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GOP Implodes As Extremist And Mainstream Republicans Clash; Rep. Greene Boasts Of Call With Trump, Vows She Won't Back Down; GOP Sen. Romney & GOP Rep. Greene Slam Each Other In Tweets; New Study Reveals Children And Communities May Be At Lower Risk When Children Are In School; Small Town Mayor Embraces QAnon; Hospital Near Amazon Overwhelmed By New COVID Variant. Aired 7-8p ET

Aired January 30, 2021 - 19:00   ET

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

[19:00:00]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: More than two weeks after the deadly attempted coup on the capitol only a handful of mainstream Republicans are openly rejecting the violent and baseless rhetoric that helped inspire the assault and could fuel new bloodshed.

Much of this latest tension and controversy in the GOP surrounds this woman. Freshman Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene who is known for embracing the QAnon virtual cult. She is set to meet with House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy next week but both of them are turning to one of their most incendiary voices in the party's history for cover.

That would be Donald J. Trump. Joe Johns is on Capitol Hill for us. Joe, tell us about this phone call between Greene and Trump and how Senator Mitt Romney is now taking on Greene.

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. You know, we don't have any confirmation that that call actually happened but we really don't have any reason to doubt that it happened. What we do know from Marjorie Taylor Greene is she said it was a great call. She was grateful to have what you called the former president's support and she also said that Democrats are now attacking her in the same way that they used to attack Donald Trump.

So assuming that call happened, it is significant just because it shows how the former president remains in the background pulling strings despite the fact that he does not have a Twitter megaphone even as his own party up here on Capitol Hill continues the identity crisis, the blood-letting, if you will.

There's another example of that as you mentioned, that is the back and forth between Marjorie Taylor Greene and Senator Mitt Romney of Utah. Romney tweeted out talking about the lies, Marjorie Taylor Greene has told and her claims that the election was stolen. She essentially shot back that Romney cares nothing about what she called the people's number one concern and then there was this.

Please grow pair or get a spine, she tweeted so that is the state of play, no remorse, no apologies, no backing down from Marjorie Taylor Greene who of course has attracted calls from Democrats for her ouster from Congress because she has supported the assassination or execution of Democratic members of Congress.

Of course, important to say also that this is not a Democratic issue. It's very much a question of the ugly public fight that continues between members of the Republican Party up here on Capitol Hill in the aftermath of the January 6 riot. Pamela back to you.

BROWN: And McCarty's office says he'll be meeting with her next week. Still big question of what that conversation will entail. Joe Johns, thank you so much. Meantime another Marjorie Taylor Greene social media post has surfaced. A Twitter user posted it on Thursday and it shows Greene discussing the 2017 Las Vegas shooting.

During that horrific incident Stephen Paddock opened fire on a crowd gathered for a music festival. 58 people were killed and hundreds wounded in the attack. Paddock was later found dead in his hotel room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound but Marjorie Taylor Greene things the massacre was staged to discourage support for the second amendment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): Maybe you accomplish that by performing a mass shooting into a crowd that is very likely to be conservative, very likely to vote Republican, very likely to be Trump supporters, very likely to be pro second amendment and very likely to own guns. Are they trying to terrorize our mindset and change our minds on the second amendment? Is that what's going on here? I have a lot of questions about that. I don't believe Stephen Paddock was a lone wolf.

I don't believe that he pulled this off all by himself. And I know most of you don't either.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: We reached out to Congresswoman Greene for comment on this post and we're still waiting for a response. And now let's get to the very latest on where things stand in the capitol riot investigation. CNN correspondent Whitney Wild joins me now.

Whitney, federal authorities are charging a woman over disturbing threat she allegedly made. What do we know?

WHITNEY WILD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, here's what we know. Prosecutors say that a woman named Dawn Bancroft and another woman Diana Santos-Smith also charged broke into the capital on January 6. So proud of themselves in fact that they took a selfie video in which they said we - well, excuse me, in which Dawn Bancroft said, "We broke into the capitol. We got inside. We did our part."

