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CNN Live Event/Special

Pence Faces Pressure from Trump to thwart Electoral College Vote; Pence Informed Trump That He Can't Block Biden's Win; Ossoff Widens Lead Over Perdue; Warnock Wins in Georgia; Perdue Campaign: We Will Mobilize Every Available Resource. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired January 06, 2021 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:00]

CHRIS CUOMO, CNN ANCHOR: Once again, you went to bed. You wake up because you needed something to drink or you had to go to the bathroom and the world has changed. Here we are early Wednesday morning and all across America we have major breaking news as you're getting up for whatever reason. I'm Chris Cuomo along with D. Lemon living history once again here at 4 a.m. in the East.

CNN has projected that Democrat Raphael Warnock will win the special Senate runoff election in Georgia defeating Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler who's a major ally of President Trump. She campaigned with him this week, Don.

DON LEMON, CNN ANCHOR: And listen, we're not in double boxes. We are socially distanced here on the set.

CUOMO: Yes.

LEMON: Wait a minute am I dreaming? What's going on. They're still on the television. Listen, there's a lot to talk about. This may be a Democrat's dream. I think it is.

CUOMO: This is Joe Biden's dream.

LEMON: This is Joe Biden's --

CUOMO: This is his best chance to get things done.

LEMON: But it's also Raphael Warnock's dream at this point. It could be Jon Ossoff's dream. We shall see. Warnock's win is historic. He'll become the first black Senator from Georgia. And with Jon Ossoff leading David Perdue in the other runoff race right now, Democrats are on the verge of another monumental event possibly flipping the Senate just as the President-elect Joe Biden prepares to take office. Can you believe they brought the camera up so I can actually read?

CUOMO: You could read it at the beginning of the night.

LEMON: What was that?

What does that say? I have a scenario nor you. CUOMO: Please.

LEMON: Helped out by my trusty executive producer Maria Spinella. OK, so if I had told you on election eve, right, on November 3rd, right, that Joe Biden would win by the same number of electoral college votes that Donald Trump did, that he would get 7 plus million -- 7 million plus in the popular vote, that he would win the Senate and the two seats that would help him win would come from Georgia and they would be certifying his election tomorrow you would say, what?

CUOMO: I'd bet you my black suit.

LEMON: OK, so listen -- listen how monumental this is? But does it feel that way? Because there's been so much drama, so much craziness that it has played out the way that it has played out.

CUOMO: I think it makes it more dramatic.

LEMON: How so?

CUOMO: Because the environment is so hostile. The rules have been thrown to the side. We're not even shocked by what happened in Pennsylvania. We're not shocked by the president's phone call. We've seen him do it before with a world leader when he talked to Ukraine's Zelensky the same way he talked to that secretary of state. Our norms are so out of whack that it is becomes surprising when good things happen, when the process works. You know when anything goes according to rules anymore. Everything is up in the air and that takes us to today.

LEMON: But who do you have to blame for that? I'm going to take us to today. What happens today, same thing. You call it the wall of shame. You know why all those things have happened? Why there's been such a breakdown? Because of folks like this on this wall who allow this president to get away with crazy things, conspiracy theories, breaking the rules.

CUOMO: One of them is literally a QAnon person.

Yes, but these are people who have chosen fealty. Which is, you know, one way -- you know, a one way respect for somebody that they fear and that they think can help them, over loyalty to their oath of office.

LEMON: Where did it get them?

CUOMO: Excuse me.

LEMON: Where did it get them?

CUOMO: We'll see. I mean right now it's all about promise that may or may not be fulfilled. Later today they're going to take to the floor in Congress without proof and say they don't want Joe Biden to be the next president of the United States because they don't like it. Not because it was wrong, not because they can prove that. They had dozens of chances.

LEMON: But they say it was rigged, that it was stolen even though there is no proof.

CUOMO: I say I should have been 6'5" playing for the Knicks. There's no proof of that either.

LEMON: And they've gotten people to believe it. They've gotten their -- many people around this country to believe it, including the people who showed up in Washington on Tuesday night as this election was going on. Look at this. This is what's happening. These pro Trump supporters clashing with police in Washington, D.C., as the election is going on and on the eve of Joe Biden's win and Kamala Harris's win being certified tomorrow.

CUOMO: And you know what the answer will be from the Re-Trumpicans about this?

LEMON: What?

