. top of the hour now. you're watching a special new year's day edition of cnn newsroom. i'm jon avalon in new york. we begin with a message today from the senate to the president, the senate voting to override president trump's veto of a mammoth defense spending bill. let's go to cnn's phil mattingly

for more. phil, a pretty remarkable last hour. tell us what happened. >> reporter: yeah, and it wasn't even close. let's first talk about the policy, and it underscores why this was a fight the president shouldn't have picked to begin with. this is the national defense act. it is the defense bill as outlined by legislators and for the last 60 years it has been passed by congress with pretty wide bipartisan margins. the difference this year was president trump who opposed the bill, not necessarily on defense policy grounds, which is the core of what it is, it also protects the pay raise for troops, i might add, he opposed it because it did not include on-line appeal of section 230, not only the those who drafted the bill tried to tell him incessantly. it also authorized the change for army bases named after

confederate soldiers. it was just a small component of this bill. the president complained pretty regularly that this bill was soft on china and russia, something the enactors of this bill said was wrong. this is always bipartisan legislation, it always passes by wide bipartisan margins and these were issues the president wasn't necessarily going to win on. however, this is the first veto override of president trump in four years, and it was not even close. two-thirds were needed to override the veto. they had 81 votes. that means the house and the senate by wide bipartisan margins have told the president no dice on this one. the nda will be law. >> that is a thumping by any measure and a heck of a way to go out by a republican congress who has worked so hard to support this president. what do we know about the latest efforts of house republicans to subvert the election?

>> reporter: that is a blunted, accurate way to put things, i guess. everybody's eyes right now are on january 6th. that is when the united states congress will convene for a joint session and they will count the electors, and jon, you know this very, very well. this is traditionally every four years a pro forma thing. this is what's always occurred and some are not acknowledging the reality, that joe biden is the president-elect and joe biden will be inaugurated as the 46th president of the united states on january 20th. house republicans, more than 140, and that number is likely to grow, i'm told, say they're going to object to at least one slate of objectors, perhaps even more. what's necessary to have an effect on the action of the day is for the senator to join them. we now know that senator josh hawley from missouri will join them. what does that actually mean? in terms of who will be the next

president of the united states, it means absolutely nothing. in terms of january 6, it means it's going to be a very long day. so, basically, if you have an objection from a house member and from a senate member and they pair up, both chambers of congress then recess, then they have a two-hour debate, maximum two-hour debate, then they vote on that objection. democrats control the house. a number of republicans in the senate have made clear, even though they control the chamber, they believe joe biden is president-elect of the united states. both of those objections will fail, no matter how many objections there are, no matter how many votes it leads toch. the most interesting element is this has basically sparked a civil war within the republican party where there are a number of republican senators, particularly those up in 2022, who are saying i don't want to have to take a vote against reality. joe biden is the next president of the united states, or president trump, who obviously still commands quite a following in the republican base. >> it's a stunning thing we're going to confront, but what you

said is so important. this essential means a two-hour debate, but it doesn't change the status of the republican party. phil mattingly, thank you, and happy new year. two of the great chroniclers of the trump era, kayla, we'll start with you. quite a smackdown on the way out the door. what do you think the reaction will be inside the white house? >> oh, i can imagine we will guess what the white house reaction will be. the president will be irate, he will rant and rave, he'll promise vengeance and may actually be in a position to bring some to the republicans who didn't vote his way, regardless of kind of what he decides to do for you. years from now he's going to remain a force in the republican party.

i do think it's kind of the capstone to the donald trump presidency, right? this is a man who has never really cared much about governance, has never really cared much about the republican party, has done everything he can to alienate people in congress and for the most part has watched republicans stand by him. for the fact there was, in this final moment of his presidency, a bipartisan rebuke, however small or minor, i think, does show just how much wreckage he's left behind him over the past four years. >> olivia, you have been a chronicler of said wreckage, and now the president has set a protest rally for 7:00 ra.m. what are you hearing? what can we expect? >> besides this smackdown, as mckay called it, being the perfect way to end things, this is kind of a portrait of the

president very isolated. everyone i talked to who ordinarily is around the president have said they sometimes don't even know who is next to him. when he was at mar-a-lago, he was very isolated. people typically around him were not. he has sort of had this vacuum filled by people who were the worst of the worst yes men, who were telling him what he wants to hear, who were telling him to do the most destructive things, and this is kind of, of course, i think how he's going out, sort of very angrily and frustrated and isolated and surrounded by people who are bringing out and encouraging his worst instincts. when he came back early from mar-a-lago and skipped the new year's eve event last night, i think we all knew he was going to be planning something, and i think besides this january 6th event, he will be planning all sorts of other things before he finally has to head out the door on january 20th. >> parting gifts to the republic.

