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New Day

Judge Says, Trump Stoked Crowd and Should be Held Responsible; Damning Evidence of Trump's COVID Lies Keeps Piling Up; Drug Users Utilize Fentanyl Test Strips to Prevent Overdose. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired December 02, 2021 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I'm Meteorologist Chad Myers, and this weather here is brought to you by Servpro, making fire and water damage like it never happened, the number one choice in cleanup and restoration.

40 places across the Midwest could break records today. The records will continue for tomorrow. Places like St. Louis will be 20 degrees above where you should be. Now, colder air is coming, but we will take the warm air while we can get it because, well, Christmas and the rest of winter still already on the way. Temperature is going to be nice for a couple of spots across the Midwest as well. John?

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY: All right, Chad, thanks very much.

So, you hear worry from some companies about the supply chain and wages, but almost two full years into the COVID economy, these companies, most of them, are doing well, really well.

CNN Chief Business Correspondent Christine Romans here with that. Romans?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, John. Look, when you talk to America's CEOs, business leaders, they are, drum roll, please, bullish. Survey of executives from the prominent business roundtable, John, found CEO's outlook the strongest in the 20-year history of the survey.

Of course, the omicron factor could change that. But if history is a guide, large companies have managed very well through every twist and turn of this pandemic. Even with tangled supply chains, worker shortages, health weary costumers, the COVID economy has been remarkably profitable for the big public companies. Profits for S&P 500 companies soared 37.5 percent in the year ending in June. And according to Bloomberg, in the past two quarters, companies outside the finance industry posted their biggest profit margins in 70 years. Let me say that again, biggest profit margins since 1950. It's why stocks have doubled since the March 2020 crash. The S&P is up 20 percent this year.

Even after that November wobble there, nearly half of CEOs surveyed said worker pay was the greatest cost pressure right now. Profit margins would suggest companies are paying people more, John, and they're still making money. It is a rare Goldilocks moment, just right for the American worker who has more choices in higher pay and just right for companies raking in profits during COVID.

Caveats here, inflation eats into that worker pay, right? And Goldilocks, by the way, is wearing a mask. Delta and omicron are still health and market concerns.

John, it's impossible to predict what happens next, right? But where are we right now? The Fed chief expects the U.S. economy will grow 5 percent this year. John, as you know, that would be the most robust expansion since the Reagan administration.

BERMAN: You had me at Goldilocks is wearing a mask.

ROMANS: That's right.

BERMAN: Thank you so much, Christine. New Day continues right now.

Welcome to our viewers in the United States and all around the world. It is Thursday, December 2nd. I'm John Berman with Brianna Keilar.

And this morning, the former president in specific legal jeopardy. Is he in specific legal jeopardy for the January 6th insurrection? If not, should he be? That's the question being asked anew by court watchers and legal analysts after surprisingly blunt comments from the bench by a federal judge as she sentenced a rioter for his participation.

Judge Amy Berman Jackson, no relation, didn't mention Trump by name but she made clear who she was talking about, suggesting to the rioter, quote, there may be others who bear greater responsibility and should be held accountable. And she singled out those who, quote, deliberately stoked the flames of fear and discontent and explicitly encouraged attendees to go to the Capitol and fight for one reason and one reason only, to make sure the certification of the election didn't happen.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY: Now, Judge Jackson is not the only one suggest that Trump incited the Capitol riot. The Justice Department just released the interrogation tape of 39-year-old Daniel Rodriguez of California. And Rodriguez tearfully admits using a taser on Federal Police Officer Michael Fanone. He says he did it for his president.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's the commander-in-chief and the leader of our country, and he's calling for help. I thought he was calling for help. I thought he was -- I thought we were doing the right thing.

He felt that they stole the election. He felt that they stole this country, that it's gone. It's wiped out. America is over. It's destroyed now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Joining me now, CNN Chief Legal Analyst and former Federal Prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin.

Jeffrey, Judge Amy Berman Jackson says there may be others who are more accountable. That's what she says to the lower wrung people at the insurrection. What's the significance of that?

JEFFREY TOOBIN, CNN CHIEF LEGAL ANALYST: Well, she is someone who has followed the Trump saga more closely than any federal judge in the country. Remember, she was the Paul Manafort judge. She was very involved in cases from the Mueller investigation. So she knows what she's talking about.

