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Vaccines Continue to Face Access Problems; Anonymous Hacktivist Saved Parler Videos; President Biden Comments on Impeachment. Aired 10:30-11a ET
Aired February 11, 2021 - 10:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[10:33:00]
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: This morning, some important new guidance from the CDC on vaccines and what it means for quarantines. Officials say there is now no need for a person to quarantine if that person has been fully vaccinated for at least two weeks, and is asymptomatic.
POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: This guidance comes as Dr. Fauci says something that I think made us all smile this morning on the vaccine timeline -- or at least his hope for it. Listen to this.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: We have those priority, 1A, 1B, 1C. If you look at the projection, I would imagine by the time we get to April, that will be what I would for -- you know, for better wording, open season. Namely, virtually everybody and anybody in any category could start to get vaccinated.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HARLOW: Can you imagine that day?
SCIUTTO: Yes, yes.
HARLOW: It's coming. But what if you're struggling right now to get a vaccine that you are qualified for? Access is proving difficult, especially in predominantly black and Latinx communities. Watch this reporting from our colleague Laura Jarrett.
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LAURA JARRETT, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Rossi is a small, family-run pharmacy in Brooklyn, but its modest frame belies the heavy load it's been carrying for the last four weeks.
AMBAR KELUSKAR, PHARMACIST, ROSSI PHARMACY: Some of us were just really breaking down from the stress.
JARRETT (voice-over): After a mountain of paperwork, the Moderna vaccine finally arrived. And since then, Rossi pharmacist Ambar Keluskar says the shop has been overrun with appointment requests.
KELUSKAR: Our rollout plan went out the window.
JARRETT (voice-over): Keluskar's family has owned Rossi since the early 1990s, and he says he noticed his usual customers, who live in this predominantly black and Latino neighborhood, weren't the ones scooping up the slots. Who was coming?
KELUSKAR: Mostly patients from Long Island, Manhattan, Westchester. We can kind of very clearly tell who's here for the vaccine, who's here for normal pharmacy business.
JARRETT: So how do you know?
KELUSKAR: They're white and they look confused.
JARRETT (voice-over): Rossi is, like many other pharmacies and clinics, now on the frontlines of an equity crisis when it comes to who is receiving vaccines in such high demand and short supply.
[10:35:05]
In New York City, critical data is missing on a little over 300,000 people who've received one dose of a vaccine but have no reported race or ethnicity. And in the available data, the racial disparities are staggering.
Out of roughly 300,000 residents who have received at least one dose so far, 46 percent were white, whereas only 12 percent were black. Even though black people make up nearly a quarter of the city's population.
And nationwide, the CDC says black and Hispanic people are almost three times more likely to die of COVID-19 than white people.
So how is it that, nearly two months into the city's vaccination effort, the people who face some of the greatest risks from COVID are still largely left behind when it comes to getting a shot?
IVELYSE ANDINO, FOUNDER, RADICAL HEALTH: There is some hesitancy, but I think beyond that, it is concrete access.
JARRETT (voice-over): Public health experts and advocates like Ivelyse Andino say the first problem is the way most appointments are booked online.
ANDINO: The challenges are, for folks maybe who don't have access to a computer, who don't speak a language, it's really challenging to find this place, do all the things that I talked about, sign up and get here. Beyond that, you know, there's a lot of eligibility requirements.
JARRETT (voice-over): Then there's the issue of where to go for a shot. State and local leaders have promised more efforts to reach minority communities, and point to mass vaccination sites, sites like this one at Yankee Stadium that's limited to Bronx residents. But it's a frustrating solution if you can't get there.
ANDINO: This site at Yankee Stadium isn't the most accessible to folks in the North Bronx. Beyond that, right? The taking off of work, coming in during the middle of the day? That's not -- you know, child care. We're asking people to come to a center and get what they need instead of meeting them where they are.
