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tv   CNN Tonight  CNN  January 12, 2022 6:00pm-7:00pm PST

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our digital news show that allows us to dig into topics in depth, mondays, wednesdays, and fridays at cnn.com/fullcircle or on our app any time on demand. let's hand it over to lawrence coates and "cnn tonight." >> thanks, anderson, nice to see you, thank you. i'm laura coates and this is "cnn tonight." anyone else tired of double standards? one rule for you and another one for everyone else. it's something house minority leader kevin mccarthy, of all people, recently railed about. >> it's an old definition of abuse of power. rules for thee but not for me. >> keep that in mind in a second, if you will, because we have some big breaking news tonight involving him and the january 6th committee.
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in a statement released just moments ago mccarthy has said he will not cooperate with the investigation despite that statement of rules for thee and not for me and also saying that he actually would if he were asked. and he was asked. a lot more of that in a moment. and look, i've got to tell you, i don't really know when you watch this show which side you're on. i don't know what political party you affiliate with or who you vote for or even where you're from. but i'll bet, i'll bet that you were as sick of double standards as i am. you have been hearing about them at least all day today. whether it's another elite athlete who thinks the covid prevention rules somehow shouldn't apply to him because he wants to win more titles at the australian open, or maybe it's a senate leader who tells you that democracy requires fighting for the rights of him and his colleagues in the political minority but the rights for a racial minority, that somehow is not what democracy is supposed to be used
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for after all. you want to preserve a senate rule, right? more than voting rights? that's the priority and the preference? wait, let me stop, because i don't want to speak about these issues too much, because minority leader mitch mcconnell, he might mistake common sense for a rant. >> the president's rant, rant, yesterday was incoherent, incorrect, and beneath his office. you could not invent a better advertisement for the legislative filibuster than a president abandoning rational persuasion for pure demagoguery. >> i just want you to think about the choice of words for a second, when he says demagoguery, i wonder if the word he was looking for was democracy. because i'm wondering how advocating for voting rights, how is that somehow beneath the
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president's office? and i do wonder also where was this very standard before? and i remember, because we were all old enough and young enough to remember and ask the question of where was mitch mcconnell on the voting rights of the minority, the time he blocked a senate vote on president obama's nominee, the man who we now refer to as attorney general but who was then judge merrick garland? that was in 2016. just so we have our chronology right, and we're all on the same page about double standards, remember, following that year he personally oversaw a change to the senate rules that did away with the filibuster for supreme court nominees in order to confirm president trump's pick, neil gorsuch. and like i said last night, if you can carve out an exception to the filibuster for the debt ceiling, well, surely you can
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carve out one before our democracy goes bankrupt. and speaking of honoring one's office, i want to talk about those who are in office. the members of congress who are telling you that you have to follow the laws that they are responsible for writing, but they don't have to. the average person, i can tell you, if they get a subpoena, when i was a prosecutor, it wasn't like an optional thing. it was, you comply with the subpoena or we can have a squad car brought to your home and you can face jail time. but if you're a member of congress that gets a request to testify before a congressional committee about an attack on the capitol, you were in that capitol. i mean, i guess the response is, if you feel like complying? how many times have you asked yourself how the response and the treatment would be different if it were you in their shoes? i do it at least ten times a
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day. we're going to get into all this tonight, right here with the context you need to decide for yourself whether this nation of laws has one standard. and we know so far republican congressman jim jordan and scott perry you see there, they're not complying with the january 6th committee's request to give voluntary testimony about that day and not having yet been subpoenaed, and their interactions with then-president trump. and the question i have is, why? what do they have to hide? jordan is the ranking member of the house judiciary committee. and he's already said multiple times he's got nothing, nothing to hide. so why not cooperate? and the committee just moved up the totem pole right on up to the top republican minority leader, kevin mccarthy. this is significant. you have to understand, right, we're talking about the number of witnesses who have already been before this committee.
