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Rise of Far-Right Extremism; Pennsylvania's Lieutenant Governor Talks about Violence; Biden's Vaccine Plan; Biden Unveils Pandemic Plan. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired January 15, 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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[09:30:30]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: The FBI says it has now identified more than 200 suspects in the U.S. Capitol attack. In his first appearance since the riot, Director Christopher Wray delivered a strong message to those suspects, we're coming to find you.

The threat from right wing extremists has been growing in this country for years. In fact, today, the Department of Homeland Security identifies these groups as the greatest terrorism threat to the country. Greater even than international Islamist terrorism.

How did we get here?

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SCIUTTO (voice over): The deadly assault on the U.S. Capitol. The alleged plot to kidnap Michigan's governor. Just two recent instances of a violent right wing extremist movement that has been growing on U.S. soil for years.

According to current and former counterterror officials, the threat now rivals that from international terrorism.

PETER BERGEN, AUTHOR, "UNITED STATES OF JIHAD: INVESTIGATING AMERICA'S HOMEGROWN TERRORISTS": There is no debate, the facts show that right wing extremists have killed more people since 9/11 than any other political ideology. And that includes jihadi terrorists.

SCIUTTO: Since 9/11, 114 people have been killed in attacks by far right wing terrorists in the United States, 107 by jihadist terrorists. And right wing attacks are increasingly outpacing jihadi terrorism responsible for two-thirds of attacks and plots in the U.S. in 2019 and more than 90 percent between January 1st and May 8, 2020. Attacks and plots by such groups have now occurred in 42 states and the District of Columbia in the past six years.

Fueling right wing extremists are the conspiracies propagated by the president of a system organized against them and two essential ingredients.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY, DHS: The first is a leader who tells them what to do, who tells them how to feel, who sort of makes them -- makes them believe that they are part of something bigger, right, that this is a mission. The other is a network, whether it's social media or a platform or ways of communicating that lets them essentially talk amongst themselves, right? Get organized.

SCIUTTO: The growing degree of organization particularly alarms U.S. officials. Investigators are pursuing signs the assault on the Capitol was planned and not spontaneous, including knowledge of the Capitol's layout, radio communications among protest leaders, and planting of explosive devices to divert law enforcement. The worry now is that the targets could expand along with the planning, from the U.S. Capitol to all 50 state capitols, to so-called soft targets, mirroring those attacked by jihadi terrorists.

CHRISTOPHER KREBS, FORMER DIRECTOR, CYBERSTRUCTURE AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY: Infrastructure, hitting soft targets, disruption of services. Those are the sorts of things that every systemically important infrastructure owner/operator, CEOs needs to be assembling their crisis management teams yesterday.

SCIUTTO: The fact is, the FBI and Justice Department have been warning about right wing extremism for years. And the DHS now identifies it as, quote, the most persistent and lethal threat in the homeland. However, political appointees in the Trump administration at times downplayed it.

BERGEN: The political signals have been that the right wing terrorism is sort of OK. Certainly what the president said at Charlottesville, after the Charlottesville terrorist attack. And he continues to some degree.

SCIUTTO: Downplaying the threat and even echoing extremist rhetoric.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our country will be destroyed, and we're not going to stand for that.

SCIUTTO: That has had consequences.

KAYYEM: The failure to identify it, to name it and to focus resources on the growing threat of white supremacy terrorism has meant that agencies have not focused on it in the way that they should.

SCIUTTO: January 6th laid that vulnerability bare, despite weeks of chatter online, U.S. authorities were not prepared for a deadly assault in the heart of the U.S. Capitol.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SCIUTTO: One measure of the seriousness of the threat now for the inauguration. There will be more than 20,000 national guardsmen in Washington, D.C., many of them armed. That is nearly four times the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria combined.

Poppy.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: It is stunning. That is such a good report. Jim, thank you very much.

Let's talk more about what is being threatened on a state level. Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman is here.

Good morning to you, Lieutenant Governor.

And let me just begin with what just crossed and that is that federal prosecutors are now saying in a new court filing this morning that the intention, at least among some who led that riot, that insurrection at the Capitol, was to, quote, capture and to assassinate elected officials.

[09:35:18]

Knowing that, and knowing that they feel emboldened from what they did last week, what are you preparing for at the Pennsylvania state capitol?

LT. GOV. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): Well, I mean we definitely completely reviewed our security protocols and made a lot of different changes. Of course, I can't go into detail with them.

HARLOW: Yes.

FETTERMAN: But what I can say is, is that on Tuesday, when I was in the capitol presiding over the Senate -- or, excuse me, Wednesday, there were national guardsmen with automatic weapons that were patrolling the area, and there's a very different climate there than there certainly was just a week earlier before the attacks in the Capitol. And the governor just announced, too, that he is shutting down the capitol complex for the entire week just to make sure that there isn't any kind of actions like that taken.

