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Article Of Impeachment Could Be Introduced Tomorrow; Interview With Former Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) About Capitol Hill Riot; U.S. Congress Attending Physician Warns Lawmakers Of COVID-19 Exposure Following Capitol Hill Riot; Social Media Posts Help Circulate Dangerous Lies; Social Media Posts And The Capitol; Schwarzenegger Speaks About Trump And America. Aired 4-5p ET

Aired January 10, 2021 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:11]

FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: Hello, again, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm Fredricka Whitfield.

All right, right now Congress is finalizing plans that would make President Trump the first U.S. president impeached twice. A new Article of Impeachment is expected to be introduced in the House tomorrow. Congress is indicting President Trump for inciting the insurrection that happened at the U.S. Capitol this past week.

A growing number of Republicans say they want President Trump out either by impeachment, resignation, or by his Cabinet invoking the 25th Amendment. That includes at least two Republicans, former Trump allies themselves who tell CNN they now support his impeachment. Pennsylvania Republican Pat Toomey going a step further this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. PAT TOOMEY (R-PA): I think there is also a possibility that there's criminal liability here. I'm not a lawyer. I'm not a prosecutor. So -- and I do know that the -- you know, the standard for a conviction in a criminal prosecution is quite high, so I'm not sure whether that could be met. I don't know whether he's met a standard that could actually be prosecuted and gain a conviction. But the behavior was outrageous and there should be accountability.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: President Trump's incitement of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week left five people dead including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick who this afternoon was honored by his fellow officers during a procession through downtown D.C. streets. And also today flags at the White House were finally lowered to half-staff. But -- and we have since learned that the White House did that in honor of Sicknick.

All right, let's first turn our attention to Capitol Hill. CNN's Sunlen Serfaty is there.

So, Sunlen, wo we have a timeline now of this process? SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Fred, that's

exactly what House leaders are trying to figure out at this moment and they'll continue deliberating over the next day or so. But certainly there is a lot of complexity around this moment given this extraordinary timing, given what they are going to try to do this week.

Now what we know is the House Rules Committee at some point in the beginning of the week will sit down and they'll try to work through the parameters of the debate of an impeachment proceeding over in the House. And then the full House can move to a vote on impeachment on Wednesday. Now from there that is when it is up to speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi when and -- likely when they pass this through whether they send it directly to the Senate or do they hold and delay?

And there is a feeling among Democratic caucus right now, concern that if they send it over to the Senate that the Senate going towards an impeachment trial in the first days of the Biden administration would not be a good thing. It would delay his nominations. It would delay his legislative priorities. Most importantly COVID stimulus relief. And that would not be a good thing to have the first few days of the Biden administration essentially encapsulated by this moment up here on Capitol Hill, this moment of impeachment.

So there is an effort to potentially consider delaying sending over those Articles of Impeachment to the Senate and from then they would have potentially the Biden administration go forth for the next few months without addressing impeachment over in the Senate.

Now all of this over the timing of impeachment up here on Capitol Hill, there also is a very real discussion going on about what role, what responsibility do individual members have for the incitement of the violence this week up here on Capitol Hill, those that stood up and objected to the electoral votes from being counted.

Here is the Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOE MANCHIN (D-WV): Whether they should resign or not I don't know how they can live with themselves knowing that people have died because of their words and actions. You know, but they were saying I'm operating within the confines of what my duties are as a senator. I don't -- the people I have the most admiration for were those senators that says, I'm going to object and they signed and put their name to it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SERFATY: And Senator Manchin there talking about Senators Cruz and Hawley among the others that stood up and objected to the counting of the votes. But that sentiment also shared by some Republicans, Senator Pat Toomey this morning said that he believes that these individual Republican senators, that they will pay a price for this, Fred. He said that they all have some soul searching to do.

WHITFIELD: All right. Sunlen Serfaty, thanks so much.

All right, with me now, former Senator Doug Jones of Alabama.

