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Ossoff Widens Lead Over Perdue; Congress To Count Electoral Votes Confirming Biden Win. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired January 06, 2021 - 06:00   ET

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

[06:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, ANCHOR: That total is more than the margin Joe Biden won the state by in November. Votes are still being counted so this race is too early to call.

But, CNN does project the Democrat, Raphael Warnock, will defeat Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler in the other Senate race. Reverend Warnock leads Loeffler at this hour by 53,430 votes. He will become the first black senator to represent Georgia.

The balance of power in the US Senate is now within reach for Democrats. They are one seat away from winning back the majority in the US Senate, which of course will mean everything for President- elect Joe Biden's presidency and his agenda.

CAMEROTA: Yes. Just to put a finer point on it. If Jon Ossoff manages to prevail in this race, the Democrats will control the Senate. Right now, he leads by 16,000 votes. And I have to say that is such an important number, why? Joe Biden won the presidency in Georgia with just 11,000 votes, so Jon Ossoff is leading by more than Biden did. And also this 0.4% lead right now, if he gets to 0.5% or higher, no recount no matter what. So that's interesting.

Also for Jon Ossoff today, one of the reasons it's good to be him as we sit here this morning, where the outstanding votes still is. Fulton County, Democratic stronghold, a place where Jon Ossoff is winning 71% of the vote, there's about 4,000 votes left there. You can expect Ossoff to expand his lead when those votes are counted in that county.

Gwinnett, Jon Ossoff with nearly 60% of the vote. There are about 4,800 votes left there. He won't expand it by as much in Fulton but you can expect his lead will grow. A similar story in another one of these key population centers, Chatham County. That is where Savannah is. Ossoff with nearly 60% of the vote, there's about 3,000 votes left account there.

Now, I'm talking about these votes coming in in Ossoff counties and the impact it has. DeKalb County is the county we were watching all night. We received hundreds of thousands of votes from DeKalb in the early morning hours. And you can see, Jon Ossoff winning 83% of the vote. The most recent vote from DeKalb County and this really illustrates how things have been going for him over the last several hours, heavily democratic. There were 3,706 votes that came in just before we came to air. Jon Ossoff won 3,606 of them or 3,635, sorry. My math is a little bit off, 3,635 and David Perdue won 71, OK? So Ossoff was winning 98% of the vote. To David Perdue is 2%. You can see how these votes that are being counted most recently are skewing, which is why the Ossoff campaign feels good about where they sit right now, even though the race hasn't yet been called for them else.

BERMAN: John, thank you for handling the math this morning, as you will be throughout our program. Meanwhile, the campaigns are already reacting to the results in Georgia. CNN's Ryan Young is live in DeKalb County with more, so what's happening there on the ground?

RYAN YOUNG, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. As you can imagine, we got here around 3:00 this morning to relieve the other crew that was here. And those people who are counting were in there. They look exhausted. They stopped counting around 4:00 am this morning.

We're told the only issue they had, there was a memory card that they did have an issue with, but they just started counting by hand. We're told they'll start counting again around 10:30 this morning. But when you start talking about the reaction from the campaign, Jon Ossoff campaign actually said that when all the votes are counted, we fully expect that Jon Ossoff will have won the election to represent Georgia in the United States Senate.

Moving to his opponent, David Perdue, that campaign put out a statement that said the Purdue campaign will mobilize every available resource and exhaust every legal resource to ensure all legally cast ballots are properly counted. So you can see what their framing works so far, in terms of how they plan to respond to this election.

Now, in the other two races, of course, you had Kelly Loeffler, and she talked about we believe there is still a path to victory. All of this being said overnight, but Raphael Warnock, the man who believes that he'll be the first black senator from the state of Georgia, released this statement from his own.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REV. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D), GEORGIA SENATOR-ELECT: And so, to everyone out there struggling today, whether you voted for me or not know this. I hear you, I see you. And every day I'm in the United States Senate I will fight for you. I will fight for your family.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: Alisyn and John, as someone who lives in this community, you could tell the get-out-the-vote campaigns were strong, especially in the black community. He talked about the mobilize to get-out-the-vote and we saw those numbers of people turn out yesterday. When we started going to polling centers and saw people lining up early in the morning, sometimes an hour before the polling centers open.

[06:05:05]

And the lines were moving so very quickly. In fact, at one point, the wait times were down to two minutes in some locations.

You see the numbers that the turnout is unbelievable, especially let's not forget, 3 million early voters, and that massive amount of money that was spent here, over $500 million in ad campaigns. And thank goodness, no more ads so far because I haven't heard any since this election has been over with so far.

