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White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki Tests Positive For COVID; Candidates Making Final Pitches In Virginia's Tight Governor Race; More Details On January 6th Warning Signs; Excessive Sickouts At The FDNY After Vaccine Mandate Deadline; Biden Wraps Up His G20 Trip; World Leaders Gather In Glasgow For Global Climate Summit; January 6th Introduces New Threat To America. Aired 6-7p ET

Aired October 31, 2021 - 18:00   ET

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

[18:00:22]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

EVA MCKEND, CNN NATIONAL POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: It's a sprint to the finish in Virginia with both candidates hitting the trail to make their closing arguments on why they should be governor.

GLENN YOUNGKIN (R), VIRGINIA GOVERNOR CANDIDATE: On day one, I will absolutely declare that Virginia is open for business.

TERRY MCAULIFFE (D), VIRGINIA GOVERNOR CANDIDATE: Do you really want parents here sending your child to first grade where the teacher is not vaccinated or not wearing masks?

CROWD: No.

MCAULIFFE: Well, that's what you got with Glenn Trumpkin.

PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Tonight, President Biden wraps up meetings with key U.S. allies in Italy.

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: What we've seen again here in Rome, what I think is the power of America showing up and working with our allies and partners to make progress in issues that matter to all of us.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Rising temperatures, extreme flooding, drought. Scientists say we're living in a climate crisis. Now world leaders meet to discuss how to stop it.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: What would be a success in Glasgow? A success would be if we came out of it with enough emission reductions to keep warming below two degrees.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

JESSICA DEAN, CNN HOST: Good evening, everyone. I'm Jessica Dean in Washington. Pamela Brown is off tonight. And you are live in the CNN NEWSROOM. We do have breaking news this hour. White House Press Secretary Jen

Psaki has tested positive for COVID-19. Psaki says she last saw President Biden on Tuesday, but that she was outside and masked at the time.

CNN's Phil Mattingly is live with us in Rome. Also with us this evening, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner.

Phil, I want to start with you. This is breaking news. What more can you tell us right now?

MATTINGLY: Yes, Jess. We're just finding out about this through a statement from White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki. On Wednesday we found out that she was dropping off this foreign trip. Every expectation was that the president's press secretary would be on the trip both stops in Rome and in Glasgow. She decided to or she put out a statement saying she was not coming and the reason why was because of a family emergency.

We now know that family emergency is based on the statement that Jen Psaki just released. A member or members of her family tested positive for COVID. I'm going to read some of the statement here. After that the decision was made not to join on the foreign trip. Since then Jen Psaki says she's quarantined and tested negative for COVID on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. However today I tested positive for COVID.

This is an important part right here. "While I have not had close contact in person with the president or senior members of the White House staff since Wednesday, and tested negative for four days after that last contact, I am disclosing today's positive test out of an abundance of transparency."

Psaki says she last saw the president on Tuesday when they, quote, "sat outside more than six feet apart." Now Psaki in this statement says thanks to the vaccine, I've only experienced mild symptoms which has enabled me to continue to work from home.

So Jen Psaki has tested positive for COVID. When you lay out the timeline, she hasn't seen the president since Tuesday. This decision was made on Wednesday because of a family member that had tested positive. Jen Psaki then proceeded to test negative Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, before testing positive today. So based on everything that that statement reads, no sense right now that this would have any potentially negative impact on the president who's obviously vaccinated.

He's also received his booster as well. And Jen Psaki who's vaccinated noted in the statement that she is only experiencing mild symptoms and has continued to work from home. But we've been wondering why Jen Psaki wasn't on this trip, just all we knew was a family emergency. We now know what that is, but the good news is for Jen Psaki, mild symptoms up to this point and still working right now.

DEAN: All right, that's great. Phil, thank you so much. And stay with us. I want to get the medical side of this from Dr. Reiner and we just

heard Phil described that Psaki said she last saw the president on Tuesday, but she said they were outside, that they were masked and they were standing six feet apart. That seems like, based on what we know, the risk of transmission would be pretty low. What do you think?

