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tv   Anderson Cooper 360  CNN  January 26, 2021 9:00pm-10:00pm PST

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good evening. once again a social media company is showing it's more willing to discipline the former president than senate republicans are. youtube today telling the technology news site cnet quote in light of concerns about the ongoing potential for violence, the donald j. trump channel will remain suspended and senate republicans some of whom had to run and hide from violent mobs three weeks ago, they had a chance to go on record for order. instead today all but five demonstrated the opposite by running from their constitutional duty and hiding behind technicalities by playing
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games even though it becomes clear every day the people that stormed the capitol were playing for keeps. >> what happened at the capitol on january 6th has not occurred in over 200 years. we owe it to the american people to find out how and why it did. we're committed to seeing this through no matter how many people it takes, how many days it takes us, or the resources we'll get to, need to get it done. we'll get to the bottom of this. the american people in this country deserve no less. >> that's the fbi special agent running a criminal investigation that has more than 400 subjects with charges up to and including sedition on the table. meantime shortly after senators were sworn in as jurors today in the impeachment trial, kentucky republican rand paul forced to vote on whether the trial on constitutional grounds should be held at all. five gop senators voted against it, signaling their belief that the trial should go forward. sasse.
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romney, collins, toomey and sasse. and mitch mcconnell sided with paul. >> no republican has sought to use the government to hold these democrats responsible for antifa and black lives matter violence that has consumed our cities all summer resulting in over a billion dollars of destruction, looting and property damage, not one republican said oh, let's impeach the democrats who are inciting this, because it would be ridiculous. a trial of a former president is simply vindictive. it will divide. it is like opening up a wound and throwing salt in it. >> again, mitch mcconnell signed on to this, the same mitch mcconnell that refused to hold a trial when the former president was in office. he's voting for a measure that says you can't try him because he's not in office, which is just how kind of odd and transparent the politics have become. if the cynicism weren't enough, with this vote he's siding with members that don't believe the former president bears any culpability at all which might come as a surprise to mitch mcconnell or
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the mitch mcconnell we saw a week ago today. >> the mob was fed lies. they were provoked by the president and other powerful people. and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like. >> and five people died in what amounted to an attempt to overthrow a free, fairly certified election. three weeks ago lawmakers saw the consequences and some sounded shocked at what several including senator mcconnell openly said the president cited. now with that shock wearing off, perhaps a reminder is in order of the president's words, and how they were received by the mob. according to reporting today, how democrats are thinking of using them at trial specifically pointing to a video put together by the publication just security which is affiliated with new york university's school of law. the video is ten minutes long and shows footage posted on parler and elsewhere in real time of how the crowd reacted to
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what the ex-president said and tweeted. according to just security, the clips and other public record information provided, quote, strong evidence of a causal link between trump's messages to his supporters and their dangerous, illegal conduct. again, the video runs ten minutes. here is just about a minute of it. >> mike pence is a bitch. mike pence is a bitch mike pence is a bitch. >> can i speak to pelosi? yeah. we're coming bittch. mike pence? we're coming for you, you [ bleep ] traitor. >> go into the gallows. put under the firing squad and found guilty of treason because men like him are the reason this country is falling apart. where is pence? >> bring pence out. >> where is pence?
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where is pence? bring out pence. >> bring him out. >> bring out pence. >> bring him out. >> bring out pence. >> bring him out. >> bring out pence. [ crowd chanting "fight for trump" ] >> shocking when it happened three weeks ago tomorrow and it will be shocking when historians look back decades from now but shocking to mcconnell and all the republican senators that had to flee floothe mob, threatg to hang one of their own. that's the question tonight. joining us now one of the democratic jurors in the trial, 45 republican senators voted to not even have is senator chris murphy of connecticut. thanks for being with us, senator. 45 republican senators went on the record today saying they think trying a former president is unconstitutional. what signal does that send about this trial and accountability for future presidents? >> first of all, it's plainly constitutional.
