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Trump-Pence Relationship More Fractured Than Ever; Haven't Spoken Since Wednesday's Capitol Hill Insurrection; More Arrests Made After Deadly Insurrection At U.S. Capitol; Conservative Media Continues Spreading Same Election Misinformation That Led To Deadly Capitol Insurrection; COVID Surge Puts California In Dire Straits; Trump Expected To Fight With Big Tech During Final Days In Office; Remembering Officer Killed As Mob Stormed Capitol. Aired 10-11p ET

Aired January 09, 2021 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: The fact is, there was a time when a president of the United States didn't rely on social media to address the nation, they would instead use this vital instrument of democracy, the White House briefing room, that podium sitting empty, all but gathering dust.

There it is. The last time it was quote used was by the Press Secretary on Thursday when she read a quick statement and then walked out without any questions, the time before it was used on December 15. The Trump administration says it has now been silenced. Well, it still has one of the most powerful mouthpieces in the world, available to it for 11 more days.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.

BROWN: And you are live in the CNN NEWSROOM on the Saturday evening. I'm Pamela Brown in Washington.

And tonight, breaking news, the most serious threat to what's left of Donald Trump's presidency may not come from House Democrats who appear ready to impeach or the first Republican senator calling on him to resign, but his own Vice President Mike Pence. He has the power to invoke the 25th Amendment along with other cabinet members and a source close to the Vice President tells our Chief White House Correspondent Jim Acosta, that Pence is not really not use of the 25th Amendment, which would remove the president from office.

And tonight I'm learning though that this is not under serious consideration. But the Vice President not rolling it out and news of that possibility comes after the latest Pence move that may be aggravating a president who has shown little interest in the transition of power and 11 days.

A source tells CNN Pence will attend the inauguration of Joe Biden while Trump boycotts.

And tonight, we're learning more about what is quickly becoming a fractured relationship between Trump and Pence. We now know that they haven't spoken since the riot on the U.S. Capitol. And the President has not made any public comments denouncing death threats made against the Vice President. Though White House Deputy Press Secretary says tonight, "We strongly condemn all calls to violence, including those against any member of this administration."

Again, that's a deputy White House Press Secretary silence from the president. And one source telling me that Pence has finally gotten, "a glimpse apodosis vindictiveness."

Two sources familiar with the matter say Trump is angry at Pence. And Pence is disappointed and saddened by Trump. And as you saw this week, Trump tried to get the Vice President to overturn the election results in Congress. But Pence made it clear what most already understood that he could do nothing about it under the Constitution. And Pence was one of the name targets of the mob during Wednesday's capital assault. This video is disturbing but part of the reality of the rage.

(CROWD SHOUTING)

BROWN: And now it's reported Trump never called and check on Pence's well being and tonight, that remains the case according to a source I spoke with this evening.

And we began this hour with White House Correspondent John Harwood. John, one thing is certain, the 25th Amendment has certainly not been taken off the table, it seems?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: It's not. It is highly unlikely, as you reported a few moments ago to be employed, not least because some of the cabinet members who are the most disaffected by the President's behavior, Betsy DeVos, and Elaine Chao have resigned from the cabinet, you need to get a majority of the cabinet voting to invoke the amendment along with the Vice President.

However, I think what's happening is that the entire country is increasingly coming to grips with the seriousness of that insurrection that was incited by the president and also with the President's mental illness that he is not a stable person that he's not acting rationally. That is clear to Mike Pence more than anyone else.

First of all, he's been very close to President Trump for four years. He's seen all this behavior. And now he's found himself at the end of this term inside the Capitol threatened by people inspired by the president, and that the President had turned on him because he wasn't willing to attempt to subvert the constitution on the President's behalf.

I think the threat of the 25th Amendment is part of a broader effort to deter future bad acts from the president over the course of the next 10 days to try to get the country out of this crisis. The same is true I think of the impeachment, at least in part the impeachment threat.

