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South African COVID-19 Variant Found in U.S.; Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) Met with Donald Trump Today; Former Fox News Political Editor Chris Stirewalt Publishes Op-Ed. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired January 28, 2021 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:00:30]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: It is the top of the hour, I am Brianna Keilar.

And we begin with another disturbing development in the pandemic. Health officials confirm they have detected two cases of the coronavirus variant that was first seen in South Africa. It is the first confirmed report of this particular strain entering the U.S. The variants from Brazil and the U.K. have already spread to several states.

Joining me now to talk about this is Dr. Adrian Burrowes, he is a family medicine doctor who has received both doses of the COVID vaccine -- congratulations on that, sir.

ADRIAN BURROWES, FAMILY MEDICINE PHYSICIAN: Thank you.

KEILAR: This -- look, this I think is what a lot of us are tracking, these variants, and we wonder how worried we should be about them, and if this could lead to another surge. What do you think?

BURROWES: So I think that if Americans are watching these mutations in the COVID-19 virus, which we were expecting in the health care field, pretty much all the variants that you see will likely end up in this country.

And so what is clear about these is that it makes the virus much more transmissible -- in other words, you can get it a lot easier than you could before. And so that's why vaccination remains the number-one thing for Americans to try to get. And number two, social distancing and mask-wearing, those types of things that we've been doing, become even more important, going forward.

KEILAR: So officials say, you know, we wonder when did they detect this? They say it was early January. And I'll be honest, you know, that's South Carolina, I'm in Washington, D.C., not too far from that. And I immediately thought, well, I wonder if it's already here. Do you think that it's actually been in the country longer than that and do you think that it has spread considerably farther than South Carolina?

BURROWES: I do. I think that a lot of these have been undetected. I think as information has come forward, we're finding out that, you know, had we done more testing for those things earlier, we might have caught them sooner. So I don't believe it's just in South Carolina, I believe it's probably in other states as well, undetected.

KEILAR: And you know, South Carolina of course has a huge African- American population. We're seeing a hesitancy remaining as an issue, a hesitancy to get the vaccine in America's black and brown communities. We just saw the death of Sekou Smith, a beloved NBA TV reporter, and it sort of brings -- I think it brings everything kind of together at once about what African-Americans and Hispanic Americans are dealing with in this.

You know, how are you looking at this? They're dying at higher rates, they're catching COVID at higher rates and then they definitely need to get the vaccine because they're more at risk.

BURROWES: Yes, and so first of all, to the family of Sekou Smith and to all the Americans who have lost loved ones to COVID-19, my deepest sympathies. African-Americans are always hesitant to do anything from a health care perspective related to the Tuskegee experiment and some of the things that have happened in health care across this country.

You know, African-Americans are four times more likely to be hospitalized, three times more likely to die. That also goes for the Latin community as well. I lost a colleague of mine, Dr. Norberto (ph) (INAUDIBLE) right down the road from my office, who was 54 years old, who died of COVID.

And so to those communities, the black and brown communities across the country, I encourage you to please get the vaccine. I have received both doses. I grew up in a home that was skeptical of health care, and I understand why some people may have reservations but this is not the time to worry about those things. The vaccines have been safe, and I encourage the Americans to go ahead and take them.

KEILAR: And Dr. Fauci has talked about the disparities that we're seeing in vaccine access, so let's listen to that.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES (via telephone): We don't want, in the beginning, that most of the people who are getting it are otherwise well, middle-class white people. You know, you really want to get it to the people who are really the most vulnerable.

You want to get it to everybody, but you don't want to have a situation where people who really are in need of it, because of where they are, where they live, what their economic status is, that they don't have access to the vaccine.

(END AUDIO CLIP) KEILAR: And you know, Dr. Burrowes, we're seeing that play out in very real time. I mean, when we're talking about Sekou Smith, that is a young man. And the sad thing about it is, you know, he's just one of many. We're seeing, especially in the black male population, so many young men who are dying.

[14:05:00]

So how can this be corrected, that, beyond just trying to convince people to get it, you have to increase their access to be able to get it?

BURROWES: Sure, so if you look at the data, the data shows that in African-American communities, there are less pharmacies per capita. And why that's important is that a lot of the contracts with the vaccines are with pharmacies, and so there's already limited access from just that perspective.

