hello, i'm brianna keilar. it is the top of the hour and we're counting down to an important first for president biden. tonight at 9:00 eastern he's going to answer questions at a cnn town hall in milwaukee, which is going to be his first official trip as president. the white house says the president's directive will be to directly engage with people who are impacted by the pandemic and it also gives him an opportunity to promote his ambitious covid relief plan, and also, and very importantly, to clear up some confusion about what exactly his administration's goals are in handling the crisis. cnn's political director david chalian is with us now to talk about this. i think it's such an important time for this event right now, david. what are you going to be watching for? >> yeah, it is an important time. i mean the impeachment trial of donald trump came to a close and that really sort of ended the trump era, right? there was a little hangover of the business dealing with president trump and now joe biden can recapture everybody's focus and attention on, as you noted, brianna, an important update to the american people on everything his administration is doing to battle coronavirus, battle the spread, get the vaccination rollout going more smoothly and aggressively, getting kids back to school. all of those issues because we're now a year into this and the public is, of course, growing tired of this form of life and wants to know when life will return to some sense of normalcy and that will be joe biden's mission tonight to sort of set the guys for everyone of when we're going to get there. >> the vaccine is so key and the white house announced today it's increasing distribution to states to 13.5 million doses per week. but there's a bipartisan group of governors what wrote a letter to president biden yesterday saying the rollout caused confusion and it caused inefficiency. the window where he can blame this on the trump administration, it's closing. >> yeah, i mean, i think the administration realizes that too. jen psaki was actually asked about this at the briefing today, brianna, and she said flat out he's the president of the united states. he owns the response to this covid crisis right now. now, she did take a moment to yet again mention all of the things wrong that they inherited from the previous administration, but fully acknowledged, this is now on joe biden's watch. that's why you're going to see him tonight engage directly with the american people. not only on an update on what he's doing to solve the crisis but also, as you noted, the huge $1.9 trillion covid relief package, he has to get the american people engaged so they can urge congress to get that bill through the legislative process and on his desk for signature so that money can get out into people's hands. >> indeed. david, thank you very much. it's a big night. we will be watching and, of course, these are the details. president biden joining anderson cooper live from milwaukee in an exclusive cnn town hall. that will start tonight at 9:00 eastern. there's some breaking news. a new kind of legal fight for former president trump over last month's siege on the capitol. just three days after the senate acquitted him in his second impeachment trial, trump is now being sued for inciting the insurrection in what is a first of its kind lawsuit that also names his former attorney rudy giuliani. bennie thompson, the chairman of the homeland security committee, is filing this suit with the backing of the naacp. his suit said trump and giuliani conspired with far right groups, the oath keepers and proud boys, to incite the attack and disrupt the certification vote. thompson said it's a very old statute, ku klux klan act of 1871 passed after the civil war. it was created to combat violence against the white supremacist group. a short time ago, one of the attorneys who helped file the suit told me trump and giuliani should expect to be deposed. >> the fact that someone used to be the president of the united states does not make them immune from deposition. it does not mean that they are not subject to the same laws, the same rules as everyone else. in this matter it would be the same as if it was any other defendant that when you are being sued, you're subject to deposition. >> thompson lawsuit also accuses trump of delaying his speech on the ellipse january 6th. also a member of the proud boys could advance to the capitol and better plan their attack. but the suit does not back up that claim with any evidence. the attorney said the legal team would not have put anything in the audience unless they had a factual basis for it. joining me is harry litman, he served as deputy attorney general and sarah cider. when you look at the suit, what comes to mind for you, what is your reaction? >> it's a real interesting lawsuit, brianna. it's under this law, as you say, passed 150 years ago in 1871 when the ku klux klan, congress heard all of these harrowing tales. they were killing and raping and whipping the newly freed slaves to keep them from exercising their constitutional rights. usually these lawsuits are under a different provision which says you can't violate civil rights and they're often expansive and different ideas of civil rights, which courts don't like very much. this one is under a different section you see very rarely that says if the ku klux klan or here the proud boys, this really is like flash forward 150 years, it's the closest we've come. the proud boys are impeding thompson in the performance of his official duties, which is exactly what they did. then that is a lawsuit because he is the actual plaintiff here. he's the one impeded. he may need to show injury to get to this important deposition but there are also a lot of paragraphs how he had to cower under the desk and be not social distanced and he's 72 and 2 people got covid. that might be where the fight is. but it really does seem to fit the