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Search And Rescue Efforts Underway After The Condo Collapse In Florida; Bill Barr Calls Out Trump's 2020 Fraud Claims; Donald Trump Rehashes Election Lies At Ohio Rally; Interview With Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL); Officials Blame Delta Variant For COVID-19 Surge In Missouri. Aired 7-8p ET

Aired June 27, 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]

MAYOR CHARLES BURKETT, SURFSIDE, FLORIDA: What I learned was there was a source of optimism injected into the discussion today in that we had the Israeli search and rescue team present at that meeting of the families who were encouraged. I know they were because I could see it in their faces, to have them here.

It was very interesting because there was a very difficult question that was asked by one of the family members. And the question was, in so many words, commander of the Israeli search and rescue team, do you think that the Miami-Dade team has been doing a good job?

And everybody paused for a second. And the commander turned around and looked at everybody and said, I think they've been doing a perfect job. That said a lot. And we already knew that. We knew that they're there. They're professionals, they're world class. We've added the Israeli team now. We've added -- I think we're going to add the Mexican team. I don't --

MAYOR DANIELLA LEVINE CAVA (D), MIAMI-DADE COUNTY, FLORIDA: There have been Cadenas there.

BURKETT: OK. Fantastic. So, you know, that was uplifting. What was also uplifting to me was, I had been asked repeatedly if the family members could go and visit. It was really my hope that that would happen and I was so pleased to learn that Mayor Cava had organized that effort and made that happen for the families because they need to be close to their loved ones. They need to see what's going on first hand because the pain that they're going through, the suffering, the unimaginable desperation to get answers was relieved by that action.

And I commend the mayor for that. I also commend Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz who has been amazing, supportive like you can't believe. Like I've said all along, we don't have a resource problem. We've only had a luck problem.

But our luck has, at least with respect to the weather and the fires, has seemed to turn now. We just need a few more miracles each day. And we need to start pulling people out of that rubble and reuniting them with the families. And I'm excited and I'm expectant and I'm looking forward to that. Thank you. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Mayor. And now Miami-Dade commissioner

and vice chairman Oliver Gilbert.

OLIVER GILBERT III, MIAMI-DADE COUNTY VICE CHAIRMAN: I would just add that today we -- the mayor, myself, Commissioner Garcia, Representative Bush, we had a chance to actually meet over on the beach with a group of clergy, just to hold hands and pray. It was interesting because one of the prayers, the minister, he started off and he said, God doesn't have a gender or race or color. He doesn't know cities or counties or countries.

God is love. We can petition God together right now in this place. It was moving because it reminded me that, you know, a lot of times we look at things and we look at things and we define ourselves by differences. But wen tragedy confronts us, we're best defined by how we come together. And so that's what you see right now. You see that's how we come together. How we actually figure it out.

How we have a better government that's going to support the state government, the state is going to support the locals, and we have a county mayor and a city mayor, and a county commissioner, all trying to figure out for some families and for our community. When we talk about our first responders and we tell you that they're the best in the world, we all knew they were the best in the world. We weren't confused by that.

And part of that is they don't see themselves as having jobs. They don't have jobs. They have duty. And so when I'm taking the tour with the fire chief, and he's telling me what they're doing and the peril that their life is in, what they're doing because they want to give anyone who has an opportunity to be alive, they want them to be alive. That's not a job. It's a job responsibility. It's a calling and it's a duty.

And that's what they're doing, that's what we're doing. And so I appreciate the hard work of everyone here because I understand that a lot of this, when we look back on it, everyone will second-guess everything. But the men and women who are out there in that pall right now, placing themselves at risk, they're doing it as a matter of duty. They're doing it for families who need to be reunited or who need closure. And they're doing it. So I appreciate them and thank you all.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, Vice Chairman, for those beautiful words. And from the Miami-Dade Police Department Chief Ed Caneva which will be addressing traffic.

ED CANEVA, MIAMI-DADE POLICE DEPARTMENT: Hello, everyone. So we're well aware of the traffic concerns in the area. Our traffic plan has been posted on social media.

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It has been shared with our public safety partners, and specifically those public safety partners within ZIP Code 33154. Currently what is close is from 8-3 Street to 9-6 Street, Collins Avenue and Harding Avenue. We are reassessing traffic on a daily basis. And let me rest assured the citizens of ZIP Code 33154 that you are

being allowed access to your residences and your businesses. So that's not going to be an issue. Our ultimate goal is to reassess and open Harding Avenue as quickly as possible. In Spanish, (speaking in foreign language).

