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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Senator David Perdue in COVID-19 Quarantine Days Ahead of Election; Interview With Los Angeles, California, Mayor Eric Garcetti; Campaigning Heats Up Ahead of Georgia Run-Offs; Pandemic Raging Out of Control. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired December 31, 2020 - 15:00   ET

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

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

The coronavirus pandemic is raging out of control. And for the second day in a row, the United States experienced a record-breaking and heartbreaking number of daily deaths, 3,744 American souls taken yesterday because of COVID, breaking the horrific record set the day before, this as the rollout of the vaccine is proceeding slower than initially promised.

President Trump returned to the White House just moments ago, earlier than expected, after bailing on his New Year's plans at Mar-a-Lago. But the virus killing the Americans he swore an oath to protect is not the reason for his early return. Instead, it is because Republicans are preparing for another doomed last-ditch effort to try to overturn the election results.

Again, this effort is guaranteed to fail. But it is where the president is focusing his energy in these last few days.

CNN's Kaitlan Collins joins us now live from the White House.

And, Kaitlan, have there been any indications from the president or his team that they're even remotely focused on trying to get ahold of the pandemic right now?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Certainly not from the president or his political aides, Jake.

Instead, they have tried to really downplay what we have seen happening with the rollout of these vaccines and the distribution that we have said -- that we were told was going to go seamlessly, was going to have a certain amount of Americans, of course, vaccinated by today, and now we are seeing they're falling far short of that goal.

But if you talk to the Operation Warp Speed officials, they say that they are working on it. They know that they are behind where they said they were going to be, where multiple officials said they were going to be.

But the president's head just does not seem to be focused on this. He has been almost singularly focused on what is going to happen next week, when Congress does meet to certify Biden's win.

We're told that actually played a pretty big role in why the president did cut his trip to Florida short and came back here to the White House earlier, where he did not take our questions, as he has not for several days.

So, we haven't actually heard from the president in person. And, instead, we're relying on his tweets. But, Jake, they give a pretty good indication of where the president is and what he is focused on right now. And it's not vaccines.

TAPPER: Kaitlan, Republican Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska is now slamming Republicans who are planning to go along with the president's plan to overturn the -- democracy, overturn the results of the election. What did Sasse have to say?

COLLINS: Yes, well, he's first saying he is not going to be participating in this, and he's encouraging other Republicans not to do so, because there is this belief that more Republican senators will join Josh Hawley in his effort to object to this.

But he says there's more here than it's just these allegations, these concerns of voter fraud that Republicans have. He says: "Let's be clear about what is happening here." He said: "We have a bunch of ambitious politicians who think there's a quick way to tap into the president's populist base without doing any real long-term damage," he says, "but they're wrong. And this issue is bigger than anyone's personal ambitions."

So, he is basically directly saying that, from Josh Hawley and the other Republicans that we could see support this, they're doing it because they have an eye on their own political careers, not because they're worried about whether or not this election was free and fair.

TAPPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins at the White House, thank you so much. And happy new year to you.

In Georgia today, a final frenzy of campaigning just five days before next week's crucial Senate run-off elections. CNN has learned Republicans are concerned about Democratic turnout in early voting. Residents are facing long lines at the early voting polls. More than 2.8 million votes have already been cast in Georgia for these run- offs.

Georgia's lieutenant governor is slamming President Trump and his allies over their efforts to prevent election certification next week for Joe Biden, calling it damaging, calling it a sideshow.

CNN senior national correspondent Kyung Lah is live for us at a Republican get-out-the-vote concert in Gainesville, Georgia.

Kyung, what are we learning about Republican concerns right now? KYUNG LAH, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, it's not that you

hear publicly at events like this, but we had been hearing these rumblings for sometime.

And my colleague Ryan Nobles has now spoken to two different sources who has looked at GOP data and analysis of early voting, and the consensus is -- from those sources is that they are increasingly concerned about how Democrats have been doing in early voting.

We have seen these lines outside Democratic strongholds and Democratic districts. And Republicans say now their data matches what they are seeing. And so they need a tremendous turnout on Election Day.

Is it achievable? Well, those GOP sources are saying, yes, they do believe that they can get that early -- they can get that turnout on Election Day, and they believe one thing that will help, Jake, is President Trump's showing up the day before the run-off election, Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Kyung Lah.

One other thing, Kyung. Incumbent Senator Kelly Loeffler, who was appointed to that position and is now running for -- to be elected to it, she was asked this morning about whether or not she supports Senator Josh Hawley's efforts next week to challenge the election results. What did she have to say?

LAH: She was asked question directly in a reporter gaggle.

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And I'm going to quote her directly. She said -- quote -- "Everything's on the table right now."

