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Trump's Path Dwindles; Biden on Brik of Election; Trump has No Plans to Concede; Biden Takes Lead in Pennsylvania. Aired 8:30-9a ET

Aired November 06, 2020 - 08:30   ET

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

[08:30:00]

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: High 60s or 70s or even, in Philadelphia, he's been getting over 80 percent of the vote as they count these mail-in ballots, then -- then that means the snowball is still rolling and gaining steam.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: And the president has himself at least partially to blame, the fact that Biden does so well with the mail-in ballots because he was ridiculing these mail-in ballots throughout the remaining weeks of the campaign, telling his voters, go out there and vote in person, don't trust the mail.

KING: Right, the president said that that would be rigged, that would be fraudulent, that would be open to fraud. There's zero evidence of that. Again, the president's come back in Ohio tells you a Democrat can take a lead with mail-in votes, a Republican can overcome it with Election Day votes. In the end, you're counting votes. You can count them in different sequences. Some different -- some counties do it in different order. In the end, they're all counted. And you do the math and you see the winner.

And, again, as the president complains about it here, a Democratic governor who he has complained about throughout the COVID crisis, a Democrat here the president complains there's something going on, in the city of Philadelphia it's Democrats. I just want to remind people, I'm sorry, not that one, this one here, in Georgia, this is a Republican governor, a Republican secretary of state and the exact same thing happened. The president built a giant lead in the Election Day lead -- in the Election Day vote, then they start counting the mail-in ballots. Joe Biden now 1,000 votes ahead, a little more than that, in the state of Georgia. It's the same exact thing in a Republican state here with a Republican administration doing what they're supposed to do, taking their partisan hat off, setting it aside and counting votes.

BLITZER: Still about 10,000 votes in Georgia outstanding right now. So that lead that Biden -- and those are mail-in ballots as well.

KING: Right (ph).

BLITZER: Potentially that lead could increase for Biden in Georgia.

KING: Yes, because, again, it's almost been exactly the same as what we've had in Pennsylvania in that, again, they counted the Republican votes on Election Day, the president turned out a lot of votes, 2020, 2.4 million for the president of the United States. In Georgia he won with just over 2 million votes. The president turned out his vote. This is not a question of Republicans not turning out to support the president. The president turned out his vote in Georgia. His rallies there in the final days clearly helped intensify Republican turnout on Election Day. Democrats had a clear strategy, stay safe, COVID, don't get stuck in a long line, vote by mail. That's what they did. They're counting those ballots later.

And, again, it's -- we've seen it in just about every state, Joe Biden is getting very high percentages of the mail-in ballots. And, again, as the president, you know -- give the president is chance. Let him try to document anything he sees. But what he has said so far he has not attached any evidence to. And if it's happening in Pennsylvania, why wasn't he said it in Georgia? There's a Republican governor here, a Democratic governor there, what they are doing is counting votes. And as they count them, overnight, Georgia went from red to blue. Any minute we're expecting more votes here. And, again, just to button it up, the president of the United States cannot win re-election unless he wins that and that.

BLITZER: So we're waiting for Pennsylvania. Another batch, maybe 20,000 plus according to Kate Bolduan about to come in.

In the meantime, let's check back with Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, Wolf.

And as we wait for the votes to come in from Pennsylvania and Georgia and Nevada and Arizona it does appear as though Joe Biden is on the cusp of some big news today.

Let's check in with the Biden campaign. Jeff Zeleny is in Wilmington, Delaware, for us.

And, Jeff, nothing has been called, nothing is definitive, but Joe Biden has to be able to read the writing on the wall. Is he preparing for the moment that might come soon?

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Jake, there's no question the Biden campaign is preparing for this moment. Of course he will be delivering a speech at some point when the race is called, if that's during the daytime hours, the afternoon hours or the evening hours. The stage that you've seen behind me all week is set and they're waiting.

