Yes, sir.

LEMON: What happened?

JIM: We just got COVID and got sick, went to the hospital and they didn't have a place, they sent us here. He come down two days before me. He left yesterday going home. I was in ICU for three days. That's a good sign.

LEMON: How is your brother?

JIM: He's doing good. He got out this morning. He was at home, first night home last night.

LEMON: What does that feel like?

JIM: You can't get air.

LEMON: Why didn't you get vaccinated?

JIM: Hadn't had time. I guess just do it.

LEMON: So you're not anti-vaccine?

JIM: No, sir.

LEMON: Just ambivalent about it?

JIM: Yeah, just cast it off.

LEMON: Do you regret it?

JIM: Yes, I do.

LEMON: Tell me why.

JIM: I don't know if a shot would have helped me. Maybe it would have prevented me from getting worse.

LEMON: What do you say to folks?

JIM: Open your eyes. You know, open your eyes. Take heed to this. This is nothing to play with.

LEMON: He says he's not anti-vaccine. He just didn't have the time.

TRISHA GUIDRY, CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER, BATON ROUGE GENERAL HOSPITAL MID CITY: Yeah.

LEMON: You find that a lot?

GUIDRY: Yeah, a lot of people -- some people are anti-vaccine. Some people just don't think it is as important, I guess, if you will. They don't think it's going to happen to them. And unfortunately what we're seeing here is it can happen to anybody. LEMON: I'm aware I'm in a hospital full of patients with the delta

variant, and so is the staff. There is strict protocol to try to keep the deadly virus from spreading.

So you have to change every time you go to a different --

GUIDRY: (INAUDIBLE) outside is clean space. Inside is dirty space. Makes sense?

LEMON: Yes.

GUIDRY: So we keep COVID behind these walls.

LEMON: Got it. That's a lot that you guys have to go there.

GUIDRY: It's time consuming, but we do what we have to do to protect everybody, the healthy and the sick.

LEMON: Let's do it. Is there some art to this? So, I'm getting my new PPE because I left a different section or different ward, is that right?

GUIDRY: Different unit.

LEMON: Different unit.

GUIDRY: Um-hmm.

LEMON: So now wherever I go, I have to have completely new PPE because they he don't want to get me or anyone contaminated. Or bring something from another ward, another area.

Okay.

GUIDRY: Ready?

LEMON: I'm ready.

The next room I visit I meet 40-year-old mother of four Maxine Sawyer. 11 days ago she came to the hospital thinking she was having a heart attack. She wasn't.

Were you freaking out?

MAXINE SAWYER, COVID-19 PATIENT: I didn't freak out. I didn't freak out. I was shocked when they said I had COVID.

LEMON: Why?

SAWYER: I don't go anywhere. We had been quarantining, disinfecting, doing everything that we're supposed to do. And I still ended up with the virus. My children got tested immediately. I'm the only one. That ended up with it.

LEMON: Maxine said she and her family had been mainly staying home since the beginning of the pandemic, only going out to see doctors. She thinks that's how she got the virus.

Let me ask you. Why didn't you get vaccinated?

SAWYER: Me, myself, I thought that I was being safe because I've been quarantining since the beginning of the pandemic. The reason I didn't get vaccinated, my choice was I wanted to wait, let this first batch go through, you know, see how it worked. But before I got sick, I was thinking about getting vaccinated and I was speaking to my children about it.

[08:20:06]

I didn't make it in time. I got sick, before I could get vaccinated.

LEMON: Being in the hospital is hard. But in some ways, the conversation with her children is even harder.

SAWYER: If mommy doesn't make it home, you guys know I love you. I have raised you up the right way. I have made sure that you guys have grown up close. They're best friends. And you guys have to be strong and make mommy proud.

LEMON: That could not have been easy.

SAWYER: No. Never. Never is.

LEMON: What was -- did you ever think you were going to die?

SAWYER: I knew it was a possibility. To experience death around me constantly was a huge ordeal for me.

LEMON: You saw people dying here?

SAWYER: Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Younger than me, healthier than me, you know. And it affects -- even though I don't know these people, you experience a code blue or laughter in the -- when the staff turns to silence because they're heartbroken because they just lost somebody. You know, it -- it does something, you know?

LEMON: What?

SAWYER: It's like, you realize just how precious life is. And how we take the smallest things for granted, like a single breath. One single breath we take for granted.

LEMON: Nobody is vaccinated at home?

SAWYER: Nobody is vaccinated at home yet.

LEMON: How many of y'all?

SAWYER: It is five of us.

LEMON: Children?

SAWYER: Yes. LEMON: Ages?

SAWYER: Twenty, 18, 14, and one and a half.

LEMON: And you wanted to wait --

SAWYER: For myself.

LEMON: What about for them?

SAWYER: I spoke to them about it and I honestly think that they were afraid.

LEMON: Afraid of what?

SAWYER: The time, how quickly the vaccine was presented. I think that was a big thing.

For myself, I already had under riding health conditions so I wanted to make sure it was safe for me, and we talked about it a lot. I didn't want to pressure them or push them into vaccinate or vaccinating. I wanted them to make their decision.

