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Missouri Buries Data on Effectiveness of Mask Mandates; Facebook Sold Ads Promoting Political Violence, Big Life; Investigators Questioning What School Knew Before Deadly Shooting. Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired December 03, 2021 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Coming up, why would the state of Missouri bury a study showing that mask mandates save lives? We'll have a Reality Check.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And Making Hanging Traitors Great Again. Facebook making a profit off of swag that promotes political violence. A new CNN investigation ahead.

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BERMAN: This morning a new Facebook controversy. New CNN reporting uncover the social media company ran and profited from ads comparing the U.S. coronavirus response to the Nazis. One of those was for a sweater that reads, quote, "I'm originally from America but I currently reside in 1941 Germany."

[07:35:00]

Another with a picture of a vaccine saying, "Slowly and quietly, but it's a Holocaust". Facebook also sold ads that push political violence like this one and all the merchandise companies behind these ads have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on Facebook.

Joining me now, CNN Correspondents Donie O'Sullivan and Laura Jarrett. Laura, of course, EARLY START anchor and attorney at law. Donie, you're part of this reporting. This is pretty amazing.

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. I mean, it's pretty disgusting to see it, and look. Facebook will often to characterize and frame the debate about its problems around free speech and saying we have billions of users and people are posting all these things. This is a lot different. These are ads. These are paid ads that Facebook is selling and then targeting to their users. So if they can't even have a handle on what it is they are selling they can't vet that, but what hope is there for all the other billions of posts on the platform?

BERMAN: So do they know? Is it OK to post Holocaust ads on Facebook? Does Facebook say it's OK? O'SULLIVAN: So the answer to that question is no, but Facebook only took the ads down or took actions on these ads after CNN brought it to their attention.

LAURA JARRETT, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You find those (ph).

O'SULLIVAN: But the ads, that last ad you showed there, "Make Hanging Traitors Great Again", Facebook said that that is cool. That does not break their rules. This just months after we saw gallows outside the U.S. Capitol.

JARRETT: Can we just pause to note how crazy this is?

BERMAN: Yes.

JARRETT: I mean, there is something particularly, as you said, disgusting, but there seems to be this virulent misappropriation if you will of the Holocaust, this embracing of Nazism, which when you break it down is really anti-Semitism at bottom. And you spend way more time that I do doing sort of the content moderating that a multibillion dollar company seems to be unable to do, but it just it seems worth noting that this is all being amplified on a Facebook in a way that anti-Semitism isn't new but it's being allowed to propagate sort of unabated.

O'SULLIVAN: And you know when we saw a Fox News personality earlier this week comparing Dr. Anthony Fauci to a Nazi doctor -

JARRETT: Yes.

O'SULLIVAN: -- people were rightly outraged by that, but this stuff doesn't happen in a vacuum. As you can see here for some people their Facebook feeds is full of this sort of stuff, full of comparing what's happening here to Nazi Germany and full of comparisons - insane comparisons making the vaccine in line to the Holocaust.

JARRETT: I know Facebook would say that, look, we can't scan through every single ad, right? That's their counter to this, but the Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, says this is actually deliberate, right, because the ads and generally the content that sort of gets people riled up, she would say is deliberately pushed to people because we know it gets more eyeballs.

O'SULLIVAN: And it's two separate issues here, right? There are billions of posts on Facebook, and Facebook can say, well, we can't monitor everything. That's one debate, but the other side of this is they're selling ads. Like they are taking money.

JARRETT: They're getting money from sales (ph).

O'SULLIVAN: So - and so, and the reason why they are so profitable is because they don't have people going through taking the time to consider what is in these ads. That is why they're so profitable. That is why they keep missing this stuff.

BERMAN: All right, two quick questions. They say they can't monitor everything. Donie, how hard was it for you to find this stuff?

O'SULLIVAN: I would love to say that I did some amazing journalism here and spent days trolling through Facebook. This stuff was so easy to find. You just type it in. You start finding this stuff. The fact that they have to rely on news organizations and academics and researchers and even groups like the ADL to bring stuff to their attention, it's - it is infuriating.

BERMAN: Any legal repercussions for Facebook here?

JARRETT: They basically have found a way to get away with this with impunity. Can you put up things that you know are false? Can they - can they knowingly put up ads that are defamatory say and not get sued for it? No. But thus far they seem to have been able to create sort of a legal zone, like this bubble if you will of not being able to be held liable, and they would say that, of course, this is disgusting, right? But it doesn't defame anybody personally. It doesn't have an explicit call against somebody for violence, a particular person. And so, who's left to sue over it? Nobody.

BERMAN: You might call that the Meta zone.

JARRETT: Yes.

BERMAN: How do you like that?