But that is not all the Biden team is doing. They're also moving to make other announcements of this transition team, which has been in place for several months. On Labor Day they announced a transition team. That's not being presumptuous. That is required by law of all presidential nominees to have a transition team in place. So that is what they will do.

And I'm told that they plan to occupy this space fairly quickly of president-elect. They plan to make announcements in some respect of who will be leading this organization in other ways, perhaps some big names on that, but they are going to move forward on this. This, of course, is a serious time for the country with coronavirus,

the economic challenges, other threats facing this country. So look for Joe Biden, once this race is called -- again, they are not getting ahead of themselves here, but look for them to move quickly with some transition announcements here. That is what is going on behind the scenes.

But I can tell you, Jake, the former vice president and his aides have their eyes on Pennsylvania like the rest of the country and indeed the world to see what happens in that state first.

Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Jeff Zeleny with the Biden campaign in Wilmington, Delaware.

And I can't help but think about this, Abby, that Joe Biden, his basic pitch to Democratic voters was, I can rebuild that blue wall. I'm a son of Scranton. I can talk to people in the Midwest, in Wisconsin and Michigan. I'm going to be able to bring us the presidency.

And while we have not called Pennsylvania, it is trending in that direction.

[08:35:03]

And it does appear that Joe Biden will be able to deliver on that promise to Democratic voters.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. Holding the blue wall is a two-pronged task for Democrats. It was recovering some losses that have -- for -- from four years ago in some more purple counties and some of these states like Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, and it's juicing the turn up in the big cities, like in Detroit and like in Philadelphia. And it seems like we've already called Wisconsin and Michigan, Joe Biden was able to do that.

The trend in Pennsylvania is that he was also able to do that. He narrowed Trump's margins in some of -- some of these counties that Trump even won, but it's really in Philadelphia that will deliver potentially as early as this morning the flip that we've all been waiting for. Fifty thousand outstanding votes, the lion's share going to Joe Biden would take him over the top. And that is because of black voters in large part, it's because of Democrats who came out in massive numbers even while President Trump had his supporters come on in very large numbers in some of the more rural parts of PA (ph).

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. The reason the blue wall crumbled four years ago is what you just described didn't happen, the last part, meaning, Democrats didn't come out for Hillary Clinton in the numbers that she needed in the cities, in the suburbs, particularly in Pennsylvania. But it's not as if this time Donald Trump was a slouch. I mean he did extraordinarily well in the places he did well four years ago. And just the total number, already we're still waiting for votes and already Pennsylvania is about -- close to 400,000 votes more now in 2020 total than four years ago, which tells a story that you were just describing, Democrats who stayed home for Hillary Clinton came out for Joe Biden. And it is because of his pitch and also, let's be honest, because they wanted to vote against Donald trump.

TAPPER: Right. And I think -- I mean the Trump presidency four years ago was theoretical and there was also this perception that the election was in the bag for Hillary Clinton. So I don't know if it was a lack of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton or sexism or misogyny or what.

BASH: All of the above.

PHILLIP: All of the above.

TAPPER: Or all of the above, but it -- but it all -- it all meant that they didn't turn out in these numbers. Now the Trump presidency is not theoretical, it is a reality and people did turn out for the Democrat.

A potentially game changing new vote count is expected any minute from the great city of Philadelphia. Will this put Joe Biden in the lead in Pennsylvania, the all-important keystone state?

Stay with us. Our special coverage continues next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:41:49]

TAPPER: Welcome back to day four of CNN's election night in America. You're looking right now at live pictures from the Philadelphia Convention Center where votes are being tabulated. We expect some new votes to come in from the great city of Philadelphia any minute now. The margin is razor thin in Pennsylvania, the keystone state. Whoever wins Pennsylvania, if it's Joe Biden, that could mean he is well on his way to the presidency. But nothing has been called yet. We are waiting to see.