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in fact, the senate, in the past, has tried a former cabinet official after he had resigned office, in order to try to avoid accountability. so, there is precedent for this. and there's a specific provision in the constitution that is perspective. impeachment not only removes someone from office, but disqualifies them from future office. that means there is a relevant consequence even to a former official. so i don't think there's a question as to whether this is constitutional or not, but you talk about the signal it sends. well, it sends a signal of impunity. this idea we can't hold somebody accountable because it divisive. it's completely foreign to the american rule of law. yes, for the person that we put in jail after they commit a crime, accountability, i guess, divisive. the people who support them and like them probably aren't too enamored by the fact that their loved one goes to jail. but we still enforce the laws of this country, because there has to be consequence for violations
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of the rule of law and there has to be consequence when the president violates the law. and he did here. he incited a crowd to violence. he violated his oath of office and there has to be a consequence for that or sends a message to future presidents they can get away with it. >> how many of your republican colleagues are latching on to this constitutionality argument of, well, it's unconstitutionala a way to avoid all together having to be on record saying whether or not what the president did was actually impeachable? >> yeah, i think it a very convenient position for senate republicans to occupy. they can say it's an unconstitutional proceeding as a way to avoid talking about the president's conduct. listen, i think they are all faced with this reality donald trump is not going away and developed such a cult of personality inside the republican party that he is going to be the person who decides who wins the senate republican primaries, at least for the next four years.
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and so they continue, as they did for the last four years, to i think live in fear of what the president will say about them and that continues to dictate a lot of their decision making. five senators stood up for the rule of law, for what was right today, but many of those that voted to try to shut down this trial before it began are once again just trying to curry favor with the former president. >> it's so interesting to me because clearly, if they cared about the republican party, which is the party they belong to, this actually was an opportunity to rid themselves of the looming figure of donald trump, you know, being down in mar-a-lago. if he had been impeached, if he had been -- you know, you wouldn't need as big a majority to prevent him from -- to prevent him from, you know, becoming, running for office again. >> so long as donald trump is
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the head of the republican party, they are going to find themselves in the minority. they are going to lose races for the house and the senate especially after the insurrection attempt. but it's also important to note that the threat to the country is not over. right? we have 5,000 national guard members surrounding the capitol complex. why? because there are still existing threats, present threats to the security of the capitol. and so long as donald trump is empowered by senate republicans, there is still the chance that he is going to incite another attempt at the capitol or stir up similar trouble at the state legislative level or in a governor's election when things don't go his way. the threat is still real to american democracy. >> i want to play something you said on the senate floor speech in december. >> republicans have decided, not all republicans, but far too many have decided that if democracy can't keep trump in
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power, then democracy seizes to have any real purpose. because to republicans who are supporting these continued efforts to invalidate the election, their loyalty is to donald trump, not to the nation or our system of government. >> and they're still contorting themselves in their loyalty to the former president. >> yeah, i gave that speech an early december before anybody had marked january 6th on their calendar because at that point, i saw what was coming down the pike, this idea that trump supporters were willing to cast aside democracy. if that was the cost to keep their guy in power. and again, i worried that that is the direction the republican party is going in. maybe they weren't successful in stealing the presidential election but what about two years from now when a republican candidate for senate loses?
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maybe state election officials do decide to overturn that vote simply because democracy didn't end up with their favored candidate winning. when a party decides to make winning more important than the preservation of fair elections, that's when the whole democratic experiment starts to go down the toilet, and i think that that threat is still out there, as well. >> senator rand paul said the impeachment, after today, is dead on arrival. under what scenario -- is there a scenario -- it was always a long shot democrats would peel away 17 republicans to vote to convict. >> you know, today's vote is not a pure proxy vote for conviction. i think there are certainly senators who voted to sustain senator paul's constitutional objection who may end up voting to convict once the question is settled. it certainly does look like it's probably going to be difficult to get to the 17 republican votes that are necessary.