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Definitely. Best wishes to Miss Psaki as she's young and she has been vaccinated, I'm sure she'll be fine. But transmission outside is much less likely than transmission inside. Also she and the president were both wearing masks, that would further reduce the likelihood of transmission.

And also remember that the president has been boosted. And recent data from Pfizer have shown that a third dose, what we've been calling the booster, restores that vaccine's efficacy to about 95 percent. So I'm sure the president also will be fine.

[18:05:03]

But this underscores the whole rationale for boosting people. We don't know if Miss Psaki has been boosted but the efficacy of this vaccine wanes about six months after the second dose. And this is why many people in this country should be getting boosted now, and as people approach their six-month point from their last vaccine, they really should go to their pharmacy and get another shot.

But again I think the important message is that Miss Psaki should be fine. The illness, these breakthrough illnesses are typically very, very mild. And if she acquired it in the course of taking care of a family member, it's no surprise that the acquired a breakthrough infection. It is possible to sort of overwhelm the protection of a vaccine if you have a very large exposure such as caring for a family member.

DEAN: Sure. And Phil, I want to go back to you. You are obviously in Rome traveling abroad with the president. He is continuing on to Scotland as well. Is there any sense at this moment in time that this diagnosis is going to impact him and his movements at all?

MATTINGLY: Yes, there hasn't been up to this point. Look, as Jen made clear in her statement that she had consulted with the White House medical team on Wednesday, so they'd clearly been aware that this was something that was in the bloodstream that had transpired, they made the decision, or Jen and the White House, the medical unit, made the decision for her not to come on this trip, and then I think the subsequent negative tests over the course of four days.

We haven't gotten any sense here that this is going to change anything up to this point. Obviously we're all tested on a pretty regular basis on this trip since we've landed here in Rome and on the way to Glasgow as well. We'll see if anything changes. But at this point in time nothing we've heard from the White House, nothing we've heard from the president indicates any shift whatsoever.

You saw the president speaking earlier tonight, Jess, at his press conference making very clear Glasgow is his next stop. It is a critical, critical stop for the White House and for the president given their climate agenda and their ambitions. Right now all signs point to everything's a go on that front.

DEAN: Right. Right. And they certainly have a lot of work to do there, and I know they want the focus to be that as well.

Dr. Jonathan Reiter and Phil Mattingly, thank you to both of you. We appreciate it.

Let's turn now to Virginia racing the clock and racking up the miles. Terry McAuliffe and Glenn Youngkin are blitzing the commonwealth just two days before one of them will be elected governor. The race has captivated the nation's top political power brokers and it could provide some valuable insight about voter sentiment ahead of next year's midterm elections when control of Congress of course will hang in the balance.

Right now that race in Virginia, neck and neck in a state Joe Biden won by 20 percentage points last year. But as president, his approval rate continues to slide. A new NBC News poll shows just 42 percent of Americans are OK with his job performance right now.

CNN's Arlette Saenz is covering the McAuliffe campaign. Eva McKend is covering the Youngkin campaign.

Arlette, let's start with you. McAuliffe has campaigned aggressive against Trump. How much is Biden, his party's leader of course, casting a shadow on his campaign?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, that's one of the big questions in this election, Jess, is whether this race will turn into a referendum on President Biden's first year in office. I spoke to Democrats at one of McAuliffe's events here in Henrico County and they said that they had seen some rough patches in the president's first year, but that ultimately they are still sticking behind him.

One question is, is what's going to happen with those independents who would have gone or who went President Biden's way, and whether they still feel that way heading into this election on Tuesday. Now on the campaign trail, Terry McAuliffe has spent the weekend touting his record as governor which he had previously served here in the state of Virginia, talking about the job creation that he brought to the state, and he also repeatedly was slamming his GOP opponent Glenn Youngkin, today calling him dangerous. And he also say -- and also calling him clueless as well.

Now McAuliffe has also spent a significant portion of his campaign tying Glenn Youngkin directly to the former president. Take a listen to what he had to tell voters a bit earlier today about Trump's interest in this race.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MCAULIFFE: Trump wants to win here so he can announce for president for 2024. That's the stakes of this election. He's trying to get himself off the mat. He wants to win here Tuesday and Wednesday Donald Trump announces he's running in 2024. Are we going to allow that to go on here?

