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Don Lemon Tonight

CNN Projects Biden Wins Georgia and Trump Wins North Carolina; President Trump Speaks Publicly for the First Time Since Defeat; New Obama Interview Reveals How He Spent 2016 Election Night; United States Sets Record of New COVID-19 Cases Today; Several Dozen Secret Service Officers Either Tested Positive for COVID-19; United States Shatters Daily Record with More Than 175,000 New Cases; Stop the Steal Touts Pro-Trump Rallies Based on Lies; CNN Heroes is Spotlighting This Year's Most Inspiring Moments. Aired 11p-12a ET

Aired November 13, 2020 - 23:00   ET

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

[23:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

DON LEMON, CNN HOST: The President-Elect Joe Biden cementing his win with 306 electoral votes. CNN projecting he'll take the state of Georgia and Trump will win North Carolina, making his final tally 232 electoral votes.

Biden also has a commanding lead in the popular vote, 5.3 million more votes than Trump. Biden didn't just win. It was a decisive win. But President Trump still refuses to concede.

I want to bring in now CNN White House correspondent, John Harwood. Political analyst Toluse Olorunnipa, and political commentator Amanda Carpenter. All better known as the A team. Good evening to all of you. It's good to see you.

So, John, the President-Elect now has a decisive 306 electoral-vote win. Is President Trump getting any closer to accepting the reality that he's a loser?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Don, it's hard to describe how strange the situation is. But I do think the president is getting somewhat closer to acceptance of this in some quasi-public way. First of all he had this phone call today with Geraldo Rivera who reported that the president described himself as a realist. That's step one.

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: Sorry.

HARWOOD: Tonight he's retweeting these self-glorification videos that Dan Scavino, his social media director has circulated that paint Donald Trump as a hero. They're all about Trump's heroic qualities. That seems to be preparing his ego for accepting defeat. And then today at the White House he had this news conference, or a public performance, about the search for a vaccine which is a legitimate triumph of the administration.

He avoided of course the spread of the pandemic itself which is a huge failure but he celebrated the advent of the vaccine and tried to contrast himself with the guy who maybe replacing him saying I'm not going to permit any lockdowns. Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This administration will not be going to a lockdown. Hopefully whatever happens in the future, who knows which administration it will be, I guess time will tell, but I can tell you this administration will not go to a lockdown.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARWOOD: So you saw the little hint there. He almost came out and said, I'm not going to do it, but the other guy is going to do it. But he's not saying the words out loud. He didn't take any questions from reporters. He sent out a couple of aides today to perform like circus freaks on television and say like Kayleigh Mcenany said, well, he's going to show up because it's going to be his inauguration on January 20th. Peter Navarro said, well, we're preparing for a second term in the White House.

I'll tell you, they're not preparing for a second term in the White House. The reason you know that is the rubber hits the road for those young aides whose paychecks are going to run out on January 20th. They're not preparing for a second term for President Trump, they are preparing to find new jobs.

LEMON: Yes. And they should be allowed to find new jobs. Listen, Amanda, everything that John just said, look, I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist, but aahhh. I mean, it's really -- there's a lot going in there. It's really sad to watch. You say that this wasn't -- what did you call this coronavirus news conference? You said it was a proof of life video.

AMANDA CARPENTER, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR, FORMER COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR FOR SENATOR TED CRUZ AND THE AUTHOR OF GASLIGHTING AMERICA: It is. Yes, because he's gone into hiding because he can't publicly admit defeat. Which that is the reality. But here's the thing, Don. You can say it, I can say it. He lost. He lost. He lost. He lost. But he needs to send that signal. I don't think he will, but there's a reason why people give concession speeches, especially in presidential elections.

It's because the losers need to send a signal to their supporters that this fight is over and more importantly they should not take matters into their own hands and consider violent actions. And Donald Trump, as he privately struggles and goes through his internal drama, his people will be taking the streets in Washington, D.C., tomorrow. OK.

