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CNN Live Event/Special

Joe Biden Speaks Out on Election, COVID-19; Vote Counting Continues; Biden on Brink of Victory?. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired November 05, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:02]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: We're also watching all the major undecided battlegrounds, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada. They're holding the keys to winning 270 electoral votes.

Biden is almost, almost there with 253. Trump has a steep uphill fight with 230.

Let's get another key race alert. And let's do it in Pennsylvania right now. There's 20, 20 electoral votes at stake in Pennsylvania, must-win, absolute must-win for Trump. If Biden wins Pennsylvania, it's game, set and match, he's the next president of the United States.

Right now. Trump is ahead by 106,000, almost 107,000 votes over Biden, 50.2 percent, 48.5 percent. But there are several hundred thousand votes still outstanding right now; 92 percent of the estimated vote is in right now.

Let's talk about Pennsylvania. We know it's so important. If Biden wins, it's over. He wins the presidency. But Trump must win Pennsylvania. Otherwise, there's no way he can win.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, let's start here. And then we can break down the vote, because you're getting at the big picture.

And today could be, could be the decisive day. We will hear from the secretary of state next hour. One of the things she will do is update us on the vote total. The other thing, there's a lot of pushback in the Trump campaign challenging this and challenging that. We will see how that plays out.

But we do the math right now, as you noted, Joe Biden at 253 this hour, President Trump at 213. That would do it. That would do it. Joe Biden thinks he can come back and get Georgia. Joe Biden leads in Arizona. Joe Biden leads in Nevada. That would be gravy, if he can hold the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Now, he's traveling right now. But the president's lead has been shrinking every time we get votes. And we know the outstanding votes, many of them, most of them are in blue-collar -- blue counties, suburban -- first urban Philadelphia, then the suburbs around it. This is why this is so important, because if Biden can do this, and if

Biden can hold here and hold here, not only is he winning, he's in the ballpark of 300 electoral votes. There is a chance, the Biden campaign believes, that he can get here. That's 306.

That was Donald Trump's total in the Electoral College four years ago. Biden thinks he can get there and match it. The rest of this looks to be out of reach, North Carolina, Alaska and Maine's 2nd Congressional district. But this is the Biden campaign best-case scenario right now in their world.

Doesn't mean it's a guarantee. We're still counting votes here, here, Arizona and Nevada still counting. But when you come out -- but here's the challenge, Wolf. If you come back to this map here, if you take -- if -- President Trump must, must win Pennsylvania, must win Georgia, must hold North Carolina. That would get him in place.

And then he could get there. Even -- that would get him knocking on the door. You see that. So, President Trump, if he wins Pennsylvania and Georgia, he has a couple of different paths, but he must win the two of those. And, right now, his leads are shrinking every time we count the votes.

So, when you're looking at this right now, we're not at the finish line. But Joe Biden is knocking on the door, and he has many more options.

When you come over here -- you have a question.

BLITZER: No, I just want to check in with Kate Bolduan in Philadelphia for us. She's getting some information.

What are you seeing over there, Kate?

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN HOST: Hey there, Wolf.

With all eyes on this largest county in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia has updated its total of mail-in ballots counted. So, the latest number that we have just received, the updated number, is the number of outstanding mail-in ballots still out there left to be counted, is their estimate is between 85,000 and 90,000.

It's a significant numbers still. For perspective, a little context, they started the day with 140,000 mail-in ballots outstanding to be counted. They're now, they estimate, between 85,000 and 90,000. So they are cutting into that number. But it's still a significant one.

I'm also told by a source involved with the canvassing that they're estimating now, Wolf, that they will, in total, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday combined, have a total of 1,000 of those ballots that needs to be segregated, those mail-in ballots that came in after the Election Day deadline that they -- that are obviously contested.

Those segregated ballots, Philadelphia believes they will have 1,000 total. And those have not yet been counted, the ones that they have received in -- Wolf. BLITZER: So, Kate, just to be precise, are we talking -- when you say

85,000 to 90,000 ballots uncounted, is that in the city of Philadelphia or the county of Philadelphia?

