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China Agrees to Return U.S. Drone; Backlash Against Unfaithful Electoral College Elector; Trump Brushes Off Russian Hack Intel; Russian Ambassador Assassinated in Turkey; 20,000 Evacuated from Eastern Aleppo. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired December 19, 2016 - 13:30   ET

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


[13:30:00] REP. ADAM KINZINGER, (R), ILLINOIS: This violates the fact we made that a staple who we are in terms of international trade and in terms of the freedom to navigate and in terms of military. I think this needs to be pushed back against hard.

It's not necessarily an act of war, but China's attempt to try to, again, reassert itself, which it's been doing over the last couple decades and especially the last few years. And I'm excited about incoming President-elect Trump's ability to push back on encroachment on the South China Sea and sanctions and things like that. An exciting few years.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: Clearly, Congressman Moulton, not bobbing along, they feel monitoring purposes for this?

REP. SETH MOULTON, (D), MASSACHUSETTS: Look, I think there's bipartisan agreement that we need to push back against China. President Obama talked about a strategic shift to the Pacific. Not because he wanted to send the U.S. Navy on vacation. We have to confront the threat China poses in the South China Sea.

The reality is that what we're seeing over the last few days and I think a frightening lack of leadership from the president-elect. At first, says we've got to get the drone back, then he says I don't care.

Look, I'm not a president-elect, but I was a lieutenant and had a platoon in the Marines. If I was taking my Marines on a mission to get a drone back and then, a day later, halfway through the mission, said, oh, no, we don't care, they can just have it, that's not leadership. We have to have serious leadership and strategic thinking. Not one-off phone calls very confusing to the troops.

KEILAR: We have a tweet. It says, "We should tell China we don't want the drone they stole back. Let them keep it."

Congressman Kinzinger, when you see this back and forth, and I suppose we may be expecting this as Donald Trump moves in to the White House, is that helpful?

KINZINGER: No, I don't think so. You know, I think Twitter can play a very important role in this kind of new era. You know, you looked at the prime ministers and presidents that use it to get information out. I think the president-elect, if advising him, I'd say be careful is when the write the tweet personally without the understanding of necessarily that message it says it may not be helpful. I wouldn't necessarily discourage him to close down his Twitter but definitely probably encourage him to run the tweets through different national security experts.

But, again, he's still president-elect. I think when it comes to January 20th, he's sworn office, or 21st, then can make the decision. I think at that point we can be way more critical, if, in fact, these kinds of tweets continue as president of the United States and not just incoming.

KEILAR: Are you expecting a change, Congressman Kinzinger? Expecting some sort of adjustment in Donald Trump and the way he tweets and how it can affect national security?

KINZINGER: I think I am. The reason is because, when the weight of the presidency comes on top of your shoulders, things change. You've seen from him saying initially he's not even going to divert himself of his business, now putting out ways to divest. As time has gone on through the transition process, you have him coming to conclusions that some things have to be done differently.

Look, I support the president-elect in every way I can and oppose in areas I must, and hopefully, when sworn in, Twitter can be used effectively, he has a lot of followers, but I think leaving the emotional tweets out of it may about good step in the right direction.

KEILAR: Congressman Moulton, what do you think about this new secretary of the Army designate, Vincent Viola? You're a veteran, as is Congressman Kinzinger, what can you tell us?

MOULTON: You know, I don't know him. But he's a veteran as well. He went to West Point, had an impressive career in business. But I'll tell you, I think that if you look at Trump cabinet so far, you know, that it's 90percent millionaires and billionaires. I think we've got that demographic --

KEILAR: And generals. A lot of generals, too.

MOULTON: There's a lot of generals. I -- I value the input of generals, but you can't have cabinet that all looks the same. That's almost all white. That's almost all men. And is 90 percent millionaires and billionaires. This is a president-elect who said he was looking out for the little guy, wanted perspectives and he was listening to the American people. Well, if you look at who he's going to surround himself with in this administration, he's certainly not listening to the vast majority of Americans.

KEILAR: What do you think, Congressman Kinzinger? So much advice that the president-elect is going to be getting from people with military backgrounds. Is that an issue and speak to this appointment?

