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CNN Live Event/Special

Trump Pressures Pence; Warnock Wins and Ossoff Leads in Georgia; Congress to Certify Election; Deadliest Day of the Pandemic. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired January 06, 2021 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: That Donald Trump has taught everybody in his orbit time and time again throughout the decades that he will, no matter how much you debase yourself in order to curry favor with him, he will turn on you if -- if you stand up for yourself, if you do what your job is and don't bend to his will every single time.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I think it's not surprising for White House officials. They know President Trump pretty well. I mean look at what he did to the political fortunes of someone like Jeff Sessions. He ruined his political career in Alabama and someone who could have had a Senate seat for the rest of his life, of course, lost that election. Now we've got Tommy Tuberville as a senator from there.

And so you see the power that the president has. He's aware of that. And I think they're just stunned that it came to this level with the vice president given how carefully he's navigated things over the last four years. And to see it end like this, where the president is blaming Mike Pence now in these final days for his election loss is stun to people. It is not surprising, though, of course, that he would eventually turn on Pence because, as someone says, you know, it happens to all of us.

COOPER: Yes. And we should just point out, as dramatic and chaotic as today will be, these are the final desperate days of Donald Trump. And he will go and, you know -- he has waning power now. It will be interesting to see what his power is when he is just a guy at Mar-a- Lago, you know, tweeting and yelling about what's happening in Washington. We'll see how much the Republicans who now curry favor with him will continue to over the next months and years.

Kaitlan Collins, thanks very much. Appreciate it.

Erin.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR: Yes. SO it's a fair point, Anderson, especially when you look at now the, you know, the balance of power in the Senate now has shifted because of the president. So we have this Electoral College count and it's going to begin in

just a couple hours, right? We are sitting here awaiting for them to gather and begin this formal process.

So, as the president is putting more pressure on Pence to do something, to do anything to stop the vote, I just want to go through this again because I think it's important, so you can all hear what's being thrown out there and you can hear why it cannot happen.

Franita Tolson is with me, professor of law at the USC Gould School of Law.

So, Franita, you know, you see this very compelling breakdown in a personal relationship, right, this stunning and remarkable moment in American history, and the president continuing to try to pressure Pence, right?

So in this statement that came out overnight, the president, the White House, say, our vice president has several options under the U.S. Constitution. He can decertify the results, send them back to the states for change and certification. He can decertify the illegal and corrupt results and send them to the House for one vote -- for one state tabulation.

So just take each of those things down. This is their last ditch effort of this is what Pence can do. He can't. Why?

FRANITA TOLSON, PROFESSOR OF LAW, USC GOULD SCHOOL OF LAW: Well, first, good morning, Erin.

Let me be clear, the process here will play out like it normally does to some extent, right? Like, there will be objections, which is unusual, but, generally speaking, I want to -- I hesitate in thinking about this as extraordinary. What the president is doing is extraordinary. The process actually is not.

BURNETT: Good point.

TOLSON: What I expect today is that Vice President Pence will be a rubber stamp, much like vice presidents in his position have been in the past. The Electoral Count Act allows him to field objections, but that is a far cry from Pence being able to substantive determine the validity of slates. So all of the options that you laid out are actually not a thing, right?

So the Electoral Count Act is really designed to streamline this process. These states have submitted their slates consistent with the Electoral Count Act by December 8th. Congress is supposed to treat them as presumptively valid. Even with the objections, there is very little chance that these slates will be thrown out.

Prior -- the prior reporting by David Chalian, he mentioned Nixon in Hawaii and how Nixon oversaw the electoral count vote -- the electoral count -- the counting of the electoral votes, excuse me, in 1961. Even then Nixon had lost, yes, and there was a competing slate submitted from the state of Hawaii, but that situation was still very different from the situation we're seeing here because a recount there had thrown the state to Kennedy, which is why Hawaii sent in two slates because they had a late breaking event that signaled that the slate was -- that there was a problem with their slates.

