Return to Transcripts main page

Inside Politics

COVID Catastrophe: India Breaking Records For New Cases, Deaths; Funeral Today For Andrew Brown Jr. Amid Calls For Body Cam Footage To Be Released; Joint Chiefs Chairman: "Bad Possible" Outcomes From U.S. Troop Withdrawal In Afghanistan. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired May 03, 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]

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: If you look at the United States situation right now, this is progress. Twenty-five states holding steady, 18 states trending down fewer cases now, only seven states with more new COVID infections this week compared to last week.

So this map is looking better in part because this is looking better, the case, the horrors of the winter, down. Now Sunday, a low, it's been a long time since we've been below 30,000, 29,000 new infections reported yesterday sometimes for the weekend, it dips. But you see the seven day average is now below 50,000. That's still high. But way down from up here, 49,000 is the seven day average. The Sundays was the lowest since September.

If you'd come forward now and just look at the vaccine snapshot in the United States, this is one of the reasons cases are down, significant reason, 32 percent nearly a third of Americans are fully vaccinated, and 44 percent of Americans have received at least one dose, 44 percent. But remember that 32 percent fully vaccinated.

Look at India, 2 percent, 2 percent of the population has been fully vaccinated. So what happens when that happens? Look at the cases in India right now, that's the yellow line straight up compared to the United States and the European Union, which are trending down. That is horrific to look at and the result of so many cases, Sunday 3,417 deaths reported in India. And you see these numbers up or above 3,000 for days, heading up toward 4,000.

Let's get some perspective now from the ground in India where people are struggling for simple basics like oxygen or chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward joining us now live from New Delhi. Clarissa, I know what you're seeing is horrifying. Walk us through some of it.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So John, as you say, it is a very grim picture here. We actually drove to the neighboring state, Uttar Pradesh. It's the most populous state in India, roughly 200 million people living there. It's also one of the hardest hit states in this country. And that is bad.

We visited the government hospital. And we came across scenes that honestly can only be described as horrifying, huge shortages of beds of oxygen of medical personnel. And I must warn our viewers, we're going to show you a little clip from our story that's coming up later. Some of these images are distressing, but the families that we spoke to, one of their story told.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WARD (voice-over): In the next room, more than 20 patients are packed in tightly. This is what now passes for the intensive care unit. Family members have taken on the role of primary carers where medical staff are simply unavailable.

This man complains no one will change his wife soiled bedding. Suddenly, there is a commotion.

Will someone please call the doctor, this man shouts. His mother, 55- year-old Raj Bala (ph) appears to be slipping away. Her sons worked furiously to revive her. A doctor comes in and tells them to stop crowding her. But the family is inconsolable.

We've been here for six days and only today we got the ventilator for my mother, he tells us. The oxygen is out. We had to bring an oxygen cylinder.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WARD: The most acute shortage that we saw in that hospital, John, was the shortage of medical personnel. There were about five doctors and nurses and well over 100 people in that ward. They were lying across the floor. The Indian government today saying that they're actually going to try to recruit and bring in medical students, final year medical students, to help with this problem. Because so many doctors have the virus, they're not able to come into work. And this healthcare system is just on the brink of collapse, John.

KING: It is horrifying. It is absolutely horrifying. Clarissa Ward, we're grateful that you are there and are crawling so there -- so we can show this to the world of this key moment in India. Clarissa, thank you so much. And you can see more from Clarissa's devastating but critical reporting later today on The Lead with Jake Tapper.

Right now here in the United States, of course, a much different pandemic path. With us to share her reporting, her expertise and insights, Megan Ranney, an emergency room physician at Brown University. Dr. Ranney, it is good to see you out of that. I want to ask you a question about the United States. But when you see scenes like that, as a health care professional here who has been through the our horrors of COVID, what does the world have to do to help here?

DR. MEGAN RANNEY, EMERGENCY PHYSICIAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY: I feel like we're back in last March in the United States all over again, watching what my colleagues and their families in India are going through is just heartbreaking. I mean, physicians and nurses there need personal protective equipment, the same way as we did back here in the United States. They need oxygen. They certainly need vaccines. And most of all they need policy changes so that they can stop the spread of this virus and adequately take care of the patients who are already sick.

KING: Let's bring the conversation home. And I want to put a map up on the scene right -- on the screen right now because you have vaccine hesitancy.

[12:35:05]

In some places it's access, but in a lot of places there's this hesitancy to get the vaccine right now. You see the darker areas on the map, that's where vaccine hesitancy is higher, 26 percent of the population or more in the deepest color there. When you look at this right now, what jumps out is you as what should, A, what should Washington be doing? And B, what should every governor be doing?

RANNEY: So the first thing that Washington needs to do is to keep getting vaccines out, and to make it easier to get vaccines to people where they are at. Although we talk about vaccine hesitancy, we actually find when we go deeper into it, that it's really about two things. One is about confidence in the vaccines. Do people trust that they're safe? Do they trust the timeline? Do they trust the FDA? That takes time and effort and conversations to get over.

