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White House: Americans Will Have to Wait Months to be Vaccinated; House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy to Meet with Former President Trump; Department of Homeland Security Issues Bulletin Warning of Possible Violence from Extremists Who Think Presidential Election Stolen from Former President Trump; Video Emerges of Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene Harassing Parkland Shooting Survivor David Hogg. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 28, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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


[08:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: anything we can do to increase the vaccine supply is on the table.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We need to get an awful lot of people vaccinated, especially as we think about this variant from the U.K. In my mind, everybody should be rolling up their sleeve.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ANNOUNCER: This is NEW DAY with Alisyn Camerota and John Berman.

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We want to welcome our viewers in the United States and all around the world. This is NEW DAY. An unprecedented bulletin from the Department of Homeland Security warning about a domestic terror threat from violent American extremists motivated by false narratives. That is a thinly veiled reference to Donald Trump's lies about election fraud. So right now, the FBI is searching for this suspect who planted pipe bombs outside of the RNC and the DNC headquarters on the day of the Capitol siege. There are concerns that this person could build more bombs.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: So today the House Republican leader is going to kiss the ring of the chief proponent of the big lie on election fraud. House Leader Kevin McCarthy is going to, we understand, basically genuflect to the former president. McCarthy also rewarding a lawmaker who has expressed support for executing Democrats. Marjorie Taylor Greene, also on video here, harassing Parkland survivor David Hogg. McCarthy gave her a slot on the Education Committee. Alisyn spoke to Hogg moments ago on NEW DAY.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID HOGG, PARKLAND MASSACRE SURVIVOR: There's no amount of money that you could pay any of us to do this work because that's not why we do it. None of us want to be doing this, but we have to because, sadly, corrupt elected officials like Marjorie Taylor Greene are in Congress and would rather choose to protect guns than children.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger is outraged about Greene's comments. We're going to speak with him in just moments.

CAMEROTA: OK, but joining us now is CNN counterterrorism analyst and former FBI senior intelligence adviser Philip Mudd, and Elizabeth Neumann, the former assistant secretary of Homeland Security and the director of the Republican Accountability Project. Great to talk to both of you this morning.

Elizabeth, I want to start with you because of this DHS bulletin that has come out. Let me read it for everybody. "Information suggests that some ideologically motivated, violent extremists with objections to the exercise of governmental authority and the presidential transition, as well as other perceived grievances fueled by false narratives, could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence." What do you think of this bulletin and the language they are using?

ELIZABETH NEUMANN, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: I'm relieved that it's out. It should have been put out in December when we had open source chatter online of violence that people were planning on and around January 6th. The intel community knew that we were likely to have problems. I'll leave it to the investigation to figure out why they did not do what they are supposed to do.

I think it's important for the American public to understand that these bulletins, the one that was issued by DHS yesterday is different than the FBI bulletins that get leaked. This is a public alert product that there is -- that Congress told DHS through a statute you have a duty to warn the American public if you know of a credible threat, or if the threat environment has changed. So there's not really an option here to not warn.

So when they started to see that there was a problem in December, they should have issued this product. Certainly, after January 6th, it's my understanding they wrote this product, and then somebody squashed it. So I'm glad that in a week of the Biden administration taking over, they did their duty. They have warned the American public about this heightened threat environment we are operating in.

BERMAN: So Phil, the timing also jumps out to you. Why?

PHILIP MUDD, CNN COUNTERTERRORISM ANALYST: Pretty simple. Let me pick up on what we were just talking about a moment ago. We started with Charlottesville. That's 2017. You remember the bombs that were sent to CNN. That's a couple of years ago. That's from a guy who was going to rallies for former President Trump. You remember the threats against the Michigan governor. That was a pretty large conspiracy. That goes back to last fall.

This bulletin mentions El Paso. That's getting on a couple years ago. It's January, 2021, and you need to tell us four years, three-and-a- half years after Charlottesville that there's a threat in America? This is not about intelligence. This is about policy and political priorities. This is about an administration saying this is now a priority. You couldn't publish this earlier because it embarrassed the president. Don't make a mistake, John. This is not intelligence. It's public policy.

CAMEROTA: OK, but, Phil, do you mean by that, that it's purely political, or do you mean this is about awareness, that the public needs to know the biggest threat is coming from inside and from domestic terrorists?

MUDD: Thanks for saying that. Fair point. I'm not suggesting this isn't a significant threat. If you weighed this against what I would have seen, say, with the ISIS threat 10 years ago, I would put this easily on a par with that because the breadth and seriousness of this threat and the fact that we see this in all 50 states, probably every county in America -- I'm just suggesting that the timing of the alert is political. The substance, I think, is real.

