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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Capitol Hill; Wisconsin School Shooting Investigation. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired December 17, 2024 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:00]

JIM ACOSTA, CNN HOST: Here's RFK Jr., Trump's pick for HHS. He's going into a meeting with Senator James Lankford.

Pam, I mean, these are some very critical meetings for RFK Jr., for all the talk of Pete Hegseth, a lot of concerns about his views that he's voiced over the years about vaccines and so on.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Yes, that's right, not just from Democrats, but also from Republicans. They want to hear from him directly, because we know what he has said in his past about vaccines, making false claims, linking vaccines to autism.

There was a report in "The New York Times" that his lawyer tried to get the FDA to reverse approval of the polio vaccine.

ACOSTA: Yes.

BROWN: He just said yesterday he's all for the polio vaccine. But there's lots of valid questions that senators are going to be asking him, no doubt.

ACOSTA: Yes, I'm sure those hearings are going to be very contentious.

Take it away, Pam. Have a great show.

BROWN: All right, thanks, Jim. Appreciate it.

ACOSTA: Yes.

BROWN: This morning, we have some new details coming in about the deadly school shooting in Wisconsin, what we're learning about the victims and the shooter. We will also get reaction from a top Democrat, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, as calls grow once again for Congress to pass commonsense gun safety laws.

And happening right now, RFK Jr. is on Capitol Hill one day after president-elect Donald Trump expressed skepticism about vaccine mandates in schools. I will speak to the president of the National Association of School Nurses.

And, later, Argo is back. The explosives detection dog and his handler will join us as they gear up for a busy holiday season at a major airport.

Hello, everyone. I'm Pamela Brown in Washington, and you're in the CNN NEWSROOM.

And new this morning, the police chief in Madison, Wisconsin, tells CNN he is seeking federal help in identifying the source of a gun used in the nation's latest school shooting just days before Christmas break. A teenage student opened fire at a small K-12 Christian school in Madison.

A student and a teacher are dead. Six people were injured, including two students who are in critical condition this morning. Two others are stable. And adding to this horror, it was a second-grade student who had to make the call to 911. Police say the killer was a 15-year- old girl. She was a student at the school named Natalie Rupnow. She went by the name Samantha.

Police say she shot herself and died. Well, today, children and adults at the school have to wrestle with what they witnessed.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ADLER JEAN-CHARLES, SIXTH GRADER: We heard them, and then some people started crying. And then we just waited until the police came. And then they exported us out to the church.

I was scared. Why did they do that? Why?

NORA GOTTSCKALK, SECOND GRADER: I just heard shouting. And there was a teacher. And she was screaming like: "Ah, my leg. Help. Help."

QUESTION: Were you scared?

GOTTSCKALK: I was really scared and I was really sad.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: No child should ever have to go through that.

Joining us now is Kris Mohandie. He's a forensic psychologist and James Alan Fox, a professor of criminology at Northeastern University. He's also an author of "Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder."

James, I want to start with you. How surprised were you to learn that this killer was a 15-year-old girl?

JAMES ALAN FOX, CRIMINOLOGIST, NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY: Well, it is surprising that it's a girl.

There have been other school shootings with females, but it's extremely rare. As far as her age, most school shootings are committed by students. But I also have to point out that there's a lot of misinformation there, misleading information about the risk, about the rate of school shootings. These are exceptionally rare. I know that CNN is reporting there's

been 83 this year, but if you look through the cases, four of them occurred inside schools, the rest outside on the playground, on the ball field, not involving students.

And of the four that were inside school, three of them were active shooter events, claiming eight lives, four students. Now, that's out of 50 million school students in this country. So our schools are safe. Parents shouldn't feel in the wake of their shooting that their kids are in constant danger. They're not. This is a rare event, tragic, though, it is.

BROWN: You know, look, I take your point, and I think it's important to put that into the broader perspective. Most, the vast majority of kids in this country go to school every day and they're safe.

But I also think you don't see this in other countries, and there shouldn't be a tolerance for 83 school shootings, despite the circumstances, 83 school shootings in one year. There is no excuse for that. And it should be looked at and it should be delved into.