And then the second part is, can they get it easily? You know, we vaccinated the people who desperately wanted it, who were willing to stand in line, to sit on websites for hours. Now we're facing the people that might get it if it's right in front of them, but aren't going to go out of their way. And so Washington and governors need to do both of those things, both to educate, and to make it really, really easy.

You know, John, in Mexico, they're actually having entertainment, the wrestlers and singers and yoga to intend -- to get people to come in and get their vaccine. It would be awfully nice to see the same thing happen here, make it an event, make it something enjoyable, rather than something that you have to go out of your way to get done.

KING: That's an excellent perspective. Dr. Ranney, it's good to see you, grateful for your expertise as always. And as Dr. Ranney notes, influencers can matter here.

Well, here's another story. House Minority Leader Steve Scalise is explaining why he has still not been vaccinated as a Friday. Scalise is telling the advocate newspaper back home in Louisiana, he would rather get the shot back home and make a formal event out of it as opposed to getting it at the United States Capitol. And he says the issue now is just finding a time that works.

The House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said last week if more members were vaccinated, the Capitol could open up more quickly. The Speaker estimating roughly 75 percent of members right now have been vaccinated.

Still ahead for us, Andrew Brown Jr. is laid to rest today in North Carolina, as his family continues to push for answers about his death.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[12:41:43]

KING: The family of Andrew Brown Jr. is saying goodbye today. Funeral service is underway right now in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. The 42-year-old Brown was shot and killed by police 12 days ago. His family calls in an execution and the family wants to police body camera footage made public. Family members are allowed to view the videos. But a judge last week ruled the material would not be made public for 30 days. CNN's Natasha Chen joins us now live in Elizabeth City. Natasha, how are you?

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, John. Well, the family is now inside as well as a number of attendees. They are currently hearing from pastors offering words of comfort, offering prayers right now. And in a few minutes, they will hear from several of the children of Andrew Brown Jr. along with their attorney Benjamin Crump.

And then later in the service, they will hear a eulogy from Reverend Al Sharpton. So there are a lot of folks in there, a lot of speeches expected earlier when the family arrived and the casket arrived. There was also a plane flying overhead saying Andrew Brown Jr. never forgotten.

This is a difficult moment because while they are grieving and celebrating his life, they are also still trying to seek. Justice at this point, 12 days after his death on April 21st, only two family members of the Brown family have actually seen 20 seconds of body camera footage. That was footage redacted with blurred faces shown to them by the county attorney.

Of course the rest of the family members were also expecting to be able to see that and they did not. So right now, a judge as of last week has said that the family can see more body camera footage within 10 days. But as far as the family attorney tells me, he's not sure if that's 10 total days, 10 business days, no real update on when the family might actually be able to see that. So they're still trying to figure that out.

The judge has also denied a request for the body camera footage to be released in full to the public. So at this time, there are still very few answers about what happened that morning, when sheriff's deputies said they were trying to execute a warrant. What we do know from the death certificate that CNN obtained is that he died of a penetrating wound to the head. And the independent autopsy done by -- contracted by the family also found that he was shot in the back of the head.

So with that information, and having the family sort of describe only 20 seconds of video is very difficult for this community and the public to accept right now to understand the nature of how he died. And that's why for 12 straight days, they've been walking the streets of Elizabeth City pretty peacefully. And they've made it a point for that to be nonviolent. And there is a curfew in town. But so far, not too many arrests per day because of that curfew, and I understand that there are -- there's a group after the service even planning to continue that daily tradition of a peaceful march later this evening, John.

KING: Natasha Chen, grateful to have you on the ground in Elizabeth City on the supporting day. Thank you so much.

[12:44:51]

Up next for us the Biden global challenge including some provocative talk from North Korea.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: We'll show you some live pictures right now. The President of the United States and the First Lady of the United States, you see them there in Norfolk, Virginia. This is Tidewater Community College. It's an electricity lab essentially. Students are hands on training in electricity and heating and air conditioning systems. They're getting a test of parallel circuits, multimeter on the table we were watching during the break. You see the President there. This part of his touring, two stops in southeast Virginia today to promote his domestic economic agenda.

[12:50:02]

This while a pair of weekend developments underlying the steep foreign policy challenges ahead for the new President, the North Korean leader sister, Kim Yo-jong, promised retaliation against South Korea saying they can, quote, no longer remain an onlooker. A 100 days decision to end the U.S. presence in Afghanistan also a big worry for the Biden White House.

Over the weekend, the top American military commander gave this reality check that leaving Afghanistan is fraught with risk, quote, on the one hand you get some really dramatic, bad possible outcomes, the Joint Chiefs Chairman General Mark Milley told reporters.

And on the other hand, you get a military that stays together and a government that stays together. Which one of these options become reality at the end of the day? We frankly don't know yet.

