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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Republicans Advance Supreme Court Nominee Amy Coney Barrett Despite Boycott From Democrats; Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) is Interviewed About Supreme Court Nomination and Stimulus Deal; Feds: Iran & Russia Interfered in 2020 Election; New Debate Details: Candidates Will Be 12+ Feet Apart, Trump Will Get First Question. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired October 22, 2020 - 16:30   ET

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

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[16:31:44]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: In the politics lead, President Trump is one step closer to getting his third Supreme Court justice on the Supreme Court. Although Democrats boycotted today's vote in protest, Senate Republicans, nonetheless, advanced the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett out of the Judiciary Committee, setting up a full Senate vote on the floor on Monday.

CNN's Manu Raju is live for us on Capitol Hill.

Manu, committee chairman Lindsey Graham celebrated today's vote. He called it ground breaking and that is fact check true. No justice has ever been confirmed so close to Election Day, but that's exactly why Democrats are so mad.

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, actually after July of a presidential election year, no Supreme Court justice has been confirmed. This is going to happen now eight days before the election, on Monday. That's when the ultimate confirmation vote is expected to happen on the Senate floor. And no Democrats are expected to vote for Amy Coney Barrett after today.

You mentioned they boycotted today's committee vote. Republicans didn't bother them. They still moved straight ahead with this committee vote and approved their nomination advanced to the Senate floor by a 12-0 vote. And now on the Senate floor, two Republican senators have raised concerns about moving so close to the election. Susan Collins of Maine is in a difficult race has indicated she's a no vote. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska today suggested she also might vote no because of concerns about this process. She was the lone Republican who voted against Brett Kavanaugh.

But even those two Republican votes not enough for Democrats to block the nomination of the vote. She'll be confirmed likely by a 51-49 vote on Monday night, Jake.

TAPPER: By many of the same Republican senators who in 2016 said that eight months before the election was too close to the election to even have a hearing for President Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland. Stunning.

Manu, the on-again, off-again stimulus talks appear to be on again, gratefully. House Speaker Pelosi sounds as if a deal could actually happen before Election Day. So, what's changed in the last 24 hours?

RAJU: Well, both sides really have an incentive to get a deal. The president wants something before Election Day so he could say he's cut a deal with Democrats. And lot of Democrats in difficult districts, swing districts in particular, have been pressuring the speaker to get a deal.

But, Jake, they are still a ways away on a number of key issues, hot button issues including funding for state and local government has been a big sticking point for some time. Liability protection for businesses and others that Republicans have been pushing. Those are two of the many issues outstanding.

So, even if they get a deal, maybe they can get it through the House before election day, but the Senate a complete different situation as Republicans there are lining up in opposition to what the president is proposing -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Manu Raju on Capitol Hill for us, thank you so much.

Joining us now to discuss, Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

Senator, good to see you.

Let me ask you, if there is a deal struck, do you think that Majority Leader McConnell will allow a vote on that, and if so -- I'm giving a lot of hypotheticals -- are there enough Republicans to join with Democrats to pass it?

SEN. KIRSTEN GILLIBRAND (D-NY): I think if we had a vote on a common sense bipartisan bill that didn't have poison pills, yes, we could pass it. But Mitch McConnell has been unwilling to even allow the conversations to let that happen. He's had the House bill since May. He's not negotiated any package with Senator Schumer, and he's been absent from these ones with the White House.

[16:35:04]

So, he's not interested in the vote, but I do believe if we could bring it to the floor, we could get immediate relief to so many New Yorkers and so many Americans that are in desperate need right now.

TAPPER: Well, let's talk about that, because the reality is, as you know, millions of Americans are unemployed because of this pandemic. Businesses are struggling, bars can't open. Music venues can't open. People need relief, and they can't.

Now, most Americans probably don't follow the machinations of, well, Mitch McConnell has $500 billion and he has a poison bill. They don't know. They see Republicans and Democrats fighting. Do you think that Democrats share any of the blame for nothing passing

yet?

GILLIBRAND: I don't, and I'll tell you why. We've been clear from the beginning that we need money for food stamps and housing relief. We need money for states and city governments. We need money for unemployment and we need money for first responders and small businesses.