facts to a t. it's like 150 years ago but in 2021, the same version with the proud boys playing the ku klux klan. >> sarah, you've done so much important investigative reporting this year on the proud boys and oath keepers. have you gotten a sense of how involved they were in the insurrection of the capitol? >> yeah, if you look at some of the indictments that have been put out there, one of the first indictments that had the conspiracy charges, really heavy charge against several people involved in the insurrection, those were all members, according to the federal government, of the oath keepers, for example. and then you look further and you see that there are several people known to be proud boys who we have talked to in the past that have proclaimed themselves as proud boys and in leadership, they too are facing some very serious charges. so what we are seeing is the government looking at some of these groups and looking very closely at these groups because you see they've done things just looking on video itself that are coordinated. you see the picture there, they came up the capitol steps. they're all wearying basically gear for war. they have ballistic helmets and goggles and sort of army fatigues and they're walking up very coordinated, hand on shoulder, up the steps, moving together in a group all throughout the day of the insurrection. then you see them going into the capitol and then bragging brazenly about being inside the capitol and taking over the capitol. so they're a very big focus of the fbi. you can see that right now the past week, more pictures of people wearing oath keepers gear put out by the fbi because the fbi is looking for a lot more people involved in these extremist groups. >> harry, i should mention cnn reached out to rudy giuliani for a response. donald trump's spokesman, jason miller, said this, quote, president trump has been acquitted in the democrats' latest impeachment witch-hunt and the facts are irrefutable. president trump did not plan, produce or organize the january 6th rally on the ellipse, president trump did not cite or inspire to incite any violence at the capitol january 6th. speaker nancy pelosi and washington, d.c. mayor muriel bowser must answer questions why they rejected additional security and national guard assistance in the run-up to january 6th. so the question is, how is impeachment, how is what happened in the impeachment trial going to play in this civil lawsuit, if at all? >> legally, not at all. it's a different charge. it was not unanimous. it really, the constitution itself is clear. you have impeachment charges and other charges. sara, i agree with everything she said but it's an important point to underscore, this is a civil lawsuit. this is bennie thompson as bennie thompson saying these guys hurt me and it wasn't just the proud boys, they were conspireing with trump and giuliani. might be hard to prove but the big fight will be can they get past the preliminary stages so they can get a deposition, get discovery? that will rank as a win. >> if they do get to deposition, harry, what about executive privilege, how does that factor in? >> very good question. i think the lawyer you spoke to was a little bit too quick in saying it can't apply because he was, in fact, president at the time. but everything is open here, brianna, and your executive privilege is about keeping confidential people advising you so you can make the right decisions. i think he's basically waved almost everything and, of course, anything from the proud boys themselves along the lines of we did it for trump, trump said this, that's, of course, fair game. >> and that, sara, is one of my questions because the proud boys, the oath keepers, would certainly welcome an association with the president. that's not good for the president in this case for sure. how are these far right groups going to react to this legal threat? >> it will be interesting to see how they react because some of them have already been charged in the insurrection criminally and now you have this civil suit that's come forward. they will have to answer at some point but both the leaders of some of these groups have already been charged, whether it be in the insurrection or, for example, the leader of the proud boys was charged just a couple days before the insurrection for having allegedly illegal cartridges of bullets that he wasn't supposed to have and being in d.c. so it will be interesting to see how they respond. so far they're still on social media, still talking about what's happening with their groups, some of which are breaking apart at this point, brianna. >> interesting. we are, i think, at the beginning of this particular story. sara sidner, thank you so much and harry litman, thank you as well. next, new footage from inside the capitol riots and it makes it clear how coordinated some of the attacks were. this as one republican lawmaker tries to claim that this wasn't an armed insurrection at all. and dr. fauci pushes back the vaccine timeline saying it could now be more like may or even june before everyone has access. really make my dry skin healthier in one day? 