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CNN Live Event/Special

Deadliest Day Of Pandemic As 3,775 Die, "Disaster" In California; Georgia Vote Counting Resumes, Democrats Closer To Senate Control; GA Election Official: Trump Is "100 Percent" Responsible For GOP Losses; Soon: Congress To Certify Biden's Win Despite GOP's Objection Stunt; Trump Ups Pressure On Pence To Baselessly Thwart Electoral Vote. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired January 06, 2021 - 10:00   ET

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

[10:00:00]

STEPHANIE ELAM, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Also worth noting, too that the Governor has said that non-essential surgeries are supposed to held off for now in counties where there's just no capacity below 10 percent as far as ICU beds are available here.

Los Angeles County is the epicenter of that and I can tell you that the ICU number here is up, 200 more people have entered into the ICU just from one day to the next, it's had a record number now.

So not just hospitalizations but ICU patients that shows you things are going in the wrong direction as people are just really watching this virus spread from person to person and it's just getting out of control here when you talk to officials on the ground, the medical personnel, Erin, they're hurting.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: All right, Stephanie Elam, thank you. And good morning I'm Erin Burnett. Welcome to CNN's special coverage of a Monumental Day in America.

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: I'm Anderson Cooper, in the next 24 hours will be historic as we follow several major stories from the Senate runoff elections in Georgia to today's planned Republican stunts on Capitol Hill. In Georgia, one race still too close to calls this morning while another seems to be decided.

BURNETT: And at stake there, of course, the balance of power in Washington. Democrats are one seat away from a 50/50 split, and what that means is they would control it because that would put the deciding vote in the hands of incoming Vice President Kamala Harris.

The Republican in charge of voting system implementation for the State of Georgia put the blame for the historic shift squarely on President Trump. What happened? Who's responsible?

GABRIEL STERLING, GEORGIA VOTING SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION MANAGER: The President of the United States is 100 percent foursquare responsible. I mean, when you tell people your vote didn't count, this is all part of crazy town and people are stealing things, you undermine people's confidence in the vote. Then you create a civil war within the GOP at a time when the GOP probably wanted to unite their vote to turn out. Those are the kind of things that the president is solely responsible for doing.

BURNETTT: Mincing no words there. Today we're watching Capitol Hill, first show from Republicans in the House and Senate. Dozens of them have declared that they will object to the Electoral College count and precincts to the president that makes Joe Biden the next President of the United States.

Of course, the stunt is meant to keep the president happy but all it's going to do is fan the flames of his baseless conspiracy theories, put out falsehoods. These claims have been repeatedly debunked by state election officials and have been thrown out of close to 60 courts across this country, Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, it's incredible, the number of times this stuff has just been thrown out. Before the Republicans get their chance to start this stunt, we expect to hear from President Trump, who will address thousands of his supporters who are gathering in Washington to protest his defeat. He's also increasing the pressure on his vice president to thwart the vote, which is something the vice president has no power to do.

BURNETT: And this political turmoil is coming as the United States has set yet another grim record the number yesterday, more than 3,700 people in this country died from COVID-19. With a vaccine being rolled out, we've now had the single biggest day of death in this country since the pandemic began, Anderson.

COOPER: Yes, it is shocking and outrageous. History is being made. Now today in Georgia as CNN has called one of the Senate runoffs for Democrat Raphael Warnock, he will become the first African-American elected to the Senate from Georgia.

There's still one race that is too close for us to call is this morning Democrat Jon Ossoff declared victory anyway, which was followed up by this buckle up tweet by Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.

I want to bring in CNN Political Director David Chalian to break down the races. So David, we've called the Warnock/Loeffler race. Where do things stand with the Jon Ossoff/David Perdue race?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes. Take a look here we know candidates don't get to call races right so. We're going to wait for a little more vote to come in. But this number, 17,025 votes is what the margin is. Jon Ossoff ahead of David Perdue, Anderson when you calm to me last hour that started with 16.

So Jon Ossoff has padded his lead a little bit. As some of the remaining vote, we have 98 percent of the vote still in, 2 percent still out there. As some of that trickles in, Jon Ossoff padded his lead. What you see here in the percentages, he has got a 50.2 percent vote share to David Perdue's 49.8 percent. That margin, 0.4 percent, is within the 0.5 percent allowable margin for a candidate to request a recount in Georgia. So Ossoff is certainly hoping to get his margin outside of that, not allowing Purdue to ask for a recount.

