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The Situation Room

Joe Biden Prepares For Presidency Starting With Coronavirus Pandemic; Trump Still In Denial About Election Loss; Interview With Rep. Debbie Dingell (D-MI) About The Divide Within The Democratic Party; Trump Faces Slew Of Federal, State Cases After Presidency; How Tragedy And Grief Paved Biden's Road To The White House; Pro-Trump Protesters Fueled By Social Media Misinformation. Aired 8-9p ET

Aired November 08, 2020 - 20:00   ET

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

[20:00:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: More than enough to become the 44th president of the United States. This little-known U.S. senator only a few years ago seemingly coming out of nowhere, delivering the Democratic convention keynote address back at the convention in 2004, all of a sudden taking off, becoming a United States senator from Illinois. And now he will be the first African-American president of the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: A memory indeed. It's an honor and a privilege to make these announcements for CNN, one I don't take lightly. And it's certainly a reminder that even when our country is divided, a presidential election is a time for hope when we can come together to wish success for the new commander-in-chief of our wonderful nation.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

BLITZER: Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. This is a special edition of THE SITUATION ROOM.

And we begin one day after Joe Biden was projected to win the election. And while he's already moving ahead with planning for his administration, the current president, Donald Trump, is showing no sign at all that he is ready to concede the race.

Here is where things stand this Sunday night. Remember, you need 270 electoral votes to win. The president-elect is now projected by CNN to win at least 279 electoral votes. That number could rise. Alaska, Arizona, Georgia and North Carolina remain too close to call. But Biden is leading in both Georgia and Arizona where his lead is over 20,000 votes in Arizona right now.

In just 73 days, he'll take the oath of office as the 46th president of the United States. His top priority is likely to be stopping the coronavirus pandemic which so sadly gets worse and worse by the day. On Saturday, there were more than 126,000 daily new coronavirus cases in the United States. That's the highest single-day reported since the pandemic began in January.

A key part of the president-elect's plan, a new coronavirus task force which could be named as early as tomorrow.

Let's start our coverage this hour with CNN's Arlette Saenz who's joining us from Wilmington, Delaware, where the president-elect is getting ready for a very busy transition.

Arlette, we've been told to expect details about the new coronavirus task force tomorrow. But tell us about today and a very key phone call the president-elect received from a former U.S. president.

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Wolf, Joe Biden is ready to get right to work starting tomorrow. And that begins with some major actions when it comes to the coronavirus pandemic. We are told that Joe Biden will release the names of his 12-person task force that will work to tackle this pandemic before he even gets into office.

Biden so much during his campaign talked about how his response would be led by scientists and experts. And that is something that he is making good on tomorrow when he announces his coronavirus team. The coronavirus pandemic shaped so much of Joe Biden's messaging in the closing months of his campaign. And it is now going to shape the early days of his transition as he is hoping to get to work on this pandemic before he even reaches the White House.

Now Joe Biden spent today here at home in Wilmington, Delaware. He attended mass with some members of his family and also visited the gravesite of his late son Beau Biden. The family has really been enjoying these past few days of this moment that they've really worked for together for so many years.

And Biden has also been receiving some congratulatory phone calls, including one from former president George W. Bush, that Republican 43rd president of the United States, speaking with Joe Biden this morning. He released a statement saying, 'I extended my warm congratulations and thanked him for the patriotic message he delivered last night. I also called Kamala Harris to congratulate her on her historic election to the vice presidency.

"Though we have political differences, I know Joe Biden to be a good man who has won his opportunity to lead and to unify our country." And then President Bush went on to add, "The American people can have confidence that this election was fundamentally fair. Its integrity will be upheld and its outcome is clear."

This is quite the contrast to what we are seeing from the current president of the United States, Donald Trump, who has yet to acknowledge the results of this election. And he and his allies continue to question the integrity of the election, whether there has been fraud during all of this. We have not heard of any outreach from the White House to President-elect Joe Biden, but regardless, Joe Biden is ready to get to work as the president-elect, as we will see tomorrow, as he hones in on the pandemic which is hitting so many people across this country -- Wolf.

[20:05:08]

BLITZER: Sadly, indeed. All right, Arlette Saenz in Wilmington, Delaware, for us. We'll get back to you as well.

