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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Microsoft: At Least 40 Orgs Targeted in Suspected Russian Hack; President-Elect Biden and Incoming First Lady to Get Vaccine Monday; Charities Struggle to Meet Skyrocketing Demand for Food as Pandemic Stretches Into Holiday Season. Aired 4:30-5p ET

Aired December 18, 2020 - 16:30   ET

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

[16:30:02]

BRAD SMITH, PRESIDENT, MICROSOFT: At Microsoft, we were fortunate it didn't impact any of our products or services. Our products and services weren't used to stage the attack, but we see data from all of these organizations around the world and we have now identified more than 40, 80 percent of them in the United States where the attacker then unleashed a second wave, if you will, and then penetrated these organizations and inflicted further harm.

So it is a wake-up call, it is a moment of reckoning and we should treat it that way.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: If you see this as a modern day Pearl Harbor, I don't need to tell you after Pearl Harbor, FDR gave a speech in which he talked about the date that will live in infamy. We haven't heard President Trump say one word about this.

Does he need to say something about this? Does he need to do something about this?

SMITH: Well, I think as we look to the future, we're all going to need to come together. We're not going to solve this problem in the three or four or five weeks. It is going to be an issue that requires strong presidential leadership.

I think it is an issue that will require that we build on some of the successes of 2020. Frankly, one of the great successes of 2020 was the work that CISA did to protect our elections and work with the private sector, but then it will require a number of new steps.

And I think we shouldn't just analogize to Pearl Harbor, we should think about 9/11. The 9/11 Commission had an important finding and it said, at the heart of the problem was insufficient sharing of intelligence. I think that should speak to us today. Not just sharing of intelligence across the federal government, but with the private sector as well. We need to change the way we work if we're going to better protect the country. TAPPER: So, you say at least 40 of your clients were hacked, 80

percent in the United States. Can you tell us which ones and was there a common thread among them?

SMITH: Well, interestingly, I think the only thing you could say in common is they were likely to have information that would be of interest to say for an intelligence agency. Some are in the government.

We've identified a number of parts of the federal government that we contacted and shared this information once we saw what was happening to them. It spanned from health and finance to telecommunications and national security.

But we've also seen attacks on government contractors, especially in the defense and national security space, as well as on technology firms, especially in the security space. So, yeah, it's fairly wide- ranging in terms of the actors' interest and inflicting greater damage.

TAPPER: So, we're told that this was a very advanced hack. The hackers used previously unknown tactics. Are the hackers still lurking in the servers?

SMITH: Well, these attacks are ongoing. I think that is the first assumption that we should take to heart.

I do think that, in some ways, the tactics were new but not entirely new. In some ways, the fundamental methods here is exactly what we saw play out in Ukraine. It's what the Russian government did to the Ukrainian economy, in an attack that was called NotPetya.

And what it effectively did was inject malware into software that many different organizations use and in Ukraine, it was accounting software. In this case, it was network management software.

And what the world has said since is that this needs to be off limits. It puts at risk the entire economy. It is not something that we should tolerate in this day and age in terms of appropriate efforts by a foreign intelligence agency.

TAPPER: Former Cybersecurity Czar Richard Clarke was on the show yesterday. And he said that sanctions will not be effective to combat this, that whoever did this, assuming it's a government, the United States needs to stage a cyberattack in response.

Do you -- A, do you agree? And, B, are the opponents that we are facing here more advanced when it comes to cyber warfare than the United States is?

SMITH: I don't know that they are more advanced in terms of cyber warfare. I just think it's a lot harder to play defense than it is to play offense. When you play offense, you can pick your methods and you can choose your target. When you play defense, you have to protect everyone every day. So it requires a massively more sophisticated effort that, in this day

and age, really brings together the government and the tech sector. That's a big difference from, say, 9/11.

But then to answer your other question, I think what we need is government policy that gives the government multiple tools. I think it always needs to start by publicly holding a bad actor accountable, by attributing the attack to them, and doing it in collaboration with the nation's allies.

[16:35:03]

And then there are a variety of steps the government can take to respond. In some cases, it may include economic sanctions. In other cases, it may need to go farther. Those are the decisions we need the president of the United States to make.

As a tech company, I think it's our role, most importantly, to ensure that we have the right defense of the country in place.

TAPPER: All right. Brad Smith, president of Microsoft, thank you so much for your time today. We hope you'll come back and discuss this more as we learn more about this cyber attack.

