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Several Lawmakers Demand Release Of House Ethics Report On Gaetz; Public Health Experts Sound Alarm Over RFK Jr.'s Vaccine Views; Biden's APEC Trip Overshadowed By Trump's Re-Election; Experts Call For "Overhaul" Of U.N. Climate Process. Aired 3-4p ET

Aired November 15, 2024 - 15:00   ET

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

[15:00:43]

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington. Thanks so much for joining me today on CNN NEWSROOM. And let's get right to the news.

We begin on Capitol Hill with Republicans scramble to respond to President-elect Donald Trump's selection of their former colleague, Matt Gaetz, as his nominee for attorney general.

Hanging over his appointment, a House Ethics Committee probe into a whole host of alleged wrongdoing, including allegations of illicit drug use and sexual misconduct involving a minor. With Gaetz having resigned from Congress on Wednesday, will that House report ever see the light of day?

Speaking to reporters earlier today, the Republican speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said House rules in his view say no.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA), SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE: And what I am saying is if someone is no longer a member of Congress, we are not in the business of investigating and publishing reports on people who are not part of this institution. I think it would open a Pandora's box. I think it's a very important rule that should be maintained. If its been broken once or twice, it should not have been because that would be a Pandora's box.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: That's interesting, because on other issues, Johnson has aired very much on the side of transparency. Here he is in December 2023, defending the release of 40,000 hours of January 6 security tapes despite concerns from Capitol police.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOHNSON: Look, we want the American people to draw their own conclusions. I don't think partisan elected officials in Washington should present a narrative and expect that it should be seen as the ultimate truth on it, when we know that they hid certain elements.

We want transparency. We should demand that the American people do. We trust -- House Republicans trust the American people to draw their own conclusions.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Transparency for thee, not for me.

Let's go to CNN congressional correspondent Lauren Fox, who's on the Hill for us.

So, Lauren, that's Johnsons reading of the rules today. He doesn't technically -- technically have a say on this. What's going to happen with this report? Is that going to win out or are we never going to see it? Might -- might the Senate during confirmation hearings get their hands on it?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, the Senate has already requested this report and they have requested that the House Ethics Committee not only send them over the finished product, but also the underlying materials that they may need. They argue, as part of that regular vetting process, when someone is being vetted for a cabinet position, like the attorney general office.

Now, one thing to keep in mind here is that Democrats right now control the Senate Judiciary Committee that is going to change in January but after the speaker made the comments that he was going to ask Michael Guest, the chairman of the House Ethics Committee, not to turn over this report to the Senate Ethics Committee, this is what senate. Senate Ethics Committee spokesman Josh Sorbe said.

He said, quote, there is longstanding precedent for releasing ethics investigation materials after a member resigns, whether in the House or the Senate. The now former congressman shouldn't be able to resign away an ethics investigation involving allegations of grave misconduct, especially when he will be nominated to be our country's top law enforcement officer.

Now, there's also pushback from Senate Republicans who want to take a look at this report. Keep in mind, they have to vote on these nominees and part of their job as senators is to advice and consent on the presidents cabinet picks. Here's what one of those Republicans, Mike Rounds, told our colleague Manu Raju.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MIKE ROUNDS (R-SD): We should be able to get ahold of it and we should have access to it one way or another based on the way that we do all of these nominations.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOX: And there's a lot of Republicans who have expressed concerns, who want more information who say that there's a lot of work that Matt Gaetz is going to have to do to get over some of the hurdles that Republicans have, as he has been nominated for this position.

I mean, I talked to Kevin Cramer. He was making the case that it's not just about maybe past statements that Gaetz has made. It may not even just be about this ethics report. There's also just concerns about the fact that he was a rabble-rouser in the House. He was responsible kind of the ringleader, in trying to oust Kevin McCarthy and being successful just a little over a year ago.

So a long way to go before we see what happens with this nomination, but obviously, there's a lot of back and forth between the House and the Senate.

[15:05:06]

There is a lot of bipartisan support for getting this report. However, in the Senate where those senators will have the say over whether or not he gets this job.

SCIUTTO: We'll see. And to your point, of course, Republicans will have the majority in the New Year. Lauren Fox, thanks so much.

