Transcripts For CNNW New Day With Alisyn Camerota And John B

Who want to know what happens now. Why . Because the breaking news this possible 900 billion implosion thanks to one video. The president blindsided democrats, republicans, shocked his own staff releasing a video overnight that signals maybe he could veto the huge Coronavirus Relief package that has passed both houses of congress. This would mean direct aid to millions of americans. It does mean its in real jeopardy this morning. The president wasnt part of these negotiations. He was on the sidelines unclear if he knew about the intricacies at all. He was too busy trying to overturn an election, but he swooped in overnight and insisted that Congress Give americans 2,000 stimulus checks instead of the 600 thats in the deal now. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is trying to capitalize on this and secure that extra money immediately. We do have some new reporting on where this might be headed, but generally speaking its just one big giant mess. Indeed it is. Also overnight President Trump issuing a wave of new pardons, among them three corrupt former republican members of congress. Two men who pleaded guilty as part of the Mueller Investigation and four military contractors convicted in connection to the massacre of iraqi civilians, those contractors from the firm blackwater which is run by erik prince the brother of education secretary betsy devos. Meantime the other big story this morning, the virus, as it has been for months and the president as he has for some time still largely ignoring it. More than 3,400 deaths were reported on tuesday, that is the second highest daily death toll since the start of the pandemic. Lets begin with the fate of the stimulus bill and what we know about what might happen. Joining us john harwood, cnn White House Correspondent and Seung Min Kim White House Reporter for the washington post. John, lets start with what we know about what might happen next. Is the president going to sign this . We dont know, and the question is is this the president just fulminating you know, he has been raging in private, mostly in private, because he has been hiding out from reporters, raging against his defeat and, you know, jeremy diamond, our colleague, reported an adviser told him yesterday this is a child having a temper tantrum. Im reminded of a mother mary trump his niece had in her book, which is as a child donald trump tormented his brother by threatening to destroy his toy trucks and the mother took the trucks away and hid them in the attic so donald trump couldnt do that. How destructive does donald trump really want to be . Is he blowing off steam . Is he angry at his defeat and, therefore, trying to blow up these negotiations through a gesture or is he actually intending to shut down the government and stop this covid relief, maybe lashing out against americans who voted against him. We just dont know how serious he is about it. Part of it, too, seung min, which john has pointed out and rightly so, i will speak to the fact that its not clear that the president actually understands how this process works, that he understands the legislative process and also just based on that video i dont think he understands the difference in the funding that was passed. Whats in the covid bill, whats, you know, in the funding bill and the fact that we also now have not only aid to millions of americans hanging in the balance, but there could be a government shutdown. Exactly. And thats why prompt action and attempts to reign the president back in from this is going to be so crucial over the next several days because this isnt a regular kind of bill goes down to the white house, the president signs or maybe vetoes and then it goes back to congress. We just dont simply have that kind of time because the government shuts down again december 28th. So you have a very limited amount of time to get this resolved. And youre right, and that extraordinary video last night the president conflated what was in a government funding package that has to pass every year to keep the federal Government Operations running with provisions in the covid relief bill package, but remember, the packaging of those two very big separate bills was green lighted by everyone, including members of his own administration to make this easier to pass right before the holidays, this very big complicated package. And the president is inserting himself into the negotiations, you know, at a time when its frankly too late. So well see if the president does back off. I did think it was very significant that he did not explicitly say the word veto in his video message last night, but we will see how far it goes. And, again, we dont have a lot of time. Seung min, what you were you hearing from your sources on hilt overnight . You worked in both places. How did they including Senior Republicans react to this . I got a lot of befuddled texts, a lot of gifs, a lot of texts saying i give up, im going on vacation. Because were just were floored here. I mean, everyone was caught offguard, Even White House aides were caught offguard, White House Press staff, who had been telling us and other reporters all day that, yes, once the bill arrives at the white house that he will sign it. So this seemed to just completely come out of the blue. Whats going to be really interesting to watch over the next couple of days is what role treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin takes to kind of calm the president down and how he p persuades the president to sign the bill. He was the chief em saer for the administration to congress to both democratic and republican leaders. We will see if mnuchin plays any role in being persuasive here. Getting to that point, john, it will be interesting to see who is there in the president s orbit because there are fewer and fewer people around him as we know. He always sort of does what he wants, but its really moving to a different degree at this point. No question about it. I want to go back to