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Trump Silent As Drumbeat For Impeachment Grows Louder; Impeachment Articles Could Be Introduced As Soon As Monday; Video Shows Officer Being Crushed By Mob; Lawmakers Criticize Lack Of Preparedness For Riots; California Reports All-Time Daily High Death Rate On Saturday; Inside The Mob That Swamped The Capitol. Aired 1-2a ET

Aired January 10, 2021 - 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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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): This is CNN breaking news.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR (voice-over): Top of the hour, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. Thank you for joining me.

The drumbeat of impeachment is growing louder in Washington while the silence from the Twitter-less president is deafening. So far, the White House has not lowered the flag to half-staff to honor or even acknowledge the officer who died defending the seat of the U.S. government.

And the president has yet to condemn the mob's horrifying calls for vice president Mike Pence's head during Wednesday's attack. The two men have not spoken since that day, when Pence did the only thing that he could, which was defying Trump by upholding his constitutional duty to certify the election for Joe Biden.

And here's further evidence of the growing divide now between the two men. Sources tell CNN that Pence is not ruling out using the 25th Amendment to remove the president from office. And Pence will also be attending Joe Biden's inauguration. Yet we also know that Donald Trump will not.

Even before then, House Democrats say they are ready to move ahead with a historic second impeachment of the president for inciting the violence and fearing he could do more damage in the days ahead, the very few days he has left in office.

They say this is as much about sending a message to future presidents as it is about the current president.

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REP. JAMES CLYBURN (D-SC), HOUSE MAJORITY WHIP: It's not only about Trump. It is about whether or not we're going to send a signal to anybody who ever occupies the White House again, that we are not going to ignore any attempts on your part not just to cause an insurrection but to ignore the will of the people.

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BOLDUAN: John Harwood is joining me now once again from Washington.

The president and vice president are not talking, so what is Trump doing?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Trump is holed up in the White House, fuming, raging about his defeat. He suffered a terrible psychic injury. Donald Trump is somebody, Kate, who, as we've all observed over the past four years, is consumed with himself, his reputation, his image, his self-image.

And the fact that he lost the election is something he's not been able to accept, so he's been raging against that, propagating these fantasies about somehow changing the results of the election.

And he finally ran out the string on that last week with a calamitous circumstance, where he incited these rioters. They went and they desecrated the Capitol. Five people lost their lives.

And at the end of the day, there were some people who finally decided to stand up and get off the train. And you have had a couple of cabinet members resign. You've got Republican senators calling for his resignation. You've got Mike Pence not ruling out the use of the 25th Amendment.

You've got a Democratic Congress poised to impeach him again. All of these things are bearing down on Donald Trump. He has lost his social media feeds on Twitter, so he can't instantly get out messages.

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HARWOOD: He is lost right now and has a very small and a lunatic circle of advisers around him. The saving grace last week was that, when all this was exploding, you did have some members of the White House staff and his family, who persuaded him to make that video, acknowledging that he wouldn't be president after January 20th.

But this is a president who cannot be counted on to act constructively on his own. And the entire country, Washington, is looking to get out of this next 10 days as uneventfully as we can.

BOLDUAN: Yes. John, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.

Joining right now for more is Ron Brownstein, senior editor at "The Atlantic."

Ron, sources telling CNN tonight the vice president is not ruling out an effort to invoke the 25th Amendment. I think most revealing and maybe shocking is that the president and Mike Pence, they have not talked since Wednesday.

I mean, what does this say to you? RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: First, it says that no one allies with Donald Trump gets to the finish line without destroying their integrity and their reputation or breaking with him because there is no bottom. And sooner or later he puts you in a position, given that loyalty is entirely a one-way street to him, he puts you in a positive to a point that you just cannot go.

In this case, it was Pence directly contravening the Constitution and trying to overturn an election, in which nearly 160 million Americans voted to make Donald Trump the president.

