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U.S. Hospitalizations Hit Record Saturday; Trump's Legal Losses Pile Up; Two COVID-19 Vaccines Potentially Mark Medical Revolution; Iran Accuses Israel of Killing of Top Nuclear Scientist; Interview with Former Proud Boys Member; Fired Cyber Security Chief Rejects Trump's Voter Fraud Claim; America's Hunger Crisis. Aired 1-2a ET
Aired November 29, 2020 - 01:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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MICHAEL HOLMES, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Hello and welcome to our viewers here in the United States. I'm Michael Holmes.
Coming up here on CNN NEWSROOM, coronavirus cases surging across America. Health experts warning the number of deaths from the virus could surge even more, even double.
President Trump just playing through, hitting the golf course, blasting out fact-free tweets.
Plus the pandemic on top of a sluggish economy, a recipe that could mean 50 million Americans will go hungry for the holidays.
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HOLMES: Welcome, everyone.
Right now in the U.S., the coronavirus pandemic gets more dire for people, while the political situation gets more desperate for the president.
Let's start with the virus. The U.S. has surpassed 13 million total cases, 4 million in November alone. Think about that. For 26 straight days, the U.S. has reported more than 100,000 new cases.
Now, Saturday, the most hospitalizations were reported; more than 91,000 Americans are in hospital with coronavirus. Experts warn the Thanksgiving holiday could trigger a surge of new infections.
And now we're about to see the impact on the holiday shopping season that small businesses rely so much for to keep going.
Some of the busiest places right now, though, are food banks, as many Americans are forced to seek help for basic needs. And things could get worse if millions of people lose their jobless benefits next month. Yes, that could happen. Meanwhile, President Trump on the golf course again and hopefully his
game getting better than his legal game because he's racking up one loss after another in court as he tries to overturn the election results.
Saturday, Pennsylvania's Supreme Court tossed a lawsuit from Republicans seeking to invalidate absentee voting and block vote certification. And they did so with prejudice.
And, in Wisconsin, President-Elect Joe Biden picked up more votes in the recount requested by Trump's campaign. Think about that. Did the recount; Joe Biden got more.
Now the president did find time on Saturday to tee off on the election system again, tweeting out more baseless accusations of fraud.
But how many times can he lose before he gives up?
CNN's Jeremy Diamond reports.
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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: When he wasn't on the golf course, President Trump on Saturday continuing to make baseless allegations of voter fraud in the 2020 election. The president's focusing his ire this time on the states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, two key battleground states that President-Elect Joe Biden recaptured from President Trump in this latest election.
But the president's continued allegations of widespread voter fraud and his conspiracy theories that he's been spreading, they now come against a mounting legal backdrop that is disproving the president's case.
More than 30 cases now brought forward by the president's campaign or their allies have been dismissed in state and federal courts or withdrawn by those legal teams.
The latest blow is coming from a Trump-appointed judge, Judge Stephanos Bibas, writing for the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, denying the campaign's appeal to try and decertify the results of the Pennsylvania election, essentially trying to throw out millions of legally cast ballots in that key battleground state.
Judge Bibas wrote, quote, "Calling an election unfair does not make it so. Charges require specific allegations and then proof. We have neither here. The campaign's claims have no merit."
The president is also running into roadblocks on the recount front. After his campaign paid $3 million to have two key counties in the state of Wisconsin conduct recounts, one of those counties, Milwaukee County, certified the results of its election on Friday. And the results of that recount actually found more votes for Joe Biden.
Joe Biden coming up with a 132-vote gain in Milwaukee County after that recount went through. The state of Wisconsin is expected to certify the results of its election Tuesday.
The question is how much longer does the president keep this up?
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DIAMOND: We know that privately he and his advisers recognize that it is almost impossible for him to overturn the results of this election. But the president has been charging ahead, trying to at least delegitimize this legitimate victory by President-Elect Joe Biden.
One key date that the president's advisers are looking at, that is December 14th. That's when the Electoral College will actually vote for the next President of the United States, locking in President- Elect Joe Biden's victory -- Jeremy Diamond, CNN, the White House.
