'Special Report' All-Star Panel on filibuster, CDC COVID messaging

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Manchin, Sinema block Democratic effort to change filibuster

'Special Report' panel weighs in as lawmakers debate election reform and changing filibuster.

This is a rush transcript from "Special Report," January 18, 2022. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL, (R-KY) SENATE MINORITY LEADER: The partisan election takeover bills that the Democrats want to ram through this week are not, not in any way successors of the civil rights legislation from the mid-20th century.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, (D-NY) SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: Members of this chamber were elected to debate and to vote, especially on an issue as vital to the beating heart of our democracy as voting rights.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: In 2024 should Manchin and Sinema be primaried?

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN, (D-MA): We'll address that when we get past this week.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Well, they still don't have the votes on this voting rights reform up on Capitol Hill. But Chuck Schumer, Senate Majority Leader, is pressing forward and wants to get everybody on the record. Just a few moments before this show Senator Joe Manchin, Democrat from West Virginia, spoke about where he is again.

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SEN. JOE MANCHIN, (D-WV): We have done everything along the lines of with the rules. And I don't know why we can't come together and find a pathway forward. But breaking the rules, there's no checks and balances in this process only for -- the only thing we have is the filibuster.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: He also said Democrats should focus on the right priorities, inflation and COVID being them, according to Manchin.

Let's bring in our panel, Guy Benson, political editor at Townhall.com, host of "The Guy Benson Show" on FOX News Radio, Mara Liasson, national political correspondent of National Public Radio, and syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Mara, they are making a point to get everybody on this vote, but there is not movement here. So, politically, is that to run on it later? What is the play?

MARA LIASSON, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, NATIONAL PUBLIC RADIO: I think politically it's to get everyone on record, so they have to vote on how they feel about these underlying issues. Right now, the only possible, and I think it's a very slim possibility, legislative vehicle is a bipartisan effort to reform the Electoral Count Act, that's a very old law that left pretty vague and fuzzy what the actual role of the vice president was in terms of certifying slates of electors and what Congress can do when they get the slates from the state. Maybe something can come of that. There is a bipartisan group talking.

But there are not the votes to either pass the two voting rights bills the Democrats want, one of which is sponsored by Joe Manchin, because they don't have the votes to carve out an exception to the filibuster the way they have for many other issues. But on this one they don't have the 50 votes they need.

BAIER: Here is the Senate majority leader saying they are going to fight.

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SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER, (D-NY) SENATE MAJORITY LEADER: We are going to fight the fight, fight the fight. We're under no allusion. We know this is an uphill fight, especially when virtually every Senate Republican, to their shame, is staunchly against any legislation to protect the right to vote.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: Guy, it's quite something to listen to the rhetoric over the past few days from the president down in Atlanta with those comparisons to what's happening on Capitol Hill.

GUY BENSON, POLITICAL EDITOR, TOWNHALL.COM: It's ludicrous what we just heard from Schumer. And he is not right, by the way. There are plenty of Republicans who are very much interested in doing what Mara just described on the Electoral Count Act. Schumer said that's offensive. So this is a power play by him and the Democrats. They don't have the votes.

Let's take a step back, though. To your point, Bret, last week we had the president pounding the table about Bull Connor. Yesterday, MLK Day, the Speaker of the House was saying that Jefferson and Washington and Lincoln are weeping at the death of democracy. Average Americans look at this and say these people are crazy. There was a Gallup poll taken at the end of last year asking voters to rank their priorities. Voting reform, electoral changes, came in less than half of one percent of respondents saying that was their priority. But that's what Democrats are all in right now in Washington, which maybe you could justify from a power dynamic perspective if they had the votes, but they don't.

So they are going to put everyone on record, and the happiest people on earth are Republican strategists right now. They can't believe that some of these recalcitrant Democrats who have been in the shadows not committing one way or the other, strategic ambiguity, they are going to be forced out of the shadows by Chuck Schumer, their own party, for no reason. It's amazing.

BAIER: Yes. You can't tell me that Mark Kelly from Arizona or Maggie Hassan really wants to do this vote. I'm not sure that they do. Meantime, we have talked about that Gallup poll and the shift of Democrats and Republicans and self-identifying in that poll, Hugh. We can always count on Senator Kennedy from Louisiana to put things in perspective.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOHN KENNEDY, (R-LA): The Biden administration has mismanaged COVID. It has mismanaged inflation. It has mismanaged the border. And it has mismanaged foreign policy. All in one year. If aliens landed tomorrow and said take me to your leader, it would be embarrassing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(LAUGHTER)

BAIER: All right, Hugh.

HUGH HEWITT, SYNDICATED RADIO HOST: Bret, the man who needs no introduction, it's the voice that needs no introduction with Senator Kennedy, and he always comes through.

You mentioned two numbers earlier in the broadcast, 28 and 14 -- 28 Democrats have announced their retirement, and 14 is the percentage point swing in favor of the Republicans in the Gallup poll over the course of one year.

You also asked, what's the play? I think it's "Lord of the Rings" meets "Survivor." They are voting themselves off of the island because the fall of the House of Pelosi is coming up, and it's "Lord of the Rings" because EMILY's List tonight said they are withdrawing support and will seek someone to run against Senator Sinema when she is up again. So the Democrats are dining on each other.

Meanwhile, I did deep research on the way to the show tonight. I stopped and filled up the gas tank -- $85 in California for three quarters of a tank. I think Americans are talking about that, not this crazy filibuster backdoor flip-jack that they have got going.

BAIER: Mara, the president is going to have this news conference, his first in a while, I think second formal news conference, first this year. And he will tout what they see as the successes, right? We heard a little bit from Jen Psaki today. What do you think?