I think there are two things probably at work here. One, if your boss sends a mob down to the Capitol that ends up chanting hang you, "Hang Mike Pence," that might catch your attention after four years of defending Trump.

But also I think he is holding open the 25th Amendment as a way to, in all likelihood, moderate Trump's behavior in these final days and perhaps to reduce the risk, not only to the country but to the party.

BOLDUAN: Add to that, Ron -- I mean, the White House has not ordered flags to be lowered to half-staff in honor of the Capitol Hill police officer who died in the riots. And the president hasn't said anything about Officer Brian Sicknick or any of the other four people who died in that attack.

To me, that's really not a small thing. Some might say it's just the flag at the White House, if you will. It's quite the opposite.

Isn't that making a huge statement?

BROWNSTEIN: Yes, well, he's sending a signal, the same signal he sent in his video. I mean, we love you. Calling on the patriots. Ivanka tweeting these were patriots who ransacked the Capitol. And by all indications in the reporting we're seeing tonight, at least some of them envisioned much greater violence against members of Congress.

And by not putting the flag at half-staff and by not condemning them, Trump is continuing to signal his tacit approval of what they did.

And what is striking about this is, as the reporting comes out on just how horrific this could have been, the fact that the principal goal of almost all Republicans in Congress, who have said anything about this, has been to ensure that there are no consequences for Trump.

I mean, you have all these crocodile tears from people who were voting a couple of days ago to overturn the election, now saying a second impeachment would unnecessarily divide the country.

Don't you think overturning a election would have divided the country?

BOLDUAN: You're putting it in a way I think that perfectly crystallizes the hypocrisy of this whole thing.

I was going to ask you about the impeachment effort, is it worthwhile, even if he's not removed? We heard from Bob Corker. He spoke out about this to Jake Tapper. He said his concern is he wants Trump out of office more than anybody. But he says it potentially helps Trump look the victim and strengthens him with supporters.

BROWNSTEIN: Look, nothing is -- there's no clear-cut answer. But here's what I would say: 100 people organized, many of them with guns today, outside the Kentucky state legislature in a so-called patriots' rally.

It's clear many on the far-right view what happened as more a success than a failure. If there are not strong, serious consequences for everyone involved, from the bottom to the top, it's pretty easy to predict, you are going to get more of this.

I think the feeling among Democrats in particular and maybe some of the Republicans is, if there is not a strong unequivocal message sent that this is unacceptable.

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BROWNSTEIN: That what the president did was an act of violence against the United States of America, against the Constitution, that you are leaving open the door for more of this kind of anti-democratic agitation and violence in the future.

So I think there's going to be a lot of pressure for there to be some consequence -- you know, Joe Biden, as a brand, is unity. His instinct is to say, let's look forward, not back. But I think there is going to be enormous pushback against that in the party, looking for some way to hold Trump accountable.

As you know, part of the impeachment this time would be a provision barring him from holding federal office again. I think there's going to be a lot of discussion about whether the Justice Department could prosecute him for what he did, not to mention a serious investigation into the Capitol police and whether there was collusion and what happened.

BOLDUAN: A third layer to that, what about the senators and the House members who helped these rioters, who lied over and over again about the election, when they knew better?

They know better, especially Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley.

Do you think they're actually going to suffer consequences?

BROWNSTEIN: I think, you know, the Senate, you know, tends to hold back on disciplining their own. But there are calls. I saw Sherrod Brown call for their expulsion. Patty Murray said they should resign.

Again, if you start from the premise that what we saw was a -- essentially an attempted coup, an insurrection to overturn the democratic results of this election, the idea that anyone involved in it could go through without consequences, basically inviting this to happen again. And it is worth noting that, on the evening after the riot, when

Congress came back into session, the vast majority of House Republicans voted to reject the results from Arizona and Pennsylvania, disenfranchise millions of voters, with the goal of making Donald Trump president for four more years.

BOLDUAN: Including the top Republican in the House.