Now, that would seem to indicate that she supports it. But I want to caution you here, that's not a clear yes-or-no answer. Having listened to a number of her speeches and heard her interact with reporters, the senator does like these types of phrases that opens a window, but isn't a clear yes or no. It certainly looks like she's considering it, but again, Jake, not a clear yes or no.

TAPPER: And, Kyung, President Trump is heading to Georgia on Monday. He seems very focused on undoing the election results, his election results. He's been calling on top Republican officials in Georgia to resign, Governor Kemp and others.

Does this complicate matters for Loeffler or Purdue, or they just need him to rally his base? Is it all a plus?

LAH: Well, they're certainly going to be hitting the Advil, because it has been in the ongoing headache for the GOP leadership in this state, having to do this high-wire act where they fully understand that one thing they need to do is to fall in line with the president. That has been the potent thing that we have seen among the base.

It is something that works here in Georgia. People show up to events like this wearing Trump shirts, not Loeffler and Perdue shirts. That is something they know. The fact that the president is tweeting these things, asking the governor to step down, talking about the election, questioning the very machines that they need to be used in order to win these Senate run-off seats, absolutely, it's a complication.

But they believe that the president, again, his power among the base is enough, Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Kyung Lah in Georgia, thank you so much. Appreciate it.

Breaking news in our health lead this afternoon, as the United States breaks another daily death record from COVID-19, more than 3,700 Americans killed just yesterday. There are some new questions about how accurate rapid testing for COVID really is, this according to a new study released this afternoon by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

CNN senior medical correspondent Elizabeth Cohen joins us now with those details.

So, Elizabeth, tell us about the study on rapid testing. What did the researchers have to say?

ELIZABETH COHEN, CNN SENIOR MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: Jake, there's been so much excitement about rapid testing, because, well, it's rapid. The White House was excited about it. They have used it. Other people have used it.

But then there were concerns that these tests just weren't as accurate as the kind that take a few days to get results. And so the CDC went and did some really interesting research at two colleges in Wisconsin. What they found is that, for every five people who we know have COVID, it's been confirmed through other testing, we know they have COVID and they have symptoms, of those five people, one of them is going to get a negative result, so, in other words, a false negative.

All five of them, we know they have COVID, and one of them is getting a negative result. That is not good, because that person thinks, oh, I don't have COVID, and then goes around and could possibly spread it.

So, this is really important. It really draws some doubts about how useful these rapid tests are -- Jake.

TAPPER: And, Elizabeth, we just learned that there's a new COVID variant, this one from South Africa, and it could potentially be resistant to the vaccines that have already been developed, potentially, I say. It's not definitive.

What can you tell us about that? And how is this variant different from the one from the U.K. that we have seen pop up in California and Colorado?

COHEN: Right.

So, Jake, I'm glad that you emphasize the word potentially. And I will tell you why. I talked to the virologist who actually discovered the South African variants. He works at a university in South Africa. And he said, yes, potentially, this could be a problem for the vaccine, but it might not be. The vaccine might work perfectly well.

He said, we need to study it. And as I understand it, those studies are going on right now, trying to figure out what this means for the vaccine. This variant has quite a few mutations in it.

It has 22 mutations. The U.K. one only has 17. And a number of these 22 mutations, they affect the spikes that are on top of the virus, when we have seen that image that's now used everywhere. Those little red spikes, those are important. That's how the vaccine essentially does its work.

And when the mutations affect the spike, that gets everyone a little nervous. We need to study it, see what these mutations mean for the vaccine.

TAPPER: All right, Elizabeth, thank you so much. Happy new year to you.

COHEN: Happy new year.

TAPPER: A vaccine mix-up, several people in one state given the coronavirus antibody treatment, instead of being given the vaccine.

How did this happen?

Then, after a lockdown of nearly a month, a person is still dying of COVID every 10 minutes in Los Angeles. The mayor of Los Angeles, one of the hardest-hit cities in the country, joins me next.

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TAPPER: Bleak news in our health lead.

With the promise of a vaccine, initially a light at the end of the dark tunnel of a year, major issues with distribution are now complicating that optimism, Dr. Fauci saying he's disappointed that more people have not been vaccinated by now.

Long lines of seniors in Florida and Texas and Tennessee have been seen waiting for their shots. And there's a massive mix-up in West Virginia that led to dozens of people getting coronavirus antibodies, instead of the coronavirus vaccine, as CNN's Sara Murray now reports.

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DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, NIAID DIRECTOR: It's been a very, very tough year. This is the worst that we have had literally in 102 years.

SARA MURRAY, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As 2020 comes to a close, the coronavirus is still wreaking devastation across the country, and lifesaving vaccines are lagging behind. FAUCI: We would have liked to have seen it run smoothly and have 20

million doses into people today by the end of the -- 2020, which was the projection.

