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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Georgia Senator Perdue to Quarantine After Exposure to COVID- 19; Sen. Hawley Fundraising Off Efforts to Thwart Biden Win; California Identifies Case of Highly Infectious U.K. variant; Youngest Person Elected to Congress Rallies Youth Vote in Georgia. Aired 3:30- 4p ET

Aired December 31, 2020 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: People are milling around with really no concern. One thing I do want to point out, though, is that the way that the Republicans and, you know, Senator Perdue is among this group, how they've been campaigning on the trail has been different than the way we've seen other candidates behaving on the trail.

Two days ago our embed D.J. Judd was at a Senator Perdue event two days ago. It was indoors. It was a small, closed area, a smaller closed area. The Senator at times wore a mask, and then when he spoke and when he took pictures and when he was talking in close proximity to a number of people, he was not wearing a mask.

So these are things we're seeing on the trail, Jake, and now all of those people who have had close contact with the Senator certainly have to think about, you know, what their next steps are -- Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Yes, all right, Kyung Lah, and we certainly wish the best to Senator Perdue and his family. Let's discuss with our panel, Amanda Carpenter, let's bring you in here. Senator Perdue's quarantine comes obviously at an awkward time for his race. Potentially do you think it could affect the outcome?

AMANDA CARPENTER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, there's a rally coming up in Georgia right before election day, and so if he's not present, obviously that would be awkward, but honestly, Jake, I don't know if it'd be any more awkward than the President himself contracting coronavirus and having to be airlifted to Walter Reed.

I mean it is truly stunning to me that so many candidates have -- they acted like nothing is wrong. We know there's a lot we don't know about this virus. We do know that you can't gather with crowds indoors without a mask.

That's just basic 101, but yet, if you go on these candidates' Twitter or Instagram, you can see picture after picture after picture of people inside without masks taking selfies, eating and acting like nothing's wrong. And so you know, I wish Senator Perdue the best, but please reflect upon that fact while you're in quarantine.

TAPPER: Hilary Rosen, I mean, we just lost a Republican congressman- elect from Louisiana who was only 41 years old with no comorbidities, no pre-existing conditions. We just lost him this week.

We're losing in the United States close to 4,000 Americans a day. Meanwhile, the vaccination program is not going as expected as promised, and our president and frankly the ruling party, the Republicans, seem primarily focused on stealing the election from Joe Biden. It is really an awful moment for this country.

HILARY ROSEN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: And let's -- look, let's be clear about this. That the Congressman who unfortunately lost his life was seen campaigning and interacting without a mask many, many times. Senator Perdue the same. These are Republican candidates campaigning without a mask.

The Democrats are not doing that. You know, Reverend Warnock and Jon Ossoff in Georgia are being very, very careful. They're being careful about not having their people campaign out there in reckless ways on their behalf. They're sending the right signal. That's what leaders do.

The thing that is so frustrating about the spread of this disease is that we have a president who is so focused, as you said, on, you know, trying to undo a democratically won election and not focused on keeping Americans safe, and that is just, you know, it's a crime that's going to end on January 20th. It can't come soon enough. This is just tragic as far as I'm concerned.

TAPPER: Amanda, we learned yesterday that Republican Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri will join with House Republicans next Wednesday, not all of them, but many of them, perhaps even a majority of them, to object to the Electoral College results, which have been certified and signed off on.

Today Hawley sent out a fundraising email trying to raise money off of that promise in which he is siding with these election truthers, these conspiracy theorists. What is this about in your view? Is it about loyalty to Trump? Is it just plain ambition? Is it grift? What's your view?

CARPENTER: It's ambition, but I mean, it comes down to what a lot of the Republican base has been led to believe. I mean, this is a Donald Trump problem, but a lot of his voters believe the election was stolen, and so they're choosing to engage in this make believe story. And here's what's particularly bothersome about this. Hawley's smart enough -- he's not saying that, oh, there's some algorithm that flipped the election.

[15:35:00]

He is pretending like that he has some concerns about voter irregularity and there's just something that needs to be looked into, even though the Department of Justice has found nothing. The Supreme Court refused to hear the cases and all of these Republican states certified the election.

All these people that know better and are trying to find some way to justify what Trump has led his voters to believe are engaging in this myth that something was wrong with the election, and you can see this up and down by people who know better.

There's only one thing that was irregular about this election. More people than ever voted. A lot of them used mail-in ballots. That was a new thing that happened, and what this is going to ricochet around to is that they're going to try to restrict those options to say, oh, well, we just want people to be able to vote this one way again.

So that's where this is going, and you can see how Trump is trying to get a victory out of this by saying we just need another voter commission something, but anyone who buys into that is buying into this made up, make believe story that is a lie.

TAPPER: Amanda Carpenter, and Hilary Rosen, thanks to both of you. Appreciate it.

