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Trump Makes Desperate Call To Georgia Officials To Overturn 2020 Election; Trump Demands Georgia Officials Find Him Votes To Tilt Election; Interview With Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL). Aired 7-8p ET
Aired January 03, 2021 - 19:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[19:00:03]
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.
ANA CABRERA, CNN HOST: Top of the hour. You are live in the CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Ana Cabrera in New York.
We continue with this shocking new audio showing a desperate President Trump resorting to strong-arm tactics in his effort to overturn the 2020 election results. In this hour-long phone call on Saturday, Trump asked Georgia's secretary of state point-blank to fudge the numbers, to flip the state's 2020 result to give Trump a victory.
Here's that specific piece of audio which was first obtained by "The Washington Post."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: So, look, 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.
So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election and it's not fair to take it away from us like this. And it's going to be very costly in many ways.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CABRERA: CNN has now obtained the entire phone call and we want to give you as much context as possible so you can hear for yourselves what the president was trying to accomplish in this phone call. So I'm going to play for you now a seven-minute excerpt from this phone call. You'll hear the president appear to issue a threat if the count is not changed. And Georgia's secretary of state, a Republican, Brad Raffensperger, pushes back.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We have many, many times the number of votes necessary to win the state, and we won the state. We won it very substantially and easily, and we're getting -- we have -- much of this is very -- you know, they're certified. Far more is certified than we need. But we're getting additional numbers certified, too, and we're getting pictures of drop boxes being delivered and delivered late and delivered three days later in some cases, plus we have many affidavits to that effect.
MARK MEADOWS, WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: So, Mr. President, if I -- if I might be able to jump in and I'll give Brad a chance.
Mr. Secretary, obviously, there is -- there are allegations where we believe that not every vote or fair vote and legal vote was counted. That's at odds with the representation from the Secretary of State's Office. What I'm hopeful for is there's some way that we can -- we can find some kind of agreement to look at this a little bit more fully. You know, the president mentioned Fulton County but in some of these areas where there seems to be a difference of -- where the facts seem to lead.
And so, Mr. Secretary, I was hopeful that, you know, in a spirit of cooperation and compromise is there's something that we can at least have a discussion to look at some of these allegations to find a path forward that's less litigious.
BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: Well, I listened to what, you know, the president has just said.
President Trump, we've had several lawsuits and we've had to respond in court to the lawsuits and the contentions. We don't agree that you have won. We don't -- you know, I didn't agree about the 200,000 number that you'd mentioned. But I go through that point by point.
What we have done is we gave our state Senate about one and a half hours of our time going through the election issue by issue, and then on the statehouse of the Government Affairs Committee we gave them about two and a half hours of our time, going back point by point on all the issues of the contention. And then just a few days ago we met with our U.S. congressman, Republican congressman, and we gave them about two hours of our time, talking about this past election.
Going back -- primarily what you've talked about here focused in on primarily I believe is the absentee ballot process. I don't believe that you're really questioning the Dominion machines because we did a hand re-tally, a 100 percent re-tally of all the ballots, and compared them to what the machines said and it came up with virtually the same result.
Then we did the recount, and we got virtually the same result. So I guess we can probably take that off the table. I don't think there's an issue about that. I think what you are --
TRUMP: Well, Brad -- Brad, not that there's not an issue but -- because we have a big issue with Dominion in other states and perhaps in yours.
[19:05:03]
But we haven't felt we needed to go there. And just to, you know, maybe put a little different spin on what Mark is saying, Mark Meadows, yes, we'd like to go further, but we don't really need to. We have all the votes we need. You know, we won the state. If you took -- these are the most minimal numbers, the numbers that I gave you, those are numbers that are certified, your absentee ballots sent to vacant addresses, your out-of-state voters, 4,925.
You know, when you add them up, it's many more -- it's many times the 11,779 number. So we could go through -- we have not gone through your Dominion. So we can't give them blessing. I mean, in other states, we think we found tremendous corruption with Dominion machines, but we'll have to see. But we only lost the state by -- by that number, 11,000 votes. And 779. So with that being said, with just what we have, and, you know, with just what we have we're giving you minimal numbers.
We're doing the most conservative numbers possible. We're many times, many, many times above the margin. And so we don't really have to -- Mark, I don't think we have to go through --
MEADOWS: Right, right.
TRUMP: Because what's the difference between winning the election by two votes and winning it by a half a million votes?
MEADOWS: Right.
TRUMP: I think we probably did win by half a million. You know, one of the things that happened, Brad, is we have other people coming in now from Alabama and from South Carolina and from other states, and they're saying it's impossible for you to have lost Georgia. We won -- you know, in Alabama we set a record. Got the highest vote ever.
