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Biden to Lift Transgender Ban in Military Monday; Trump to be Tried for Impeachment in Two Weeks; Trump Allegedly Pushed DOJ to Take His Election Battle to SCOTUS; Mexico's President Tests Positive for Coronavirus; U.S. Surpasses 25 Million COVID-19 Cases; Trump's Exit Tests QAnon Believers; Two Hospitalized After Tacoma Police Officer Drives Through Crowd; Wuhan Back to Normal Ahead of Lockdown Anniversary. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired January 24, 2021 - 20:00   ET

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

[20:00:32]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, BIDEN'S CHIEF MEDICAL ADVISER ON CORONAVIRUS: The president is saying 100 million shots in people's arms within 100 days.

XAVIER BECERRA, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY NOMINEE: It's ambitious. It's bold. It's doable.

DR. VIVEK MURTHY, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL NOMINEE: We know how critical it is for schools to get opened, for parents, for the economy, for all of us. The more people we vaccinate the better we will do.

SEN. ELIZABETH WARREN (D-MA): What President Biden is communicating is the urgency of the moment. We're in the middle of an economic crisis.

SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (I-VT): What we cannot do is wait weeks and weeks and months and months to go forward. We have got to act now.

SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): Incitement to insurrection is an impeachable offense. If not, what is?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): I think the trial is stupid. We already have a flaming fire in this country and it's like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: I'm Pamela Brown in Washington. Welcome to our viewers in the United States and around the world. You are in the CNN NEWSROOM on this Sunday evening.

And we go to breaking news. Just into CNN, President Joe Biden is expected to repeal the ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. This could come as soon as Monday, according to a source familiar with the plans. The ban, of course, was first put in place by former President Donald Trump in 2017 who announced that decision in a tweet, if you remember. Let's bring in CNN White House correspondent Arlette Saenz.

So what more are we learning about this, Arlette?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pamela, President Biden is looking to make good on a promise he made during the campaign and that was to repeal this ban on transgender individuals from serving in the military. He has long said that he would repeal this and a source tells me that it could come as soon as tomorrow. Last week White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that that would be among the first executive actions that the president would sign in the opening weeks of his administration.

And you'll remember that President Trump announced this ban on the military back in 2017 in a very abrupt way. He did it via a tweet and it wasn't actually implemented until a further review process from the Pentagon about a year later. But what President Biden is doing, once again, is undoing some of those policies from the Trump administration. That includes tomorrow he is also expected to re- impose a ban on travelers who have recently traveled to Brazil, the United Kingdom, Ireland and other European countries, amid the coronavirus pandemic.

But this announcement that is expected to come as soon as tomorrow is just the latest effort also from the Biden administration to try to ensure some protections for LGBTQ Americans, and that includes repealing that ban on transgender individuals from serving in the military. Now this even came up during the confirmation hearing for Biden's Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. And he said that he fully supported the president's decision on that.

It's unclear how soon it would actually be put into place. It could take some time, but it is just another one of the steps we are seeing from the Biden administration.

BROWN: All right. Arlette Saenz, thanks so much.

And in less than 24 hours House impeachment managers will deliver the single article of impeachment of former President Trump to the Senate. CNN senior Washington correspondent Joe Johns is at the Capitol live for us.

So how exactly will all of this play out tomorrow and in the next couple of weeks, Joe?

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Pamela, a little bit of history, a little bit of custom. Tomorrow evening the nine House impeachment managers will take the long walk from the House to the United States Senate where they will deliver and present that one article of impeachment to the United States Senate.

Now after that there is going to be a two-week period until February 9th where we'll see sort of an exchange of legal documents, more likely seen in a traditional trial. We're going to have summons. We're going to have an answer filed presumably from the president's lawyers to the United States government. And then after that we're going to see a pretrial brief written by the impeachment managers before the trial begins.

There are some people speculating this is going to go much quicker than the first Donald Trump impeachment trial, in part because they think there's not that much evidence that the senators haven't seen and the senators, in fact, are even witnesses of what happened and transpired on January 6th.

[20:05:02]

Still others say it could be a long trial simply because Republicans are a bit all over the place about how to approach this. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RUBIO: I think the trial is stupid. I think it's counterproductive. We already have a flaming fire in this country and it's like taking a bunch of gasoline and pouring it on top of the fire.