It is meant to be hung over the president to as well as Republican senators, calling for his resignation, for example, to try to stop him from doing bad things. We've seen he responded to pressure the other day and put out that videos tape statement where he acknowledged he wasn't going to be president after January 20. He may regret that now. But he did it in response to pressure. Mike Pence and others are trying to keep the pressure on.

[22:05:16]

BROWN: Yeah, we've seen that pattern with the president where something bad happens then he's under pressure to correct the wrong and then he regrets it after and that's that appears to be the case here as well.

John Harwood, thank you so much and keep up the reporting. There's a lot going on. I know you're very busy. Thanks so much.

And although the political divide in the country has never been so stark few would argue with this statement right here, that the past four years have been unlike any other presidency in history. But where do we go from here? I'm joined by Presidential Historian, Allan Lichtman, distinguished Professor of History at American University. He is also the author of many books, including Predicting the Next President: The Keys to the White House.

Allan, thanks for coming on. You know, you made headlines back in 2016, when you correctly predicted that President Trump would win the White House using your 13 keys underlying fundamentals that you say have driven every presidential election since 1860. I'm sure you would also predicted that Trump would be an unorthodox president. But did you have any inkling that things would turn out the way that they have?

ALLAN LICHTMAN, PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Absolutely I did. At the same time, in my September 2016, Washington Post interview where I predicted Trump would win. I predicted that he would be impeached. And then in April 2017, I wrote my book, the case for impeachment.

Now, how did I know this? Because I'd looked at Donald Trump's entire history, and I saw this was an individual who cared about nothing but himself, who constantly faulted the law, and who made lying, a practice, a daily practice.

In fact, he burst into politics on the back of the biggest, most protracted worse lie in American history that our first African American president was born in Africa, not in Hawaii. So nothing about Trump's transgressions has surprised me at all. It was all predictable from the start.

BROWN: Has there ever been a presidential moment that compares with what happened on Wednesday, when a sitting president actually egged on an angry mob essentially?

LICHTMAN: Never. And I want to point out a synergy here. At the same time, this murderous mob was storming the Capitol, something we had never seen before. The death toll from COVID-19 was well exceeding the victims on 9/11. And patients were being dumped into hallways because they couldn't find beds.

And both of these tragedies was the result of the two worst transgressions by a president in American history, first, lying about the pandemic, and then watching the response. And second, lying about the election and then instituting this violent attack on the Capitol.

BROWN: Do you think about how history books hundreds of years from now we'll be writing about what we're living through right now, right? I mean, in this moment that we're all living through? How do you think history will look back on this?

LICHTMAN: Well, it depends or look on it as the greatest stress test since the Civil War in our democracy. And we have two pathways, we can try to repair our democracy, to nurture civic virtue, or we could follow the path that Donald Trump has tried undermining democracy and threatening our unity.

You know, I go back to the 1850s when the nation was wracked by slavery, and the slavery conflict, destroyed the Whig Party. And what arose out of the Whig Party was the Republican Party. Yet ironically, today, the Republican Party faces the same threat of implosion from within, as the Whig Party.

A recent poll showed 45 percent, get this of Republicans approved of the attack on the Capitol, 43 percent disapprove. The Republican Party is going to have a very difficult time navigating between the skilar and corruptos (ph) of these two unpalatable alternatives really risking, losing half of its base and perhaps going the way of the Whig Party.

BROWN: Right. And you look at this dynamic with the election basically some have clearly felt like they had to lie about the election in order to make their base happy. It was this weird sort of symbiotic relationship.

I want to ask you this before we let you go, Allan, the White House has yet to lower the American flag following the death of the Capitol Police Officer after a Wednesday's attack. Here are some live pictures of how unusual is that?

[22:10:12]

LICHTMAN: It's quite unusual. But it is not unusual for this president. This President has no empathy, no concern for anyone but himself. Everything for him is transactional. And he doesn't want to admit that his followers, who stormed the Capitol, were responsible for the death of this officer responsible for the other death.

You know, one thing that this President is good at, is distraction and deflection. And we're absolutely seeing that now. He takes no responsibility for anything throughout his presidency. And, you know, Harry Truman once said, the buck stops here at the presidency. Well, the Donald Trump presidency has been the buck stops anywhere, but here.