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we know of course the relationship that mccarthy had with then-president trump. and frankly, perhaps to this day. and they want to know about those conversations with him before and during and even after the insurrection. and they are citing that mccarthy himself has already acknowledged speaking directly with the former president, not just some day, but actually that day. and while the violence was under way. and let's just go back in time just a little bit, a few months ago when back in may, mccarthy said that he would cooperate if he were asked. >> would you be willing to testify about your conversation with donald trump on january 6th if you were asked by an outside commission? >> sure. next question. >> oh, okay. well, sure. next question. well, here's one. that was then. but what about now? because now he says he will not cooperate. why? in a statement just out tonight, he says, and i quote, this
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committee is not conducting a legitimate investigation as speaker pelosi took the unprecedented action of rejecting the republican members i named to serve on the committee. it is not serving any legislative purpose. and he goes on, as a representative and the leader of the minority party, it is with neither regret nor satisfaction that i have concluded to not participate with the select committee's abuse of power that stains this institution today and will harm it going forward. now, remember, i told you to recall from before that moment of rules for thee but not for me. and by the way, what can the house select committee do if perry and jordan and mccarthy won't sit down with them? do they have the constitutional right to subpoena their own fellow lawmakers and compel them to cooperate? well, the head of the panel says that that very question is now
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being explored. so i want to bring in somebody right now who is a former general counsel to the house of representatives. his name is stanley brant. and he represents former deputy white house chief of staff dan scavino before this very committee. welcome to the show. nice to see you, stan brant. >> good evening. >> i wonder what your take is, and spoiler, i think i already know, what do you make of the decision not to voluntarily cooperate with a select committee in congress? >> i make a couple of things. one is that because the committee or members of the committee have stated unabashedly that they want to call members in for the purpose of inducing perjury and sending them off to the department of justice among other purposes, they've really revealed two things. they revealed that they're more aligned in that respect with law enforcement than they are with a
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legislative inquiry. secondly, they are on the cusp of stripping members of their speech and debate clause privilege which they would have if, for instance, the department of justice subpoenaed them directly to a grand jury or charged them. and this privilege is not for the personal aggrandizement of the members. it's to protect the independence and sanctity of members of congress and their position vis-à-vis co-equal branches and in this case their own house. and the second thing i would say is that member discipline, subpoenaing members, has never been done by legislative committees. that's always been the province of the ethics committee. and that's because the ethics committee is evenly split between democrats and republicans to prevent the majority from abusing the rights of the minority. >> well, hold on, stan, let me jump in. a couple of points. number one, the fact that it's
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never been done does not mean they were prevented from doing so. a lot of things haven't been done in recent times, namely an attack on the united states congress. on the point of who gets to make -- hold on, i'm going to finish my point, then i want to invite you to continue to speak. when you talk about the idea of the legitimacy, essentially, or the ability for -- and they're talking about trying to invite perjury, when i read the letters from the committee that invites the voluntary, not the punitive, but the voluntary testimony of members of congress, they're asking about what they actually know. why do you view it as a punishment, to give transparent information? >> well, they're not punishing them. they're setting them up potentially for progression by t -- for prosecution by the department of justice. let me go back to your earlier
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point, precedents are broken all the time. that's true. imagine that republicans take over the house in november and imagine a republican legislative committee decides now on the precedent built here to subpoena or request interviews with democratic members on their conversations with president biden. these things have a way of metastasizing and becoming very uncomfortable precedents that really i don't think serve the long term interests of the house, no matter who is in control. >> well, i understand that point about the precedent being set. and again, eiit's the novelty, t just the dismissal of precedent that i talk about here. even if the republicans were to do what you're talking about, hasn't a precedent also now been set by the idea of a sitting member of congress being able to thumb your nose and say, no, i don't have to because i think you might be inviting perjury? couldn't democrats ultimately then say, well, you know what, i see you're delegitimizing a duly
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issued subpoena and i raise you with the same behavior you engaged in. isn't that also a risk and doesn't it disserve what congress' role is here? >> again, to the extent that congress wants to inquiry into members' behavior for purposes of exercising their constitutional right to impose discipline, they still have that power and they can do that through the ethics committee. there's nothing that stops them from doing that at any point. the precedent here is beyond that, though. this is a legislative committee which now is making noises and sounds not like a legislative committee but like a prosecutor's office. and i quote liz cheney, saying, you know, she wants to invite president trump in. and i have no truck with president trump particularly, but they want to invite president trump in. and if they catch him lying, they'll send him off to the department of justice. >> but isn't that everyone?