Here's where the story gets very chilling Pamela. Dawn Bancroft according to prosecutors said in a selfie video, "We were looking for Nancy to shoot her in the friggin' brain but we didn't find her." That - those words absolutely so frightening and it was just one example of that hyperbolic language and inflammatory language that seem to be so rampant on January 6.

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There's also news out this week, two members of the far right group 'The Proud Boys' have been charged with conspiracy and that's significant because in addition to a long list of other charges they face, the conspiracy represent a ramping up from prosecutors. It represents a new phase in the case where prosecutors are going after the most severe charges possible.

Their accused basically conspiring together on January 6 trying to stop police from protecting the capitol. Again, this represents a very significant moment in the case. However, their conspiracy is limited to January 6. That's different from other conspiracy charges we've seen Pamela, in which prosecutors say other people spent weeks or even months planning this riot.

BROWN: Yes, that would show premeditation. Whitney Wild, thank you very much for bringing us the latest there with that investigation. Well, he may be gone but the former president is far from forgotten in the Republican Party. Even without his Twitter account Donald Trump's fan base is more activated than ever it seems.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CORKY HAYNES, ARIZONA GOP PARTY MEMBER: This election was stolen. Trump won I think by a landslide.

BARBARA WYLIE, ARIZONA GOP PARTY MEMBER: I will be with him wherever he goes. However he goes.

EUGENE PEPLOWSKI, ARIZONA GOP PARTY MEMBER: Unification at what cost. OK? Selling out America? I can't do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Joining me now with more. CNN political commentator and former U. S. Senator Jeff Flake. Thank you. When you decided not to seek re- election, you famously said that you thought Trump fever would soon break. That was in October of 2017. Do you see any evidence of that yet?

JEFF FLAKE, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it's tough to say that there has been much break yet. I'm hopeful that it will. I think the president will lose influence the longer we go but that will depend on other elected officials ignoring him and moving on and realizing that if we want to be relevant as a National Party, we've got to get beyond Trump and Trumpism.

Why do you think that they are still hitching their stock to Trump so much? He lost the House in the midterms then the White House, then the Senate, yet the Republican Party is still banking on him for the next round of midterms. He's not even on Twitter anymore. He doesn't even have that sway. Why does he still have so much influence? FLAKE: They're still concerned that with a phone call, the president

can still generate a primary for just about anybody and that is still the case right now but that's only the case because so many elected officials simply go along with the big falsehood that the president won the election and that is going to continue unless enough elected officials stand up and say no, let's move on, we need to be a relevant rational party and we can't do it if we continue to basically amplify the president's falsehoods.

BROWN: But I mean we've seen that happen. You're one example and you're seeing the Republicans who sit up for impeachment getting punished and you're seeing Republicans who are perpetuating that falsehood still getting support like Marjorie Taylor Greene so is that a realistic view that Republicans who want to stay in politics will actually do that given how many have been punished for standing up to Trump?

FLAKE: Well, if they do it together, if there are enough Republicans, enough elected officials who say we're ready to move on now. We've just got to move on and we can't countenance these falsehoods anymore about the election and we can't stand with people like Congresswoman Greene and all that she talks about.

I mean we cannot win national elections or even state-wide elections in some states like Arizona if we Republicans continue down this path. At some point we'll realize that but that time hasn't come yet apparently.

BROWN: So writing for Politico, CNN Senior Political Analyst Ryan Lizza said this. He said "For Trump's loyalists Trump second impeachment has been taken less as an indictment of the former president's behavior than a cause to rally around him - a martyr for an aggrieved populist base."

Do you think that that same effect is happening with Marjorie Taylor Greene? I mean she's now fund raising off of her controversial comments that have come to light recently.

FLAKE: Well, I think that that affinity with Congresswoman Greene will last - won't last long if you will. I cannot see too many members rallying around her given what she has said. Now if she were to apologize and say hey, I misspoke so many times over the years and I'm ready to move ahead as a different person, that'd be one thing but she's not. It was clear today by what she tweeted out she said I will not apologize.