i'm going to stick with you, olivia. louie gohmert responded to vice president pence's attempt to dismiss his lawsuit today. how seriously should anyone take louie gohmert? >> i think generally the answer to that is not very. it's interesting that we're talking about louie gohmert. i was talking to a republican official a few moments ago about josh hawley and what he's doing and how establishment republicans view what he's doing right now. and this person said, including, he's not some moron like louie gohmert, and the reason why people are being harsher in how they're assessing what josh hawley is doing is because it seems so much more cynical, whereas in washington, at least, among establishment republicans, louie gohmert has always been viewed and pretty much is still viewed as a joke. >> mckay, i want you to hear

what was said this morning and get your reaction. >> pretty much i haven't seen anything, but a lot of the argument is a lot of evidence has never been brought to court. the courts have basically shot down these challenges due to procedural grounds. there are so many things that i saw from other states that shouldn't have happened that lead a lot of people to speculation, hey, there's some hanky-panky going on. i'm not saying that there was. >> what i love about that was it's the kind of thing you hear a lot, republicans saying, look, there is a lot of confusion around the election and that's why we should have this vote. when, of course, it's the president, and in some cases, the vote that's increasing the confusion. mckay, what's your take on that kind of logic or illogic you're hearing from republicans lately? >> it's donald trump's that a lot of people are saying illogic. he will say, assert, basically,

without any evidence that something is happening. a conspiracy theory, some kind of nefarious activity by democrats or his foes, and then create out of thin air this narrative that then the rest of the republican party will sort of say, well, you know, i'm hearing from my constituents about this and it's clearly something a lot of people are concerned about, and therefore i need to take it seriously. and so it's this kind of -- >> it's circular. >> yeah, it's a self-perpetuating thing where they can pretend like they're kind of doing the statesmanlike thing by taking their constituency seriously when, in fact, they all know what reality is, they're just kind of too afraid to say it. >> all right. mckay coppins, olivia nuzzi, i recommend everything you're writing. happy new year to both and thank you very much. the united states starts a new year by crossing another grim milestone. more than 20 million cases as concern grows over new strains

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case mark. as the gap between the doses delivered and the number of americans getting shots in the arm is stunning, considered incomprehensible by senator mitt romney. how to fix it includes rethinking the entire dose strategy and giving people more herd immunity. rick, what more can you tell us? >> reporter: it's more awfulness, i'm afraid, jon. here in california we've just set a new daily record, the most deaths reported in a day, 585. and as a country, we've just passed 20 million confirmed cases. that means at least -- that's about 1 in 16 americans have already been infected by this virus. from wuhan where all this began, to new york, not much fondness

in the farewell to a tough year. >> 2020 is gone. >> reporter: 2020 was tough, but -- >> we're still going to have our toughest and darkest days. >> reporter: officials say hospitals are on the brink of catastrop catastrophe. >> you're already drowning but you have to keep trying because that's what you can do. >> reporter: today in atlanta a field hospital reopens for business at the georgia world congress center. meanwhile -- >> in many parts of rural georgia, both in the north and the south, there is vaccine available and literally sitting in freezers. that's unacceptable. we have lives to save. >> reporter: they're just not getting the hoped-for uptake for medical workers. in west virginia, 42 people were given antibodies, not the vaccine, by mistake. in wisconsin, a pharmacist in

custody after destroying 5,000 doses, taking them out of refrigeration. the administration projected 20 million would have had vaccine dose number 1 by now. the reality? not even 2.8 million reported. >> states and localities need resources, they need funding. i suspected we would see bumps in the road, but i didn't suspect we would see this lack of consistency across the states. >> reporter: and that new, faster spreading coronavirus variant now detected in colorado, california and maybe florida. >> i think we have to assume that this strain has been in the u.s. for a long time. >> reporter: december, by the numbers, was the worst month of the pandemic, the most confirmed cases, the most deaths. 10,000 lives lost in the last three days alone. >> we do have these vaccines, we just need to hunker down and get them. >> reporter: in 2020, 345,737 people confirmed killed by

