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Warnock Wins, Ossoff Declares Victory, Dems Near Senate Majority. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired January 06, 2021 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

ALISYN CAMEROTA, CNN ANCHOR: We do begin with breaking morning -- breaking news.

(LAUGHTER)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: It's all breaking. Everything is breaking.

CAMEROTA: We've broken it. We are moments away from hearing Democrat Jon Ossoff after last night's historic runoff election in Georgia that has Democrats one seat away from taking control of the U.S. Senate. At this moment Jon Ossoff is leading Republican Senator David Perdue, and he is expanding that lead. He is at the moment 16,370 votes ahead of Perdue. That's more votes than the total that was the margin that Joe Biden won Georgia by in November. Votes are still being counted at this hour so this race is too early to call.

We just heard from Democrat Raphael Warnock, CNN can project that he will defeat Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler in that other Senate race. Reverend Warnock leads Loeffler at this hour by 53,430 votes. He will become the first black senator ever to represent Georgia. The balance of power in the U.S. Senate is now within reach for Democrats. They are one seat away from winning back the majority in the Senate, which of course will have major, major repercussions for everything in Joe Biden's presidency and agenda.

BERMAN: It may even have repercussions for today when both chambers of Congress gather to count the electoral votes. I wonder if Republicans who were going to go in there with the undemocratic mission of overturning the election were going to be chasing. Jon Ossoff speaking now. Let's listen.

JON OSSOFF, (D-GA) SENATORIAL CANDIDATE: -- confidence and trust -- our state and our country. When hundreds of thousands have lost their lives, millions have lost livelihoods, Georgia families are having difficulty putting food on the table, fearing foreclosure or eviction, having difficulty making ends meet. Let's unite now to beat this virus and rush economic relief to the people of our state and to the American people.

I will work in the U.S. Senate to support a robust public health response so that we can defeat this virus, putting Georgia's own Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the lead, trusting medical expertise, doctors and scientists, to bring the tools to bear, the technology to bear, the ingenuity to bear, and the resources to bear necessary to stop the spread of this virus, to defeat it and to get our daily lives back and to rush direct economic relief to people who need help right now.

This campaign has been about health and jobs and justice for the people of this state, for all the people of this state, and they will be my guiding principles as I serve this state in the U.S. Senate, ensuring that every Georgian has great health care no matter our wealth, ensuring that we invest in an economic recovery that includes all communities, that rebuilds our state's infrastructure, that lays the foundations for prosperity in rural Georgia, suburban communities, and urban communities alike, and securing equal justice for all, following in the footsteps of leaders who have departed us in this last year, like Congressman John Lewis and C.T. Vivian.

I want to thank the people of Georgia for participating in this election. Everybody who cast your ballot, everybody who put your faith and confidence in our democracy's capacity to deliver the representation that we deserve, whether you were for me or against me, I will be for you in the U.S. Senate. I will serve all the people of the state, I will give everything I've got to ensuring that Georgia's interests are represented in the U.S. Senate.

I want to thank all the volunteers who poured their hearts and souls into this campaign. I want to thank my family for their support and their patience. I want to thank my wonderful wife Alisha, who as we speak is at the hospital helping Georgia mothers deliver healthy babies, helping save lives. Let's emulate the spirit of courage and heroism, of those who have given so much to the health response to this crisis, as we unite as a people to overcome this challenge of COVID-19 and to build a republic that lives up to our highest ideals of equality in God's eyes and equal justice under the law.

Georgia, thank you so much for the confidence that you have placed in me. I am honored, honored by your support, by your confidence, by your trust, and I will look forward to serving you in the United States Senate with integrity, with humility, with honor, and getting things done for the people of Georgia. Thank you so much.

CAMEROTA: OK, that was Jon Ossoff's first statement since he has taken the lead in that race. He is now up something like 16,300 plus votes.

[08:05:00]

Joining us now CNN White House correspondent John Harwood, LaTosha Brown, she's the co-founder of Black Voters Matter, also with us CNN political commentator Van Jones. So Van, I just want to start with you. CNN has not called the race for Ossoff, but he sure sounds like he knows he's headed to Washington. He was speaking as if it was a foregone conclusion and thanking the people of Georgia. Give us your thoughts this morning.

