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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Did Senator Lindsey Graham Try to Get Legal Georgia Votes Cast Out?; GOP Senators Appear to Congratulate VP-Elect Harris; Iowa Governor: COVID Hospitalizations Doubled Since November 1st. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired November 17, 2020 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:00]

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The alarm bells sounding nationwide are moving several Republican governors who had resisted restrictions to reverse course.

In Iowa, Republican Governor Kim Reynolds is the latest to implement a statewide mass mandate.

GOV. KIM REYNOLDS (R-IA): I'm just reminding and asking all Iowans to step up and help us stop the spread of this virus together.

FIELD: In Mississippi, Republican Governor Tate Reeves is now requiring masks in 22 of the state's 82 counties. They haven't seen hospitalizations this high there since August.

And, in West Virginia:

GOV. JIM JUSTICE (R-WV): How do I feel about the masks? Well, I don't like them. I don't want to wear them. But, more than anything, I want us to get more control, more control over this terrible virus that is just eating us alive. I want us to absolutely wear a mask.

FIELD: Mobile morgue trucks are filling up the parking lot of the El Paso Medical Examiner's Office, and more are rolling into Amarillo, Texas, in preparation for things to get even worse, which Dr. Anthony Fauci says will happen.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: Help is on the way, but help is not here yet. The fact that we have a vaccine coming means we should double down and hang in there.

FIELD: The U.S. has recorded more than 100,000 new cases every day for two weeks straight, as states add restrictions to try to contain the virus.

In Pennsylvania, Philadelphia has new limits for indoor gatherings, dining and gyms.

JIM KENNEY (D), MAYOR OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA: There's no doubt these changes are necessary. We need to act now to reduce the rate of increase and to flatten the curve once again.

FIELD: To Massachusetts, home to several universities and colleges, the mayor of Boston telling college students who go home for Thanksgiving not to come back.

MARTY WALSH (D), MAYOR OF BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS: If you go home for Thanksgiving, you should not be returning to Boston this semester. You should do the rest of your learning remotely.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FIELD: And, in Ohio, where cases are soaring, the governor announced just this afternoon that a curfew will be implemented starting on Thursday, part of the efforts we're seeing all across the country to balance trying to keep communities open for business, while trying to protect people -- Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: All right, Alex Field, thank you so much for that report. Appreciate it.

I want to bring in CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta.

Sanjay, let's start with this news from Pfizer. I mean, there's a lot of bad news, but let's focus on the good news for one second.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes.

TAPPER: The CEO says the company reached its safety milestone. Now they're preparing to file for emergency use authorization.

What does that mean for the timeline in terms of when people can get this vaccine?

GUPTA: Yes, I mean, things are things are moving along, Jake. We are just hearing from the company so far. So we do need to hear from the FDA.

But if you sort of look at the calendar and say emergency use authorization applied for because now the safety data, in addition to the effectiveness data, which we got back eight days ago, both those milestones have been met, perhaps by first week of December or so, December 10, we're having possibly, the FDA could issue an emergency use authorization for this vaccine.

So that's coming up fairly quickly. After that, Jake, there is another committee in conjunction with the CDC that basically determines who gets it, where does the vaccine go, and how to schedule it, to make sure the right people are getting it first.

But, Jake, we're talking this year, before the end of the year, possibly before Christmas, likely for front-line health care workers first. They would likely be first in line. And then, as more and more doses get made, more and more people would be added to the list of people who receive this.

TAPPER: So that's the Pfizer vaccine. There's also the Moderna vaccine that was announced earlier this week.

According to a new Gallup poll taken before either vaccine was announced as having the great success rate -- they have -- 58 percent of Americans polled said they would get a COVID-19 vaccine. That's up a little bit from 50 percent in September. It's good news. But still, four in 10 Americans remain unwilling to get a vaccine.

What's your message to those people?

GUPTA: Well, I know the reluctance and the hesitation because of the concerns of how the FDA was issuing these emergency use authorizations.

I mean, I think we have seen a lot of back and forth this year. Hydroxychloroquine was an example of where an emergency use authorization was granted for something that really didn't have any evidence behind that. We saw the sort of exaggerating of evidence around convalescent plasma.

So, I think that's where some of this is coming from, Jake. I think what I would say is, first of all, we have been reporting on this process all along. There is an independent entity known as the Data Monitoring Safety Board, and I have interviewed people from this board.

They're outside the company. They basically are just looking at this data, and then telling the company, OK, here's what we find. So, I do think that other layer is important.

I also think there was a lot of back-and-forth on if they were going to wait long enough for safety data. What is long enough? That's an open question. But what they find is, most adverse effects with these vaccines, Jake, occur within the first two months, actually within the first 42 days.

