he wanted alex azar to go around the fda. yasmin, how did that turn out? at was the rest of the conversation? >> what happened was secretary azar went to his general counsel at the health and human services to see if he did have the legal authority to overrule the fda. one thing that's important is hhs is actually the parent agency of fda and cdc and a number of other health agencies. alex azar was the fda commissioner's boss. so there was a meeting later that day where the president was talking about this with a number of advisers including anthony fauci, the former fda commissioner scott gottlieb, the current commissioner steve hawn and a number of others, he wanted the drug approved that day, march 18. secretary azar came into that meeting saying he checked with his general counsel. he did have the authority to overrule the fda, and he could approve the drugs that day. the other advisers in the room talked the president out of it, so it didn't end up moving forward. but as we saw play out, the president did remain fixated on hydroxychloroquine and remdes

when alex azar, modelled it, he was ridiculed and political cudgel and political symbol and we didn'tave mask wearing to the same degree as other countries that had more successful responses. in march or april, jared kushner was talking to robert cad atlantic to asking where were the n95 masks and kadlec told him i ordered 600 million masks. it would be tight, the u.s. might be cutting it pretty close. derrick kushner used some colorful language in calling him a moran. he said he thought the country with would be rocking and rolling by july. >> let's talk about dr. gautsche and the way he became such n adversariry and the scary story because of the way he was being described about receiving white powder in the mail. >> we asked dr. fauci action his comments and he didn't challenge the president. one thing i asked was there's a whole different side. he was under enormous pressure. at one point in august, about a thousandlers a day were sent to his office at the nih and that was intercepted. there were about 10 or 20 letters a day that were sent to his house. he would pick up those enve

was it alex azar who was removed as head of the task force.scenario does a great job of exploring the consequences of no he is decisions that are not made because no one was ultimately willing to make some of the hardest calls. >> brianna just looks at me and goes, what does he know? what does he know? >> i am a reporter, but nothing bad about cnn that i've heard. >> dan diamond, we appreciate your reading and your analysis of this book which certainly sounds interesting. thanks so much for joining us this morning. >> happy to talk about my colleagues' good work. thanks for having me. >>> it is a warning fwor the great barrier reef and a woman who killed her abusive husband goes on trial. cnn reports from around the world. >> i'm ivan watson in hong kong. the australian government is furious with unesco after it proposed to put the great barrier reef on the endangered list of world heritage sites. the great barrier reef is this incredibly rich and diverse marine habitat off the coast of australia, but its coral forests have been dying due to r

one was alex azar , the hhs secretary. days dur a ing a critical po of the pandemic, trying to downplay the virus perhaps, not trying to worry people too much. some of these experts in health and medicine were kept off tv, and slavitt says he has some of the evidence, the proof of that. it's notable because we kind of sensed it back then. this book says it really was happening. this book comes out on tuesday. there are going to be a lot of these kinds of books. but it's interesting to hear a trump critic turned biden adviser coming out with a book on tuesday. >> it's interesting to hear what happened in the white house during the pandemic. thanks so much. >>> a reminder check out brian's book, "hoax." that is out in paperback. >>> a player needed cpr after collapsing in the middle of the game. he's okay. the latest on his condition next. it's the sound of low cash mode from pnc bank giving you the options and extra time needed to help you avoid an overdraft fee. low cash mode on virtual wallet from pnc bank. one way we're

we brought this proposal together and they brought it to alex azar who was the public health secretary and a's are like it and of course congress funded it. this is truly a situation where it's a feel-good story. everybody has had a hand in the success. career civil servants and political leaders who funded it people all the way from george w. bush all the way up through the trump era including obama who continued to fund it and supported the public sector and the private sector. we ought not say this person contribute 18% and that person contribute 13% or that person didn't do very much. what we did so well and we had to be generous about it. when i was in the biden white house and asked the question should we contribute the success of the vaccine to the trump administration i said absolutely and i tip my hat to the trump team and it became a cult political alert. i'm going to hear about this from the white house for sure. i don't know but i think we near a's to hard scientists and failed the soft sciences so psychology and humanities we did well but when it came to the hard scientist

this harkens back to another part in the book in february when alex azar who was often doing trump's were fine, which they weren't, but thing could change rapidly. the white house pulled him from fox and friends and told him, and he the department were not allowed to talk to the media for 45 days. so imagine this. we have a pandemic started. and our own department of health and human services isn't allowed to talk to the press and the that you can. that was the pattern throughout the whole of 2020. if you didn't agree with trump's narrative about the pandemic, you were shut down. that's what happened to birx at the end. >> we had you on at the height of the pandemic and we love having you on now. we thank you for writing this book. it is called preventible. how leadership, failures, politics and selfishness doomed the u.s. coronavirus response. be well. thank you. >>> president biden apologizing today for something trump would never apologize for. we'll tell you why. that's next. jumped the median. there was nothing i could do. (daughter) daddy! (dad vo) she's safe because of our fir

and we saw it early on in the -- as was revealed in the book, at one point in time, alex azar simply wanted to go out in february and say that things were good, which they really weren't, but could change quickly. he got pulled from fox and friends and banished from doing any media for 45 days. here we are in the middle of a crisis of public health and the department of health and human services isn't allowed to talk to the public or the press. we saw that with, weather it's tony fauci, if you weren't on trump's script you were going to be -- your voice was going to be squashed. his script was basically everything was okay and this was overblown. and so when they went to find one of the things that the book kr references, i was on a call with reince priebus who said he have to go find people from harvard and stanford who will say that everything is going okay. and then when they found scott atlas. >> and that's when thousands of people had already died, although not nearly as many have died now, 600,000. you told cbs over the weekend that americans could have done a better job at sac

