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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Interview With Georgia Voting System Implementation Manager Gabriel Sterling; McConnell Finally Acknowledges Biden's Win; U.S. Passes 300,000 COVID-19 Deaths. Aired 4-4:30p ET

Aired December 15, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:22]

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

And we begin today with the health lead, a sight we have all been waiting for, Americans receiving coronavirus vaccine injections. Every single state in the nation now has doses of Pfizer's vaccine, and a second vaccine could be authorized for Americans this week.

Today, an FDA advisory committee released a document confirming that Moderna's coronavirus vaccine is safe and 94.5 percent effective. But Dr. Anthony Fauci notes that this is bittersweet, because we are seeing what he calls the light at the end of the tunnel while the pandemic is worse than ever before in the United States.

Daily new infections are soaring. The peaks we saw in the spring and summer have now been far surpassed. Right now, the U.S. is seeing an average of more than 215,000 new cases each and every day, 215,000, and a record number of Americans are so sick, they're hospitalized, 110,000 as of right now, and the U.S. has now marked more than 302,000 deaths from the virus, as CNN's Alexandra Field now reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ALEXANDRA FIELD, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Our latest defense against the virus now deployed to all 50 states, 425 more sites across the country receiving shipments of vaccines today.

More front-line hospital workers in New York City are lining up for their first shot in the arm, Chicago's very first doses given today at a hospital in one of the city's hardest-hit communities. California received more than 33,000 vials of the vaccine on Monday, nearly the same number of new hospital cases in the state on the same day.

The effort to pump out as many vaccines as possible as quickly as possible is expected to get a big boost later this week. Moderna's vaccine, proven 94 percent effective, is likely to get FDA emergency use authorization. The company is promising a first shipment of six million doses. That's double Pfizer's original shipment.

FedEx and UPS are reporting no problems with the massive undertaking of moving vaccines across the country so far.

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Sixty million people right now are under some type of watch or warning.

FIELD: But a fast-moving nor'easter could affect shipments later this week. Just as hope starts to arrive, the U.S. has crossed the threshold of 300,000 COVID deaths, and, on Monday, almost 200,000 new cases.

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: It's bittersweet because we are still in a terrible situation with the numbers that you mentioned, the deaths, the hospitalizations, the number of cases, and yet we're really now starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

FIELD: But the tunnel is long and the roadblocks already obvious. New York City is facing another possible lockdown, with the exception of schools.

BILL DE BLASIO (D), MAYOR OF NEW YORK: If we implement that, my nomination would be right after Christmas.

FIELD: In New Jersey, ICU beds are as full as they were back in May.

GOV. PHIL MURPHY (D-NJ): These are numbers we're probably going to keep seeing for the coming weeks. And that's why we cannot let our guard down.

FIELD: In Nevada, the governor extending a moratorium on most evictions through March of next year, a painful reminder that more Americans could be worse off in a new year that comes with so much hope for something better.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

FIELD: And, Jake, here at Mount Sinai, they're starting by vaccinating the men and women who are working most closely with patients who have been infected by COVID. This is something that they have been doing for months now. These men and women have been working in this close proximity. So they are the ones who are getting these vaccines first.

The hospital says that they have received about 975 doses right now. That is just enough to vaccinate or to start vaccinating about half of their front-line workers. They hope to get to all of them in the next few weeks.

And, Jake, as for the next big shipment of the Pfizer vaccine, we're expecting an announcement on that as soon as Friday. And we're hearing that could be about four million more doses, doses that are certainly badly needed at this point.

TAPPER: All right, Alexandra Field, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

CNN chief medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta joins us now.

Sanjay, let's start with the Moderna vaccine, which we hope will be authorized later this week by the FDA. What are your takeaways from the data that was released today?

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, let's put up some of the specific things that we took away from this 54-page document.