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if i invite someone, if i'm in trial, you're a lawyer, if you're in trial and you have somebody who's subpoenaed to testify, and they end up lying on the stand, i mean, isn't that risk sort of the assumption by which if somebody were to perjure themselves, that's pretty much of a standard. >> there are cases in the district of columbia that hold that when congress acts like a grand jury and subpoenas people for the purpose of setting them up for perjury, it's not part of a valid legislative inquiry. and those cases occurred at a very critical time in our history, during the '50s and '60s, when the house un-american activities committee and others were busy abusing people's rights and the courts have shut that down. there are limits to the congressional investigative power. just last term the supreme court reminded the congress, when they subpoenaed trump's personal business records, that the function of congress is as a
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legislative body and not as a law enforcement agency. >> do >> i do hear you, stan, i wish i had more time to talk to you about it. i'll leave you with this, when we read these letters, we see a lot about why the committee wants their information. can i call you stan? stan brant, thank you so much. >> thank you. i want to bring in someone who did testify before the select committee, john dean, the former white house counsel to richard nixon. john dean, it's good to see you. i would love to hear your reaction to this notion that inviting someone to testify about what they knew and experienced that day and who they spoke to, that that somehow is punitive, on a voluntary basis. what do you say? >> i disagree with the portrait that stan is trying to paint of this committee.
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i think they're being very careful, to make it very clear they have a legislative intent. they have been charged with finding out what happened on january 6th. they're looking at every aspect of it. they're trying to understand the larger picture. and that is the focus of this committee and not to prosecute anybody. it's to elicit information. now, can you portray it that way? of course, by cherry picking, you can. but this has been before two courts already, and they've both found this committee is totally legitimate and has standing to proceed as it is. so that issue i think is moot at this point. >> now, he did talk about the speech and debate privilege, and i want you to weigh in on that, because of course it does say in the constitution, essentially it's congress' job to look at these issues. you do have the idea of some privileges associated with, say, a member of congress not being held to account for everything he or she is doing, but it does say that representatives shall not be questioned in any other
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place, which says to me that this is the place, it's congress who is supposed to be asking the questions if there is an issue. is that not accurate? >> you're right on it, laura, that's exactly what that clause says. and it's really a rather unique exception, that the place they can clearly be questioned about anything is the house to which they belong. that certainly is implicit in all the code of ethics that apply to the members of the house and senate and it would certainly apply also with a subpoena. certainly they have that power, and there's nothing in this debate clause that should exclude the use of a subpoena. >> and i would note again, a duly issued subpoena by a legitimate select committee. john dean, thank you very much for your time. talk again. >> thank you. you know, republican senators are using a bizarre excuse to try and block a
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judicial nominee, that's the kindest word i can think of, bizarre. it's one phrase by a conservative senator that's drawing not only mockery but outrage in questions on whether race is playing a factor in their decision. we'll talk about it with the former head of the naacp, next. like the splash they create the way they exaggerate the surprises they initiate. otezla. it's a choice you can make. otezla is not an injection or a cream it's a pill that treats differently. for psoriasis, 75% clearer skin is achievable, with reduced redness, thickness, and scaliness of plaques. for psoriatic arthritis, otezla is proven to reduce joint swelling, tenderness, and pain. and the otezla prescribing information has no requirement for routine lab monitoring. don't use if you're allergic to otezla. it may cause severe diarrhea, nausea, or vomiting. otezla is associated with an increased risk of depression. tell your doctor if you have a history of depression or suicidal thoughts or if these feelings develop. some people taking otezla reported weight loss.
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now, look. this is how republican senator marsha blackburn of tennessee questioned one of president biden's judicial nominees today. listen to this. >> on the eve of this hearing, it has been made public that he has a rap sheet with a laundry list of citations including multiple failures to appear in court in tennessee. we expect our judges to respect the law, not disregard it. if mr. mathis thought that he was above the law before, imagine how he'll conduct himself if he's confirmed as a
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federal judge. >> rap sheet? i mean, if you're like me and you heard her say that you might be thinking, what did this man do? so let me tell you about his -- was the word "rap sheet" he used? he apparently forgot to pay for three speeding tickets over ten years ago. one, brace yourself, one was for going five miles over the speed limit. and by the way, mathis, the man you see here, he's from tennessee, the state that blackburn represents. and listen to how he had to respond. >> i highly regret that i'm in this situation. i feel like i've embarrassed my fa family. i truly regret that. i deserve this. they don't. i can assure the committee that i'm a law-abiding citizen. i've never been arrested. i've never been charged with a crime.