Joining the conversation or CNN global affairs analyst Susan Glasser. And Susan, let's start right there, the President made this decision. He had conflicting advice about what to do in Afghanistan. He decided 20 years is enough. We're out. General Milley there essentially seems to be saying we really don't know how this is going to turn out.

SUSAN GLASSER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, that's right. I think it really is one of the most consequential and potentially risky foreign policy decisions so far of the new Biden presidency. And General Milley and the other generals, they advocated for a different outcome. You know, they've been making the same case for a number of years to Donald Trump, who also wanted to pull out but never quite got there. And to Joe Biden, they argued that the relative costs at this point were low, that there were only about 2,500 U.S. troops, and that the potential risks are very high. We're now going to see if some of their worst case scenarios come true. And I think the fear right is that the Taliban will become strong enough to once again take over the government of Afghanistan once again, potentially leaving the door open for Al-Qaeda and other sort of transnational terrorist actors.

So there are real risks involved. And I think the Biden ministration knew that. But to me it was a preordained decision. Joe Biden never was going to decide otherwise, I think.

KING: Right. And in the case of Afghanistan, essentially on the same page with his predecessor, Donald Trump wanted out of Afghanistan, had a quicker timetable. But they're essentially on the same page there. The new President has signaled, at least in his word so far, that he plans to be tougher in a more sustained way against China, which, of course, is the world's giant challenge at the moment.

Listen here to the Secretary of State. This is where you know, something is dicey when you're asked questions like this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Do you think we're heading towards some sort of military confrontation with China?

ANTONY BLINKEN, SECRETARY OF STATE: I think it's profoundly against the interests of both China and the United States to get to that point or even to head in that direction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: But the question on the table, though, Susan, because you see, in Hong Kong, China violating an agreement concerns that there could be provocative acts toward Taiwan other aggressive Chinese behavior in the neighborhood and around the world. Is there a new Biden approach or just a tougher Biden approach to tough, what's the answer when it comes to China?

GLASSER: Well, I think we're in the, what I would call the testing the new President phase of his foreign policy. China, as you know, has pushed back pretty aggressively in the first meeting with Biden's diplomatic team. I think there's an effort to sort of sound at what does it mean that the new President is echoing this.

And I think there's a particular concern in Beijing that there's been a reframing here in Washington, you have the new President Biden even cloaking his domestic political agenda in the context of the competition with China and portraying the world right now as a clash between rising authoritarians and the need for democracies like the United States to get its act together to even connecting the dots between domestic and foreign policy, that's got a lot of people concerned in Beijing that the U.S. is settling in for a much more competitive and adversarial phase of this relationship.

KING: Susan Glasser, grateful for the reporting and insights, appreciate your time. Thank you.

[12:53:53]

Up next for us, Homeland Security announces the reunification of four migrant families that were separated at the southern border.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KING: Topping our Political Radar today, small but significant process in the effort to reunite families separated at the U.S.-Mexico border back during the Trump administration.

The Homeland Security Secretary confirming this morning that four families will be reunited tomorrow, among them, a mother from Honduras and a mother from Mexico separated from their children in 2017. Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says much more work lies ahead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEJANDRO MAYORKAS, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: President Biden said we must reunite these families. He directed the creation of a task force of multiple departments and agencies in an all of government effort.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: How many kids left?

MAYORKAS: We have hundreds left.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

MAYORKAS: We have hundreds of families left and we will reunite them all.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem says last year's 4th of July celebration on Mount Rushmore proves fireworks are safe. But the Biden administration disagrees and this fight now headed to court. The Republican Governor is suing, challenging the Biden Interior Department's decision to deny a fireworks permit.

In a letter to state officials, the Interior Department sites, quote, potential risks to the park itself and to the health and safety of employees and visitors, pointing to last year's packed event amid the COVID pandemic.

The TSA says it screened a record number of people at airports across the country yesterday on Sunday, more than 1.62 million passengers, that's nearly 10 times more travelers that were screened on that same day one year ago.

Some other sides of what industry groups say is pent up demand more than a million TSA screenings per day for more than seven straight weeks. Delta now joining other major airlines in selling middle seats again. And American Airlines announcing all of its planes are coming out of pandemic storage. Also new today the travel industry, pending a letter to the government of the United States and to the United Kingdom asking the governments to lift restrictions on transatlantic travel. And another travels headline, this one you will like, travelers getting hit in their wallets as they plan post pandemic vacations -- vacations, excuse me.

Gas prices closing in on $3 a gallon, that according to AAA, the national average now stands at $2.90. That's up more than 60 percent from one year ago. What's behind the hike? Industry expert say a shortage of tanker truck drivers causing some stations to run out of gas. They say right now as many have a quarter of tank trucks stationed in place.

[12:59:54]

That's it today on Inside Politics, grateful for your time. Hope to see you back here this time tomorrow. Please stay with us, Ana Cabrera picks our coverage right now. Have a good day.