tv Cuomo Prime Time CNN February 23, 2021 6:00pm-7:00pm PST
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who said she golfed with tiger yesterday, prayered up for the g.o.a.t., tiger woods, i was just with him yesterday. don't take not even a moment for granted. i know you're good because your tiger within is a beast. breaking now, a tweet from former president obama, quote, sending my prayers to tiger woods and his family tonight. here's to a speedy recovery to the g.o.a.t. of golf. if we learned anything over the years. it's never count tiger out. the news continues, so let's hand it over to chris for "cuomo prime time." >> welcome to prime time. we're about to talk live with the first man to come upon tiger woods after his car accident. tiger is now in a trauma center, after this morning's horrific rollover crash in his suv south of los angeles at about 7:00 a.m. woods suffered compound fractures in his legs. compound is bad. it means the break came through the skin. it can create a lot of
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complications in terms of the surgery and the need for healing. now, by the looks of it, he was lucky to survive. the l.a. times reports he also injured his ankles, procedure going to be the least of his worries. we'll see. they had to use an ax and something called a hooligan tool to pry tiger free from through the windshield, according to the l.a. times. listen to what happened on impact. >> apparently, the first contact was with the center median, and from there, then crossed into the opposing lane of traffic. hit the curb, hit a tree, and there was several rollovers during that process. >> obviously, the question on everybody's mind is going to be why? why did this happen? as you heard the sheriff there, we'll have him on in a moment. they believe speed was an issue. the car did make its way across the median on to the other side of the road and down an embankment. we have an up close look from
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cnn's nick watt. >> so chris, tiger woods was driving down the hill on the other side of the road. somehow lost control, crossed the median, hit this curb, and then flipped. the county sheriff said that he flipped multiple times in that suv. through all this undergrowth, and look how far he traveled. all the way down here, rolling through, hit a tree, and then his car landed way further down here. now, the first deputy on the scene, a young man called carlos gonzalez, said he thought tiger woods was lucky to get out of this alive. and frankly, i agree with him. this is still -- i'm still walking where his car was rolling. and this is where tiger woods' car ended up. now, apparently he was calm but gonzalez said maybe that was shock. compound fractures to his legs. conscious when the emergency
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services arrived. chris. >> all right, thanks to nick watt. why was he so calm? tiger is known for being calm, but it also could have been shock. he was awake and talking, thankfully, when help arrived. he was already recovering from his fifth back operation of his career. this man is the best or one of the best ever to play the game. his play made him famous, but he was always bigger than sport. he was one of a kind when he came along, and i don't mean to talk about him in the past tense. i'm saying when he was a kid, okay. hopefully he'll have many years to come, even playing. but that vein and his uniqueness in the sport generated huge attention and scrutiny. look how recovering a car accident, there is no indication that tiger woods is in any mortal danger, thank god. but everything about his life generates outsized curiosity. his marriage and personal issues
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were blown up worldwide in a way we have rarely if ever seen. but then what defines this man is that he came back. he came back from much worse than a pair of broken legs. he's only 45 years old. and he's had enough injuries for two lifetimes, close to a dozen back and knee surgeries, after which he still found a way to win a masters just last year. he just had a surgery days before this crash, just this sunday, tiger spoke about his hopes to compete at the masters in april. at that point, he wasn't sure if he would be in condition to even play yet. >> i'm a little bit stiff. i have one more mri scheduled so that we'll see if it's scarred over finally and i can start doing more activities. >> seven weeks from today, final round of the masters. you going to be there? >> god, i hope so.