BROWN: All right, all Lichtman, thank you so much for your time. We appreciate it.

LICHTMAN: My pleasure, Pamela.

BROWN: And now to the work of bringing the people who actually storm the U.S. Capitol to justice, police and federal agents across the country are identifying and arrested some of these people, seen smashing windows and breaking down doors.

One man made the search easy by posting a video of himself going into the Capitol with the mob. He was an elected official in the State of West Virginia. I say was because Derrick Evans resigned that office today and he now faces federal charges. And the man photograph smiling and carrying the House Speaker's lectern was also arrested in Florida. Adam Johnson now faces multiple charges, as well.

And let me bring in Peter Licata, he is a CNN Law Enforcement Analyst and former FBI Supervisory Special Agent.

Peter, good to see you, is there anything a city's police force can do if a crowd that is big enough and frenzied enough? Is hell bent on taking over a building like we saw at the U.S. Capitol?

PETER LICATA, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Good evening. Yes, it's be prepared. It's do analysis prior to knowing that there's going to be protests and potential violent protest is prepare yourself, query sources, insert law enforcement into the crowd is what we would call post standards that blend in with the crowd to report that live real time information back to law enforcement, so they can plan and scale their preparedness properly.

BROWN: Was there a moment you could put your finger on when the people in this crowd change from a rally of Trump supporters to this violent stampede that overwhelmed Capitol police?

LICATA: Yeah, either when you saw people start scaling the side of the building to get up onto the rotunda area, when they were, you know, using their flags as weapons to try to, you know, barricade or force the way into the Capitol building. It broke very quickly, law enforcement did the best they could in the reaction of it. I just don't think they could have done a better job preparing for this. And future casting what the consequences could have been with the better preparedness?

BROWN: Right. There was a lot of talk about, you know, intelligence sharing this and that. But the reality is, there was chatter about this on publicly available extremist forums. You didn't have to have classified intelligence access to know that this was going to happen.

The President had also been promoting this rally, he had been using the rhetoric about the election being stolen from him and to fight and so forth. It didn't take a lot to know what could happen. But if you would help us understand what might have been happening, when we saw uniformed officers either stand aside or to show solidarity with the rioters, taking selfies or fist bump being within, what do you make of that?

LICATA: That's a tough situation to try to judge without being there. Obviously, when an officer is encountered by hundreds, if not 1000s of people yelling profanities yelling acts of violence, it's sometimes it's better to give ground. So it's almost sometimes might be a defense mechanism, that law enforcement officer. He's not going to shoot the crowd. He's not going to arrest all 100

people or 20 people around him or her. So unfortunately, those officers were put in a bad position. And they had to do what they could in order to almost survive that situation.

BROWN: It's almost incredible when you look at the video that we're showing right now, and how the Capitol was just filled up with all of these rioters, how they were actually able to clear out the Capitol building safely so that the lawmakers could continue their work. But how are certain leaders or people in positions of power able to whip a crowd of people like this into a mob that is capable of such destruction?

What do you make of that? And how likely is it? Because you look at the profiles of some of these people who went to the Capitol Building, you know, elected officials, war veteran, CEO, I mean, getting them whipped up to, to sort of join in and this mob mentality?

[22:15:28]

LICATA: Agreed. To your initial point, though, it is a credit to the Capitol police and law enforcement, the fact that, you know, members of Congress were injured, not hurt, they stay in the capitol. They were able to repel the rioters, the insurgents back out and establish order. But to answer your question to the ladder, it's about extremism.

So I kind of refer back to -- I was asked that question once before by a news reporter, and the answer is, in my years, 21 years with the FBI, a lot of that overseas responding to terrorist attacks conducted by al-Qaeda, Al Shabaab and other terrorist groups. I never saw a leader of an extremist group actually strap on a device, an explosive device to their body and walk into the market.

Those people in power exploit their masses, by espousing rhetoric. They play to their fears, they play to their passions, and they let, unfortunately, let the followers do the dirty work for them. And that's the problem with extremism. And then people listening to cults of personality, for lack of a better term.