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: All right. We're going to continue to monitor this news conference. We'll get back to it. But we are getting some information. Not a whole lot of new specific details. I'll just confirm they reported nine confirmed dead. 152 people still unaccounted for. And that was what the Mayor Daniella Levine Cava told us. We'll get back to the news conference shortly.

I want to bring in CNN's Ryan Young who's also been watching. He's been speaking with family members.

Ryan, as we wait to go back to the news conference, update our viewers on what you're learning.

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely, Wolf. We know for the last few days family members have been asking for any sort of update they could get. They desperately wanted to see more action toward that site.

Now what we got to see today was something that have been floating a few days ago, which is there were several different leaders in this community who were trying to coordinate family members getting a chance to go to the site so they could see the work that's being done, they could say prayers and they could also see what exactly was going on.

So we thought it was going to be yesterday. It ended up being coordinated for today. So what we saw was three different groups get a chance to go over to that site. They lined up two Miami-Dade buses. They filled them up. They got a police escort over there.

What we're told, some of them have to go to the beach side. But they all got to see the effort that was being put in place. Some of the officials also were there to answer questions and then they were brought back here to this hotel where a lot of them are meeting and being able to talk with themselves.

We've been able to see them sort of calm down just a little bit because they're getting a lot more information. I can tell you yesterday some of the responses from family members were quite sharp because they wanted to make sure that the effort was really put into place there. Now look, the first responders have been doing a tremendous job in terms of all the work they've been putting in.

But these family members finally got a chance to see it for themselves. And look, they've been talking to us, Wolf. They've been talking to you. Just about this idea of the desperation. They wanted to go out there and help themselves. One of the things that I was told today by one family member, they didn't understand how large the concrete slabs were. That building was made of concrete and obviously it takes a lot of work to move that concrete around. And now that we are figuring out how to exactly sort of burrow the

hole all the way down, and from what we're being told they're going section by section to see if they can find anything. Of course, those numbers were updated earlier today. And at this point, what we've been learning is they're hoping to get further down to the bottom of that structure sometime today. One of the family members that we've been talking to honestly told us today that they are just too distraught to talk anymore.

They're starting to lose a little hope. But they're just hoping something happens especially with the weather the way it was today. They're hoping it's better, Wolf. We can only pray for them.

BLITZER: Yes. That's what everybody is saying. They're hoping and they're praying as much as possible.

All right, Ryan, stand by. Brian Todd is also covering this story for us.

So, Brian, what are you learning?

BRIAN TODD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, we've been talking to Israeli officials today who say they're very eager to start their work. Unclear at this point whether they've actually begun the work in earnest of trying to rescue people. That's the Israeli rescue unit that has just arrived today on scene. So when they get going, we're going to see if the dynamic changes with the pace of this or not.

A couple of things that you've got to focus on both the good news and the bad news that have come from these news briefings today. The good news is that they seemingly have been able to contain, possibly put out that one fire that they've had trouble getting to. They've said that at least they've contained it. That was a key hurdle because for the better part of least two days, and probably close to three days, they couldn't even get to that fire.

They could not isolate it. They had moved heavy equipment in to dig trench just to get to that fire because that fire was producing smoke, it was producing debris. Other particles in the air that were very dangerous, and it just obstructed them, the minutes, so that the rescuers couldn't even see where they were going. The fact that fire has been contained, Wolf, and hopefully at least mostly put out, that's a very positive development and that will enable crews to maybe pick up the pace a little bit of the work that they're doing.

The bad news is we heard one of the top fire officials today earlier say that they have not been able to find the voids that they were hoping to find in the rubble so far.

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That's not good news because in the experience that we've had covering the earthquakes in Haiti and Japan, those voids are critical. That's where people can just carve out a space to exist, to breathe, to maybe make noise, and signal crews to come and get them. If they're not finding those voids, Wolf, that's not a good sign. But we're going to see how they progress.

This massive trench that they've dug is key. That's enabled them to pull more bodies out. That's enabled them to identify remains. But, you know, one of the fire officials described that trench as horrific but that trench seems to be one of the key components of their work, and we're going to see how deep that trench goes. It was about 125 feet long the last time we were given an update, about 40 feet deep.