Of course, the writing is on the wall. It has been trending in Biden's direction for several days now in Georgia, in Pennsylvania and in Nevada.

Let's check in with Kaitlan Collins, who is covering the Trump White House for us.

And, Kaitlan, at a time like this any normal president would be preparing two speeches, a victory speech and a concession speech. That's a normal president, of course. President Trump likes to do things his own way.

Is there any preparation going on for President Trump to get bad news?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No. And I'm actually being told by sources that in recent days the president has said he has no plans to concede this election to Joe Biden even if his path to victory is effectively blocked, which it could be by a Biden win in Pennsylvania or in somewhere like Georgia. But despite that, the president has said that he has no plans to concede this election as he has continued to push this baseless claim that the election is being stolen from him.

And, Jake, the question that immediately follows that, I think, is, who around the president is being frank and honest with him about his chances of getting a second term in the White House. And I'm told that one person who is not is the chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who has effectively been feeding the president's claims about voter fraud, about this being stolen from him, about this conspiracy that he touted in the briefing room yesterday that they are stealing this election from him but, of course, not from Republicans down the ballot. And Mark Meadows is not someone who has been frank with the president about his claim and about whether or not there is evidence to back up what the president is saying.

So that creates this conversation about, who is going to be the -- the person that's going to reckon with the president and tell him that his time in office could be coming to an end? And that's a conversation that I'm told the president's allies are still having. They're not sure who that person is going to be. They've talked about Jared Kushner. They've talked about someone like an Ivanka Trump. But so far they haven't figured out who it is that's going to bring the president to terms with reality to realize that there is a real chance here that he could lose this election and he could lose it sooner than he thinks. And, instead, the president has been operating on this idea that he is going to continue to push these claims and somehow that's going to buy him time. And, Jake, that just doesn't appear to be the case right now.

And so the question is, if the president is refusing to concede this election, even if it's clear he has no path to victory, what is the next step for the White House? And are they going to have some kind of what amounts to basically an intervention with the president to get him to come to terms with what's actually going on and what the map is showing.

TAPPER: It's just hard to believe that that is where we are as a country.

Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much.

Let's bring in Ben Ginsberg.

[08:45:00]

He is a Republican election official.

Is he there with us? Are we going to him right now?

There he is.

Ben, let me ask you, first of all, I have seen no credible evidence of voter fraud in any way. What is the president's legal strategy here, if there is one, and what is the possible path he could take, a credible path? BEN GINSBERG, REPUBLICAN ELECTION LAWYER: Well, the credible path is

to actually be able to produce evidence in the individual states to show fraud to throw the results in doubt. So far we've seen absolutely nothing that would rise to that level. Bombastic statements do not work in the recount and contest proceedings in states. You have to show about individual ballots.

What's also true, and I know this from experience, if you haven't developed the evidence on Election Day in real-time, you're not going to be able to mount it and collect it afterwards. And you're at the stage where staffers are sleep deprived and not wanting to face reality, so there will be all sorts of legal conspiracy theories. But the president doesn't have many options absent real evidence.

TAPPER: And, Ben, I guess one of the questions I have here, you're a long-time Republican, respected Republican attorney in Washington, D.C. Is there anyone in this city, any Republican elected official or leader, who has the ability to put the United States of America as its top priority, as his or her top priority, and go to President Trump and deliver to him the reality that it looks as though he's going to lose and he needs to prepare to concede and move on? Is there anyone capable of that?

GINSBERG: Well, the people who would have to do it are the people who hold his electoral fate in their hands. And at that point, it becomes the Republicans in the House and Senate.

I think that his speech last night tells you that there's nobody within the White House who can tell him that. I mean, honestly, the staffers -- the White House staffers I've worked with would have not allowed their principal to go out and give remarks like he gave last night. But what it -- but the direct answer to your question is his strategy has to be a play in the Congress when the Electoral College slates are given to Congress. And those folks, members of the House and Senate, who have to vote on that, going to him and saying, we're not going to be with you, you're on your own here, would be the message that would get him to stop. In other words, it's not a -- it's not an appeal to patriotism, it's the shear raw political power of votes in Congress.

