welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. it is tuesday, january 11th. i'm brianna keilar with john berman. new this morning, voting rights advocates in georgia are speaking out on their plans to boycott president biden's speech today in atlanta. they say without a concrete plan to pass election reform laws that have, so far, been blocked by republicans, and also some resonant democrats, the president shouldn't bother coming. here's what the founder of black voters matter told us here on "new day" just moments ago. >> he gave a very passionate speech, not only the one he gave for the commemoration last week of january 6th, but, remember, he gave a very passionate speech back in philadelphia, back in july. but then literally for seven months, we heard nothing else about voting rights from him. so now is not the time for another speech. and to be clear, we believe in using the presidency as a bully pulpit. we would have loved that the president use the presidency as a bully pulpit for the past seven, eight months, while we've been fighting for voting rights, even getting arrested outside the white house, begging him to do so. but, at this point, we don't need another speech. we don't need him to come to georgia and use us as a prop. what we need is work. >> also new this morning, cnn obtained a portion of what the president will say hours from now, as democrats put forth two new voting rights bills that require a weakening of filibuster rules to pass. this is what the president will say. quote, the next few days when these bills come to a vote will mark a turning point in this nation. will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? i know where i stand, the president will say. i will not yield. i will not flinch. i will defend your right to vote in our democracy against all enemies, foreign and domestic. so the question is, where will the institution of the united states senate stand? joining us now, journalist and host of "the run tell this" podcast, and joseph, founding director of the center for the study of race and democracy at the lbj school of public affairs at the yuniversity of texas at austin, where he is also a professor of history. mara, i was speaking, again, with the head of black voters matter, who said, we don't need the president to come here and use us as props. that's strong language there. and a boycott from the people you would think would be supporting the president's moves. what's going on here? >> yeah, this is a very clear message that they're sending him, but for good reason. think about this. today in georgia, they have fewer voting rights protections than they do on the day the president was elected. so what these groups are saying is, we've done our part. we've done the work. now, don't come down to georgia for a photo-op. stay in washington, and come up with a plan. they want specifics. they want to know how he is going to get things done. he has said he wants to make changes to the filibuster. great. how are you going to do that? is he going to start forcefully calling out manchin and sinema, who have been described as moderates by many, but at this point, you can only describe as obstructionists for voting rights. is he going to call them out directly? what is he going to do to get this done? that's what they want to know. they've been in the streets doing the work, and they've been able to mobilize unprecedented voter access. you can't outorganize legislation designed to suppress the vote. >> noticeably absent from this speech today will be stacey abrams, who is seen as the reason that georgia was able to shift the senate there to democrats. it seems like if she wanted to be there, she would move heaven and earth to be there. the white house would move heaven and earth to have her there. yet, she's not going to be there. how do you read this? >> i think this is based on a messaging problem that the biden administration has had, really since they started. that messaging problem is connected to january 6th. it's connected to covid. it's connected to voting suppression. i mean, it's really trying to articulate both with the vision of the democratic administration and also what the substance is. they passed a pandemic bill. they've done extraordinary, successful legislation, but at the same time, voting rights sort of has been the can that was kicked down the road in the last seven or eight months. in the president's defense, calling out senator manchin or senator sinema strategically doesn't make a lot of accsense. this isn't a president who is so popular in west virginia and arizona, that calling them out would somehow be a political liability for them. i teach at the johnson school, where johnson was master of the senate and was a president who could convince and sort of wield power to get voting rights legislation and civil rights legislation. we're long past those days. i do think, however, though, that the biden administration has missed an opportunity. that's why he's coming to atlanta in the last seven months. really telling the american people in simple language why the john lewis voting rights bill is so important. why our democracy is at stake. i think the inability to sort of message why the voting rights movement is so -- voting rights bill is so important, it's really allowed not just senator sinema and manchin, but other folks in the party who have been obstructionists to appear as moderates. people will say, this is a partisan votie ing rights bill. it is not a partisan voting rights bill. it shows how far to the right the republican party has moved. but they've