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CDC Monitoring Cases In The U.S. As WHO Confirms 92 Monkeypox Cases Worldwide; U.S. Company Captures Crucial Satellite Images Of Ukraine; Russian Officer Risked Everything To Quit Putin's War; Son Pleads For The Release Of His Father Held In China; Georgia's Governor Expected To Win Against Trump-Backed Candidate; Pennsylvania Senate Candidate John Fetterman Released From Hospital After Stroke. Aired 7- 8p ET

Aired May 22, 2022 - 19:00   ET

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

[19:00:03]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

POLO SANDOVAL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: What usually takes places in weeks was only done in about 72 hours. This will go directly to hospitals and to home healthcare facilities. This will likely be the first of many more of these flights.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It really is a remarkable story, exclusive to CNN. We're talking about a Russian junior officer who was part of the launch of the war inside of Ukraine. Now after a couple of weeks into the war this is where things changed for him. He says in the end I gathered my strength, I went to the commander to write a letter of resignation.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Given all of that, are you confident that the U.S. can avoid a recession?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There are always risks. But we feel very good about where the United States is particularly winning when you're upon a global landscape.

MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC NEWS: And let's talk about this monkeypox.

DR. ASHISH JHA, WHITE HOUSE COVID-19 RESPONSE COORDINATOR: I would not be surprised, Martha, if we see a few more cases in the upcoming days.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: I'm Pamela Brown in Washington. You are live in CNN NEWSROOM.

We're following several mayor stories this hour including new concerns over monkeypox after another suspected case in the United States. Also tonight, baby formula given a military escort into the United States. But just how long will this first shipment last? And the NYPD is searching for a suspect after a man was shot dead on the subway this morning. Plus voters in four more states are set to head to the polls on

Tuesday. Could a primary miracle for some Trump-backed candidates be on the midnight train to Georgia? And Pope Francis says President Biden should receive communion despite supporting abortion right, but other Catholic leaders are pushing back. The mixed message from the church coming up.

While many states deal with a rise in COVID-19 infections there is another reported possible case of monkeypox in the United States. Florida health officials say a Broward County person is in isolation for a presumptive case of the rare disease.

Now monkeypox is mostly found in West and Central Africa but additional cases have been reported in other parts of the world recently. Earlier this week a case of monkeypox was reported in Massachusetts. That patient recently traveled to Canada. Doctors say the Florida case is also related to international travel but offered few other details.

And there's another reported case in New York. White House COVID-19 Response Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha told ABC News monkeypox is not a mystery illness.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JHA: I would not be surprised, Martha, if we see a few more cases in the upcoming days but I feel like this is a virus we understand we have vaccines against it, we have treatments against it and it spread very differently than SARS-COV2. So I am confident we're going to be able to keep our arms around it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And last hour I talked with Dr. Peter Hotez. He's the dean of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College in Texas and Dr. Hotez said the U.S. is more prepared to handle monkeypox than it was with COVID-19.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. PETER HOTEZ, DEAN OF TROPICAL MEDICINE, BAYLOR COLLEGE OF MEDICINE: This is a virus that's not nearly as transmissible as something like COVID-19. It requires very close, some people say face- to-face intimate contact. Its transmissibility is way down and it's important to remember that because it does have some resemblance to small pox, although it produces much less severe disease, we have all of these antiviral drugs, at least two anti-viral drugs and three different vaccines in our U.S. stockpile because we were concerned in the early 2000s about small pox by terrorist attack.

This is not related at all but it could probably be repurposed for monkeypox if we need it. So we're much better prepared for this than something like COVID-19.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And monkeypox was first discovered in 1958. According to the CDC there were outbreaks of pox-like disease in colonies of monkeys kept for research.

And turning now to Russia's war in Ukraine. It is just after 2:00 a.m. in Kyiv on this, the 89th day of the war. Ukrainian President Zelenskyy is accusing Russia of blocking the export of 22 million tons of food products and he says many countries could face a food crisis if the sea ports remained blocked. Ukraine's vast farming industry has long earned it the nickname bread basket of Europe.

