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Erin Burnett Outfront

Trump Taps Vaccine Skeptic RFK JR. For Health Secretary; CNN Inside Brutal Prison; Russian TV Celebrates Gabbard. Aired 7-8p ET

Aired November 14, 2024 - 19:00   ET

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

[19:00:34]

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: OUTFRONT next:

The breaking news, vaccine makers shares tumbling after Trump announces RFK Jr. will be his top health official. Kennedy vowing to make America healthy again. So what exactly does that mean?

Plus, we'll take you exclusively inside one of the worlds most brutal prisons, filled with murderers, rapists and gang members. A prison that Matt Gaetz happened to just visit and he called this prison the, quote, solution.

And Putin's state TV celebrating Tulsi Gabbard as America's top intel official. A special report tonight from Moscow.

Lets go OUTFRONT.

And good evening. I'm Erin Burnett.

OUTFRONT tonight, the breaking news. Trump tapping a vocal vaccine skeptic to be his top health official, naming Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to be Americas next health and human services secretary.

And tonight, immediate reaction, the companies that make vaccines, their stocks are tumbling. And that is because Trump has made it very clear that Kennedy will have free rein in his administration.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm going to let him go wild on health. I'm going to let him go wild on the food. I'm going to let him go wild on medicines.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Well, Kennedy has gained a following, okay? Let's just start here, in part because he talks about of people care about -- making America healthy again is the motto and that has connected with a lot of people healthier eating, better water, breathing air free of chemicals and glutens, all things that should not be controversial, should be bipartisan to look into that, things that are real problems hurting this country.

But Kennedy then goes further. He goes straight for unfounded conspiracies.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

INTERVIEWER: You've talked about that the media slanders you by calling you an anti-vaxxer and you've said that you're not anti- vaccine. You're pro safe vaccine.

Difficult question 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 solve -- averting more problems than they're causing. There's no vaccine that is, you know, safe and effective.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: That is not true, that -- when he says there's no vaccine that is not safe and effective.

I mean, just to give you a very basic example, if you look at the chart of polio cases in the United States, you can see the drop -- that drop is after the vaccine was introduced. So what did that vaccine do?

Well, I mean, in the early 20th century, just to imagine a world where were going to go back and reconsider vaccines, polio was one of the most feared diseases in the world. 1916, there was an outbreak in New York City. Over 2,000 people died, at its worst, it was killing or paralyzing over half a million people, a year.

Remember the guy with the last iron lung, literally an iron lung just died earlier this fall.

So that all changed in the 1950s when the polio vaccine came out. And these were the lines, because those people had seen people in their lives paralyzed children paralyzed. So when that happened, they didn't question vaccine efficacy they believed in the science. And they went and they waited hours to get vaccinated.

Today, it is considered to have been one of the greatest vaccine campaigns in the world, eliminated in the United States. And yet Kennedy now has urged parents not to vaccinate their children.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

KENNEDY: Our job is to resist and to talk about it to everybody. You're walking down the street and I do this now myself, which is you know, I don't want to do -- I'm not a busybody. I see somebody on a hiking trail with a caring little baby. And I say to them, better not get them vaccinated. And he heard that from me if he hears it from ten other people, maybe he won't do it. You know, maybe he maybe he will save that child.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BURNETT: Okay, so that's not vaccine skepticism. I mean you heard him. He said it.

I mean, obviously that sort of thing. Not vaccinating in a mass way in a society could kill children, would kill children. Just today, health officials reported cases of measles is just an example of surged by more than 20 percent, more than 107,000 people, mostly children, died last year from that disease around the world.

And the reason that measles is surging when MMR is a vaccine that is widely available, and every child in the United States should be getting it, is because vaccine levels have fallen.

But the reality of it is, is while the vaccine issue itself is so crucial here, some of Kennedys conspiracy theories go beyond that.

[19:05:04]

For example, he was talking about the antidepressant Prozac and he said this.

(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)

KENNEDY: Prior to the introduction of Prozac, we had almost no -- none of these events in our country, and we've never seen them in human history, where people walk into a school room of children or strangers and start shooting people.

(END AUDIO CLIP)

BURNETT: All right, there's no evidence of that. Study after study has not found a link between antidepressants and school shootings.

