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Trump's Push to Overturn Election Results reaches new low; Trump Demands Georgia Officials "Vine" Votes to Overturn Results; 4.2 Million Vaccinated in U.S., Far Below White House Promise of 20 Million. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired January 04, 2021 - 11:00   ET

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

[11:00:15]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Hello, everyone. I'm Kate Bolduan. Thank you so much for joining us this hour.

We are looking at a huge week ahead. A week that will decide the balance of power in the Senate and in Washington for years to come. And also, a week that could decide the future of American democracy for a whole lot longer.

And it is becoming very clear that the line is no longer between two major political parties. It's no longer liberal versus conservative. It's no longer -- it is Democratic values versus the shredding of those very ideals. It is reality versus conspiracy theory. It is now truth versus lies. That is the fault line. And this is also the choice before every member of Congress but especially Republicans this week as President Trump takes his unfounded crusade to overturn the election results to a stunning new low.

In newly released audio obtained by CNN and first reported by "The Washington Post," President Trump is recorded on a call asking Georgia's secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to find just enough votes so he can overturn Joe Biden's win in the state. And Trump is also heard threatening the secretary of state if he does not. The call, which took place on Saturday, was one hour long. Here are the key parts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (via telephone): 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. And flipping the state is a great testament to our country because, you know, this is -- it's a testament that they can admit to a mistake or whatever you want to call it. If it was a mistake, I don't know.

A lot of people think it wasn't a mistake, it was much more criminal than that. But it's a big problem in Georgia and it's not a problem that's going away. I mean, you know, it's not a problem that's going away. The ballots are corrupt. And you are going to find that they are -- which is totally illegal, it is more illegal for you than it is for them because you know what they did and you're not reporting it. That's a criminal, that's a criminal offense. And you can't let that happen. That's a big risk to you and to Ryan, you lawyer. And that's a big risk.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: As you now well know the president's efforts to steal the election which are based on unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud have failed at every turn in audits, in recounts and in the courts. So, this appears to be President Trump's final move of desperation, resorting to pressuring officials in his own party to try to help him cling to power.

Let's get straight to CNN's John Harwood. He's at the White House for us. John, what now?

JOHN HARWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Kate, I think President Trump is going to continue to do what he's been doing. He keeps tweeting all sorts of nonsense about the election. Tens of thousands of illegal ballots he says, dead people voting. None of those things have been substantiated.

He had the hour-long call with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia Secretary of State, after trying to call the secretary 18 times, he finally got through. And spouted that sort of incoherent nonsense for an hour. The kindness thing you can say about the president is that he is mentally or psychologically impaired and unable to understand that what he was doing was false and wrong.

Otherwise, it is simply a straight up request by the president for the secretary of state of Georgia to commit election fraud, which is the very thing the president has been complaining about. It's notable for his state of mind that White House council, Pat Cipollone, was not on the call.

The president has narrowed his circle of people to people who enable these fantasies and this attempt to overturn the election. Pat Cipollone has argued that that is a futile attempt. The real question now is what do Republicans do? On Wednesday, that's when Congress is due to certify the results of the Electoral College.

The president is calling his supporters to a big rally in Washington. He has laid an air of menace over this process, talking about how angry people are, warning Brad Raffensperger that he's taking a risk.

How do Republicans react to that? We expect more than 100 Republican House members to back the objection to the certification of the Electoral College votes even though all 50 states have certified their results. We expect a dozen Republican senators to back those requests. Few have spoken out aggressively, some have.

[11:05:02] And between now and Wednesday, we're going to find out which members of the Republican Party are going to stand up for democratic elections in the United States and which ones are going to abet this assault on democracy. Kate?

BOLDUAN: John, thank you.

Joining me right now is CNN political correspondent Abby Phillip. And Rick Hasen, a CNN election law analyst. He's also the author of the book "Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy."

Rick, is what happened on this call -- is this illegal? What do you hear in this phone call between the president and the secretary of state of Georgia?