First of all, keep in mind, we had only heard from the company up until now. So now we got some validation. It's two doses. It's a month apart, 28 days apart. The storage is a little bit warmer than the Pfizer vaccine, but still very cold storage., as you mentioned, Jake 94.5 percent efficacy at preventing COVID-19.

[16:05:00]

Also, take a look at the age there, 18 and older, and, as you mentioned, being considered for authorization. No red flags. That's the thing when you look at these documents, to see if some surprise came out there. It's pretty much as we thought. Now we're going to let the FDA scientists weigh in on it.

TAPPER: Sanjay, how does the Moderna vaccine compare to the Pfizer vaccine, which is now being administered in the U.S.? I had asked Bill Gates, who is something of an expert on this sort of thing, although he's done a medical doctor, if one is better than the other. He said, no, he didn't think so.

GUPTA: No, it's interesting. They're very similar vaccines. They are both messenger RNA.

And I will point out again, this type of vaccine has never been used before. But here's the big differences. Moderna, I just talked about. We know the specifics and the authorization process is under way. Pfizer, very similar, the two doses as well three weeks apart. So, you can get immunity a little bit fast with the Pfizer needs to be colder than the Moderna vaccine.

And that's a significant thing, because there's some places that simply don't have the cold storage that can handle Pfizer, so Moderna may be better. And then the age. This was a point of debate, as you remember, Jake, last week. Pfizer trialed it in 16 and older, and it's been authorized for people 16 and older. Moderna's trying to get 18 and older.

TAPPER: Both the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccines require two doses. As you note, one is three weeks apart. One is four weeks apart.

How critical is that second dose? How important is it?

GUPTA: Yes, this has come up. And this has been a bit of a debate even within the scientific community.

I can tell you that Dr. Fauci, Dr. Peter Marks, Albert Bourla, the CEO of Pfizer, they all say, look, this is a two-dose thing. Don't get into this sort of notion of saying, let's give just one dose. And they also point out that, as you're doing these trials, Jake, you're always looking for signals. If, at some point, it became really clear that one dose was going to

be adequate, sometimes, the trials will pivot to a one-dose sort of arm of the trial. For example, Johnson & Johnson, they started with a one-dose sort of thing. But now they added a second dose.

So the data is around two doses. That's what everyone's going to recommend. That's going to give people their best protection.

TAPPER: With both the Pfizer and the Moderna vaccine, we have gotten some preliminary information this very important question as to whether the vaccines prevent people who have been vaccinated from spreading the virus. We know that they won't get sick 94, 95 percent of the time.

GUPTA: Right.

TAPPER: But what about spreading the virus?

GUPTA: Yes, great question.

It's interesting, because the original document from Moderna did not mention anything about preventing infection, but they added an addendum there. And what they said is that they did swab the trial participants before the first dose, before the second dose after the trial, after both doses had been administered.

And what they found was that between the first dose and second dose, they found that people were about 2.5 times more likely to become infected if they had received the placebo vs. the vaccine. And these are small numbers. It's hard to read into this right now. But there does seem to be some evidence, at least with the Moderna trial, that it does also at least reduce the likelihood of infection. It doesn't eliminate it altogether, but reduces it.

Pfizer, by the way said, beginning of next year sometime, they should have some of that data as well. They were really only looking at symptoms of disease. But now that they're digging into the data, they may have a statement or some conclusion about the idea of preventing infection as well.

We just don't know right now, Jake.

TAPPER: President-elect Biden told me earlier this month that he would take the vaccine publicly as soon as Dr. Fauci said he should.

The Biden transition said that they're going to announce soon when that's going to happen. When should we see president-elect Biden, not to mention outgoing President Trump, take this vaccine, and in a public way, we assume?

GUPTA: Well, I mean, Dr. Fauci is, as you know, chief medical adviser now for president-elect Biden. He has specifically, as you mentioned, spoken about this. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) FAUCI: For security reasons, I really feel strongly that we should get them vaccinated as soon as we possibly can. You want him fully protected as he enters into the presidency in January.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GUPTA: And I think what he means by that, Jake, is the same thing that we're talking about. He says it's not necessarily an emergent thing, but not -- no reason to wait either, especially given that it's two shots three or four weeks apart.