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JARRETT (on-camera): Governor Andrew Cuomo announced just yesterday, two new sites coming online: one in Queens, one in Brooklyn, that are supposed to serve up to 3,000 people a day, which would be a huge improvement.
The Biden administration, of course, also announcing that vaccines will be shipped directly to some community clinics. But the question here, again, Jim and Poppy, is how do you make sure that residents who don't live in the communities that have been hardest hit, coming in, taking in all of the available appointments. Back to you guys.
HARLOW: I mean, it's completely unethical. I'm so glad you're doing this reporting, Laura, I know you have more of it to come. Thank you very much.
JARRETT: Thanks.
[10:37:32]
HARLOW: Well, new, key evidence in the Democrats' case against former President Trump was almost wiped from online, from a social media site, until an anonymous computer programmer stepped in. We'll have those details for you, ahead.
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HARLOW: Welcome back. So House impeachment managers actually have a computer programmer to thank for some of the video evidence they're using right now in the impeachment trial against the former president.
It's a self-proclaimed hacktivist who downloaded several videos of the insurrection that were posted to Parler before that site was taken offline. Our Donie O'Sullivan joins us with more on this.
Donie, what made her think to download all this and do it quickly? And would it have never been available if she hadn't?
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN REPORTER: Yes, so you might remember, we talked a lot about Parler, particularly in the weeks leading up to the insurrection. It was that social media platform that promoted itself as a free speech platform. It was actually really filled with hate and misinformation, a lot of pro-Trump misinformation.
After the insurrection, Amazon, which was hosting the website on its web servers, announced that it was going to pull support for Parler, essentially taking the website offline. Now, once that happened, this hacker, an anonymous computer programmer
who goes by the online name "Crash override," realized that there was a whole ton of evidence there because so many of the insurrectionists were using Parler.
TEXT: Anonymous Computer Programmer Helped Case Against Trump: Downloaded videos before Parler was taken offline; Online name "Crash override," Twitter handle @donk.enby; Says she gathered 30 terabytes of data; Not based in U.S.
O'SULLIVAN: So she quickly began downloading thousands of videos from the platform, actually downloaded 30 gigabytes of data -- 30 terabytes of data. That is, 30,000 gigabytes. And she made this, all these videos, available in a database, which news outlets like ProPublica have now downloaded and used, and, as we have seen with the House impeachment managers, and no doubt the authorities.
And just to give you a sense of what sort of videos were being put up on Parler, we saw a lot being used this week by House managers. But take a look at this video.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hi guys, we are at the Capitol right now, we're going to go back in. I'm the only one with a shield, so I don't know why no one else brought a shield, but I brought one just in case they start shooting, so.
[10:45:05]
Make sure if you ever take over the Capitol or any other big place, make sure you bring a shield. You can't get this anywhere except for a cop's hands. All right, guys, thanks for watching.
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O'SULLIVAN: So you can see how a video like that, of somebody being so brazen and boastful and frankly stupid, to post a video like that, could help authorities.
Worth pointing out here that all these videos, the hacker told me, the computer programmer told me were downloaded publicly. They were publicly available, so she said she did not hack any systems.
SCIUTTO: But, Donie, had this hacker -- hacktivist, if you want to call her that -- not downloaded this, is there a chance that it would have disappeared into the ether otherwise?
O'SULLIVAN: Absolutely. You know, I think the history of the January 6th may not have been told in such a way that we now understand it, had it not been for this woman.
SCIUTTO: Wow, that is remarkable. And of course, a lot of those videos showed up in what the House managers showed. Donie O'Sullivan, thanks very much.
And we'll be right back.
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[10:50:31]
SCIUTTO: Well, just moments ago, President Biden gave his thoughts on the ongoing impeachment trial.
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JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I, like other Americans who watched the news -- I didn't watch any of the hearing live because I was going through straight through last night until a little after 9:00, but I watched some this morning. I think the Senate has a very important job to complete, and I think my guess is some minds may have been changed, but I don't know.