CROWD: No. No.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: So McAuliffe is really hoping that by invoking former president Trump, that that will be a moderator for Democrats heading in to Tuesday election. Now McAuliffe spent part of his day here in Henrico County. This is an area where Democrats have really been making gains in recent years, yet it is still an incredibly competitive district.

[18:10:02]

McAuliffe is hoping that he can turn out Democratic votes in areas like this. And tomorrow he will be heading some of the biggest cities across the state, Roanoke, Virginia Beach, Richmond, and then ending his campaign tomorrow in northern Virginia as he is trying to energize and excite those voters to head to the polls on Tuesday -- Jess.

DEAN: Arlette, thank you.

Let's go now to Eva. What's Glenn Youngkin saying to win those last undecided votes?

MCKEND: Well, Jessica, Youngkin is really honing in on these parents matter message. He think he can appeal to both Democrats and Republicans with that strategy.

You know, I get the sense from parents that they've never felt more isolated from their public schools, especially in this time of the pandemic, and Youngkin is speaking to those concerned, you know, those parents that are angry about mask mandates, those parents that don't like the way that the history, the legacy, the impact of racism, conversations about systemic racism, and white privilege are spoken about in public schools.

Youngkin really seizing on that in the final days here, and apparently gaining traction with it because when you go to his rallies and you speak to people there, they often cite that, talk about race and education as the reason that they are supporting him.

Now Youngkin today in southwest Virginia, take a listen to what he told to voters there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNGKIN: Well, the polls look pretty good. Polls look pretty good. Polls do not win elections. Votes do. Votes do. We have got to turn out the vote. And I will tell you that vote in southwest Virginia counts more than any vote in the entire Commonwealth of Virginia.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

MCKEND: So there in southwest Virginia, he was speaking from Scott County. That's actually a county where former president Donald Trump did very well. It's very conservative. Trump captured nearly 70 percent of the vote there in 2020. But Youngkin visiting that area anyway even though he's expected to do well there, to encourage folks to get out the vote because this is really a numbers game, Jessica. This off-year election will be all about turnout.

DEAN: All right. Arlette Saenz and Eva McKend, thanks so much for those updates. We appreciate it.

Also tonight a "Washington Post" investigation reveals in chilling detail the warning signs law enforcement failed to act on before the January 6th insurrection. Here's just one part of this massive piece, quote, "One of the most striking flares came when a tipster called the FBI on the afternoon of December 20th. Trump supporters were discussing online how to sneak guns into Washington to overrun police and arrest members of Congress in January.

"The tipster offered specifics. Those planning violence believed they had orders from the president, used code words such as pickaxe to describe guns and posted the times and locations of four spots around the country for caravans to meet on January 5th. On one site a poster specifically mentioned Senator Mitt Romney as a target."

According to the "Post," the FBI believed many of the threats were, quote, "aspirational" and couldn't be pursued. There were also fears that far-right extremists could bait soldiers into a Boston massacre type situation. And it was those fears that led to the fateful decision to keep soldiers away from the Capitol on January 6th.

And joining me now is one of the reporters who broke this story, Rosalind Helderman of the "Washington Post." Also with us tonight CNN national security analyst Juliette Kayyem.

Great to have you both.

Rosalind, I want to start first with you. This piece is incredible. It is so detailed. You all revealed so much. You are right that while the public may have been surprised by what happened on January 6th, the makings of the insurrection had been spotted at every level from one side of the country to the other. The red flags were everywhere. How is it possible that the FBI missed all of these red flags? That was what struck me about reading what you all had discovered. This was weeks and weeks out that they knew about this.

ROSALIND HELDERMAN, POLITICAL INVESTIGATIONS AND ENTERPRISE REPORTER, THE WASHINGTON POST: You're right. We catalog a sort of cascade of these red flags coming in from everywhere. From FBI informants, from local officials, from researchers who studied this information in social media, and the FBI, as you mentioned in your introduction, believed a lot of this was First Amendment protected speech, aspirational, didn't really believe that this was real.