BASH: Hey, Ben, it's Dana Bash.

Can you just drill down on that a little bit more? How -- how would that work, what you just described?

GINSBERG: Well, the way it works is that on December the 14th, in each state capital in the country, you'd look at the certified results of that state. And whoever wins it gets his slate of electors. Those slates of electors get taken to Congress. Congress opens them, receives them on December 26th. The House of Representatives opens them on January 6th, the new House, and members at that point can object to a slate of electors.

At that point both the House and the Senate go in their separate chambers, debate it, have to agree on an objection to a slate. Obviously, with a Republican Senate and a Democratic House, that's not going to happen. And so the slates get accepted.

BASH: Yes, so --

GINSBERG: And then you -- and then you move on.

BASH: So that is a scenario that the Constitution obviously put in place for one of the worst case scenarios.

TAPPER: Right.

BASH: But before we even get to that potential space, one of the questions is Pennsylvania because we've already heard Republicans like Lindsey Graham put into question whether or not the electors could be seated in Pennsylvania.

Is that part of the Trump legal strategy, if there is one, that you see, to try to delay that?

GINSBERG: Yes, I -- I think you have to put legal strategy in quotes there.

BASH: Right.

GINSBERG: So, at this point, it's the -- it's the -- it's the fevered pipe dreams of, gee, what can we do now? We're not going to give up. And the direct answer to that is that you would try and go in an individual state like Pennsylvania, claim that there were so many votes in dispute, so much fraud, so much irregularities, that in point of fact the secretary of state can't certify the final results. And so at that point there is no official declared winner in a state.

[08:50:02]

That throws the ball back to the state about, are you going to not have electors go into the Electoral College. That's the scenario where a state legislature, under the Constitution, would try and --

TAPPER: OK. Ben, I'm sorry, I have to interrupt you.

Ben, I'm sorry, I have to interrupt you. Thank you so much for your expertise there.

I'm going to go to Wolf Blitzer right now.

BLITZER: Joe Biden takes the lead in Pennsylvania. A major, major development right now. Take a look at this, Biden 49.4 percent, Trump 49.3 percent. Biden takes the lead. He is ahead by 5,587 votes with the votes that have just come in. Twenty electoral votes in Pennsylvania. Biden takes the lead.

Let's go over to John King and see what's going on.

John, this is a dramatic, dramatic development. Twenty electoral votes in Pennsylvania.

KING: Dramatic and potentially decisive. The president cannot win re- election without Pennsylvania and without Georgia. Overnight, Georgia flipped blue. Seconds ago, Pennsylvania flipped to the blue. We cannot understate this moment. It's not over. Still counting votes. But Joe Biden now in the lead in Pennsylvania, in the lead in Georgia, in the lead in Nevada, in the lead in Arizona. More than enough to win the presidency right now.

So let's see what just happened in Pennsylvania. It is blue right now. Remember, it was red in 2016. Donald Trump won the presidency in part because of this state. He was ahead, Donald Trump was, just moments ago, by a little more than 18,000 votes. Joe Biden now 5,587 votes ahead. Votes came in from right here in Philadelphia just moments ago. Joe Biden now at 313,000 votes. You see 95 percent of the vote in. Important to note, Wolf, there are still more votes to get. That's Montgomery County. I'm sorry, I touched the wrong line, 95 percent of the votes in, in Philadelphia, 80 from Philadelphia right here.

As you watch the president, important to know, there are still more votes to come from Philadelphia but they just updated their vote count. And as they did, again, the president of the United States, moments ago, had an 18,000 vote lead in Pennsylvania. Joe Biden now, 5,587 vote lead. And that math has been (INAUDIBLE).

