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Trump Asks to Invalidate Votes; Stimulus Talks Falling Apart. Aired 9:30-10a

Aired December 10, 2020 - 09:30   ET

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

[09:30:00]

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Became loathed by his colleagues because he was the one who would shamelessly pretend that you could do things that you couldn't do, like get rid of Obamacare, if only his fellow Republicans were not weak and wimpy. And he did that to rally the base behind his presidential campaign.

But in that campaign, he encountered somebody who was even more cynical and shameless than him, and that was Donald Trump, and Trump was more appealing. Trump beat him in the primaries, which enraged Ted Cruz, which led him finally, at the end, to say what he really thought of Trump.

Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX) (Mary 3, 2016): I tell you what I really think of Donald Trump. This man is a pathological liar. He doesn't know the difference between truth and lies. He lies practically every word that comes out of his mouth.

The man cannot tell the truth but he combines it with being a narcissist. A narcissist at a level I don't think this country has ever seen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARWOOD: Now, where we are now is that President Trump's about to go away. He lost the election. Everyone knows that. Ted Cruz knows that. But Ted Cruz's ambition has not gone away. And so as Trump leaves, he's going to stand up again, try to rally that base behind him. The case is going nowhere. And, sadly, there are tens of millions of Republicans around the country who believe this nonsense and we're just going to have to wait for the Supreme Court to throw it out.

On Monday the Electoral College -- the electors are going to meet in state capitals and cast their votes, elect Joe Biden -- make Joe Biden the literal president-elect. And then we'll go on with things after that. And, presumably, Ted Cruz will try to run for president in the future if Donald Trump doesn't beat him to it for 2024. JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR: John Harwood, those words from 2016, notable.

Thanks very much.

For more on this let's bring in Republican election lawyer and CNN contributor Ben Ginsberg.

Mr. Ginsberg, always good to have you back.

BEN GINSBERG, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Thank you.

We spoke earlier this week about the Supreme Court's brief and stinging rejection of the previous attempt to invalidate millions of votes. This, the Pennsylvania case.

Will the Supreme Court treat this latest attempt any differently?

GINSBERG: I suspect it will be exactly the same treatment. I mean, after all, there are 20 million reasons, which are 20 million American voters, that would be disenfranchised should the court grant the Texas attorney general's wish. And there are two direct provisions of the Constitution that the relief that Texas attorney general is seeking contravenes -- I mean the time, place and manner of holding elections is reserved to the states. That doesn't mean Texas can go in and tell Pennsylvania how to run its elections.

And, secondly, the Constitution says that all the electors from the different states have to meet on the same day and the Texas attorney general wants the postponement of the meeting of the Electoral College in those four dates. So the U.S. Supreme Court is not going to accountance (ph) this.

POPPY HARLOW, CNN ANCHOR: Mr. Ginsberg, to the president's motion itself in the Texas case, he asserts and writes that the reporting in the media about the -- about the lack of proof misses the point. They say that the media gets it wrong because the larger issue is whether state officials loosened ballot safeguards, quote, so that fraud becomes undetectable. It's like they're searching for a problem that doesn't exist to try to get the court to weigh in on, no?

GINSBERG: Yes, absolutely. And there is a consistent body of election law that says you can't bring sour grapes complaints. You can't change the rules under which an election is held after the election itself. That was one of the tenets of the Bush versus Gore case in 2000.

But the attorney generals have apparently forgotten that because all of the laws that the president says in his motion and that the attorney generals cite were all litigated in the courts before the election and they lost. They lost them all. So now this is just a sour grapes case.

SCIUTTO: Mr. Ginsberg, I know that folks at home, their eyes might glaze over at the latest outrage, shock, et cetera, but I don't think that we can put what's happening right now in the basket of the normal by any means, can we? I just -- I just want to ask you to put into words, as someone with years in Washington and expertise in election law, what a president attempting to throw out millions of votes based on fraud that they didn't even allege in court, right, what does that mean for this country, for election law?

[09:35:05]

GINSBERG: Well, it means -- I mean it's more than just election law, it's the whole foundation of the democracy, which is about elections being held and with each party that competes in the elections, accepting that defeat is a possibility, that the voters have the ultimate say in who their elected officials are.

And once the voters speak, part of the compact with which this country operates is that both sides recognize that when you win you win and when you lose you lose. And that's being violated here. And that's a basic tenant of the whole country, the whole democracy, that's -- that's being assaulted.

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: It will be interesting to try to explain it to our kids one day when they ask, I don't get it, how did this happen?

Thank you. Ben Ginsberg, great to have you.

GINSBERG: Or grandkids.

HARLOW: Or grandkids, you're right.