But there's no question that RFK has strong opinions, founded or not, about the health of this country. And his own health. Of course, you may remember he made news during the campaign for this rather bizarre revelation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KENNEDY: In 2010, I was having brain fog and I was having trouble with word retrieval and short term memory. And a friend of mine, I was -- I was trying to figure out what it was. In the end, they said that this is almost certainly a parasite.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BUIRNETT: That was the worm.

All right. So Kristen Holmes is OUTFRONT, live in West Palm Beach, Florida, near Mar-a-Lago tonight.

So, Kristen, Trump making a controversial pick for his cabinet. This is though somebody that he had telegraphed loud and clearly would be in his cabinet if he won.

What are you learning from your sources? KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, right now, Erin, the people that I'm talking to are thrilled that RFK is going to potentially have a role in this cabinet. Now, of course, just a reminder that he has to get confirmed, and there's a lot of skepticism that RFK can get confirmed. But when I talk to the people close to Donald Trump, they believe that this is Donald Trump following through on his promises.

Now, I do want to just flag one thing that we saw just a few weeks ago which was on Kaitlan Collins show, when Howard Lutnick, the head of the transition, was asked if RFK would have a role in the cabinet or the administration, and he kind of laughed it off and said, no, for that same reason that we seemed unlikely that RFK could get confirmed.

We'd also heard from a number of sources that they were considering some kind of outside role for RFK where he wouldn't have to be confirmed and probably wouldn't have the same level of power, would be more like a health czar. However, of course, as we've seen, all of that went out the window and Donald Trump ended up now asking RFK to be the head of HHS. And I will remind you too, you know, there were a lot of people who were very upset about even the idea that RFK would serve in an administration, even as a czar role. Now, as a secretary role, were obviously hearing a lot of pushback to that.

But of course, the question being, could he get confirmed? And I will say one thing about RFK and Trump's relationship, RFK worked very hard to get Trump elected. There is a significant group of people out there and maybe not significant in the traditional sense, but when it comes to an election that has small margins, there's a significant group of people who backed Donald Trump because they liked RFK's platform, this make America healthy again.

And I know that specifically from anecdotal experience, where I sat in the audience and saw Donald Trump introduce a slew of various people and RFK got the most standing ovation and the largest applause of anyone he paraded across the stage.

So, clearly, Donald Trump is now on some kind of loyalty tour and trying to pay back the people who helped him win this election. Obviously, as we know, he was always going to choose people that he believed were loyal to him during this last couple years.

BURNETT: All right. Kristen, thank you very much and so much important new detail there.

All right. So everyone's here with me.

Sanjay, can I just start with you just on the very basics here. You know I mean, I was sort of laying some of it out there. I mean, a lot of the things that he said that connect with people and that are important and real and then you hit this vaccine issue. So what's your reaction to him becoming HHS secretary?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: I mean, I think it's exactly what you're saying. There are some parts of it that I think a lot of people are in agreement on. I mean, we are a country that spends $4.5 trillion on health care, and

we have some of the worst health care outcomes in the developed world. A lot of that probably has to do with our food supply, 70 percent of chronic disease is probably preventable. So, you know, were creating problems and then spending a lot of money trying to solve it.

The problem is the second part of what you were talking about, there's so many things that he contorts to his version of the truth. He takes these little -- these little correlations and turns them into true causations the antidepressants and the school shootings for example.

Prozac came out in 1987. School shootings have been happening since the '60s, number one. Number two, I don't know how many of these children that were talking about were on Prozac. These school shooters or whoever they were, were actually on this. But he -- it sort of fits what he's trying to say. So he sort of conforms these things to his truth.

So when he talks about the gold standard of scientific research, what that means is trying to take -- look at correlations and saying, hey, let's study this. Let's study it like we did vaccines and autism.

[19:10:01]

Let's do a global study. Let's follow hundreds of thousands of kids. Let's follow them for a decade and a half and see did -- was there a correlation or a causation between vaccines and autism? And that was debunked a long time ago. And yet it keeps coming up. It keeps instilling fear and keeps causing some of the statistics you were just talking about.

BURNETT: So, you know, he's -- he has frequently spread, you know, false -- you heard him say that about walking up to the baby on the hiking trail. Don't -- don't vaccinate your baby. And if ten more people say it, right?

I mean, it's very clear. And Lex Friedman, they're asking that question.

GUPTA: Yes.

BURNETT: Is there any vaccine that you would. It was a good question. And the answer was there's no vaccines that are safe and effective. That's false.