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i have to get there first. >> if anyone can handle the injuries and the scrutiny, it is tiger woods. let's get the latest from the sheriff of los angeles county, alex villanueva, and deputy carlos gonzalez. we keep hearing about because he was first to arrive on the scene. gentlemen, thank you for doing your job and thank you for taking time with us tonight. >> you got it, chris. >> sheriff, what can you tell us about the latest on the investigation into why this happened? >> well, the investigation is in its infancy right now. the investigators are gathering all the facts. deputy gonzalez on scene, they take all the measurements, put all the information together. they're going to prepare a very detailed report and it's going to be approved and we'll have an actual cause of the accident. >> but right now, it's being investigated as an accident, right? >> that is correct. there is no evidence of any sort
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of on his part, inebriation or anything like that. >> good. good to have that clear from the onset. >> deputy gonzalez, you have seen a lot of ugly accidents, i'm sure. were you at all surprised to see what had obviously happened with the vehicle and get there and find tiger woods in the condition he was in in terms of alertness in the car? >> i was surprised for a moment, when i realized it was tiger woods inside of the vehicle. but of course, my job comes first. and my responsibility is to the person involved in the collision. and so i didn't let the surprise last more than a second because i had a job to do. >> i hear you about him being a star. not even what i'm talking about. the car traveling as far as it did off the road, down that embankment, as bashed up as the car was, were you surprised at all that the person inside was still alert and awake? >> you know, over my experience,
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i have learned with vehicle collisions, there's no telling. sometimes something really minor looking can be very serious, and vice versa. something very horrible looking can result in no injuries. in this situation, it was a very traumatic collision. i do think the fact he was wearing a seat belt and that the vehicle safety features worked as designed by the manufacturer likely resulted in either reducing his injury or saving his life. >> why did they have to use tools to get him out? was it because of the pain of the injuries and his inability to move or was he stuck in there? >> when i arrived on scene, the vehicle was rolled over onto the driver's side door, so there was no way to open the door. and he was still seat belted in. when i got there, i made the decision because i was able to get my upper body through the windshield, and i determined that he was alert enough and not in a medical condition that necessitated me extracting him
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myself, and i decided to wait for the fire department. they have the tools and training to rescue people in these situations. and they're the real experts. i decided to wait for them. >> you know, sheriff, you have been doing this a long time. celebrities get into garden variety trouble. it gets more attention. but this is unusual. there is something about tiger woods that provokes a level of examination. there's no foul play, nobody else was involved. nobody is hurt. thank god everybody is alive. this is getting national and international attention. what do you make of that? >> well, it's just the nature of, you know, cult of celebrity, whatever you want to call it. people just have an interest in things like this. and thankfully, it's an accident, nothing beyond that. now we just have to pray for tiger's speedy recovery, and hopefully he'll get back on his feet and doing what he's known to do. we'll have to wait and see. >> now, deputy, when you made contact with him, i heard you say that you were talking to him. he may have been in shock.
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which is not unusual when somebody has had bad injuries. did you need to prompt him to stay conscious and to stay awake or was he okay but maybe in a little bit of shock? >> when i got there, he was lucid. i was able to ask him his name, i was able to ask him if he knew where he was and what time of day it was. so i didn't need to keep him conscious. what i was more focused on was to keep him talking so he wouldn't be so concerned about the situation he was in. and that way, he wouldn't go into additional shock before the department arrived. >> deputy, did he ask you to contact anybody or let anyone know he was okay? >> he did after he had arrived at the hospital. he asked my partners if we could reach out to his team that's here in l.a. county and notify them of what he had been through. >> that's all a good sign, right, that he was able to have his head around him. in terms of the injuries,
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sheriff, what do we know? i'm hearing compound fractures in the legs and a break in one of the ankles. is that accurate as far as you know? anything to add to it? >> we can't report on what's happening at the hospital, so that would be up to tiger or his team to disclose it, the medical authorities, but when he was removed from the scene, obviously, he had very serious injuries and he was treated for that. we have to leave it at that. >> how bad was this accident? from your experience. >> well, i have seen many accidents throughout my career. i know deputy gonzalez has seen as well. that he's alive and well is good. it's nothing short of a miracle considering the damage. however, like he said, we have seen accidents with far less obvious that are fatalities. multiple fatalities, as a matter of fact. so there's a lot of things that played in his favor. >> as we often say, whether you believe or not, there but for the grace goes tiger woods. thank god he's well.