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but just like was the case a year ago, that doesn't obviate the united states senate to have a trial. listen, once we put on evidence, right, those videotapes, showing how the president incited the mob. once we show evidence of the very clear plans many of these rioters had to kill mike pence and members of congress, you know, maybe the process of putting on evidence does prompt a few more republicans to vote to convict. i'm not giving up on that. >> appreciate your time. thank you. >> thanks. more on the notion of trying and convicting an ex president rand paul cited jonathan turlly and imagine that as president on his second impeachment. joining us now is harvard law promp professor and constitutional scholar, noah feldman. what do you make of jonathan tourly's argument that you can't
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impeach a president who is no longer in office? >> professor truly was wrong in the constitutional arguments a year ago and wrong again now. first of all it's been done. the senate has tried and after the house impeached the secretary of war in 1876 when he was already out of office. in fact, he hustled to quit in the hopes they wouldn't try him. they tried him anyway. so it can be done. the constitution doesn't say anything about not doing it. and more to the point, the founding fathers if they can hear this argument, you can't impeach once the guy is out of office, i'm not sure if they would be laughing or crying. they have to be one of the two. it normal to impeach people out of office, that's how most impeachments operate and one of the big innovations of their era is you can also impeach someone while he was still in office and kick him out. so, it's pretty clear from historical evidence that there's nothing to that argument. >> i mean, the logic is so flawed when you take a step
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back, the idea that any president who is corrupt could commit a crime, then resign to avoid all accountability. i mean, is there any argument to be devil's advocate that's what the framers of the constitution intended? >> if there were, they wouldn't have included the possibility of blocking somebody from running from office again. if that didn't exist, maybe, maybe you can say well, it purely symbolic and can't do something symbolic. that would be wrong anyway. the house and senate things do spolic things all the time. there is no reason it shouldn't be symbolic. if you thought that's the case, the reality is there is something alive in this controversy and what is alive if convicted, donald trump could be barred from running again for any office, including president. and that really matters and it's not at all plausible to think the framers wouldn't have wanted that possibility to be in the case of someone that resigned rather than be impeached or timed out like donald trump. >> the republican senator roy blunt said today no consideration was given to impeach nixon when he left office in 1974 and the constitution hasn't changed and the congress should not set a
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new destructive precedent. does that make sense to you? >> it's not a constitution argument. it's true politically once nixon was out of office, there was kind of a deep breath and everyone thought okay, let's let it go. some people thought he should be criminally tried. had it not been for gerald ford pardoning him, he might have been tried. what was in for nixon is much worse than impeachment. nixon had been president twice so he couldn't not have been excluded from office. you could run for a third term in any case. there was no live issue there where there is for trump because he's only been president once. i don't think they are the same. >> it seems like professor truly is an outlier here. if you look at members of the federalist society and conservative attorneys they debunked the constitutionality argument. do you think it's an issue of political convenience than the law for republican senators? >> yes. i mean, the bottom line is all law professors that i know pretty much except professor truly are lined up on this side and himself in 1999 wrote an
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article on the other side of the issue. it convenience for him and the vast majority of the senators. there might be a handful who say there is a constitutional reason to actually believe it but for the most part, it's obvious they are trying to avoid casting a ballot that says donald trump didn't in fact incite an insurrection or didn't undermine our democracy for much of the last couple of years. they want to avoid that so they hide behind the constitution. >> we played some of this but i want to play more from this video from january 6th from the publication "just security." let's listen. >> everyone you know tell the other side of the capitol! that's where trump's going to be. >> when you hear that, appears -- i think that's alex jones, the other video we played. do you see this as compelling evidence because it seems possible social media could be a big part of the democrat's
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strategy. >> look, it's profoundly disturbing to see that kind of footage and we all know what happened that day and how deeply disturbing it was. it was a fundamental assault on our constitutional process of changing presidents. the horror is there and it's very, very clear. that said, it would be incoherent for a republican to say the trial is unconstitutional but i'm voting to convict anyway. i think playing that video is a way for the democrats to symbolize what is bad here but not going to be enough to move the republicans realistically unless some new evidence emerges. ed. >> professor noah feldman, appreciate it. thank you. >> thank you. there is breaking news now on the president pro tempore of senator patrick leahy. he's not hospital. so what is his condition? do you know? >> reporter: anderson, it seems like he's going to be okay. we don't have a ton of information.