CUOMO: What about Antifa. What about Black Lives Matter? What about those guys? How you're not showing those?

LEMON: What about them?

CUOMO: That's where we are though. Nobody wants to own what they do wrong anymore in this country when it comes to these political goals and aids. They don't want to deal with it.

[04:05:00]

And that's why they are where they are right now. What happened in Georgia. What's happening right now, tonight, if it stays this way, success has many fathers. Failure has one and it's going to lead back to the outgoing president, Donald Trump. Now, he didn't start this fight to be fair. This is --

LEMON: But he set a huge gas can and through it --

CUOMO: He is a human turbo charger. There's no question about it. All metaphors apply. You know we've been building all these bad habits for years. And he is the ultimate manifestation of them. We did this to ourselves. How we get ourselves out of it is not easy. It's easier to make them bad than to make them good.

LEMON: We're going to have to work hard to get ourselves out of it. That means we're going to have to work together whether people like it or not. Regardless of what side of the political aisle you're on. We're going to have to work together. But, Chris, there has to be truth in it. You have to live in reality. You cannot expect someone to work with you if you don't believe that Joe Biden is the duly elected president. If you don't believe in the truth. If you believe in conspiracy theories. It's kind of hard to win someone over to actually see you side when you're not dealing in reality.

CUOMO: It's true. And look, the best hope is that we wind up getting the benefit of the weakness of too many people in office. Which is that they'll follow. That when the tone changes at the top and people start making deals, they'll fall in line and we'll start to have just regular fringe populations again and not have it be so contagious.

And I think one of those aspects will be made manifest today. These men and women what they decide to do today, is going to have a lasting mark on where we are. And it's such an interesting play by Trump to throw his own and most loyal guy under the bus. VP Mike Pence has done everything that Trump has asked him to do which has absolutely operated to his own detriment of his own political future.

And now Trump is putting it out there on Twitter and everywhere else, that if Pence doesn't come through today, he doesn't make it happen for him, he's going to be upset. Pence has no power. For insight into what's going to happen today and why it will happen, Suzanne Malveaux joins us on Capitol Hill. Good to see you, my friend. Happy new year.

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well happy new year. Good to see you as well. I anticipate that we're all going to be here together at the same time tomorrow, three or four or five in the morning to just let it play out. Because it will play out normally a mundane process about an hour or so is going to take at least perhaps even 18, 20 hours or so.

It's going to be 1:00 in the afternoon at the joint session of Congress. It will be a gavel to order. Vice President Mike Pence will go ahead, and he'll start to open up the certificates for each one of the states for their Electoral College votes and the tellers will start to read those and they will go in alphabetical order. So they start with Alabama.

We anticipate the first objection is going to be by a House member as well as Senator Ted Cruz for Arizona. That that is going to be the objection at that point. When that happens, because there's a Senator as well as a House lawmaker, it will have to be signed. It will have to be in written form and then the House and Senate will break apart, they'll debate for about a couple of hours or so. Each lawmaker will have about five minutes to jump in.

We expect that Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell will be the first one to take the Senate side when dealing with these objections very forcefully against those objections saying that they do not have a place here. He is quite embarrassed by this whole thing trying to keep his caucus together. He has failed in doing so.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the other end, she will be organizing and taking care of the House debate that will take place on her side. We also expect that there will be objections potentially to Georgia's election, to Pennsylvania and we're not sure if there will be others with Nevada and Michigan and other states that Trump has contended. If that's the case, this could be a process for each one of those objections could take three or four hours to play out. We anticipate therefore it could be a very long day.

However, when it's all said and done, we don't expect there will be any objections that will actually be sustained because of the Democrats on the House side. It takes the House and Senate to do so and the big question remains is what the vice president is going to do at the end of the day because ultimately, it's his responsibility, and it is his job to essentially announce when somebody has 270 that is required to win.

CUOMO: It is described under law as a ministerial duty, not a discretionary duty. He doesn't have the ability to render an outcome. He is literally operational there. And Trump has put this big mandate on him to do something more than that.

MALVEAUX: It is a ceremonial duty, you're absolutely right. And what we have been told is likely to happen is that he will go ahead and announce the winner but also make some sort of statement trying to appease Trump that, in fact, that he can understand why people are objecting to all of this.

[04:10:00]

We have heard from his chief of staff saying as much so that he understands and realizes and feels the sympathy of many people who say this has to be contested and so that he is going to try to essentially play it both ways.