And you got to look at the warning signs too, because so often it's the family members that are the front lines of this, Kris. And you do have to wonder.This is an unusual case, as we heard, that it's typically boys. In this case, it was a girl.

[11:05:10]

Do you think the warning signs of a troubled 15-year-old girl could be easily overlooked as a potential school shooter?

KRIS MOHANDIE, FORENSIC PSYCHOLOGIST: I think that warning signs are often overlooked when we find that these events happen.

You know, about 75 percent or more of the time, there is leakage beforehand. That is the threats that they're making, the suicidal statements that are not reported in standard see something, say something campaigns.

But I do think that there would be a tendency to discount the fact that it might be coming from a female. Females don't do this. And the fact of the matter remains that what's more important are behavioral indicators, the fixations, the grievances, the weapons accessibility.

I know they're trying to chase down where that gun came from. Almost all the time, it's coming from the home itself that they live in, where the guns are not being safely kept. And it's a huge issue of firearms in our country and the ready accessibility of people that should not have them.

So firearms are the leading cause of death of our children. And there needs to be something done about it. But back to the point is that see something, say something campaigns work. And whether it's a female or a male, a 10-year-old or an 18-year-old, those kinds of warning signs need to be reported to people that take them seriously, investigate and do threat assessment, righteous threat assessment, to determine whether there really is cause for concern.

BROWN: But, Kris, just to follow up with you, I mean, look, there are more guns than people in this country. And it seems like a lot of law enforcement officials at this point are like, look, the guns are just going to be out there. There's nothing we're going to be able to do about the numbers, right? They're out there. They're in this country. They're circulating.

The bottom line is, the best way to prevent these shootings is to just look for the warning signs and try to make sure that someone who is at risk of doing something like this doesn't have access to those guns.

So, again, just walk us through what that checklist should look like for people watching the show today. What should the red flags be?

MOHANDIE: It's usually not subtle. It's usually the person will be making threats, ominous statements. You will see, tomorrow, I'm going to come shoot up the school or they will talk about Columbine. There's a lot of references to other shooters sometimes.

They may be talking about their love of guns. They may be talking about how they want to hurt themselves and others. It's usually very straightforward with the kinds of ominous statements that students will make. And it's not just what they will be saying to other people on campus, other students, but it's also what they're posting on their social media that needs to get-- gets-- to be attended to and reported as well.

And I want to underscore point that Dr. Fox talked about earlier is that there are three types of offenders that pose a potential risk to a campus. One are outsiders that show up and do things. And we may not get as much warning sign about that kind of a person. Community-based warning signs, we might see.

The second are employment-related offenders. Those are people that might be current or former employees or somebody that's in a relationship with one where D.V. is spilling on to the campus. And then the third type would be students and former students.

So it's important to recognize that, if you have got a threat management, program, it needs to include looking at all those three potential threat sources and devising as a school, as a community, as law enforcement methods to intervene and interrupt those unfolding violence pathways, right?

BROWN: Right, because I think it's important to emphasize in most cases, they don't just snap.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Go ahead, Dr. Fox.

FOX: And, in fact, we have far more averted school shootings than we have school shootings. And, indeed, these warning signs should be heeded. But let me-- and I do support every effort to try to improve gun

safety and counseling of students. But let me just to be clear about this statistic, that the overwhelming majority of those numbers are at school-- on school property. They're at nighttime involving adults.

They don't have anything to do with the school. That's all I'm trying to say, that schools are safe. These episodes do happen. We should be aware of the warning signs, but let's also not scare Americans and parents and students by talking about these large numbers of cases that really have no relevance to school.

So, when we people hear 83 school shootings, they want more school resource officers. They want more armed guards. They want more lockdown drills. The overwhelming majority, over 90 percent of those cases have no relevance to what goes on inside the school.

[11:10:00]

Schools are safe. At school, kids have supervision. They have monitoring. They have structure. In fact, for some kids, schools are safest place for them to be.

BROWN: Yes.

FOX: So we take these cases seriously, but let's also not think that this situation is out of control. It's not.

We actually had more school shootings...

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: There is the risk of availability bias. There is always the risk of availability bias, and it's important to talk about the statistics in the larger context.