It's just a massive trench but it has enabled them to, you know, carve out more space underneath this rubble. We're going to see what happens in the next few hours. But the fact that that they've not been able to find the voids that they've been looking for, not great news for the families.

BLITZER: Yes. That's an important point indeed. All right. Brian, thank you very, very much.

Let's get some analysis from Dave Downey who is with me here. He's the former chief of Miami-Dade Fire and Rescue.

Thank you very much, Dave, for joining us. What does it say to you, day four now, and the numbers really haven't changed all that much. There was one dead, four dead, five dead, now nine dead. Basically been the same now for a while. 152 still unaccounted for. What does that say to you?

DAVE DOWNEY, FORMER CHIEF, MIAMI-DADE FIRE RESCUE: Well, we're still continuing to remove the rubble. And it is a very slow, methodical process. And so it's not something that we can do very quickly. And so it's going to take some time. You know, we're still in rescue operations. Our shifts start at 12:00 noon and end at 12:00 p.m. and they rotate off.

I just saw some of my guys coming off today at 12:00 noon and they were spent. Exhausted. I just ran into them on the way over here, they've refreshed, they're ready to go to work. They said, listen, we're doing everything we can, Chief, to rescue these people.

BLITZER: Yes. These men and women are real heroes.

DOWNEY: Incredible.

BLITZER: I think everybody appreciates what they're doing. And a lot of people don't realize is they themselves are risking their own lives going into what potentially could be a rather dangerous situation.

DOWNEY: Absolutely. I mean, there's still a possibility of a secondary collapse. We still have all the hanging debris that we refer to as widow makers on the building. We had a piece of that come off today so it's a constant threat to the rescuers. And we're trying to keep them safe, as safe as we possibly can. But this is still an incredibly unstable environment.

BLITZER: It was very moving for the family members to be allowed to go to the rubble and see the search and rescue operation underway. They wanted to do that. The authorities allowed them to do that. I don't know if -- tell me if that's pretty extraordinary. When you're involved and you've been involved in many search and rescue operations, do you let private citizens come by and watch what you're doing?

DOWNEY: It's not that common. I think it was a very good decision. I agree with you that these families have been isolated. All they're seeing is video. All they're seeing is hearing things and it was very important for them to be able to get in there and see for themselves. I have encountered it before but it's relatively rare and this was a great, great thing for them.

BLITZER: Yes. All right, Dave. Thank you very, very much for what you and your colleagues are doing.

Pamela, much more news coming up from here but there's other news as well.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: There sure is. And coming up this hour, could the new more contagious variant of the coronavirus force mask mandates and social distancing to return? Can you imagine? And how effective are existing vaccines? I'm going to ask Dr. Jonathan Reiner to weigh in on all of that.

Also ahead, is the new government report on unidentified flying objects just stoking more conspiracy theories? I'm going to ask the NASA administrator, former senator, Bill Nelson.

But first, double speak from the former attorney general Bill Barr. Reportedly calling out the big lie in private before amplifying it in public. CNN's senior legal analyst Elie Honig joins me next with his reaction.

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BROWN: Former attorney general Bill Barr, once a top Trump loyalist, is now calling the former president's election lies, quote, "all B.S.," he claims in this new interview they did with Jonathan Karl from ABC that he knew it really from the beginning when Trump started spewing the false claims about the election being stolen from him.

But contrast that uncompromising language, calling it B.S., with what Barr said in his December resignation letter. He said, quote, "I appreciate the opportunity to update you this afternoon on the department's review of voter fraud allegations in the 2020 election and how these allegations will continue to be pursued.

"At the time when the country is so deeply divided, it is incumbent on all levels of government and all agencies acting within their purview to do all we can to assure the integrity of elections and promote public confidence in their outcome."

I'm joined now by CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig. His new book is out next month and it's called "Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor's Code and Corrupted the Justice Department." Elie, first off, when you heard or read these comments, what was your

gut reaction?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Pam, the Bill Barr image rehabilitation tour is underway and he's offering up a bunch of self- serving revisionist history garbage. Did Bill Barr in December 2020 after the election was over, stand up and say there's no evidence of election fraud? Yes, he did. However, what's more important is that in the months leading up to the election, Bill Barr was one of the most vocal, most visible proponents of the big lie.

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I'll give you a couple examples. He did an interview with NPR in June 2020 five months before the election --

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: And by the way, we have examples coming up in a graphic but go ahead.