It's his campaign organizers, people like Matt Schlapp, members of Congress are going to be there. And so I think we're giving Trump far too much leash on this. Because his people on the ground are perpetuating the notion that the election was stolen. [23:05:05]

I was happy to see John Kelly stand up and say, you know, this is over and he needs to participate in the peaceful transition of power for security purposes. But now is the time for a lot more people to say things like that. Anybody and everybody needs to send a signal that Donald Trump is an outlier. This is not normal. This is fringe behavior that is not tolerated and acceptable in a peaceful Democratic society. So, please people, whatever platform you have, if you have any influence among Republicans, say that now.

LEMON: Maybe he would understand that in the language that he's accustomed to like, you're fired? I don't know. Maybe that's easier for him instead of he lost the Electoral College and therefore he lost the presidency. Maybe you're fired is more palatable to him.

So, Toluse, President Obama spoke to CBS earlier and here's how he is looking at all this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When Donald Trump won, I stayed up until 2:30 in the morning and I then called Donald Trump to congratulate him. His margin of victory over Hillary Clinton wasn't greater than Joe Biden's over him.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

OBAMA: But if you're listening to some of the talk radio that Trump voters are listening to, if you're watching Fox News, if you're getting these tweets, those allegations are presented as facts. So you've got millions of people out there who think, oh yes, there must be cheating because the president said so.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: OK, so here's -- to Amanda's point and to the former president's point, Trump did not win. He lost. There is no widespread fraud. That's what election and DHS officials are saying and yet President Trump is trying to sell this lie, Toluse.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, CNN POLITICAL ANALSYT, WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, BLOOMBERG NEWS: Yes. I'm with Amanda on this. For the elected officials who follow politics, who know about electoral politics, who know about voting, they're going along with a game that they know is very disingenuous. You can take people who maybe don't follow politics very closely, maybe they are watching other networks and they are listening to the president's tweets.

And they don't know what's really going on and they believe there's cheating for the Senators, for the politicians who know how these vote tallies work. They now the president has lost and for them to be silent or to go along with this charade of it. You know, we need to wait until all of the votes are counted. All of the states had been called. They all sort of just doing damage to democracy by going along with

the president and trying to, you know, chill his ego from being bruised by not saying that he lost and not saying that he shouldn't concede the race. Allow Joe Biden to begin the transition process.

It is really absurd to see all of these politicians sort of play this game and maybe pretend like they don't know what's going on or saying maybe we're preparing for a second Trump administration or maybe there's some sort of, you know, hand of God that will come in at the last minute and allow President Trump to have a second term.

They know better. I think it's very clear that they know better. It's important for us to say that these politicians know better and unfortunately for a lot of the voters out there who do support President Trump, many of them don't know better and some of them don't know better and they're being led astray not only by the president but by a number of these politicians who should telling their constituents that this is what's going to happen.

We are going to have a new president. We all need to come together to make sure that this process plays out in a way that, you know, preserves our democracy and preserves the national security of the country and that's not happening.

LEMON: Well, here's what is interesting to me. You have people, as I have said before, like Lindsay Graham and others who are saying, you know, this was -- you know, every legal vote needs to be counted and intimating that there is something unusual happened with the election. He won on with same ballot.

(LAUGHTER)

So, if this president's lost is not legitimate, is his win not legitimate? I mean, I'm just -- it makes absolutely no sense. And all of these people who are out there calling -- talking about liberal tears for the last four years and snowflakes forever, they turn out to be the snowflakes, Amanda, they're the ones who are crying now, the Trump tears.

CARPENTER: Well, here's the thing. The latest talking point that people like even my former boss Ted Cruz were pushing over the last week is that the president deserves his day in court. OK, the president has had his day in court, many days in court. He's lost 20- some cases. He's losing again and again and again. Because the court demands evidence of ballot fraud. They have none. Their lawyers are pulling out. And now Rudy Giuliani, The New York Times is reporting, Rudy Giuliani is going to be put in charge of the legal strategy. It is over. The courts have ruled.