BROWN: But to be clear, we were talking about the President of the United States. Do you believe that the President radicalized these people? And, you know, the President's comments are then amplified online that they are then watching and consuming?

LICATA: Well, that's kind of part of it. They're listening to whoever they espouse their loyalty to, in this case, it was the president and the president's rallying, they're going to almost blindly listen to those words and almost interpret what he or she is anticipating them to do.

BROWN: All right, Peter Licata, thank you, really important perspective there.

LICATA: Thank you. BROWN: And there are some developments tonight on the presidential inauguration ceremony, 11 days from now, when Joe Biden takes the oath of office, and administration source now confirming that Vice President Mike Pence will be in attendance. CNN had previously reported that the vice president was waiting for an invitation.

CNN's Athena Jones is with me now. So Athena, Joe Biden made that invitation pretty clear?

ATHENA JONES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Pamela. Well, I think, you know, if you -- This is usually something handled on a staff level. It's not as though it's a wedding that you get an invitation and have to RSVP. It's generally expected that someone like Vice President Pence would attend inauguration along with outgoing President Trump.

So the one who's breaking precedent here really is President Trump, deciding not to go, but you're right. President-elect Joe Biden was asked about this at a press conference here in Wilmington on Friday, and he said that Pence is welcome. In fact, he said that it is important to try to stick as much as possible to what have been the historical precedents of how there is a turnover of administrations. And he said not only is Pence, Vice President Pence, welcome to come, we'd be honored to have him here and to move forward in the transition. So that is now very clear. And now we know that Pence is going to be going. Pamela.

BROWN: He is and the President will not. All right, Athena Jones, thank you for bringing us the latest there from Delaware.

And coming up on the Saturday evening, the interaction we saw on Capitol Hill this week was the result of months of disinformation about the presidential election. So what role did conservative media have in it? We're going to take a look up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:22:21]

BROWN: Well, Wednesday's deadly events at the Capitol did not happen in a vacuum. It was the culmination of months and months of disinformation and conspiracy, lies about the election that were sold to citizens by the president and by conservative media. And even after the insurrection these same people were spreading the same lies that led to the riot.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: President was right, our election, frankly, was a train wreck, 80 percent -- 83 percent according to Gallup are Republicans and millions of others do not have faith in these election results. You can't just snap your finger and hope that goes away.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Capitol was under siege by people who can only be described as antithetical to the MAGA movement. Now there were likely not all Trump supporters. And there are some reports that Antifa sympathizers may have been sprinkled throughout the crowd.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got to the sad chaotic day for a reason. It is not your fault. It is their fault.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And it makes people very suspicious and very angry when the entire power structure in this country says no, no, no, no, let's not look at that election at all. So we need to figure this out. So whatever happened yesterday never happens again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: I'm joined by former Fox News Chief Political Correspondent and co-founder of Front Page Live.com. Carl Cameron. Thanks so much for coming on, Carl. You were at Fox News for, what, two decades. So I'm looking forward to hearing your perspective on this. You have Fox News and conservative outlets spending months selling their viewers a lie about the election being stolen, and then people believed it. And then they acted on it. Is conservative media partly to blame here in your view?

CARL CAMERON, CO-FOUNDER, FRONT PAGE LIVE.COM: Partisan media of any kind is the problem. But the catalyst for that problem is leadership. That's false. That's fraudulent. So it starts with Donald Trump, and that an awful lot of Republicans in 2014 and 2015 and 2016 decided that his clown act was just humorous and entertaining enough for them to vote for president and right wing media of all stripes.

Even "The Wall Street Journal," in some cases, was guilty of perpetuating Trump's lies. And when we now have his cabinet secretaries, some of his national security council members, the senior advisor for Africa, the senior advisor for Russia and Europe, the senior advisors across the board, and the National Security aid for the Defense Department, all have quit in the last few days.

