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Support for President Trump Remains High; Melania Trump Has Not Communicated with Jill Biden; Interview with Former CISA Director Chris Krebs. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired January 14, 2021 - 10:30   ET

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

[10:30:00]

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think that would be the preference, my guess is, of most senators. And that'd be a bipartisan sentiment.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Interesting, notable.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Scott, bigger picture here with McConnell, our reporting, as you know, in the last 48 hours, has been McConnell hates the president for what he said and did last week, they haven't talked since December. And also that he wants the president as far away from the Republican Party as possible.

I set these numbers up with that because a new poll this morning from Axios and Ipsos says this, 64 percent of Republicans told the pollsters they support the president's recent behavior. Fifty-seven percent of Republicans say Trump should be the 2024 GOP candidate. How do you square the two, what do you make of those numbers?

JENNINGS: Well, I think before last Wednesday, he was certainly the frontrunner for the Republican nomination. I think now --

HARLOW: But these are numbers today --

JENNINGS: -- I think his support has diminished --

HARLOW: -- you know?

JENNINGS: I know. I'm saying now, I think his support is somewhat diminished, but obviously he remains the most popular figure in the Republican Party.

I think what Republican leaders and voters have to reckon with over the next, you know, weeks and months is have we reached the limits of Trumpism, just as purely a political matter? He lost the populate vote twice, although we had some unexpected wins downballot.

He's clearly shown that he has personal limits on what he can do with the American people from an electoral perspective. Those limits, I suspect, are now even lower than they were. And so I think a lot of Republicans are wrestling with the fact that we lost an election, we still like some of the things Trump did, we don't want the baggage that goes with Trump but we also don't want to turn away his voters.

So there's a lot of political calculation swirling for Republicans right now that I think it's going to take time to sort out, and it will ultimately be sorted out in a presidential primary.

SCIUTTO: Listen, I had a Republican member of Congress tell me that if I voted to impeach I wouldn't be elected again, right? I mean, the political calculus is --

JENNINGS: Sure.

SCIUTTO: -- front and center.

Alan Frumin, in terms of a trial, is there precedent, is there allowance in the Constitution for something of a fast-track, right, Senate trial? I mean, if Democrats determine -- and with a new president who wants to focus on his agenda -- that they want to do it but get through it, is there a path that way legally?

ALAN FRUMIN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Yes, there's a path. First of all, with respect to double-tracking, that does not take unanimous consent. The Senate has the authority to proceed to the trial, to continue the trial every day at a set time in the afternoon, to adjourn from the trial and to resume its legislative and executive business.

So the Senate has that as a matter of right, that doesn't require unanimous consent. So there's no reason why those two tracks can't proceed simultaneously, number one.

Number two, once the Senate is in trial, the majority sets the ground rules. As we saw last year, the Republican majority set the ground rules, certainly with respect to witnesses, and they said thanks but no thanks. But that's a clear example of the majority conducting the trial in the manner that it saw fit.

Once in the trial, there's no filibustering, there's no true ability for the minority to gum up the works. Then it simply becomes a question of how do the majority of the Democrats want the trial to proceed.

SCIUTTO: That's a big point there, right? I mean, the majority matters, the thinnest of majorities, but a majority nonetheless. And a reminder, right? That you know, the majority in the last Senate trial totally forbade, you know, witnesses in effect, or additional witnesses.

So great to hear from you, Alan; Scott Jennings, thanks very much to both of you.

FRUMIN: My pleasure, thanks for having me here.

JENNINGS: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: Well, the outgoing first lady, Melania Trump, has been mostly silent in the days after the Capitol insurrection, with the exception of a statement mourning the lives lost -- including of the protesters as well as police -- and casting herself as a victim of what she called "salacious gossip."

HARLOW: Many say her silence is more proof that the first lady is much more aligned with the president than some might have thought. Let's go to a woman who knows more than any of us about the first lady and her mindset, Kate Bennett, our White House correspondent, is here.

Good morning, Kate, what do you know?

KATE BENNETT, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. I mean, you know, listen, Melania Trump has sort of played this gray area for the past four years by not saying a lot and being sort of mysterious. People often wonder, is she or isn't she aligned with her husband politically?

And I think as we close this chapter of the Trump administration, it's pretty clear the first lady is more aligned with her husband politically than people might think. Now, I've always known this, covering her, but it's because of the few remarks that she's made that it really proves the symbiotic nature of this first couple.