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And somebody who will not apologize for racist comments for what she has said about these false flags she claims with the shootings and whatnot, it's just so crazy. There's no other way to say it and so I cannot see too many of my colleagues standing up for that. There will be resolutions that come to the floor of the House of Representatives because Democrats are in control.

That will force Republicans to take a position and I think long before then Kevin McCarthy and others in the party are going to have to put some discipline there in terms of committee assignments or whatnot but that I don't think that members will stand with her.

BROWN: But I want to just go outside the beltway and members of Congress, I mean what you're seeing is this dynamic out in the country, that you saw with Trump, that that's what Ryan Lizza was talking about. The more that he stirs up controversy, the more that his supporters sympathize for him. Look at him as a martyr essentially.

I mean, because there has been so much distrust built up over the years and so forth, it's almost as though people - Americans who support people like Donald Trump or Marjorie Taylor Greene, they're more focused on how they were treated in times like this than what they actually said that's controversial. What do you do about that?

FLAKE: Yes, it's difficult to move beyond that but I do think you know a bolt ultimately, the president did lose supporters, frankly. Or Democrats gained followers. This election was not really close. I mean we had 74 electoral votes. You had 7 million popular votes that the president lost by and we in Arizona have now two Democrats representatives in the U.S. Senate.

This is really - this is not winning and at some point, at some point Republicans will realize that but right now they still see it in their interest. They have to get by a primary to stick with the president. I don't think that that will last but it certainly is right now and I don't see them standing with Marjorie Taylor Greene very much longer.

BROWN: And before we go I just want to ask you about the local politics in Arizona and how you - how you have been treated by Arizona Republicans who want to censor and others, what is your reaction to that?

FLAKE: Well, if what it takes to stay in the good graces of the GOP and Arizona is to excuse the president's behavior, I'm just fine being on the outs and so I know that Cindy McCain feels the same way and the governor as well so yes, nobody wants to be censured by their party but the alternative is far worse.

BROWN: And just to be clear, you still consider yourself a Republican?

FLAKE: I do, I do and I hope our party can come back. I'm not one that says burn the party down. I want to rebuild the party into a party that believes in limited government and economic freedom, individual responsibility and strong American leadership. We can win on that message.

But we cannot win if we continue to condone the president's behavior and follow this, what really isn't the philosophy at all, it's more of an attitude and it is just not - there's nothing sustainable or coherent there but it just cannot last much longer if we want to be a relevant party in the future.

BROWN: OK. Former Senator Jeff Flake, thank you for coming on, sharing your views, being a part of your Saturday evening with us. FLAKE: You bet.

BROWN: Well California is reporting more than 40,000 deaths so far from the coronavirus but despite that the state's largest county is easing some restrictions. Paul Vercammen is there. Paul.

PAUL VERCAMMEN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right Pam. Look behind me, all of these people out at a restaurant for the first time in a long time. We'll explain why they're easing restrictions and why one restaurant owner is very upset with a rule that pertains to the TV and the Superbowl.

BROWN: Plus we've seen the fringe conspiracy theory QAnon reach the halls of Congress but now it's reaching leaders and other positions of power. The story one small town's mayor is just ahead.

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BROWN: In Los Angeles county the nation's largest coronavirus cases are nearing 3.3 million with more than 40,000 deaths. The Los Angeles County has decided to allow restaurants to reopen outdoor dining at 50 percent capacity. CNN's Paul Vercammen joins me now with more on this. This is just such a dilemma, Paul. Health concerns are top of mind but the economic impact on small businesses can't be ignored either. Tell me more about this decision.

VERCAMMEN: Oh, it's a wrestling match here in California, Pam. First off the governor projected that there would be more intensive care unit beds available in the coming weeks so he loosened up the restrictions. Here in LA County, they've reopened restaurants today with a lot of very strict guidelines.