CUOMO: It doesn't work. Strong and wrong is not going to get them where they want to be. Suzanne, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

All right let's bring in CNN's Joe Johns. He's keeping an eye on Trump for us. He was active late into the night and early into the morning.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: He really was. He was looking at the results coming in. And as soon as it started looking more clear that the Democrats were getting ahead, the president immediately picked up on his previous line we've heard so many times suggesting that there was fraud afoot. Of course, there apparently is not. Nonetheless that's the president's story and he is sticking to it.

He also was tweeting about Mike Pence, the vice president, because as you just heard from Suzanne, he is going to preside over this event up on Capitol Hill. And we were told actually that he spoke to -- he spoke to the president but here's the president's tweet.

If Vice President Mike Pence comes through for us, we will win the presidency. Many states want to decertify the mistake they made in certifying incorrect and even fraudulent numbers in a process not approved by their state legislatures, which it must be. He says Mike can send it back.

Mike can't, number one, and there is plenty of other stuff there that's very hard to unravel, but basically untrue. Now to the back story. The back story is the president and Mike Pence actually met once again today or last night, I should say, and Mike Pence, we're told, told the president of the United States he didn't have the power to decertify the election. This is of course something that the president doesn't agree with it.

The president also apparently heard about this from "The New York Times" which first reported it. Responded very quickly thereafter to say that, no, no, no, no, no. He and Mike Pence are on the same page. They're both in agreement that Mike Pence has the power to act. That certainly is not true. If both of them were on the same page, then both of them would be delusional because the fact of the matter is, as you've said, it's ministerial what the vice president is going to be doing today.

Also one other point. The president is expected to give a speech of sorts to some of his supporters who were in town. Apparently, some those supporters you saw in video out on the streets last night. And the president is also expected to talk about Mike Pence. There's some people suggesting he might go after Pence if Pence doesn't agree to do his bidding. Though this speech is supposed to occur fairly early in the morning so it's not clear that all of the proceedings up on Capitol Hill will have been finished. Back to you.

CUOMO: All right, Joe Johns, another day to watch.

Let's come here to the magic wall. My man John Berman to figure out what the state of play is. Ossoff, David Perdue now 16,000 -- you didn't circle it, but it just changed.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF NEW DAY: That just changed. We're going to wait and find out where that vote just came in from. As you were pointing --

CUOMO: You're supposed to circle this --

BERMAN: With that magic finger you just created votes for Jon Ossoff. All right let me show you where that came from.

CUOMO: Go ahead.

BERMAN: 3,706 votes, Ossoff got 3,635. David Perdue got 71. OK. So Ossoff took 98 percent of this latest batch of votes that we're seeing right now. So Jon Ossoff now leads -- let's take this look here because this is really important. He now leads by 16,000 votes, OK, which is more than Joe Biden won the state of Georgia by in the presidential race. He now leads by .4 percent. If he leads by .5 percent or more it is outside the realm of where David Perdue can ask for a recount.

CUOMO: .5 is a push to no recount or recount.

BERMAN: .5. If David Perdue can keep it below .5 --

CUOMO: So below.

BERMAN: So .5 that's the outside margin he could ask for a recount there. Jon Ossoff's lead keeps on growing. And we expect right now that it might very well keep on growing. We just saw from DeKalb County, which has been the story of the night. This is where the most votes have come in over the last several hours. 95 percent reporting. He leads by 220,000 votes here. As more and more votes come in from DeKalb, Jon Ossoff's lead keeps growing more and more.

CUOMO: And it's slow because they've had to go to hand feeding of the ballots into the machinery because they had some kind of technical problem. So it's taking longer. But you have, you know, you a paper trail here for them to do it.

[04:15:00]

BERMAN: Let me tell you why Democrats are enthused and think that the vote that does remain in the state -- we have 98 percent in -- will lien their way. This is the population. The blue dots, the bigger they are, the bigger the population in those areas. The red dots, the bigger they are, the bigger the population. Now I can show you where there's still remaining votes. Not talking about a lot here. We're talking about, you know -- let's move this up to 97 if I can.

CUOMO: You don't have the magic finger.

BERMAN: Ah, oh, ah, oh.

CUOMO: You do not have the magic finger. Now what happened?