We quote an official in the third chapter of this three-part investigation who talked about how there was a bias within the FBI. They did not believe that Trump supporters backed the blue. Law enforcement supporting Trump supporters were likely to attack law enforcement and they underestimated the anger, the desperation and the conspiratorial thinking of the crowd. [18:15:01]

DEAN: And what is ironic is that's exactly what happened when they got to the Capitol, they did attack law enforcement.

Juliette, I also, I want to read one part of the article that details some of the online chatter law enforcement saw a month before the insurrection, quote, "Please be in D.C. armed on the 6th," read one post. "You might have to kill the palace guard. Are you OK with that?" Another said, "Drop a handful, the rest will flee."

And obviously we have freedom of speech in this country. But, Juliette, at what point did these threats become enough for law enforcement to take action, and is it different because these are domestic terrorists?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, the standards are different but at some stage enough -- there were so many threats that it was -- you had to have blinders on to ignore them. Those of us on the outside, CNN was certainly prepared. I mean, it wouldn't have taken a genius at that stage to sort of say this is a lot of data coming at us at a particular time. Remember, it's not just January 6th. So you have to remember, the November election happens. The Stop the Steal madness begins to get traction.

Donald Trump changes his tune around the 26th of December where he targeted January 6 and the rally and the potential march up to the Capitol. So in that period is when all the information comes out. And what's clear from this absolutely amazing reporting from the "Washington Post," I can -- you know, I thought I was following everything.

I cannot tell viewers enough how important it is to read this, is the extent to which local law enforcement really did have their ear to the ground, were seeing things that were going on in their communities and trying to get federal law enforcement to notice, to pay attention to what was about to happen.

And you had sort of this flipping of how we often think of intelligence, that it comes from the feds down to the state and locals. It really was sort of flipped by these fusion centers that exist throughout the U.S. homeland that really were driving a lot of this intel information.

DEAN: Yes, that was very striking to me as well, that the local law enforcement really did seem to know. They were seeing the red flags and acknowledging them.

Rosalind, you point out in your reporting that Trump had, quote, "direct warning of the risks" but stood by for 187 minutes. 187 minutes he stood by as his supporters breached the capital. Were you all able to learn whether law enforcement or intelligence officials had briefed the president about the violent threats that they received leading up to January 6th? How aware was he this could turn violent?

HELDERMAN: Yes. There were enormous red flags, as we noted, and one of the things we talk about is this moment, the night before January 6th, in the Oval Office where there is a rally going on, and the then- president can hear the crowd outside and really revels in it. He tells people in the Oval Office that they're angry, so he knows, and, of course, we've also been able to catalog really how directly people seemed to follow his instructions.

People may remember he sends that tweet in December where he tells people to be there because it will be wild. And we were able to track really directly how white nationalists, far-right extremists, responded to that tweet by basically saying, you know, we'll be there.

DEAN: Yes, the reporting is amazing because you do show that tweet in your reporting and then like the message boards that lit up about what they were interpreting these messages to be and it really shows how that spread among these extremists.

And Juliette, the report also explains that the National Guard was withheld on January 6th because there were fears among Pentagon officials that President Trump might try to use them to stay in power, which is striking. What's your reaction to learning that the Capitol may have actually been left exposed because the alternative could have been that President Trump was essentially staging a coup?

KAYYEM: This is -- right. This is exactly the sort of damning part of the investigation is the Pentagon now is forced to essentially make a decision that if we deploy the troops, they might be -- you know, they might be taken over by Trump to be used against the Capitol Police and Congress. Remember, Congress and the Senate are sitting inside of this. It's not just the Capitol Police. And therefore, they decide, OK, we're going to leave the Capitol more vulnerable, to sort of the worst of two bad options.

And I think if anything that the reporting about the FBI, the military, the state and locals, that we need to put to rest, finally, that January 6th was an intelligence failure. It was not. It was absolutely not an intelligence failure. There is intelligence coming from everywhere. What it is, is essentially a failure of responding to that intelligence. Everyone knew that it was more likely than not that the president was going to activate something on January 6th.