Senator, good to see you. What do you think about the House introducing this Article of Impeachment tomorrow and acting fast on impeaching the president for inciting that mob violence?

DOUG JONES (D), FORMER ALABAMA SENATOR: Well, thanks for having me, Fred. You know, look, I think the House needs to move in the way that they feel most appropriate. What we saw last week was horrific. It was egregious. And clearly amounts to an abuse of power. The question I think is going to remain is when would they send that over. When would a Senate trial begin?

[16:05:02]

Those are a lot different issues I think than in just introducing this. You know, if Republicans want the president to leave office, they've got a mechanism I think that they could do it. And that is that a group of senators and congressmen, a lot of them, can go to President Trump just like they did to President Nixon and say you're about to get impeached for the second time. This time it's going to be bipartisan. It is time for the country to move on. It's time for you to move on. That would be the best thing to happen right now.

WHITFIELD: They're not doing that. And then even for Senator Mitch McConnell, I mean, he could bring back the Senate earlier. They are expected to be back January 19th but he has the power if he wanted an expedited process, you know, a response, some culpability for the president, to bring them back early as well.

JONES: He could. Quite frankly, I would be surprised if there was an impeachment vote, that Speaker Pelosi would send the Articles of Impeachment over while Mitch McConnell is still the leader of the Senate. We saw what happened the last time.

And I think that there would be some delay and I think there would need to be delay should these articles be voted on in the House. There needs to be some delay. There needs to be an opportunity for the Biden administration to come in, to get their Cabinet appointees confirmed, to get people in there, to get their agenda moving forward.

And you can still do a lot of things once the Senate gets these if they come. And I'm not convinced they will come. But if they do there's a lot of things that the Senate could do to delay a trial on the merits and do some work and let the people understand fully what happened and not rush this through a process that would only give, you know, some credence to the victimization of Donald Trump which I think would be unconscionable.

WHITFIELD: Is there more at stake as well if Congress were to delay, were to do nothing? I mean, we know the House of Representatives will likely do something.

JONES: Yes.

WHITFIELD: But if the Senate were to do nothing, is there damage, too?

JONES: Fred, there is a hell of a lot at stake right now for this country and for our future. For the next administration and the one after that in this Congress and the one after that and the one after that. There is an awful lot at stake. We cannot let this pass. We've got to make sure that the folks are held up accountable. That's not just the people that were coming in and shouting and destroying the Capitol building but the people that incited this, the people that were doing this.

I think that there's got to be some accountability. But I also think that this needs to be a deliberate process. They don't need to rush this because then people will go to their partisan corners and that's the last thing we need right now.

WHITFIELD: Today Republican Senator Pat Toomey suggested President Trump could face criminal liability after he leaves office for his role in the riot and on top of that, you know, we've since learned the president made other calls to Georgia's election investigator in early December urging him to find fraud in the election. And we all heard the recording from last week where, you know, Trump put pressure on the Georgia secretary of state to overturn, you know, the election, find more than 11,000 votes.

So as a former U.S. attorney do you think the Georgia attorney general will pursue charges against the president once he leaves office?

JONES: Well, I don't know if he will pursue charges. That's a big difference than could face charges. I think that people need to look at this whole picture and we need to carefully examine what happened over the last couple of months, what happened last week.

And see, I think that the Justice Department is going to take a look at this. And it's not just the folks that are, as I said, storming the Capitol. All of those who spoke at that rally the other day that seemed to incite this, they've got to be a little bit concerned right now that they could face a criminal charge --

WHITFIELD: You're talking about the rally where there was Giuliani and the president? You're talking about that --

JONES: Absolutely. Absolutely. I think that every one of those speakers, they need to look carefully at what was said and what they were inciting at that point. And whether they face criminal charges I don't have an opinion on right now but I think everything is on the table to look at. That's the most important thing. I think the people of America deserve to know exactly what happened. That those that violated the law should face some kind of consequences.