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>> my colleague don lemon joins me now to talk about this. i just wonder, obviously, we see a double standard that has played out here. i just wonder how you have been struck by what dave chappelle said, don. >> hi, brianna. i -- i agree with dave chappelle and i actually don't agree with him in a sense but mostly i do. here's why. because he said in the stand-up routine that they got the n-word treatment, right? i don't think they did because they weren't lynched. they were able to leave washington, d.c. and go back to their perspective places where they lived and got to turn themselves in if they even decided to when they wanted. they got to live where they wanted, they didn't get red-lined and got loans. i understand what he's saying, yes, overall i agree with him. but for 30 minutes they tried to storm the capitol and police beat them back. what they forgot was the consequences of trying to break and entering. but his whole point about the flag and colin kaepernick is spot on. they used, as we've been pointing out, the american flag, blue lives matter flags and flagpoles and confederate battle flags to beat police officers, to try to kill police officers. so, you know, that's where we are right now. in a sense his overall point, i get it. but they didn't really get the treatment that african-americans have had in this country. >> and that's a point a lot of people have made, right? what would have happened if you were to have a role reversal here? what would have happened? what would the ramifications have been? would the carnage have been so much greater? that's a very reasonable question a lot of people asked. i'm also curious what you think about something that republican senator ron johnson of wisconsin has said because he has a very bizarre take on the capitol riots. he doesn't think it was an armed insurrection. let's listen to that. >> this didn't seem like an armed insurrection to me. when you think of armed, don't you think of firearms? >> uh-huh. >> here's the questions i would have liked to have asked, how many firearms were confiscated? how many shots were fired? i'm only aware of one and i will defend that law enforcement officer for taking that shot. it was a tragedy, okay. but i think there was only one. if that was a planned armed insurrection, man, you really have a bunch of idiots. >> we did this whole analysis of that, don, last hour where we looked at all of the weapons that were seized. we looked at, obviously, you mentioned people just walked out of the capitol. they weren't even searched for weapons. there were many weapons. clearly, this was a deadly insurrection. what do you make of someone defending this as not a big deal? >> the hoops that people will jump through for, first of all, their political ideology, second of all their way of life, and to continue white supremacy, that's what that is. if you look up the definition of armed, right, you look at the definition of armed, it says furnished with weapons. we know they had weapons. we know they had tear gas. we're not sure of all of the weapons, and you made a very good point i neglected to bring up, if this was black people storming the capitol, mostly men, they would have been shot. i think everyone agrees with that. that would have been much worse. furnished with something that provided security, strength or efficacy. that doesn't necessarily mean guns. it can be gun but it doesn't necessary palestine that. those flagpoles mean being armed as well. i think he got the one part of it right, that it was -- i think he said that they were idiots or something, they were a bunch of idiots if they didn't carry it off well. that part they got right. i think it shows, as does that attack on the capitol, the length that people will go to, to protect white supremacy. and that's exactly what ron johnson is doing. >> if you -- i'm sure, look, you ask senator ron johnson, i'm sure he would not see what he's doing as maintaining the power structure of white supremacy. >> well, just because you're ignorant of it doesn't mean that you're not doing it. just because you have done it for so long doesn't mean you're not doing it. just because you have been in a position where many republicans who sat in on those impeachment hearings and said, i have never seen that much video, what does that mean? skr video of the insurrection. what does that mean? you have been in a position of privilege where you didn't have to. just because you're ignorant of something does not mean it does not exist and you're not doing it. that's exactly what he's doing and perhaps him and others who are like, and this isn't just about him, perhaps they should take a moment to reflect on their actions and to reflect and think about it before they say things like that. they can't continue to say things like that and to live in the world that they're living in because there will be more insurrections. there will be more violence to come if they continue to do that because, again, it's just ignorance. ignorance does not mean something does not exist and you're not doing it. >> i'm sure that you've seen republican congressman add up kinzinger, who voted to impeach -- he voted to convict donald trump and in his second impeachment trial for inciting the riots. he's now being shunned by his own family and it's not just a matter of sort of a private division, it is a letter, it is something they wanted to do very publicly. this has been signed by 11 of his family members. granted, this is a big family in illinois. these are family members he might see at events here or there, right, but they're family members. they wrote this. "adam, oh, my, what a disappointment you are to us and god. we were once so proud of your accomplishments. instead you go against your christian principles and join the devil's army, fake news and media. and i think this stands out because there are families across the country who have been divided like this. they've just been torn apart by what is true and what isn't true and having different opinions of that. >> there's so much there when it comes to that letter adam kinzinger and republicans and trump supporters as a whole, trump supporters have taken over the republican party. the republican party can no longer say they don't agree with the insurrectionists, bigots, racists, with the white supremacists and anti-semites because that's what they have clearly shown through their actions, especially over the last five years. with him showing that letter, first of all, they should probably figure out what christianity real plienz, and i think i would love to ask adam kinzinger that but he's so far refused to comp ott show and take questions, but i would like to ask