successfully moved so far to the right that the new center is really a reactionary political center, which is why these dpragrassroots groups hav criticized the president coming to atlanta. >> what does this portend for the biden presidency writ large? he himself said he won the nomination and presidency because of black voters. if you have the co-founder of plaqu black voters matter saying on our air, don't come here and talk to us and use us as props, this could spell a bigger problem. >> yeah. voting rights is going to be a very big problem for him, not just for the reasons you mentionedmention edb but also logistically. these bills are making it harder to vote, and most of them are democratic voters. it's not just passing an important part of his legislate you have agenda. will democratic vote rs be able to cast a vote that is counted in the midterm election? if they lose control in the midterms, that really spells doom for the rest of his legislative agenda. republicans have been very clear their goal is 100% to stop biden's legislative agenda. what we see happening here now, and i think today's speech is going to be the beginning of this, is he is taking this fight directly to the people. because, let's be clear, his options are very limited. he doesn't have the votes in his own party right now tofilibuste. he doesn't have the votes overall to overcome the fill pus filibuster. what we are expecting today is him to come out forcefully, take the fight directly to the people, to appeal directly to the people, and see if it can generate momentum or change something. as things stand right now, there are not a lot of options. >> can he do that, mara? i mean, do you see value in biden going and giving this speech in georgia, if stacey abrams isn't going to be there, and you have the voting rights groups boycotting it? >> yeah, well, the optics of this right now look terrible. because you mentioned stacey abrams. here, we have the country's most famous and, arguably, one of the most effective voting rights activists who is skipping a speech by the president on voting rights in her home state. now, that becomes the dialogue. why are these groups boycotting this, and should the president even come down and make the speech? or does he need to do what they're asking, which is stay in washington and work on hammering out a plan? to be clear, his options are very, very limited. a lot of people are seeing this as a hail mary. he's going to come, try his best, but there's not a lot he can do. and is anything they can pass on a bipartisan level going to be enough to overcome the legislative hurdles we're seeing state by state all over the country? >> professor, it feels some of the base voters are growing disenchanted with president biden. >> they are. i think the move to come to atlanta is a smart move politically. we need voting rights protection just for our democracy, but, certainly, president biden would need this legislation to be passed to be in any kind of position to be re-elected in 2024. the 2022 midterms seem like they're going to be very inauspicious for the democrats. it has to do with gerrymandering and a combination of voter suppression. one thing historically, we've faced this before as a democracy. in the 19th century during reconstruction, the parties were realigned in that historical context. the republican party was the party of civil rights. democratic party was the party of the racial status quo. what we did in that context, we really faltered. we allowed voter suppression to be the law of the land, in violation of the 15th amendment to the constitution. we got sort of another 70, 80 years of jim crow segregation as a result. so this is real serious business, not protecting people's right to vote, whether that's african-americans or any americans. it really sets us up on a very, very dangerous course. biden is going to atlanta to remind us of dr. martin luther king jr. who, of course, his vision of the beloved community is completely connected to voting rights. and the late john lewis, who was bloodied and battered in selma on march 7th, 1965, marching for the right to vote. so i think it is important that the president does that. he can do both things. he can try to strategically pass this legislation and come to atlanta. i don't think atlanta is just a photo-op. ebenezer baptist church means so much to the community. senator warnock will be there, who resides over martin luther king's pulpit. i think it is more than a photo-op. >> thank you both for being with us this morning. >> thank you. >> thank you. this morning, the u.s. poised to break a record in the coronavirus pandemic. an ominous milestone but one that requires important context. covid is pushing many hospitals to the brink, but really, more specifically, the unvaccinated are the ones pushing hospitals to the pebrink. 