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>> you shouldn't be embarrassed or regret. i mean, he's not the one who should be embarrassed about the way you handled this situation. and i want to bring in now the former naacp president and ceo, cornell william brooks, because i can imagine, cornell, i can almost predict what your reaction was, i almost called you to be like, did you see this just now? what's your reaction to that? unbelievable. >> unbelievable. it was extraordinarily painful to watch as an american and as an african american and certainly as a black man. why? because here we have the first woman elected to the united states senate from the state of tennessee humiliating, denigrating, demeaning a black man who has an opportunity to be the first black man to serve on the u.s. court of appeals for the sixth circuit. she refers to less than a handful of speeding tickets as a
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rap sheet. now, you know, laura, one out of every three american adults has a criminal record. that is to say, a record of arrest. 77 million people. >> he's not one of them. >> he's not one of them, that's exactly it. that is exactly it. and so we know that this invoking of a rap sheet invokes an ugly history of criminalizing and stereotyping and degrading black people. so in the context of a judicial nomination hearing, he is surrounded by his family. and literally he is humiliated, almost reduced to tears, in front of his children. this is conduct unbecoming of a united states senator, and surprising from a woman. >> cornell, you know what, i couldn't help but think, in the recent thoughts about how judicial nominees have been handled, gosh, i wonder how this same senator may have acted when
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somebody was accused of sexual misconduct who was a nominee for the supreme court. surely a statement that she made and the ideas of what we expect about above the law and these notions about years-ago behavior that are alleged, i assume she had the same ones. instead, do we have the clip what have she actually said about now justice kavanaugh? because i want to play it. let's play it. >> we have spent enough time and money trashing a good man and his name. he is on the supreme court, justice kavanaugh is an honorable man. he is doing an honorable job on the supreme court. >> but cornell, did he speed? did he ever speed? because that would make him dishonorable and somebody who, imagine if he were on the court. that strikes me as quite a dichotomy even though the allegations are obviously quite
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distinct. >> it's a dichotomy but it's also rank hypocrisy. justice kavanaugh was my class n mate at yale law school. i expected him to be questioned fairly in the same way i expected this judicial nominee, attorney mathis, to be questioned fairly. but to suggest that he was somehow a felon, somehow a ne'er-do-well, come on. let's be fair. millions of americans have speeding tickets. this is not a disqualifying characteristic, particularly for speeding tikckets from ten year ago. this senator had her own issues
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with speeding on constitution avenue in washington, dc. >> do you mean the one where she allegedly flashed her congressional pin to get out of a speeding ticket? but let's not talk about that, cornell, i think perhaps that would not be the point she was trying to make. i have to tell you, i am an officer of the court, as you are, and i understand and appreciate being able to abide by the principles of the law. but the intended humiliation disturbed me as a woman, as an attorney, as prosecutor, as someone who has been before appellate courts, and i know you know the same as well. cornell brooks, thank you very much. >> always good to be with you, laura. >> it bothers me, i have to tell you, it bothers me as a human and as a black woman, to see what transpired and the role that a senator played in that. what also bothers me is what's happening in our hospitals, particularly amidst the pandemic. we know that covid vaccines are saving lives. but hospitals are once again at
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the breaking point. i've got an er doctor who is seeing the worst of it. he's here to share what the omicron surge is doing to hospitals now and how this variant has the potential to crush america's health system. don't be confused even if it's said to be milder. we'll be right back. nicorette knows, quitting smoking is freaking hard. you get advice like: just stop. go for a run. go for 10 runs! run a marathon. instead, start small. with nicorette. which can lead to something big. start stopping with nicorette.
