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Trump Refuses To Concede Election, Even As Pandemic Spirals Out Of Control; Biden Mulls Transition Moves Despite Trump's Refusal To Concede; "Stop The Steal" Touts Pro-Trump Rallies Based On Lies; Despite Biden Win, No "Blue Wave" In Down Ballot Races. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired November 14, 2020 - 20:00   ET

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

[20:00:05]

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: And after Beau's death, Biden decided not to run for president in 2016. And he felt his political career might be over. But as we all know, it wasn't. Back to you, Wolf.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: All right, Gloria. Thank you so much. Fight for the White House, Joe Biden's Long Journey airs later tonight 10:00 P.M. Eastern right after THE SITUATION ROOM. You must watch this documentary. It is truly excellent.

And welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. This is a special edition of THE SITUATION ROOM.

Tonight, the American capital, we're talking about Washington, D.C. is home to two very different outlooks when it comes to the soon to be end of the presidency of Donald Trump. On one side, there's the president's supporters angry at the results of the national vote count, convinced they were robbed and cheated.

They demonstrated here in Washington today. Then there's the president himself publicly silent, mostly out of sight once again today, slowing down only at his way to play golf only to wave at the pro-Trump protesters as they shouted in the streets.

All of this happening at the same time as two major developments. The president's own officials declaring the election, quote, the most secure in American history. That comes from his Department of Homeland Security, and an alarming spike in the deadly pandemic, 12 straight days now of more than 100,000 new coronavirus infections, a real world medical emergency on a national scale and at a critical time of transition when the country desperately needs solid leadership even from a president whose one term will end in a matter of weeks.

Let's go to CNN's Jeremy Diamond. He's over at the White House for us right now. Jeremy, President Trump spent, what, his 301st day today as president of the United States at one of his own golf properties, this one outside Washington, D.C., in Northern Virginia, while still refusing to accept the election results or manage the coronavirus crisis. Are there any signs at all that the president, first of all, will concede the election to Joe Biden and let the transition process officially get under way?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, in the weeks since you announced on CNN that we had projected Joe Biden as the winner of the presidential election, what we have watched from President Trump is mostly him claiming victory, him insisting that this election was rigged and stolen from him.

But, privately, Wolf, our sources have told us that the president has vacillated between two different emotions. On the one hand, urging his advisers to push forward with all of these legal efforts and recount challenges in several of the key battleground states, and on the other hand, beginning to come to grips with the reality, that Joe Biden will be the 46th President of the United States and that he, Donald Trump, will be a one-term president.

We saw that kind of play out over the last 24 hours, Wolf. Yesterday, the president, during in an event in the Rose Garden, briefly acknowledged at least the possibility of a Joe Biden administration, something he had not done in public since the results of the election were announce. And then today, Wolf, after he drove by some of his supporters who were cheering his claims of a rigged election, the president, once again, began making those very same claims on Twitter. And he seemed to be emboldened once again.

And we should know, Wolf, that this is despite the fact that election officials, Republicans and Democrats in all 50 states, have made very clear that there is zero evidence of widespread voter fraud. In fact, even government agencies, the federal government agencies have also made clear that there is no evidence of widespread voter fraud and yet the president, for now, refusing to publicly concede this election to Joe Biden.

Our sources have told us that they expect the president to see these legal avenues through. The question is whether at the end of that road, if we do see the president ultimately acknowledge legitimacy of Joe Biden's election.

BLITZER: All right, Jeremy, we'll get back to you. Jeremy Diamond covering the president over at the White House.

On January 20th of this come year, the U.S. diagnosed -- January 20th of this year I should say, the U.S. diagnosed the first case of COVID- 19. Since then, the exponential spread of the disease has been met by tireless efforts of the scientific and medical communities. There has been some progress.