As I said, we're still waiting on some votes. So take a look here in Fulton County, Atlanta, the most populous county. It's at 95 percent reporting. So there's not a ton of vote left out in Fulton County, but enough that can pad Ossoff's lead because he's winning Fulton 72 percent to 28 percent.

[10:05:00]

CHALIAN: Look here next door in DeKalb County, again, 95 percent reporting, Anderson. So that 5 percent of the vote that's left, well, if it splits like it has been splitting, 83 percent to 17 percent for Ossoff, the Democrat is going to pad his lead and perhaps get to a wide enough margin to make all of the difference in being able to project this.

As you noted before, this all comes down to the balance of power in the United States Senate. And with that call that we did make in the other race for Raphael Warnock, Democrats have 49 seats right now. Republicans are at 50.

If Ossoff keeps adding to his lead, and if we're able to project him the winner, that goes to 50. And in a tied Senate, the tie goes to the vice president, who will be Kamala Harris come January 20th.

COOPER: David Chalian, it is a stunning turn of events. Stick around; I want to check in on DeKalb County, where the counting will resume in minutes from now. CNN's Ryan Young is live there. So Ryan, explain what is going to be happening over the next few hours?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Anderson. We're told at 10:30 the count will restart. We were here last night or early this morning, at 4:00 am, when they stopped counting, a lot of the workers looked like they were ready to go home at that point but we're told they are going to start counting again.

A lot of the poll watchers have actually already shown up to be inside that room so they could watch what's going on? I can tell you just behind, pretty much behind the door behind me when you go into the room, it's a small enough room where there more poll workers actually then reporters.

Of course, this has been an invigorated county. A lot of money has been spent to get folks out to vote. Now we did find out last night there was one small issue, there was a memory card that had an issue, so they had to go to hand counting. But they said they were able to meet that need.

We're not sure how big of a batch is left in terms of vote but we do know there are provisional votes. Some of the paper ballots were torn so they're going to have to re-feed those through. Let's not forget military ballots and some of the absentee ballots that were sent have until the 8th to arrive.

So we believe at 10:30 this morning they will start again. We're hoping, we were told yesterday that at 4:00 they will do another dump of the votes. Maybe something will happen faster because you never know these folks seem pretty smooth with it. But we have to wait and see how long they will go through the counting this afternoon as they start once again. Anderson?

COOPER: Yes. Ryan Young, appreciate you being there. Thank you very much.

BURNETT: All right. Let's get some more reaction to the stunning turn of events in Georgia from Bakari Sellers, Attorney and Former South Carolina State Representative. So Bakari, what is your reaction here to Georgia flipping blue now? This is a red state.

It's been contested right, but this is a red state. All of a sudden it goes blue for the presidential election and now blue it appears for two Senate seats, in so doing electing its first African-American Senator ever and its first Democratic Senators in two decades.

BAKARI SELLERS, FORMER SOUTH CAROLINA STATE REPRESENTATIVE: Yes, it's only the second African-American Senator that we've elected in the confederate state since reconstruction only the second African- American. I mean, I want to read off the names of the black Senators in American history.

You have Rebels Bruce Brook, Moseley, Braun, Obama, Burse, Scott, Coven, Booker, Harris and Warnock. That's 11 people. You literally had more people in the United States Senate named mike than you've had African-American Senators. So that just tells you the gravity of the moment that we're in.

And if you think about it, you have a preacher, a Baptist Minister from Ebenezer Baptist Church, which was a part of the spiritual heartbeat of the Civil Rights Movement and 33-year-old Jewish journalist, who are now going to the United States Senate to represent the State of Georgia.

There are a lot of people and I have to contrast these current events, there are a lot of people yesterday who were punched in the gut because of Jacob Blake and what happened with the failure to charge the officers in this case.

But there are a lot of people who got just a small glimmer of hope after these election results as they come in because now we know that Mitch McConnell can no longer block progress. We can pass the George Floyd justice in policing act, the John Lewis voting rights package. All of these things can now be passed because of these two young men in the State of Georgia.