Now one of the reasons for this is 1.8 million people in California with jobs associated with food and service. Among the new rules, you could see the tables Pam, they're 8 feet apart. They want the servers wearing their mask and their shields. They have also said though in the future and right now in fact there are going to be no TVs allowed and that has the owner of this restaurant furious because the Superbowl is next weekend.

ANGELA MARSDEN, OWNER, PINEAPPLE HILL SALOON & GRILL: If you put people out of safe spaces for Superbowl, you're putting them literally in danger and putting them into homes and house parties which will take place. So please have some common sense, let us use the TVs, give us the chance to keep people safe and give them a little bit of community because that's what people need right now and I don't know what else to do other than get on my knees and just pray or beg. You know like let's use some common sense here.

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VERCAMMEN: And something we're hearing again and again for Angela Marsden's customers is this isn't just about a plate of food for them, there are often sentimental value to coming out and seeing other people.

DARRIN LOMBARD, CUSTOMER: This place is pretty historic since here in Sherman Oaks neighborhood of Los Angeles where I met my then fiance. We actually got engaged here so it's pretty important me to see that this you know personal landmark of mine survives. I think a lot of people have similar experiences in that way and many other places in this historic town also.

VERCAMMEN: And one more rule they say, no tables will have more than six people and they do not want those people coming from the same households, Pam.

BROWN: All right.

VERCAMMEN: I should say different households.

BROWN: Different households. So you obviously talked to an owner or manager of a restaurant that's open. You also talked to people who decided, who were deciding not to reopen this weekend. What are they telling you?

VERCAMMEN: Well, a number of these restaurants I talked to Dustin Lancaster, he owns 10 restaurants. I talk to the owner of Casa Vega just down the street from here and they were just not ready, they were frankly surprised by LA County's new rules, they came out just yesterday and they said they did not have enough preparation time to re-hire employees, to prepare and get the tables that are eight feet apart, et cetera, et cetera.

There's a lot of regulations here. They're quite stiff. They say they will open eventually but they just weren't ready to do so this weekend Pam.

BROWN: OK, Paul Vercammen thanks for bringing us the latest there from Los Angeles. A new study says that rates of coronavirus infections are lower for kids who were in school rather than out of school. The former Education Secretary under President Obama, Arne Duncan joins me live to discuss.

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(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. DARRIA LONG, UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE, DEPARTMENT OF EMERGENCY MEDICINE: It's safe to go back to school when you do these things is what I say and even in our schools, we did identify outbreaks of one, traced two on and off campus party but when you're testing and doing these things, you can identify where the outbreak is and instead of flying blind, you can be very strategic in who you quarantine and allow the rest of the school to be in place.

That was the key point is that if we do these things, we can keep the majority of children in school safely.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So that was part of my conversation with Dr. Darria Long, one of the researchers behind a new study that suggests kids maybe at a lower risk of COVID infection, if they attend school in person. Arne Duncan was the Education Secretary under President Obama and he joins me now to talk more about this. Nice to see you. So Mr. Secretary, I want to get your reaction to this.

You have President Biden pledging to reopen most schools within 100 days. Now this new study that says rates of coronavirus infections are lower for kids who are in school rather than out of them. What do you think about that?

ARNE DUNCAN, FORMER EDUCATION SECRETARY UNDER PRESIDENT OBAMA: First of congratulations on the new show, really happy for you.

BROWN: Oh, thank you.

DUNCAN: And this is - this is super complicated issue so that the news coming out of the CDC this week was very, very encouraging but we have to be clear that it's safe for kids to go back to school when those schools are safe, when the precautions are taken, when there's testing and contact tracing and quarantine, when there's enough PPE, when the ventilation systems work.

So those are all that I'm going to say caveats, those are all the very important things that have to be in place but it's even more complicated in that the goal is not to get kids back into school safely which is critically important is to take care of their social and emotional needs.