141,000 americans are hospitalized with covid this morning, just shy of the all-time high that happened this time last year, in january of 2021. that record is likely going to be broken today. this includes people who are going to the hospital because of covid and those who show up for other things. a car crash, broken arm, but also turn out to have covid. crucially, the large majority of hospitalized patients are unvaccinated. this is overwhelming. or they're only partially vaccinated. take a look at this chart from new york city. look at this gap, this big gap in the rate of hospitalization among the unvaccinated. that is the top line. the one you don't want to be. the vaccinated, the bottom line. let's bring in cnn's chief medical correspondent and the author of "keeping sharp," dr. sanjay gupta. sanjay, the choice could not be more stark when you look at this graph. >> no question. when you look at those hospitalizations, just to give you some context, you know, as you mentioned, we're about to potentially get to that peak again. that was almost exactly a year ago. that was january 14th of 2021. so, you know, we're likely to surpass that within the next few days. i can tell you that those numbers, in addition to critical staffing shortages, which is a real problem. a lot of hospital systems simply don't have the staff because people are out with covid themselves, diagnosed and isolating themselves. that's a problem. also, if you take the data you just showed about unvaccinated versus vaccinated to a more national scale, show you the cdc data, you get an idea of the story here. you get the red line, the unvaccinated. the green is the vaccinated, which has stayed pretty stable. it is not that nobody who is vaccinated ends up needing to be hospitalized with covid, but as you said, the distinction could not be more clear. that's held up, even become more magnified the past several months. >> over the weekend, sanjay, the director of the cdc, dr. rochelle walensky, was asked, how many people are in the hospital for covid versus with covid? >> some hospitals, up to 40% of the patients who are coming in with covid are coming in not because they're sick with covid but because they're coming in with something else and have had covid or the omicron variant detected. >> do we have a clear picture, who exactly is being admitted for covid? >> we have a clearer picture, but, you know, this is data that's not been really that forthright. the data that, think i, dr. walensky is talking about is from new york state. i'll show you that. this idea of incidental covid. you go into the hospital for something else, and then you get diagnosed with covid inside the hospital. we don't know how significant that is all over the country, but we do know in new york state, there's a significant breakdown. as you mentioned, about 43%, roughly, across the state coming in with covid. they get diagnosed with covid in the hospital. now, the american hospital association, they've been asked about this several times. they say they generally have not been breaking down this data. in part, because, in some cases, it is very clean. someone comes in with a broken leg. totally unrelated to covid. they get diagnosed with covid in the hospital. that's clearly somebody who is coming in with covid, not for covid. but if someone comes in with cardiac difficulties, for example, or blood clotting difficulties, was that due to the fact that they had covid, or was that an incidental finding? sometimes it is a little bit harder to separate out. add on to that that there's still not enough testing in the general community, so people may be coming in, and the first time they're getting tested is in the hospital. nevertheless, i think this data is really important. it is really important to give a clearer picture of just how significant the hospitalization rates are for covid specifically. it doesn't do anything about the fact that hospitals are still overloaded. there are still staffing shortages, all those problems. in our hospital, we're about a 600-bed hospital. at our peak last year, 162 patients in the hospital for or with covid. now, it is closer to 258. if they get diagnosed with covid in the hospital, they still need to go into infection protocol, personal protective equipment, all of that still needs to be utilized. it's a huge drain on the system overall. >> sanjay, the cdc, the "washington post" is reporting this morning, is considering changing its recommendations on masks. saying to wear the n-95 or k-95 if you can instead of cloth masks. why? maybe another question is, why, finally, are they going to change this? >> yeah. i mean, look, this one surprises me. at the beginning of the pandemic, there was maybe a reason not to widely recommend those masks, these high-filtration masks. but they've been in good supply for some time now. kn-95 or n-95 masks. we talked about this on your program for a long time now, saying, why not just recommend those masks, especially given the contagiousness of this virus and the new variants. in fact, i asked dr. walensky and dr. fauci about this at a town hall, maybe close to a year ago. listen to what they said. why not recommend it, especially with these more transmissible variants? >> yeah, it is a really good question and one we get a lot. i have spent a reasonable amount of time in an n-95 mask. they're hard to tolerate all day, every day. in fact, when you really think about how well people will wear them, i worry that if we suggest or require that people wear n-95s, they won't we them all the time. they're very hard to breathe in when you wear them properly. they're hard to tolerate when you wear them long periods of time. >> you know, that surprised me, again, a little bit. a lot of people have been wearing these masks now over the past year. yeah, they are a mask, so you do have to be conscious of that. they're not that uncomfortable, i don't think. most people have been wearing them comfortably. they provide a lot more protection. we can show the protection of cloth masks versus surgical masks versus kn-95. it's really not even close. i still always go back to this which i was told, if everyone wore a high filtration mask in public for four weeks, we could essentially bring an end to the pandemic. i'm glad they're finally talking about it. i don't know why it's taken