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Inside Politics

First Time Unemployment Claims At 861,000; Texans Struggle To Stay Warm, Survive Winter Storm Blackouts; Texas Governor Politicizes Power Crisis In Fox News Interview; Biden Signals He's Open To Piecemeal Immigration Legislation; New COVID-19 Cases, Hospitalizations Continue To Drop Off. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired February 18, 2021 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: Hello to our viewers in the United States and around the world. I'm John King in Washington. Thank you so much for sharing your day with us. It is a crisis test in Texas and the question of who's to blame for now day's long blackouts and death.

A relentless winter chill has killed at least 37 people across eight states. FEMA generators now keeping critical infrastructure for hospitals online hundreds of thousands of people still sit in the dark millions are under boil water advisories with another winter blast expected to engulf Texas with more freezing rain, snow and dire temperatures.

Keeping warm right now equals survival fireplaces; gas grills even trashcan bonfires now, new essentials melted snow for many a water source. The Texas state power grid is now at the center of a debate over oversight and this life or death moment includes a very sharp political edges.

Many Texas Democrats blame blackouts on poor planning and years of neglect by Republicans who for years have controlled most of that state. Also a new trouble sign this morning for the American economy first time unemployment claims jumping again to 860,000 plus continued claim stood at 4.5 million.

The Biden team says this new data underlines the urgency for the COVID relief plan. The president wants to speed through Congress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRIAN DEESE, NATIONAL ECONOMIC COUNCIL DIRECTOR: We look at the situation and recognize this is a very precarious moment for the economy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: COVID relief is big agenda item number one but another Biden priority immigration lands on Congress today. The president's plan includes a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented immigrants already here also include money to clear a backlog of asylum applications and new investment towards Central American nations.

More on the politics and the new plans ahead first, though, to that storm and the life or death struggle to stay warm in Texas. Let's get straight to CNN's Camila Bernal she is Dallas, Camila?

CAMILA BERNAL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, John, half a million people more or less in the State of Texas, still without power. Here in Dallas, we're being told that about 23,000 people or households are still without power. And the judge, the Dallas County Judge specifically saying that there's still some problems with the transformers and the lines here.

And so if they don't get that fixed, people are still going to have to be waiting to get their power back. But the reality is that despite some of the improvements, people are still upset, I want to show you what things look like in this neighborhood.

Of course, you're still seeing the snow on the ground. And people are still not with power in some cases. I drove about three minutes from here to meet up with Rachel Siegal and she is a mother, her baby is 11 months old at the moment. And she says that even though she got her power back yesterday, after about three days without power, she's still frustrated with leaders in this state, take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RACHEL SIEGAL, DALLAS RESIDENT: I expect a full apology as to how this has been handled. And I expect some sort of solution so that this doesn't happen again. Because from what we've been hearing, this was not fully preventable, but it could have been prevented.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERNAL: Now Rachel and her husband were telling me that basically they had to get together get in the same room with their dogs and the cat trying to warm up over those three days without power. They're still telling us that we are going to continue to see those rolling blackouts here in the State of Texas.

There's no guarantee as to when that will end, but they are trying to limit the amount of time that people are experiencing without power. Nonetheless, as you heard there people want answers. They want an apology and they want an explanation, John.

KING: That's more than understandable that they would want an explanation and an apology. Camila Bernal for us on the ground in Dallas, grateful for the live reporting and insights there. Just want to show you Texas is a big state. In fact Camila is in Dallas people across the state are feeling this.

Here's a headline here. This is Waco you see city pleads for water conservation thousands in the Waco area still shivering. That's Waco, Texas. This is San Antonio. This you see the headline right here the front page in San Antonio news struggle to get to basics again, this is a statewide problem the power out.

In Houston, the largest city in Texas, uncommon cold you see the headlines there as well people asking those very questions just a couple answering asking Camila. Why did this happen? Who is accountable for it?

And in Dallas you see the headline here problems pile up. You also see at the bottom of the page question about the Republican Governor Greg Abbott and whether he might be in national interviews and local interviews when you match them up are talking out of both sides of his mouth?

[12:05:00]

KING: Joining me now to discuss the crisis and the political accountability is Democratic Congressman Colin Allred, who represents Texas 32nd districts that's largely Dallas County Congressman grateful for your time today and I want to get first to the accountability issue.

You've been asking these questions in your Twitter feed. And I know you've been on the line with the power company down there, the grid, the consortium that works on it, I just want to go through some of your questions here.