We're now hearing from the first lady of the United States for the first time publicly. She took to Twitter today and tweeted this in part. "The American people deserve fair elections. Every legal, not illegal, vote should be counted." This as CNN has learned that behind the scenes, she's pushing her husband to accept Biden's victory.

Let's go to our White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, who's joining us right now.

Kaitlan, it's not just the first lady who's pushing the president to concede, is it?

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: No, it's not, Wolf. But I should point out that she tweeted that after my colleague Kate Bennett reported that she was going to the president, telling him that he should accept this election loss. And of course we're seeing kind of similar efforts from Jared Kushner who reported last night had also approached the president about conceding the election.

But, Wolf, what's clear is the president right now -- excuse me -- does not intend to do that because we heard from Chris Ruddy, who is the CEO of News Max, a friend of the president's, who had spoken with him, and earlier today he said that right now the president does not have any intention of conceding the election.

Now of course, it's not required for the president to do so. He will still have to leave the White House when it is time for Joe Biden to be inaugurated, to move into this White House, to have this transition. But it does raise questions about how the next several weeks are going to go because as Arlette noted, there is still a pandemic going on. There's a task force here that is still working on that pandemic. But they're not meeting nowhere near as regularly as they were in previous months.

So the question is, something as simple as that, not only transitioning the logistics of government but also transitioning the handling of this pandemic and how that looks like in a Biden administration, and if the president wants to try to stand in the way of those efforts or he wants to help them go more smoothly.

Now so far the president has continued to push these baseless allegations that the election was stolen from him, that there is widespread voter fraud, even though his campaign has not presented any evidence of that. And we've asked them for it, Wolf. So that's the question going forward of how these next few days look. But right now, what we know is the president has not called Joe Biden. The vice president has not called Senator Kamala Harris.

And what we do know is the president has spent the last two days at his golf course. He was there yesterday as we called the race. He was back there again today. And now he's at the White House and we do have -- which means, Wolf, right now we are not expecting to see the president today.

BLITZER: All right. Kaitlan, thank you very much. He likes to golf, obviously.

Let's bring in Bob Woodward right now. His brand new book on the Trump White House is entitled "Rage." It's a major, major best seller.

Bob, thanks so much for joining us. Now that we know the outcome of the election, I want you to re-visit what may have been very important information, an important sound bite of this entire 2020 presidential race. I want you to listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: It goes through air, Bob. That's always tougher than the touch. You know, the touch you don't have to touch things. Right? But the air, you just breathe the air. That's how it's passed. And so that's a very tricky one. That's a very delicate one. It's also more deadly than your -- you know, even your strenuous flus.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: That was an interview you had with the president back on February 7th. Very, very early. How do you think that admission by him in that conversation -- eventually, you released it in your new book? The president's handling of this overall pandemic. How do you think that influenced the outcome of this election?

BOB WOODWARD, AUTHOR, "RAGE": Well, we'll never know. But it's a catastrophe what he has done. When I talked to him on February 7th, I was talking -- I thought he was talking about China. Only in the next month when the pandemic exploded did I realize what he was saying. And then in May of this year, learned of this January 28th meeting where it was clearly laid out to him in a very dramatic, empirical way that this was going to be the biggest national security threat to his presidency.

He did a few things. But he wasn't honest with the public. He didn't tell us that he had received this warning. He thought he could cover it up, frankly. And when I asked him about it, he said, well, I downplayed it because I didn't want to panic people. And this is such an unforgivable misunderstanding of the job of the president and his knowledge of the American people he leads very clearly. If we're told the truth, we will rally, as we have in decades, in centuries of history. So, you know, what impact this has had, I don't know.

[20:10:02]

But you were talking about to a couple of other people earlier, Governor Kasich, and he said there's kind of a mystery in why Trump is being obstructionist here. I don't think there's really a mystery. I think this is what Trump does. I had discussions with him at great length about this idea, the old order is gone. He represented the new order, at least in the Republican Party. And he was emphatic. He said, that's what I do. And this is his franchise to obstruct -- do things his own way.

And it's a part of the tragedy here. It's too bad he will not realize it is in his own interest to be gracious here. 70 million people voted for him. So he ought to kind of step right up and be a realist. But that's not his style.