BLITZER: All right, let's go through the numbers. We just got the numbers, the exact numbers from Philadelphia that just came in. We'll share them with our viewers right now.

Biden, let's start off with Biden. He got 27,396 votes. Trump got 3,760 votes. Biden got 87 percent of the votes. There were 31,412 votes that we just tallied, that just came in. You can see what's going on, 87 percent of that vote came in for Biden. As a result, he has now taken the lead in Pennsylvania by 5,587 votes.

KING: Right.

And this is a very important number. That is overwhelming math. You can do that. Your eyes tell you that. that's overwhelming math. But this is the important number because we have seen it consistently out of these Democratic strongholds. As we came in this morning, Joe Biden needed to win 55 percent, 56 percent of the outstanding vote in Pennsylvania to overtake the presidency, 55, 56 percent. We keep seeing this as the votes come in, upwards, north of 80 percent, 87 percent in the latest installment.

When you talked to Kate Bolduan just a short time ago, she said they would report north of 20,000 votes. They did. They came in north of 30,000 votes here. And that was the question, how many votes and what would the percentage be. There was an 18,000 vote lead for the president of the United States. You can just do this math at home. That 27,000 overtook. That not nearly enough to offset it. And 87 percent out of this count in Philadelphia. I just want to move this up again because this is now the potentially decisive moment in the race. Joe Biden pulls ahead. Again, that's close. The president -- we're going to count the rest of the votes. The president is making allegations of all sorts of bad things.

Please, jump in. BLITZER: There's another potentially 20,000 votes outstanding in Philadelphia alone.

KING: Right.

BLITZER: We're waiting for those numbers.

KING: Right, 20,000 more votes here in Philadelphia. A small number of votes, too, in the suburban collar counties around Philadelphia, which are voting overwhelmingly for Joe Biden, overwhelmingly for Joe Biden anyway, even more so in these mail-in ballots. Plus, you have votes to come from Allentown in the Lehigh Valley. You have more votes to come from Allegheny County, which is Pittsburgh. And, again, if you've been with us over the last 24 hours, when these mail-in ballots come in, they are coming in overwhelmingly, 70 percent or higher. And as we know, let me pull this back down, I mean this has been a trend continuing, especially Philadelphia, obviously, the Democratic city in southeastern Pennsylvania, about 87 percent of the ballots. Joe Biden needed 55, 56 to overtake the president. He's getting 86, 87 percent. If that continues, not only do you have a lead, but you build a lead.

And, again, to come back out, just look at this map right now if you look here and here and here, this is what we're still waiting on today, Joe Biden leads, leads and leads. I circle those states because if you go back to 2016, Trump state, Trump state, Trump state. And more significantly, remember this, this was the whole reason Donald Trump is president, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, that's 2016. Here is where we stand on this decisive day of the 2020 election, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania back in the Democratic hold for now.

[08:55:05]

Still some votes to count. Joe Biden now, though, more than enough -- if this holds, more than enough to get across the finish line.

BLITZER: And let's not forget, as we've been pointing out all along, Pennsylvania, with its 20 electoral votes, more than enough -- more than enough, even if he loses everything else, if Biden wins just Pennsylvania, he's got 253 right now. If he gets those 20, that's 273. You need 270.

KING: Right.

BLITZER: He's the president-elect.

KING: And there it is. That's why the president was so mad in the briefing room yesterday, 253 right now, 20, that's the largest prize still on the board. That alone -- that alone would get Joe Biden to 273. And just a reminder, Joe Biden leads here, Joe Biden leads here, Joe Biden leads here. So Joe Biden has the potential to get to 306 Electoral College votes. That's exactly the total President Trump won four years ago.

And, again, to be careful, we're going to continue to count the votes and respect the process. But what you see right now, the trajectory in Pennsylvania, Joe Biden narrowed it, narrowed it, narrowed it. Now he has overtaken the president and we expect that lead to grow in the hours ahead. Same thing happened overnight here in Georgia, but Joe Biden's lead, they count the mail-in ballots, he eclipse the president.