BROWNSTEIN: His role in the riot did not disqualify him in their eyes. And so, you know, we have watched, I think, over these four years, an astounding percentage of the Republican Party show itself to be willing to go along, to excuse, abet, enable Trump, as he has pushed and pushed and pushed against the rule of law.

And I don't think you get to this point we saw this week without that precedent. I mean, the famous quote from Susan Collins after impeachment, "He learned a pretty big lesson."

He did indeed, which is that no matter how far he went into undermining our small D democratic traditions, the vast majority of Republicans would defend him. I think that's how he has taken us step by step to a scene that we could not have imagined even when he took office.

BOLDUAN: What is the lesson other than that?

What is the lesson other than that?

That is what you would learn from that acquittal. That is what he has seen. There were not consequences. And then you see what has happened. Thank you, Ron.

Coming up, police say they didn't see signs ahead of time that Wednesday's protests would turn violent. But we are finding the signs were everywhere.

Plus, lawmakers and now the first Republican senators say that it is dangerous for President Trump to remain in office. Here's why.

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REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): This is a man who's still in charge of American nuclear forces. He's still the most powerful man on the planet.

And guess what?

I think he's more than a little grumpy right now.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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BOLDUAN: There's new video offering a new perspective on the crush of the mob as they tried to fight and force their way into the Capitol Wednesday. Police officers pushing back as the mob reached a fever pitch.

Before we play this, we want to warn you, the video is disturbing.

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BOLDUAN (voice-over): This video later shows one police officer, trapped between a doorframe and the masses of people, shouting in agony for help as he was being crushed. The officer was eventually able to free himself and former D.C. Metro Police commissioner Charles Ramsey told CNN today that the officer's injuries are not life- threatening -- thankfully.

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BOLDUAN: The deadly mob attack on the Capitol did not come out of the blue. There were warnings and threats surfacing on social media for months. Rioters had been advised to come with weapons and supplies for a violent siege. And as Drew Griffin reports, the threats are still coming.

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DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SR. INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over) : Caught flat-footed, federal and local officials insist they had no idea the siege would happen.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There was no intelligence that suggested there would be a breach of the U.S. Capitol.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): But that seems hardly believable. In the days and weeks before the insurrection, the warning signs were clear. Violent and threatening online posts and online call to arms, "Operation Occupy the Capitol," one viral post called it.

"Go to Washington January 6th and help storm the Capitol."

"We will storm the government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents and demand a recount."

"Trump or war today. That simple," another user posted.

JOEL FINKELSTEIN, NETWORK CONTAGION RESEARCH INSTITUTE: The writing was on the wall months ago that this could turn into something extremely violent.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Researchers who track hate, violent speech and extremist groups say what happened at the Capitol shows what some dismissed as just online boasting was actually a plan of action and some of those who sieged the Capitol were prepared.

JOHN SCOTT-RAILTON, UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO: There were men on the Senate floor wearing tactical equipment, carrying zip-tie restraints of the kinds that police use to handcuff people. I somehow doubt that they just brought those to a protest.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): The nonprofit rhetoric had wide reach. The nonprofit Advanced Democracy tracked 1,480 violence-related QAnon Twitter posts just since January 1st.

On TikTok, videos promoting violence reviewed 279,000 times.

SCOTT-RAILTON: If you look at the work of anybody who has been tracking violent extremism in the United States, you will find that they have been issuing warnings regularly about these groups and the language that they're using.

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GRIFFIN (voice-over): One of the main Stop the Steal rally organizers, Ali Alexander, told followers on Periscope he and three Congress men were planning something big.

ALI ALEXANDER, STOP THE STEAL ORGANIZER: We four schemed up a pretty maximum pressure on Congress. We could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud war from outside.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): He told followers, "Bring tents, sleeping bags and other supplies," and added this, "If D.C. escalates, so do we."

