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CNN Live Event/Special
Biden Expands His Lead in Georgia; Trump Unhappy with Legal Team's Lack of Impact on Election Count. Aired 4-5a ET
Aired November 07, 2020 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:00]
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CHRIS CUOMO, CNN HOST: Welcome back, friends, to CNN's breaking news coverage. Election Night/Week in America continues.
DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: Month, year.
CUOMO: Chris Cuomo, Don Lemon, however long it takes to get it straight. It is 4:00 am Eastern on Saturday and we've seen changes once again on our watch. Joe Biden is getting closer to the privilege of being President-Elect of these United States, D. Lemon.
LEMON: Yes. What a title. It's kind of joking around but it's true. This week has felt long and short at the same time because it feels like just one long day.
The former vice president, who wants to be president-elect and ultimately the president keeps getting padded, making it more and more unlikely that President Donald J. Trump can catch up. He keeps telling us on Twitter how mad he is, rage tweeting. And we hear that he is hurt and his legal team is having a lack of impact.
CUOMO: What he hasn't been, which is why we're not showing you any of the specific language, is compelling. He has offered no proof to substantiate the claim that we should doubt our own democracy.
Where does the count stand?
Georgia, 16 electoral votes. We now see what Don was telling you. In Georgia, the gap between Biden and Trump is now 7,248 votes. We saw it jump 64 percent in the last batch, every vote matter. Biden and Trump separated by 28,833 votes. The test in Pennsylvania, one and done. If Biden wins it, he's president-elect.
Can he get his margin of victory above the recount amount of 0.5 percent?
Why?
Because if he does, then Donald Trump has one less tool to create drama about an election that hasn't warranted any yet, in terms of questioning the count. Let's do more. Arizona, 11 electoral votes; Arizona has Biden up by
29,861 votes. Biden is fighting to keep a lead here, not to catch Trump or exceed Trump; it's the opposite. Trump is catching him.
Enough votes to meet or beat?
We don't know. Probably not but we're watching closely.
Nevada, six electoral votes; if Biden is able to win Nevada and Arizona, he also gets to 270. So we're watching this closely. He is now 22,657 votes ahead. Look at the map, 253-213.
Why is it 253?
Because we have not projected Arizona and, therefore, it is there. Everybody does it the way they want to do it. Let's get some insight into the state of play in each race. Biden's lead in Georgia, why?
Since 1992, you haven't seen a Democrat take it. If he wins there, it will be the first time in 28 years a Democrat has done so. MJ Lee is with the Biden campaign but let's start this block with Nick Valencia in Atlanta.
What is it looking like now?
NICK VALENCIA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning. We know the tabulations of mail-in votes had stopped here in Georgia, but they had about 20,000 provisional overseas and military votes to get through.
Overnight, that widened Joe Biden's lead to 7,248 votes in the unofficial tally. Later today, Gwinnett County are expecting to get through 1,500 provisional ballots. But because they are provisional, that may not go into the overall tabulation.
All signs, guys, point to a runoff in Georgia, not just in the presidential election but not just one but two Senate races in Georgia. That means Georgia could be at the center of the political universe through early next year. Georgia is still very much in the spotlight here.
CUOMO: And one of the curious aspects of this election, Biden turns ruby red Georgia maybe, but the two Senate races are going into a runoff. Very interesting dynamic. Thank you very much.
Let's now check in with MJ Lee. She is in front of Biden headquarters, which is the place that Biden has reserved to celebrate if he wins the election.
[04:05:00]
CUOMO: Will he get to do that?
We'll see.
What is the word out of the camp? MJ LEE, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It is worth underscoring what a huge political feat this would be if he were to win Georgia. As you pointed out a couple of times, a Democratic presidential candidate hasn't won Georgia since 1992.
How did the Biden campaign get there?
They decided to go all in on the state in the final weeks of the campaign. Joe Biden himself went there and campaigned in Georgia one week before Election Day. His running mate was dispatched to go there before Election Day.
And former president Barack Obama spent the Monday before Election Day campaigning in Atlanta. So clearly, this was a purposeful decision by the campaign, which saw that they actually had a real chance at taking this state.