So, middle of December now. If you want to be fully protected by inauguration, it takes two shots, and then it takes seven to 14 days after you receive those shots.

So, that's why I think Dr. Fauci and others are suggesting that he do it right now.

TAPPER: The first vaccinations are for health care workers and nursing home residents. It's going to be a monstrous undertaking to get a vaccine to every American.

People at home want to know, when are they going to get a chance to get the vaccine? What do you think?

[16:10:01]

GUPTA: Well, I have been pretty optimistic on this. I mean, we will see what happens with Moderna, if Moderna does get authorized. There's 200 million doses that have been purchased by the U.S. government of that vaccine. They won't come right away, obviously, but they will layer in over the next several months.

If you did -- 100 million Pfizer, 200 million of the Moderna, that's 300 million. We would need close to -- for the whole country, need closer to six 700 million. There's other vaccine trials that are under way, including Johnson & Johnson and Oxford/AstraZeneca.

If those get authorized at the end of January, early February, they would layer in as well. So, if all those things happen -- and it does look promising, Jake -- you're talking probably end of spring, early summer, maybe, May/June time frame, where there should be vaccines available for people in pharmacies, in doctor's offices, things like that.

People still got to go get them. And there's that logistical challenge. But the availability will no longer be the rate-limiting step at that point.

TAPPER: All right, a light at the end of the tunnel, as we keep saying.

GUPTA: Yes.

TAPPER: Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks so much. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell actually broke with President

Trump on something. The question is, will the rest of Senate Republicans fall in line?

Then: He has received death threats after standing up to President Trump by doing his job and following the law. Now he's preparing for the Senate run-off.

So, we're going to talk to the guy in charge of making sure Georgia's voting system works again.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:15:46]

TAPPER: In our politics lead: Today, the Senate majority leader, Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, acknowledged reality, that, with the Electoral College votes cast, counted and confirmed, what you and I have known for weeks now has the constitutional seal of approval.

President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in on January 20. Amazingly, McConnell's acknowledgement of basic fact places him among the minority of his Republican colleagues on Capitol Hill. And that's because outgoing President Trump continues to deny that he lost, even retweeting a truly deranged suggestion on Twitter that state leaders from Georgia will soon be jailed for abiding by the law.

They, of course, will not, as CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Twenty votes for the Honorable Joseph R. Biden.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Sixteen votes for Joseph R. Biden.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Joseph R. Biden.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Though the Electoral College sealed his fate as the loser of the 2020 election, President Trump remains in denial, as aides claim he's still pursuing legal challenges.

KAYLEIGH MCENANY, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Yesterday's vote was one step in the constitutional process. So I will leave that to him and refer you to the campaign for more on that litigation.

COLLINS: As the press secretary was passing off questions to the campaign, Trump was firing off tweets alleging widespread voter fraud that his own government says didn't happen, claiming: "There has never been anything like this in our country."

The president amplified a tweet from a pro-Trump attorney falsely claiming that Georgia Republicans will be imprisoned for refusing to break the law. Referring to Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, Lin Wood wrote: "They refused. They will soon be going to jail."

Despite Trump's pressure campaign, senior Republicans are now breaking with his efforts to delay the inevitable.

SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KY): The Electoral College has spoken.

COLLINS: After weeks of refusing to recognize president-elect Joe Biden's victory, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell congratulated him today.

MCCONNELL: So, today, I want to congratulate president-elect Joe Biden. I also want to congratulate the vice president-elect.

COLLINS: Utah Senator Mitt Romney urged his fellow Republicans to follow McConnell's cue.

SEN. MITT ROMNEY (R-UT): So, we need to have people who are strong Trump supporters come out and say that as well, or you are going to continue to have this country divided, which is pretty dangerous.