(LAUGHTER)

LEMON: John --

HARWOOD: Don, that's the biggest sign right there --

CARPENTER: Look it up. HARWOOD: -- that it's over, because Rudy Giuliani is the biggest

circus freak of all in the Trump orbit. He was once America's mayor. Now he's a television performer. Somebody who comes on and says crazy stuff. And by telling his aides that Rudy Giuliani is in charge, he's telling them that this is purely a TV skit right now.

[23:10:17]

LEMON: OK. So, I want to play this and I want to continue this with some more for you, John. This is what else we heard from President Obama.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Well, look, Joe Biden will be the next president of the United States, Kamala Harris will be the next vice president. There's no legal basis, there's no --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But he's getting support from members of the Republican Party who are not challenging him.

OBAMA: And that has been disappointing. They obviously didn't think there was any fraud going on because they didn't say anything about it for the first two days. But there's damage to this, because what happens is that the peaceful transfer of power, the notion that any of us who attain an elected office, whether it's dogcatcher or president, are servants of the people. It's a temporary job. We're not above the rules. We're not above the law. That's the essence of our democracy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So, John, OK, none of the president's lawsuits are -- appear to be holding up. I'm wondering how much longer the Republican Party can stay silent or the members who are going along with this, how much longer. Because they keep saying, everyone keeps saying, well, you know, 70-some million people voted for the president. OK, that's fine.

But there are a lot of those people who are not living in reality right now. They're being lied to by state TV and others, even people who are supposed to work for us. Kayleigh Mcenany. And so, how much longer is the Republican Party going to stay silent? How much longer are we supposed to go along with this and pretend -- and continue to coddle people who aren't necessarily living in reality?

HARWOOD: It's hard to say how long it will go on. My colleagues, of course, are correct. It should have been over long ago, days ago. They should not -- Republicans should not have participated in this theater. If I had to guess, I would say it goes no longer than the end of next week. I think eventually people who are not quite as delusional as Donald Trump but are participating and facilitating his delusions, they get warned down by reality and reality gets weightier every single day.

As we get the cases thrown out, as we get vote totals certified, if we get Republican officials in places like Arizona saying this is a legitimate result, close as it was. I don't think they want to carry this into thanksgiving weekend and perpetuate this too much longer. Obviously we've got deadlines with the Electoral College which is due to vote in mid-December. I don't think it's going to go that long.

LEMON: All right. Thank you, all. I appreciate it. Listen, people who are -- you know, maybe Trump supporters -- I know you don't like it. You may not like me. I'm telling you the truth. You're being played. Like, wake up. The reality is, Donald Trump lost. There's no evidence of widespread voter fraud. He lost.

And he may be using you to pay off election debts. So, come on. We have to move on and move to a better, saner place in this country. Time to cut the shenanigans. CNN is projecting that President-Elect Biden will win the state of Georgia. President Trump will win North Carolina.

Senior political writer and analyst Harry Enten is here to break this all down for us. Harry, we need you, thank you, we need you to give us some reality and give us some numbers, right. So, help us. CNN has now projected a winner in every state. What stands out to you when you look at the map?

HARRY ENTEN, CNN POLITICS SENIOR WRITER AND ANALYST: Right. You know, and I'm a numbers guy. That's what I do. That's what I spend my days doing. You know, I just think it's so helpful to compare this to what occurred in 2016, right? President Trump would bring around that big electoral map with him. He'd say, oh, this is a landslide. Look at that.

Biden has the same number of electoral votes that Trump got and not only that, but Biden's popular vote victory, he actually won the popular vote. He's at 51 percent right now. Trump just got 46 percent. If Trump had a landslide, I don't -- what would have, Biden have the greatest victory of all time using Trumpian language? That's the only way to talk about it, Biden has won this election. He won it fair and square and we just have to recognize that fact and move on from it.

