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The Lead with Jake Tapper

Georgia Law Restricts Voting, Fox Sued For $1.6 Billion as Trump Whitewashes MAGA Mob; White House: Biden Thinks Making It Harder to Vote is Un-American, Met with Stacey Abrams Over Georgia Law; Fauci: Redfield Saying COVID-19 Escaped from China Lab Just "An Opinion". Aired on 4-4:30p ET

Aired March 26, 2021 - 16:00   ET

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

[16:00:00]

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

And we begin today with the national lead. Tentacles from former President Trump's big lie about the election continuing to squeeze American society. There are those fighting back.

Dominion Voting is now suing advocates for $1.6 billion for pushing that garbage that helped send the January 6th rioters into a froth, but that channel continues to allow the lies to be spread. Former President Trump was given a huge chunk of primetime last night to further disseminate these toxins telling us that the murderous MAGA mob on January 6th was all about peace and love.

Look, you can decide for yourself whether his words match what we all saw and heard that day because the images from that day are certainly graphic and disturbing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, FORMER PRESIDENT (via telephone): It was zero threat. Look. They went in. They shouldn't have done it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Pull them this way.

TRUMP: Some of them went in and they were hugging and kissing the police and the guards.

(SCREAMING)

TRUMP: You know, they had great relationships. A lot of the people were waved in and then they walked in and they walked out.

(SCREAMING)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go, go, go, go, go!

(END VIDEO CLIP) TAPPER: Hugging and kissing? How about stomping and killing? Fix that for you.

It's the former president's late attempt at whitewashing, pretending he does not have blood on his hands for one of the darkest days in American history in which five people, including Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died.

It's a dangerous alternate reality that Trump continually projects, continuing to rile up hate and anger and division in this country.

And this alternate reality is now prompting Georgia Republican officials who spent months attesting to the integrity of their elections now bending over backwards to fix a problem that does not exist according to them in terms of widespread voter fraud.

Trump's big lie inspiring action in the Peach State where President Joe Biden and two Democratic now senators pulled off upsets. Georgia Republicans now taking steps to restrict voting access. The most controversial and draconian proposals did not make it into the final version of the bill, but Democrats are upset about what is in there, imposing an ID requirement for absentee ballots which critics say could hurt poorer and older Georgians, stripping power away from the secretary of state and giving it to the legislators, even criminalizing the act of giving water to voters standing in line to cast their ballots.

New today, late this afternoon, President Biden saying the new Georgia voting law is quote, a blatant attack on the Constitution -- as CNN's Kaitlan Collins reports.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Protect the vote!

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Condemnation from the White House after Georgia Republicans passed a major law restricting voter access.

JOSEPH R. BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It's an atrocity.

COLLINS: In a new statement this afternoon, President Biden blasted the law as, quote, a blatant attack on the constitution and Jim Crow in the 21st century.

BIDEN: They passed a law saying you can't provide water for people standing in line while they are waiting to vote? You don't need anything else to know that this is nothing but punitive designed to keep people from voting.

COLLINS: Biden called on Congress to act one day after he condemned GOP efforts in 45 states to limit voting access calling them, quote, un-American.

BIDEN: The Republican voters I know find this despicable. Republican voters, folks out in the -- outside this White House. I'm not talking about the elected officials. I'm talking about voters.

COLLINS: Biden defeated former President Trump in Georgia by a slim margin leading Trump to obsess over the loss and even pressure GOP officials to, quote, find him the votes.

TRUMP: All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes which is one more than we have because we won the state.

COLLINS: The state also delivered Democrats a narrow majority in the Senate and one of those new senators is blasting the law that voting rights groups have said will hurt black voter turnout.

[16:05:00]

SEN. RAPHAEL WARNOCK (D-GA): So you're literally going to make public policy based on a lie? Our democracy is in a 911 emergency.

COLLINS: Democrats in Washington are battling the Republican wave of voter access laws with the For the People Act. Although it's not expected to pass in the Senate, Biden said today they had a moral obligation to act.

SEN. CHUCK SCHUMER (D-NY): In the coming weeks and months, each of these bills will receive full consideration in committee and eventually on the Senate floor.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COLLINS (on camera): And, Jake, back to the statement that President Biden put out earlier. It's pretty lengthy and he also said that basically what Republicans are doing here instead of focusing on the nationwide record turnout or the record turnout in Georgia, he said that they are, quote, instead of celebrating the rights of all Georgians to vote or wing elections on the merits of their ideas, Republicans in the state instead rushed through an un-American law to deny people the right to vote -- Jake.