And what would that mean ultimately for Biden if he were to win Georgia?
It would mean that he is expanding the map, that they saw multiple paths to getting to 270. And they wanted the extra bonus padding from states like Texas or Georgia, for example.
Texas has, of course, already been called for Trump. So, if Biden is victorious in Georgia, it would be a huge political accomplishment and it would mean for him that he basically gets a cherry on top of the blue wall states that he is hoping to build as well. He already has Michigan and Wisconsin.
Obviously, we know that the final price for him there is Pennsylvania.
CUOMO: MJ, thank you very much.
At the magic wall with the one and only Phil Mattingly.
What does Georgia mean for us at this point in terms of seeing the election come to a conclusion?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There's no pathway for Trump if Georgia goes to Joe Biden. If looks like Georgia will go to a recount. But Joe Biden is adding a couple thousands more votes to his tally.
So it would give Biden a bit of a cushion there. Democrats have been eyeing Georgia. They thought they had a shot in the 2018 governor's race. But the difference in Georgia, particularly in the Democratic counties from 2016 to now -- there is always a lot of talk, can somebody flip a county?
What President Trump did in 2016 was astounding in terms of how many counties Barack Obama won in 2012. That is not the model for Joe Biden this time around and it hasn't been in the strongholds of Georgia.
Take a look right here. This is the fulcrum of any Democratic efforts in the state, Atlanta, the metro areas, where the turnout happens. We'll start with Fulton County, the biggest county in the state.
Flashback to 2016, 3 points higher. Move over to Gwinnett, 51-45. Look at the margins, Dekalb, should be 3 points higher.
Two points here and 3 points there, is that enough?
The answer is yes. These are huge jumps in the metro areas of Atlanta.
You look at Georgia 2020 versus 2016, that's the difference. President Trump ended up in Georgia the day before Election Day because they needed to. They were looking at the numbers, regardless of what they were saying publicly. His people turned out, 2 million votes back in 2016 and 2020, he's already at 2.4 million.
And yet Joe Biden has a real pathway to win rights now, depending on how the recount turns out, because they turned out their people in their strongholds at a level which has never been seen before. That is always the question for Democrats, can you turn out, can you get your people to vote?
That was the pathway in Georgia. If you look at these margins, they met and exceeded what they needed to win.
HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Look at that, I was able to jump in. I'm learning as we go on --
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ENTEN: By the next 15 overnights we'll figure it out.
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ENTEN: What I'm so interested about Georgia, you know, we're hitting on it right now but there are going to probably be two runoffs for Senate control in early January. There's the special Senate election as well as the regularly scheduled one.
[04:10:00]
ENTEN: And I think one of the key questions that I have is whether or not these voters that you're talking about, who turned out for this election, will they, again, turn out in early January?
If they do, then Democrats get the majority of the United States Senate. But I think it's a very big question. I'm interested in your thoughts on that, Phil.
Let's compare one Senate race, Jon Ossoff, 49.8 to 47.9. Now let's look at where Vice President Biden is. Doing better. You see this with Raphael Warnock as well. They need to match Biden and they need to do better than Biden.
The reality here, the dynamics of what this race is going to be, there will be more money than you can even imagine dumped into these two races. These will be with the two candidates in the special election. These two races will determine who has the majority in the Senate if Joe Biden wins.
The amount of money that comes in here but also what is the interest for voters?
Are the voters here, after they may have helped elect the President of the United States, going to care about a 50-50 Senate?
ENTEN: I think that's right.
Are these college educated white voters in the Atlanta suburbs, who shifted so significantly against Donald Trump, was it more of an anti- Trump movement or a pro-Democratic turnout?
If these are real Democratic voters, I think it's a real potential for a real race down there in the Senate races that we simply haven't seen in a long time.
MATTINGLY: The interesting element, my day job is on Capitol Hill. In talking to Senate Republican campaign operatives, they feel like they're going to be in very good shape here. They feel like they're going to have more money than anybody and their voters will understand the stakes here, particularly if Joe Biden is president.
I'm very intrigued whether or not the Democrats, to your point, will also understand the stakes. In covering the United States Senate, 50- 50 with a Democratic president, you have the majority.