The death rate has dropped. The treatments have improved for the outcome for so many patients. But as case numbers continue to skyrocket, hospitalizations skyrocketing, the death toll continues to climb. It's clear this fight is far, far from over and about potentially in the weeks and months ahead to get a whole lot worse.

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta has more.

[20:05:01]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL ANALYST: New York City, the epicenter of the pandemic this spring.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Code 99, code 99.

DR. ROBERT FORONJY, CHIEF OF PULMONARY AND CRITICAL CARE, SUNY DOWNSTATE: Code 99 could mean someone that still has a pulse, a blood pressure, but is struggling to breathe.

GUPTA: Dr. Robert Foronjy was in the thick of it in March with very few tools at that time to manage a new respiratory disease.

FORONJY: Imagine trying to treat severe bacterial pneumonia without any antibiotics. We're basically relying on the machine and the patient's own immune system to recover.

GUPTA: Other area hospitals also overwhelmed, like Morristown Medical in New Jersey, where Dr. Lewis Rubinson works.

DR. LEWIS RUBINSON, CHIEF MEDICAL OFFICER, MORRISTOWN MEDICAL CENTER: You know, our numbers went up pretty dramatically and pretty quickly. We ultimately had 20 units, with COVID patients. Our maximum of census was over 300 patients concurrently.

GUPTA: One study of a New York City health system found that in March, 25.6 percent of hospitalized COVID-19 patients would end up dying. Imagine that, one in four.

V.J. SMITH, COVID-19 PATIENT: This is a terrible, a very terrible one that's killing more people.

GUPTA: But by June, that mortality rate has dropped by more than two- thirds to 7.6 percent.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The number of deaths has not been increasing markedly.

GUPTA: And it's not just New York. In England, the fatality rate was around 6 percent in June and by mid-August, it was 1.5 percent.

One thing has become clear. If someone is infected with the novel coronavirus now, they are more likely to survive than back in the spring. But why? After all, the virus itself hasn't changed. But it turns out we have. For starters, about 75 percent of the people hospitalized were over the age of 50 back in March. Almost 40 percent had at least one underlying condition.

RUBINSON: We were seeing, as many centers were seeing, more mature patients being impacted and having severe disease.

GUPTA: Today, more than half of all newly infected people are under the age of 50 and they are significantly less likely to get sick. But even if patients do end up in the hospital, their care is now very different. We have an expanded toolkit, drugs like remdesivir and monoclonal antibodies to stop the virus from duplicating, the steroid, dexamethasone, we are using blood thinners to help reduce clotting associated with COVID-19.

You know there was a lot of discussion about ventilators, Doctor, in the beginning. And patients who went on ventilators, at one point, the mortality rate for them was approaching 50 percent. What was going on there?

RUBINSON: Well, for someone whose breathing so bad that we can't get enough oxygen in them or carbon dioxide out, the ventilators helps, but it comes at potential costs. The pressures and the strategies that were using mechanical ventilation can actually worsen someone's disease.

GUPTA: Take a look here, with COVID-19, the lungs can quickly fill up with mucus, making it difficult to take in oxygen. Also damage the lung tissue can sit next to healthy tissue. And if too much oxygen is force on to the healthy tissue, it can cost leaks and swelling and other damage. That's why doctors started to wait longer to move patients to ventilators, utilizing strategies, like having patients breath on their stomach, known as proning, and just monitoring patients with low oxygen levels with as few interventions as possible.

RUBINSON: We're driving on the road that we're paving at the same time with COVID.

GUPTA: Evolving standards of care to match or evolving understanding of this disease.

So there is no question that we've become better at being able to take care of patients once they have contracted COVID and even if they become seriously ill. All the techniques, the medication, things that we've been talking about, the issue now is that there is just so many patients who are contracting COVID, that's going to increase the percentage of people who need to be hospitalized.

We're already seeing that. And now, the projections are, as you probably know, that close to 200,000 more people may die within the next 100 and so days. So, you know, the numbers are still pretty awful. What we have to do in order to bring those numbers down in addition to the better medical care is reduce the amount of virus out there.

