captioning sponsored by cbs i'm margaret brennan, and this is "face the nation." 2020 without last-minute breaking news. first, that early christmas morning explosion that rocked the city of nashville. we'll talk with the mayor of nashville, john cooper. former f.b.i. sif assistant director frank figliuzzi will be with us. and more than a million americans have been vaccinated so far as coronavirus cases, deaths, and hospitalizations continue to climb dramatically. the governor of california says his state could see,

quote, "a surge on top of a surge on top of a surge" in the next two months as millions ignore c.d.c. recommendations to stay home this holiday season. we'll talk with former f.d.a. commissioner scott gottlieb. the massive aid bill has been torpedoed by the president. his refusal to sign is a putting a staggering amount of financial aid in jeopardy just as struggling americans need it the most. in these final weeks of the trump administration, ironically, it is democrats who are in agreement with mr. trump on his demand for additional payments, which has split the president from most republicans. one thing americans are not divided on? 2020 will go down in history as one of the worst years ever, at least in our lifetime. with political and racial divisions plaguing our society, what can be done to unite the country? we'll have a discussion on

race, leadership, and moving forward with our holiday book panel. we'll talk with pulitzer prize winning author and journalist isabel wilkerson. her new book is "cast: the origins of our discontent." his truth is marching on, john lewis and the power of hope is the latest from jon meacham. susan glasser, writer for "the new yorker," and her husband, peter baker, wrote "the man who ran washington: the life and times of james a. baker the third." plus, we'll talk with two midwest governors, michigan democrat gretchen whitmer, on ohio republican mike dewine. it is all just ahead on "face the nation." ♪ >> brennan: good morning. and welcome to "face the

nation." there are only four and a half days left in 2020, and the wicked blow this year has dealt is not letting up. there have been more than 80 million cases of covid-19 worldwide. here in the u.s., we've seen nearly 19 million infections, and more than 33 1,000 deaths. los angeles county alone is seeing a coronavirus death every 10minutes. washington is quiet, as the president is vacations in florida, but yesterday jobless benefits for nearly 14 million americans ran out, and the government could shut down after midnight tomorrow if mr. trump does not sign the covid relief bill. this comes after the christmas morning bombing in nashville, which left three people hospitalized. we begin there this morning with cbs news correspondent mola lenghi. >> there are more than 250 federal agents on the ground in nashville

continuing to investigate. the f.b.i. says they've received more than 500 tips. and cbs news has learned they have zeroed in on a person of interest. >> reporter: the day after an r.v. exploded in nashville, leveling parts of downtown, federal agents raided a home tied to anthony quinn warner. this google maps image is partly why the feds ended up at the home just outside nashville. notice the r.v. parked behind the wood fence. investigators believe it matches the description of the one used in the explosion. on the christmas morning it was blaring a message. >> if you can hear this message, evacuate now. >> reporter: in addition to three injuries, human remains were found around the scene. it is unclear to whom they belong, but authorities say possibly the suspect. >> we're working on that assumption. >> reporter: at this point, the f.b.i. says they do not believe there are any additional public

threats. parts of the downtown area remain a crime scene as ivestigators sweep the area. >> it is like a giant jigsaw puzzle created by a bomb that throws pieces of evidence across city blocks. >> reporter: it was parked near an at&t transmission building, knocking out cell in the area, and the fire department says it could take a couple of days for that to be restored. >> brennan: mola lenghi, thank you. we want to go now to the mayor of nashville, john cooper. >> good morning. >> brennan: cbs news is reporting that a person of interest has been identified. is there any update yet on the motive behind this bombing or who carried it out? >> i think a lo everybody feels like there is a lot of momentum behind the

investigation. i expect a lot of questions will be answered relatively soon. we've got hundreds of agents on the ground working very hard. >> brennan: the person of interest is nashville area resident, he is described as a 63-year-old white man who ha an r.v. similar to the one in the explosion. to ddo you know if he is the suspect and what his status is? >> i know what you know, what authorities are reporting to the public. i think there is a lot of momentum in the investigation. it is so, i think there is a lot of public interest because it is so shocking that on christmas morning, the time of greatest hope, you have a bombing, a deliberate bombing, and how can this be? and the public i know is anxious to try to understand it better. >> brennan: absolutely. you said this is not typical of terrorism. you called it an infrastructure attack. what did you mean by that? >> well, those of us

realize on second avenue, there is a big at&t facility, and the truck was parked adjacent to this large, historic at&t facility, which happens to be in downtown nashville, somewhat surprisingly. and to all of us locally, it feels like there has to be some connection with the at&t facility and the site of the bombing. you know, and that's just a bit of local insight, that it has to have something to do with the infrastructure. >> brennan: we know service was knocked down in parts of tennessee, alabama, and kentucky. when will service be restored? and do you also need help from the president, as the governor has asked? >> oh, absolutely. the governor and i have talked about this. the damage on second avenue is not dissimilar to what the tornado inflicted on nashville, in bigger parts of nashville,