Unfortunately, Mitch McConnell, the one thing he wants in there is the one thing that is a poison pill, liability protection for large companies, and for companies that aren't making sure their employees are safe. We know what that looks like, Jake.

If you remember, we saw the meatpacking plants where people had to stand shoulder to shoulder with no masks, no PPE and COVID spread like wildfire in those places. If you don't have liability -- if you have liability protection then those employees can't sue and say, listen, we'll come to work, but you have to keep us safe. There's no incentive.

And so, that is the poison pill. And Mitch has no interest in doing anything unless he can actually deliver that for his donors.

TAPPER: There's a new study out today from Columbia University that says if the Trump administration had taken leadership and more assertive testing that somewhere between 130,000 and 210,000 lives would not have been lost. There was a previous one, a previous study by Columbia saying that if the U.S. had enacted social distancing measures one week sooner than it did in March, 36,000 lives would have been saved.

Now, Democrats have been very tough on President Trump for enacting those measures, but don't some -- don't some of these -- doesn't some of the blame also lie with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo who could have put in place some of these measures as well as mayors and city leaders? Are they not also responsible?

GILLIBRAND: I don't think so, and I'll tell you why. What President Trump first did is he did not disclose the seriousness of the COVID epidemic when it started. He had information that it was airborne, that's how it would be transmitted, and that it was deadly for everyone including children. And he did not tell the American people that.

In fact, he kept down-playing it saying, it's just like a flu. He refused to wear a mask for a very long time, and even most recently where the White House was the vector for the virus, where spread was all over. He wasn't wearing masks, the people around him weren't wearing masks -- again, flying in the face of what his scientists and experts have been telling him.

So, President Trump hadn't used his office in the way he could of. He could have used the Defense Production Act to start in January developing vaccines, developing the personal protective equipment, making sure he has all the testing manufacturers here in the United States, making sure we wouldn't run out of reagents and swabs like we have.

TAPPER: Yeah.

GILLIBRAND: And so, today, Jake, we still don't have universal testing. You have kids who can't go back to school because it's not easy to get a test, they're not taken very often, and they take too long to get results back and so you can't do proper contact tracing.

So, I really -- I leave the blame at President Trump's feet --

TAPPER: OK.

GILLIBRAND: -- because the things he could have done, he chose not to do.

TAPPER: Senator, I'm sorry to interrupt but I do want to ask you about the Senate Judiciary Committee advancing Judge Amy Coney Barrett's nomination to the support today. The vote was unanimous because Democrats on the committee boycotted the vote. They filled their seats with photographs of people who defend on the Affordable Care Act.

Republican Senator John Cornyn criticized the move. He said doing that made it look like a sporting event. What's your response to what Cornyn had to say?

GILLIBRAND: Well, Cornyn has not provided leadership at a time when our country desperately needs it, and I don't think he's served the people of Texas well at all. In fact, I think this whole process has been a sham.

It was Mitch McConnell who denied Barack Obama his final Supreme Court justice, and he said that it was too close to the election. That was in March. He denied even a hearing to Merrick Garland.

Now, his duplicitousness and hypocrisy is here for everyone to see, not only is he jamming through a justice weeks before an election, but he's refusing to put on the floor a COVID relief package that is bipartisan in the House and that could make a difference and help save peoples' lives.

TAPPER: All right. Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, thanks so much. Good to see you again.

GILLIBRAND: Thanks, Jake.

TAPPER: The U.S. is blaming Iran for threatening e-mails sent to Democratic voters. But why is there debate about which presidential candidate they were trying to hurt?

[16:40:03]

Stay with us.

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TAPPER: Continuing on our 2020 lead today, only 12 days until the presidential election. Today, there is a troubling new concern about election interference by foreign actors. As CNN's Pamela Brown reports in our latest installment of "Making It Count."

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This debate will cover six major topics.

[16:45:01]

PAMELA BROWN, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): On the night of the final debate, the spotlight is on threats to America's election. The federal government announcing both Iran and Russia have obtained U.S. voter registration information.

JOHN RATCLIFFE, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: This data can be used by foreign actors to attempt to communicate false information to registered voters.

