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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Republican Senator to Challenge Electoral College Results; Vaccinations Falling Short of Trump Administration Promises. Aired 4- 4:30p ET

Aired December 30, 2020 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:02]

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: It will no doubt further inflame the anger that those lies have fueled. And it does set up a nightmare scenario for Republicans in the Senate, one that party leaders have been trying to avoid for weeks.

It will force every Senate Republican to go on the record and say whether or not he or she agrees with President Trump's baseless claims that the election was stolen, or siding with the truth, that Joe Biden is, in fact, president-elect.

If they, in fact, stand up for the truth and the facts, well, in 2020, that might open the door for a primary challenge in the future.

As CNN's Boris Sanchez reports, this doesn't help the country and, in fact, benefits no one, except those who seek political gain by exacerbating these deep divisions created by the president's election lies.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As President Trump spends yet another day on the golf course, Missouri Republican Josh Hawley becoming the first senator to say he will challenge the Electoral College results in Congress next week.

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): These are normal folks living normal lives, who firmly believe that they have been disenfranchised.

SANCHEZ: Hawley arguing that some states failed to follow their own laws, and -- quote -- "At the very least, Congress should investigate allegations of voter fraud and adopt measures to secure the integrity of our elections."

HAWLEY: Seventy-four million Americans are not going to shut up.

SANCHEZ: With Hawley joining a small group of conservative House members next Wednesday, it'll force a debate and a vote on the election results, which will put GOP lawmakers on the record either supporting Trump's unfounded voter fraud claims or voting to certify Joe Biden's win, which is certain to happen.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This was a massive fraud.

SANCHEZ: The news coming as Trump's campaign launches another last- minute Hail Mary effort in court, Trump's team appealing their most recent loss in the Wisconsin Supreme Court to the U.S. Supreme Court, seeking to toss out more than 50,000 absentee ballots from heavily Democratic districts.

The Trump campaign now racking up at least 59 out of 60 losses in court, with cases denied or dismissed at the local, state and federal levels.

Despite the staggering failures and zero evidence, Trump continuing to peddle conspiracy theories and again targeting GOP officials in Georgia on Twitter.

VIC REYNOLDS, DIRECTOR, GEORGIA BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION: There were no fraudulent absentee ballots identified during the process.

SANCHEZ: After an exhaustive audit found no widespread fraud in the Peach State, Trump calling on Republican governor Brian Kemp to resign.

GOV. BRIAN KEMP (R-GA): So, I have done the things that I can do under the power that I have by our laws and constitution in this state, and that's what I'm going to continue to do.

SANCHEZ: And erroneously accusing Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger's brother Ron of working for a Chinese firm.

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER (R-GA), SECRETARY OF STATE: Integrity matters. Truth matters.

SANCHEZ: Raffensperger's office today confirming his brother does not work for a Chinese company, and his name is not Ron.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

SANCHEZ: Something else to consider here, Jake, is just how much confidence Republican voters in Georgia are going to have about the state's elections when two Republican incumbents are fighting in very tight Senate run-offs just days away -- Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Boris, thank you so much.

Joining me now to discuss, conservative attorney George Conway. He was once considered for the solicitor general position in the Trump administration, but now, of course, has become a Trump critic.

George, thanks for joining us.

What's your reaction to Senator Hawley saying that he's going to force -- he's going to reject the election results and force every Senate Republican to go on the record and say whether or not they side with him or side with the facts and the truth?

GEORGE CONWAY, CONSERVATIVE ATTORNEY: Jake, thanks for having me, first of all.

It would be comical if it weren't about such a serious matter as the integrity of our election process. This is just the height of absurdity. This election is over. It's over not just in terms of voters casting their votes, but it's over in terms of what the Electoral College has done.

Under the federal -- governing federal statute that covers the counting of electoral votes before the joint session of Congress on January 6, the only thing that Congress can do is consider objections right now to whether or not there were forged votes from the electors.

The electors have been certified by the governors of all the states, including the states that Trump has contested. And, because of that, under the governing federal statutes, those votes from those electors have to be taken as valid, unless there's some reason, like it's written in crayon or something, that they don't have the -- to believe that they don't have the proper certificates before them.

The only thing that's left to do is to open the ballots, which is the votes, which is what the vice president, Vice President Pence, is supposed to do, sitting as president of the Senate, and for everyone to count them together and get to 270, and you will get -- and they will get to 306 from Joe Biden, and he will win.

[16:05:09]

That's the way it's supposed to work. The objections process only should come into play when there weren't certified electoral slates from the states that were -- that met the safe harbor date of January -- of December 8.