[22:25:17]

When people are running from that type of administration, it really tells you that some hung on there. And now whether it's rats from a sinking ship, or people who thought they could make a difference, and we're wrong, all of the wrong is from Donald Trump. It really is. Fox News, Sinclair, all of these other organizations that are parroting his lies, are not journalists. And that is a true shame of American journalism. And all of our American culture is at risk as a consequence.

BROWN: We saw in that clip, the lies didn't stop after the insurrection. I mean, that was a moment where I, you know, you would think, OK, we all have to be in agreement here, right? What we're seeing is bad. But then you had these right-wing commentators and Fox and elsewhere, falsely trying to spin it that Antifa was responsible for it. Are you surprised that they didn't step back and honestly, assess a moment of such gratitude -- sorry, magnitude, and instead of trying to play politics with it and spin it and gaslight people?

CAMERON: Well, gaslighting and causing fear and anger in people is Donald Trump's specialty. And, unfortunately, too much of what calls itself media and news media at that is really a perverse entertainment, of anger and fear, and misdirection. And it's very, very attractive.

Millions of people watch it, people on their laptops, people on their iPhones, even hardcore talk radio. It can be very, very seductive. And it changes how people think. It messes up brains, it messes up families, and yes, it messes up nations.

BROWN: Well, you have to think it's like a diet, right? You wouldn't -- you watch what you put in your body, you should watch what you put in your mind. And these people are being sold disinformation. What is the remedy to this? Where do you see this going?

Cameron: Right. Well, it's interesting to hear Mike Pence say I'll think about it, in terms of what he may or may not do in the next few days. We're now already getting word out of the White House that, well, maybe the President's changed his mind in this business of a peaceful transition of power. Maybe he's going to change his mind, again. This is a president who has flip flopped on things within 24- hour periods, very, very, very regularly in the last four years. So whether he behaves nicely in one moment and doesn't nest next shouldn't surprise us.

BROWN: But what about the media? What's the care for the media? Go ahead.

CAMERON: Honestly, truth, facts, trying to do the right thing. There's a responsibility in journalism to not do any harm. Sort of Hippocratic Oath for doctors, and when people are being lied to, and journalists know that it's false, and they're misleading the public, it's damn near criminal.

And something needs to be done about that. And it starts with leadership. If Joe Biden can get in front of the media, and actually get a fair shake, I'd be shocked given the wreckage that Trump is leaving. So it's going to take a long, long time. Trump's four years could be generations to undo.

BROWN: Carl Cameron, we'll leave it there. Thank you so much for coming on and sharing your perspective and for your time this Saturday.

CAMERON: Thanks, Pam.

BROWN: And be sure to join CNN's Wolf Blitzer for the Trump Insurrection 24 hours that shook America, a look at what happened at the U.S. Capitol and what happens next. This new CNN Special Report airs tomorrow night at 10 a.m. Eastern.

And then the first nine days of 2021, the U.S. has reported more than 2 million new coronavirus cases and 24,000 deaths. We're going to take you inside hard hit ICU in California up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:30:00] BROWN: The holiday surge is starting to hit and officials are warning of more alarming patterns to come. Right now, the total number of Americans infected with coronavirus has surpassed 22 million, more than 372,000 people have died. And in California, the effects are hitting especially hard with some hospitals now running out of room for their most desperately ill patients. CNN's Sara Sidner has more on the struggle to keep up.

SARA SIDNER, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Pamela, I know you remember those awful images from hospitals in New York City when the pandemic just began. They were packed to the gills. Now, that same scenario is playing out here in Southern California in some hospitals.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've never seen an ER like this before in our whole time being here.

SIDNER (voice-over): This is what COVID-19 looks like in California in 2021, a hellscape.

LINDSAY PACKARD, ICU MANAGER AND NURSE, ST. MARY MEDICAL CENTER: UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The death toll, it has been just out of this world.

SIDNER (voice-over): On the edge of the Mojave Desert, at St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, you can see the crisis even before you walk in. Patients arrived constantly, some by ambulance, some on foot.

A California National Guard strike team of medics and nurses arrives daily.

