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Trump Pushes Fraud, Refuses to Concede; COVID-19 Surging across Texas; Europe Tightness Coronavirus Restrictions; Republicans Resist Acknowledging Trump's Loss; Al Qaeda's Abu Mohammed al-Masri Killed; Art's Evolution during the Pandemic. Aired 3-4a ET

Aired November 15, 2020 - 03:00   ET

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

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KIM BRUNHUBER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Divided states of America: pro-Trump rallies in Washington following election results turn violent.

Amidst this divide, the coronavirus runs rampant in the U.S. as cases this week reach the highest count since the start of the pandemic.

Live from CNN World Headquarters in Atlanta, welcome to you our viewers here in the United States, Canada and around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber and this is CNN NEWSROOM.

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BRUNHUBER: Joe Biden, of course, is the clear winner of the U.S. presidential election. But that's not stopping president Donald Trump and thousands of his supporters from claiming otherwise. They descended on Washington Saturday for mostly peaceful protests.

But after dark, things got violent. Officials say one man was stabbed and is in critical condition. The mayor's office says two police officers have also been injured and at least 20 arrests made.

We don't yet have a full picture yet of who was attacked or who might be responsible for the violence but that doesn't stop the president, of course, from weighing in, tweeting that his supporters, quote, "aggressively fought back" after he says Antifa attacked them. Sara Sidner gave us an update a short time ago.

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SARA SIDNER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Really, what you're seeing are several different things. You're seeing anti-fascists, who are out, who are anti-Trump as well.

And when they see someone from the Trump supporting side of things, who come into the area where they are, we've seen arguments unfold and then sometimes violent acts unfold as well.

We've also seen, conversely, some of those folks, who are anti-Trump, who are walking the streets in large groups. And then we have seen Trump supporters, including the Proud Boys, who he infamously told to stand back and stand by during the very first 2020 presidential debate with Joe Biden.

We have seen them running toward a group of people who were not being aggressive until confronted with a bunch of folks who were coming and screaming curse words at them. And then it started to turn into a bit of a melee.

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BRUNHUBER: Now to be clear, Donald Trump has no path to victory. But it's not stopping him from denying reality by continuing to push false claims. Jeremy Diamond reports from the White House.

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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, one week after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the presidential election, President Trump is still refusing to concede and admit defeat in this 2020 election.

Instead, what we've seen from the president is continuing to falsely claim that he has won, falsely claiming that there has been widespread voter fraud and that this election was rigged against him.

Of course, these are the same claims we saw the president make in the run-up to the election; but he has only continued to make those despite the clear and overwhelming evidence of this election, despite the fact that we have seen election officials, Republicans and Democrats, in all 50 states make very clear there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and that, in fact, the 2020 election was one of the most secure to date.

During this week, we've also seen the president privately, according to our sources, waver between this pugilistic attitude where he says he wants to continue pursuing the lawsuits and recount challenges in key battleground states and also, at other moments, beginning to come to grips with reality.

We saw a sliver of that as the president spoke in the Rose Garden, acknowledging the possibility at least of a future Biden administration.

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TRUMP: This administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully, the -- whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration will be, I guess time will tell. But I can tell you, this administration will not go to a lockdown.

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DIAMOND: But on Saturday we saw the president drive through this crowd of supporters who were protesting in Washington, parroting his claims of a stolen election. And after that, the president seemed to be buoyed by those supporters,

digging in once again on his claims of a rigged election, taking to Twitter, making several tweets that Twitter has labeled as misinformation about this election.

And the president showing no sign that he is prepared to concede this election publicly -- Jeremy Diamond, CNN, the White House.

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BRUNHUBER: Mr. Trump's refusal to acknowledge his election losses making things difficult for President-Elect Joe Biden.

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BRUNHUBER: He and his transition team are being denied crucial resources that would normally have long since been available for any incoming president. Jessica Dean reports from Wilmington, Delaware.