Turning now to another one of Trump's highly divisive cabinet picks. What is MAHA, make America healthy again? That is how Robert F. Kennedy Jr. brands a sweeping agenda to reshape America's health and food systems, an agenda he may be empowered to carry out if he is confirmed as Trump's secretary of health and human services. It is in many cases, not all, but many anti-fact and anti-science, particularly on an issue he's very well known for. That is his opposition almost a blanket one to vaccines?

Here's how he describes them. Not just the COVID vaccine, but all vaccinations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

INTERVIEWER: Can you name any vaccines that you think are good?

ROBERT F. KENNEDY JR. (I), FORMER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: I think some of the live virus vaccines are probably saw -- averting more problems than they're causing. There's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: The fact is vaccines have saved lives, millions of lives around the world, and there have been very real human consequences to his promotion of falsities.

CNN's medical correspondent Meg Tirrell joins me now for more on all of this, as well as Dr. Jonathan Reiner, professor of medicine and surgery at George Washington University.

You know, the list is long from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. I mean, he's claimed the 1918 influenza pandemic, HIV somehow originated from vaccine research, no science to support that. And you both well know that vaccines have saved lives, eradicated disease -- diseases.

Meg, start with giving us an overview of RFK's strongest positions when it comes to public health. MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Jim, you know, a lot of attention he's been getting recently has been for this make America wealthy again platform. And this seems to be, you know, some of the things that President Trump is really focused on in choosing RFK Jr.

And a lot of people in the public health world say, yeah, these things sound great. Let's focus on our chronic disease rates. Let's focus on the fact that the us does spend so much on health care, but we have some really poor health outcomes.

He's talked a lot about food and nutrition. Those things are not necessarily controversial. Though, some of the ways he's talked about going after those things, like getting some NIH research or totally changing the FDA, those things are more controversial.

Then you get into things like fluoride in the water. He put out a tweet recently and he was interviewed, talking about how he would direct the government to tell local water systems to take fluoride out of their water. His tweet pointed to risks that studies show are really only found at extremely high levels of fluoride in the water over extremely long periods of time, not the levels that are recommended in the U.S. water systems.

The CDC is called public water fluoridation, one of the top public health achievements of the 20th century. However, some folks do think look more closely into this as we understand some of those risks at high levels.

But then you get to things like vaccines, and that's where people are really frightened about the impact of RFK Jr. on health care in this country.

Listen to Hawaii Governor Josh Green last night with Laura Coates. He's a doctor and he says he responded to a measles outbreak in Samoa in 2019 that he links, in part to a rhetoric from RFK Jr. and his group.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. JOSH GREEN (D), HAWAII: We had a terrible experience in Samoa. RFK went and rallied that country against vaccinations when there was a measles outbreak. It resulted in the deaths of 83 innocent children. If he is confirmed as HHS secretary, what he will do is he will cast doubt on vaccination programs across America. That will mean thousands and then millions of people will consider not getting vaccinated. We will not have herd immunity and physicians like myself and pediatricians and all sorts of other health care providers will see cataclysmic spread of disease.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TIRRELL: And, Jim, we should say, RFK Jr. has denied spreading vaccine skepticism or telling anybody in Samoa not to get vaccinated.

But, clearly, public health experts are very concerned about that element of him. SCIUTTO: Listen, his statements on vaccines have been quite public and quite definitive for years. You can say all he wants to deny, but it's out there. It's in the public record.

Jonathan Reiner, when you hear that, when you hear the governor, for instance, of Hawaii, they're talking about cataclysmic effects. But the fact is, we've seen it -- we saw it in Samoa. We've seen outbreaks of measles in this country in pockets of kind of vaccine, anti-vaccine feeling.

[15:10:01]

What would be the consequence of putting someone with those views, again, not based on science at the top of HHS happens?

DR. JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Jim, we've already seen what happens when vaccine skepticism becomes dominant in certain parts of other country. We just have to go back a few years to the COVID pandemic. And an interesting study, an interesting study looked at mortality rates around the United States, both before and after vaccines were widely available.

And for the first 15 months of the pandemic, no matter where you lived in the United States, you had basically the same risk of dying from the virus. But in May of 2021, when the vaccine was finally available to all adults what you started to see is that parts of the United States where vaccine uptake was lower in largely in red counties, where vaccine skepticism was had a much greater uptake, mortality rate was higher. So we've seen in very recent history in this country what happens when you promote junk science.

And it's not just that the things that Mr. Kennedy are saying are unproven. They have been disproven.