KINZINGER: I think it's going to about great thing. I mean, you know, look, we've got people -- again, the case of General Mattis, out of the military three years. The good thing about military people, like Seth and I in Congress, for instance, is we know where the -- for lack of a better term -- the skeletons are buried, for instance, in the Pentagon, where there's inefficiencies and things that need fixed. General Mattis will do a great job of that. Bringing in military experience I think will be good. And with the new Army secretary, I don't know a lot about him but I actually do know somebody who worked with him before and knows him well, said probably among the best pick he could have possibly made. He may be worth a lot of money, showing he's successful, and I think he'll do a great job for the Army.

[13:35:28] KEILAR: Gentlemen, thank you. Congressman Kinzinger and Congressman Moulton, thank you for being on to have a bipartisan discussion. Appreciate it.

KINZINGER: You bet.

MOULTON: Thanks.

KEILAR: Have a great day.

Just ahead, what happened to one Electoral College elector when said he would not vote for President-elect Trump. It got downright scary.

And live pictures from Tallahassee, Florida, where the electoral voting is set to begin next hour. Normally, a boring formality, but interesting this year. We're monitoring it, and will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: At this hour, electors in eight states are meeting to cast their votes for president and vice president. This hour, Iowa, Alabama, Wisconsin, getting their chance. But have been trying to persuade electors in the major battleground states not to cast their votes for Donald Trump.

In Texas, one Electoral College elector openly vowed not to cast his vote for Trump and tells CNN's Kyung Lah the backlash is vicious.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KYUNG LAH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The threats keep coming to Christopher Supron, from raping his wife and daughters with a knife before killing him, to warnings on social media, to messages on his cell phone.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You better get your (EXPLETIVE DELETED) straight. We coming after you.

[13:40:08] CHRISTOPHER SUPRON, TEXAS ELECTORAL COLLEGE ELECTOR: People put out my home address and phone number. We're in a place where, oh, you're not voting the way I want, I'm going to kill you.

LAH: All because he is a Republican Texas elector in the Electoral College, a so-called faithless elector, a conservative lifelong Republican who will not vote for Donald Trump, even though the GOP easily won Texas.

(on camera): Why not vote for Donald Trump? I mean, isn't that what you're supposed to do?

SUPRON: If I'm a rubber stamp, that's exactly what I'm supposed to do. This is unfortunately the first time we've needed to use it as a nation but it's time to pull the brake.

LAH (voice-over): He claims that goal of stopping Trump made him a target of a smear campaign. He says is was a volunteer paramedic on 9/11. He says Trump supporters claiming he was never there, a claim he called outrageous.

The Dale City (ph) Fire Department says Supron was a volunteer member from 2000-2002 but can't find a record of where he was on 9/11.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: These electors are charged with a constitutional responsibility.

LAH: The electoral vote is something we usually never pay attention to --

(CHANTING)

LAH: -- but 2016 has been anything but usual.

BRET CHIAFALO, TEXAS ELECTORAL COLLEGE ELECTOR: Bottom line, he hasn't won yet. The only vote that matters when it comes to president has not happened yet.

LAH: Bret Chiafalo, a Democratic Washington State elector, formed the Hamilton Electors the day after the election. He's now trying to urge Electoral College members across the country to block Trump from 270 votes.

For that to happen, some must flip he is the first to flip.

Supron is the first Republican to publicly flip.

But, Chiafalo says he has heard from others.

CHIAFALO: We believe there is -- there's a large group of people staying silent out of fear or maybe because they haven't made a final decision, but we do believe there's dozens of Republican electors who are seriously considering not voting for Donald Trump.

JOE BIDEN, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: -- will announce the votes --

LAH: But even if that remote possibility happens, the House of Representatives, controlled by Republicans, elects the president.

(on camera): He's still going to win.

SUPRON: Still going to win.

LAH: Isn't this pointless, then?

SUPRON: Not if you're trying to vote your conscience, do the right thing and bring up the issue. I've been hoping he would become the president we all want him to be. He keeps proving me wrong.

LAH: Kyung Lah, CNN, Dallas.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: And Texas electors voting at 3:00 p.m.

This here is your latest Electoral College count, Donald Trump, 135 votes, Hillary Clinton at 83.

