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New Day

Court Draws GOP-Friendly Maps; Dr. Lee Savio Beers is Interviewed about the Formula Shortage; Vital Bridge Still Issue after Infrastructure Law; Musk Says Deal May be Off. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired May 17, 2022 - 06:30   ET

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


[06:30:00]

MAGGIE HABERMAN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Is that the initial maps were an overreach, that this was a mistake, that it should have been very clear that this was going to be a problem. And then this version is anti-political, I think was your word, that this version is an overcorrection. And so now it is absolutely going to hamper their efforts.

You are seeing the DCCC chair have to make an argument about which district he's running in. I've never seen anything like this. A lot of news we've never seen anything like today.

But the idea that you are going to have two long-standing members in Manhattan potentially running against each here. This is just absolutely unheard of.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney, so people know, which are --

HABERMAN: That's right.

ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The chair of Oversight and the chair of Judiciary running against each other.

HABERMAN: Correct. Yes.

BERMAN: Written -- you know, written into the same district, for drawn into the same district. And Hakeem Jeffries, who could be speaker of the House or minority leader no longer lives in the district that he lived in.

LOUIS: That's run out of this.

HABERMAN: Yes. Yes.

BERMAN: It just -- every step of the way here it really seems to have blown up on the Democrats.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it's one of those things where you say, oh, this is a New York Democrat's problem, but it means -- it means just so much for the party and what's going to happen to them potentially this fall. HABERMAN: Correct. And especially when, Kaitlan, you have this situation where, because of gerrymandering, there are few seats at -- in play than I think Republicans would like there to be in the fall given the -- the climate -- given that the political climate is just bad for Democrats across the board. And so the saving grace for Democrats had been in places like New York, where they thought they were going to do well. This, obviously, blows that up.

COLLINS: Yes.

BERMAN: It's also, people should know, it's based on New York state law is the reason this has not worked for the Democrats in the way.

HABERMAN: That's right.

BERMAN: Other states have other laws, which is why Republicans who have been in power in states have been able to gerrymander their states more.

HABERMAN: That's right.

BERMAN: Interesting to watch.

Maggie Haberman, Errol Louis, thank you so much.

COLLINS: (INAUDIBLE) so much.

Meanwhile, only a few people saw the actual live stream of that racist attack in Buffalo as it happened. But then millions watched it after the fact because of Facebook. Why wasn't the video taken down sooner?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMBER HEARD, ACTRESS AND EX-WIFE OF JOHNNY DEPP: Well, Rachelle (ph) and I were both in -- in that bed with the dogs and I didn't notice anything. But we left them in the bed while we packed a bag to go to Coachella, you know.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: All right, just some of the dramatic and at times strange testimony in Johnny Depp's defamation case against his ex-wife, Amber Heard. That's ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:36:31]

COLLINS: The FDA is predicting it's going to be at least a few more weeks before shelves are back to normal with baby formula. In the meantime, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued a new advisory for parents who have babies older than six months, saying that, quote, in a pinch you could feed them whole cow's milk for a brief period of time until the shortage is better. This is not ideal and should not become routine. However, it is a better option than diluting formula or making homemade formula. Joining us now is the president of American Academy of Pediatrics, Dr.

Lee Savio Beers.

Thank you so much for joining us this morning, Doctor.

And I just want to start with this new advice because it says you can, but it doesn't say that you should necessarily.

DR. LEE SAVIO BEERS, PRESIDENT, AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS: Yes, absolutely. Thanks so much for bringing this to light. And as you know, this is a really difficult situation for a lot of families. And I think one thing that's important about this recommendation to emphasize is that it's not a long-standing or permanent recommendation. It really is something to be used in extraordinary circumstances. I know families are -- you know, who are -- who are affected are doing everything they can do access the nutrition they need for their babies and so this really would be a very short-term, temporary things as essentially a stopgap measure.

COLLINS: So, if you're a parent and you are having to resort to this because you can't get formula at your local store while this shortage is happening, how long would you recommend that they continue doing this?

BEERS: Yes, we really don't recommend it for more than a few days. You know, again, I just want to emphasize, I know parents are really in a difficult situation and doing everything they can. But sometimes there may be, you know, I've heard stories of families who have, you know, family members from out of state who are sending them formula. And so while you -- while you wait those couple of days, that could be an appropriate period of time. I think another thing important to know is that, you know, whole cow's milk does not have all the nutrients that babies need. But one way that we can help that a little bit is by supplementing with iron. So iron vitamins that you can get at your drugstore.

