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Bomb Cyclone Taking Direct Aim at 75 Million Along East Coast; Today, Biden Heads to Pennsylvania to Talk About Economy; New Tensions Between Ukraine, U.S. Play Into Putin's Hands. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired January 28, 2022 - 07:00   ET

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

JOHN BERMAN, CNN NEW DAY: Flights have been canceled for tomorrow.

[07:00:01]

We're watching that as well.

I want to get right to CNN Meteorologist Chad Myers. And, Chad, when you say three feet of snow possible in Boston, wow.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: And Worcester, and maybe parts of Rhode Island, and possibly even Eastern Long Island, because this is going to be a big event for a long time, the two to three inches of snow per hour, up to ten hours. You don't have to really be a magician to figure that one out. That is going to take a lot of snow. It's going to take snow removal equipment too. If you're trying to drive in this, do not expect the roads to be plowed with winds going 50 miles per hour.

Boston, 24, that's your number. But I have seen models this morning at 36. I have seen places in the Berkshires at 43. Now, those are not forecasts. Those are just models, models that try to take the atmosphere and put it into numbers and crunch the numbers there. New York City, 8 to 12 in the city, but much more in Long Island, 18, 24. If you get up the Long Island expressway, it's going to be very deep.

Now, if you go the other way, the falloff is also very rapid. The falloff into New Jersey will go from four to three to one to nothing. So, you're not even going to get probably a lot of snow if you go toward the Delaware water gap. There's your winter storm warning, 75 million right now, even the winter storm warning right now for Chicago with lake-effect snow, four to eight inches deep, that came overnight. There's your blizzard warnings on up and down the coast. I could see New York City putting down probably some blizzard warnings or Eastern Long Island as well, it's just not there right now.

Look at the wind with this. This is 40 to 60-mile-per-hour wind with wind-driven snow, power lines coming down. This is what the radar is going to look like. This is a forecast radar. This is one of the models showing you what it believes the snow will look like. And here is 11:00. We'll start to see snow coming in. Very heavy snow all day tomorrow with that wind blowing through the houses, blowing through the buildings, a lot of snow everywhere. Finally, they're moving away on Sunday. Now, we showed you the models yesterday between the European and the American. They both look a lot more similar today, but there's the European there with that 36 for major metropolitan areas around Boston, Massachusetts.

BERMAN: Yes, they are had he more similar right now. So, Boston, for instance, on the lighter end, still seeing as much as two feet.

I know this has been difficult to forecast, Chad. When do you think it will be more or less locked in? When is the moment when it's going to be clear?

MYERS: All the weather balloons that are sent across America just went up two minutes ago. We call that 12Z, 12 Zulu Time. It's the Greenwich Meantime, a London kind of time. So, everybody sent their weather balloons up. Those balloons will all now launch for a few minutes. And all that data will go into the computer models. Those models will run. And eventually by 11:00, the American model will be ready, 11:00 A.M. And then around 1:30, the European model will come in. And by then, they should know exactly what's going to go on today.

BERMAN: So, between 11:00 and 1:00, we will know whether this is huge or potentially epic.

MYERS: Yes.

BERMAN: Chad, you're going to have a busy day. Thank you for watching. Everyone needs to pay attention and be very, very careful with this.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN NEW DAY: President Biden heading to Pittsburgh today, the Steel City, the city of bridges. And he will be touting the infrastructure program that he signed into law last year, which includes more than a billion dollars for about 3,000 Pennsylvania bridges that are falling apart.

CNN's Jeff Zeleny joining us now. Jeff, also he's clearly going to be talking about the economy. Wages are up. Inflation is taking a bite out of that. What are Pennsylvanians saying? What are they feeling?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Well, good morning, Brianna. I mean, a sense of exhaustion clearly awaits over inflation, schools and politics, in general, among so many of the people we talked to, including those who voted for President Biden and still believe in him.

But others think he isn't getting the credit he deserves and wants to see him more as a fighter as this pandemic approaches its third year, still casting a shadow over so much of American life.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SALLY BISSEY, PENNSYLVANIA VOTER: Inflation is frustration. Filling your tank is expensive. Everything is expensive.

ZELENY (voice over): Sally Bissey feels the pain, yet she hardly believes President Biden deserves all the blame.

BISSEY: I think he has done as good a job as anybody really could have done. I don't care who would have been in his position, no Republican would have liked him. We're just like that now.