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Democracy is working. Democracy is working. This is what's supposed to happen. You had a government that had a failed response to a national catastrophe, you have a president who has been trying to break every rule, every norm, and a bunch of laws, and the system is responding. You will have a new president, and you will have a new Congress to try to fix what's broken.

But for me as a southerner, I grew up in Tennessee, to see a southern state send a young Jewish reporter and a black pastor to represent Georgia, you can't get away from the history of that, you can't get away from the meaning of that, you can't get away from the power of that as a statement that when people decide enough is enough, you don't have to have royalty -- often when you're trying to put people in office in Georgia, they went and got Jimmy Carter's grandson, they went and got Sam Nunn's daughter, they went and got the royalty of Georgia to try to win as Democrats. That never worked. They went and got regular people, authentic people, who really believed, they built a real machine of ordinary people, and they won. If you are looking around the world right now, can democracy work, can the people govern, can the system self-correct, the answer this morning is absolutely yes, absolutely yes.

BERMAN: Let me just read you what the first words were from Jon Ossoff in that statement. He said "It is with humility that I thank the people of Georgia for electing me to serve you in the United States Senate." Again, CNN has not called the race. There is reason to believe the remaining vote comes from Democratic strongholds, things look good for Jon Ossoff this morning.

LaTosha we heard from the reverend Raphael Warnock who we have called the race for, who is Senator-elect now from the state of Georgia. He has referred to Jon Ossoff as brother John, and that struck me as quite a moment to hear a pastor of a black church refer to a 33-year- old Jewish man as brother John. It's a lot of different things coming together all at one place. If you had to point to one single thing that let this historic moment happen or made it happen this morning, what would it be?

LATOSHA BROWN, CO-FOUNDER, BLACK VOTERS MATTER FUND: Organizing. I think more so than this being indicative of the strength of the system, I think this is about people organizing themselves and their power. And so if there was one thing that I think that worked, is that organized power is realized power. It doesn't matter how many radio or TV ads you have, when you have organized people you can actually overcome great barriers and obstacles, just like voter suppression. And even if you're being outspent, that organized people are realized power.

CAMEROTA: So those -- that's the empowerment side, John. That's on the positive side. And then there's the President Trump factor, and it's impossible to quantify, but he didn't do them any favors by constantly saying that the election was rigged and using all of that rhetoric and all of those mixed messages. So it's hard to know this morning just how much damage he did in these final days, other than he managed to lose the White House, he had already lost the House two years ago, and now it looks like the Senate. JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Alisyn, you're right. In

a close election people can cite all sorts of factors as decisive, but the one thing that's pretty clear is that Donald Trump the last few weeks has proven the message -- the book that John McCain wrote a few years ago, the title of which was "Character is Destiny." Donald Trump's character was a key part of why Republicans lost the House in 2018. It's a key part of why he lost the presidency a few weeks ago.

It galled him to lose. It galled him even more that other Republicans were winning while he was losing. He said so out loud. Donald Trump, remember, is focused on himself to the exclusion of others. I was on television with John Berman two weeks ago when Donald Trump came out and attacked the COVID relief bill that Mitch McConnell had negotiated and passed with Nancy Pelosi in the House. He said it was a disgrace. He threw up a futile demand for $2,000 checks.

And I said that night it appeared that Donald Trump had decided to burn everything down on the way out. He wanted to hurt Mitch McConnell, who a week earlier had recognized the reality of Joe Biden's victory.

[08:10:00]

And he's behaved destructively ever since, from that extortion phone call, the threatening phone call with Brad Raffensperger, attacking Governor Brian Kemp, attacking the surrender caucus within the Republican Party. And now he has set it up for the ultimate act of betrayal, and that is this -- he tweeted last night that if Mike Pence, the vice president, comes through for us, we will win the presidency. That of course is false. Mike Pence has no power to make him president. But it is telling about Donald Trump that right to the very end he is standing in the foxhole with the guy who has been closest to him for all four years, never wavered for a second in loyalty to Donald Trump, he's looking at his MAGA followers, he's pointing to Mike Pence and saying it's his fault.

BERMAN: LaTosha, how much easier did Donald Trump make your job organizing?

BROWN: Actually, there's nothing like having a common enemy to rally people around. I think what he underestimated is he underestimated how -- while he had his whistle blows around racism and he aligns himself with white nationalists, what he underestimated is how people would respond to that. He underestimated the power of black voters, and that was a fatal mistake, I think, for him.