So many kids have been struggling with real trauma during this past year. We have tens of millions of kids who were six months to a year behind academically so we need to think about a national tuning program to try and help them catch up basically have a seven-month sprint from February to September so they can go back to school in the fall, ready to go and then finally, we have probably 2 million to 3 million children who literally have not been to school in a year and Pam, people aren't talking about that enough.

For me, that is devastating. We have to go find those lost children and bring them back into the system.

BROWN: So for parents watching this right now, what are they supposed to think? You have this study, you have the CDC saying schools can reopen during the pandemic but we've also seen these outbreaks across the country. What are parents supposed to think right now?

I mean it's almost like if you're a parent, you have to be our own detective on whether it's safe to send your child back to school if the school opens.

DUNCAN: We partly have to be detective, partly we have to listen to people who really care about our children and listen to the science and pay attention to that. There's so much misinformation out there. We have two children at home and we're figuring out what to do here, it's the same thing. I think asking those hard questions of your school and school district, is it safe for them to go back and what does that look like?

They always say that we should start with the youngest children first. We should open gradually, slowly. The goal is not to reopen schools, the goal is to keep them open. We should start with the most vulnerable children first and while ideally COVID would never enter one of our school buildings, we know that it will.

The key thing is what do we do when COVID does enter our school building and the other interview that you were playing talking about the steps needed to be taken.

[19:30:09]

So it does not force a school to shut down, doesn't endanger everybody else. Those are the kinds of things that have to be happening.

BROWN: Do you think teachers should be vaccinated before kids return?

DUNCAN: I think everybody should be vaccinated. You know, that's coming very, very quickly. I don't know if it's absolutely critical that every teacher gets vaccinated before any kids return to school. We've had schools, as you know, open for a while now without teachers being vaccinated.

But teachers, let me be very really clear, are absolutely essential workers, we should get them vaccinated as fast as we can. And not just teachers, counselors, social workers, bus drivers, principals, custodians. No one is more important to our country than those taking care of our children every single day.

BROWN: Why aren't they considered essential in more states? I think I read last night, it was only 18 states, have them as essential workers who can get vaccinated. Do you know why they wouldn't be considered essential more broadly?

DUNCAN: That's a phenomenal question. And for me, there's no plausible explanation for why they are kept off of that list. It doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever.

BROWN: So I want to ask you this, because I know you've laid out, look, this is a complicated issue. There are all these moving parts and variables here.

I want to talk about the C.D.C. report that concluded schools are safe, if there is PPE and testing. But we don't have a one size fits all system in this country, particularly when you look at the disparity between public schools and private schools and the funding gaps. How do you really go about tackling this?

DUNCAN: Well, first of all, what we've lacked up until a couple of weeks ago, was a national strategy, a national plan, and the fact that you've had 15,000 school districts and 100,000 schools trying to figure this out for themselves is absolutely crazy. It's heartbreaking. It didn't make any sense whatsoever.

Now, with the new Biden administration coming into place, you can start to think this thing through collectively, learn from each other, share best practices, where things aren't working, be very transparent and vulnerable about that. They'll learn quickly and don't replicate those mistakes.

And so I think we have a chance to rapidly accelerate the pace of change, get more schools open safely, and work and do this together. We're all in the same boat. We all have the same fears and concerns. Everybody wants to go back to school: teachers, principals, parents, everyone wants it. We just have to do it absolutely as safely as possible.

BROWN: So in states without mask orders, how would that work with Biden's school plan requiring masks?

DUNCAN: Well, I don't see how you do this safely without masks. That seems absolutely impossible to me. And again, it makes no sense.

So that is talking about the precautions, the steps that have to be taken to reopen safely. Nowhere will you see open schools without masks. That's ludicrous.

BROWN: All right. I want to ask you about this horrific story, this unfathomable repercussion in Las Vegas, a spike in student suicides that has Clark County there, scrambling to reopen as quickly as possible, as an electronic warning system used by the district to detect mental and emotional struggles among students is showing an increase in activity.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JESUS JARA, SUPERINTENDENT, CLARK COUNTY, NEVADA SCHOOLS: Kids are Googling or they're surfing how to suicide. You are getting the alerts, you get four or five a day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: How should educators and local officials balance protecting children's mental health with protecting their community from the virus?