The same basic things we've been saying for months, masks, physical distancing, no large public gatherings, stay away from clustered indoor settings. And if you do these things, we can -- in addition to the good medical care, we can really start to bring this curve down.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Thank you so much, Dr. Sanjay Gupta for that.

Let's discuss with CNN Medical Analyst Dr. Seema Yasmin, she's joining us now. Dr. Yasmin, thank so much for joining us.

[20:10:01]

As you just heard Dr. Gupta chronicle so many health crisis over the years his reported with addition to being to a great doctor, he's a great journalist, he's reported on so many crisis, health crisis around the world, whether in Haiti or Sudan, so many other places. He calls what's happening here in the United States of America right -- one of the worst humanitarian disasters he's ever covered. Do you agree with that assessment?

DR. SEEMA YASMIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: He's rights, Wolf. And he's not the only person to make that assessment. Let's just think about the medical aid agency, Medecins Sans Frontieres or Doctors With Our Borders, best known for helicoptering their doctors and nurses into disaster areas after there's been war or tsunami, usually very resource-poor settings.

That same agency has set up temporary operations in the U.S. that lasted between April and October. So, for seven months, these humanitarians who are used to being in the same kind of places that Sanjay has reported from were in Florida, New York, Texas. They were also in Puerto Rico in the Navajo Nation and the Pueblos. So this has been a real concern.

And when MSF was asked, wait, why are you setting up shop in the U.S. now. They said, well, it's because the U.S. health care system cannot cope with this crisis. People are dying because of those failures and also because of the massive inequities of black Americans, Hispanic and indigenous Americans, much more likely to become infected and to die from COVID-19. And that to them, to Sanjay, to myself, so many other public health physicians, this is a humanitarian disaster right here in the U.S.

BLITZER: It certainly is. Earlier today, Dr. Yasmin, the U.S. surgeon general, Dr. Jerome Adams, was interviewed on national public radio. Let me play this clip. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. JEROME ADAMS, U.S. SURGEON GENERAL: There is no information that we have that we don't share with the American public, in general, and that is not available to the Biden task force.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: But listen to this. Here is what a member of the Biden advisory team earlier told my colleague, Ana Cabrera, when she asked if access to the public information that is out there already is enough for the incoming Biden coronavirus advisory council. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANA CABRERA, CNN ANCHOR: A lot has been made public when it comes to research and studies. What information do you need access to from those agencies that isn't public?

DR. CELINE GOUNDER, BIDEN COVID-19 ADVISORY BOARD MEMBER: Well, I think the most critical thing is to know in very detailed fashion what's available to us in terms of countermeasures, what are the supplies, and then also where is the virus spreading and, again, in very detailed granular fashion, understanding exactly in real-time. And there is some there that's publicly available, but I think really having the full accounting is going to be really critical to best planning our efforts.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: So, Dr. Yasmin, it sounds like a huge disconnect between Dr. Adams, the surgeon general, what he said, and Dr. Gounder, what she just said. What do you make of that?

YASMIN: That is a huge disconnect to what Celine is outlining care. That information that she's saying the task force needs is very basic information that should be readily made available to them. This isn't about one administration versus another, or at least it shouldn't be about that. It's about protecting the American public from this pandemic. And we know that good public health requires transparency.

This current administration, the surgeon general included, they have not been transparent with the public and now they're not ready giving this lifesaving information to the new Biden COVID-19 task force. It's such a basic thing to do in this process of transition. Give them the data they are asking for so that they can get on with their job as being ready January 20th of next year to lift us out of this crisis.

BLITZER: It will save potentially thousands and thousands of lives. There's one estimate that 70,000 Americans will die between now and January 20th, the date of the inauguration. 70,000 more will die. And, so far, this outgoing administration is not cooperating. They haven't authorized the various experts to start providing this critically important information.