SMITH: Thank you.

TAPPER: We now know when President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris will get the coronavirus vaccine. That news, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:40:11]

TAPPER: And we're back with the politics lead.

This afternoon, the Biden transition announced that the president- elect and soon to be First Lady Jill Biden will each receive their first doses of the Pfizer vaccine on Monday.

CNN's Jessica Dean is live for us now.

Jessica, tell us more about what you're learning about the vaccinations.

JESSICA DEAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. So, we learned today they will take the first round of the Pfizer vaccine on Monday in Delaware. And as promised, they will do so publicly for all to see.

We also learned that Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Inhofe will receive their first vaccines the week following. They are staggering the vaccines between Harris and Biden, the transition would only say that that was on advice from their health and medical experts. But it's very possible because if either of them suffer any sort of side effect, that they won't be going through that at the same time. Now, as for today, it was a very quiet day. President-elect Biden

marking the anniversary, 48th anniversary of the horrific crash and death of his wife, first wife and baby daughter. He did so by attending mass with his family earlier today, but as is typically, he spent most of the day, all of the day really privately without any public events to mark this very solemn and sad occasion for him and his family.

Tomorrow, he goes back to work, though. He will be introducing key members of his climate team at an event in Wilmington, Delaware. And he had said previously, Jake, that he was planning to have his full cabinet announced by Christmas. That is a week from today.

So far, he has got six major slots left to fill, including attorney general. We are told to expect more announcements next week. When we asked the transition about that today they started to allow wiggle room for the president-elect saying it may not be just by Christmas, there may be some announcements a little bit later after that. But we'll see what unfolds next week, Jake.

TAPPER: All right. A shifting deadline, potentially.

DEAN: Yeah.

TAPPER: Jessica Dean, thanks so much.

Let's discuss with my panel.

Let's start with President Trump.

Nia-Malika, I'll start with you. Incoming Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville suggested he would challenge the election results when they come to the Senate on January 6th.

So, now, President Trump is calling him a great champion and man of courage. More Republican senators should follow his lead. In another tweet, the president says Senate majority leader and Republican senators have to get tougher or you won't have any Republican Party anymore. We won the presidential election by a lot. Fight for it. Don't let them take it away.

I mean, obviously, that is all false. President Trump is lying or, in some sort of psychological state of denial. But he is trying to get Republican senators to buck McConnell to overturn the results of a free and fair election. I get he has been doing this for several weeks but it's still stunning.

Will Republicans, Nia-Malika, do you think even one or two of them might follow -- follow-up and do what he's asking?

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: That is the big question. People like Ron Johnson come to mind, Ted Cruz, obviously, Rand Paul, the folks who have wanted to show their loyalty to this outgoing president.

We know that over in the House side, Mo Brooks might have a collection of conservative house members that want to challenge the results there. That, of course, will go nowhere because the House has the majority there. But, you know, it would make sense for them. It would be better for them if they had senators to join them and Tuberville, incoming senator from Alabama. I think he was one a little bit unclear to the three branches of government so he might need something of an education on democracy and elections more generally.

But listen. I think we are going to have maybe some of those senators fall in line with this president. I think it's just a matter of how many. Ultimately, we know it's going to happen on January 20th. President Trump will no longer be the president and President Biden will be sworn in.

TAPPER: The real reason we should point out, Gloria, that the real reason Mitch McConnell doesn't want this to happen because then it would force a vote and the majority of Republican senators would then be forced into the position of voting against Donald Trump because Donald Trump lost the election.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Yeah, he told them this in a private call. He said, look. Why would you do this? On the record, it will look like you're opposing a very popular president within the Republican Party.

And it's just curious to me that a new senator would say, I might do this and challenge his leader. Now he may decide that loyalty to Trump is much more important in his life than loyalty to Mitch McConnell. But Mitch McConnell has a way to getting back to people who step out of line too much and I'm wondering what that would do to that relationship.

[16:45:00]

TAPPER: Yeah, it's a good way to end up with some bad committee assignments and the worst office on Capitol Hill.

BORGER: Yeah, that's right.