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HOLMES: Colorado's governor is the latest political leader to catch coronavirus. Both Jared Polis and his spouse have tested positive but are asymptomatic, according to the governor's office. Polis says he will keep working remotely and is asking Coloradans to limit their time in public, wear a mask and stay six feet away from others.
Health experts in the U.S. are warning we will see dramatic increases in coronavirus infections and deaths in the coming weeks. As we mentioned a little earlier, the U.S. now recording more than 13.2 million cases and more than 266,000 deaths. Miguel Marquez tells us where the country stands right now.
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MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Here in New York City and testing sites across the country, people are still being tested. But those lines and the length of time it takes to get tested is going down because we're in the middle of a long holiday weekend.
This is something that epidemiologists expected during the weekends, the numbers sort of go down. The number of cases, the number of deaths, the number of people getting tests, those all go down.
But during the week, they all go up. They expect that same pattern with the long holiday weekend we're in right now.
It is stunning to consider that the U.S., in the last week, has added over a million cases of coronavirus. That is something that used to take weeks, if not months, to get to, not only here in New York when it was horrible in the spring. The numbers are rising, not as fast as South Dakota or Iowa or Texas.
But they are rising and rising everywhere. Doctors and nurses working so hard and epidemiologists who follow this disease fear that Christmas is going to be memorable for all the wrong reasons -- back to you.
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HOLMES: Our thanks to Miguel Marquez.
Many coronavirus deaths could be avoided, of course, if and when a vaccine gets the green light. The most promising candidates use groundbreaking technology that could revolutionize the way vaccines are made for decades to come. CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta explains how it works.
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ALBERT BOURLA, CEO, PFIZER: This is an historic day, an historic day for science and for all of us.
DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Albert Bourla is CEO of Pfizer and he's talking about their vaccine for COVID-19, 248 days from an idea to now, applying for the vaccine to be authorized. That's just eight months. For context, eight years would have been considered speedy.
But the truth is, the story I'm about to tell you actually began more than two decades ago. And to really understand it, you first have to understand how most vaccines work.
Since the first vaccine for smallpox back in 1796, they've all relied on the same basic concept: give a little piece of the virus -- also known as antigen -- to someone, not enough to make them sick and their body will then be taught to make antibodies to it. Those are the proteins that neutralize the virus if it ever tried to invade again. That's what makes you immune.
But what if the body could be taught to do the whole thing? Not just make antibodies, but also to make the antigens as well, to essentially become its own vaccine-making machine?
It's why, in the 2000s. Dr. Drew Weissman started focusing on this tiny strand of genetic material that our cells make all the time. It's known as mRNA.
DR. DREW WEISSMAN, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PERELMAN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE: Back then, we were thinking of using it for vaccines, for therapeutic proteins, for gene editing, for lots of different applications.
GUPTA (voice-over): mRNA stands for messenger RNA. It carries the instructions for making whatever protein you want.
WEISSMAN: Once you've got the sequence, it's a one-step reaction to make RNA and that reaction is identical for every vaccine that we make.
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GUPTA (voice-over): If this sounds more like code in a computer rather than medicine from a lab, that means you're getting it. This is an entirely new way of thinking about vaccines. It's also the basic technology behind Pfizer and Moderna's COVID-19 vaccines. DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Vaccines are close by, they're coming. You know I said help is on the way.
GUPTA (voice-over): It's truly bio meets tech. The vaccine is not the virus at all, it's essentially just a genetic code for a portion of this virus: this portion, the spike protein. Why the spike protein? Because it's the key the virus uses to enter the human cell. But if you create antibodies to the spike protein, it's then blocked.
So, putting it all together, once the vaccine, made up of genetic code, is administered through a shot in the arm, our own cells then start making the spike protein over and over again. Now, remember, you're just making a part of the virus so you can't get infected from this vaccine. And within days after that, the body reacts and starts churning out the antibodies: plug and play.
WEISSMAN: With RNA, all you need is the sequence of the protein of interest. Within weeks, you can have a new vaccine.
GUPTA (voice-over): It's a technology that could help lead us out of this pandemic.