so long, but it is necessary. >> sanjay, thank you very much for being with us this morning. >> thank you. breaking overnight, a deal between the city of chicago and the teachers union. parents waking up to the news, finally, and way too late, that teachers will be back in the classrooms today. students set to return tomorrow. this ends a standoff over covid that lasted four days. let's get right to chicago and bring in adrienne broaddus. again, kids aren't going to today, but if everything goes well, tomorrow. >> reporter: exactly. so not four days of missed school, john, five. sanjay was just talking about those high-quality masks. let's get right to this agreement. that's one thing teachers of the union here in chicago wanted. they wanted to make sure students were able to wear kn-95 masks. what we know about this agreement, the city has agreed to provide kn-95 masks to students and staff. it also has agreed to add some enhanced pllayers to weekly cov testing. now, there will be a threshold. there are metrics in place that will trigger individual schools to switch to remote learning if covid cases, the transmission is high, based on cdc guidelines. however, the president of the union said this is not a home run. he said the deal is not perfect, and it doesn't have everything members of the union wanted. but it does have those added layers of protection. rank and file members will vote on this final agreement later this week, an agreement that will take them through the end of the school year, provided nothing changes. >> parents want their kids back in l school. adrienne broaddus, thank you very much. officials say the horrific, high-rise bronx apartment fire that killed 17 people, including eight kids, began with a malfunctioning space heater. most of the deaths were actually due to smoke inhalation because the burning apartment's doors were not closed as residents were flees. shimon, can you tell us the latest? >> reporter: yeah, so the latest is from the investigation standpoint. they believe now that that apartment door, as we've been reporting, was left open, perhaps some kind of malfunction. it should have shut closed. fire officials yesterday said there was also another door on the 15th floor that led to the stairwell that was empty. that sort of created this chimney-like effect. that allowed the smoke to rise, essentially through every floor of the building. now, some of the residents have been back in the building. nay started coming back yesterday. officials allowing them back in to retrieve their belongings and medicine and other things they may need. most of them staying in hotels that the city is providing. the other thing, brianna, that has been frustrating for many of the people whose family members were inside this building, they're all from gambia. one of the things is they're having a hard time finding out who is missing, who died. still many of the families not getting word from the city on whether their loved ones perished, sadly, in this fire. so that's been a source of frustration for many of the people in the community. yesterday, i spent some time with a man with a brother -- the man of a brother who is missing. he still hasn't heard from city officials whether or not his brother died in the fire. there's been a lot of frustration. yes, the city is doing a lot to try to help these people, but yet, they're still seeking many answers. still many remain missing. of course, there are selveral still remaining in the hospital, fighting for their lives. >> with very serious injuries. shimon, thank you for that. just ahead, an amazing medical wonder. how surgeons used a pig to help save a heart patient's life, and what this means for others with heart problems. >> they're putting pig hearts in people! >> it's amazing. >> they're putting pig hearts in people. nothing else matters this morning. plus, the new warning from the irs and its impact on your refund. first, new details on bob saget's sudden death, with tearful new tributes 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that could help people understand. >> the ritz-carlton. >> reporter: new details in the death of beloved tv dad and comedian bob saget, who was found dead at the ritz carlson in orlando on sunday. >> patient in 962. going to be for a male patient. guest was not breathing, no pulse. >> reporter: incident report released by the sheriff's office revealed saget was due to check out of the room sunday. when family was unable to reach him, they contacted hotel security who found the body and called departments. t mr. saget was in a supine position on his bed. left arm was across his chest, while the right arm was resting on the bed. no signs of trauma were seen. the officer stated he, quote, checked the immediate area for signs of foul play. it should be noted, none were found. the medical examiner confirmed the deputy's assessment, statement, quote, there is no evidence of drug use or foul play. the cause and manner of death are pending. saying it may take 10 to 12 weeks to complete. the incident report also revealed that saget last used his room key card at 2:17 a.m. sunday and was officially declared dead at 4:18 that afternoon. saget's wife, kelly rizzo, learned of his death from hotel management. >> i'm danny tanner. >> reporter: saget may have been known as america's favorite single dad of the late '80s and '90s, danny tanner. raising three daughters on the show "full house." ♪ i got sunshine on a cloudy day ♪ >> reporter: the show was rebooted as "fuller house" in 2016 on netflix, starring many of the same actors. the cast reacting to