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Ryan Revs Up Republican Crowd; Rice Speech Wows Crowd; Fact- Checking Ryan on GM Plant; Grand Isle Takes Hit from Isaac

Aired August 30, 2012 - 12:00   ET

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

SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Suzanne Malveaux. And this is CNN NEWSROOM.

Here's what we're working on right now.

Tropical Storm Isaac still creeping across the Gulf. We're hearing amazing stories of survival.

And in a country where foreign media are banned, we're going to get an inside look at the violence near Syria's capital.

But first, Republicans, they came out swinging.

Paul Ryan, he gets the Republicans revved up, set the stage for Mitt Romney. That is happening tonight. The VP nominee fired up the crowd. You can kind of hear this during the speech. This is the Republican National Convention. This is last night. An aggressive attack on President Obama.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. PAUL RYAN (R), VICE PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: These past four years, we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What is missing is leadership in the White House.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: I want to bring in Democratic strategist and CNN political contributor Donna Brazile.

And Donna, great to see you there. I know we were watching carefully there. You really got a sense of what it was like there to hear and to listen, and to get the reaction from Democrats as well as Republicans. A lot of red meat that was thrown out there. I want you to take a listen to this segment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RYAN: These past four years, we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What is missing is leadership in the White House.

Twenty-three million men and women are struggling to find work. Twenty-three million people unemployed or underemployed. Nearly 1 in 6 Americans is in poverty. Millions of Americans have graduated from college in the Obama presidency, ready to use their gifts and get moving in life. Half of them can't find the work they studied for or any work at all.

So here's the question, without a change in leadership, why would the next four years be any different from the last four years?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: Donna, let's talk a little bit about this night, because really, this was the kind of energy that Republicans had been asking for, that they sorely were lacking before you had this kind of speech. How does the president, how does Joe Biden, how do they counter the kind of energy and the excitement out there that you are seeing, really a reinvigorated party from the Republican side?

DONNA BRAZILE, CNN CONTRIBUTOR: Well, as you know, Suzanne, it's taken them almost three days to fire it up, and they fired it up of course with Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan was not only a passionate defender of Mitt Romney, Mitt Romney's economic policies, but I also believe that at least he achieved one other goal. He put out a litany of misleading statements about President Obama. And President Obama's leadership.

There is a reason why Congress' approval rating is very dismal right now and part of that is because the American people are dissatisfied with all of these just partisan sound bites but no results. Paul Ryan, as a member of Congress, has helped contribute more than $6 trillion to our federal deficit. That's a lot of money because he rubber stamped the failed economic policies of previous administration.

MALVEAUX: So Donna --

BRAZILE: What Paul Ryan didn't talk about was his own plans and his own budget. But he fired up the base and that's what they wanted. They wanted Tabasco, and he gave them Tabasco.

(LAUGHTER)

MALVEAUX: Gave them Tabasco. I know Tabasco very well, you and I both-being from New Orleans there. But, you know, we know that the DNC today is actually holding its own counter press conference there in Tampa to address some of the misstatements that you talked about. We're going to address that later in the hour. We'll do a fact-check on some of Ryan's statements there, but the bottom line is he was emotional, he was able to get people excited.

That is something that in the group that President Obama, he's really counting on those college students, he's counting on the young folks just like he did four years ago. How does he counter what Ryan is bringing now to the table, these Gen-X credentials?

BRAZILE: You know generation X want exactly what generation Y wants. They want a good economy. They want shared prosperity. They want to be able to go to college. They want to be able to retire. And let me tell you what Paul Ryan didn't talk about last night was his plans to, as you know, turn Medicare into a voucher system, and he didn't talk about the cuts that he wants to make in the Pell grants.

Look, President Obama, and Vice President Biden next week will not only fire up and energize Democrats, but they will talk to the swing voters. They will talk the independents. And I believe they would talk to some of the Republicans who are also tired of just raw red meat. They want solutions, not sound bites.