[16:35:07]

So that's where the two-month sort of time frame comes from. And I think, if all those checks are met, I think this seems like a vaccine that is likely to get emergency use authorization.

And 90 percent effectiveness, I think that that's probably going to convince a lot of people to go ahead and take this.

TAPPER: Yes, people should take it. It's a shame that President Trump and people like Dr. Hahn politicized the earlier process, but that's not to say this one is being politicized.

Sanjay, the number of people hospitalized because of coronavirus, this number has never been higher. I think it's more than 73,000 now. In fact, since the pandemic began, the top five days with the highest hospitalization numbers all occurred just this week.

Where are we in this pandemic right now?

GUPTA: Well, Jake, I mean, the numbers are -- in terms of hospitalizations, which I think is perhaps the most important, consistent and true measure here, is far higher now than what we saw in the spring, 10,000 more people, for example, right now, than were at the height in the spring.

And you remember what we were talking about all the time back then, Jake, flatten the curve, we got to make sure hospitals don't become overwhelmed. There was a real sense of urgency at that point. Things are worse now, sadly to say.

And we know that the numbers are continuing to go up because the numbers of cases go up, and we know that hospitalizations are a few weeks behind that. So, we're -- there's some places in the country that are really at sort of this breaking point, Jake. And, again, I choose my words carefully here. I mean, hospitals will do everything they can to keep up.

They will create surge capacity. They will find -- they're doing hospital tents. They will find buildings that could serve as triage areas. But every time you start adding these other layers to the system, you have to have this personnel, you have to have the equipment, and the overall level of care is not going to be as good as if you were in your own ICU taking care of your patients.

So, it's in some places worse than others right now, Jake, but I think there's hospital systems that are basically full middle of November, and the worst two months are still yet to come.

TAPPER: Yes, it's not only predictable. It was predicted.

GUPTA: Yes.

TAPPER: You and I have been talking about it literally for months and months. And now we see all these governors suddenly realizing what's going on. It's absolutely a tragedy.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thank you so much.

Senator Lindsey Graham accused of taking his blind loyalty to President Trump to a whole new, quite disgusting level. He responds to CNN about that accusation.

That's next.

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TAPPER: We have breaking news for you in our politics lead.

A top elections official says Georgia is on track to finish its recounts by tomorrow, and that it will affirm Joe Biden's victory in the state. The announcement comes as a growing number of Democrats are blasting Republican Senator Lindsey Graham after stunning claims from Georgia's Republican secretary of state that Graham hinted that he thought that the secretary of state should find a way to discard legally cast absentee ballots. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: He asked if the ballots could be matched back to the voters. And I got the sense it implied that then you can throw those out for any -- really would look at the counties with the highest frequent error of signatures.

Well, just an implication that look hard and see how many ballots you could throw out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Senator Graham disputes the claim, calling it ridiculous.

CNN's Manu Raju is live on Capitol Hill.

Manu, you spoke with Senator Graham today. That is a stunning charge of real shadiness. What else is Graham saying?

MANU RAJU, CNN SENIOR CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, a charge from a fellow Republican official.

Graham is defending his efforts. He said that he simply had questions about the way mail-in voting is occurring in key states, raising concerns about the mail-in voting process to ensure that signatures are verified, there are appropriate protocols in place to do just that.

He revealed today that he didn't just call officials in Georgia, but also two other states in which Joe Biden's projected to win in Arizona and in Nevada.

And in my conversation with him today, he also contended that he was trying to push to see if they can make stricter those voter verification rules in Georgia ahead of the Senate run-offs that will determine the next Senate majority.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): What I'm very concerned about is that, if you want to continue to vote by mail, that we need to know what systems work and what don't. It's up to the people of Georgia.

But I think I have every right in the world to reach out and say, how does it work? And that's what it is. It was really, I thought, a pretty good conversation. So...

RAJU: I mean, he thinks there's an implicit threat by what you were saying.

GRAHAM: No, I categorically reject that. That wasn't my intent. And that wasn't the purpose of the conversation, throw out ballots.

We're talking about an election we haven't even had yet, which is the Senate races. That was my focus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: And part of the reason why Lindsey Graham has gotten so much backlash is because he's a close Trump ally. He's the chairman of Senate Judiciary Committee that has no oversight over these election matters.

He's also a senator from South Carolina, not from Georgia, Nevada, or Arizona.

Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, I asked him if he's OK with what Lindsey Graham is doing. He said, ask Lindsey Graham about that. And Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader, called it reckless -- Jake.

TAPPER: So he called three states that Joe Biden won. He didn't happen to call the elections officials just north of South Carolina in North Carolina, where Trump won just. That didn't occur to him, just the ones that Biden won. That's interesting.