BLITZER: Yes. More than 74 million voted for Biden. So -- and they're still counting votes. But he's lost by at least four million votes. The president, as you know, he's refusing to concede. Even though his son-in-law Jared Kushner, his wife, Melania, the first lady, they're reportedly urging him to do so. You've spent time -- you've spent a lot of time interviewing the president. You know him well. Do you think eventually he will concede, cooperate in a transition of power?

WOODWARD: Well, he is going to file these legal suits and so forth. And it really is true, there's been a couple of people who said there were irregularities in the polling and the counting of ballots. But nothing substantial to change the election. The tragedy, the legal tragedy is, it's quite possible they will find a judge who will find a reason to say, wait a minute, let's recount or let's do this or that. It will only have the impact of delaying things. And this is -- you know, we are going into a period where there's not only going to be that delay, but the delay of the control of the Senate.

BLITZER: Yes. Because there's going to be two runoff elections in Georgia in early January. The president hasn't spoken publicly since he made that statement Thursday in the White House briefing room that we followed. We know he's been discussing the election with his inner circle. We know he's played golf yesterday and today. What are your sources telling you about all of this at this hour? Do you think he's still carrying out the day-to-day work of the presidency? Or is he simply focused solely on his legal fight, his potential legal fight, his potential legal fight that seems to be so, so farfetched?

WOODWARD: Well, to be very direct with you, I think he's lapsed into self-pity. And in discussions I had with him about the pandemic, it was always, look, what it's done to me. Look what it's done to my re- election chances. Not about the impact on the millions of people who have had the -- the COVID in this country. And so when you lapsed with -- lots of us have periods of self-pity. And it incapacitates you.

And somebody needs to help him and wake him up, and do what's in his interest and the country's interest. And I had talks with him about the responsibility of a president to do what's in the national interest. And at least verbally he'd say, yes, that's right. My job is to protect the people. Well, you protect the people in a situation like this by taking the heavy dose of reality, not self-pity.

BLITZER: Who do you think could talk to the president and convince him it's over?

WOODWARD: I don't know the answer to that. It's probably a collective, I think -- you know, he's stubborn. As I was saying earlier, that's his franchise. I'm going do it the Trump way. And he's powered through lots of dire moments. And he thought he could do it with the pandemic. And it failed. And it failed in this election. So what you need to do is learn how to pivot.

[20:15:04]

And he pivoted at times when confronted with some realities. But he needs to pivot here. And I suspect -- he's not necessarily an introspective person, to say the least. But I think he's capable of introspection. And let's hope he walks that road. And we'll see -- this isn't just a way of getting out of this dilemma for him or the Republican Party. It's for the country. And he really -- he has an opportunity to shift ground and pivot here and do something so there will be a memory of him that will be much fonder.

I mean, Biden is, I think, in a very classic Biden way just barreling ahead without being mean about it. Only being, OK, Trump voters, I understand. I'm going to do my job. And there's nothing -- I spent a lot of time doing two books about Obama. And when Biden was the vice president, learned a lot about Biden. And it's really important. There's nothing cruel about him. In fact, he is the one who will sense, gee, there's someone in the crowd who is needy, and he will go that person.

He will listen. So what -- you know, maybe it's time to look at the good side of this. The obstructionism from Trump at some point will just die or hopefully Trump will seize that moment himself. It would be magnanimous of him to do that.

BLITZER: I suspect we'll have to wait. We are out of time, Bob. But I just want to play one clip of what the president said about Biden in October. He was out on the campaign trail and he said this. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Could you imagine if I lose? My whole life. What am I going to do? I'm going to say, I lost to the worst candidate in the history of politics. I'm not going to feel so good. Maybe I'll have to leave the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Yes. That's what he said then and we'll see what happens.

Bob Woodward, thanks so much for joining us. Once again the best- selling book, a critically important book, it's entitled "Rage." Appreciate everything you're doing, as always. Thank you.

While Democrats pulled out a win at the top of the ticket, the blue wave they had hoped for did not necessarily materialize. Michigan Congresswoman Debbie Dingell standing by live to discuss when we come back.

Stay with us. You're in the SITUATION ROOM.

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[20:22:04]

BLITZER: Democrats may have won back the White House. But if Republicans and the Majority Leader Mitch McConnell maintain their grasp of the U.S. Senate, President-elect Joe Biden's agenda potentially could face some serious gridlock.

Democratic congresswoman of Michigan, Debbie Dingell is joining us right now.