[07:05:00]

It's a little unclear to me whether she was talking about moral responsibility or legal responsibility. What the Justice Department is doing, to the frustration of many Trump opponents, is they are pursuing a typical investigation in the sense that they are working from the bottom up. They are prosecuting all the low-level people first and then they are working up to who may have planned the insurrection at the Capitol.

It's a slow process. They are getting people to cooperate. And if there's a case to be made against the ultimate higher up, which is the former president, that's going to be based on the cooperation of people at the next level up.

So, it is significant that she feels there might be a case there but the Justice Department is clearly moving in a much slower pace

BERMAN: And they are the ones who matter here because they are the ones who need to make a decision. There are others, David Rothkopf and others, who'd sit here and say they need to charge Trump now.

TOOBIN: It's never going to happen. And that's not the way white collar criminal investigations work. I mean, they always rely on the cooperation of lower level people. There are a lot of people cooperating. How high that goes remains to be seen. But you certainly never indict the chief or even investigate the chief until you have lower-level people to cooperate.

BERMAN: They say, incitement, she used the word, incitement, there. So, that's evidence of incitement. He spoke. He said, we're going to march to the Capitol. Is that enough to charge for incitement?

TOOBIN: Absolutely not. The language she used, while inflammatory, was also consistent with the language of politics. We're going to fight. Every politician says we're going to fight. Now, what followed was this extraordinary series of crimes. Whether Trump knew that crimes were being planned and committed, that's a very different matter from inflammatory rhetoric.

BERMAN: What about sedition? Why haven't they thrown the book at him with sedition, him and others?

TOOBIN: Sedition is a crime that has almost never charged in American history. It is legally very murky. The Justice Department has plenty of crimes that they are able to charge the rioters with, and the immediate -- the people immediately involved in the events at the Capitol. We'll see if there are more exotic charges down the line. But there is no reason for the Justice Department to get into legal fights with lower level people when they have very conventional crimes they can charge where there are no legal issues.

BERMAN: Just to put a bow on this part of our discussion, if you're Donald Trump, if you're Steve Bannon or someone in his immediate circle, are you more worried because of what Judge Jackson said?

TOOBIN: Probably a little, because she has an intimate familiarity with the facts of the January 6th case. But, ultimately, remember, in our system, the decision of whom to investigate and whom to charge belongs to the Justice Department, not to the judiciary.

BERMAN: What on Earth is going on with Jeffrey Clark? The January 6th committee, the committee voted to refer him for criminal contempt for not showing up and testifying. But then after that vote, reached some kind of agreement for him to go into a deposition but we think he's going to cite his Fifth Amendment rights not to speak.

TOOBIN: I think what happens with Jeffrey Clark will happen with a lot more people involving this investigation, which will simplify the legal process. Bottom line, it looks like he's going to take the Fifth, which he is entitled to do. And there is nothing the committee can do except grant him immunity, which would effectively stop the Justice Department's investigation of him, and the committee is not going to want to do that.

So, Roger Stone has suggested he's going to take the Fifth. Clark is saying he is going to take the Fifth. That's it. That's the end. It's not legally complicated. Nobody has to go to court. It is frustrating to the committee because they won't be able to ask questions but that's the way our system works and --

BERMAN: Jamie Raskin said he can't use the Fifth on everything.

TOOBIN: The way it works in the real world is you mostly can take the Fifth about everything. You would have to litigate the issue of whether he can take the Fifth. That would take months. Taking the Fifth is the end of the story.

BERMAN: As we used to say as a kid, same difference.

TOOBIN: Same difference, as we said, back in --

BERMAN: Jeffrey Toobin, thank you very much. Nice to see you.

KEILAR: So, we're learning more now about former President Trump and his administration hiding the fact that Trump had tested positive for the coronavirus before he attended multiple events in 2020. This included a debate, of course, with then-Candidate Joe Biden, who, because of his age, like Trump, was in a vulnerable category. Trump had already lied repeatedly about the pandemic from the very start of the crisis. Now, a stunning revelation by Trump's former right-hand man giving us a timeline of the ex-president's reckless behavior after he became infected.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR (voice over): Former President Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, making a stunning admission in his upcoming book, writing that the then-president first tested positive for COVID-19 on September 26th, just three days before the first presidential debate, and that Trump subsequently took an antigen test that came back negative.

[7:10:15]

Here's how the timing breaks down. That same day of the first positive test, Trump hosted a White House event, announcing his nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Amy, say a few words.

