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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Trump Breaks Post-Defeat Silence; Interview With Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA); Pandemic Exploding; Joe Biden Wins Georgia. Aired 4- 4:30p ET

Aired November 13, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:04]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: That's Sunday, December 13, at 8:00 p.m. Eastern on CNN.

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BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN HOST: These stories, every year, they are so insanely inspiring.

Thank you all for being with me. I'm Brooke Baldwin.

"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. CNN has now projected that president-elect Joe Biden will win the state of Georgia. This comes after we projected he won Arizona last night, flipping those traditionally red states to blue for the first time since the 1990s.

CNN also projecting that outgoing President Trump will win the state of North Carolina, which means, in addition to president-elect Biden currently up in the popular vote, 77.9 million votes, or 50.8 percent, to outgoing President Trump's 72.7 million, or 47.4 percent, Biden has 306 electoral votes, to Trump's 232.

That's a score that Trump called a landslide when he was on the right end of it.

Today, president-elect Biden is meeting with his transition advisers and preparing to take office on January 20. The Biden/Harris transition team is forced to reach out on their own to governors and health experts in the private sector to prepare, since the Trump administration is still refusing to begin the transition process.

Trump is set to speak any minute from the Rose Garden. These will be the president's first public remarks since president-elect Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 election almost a full week ago. Trump has so far refused to acknowledge his electoral loss in any way at all, though the writing has been on the wall for quite some time now.

More news of fatality just in recent hours, with Pennsylvania announcing Biden's margin of victory is way too big to trigger an automatic recount. A law firm representing the Trump campaign in Pennsylvania has withdrawn representation.

A judge in Michigan rejected a Republican lawsuit to toss out votes in Detroit. The Trump campaign dropped its lawsuit in Arizona. And the Trump campaign shut off its voter fraud hot line.

And yet President Trump and his advisers are still out there spewing lies about what Department of Homeland Security officials are calling the most secure election in American history.

Today, trade adviser Peter Navarro and press secretary Kayleigh McEnany are the latest Trump officials to continue to spread this big lie, signaling that the president is not the only one in the building unwilling to accept the results of the democratic process.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STUART VARNEY, FOX BUSINESS ANCHOR: President Trump will definitely attend the inauguration?

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: I think the president will attend his own inauguration. He would have to be there, in fact.

PETER NAVARRO, DIRECTOR, WHITE HOUSE OFFICE OF TRADE AND MANUFACTURING POLICY: We're moving forward here at the White House new assumption that there will be a second Trump term.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Now, is it delusion? Is it dishonesty? Frankly, it doesn't really matter, the motivation, anymore. All that matters that is that it's false and it's destructive.

A senior administration official tells me that the Trump team is still actually discussing whether President Trump should go out and hold rallies right now.

And it comes as the Trump campaigns options to try to delay this inevitable result are running out, as CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Today, President Trump will speak in front of cameras for the first time in over a week for what the White House says is an update on the administration's COVID-19 vaccine initiative.

The appearance comes as President Trump and senior government officials are still denying the results of the election, including his top trade adviser.

NAVARRO: We're moving forward here at the White House on the assumption that there will be a second Trump term.

COLLINS: Peter Navarro isn't the only high-ranking aide refusing to acknowledge Joe Biden's win. When the press secretary was asked today if Trump will attend Biden's inauguration, she bizarrely claimed he will go to his own.

VARNEY: It would look pretty bad if he did not attend the inauguration. It would sound like -- look like sour grapes, wouldn't it?

MCENANY: I think the president will attend his own inauguration. He would have to be there, in fact

VARNEY: You really think you can turn this around?

MCENANY: Absolutely.

COLLINS: Officials like Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo are denying reality, as the Trump campaigns legal arguments are falling apart in court.

Today, the campaign dropped a lawsuit filed in Arizona, while acknowledging it wouldn't have made a difference, given county officials said fewer than 200 votes were at stake and Biden leads Trump in the state by 11,000.

The law firm representing Trump's campaign in Pennsylvania also withdrew from the longshot case today, as firms carrying out Trump's legal challenges are now coming under public pressure.

Even the president's own Department of Homeland Security is rejecting his claim this election was rigged. Security officials say the 2020 race was actually the most secure election in American history and there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, or was in any way compromised.