A follower responded to the post, "Bring a gun."

Investigators of the Anti-Defamation League say they were sharing the violent posts and concerns about January 6th with law enforcement right up until this week.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We've been in touch with law enforcement on a very regular basis.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Fearing the warnings were being ignored, the ADL went public.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Our level of concern rose so dramatically that, on Monday, we actually published a blog to put it out on the public record about our degree of alarm. We weren't surprised by the intensity of what happened.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): What's next?

January 20th: researchers are worried about the increasing chatter about violence at the inauguration.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I think it's very plausible that we are just at the beginning of this.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): "Round two on January 20th," one poster writes on the online forum The Donald. "I don't even care about keeping Trump in power. I care about war." "Please take urgent action to save our country."

"On January 20th," says another post, "it's our last chance."

GRIFFIN: All of this means the same groups that attacked the Capitol on January 6th may already be planning to be back in Washington. Hopefully, this time, law enforcement is taking note -- Drew Griffin, CNN, Atlanta.

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BOLDUAN: Drew, thank you so much.

Joining me right now is Juliette Kayyem.

I was struck by one expert in Drew's piece, who said this is not over.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: That's why what we'll hopefully see is a combination of efforts to at least minimize the risk. You're not going to eliminate it in time. That is going to include a tremendous force presence on the 20th, if not sooner because there's other dates being mentioned.

I also believe the arrests you're seeing around the country, a couple dozen now, more over the weekend and early next week, are really essential because they show the FBI is serious about putting these people in jail.

And finally I think it is important to isolate and essentially eradicate the influence of Trump as an inciter of domestic terrorism, so keeping him from the platforms, these political moves. All of them are going to matter to at least minimize the risk in the next 10 days to come.

BOLDUAN: So you know, in the coming days, as you've mentioned, is Joe Biden's inauguration. And so far he is saying that he's still wanting to stand on the west front of the Capitol for his swearing-in. The image that we have all come so accustomed to when it comes to the inauguration and the oath of the President of the United States.

These are the same areas swarmed by mobs Wednesday.

Do you think Joe Biden should reconsider?

KAYYEM: I don't. Unless there's new intelligence that would -- basically the Secret Service would say to him, we need to not do this. The Secret Service is in charge of organizing and planning for an inauguration. It's called a national special security event, an NSSE.

Remember, we're in a pandemic so it was not going to have a large audience and it certainly won't have a festive mood like we've seen with presidents before Donald Trump.

But nevertheless, I also think there's an important symbolism to Biden maintaining a continuity of a peaceful transition of power. He won't look scared. The country won't look scared. He will have moved on from Trump. Trump will not be there. I think those are important, too.

All these Republicans are now talking about healing out of the blue, right, now we're going to talk about healing. But we have to think about how President-Elect Biden is going to govern such a deeply divided nation.

And I think one way to begin that is a constitutional moment on January 20th, for the public to see, like it was before, that whatever damage that has been done in the last four years and certainly the last week, that we still move forward.

BOLDUAN: I mean, this was a colossal security failure Wednesday.

[01:25:00]

BOLDUAN: How do you begin to fix what was broken here, going beyond the resignations of top police officials?

KAYYEM: Now you start from the sort of baseline, that it will be bad. So this is where, whether it's security theater or just the mere presence of lots of people, that has to happen. So for Virginia, Maryland, National Guard -- I bet you're going to hear about National Guard coming from all around the country to have a physical presence, to essentially make sure that mobs cannot form.

Individuals may still be around. But you just don't want 10, 20, 30 men, who potentially can be armed. We're also going to have to ramp up intelligence, see who's coming into the city.

But basically, you start from the belief that something bad could happen and work your way backwards.

I don't know what happened with the intelligence in this case. I'm not reading classified information anymore. And I was starting to get agitated by what was going to happen, that the Capitol police and others seemed so caught off guard is a failure not only for us but for them.