The advice we're still hearing from the experts is what we've been hearing since way back in March, wash your hands, wear a mask, social distance. It seems to be such simple things to do, it isn't working. So many people are ignoring that advice. What needs to be done to convince the American public, you got to go out there and do these simple things, including especially wear a mask.

YASMIN: We're not just dealing with a pandemic, Wolf. We're dealing with a misinfodemic. There is so much disinformation and misinformation circulating about not just the virus but about the government response to it.

[20:15:00]

And this administration, the president himself has been identified as the single biggest driver of false information about COVID-19. That's according to researchers at Cornell University who analyzed 38 million English language articles about the president and COVID-19.

This has been a massive failure, not just in dealing with the virus but in dealing with communications and being transparent with the public. The president, instead of doing that, instead of having a cohesive pandemic response and communicating that carefully and with nuance to the public has seeded so much distrust. And the worry here is that now that there is politicization and polarization around masks and vaccines, that will really hurt us potentially next year and the year after and when we do hopefully have a COVID-19 vaccine because here is the thing, Wolf. In order for us to get herd immunity we need 75 percent of Americans to receive a vaccine that at least 80 percent effective. And the polls, I'm sure you've seen them as well, show a diminishing proportion of Americans saying, yes, I'll roll up my sleeve, I'll get vaccinated.

So we need to deal with the infectious contagion but also the information contagion as well, make it easy for people to understand what they need to do and just reiterate that wearing a mask can literally save your life and save other people's lives too.

BLITZER: Yes. It's so, so important. The president was in the Rose Garden yesterday speaking about Operation Warp Speed. He could have looked into the camera and simply said, to all of this, more than 70 million Americans who voted for him, wear a mask. It is critically, critically important. Just do it and you'll save lives. We didn't hear that from the president, unfortunately. Dr. Yasmin thank you so much for joining us.

YASMIN: Thank you.

BLITZER: President Trump's former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is slamming the Trump administration refusal to officially begin the transition process, saying the delay could be catastrophic. The president's former national security adviser, John Bolton is standing by live. We've got lots to discuss.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:20:00]

BLITZER: President-elect Joe Biden is in Delaware this weekend continuing to plan his transition. But he and his team are still facing some very, very tough roadblocks as President Trump still refuses to concede and allow the official transition of power to go into effect.

CNN's Jessica Dean is joining us now from Wilmington, Delaware. Jessica, how are the Biden team -- how are they working around the challenges, very significant challenges they're facing during this transition?

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, the Biden transition team will tell you that they feel like they are making progress. They have put together their COVID advisor board, gotten that launched. They have seen Ron Klain be named the chief of staff earlier this week. So they feel like they are making progress in the places where they can. They also say they prepared for a vast number of scenarios, including this one.

Now, all of that being said, it remains that the General Services Administration has yet to ascertain, that's the formal nomenclature for it, but just a validate Joe Biden as president-elect here. And so that means that the formal transition process has not been triggered, which means they don't have formal access to any of the of the agencies that they need to be interfacing with in order to prepare for the transition in January.

So when this comes to something like the coronavirus pandemic, they got their advisory board in place but they're not able to talk with Health and Human Services. They're not able to talk with the current White House coronavirus task force in terms of getting ready for a vaccine distribution plan, things like that. And Ron Klain himself has said that as it gets further down the road, that is going to hamper a seamless transition. They need to be talking about this.

We've also learned that the Biden transition team is doing some backchanneling. They're reaching out to local officials and states, people in the medical community to talk about their COVID plan and work with what they have.

As far as national security is concerned, President-elect Biden is not getting those presidential daily briefings, which would keep him abreast of the day to day movements within the national security realm. And so that means they're kind of out in the dark in terms of the day-to-day movement and the latest information.