Congresswoman, thanks so much for joining us. The Democrats won the presidency but you lost seats in the House of Representatives, several seats. The Senate remains up for grabs right now. There'll be some runoffs in early January in Georgia. So what lessons, main lessons, do you take away from what happened?

REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-MI): Well, for starters, I'm asking my colleagues not to be judgmental. But we need to understand why so many people did vote for Donald Trump. And I think we still -- look, we won Michigan. I told you it would be tight. And women voted quite frankly in very significant numbers. Black women and white women. But we didn't get all the union workers back. So I think it's going to force us to work together.

We're going to have to bring all parts, our Democratic Party who is not as united as I wish it could be some days. And it's going to force us to listen to each other and try to find ways to get some really important things for the American people done.

BLITZER: Yes. The president-elect, he managed to recreate that so- called blue wall, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, winning all three of those states. And I'm just looking at the latest numbers we're getting from your state of Michigan. Biden won in Michigan, 50.5 percent to 47.9 percent. He won by 147 -- almost 148,000 votes. Hillary Clinton lost Michigan in 2016 by 10,704 votes.

So what did Biden do right in Michigan and Hillary Clinton do wrong?

DINGELL: So I think it's a combination of a lot of things. I think that there was an enthusiasm gap four years ago. And certainly Joe Biden knew that and started paying attention to all three of the states that you just talked about in far more detail. Four years ago, trade was a major issue. This year, I would say there were two issues that people voted on. The economy and COVID. Well, people were not happy with the way that President Trump handled COVID.

But women have -- I can't tell you. I mean, remember the weekend after the inaugural when a 60-year-old woman stopped, we had 20,000 people in the (INAUDIBLE) in Ann Arbor for the Women's March four years ago and I think that's when a lot of this started to build. What you actually saw on election day, say, I've never been involved in politics. I didn't vote this election. I'll never do that again.

I just think in the end the way women have a lot of issues that they are the caregivers. They haven't liked the way that COVID has been treated.

[20:25:02]

Many of them have had to leave the workforce. Many of them are the frontline workers that aren't getting the attention, being paid what they need, don't have equipment that they need. And I think that that's ultimately what delivered Michigan.

BLITZER: There is a serious divide in the Democratic Party, as you well know, Congresswoman Dingell. Your colleague, Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez addressed it here on CNN earlier today when she spoke to Jake Tapper.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): There are at least an inhouse caucus very deep divisions within the party, and I believe that we need to really come together and not allow Republican narratives to tear us apart. You know, as you mentioned, we have a slimmer Democratic majority. It's going to be more important than ever for us to work together and not fight each other.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: A lot of -- several Democrats, Democratic representatives, moderate Democrats, they lost their bid to Republicans in the election. Your majority in the House of Representatives is dwindling, even though you still maintain a slight majority.

How divided is the Democratic Party in the House right now?

DINGELL: Well, I was really glad to hear her say that. And I agree with her. I think we're going to have to bring people together. You know, I have already -- I come from Michigan, the auto industry, environmental issues, CAFE standards, are going to be very important. Green New Deal didn't have labor at the table four years or two years ago. I'm sorry. I went to AOC months ago and said, we've got to put everybody at the table.

We've got to talk about jobs and the goals of the Green New Deal are right. But how do we reach that common ground? She's very open to that. You know, I think that we cannot be divided. Republicans, that's what Donald Trump has done for four years, try to pit us against each other. I think that there is no better person to be president of the United States than Joe Biden right now because he has a history of working across the aisle.

He knows how to listen. He knows how to build coalitions. And we all have to be part of trying to bring this country back together and quite frankly, delivering on some really critical issues that we have not addressed and need to get addressed quickly.

BLITZER: Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan, thanks so much for joining us.

DINGELL: Thank you.

BLITZER: Up next, President Trump is digging in, vowing to fight the election results in court. But do those challenges actually have any legal standing at all?

Stay with us. We'll update you on that when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:31:58]

BLITZER: There's breaking news coming into THE SITUATION ROOM right now. A sobering reminder that even with the election finished, the country faces a horrible, horrible, terrible pandemic. Today we've seen a fifth straight day of more than 100,000 new and confirmed coronavirus cases in the United States. And those five days are the worst of this pandemic since it broke out in January.