[16:05:11]

Despite all of that, Trump has refused to concede the race, as his allies are pushing him to do so, including Geraldo Rivera of FOX News, who says he spoke with the president today.

GERALDO RIVERA, FOX NEWS: He told me he was a realist. He told me he would do the right thing. Every impression he gave me, Harris, was that, if the process went against him, and he was satisfied that every vote, legitimate vote, had been counted, and every illegitimate vote had been thrown out, that he would follow the edict of the Constitution.

I got no impression that he was plotting the overthrow of the elected government.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: And, Jake, on top of all of that, we have been reporting that the president is potentially on the verge of firing the CIA director.

And, today, we have learned that, as that's been going on and those discussions about whether or not to terminate her have been happening, there was an intelligence briefing held here at the White House this afternoon with President Trump, the director of national intelligence, John Ratcliffe, and other senior intelligence officials.

But Gina Haspel was not invited to that briefing. And an official said that it's not mandatory for her to be there. But, of course, that is not a good sign for whether or not she is going to be in this job for much longer.

And, Jake, this comes as the president is about to come out here to the Rose Garden. This is going to be the only the second time he has addressed reporters since he lost the election to Joe Biden. He has not taken questions from reporters since the day of the election, so we will see if he does when he comes out here in a few moments.

TAPPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

As we reported, the Trump administration continues to block the Biden/Harris transition team's access to federal agencies and funds.

Now Biden's future White House chief of staff, Ron Klain, says the delayed transition could hamper the coronavirus vaccine preparations, as CNN's Jessica Dean now reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): President-elect Joe Biden spending today at his Delaware beach house meeting with transition advisers, taking what advisers describe as his notoriously deliberative approach, as he considers potential Cabinet nominees.

JEN PSAKI, BIDEN TRANSITION ADVISER: We're charging ahead with the transition.

DEAN: During a virtual briefing, Biden's transition team offering assurances the transition process is moving ahead, even as they continue to wait for the General Services Administration to trigger the official transition process.

PSAKI: We're not interested in having a food fight with the GSA administrator or anyone really. We just want to get access to intelligence information, to threat assessments, to the ongoing work on COVID, so that we can prepare to govern.

DEAN: The team confirmed they have been in contact with specific representatives from a number of agencies.

YOHANNES ABRAHAM, BIDEN TRANSITION ADVISER: We have been in regular contact with federal career officials who are tasked with administering transitions, who are nonpartisan career experts on transitions, including at GSA.

DEAN: Aides say Biden has contenders in mind for nearly all of the Cabinet positions, but they are trying to be deliberate. As one former senior Obama official advising the Biden transition told CNN -- quote -- "There is no room for any embarrassments."

Meantime, in his first interview since Biden named him chief of staff, Ron Klain said Thursday night Biden will issue a national mask mandate on his first day in office and install a White House COVID coordinator.

RON KLAIN, INCOMING WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: And he will have a COVID coordinator who works in the White House who has direct access to him and will be briefing him daily, and otherwise as needed, on the response to the COVID crisis.

DEAN: Klain also confirmed Biden has not spoken with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has refused to publicly acknowledge Biden as president-elect.

KLAIN: There will be a time and a place for Joe Biden and Senator McConnell to talk.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

DEAN: And we are learning from new reporting from our colleagues Jim Sciutto and Kylie Atwood that the Biden transition team is reaching out to former Pentagon officials who worked under former Secretary of Defense James Mattis to kind of get the lay of the land from them.

Of course, they're locked out from talking to any current Pentagon officials, so they figured former was the next best thing. Jake, we're told they're just looking for information here.

TAPPER: All right, Jessica Dean in Wilmington, Delaware, thanks so much.

Here to discuss this all, Democratic Congresswoman Jackie Speier, who serves on the House Intelligence Committee.

Congresswoman Speier, thanks so much for joining us. Congrats on your reelection.

REP. JACKIE SPEIER (D-CA): Thank you, Jake.

TAPPER: First, President Trump's about to speak for the first time since president-elect Joe Biden was declared the winner of the election. What would you like to hear from the outgoing president?

SPEIER: I would like the outgoing president to be presidential, to concede the election, to allow the transition to move forward. It's in the best interests of the American people.

Our national security is at risk the longer he pursues this fallacy that -- or fantasy that he's engaged in about trying to overturn the election results.