HONIG: Sure, sure. He spoke to NPR and he talked about the threat of election fraud counterfeiting from foreign countries and NPR then had to run a piece where they quoted experts who said the things Bill Barr were, and I quote, "preposterous, false," and, quote, "nuts."

He repeated it in Congress a month later. He even came on our air here on CNN and tried to tell Wolf Blitzer that DOJ had a case involving 1700 false ballots.

It turned out that case was not a DOJ case and it involved one false ballot. A single false ballot, DOJ had to walk that back, too. So the bottom line here is Bill Barr pumped up the big lie as much as anybody in the crucial months leading up to the election.

BROWN: Well, and not only that, I mean, according to this article where he did this interview with Jonathan Karl, he claimed that they knew from the beginning that Trump's claims were B.S. and yet he waited weeks and weeks after the election to make that statement to the AP and even after Mitch McConnell, which we'll get to in a second was pleading with him to come out and say that basically there was no validity to what Trump was claiming.

But you mentioned some of these examples from Bill Barr. I'm going to go through the actual timeline here. And again, as we point out earlier we do have a graphic I believe to show. Here we go. So you have June 2020. An NPR interview, Barr raised concerns over the expanded mail-in voting but he didn't share any evidence. Fast forward to September 2020, as you pointed out, Barr told my colleague Wolf Blitzer, that mail-in voting is, quote, "playing with fire."

Fast forward to after the election, November 9th, Barr authorized federal prosecutors to pursue, quote, "substantial allegations of voting irregularities," which by the way, was against DOJ protocol. December 1st, 2020, Barr tells AP that DOJ has uncovered no evidence of voter widespread -- of widespread voter fraud. And then you fast forward to December 14th, Barr resigned.

Barr said in June 27th that there was evidence of fraud, "I had no motive to suppress it but my suspicion all the way along was that there was nothing there. It was all B.S."

I mean, his resignation letter was so obsequious to Trump.

HONIG: Yes.

BROWN: And you look at that versus what was going on behind the scenes or so he claims. What do you make of it?

HONIG: Pam, I would say that Bill Barr's turn-around to acknowledging that there was no election fraud was too little too late. But really that's not even doing it justice because remember, this election fraud big lie had to come from somewhere.

And Bill Barr was part of the initial kindling. Donald Trump first started sort of frantically tweeting almost daily about the risk of election fraud early in 2020 when it became clear that we were going to have a lot of people voting by mail.

And Bill Barr was one of the first people to jump on that bandwagon to fan those flames in his interviews with NPR, with CNN, in front of Congress, and it's so damaging, Pam, because Bill Barr is not just any official. He is the attorney general of the United States. Everything he does carries the weight of the Justice Department behind it. He is one of the people who's primarily responsible for the big lie taking root, taking hold and spreading.

And what he tried to do at the very end I think was a transparent act of sort of self-preservation, way too little, way too late. He did far too much damage before and after that.

BROWN: All right. Elie Honig, thank you so much for breaking it down for us. We appreciate it.

HONIG: Thanks, Pam.

BROWN: Well, I want to know what Republican Adam Kinzinger thinks about that and about his conspiracy-loving Capitol colleague taking part in an insurrection investigation. Congressman Kinzinger joins me next.

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BLITZER: We're back with our special coverage. Only moments ago we got an update on search and rescue efforts right here in Surfside, Florida, after that devastating condo building collapse. The mayor of Miami-Dade County says 152 people, 152 people are still missing. At least nine people are confirmed dead. Four additional victims have been identified. And here's what we heard from Mayor Daniella Levine Cava just moments ago.

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CAVA: Their work getting the fire and the smoke under control was very, very pivotal, and the good weather today were two very positive developments in the search. And they have allowed the search and rescue effort to move forward without some of the previous challenges that we have faced. So we continue to sweep the mound with our canines using all of the technology available to us and machinery to lift the debris.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: The mayor also confirmed, the families of those killed and unaccounted for were in fact for the first time today able to visit the site and see for themselves this search and rescue operation. That's what they wanted to see. They wanted to see the rubble, they wanted to see the efforts first hand. A really painful experience for them, Pamela, but something they really wanted to do.

BROWN: Thanks so much, Wolf. We'll be checking back in with you soon there in Surfside, Florida.

But in the meantime, we have other news to get to here in Washington and elsewhere. Last night former president Trump returned to the campaign trail. The rally was meant to boost the 2022 GOP primary candidate in Ohio.