BURNETT: So you heard Gabe Sterling, obviously, lifelong Republican who runs the elections in Georgia. He's stood firmly, stood up firmly to the president, right, as has Secretary of State Raffensperger and Governor Kemp in saying that their elections have been free and fair and Democrats have won. Gabe Sterling's point of view was that he 100 percent - let me just get his words here 100 percent four square responsible the President of the United States for the loss of the Republicans in Georgia. These are underperforming even what they did in November, right when you had versus the Democrats.

What do you think though, Bakari? Who deserves more credit for the loss, is it the president or Democrats for outperforming?

[10:10:00]

SELLERS: So, look, there's a lot of blame to rest on the shoulders of the President of the United States. He's inept, he's backwards and politically backwards and a lot of times when he ends up on top, it's just pure, you know it fortuitous but Republicans knew that going on. So that's a small amount of blame.

I want to give more credit to the organizers though, I mean, Latasha Brown, Black Lives Matter, Stacey Abrams, her organization down there my brother Antoine C. Wright, who went down and mobilized black men.

90 percent of black men - there have been this huge narrative pushed about black men peeling away but 90 percent of black men based upon our exit polls at CNN voted for Warnock/Ossoff, 90 percent. So that work was done.

And then there's this very unique thing, there were two policy issues one was policy, one cultural. The $2,000 stimulus checks that got the two Republicans in somewhat of a pretzel was a huge issue for voters, Democrats, Republicans, black and white because those are pocketbook issues.

And the other thing was, Erin, I will share this with anybody out there, if you want to get black folk riled up, if you want to get them active, do not attack the black church, right? That is what - that is what Republicans did, they attacked the black church. They attacked the Baptist pulpit. They attacked the church of John Lewis and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

And look, we might get punched in the face, we might get slapped, but you're not going to attack our spiritual homes.

BURNETT: Bakari, stand by. In just about an hour, President Trump is actually set to speak. The crowd has been building in Washington. Tensions also building because the president's false claims and baseless attempts are believed by so many of the people who are going out there today, even though it is all untrue.

And now, of course, there's the attempt to overturn the election on Capitol Hill. Congress will shut that all down today after drama. Let's go to Boris Sanchez because he is in Washington where the president is, or going to be giving that speech in just a few moments. So what do you think?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Erin, a number of things stand out to me about the event here the president is holding this morning. First, the enormity of the crowd it is massive. I don't think you can really appreciate it from what you're seeing behind me.

It goes out towards the sides and beyond behind our cameras the Washington Monument and there's a sea of people. The event organizers got a permit for about 30,000. I believe they're going to have to stop letting people in soon and from what I can tell on the sidewalks, throngs of people are still showing up. That's one.

The second is the move, the temperament. I have been to a number of trump rallies. More than two dozen, and the animosity, the anger in the air are palpable and are being pushed forward by the rhetoric that's coming from the stage. We heard from a number of speakers this morning.

A lot of them not only peddling falsehoods but also ratcheting up the idea that these folks have to fight, fight in their eyes to keep President Donald Trump in the White House to save the republic. You pair that with what we saw last night, violence in the streets, some of the president's own supporters going toe to toe with police officers, not far from the very doorstep of the White House. It is a toxic mix.

And it's not being helped by the fact the president continues to peddle conspiracy theories on Twitter. We're expecting him here shortly after 11:00 am. We're likely going to hear from his two sons, Eric and Don Jr. before that. Likely to hear more of the same and as soon as that wraps up, these folks are headed marching straight for the Capitol, Erin.

BURNETT: All right, Boris Sanchez, thank you so much my apologies all right. And many of Trump's allies in the House and Senate plan to object to the outcome of the election in some battleground states, right? Once congress officially gavels in, in just a couple of hours those law makers perpetuating the president's baseless claims of widespread voter fraud which let's just be clear didn't happen.

Attorney General Bill Barr has investigated it, come to the same conclusion, did not happen, and today congress will certify Joe Biden's win. Our Political Director David Chalian is back again. So David, I think just we're going to be watching this happen today.

And it can be a little confusing. So walk us through exactly, less than two hours away or about two hours away from gaveling in. What's going to happen with the certification process and these objections?