RICK HASEN, CNN ELECTION LAW ANALYST: Well, it's sure sounds like what the president was asking for was for the secretary of state to manufacture votes. Just enough votes to give him a one vote margin in Georgia. Exactly how this would work. Georgia already sent in its Electoral College votes. But it sounds like it could be a crime under both federal law and under state law. Because when you ask someone to come with fake votes that's kind of the definition of election fraud.

The only question here I think is about Trump's state of mind. If, in fact, he actually believes the kind of nonsense that he's been spouting about fraud and that you know this would not be manufacturing votes but actually righting a wrong, maybe he could make that kind of defense. But I certainly think there's enough for Georgia and federal prosecutors to look at as to whether or not this actually is a crime.

BOLDUAN: Abby, let me play what the secretary of state of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, said about this. About also what he told the president. But he talked about it this morning. Let me play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BRAD RAFFENSPERGER (R), GEORGIA SECRETARY OF STATE: The data that he has is just plain wrong. We've -- you know, he had hundreds and hundreds of people that he said that were dead had voted. We found two. That's an example. He just has bad data.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: But none of this is going to convince the president as we can see now of anything, though, Abby.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And I think that Brad Raffensperger is actually being incredibly polite and diplomatic by saying the president has bad data. The president is using information that he has gleaned from the Internet that is completely invented in nature. And he has no interest in finding out the truth because he's only interested in burrowing deeper and deeper into these conspiracy theories. The problem is that you cannot reason, as everyone saw and heard in that call, with the president on this issue. And so, I don't expect that one day he's going to wake up and realize that he was wrong. I think it is going to come down to the people around him and the Republicans in Washington to make a decision about whether they want to be aligned with the kind of ravings of the president on this call or with the truth.

And what you're hearing from people like Tom Cotton -- not Tom Cotton. Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley is basically, oh, well, people are saying that there's fraud going on. Or people are saying that there's something nefarious happening.

And the reason that they're doing that is because they know that there's no evidence of these claims. And as Rick said, I don't know if the president knows or not. I don't think he really cares what the truth is. He just wants to win at the end of the day.

BOLDUAN: It's his job to know if he really care -- I mean, it's his job to know.

PHILLIP: And he has the access to all the information to find out.

BOLDUAN: That's exactly -- as we've said. As you have pointed out at many points and many different issues throughout his presidency. He has access to this information on all different fronts and chooses not to look at it.

Rick, you know "Politico" is reporting, Rick, that after the Georgia call, the president joined another call with officials from four other battleground states. And the way "Politico" puts it is to talk about allegations of voter fraud in the presidential election.

And I'm curious, if the president is jumping on other calls, maybe with legislators, maybe not secretaries of state, regardless he's jumping on calls on Saturday as well with other states pushing this exact same thing because you know he's going to stick with his same script as he often does. Does this new set of facts - does it make the whole thing better or worse, Rick?

HASEN: In terms of his criminal liability, I mean, I think it really goes to his state of mind. You know, his pulling out all the stops to try to get a change in the election result. But the important thing to note is that, the states have counted the votes. The Electoral College votes in each state have been certified. Those certified votes have been sent to Congress and they're going to be counted on Wednesday.

And while there's going to be some noise made by people like Ted Cruz and others, there maybe you know some hours of debate. At the end of the day, none of what Trump is doing is going to affect the election outcome.

What it does do is put him in potential legal jeopardy. And you know, he could still be impeached. And he can be impeached after he leaves office in a way to disqualify him from running for office again in 2024. So, he's not out of the woods yet based on this conduct.

[11:10:07] BOLDUAN: Not something I have - not a scenario I had considered. You know as Rick is talking about, this goes -- this is going to go forward this week, Abby. But this call, it really should probably force many Republicans to reconsider what they thought - they thought or hoped that they knew about President Trump in many regards. But case in point is Republican Senator Susan Collins. I want to play what she had to say about the president and, if you will, lessons learned after the impeachment trial.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. SUSAN COLLINS (R-ME): I believe that the president has learned from this case.

NORAH O'DONNELL, CBS ANCHOR, "CBS EVENING NEWS": What do you believe the president has learned?