We have some counting to do. The president has narrowed the lead in Arizona. Joe Biden still leads. But it's the president who has narrowed the lead in recent hours there. We'll continue to count votes throughout the day. But, Wolf, do not understate this moment, that one blue, this one blue. The president cannot win re-election without both of those states. They have now flipped to Joe Biden. They are blue. The trajectory of this race has turned in a decisive way.

BLITZER: I want to check in with David Chalian, our political director.

David, as you know, Biden has taken the lead in Pennsylvania right now, 20 electoral votes. But CNN is not yet ready to make a projection. Tell our viewers why.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Well, what's happening now is we got this new vote installment. You see that 5,587 vote lead. So what our decision desk is now doing, Wolf, is calculating, what do we know about the outstanding vote in Pennsylvania, what do we know about the rate it's been coming in, as John is explaining, we keep seeing, I think you said it was 87 percent of this vote installment in Philadelphia went to Joe Biden, that kind of rate in how Trump and Biden are splitting these remaining votes are going into the calculations and we need to see a level of confidence when we're looking for these calculations that the candidate in second place, now Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, is not at all likely to overtake the candidate in first place, now Joe Biden in Pennsylvania.

When we get to that level of confidence that that cannot happen, then a projection gets made. So now with this small lead that Joe Biden has taken here, 5,000 votes, we will be looking at those calculations, seeing if we can get to a level of confidence that Donald Trump is not going to overtake Joe Biden with all that we understand about the vote outstanding, where it's from, the fact that it's very pro-Biden mail vote that is mostly outstanding. We will feed that into the analysis. And when we get to that level of confidence, we'll be able to make a projection. As John said, that may take additional votes to come in. We'll see as we continue to crunch the numbers, Wolf.

BLITZER: You know, it's interesting, David, because there are -- were 163,000 outstanding votes in Pennsylvania, 31,000 came in, in Philadelphia right now. Biden got the overwhelming majority, 87 percent of those votes. So there are still about another 130,000, rough numbers, 130,000 votes outstanding, David, in Pennsylvania right now. So we're waiting to see how those unfold. We do anticipate that Biden will win decisively because those are mail-in ballots.

CHALIAN: Right, and we know -- we have been seeing Joe Biden winning these mail ballots, not just sort of 75/25, 80/20. I mean look at what just happened in Philadelphia. He got 87 percent of them.

And we know, by the way, there's still a bench of vote in Philadelphia to count. So when that kind of Biden advantage vote gets put into the vote totals, it just boosts that level of confidence that this will be potentially out of reach for Donald Trump. This current lead at the moment, we're taking a look to see if it gives us that necessary level of confidence. But, in the meantime, we will await more vote to come into Pennsylvania as we continue to make those calculations.

BLITZER: Let's go back to John.

So about 130,000 votes still outstanding in the state of Pennsylvania right now.

KING: Right.

BLITZER: Do we know roughly where those votes are?

KING: Yes. And let me say this at the top, the president now, the president now, because Joe Biden is in the lead, would have to win 52 percent of the remaining votes to catch up and to have a narrow lead. He would have to win 52 percent. And as David just noted, it's very important, consistently in the last 24 hours, when we counted these mail-in ballots, even in red counties, even in the red counties you see here, I'll just give you one, we got some vote here yesterday in Mercer County, you see the president's winning by a lopsided margin. The votes that came in, in Mercer County yesterday were 80 percent plus for Joe Biden because Democrats are voting by mail. It might not be a lot of votes, but that has been a trend we have seen consistently.

So you pull this out now. Where are the votes still out?

[09:00:00]

As David just noted, we know there's several still, many still, thousands here in Philadelphia. Joe Biden, in the last installment from Philadelphia, had 87 percent of the vote.