Well, it's in the city of Philadelphia.

BOLDUAN: This is the county of Philadelphia. That's where all of this counting is going on.

Yes, this is -- that -- all of that is happening in this Convention Center beside me. That's that cavernous space where they're doing all of this counting. That is the total for the count. The county commissioners run this site. That is the county of Philadelphia. They have 85 and -- between 85,000 and 90,000 mail-in ballots still outstanding, have not yet been counted.

BLITZER: All right, thanks very much, Kate Bolduan in Philadelphia for us.

Eighty-five thousand to 90,000 votes, he's behind by, what, a little bit more than 100,000 votes. And if he's getting 80 percent in Philadelphia County right now, that's a pretty impressive number.

[16:05:05]

KING: And the lead just went down a little bit more. It's 101,000 right now. The lead has been shrinking, yes.

And so, as we come back into Philadelphia, if you come back and just try -- as I turn and look, this is where we are in this race now. They're beginning to report them, so, 97,900, right, 97,900. Let me clear this and bring Philadelphia back up.

The locals sometimes do get a little annoyed with us. Philadelphia County is the Census Bureau designation. That's how the wall operates. They just call it Philadelphia. It's their city.

Look, Kate says 85,000 more votes. So think about that, right? If you got around 85,000 more votes in Philadelphia, Joe Biden's getting 80 percent in the public count already. In the mail-in ballots, he's actually been running around there in Philadelphia. So, imagine if he gets 80 percent of those 85,000 votes, right? Just there, if he's in that ballpark, 97,000 right there, that would cut substantially into adjust from Philadelphia, just from Philadelphia.

And we know we have other votes outstanding. Places like Montgomery County, they're close to being done here. Bucks County, we talked to our correspondent there earlier. You see them at 91 percent.

Now, you look at that and you say, oh, Joe Biden's getting 50 to 48. If they split them, President Trump, the lead might shrink, but he would probably keep it. But we do know, in the mail-in ballots, Joe Biden has been disproportionately winning.

Mail-in ballot was the preferred strategy of Democrats, the preferred way of voting from Democrats. So we have seen that across the country, but especially in the last 24 hours or so, as they have counted the mail-in ballots in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Kate makes an interesting point about those separated ballots. This is an arcane issue if you're watching from somewhere outside of Pennsylvania, and you haven't followed this. There's going to be a fight over this. Local officials are trying to say, because of the pandemic, we want to count some ballots that come in, as long as they're postmarked, that come a little in a little bit after the election, and Pennsylvania Republicans in the Trump campaign are saying no way.

So there could be another court fight over some ballots, which, if this ends up being -- if Biden wins by a very narrow margin, this one's going to be in court for a while, without a doubt.

But, as you watch it play out, let's just check a few more here, Chester County up to 95 percent. Touched on this one, Montgomery County, up to 95 percent. So you're waiting for Philadelphia, those 87,000 votes there, 85,000 votes or so there. And then you come out here. And this could be what keeps us waiting, Allegheny County, there's also, ballpark, 30,000, 35,000 ballots to be counted here.

And there's a court challenge over some of those. And the officials have said it most likely won't happen until tomorrow. But we are starting to see in these other counties the numbers move.

And one of the things, this is a little bit deceptive, in the sense that in these -- in the Pennsylvania, all this red, the president runs very strong in the rural counties of Pennsylvania. You pop one up here at 74 percent. You pop one up here at 73 percent. You just keep going.

The president runs incredibly strong. Cambria County is one of the places where the president runs up the numbers here. Senator Casey was talking about that earlier. He runs it up, and you see the numbers here. But, again, in the mail-in ballots, Joe Biden has been doing well even in these red Trump counties.

So, as those counties report their votes, it's a couple hundred here, it might be 1,000 there. Joe Biden, in many of these counties, is picking up votes on that lead the president has. Another place we're watching is here in Erie County. You're from Buffalo, New York. You know Erie County, Pennsylvania, very well.