And Russian forces came from several directions in an overnight attack on a strategic city in the country's east. Ukrainian officials say they managed to repel that Russian offensive. And ever since the first shots were fired, satellites have been a crucial tool in recording and revealing what Russia didn't want the world to see. The targeting of civilians, the scorched earth bombardments and yes, the atrocities.

[19:05:05]

CNN's Gary Tuchman takes us inside one San Francisco satellite company that has captured the horrors and realities of war.

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GARY TUCHMAN, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A picture from space.

MELISSA HANHAM, STANFORD UNIVERSITY: This is the port town of Mariupol and the steel plant that's been in the news is located here.

TUCHMAN (on-camera): Right here.

(Voice-over): This image taken from a satellite about 280 miles over Earth. This company called Planet has more than 200 satellites in orbit that resemble this one and this one, displayed in its San Francisco headquarters. The satellites can pinpoint just about any location and show it in great detail, like this satellite image of a cemetery in Mariupol, which helped lead to a horrifying conclusion by this Stanford military expert who's a client to Planet.

(On-camera): So how do you know these are new graves?

HANHAM: So up here, you can see there's trees, there's tombstones, there's little dots that show each plot for each person. Here, now, this is fresh ground dirt and they've been using bulldozers that we saw in earlier imagery to slowly dig out these trenches. Around just the town of Mariupol, there are three mass graves. And I would say that they're ready for 5,000 bodies or more.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): The images captured here are important because they add to what can be an incomplete picture. Remember when the Chernobyl nuclear plant was under attack? This video was incomplete at best, leaving a lot of questions. There is no hiding the facts with a satellite image.

HANHAM: And here is a convoy of tanks coming through here and military vehicles. They set up bases here. They've dug into the radioactive soil and they dug trenches in here. TUCHMAN: And then, there is another aspect to this war, the continuing

destruction of Ukraine's agricultural sector, something that's very hard to capture when trying to photograph on the ground.

(On-camera): Let's zoom it in. And this is a couple of weeks ago. You see a grain silo. Ukraine is a very important agricultural country. And let's see what happens a few days later. What happened here?

HANHAM: So there is a huge gravity bomb dropped here. You can see kind of the concentric circle of ejecta as it hit the dirt, buried and then exploded out. And the explosion was so percussive that it took out these four silos here as well as the grain storage here. And then all of the sort of light yellow that you see spread out is wheat.

ANDREW ZOLLI, CHIEF IMPACT OFFICER, PLANET: The food security crisis is a crisis on a crisis. We're going to feel its effects reverberating all over the world in the next year or two.

TUCHMAN (voice-over): Planet's clients include the U.S. government and many other governments, also the media, universities and notably humanitarian organizations.

ZOLLI: I have no doubt that our data can and is used today around the world, in Ukraine and well beyond its borders, to help support humanitarian efforts, to reduce suffering, to save lives. There is no question about that.

TUCHMAN: Returning back to the most current images of Mariupol, we asked to zoom in but are told at this time it is too sensitive to show on TV.

ZOLLI: We just don't want to accidentally reveal information that would compromise those humanitarian efforts.

TUCHMAN (on-camera): Planet says its small satellites like these last about three to five years in orbit and take millions of images every single day. The larger satellites don't take as many daily images. But the resolution is superior and they last longer, up to eight years in orbit. The company launches about two to five large satellites a year. The smaller satellites, up to 80 are launched annually.

This is Gary Tuchman, CNN, in San Francisco.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BROWN: And now a CNN exclusive. A junior officer in the Russian military says he is overwhelmed by shame and guilt for the unprovoked invasion of a peaceful country and he risked it all by resigning his commission and walking away.