WHITFIELD: And my guess worst case scenario is if none of that were to happen then a strong message is being sent that the president is above the law. I wonder if we can talk in general now about, you know, this change that is taking place whether it be on Capitol Hill or, you know, just across the country state to state. The South certainly is changing by way of elected office. You exemplified the change, you know, when you won your seat in 2017 as a Democrat in Alabama. Black women voters largely credited for helping you to win your seat

in a very red place. And now in Georgia a black man, a Jewish man in both Democratic Senators Warnock and Ossoff. How do you see what Warnock characterized to me last I spoke with him that this is the new South?

[16:10:03]

JONES: Well, I think the term new South has been a little bit overused to be honest with you. We heard that with new South governors back in the '70s and it just never happened. I think we have a changing South, I think we have a changing demographic, and I think what people on the bottom line are looking for is they want someone who's going to represent them. I think what happened in Georgia is not -- it was a referendum on issues and values and what it means for those kitchen table issues that we ran on in 2017.

And I think people, as we become a more diverse country, the South is becoming more diverse. That opens up possibilities for real dialogue and real change. And I want the Democratic Party in Alabama and across the South to be viable. I don't necessarily care about flipping one state red to blue, blue to red, whatever. We need to all be kind of purple states to where our public officials and candidates are competing for our votes on ideas and progress and coming together and healing this country. Not dividing it.

And that's what we've seen far too much of especially in the South. And I'm hoping that the South, with the election that we saw, the candidates, we had great candidates running, we're going to have more coming up, I think we can be that place of healing. I really do. And I think that that's where you will see things headed in the future.

WHITFIELD: How do you see yourself serving in the Biden administration if you're interested in that or perhaps you can shed some light on what other political aspirations you might have if not with the administration?

JONES: No. I think it's a little too early to talk about any of that right now. I think that this Congress needs to get in and start doing their work. I think President Biden, Vice President Harris need to get in. They need to start doing exactly what they campaigned on. That's healing this country not only emotionally but also physically. Getting this pandemic under control. Making sure that everybody has a vaccine and we can have some sense of normalcy.

But by doing that we have a normalcy that brings people together and it brings the inequalities that we've seen to a halt. That we bring people economically, physically, you name it. We need to bring people together and get rid of the disparities in our country. We've got that opportunity and I think Joe Biden has the perfect opportunity to do just that.

WHITFIELD: All right. Senator Doug Jones, good to see you. Thank you so much. Be safe.

JONES: Thank you. WHITFIELD: Still ahead, lawmakers hiding in a safe room during the

terror attack on the U.S. Capitol building may have been exposed to coronavirus. Plus an uprising of antigovernment white supremacy fueled by misinformation online. The hard truth. There are talks of further attacks. Is the U.S. prepared?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:16:43]

WHITFIELD: Welcome back. Lawmakers are now being warned of the potential risk of coronavirus exposure following the Capitol Hill riot Wednesday. The attending physician for the U.S. Congress instructing lawmakers to watch out for symptoms and to be tested as a precaution after a mostly maskless mob stormed the U.S. Capitol.

Joining me now to discuss is Dr. Brittani James, a family medicine physician and the co-founder of the Institute for Antiracism in Medicine.

Doctor, good to see you.

DR. BRITTANI JAMES, CO-FOUNDER, THE INSTITUTE FOR ANTIRACISM IN MEDICINE: Happy to be here.

WHITFIELD: So this is a very real concern. I think it really crossed a lot of people's minds when, you know, we saw the images of people being, you know, put into safe spaces in close quarters. How concerned are you now about the consequence of this?

JAMES: Oh, I'm very concerned. I mean, this is a situation that is a complete set up for infection. But at the same time, you know, we're coming out of the holidays. We're coming out of a period where there was a lot of interaction between people, and so my fears certainly include this event but are much wider as well.