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS (R-SD): To begin with, I think it's a moot point because I think right now Donald Trump is no longer the president. He is a former president. The Constitution and I think -- and I know that there are other people out there that may disagree with me, but Article One, Sections -- I think it's 6 and 7 specifically point out that you can impeach the president. And it does not indicate that you can impeach someone who is not in office.

ROMNEY: The preponderance of the legal opinion is that a impeachment trial after someone has left office is constitutional. I believe that's the case. I'll, of course, hear what the lawyers have to say for each side, but I think it's pretty clear that the effort is constitutional.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNS: You'll remember that the Senate now is 50-50 after the election, so that means that you'll need 17 more Republicans to vote for conviction if all Democrats, all 50 Democrats vote in favor of conviction also. And apparently those numbers are just not there yet.

Pamela, back to you.

BROWN: All right, Joe Johns, thanks so much live for us from the Capitol.

And this weekend we're learning more about the lengths that Donald Trump is willing to go telling the lies that he was willing to tell, the people he was willing to pressure to keep himself in office. The "Wall Street Journal" today is reporting that Trump pressured his Justice Department to go directly to the Supreme Court to overturn Joe Biden's victory.

CNN's crime and justice correspondent Shimon Prokupecz joins us now.

So, Shimon, what more are we learning?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE REPORTER: Yes, it was under the Attorney General Bill Barr that this happened, that the president was putting pressure on top officials at the Department of Justice to try and file a lawsuit with the Supreme Court to see if they'll -- they would overturn the election. The attorney general and other senior officials at the Department of Justice said they don't have any legal standing, they had no legal rights to file this kind of a lawsuit. So they didn't.

That was early on, right. So there was another part that we learned of Friday. "The New York Times" was first to report and we've since confirmed that after Bill Barr left, the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, was in that spot, and that the president was trying to -- was contemplating having him removed from the acting attorney general role to replace him with someone who would more likely file a lawsuit or act in the ways that the former president wanted.

That sort of set off alarm bells inside the Department of Justice with top leaders there saying they were all going to quit if that happened. So that prevented that from happening. But I think as we have seen throughout the former president's time, that this is just more examples of him trying to use the Department of Justice for his political gain, and for his personal gain ultimately. The Democratic leader Chuck Schumer saying that he wants the DOJ IG, the inspector general for the DOJ, to investigate all this.

And then, Pam, some of this could also be part of the impeachment trial. Some saying that perhaps parts of that aspect of what the former president was trying to do with the Department of Justice as it relates to the election, that could come up during the impeachment.

BROWN: And there is also this question of if the president could face legal action for those specific power plays.

PROKUPECZ: So, certainly that is, that is a possibility. The fact that he asked DOJ lawyers to go and try and fight this out in Supreme Court is one thing. But more significant is the idea that he thought about removing the acting attorney general and replace him with someone who would be more favorable to him and to do the things that he would want him to do is certainly more troubling and could potentially land the former president in some kind of trouble.

BROWN: All right. Shimon Prokupecz, thank you so much. Thanks for coming on, Shimon.

PROKUPECZ: Sure, thank you.

BROWN: Well, breaking news this hour, the president of Mexico has tested positive for coronavirus and is undergoing treatment. CNN's Rafael Romo has an update on his condition when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:13:35]

BROWN: Some breaking news into CNN right now. Mexico's president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has just announced that he has tested positive for the coronavirus. He has consistently shunned wearing masks, even while holding events around the country during the pandemic.

I'm joined now by CNN's Rafael Romo.

So, Rafael, what do we know about the president's current condition?

RAFAEL ROMO, CNN SENIOR LATIN AMERICAN AFFAIRS EDITOR: Well, that his symptoms are mild, Pam. President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador confirmed the news on his Twitter account in the last hour. He wrote a couple of messages, the first one to confirm the diagnosis, and the second to say that he will keep an eye on the government's affairs from the national palace, the presidential mansion in Mexico.

The president wrote the following. "I regret to inform you that I have contracted COVID-19. The symptoms are mild, but I am already receiving medical treatment. As always, I am optimistic."

And, Pam, the president has a daily morning news conference that is broadcast live. He said that Interior Secretary Olga Sanchez Cordero will take over while he recovers. And President Lopez Obrador as you mentioned before has been dismissive of measures to prevent transmission of COVID-19 in the past. He has been seen in public many times without wearing a mask and he travels around the country meeting with officials and people and not keeping a healthy distance sometimes.