Are you going to be able to pass Medicare for all?
No. But the difference in 50-50 versus 51-49 with Mitch McConnell is the Senate majority leader, it means a lot.
CUOMO: Could mean whether or not Joe Biden spends a lot of his time being investigated.
MATTINGLY: That is a crucial point.
You know who would be the committee chairman?
CUOMO: Who?
MATTINGLY: Ron Johnson, a top ally of President Trump, obviously was doing a lot of the Hunter Biden investigations as well. We'll see where Lindsey Graham ends up in chairmanships. If you control both chambers, all of a sudden, chairmanships in committees with subpoena power, if it's the same party, you don't have to worry about that as much.
CUOMO: One layer off of the analysis, traditionally, a runoff doesn't get the same enthusiasm.
MATTINGLY: Correct.
CUOMO: As the preceding election.
MATTINGLY: Correct. CUOMO: That is, I would suppose, a bigger problem for the Democrats because they're trying to break culture more in Georgia, so they have more work to do.
ENTEN: Use 2008 as an example. The last time, Barack Obama came very close to winning in Georgia. What you essentially saw was something along the lines of a 14-16 point margin in the runoff. It dropped off among African Americans.
Will you see the same thing here come early January with Senate control potentially in the balance as well as the fact that you have an African American candidate running in that race?
And in Louisiana, for example, you actually see them rising a percentage of the electorate. So it's not something that's locked in necessarily.
MATTINGLY: If Joe Biden wins the presidency, these two runoffs, how much capital does he expend?
Back in 2008, President-Elect Obama went nowhere near that race and part of the reason why is, if you're a newly elected president, you don't want the first thing that you do, before you're even inaugurated, to lose a special election, right?
[04:15:00]
ENTEN: So for Joe Biden, the pressure is on him more because this could be a state that he wins.
So how much capital do you expend before you even take office, given the stakes --
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CUOMO: What does he get done?
Does McConnell do to him what he does to Obama, which is come out and say, I am going to live to oppose?
If that's going to be the play, he might as well.
MATTINGLY: Here is the risk. You go all in and you lose both races and you are a weakened president --
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CUOMO: There's a push dynamic to figure in, which is the pandemic.
ENTEN: That is also true. Joe Biden, of course, is very hesitant to go on the campaign trail. Joe Biden always said, I am a Democrat running in the primary. He's all about building that party infrastructure. And this may be the first test --
CUOMO: I think the pandemic helps him, to Harry's point about him being a little reluctant. Everything that Joe Biden does -- even if Trump wins. I know that's becoming less likely.
One, we don't know. Two, I also don't care because we have to get to a better place for the pandemic, whoever it is. You know with Trump you have built in animus against the pandemic. Somehow Trump thinks it's opposed to him. So, he doesn't want to acknowledge it and keeps saying it's a hoax.
If Biden is all in on the pandemic, and I don't know why he wouldn't be, it makes it easier to say, I need these guys because this Congress wouldn't get it done. They wouldn't pass another bill. But I need to have more control. I think there's a lot of leverage for him.
You're right, if he loses, he looks weak, but he has that -- he's doing something on something.
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CUOMO: That is a good problem for him to have because it means he's president-elect.
MATTINGLY: Yes. He'll take that. But you walk in the door and you're already dealing with a public health crisis, dealing with an economic crisis and then you have a real political riddle, trying to figure out what you're going to do. I assume he goes all in but it's an interesting dynamic, I think.
CUOMO: We'll see. There will be a lot of interesting dynamics.
How about if Joe Biden is gifted by you with the mandate of being your president, how about the next couple of months with Trump there?
What can he get done in a pandemic that the sitting president doesn't want to acknowledge exists?
Our fellow citizens are busting their humps to get this election finished. Please stay tuned to CNN.
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[04:20:00]
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LEMON: So we know the president has been watching a lot of election TV and likely state TV, where he is surprisingly getting a dose of truth from some but more of what he wants to hear from others, pushing his baseless fraud conspiracies. So more on the FOX effect, Nia-Malika Henderson, John Avlon and Margaret Hoover.
Hello once again.
MARGARET HOOVER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Good morning.