him where were he -- and i'm glad he's doing it, don't get me wrong. i think we should take people where they are and then move forward. but i want to know where republicans like adam kinzinger and liz cheney and all of the others, where they were when this stuff was festering in the republican party for years? when people even before them when it was the welfare queens and willie hortons and tea party and effigies of barack obama and the bones in his nose and wasn't born in this country, the birtherism and all of that, all of the little things that led up to this moment, where were they? i think that people need to really answer for those things because we have to start at the beginning. we can't just start with what happened on january 6th. because that was what? a symptom, culmination of something. we can't just start with what happened over the summer because that was a symptom, culmination of something. it's interesting, brianna, not to go too far off on a tankant but i'm sure you have seen this thing that would happen with "the bachelor" and host of "the bachelor," what the young lady did, it was 2018 and we weren't looking at the world through that lens. why he, we were. racism has been around this country forever. it started at the inception of this country. and until we go back to the beginning and we start to deal with those things, then we will never address this problem properly. we will never correct this problem. the one thing i completely agree with dave chappelle on is if you solve the black man's problem, you solve the problem of the black man, just black people in general in this country, you will solve the bulk of the problems in this country. you will solve the racism problem, you will solve the poverty problem, the health care problem, you will solve all of those things because it will lift the veil on all of the indignities that have been done to people throughout the history of people in this country, starting with the original sin of people in this country, and that is racism. >> yeah, racism and slavery. don, i love having you on. you apologized for your tangent. i live for your tangents. thank you for coming on. >> you know what we have to stop doing? what you and i do. people say these conversations are very difficult. we have to have these tough conversations. these aren't tough conversations. these conversations are actually quite easy. the way you do it, just start talking about them. >> with an open heart, right? >> there you go. >> it's great to have you on, don. thank you very much. and, of course, you can see don tonight. he will be on 10:00 eastern. so check him out. don, thanks again. >> thank you. oh, wait, you got a book. don has a book. a new book. "this is the fire: what i say to my friends about racism." and that's what we're talking about, don, where you say having these conversations. i think it's such an important -- it's a conversation about a conversation. it's hugely important right now. thank you. i'm looking forward to reading that. >> thank you, brianna. good to see you. >> all right. have a good day. next, dr. fauci now saying it will likely be summer before we all have access to a vaccine. so what do we do about schools now? i will be joined by a doctor who says he's losing patience with teachers' unions who refuse to return to in-person teaching. keeping your oysters business growing has you swamped. you need to hire. i need indeed indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a shortlist of quality candidates from a resume data base claim your seventy-five-dollar credit when you post your first job at indeed.com/promo - [narrator] grubhub perks give you deals on all the food that makes you boogie. (upbeat music) get the food you love with perks from- - [crowd] grubhub. >> man: what's my safelite story? - grub what you love. i spend a lot of time in my truck. it's my livelihood. ♪ rock music ♪ >> man: so i'm not taking any chances when something happens to it. so when my windshield cracked... my friend recommended safelite autoglass. they came right to me, with expert service where i needed it. ♪ rock music ♪ >> man: that's service i can trust... no matter what i'm hauling. right, girl? >> singers: ♪ safelite repair, safelite replace. ♪ dr. anthony fauci now says it could be late may or even june until the general public has the opportunity to get vaccines that means teachers are insisting on vaccines before they return in person. positions like that have led my next guest to grow increasingly frustrated. dr. benjamin linus is an infectious disease doctor and associate professor of epidemiology at boston university school of medicine and wrote a book titled "i'm an epidemiologist, father and here's why i'm losing patience with teachers' unions." you volunteered to be on the advisory board at brooklyn mass. what are you growing frustrated for? >> thank you for having me on. i want to say at the offset likely every kid in america has had the experience of seeing their teacher down zoom and the chills you get when you see somebody clearly so devoted to my child and working so hard in such difficult circumstances. but at the collective level i think we've gotten to a point now that we have data to see it's possible to curb transmission in school buildings and given that and growing education gaps and growing mental health crisis amongst our kids, i think we need to start taking seriously the risk/benefit of going back to school. i think the data are quite strong the risk is not zero but we can mitigate it and make it so low and the benefits are so huge for everyone involved, kids, parents, everyone in our society. in that sense i'm really urging educators to embrace the data and start to use facts to fight the fear because i think that's exactly the strategy we should be taking right now. >> i think what we are hearing from teachers and we've spoken to teachers' unions on the show so i want to be clear, we're just