He's one of several heads of state in the region who have contracted the virus, including the Jair Bolsonaro, the president of Brazil, and Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez.

[20:15:10]

Of course, former president Donald Trump also had COVID-19 -- Pam.

BROWN: Do you know if he's had any recent events, though, where he was around a lot of other people and they're now going to have to do the contact tracing? I remember when President Trump had COVID, that was a big issue.

ROMO: Yes, it is a very good question. And for the most part he has not changed the way he conducts business very much since the beginning of the pandemic. He has gone to different parts of the country for promoting social projects, for meeting with officials in different states. And the reality is that there were probably multiple instances in which he could have contracted the disease. It's going to be difficult really to pinpoint exactly where it might have happened.

And now the thing is that he meets daily as you can imagine with his aides and other officials. And it remains to be seen if any other were also infected, Pam.

BROWN: All right. Rafael Romo, thank you so much for coming on and bringing us the latest there. We appreciate it.

And in the U.S. it has now passed 25 million confirmed cases of the virus, but the vaccination rate is picking up speed. The CDC says more than 21 million doses of COVID vaccine have been administered across the United States. That's up more than 1.3 million doses from the days before.

CNN's Natasha Chen has the very latest from Atlanta.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

NATASHA CHEN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The U.S. has now surpassed 25 million coronavirus cases, and the death toll continues to climb with more than 3,000 people who have died of COVID- 19 every day in the last four days. And the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation projects a total of 569,000 Americans will have died from coronavirus by May 1st.

Xavier Becerra, President Biden's nominee to run Health and Human Services, described it this way on Sunday.

BECERRA: The plane is in a nose dive and we've got to pull it up. And you're not going to do that overnight, but we're going to pull it up. We have to. Failure is not an option here.

CHEN: But there has been some good news. The same model that predicted 569,000 deaths also shows nearly 43,000 people's lives may be saved in that same timeframe thanks to vaccination. And the seven-day moving average of new cases in the U.S. is starting to drop after an aggressive post-holiday peak. And the positivity rate stayed low enough in Chicago for restaurants and bars to re-start limited indoor dining.

CASEY CORA, FRONTERA GRILL RESTAURANTS: When rumors started swirling around our staff that it was going to be able to happen, there was a spark in everybody's eyes just to be able to know that we're going to be able to do what we do best once again and that's an exciting thing for us in the hospitality profession.

CHEN: That same look of excitement and gratitude.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Well, that's from you? How sweet. That's so very kind.

CHEN: Is in the eyes of millions of people lining up to be vaccinated around the country, including now mobile and pop-up vaccination sites run by companies like Amazon.

The challenge is getting more supply distributed to what's currently a patchwork of local health providers who are sometimes battling Web site crashes and scheduling mishaps.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: No one knew what the hell they were doing so they sent everybody home.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If this is happening to me and I'm well educated, my husband is a state senator, if this is happening to me, what's happening to people who don't have what I have? And don't have the access that I have?

CHEN: Meanwhile, officials have their eye on coronavirus variants and how well the vaccine may hold up as the virus changes. MURTHY: It means we've got to, number one, do much better genomic

surveillance, identify variants when they arrive. It means you've got to double down on public health measures like masking and avoiding indoor gathering. The bottom line is we're in a race against these variants. The virus is going to change and it's up to us to adapt and to make sure that we're staying ahead.

CHEN: Natasha Chen, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And joining me now with more is Dr. Celine Gounder. She was on the Biden transition COVID Advisory Board and is former assistant commissioner of health for New York City.

Thank you so much for coming on, Dr. Gounder, good to see you. If you would, tell us what are the key issues dragging down vaccine distribution around the country? We know around 40 million vaccines have been distributed, but as of this morning only 21 million have been administered.

DR. CELINE GOUNDER, FORMER MEMBER, BIDEN COVID-19 TRANSITION ADVISORY BOARD: Pamela, the Biden administration inherited a black box as to how many vaccine doses were where all along the pipeline. You have some doses that are coming off the manufacturing line. You have some that are in pharmaceutical company warehouses. Some of those have been allocated or assigned to certain states, but haven't been ordered yet. Some of them have been ordered. Some have made it to states. Some have made it to facilities.