(CROSSTALK) LEMON: That's where I want to start.
I want to start with good morning, right?
I got off early or late and I watched state TV's morning television show and I thought I was watching an "SNL" skit.
My question is, have they become more moderate?
But this is some of the pro-Trump propaganda. They're defending the president. But among some of their anchors, some of them, they're start to go sound a little resigned. Watch this.
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CHRIS WALLACE, FOX NEWS ANCHOR: It seems inevitable, whether it's Pennsylvania, Georgia, Nevada, Arizona, some combination of them, if he gets them all, he ends up with 306 electoral votes, which is exactly what Donald Trump had in 2016. It seems inevitable that, in this initial vote count, that Joe Biden is going to win.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The Trump campaign has said that they wanted to have their poll watchers there and that I guess they're being asked to provide evidence for something that they say they weren't able to even participate in or to be able to see. And so that is I think where they would say that needs to be rectified, if it could be.
ERIC SHAWN, FOX NEWS HOST: That's not true. That's not true. It's just not true. The election poll watchers, they are called canvas (ph) watchers, Republicans have been in this room, in that room, where they are supposed to be, standing alongside with the Democrats.
There is a specific segregated, penned-off area for the Democratic watchers and the Republican watchers. So the claim from the Trump campaign and the president about that is not true. It is false.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Trump supporters in this country are having a difficult time processing what's been happening over the last three days. At this point, the president needs to win at least three recounts to even get to 270 or maybe tie it at 269. It's just a -- it's a really tough, uphill battle.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: To all you patriots who supported President Trump, stand tall and be proud of your efforts and his. It was all worth it. We all helped reshape the national conversation on China, on immigration, on trade and political correctness, et cetera, et cetera. We don't have time to bury our heads in crying towels.
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LEMON: Wow.
Margaret, I'm going to come to you because you used to work there. Fun fact, I used to work for the guy that said that's not true, I was his P.A. back in the early '90s.
HOOVER: What you saw there was the heart --
LEMON: The other guy, you said has taken truth serum --
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HOOVER: By the way, he used to produce my segment on O'Reilly at FOX News. So what you see there is the split at FOX News.
[04:25:00]
HOOVER: You see reporters saying, you know, calling it like it is; saying, you know, this is very clear, that Joe Biden is on his way and the reporter saying there are Republican and Democratic poll watchers right here behind me. So don't even feed this disinformation.
But what Dana Perino said and what some of those other anchors -- I was surprised how many of them are gently trying to take their viewers to the truth.
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LEMON: I think it was like involuntary deprogramming that they're going through right now. And I don't mean that in a condescending way.
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LEMON: And they're trying to say, OK, listen --
HOOVER: To the extent they are continuing to foster this disinformation, what is the difference between that language and Russia today?
There is no difference. They are doing the Russians' job for them by spreading this disinformation.
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Those folks have always spouted Donald Trump's talking points. At this point maybe they are starting to cut ties. You see some of the "New York Post" sort of language. So we'll see.
But it also seems like they were talking to Donald Trump, to ease him into a new direction. So that was interesting to see those folks kind of say, hey, it might be over.
LEMON: Chris, you and I talk about this all the time. But I want John to get in first.
Not everybody is doing it because I think the two, Tucker and Hannity, have they -- they haven't come this far.
JOHN AVLON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: No.
(CROSSTALK) AVLON: I gather Hannity was saying there should be a redo of the election in Pennsylvania. This is the problem of what is fundamentally a sick system that has been set up. Hyperpartisan media has divided our country.
We're asking, how much are they playing to the audience of one, right?
And the other thing is, Donald Trump has said repeatedly that the only way he could lose this election is if there's fraud.
LEMON: Do they even know how to push back any more?
AVLON: No. The muscle memory of telling the president the truth inside that media ecosystem in his White House has been completely atrophied. So we are seeing a dangerous moment where disinformation is metastasizing in the body politic and people will not face facts. And they're trying to walk the difficult task of saying, hey, facts do matter, some of them.
CUOMO: I don't like a lot of what I'm hearing. First of all, I worked with Eric Shawn. He has always been the real deal. The idea of --
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LEMON: Well, we gave Eric Shawn his due.