COLLINS: OK. So if parents should only do this for maybe a few days at maximum, but the FDA is still saying it's going to be weeks, potentially, before shelves look back to normal and you're not having to get family from out of state to send you formula or drive hours to go and get it, I kind of wonder what it says to you at this moment that we've come to this place in the United States where this is a shortage, that when you talk to some experts they say this is not that hard to predict. The FDA should have known that this was a chance that this could happen. There were steps that could have been taken to prevent a shortage like the one that the United States is seeing.

BEERS: Yes. No, I agree, it's -- it's so concerting because this -- this is -- you know, it's just -- the most important thing for families is to be able to take care of their children and make sure that they have the nutrition and all the other care that they need. And so when we're in this situation, it really is quite difficult for them.

I think, you know, unfortunately, we see this with a lot of public health things where maybe we don't -- you know, we don't attend to it with urgency until we're really in the crisis situation. But I hope this is a wake-up call for us to really look and make sure that we don't end up in this situation in the future.

COLLINS: Has the American Academy of Pediatrics ever had to change its advice to parents like it is with this situation because of a shortage?

BEERS: No, I think this is the first time that I can really remember this happening.

[06:40:01]

Certainly, you know, our kids have faced extraordinary times in all sorts of different ways. The past two year have -- you know, have shown us that in so many different ways. And so I think this is -- this is the first time that I can remember we've had to do something just like this. But, absolutely, we know that, you know, there's -- there's all -- you know, there may be things that happen and as pediatricians we're always here to help families think it through, to help them problem solve and to help make sure that we can keep your kids safely and healthy.

COLLINS: Yes, and I'm sure they appreciate the guidance.

Before we let you go this morning, I do want to ask you about some CNN reporting from last night that we do expect the FDA to authorize the Pfizer booster for children five to 11. Of course, that would make them the youngest children eligible for that shot. And I just wonder what your -- what you take -- what your takeaway is from that authorization that we expect today.

BEERS: Yes. I -- you know, I think that would be very accepted. It's what we have seen with all the other age groups. You know, the way vaccines work is to -- is to essentially coach your immune system to create antibodies. And it's very typical for boosters to be required. I think I would also add, and we also know that -- that just less than 30 percent of children in this age group have even gotten their primary series. So, hopefully for families, this is a good time to really think and say, you know, we know this vaccine is safe. We've gotten months and months of experience with it and really encourage families if their -- their children in this age group have not yet gotten the vaccine to go out and get their primary series as well.

COLLINS: That's certainly a message we know the White House is going to be putting out there.

Dr. Lee Savio Beers, thank you so much for joining us on both of these very important topics this morning.

BEERS: Great. Thank you so much for having me.

COLLINS: And six months after President Biden signed the infrastructure bill into law, critically needed fixes on a vital bridge that links Ohio and Kentucky has still not begun. We have a live report there, next.

BERMAN: Plus, just a short time ago, Elon Musk said basically the deal is off unless Twitter can prove one thing.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:46:21]

BERMAN: This morning, a dangerously outdated bridge is a growing problem for trucks and emergency vehicles trying to cross between Ohio and Kentucky. This as the White House touts six months since the signing of President Biden's $1 trillion infrastructure package.

CNN's Pete Muntean live in Covington, Kentucky.

And this is a bridge everyone wants to see fixed. Like every president that we've had for the last several decades. Mitch McConnell. Everyone wants it done, Pete.

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it's the Brent Spence Bridge, John. You know, it's so critical in the Cincinnati area, but it's become kind of a punch line. Presidents have been calling to fix it for years. But you can see, no cranes, no construction. The White House says that work is starting on projects like this, though you might not see it yet.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LUKE HAYDEN, VICE PRESIDENT, M&M CARTAGE CO.: Business is busy.

MUNTEAN: Yes.

HAYDEN: Business is very busy.

MUNTEAN (voice over): Twenty-five-year-old Luke Hayden is in line to one day run the family trucking company, but also inherit a problem, a bridge that is putting the brakes on business.

HAYDEN: It's very tight. It's very accident prone. So a fix would be huge for our industry.