[20:20:01]

And when you don't know how many doses are in each step of the way that I outlined, it's very difficult then to communicate to facilities on the ground and say, OK, you can expect this number of doses next week, and then for them to be able to plan appointments. So just having transparency into all of that supply chain of vaccine is really essential to being able to make this rollout much smoother.

BROWN: So, how much of this, though, is a state issue? Because other people would argue, look, the federal government is already doing its job in getting these vaccines, these shots to the states, and they should be able to know what to do about it from there. What do you think about that?

GOUNDER: The states simply don't have that kind of capacity. That's not how they're set up. You are going to need to have federal funding, federal staff, federal supplies to bolster this entire process. And the reason we have been floundering all along is because the states have not had that kind of support. States also can't go into deficit spending the way the federal government can, and this is precisely the kind of situation where we need to mortgage the house if that's what we need to do in order to get ourselves out of this situation.

BROWN: So, bottom line, what do you think the timeline is for getting every American vaccinated, anyone who wants a vaccine can get one? GOUNDER: Look, it's going to take months before we have enough doses

for everybody. You know, we heard somebody in the package earlier talk about, well, if I can't get one when I have great health care -- this is not a question necessarily of, are you somebody who has money or power. There simply are not enough doses for everybody. And so we're looking at probably middle of the summer, end of the summer before the average healthy young American has access to vaccination, too.

BROWN: Wow. Middle summer, end of summer. I also want to ask you about schools because there's, you know, a lot of parents are out there right now wondering about sending their kid back to school. You have this new variant. What do you think should happen in that regard?

GOUNDER: Yes, so there are a couple different variants that we're worried about. There is one coming out of the U.K., or originated from the U.K., one in South Africa and one in Brazil. The one in the U.K. is concerning because it does seem to spread much more easily from person to person. So even if it doesn't cause more severe disease, it can still cause a lot more deaths and hospitalizations if it's spreading more widely.

There is, however, now some new data that shows perhaps that U.K. strain is also more deadly because it may cause more severe disease. So that's the U.K. strain. And then the other two are concerning because there is some -- some preliminary data that perhaps this may mean that our vaccines and other treatments are not as effective against those new strains as we'd hoped. Big picture, the best way to prevent the emergence of new variants is to do all of the things we've been talking about for months.

The more you let the virus spread, the more it mutates, the more variants you'll have. So we absolutely need to be doubling down on the masking, the social distancing and accelerating vaccine rollout.

BROWN: And I want to listen, quickly, to Surgeon General nominee Dr. Vivek Murthy just about what he had to say about this issue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MURTHY: It's going to take a lot of work and several fronts we have to focus. Number one, getting clear guidance to schools on what they need to do to reopen. Number two, we've got to make sure schools have their resources to be able to reopen and take these measures. I do think that we can get on a path to reopening schools more safely, but it's also going to take us getting the background number of cases down in our communities. And that's where we all come in.

Achieving these goals, turning COVID around, is a goal that we have to undertake together as one nation. And if we do that, and I'm confident we can turn this pandemic around.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So he didn't give any specifics there. What do you think about sending kids back to school and if that is a possibility you think across the board? GOUNDER: This is going to depend on how much the virus is transmitting

in a particular community. So if we value reopening schools, it means that we need to do the things to suppress virus transmission in the community. Again, masking, social distancing and accelerating vaccine rollout.

The Biden administration is also going to be supporting schools in this process since some of that includes providing science-based guidance on what to do, how to keep everybody safe. That includes assisting with purchase and use of test kits to screen staff as well as students. And then also the FEMA disaster fund will be reimbursing schools for the costs of some of these materials. Whether it's personal protective equipment or screening testing supplies. So there's a pretty robust package to make this a safe reopening if we also do our part.

[20:25:00]

BROWN: I want to get your reaction also to some news that's breaking tonight that more than three dozen Capitol Hill police officers are now testing positive for COVID in the wake of the January 6th attack on Capitol Hill. What do you think about that?

GOUNDER: So, you know, I think this is another tragedy resulting from the insurrection at the Capitol. I think unfortunately when you find yourself indoors in a crowded situation where some people may not be wearing masks, that is a recipe for transmission of coronavirus. And it's unfortunate that these Capitol police officers were put at risk, not just by the actions of the insurrectionists at the Capitol, but also by the virus when in the line of duty.

BROWN: All right. Dr. Celine Gounder, thank you for coming on and sharing your expertise and perspective with us.

