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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Interview With Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT); Biden Sets Up Coronavirus Task Force; Trump Fires Defense Secretary; Trump Refuses to Accept Defeat. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired November 09, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:01]

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: Ladies, thank you so, so much.

Again, congratulations again, congresswoman-elect. Thank you both.

And thank you all for being with me. We will see you back here tomorrow. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

In the meantime, "THE LEAD WITH JAKE TAPPER" starts now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.

And we begin today with breaking news.

Two days after it became clear that Joe Biden had been elected 46th president of the United States, Biden is now beginning his transition. President-elect Biden is making an appeal to the nation for unity and the end of polarization in the United States.

Yet this happens as the same at the same time that President Trump is refusing to accept defeat and is instead lashing out. This afternoon, as his lame-duck session as president began, Trump fired his secretary of defense, Mark Esper.

Senior administration officials tell CNN that Secretary Esper has been pushing back on President Trump since last year. Esper was among officials in 2019 who urged Trump to release that aid to Ukraine, aid that Trump used as leverage for dirt on Biden. Esper cautioned Trump not to completely pull troops out of Northern Syria.

And after force was used against protesters outside the White House this summer, Esper publicly denounced the move, said he regretted his presence, and was careful to try to keep the U.S. military out of the realm of the president's political desires.

Secretary Esper may just be the first firing. A senior administration official tells me that Esper is worried that President Trump will also soon fire FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel next. A separate administration source also tells me that President Trump's personnel chief at the White House is threatening to fire members of the administration if he hears that they are even looking for another job.

Plus, this afternoon, we're learning of new coronavirus cases in President Trump's orbit, sources telling CNN that Trump adviser David Bossie has tested positive for coronavirus, as well as Coronavirus Task Force member and Housing Secretary Ben Carson.

We have our CNN correspondents covering all angles of the incoming and outgoing administrations, the deadly pandemic and the economic impact.

We're going to start with CNN's Kaitlan Collins. She is at the White House for us and a closer look at the turmoil and uncertainty gripping the West Wing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT:(voice-over): President Donald Trump terminating Defense Secretary Mark Esper in his first major act since losing the election, Trump announcing on Twitter that Secretary Esper had been fired and a senior intelligence official will take his place for the next two months.

The move was announced suddenly, though it was months in the making.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Mark Yesper. Did you call Yesper?

QUESTION: Esper.

TRUMP: Oh, OK. Some people call him Yesper.

COLLINS: On his way out, Esper took issue with that description. He told "The Military Times": "Who's pushed back more than anybody? Name another Cabinet secretary that's pushed back. Have you seen me on a stage saying, under the exceptional leadership of blah, blah, blah, we have blah, blah, blah?"

Esper and Trump clashed this summer over the president's attempts to use active-duty troops on American streets to control protests against police brutality.

MARK ESPER, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act.

COLLINS: But Esper may not beat Trump's last firing. Sources say Attorney General Bill Barr, FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director Gina Haspel could be next to go.

Esper's firing amounted to President Trump controlling what he could while contesting what he can't. He's refused to concede the election to president-elect Joe Biden and spent the weekend out of public view, with the exception of two trips to the golf course. Some in the president's inner circle are delicately pushing him to come to grips with reality and concede, while others are telling him to keep fighting and even suggesting running again in four years.

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Grover Cleveland came back. Donald Trump should think about it if he falls short.

COLLINS: Neither Trump nor Vice President Mike Pence have called Biden or Senator Kamala Harris. Today, Pence tweeted that he told his staff -- quote -- "It ain't over 'til it's over, and this ain't over."

On the day Biden announced his transition task force on the pandemic, Pence met with the one that he leads for the first time in nearly 20 days, the meeting happening the same day news broke that another person in Trump's orbit has contracted COVID-19. HUD Secretary Dr. Ben Carson tested positive today after attending an indoor election night party at the White House with hundreds of others, where few were wearing a mask and none were social distancing.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: And, Jake, now we're learning Ben Carson is not the only one in the president's circle. We have also that Dave Bossie, who was a campaign aide in 2016, he's an adviser right now, has also tested positive for coronavirus.

And the problem that poses for Trump world, Jake, is that he was just tapped to oversee the legal challenges that they're carrying out in several of these critical battleground states as they are fighting the outcome of this election.

[16:05:00]

So, David Bossie, the person who is supposed to be charge of that, now has coronavirus, and is quarantining at home, we should note.

And, Jake, back to that firing of the defense secretary, we're told that he got about a five-minute heads-up from the chief of staff, Mark Meadows, who called him to let him know the president was going to be tweeting that he was firing him earlier today.

TAPPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins at the White House.

And, of course, our thoughts and best wishes go out to Secretary Carson and Dave Bossie on their recovery from the coronavirus.

Today, president-elect Joe Biden is focused on moving forward.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT: This election is over. It's time to put aside the partisanship and the rhetoric that's designed to demonize one another. It's time to end the politicization of basic responsible public health steps.

(END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: President-elect Biden is turning his attention to the coronavirus pandemic, after he and vice president-elect Kamala Harris were briefed by the transition team's newly announced coronavirus advisory board, as CNN's Arlette Saenz now reports for us on.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BIDEN: Good afternoon, everyone.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL REPORTER (voice-over): On his first workday as president-elect, Joe Biden turned his attention straight to his top priority, tackling the coronavirus pandemic.

BIDEN: I will spare no effort to turn this pandemic around once we're sworn in on January 20.

SAENZ: With vice president-elect Kamala Harris at his side, Biden warned of the pandemic's severity, after the U.S. saw a record- breaking weekend in coronavirus cases.

BIDEN: The challenge before us right now is still immense and growing. We're still facing a very dark winter.

SAENZ: Biden welcomed progress on our vaccine, while urging Americans to embrace masks to curb the growing spread of the virus.

BIDEN: A mask is not a political statement. But it is a good way to start pulling the country together.

SAENZ: The president-elect stressed his response will be guided by science, unveiling a new Coronavirus Task Force led by a former U.S. surgeon general, former FDA Commissioner and Yale University professor.

Also on the team, Rick Bright, the whistle-blower who alleged his early warnings about the pandemic went ignored by the Trump administration.

DR. RICK BRIGHT, FORMER DIRECTOR, BIOMEDICAL ADVANCED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY: More people are going to die because scientists are being pushed back, scientists are not being heard.

SAENZ: In the days since his win, Biden has seen a wave of messages from world leaders, today speaking by phone with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and congratulatory statements from the king of Saudi Arabia and Israel's prime minister, two men seen as allies of President Trump.

The president-elect already looking ahead to the next chapter.

BIDEN: This election is over. It's time to put aside the partisanship and the rhetoric that's designed to demonize one another.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAENZ: While the president-elect has received well-wishes from world leaders, back here at home, only four Republican senators have congratulated the president-elect, the latest being Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse, who gave a statement to his hometown paper, "The Omaha World-Herald," saying that he congratulates the next president and the next vice president, Jake, quite the contrast from the majority of the Senate Republican Caucus.

TAPPER: All right, Arlette Saenz, thanks so much for covering that.

President-elect Biden's White House victory, combined with some extremely encouraging news about a potential coronavirus vaccine, sent stocks soaring today, in one of the best days of the year on Wall Street.

That's our money lead today.

CNN business anchor Julia Chatterley joins me now live.

Julia, is this a one-time spike? Or do you expect to see more major gains this week?

JULIA CHATTERLEY, CNN BUSINESS ANCHOR: The multitrillion-dollar question.

I will tell you what, Jake, it will be easier to answer that if we weren't already trading at or around record highs for these stock markets and if we weren't already knee-deep in a pandemic that's getting worse.

If I had to guess, I'd say we probably move higher. We're going to get more of these vaccine announcements. And big investors are telling me, look, this is the beginning of the end of the COVID-19 pandemic.

But none of the current issues, of course, are addressed by this vaccine.

Let me give you a sense of what moved today. Everything that's been beaten up in the last six months gathered speeding and gained ground today. So, we're talking airline stocks like Delta. We're talking Carnival Cruise Lines. Look at the performance there, up 38 percent today, Disney now flat on the year, up 12 percent.

All those that have benefited from the work-from-home and the stay-at- home phase, Netflix -- we have watched too much TV -- we have seen some profit-taking here, down 8 percent. Clorox, we have washed our hands so much, down 10 percent.

You get the sense of what we're seeing here. So, potentially, we see more of these kind of moves. But it's not going to be a straight line, Jake. And I think the critical thing is, don't look at this vaccine news and don't look at markets and think the crisis is over here, because it's not.

TAPPER: Oh, absolutely not.

Julia, when president-elect Biden takes office in January, what do you see as the biggest hurdles on the economic front that he's going to face right away?

[16:10:02]

CHATTERLEY: Where do I start?

We still have triple crises here. We have the health crisis to tackle. We have an economic crisis to tackle and we have a jobs crisis. And the critical thing here, Jake, to understand is, they will probably be worse when he takes over than they are today, without lack of policy action, either from Congress on more financial aid, or if people continue to follow the White House here, rather than listening even to what Joe Biden said today about basic things like wearing a mask.

