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Rep. Joe Neguse (D-CO), Is Interviewed About Biden's Legislative To-Do List; Daily COVID Vaccinations Level Off As WH Battles Hesitancy; "United Shades" Tackles Police Reform And Race Conversations. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired April 29, 2021 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: If they decide to cause trouble, they will be on the ground. An aircraft carrier will be in the Arabian Gulf able to conduct airstrikes, if needed. And even B-52 bombers will be in the Gulf region.

All of this to really try and, you know, you get the Taliban to not attack U.S. forces on the way up. The U.S. is very adamant. This package will be available. They will be able to deal with the Taliban. But look, they sure hope all of this goes safely and smoothly, John.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: As do we at this important moment. Barbara Starr, grateful you're keeping an eye out for us. And we will keep in touch as it plays out over the next weeks and months. Barbara, thank you very much.

When we come back, if you heard the president last night, you heard a very ambitious wish list. Do the Democrats have the votes to pass it?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:35:16]

KING: Democrats have just a handful of votes to spare in the House and a 50-50 split to navigate in the Senate, tight math yet, listen here, a very ambitious to-do list.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: American Job Plan is going to create millions of good paying jobs. Let's raise the minimum wage to $15. Equal pay, it's been much too long.

If you believe we need to secure the border, pass it.

Let's get it done next month by the first anniversary of George Florida's death. We need a ban on assault weapons and high capacity magazines.

Let's lower prescription drug costs. Send it to my desk so we can support the right to unionize. Send that

legislation on my desk.

I also hope Congress will get to my desk, the Equality Act.

Congress should pass H.R. 1 and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and then send it to my desk right away.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Democratic Congressman Joe Neguse of Colorado joins us now.

Congressman, this is half serious, half a joke, but who decides what order? That's a long list. And as you know, you've got a handful of votes to spare in the House. And a lot of that is hard, some of it's controversial. How -- what's realistic here?

REP. JOE NEGUSE (D-CO): Well, good to be with you, John.

Look, I think that this Congress, the 117th, will be looked at as one of the most historically productive in the modern history of our country. We have been busy. And there are a number of competing priorities. But the House and the Senate has worked hard to get as many of these priorities accomplished and across the finish line as we can.

I think the president, as you've said, outlined a series of ambitious proposals last night, to the joint session of Congress. Some are going to be more difficult than others to achieve.

But at the end of the day, there's not a single proposal that he mentioned last night that isn't incredibly popular with the American people, broadly supported by most Americans across the political spectrum.

So, we feel confident that we will be able to get done the once in a generation investments, for example, that the president has called for in early childhood education, and healthcare, and childcare, and so much more.

KING: I hope you'll come back in a few months, and we'll will put up the list -- proposals passed by the House, proposals that are sitting in the Senate. And we'll go through the dynamics of the moment.

But there does seem to be a movement, we -- I don't believe it until I see it in this town, and I think you've -- share that view.

But I want you to listen to the speaker just moments ago. There's a police reform, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act has passed the House. There are negotiations now to try to compromise in the Senate.

The speaker sounds quite optimistic. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think that that's a realistic deadline? Can that be done?

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Yes, I think so. I'm very proud of Karen Bass, who has authored the bill in the House, now working in a bipartisan way in the House and in the Senate with Senator Tim Scott.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: A, do share that optimism? And, B, do you know anything about where they are and the specific language of the big -- one of the big hang ups, which is qualified immunity?

NEGUSE: I do share her optimism, John. And, of course, it couldn't be more important for us to ultimately get this done. I think the president's clarion call to action yesterday in the joint session of Congress was incredibly important, in terms of motivating folks in the Congress to get this done.

I have, you know, have -- have had many conversations with Chairwoman Bass, with Senator Scott and Senator Booker as well, as well as with a number of other House Republicans who are part of the negotiations that are now taking place.

And those conversations, I will tell you, have been fruitful. They have been in good faith. I think every member is trying to solve this problem in a thoughtful way. And I suspect that ultimately, we will reach a compromise measure and that that will be something that we're able to take up in May.