FAUCI: We're going to get a heck of a lot of help from a very efficacious vaccine -- two vaccines -- that, just two weeks ago and this past week, were shown to be extremely effective -- I mean efficacious -- in 95 percent and 94.5 percent.
GUPTA (voice-over): If true, remarkable results for an entirely new type of vaccine and also a new way of thinking about medicines, going forward.
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HOLMES: Having a safe and effective vaccine is only part of the equation. Getting people vaccinated is, of course, another. Celine Gounder, a member of the U.S. president-elect's coronavirus advisory board, explains who should get first priority.
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DR. CELINE GOUNDER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Certainly health care workers -- so doctors, nurses, who are caring for patients in the hospital including patients with coronavirus -- should very much be among those first receiving the vaccine.
And then beyond that, there are other frontline workers, essential workers, whether that's the people who are working in food and meat processing, people who are the grocery store checkout counter, you know, people who are doing things we can't function without, whether it's with respect to food or drugstores or teachers, for example.
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HOLMES: A recent Gallup poll finds 58 percent of Americans say they would be willing to get vaccinated right now at no cost. That is up from mid-September when just 50 percent said yes.
One U.S. Congress man floating the idea, though, of paying Americans to take the vaccine, which would, of course, keep the virus from spreading. CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner explains why he thinks it's a good idea.
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DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: If you look at our experience, trying to get people to wear masks, we tried altruism, protect your neighbors. That didn't work. More recently we tried to get people to protect themselves. That doesn't seem to work.
So maybe money works. I'm all about paying people to do the right thing. Sure, so many people in this country are hurting financially. They need stimulus. They need some stimulus money. Get vaccinated, send the government your receipt and get paid. I'm OK with that. Let's do that.
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HOLMES: Marina del Rios Rivera is a professor of emergency medicine at the University of Illinois in Chicago. She joins me from Chicago.
Doctor, thank you so much for being with us; 90,000 Americans, more, are in the hospital right now with COVID. It's hard to get your head around that.
Are you worried many Americans still don't understand the risk and, post Thanksgiving, what do you see coming?
DR. MARINA DEL RIOS RIVERA, UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS, CHICAGO: I really worry that people have just not gotten a complete handle of how serious this is. Yes, I worry that, two weeks from now, our hospitals are going to be more than full to capacity and I worry about the ability of our staff taking care of patients.
HOLMES: I'm curious how you and your colleagues are coping with the mental and physical strain.
How do you prepare yourself for what you're doing now, let alone the next several weeks?
RIVERA: Well, we call each other a lot, try to give each other support. I, for myself, I'm very lucky that I have a very supportive family. My husband is very good at equitable division of labor, because I have to admit, after shifts, I'm often just exhausted.
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RIVERA: It's not only just the physical exhaustion of being on your feet all the time and running from room to room but also the mental exhaustion of having to deal with people who are so sick all the time. HOLMES: Exactly. I was talking to an ICU doctor a couple of weeks ago on this program and he spoke of the frustration of what he was seeing, people dying and then going out and seeing people in close quarters in bars and so forth.
You said you're not the front line, you're the last line of defense. I thought that was very salient.
Does it frustrate you to see so many people acting like it's no big deal?
RIVERA: Yes. It's very frustrating. It's caused strains in my personal relationships. There are people I just can't talk to because it's difficult to understand. They've heard me complain of how difficult this job is becoming.
They've heard me with my concerns for, you know, patients that are just so sick and I can't do anything about them and yet, you know, they're still choosing to gather in big groups, to go out to bars, to be in close quarters and to complain because there's mandates for mask wearing and for distancing.
HOLMES: Meanwhile you're wearing a mask 10, 12 hours a day?
RIVERA: Yes, at least a good 10 hours. For my own protection, I've decided that the wise thing to do -- and the hospital has it as policy now -- just wear a mask for every patient encounter regardless of whether we think this person has COVID or not.
We've learned that the percent is so high of positivity. One in 15 people in Chicago is estimated to have COVID right now. So it's better to just be safe and assume everyone might be infected, even if they're asymptomatic.
HOLMES: I've covered wars for half of my career and I'm trying to get my head around the mental stress that you endure every day. You're in a place that has COVID patients. You just don't know when you're going to get it. At the same time, you're watching people die. I mean, that's got to take a toll.