And I think the rest of America are tired of him, that we're tired of all the rhetoric, and tired of here is a man who has openly said that he wanted to steal the election, that he wanted to find, quote, 1,200 votes. And so I know on election, -- the day before election I got a phone call from a woman who said she was taken off work because she was so upset about Trump that there had been people, black folks that we know, that actually threatened to be arrested just for helping people. But here he was asking to -- asking, and literally showing, demonstrating criminal behavior, and was literally coming down for a rally, and she was so moved that she was going to take off that day from work. And so what he underestimated was the backlash that was going to come to his racist tropes that he said throughout the year and throughout his term.

CAMEROTA: Van, how much do you think of this, what we're seeing this morning, is the Trump factor?

JONES: Well, look, the big factor in Black Voters Matter, it's the new Georgia project, it's all the folks -- you have black genius and grassroots genius on display, and black joy. Some of the tactics that were used on the ground to get people together -- food, music, culture. This is black joy versus a certain kind of white rage, and black joy won.

But you don't just have the genius of the black grassroots and the brown grassroots and the progressive grassroots, you also just have a lack of smarts on the part of Republicans at every level. It was not smart for the candidates down there to make their whole campaign be demonizing a black pastor rather than trying to inspire people. That didn't make any sense. It was not smart for McConnell to be Scrooge McDuck right before Christmas, holding back money from people who needed money, and trying to give out pennies when people needed dollars and more. That was not smart.

And it was certainly not smart for Donald Trump to conduct himself the way that he conducted himself and suppress his own vote by telling people when you vote, the vote is rigged but go vote anyway. So when you have from McConnell to Trump to the candidates down there making those kind of mistakes, that's one aspect of it.

But the key aspect, as the sister just said, the genius of the black grassroots at every level, picking real people with real stories, coming forward with joy, with determination, with resilience, resilience. Stacey Abrams lost two years ago, and made herself stronger. Donald Trump lost two months ago and made himself weaker. That is the story.

And Stacey Abrams is not by herself, as you can see here this morning. You will never be able to get the full roll call of the black people, especially black women, who brought this victory home months and months and months ago when nobody was watching Georgia.

BERMAN: If you look county by county, it's not just the metropolitan areas. It's the rural areas, too, even counties where the Democrats lost, they overperformed largely thanks to the African-American vote. Van, LaTosha, John, thank you all so much for being with us this morning.

As we've been saying, Democrats on the verge of capturing the U.S. Senate. We'll discuss what's going to happen in that building later today, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[08:18:04]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Moments ago, Jon Ossoff declared victory as he widens his lead over Republican incumbent David Perdue in the Senate race there. Let's listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OSSOFF: It is with humility that I thank the people of Georgia for electing me to serve you in the United States Senate. Thank you for the confidence and trust that you have placed in me.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BERMAN: Now, to be clear, we have not called this race yet.

The other race, Raphael Warnock, we project has won, defeating Kelly Loeffler. Jon Ossoff is in the lead, perhaps headed in the direction of victory, but not quite there yet. If he does win Democrats would take control of the U.S. Senate.

Joining me now is former Democratic Senator Al Franken, he is now the host of "The Al Franken" podcast.

What do you think with what we saw happen last night and what we expect to happen with the remaining race?

FMR. SEN. AL FRANKEN (D-MN): I've been listening for the last half hour and there's so much resonates here, both Senator-elect Warnock and it looks like Senator-elect Ossoff talked about serving the people of Georgia and they both talked about the pandemic and addressing that.

What you're going to see in Congress today, these 13 senators, including Loeffler who are going to challenge the presidential election, that's all about them. Those senators know this isn't going to happen. Nothing, you know -- Joe Biden is going to be the next president.

This is all a political calculation on their part. Every one of those senators is from a red state except it turns out Loeffler, and they know that they will only be defeated by Republican in a primary so now they are making sure they are on Trump's side.

And what this really was about is not addressing the pandemic.

[08:20:06]

You know, both Ted Cruz and Donald Trump during this campaign said, oh, you know, after the election is over, no one -- they're not even going to talk about the coronavirus because it's kind of a hoax.

But now, we're seeing it killing as many people as it ever has and what you saw on the doors, this was about organizing, and on the doors, people were saying, we're hungry. I'm worried about being evicted. I don't have a job.