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

In Georgia today, Democrats say the new voting restrictions allow politicians to pick their voters instead of the other way around.

Now, as I mentioned, some of the most stringent and controversial provisions such as the proposal to ban Sunday voting which seem to many critics seem to be targeting Souls to the Polls, black church efforts, those were not included in the final version of the law. In fact in some part of the state it expands early voting options, but the law also limits the use of ballot drop boxes and imposes new voter ID requirements for absentee ballots. It's also now illegal to even give water to people waiting in line to vote.

This has many Democrats saying it all seems targeted at reducing black voting.

CNN's Dianne Gallagher is in Georgia.

And, Dianne, we heard from Governor Kemp just moments ago defending this bill.

DIANNE GALLAGHER, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Jake. And, look, he continues to defend it. He was very defiant yesterday before signing that into law, even sort of waging these accusations against detractors and, well, he was up to it again this afternoon.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. BRIAN KEMP (R-GA): Well, it wasn't a voting rights bill. It was an election security bill that actually increases early voting opportunities on the weekend here in Georgia, also requires a photo ID for absentee by mail just like when you vote in person, and it continues to -- I think it will allow Georgia to have secure, accessible, fair elections in Georgia.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

GALLAGHER: Now, of course, just a little more -- almost 24 hours ago, Kemp signed that bill into law behind closed doors, surrounded by other white male Republicans with a painting of a home owned by slave owners above them.

On the other side of that door were protesters and lawmakers, many of them black and women and one lawmaker, Representative Park Cannon, an elected representative in the state of Georgia from Atlanta was carted off by troopers handcuffed, put into a police car for knocking on that closed door because she wanted to be more open and people to see the bill-signing.

Now, Representative Cannon was charged with two felonies, obstruction and disrupting the general assembly. Again, Jake, remember, she is an elected member of the general assembly. Her attorney tells me they are going to vigorously fight these charges.

TAPPER: All right. Dianne Gallagher in Georgia, thanks so much.

Let's discuss.

Abby Philip, there is one major connect between all these headlines today, whether it's Fox being sued by Dominion Voting Systems or what we heard, the insanity from President Trump last night, this other version of what happened January 6th and what happened in Georgia yesterday, the new voting restriction as CNN legal analyst Elie Honig put, it quote, it's mind boggling to determine all the damage done by a lie to protect one person's fragile ego, a series of preposterous lawsuits, the January 6 insurrection, loss of human life, billion dollar damage claims, flimsy excuses for new voting rights -- all for a lie.

And I think we can add to that undermining the confidence that millions of Americans have in the election system based on the same lie.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: And all because one person, Donald Trump, could not fathom the idea that he could lose something. That is what is at the foundation of all of this. I think Elie put it so perfectly. You know, what is happening across the country and what is happening in Georgia is just yet another falsehood that stems from the big lie and that falsehood is that somehow there is a crisis of confidence in this country about the security of American elections and that that crisis of confidence is justified. But we know that it's not because it only exists because there have been lies told to millions of Americans about whether or not there was widespread fraud in the last election.

[16:10:01]

And, you know, you hear Governor Kemp talking about this quote election security bill as he calls it. He was one of the people voting by ballot boxes in the last election. He have was one of the people saying that he believed that Georgia's election was free and fair, and so the question then becomes what is the justification in Georgia or elsewhere for any of these laws that are trying to -- to basically restrict voting just for the sake of that happening based on any kind of truth.

TAPPER: Trump voted by mail, I mean --

PHILLIP: Right.

TAPPER: He did so in a state that he won.

And, Philip, President Biden just landed in Wilmington. We're told from the pool report he said he's not sure there's anything he can do about the Georgia law although the Justice Department is going to look into it.

There are so many bills to restrict voting introduced in at least 45 state legislatures according to the Brennan Center for Justice and CNN reporting. You heard Biden say he would do everything in his power to stop efforts to restrict voting rights.

Do you think this should be a priority for the president more so than guns? More so than immigration, more so than infrastructure?