CHALIAN: Let me first just take you, Erin, to how we got here, the process, right? On November 3rd was the election, from November 4th to December 13th, the states certified their election results. Then you remember on December 14th we all watched as the electors gathered in the 50 state capitals and cast their electoral votes. That's how we elect the president.

On December 23rd the electoral votes had to arrive in Washington from the state capitals. One set of those certifiable electoral votes sent directly to Vice President Mike Pence. January 3rd this past Sunday the new congress was sworn in and today, January 6th, that new congress convenes a joint session to count the Electoral College results.

[10:15:00]

CHALIAN: It's all spelled out in the law of the land. Here's U.S. code, congress shall be in session on the 6th day of January succeeding every meeting of the electors. The Senate and House of Representatives shall meet in the hall of the House of Representatives at the hour of 1:00 in the afternoon on that day and the president of the Senate, that's the Vice President of the United States, shall be their presiding officers.

What you are going to see are two Senators, two House members, Republicans and Democrats, so bipartisan, by cameral, are named tellers. And they are going to be sitting up front, these four folks actually doing the tallying. Here's how the counting process works.

The tellers will read and tally the certificates of electoral votes. Vice President Pence will announce those final results for each state. The announcement of the vote "Shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons elected president and vice president", meaning that's all that needs to happen to make that vote official there.

We know there are going to be objections. We know that the Republicans are trying to show fealty to the president. This is how it works. It requires at least one House member and one Senator to object. They must join together on an objection, and it must be submitted in writing.

What happens is that written objection is submitted. The joint session of the House and Senate together gets suspended. The House and the Senate retreat to their own chambers for a maximum of two hours of debate about that objection. Then after the debate, they vote to accept or reject the objection.

Five minutes of speaking time for every House member or Senator, and they can only speak once, Erin. After the two hours of debate, the presiding officer in each chamber must put forward the main question, meaning put forward to a vote whether or not the objection is accepted or rejected.

And both chambers must agree to the objection to throw out the vote. So I know we had the election in Georgia last night, but it's a Republican-controlled Senate right now and some people think, well, the Senate can vote to accept these objections.

Even though we heard lots of Senators, including the leader Mitch McConnell totally opposed to this process but remember it's both chambers and Democrats control the House. So these challenges are going nowhere.

This is the vice president's power, while the two Houses shall be in meeting as provided in this chapter, the President of the Senate shall have power to preserve order and no debate shall be allowed and no question shall be put by the presiding officer, by Mike Pence here in the Senate, except to either house on a motion to withdraw. That's all he can do. It's all ceremonial. And it is what two of his predecessors have had to do. Back in 1961 Richard Nixon, Vice President at the time overseeing the Electoral College tally of the election he lost to John F. Kennedy and in 2001, Al Gore did the same thing as Vice President, he had to provide over the joint session that tallied up the electoral votes that caused him to lose the election to George W. Bush. Erin?

BURNETT: Yes, I mean, you know, it's amazing, David, just to see how this is going to all play out? Anderson, during the impeachment process, we sort of got accustom to people ceding their time back to certain people, right, who were doing all of the talking?

And as David is laying out, we're not going to see that now. You can only speak once. So it is going to be very interesting to see who speaks? Who uses their time? Who doesn't? But you're not going to, for example, in the Senate see everybody ceding their time to, say, Ted Cruz and keep hearing him speak. You only get your five minutes and that's it.

COOPER: Yes. It will be interesting though to see how drawn out this is just with people are going to move back and forth between their different chambers going back to their respective chamber. Erin, thank you one big question about today's voting congress, what role Vice President Pence will play?

President Trump claims Pence has the power to overturn the election that is simply not the case. Nor the constitution or established law gives them that power. Joining me now is Alan Frumin, Senate Parliamentarian Emeritus. Alan, so would you expect - what do you expect to happen today when congress meets?

ALAN FRUMIN, SENATE PARLIAMENTARIAN EMERITUS: Good morning, Anderson. What I expect to happen at the end of the day is that Vice President Pence will follow the constitution, he will follow the statute, he will do exercise the two authorities of the constitution and the statutes grant him, he will open the ballots and he will announce the result.

He has no legal authority to do anything else but those two actions. And my hope and my guess is that when all is said and done, that's all he will do.