In Georgia we set a record with a massive amount of votes. And they say it's not possible to have lost Georgia. And I could tell you by our rallies. I could tell you by the rally I'm having on Monday night, the place, they already have lines of people standing out front waiting. It's just not possible to have lost Georgia. Not possible. When I heard it was close, I said, there's no way. But they dropped a lot of votes in there, late at night. You know that, Brad. And that's what we are working on very, very stringently.
But regardless of those votes, with all of it being said, we lost by essentially 11,000 votes and we have many more votes already calculated and certified to. So I just don't know, you know, Mark, I don't know what's the purpose. I won't give Dominion a pass because we found too many bad things. But we don't need Dominion or anything else. We have won this election in Georgia based on all of this.
And there is nothing wrong with saying that, Brad. You know, I mean, having a correct -- the people of Georgia are angry and these numbers are going to be repeated on Monday night along with others that we're going to have by that time which are much more substantial, even. And the people of Georgia are angry.
The people of the country are angry. And there's nothing wrong with saying that, you know, that you've recalculated because the 2,236 in absentee ballots, I mean, they're all exact numbers that were done by accounting firms, law firms, et cetera.
And even if you cut them in half, cut them in half, and cut them in half again, it's more votes than we need.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CABRERA: Let's be clear there, there is nothing there. The president is spouting conspiracy theories, he's spouting lies. You heard the secretary of state push back at times. But the bottom line is that state conducted at least three recounts, they've done a signature audit, one of the big counties, in Cobb County, which found no voter fraud, and this issue has been litigated by the courts as well, state courts, federal courts, all the way up to the Supreme Court, when it comes to issues of the election integrity.
So let's bring in our reporters here. We have Kyung Lah, standing by in Georgia, John Harwood at the White House.
Kyung, you know, Tuesday Senate runoffs there in Georgia were a big part of this call. How are all the campaigns now responding to this stunning audio?
KYUNG LAH, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we're just getting a new response from the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party and he just posted this, David Schaefer, on Twitter and he is claiming that the president will be filing a lawsuit claiming that this phone call between the president and the secretary of state was illegally recorded.
I want to make real clear, we haven't seen the content of these alleged lawsuits, but the chair of the Georgia Republican Party is now tweeting that the president has filed two lawsuits, a federal suit and a state suit against the Georgia secretary of state.
[19:10:03]
So we'll have to look into that. That's one response that we are just getting in now this evening after that astonishing recording of that telephone call between the president and the secretary of state. As far as why I'm here, I'm here in Savannah, Georgia, and this is an event that Democrats were at both of the candidates, the Democratic challengers who want to flip these two Senate seats here in the state of Georgia, the balance of all of this is control of the U.S. Senate.
Democrats hope to win control by flipping those two seats. And the person who would be the tiebreaker, the person who would break the tie in the Senate, this 50-50 split would be Vice President Kamala Harris, the incoming vice president, and here's what she had to say coming here in Savannah, in support of these two candidates.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA), VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT OF THE UNITED STATES: Have you all heard about that recorded conversation? Well, it was, yes, certainly the voice of desperation. Most certainly that. And it was a bold, boldfaced, bold abuse of power by the president of the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LAH: And she's hoping that that will inspire Democrats who so far have appeared to outpace their November 2020 early vote pace in this Senate runoff. She's hoping that it will inspire more to go to the polls.
And we also heard Jon Ossoff, Ana, go to the mic and say that this was a gross abuse of power by the president -- Ana.
CABRERA: And, Kyung, just coming back to you for a second, any, any word at all from the Republican candidates, Senator Perdue or Senator Loeffler?
LAH: You know, we reached out to both of the campaigns and we have heard nothing from them. Senator Loeffler was on the campaign trail today and she did not deviate from her message, from her general stump speech. She simply is pretending that this call never happened.
CABRERA: John, the timing here, it's not just that it comes, you know, a couple of days before the runoffs in Georgia, but it's also just days before the president was about to get exactly what he wanted out of congressional Republicans, a majority of them now disputing the electoral college results as they are, you know, set to count the electoral votes and make all of that official when they certify the results on Wednesday.
Will this, perhaps, derail this effort that GOP lawmakers were, you know, prior to this call planning?
JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I doubt it, Ana, for the same reason that the Georgia party chairman responded in the way that Kyung just reported, that is complaining about the leaking of the audiotape rather than the contents of the audiotape and the fact that the president was asking the Georgia secretary of state to do something improper.
Look, much of the Republican Party is now engaged in a process of proving that President Trump was correct when he said I could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and I wouldn't lose any support. We expect more than 100 Republican members of Congress to side with the objection to the certification of the electoral votes, 12 Republican senators have said that they're going to side with that objection. In for a dime, in for a dollar.