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an increasing sentiment is vaxed and done among vaccinated americans that are getting sick with omicron and think it might not be so bad if it means mild symptoms, they've done their due diligence, they've gotten vaccinated, they've gotten boosted, they've socially distanced, they wear the masks. is it time to treat it like the flu and move on? that can be the that you have the some who are vaxed and done. but health experts like my next guest are cautioning against that mindset of being vaxed and done because of rising hospitalization rates in nearly every single state across this country. you realize that about one in four u.s. hospitals are reporting what they're calling a critical staffing shortage and that is in january of 2022. that's the highest level since the pandemic began over two years ago. here, just look, here is a snapshot of what the impact has been. look at kansas where we're
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pointing to right now. in kansas, hospitals aren't just dealing with shortfalls in staffing. they're also dealing with it for ventilators and monoclonal antibody shortages. you've got regions like in new york and in ohio, and they've had to postpone nonessential surgeries. i remind people what happened earlier in the pandemic, in ohio, but was being classified as nonessential when it came to women. and while mississippi now requires transferring the critically ill to other hospitals on a rotating basis, just to avoid overflow. i mean, a number of these states this week alone have even had to deploy more national guard members to try to help them with the overwhelmed hospitals. it is partly the reason that the cdc is now forecasting that average covid deaths, and this is average covid deaths per day, could jump to over 2,600 over the next four weeks alone.
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do you realize that's 62,000, 62,000 more deaths by next month alone? and it's exactly why the er doctor, craig spencer, wrote this in an op-ed in "the new york times." he says, quote, i fear health care collapse more than omicron. dr. craig spencer is here with me now. thank you for joining me, dr. spencer. you know, i'm glad you're here but it's unbelievable to see those maps and those figures and think about where we are right now in january 2022. and you can imagine, there is fatigue among the people on this very issue. but you want to caution people, don't let the fatigue and wanting to be vaxed and done lull you into a false sense of comfort, right? >> absolutely. look, what i think is really important for people to understand right now, is i know you're fatigued. there is good news in addition to the daunting news you just shared. this is not march 2020. we know that the likelihood of
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having severe illness, especially if you're vaccinated, is much lower. we have other treatment options. we have other things we can do. years of experience in treating this disease so that 2,600 number of deaths is huge, but likely, you know, just a year or two years ago would have been much higher. we've learned a lot. the problem is that right now we have hospitals where there's not enough nurses to take care of the patients who are coming in, the covid patients and the non-covid patients. that's exactly why we need to do everything we can to try to limit the number of people that are infected, not just those that are older or unvaccinated or not boosted, but everyone. because each infection represents a potential to infect more people. we need to do what we can to slow that spread right now and ease the pressure on our hospitals. >> you tweeted out as a personal anecdote just today alone, you said last night i took care of covid patients. one was dehydrated and had renal failure from covid. another had a stroke.
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others need oxygen including high flow unvaccinated. and one that had covid but couldn't go home because her home health aide wouldn't come anymore. i mean, how troubling to hear what's happening on the ground. >> right, this is, again, different than a year ago or two years ago in that i would walk into the hospital then and it felt like the apocalypse with so many people on ventilators, so many people dying every day. right now, we're still seeing sick people that need oxygen, the overwhelming majority of which are unvaccinated. but a lot of the patients that we're seeing right now have underlying chronic conditions that are being exacerbated. they may not look like a classic covid patient. but as i pointed out, someone who gets covid is dehydrated and needs to stay in the hospital or someone who gets covid and is too weak and they can't go home because they're a fall risk. those aren't as bad in one sense as those kind of classic covid patients we were seeing before. but every single patient that needs to stay in the hospital takes us a bed.
