supply kicks in. this is happening as new infections and hospitalizations fall and evidence grows from a recent may skbrjor study in isr prevents the spread of infection, not just illness. >> we've always believed that they're having that effect. we didn't know the full magnitude of that benefit but all of the evidence coming out suggests that the impact on the reduction and transmission could be quite strong and if that's the case, the vaccine creates what we call dead end host meaning people will no longer be able to transmit the infection. >> so more people than ever getting shots that appear to be more beneficial the closer you look, the kind of breakthrough we've all been hoping for. why is it in a poll 47% of 2020 trump voters and 49% of republican men say they would not take the vaccine when it becomes available to them. remember, the former president launched the effort to speed up the testing and production of it and demanded national gratitude for the speedy delivery of what he calls quote that beautiful shot. he's the one who once upon a time even seemed to recognize the public health purpose of someone like him getting vaccinated or not as the situation demanded. >> if there is a vaccine and if they wanted me to be first in line, i'd be first in line or last in line or wouldn't take it at all. whatever is best for the country. >> to cut to the chase, he did get vaccinated. he did it off camera in secret without saying a word about it, which is pretty remarkable when you consider how willing he is to weigh in on anything, especially his establishments, which this is. it's a puzzlement even to his former members of his covid team. >> the people that follow former president are very committed to president trump, and i think his leadership still matters a great deal. i think it very important for former president trump as well as the vice president to actively encourage all the followers to get the vaccine. >> the doctor is not alone. here is dr. anthony fauci. >> if he came out and said go and get vaccinated it's really important for your health, the health of your family and the health of the country, it seems absolutely inevitable that the vast majority of people who are his close followers would listen to him. he's such a strongly popular person, i cannot imagine that if he comes out that they would not get vaccinated. it will be very helpful to the effort for that to happen. >> keeping them honest, there is reason to doubt the former president'sfectiveness as a spokesman for getting vaccinated. his own supporters are vaccine skeptical. the entire covid outbreak he politicized public health bad mouthing mask wearing, toting crack cures or leaning on the cdc as a review today as agency guidance suggestions. donald j. trump vaccinated his supporters towards the science and making it perfectly clear this wasn't really a pandemic at all, it was just politics. >> that's all i hear about now. turn on the television. covid, covid, covid, covid, covid, covid, a plane goes down. 500 people dead. they don't talk about it. covid, covid, covid, covid. by the way, on november 4th you won't hear about it anymore. >> not from him at least. except to complain somehow that vaccine authorization was delayed just to get him, which it wasn't. after that, he checked out completely. now was it because there was no longer anything in it for him? you can decide for yourself, what is indisputable though, he primed tens of millions of americans, one presumes he would have never stopped boasting about were he still sitting in the office today but if the president had a complete change of heart and praised vaccinations to the skies, it is an open question how much sway he holds over former supporters. a notion the current president explored when asked about it today. >> should president trump help promote the vaccine among skeptics, sir? especially those republicans who say that -- >> i'm hearing a lot of reports from serious reporters like you saying that. i discussed it with my team and they say the thing that has more impact than anything trump would say to the maga folks is what the local doctor, what the local preachers, what the local people in the community say. so i urge, i urge all local docs and ministers and priests to talk about why, why it important to get that vaccine and even after that until everyone is in fact vaccinated to wear this mask. >> others he says and not the former president are better influencers. there was vaccine he sitant trup voters and blame it on doubts about the long term effects of new vaccines and accuse politicians and government scientists for misleading them but what is interesting, the post reports blame democrats and not the former president for this. at the same time what seemed to thing chair minds the most were not political endorsements of getting vaccinated but more science and more evidence. there is a woman named sue from iowa that went from being about 50/50 on getting a shot to 75% in favor. >> i like the doctors, i like the medical situation when they give us the facts and talk to us without any politics involved. i think that helps me see that my bias was probably with the political side of it, getting involved in just separating the medical side of it. if i can work just with the medical and health side of it, i'm much better off than mixing politics in with it. >> 19 people took part in that group which included republican politicians and former cdc director dr. tom frieden, all 19 came out of it saying they were more likely to get the vaccine than going in. joining us is dr. tom frieden. thanks for being with us. we heard that group