DUNCAN: Yes, sorry, can you repeat that question?

BROWN: Yes, so how do you balance the health of a community and the mental health of these children?

DUNCAN: Yes, well, there's many things that districts have done throughout this pandemic. Telehealth, calling kids, testing them, making sure they're okay. We can do this physically. We can also do it virtually, that's been happening.

Counselors, social workers, teachers taking care of kids throughout this pandemic. But this is taking a real toll on kids' social emotional health. And so I do not want to blow through that. That's where you have to start, meet them where they are and when they're dealing with tremendous trauma. We can't bury that. We can't sweep it under the rug. We have to take care of kids and families who are really struggling.

BROWN: All right, Arne Duncan, thanks for coming on the show.

DUNCAN: Thanks so much for having me.

BROWN: Well, the QAnon conspiracy theory hasn't just infiltrated the Halls of Congress, but also other positions of power.

Up next, we take you to a small town outside of Seattle for the story of one small town mayor.

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BROWN: Well, the QAnon conspiracy theory isn't just constrained to political figures on the national stage. In one town outside of Seattle, Washington, the mayor supports these baseless fringe theories. CNN's Kyung Lah spoke with residents about it, as well as the mayor himself who had some startling conspiratorial thoughts about the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I want to welcome Mayor Armacost to the program.

MAYOR WILLIAM ARMACOST, SEQUIM, WASHINGTON: Thank you Good morning.

LAH (voice over): The small community of Sequim, Washington.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And the next question is for the Mayor --

LAH (voice over): Has a big question for the mayor.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Why do you publicly support QAnon?

LAH (voice over): Question after question, QAnon and the mayor are the talk of the town.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. Mayor, excuse me. You owe it to the citizens of Sequim.

LAH (voice over): Residents fear that Sequim, population 7,000, may be the first to have a QAnon conspiracy theorist in power. William Armacost is the mayor.

ARMACOST: It does not influence me at the role of a city council member in there.

LAH (on camera): But you still believe it.

ARMACOST: I am not saying that I believe that. LAH (voice over): That is QAnon, the ludicrous conspiracy that a cabal

of Satan worshipping pedophiles are part of a Deep State plotting against Donald Trump and operating a global child sex trafficking ring.

[19:40:08]

LAH (voice over): QAnon burst into the mainstream during the U.S. Capitol attack. Insurrectionists were seen wearing Q symbols inside the Capitol and in the crowd outside.

SHENNA YOUNGER, SEQUIM, WASHINGTON RESIDENT: Most people think of QAnon is something that is so far off the spectrum it will never come to their town.

LAH (on camera): Do they?

KAREN HOGAN, SEQUIM, WASHINGTON RESIDENT: That's what we thought.

YOUNGER: I don't know. Yes.

HOGAN: I mean, this is -- this has been shocking.

YOUNGER: Yes.

LAH (voice over): It began last August, few in this quiet community two hours from Seattle expected the mayor's monthly radio broadcast to include a message like this.

ARMACOST: QAnon is a truth movement that encourages you to think for yourself. I want to encourage you to search for Joe M on YouTube, and watch his videos starting with "Q: The Plan to Save the World."

LAH (voice over): That ominous video --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Every President after Reagan was one of these Deep State criminals --

LAH (voice over): Full of absurd lies, ends by promoting Trump as the Savior.

Mayor Armacost has also spread disinformation online. He shared this QAnon rallying cry on his personal Facebook page short for, "Where we go one, we go all" posting that nearly 20 times in one month.

HOGAN: Go ahead and have those theories. It doesn't matter. But don't let somebody who has those theories get put in a position of power.

ARMACOST: I never said I believe that. I believe there are, unfortunately --

LAH (on camera): You called it a truth movement.

ARMACOST: What I call is the opportunity as a patriot, and as an American citizen to seek truth.