trying to explore this from all angles, they feel like they're bearing obviously, look, they don't want to be teaching this way. it's pretty clear they don't like it either. >> yes. >> but they're certainly concerned about the risk. they're concerned if they're older and have underlying conditions and concerned if they have people at home. and a lot of them want to be vaccinated. we have these new variants that are kind of creating this question mark and i think anxiety about, yes, there's research but also the state of coronavirus is a bit of a muovig target. talk to me about that. a lot of folks have said why don't you just vaccine nate teachers? why is that not a good requirement? but that's not something you necessarily support. >> there are two points to that question. in my book i argue that teachers should be prioritized for vaccine -- >> yes, you do. >> and i also think to be fair it's important for us to get started going back into school buildings and if it's going to take until june until everybody is vaccinated, i don't think that's the right timeline and we need to start before june. and the reason that is because we had schools open in the united states and all across the world without vaccines and we now have data to show empirically even with the data, it's possible to guard against the virus without vaccine. so we need to make a decision today and we need to start acting now. covid is a moving target but covid will always be a moving target. and there's a saying that a decision ha to be made. we have to do something today with the best data that we have available today. the best data we have available today says we can mitigate covid transmission into school buildings. it's important we remain attuned to the data and be ready to change if the message changes but doing nothing and not reopening our buildings, that's a decision too but that's a decision that's made without data. it's made based on fears and i think now is the time to start using the data and facts to assuage the fear. >> dr. linus, it's such an important conversation. i really appreciate you joining us for it. >> my pleasure. thank you for having me. >> thank you for coming on, sir. next, a republican woman who may have her sights on a presidential bid in 2024 gives her presidential history -- gets her presidential history all wrong. why nikki haley's attempt to summon george washington in a twe tweet was incorrect. plus, i will speak to a republican leader in pennsylvania who said it would be a mistake to censure senator pat toomey over his impeachment vote. managing type 2 diabetes? 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(doorbell) (giggle) do ya think they bought it? oh yeah. nikki haley, the former ambassador to the united nations and potential gop candidate for president in 2024 is getting heat from historians for a tweet she sent out on presidents' day, attempting to pay tribute to the america's first president. she wrote, george washington turned an army of rag tag troops into an unstoppable force that defeated the british and secured america's independence. as president he oversaw the creation of our constitution and showed the world what it looks like to govern by the people and for the people. only problem is, that's not at all how things went down and presidential historian alex co-called her out own it. he wrote a biography "you never forget your first" and with us now to talk about this. just fact chektck the tweet for us. >> it's hard to know where to begin. it's 480 characters and a lot of beginning. from the very beginning, the continental end was not unstoppable. we know the british had the most powerful navy in the entire world. we barely had some boats. there were many times we looked like we were going to lose. we were definitely not unstoppable. she said george washington was president, and oversaw the constitution. that's simply not true. the constitution created the presidency. and then washington was, of course, our first president. the constitutional convention was 1787, presidency 1789, and then the kicker the way she ends by quoting by the people, for the people. washington has been dead for many decades by the time abraham lincoln says that in the gettysburg address. >> alexis, that was amazing. thank you just for walking us through that and fact checking us. it's quite the tweet and quite the fact check. alexis coe, thank you very much. >> thank you. next, after senator pat to toomey voted to convict donald trump, one state republican in pennsylvania said, he didn't send toomey to washington to, quote, do the right thing. whe, that allowed me to pay off aggressively and save without breaking my back or breaking the bank. ♪ we made usaa insurance for members like martin. an air force veteran made of doing what's right, not what's easy. so when a hailstorm hit, usaa reached out before he could even inspect the damage. that's how you do it right. usaa insurance is made just the way martin's family needs it with hassle-free claims, he got paid before his neighbor even got started. because doing right by our members, that's what's right. usaa. what you're made of, we're made for. ♪ usaa ♪ covid's still a threat. and on reopening schools, we know what happens when we don't put safety first. ignore proper ventilation or rates of community spread, and the virus worsens. fail to provide masks or class sizes that allow for social distancing, and classrooms close back down. a successful reopening requires real safety and accountability measures. including prioritizing vaccines for educators. parents and educators agree: reopen schools. putting safety first. there is fierce backlash within the republican party against the seven republican senators who voted to convict former president donald trump in his second impeachment trial. senator pat toomey is one of the seven. pennsylvania republicans will meecht in the coming weeks to decide what to do, if anything, but