I have lost count of the number of analysts that are saying, look, we're getting a V-shaped star recovery, the data is better than we thought. Forget that. We have still got 21 million Americans claiming some form of jobless support. Millions of those Americans were struggling before we came into this crisis.

And the pandemic is continuing. So, again, I will reiterate he is picking up the pieces of multiple crises here. Oh, boy, has he got a challenge ahead. And don't underestimate that.

TAPPER: Oh, yes, huge, huge challenge.

CHATTERLEY: Yes.

TAPPER: Julia Chatterley, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

He predicted Trump's rage could lead to Secretary Esper's firing. Up next, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy will join me with reaction and what the new-look Senate could mean for the Biden administration.

Also ahead, major news on the coronavirus vaccine front, but how soon could this vaccine be made available, theoretically? Our Dr. Sanjay Gupta will join me with answers.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:15:42]

TAPPER: In our 2020 lead: Moments ago, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that President Trump is -- quote -- "100 percent within his rights" to wage a legal fight against the election results.

Most Republican lawmakers are either staying silent or backing President Trump's decision to not concede, some even bolstering the president's false claims that there was widespread voter fraud, even though there has been no credible proof of widespread voter fraud that has been put forward.

Joining me now, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

Senator Murphy, only four of your Republican colleagues, Senator Susan Collins, who was just reelected, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Senator Mitt Romney, and Senator Ben Sasse, only four of them have acknowledged that president-elect Joe Biden is president-elect. Others are actively pushing Trump to keep the fight going. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Trump has not lost. Do not concede, Mr. President. Fight hard.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): I believe President Trump still has a path to victory. And that path is to count every single legal vote that was cast, but also not to cast any votes that were fraudulently cast or illegally cast. And we have a legal process to determine what's legal and what isn't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Now, the Trump campaign has not put anything forward that we have seen as a credible evidence of widespread fraud that Republican election lawyers, like Ben Ginsberg, say should be taken seriously or would change the outcome in any state.

What's your response to your colleagues, not the four who have acknowledged reality, but the others?

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): This isn't Florida in 2000. This isn't a couple hundred votes. This is tens of thousands of votes. And absent any evidence of fraud or mishandling of the vote, the president needs to concede.

And I think what you're seeing from most of my Republican colleagues is just the reality within the Republican Party today. The reality within the Republican Party is that Donald Trump runs it. He ran it for the last four years, and he's going to run it for the next four years.

And so Republicans, by and large, don't want to get on the wrong side of this president, because they still operate in fear of him, and what he could do to their political future. Unfortunately, that is the modern Republican Party.

Now, there are real consequences, as you have talked about, regarding the president's lack of concession, because we need to get about the business of transition. It's complicated. It involves American national security to make sure that there's a smooth transfer of power.

And if that cannot happen, then that puts our nation's security at risk.

TAPPER: Yesterday on Twitter, you said that a lame-duck White House could lead to -- quote -- "President Trump's post-defeat rage" and the possible firings of Defense Secretary Mark Esper, CIA Director Gina Haspel.

Now that Esper has been fired -- and, to be fair, Jonathan Swan from Axios wrote that this might happen about a week or so ago. So I'm not giving you credit for your prognostication.

But now that Esper has been fired, what's your reaction?

MURPHY: It's unexpected, and it might not be the end of this purge.

The president is furious, and he likely has others in the national security infrastructure in his sights. Our adversaries are watching. Our adversaries are looking at the potential vulnerability of U.S. national security. And they may take action.

I think about a country like China, who may want to take the next logical step, with respect to a crackdown in Hong Kong, may want to do something even more provocative, like take a run at one of the disputed islands off their coast. And in doing so, they may believe that they could gain an advantage, because there is no defense secretary, there may not be a CIA director.

The president may decide not to respond to their actions abroad. And then, by the time that Joe Biden is sworn in, it may be too late to reverse those very escalatory and disturbing actions.

So, I think we have to watch for all of that.

TAPPER: I have to -- we have to acknowledge here, even though President Trump lost the presidential election and Joe Biden won, the Republican Party is clearly still very popular in much of the country. They gained at least eight seats in the House.

They held on to key seats in the Senate. And depending on what happens in Georgia, they might maintain control of the Senate. This election was not an embrace of Democratic or progressive values.

What went wrong for your party?

[16:20:01]

MURPHY: Oh, I don't think anything went wrong. We beat a president, maybe in the end, by seven million votes. We gained seats in the Senate.

Listen, this is a divided country. There's no doubt about it. And to get anything done in Washington in the next two years, you're going to have to reach out across the aisle. And our intention is to try to do that.