Then when you think about how those communities already have limited access to care, those are things that we really need to be looking for. You know, we've had -- this was not a surprise to anyone, we knew we needed vaccination and we knew that we were going to have a time where we had to roll out the vaccinations, and we did not prepare for that, the prior administration did not prepare. And the reality is that it's caused a lot of chaos in rolling out the vaccines.

We're catching up to that, and now we need to make sure we put in place, in the local communities -- whether that be in churches or in schools, whatever we need to do -- to make sure that the vulnerable populations in this country are vaccinated appropriately and quickly.

KEILAR: Indeed. Sir, thank you so much for being with us.

BURROWES: Always a pleasure, thank you.

KEILAR: And now to the security alerts that we're seeing here in the U.S. Three weeks since the riot at the Capitol to overturn Joe Biden's presidential victory, the threat that spawned it has not gone away and if anything, we're learning it may intensify.

The Department of Homeland Security, issuing a new warning about domestic extremists, saying that they may be emboldened by the Capitol insurrection and, quote, "could continue to mobilize to incite or commit violence." Once again, America's elected officials may be targeted, according to this bulletin from DHS.

And today, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pointed out that the threat against lawmakers may not only be coming from outside Congress.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: I do believe -- and I have said this all along -- that we will probably need a supplemental for more security for members. When the enemy is within the House of Representatives, a threat that members are concerned about in addition to what is happening outside. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What exactly did you mean when you said that the

enemy is within? What exactly do you mean by that?

PELOSI: It means that we have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor, and have threatened violence on other members of Congress.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Just a day ago, U.S. Capitol Police arrested a Virginia man who the Metropolitan Police say was armed with a handgun and 20 rounds of ammunition outside of the American Veterans Disabled for Life Memorial, which as you can see on this map, is very close to the U.S. Capitol.

And now, authorities are urgently searching for more information about the person who placed two suspected pipe bombs outside of the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic Parties that were rigged to explode the day of the deadly insurrection.

Our CNN crime and justice correspondent Shimon Prokupecz has been tracking this story for us. And, Shimon, officials are worried that the suspect could strike again. What are you hearing?

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, they are worried, and simply because he's still -- or she's still out there. They don't have much to go on right now, it's almost the perfect crime here, Brianna. All they have is this grainy surveillance photo that they've distributed and put out there to try and see if someone perhaps may remember some piece of clothing this individual was wearing.

What's so significant in all this is that the fact that this person seemed to know what they were doing, by being able to disguise themselves almost so perfectly. And really, there's no DNA that we know of, there's no fingerprints, which also leads authorities to believe a couple of things.

First, that perhaps maybe these devices that were placed outside the Republican and Democratic locations were placed there to try and divert law enforcement that was responding to the Capitol as the insurrection was occurring. And certainly, the other thing is obviously it indicates that there was some kind of planning that went into this.

The broader theory here, that perhaps there was a bigger plan all around on the day of the insurrection, so that's what authorities are really working off of.

They don't tell us much about how the bombs were made, they do say that they were steel. And what's also significant is that these kinds of pipe bombs are very common, so it's someone who probably learned how to make this off the internet, used things that you could just buy at a store to make. So they haven't really learned much in terms of -- from that. But a couple of clues, but the most significant is that they really

have nothing to go on right now. In fact, the FBI and the ATF recently upped the reward. It was initially $50,000, it is now $75,000 and will likely go up in the days and weeks to come if they still do not have any clues as to who this person is.

KEILAR: And tell us about another story that you're following, about a California man who has been charged with possession of pipe bombs.

[14:10:00]

PROKUPECZ: Well, this goes to the overall threat across the country, right? We know this DHS bulletin, and we've been reporting now for weeks that authorities are very concerned off (ph) the chatter and information that they're receiving, and this seems to fall within that.

What they found was this individual, his name is Ian Rogers, he's from California. They raided his home back on January 15, and they found five pipe bombs at the location, they also found information on a mock credit card, where it talked about white privilege, there was some labeling on it about white privilege and the former president, Donald Trump. The FBI has said that he is a Trump supporter.