They lost someone. The pictures that we're showing now show a really terrifying few hours I don't think any of us had any idea the day of.

BOLDUAN: I agree. On Capitol police, Jim Clyburn suggested he thought Capitol police were complicit in the violence in some pretty striking language. Let me play for you what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The joint session of Congress to count the electoral vote will resume, the tellers having taken their seats. The two houses retired to consider separately --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Clearly neither the right sound bite nor is that Jim Clyburn.

(LAUGHTER) BOLDUAN: That was vice president Mike Pence. But regardless, that Clyburn would suggest that, this evening, that Capitol police would be complicit, because he says, I have my eyes, I have my ears. I know what I saw.

What do you think of that?

KAYYEM: I think a number of things can be true simultaneously. One is that they were completely unprepared, inexcusably unprepared.

Two, most of the Capitol police, as we have seen in the pictures, worked valiantly to protect the life of our constitutional chain of command essentially.

Three, that there might be members of the Capitol police that were too lax, too welcoming, Doing the selfies and they should be punished.

And four, had this been a progressive group of Black Lives Matter, this would have turned out very differently. I think all four of those are probably true simultaneously and we just have a little bit of time to figure out what in fact happened and who should be punished.

BOLDUAN: Juliette, thank you for coming in.

KAYYEM: Thank you so much.

BOLDUAN: President Trump staring down a possible second impeachment.

How quickly could it happen?

Also coming up, this:

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We are being stretched. The nurses are being pushed to their absolute breaking points and then a little further every day.

BOLDUAN (voice-over): Every day, nurses having to work 18 hours a day at one California hospital. We're going to show you exactly what they have been up against day in and day out with no end in sight. That's ahead.

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BOLDUAN: Welcome back to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Kate Bolduan. President Donald Trump could be on the verge of making history in no

way that any president would want. House Democrats say they're getting the ball rolling on second impeachment after the deadly attack Wednesday on the U.S. Capitol. Here's what Congress man Ted Lieu told CNN about this.

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REP. TED LIEU (D-CA): All of us, including Speaker Pelosi, would prefer that Donald Trump simply do the right thing and resign or that vice president Pence actually show some spine, at least for himself and his own family, and invoke the 25th Amendment. If none of that happens, then on Monday we will introduce the article

of impeachment, which is incitement to insurrection. And we do expect a floor vote this coming week.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Congress man Ruben Gallego told us tonight he thinks the House could vote on impeachment as early as Tuesday or Wednesday.

Also tonight, sources tell CNN vice president Mike Pence has not ruled out using the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office, that Pence wants to preserve the option in case Trump becomes more unstable.

No president has ever been removed from office with the 25th Amendment. No president has ever been impeached twice.

Right now there is a nationwide manhunt for those people you have seen on video and on social media taking part in the violent insurrection on the U.S. Capitol. CNN's Evan Perez has more now on that massive investigation.

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EVAN PEREZ, CNN SR. JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Federal authorities around the country are working through the weekend, hunting down some of the people involved in Wednesday's terrorist attack on the U.S. Capitol.

We know of at least 18 arrests on federal charges and dozens more are facing charges in local court here in Washington.

Among those arrests are Adam Johnson, arrested in his home state of Florida. He is seen in pictures carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's lectern.

Also arrested, Jacob Chansley in Arizona, seen in video inside the Capitol, wearing face paint and a bear skin hat. The FBI says that Chansley told them he came to Washington because Donald Trump called for his supporters to come and that he organized a group to heed the president's call to action.

Another member of the mob facing charges, Derek Evans, a delegate in the West Virginia legislature. And he announced that he is resigning his seat. Five people died in Wednesday's mob scene, including a Capitol police

officer, who was attacked by the pro-Trump crowd. Prosecutors have laid out serious charges against some suspects, including against a man who drove from Alabama with a truck, allegedly carrying bombs and a handgun and a rifle.