And these last few days, where she has not said anything, she has not come out to condemn the violence in any quick way -- took her five days to make a statement -- she is packing up, she is leaving, she is not speaking out against things that have been happening on Capitol Hill.

[10:35:08]

These all demonstrate that this is a first lady who will leave the White House in connection -- in much the same manner as her husband politically in terms of her thought process.

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this. After the election in 2016, Michelle Obama welcomed Melania into the White House, as Barack Obama welcomed President Trump, conceded the election, et cetera. Has Melania Trump had any communication with the incoming first lady, Dr. Jill Biden? Any offer of a welcome into the White House?

BENNETT: No, not at all, Jim. In fact, you know -- and you're right, Michelle Obama welcomed Melania Trump; other contentious campaigns, you know, Barbara Bush welcomed Hillary Clinton. It's a tradition that has gone on between first ladies in the East Wing for decades and decades.

There has been no outreach from Melania Trump to Dr. Jill Biden's team. There's been no transfer of information, staffing issues. I mean, all these things are very important, handing over the house to the next incoming administration. So far -- and we don't expect it -- Melania Trump has said nothing -- guys.

HARLOW: As we said, you know more than we all do on this, Kate, thanks for the reporting.

BENNETT: Thank you.

SCIUTTO: As we get warnings of the possibility of more violence leading up to the inauguration after the violent assault on the Capitol, a former senior DHS official says he is worried -- in his words -- about the breakdown of civil society in this country, alarming. He's going to join me, next.

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[10:41:14]

SCIUTTO: Facebook is now warning it is seeing an increase in posts, communications indicating there could be more violence in the coming days, in the wake of the insurrection at the Capitol. My next guest says that the country -- in his view -- is on the verge of what is a significant breakdown, what could be a significant breakdown in democracy and civil society, it's just an alarming warning.

Joining me now to discuss is Chris Krebs, he's the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency at the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Krebs, thanks so much for taking time this morning.

CHRIS KREBS, FORMER DIRECTOR, CYBERSECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY: Thanks for having me on, Jim, good morning.

SCIUTTO: You monitored this kind of stuff for years with a view both to foreign threats and domestic threats here. A law enforcement official says that the chatter right now among these right-wing extremist groups of new protests and violence is off the charts.

As you look at the signals now, how concerned are you about a repeat in violence in the coming days -- if not in the U.S. capital, at state capitals around the country?

KREBS: I think your last point about state capitals is spot-on. I think we have to kind of set back a little bit and realize that on the 6th, it wasn't just Washington, D.C., it wasn't just the U.S. Capitol building. There were armed demonstrations -- armed demonstrations -- with long guns and other weapons in state capitals across the country.

And even think back three weeks ago, Nashville, Tennessee, with an IED that detonated outside an AT&T telecommunications facility.

You put all these things together and you think strategically? Next week, next Wednesday, I suspect there will be folks that do come to Washington, D.C. to protest and riot and continue seditious acts.

But I would also be significantly concerned about some of these longer-term planning efforts amongst the Boogaloo Bois and other -- these LARPers and cosplay seditionists hitting at not just state capitals and seats of power across the 50 states, but also infrastructure, hitting soft targets. Again --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

KREBS: -- look at Nashville, look what was accomplished there with the disruption of services. Those are the sorts of things that every systemically important infrastructure owner-operator, CEOs, needs to be assembling their crisis management teams yesterday.

SCIUTTO: What you just described so closely parallels a threat we've normally confined to jihadi terrorists: attack on soft targets, infrastructure, you know, access to weapons. I mean, there were pipe bombs planted in D.C. on January 6th.

How big, when you compare those two, the terror threat from foreign groups, jihadi groups and this domestic terrorism of right-wing extremism?

KREBS: You know, there have certainly been some lessons learned picked up, and what works and what doesn't work. And plenty of it's disseminated across the internet.

But, you know, there are -- there's a cross-section of American society that continues to believe that this election was stolen. Look, you have the president who still has not conceded formally that he lost, he still contends that it was stolen. You have his own team, his advisers, you have Pete Navarro out there, still saying that the president was legally elected, on TV.

You have others that are distracting. There was a "USA Today" article today about how members of Congress were floating false-flag concepts --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

KREBS: -- that it was actually Antifa that stormed the Capitol last week.

This is the big lie. They're going to continue to repeat it and it will unfortunately become mainstream. There have to be consequences and accountability. This is not cancel culture, there has to be an accountability culture in the United States right now.