There's just no basis for which any -- to consider anything that happened in any of the states and whether there will be these false allegations of fraud or even -- even if there were legitimate allegations of fraud, there'd be no basis to consider them on the floor of Congress.

TAPPER: Obviously, we have seen courtroom after courtroom, election board after election board, governor after governor, Democrats, Republicans, independents, et cetera, reject all of this nonsense.

And it doesn't even matter anymore. We see President Trump tweeting out just utter crap, like the secretary of state of Georgia's brother works for a Chinese company. No, he doesn't. And they don't care anymore, right, not that they ever did. It just sits there in his Twitter feed.

But Josh Hawley is a smart guy. Ted Cruz is a smart guy. And they are aligning themselves with this stuff that the Supreme Court just threw out the window. Tell us why you think that is.

(CROSSTALK)

CONWAY: Well, obviously, they think there's some political advantage to be had for doing that. These two men are -- these two men are very smart lawyers. Josh Hawley went to the law school I went to ,Yale Law School. He knows how to read a federal statute. The federal statutes here in Title 3 of the United States code are perfectly clear as to what's supposed to happen.

And what's supposed to happen on January 6 is that Joe Biden will win. Same is true of Ted Cruz, who offered to litigate that crazy case before the Supreme Court, if it ever was going to be granted by the Supreme Court for plenary hearing, which it never was.

They -- this is just as you said in the opening. It's a performance.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Yes. So here's my question.

George, it's obvious performance and it's obviously for political gain.

But isn't there a risk now for, for instance, all the Senate Republicans who are up for reelection in 2022, like John Thune, right, John Thune in South Dakota, one of the Senate leaders, very conservative Republican? But he made the mistake of acknowledging reality that Joe Biden won, and then Trump started attacking him.

Couldn't this move by Josh Hawley force John Thune to vote against President Trump, and thus open an opportunity for somebody to primary John Thune in a Republican primary for -- when he runs for reelection because there is now this anti-fact, anti-truth groundswell of support among Trump supporters?

CONWAY: Well, if that's true, then I guess the path to success in the Republican Party is to continue to degrade it.

And we're -- what we're seeing here is a never-ending downward spiral into delusion and unreality and into just lies about the integrity of our democracy. And that is profoundly dangerous. These individuals are seeking to advance their own political careers and do so at the expense of trust in our democracy.

They're fomenting these lies, fomenting these fears of an illegitimate election, and they're doing so for their own political benefit. And it's destructive of democracy. It's horrible. And nobody's ever done this before.

TAPPER: So, one of the things that Hawley says -- and so just permit me to ask this question.

One of the things I'm having a difficult time doing it with a straight face, I confess. One of the things he says is, I have to do this because there are so many voters out there that are concerned about the election integrity, and I need to stand up for them.

Fact-check that for us. CONWAY: Fact-check. The fact-check is, the reason why these people are concerned is because they're being lied to, and people like Hawley are sticking up for the lies or not countering the lies.

The source of all of these fears that people have about the election, to the extent they actually have them, is from the lying of the president of the United States and his enablers, which include not just his campaign, not just his lawyers, such as they are, but include members of Congress.

It's simply appalling.

TAPPER: Do you think that -- I guess you're not a Republican anymore. You registered as an independent recently.

CONWAY: That's right.

TAPPER: Do you think that your former party, the Republican Party, that the fever will break at any point?

President Trump will leave on January 20. He will leave, not -- he is not going to leave public life. He might get kicked off Twitter, but that's a separate story.

But do you think that the fever will break with your party, that the people...

CONWAY: I...

TAPPER: Go ahead.

CONWAY: I had hoped it would have broken by now. I had hoped it would have broken at the time of the impeachment trial, when the president clearly breached his oath of office and used federal funds to support his own reelection by extorting the government of Ukraine.

[16:10:08]

I would have thought it would have come long before now. The only good I can see out of what Hawley may be doing now is putting the choice once again to Republican officeholders, to the Republican senators: Do you support the country, do you support the rule of law, or do you continue to support the cult of Donald Trump?

That's the question that they are going to face on January 6.

TAPPER: The Trump campaign is making this other last-ditch effort to overturn the election results by asking the Supreme Court to throw out thousands of absentee ballots from Wisconsin.

Is there any chance that that...

CONWAY: Zero, less than zero, about the same probability as what we saw with that crazy lawsuit brought by the attorney general of Texas.

There is no chance. First of all, the issues that are raised in that certiorari petition to the Supreme Court are essentially just issues of state law, how you administer a mail-in ballot system under the Wisconsin statutes and regulations. That's not an issue that the Supreme Court will weigh in on.

