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Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) is Interviewed about Impeachment; Change of Course for Vaccine Distribution; Social Media's Crack Down on Rhetoric and Conspiracies. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired January 12, 2021 - 09:30   ET

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

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[09:33:55]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: Democrats are pushing forward for a second impeachment vote for President Trump with just over a week before President-elect Biden is inaugurated. The timeline is tight. The Senate is out of session and Biden's list of priorities is long.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT-ELECT FOR THE UNITED STATES: Can you go a half day on dealing with the impeachment and half day getting my people nominated and confirmed in the Senate, as well as moving on the (INAUDIBLE). So that's my hope and expectation.

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SCIUTTO: Joining me now is Democratic Senator Chris van Hollen of Maryland.

Senator, thanks so much for taking the time this morning.

SEN. CHRIS VAN HOLLEN (D-MD): Good to be with you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: We just got news crossing from the House side, and that is that House Republican leaders will not whip their colleagues, in other words pressure their colleagues in the House, to vote against impeachment. In other words, giving them a green light to vote their conscience as Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney said in this expected vote tomorrow.

I wonder, on the Senate side, have you had conversations with Senate colleagues, Republicans who might be willing to or at least open to voting to convict?

[09:35:07]

VAN HOLLEN: Jim, I have. And I think you will find a number of Republican senators certainly open to it. We'll have to see how they ultimately cast their votes. But at least a few of them recognize that this is the kind of sanction conviction that is necessary at this point in time.

SCIUTTO: So to get a Senate trial prior to inauguration requires some legislative moves. Chuck Schumer has brought those up. I won't get into the weeds on that. But in the simplest terms, it would require the Senate major leader's, Mitch McConnell's, cooperation, which he has not offered yet.

Is there still a possibility, realistically, of a Senate trial before inauguration?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, there's certainly a realistic possibility of a trial starting before the inauguration. And as Senator Schumer has pointed out, we don't need the consent of all 100 senators. Senator Mitch McConnell could agree to do this under a post-9/11 law, and we hope that he will agree to move forward immediately upon the House's impeachment vote.

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this, to explain to people who are watching, what do you gain by trying a former president in the Senate, assuming that trial, as you suggest there, extremely unlikely to end before Inauguration Day? What's to be gained by that?

VAN HOLLEN: Well, what's to be gained is sending a clear message to the present and to the future that the kind of attack we witnessed on our democracy, instigated and incited by the president of the United States, is absolutely unacceptable. It's unconstitutional. It's lawless. And we think it's important to use this sanction provided under the Constitution to do that.

In addition, if he's convicted, you can have a second vote to make it absolutely clear that this individual is disqualified from running for office again in the United States of America.

SCIUTTO: There is a political cost to this, which I'm sure you're aware of, better than me. And it's been raised by Jim Clyburn on the House side talking about delaying a trial until after the first 100 days of Joe Biden's term, to allow him to focus on his legislative priorities.

Senator Joe Manchin, Democratic colleague, of course, of yours in the Senate, has also raised the, you know, the damage that this could do to Joe Biden's start.

Do you share those concerns?

VAN HOLLEN: I think we can pursue both tracks at the same time. In other words, I think we can work to hold President Trump accountable and send a message that this is unacceptable conduct from a president of the United States and move forward with the new Biden administration.

So, first, if Mitch McConnell would agree to start this process earlier, that would, obviously, help. Second, we're looking into the idea and possibility of two tracking this in the United States Senate. In other words, proceeding with the trial and at the same time moving forward to, you know, vote to approve different nominees, which I believe we should have started now as well that process, as has been done in the past.

SCIUTTO: As of next Wednesday, the inauguration, there will be at least four times as many national guardsmen deployed in the Capitol as there are in Afghanistan. I -- personally, as a reporter, I've covered terrorism all over the world. D.C. is my home. I'm watching these deployments here. I'm reading the FBI bulletins about armed protests in all 50 state capitals.

There is an enormous domestic terror threat in this country right now. I understand the House side has been briefed. You have not been briefed yet. But describe your concern at the level of the domestic terror threat right now and what needs to be done right now to protect lives in this country.

VAN HOLLEN: Well, it's a shocking statement of the state of our democracy right now. And it's the consequence of a president of the United States who launches the big lie, who poisons people's minds and then instigates them to take action. So we're going to have to have a very thorough investigation of the white supremacist groups, the domestic terror groups, and everything that has brought us to this point.

In terms of immediate security, I do know that, you know, people recognized what a failure the situation was at the Capitol. And we're going to be, you know, be ensuring that the security is good for the inauguration.

But, Jim, as you point out, the president has still refused to take responsibility for what happened. He's still pointing the finger at Antifa, where there's zero evidence of that, just like there was zero evidence that the election was stolen.

[09:40:04]

So we have a lot of work to do in terms of tracking down these domestic terror groups.

SCIUTTO: Well, we, and I'm sure many people watching, are counting on you.

Senator Van Hollen, we wish the best to you and your family. Thanks very much.

VAN HOLLEN: Thank you, Jim. Thanks so much.

SCIUTTO: And we'll be right back.

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SCIUTTO: The Trump administration is now making sweeping changes to how it distributes coronavirus vaccines. This after heavy criticism and a remarkably slow rollout of vaccinations.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Let's go to our colleague, Kristen Holmes. She joins us in Washington.

There are really big changes.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Explain what they mean for everyone at home waiting, you know, waiting for a vaccine soon.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Poppy and Jim.

Yes, these are huge, sweeping changes here. They will not only expand who is eligible to get the vaccine, but they'll also expand what places are allowed to put those doses into arms.

[09:45:05]

So let's take a look here on how they want to make these changes.