[10:45:13]

SCIUTTO: Tell me your view of the benefit of social media companies such as Twitter and Facebook, but others not just taking down the president for all the disinformation that he shared, but also some of these groups, supporters, seeing them now migrate to Telegram, which by the way is an app that jihadi terrorists had used for some time. Is that a positive step in your view? Does it also though have a danger of driving them further underground?

KREBS: Yes, there's a gain-loss analysis you have to conduct. On the gain side, you have this large, you know, almost 90 million followers on Twitter, the president can no longer spread the big lie. There was, I think, a legitimate public policy interest for the president to have some Twitter presence, but it clearly crossed a line with inciting insurrection.

But again, when you have members of the political elite, the political class that continue to spread these lies? It was incredibly difficult for me and my team to get facts out there and in the mainstream because there's a part of the nation that just doesn't want to hear it.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

KREBS: They want to believe that what resonates with their political view and the lens that they view the world through. And when it's magnified by the president there's not a whole lot you can do. So I think yesterday the impeachment was just what we have to do for accountability.

And that's important globally too. Soft power is diminished when you can allow insurrections and coups to happen without accountability. And then what kind of signal are we sending to our allies, emerging democracies, and also dictatorships worldwide.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I made a similar comment earlier this week, that this is country that has preached the necessity of recognizing free and fair elections for decades, and now a sitting president refused to do that at home.

I want to ask you this because a big part of your focus, leading up to this election, was foreign interference: China, Russia, I mean, we saw it in 2016, disinformation, et cetera. They of course amplify existing U.S. divisions and continue to do that to this day. But I wonder, right now, are they more likely just to sit back and let this country eat itself, in effect?

KREBS: So the playbook for the Russians in particular was never to generate their own controversies. They understand that America's not perfect, that we have our flaws and imperfections. And they would amplify, they would drive wedges, you know, Black Lives Matter, take a knee, Kaepernick, all that. You know, they really amplified and pushed those.

So now, what I suspect, what they're doing and their proxies are doing is letting us, you know, eat our own. But really putting some, you know, additional fuel on the fire.

But going back to my last point on consequences and accountability and impeachment and holding others in Congress responsible, you don't get a mulligan on insurrection. You don't get a onetime pass. We have to be forceful and clearly communicate to the world that this is unacceptable and there will be consequences.

SCIUTTO: Yes. It's still an open question, frankly, sadly, and remarkably. Chris Krebs, good to have you on, we hope we can keep up the conversation.

KREBS: Thanks, Jim.

[10:48:46]

SCIUTTO: And we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

HARLOW: Well this morning, the U.S. is approaching 385,000 COVID- related deaths, and a new CDC forecast shows 92,000 more Americans could die from the virus in just the next three weeks.

SCIUTTO: I can barely keep up, 385,000 dead Americans now, that number rising inexorably. California is among the hardest-hit states, now is expanding who is allowed to get the vaccine right away. CNN's Stephanie Elam is in Los Angeles this morning.

Stephanie, tell us who is now eligible for this and how many people does that affect?

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I mean, obviously it's very good news, Jim and Poppy, that you're talking about the fact that now 6.6 million Californians will be eligible to get the vaccine.

You're talking about people 65 and older as of yesterday, now able to go ahead and get the vaccine, joining the ranks of health care workers, obviously, and people who work in assisted living facilities and the people that live there. So this is obviously very good news. They're also going to start, next week, a texting system to let people know when it's their turn to go ahead and get that vaccine.

But let's just step back a little bit. You guys were talking about the overall numbers in the country? Think about it this way. Since the beginning of the year, 13 days, 38,000 Americans have died already this year. We've added 3 million cases, 3 million new people testing positive with the coronavirus in that same amount of time.

It took 167 days to hit 3 million cases in 2020. The first case actually was January 22nd of 2020. In that time, that's how long it took. You can see that these numbers are moving so quickly, as we have hospitalizations of more than 130,000 people right now in the United States. And then here in California, we had yesterday 589 people reported dead because of the coronavirus. Just this month so far, so far in 2020 (sic), 5,000 people have died here because of the virus.

[10:55:12]

So all of this is very concerning especially as, here in Los Angeles County, they're estimating one in three people has had the infection since the pandemic began -- Poppy and Jim.

HARLOW: Stephanie, thank you. Let's hope that the change in the rules means a whole lot more people protected. Thanks, Stephanie, for the reporting.

And thanks to all of you for being with us today, we'll see you tomorrow morning. I'm Poppy Harlow.

SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto. NEWSROOM with Kate Bolduan starts after a quick break.

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