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hopefully he makes a full recovery. and also, really important to see people doing the job, doing it fast, getting there in moments, and doing it the right way. sheriff alex villanueva, thank you, deputy carlos gonzalez, appreciate you taking the time. >> thank you. >> thank you, chris. now, the medical reality has been as big a part of the tiger woods story in recent years as his play on the greens. again, anybody can do it at a high level if they're a pro when they are injury-free. you start building in injury, and players fade in every sport. imagine five back surgeries, five knee operations, all before today. now, let's talk about what the range of what he may be facing could be, based on what we know. let's bring in our man, chief dr. sanjay gupta. i don't want to handcuff you with too little information here, but the words compound fracture let you know multiple
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compound fractures, that is where the bone literally breaks through the skin. what does that create as a range of severity here? >> well, it is a big range, chris. you know, just simple things, was this the upper leg, the femur? was this the lower leg, the tibia and fibula, these types of things matter in terms of trying to figure out the severity of the injury, and to your question, prognosis long term. the thing about him that's amazing, 2014, he has a back operation. 2015, 2017, 2019, 2020. it's pretty remarkable, and then he comes back after these operations and plays a really high level of golf. i just -- we just don't know right now. as part of these injuries to his legs, did he also have nerve injury? did he also have significant vascular injury? it sounds like he had a significant amount of bleeding. that's what caused him to be in this sort of serious condition,
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vital signs becoming a little unstable at times. but there's a lot of still questions to be answered. and also, chris, just having, as a trauma neurosurgeon, i know that there's a picture in time that those -- you heard from the sheriff and deputy, that's what they saw and what they're describing at the time. he then goes to the hospital. and at that point, you get a full surveillance, everything. cat scan of your brain, make sure there's no other internal organ injuries, any other broken bones. it's tough to assess all that on the scene. that's why they put you on a back bone, in a neck collar, they have to assume there are more severe injuries and go to the hospital to make sure that's not the case. >> this level of golf, people will say it's a game, not like football. incredible amount of torque, strain put on the body through repetitive motion which is how he got the back injuries. is there an open question as to what this did to his back. they're talking about the legs
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being broken, the ankle may be broken, but you have a fragile back. you just had surgery. that has to be part of the analysis also, no? >> i think without question, and in addition to the fact that he had recently by his own description, i guess, in december of last year, he had another what's called a diskectomy, a herniated disc that was operated on. prior to that, he had a spine fusion where they basically put a graft in between two of the bones in the lower back. i know the doctors, whenever someone has a mechanism of injury like the one we're hearing about here, high speed, multiple rollovers, you're going to obviously assess the status of that fusion as well. a ct scan or mri scan depending on what's going on with him, but absolutely, chris. it's kind of remarkable he was able to play after all of those operations. we'll see what these injuries now do to him. but they're going to want to assess how this has affected all
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those areas he's had previously operated on his back. >> serious but stable. does that tell you anything other than, yeah, that sounds like broken legs and you're banged up from a car accident? >> yeah, you know, it's interesting. you have stable, you have serious, you have critical. so they said he was in serious condition. what that typically means is that may have been periods of time where his blood pressure may have dropped out of the normal range, his heart rate may have gone up to try to compensate for that. and it's usually, as you should point out, indicative of significant bleeding. he's a young guy. you know. >> phenomenal athlete. >> very good shape. but that does, you know, the body compensates pretty well. it can keep up for a period of time. if you start to drop your blood pressure significantly, that usually is indicative there's a significant amount of blood loss, maybe necessitating blood transfusions, iv fluids, all the things you might suspect.