SCIUTTO: Yeah.

REINER: And putting him -- basically put him in charge of the machinery that is used to approve and license drugs and vaccines and devices around this country.

SCIUTTO: So that's key because there's both a public information element to this. But by -- by sending these views further out, people believe it and you saw that in the COVID pandemic, they take steps that in response to that. But he will now -- he would if confirmed, have power.

I mean, Meg Tirrell, when you look at things, you know, the FDA comes under HHS, would he have the ability to stop for instance, vaccine requirements for school children? Because that, of course, is already a battle zone, right?

TIRRELL: Yeah, you know, it's something that I've been talking with people who study vaccine uptake about and what they are really worried about is actually is -- in particular on that is about the CDC, and in terms of their outside panel of advisers known as the ACIP, who gets appointed onto that panel. They are very influential in making recommendations about the vaccine schedule, which is influential in determining, you know, what vaccines kids get and when.

So there are a lot of things. Potentially, they\re worried about that he could do as HHS secretary to dismantle those institutions around vaccines. But then also just even more broadly, we even heard from Paul Offit, the vaccine scientist from CHOP, this morning, saying he'd already heard from a pediatrician in Connecticut who said three parents came in saying they didn't want to vaccinate their kids because of what they've been hearing in the news, even as RFK Jr. has just been swirling as this potential pick for HHS secretary.

So, the erosion of confidence is what they're really worried about immediately.

SCIUTTO: Doctor, I got three kids. Then I begin to think, you know, I get them all the vaccines because that's the science, right? What's the danger, right? If lets say that you take the choice, you and I and us and our kids take the choice to take these vaccines. If others are not, tell us the -- one, the danger to ourselves, but also the danger to the community, if this grows, not just with, say, COVID vaccines, but you know, polio vaccines, measles vaccines?

REINER: So, the way vaccines work, besides preventing illness in the individual who takes the vaccine, when you immunize enough people in the community, you do develop something called herd immunity and the percentage of folks who need to be immunized in order for the community to have that effect differs from virus to virus.

But let's take measles virus as an example. It felt that at least 94 percent of a community has to be vaccinated against measles for there to be, you know, herd immunity, and were starting to see the impact of vaccine denialism in the United States.

Look at Florida, Dr. Joseph Ladapo, who is the surgeon general of Florida, has been a very vocal critic of vaccines. And in the three years that he has been surgeon general, there's been a relatively steep decline in vaccine vaccination rates for kindergartners, so much so that prior to his arrival, the vaccination rate was like 93.6 percent. And in just two years, it dropped to a little over 91 percent.

Now, that seems like a small decline, but in the years prior, the decline was in the fraction of a percent and now in Florida, the vaccination rate for kindergartners is lower than the rate felt to be necessary for herd immunity for measles. And we're starting to see out, you know outbreaks of measles in places like Florida.

SCIUTTO: I mean, the thing is, and you started off with this, Meg Tirrell, there's a portion of RFK Jr.'s message that has broader appeal and, frankly, has broader basis, right?

[15:15:07]

The idea of the effects, the health effects of processed foods, for instance, that piece, there is some basis for it, is there not?

TIRRELL: Yeah, absolutely. I talk to a lot of doctors about this, people who are in food policy like Marion Nestle, who's a famous food policy researcher at NYU, and she's like strange bedfellows. She's sort of surprised to find herself agreeing with a lot of the policy proposals that RFK Jr. and people that he's working with in this space are talking about, changing agricultural subsidies, focusing on ultra processed foods, trying to get folks more access to healthier foods. People really agree with a lot of those things.

But then when you kind of dig in on how he might get there on a lot of these things, he's talking about getting rid of infectious disease research at NIH, in order to focus more on alternative and holistic and preventive areas. And people are certainly into prevention, but they're worried we shouldn't just stop researching infectious diseases so that is a main concern with how he's going about it.

SCIUTTO: Seems fairly basic. I mean, I wonder let's say, Dr. Reiner, that he gets confirmed is the organization -- organization such that under HHS, the various agencies, CDC included that it's top down, that if you're the boss, you can just say, hey, guys, you're not going to research this stuff anymore or were not going to require children to be vaccinated for deadly disease.