Another man, arrested with firearms, allegedly told friends that he came to kill Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- Evan Perez, CNN, Washington.

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BOLDUAN: Evan, thank you for that.

Hospitals now in parts of California are under such enormous pressure.

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BOLDUAN: The National Guard has been called in to help but the flood of COVID-19 patients just hasn't stopped.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, when I first got in it, it felt like maybe a Band-Aid on an arterial bleed.

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BOLDUAN: That is next.

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BOLDUAN: The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases passed 22 million tonight; 2 million of those cases happened in just these first nine days of the new year. It's amazing and astonishing and should stop everyone in its tracks.

But even more, look at California, one of the hardest hit states is seeing hundreds of new cases every day and coronavirus deaths in the state are right there as well, one person dying every eight minutes in Los Angeles.

The state is reporting 695 people lost their lives to the virus just on Saturday, which is an all-time daily high. Cases are surging in major cities like Los Angeles but also in small towns in rural California. Sara Sidner has more.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We've never seen the ER like this before in our whole time being here.

SARA SIDNER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is what COVID-19 looks like in California in 2021, a hellscape.

LINDSAY PACKARD, ICU MANAGER AND NURSE, St. MARY MEDICAL CENTER: The death toll has been just out of this world.

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SIDNER (voice-over): On the edge of the Mojave Desert at St. Mary Medical Center in Apple Valley, you can see the crisis even before you walk in. Patients arrived constantly, some by ambulance, some on foot.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What's going on today?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I just feel weak.

SIDNER (voice-over): A California National Guard strike team of medics and nurses arrives daily.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is an area of great need and we're glad to be here. You know, when I first got in it, it felt like maybe a Band-Aid on an arterial bleed.

SIDNER (voice-over): A gush of patients that just won't stop.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'd say about 80 percent of our patients are COVID.

SIDNER (voice-over): Temporary plastic walls erected all over this hospital create a maze of COVID pods. Patients with other emergencies line the halls.

SIDNER: The hospital is so full here that some of the patients that you're seeing here in the hallways will have to wait seven to 10 days possibly just to get a room. They need to be admitted to the hospital. But they're being cared for in the hallways for now.

SIDNER (voice-over): Upstairs in the 20-bed ICU --

PACKARD: In ICU, we see death and dying on a daily basis but never to this scale.

SIDNER (voice-over): -- every intensive care unit bed is full; every staff member, busy saving patients.

PACKARD: We have over 50 ICU patients in the hospital right now. And we only have the staff to care for about 20 of them. So we are being stretched, the nurses are being pushed to their absolute breaking points and then a little further every day.

SIDNER: The soundtrack here, a never-ending series of beeping, codes and rapid response calls alerting staff when someone's heart has stopped or breathing has stalled. That's what's happening behind this curtain inside a newly created COVID unit.

A COVID-19 patient in pain can't catch their breath. Nurses and doctors can't, either, working every day to exhaustion. DR. ARTUR GRIGORIYAN, EMERGENCY MEDICINE, ST, MARY MEDICAL CENTER: The physical toll, of course, there's also an emotional toll and it's very hard to see these patients dying. You know, mortality is very -- has been very, very high.

SIDNER: How do you deal with this?

I mean, are you OK?

GRIGORIYAN: I guess. I'm still standing but, you know, we'll see. Give it a few months.

SIDNER (voice-over): But right now, a patient needs him. He's on life support. COVID pneumonia is on the attack. His lung has collapsed. There's a scramble to insert a chest tube; the difference between life and death, razor thin.

PACKARD: People don't take it seriously until they're here with us or until they're on the other line of that phone call talking to their family member for the last time. It is real it is serious and most of what we're seeing is preventable.

SIDNER: The hospital is making space in every nook and cranny but the crush of patients threatens to overwhelm the space and the staff every single day. Everyone here expects this to get worse before coronavirus takes its last breath.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SIDNER: The thing that got us the most, honestly, was the sound of struggle, the sound of pain inside of that hospital. And really, this is all about the numbers, which is why the ICU nurse was telling people to please do everything you can to stop this. Wear a mask at the very least.