TAPPER: Nia-Malika, Michael Flynn, just in case you didn't think that was crazy enough, let me tell you about this. Former General Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, said this on fringe conservative media. It's sheer lunacy. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEN. MICHAEL FLYNN, FORMER NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: He could order the -- within the swing states, if he wanted to, he could take military capabilities and he could place them in those states and basically rerun an election in each of those states.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: I mean, it's so ridiculous and insane. But this is the world we are in and now the secretary of the army and the army chief of staff released a statement saying, quote, there is no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of an American election. I mean, I don't even know what to say any more about this lunacy.

HENDERSON: You know, Michael Flynn, this is a America. It's not Russia. Donald Trump is not a dictator. He is not all powerful as that statement suggests. This idea that somehow he can deploy the military to select swing states to -- it's absurd. No words for this.

It does make you think it's a good thing that Michael Flynn was fired in the early days of Donald Trump's presidency because his ideas about America, his ideas about democracy are just abhorrent and objectionable. I mean, it's insane. As you say, absolute lunacy.

But this is part of the die-hard conspiracy theory caucus that Trump has surrounded himself with, that Trump listens to and, in fact, forms part of that 70 million bloc of voters who voted for him.

How many of those people believe such wild conspiracy theories and outlandish thoughts but Donald Trump, obviously, is doing everything he can to hold on to those people and convince them he actually won this election in a landslide which, again, is absurd.

TAPPER: He did not. Yes, he lost. Once again, he lost.

HENDERSON: Right.

TAPPER: Gloria, President-elect Biden, he is going to have to deal with a lot of these people. He is facing a very slim majority in the House, likely Republican control of the Senate.

Last night, Stephen Colbert asked how he plans to get anything done. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN (D), PRESIDENT-ELECT: I think once this president is no longer in office, I think you're going to see his impact on the body politic fade and a lot of these Republicans are going to feel they have much more room to run and cooperate.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Isn't it pretty to think so?

BORGER: Yeah. Well, I think -- I think the president-elect is being very optimistic here because he would like it to work that way and he would like to be able to work across the aisle no matter who is in the majority, in the Senate. And I'm not so sure he is right.

You have Donald Trump raising over $200 million in a PAC that is going to fund his political activity. He is going to want to figure out how to remain the king maker and I think he is making a list of people who were loyal to him, and I think he is going to remain very involved and because of those 74 million voters that Nia is talking about, I think they are going to feel beholden to him and he is going to be tweeting, this I can predict, on every single piece of legislation or deal that is going to come down the pike.

TAPPER: Yeah. It's going to be interesting to cover.

Gloria Borger, Nia-Malika Henderson, thanks to both of you.

Be sure to tune in this Sunday to CNN's "STATE OF THE UNION." My guest include the head of Operation Warp Speed, Moncef Slaoui, the former head of the Cybersecurity Agency, Chris Krebs, as well as Joe Biden's nominee for transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg. It's all at 9:00 a.m. and noon Eastern on Sunday.

Coming up, millions of Americans are in desperate need for basic food right now. A look at how you can help, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:53:40]

TAPPER: In the national lead today, the economic toll of this pandemic almost every day, somewhere in America looks like this -- long lines for food, stretched for blocks, so many families thankful, desperate that charities are reaching out.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's actually going to make the burning of the holidays a little bit better for all of us.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: With COVID and parents being out of work, you know, just depends on income wise whether they get the EBT and stuff like that. I think it helps a lot.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: That's from Louisville, Kentucky. But this is going on on all over the country.

According to the hunger relief group Feeding America, some 54 million Americans will be soon food insecure, meaning they will miss meals due to lack of access to food regularly.

Just this one charity reports a 60 percent rise in food assistance since the pandemic started.

Let's bring in Loree Jones. He's CEO of Philabundance. It's a member of Feeding America in the great region of Philadelphia.

Loree, how severe is the need for food in Philly? Do your figures compare to what Feeding America is seeing nationally, just a significant increase in how many people need your help?

LOREE D. JONES, CEO, PHILABUNDANCE: Absolutely. And thanks for having us on, Jake, to raise awareness about this important issue.

We are seeing at Philabundance in our nine-county service area in Southeastern Pennsylvania and South Jersey, up to 50 percent increase. What is also alarming is that 40 percent of the people were accessing a charitable food network now are accessing it for the first time. These are brand new Americans, our neighbors all of a sudden finding themselves unable to put food on the table.

TAPPER: We often see the lines in news reports like this one but you're hearing the stories. You're meeting the people. What are the most common types of cases that you're hearing from families every day?