LEMON: So, OK, so a landslide, an earth slide, maybe it was an ocean slide, I don't know how he would characterize it, the biggest, hugest. I mean, it's a very decisive win. How does it compare to other elections?

ENTEN: Right, you know, so, look back through history. It's something I really like to do. So, look at all of the presidential elections with incumbent since 1920. Joe Biden earned a higher percentage of the electoral votes than all but three challengers since 1920, right. We're talking about FDR. We are talking Reagan in 1980. We are talking Bill Clinton in 1992. And if we look at the popular vote, right, this is even clearer.

[23:15:01]

What we see is that Joe Biden is forecast to earn a higher percentage of the popular vote. It's at 51 percent right now. It might get all the way up to 52 percent than every challenger but Franklin Roosevelt in 1932. This is what we're talking about right now. We're saying that Joe Biden, just looking at the results, a clear, definitive victory, something that we rarely see for challengers when they're taking on incumbents.

LEMON: Those are the numbers, the facts. OK, Harry. So, it's a big deal Biden turned Georgia blue. That hasn't happened since the 1992 presidential race with Bill Clinton. How did he do it?

ENTEN: 1992. Yes. You know, this is so interesting. You know, we had all of these swing states. We weren't exactly sure how they would go. But one of the key things to recognize about Georgia is that Donald Trump's base is white voters without a college degree. They actually make up a very low proportion of that electoral, much lower than any of the seven closest states that Trump won in 2016. It's just 30 percent according to New York Times/Sienna College pre-election polls.

And in this particular election, that was the group that Trump did best with. And keep in mind in Georgia too, you have a very large black vote that Joe Biden did very well with and those suburbs around Atlanta, white voters with a college degree who have been shifting away from the Republican Party into the Democratic Party.

They make up a large percentage of that Georgia vote. Joe Biden did very well with them and the result as you saw was that he was the first Democrat since Bill Clinton in 1992 to win the state of Georgia.

LEMON: Stacey Abrams, what she created, she'd been working on for 10 years that is also out there. Natasha Brown, black votes matter as well. They also helped. And you know what, Harry, this is exactly what I talk about on my podcast. I'm talking about now, this week the power of the black woman vote, especially in Georgia and southern states.

ENTEN: I will just say this to end it, Don. Black women saved Joe Biden's bid for the presidency in the South Carolina Democratic primary and they helped carry him over the top in many swing states including Georgia.

LEMON: Thank you very much. Thank you, Harry. The podcast is called Silence is not an option. Any way you get your podcast, you can check it out.

So, more than 175,000 new coronavirus cases reported just today. Americans could see a vaccine by April. But what happens between now and then? We're going to bring you the very latest.

But first, more from President Obama on Trump refusing to acknowledge he lost this election.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Any of us who attain an elected office, whether it's dogcatcher or president, are servants of the people. It's a temporary job. We're not above the rules. We're not above the law. That's the essence of our democracy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[23:20:00]

LEMON: So we got some breaking news to tell you about. The U.S. setting a record again for the number of new coronavirus cases in a single day, at least 175,000 today alone. Let's discuss now, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner is here. Doctor, thank you. We have to stop meeting this way. I mean that sincerely.

JONATHAN REINER, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: I know.

LEMON: This is awful. The president finally breaking his silence today for the first time since he lost the election, but he only gave an optimistic update about vaccine progress, not a realistic and sober assessment of how dire the situation is right now. And what we should be doing to stop the spread of this virus. That's really weak leadership. And I think in many people's estimation.

REINER: Right. Well, look. I'm optimistic about the vaccine also. And we will have a vaccine, but we have to get there. You know, the outgoing vice president said that Americans should be comforted that help is on the way. But it doesn't comfort me that a vaccine is going to be available in April for most Americans, right? We need help now. So what are you going to do now?