participant said she liked hearing the facts about the vaccines. for you, was that the big take away separating politics from science getting people to trust the vacvaccine? >> it was a really interesting conversation, anderson. this is a group that is strongly protrump. they are -- have a lot of doubts about the vaccine, but they're not people who are totally anti vac and that's how they were selected and they clearly believe that the virus, the vaccine and the response has been politicized and what they wanted is they didn't want to hear from any politicians, not even former president trump. they wanted to hear from doctors, their own doctors and had understandable rational concerns. they wanted to know what's the evidence about the long term health complications of the vaccine? this is a reasonable question, and they wanted to be listened to. i think that's the fundamental message for each community, we need to listen and figure out both the messages that are going to resonate most and the messengers who will be most effective and el tei'll tell yoe of the most effective messengers are every doctor that offered this vaccine is going to get it. no corners were cut in approving it, only red tape was cut to get it approved quickly and it was not rushed to the market in a year. this is a technology that was more than a decade in the making and the trials were not small. there were tens of thousands of people and not a single person, as far as we know, has died from getting the vaccine. >> dr. fauci said it would be helpful if donald trump encouragers supporters to get the vaccine but president biden said look to community leaders, local doctors to promote it. your focus group, did they care about the former president's opinion on taking the vaccine? >> it was actually somewhat surprising. i think it surprised frank luntz who organize the whole group. they didn't really want to hear from any politicians. not even former president trump. they wanted to hear from their own doctor and it's so important we get shots into the offices of doctors as soon as the supply gets a little more than it is now. and they want to hear from medical professionals. >> chris christie also spoke during the meeting i understand and talked about his only personal ordeal with covid-19. i wonder if personal and emotional stories have an impact on changing minds? it wasn't so much chris christie's story or getting covid at the white house but his discussion of two family members, one quite healthy that both died from covid. that clearly had an impact. this is one thing that's very important. we need to give honest accurate narratives of what covid does of the death of also the long covid and the suffering it causes because fund mentally, we can't give you 100% certainty there is not going to be a rare adverse event of this vaccine ten years down the line but we can tell you with 100% certainty that you're much less likely to get covid if you get the vaccine, and if you do get covid, it's going to be replicating all over your body for a week and that you do have a chance of having long-term suffering as a result. >> that was one of the things personally for me was really powerful. i did a piece on "60 haulers, p symptoms when infected and had bad days but they weren't hospitalized, many of them and yet, eight months later, they're still, you know, having trouble walking, having trouble breathing, having brain fog and the like and that for me was a wakeup of, you know, you don't even want to get it and not have symptoms or think you have mild symptoms. we played sound a few minutes ago from the form er fda tellin cbs this weekend evidence showing vaccinations are reducing asymptomatic transmission. if he's right, that is a huge step toward getting the virus under control. what more do you know about that? >> well, we have better and better news about the vaccine. what you're seeing already in the u.s. is a dramatic decrease in nursing home death and that is undoubtedly an impact of vaccination. already, these vaccines are saving thousands of lives in this country, and that effect is going to get even greater in the coming weeks as vaccine induced immunity kicks in for more and more people who are over the age of 65. so this is making this virus even less lethal and there is growing evidence that it reduces the likelihood that you'll spread the virus to others, but we don't know that yet. it not certain. but i do think that the vaccine is getting the best of the virus. now, we're not out of the woods. it ain't over until it over. you're seeing explosive spread in europe and parts of latin america. you're seeing variants that can overwhelm the immunity you get from getting the virus infection before so it's really a race of the vaccine against the variants and the more we control the virus, the more we vaccinate, the greater the likelihood that we'll get to a new normal sooner. >> dr. tom frieden, appreciate it. thank you very much. >> thank you. coming up next, republican senator responds to allegations over racism about the january insurrection and also, arrests finally connection with the death of capitol police officer br brian sicknick and pete buttigieg on the relief bill and money going into people's pockets. ♪ pepto bismol 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law enforcement; would never do anything to break a law so i wasn't kconcerned. had the tables been turned, joe, this could mean trouble. had the tables been turned and president trump won the election and those were tens of thousands of black lives matter and antifa protesters, i might have been concerned. >> senator ron