covid-19 in america. in 2021, how many more? now, the british have just decided to space out the time between dose 1 and dose 2. it's going to go to maybe 12 weeks. it was three. now, the reason they're doing that is they want to try and get as many first doses into arms as they can as quick as possible. but dr. fauci says the u.s. will not be following suit. he says we are going to continue following the science and continue following what worked well in the trials. dose 1, and about three weeks later, dose 2. jon? >> that's the way it's been designed. nick watt, thank you very much as always from california, and happy new year. dr. leana wen is a cnn medical analyst and doctor out of baltimore.

doctor, how is this even more transmissible deep in the health crisis of our country. >> reporter: the good news for the u.k. is the individual that gets that variant, it doesn't appear to be more virulent, so they are not likely to be more hospitalized or to die if they got the other variant. the problem is the population level. if you have something that spreads even more readily than the variant that we have, we are going to, by definition, see more hospitalizations. that's going to overwhelm our hospital systems even more, and we're going to see, unfortunately, more deaths. and so i hope people will take away from this the importance of hunkering down once again. we need to get these vaccines out to people as urgently as possible, and in the meantime to keep up masking, physical distancing and avoiding indoor gatherings. >> absolutely. now, with this new variant spreading, vaccines are more crucial than ever, and you just heard dr. fauci say the u.s. will not following the u.k.'s decision to spread out that

second dose in order to administer more first doses. you agree that's the best move? >> i do. i understand the desire to, let's say, stretch out the doses that we have and to say, if one dose can offer some partial protection, why not give it to as many people as we can? the problem, though, that's not how the studies were conducted. the studies were conducted for moet f both pfizer and moderna with the second dose given within three or four weeks of the first vaccine. we don't know how long the immunity lapsed, we don't know how long that protection is, we don't know what happens if you get that second dose several weeks or months after it was intended, and i think there is enough vaccine hesitancy or concern in this country, the last thing we want to do is add more concern. the problem we're having now is that the vaccines we do have are not being distributed, so let's not create more problems. >> that's exactly right. that brings us to the point that

the administration of the vaccine varies greatly from state to state. texas, california and florida. according to the cdc, only about 20% of the vaccines distributed to them have been administered. what's the source of the lag we're seeing in some states and not in others? >> well, there is a lot of inconsistency between the states in terms of who they are v vaccina vaccinating, what procedures they're using. i think the federal government should have set out much clearer guidelines and expectations for these states. basically, use it or you lose it. also there was a lot of overpromising by the federal government and not providing the resources that local and state health departments said they need. i think that still needs to be done even as we recognize we are really months behind where we should be at this point, and it's a profound tragedy for there to be millions of doses that are sitting in freezers when there are thousands of people dying every day who could have been saved if they had received the vaccines in time.

>> it's always a good idea to underpromise and overdeliver, not the opposite. dr. wen, thank you very much and happy new year. >> to you, too, jon. the state of georgia has been forced to open a field hospital yet again. what happens when health care workers are stretched way too thin? plus, 140 house republicans preparing to defy the will of the american people and vote against counting electoral votes. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪

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atlanta has become the latest city to open overflow hospitals as coronavirus cases rise across the country. cnn correspondent nic valencia is at a hospital now that's accepting patients. nic? >> reporter: 2020 is gone, but the latest numbers from johns hopkins shows the pandemic still rising. over 10,000 americans died as a result of the coronavirus. things here in georgia aren't faring much better. governor brian kemp so concerned about the latest numbers of the coronavirus that he's opened up the georgia world congress center to act as a makesthift

field hospital where there will be 60 temporary beds acting as an overflow center for the health systems here that have been overwhelmed by the rising cases. it was yesterday the governor addressed his concerns about the rising numbers. >> if the people of georgia will hunker down for a little bit longer, stay vigilant and do the things we've been talking about, wearing a mask, washing your hands, socially distancing themselves and following the health guidance in our executive orders, we can all have a safe, happy new year. >> reporter: this field hospital is expected to be open until at least the end of january, and earlier, when i spoke to the governor's office, they said they are admitting patients as of today. just a quick note here on hospitalizations in georgia, this morning about 5,000 georgians woke up in the hospital. numbers here continuing to spike. jon? >> nick valencia, thank you very much. now, from bob dillon to willie nelson to johnny cash, the mt. rushmore of americana.