Mind you, today's number will rise. The day is not yet done. More reporting is about to come in. 451 confirmed coronavirus deaths in the United States so far today.

We'll talk more about all this coming up in the next hour with our CNN medical experts. Stand by for that.

In the meantime, the president's own family right now seems to be divided on whether or not he should concede to President-elect Biden, even as his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani says team Trump may file even more election lawsuits. But there are other judicial issues that must be front of mind for President Trump right now. How much legal jeopardy potentially could he face once he is no longer a sitting president of the United States? That would be after January 20th.

Our senior legal analyst Preet Bharara is joining us right now.

Preet, thanks so much for joining us. You were the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York. Let me ask you, first, do any of the Trump campaign's legal challenges that he and some of his supporters have discussed, the challenges to the election, stand any serious chance of changing the result?

PREET BHARARA, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, you asked the question the right way. Not whether or not those legal challenges have some possibility of being successful, but whether or not the point of them makes any sense? Will they flip the election?

With respect to lots of these lawsuits that have been brought already, they've been kicked out, sometimes with caustic comments from the court. They are not well pled. Sometimes they have been brought by the wrong party and brought against the wrong party. There is this one suit that I'm familiar with from Pennsylvania that is as yet unsettled, which deals with the votes that came in by mail in Pennsylvania after election day.

But as you said in the premise of your question, will it have any difference? Will it cause any change in the outcome of the Pennsylvania race? It won't. Even if every single one of those votes is not counted, even assuming every single one of those votes was cast for President Trump. The margin of the race as I understand it in Pennsylvania is in the 40,000 plus range. So it won't have any affect. And separate from that, the other suits don't seem to be doing well in court in any event.

BLITZER: There are a number of criminal cases working their way through the Southern District of New York as well as elsewhere in New York state, the New York attorney general Letitia James said on Friday that her state investigations into the Trump Organization wouldn't end if he loses the presidency. How much danger do you believe all this potential -- the legal issues, how much danger potentially does it pose to the president of the United States after he leaves office?

BHARARA: Well, it's hard to say. But the one thing that we know is true, when he leaves office at noon on January 20th of next year, is that he will no longer have the protection of the Department of Justice policy set forth in an opinion -- multiple opinions that a sitting president can't be indicted.

[20:35:14]

He will no longer be the president. He is subject to prosecution in any and all jurisdictions in the country. He already was subject to prosecution in state court and there's investigations going on as you mentioned by Cy Vance, the district attorney, in Manhattan. With respect to the Southern District of New York, I don't have any personal knowledge. There is this one sort of leftover issue.

You'll recall the Michael Cohen, the fixture and former personal lawyer for Donald Trump, pled guilty to charges and is doing time in prison, or was doing time in prison before he was released early because of COVID, in which he said in his guilty plea that he had engaged in one of those crimes involving payoffs to Stormy Daniels in coordination with and at the direction of Individual One, who's Donald Trump, which seemed to be the Southern District of New York saying the president was involved in a crime.

I don't know what will come of that. I don't know if that will be pursued. I don't know if they may not pursue it because Michael Cohen is not a good witness. He was never signed up to a formal cooperation agreement. But you have that sitting out there. And you have other things that we don't know the results of.

Reports that Rudy Giuliani has been under investigation. Other people who are close to the president may be talking to prosecutors in the Southern District. It's hard to say. The one thing we do know is his, you know, general immunity as the sitting president of the United States will be gone.

BLITZER: After January 20th, as you say, at noon. January 20th. Preet Bharara, as usual, thanks so much for joining us.

BHARARA: Thanks, Wolf.

BLITZER: President-elect Joe Biden's life has been filled with heartbreaking tragedy. So what role have those moments played in his road to the White House?

Stay with us. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:40:49]

BLITZER: While President-elect Joe Biden is known for his decades-long career as a public servant, he's also known for the unimaginable loss that he has suffered and his ability to survive that loss and move forward. He's lost a wife, a daughter and a son. In fact, the death of his son Beau in 2015 is what ultimately drove his decision to not run for president the last election cycle.

CNN's Chris Cillizza writes about what he calls "Biden's Triumphant Grief" on CNN.com, saying in part, and I'm quoting Chris now, "Joe Biden is a man and a politician whose joys and sorrows, who's triumphs and tragedies have always followed hard on one another. Joy has been replaced by pain, pain has given way to joy."