KEILAR: As Trump was on his way to a rally in Pennsylvania, his physician, Dr. Sean Conley, notified Meadows that Trump had tested positive for COVID. Later that day, another test, this time an antigen test, came back negative, Meadows writes in the book. Conley never acknowledged the first positive test in the media, even when asked directly days after Trump was hospitalized with COVID.

REPORTER: Can you tell us when he had his last negative test? Was it Thursday, was it Wednesday? Do you remember when he had his last negative test?

DR. SEAN CONLEY, FORMER WHITE HOUSE PHYSICIAN: I don't want to go backwards.

KEILAR: While aboard Air Force One for the September 26th rally, Trump reportedly talked to the press without a mask on. And that night, he still held the rally before thousands of supporters. The following day, Trump briefed the media indoors and held an indoor event for gold star military families. Trump later would suggest that this event is where he contracted the virus, despite knowing he had tested positive the day before it.

TRUMP: They come within an inch of my face sometimes. They want to hug me and they want to kiss me. And they do. And, frankly, I'm not telling them to back up.

KEILAR: On, September 28th, Trump held an outdoor Rose Garden event highlighting COVID testing, where notably he was speaking at a lectern several feet away from everyone else. The next day, he traveled to Cleveland for the first presidential debate with Joe Biden, with moderator Chris Wallace later saying Trump arrived too late to be tested. Trump later deflected questions about testing before the debate.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Did you take a test on the day of the debate, I guess, is the bottom line.

TRUMP: I probably did. And I took a test the day before, and the day before. And I was always in great shape. And I was in great shape for the debate.

KEILAR: Trump announced on Twitter that he had tested positive on October 1st and went to Walter Reed Medical Center for treatment on the 2nd. Wednesday, Trump denounced Meadows' account, calling it fake news. And Meadows tried to walk back the significance of the positive test.

MARK MEADOWS, FMR. PRESIDENT TRUMP'S CHIEF OF STAFF: That story outlined a false positive. Literally, he had a test, had two other tests after that that showed that he didn't have COVID during the debate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR (on camera): Joining me now, former White House Communications Director under Trump Alyssa Farah Griffin and CNN Political Analyst David Gregory.

And we hear Meadows there trying to clean this up, David. He is saying this revealed a false positive. No, it didn't. Clearly, it revealed a false negative.

DAVID GREGORY, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, and the president was called by the White House doctor in this reporting and told, I've got bad news for you. You have a positive test. And then he precedes then to have the event for Amy Coney Barrett and then go into the debate. So, it was very clear that the president and his top advisers decided we're not going to reveal this. We're not going to take it seriously.

Look, none of this is surprising that the president would lie about his own health, lie about other things. And let's also be clear, at this time, he wants to portray complete strength in the face of the virus. He has got this Barrett event at the Rose Garden, which he is not going to cancel because this is a huge moment for him in the middle of a campaign with conservatives to trumpet the fact that he was going to -- they had nominated her for the court. So, he just wasn't going to back down.

And, again, I don't think there's much impact to this. I don't think any of it is surprising. It just shows you a mindset and that people around him were either unwilling or in no position to push him around to do the right thing.

KEILAR: Alyssa, you were press secretary, then comms director for Mark Meadow, comms director for the Freedom Caucus under Mark Meadows, comms director at the White House when Mark Meadows was there. What's he doing here?

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR: I'm very confused by this. My best instinct is that he didn't realize what he was revealing in this book. But let me say this, my frustration with much of Trump world is that rather than giving the best advice and counsel to the president, most of the former president, most of the folks around him would tell him what he wanted to hear. And so this is an incident a 74-year-old man who is not in good health tests positive with COVID, and rather than say, we need to put on you bed rest, we need to keep you home, they had him flying him around doing events for, of course, exposing other people and putting others at risk, but he may have not ended up in Walter Reed had he just rested when he had that first test.

Again, like if people were actually looking out for Donald Trump and not just their own self-interest, he may have not been there in the first place.

[07:15:02]

GREGORY: The other side is there's certainly plenty of accounts, and you would know this, where, you know, you didn't take on the president or those around him for fear of retribution by the president. I think it was you who has made some public comments that -- or maybe at the time, well, we're not sharing anything about his testing --

KEILAR: So, actually, let's -- okay. Did you know about the positive test?