BERMAN: All right. Ryan, thanks so much for being there for us. Really appreciate it. Joining us now Political Reporter for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Patricia Murphy, and CNN Political Commentator Errol Louis.

Patricia, you're with us. Let's throw up the front page of your paper so people can see what it looks like this morning. It says Warnock elected, Ossoff leads Purdue. And I just have to say, wow. I mean, wow. You live there. You know Democrats aren't supposed to run -- win or haven't traditionally won these runoff elections.

David Perdue led Jon Ossoff by 88,000 votes in the November election. Raphael Warnock, you know, a black preacher, not supposed to win statewide Georgia elections. And I say that it's just not what has happened in the past. So how did we get to this point this morning?

PATRICIA MURPHY, POLITICAL REPORTER, ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION: Well, a lot of things fell into place for the Democrats. But as you said, these things just aren't really supposed to happen because they've never happened before. As you've said, we have never had a black senator represent Georgia that will be a historic first for us. And also, he'll be the first Democrat elected to the Senate since 2000, so there has been a very large Republican infrastructure here.

This really does still, in many ways, feel like Republican state. We have Republican governors, Secretary of State, lieutenant governor, the legislature is controlled by Republicans. So Democrats certainly started at a disadvantage, but I think two things happened here.

First of all, Donald Trump was at the top of the ticket on Tuesday, he lost in November, and he lost again last night. He inserted himself on the front page of our paper almost every day since November. And that was very hard for the Republican senators to escape from, and they didn't even try to. They glommed themselves on to Trump as closely as they could. And I think that was a big rejection of voters last night.

And the second thing really is that, the Democratic turnout operation here, certainly spearheaded by Stacey Abrams, really has learned how to register those black voters. You can be motivated as much as you want. But if you're not registered to vote, you can't cast a vote. And that is what has changed here in Georgia.

CAMEROTA: Errol, give us the big picture as you see it and what looks like is unfolding this morning.

ERROL LOUIS, POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, the big picture is that politics is changing in Georgia, in such a way that makes it a true swing state. And it represents to me the culmination of a long, long multi-generational effort to bring black voters fully into the political life of this country. The Civil Rights Movement, in many ways, was really based there. I think back to folks that I've met there, civil rights legends for those who know the history, like Charles and Shirley Sherrod in Southwest Georgia, who spent their entire lives, who spent decades, lawsuits, beatings, demonstrations, campaign after campaign after campaign, registering, mobilizing motivating people.

And it has all led to this, which is that in numbers that we haven't seen before, in numbers that are commensurate with what we should have seen all along. You've got black voters who go out and they can elect somebody and really make their voices and their choices known. And that's what could have happened a long time ago, and is finally happening now.

There was some question out there, Alisyn, about whether the election of Barack Obama represented sort of the end stage of black political development, we have an answer now is that well, no, it becomes the launching pad for some new developments. And this is history in the making and a brand new development. And I think we're going to see something that we haven't seen before, which is a real sort of transformation, both of the local economy and of American politics.

BERMAN: I mean, that was the upward pressure for the Democrats, Stacey Abrams, registering voters, clearly that made a difference. Then there was the downward pressure from President Trump, Patricia, that you were talking about. Gabriel Sterling on CNN overnight said that if we lose, this is before the Warnock race was called, before also took the lead, but he clearly said. If we lose these races, it's on Donald Trump.

It's because of how he behaved. It's because of how he talked. It's because of the phone call to try to convince the Secretary of State to overturn the election there. Politico put out a note a few minutes ago, calling this a Republican implosion in Georgia, and I don't think that's an exaggeration.

MURPHY: It is not an exaggeration. Donald Trump has essentially dropped the bomb in the middle of the Republican Party down here in Georgia. He has been attacking our Republican governor since Election Day. He has been attacking election system run by a Republican Secretary of State and laws passed by Republicans here in the state legislature.

[06:10:07]

And he has driven a wedge between the senators and the governor to the point that Governor Kemp could not campaign with those two senators toward the end of that campaign because the President had so activated Republican voters against half of the Republican Party, but not against his half. And it also made it so hard for the Republican senators to have a positive unified message.

They were talking about the last election. They were being drowned out by chance from Republican voters fight for Trump, fight for Trump. They rarely had a chance to really talk about the January election. And that is because President Trump drove that every single day. And he just, you could feel it, he stayed at the top of the ticket and it has to be said, he convinced almost all Republican voters that I spoke to, that he did not lose, and that elections in Georgia are not to be trusted.