It's 49 percent, 50, if you round up, to 49, for the president, but there's still 10 percent of the vote to be counted. This is one of these battleground counties, blue-collar counties that the Democrats want to turn. 2016, the president carried just barely. If you go back to 2012, President Obama carried this county twice.

Joe Biden, from Scranton, Pennsylvania, that's where he was born, made a point of trying to fight for Erie. He's trying to president himself as a blue-collar alternative to President Trump. So we will watch this one as they play it out. But there are more ballots here when you're at 10 percent.

And it's not a huge population center, but it's a decent sized population center. Erie County, bigger, more ballots still to come in than many of these smaller counties in rural Pennsylvania.

So, Wolf, we're going to have to wait. And, as we wait, the key is, right there, you will get a little bit more perhaps out of there, but mainly here, 86 percent in, in the city of Philadelphia, 85,000 or so to go.

BLITZER: All right, let's check in with Pamela Brown. She's getting some information about Pennsylvania as well.

What are you picking up, Pamela?

PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we just heard John talk about Erie County. And that margin is getting tighter and tighter.

I'm talking about President Trump's margin there in Erie County. He has 64,089 vs. 63,547 for Joe Biden. And here's why this matters. You're looking at the map right here. Erie was one of three counties that President Trump flipped in 2016. This is a county he thought he didn't have to worry about this election.

But then COVID hit, and he went back. He came, campaigned there in Erie in late October, and he even admitted to the crowd: I didn't think I had to come back here, honestly, but then, as he called, the plague, COVID, hit, and here I am. I need your vote.

But with this trend we're seeing, they have some outstanding ballots that they say that they are going to be counting tonight. And what we are told, John King and Wolf, is that they expect to be finished counting tonight. They're all mail-in ballots remaining. And those ballots have been 4-1 for Joe Biden.

BLITZER: Interesting, indeed.

[16:10:01]

John, and, as Pamela points out, those mail-in ballots are skewing big time in favor of the Democrats.

KING: Right.

And that's as I said. So, sometimes, when you pull out the map, you look at Pennsylvania. If you don't understand, you would look at this and say, oh, the president's going to win this state huge. Look at all that red.

These are just much smaller rural counties. And that is a place where the president amps it up, to his credit. Again, this is the place where we saw the president, one of his rallies at the end of the campaign here in Butler County. And look what he does. This is this is how he -- this is how he offsets Democratic advantage in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia and the suburbs by running it up in these counties.

But even in places like this, where the president gets very high vote totals, the Democrats who live there, many of them voted by mail. So, as Pam just noted, in Erie County up here, you look at it on the map, and it's red, so you would think there are still outstanding ballots, you would look at this and think, oh, they're going to roughly split them.

They're roughly splitting the vote, they will roughly split the outstanding ballots. In a normal election, you sometimes see it that way, because if people are voting general absentee. This is not a normal election.

A lot of Democrats decided, I'm not going to get in line on Election Day. I'm not going to get in line to vote early. I'm going to vote by mail. And we're seeing just a lopsided advantage for Joe Biden.

Republicans chose, most of them, to vote on Election Day or to vote early, to get in line. Those ballots have largely been counted. What these counties are counting now, the ballots that came in the mail from the Postal Service or in drop boxes. And, overwhelmingly -- Pam just told us 4-1 one in Erie County.

And we have seen that pretty consistently, even in these Trump counties across the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and other states. The same thing is happening in Georgia as we speak. And as they count those mail-in ballots, the president's lead is shrinking, now under 100,000 in Pennsylvania.

If I have a second, Wolf, I just want to go back just to understand the drama of this, the drama of this. This is Pennsylvania. Look at where we were. Look at where we were as Tuesday, election night, gave way to Wednesday. That's midnight.

The president was up by more than a half-million votes. He stretched it out even a little bit more, 435,000. It started to drop Wednesday afternoon. Then it dropped by Wednesday night. By last night, we started to see this trend happening. But it has continued.