The only way you're going to get a coronavirus relief bill done is with Republicans and Democrats supporting it, for instance. So, I don't think that it's any surprise we did -- we have won more seats than we lost across the board. And, ultimately, we're going to have to govern together with Republicans.

TAPPER: I mean, I'm going to push back a little here, Senator.

Joe Biden won the presidency by a big margin. And you picked up -- your party picked up one seat in the Senate. You lost the race in Maine. You lost the race in Iowa. You lost the race in Montana. I could go on and on. You lost the race in North Carolina. I mean, Schumer thought he was going to be the majority leader. And he's not. I mean, obviously, something went wrong.

MURPHY: Well, I'm not sure a year ago that people thought that we would have had so many potential Senate seats in play.

But let me humor you for a second, because I don't think you're wrong. I mean, we should do an assessment. We should always be doing assessments as a party about how we can be better.

President Trump from the White House over the last four years was able to sort of maintain a status of an outsider. And Democrats, I believe, are the party of reform. We're the party of real top-down economic reform. We're the party of reform to our democracy.

And I think we have to be much more vocal in those policies that are going to dramatically alter the nature of our economy or are going to put voters back in charge, rather than big donors of our government. And I think the president has been successful in being the anti-status quo party. The Democrats should hold that mantle.

And we have got to do a better job of explaining why over the next two to four years.

TAPPER: Biden has a history of making deals with McConnell.

A lot, of course, has changed in the past four years. How much of Biden's agenda do you think can really get done if Republicans keep control of the Senate, which seems possible, if not likely?

MURPHY: Well, I do think it's really important that we win these two seats in Georgia.

I know that folks may think that that's a long shot. I don't agree. I think that there are a lot of voters who voted for Joe Biden in Georgia who are going to want to give him a chance to actually implement his agenda. And my belief is that, while you are right that Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden have a history of working together, that it is probably more likely than not that Mitch McConnell is going to stand in the way of much of that agenda.

So, I think we have a chance to litigate that question in Georgia coming up in early January and, in the meantime, try to put pressure on McConnell to, at the very least, make sure that Joe Biden gets the opportunity to put a Cabinet in place.

TAPPER: All right, Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

Why the Trump administration's refusal to officially start the transition process could have serious national security implications.

That's next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) [16:27:41]

TAPPER: We're back with the 2020 lead.

As president-elect Joe Biden is focused on the coronavirus pandemic today, convening a meeting of his new COVID Task Force, President Trump has given no official remarks since his election defeat. Instead, he's been fuming about the results on Twitter, where he declared that his defense secretary, Mark Esper, had been terminated this afternoon.

Let's discuss with our panel.

And, Karen Finney, this could just be the beginning of this lame-duck session. What else do you think might happen?

KAREN FINNEY, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I feel like we are in for what we have been in for, for the last four years. Who knows?

I mean, look, this is a now almost former president who is in search of relevance. So, whether it is firing someone like Secretary Esper out of what appears to be personal grudges, we should expect to see more of this kind of behavior, in addition to challenging the election, acting more like a child than a president who should be going out of office with some degree of dignity.

TAPPER: Bill, viewers at home might think president-elect Biden is going to take over in two months and replace these officials anyway. Why does it matter? Why does it matter?

BILL KRISTOL, DIRECTOR, DEFENDING DEMOCRACY TOGETHER: Well, it's interesting. He didn't just fire Secretary Esper.

He didn't let the deputy secretary step up, who presumably is familiar with what's going on at the department. I have no problem with Mr. Miller. He's well-respected, but he hasn't been at the department or in the heart of it for quite a while, really ever.

If he now fires the CIA director, as is rumored -- I think you have reported this -- and possibly the FBI director, I mean, A, it just weakens the U.S. federal government at a time that's always a little problematic, a transition, right, when foreign adversaries might look to take advantage.

And, B, one does wonder what Trump has in the back of his mind in terms of possible range of things that he could do with, use the different parts of the federal government for on his way out the door.

TAPPER: Let's talk about the idea of a transition for a second, because it's not something a lot of people pay much attention to in the public.

You might remember Chris Christie had done all the transition planning for Trump back in 2016. And then Jared Kushner took that binder and threw it in the trash, and they started from scrap. And, frankly, they made some big mistakes. Karen, you worked on the transition team for Bill Clinton back in

1992, where George H.W. Bush and his administration were graceful and completely cooperative.

It's -- even under the best circumstances, it's a major undertaking.

FINNEY: Oh, absolutely.

And, Jake, we have been talking so much about a peaceful transition.

[16:30:00]