one thing you were just talking about with seung min. Im not sure the president was confused about the bill. Remember, the president is a massive liar and i think it is very possible that he was deliberately plucking items out of this omnibus spending bill, the entire government funding bill, the kind he signs every year to keep the government going, to discredit the covid bill struck by Mitch Mcconnell. Remember, Mitch Mcconnell and john thune, the another member of the republican leadership, have both said in recent days that the effort to overturn or to block the certification of Electoral College votes on january 6th in the congress is going nowhere and encouraging people not to support it. That angered the president because he still harbors this delusion that he is going to be preserved in office, which is encouraged by a lot of these cookie advisers that you were alluding to, rudy giuliani, sidney powell, mike flynn, the overstock. Com ceo guy, all these people who are feeding him crazy ideas about how he could stay in power. So i think he may have been doing that on purpose to try to discredit what mcconnell did. I dont think its going to change the outcome on january 6th, but we could have a big mess and a lot of broken china between now and then in washington, and for all those millions of people out in the country who are desperately waiting for extended unemployment checks, 600 stimulus check, protection from evicti eviction, Small Businesses looking for paycheck protection, the president can do a lot of damage if he is determined to do so. Just to be clear, nobody knows whats going to happen next is an awful sentence for millions of americans who are depending on these extended Unemployment Benefits or were hoping for this stimulus check. We dont know whats going to happen, that hits them right in the gut. I want to move on to pardons in just a minute but before i do whats the latest on whether the president is going to go on a plane and go to maralago today . Its on a schedule hes supposed to leave this afternoon. My guess is because the president is interested in himself to the exclusion of pretty much Everything Else that he will decide to go. For one thing, its warmer down there and he has better chance of playing golf. On the other hand, if he really does want to swing his sledgehammer around and break as many things as possible before joe biden takes over, maybe he will stay here and do some of that, but my bet is by the end of the day hes gone. We have these pardons as well which weve been talking about, look, we knew more pardons were coming from the president , seung min, but it is what we saw in this wave of pardons last night which really you know, i said this earlier but i think its worth saying again, this is contrary to everything that the president bills himself as. These are not about draining the swamp, this shows that apparently its fine to be in the swamp. These are not about law and order, but these are about the president doing what he can at least in a couple of cases to discredit the Mueller Investigation. All of that served up on a platter last night, seung min. It was pretty swampy if you go down the list of pardons that the president issued last night. Youre right a lot of it there are a lot of provision here, but one shes really doing whatever he can in the final days to discredit and undo the work of the Mueller Investigation by pardoning last night two figures connected to that as part of the russia probe which know he has railed on as an illegitimate investigation and we know was a very legitimate investigation. And you see how he, you know, rewards his allies and, you know, people who are loyal to him even if they have been convicted of serious federal crimes. Two of the former members of the congress who were pardoned last night, Chris Collins and duncan hurter were early supporters of his president ial bid. We saw this going all the way back to his first pardon of his presidency when he pardoned the controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio who was convicted of contempt in his efforts towards cracking down against illegal immigration. He was a supporter of the president. Thats a message the president is giving here, if you are loyal to me i will reward you with the powers of my presidency, which is a pretty swampy message to be conveying on his way out. Indeed. I think Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter literally were the very first two house members to endorse donald trump. John harwood, you know from your days in financial reports, the phrase return on investment, roi, thats a pretty big roi for those endorsements of two members of congress. There is roi on the russia investigation and silence as well. No question about it. There was never the slightest bit of sincerity or merit to the president saying im going to drain the swamp. The president s ethos from the beginning, his entire life really is im going to get mine and thats what he has tried to do as president. Whats interesting about these pardons is on the one hand hes occupying this fantasy world in which he won the election and hes somehow convinced himself thats true, lying to people and raising money from them and that sort of thing. On the other hand these pardons show somebody who understands hes leaving office in a few days and he is going to use the unchallenged power he has to protect himself. Yes, he is pardoning early allies, those corrupt members of congress, yes, hes pardoning the blackwater guards who worked for erik prince, the brother of his education secretary, but the real mission for the president is to try to discredit, unravel the Mueller Investigation which lets just remember the stakes here. Russia was Donald Trumps financial ben factor before he ran for president , he hired a putinaligned campaign manager, there was an fbi investigation, russia helped him get elected. As soon as he got into office he fired the fbi director. Then we had the Mueller Investigation. In all of the meantime this president has