That's at final -- that's an issue that can only be finally determined by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, because it's an issue purely of state law. And their attempts to dress that up in their cert petition as federal issues will fail.

But even if they had a federal issue, it's too late. Those votes by the electors, by all of the electors, have been cast of all 538 electors. It's done. They had been certified as electors by the governors of their various states. There is no basis to look behind those votes and to challenge their validity.

The only body that can do that is Congress. And, as I said, the only basis for which Congress can do it is to -- is if there were fraudulent certificates attached or fraudulent votes submitted purporting to be the electors, but weren't. And there just isn't any -- that just didn't happen.

You can go on the Archives.gov Web site and look at all of the certificates of ascertainment for the electors and look at all of the votes signed by the -- subscribed to buy the electors. And it's done. Those are official. There's no issue.

And the Supreme Court isn't going to be -- even if there were some meritorious, substantive claim that they had under federal law, the Supreme Court's not going to undo those certificates at this point in time.

And, in fact, I don't even think the Trump campaign has even bothered to ask for the kind of emergency relief that that could get them some positive result that could affect the election, because they know it'll be (AUDIO GAP)

TAPPER: Yes.

CONWAY: ... like the Texas case was -- the application of the Texas case was denied.

TAPPER: George Conway, as always, we appreciate your expertise and your integrity. Thank you so much for your time today. Appreciate it.

CONWAY: Thank you, Jake.

TAPPER: We now know more about the potential cases of the more infectious strain of coronavirus that have appeared in Colorado, including both people who may have worked in the same nursing home.

Then: The head of Operation Warp Speed just announced another vaccine could be approved in February, and that one also could be a game- changer.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[16:17:06]

TAPPER: Grim news in our health lead today; 340,000 people have now died from COVID-19 in the United States, 340,000.

Yesterday alone, we had more than 3,700 deaths, a horrible new record set in the United States. Doctors are warning that the next few months are going to be awful, as we deal from the fallout from the holiday season.

And, as Sara Murray reports for us now, vaccines are not getting into Americans arms as fast as previously promised, with nearly 2.6 million doses administered so far.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As the rate of coronavirus vaccinations falls far short of the Trump administration's optimistic projections...

ADM. BRETT GIROIR, U.S. ASSISTANT SECRETARY FOR HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: Of course we need to be doing a better job, but all vaccine programs start somewhat slow.

MURRAY: ... Operation Warp Speed officials are offering few specifics on how to speed up the pace.

GEN. GUSTAVE PERNA, U.S. ARMY MATERIEL COMMAND: Here's what I have confidence in. Every day, everybody gets better. And I believe that uptake will increase significantly as we go forward.

MURRAY: The administration coming under fire from the Biden team and other health experts for the slow rollout.

DR. RICK BRIGHT, FORMER DIRECTOR, BIOMEDICAL ADVANCED RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY: What this reveals is a failure to plan, a failure to have a national strategy to vaccinate individuals across the country, a failure to communicate, a failure to coordinate.

MURRAY: This as the U.K. as another vaccine to its arsenal, green- lighting the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine, which is still being evaluated in the U.S. It's cheaper, easier to transport. And the U.K. says it offers a high level of protection after the first dose, allowing the U.K. to vaccinate as many people as possible with the first dose, and wait longer to administer the second.

DR. JAY VARKEY, EMORY UNIVERSITY: I think it could represent a game- changer, but I think we can wait and really kind of focus on letting our scientists vet the data and make sure that we're using the product we have.

MURRAY: Vaccine developers still believe the shots will ward off new strains of the virus. In the U.S., Colorado confirmed one case of the U.K. COVID-19 strain in a member of the National Guard with no known travel history. Officials are looking into a probable case in another Guard member.

Both were deployed to the same nursing home.

BRIGHT: What's really concerning is, it's taken so long to detect it in the United States. It tells us once again, if you're not testing for something, you're not going to find it.

MURRAY: This comes as the U.S. continues to notch heartbreaking records, another 3,725 deaths were recorded Tuesday, and nearly 125,000 hospitalizations, both new highs, the U.S. hitting daily hospitalization records 22 times this December.

As New York prepares emergency hospital facilities, including the Javits Center, in case of another COVID surge, California is warning hospitals to prepare for crisis care made and the possibility of rationing care.

DR. JORGE RODRIGUEZ, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: In some hospitals, there is not enough infrastructure to deliver oxygen right at the rate necessary. California is going through a very tough time right now.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[16:20:01]

MURRAY: Now, in other disturbing news for California, the governor there, Gavin Newsom, just announced that this U.K. variant has been detected there in Southern California.