MUNTEAN: Cincinnati's Brent Spence Bridge carries ten times the trucks and twice the cars that it was designed to handle when it opened 60 years ago.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: That bridge, if you really want go to Kentucky, is going to get better.

MUNTEAN: President Biden says help will come from the bipartisan infrastructure law. But six months after it was signed, work here has not started.

MARK POLICINSKI, OHIO-KENTUCKY-INDIANA REGIONAL COUNCIL OF GOVERNMENTS: It is the poster child of what needs to be done in infrastructure in this nation.

MUNTEAN: Cincinnati officials want $2 billion federal dollars to build a new neighboring bridge. They hope to break ground next year.

POLICINSKI: It's going to be a dramatic difference. It will solve a huge part of all the congestion in this region.

MUNTEAN: The infrastructure law sets aside $40 billion to help ailing bridges. The administration points to work that has already started on 4,300 other infrastructure projects. But the White House stresses getting larger projects moving takes time. Even though the clock is ticking for some 46,000 bridges in the U.S. rated as structurally deficient that drivers cross each day.

ANDY HERMANN, American SOCIETY OF CIVIL ENGINEERS: They have to be patient. It's -- you know, there's engineering involved. There's design involved. It has to be done to make sure we do these jobs right.

MUNTEAN: When visiting Cincinnati earlier this month, President Biden became the third president to say the Brent Spence Bridge must be fixed.

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: It's in such poor condition that it's been labeled functionally obsolete.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: Replacing the Brent Spence Bridge in Cincinnati -- you like that -- which is critical to the region.

MUNTEAN: Regional officials insist this time there is a real sense of optimism. For Luke Hayden, he says the can should not get kicked to another generation of the family business.

HAYDEN: It is an exercise in patience. You know, things don't happen overnight. You know, you can't build a bridge in a day.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MUNTEAN: The Biden administration says it will take years for Americans to feel the full impact of the infrastructure law. There are thousands of little projects but also many bigger projects like this one which the White House coins cathedrals. The White House puts it like this, it takes hours to demolish a bridge, it takes years to build one.

John.

BERMAN: Got to get started at some point.

All right, Pete Muntean, thank you very much.

Very shortly, President Biden and the first lady, they will travel to Buffalo to meet with the families of the victims of the racist attack at the supermarket there.

COLLINS: Plus, as the Supreme Court decides the fate of Roe v. Wade, Starbucks is making a big move for its employees.

BERMAN: And the truth is out there. And by there I mean Congress.

[06:50:01]

The first public hearing in Congress on UFOs in more than 50 years. We are live on the scene. And by that I mean Washington, not outer space.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COLLINS: Elon Musk says that his $44 billion bid to buy Twitter can't move forward unless the company is clear about how many of its accounts are actually fake. Musk claims that 20 percent of the Twitter accounts are bots, but Twitter executives have pushed back on that and said span accounts account for less than 5 percent of their users.

Here to discuss all of this this morning is "EARLY START" anchors, Laura Jarrett and Christine Romans.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.

COLLINS: And, of course, this is so interesting to talk about at 6:54 in the morning.

I know there's a lot going on. And, of course, this is raising so many questions about whether he actually wants to buy Twitter. But he says that he just needs evidence from the company about how many users are fake.

[06:55:02]

How do you read that?

ROMANS: I read this as that Elon Musk should have done some more due diligence before he decided to buy a company for $44 billion, right? I mean he is riffing essentially and saying that he doesn't believe the company, that only 5 percent of its users are bots and the deal is on hold until he has some more proof. The company has offered how it measures bots and said it's about 5 percent.

He, Elon Musk, without offering any evidence of its own, just, again, riffing, says it's 20 percent or 90 percent are bots. And this is something he said he wanted to clean up if he took over -- over this company.

Twitter, for its part this morning, actually filing a preliminary proxy statement with the SEC, which is how you're supposed to do things actually when you're in the middle of a big negotiation, not just tweet about it, saying that, we are committed to completing the transaction on the agreed price and terms as promptly as practical.

I mean a lot of analysts are saying this morning he's just trying to drive down the price a little bit. I mean, after all, Tesla shares, which is the source of much of his wealth, are down 27 percent this year. So, he's worth less money today than he was when he started this endeavor to buy Twitter.

BERMAN: Laura, I haven't done too many corporate takeovers myself.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN ANCHOR, "EARLY START": No?