RIVERA: Yes. I have to say, this wave has been difficult because, in the first one, we didn't know what we were dealing with, right, so I think we were still learning how to protect ourselves, how to protect our communities.
Now we know how to protect each other, how we can reduce the spread, the fact that we haven't learned our lesson is -- it really is a cause of a lot of concern and of mental exhaustion. It's more exhausting to deal with that than it is to deal with the sick patient in front of me.
HOLMES: That's well put. One thing about a vaccine, it's not like flicking a switch. It's more of a dimmer.
Are you concerned that the politicization of the pandemic and vaccines will leave people skeptical, reluctant to be vaccinated? What would you say?
RIVERA: What I worry about is we've had already anti-vaccine rhetoric before COVID.
How many parents are choosing not to immunize their children or even people that are adults already that are refusing to get booster shots for tetanus or for the flu every year?
And so I worry about, just the fact that we have an effective vaccine is not enough. You really have to fight against this anti-vaccine rhetoric that, unfortunately, is part of the culture of American life. With that, also ensuring we're distributing the vaccine equitably and
making sure our most marginalized and most affected population are receiving the vaccine.
HOLMES: Powerful messages, eloquently put. Dr. Marina del Rios Rivera, thank you so much for what you do and thank you for speaking with us.
RIVERA: Thanks for giving me the time. And I appreciate your work, too.
HOLMES: Thank you so much.
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HOLMES: Fury and angry rhetoric continue to escalate inside Iran after the killing of a top nuclear scientist. Just ahead, what his death could mean for diplomacy and relations between Iran, Israel and the U.S.
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HOLMES: Iran's semi official Fars News Agency says the funeral for the country's top nuclear scientist will take place Monday. Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was killed Friday east of Tehran. He was considered one of the masterminds of Iran's nuclear program.
Fakhrizadeh was reportedly targeted by gunfire and a vehicle explosion. Top Iranian officials are accusing Israel of being behind the killing. And Iran's supreme leader vowing revenge. CNN's Alex Marquardt with more.
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ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Iran is saying it will avenge the death of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh and is pointing the finger squarely at Israel for carrying out this attack. A list of actors who could mount such a brazen, well-coordinated killing of one of Iran's biggest scientific figures in broad daylight is quite short. Israel is neither confirming nor denying any role.
The Trump administration for its part is being very quiet. The question now is how or whether Iran responds.
That the attackers were able to reach into Iran and take out the country's senior-most nuclear scientist is very embarrassing for them. It comes almost 11 months after the United States killed Iran's most famous military commander, Qasem Soleimani, in an airstrike.
There's been no major reaction to that either. So there is pressure on them to respond.
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MARQUARDT (voice-over): If Iran were to respond in a significant way against U.S. or Israeli targets in the region, for example, it could set something off.
At the same time, Iran knows Joe Biden is about to become president and he wants to engage with them. He wants the U.S. to get back into the nuclear deal, to ease sanctions and the maximum pressure campaign of the Trump administration. So Iran could hold off. Meanwhile,
Israeli president prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu sees the clock ticking down on the Trump administration and knows that he will have less leeway with a President Biden when he's sworn in.
Biden is not eager to inherit a war with Iran and is almost certainly hoping things will be calm when he's sworn in in January so there can be a fresh start -- Alex Marquardt, CNN, Washington.
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HOLMES: Karim Sadjadpour is an Iran expert and senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment. He joins me from Washington.
Good to see you. Joe Biden has said he would like a U.S. return to the Iran nuclear deal. If Israel was behind the assassination, it could be a reason not just to mess with Iran's nuclear program but to interfere with diplomacy.
KARIM SADJADPOUR, CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT: I think that is certainly a plausibility, Michael. What has happened now is, that by assassinating Iranian's top nuclear scientist, Iran will feel that it has to take revenge in order to not only restore national pride but to restore deterrence.
But how is it going to do that without sabotaging the possibility of a full or partial return to the nuclear deal which is so important for Iran? Because it's one of the most sanctioned countries in the world. It is
not only suffering from economic sanctions but it's been hit hard by the pandemic as well. So Iran is in a very difficult spot in the coming days, weeks and months ahead.