But keep in mind, as I mentioned, each state here met the safe harbor deadline. There's no competing slates that have the governor's stamp of approval. The governor's signed one slate. And also Hawaii was not central to the outcome there, right? No one objected to what Nixon did there because Kennedy had clearly won the state. We do not have any situation here where Pence can credibly claim that he can throw out the slates of electors from any of the contested states.

BURNETT: So basically Pence needs to do what everyone else has done in history, right?

TOLSON: Pretty much (ph).

BURNETT: Right. And if he doesn't, then he's just completely outside the law, right? As David Chalian I thought put it well, he would be exercising super powers that he does not have.

[09:35:04]

TOLSON: Not only would he be exercising super powers that he does not have, there are sufficient checks where his attempts will come to nothing, right? So really what the Republicans are doing here is prolonging this process possibly, right, depending on the number of states that they object to today.

What we're seeing, though, is democracy worked. It's not perfect. We had problems. But they weren't the type of problems that would call into question the outcome of the election. And many of the so-called objections are over issues that have already been litigated.

We spent the last seven weeks in 60 plus lawsuits trying to figure out whether or not this election was properly held. And it was.

But I think the main lesson here, Erin, is that our country requires our leaders to have a certain amount of virtue in order to work properly. And maybe that's a problem, right? We clearly need more safeguards. Anytime we have to have an extended conversation about a process that's supposed to be ceremonial, right, and hopefully Pence comes in, he does his job and he goes home and he sits there until January 20th.

BURNETT: Right. Well, this is -- this is a moment for him to make a decision of who he is, virtue he has.

Thank you very much, Franita.

Anderson.

COOPER: Well, moments from now, Georgia resumes its vote counting. Find out when we should know if the Democrats take control of the Senate.

Plus, the history made as an historically red state turns blue overnight.

You're watching CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:40:29]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA), SENATOR-ELECT: When I think about the arc of our history, what Georgia did last night is its own message in the midst of a moment in which so many people are trying to divide our country, at a time we can least afford to be divided.

We've got big problems. And I'm deeply honored that the people of Georgia have placed their trust in someone who grew up in public housing, one of 12 children, I'm number 11, the first college graduate in my family. And I hope to bring the concerns of ordinary people to the United States Senate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: That is Democrat Raphael Warnock speaking to CNN this morning after claiming victory in the Georgia Senate special runoff.

Now, CNN is projecting that Warnock will defeat his Republican rival, Senator Kelly Loeffler, becoming the first black senator to represent the state.

Meanwhile, Democrat Jon Ossoff is currently leading and expanding his lead against Republican Senator David Perdue. While he's declared victory this morning, CNN has not yet made a projection in this race.

Joining me is CNN's Dianne Gallagher. She's at the Georgia secretary of state's office.

Dianne, just walk us through what there is left to count.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes. So, Anderson, it was a very late night here in Georgia and things are starting to slowly ramp up this morning. The voting implementation manager, Gabe Sterling, said here on CNN just about a half hour ago that at first glance this morning they believe that there's just over 65,000 ballots that are still outgoing across the state of Georgia.

Now, he did note that the majority of those are in these kind of Democratic stronghold counties and told us that he hopes to have a better idea of specifically how many votes there are still out there around lunchtime today.

But we have crews who are out there across the state. They've been speaking directly with these counties. And, Anderson, I can tell you to expect a staggered pace when it comes to the results reporting today.

If you take a look at some of these largest counties, if we go to Fulton County, we just got an update this morning, they still have about 2,700 absentee ballots that are out there that they still have to count. Gwinnett County, late last night, telling us about 4,800, Chatham County telling my colleague, Pamela Kirkland (ph), that's down there in the Savannah area, between 3,000 and 4,000 ballots today.

And based off the procedures and the way they do things there, don't expect to start getting results from Chatham County for those remaining ballots until later this afternoon.