BERMAN: But isn't it a problem if you're live tweeting, you know, this kind of stuff? JARRETT: Yes. Yes. Yes. And that's the thing is that his musings and

his riffing and what may seem like just sort of adolescent humor has the attention of the SEC. And we know already he has gotten our attention and not in a good way.

Back in 2018, it was an eerily similar situation where he was tweeting about having the funding secured to take Tesla private. Turns out he did not have the funding secured, so a federal just found out, and he eventually reached a settlement with the SEC about it. But it was because he was tweeting about it, the stock price shoots up, and he eventually has to settle with them, but he's still under investigation by the SEC because he didn't stop tweeting.

ROMANS: To take Tesla private at $420 a share at the time.

JARRETT: A wink and a nod.

ROMANS: Which is another one of those like sophomoric things that he does. There's a poop emoji this week or last -- on Friday, I guess, about the bot thing with -- you know, so his fans love how he is so irreverent.

You know, irreverence is one thing, but there are shareholders, real people with money in Tesla and in Twitter shares. And when he fires off a tweet, those people can make and lose money. So it's really -- it has real world consequences.

COLLINS: It also raises huge questions about if the deal actually goes through, what he's going to do going forward, because you've seen how he's been navigating all this.

ROMANS: Yes.

COLLINS: I do want to ask you, Laura, though, about Starbucks and a big move that they're taking given the concerns that some companies have about what to do if Roe versus Wade is overturned by the Supreme Court.

JARRETT: Yes.

COLLINS: What they're going to do with their employees, because a lot of employees have been raising questions about this.

JARRETT: Yes, and a lot of companies have been trying to figure out creative solutions, you know, based off of really employee demand that they do something. And so Starbucks' solution to this is to reimburse travel expenses. Of course, if Roe is struck down, women will have to travel somewhere out of state potentially to get the services that they need. Now, other companies have done, you know, different things in response to Texas' law where you can sue anybody who, you know, provides -- a Lyft, for instance, to an abortion clinic. Other companies are doing creative things.

Interestingly, Starbucks put out a memo to its employees saying, regardless of what the Supreme Court ends up deciding, we will always ensure our partners have access to quality health care. ROMANS: A hundred percent employee driven. They -- their audience is

100 percent their employees. They want to make sure that they're keeping their employees happy because their own surveys show that their employees do not agree with overturning Roe v. Wade and -- among other issues that are happening around the country. And so this is certainly their sensitivity to making sure their companies feel that they are heard and that they are respected and that their companies will support them.

JARRETT: But it does raise interesting privacy issues.

COLLINS: Exactly. That's what I was going to --

JARRETT: Christine and I were talking about, you know, to have your employer know that you need to get reimbursed for traveling across state lines to get your abortion. It -- and some people may decide, look, well, that's what we have to do to get this done. But it's going to raise some issues.

ROMANS: I think it's more symbolic than anything else.

JARRETT: Yes.

ROMANS: I think it's saying, we feel you, we hear you, you know, and this is available for you if you need it. But it's interesting to me, like, you look at what happened in -- with the so-called don't say gay bill in Florida and what just a mess that has caused for Disney and the Florida governor, who, as you know, trying to take over sort of its special, you know, tax status in the area. And Disney, for example, got hit on both sides of that.

JARRETT: Yes.

ROMANS: Its employees thought it didn't go far enough.

JARRETT: Yes.

ROMANS: And Republicans in the state of Florida think it went too far. So they can get -- they can get in trouble trying to take a stand on these things.

JARRETT: It shows you don't get to sit on the sideline anymore.

ROMANS: That's right.

JARRETT: You have to -- you have to take a stance.

COLLINS: Well, and that's DeSantis' whole thing is he's arguing that companies like this should not have positions like that. Shouldn't be pushing back on that.

ROMANS: Right.

JARRETT: Yes.

ROMANS: But the employees think otherwise. BERMAN: Laura, Christine, thank you so much. Great to see you both.

JARRETT: Your "EARLY START" crew.

ROMANS: Love the green. Nice.

BERMAN: I know. Thanks for hanging around late.

COLLINS: This is the early crew right here.

ROMANS: You see the stock markets are going to be up today because you guys are wearing green. I'm not kidding.

COLLINS: Yes, we're sending a signal, like Elon Musk.

BERMAN: But we're not growing to live tweet it.

COLLINS: I might.

And NEW DAY continues right now.

[07:00:09]

BERMAN: All right.