Every time they have added more ballots, the presidency has gone down. There we are in real time, now under 100,000. So, again, doesn't mean you can't stop that trajectory. But, in the Biden campaign, they think this is a snowball going down the hill, and as they count more of these ballots, they're going to keep picking them up as they go.

In the Trump campaign, they hope these red counties bail them out. But you can understand, you can understand the anxiety in the Trump campaign. You're hearing a lot of people say -- the Trump campaign, I think, three days in a row has been in Philadelphia crying foul.

Again, my advice to everybody, Trump supporter or Biden supporter, don't pay attention so much to what they say in a news conference. See if they actually go to court and try to prove anything. But you see the circles here. These are your population centers, and you see overwhelmingly the population of Pennsylvania, in terms of voting, is down here.

Philadelphia and the suburbs generate a ton of votes. Pittsburgh, suburbs around it more, these other circles, you see the red circles. This is where the president, he does run it up. He does run it up. This is a good state for President Trump. We looked earlier. He's not underperforming anywhere compared to 2016.

It's just there's higher turnout. Democratic turnout is up. Republican turnout is up. That's why Joe Biden is in play as we come into the final hours of the campaign in Pennsylvania.

And, again, I keep looking up there just to see. Sometimes, this is a rolling target, 97,900 votes, within reach for Joe Biden. He needs to execute as the rest of these ballots get counted.

BLITZER: When you and I spoke to Senator Bob Casey, the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, a little while ago, he pointed out, what, there are still some 370,000 ballots that have not yet been counted in Pennsylvania.

And if you look at the 370, you think most of them are mail-in ballots that skew in favor of the Democrats. Potentially, Biden can narrow that 97,000-point lead that Trump has significantly, if not overtake him.

KING: Yes, he can.

And, remember, Senator Casey, his dad was governor. The Casey family knows the state quite well. And the point he was making is, when you come into counties like Luzerne -- again, you see the president is winning there, but Democrats voted by mail.

So this is the thing. This is what you can't see when you look at the map. The map tells you a lot. What we can't see is these mail-in ballots. And so he's talking about counties like this where, again, the president's getting 67 percent of the vote, but in the mail-in ballots, maybe there's only 50, 60, maybe there's a couple hundred. They are coming in predominantly for the Democrats even in the red counties.

That was the point Senator Casey was making, including one place to watch when we get finally done is out here. This is a place -- look at the numbers -- larger county to the east of Pittsburgh. This is part of the Trump base in Pennsylvania, Westmoreland County. It's where the president tried to make the fracking argument for example.

You see 64 to 35. But, again, even there, what we are told by local officials is, the mail-in ballots, those left to be counted are predominantly for Joe Biden, because that's how Democrats decided to vote to be safe. Republicans -- it's also tradition. Even before COVID, Republicans have more of a tradition of voting on Election Day, and that was exacerbated this year because of all the mail-in balloting.

BLITZER: I want to check in with Jeff Zeleny, who's covering the Biden campaign for us.

I take it we're going to be hearing fairly soon from the former Vice president, who's been in briefings on coronavirus and other policy issues so far today? Is that right?

[16:15:06] JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: We are indeed, Wolf.

I'm being told, at any moment now, we are going to hear from the former vice president about really what he's been up to the last couple hours. And he has been receiving briefings on coronavirus.

As, of course, this campaign has been unfolding, the coronavirus numbers have been going up across the country. So, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have been receiving briefings on that, as well as the economy, here in Wilmington, going forward with their daily briefings, even as they are keeping a close eye, their advisers are keeping an eye on what is happening in Georgia, in Pennsylvania in particular.

So I am told by advisers that the comments from Joe Biden are going to be similar to what we heard him say yesterday. He wants every vote to be counted. He's going to be talking about democracy. He's not going to declare victory at all, but he will be projecting optimism.

But, again, Wolf, here, the point is clear. They're trying to show that he is already at work. He's being briefed on the challenges ahead should he get the job, a stark contrast, of course. We have not seen the president really in almost 48 hours here, not talk from the White House about the daily challenges that are undergoing at this time.