COLLINS: The president has been impeached. That's a pretty big lesson. There has been criticism by both Republican and Democratic senators of his call. I believe that he will be much more cautious in the future.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Abby, clearly, he was not.

PHILLIP: No. Obviously not. And that was apparent when Susan Collins made those comments at that time. But what is even more striking about this moment is that this call with Brad Raffensperger is basically like a Ukraine call part 2.

It's the same type of behavior that the president is using, trying to strong arm someone into doing something that is unethical at best or illegal at worst. And it clearly shows that President Trump has not been chastened by any of this. In fact, he's been emboldened and what you're seeing actually is Republicans now falling even more in line now than they did around the time of impeachment, which I think is the scary part of the whole situation.

BOLDUAN: Abby, Rick, thank you very much.

Coming up for us, the FDA will now be looking at giving half doses of one coronavirus vaccine to younger Americans. Why at this point and what does this mean for a vaccine rollout that has already fallen short of expectations.

And later, the show down on Capitol Hill, how the efforts by some Republicans as we've been discussing to challenge the Electoral College votes are splitting the party.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:16:35]

BOLDUAN: It has been 21 days since the first Americans got the first coronavirus vaccines. That means today those very same people are set to get their second and final dose. That is great and promising news. Yet it comes at the very same moment the country is clearly struggling as the vaccine effort is behind schedule across the country.

The CDC says in the last three weeks 13 million doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been distributed. But just over 4 million have been administered. Well short of the 20 million shots in arms that top Trump administration officials promised in early December.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MONCEF SLAOUI, CHIEF SCIENTIFIC ADVISER, OPERATION WARP SPEED: Overall in the month of December, between the two vaccines, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine, we expect to have immunized 20 million of our American people and keeping 20 million doses for their second immunization a few weeks later.

ALEX AZAR, SECRETARY, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES: 20 million vaccinations this month and then we think we'll be up to 50 million total vaccinations of people by the end of January. And 100 million shots in arms by the end of February just with the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: So that was then. Not so long ago, obviously. In a strange twist now, these very same officials say they didn't project that. They didn't say they expected this at all. This is today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SLAOUI: Nothing has gone wrong. What we have committed to was to have 20 million doses of vaccine available for the American people to be immunized with.

AZAR: What we said our goal was, was actually to have 20 million first doses available in the month of December. Those are available. But there's a lag between doses being available, them being ordered by the providers and the states, shipping and then eventual vaccination.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: That is clearly not what they said.

Joining me right now is Dr. Seema Yasmin, a former CDC disease detective and a CNN medical analyst. It's good to see you again, Dr. Yasmin.

You talked to me -- a few weeks delay doesn't necessarily mean that this entire effort is a failure. But they very clearly are moving the goal posts in terms of the rollout of the vaccine and getting the shots into arms. What does it mean if they cannot acknowledge this failing?

DR. SEEMA YASMIN, CNN MEDICAL ANALYST: I mean, it's gaslighting us. Thousands of Americans dying every day. All of us completely desperate to get out of the pandemic.

And we know what we heard them say last month. You know it's just very frustrating to hear the tape. We know what we heard. We know the promises that were made a month ago. Be very transparent with us. Transparency is so key to successful vaccination campaigns, especially ones that this big.

We know that we need about 80 percent of the American population to be fully vaccinated in order for us to achieve herd immunity and get out of this pandemic. Right now, we've vaccinated about 1.3, maybe 1.5 percent of the population.

Clearly, there are hurdles that have been faced. And clearly, we are not navigating them very well so tell us what's going wrong and then tell us how you're going to fix it. Stop lying to the American people.

BOLDUAN: Doctor, is it clear to you why this is so behind schedule in this moment?

YASMIN: I think there are a few reasons, Kate. And I think certainly one of them is that the same health care systems that are on the hook for delivering these vaccines are the same health care systems that are massively overwhelmed. Because of the massive surges in cases.

[11:20:08]

So, I think that is one of the issues here in the Bay Area. Right here in Santa Clara County, we have ambulances waiting six, seven hours just to offload their patients. Just to give you an idea of how backed up things are. That's one of the issues.