GRIFFIN: Oh, absolutely not. Goodness no. I'm telling you I would either going go to the president and tell him this is the wrong mistake or go to the press and say it's positive. That is insane to me that it wasn't revealed.

KEILAR: To your point, I want to play some of the sound that you're talking about. Let's listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I'm not going to give you a detailed readout with timestamps every time the president has tested. He's tested regularly.

GRIFFIN: I can't reveal that at this time. The doctors would like to keep it private. My understanding is that it's just private medical history.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Okay. That doesn't -- Allysa, that doesn't fly? So, tell us what's happening there?

GRIFFIN: So, I was asked by a handful of very dogged reporters, Maggie Haberman, Kristen Welker wanted the timeline. They were coming into my office. When was his first -- like when was he last tested? Has he ever tested positive? They wanted a timeline, which to me seemed perfectly reasonable. I went to the chief of staff and to his doctor and said, we are getting bombarded by reporters from reporters. Can we give them the timeline? And I was told, it's his private medical information, we're not revealing that.

And, I mean, that's my chain of command. I didn't have any other way to get that information. In retrospect, it totally makes sense why I was told that, because they were hiding a false positive. But most of us had no idea.

GREGORY: it's also absurd, of course, because he's the president of the United States. All the privacy about his health, I mean, it is important that our commander-in-chief -- I mean, he could fit into the rich history of other presidents who lied about medical ailments. He is the president during a pandemic and is not telling the truth about testing positive.

GRIFFIN: And I made that point. I pushed back to the chief of staff and said this is in interest of public health. It is of vital public interest. I mean, this is a 74-year-old commander-in-chief. His medical history matters.

KEILAR: In retrospect, there should have been some contact tracing going back. Judging from Meadows said, he was symptomatic very early, right? He was symptomatic. And so it is clear that of all the people who got sick, he seemed to be the first one showing symptoms. So, was there a discussion about going back and kind of reverse engineering this?

GRIFFIN: No. So, that was part of the problem as this was kept with a close group. I didn't know the president was positive until moments before the statement went out that evening. I was never contact traced though I had been in contact with him and others who did get COVID. It, once again, comes back to like the fatal flaw of that era of leadership, which was a few people making decisions that were not the best ones for the country or for the president and not sharing vital information with the public.

GREGORY: Yes. I mean, there is just nothing normal about this at all that fits a pattern, whether it has to do with January 6th or the treatment of the pandemic. We're not talking about normal operations where people are doing the responsible thing.

I mean, you know, Kayleigh saying we're not going to timestamp when he gets tested. I mean, we're in the middle of a pandemic and the president gets severely ill because of the virus, has to be hospitalized and pumped full of all of the top antiviral drugs that most people couldn't walk into a hospital and get because of his health.

So, again, none of this is -- there is not a big whodunit here. It's like, guess what, he was never going to tell the truth about his own health, particularly -- and why? Because that's not his style and he didn't want to look weak. The whole message was you can't let the virus dominate your life. Why would he be truthful about that?

I mean, it's so rich that Mark Meadows is taking to write this memoir. I would be very interested to hear a lot of other things that he might want to reveal about January 6th and all the rest.

KEILAR: And, Kayleigh, to your point there, what do we know? She's there talking with a mask. She later tested positive for COVID. She was very likely contagious at that moment in time.

Okay. So, then, the question, David, is then -- so here we are talking about this now. I mean, I think this still very much matters right now. Why do you think this matters right now?

GREGORY: I don't think it matters right now.

KEILAR: Why do you think it doesn't?

GREGORY: Well, because, again, it's not a revelation. I don't think it will have any impact on people. I don't think people will be surprised that he lied about this at all.

GRIFFIN: I don't think people will be surprised but I'll say this. But I said this to Jake Tapper last night. The president could still tell his supporters, you should get vaccinated. I did. My wife did. My kids did. It's safe. I trust it. You should trust it, because half the country is still unvaccinated and many are die-hard Trump supporters. So, maybe this could be a moment to inspire him to finally do the right thing on coronavirus and say, this was developed under my administration. It's not going to happen, but we can dreams.

KEILAR: Yes. I think it matters. I think it matters for how people perceive how you're honest about a disease, even if you're someone in a position of power.

GREGORY: I'm just saying it's not a revelation.

KEILAR: It's not surprising. I totally understand what you're saying.

GREGORY: No, I'm all for a complete record of his presidency, without a doubt, but I don't think it is as impactful.