Cases of a more infectious strain of COVID are growing in the U.S., why that could be very bad news for any plans to reopen schools.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:40:00]

TAPPER: In our HEALTH LEAD, we are learning more about the California man who tested positive for that U.K. strain of COVID-19. We know that he's 30 years old. He lives in San Diego, has no travel history and has had very few social interactions during the potentially contagious period. We also know that a second suspected case of this U.K. variant is being monitored in Colorado. All of this comes as a new study finds that not only is the variant more transmissible, it's also more prevalent in individuals who are 20 years old and younger.

And joining me now CNN medical analyst Dr. Megan Ranney, she's also an emergency physician at Brown University. Dr. Ranney, when you hear that this man in California does not have much of a travel history and has had few social interactions, but he still contracted the variant. What does that tell you if anything?

DR. MEGAN RANNEY, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: It leaves a lot of questions unanswered, but my biggest concern about that story, Jake, is that it means that this virus is being transmitted through the community already.

You know, we know that it was first found in the U.K. in late September. Many of us suspected it was here in the U.S. already, but if this guy who wasn't going out and doing much caught it, it means it's out there probably in many states across the United States.

TAPPER: So this does increase your concerns about the virus and the pandemic and where we're headed?

RANNEY: Very much so. I mean, this virus is -- this new strain is up to 70 percent more transmissible. The good news is it doesn't seem to be more dangerous, but if we see a lot more people catching it, if we see more super spreader events happening, we already have hospitals that are overwhelmed. We already have hospitals that are on the breaking point. We already have almost 4,000 deaths a day. This bodes so poorly for the next couple of months in the United States until we can successfully get more people vaccinated.

TAPPER: You know, the moment that we heard about the individual in Colorado showing up and having this U.K. variant that we had just learned about maybe a couple of days before, it reminded me of the moment earlier this year when an individual in a nursing home outside Kansas City was discovered to have the virus, and I think he, in fact, died of the virus. This was very early on.

And I was talking with my fellow journalists here at CNN, and I said if it's in this gentleman in a nursing home outside of Kansas City has this -- this is very early on when it was only showing up in the coasts -- then it really must be everywhere, and I wonder if that's what you think about this?

RANNEY: Yes, that's exactly it, and it's funny, folks asked me a week or two ago, should we shut down flights to the U.K., and my response was it's too late, right? It's already here.

It's the same thing. Even if you look at that nursing home case in Washington, you know, that seminal case that we identified here in the U.S., we now know it had been up and down California, and Washington state for months, ditto with the East Coast breakouts. I agree completely.

It is here already. And unfortunately right now, the only thing we have to protect ourselves are those same strategies we've been urging since the beginning, right? It's mask up. Avoid indoor gatherings. Make sure that you isolate if you have symptoms. The things we haven't been doing a great job at already.

TAPPER: What do we know about how transmissible this is among children? And the reason I ask that is because there is this move to reopen schools because the variant that we have been dealing with in the United States doesn't seem to spread all that much among children, especially children under 12. Does this U.K. strain throw a wrench in that?

RANNEY: Yes, it definitely gives me pause. You know, there was a recent CDC publication that confirmed what many of us have been saying, exactly as you just said. The virus does not seem to spread in schools where there is masking. It spreads outside of school when kids are doing sports or in social activities. But this new strain may change everything, and I think we're going to be waiting for the Imperial College in London and for their larger consortium that's been looking at the genetics to do more detailed analyses of who exactly it's more prevalent in.

[15:45:00]

Under 20 is a pretty big group, right, is that age 18 to 20 or is that the younger kids that so far have not been transmitting the virus here in the United States?

TAPPER: We learned today that a different variation of COVID, one found in South Africa is also spreading quickly. The researcher who discovered it said that he didn't know if the current vaccines will be effective against it. That does not mean that they won't be, just that it's a question mark. How worried are you about that?

RANNEY: So I'm not super worried about the current vaccines not working for the current new mutations. The thing that concerns me more is that we're finding more and more of these significant mutations, South Africa, U.K., others, and that that has a bad prognostic factor for the success of the vaccine long-term.

All along we've questioned is a single vaccine going to work forever, like with measles or is it going to be more like the flu where we have to get yearly boosters and change the vaccine from year to year? Typically coronaviruses don't mutate that quickly which gave us hope, but these quick changes that we're seeing make me worried that we're going to have to get revaccinated in one or two years.

TAPPER: All right, Dr. Megan Ranney, thank you so much for joining us today. We appreciate it.

Coming up next, the youngest person elected to Congress in generations is about to be sworn. He's already wishing he could take back a statement he made. That's next.

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[15:50:00]

TAPPER: In our POLITICS LEAD today, on the final day of early voting in Georgia both Democrats and Republicans seem to be doing everything they can to get out the all-important youth vote, including using the youngest person elected to Congress in recent memory. CNN's Diane Gallagher caught up with North Carolina Republican Congressman-elect Madison Cawthorn.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DIANE GALLAGHER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Do you wish you could take it back?