We know that the Biden transition team has reached out to former Pentagon officials who worked under former Defense Secretary James Mattis, trying to just get some information. They know they can't contact the current officials. They figure former officials are the next best thing, trying to get information there and, again, just trying to get the lay of the land in these agencies, as you well know, a transition process is a major undertaking, Wolf, and right now, it is being slowed down.

BLITZER: Jessica Dean reporting for us. Jessica, thank you very much.

Joining us, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, the former national security adviser to President Trump, Ambassador John Bolton. Ambassador, thank you so much for joining us.

The new book you have, and we'll put the book cover up on the screen, is entitled, The Room Where It Happened, a White House Memoir, it's a major bestseller right now.

Ambassador, let me quote from an opinion piece that you wrote for The Washington Post this week, and these are your words. I'll put them up on the screen. As of this writing, the Republican Party has not suffered permanent damage to its integrity and reputation because of President Trump's post-election rampaging. This will not be true much longer. The more Republican leaders kowtow, the more Trump believes he is still in control and the less likely he would do what normal presidents do.

How much longer do you believe, Ambassador, before the GOP really suffers real damage because of the president's adamant refusal at least so far to concede that he lost the election?

JOHN BOLTON, FORMER TRUMP NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: Well, I think it could be a matter of days here. I mean, if you look at the litigation that the Trump campaign has brought or sponsored around the country to challenge the elections in the battleground states, their record so far is dismal, cases are being dismissed, the lawyers are withdrawing from the cases.

[20:25:07]

They have not presented the kind of information that they need to.

And I think people, even those who were strong supporters of the Trump campaign, are beginning to understand there's nothing there there. I mean, they're going to have trouble finding lawyers who care enough about their own legal ethics and personal reputations, even to sign filings papers in court. And if they've got something, I don't know what they're saving it for because time is just about out.

BLITZER: I want to play for you what the former President Barack Obama said in a new interview with 60 Minutes. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT PELLEY, CBS NEWS HOST: What are these false claims of widespread election fraud doing to our country right now?

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER U.S. PRESIDENT: They appear to be motivated in part because the president doesn't like to lose and never admits loss. I'm more troubled by the fact that other Republican officials who clearly know better are going along with this, are humoring him in this fashion. It is one more step in de-legitimizing not just the incoming Biden administration but democracy, generally. And that's a dangerous path.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: So, Ambassador Bolton, is this a moment where you agree with President Obama?

BOLTON: Well, I think he's overstated it somewhat. But, by and large, the point is that the president has no basis other than his own reputation to continue to make these kinds of assertions. And that's why in that op-ed you referred to, I asked Republican leaders to stand up and just take the obvious facts that Biden has won this election, absence some dramatic showing that Trump hasn't made and I think can't make.

And what I worry about, I worry about the effect on the country for de-legitimizing our institutions by eroding public confidence in the electoral process. But I'll make clear my partisan worry too. If Republicans don't distance themselves from Trump in the very near future on the integrity of the election, our opponents will take us and lash us to Trump for all eternity, and that is not the place we want to be in.

We have to acknowledge reality when it stares us in the face. I don't think it's that hard. I disagree with the idea that the Republican Party base apparently can't absorb that. I think they can if their leaders talk to them intelligently.

BLITZER: You say the Republican Party needs a long, internal conversation about the post-Trump era right now. Who leads that conversation? What do are Republicans like you need to agree on?

BOLTON: Well, I think in the first instance, this is going to be let a hundred flowers bloom-period. I don't think there's a plan or program at the moment. I think we need to prevent the possibility of nominating somebody like Trump in the future who doesn't have a consistent conservative philosophy, who plays by his own rules and looks out for himself and his interests rather than the interests of the country, and his fellow Republicans. I don't think that ought to be hard to do.

And I think we ought to be looking really for a return to a Reaganite (ph) party of both in terms of policy and attitude. You know, one thing about Ronald Reagan, he was a relentless optimist. He was the Republican Party version of Hubert Humphrey. And it inspired people, and that's what we need more of.