REINER: I've recently spoken to a vaccine researcher at FDA who is worried about, you know, what such an effect can be at that agency but I also worry about who will be hired to run CDC, FDA, Center for, CMS, the agency that runs Medicare and Medicaid. Who will they get to work under the aegis of Robert F. Kennedy?

SCIUTTO: We'll see. And does he get through? It's open question. But the president's got -- given him his backing.

Meg Tirrell, Dr. Jonathan Reiner, sadly not the last time we talk about this, I assume, but thanks for joining.

Coming up, President Biden in Peru, one of the last forays on the international stage for the outgoing U.S. president.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:20:34]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back.

The APEC Summit is currently underway in Peru. This is likely one of Joe Biden's last major international trips as the president before Donald Trump takes over in January. The main concern for world leaders is the significant shift in engagement on the global stage, expected when Biden departs and Trump replaces him.

Right now, President Biden is meeting with his Peruvian counterpart.

CNN's MJ Lee joining us from the White House.

MJ, earlier today, Biden met with the leaders of Japan and South Korea. I wonder what you're hearing, one, about what Biden and his team are hearing from U.S. allies abroad in light of the election results, and then what the message in return is? MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, you know, we just heard President Biden trying to hail the relationship and the alliance that he has really forged between the U.S. and South Korea and Japan during his term in office, clearly trying to emphasize part of his foreign policy legacy that he would like to boost and bring attention to the work that he has done to boost the U.S.'s alliances throughout the Indo-Pacific.

The president did say, importantly, that he is hopeful that that alliance is built to last. But, Jim, the reality is that that may be his wish. But the reality that is facing many of the global leaders that are contemplating the idea of Donald Trump coming back into office is that there is a question mark and an asterisk next to every sort of foreign policy question and every relationship, frankly, that the U.S. has with its various alliances allies and other countries.

And the fact that they know and remember very well from Donald Trump's first term in office, how that, first and foremost, his foreign policy worldview is very we know very well, which is America first.

So even while we have President Biden, you know, going on this sort of swan song last big foreign trip that is expected, you know there could be another one that gets filled in before he leaves office, but this is going to be the last major one with international conferences like this. A lot of the global leaders are basically looking ahead to the Donald Trump era and trying to glean from U.S. officials, what can we possibly expect?

And I think the realistic answer is that a lot of folks actually don't know and don't know what the right answer is.

SCIUTTO: No. And I know they've been seeking contact with the Trump team even prior to the election to kind of build some of those relationships, get some of those questions answered.

LEE: Uh-huh.

SCIUTTO: I know that Biden is going to meet with the Chinese President Xi Jinping. What are their expectations, if any? I suppose at this point, given the changing of the guard from that meeting?

LEE: Yeah, I mean, I think the context here is really important, as you know very well U.S. -China tensions had really reached peak earlier on in the Biden administration, and there was real work that was put in to try to remedy that and that was in large part around that Biden-Xi summit that you remember from last winter when they really tried to emphasize this idea that competition doesn't necessarily mean confrontation. And one of the main things that U.S. officials try to emphasize around that summit was there needs to be better lines of communication that is open.

But just as we were talking about, this is yet another example where it's impossible to say exactly what U.S.-China relations might look like under a second Donald Trump term. I mean, for one, one of his favorite topics that he likes to talk about is tougher tariffs and this is something that a lot of folks expect that Donald Trump will want in terms of China.

But again, I think anybody that is trying to sort of game out exactly how these relations might play out they don't know. It's just impossible to say. And I think, again, there's this dance going on the world stage of a lot of foreign leaders trying to figure out what exactly the second iteration of a Trump presidency is going to look like on the world stage.

SCIUTTO: Yeah, it's -- it's almost unpredictability by design. You'll often hear that from Trump advisers that that's a virtue.

MJ Lee, thanks so much.

All right. So lets speak now to David Sanger, CNN political and national security analyst, also works for a little newspaper called "The New York Times", also author of "New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion and America's Struggle to Defend the West".

David, good to have you.

I mean, we could talk for hours on this. I guess a big question is with this change again, and listen, world leaders have to get used to now, this pendulum swing of U.S. international relations from election to election.

If you had to identify one thing, one issue internationally, that will change the most from Biden to Trump, what would that be?

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, it's probably Ukraine because on that issue, they've got completely different views, Jim.

President Biden has said nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. It's up to the Ukrainians to decide how long they want to fight, whether they want to negotiate.

Clearly, President-elect Trump has a very different view. He thinks he can just cut a deal and impose it. And his leverage is cutting off aid.

But, you know, it's interesting. We're discussing with MJ there, the meeting with -- with Xi Jinping, the biggest single change, Jim, in the geopolitical world and you wrote a lot about this in your book, and I wrote about it as well, is that when Trump left office Russia and China didn't have much of an operational relationship.

SCIUTTO: Yeah.

SANGER: Xi and Putin had met a lot, but they weren't doing a lot together. That's completely changed in the four years he's been gone and I think the biggest thing to watch for is whether or not he's going to try to get in the way of that relationship. The way Biden said at the end of the NATO summit that he was trying to get in the way of the China-Russia relationship now.

SCIUTTO: Try to, right? The trouble is, of course, it's not just China and Russia, it's North Korea and Iran increasingly.

SANGER: That's right.

SCIUTTO: And that's a different dynamic. Trump can't, you know, sort of choose and say, well, I'm going to go to battle with China. But Putin's, my friend, right, when they're arm in arm.

SANGER: Yeah.

SCIUTTO: Middle East, Jared Kushner seen as being pivotal once again in the Middle East efforts. We already have a vision into Trump's Middle East policy with his selection of Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel given that Mike Huckabee has positions quite in line with the furthest right in Israel that he's even said he doesn't believe the Palestinians exist, right?

He doesn't believe settlements is an acceptable term. He seems to believe in the annexation of the West Bank.

SANGER: He doesn't believe the West Bank is --

SCIUTTO: Exactly. Does that -- is that going to be Trump administration policy as regards to Israel?

SANGER: Really interesting question -- really interesting question. So, first question is why do you appoint your ambassador to Israel before you? He actually appointed him before he appointed his secretary of state, right, so that that was interesting.

This was all about symbolism and signaling, and why Israel before say, China, the most complex relationship you've got or Russia or others.

But you're right because the signal that it sent was that the Trump position is going to be to Bibi Netanyahu you go do whatever you need to do and we'll back you. And, you know, you could argue and the criticism on the left of Biden is that that was essentially his message even if he didn't phrase it that way, that he didn't use enough of his leverage.

But you're really going to see, I think, in this case not the U.S. step in as a mediator, but the U.S. step in pretty much backing whatever military steps Netanyahu wants to take.

Whether that goes to attacking Iran, we don't know.

SCIUTTO: Yeah. It's hard to keep up with all the appointments and what they would mean for each agency. There is talk now of Kash Patel, a quite extreme choice at the FBI, who has said not only would he go after Trump's enemies -- perceived enemies in government, but also possibly the media. What would Kash Patel mean for the FBI?

SANGER: It's a really good question because, you know, for a while, in fact, earlier in the week, we thought he could well end up as the deputy CIA director. One of the questions is whether he's confirmable and deputy CIA director is not a post that's going to off for confirmation.

The FBI would be a different -- different thing and I think, you know, one of the immediate issues that everybody is concerned about is that the Justice Department, across Democratic and Republican presidents, has by and large, not always, but by and large said, we are going to look for sources of leaks among the leakers but not subpoena reporters, there were exceptions, including the Obama administration that they weren't sort of out to go investigate media that is considered to be uncomfortable or in disagreement with the president.

[15:30:00]

We're not sure that remains in a combination of a Justice Department and FBI in the next -- in the next set of hands.

It is pretty remarkable that he's thinking of getting rid of the FBI Director Christopher Wray, because he appointed Christopher Wray.

SCIUTTO: Yeah. Well, he's been known to change his mind, David Sanger. We've seen that.

SANGER: Yeah, he has.

SCIUTTO: David Sanger, thanks so much for joining.

SANGER: Great to be with you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Coming up next, the U.N. climate summit has descended into a circus of boycotts, political tirades and fossil fuel celebration. And the host country, Azerbaijan, very much at the center of it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SCIUTTO: The U.N. Climate Conference COP29 is well underway in Azerbaijan with many countries concerned it's losing its very credibility.

Among the moments that stood out, the conferences host, the Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev, used his opening remarks to defend its oil and gas riches as a gift of the god.

Global climate leaders are now speaking out. Earlier today, they signed an open letter calling for a, quote, fundamental overhaul of the entire U.N. climate process. Originally, the letter stated the talks no longer fit for purpose, but the language was removed.

CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir is following these developments.

And, Bill, I wonder when you look at this, I mean, have we just seen the U.N. climate process blow up here?

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Oh, boy. It doesn't look good, Jim. There was already criticism from the likes of Al Gore or Christina Figueres, a former head of the climate accord at the Paris in 2015, saying this whole process is being captured by fossil fuel industry.

[15:35:00]

Thousands of lobbyists are coming in not trying to defend the Paris accord which is really the mandate of the presidency but to defend business interests and it looks this way. And also geopolitics got in the way. France and the Netherlands are involved in a dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia. And so, there's a French minister that didn't come.

It's, you know, that's the job of the COP president is to delicately balance allies enemies, grudges, hopes, dreams, and to try to come up with consensus and there's still time maybe to salvage this but it doesn't look good.

SCIUTTO: Okay, so lets talk about the U.S. position, because Donald Trump, you and I have talked about this before, of course, took us out of the Paris climate accord. In his first term, Biden put us back in. He's going to do it again. He said he has.

And now, he's chosen as his secretary of the interior, North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, and Burgum has promised to unleash Americas energy dominance which I always have to say, it's already dominant, right? I mean, we're producing more oil than we ever have before, you know, not depend on the Middle East anymore, whatever. That's a fact. But anyway they, you know, drill, baby, drill.

So what happens now under Trump and Burgum?

WEIR: It's interesting because he does at least acknowledge the climate crisis and very much from a sort of an entrepreneur, this is a business opportunity. He phrases it as a carbon balance problem, not climate change, too much carbon from in the Earth, in the atmosphere. And he actually proposed making North Dakota carbon neutral state by drawing down CO2, injecting it underground using it in greenhouses to grow fruits.

So, who knows? And he's also a big fan of wind energy and Donald Trump, which he hates.

SCIUTTO: Ooh, yeah.

WEIR: So can he be the last guy in the room with President Trump to nudge him towards maybe giving wind a second chance, or thinking about these carbon caption? There's a lot of money in it for fossil fuel companies, which is why ExxonMobil says don't pull out of Paris because they have incentives and want a seat at the table.

SCIUTTO: Yeah, I mean, will Burgum then is going to have to get over Trump's constant obsession. It seems with birds dying from wind farms, which I'm sure we haven't heard the last of.

Well, Bill Weir, it's got to be hard for you to watch all this. You know, the consequences of climate change and we always appreciate you coming on.

WEIR: Any time. Thanks, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Well, CNN is hearing exclusively from U.S. Air Force pilots who took down a swarm of Iranian drones sent to attack Israel in the April attack. Iran fired hundreds of drones, a far larger strike than the U.S. military anticipated.

The U.S. pilots spent hours in the air that night fighting off the prolonged attack. At one point, they even ran out of their own missiles.

National security correspondent Natasha Bertrand, she has the exclusive.

Tell us what the pilots told you.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, Jim, it was really interesting hearing directly from these pilots who were engaged that night and particularly the fact that before this large scale drone attack, the U.S. Air Force had really never faced a test like this. And a lot of things, frankly, were surprising to them. And some things even went wrong.

But take a listen to what one of the fighter pilots told me about the difficulty of being in this fighter jet and having to take down these very slow small drones that can easily evade radar systems.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BERTRAND: Can you talk a bit about how difficult that was to take down these very small, slow moving drones?

MAJ. BENJAMIN "IRIAH" COFFEY, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE: You're talking about something that's on the very edge of a fighter aircrafts ability to detect what we call fine fix, track, target, and engage.

We weren't sure if our radar, the best radar in the inventory is in this airplane behind us. No one really knew whether or not its capability to find these things even existed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERTRAND: So I think some people might look at a fighter jet and say wow, you know, surely that can take down a swarm of drones fairly easily, but actually it's a lot more difficult than I think the broader public understands. And so that was really interesting to get insight into that.

And then another aspect of this, of course, is that that fighter jet can actually only hold about eight air to air missiles at a time. So they had to land at a base that was under alert itself because of the threat of an imminent attack, a base in the Middle East. And while they were landing debris from intercepted missiles and drones, was falling onto the runways overhead and so there was a real danger to personnel who were on that runway trying to get these jets refueled and reloaded and back in the air.