LEMON: We need to get through the winter.

REINER: To keep more Americans from dying. We got to get through the winter. And gets to the end of the fall, and then we have to get through the winter. Yes, exactly. To do that, we have to protect our hospitals, because our hospitals are going to be overrun with patients.

Our ICU's are filling up throughout the Midwest. And the thing to do right now is a nationwide mask mandate. That's the first thing. That's the first thing that we need. I can't wait until January 20th at 12:01:00 p.m. It has to done now.

LEMON: Do you think it will? I don't think it will.

REINER: You know, that would have to happen organically through the nation's Governors. And the other thing that can happen and should happen is that President-Elect Biden's team should start reaching out to the Governors. They don't have to wait until the Biden administration tales office to start doing these things, it makes sense for those states.

LEMON: Yes. I want to show you this picture. It was a dinner being set up for incoming members of Congress. Speaker Pelosi is quoted saying the Capital physician had signed off on it. They cancelled it after an extreme backlash online, and instead of serving boxed meals to go.

Pretty tone-deaf, I mean, they need to be modeling good behavior, especially as families all over the country are really wrestling about what to do about thanksgiving, and the kids in school and what have you. What do you think? Was it tone-deaf?

REINER: You think? So, let's be crystal clear about this. It's unsafe to have dinner inside a place with a lot of people. Particularly a lot of people that are not related to you. Look, every night we tell people, that look, you can't go to mom and dads for thanksgiving, because it's not safe. And now, you know the House of Representatives is going to have two large gatherings in statuary hall?

LEMON: What are they thinking?

REINER: Absolutely insane, from a medical standpoint, and again, your right. Completely tone-deaf from a policy standpoint. Really crazy.

LEMON: What is going on? Everyone is losing it.

REINER: Yeah.

LEMON: OK. Thank you, doctor. Always a pleasure.

REINER: Sure.

[23:25:00]

LEMON: Oh, you're going to stay with me. Sorry, doctor, my bad. I was trying to get rid of you. I don't want to get rid of you. So, I want to bring in now, a former secret service agent, Jonathan Wackrow. Jonathan, thank you. And the doctor is going to stay with us.

So, Jonathan, we have learned that several dozen members of the secret service are either quarantined or infected with COVID-19. The outbreak is being link to the Trump families, the Trump rallies, I should say and parties in the days leading up to the election. I'm glad we are talking about this. We were just talking about what was happening in statutory hall. Is this some necessary risk what service -- secret service members signed up for?

JONATHAN WACKROW, CNN LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST, FORMER SECRET SERVICE AGENT: Don, I think you and I had talked about this time and time again. You know, actions have consequences and we're clearly seeing this, with 130 secret service uniform division officers either in infected with this virus or now quarantining because of it. It's a significant impact to the potential operation around the White House.

You know, but beyond these officers and agents that are affected, there's a ripple effect, there's a second and third order of consequences that they've not only put themselves, have been placed at risk, but their families and loved ones. And all of this, really unnecessarily.

LEMON: We know the president doesn't think of the impact -- the people who have to be around him, on the people who have to be around him, but the joyride to get out of Walter Reed with the secret service and hermetically sealed cars with a COVID positive president that serves us a good reminder. What are your former colleagues saying about the position that they are being put into?

WACKROW: You know, that was really the culmination of multiple miss- steps that the agency unfortunately has been placed into throughout the past months. You know, we should never have been here. There should have been, you know, a codified health security plan built around the president of the United States.

I said this before, the president should never have contracted this deadly virus, nor should the first lady, and anyone else at the White House. We should have had a very comprehensive health security plan that was set up from day one that had all the stakeholders, secret service, the White House military office, the White House staff, guided by science.

That allowed us to -- the president to, you know, do his job, and the White House to function normally but safely under these really unprecedented conditions. We did not do that. Why? Because people failed to actually recognize the threat that this virus actually poses.