their book "nightmare scenario" that trump complained to then-health and human services secretary alex azar on march 18 about coronavirus testing. trump reportedly said -- "i'm going to lose the election because of testing! what idiot had the federal government do testing?" in florida, hope is fading that search-and-rescue crews will find more survivors of the rfsideondominium disaster, five days after the building suddenly collapsed into a massive pile of twisted steel and rubble. the confirmed death toll has risen to 11, with 150 people still unaccounted for. cnn reports the champln towers south condo association was cing assessments for $15 million worth of repairs, with paymen set to begin just one week after the building's sudden collapse. the e-cigarette maker jewel labs has agreed to pay $40 million to settle a lawsuit brought by north carolina, charging its marketing practices led to widespread nicotine addiction among teenagers. the settlement comes as 13 other states and the district of columbia are pressing similar lawsuits and as the food and drug administration is considering w

so alex azar was prohibited from talking to the press during the pandemic because he was saying things could change rapidly. we now have a president that is fully accountable for the results. he's not willing to let arguments with governors or to deflect blame, so i think we have come an enormous way and i think that the government -- the president wants to be the president of all americans, across the country, i think we're putting resources against the states that are falling behind and we're not going to give up on them and we shouldn't. i think it is important to set this goal, and i think we have come much further than we probably would have if we hadn't. >> and to be clear, you didn't quite answer my question about if there were any miscalculations, but certainly it has been a tremendous effort and that is for sure. i want to ask you as you learned so much about these vaccines and about the variants and so forth, what do you say to parents right now who are hesitant to get their kids vaccinated? the younger kids? obviously it is 12 and up, that's approved in the u.s., but there i

in charge of the cdc and on this day march 6, this is the day when trump-- the former guy and a alex azar or blathering on about how anyone can get a test, 4 million tests are coming out and millions of people will get tested and anyone in the world especially in new york where it was starting-- you couldn't get a test. you could not get a test even in urban areas, so this is-- i'm going to move on. at the other pillar was these extreme pre-marketeers, the extreme in the ideology represented by some extent to jared kushner, but not solely him, obviously there are many other people involved, low tax, leave us alone, don't regulate us group of ideologues in those people aligned with the evangelicals and that of course was the basis for the power-- political power that the former administration had. [inaudible] the trump administration started immediately cutting deals with groups putting jared kushner in charge of operation air bridge which was this kind of you know, they were bringing ppe in on government airplanes implementing private companies set the prices. they refused-- the governmen

furious about the increase in covid cases due to testing, trump freaked out on hhs secretary alex azaro lose the election because of testing. what idiot had the federal government do testing? azar had to remind trump that the idiot he was referring to was the guy currently married to his favorite daughter, ivanka. as awful as that it is, it gets worse. the absolute worst, in fact, is the bonkers story told by the authors about what trump reportedly wanted to do with americans who were infected with the coronavirus. looking to come home overseas, back in february of 2020. right as covid began to surge. it turns out he wanted to lock them up. according to the book, during a situation room meeting, trump turned to his team and said, do we have an island we own? what about guantanamo. we import goods. we're not going to import a virus. you hear that, america? the president of the united states was looking to send american citizens to the same place they detained terrorism suspects forever, because he didn't want them increasing the number of cases in the united states. according to the boo

there's a part of the book where alex azar, the head of health and human services wanted to say the wordhe virus wasn't a problem but could deteriorate rapidly and because that have the white house pulled him from the show and banned him from doing media for 45 days so here we are in the middle of a global pandemic and our department of health and human services isn't allowed to talk to the press or the public, and there's a number of examples like that, and i go through my conversations with jared kushner and with debby birx, et cetera, which lets you see what's going on on the inside. >> the book is "preventable." andy slavitt, thanks so much. >> thank you, pam. >>> new developments in a bizarre yet violent confrontation involving bombs and balloons. that's next. can you be free of hair breakage worries? we invited mahault to see for herself that new dove breakage remedy gives damaged hair the strength it needs. even with repeated combing hair treated with dove shows 97% less breakage. strong hair with new dove breakage remedy. the world we're inheriting, it's in crisis. s we got here

quote, testing is killing me, trump reportedly exclaimed in a phone call to alex azar, yelling so loudlyvery word. quote, i'm going to lose the election because of testing. azar responds, quote, do you mean jared? there may be the first time i've ever agreed with trump on the i-word but this is the idea it was never about diagnosing, curing, protecting and containing a pandemic. it was only ever about his re-election. >> well, good afternoon, nicole. what i will say this has to be the moment for all of us to clamor for a nonpartisan 9/11-style investigation to investigate not just the root causes of the pandemic but more importantly the failures and response and this will not be the last time. to your point the ex-president knew, and i think most glaringly he knew this was an airborne virus. as a military member myself, that should have alerted a five-alarm fire, something akin to what pearl harbor was doing right after they knew they were about to get attacked. this was that same level of urgency. they had a warning this was an airborne virus. nothing was done. we know if something was

the book also describes another incident when president trump was speaking with alex azar, trump reportedlose the election because of testing. what idiot had the federal government do testing? azar then said, you mean jared? kushner vowed to take charge of a national testing strategy just days earlier. a lot to digest but the first story, the instinct of president trump in february of 2020, according to the books was to send american citizens who wanted to the come home but were sick with coronavirus to the same place that a reed shake mohammed now sits. >> now we know why he wanted to buy greenland. you look, it's just example after example, going back over the past year, just the ignorance -- well, the feigned ignorance because it's interesting when he was talking to woodward, i believe it was in late february, early march, he knew that the virus was a killer, as he said. he knew it was five times as likely to kill you as the flu. he knew it was airborne, could impact younger americans. he knew everything on the take but suddenly in the white house, i guess he just feigned ignorance and