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Two Officers Killed in Shoutout on Bridgewater College Campus in Virginia; Pfizer Reports It is seeking Emergency Use Authorization from FDA for COVID-19 Vaccines for Children between Six Months and Five-Years-Old; Russia Continues to Amass Troops along Ukrainian Border. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired February 02, 2022 - 08:00   ET

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

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[08:00:38]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning to viewers here in the United States and around the world. It is Wednesday, February 2nd, and I'm Brianna Keilar with John Berman.

We are beginning with police under assault across America. The latest tragedy in Virginia, where two officers were shot and killed on the campus of a private college in Bridgewater during an active shooter standoff. Officer J.J. Jefferson and Officer John Painter, known as the "dynamic duo," lost their lives in this shooting. One was the best man at the other man's wedding just this year.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: On the same day here in New York City, an off-duty police officer was shot by two suspects who tried to rob him while he was on his way to work. We're told the officer is in stable condition. And it happened on the eve of the funeral for 27-year-old NYPD Officer Wilbert Mora, who was killed along with his colleague during an ambush almost two weeks ago.

In Texas, at the emotional funeral for a deputy shot and killed during a traffic stop, officials called the judicial system broken.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONSTABLE TED HEAP, HARRIS COUNTY PRECINCT 5: This has to stop. Those in authority who were coddling the criminals and enabling this behavior have culpability just as those who are pulling the trigger. We cannot continue to do our jobs effectively when the rest of the judicial system is broken. People need to be held accountable because enough is enough. There is no other way to say it. We're tired. We're tired. We're tired physically, and we're tired emotionally. This is a fight between good and evil, and we will not let evil prevail.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Here in just the past two weeks, officers shot in Houston and St. Louis, in Milwaukee, New York, and now in Virginia, and this is the man who is accused of killing those two campus officers in Bridgewater, Virginia. He has been charged with two felony counts of capital murder as well as two other felonies. The Bridgewater College president says the two officers who lost their lives were beloved by students, faculty, and staff.

And joining us now, Bridgewater College student Alex Hulleman. He was in the area of the shooting when it took place. Alex, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry for what your school community is going through, and I really appreciate you being with us this morning to tell us about this and to honor these police officers. Can you tell us what you experienced, what you saw?

ALEX HULLEMAN, BRIDGEWATER COLLEGE STUDENT: Yes. Thanks for having me on. So we were just going about our business as usual last Tuesday afternoon, and all of a sudden we hear in our classroom eight shots rang out, and everybody immediately knows, even someone like myself who doesn't have much experience with firearms, we know it's a gunshot, and we all get on the ground, we all covering our heads. A couple of kids get in the way of the door to block it if someone tried to open it. Professors telling everyone to get down, and telling they're calling 911, telling the operators what's going on.

We hear someone who we later would come to realize was one of the officers who was shot, screaming in pain for several moments after the shots had rang out. And then for several very intense minutes we sheltered in place there, not sure what was going to happen. We all knew the game, though. School shooting, the playbook has been written before. But then gradually officers began to arrive at the scene, and we started to look out of the windows and see the officers. And our professor told us, he was initially the first one to see it, he said, don't look out there if you're not going to handle it. So, yes, employee they covered the bodies with sheets, though, but we could see from our vantage point, we could see the officers down.

KEILAR: Did you know the officers? Did your fellow students know these officers?

HULLEMAN: Well, everyone had interacted with these people on some level because they were probably the most friendly people on campus. Every time you saw them, they'd say hi to you, they'd greet you. Anyone -- I didn't get to know them much more extensively than that. People who did confirmed that these are great people.

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And no one -- no one I know can say a bad word about them. Even some people who got caught with drug or alcohol and got charged by them say, the next week they're back in the cafeteria, joking with each other and teasing each other. These are upstanding individuals and pillars of our community. KEILAR: And I know they were responding to this call of a suspicious

man. So they intercepted, obviously, a dangerous person who did not get to the students, Alex.

HULLEMAN: Yes. That was -- that is something that is gradually sinking in on us, is that these people potentially sacrificed their lives for ours. So we're very grateful for that.

KEILAR: Alex, I want to thank you for being with us, and also for telling us about these officers, and just some beautiful stories about what they were to the students at your school. We appreciate it, Alex Hulleman.