LEMON: You know, Doctor, it's not just the agents. It's their friends, their colleagues, and of course it's their families that are being put at risk.

REINER: Right. You know, we wear masks at work to protect each other. Now, we protect ourselves when we protect each other. But this president has spent the last nine months placing the people around him, not just the supporters that come to his rallies, but his advance teams and a secret service agents, and his political staff that travel with him, and the press.

He's put all of these people at needless risk just to really soothe his own vanity. A Stanford study a week or two ago suggested that 18 of these masked gatherings that the president had during the summer probably accounted for about 30,000 new infections. And now we know that some of those folks infected were the people that put their own lives at risk for him, his secret service agents.

LEMON: Thank you, thank you all. I appreciate it. Thank you both, I should say. I appreciate it. Have a good weekend.

REINER: Sure.

LEMON: With cases surging across the country, public health officials are warning about gathering on thanksgiving. OK. So, what do you need to know to celebrate safely? We're going to tell you.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[23:30:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: The coronavirus pandemic, out of control in the U.S., OK? With Thanksgiving now less than two weeks away, millions of Americans are facing tough choices and hard conversations over whether they can spend the holiday with their families.

Dr. Anthony Fauci suggesting Americans should wear masks during those celebrations.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES: Obviously, it's kind of difficult to be eating --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yeah.

FAUCI: -- and drinking at a dinner with a mask on. You can't do that. But to the extent that you can keep that mask on, I mean, nothing is going to be perfect in this, but if you're indoors and gathering with people, even if it's a relatively small group, to the extent possible, keep the mask on.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LEMON: So just don't do it, people. I mean, don't gather. So can families celebrate safely this Thanksgiving?

Joining me now to discuss is Andy Slavitt, the former acting administrator for Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services or Medicare and Medicaid Services.

It is good to see you, Andy. So, I mean, I want to be with my family, but I'm not going to do it. But, I mean, what? Who is right? What should Americans be doing?

ANDY SLAVITT, FORMER ACTING ADMINISTRATOR, CENTERS FOR MEDICARE AND MEDICAID SERVICES: They should have Thanksgiving with the people that you're spending time with now and that's it. Don't add parents, don't add neighbors, don't add college kids.

And the good news is -- I know that's hard. I know we all love our Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving. But the truth is we're crushing, we're crushing our hospital system. And the good news is we do have vaccines coming. They'll be coming around the corner.

So this is one year. You know, we have to pick a holiday that we're going to take off. We didn't do it Memorial Day. We didn't do it Independence Day. We didn't do it Labor Day. We've got 200 million tickets sold for Thanksgiving. This is not going to work. We are going to have over 100 million super spreader events.

[23:34:58]

LEMON: OK. So let me ask you then, because people are going to think, I'm exempt to this because I've been seeing my family, I've been hanging out with them, I've been wearing masks, I've been meeting -- you know, having barbecues, whatever.

So in my family, my mom has been seeing her -- my sister and her nieces, right, and her great grandbabies at the -- and her granddaughters, sorry, my nieces, her granddaughters. She has been seeing them. They've been standing at the end of the driveway, right --

SLAVITT: Mm-hmm.

LEMON: -- and saying -- coming over to say hello to my mother. Don't -- they should not be gathering for Thanksgiving just because it's Thanksgiving. They got to continue to say hello at the end of the driveway, right, regardless.

SLAVITT: Right. This is another day in November. Look, if you're somewhere warm and you can meet outdoors, terrific. If you're seeing someone and they're in your household, you're seeing them every day anyway, terrific.

Otherwise, just keep doing what you're doing, keep the distance. We'll be glad we are. The virus unfortunately has now spread really deeply into most communities and it's, you know, it's something we're going to have to deal with. It's not -- I think only in America do we consider skipping one meal with some friends to be a sacrifice.

LEMON: So even if you live across town or in the same town as your family -- I don't know. I mean, what do you do?