BERMAN: Just give me a second because this is worth it. I've been working all night to give you this one little toy here. So we're going to bring it down just a little bit. We'll take what we get. Let's show 94. OK, but you can see where there is still vote remaining at this point. You know, it's in these major population areas. It's around Atlanta mostly. So that's where the vote still remains at this point to be counted.

I have another way of looking at it right now which I think actually might help us out a little bit more. Look at the counties where we still have votes to count. Chatham County, which is where Savannah is. We still have 3,000 votes to count. Jon Ossoff is getting nearly 60 percent of the vote there. So if he gets 60 percent of 3,000, he builds his margin.

Around Atlanta, this really is the key area. Fulton County where metro Atlanta is, there's still about 4,000 votes, Jon Ossoff's getting 71 percent. Again, he gets 71 of the 4,000 votes, he will expand his lead even more. Dekalb County, we're talking about that. He will expand his lead there.

Gwinnett County, now he's not doing as well in Gwinnett as he's doing in DeKalb. He's doing about 60 percent there. There're 4,800 votes left in Gwinnett. He can expand his lead more. So again, there's just so much more opportunity for Jon Ossoff than there is for David Perdue.

I'll show you a couple of the big Republican counties in the state. Forsythe, where you can see, David Perdue enjoyed a big lead with 99 percent reporting. Same for Cherokee County, the other big county that David Perdue won. Yes, he won 70 percent of the vote, but 99 percent is in. So at this point Jon Ossoff has much more room to expand his vote than David Perdue does.

CUOMO: So most of the vote has come in since we began tonight at midnight. DeKalb county has moved the needle considerably for Jon Ossoff. There was this number that you probably heard if you've been watching the coverage tonight, that they were waiting on about 19,000 votes from DeKalb County. That number has been slowly going down as we've been watching it in real time. But there's still a way to go.

BERMAN: We think there's a few thousand left in DeKalb County. And what we don't know is how much mail-in ballots that haven't arrived yesterday by 7:00 might be there. I hear the peanut gallery -- Harry.

HARRY ENTEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL WRITER AND ANALYST: The peanut gallery -- I'm jumping in right here. Look, based upon what we know, we know that there's vote by mail that's still out. And what's so important, I just keep emphasizing this, is the vote by mail in any individual county will run more Democratic than the overall result in those counties.

CUOMO: Why?

ENTEN: Why? Because Democrats voted by mail and the Republican president of the United States bashed voting by mail, that's why. And so what we're going to see if in fact there that is vote by mail that I believe is still out there that Kristin Holmes was suggesting that there still was, this margin is going to expand. And at this particular point outside of vote tabulation error in the counting I just don't see it. Look, we have to count those votes. There's still plenty of them out there. But at this particular point it's pretty clear where that midnight train to Georgia is going.

BERMAN: Let me just tell you, right now you look at Jon Ossoff with 83 percent of the vote in DeKalb County, but that last batch of votes we just received, he was getting -- I'm going to draw this. It's that big. He got 98 percent of the vote that was just counted in DeKalb. Why? It's the early vote. The mail-in vote which skews even more heavily Democratic than the already Democratic count.

CUOMO: It also fuels the conspiracy theorists that the numbers are so big the other guy's getting 60 votes, 70 votes. He's getting 3,000. I mean, you know, look, it's internet chatter. But remember, that's who our president is and that's who is people are.

BERMAN: It's a load of who. Look, Forsythe county, he gets 70 percent. You go up to some of these other counties and Republicans pull huge numbers, huge numbers. 78 percent of the vote up there. 80 percent of the vote up there. It's just the way the vote is distributed around the state. You don't hear Democrats saying there's no way David Perdue can get 80 percent of the vote in Fannin County. Yes, there is because more Republicans live there. It's just the way that the vote is divided up in the state.

CUOMO: Hey, John, Harry. What about military overseas ballots? Enough there to make up the difference for --?

BERMAN: This is what we know about the military vote and overseas ballots. They can be received until Friday. There are 17,000 possible -- and this is important -- there were 17,000 military and overseas ballots that were requested that have not been returned yet.

[04:20:00]

We don't know if they will return 17,000 by Friday. In fact, it's highly likely you'll get nowhere near 17,000 votes total. Right? And then we don't know how those votes will divide. They won't got 17,000 for one candidate, zero for the other. They'll likely be split depending on what part of the state they come from. But again, 17,000 is the maximum number that you can get of that vote and it's likely to be much less than that.