HULLEMAN: Yes, thank you for having me on.

BERMAN: So, big new on the vaccine front for parents of young children. Pfizer says it is ready to start vaccinating babies as young as six months old. The company says it has reached out to the FDA for emergency use authorization. That's the news here. Pfizer is applying for emergency use authorization here. But according to the Kaiser Family Foundation, only three in ten parents of kids under five say they will get their child vaccinated right away.

Joining us now is Dr. Ashish Jha, Dean of the Brown University School of Public Health. Vaccines only work if you take them, Dr. Jha.

DR. ASHISH JHA, DEAN, BROWN UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH: Yes. Good morning and thanks for having me here.

That's correct. And what we need to do is we need to build up confidence in these vaccines. We're going to want to look at the data to see how well the vaccines are working, how safe they are. I expect them to be exceedingly safe. They have been for other children. But absolutely true we're going to really have to help parents get comfortable, get confident this is the right thing to do for their kids.

KEILAR: OK, so, look, I'm the parent -- I've been long awaiting this vaccine, Dr. Jha, and I know there are so many people who are in this category. But you look at the numbers, I have a three-and-a-half-year- old. You're looking at the kids who are right under that five-year mark, they didn't see as effective a bump in the trials. I will tell you just personally, I'm inclined to move forward. My child, who is three-and-a-half had COVID over Christmas. My hope is the vaccine is safe, add that to the fact he has some natural immunity now, and I'm hoping that this puts us somewhere, but we need more answers too.

JHA: Yes, absolutely. So, first of all, I think there are a lot of parents out there, obviously at least three in 10, maybe more, who are anxious to get their kids under five vaccinated. We have always been guided by evidence and data on this stuff. And that's what we got to do again. And so I'm going to look very carefully at the data presented to the FDA, the advisory committee is going to look very carefully at this, and first and biggest question is, is it's safe? I expect it to be very safe, but we'll have to see. And then the second question is, how effective is it? And that should really drive the decision-making. I expect an authorization, but I'm not convinced we'll have one. We will really want to look at the evidence very carefully.

BERMAN: Yes, it is not a slam dunk this time, and it's not the safety that's an issue so much as data that is effective, because there isn't that data, at least not yet. They're sort of taking a flyer on the hope it might be proven effective going forward.

Dr. Jha, I want to ask you, you're so informative on Twitter, and you frame things, I think, in such an understandable way for people. You describe this moment in the pandemic as sort of a rainstorm or a waning rainstorm. What does that mean, and how should that impact our behavior?

JHA: Yes. So I've been really puzzled by the fact that we have managed to politicize these very basic public health measures like mask wearing and testing and vaccinations, and I really do think of it as, like, if I'm going out into a massive thunderstorm and it is bucketing rain, I have an umbrella, but I also wear a raincoat, I wear my rain boots. But obviously if it is drizzling, I sometimes go out with like a small umbrella and not going to put on a big raincoat. And that's how to think about this. When the virus is raging, we should be doing everything we can to slow that down and protect ourselves. When virus levels get very, very low in the community, perfectly reasonable not to have mask mandates. For people who want to wear a mask, of course, they should wear one. But mandates can get lifted in the moments when infection numbers are really low.

KEILAR: So when you're looking at mandates, universities that are starting to lift certain mandates, whether it's vaccines or masks or both, is the timing right on that?

JHA: Yes, so, first of all, I think vaccine mandates make a lot of sense, because vaccine mandate is a one-time thing, and then you get lifelong or long-term protection. So that's a different thing, in my mind.

In terms of mask mandates, I wouldn't do it right now in most places, because infection numbers are way down, they're still pretty high compared to historical averages. So I would probably wait a couple more weeks.

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As long as infection numbers get low, as long as hospital capacity is not a problem, as long as deaths start coming down, and they're still pretty high, those are the moments I would use to start pulling back the mask mandates.

BERMAN: Dr. Ashish Jha, thank you so much for joining us this morning. Great to see you.

JHA: Thank you.

BERMAN: All right, the story that really could upend the National Football League. The former coach of the Miami Dolphins Brian Flores now suing the NFL for racial discrimination. He was called the Rosa Parks of the NFL. Flores will be with us here live.

And brand-new satellite images just in to CNN that shows significant military deployments along the Ukrainian border. What does this mean about the possibility of an invasion?