In terms of how we resolve, for example, the qualified immunity issue, and obviously the various different proposals that had been suggested -- one proposal that I have emphasized to my colleagues privately and as well as publicly is the Colorado model, which was adopted successfully on a bipartisan basis in our state last year, that is -- offers a potential route in terms of getting this done.

But look, at the end of the day, I know Chairwoman Bass, she's an incredible, thoughtful leader, and she has the tenacity and the commitment to get this done. So, I believe that ultimately we will get a reform bill to the president's desk.

KING: A lot of praise for the president's speech from Democrats last night. But a couple of testing points. One is about the border.

The president said he wants to pass, you know, the DACA legislation to help the DREAMers, pass a path to citizenship for farmworkers and for the undocumented.

But he did not talk much about the current crisis, a lot of -- a lot of children, minor children coming across the border.

Senator Mark Kelly, your Democratic colleague in the Senate from Arizona, just told CNN's Manu Raju, I just didn't hear anything on crisis at the southern border, which is an important issue in the state of Arizona. Does the president need to say more and do more when it comes to that?

NEGUSE: Well, I certainly respect my colleague, Senator Kelly's view.

I would say, John, I think that the president, when he referenced comprehensive immigration reform, was talking about both the border and the need to address the archaic immigration laws that we have on the books here in the United States.

I think his call to action to the Congress is to step forward and actually offer the political will -- or rather show the political will to get it done.

[12:40:14]

You know, you've covered these issues for so long, you remember the compromise in 2013 and going back to 2006. The general contours of comprehensive immigration reform with respect to both border security and a pathway to citizenship for DREAMers and addressing our refugee laws and so forth, those contours are fairly well established and broadly supported by the American public, by the way.

The problem is that we've lacked any real political will in Washington to get it done. So, I think that's why the president said what he did. I suspect he'll have more to say about the various issues on our southern border in the coming days and months ahead.

KING: You're right. I've been here a while, 30 plus years. What you get on immigration is a lot of talk, a lot of promises, and very little action. We'll see if this year is any different.

Congressman Neguse, grateful for your time, we'll circle back as we go through the consequential days and weeks ahead of us here. Appreciate your time today.

NEGUSE: Thank you, John.

KING: Up next for us, one reason for vaccine hesitancy is vaccine misinformation.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:45:49]

KING: President Biden knew he had a big audience last night so he took time early on to address a giant COVID challenge.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: Everyone over the age of 16, everyone is now eligible to get vaccinated right now right away, go get vaccinated America. Go and get the vaccination. They're available. You're eligible now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: The pace of the COVID vaccine rollout is slowing and it is not a supply problem. Vaccine hesitancy is the challenge of the moment. A new poll finds nearly one in four adults have no plans to get the shot. Only 18 percent of those who are not vaccinated yet say they plan to get their shot or shots.

Some of this hesitancy is understandable. The reason Johnson & Johnson vaccine pause for example, did raise some safety questions. Questions, though the experts say have now been answered. A good deal of the hesitancy is driven by conspiracy or politics, and then magnified on social media and elsewhere.

Renee DiResta is a technical research manager at Stanford Internet Observatory. She studies misinformation and disinformation surrounding COVID-19. Renee, grateful for your time today. As the president tries to deal with this problem, as the country tries to deal with this problem, when you study it, is there a main, is there a single main source of vaccine hesitancy misinformation that contributes to it? Or is it a little bit of everything?

RENEE DIRESTA, TECHNICAL RESEARCH MANAGER, STANFORD INTERNET OBSERVATORY: No, it's a lot of everything. So I think it's important to realize that hesitancy isn't just one thing. A lot of it -- a lot of our attitudes about vaccination are shaped by the people that are around us, you know, who's our social group? What are they saying about it? It's related to the information that we see. What media are we consuming? What social media communities are we in?

It's about our prior experiences with vaccines. How do we feel about the flu shot? So there's a lot of different things that are caught up in shaping people's attitudes that are potentially contributing to hesitancy.

KING: And we see a lot of it from the right, people who don't trust Dr. Fauci, who don't trust government, who don't trust vaccines. But I saw in your work, that that's only a piece of it, that you see it on what we would call, in political conversations we would call, the left.