MALVEAUX: All right. For somebody we both know fairly well, Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, really, when she spoke, a lot of people, she got a standing ovation a number of times here, my Twitter blew up, I was asking folks, what do you think about what kind of impact she is having here. We saw a Condoleezza Rice I have not seen before, really when it comes to public speaking the energy and the excitement that she provided for the Republican Party, and I want to play a little bit of the sound here. This is about her background growing up in segregated south.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE: And on a personal note --

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

RICE: And on a personal note, a little girl grows up in Jim Crow Birmingham, the segregated city of the south where her parents can't take her to a movie theater or to a restaurant, but they have her absolutely convinced that even if she cannot have a hamburger at the Woolworth's Lunch Counter, she could be president of the United States if she wanted to be and she becomes the secretary of state.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: So, Donna, last night, there were a lot of folks tweeting about this. Really robots debate on whether or not she would have actually been better for Romney than Ryan. As a VP pick, and also whether or not he has some strength, some power here to pull some of the moderates and pull some black voters as well. This is something that a lot of people think it could be a possibility here.

BRAZILE: You know, if Condoleezza Rice was on this ticket, I'm perhaps some people would take a second look at Mitt Romney. Unfortunately she's not on the ticket, or I should say, fortunately, she's not on the ticket.

Look, she's a woman of ours, she's a personal friend of mine. I have enormous respect for her. I disagree with her statement that the president is leading from behind because I think he has restored America's greatness in the world. And he has re-established our relations with out allies. He's kept our country strong and secure. Al Qaeda today is on the run because of his leadership, bin Laden is dead, we're out of Iraq and we're winding on our operation safety and responsibly out of Afghanistan. But Condoleezza Rice, back to her. She is a woman of tremendous integrity and courage. I'm so glad that she's on that -- she's broken another barrier and getting on the Augusta board, but, you know, she fired up the base as well, Suzanne. And I'm proud of her and I was glad to see her last night, but I'm not voting for Condoleezza Rice. I'm voting for Barack Obama.

MALVEAUX: Yes, you -- you guys are close, but you're on opposite sides when it comes to this one. I know you share gumbo dinners from time to time.

I want to --

BRAZILE: Yes.

MALVEAUX: I don't want to let you go without asking you seriously about your family, and how they're doing in New Orleans and Louisiana in light of Hurricane Isaac.

BRAZILE: Well, I know many of them will not be able to see me right now, because the power has not been restored, but I am -- I am indeed grateful for all of the prayers, and I know I speak for James Carville and so many of my other kin folks down in Louisiana.

Isaac was a two-eyed storm, a lot of the torrential downpour, wind damage. of course. People are waking up now to figure out if they can go back home. Some people are still displaced because of the tropical storm, I call it a two-eyed monster because it stayed in the Gulf, as you know, hours, days. And soaking up all of that wonderful, wonderful warm Gulf water, and then spun around trying to get all four seasons in Louisiana, crab, shrimp, crawfish, and oysters.

Didn't want to leave us. Now it's on another destructive path. We're going to pray for everyone in its way to listen to local officials and to heed their calls, be very, very careful, but I just want to do a special shout-out not only to our governor, Bobby Jindal, and this is a special shout-out for his tremendous leadership to -- and of course Mayor Mitch Landrieu, the entire team there. The parish officials, Plaquemines, St. Bernard, Jefferson, St. John, East Baton Rouge.

MALVEAUX: All right.

BRAZILE: Ascension. I mean, God bless them all. You know I know all of the parishes. I've listened to all of the news.

MALVEAUX: Right.

BRAZILE: The people have to go home. They've got to be restored and we will help them once again --

MALVEAUX: OK.

BRAZILE: -- rebuild and recover.

MALVEAUX: All right. Donna, we've got to leave it there. Appreciate it.

BRAZILE: Thank you.

MALVEAUX: Praise to two Republicans you gave, Governor Jindal and Condee Rice today. Got to let it go there. Thank you, Donna. Good to see you.

BRAZILE: I've got a little red. I'm bipartisan today.

MALVEAUX: Isaac still dumping rain on parts of Louisiana. Some areas have floodwaters rising even higher today. Authorities in Mississippi, they've confirmed that the first U.S. fatality from this storm now, they say a tow truck driver was hit by a falling tree. Meanwhile, people in several towns around New Orleans, they're warned to get out. And new rescues. Evacuations there under way. Search teams, they've been using helicopters, boats, high water trucks.

Pulled more than 3,000 people stranded to safety. Now the National Guard troops, they're going house-to-house. This is in St. John and Plaquemines Parishes to make sure that no storm victims have been left behind.

The rising flood waters caught people off guard. Many of those rescued said they didn't category 1 hurricane would really be this bad.

I want to bring in Martin Savidge. He's in New Orleans.

Martin, talk a little bit about the search and rescue operations that are under way in the areas around New Orleans after coming from the storm. Still a lot of folks who are stranded.