Wolf, I should also point out the stage behind me here that you have been seeing in the backdrop, really, it's been quiet for a couple days. There's been some activity in the last several minutes here, doing some sound checks, getting ready for something possible, I'm told.

The former vice president is not going to speak here. He's going to be speaking in downtown Wilmington, but they're getting the stage ready in case they need it at some point. But, Wolf, that would likely only happen if this race is called. And that has not yet happened, many votes still being counted -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Absolutely true.

All right, Jeff, we will stay in close touch with you.

John, we're going to hear from Biden. He's been getting a briefing on coronavirus. Just want to point out, yesterday was a record high number of new confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States, more than 100,000, and more than 1,000 Americans died yesterday from coronavirus.

These are awful, awful numbers that we're seeing here in the United States.

KING: They are awful numbers. And I don't even know if we still have this loaded. I'm going to see if we do just to show it out if I can find it in the map here. Let's see. Here we go. Let's bring this up.

We judge our presidential elections in red and blue. This is something when we're not doing our election coverage. And our election coverage has taken us away from the pain of this pandemic for a couple of days.

This is the coronavirus across America. We will know maybe by the end of today, maybe it'll take until tomorrow, about who will be the next president, who will inherit this in January. Will it stay in President Trump's hands, or it will Joe Biden pick it up?

The deeper the red is the higher the case count. You see confirmed cases per 100,000 residents. Let's just -- it's stunning. These are numbing. You go through them every day and you go through the counties. And it is numbing.

And, as you note, another record yesterday. I looked earlier. We were well above 50,000 new infections today already. So the possibility to go over 100,000 again today or at least back into that ballpark, record territory. You're adding 100,000 new infections a day. We're in the middle of this fall peak.

It was the defining issue in the campaign. And one of the big questions here is, if Joe Biden wins the presidency, Donald Trump is still president for three more months as this plays out. If Donald Trump wins the presidency, obviously, he has four more years.

But just Joe Biden has received these daily briefings throughout the campaign. And this will anger the Trump supporters. It's just a simple fact. The president has not himself attended a Coronavirus Task Force meeting in months.

The president doesn't even meet with the experts anymore. The United States is setting record new infections every day this week, just about, and the president of the United States was out on the campaign trail. Somebody's going to have to take charge of this.

Our attention is focused on who's going to win the presidency right now. The president said during the campaign, this is going to go away, we're going to stop talking about this. No, we're not. No, we're not. We can't, because it's not just here too.

People are watching around the world. They are dealing with the same thing, especially across Europe right now. This is a problem and a crisis for the American president, whoever that is.

BLITZER: More than 100,000 cases, hospitalizations going up. And at least 1,000 Americans are dying almost every day right now -- Anderson, back to you.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Well, thanks very much.

David Axelrod, we are waiting to hear from Vice President Biden. What do you -- we heard from Jeff Zeleny, saying that he's going to be sort of projecting confidence, not declaring victory at this point, but ready for the challenges if he does win.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, what a contrast between these two candidates at this moment in this process.

You have got the president, who seems cloistered in the White House, and they're firing off lawsuits and threats of lawsuits, and -- but we haven't really heard from him, other than through Twitter. And you have Vice President Biden, who is clearly projecting confidence and a sense of transition, a sense that this is going to come to an end and we are ready to move forward.

And it is a smart thing to do to be out there, to be reassuring people and to be sending signals of confidence that this process is about to come to an end.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: I think also to stability, to say that you may think that there's chaos, demonstrations, whatever, but I am -- I represent stability here, peaceful transfer of power, should it come to that.

[16:20:10]

And I'm going to be working for you with my briefings not only on COVID today, but on the economy, which he does regularly anyway. But I think they want to make sure the public knows that.

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.

Look, I'm excited to hear from him, actually. It's -- the weight of the office, as it's being -- it's coming to him. It's not there. He could still -- we could still have some surprise ending. It's 2020. Anything can happen. Anything can happen at in 2020.