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JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: President-Elect Joe Biden spending the weekend meeting with his transition advisers. Earlier this week they announced the formation of their COVID-19 advisory board as they look toward the coronavirus pandemic and what they'll be able to do when Biden assumes office on January 20th.

As it stations now, the General Services Administration, the federal office responsible for validating Biden as the new president-elect and triggering this formal transition process, has yet to do that.

And what that means is that the Biden transition team cannot formally interface with any of the federal agencies. That includes Health and Human Services. That includes the Coronavirus Task Force out of the White House.

That's important because, when it comes to things like a vaccine distribution plan, plans are already being drawn up in Health and Human Services for what that might look like. And the Biden team, which will be in place once that would start, is not allowed to talk back and forth with them.

So what have they been doing?

We know that they have been doing some work-arounds, back channeling with local officials, governors, people in the medical community, trying to do as much as they can without interfacing with these official agencies. They're still waiting for that green light.

But they will tell you they feel good about where they are with their advisory board. The president-elect releasing a statement on Friday, saying urgent action is needed right now when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic. It can't wait until he takes office in January.

He urged Americans once again to do all the things that he's been saying, wear a mask, social distance, wash your hands but acknowledged that he won't be in office until January but that the coronavirus pandemic is on its own timeline -- Jessica Dean, CNN, Wilmington, Delaware.

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BRUNHUBER: For the 12th straight day, the U.S. is counting more than 100,000 new coronavirus cases. There were more than 160,000 just on Saturday, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Infections are climbing in every single state. Hospitalizations are shattering records, too. For five straight days the number has climbed. Now more than 69,000 people are in hospitals across the U.S. and experts warn those facilities will soon be at capacity.

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DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: We're headed to more and more cases and an intolerable number of deaths. And what we're going to see in places where the rates of cases are continuing to rise, is we'll see hospital ICUs fill.

Now you can make more ICU beds but what you can't make are more ICU nurses. And we will run out of the capacity in many of these hospitals to care for the critically ill.

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BRUNHUBER: Texas is swamped with coronavirus hospitalizations and new infections. It was the first state to pass 1 million cases. Texas crossed that grim marker Tuesday, days ahead of California, even though California has roughly 10 million more people.

More than 7,000 Texans were hospitalized due to COVID-19 as of Friday, according to the state's health department.

Dr. James McDeavitt is the senior vice president and dean of clinical affairs at Baylor College of Medicine and he joins me now from Houston.

Thank you for joining us, Doctor. We've seen how bad the situation is elsewhere in Texas. Places like El Paso, where they've had to call in mobile morgues, there aren't enough nurses to help patients. Hospitalizations are surging in Houston, where you are.

And this week you wrote a message to your university medical community that caught my eye for a couple of reasons. The first was the stark assessment of where we are. The title was "Winter is coming," a bleak "Game of Thrones" reference.

You wrote, "If this were a flood, most of our neighbors' houses have already flooded, we hope ours will not but quietly believe it will."

Tell us where we could be in the next weeks and months.

DR. JAMES MCDEAVITT, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: Here in Houston, we've lived through this twice now. We had a surge in April, a surge in July and we're surging again, I believe, but it's a slow surge. It's been going on for nine weeks now. We're at about 700 cases per day.

That's about double what it was six weeks ago. But on a per capita basis, I know you had a physician on from El Paso a couple of days ago on your program. The situation's terrible there. They are seeing case rates 10 to 20 times of the per capita base we're seeing in Houston.

It is hard to believe we could see so much growth in the virus around us and not think it's going to hit us in Houston eventually. I think it will.

BRUNHUBER: There are plenty of reasons for worry from what you said.

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BRUNHUBER: But there are also reasons that we might have to be a little more optimistic, shall we say. In that letter I was struck by your hopeful tone. You said there was cause for optimism, that even though things look especially grim, that we shouldn't give up hope.