And on Wednesday night, CNN brings you a new global town hall in this race to vaccinate America. Dr. Anthony Fauci and top doctors from President Biden's COVID-19 team join Anderson Cooper and Dr. Sanjay Gupta for "CORONAVIRUS FACTS AND FEARS" live on Wednesday night at 8:00 p.m. Eastern.

Well, the impeachment trial date is set. President Trump will have to mount a defense about insurrection that puts some of those same Senate jurors in harm's way. I'll speak to President Richard Nixon's former counsel, John Dean.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:30:59]

BROWN: A pair of stunning new reports appears to show how President Trump tried to use his Justice Department to overturn the 2020 election. According to "The Wall Street Journal" pressured the Justice Department to file a case with the Supreme Court to overturn Joe Biden's victory. And that follows a scheme first reported by the "New York Times" that Trump considered replacing his acting attorney general with a loyalist who plotted to overturn Georgia's results. So with the impeachment trial set to begin in two weeks, could even

more damning details emerge in the interim?

CNN contributor and former Nixon White House counsel John Dean joins me now. He is the coauthor of "Authoritarian Nightmare: Trump and His Followers."

I'm curious, John, how do you view this new reporting and how it factors in potentially to whether Trump should be convicted or not?

JOHN DEAN, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Pamela, it has the potential to show more of his state of mind. It's not conduct that is out of extraordinary conduct for a president to tell his Department of Justice what to do. Post-Watergate there was a rule presidents didn't do that. Trump breached that norm long ago. So it's not unusual in this presidency to see him leaning on the department. He's gotten away with a lot more than this, but it does show his state of mind, which was to overturn this election and use every device and every tool he had in his disposal.

BROWN: Several Republicans are arguing it's unconstitutional to hold an impeachment trial for a former president. Where do you stand on that?

DEAN: Well, there's been scholarship on both sides of that. History certainly shows there is precedent to hold a trial after a person has left office. You know, it makes really very little sense if you could impeach somebody and they could resign and defeat the impeachment, and that's what happened here. The president has been impeached. He hasn't been tried and convicted or barred from holding office. Those are the issues that are still on the table.

BROWN: And we still don't know what exactly this trial will look like for Trump's first impeachment trial. As we know Republicans voted against calling witnesses. For the second trial, some are saying they need witnesses. How do you see this playing out?

DEAN: We don't -- we'll know the rules soon. They haven't set the rules yet. Every impeachment trial is different, Pam. They all seem to vary, so there's no standard procedure. There are guidelines. There are a set of rules from which they draw, but the question of witnesses, for example, will be decided by the Senate before they start this proceeding.

I'm one who happens to think they need witnesses. They don't have -- you know, they don't have a direct case against the president. They have his words that are public. We don't know what the House managers might have accumulated. We know a lot of the people who were incited by Trump have said he is the reason we went to the Capitol and stormed the Capitol. He's the reason we were trying to find Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence. So some of those people need to be off the airways and in the chamber, if you will, presented as witnesses.

BROWN: I spoke a short time ago to Congressman Eric Swalwell, one of the House impeachment managers, and he made an interesting point about this trial. Let's watch. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): I tried about 40 jury trials to verdict before coming to Congress, and I think that in the history of jury trials, ever, there's never been a case where the jurors, these senators, were witnesses, where the jurors, these senators were victims. Where their chamber is the scene of the crime, but it's also the courtroom for this upcoming trial. I think that goes to the bigger responsibility they have to do the right thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So these senators were directly impacted by the insurrection. They are the witnesses. Does that change things in your view?

DEAN: He makes an excellent point.

[20:35:01]

He certainly -- they don't have to have the same sort of background and information to understand what was going on. The other side of it, though, Pamela, is some of those people were part of the insurrection. They actually encouraged the big lie. They encouraged these people to come in, if you will, and try to upset the apple cart. So that's what's troubling is they are also now judges and jurors in the case, and I'm not sure some of those should not recuse themselves because I think they've already made their decision because it implicates them.

BROWN: So even if he's not convicted, do you think that Trump is in criminal legal jeopardy from his call pressuring the Georgia secretary of state or other parts of his election scheme?