HOLMES: They've got many things to consider. One thing, the killing of such a senior figure clearly exposes internal security.
How embarrassing is this for Iran, their top protected top nuclear expert taken out like this?
A few weeks ago, a top Al Qaeda guy taken out. And in January the assassination of their top military advisor.
SADJADPOUR: Well, you put it well. In the last year, four major global figures, ostensibly protected by the Iranian umbrella, were quite easily assassinated. For a regime like Iran, which really prides itself on being a security state, being a police state, this is deeply, deeply humiliating.
This comes at a time when Iran has been imprisoning innocent academics and environmentalists on charges of being Israeli spies. They can't protect the top figures from Israeli or American assassination. So I think morale must be very low right now in Iran.
And they must be thinking, what else do they know about us?
What other means of our communication have the penetrated?
HOLMES: Good point. Of course not all groups in Iran, all factions have the same calculations.
How does this potentially change the dynamic between Iran's hardliners and moderates?
It's been notoriously fractured.
SADJADPOUR: My view is that, over the last two decades, Iran has being gradually shifting from a country ruled by the clergy, these elderly Shiite clerks, to a country ruled by middle aged military men, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
And I think the more insecurity you introduce into Iran, whether it's assassinations or an escalating nuclear situation or regional crises, like Syria or elsewhere, any type of insecurity plays to the advantage of the security forces within Iran.
At the moment, even though we're talking about 150,000 men who constitute the Revolutionary Guard, there certainly is diversity among them.
But at the moment, the hardline folks, who are not at all keen on issues like civil liberties or human rights and things like that, are the ones that are firmly in control because they make the argument that this is a time of existential crisis. HOLMES: You made a good point. Iran has a way up, the pride that might say they need to retaliate and the economic realities, which are a huge part of the calculus.
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HOLMES: It can't afford financially to make a misstep here.
SADJADPOUR: You're right. Iran's currency reserves are dwindling and its population has really been battered by the sanctions, the mismanagement and the corruption. Throughout the Trump presidency, they were really just waiting for Trump to be elected out of office, with the possibility that they could go back to the nuclear deal with a Democratic American president.
As you pointed out at the outset, this is precisely why the Israelis may have wanted to take this action, to sabotage the possibility of a revival of the Iran nuclear deal. But the brutal reality for Iran is that its dwindling economy and currency reserves simply cannot be reversed if they don't go back to either a full or partial nuclear deal.
HOLMES: If you can summarize, what's going to happen over the next month or so?
SADJADPOUR: I am confident we can avoid war but I am not confident that we can go back to a full nuclear deal, even under a Biden administration.
HOLMES: Plenty of moving parts, Karim Sadjadpour, always good to get you on and take advantage of your expertise. Thank you so much.
SADJADPOUR: Thank you, Michael.
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HOLMES: Up next, President Trump told them to "stand back and stand by." Now in an exclusive interview with CNN, a former member of the Proud Boys tells us what drew him to the far-right group.
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HOLMES: Welcome back to our viewers. I'm Michael Holmes. You're watching CNN NEWSROOM. We thank you for doing so.
Now a CNN exclusive: a former Proud Boys member speaking out, detailing why he became disenchanted with the far-right group. The Proud Boys gained notoriety in recent months after President Trump urged them to "stand back and stand by" during the first presidential debate. CNN's Elle Reeve with the story. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
RUSSELL SCHULTZ, FORMER PROUD BOYS MEMBER: They're afraid to say what's on their mind for fear of getting into a fight. But if they have that guy or that group behind them, they're more bold in saying what they think because they think someone has their back.
PROTESTERS: (INAUDIBLE) Antifa.
SCHULTZ: The Proud Boys are the vehicle that attracts those people and accepts them in.
ELLE REEVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Russell Schultz spent about a 1.5 years as a Proud Boy near Portland. He didn't hold a title but he was at a lot of political protests and had a big presence online.
He says he quit but the Proud Boys say he was kicked out in May 2019.
Russell's a witness to what it's like inside the far-right group and why some men would want to join it.