WHITFIELD: Yes. And, you know, reportedly there were some members of Congress who refused, you know, to put on the masks that were being handed out knowing that people were going to be in close confines. So that just seems to up the ante on, you know, possible exposure and limiting -- you know, confining the spaces that they were in.

So, overall now, the U.S. recorded a record number of coronavirus deaths on Thursday. This against the backdrop of a nationwide vaccination effort that is woefully behind schedule. So what concerns do you have now about this slow rollout or plans to vaccinate more people, you know, departing from I guess this more structured rollout plan?

JAMES: Yes. You know, on one hand I -- you know, I think it's great to see, you know, kind of us pivot and adjust to the situation on the ground. You know, we weren't getting as many people vaccinated as we had hoped and it's great to see the Biden administration come in with a different plan. However, my worry is that, you know, sort of the way things are going, the disorder and chaos, we really see a situation in which the people who really are the most vulnerable can be really left out of this effort.

You know, the simple fact of the matter is the people who are making these decisions about how these vaccines are distributed again reflect the power structures in medicine. That means they're disproportionately male, they're disproportionately white, and the perspectives of the most vulnerable people who are disproportionately black and brown and poor are really not represented at the negotiating table and in these critical conversations. So moving ahead, that's a concern.

WHITFIELD: So what would be your suggestion, you know, to the incoming administration perhaps about how to better distribute? I mean, what is missing in the current distribution plan that is not getting to the most vulnerable and particularly the communities you just mentioned, brown and black communities, people that -- you know, are unable to gain access to this supply as is?

JAMES: You know, I think the important thing to think about is again where do people of color get their care. And again they're disproportionately connected to community health clinics, probably qualified (INAUDIBLE), and, you know, I think it's important to really uplift the communities and the programs that are already in those spaces so that means making sure there's efforts on the ground, partnering with local institutions that maybe do pop-up shops in those sorts of locations, and not just our academic medical centers and our more -- you know, our bigger top down institutions but really to start on the ground and make those partnerships to make sure the vaccines get to who needs them.

[16:20:30]

WHITFIELD: Dr. Brittani James, good to see you. Thank you so much. Be safe. Be well.

JAMES: Take care.

WHITFIELD: All right. Next, the threat of violent extremism fueled by misinformation on the internet now social media companies are cracking down on racist contact -- content, rather, and suspending the president of the United States for instigating it. Should these companies go further? I'll talk to the director of Netflix's "The Social Dilemma" straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:25:24]

WHITFIELD: All right. A follow-up on what happened on Wednesday. The man seen chasing a black Capitol police officer during Wednesday's riot has now been identified through a CNN comparison analysis of his booking photo and posts on social media.

In the video taken by the "Huffington Post," Doug Jensen, seen in the black QAnon T-shirt, chases the unidentified officer up the stairs with a mob of rioters following him. The 41-year-old is now under arrest according to the FBI and local authorities in Iowa and faces five federal charges for pursuing that officer.

CNN has reached out to the suspect's lawyer for comment, but has yet to receive a response.

The insurrection in Washington last week is shining a spotlight on a dark side of social media. The event had been touted repeatedly online as an occupation of Capitol Hill by the far-right to help overturn the U.S. election. Social media companies are becoming more wary of the idea that they're being used as instruments to perhaps circulate fake news, dangerous posts.

Well, that is why many took the unprecedented step of suspending President Trump permanently from Facebook and from Twitter.

Is this just the beginning? The documentary "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix is revealing some of the ways that companies are actually putting people in a bubble and keeping people there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEFF SEIBERT, TWITTER FORMER EXECUTIVE, SERIAL TECH ENTREPRENEUR: What I want people to know is that everything they're doing online is being watched, is being tracked, is being measured. Every single action you take is carefully monitored and recorded, exactly what image you stop and look at, for how long you look at it. Oh, yes. Seriously for how long you look at it.