his death. john stamos posted their joint statement on his instagram with a photo, reading, in part, he was a brother to us guys, a father to us girls, and a friend to all of us. bob, we love you dearly. other celebrities are also reacting to his death. fellow comedian and actor john arnold is remembering his edgy, r-rated sense of humor, which he'd just shown off during a stand-up show in jacksonville, florida, hours before his death. >> had just done a two-hour set. he was so happy. that's the place he liked to be. he was a great comic. bob saget is a guy that started on "full house," "america's funniest videos," but then his stand-up comedy is so different. >> reporter: late-night host jimmy kimmel broke down in tears monday night while talking about his friend. >> so last night, i was going through emails with bob. some of them were just funny. some were very serious emails about life. the well-being of our children. how hard it is to appreciate one of those without the other being just right. and one email we're talking about our kids, and i have it here, he wrote, one night soon, let's go out and have some meat and some good damn drinks and talk about how lucky we are that we have them. and we did do that many times. when my son was in the hospital, bob checked in a lot. so i want to send love to his daughters, to his wife kelly, and to his friends who loved him so much. he was very kind to everyone. he had no problem telling you that he loved you and what you meant to him. 2017, after our mutual friend don rickles died, bob and john stamos, who were beyond friends, they were brothers, they are brothers, they were like this. bob was the tall one. he was the middle finger. bob and john joined me on the show to eulogize don, to tell stories about him and how much we were going to miss him. we never imagined that 4 1/2 years later, we'd be talking about -- i'm sorry. i taped this, like, 14 times, and i just -- anyway, we had a beautiful conversation that night. you could see when john and bob were talking about how much they loved don, how much they love each other. i thought it might be nice, before we go on with the show, regular show, to share just a bit of that one more time, as we remember bob. >> i never thought we'd be fwr friends this long. >> my god, the first four years we worked together, we weren't besties. you were bringing all the hot women in the world to the show. you had a mullet. you were uncle jesse. i was a married guy. i didn't know what hthe hell wa going on. you were getting action. i was writing jokes every night. >> you guys are going to be like the old guys on "the muppets." i hope that happens. >> i hope so, too. >> john stamos and bob saget, everybody. >> we love you, bob. >> reporter: bob saget, though he was an actor, he came into our lives with a popular television program and felt like he was part of our family. now, we feel like he's been taken too soon. like with any family member, we simply want to understand why. john, brianna. >> martin savage, there were a lot of people who loved him. look, it is heartwarming to hear some of the tributes now. >> reporter: it is. >> thanks so much. >> reporter: you're welcome. turning now, the state lawmaker said teachers should be, quote, impartial when talking about nazis. and they transplanted a pig heart into a human. this is real. a revolution in science. t memories growing up, were cooking 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>> potentially a really big deal, not just for heart transplant patients but for the 100,000 or so folks who are on the waiting list now for other kinds of organ transplants in the united states. so there are a lot of people waiting for organs. only about 40,000 people actually get an organ transplant every year. there's great demand for donor organs, kidneys, hearts, livers. this is sort of proof of concept, at least the initial steps towards proving, that you can modify an animal's organs to make it suitable for transplantation in a human. it is really a remarkable engineering, bioengineering feat. >> how? modify how? explain that in terms that i can understand. >> so -- right. so in order for a zdeno transplant, a transplant from a non-human source to a human to work, you have to overcome acute rejection, which can happen right in the operating room, when as soon as the organ sees blood, the recipient basically identifies it as foreign and immediately rejects the organ. to do that, you actually have to take away some of the genes that the organ expresses. so you have to take away some of the pig genes. you have to give it some human genes so that it appears to be more humanlike. then you have to make it work a little bit better. the pig heart, in particular, doesn't interact well with human bachelor' blood in terms of preventing coagulation. there is this magical dance blood vessels do with the blood to keep the body in this sort of carefully balanced stance, so that you're not clotting too much and not bleeding too much. the pig heart doesn't do that well with human blood. you have to give it the ability to do that. you have to prevent longer term rejection with the use of certain medications. also, there's another concern. you know, pigs can harbor certain viruses which humans have never seen. you need to make sure you're not transplanting an organ that might bring into the human a virus that has never been seen. particularly in this current environment. so there are a lot of things to do. very exciting first step. we have to see how this patient does and what this leads to for the whole field of organ transplantation. >> very exciting, as you said. already the fact it's gone four days is a good sign, but we'll be monitoring closely going forward. i look forward to talking with you about this again because i find it fascinating. >> my pleasure. wednesday, an indiana senator, scott baldwin, said teachers should be impartial on lessons about fascism and nazism. >> i'm not discrediting as a person marxism, nazism, fascism. i'm not criticizing the isms out there. i have no problem with the education system providing instruction on the existence of those isms. i believe we've gone too far when we take a position on those isms. >> well, maybe not surprisingly, state senator baldwin is walking back those comments and even apologizing in response to a high schoolteacher's concerns over the proposed legislation. let's talk about this now with our cnn correspondent laura jarrett. wow, laura. >> brianna, good morning. senator baldwin said it was a misunderstanding. he was focused on preventing teachers from telling students what to think. fair enough. why is it that nazism is defended in the first instapnce and raicism makes people scared? it started when a history teacher raised concern about a bill in indiana, requiring teachers to be, quote, impartial, about all subjects. so a teacher named matt bockenfield, said, quote, i'm not neutral on the political ideology of masfascism, which i what prompted senator baldwin to say what he did in the clip. now, in a statement, pauld win s baldwin says, i sincerely regret i didn't arcticulate and apologize for that. aside from the senator's poor phrasing and whether or not he misspoke, it is worth noting the larger picture. this gop sponsored bill has a broad reach and tries to ban quite a bit. it is another data point in this larger national discussion we're all seeing about critical race theory. a legal theory about institutional racism that's rarely taught outside of grad school. certainly not in lower schools. but it is more recently become this catch-all boogy man for any issues that people find divisive. not notably, this new bill senator baldwin is advocating for would have the schools make sure parents review everything taught in the classroom and allow them to sue the schools found in violation of the law, something you can imagine parents think is a great idea. a lot of schools pushing back on this. a loat of teachers pushing back on it. >> wow, you can see where this is headed. laura, thank you so much. >> sure. up next, the new warning from the irs. why your tax returns might be delayed this year. plus, pope francis speaking out on cancel culture. dove 0% is different. we left aluminum out and put 48 hour freshness and 1 quarter moisturizers in. dove 0% aluminum deodorant lasting protection that's kinder on skin. ♪ i see trees of green ♪ ♪ red roses too ♪ ♪ i see them bloom for me and you ♪ (music) ♪ so i think to myself ♪ ♪ oh what a wonderful world ♪ at fidelity, your dedicated advisor will help you create a comprehensive wealth plan for your full financial picture. with the right balance of risk and reward. so you can enjoy more of...this. this is the planning effect. moving is a handful. no kidding! fortunately, xfinity makes moving easy. easy? -easy? switch your xfinity services to your new address online in about a minute. that was easy. i know, right? and even save with special offers just for movers. really? yep! so while you handle that, you can keep your internet and all those shows you love, and save money while you're at it with special offers just for movers at xfinity.com/moving. there is a warning from the irs that this tax season is going to be messy. chief business correspondent christine romans is here with that story. okay, what is it going to look like? >> plan ahead here, folks. it is a super complicated tax filing year with all the covid re relief. the child tax credits. at the same time, staff shortages at the irs are creating a nightmare scenario here. every tax season is busy, but the irs says the backlog of inprocessed cases is, quote, several times worse that be past years. and centers can't keep up. the irs said it was unable to answer two-thirds of the calls it received last year. two-thirds of the calls they couldn't pick up. processing centers for paper tax returns also hampered by covid cases among staffers. the irs says it needs more money, the tax code is more complicated, the funding is the same. the biden administration wants $80 million more for the irs to hire staff and upgrade technology. that's part of build back better. that's, of course, currently stalled in congress. so what does it mean, brianna, for you and me this tax season? okay. re refund might be delayed so file early. the irs is accepting your tax returns starting january 24th. that's two weeks earlier than last year. it's moved up the beginning of tax season. filing paper forms is going to add time. the irs says you should file electronically. this year's deadline is april 18th for most filers. they moved up the beginning of tax season by two weeks just so they can try to, you know, get a handle on this. >> yeah. look, we're going to be talking more about this in the coming months. christine, thanks so much. just in, australia says it is now investigating whether novak djokovic lied about his positive covid test in december. plus, why stacey abrams and voting rights groups are skipping president biden's speech today, refusing to be props. and watergate legend carl bernstein, a newspaper man at age 16, the amazing new book that he can all learn from. somee brainy on tv - i'm an actual neuroscientist. and i love the science behind neuriva plus. unlike ordinary memory supplements, neuriva plus fuels six key indicators of brain performance. more brain performance? 