Here's what another fighter pilot told me about what he saw that night, in terms of the bravery of these guys who were on the ground.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LT. COL. CURTIS CULVER, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE: There was an airman at one point standing next to a fuel truck with tons and tons of jet fuel in it just pumping gas into the jet with stuff exploding over the base. I mean, the courage of that person to stand up and do that for an ally is incredible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERTRAND: Other jets, Jim, they landed with hung missiles, which is when a missile malfunctions, and it actually means you have a live missile hanging on your wing that could explode at any point. So it really gives you a sense overall of just the chaos of that night behind the scenes that we really haven't gotten a look at until now.

SCIUTTO: Well, it's a good point, right? Because you know, there had been some public commentary that -- well, Iran, you know, sort of held its fire a bit or telegraphed. It didn't really want to cause that much damage.

[15:40:03]

But what you're revealing there is that there was a real effort, right? And it helped, you know, it was only through the efforts like that you described that limited the destruction in Israel.

I do want to talk about another topic we've been following closely, which is, of course, the ongoing Israeli military assault on Lebanon. New proposal U.S., Israeli proposal, as I understand it, on the table for a ceasefire?

BERTRAND: Yeah, the U.S. and Israel have continued working on this even after the election of Donald Trump. There were some questions inside the administration of whether the Israelis might want to hit pause on that in order to give Donald Trump an early victory once he enters office.

But the U.S. says now that they're full steam ahead. And we did see the U.S. ambassador to Lebanon deliver a ceasefire proposal that apparently Hezbollah is now looking at. But it remains to be seen how Donald Trump is going to actually react. We are told that he is not planning to step in or try to upend this in any way, but the Israelis are, of course, playing a very delicate game here, Jim.

SCIUTTO: No question. We'll see. Be quite a surprise to get that in the lame duck period of President Biden's administration.

Natasha Bertrand, thanks so much.

Coming up, an exclusive look inside an El Salvador prison, which Trump's attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz, has visited and hailed for its hard line methods.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [15:44:25]

SCIUTTO: President-elect Trump's pick for U.S. Attorney General Matt Gaetz will oversee U.S. prisons if he is confirmed. Back in July, Gaetz took a tour of one of the world's most brutal notorious prisons and suggested it could be a model for here in the U.S.

The prison is where El Salvador keeps the, quote, worst of the worst, murderers, rapists gang members, including some who were deported from here in the U.S. El Salvador's president released a video of some of Gaetz's comments after his visit to the facility.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FL): There's a lot more discipline in this prison than we see in a lot of the prisons in the United States.

[15:45:02]

This is the solution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO: Well, CNN is the first major U.S. news organization to gain access to that prison system, which Gaetz praised there. Our David Culver takes you inside. You'll want to see this exclusive report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID CULVER, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: All right, I'm going to go in here.

(voice-over): Even as I'm stepping through these doors, I don't fully grasp what were about to walk into. And suddenly you're hit with the intense gaze of dozens locking on to you. These men described as the worst of the worst, tattooed with reminders of El Salvador's dark past.

It's tense and uncomfortable, but here, officials say comfort isn't meant to exist.

There's no mattresses. There's no sheets. You've got a toilet over here for them to go to the bathroom. You've got this basin here that they use to bathe themselves, and then you can see there -- there's a barrel of water that they can drink from.

This is a rare look inside El Salvador's terrorism confinement center known as CECOT.

He says there's always somebody standing here in front of the cells. And then if you look up, there's another corridor with more security personnel, 24/7 light.

The prison sits like an isolated fortress, nestled in mountainous terrain about an hour and a half drive from the capital. Even with government officials on board with us, we're stopped a mile out. Okay. He's going to inspect bags.

We'll get back in.

Only to hit another checkpoint.

Approaching the main gate, our cell signals vanish.

They want to do a full search on us before we enter.

Once cleared, we tour the vast campus.

It's been equated to seven football stadiums. It's almost multiple prisons within the prison. You can see off to the distance, there's three different rights as they describe. The far end, you have one that's nine meters high of concrete. And then above that, three meters of electrified fencing.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Fifteen thousand volts.

CULVER: Fifteen thousand volts.

More than a thousand security personnel guards, police and military are stationed on site. Inmates are assigned to one of eight sectors.

The director tells me the inmates, once they're inside one of these sectors, they never leave. Everything is done within, including doctors as well as legal visits or court hearings.

Each sector holds more than two dozen large cells.