BROWN: That's already happened. The intelligence director says Iran was responsible for e-mail threats sent to thousands of voters urging them to, quote, vote for Trump or else. Many of the e-mails were made to look like they came from the proud boys, a far right extremist group.

Director John Ratcliffe sparked outrage when he politicized the attack saying without explanation the e-mails were designed to hurt the president.

Democrats pounced on that.

REP. NANCY PELOSI (D-CA): Elections are sacred. It should be treated with respect. I don't know what the DNI is up to.

BROWN: The Senate Intelligence Committee issued a joint statement saying, quote: Republicans and Democrats are united when we say that continued attempts to sow dissent, cast doubt on election results or disrupt our election systems or infrastructure will necessitate a severe response.

It's unclear what Russia will do with the data officials say it has. But Democrats fear it will be for Trump's benefit.

REP. ERIC SWALWELL (D-CA): Russia has done this before. They had preference to tear down Hillary Clinton, help Donald Trump. We know right now they have a preference to help Donald Trump and to tear down Joe Biden.

BROWN: And there are also fears of in-person voter intimidation after the president's rhetoric at the last debate.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I'm urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully.

BROWN: Both parties will be sending out poll watchers who will gather signs of not just intimidation but all voting issues. A rule that limited the RNC's ability to work with the party nominee to recruit poll workers has expired, allowing closer coordination with the Trump campaign.

And Democrats have a new app that allows poll watchers to quickly report issues back to the campaign and its lawyers.

Meanwhile tens of millions of Americans have already voted, up more than 100 percent from this time in 2016. This despite many voters nationwide reporting not receiving their mail-in ballots yet. Printing errors, mail delivery delays and sheer volume have left many states struggling to keep up.

In the battleground state of Michigan, 3 million absently ballots were requested, 20,000 voters are still waiting.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: This kind of thing just can't happen. Obviously, there's a kink in the system.

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BROWN: And, Jake, now, with less than two weeks to go until election day, the Supreme Court is still weighing in on these election issues in different states. In Alabama, in reinstated the ban on curbside voting. There are still cases about North Carolina and Wisconsin on ballot receipt deadlines in front of the court. And Republican sources tell me that Republicans will likely appeal on that Pennsylvania case on the merits that extended the deadline by three days to receive mail-in ballots if they were mailed by-election day.

And it's worth reiterating, Jake, election experts are saying given all that's going on, given how close we are to election day, the best thing you could do if you haven't mailed in your ballot, that's what you're planning to do, is to go in person and vote and vote early -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right. Pamela Brown, thank you so much.

Joining us now to discuss all the latest in election security headlines, Admiral James Stavridis. He's a retired U.S. Navy supreme allied commander and he's author of the book "Sailing True North."

Admiral Stavridis, thanks so much for joining us.

Just yesterday, you warned in a piece in "The Economist" that some, quote, un-neighborly countries might be tempted to take advantage of our divided nation. Is what we heard officials lay out last night what you were concerned about?

ADM. JAMESA STAVRIDIS (RET.), FORMER U.S. NAVY SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER AT NATO: It really is, Jake. And let's face it, we've heard a lot about Iran. We've heard a fair amount about Russia. The dog that hasn't barked yet that I worry about, if you will, is China.

So we've got a spread of concerns here, but let's kind of put them into perspective. If you want to put it in baseball terms, the Iranians are not like a tee ball team, but they're probably like a good high school baseball team. The Russians in this zone are the L.A. Dodgers. They're coming right at you like they would for the World Series.

The Chinese are even better. We haven't seen publicly discussions of what China is doing, but our elections are front and center for all of these entities, and what they want is to sow disruption and continue the division that we've lived with for the last four years.

TAPPER: That's right. A lot of the divisions were there for them to exploit, but it's our fault that we have the divisions.

Do you agree with the Director of National Intelligence Ratcliffe when he made this assessment that these e-mails they were talking about, that were purportedly sent by this far right neo-fascist group, the Proud Boys, threatening Democratic voters if they don't vote for Trump?

[16:50:05]

Ratcliffe said that these were made to hurt President Trump. And I guess following his logic, it was an attempt to show some sort of alliance between President Trump and the Proud Boys, but I don't know that we can assert with any certainty who these were trying to help our hurt. What do you think?