Why is that?

MCDEAVITT: So I write this message to the Baylor College of Medicine every week. I try to remain apolitical. I try to be realistic in my assessment of where we are but also try and look to the future.

I think there is ample cause for optimism right now. For one thing, our hospitals now are battle hardened. We've been here, we've done it, we've got therapeutics we didn't have before. Hospitals have surge plans in place that they just have to reactivate, they don't have to reinvent them again.

So we are ready for whatever comes down the pike. Second, based in Houston, I'm sure it's true of most areas of the country, our community leaders are all pulled together. Hospitals, business leaders, the religious community, the faith community, city and county health department, we all know each other.

We're on the first-name basis. We have each other on speed dial. We are very well prepared to respond. And I think our public health organizations have substantially improved.

As an example, in Houston, we monitor wastewater. We can pick up viral products in wastewater. That predicts where we're going to see a hot spot one to two weeks in advance so the health department can mobilize the resources to try to extinguish that hot spot, a huge advantage.

Then I think, fundamentally, although masks may have become politicized and may be a little bit of an issue, I went to the zoo with my daughter this weekend. And it's timed entry, so there was lots of spacing. Everybody was wearing a mask.

I saw mothers telling their children, you need to wear your mask. I think the public in most communities, by and large, enough people have bought into this that we're in far better shape than we were three or four months ago.

BRUNHUBER: I want to go back to -- sorry, I just want to go back to something you said about community response because that struck me. Perhaps people have come together in Houston.

But I'm looking around different communities in Texas; just as one example, in El Paso, there was a stay-at-home order and then that was overturned. The judge in his decision wrote, a servant cannot have two masters, a Biblical reference there.

And that gets to the crux of the problem, that there's no one authority here. We have different levels of government often disagreeing about what should be done.

So how hazardous that make it when there are still -- eight months after coronavirus hit the country, we still can't come together and agree on even the basics?

MCDEAVITT: Yes, I guess I would say to people in general, this is not that hard.

What do we have to control the virus right now?

Masking and social distancing. That's it. That's why we're doing as well as we are right now in some communities.

It would certainly be useful if government officials are unified in that message but for whatever reason we're not. But we also, in Texas, we are proud of our independence. We don't like the government telling us what to do in Houston.

I think this is really a matter of personal responsibility. I don't necessarily care what the state or federal or local government is saying. If I walk into a place of business and people aren't wearing masks and they're elbow to elbow, that is not a safe environment and I should turn around and walk out.

So if we have 70 percent of the population that feels that way, we're going to be in really good shape in terms of viral control. And the politicians can argue about who's right and who's wrong and history will decide. But I think it's more about personal responsibility than waiting for the government to tell us what we can and should do.

BRUNHUBER: All right, a very Texas response there. Thank you very much for coming on and talking to us and giving us at least a few causes for optimism there. Thank you so much, Dr. James McDeavitt of Baylor College of Medicine, appreciate it.

MCDEAVITT: Thank you.

BRUNHUBER: Europe is one of the biggest coronavirus hot spots right now. And each country is going about it quite differently. But the wave of infections does seem like it could peak soon.

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BRUNHUBER: Since the first diagnosed U.S. coronavirus case back in January, scientists and doctors have learned a lot about the illness. The death rate has dropped dramatically. Treatments have improved the outcome for many patients.

But as case numbers continue to skyrocket, it's clear this fight is far from over. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta has more.

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DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL ANALYST: New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic this spring.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Code 99, code 99.

DR. ROBERT FORONJY, CHIEF OF PULMONARY AND CRITICAL CARE, SUNY DOWNSTATE: Code 99 could mean someone that still has a pulse, a blood pressure but is struggling to breathe.

GUPTA: Dr. Robert Foronjy was in the thick of it in March with very few tools at that time to manage a new respiratory disease.