taken actions to benefit russia by weakening the western alliance, raising questions about nato and now his administration is ending with a massive russian hack of the u. S. Government and u. S. Business which the president in response when his own secretary of state slammed russia, he defended russia and suggested it was china. There is a long pattern of this president being subservient to vladimir putin, thats how he started his presidency and thats how hes ending it. John harwood, Seung Min Kim, Merry Christmas . Thanks for being with us this morning . Nice to see you at a bare minimum. Appreciate it. Researchers now think that new coronavirus variant which is spreading in the uk is already here in the u. S. Likely hundreds of people already infected. Were going to take a closer look at what we know and also what we dont know. Thats next. Researchers set studying you the new variant of covid19 believe those in u. S. Could already be infected by the strain. Good to see both of you this morning. Dr. Schaffner, in some ways i feel like you hear that its likely already here and that probably is not a big surprise, hundreds maybe already infected. I am no expert as we know, it would almost seem like it needs to be a bigger number based on where were at and that it was first reported discovered in september in the uk. How should we be digesting all of this this morning . I think we all ought to look at it with some care, erica. You know, perhaps it is more transmissible, there is some computer models that suggest that it is. It may be here already and being transmitted. I know our colleagues in the uk traced these strains more he is do you sayly than we do here in the united states, but the important thing to remember is masking still works and we can reduce the spread of this strain and any other strain if we wear our masks, if we do social distancing and if we avoid groups and if we avoid a lot of travel during the holiday season. If we do all those things we can join together to dampen the spread of this virus and all the other strains of covid also. Dr. Jha, what would the impact be if there is a strain here that is more contagious, more infectious, able to spread more quickly particularly as, if some are still concerned, although i understand the science south on this, that children might be more susceptible to this variant of the disease . Yeah, so, john, good morning. Thanks for having me on. You know, i think the issue here is weve got so much spread already happening in the country that adding more fuel to that fire is certainly not going to be helpful. I think at this point theres a lot we need to sort out as dr. Schaffner said. What we need right now is people to really try to hunker down for the next six, eight weeks or so until the vaccine started getting more widely deployed and we start making a difference. But im absolutely i think we need to track this strain and make sure that it isnt spreading more substantially in this country. Just to follow up on your point, dr. Jha, that people need to hunker down for the next six to eight weeks. Thats not what were seeing. Weve been talking about covid fatigue, but this is really when its getting bad. Were asking people to hunker down now, a couple days before christmas. What do you think the reality is that people are going to listen . Yeah, so its a challenging situation because people have been sort of battered with so much misinformation about this pandemic. Im very sympathetic to that and im also sympathetic to the fact that its been a long pandemic already and people feel tired and they want to see their families. That is not only understandable its completely normal. The key here is unfortunately because we are in probably the hardest time in the pandemic i think people have to redouble their efforts. We need to hear from our political leaders the importance about doing these things. Again, we are not talking about forever, we are really talk being a short period of time until we can get to the other side of this tunnel. Dr. Schaffner, we just got word a few minutes ago that the administration has struck a new deal with pfizer for an additional 100 million doses of their vaccine by july 31st. Is that enough . Your reaction to that news. Well, its terrific. We would like more vaccine from both manufacturers. The more vaccine we have, the more quickly we can protect more people and of course the vaccine is a fabulous addition, a fabulous addition, to everything we can do to try to bring this outbreak, this pandemic under control. So more vaccine, im really enthusiastic about. In terms of more vaccine, some reporting, dr. Jha, from our colleague Elizabeth Cohen this morning found in her discussions with people that this new variant may take a modest hit i think were the words she used. So maybe the vaccines would be 80 to 85 effective against this new variant versus what were seeing in pfizer, moderna rates as high as 95 . How much of a concern is that, that modest hit, and based on that how many more americans may need to be vaccinated . Yeah, i think the science here is not at all clear, meaning first of all, im still optimistic that the vaccines will continue to be just as effective for this new variant, though we dont know. And if there is a bit of a hit, 80 , 85 is still quite good. As weve heard from the biontech ceo, they could make modest changes to the vaccine to make it more effective yet. I think we have a lot of tools in front of us on the vaccine, i certainly am not worried that the vaccine as an important way to get out of this pandemic will somehow be dampened by this new variant. Dr. Schaffner, are we getting people vaccinated quickly enough . By that i mean its amazing that we have the vaccines at all now. I get that. But operation warp speed has been trying to develop a Distribution Plan for some time. There is the issue of how many vaccines are allocated, but allocation and actually in your arm are two different things. So are they getting into peoples arms at the rate that you were hoping . Well, j