SCHULTZ: It was too much like a nationwide criminal gang is where they were heading towards and I didn't want any part of that.
This is for Proud Boys and only Proud Boys. We need more political activists on the right side. More, not less.
REEVE (voice-over): Russell grew up around Portland. He's Jewish and told us he voted for Obama twice before voting for Trump twice.
SCHULTZ: Donald Trump was bullheaded. He was determined. And he takes a lot of criticism but he keeps fighting on. I like his political policies.
I got involved in doing the activism stuff because of Trump supporters getting attacked and I wanted to stand up to that and say, that's not what we do in America.
REEVE (on camera): But you weren't just a Trump supporter. You got involved with the Proud Boys. How did that happen?
SCHULTZ: We were holding a free-speech rally in Portland and, all of a sudden, the fights are breaking out all over the place.
And here come marching across a field, these guys in black and yellow striped polos. And, to me, it just looked like something from a "Braveheart" movie or something. It was kind of cool.
And then they asked me to join. And I thought about it for a minute and I was like, yes, OK, it will be fun. I'll wear a goofy little shirt and look like we're a bowling team.
REEVE (voice-over): The Proud Boys were founded in 2016 and are known more for street fights than for their vague ideology.
They celebrated when President Trump mentioned them in a presidential debate.
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Proud Boys, stand back and stand by.
But I'll tell you what, I'll tell you what, somebody's got to do something about Antifa and the left.
REEVE (on camera): Do you think the Proud Boys felt encouraged by President Trump, like that he had their back?
SCHULTZ: Yes. Yes. Because everyone -- everybody wants to feel special.
REEVE (voice-over): Unlike many far-right groups that emerged around the same time, the Proud Boys don't say they're trying to defend the white race. They say they're defending Western civilization and that, if you think that's code for white people, you're the racist.
SCHULTZ: I don't perceive them as racists. There might be some that might be misogynists but most of that would be their defense of rejection.
But a lot of it, I just -- I see people showing up because they want to have drinking partners and they want to join a gang, so they can go fight Antifa and hurt people that they don't like and feel justified in doing it.
REEVE: Chairman Enrique Tarrio told CNN, currently, there is no criminal activity happening in the Proud Boys.
Russell left the group but he hasn't left the mindset. His antipathy towards Antifa still motivates his actions and he still shows up at some rallies.
And while he criticizes the Proud Boys, he defends most of what he did while with the group, including violent threats as either a joke or justified.
SCHULTZ: I'm going to shoot you in your head or your chest.
REEVE: Antifa posts information about far-right activists online, they say, to raise the social cost of being a fascist.
In 2018, Rose City Antifa posted Russell's address and workplace and reposted his videos where he talked about violence.
SCHULTZ: At the last rally, I nearly ran you over with a car and I don't feel bad about it one bit. You're lucky I didn't kill you.
REEVE (on camera): Rose City Antifa posted this.
SCHULTZ: Oh, I've never seen that one. I'm glad they posted that one.
You are not going to survive. I will survive and take my chances in court.
REEVE: OK, they do seem like violent threats, Russell.
SCHULTZ: They are violent threats. And it's for a good reason, too.
REEVE: Why? What happened? What's the context of this?
SCHULTZ: We were going -- we were -- we were going to have a religious march, a pro-Jesus march. This was around Christmastime.
REEVE: Yes.
SCHULTZ: And Antifa was saying they were going to start throwing urine and feces on us.
And so that was my way of saying, OK, if you do that, that's a threat. I don't know if it was AIDS tainted. And I -- I made the threat so they wouldn't come over. And they didn't come over.
REEVE (voice-over): Rose City Antifa told CNN they did not threaten to throw poop at the Jesus march and do not know how to lace poop with HIV.
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REEVE (voice-over): At the Million Mega March in Washington, D.C., after Trump lost the election, Proud Boys got into fights with anti- Trump counter protesters. Videos of the violence circulated on social media.
REEVE (on camera): Yes, look at him! He's a big old fat dude hitting a woman.
SCHULTZ: Yes. From behind. She didn't even see it coming.
REEVE: How is that like proud masculinity right there? That's as low as it gets.