MAJOR DWIGHT CHRISTENSEN, CALIFORNIA NATIONAL GUARD: This is an area of great need, and we're glad to be here. You know, when I first got in it, it felt like maybe a bandaid on an arterial bleed.

SIDNER (voice-over): A gush of patients that just won't stop.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'd say about 80 percent of our patients are COVID.

SIDNER (voice-over): Temporary plastic walls erected all over this hospital, create a maze of COVID pods. Patients with other emergencies line the halls.

The hospital is so full here that some of the patients that you're seeing here in the hallways will have to wait seven to 10 days, possibly, just to get a room. They need to be admitted to the hospital, but they're being cared for in the hallways for now.

Upstairs in the 20-bed ICU.

[22:35:03]

PACKARD: IN ICU, we see death and dying on a daily basis but never to this scale. SIDNER (voice-over): Every Intensive Care Unit bed is full. Every staff member busy saving patients.

PACKARD: We have over 50 ICU patients in the hospital right now, and we only have the staff to care for about 20 of them. So, we are being stretched, the nurses are being pushed to their absolute breaking points and then a little further every day.

SIDNER (voice-over): The soundtrack here, a never ending series of beeping, codes and rapid response calls alerting staff when someone's heart has stopped or breathing has stalled. That's what's happening behind this curtain inside a newly created COVID unit.

A COVID-19 patient in pain can't catch your breath. Nurses and doctors can't either working every day to exhaustion.

DR. ARTUR GRGORYAN, EMERGENCY MEDICINE, ST. MARY MEDICAL CENTER: The physical toll of course, but there is also an emotional toll and it's very hard to see all these patients die. You know, mortality has been very, very high.

SIDNER: How do you deal with this? Are you OK?

GRGORYAN: I guess I'm still standing but, you know, we'll see. Give it a few months.

SIDNER (voice-over): But right now, a patient needs him. He's on life support. COVID pneumonia is on the attack, his lung has collapsed. There's a scramble to insert a chest tube. The difference between life and death, razor thin.

PACKARD: People don't take it seriously, until they're here with us or until they're on the other line of that phone call talking to their family member for the last time. It is real. It is serious and most of what we're seeing is preventable.

SIDNER (voice-over): The hospital is making space in every nook and cranny, but the crush of patients threatens to overwhelm the space and the staff every single day. Everyone here expects this to get worse before coronavirus takes its last breath.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: It is hard not to be shaken simply from the sounds that we heard inside that emergency room and inside all of those COVID pods. We should also mention that this really is a story about the numbers each one representing a human life, a family suffering. The numbers here are astronomical when it comes to the number of people who have tested positive for coronavirus. Some 40,000 people a day, Pam.

BROWN: That is astounding. Sara Sidner, thank you. Meantime, Twitter and Facebook both banned President Trump for inciting violence on Capitol Hill this week, but what repercussion should social media sites face for their role in spreading misinformation? For more, adviser to Mark Zuckerberg joins me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[22:41:35]

BROWN: A right wing reckoning on social media. On Friday, Twitter permanently banned President Trump from its platform for inciting this week's insurrection. And just breaking tonight, Amazon will remove Parler from its cloud hosting service tomorrow, effectively kicking the app off the public internet until it finds a new host. Parler, a so called "unbiased social media platform" that is popular with the right was also removed from Apple App Store today as well.

And my next guest was an early Facebook investor and former adviser to Mark Zuckerberg, and he's now committed to reforming the tech giants. Roger McNamee joins me now. Roger, thanks for coming on. You're also the author, we should mention, of Zucked; Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe."

Roger, let's start with Twitter. We've learned that Trump is now planning to lean into his fight with big tech in his final days as president, what do you think of Twitter's move?

ROGER MCNAMEE, CO-FOUNDER, ELEVATION: So Pamela, I think the key thing to keep in mind, is that inciting insurrection against one of the branches of government, in this case the Congress, at an event where the vice president and the next two people in the chain of succession to the president were all in attendance of violent insurrection, that that is the greatest crime any president could possibly commit. I mean, in the old days, it almost certainly would have been a capital crime.