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BERMAN: Elizabeth, one of the things this alert points out directly. Alisyn said thinly veiled. I don't even think it's thinly veiled. It basically says this domestic extremist movement is being fueled by the election lie, the lie that was told by the former president and his supporters that there was widespread election fraud and that Joe Biden is not the legitimate winner of the election. Which is why it is notable that today, within the very 24-hour period when this Homeland Security bulletin was issued, that the House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy is going to meet with the former president. Rachael Bade on our show said he's going to kiss the ring of the former president. So domestic extremists, what message are they supposed to take from that?

NEUMANN: I think you had a guest on earlier that said the Republican Party is morally bankrupt. That's absolutely right. How you cannot see the connection to the security environment that we're operating in, but you are still thinking that this is about politics and that you don't want to upset Trump voters, and so you don't want to have a difference with the president. Like, oh, my gosh, you were attacked. Your life was in danger, Kevin McCarthy. How are you forgetting so quickly? It's just mindboggling that Republicans are either that daft or they are willfully choosing to turn a blind eye.

But let's make no mistake here. It wasn't just in this bulletin, which is only a one-page bulletin. They can't get into a lot of detail. But about a week or two ago the FBI issued an intelligence bulletin to their law enforcement partners that leaked, and they were much more explicit that it was about the election lies, that it's also about COVID misinformation, and that we have a large group of people in this country that have been deceived. They've been deceived by their politicians. They've been deceived by their media.

And we need to address that problem or we will continue to see more violence, because if you actually believe the lies, it's not illogical that they commit acts of violence. So we have to cut out the lies. We have to insert doubt into that echo chamber so that they can slowly but surely come back to reality. Otherwise, we will see more violence. And that's why I joined the Republican Accountability Project. We have

got to hold these Republicans accountable, not just for the morality of the nation or for the fact that they should have character and uphold their oaths of office, but for the sake of the security of this country they need do their jobs and tell the American people the truth.

CAMEROTA: And we only have a few seconds, Elizabeth, but how do you break the fever? We do this every morning. We fact check. We tell people what's really happening. But that didn't stop the insurrection on the capitol. And so how are you going to do that?

NEUMANN: Simply it requires credible voices from within the community. We did this post-9/11. We asked Muslim imams to speak within their community about why violence was not an appropriate approach to jihad in their scriptures. Likewise, we need Republican leaders. We need church leaders. We need anybody that has a credible voice within the community to denounce these lies and call for calmer temperatures, no violence.

BERMAN: Elizabeth, Phil, thank you both for being with us. I appreciate it.

So we have new reporting on this event that's going to happen today that Elizabeth basically just said is dangerous. The House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy going to kiss the ring of the former president as DHS warns that the big lie told by that former president is fueling domestic extremists. CNN's Lauren Fox live on Capitol Hill. How does McCarthy justify this?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: John, what you're seeing right now is the Republican Party really soul searching for where they go after Trump. And there's really a disagreement clearly happening right now within the party. They had a conference call yesterday in which McCarthy made the case to his members, quote, they need to cut the crap and stop fighting with each other, stop attacking each other. But a couple thousand miles away in Wyoming you have Matt Gaetz, a Republican, a conservative in the Freedom Caucus, going and making the case against his colleague, the number three in leadership, Liz Cheney, against the case for why she shouldn't have voted to impeach former President Trump.

So clearly, a lot of members not getting that message. And, of course, you had McCarthy going to Florida to meet with former President Trump. And this comes just three weeks after that insurrection at the Capitol where McCarthy was trying, pleading with the president to try to come out with a stronger message to stop the mob on Capitol Hill, to tell them to go home, to get away from the Capitol. That was only a couple of weeks ago. But McCarthy clearly feeling like he is under pressure, both from his members and his own conference, and from voters. They must be looking at a lot of polling internally that is showing them that Republican voters are not done with Trump.

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Meanwhile, you have some senators making the case that the country needs to move on, and it's the responsibility of Republican lawmakers to explain to the American people, Republican voters specifically, that this election was not rigged. Here's what senator Mitt Romney said yesterday in the "Deseret News." He said, quote, "I say, first of all, have you gone out publicly and said that there was not widespread voter fraud and that Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States? That's really what is at the source of the anger right now. You have got to get that in the rearview mirror before you talk about the next stage."

And, look, this is a fight that is going to be going on, not for days or weeks, but months and years as the Republican Party tries to chart their course forward without former President Trump. And how distant they can get from him is still really an open question, John and Alisyn.

BERMAN: So Marjorie Taylor Greene, member of Congress from Georgia, "The K File" here at CNN reported that she had expressed support on social media for the idea of executing Democratic politicians. What action has the House Republican leadership taken against her?