FORONJY: Imagine trying to treat severe bacterial pneumonia without any antibiotics. We're basically relying on the machine and the patient's own immune system to recover.

GUPTA: Other area hospitals also overwhelmed, like Morristown Medical in New Jersey, where Dr. Lewis Rubinson works.

DR. LEWIS RUBINSON, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, MORRISTOWN MEDICAL CENTER: You know, our numbers went up pretty dramatically and pretty quickly. We ultimately had 20 units, with COVID patients. Our maximum of census was over 300 patients concurrently.

GUPTA: One study of a New York City health system found that in March, 25.6 percent of hospitalized COVID-19 patients would end up dying. Imagine that, one in four.

V.J. SMITH, COVID-19 PATIENT: This is a terrible, a very terrible one that's killing more people.

GUPTA: But by June, that mortality rate has dropped by more than two- thirds to 7.6 percent.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The number of deaths has not been increasing markedly.

GUPTA: And it's not just New York.

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GUPTA (voice-over): In England, the fatality rate was around 6 percent in June and by mid-August, it was 1.5 percent.

One thing has become clear. If someone is infected with the novel coronavirus now, they are more likely to survive than back in the spring. But why? After all, the virus itself hasn't changed. But it turns out we have. For starters, about 75 percent of the people hospitalized were over the age of 50 back in March. Almost 40 percent had at least one underlying condition.

RUBINSON: We were seeing, as many centers were seeing, more mature patients being impacted and having severe disease.

GUPTA: Today, more than half of all newly infected people are under the age of 50 and they are significantly less likely to get sick. But even if patients do end up in the hospital, their care is now very different. We have an expanded toolkit, drugs like remdesivir and monoclonal antibodies to stop the virus from duplicating, the steroid, dexamethasone, we are using blood thinners to help reduce clotting associated with COVID-19.

You know there was a lot of discussion about ventilators, Doctor, in the beginning. And patients who went on ventilators, at one point, the mortality rate for them was approaching 50 percent. What was going on there?

RUBINSON: Well, for someone whose breathing so bad that we can't get enough oxygen in them or carbon dioxide out, the ventilators helps but it comes at potential costs. The pressures and the strategies that were using mechanical ventilation can actually worsen someone's disease.

GUPTA: Take a look here, with COVID-19, the lungs can quickly fill up with mucus, making it difficult to take in oxygen. Also damage the lung tissue can sit next to healthy tissue. And if too much oxygen is force on to the healthy tissue, it can cost leaks and swelling and other damage. That's why doctors started to wait longer to move patients to ventilators, utilizing strategies, like having patients breath on their stomach, known as proning and just monitoring patients with low oxygen levels with as few interventions as possible.

RUBINSON: We're driving on the road that we're paving at the same time with COVID.

GUPTA: Evolving standards of care to match or evolving understanding of this disease.

So there is no question that we've become better at being able to take care of patients once they have contracted COVID and even if they become seriously ill. All the techniques, the medication, things that we've been talking about, the issue now is that there is just so many patients who are contracting COVID, that's going to increase the percentage of people who need to be hospitalized.

We're already seeing that. And now, the projections are, as you probably know, that close to 200,000 more people may die within the next 100 and so days. So you know, the numbers are still pretty awful. What we have to do in order to bring those numbers down in addition to the better medical care is reduce the amount of virus out there.

The same basic things we've been saying for months, masks, physical distancing, no large public gatherings, stay away from clustered indoor settings. And if you do these things, we can -- in addition to the good medical care, we can really start to bring this curve down.

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BRUNHUBER: There are some worrying trends outside the U.S. as well. Mexico is now reporting more than 1 million COVID-19 cases. And some states are bringing back restrictions.

That's also happening in Europe, another major virus hot spot. But some people there are protesting those safety measures.

Police in Frankfurt, Germany, here you see them dispersing lockdown protesters and counter protesters on Saturday. Germany has been under partial lockdown since November 2nd and there's little expectation that restrictions will be eased for now.