And then to say -- and by the way, go out and vote on January 5th, we saw that that depress the votes last night for Republicans. And so, I think so much of this rests on the shoulders of the President for two Republican senators who really should have had the edge going into this.

CAMEROTA: And this is the things they get, Errol. The things that Republicans get for their undying fealty to President Trump these past four years, they get the rigged rhetoric that may have ensured the Democrats get the majority in the Senate.

LOUIS: Yes. It was warned about. There were a number of people who are, of course, now allies of the President, but who warned as early as 2015, that this is a chaos candidate, I think Jeb Bush called him.

You bring him into Republican politics and he will create mayhem. He will create chaos. He will create confusion. And he will create political losses. This was all warned about, this was all predictable, and it was indeed predicted. And so now, having lost the House and the White House, and presumably also the Senate, I'm not sure what else you could tell a Republican politician about what Trumpism has meant to this party and its power.

Perhaps this then wakes everybody up. Perhaps after Joe Biden has sworn in and they realize how much they've lost in just four years. Perhaps they'll take a different direction if they want to be players when it comes to national politics.

BERMAN: Harriet noted before that four years ago, Donald Trump came in. He won the White House. Republicans had the Senate and the House, and now four years later, it appears they're headed to losing all three. It's hard to think of another time where that's happening where a president was defeated and losing both house of Congress during one administration.

Don't go anywhere, we have a lot more to talk about including what this all means for the Biden administration. How will this change how Joe Biden approaches his presidency, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:16:33]

CAMEROTA: Breaking news at this hour, Democrats are one seat away from regaining the majority in the US Senate, and Jon Ossoff is widening his lead over David Perdue, but it is still too early to call, votes are still being counted. Raphael Warnock meanwhile, CNN projects that the reverend will defeat Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler. He has 53,430 more votes than she got.

If Democrats win both seats, it will obviously have a huge impact on President-elect Joe Biden's presidency. Back with us Patricia Murphy and Errol Louis.

So, Errol, the US Supreme Court federal judgeships, the future of Obamacare. I mean, everything. You know, I could go down the litany of how, whatever happens in the next few hours will affect the future of the country.

LOUIS: A great reminder that every single vote counts, it looks like what could be about 16,000 people in Georgia could make the difference on all of those issues that you mentioned and more. To take a recent example, there was this proposal to give relief checks of $2,000 to every working household in America, that never even came up for a vote. It almost certainly would have passed if it had come up for a vote.

But control of the Senate rested with Republicans and they have a leader who refused to bring it to the floor. It sounds a little arcane and procedural but it makes a huge difference and could have made a huge difference to many millions of American families. So yes, here we are at a point where every vote does count if democracy works as it is supposed to, we will have at possibly an outcome where all kinds of things that a majority, according to polling, and every other measure that you can imagine, wants to see happen, or at least debated, at least voted on, and this country will finally come up for real discussion on climate change and a number of other issues.

It's a great time to be an American and to watch this process play out, Alisyn.

BERMAN: And I think, Patricia, one of the most intriguing things is what it does to nominations for President-elect Biden starting, you know, today, tomorrow potentially talking about the Supreme Court. We can talk about that in a little bit, but he still hasn't picked an attorney general yet. And our Jeff Zeleny is reporting, this puts former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates back on the table. There was a feeling that she would be hard to confirm in a Republican Senate.

Well now, it may very well not be a Republican Senate. Can there is something fitting perhaps about the fact that Sally Yates is from Georgia, Patricia. And, you know, it may very well be that Georgia is what makes it possible for her to get the nomination.

MURPHY: Yes. I heard that reporting last night. I thought it was so interesting. It certainly let us know that the Biden administration maybe even has been holding back a little bit in terms of the plans that they would decide to pursue. Because, as Errol said, many things would not even come up for a vote. Nominations do not even have to come up for a vote if a Republican senator and Republican majority choose not to at the committee level. And when that's chaired by a republican senator, they don't even have to bring them up for a vote.

A great example is Mary Tandon proposed to be the head of the OMB in the Budget Committee that would either go from, either be before Lindsey Graham or Bernie Sanders. So you can see exactly the difference in the type of leadership you would be getting even at the committee level if the Democrats could pull off these two wins, which again, would just be -- we knew it was possible. It's really surprising and almost shocking to see it actually play out this way.

[06:20:11]

CAMEROTA: All that said, Errol, it's still a 50/50. It still would be a 50/50 split if Jon Ossoff does end up pulling this off. So it's not exactly a rubber stamp for Democrats.