LAH (voice over): As far as that video he encouraged residents to watch.

LAH (on camera): Do you believe what the video suggests?

ARMACOST: I'm not committing to that. I think, again, there are many different resources that can influence our thought pattern. Again, I encourage people to seek truth.

LAH (voice over): For 15 minutes, Armacost returned again and again to his idea of truth.

LAH (on camera): So you're not going to categorize what QAnon is despite --

ARMACOST: You know what? I am not in the position to do that.

LAH: Despite what we saw at the U.S. Capitol? Despite --

ARMACOST: You know, I've watched a lot of different videos that showed many different what appeared to be scenarios versus what has continued to run. I have no way of confirming that that was one group versus another.

LAH: There is a difference between fact and fiction.

ARMACOST: Again, back to the authenticity of the information that we're seeing, just because one angle of the camera showed this view, they may not have seen the other angle that shows a totally different scenario.

LAH: What I'm confused about is you don't think he was involved in what happened.

ARMACOST: You know, I have no way of validating that.

LAH (voice over): But some say his words aren't enough. They're petitioning to replace him.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This isn't just a conspiracy theory. This is serious.

LAH (on camera): As far as whether it's having any direct impact on this town, there have been some sudden vacancies in city leadership. The City Manager has suddenly left. There have been some vacancies on the City Council for a variety of different reasons that they've publicly stated those City Council members have stepped away from the job.

Critics of the mayor fear though, that this is somehow all connected to the mayor and QAnon.

Kyung Lah, CNN, Sequim, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: Fascinating report there from Kyung. Coming up in the next hour, the F.B.I.'s former counterintelligence

chief will join me live. I'll ask him about the fast-growing QAnon threat and how to combat it.

And tonight, join Anderson Cooper for a closer look at the origins of the QAnon conspiracy. How did this fringe theory become a movement that includes Members of Congress? What role did it play in the Capitol insurrection?

The CNN special report "Inside the QAnon Conspiracy" airs tonight at nine Eastern.

Well, a new variant of the coronavirus is overwhelming hospitals across Brazil, and now the healthcare system is in freefall and authorities are digging vertical graves to bury the dead. Matt Rivers is live for us in Brazil, next.

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BROWN: Encouraging news just coming in to us tonight. The number of people hospitalized in the U.S. with coronavirus has now fallen below 100,000. It's the first time we've seen hospitalizations that low since December 1st.

But there's also concern growing about the spread of COVID variants which are proven to be much more contagious than the original strain. So far, the Centers for Disease Control report that three of these variants have shown up in the U.S.: one from the U.K., one from South Africa and a third from Brazil, and they are highly contagious.

Right now in Brazil, that third variant is overwhelming hospitals. There just isn't enough critical equipment like ventilators or even oxygen to go around.

Matt Rivers joins us now live from Brazil. Matt, does it seem like things are going to get worse there before they get better?

MATT RIVERS, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I don't think there's any question about that, unfortunately, Pamela. I mean, earlier this week, we spent several days in the City of Manaus. And for our viewers who might not know that city, it might sound familiar, because last year it experienced one of the worst singular outbreaks of any city around the world. And yet, what is going on there right now might be worse than what we saw last year.

One guy who took us around the city for a couple days, said to me earlier this week, to them it seems like it's not if you might know someone who lost someone, it seems like everybody in the city now has lost someone themselves.

[19:50:09]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) RIVERS (voice over): The tense quiet outside the small hospital in

Iranduba, Brazil, can change so fast. An ambulance suddenly pulls up in front of the hospital as a woman inside is given CPR, medics desperately trying to save her. But a hospital source told us she died soon after this video was shot.

The woman was the third COVID-19 patient to die here this morning alone.

The overwhelmed hospital is a small example of a massive outbreak here in Brazil's northwest. Its epicenter known as the gateway to the Amazon, the City of Manaus.