They know when people are lonely. They know when people are depressed. They know when people are looking at photos of your ex-romantic partners. They know what you're doing late at night. They know the entire thing. Whether you're an introvert or an extrovert or what kind of neurosis you have, what your personality type is like.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They have more information about us than has ever been imagined in human history. It is unprecedented.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: OK. Along with the music that definitely is escalating the creepy factor there. Joining me right now the director of the documentary "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix, Jeff Orlowski.

Good to see you, Jeff.

JEFF ORLOWSKI, DIRECTOR, "THE SOCIAL DILEMMA": Yes. Thank you so much.

WHITFIELD: All right. Well, congratulations, you know, on the project. And this is eye-opening.

ORLOWSKI: Yes.

WHITFIELD: So talk to us about, you know, I mean, this is I guess another way of some people looking at this is big brother watching, although it's not government. We're talking about these independent companies that are watching your habits, analyzing you, tracking you down. ORLOWSKI: Yes, these entire systems, I mean, so much of the internet

is designed around giving you what you want. They track all of this data. We're carrying these sensors in our pockets and they are using it to really reverse engineer who we are and what makes us tick.

We look at last week's events, these tragic events, and we see them as this like unique moment in time but the people that we spoke to in building this technology, the people who worked at the companies, this seemed very, very expected from them. We know that these platforms have been pushing radicalization, like built into the way the algorithms and the systems are designed.

WHITFIELD: So then is it odd, peculiar to you now that companies would now say, OK, you know, we're --

ORLOWSKI: Yes.

WHITFIELD: We're going to pull the lever, you know, on some people and their dialogue when all along they've been watching it sounds like from what you're saying, they know exactly the behavior of people, what they have been saying, whether it's been incendiary or not. But now, you know, this week, particularly for the president, he is cut off.

ORLOWSKI: Right. I think these platforms have been trying to deny their responsibility and their culpability in this for a long time. I think this week's events and the fact that they are taking action in the way that they have is just indicating that they do know and recognize that they play a role here.

What we're talking about is our information ecosystem. Right? How do people get information, what do they see, what do they trust, what are they surrounded by? These systems are designed to give people what they want.

[16:30:00]

And when you get that over and over and over again, it reinforces a world view that, in many cases, we know has become more and more radicalized. We know, from insider leaked research that happened at Facebook, that people who ended up getting radicalized on the platform, 64 percent of those people were radicalized because of the group recommendation suggestions that Facebook's algorithms were pushing out.

So, the fundamental tools, themselves, are pushing people towards radical thought.

WHITFIELD: So, what changed? Because so many of these companies, when challenged with this very idea of, kind of, policing, paying attention to, penalizing people for things they -- and their behavior and what they were saying, for a very long time said, no, we're not in the business, you know, of --

ORLOWSKI: Right.

WHITFIELD: -- editing, of making judgments about what people are saying. We want this to be a free space where people can just say --

ORLOWSKI: Right.

WHITFIELD: -- whatever is on their mind. And, now, --

ORLOWSKI: Right.

WHITFIELD: -- there is this realization, perhaps they're seeing. Is it a liability? A certain responsibility that has come with the profiting that comes from this business?

ORLOWSKI: Right.

WHITFIELD: What has changed?

ORLOWSKI: Well, I think the -- as many of the critics have been saying for a long time, when you -- when you run a machine learning algorithm on society. Right, that's how these platforms are built. They learn from what they collect and they keep feeding back these systems. The critics have been warning that things were going to get worse and worse.

And I think what we're seeing now is that we're hitting this tipping point. Like, we are hitting the curve in the exponential chart where things are just escalating so much more -- so much faster than they have a decade ago. You know, we're living -- we're living in this inertia, right.

It's not -- it's not like there is a singular post that turns somebody's mindset. This is a decade of this slow drip, these whispers in the back of your mind that every scroll -- every time you scroll, every little article that you see, is constantly reinforcing whatever it is that is going to resonate with you. That happens to each and every one of us, regardless of your political ideology. We're all living in our own little Truman show version of reality, where these platforms aren't actually connecting us to the world. They're actually separating us from reality.