MARTIN SAVIDGE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, there are, Suzanne. And it's been a very busy 24 hours for the emergency rescue personnel whether they be on the federal level or whether they'd be on the local level. And these operations are still continuing as you pointed out.

We want to show you one of the areas that was affected especially yesterday afternoon into last night. That's to the northwest of New Orleans, La Paz, and that was a community that was inundated by water coming from -- floodwater coming from Lake Pontchartrain, and also rainwater coming just from the tropical storm, or at that time Hurricane Isaac.

It was the Coast Guard that had to go in with their helicopters there and literally pluck people out of those floodwaters. In some cases families with their animals. I point that out because many people won't leave without them. And that was the situation last night.

Take a listen to how people responded to being saved.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think that he had a harder time because he had the bigger dog which I'm sure she -- (CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It gives you a more of appreciation for what these guys do, I can tell you that.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes. Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They are god.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Top notch.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: God in a helicopter.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SAVIDGE: Yes. I've seen those helicopters, what they can do. And they really do seem like a lifesaver when they're hovering over your head and you're in trouble. But La Paz is still an area that is under the water gun so to speak. But it's not the only place. The north shore of Lake Pontchartrain is also suffering, this is in Slidell area. Water continuing to rise there. Combination of factors, run off, can't drain away in the lake, it's also the fact that the wind blowing very strongly from the south is pushing that water up against the north shore, and again, you've also got down in Plaquemines Parish, water that is trapped between levees down there.

So there are a number of communities where they are urging people, even though after the storm, they've got to move.

MALVEAUX: Right.

SAVIDGE: Because the floodwaters are only going the rise -- Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: And Martin, tell us where you are there? You've got the 17th Street Canal pumping station that pumps the walls, the gates. How are they doing?

SAVIDGE: They're good. They're did very well throughout the storm. And the peak of the storm -- this is just one pumping station, 72 -- sorry, 42 of all of the -- that's all the pumps, essentially, they had them going full crank and they did well. What it's designed to do here is take the water from the canal, pump it into Lake Pontchartrain. The canals that are accepting all the water draining from New Orleans.

There are a number of pumping stations like this. They are post- Katrina.

MALVEAUX: Right.

SAVIDGE: And the authorities are very pleased with how they did. The floodwalls also held up well.

MALVEAUX: OK.

SAVIDGE: But again, it's a category 1 storm, it should have, it should have easily handled it, and it did.

MALVEAUX: All right. That is good news. Marty Savidge, thank you. Appreciate it.

It was the biggest speech of his life. Paul Ryan spent a lot of time last night talking about his generation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RYAN: I accept the calling of my generation in this generation. A generation apart from my mom's generation, for my generation, the founding generation, secure those rights for us and in every generation since --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: You get it? Generation. We're going to take a look at the Republicans' chances of winning over young voters. Up next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RYAN: College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms. Staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life.

Everyone who feels stuck in the Obama economy is right to focus on the here and now. And I hope you understand this, too. If you're feeling left out or passed by, you have not failed. Your leaders have failed you.

When I was waiting tables, washing dishes or mowing lawns for money, I never thought of myself as stuck in some station in life. I was on my own path. My own journey, an American journey where I could think for myself, decide for myself, define happiness for myself. That's what we do in this country. That's the American dream.

That's freedom, and I will take it any day over the supervision and sanctimony of the central planners.

We're a full generation apart. Governor Romney and I. And in some ways we're different. There are the songs in his iPod, which I've heard on the campaign bus.

(LAUGHTER)

And I've heard it on many hotel elevators.

(LAUGHTER)

He actually -- he actually urged me to play some of these songs at campaign rallies. I said look, I hope it's not a deal-breaker, Mitt, but my playlist, it starts with AC/DC that ends with Zeppelin.

(END VIDEO CLIP) MALVEAUX: All right. Not just a candidate and Republican nominee for vice president, Paul Ryan, Wisconsin congressman bringing the convention crowd to its feet last night in Tampa.

I want to bring in Brooke Baldwin who was there inside the convention hall.

And Brooke, it was really interesting to me because this was -- if you go to President Obama four years ago he was talking about, you know, I got Jay-Z on my iPod. Yi? Like he's talking about -- really trying to appeal to the young voters and he was so successful at doing that. He went to this college campuses, and that was when you really got a sense, like, OK, maybe this guy has a shot at the presidency. Maybe he's actually going to win.