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all we know is senator patrick leahy was taken to the hospital after not feeling well in his capitol hill office and the attending physician suggested he go to the hospital out of an abundance of caution. senator dick durbin, second ranking democrat in the united states senate told us tonight that he spoke to his wife, who happens to be a nurse, and said he could be back in the senate as soon as tomorrow. so it doesn't appear that this condition is serious, but because of leahy's age, he is 80 years old, and the importance of the role he's playing here on capitol hill, the attending physician suggested he at least go to the hospital to be checked out. >> senator leahy is third in line to the presidency as pro tempore. he's said to play a historic role presiding over this impeachment role. if he were not well to do that, who would preside? >> we should say there is nobody making that speculation now because they expect senator leahy be okay. the president pro tempore of the president is 100% based on the seniority of the majority party. that would mean it would fall to
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dianne feinstein the senator from california. she's second in line in terms of seniority and she of course, 87 years old. she would move into that role if leahy is unable to perform his duties but everyone seems hopeful that won't be the case. >> ryan nobles, appreciate it. still ahead, two major developments on the coronavirus front. president biden's purchase that could speed up vaccinations across the country. and a new study that could prove important in determining whether schools should reopen for in-person education. also, damning new evidence about the qanon supporter turned congresswoman. disturbing comments she once made about the same people she serves alongside with at the capitol. we have that investigation when we continue.
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vaccine delivery and how we got here from cnn sr. correspondent investigator drew griffin. >> reporter: this mass vaccination center inside atlanta's mercedes benz stadium could vaccinate up to 2,000 people a day but on monday had 150 appointments. >> i'm a bit surprised the lack of busyness here. >> yeah, well, we're reserving the appointments for how many doses we have available. >> reporter: there is just not enough vaccine. fulton county health director dr. paxton says her team alone could handle 50,000 doses a week. she's lucky if they get 10,000. >> we have to be very judicious in how we schedule appointments and the important thing i want everyone to know is that we are in no way hoarding these vaccine doses. >> reporter: louisiana's governor decided not to have mass vaccination sites for now, there is just not enough vaccine. in florida, hospitals have cancelled appointments because vaccines didn't show up. in parts of texas, people lined up for hours. >> i've been in line since 5:00
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this morning. >> reporter: cnn interviewed more than a dozen health officials from across the country and the message is largely unanimous. for many states, local health departments and hospitals, it's not just the lack of vaccine doses causing the chaos, for weeks there was a lack of information from the federal government. >> i think having a federal plan would absolutely stop the kind of hunger games approach to every individual state, every individual county scrambling for their own set of rules. >> reporter: without knowing how much vaccine is going to be shipped to them and when, it's nearly impossible to plan. and that means crashing websites, appointments impossible to get and a vaccine rollout that's looking a heck of a lot like the botched rollout for coronavirus testing. >> this sounds almost like a repeat where is the testing when covid first happened. >> it does feel a little too familiar. we're in that exact same
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position with vaccines right now. we're turning away people that we know are over 65 with heart disease saying we're sorry but we don't have a vaccine for you today. >> reporter: dr. amy compton phillips who helps run 51 hospitals in seven states is dealing with worrying if everyone will get the second dose. a clinic in seattle that was vaccinating more than 2,000 people a day is about to face a massive 90% cut. >> so, what about all of those people who got dose one now our allocation is cut back by 90%. how are we going to get everybody dose two? >> reporter: that, too, is playing out across the u.s. each state gets first doses and earmarked second doses which are required for full immunity. last week colorado's governor ordered those second doses be used as first doses immediately. >> i sent a letter to all of our partners that administer the vaccine directing them to use