the 39th president forged friendships with some of the greatest artists of all time. jimmy carter, rock and roll president, explores how his unique relationships shaped battles for years to come. take a look. >> one of the things that have held america together has been the music that we share. >> jimmy carter used music in politics. it had never been done quite that way. >> i want to introduce to you the allman brothers. >> he enjoyed our music and he became a friend. >> he's a kin ddred spirit of o kind. you're honored to meet him if you do. >> his love for music makes sense to me because music is the voice of the heart. >> that was the music of shame

and dissidence. it didn't matter to him. >> i think music is the best proof that people have one thing in common no matter where they live, no matter what language they speak. >> jimmy carter, rock and roll president, sunday at 9:00 on cnn.

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seriously? but zerowater- let me guess. zero? yup, that's how i know it is the purest-tasting water. i need to find the receipt for that. oh yeah, you do. you remember rick, text her neighbor?er. sure, he's the 76-year-old guy who still runs marathons, right? sadly, not anymore. wow. so sudden. um...we're not about to have the "we need life insurance" conversation again, are we?

(woman) no. we're having the "we're getting coverage so we don't have to worry about it" conversation. so you're calling about the $9.95 a month plan from colonial penn? i am. we put it off long enough. we're getting that $9.95 plan today. (jonathan) is it time for you to call about the $9.95 plan? i'm jonathan from colonial penn life insurance company. sometimes, we just need a reminder not to take today for granted. if you're age 50 to 85, you can get guaranteed acceptance whole life insurance starting at just $9.95 a month. there are no health questions, so you can't be turned down for any health reason. the $9.95 plan is colonial penn's #1 most popular whole life plan. options start at just $9.95 a month. that's less than 35 cents a day. your rate can never go up, it's locked in for life. call today for free information. and you'll also get this free beneficiary planner. so call now. (soft music)

♪ hello, colonial penn? robinwithout the commission fees. so, you can start investing today wherever you are - even hanging with your dog. so, what are you waiting for? download now and get your first stock on us. robinhood. the fatally flawed fight to keep donald trump in office beyond the 19 days he has left in office is now focused on congress and its meetings next

wednesday to certify president-elect joe biden's victory. president trump tweeted just moments ago that massive evidence of voter fraud will be presented. he also has a bridge he'd like to sell you. nevertheless, 149 gop members are expected to object. here's how it works. the objection is submitted in writing by at least one house member, one senator then joins. that suspends the joint session. the senate and the house then debate separately for two hours over the objection. the house and senate then each vote on the objection. finally, both the house and the senate would need to agree on the objection for the votes to be thrown out. that's not going to happen. so why are so many republicans joining in on this charade? well, republican ben sasse explains it this way in a facebook post. quote, let's be clear what's happening here. we have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there is a quick way to tap into the president's populist base without doing any real long-term

damage. but they're wrong. and this issue is bigger than anyone's personal ambitions. adults don't point a loaded gun at the heart of legitimate self-government. and that is, indeed, what's happening. i want to discuss all of this and more with rick wilson, a former republican strategist and co-founder of the lincoln project, and maya mcguinness, founder of the national budget and "fix us." it's great to see you both. i want to have a conversation about democracy reform, about strengthening the guard rails that have been weakened the last four years. maya, i want to start with you. you've said many times donald trump is the situation, not the lone cause of the situation we're in. what do you think president-elect joe biden can do in a new administration to help heal these divides? >> he's already started what he needs to do, and that is the way he's talked about his objective of unifying the country and

being the president of all people whether they voted him or not. i have said the underlying roolt causes, and they're political, they're technological, all of those have been going on for a long time. president trump fanned those flames massively, things got much worse the last four years and now we need to start at the top with a leader who is trying to bring the country back together where we don't look at each other as enemies. i think his focus on that, and then starting a national discussion on letting some of the anger -- it's such an angry moment -- letting some of that anger out and having real discussions about legitimate different points of view but with a civil tone, which is not what we've had in the past years. >> rick, you're a former republican. you and i met years ago working for rudy giuliani. i guess my question to you is that, do you think there is enough responsible republicans left in the party to take it back and oppose trump era, or do