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MURRAY: Hailed as the light at the end of the tunnel, vaccines have been slow to make their way into Americans' arms.

Less than 2.8 million shots had been administered, and less than 12.5 million doses distributed, according to the CDC, far short of the Trump administration's 20 million goal.

FAUCI: Obviously, it didn't happen. And that's disappointing.

MURRAY: As states struggle with distribution challenges--

GOV. MIKE DEWINE (R-OH): We know that there's a moral imperative to get this out just as quickly as we can.

MURRAY: -- Arizona's governor ordered the state health department to accelerate vaccinations, rather than leaving it to each county, saying: "Vaccines don't do any good sitting in a freezer."

In West Virginia, officials say 42 people were accidentally given antibody treatments, instead of coronavirus vaccines. In Wisconsin, the FBI is investigating after someone intentionally removed 57 vaccine vials from a pharmacy freezer and about 500 doses were discarded.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I want some normalcy in my life again.

MURRAY: And in states like Florida and Tennessee, which opened vaccines up to the elderly, lines are snaking around the block, the urgent need for vaccines evident as 2020 ends with more grim milestones; 3,744 people died of coronavirus Wednesday, an all-time high, and 125,220 were hospitalized.

It marks the third time the U.S. set a hospitalization record in December alone. Many Americans understandably eager to bid adieu to 2020. But officials warn, this isn't the time to pop over to Times Square to ring in the new year.

BILL DE BLASIO (D), MAYOR OF NEW YORK: Don't go down there. Watch from home.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

MURRAY: Now, obviously, just because the year is changing, that doesn't mean the pandemic is coming to an end.

And in a stark reminder of this, we're seeing the L.A. County Public Health Department send out these devastating tweets every 10 minutes today commemorating people who have died and urging people to continue to stay home. In that county, someone is dying every 10 minutes.

The daily case counts there are 10 times higher than they were just two months ago, Jake.

TAPPER: All right, Sara Murray, let's stick with Los Angeles, because the situation in Los Angeles could not be more dire, surpassing 10,000 deaths today.

According to "The L.A. Times," bodies are literally piling up in morgues. The National Guard has been called into L.A. to move these bodies to storage facilities. People are being left to die in hospital hallways because there are no beds left, "The L.A. Times" reports.

And with so many front-line workers out sick with COVID themselves, these overcrowded hospitals are now severely understaffed.

The Los Angeles mayor, Eric Garcetti, joins me now.

Mayor Garcetti, "The L.A. Times"' description of hospitals and morgues right now sounds practically apocalyptic. Is it accurate to what you have seen? And is the situation getting better or worse?

ERIC GARCETTI (D), MAYOR OF LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Well, Jake, this is what we all feared.

Here in Los Angeles, one of the most vulnerable cities in the country, the most densely populated metro area, we are at our capacity. And while we're seeing the caseload begin to level off, we know that two or three weeks of more hospitalizations and more deaths that follow last week and the week before caseload, we are still going to have our toughest and darkest days.

Our hospitals are doing miraculous work. Our health care workers are stretched to the limit, taking shift after shift after shift. We learned a lot, prepared a lot of, have equipment, have a lot of the spaces now available, but we don't have the people.

And that is what's devastating us. And, of course, it's not just for COVID-19. I remind people other accidents happen. People need emergency rooms for car accidents, things we don't expect, heart attacks. And so this is going to have an effect not just on people with COVID-19, but on the health of this entire city.

That's why it's so critical that we change our behavior. Everybody's doing something, but everybody can do more.

TAPPER: So, in Los Angeles County, one person is dying of COVID every 10 minutes. You say people need to change their behavior.

Your city has been in lockdown for nearly a month. Both you and Governor Newsom have been imposing restrictions since the beginning of this pandemic. What's going on? Are people not adhering to them? Are the restrictions you're imposing not the right ones?

GARCETTI: No, 95 percent of people with this virus can do the right thing, and it's still dangerous.

If 80 percent of people are doing the right thing, it can be disastrous. So, I know -- I was talking to the head of Red Cross here, who came from Florida. She said, people wear masks here. I see much more adherence than other places I have been.

But we see, in a dense environment, all it takes is one household mixing with another, people thinking, well, maybe I'm the exception, or it's a close friend and I got my window open, it'll just be for an hour at Christmastime.

We have to make a New Year's resolution to stay home for New Year's Eve and to continue doing the hard work for this next two or three weeks to make sure we can get through this surge and not see a second one from Christmas and a third one from New Year's.

If we can do that, we can hang on, we can save a lot of people's lives, and we can make sure that we come out of this to a brighter day.

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TAPPER: According to county officials, between 20 to 40 percent of front-line workers in L.A. County are refusing to take the vaccine.

Why? And what's being done to convince them that they need to get vaccinated?