CUOMO: Give me a second, brother. I'm about to come heavy but here it comes.
The idea that they're muscle atrophied, make no excuses for people who made a definite choice to turn on journalism, turn on journalists, demonize other human beings with families and do it to cotton favor with this president.
They're all adults. They all knew what they were doing and they did it with malice. And this is a time where people will be remembered and the media should muscle up and remind everybody of what happened. And no forgiveness. There's no reason to frost over anything that happened.
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HENDERSON: I think we're all agreeing.
CUOMO: No one has had a change of heart. They're all just playing to strength and now running from weakness.
AVLON: There absolutely should be accountability. Whatever muscle memory language is being used, I think we're fundamentally saying the same thing. There has been an effort to suck up to people in power. And there needs to be, especially at this moment, right now you have a handful of Republicans, who are telling the president that this is un- American to question the integrity of the election process.
Mitt Romney has made some noises.
LEMON: Not enough, John.
HENDERSON: And too late.
LEMON: Not nearly enough.
AVLON: Let me finish.
LEMON: Hold on. No, no, no, no, no. It's always wrapped in the every vote should be counted. That is not where you start. You start with the president is putting out B.S. He's lying to you.
AVLON: And there is a lot of disingenuous B.S. that tries to sound neutral, certain wings of the Trump family versus others.
[04:30:00]
AVLON: But the people who right now are pouring flames on conspiracy theories to empower the president's worst impulses -- we've gotten numb to the fact that the president of the United States is refusing to concede the results of an election.
LEMON: Who is doing it?
AVLON: We can start naming names. Newt Gingrich has done it --
LEMON: Great, but where are they being allowed to do it?
Who is putting it out there?
AVLON: Social media and FOX News.
LEMON: That's the point.
Chris, is that not the point?
CUOMO: That's the point.
And, look, the White House press releases. They're the same thing.
You know what I mean?
You hear Laura Ingraham coining the phrase, "Shut up and dribble."
We know what that was about. They can say, oh, this show is not supposed to be considered a credible news source.
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CUOMO: Nobody knows the difference. Don is exactly right. And this has been a unique time. The media takes a lot of hits. I would argue deservedly so. But you have to start figuring out what your standards are. And you have to reward who does it right and go after those who do it wrong.
We like to watch ourselves get attacked. Let's play both sides of whatever the latest controversy is until you're in it and everybody feels like a victim.
LEMON: Have you not watched your show or my show?
CUOMO: That doesn't apply.
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CUOMO: Listen, with all due respect to you guys, there are different levels of being in the crucible during this time. I'm just saying that this is a period that needs to be remembered for what people did and what they didn't do.
LEMON: You and I are having fun but this is about me and you, what their viewers -- the disinformation.
CUOMO: They lie to their viewers. They tell their viewers that the people telling them the truth are liars and they do it to benefit Donald Trump. Now they have to own it and be held to account, not by us, by people, regular people, not media people.
LEMON: You know Margaret worked there. Go ahead.
HOOVER: What I love to hear are the honest voices who are calling it like it is. Chris Wallace, who is the producer, your friend?
LEMON: Eric Shawn.
HOOVER: I mean, that does speak volumes. But it just drives -- look, it's deeply irresponsible for some of those anchors to be saying, well, shouldn't we be looking into the fact that there aren't poll watchers behind you?
And Eric just looked at her and says, but there are.
But the viewers, Donald Trump's voters are more inclined to believe the conspiracy and to believe the fraud and to believe that it isn't fair.
LEMON: Chris, I know we like to say, there are some straight shooters over there and at times I wonder how true that is. But sometimes it's a wink and a nod and you're like, wait a minute, are they really being straight shooters?
I used to watch a lot of FOX News. And I cannot watch anymore. The straightest shooter I know there is Neil Cavuto. Everyone else takes a far back seat to him. The way that they present it and produce it is not necessarily down the middle. And I'm not sure how much credit we can give, for "there are some people there who are these straight shooters."
CUOMO: I don't disagree but it doesn't matter. This is for what people want to decide. I'm saying that I think it's really important. You know the expression nothing changes if nothing changes?
LEMON: Yes.