ZELENY: Here in Pennsylvania where Biden is visiting Friday as part of his new pledge to break free from the White House bubble.

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: I need to get out of this place more often.

ZELENY: Exhaustion over the pandemic runs deep, including the economy. Conversations about how Biden is doing are filled with nuance, bookended by inflation at a four-decade high, and Thursday's GDP report showing the biggest economic growth since 1984.

Going forward, Esther Lee wants the president to show more fight.

ESTHER LEE, PRESIDENT, BETHLEHEM NAACP: He is kind of a soft spoken, easy-going guy. Those are his attributes. But I would like to see him press forward a little more.

ZELENY: A little more fire?

[07:05:00]

LEE: Yes. I've got fire. And I think he should just come forward, move forward on it. What's he got to lose?

ZELENY: Lee is a long time leader of the NAACP in Bethlehem. She doesn't hold Biden responsible for election reform falling short but believes he should sharpen his approach for today's reality.

LEE: I hear him talk about what he used to do, what he was able to do across the aisle. That no longer exists. That's out. This is a different world.

ZELENY: As Biden kicks off his second year, he wants people here to feel the accomplishments of his firsts, like new roads and bridges, thanks to the infrastructure law.

Congresswoman Susan Wild, who represents the seventh district here is busy touting that landmark infrastructure achievement, but she knows the mood of many voters is still sour.

REP. SUSAN WILD (D-PA): The fact of the matter is, I'm not going to sugar coat it, people have seen increases in their wages but we know that those increases in wages have not kept up with the higher price of goods.

ZELENY: Facing her own midterm battle, she believes her fellow Democrats should turn to a scaled back version of Biden's economic agenda, like lowering prescription drug costs.

WILD: Let's not keep knocking our heads against a wall and trying to pass a massive bill if what we can get done are smaller bills that will really make a difference in people's lives.

ZELENY: Don Cunningham runs the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation. When we first caught up with him last year, he said most business leaders, whether or not they agreed with all of Biden's policies, saw him as a fresh start. But a year later, he believes what wasn't been accomplished often overshadows what has.

DON CUNNINGHAM, PRESIDENT, LEHIGH VALLEY ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION: There is not enough understanding of what's trying to be done and that will be a challenge for the Democrats coming up in 2022. Because you might know a name like Build Back Better but people don't know all of what's in it. They're not even discussing it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZELENY (on camera): Now, the president is making his ninth official visit to Pennsylvania since taking office, so this trip today may not quite seem like the second year reset he told us about last week at his news conference. But it is clear the White House is trying to shine a brighter light on what they have accomplished, like infrastructure and economic growth.

But, Brianna, one union member told me this. If Donald Trump had done one-tenth of what Joe Biden did, that's all you would be hearing.

KEILAR: Well, it will be interesting to see if this victory lap sticks and if people absorb it. We know you will be watching it. Jeff Zeleny, thank you.

ZELENY: Sure.

BERMAN: So, how poisonous is American politics -- or are American politics right now? Well, someone who spent his entire adult life working in U.S. politics is now warning other countries, don't be like us. The U.K. paper, The Independent, is reporting that veteran Republican Pollster Frank Luntz told a group of British reporters basically don't let this happen to you. He said this is an S-show. This is a disaster. And it will come if you let it happen.

Joining me now is Pollster and Communication Strategist Frank Luntz. Frank, thanks so much for being with us. An S-show, a dung show, if you will, for those who didn't get the S part of it here in the United States, what exactly do you see as the dung show here?

FRANK LUNTZ, POLLSTER AND COMMUNICATION STRATEGIST: It's the idea that nothing happens, nothing gets done, that we seek to demonize each other, delegitimize each other, dehumanize each other. It is happening with woke culture and cancel culture on the left. It happens with populism on the right. And people look to own each other rather than to listen and to learn. And what I found in my focus groups over the last two or three years is that people want to speak. They want to be heard. But nobody wants to listen and nobody wants to learn.

BERMAN: And that's different than it is in other places?

LUNTZ: It's much worse in America. I have spent a fair amount of my life in the U.K. I got a PhD from Oxford. It's better there. It's actually more respectful, more civil, more decent. It's so hard to have a political conversation. Just ask your friends, your neighbors, your family what happened at Thanksgiving and Christmas. And even during this time of this great pandemic, instead of understanding people's concerns, we demonize them, we condemn them, and we have social media to thank for that being presented every single day in the homes of over 300 million Americans.