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But most of Trump's speech focused on 2020, and I should say 2022 candidate in Ohio, specifically, his growing assortment of delusional lies about the election.

This morning, Republican senator Mitt Romney gave his view of the spectacle.

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SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): The growing recognition that this is a bit like WWF; that it's entertaining, but it's not real. And I know people want to say they believe in the big lie in some cases, but I think people recognize that it's a lot of show and bombast, but it's going nowhere.

The election is over. It was -- it was fair.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: For more on this, I'm joined by Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger. Congressman Kinzinger, thanks for coming on the show. So, what do you think about Senator Romney, what we just heard that this is just entertainment that's going nowhere?

Because you contrast that with what we saw last night, a pretty big crowd showed up, clearly this movement did not lose steam from Trump's defeat, or from his mishandling of the pandemic or the insurrection. What do you say? REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): Yes, I mean, I hope he is right. There's a

lot of people, though, that I've talked to, you know, that are mad at me for just telling the truth, which used to be a pretty basic, you know, low bar that really, truly believe that Donald Trump was elected President again.

And what you saw yesterday was a recycling of all his old talking points. It was a rally of a loser President. I mean, he is the first President to lose re-election in decades, and I don't know why these folks would go there.

And, you know, in essence, are glad, and in many cases, just short of worship a loser. But they did. And the interesting thing is, you know, he didn't talk much about the candidate running against Anthony Gonzalez, who is a fantastic person, Anthony is. The guy running against him at one point, I know Trump made it sound like he went and negotiated world peace in North Korea. The guy worked events, which is a really entry level position.

Now to put it down, but you're not negotiating with world leaders.

And then he went off in to old recycled talking points.

So look, the problem is, again, people believe this, they really do, and there is enough people frighteningly that believe he's going to be President in August.

BROWN: And there is enough Republicans who are in leadership positions who know that it's not true, and yet they stay silent.

And last night, I interviewed Democratic Congressman Dan Kildee, here's what he said about those Republicans who are staying silent about election lies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DAN KILDEE (D-MI): It's really difficult to hold them in any level of respect, when they are participating in a lie by not denouncing it, by pretending it's true, or at least allowing others to think it's true.

They have a responsibility to speak truth, and they're not doing it, and it is very tough to look at them in the same way that I used to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: You have obviously not been one of those Republicans who have been very outspoken against these lies. But do you share that same sentiment about members of your own party?

KINZINGER: Sadly, to some extent, yes. I mean, you know, I am friends with a lot of people, of course, and, a lot or whatever, but there's just so many that either don't say anything, and kind of, you know, bury their head a little bit or they tacitly kind of go along with the big lie, because it's really difficult to stand in front of a crowd that doesn't want to hear the truth and tell them the truth. But that's the problem, when you're elected as a leader, it's exactly

that, you have to lead.

I mean, yes, we need to know what our constituents think, what they want us to do, how do we advocate for our district? But if nobody is taking the role of leader and leading people a certain way, telling them the truth when the Republic is at risk, which it truly is right now, then you can't expect anything but what you saw last night, which is, you know, thousands of people that believe the election was stolen, because they don't hear people telling them otherwise.

You can take, you know, me and Liz Cheney, and if it's just us, you can demonize us and say we're the aberration and really we are right now, but we're telling the truth. And it is high time that other members of Congress, any leader, any county official, any Republican official, say the simple thing that Joe Biden was elected President and work against his re-election, but quit pretending like it was stolen because that's really, really dangerous.

BROWN: And quit white washing the insurrection, of course. We're seeing the lies go on past the election. But do you blame G.O.P. Leader McCarthy for allowing lies or conspiracies to fester within the G.O.P.?

KINZINGER: Yes, I mean, there are so many people to blame, but he bears serious responsibility because he gave a great speech after the insurrection. He said Donald Trump is to blame, et cetera. We know that, you know, he had that position for about a week and then he went down to Mar-a-Lago because the majority was just around the corner, if he can only raise the money. And he took the paddles and he put them to Donald Trump and resurrected him politically.

Prior to that, you know, McCarthy was kind of doing the McConnell who is his Trump, you think -- the guy you talk about thing, people -- and I can tell you, my colleagues were kind of waiting around and ready to denounce the insurrection. But the second Kevin went to Mar-a-Lago, it all changed, and it's silenced so many people.

