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Biden & Trump Campaign in Georgia Ahead of Vote to Decide Senate; GOP Officials Concerned about Trump's Runoff Eve Visit; Peter Wehner, Former Bush Senior Advisor, Discusses Signs of "Weak and Rotten Republican Party" & Where GOP Goes in Post-Trump Era"; Trump's Call to Georgia Election Officials Compared to Watergate. Aired 2:30- 3p ET
Aired January 04, 2021 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[14:30:25]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Georgia voters go to the polls tomorrow in a runoff election to determine who has a control of the Senate.
Both President Trump and President-Elect Biden will be in the state today for last-minute campaign stops ahead of tomorrow's historic vote.
And the gravity of the election also explains the enormous amount of money being spent there, almost half a billion dollars by these two sides.
CNN's Arlette Saenz is in Atlanta following the president-elect who is expected at his event shortly.
Arlette, everything hangs in the balance for Joe Biden, about what his term will look like as president. What will he say to Georgia voters to try to get them to the polls?
ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, President-Elect Biden left Delaware a few moments ago to make his way here to Atlanta, where he will be campaigning with the Democratic candidates, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
As these Senate runoffs will determine the course and control of the Senate, and also how successful President-Elect Biden's agenda will be in Congress.
We will see the president-elect campaigning here in these runoffs for the second time later today.
And this will also be the first time that we see the president-elect and hear from him since that explosive audio showed President Trump pressuring Georgia officials to find votes to alter the course of the election.
The president-elect himself has not commented on that just yet. But vice president elect, Kamala Harris, was in Georgia, in Savannah
yesterday, where she had a blunt assessment of the president's call. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. KAMALA HARRIS (D-CA) & VICE PRESIDENT-ELECT: Have you all heard about that recorded conversation?
It was certainly the voice of desperation, most certainly that. And it was a bold-faced, bold abuse of power by the president of the United States.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
SAENZ: So we will see if President-Elect Biden will issue his own comments here later today.
But really what the president-elect is trying to do here is mobilize the same voters that turned out for him in November, that helped him flip the state from red to blue back in the general election.
So much of what the president-elect hopes to accomplish could hinge on this race, which will determine control of the Senate.
If the two Democratic candidates were to win, that would set up Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris to be the tiebreaking votes in the Senate.
There's so much of the president-elect's agenda, from climate change to immigration and health care, that he is hoping to push forward that would be easier to do if the Democrats win here in Georgia tomorrow -- Brianna?
KEILAR: Yes, indeed, it would be easier for him to do
Arlette, thank you so much. Arlette Saenz for us on the trail in Atlanta.
And Vice President Mike Pence just wrapped up a campaign stop in Georgia just a few hours before President Trump himself will be holding his own rally.
Trump's appearance should have been a slam dunk. But now, as Georgia's Republican Governor Brian Kemp puts it, the phone call between Trump and Georgia's secretary of state has become a distraction.
CNN's Robin -- pardon me, Ryan Nobles.
Hello. I know your name, Ryan. Sorry I messed that up.
(LAUGHTER)
KEILAR: But you're in Milner, Georgia, which is where the vice president just spoke to supporters.
How concerned are the campaigns over the impact of this call from President Trump, and also what he might say tonight?
RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, I would say they're very concerned, Brianna. This entire runoff has been spent by Republicans finding ways to try to explain away President Trump's behavior since the election.
Because they do not want to alienate Trump supporters here in Georgia.
While the Republican Party is very strong in this state, it's been traditionally a red state for quite some time, there's no doubt that President Trump holds an unequal sway on some of these Republican voters.
It's been a difficult asking to try to tell the Republican voters that, A, the election is filled with fraud, which it's not, but then try to convince them they still need to vote on Tuesday.
The vice president, Mike Pence, tried to strike that balance during his speech here at this mega-church behind me a few hours ago. Take a listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I want to assure you, I share the concerns of millions of Americans about voting irregularities.
I promise you, come this Wednesday, we'll have our day in Congress.
(CHEERING)
PENCE: We'll hear the objections.
(CHEERING)
PENCE: We'll hear the evidence.
(CHEERING)
PENCE: But tomorrow is Georgia's day.
(CHEERING)
[14:35:05]
PENCE: So for our faith, for our freedom, we need you to vote, Georgia. Vote to send David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler back to the United States Senate.
(CHEERING)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
NOBLES: What you hear there from Vice President Pence is very similar to what you've heard from David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler.
They continue to lean into the president's conspiracy theories about the election that was run here in Georgia.
This, despite the Republican leaders stating emphatically nothing was wrong, there was no evidence of fraud, and that Joe Biden won that election.