So the notion that we're focused on what he's saying about Twitter, in my mind, is actually misplaced. This could not be a more serious offense if it tried. And I think Twitter banning Trump is literally the bare minimum that they could have done. And these other tech giants, taking action against the enablers of what Trump did here, is literally the bare minimum.

Our democracy is hanging on by a thread, and internet platforms have played a huge role in putting us here. And it's really long past time for them to take responsibility and begin to behave as good corporate citizens.

BROWN: What do you say to critics of Twitter's move? You had Mike Pompeo, Nikki Haley, many others, particularly on the right who have been critical of it saying this is something we'd expect to see in China, not in the United States. What do you have to say to all the criticism about this? And that there is authoritarian regime leaders who are still on Twitter, and yet you would kick off President Trump. What is your response to them?

MCNAMEE: It's a very simple one. Let's keep in mind that the president of United States and all of those people you just mentioned, have been enablers of denial of a COVID pandemic that has now killed nearly 370,000 Americans, which the ratio of that is so much higher as a percentage of our population than any other developed country in the world. I mean, it's literally like 10 times as bad as other developed countries. And so, these internet platforms have enabled the disinformation that undermined our pandemic response.

And again, I think this was, you know, this isn't about politics left or right. This is about public safety and public health. And I just think the internet platforms have behaved horribly, and quite candidly, the Trump administration, all the people in it, and the media companies around them have been enablers of this massive, essentially death cult against American people. And I'm deeply, deeply trouble because we're sitting there arguing about whether this is about freedom of speech when in fact, you know, hundreds of thousands of Americans are needlessly dead.

[22:45:09]

BROWN: So, do you think that they should have banned earlier then?

MCNAMEE: Much earlier. And, I mean, the issue here is, I believe that when we have the counting here, we're going to see that the business model that powers YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other parts of Google and other platforms, that surveillance capitalism, that business model is just incompatible with democracy, and it's incompatible with public health.

And I just believe that, as a country, we're facing a moment of reckoning right now, where we have to decide what matters to us. Are we going to be a democracy? Are we going to be capitalist? Are we going to have opportunity for everyone? Are we going to treat everyone with respect? Because that has not been the track record of the past four years and the country, I mean, we've barely survived the last four years. And it's not clear that we're out of the woods yet.

BROWN: You were at Facebook during the early days, were there discussions then about how this could happen, how something like this could happen? How it could be used as a platform to perpetuate disinformation like this and essentially evil?

MCNAMEE; So, I was only involved with Mark Zuckerberg as an adviser from 2006 to 2009. Mark was 22 when I first started working with him. The company was tiny. So it, you know, it couldn't even dream of being global on the days that I was involved with it. So the answer is no.

All of this came as a huge shock to me. It was my expectation that as Mark grew up, and as the company got bigger, he would do what most executives do which is to embrace success, and become a good corporate citizen, and work really hard to integrate with society and to be a constructive partner in it. And, you know, the reality is the culture of business in America is broken. We have monopolies in almost every industry. They are authoritarian by nature, and they have not.

I don't -- in any sector of the country, have we seen the kind of civic-minded corporate leadership that we used to see a generation or two ago. And I think that's one of the things that we're going to have to settle going forward. Because authoritarian business, which is what we've had in this country, least to authoritarian government.

And, you know, I think we're seeing what that looks like now and I hope that people are saying, we don't like that. We want to become the America that is a shining symbol of freedom and equality of opportunity. And, you know, that we have a capitalist system that encourages innovation and, you know, making people's lives better instead of worse.

BROWN: Lastly, how do you envision Facebook and other social media platforms paying for their role, essentially, in the interaction? As you have said, you think that they should pay a price, what should that be?

MCNAMEE: So, you know, Pamela, this is a really important point, there are three areas of regulation we need to see as soon as possible. We need to see regulation around safety. These companies have to be accountable for harm. They have to have incentives to anticipate and prevent harms. The way you would see, you know, in the chemicals industry or in the building trades where people really are personally accountable and have to do the right thing all the time.