The city of about two million is replete with scenes like this, patients packed into unsanitary hospitals with a startling lack of ventilators or even just oxygen. Recovery is a mirage.

In what's been the city's deadliest month in the pandemic by far, many here are simply waiting to die.

This doctor says, "We've got 15 patients and there's two beds. It's difficult to say that we choose who lives and dies, but we do try and save the ones with the best chance to live."

Health officials at all levels have acknowledged shortcomings. And doctors and nurses are clearly doing their best with the little they have. But Manaus has been here before.

In April and May last year the healthcare system collapsed for the first time during the first COVID-19 wave. Some studies suggested up to 75 percent of Manaus got the virus. Thousands of newly dug graves pockmark the city cemetery, but now even those are not enough.

RIVERS (on camera): So that's why the government is quickly building these, so-called vertical graves. They are basically coffin-sized sections that will stack on top of one another and they are doing it this way because they are running out of space.

By the time this project is ultimately done, the government says they will have built 22,000 vertical graves to meet the expected demand.

RIVERS (voice-over): So many people got sick the first time, many here simply believe that herd immunity would prevent another round, despite many warnings from experts that that might not be true, Brazil's COVID skeptic President, Jair Bolsonaro, said there wouldn't be a second wave.

Things opened up, life got back to normal and then came a new COVID variant, P-1, originating right here in Brazil, a kind of a perfect storm.

SCOTT HENSLEY, VIRAL IMMUNOLOGIST, UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA: I'm usually not an alarmist about these kinds of things and I'm concerned about what we are seeing in Brazil right now.

RIVERS (voice-over): A recent study in Manaus found two-thirds of recent infections are caused by the variant, prompting fears that this variant spreads faster.

Back outside the small hospital in Iranduba, we meet Maxilila Silva da Silva. Her brother has been inside with COVID for weeks in desperate need of better care that just doesn't exist here right now.

Next to the hospital, a refrigerated container was brought in to store bodies.

"Take our cry for help to the world," she tells us. "Tell them that this system is killing Brazilians. People who can't get into hospitals are dying."

Halfway through our interview, though, we had to pause. There was a new suspected COVID patient arriving, crying as he is admitted, because everybody here knows what can happen once you go inside.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

RIVERS (on camera): And Pamela, in the first three weeks of January, more people were buried in Manaus than at any other full month throughout this entire pandemic and it wasn't even close and yet, despite that, President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, he says that he thinks that the Federal government actually did more than they were obligated to do in Manaus is a stunning lack of empathy from a leader who purports to represent the citizens of Manaus who are going through some incredibly dark days right now.

BROWN: Incredibly dark and really summed up by the cries we heard there in the hospital from the COVID patient. Chilling.

Matt Rivers, thank you for bringing us that important story from Brazil.

Poisoned and then imprisoned, Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny is now asking President Biden for help. The latest from Moscow up next.

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BROWN: Well, Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny's foundation is calling on President Biden to sanction at least eight high profile Russian figures that they say are close allies of Vladimir Putin. The call comes with Navalny in jail on fraud charges, and nationwide, there are protests planned for a second weekend.

CNN's Matthew Chance is in Moscow. So tell us Matthew, how significant are these protests?

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Pam, as Russia braces for nationwide protests to demand the release of Alexei Navalny, his anti-corruption group is calling on President Biden to put pressure on the Kremlin and to impose sanctions on those individuals close to Vladimir Putin. In a letter obtained by CNN and addressed directly to President Biden,

the group lists 35 names including eight high profile Russians it says are a priority, including billionaire oligarch Roman Abramovich described as being a key enabler and an alleged beneficiary of what the letter calls the Kremlin kleptocracy.

A spokesperson for Abramovich told CNN that there is no basis for such claims, which are entirely without foundation.

Russia's Health Minister Mikhail Murashko is also on the list for allegedly covering up Alexei Navalny's poisoning with a suspected nerve agent last year and hindering efforts to evacuate the opposition leader to Germany for treatment.

The Russian Health Minister has not yet responded to our requests for comment.

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