It's going to be the same case in DeKalb County, which there's an unknown number of ballots that are still outstanding there, but they didn't stop counting until about 4:30 this morning. They said they were going to come back into the office, start all over again at 10:00 to finish up. But they warned us that they weren't expecting to do another dump of results until maybe 4:00 this afternoon, Anderson.

And then there's this sort of unknown number of military and overseas ballots. There are 17,000 that they could potentially receive. But the state has said that they don't expect to see anywhere near that number returned. They have until Friday for those ballots to come back, Anderson.

Now, of course, because of that very, very slim margin between Jon Ossoff and David Perdue, every single ballot can come into play. Gabe did say on our air, Gabe Sterling, that it would be a bit of a nip/tuck to see if Ossoff could get past potentially that half mark, which would allow someone to request a runoff.

COOPER: Yes.

Dianne Gallagher, appreciate it. Thanks very much.

BURNETT: All right, and dozens of Republicans are expected to baselessly contest Joe Biden's election victory. So you want to know who as you get ready for this day. So we're going to run down who's expected to object and to which states, what will happen.

Plus, what will Vice President Mike Pence do when he presides over that vote later today? This is CNN's special live coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:48:37]

BURNETT: In just a few hours, the congressional session to seal Joe Biden's victory will begin ahead of his inauguration, which is now just 14 days away.

Take a look at this, though. These Republican senators and House lawmakers you see your screen littered with faces, they are planning to object to the results from multiple states. Now, this move will not change the overall outcome. It, though, does create drama. It will drag out the typically routine process.

Our Lauren Fox is on Capitol Hill. She's been reporting on this.

So, Lauren, you know, we know about a lot of them. They're people like Rand Paul have kept his cards close to the vest.

What are you learning about how all this will play out today?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CONGRESSIONAL REPORTER: Well, essentially, Erin, at 1:00 today all this drama is going to begin. What you'll see is a joint session of Congress. You'll see Vice President Pence sitting, presiding over all of this. And then they're going to go state by state. Essentially they'll go through two states and then they'll get to the state of Arizona. At that point we expect the first objection.

And this is really when the circus will begin. We expect that Senator Ted Cruz will raise that objection with a House member. At that point the two chambers will go back and debate this separately for up to two hours. Then they all have to vote on whether or not to uphold this objection.

We know that each of these objections are going to go down. But, essentially, this could take upwards of four or five hours given the fact that it's going to take the House of Representatives a long time to vote because they're dealing with the fact that they're -- we are still in a pandemic up here on Capitol Hill. There are concerns about safety. They're going to be voting in groups.

[09:50:04]

Then there will be a joint session once again. They're going to continue to go through these states. We expect (ph) other objections after Arizona. That's the state of Pennsylvania, of course, and potentially the state of Georgia from Kelly Loeffler, who, again, lost last night in her re-election campaign. So a lot of drama coming on Capitol Hill.

At the end of the day, and this is very important, Joe Biden is still going to be the next president of the United States. How painful this is going to be for the Republican Party, that's really a question of how many objections they have to get through. There could always be more. We do know that House members are prepared to raise six, but they have to have a senator sign on. Right now we know of only three states where that is the case.

Anderson and Erin.

BURNETT: All right, Lauren, thank you.

COOPER: Vice President Pence now in the tightest of tight spots ahead of today's proceedings on Capitol Hill. President Trump firing off tweets overnight urging Pence to reject the Electoral College vote, saying he'll, quote, win the presidency if Pence comes through for us. In truth, vice president's role overseeing the country -- the count is largely ceremonial. Pence reportedly told the president as much when they met yesterday.

I'm joined now by Olivia Troye, a former homeland security counterterrorism and coronavirus response adviser to Vice President Pence. So, Olivia, the president clearly sees Mike Pence as, you know, one more, you know, lever he can try to manipulate to get what he wants. The vice president, meanwhile, has, you know, essentially walked a tight rope on this issue up to now. How do you think he'll handle today's proceedings?

OLIVIA TROYE, FORMER ADVISER TO VP PENCE: Well, first, thanks for having me, Anderson.