several counties are not waiting, and they have already voted to censure toomey. my next guest disagrees with that. sam dimarco is the chairman of the republican committee of allegheny county. sam, thanks so much for being with us. you've gotten a lot of attention for this. you've not gone along with what many of your fellow gop county chairs in pennsylvania have wanted to proceed with. why have you decided that? >> i've tried to take a thoughtful approach to this as opposed to a reflexive approach. my belief is that the impeachment of president trump was designed with two objectives in mind. one was to prevent him from running from office in the future and the other was to create fissures and splits within the republican party. on the first objective they failed. on the second objective the jury is still out based on how we take and react and move forward, and i believe that our focus is best focused on the future and not on the past. we got the result that we wanted last saturday when the president was acquitted, so why are our folks so angry and looking to punish someone, and i worry about the message that it sends to voters out there, the people who would want to be part of the republican party but are worried that if they don't agree with everyone 100% of the time that there's not space for them, and we're a big tent and have a lot of room for everybody. >> you say this is, you know, you want to look to the future of the republican party. isn't this about the future of the republican party and a disagreement about whether it is a trumpian republican party or not? >> no. this particular resolution here or censure motion would be about telling senator toomey that folks run happy with the decision he made. i did not support the vote that he made. i would have voted no. i thought the process was unconstitutional, but i was not there on january 6th. i didn't live through it. he's entitled to his opinion, and i believe that the future of our party is bright when we're able to show folks that we welcome people that may agree with us only 70% of the time or 80% of the time. it doesn't have to be 100% of the time, and i foreas we go down this path of group think or cancel culture where if you don't believe or you don't agree with someone all of the time they look to personally destroy you. i don't see that helping or benefiting our party or our country. >> i want you to listen to what the pennsylvania gop chair said over why they censured senator too maniy. >> we did not send him there to vote his conscience. we did not send him there to do the right thing or whatever he said he was doing. we sent him there to represent us. >> what do you say to that? >> well, the chairman of the washington county republican party is a good friend of mine, and he's a good man. he might want to have that sound bite back. you know, i don't know, but i would say -- you reported on this as well as all the other major stations here. the republicans were having problems in the suburbs, and some of that may be that nokes don't believe that if they don't agree with us on 100% of the things that they would be welcome. i can -- i get a lot of e-mails and i've had folks that want me to censure the senator, and i've had people reaching out saying they appreciate a sensible approach and they don't want me to censure the senator because they believe -- i don't necessarily agree with him, but they did the right thing so they are entitled to their opinion. he's entitled to his opinion and i'm entitled to mine. i just believe my job as a county chair is to grow this party. politics is a numbers game. we only win when we bring more people into the tent. >> let me ask you about that. it's clear your party is contracting with donald trump as its central figure. do you see him as the central figure of the republican future? >> well, i would disagree with your premise as far as contracting. since january 6th, yes, you've had approximately 140,000 people, republicans, across this nation that have changed their voter registrations, but -- >> he lost the election, sam. >> absolutely. but you're talking about the party contracting. we're not talking about the election. i was responding to your comment there. >> i hear what you're saying. i'm just saying, that you know, obviously he lost support as well there. sam, i have so much more to talk to you about. we're out of time. sam dimarco, thanks so much for joining us. we're back in just a moment. good morning! this is where everything started. the four way is engulfed in history. you're sitting in the place where giants ate. the four way is the heart and soul of the community. ♪ new projects means new project managers. you need to hire. i need indeed. indeed you do. the moment you sponsor a job on indeed you get a short list of quality candidates from our resume database. claim your seventy five dollar credit, when you post your first job at indeed.com/home. for nearly a decade, comcast has been helping students get ready. we've connected 4 million low-income students to low- cost, high-speed xfinity internet. we're working with hundreds of school districts across the country to sponsor free internet and laptops. and parents are seeing an impact. and now we're turning 1,000 community centers into lift zones - wifi enabled safe spaces to study. so more students can be ready for anything. i'm trying to do some homework here. hi there, and thank you so much for being with me. i'm brooke baldwin. you're watching cnn. before we get going, i want to start with some personal news. i will be leaving cnn in april. let me back up. after most of my 20s working my way up in local news i came to this network in 2008 in the midst of the great recession as a free lanser. i remember i scribbled my name on a post-2 note and stuck it outside of this temporary office determined to fulfill my dream of becoming a full-time cnn es

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