Thank you.

Well, coming up, we have an exclusive interview with Melinda Gates as the U.S. nears FDA authorization for the vaccine.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MELINDA GATES, CO CHAIR, BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION: What worries me the most is how do we get this vaccine out? How do we make sure we get this vaccine out to the far corners of the globe, these first five vaccines that are to come, because everybody needs this vaccine.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:40:47]

HARLOW: It's a big day. Right now an FDA panel is meeting and in hours Pfizer's COVID vaccine could be authorized for use.

Also today, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation making their largest contribution yet to fight this pandemic, a quarter of a billion dollars in additional aid. That brings their total commitment up to $1.57 billion to fight COVID.

I spoke with Melinda Gates for an exclusive interview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

HARLOW: Today is a huge day. The Pfizer vaccine may be approved by the FDA by the end of today. Stepping back for a moment, how significant is it that we are on the verge of potentially multiple, highly effective vaccines being approved in this country so quickly?

MELINDA GATES, CO CHAIR, BILL AND MELINDA GATES FOUNDATION: It is incredible. I mean, if you think about where we were on March 30th, I don't think any of us would have predicted that by the end of December or mid-December we'd have vaccine. It is an incredible tribute to the vaccine community, to the scientists who have worked night and day on these vaccines to even get us to this point. It is a really exciting moment for the country.

HARLOW: It is for sure, but you have still warned that we have a stretch of very dark months ahead of us. What worries you the most as we sit here this morning?

GATES: Well, what worries me the most is how do we get this vaccine out? How do we make sure we get this vaccine out to the far corners of the globe, these first five vaccines that are to come because everybody needs this vaccine? And if we only get it to the high-income countries, this disease is going to bounce around, we're going to see twice as many deaths and part of this announcement that Bill and I are making of this $250 million is to buy 200 million doses for the rest of the world, for low and middle income countries.

HARLOW: A quarter of a billion dollar investment donation from The Gates Foundation being announced today. This goes largely towards equitable distribution, which your foundation has said is going to be even more expensive than developing a vaccine.

GATES: Well, it takes a lot of planning to get vaccine out to these remote, rural areas. The planning has to start now if, in fact, we're going to get vaccine there. And it's got to be purchased, manufactured and then there has to be money there for it to be purchased.

HARLOW: Yes.

GATES: And so the world needs to put up more money to make sure that low-income countries can get the vaccine.

HARLOW: The president just signed an executive order to try to put Americans at the front of the line when it comes to vaccines, granted it doesn't really have any teeth because pharmaceutical companies have already made deals and guarantees with -- with other nations around the world. But I just wonder if that's what you were worried about when you kept saying and warning against vaccine nationalism?

GATES: That's exactly what we were worried about. Instead, what should be done is the Defense Production Act, which is, they should be scaling up lots and lots of manufacturing so that not just the U.S. gets vaccines, but everybody gets vaccines. So this is this reservation system is exactly the type of thing we were concerned about.

HARLOW: What did you think when you heard the president say that?

GATES: I was -- I knew it was coming and I was just incredibly disappointed. I'm much more optimistic about the president-elect and the COVID task force, this eminent task force that he's put together. I think we're going to see a lot more sensible policy making in the United States. But that starts, you know, January 20th. And we have still some dark months to live ahead until then.

HARLOW: Yes.

Have you been speaking to the president-elect directly?

GATES: Yes, we have.

HARLOW: So what did you, and maybe you and Bill, tell President-elect Joe Biden you believe, you know, task number one on day one is for his administration on this front?

GATES: One of the things I know about President-elect Biden is, he's not just thinking about how to keep Americans safe, he's thinking about global leadership about how to keep everybody safe. And the great news is, we will add more money to our economy if we get everybody else vaccinated.

[09:45:01]

HARLOW: Very troubling to see the new numbers out of Pew Research that only 42 percent of black Americans trust vaccines right now for COVID. And it's understandable given the history of this country going back to Tuskegee and beyond. But I wonder what we need to do about that.

GATES: Yes, we have to address the -- the disparities that people of color face in our health system. There are reasons they don't want to go to the health system. And even when they go, they're discriminated against or there's bias. We have got to fix that if we're going to have all Americans be safe.

HARLOW: Disinformation has been rampant, to say the least, throughout this pandemic, and it's rampant once again when it comes to the vaccine. What is -- what are the consequences of that?

GATES: Death. Disinformation can equal death. So if you don't do the right things to keep yourself safe, you or a loved one may die. And that's why it's so discouraging to see so much disinformation spread out there.

And what I tell everybody is, ask your doctor. He or she knows what's best for you or your family.

HARLOW: Yes.