(LAUGHTER)

How do you like that? Laura Jarrett, Donie O'Sullivan, terrific reporting.

JARRETT: John with the puns.

BERMAN: Thank you very much. Alec Baldwin says he in his mind he knows he is not responsible for the shooting death of his cinematographer. That's what he thinks. We'll speak to a lawyer representing a crew member who disagrees.

KEILAR: And why are some Senate Republicans fighting tooth and nail against lifesaving vaccines? Your Reality Check next.

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[07:43:55]

KEILAR: Why would public officials not only ignore but actually bury hard proof of a way to keep people safe from COVID-19? It's called partisan politics, and John Avlon has this data and also a hard lesson in today's Reality Check.

JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITCAL ANALYST: Back when President George W. Bush was running for reelection - bear with me here - I remember seeing this bootleg campaign slogan slapped on a t-shirt. It read, "Saving Your Ass Whether You Like It Or Not". I had my policy differences with the guy, but that was an instant classic. It's in the wake of 9/11, distilled the debate clearly. War on terror was a struggle against a death cult (ph), and the

president was going to try to keep everyone safe no matter how much they complained, but what a different a decade and a half makes because now it's the Democrats who are trying to save your ass from COVID whether you like it or not. And Republicans are fighting vaccine and mask mandates that save lives in the name of freedom.

The fights seem never-ending, right? I mean, late last night the Senate managed to avoid a shutdown being pressed by a few right- wingers who wanted to take the government off a cliff unless the Biden administration backed off its push for vaccine mandates.

[07:45:00]

Of course, Ted Cruz was in on the weasley (ph) action saying that we should leverage - we should use the leverage we have to fight against what are legal, unconstitutional, abusive mandates. His junior partner in crime, Kansas Republican Roger Marshall, tried to play the victim card saying, "Does Senator Schumer want to shut down the economy? Does he want to threaten national security? So long as we make sure we don't fund that unconstitutional mandate we'll be OK."

Now Senator Marshall is an actual medical doctor, which is one of several reasons he should know better than to spread this B.S. "The Kansas City Star" Editorial Board slammed him, writing, "Roger Marshall is far more interested in fighting culture war than he is in fighting the pandemic." And that problem is epidemic right now.

Here's a brand new example from Missouri where the Governor Mike Parson strenuously opposes mask mandates and came down with COVID in September. Now get this. It turns out that his office requested a study about the effectiveness of mask mandates back in November. And when the report by the State Department of Health came back with data showing that counties with mask mandates has far lower case rates during the height of the Delta wave it was shelved. It would not have seen the light of day, but for an information request by the Missouri Independent in the documenting COVID-19 project.

Why would the state suppress data showing that mask mandates save lives? Was it politically incorrect? Well that's the darkly-ironic part in the show me state, especially when the State Republican A.G. is suing counties to remove local mandates, but this is part of a red state political trend right now, and that's why the partisan divide over COVID is so sick and so stark.

"The Washington Post" Phillip Bump did an analysis of the deaths per capita since Biden took office and vaccines became widely available. Get this. In counties that Trump won deaths have spiked this year. In counties that Biden won COVID deaths have decreased dramatically. To put a finer point on it deaths have risen in rural counties while they've gone down in urban areas despite the fact they're more densely populated.

It highlights the fact that this is primarily a pandemic of the unvaccinated. There, too, we see the partisan divide with a new survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation showing that 91 percent of Democrats are vaccinated with at least one dose while only 59 percent of Republicans are.

And what's worse, 26 percent of Republicans say they will definitely not get vaccinated. There's a deeper demographic divide along partisan lines than any other category including race or income when it comes to vaccines, and this, of course, is not some kind of naturally occurring phenomenon. It's the result of people being lied to in political echo chambers, being told that the vaccines are a greater risk to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness than the disease itself.

It's tragic but not surprising to see that some of the people who've spread this information fall prey to the disease. But knowing that more of the unvaccinated will die, statistically disproportionately Republicans it is beyond cynical to see the RNC pushing talking points saying Biden has failed to get COVID under control.

What's it going to take to snap out of this stupid and self defeating partisan stupor because we've already lost more Americans to COVID than died in the Civil War in half the time, and still we can't seem to face facts. Vaccines works. Masks work. Mandates work. And America's not going to get fully back to work until we finally recognize that pandemics don't care about partisan politics, and that's your Reality Check.

KEILAR: It is so simple, right? It is so simple. And I know that, you know, in your new digital Reality Check you're exploring why Americans are finding themselves on these two sides of the extremes.

AVLON: That's right. I tried to dig into the question of the psychology of extremism, and what researchers are finding are some commonalities between folks on the far-right and the far-left. It's a fascinating conversation with Jonathan Hite (ph) who says that basically this tribalism, this teamism (ph) is making us structurally stupid as a nation. Go check it out.