On the podcast, we talked to D. Taylor, the head of Unite Here. They had 1,000 people on the doors.

When they knocked on doors instead of the normal 7 percent of people that talked to them, they had over 30 percent of the people talked to them. And those people were worried about those things, and that's what Washington and what the president and what everybody in Congress should have been focused on is getting people inoculated, getting a package to help them.

(CROSSTALK)

BERMAN: What do you think --

FRANKEN: Yes?

BERMAN: What do you think as we sit here this morning as Democrats are poised perhaps to take control of the Senate, what do you think is going through Mitch McConnell's head?

FRANKEN: I think he doesn't quite know what happened to him. You know, normally, he is pretty capable and pretty Machiavellian and I think he saw President Trump completely out of control, the phone call.

I mean, President Trump also in a large part made this happen and he made it happen by ignoring COVID. They made it happen by making all these completely fraudulent allegations about fraud.

I love their thing was like, well, there have been so many allegations that people have lost trust in our system. Well, yeah, you guys made fake allegations. That's why.

It's been one big disgrace. And people have seen through that.

BERMAN: You talked about Senator Ted Cruz. He is one of the leaders of this effort today to try to overturn the election, to try to undermine democracy. And I don't say that lightly. I mean, that is literally what they're doing out in the public today.

And you have had some things to say about Ted Cruz in the past. In your book, you write, here is the thing you have to understand about Ted Cruz, I like Ted Cruz more than most of my other colleagues like Ted Cruz, and I hate Ted Cruz.

FRANKEN: And that's a true statement.

BERMAN: And so -- so how does his effort today affect you or impact that one way or the other?

FRANKEN: It just confirms everything I know about Ted. This is so cynical and this is about him running for president. I mean, you know, Trump insulted his wife, he insulted his father.

You saw what Ted Cruz said about Trump during the campaign and now he is his biggest lick spittle. This man just has no character.

BERMAN: What's your message to your former colleagues who are in the U.S. Senate today? What do you expect to see? You know, give viewers a guide for how they should watch what is going to play out on Capitol Hill today. FRANKEN: Today -- well, first of all, this had like to really poke a

hole in their balloon, the Republicans, but I think we knew how this was going to play out. They're going to in the certification they're going -- I think they start at Georgia, they're going to challenge Georgia and then they go back to the -- the senators go back to the Senate and they have a two-hour debate supposedly.

And then they will vote and, you know, there are Republican senators who are going to vote for Biden on each of these challenges and it's just going to take a lot of time, but at the end of the day, Vice President Pence is going to declare that Joe Biden will be our next president.

BERMAN: That's Senator Ted Cruz texting you right now. We will let you get to that.

(LAUGHTER)

FRANKEN: Oh, my God. Well, it's very typical of him. I can't say what it is.

BERMAN: We will let you get to that.

Senator Al Franken, we appreciate your time. Thanks for being with us this morning.

FRANKEN: You bet. Thank you.

BERMAN: And we should note Chuck Schumer who stands to be perhaps if things continue heading in this direction majority leader just tweeted, I'm told, buckle up.

Chaos erupting in the Pennsylvania Senate after Republicans refused to seat a Democratic member who won reelection. The state's lieutenant governor who was at the center of all of this joins us next.

[08:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CAMEROTA: Chaos erupting in Pennsylvania's Senate chamber after Republicans refused to seat a Democratic senator who had won reelection. The state's lieutenant Governor John Fetterman loudly voiced his objection, then Republicans took the rare step of removing him from presiding over the session.

That's when one Democratic lawmaker erupted off camera.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STATE SEN. ANTHONY WILLIAMS (D-PA): This is inappropriate. You are breaking the constitution and the laws of the commonwealth and violating the oath of office you have actually taken. There is nothing about this day that is appropriate. Nothing.

And we will not lay down and roll over because you have more folks on that side of the aisle. This is about Pennsylvania, it's not Democrats or Republicans. It's not about simply winning it's about protecting our democracy. That's what this is.

(CROSSTALK)

I don't think the gentleman wants to do that given the fact that he is violating the rules from the moment he has opened his mouth today. To not seek a certified gentleman who is qualified through the court system, recognized by the Constitution the Pennsylvania suggest that you are breaking these rules. Do not threaten anyone in this building because trust me, my friend, you don't want to walk up there with me up there.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[08:30:00]