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(robert) thank you. subaru. more than a car company. before reporting on the watergate scandal, that took down richard nixon's presidency and becoming half of the most famous by line in journalist, carl bernstein was a kid, fresh out of his junior year in high school trying to make it as a copy boy at the tender age of 16. 16. joining us now, carl bernstein, cnn political analyst and the author of the new book "chasing history: a kid in the newsroom." the book is available now and it is wonderful. i am enamored with it. it is a love letter to journalism. it is a love letter to newspapers. and it is also something of a love letter or a guide book to hard work. >> it is. and i'm about as lucky as anybody in this business can be because at age 16, while i was a junior in high school, i got a job as a copy boy at perhaps the greatest afternoon newspaper in america, "the washington evening star." and all of a sudden i was the kid with the greatest seat in the country. the beginning of the kennedy administration, the beginning of the civil rights movement, and i had grown up in jim crow washington. i went to a segregated public school in the nation's capitol until brown versus board of education when i was in the sixth grade. almost immediately i was able to cover civil rights among other things. so i got to watch this amazing thing happen in our country at a time of our greatest change and got to cover everything as a teenager. >> maybe lucky, carl, but it is amazing how much luckier you've got with how much harder you would work. that's also clear. berman said this is a love letter to journaljournalism. you say people were shouting, typewriters klattered and chinged. beneath my feet i could feel the rumble of the presses. in my whole life, i had never heard such glorious chaos or seen such purposeful commotion as i now beheld in that newsroom. by the time i walked from one end to the other, i knew i wanted to be a newspaperman. you're describing in a way sort of falling in love. >> i did. and i also fell in love with the people at "the washington star." i was a good deal younger than the other copy boys. the reporters were in their 20s, late 20s, 30s, 40s. they saw in me i think when i was 16, 17 years old perhaps something i didn't see in myself. when i went to work at "the star," i had one foot in the classroom, one foot in the juvenile court, and one foot at the paper. and immediately, you know, "the star" had the greatest reporters in the country probably. the year i went to work there, two women won the pulitzer prize, mary lou warner for covering massive resistance to desegregation in virginia, merriam attenburg for used car rackets and other terrible things that took advantage of people. so right away i had the mentors and great mentor that i had was a city editor named sid epstein. i've been blessed. i've had the two greatest editors perhaps of my lifetime in many ways, sid epstein who taught me and gave me every opportunity, i was 16, he said, go cover kennedy's inauguration. go out there and see what the crowds are doing. and the other great editor, of course, was ben bradley at "the washington post." but during watergate, you can see in this book, even though it is not about watergate and just about these five years from 16 to 21, you can see that what i learned at "the star" about perseverance, about knocking at doors at night, rather than seeing people in their offices where they're under pressure, all the techniques that we used in watergate had their formation in this great newsroom at "the washington star" with this remarkable group of people. and the other thing i should say is it was an afternoon newspaper and the writing in the paper was magnificent. these were people who knew how to dictate stories on deadline, off the top of their heads. and i learned to do all these things when i was 16, 17, 18. >> it is about watergate. it is about the work that went into watergate that you learned at "the star." you put it politely, you were -- i can't say it -- you were a messup. i mean, you were, you know -- >> i was flunking out of school. i never finished college. and the book is partly about my struggle with school and how i really put everything into being a reporter, learning to be a reporter. the hell with school. i got the best education you could possibly get and when i went for an interview at "the washington post," i was asked, well, what about you didn't graduate from college? and i said, look, i got the greatest education you could have from the greatest teachers you could have at "the washington star" and i was hired at "the washington post". >> carl, thank you for taking us along for the ride, honestly. it is delightful. i learned so much. i can't wait to ask you much more about this, because there are so many great stories in this book. carl bernstein, author of "chasing history: a kid in the newsroom." he's still a kid when it comes to reporting in journalism. "new day" continues right now. all right, good morning to our viewers in the united states and all around the world. it is tuesday, january 11th. i'm john berman, with brianna keilar. and today the battle for voting rights is being taken directly to the voters. president biden and vice president harris speaking in atlanta this afternoon. cnn obtained a portion of what the president will say as democrats put forth two new voting rights bill