FOX: Well, what we reported last night, our colleagues Kristin Wilson and Manu Raju, reporting that McCarthy does plan to talk to her about those comments. But clearly this is a reoccurring problem for Republican leadership with her. This is something that has come up time and time again. Past comments she's made, videos of comments she's made all coming to the surface.

And I can tell you that Republican rank and file members are sick and tired of it, because it's a distraction for them as well. They have enough on their plates. Like I said, Matt Gaetz in Wyoming this morning attacking one of their own, a member of leadership. There is so much happening right now that this is something that Republicans really view as a distraction. And I think there's some concern that she's been elevated to committee assignments.

This was one place where Republican leadership used to take retribution against members who were getting out of line. They essentially would take them off their committee assignments. That's what happened with Representative Steve King. Then he was challenged in a primary and lost his reelection. If you're not on a committee, if you're not bringing things home to your constituents, it makes you less competitive. So that's a line that I think some Republican members wish that McCarthy would take. Whether it gets that far I think still remains an open question.

BERMAN: She hasn't been penalized, not at all, yet. In fact, in some ways, rewarded. Lauren, thank you so much for being with us this morning.

Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger has been extremely critical of Marjorie Taylor Greene. We're going to ask him what he thinks about the leadership reaction to her and also Kevin McCarthy's trip to Florida today.

There are growing concerns this morning about the new strains of coronavirus. One of the professors who was on the Biden administration's coronavirus transition task force worries that the new variants could cause the biggest wave yet in this pandemic. That's next.

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BERMAN: White House officials say most Americans will have to wait months to be vaccinated, as public health officials are expressing new concern about the strains, these new variants of coronavirus.

Joining us now, Michael Osterholm. He's the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota and informal coronavirus adviser to the Biden administration.

Professor, always a pleasure to have you on.

Look, people are looking --

MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH & POLICY UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: -- at the numbers this morning -- hospitalizations going down, new cases going down. Why then are you so concerned about what you're seeing?

OSTERHOLM: Well, two issues. First of all, know this term -- shifting base lines. Remember what happened in April and we were at 72,000 -- excuse me, at 32,000 cases a day and we thought the house was on fire, couldn't get worse and we went down to 20,000 cases a day and Memorial Day.

But then it jumped back up to 70,000 cases a day in July. Came back down to about 26,000 cases on Labor Day and then jumped to 200,000 cases at Thanksgiving. Came back down to about 150,000 and then it jumped to 300,000 cases in early January. Now down at about 150,000 again.

See the trend there? Every time the highs get higher and the lows just stay high or higher. And what we're now going to see are these new variants, much more infectious viruses, much more easily transmitted, even causing more serious illness are now going to overlay on top of that very high base line.

So what we can expect to see in the course of the next 6 to 14 weeks is something that we haven't even come close to experiencing yet.

CAMEROTA: I mean, that's just so troubling and alarming. And in terms of the new variants, do you see a difference between the U.K. and South African and Brazilian? Or which one are you most worried about?

OSTERHOLM: Well, I'm worried about all of them, in somewhat different order. The B117 or the U.K. variant is here now. That one is the one that's spreading widely in Europe and if you've been watching the media over there, you can see, they have been virtually in total lockdown and they're still having a hard time containing it. What it's doing to their health care system in England and Ireland and

Denmark and Portugal, it's amazing. So, that one is here now. And that's what we'll have to deal with.

And vaccine is not going to save us with that one. Vaccine is ultimately what's going to save us down the road, but if we even hope we can get 100 million vaccine doses in people by the end of March, 65 days post inaugural, not 100 days, that means only about 12 percent of the population will be protected.

So, we're not in a race against the variant and the vaccine. If that's the case, the variants have already won. So we're going to have to understand that.

The second issue, these other variants, the one from Brazil which is really troubling for us right now because, in fact, the one city this virus came from is actually now in its second huge house on fire moment. We thought last summer that they may have hit 75 percent of the population having been infected and protected.

And now we're seeing it all over again. Is this new variant avoiding the immune protection previous infection?

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And then, of course, we have the South African strain, the one we know can potentially impact how well the vaccines work.

That one I'm less concerned about in terms of the vaccines. I think we have enough data now to say it's not going to be a huge hit on the vaccines but we have to watch it carefully. But we have enough right now to keep us 26 hours a day just worried about the B117 or the U.K. strain.

BERMAN: Given these concerns you just laid out, in really interesting detail, what do you think about some of the decisions being made, say in California, where they are easing some coronavirus restrictions? In New York, they're talking about opening up restaurants in the city and in-person dining again.