So the intelligence failure, no, that's not what it was. This was a failure of leadership, and in particular, fear amongst the FBI in the military about what the president was capable of doing.

[18:20:06]

And it doesn't get darker than that. It does not get darker than that in this country.

DEAN: That is absolutely right. As you said, I go back to this, the red flags were everywhere. Exactly to your point, Juliette. And Rosalind, this is extraordinary reporting that you and your colleagues did. Thanks so much for it.

Rosalind Helderman and Juliette Kayyem, thanks to both of you. We appreciate it. Well, leaders from nearly every country on the planet heading to

Scotland with one goal. That is to stop climate change.

Plus, no vaccine, no work. The mandate has some New York City firefighters off the job. How bad could it get?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DEAN: New York City's fire department is experiencing so many sickouts that some companies are temporarily out of service. That's according to department officials. About 78 percent of the city's firefighters have complied with the mandate to show proof of at least one COVID shot or go on unpaid leave.

[18:25:06]

CNN's Polo Sandoval joins me now from New York, and Polo, despite the sickout, we're told no firehouses have been closed, the department is still responding to all calls, but I guess the question is, like, how long can they keep that up?

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: And that's really important to clarify, too, Jessica. Remember it was just a few weeks ago that the city laid it all out here. If you're a city employee here in New York, either get vaccinated or lose possibly your paycheck here. That's because starting tomorrow, all New York City employees, including police officers and firefighters will have to be ablet to prove to their supervisor that they have at least one COVID-19 vaccination.

There are a few exceptions. There's a few exceptions, there are some that still have some of those pending reasonable accommodation requests. But overall, though, if you look at the latest number including the one that was just put out by New York City's mayor just today, about 91 percent of the city's work force now in compliance, but still, that means thousands of employees still have not rolled up their sleeve.

And then when you break down the number in terms of who is vaccinated right now at the New York Fire Department and the police department, just look at the numbers yourself. You're seeing about 84 percent of the NYPD according to these updated figures as of yesterday now have at least one shot. FDNY, that number at 78 percent, which is actually a significant increase compared to what we saw just a couple of days ago.

So that certainly shows that there is perhaps less resistance. But nonetheless, that fight over the mandate, it is not over. There are still several employees that are still basically digging in their heels here and even some of them taking to the streets in protest the last couple of days. So much so that you mentioned there's an increase in some of that sick leave that's being taken by some firefighters.

Just yesterday New York City's -- fire commissioner, I should say, actually said that they've noticed a sharp excessive increase in sick leave being taken. Now the commissioner saying that that kind of behavior is, quote, "contrary to their oaths to serve" and he's worried that that could potentially put many lives at risk.

Now we should also mention that tomorrow morning we're expected to hear from one of those firefighter unions. Hopefully will be addressing what kind of impact they've seen overall. But again, we really need to stress here. So far the fire department says that they've been able to reshuffle some manpower here, some resources to make sure that no calls go unanswered.

And yes, they have taken temporarily out of operation various fire companies, but that is not to be confused with firehouses. We're told those continue to operate and those calls continue to be answered. But again, some of those protocols will be put to the test tomorrow when they start to enforce this mandate.

DEAN: Yes, you make an important distinction there in your reporting.

All right, Polo Sandoval, for us, thanks so much.

As he wraps up the G20 in Rome, President Biden says international support for him is strong even as his domestic agenda at home hangs in the balance. We've got more on that, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[18:32:12]

DEAN: President Biden reassuring Americans the U.S. is not losing its global standing and neither is he. After he wrapped up his first G20 summit as president, Biden said world leaders, quote, "sought me out." That's despite sagging poll numbers at home and a stalled domestic agenda the president said will be passed. In fact a short time ago we learned House progressives are inching closer to backing both bills, but it will require pushing that vote past Tuesday when they had hoped to get the vote done.

Joining me now, CNN senior political analyst David Gergen, former adviser to presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton, and David Andelman, author of "A Red Line in the Sand," he was also a European correspondent for the "New York Times."

I've got the two Davids with me, so I'll address you both by first and last names so we don't get confused.

David Gergen, we'll start with you and the G20. They covered climate, vaccine equality, supply chain issues. In your experience, do talks like this ever bring tangible results that we can see quickly?

DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: There was a time way back in the 1970s when the G7 and G8 meetings were created as an annual get-together essentially of the leaders of the Western world. And they were very productive meetings.

People got to know each other, they were small, they were intimate. You got to know the person on the other side. You spent time hanging out, you had dinner together. And it very much advanced of the world and had some collaborative leadership, cooperative leadership. Now these have gone to be 20 different nations represented. It's much,

much harder to have it, nothing stands out. And this frankly, there is a sense of real disappointment coming out of this portion of the G20 so far. And that is a lot of the countries there said they would do great things and they were going to set a high bar for climate, but they had no plans to get there. And, you know, we've been there before, and it doesn't work.

DEAN: Yes. And, David Andelman, you wrote an op-ed for CNN.com saying this is Biden's last chance to rescue America's world standing, especially when it comes to climate change. Why is this such a crucial moment, in your view, and do you agree with David Gergen, that this is a bit of a disappointment as we come out of this?

DAVID ANDELMAN, FORMER EUROPEAN CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I do agree very much with David about that. Look, I think this is -- this goes back to the beginning of the Biden administration. Senior French leaders particularly and others in Europe were telling me a year ago, right after the election, that they feared that Biden would be a little more than an interregnum, a little more than, you know, just basically a change -- a very slight change in direction before we go back to a Trump-like position in America.

There were plenty of carrots but no sticks here. And that was the principal problem that I see about this. This was his last stand to rescue America's standing in the world. Biden needed to come with something that he could actually tell what he was going to do, not simply, you know, basically, platitude.

[18:35:07]

Show, don't tell, is what I always say. Show me what you're going to be doing. Don't tell me what you want to do. And that's what I think happened basically along the entire period. Especially in the -- you know, it's interesting, the French magazine, newspaper Figaro, said climate taxes, vaccines, timid advances from the G20. That's not what we need. We don't need timid advances. We needed some strong advances and they weren't there.

DEAN: Yes. You don't need timid advances for really big problems. Go ahead, David Gergen. Were you going to say something?

GERGEN: Yes. As what David was saying, if you think about the top four emitters of carbon in the world, and this meeting is now starting up in Glasgow, the number one emitter in the world, China, the leader is not coming at all. Number two it's Biden with the U.S. Number three is India.

Modi is coming but he's coming with bad news, and that is he wants to lower the goals for India. And number four is Russia. And here we have Putin going to do it by Zoom. That's hardly encouraging sense of urgency about solving one of the world's biggest problems.

DEAN: Right.

GERGEN: You know, we don't have these -- these people aren't committed in a serious way.

DEAN: Right. As time is ticking away, right? Very quickly.

ANDELMAN: Boris Johnson said that the pledge from world leaders after two days of the G20 was not enough. He said the G20 commitment is what drops in a rapidly warming ocean. And this Prime Minister Boris Johnson with whom Biden said he had wonderful conversations. But you've (INAUDIBLE) around and saying, look, we just did not get there.

DEAN: I want to talk about domestically, not great news for President Biden with his numbers. In a new NBC News poll, 71 percent of responders say America is headed in the wrong direction, and that includes a lot of Democrats. The president did discuss this tonight in Rome. I want to listen to that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: I didn't run to determine how well I'm going to do in the polls. I ran to make sure that I followed through on what I said I would do as president of the United States. And I said that I would make sure that we were in a position where we dealt with climate change, where we moved in a direction that would significantly improve the prospects of American workers being able to have good jobs and good pay. And further that I would make sure that we dealt with the crisis that was caused by COVID.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: And David Gergen, how much do these numbers matter right now? And in your opinion, if Democrats go ahead and passed these two bills, is that enough for them to -- to salvage their majorities in the midterms, do you think?

GERGEN: It will certainly help. And I think if they do it this next week, so we'd have another week that we have to slug through waiting for them to have a vote. That would help a lot. But I think he's down so far now, he's down 11 points in the polls. He used to be at 53. He's now down to 42. That's bad news. It's going to matter in Virginia with the voting on Tuesday. It matters a great deal in the midterm elections.