Let's bring in our political panel now, Dan Balz, chief correspondent for the "Washington Post"; and Heidi Pryzbyla, the senior politics reporter for "USA Today"; and Ryan Lizza, a CNN political commentator and the Washington correspondent for "The New Yorker."

let's start with this elector, this -- it's really an interesting situation. Where we don't see this all the time, and I don't remember the last time, Dan, we were looking in at all of these states as their going through what's normally this perfunctory process and we see protesting happening in Wisconsin and other places?

DAN BALZ, CHEIF CORRESPONDENT, WASHINGTON POST: We've never seen anything like this. But we've never seen anything like the election we went through, and should not be surprised there's this much interest in it. Obviously, because the popular vote went one way and the electoral vote another way, there's heightened interest and concern about it. But the kind of faithless elector movement, if you will, reminds me a little bit of kind of the Never Trump efforts ahead of the Republican National Convention. A lot of talk, people trying to stir things up but, in the end, nothing really was affected or changed by it.

KEILAR: Listen to what the president said about the Electoral College in his year-end press conference before he went on vacation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The Electoral College is a vestige, it's a carryover from an earlier vision of how our federal government was going to work. There are some structures in our political system, as envisioned by the founders, that sometimes they're going to disadvantage Democrats.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: He says, it's a vested -- so like an appendix or something we don't really need? You know? We've been hearing a lot of people on the left, Heidi, how do you say, maybe we should get rid of this? Of course, there's challenges to that. How do you see this debate?

HEIDI PRYZBYLA, SENIOR POLITICS REPORTER, USA TODAY: The reason why you hear it from the left, it's overwhelmingly hurt the left. Both throughout history --

KEILAR: Through history. [13:44:41] PRYZBYLA: -- and in recent history. This is the second time in recent history we've seen the Democrat win the popular vote and lose the presidency. And the last time it happened prior to that was 1888. There's something happening in terms of polarization of our country, as well as vote distribution that is causing this and causing Democrats to say, maybe we need to take another look.

But let's have a reality check here. That is in order to do that you'd have to have a voting Congress and then you'd have to have three-fourths of states. Who controls Congress? Republicans. They understand this. It disproportionately hurt Democrats, and not their party. I don't see this going anywhere.

But if you want to put in context what we're seeing today, it is to spark just such a discussion, and to kind of give Americans a bit of a civics refresher about why we have the type of system we have, and maybe have a debate about it.

KEILAR: Can you make the case for the Electoral College?

RYAN LIZZA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, the case is, this is, our system does -- there's built-in advantage, talking about a little now of a built-in advantage for Republicans because our system favors geography, not just people. People think the Senate is undemocratic. Every state has two Senators. And every state, regardless of population, has at least three electoral votes. The candidates, they don't spend a lot of time in California and New York, two big states, because they're not swing states, but spend a lot of time in small states such as New Hampshire, a swing state.

So, the defense of it is, as Trump, who is a recent convert to the Electoral College -- remember in 2012 --

KEILAR: Hated it.

LIZZA: The popular vote. The defense is that there are states where the candidates would never go if we didn't have the Electoral College, and it gives some of the smaller states a little bit more of a say in the system.

KEILAR: I've heard some Democrats say, well, the Senate is representative of states. Right?

LIZZA: We've already got that.

KEILAR: You have the small states with two Senators just like big states like California only have two Senators. That should be enough. I mean, what do you say to that?

LIZZA: It mirrors the undemocratic nature of the Senate, which was, of course, a compromise, when the constitution was written, is carried over into the Electoral College. That's the argument. That -- we shouldn't have both of these undemocratic things institutionalized.

BALZ: If you were to undo the Electoral College, would you have a movement to change the way the Senate is distributed? KEILAR: I want to talk about Russia and some of what we're hearing,

really a divide between Republicans, like John McCain and Donald Trump. You have John McCain, who's saying this may mean the unraveling of the world order, If Russia or another country can interfere with elections in the Democratic process. And then you have Donald Trump, who at this point, is still not acknowledging, despite all intel agencies in agreement that that this is Russia. Quite the divide.

PRYZBYLA: That's why you'll see a lot of defense hawks potentially coming forward, like McCain is. A debate over what should this investigation look like? There is a lot of concern right now that, given what we know about how congressional investigations have operated over the past 10 to 20 years, they inherently become politicized. Maybe not all of the information will get out to the public. And so, that's why I think McCain -- has he actually said whether -- he might not -- McCain doesn't support necessarily the independent investigator, but what would be good is if McCain were kind of the head of the -- if his committee was the one investigating, because McCain does have such a bipartisan, you know, credentials, and a lot of people trust McCain.