[07:20:07]

And, of course, it matters. I don't think it's impactful.

KEILAR: No, I take your point. David Gregory, Alyssa, thank you so much as well.

Next, four big trials happening right now in America. We're going to get you up to speed with all of the admissions, the regrets and key witness testimony.

Plus, Merck's COVID pill winning blessings from the FDA, as this could be the first COVID-19 pill to be taken at home.

BERMAN: And Dr. Sanjay Gupta very nearby. I can sense his presence. He has a firsthand look at the opioid crisis in the U.S.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: This has fentanyl?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Absolutely. This is fentanyl.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: This morning, a tiny strip of paper is having a huge impact in saving the lives of drug users.

[07:25:03]

The strip can detect fentanyl, the deadliest drug in the U.S. when mixed with other drugs.

Here with me now CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta, author of World War C, Lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic and How to Prepare for the Next One, an addition to all work on COVID Sanjay. You've been all over the opioid crisis and fentanyl for years now, and this is a big moment.

GUPTA: It is. I mean, the way this started was probably with prescription drugs, people then transitioning to heroin, started talking about fentanyl. Most people have heard about fentanyl yet now. It is come in oftentimes as illicit drugs, becoming very, very powerful, and now mixed with just about everything out there. That is the thing that's so striking.

So, what do people do about this? How do they potentially detect fentanyl is in their drug supply? It is called harm reduction. It's provocative. Here's what it looks like.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

GUPTA (voice over): Tanya, who didn't want us to use her last name, has been using heroin off and on for more than 20 years. Lately, she says, each time feels like a real gamble.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Put it in the cup and then you just pour it onto the dope. I use the end to stir it up.

GUPTA: What you're watching is Tanya testing for the presence of the deadliest drug in America.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And it just takes a small amount and just dip it in.

GUPTA: Between April 2020 and May 2021, more than 100,000 people died from drug overdoses in the United States. It's the most ever for a 12- month period. But dig deeper and you will see that this tragic story is almost entirely about fentanyl.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: People dying. What's scary is it is the smallest amount of the fentanyl. It's such a tiny amount that we have seen people go out.

GUPTA: When you say go out, I mean --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Overdosed.

GUPTA: The reason, fentanyl is faster acting and more powerful than heroin. And not just a little bit, up to 50 times more potent. And because it is significantly cheaper to produce, it is an attractive cutting agent. That means dealers will mix it in, giving a small amount of heroin a bigger punch, juicing up fake prescription pills. Nowadays, fentanyl is mixed with just about any drug.

The problem is this, if someone isn't expecting fentanyl, they can easily overdose.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But it's instant. I mean, as soon as they hit, most of the time the rig is still in their arm. If not, they're tied off or something. It happens fast.

GUPTA: From alive to dead, within seconds.

Louise Vincent has heard too many of these stories as well. She's executive director of the North Carolina Urban Survivors Union, and has dedicated her life to harm reduction, trying to make the use of drugs safer, like Naloxone or Narcan, which can rescue someone from an overdose, as you are watching in this extraordinary video, even better, though, preventing the overdose in the first place.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's just a little test strip. They're really easy to use them.

GUPTA: Why are people testing them?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Drug users care about their health because people don't want to die, because people don't want to be sick. Contrary to what everyone says, people that use drugs are human beings and they want the same thing that every other human being wants.

GUPTA: Giving users a chance to use safely has a long history of controversy. Is it saving lives or enabling even more drug usage? In the 1980s and '90s, it was often a debate about needle exchanges. More recently, it's been about consumption sites or safe spaces to use, like this bathroom in New York. And lately, it's about fentanyl test strips.

Researchers will tell you that the evidence shows harm reduction works.

The question that will always come up is does this actually save lives? Does this prevent deaths? Do we know that?

JON ZIBBELL, RTI INTERNATIONAL: We don't know that yet. But what we are seeing is that people are using more safely. They're more aware of what's going on.

GUPTA: Jon Zibbell studies the impact of fentanyl test strips.

ZIBBELL: What our study found is that people with a positive test result after they tested their drug were five times more likely to change their behavior.

GUPTA: Like using less of the drug, doing a test shot ahead of time, or maybe using with someone else who can watch them.

Tanya credits the fentanyl strips for keeping her from overdosing as the drug supply has become progressively more and more dangerous.

[07:30:04]