MADISON CAWTHORN, (R) NORTH CAROLINA, REP-ELECT: Oh, absolutely.

GALLAGHER (voice-over): Meet North Carolina Republican Madison Cawthorn, the youngest person elected to Congress in modern history. The night he won Cawthorn celebrated on Twitter with three words, which some thought was a dig at his Democratic opponent.

GALLAGHER: You tweeted --

CAWTHORN: Oh, not the most congressional thing I've ever done.

GALLAGHER: Cry more, lib. Why did you do that? CAWTHORN: It was definitely not targeted at my opponent, Mo Davis, who

ran a very tough campaign. It was targeted more this kind of cancel culture and really the extremes on both ends.

GALLAGHER (voice-over): The first member of Congress born in the 1990s, Cawthorn has taken his party by storm.

CAWTHORN: I represent the young Republicans. I represent kind of this new face of the Republican Party.

GALLAGHER (voice-over): With a very conservative platform wrapped in a message of youth, faith and overcoming adversity. The now 25-year-old has used a wheelchair since a car accident in 2014 left him partially paralyzed.

CAWTHORN: I've known what it is to feel significant amounts of pain and to feel left behind society and I think that's an interesting perspective to come in to as a conservative and more of an empathetic message with these conservative values.

GALLAGHER (voice-over): Cawthorn actually credits a Democrat, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez with inspiring him to run for Congress.

CAWTHORN: Although I disagree with her on a lot of policy positions, she did set an example that you can get involved as a young person in your 20s to make a difference in your country.

GALLAGHER (voice-over): After his shocking win over a Trump backed candidate in a crowded 11th District Republican Primary, the party and the president started quickly started showcasing the western North Carolina native.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Where is Madison? Where is Madison? Is he here? Madison Cawthorn a real star. You'll going to be a star of the party.

GALLAGHER (voice-over): A prime speaking spot at the convention.

CAWTHORN: Be a radical for our republic, for which I stand.

GALLAGHER (voice-over): Stumping for GOP Senate candidates in Georgia. But it was a series of scandals that helped propel the relatively unknown candidate to the national stage.

CAWTHORN (voice-over): I'm definitely not a Nazi. I'm not a white supremacist.

GALLAGHER (voice-over): This 2017 Instagram post from a visit to Adolf Hitler's vacation home in Germany, the Eagle's Nest where Cawthorn refers to Hitler as the Fuehrer.

CAWTHORN: I do believe I made a mistake. I was unaware that using a certain term to describing an evil man, Hitler, was offensive to people in the Jewish community. GALLAGHER (voice-over): Cawthorn says that he went there for the

history. Pointing out that he called Hitler a supreme evil in the post.

CAWTHORN: I hate racism, my fiancee, she's a biracial young woman. I'm going to have biracial children.

GALLAGHER (voice-over): When he arrives in Washington Cawthorn says that term limits are a top priority in his conservative agenda, but he does see potential for compromise with Democrats with broadband expansion, opioids and even the environment.

CAWTHORN: I believe that as a Republican you can love God, you can love guns and you can hate greenhouse gases.

GALLAGHER (voice-over): In our interview just before Christmas Cawthorn told CNN that he suspected fraud in the presidential election but did acknowledge that Trump's legal team had yet to prove it.

CAWTHORN: If Joe Biden is our president and I was a betting man, I would probably say he will be.

GALLAGHER (voice-over): But just two days later at a gathering of young conservatives.

CAWTHORN: I will be contesting the election.

GALLAGHER (voice-over): Not ready to completely accept reality, but open to what's next.

CAWTHORN: I look forward to working with him and I think we can modernize our country together.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

GALLAGHER (on camera): And we barely scratched the surface on some of the controversy surrounding Cawthorn but, look, it's no secret his star is on the rise within the party.

Not everyone is a fan of his style, though. Take Illinois Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who quote tweeted that video of Cawthorn saying he was going to contest the election results saying, quote, applause is intoxicating, governing honorably is hard sometimes and it has no adoring crowds nor should it.

Now Jake, Cawthorn told me that he expects actually to have a lot pushback from within his party.

[15:55:00]

To that he says he is grateful that his spine is reinforced with titanium.

TAPPER: All right, Diane Gallagher, thank you so much, appreciate it.

Did he dislike the decorations that much? President Trump leaves the Florida before the New Year's Eve party tonight. Could a wrecking ball be returning to Washington? Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

TAPPER: Welcome to a special edition of THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper on this last day of 2020.

And we are ending this year with some absolutely horrific new records when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic. 3,744 Americans died just yesterday from COVID-19. Breaking the tragic record set the day before.

And more than 125,000 people are currently hospitalized with the virus.