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KEILAR: Just in to CNN, satellite images appear to show new significant military deployments in Belarus, Crimea, and western Russia. This is happening as Russian President Vladimir Putin is blaming the U.S. and NATO for the escalating conflict along the Ukrainian border.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIAN PRESIDENT (through translator): Their main task is to contain the development of Russia. Ukraine is simply a tool to achieve this goal. They could draw us into some kind of armed conflict and force their allies in Europe to impose the very tough sanctions that are being talked about in the United States today.

[08:15:01]

PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN, RUSSIA (through translator): We were given promises not to push the infrastructure of the NATO block to the east one inch. Everyone knows this well. Today, we see where NATO is located, Poland, Romania, the Baltic countries.

They said one thing, they did another. As people say, they screwed us over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Joining us now is Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey. She's a member of the House Armed Services Committee, she also just returned from a trip to Ukraine where she was part of a bipartisan delegation to discuss this buildup of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border.

Long intro there, Congresswoman, but obviously, you've been on this very important trip that we wanted to tell people about.

First, though, can you respond to what you heard there from Vladimir Putin basically saying NATO has just encroached on Russia and he clearly feels justified?

REP. MIKIE SHERRILL (D-NJ): I'm not sure he truly feels justified because, you know, none of what he's saying really comports with the history or reality. I was a Russian policy officer when I was in the military and certainly discussing states coming into NATO and what NATO might look like after the fall of the Berlin Wall. And what he is describing simply is not true.

We would not tell a sovereign state who they could or could not ally with. And that is the argument of Russia, that they should have a sphere of influence, contrary to our beliefs in democracy and sovereign states choosing their path forward and the citizens of that state being able to choose their path forward. It is striking to me to hear this sort of victimhood that Putin seems to be putting forward when he has amassed over 100,000 troops on the border of Ukraine and seems to think that there should be no response to that.

KEILAR: That's the other thing, Congresswoman, is we have these photos from an independent company that shows this buildup of troops, in Crimea, in Donbas, coming in from Belarus as well, and yet the Russian position seems to be that we should not believe our eyes.

What do you say to that?

SHERRILL: It is really striking. It kind of harkens back to the way Russia used to communicate or the Soviet Union used to communicate during the Cold War. I remember even as a young girl, you know, seeing right through that and thinking this makes no sense, and certainly that's where we are today.

And you're exactly right. You know, in 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea and the Donbas, that was the first time since the end of World War II that we saw an invasion of a sovereign nation in Europe, and attempt to annex territory.

So, again, this massing of troops I think is really the aggression that we're seeking to address. I would love to find a way to deter Russia from moving forward.

I'll tell you having just been on the ground in Ukraine, seeing the desire of the people there to fight for freedom, I think Putin is making a miscalculation and some of what he's talking about now gives me some hope that he's attempting to find a path to walk back from his current aggressive position.

KEILAR: Can you tell us more about your trip? You met with the Ukrainian president. What did you learn?

SHERRILL: So, I am a member of the House Armed Services Committee. So I joined the foreign affairs trip to Ukraine with a sense in mind of determining if Ukraine felt as if they had the support they needed, militarily, from the U.S., with weapons, and other means to deter this aggression, and if they were invaded, to fight back against Russian aggression.

And I'll tell you, we started in the -- we started in Brussels, we met with our EU allies and NATO, and what struck me was how unified we all were in addressing this aggression from Russia. In fact, I think another miscalculation of Putin's is that he has done more to reignite the transatlantic relationship that had been somewhat frayed in the previous administration.

But we are all strongly united. We also went as a bipartisan delegation and I can tell you that as we were overseas, we were all simply supporting the position of America's support of freedom. We met with the Ukrainian president and, you know, he said he -- his people are ready to fight. He certainly does not need United States troops on the ground. They are more than capable, he said, and will defend their democracy

and their freedom.

KEILAR: All right. Democratic Congresswoman Mikie Sherrill, we appreciate you joining us this morning. Thanks.

SHERRILL: Thank you so much for having me.

KEILAR: And here's what else to watch today.

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KEILAR: Just in, President Biden revealing an initiative that aims to cut cancer deaths in half.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: And the bombshell lawsuit with the potential for major repercussions in the NFL. I'm joined live by former Miami dolphins coach Brian Flores.