And, Jake, as you said, this comes as vaccines are getting out there, but not as quickly as administration officials promised. Just over 12.4 million doses have been shipped, and about 2.6 million doses have gone into Americans' arms. Obviously, the goal for the end of the year was 20 million.

We're going to fall a little bit short of that.

TAPPER: Right. The original goal, of course, was, in October, Trump and Azar said that the vaccine would be ready before Election Day and that there would be 100 million ready by the end of the year, falling short of both those goals, indeed

Sara Murray, thanks so much.

Joining me live to discuss, Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious diseases professor at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

So, first of all, let me start with the fact that this new variant has been discovered in California as well. So, we know of California and Colorado. Both have this variant, this U.K. variant, that is apparently more infectious, more easily transmissible, not necessarily more deadly, but spreads more rapidly.

How much do you think this might be why we're having such a horrific surge right now? DR. WILLIAM SCHAFFNER, DEPARTMENT OF PREVENTIVE MEDICINE CHAIRMAN,

VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY: Well, that could certainly contribute to it, Jake.

But, remember, the main reason that people are spreading this virus is, they're not wearing the mask, they're traveling, they're gathering together in groups, they're not observing social distancing.

These measures will also prevent transmission of this new strain, which is, yes, more contagious. But we can contain it also if we would all wear our masks.

TAPPER: Can you just explain how this variant is more transmissible, what that means exactly?

SCHAFFNER: It is thought -- remember, the studies are still under way, but the major theory at the present time is that somehow this virus is able to enter our cells more quickly or more completely, more easily, multiply more in our bodies, so we shed more virus.

If we put out, shed more virus, we can transmit it to other people much more readily. And that makes it more contagious, all the more reason -- I keep coming back to my favorite song.

TAPPER: Yes.

SCHAFFNER: Wear that mask. Stay away from others. Hunker down at home.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: I have got mine right here, Doc. I have got mine right here.

So, Admiral Giroir just told me last hour that the Trump administration will have 20 million doses distributed by the first week of January. That doesn't mean inoculated in arms, but distributed. Only 2.6 million shots have gone into arms as of right now.

The vaccine rollout does not seem to be going as quickly as had been promised. Why?

SCHAFFNER: It's going out very securely.

Everybody across the country is starting up our vaccination programs. Right here at Vanderbilt, we're doing that. We have actually vaccinated already 15,000 people in our own medical center, but we're doing it very carefully.

It's like a locomotive that gets started. The wheels turn slowly at first, and then they pick up speed as we all get experience in doing this. And, of course, handling the Pfizer vaccine took special efforts. So, we're all trying to do this absolutely right. Nobody (AUDIO GAP) and foul up the program in the beginning.

We're going to pick up speed as we go along. I'm more optimistic than some of the comments that I have heard recently. Cut everybody a little slack. We're working on this very hard.

TAPPER: So, president-elect Biden has promised one million vaccinations per day in his first 100 days. Right now, we're about 16 days into this and 2.6 million vaccinations have happened.

Is that possible, what Biden is now promising, one million a day for the first 100 days? Can the federal government do this? Is the infrastructure there, the resources, the personnel?

SCHAFFNER: Oh, I wish you hadn't asked, because I don't like to overpromise and then wind up underdelivering, which is the current circumstance, right?

It's aspirational. I think, once we get going, and we have plenty of vaccine, that's a reasonable target. Yes, it is. But I wish it hadn't come out quite that specifically. Give everybody a chance to do the best they can. Everybody's working on this full time in our public health departments, in our hospitals.

Pretty soon, our pharmacies will be involved, doctor's offices. We can get these vaccines out there. Just give us a little time to make sure everything is working smoothly. This is a very large enterprise.

TAPPER: Of course. Of course. It's a huge, huge mission.

Dr. William Schaffner, thank you so much. Appreciate your time and your expertise today.

[16:25:01]

The decision of one Republican senator will not change the fact that Joe Biden won the election and will be the next president, but it might make a mess on Capitol Hill.

We're going to talk to the number two Democrat in the Senate next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: In our politics lead: The election results have been decisively confirmed by the courts and the Electoral College, leaving zero doubt among any credible election expert that president-elect Biden won.

But that is not stopping some Republicans from denying the truth. Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri announced today he will contest the Electoral College results when they're brought to a joint session of Congress one week from today, teeing up what should be nothing more than a procedural confirmation of Biden's win, doing it for whatever reason.

[16:30:00]