People look at Paul Ryan and they see similarities in the way that he is reaching out and people respond to this young guy.

BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I mean, you covered the campaign in '08, so you know -- what, you know, then Senator Obama did to try to grab that youth vote and grab that youth vote, he did. But I think really last night and I was on the floor, I've been on the floor the last couple of nights, but it was this Paul Ryan and that speech and specifically, Suzanne, that line, that line about the faded Obama posters and, you know, these people, you know, youngsters having to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, that line, I'll tell you what, it was like a -- it was a like a switch flipped inside this forum behind me.

There were -- there were, you know, young guys in front of me in their 30s and these two guys sort of turned to each other and I watched this and they looked to each other after that line and they said, wow. So clearly the energy was -- you know, up and at them inside the forum, but obviously they're hoping for the energy, you know, to percolate across the country when it comes to the youth vote, because in L.A. there was President Obama, he had it with the millennial vote, 66 percent to 32 percent, certainly no coincidence that we've seen President Obama on trail this week talking to who? To two college students in three different swing states this week.

And quickly, I'm going to mention of music, back on a huge, huge laughs. But Ill say this, Paul Ryan, you know, he mentioned AC/DC, he mentioned Led Zeppelin. He's also mentioned mentioned Rage Against the Machine, But if you read the quote from Tom Morello, he's the guitarist for Rage, he has said, hang on a second, Paul Ryan, because it's your establishment against which we have been raging for the last two decades.

MALVEAUX: Right. Right. And there's always that back and forth. The bottle over the music what that really means if the --

BALDWIN: Right.

MALVEAUX: If the artists are going to weigh in on that on all of that there.

BALDWIN: Right.

MALVEAUX: Give us a little sense -- so we're talking about young folks. There are a lot of young people who are actually delegates who are in that crowd or is that mostly an older group?

BALDWIN: Hmm. I've got to be honest, Suzanne, it was a lot of older folks, I would say, inside of the forum and the younger people were a lot of the staffers perhaps and the youngest is inside the Forum, I think a lot of the younger, the younger people, 17-year-old delegate, so I don't know if it is fair for me to say there were many, many younger where a lot of these staffers perhaps.

Certainly, though, I mean the youngest is seventeen, 17 year-old people delegate. So I don't know if it'd be scary for me to day there were many, many young people, it was a lot -- lot older folks in the forum.

MALVEAUX: How did they respond to him emotionally? Because it was one of the things that President Obama had a difficult time in the beginning, to emote, to show feeling and passion here. And you had Paul Ryan and he almost seemed like he was brought to tears when he was talking about his mom as a role model. How did people respond that?

BALDWIN: Yes. Did you notice that, because I definitely did. When he was talking to his mom, she was sitting, you know, you know, she was sitting right next -- Right in that sort of to a section where Janna, the wife, his kids, Ann Romney's mother. One of their sons. And this sort of white almost

Irons and the Romney's son, and he wiped what appeared to be a tear speaking about his mother, and that is precisely what these people in this country want to see. We've talked so much about Mitt Romney, and there were the new numbers out today. The "USA Today"/Gallup poll numbers in terms of, you know, one's character, likability and we've talked so much about how that is lacking.

America needs to like Mitt Romney and that's really part of this whole pitch that he needs to roll out tonight in addition to the substance and policy, but I think it really, really the speech last night similar to Governor Chris Christie's speech the night before really touched, just touched people that human -- that human characteristic that people so badly want to see, you know, you've covered campaigns. People -- you know, they want a smart, intellectual guy, who can fix the problems of this country, but they want to like you. Voting is very, very personal. So we have to see how Mitt Romney delivers tonight on that.

MALVEAUX: Absolutely. Big test for Mitt Romney tonight.

Brooke, good to see you as always.

BALDWIN: Yes.

MITCHELL: Enjoy the evening.

BALDWIN: Thank you.

Ryan's speech at the Republican convention, it might have been fiery but critics are saying, it wasn't all that factual. Our team, they've been doing some fact checking on Ryan's claims like the comments about President Obama's speech at a GM plants that later closed.

Tom Foreman, he's in Tampa. And Tom, we've got a lot of things that we want to go over here, but first of all about that very specific example that Ryan gave talking about a plant that actually closed and who was responsible for it.

TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is -- you know, many Republicans believe President Obama's priorities in terms of the economy are all wrong. But he's always looking for government solutions first instead of Democrats have been out there just laying for Ryan. They really want to go after him, and many Republicans believe that president Obama's priorities in terms of the economy are Private sector (INAUDIBLE). Paul Ryan rode out a perfect little story, all lines about this GM plant, his hometown, that Barack Obama visited when he was a candidate and the recession was roaring. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RYAN: A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, Candidate Obama said, I believe that if our government is there to support you this plant will be here for another hundred years. That's what he said in 2008. Well, as it turns out, that plant didn't last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

FOREMAN: Wow. Nice tide-in little story that sort of drives the Republicans narrative. Let's break it down. First, did Candidate Obama say that?

MALVEAUX: Yes.

FOREMAN: Yes, he did. GM was in tremendous financial trouble and you could argue that such statements were laying the groundwork for the big auto bailouts to come. Bailouts that many Republicans still think were a mistake, but are also credited with saving many thousands of jobs.

But now let's look at the timeline of that plant in Ryan's hometown. Did it in fact close? Yes. The biggest part of the operations were shut down there, they're costing the area about 2,000 jobs by December of 2008. Before Mr. Obama even took office. So to somehow suggest that he could have or should have stopped it, it's really absurd. But now one part of the plant was still operating when President Obama took office in January of 2009.

But it only had 29 jobs and it, too, was closed by April. If you look at the entire speech by candidate Obama, when he visited that plant, he was talking about government help for retraining, retooling, developing new technologies. These are long-term things, things that certainly could not have happened in just a few months after he took the oath.

All of this, all of this is complicated by the fact that Congressman Ryan made a similar statement just a couple of weeks ago in which he suggested that candidate Obama actually promised he would keep the plant open. That was absolutely false, but since then, Ryan has slightly changed his wording so that if you consider only specifically what he said last night, what we just listened to, that statement was technically true, but it gets a great big capital I for incomplete, because it left out critical details that you have to know to understand the true story of what happened with that plant and what the president said about it. It is not at all complete -- Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: All right. A lot of times you get those incomplete statements from both sides when you are months away, just months away from the vote.

Thank you for checking it all out for us, Tom. Appreciate it.

CNN's primetime convention coverage continues tonight, 7:00 p.m. Eastern with Wolf Blitzer and will be reporting live from the Democratic National Convention. That's happening all next week in Charlotte, North Carolina.

High water, courageous rescues, we're going to take you to the worst of Tropical Storm Isaac.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: The full impact of Isaac is the far from over. The storm has killed at least one person in the Gulf Coast and it is still dumping rain on lots of parts of Louisiana. Even as it weakens, it moves inland over a very, very slow movement of the storm.

I want to bring in Ed Lavandera. He's in Grand Isle, Louisiana, which really took the brunt of all this direct hit from Isaac, and Ed, you and I, we were talking yesterday. It looks like the rain has passed, but this is a place where people were stranded. They had to be plucked out. What is the situation? Are you actually stranded on this barrier island?

ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we have been here since late Monday, and yes, this is the home of Dean Blanchard, a well known shrimper here in Grand Isle, Louisiana, and took us into his house, and we rode out the storm here, and we have -- the center of the storm came through here in Grand Isle. So many -- the vast majority of the people did evacuate, there are only some about between 30 and 40 people who stayed behind, but now the surveying of the damage begins and a lot of it really has to do with the storm surge and the water, not so much from the wind that has caused the problems here, but we're hearing reports now that the main road that brings you into Grand Isle, Louisiana, parts of it have been washed out.

So that could hamper the ability of people to get back or to get off the island like we'll be trying to do here shortly. We haven't had a chance to survey that for ourselves. As soon as we're done here, we're going to try to get out there. The water levels around the house that we're at have been dropping significantly. They got up to about five to six feet as you look all the way around us. We have five to six feet of water all the way around.

(CROSSTALK)

MALVEAUX: Tell us where you are, Ed.

LAVANDERA: But I think finally our cars are around to drive around there. Yes, absolutely. We can -- we're pretty much in the middle of the island and we have a good vantage point here from the deck that we're on. We're on the second story of Dean's home and we can see the bay side and this is all the way back toward the Gulf of Mexico here. And we can see dozens of homes from our vantage point.