you think it's something new entirely? >> john, at this point you have cheney, romney, ben sesse. basically you could fill a small table at the waffle house with the remaining republicans who are responsible adults. you will have no end, as senator sasse admits, this is about ambition. donald trump has even fooled himself a little bit. he thinks that josh hawley and ted cruz and marco rubio love him. they just want to take over his movement. they want to be in a position in 2022 and 2024 to not get primaried from the right or be disapproved where the base has renewed themselves as a political party surrounded by trump. they haven't learned any lessons by what's happened. >> you just said that basically four people at a waffle house can't retake over a party.

i think that's a fair point. maya, to that extent, how much of this is about a twisted incentive structures who might allow people to play to the extremes because they're afraid of lose to ing to a primary? if that's the case, what incentives could be put in place to perhaps change our democracy rather than destroy it? >> i think that's exactly the right kind of questions we now have to focus on, because leading a movement fueled by anger alone will not sustain, and those politicians who are kind of trying to take advantage of that, that can't work. at some point, and hopefully soon, we have to start solving the problems that people are really angry about. in order to do that, we need to start returning to an era where congress is functioning. that starts with things like political reform, election reform, everything from gerry n

gerrymandering, so we don't have polarization, huge tribal separations of a country turning us into two teams instead of one country with very real threats on the horizon, which is what we should be focusing on. those political reforms are front and center, and i think they are the low-hanging fruit. i think we can make progress with them. but there are also economic and policy pieces we need to look at. first and foremost is fighting the pandemic which we're still not through, so starting to help the country function as we're dealing with that may have more economic measures that we need as well as getting the vaccine out. and then moving into some of the other policy issues where there may be places for compromise. i know word is not in fashion right now, but in things like infrastructure, fixing medicare which is about the trust fund running out of money in the next couple years. we need to return to an era where congress is willing to compromise and show we can function. if we continue in an era of division and distrust and dysfunction, we will lose to these great threats outside the

u.s. that are looking straight at us. >> sure, these who are trying to eat the u.s. for lunch. presidential leadership matters, but certainly good faith has been in low supply with president trump's negotiation with congress lately. what would you advise he do to help move the ball forward, to make infrastructure week more than a punchline, to help reach out to more trump supporters? >> my three pieces of advice to president-elect biden and then president biden are simple. first off, never be in a dark room with mitch mcconnell because he'll shiv you. the second is he's got to go out and find a coalition of republican voters inside the caucus large enough to start influencing the way the tide turns and to stop mitch mcconnell from just engaging in his singular goal -- look, all mitch mcconnell slois looking as 2022. if he loses in georgia, he wants

to recap toture his majority. if he doesn't, he wants to enhance his majority. so he wants to stop the biden administration from the first day. so joe biden needs to be cautious of mitch mcconnell, but then he needs to reach out to him in good faith, and there are probably half a dozen in the house he could work with a little bit here and there, but this is a big thing that republicans aren't going to understand unless we deal with covid in the next year or two. unless we get back on -- get an actual vaccination program in place, an actual program of economic recovery in place, nothing else matters. biden needs to frame a lot of the argument in those terms, the few he can operate with. remember, joe biden does have a lot of relationships in the senate that stretch way back, including a lot of these people who have been the tacit enablers

of donald trump. >> rick, it was a great conversation. thank you and happy new year to you both. >> happy new year. what can we do to recover from the pandemic? we're going to talk to someone who can help get the country out of a recession. that's next. only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ responds to snoring-automatically. so no hiding under your pillow. or opting for the couch. your best sleep. all night. every night. experience the mattress ranked #1 in customer satisfaction by jd power two years in a row.