[16:10:03] TAPPER: Well, just a few minutes ago, he tweeted part of this tinfoil hat conspiracy theory that the election software is somehow responsible for why he didn't win. It's been debunked by no less than his own cybersecurity czar at the Department of Homeland Security.

So it's not just that he's not going to be presidential, in all likelihood. It's that he's spreading this misinformation to tens of millions of his followers.

SPEIER: Well, it's true.

And what we do know that will happen in the end, when you have more than five million more votes that president-elect Biden has received, there is no way that he is going to be able to overcome that kind of a margin.

When Jill Stein in Wisconsin called for a recount, when then president-elect Trump had 23,000 votes, and we now have president- elect Biden having 20,000 votes, when she called for a recount, there were only 131 votes that changed hands.

So, he's lost. And, unfortunately, he's a poor loser. Meanwhile, the American people are at risk. What we do know is that the 30-odd days that transpired before Bush was called the victor in 2000 was somewhat responsible for the fact that it took six months for him to get the clearances on his staff and actually contributed to our lack of ability to anticipate 9/11.

TAPPER: Yes.

SPEIER: That's what the 9/11 Commission said.

TAPPER: Right. The 9/11 Commission report found that the delayed transition between President Bill Clinton and President George W. Bush in 2000 hampered their ability, as you know, to put key appointees in place before the 9/11 attacks.

Are you worried that something like that could happen again?

SPEIER: Well, I'm worried about that. I'm worried about the fact that our embassy in Iraq has been attacked numerous times and our diplomats who are still there are risk.

I'm concerned about the diplomats in Cuba and elsewhere, who have had brain damage of some sort, that we have not been able to ascertain what caused it or who is responsible for it, although we have some speculation, all those things that are going on around the world, and our adversaries looking at this circus going on here in the United States. And they delight in it.

I can assure you that Putin is just getting the last laugh here, because this is precisely what he wants to see happen.

TAPPER: Have you talked to any of your Republican colleagues who have not yet acknowledged the result of the election? Because it's really a very short list of Republican officials in Washington who have acknowledged what happened last week, the idea that president-elect Biden is president-elect Biden.

Congressman Kinzinger has. I think Congressman Conaway has, but very few Republicans have. Have you asked any of them, what's going on; this isn't good for the country?

SPEIER: You know, I haven't, Jake. And that's probably a good idea. I think I will get on the phone later today and try and get a sense.

What I will probably hear from them is, they realize that Joe Biden is now the president-elect, but they want to give the president more room to come to grips with the fact that he's lost.

I mean, this is treating the presidency like you have got a mental health issue at stake here, and that we have got to be careful with this fragile ego that is in the White House. It's time for the president to put his big man pants on and accept the fact that he has lost.

TAPPER: Yes. I have said it's like they're coddling a 5-year-old whose pet turtle died. It's just remarkable.

(LAUGHTER)

TAPPER: There's a growing list of Republican lawmakers who won't acknowledge that Biden is president-elect, but they say he should be getting the presidential daily brief and the intelligence updates.

What do you think it's going to take to get that to actually happen, so that president-elect Biden is up to speed so he can protect the country when he takes office on January 20?

SPEIER: Well, Senator Lankford, who I served with in the House, has said that, if it didn't happen on Friday, he would do something. He then somehow recanted it a little bit.

That's the fear that so many of these Republican senators have, one, because they have got two Senate seats that are up in Georgia in January, and they want President Trump to be able to rally the forces there. And the other is that they're always concerned about their own skin.

It's whether or not the president will come out and attack them. As an outgoing president, he still will have 70 million people that he will try to rally around him and others. So, it's all about self- preservation.

Meanwhile, we have a country at risk here. And we owe our allegiance to the Constitution, not to President Trump, who has lost the election.

[16:15:07]

TAPPER: Not to mention, of course, the coronavirus pandemic, which is getting worse and worse every day.

Congresswoman Jackie Speier, thanks so much for your time. We're still waiting for President Trump to come out in the Rose Garden

and speak at any moment, his first public remarks since the election was officially called for Joe Biden by every major media organization.

Plus, as this nation hits COVID numbers that were unthinkable just a couple of weeks ago, a new study is warning of a mutant strain that could spread even faster.