And the good news is is that we can't see any significant structural damage in terms of homes collapsing. I'm not trying to minimize the damage that people will be coming back to, but I think it would be a much bigger story if you'd seen a lot of homes, they'd been collapsed. Obviously homes around here are built on stilts for that -- stilts so that the storm surge can pass underneath and retreat back into the Gulf and into the bay.

There I think there is significant roof damage in places in some of the homes and also in some of the industrial parts of it, of the island, that will need a lot of cleaning up, but the question, I think, now, will really become these roadways. And as soon as we can get clear answers with what is going on with that, we will pass it along, because if those roadways are washed out in parts, there is going to be a big concerted effort to have to repair that so that people can get back.

MALVEAUX: Yes, and let us know how you managed to get off of that little isle space that you are on right now, and how others are managing it as well. Thank you, Ed. Ed Lavandara.

Tonight, Mitt Romney's chance to shine. Pressure is on. I'm going to take a look at what he needs to do to sell himself to the voters.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Mitt Romney gets his turn in the spotlight. Tonight, Romney formally accepts his party's presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Tampa. It is his chance to sell himself to voters after his fellow Republicans set the stage. Here's Paul Steinhauser.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

PAUL STEINHAUSER, CNN POLITICAL EDITOR (voiceover): It's job number one at the Republican Conventioon --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need President Mitt Romney. REINCE PRIEBUS, REPUBLICAN NATIONAL COMMITTEE CHAIRMAN: The president America needs is Mitt Romney.

REP. JOHN BOEHNER, (R) HOUSE SPEAKER: President Romney. Boy, I like the sound of that.

STEINHAUSER (voiceover): Call it the selling of the GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's filling the blanks on Mitt Romney and telling the voters who he is.

STEINHAUSER (voiceover): From highlighting his resume --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mitt Romney turned businesses around in the private sector.

STEINHAUSER (voiceover): To describing what he'd do as president.

GOV. CHRIS CHRISTIE, (R) NEW JERSEY: Mitt Romney will tell us the hard truths we need to hear to put us back on a path to growth and create good paying private sector jobs again in America.

STEINHAUSER (voiceover): While most polls, like our latest CNN ORC survey, indicate the race for the White House is a dead heat, most polls also show that Romney lags behind President Barack Obama when it comes to relating to the average voter. And even though he's been running for President on and off for six years, most Americans don't know Mitt Romney, the man. That's where his wife, Ann, comes in.

ANN ROMNEY, MITT ROMNEY'S WIFE: I know this good and decent man for what he is. He's warm and loving and patient.

STEINHAUSER (voiceover): Now it's her husband's turn on the podium.

CRAIG ROMNEY, MITT ROMNEY'S SON: I think it's a great opportunity for people to get to see him in a very unfiltered way, to get to hear his story and his vision for this country. I think that in large parts he's been defined by the opposition up to this point and it's a chance for him to -- for the voters to get to know what kind of candidate he really is.

STEINHAUSER (voiceover): What will he say? Romney hasn't said much about his speech other than to share he wants to highlight --

MITT ROMNEY, (R) PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: How America is going to get on track and we're going to get this economy really going again.

STEINHAUSER (voiceover): But his top strategist gave us an appetizer.

STUART STEVENS, ROMNEY CAMPAIGN SENIOR STRATEGIST: It'l be a clear vision of a Romney presidency and very much from his heart about America and why he wants to be president, and what a presidency would be like.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

STEINHAUSER: With the nation watching, this convention and Romney's prime time speech are incredibly important opportunities, opportunities that the Romney campaign wants to leverage. Paul Steinhauser, CNN, Tampa, Florida.

MALVEAUX: These are the kinds of pictures the Syrian government does not want you to see. A film crew gets inside of the civil war and witnesses a massacre.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: The new president of Egypt has nothing good to say about the Syrian government, at least what's left of it. Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, he is now in Iran and Iran is one of the few nations that still supports Syria. He says that the government, Bashar al Assad, is no longer legitimate and he is backing now the opposition that wants to throw President Assad out of office. Well, Egypt is now also in transition, too, but still very influential in the Middle East, especially with Arab nations.

More about Syria. Today alone, at least 40 people are dead. Across the country, more than 135 people were killed there yesterday. The most horrifying stories of violence, they are coming out of Daraya. It's a suburb north of Damascus.