CNN's Suzanne Malveaux is in Ukraine with his remarkable story -- Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: Good evening, Pam. It really is a remarkable story, exclusive to CNN. We're talking about a Russian junior officer who speaks that he is anonymous to protect his safety as well as his identity speaking to CNN says that he was a part of this unit, February 22nd, the buildup, the troop buildup along the border with Ukraine, and it was that evening that they were ordered to give over their cell phones, that he lost communication with the rest of the world.

They were ordered to paint the Z's on their vehicles later to be symbolized the invasion of Ukraine. But again no idea that that was in fact the mission. The following day they were in Crimea. He did not know they were going to move forward in that Russian-controlled territory.

[19:10:01]

But on February 24th he says, yes, he was part of the launch of the war inside of Ukraine. He said many of his comrades as well as himself did not understand the goal. He tells CNN, and I'm quoting here, "We were not hammered with some kind of Ukrainian-Nazi rhetoric. Many did not understand what this was all for and what we were doing here."

The officer describing their drive towards Kherson, and actually confronting Ukrainian locals saying here, I'm quoting, "In general, when we saw the locals we tensed up. Some of them hid weapons underneath their clothes and then they got closer they fired."

He also told CNN that he often would hide his face from the Ukrainians because he was embarrassed, out of shame as well as safety that he didn't want the Ukrainians to see him on their land. He also says the second or third day that is when Russian forces also came under heavy fire, heavy attack. He said this first couple of days, he was really in a state of aftershock and he says it was a miracle that he believed that he was even alive at that point.

Now after a couple of weeks, into the war, this is where things changed for him. He said he got a hold of a radio receiver and that is when he got a glimpse into the news here. He says, "That's how I learned that shops are closing in Russia and the economy is collapsing. I felt guilty about this but I felt even more guilty because we came to Ukraine."

And then he concludes, Pam, he says, "In the end I gathered my strength, I went to the commander to write a letter of resignation. He told me there could be a criminal case. That rejection is betrayal. But I stood my ground."

And Pam, he went off. He is now back home with his family. In terms of his future, his fate, he says he does not know, he is just glad to be home -- Pam.

BROWN: Wow. Incredible reporting. Suzanne, thank you.

And still ahead tonight in the CNN NEWSROOM on this Sunday, two American families, all they can do is wait and hope their loved ones are jailed abroad. And they are pushing the government to help free them. I'll talk to both families, up next.

And it's Trump versus Pence backing different candidates in the Georgia Republican governor's primary election, and one day before the polls open Trump's candidate has a difficult road ahead. We'll be right back.

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[19:16:38]

BROWN: Right now an urgent manhunt in New York City for the person witnesses say shot and killed a man on the subway this morning. New York Police held a press conference tonight and said the suspect and the victim had no interaction before the shooting. Nobody else was hurt. The NYPD are looking at surveillance video and asking the public for help identifying and finding the killer.

Well, it is a fascinating story of struggle, survival, persistence and luck, and it is a CNN exclusive. Trevor Reed, an American freed after more than two years in a Russian prison talks to Jake Tapper.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TREVOR REED, FORMER U.S. MARINE IMPRISONED IN RUSSIA: So I was too worried about, you know, who was in the cell with me to actually sleep.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: You thought they might kill you?

REED: Yes. I thought that was a possibility.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Jake's exclusive "FINALLY HOME: THE TREVOR REED INTERVIEW" comes up at 8:00 Eastern right after this program. You will not want to miss that.

And there are shared emotions between Reed and his family with other Americans jailed abroad and their own families' struggles to get relatives back home. Harrison Li's father Kai is being held in China.

Hi, Harrison. Thank you so much for joining the show. So you're one of those families that has a relative, your father in this case, being detained overseas. Your father is being held in Shanghai on state security charges. If you would, tell us his story and why do you say that those charges are politically motivated?

HARRISON LI, FATHER KAI LI BEING DETAINED IN CHINA: Sure. So many father, you know, he's an ordinary American. He came to the United States in 1989 with just $200 in his pocket. He started working in food service and he's an ordinary American citizen.