Also significant, there are text messages they found on his phone, between him and an individual, where he talked about wanting to do harm to Twitter, after the president was removed, the former president was removed from Twitter, but also he talked about wanting to blow up a Democrat building, specifically saying that he wants to blow up a Democrat building bad.

Again, this is all surrounding the climate that we now find ourselves under, with all the threats that are ongoing, it would seem that somehow the FBI got tipped off to this, the local police in California got tipped off to this and they were able to make this arrest. He is still behind bars, there's a $5 million bond on him so we have yet to learn more about this.

But again, I think, Brianna, all of this obviously goes to the fact that we are under this threat stream, and stuff that just keeps coming in and almost on a daily basis, we hear from the FBI of a new arrest. And very concerning, as we know from the DHS bulletin, this is something that they expect to go on for quite some time.

KEILAR: All right, we know you will be following it, Shimon, thank you so much. Shimon Prokupecz for us.

Significant signs today that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is sticking with Donald Trump and those who remain loyal to Trump's big lie of election fraud. McCarthy, meeting with Trump in Florida today in an attempt, according to what sources tell CNN, to mend fences with the former president after saying that Trump bears responsibility for the attack on Capitol Hill, and then of course flip-flopping on that.

CNN political commentator Amanda Carpenter once served as Ted Cruz' communications director, she is now the author of "Gaslighting America: Why We Love It When Trump Lies to Us."

Amanda, great to have you here to talk about this. There's a source telling CNN that some people warned McCarthy, don't take this trip. Why would he still go?

AMANDA CARPENTER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Listen, the Republican Party has come to the realization that, despite what happened in the Capitol, they still love Donald Trump, they need Donald Trump, they can't imagine life without him. Because as you pointed out, Kevin McCarthy tried to lay some responsibility at his feet, and then he flipped around and said, well, we're all responsible.

Nikki Haley did the same thing, she went (INAUDIBLE) meeting among fellow Republicans and said, he'll be judged harshly by history. That didn't go well because yesterday, on "Fox News," she's saying give the guy a break. And so they all got the brushback pitch, and they realized they're going to make do with Trump.

And here's the sad thing that I realized when I heard Nikki Haley say that, because I would have liked to think of her as a plausible 2024 presidential contender who maybe could put the Republican Party back together. I realized when she said that, she can't do better than Trump.

They've all looked down the well of 2024, and realized they don't know how to talk to that base, they don't know how to create a new base. They can't imagine a different coalition, and so that's why Kevin McCarthy is going down to Mar-a-Lago to mend fences with Trump even though he sent his supporters into his workplace to commit violence and stop the certification of an election. It's because they can't imagine life any other way, and that is just the saddest realization I've come to over the last four years.

KEILAR: And McCarthy, Amanda, is also seen as enabling Trump loyalists. He gave Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene a slot on the Education Committee despite the fact that she has had repeated support, before being elected, for executing Democrats. And I think especially when it comes to the Education Committee, these claims that she previously made that the Parkland School mass shooting was a false flag event that was carried out by actors?

This is a clip of Taylor Greene that was posted online, of her confronting David Hogg, who we'll all recognize as a survivor of that Parkland mass shooting. And just to mention, when this happened, it was not too long after the shooting.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): David, why are you supporting the red flag laws? You are using your lobby and the money behind it and the kids to try to take away my Second Amendment rights. You don't have anything to say for yourself? If school zones protected by -- with security guards with guns, there would be no mass shootings at schools.

(END VIDEO CLIP) [14:15:05]

KEILAR: She is going after a student, a survivor of a shooting, there, Amanda. And she's on the Education Committee.

CARPENTER: Yes. Our -- you know, our own Andrew Kaczynski has done a great job putting all the stuff about her together, but the problem with her is that there's been so much. It's like, OK, she's a 9/11 truther. OK, she thinks the school shootings are false flags. Oh, OK, she's into QAnon.

It's all been out there, and Kevin McCarthy was well aware of it during her primary last summer. People brought concerns about her to him and he said, through a spokesperson at the time, he has zero tolerance for this kind of stuff, it's appalling.

But guess what? He's welcomed her into the caucus. He might give her a stern little lecture, but the problem is, this blind, partisan loyalty where everyone thinks if you're a Republican, you have to support any Republican that wins their general election no matter what, is how you get candidates like Marjorie Taylor Greene, it's how you end up enabling and supporting someone like Donald Trump for four years, and maybe for another four years, who know.