The U.K., meanwhile, is reporting its lowest number of daily new cases since Wednesday, still nearly 27,000 cases as of Saturday morning.

Encouraging signs out of France as well. It's reporting a decrease in COVID-19 patients in intensive care units for the first time since October. That's where you find CNN's Melissa Bell, following this from Paris.

Looking across Europe, a mixed picture we're seeing.

MELISSA BELL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Mixed is exactly the right word there, Kim. There are those countries like France, Belgium, Germany, where there has been a slight improvement in infection rates over the course of the last week or so.

Germany did see its highest daily increase on Friday, though on the whole, the figures have been positive. Yet there are countries where the partial lockdowns in place are going to be kept in place until those improvements translate into something more durable.

That's what authorities in all three countries have said. Then there are those countries where things continue to get worse, amongst them, in Austria, an explosion in infection rates there.

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BELL: Ten times higher than authorities expected with the collapse of their tracing system that led the chancellor to announce there will be a 2.5-week partial lockdown there.

Things worsening in Greece, where schoolchildren, primary and nursery schoolchildren, will no longer be able to go to school as a precautionary measure.

Poland saw its highest deaths related to COVID-19 on Saturday. Italy saw an all-time high on Friday in terms of new cases, slightly down Saturday but extremely worrying with a partial lockdown there being extended to extra regions from Friday.

Yes, some countries where things are beginning to show signs of improvement, other European countries where things continue to steadily worsen.

BRUNHUBER: In the countries that saw improvement, it seems at least to me that the lockdowns have worked. But we're also seeing more resistance to those lockdowns. Those seem to be getting more intense.

BELL: That's right, these are lockdowns that are far less strict than the ones we had in Europe in many countries in the spring. This time, many more people going out to work, kids in school.

Yet there is this lack of patience with the measures, this anger that the loss of freedom has returned to the European continent. We see the protests in Italy, in Spain the last couple of weeks. We saw them over the weekend in Frankfurt, anti-restriction protesters clashed with those who think the restrictions were necessary.

Water cannon was used against both groups, a reminder of how difficult it is for some people to accept.

BRUNHUBER: All right, thank you so much for that. Melissa Bell in Paris.

And that wraps up CNN NEWSROOM for our international audience. "MARKETPLACE AFRICA" is next for you. If you're in the United States and Canada, please stick around, we have another half hour of news for you.

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BRUNHUBER: Welcome back to our viewers in the United States, Canada and around the world. I'm Kim Brunhuber and you're watching CNN NEWSROOM.

Police in Washington, D.C., have been out in force after violent confrontations between pro-Trump supporters and anti-Trump protesters. Officials say one person is in critical condition with stab wounds. The mayor's office reports two police officers were injured. At least 20 people have been arrested.

Trump blamed the violence on anti-Trump protesters. The unrest erupted hours after a pro-Trump rally to protest his election loss. The president's motorcade made a slow pass through the crowd on his way to the golf course.

While the president challenges the election in court, his firing of the U.S. Defense Secretary and other government officials has set off alarm bells. One official called it "a dictator move." Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat joins us via Skype from New York, author of

"Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present."

With Trump's refusal to acknowledge the election, people have been throwing around the term dictator, Trump's a dictator, so on. You've studied modern authoritarian leaders, propaganda, the cult of personality, the hypermasculinity, so on, so forth.

In your book there's a frightening symmetry in the similarity between Mussolini and what's happening now with President Trump. Explain what they have in common.

RUTH BEN-GHIAT, HISTORIAN: So when we think of fascists, we often -- our mind goes straight to Hitler and there's very good reasons for that. But Mussolini was the one who laid down this template of authoritarian rule.

We can understand better the way authoritarianism develops today because he was a prime minister in a democracy for three years. And during those years he chipped away at the institutions and built his personality cult. And then he declared dictatorship in 1925 to escape a special investigation that was going to send him to jail.