BERMAN: What's it like for you as a guy who has worked in part of this system for your entire life to tell people in other countries, don't be like us?

LUNTZ: Well, first off, we have to take responsibility. It's the pundits, it's the people like me, the pollsters, the politicians, and people like you, the press. We're not hearing both sides. We seek to affirm what we believe rather than to inform what we believe. We're not seeking the facts, the information, we're seeking to cut people off.

And I have a love for the U.K. I believe in the special relationship.

[07:10:00]

I believe in what Britain has done for us. And it's so important in the U.K. to learn from us. It's important in Europe and in Asia to learn from us. Look, these are tough times for a lot of people. And we were expecting that things are going to change when we changed administrations. But the truth is, the fact is, it is just as bad, if not, worse today, than it was a few years ago.

And someone like me, who listens to the public and learns from the public every single day, my message to you all who are watching me right now, don't seek to blame, seek to understand. Don't condemn before you walk in that person's shoes. We have a lot to learn from each other.

BERMAN: I'm not seeking to blame here, as you suggest, but you were integral to the rise of Newt Gingrich in the '90s, Go PAC. And you worked with him in messaging, right? And this is the guy who last week said that the January 6th select committee should be thrown in jail or will be thrown in jail when the Republicans --

LUNTZ: The best of Newt Gingrich was that contract with America, the idea that you would be signing on the dotted line. And I'm hoping that Kevin McCarthy does the same thing with House Republicans. You make a public commitment, sign like a contract that says, these are the things that we will do. And if we don't, hold us accountable. That's the best of Newt Gingrich. That's the best of politics.

The worst of politics is talking about jailing people. The public has a right know. We have a right to know about our economy. We have a right to know about foreign policy and the threats that are happening right now from nations across the globe. And we have a right to a strong, healthy, vibrant democracy. And to give up those rights or to threaten people, the way that some politicians do, that's why we are in so much trouble. And I say to every politician now, to every elected official, at least spend the next seven days reaching out, listening, learning. It is absolutely appropriate to stand for what you believe. It's appropriate to draw the contrast. But it is not appropriate to destroy the lives of people you disagree with.

BERMAN: You have been honest about your role and your development, your evolution here. How difficult for you has it been to come to terms with your role in this?

LUNTZ: I left. It's why I left the country for eight months. I was getting absolutely -- I can't describe the onslaught. Because if you live on social media, if you tweet and you have Facebook and you are involved in the political discussions, and the world comes at you because you're too left-wing for some people, you're too right-wing for others, you're too honest for some people or you don't say what you mean and mean what you say for others, honestly, I'm not going to use the four-letter word on CNN, but it sucks.

And I have come to grips with it. I believe it was the reason why I got sick. And I'm determined to learn from that. And that's why I am so pro-vaccine, I'm so pro-science. I don't want government mandates. I don't want government control. I want people to do the right thing, make the right decisions based on the right reasons. And it's why I really appreciate this interview. We're doing this straight.

BERMAN: I mean, to what extent do you feel like you helped create this monster? To what extent do you feel you played a role in it?

LUNTZ: I was never really good at politics. If truth be told, I hated doing the negative. And so I stopped doing it. I wanted to present a positive reason for economic freedom, a positive reason to defend the democracy, a positive reason for a strong American approach globally. I don't want to take down my opponents. I want to convert them. I want to reach them, understand them, empathize with them, and then change them.

And the problem is that's not what politics is about right now. Just take a look at the segments before this, and at what's going on on cable news, on social media, and the networks. It's all negative. If it bleeds, it leads. And if it's negative as hell, we remember it. And that's what's wrong with American politics right now.

BERMAN: No, I get you. We led with the bomb cyclone, which neither bleeder nor it doesn't bleed. It's just bad weather event that's happening in the northeast, but I do get what you are saying.

I also want people to know you had a stroke, right? I mean, you had a real major health scare.

LUNTZ: Yes. And I had it on television. It was being filmed by the L.A. Times. And my students from NYU Abu Dhabi, were in the back room of the focus group as my arm is getting numb, as I can feel it moving across my face, so viewers should know. I know I don't enunciate as well as I used to. This is still numb after two years, and it's never coming back. It's one of the reasons why I'm so careful and why I advocate so strongly for making the right decisions on the vaccine, no mandates, just be smart about it, make the right choices.