DIRESTA: So again, depending on what kind of communities you're part of, there are communities on the left that traditionally in the context of childhood immunizations have been anti-vaccine or have been vaccine hesitant. There's -- those are two different things. And so one of the areas in which we see this taking shape on the left, if you, you know, want to use that term, is in women's communities, for example.

There's a lot of women who are concerned about things like their fertility in a relatively unknown vaccine. And so it is not so much that they are concerned about the what political influencers are saying as what they're seeing from the people that they follow on Instagram, the wellness influencers that they engage with, what those people are saying has a little bit more of a direct impact on how they're thinking about the vaccine, then something like who feels a little more removed, like a president or a politician.

KING: And how big of a problem is it just an average American who just has a question? That's a legitimate question. Goes online to search for an answer, how much of what they see is reliable science based and how much of it is not? DIRESTA: Well, that's really the challenge that's been plaguing us throughout COVID-19, which is that there are certain things that we just don't know. So it's a little bit different than childhood immunizations, where there's just a plethora of evidence documenting how safe they actually are. It doesn't necessarily mean that people don't feel hesitant when they're vaccinating their children.

But at least when people are searching for information, reputable up to date information is out there. Whereas what we see with COVID is people just don't know. And so one of the dynamics as you alluded to in the opening, the J&J vaccine, people who are looking to try to understand why the J&J vaccine was halted, for example.

Depending on what communities they're participating in, or where they're getting their information from. They're going to see very, very different messaging about that J&J halt. A lot of the news media did a really great job covering just the facts. There were six instances of a rare but severe side effect. And that led to CDC and FDA halting the shot temporarily out of an abundance of caution.

And then in the CDC's meeting last week they chose to restart that process. But if you were getting your news or if you were following media influencers, like for example, Tucker Carlson, what you would have heard was a whole lot of just asking questions, why are they doing this, insinuating kind of a nefarious motive or insinuating that perhaps there are way more than six, so taking really a conspiratorial tone to conveying the story.

[12:50:20]

And again, if you're participating in one media ecosystem, or one social media ecosystem, you might be getting reliable information. And if you're participating in another, you might be getting highly politicized or conspiracy theorist information designed to keep you afraid or keep you outraged. And that's the -- that's really the challenge with a very kind of broad and diverse information environment that we have today is really people actually getting the most reputable information possible.

KING: That's why we're grateful for your work and for your insights and help today. Renee DiResta, thanks so much. Appreciate it very much.

And up next for us, CNN's W. Kamau Bell, ready to launch a new season of United Shades and ready to share new conversations on policing and race including what it's like to be black, and also be a cop.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: The new season of CNN's United States of America debut Sunday night. And if you are not a regular viewer, I urge you to give it a look and to give it a chance. W. Kamau Bell addresses some of the issues now front and center in the American conversation whether it's in Washington or what I like to say the real America, issues like race, policing, justice. Here's a snippet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

W. KAMAU BELL, HOST, CNN'S UNITED SHADES OF AMERICA: Is this moment different as far as like where we are in America and specifically around law enforcement?

LARONNE ARMSTRONG, OAKLAND'S POLICE CHIEF: For me, it's just this moment of being a black man in a police uniform, right? And there are some problems, a systemic problems that's been in policing for a very long time that you know needed to be routed out. And so you sit in this place where you're like, do I fit in, right? Sometime you even ask the question, do I fit in? I'm a black man before I put on uniform.

[12:55:00]

BELL: Yes.

ARMSTRONG: And I'm one when I take it off is, you know, I'm not --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Anywhere why you got it on.

ARMSTRONG: Right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: We're lucky to have with us right now the man behind the program, the host of CNN's United Shades of America, W. Kamau Bell. Kamau, it's great to see you. Help me understand. We were talking recently, when we were together. There's conversations in Washington. They say they're going to make progress on police reform. They are genuinely trying to negotiate a compromise. We talk about things in this town one way. You're sitting down there with a black man who happens to be a police officer. Walk through what you're learning in this new season about trust in the community, trust, respect, fear.