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i think there's lots of clues that you're getting at with the sheriff and deputy. he was calm and lucid. he was oriented times three, meaning he knew who he was, where he was, what time it was. his airway was clear, his ability to breathe was clearly okay. they were able to extricate him from the vehicle. i wouldn't read too much into all these reports that he couldn't stand. you wouldn't have somebody stand in this sort of situation. you would have to assume they might have a spinal cord injury, so you would put him straight on a backboard. >> you have compound fractures in your legs. why would you ask him to stand? the best thing i heard, tell me if you feel differently, obviously, he was able once he got to the hospital, to make a conscious call to say, hey, please contact so-and-so. that makes me feel a lot better about head trauma because people can phase out once they go through the initial trauma and shock, they get to the hospital. sometimes they go south. it's good to hear he was still talking in a coherent way. >> yeah, that's a really good point, chris. again, when you hear this
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description from the deputy and the sheriff, that is a snapshot in time. and it's always an important lesson. someone can, you know, decompensate or deteriorate even en route to the hospital. it's something that obviously they're continuously being evaluated for. as you point out, you now have two points in time where he seemed to be very lucid and making these types of decisions. my guess is he was still scanned, internal organs were assessed to make sure there was no additional bleeding. again, it was a serious accident. you have to make sure that you don't miss something. you can't just go by what is obvious. it was obvious, i'm sure, these compound fractures, as you point out. they're tough to see because that's bone coming through the skin. but you have to make sure you don't get too myopic and you miss other injuries as a result. >> now, because we're talking about tiger woods and the art of the comeback, what is the shortest imaginable timeframe for recovery to activity from
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those kinds of issues, if they are compound fractures of the femur, the upper biggest bone in the body? >> that's -- you know, it's tough to say. it's speculative, but we're talking, this is a long recovery here, chris. i mean, for sure, was there nerve damage as well? how much vascular damage was there? sometimes, chris, you may have heard of this idea that if there's so much injury to the muscle, it will swell and because it's swelling underneath these thick layers of tissue known as fascia, sometimes you actually have to open up and provide some -- you have to relieve the pressure. that can slow down your overall recovery. we just don't know. we don't know. all i have heard really is these compound fractures. i don't know if they're the femur or the tibia, fibula. we know about the ankle. the ankle can be a very serious injury because it's an area of the body that doesn't get as good of blood supply, so it can take longer to heal. it's bearing a lot of weight, me
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of the weight, so there's all these things to take into consideration. but i will say, again, five back surgeries and the guy was still playing at the level he was. i don't want to overstate that, but i'm just saying the guy has clearly come back from some significant, you know, operations in the past. >> it will be interesting to watch. thank god there's more of this story to tell. dr. sanjay gupta, as always, thank you. the only thing that matters tonight for tiger woods and the many who care about him is that he's alive. and that he's going to get another chance at this. and if anybody is going to break our expectations of what this injury can do to you, it would likely be tiger woods. but you know, this could be a moment that winds up deciding the future of a one-man sports dynasty, at least in terms of his play. i want to bring in just one of the greats from the art of broadcasting communication, bryant gumbel. he's going to come in, and i want to talk to him about tiger woods means more than golf.
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he means more than sport. we are covering this accident because it happened to him. what does he mean? what would it mean if he can't play again? what is next? bryant gumbel, stay with us. e o♪ ♪ hey now, you're a rock star, get the show on, get paid ♪ ♪ and all that glitters is gold ♪ applebee's $1 boneless wings with any handcrafted burger.
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we've seen tiger woods come back from bad crises, physical and emotional. now, the interesting thing will be what will this moment mean to him in terms of hilegacy as one of the greatest sports icons of all time. i want perspective from somebody who knows the man and also knows his meaning. legendary journalist, he's been following woods' career, got a great clip for you tonight of bryant gumbel with tiger woods at 5. you know the host of "real sports" on our sister network, hbo, friend and mentor. good to see you, bryant. >> hey, chris. how are you doing.