You know, I think that the vice president is in a very difficult situation. An impossible spot. And he's been in this situation before, but just not in front of the public eye to this -- to this extent, so to speak.

So I think he will be very measured. I think you'll see that Pence sit (ph) we've seen sort of walk the fine line of trying to appease his boss, which is Donald Trump, and also trying to appease the more moderate side of the Republican Party. And I think -- I think what it will determine is Mike Pence's determination of what 2024 looks like, to be honest. Is it the Trump base of the party for his future or is it more moderates? And right now what we're seeing is there is a wave of Trumpism in the party that doesn't seem to be fading.

COOPER: One White House official called it shameful what President Trump is doing to Pence right now. How would you describe it?

TROYE: It's deplorable. You know, you have someone who has been very loyal. He's one of his most loyal soldiers. He's been there through thick and thin for the past four years. He has never, you know, been outspoken against the president.

But Donald Trump, you know, the way he operates is he is a bully and when he doesn't get his way and he starts to, you know, lose grasp of power, he is going to push those closest around him and he will be the loudest voice in the room and he will push conspiracies that are completely false, and try to bully and intimidate those around him into doing his bidding.

But, today, the vice president doesn't have the power to do the things that Donald Trump is proclaiming. And I hope that he will publicly state this and counter this sort of conspiracy theories that the president is spreading because I think they are very detrimental to our country.

COOPER: Do you -- do you expect Pence to try to run for president in 2024?

TROYE: Absolutely. I really do.

COOPER: That's -- and so that's got to be the calculus. I mean, as you said, it's trying to figure out which -- I mean there's really not anything he can do today based on what his constitutional role is, which is really a ceremonial role. He's essentially, you know, opening the envelopes like somebody at the academy awards and announcing who the winner is. TROYE: That's correct. And I think the vice president has a big choice

to make today. I mean his -- his choice is, you stand by the Constitution and you stand for the ideals of what our country has been founded on and you stand for the integrity of our elections. And if you stand for anything but that, I think that you are defining yourself and your legacy completely for 2024 and what movement you're attaching yourself to. That's the bottom line.

COOPER: Yes, (INAUDIBLE).

Yes. Olivia Troy, fascinating. Thank you. Appreciate it.

TROYE: Thank you.

BURNETT: As President Trump rallies his allies to overturn the election, thousand of Americans now, thousands, nearly 4,000 yesterday dyeing of coronavirus. A pandemic that he has essentially stopped addressing in any way. We're going to go to California. It is now ground zero for the coronavirus crisis in America.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:58:29]

BURNETT: This morning, a frantic scramble to boost coronavirus vaccinations. The United States has just seen its highest COVID death count ever in a single day. Yesterday there were 3,775 reported deaths. These are individual people who are gone. They've died as a vaccine is on the horizon. And hospitalizations is shattering records again. Meaning, this isn't going to stop.

In California, the crisis is so dire, the unthinkable is now happening. They are rationing patient care.

Stephanie Elam is there in Los Angeles with more.

So, Stephanie, on the heel of this record-breaking day of death, tell me what's happening in California.

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, let's put it into perspective this way, Erin, our positivity rate is approaching 13 percent over the last two weeks in California. That's back towards the spring surge that we saw here. So that shows you how bad it is.

Over the last two weeks, we've been averaging about 38,000 new cases a day. Our hospitalizations at a record number, above 22,000. We're also seeing that 22 percent of those people are in the ICU.

We did find that 24 new cases of this U.K. variant were found in San Diego County. So you're looking at all of this data and you're seeing these numbers go in the completely wrong direction. There's been a lot of call for the United States Navy hospital ship "Mercy" to come back here, but it's in repair. And so, in lieu of that, and some people saying it's actually not as helpful since it doesn't take COVID patients. What is happening now is that the governor, Governor Newsom, has

requested 500 additional federal medical personnel to come and help out in these overburdened hospitals here.

[10:00:07]