Why would the generation units not prepared for this weather event? Why was there no plan for responding to an emergency loss with some power generation? Why was the public not notified sooner about potential outages and the need to take emergency steps to mitigate their own usage? Why were cots predictions for peak use in the winter so far off?

You raise very smart questions here, sir; I know you've been on the phone trying to get the answers, or any of those answers satisfactory?

REP. COLIN ALLRED (D-TX): Well, thank you for having me on John, thank you for highlighting what's happening here in Texas. And I just want to make sure your viewers know that at one point, nearly 4 million Texans are without power, and one of the coldest snaps that we've had and the description of what folks are doing exactly right, burning their furniture, breaking down their fences and burning their fences.

We've had deaths from carbon monoxide poisoning. And you know I really don't have satisfactory answers for why we weren't prepared for this? Because in many ways, we knew that that storm was coming. And we also have had events like this in the past that should have led our state regulators, our state legislators to put in place the protections to make sure that our systems were ready for this.

I mean, you know, they have natural gas that they use in Alaska, and doesn't freeze in temperatures like this. In Iowa, they have wind turbines that turn in the cold as well. We should be on winterizing and making sure that our grid is sustained that it can get through a crisis like this.

KING: I saw a statement from ERCOT again, which is the energy consortium there, right before we came on the air that says things are getting better, they still can't promise when everybody will have their power back. They insist that things are getting somewhat better.

But I just want to put up what we know so far, 12 million people facing water disruptions, nearly 500,000 people still without power that fluctuates a little bit, but somewhere in that ballpark, nearly 300 warming centers have been opened across your state.

The Governor says below freezing temperatures could last for days in some parts of the state. And as I said ERCOT can't say when full power will be restored? It's like this the question I've asked her about the COVID pandemic when you get an official on the air like this. So don't ask me do you? Are you confident tomorrow will be better than today? Is there at least an arc in the right direction or you're not so certain?

ALLRED: Well, we have seen in the last 24 hours, a lot of our power generators coming back online. And the numbers are much better as we sit here today than they were 24 hours ago. And so that's certainly a positive.

What folks are coming home to now when they're coming back to their homes, if they've gone away or when they're turning back on their power now is that their pipes are bursting and they're having serious flooding damage? And they're coming home to roofs that - ceilings that have collapsed.

And so you know, the damage is going to be enormous. In fact, the Insurance Council of Texas has estimated that this is going to be the largest claim event in our state's history surpassing Hurricane Harvey, which came in at $180 billion.

And of course, that's not even counting the most important statistic, which are the lives that have been lost and of course, the lives that have been interrupted or damaged by this. And it's really just inexcusable; we have to make sure this never happens again.

KING: It's stunning to hear that surpassing even Harvey and so the most important priority today is to get the power on and then to get help to people who need it, and to get food and water to those who need safety. And then we will get to the questions of political accountability.

And I know you want to get to the answers on those questions. Why did this happen? Why did - why was it not a backup plan? Why we are not prepared? Yes, this might be extreme weather by extreme weather happens especially more and more so in this age of the climate crisis.

I want you to listen here. This is your Republican Governor Greg Abbott. And like many politicians, especially Republicans nowadays, that what they say to reporters back home and what they say on Fox News can be a little different.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. GREG ABBOTT (R-TX): The companies that generate the power, their operations have frozen up or trip wired and are non operational. That is the lead reason why there is a shortage of power. This shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States of America.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Which is it?

ALLRED: You know, I'm just shocked at the callousness and the arrogance that we've seen from some of our statewide leaders here in Texas from Governor Abbott, who just before he gave that interview on Fox News spoke to my local ABC affiliate, and said that the real problem here was natural gas lines freezing, which is what he knows is the real problem.

Over 60 percent of the power loss that we had was from thermal sources. As natural gas, coal, nuclear, it wasn't the renewable sources that caused this.

[12:10:00]

ALLRED: And I don't know why he's even talking about something like the Green New Deal when he has residents who when he was speaking at that time were freezing to death. That's unacceptable. We also, of course, saw our junior senator fly to Mexico for a vacation, while the city that he lives in Houston doesn't have - they are under a boil water notice.

And so many folks are burning whatever they can to stay warm. I mean, this is just, you know, beyond anything that you would expect, regardless of party during a crisis like this, you know, you expect public officials to use whatever airtime they have to tell the truth, to give folks information they need to survive, and to help with the recovery.