HARLOW: You know, take a look at this. This is video -- it's really hard to watch, but I think it's important for our viewers to see of a Pennsylvania man who is also a retired firefighter, Robert Sanford, arrested yesterday on four federal charges, accused of throwing a fire extinguisher -- this is a retired fireman -- look at that, hitting the heads of three police officers there. You've got another Pennsylvania resident federally charged this week for his alleged role in the riot as well.

I suppose I wonder your message to anyone who may be planning any form of violence at the state capitol or anywhere in your state leading up to the inauguration.

FETTERMAN: Well, obviously, I condemn it in the strongest possible terms. But what's given rise to this, in my estimation, is the months and months and weeks and weeks of unanswered tweets and conspiracy theories and lies and outrage.

HARLOW: Right. FETTERMAN: And it's the logical conclusion when all of this goes unchecked until just very recently when he was shut down. The idea that you have unlimited free speech to advance lies that are demonstrably false is yelling "fire" in a crowded theater when there is none.

HARLOW: Sure. And it's interesting because overnight we learned that the president's sort of response here is going to be that he's protected by free speech. I'll leave that to the judiciary and, obviously, it will be debated in the Senate trial.

But you really took interest in the great interview that Jim just did with Congressman Andy Barr of Kentucky. And his argument is against the president being de-platformed if you will, taken off Twitter, against Parler being taken off, Amazon, despite their repeated warnings about the violent content.

Can you explain your case? Because I think it's interesting, from a Democratic perspective, it sounds like you don't think Twitter made the right decision by taking the platform off -- taking the president off the platform, is that right?

FETTERMAN: Yes, well, from the -- from the very beginning, after the election, you know, no state has received more scorn and conspiracies and lies than Pennsylvania has. And it is all demonstrably false. Seven million votes. We had three documented cases of voter fraud and they all were for the president, I might add.

So this idea that saying that Pennsylvania was rigged or that we were trying to steal the election, unquote, that's a lie. And that you do not have the right, that is not protected speech. The second those tweets went up, they should have been deleted. That's not de- platforming someone, it's deleting lies that are yelling "fire" in a crowded theater when there is none.

And there's a difference. That is not protected speech. He can talk all day about what his favorite football team is or that he's the greatest president in the history of the world, but no one, Republican, Democrat, whatever, has the right to say those kind of incendiary lies that are hurled with only one goal in mind, and that is to damage and debase the Democratic franchise.

And that is exactly what happened. Slapping the, this is in dispute is ineffectual. It's not disputed. If I say one plus one equals three, that's not in dispute. You know, it wasn't dispute that Pennsylvania results were true, you know, it was demonstrably false. We had a perfect election in the sense that we had no instances other than those three.

You cannot use a private platform to deliberately spread what you know are lies to cause harm and to incite violence and mass chaos. And that's exactly what Twitter allowed up to recently when they de- platformed him altogether.

HARLOW: And then you think they went too far by de-platforming him? FETTERMAN: All I'm saying though is that anyone should have -- it

should have never gotten to that point, is that -- is that you're slapping a warning on a tweet and allowing it to be retweeted millions of times and having it spread over and over again, it's a little too late.

HARLOW: I think -- I think it's such an important debate that we need to have, and it's almost as if, you know, well, we were, as a country and these platforms grappling with it in real time.

[09:40:08]

So the hope is this leads to some very clear rules and regulations going forward all around.

Thank you for the time and good luck. I hope everyone is safe in your state. Thank you.

FETTERMAN: Thank you very much.

HARLOW: President-elect Joe Biden calling President Trump's COVID-19 vaccine rollout a, quote, dismal failure. You're going to learn his goal for the first 100 days in office in terms of vaccine distribution, next.

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HARLOW: President-elect Joe Biden has unveiled a $1.9 trillion economic rescue plan. It includes coronavirus testing and tracing funding. It also includes an ambitious goal of vaccinating 100 million Americans in the first 100 days of his administration.

SCIUTTO: And he's got both the Senate and the House.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Chances of passage, pretty good.

Joining us now to discuss is Michael Osterholm. He's director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota, also a member of President-elect Biden's Coronavirus Advisory Board.

[09:45:06]

Mr. Osterholm, always good to have you on.

MICHAEL OSTERHOLM, MEMBER, BIDEN TRANSITION COVID ADVISORY BOARD: Good morning. Good to be with you.

SCIUTTO: Let me ask you this. In five days, Biden's going to take over. He's assembled a team that includes you. They have a plan.

I'm just curious, what will be different about Biden's vaccination plan? How much of a difference will it make? Because, I mean, one of the key challenges is states' preparedness for this. Is that something you can fix quickly?

OSTERHOLM: Well, first of all, let me just say that it is an incredibly comprehensive plan that starts with how to even increase the amount of vaccine being produced, which is, of course, a very important limiting factor. But he has really listened to what state and local health departments who ultimately are the air traffic control towers for moving vaccine in our communities need to be able to do their job.