He ran a one-person business helping export space parts to China. He had done that for over 20 years. He doesn't have high-level political connections. He's not a multimillionaire. He's just an ordinary person. So you can just imagine the shock when suddenly in September of 2016 he was taken from us.

And now the charges of endangering state security and espionage that have been levied against my father, they are 100 percent politically motivated. First of all you can see that these are the exact same charges that have been used to detain other foreign nationals, for example, Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in Canada.

The, quote-unquote, "state secrets" that my father is alleged to have stolen in fact consists of information that can be freely found on the internet. Even behind China's great firewall. I think that illustrates that in indeed the charges are false. The U.N. working group rule in arbitrary detention has also ruled my father's detention to be arbitrary and the U.S. government has finally agreed to take up this case through its special envoy for presidential -- for hostage affairs, SPEHA.

And while I'm grateful for that it just has not been enough. I haven't seen my father in six years now. I don't know how much longer it's going to be. I know that this administration is working hard but not hard enough, and what they need to do is they need to get together, put together an interagency effort and iterate much more quickly on solutions to get my father out because right now I don't think there's any real plan to get him out.

It's been six years. I don't know what the holdup is. And I just want my dad home.

BROWN: Tell us a little bit more about the communications you've had with the U.S. government.

[19:20:01]

LI: For sure. Certainly, it is varied. Like I said, I'm grateful to be in touch with SPEHA on a weekly basis but unfortunately it takes a village to resolve these cases. That's just the reality of the situation.

And, you know, I get the sense that there are a lot of different government agencies that need to work together to get this done and it seems like iteration process that's just taken months and months at each step, and that's just not a timeline that's acceptable because, you know, while this is happening you have innocent Americans being tortured, being wrongfully held away from their loved ones with no communication.

My father's only means of talking with the outside world are through these seven-minute phone calls that are all tightly monitored by the authorities. And he makes it very clear to us that he can't tell us the full extent of what's going on in prison. I mean, we already know he's suffered a stroke there. He's been diagnosed with high blood pressure. He only sleeps three or four hours at night because he's crammed into a cell with 12 other prisoners, with no climate control in Shanghai's hot and humid climate.

The Biden administration just needs to place a greater priority and the number one thing that they can do to illustrate that is to meet with each of our families individually as he has already done with the families of Trevor Reed and Austin Tice. There are many other families including all of the wrongfully detained Americans in China. We are all waiting to meet with the president yet have had no luck in doing so.

BROWN: So what do you think the U.S. government should do? I mean, do you think that the U.S. government should be paying ransoms for a prisoner releases or in Trevor Reed's case a prisoner exchange? What are your thoughts on that? And if your dad was able to watch this now what would you say to him?

LI: Yes. So China I'm always told is a very complex country with these kinds of cases and the types of solutions that have worked in these cases in the past that they vary, and I think there just isn't a consistent strategy so, you know, I leave it in the hands of the government experts to decide what the best course of action is, but right now they need to take an action and that's where we're at really with my father.

So that's the first step. And I think, you know, to help with that senior administration officials like President Biden and National Security Adviser Sullivan who actually promised many families a call more than five months ago but still hasn't talked to me or most of the other families on that call, you know, we just want to talk to him so that we can present our side of the story and so that they can help them come up with a plan. We want to help them help us get our loved ones home.

BROWN: And what is your message to your dad if he's -- if he could watch right now?

LI: Well, Dad, I am just so impressed by how strong and resilient you have been through six years of Chinese prison. I don't want to know what's happened to you. I know that you have suffered immensely for a crime that you did not commit. Everybody here in the U.S. government knows that and I know that they want to work hard but it's just a matter of prioritization. But of course I will not give up until you're back home in New York because to do otherwise would of course not be right.

BROWN: Harrison Li, thank you. And your father is fortunate to have you fighting for him. Keeping up that fight. Thank you so much for joining the show.

LI: Thank you.