KEILAR: Yes, that is fascinating. I can't wait to see that. John Avlon, thank you so much.

Some new CNN reporting that Donald Trump is furious after his former Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows - at his former Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, I should say. Here why.

BERMAN: And new allegations that the Michigan shooter had the gun in his backpack during a school meeting with his parents. The sheriff leading the investigation joins us ahead.

[07:50:00]

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BERMAN: New details into what led up to the shooting at Oxford High School that left four students dead and seven others injured. The prosecutor in the case says she believes it's a strong possibility that the suspected shooter had the gun in his backpack as he met with his parents and a school official before he opened fire. Joining us now is Oakland County Sheriff, Michael Bouchard. Sheriff, we really appreciate you being with us. You've been very, very helpful to us, and I think the public appreciates it. Sheriff, the prosecutor there, Karen McDonald, yesterday said she would release evidence today that she says will show that this crime could have been prevented. What do you know about this?

SHERIFF MICHAEL BOUCHARD, OAKLAND COUNTY, MICHIGAN: Well one of the things that we're working on as we retrace the moments of that tragic day and thankfully because the school has such an incredible video system we can really map out exactly and literally watch

[07:55:00]

what the perpetrator did from the point where he left the office from that meeting and ultimately the shooting began until we took him into custody. So you know, we have to believe that he had the weapon either on his person in his backpack or somewhere secreted in that travel route and because the process never had him leaving the school.

BERMAN: So he either had it in his backpack or he picked it up somewhere in the school where he had left it, correct?

BOUCHARD: Correct.

BERMAN: And when the prosecutor says it could have been prevented, by whom then?

BOUCHARD: Well you know, I'm not sure exactly what she means specifically to that because I didn't hear the context, but I think the point is is that there was a meeting. There was some concerning behavior. We were not looped in obviously that that was something that we certainly wish would have happened and, you know, we encourage all schools or people to always loop us into anything that they find concerning, troubling, and, you know, there's protocols and things that we do and follow that I think certainly may have made a difference in this situation

BERMAN: The superintendent put out a video last night. It was a very heartfelt video about a lot of subjects. One of the things that was suggested was that there was no action the school could have taken to prevent it. Do you agree with that?

BOUCHARD: Well again, the one thing that comes to our mind is that we would have liked to have been looped into that conversation either in the room or told about it immediately. They may not have had certain authorities or they may not have wanted to do certain things, but that's different for us. We have a different role and a different process.

BERMAN: I want to ask you about an Instagram post that was put up by the shooter, and it shows the Sig Sauer gun, the murder weapon here. And the post reads, "Just got my new beauty today. Sig Sauer 9mm. Ask any questions. I will answer." So that was the gun purchased by the father, correct?

BOUCHARD: Correct.

BERMAN: Yet the shooter, who was 15, is referring to it as mine. Mine. Is that legal?

BOUCHARD: No. No. Legally that's not his. He cannot own or, you know, possess that weapon outside the house or, you know, any kind of transporting, carrying, or using without very few restrictions. You know, there's some places where it's possible an underage person can use a firearm at a range or on private property, in a range fashion, things like that. Within a home they can hold and possess it, but not outside the house. And they can't legally own it either.

BERMAN: What legal jeopardy are the parents in? What laws would be pursued here?

BOUCHARD: Well the key question will be - and that's what my detectives are trying to run down and it's a bit of challenge obviously because neither the parents nor the suspect are speaking with us - but at what process did he come into possession of the weapon that day? Was it given to him? Was it allowed to be picked up and taken freely at his discretion? Or was it stolen? Was it broken into something to be removed? And that's all part of the investigation, and obviously will have to be part of the charging decision of the prosecutor.

BERMAN: Hypothetically if the gun was just sitting around the house does that put the parents in legal jeopardy and not locked up in any way?

BOUCHARD: That would have to be a legal argument. There's not a specific statute that says anything along that lines, but that would be something, A, that we would have to figure out a way to confirm, and B, that the prosecutor would argue.

BERMAN: Finally I know there's one thing that's going on that's got to be infuriating to you, which is that there are at least last count 60 phone threats to high schools, schools across Michigan. What do you think of this phenomenon and what do you want to say about it?

BOUCHARD: Incredibly disturbing, and it's more than 60 threats. It's 60 area school districts are closed. Not the number of threats. The threat number is significantly higher. Hundreds and hundreds, and it's very disturbing because what it's doing is it's really aggravating the raw nerves and emotions of every student, every parent, every teacher in the whole region completely unnecessarily. So the schools shut down out of an abundance of caution why we and our partners check all these threats out.

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