(LAUGHTER)

JONES: But I just want -- I want to see how it lands on him.

When he was a kid senator, people said, you're going to be president, you're going to be president. And it looked like it was never, ever going to happen for him. And he went through personal tragedy after personal tragedy, showed up for the country over and over again.

And here, in the twilight years, you would imagine, he gets this massive responsibility, and it's got to be hitting him.

Well, I want to see how it sounds to him.

AXELROD: Yes.

COOPER: David, you had mentioned something about...

AXELROD: Yes, the night that Barack Obama got elected president, I have such a clear recollection of going over to see him. And we had been friends for a long time since he was a returning law student from Harvard coming back to Chicago.

Oh, here we go.

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Senator Harris and I just completed briefings on both COVID and the economic crisis facing this nation. And we were reminded, again, the severity of this pandemic. Cases are

on the rise nationwide, and we're nearing 240,000 deaths due to the COVID. And our hearts go out to each and every family that has lost a loved one to this terrible disease.

In America the vote is sacred. It's how people of this nation express their will. And it is the will of the voters, no one, not anything else, that chooses the president of the United States of America.

So, each ballot must be counted. And that's what we're going to see going through now. And that's how it should be. Democracy is sometimes messy. It sometimes requires a little patience as well. But that patience has been rewarded now for more than 240 years with a system of governance that's been the envy of the world.

We continue to feel, the senator and I, we continue to feel very good about where things stand. We have no doubt that, when the count is finished, Senator Harris and I will be declared the winners.

So, I ask everyone to stay calm, all the people to stay calm. The process is working. The count is being completed. And we will know very soon.

So, thank you all for your patience. But we have to count the votes.

God bless you all. And may God protect our troops. Thank you so much.

COOPER: Very short from Vice President Biden.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, the notion that he was saying, I ask everyone to stay calm...

COOPER: Yes.

BORGER: ... really makes it clear that he understands what is occurring and what could occur after any result is announced.

And I think that that is the message you're going to hear from him time and time again, saying: The process is working. Just let it work. It's messy. And please stay calm.

COOPER: It's also interesting, because he's not -- I mean, he made it clear to not assume that he has won, without even -- I mean, he could have not declared that he's the winner, but kind of acted as if he had one.

AXELROD: Yes.

COOPER: He chose not to do that. I was thinking about, if he had done that, President Trump watching, what the reaction would have been.

This was sort of a much more pulled-back statement.

AXELROD: I think it sends a message when you start off by saying, we had a briefing this morning about COVID, and you address COVID. And it's almost a kind of quasi-presidential statement. And I think the unspoken message was, we are -- we know where this is

going. We're prepared. We're -- I'm ready. So he doesn't have to.

I think the body language, the nature of his statement says, we're going through this, we know where it's going, and we're ready to take off.

Now, we will find out if -- but, I mean, increasingly, it looks like he -- that responsibility is going to fall to him.

JONES: His acknowledgement of the -- when he said that, 240,000, I mean, I -- something about him saying that it really hit me.

I think we know -- the numbers have become numbing. But when they come out of Joe Biden's mouth, they don't feel numbing; 3,000 people died on 9/11, and we deal with that every year, as we well should. We get a couple 9/11s a week at this point.

And when he said that 240,000, you can just tell this is going to be a different kind of president, if he gets there.

AXELROD: You -- but you -- your point -- I was saying before about Obama, he -- this was an incredible day when he won in 2009 -- '8.

[16:25:08]

It was a historic moment. There was a lot of jubilation. But when we went to see him, the thing that struck me was, he was not filled -- he was happy, obviously. But you could see etched in his face, you could see the sort of weight of the office, and the realization that this is all mine now.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: This is when he first found out, when he first realized...

AXELROD: Yes, it was literally when the race was declared. Ten minutes later, a few of us went over to see him with his family.

And I never saw that weight lift off his shoulders in the eight years that he was president. I never sent -- it was always there, a constant companion, I have this responsibility.