But the other issue is that we're told as if it's an issue of just not enough vaccine really, it's massive logistical challenges as well. Two thirds of the vaccine doses have been distributed to states are sitting in freezers right now. They are not going into people's arms.

So, this is an issue about logistics. It's poor planning. It's not enough personnel. It's what we've seen throughout the pandemic and now it's just manifesting in a really badly rolled out vaccine campaign.

BOLDUAN: And it sure seems then when you put it that way that hearing from top officials that they're just - that they're looking to the states to ask them for help and they're ready to help when the states ask them, doesn't seem like a fix.

YASMIN: It doesn't. And states have been left in the lurch since February of this year. And so, they need the right support. And I do think that with the FDA kind of reviewing the states about the Moderna vaccine, that's great. Tell us what's possible. But say they come back to us today and say well, we don't need to give everyone the 100- microgram dose. We can give them less. We can give them half.

Well, OK, that instantly doubles our doses that are available. We could potentially vaccinate double the amount of people right now than we thought we could but how if those two thirds of those vaccine doses are still sitting in freezers like I said. What makes us think that magically doubling the amount of vaccine available would actually get into peoples' arms because of the logistical failings that are happening here. BOLDUAN: That is an excellent point, Doctor. That's not the holdup is having more vaccines available at this point.

YASMIN: Right.

BOLDUAN: You're 100 percent right. Do you think - what do you think of the idea that giving half doses, as it's being discussed, do you think that's a good idea?

YASMIN: So, I don't know yet. I am carefully passing the data. And I am reassured that the FDA is reviewing that information instead of doing what kind of happened in the UK, which is a massive U-turn in vaccine strategy and a big uproar, a lot of doctors upset.

I'm glad the scientists are going back to square one looking at the clinical trial information and telling us what might be possible. I'm glad that's not being rushed, at least I don't think it's being rushed right now. I come back to the issue it's not just about the amount of vaccine available. It's about the failure to get the vaccine to people safely and quickly. That's what's failing here.

BOLDUAN: The same system that failed to rollout testing is exactly seems to be repeating itself with the vaccine rollout. Thank you, Doctor.

Still ahead for us, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, he is one of the Republicans leading the challenge to the Electoral College vote in the Senate. You are going to want to hear what he had to say about questioning an election result just one year ago.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:27:40]

BOLDUAN: The stage is set for a major showdown on Capitol Hill in just two days. Republicans in both the House and Senate, they are planning to join President Trump's futile fight to challenge the election and will be objecting to counting the Electoral College votes on January 6th.

The day which is laid out as required in the Constitution. This is the day that Congress is expected to certify Joe Biden's election victory. But does this recording of the president and what he asked, requested and threatened of the secretary of state of Georgia, change anything? Congressman Adam Kinzinger had this to say about that.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ADAM KINZINGER (R-IL): It's disgusting and quite honestly, it's going to be interesting, you know, all these members of Congress had now commands. 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 so obviously -- beyond the pale is probably not even the way to describe it.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BOLDUAN: And then there's this, one of the Republican senators leading the effort, Senator Josh Hawley, just last year, he agreed with Adam Kinzinger's position. Take a listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R-MO): The consequences to the Republic of overturning a Democratic election because you don't like the result and because you believe that the that election was somehow corrupted when, in fact, the evidence shows that it was not, talking about how elections can't be trusted, that's an interesting approach. I think it's crazy, frankly.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Crazy frankly, but that's exactly what he's pushing for now.

Joining me right now is John Kasich, CNN senior political commentator and of course, former Republican governor of Ohio.

Governor, set the president aside for a second. Hearing that from Josh Hawley from one year ago, what is happening to these members of the Republican Party right now?

JOHN KASICH, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, it's not something, Kate, that's just happened now. They've been in league and supporting him. There are no heroes here, even for those that are not going to vote to decertify. I mean, there are no heroes. They went along with him the entire time.

And, you know, as a result he had so much bad behavior, beyond anything we can even imagine, and now they're landing another blow to our Democracy. Frankly it's just one blow after another and it's been going on for a while.