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all the moderna and pfizer vaccine they have including the ones that were designated as second doses. >> reporter: most states like new york are only using second dos on those who have already had a first shot. >> the last thing you want on top of this chaos is people got a first dose and then they come back for the second dose and you say we ran out. >> reporter: it could all be solved with more vaccine, a problem the biden administration announced it will tackle with more than a million additional doses per week. it can't happen fast enough. >> drew griffin joins us now. hopefully much more vaccine will be available. it sounds like the biggest problem is knowing how much is on the way. is there a plan to straighten out the supply chain? >> reporter: anderson, that's one thing the biden administration announced today. they will try to tell states three weeks in advance what you'll get three weeks from now and that will hopefully end the hunger games type situation going on in the states and also for the people at home trying to get online and get appointments, it will be able to schedule them
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three weeks out instead of having these mad dashes when appointments open up on websites. anderson? >> drew griffin, appreciate it. perspective from dr. sanjay gupta. and michael olsterhol am from the university of minnesota, who also served on covid coordinator. sanjay, how was biden's covid coordinator able to tell governors the vaccine allocations would increase around 16% starting next week and why couldn't this have happened last week or yesterday? where are the doses coming from? >> right. they seem to be primarily moderna doses that are coming that are being released, maybe some streamlining of production overall as well. it's a little bit hard to figure out exactly how they are accounting for that, and how they can be so confident that it's going to be that number. it sounds like they have at least confidence in the next three weeks to release those doses. this does not seem to include as
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we were investigating this today, the sixth dose in these vials. remember that anderson that instead of five doses, many of the pfizer ones contain six doses and specialized syringes called low dead volume syringes they could get the sixth dose out. they seem to think they can get to the 20% increase with more moderna doses and streamlining production. >> with the 200 million more doses the country purchased. 300 million more americans should be able to be fully vaccinated by the end of summer, early fall. do you agree with that prediction? >> i do. the one challenge we have is vaccine hesitancy. we'll hit a point at some time we have more than enough vaccine, the question is will people take it? we have a lot of work to do to educate the public why these vaccines are so important and why they are safe, why they are effective, and why they can save your life and the life of a loved one. unless we do that, we can have a substantial number of people
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come summer to get vaccinated. >> researchers say from the cdc published study with the right mitigation strategies, it's possible to reopen schools with minimal covid transmission. should schools reopen given this? >> i thought this was a very good study. i will preface by saying in the beginning i was concerned about opening schools, and just the idea that kids spread germs, especially kids over the age of 10. i thought this was important study with 17 rural wisconsin schools. they had enough resources to be able to make sure everyone had masks and keep physical distance but we have the results of the study. basically, lower incidents of covid in the school versus the surrounding community and significantly so, 37% lower just to give you context. 191 cases of infection were found among students and staff, that was out of 5,300 people and only seven of those 191 actually
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came from the school itself. so you can start to make the argument schools if they have appropriate resources can be safer places than surrounding communities. we've seen that here and in other places around the country. if schools have resources, you can make the argument they should open. >> do you agree? >> i do agree. i think the one challenge we have before us, though, is with this b 117, the u.k. variant takes off, we've seen in europe that in fact, they had to close schools in the u.k., ireland, the netherlands, denmark to try to bring the transmission down. but otherwise, what we have right now in this country, i think this really does give us reason to look at opening schools and feeling that we can do it safely. >> did they have to do that because the british variant is more easily passed than the other? >> you know, at this point we don't know. and if you look at what happened in england, for example, they had shut down much of england but not schools, and the case numbers kept going up.