DEAN: I think he has multiple potential criminal liabilities. That just being the most recent. And apparently Atlanta's D.A. is looking at it as to how he behaved in the Georgia incident. His effort not only with the secretary of state, but with some other people in the secretary of state's office in Georgia, and these are state criminal offenses. Whether a U.S. attorney or not will investigate those, I don't know. And we also don't know what to make of the rumors that he self-pardoned.

BROWN: Wait, what to make of the rumors that he self-pardoned?

(LAUGHTER)

DEAN: Yes. Michael Cohen online --

BROWN: Sorry, we don't have any reporting to support that. I just want to be clear. Go ahead.

DEAN: No, you don't. It's just online at this point.

BROWN: OK, yes. So just want to be clear, we do not have reporting to support that.

John Dean, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective.

DEAN: You're welcome.

BROWN: Well, QAnon followers are now facing the reality of Donald Trump's broken promises and conspiracy theories that never bore fruit. The president they believed for so long is now out of office, but that doesn't mean the QAnon crowd is going to disappear.

I'm going to speak to Trump's former assistant secretary of Homeland Security, Elizabeth Neumann, about just that.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:41:11]

BROWN: Well, by now you're familiar with QAnon, a completely unfounded conspiracy theory that says former President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan worshipping pedophiles. It would lead to a day of reckoning where prominent people would be arrested and executed. But no matter how crazy you think it sounds, these ideas permeated the mainstream. And many QAnon followers are keeping the faith even after the Biden decimated their theory.

Elizabeth Neumann joins me now. She is the former assistant secretary of Homeland Security under President Trump and a director with the Republican Accountability Project.

Good to see you, Elizabeth. I'm just wondering.

ELIZABETH NEUMANN, FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY UNDER PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thanks for having me.

BROWN: I mean, before we dive deeper into this, just overall, what is so attractive about this QAnon theory? Why is it so gripping for some people?

NEUMANN: It's a great question. And over the summer when it really seemed to gain traction, there were a lot of psychologists and extremist professionals trying to, trying to answer those questions. And the best we can tell is that the pandemic created a lot of questions for people. It was so destabilizing. People lost jobs, they were losing loved ones, and there were all sorts of questions about the government's role in keeping us safe and the mitigation measures seemed really harsh to certain people.

And so it created this space where people stuck at home had a lot of time on their hands, didn't have to commute any more. They're not going to their kids' little league games anymore, so there's time and space for them to spend a lot of time online and search for answers. And when we look at people that move into extremist thought, not necessarily violence, but extremist thought, it's often because there's some sort of hole in their life.

Christian Picciolini talks about potholes that life throws at you and they're searching for answers. And for some, QAnon provided a sense of control, a sense of I know more than everybody else, and so it makes you feel powerful in a time when we all felt powerless. So it was meeting these needs, these -- maybe even inarticulable needs that we all felt during the pandemic.

Now QAnon's been around well before the pandemic, but it was the pandemic that seemed to really set QAnon on fire and become mainstream.

BROWN: That's just so interesting. It's like an emotional -- people needed it as sort of an emotional clutch to give them a feeling of certainty during such a scary time.

Kathleen Hall Jamison, the co-founder of FactCheck.com -- FactCheck.org, rather, told the "Washington Post" that Trump took tactics of deception and played to confirmation bias. Quote, "That crazed content has always been there, but it becomes dangerous when it is legitimatized and when it has the power of the state behind it."

As we know, Trump did not invent QAnon, but do you think he bears responsibility for the conditions that lead to this kind of logic?

NEUMANN: Sure. I mean, he laid groundwork back during his campaign in 2015 and 2016 to prime us all to be comfortable with the fact that he wouldn't tell us the truth. That he spoke in hyperbole and even myself as a 2016 voter for Trump, you kind of dismissed it as, you know, well, he's an entertainer, and that's why he has a hard time with the truth.

Well, that never changed when he got into government. He did not adjust to the role of government and therefore you have -- and I'm sure your fact checkers know the numbers, some enormous amount of lies that he told in office.

[20:45:03]

And they weren't even -- it's not even spin. It's not even the kind of thing where you could turn it a little bit and say, yes, I can see how he might think that, but it's a little deceptive. We should --they're boldfaced lies. And we got so desensitized to it, and at some point when you add in this conservative echo chamber where they are taking his talking points and amplifying them over and over and over again, sometimes taking talking points and adding to it logic that maybe he never had, that they are building the case for why his lie might be true, that has an effect on the ability of people to discern the truth.