the pandemic touched every

part of the economy in 2020. so does the same hold true for 2021? it's an important question as health experts warn the pandemic will still be with us for several more months. cnn business correspondent alison kosik is back with us. alison, what are the indicators for the year ahead? >> reporter: john, last year job losses sparked unprecedented economic problems in 2021. americans are falling behind on bills, they're struggling to pay rent or mortgage or fear losing a job. now with the second round of stimulus, help is on the way, if only temporarily. americans will receive one-time checks of $600. those benefits will get an additional 300-a-week benefit through the end of march and additional benefits will be extended through the end of january. there is also benefit for

industries that continue to struggle. the restaurant industry is being crushed, including airlines. home sales have surged because of record low mortgage rates and families searching for more space that's as some of the biggest banks are forecasting the economy will grow anywhere from 4% to 6% this year. that would be an improvement from the collapse of the economy in early 2020. and if gdp hits 6%, that would be the best since 1984, which was also a year bouncing back after a terrible recession. john. >> that would be quite a bounceback. alison kosik, thank you very much. president-elect joe biden will assume office amid a pandemic, which has been plaguing the global economy. so what do his past instincts tell us about his future policies. joining us now is someone who worked extensively with then vice president joe biden to navigate america out of the great recession. austan goolsbee, currently an

economics professor at the university of chicago's business school. austan, good to see you. you know the president-elect well. you've seen him in action. what does that tell you about he's going to tackle this dire situation when he takes office later this month with regard to the economy? >> well, i mean the poor guy. the last time he took office, we're in the worst economic crisis since the depression, and now he's going to come in as president-elect and, if anything, it's even worse. i think he was in charge of the enforcement and execution of the stimulus the last time, and my observation of the president-elect is that he's very concerned with the blocking and tackling of getting things out the door. at that time, get the money out the door, make sure that it's not being wasted, make sure it's being spent the way it's supposed to. we could have used that attention to detail when we've been trying to get this vaccine out. i think president trump doesn't want to be there.

i think this has spiraled so far out of his control that he just wants to be done. it's ironic that he's fighting to overturn the results of the election. it's not -- he doesn't want to do the job, and that's going to make it that much harder for the president-elect when he comes in to try to correct for it. but if we have attention to detail to stop the spread of the virus, i actually think that the economy could come back pretty rapidly. >> all right. that actually brings me to the next point, which is that obama alumni lauded president bush for cooperation during the last transition. that is not the case this time as particularly we've seen pushback from the omb and the defense department. my question is what are the stakes of those kind of political contentions in terms of impacting an incoming administration? >> well, i think it's more than just petty. i think it's outright destructive, and that's -- i assume that was their purpose.

that's why the trump administration is doing this. they're actively trying to sabotage and make worse the early months of the incoming administration. but rather than get into the, did they invite them to meetings? are they sharing intelligence? i would just observe on the ground the administration is not doing the fundamentally most important thing that it needs to be doing right now, which is protecting the american people, slowing the rate of spread of the virus. they're literally -- at mar-a-lago, they're having another superspreader event, maskless with people dancing, yelling, celebrating in each other's face. we've got multiple superspreader events in the white house itself and the president got the disease. >> sure. >> if they aren't going to take those actions to control the spread of the virus, the stakes are that the economy is going to be that much worse because the number one rule of virus economi economics, i always say, is you want to fix the economy, you

have to slow the spread of the virus. >> that's the order. let's talk about policy. joe biden going back to his 1988 campaign always was focused on the middle class. it's been squeezed for decades. so specifically what do you think a president biden can do to rebuild the middle class either through executive order or in working with congress through a bipartisan coalition? >> it couldn't be a more important topic to question about. my general view is that the best thing to expect what a president's going to do is pretty much in the spirit of what did they say they want to do in the campaign. and i think what president-elect biden described as his "build back better" plan, that a heavy emphasis on infrastructure and manufacturing, a heavy emphasis on the care economy, education, training, child care, and those things as well as health care system, getting people health care and working in health care,

and a commitment on climate change and on racial equality. i think all four of those are spaces that the president-elect will probably move pretty strongly in. and several of those areas i would observe outside of just the last few years of contentious gridlock, before that, they were some bipartisan areas. so i would not be surprised if president joe biden has a couple aces up his sleeve and is able to pull together coalitions that right now we didn't necessarily envision him being able to do. >> we will see. that will be the acid test. austan goolsbee, happy new year. thank you very much. >> happy new year. >> and thank you all for joining us. up next, cnn film "a president in waiting." happy new year. university of phoenix is awarding

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♪ we as a nation spend the best part of a year selecting our president.