GUPTA: It's false. And I don't know if you've heard his comments recently, but he's sort of dialing that back. He's always said, I'm not anti-vax. He's always said but then he says things like that.

BURNETT: Right.

GUPTA: So how do you reconcile those two things together? I think that's the challenge, makes him really difficult to interview and have conversations about this because he just changes depending on the way the questions even asked.

BURNETT: Right? No, that is true.

So, Margaret, Democratic governor of Colorado, Jared Polis, just tweeted. This was very interesting. And now he's taking a lot of a lot of heat for this, but he said, I'm excited by the news that the president-elect will appoint Robert Kennedy Jr. to HHS. He will help make America healthy again by shaking up the HHS and the FDA. And he continued to say that he specifically supported him on not having vaccine mandates.

He said, I didn't -- I don't want them banned, but I also don't want them mandated and I support it. This is a Democratic governor of Colorado. I think it shocked people to see this. But are we going to see more of that?

MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Perhaps you will. I don't know. Here's what I do know. I can't explain the specific circumstances around Jared Polis and his argument against mandates in Colorado. I mean, Colorado state is just my home state, has a significant population of people who abstain from vaccinations, and they also have significant outbreaks of measles and smallpox from measles and other diseases from time to time, because they don't have compliance, they don't have enough compliance to create herd immunity.

What we know is that if you have an HHS secretary who believes and tells people that vaccines don't work or discourages people from getting vaccines, it will cost lives and we know that it will cost lives because it already has. RFK Jr. has a specific example. For example, the island of Samoa, who where he decided he went to the island of Samoa when there was an outbreak of measles because there had been a circumstance where poorly administered vaccines had caused deaths.

He then said it was because of the vaccines that these erroneous deaths occurred which led to an outbreak of measles, where thousands of individuals end up getting measles because he told them that the vaccines had erroneously killed these two people, and then many more scores of people died of measles.

You cannot lie about vaccines and not have people believe it to some degree, and then have real life consequences. People will die if this kind of spokesmanship is elevated to the chief health department in the United States of America.

And by the way, that's not to mention the research that he's going to defund for infectious disease and viruses, at least, is what he has said. He will stop it just temporarily for eight years.

I mean, this is -- there are real consequences to this. I think this is one of potentially the most impactful and potentially dangerous decisions that Donald Trump has made in his nine days of being president elect.

BURNETT: So I want to ask you, Sanjay, about the viruses and that research in a moment but first, Scott, okay this has to go through the Senate.

HOOVER: Maybe.

BURNETT: Maybe. All right. So appointments, which you know, that obviously would change all of this but the thing is, is the President Trump has put forth Matt Gaetz and Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard and, now RFK Jr.

SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yeah.

BURNETT: They're not going to -- they're not going to block. There's going to be some choices if they choose to block any of them. Certainly, RFK Jr. isn't going to be top of the list. Or will he be?

JENNINGS: Yeah, I wouldn't put him in the same category of Gaetz. I think Gaetz is pretty far under the line and has a long way to go. RFK, I saw a few positive vibes out of the Senate tonight. I'm not in a position to totally handicap it yet.

But, you know, he like everybody else that gets nominated for these jobs, gets to sit at a table and answer questions. And I think to your point, a lot of what he talks about, there's widespread agreement with on the left and the right about, you know, if we just improve the way we ate in this country, we would solve a lot of our health problems and it would be really good. And so you're going to get widespread, I think, bipartisan agreement on that.

I'm certain the vaccine stuff will be the biggest flashpoint in the hearings. And like everybody else who gets nominated, he'll have a chance to answer for those statements. And the senators are going to have to decide whether that's satisfactory to them or not.

[19:15:03]

As a political matter, I will just say there's no hiding the ball here. This isn't like Donald Trump pulling someone out of the closet and saying, and now I'm doing this. He was the most visible campaign surrogate.

BURNETT: Right.

JENNINGS: Trump embraced him on the trail. He didn't disavow anything he did. This was a full part of Trump's campaign and Donald Trump won the election.

So my view is he'll go up to the Hill, he'll answer questions, and we'll see what the Senate has to say about it. And, you know, some people, when they get in front of the table and they're under oath, you know, you talked about him in interviews. When you're under oath, it's a different story about what you might say.