BROWN: And don't forget, at the top of the next hour, former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed joins Jake Tapper. "Finally Home: The Trevor Reed Interview" airs at 8:00 Eastern right here on CNN.

Well, prevailing wisdom is that Democrats will face a difficult battle winning votes in this year's midterm elections but could things actually get worse for them? Alice Stewart and Maria Cardona join me to discuss that and more up next.

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[19:28:27]

BROWN: Welcome back, everyone. It is just about 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time here. You're taking a live look at Capitol Hill. It was raining but now it looks as though the rain is clearing away. Hopefully things have cooled down out there. It has been hot here in Washington, D.C. as it has been in many parts of the country.

Well, we are now just two days away from a high-stakes primary in the state Georgia. Incumbent Governor Brian Kemp appears poised to deal former President Trump his biggest political defeat this year as polls show Kemp with a massive lead over Trump's handpicked challenger, former senator David Perdue.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. BRIAN KEMP (R), GEORGIA: Really what matters is Georgians. You know, that's what I'm running on. I've been doing that the whole time. Not concerned with, you know, what other people that don't live even in our state or, you know, what the national news media might think. I'm focused on putting hard-working Georgians first.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So let's discuss with our political panel. Alice Stewart is a Republican strategist and former communications director for Ted Cruz, and Maria Cardona is a CNN political commentator and a Democratic strategist.

HI, to you both. Alice, let's kick it off with you. So Trump is going to make one final push for Perdue at a tele-rally tomorrow but he has no upcoming in-person events planned with Perdue which is notable, despite having basically convinced him to run in this race. How embarrassing would a Kemp win be for Donald Trump after all of this?

ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Very embarrassing, Pamela. Look. I'm from Georgia. I'm born and raised there. And look, Governor Kemp has done a tremendous job for the people of Georgia and that's why we're seeing poll numbers around 60 percent.

[19:30:04]

And he has focused on creating jobs, keeping the economy open as much as possible throughout COVID, and really being accountable to the people of Georgia. That's why he's doing so well.

Whereas Perdue, all he has focused on is carrying Donald Trump's water talking about the last election and how there was a rigged election.

The problem with him is, when you're a one trick pony, you need to make sure that your trick is correct and his trick was not correct. The election was free and fair. And that's the only thing he is running on.

Whereas Governor Kemp is going to be in a good spot on Tuesday because he has been responsive to the people.

BROWN: And Kemp is already pivoting right, Maria? He is pivoting to the general releasing ads attacking Stacey Abrams, particularly on COVID politics. Take a listen. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STACEY ABRAMS (D), GEORGIA GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: I actually believe that you should tell people what they should do, and that means mask mandates.

ANNOUNCER: Abrams would have made us like California and New York -- strict mandates and lockdowns, businesses closed, people laid off -- hypocrisy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: So how effective do you think this message will be in the general and how should Abrams respond, Maria?

MARIA CARDONA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR Well, I think that Stacey Abrams is salivating to get this General Election campaign started because let's remember, this will be a matchup. And one of the most incredible things that Stacey Abrams has been able to do since the last time that she ran for Governor was mobilize and excite the Democratic Party base expand new voters coming in.

The work that she did was frankly responsible, a lot of it was responsible for why Democrats actually won the two Senate seats in Georgia in 2020. Her organization, Fair Fight really did so much to bring in these new voters, new African-Americans Latinos, Asian- Americans, people who had never voted before that, frankly, see what an extreme party, the Republican Party is, including, including Kemp, because let's remember, from a voting standpoint, he wants to take away the right to vote for millions of Americans.

Abortion rights is going to be a huge mobilization tool for Democrats, and Georgia has one of the worst laws that are that are going to be on the books. So I think Stacey Abrams is in a fantastic position to re- up this fight, and to get those new voters into mobilization and getting them excited about all of the things that Republicans represent that they don't believe are right for Georgia.

And I think she is going to be in a great position to beat him in November.

BROWN: All right, very quickly, I'm going to give you a chance to respond, Alice.