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they did shut down schools and while we can't say for certain it was cause and effect, meaning exactly due to schools closing, only then did the numbers flatten off. i think we have a lot to learn from that and need to apply that possibly here should this variant take off here in the united states in the next six to 12 weeks. >> sanjay, it's not just the uk variant, but there's a brazilian one and a south african one. pfizer is laying the groundwork for a vaccine booster against variants. how great is the fear variants might emerge? >> i think -- first of all, mike osterholm sounded the alarm before anyone else, as he often does. he's right on these things. as you accumulate more and more mutations, the idea you're going to have more variants is true which is why when we talk about vaccines, it's not just the number that get out there but the speed at which you vaccinate people, to try to reduce the amount of virus that's tr
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transmitting and spreading and accumulating these mutations. let me show you something and i can ask michael osterholm if i got this right. in this situation, if you have 50% more deadly strain, variant, that would lead to 1.5 times more deaths but what is interesting to this point is that if it's more contagious, not necessarily more deadly, because it will spread so much more and increasingly affect vulnerable populations, make more causal encounters more likely to result in infection, within a month, six generations could lead to a lot more deaths. that's the concern. >> so that's interesting. even if technically the variant is not more deadly if it's more contagious, it will end up being more deadly? >> absolutely. sanjay laid it out very nicely just now. >> professor, you're putting the pandemic into terms all of us can understand. i'm certainly not a sports
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expert but i do know there are nine innings in a baseball game. what inning is this pandemic in? >> i still think we're in the bottom of the third, top of the fourth. you know, i worry the next six to 14 weeks could be the darkest weeks of the pandemic. you know, we're down to 150,000 cases a day, which seems down, remember when 70,000 or 32,000 cases a day seemed high. and if this variant takes off in north america like it has throughout europe, i think we could be seeing numbers much, much higher than we've had to date. and, unfortunately, vaccines really won't save us. what i mean by that, we won't have enough out in time. if we vaccinate everybody that the government has said the vaccine will be available for through april, that's about 12% of the u.s. population. this variant could do a great deal of harm in that time. so we'll have to wait and see. i sure hope it doesn't happen but if it does, it's going to be a long few weeks ahead of us.
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>> sanjay, one of the things that's depleting about this is we've come all this way and, you know, there is still a long way to go. now there are variants. the idea you can make a mistake and let down your guard and don't wear a mask when you should or go to the grocery store and, you know, you happen to get -- catch it. i mean, it doesn't matter that it been this long for the virus, it's all brand-new and whether you get infected, if you get infected now, it's -- i mean, i'm not explaining this well but it's just -- it's so easy to mess up and it's so easy to get tired of these precautions and yet, the virus doesn't care about that. >> right. no, i think you're absolutely right. i think people with all the talk about vaccines, you know, have started to look at this more in the rearview mirror and i think two stats struck me. the percentage of people that think the worst is behind us and the percentage who think the worst is in front of us.
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it's about half and half. half the country thinks the worst is behind us and as you hear from professor osterholm, some of the worst days may be in front depending what happens with these variants. what else struck me is such a significant percentage of people still, when they get infected, and you say where do you think you got this, a significant percentage don't know. they can't pinpoint where they're getting it. that's a problem. there are too many potential sources of infection for too many people still. >> michael, professor osterholm, if you get infected you should be able to narrow it down because one shouldn't have that many exposures. >> well, that gets to the point of what is an exposure. most people going to the grocery store since the beginning of this would say well, i've been there so many times i haven't been exposed and what we're concerned about is this new variant may mean that there is just much more virus in the same setting than there was before because people are inhaling more virus. all the trips to the grocery
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store that weren't an exposure becomes one. that's the challenge we're up against. and that's what we saw happening in europe. your point is a good one. we're so close to the end. we've just got to get through this summer. we've got to get people vaccinated and, you know, beat these variants at their very game. >> professor osterholm, sanjay, thank you very much. join san jay and me tomorrow night for a coronavirus town hall. dr. anthony fauci and cdc directors will discuss the latest and answer the questions tomorrow night 8:00 p.m. eastern. >> next tonight, files uncovered about a congresswoman known for her support of qanon. marjorie taylor greene, her social media presence in the past and the question whether she supported back then political violence. also, the search for those who turned the capitol into a battleground and killing ground. we have a progress report and investigation ahead.