PHILIP BUMP, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, there are a lot of Democrats who think that it should be. I mean, not necessarily that there is a greater urgency to it, but that it is over the long-term important issue. There are a lot of Democrats who feel as, though, if there are these sorts of roll backs, these suppressive acts in these various states and if you look at the map incidentally, you know, it's a lot of laws in Georgia, and Arizona, and Pennsylvania, the places that Trump lost narrowly, that if that is -- if that is not somehow countermanded, that this will be a long-term political problem for the Democrats.

And I think it's really important to remember that while Donald Trump was absolutely responsible for amplifying this lie, this lie existed well before Donald Trump. I remember 2008, there are all these accusations that Barack Obama somehow cheated his way into the president using ACORN, this community organization, which became a focus of right wing attention for a while there. This is a longstanding effort on the right, which is being used precisely to advocate for policies like this one, for policies which restrict the ability of people to cast ballots. Fundamentally, that's the question. How much do we believe that people should be able to easily to vote? That's what's at issue here and what we're seeing is that this lie that was very much amplified by Trump that pre-dates him is used as a rationale to tamp that down, obviously in many cases with the hope that it means tamping down Democratic turnout.

TAPPER: And, Abby, on Georgia and the new law there, voting rights groups directly credited black voter turnout with helping Democrats win not only the presidential race but the Ossoff and Warnock Senate seats. Last night, Democratic State Representative Park Cannon, this black woman legislator, she was arrested for knocking on the Georgia governor's door for the bill-signing.

In response she tweeted: In November and January, we refused to be controlled at the ballot box. This bill is a direct retaliation.

And, of course, that image is less than optimal, a bunch of middle- aged white male Republicans behind closed doors in front of a portrait of a house, a mansion owned by slave owners.

Could this have the opposite effect? Could this actually drive black turnout, young turnout, Democratic turnout?

PHILLIP: I think it's a really important question. I mean, there are two elements of it. One, it is such a galvanizing force to Democrats to see this sort of thing happen. As you noted, this bill that actually became law was kind of a watered down version of what they originally proposed. And the reason they had to water it down was because of the outrage, the public outrage that was sparked by activists who have been largely responsible for Georgia going red to blue in the last election.

And those activists are not going to be placated by any of this. I think they are probably even more fired up going forward. But the second thing just quickly is that Republicans also need to think about how these voting restrictions are going to affect their voters as well who are increasingly less reliable, less well-educated and maybe more in need of more means and ways to vote.

It might have the opposite effect of what they're expecting because of assumptions about their voters that might be outdated at this point.

TAPPER: Abby Philip and Philip Bump, thanks so much.

Abby, I'll see you on Sunday morning.

Ahead, I'll talk with a Democrat with the power to stop Republican voting efforts in his state.

Plus, the man who led the CDC under Trump says he believes that COVID- 19 originated in a Chinese lab. Why his comments in a CNN special report are so significant, and how did Dr. Anthony Fauci respond? He responded today. Plus, the new images coming in after deadly tornadoes swept through the South.

We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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TAPPER: In our health lead, in a brand new CNN documentary with our own Dr. Sanjay Gupta, former CDC Director Robert Redfield says he thinks coronavirus originated in a lab in Wuhan, China, though he underlines that's just his opinion.

Sanjay joins us now.

Sanjay, first, let's watch this clip from your great documentary.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DR. ROBERT REDFIELD, FORMER CDC DIRECOTR: If I had to guess, this virus started transmitted in September and October in Wuhan.

DR. SANJAY GUPTA, CNN CHIEF MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: September and October?

REDFIELD: That's my own -- it's only opinion. I'm allowed to have opinions now. You know, I'm of the point of view that I still think the most likely etiology of this pathogen in Wuhan was from a laboratory, you know, escaped. Other people don't believe that. That's fine. Science will eventually figure it out. It's not unusual for respiratory pathogens that are being worked on in a laboratory to infect a laboratory worker.

GUPTA: It's also not unusual for that type of research to be occurring in Wuhan. The city is a widely known center for viral studies in China, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which has experimented extensively with bat coronaviruses.

It is a remarkable conversation I feel like we're having here because you are the former CDC director, and you were the director at the time this was all happening.

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For the first time, the former CDC director is stating publicly that he believes this pandemic started months earlier than we knew and that it originated not at a wet market but inside a lab in China.

These are two significant things to say, Dr. Redfield.