Let's discuss.

Manu Raju, thanks so much.

So, first of all, let me start, Abby.

President Trump and many Republicans obviously refusing to publicly acknowledge that president-elect Biden is president-elect Biden.

[16:45:08]

But today on the Senate floor, CNN team saw not only Senator Lindsey Graham give Kamala Harris a fist bump, but other Senate Republicans including Tim Scott and others appearing to congratulate incoming Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

Abby, what's your reaction when you see that?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It's so interesting, Jake, that these Republican lawmakers would be willing to congratulate Senator Harris. And I think in one case discuss with her what would happen to her Senate seat back in California but not acknowledge that this election is over and that Joe Biden is the president-elect.

It just really highlights that all of this is, to some extent -- perhaps they view it as some political theater, although I think we all know there are real-life consequences to misleading millions of Americans about whether there's a real chance these election results could be overturned.

TAPPER: Right, not to mention, not allowing the transition when it has to do with COVID or the troops in Afghanistan.

Jackie, Lindsey Graham is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. What do you think the response would be if the Democratic chairman of the House Judiciary Committee started calling election officials in states that Trump won narrowly like North Carolina and asked about absentee ballots? What do you think the response would be from the MAGA media?

JACKIE KUCINICH, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Oh, my gosh, I feel like Fox News could be ablaze and you could see it from space. But that's not what's happening here. You even had the secretary of state of Georgia, one of his top aides was at the call, back him up and say he -- that Lindsey Graham's definition of the call is incorrect and the secretary of state of Georgia is telling the truth. It's extremely ham-handed.

And, frankly, I don't know a lot of Republicans that would appreciate anyone getting involved on the federal level into their state. States are held -- states rights is kind of a Republican thing, so the fact that Lindsey Graham kind of wanted to see how things work in the Georgia, it's none of his business. And you can only extrapolate why exactly he was doing that. But I have a hard time believing it's to see how things work.

TAPPER: Yeah, Abby, Senator Graham told Manu that he just had questions about verifying signatures on ballots, what's going to work. CNN has learned that Georgia expects to finish its recount by tomorrow and affirm Biden's win.

What's your take on what Lindsey Graham was actually trying to do?

PHILLIP: Well, it's pretty clear that the president and his allies are searching for any evidence they can find of fraud. They have found none so far. But they're searching desperately for it.

And one of the main avenues is looking at the signature verifications, specifically the way you sign up your ballot and it's matched up to another signature that is on record. And it sounds like what the Secretary of State Raffensperger was saying is he's inquiring about the rate at which those are thrown out and whether that could be an indication they could imply there was widespread fraud.

This is a fool's errand, I think, largely, because states that have signature verification are among the most stringent for mail-in voting. And it's just evidence that they're looking for something where there's really nothing. I think this idea that you could throw out votes in bulk is so, frankly, anti-democratic in nature. If anything, if you're going to throw out votes, they would be thrown out on individual merits, not on a whole, and I think this whole idea is just one that is pretty disturbing when you really think about what the implication is on all this.

TAPPER: In fact, the secretary of state of Georgia said, Jackie, that there are 24,000 more Republicans that voted in the primary than voted in the general after Trump begun his crusade slamming vote by mail. There's your margin of victory right there for Joe Biden, 24,000 Republicans who vote in the primary but not the general election when Joe Biden won by almost 14,000 votes? That's it.

If Trump's looking for a reason as to why he lost, it's because he demonized vote by mail.

KUCINICH: Well, right, which is why you had in other states like North Carolina -- I'm not sure if the Georgia GOP did this -- they were trying to unring that ball. And there are Georgia Republicans now that are worried about the runoffs coming up in January that the president and his allies, continuing to slam Georgia, continuing to slam how Georgia is doing this recount, is going to diminish the trust in the Georgia election even going forward.

So, perhaps Lindsey Graham should look at that if he's actually, as he told Manu, looking toward the election next, because that's something we're hearing from our sources that Georgia Republicans are actually concerned about.

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TAPPER: And, Abby, Democratic Congressman Hakeem Jeffries is now calling for a Justice Department investigation into Lindsey Graham. Do you think it might actually go that far?

PHILLIP: Well, probably not in the next 60 days under the Trump administration, and it's really still an open question even after that if the justice department would be engage in the any kind of investigations like that in a Biden administration, because if the reporting is correct, Biden is sort of trying to tamp down on some of this talk, I think that this is one of those things you might want to let go.

It's also not clear how explicit what Lindsey Graham said was. I mean, clearly, the implication was there. Raffensperger, who's a Republican, took it one way. But Graham is really playing I think kind of a dangerous game here. If he's implying to election officials they ought to do something they think is unethical or potentially illegal it's just not a game you want to play if you're a sitting United States senator.

