CNN "State of the Union with Jake Tapper" - Transcript Interview with Stacey Abrams

Interview

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Joining me now, a contender to be Joe Biden's running mate and founder of the voting rights organization Fair Fight, former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams.

And, Leader Abrams, President Trump suggested delaying the election this week. We should underscore and underline he doesn't have the power to do that.

But he is saying it's because mail-in voting would lead to -- quote -- "the most inaccurate and fraudulent election in history."

What is your response?

STACEY ABRAMS, FOUNDER, FAIR FIGHT: First of all, he is trying to distract us from his oversight and leadership, or failed leadership, of an economy that shrank by one-third this last quarter.

[09:45:08]

You have got 43 million people who are now going to be subject to evictions because of the inaction of the Republican-led Senate. We have millions of people who've been infected and are out of work.

We have, unfortunately, 150,000 dead. And he's attempting to distract us from his failed leadership.

But by -- invoking the notion that we cannot hold an election cuts against hundreds of years of history. We had elections during the Civil War, during the Spanish Flu. And we can have an election this time.

Absentee ballots work, as he admits. And it's the exact same thing as mail-in ballots, vote by mail. It's all the same job.

And the job that he has is to make certain that we have a Postal Service that can actually deliver the votes to our elections officials. But, unfortunately, his partisan leader that he's put in charge of the post office is doing his best to undermine one of the core pillars of our society, which is our ability to communicate.

And so, rather than tweeting out erroneous information, I wish he would focus on actually doing his job for the last few days that he has in this office.

BASH: Are you worried that he won't accept the results in November?

ABRAMS: I'm not worried about that. What I'm worried about is that we will not be able to effectively count the votes of every eligible American, because he's doing his best to undermine our confidence in the process. But, worse, he's doing his best to actually steal the vote by

undermining the Postal Service knowing that, at this point, more than 40 percent of Americans are likely to use some form of early voting, including vote by mail.

And, as we know, we're not yet in the second wave of the pandemic. That means we have to be prepared, and that means we have to have a Postal Service that's working, but we also need the HEROES Act passed, so that cash-strapped states like Arkansas, like Georgia, like North Carolina, like Wisconsin can scale up an deliver an election that is worthy of America.

BASH: Former Vice President Joe Biden will announce his running mate in the coming week or two.

Are you still in the running?

ABRAMS: I leave it to the Biden vetting team to answer questions about who's in the running.

But we know that whomever Joe Biden picks will be a good partner to help us turn this country around, restore the soul of America, and build back better. That's what we need.

We're watching an economy in freefall. And our only pathway to recovery is to have a leader like Joe Biden, who's actually done this job before, who understands the public health crisis and the economic crisis that we face. And that's what I look forward to having Joe Biden do for us in January.

BASH: If he doesn't pick you, would you be disappointed if he does not choose another African-American woman?

ABRAMS: I have said time and again I believe that Joe Biden is going to pick the right partner for himself, because he's the only person who's done this job.

And while I believe that diversity is incredibly important, and I think it is an absolute good to see a continued changing of the face of what leadership looks like in America, I look to Joe Biden to pick the right partner for himself in the moment that we have before us, which is one of an economic crisis, a public health crisis, and a crisis of justice.

And I think he's the person who will not take anyone for granted. And I look forward to working with him to make sure he's elected.

BASH: So, this week, the country mourned the loss of civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis. You attended his funeral in Atlanta and heard former President Obama call Lewis a founding father of that fuller, fairer, better America.

Is that how you see America right now?

ABRAMS: I do. And I was so privileged to be in that space. One of the issues that I was working with Congressman Lewis on and a

number of members of Congress is the 2020 census. We can't look past the fact that we have to tell the story of what America is.

And as one of these modern founding fathers, John Lewis understood that what Donald Trump is doing to the census is wrong. He is doing his best to artificially truncate the census, because he understands that, as much as this year's election matters, the count of America matters.

It deploys $1.5 trillion. But it also governs how we pick our leaders for the next 10 years. And his memo, which is patently unconstitutional, is yet another distraction from what he's attempting to do, which is to craft a way to artificially in the census, so that the hardest-to-count communities, communities of color, do not get counted this year, because he understands that gerrymandering, which has been, unfortunately, accepted as a partisan article of faith, that racial gerrymandering is illegal.

And we need people to step up and demand that the census count be accurate and be complete, and not end until October.

BASH: Stacey Abrams, thank you so much for joining me this morning. I appreciate it.

ABRAMS: Thank you.

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