But, look, when you look at the numbers-- and I take your point. I just want to be specific with our viewers. This is what-- CNN's numbers. Of the 83 school shootings this year, 56 shootings have been reported on K-12 campuses, and 27 on university and college campuses.

And I know your point, you're saying, some of these, the schools weren't actually the target. But you did talk about that there were some that have been averted, right, that some school shootings have-- they have been able to stop them before they happened.

You're on the record also for being skeptical of the value of school drills for shootings, right? After the school shooting in Georgia back in September, you wrote this in "The Dallas Morning News": "Do students really need to practice over and over again how to sit quietly in a corner of their classroom?"

You continued: "In the process of trying to protect them through tight security and lockdown drills, we send the message that the bad guy is out to get them, that there is a target on their backs."

James, I will say, a school official in this case credits those drills IN how her students responded yesterday. Do you still feel the potential trauma of those drills on young students is too much?

FOX: I do, and the evidence shows that kids are traumatized by them.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have them, but some schools have extremely aggressive drills, involving fake guns and fake blood and someone running around screaming and shouting at the students. We should low- key it. The faculty should be trained, along with the police.

The students, for the most part, should listen up if something bad happens. We should take a lesson from the airlines. No one pays attention when they're given the instructions at the beginning of the flight, but we don't have drills on flights. We just know that the crew has been trained and we will listen up.

So let's have low-key trainings. Kids can be told what to do. They can be tested on what to do, but having kids repeatedly sit in the corner quietly, it doesn't take a lot to learn that.

BROWN: All right, James Alan Fox, Kris Mohandie...

MOHANDIE: I agree with Dr. Fox. I think you have to avoid anything that's going to traumatize them. We call those cue-based drills, where they just learned to follow cues.

BROWN: Yes.

MOHANDIE: Because you can't do the same thing every time anyway, because offenders will study that and use that as the basis for their attack.

BROWN: Right.

MOHANDIE: So you have to be thoughtful, as Dr. Fox is saying.

BROWN: All right, look, as a mom of young kids, I agree with that. You don't want to scare them and cause trauma.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Quickly, go ahead. We're running out of time. Go ahead.

FOX: Sure.

We have tended to normalize this event. By constantly obsessing over it and having kids go through these drills, we're telling kids, reminding kids, you don't like teachers. You don't like the classmates. What do you do? Take a gun to school. We need to deal with it prevent in terms of prevention.

But let's not overstate the risk, because it actually can backfire.

BROWN: All right, James Alan Fox, Kris Mohandie, thank you.

Still ahead this hour: My next guest is imploring President Biden in his final days in office to ratify a 28th Amendment to the Constitution that she believes could bolster reproductive rights for women.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand joins me next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:18:03]

BROWN: Happening now, RFK Jr. is back on Capitol Hill. He's there to convince lawmakers he is the right guy to lead the Health and Human Services agency, despite his outspoken criticism of lifesaving vaccines. That could be a major obstacle to his confirmation.

Just last week, 75 Nobel laureate signed a letter asking the Senate not to confirm him, citing his opposition to vaccines. Now, yesterday, he sought to provide reassurance on at least one vaccine, saying, "I'm all for the polio vaccine," after a "New York Times" report said his lawyer tried to get the FDA to reverse approval of it.

President-elect Trump, for his part, appears to be trying to downplay concerns about his pick, saying RFK Jr. won't be as radical as people think, but he also added this:

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Do you think schools should mandate vaccines?

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (R) AND CURRENT U.S. PRESIDENT-ELECT: I don't like mandates. I'm not a big mandate person. So I was against mandates. Mostly Democrat governors did the mandates and they did a very poor thing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: Trump has previously pledged to cut funding to schools with vaccine requirements.

And joining us now to discuss is Kate King, the president of the National Association of School Nurses.

Kate, thanks for coming on.

So all 50 states currently require certain vaccines for students to attend school, and, of course, there are exemptions for certain reasons. But why are those requirements important, in your view, and what would it mean if that mandate was taken away?

KATE KING, PRESIDENT, NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF SCHOOL NURSES: Vaccine requirements in states provide the opportunity for all children to have the opportunity to get vaccines, in terms of cost, in funding for those vaccines.