BLITZER: And you agree with the former White House chief of staff, retired General John Kelly, who issued a statement yesterday saying, it's time for the outgoing administration and the president to start cooperating with the incoming administration. Let me read a line from what he said. This is General Kelly.

The delay in transitioning is an increasing national security and health crisis. It crossed the current administration nothing to start to brief Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris. The new chief of staff and all identified cabinet members and senior staff. The downside to not doing so could be catastrophic to our people regardless of who they voted for.

This is essential that this -- the transition briefings begin, right?

BOLTON: Absolutely. And I think John made a point, and it's completely correct, that President Trump can authorize the transition process to begin without in any way conceding what I think is the obvious legitimacy of Biden's claim to the presidency. He can disavow backing that claim. He can just say, I'm doing this as a matter of prudence and good judgment on behalf of the American people. I don't expect that to happen but it's certainly something he could do.

[20:30:02]

BLITZER: Yes, and we're just looking at the numbers the President- elect Biden, he is leading the national popular --

[20:30:00]

BOLTON: But it's certainly something he could do.

BLITZER: Yes, and we're just looking at the numbers. The President- elect Biden, he is leading the national popular vote now by more than five and a half, almost -- it's approaching six million votes right now in the Electoral College. He has 306 to 232, you need 270. He is way, way ahead as far as the Electoral College is concerned, as well as the popular vote. It's time for the President of the United States to recognize that.

Ambassador Bolton, thanks so much for joining us.

BOLTON: Well, thanks for having me.

BLITZER: A new movement called Stop the Steal is gathering steam at pro-Trump protests as well as on the Internet, but who's really behind this? A CNN investigation is next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:35:12]

BLITZER: A three-word slogan, Stop the Steal. You've probably seen it splashed across your social media screens or heard it shouted by people who believed President Trump was robbed of a second term by Joe Biden. A baseless allegation, of course, but it turns out Stop the Steal is not a new movement at all. It just never before have this kind of following or attention.

Here's CNN Drew Griffin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's an Internet battle cry, Stop the Steal, has swept across inboxes, Facebook pages, and Twitter like an out of control virus. The claims that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump are all false. But the truth means little to people inundated with lies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I believe that they tried to steal the election.

GRIFFIN: Stop the Steal may appear as a grassroots uprising, but it started more than four years ago, the brainchild of a political dirty trick artist and convicted liar who was pushed disinformation schemes for years, Roger Stone.

ROGER STONE, AMERICAN POLITICAL CONSULTANT: Stop the Steal is posting much of this material. There is insurmountable compelling, overcoming evidence of fraud

BENJAMIN DECKER, FOUNDER, MEMETICA: Stop the Steal is actually a coordinated effort that has been revived twice by Roger Stone and allied political operatives, in an attempt to gaslight the entire integrity of our voting and election process.

GRIFFIN: Ben Decker who conducts digital investigations says fire from a grassroots campaign Stop the Steal is a business.

In 2016, Roger Stone's pack launched stopthesteal.org, which was asking for $10,000 donations, purportedly back then to help uncover evidence of vote fraud against Donald Trump. Stone told CNN, the group was a nonprofit created to ensure the integrity of the vote. Stop the Steal reemerged briefly in the 2018 midterms. Then in the runup to 2020, the Stop the Steal campaign rebooted by a group of people orbiting Roger Stone. A cast of characters include Ali Alexander, a Roger Stone wannabe.

ALI ALEXANDER, RIGHT-WING OPERATIVE: Actually, just got a message from Roger Stone.

GRIFFIN: He began hash-tagging Stop the Steal weeks before Election Day and launched a Stop the Steal website.