What is interesting, though, the secretary of state's call has a new wrinkle to this. And it means tonight could get a little crazy at the president's event.
I talked to one Republican official who said, if the president came and just delivered a message that was to get these Republican voters -- or Senators reelected, that it would just, frankly, be "dumb luck."
What they are hoping for, Brianna, is that the president's rhetoric is already baked into the cake, that there isn't anything more he can do to turn off voters.
What is interesting, I tried to talk to about half a dozen Republicans as they left this event today. Very few had any idea about this call with the secretary of state. It's just not something in their or orbit.
So perhaps, for Republicans, this is something they'll be able to try and work around. We probably won't know until tomorrow night.
KEILAR: Very interesting. Thank you for sharing that with us.
Ryan Nobles, in Georgia, we appreciate it.
Next, a former aide to Presidents Reagan and Bush who says the Senators who are willing to object to the electoral results are a sign of a, quote, "weak and rotten Republican Party." He's going to join us live to talk about where the GOP goes in the post-Trump era.
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KEILAR: With President Trump voted out of the White House, now the question is what does a Republican Party without Trump look like? Does it carry his mantle, or does it try to return to some semblance of sanity?
A new piece in "The Atlantic" by a former Bush aide doesn't hold out much hope of returning to some sanity. It's titled, "The Unbearable Weakness of Trump's Minions."
"Senator Josh Hawley isn't just engaging in civic vandalism. He's an emblem of a weak and rotten Republican Party."
And the author of this piece is with us now, Peter Wehner. He'll talk to us about what he wrote there.
He's worked for three Republican presidents, Ronald Reagan and both of the Bush presidents. He's also the author of "Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic after Trump." Thank you so much for being with us, Peter.
PETER WEHNER, FORMER SENIOR ADVISOR TO PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH & AUTHOR: You bet. Thanks for having me on.
KEILAR: First up, what is your reaction to hearing what the president said during this phone call with Georgia's secretary of state. I'm sure this plays very much into the thesis of what you wrote.
WEHNER: Yes, it does. I mean, both shocked and not shocked. Shocked in the sense that the president of the United States would pull a stunt like this, talk essentially like on mob boss, and apply such pressure.
What he does was clearly an abuse of power and may very well have been illegal as well. That's on the shocking side.
What is not on the not shocking side is the fact that Donald Trump did this. This is exactly the kind of thing one would expect from Donald Trump.
This is what he was like before he became president. It is what he's been like since he's president. And it's what he will be like after the presidency. He was acting in type.
Anybody that is surprised by where we've ended, any Republicans who is surprised by where we've ended to date, this Trump presidency, all the corruption, has had their head in the sand.
It has to be willful blindness. This was almost inevitable, that Trump, given his sociopathic tendencies, would bring us to a point like this.
KEILAR: I want to read some of your piece, Peter.
You write, "The problem with the Republican establishment," quote, "is not that they are crazy or they don't know any better. It is that they are cowards and that they are weak. They are far more ambitious than they are principled. And they are willing to damage American politics and society rather than being criticized by their own tribe."
I mean, it's a pretty stunning statement but you're basically -- I mean, it's also sort of -- I don't want to say it's cynical but it's sort of they know what they're doing and they're doing it anyway out of ambition.
WEHNER: Yes, I don't mean to be cynical. I think it's an objective assessment of the facts.
I should say there's a few honorable exceptions. Mitt Romney among those. He's been really a tower of strength.
But look, beyond that, I've had conversations with Republican lawmakers, and I know other people who have. They do know better.
They are not Trumpian. They don't like Trump. They don't like dealing with him. But they're afraid of him or the base. And some of them are acting in ways driven by their hyper-ambition
because they think that the party is Trumpian at its core. And right now, it is.
So you have people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley and others, who want to try and take advantage of that, and who, because of their own ambitions, are willing to do real damage to the country.
KEILAR: You write about what an acquaintance of Hawley told you, that Holly wants to pretend the lies are true.
Explain that thinking there.
WEHNER: Well, you know, Josh Hawley is not Tommy Tuberville. He is a person who went to Stanford Law School -- graduated from Stanford, went to Yale Law School, clerked for the Supreme Court. He knows what's going on.
He knows this effort to overthrow the election and all the charges of fraud, these are insane conspiracy theories. He knows it. But he won't say it. He's saying the opposite.
So he's playing to this attitude in the base, which Trump, of course, is inflaming, which is this notion that the election was stolen and there was fraud. We know that was not the case.
[14:44:58]
So Hawley is pretending this is true. They're going through this dance, this kabuki dance. They have entered the world of make believe.
So they talk about as if there really is a question in terms of the outcome of the election and about fraud when it's not.