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>> let's talk about his significance. no intention to speak about him in the past tense. only 45 years old. if anybody can recover from a couple compound fractures. it's this guy. we have seen him come through worse, frankly. why does he matter so much to us in this culture? >> i think he's one of the few athletes who has really moved beyond just athletics and become a symbol in popular culture. i mean, i think if you're going to gauge his impact, you would have to pick a world. if you chose entertainment, he made golf worth watching. if you're going to talk sports, he tied the record for most pga victories in his second and most majors. if you're talking racial context, he gave the game color and brought a lot of african-americans to golf. if you're talking financial impact, he doubled and tripled the amount of money that purses
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were worth on the pga tour. so his impact is enormous in the number of different spheres. and i don't know if that will ever be minimized, whether he makes it back or not. >> that's an interesting point that you make there about what this will mean for him. if he were to come back from this, it would really cement him as the iron man of all time when it comes to sports. >> iron man, miracle man, maybe. as you noted, five back surgeries, five knee surgeries and now we're talking about, if we're to believe the reports, a shattered ankle and at least one broken leg. he's 45 years old. i heard dr. gupta talking about his chances of recovery, us not knowing if it's his tibia or fibula. you know, it's hard to imagine him trying to compete before the age of 47, 48.
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and then you get into the game of how many men have been able to win a tournament on the pga tour beyond that age? now, about a dozen have done it. but it remains a very unusual circumstance. certainly, he's an unusual player. i don't know. it would be nice to think he could at least get one more, one more, which would break the tie, which would be his 83rd tour victory, which would move him to number one all-time on the pga tour in victories. that would be very nice. >> you know sports so well. could you imagine us talki like this about anybody else near the tail end of their career. like god forbid something happen to tom brady, i hope he could come back and win one more super bowl if he were in a situation like this. you would just hope he could play with his kids. i want to get your perspective on him as a person from the polls of your existence. i want to show people this clip
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that is so beautiful and signature bryant gumbel journalism. here's bryant telling the story of tiger woods at the beginning. >> tiger woods, the most amazing 5-year-old golfer you have ever seen. >> what has rudy been able to teach you? >> putting, hitting, chipping. >> he says you're a good student. >> i am. >> always great to interview kids. what did you -- >> always torture. >> you never know what you're going to get. they can go so bad on you so fast. what did you think of him at that age, other than having a swing i had never seen in a kid that age before? >> look, it's very hard to not be impressed. you know, as a hacker, you know, you watch a guy at that age doing things that you can only dream about. his ability with a golf club is unsurpassed. certainly unsurpassed in my lifetime, and i suspect he'll wind up being a
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multigenerational talent. yes, jack nicklaus has more majors but i think even jack would concede that tiger has hit golf shots that no one who has ever lived has hit. >> now, when you say hit shots, you have the mechanics and the skill, but also the pressure, bryant. this guy carries color. he carries class, he carried a lot of things in there with him. people watching this guy for better and worse in a way no golfer has ever experienced. >> yeah, he was under a microscope at all times from an early age. and yet he has so many moments, as you note, that continue to stand out. whether it's the shot from the fairway bunker at the canadian open or the shot in the dark at firestone. or the ace at phoenix. or the better than most putt at tpc. the guy managed to transcend the game and create moments that stay with you forever.