rather than just on one street. so we're going to need to get this rebuilt. it is part of our historic identity of nashville, this kind of light victorian street scape, -that eg bombed. and they went through nine months of the wort time yoworst timeas a business becauf covid. now, the at&t building itself, i think a lot of it probably survived very well, but you have flooding after these events that gathers in basements. so some of the problem may have been as a result of the cure rather than the bombing itself. >> brennan: and how long before service is restored? >> well, i know at&t is working very hard and sent a lot of trucks to nashville to get this back on line. they'll have to tell you when it will be, but everybody is working hard

to solve the problem. >> brennan: do you feel confident that there is no ongoing threat to your city? >> i feel confident in repeating what the authorities -- what the investigators said yesterday in nashville, that they think that the threat is over, that nashville is safe. that there aren't any other bombs. i think they wouldn't have said that unless they were very con fept tha confident that is true. >> brennan: you also have an ongoing covid spike in the state of tennessee, and you're rolling out the covid vaccine in your city. how is all of this coming together? is it complicating the response? >> this is our year of first responders. we've had a lot of brave nurses and doctors all year long. on christmas day six incredibly heroic police officers get added to our role of honor in nashville

for 2020. covid makes everything harder. we are in the middle of a spike. it is hard to know, post-christmas, where those numbers are headed to. and in nashville, we've dealt with it reasonably well. we've had a mask mandate and restrictions on gatherings that have been going on for some time. it is part of how our businesses are suffering. our hospitality area, and our gatherings have been restricted, and so the businesses that were bombed are still in the middle of having a covid recovery. it is part of needing a response from the federal government both for the bombing and for covid, also. >> brennan: mr. mayor, good luck, and good luck to everyone in your city. >> thank you. >> brennan: we want to go now to frank figliuzzi, the former assistant director for counterintelligence for the f.b.i., and the author of the upcoming book, "the f.b.i. way," and he joins

us from houston. good morning. >> good morning, marrying. >> brennanmarrying.>> brennan: o threat detected beforehand. how confident are you that there is no broader threat in the country? >> my confidence comes out of the language that law enforcement has been using as recently as the press conference yesterday afternoon. when you hear law enforcement leaders say things like they're confident that the city is safe, that there is no additional threat, that there is no additional explosives attached to this incident and that they're confident they will find out who did this, that's a code for we know who did it and we have our man. and i say man because statistics tell us that bombings are largely committed by men. >> brennan: the person of interest that cbs news is reporting is anthony quinn warner. federal investigators are not calling him a suspect. do you believe that he is? do you know anything about

him? >> margaret, i do from observations, experience, and from talking to sources, and i do believe that we'll fairly quickly see warner turn from person of interest to the subject of the investigation. and i think right now we're all waiting for d.n.a. results of that tissue that we all heard has been found in and around the scene. >> brennan: and you believe that may be him? >> i think it is quite likely that this was a suicide mission for this individual. if there is any comfort to be taken here is that this may likely end up being not connected to a larger group or organization, international or domestic, but rather a personal real or perceived, acting out on something that may or may not relate to that at&t building. the choice of christmas morning, deserted street, was not about hurting

people or sending a political or ideological message, but some personal connection to that building, to christmas day, or to some other thing that caused him to act out. >> brennan: the governor of tennessee described this has an attack, and said it was a vehicle borne explosive device. it decimated at least 41 buildings in the surrounding area. how easy is it to make a bomb of that scale and do it underneath the radar, without law enforcement knowing it was there. >> i think this is a wakeup call to our usual our infrastructure is, and how easy it is for a single individual to do this. we've concentrated, post-9/11, on getting our hands on all of the chemical companies, mass orders of precursors for known explosives, and look what an individual can do on his or her own when they simply unmask quantities of things that

are under the radar screen. the public has to be extremely vigilant about those around them that are talking about acting act, and shop owners or companies who are seeing smaller numbers of precursors. margaret, the notion of a copycat seeing what has happened in nashville and trying to do this themselves is very real and we should be concerned about it. >> brennan: in your professional opinion, an operation of this size, could it have been completely undertaken by a single actor? >> we saw this in the bombing of the federal building -- you remember timothy mcveigh did this almost entirely by himself. so the short answer is, yes, it can be done. it is not the last time we can see this, but we should be thankful it happened with very few people.

>> brennan: cbs news is reporting that witnesses told investigators that the individual we're talking about, mr. warner, may have had an issue with 5g technology and online conspiracy theories stemming from it. is that an intent here? and when you were talking about trying to figure out what motivates him and copycat, what are you most concerned about going forward? this is a pretty tense time in the country. >> yep. i don't have to tell you we're living in incredibly politically-charged environment. there is tremendous dangerous polarization and it is being fueled by social media conspiracy theorists out there. there are individuals who think that 5g technology may be the cause of covid and that technology is generally targeting us. wuyou'll find anything imaginable and unimaginable online. that's why we need to

speak the truth about what 5g is, where covid came from, and all of this. but all of that increases the possibility of a copycat operator, and we've got to be extremely vigilant as we move into the next couple of weeks, where we're going to see the nation increasingly polarized about election results and an inauguration. >> brennan: thank you for your analysis. we'll be right back with former f.d.a. commissioner dr. scott gottlieb. you see the . it was just the right thing to do. ♪ ♪ secret stops sweat 3x more ♪ ♪yo yo yo yo yo yo start your day with secret.