STEWART: Look, the biggest downfall; that Stacey Abrams has is that she's a Democrat. And not only that she is a progressive Democrat, she -- and Democrat, Raphael Warnock, very progressive on the issues, and that just doesn't fit with the people of Georgia.

And when you have President Biden with approval ratings around 40 percent, he is a tremendous drag on any person running whether you're in a statewide office or in a congressional race, and that's going to be her biggest downfall.

Whereas Governor Kemp has been responsive to the people kept the economy going, and that's what the people of Georgia are wanting to see more of what they have had over the last few years.

BROWN: All right, Maria, I want to get your take on this because according to POLITICO Speaker Nancy Pelosi, she received communion at Holy Trinity in Georgetown today, but this week, a conservative Archbishop in her hometown says he is barring her.

In letter, the San Francisco Archbishop told Speaker Pelosi, "I am hereby notifying you that you are not to present yourself for Holy Communion and should you do so, you are not to be admitted to Holy Communion until such time as you publicly repudiate your advocacy for the legitimacy of abortion and confess and receive absolution of this grave sin in the Sacrament of Penance."

So, Maria, you're a Catholic and a Democrat. What do you make of this story?

CARDONA: Yes. Judge not lest ye be judged, Pam. The Holy Father, Pontifex, the Pope is the one who said that bishops should not be politicians, they should be pastors.

This, I think is incredibly misguided on behalf of these Bishops. They represent not what the majority of Catholics believe, but they represent a very extreme conservative political view that they are using their incredibly powerful perch to dispense of that view. And I think, it is completely wrongheaded of them.

This is one of the reasons, Pam why people are leaving the Catholic Church in droves, and I'm hoping that you know, better minds within the Vatican will prevail such as the one that is coming from Pope Francis, where he felt this is on exactly what the Catholic Church should be doing in reflecting the teachings of Jesus Christ.

[19:35:10]

CARDONA: These Bishops are using the Holy Communion, the bread -- the Body and Blood of our Savior, Jesus Christ, they are weaponizing that, and I just think it's completely wrong of them to do that.

BROWN: Alice, your reaction?

STEWART: I just -- I think this is a long time coming that this should have happened. Look, this is not a conservative Archbishop, this is universal church teachings. It is actually.

CARDONA: It is. This is the Catholic faith and they have said that abortion is a sin. Even Pope Francis referred to abortion in extremely horrible terms, calling it murder. And the Catholic Church needs to stand up and you cannot pick and choose which tenets of the Catholic faith you want to believe in.

And having communion and participating in communion is one of the aspects of the Catholic faith that is part of the big picture of being a Catholic, and this is universal Catholic teaching and this is exactly what the Archbishop enacted and put into effect.

CARDONA: I'm sorry, Alice. I am sorry, Alice. The most important part of being a Catholic, the doctrine of a Catholic Church says that you are responsible for your own morality, for your own moral code. You have to act and depending on what your moral compass says. That is up to nobody else.

That is why you go to confession. If you believe you have sinned, you go to confession, that is how you then are back into the grace of God and then you are able to take Holy Communion. That is no one's decision, except for the person who is up and decides to take Holy Communion.

Interestingly enough, that decision is as personal to whoever wants to decide to take Holy Communion, as the decision to terminate a pregnancy is to a woman. It is that personal, it should be no one else's decision to do that.

If those Catholic Bishops believe that whoever is taking communion that they are sending because they believe in abortion rights, well, then you know what? That is up to that person, and God and Jesus.

If they believe that that person is going to burn in hell, well, then that's up to that person to make that decision. That is not up to the Bishop. And that is doctrine of the Catholic Church, you are responsible for your own morality and your own moral code and that is how you should act.

And so again, I think it's completely wrongheaded. They are weaponizing communion, and it is one of the reasons why the Catholic Church is losing people in droves.