The numbers here of coronavirus patients are astronomical and so are the numbers of those getting the virus. It's about 40,000 people who are testing positive with coronavirus here in California a day -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: Sara, thank you so much.

"The sound of struggle, the sound of pain."

Joining me right now is Dr. Eric Topol, a cardiologist and the director of Scripps Research Translational Institute out of California.

Doctor, thank you for joining me tonight. California, the epicenter of this virus. The mayor of L.A. says someone is dying in his city of COVID once every eight minutes. And you see the picture from inside that one medical center, St. Mary's, that Sara visited. It's hard to understand how it got to this place.

But is there anything that can be done right now to get any kind of handle on this crisis in the state? DR. ERIC TOPOL, DIRECTOR, SCRIPPS RESEARCH TRANSLATIONAL INSTITUTE: Right. Well, Kate, good to be with you. It's a dreadful, horrific situation. But like we said, it's so eminently preventable.

We're not doing so many things we could be doing. You know, getting people masks, high quality masks and enforcing their use and all the other mitigation measures that are -- just because you say this is the recommendation, people don't follow it.

And so this has to be enforced. We should be getting home rapid tests to every household so they know whether they're infectious or not. And there's so much tracking we're not doing, whether it's digital, mobility, genomics, wastewater.

[01:45:00]

TOPOL: And we're not vaccinating nearly enough aggressively. We're not pulling out all the stops and that is what we're seeing now, is the crushing, breaking the back of the workforce in the hospitals and all the facilities in California and also in many other parts of the country.

BOLDUAN: And it's so stark, also, that it is California that's seeing such a crush because California was one of the states that was most aggressive early on in the crisis. First to issue a stay-at-home order when the pandemic started.

What went so wrong, Doctor? TOPOL: Well, one of the big things was pandemic fatigue. It's been now 10 months. It's hard to just keep trying to fight the virus. But it's also the lack of unity. There's just so many people who don't take this seriously, as was mentioned, at St. Mary's. This is the problem. They don't abide by the things we know work.

And we could get this virus contained if we did pull out all the stops. We're not vaccinating. If you look at Israel, they were in worse shape than California, if you look at the number of COVID cases per population.

But they're vaccinating their way out of it. They have 20 percent of the whole country is now vaccinated and our entire country is at 2 percent, even lower in California. So there's just so much we could do but we're just not doing it and that has to change.

BOLDUAN: One thing on the vaccine front -- we've heard from the Biden transition that it would like to try to send out, distribute and administer, really, every dose of the vaccine that is available, rather than holding back half, as has been the strategy so far, in reserve for the second shot.

What do you think of that strategy?

TOPOL: I actually think it's a good idea, because we're holding back tens of millions of doses. Right now, of course, it isn't the issue because we have a mismatch of getting shots in and vials of the vaccine sitting in freezers. But soon, hopefully, we're going catch up. We had a good day of almost

800,000 people vaccinated just a couple of days ago. If we can build on that and get to the 2 million to 3 million people that need to get vaccinated every day -- 24/7 -- this is an emergency -- we're going to deplete the supply and we need to get into the other half that's being held back.

I do think Pfizer and Moderna are going to be able to keep up with people's second dose. So I'm very much in favor of that. That shows the aggressiveness. This is an emergency. We need to vaccinate like there's no tomorrow.

BOLDUAN: Real quick, what do you think of the idea, if that's the strategy or maybe even separate from it, of -- we heard from a top COVID adviser to the Biden transition, of taking a look at the priority list, maybe opening it up more, who should be getting the shots first.

What do you think?

TOPOL: Well, I think we should be doing that. It's not just that. There's a problem. First, for the health-care workers and people in nursing homes and there were all these different phases. If you look again at Israel, what's been successful is keep it simple. Anybody over age 60.