We have to see rules around privacy to protect people from having their lives manipulated without their ability to control it. And then lastly, we need to restore competition. We need to get away from monopoly back to capitalism, and have the tech industry be a growth engine for the economy again, because that's not where we are today. We need a creating jobs. And, you know, it's a great opportunity, Pamela, and I hope we see soon.

BROWN: All right. Roger, thank you so much. Appreciate it. And we'll be right back.

MCNAMEE: My pleasure.

[22:48:50]

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BROWN: Well, Michigan Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin says she spoke with Pentagon officials about giving special posthumous honors to Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, along with a burial at Arlington National Cemetery. CNN's Brian Todd has more on the life of Officer Brian Sicknick.

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BRIAN TODD, CORRESPONDENT: With flags lowered to half staff, the Capitol Hill community is reeling over the death of a respected police officer, 42-year-old Brian Sicknick. But with their sorrow, some including members of Congress are also expressing anger.

REP. KATHERINE CLARK (D), MASSACHUSETTS: My heart goes out to Officer Sicknick's family. There are a lot of people who have Officer Sicknick's blood on their hands.

THEORTIS "BUTCH" JONES: FORMER CAPITOL POLICE OFFICER: The way that they went out or the way that he died was unnecessary.

TODD: Capitol Hill Police say Officer Sicknick was injured on Wednesday while "physically engaging with protesters," that he then returned to his division office and collapsed. He died late Thursday. The youngest of three sons born and raised in South River, New Jersey, Brian Sicknick is being called a hero by his family tonight.

In a statement sent to CNN, the family saying he wanted to be a police officer his entire life. As a means to that end, they say, he joined the New Jersey Air National Guard. That branch says Sicknick joined in 1997, was deployed to Saudi Arabia and Kyrgyzstan, and served in a security force Squadron, the Air Guards Military Police. Sicknick was honorably discharged from the New Jersey Air National Guard in 2003 and joined the Capitol Hill Police in 2008.

Capitol Hill Police say Sicknick most recently served in the force's first responders unit. One former Capitol Hill officer says the job is dangerous even under normal circumstances.

JONES: Every day is, in your life, is in danger. There's no promise that you're going to come home the next day or the same day that you go out. Every officer this wears in take the job very seriously to protect Congress.

Officer Sicknick and his colleagues, though by most accounts overwhelmed by the rioters, are drawing praise from members of Congress who they fought to protect.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), HOUSE SPEAKER: many of our Capitol Police just acted so bravely, and so with such concern for the staff or the members for the capital, for the capital of the United State, many of the men, and they deserve our gratitude.

[22:55:01]

REP. ANNIE KUSTER (D), NEW HAMPSHIRE: We were all very fortunate that the Capitol Hill Police that were there were thinking as quickly as they had. If they had automatic weapons, they could have killed hundreds of members of Congress.

TODD: Tonight, one of the men who helped prevent that horror is being remembered by his family for his empathy, his commitment to rescuing dogs and his love of the New Jersey Devils hockey team. Brian Sicknick had no children but lived with his girlfriend of 11 years.

In its statement to CNN, Brian Sicknick family asks the public and the media not to make his passing a "political issue," but his death will be the subject of a federal murder investigation with the US Attorney's Office, the Capitol Hill Police and the DC Metropolitan Police taking part. Brian Todd, CNN, Washington.

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BROWN: Thank you, Brian. And after the death of Officer Brian Sicknick, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered all flags at the Capitol to be flown at half staff in his memory. But as of tonight, over at the White House, the President has yet to order flags to be flown in half staff.

The White House or across the government, days after five Americans lost their lives in the pro-Trump mob that stormed Capitol Hill. And the President has yet to personally offer his condolences. Yet, the White House did release a statement from the Deputy Press Secretary. And Vice President Mike Pence, who was also at the Capitol Hill during the siege tweeted his condolences and called Sicknick an American hero.

Well, I'm Pamela Brown. Thank you so much for joining me on the Saturday evening. CNN Special Coverage with Kate Baldwin starts, next.

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