I've been on the phone constantly with FEMA with our local electrical grid with our county judge trying to find out what we can do to help at the federal level. I'm sure there are a lot of things that our Governor and Senator should be doing instead of what they've been up to.

KING: Well, Congressman, we'll keep in touch as this plays out, and we wish the people in your district and across your grid state the best of luck as they try to navigate these challenges in the days ahead, and we'll keep at first on the crisis, but then we'll keep up on the political accountability questions as well.

Congressman, grateful for your time, and as the congressman just mentioned, is talked about the junior Senator in Texas today from that Senator a lesson in how not to do constituent services in the middle of a life or death crisis.

The Junior Senator from Texas his Ted Cruz, his state, as we just discussed, is in the middle of a rolling power outages and a struggle for many just to survive to keep warm to find safe water to drink. But Senator Cruz and his family flew to Cancun, yesterday on Wednesday. A source familiar with the Senator's travel itinerary now confirms to CNN if you go on social media, you will see social media users posting multiple pictures of the Senator and his family in the Houston airport waiting to board their flight. That same source now says Cruz is scheduled to get on a plane back to Houston this afternoon.

Up next the new Biden immigration plan and its prospects in the Congress and as we go to break a reminder, immigration has been political quicksand for more than a generation now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This bill, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 that I'll sign in a few minutes, is the most comprehensive reform of our immigration laws since 1952.

GEORGE W. BUSH, 43RD U.S. PRESIDENT: Tonight, I want to speak directly to members of the House and the Senate. And immigration reform bill needs to be comprehensive, because all elements of this problem must be addressed together or none of them will be solved at all.

BARACK OBAMA, 44TH U.S. PRESIDENT: To those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work well or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer pass a bill.

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: To every citizen called Congress and tell them to finally, after all of these decades, secure our border.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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[12:15:00]

KING: A bet from the new president that he can succeed where others have failed and navigate political quicksand, the Biden Administration today unveiling its ambitious immigration plan, an eight year path to citizenship changing how the law refers to people here illegally and clearing a backlog of asylum cases are top line requests from the Biden White House.

The president wants comprehensive reform, but he's already signaled he will take some change instead of no change at all if that's how he has to negotiate this with us to share their reporting and their insights CNN's Kaitlan Collins and Jackie Kucinich of "The Daily Beast".

Jackie, let me start there. You hear it? Let's listen. Actually, here's the President of the United States two days ago saying I want a big plan but--

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: And so I would if you had a refugee bill by itself, I'm not suggesting that. But I would - there are things that I would do by it, but not at the expense of saying I'm never going to do the other.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And just moments ago, though, on Capitol Hill, Senator Bob Menendez is saying not so fast on the piecemeal approach.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BOB MENENDEZ (D-NJ): There are some in Congress, I'll say from both parties who argue against going big on immigration reform. Others say we should leave the bigger tougher questions for another day, pursuing narrow reforms that nibble at the edges and leave millions of people behind. We know the path forward will demand negotiations with others. But we are not going to make concessions out of the gate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: So which will it be? I have lived through this for a long time from the George W. Bush Administration and through and every president that has tried a big comprehensive immigration reform bill even at times maybe when prospects look good have ended up getting nothing.

JACKIE KUCINICH, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE DAILY BEAST: Well, right. I think the operative words there were I'm not going to make concessions out of the gate from Menendez. But perhaps Biden is the end of the journey where Menendez is the beginning of the journey, because Biden, of course, is a creature of the Senate, and is someone who knows that sometimes these big comprehensive bills end up getting broken up.

But listen, immigration is a particularly fraught topic in the Congress and just in politics generally. Because not only are they in their own party, are there some disagreements? The Republican Party that they'll be trying to negotiate with on this is a very different Republican Party than the last time any kind of immigration bill tried to work its way through the Senate.

So it is bold, what they're doing in terms of the introduction, but whether it'll actually get anywhere, that's going to be really tough.

KING: Really tough because not only do you have narrow Democratic majorities in the House, the narrowest possible Democratic majority in the Senate, the 2022 midterms looming, so Republicans who might be inclined to help you might be worried about a primary challenge.

We've all been through this, which is why Kaitlan Collins it's fascinating to me to get the sense of you know, does the president have a firm plan or are they still trying to figure out you know, what's the climate, right? What's in the water?

In the sense that you heard Senator Menendez let's try to start big but in "The New York Times" today, Frank Sherry, who Americans - many Americans might not know him around the country.