BELL: Well, I think it's, not only is that black man, a police officer, he is now the chief of the Oakland Police Department, LaRonne Armstrong. So he's in a very unique position where he's a black man who's in charge of police. But one of the problems in policing is the structure policing is that even as the chief of police he has to deal with the union. And police unions around the country are always protecting their power more than they're seeking justice for their communities.

So I think it's a very difficult position. And whatever negotiation and compromise happens in Washington, if it doesn't end up with us really examining the entire institution of policing in this country, they were just nibbling around the edges, we're not actually getting to the problem.

KING: Right. And whatever they legislate, and let's hope they do reach a deal that actually addresses some of the systemic problems. But then you have to build the trust and people have to follow the new rules if there are new rules. It gets hard in this chair every day. The -- some of the protesters out in the family members legitimately say, say their names. It's too long of a list. And just as we were waiting for the Derek Chauvin verdict you had another case out there you live out in Oakland in the Bay Area, Mario Gonzales, we're talking about Andrew Brown in North Carolina. But talk -- walkway through Mario Gonzales and why it is yet another example of an incident that raises just profound questions of trust.

BELL: Mario Gonzalez was a 26-year-old Latinx man who was in Alameda, California. And apparently according to the lawyer for his family was basically just a guy who would had a few drinks sitting in the park. He was drunk in the park, which -- whether that is a crime within a few minutes of being abducted by the police. He was dead.

You know, and some people comparing it to George Floyd because the police were leaning on him, putting pressure on him. And let's be clear, multiple people called 9/11 because the guy was drunk in the park. Now, even if those people weren't calling the cops to kill him, we have a system in such that you have to call the police, someone with a gun for a guy who is drunk in the park. This -- that is a flaw in the system.

If you're worried about a guy who's drunk in the park, you should be able to call somebody who shows up who is a social worker or someone who's looking to help him not whose main tool is a gun or not -- or their -- or violence.

KING: I want you to listen to a snippet of the conversation in this town. The President gave his joint address last night. Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, a Republican who's intimately involved in those police reform negotiations gave the response. Race is obviously a question and an issue. I want you to listen to his perspective and the Vice President of the United States.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC): Nowhere do we need common ground more desperately than in our discussions of race. Hear me clearly. America is not a racist country.

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, I don't think America is a racist country. But we also do have to speak truth about the history of racism in our country and its existence today. And I applaud the president for always having the ability and the courage, frankly, to speak the truth about it. He spoke what we know from the intelligence community. One of the greatest threats to our national security is domestic terrorism manifested by white supremacists.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: That's the Washington conversation. How does it relate as you get to learn, you get -- the great thing about our jobs is we get paid to learn and you're going into these communities and you're talking to people. And one of the questions I always have is how disconnected is the way the politicians talk from the way real people talk?

BELL: Well, I think you know, I hear two politicians being political in their answers both trying to achieve maybe different goals. I think Kamala Harris is maybe trying to achieve a different goal than Senator Tim Scott is. But both of them feel like they're being political in their answers all due respect to Kamala Harris, Vice President Harris.

I will say this, the structure of this country, whether we want to admit it or not, is based on racism. This country started on genocide and the transatlantic slave trade. And the country was built on the backs of black folks who made this country as great as it is, whatever that means. And until we recognize that, and specifically policing, it was built on slave catching, that's the institution policing was built on slave catching, until we recognize that and see how that has affected everything that these institutions have done, we're not getting anywhere further. So yes, America is built on racism.

KING: Kamau, it's great to see you. And I'm really looking forward to the new season. It was great to see you --

BELL: And thanks for teaching me how to use the magic wall. I don't want to go too far without saying thanks for teaching me how to use the magic wall.

KING: You were close on the password, Wolf Blitzer 37. You forgot the special character. I can't tell you what it is though. Sorry about it. Best of luck.

BELL: Thank you.

KING: See you soon. And set a reminder right now so you don't miss the new season. United Shades of America all starts this Sunday, 10:00 p.m. You don't want to miss it.

[13:00:00]

Thanks for joining us in Inside Politics today. We'll see you back here at this time tomorrow. Don't go anywhere. Busy News Day, Ana Cabrera picks up our coverage right now. Have a good day.