CNN has actually obtained an extraordinary account of life there over the last two weeks, just before that neighborhood was overrun by Syrian government troops. Some of the images, have to warn you, very graphic; not appropriate for everybody. For safety reasons, we are not naming the journalist who brings us this report.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voiceover): Downtown Daraya. Here every night during Ramadan, the people came together after nightly prayers for celebration.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [ speaking foreign language ] Victory! Outpourings of happiness. By the grace of God, this will continue. So we can prove to the world our revolution continues.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voiceover): I travel to Daraya on the outskirts of Damascus because I've heard that nearly two months after forcing out Syrian out authorities, the town was declaring tiself Free Syria. For the safety of those who helped me get into Syria, I've promised not the reveal my identity.

After forcing out Syrian government forces nearly two months ago, anti-regime activists have spending their days rebuilding the town. It was a sight I've never seen before in Syria. The activists eagerly told me that they were in the next stage of their revolution.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [ speaking foreign language ] Daraya is liberated. The revolution has won. We wanted to return normal life to Daraya and rebuild what the regime destroyed.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [ speaking foreign language ] Ready? Ready?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voiceover): And for the first time, the Free Syrian Army based out in the gardens and fields on the outskirts of town even agreed to allow us to film them carrying out exercises in broad daylight.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [ speaking foreign language ] Everyday we carry out training exercises. We train and train. So that when the Syrian army comes we are ready. As a force and for the battle to come.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [ speaking foreign language ] As far as the security situation in the Damascus suburbs goes, the Free Syrian Army is in compelte control of the whole of the subrubs. The Syrian security and armed forces are concentrated in Damascus proper. That's where they are trying to focus. With the grace of God, we are clsoe to the end of our journey to take the capital.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voiceover): But Syrian government forces were on the move.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [ speaking foreign language ] The planes are shelling.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voiceover): And after breaking the fast on the last day of Ramadan, we began to hear more forces.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: [ speaking foreign language ] They're shelling us in Daraya.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (voiceover); It was relentless. The activists told us we had to leave Dayara or risk being trapped. After our departure, they continued to send us these pictures of the onslaught.

Even as the hospital became overrun with casualties, the Syrian government switched off electricity and running water. I listened to the clips they sent us as they narrated the unfolding massacre, struggling to keep their voices steady, leaving the few doctors that remain to stumble in the dark.

In 72 hours, activists said 100 men, women and children were killed and more than 300 wounded, and that toll continues to rise. At first we were told they tried to bury the dead, but even funeral processions weren't safe from the shelling and the bodies had to be abandoned. After five days of bombardment, the town was eventually overrun by the Syrian government forces and I lost touch with the activists trapped inside. One of the last messages they did manage to send read simply, "Daraya is now cursed."

(END VIDEOTAPE)

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) MALVEAUX: John and Cindy McCain say Republican Presidential Candidate Mitt Romney should talk more about his Mormon faith. The former presidential candidate and his wife, they sat down with my colleague Piers Morgan as Romney is preparing now to accept his party's nomination tonight.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PIERS MORGAN, HOST, "PIERS MORGAN TONIGHT": Are you pleased, Cindy, in particular, to see the issue of faith being openly discussed now by the hierarchy?

CINDY MCCAIN, WIFE OF SEN. JOHN MCCAIN: Yes.

MORGAN: I mean Paul Ryan -- I thought it was a very smart thing to say, actually.

C. MCCAIN: Yes.

MORGAN: I'm not a Mormon, but we share common values and morality. I thought that was a very clever way of actually killing the Mormon issue as a problem. Is that what you thought?

C. MCCAIN: Exactly. It's about strong values. Strong American values, which we all share. It's about two men and their wives, of course, that could possibly be the top tier of this government being not only strong in what they believe and strong in their faith, but believing in what's best for the country and moving forward. Not putting their personal interests first.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN (R), ARIZONA: But I think also that there is questions about the Mormon faith, as you know. And I think that Ann talking about it, and I am convinced that Mitt will talk about it --

MORGAN: Yes.

C. MCCAIN: Yes.

J. MCCAIN: And to tell people that his faith is part of his life, and that's what's made him the person he is today. Because, you know, the Mormon faith has come under significant scrutiny and attack from time to time in our history.

MORGAN: But I think a lot of that is down to the fact that he's refused to discuss it. And I think that's been a strategic error, actually, because I felt if he talked about it openly more often, the kind of cult element, stigma that's been attached to it, may have dissipated a bit because, in the end, it's one of many religions in American and there are many, many Mormons in America. It didn't have to quite be the stigma that it's been allowed to go into.