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more breaking news tonight. this time a republican congresswoman and her facebook feed in the past. she's congresswoman and qanon supporter marjorie taylor greene. kfiles, andrew shares a bbyline. andrew, what more did you learn about the congresswoman's views and comments? >> so, what we found was that marjorie greene in 2018 and 2019, this is before she ran for congress, she was a conservative commentator posted on facebook a lot. she repeatedly indicated that she supported executing
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democratic members of congress including house speaker nancy pelosi. there was a post in which, you know, this is really fwraf if i can -- graphic stuff, somebody said a bullet to the head would be an easier way to remove pelosi and greene liked that comment and repeatedly liked comments about executing members of the fbi who she claimed were part of the deep state conspiracy against president trump. and sort of backdrop to this was she was leading this petition to impeach pelosi saying she was guilty of treason and it suggested pelosi could be executed for treason. she gave many speeches in support of this. and in many of those actually suggested that pelosi could be executed for treason. just many, many of these comments. >> and i think we put it on the screen but did you get a response from the congresswoman or anyone in her office? >> so the interesting thing about her response, we asked for comment and two hours before we posted the story, they sent out a tweet and she didn't deny that she had made any of the comments
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or liked any of the posts but she said over the years i've had many people manage my posts, many posts have been liked, many have been shared. some of them did not represent my views, especially the ones cnn is about to spread across the internet. so she was basically -- didn't deny liking them but said i might not have and at the time she was a conservative commentator and ran a cross fit gym so it would be strange if other people ran her pages. >> i was reading the response there. it said that they're coming after me because essentially they're trying to have socialism in america and she's standing up again. i'm a threat to the goal of socialism she says. the story is about comments, things she actually did or at least were on her facebook page in which she seems to be happy about the idea of shooting nancy pelosi in the head or executing
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members of congress. that's what this is about. >> well, and it's -- she also sort of suggested that it was us in her comment coming out for her about stuff other people said but in our story, she's on video suggesting that pelosi could be executed for treason. so it's not just about a random comment on facebook or things she liked in facebook but stuff she also said in video and put on facebook. >> right. yeah. she's, you know, said q is patriot, we know this. she's -- yeah. has an interesting past. appreciate it. thank you. if that report is not disturbing enough, look what is happening in the official republican parties in both arizona and oregon. last night the oregon gop actually said the violence at the capitol was, quote, a false flag operation designed to discredit the former president. and they were serious. and in arizona as you may remember the state republican
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party censored the governor for covid restrictions and they also reprimanded cindy mccain, wife of the late senator john mccain, and senator jeff flake, because they weren't loyal enough the past four years. cnn's kyung lah has more. >> reporter: this is the storming of the capitol you may not have seen. rioters breached the oregon state capital and assaulted the police than a month before this, the insurrection in washington, d.c. >> usa! >> reporter: as former president donald trump faces a second impeachment trial charged for his role in inciting the deadly d.c. riot. >> it was a sham impeachment just like the first one. >> reporter: the oregon republican party defiantly defends trump. >> patriots are not going away. the president is not going away. >> reporter: the state party passed a resolution, condemning
quote
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ten house republicans that voted to impeach trump calling it a betrayal. then dived into this conspiratorial lie about the insurrection that there is growing evidence that the violence at the capitol was a false flag operation designed to discredit president trump. >> this is a time for choosing, a time for choosing what you believe and stand for and not for just giving lip service to being a republican. >> reporter: that's not helping to win over more republicans says oregon republican state representative david brock smith. >> extremism on either side only benefits a small minority and not the majority of the constituents that we represent. >> reporter: choosing to side with the far right fringe or not, that is the battle at the state gop level. in texas, the gop continues to use a slogan we are the storm. the same slogan used by followers of the qanon conspiracy, the texas republicans deny that connection. in hawaii, a top gop official