Amy Kremer, a Tea Party activist who in 2016 formed the group Women Vote Trump with Roger Stone's ex-wife. Kremer was behind a Stop the Steal Facebook group, along with two people who worked on Steve Bannon's discredited We Build the Wall fund. It was taken down by Facebook. Also shut down, a cluster of pages affiliated with Bannon that coordinated posts according to Facebook, using inauthentic behavior tactics to artificially boost how many people saw their content. In all, the pages had 2.5 million followers before they were shuttered.

DECKER: Stop the Steal is a highly coordinated partisan political operation.

GRIFFIN: This week, Stone even took his message to the most notorious conspiracy theorist of all, Alex Jones.

STONE: A hoax is being perpetrated on the American people.

GRIFFIN: On Twitter, researchers at Clemson University saw the hashtag Stop the Steal mentioned in nearly two million tweets. The tweets, the Facebook posts filled with unsubstantiated and false evidence of widespread voter fraud quickly caught the attention of disinformation researchers like Ciaran O'Connor.

CIARAN O'CONNOR, ANALYST, INSATIATE FOR STRATEGIC DIALOGUE: It only took a day and a half before Facebook took the group down, but by then, it was already too late.

GRIFFIN: Copycat sites now number in the dozens and the false information initially spread by a few is only multiplying.

Drew Griffin, CNN Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Thank you drew.

Democrats may have won the White House, but there are some signs out there right now of a potential new fight brewing within the Democratic Party, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez. He's standing by live. We will discuss what's going on when we come back right here in THE SITUATION ROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:40:26]

BLITZER: Even now, even with Joe Biden very much the president-elect of the United States, the final votes are still being counted in the U.S. While every vote certainly counts, there are also too few left to change the outcome of the race for the White House. Joe Biden will become the president of the United States on January 20th.

But as Democrats nationwide clearly are rejoicing in the Biden-Harris victory and clearly they should, they did not necessarily have much in the way of political coattails elsewhere. Joining us now to discuss the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Tom Perez. Tom, thanks so much for joining us.

I want to show our viewers a little bit of the state of play right now. Democrats did pick up only two Senate seats. They lost one, they're waiting on the Georgia runoffs to see who controls the Senate next year in the house, which the Democrats obviously have control since they scored so many wins in 2018. Your party lost more than double the seats, you've gained so far. The democratic majority has dramatically narrowed in state legislatures. The Democrats did not do well. They're great. Other contests down ballot contests did not do so great.

What happened to the so-called blue wave that so many were anticipating?

TOM PEREZ, CHAIRMAN, DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL COMMITTEE: Well, Wolf, I think it's important to ask ourselves the question, where were we four years ago and where are we now? Four years ago, we had 15 democratic governors, now we have 24. Four years ago, we were in the teens with attorneys general and secretaries of state, we're moving in the right direction there. We now have speaker Nancy Pelosi as of 2018.

[20:45:00]

We've won almost 400 seats in state legislators, flipped six or seven state legislative bodies. Did we win as many seats as we want to do win this past cycle? No, we didn't. In the Congress, if you look at the seats, we lost. They were seats that we want in 2018 in pretty red districts. Look at New Mexico, Xochitl Torres Small. Really good member of Congress. That was a Trump plus 12 or 13 districts. Oklahoma, same thing with Kendra Horn, another wonderful member of Congress. I wish she were still there.

And so those races were always going to be tough when Donald Trump was on the ballot, but we still have the majority. We still have -- we have so much more going for us in state legislators across this country. We're fighting my pack in Georgia to win those two seats. And we have the most important prize of all, the presidency. And Joe Biden is going to lead us around the coronavirus, around building back our economy, around uniting our country.

And so, I'm thoroughly excited about where we are. We've got more work to do. And I'm confident we will get the job done.