J. MCCAIN: And the Mormon faith requires that people go on missions.

MORGAN: Yes.

J. MCCAIN: Now, he will -- has said in the past, his mission was one of the important phases of his life.

MORGAN: Yes.

J. MCCAIN: And, you know, it's really remarkable. They take these young men and women and send them to a foreign country, kind of on their own. Their job is to recruit people for the faith. But it broadens them enormously.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: Tune in for Piers' full interview with John and Cindy McCain from Tampa. That is tonight at midnight.

We have breaking news on a controversial voting law. That is in Texas. We're going to have more of that after the break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: Breaking news. A court in Washington has now struck down a Texas voter ID law which requires voters to bring photos with them to the polls. This is very significant. I want to bring in Joe Johns, who's live in Tampa, for more on this.

Joe, you've been following this story. What does this mean for the Obama campaign? What does it mean for the Romney campaign?

JOE JOHNS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Suzanne, this is a very significant holding from a three judge panel in Washington, D.C. A court that really moved with just lightning speed. It was just a month or two ago when I was actually sitting in the courtroom while the court heard this case. And they've turned around this decision very quickly. It is essentially a slam dunk in favor of the Obama administration, which went to court to challenge a voting rights' law that was passed in the state of Texas. In fact, a number of states around the country, most with Republican controlled legislatures, have passed these voter identification laws. Of course, Texas being the largest of those states. This was seen as one of the bellwether cases.

And I just want to read you a little bit of this that shows how much of a slam dunk it is in favor of the administration.

MALVEAUX: Sure.

JOHNS: It says, "to sum up everything, the Voting Rights Act prohibits coverage to states from implementing voting right laws that will have a regressive effect on racial minorities." It says, "everything Texas submitted in this case as affirmative evidence is unpersuasive, invalid or both." It also says, "the uncontested record shows that the cost of this law in Texas would fall most heavily on the poor and that a disproportionately high number of African- Americans and Hispanics live in poverty." That the bill that was passed in the state and was about to go into effect would likely lead (ph) to retro aggression (ph).

In other words, going backwards in the position of racial minorities with respect to their effective exercise of the electoral franchise. So that is just a slam dunk for the administration. They've been fighting this out in state after state. It's a very big deal.

Nonetheless, the question remains, Suzanne, and then I'll shut up, but the big question is whether the effect of passing these laws in all of these states could actually end up suppressing the minority vote, because people heard so much about that, of course, that question remains to be answered somewhere down the road.

Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: Joe, do we think that this could actually have an impact on some of the cases in other states where they think that the laws are discriminatory?

JOHNS: Well, we certainly know it as a bellwether case. You're going to have to forgive me for wiping my face. It's really hot out here in this garage.

MALVEAUX: We forgive you.

JOHNS: We do think that -- yes. We do think that it's going to have at least, if you will, a precedential effect. In other words, it will tell other states that have laws in place that they've got a real problem with trying to push through these voter ID laws as we approach the November elections.

MALVEAUX: All right.

JOHNS: Nonetheless, we do know some of the other cases are already in the courts, Suzanne.

MALVEAUX: All right, Joe Johns, thank you for bringing us the breaking news. It will have an impact on this election.

He says he was on the mission to kill Osama bin Laden. Well, now he's written a book about it.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

MALVEAUX: A man who says he was on the mission to kill Osama bin Laden is now writing a book about it. It is called "No Easy Day." It's under the pseudonym Matt Owen. Now he's a former Navy SEAL who gives a first-hand account of the raid and the death of bin Laden. Now he's giving interviews. CNN and other news outlets learned of the author's real name last week. We kept it to ourselves to protect the identity of his fellow SEALs. Well, a senior military official tells us that now those SEALs have had time to protect themselves. The author spoke on camera for the program "60 Minutes" about the decision to release the book on the anniversary of 9/11.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MATT BISSONNETTE, FORMER NAVY SEAL, AUTHOR: My worry from the beginning is, you know, it's a political season. This book is not political whatsoever. It doesn't -- doesn't bad mouth either party. And we specifically chose September 11th to keep it out of the politics. You know, if these crazies on either side of the aisle want to make it political, shame on them. This is a book about September 11th. And it needs to rest on September 11th, not be brought into the political arena, because this has nothing to do with politics.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MALVEAUX: People with access to the book say his account of what happened at the bin Laden compound is not the same story as the Pentagon's official version.