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my dear mother, god rest her soul, could not have told you the difference between a golf ball and a hockey puck, but whenever tiger woods was on, she was glued to the set. he was, to steal a phrase from my own network, he was must-see tv. when he was on, you had to watch. you had to watch. because it was what everyone was going to be talking about the next day. >> the idea of being an icon transcends sports. you think about muhammad ali, you know, somebody who winds up creating a significance beyond what they do in their field of play. what do you respect most about tiger woods as a man now of 45? >> well, you know, it's very interesting you say that because i do think part of the allure of ali in my opinion, the allure of tiger, is that we do see all
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facets of their personality. that we do see how fragile they are, that they are not perfect men. that they are not unbeatable, that they are prone to illness, injury, disease. that they are inclined to fail at various points in their life. that not everything is as perfectly executed as the sport they have chosen to play. and i think to most of us who are all too familiar with our flaws, we watch that, and it makes them more easily relatable for most of us. certainly, that's the way i feel. >> and yet, i do believe, look, tiger's very different from muhammad ali. it's not correct to qualify him just because of color, but muhammad ali lived in a different time. he took on politics in a way, he took on class and structure in a way that tiger woods has not, but i tell you what, i have never seen anybody get taken
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down the way tiger woods was either. in a world of sexual peccadilloes and what people make of your marriage, that was epic what was done to him, and it was done as a social kill shot, and he came back. and i didn't think he would. >> he did come back. although i would venture to say he came back in a different fashion. i think he lost a lot of people. i think a lot of people cheered the failures. but yes, he did come back. and you are absolutely right. he does not belong in the same social sentence as muhammad ali, not even close. but on the field of play, what tiger was able to accomplish is actually amazing when you think about it. this is a guy who was number one in the world basically for ten years in a row, was 11 times player of the year, who has these 82 wins, who has these 15 majors. yet people forget, he played in basically one tournament for
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three years. he had back surgeries constantly for five years stretch. simply from a physical standpoint, what he did was remarkable. to do it when you're under that kind of a microscope in this media age is really something we have never seen before. and that's something even muhammad ali didn't have to thwart. >> hardest thing in life to do is change, and to get taken down on a big stage, most go away. most stick with their close circle and don't want the scrutiny anymore. he came back, he put himself out there. it's something that deserves respect, no matter how you feel about the behavior that brought him down. he tried to do better, and he tried to do better in public. and that's impressive. i think that's one of the reasons we're all paying so much attention now. people want to see what happens next. and i hope it's a beautiful chapter. bryant, last word to you. >> if i could add just one thing. i would like people at this
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point selfishly, we are all sad at what happened because we're now going to be deprived of him playing, but i hope a lot of people feel relief that when we first heard about this, we thought we were hearing the early stages of another kobe accident. and clearly, that's not going to happen. these are not life-threatening injuries. he is presumably going to heal and enjoy a life with his children. whether he can play golf or not, i don't want to say it's incidental, but that's not the important thing. this is a man who seems to have found happiness with his family and himself, and a degree of contentment, and it's wonderful that he's going to survive this accident and be able to live his life. >> it will be interesting to see what happens. and you're right, there has been too much terrible loss in this country in the last year already. the last thing we need is to lose anyone else, let alone a tiger woods. bryant gumbel, you're one of the men that every time i see you, i have the same thought. why don't i see this guy more? thank you for taking the time to
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give us your perspective tonight. god bless and be well. >> take care of yourself. >> thank you, sir. >> a big news night. the first public hearing on the trump insurrection was held on the hill today, and it was a perfect distillation of just how screwed up we are. one of the top retrumplicans in the senate, embracing the gop, he made a mockery of what we should see in january 6th. he literally did what he could to make it worse. we're back with a key lawmaker looking for real answers, and we've got to be honest. some things may be broken in our style of government. we have to take them on. next.
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many public hearings on the capitol attack. the first time today we heard from security officials, former and present, on why our leaders were forced to run for their lives from a rabid trump mob on january 6th. was this about planning? was it about intel? was it about intentionality? why did this happen? especially now that we understand that what happened on the attack side was at least partly coordinated in advance. so you had two senate committees hear from four witnesses who blamed federal law enforcement and the dod, the defense department, for intelligence failures and a communication breakdown. former capitol police chief steven sund resigned in the wake of the insurrection. he says he only learned over the past 24 hours of a critical fbi warning that extremists were calling for war.