And the race to get an effective vaccine to all Americans coming with some special challenges. Is the Trump administration up for those challenges?

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:20:01]

TAPPER: President Trump, we are told, is about to speak at the White House at any moment. We are standing by for that, his first remarks since the race was called for president-elect Biden.

But, first, in our health lead: New coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in the U.S. are continuing, sadly, to shatter records. For the first time ever, the U.S. reported more than 150,000 new cases in a single day, 150,000, marking the 10th consecutive day that cases have been above 100,000 new cases.

Equally concerning, hospitalization numbers also break breaking records for the third day in a row, at least 67,000 Americans hospitalized with coronavirus, that number expected to rise, as CNN Erica Hill reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. ABDUL EL-SAYED, FORMER DIRECTOR, DETROIT HEALTH DEPARTMENT: As cases were growing this fall, people were saying, well, the death rate is low and hospitalizations aren't really growing. Well, now we're there. And we were predictably there.

ERICA HILL, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Records being set and shattered at a frightening pace, as the virus rages across the country.

DR. ALEX GARZA, ST. LOUIS METROPOLITAN PANDEMIC TASK FORCE: Our health care heroes have fought valiantly day after day. But we have no reserves.

HILL: More than 67,000 Americans hospitalized with COVID-19 on Thursday, topping the previous day's high again, as the country added a record 153,000 new cases, and the daily average of new cases jumped 32 percent in just one week.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: Our baseline of infections all along has never gone down to a level that would allow you to be easily controllable when you get cases that soar up. HILL: An influential model now predicts we could see 2,200 COVID

deaths a day by mid-January and 439,000 lives lost by March 1.

Yet, even in some of the hardest-hit areas, there is resistance and denial.

DR. PAUL CASEY, BELLIN HOSPITAL: People come in, and some of them refuse to wear masks. They create quite a scene at the registration desk, to the point that we have had to call the police.

HILL: In South Dakota, the mayor of Sioux Falls, who once implored residents to wear a dang mask, vetoing a proposed mandate.

PAUL TENHAKEN, MAYOR OF SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA: My official vote on this is a no. And that item fails 5-4.

HILL: The nation's largest indoor water park just opened outside of Austin, one day after Texas reached a total of one million coronavirus cases.

DR. CELINE GOUNDER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: Every single American citizen needs to step up and take personal responsibility.

HILL: New York limiting gatherings, cutting back hours for gyms at restaurants starting today.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is going to hurt.

HILL: Mayor Bill de Blasio warning, schools could close as soon as Monday if the city's seven-day average positivity rate hits 3 percent.

BILL DE BLASIO (D), MAYOR OF NEW YORK: There's still a chance to do something to avert that.

HILL: Chicago's new stay-at-home advisory goes into effect Monday morning, California, Oregon, and Washington urging travelers to avoid nonessential visits.

Michigan offering this:

DR. JONEIGH KHALDUN, MICHIGAN CHIEF MEDICAL EXECUTIVE: The winter holidays simply cannot be the same this year, as Dr. Fauci reminds us to mask up everywhere.

FAUCI: But if you're indoors and gathering with people, even if it's a relatively small group, to the extent possible, keep the mask on even if you are indoors.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HILL: The list of states announcing rollbacks or new restrictions is growing, Oregon, Idaho, Vermont and New Mexico among those announcing new efforts today.

And here in New York, the governor says he's meeting with his counterparts in six neighboring states this weekend to discuss possible coordination of more new measures -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Erica Hill, thank you so much.

CNN's chief medical correspondent, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, joins me now.

And, Sanjay, we are expecting the president to come out at any moment to talk about the new vaccine and Operation Warp Speed. So, I apologize ahead of time if I have to cut you off.

But, while we're waiting, what do you expect him to say? What do you want him to say?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, those may be two different things entirely.

TAPPER: I'm sure they are.

(LAUGHTER)

GUPTA: I mean, I think that what I would hope he would say is, there is actually some things worth celebrating right now with regard to this vaccine.

I mean, there's still a lot of data we have to look at. But if you look at the initial sort of what we have heard about the Pfizer vaccine being 90 percent effective in terms of COVID-19, I mean, that's a pretty remarkable number.

The FDA said they would have accepted 50 percent. And the process is moving along very, very quickly. I know he's upset because he says the results were held until after the election. I mean, science doesn't follow a particular timetable.