Now to be clear, the president isn't going to get what he wants in the sense of the Congress rejecting the electoral college results. That is going to be affirmed after some debate and a bit of a circus on Capitol Hill. But it is an opportunity for other Republicans to speak up and condemn the president's behavior, but that's not been at the forefront of the Republican response. A few voices, but not all that many.
CABRERA: Yes. One of those voices is Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who will be talking with us later this hour.
John Harwood, Kyung Lah, thank you both.
I want to bring in right now Anthony Scaramucci, the former White House communications director under President Trump.
Anthony, you've heard this recording now of this phone call. First, just give me your reaction. Are you surprised? Are you alarmed? Disturbed?
ANTHONY SCARAMUCCI, FORMER WHITE HOUSE COMMUNICATIONS DIRECTOR UNDER PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, certainly not surprised. I think anybody that's been in Trump -- in President Trump's orbit has heard calls like this and has heard that sort of pushiness and that level of intimidation. Obviously there was lawlessness related to the Ukrainian president. This is rank lawlessness happening domestically.
And so he needs to be impeached again. But they won't do that of course because you've only got 16 days left to go here. So -- but I mean, it's just absolutely disgraceful that there's only a few Republicans that are willing to speak out against this.
And so why that is so troublesome, Ana, is that they're seeing this as a sign to coalesce with the president and they're seeing this as to torque up Trumpism even harder, thinking that that's a winning strategy, that it's a working-class party now, and that more Trumpism, more QAnon is going to be their ticket to more power.
[19:15:15]
You know, they obviously picked up some seats in the House and this is sort of evidence that is creating this sort of hysteria in the Republican Party. So we have to break the back of it and we will. There's a very smart and large group, a coalition, of Republicans or former Republicans that are center-right conservatives that know that they need to smash and demolish this level of autocracy, authoritarianism and fascism.
And so we will break the back of this. We'll work tirelessly over the next couple of years to do that. But it's absolutely reprehensible and it's a sad day in U.S. history that nobody in the Republican Party is really hammering this for the lawlessness that it actually is.
CABRERA: Right. Right. Help me understand that because, to some, this might sound like mob talk. Why doesn't the president's base seem to care?
SCARAMUCCI: Well, you know, the base has drunken the Kool-Aid of President Trump and so he can do anything he wants. He talked about shooting people on Fifth Avenue. But there are responsible people that took an oath to the U.S. Constitution that know better. Let's take a guy like Josh Hawley, went to Yale Law School, Ted Cruz went to Harvard Law School, he studied under Professor Lawrence Tribe.
I took that same constitutional law class as Ted Cruz did a few years prior to him. These guys know better. This is total political opportunistic strategy, this is total political expediency, and it's absolutely disgusting. But you know, the good news is, a lot of wealthy people and a lot of really smart people that are going to coalesce and smash these guys' smithereens politically. And so we'll be working that --
CABRERA: But I just wonder if it --
SCARAMUCCI: -- over the next 24 months. CABRERA: But is that going to be too late? The president will be gone.
He won't be in office. You know, the time was before the end of his presidency and yet --
SCARAMUCCI: Well, I recognize that. But these 11 or 12 people that are trying to foment and grow Trumpism, if you look through history, take a look at the 1924 Munich Beer Hall Push where the insurrection by the Nazis was put down and then they rose to power in 1933.
These guys have to be smashed politically, Ana. And so yes, President Trump will be meleed (PH) on the 20th of January. That is for certain. But there's 11 or 12 sinister people that are coalescing around him and they have to be -- they have to be handled, they have to be handled, they have to be handled deftly, politically, not just marketing and political advertising. But we have to have a grassroots effort inside the country explaining what these people are trying to do to our democracy which has been very, very successful for 240-plus years.
CABRERA: Coming back to this audiotape, the president and the boldness of him to make these comments, especially with other people on this call, his White House chief of staff, there was a predominant GOP lawyer. What does that say?
SCARAMUCCI: That says that he, like other autocrats, has willing accomplices that have caught his fever. They're intimidated by him. They like this strategy. They're drinking that Kool-Aid as I said. And so, you know, listen, you can go throughout history, good men and women, once of sound principles and sound morals, have fallen for this sort of nonsense. And so I'm not surprised by it.
You know, Mark Meadows is a disgraceful guy, absolutely disgusting person, and, you know, we will work together, we will form a coalition of people and we will work together to defeat this nonsense. I am super confident of that because America is going to rise again, the economy is going to grow and the anger is going to dissipate, and with it will be all of these reckless principalist characters in Republican Party politics.