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is that true? so we also heard powerful testimony from current capitol police captain carnesia mendoza, how she left for the front lines of the capitol attack on the 6th only to return home with a nearly broken arm and chemical burns on her face that have yet to fully heal. unfortunately, we heard another retrumplican pushing more lies. i can't believe. i really can't, that in the face of listening to these lawmakers and all the things and the legitimacy of that, that this senator, ron johnson, literally, with no irony on his face, like he believes it, starts talking about how this wasn't what it looked like. these stupid baseless conspiracy theories about who these rioters were, that they really weren't trump supporters, listen to this
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bull. >> he said the mood of the crowd was positive and festive. many of the marchers were families with small children, many were older, plain clothes agents, fake trump protesters, but almost everyone seemed talkative and happy. >> first of all, let me tell you something, brother. very few people fake being a trump supporter. okay. and you can describe who was in the protest any way you want. look at the faces and the intentionality of what happened at the capitol. why would you try to fake the reality? what do you think is going to happen? if you continue to be this way? why would anyone who calls themselves a republican want to associate with what's coming out of that man's mouth? i want to bring in democratic congressman tim ryan, who chairs a subcommittee investigating the police response. congressman, thanks. have you heard anything to put
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any meat on the bones of any suggestion that what happened january 6th was anything other than what it seemed in all of the pictures? that these were posers, these were plants? is there any guidance from any level of law enforcement to authenticate any of that? >> zero. zero, chris. and you know, they're just repeating the same lie. there's zero truth to any of that. you can see the prosecutions, the 200 people that are prosecuted are saying trump told us to go. they're members of these right-wing extremist groups. there's all kinds of connections to president trump, to these organizations, and so for senator johnson to say that, he's just blatantly lying. but it's working to some extent because 58% of republicans believe what ron johnson was saying, because people like ron johnson keep saying that. >> i think the only answer is that every time it's brought up,
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you have to step on it. not just by saying it's not true, but by showing the footage and showing the reality of who's prosecuted and what they say. now, one of the things that is not so clear is that in terms of intel failure versus lack of preparation, you could have a little cya going on here, that's not unusual, but if there were a meeting where the fbi was present, meeting with the local authorities there, i don't understand how this january 5th meeting between the capitol security and federal law enforcement did not generate an understanding of the fbi report. i heard one explanation was it was only raw intelligence. for people at home, that means it hadn't been processed, it hadn't been verified in a way that it was actionable. do you buy that? >> no, and the idea that the fbi just sent this as an email, like, holy crap, all this is going on, let me send you an email. along with the 400 other emails you get every single day.
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no one picked up the phone, no one made a call, no one elevated this situation, and so that's what we've got to find out. and then have a meeting in that same information not come out is mind-boggling. this is all with the backdrop, chris, of all of the things you covered leading up to january 5 and 6. trump circled that date on the calendar. it's going to be wild. we're going to go down, have a rally. so you know, the more you look at it, the more you see all these data points, and there was nobody or no group of people there really to synthesize all of this information. it seems like everyone's got these little pieces of information, and no one said, man, this could turn into a real you know what storm, and we better be ready for it, and ready significantly, because they're talking about national guard, too. we wanted the national guard. we wanted the national guard. chris, there were only a few hundred national guard, like 150 to 200 that if they did get the
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emergency clearance, if they did activate, it was only like 300. so we were still ill prepared even if the national guard got activated immediately once they started storming the capitol. >> you have to keep pushing, and you will continue to have this platform to tell people what you find out because you have to find a fix. god forbid you don't, this could happen again. congressman tim ryan, hope you keep learning, and you're free to come here. we'll keep inviting you to tell people what's going on and what needs to happen. >> appreciate it, chris. thanks. >> other front in the war is obviously covid. we do have more hopeful news tonight. the vaccine makers are saying t they have been figuring out ways to make more and keep their consistency. remember, it's not easy to match batch when it comes to vaccine. so then you have the real question. i know what you're hearing because i'm hearing it in my own life with my own family. how do i get this thing? how can i get an appointment? why is it that my friend who is 50 miles away but in a different state, they're getting vaccines but i can't get my family, i get
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it, i don't understand, either. but we do have a former cdc director here, and let's get some answers next. t i'll be eatg a calzone from doughballs in aurora. (doorbell) rock on. tonight i'll be eating lobster thermidor au gratin. really? sh-yeah, and monkeys might fly out of my butt. make it two calzones!