BLITZER: You're absolutely right, the most important prize, the presidency of the White House has been won by the Democrats. But I want you to listen, Tom, to one democrat who is not very happy right now, Congresswoman Abigail Spanberger of Virginia. She won her race but slammed her own party on a post-election conference call with her colleagues. I want you to listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ABIGAIL SPANBERGER (D-VA): -- We need to not use the word socialist or socialism ever again. We lost good members because of that. If we are classifying Tuesday as a success, we will get (BLEEP) torn apart in 2022.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Because as you know, Democratic Congresswoman, Donna Shalala, in Miami, which is not necessarily, you know, a red area or Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, also in Miami or Max Rose in New York, they lost too Republicans, they lost their House seats to Republicans. Is Representative Spanberger right that the Democrats just stopped talking about socialism, stop talking about defunding the police?

PEREZ: Well, listen, Joe Biden and Democrats have been clear. You look at our platform, it's very clear. We don't want to defund the police. We want to make sure police perform effectively. They build partnerships with communities, so Joe Biden did in and 90s when he worked to establish community Oriented Policing.

We've been very clear about what we want to do. We want to make sure that law enforcement officers like Joe Arpaio, the lawless sheriff, in Maricopa County, Arizona, are not allowed anymore. We didn't -- and Joe Biden and Barack Obama, we were the ones who prosecuted Joe Arpaio, and Donald Trump pardoned Joe Arpaio. We didn't defund the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, we reformed it, that's what Democrats are for.

What we have to make sure we're mindful of is that Republicans engaged in the -- socialism plays Social Security, and Medicare and Medicaid. And so, we have to do a better job of responding to that and calling it out for what it is, which is it is false.

We want to make sure that our economy works for everyone. We want to make sure that people have access to health care if you have a pre- existing condition or not. And so that's what we're doing. And we undeniably need to make sure we do more to combat the misinformation that's out there and we will continue to do that.

BLITZER: And you did win the biggest prize of all, the presidency, which is so important. Tom Perez, as usual, thanks so much for joining us.

PEREZ: Always a pleasure.

BLITZER: All right. Even if President Trump refuses to acknowledge it, President-elect Biden will be sworn in within a matter of weeks on January 20th. But before that happens, there's still a lot that needs to occur. We're going to tell you what will happen over the next few very, very busy weeks. We'll be right back.

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[20:50:28]

BLITZER: Whether President Trump decides to acknowledge them or not, the next few weeks are packed with events setting the stage for Joe Biden to assume office as the 46th President of the United States. One of the first big milestones is to make sure that every American vote in every state is official.

Here's CNN Tom Foreman.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Wolf, from now until the second week of December, states should settle their vote counts and certify the results. They all have their own particular deadlines, so it won't happen all at once. And, of course, if their local rules or legal challenge require a recount, that could produce some delays, but they're all headed for the same goal, saying within a few weeks, we've settled all disputes and this is our final tally for each candidate.

They must have that complete by December 14th, because that is when the electors must vote. Who are they? They are 538 people from all 50 states chosen by the parties, and they mirror the number of senators and representatives in each state plus the District of Columbia which gets three.

This is the Electoral College. Typically, they gather at their local state Houses and award their electoral votes in most cases, to whoever gathered the most popular votes in their state. Although occasionally some break from that and cast rogue votes becoming what we call faithless electors. Although the Supreme Court rule just this year, they can be punished or removed if they take that action.

[20:55:58]

In any event, the results must be sent to Washington no later than December 23rd. And then on January 6th, those electoral votes are counted during a joint session of Congress, under the watchful eye of the President of the Senate, meaning Vice President Mike Pence. And when that count is done, he will be the first person to officially announce the names of the next president and vice president.

And then on Wednesday, January 20th, at noon, as prescribed by the Constitution, the big finish, the president and vice president will be sworn in at the U.S. Capitol and begin four years of leading the country or at least trying to amid these challenging times. Wolf.

BLITZER: All right, Tom Foreman reporting. Thank you very much.

Meanwhile, as the pandemic breaks new records across the United States, we'll take a closer look at how the President's refusal to accept the results of the election could hamper efforts to fight the virus and endanger thousands of American lives.

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