SCHULTZ: Yes.
REEVE: It's just crazy to me, though, like we've come to this point.
SCHULTZ: Yes.
REEVE: I mean but do you feel like you're part of it that brought us to this point with their -- with --
SCHULTZ: That brought us to it?
REEVE: Yes, like your propaganda?
SCHULTZ: Well, I definitely had -- honestly, I -- yes, I had a role in it, you know. I never advocated for the violence to come out of it though.
REEVE: Well -- well, do you see why people make the argument then that like it was never really a joke. That joke is just a cover for what you actually want to do. SCHULTZ: Oh, I see what you're saying. I don't think it was ever meant to be a street gang. Not at first. It just kind of morphed into that.
You probably wouldn't even know who Proud Boys are if -- if there hadn't been Antifa attacking patriots or Trump supporters at rallies. And maybe that would be better.
Building themselves up, beating up on a punching bag.
REEVE: Do you think after Trump leaves office, the Proud Boys will fade away?
SCHULTZ: No.
REEVE: Why not?
SCHULTZ: Because they found that other part we were talking about where they felt like the big part of a group.
That you've got these guys that normally they'd be at this bar by themselves. They have no friends. They can't talk to a girl because for whatever reason that they just don't have the self-confidence.
Well, they join the group. Now they had that self-confidence. Here, I'm -- I'm with these guys and they get some attention.
REEVE: Elle Reeve, CNN, Vancouver, Washington.
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HOLMES: We'll take a quick break. When we come back, Cuba is looking to President-Elect Joe Biden to help stop a booming drug trafficking business. Just ahead, a CNN exclusive report, as Cuba tries to combat drug smuggling at sea.
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HOLMES: We're hearing more from the top cyber security official President Trump fired last week.
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HOLMES: Christopher Krebs got the heave-ho via Twitter after he rejected Trump's false claims of widespread voter fraud in the election. Krebs spoke with "60 Minutes."
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CHRISTOPHER KREBS, FORMER DHS CYBER SECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY: I don't know if I was necessarily surprised. It's not how I wanted to go out. I think I -- the thing that upsets me the most about that is I didn't
get a chance to say goodbye to my team. And I'd worked with them for 3.5 years, in the trenches, building an agency, putting CISA on the national stage.
And I love that team. And I didn't get a chance to say goodbye, so that's what I'm most upset about.
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HOLMES: Krebs says he stands by a statement that the election was the most secure in American history. Homeland Security officials claim Krebs and his agency overstepped their bounds.
Despite the raging pandemic, Cuba is seeing a surge in drug smugglers, piloting boats through Cuban waters to the U.S. These spikes come after the Trump administration ended an Obama-era agreement that increased cooperation on combating drug running.
Now Cuba hopes the incoming Biden administration will resume that joint effort. CNN's Patrick Oppmann gained exclusive access to a Cuban border control team as it captures, transports and burns thousands of pounds of illegal drugs.
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PATRICK OPPMANN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Trespassing into Cuban waters, these drug smugglers attempt to outrun a Cuban government patrol boat. After the Cuban crew threatens to open fire, the smugglers throw their contraband into the ocean.
Just in October, Cuban border guard officials say they confiscated enough drugs to fill two whole trucks. Smugglers, trying to sneak boatloads of marijuana and cocaine passed Cuban patrols and into the United States have become an increasingly common occurrence over the past year.
Cuban border guard also tells us. "In this last period, there has been an increase," he tells me. "We've detected 40 vessels that were suspicious or smuggling drugs. As well as the drugs that have been recovered."
Under close guard by Special Forces troops, Cuban officials unseal the secure facility, where they have stored the seized drugs. Nearly 3 tons worth, they tell us.
We're going to walk in right now and you see, from floor to ceiling bags and bags of marijuana that has been captured, either taken off boats that were coming through Cuban waters, drug smuggling runs or found. Smugglers would ditch the drugs in the ocean or found later and then turned in.
And what I can tell you is that the smell of the drugs in this room is completely overwhelming. It's just over powering.
Much, if not all of the drugs, Cuban officials say they recovered were headed to the United States. 90 miles off Cuban shores.