johnson on friday saying the people that attacked the capitol loved law enforcement. >> there is nothing racial about my comments. nothing whatsoever. this zbisn't about race. it about riots. it's shocking they would take the comment and turn it into use the race card on me and say there is some kind of racist comment involved in that. there was none. >> joining us now cnn political commentator and state lawmaker bakari sellers. bakari, i'll let you just speak on this because i was just so surprised by -- not surprised by but just irritated by what he just said now to justify what he said previously, the idea that he sees the truth here in his comments and knows that there was nothing racist involved. >> and you know when people are making racist comments, the first thing they want to push back with is simply say you know, you can't play the race card but it our job to call it out. i mean, i'm not surprised but -- and i'm not disappointed anymore. nothing about this is new. this is an american as american can be but i'm troubled because this is coming from the highest part of the land. this is coming from the united states senate, the united states congress just last week we heard from repgrothman. i go back to carmichael and he once said that if you want to lynch me, that's your problem but if you have the power to lynch me, then that's my problem. racism in this country is a power construct and people like ron johnson have the power and the ability to implement racist policies even when they're ignor ignorant what they are doing is racist. it's not about someone calling you the "n" word. every single day. it's not about that. it's about something more than that. it's about the systemic oppression and the systemic racism and people like ron johnson who play a role in it and are so ignorant to the fact to the role they play they sit there and simply turn their back and say don't play the race card. we're not playing the race card, senator. we're trying to educate you on the fact -- there is one of two things. either you're using racism as political currency which is coward or you're ignorant and do not know the language you're using is racist and hurtful. it one of those two options. >> you know, and then him using the term, you know, the race card as if it's some sort of game here. >> yeah, and, you know, for me -- if i -- if i had the opportunity to sit down with senator johnson, i would go back and say senator johnson, you know, what this is an ignorance of the history and how far we've come. you know, i would sit down and tell him that the reason that we got the 64 and '65 civil rights act and voting rights act is because of the people brutally beaten on tv for the first time in this country. white folk saw the dogs, water hoses batons, the emit teals, all of those led to the civil rights act and voting rights act. senator johnson the way we got to the fair housing act of 1968 is because dr. king got asays n -- assassinated. i would say senator johnson, the on reason we're on the cusp in having these discussions about criminal justice reform is because george floyd had a knee in his neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds. what i'm trying to tell you is that there is a great deal of pain in black blood that's flown through the streets of this country to have a semblance of political change. i think he needs to understand the history of this country so when you make comments like it's okay for these white boys to come in here with confederate flags and antis-semitic rhetoric and beat police officers and murder a cop but if there is somebody black standing up for what they believe to be right and just, saying that we need to stop being killed in the street, you want the national guard called on them. see, that's the problem. and it's not people who use ignorant rhetoric. it people in power that implement racist policies, that's why i have a problem with grothman and ron johnson. >> he's also rewriting history. he looks at the crowd that attacked the capitol, he's not scared of them he aleleges because he knows they are good people who love this country and love law enforcement. i mean, there are hundreds of people that have been arrested, you know, and numerous police officers who have been injured. one police officer lost their life, two other have died but suicide. i mean, it's a complete rewrite of what happened. >> it's a rewrite of what happened but it american history. just think about ron johnson being more sympathetic to cop-killers and anti semitists and people carrying confederate flags than black folk protesting. but it not just about ron johnson. that's what i'm trying to tell folk. when we talk about systemic oppression. imagine the ron johnson that works at wells fargo who is your loan officer and looks at you as less valuable than a white guy who comes in there or imagine ron johnson as your professor or teacher who looks at you asless intelligent or police officer that pulls you over on the side of the road who thinks you're more of a danger than a white boy. see, that is what we're talking about when we talk about this systemic injustice but ron johnson creates the laws. we got to call it out and push back and i wish he would instead of doubling down which is what trump got us, i wish he would simply try to educate himself on the ignorance and the statements that he makes. i know he's retiring but there is still time to do better and maybe that's my youthful eye. i still believe that ron johnson can be a better man than he displayed last friday. >> bakari sellers, appreciate it. to the point we come to learn two of the allegedly police