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and beds and staffing are what's in short supply right now. >> when you said the idea of underlying health conditions, my mind went to the fact that although covid-19 obviously has exacerbated so many things, it's not as if cancer went away or breast exams didn't need to be performed any longer or routine screenings, in addition to the appendicitises, heart attacks, arm breaks, these are all still happening. for every bed taken, that means attention and resources can't go to those people in a timely fashion. >> correct. not only are we pulling away those resources from those patients but we're putting them at greater risk. my greatest fear and the thing i've been trying to do the most in recent shifts is to control exposure for those that are in the hospital without covid, to try to prevent them from getting it. patients that have cancer, on chemotherapy, who come in because they're having side effects, and have done everything they can including getting vaccinated multiple
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doses, but whose immune system doesn't respond in the same way. and for whom an infection would be a lot more severe. and so that's what i'm trying to do, go around, make sure they have masks on, try to separate people. with so many people coming in at the same time, with covid, for covid, for non-covid reasons, whatever it is, it makes it a lot harder to do that job to keep that covid parenttient safd the non-covid patient safe as well. >> thank you for giving us the context of the whole ecosystem and not just one patient. >> thank you, lauren. now to a controversy surrounding the world's number one men's tennis player. you know him. novak djokovic. he's in australia, hoping to defend his title at the australian open. but the threat of deportation is still looming after admissions that he made some mistakes on his immigration forms and didn't isolate after recently testing positive for covid. we'll take it all on with bob
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so look, we're awaiting a
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decision from australia's immigration minister on whether tennis star novak djokovic will be allowed to stay in the country and play in the australian open after his covid vaccination status controversy. he admitted today he did not immediately self-isolate after testing positive for covid-19 back in december. in fact he spent more than a half hour with french journalists. he writes, i felt obliged to go ahead and conduct the interview as i didn't want to let the journalists down. i socially distanced and wore a mask except when my photograph was being taken. now, on reflection this was an error of judgment. so what exactly could all of this mean for his reputation and whether he ultimately will be able to play in australia? let's bring in the incomparable bob costas right now to discuss. bob, i would love to hear your take on this idea of mistakes and blaming it on agents and lapses in judgment. what's your take?
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>> and in addition to the episode with the french sports journal, there is the fact that there was what he calls a simple clerical error. others might view it as a conscious lie, of contending, whoever filled out the form, on his form to enter australia, that he had not traveled to other nations when there was clear evidence that he had in the days preceding. and it's all part of a pattern of contempt for common sense when it comes to the medical issues and also contempt for the common good. and in sports, and i guess in parts of entertainment or whatever, if you're great enough and if you're important enough to the bottom line because your star value means people in the seats and eyeballs on television, there are people who will excuse that or try and work around it, including the australian tennis committee which at first said, sure, he's welcome, then they got pushback from the border authorities in
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australia. now he's won, as you indicated, a preliminary judgment but it's not at all certain that he'll be on the court when the australia open begins on monday. all four of the tennis majors are in different countries. they're in france, they're in england, they're in australia, and the u.s. open is obviously here in the united states. so you're running up against different local and national regulations. now, djokovic plays an individual sport. so in the end, he may be only undoing himself in this circumstance. but leave aside the medical issues and the ignoring of the overwhelming consensus of credible medical authorities from those who remain anti-vaxx. in team sports, they are not good team players. and that's part of the ethos forever of sports. are you a good teammate? not are you good at the sport but are you a good teammate. >> look, i know i'm not a tennis player and i don't pretend to be, i know he's an individual tennis player. we're talking about a pandemic.