SLAVITT: If they're in your bubble already and you're spending time with them already and you know that they're only spending time with you, then that's one thing. But if you're going to have some people over and you don't know who they've been spending time with, you don't know how big your bubble is, right, because their kids are spending time with other people's kids who are doing other sort of things, and that's how people are catching this. You don't want to catch this virus.

Look, Two weeks from today, we had 160,000 cases today, two weeks from today, a large number of those people are going to be entering the hospital systems that are in many places already at breaking points. Let's give our ICU nurses a break, please. Let's give our doctors a break, please. They are begging us to do this. I know most people are careful, but a lot of people are not.

LEMON: Mm-hmm. My favorite holiday is Christmas. We will see what happens. It's going to be tough, but maybe I won't get to see my family, and this is the way it is.

I got to get this in, doctor. This is a cool online tool from researchers. This is a Georgia tech that helps you assess how likely you are to come in contact with someone who has coronavirus. This is very important, people.

A lot of Thanksgiving events can range between 10 to 15 people. So we tried that out. In places like Tallahassee and Wilkes-Barre, right now, the chance of there being someone with COVID is in the low to mid-teens. In places like Amarillo and Cedar Rapids, you're basically flipping a coin. Can a tool like this help people assess the risk that they're willing to take?

SLAVITT: I think common sense should tell us that -- what risks are you willing -- are you willing to take a 15 percent chance with your mother or your grandmother or your father --

LEMON: Yeah.

SLAVITT: --- or your grandfather? I think that those risks are too high. And look, there is great news. The news around -- about the virus is -- about the vaccines should encourage us. During the course of next year, we're going to get our lives back. This is not going to be forever. This is a short period of time. We can do this. We have to be able to do this.

LEMON: Yeah. Andy, thank you for speaking truth to the viewers. I appreciate it. I'll see you soon.

SLAVITT: Sure.

LEMON: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[23:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Cities all across the country preparing for protests tomorrow being pushed by Stop the Steal, a group embracing President Trump's baseless conspiracy theory that the election is being stolen from him. More than 50 pro-Trump rallies are planned, including in Washington.

Here is CNN's Drew Griffin.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DREW GRIFFIN, CNN SENIOR INVESTIGATIVE CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): It's an internet battle cry. Stop the Steal has swept across inboxes, Facebook pages, and Twitter like an out of control virus.

CROWD: Stop the Steal!

GRIFFIN (voice-over): The claims that Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election from Donald Trump are all false, but the truth means little to people inundated with lies.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I believe that they tried to steal the election.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Stop the Steal may appear as a grassroots uprising, but it started more than four years ago. The brainchild of a political dirty trick artist and convicted liar who has pushed disinformation schemes for years, Roger Stone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Stop the Steal is posting much of this material. There is insurmountable, compelling, overcoming evidence of fraud.

BENJAMIN DECKER, FOUNDER AND CEO, MEMETICA: Stop the Steal is actually a coordinated effort that has been revived twice by Roger Stone and allied political operatives in an attempt to gaslight the entire integrity of our voting and election process.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Ben Decker, who conducts digital (ph) investigations, says far from a grassroots campaign, Stop the Steal is a business. In 2016, Roger Stone's PAC launched StopTheSteal.org, which was asking for $10,000 donations, purportedly back then to help uncover evidence of vote fraud against Donald Trump.

[23:45:05]

Stone told CNN the group was a non-profit created to insure the integrity of the vote.

CROWD: Stop the Steal!

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Stop the Steal re-emerged briefly in the 2018 midterms. Then in the run-up to 2020, the Stop the Steal campaign rebooted by a group of people orbiting Roger Stone. The cast of characters include Ali Alexander, a Roger Stone wannabe.

ALI ALEXANDER, RIGHT-WING ACTIVIST: I actually just got a message from Roger Stone.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): He began hash-tagging Stop the Steal weeks before Election Day and launched a Stop the Steal website.