BRUNHUBER: There was also an appeal to Christians as well, right?

So there are other things that sort of make them similar, too?

BEN-GHIAT: Yes. And Mussolini was, along with the Communists who were doing this in parallel fashion, the first to really develop a personality cult. And he was extremely savvy with the media. He'd been a journalist.

So the canons of the personality cult haven't changed over 100 years. You have to be a man of the people, very approachable; Mussolini used to strip off his shirt, the hypermasculinity. He was also a man above all other men, who was said to rule with a divine benediction.

He was the one, although he was very profane, he was an atheist, he made peace with the Catholic Church. So there's many, many similarities.

And it was very interesting to me when Donald Trump, who certainly didn't have a very pious past, has been proclaimed as ruling -- he's there with God's will to save the nation by the evangelical Christians and orthodox Jews. So there are a lot of recurrences between then and now.

BRUNHUBER: Another word we associate with dictatorships is coup. Understandably, many people are nervous about the possibility, obviously what's happening right now hasn't risen to that.

But at what point does it become a coup?

Or since he's already in office, an auto-coup?

BEN-GHIAT: Yes, it's -- I mean, the age of coups is mostly gone. And it would be indeed a kind of auto-coup or self-coup, where somebody's already in power and they're trying to stay there by illegal means.

To pull that off, you need the collaboration of law enforcement and the military. And, you know, the other day, General Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made a very clear statement that the armed forces is going to obey the Constitution and not an individual. So I don't think he will pull this off in the end.

But we should all be very alarmed that he is trying to invalidate the election. And he has the support of the GOP. And this is one thing I'd like to emphasize, that although he came, he didn't start the GOP. Mussolini started his party.

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BEN-GHIAT: Berlusconi started Force Italia. Trump came from the outside and, within four years, wrapped the GOP around his finger. They acquitted him in the Senate trial, now very few Republican senators have accepted the results of the election, even though foreign leaders like Modi and Erdogan have.

BRUNHUBER: There's one thing I hear often in discussions with Democrats, that the Trump administration itself was kind of incompetent, couldn't actually achieve most of its goals, whether it was ending ObamaCare or even building the wall.

They always shudder at the thought of what could happen under the rule of a competent authoritarian -- a smarter Trump, I guess. But you see things differently.

I guess we're using the wrong criteria to assess his competency?

BEN-GHIAT: Yes. And you know, it makes perfect sense that Americans would use a democratic frame of reference to think about Trump because we've never had foreign occupation. We've never had national dictatorship. All we know is democracy. This is the playbook.

But I've said since before he was even inaugurated that he's following an authoritarian playbook. And his goals as president have not been the goals of regular democratic presidents, whatever party they are.

He has been in office to make money for Trump Organization. So when he goes golfing, people say, oh, he's lazy, he just goes golfing. But what he's doing is at taxpayers' expense. He's traveling to promote Trump's private businesses. These are all Trump branded properties he goes to.

Then he's been building his personality cult, which he's been phenomenally successful at that. So he had 70 plus million people vote for him.

And he's spreading hatred to encourage polarization because then people remain dependant on him. So when we think -- if the metric is what a regular democratic president would do, he doesn't suit any of these things.

BRUNHUBER: Yes, we'll have to leave it there. But I just wonder, we'll have to see what happens after Trump.

Does this era sort of end?

Do people who wanted this authoritarian leader just wait for the next one or maybe for Trump 2024?

We'll have to see. Thank you so much. Really appreciate you joining us.

BEN-GHIAT: Thank you.

BRUNHUBER: In just 66 days, President-Elect Joe Biden will be sworn in as president.

So what happens in those days leading up to the inauguration?

Who does what?

Tom Foreman takes a look at the complicated process that lies ahead.