And also we know through data and research that states that require vaccines through mandates have an increased rate of vaccine response. What that does is create an umbrella of protection. We know that the more people who are immunized in a population, the more likely it is to prevent those diseases from happening. [11:20:09]

So we really need to make sure that what we call an epidemiology herd immunity is reached, so that everyone is protected from those diseases.

BROWN: And looking at the CDC data, there is a record share of U.S. kindergartners that had an exemption for required vaccinations last school year.

And we have continued to see these declines in vaccination rates for diseases like measles and polio. How concerned are you by this?

KING: As the organization of the National Association of School Nurses and as a school nurse myself in Columbus, Ohio, I am concerned about the decrease in vaccine rates.

We have seen outbreaks of measles with unvaccinated children and adults increasing across the United States. And measles can be very dangerous. The disease itself is very difficult, but also can cause disability or even death.

What school nurses do is provide that information for parents who have what we call vaccine hesitancy. They may have misinformation about vaccines. They may have not heard all the benefits of vaccines or maybe are very fearful of side effects of vaccines.

So, Gallup polls show that nurses are the most trusted profession. And school nurses are no exception. Parents trust schools and school nurses to provide health care in schools and provide vaccines. We, for example, facilitate school-located vaccine clinics.

But school nurses shoulder a great deal of the work in informing parents, helping parents understand what vaccines do, the efficacy, the risks, and the safety of them. And when we do that, then parents can make an informed choice about vaccines, rather than depending on social media or maybe other sources that are not scientists.

BROWN: There is no question vaccines have saved millions of lives, but it's also worth discussing how many vaccines have been added to the schedule over the last few decades.

I mean, now kids in the U.S. receive as many as 27 shots by the age of 2. I mean, my baby is supposed to get five shots at one appointment when he turns 1 years old. In the '80s, kids received only five shots by age 2 and no more than one shot a visit. This is according to analysis by the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Help us understand why so many more shots are administered now.

KING: We have seen that the science in developing vaccines has greatly improved. And we have also seen that diseases have increased in terms of those other vaccines.

Certainly, not all of the vaccines that you're speaking of are mandated or required by schools. We pretty much hit the big ones. But when-- as a parent myself-- my children are grown, but as a parent, my-- and as a school nurse, my view is if I can prevent my child from becoming ill and having a sequelae effect of that illness that might be detrimental or might cause death, I want to do that for my child.

I want to protect my child as much as possible. So, as vaccines have developed and as the vaccines for these other diseases have come about, we have seen an increase in the number of vaccines, just as we have seen an increase in the number of medications, the number of chemo drugs for cancer.

(CROSSTALK)

BROWN: Let me just quickly ask, I don't mean to interrupt, but I really want to get this question in, because we do have to go soon. But what do you think about spacing out vaccines?

I hear from some parents that they're choosing to go that route, that they're all for vaccines, but they want to space it out because they just don't like the idea of their baby getting so many shots in one visit.

KING: Well, certainly, that's a conversation that parents should have with their vaccine provider, their pediatrician or their local health department.

However, the Advisory Council on Immunization Protection has thoroughly vetted the Schedule For those vaccines. They look at the evidence, the science, the efficacy in terms of creating that recommended schedule for children.

The other thing is that-- making sure that children come back and get those vaccines if their spacing is different. Oftentimes, when we space vaccines farther apart, they're not getting the protection they need at the age that they need it.

So that spacing, again, is science-based, very evidence-based, and really makes sure that children have the correct protection at the correct time.

[11:25:03]

BROWN: All right, Kate King, thank you so much for giving us that perspective. We appreciate it, and talking about the science and the data backing up the efficacy and safety of these vaccines. We appreciate it so much.

And coming up: Another school shooting in the United States has left a community reeling. I will get reaction from a top Democrat, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. She will join us live.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BROWN: Another school shooting in the United States has left a community in mourning.

Police are still searching for a motive after a 15-year-old girl opened fire at Abundant Life Christian School in Wisconsin. A student and teacher were killed, six others wounded. The shooter then turned the gun on herself. Officials say it's not clear how she got the firearm.