[12:20:00] KING: An activist has been involved in this issue for decades, who has very great credibility with most of the stakeholders involved on the left of Senate groups who wants some reforms. He says we want 11 million people legalized that are our North Star. But we can't come home empty handed, we're not going to adopt an all or nothing approach, we have to achieve a breakthrough.

That's significant, because in the past, a lot of the interest groups involved have won a big bill because they know if you go small, you do lose something, you might win some but you lose some.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: And that seems to be the concern and why people like Menendez are saying let's not make concessions out of the gate. But I think even these big pro immigration groups who they could risk angering by doing this piecemeal are OK with this approach, because it's more pragmatic.

And they realize that everyone else who's tried it, this has eluded them. And so I think publicly the White House is saying we're proposing all of this together, because we want it to all be together. But I think realistically behind the scenes, they know the reality of what they're dealing with on Capitol Hill?

Look at what's going on with the coronavirus relief bill, even when they're trying to get it passed through this process where they only need the Democrats straw vote for it, you're still seeing some Democrats have problems with key parts of it. That could also happen when it comes to immigration if they try to pass it through a similar method.

And I think they're well aware of that, that you might end up seeing this very well be broken up into multiple pieces. And the other aspect you've got to consider is that it doesn't include a lot of border security enforcement that has always kind of been a token that they've put into pass proposals to get Republicans on the board and this is one of those that do not include a lot of that.

KING: And which gets to the hard part. Kaitlan Collins was not born Jackie Kucinich was in kindergarten, the last time - the last time a president signed comprehensive immigration reform. That was Ronald Reagan back in 1986. Where there was we thought maybe in the mid 2000s, this might happen.

Even Republicans are on board a little flashback here. I do it because let's listen to the Republicans in this mix, then. And then we'll talk about now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): I think 2013 is the year of immigration reform, I really do believe it.

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): We all wish we didn't have this problem. But we do. And we have to fix it. Because leaving things the way they are. That's the real amnesty. SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): I don't think it's at all like gun control, frankly, because I think that the product that we're starting out with has broader support on a broader basis than guns did.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That was Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio in the pre-Trump Republican Party. This highlights the challenge, the Republican Party has changed dramatically which Jackie Kucinich gets me to the point now the Chamber of Commerce, many business groups, they support a path to citizenship, or at least a path to legal status.

If you break it up, you can get some Republican groups to support your pieces. And then the challenges are Republican lawmakers will have the courage to cast the votes?

KUCINICH: Well, right. And those same groups don't really have the clout that they used to with the Republican Party. And the same because the grassroots is so vehemently, particularly in the Trump years against a lot of, you know, more open immigration policies.

And we've seen the Republican Senators tend to be very cautious. And particularly someone who's up and insightful about what the Republican base is going to say. So yes, they're facing a very uphill battle.

But I do - Kaitlan mentioned the activist class. I do think that because of the unified Democratic Party, despite the small margins, there is a push to get something done, particularly when you're talking about COVID relief, the organization that's going on with progressive groups to try to force through and try to take an aggressive posture to keep minimum wage in this bill is different.

They're not going to go quietly this time. Because I think in one of our stories, they said there is no next time when it comes to minimum wage. So I think you're going to see there then active in a way that perhaps you haven't in past pushes.

KING: It's a fascinating moment on several policy fronts the governing challenges for the new president and his party and the Republicans as well. Jackie and Kaitlan are going to stay with us for a conversation just a few minutes down the road. Up next for us, the race to get more Americans vaccinated as experts warn of a possible spring COVID surge because of those new variants.

[12:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Most of the COVID numbers we track are unmistakably better. And yet public health experts have a little sense of jitters worried that if we don't get the case count down enough if people start to ease up when it comes to wearing masks and social distancing, that there could be a spring surge especially because of the new variants out there.

Let's walk through some of these numbers and this is just dramatic. Here's your peak on January 2nd 300,000 new infections report on that day watch the red line down still high 70,000 yesterday but way down from 300,000.

The challenges keep going down keep shoving it down 70,000 new infections across the United States yesterday cases come down guess what? Hospitalizations down as well. 63,000 just shy of 64,000 Americans hospitalized yesterday from COVID the peak 132,000 plus back again in early January.

So again significant progress there the CDC though still says you see these numbers every day and they are heartbreaking. We're currently 490,000 plus deaths. We're going to add 60,000 65,000 more by March 13th, less than a month away that's from the CDC ensemble forecast.

And every day we get a painful stat from COVID. This one is a body blow.

[12:30:00]