REDFIELD: That's not implying any intentionality, you know. It's my opinion, right? But I am a virologist. I have spent my life in virology. I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human and at that moment in time the virus came to the human became one of the most infectious viruses that we know in humanity for human-to-human transmission.

Usually when it goes from a zoonotic to a human, it takes a while for it to figure how to become more and more efficient in human-to-human transmission. I just don't think this makes biological sense.

GUPTA: So in the lab, do you think that that process of becoming more efficient was happening, is that what you are suggesting?

REDFIELD: Yeah, let's just say I have coronavirus that I'm working on. Most of us in the lab were trying to grow virus. We try to help make it grow better and better and better and better and better so we can do experiments and figure out about it. That's the way I put it together.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

TAPPER: Sanjay, just to underline there. He's no concrete evidence to back up his claim, but this is significant.

GUPTA: Yeah. I mean, this is one of those things where he offered up this during our interview. He is the CDC director at the time this was happening and as a former White House official has pointed out to me, Mr. Dr. Redfield had access to some of the raw data and raw intelligence, things that we don't have access to.

So, you're right. There's no clear evidence that he present but, you know, this isn't some guy on the street either, right, Jake? To be clear the World Health Organization has said the lab leak theory as they call it extremely unlikely. Chinese officials have said it could be that there is a multi-origin theory, so maybe it emanated from several different places around the country, around the world. So, that's unsubstantiated.

But real point is we still don't have a clear answer on this basic question which is an important question, where did this come from? What are the exact origins of this pandemic?

TAPPER: And Fauci today underlined that was Redfield's individual opinion. He didn't say he agreed or disagreed, but he did agree that the virus was spreading in China earlier than China had report. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASE: It likely was below the radar screen spreading in the community in China for several weeks if not a month or more which allowed it when it first got recognized clinically to be pretty well- adapted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Presumably, wouldn't that also mean that the virus could also have been spreading in the U.S. earlier than we knew?

GUPTA: I think absolutely. I mean, know, officially, the first patient was diagnosed as infected January 21st but we know that there was a lack of testing at that point and then subsequent studies show that there were antibodies in people who had donated blood in December of 2019 here in the United States. There are autopsy results that came back that predated it even further than that.

So the timeline is real important as well, but also who -- who knew what when? Did -- were officials in Wuhan aware of just how that this was happening and how communicable this particular virus was because you'll remember it was December 31st, 2019 when the world sort of became aware, Jake, that there's an unusual cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan. That's all we sort of knew at that point. Sounds like there was a lot more known weeks if not earlier.

TAPPER: And, Sanjay, one in three adults have received at least one dose and one in five U.S. adults are fully vaccinated. The U.S. is putting 2.6 million shots in arms every day, and all American adults should be eligible for the vaccine by May.

For the first time in a long time, it seems as though people have reason to be optimistic.

GUPTA: I think so, Jake. I mean, you know, we look at the vaccination numbers and they are obviously going up. I think, as we've seen before, I think they're going to exceed expectations, 200 million doses in 100 days, I think they will bypass that.

But we're also seeing a death rate compared to last week is down 21 percent, hospitalizations down 3.5 percent. Cases are still going up, probably in part because of these variants. Got to keep an eye on that but overall, Jake, I agree. I think it's mostly good news.

TAPPER: It's a nice note for the weekend to begin.

Dr. Sanjay Gupta, thanks so much.

And look out for Sanjay's CNN Special Report. What else he learned from the medical leaders on the war of COVID. That's Sunday night at 9:00 Eastern, only here on CNN.

And about Trump's big election lie, how a Democratic governor in a state Trump won is trying to stop Republicans racing to change election laws. We'll talk to him next.

Stay with us.

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

Now you've heard President Biden talking about it. You might have heard about Georgia's brand new law restricting it, and in nearly every state across the country is debating it. We're talking about voting rights.

More than 250 bills have been introduced across at least 45 states, which would make voting in elections more complicated, more restrictive and plainly in some places far more difficult. That's according to data compiled by CNN and the Brennan Center for Justice.

One of these states is North Carolina and its Democratic Governor Roy Cooper joins me now to discuss.

And, Governor, Republicans in your state have introduced legislation about when people could obtain and return absentee ballots. Is this predicated on the big election lie that Trump and his allies pushed? Is there something else going on?

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