BROWN: I'm wondering, so you told MSNBC that you haven't talked to McCarthy in months. Have you seen him in person on Capitol Hill? What's that like? What's it like when you run into other Republican lawmakers who don't like the fact that you're so outspoken?

[19:35:37]

KINZINGER: Well, we don't really all, you know, confront each other too much. I guess, kind of behind the scenes, you recognize that you're doing what you're doing. And, you know, there's no reason to fight and yell on the floor and stuff.

But with Kevin, look, I mean, Kevin, I had considered a friend of mine. And -- but really, since January, it's like, what are you going to do? What are you going to tell me that, you know, there's some tactic behind denying January 6 was what it was? There's some reason that getting the majority is worth denying the truth?

So look, I mean, is he still a friend? I guess, maybe, but I haven't talked to him in six months. So I would assume that's not the case.

BROWN: Have you like reached out to him directly to convey that sentiment?

KINZINGER: No, not in a long time. Because again, you know, what's the point? Right? I mean, I don't think I'm going to go and convince him. I'm happy to talk to him. But the bottom line is, I'm going to continue to tell the truth, and I certainly hope he does, too.

I'm sure it's gnawing in a way at him and others that aren't. But at some point, the truth is, and I learned this in Sunday School, it is more important than anything.

BROWN: Certainly. I want to revisit something your Republican colleague, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene told my NEWSROOM colleague, Jim Acosta. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Would you like to serve on the committee? Would you like to be on the committee?

REP. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-GA): Sure. She should put me on the committee. That would be great, you know.

ACOSTA: And you would show up and ask questions?

GREENE: Absolutely. Of course, I would. I've worked hard all my life, and I would work hard there as well.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: What do you think of that proposition there? And do you want to be on the committee? Do you have to be appointed?

KINZINGER: Well, she has plenty of time because she was stripped of her committees. So, she really doesn't do anything but travel the country and attack people, but you know -- and come up with crazy conspiracy theories, and try to be famous. And she has done a good job of being famous. We all know her. So, congratulations.

Would I serve, if asked? I'd consider it. I want it to be fair. I want to be able to, you know, pursue all leads. But you know, at this point I haven't been asked. I'm certain that Kevin McCarthy won't put me on it. I'm going to continue to get to the truth as best I can, anyway.

BROWN: Okay, very quickly, I want to ask before we get to some of the hard work that you were doing on behalf of Afghan military support. This new reporting came out in "The Atlantic." Mitch McConnell had asked Bill Barr to be the one to be outspoken about Trump's lies, and Mitch McConnell was apparently worried about the Georgia runoff.

What is your message to Mitch McConnell on that?

KINZINGER: Well, you know, I don't really have a message from Mitch on that. I know there was concern with the Georgia runoff. Look, by the way, to anybody watching. The whole reason I think Republicans lost Georgia was because of Donald Trump.

I wish, of course, Bill Barr would have spoken out sooner. But the bottom line is, there's no time like the present to start, right? And I think it's all about looking forward when you have millions and millions of people that haven't heard from anybody telling them the truth. I'll take anybody in our camp that we can.

BROWN: You're working very hard to expedite visas for thousands of Afghan support personnel who helped the U.S. military. This is a really important mission for you. What is the status of that effort?

KINZINGER: Well, the last we've heard, the administration is committed to getting them out. That is a Herculean task. There's 18,000 plus another, something like 30,000 or 40,000 family members, and we're supposed to be out of Afghanistan in like a month.

So, I appreciate that commitment. But the devil is going to be in the details. A lot of these translators that helped us have already been killed by the Taliban, and only more are going to be killed every day.

This is essential, not just following through on our commitments, but also we will fight a war again sometime in the future. And I want the locals to know that we're actually going to follow through on our work. That's important for the future of American soldiers and future conflicts.

BROWN: That is a mission worth fighting for right there. Congressman Adam Kinzinger, thank you so much again for your time on this Sunday.

KINZINGER: You bet. See you.

BROWN: Well, as Americans emerge from their COVID cocoons, there is a new warning from global health officials. Don't get rid of your mask. Do we really need to start wearing them again if we are vaccinated? I'm going to ask CNN medical analyst, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, up next.

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[19:43:39]

BROWN: And now to the global coronavirus emergency. New concerns tonight as the so-called delta variant of the disease tightens its grip around the globe. In the United States, hospitalizations are on the rise in several states where vaccinations are lagging, including Missouri where the C.D.C. says patients are infected with the highest proportion of the delta variant.