WHITFIELD: So, now, during Wednesday's riot, a lot of people who showed up said they learned about the gathering, the intent, --

ORLOWSKI: Right.

WHITFIELD: -- via these, you know, social sites.

ORLOWSKI: Right.

WHITFIELD: And so, do these sites -- because you say they are watching. They pay attention to the behavior. What's being spoken. Do they bear some culpability by not saying something sooner about what they learned about the gathering when there was very graphic language that was posted about targeting someone, going out to kill somebody. And doing so by meeting at Capitol Hill and storming the building.

ORLOWSKI: Right. I think what you're getting to, where the question comes down to one of the fundamental challenges in how these social media platforms are designed. They're designed in a way where anybody can post anything, and then the content moderators try to catch the bad things. Like, fundamentally, that entire system doesn't do well at scale. Like, you can never catch all of the bad things. You can never catch enough of the bad things.

Even when this particular movement was starting to surface on social media, and even when Facebook was able to jump in and stop particular groups around Stop the Steal, it had already reached hundreds of thousands of people. All right. So, when you have a system like this where, like, anything goes, and they just try to catch the really egregious bad things, they're always in a constant losing battle. Some of the research that we know. Lies spread six times faster on Twitter than the truth.

WHITFIELD: Wow.

ORLOWSKI: So, this is research coming out of MIT. So, if you look at the system as a whole, you kind of scale back and look at what social media is doing, if lies are going to operate six times faster than the truth, the truth will never keep up. The truth cannot keep up in a system that profits off of misinformation.

WHITFIELD: That's really sad. A sad way to end this one. But I'm glad to see you, Jeff, and learn from what you've discovered.

ORLOWSKI: Yes.

WHITFIELD: Jeff Orlowski, thank you so much.

ORLOWSKI: Thanks, Fred.

WHITFIELD: And congrats on being the director of "The Social Dilemma" on Netflix.

ORLOWSKI: Thank you.

WHITFIELD: All right. Some have called Wednesday's Capitol Hill attack a failed coup attempt. Next, why CNN's Nick Paton Walsh says this would have played out much differently if not in America. He'll join me live.

[16:34:33]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: In the aftermath of the insurrection attack on the U.S. Capitol and the failure of policing, the country woke up the next day to relative order. Congress finished its business of certifying Joe Biden as the president-elect and democracy continued. As a seasoned Correspondent, CNN's International Security Editor, Nick Paton Walsh has seen his share of insurrections and coup attempts abroad. He says, in a new op-ed for CNN, that America was lucky to be saved by its democracy.

He joins me now from London. Good to see you, Nick. So, help people understand that. You know, you make the point that rioters simply had no idea how lucky they are to enjoy their privileges of the wealth and freedom of the United States.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR: Yes. I mean, normally, what we've seen around the world, as foreign correspondents, attempted failed coups, unrest. Because, often of a fraudulent election, a genuinely fraudulent election, where there has been blatant vote rigging by an autocrat, and then people rising up in anger against that.

What I think many Americans have to understand here is how for people, perhaps, who've suffered from tyrannies like that, the scenes were remarkable to behold. Because you had had a very free and fair election. One of the fairest in history. Yet, still, there was enough freedom of speech for people to indulge themselves on social media with conspiracy theories, that the whole thing had been a steal.

[16:40:00]

WALSH: And, yet, still exercise their freedom of protest to turn into that violent riot that we saw that took a number of lives.

Yet, still, after those shocking scenes, which most of the time the rest of the parts of the world frankly you would sadly fill an abyss the next day. The president, perhaps, in hiding or celebrating his kind of ugly victory there, depending on what quite had happened. Instead, the next morning, you woke up. Rolling news coverage. Congress had done its job. The police were in place. And things were kind of sliding back to normal, despite the shock.