One is to release the second dose. This is a huge change from what we saw just on Friday of last week after President-elect Biden suggested that he would release those second doses that were being held back. We still heard pushback from Operation Warp Speed. Now they are following suit. That is what is going to put those vaccines actually out there on the market.

Two, they are allowing anyone 65 and older to get the vaccine. That, again, opens up that eligibility question. More people can get the vaccine.

Three, if states request help setting up mass vaccination sites, the government will step in and they will help them. This is interesting because, remember, President-elect Biden has talked about those mass vaccination sites being run federally. Now they're saying they would be run by the states but the Trump administration would help.

And, lastly, and I think this is one of the most important things that they're doing, they are expanding the venues where shots can actually be administered, where they can put those shots into arms. I cannot tell you the amount of state officials that I've talked to who said that the current system is just not working. These clinics, these hospitals, a lot of them do not have the resources to actually administer the shots and they wanted other options. This will turn that to more of the pharmacy, the chain pharmacies and open up the hospitals and doctors' offices to do what they need to be doing outside of coronavirus.

And I do want to note here, we are told that this decision to make these sweeping changes came after Secretary Azar, HHS secretary, called two meetings in the last 48 hours just to address the lag here. They wanted to push this forward. And we did hear Azar in an interview this morning saying that it was just too narrowly focused, they needed to widen this out to get more people vaccinated.

SCIUTTO: You know, on the good side, what's interesting there, is it seems that the outgoing Trump administration, the Biden administration, on this issue of expanding vaccine rollout, that first dose, are on the same page, right? HOLMES: Yes.

SCIUTTO: I mean Poppy and I struggle to -- struggle to find good news in all of this, but maybe that's progress.

HOLMES: No, I mean, look, this -- they -- there are a lot of similarities here in the two plans. It will, in fact, make it easier for the Biden administration to come in and take over if they are on the same page.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HOLMES: We've heard that from all these health officials. So that is, in fact, good news, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Kristen Holmes, thanks very much.

Well, House Democrats reportedly want to investigate the role that social media sites played in inciting the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. We're going to discuss, next.

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[09:51:59]

HARLOW: Welcome back.

Well, this morning, the big tech crackdown on conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric is growing. Companies are reckoning with what they did or, you know, to contribute to or didn't stop the deadly insurrection.

SCIUTTO: For years, frankly. Well, Twitter has now removed 70,000 accounts. FaceBook is removing all content that mentions "stop the steal." And Parler was just plain out removed. It's now suing.

Here to discuss it all, CNN chief media correspondent and host of "Reliable Sources," Brian Stelter.

Brian, you know, the only peril as I can watch -- as I watch this that I can think of is the takedown of Islamist terrorism social media discussions and sites and communication channels, that kind of thing. You know, I just wonder, have you seen anything like this before in your career and what's the latest as we see it go forward?

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: ISIS is the only parallel. And the research by scholars years ago found that that was somewhat effective in stopping further recruitment of would-be terrorists. That is a similar conversation that FaceBook and Twitter and other companies are having now. They are wiping away the lies, "stop the steal" lies, QAnon lies.

But as we all know, lies beget more lies. In fact, lies are used to cover up old lies.

SCIUTTO: Yes. STELTER: So in order to cover up what happened, what went wrong last week you say, oh, it was Antifa. That's what the president is doing. And he's probably going to repeat that lie today.

These companies are addressing supply but not demand. And demand is the harder part. Hatred and resentment and fear of the other, the vitriol that leads to violence. The white lash in this country, the anti-Democratic streak. I just fear there's no way to delete that.

There's no way to delete those feelings. That's where you need leadership from trusted figures. The Rush Limbaugh's, the Ted Cruz's of the world. Leadership begins with telling the truth, but at least these platforms are looking inward right now and that is something they didn't do in the past.

HARLOW: That's true, Brian. And all you can do is hope for change going forward.

But I don't want us to -- I forgot until last night, so I don't want us to all forget, and our viewers to forget, that there are intentional decisions that are made by companies like FaceBook.

STELTER: Right. Right.

HARLOW: In mid-December, they dialed back up the change that they rolled back in the weeks before the election. Before the election they said, we're going to dial up authentic news sources like CNN, "The New York Times," et cetera.

STELTER: Right.

HARLOW: They dialed that back a few weeks later.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: And then a few weeks after that, the Capitol is attacked. Sheryl Sandberg, the COO, was asked about it this morning. Here's what she said.

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SHERYL SANDBERG, COO, FACEBOOK: I think these events were largely organized on platforms that don't have our abilities to stop hate and don't have our standards and don't have our transparency.

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HARLOW: Is that true?

STELTER: It's very hard to say, but I think she is dramatically minimizing FaceBook's responsibility because FaceBook is so large, with billions of users. And as you said, they turned up the heat in December. They turned up the heat in a way that brought back more hyper partisan content, more crazy content on people's FaceBook pages. So they do have an enormous responsibility because they're so much bigger than these fringe sites that we keep talking about. [09:55:01]

Parler, for example, now wiped off the Internet for now. You know, there are these dark corners of the Internet and there will always be, in some ways, those dark corners. But FaceBook is so much bigger. It's scale is enormous. And, honestly, I think Sandberg is trying to point the finger instead of looking inward, which would be a beneficial thing to do.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Brian Stelter, thank you. Always good to have you.

A quick break. We'll be right back.

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SCIUTTO: Inauguration Day is also moving day. But this year will be unlikely any other in a lot of ways, Poppy.

HARLOW: That's for sure.

Our Kate Bennett has the details.

[10:00:00]

Obviously COVID complicates it all, right?

KATE BENNETT, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Absolutely.