BROWN: Really quick, I want to ask you, if you can respond, we are running out of time. But I do want to ask you, Alice, given your perspective on this, do you think then that the Bishop at the Georgetown church where Nancy Pelosi received communion that that Church was wrong than to allow her to have communion given her stance? I just want to better understand your perspective here.

STEWART: I do, Pam. The Catholic tenets believe and say that abortion is sin, and therefore it follows suit that having communion, that shouldn't -- you should not be able to participate in communion.

And I don't understand how Catholics again are able to pick and choose which tenets they want to follow. And all I can do is state, as this Archbishop did very clearly, very succinctly. This is part of the Universal Church teaching. This is not pro-life propaganda. This is not a conservative Archbishop speaking their mind.

This is Universal Church teachings, and if it says that abortion is a sin, then the people who are supporters of this like Nancy Pelosi and others should not be participating in communion.

CARDONA: Alice, Pope Francis does not believe what Bishops --

BROWN: We have to go, Maria.

CARDONA: Pope Francis, the head of the Catholic Church.

STEWART: I just --

CARDONA: Sorry, Pam.

BROWN: Thank you. We have to leave it there, but I appreciate how much passion you both have on this issue. It is interesting to note that that where Nancy Pelosi went to receive Communion and whereas Joe Biden also goes, the President goes to receive communion. Just a side note there, but Alice and Maria, thank you and we'll see you on again soon.

STEWART: Thanks, Pamela.

CARDONA: Thanks so much, Pam.

BROWN: You're in the CNN NEWSROOM. Pennsylvania Senate candidate, John Fetterman was released from the hospital today. Despite having a stroke, he pulled off an overwhelming win in the Democratic primary, but he could face a much tougher challenge in the General Election.

We'll have the very latest, up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:44:20]

BROWN: It has been nine days since a stroke put Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor, John Fetterman in the hospital and today, the newly minted primary winner in the Democratic Senate race got to go home.

CNN's Melanie Zanona joins me now. So how is he doing, Melanie?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Well, Fetterman is on the mend, nine days after he was forced to check himself into a hospital here in Lancaster. He had been on the way to a campaign event when he checked himself in and learns that he had suffered a stroke.

On Tuesday night, he underwent a three-hour surgery to have a defibrillator implanted. That same night he watched the election results rolling from his hospital bed, but today he was seen leaving hospital and walking in a video posted by his wife, Gisele. Take a look.

[19:45:07]

[VIDEO CLIP PLAYS]

ZANONA: Now, he also put out a statement today saying he hopes to return to the campaign trail soon. Here is a part of what he said: "I'm feeling great, but per my doctor's orders and Gisele's orders, I'm going to continue to rest and recover. I'm going to take the time I need now to rest and get to 100 percent so I can go full speed soon and flip this seat blue."

Now, Fetterman doesn't even know whose Republican opponent is going to be yet. That's because the GOP primary race has been too close to call. Votes are still being counted. As of right now Mehmet Oz narrowly leads David McCormick by just over 1000 votes. However, the consensus on the ground here is that this is almost certainly headed to a recount, which would be automatically triggered if the race is within half a percentage point -- Pam.

BROWN: All right, Melanie Zanona, thank you so much.

Well, more than a million Americans have died from COVID and that means many millions of family and friends have had to cope with grief and mourning.

Up next, the author of a new book joins me to explain how to move past grief and build resilience.

You're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:50:58]

BROWN: One million and counting. That's how many people have died from COVID-19 in the U.S. since the pandemic began, and one study finds that each of those deaths affects as many as nine people.

A new book called "The Modern Loss Handbook" is an interactive guide for moving through grief and building resilience.

Author, Rebecca Soffer lost her mother in a car crash 16 years ago. Four years later, her father died suddenly. And after struggling to manage her own grief, Soffer co-founded her own online community to help others through the process.

Rebecca joins me now. Hi, Rebecca. You know, we were talking in the break, you said, "I wish I didn't have to write a book like this. I wish I didn't have to go through that experience," but you did, and you're writing this book to help others. And so many people have gone through grief particularly in the last couple of years, one million Americans lost to COVID-19. How do you think this collective grief has impacted us?