CNN medical analyst and Medical Professor at George Washington University, Dr. Jonathan Reiner joins me now.

Thanks for joining us on set here. Bottom line is, how effective are the Moderna, Pfizer, and Johnson & Johnson vaccines, the vaccines available in the U.S. against this delta variant?

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Hi, Pamela. Look, we know that the mRNA vaccines, the Moderna and the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines are very effective. We have good data from the U.K. showing that the Pfizer vaccine is about 90 percent effective at preventing illness, but 94 percent effective against severe illness and hospitalization, and we think Moderna will behave exactly the same way.

The problem is we don't have data for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine in the United States. About 12 million people have been vaccinated with a one dose J&J vaccine, and we don't have any data to show how well that prevents illness or severe illness against delta.

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REINER: It's thought that it will behave like the AstraZeneca vaccine, which is about 60 percent effective at preventing infection, about 90 percent effective at preventing severe disease, but we don't have the data.

BROWN: So, if you have been vaccinated by Johnson & Johnson, what do you do?

REINER: Well, that's the problem. And I think the C.D.C. needs to answer that question this week. We have two very effective vaccines against the delta variant, and if the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is significantly less effective, then we should stop giving it.

BROWN: So, let's -- help us understand this. Health officials in Israel say vaccinated people represent around 50 percent of the cases, though most of the cases are mild. What do you make of that?

REINER: In Israel, about half the infections actually are in kids, so about half of the infections in adults are in vaccinated people. So, about 25 percent overall of the infections in Israel are on vaccinated people. But we're going to see infections in vaccinated people because the vaccines are not perfectly effective, and so many people in Israel have been vaccinated.

It's kind of like saying, you know, 90 percent of right-handed -- you see cancer in 90 percent of right handed people, 90 percent of people are right handed, so that that's where you see it.

The vaccines are very effective, and they're particularly effective against preventing severe illness.

BROWN: And that's the key point there, that even if you do come down with it, it's much less severe if you've been vaccinated by Moderna, Pfizer, still waiting on word about J&J.

I want to ask you about the W.H.O. saying that fully vaccinated people should still wear masks. For now, the C.D.C. guidance says, you don't need to wear a mask if you're vaccinated. What is your advice for Americans?

REINER: My advice is, it depends where you live. In D.C. where we're sitting now, where the positivity rate is one percent, there is not a lot of virus around and particularly there isn't much delta around. In New York, it's even lower. It's about 0.4 percent positivity rate. But in Missouri, the positivity rate is 10 percent and there's a lot

of delta there. First of all, if you're unvaccinated, you should be wearing a mask wherever you go. If you're vaccinated and you're in a high prevalence area, yes, you should consider putting a mask on if you're in a crowded place, if you go to a grocery store, or you get in an Uber or your public transportation where you should be wearing a mask anyway, particularly in high prevalence areas.

But as the variant travels around the United States, we will have to make individual decisions and localities might have to bring back masks in public places.

BROWN: That is -- I mean, I don't even want to hear that. But we have to face the reality as it evolves day to day. Dr. Jonathan Reiner, thank you so much for joining us.

Well, what keeps the nation's cyber defense chief up at night? More from my exclusive sit-down interview with Brandon Wales, next.

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BROWN: More of our CNN exclusive interview now with the man in charge of the United States cyber defense.

Last hour, you heard Brandon Wales explain how companies of all sizes from local grocery stores to hospitals, to major corporations are currently at risk for a serious cyberattack. But how can that affect your daily life? It turns out, in more ways than you think.

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BRANDON WALES, ACTING DIRECTOR, CYBERSECURITY AND INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY AGENCY: Critical infrastructure enables almost everything we do -- our finances, the electricity that powers our country, our water systems, all of those increasingly rely upon automation. They rely upon remote monitoring and servicing. And so cyber and the Internet of Things are critical to almost every aspect of American life.

BROWN: How much of our daily lives, what percentage of our daily lives have a nexus with cyber, or a cyberattack could really impact our lives?

WALES: If it's not a hundred percent for most people, it's probably pretty close.

BROWN: Okay. Could you walk us through a specific example where a cyberattack would really impact the daily life of an American?