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executives from the vaccine makers are promising a big increase in production this spring. they're talking of about 3 million shots a day by april. that would be a game changer. we certainly need as much as we can get. we're in a race. we have to get as many vaccinated people as we can before the variants start creating cases that may or may not be as affected when they have the vaccine. while it's good news that we're up to 13% of the population having at least one shot, we still have a long way to go, and i it's really uneven. i know you're all hearing these stories about nearby states being very different than yours. let's discuss what's going on with the pace and what will be different once we do have prophylaxis, once we do have herd immunity. we're joined by cdc director dr. tom freedman.
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good to see you, doc. >> great to speak with you, chris. >> why is it so uneven where in, let's say, new york, one place where you still can't get old people vaccinated and people are desperately looking for appointments and it's so hard, and then in new jersey you have people my age getting it. why is it so uneven? >> well, first off, the if you understand -- fundamental problem is we don't have enough vaccine to go around. the supply is getting better but it's going to be months before there's ample supply. second, there really wasn't the kind of planning that was needed. world leading scientists creating these vaccines, fantastic, just-in-time delivery of a technology that's been a decade in the making and giving stunning results, but not in time for a planning campaign. the i.t. systems aren't really up to it, and we're paying the
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price for a poorly planned vaccination campaign, but we're seeing it get steadily better. the biggest thing that concerns me right now is the continued lack of equity in vaccine access. we're seeing black and latinx people vaccinated at about half the rate as white people in the u.s., and we know they're about twice as likely to die from the virus. so we have to do much better, and we're seeing some places have creative approaches, such as having the number of slots per zip code. that's a way of increasing the fairness of who gets the vaccination. >> right. >> but fundamentally, you have a lot of frustrated people because there aren't enough vaccines to go around. >> the federal government gives them the vaccine, so they can put rules on who it's supposed to go to. why doesn't the federal government say, x percentage of these have to go to people who are minorities, or within these communities. why not? >> well, they're doing some
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things that are trying to do that without doing things that would create unnecessary conflict. for example, providing more vaccines to pharmacies, big and small pharmacies, providing vaccinations for community health centers to vaccinate. this is going to get better as vaccine supply improves, and really, we are seeing a lot of vaccinations being given, well over a million and a half a day on moest days. but, fundamentally, it will be a few more months before we can begin to see a really big impact. but, chris, i'll tell you one thing, we are already seeing, which is very encouraging, we're seeing a drop in the number of deaths in nursing homes around the country, and that's a direct reflection of the vaccination in nursing homes, because that's gone pretty well. >> one more quick thing. one of the greatest things that will motivate people to get this vaccine other than safety information is what they can do once they're vaccinated. when will we get guidance about whether people who are vaccinated will get some kind of
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thing they can have on their smartphones so you can go to games or go places? will we get some kind of guidance like that where people who are vaccinated get a preference? >> i think that's probably inev inevitable, especially for some international travel and maybe for some local events. we're already seeing israel do that. the problem is if we don't have equal access to vaccination, we're going to make unequal risk combined with unequal opportunity to do more things. so for now, mask up. but i think by the summer and fall, we're going to see a big difference, and a lot more safety and a lot more activities. by fall i think schools should be in person virtually entirely with a few minor exceptions, and increasingly, over the course of this year, we're going to get back to a new normal where we're going to be able to go out and share space with others even indoors. >> i hope so. dr. tom frieden, thank you very much. we'll be right back.
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thanks for watching "cnn tonight." the big show, the big star, d. lemon, right now. >> riddle me this. how can people who are 30, 20s, 40s in other states like california and florida already have gotten the vaccine, and you and i are sitting here like bumps on a log waiting to get the vaccine. i'm not complaining, i just want to know what is the -- like, where is the rhyme or reason to all of it. >> you would have to rank them. one, you do have supply chain issues in terms of what percentage of each of the populations the states have, how they phased it. then i think you have efficiencies in terms of how local and state government work together to get it done.
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