But there are different groups that deserve priority. The biggest problem isn't necessarily, Kate, the order but it's the lack of having enough facilities. It's the lack of the aggressive posture. If you have extra doses, just vaccinate someone instead of wasting them and throwing them away.

So we just don't have that posture yet and that's really the critical aspect.

BOLDUAN: Dr. Topol, thank you so much for coming on.

TOPOL: Thank you, Kate.

BOLDUAN: We'll be right back.

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[01:50:00]

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BOLDUAN: The insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is a day that this country will never forget. CNN's Elle Reeve was there among the mob, seeing first-hand the chaos and violence unfold in real time.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are we supposed to do? OK? The Supreme Court's not helping us. No one's helping us. Only us can help us. Only we can do it.

ELLE REEVE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A masked group of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday to stop the certification of what they believe was a fraudulent election.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unquestionable there are those that are stolen. It's unquestionable. There is so -- there's so much proof.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: People, come on. You didn't come up here for nothing. Come on up and tell Nancy Pelosi what you think.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We want our representatives to do the right thing and decertify the seven swing states.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: USA. USA. USA.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: USA. USA. USA.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: USA. USA. USA.

REEVE: The rally started peacefully as tens of thousands gathered outside the White House. They cheered Donald Trump and his allies as they continued to lie that the election was stolen.

RUDY GIULIANI, ATTORNEY FOR DONALD TRUMP: Let's have trial by combat.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He just said, "trial by combat." I'm ready. I'm ready.

REEVE: People marched down two avenues to the Capitol and once they got there, some broke through barricades. Once a few rioters broke into the building, the mob followed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was actually here when this guy started breaking in with a cane. Obviously, there's a power struggle. There's the peaceful guys that were like, No, no. We don't to do that.

Then there was that guy. You know, he just said, Oh, well. I'm breaking it in.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We broke down the barriers and we rushed them. We charged them. We got all the way to the steps and made a line. So we stood there and we tried to push them back a little bit, until finally they started getting rough with us. So we had to push them back.

So that's what we did. We pushed them back. We tried to get up the steps. They wouldn't let us up. So then they started pepper-spraying and macing everybody.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Are you OK?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Put some milk in your eyes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They Maced me. They pushed me out and they Maced me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mace.

REEVE: We spoke to some people who broke into the Capitol.

(on camera): What really just -- what happened in there?

Tell us what happened.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, we went to there. And then I walked in and there's just a whole bunch of people lighting up in some Oregon room. I don't know if it's an -- there's ton of Oregon things.

[01:55:00]

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: But they were smoking a bunch of weed in there.

And then we moved it down. So many statues. Cops are very cool. They were like, Hey, guys, have a good night, some of them. It's just crazy. It's really weird. You can see that some of them are on our side.

REEVE: We've reached out to the Capitol Hill Police for comment but have not yet heard back.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We have your backs for a long time now. Long time.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A huge group of us stormed inside and as we sort of -- We were basically shouting at the cops and there were people arguing with them, trying to get them on our side, basically.

REEVE: Clashes with police happened sporadically throughout the day and waves of tear gas wafted into the crowd. They said they felt like they were doing something good.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, this is a bunch of really, really pissed- off regular folks. I've got a job. This is Wednesday. I'm supposed to be at work, yes. Shh.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Don't tread on me.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: That's what we're doing, fighting back.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And what's the point? What's the end game?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What's the point.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We're losing our freedoms. What do you mean what's the point?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Taking our freedoms, locking us down and turning this country into a blasted socialist republic and that is not right. That's what I'm doing here.

REEVE: Elle Reeve, CNN, Washington, D.C.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BOLDUAN: Wow. Thank you, Elle.

Thank you so much for joining us. I'm Kate Bolduan. My colleague, Michael Holmes, picks up our coverage after this short break. You are watching CNN.