You had a system of law and order and democracy that prevailed. These guys simply didn't get anywhere, if they even knew what they wanted to do when they got there. And I think that's an extraordinary privilege Americans have that many people around the world watching those scenes simply would have felt a bit of jealousy about, to some degree.

WHITFIELD: So, Nick, take a look with me at this video from our colleague, Alex Marquardt, and his crew. And what they experienced when they were trying to report from inside the siege right on the fringes, you know, of the Capitol. They were outside. And I do want to caution our viewers that there was a lot of explicit language. There are profanities in this clip. So, if you have children in the room, might usher them out of the room right now. But we do want to show you what really was experienced by our crew.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You better get out of here, mother fuckers.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's go. Let's go. We've got to go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's get out.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've got to go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No, go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fuck you. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't you talk to me.

CROWD: USA. USA. USA.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. Let's go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out of here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get out of here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get the fuck out of here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go. Go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You don't like (INAUDIBLE)? Fuck you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fuck you.

UNIDENTIFIED: Let's go.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fuck you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You fucking pussy. Who are you with?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You fucking piece of shit.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's more of us than you. There's more of us than you.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WHITFIELD: I mean, Nick, this is really frightening to watch. It's frightening when it happens. You know, I have experienced what it was like at the inauguration of Trump, when my producer and I and crew were right there in the shadow of the Capitol on the mall. And we were jeered, you know, by Trump supporters. Not of that caliber.

And I know you've experienced, too, abroad, when people recognize that you're with an American network. Talk to me about what happens when that happens. How you process safety versus getting the story. And, at the same time, not wanting to become the story.

WALSH: Well, there is nothing you can really do there, to be honest. And Alex showed you. He's been around the world. Been around the block a number of times. You really just have to try and calmly walk away. Because people aren't going to that situation shouting abuse like that because they've had a reason to think that this is the best thing to do. So, no logical response you give to them will calm them down.

What's extraordinary, though, is scenes like that of things that I have mostly experienced in countries where there's great anger towards America. That people feel you are somehow associated with the U.S. government. And, therefore, voicing their anger towards you is a way of expressing that broader fury.

What's shocking to see there is these are Americans turning on Americans. They're turning on an essential part of what keeps their lights on. What keeps their economy the biggest in the world, at this point. That their democracy, that so many are envious of. The First Amendment rights they're enjoying are embodied in the people they're yelling at. And so, it's an exceptionally sad thing to see.

And one -- the kind of anger there you saw reminds me, I think a lot of the time, of crowds we saw during the beginnings of Ukraine's Civil War, fueled by Russian propaganda, showing anger towards anybody who they thought were against their particular motivation there. And it's deeply distressing to see that outside of Capitol Hill against colleagues like that.

But, frankly, the inevitable consequence of having a president who's called the press the enemy of the people for such a protracted period of time. Startling words still to hear now.

WHITFIELD: It really is. Well, we appreciate your perspective. Nick Paton Walsh, thank you so much.

And join CNN's Wolf Blitzer for "The Trump Insurrection: 24 Hours That Shook America." The CNN special report airs tonight at 10:00.

[16:44:48]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WHITFIELD: All right. We'd like to end this hour with an emotional and heart felt message from Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a powerful video nearly eight minutes long, the former California Republican governor, actor, and immigrant from Austria, condemns the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol and calls for unity.

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ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, ACTOR, FORMER GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA: As an immigrant to this country, I would like to say a few words to my fellow Americans, and to our friends around the world, about the events of recent days. I grew up in Austria. I'm very aware of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. It was a night of rampage against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys.

Wednesday was the day of broken glass right here in the United States. The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol. They shattered the ideals we took for granted. They did not just break down the doors of the building that housed American democracy. They trampled the very principles on which our country was founded.

Now, I grew up in the ruins of a country that suffered the loss of its democracy.