LEMON: The kids can stop being afraid. If all continues to go well, Maxine is scheduled to go home tomorrow.

SAWYER: The good thing about me ending up here is everybody has said, okay, if mom of all people got COVID, it's time for us to get vaccinated, the family.

LEMON: Maxine, Jim's brother, they came in through these doors, and they get to walk out. But 54 patients have died of COVID across Louisiana today, and didn't get to leave. Over 11,000 have died here across the state since the pandemic started. And the rate of hospitalizations and deaths have almost doubled in the country over the last two weeks as the delta variant surges.

They say it's a small world, and it really is, especially here in Baton Rouge. I actually met someone who went to my high school.

Did you go to Baker High School?

BRENDA CARL, COVID-19 PATIENT: I sure did.

LEMON: What year did you graduate?

CARL: A long time before you, '68.

LEMON: Oh, my gosh.

Seventy-year-old Brenda Carl said she was admitted to the hospital Saturday with double pneumonia and COVID-19.

What were your symptoms? What happened?

CARL: I just got to where I couldn't breathe. I had no oxygen, and I was doing okay at home. I thought I was getting better, and then just the bottom fell out. You just don't know. It's a rough stuff. It really is.

LEMON: Did you know you had COVID?

CARL: Yes, I had tested positive several days before, yeah.

LEMON: Why didn't you get vaccinated?

CARL: Just apprehensive, you know? My husband got vaccinated and wanted me to, and I just thought, oh, I'll be careful, and you know?

[08:25:06]

But it's I guess needful, very needful.

LEMON: Are you going to?

CARL: I plan to get vaccinated.

LEMON: You weren't against vaccines?

CARL: Oh, no, I've always taken vaccines. I was just -- this seemed so different, you know. Just informational, I just didn't, I guess, get the information that I wanted or thought, well, it's so different. I'm not sure it's going to be a good vaccine, so.

LEMON: Yeah. What do you say to folks now?

CARL: I think everybody ought to try to get it, yeah. Yeah. If it will help prevent you from getting really sick, you know, it's going to do its thing.

LEMON: How long have you been here?

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: And Don Lemon is joining us now. Don, this is such a powerful report that you have done there, and the regret that we're hearing from those patients. What was it like, this experience?

LEMON: It was sad and frustrating and it made me question how the messaging going out, quite frankly, from all of us, from the political leaders in Washington, for us here in news media, and quite frankly, especially from the -- you know, propaganda media on the right which doesn't often operate in facts and reality.

That was the most frustrating part for me. I think that because of the attacks on our institutions in this country over the past five or six years or so, and attacks on journalism, people don't know what to believe because they hear so much rhetoric out there, and I think it's incumbent on us to make people more media literate, but it's also incumbent on the other guys to speak the truth.

And so, those people they just don't know what to believe because they've been fed such lines of B.S. for so long, that the media is fake. Here we are every single day giving people the facts, telling them what the science is saying in the moment. And as you know, this disease, this virus -- it changes, it mutates. There are variants so the science often changes.

So when it changes they use that to say, hey, you know, they're not telling you the truth. But we are.

And I think there was also what I learned as well is that by speaking with them there at the hospital and other doctors and other folks who are out there, everyone thought then that it was great, you know, get it out fast. Name it Operation Warp Speed.

That was a mistake, because just by saying warp speed, it put into people's minds, cemented that this was too fast and perhaps it had not been tested when they don't realize this sort of mRNA vaccine has been -- this medicine, this has been worked on for decades. There have been -- there was COVID before this. It wasn't COVID-19, but it was another form.

So this is not something that is exactly new. Scientists and doctors have been working on this for decades. But I think the most frustrating part for me was that it didn't have to happen. John and Brianna, it doesn't have to happen because we have something that will help you either not get it, or if you get it then you won't get as sick.

And what people don't realize is when they say, I have my freedom and I have my liberty. Of course you do. But your freedom and your liberty just does not affect you. This is a community effort, a group effort. And so if you don't -- if you are selfish, quite frankly, and you don't get the vaccine, then you are putting a strain on the resources at the hospital, people who have to work there, some of those people have been there nine days.

And then you go into the hospital and you take resources from people who are actually doing the right thing, who are getting the vaccine, and who are not inundating the hospitals. 90 percent of the people who are in that hospital of the patients there for COVID, and that's most of the hospital now, they are there because they're unvaccinated.

So you're selfish, you won't get the vaccine, you don't believe in the science, and then when you get the coronavirus, you rush to the hospital and you use the science, you take the resources which could be used for other things that you didn't have to be there for. So I just want people to keep that in mind as they are saying, I don't want to take this. I'm nervous about it.

This vaccine has been worked on for quite a long time. It's not just something that came in warp speed. And don't be selfish. Think about others, especially for people who live in the South and the Bible Belt who say that they're Christians and they believe in the bible. The Lord helps those who help themselves. That's what the governor said to me as he was doing his -- he was praying and fasting for the past couple days.

And also do unto others as you would have them do unto you, which means you are here to protect your fellow man, not to be selfish.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Don, I think it's really important to get inside these hospitals. So I want to thank you for that. Thank you for going and talking to these people.