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TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: From now until the second week of December, states should settle their vote counts and certify the results. They all have their own particular deadlines, so it won't happen all at once. And, of course, if their local rules or legal challenge require a recount, that could produce some delays but they're all headed for the same goal, saying within a few weeks, we've settled all disputes and this is our final tally for each candidate.

They must have that complete by December 14th, because that is when the electors must vote. Who are they? They are 538 people from all 50 states chosen by the parties and they mirror the number of senators and representatives in each state plus the District of Columbia which gets three.

This is the Electoral College. Typically, they gather at their local state Houses and award their electoral votes in most cases, to whoever gathered the most popular votes in their state. Although occasionally some break from that and cast rogue votes becoming what we call faithless electors. Although the Supreme Court rule just this year, they can be punished or removed if they take that action.

In any event, the results must be sent to Washington no later than December 23rd. And then on January 6th, those electoral votes are counted during a joint session of Congress, under the watchful eye of the President of the Senate, meaning Vice President Mike Pence. And when that count is done, he will be the first person to officially announce the names of the next president and vice president.

And then on Wednesday, January 20th, at noon, as prescribed by the Constitution, the big finish, the president and vice president will be sworn in at the U.S. Capitol and begin four years of leading the country or at least trying to amid these challenging times-- Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.

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BRUNHUBER: A mystery after the possible death of a top Al Qaeda figure.

Who may have killed the terror group's number two leader?

We'll have that ahead.

Plus Hurricane Iota is making its way towards an already battered Central America.

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BRUNHUBER: We'll have a live report on the latest track from the CNN Weather Center when we come back.

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BRUNHUBER: We're tracking a mystery in Iran after reports that a top Al Qaeda figure was gunned down and killed there last August.

"The New York Times" says Israeli agents killed the Egyptian Abu Mohammed al-Masri and his daughter. Iran is denying that. State media initially reported a Lebanese academic was killed. For the latest, CNN's Oren Liebermann is live in Jerusalem.

Oren, a secret killing, geopolitical intrigue?

Help us unravel this, what do we know?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: This is a story that has to be unpicked carefully. It starts in August, August 7th, in fact, with a double killing on the residential streets of Tehran. From there it gets murkier, with each step you move forward.

What makes this more difficult is none of the players involved -- not Israel, U.S., Iran, Al Qaeda -- have offered a full accounting of what happened.

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LIEBERMANN (voice-over): On the streets of Iran's capital city, the drive-by shooting took seconds. A middle-aged man and his daughter shot and killed in their car on August 7th. Semi-official news agencies ID'd the man as Habib Dawood, a Lebanese academic, Habib Dawood, with ties to Hezbollah. And then the story vanished.

Dawood, it seemed, didn't exist. There was no eulogy for him in Lebanon, no academic by his name in Iran.

Months later, mid-October, on obscure social media accounts, the story resurfaced but not about Dawood. The accounts said the man was really Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, better known as Abu Mohammed al-Masri, the number two man in Al Qaeda.

"The New York Times" said it was indeed al-Masri, according to unnamed intelligence officials. A senior counterterrorism official told CNN, that al-Masri "is probably dead."

Al-Masri was on the FBI's most wanted list; $10 million reward for information leading to his capture.

[03:45:00]

LIEBERMANN (voice-over): He was one of the primary planners of the twin bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya on August 7th, 1998, 22 years to the day before he himself was killed.

According to "The Times," the drive-by shooting was carried out by Israeli agents at the behest of the United States. If true, it would be similar in nature to Israel's reported killings of Iranian nuclear scientists in the past.

The Israeli and American governments declined to comment and Al Qaeda has made no comment about losing one of its leaders. Iran's foreign ministry denied the report Saturday, accusing the U.S. and Israel of spreading lies that Iran associates with terrorists.

Some analysts saw Abu Mohammed al-Masri as next in line to lead Al Qaeda, the man who would take over for Ayman al-Zawahiri, the terror group's leader for a decade, also on the FBI's most wanted list.

What about the woman in the car with al-Masri who was killed?