CUOMO: We just lived through a really uniquely, ugly period. Lives were changed by this.
HENDERSON: We're still living through it.
CUOMO: I know. That's my point. If you want to get out of it, do you think Joe Biden coming in is going to magically change this dynamic?
HENDERSON: No.
HOOVER: But you know what?
The longer this goes on, what is happening right now is that the Trump campaign and all of these, our foreign adversaries, everyone is using this time of uncertainty to agitate and mix it up.
[04:35:00]
HOOVER: And to increase uncertainty instability in this country.
LEMON: The reason I think it's important is not just because the person who is on the screen, it's also the way it is produced and presented.
HENDERSON: And what they focus on over and over and over.
LEMON: Because it used to be -- what was it that I used to -- ACORN, which was the first Antifa, right?
HENDERSON: And the Portland riots, yes.
LEMON: There you go.
Let's hope that changes. Let's hope that their viewers start to get some straight information and let's hope the president who is watching can get it as well.
So we've got a lot to talk about. We have to talk about mail-in ballots, provisional ballots, we have to talk about where everybody is now. We have to focus on the key battleground states that are going to make the difference in this election.
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CUOMO: What a time in America, huh?
It's 4:39 in the morning in the east. And I know that we have super amounts of people watching that we normally never would because everybody is on the same page right now.
Who is going to lead us?
When will we know?
Good.
What can we do with this momentum once we pick this president?
And what can we get done if everybody is together?
Part of answering it is getting through the election. So let's get back to what we know about the state of play, which really now is all about mail-in ballots; I would say specifically in Pennsylvania.
[04:40:00]
CUOMO: The Postal Service, everybody wants to talk about what was wrong with this process.
How about the fact that we had these weird things happen at the USPS when we needed them at their most hyperefficient?
So the USPS has been getting grilled in court over delivering and not delivering ballots in morning. Kristen Holmes at the voting desk, what do we know?
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Chris. So let's talk about how we have this data from federal court filings and that is because in the last five days leading up to the election, the Postal Service every day reported slower and slower times at processing ballots, which isn't great when you're in the middle of an election.
So let's talk about what they found. They reported that in Pennsylvania, a critical swing state, there were 2,927 ballots that were processed by the Postal Service on Thursday. This is all part of these sweeps that were ordered by a judge.
The big question is whether or not these votes are going to count. We do not know right now when they were postmarked. If they were postmarked on Election Day, they could count.
As we know, the Trump campaign is likely to bring this to the Supreme Court to challenge these ballots, raising a lot of questions why these 3,000 ballots weren't delivered on time. We have been talking about, as you said, for months the issues with the Postal Service, these changes implemented by Trump donor Lewis DeJoy that slowed down the service that then the Postal Service told us time and time again was going to be fixed by the election.
Then in the last five days, critical timing, a lot of slowdowns. So Philadelphia metro district, 763 ballots from there; Western Pennsylvania, 828; and 1,300 from central Pennsylvania. As we have been talking about for the last four days, most of the mail-in ballots that we have seen in Pennsylvania tend to skew Democratic.
At this point Biden is leading by a large margin. That's when these types of ballots are going to come into play.
I do want to give you the big number out of Nevada, too, because there were -- excuse me, did I say Nevada?
I mean Nevada. Let's go with that.
This is the big number. This is what was found in a processing USPS facility on Thursday, 1.270 ballots there. Again, unclear if these are going to count. If they were in by Friday, they will count in that election. That will slow them down but they are being very careful.
But this is raising all sorts of questions about the Postal Service. I talked about this on air, probably on Thursday when we were -- oh, no, it was Monday -- when we were starting to see that slowdown just before the election.
And I got some pushback. I heard from people at the Postal Service saying, well, the number of ballots had really decreased. But that doesn't really line up with the fact that their processing times were slower. Just because there's fewer ballots doesn't mean you should slow down in processing them.
So lots of questions being raised and if there's going to be changes after this election.
CUOMO: Very well done. Thank you very much, Kristen. I appreciate it. It really makes a difference to get the depth of understanding of what's happening here and the irony. You worry about are you seeding misinformation when the USPS is really a shame at this point. We have to get that right.