Chris Cillizza is joining us now.

Chris, excellent, excellent article. So tell our viewers how these tragedies have led Biden to last night's presidential victory speech.

CHRIS CILLIZZA, CNN POLITICS REPORTER AND EDITOR-AT-LARGE: Yes, it's -- I mean, everyone knows that he's been in political life for a long time. But I wanted to pluck out two moments.

The first was a picture of him and his very young family in the summer of 1972 in which he is at the Democratic state convention. He's got Beau and Hunter. He's holding them, their little boys, his wife is standing there smiling. He would go on to win that 1972 Senate race as we know.

And then months later, even before he was sworn in, his wife, his 13- month-old daughter Naomi were killed in a car accident going to get a Christmas tree of all things. Joy elected at 29 years old to the Senate. The pain and the loss that stays with you of the death of your daughter and your wife.

Fast forward to election day 2020. Joe Biden and his granddaughter go and visit the grave as you mentioned of his eldest son, Beau Biden, dead in May 2015 of brain cancer, a death that bookended a piece of Joe Biden's life, and I think many of us thought, well, 2016, he didn't run, that will be it.

But that Beau Biden's urging of his father to stay in the public forum, to stay in the national dialogue eventually leads him on this really, honestly sort of unlikely path from him getting out with Barack Obama at his side in 2015 to being elected the president of the United States.

A story that I don't know that a fiction writer could write. I mean, it really has the full scope of human emotion. And for Joe Biden, I do think that that mattered, Wolf. I think Donald Trump lacks empathy. Whether you lack him or you hate, he's not empathetic. Joe Biden is because he has suffered, because he has grieved, and because he's been able to overcome it and experience these joys and triumphs. BLITZER: So how do you think, Chris, his experience with loss, awful,

sad loss like that, what does it tell us about how he'll lead as the president of the United States?

CILLIZZA: Yes, I mean, I think it's a very different form of leadership than Donald Trump. I do think that Joe Biden leads often -- and sometimes to his detriment with his heart. I think he is a hugely empathetic person. I think he is someone who thinks of he does what his heart, his emotions tell him oftentimes, less than sort of his brain. It makes him not the perfect political candidate, candidly. He is not -- he was not great in debates. You know, he's not what you take out and put on a shelf as the best political candidate.

But I do think it is the secret to why he's succeeded in all those years in the Senate. Look, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader at least at the moment, he didn't like many people, particularly many Democrats. He and Joe Biden have a real relationship. And I think it's because Joe Biden -- he goes around the partisanship. Now can you do that as a president of the United States? I think it's more limited.

Mitch McConnell is going to have his agenda. Nancy Pelosi is going to have somewhat her agenda. And Joe Biden is going to have his agenda. It doesn't mean all of this polarization and partisanship will fall away. But I will tell you, he will treat people more as people rather than political entities. And that's sort of what Donald Trump always did.

BLITZER: Yes, it's going to be a very, very different presidency.

Chris Cillizza, excellent, excellent article.

CILLIZZA: Thank you, Wolf.

BLITZER: Thanks for writing it. And I recommend our viewers read it right away. Thank you very, very much.

[20:45:02]

CILLIZZA: Thank you, sir.

BLITZER: So it isn't just the president baselessly claiming that the election was stolen, so many of his supporters are actually saying the same thing.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN POLITICS AND TECHNOLOGY CORRESPONDENT: You don't think there's any way Trump could have lost?

ANDREW WALKER, TRUMP SUPPORTER: No.

O'SULLIVAN: Really?

WALKER: Yes. How do you go from almost losing 200,000 in five hours, you're down to 30,000 votes away from winning?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: So what's behind their false claims? CNN traveled to a protest to find out. We'll share it with you when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[20:50:03]

BLITZER: Amid the uncertainty of the historic election here in the United States this week, an online movement in the U.S. has convinced some Trump supporters that the election was stolen. These totally ridiculous and baseless claims have blossomed online, including on the Twitter feed of the president himself who for weeks actually laid the groundwork for doubting the election results.

CNN's Donie O'Sullivan has more.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Trump is still your president.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: It's legal for them to count votes in Pennsylvania two days after the election on November 3rd?

O'SULLIVAN: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're wrong. Go. I don't even want to talk to you.