BORGER: Did you see that in the seriousness with Biden today, in a way, coming out of this briefing, learning with a new number on the increasing number of deaths, the depths of the economic crisis?

Obviously, he's known about it.

AXELROD: Right.

BORGER: But did you see that, in a sense, that he kept it short, and he moved on?

AXELROD: Yes. I used to joke that -- not joke. I used -- it wasn't a joke at all.

I'd say that Obama had the worst set of circumstances since Roosevelt. He is going to be -- Biden will surpass that. The situation he's inheriting is graver than the one that Barack Obama faced.

And he is a serious person. He is a student of this. And he -- I'm sure, I'm sure that the gravity of the situation that he may well now walk into is with him.

BORGER: Because he was there.

AXELROD: Yes, he was there. He was there with us in the first...

BORGER: He was there when you got the bad news.

AXELROD: He knows.

BORGER: And now here he is looking at that all over again, potentially.

AXELROD: Exactly. Exactly.

COOPER: Rick, what did you make of it?

RICK SANTORUM, CNN COMMENTATOR: I thought it was the right tone. He's -- he clearly is very confident that they're going to win. And it's not a bravado. He feels very confident is going to win. I mean, I think he's been -- his people have convinced him that the numbers are there for him to win.

And so he is assuming the role. And, as far as I'm concerned, I mean, he didn't say anything. I'm just looking at from the standpoint of -- as a conservative, of someone who's been in the fight. I mean, there was nothing there that was a poke in the eye or that stirred the pot a little bit.

I think his call for calm was a call for calm generally, not like saying you people who aren't -- he was just saying, look, just let the process work. I thought it was...

COOPER: I have been told that CNN is reporting that some people around the president are concerned that seeing Vice President Biden speak, that the president is going to want to come out and speak.

JONES: And echo the message of calm. No.

(LAUGHTER)

COOPER: The president wanted to speak. I didn't -- they didn't characterize...

BORGER: Let's get...

(CROSSTALK)

SANTORUM: There was -- yes, I don't -- there was nothing there that pokes the president, and not that the president doesn't have every right to go out and say something. I think it's appropriate for the president, if he wanted to say something today, to say something.

But I don't think there was any intent...

COOPER: No, certainly.

SANTORUM: ... to poke the president or prod him to say something.

Look, the campaign's over. I mean, there's -- the decision is made. We have to figure out what that decision is. And so I give credit, frankly, to both sides, because I think the president, you can say, well, he's tweeting everything. Yes, he is.

But he's -- for Donald Trump, he's been fairly restrained. And I think that's appropriate on both sides.

COOPER: Van, and then we got to go.

JONES: I do think that you have the eyes of the world on these TV cameras, the eyes of the world on these devices.

I mean, literally, you got billions of people around the world. So I think leaving a vacuum out there isn't good, because what's happening in the vacuum you have disinformation and bunch of hysteria going on. And, frankly, the president is not helping.

So I do think that having Biden come out and give that comment that's being now shared around the world, that's medicine. That's medicine that we need right now.

COOPER: Let's go back to Jake, Dana, and Abby -- Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: All right, thanks so much.

And it is very different to see what we're hearing, see what we're seeing from Joe Biden, calming the temperature, saying everything's going to work out, just let the system work, and the opposite from, not President Trump, who they have kept safely ensconced in a sack in the basement of the White House.

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: So far.

TAPPER: So far.

But there are conservative activists out there who are just alleging all sorts of -- they're just lying. I mean, let's just put it bluntly. They're just out there lying.

BASH: And I'm just pulling up, because I took notes on what the former vice president said.

He said, democracy is sometimes messy and requires patience. Obviously, the latter is true. We all are experiencing that right now, the need for patience.

But I don't actually think that this is that messy.

TAPPER: Nope.

BASH: It's remarkable in how unmessy and how clean this process is, considering the fact that we are talking about millions of votes, well, tens of millions of votes, obviously, hundreds of millions total.

[16:30:00]