A president below 50 percent usually is a drag on the ticket. President above 50 percent improves the chances for the Democrats. But we look at 42, that's bad news going into it. So -- and that of course then begins to affect the conversations about whether Biden should succeed to (INAUDIBLE) and so forth and so on.

So you're going to see more splits in the Democratic Party, unless they -- they get this passed and they get back on track and they have a couple of other wins and things we're not necessarily expecting, they'll be a much, much healthier shape. But the hill has gotten very steep.

(CROSSTALK)

DEAN: Right. ANDELMAN: The commitments overseas, the Europeans, particularly the

French, and the British and the Germans, they're watching those numbers, too, and they're watching Virginia in a very big way come Tuesday.

DEAN: Isn't that interesting, David Andelman, that they are watching Virginia across the world right now to kind of see what that means? And I would think it affects Biden's leverage on the world stage.

ANDELMAN: It certainly does. In fact it was the lead story in Le Monde, the main French newspaper, just the other day, worrying about this sort of thing. Look, as I said, the principal concern going into the Biden administration was that he was simply an interregnum, that he was not a long-term, long-standing force in America for change. And they're very -- they're petrified about that. But they're watching very carefully just to see what direction we might be going in.

GERGEN: Yes.

DEAN: Right. Right. Well, we'll all find out on Tuesday and then we'll see what happens with these two bills in Congress. My thanks to both of you, David Gergen and David Andelman. We appreciate you being with us tonight.

ANDELMAN: Thanks for having me.

GERGEN: Thanks, Jessica.

DEAN: G20 leaders agree on the climate goals but nobody made a firm commitment. We just talked about it. And now they are headed to Glasgow where a major climate summit is just getting started. We're going to be alive in Scotland. That's next.

[18:40:01]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DEAN: After meeting with G20 leaders in Italy, President Biden now heads to the International Climate Conference in Glasgow, Scotland where he'll try to rally world leaders to take urgent measures to combat the climate crisis. This year's summit is seen as the pivotal moment to avoid climate catastrophe as it will set the strategy for what scientists say could be the last best chance to get the climate crisis under control.

CNN's Bill Weir is in Glasgow where the COP26 Summit is now underway.

[18:45:03]

Bill, so great to have you with us tonight. There was a climate agreement signed at the G20 conference today. It lacked a lot of specifics. Are activists hopeful that there's going to be more than just talk at this conference? I mean, we just laid it out. This is kind of it. All the lights are blinking.

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely. And they've been blinking for such a long time, Jessica. And I think the frustration is the watch word of the day. You know, this is the 26th conference of parties, so they've been at this for 25 years, and then all that time, carbon dioxide levels have gone up like a hockey stick, and the result of this warming world we're seeing sort of a fresh horror by the month these days.

So yes, the statements we're getting from the likes of 350.org bitterly disappointed with the statements there in which it seems almost hypocritical for them to say, yes, we agree that this is an existential crisis, we agree that we must keep warming it 1.5 degrees Celsius, but there were no specifics on when and how we're going to put out this fire.

And, you know, just in the -- since Rio de Janeiro back in George H.W. Bush, the very first climate conference where people said this is an issue we have to tackle, trillions of tons of ice have melted both at the poles and from glaciers that feed fresh water to millions. Coral reeves have died, rain forests have been degraded.

And I guess it's just that human evolution where we think about the worries of today more than the worries of next week or next month, much less next decade, but the science is absolutely clear and the political will is the only thing standing in the way. So when you come to a place like this, it was interesting walking around today, you see people in dashikis or military uniforms from different countries in Africa, all different delegates coming.

You hope with the same shared commitment to a livable future here. But, of course, politics is messy in the age of nationalism around the world. President Xi, President Putin, neither of them are coming. They constitute over a third of current global emissions right now, and so this is as much of a psychological challenge these next couple of weeks as it is about science or technology or diplomacy.

DEAN: Sure. And what are people saying there in Scotland? What would you -- how would you describe the mood at this point? Is there hope or is it more of the frustration that you're talking about?