OSTERHOLM: You know, first of all, I understand the issue of pandemic fatigue and pandemic anger in this country and people are just done with it. But why are we so good at pumping the brakes after we wrap the car around the tree? We do this over and over and over again.

And right now, I'm telling you, with as much professional certainty as I've been telling you all along in this pandemic and you know I've been on your show many times telling you what I thought was going to happen and you can judge what did. This is going to be the darkest of the days.

And so we have -- we have to help our political leaders understand. Now is the time not to roll out, now is not the time to ease up because again, we'll be pumping the brakes after the car is wrapped around the tree if we do that. So, I can't put it in any more stark terms but I fear that's what will happen. It is only when our hospitals are overrun, and that seems to be the

benchmark right now. We don't do much.

I mean, think about this. New Zealand, 4.9 million people, Minnesota, 5.3 million people. They've had 25 deaths. We've had 6,000.

Is their science better than ours? No. They've been willing to do the tough things to keep the case numbers down and it shows. And their economy has benefited from it and most of all, the health and lives of their citizens have.

We aren't doing that and we still aren't doing that. And so, we really need to have, I think, a real discussion with ourselves. What are we going to do to get ready for these next 6 to 14 weeks? And if we don't, I can tell you the measure will be how many hospitals will be overrun.

CAMEROTA: Michael, do you ever feel like a lone voice in the woods? I mean, why -- I'm not hearing your level of alarm from other public officials in the Biden administration. Are you?

OSTERHOLM: No, they are. You know, I have to say, first of all, it's a difference between night and day right now in government response. The Biden administration gets this. They see it. They understand it.

And I think that at this point, though, it's how do we deal with the American public to understand it? When you have so many people who don't believe that this pandemic was real, we have, you know, 20 to 40 percent of health care workers not accepting the vaccine right now because they just want to get more data on it. Even their lives may be on the line today.

So we have a lot of work to do to basically help educate the public about what's coming. And if we -- if it doesn't work, you know, so be it. It's going to be a crisis upon a crisis. If we do make it work, I think we can help begin limiting cases now.

I think the University of Michigan, I give them great credit. They really went out on a limb this past two days along with the county health department where they now have the U.K. strain spreading within Michigan, at the University of Michigan, including their sports teams. And they shut everything down. That was a real move of courage. That's what it's going to take right now for us as a nation to understand what's coming.

This is coming, folks. There's no question about it. It's coming.

BERMAN: When will we know that the variant, one of these variants or several of the variants have become prevalent and taken over?

OSTERHOLM: You know, we're going to start seeing it in our surveillance. As you know, we've talked also about this on the show. We have to be 42nd in the world as a country in (AUDIO GAP). We have a horrible history of understanding what's going on. We're flying pretty blind right now. Now the new administration is working tirelessly to improve on that.

But it's not going to happen overnight. But it's really not, John, until we start seeing, you know, these variants show up.

But it will also start showing up in just number of cases and hospitalized issues. Throw out another red flag. We're seeing our testing programs in this country very quickly going away. Why? Because we need these same staff for vaccinations.

I worry that we're going to miss this signal in a big way because our testing programs are not going to pick it up because they're not what they were even three months ago. That again is another problem we have to address. It's not vaccination or testing. We have got to do both.

CAMEROTA: Michael Osterholm, we hear your red flags. We see them.

OSTERHOLM: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Thank you very much for being on NEW DAY.

OSTERHOLM: Thank you.

CAMEROTA: Republican House Leader Kevin McCarthy is scheduled to meet today with President Trump at Mar-a-Lago.

At the same time, Leader McCarthy just put QAnon supporter Marjorie Greene -- Marjorie Taylor Greene who thinks the Parkland school massacre was a fake, on the education committee.

[08:25:07]

Up next, Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger shares his thoughts on the state of his party.

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BERMAN: House Minority Leader (AUDIO GAP) former president today in Florida. A source tells CNN the meeting was McCarthy's (AUDIO GAP) to get back in the former president's good graces.

Rachael Bade from "Politico" just told us a little ago, McCarthy is going to kiss the former president's ring.

Joining me now is Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger.

Congressman, thanks so much for being with us.

You told our friend David Axelrod on "The Axe Files" that you have no doubt there is no doubt in your mind that the former president incited the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Given those feelings, how do you feel about House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy going to meet with him today?

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): Well, look, I'm not -- you know, I don't know why Kevin is going down there, saying it's to go kiss the ring conversation, whatever, I don't know. So I'm not going to say anything on that.

I'll just say this, though -- our party needs to take a step back. Look at where we've come. You know, this is the party if you think back to the days of Ronald Reagan and inspiration and aspiration.

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