JONES: I'll share something someone shared with me confidentially. A business owner I patronized for years emailed me last week and said, knowing where I work, he said, how can I find food? She and her husbands are entrepreneurs, and for years, they contributed to the economy and for the first time in their lives, they have to ask for a handout.

I'll also share with you that just this week, as we're waiting for snow, expecting snow, it's 32 degrees outside. I was in Camden, New Jersey. There was a line around the corner, two hours before the lines opened up.

And so, the reality is that so many people in our communities for the first time finding themselves in a really tough position, a meeting, a handout in this way.

TAPPER: Camden, New Jersey, is just across the river from Philadelphia. We are one week away from Christmas.

Do you have what you need to help all of the families coming to you needing help to make ends meet?

JONES: You know, the community has been incredibly supportive. Feeding America food banks, we have seen outpouring of support. More and more people than ever are donating. We see kids are donating $5 from their piggy banks. People signing over their stimulus checks.

But the reality is to make this, we need more help. So, we are encouraging people to give what they can and give a dollar if you or ten if you can so we help people put food on the table, especially this particular year and especially at the holidays.

TAPPER: Are things going to get more desperate, do you anticipate, as we get deeper into winter?

JONES: We are concerned that it will. We have distributed in the last year about 50 million pounds of food as a result of COVID twice what we normally did and we believe we are on track to do the same this coming year. With unemployment the way it is, we are trying to see what is happening in Congress to see if more help is going to come for both food banks as well as for every day citizens. Without that kind of help, we are really worried that we are not going to be able to meet the growing need.

TAPPER: The problem of hunger in America is year-round and it's always a problem. It's a shame. It's an absolute tragedy, and frankly a disgrace. But now you have the pandemic and the economic problems because of the pandemic.

Has the demand this year put such a strain that you're not able to even provide for the people who are normally struggling?

JONES: It has been incredibly difficult for food banks like ours across the country to keep up with the need. The reality is we are only scratching the surface. It's why we ask people to definitely support us. We also advocate. We call for increases to SNAP.

We realize that we can't do it alone. We have to partner with government and with other agencies to begin to meet the need that people have.

TAPPER: And how has coronavirus changed the way you conduct operations to try to feed so many families? Obviously, you can't have the kind of face-to-face interaction and you have volunteers come in the way you probably were able to in past?

JONES: Absolutely. We have had to change dramatically how we operate. Initially when COVID first started, we shut down our operation to volunteers. We now are able to have volunteers in our warehouse. It's helping us sort and pack food.

We have fewer volunteers there and we do it safely and take temperatures anybody who come in our buildings. We have COVID-19 waivers. We encourage social distancing. We have masks. We have gloves. All -- everything we can -- we do everything we can do to keep our staff and volunteers safe but it's made it harder. We have had increased expenses for additional cleaning and PPE.

We have also provided that for not just our folks but also for the 350 agencies that we work with and through in the Philadelphia area.

TAPPER: Loree Jones, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks for the work you do. I'm going to give to Philabundance after the show. I'm going to tweet the charity's website, Philabundance.org. Please join me, viewers, join me if you can afford.

And also, you can find sister organizations at FeedingAmerica.org. If you're looking for ways to help various groups across the country, go to CNN.com/impact.

I'll put that up on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram after the show. So if you missed it, don't worry about it.

Loree Jones, thanks again.

JONES: Thank you so much, Jake.

TAPPER: Finally, over 312,000 Americans have died from coronavirus. And so many families are spending the holidays without their loved ones for the first time because of this pandemic.

Mary teachers, Paul and Rosemary Blackwell are two of them that we lost. They were passionate about educating the youth of Grand Prairie, Texas. They had 20 grandkids of their own.

Paul was a 61-year-old P.E. teacher, a mentor and a coach. Rosemary was 65 and a bilingual teacher, the longest serving educator at their school. Their son remembers how special his parents made the holidays.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHAWN BLACKWELL, LOST BOTH PARENTS TO COVID-19: Mom made Christmas happen and it's crazy. It's crazy she is not here and her favorite time of year.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: When the couple contracted coronavirus, they were hospitalized and quickly declined. On Sunday the hospital put them in the same room and interlaced their hands. Paul and Rosemary died within minutes. May their memories be a blessing.

Our coverage on CNN continues right now. I'll see you Sunday morning.