LIASSON: Oh, I thought you were going to play Jen Psaki.

BAIER: Yes, that's all right.

LIASSON: Look, he is going to get tons of questions about all the things that are going wrong, the two biggest things that are out of his control, COVID and inflation, which I would argue are the two things that Democrats fortunes will most depend on. And then there is going to be all these things that he wanted to pass but couldn't pass -- voting rights, which we just talked about, Build Back Better, which is something he wanted to.

So they are going to focus on the COVID relief bill and infrastructure. Yes, he got some things done. But he set expectations so high and the Democrats raised expectations so high, so out of proportion with their minuscule majorities, that the contrast is pretty big.

BAIER: All right, panel, stand by if you would. Up next, the CDC director says maybe she does need to talk about things differently. Plus, tomorrow's COVID testing strategy rollout. Keep it here.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. SCOTT GOTTLIEB, FORMER FDA COMMISSIONER: I think a lot of the confusion emanates from CDC and the mixed guidance that they have issued.

REP. TIM RYAN, (D-OH): The lack of clarity is contributing to the level of frustration.

REP. RO KHANNA, (D-CA): I think we need someone who is compassionate, who is consistent, and where the messaging is clear.

DR. ROCHELLE WALENSKY, CDC DIRECTOR: This is hard. We have ever-evolving science with an ever-evolving variant. I'm here to explain that to the American people and I'm committed to continuing to do so and to continuing to improve.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BAIER: CDC Director coming under fire and telling "The Wall Street Journal" that she aims to improve the messaging, and it has been a problem. "Rochelle Walensky acknowledged that she hasn't been clear enough with the American public. She says the pandemic threw curve balls that she should have anticipated. She thinks she should have made it clearer to the public that new rules and guidelines were subject to change if the nature of the fight against COVID-19 shifted again. I think what I have not conveyed is the uncertainty in a lot of these situations, Dr. Walensky said."

This comes, obviously, as the administration gets ready to roll out this website, Mara, for COVID tests, and that's always a little hairy because we saw the last administration rollout of a website not go too well.

LIASSON: Right. Are you talking about the Obamacare website?

BAIER: Obamacare, yes, sure.

LIASSON: Yes, because, anecdotally I have heard people who have tried that website today and it worked. They ordered some tests. We will see if it continues to work really well.

But this is the thing that the White House has been kind of inexplicably tardy on. Why they couldn't have gotten tests to people sooner is unclear. And the irony is that testing is the one thing in this entire pandemic that has not been politicized, at least not yet. Nobody is against testing if people want to do it. So they are trying to get this out now. The president is also going to talk tomorrow how he is going to get high quality masks for free to anyone who wants them. The question is, will people get them, will there be enough, and will they get there in time?

BAIER: Hugh?

HEWITT: I don't think they have focused on the right thing, Bret. The good news today is Pfizer has tested its antiviral pill, and it works against Omicron. We expect Merck and AstraZeneca also to have antiviral pills that will work against Omicron, which is 99 percent of the cases. Dr. Walensky continues to hide in her safe spaces with "The New York Times" and the big media. She doesn't go out and talk to people. What they ought to be doing is posting up these antivirals, getting the expectation high that people are going to get sick and then they're going to get better. And they ought to be using the Defense Production Act or any tool that they can to rapidly get those pills distributed, because those are therapeutics that will be widely available and easy to take and will be metric as opposed to tests that will actually show that something good is happening.

BAIER: Guy, this is going to be something to watch, this news conference tomorrow, and COVID obviously is a big topic in how this administration has dealt with it from what he said as a candidate.

BENSON: Sure, shut down the virus, which has not happened. And I am sure is he going to come out there and tout the fact that they rolled out the website. And Mara is hearing of the same things that I have. My siblings put in their order for their tests today, their free tests from the government. The problem is one of those siblings had COVID over Christmas, and we couldn't find tests because they were selling out everywhere.

And so this feels like extremely late to the party here when they were warned months in advance of the holidays, hey, let's do some testing reported. This was reported in "Vanity Fair" and elsewhere, and they rejected that plan.

So at some point Americans are going to get these four free tests, they say seven to 12 days from now. If people are symptomatic now and they get the test, it will be over by the time they get these -- the tests actually come in and actually test themselves, the infection will be over. And it looks like the Omicron wave has crested already. So this might have felt more like a triumphant achievement of the government if it had been announced and rolled out six weeks ago as opposed to now where the clock starts for 10 days. That's a little silly, and I think people are going to be posting on social media, I got my tests. Too late, but I've got them. Thanks, government.

BAIER: Well, then the other not so clear thing is that the CDC came out and said even if you get a negative that doesn't mean that you don't have it or you are not contagious. So you have that to deal with as well.

Mara, the question here is will there be any changes, do you think, in administration staff, maybe even up the chain to White House chief of staff or somebody in the CDC or Dr. Fauci? Does it seem like this president has any changes in the making?

LIASSON: Well, when presidents get in trouble, the kind of standard response is to throw someone over the side. But I'm not hearing that that's going to happen. This is not a White House that's in disarray. This is a White House that is just failing to achieve its goals and is dealing with a whole bunch of problems. Some are within their control, and they've made mistakes. Some are out of their control. So, no, I don't expect any big headline firing.

But I do hear from a lot of Democrats that they want a clearer message. They want a vision from the White House going forward into this election year, and that's what they are going to be listening for tomorrow.

BAIER: We'll all be listening. You'll see it live here on FOX News Channel, complete coverage. Panel, thank you very much.

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