CABRERA: They drank the Kool-Aid, you say. "The Washington Post" which first obtained the audio reported about it saying it was clear from the call that Trump had surrounded himself with aides who have fed his false perceptions that the election was stolen.
Anthony, does he really believe that he is right about this? Do the people around him also truly believe it?
SCARAMUCCI: Well, he absolutely doesn't believe it. Remember, he said that Ted Cruz stole the Iowa caucus back in 2016. He said to us on the campaign in 2016 that if he lost the presidency, he was going to play the whole fraud game and the whole card of it being stolen and it being a rigged system. And so he just repurposed that 2016 playbook and put it into gear in 2020. The big difference, though, is that he's sitting in the office of the presidency and that toxic power is sort of like a narcotic for these people around him. But, no, the president doesn't believe this. He's already looking for
houses in Palm Beach. They don't want him in Palm Beach. They obviously don't want him in New York.
[19:20:02]
He'll be a social pariah once he leaves office and these despicable characters will try to pretend that they weren't involved with this thing in, you know, six to 12 months. But no, they don't -- they don't believe it. But they've got a lot of people unfortunately on the outside who don't know their nefarious nature, as well as somebody like me knows them. They actually do believe it. And that's the scary part. They've got a very large group of people that supported President Trump believing nonsense, believing lies and believing propaganda.
And so, you know, we'll break that fever. I'm very confident of that. And the economy is going to grow once we can get out of the pandemic and these people will be put aside and hopefully you and I will be talking about it in a year, talking about how sordid this was at the moment. But thank God President Trump was defeated by a very strong coalition of people that actually look like the wonderful colorful mosaic of the American people.
And so I'm very confident of that. Today is a disgusting and very dark day for America and American presidential history. But we'll get past it like -- we're very resilient country and we'll get past this as we've gotten past many other things equally sorted in our past.
CABRERA: This is definitely an historic day in the U.S. Thank You, Anthony Scaramucci.
We have much more now on our breaking news in just a moment as we continue to play this audio recording obtained by CNN. We have the full phone call as the president tried to pressure Georgia's secretary of state just this weekend to magically find him votes so he could win that state.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CABRERA: More on our breaking news tonight. President Trump in a phone call ordering Georgia's Republican secretary of state to, quote, "find enough votes" to magically hand Trump an electoral victory in that state. It was an hour-long phone call between the president and the secretary of state of Georgia. It took place yesterday. Here's that specific piece of audio which was first obtained by "The Washington Post."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: So, look, 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.
So tell me, Brad, what are we going to do? We won the election and it's not fair to take it away from us like this. And it's going to be very costly in many ways. (END VIDEO CLIP)
[19:25:05]
CABRERA: Joining us now is former independent senator, Joe Lieberman of Connecticut who back in 2000 was the Democratic Party's nominee for vice president in an election that came down to roughly 500 votes in Florida. This election obviously very different. It was nowhere close.
Senator, what is your reaction to our breaking news tonight?
JOE LIEBERMAN (D), 200 VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Well, I begin by saying that the president made a call to the secretary of state of Georgia that no election official at any level in American government should ever have made, let alone the president of the United States. It was reckless, it was contrary to basic American values, we're a country of a rule of law, and this call was basically an attempt to get the secretary of state to do something that he believed the law does not require him to do.
It also violates the basic principle of our democracy, the people who governor are there by consent of the governed, and the people of Georgia have said and the governor, the lieutenant governor, the secretary of state, all Republicans who supported Donald Trump, have said Joe Biden carried Georgia. So this call was irresponsible. It was reckless. It might have been illegal.
If President Trump was in the middle of his term, I have no doubt that this call and the tape of it would be the basis of another attempt to impeach him for conducting, carrying out behavior that is not worthy of our American presidency.
CABRERA: If not impeachment, though, what can be done to hold him accountable?
LIEBERMAN: Well, the main thing that can be done now, because he has less than three weeks in office, is for Republicans to reject his leadership. I know all the polls show that the poor constituents of the Republican Party still support President Trump, but honestly, Dante, the hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of moral crisis preserve their neutrality.
This is a time of moral crisis. And President Trump -- Donald Trump will take the Republican Party over the edge. Incidentally, I want to give a shout-out and praise to the Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in Georgia. This man deserves a chapter in profiles in courage.
The president of the United States calls him and basically asked him to change the position that he's taken after two or three recounts in Georgia, and litigation that ended up in his favor, and he has the guts, the courage, to quietly say no to the president of the United States. So that's the kind of behavior that I think we'd rather see.