One other political issue, I think the pro-lifers are a little weird on this right now. If I were the Trump people, I would be coming up with something proactive to head that off, because I do think those attacks are coming.

HOOVER: Specifically, specifically that because he's pro-choice, pro- life senators may have difficulty confirming him, which would make it difficult for him to get --

BURNETT: And that's a whole other aspect. It's not even the vaccines.

JENNINGS: Yeah.

BURNETT: But I wanted to give you just a chance. When Margaret mentioned that research, what is so important there?

GUPTA: About the infectious disease research?

BURNETT: Yeah.

GUPTA: Well, look, I mean, we just came out of a pandemic. You know, there's always these concerns about new viruses. He has threatened to defund -- I mean, keep in mind, HHS oversees CDC, FDA, NIH, among several other agencies. He's basically threatened to take away a lot of that funding.

So we would I think really be in a bad spot. You got H5N1 circulating out there. There might be another virus.

BURNETT: Right.

GUPTA: I don't know what kind of position he would put us in if something else were to start percolating.

BURNETT: All right. Well, thank you all very much. I appreciate it.

And next, more Republicans casting doubt on Matt Gaetz's chances of getting confirmed as attorney general. But will Trump, as Margaret just alluded, skip the Senate?

Plus, we take you inside one of the worlds most brutal prisons filled with quote, the worst of the worst.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You got to kill people, you got to rob, you got to do what you got to do to survive.

REPORTER: You have to do those things.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yeah, you got to do that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: And Russian television tonight cheering Trump's choice of Tulsi Gabbard as a director of national intelligence. A special report tonight from Moscow.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:21:36]

BURNETT: All right. The breaking news calls growing tonight for the House Ethics Committee to release its report on Trump's attorney general pick, Matt Gaetz. The committee has been investigating whether Gaetz, quote, engaged in sexual misconduct and illicit drug use or accepted improper gifts dispensed special privileges and favors to individuals with whom he had a personal relationship, and sought to obstruct government investigations of his conduct.

Now, Gaetz has denied the allegations. The report was actually pretty much done. It's supposed to be released tomorrow.

But Gaetz resigned from his House seat last night, which effectively, you know technically it ended the probe. Like I said, though, the report was ready to go. It is coming as more examples are coming to light about the way Trump's would be attorney general talks about women.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MATT GAETZ (R-FL): Why is it that the women with the least likelihood of getting pregnant are the ones most worried about having abortions? Nobody wants to impregnate you if you look like a thumb.

REPORTER: You're suggesting that these women at these abortion rallies are ugly and overweight?

GAETZ: Yes.

REPORTER: What do you say to people who think that those comments are offensive?

GAETZ: Be offended.

(END VIDEO CL.IP)

BURNETT: OUTFRONT now, Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the house oversight committee, served as the lead impeachment manager during Trump's second impeachment trial.

So I appreciate your time.

I guess you -- and you've spent time with Gaetz because you were both on the Judiciary Committee. So you have seen him personally and professionally in that context.

Putting that context on this, what's your reaction to his selection as attorney general?

REP. JAMIE RASKIN (D-MD): Matt Gaetz is a MAGA zealot and a Trump sycophant and a confidant.

And the way I see all of the appointments that we've been reading about over the last couple of days is this is the absolute triumph and takeover of the Republican Party by MAGA, and it will be the takeover of the U.S. government by MAGA, if the Senate lets all of these people go through. So, you're not seeing, you know just right wing conservative corporate

types like Rex Tillerson that you saw in the first Trump administration. I mean, these people are MAGA true believers like Matt Gaetz.

Now, there is a theory on Capitol Hill that President-elect Trump is just doing a favor for Matt Gaetz that nobody really holds out much hope that he will be confirmed according to this theory. But it gave him an excuse, a way to save face and say he was resigning from Congress so that that would suppress the release of the ethics committee report, because that's been the tradition and the norm on the ethics committee if somebody is no longer in the House of Representatives then an ethics report won't be released on them.

But all he did was resign from the 118th Congress. If he felt like there's no way he could get through the people he considers RINO Republicans on the Senate side, he could go ahead and get sworn in, in January. On January 3rd with the rest of us, because he did win reelection, so he could join the 119th Congress.

BURNETT: So, okay, let me ask you, though, about that. When you talk about the theory do you do you think that they should release the ethics report anyway especially if he is going to be going in front of the Senate, right? There's going to be a discussion about whether he should be attorney general.