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we're all supposed to be on this team. and so what you do even as an individual player, as long as there's oxygen in that court, it's still the same thing. >> sure. >> i want to go to the point you raise and thank you, first of all, for pronouncing the name of that french newspaper because i don't speak french nor do i pretend to. i also don't appreciate this notion of elitism being able to give you carte blanche to do what you want. i appreciate athleticism but i don't understand that we continue to allow people to get a pass, the rules that apply to everyone else don't apply if you're an elite athlete? we've seen it in baseball, we've seen it in basketball, we're seeing it in tennis. why don't the rules apply to those who live and die by the lines of the court? >> i want to refer our viewers, laura, to a brilliant piece,
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full disclosure, a long time friend and colleague, howard bryant, on the espn website. he writes about this very syndrome in greater depth and nuance than we can imagine in the limited time here. but howard bryant's piece, which just dropped today, is a must-read for anybody who is interested in the full texture of this. and his essential point is the point that you're making here. look, aaron rodgers is one of the greatest players of all time. he's the best and most valuable player in the national football league. no green bay packer, given the fact that almost all of them are vaccinated and they're young and healthy, thinks that ducking into a huddle with aaron rodgers puts their individual health in jeopardy. but should the packers, who have a good path to the super bowl, get as far as the super bowl? there are different protocols for unvaccinated and vaccinated players, still. he had a 90-day exemplition aft he tested positive in early november. that exemption, as it happens,
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runs out two days after the championship games. if aaron rodgers should make it to the super bowl and the wednesday before the game he tests positive, completely asymptomatic, he can't play in the super bowl. is that what an unselfish, good team player does? he's a great player, and for what it's worth, in my dealings with him, which go back a few years because i don't cover major league sports anymore, i liked him, i don't have an axe to ground. but this is not the behavior of a first rate teammate. >> i'm not -- i'm from minnesota, so go vikings, skoal. this issue is a different one, i appreciate it. i just can't get there with you with the cheese heads. but you pose an interesting question of what it's going to look like, team players in a collective pandemic. bob costas, thank you for your insight, great to talk to you. >> thank you, laura. i hate to break this to you, the vikings are out of the playoffs
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and they just fired their coach. >> i'm sorry, we have a bad connection, bob costas, i can't hear you anymore, sorry about that. donald trump may have gotten vaccinated in secret but he's loud about the merits of vaccinations. and look, he's throwing shade, kind of like i did to the packers, no offense, wisconsin, he's throwing shade at other politicians about them being cagey about their vax status. that u-turn, along with some notable others, in my case, next. big boi house. big boi foyer! big boi marble. big boi quartz. word? realtor.com to each their home.
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when you help heal your skin from within, you can show more with less eczema. talk to your child's eczema specialist about dupixent, a breakthrough eczema treatment. 180 days ago today the u.s. surgeon general called covid misinformation a serious threat to public health. today one of the biggest pushers of misinformation is pulling a 180 when it comes to one of his biggest allies governor ron desantis. >> watch a couple of politicians be interviewed, and one of the questions was did you get the
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booster because they had the vaccine, and they all -- they're answering it like -- in other words the answer is yes, but they don't want to say it because they're gutless. you got to say it, whether you had it or not, say it. >> well, that's rich, and man, what a change. but it's not just the man responsible for operation warp speed doing a kind of 180 worthy of calling out. after all, we've known about his vaccination status for quite some time. for me it's the 180s from some republican members of congress on january 6th. it's the 180s on which elections on the same ballot i might add are somehow fraudulent, and which should actually count. the 180s on bipartisanship, the 180s on the need to fortify voting rights, on supreme court precedent, on honoring congressional subpoenas. the 180s on legitimacy of the oversight functions of our congress and even by its own members. republicans had no problem pushing numerous investigations
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into benghazi, but it's more than convenient reversals that bother me. it's that some feel like they are pulling one over on you. the thought that you're not only gullible but have the short-term memory of ted lasso's goldfish. they're hoping that you will buy into their rewrite rather than holding them accountable, and i got to tell you, i find myself watching press conferences these days and these interviews like ka kathy bates in her role as annie wilkes in misery claiming that everyone forgot what happened before the cliff hanger before they settle into their seats before the next installment of the story. >> this isn't what happened last week. have you all got amnesia? they just cheated us. this isn't fair. he didn't get out of the cockadoodie car. >> people should have the opportunity to evolve and change their minds about something, but
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pretending like they were never wrong is just not right, and mistaking or even playing voters for fools, that's as denigrating to our democracy as any other lie, pbig or small. i'll chat with don lemon next. their car insurance. ys ow! i'm ok! only pay for what you need. ♪ liberty. liberty. liberty. liberty. ♪ only in theaters december 17th.
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helping to make san francisco the greenest big city in america but we couldn't do it without you. thank you, san francisco. gracias, san francisco. -thank you. -[ speaks native language ] let's keep making a difference together. hey, everyone, thanks for watching. i'll be back tomorrow. "don lemon tonight" starts right now. >> i like the way you said that, don lemon. >> it had an oprah quality, i think, don lemon. i don't know why i did that. >> you get a car, you get a car. so we're anticipating hearing about novak djokovic tonight. i know you spoke about it a little bit. you know, i think that american athletes, the nfl, the nba so on and so forth can learn fro

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