REBECCA SOFFER, AUTHOR, "THE MODERN LOSS HANDBOOK": Oh, my gosh, well, first of all, thank you, Pamela, so much for having me and recognizing the importance of talking about this stuff, because it's so important like you said.

You know, we just hit the million death mark from COVID, you know, on the official books, right. And I think that they're saying that it's probably up to 200,000 higher than that. So maybe 1.2 million people in this country have died from COVID alone over the last couple of years.

There's something called a bereavement multiplier, which suggests that for every death from COVID, nine people are directly grieving that death. So basic math, you have nine million people officially in this country alone, grieving a COVID death, not to mention all the other grief that's out there due to death loss. Over the last two years, we've had loss of identities, we've had loss

of jobs, loss of coping mechanisms, and the ability to, you know, access roles that we were used to having and the addition of other roles, you know, the loss of our ability to go to funerals and hug people.

We've had so much collective loss, you know, mass shootings, political divisiveness, that grief is real right now.

BROWN: And a lot of people compare grief to fighting a battle. You compare it to of all things crabs. Why are crabs a better metaphor?

SOFFER: Yes, I mean, so I always ask people to bear with me for the first like four seconds of that explanation because I think that in our culture, we really love fixing things. We like telling people that if you fight hard enough, or you're, you know, just determined enough, you grit your teeth enough, pull yourself up by your emotional bootstraps, you can vanquish the aggressor.

And the aggressor can be serious illness, it can be, you know, death or grief. It could be anything really hard. But that's just -- I think we both know, that's just not the way it works, right? Like you can fight as hard as you can. But you're still going to deal with tough things.

And the more you try to power your way through something, you're just not going to be acknowledging the fact that it's really hard. You're going to just like be putting on blinders and not realizing that there are a lot of different supports that you can be getting for yourself that can accompany you along the way that can make you feel more acknowledged, make you feel like you're healing better, like you're building more coping mechanisms, you know, building your resilience.

So I'm all for crabs, which for me, they just -- they pivot every which way, their only job is to kind of like hang on to the sand at the bottom of the ocean in shifting tides that shift without warning.

You know, they have to pivot. They have to be resilient. They're very wonky. I mean, we've all seen a crab on the sand, like they look weird, and they walk sideways and forwards and backwards. You know, but they don't care. They don't care that they look awkward and weird, and they're fumbling their way through it. They just do it. They just get it done.

And that's kind of what I like to compare grief to which is like, there is no winning, there's no losing in grief. There is just doing, and sometimes you mess up for yourself and you're like, "That didn't work well for me, I'm just going to do it again." That's the only way it's like chopping wood and carrying water, just keep going.

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BROWN: Yes, I've learned from my own personal experience the only way over it is through it, and you never really get over it per se, especially like, in our case, we both lost our moms. But as someone said, to me, it's like a big black cloud and it rains and it rains and it starts raining harder when you -- just when you're like, feel like you can't take it anymore, and it keeps raining. And then one day like, it clears out, right? And you're doing a little bit better, and you feel like you can move forward a little bit more.

And I think the point of the fact that like you can't rush through it is so important, because you do, you have to, unfortunately, you have to experience it in order to get over and I think your book is going to help a lot of people.

SOFFER: Thank you so much. You're right, the only way out is through and sometimes the through looks like a major storm, 10 years down the line. You know, I mean, the waves come and then they go and that's just grief because grief is a part of life. And I want people to understand that it's a very normal part of life, that some of us are going to need extra support, extra help, and we should get that help.

But many of us are going to be moving through this in ways that absolutely feel painful, but it's going to feel a lot more painful if we can't talk about it.

BROWN: Yes, and there is no one size fits all.

Rebecca, thank you so much.

And thank you for joining me this evening, I'm Pamela Brown. The CNN Special Report, "Finally Home: The Trevor Reed Interview" is next.

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