GARCETTI: Yes, that was in some areas. I think the number is better in the city of Los Angeles.

For instance, our firefighters, we had a survey. I was out with my firefighters getting them vaccinated. Over 90 percent of them said that they're going to get the vaccine. And as soon as they talked to a buddy who got it, know that there's a sore arm, maybe a little bit of a headache to treat with Tylenol, we're seeing people come in record numbers.

So, I think we have to build that trust, especially where we see federal government that's played politics was so much of this crisis. There is a lot of mistrust and distrust out there. But I do believe that we will be able to. And we're sprinting, by the way, on our vaccines here. As quick as they come in, we are putting them in the arms of our medical workers, we're putting them in our firefighter, paramedics.

And, of course, now we're surging them into our senior nursing facilities, our skilled nursing facility. So, we're not finding as much in the city, but I think there's a lot of folks out there who have question marks, simply because there hasn't been unified messaging on this.

But I can't wait to get the vaccine when it's my turn. I'm not going to be jumping the line. But I certainly will do that. And I hope that all of us will, so that we can get back our economy and get back our city to normal.

TAPPER: Well, tell us more about the vaccine distribution, and if you have any numbers. How many -- how many doses have come in? How many have gone into arms? Are you getting everything you need at the rate at least that is reasonable to expect at this point? GARCETTI: Well, I would love to have a lot more, Jake.

And I would say one thing to the federal government and to our vaccine manufacturers: Send more to Los Angeles. We're getting them in arms as quickly as they arrive, over 90,000 first doses just in this last week-and-a-half.

We had hoped to see, under the 20 million goal, more like 200,000, though. So this is less than half of what we had hoped and what we were told. And that's why leadership, it's so important not to set false expectations, when people are bragging about sprinting ahead. Be realistic.

But we have set up the most amazing system for the distribution, especially in communities that are overlooked. For instance, in three poor communities of color, we set up vaccine distributions for health care workers that might not work in those big hospitals that are taking care of their personnel, so, in the neighborhood, they can make sure themselves, their patients and their families are protected as well.

TAPPER: Mayor, the variant of COVID initially reported in the U.K. the one that is more easily transmissible, was just discovered in San Diego, south of you, as you know.

Has L.A. County reported any cases of this strain? And how concerned are you about this variant?

GARCETTI: Not yet, although our labs are analyzing a lot of strains out there. So, it certainly isn't dominant or widespread here.

But it's reasonable to assume somebody here probably has it, if it's down in San Diego. And it's of great concern. While it doesn't make the virus more vicious, it spreads even more quickly, which means trying to get that curve bent down is even more difficult. That will overwhelm our hospitals even more.

So, this really is a moment when we all have to do something more, stay home, make sure we're not mixing our households, doing all those things, even in a dense household. If somebody is positive in your home, and they're isolating, everybody should wear a mask at home too for that period of time.

This is something that has ravaged in the community. And a new strain would certainly make it worse. Right now, we can still hang on, I believe, where we're at right now, with equipment, with space. But we're running short on some oxygen and certainly running short on people. And so this strain would be very dangerous to us.

TAPPER: Mayor Eric Garcetti, thanks so much. Our best wishes to you and the people of Los Angeles.

GARCETTI: Thank you. Sending you all strength and love for this new year.

TAPPER: Yes. Breaking news on the race in Georgia. Days before the election, a

candidate is going to quarantine.

Stay with us.

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TAPPER: This is CNN breaking news.

And we have some breaking news for you in our politics lead.

Georgia Senator David Perdue's campaign just announced that he is now quarantined just days before his run-off election after learning that he came into close contact with somebody who had tested positive for the coronavirus.

Let's go back to CNN's Kyung Lah, who's live for us in Gainesville, Georgia, where Perdue had been scheduled to appear.

And, Kyung, do we know if the senator has been tested for COVID-19 today?

LAH: He has been tested. That, we got in the statement released by the Perdue campaign just a short time ago, and that he and his wife have both tested negative.

But now, having seen this repeatedly, we understand that if you do have close contact with someone, you have to get tested over a number of days, because it may not show up on that first test.

So ,from what we understand here, if you were attending this event -- and this was scheduled to be a joint event with Senator Perdue and Senator Kelly Loeffler, ending out the year, trying to present a united front, encouraging Republicans to go out and vote in these Senate run-offs -- there's no sign that there's anything wrong.

People are listening to country music. They are enjoying themselves. My producer, Kim Berryman, I'm going to look to my left here as she's trying to talk to staff. She was actually notifying some members of the setup team here that the senator wasn't going to be showing up.

I also spoke to a member of the senator's staff just a few hours ago when we arrived here, the field director, and there was no sign that anything was off.

You can see that there are signs behind me, that there is a crowd. People are milling around with really no concern.