YURI GALA LOPEZ, CUBAN FOREIGN MINISTRY: The capable forces that we have in the law enforcement community is not only a guarantee for the national security of Cuba but is also beneficial for the national security of the United States.
OPPMANN: While the U.S. criticizes Cuba on human rights and lack of multi-party elections, the State Department acknowledged in their 2020 report, narcotics that Cuba is not a major consumer-producer or transit point of illicit drugs.
This Cuban government video obtained by CNN shows U.S. Coast Guard officials turning over drugs to the Cuban border patrol that they recovered at sea to help with the pro section of the smuggles who were arrested by the Cubans. But after the Trump administration rolls back improve relations with Havana, Cuban officials say, regular meetings with U.S. law enforcement agency or cancel.
The Trump administration did not respond to our request for comment.
"Despite this policy," she tells me. "Cuba is willing to combat international drug trafficking. We have stopped tons of drugs from reaching the U.S."
To make their point, Cuban officials give us rare access to film and stayed low with the drugs, then transport them under heavy guard, to hold them by crate to this industrial furnace where, packet by packet, they are incinerated; smoke signals the Cuban government is sending to the Biden administration that they are they are seeking a new U.S.- Cuba relationship -- Patrick Oppmann, CNN, Santiago de Cuba.
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HOLMES: CNN NEWSROOM will be right back.
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HOLMES: The devastating economic fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has millions of Americans relying on food banks this Thanksgiving. By one estimate, 50 million Americans will go hungry this year. And as Vanessa Yurkevich reports, it will take 8 billion meals to feed them.
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VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The journey to get food through the cold and COVID-19 has been long and hard for Regina Status.
REGINA STATUS, NEW YORK CITY RESIDENT: Got to take one day at a time. And as long as you have for today, you save for tomorrow. When tomorrow gets here, something's going to happen.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): And it did, just in time.
STATUS: Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: No problem.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): Days before Thanksgiving, Agatha House Foundation, a local food pantry in the Bronx, New York, made a special Thanksgiving delivery, filled with everything she needs for her and her two teenage daughters.
STATUS: It's just a relief that I don't have to purchase all of that.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): Over 50 million Americans like Regina won't have enough to eat in 2020.
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YURKEVICH (voice-over): In part, because of the pandemic. Feeding America, the largest hunger relief group in the U.S. projects that 8 billion meals will be needed next year to feed food- insecure Americans.
CLAIRE BABINEAUX-FONTENOT, CEO, FEEDING AMERICA: About 40 percent of the people who right now are turning to food banks for help around the country are people who've never before relied on the charitable food system.
STATUS: Onions.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): Regina is out of a job. Her car was totaled months ago. And she's not receiving unemployment. She now relies on a once-a-week delivery from the Food Pantry.
YURKEVICH: Day to day, is your pantry stocked, or what does it look like day to day?
STATUS: Just surviving. That's all I can say. You just have to survive it.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): The 15th congressional district here in the Bronx has the highest food insecurity rate among children in the country.
At Agatha House, they're hoping to take the stigma our of needing a little extra help.
JEANETTE JOSEPH-GREENWAY, FOUNDER, AGATHA HOUSE FOUNDATION: We have to look and try to imagine ourselves in the position, what we would want for ourselves. Not just to give them a cardboard box but to make them feel loved, special.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): This small operation says it's seen 100 percent increase in need. JOSEPH-GREENWAY: Even with the that they get, hopefully, there's someone in their building or one of their neighbors that they can invite for a plate of food.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Got to give Miss Mamie some stuff.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): Despite her struggles to put food on the table --
STATUS: You welcome, Miss Mamie.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): -- Regina is sharing what she has with her neighbor and remains grateful for this Thanksgiving.
STATUS: Even if we didn't get to Agatha House or we were just having regular chicken every day, just to say that you're alive to eat it, that's a blessing in itself.
YURKEVICH (voice-over): Vanessa Yurkevich, CNN, Bronx, New York.
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HOLMES: I'm Michael Holmes. Thanks for spending part of your day with me. Do stick around, though. I'll be right back with more CNN NEWSROOM.