WALES: Sure. So, you can just imagine, you get up in the morning and you try to turn on your lights and they don't come on, you try to brush your teeth and the water is not -- it's not there or it's not clean. You try to log on to check your e-mail and it's not working. You can't execute a financial transaction because critical infrastructure in this country has been compromised in some way by a cyber-incident.

This is what our adversaries are attempting to prepare for. They want to make our life challenging. They want to potentially disrupt our most essential services, those things that American people expect to happen naturally, every single day, all day without realizing that those things are made possible by the ones and zeros of the internet, and they are at risk.

BROWN: What's the thing, knowing everything you know, and all of your experience that keeps you up at night, that worries you the most?

WALES: You know, I think the idea that our critical infrastructure can be used to execute an incredibly catastrophic attack on the American people is what I am most concerned about. It's why from the White House on down, we have a renewed focus on improving the security of the nation's most critical assets, those critical functions that enable our way of life and we need to be doing more every single day to make sure that no adversary can execute an attack that causes such catastrophic effects.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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BROWN: Intel officials say Russian hackers are often to blame for the latest security breaches in the U.S., but did those bad actors actually stop after President Biden confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin? I'll ask Brendan Wales next hour, so stay tuned for that.

Well, it's not exaggerating to say the eyes of the nation are on Surfside, Florida right now, and that includes former Florida Senator Bill Nelson, born in Miami. We talked to him about it last night.

Thank you so much, Senator, for joining us again. As a former Senator, a former astronaut, and now the administrator of NASA, what is your reaction to the release of that U.S. Intelligence report on the series of UFO sightings by Navy pilots and others? Have you had a chance to review it?

BILL NELSON, NASA ADMINISTRATOR: I have. I've seen the classified version as well. I just want to say at the outset, my heart just grieves for what folks are going through in South Florida right now.

As I said to you last night, I had two friends that have apartments in that building. One friend was not in the apartment, and the other one was, and of course hasn't been heard from.

Yes, I've seen the classified report. It says basically, what we thought. We don't know the answer to what those Navy pilots saw. Now, they know that they saw something. They tracked it. They locked their radar on to it, they followed it. It would suddenly move quickly from one location to another.

And what the report does tell us that is public is that there have been over 140 of these sightings. So, naturally, what I ask our scientists to do is to see if there's any kind of explanation from a scientific point of view, and I'm awaiting their report.

BROWN: And I'm so sorry, first off, about your friend that you still haven't heard word about. Please keep us posted on how that goes. We know those search and rescue efforts are underway down in Florida.

But you have actually viewed the classified report, and I'm curious given that this -- the public report was obviously inconclusive, after looking at dozens of incidents, do you -- did you have a strong feeling after you read the classified report of what could account for these objects in the sky?

NELSON: Not only reading the report, but three years ago, I talked to the Navy pilots when we were briefed in the Senate Armed Services Committee, and my feeling is that there is clearly something there. It may not necessarily be an extraterrestrial, but if it is a technology that some of our adversaries have, then we better be concerned.

BROWN: So not necessarily extraterrestrial, but you're not ruling it out? Do you know, obviously, you have so much knowledge about what our adversaries are capable of? Do you know if they have the capabilities to create these flying objects like this?

NELSON: We don't think so. But when it comes to the universe, remember, the universe is so large. We have a program in NASA called the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. But thus far, we don't have any receipt of communication from something that's intelligent.

BROWN: Right. I mean, we're a little speck in one galaxy in billions of galaxies, right? Do you think this report though, and its lack of real answers is just going to create more anxiety and more conspiracy theory since people as you well know, people want something definitive? They want an explanation for this, and we just don't have it right now.

NELSON: Ever since that video from the Navy pilots came out, people are hungry to know. And of course ever since "Star Trek," you know, people are yearning to find out what's out there in the cosmos. Are we alone? Personally, I don't think we are. The universe is so big. It's 13 and a half billion years ago is when the universe started. That's pretty big.

But people are hungry for this kind of information, and we're going to keep searching.

BROWN: So, what you're saying is you do believe in the idea that there are other living beings out there on another planet outside of Earth is what you're saying.

NELSON: We are already finding examples of other planets around other suns. When we launch the James Webb telescope in November, it will peer back in time almost the beginning, and then we'll find additional information. We will find more planets.

BROWN: This is fascinating. We hope you will come back on the show to discuss all of this with us. NASA Administrator, former Florida Senator Bill Nelson. Thank you. And your next hour of CNN NEWSROOM starts now.

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