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

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): "Stop the steal," a movement of Trump supporters that gained hundreds of thousands of followers online in the hours after the election, has inspired protests across the country.

(On camera): The ballots that you said you saw are lying around the place or in trash cans or whatever, where are you hearing that from?

WALKER: I mean, it's -- the videos are going viral everywhere. I have seen them on TikTok, I've seen them on Facebook, I've seen them on FOX News. I've seen them on the local news around my area.

MELISSA, TRUMP SUPPORTER: I have seen too much pieces of different evidence so far that shows that at this point I would be OK with a revote.

O'SULLIVAN: Really?

MELISSA: Yes. Absolutely. When you have video footage of people taking bags of ballots and showing that they are for Donald Trump and lighting them on fire --

O'SULLIVAN: I helped write a fact check on CNN on that particular video. The election officials said that video has been going around for a few days. They are printout ballots. They're not real ballots.

MELISSA: So you used the information of the election officials?

O'SULLIVAN: Somebody like me comes along, tries to research it, tries to fact check it. And then I fact check it, you'll come back and say well, the election officials would say that.

MELISSA: Why wouldn't they, though? That's the thing, though. Question everything, right?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You are not going to steal this election from us.

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): The video actually showed sample ballots, not real ballots. The video's assertion is false. But even the president's son tweeted it to his millions of followers. Election officials in Virginia where the sample ballots were from told CNN they had spent days trying to correct the online misinformation.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We love you, Donald Trump.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: When we went to bed open election night, when they told us they stopped counting, we woke up and there was a vertical spike right for Biden, 130,000 votes approximately. That's when I knew there was a problem.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Now as my buddy Steve Bannon says, if you're going to lie, be believable about it because you do not have 138,000 votes come in and 135,000 of them come in for Biden.

O'SULLIVAN (on camera): This is what I think you guys might have been talking about on election night, Michigan, 138,000. This was from a Web site called DecisionDeskHQ. But they come out and they said, we messed up. There was an error in how votes came back and reported. And that's why there was this spike in the map. But, you know, the election officials in Michigan then all confirmed to say, yes, there was this error. They are not real ballots. Those ballots never existed.

(Voice-over): President Trump himself even shared a post about the Michigan error. Twitter labeled his post as misinformation.

(On camera): Are you concerned that just as how people on the left can fall for misinformation that maybe sometimes --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, I'm -- yes -- no. I mean, I'm very thorough with the information I look at. I have my opinions, obviously. But I'm not just going to go around retweeting false information or things that I believe that are just -- I look at things that are suspicious.

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Some people at the protest told us the delays in news outlets projecting a winner contributed to their belief that Biden stole the election.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: America first or else it's going to be America last.

O'SULLIVAN (on camera): You don't think there's any way Trump could have lost?

WALKER: No.

O'SULLIVAN: Really?

WALKER: Yes. How do you go from almost losing 200,000 in five hours you're down to 30,000 votes away from winning?

O'SULLIVAN: A lot of Democrats voted in the mail. They voted absentee, they voted before election day. And in a lot of states, those election day votes got counted first. That's why Trump had that early lead. And then once those other voters started getting counted, that is how Biden caught up and --

WALKER: So where are all the Trump ballots that were mailed in? Why are we finding them laying around in different places?

O'SULLIVAN: But Trump was telling everybody not to mail it in. Right? That's why there are so much more mail-in Democratic votes, no?

WALKER: No.

[20:55:02]

O'SULLIVAN (voice-over): Many of the false claims alleging voter fraud spread on social media. Facebook and Twitter labeled some as a misinformation.

MELISSA: I think that's wrong. That's not their place. We're like one big science experiment for social media. If I'm seeking a certain viewpoint and I seem -- and they seem to see that I favor that view more, that's the viewpoint that they're going to feed me. And then the other side is going to get a different viewpoint.

O'SULLIVAN (on camera): Does that concern you as a Facebook user?

MELISSA: I mean, it concerns me, yes, because of the fact that unfortunately people fail to think for themselves. They feed into everything that they are seeing without questioning it.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: Donie O'Sullivan reported for us. Donie, thank you very much.

Meanwhile, a sobering reminder that the country still faces a terrible pandemic. A fifth straight day here in the United States where the country has recorded more than 100,000 new confirmed coronavirus cases. We have details on the President-elect Joe Biden's plan when we come back.

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