This is going to be a comprehensive effort. It's going to take federal resources, like, for example, additional staffing, having the pharmacies around the country being involved. And so what he's done is really put together all the tools that the people at the local level have said they need to get this done. And that's something that didn't happen before.

In addition, they are going to be really trying to do much to understand why some groups may be hesitant to get the vaccine and what can we do to help shore that up so that they have the information they need to make the wise decision to get vaccinated.

So when you put this all together, I think it's fair to say it really is a comprehensive plan.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Michael, I -- in terms of the news that came out that I think was really welcome by a lot of folks this week from Secretary Azar that if you're 65 and over, they're instructing the states to give the vaccine to you, right? But when I talked to a family member in Minnesota who is under 75 but over 65, their doctor said it's still going to be months, two months or more before they can get the vaccine.

I'm just wondering, anyone out there watching, 65, you know, or a little bit older who's like, I can get it now, it's not really now, right?

SCIUTTO: Yes.

OSTERHOLM: Right. In fact, Secretary Azar even went further and said that anyone under 65 who has an underlying medical condition get it -- could get the vaccine, which is another 81 million people.

HARLOW: Right.

OSTERHOLM: You know, that was not helpful. That is just not based on reality. It's like trying to deny gravity.

We only have so much vaccine. Nobody's trying to hold it back. So what we have to do is basically try to, when you call a number and say, OK, we've got this many doses this week, this is who we can get it to. And states are trying to move this vaccine as quickly as it possibly can be moved.

In our own state of Minnesota, we don't have enough vaccine even in our state right now to vaccinate everybody 65 years of age and older. So we can tell people, you're next in line, get ready, you know, but we'll have to still wait until the vaccine arrives here before we can give it to you.

SCIUTTO: We, and we have this on our screen right now, we're halfway through the month of January. About 11 million people vaccinated so far. That's half this administration's goal for the end of last month.

I just wonder, for folks watching right now, why should they have confidence that these numbers are going to start going up rapidly, right? Why should they have confidence given all the -- all the obstacles here that these problems are going to get fixed and quickly?

OSTERHOLM: Well, first of all, just take a look at what's happened just in the last several days. We're now averaging over 700,000 vaccinations a day now. That's very different than was happening two to three weeks ago.

And that number is going to ramp up even more so that we're over a million vaccinations every day. And I think that it's very likely that the aspirational goal that the president-elect has set for 100 million doses in 100 days I think is going to be met. I think that's going to actually happen. And it's because we're ratcheting up the vaccine program. We're making it more available and more doses are being made.

So I don't think you should judge what happened in the first two weeks under the previous program aspects to be what's going to happen over the course of the next 100 days.

SCIUTTO: Well, that's good to hear. And folks want to hear hope and confidence at this point.

Michael Osterholm, always good to talk to you.

OSTERHOLM: Thank you, guys.

SCIUTTO: And we'll be right back.

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[09:53:58]

SCIUTTO: Well, another round of stimulus checks could be on the way to Americans soon. That is part of President-elect Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion economic rescue package.

Poppy, I mean the series of these things, each one bigger than anything we've seen before.

HARLOW: I mean it's pretty unprecedented.

Christine Romans, our chief business correspondent, is here. I was thinking back to TARP and the Obama administration.

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: It was like under $800 billion.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: And it failed the first time, remember?

ROMANS: That's right.

HARLOW: This is -- this is like more than twice that.

ROMANS: And it shows you just how deep the hole we are in, to be quite honest. You know, that time it was a financial crisis. This is a health crisis that's getting worse. And we can see in the economic data even this morning that the economy is really on a precipice here.

So this is money that desperately needs to get out there and rescue the economy and then recovery is something that has to come after that.

Let me show you what's in here. More checks for families. So that's important here. But also there's a big, national vaccination program. And that's important. The administration is saying -- the incoming administration is saying that virus and the economy intertwined. You cannot rescue the economy without containing the virus.

[09:55:03]

So you've got money for colleges and schools. You've got this money for the vaccine program. State and local governments. Look at that price tag there. That's going to be up for discussion with those in Congress who have not wanted to give money to state -- especially that much money to state and local governments. And also pushing from of this aid into September, right? $400 a week in extra jobless benefits and pushing that all the way to September. You guys, that's an admission that this is really going to be a tough year for main street here as we get this virus under control.

And also the president-elect would like to raise the minimum wage to $15. That will be another fight in Congress. I think this is a starting point. But it shows you just how deep a hole we're in, in this economy and in this -- with the virus and this is how serious the administration is, the new administration will be in trying to tackle it.

HARLOW: For sure.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Christine Romans, thank you so much for explaining it to a lot of folks in need this morning.

ROMANS: You're welcome.

HARLOW: Well, we have, this morning, chilling, new details in the wake of the insurrection, the raid on the Capitol. U.S. federal prosecutors now allege that some of those riots intended to, quote, capture and assassinate elected officials. We'll have more on that next.

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