Nobody's going to put any brakes on this thing because he's a Republican. At some point, people have to decide that being a Republican is about more than just waving the red flag, and actually stands for something. Otherwise Marjorie Taylor Greene will say, look, it's for this, it's for stalking survivors of mass shootings and conspiracies.

KEILAR: I also want to ask you about Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who is heading to Liz Cheney's home district in Wyoming to campaign against Cheney for voting to impeach Trump. And I should add, of course, that Cheney is -- you know, she's got a position in the Republican leadership in the House, she's the GOP Conference chair.

Gaetz is making this trip as McCarthy is telling members of the GOP to stop attacking each other during a conference-wide call yesterday, according to reporting from our Manu Raju.

I mean, does anyone listen to what Kevin McCarthy even says? Do they even care?

CARPENTER: No, because he doesn't have sway with the Republican base. it's just like when Mitch McConnell stood up on January 6th and essentially told senators don't object to the certification of Joe Biden's election. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, the rest stood up anyway.

It's because the leadership of the Republican Party doesn't know how to communicate to the base, only Donald Trump does. And they've done it for -- in really bad ways for really bad reason. Matt Gaetz has been on the Trump roadshow all over the Western states for quite a while. This isn't his first trip outside of Florida, he holds these events just like Don Jr. and the rest of the MAGA media club has been doing for a long time. And no one's going to stop them because, quite frankly, what worries

me? I think they want it more and they're better at this than the people who I respect and I know have principles when it comes to at least talking and selling their ideas to voters.

KEILAR: How does this work out? I mean, how do you see this kind of I guess ending or evolving for the Republican Party? There's a lot of people like you, you know, there's some of them in Congress too, who saw the pathway diverging in the party, and they chose -- for a lot of people -- to kind of go with their consciences.

Some people decided very much to go with their political ambitions, or perhaps that was in line with what they actually believed, some of them, as well, when I think of a Marjorie Taylor Greene. How does this end?

CARPENTER: Well, I mean, if the Republican Party keeps going this way and just chasing, you know, the QAnon dream (ph), they're probably going to keep losing. Donald Trump is responsible for losing not only the White House, but the House and the Senate.

But you can't assume that bad ideas are going to keep losing, you kind of have -- for that to work, the Democratic Party has to be perfect. In a lot of ways, the Democratic Party ran a perfect campaign. A lot of people didn't think Joe Biden would get the nomination, he was too moderate? He was the right candidate for the right time.

They have to be perfect, and those dozens and dozens of lawsuits, beating back the Trump campaign's claims to try to overturn the election. They had to win all the right states.

You can't depend on that to hold for so long, especially now that they're in power, and it's going to be much easier for the Republican Party to mobilize against a Biden administration, who will push policies that they don't like, and will be easier to message against.

And so at some point, I think people of good, sound mind just have to evaluate a candidate's character first. There may be policies that you don't like, but bad character leads to bad consequences, that -- we saw that in the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, we saw that in Lafayette Square, we saw that so many times.

And so if we could do one thing on a bipartisan, unified manner to come together and agree that character and decency are voting issues first, I think we'd come a long, long way.

[14:20:06]

KEILAR: We will see. Amanda Carpenter, always great to see you, thanks for coming on.

CARPENTER: Thank you.

KEILAR: And next, the Fox political editor who called Arizona early for Biden has been fired, and he appears to be calling out his old bosses in a new op-ed. Plus, the White House press briefing expected to start just minutes

from now, we're going to bring that to you live as President Biden has just signed executive actions to expand health care access during this pandemic.

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KEILAR: A former political editor fired from "Fox News" is slamming his ex-network for its, quote, "hype men" who helped former President Trump in his attempt to, quote, "steal the election."

[14:25:03]

Chris Stirewalt faced major outrage after defending the network's decision to call the presidential race in Arizona for Joe Biden on Election Night, much earlier than other news outlets. Fox fired him in what they called a restructuring.

Now, in a "Los Angeles Times" opinion piece, Stirewalt fires back and he says that the U.S. is, quote, "a nation of news consumers both overfed and malnourished. Americans gorge themselves daily on empty informational calories, indulging their sugar fixes of self-affirming half-truths and even outright lies."