Stay right there, everybody. Anything can happen in this race and things have been happening overnight, like right now. We'll be right back.
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[04:45:00]
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CUOMO: Let's take the issues of the moment to some power players. Laura Barron-Lopez, Toluse Olorunnipa and Ron Brownstein.
Ron, I start with you.
What is the most critical question, other than the obvious one, which is who is going to be our next president, once that decision is made, what is the next thing to worry about?
RON BROWNSTEIN, CNN SR. POLITICAL ANALYST: Who is going to control the Senate. It is such a vastly different world if the Democrats win these two runoffs in Georgia. Mitch McConnell famously said, my principal legislative goal is to make Barack Obama a one-term president.
I do not think he will behave any differently if he has the leverage this time. Chris, in 2016, every Senate race went the same way as the presidential race in that state. In 2020, every Senate race except Susan Collins went the same way again as the presidential race. That is a problem for Democrats because there are slightly more states
that lean Republican than Democratic at the Senate level. So these contests in Georgia are really emblematic of the challenge they face.
To get a Senate majority, they have to win two seats in a state where they have not won a Senate race in 20 years. It gives you an indication of the challenge they face in building Senate majorities. But the stakes could not be higher and I would be shocked if Biden is not all in on trying to make that happen.
CUOMO: Laura, another take on what the urgent issue becomes, once we know who the president is, why isn't it the pandemic and that Biden is going to have two months, if he wins this election, between being president-elect and being inaugurated and the pandemic can't wait?
We are literally getting eaten up by the virus. He has to jump into it yesterday if he wins that election.
And what does that look like with Trump?
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: We've already started to see a little bit of what that looks like in that Biden is already meeting with experts, health experts, doctors, scientists, to tell the country, look, I'm going be on this as soon as I possibly can be.
And I'm going to move in a very different direction than Trump. That being said, you made a good point, which is that President Trump will still be in office beyond early this month.
[04:50:00]
BARRON-LOPEZ: And what he does is questionable. So far, he has not talked about coronavirus for a very long time. And we know cases are on the rise across the country, that Americans are continuing to die and we aren't seeing any real action being taken by the current president to address those issues.
CUOMO: What are people missing right now?
Everybody is watching television like a gazillion hours a day for an obvious reason, who wins.
What do you think we're losing sight of right now?
TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: That's it. That's a really good question. We talk a lot about the pandemic and the fact that a lot of people are sick and a lot of people are in the hospital.
But our economy is still sick. We still have millions of jobs that were not brought back months ago and I think that story is starting to get missed. People look at the stock market. The stock market has done well in the past week. A lot of investors are happy that, we may have a new government, we may have even a split government.
But when it comes to lower wage workers, there is a lot of hurt out there. I'm a Floridian. Florida just passed a $15 minimum wage that will kick in over the coming years. And it really goes to show, this is a state that voted for Trump, voted for Republicans up and down the ballot.
People want economic stimulus. With so many people out of work, so many people struggling, balancing kids in virtual school with trying to get back to work and trying to get jobs for themselves.
So as we're talking about this election and, you know, the fight over voter fraud and the fact that so many people were sick because of the pandemic, some people are still out of work. Some of the eviction protections that were in place are starting to fade away and there are a lot of people in for a lot of hurt.
If we have a split government, that may not allow there to be a major stimulus package. So that is a big issue that's going to be facing whoever is in power on January 20th.
CUOMO: They're going to have a hard time justifying that tax cut. That's an easy conversation about media memory. But we have to remember what these lawmakers did during this period also.
But I have to jump to break. Thank you to each and all. Appreciate it. We'll be right back.
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[04:55:00]
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CUOMO: All right. Here's an update. Joe Biden is knocking on the door of 270 electoral votes. Let's see. It's 4:55 in the morning.
You know what we need?
A key race alert. All right. I want you to stay right there with us because we'll read these numbers and you'll understand where we are. Georgia, Biden ahead 7,248 votes; Nevada, 22,657; Pennsylvania, 28,833; Arizona, 29,861; right now, all blue for Biden.
Will it change?
It has before on our watch. So, stay right there. More to come on Election Night in America continued. Next.