TAPPER: Yeah, but as you know, the secretary of state of Georgia says it was an implication, not a direct order.

PHILLIP: Yeah.

TAPPER: That might be the difference between an investigation and not.

Abby Phillip and Jackie Kucinich, thanks to both of you. Appreciate it.

CNN going inside a hospital with just 19 beds, overwhelmed by the number and the severity of coronavirus patients. The awful situation playing out in small towns across the United States, that's next.

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TAPPER: In our health lead today -- today, the Republican governor of Iowa announced that just this month, in just 17 days, the number of people hospitalized with coronavirus has doubled in her state. Doubled.

CNN's Miguel Marquez went to Iowa where hospitals in many small struggling to keep up with the recent surge in coronavirus cases.

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MIGUEL MARQUEZ, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Butch Hansen, 84 years old, diagnosed with COVID-19 last week.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to get a CAT scan of your chest. You got some junk, so probably have pneumonia, but I want to make sure you don't have a blood clot in your lung.

MARQUEZ: Today, he's back in the emergency room.

MARQUEZ (on camera): Why did you come back today?

BUTCH HANSEN, DIAGNOSED WITH COVID-19: I had a rough time with that phlegm last night. That's all I did, cough up that phlegm. And I thought, well, it's either the COVID or something else. Let's find out what it is.

MARQUEZ (voice-over): Hansen, a retired farmer, says he's been careful.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Open your mouth. Say ahh.

MARQUEZ: But he may have picked it up by a family member.

Regional health services of Howard County, in Cresco, Iowa, it's the hospital, the ambulance service, the public health department and hospice for the entire county. The 19-bed facility moves most its sickest patients to larger hospitals.

With Iowa, the Midwest and the rest of the country seeing a sharp increase in cases and patients, finding an available bed in a larger facility, not so easy these days.

DR. JOHN KAMMERER, DOCTOR OF FAMILY MEDICINE, REGIONAL HEALTH SERVICES OF HOWARD COUNTY: The biggest concern in the last week is when we call and ask for them to help take care of our patients who may be sicker than we're used to taking care of, they don't have beds for us. And so, that's where the strain really comes on.

MARQUEZ: Over the last month, hospitalizations across Iowa have skyrocketed, under 500 COVID hospitalized in the mid-October. Now, nearly 1,400 Iowans hospitalized with COVID-19.

And if there's a surge with nowhere to send critically ill patients --

MARQUEZ (on camera): So this is the in case of emergency, open this?

BRADY NORMAN, DIRECTOR, AMBULANCE SERVICES & EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS, HOWARD COUNTY, IOWA: Pretty much, pretty much.

MARQUEZ: How many more people could you surge up to with everything here?

NORMAN: We have the capability of adding up to 50 beds. My hope is to never have to open this trailer.

MARQUEZ (voice-over): Today, the entire health-care system here pushed to its limits.

CHAD RASMUSSEN, NURSE PRACTITIONER, REGIONAL HEALTH SERVICES OF HOWARD COUNTY: It's starting to stress us out.

MARQUEZ: In the first month of the pandemic here, Howard County saw 13 coronavirus cases. Over the last month, there were 411.

With holidays around the corner, the fear, it's going to get a lot worse.

MARQUEZ (on camera): With Thanksgiving coming up, how concerned are you with what you're going to see around Christmas?

RASMUSSEN: I have a feeling it's going to be out of control.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MARQUEZ: Now, one good thing about Iowa is that they do make them tough here. Mr. Hansen, who you saw earlier in the story, he got out. He has COVID, a bit of pneumonia possibly. He got out of the hospital. They're going to see him tomorrow, looks like he's going to be okay.

But the hospital here in Crestwood, the Howard County Hospital, they have a few beds left, they are hoping they can get through Thanksgiving and through Christmas without all of them filling and they don't have that problem of moving patients to bigger hospitals and that the system that's just filling up right now will be able to absorb all these patients -- Jake.

TAPPER: It's tragic. Miguel Marquez, thank you so much.

Finally, today, we'd like to take time to remember just one -- one of the almost quarter a million lives cut short from the pandemic in the United States.

Today, we're going to look at Sergeant Major Robert Strawberry. He was a chaplain at the Salvation Army in Minneapolis. His son says he was passionate about the bible, and knew every word from Genesis to Revelation. Strawberry taught Sunday school and counseled people experiencing addiction and mental health issues.

The 79-year-old was also a great grandpa. His son says he'll miss calling his dad whenever he wants advice or a listening ear.

Strawberry went to the hospital with flu-like symptoms on October 18. He was put on oxygen within two days. He was taken off oxygen a week later. May his memory be a blessing.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now.

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