ENTEN: If David Perdue is relying on military votes, he is in a world of trouble. The military votes theoretically could really close this, but in reality, it ain't happening.

CUOMO: Well look, here's what we know in reality. We've watched DeKalb County change this race for Jon Ossoff tonight. He's not out of recount territory yet. He's on the verge of it. And by the way, a recount doesn't mean the outcome is going to change. It just means it will take longer and it's another step in the process. But you know, we've watched them come in. literally I was pointing at a number ready to say 12,000 --

BERMAN: You're still taking credit for that.

CUOMO: -- it changed to 16,000. This is happening in the middle of the night because they're still working and still counting. So let's take a break. When we come back, we will give you the latest update on where things stand. It is going to make a huge difference in the next presidency. I'll just keep pointing at it. Maybe we'll get some more numbers. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:25:00]

LEMON: You know you hear with protests out on the street, right, this is what democracy looks like. No matter who wins this last Senate race in Georgia, we are really seeing Americans exercise their constitutional rights the way they're supposed to do it. They voted and they voted in mass numbers. But in just hours though you're going to see lawmakers try to mock the constitution at the moment where the nation is supposed to come together.

So let's bring in Angela Rye, Alice Stewart and Ryan Lissa. So listen, we have already called the Warnock race. Let's talk about the Ossoff/Perdue race, OK. Alice, I want to ask you about this. Jon Ossoff is ahead 16,370 votes. The 19,000 votes around DeKalb have been counted putting him ahead by 16,000. He is almost to the point where Perdue cannot even ask for a recount if it does indeed -- if the numbers hold up. I want to put up this statement and I just want to get your response to what's going on right now. This is from the Perdue campaign.

We will mobilize every available resource and exhaust every legal recourse to ensure all legally cast ballots are properly counted. We believe in the end Senator Perdue will be victorious.

You know, we talked about this last time you were on and you talked about, listen, this is a free and fair election. What do you make of that? Do you think Perdue is going down possibly the same road that we have been going down since November 3rd in this country?

ALICE STEWART, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I have every reason in the world to believe that he's going to challenge it regardless of how close the margins are because he's certainly playing from the Trump playbook and I think that's unfortunate. As I said, I believe the election on November 3rd was free and fair and the one this week was free and fair.

I, having been former deputy secretary of state in Arkansas, I think states across the country take a lot of pride in making sure that every legal and legitimate vote is counted, and people have confidence in the election process. And I spoke with Secretary Raffensperger on Monday about the races in Georgia and he has confidence in the results that came out in November and he also had all the ducks in a row and all the elections officials across the state of Georgia ready for this election.

And I think it's really discouraging for voters when they go, and they take the time to go vote and they're being told that not only is there a irregularity before they vote but now it's going to be challenged. And look, this has been tough. I wish the results were different. I would love to see two Republicans win the state Georgia and go on to Washington, D.C. Unfortunately, it looks like the voters of Georgia feel differently. Democrats were more energized and more mobilized. And when you have Republicans that are really supportive of this president and you have Republicans looking for incentive to come out and vote and they are disincentivized by this president, it tends to have consequences.

LEMON: Let's talk about what's going to happen later today, Ryan Lissa. Because you're going to have Senators objecting to the electoral college count, Cruz, Hawley, Johnson, Lankford and so on and so forth. What do you think -- if we can put up what Chris has been calling the wall of shame, I think aptly so he has named it that. If you look at all of these folks on here expect to object, the Republicans against counting electoral votes. What does this mean for our democracy, Ryan?

RYAN LISSA, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Well it's terrible for our democracy that this many Republicans would follow Trump down this path when they know better. They allowed the president to create an alternate reality that his supporters believe and then they were forced to respond to that alternate reality, alleged election fraud that didn't happen, and instead of fighting those facts and pointing out it's not true, they basically decided to say, well the voters believe this, there's got to be something there, you know, we're going to do something about it because our voters are pressuring us to.

I think the results yesterday and what, you know, what might be the results in the Ossoff race has really taken the air out of this idiocy and already you are seeing Republicans pointing a finger at President Trump and saying that he's the cause of what happened in Georgia. And I think these results just completely change the dynamic in the Republican Party making Trump look like some kind of, you know, electoral genius to the opposite.

Don, if I could just read a couple of quotes from a story that's moving in Politico like a half an hour ago.