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resigned from his post after he tweeted sympathy for qanon followers from the state party account and later called it an error in judgment. >> it will be the trump republican party. >> reporter: in arizona, it open warfare among republicans. these women believe the baseless claims pedaled by trump. trump won i think by a landslide. i will be with him wherever he goes. however he goes. >> reporter: the state party shows no sign of moving away from trump. members reelected a trump follower as the chairwoman despite democrats flipping the state blue in 2020. arizona republican party members don't seem to care. >> at what cost? selling out america? i can't do that. >> reporter: there will be a price warned establishment republicans. >> it really is driving normal,
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regular rational people from the republican party and we can't afford to lose many more. >> reporter: and it's more than just a fear that the former senator is talking about. they're real numbers behind this. the arizona secretary of state's office tells cnn 9,944 registered republicans, that's almost 10,000 of them have switched the party registration since the u.s. capitol riot. anderson, when we talked to establishment republicans here, they say that is a blaring siren and the concern when they look at it nationally is that it's not just happening here in the swing state but probably happening in other swing states across the country. anderson? >> kyung lah, thank you. as they hunt for the person they say planted pipe bombs that day. details when we return. i discovered my great aunt ruth signed up as a nursing cadet for world war ii. you see this scanned-in, handwritten document.
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the senate prepares for the impeachment trial of the former president former investigators search for the criminals he inspired including at least one person they say planted pipe bombs that day. evan perez joins us with the latest on the investigation. what do you know about the arrests and charges for those
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involved? >> this is a sprawling investigation. tomorrow marks three weeks since the insurrection and they have according to the fbi and the u.s. attorney here in d.c. they have 400 people subjects who are under investigation, over 150 arrests already and according to them they have had about 200,000 tips, digital media tips that have come into the fbi, a lot of them have come from friends, family members turning in people they believe were involved or who they know were involved in the violent assault on the u.s. capitol. one of the more interesting things is if you have had arrests from hawaii to florida, and this is only the beginning. we expect hundreds more to be arrested as a result of this investigation. >> the fbi announced today that the investigation is focusing on more complex cases. do you know what that means?
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>> yeah. so far they have done what they call the low-hanging fruit, the people you see in social media posts boasting about where they were. now comes the harder part which is to find people who purposely trying to hide themselves and one of the big priorities is to find the people or the group behind the two pipe bombs that were found on the day of the capitol. the question that the investigators are still trying to answer is whether that was intended to draw police away from the u.s. capitol before the assault began. that's something that the investigators are still trying to figure out. they have raised the reward to $75,000. it tells us that they are struggling to find who was responsible for this. they have looked at everything from cell phone tracking data to all of the surveillance cameras and not able to find a suspect for these cases. the other top priority is to figure out who may have been
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responsible for the killing of that officer, the u.s. capitol police officer who died that day. >> evan perez, appreciate it. thank you. next, a late and welcome update on senator leahy hospitalized tonight. details ahead. welcome,
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an update and positive within on a story we reported earlier. vermont senator patrick leahy is back at home. after being hospitalized earlier. after an examination he is now home. he looks forward to getting back to work. senator leahy who's 80 is set to preside over the next impeachment of the former president, he has the most democratic senator with the most seniority and president pro tempor in the senate and the trial is scheduled to start february 9th. durbin said he was confident he could return to work as soon as tomorrow. the news continues. let's hand it over to chris. for cuomo "prime time." >> thank you, my brother. i'm chris cuomo and welcome to
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"prime time." we have major news on the vaccine and a way forward on the pandemic but we need to look at why all efforts may be sabotaged from the inside. this is the futility we face. 100 u.s. senators taking their oaths of impartiality again today and then just 45 minutes after, 45 of 50 republicans voted to drop the case against trump. just minutes after taking their oath. why? they say the trial would be unconstitutional at the urging of senator rand paul arguing the senate can't hold a trial of a private citizen. this captures the sham. ted cruz and josh hawley raising their right hands and signing the oath book to swear they'll be impartial when they themselves fed the trumphe