And look, I'd be saying this if this was a Democratic president. This is bad for the country. We can't take it anywhere. Incidentally, the president also has to get to a point where he realizes there's no more reason to fight. I said after the election thinking about our own experience, Al Gore and me in 2000, where we did go to court. It ended up in the Supreme Court. It shouldn't have been there. The Supreme Court made a decision which we thought was absolutely wrong and infuriated us.
But Al Gore said for the good of the country, we've got to stop now. It was December 13th, 2000. The electoral college votes were going to be opened up in Washington about a week later. And in the interest of our country, Al Gore said that's it. Even though we were bitterly disappointed.
It's time for Donald Trump to do that because he's really playing with fire here. There are millions of people within America who are very loyal to him. And some of them are coming to Washington on Wednesdays. Some of them have said at his urging, some of them have said on their own that they may have to get violent.
The president is at a point where if he doesn't stop soon, he will have threatened the domestic tranquility of the United States. And, you know, that's one of the reasons why our founders wrote the Constitution and started the United States of America to ensure our domestic tranquility. I think President Trump has to be told by somebody around him that he's about to do something that will risk the domestic tranquility of the United States, and frankly putting people at risk of personal injury and danger.
CABRERA: It is. It's incredibly dangerous and here you have at least a dozen Republicans on the Senate side, 140 House lawmakers, Republicans, will participate in this stunt next week protesting Biden's victory and objecting to counting these electoral votes of a free, fair, secure election.
[19:30:07]
You called the Secretary of State of Georgia a profile in courage, what do you call this effort?
LIEBERMAN: I think it's this effort is another example of the disease of partisanship going wild. And what I mean, it is very clear that everything has been done since Election Day in November regarding the presidential vote count has been according to the Constitution.
The vote that's going to occur on Wednesday where the electoral ballots are open from the different states is purely ceremonial. I mean, if Members of Congress look at the law that was passed in the 1880s that governs what happens on Wednesday, the Members of Congress then passed that law to make sure that the will of the states was respected and that all it happened in Washington was that the envelopes are opened and the votes are counted.
I do want to say, again, another word for Al Gore, he was Vice President of the United States in December of 2000. He presided at the joint session where the electoral ballots from the states were open, but he knew that he had no role beyond just basically opening the envelopes and presiding. And we discouraged the members of the Senate from joining the few
protests that happened in the House because we thought it was wrong. And as a result, there was never a vote on those protests in 2000.
Honestly, we better get back to that for the good of the country and for the domestic tranquility of the country, so we don't get into -- from a political debate here into what I fear could be civil unrest in America. It's not worth it.
CABRERA: Quickly, if you will, because I only have a few seconds left, but you are a dear friend of Senator John McCain, who himself felt the sting of a presidential election loss, but he still urged people to accept Barack Obama as their President.
To see his party now, what do you think he would say?
LIEBERMAN: Can I be honest? Well, in a lot of ways, it is not repeatable on CNN, but, he probably would say in McCain vocabulary, the wackos have taken over the National Party, his party, and he would hope and pray and work for the return of center-right Republicans.
John was a conservative Republican, but he was an independent person who always put the well-being of the country first, and he would really be dismayed and furious about what's become of the Republican Party today.
CABRERA: Former Senator Joe Lieberman, thank you very much for your time tonight.
LIEBERMAN: Thank you, Ana.
CABRERA: We have much more on our breaking news, President Trump in a new audio recording now obtained by CNN trying to pressure Georgia's Secretary of State to magically find him votes so he could win that state and overturn President-elect Joe Biden's victory.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[19:36:24]
CABRERA: We're back with our breaking news. President Trump on tape ordering Georgia's Secretary of State this weekend to find the votes needed to hand him a win in that state.
Let me just quote a couple of chunks here. He said, "There's nothing wrong with saying you know, that you'll recalculate it." He goes on to say, "I think you have to say that you're going to re-examine it and you can re-examine it, but re-examine it with people that want to find answers, not people who don't want to find answers."
I want to get right to Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger who is with us now. Congressman, what went through your mind when you heard this audio today?
REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): It was disgusting. I mean, you know, I heard the audio parts and then I actually read the transcript. And I would encourage everybody to spend the time and read the transcript because in it, you see, you know, threats made -- threatening in essence a crime to the Secretary of State.
You see the repeating of conspiracy theories that you see on the internet that get disproven, but the President believes these or at least he is saying he believes them, and then again, just saying, we want people that are basically find the vote for us. It's disgusting.
And quite honestly, it's going to be interesting, you know, all of these Members of Congress that have now come out and said they're going to object to the election. I don't know how you can do that right now with a clear conscience because this is -- this is so obviously beyond the pale is probably not even the way to describe it.