COOPER: Can he sort of express anger, can he express regret at having to do something?

FRUMIN: Legally, no.

COOPER: President Trump tweeted this morning that Vice President Pence can send the electors back to the stage, which can then - the word he used was correct their votes but even President Trump's longtime Attorney Jay Sekulow is dismissing that claim.

[10:20:00]

COOPER: I want to play that for our viewers.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAY SEKULOW, PRESIDENT TRUMP'S PERSONAL ATTORNEY: Some has speculated that the vice president could simply say I'm not going to accept these electors. He has the authority to do that under the constitution. I actually don't think that's what the constitution has in mind. If that were the case, any vice president could refuse to any election.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Alan, what some of the sort of I guess, the attorneys, sort of fringe attorneys that the president now has around him are now saying is, well, just he should go ahead and do that anyway and then it would end up going to the courts and let the courts decide and at least that would delay things. I'm wondering what your reaction is?

FRUMIN: Of course, if that happens, we would be, as I said before, in crazy town. But I don't think that the two houses of congress are powerless to address a trip to crazy town. Each House of congress can overturn rulings of their presiding officers. The presiding officers of the two houses of congress preside.

They do not rule, they do not dictate, they do not ignore the law, they do not ignore the rules of the respected houses, and they do not ignore precedent. When they do - if they do, an appeal can be taken in either house to whatever it is the chair has ruled. Appeals in each house require an affirmative majority vote to sustain what the chair's position has been.

And so the two houses pursuant to their ordinary rules and precedence, and I would believe pursuant to the Electoral Count Act properly interpreted had the ability to tell the vice president no, you cannot pronounce what you've just pronounced. What would happen presumably is there would be an objection to the chair's ruling.

The objection would have to be in writing and signed by one member of the House, one member of the Senate. Presumably, and as I said this has never happened so this is my best guess, the two houses - Senate would withdraw, two houses would spend two hours debating whether or not what it was that the vice president declared from the chair is to be sustained, and he would have both houses voting yes.

And we know that's not going to happen. And so I don't think regardless of what the vice president says, that congress is powerless to actually correct, shall we say, an unprecedented constitutional mistake on the part of the vice president.

COOPER: What do the events of the last few weeks say about where the Senate is as an institution, especially the way that some Republican Senators have gone along with President Trump in pushing completely unfounded claims of voter fraud and bought into these conspiracy theories? Whether they believe it or not and doing it for political purposes or not, what do you want to see from the Senate going forward?

FRUMIN: Well, I spent my entire career working for the Senate and protecting the prerogatives of the Senate, and the Senate, given its procedures, relies on a critical mass of responsible adults to do the right thing. And over the years for the most part, the Senate could cobble together a critical mass of responsible adults reaching into both parties to do that.

Over the years, that critical mass of responsible adults has eroded, and I fear that we've seen that replaced by a growing mass of petulant infants and I believe that's what we have now. The people who are challenging the election fear are behaving as petulant infants and the Senate cannot survive with petulant infants behaving irresponsibly and unconstitutionally.

COOPER: Let's - those are - petulant infants, is quite a stunning, stunning turn of events that we will be witnessing and we have been witnessing. Alan Frumin, I appreciate it. Thank you very much for checking with you throughout the day. In just minutes President Trump is set to address a crowd of his supporters in D.C.

We're told the president may lash out at his own vice president today. Sure, of course, why wouldn't he? When it comes to the GOP's futile bid to block President-Elect Biden's win, we're learning more about which states results are being scrutinized and which Republican Senators will object?

(COMMER CIAL BREAK)

[10:25:00]

COOPER: Just less than three hours from now proceedings will begin in the Senate to confirm Senator Joe Biden's victory. What is, typically a routine from now will likely be a drawn-out process, chaotic perhaps at times. This is why all of these House and Senate Republicans plan to object to the counting of the electoral vote.

CNN's Sunlen Serfaty joins me now. She is on Capitol Hill for us. So the move by the Republican lawmakers it is not going to change the overall outcome. What are we learning about how the proceedings will play out today?

SUNLEN SERFATY, CNN CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, there will certainly be many dramatic moments over the course of this day, Anderson, and should note this is likely to stretch out many, many hours potentially late into this evening potentially even into tomorrow depending on how many objections are raised.