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KEILAR: All right, we're just two days out from the Beijing Winter Games beginning. The torch relay now under way, scaled back, though, to just three days, as coronavirus cases rise.

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Ahead of the games, athletes and Olympics personnel have been sealed off from the public.

CNN's David Culver and Selina Wang take us inside and outside the Olympic bubble.

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DAVID CULVER, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The motto of Beijing's winter games is "together for a shared future". It's a nice sentiment, but daily life in the Chinese capital is far apart from the Olympic enclave within it, and absolutely nothing is shared between the people that inhabit the two worlds.

Too great is the risk of omicron for China as it tries to maintain its zero COVID policy. In the week leading to January 30th, 237 symptomatic infections were reported in the country of 1.4 billion people. Meanwhile, arrivals testing and the daily screening of games participants has already registered around 200 positive results.

The closed Loop System means those Olympic personnel who are visiting from other countries won't be able to freely wander and check out the iconic tourist sites like this one, the Forbidden City. For them, it is truly forbidden.

SELINA WANG, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Instead, for athletes, organizers and us journalists, inside the Closed Loop, Beijing has become a series of bubbles. Our hotels, the sporting venues and places like this media center are as much as the city has to offer.

There are even literal walls, security blocking us from freely moving about. We are COVID tested every day outside the hotel.

Technology takes the place of many lost interactions. Here at the media center a robot serves our food, and there is a robot bartender mixing and serving our drinks.

Only a limited number of Beijingers have joined our closed loop to look after and transport all of the people connected to the games and they will need to stay separate from family and friends for weeks, quite a sacrifice as the lunar New Year's holiday overlaps with the Olympics.

UNIDENTIFIED KID: Happy New Year, mama.

WANG: But as COVID disconnected Beijing from the international event it's hosting, it has also disconnected the people here from the rest of their country.

CULVER: And normally, during the Lunar New Year holiday, major cities like Beijing, they're empty. All of the folks who lived here go back to their home provinces.

But this year, because of the outbreaks happening over China, they are asking folks to stay put so you have crowds like this gathering at the more popular spots.

Crowds that won't get to be there as the medals are contested and won. No sporting tickets are on sale. Instead, the government will issue some to a lucky few.

Beijing 2022 is a tale of two cities.

The hosts --

WANG: And their guests, so close -- but so far.

For CNN, I'm Selina Wang inside the Olympic Closed Loop.

CULVER: And I'm David Culver on the outside, Beijing, China.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: On the outside.

Joining us now on the inside is Selina Wang. First off, that robot bartender, I mean, I want to talk to my bartender, so I have many questions about that. But the real question I have is a more serious ones, Selina, which is the FBI is telling athletes, leave your phones at home.

WANG: Well, Brianna, that robot bartender is actually slower than you would think, but, yes, this FBI concern comes on top of Team USA and other countries already warning athletes not to bring their personal phones to bring burner devices instead. Now, as a journalist here, I got a burner phone as well, many media organizations including CNN have equipped their reporters with these, and in fact the committee to protect journalists has told reporters to assume that even your hotel room is being surveilled.

A key concern for athletes and participants is this my 2022 health app. Every day we have to use this, put in our personal health details and cybersecurity researchers say they have found security flaws in it that could leave users' data exposed to data breaches. Chinese authorities for their part have dismissed those concerns -- Brianna.

KEILAR: All right. Selina, thank you so much for that tour. Appreciate it.

BERMAN: All right. This morning, a bombshell lawsuit with the potential to upend the NFL. The former head coach of the NFL's Miami Dolphins, Brian Flores, is accusing the league and multiple teams of discrimination. In this lawsuit, Flore and his attorneys, they call the league racially segregated and like a plantation, citing multiple interviews they say were a sham, held just to meet the league's diversity rules and say this is why so few NFL coaches are black. The NFL denies these allegations.

So, joining us now is Brian Flores, former head coach of the Miami Dolphins who is suing the NFL and his attorneys Douglas Wigdor and John Elefterakis.

And, Coach, I appreciate you being with us. You know what a huge risk you're taking. There was a coach -- not a coach -- a lawyer quoted in "The New York Times" is who says I'm extremely surprised he would put his career in jeopardy.

Does it feel like that to you?

BRIAN FLORES, FORMER HEAD COACH OF MIAMI DOLPHINS: Well, I understand the risks.