[19:25:02]

And do you have any idea about what's -- what's in it?

RASKIN: Well, we know what the allegations are of drug use and traffic -- sex trafficking. Those are the same kinds of things that were investigated by the Department of Justice apparently. Look, I think it's just impossible to contemplate that the U.S. Senate, you know, even as much as they're under the thumb of Donald Trump, would actually vote to confirm him without the ethics committee report being released, because this was an exhaustive investigation in a Republican Congress by a bipartisan committee in, you know, in a time of very serious concern about these kinds of allegations that go to, sex trafficking.

So I would imagine that it would have to be released if they really want to try to get the Senate to vote to confirm him. Of course, they could move to try to do a recess appointment, which would escape the requirements of getting an actual Senate vote.

BURNETT: So let me ask you about that then. Do you think that that -- that is likely from what you're hearing and, you know, whether -- Senate Majority Leader Thune will allow such a thing to happen and essentially that means Gaetz gets confirmed?

RASKIN: Well, he gets -- he gets appointed. He would be installed essentially on a recess appointment basis. Yet, he wouldn't be confirmed by the Senate.

Look, you know, it may be that Trump doesn't have enough political might with the Senate to get them to actually confirm Gaetz, but he might have enough political influence with them to get them to take a recess. And then allow him to engage in that recess appointment, but, you know, the questions are very serious. Being raised not even primarily by Democrats at this point, who are standing back to let the Republicans pose these questions. And it really does go to the issue of whether or not they are going to meaningfully defend their advice and consent power.

I mean, that really is the central differential between the Senate and the house that they get to render advice and consent on presidential nominations.

BURNETT: All right. Well, Congressman, I really appreciate your time. And thank you very much.

RASKIN: You bet.

BURNETT: All right. Congressman Jamie Raskin, as I said.

And next, KFILE with more unfounded conspiracy theories. We'll play those.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KENNEDY: If you in a lab put Atrazine a tank full of frogs, it will chemically castrate and forcibly feminize every frog in there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: Plus, the CNN exclusive inside one of the worlds most brutal prisons, the one that Matt Gaetz just toured and called the, quote, solution.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[19:32:34]

BURNETT: All right. Breaking news, these are pictures from just a couple of moments ago at Mar-a-Lago. RFK Jr. is there for a gala. Trump, of course, just tapping him to lead the Health and Human Services Department.

Our KFILE revealing Kennedy shared a theory a while ago that manmade chemicals in the environment are making children gay or transgender and causing the feminization of boys and masculinization of girls.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KENNEDY: The capacity for these chemicals that we are just raining down on our children right now to induce these very profound sexual changes in them, is something we need to be thinking about as a society.

They're swimming through a soup of toxic chemicals today.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BURNETT: All right. Andrew Kaczynski of KFILE uncovered this, and he's OUTFRONT now.

So, Andrew, all these things are going to come up in a confirmation hearing. All of this is going to be discussed, and there's a lot more where that came from.

ANDREW KACZYNSKI, CNN KFILE SENIOR EDITOR: Yeah. That's right. He has repeatedly suggested that man made chemicals in the water could be making children gay or transgender. He's also suggested or spread this unfounded theory that chemicals in the water could be responsible for the feminization of boys and making girls more masculine. Now, the experts that we previously spoke to last year when he was running for president strongly pushed back on those claims.

Take a listen to just a few more of what Kennedy was saying in those comments.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KENNEDY: There's atrazine throughout our water supply, atrazine, by the way, if you in a lab put atrazine in a tank full of frogs, it will chemically castrate and forcibly feminize every frog in there.

What does this do to sexual development in children? Nobody knows because we know what it does to frogs.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: So, you asked experts about these claims, right? What do they tell you?

KACZYNSKI: Yeah. And people Alex Jones went viral for making similar comments a few years ago. He said they were putting chemicals in the water that were turning the frogs gay. Now, the experts that we talked we talked to about this, they basically said you're comparing apples to oranges here. We're humans. Frogs are amphibians.

With humans, our sex is determined at the moment of conception. Frog's sex is determined by a number of environmental factors.

So they said this is not actually very a surprising thing.

[19:35:01]

We did pose this question to the Kennedy campaign. How do you square what he said with what all of the experts that we spoke to said? And here is what they told us at the time.