AMY KREMER, TEA PARTY ACTIVIST (voice-over): I'm one of the co- founders --

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Amy Kremer, a Tea Party activist, who in 2016, formed the group Women Vote Trump with Roger Stone's ex-wife. Kremer was behind the Stop the Steal Facebook group along with two people who worked on Steve Bannon's discredited We Build the Wall fund. It was taken down by Facebook.

Also shutdown, a cluster of pages affiliated with Bannon that coordinated posts, according to Facebook, using inauthentic behavior tactics to artificially boost how many people saw their content. In all, the pages had 2.5 million followers before they were shuttered.

DECKER: Stop the Steal is a higly-coordinated partisan political operation.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): This week, Stone even took his message to the most notorious conspiracy theorist of all, Alex Jones.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A hoax is being perpetrated on the American people.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): On Twitter, researchers at Clemson University saw the hashtag Stop the Steal mentioned in nearly two million tweets. The tweets, the Facebook posts filled with unsubstantiated and false evidence of widespread voter fraud quickly got the attention of disinformation researchers like Ciaran O'Connor.

CIARAN O'CONNOR, ANALYST, INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC DIALOGUE: It only took a day and a half before Facebook took the group down. But by then, it was already too late.

GRIFFIN (voice-over): Copycat sites now number in the dozens and the false information initially spread by a few is only multiplying.

Drew Griffin, CNN, Atlanta.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEMON: Hmm. We'll be right back.

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[23:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

LEMON: Here at CNN, we are proud to celebrate people who are doing extraordinary work to help others. Well, today, Anderson Cooper gives us a sneak peek ahead of this year's very special "CNN Heroes: An All- Star Tribute."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: It has been an incredible and unprecedented year of change in almost every way imaginable. But at times, it's also been a year of hope and inspiration. We have seen, yet again, that the human spirit is resilient, that communities are connected, and that life can be filled with joy.

This year, "CNN Heroes: An All-Star Tribute" is going to be a celebration of the heroic efforts of many people around the globe from two of the biggest stories of this year, the fight against coronavirus and the battle for racial equity and social justice.

Women, men and children of little towns and big cities all over said we can get through this, we can do better. CNN heroes salutes the remarkable people who, when faced with two simultaneous crises, stood up to do more, to help each other.

We want you to help us share some of the incredible moments of inspiration that moved you all this year. Moments that helped keep our spirits lifted and moving forward, together. Here are some of this year's most inspiring moments.

Before, we never noticed the shift change. We didn't see the health care workers and first responders heading home after a long day. But now, we do. We celebrated these heroes every night in cities around the world.

For nearly eight minutes, George Floyd pleaded for his life. His death sparked worldwide protests against police brutality and systemic racism. At the press conference, his daughter Gianna shared hope for us all.

GIANNA FLOYD, DAUGHTER OF GEORGE FLOYD: Dad changed the world.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Dad has changed the world.

COOPER: When the call rang out for PPE to keep our frontline workers safe, Americans responded with great generosity. The workers at Braskem America did something extraordinary. They moved in and quarantined in two of their manufacturing plants for nearly an entire month to get the job done. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: There's the team. The boys (INAUDIBLE).

COOPER: In June, a photograph captured the world's attention. During a London protest, events turned violent. One man, Bryn Male, a white, former police officer, wandered into the crowd and started to get beat up. Black Lives Matter protester, Patrick Hutchinson, saw that he was in peril and carried him to safety.

In Florence, people sang the Italian national anthem. In Chicago, they countered the sorrow with "Livin' On a Prayer."

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Livin' on a prayer.

COOPER: And a Broadway legend Brian Stokes Mitchell serenaded us with "The Impossible Dream" from his balcony.

(SINGING)

COOPER: All over the world, we found a way to lift each other up and connect through the power of music.

And this summer, millions of people worldwide were willing to risk their lives amid the pandemic by stepping out and stepping up to protest systemic racism.