And so when you get to a QAnon type conspiracy, he laid the groundwork for people to be primed to buy into this deception. In particular, his rhetoric around the deep state, the idea that there are all these people, elites out to get you. I mean, he campaigned on that. He campaigned on drain the swamp. And that absolutely contributed to people's willingness to buy into some of these crazy beliefs.

BROWN: All right. Elizabeth Neumann, just fascinating. And I hope we're going to continue this conversation because it appears that it's not going to go away any time soon, at least. Thank you so much.

NEUMANN: Exactly. Thank you, Pamela.

BROWN: A police officer -- thank you. A police officer in Washington state is under investigation after witnesses say he plowed through a crowd of people in Tacoma. More details on that just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:51:02]

BROWN: And we're following breaking news. Five people and an unborn child are dead after an early morning shooting in Indianapolis. The city's mayor calls it a mass murder and tonight a juvenile is in critical condition and is expected to survive. Police say this was not a random act.

And in Tacoma, Washington, tonight two people are hospitalized and a police officer is under investigation. That's after multiple disturbing videos were posted online showing a police vehicle driving not just through a crowd but then rolling over someone and then kept going.

CNN's Camila Bernal is in Tacoma.

So what more are you learning, Camila, about this incident and the disturbing videos that Tacoma Police are looking at?

CAMILA BERNAL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Pam. So first I do want to warn our viewers that that video is disturbing. It is difficult to watch because as you mentioned you're seeing that patrol car running over at least one person.

(VIDEO OF TACOMA POLICE OFFICER)

BERNAL (voice-over): In terms of the investigation this is now an independent investigation that is being conducted by the county instead of the police department here. And I do want to explain exactly what happened. About 24 hours ago according to police and because of these social media videos we know that there was about a hundred people here. They were racing. There was a number of cars, and you could see them in the videos doing these doughnuts at this intersection.

(On camera): In fact, I could still see those skid marks here throughout the day. And so what happened was that police were called to disperse the crowds and that's when you see that patrol car surrounded by a number of people. And according to police they were hitting the vehicle in a way that the officer who was driving they say feared for his safety. So he tried to back up. That didn't work, and then he accelerated moving into the crowd, and that's when you see that patrol car in some of the videos bouncing over someone or something, and then you see the back tires of that patrol vehicle running over at least one person.

There is an update. We know that two people were taken to the hospital. One of them was released. We still don't know the exact condition of the other person. But we do know that it's nonlife threatening injuries. And I do want you to listen to what some of the witnesses here had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was literally so crazy. Like he had tire marks all over his body, belly out. His shoes were off. Honestly it was like something out of a movie. People started like going to the cop cars, they're like yelling at him.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERNAL: Now the interim police chief here in Tacoma did say he was concerned because specifically the deadly use of force. He said his department will cooperate with this independent investigation. And the local newspaper reporting that that officer has been put on leave.

But the community here still has a lot of questions to be answered. There is a protest scheduled for tonight. A lot of the businesses here in this area are already boarding up so of course we'll have to wait and see how this turns out tonight. But the people here are demanding to know exactly why this officer directly ran over at least one person -- Pam.

BROWN: And they have every right to demand answers to that.

All right, Camila Bernal, thank you very much.

Well, it's been one year since the coronavirus changed life as we know it. Remember when things used to be normal? Up next, we're going to take you to the first epicenter of the coronavirus, Wuhan, and see what life after lockdown looks like there.

[20:55:00]

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BROWN: Well, one year ago the Chinese city of Wuhan was sealed off from the rest of the world when it was suddenly ground zero for the coronavirus. So what is it like on the ground now a year later?

CNN's David Culver is there -- David.

DAVID CULVER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Pamela, we are back in Wuhan, China. This is a city when you mentioned its name folks around the world now know as the original epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. We're here as this city is marking one year since an unprecedented lockdown took place.

It was a lockdown that lasted 76 days. And the city of 11 million people was essentially sealed off from the rest of the world. But as we've come back now, we know this business is back to almost normal. However, the people that we've spoken with, those who have lost loved ones, you realize there is a deep agony. Wounds that have yet to be healed. And many of them are angry, upset with local officials who they believe didn't do enough early on.

We're also here as the WHO has a field team here in Wuhan preparing to look deeper into the origins of this virus -- Pamela.

BROWN: So much for that. An all-new CNN global town hall join --

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