So he's lying. He's lying because he knows better. He knows what the truth is but he is telling falsehoods instead.
It's a shame. He's a bright guy. And he could, in a different Republican Party, a bright future.
As it happens, he's fundamentally weak. And I think, at the end of the day, unpatriotic. And he's casting his lot to the forces that are doing real damage to the country.
And as a lifelong Republicans, working in three administrations, it's a painful and discouraging thing to see. But it is the reality of things. And I think we just have to name that.
KEILAR: Peter, it's a fascinating piece that you wrote.
And thank you so much for coming on to talk about it. And a happy New Year to you as well.
WEHNER: Thanks. Thank you, Brianna. Happy New Year to you, too. And good luck to us all.
KEILAR: Good luck to us all, indeed.
Minutes from now, the Georgia secretary of state will hold a news conference in the wake of that brazen phone call where the president asked him to find enough votes to overturn a free and fair election. We'll bring it to you live. Stand by.
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[14:50:43]
KEILAR: It's no secret that the president has essentially abandoned his job since his election loss, ignoring the COVID pandemic, watching TV, staying behind closed doors, tweeting conspiracy theories.
But the proof is really in his schedule. And it's become comically sad at this point.
Since the election, he's had no public events listed on his schedule for 36 days. Only 13 public appearances open to the press. Only two of those where he took questions and just one on-camera interview on FOX, of course.
Since Christmas Eve, the White House has released these exact two sentences to announce the president's schedule 11 times:
Quote, "During the holiday season, President Trump will continue to work tirelessly for the American people. His schedule includes many meetings and calls."
Five of those days, he actually spent golfing. One of those days, he did famously make a call, one where he potentially committed an illegal act by asking Georgia election officials to find votes and overturn the election.
But this isn't a president working tirelessly for the American people. This is Nero playing the fiddle while Rome burns. Only it's Trump and there's no fiddle.
He's just tapping out mean tweets on his iPhone and taking four-foot putts of gimmes while Americans die of the coronavirus.
And President Trump's call to Georgia election officials has drawn comparisons to former President Richard Nixon.
This is a comparison coming as well from Carl Bernstein, the journalist who was part of the team that broke the Watergate scandal.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CARL BERNSTEIN, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: This is far worse than what occurred in the Nixon presidency.
What we have just heard is that, in any other conceivable moment in our history, this tape would result in the leadership of both parties calling for the resignation of the president of the United States immediately. What we're listening to here is the president proposing a conspiracy
to steal the election.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: My next guest has spent the past year writing his own book on Nixon and Watergate. Garrett Graff it also a CNN contributor.
Garrett, happy New Year to you. Thank you so much for coming you.
You call this more dangerous, more criminal and more damaging to American democracy than Watergate. Tell us why?
GARRETT GRAFF, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Right. It already is, Brianna.
I think Carl Bernstein is exactly right, that this tape is in many ways worse than anything that we saw in Watergate.
And there's a big reason for that. At its fundamental core, Richard Nixon and all of the criminality and corruption that surrounded him was about corrupting the game of politics, corrupting the playing field where the campaign was going to take place.
What we have seen Donald Trump do repeatedly, and most recently in this tape but hardly only on this tape, is try to corrupt the institutions of democracy.
These are the traditions and rituals that bind us together as Americans, generation after generation, the things that make our democracy work.
And that's the type of damage that is hard to rebuild.
And it's particularly troubling to watch the Republican Party, which has, for decades and centuries, played along according to this agreed- upon set of rules for our democracy, play along now with Donald Trump to undermine the very democracy, the very types of traditions that we need in order to function as a country going forward.
KEILAR: Nixon also didn't have this disinformation campaign that Trump has fueled over the past five years and that also has existed separate from him, and Republicans, as well, onboard pushing lies and conspiracies.
When it came to Nixon, he actually lost the support of the American people. And that was really the turning point of losing support from Republicans.
GRAFF: Absolutely. And one of the things that's remarkable is that Richard Nixon's depths of his disapproval with the American people were not that much lower than Donald Trump's disapproval.
But the Republican Party then had a shared commitment to democracy and was willing, for the good of the country, to remove and push for the removal of their own party's leader.
[14:55:06]
Understanding that it was important for the country, and that it was important for the ability of their party to govern and participate in politics in the future.
This Republican Party today is making a very different choice, choosing authoritarianism and this illegal attempt to overthrow the election over the basic rights and traditions of our democracy.
KEILAR: Garrett, it is great to see you. Thank you so much for talking to us about this, Garrett Graff.
GRAFF: Always a pleasure.
KEILAR: Next we'll bring you a live news conference from the Georgia secretary of state. You'll hear his response to President Trump's efforts to get him to steal the election.
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