Roughly 80 inmates per cell, but it can fluctuate.

Most bear the markings of the gangs that held this nation hostage for decades, committing brutal acts of violence.

MARVIN VASQUEZ, PRISONER: You got to kill people. You got to rob. You got to do what you got to do to survive.

CULVER: You have to do those things.

VASQUEZ: Yeah, you got to do that.

CULVER: We meet 41 year old Marvin Vasquez, shackled and heavily guarded.

What gang were you part of?

VASQUEZ: MS-13.

CULVER: And do you have any gang affiliations?

VASQUEZ: Yeah, I'm tattooed up.

CULVER: What is this?

VASQUEZ: Crazy criminals. The crazy criminals. Yeah, I made this clique in 2011.

CULVER: You made the clique?

VASQUEZ: Yeah.

CULVER: You were a gang leader?

VASQUEZ: Yeah.

CULVER: What is it like to live here?

VASQUEZ: It's probably not a hotel, five star, but they give you the three times the food. They give you some programs. You go to -- you go to do exercise, some church religion programs, too.

CULVER: But that's limited to just 30 minutes a day. The other 23-1/2 hours, they're kept inside and locked up.

For inmates who get violent with other prisoners or guards --

We're going to close the door. I just want to get a sense of -- wow.

Solitary confinement awaits.

The only light you get is through this hole, and it can be in here for 15 days, potentially.

All right. I'm ready to get out.

The director brought up that a lot of folks will raise concerns from a human rights perspective, and an abuse of human rights, that he's calm hearing that because he sees it day to day. The process they go through to maintain as he sees it proper punishment.

While you're cut off from society, hear whispers of life on the outside, make their way in.

VASQUEZ: I've heard about it, that it's a new El Salvador. It looks different.

CULVER: That new El Salvador has emerged under President Nayib Bukele, who took office in 2019 and declared a controversial state of emergency more than two years ago. It sparked an aggressive crackdown on crime.

[15:50:00]

We see that firsthand as some 2,500 police and soldiers deploy into one neighborhood.

It's going to go on through the night for however long it takes for them to root out any suspected criminal elements.

Critics argue Bukele's strategy has given him far reaching power to suppress dissent and silence any opposition. Late last week, as the U.S. State Department lowered its travel

advisory for El Salvador citing a significant reduction in crime, it also warned that Bukele's emergency measures allow authorities to arrest anyone suspected of gang activity and suspends constitutional rights.

And yet most we meet seem unfazed by the added show of force.

I asked him, I said how do you feel with police and soldiers? I mean, there's a couple of dozen just even right outside his door, and he said, no, I feel safe.

El Salvador now has one of the world's highest incarceration rates. The most hardened criminals brought to CECOT, where inside a life sentence awaits.

VASQUEZ: We did bad things. We paid the rough way, doing time.

CULVER: And yet, for many on the outside, the prison now a symbol of newfound freedom, the new El Salvador as they see it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CULVER (on camera): Now you've got other Latin American countries that are building what some are considering to be Bukele style prisons, namely Ecuador and Honduras. No question it's controversial. Some think it is far too extreme.

But when you speak to the folks on the ground in El Salvador and we've made multiple disagree with Bukele's tactics will tell you they're incredibly happy with the outcome. They feel far safer, safer than they've ever felt before in their own country. Many of them will say that as extreme as those tactics are, they were necessary to eradicate the gangs that really took control of the country for so many years.

David Culver, CNN, West Palm Beach, Florida.

SCIUTTO: What a view inside that prison. Please stay with us. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:55:04]

SCIUTTO: Welcome back.

Well, some lighter news to cap off. What has been a jam-packed week to say the least. Former late night host and comedian Conan O'Brien has been announced as the next host for Hollywood's biggest night, the Oscars. The Emmy-winning TV host spent nearly three decades in late night television on NBC and TBS. He's now the host of the popular "Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend" podcast, which I listen to. Its pretty funny, and Conan O'Brien must go on Max.

Conan reacted to the Academy's announcement on X, formerly Twitter, writing true to his humor, America demanded it. And now it's happening. Taco Bell's new cheesy Chalupa supreme. And other news, I'm hosting the Oscars.

It's going to be a funny night.

Thanks so much for joining me today. I'm Jim Sciutto in Washington.

"QUEST MEANS BUSINESS" is up next. I hope you have a nice weekend.