CABRERA: Do you see this serving as a red line for your G.O.P. colleagues who have up to this point stood neck and neck with this President?
KINZINGER: I don't know. You know, there were a few times I thought we'd had red lines in the past. You know, it's very different though. And this one, I think people need to understand that we've reached a very different demarcation.
It's one thing to say, you know, I support President Trump prior to the election and to vote for him, and that's your right and everything else. After this, though, when he loses, and we're threatening a peaceful transition of power and we're finagling with the very Constitution that we rely on to keep peace in this country. That is very different.
And, you know, we are not going to be here to pick the electors that we want. We're supposed to vote simply that the state that sent them, send them, that's our job.
But we are in this constant moment of conspiracy theories and people have been overloaded with so much misinformation that -- and I don't blame them. I understand that they don't know where else to turn because there's so much information that they just pick somebody they trust and leaders of Congress are misleading people daily in this by not pushing back.
CABRERA: There's so few Republicans like yourself to say what you're saying. Do you feel like you're just on an island right now?
KINZINGER: That's actually exactly what I told somebody. It feels like you're on an island, and you know what, there's a lot of people that I think will become more outspoken.
I don't know, I mean, I can't speak for them. You're not going to have all members of the Republican House, you know, vote to object to the electors, but I just think this is different than saying maybe I don't agree with his Afghanistan policy or some policy issue or I didn't like the way he said something.
This is about the very nature of the Constitution. And to my Republican friends out there, listen, if we win the presidency in four years and the Democrats tried to do the same thing, I don't think they will, but if they do, you have no moral authority to be upset by it if you voted for this. You have no moral authority.
[19:40:19]
CABRERA: Your Democratic colleague, Congressman Hank Johnson tweeted that this move by the President is a violation of state and Federal law, and he added that he will introduce the resolution of censure tomorrow calling on Trump to resign now. What do you think? What should Congress do?
KINZINGER: I don't really know what we can do at this moment. As I think, it was Mr. Scaramucci on prior said, look, there's what -- two or three weeks left. The guardrails of the Constitution will hold everybody that, you know, has been convinced that January 6 is going to be the miraculous beginning of the President's second term. They're going to be let down.
Now they'll find somebody else to blame, trust me, it's not going to be, you know, themselves. But I just don't know where we can go from here, besides speaking out saying this should never become normal and ensuring that the peaceful transition of power happens.
CABRERA: What is your message right now to the more than 150 Republican lawmakers who are currently planning to object to certifying Biden's victory this Wednesday?
KINZINGER: Well, I'll tell him here the same thing I've told them all in person and in conference calls, which is this is far beyond anything that is just a political thing, or worrying about the base or worrying about an election. You haven't been split, you just got sworn into your next term, for goodness sakes.
I mean, we ask young people to give their lives to defend this country. We have to be willing to give our careers for the same thing.
CABRERA: Do you think they're attempting a coup?
KINZINGER: No. See, I'm not going to use that kind of language because I just think it's counterproductive. I do think though, if by voting to object to the electors and change the outcome of the election, they are absolutely going against the will of the people. You may not like it, right? You may not like the outcome of this election, but guess what? There's another election in two years and there's a presidential election in four. Make that your call to work harder.
But we don't overthrow the will of the people in this country. It is the only thing that takes us from being an extraordinary country to just one of the other ones.
CABRERA: Georgia's Secretary of State, we heard pushed back on the President's false claims, and he also tweeted this, "Respectfully, President Trump, what you're saying is not true. The truth will come out." But it's really only up to, you know, you and your colleagues in Congress to hold this President accountable.
I mean, if this slides with no consequences, what does that mean for this country's democratic system going forward?
KINZINGER: Well, I think the fact that there's even not necessarily just an objection, objections have happened in the past, but the fact that you're going to have a senator or a number of senators, and you're going to have a number of House members, and now it's becoming a litmus test for: are you a conservative, you get the sixth, which I would argue if you vote for this thing you're not?
I think -- I think what the damage that has in the long term and in the short term is pretty clear. And all I can do, and I would encourage my other, you know, friends out here to do is to just think about how is this going to look in two or four years if you're not worried about the constitutional part of it?
You know, I don't think that in two or four years, anybody is going to look back and say, boy, if there were only more people that would have been good for this country. I think once the President is out of office and once kind of that spell wears off, there are going to be a lot of people embarrassed by this. I hope not, but I'm afraid there will be.
CABRERA: I spoke with former Secretary of Defense William Cohen earlier this evening who is also a Republican. He basically said he thinks it's time -- he thinks it's time to start over. He thinks there should be maybe a new party. What do you think? Is it time for a new party?