KEILAR: Does this call for the select committee? Is it something that puts him at odds with his leadership in the Senate? So far mitch McConnell rejected it. You see John McCain joining with Democrats in a letter trying to sway him, and also Speaker Ryan, but they're not onboard with this, Dan?

BALZ: No. Not at all, and will continue to resist, and that could well be the result we get. There won't be a select committee investigation, but some kind of investigation. I think we're likely to see that. And we'll also get the report from the administration, presumably before President Obama leaves office, which is likely to spur more questions and further inquiry. We're a long way from this being ended, pre-maturely.

KEILAR: Your expectation, there is really going to be a deep dive into this, that we'll learn about this? Obviously, some is classified, but you think we're learn a lot about this?

BALZ: A good question. These things become politicized quickly. And I think it will behoove the people if there is in fact an investigation to be able to conduct it in a way people have confidence about it that it doesn't simply become a part of partisan shouting match.

[13:59:54] PRYZBYLA: That's the problem, in a way people have confidence in it. Look at the numbers than what institution has less support than the media right now? It's Congress. But the problem is that unless -- given the level of distrust right now, it will be hard to emerge from this if it is run out of Congress specifically out of these committees which are led by one party for there not to be an inherent politicization of it.

KEILAR: Heidi, Dan, Ryan, thank you so much to all of you. We have a new Electoral College count. Donald Trump with 176 votes and Hillary Clinton -- is that 93? 93. She was down a little bit below that, so 176-93. We'll keep an eye on this as it changes. The state electors in various states acting now.

They survived life under ISIS rule, but that doesn't mean the worst is over. Just ahead, a live report on the refugees fleeing Aleppo.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: Let get an update on our top story. A warning, some of the images you're about to see are very disturbing.

A Russian news agency is reporting that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan spoke over the phone following the shooting death of Russia's ambassador to Ankara. In what Russia is calling a terror attack, a Turkish gunman shot Andrey Karlov as he was speaking at the opening of a photo exhibit. He was yelling "Allah Akbar, do not forget Aleppo," in Turkish.

This attack is coming at a time when Turkey and Russia have been trying to repair relations over the war in Syria. In recent days, the two countries were working on a joint effort to evacuate civilians from Aleppo.

And the number evacuated from eastern Aleppo up now to 20,000. This is according to the Turkish foreign minister. The United Nations Security Council has voted to redeploy U.N. staff to monitor and report on the evacuation.

For a report on the evacuations, we have our international correspondent, Muhammad Lila, on the Turkish/Syria border.

Muhammad, I know you talked to some of the civilians. What are you hearing?

[13:55:11] MUHAMMAD LILA, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, they are describing their ordeal in Aleppo as hell on earth. We spoke to people who are being treated at the hospital after being evacuated from Aleppo and surviving so many things, like dozens and dozens of air strikes.

A man lost his entire family and had his 6-year-old son cradled in his arms. His son was crying because he had just been told his mother died in an air strike. That story is not uncommon. There are hundreds and hundreds of civilians being evacuated from east Aleppo that have lost close family members.

Once they are evacuated, the big question, where do they go? Are they going to a place that's going to be attacked by ISIS? A lot of unknowns but for many the suffering still continues once they are evacuated.

KEILAR: Tell us about the evacuations. How many people have been able to -- have been moved out of the area and what the expectations are? LILA: This is what makes the attack so interesting, the timing,

because the evacuations were going on today uninterrupted by all accounts today was a success. Around 20,000 have been evacuated from eastern Aleppo. And the U.N. came out and said they were able to rescue 45 orphans from an orphanage, some of them were in dire need of medical care, and now that they've been rescued they are getting medical care.

It looked like, in Syria, everything was moving according to plan. But now with this targeted killing of the ambassador, there's question marks about what's going to happen next.

KEILAR: We know you're going to follow that.

Muhammad, thank you. Appreciate that report.

That's it for me. I'll be back at 5:00 eastern on "The Situation Room."

For our international viewers, "Amanpour" is next.

For our North American viewers, NEWSROOM with Brooke Baldwin starts right after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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