It was his daughter, Miriam, the widow of Hamza bin Laden, the deceased son of Osama bin Laden.

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LIEBERMANN: One of the key questions here, does Israel have the ability to operate like this in Iran?

That answer very much appears to be yes, not only because of the killing of nuclear scientists in Iran attributed to Israel but also, for example, a few years ago, the stealing of Iran's nuclear archive, an operation there that withdrew a tremendous amount of information and a tremendous amount of data from Iran about their nuclear program.

BRUNHUBER: So much still unknown. Very interesting story, thank you so much, CNN's Oren Liebermann in Jerusalem.

Honduras is bracing for another hurricane as it still struggles to recover from damage done by Hurricane Eta less than two weeks ago. Iota was just upgraded to hurricane status and is gaining strength as it makes its way to Central America.

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BRUNHUBER: Coming up on CNN NEWSROOM, the art world is finding new and innovative ways to bring joy during the pandemic. We'll have that after the break.

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BRUNHUBER: The pandemic has forced artists and musicians to find new and innovative methods to get their works to the public. Some are wondering whether museums, galleries and concert halls will ever be the same. Cyril Vanier takes a look.

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CYRIL VANIER, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As lockdowns swept the world throughout 2020, music and arts venues were among the first to fall victim to COVID-19 restrictions.

Now 11 months into the pandemic, venues are using new and innovative ways to bring in business. Some simply socially distancing crowds, others taking the phrase "living in a bubble" to a whole new level.

Then there's the question of whether you really need to be somewhere at all, thanks to creations like telepresence robots, as seen in this London gallery. And other technologies are surging during the pandemic, like remote video streaming, virtual reality and holographic projections.

PHILIP COLBERT, ARTIST: I wanted to stage my exhibition opening using these telepresent robots as almost like a sci-fi vision of a possible future, where we do have a telepresent robot, which goes out into the world for us so we stay protected at home.

And I felt that that was an interesting way of genuinely making the show more accessible.

VANIER (voice-over): The pandemic seems to have accelerated what some see as an already impending future, the digitization of arts and experience, something that's long been fueled by streaming services and social media. And there's certainly no shortage of technology to keep venues distanced.

[03:55:00]

VANIER (voice-over): Or just empty, using virtual experiences. Still, many professionals and patrons alike are antsy for a return to the norm of crowded concert halls and face-to-face interaction.

MONIKA VOGLGRUBER, BELVEDERE MUSEUM, VIENNA (through translator) We are now offering a virtual selection but this will never replace the experience of the original. You can compare it to a crystal. There are techniques today to recreate crystals but they will never come close to an original.

It's the same for artwork and experiencing it directly in the museum.

VANIER (voice-over): The question remains, though, could all this COVID-era technology be a new normal?

And if so, would it be that bad?

A new digital era of consumption aims to bring more interactivity and accessibility to everyone, potentially democratizing arts for the masses.

HAROUT FAZLIAN, LEBANESE PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA: This will be the first concert that I will be conducting without a public, physical public. But I know that, in the background, there are hundreds and thousands of people who will be watching from their homes. And maybe this is an advantage, because everybody will have front-row seat watching this concert.

VANIER (voice-over): Most likely, a post-pandemic future will bring a hybrid of both digital and in-person events. And if anything, the pandemic has shown that arts are a nonnegotiable aspect of life -- Cyril Vanier, CNN.

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BRUNHUBER: Well, if a tree needs a police escort, you know it's an extra-special tree. That's exactly what this Christmas tree is. It's for the Rockefeller Center in New York and it was delivered on Saturday.

A crane had to lift the nearly 75 foot or 23 meter tall Norway spruce into place. But you won't be seeing that iconic holiday set up just yet. The tree is now going to be decorated before it's officially lit on December 2nd.

I'm Kim Brunhuber and I'll be back in just a moment as CNN NEWSROOM continues.