CNN "The Lead with Jake Tapper" - Transcript: Interview with Senator Chris Murphy

Interview

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[16:15:42]

TAPPER: In our 2020 lead: Moments ago, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said that President Trump is -- quote -- "100 percent within his rights" to wage a legal fight against the election results.

Most Republican lawmakers are either staying silent or backing President Trump's decision to not concede, some even bolstering the president's false claims that there was widespread voter fraud, even though there has been no credible proof of widespread voter fraud that has been put forward.

Joining me now, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut.

Senator Murphy, only four of your Republican colleagues, Senator Susan Collins, who was just reelected, Senator Lisa Murkowski, Senator Mitt Romney, and Senator Ben Sasse, only four of them have acknowledged that president-elect Joe Biden is president-elect. Others are actively pushing Trump to keep the fight going. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): Trump has not lost. Do not concede, Mr. President. Fight hard.

SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): I believe President Trump still has a path to victory. And that path is to count every single legal vote that was cast, but also not to cast any votes that were fraudulently cast or illegally cast. And we have a legal process to determine what's legal and what isn't.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TAPPER: Now, the Trump campaign has not put anything forward that we have seen as a credible evidence of widespread fraud that Republican election lawyers, like Ben Ginsberg, say should be taken seriously or would change the outcome in any state.

What's your response to your colleagues, not the four who have acknowledged reality, but the others?

SEN. CHRIS MURPHY (D-CT): This isn't Florida in 2000. This isn't a couple hundred votes. This is tens of thousands of votes. And absent any evidence of fraud or mishandling of the vote, the president needs to concede.

And I think what you're seeing from most of my Republican colleagues is just the reality within the Republican Party today. The reality within the Republican Party is that Donald Trump runs it. He ran it for the last four years, and he's going to run it for the next four years.

And so Republicans, by and large, don't want to get on the wrong side of this president, because they still operate in fear of him, and what he could do to their political future. Unfortunately, that is the modern Republican Party.

Now, there are real consequences, as you have talked about, regarding the president's lack of concession, because we need to get about the business of transition. It's complicated. It involves American national security to make sure that there's a smooth transfer of power.

And if that cannot happen, then that puts our nation's security at risk.

TAPPER: Yesterday on Twitter, you said that a lame-duck White House could lead to -- quote -- "President Trump's post-defeat rage" and the possible firings of Defense Secretary Mark Esper, CIA Director Gina Haspel.

Now that Esper has been fired -- and, to be fair, Jonathan Swan from Axios wrote that this might happen about a week or so ago. So I'm not giving you credit for your prognostication.

But now that Esper has been fired, what's your reaction?

MURPHY: It's unexpected, and it might not be the end of this purge.

The president is furious, and he likely has others in the national security infrastructure in his sights. Our adversaries are watching. Our adversaries are looking at the potential vulnerability of U.S. national security. And they may take action.

I think about a country like China, who may want to take the next logical step, with respect to a crackdown in Hong Kong, may want to do something even more provocative, like take a run at one of the disputed islands off their coast. And in doing so, they may believe that they could gain an advantage, because there is no defense secretary, there may not be a CIA director.

The president may decide not to respond to their actions abroad. And then, by the time that Joe Biden is sworn in, it may be too late to reverse those very escalatory and disturbing actions.

So, I think we have to watch for all of that.

TAPPER: I have to -- we have to acknowledge here, even though President Trump lost the presidential election and Joe Biden won, the Republican Party is clearly still very popular in much of the country. They gained at least eight seats in the House.

They held on to key seats in the Senate. And depending on what happens in Georgia, they might maintain control of the Senate. This election was not an embrace of Democratic or progressive values.

What went wrong for your party?

[16:20:01]

MURPHY: Oh, I don't think anything went wrong. We beat a president, maybe in the end, by seven million votes. We gained seats in the Senate.

Listen, this is a divided country. There's no doubt about it. And to get anything done in Washington in the next two years, you're going to have to reach out across the aisle. And our intention is to try to do that.

The only way you're going to get a coronavirus relief bill done is with Republicans and Democrats supporting it, for instance. So, I don't think that it's any surprise we did -- we have won more seats than we lost across the board. And, ultimately, we're going to have to govern together with Republicans.

TAPPER: I mean, I'm going to push back a little here, Senator.

Joe Biden won the presidency by a big margin. And you picked up -- your party picked up one seat in the Senate. You lost the race in Maine. You lost the race in Iowa. You lost the race in Montana. I could go on and on. You lost the race in North Carolina. I mean, Schumer thought he was going to be the majority leader. And he's not. I mean, obviously, something went wrong.

MURPHY: Well, I'm not sure a year ago that people thought that we would have had so many potential Senate seats in play.

But let me humor you for a second, because I don't think you're wrong. I mean, we should do an assessment. We should always be doing assessments as a party about how we can be better.

President Trump from the White House over the last four years was able to sort of maintain a status of an outsider. And Democrats, I believe, are the party of reform. We're the party of real top-down economic reform. We're the party of reform to our democracy.

And I think we have to be much more vocal in those policies that are going to dramatically alter the nature of our economy or are going to put voters back in charge, rather than big donors of our government. And I think the president has been successful in being the anti-status quo party. The Democrats should hold that mantle.

And we have got to do a better job of explaining why over the next two to four years.

TAPPER: Biden has a history of making deals with McConnell.

A lot, of course, has changed in the past four years. How much of Biden's agenda do you think can really get done if Republicans keep control of the Senate, which seems possible, if not likely?

MURPHY: Well, I do think it's really important that we win these two seats in Georgia.

I know that folks may think that that's a long shot. I don't agree. I think that there are a lot of voters who voted for Joe Biden in Georgia who are going to want to give him a chance to actually implement his agenda. And my belief is that, while you are right that Mitch McConnell and Joe Biden have a history of working together, that it is probably more likely than not that Mitch McConnell is going to stand in the way of much of that agenda.

So, I think we have a chance to litigate that question in Georgia coming up in early January and, in the meantime, try to put pressure on McConnell to, at the very least, make sure that Joe Biden gets the opportunity to put a Cabinet in place.

TAPPER: All right, Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, thanks so much. Appreciate it.

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