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HARLOW: Let's bring in CNN senior political reporter Nia-Malika Henderson. Nia, I'm looking forward to talking to you about your Lincoln work in a moment, but we just need you to weigh in on that. I mean, it depends -- do you believe the first part of his sentence, I believe some minds were changed? Or the second part, where he said I don't know?
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: You know, all of the above, really, I think that's where everybody is. It was such a powerful presentation yesterday, with all of that video, harrowing scenes, near misses for people like Mitt Romney as well as Vice President Pence and Chuck Schumer. And so you would imagine that maybe some minds were changed, but we'll have to see.
I do think it was incredibly damning for the former president, and it could be that the weight of the trial is its own conviction, even if he isn't convicted. In other words, his political career could be so damaged, his financial standing could be so damaged from what came out, they almost might not need a conviction. So that's one way to look at it.
SCIUTTO: OK, so let's speak about the new CNN original series, "LINCOLN: DIVIDED WE STAND." It explores Lincoln's tragic personal life and -- as well, of course, his historic political career. Here's a preview.
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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A lot of people think Lincoln was a fiery opponent of slavery from the day he was born, and that's not quite true.
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Turns out a great way to put down a rebellion is to yank the enslaved Africans out from under his enemies. And the guy really was freeing slaves, hoping they'd go back to Africa. They don't tell you that in second grade.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The sin of slavery has loomed over America for centuries, and it was not absolved with Emancipation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Lincoln died close to Easter, so this made it easy for people to imagine that he died for the sins of the nation.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The martyr narrative made it possible for us to think of Lincoln in a simplistic way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SCIUTTO: Nia, you've got a piece on CNN.com that explores the parallels existing between Lincoln's time, the Civil War era and, sadly, today. Explain those parallels.
HENDERSON: Well, listen, I think we're at a moment, a similar moment to where they were in the Civil War, really thinking about whether America can be a multiracial democracy.
The crucial question for Lincoln and folks in that time was a question about black citizenship, right? What do you do with the existence of 4 million freed slaves? And by the end of his life, Lincoln actually did think that some black people should get the right to vote.
And I think that is similar to some of the conversations that are going on now, in terms of how do you construct an America, a multiracial democracy, where you have African-Americans, Latinos, Asian-Americans and white Americans living in a union that is a kind of multiracial America. So that is what Lincoln was grappling with, and of course evolved greatly by the end of his life.
HARLOW: It did evolve, right? And it --
HENDERSON: Right.
HARLOW: -- evolves for everyone. It evolved for the current president, for Joe Biden.
My question to you is what -- you know, do we know and do we learn through this series, his ultimate goal for an American society with free white and blacks?
HENDERSON: Yes, you know, I think Lincoln's sort of goal and dream for America was most noticeable in the reconstruction. This period, obviously, he didn't get to live to see that and reconstruction, about 12 years where America was a multiracial democracy, African-Americans did have the right to vote.
It of course was overthrown by white mobs, southern white mobs who couldn't stand this thought that black people could be equal to them, living in some of these southern states. So I think that is the closest we get to getting a sense of what Lincoln would have wanted for America.
SCIUTTO: Yes. I mean, we're just returning now to the number of black senators, right? Serving as --
HENDERSON: Right. SCIUTTO: -- as we had back in 1870 --
HENDERSON: Exactly.
[10:55:00]
SCIUTTO: -- because of that enormous -- you know, the century of racism, institutional racism. Nia-Malika Henderson, thanks so much.
HENDERSON: Thank you.
SCIUTTO: And you can tune in for the new CNN original series that chronicles Lincoln's life, "LINCOLN: DIVIDED WE STAND," premieres Sunday night, 10:00 on CNN.
HARLOW: Thank you so much for joining us today, we'll see you tomorrow, Friday morning. I'm Poppy Harlow.
SCIUTTO: And I'm Jim Sciutto. CNN's special live coverage of the second impeachment trial of former President Trump starts right after a quick break.
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