COLLINS: Before McConnell acknowledged Biden's win, Russian President Vladimir Putin did, saying in a statement issued by the Kremlin that he wished Biden's success and was -- quote -- "ready for cooperation and contacts with you."

Meanwhile, the president remained behind closed doors today amid questions about when he will receive the coronavirus vaccine.

MCENANY: He will receive the vaccine as soon as his medical team determines it's best.

COLLINS: Vice President Mike Pence said he will take it soon, but declined to say specifically when.

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I look forward in the days ahead to do receiving the vaccine myself, and do so without hesitation.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS: Now, Jake, Dr. Anthony Fauci said he believes it's important not only for Biden and Harris to get this vaccine, but Trump and Pence as well.

And we are now told by two sources familiar that Pence is expected to get that vaccine likely by Friday at the latest, we are told. But we're still waiting to see when exactly the president is going to volunteer to get his.

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

Joining me now to discuss, Gabriel Sterling. He's one of the top election officials in Georgia. Mr. Sterling, thanks for joining us.

I want to get your reaction to President Trump retweeting this deranged post on Twitter that claims that Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and your boss, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both of them conservative Republicans who have been Trump supporters, that Kemp and Raffensperger will soon be going to jail.

Obviously, that's not true. And it's nuts.

Now, when you see the president of the United States share that message to tens of millions of Twitter followers, what goes through your head?

GABRIEL STERLING, GEORGIA VOTING SYSTEM IMPLEMENTATION MANAGER: That it is just continuing to add to the environment we're having in this state and across the country, where we're seeing increasing division, a threat environment that's ranging across -- for election workers across this nation that's unhealthy. It's unhelpful.

I can't -- at this point, I'm not surprised, but I can't explain it, no. It's just -- it is what it is, I suppose, Jake.

[16:20:03]

TAPPER: Like your boss, Secretary of State Raffensperger, you're a lifelong Republican.

Two weeks ago, you publicly criticized President Trump and members of the Republican Party with a fiery speech. Let's remind our viewers. I want to play just a snippet from that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

STERLING: And you need to step up and say this is, stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence.

Someone's going to get hurt, someone's going to get shot, someone's going to get killed, and it's not right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Has anything changed since you made those pleas to your fellow Republicans?

STERLING: Some of the level of e-mails coming in has dropped down some.

I was disappointed that, yes, great, the senators and the president sent their spokespeople out to condemn violence, but it shouldn't seem like high of a bar, as an elected official, to say in your own words and in your own voice, we condemn violence and people should let the due process go through its route, but then we have a legal election done at the end of the day.

It's disappointing on that front, but politics are cuckoo right now, for lack of a better word. So, we just -- we have to ride it through and get ready for a successful election here on January 5.

TAPPER: Cuckoo is the right word.

Decrying violence is -- that's easy. The point is, they keep spreading these deranged conspiracy theories that are motivating people to threaten violence, right?

STERLING: Yes. And that's one of the underlying issues we're seeing.

And it's being done irresponsibly by people who are being put in positions of responsibility by their voters, who expect them to tell them the truth. And, oftentimes, now, because of following the herd mentality that there's a stolen election, besides the fact that we can't find any evidence of it, it's adding to this threat environment, like I said before.

TAPPER: Yes. And it's not just President Trump. It's obviously your two incumbent senators, Loeffler and Perdue, who are fueling the fire.

I know you had to have police protection around your home at one point because of threats being made against you. Has that gotten any better? Are you still getting death threats for simply abiding by the law?

STERLING: On Saturday night, I was making Christmas fettuccine, which is a family tradition we have.

And I had to step away from the kitchen for a while to be forwarding messages that were e-mailed to me right then and there of an enemies list, crosshairs over me, pictures of my house, and the addresses again going out, so -- and forward to friends to give them to the FBI.

So it's continuing. It's gone down a little bit. But any volume of death threats is a little disconcerting when you're just doing your job.

TAPPER: Absolutely. I know that well.

