By ,
Published January 23, 2017
This is a rush transcript from "Special Report with Bret Baier," December 15, 2016. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.
BRET BAIER, ANCHOR: This is an ad by celebrities out there trying to ask the Republican electors that meet December 19th to not vote Donald Trump, to vote for somebody else, and thereby send it to the House of Representatives.
If you remember, Donald Trump has 306 electoral votes, Hillary Clinton 232. The Constitution says that you have to finish in the top three in electoral votes. So far they are the only two with votes. If what these celebrities said actually happened, it would then go to the House of Representatives where they would vote for Donald Trump.
We're back with the panel. It's mindboggling to me.
JULIE PACE, ASSOCIATED PRESS: It's a little confounding, and I would compel the celebrities in that add to read a story by some of my fine A.P. colleagues who have spent the last several days tracking down these electors, asking them what they will do. And they found a grand total of one Republican elector who said they will not vote for Trump. So I think this is a bit of a wild goose chase on their part.
BAIER: I wanted to deal with that right off the top. Laura, Trump tweeting today on Russia, "If Russia on some other entity was hacking, why did the White House wait so long to act? Why did they only complain after Hillary lost?" Here is Donald Trump back in his last press conference, July 27th, and the White House today.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)
TRUMP: Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing.
EARNEST: The defense from the Trump campaign is that he was joking. I don't think anybody at the White House thinks it's funny that an adversary of the United States engaged in malicious cyber-activity to destabilize our democracy. That's not a joke.
(END VIDEO CLIPS)
BAIER: Laura, his rhetoric from the podium has increased over the last couple of days on this very issue.
LAURA INGRAHAM, LIFEZETTE.COM: Think how heartwarming that meeting between Obama and Trump was in the Oval and they have been talking regularly, how complementary Trump was of Obama and this is what he gets for it, kind of the back of the hand.
I think it's pretty obvious that Trump made that offhand comment in the summer. I don't think he was really telling Vladimir Putin to hack the U.S. computers. That's not what he would do. But it doesn't surprise me at all that Josh Earnest, Obama's press secretary speaking for the president would be another agent provocateur trying to, just like with the entire Russia story, delegitimize the Trump victory.
The Trump victory was a repudiation of the failures in our economy, the failures in the national confidence, and our failure in foreign policy. Across the board it was repudiation of that. And the rustbelt, the Midwest, the middle Americans who turned out in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio, Iowa, and beyond. They rejected what Hillary was going to do which was going to continue the Obama term.
And, by the way, where was Barack Obama and all the lefties when all of us were talking about the Soviets in the 1980s? When it was the Soviet Union they were all railing against Reagan and calling him Ronnie Ray-gun. Now they're all worried about Russia. I just find it. We needed him back in the 80's and they were nowhere to be found.
BAIER: Charles?
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: Putin is actually succeeding in the sense if you wanted to destabilize the American system and to turn people against each other, well, he has produced it. You have got CIA, you have got FBI, Democrats, Republicans, committee chairman, all at each other's throats.
The issue here isn't who elected Donald Trump. The American people did. The issue is the power of the Russians and presumably others to get into our systems and disrupt what we do. And the deeper issue is we have had an administration. It's the same in Aleppo, it's the same in Ukraine, same everywhere, that does nothing. It does absolutely nothing to deter the other power.
The point of a superpower is not to invade. It's not to drop the bombs. It's to be so strong that when you issue a warning, secretly or publicly, the other guy listens and doesn't do it. And we are going to suffer from the fact that Putin has gotten away with this and succeeded to the extent he has us at each other's throats. Trump is going to have to be a president who gets in there and does something, retaliation that is really going to singe the Russians.
BAIER: Judge, you can respond to this but I want to ask you about the transition and the meeting but go ahead.
JUDGE ANDREW NAPOLITANO, FOX NEWS JUDICIAL ANALYST: Well, I don't think that there is any evidence that the Russians hacked. The definition of hacking being entering an operational system and altering what's recorded there. And Julian Assange has said, told our friend Sean Hannity, it will be aired later on tonight, that his source was not the Russians. Who knows who source was.
BAIER: They think -- the intelligence department, the ODNI, the national intelligence director put out a statement, they think that it may be actors like Guccifer and others that were working somehow with the Russian government.
NAPOLITANO: But that is the leaking. That is the revelation of private and truthful information on which voters may have made their decisions. That is not altering an operational system so that vote totals were changed.
BAIER: No, no, no. Right. Exactly. It's interfering with the overall election or the coverage of it. I want to ask you quickly about your meeting today.
NAPOLITANO: The president-elect is nearing the end of his choice for cabinet officers and is beginning to concentrate on the Supreme Court and has begun to call people in. And I was privileged to be one of those people. And we spoke for an hour today about the constitution, about the Supreme Court, and about the process for choosing the replacement for Justice Antonin Scalia.
BAIER: All right, so not betraying confidence here, but any little nugget, are we going to see a nominee before inauguration?
NAPOLITANO: I think so. I think that's -- I think that's his goal. I think is he going to begin to concentrate on finding a younger version of Justice Scalia and have that name out there before he is inaugurated.
Content and Programming Copyright 2016 Fox News Network, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2016 CQ-Roll Call, Inc. All materials herein are protected by United States copyright law and may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, displayed, published or broadcast without the prior written permission of CQ-Roll Call. You may not alter or remove any trademark, copyright or other notice from copies of the content.
https://www.foxnews.com/transcript/celebrities-urge-gop-electors-to-reject-trump