STAVRIDIS: I agree with you. And more importantly the intelligence community agrees with you. The intelligence community looks at what has come out of the Iranian efforts, and they were using publicly available data. They weren't even hacking to get this stuff.

And if they were the ones sending them, it's entirely unclear even what the effect would be. I could see where some Democratic voters might be intimidated in that setting, for example. That would help President Trump.

I think what's much more clear and we saw that the briefing yesterday from FBI Director Wray is that Russia is deeply involved here hacking and clearly trying to support President Trump. And that's just not in the real moment. We know from 2016 that's exactly what they did. That's all been validated in a bipartisan way by the intelligence community and Senate investigations.

TAPPER: A lot of the officials that were up there on that stage last night I think are patriots who really have the best interest of the United States at heart. Chris Krebs who's in charge of cybersecurity, Chris Wray who's in charge of FBI.

Do you have faith in the Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe?

STAVRIDIS: I do not. I think he was unqualified for the job to begin with, he was turned down once for exaggerating his national security credentials. There's nothing in either his background or his comportment thus far that give me confidence.

I would pose much more confidence, for example, in the director of the CIA, Gina Haspel, who's a career intelligence officer, or FBI Director Wray. Those are the two voices I'm looking to hear from. TAPPER: We know that foreign adversaries try to exploit social media platforms. This time, Google is saying approximately 25,000 e-mails were sent to Gmail users. What do you want tech companies to do to prevent this kind of malice we saw in these fake e-mails from the Proud Boys?

STAVRIDIS: This is a tricky one. Let's face it, if we didn't like the things that were coming out of the printing presses that Gutenberg invented we might have said, well, let's burn all the printing presses. We don't want to just shutdown the social networks. They're powerful engines, but we need Google, Facebook, all of the social nets, LinkedIn, all of them to monitor content.

And when they see hate speech that should come down as surely as child pornography should. I think they can find their way to this.

Jake, it's not an on and off switch of total free speech or shutdown the Internet. We got to dial that (INAUDIBLE) in. It needs to be a little closer, little better control. I feel they're moving in that direction in a measured way.

TAPPER: And quickly if you could, when it comes to spreading false or sketchy or scurrilous information, I don't know if any foreign actors with ill intent can outmatch what we're seeing with homegrown American actors doing in this election cycle to be frank.

STAVRIDIS: It's absolutely true, but what we ought to consider is that they can build off each other and they can create the sum of the parts is greater than the individual parts. We ought to be concerned about both halves of that noxious brew.

TAPPER: All right. Admiral James Stavridis, thank you so much. Good to see you as always, sir.

The new details just being revealed about tonight's presidential debate. That's next.

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[16:58:19]

TAPPER: Vice President Joe Biden has just landed in Nashville, Tennessee, ahead of tonight's debate there.

We're learning new details about the final matchup. The Presidential Debates Commission says the lecterns between Biden and Trump will be more than 12 feet apart and they will be positioned more than 16 feet away from the moderator, NBC's Kristen Welker.

President Trump will get the first question and we will have the first two minutes of interrupted time. Vice President Biden will then get the same question and we will have two minutes of uninterrupted time.

Remember, the other candidate's mic will be muted. The size of the audience is still being determined. I'll be back with you tonight for CNN's special coverage of the final debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Our coverage starts at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.

And finally from us today, the death toll of coronavirus is climbing past 222,000 deaths, and we want to take a moment to remember just one of those many, many lives lost.

Today, we're talking about Richie Lopez, 52 years old. He died after almost 3 weeks in the hospital. He was an avid fisherman, going out to sea with his friends any chance he could. He was a huge fan of the L.A. Rams. Lopez purchased season tickets last year, hoping to watch his favorite team play this season.

His family members -- his family remembers him as the fun uncle. He was always spoiling his nieces and nephews. Lopez leaves behind his younger brother and sister, his parents and his beloved dog, happy.

May his memory and may that of all those lost, far too many, be a blessing.

You can follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter @JakeTapper. You can tweet the show @TheLeadCNN.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now. I'll see you later tonight.