KINZINGER: You know, I think the barriers to a new party in this country are so high. For instance, in Illinois, you'd have to get like 20,000 petition signatures. If you're an established candidate, it's like 1,500. I think the key and what I'm focused on is to restoring our G.O.P., it is to bring the G.O.P. back not to necessarily what we were 40 years ago, 20 years ago, you know, somebody that can understand the voice of the people that feel left out, but do it in a way that unifies this country and holds precious this democracy that is so fragile.
And what we've been doing lately is certainly not that, so I'm going to fight tooth and nail inside the G.O.P. It may cost me, but the bottom line is, you know, I've paid higher prices in my life before.
CABRERA: Congressman Adam Kinzinger, you are courageous. Thank you for coming on. Thank you for what you're doing.
KINZINGER: It shouldn't have to be courageous, but in this day and age, I guess so.
CABRERA: Right, but keep speaking.
We have much more on this stunning phone call now between President Trump and the Georgia Secretary of State.
Coming up after the break, we're going to play you more of this phone call so you can hear it straight from the President's mouth. Stay with us.
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[19:48:08]
CABRERA: Back with our breaking news, President Trump in a phone call pushing the Georgia Secretary of State to find votes in order to overturn his verified loss in the November election.
This audio was first obtained by "The Washington Post" and CNN has now obtained a recording of the full phone call. I want you to listen to it for yourself: a sitting President piling on the pressure and stopping at nothing.
(BEGIN AUDIO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: She is known all over. I'm telling you where's -- where's [bleep] was one the hot items on the [bleep] they knew her. Where's [bleep]?
So Brad, you know this -- there can be no justification for that. And I -- you know, I'd give everybody the benefit of the doubt. But that was --and Brad, why did they put the votes in three times? You know, they put them in three times.
BRAD RAFFENSPERGER, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: Mr. President, they did not put that three -- we can -- we did an audit of that and was proved conclusively that they were not scanned three times.
TRUMP: Well, where was everybody else at that late time in the morning? What where was everybody? Where were the Republicans? Where were the security guards? Where were the people that were there just a little while before when everyone ran out of the room?
How come -- how come we had no security in the room? Why did they run to the bottom of the table? Why did they run there and just open the skirt and rip out the -- and rip out the votes?
I mean, Brad -- and they were sitting there, I think for five hours or something like that at the most, but they just all happened to run back and go -- you know, Brad.
RAFFENSPERGER: Yes, Mr. President, we'll send you the link from WsB that does --
TRUMP: I don't care about a link. I don't need it. I have much -- we are going to have a much better look.
CLETA MITCHELL, PROMINENT G.O.P. LAWYER: Mr. President and Mr. Secretary, I will tell you, I've seen the tape, the full tape, so has Alex. We've watched it and what we saw and what we've confirmed in the timing is that they made everybody leave. We have sworn affidavit saying that and then they continued -- then they began to process ballots.
[19:50:13]
MITCHELL: And our estimate is that there were roughly 18,000 ballots. We don't know that if you know that.
TRUMP: There was 18,000 ballots, but they used each one three times.
MITCHELL: Well, I don't know about that, but I know --
TRUMP: Well, I do because we haven't -- we had ours magnified out. So --
MITCHELL: But we have watched --
TRUMP: So each one magnified out --
MITCHELL: I watched the entire tape.
TRUMP: ... times three, but you know, but nobody can make a case for that, Brad. Nobody. I mean, look, that's -- you'd have to be a child to think anything other than that. Just a child. I mean, you have -- your never Trumper attorney --
MITCHELL: How many ballots, Mr. Secretary are you saying that were processing?
RAFFENSPERGER: We'll let these guys certainly investigate that.
RYAN GERMANY, GENERAL COUNSEL, GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: We had our -- this is Ryan Germany. We had our law enforcement officers talk to everyone who was who -- was there after that event came to light. The G.B.I. was with them as well as F.B.I. agents.
TRUMP: Well, there's -- there's no way they could -- then they're incompetent. They're really dishonest.
MITCHELL: What did they find?
TRUMP: Okay, there's only two answers: dishonesty or incompetence. There is just no way. Look, there's no way. And on the other thing, too, there's no way. I mean, there's no way that these things could have been -- you know, you have all these different people that -- that voted, but they don't live in Georgia anymore. What was that number, Cleta, that was a pretty good number, too?
MITCHELL: Well, the number who had registered out of state after they moved from Georgia, and so they -- they had a date when they moved from Georgia. They registered to vote out of state, and then it's like 4,500, I don't have that right in front of me.
TRUMP: And then they came back in and they voted.
MITCHELL: And voted.