CNN chief media correspondent Brian Stelter is with us on this story. This is very interesting, a fired political editor, he never actually names Fox in his op-ed --

BRIAN STELTER, CNN CHIEF MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: Right.

KEILAR: -- but it's pretty clear who he means -- Brian.

STELTER: Yes, I think maybe because he's on an NDA or something, he's limited in exactly what he can say about Fox, but he wants people to know where he's coming from and he's taken to this op-ed to do that.

Here's another part of what he said that's really remarkable, Brianna, he says, "The rebellion on the populist right against the results of the election was partly a cynical, knowing effort by political operators and their hype men in the media to steal an election or at least get rich trying.

"But it was also the tragic consequence of the informational malnourishment so badly afflicting the nation." He says, "When I defended the call for Biden in the Arizona election, I became a target of murderous rage from consumers who were furious at not having their views confirmed."

And I know that's true anecdotally inside Fox, there was so much anger about the Arizona call and about Fox, even calling Biden president- elect, even reporting the news. Stirewalt was benched by mid-November, he was off the air in all of December and then, as you said, he was fired recently along with a number of others at Fox. There seems to be a purge of real journalists under way.

KEILAR: Yes, and they say it was a restructuring. I mean -- STELTER: Right.

KEILAR: -- was it?

STELTER: That's what they say. Look, I've been reporting on this for the next edition of my book, "Hoax." There's a lot of mystery about what happened with Stirewalt, why did the D.C. bureau boss suddenly retire.

I think there's a narrative inside Fox that goes like this, we moved too quickly, we told the viewers things they didn't want to hear. The viewers rebelled, they turned the channel, they went to Newsmax, they stopped watching news altogether. We need to win our viewers back someway, somehow.

Of course, they're trying to win their viewers back with more crazy right-wing, far-right opinion. They're doing less and less news, more and more opinion. And ultimately, that is self-defeating, it is not actually in the interests of the audience to be fed misinformation and propaganda. But that's the path Fox is going.

You can see it all day long, in the way that you've covered, in all these clips they run, Tucker Carlson all day, the programming decisions they've made are all pointing in a propaganda direction and away from news, which leaves people like Chris Stirewalt out in the cold -- Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, indeed. Brian Stelter, thank you so much for that.

President Biden this afternoon, signing new executive orders on health care, and one of them will temporarily reopen enrollment for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. Another order will roll back a Trump policy on abortion rights and funding for international nonprofits, all of this coming as West Wing offices at the White House are filling up fast with key Biden advisers.

I want to bring in CNN's chief national affairs correspondent Jeff Zeleny. Jeff, you got the inside look. Tell us which advisers are getting offices with close proximity to Biden's office, the Oval Office. This is always something that is very telling.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, it certainly is. I mean, the fight for real estate in the West Wing is always one of the most interesting things, you know, that happens at the beginning of any new administration.

And as you know form being in the West Wing, it's actually a very small space, small hallways, small, cramped offices. Not with big views, but the proximity to power is the most important. Now, this is a look inside, in an animated way, of what the West Wing looks like under President Biden.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZELENY (voice-over): From the outside, the views of the White House are majestic. But from the inside, they are powerful. And that proximity to power comes alive in the West Wing.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you very much.

ZELENY (voice-over): The Oval Office --

JEN PSAKI, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Hi, everyone.

ZELENY (voice-over): -- and the White House Briefing Room are already front and center after week one of the new administration, yet it's the rooms and offices not seen on television that speak to the hierarchy surrounding President Biden. Vice President Kamala Harris has her working office in the West Wing, but the rest of the real estate has been parceled out to Biden advisers.

White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain has the corner office, complete with a fireplace and small outdoor terrace. Down the hall, and only steps away from the Oval, sit Steve Ricchetti and Mike Donilon, two of Biden's longtime hands.

Just across the hall, Bruce Reed, another longtime aide, and Jennifer O'Malley Dillon, Biden's winning campaign manager. The president's personal aide and director of Oval Office operations are seated nearby.

The second floor of the White House is home to other top-flight officials including Jeff Zients, the coronavirus coordinator, along with the White House Counsel's office, Legislative Affairs director, National Economic Council and head of Domestic Policy.

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