[07:15:02]

I didn't. I weighed almost 240 pounds. Now, I'm down to the upper 180s, and I hope to keep it this way. I'm doing the best I can. But you know what, my sickness is America's democratic sickness. It's a symptom of what's wrong with the country. And if I can get myself right, so can American democracy.

BERMAN: Well, Frank Luntz, we wish you the best of health going forward.

LUNTZ: Thank you.

BERMAN: We wish America the best of emotional and mental and political health going forward as well. Let's hope we get all of it.

LUNTZ: You got it.

BERMAN: New developments this morning in the escalating crisis in Ukraine. President Biden and the Ukrainian President Zelensky, they were on the phone for an hour and 20 minutes yesterday assessing the risk levels of a Russian attack. Now, a Ukrainian official told CNN the call did not go well. The White House pushed back on that hard.

Joining us now, CNN Chief White House Correspondent Kaitlan Collins. Kaitlan, what do you know about this call? What should be the takeaway for what happened?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, the one thing we do know for sure is that it was a very long call. An hour and 20 minutes of President Biden and President Zelensky talking about the situation right now and these efforts to try to defuse this Russian standoff, given they have over 100,000 troops on the Ukrainian border, the pentagon yesterday, that they are only adding to that. They may not be adding a lot but they said they certainly are still adding to those forces. And so there are some different reporting about what exactly was said on this call, how it transpired.

And I guess, really, a lot of it was about the tone that President Biden used when talking about the prospect of a Russian invasion. Because a senior official, a senior Ukrainian official told our colleague, Matthew Chance, that President Biden basically described it as all but inevitable. And he said pretty similar publicly that he was saying in February that it's very likely to happen. I was told by a national security official that he did not say it is definitely going to happen but he said that U.S. intelligence has assessed that if it does happen, it would likely be in the month of February.

KEILAR: Is Biden frustrated with Zelensky, Kaitlan?

COLLINS: Maybe not the president himself. I don't want to speak to that because we don't have any reporting that shows that. And he hasn't himself said that publicly. But I do think sometimes you hear frustration from administration officials because this is one of their number one priorities right now. This is taking up a lot of space in the National Security Council, focusing on this, when, of course, Biden came into office, he said that China was a priority. Things like that was what he wanted to focus on when it comes to foreign policy. And now Russia, of course, is taking up a lot of the oxygen in the room.

And I think officials recognize that they believe the Ukrainian leader has to balance multiple audiences. That's how an official described it to us yesterday, saying, of course, he is trying not to cause a panic in his country. They have been in a standoff to a degree with Russia for several years now. And so they are trying to measure that with also telling U.S. officials that they believe they need more security assistance, they want the reassurances of the United States and other European allies given they do have Russia on their doorstep right now with over 100,000 troops.

And so I do think sometimes there is frustration inside the administration with how Ukrainian officials present a call with President Biden yesterday, for example, or how they present the situation. We know Ukrainian officials aren't always happy with U.S. officials, including when President Biden said he believed publicly that an invasion was imminent, they did not agree with that assessment. And so that is kind of where you see sometimes the messaging that isn't always right in line with each other from both sides.

BERMAN: I'm taking a look. I always try to look at what actions are being taken, what specific things are being announced. And there is a meeting with the German chancellor coming to the White House, what, February 7th. I always look at the date too because it's February 7th, maybe it means that, internally, the United States doesn't think anything will happen before February 7th. It also means they are trying to show unity with NATO and Germany.

COLLINS: Definitely. And, of course, Germany -- this is a new chancellor. This is a new situation that they are dealing with. And before with Merkel in office, that changed kind of the -- not the thinking of this but she was someone who is, of course, this longstanding leader in Europe. It took a very public-facing role with this. The U.S. has kind of been leading in this situation when it comes to trying to defuse tensions here, of course, responding to those demands from Russia this week.

And, yes, it was very notable that the White House has scheduled this meeting with President Biden and the German chancellor in the coming weeks. Of course, there are a lot of questions there, because you have seen the White House talk about how they believe that if Russia did invade Ukraine, all of the allies, all the European allies and the United States are on the same page of how to respond.

But there have been some big questions for Germany because, of course, they have got this pipeline, this gas pipeline with Russia that they rely on. They've been more hesitant to send security assistance to Ukraine. You saw this week, they finally relented and sent helmets to Ukraine. And so I do think it will be an interesting conversation to see what is said.