GATES: That's where you go for credible information, not the Internet.

HARLOW: But, unfortunately, a lot of people go to the Internet. And you are formally of the tech world. So I wonder if you could just speak to those in power at the tech companies, at the social media companies in particular right now. Do the social media companies, FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, on and on, have a responsibility to do more right now, Melinda, in terms of getting this misinformation, this disinformation, off their platforms?

GATES: They absolutely have a responsibility. Anybody who's spreading information in society has a responsibility to spread that information safely and equitably. And so, you know, I think a bit the Internet and the rise of social media has happened so quickly that really the regulations and the good policy making hasn't stayed out in front of it. And, quite frankly, it needs to catch up.

HARLOW: You have said, we've seen far more deaths than was necessary in the United States from COVID. And I wonder how many deaths, if you think there are a significant number of deaths that could have been prevented with better leadership from the top, from President Trump.

GATES: We know there could have been less deaths. If you -- we had started from the beginning or reassessed on July 1st or reassessed on September 1st and instead of having 50 different state solutions had a national plan for testing that was grouped up, that grouped up the testing so everybody had access to a lab and could get the results quickly, and then we did contact tracing, we would have kept the death rate down.

HARLOW: What's the most important thing, Melinda, that you have learned this year?

GATES: I have learned that we have a resilience that I think maybe sometimes we don't even realize we had as human beings.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HARLOW: Jim, she also expressed concern that the richest countries appear to be the ones, us, the U.K., getting the vaccination first, but she sort of had a glimmer of hope in the fact that European countries have pulled a lot of money together to distribute the vaccine to much poorer nations around the world, right, because it doesn't work if the world doesn't -- doesn't -- doesn't get it.

We had a long conversation. The rest of its online on CNN Business' YouTube Channel.

SCIUTTO: Yes, and that distribution does not appear to be a priority for this current administration, right?

HARLOW: Right.

SCIUTTO: I mean you're aware of the executive order earlier this week from Trump about kind of pooling them here domestically.

HARLOW: That's a good point.

SCIUTTO: But, again, it's a pandemic. It's global. You can't -- you can't fight a global pandemic without global cooperation.

HARLOW: Yes. Yes. So will that change under the Biden administration? Clearly she's been talking to the president-elect a lot.

SCIUTTO: Yes. HARLOW: And I have a sense that it will.

OK, we'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:53:34]

HARLOW: If you can believe it --

SCIUTTO: Yes.

HARLOW: Stimulus talks are falling apart this morning as millions of Americans remain desperate for relief. The two sides still stuck, apparently, on state and local funding and how to craft lawsuit liability protections.

SCIUTTO: Yes, I mean, it happens on a day that we've seen a jump in new unemployment claims.

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: The House voted Wednesday to pass a short term funding bill in order to overt a government shutdown at week's end, in effect to give a few more days to negotiate.

CNN's Lauren Fox is on Capitol Hill this morning.

I mean, Lauren, you know, Jesus --

HARLOW: Yes.

SCIUTTO: After all these months, are they really going to go home without -- without a deal?

LAUREN FOX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're talking really about eight days. That's how long they have until the next spending deadline. And, you know, what the expectation has been all along is that if you're going to do something on the stimulus bill, you have to do it if it's riding on the spending bill. And that's because it's sort of the last train leaving the station.

But the bipartisan group is still stuck on how to deal with liability insurance. That has been a red line for Republicans, something they need in these negotiations. And you have a lot of Republican senators who are in leadership essentially throwing cold water on the bipartisan group's framework at this point, saying, you know, they've done a lot of good work, but at this point it needs to be a negotiation between Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. They are the only ones who can sort of solve for these outstanding issues.

[09:55:02]

But we know that they've been trying to work on this for the last several months and have gotten nowhere. We still are waiting to see if McConnell and Pelosi might be able to get into a room and figure this out.

But I pushed the speaker yesterday on this and asked her, you know, a lot of Republicans are saying you just need to get in a room and negotiate with McConnell. She said, good for them, they can get in a room and negotiate with McConnell.

So that's where things stand this morning, Jim and Poppy.

SCIUTTO: Folks are going to lose their benefits the day after Christmas, any will. It's just remarkable.

Lauren Fox, good to have you, as always, on the story.

HARLOW: Thanks, Lauren.

Well, happening right now, a pivotal FDA meeting. You're seeing a live stream of it. It is on the potential Emergency Use Authorization of the Pfizer COVID vaccine. We have all the breaking details ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:00:01]

SCIUTTO: Well, a very good Thursday morning to you. I'm Jim Sciutto.

HARLOW: And I'm Poppy Harlow.

This is happening right now.