LOUIS: Oh no, by no means. In fact, we have -- we still have divided government, make no mistake about it. I mean, if you have a literal 50/50 split and you have Vice President-elect Harris, who's going to be making the difference, in some ways that empowers every single member of the Senate to go and strike deals that threatened across the aisle. We've actually seen this happen at times.

It gives the President an incentive to maybe offer a tempting ambassadorship or a cabinet post to a senator of the opposite party in order to create a vacancy or maybe create the possibility of increasing the Democratic majority if they should try and achieve one. I mean, there are a lot of different games that can be played and the Senate is a place where those games do get played.

So yes. At a minimum, I think we could possibly see a stable kind of centrist operation in the Senate, or more likely there'll be a lot of jockeying as each side tries to by whatever means get a clear majority.

BERMAN: Yes. Joe Manchin has made clear and he would be the 50th. Democratic Senator in some ways that he was never going to support packing the Supreme Court. He was never going to support, in his mind, DC statehood or Puerto Rico status. So that wasn't likely -- that isn't likely to happen even with a majority, the Democrats would have needed much more.

But I don't want to underplay the significance of this either, Patricia, because Merrick Garland would be sitting on the Supreme Court right now, if the Democrats had had a 50/50 Senate with then Joe Biden breaking the tie under the Obama administration. Merrick Garland never got a hearing in the Judiciary Committee, never got to vote in the Full Senate to be sitting on the Supreme Court. That would not happen now.

And just one last thing, and this is in your Georgia wheelhouse. Jon Ossoff is 33. Jon Ossoff is 33 is on the verge of being elected to a six-year term. It's just -- I'm still trying to get my arms around what may very well be on the verge of happening.

MURPHY: Yes. Jon Ossoff had a brief stint as a Capitol Hill staffer but I think even in his wildest dreams, he was not going to be a 33- year-old senator. It certainly would put him in an incredibly, incredibly unusual and unprecedented position.

I had spoken with some Republican and Democratic staffers last night to say, well, should we just ask Joe Manchin what he wants because it looks like Joe Manchin, Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, that moderate centrist portion of both parties could be really strongly empowered, really, no matter what happens tonight. It doesn't mean that they're going to win the votes, but it does mean that Democrats would have the discussions that they want to have, and have the matters come up for those votes in the first place if they could manage to pull up these two Senate seats.

And certainly, Jon Ossoff would probably have some staffers older than him if he manages to get up to Capitol Hill.

CAMEROTA: Patricia, Errol, thank you both very much. Thank you for sharing your thoughts, waking up to this huge news.

So the GOP is futile bid to block Joe Biden's win comes to a head today. New reporting on what Vice President Pence could do before Congress this afternoon. That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:27:045]

BERMAN: After a history making night for Democrats in Georgia, they picked up one Senate seat and poised perhaps to pick up another, President Trump's desperate debased effort to overturn his election loss is about to hit a wall, the Constitution of the United States, when Congress meets today to count the electoral votes confirming Joe Biden's victory. CNN's Sunlen Serfaty is live on Capitol Hill with the latest of what we're going to see and what the Vice President Mike Pence might do.

SUNLEN SERFATY, CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right. Good morning to you, John. This will be a very dramatic day up here on Capitol Hill that will likely stretch out over the course of many, many hours. But in the end will do absolutely nothing to change the results of Joe Biden's win.

Now, this all gets underway at 1:00 pm Eastern Time, and that is where we will see Vice President Mike Pence in his ceremonial role presiding over the Senate come forward in front of the joint session of Congress. And this today puts him in such an awkward spot. He is under intense pressure from President Trump to attempt to overturn the results of the election to defy his only ceremonial role today.

President Trump tweeting in part, "If Vice President Pence comes through for us, we will win the presidency." That is a statement which, of course, is untrue, and sources have told CNN that Vice President Pence has sat down with President Trump and told him that he does not have the power to overturn their loss.

Now today, what we will see is Republicans standing up and objecting to at least three states. We know Arizona, Georgia and Pennsylvania will be objected to by member in the House and the Senate, which is important. And this is where the process will get slowed down significantly. For every state that is objected to, both chambers have to recess. They have to debate this for two hours, then they have to vote again.

Again, nothing that will change the outcome, it just slows down everything today. And there is, of course, a specter that more states will be added into this. So we're looking at a very, very, very long day up here on Capitol Hill, John.

And again, to be noted, this is something that's very ceremonial, very routine that Congress does all the time once there is a new present. But today is really getting gummed up in the theatrics of this political moment, John.

BERMAN: Theatrics of Republicans trying to overthrow an election. Sunlen Serfaty on Capitol Hill, please keep us posted.