TRUMP: Now that was a large number, though, it was in the 20s. And, you know, the point is --
GERMANY: We could go in through each of those as well and those numbers that we got that Miss Mitchell was just saying, they're not accurate. Everyone we've been through our people that lived in Georgia, moved to a different state, but then moved back to Georgia legitimately and -- and in many cases --
TRUMP: How many people do that? It means, they moved out and then they said, ah, to hell with it, I'll move back in. You know, it doesn't sound like a very normal -- you mean they moved out? And what? They missed it so much that they wanted to move back in? Yes, it's like -- it's crazy.
GERMAN: Well, and then this is they moved back in years ago. This was not like something just before the election. So there's something about that data, it's just not accurate.
TRUMP: Well, I don't know. We -- I mean, all I know is that it is -- it is certified, and they moved out of Georgia and they voted. It didn't say they moved back in, Cleta, did it?
MITCHELL: No, but I mean, we are looking at the voter registry. Again, if you have additional records, we've been asking for that, but you haven't shared any of that with us. You just keep saying you've investigated.
TRUMP: But Cleta, a lot of it you don't need to be shared. I mean, to be honest, they should share it. They should share it because you want to get to an honest election. I won this election by hundreds of thousands of votes. There is no way I lost Georgia. There's no way.
We won by hundreds of thousands of votes. I'm just going by small numbers, when you add them up, they are many times the 11,000. But -- But I won that state by hundreds of thousands of votes.
Now, do you think it's possible that they shredded ballots in Fulton County? Because that's what the rumor is, and also that Dominion took out machines, that Dominion is really moving fast to get rid of their machinery. Do you know anything about that? Because that's illegal.
GERMANY: Ryan Germany. No. Dominion has not moved any machinery out of Fulton County.
TRUMP: But have they moved? Have they -- have they moved the inner parts of the machines and replaced them with other parts?
GERMANY: No.
TRUMP: You sure, Ryan?
GERMANY: I'm sure. I'm sure, Mr. President.
(END AUDIO CLIP)
CABRERA: So this breaking news comes on the same day the new Congress was sworn in. CNN's Phil Mattingly is joining us on Capitol Hill and Phil, what reaction are we getting now from lawmakers?
PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN U.S. CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, I think the biggest thing is it is exacerbating something that's been kind of percolating underneath for the better part of the last probably five or six days, and that's just a total rupture inside the Republican Party.
You obviously have more than 140 House Republicans who have made clear that come January 6th, on Wednesday, when they're attempting to certify the Electoral College votes in a joint session of Congress, they plan to object.
You've obviously got up to 12 senators who over the weekend, said they would join in those objections or at least support those objections. What you hadn't seen really become public until today was significant pushback from inside the Republican Party towards their own colleagues and what they plan to do on January 6.
You heard from Congressman Kinzinger, you had Liz Cheney who is the number three Republican in the U.S. House, where all of these members are supporting what the President is going for here. She circulated a 21-page memo to her colleagues this morning, talking about how dangerous the precedent they were setting by doing these objections could be.
[19:55:13]
MATTINGLY: You also had Republicans who have almost said nothing since they left Congress and most notably, the former Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, basically, since he left Congress about two years ago right about now, he has not weighed in on anything.
He has gone to great pains to avoid talking about President Trump. He laid out a lengthy statement today, completely unsolicited, it says in part, "Efforts to reject the votes of the Electoral College and sow doubt about Joe Biden's victory strike at the foundation of our Republic. It is difficult to conceive of a more anti-democratic and anti-conservative act than a Federal intervention to overturn the results of state certified elections and disenfranchise millions of Americans."
"The fact that this effort will fail does not mean it will not do significant damage to American democracy." And Ana, again, it is significant. Speaker Ryan has not spoken out at all over the course of the last couple of years trying to kind of fade away a little bit when it comes to Donald Trump.
But I just think the biggest thing to watch over the course of the next couple days, you are not going to see those who have already come out and said they're going to object suddenly change their minds because of this tape.
They knew who Donald Trump was, and he has been not very subtle about what he's been saying on Twitter. I think the biggest thing you're going to see is the pushback within the party that just underscores right now, there's a significant battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party, a party that Donald Trump is still extremely popular inside of and whose endorsement will be crucial probably to all of these republicans as they run for re-election or higher office.
CABRERA: And that 21-page memo from a member of the leadership team in Congress, Liz Cheney seems somewhat significant. Maybe that's a turning point. We'll see. Thank you, Phil Mattingly.
Much more on our breaking news. Just ahead, President Trump in this new audio recording obtained by CNN trying to pressure Georgia's Secretary of State to magically find him votes so he can win the state and overturn President-elect Joe Biden's victory there.
Don't go anywhere. You're live in the CNN NEWSROOM.
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