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I was born in 1947, two years after the second world war. Growing up, I was surrounded by broken men drinking away their guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history. Not all of them were anti-Semites and Nazis. Many just went along, step by step, down the road. They were the people next door.

Now, I've never shared this so publicly because it is a painful memory. But my father would come home drunk once or twice a week, and he would scream and hit us and scare my mother. I didn't hold him totally responsible because our neighbor was doing the same thing to his family, and so was the next neighbor over. I heard it with my own ears and saw it with my own eyes. They were in physical pain from the shrapnel in their bodies and in emotional pain from what they saw or did. It all started with lies, and lies, and lies, and intolerance.

So, being from Europe, I've seen, first hand, how things can spin out of control. I know there is a fear, in this country and all over the world, that something like this could happen right here. Now, I do not believe it is. But I do believe that we must be aware of the dire consequences of selfishness and cynicism. President Trump sought to overturn the results of an election and of a fair election. He saw the coup by misleading people with lies. My father and our neighbors were misled also with lies, and I know where such lies lead.

President Trump is a failed leader. He will go down in history as the worst president ever. The good thing is he soon will be as irrelevant as an old tweet. But what are we to make of those elected officials who have enabled his lies and his treachery?

I will remind them of what Teddy Roosevelt said, patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president. John F. Kennedy wrote a book called "Profiles in Courage." A number of members of my own party, because of their own spinelessness, would never see their names in such a book. I guarantee you. They are complicit with those who carried the flag of self-righteous insurrection into the Capitol.

But it did not work. Our democracy held firm. Within hours, the Senate and the House of Representatives were doing the people's business and certifying the election of president-elect Biden. What a great display of democracy.

Now, I grew up catholic. I went to church and to Catholic school. I learned the bible and my catechism and all of this. And from those days, I remember a phrase that is relevant today. A servant's heart. It means serving something larger than yourself.

See, what we need right now, from our elected representatives, is a public servant's heart. We need public servants that serve something larger than their own power or their own party. We need public servants who will serve higher ideals. The ideals in which this country was founded. The ideals that other countries look up to.

Now, with the past few days, friends from all over the world have been calling, and calling, and calling me. Calling me distraught and worried about us, as a nation. One woman was in tears about America. Wonderful tears of idealism of what America should be. Those tears should remind us of what America means to the world. Now, I've told everyone who has called, that as heart breaking as all this is, America will come back from these dark days and shine our lights once again. Now, you see this sword? This is the Conan's sword. Now, here's the thing about swords. The more you temper a sword, the stronger it becomes. The more you pound it with a hammer and then heat it in the fire, and then thrust it into the cold water, and then pound it again, and then plunge it into the fire and the water, and the more often you do that, the stronger it becomes.

I'm not telling you all this because I want to become an expert sword maker. But our democracy is like this steel of this sword. The more it is tempered, the stronger it becomes. Our democracy has been tempered by wars, injustices, and insurrections.

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SCHWARZENEGGER: I believe, as shaken as we are by the events of recent days, we will come out stronger because we now understand what can be lost. We need reforms, of course, so that this never ever happens again. We need to hold accountable the people that brought us to this unforgiveable point. And we need to look past ourselves, our partisan disagreements, and put our democracy first. And we need to heal together from the trauma of what has just happened. We need to heal not as Republicans or as Democrats, but as Americans.

Now, to begin this process, no matter what your political affiliation is, I ask you to join me in saying to President-elect Biden, President-elect Biden, we wish you great success as our president. If you succeed, our nation succeeds. We support you with all of our hearts, as you seek to bring us together. And to those who think they can overturn the United States Constitution, know this. You will never win.

President-elect Biden, we stand with you today, tomorrow, and forever in defense of our democracy from those who would threaten it. May God bless all of you and may God bless America.

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WHITFIELD: Perhaps now one of his most powerful films. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Thanks so much for joining me today. I'm Fredricka Whitfield. The CNN NEWSROOM continues with Ana Cabrera right after this.

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