How's your family doing?

STERLING: Well, I feel like sometimes they're more stressed out than me.

But the other day, my door rattled when I wasn't expecting to come over. My fiancee came over early. And I got up, was ready to deal with whoever was coming through the door. So, maybe, in my own mind, I'm a little more stressed out about it than I realize sometimes.

TAPPER: Does it make you regret your public remarks a few weeks ago?

STERLING: No.

Given the same set of circumstances, I would do the exact same thing because it was the right thing to do. What caused that to happen was, there was a young man who literally was an I.T. temporary tech who just took a job, and then, because of his unique name, his family was being harassed, and he had death threats. And that's -- it's one thing the secretary or me to kind of be in the

limelight. And it's never right to have somebody threaten your life. There's never anything like, you deserve to have that. But when you are kind of in the public sphere in this environment now, you kind of expect it.

But this guy here -- this was a young man -- he just took a job. And he definitely didn't deserve it. And the actions of the president, unfortunately, continue to fuel this.

And, at some point, he's got to be able to say -- years ago, we could all say, yes, we lost the race, we're going to come back and fight in two years, and we're going to fight through it all. But we have gotten to a point in this country where the institutions are being attacked and undermined. And people can't accept a loss.

In 2018, Stacey Abrams still hasn't conceded. In 2016, over 50 percent of Democrats still believe that Russians hacked voting machines to flip votes. Now, they absolutely did social media, but there's no evidence they hacked voting machines to do votes.

So it's on both sides. But this level of intensity, of potential violence and stuff is the next phase in this, I suppose.

TAPPER: Well, I have to ask you, though -- and, obviously, I completely think it -- I think it's horrible what you're going through, you and all the people in Georgia, Kemp, you, Raffensperger, et cetera, just upholding the law, just abiding by standards.

You all wanted Trump to win Georgia. He didn't. That's how it is. You have to move on and do your job regardless. But I have to say, this has been going on for years. And Trump has been doing this to anybody who dare question him, whether his Republican rivals in 2015, 2016, journalists, Democrats who criticized him.

It's only now turning to his stalwart supporters like you and Raffensperger and Kemp or Arizona, Ducey. I'm sure it's going to go to Mitch McConnell sometime in the next few minutes.

Didn't you see it coming in any way? I mean, like, I have been getting death threats for years, you know?

STERLING: To a degree, yes, you can't not know that that was some of the things that he did.

[16:25:00]

But, like I said, in the public eye was where kind of I placed myself, the secretary, the governor. And if you -- politics is a complicated profession where this kind of thing happens.

But when it happened to this young man, and we're seeing it happen to elections workers, who are simply outside of the realm of this kind of thing, they're just doing their jobs going -- they go home. They go to the same churches, same grocery stores as their neighbors, but now they have some of their neighbors basically issuing threats or saying you're going to go to prison for treason.

And it goes beyond President Trump to a bigger pathological issue, where we can't disagree without having the other person being an enemy.

TAPPER: Yes.

STERLING: And that's not healthy for the republic in the long term.

TAPPER: I agree completely.

He's been calling news media, he's been calling journalists enemy of the people for a long, long time. And it's been a horrible, horrible--

(CROSSTALK)

STERLING: Terribly wrong.

TAPPER: Yes.

STERLING: I'm a republican small-R guy. We got to protect all of our institutions.

The courts, the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, all of them are important, and we have to make sure all the institutions are helped, but they're all being torn down by all sides.

TAPPER: Well, best of luck for another clean election in Georgia for the run-offs. I know the last one was clean and efficient. And this one will be too, as the nation turns to Georgia once again.

Gabriel Sterling, thanks so much for your time, your work, and merry Christmas to you, sir.

STERLING: Thank you. Merry Christmas to you, Jake.

TAPPER: Majority Leader McConnell didn't just congratulate president- elect Biden. He also sent a stern private message to his fellow Senate Republicans. What did he say?

That's next.

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