They said: He is merely suggesting that given copious research on the effects on other vertebrates, this possibly deserves further research.

BURNETT: We'll see. I mean, all of this hopefully will be discussed and he'll have a chance to answer questions about it at confirmation hearings, assuming that those hearings occur.

All right, Andrew, thank you very much.

And now I want to bring in Mike Allen, the co-founder of Axios, deeply sourced inside the Trump world, breaking so much news on this incoming administration.

So, Mike, here we RFK Jr. is Trump's latest cabinet choice. So -- and now this is one that you know he had RFK Jr. had said that Trump promised him a cabinet position for the endorsement. And then Trump saw, you know there was a little vagueness over what really happened. And but here we see that that deed appears to be what happened.

So, is -- all these choices, are these -- are they all serious? Is this really what Trump wants to do or is some of this just a sort of shock and awe?

MIKE ALLEN, CO-FOUNDER, AXIOS: One hundred percent -- well, of course, Erin, those things aren't mutually exclusive, but absolutely based on my reporting at Mar-a-Lago these are 100 percent things that President-elect Trump wants to do. He wants the fight. Their attitude is bring it on.

I can tell you, Erin, these picks have come faster and have been more defiant than even some insiders thought. I'm told its clear the president knew what he wanted. They thought that he would spend much more time with these lists, considering the options, but he feels like he has a mandate. He feels like there's a lot of people that think he has a mandate.

He's learned over the last four years what he's up against and the way they put it to me is you want to be in a foxhole with fighters, you want to be in a foxhole with people you trust but, Erin, I can tell you here on Capitol Hill where the CNN bureau is, as I talked to people here, real concern about these picks.

So you mentioned the RFK confirmation hearing. The Trump view is that's a great opportunity. There's going to be no bigger stage to air many of what, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believes that yes, they're going to ask him about vaccines and fluoride. But he's going to talk about how the health care system is broken.

But, Erin, listen to this math. The Senate can only lose three Republicans with -- to pass with an all Republican vote that would leave J.D. Vance breaking the tie. But, Erin, "Axios" has reporting that for five, sometimes even six senators may be against some of these picks.

Now on with Matt Gaetz for attorney general, he's going to get only Republicans. They can't lose many. Trump people tell me they're optimistic that RFK might pick up some votes from the family's Democratic side of the aisle, which is interesting.

BURNETT: Which is interesting, and, you know, and I had mentioned earlier, Democratic Governor of Colorado Jared Polis had come out with a strong endorsement of Kennedy. In fact, even supporting him on vaccines in terms of not mandating or banning them. You do have reporting, though. You've said about people around Trump had real doubts that he'd actually nominate RFK Jr. to run something. Maybe it would have been more informal. What more can you tell us about that? What were Trump's hesitancies?

ALLEN: Yeah, there was some thinking, there were two options that I know were live, one was that he stays on the outside, makes money and has his people in place at the agencies.

Another possibility that was contemplated was do you put him in the White House with some broad mandate, then, of course, he doesn't face confirmation. And that's why, Erin, I told you at the top and our reporting reflects the president wants the fight, welcomes the fight and has gotten through these picks. He's more than half of his top picks are out.

You saw just tonight, his legal defense team going to be at the top of the Justice Department. I'm told that all the pushback over the incredible picks, defiant picks surprising picks, aggressive picks over the last 48 hours, my conversations with his inner circle, zero qualms.

BURNETT: All right. Well, Mike, thank you so much. It's great to see you.

ALLEN: Thank you for your coverage.

BURNETT: Hopefully, see you soon.

All right. And next, an OUTFRONT exclusive, we are going to take you inside one of the worlds most brutal prisons. Matt Gaetz has been there and commented on it supporting it. Is it giving him ideas of what he'd do as AG?

And Trump's be unsettling to some members of Congress, but they are getting a warmer welcome on Russian TV, specifically one of them.

[19:40:03]

And this is really important one. We'll tell you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BURNETT: Tonight, Matt Gaetz inside one of the world's most brutal prisons, taking a tour and suggesting it should be a model for the U.S.

And tonight, we have exclusive access to that very prison where El Salvador keeps the, quote, worst of the worst -- murderers -- murderers, rapists, gang members, including some deported from the U.S.