[07:20:02]

When it comes to the timeline, I do also think U.S. officials realize the Olympics are starting in next week. President Putin has been invited to those, he is expected go. And so they also think that that could be a factor into the decision here that they say, no one really knows what the Russian leader is going to do. And President Biden told you also a few days ago, he doesn't even think top aides know what he is going to do.

BERMAN: Kaitlan Collins, thank you for being with us. Please keep us posted.

So, we have new CNN reporting on how the tensions between the U.S. and Russia could have interstellar implications in the space race.

And a Tennessee school board cuts the iconic graphic novel about the Holocaust, Maus, from its curriculum. We are joined by a parent now reacting to that decision.

KEILAR: Hundreds of athletes have not dropped dead from COVID vaccines. Why this lie is taking hold in GOP Circles, including within Congress, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[07:25:00]

BERMAN: New this morning, as national attention builds over a Tennessee school board's decision to pull a Pulitzer-winning book about the holocaust, Maus, from its eighth grade curriculum, the board there is defending the vote. McMinn County Board of Education said in a statement that the book includes unnecessary use of profanity and nudity and its depiction of violence and suicide, saying it is too adult-oriented for use in our schools.

Now, though, some parents and McMinn students are voicing their concerns over this, over the decision to pull the book from the curriculum.

Joining me now is one of those parents, Whitney Coe, who has two children in the McMinn County School District. Whitney, hey, thanks so much for being with us.

What is your reaction to their decision to pull the book from the curriculum?

WHITNEY COE, PARENT CONCERNED ABOUT REMOVAL OF MAUS BOOK: Thanks for having me. I mean, I should say that my young children are not in McMinn County Schools yet. They attend at Athens City schools, but we are one all part of McMinn County. And they would ultimately end up in McMinn County High School.

And, you know, my take on the ban is, you know, that I completely disagree with it. This idea of removing the book from the eighth grade ELA curriculum, I think, it's misguided. This book is absolutely appropriate text for 13 and 14-year-olds who are learning about the profane and brutal story of the Holocaust.

BERMAN: What's your church doing about this? I was fascinated by how you're responding.

COE: Well, you know, my church, St. Paul's Episcopal here in Athens has decided to host a community-wide book discussion next week. And I think that is an interesting byproduct from this decision that the school board made that we are now, in a way -- it's led us to a community read of Maus and perhaps even a national and global read of Maus. I have heard that Amazon is selling out of its copies. People are buying them bookshelves and swapping them all over the place. And if kids some McMinn County want a copy, all they have to do is just drop a note on Twitter and it's done. So, there's some global love coming in too.

So, in a way, we have used this as an opportunity to have a deeper discussion about how we accompany one another through these really, really hard topics and histories.

BERMAN: Yes. There is some irony here, and that the repercussions of this may be that more kids see Maus than ever would have before, or certainly pay attention to it than ever would have before, which is irony. And maybe it's a good thing.

Listen, the idea of banning books from curriculum, saying you can't teach this, you can't teach that, what are your concerns there?

COE: Well, I think you interviewed Art Spiegelman, the author of Maus yesterday, perhaps. His reaction, his response to this was one of bafflement, which felt appropriate. If you read the minutes from the school board's meeting, you see that their objections were not necessarily about talking about the Holocaust or having hard conversations about the Holocaust. They were objecting to, you know, levels of decency about, you know, words that are used and leaning on kind of a purity narrative. And, again, that feels really misguided, like they are misplacing where the priority ought to be.

And I think the priority is that we need to be able to accompany our kids through this really, really difficult conversation. And Maus is just -- and many other books are where those really hard conversations are able to happen.

BERMAN: And, Whitney, I know finally that you were concerned that people are getting the impression that this school board somehow speaks for you or even the community.

COE: Right. I've seen a lot of the backlash across even the globe, I mean, through Twitter. And I want to make sure that people understand that small towns and any size towns, no one is a monolith. McMinn is not a monolith of an opinion on this. There are many, any people are speaking up, speaking out. Donations are pouring into our local public library, both monetary and copies of this book. I think that it does a disservice to our communities to think that there wouldn't be voices of dissent around this decision. BERMAN: Whitney Coe, I appreciate the discussion this morning. Thanks so much for coming on.

COE: Thank you.

BERMAN: The escalating tension between Russia and Ukraine has some former astronauts fearing it could spill over into space.

[07:30:06]

What has them so worried?

KEILAR: Plus, a lie about vaccines.