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off in new cases. some of that is the holiday effect. once again, the number of hospitalizations and the number of deaths is likely to l by about two or three weeks. so even if we start to see a plateau of cases the first week of january, it will not be until the end of january where we start to see the burden on hospitals begin to lessen. we have a grim month ahead of us, a very difficult month ahead of us. the cases are being led by the coasts, california, massachusetts, new york, new jersey. when you look at illinois, michigan, you're starting to see cases come down quite discernably. the places where the infection were first is now slowing. it is the east coast and west coast, and florida, where the cases are still building. >> brennan: this was the deadliest week and month for people in nursing

homes and long-term care facilities. we know vaccinations began last monday. how soon do you think it will be before we see that relief? >> doctor: vaccinations will the take about three weeks to get through all of the nursing homes. we'll see some indication they're having an affect maybe as early as this week. they went into the skilled nursing facilities first and vaccinate there'd first. you have some of the highest-risk people in those facilities. it will take a week to 10 days for partial immunity to get it. and to get immunity, especially in an older population, you need to get a second dose. >> brennan: the president tweeted this morning cases in california have risen despite the lockdown, and yet florida and others are

open and doing well. he seems to be encouraging the lifting of local restrictions. is that medically advisable? >> doctor: florida had 17,000 cases on the 26th. they have around 21,000 deaths. the fourth highest in the country in terms of covid deaths. it is true that california is having a worst epidemic right now, although there are some signs that the epidemic may be plateauing in northern california. every state has grappled with this. i wouldn't be trying to make comparisons between different states about how to approach this. every state histor has had to approach it differently. florida, too, is dense, like california, and i think that's why they're experiencing a very difficult epidemic. florida is not out of the woods by a long shot. >> brennan: canada is now saying it has detected evidence of that new strain of coronavirus on

its shores. that means it is here in north america. the u.s. is set to limit those coming from europe, and people will have to betivitbetested within 72 hoursf arrival. will it make any impact? >> doctor: i think it is here in the united states. we don't sequence a lot of samples in this country. a lot of that sequencing that does get done is done in private labs. in the u.k., they're sequencing about 10% of all of the samples. here we're doing a fraction of one percent. we probably need a better approach to more systemically sequence strains in the united states to track new variants in this virus. we're not doing that. >> brennan: so it may be here, but we just don't know it. on the vaccine,

9.5 million doses have been distributed. the c.d.c. says that more than a million vaccinations have actually taken place. what do you think of this pace? >> doctor: the pace is slower than what was stated. i think it is realistic to think that the pace will be a little slower, especially as we move through hard to vaccinate populations next month. i suspect there is more than a million vaccinated and there is a lag in reporting. but getting to 20 million vaccinated by the end of the year is probably unrealistic. they only shipped about 45% of the vaccinations to states, and the states weren't able to absorb this. i think they'll get up and running and get better systems in place to distribute the vaccines more efficiently. i think they'll turn to c.v.s. and walgreens to start distributing. but as you get out into the community and vaccinate a harder to reach population, it will become more difficult to get those vaccines out. so the fact that we've

struggled to vaccinate nursing homes, it shows we need to be investing more. >> brennan: before you go, i do want to thank you -- tm wants to thank you for helping to guide our viewers and us through this crisis. and we thank your wife and family for letting you sacrifice your sunday mornings so you could join us here. >> doctor: thank you for the opportunity. to be great at this. these are skills lots of people can learn. i feel hopeful about the future now. ♪ if you have postmenopausal and a high risk for fracture, i feel hopeful about the future now. now might not be the best time to ask yourself, 'are my bones strong?'

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moratorium on housing evictions will end on thursday, impacting as many as 30 million americans. the president insists that he wants to boost individual payments from $600 to $2,000 for americans who make less than $75,000 a year. but that is a figure that most republicans think is just too high. most urgently, the bill funds the government, and without another measure, it could shut down at midnight tomorrow. we'll be back in a moment. welcome to silversneakers, are you ready to get moving? our new virtual classes were designed for you and millions of seniors like you. you can now choose from thousands of live virtual classes every week. get moving wherever you have an internet connection. and when you're ready, enjoy access to thousands of locations nationwide.

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[captioning funded by cbs sports division] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] james: week 16 in the nfl. phil: mitch trubisky, last three games, he has played well. can he keep it up today at jacksonville. bill: there is t.j. watt. he leads the nfl with 13 sacks and 22 sackles for a loss. nate: there there is phillips films, 17