Here's Gaetz who would oversee U.S. prisons as attorney general in a video released by El Salvador's president after seeing the prison firsthand.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GAETZ: There's a lot more discipline in this prison than we see in a lot of the prisons in the United States.

[19:45:02]

This is the solution.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BURNETT: CNN is the first major news organization to gain access to the prison system.

Our David Culver takes you inside that prison in this OUTFRONT exclusive.

(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.

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. 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 program too.

CULVER: But that's limited to just 30 minutes a day. The other 23.5 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. We see that firsthand as some 2,500 police and soldiers deploy into one neighborhood.

[19:50:06]

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 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)

BURNETT: And it's incredible to watch that, you know, and it's new and it's clean. You see it there. Matt Gaetz had said this should be a model and a solution. So look, are we going to see more prisons in the world modeled after the one that you just showed us in such great detail.

CULVER: So, Erin, I don't think Gaetz is saying that you're going to see these type of prisons popping up over across the U.S. per se, but he does definitely seem supportive of seeing them expand in countries that have severe gang problems, countries in Latin America. And we're actually already seeing Ecuador and Honduras. They're building what are described as Bukele style prisons.

Here's the thing to watch, though, if Gaetz is confirmed as attorney general and then you get Senator Rubio as secretary of state, these are two guys who are incredibly focused on Latin America. Both are incredibly supportive of President Bukele and hence would very likely be supportive of extending those methods across Latin America.

Why does that matter? Well, as they see it, it's about stabilizing everything south of the border so as to stop migration northward.

No question, this is controversial. Walking through those halls, it hits you. I mean, its unnerving. That said, nearly everyone we speak with in El Salvador, even if they don't like the tactics, they say that they work and they say it is what is necessary to eradicate such severe gang violence, Erin.

BURNETT: It's just -- it's amazing. And just to see how this will play out, well, well we'll see over these next months.

David Culver, thank you so much. As we said, that exclusive and first report from inside that prison in El Salvador.

And next, is Trump's new cabinet, well, does it have an incredible gift to Putin in it? Russian state television seems to think so. And we're going to take you to Moscow to show you next.

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[19:57:40]

BURNETT: Tonight celebrations on Russian state television after Trump picked Matt Gaetz and Tulsi Gabbard for highly sensitive national security roles.

Our Fred Pleitgen is there in Moscow and he's OUTFRONT tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice- over): Kremlin-controlled TV praising some of President-elect Trump's cabinet picks, calling designated Attorney General Matt Gaetz, quote, a Trump loyalist, and also speaking favorably about Trump's pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, for repeatedly parroting Kremlin talking points on the war in Ukraine.

She from day one clarified the reason for Russia's special operation in Ukraine, the anchor says, criticizing the actions of the Biden administration.

Gabbard's words in 2022, right after Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine, caused even panelists on Russian state TV to cynically ask if she's a Kremlin agent.

Yes, the host said, without providing any evidence.

But the Russians ripping into designated Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and national security advisor Mike Waltz.

Waltz at the Republican convention proposed deploying more American drones in the Black Sea and bragged about how Trump threatened to bomb as he put it, Putin's Kremlin, the anchor says. That is what's called Russophobic dream team or the American dream.

Of course, there's a lot of discussion here in Russia about the new Trump administration that's taking shape, and what some of the picks could mean for relations with Russia especially when it comes to possibly ending the war in Ukraine.

Donald Trump said that he definitely wants to resolve the conflict in Ukraine.

Do you think this is possible, through talks, through military action, what do you think?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I don't know how Donald Trump can resolve this. But I would really like this to be resolved as soon as possible and resolved as soon as possible that is, through negotiations and not through the actions that are happening now.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, there's still a bit of ambition here, with those in power. And I don't know if Trump will stick to his line. But I hope that there will be a good agreement between Russia and Ukraine.

PLEITGEN: Russian President Vladimir Putin has said he's willing to talk to Donald Trump even before Trump takes office. The Russians praising some of the president-elect's appointments as officials who could help normalize relations with Moscow.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

PLEITGEN (on camera): And, you know, Erin, the Kremlin was actually asked about all of this today. And Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the Russians are monitoring all of this very closely. At the same time, he also says that this is not their main priority. And so therefore, at this point in time, they do not want to comment on the cabinet appointments yet -- Aaron.

BURNETT: All right. Fred, thank you very much, in Moscow.

And thanks so much to all of you.

"AC360" starts now.