But it is still really worth celebrating. I mean, we're hearing, by the end of this month, perhaps they would apply for an emergency use authorization. That may take a few weeks then to get that.

But, by the end of the year, Jake, we may be putting shots in arms for a vaccine that -- for a disease we didn't even know about a year earlier. So, it is worth celebrating.

[16:25:00]

But that's what I would hope he would say. But I think, unfortunately, there's going to be grievances there, that he wishes it could have gone faster. He should celebrate that Operation Warp Speed has done as good a job as it has so far.

TAPPER: Yes. I mean, he's out there pushing this idea -- and there's no evidence, no evidence for it at all -- that the announcement was delayed until after the election.

You asked the CEO of Pfizer about it. He said, no, not at all. We -- as soon as we found out, we announced it.

We should point out that Pfizer did not take money from the federal government to develop the vaccine. But they do have a deal with the Trump administration, with the federal government to manufacture and distribute the vaccine, which a lot of experts think probably helped encourage and speed up the process.

So he could take a victory lap of sorts. I mean, it is an achievement of his Trump administration.

Sanjay, hold on one sec.

Let's go live to the Rose Garden right now, where President Trump is about to make his first public remarks since losing the election.

(JOINED IN PROGRESS)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: ... has initiated the single greatest mobilization in U.S. history, pioneering, developing and manufacturing therapies and vaccines in record time, numbers like nobody's seen before.

No medical breakthrough of this scope and magnitude has ever been achieved this rapidly, this quickly. And we're very proud of it. And I had tremendous help from the military, generals, admirals, and many of the great people at the White House.

Operation Warp Speed is unequaled and unrivaled anywhere in the world, and leaders of other countries have called me to congratulate us on what we have been able to do. And we have helped many countries with their ventilators and all of the problems they were having.

And I'd like to congratulate everyone involved in this effort. It's been an incredible effort.

As a result of Operation Ward Speed, Pfizer announced on Monday that its China virus vaccine is more than 90 percent effective. This far exceeds any and all expectations. Nobody thought they would get to that level. And we have others coming which we think will be an equal level, maybe more, if that's possible.

In July, my administration reached an agreement with Pfizer to provide $1.95 billion to support the mass manufacturing and distribution of 100 million doses, with the option to purchase a total of 600 million doses shortly thereafter.

Our investment will make it possible for the vaccine to be provided by Pfizer free of charge. Pfizer said it wasn't part of Warp Speed, but that turned out to be an unfortunate misrepresentation. They are part. That's why we gave them the $1.95 million -- billion.

And it was an unfortunate mistake that they made when they said that. We will work to secure an emergency use authorization, which should be coming down extremely soon. And my administration will then coordinate the distribution of the vaccine. And it will be approved. I think, again it will be approved very, very quickly, we hope.

The average development timeline for the vaccine, including clinical tests and manufacturing, can take eight to 12 years. Through Operation Warp Speed, we're doing it in less than one year. If you had a different administration with different people, what we have done would have taken, in my opinion, three, four, five years.

And it would have been in the FDA forever. This is five times faster than the fastest prior vaccine development in history, five times faster. Say it again, five times faster. Nobody can believe it, actually.

Three other vaccines are in the final stages of trial. They will arrive within a few weeks. And they will also be mass-produced, and the delivery will be very rapid. We're ready to go. The vaccine will be distributed to front-line workers, the elderly, and high-risk Americans immediately.

It will be very -- a matter of weeks, get out very, very much ahead of schedule. Any schedule that I said, we're going to be far ahead of that. We know that this virus primarily targets older populations and those with underlying health conditions, while over 99.98 percent of those under the age of 50 make a full and quick recovery.

By giving the vaccine to high-risk individuals right away, we will dramatically reduce hospitalizations and deaths. Case levels are high, but a lot of the case levels are high because of the fact that we have the best testing program anywhere in the world. We have developed the most and the best tests. And we test far more than any other country. So, it shows, obviously, more cases.

By vaccinating the elderly and the high-risk, we will effectively end this phase of the pandemic and allow seniors to reclaim their golden years, the golden years of their lives, which are so incredible. And it's about time that they can have those golden years.

Again, this process is starting right away.

[16:30:00]