WEIR: Well, there was tangible frustration today because due to inclement weather a tree went down on the power line above the train line that connects London to Glasgow. So even the U.K.'s Environment Minister had to be evacuated from his train.

It jammed up travel for those folks who are hoping to take the greenest option up here as well. But you can see the strategically placed billboards around the conference site behind me there, and the theme is a lot of children, a lot of big eyes, a lot of pressure that this is the time.

We are counting on you all to do something bold and big. And at least come to the table as they did in Paris in 2015 and say, we get it. You know, we're on it. The grownups are in charge at this point. But it's probably guarded optimism after so many promises in the past, and so little action to match it.

Of the 190 nations that signed on to Paris, only the Gambia, the tiny nation in Africa, is the only country that is meeting its targets. Everyone else, not just China and Russia, but even Denmark and Costa Rica who are on the vanguard of making big, bold promises aren't quite matching the promises made. And even if we stayed with the promises made, we're headed for 2.7 or three degrees warming which is twice as severe as the target.

DEAN: It is overwhelming. We will see if they can act and act in a big way.

Bill Weir, thanks so much.

WEIR: You bet.

DEAN: Militia groups have been in the U.S. since the revolutionary war, but in the last few years they have become increasingly public and dangerous. And it's the focus of this week's "THIS IS LIFE." Lisa Ling joins me next.

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[18:53:45]

DEAN: The images from the U.S. Capitol on January 6th are haunting. The scars from that day will live on as long as this country does. And tonight on an all-new episode of "THIS IS LIFE" Lisa Ling take a closer look at the rise of self-described militia groups, and how they're contributing to incidents like the Capitol insurrection.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: If 9/11 was this generational event where the greatest threats to the United States were coming from abroad, January 6th was the beginning of a different era where the greatest threat to American national security right now is the divisiveness between Americans.

LISA LING, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER AND HOST, "THIS IS LIFE WITH LISA LING": So many of these militia members will say that they have a right to rise up against a tyrannical government.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: They believe they do. But as we saw from the number of arrests that came out of January 6th, you do not have the right to an armed insurrection against the U.S. government.

(END OF VIDEO CLIP)

DEAN: Lisa Ling joins me now. Great to see you. We are seeing --

LING: Nice to see you. Happy Halloween.

DEAN: Happy Halloween. We are seeing increasing militia activity in events like the January 6th Capitol insurrection, and I'm really curious to know just from your reporting, why do you think this is happening? Why are we seeing more of this?

[18:55:05] LING: Well, Jessica, so private militias have been operating in the U.S. for about three decades now. But the election of President Trump really saw an increase in numbers because they believe that the former president validated so many of their beliefs and their fears like out- of-control immigration and ultimately the biggest fear are threats that somehow something will affect our Second Amendment to the Constitution which is they believe something that enshrines their right to bear arms of all kinds, but despite this private militias have historically been anti-government.

In the pandemic and it's lockdowns and the mask requirements really sparked protests and public demonstrations, many of which were organized and attended by militia groups and then after the murder of George Floyd our militia members attended racial justice protests and police reform protests, and they said to provide security to local businesses.

But the conspiracy theorists who claim that the 2020 election of President Joe Biden was illegitimate really drove the biggest increase in militia activity including participation in the Stop the Steal movement, and we saw that a number of professed militia members participated in the January 6th insurrection as you mentioned.

DEAN: Right. And you also reported on American militias for an episode of "THIS IS LIFE" back in 2016. So how have you seen this evolve when you were checking back in on this now five years later? What are your thoughts?

LING: Well, the militia that we spent time with years ago, I mean, they like thousands of militia members have been de-platformed from social media but they insist that they are defenders and protectors of their communities and will not rise up unless the government or government entities attack first, but to them an attack on the government, on them might be the threat of taking their weapons away.

DEAN: Interesting. All right, well, Lisa Ling, thank you so much. We'll be watching. Great to see you.

LING: Thanks, Jessica.

DEAN: The all-new episode of "THIS IS LIFE WITH LISA LING" airs tonight at 10:00 Eastern and Pacific only here on CNN.

Also we are following breaking news. President Biden's press secretary testing positive for COVID. More on that next.

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