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Trump Speaks After Being Formally Nominated For Second Term. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired August 24, 2020 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: But he did lose one of his most potent campaign tools, and those are rallies.

And a lot of what you are seeing and how you're seeing, like each -- how you're seeing each side approached their campaigns is kind of what their approach what each party's approach has been to dealing with the virus, particularly the President -- particularly the President. I mean, we've seen for months how the President has put a much rosier than realistic projections on the future of the pandemic and how serious it was.

And the faster it return to normalcy, the faster the economy recovers, the better it is for President Trump and his reelection chances. But Democrats have been focusing on as we saw so repeatedly last week, the President's mismanagement of the pandemic, every statement that you saw from state parties, the national parties, it was such a theme and so many. So -- and so many of the remarks last week, they were really pinning the blame for how serious the pandemic has gone on President Trump.

The longer the states are referendum on the President himself, the better it is for -- the better it is for the former Vice President's team right now and for the Democrats.

JOHN KING, CNN HOST: And as we wait for the President, let's list a little bit of the warm-up act came from the Vice President. As Danna noted, he spoke a short time ago. Law and order was a big emphasis. He says give the President four more years and you get this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MIKE PENCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Remember, it's going to be -- it's going to be four more years, that means more jobs. Four more years means more judges. Four more years means more support for our troops and our cops. And it's going to take at least four more years to drain that swamp.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: And Ryan Nobles here, you're on the scene, I think that drain the swamp pledge from the Trump administration, we have three and a half years now of watching people associated with Trump do their own business in Washington. That's a tough one to sell. But let's focus instead. There's no question especially to the Republican base, the President has a very strong argument about judges. Democrats may not like it. But he has kept his promise about federal judges, including to Supreme Court nominees. And that is something that a lot of Republicans even who hold their nose, it's out of his personal behavior, say we want to keep this going.

But the jobs part to me is the fascinating question in the 10 weeks to come. The Vice President saying four more years means more jobs at the moment because of the pandemic, it's not all the President's fault, but there are 11.5 fewer, 11.5 half million fewer Americans working today than were working in January, just before the pandemic hit. The question for the President is, A, can he change those numbers between now and Election Day? And even if he does, will voters give him credit?

RYAN NOBLES, CNN WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And I think you see Mike Pence here playing a very specific role in this campaign, John. And in this is very similar to the role that he was tasked with when he was put on the ticket four years ago, and that is to reach out to the more traditional Republican, the conservative Republican, the socially conservative Republican. And, you know, send out those talking points that make them feel comfortable to reelect Donald Trump.

He did the same thing four years ago. And when he talks about judges, when he talks about the economy, even when he talks about law and order, he's doing it in a different way and in a different approach than President Trump might do. And even if you're a Republican that isn't necessarily a fan of the President's tweets, you're not -- you're concerned about his character, the way that he goes about things. You see in Mike Pence, perhaps more of yourself, and you, you see Mike Pence is aligned himself with President Trump, and maybe it's still OK for you to support President Trump.

And this is something that's, you know, specifically pushing back this kind of a reenergize group of the so called never Trumpers, you know, the Lincoln project, Republicans for Biden, all these different groups that have been really, you know, pushing hard against President Trump and even differently than what we saw four years ago have taken that step of actually endorsing Vice President Biden.

You know, we saw a group of a former Republican members of Congress come out today and say that they're going to support Joe Biden. In what Mike Pence his job here is to remind you, if you are Republican that if you vote for Vice President Biden, you are voting for a whole suite of issues that you don't necessarily support when it comes to abortion rights, when it comes to taxes, when it comes to cops, when it comes to guns, all those things.

And so, you know, this is, you know, Mike Pence telling you as a Republican, that you may not be comfortable with President Trump, but the alternative is much worse. And it's part of a broader effort by the Trump campaign to make this a choice election between Vice President Biden and between Donald Trump as opposed to just a simple referendum on Donald Trump's last four years in office.

KING: Ryan Nobles on the scene.

I'm going to take you into the room now. The State of Florida now the President's home state from New York, obviously Donald Trump, Florida has adopted home state. This is the chairman of the Republican National Committee Toscana Florida. Let's listen.

JOE GRUTERS, CHAIRMAN, FLORIDA REPUBLICAN PARTY: -- including our 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. We're known as -- we're known as the Sunshine State. We have the best beaches in the world. They're second to none. And we have a great economy and we have no income tax.

[12:35:02]

We believe in the great American -- we believe in the great American comeback. And we believe there's one leader that will deliver us prosperity once again, that will defend the rule of law. And that will bring great things back to our country. Florida's home to America's number one anticommunist freedom fighting Senator Marco Rubio, we're home to America's number one senator in terms of the economy and jobs and who's making Washington work for us again, Senator Rick Scott.

And we're home to America's favorite Governor Ron DeSantis, who signed the toughest sanctuary city ban in the entire country. And he welcomes over 1,000 people a day from failed leadership states like New York, including individuals like our new favorite son, Donald J. Trump. It's a -- for the 122 delegates that are back at home and the over 5 million Republicans that we have registered and is an honor for us to award Florida's 122 delegate votes to the next President of the United States to delay his full time relocation back to his home state of Florida, Donald J. Trump for the President of the United States.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: The State of Florida, that's 122 votes for Donald J. Trump for President. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming the President of the United States of America and our nominee Donald J. Trump.

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oklahoma loves you Mr. President.

TRUMP: Thank you very much.

CROWD: Four more years, four more years, four more years, four more years, four more years, four more years, four more years, four more years, four more years, four more years.

TRUMP: Now if you want to really drive him crazy, you say 12 more years.

CROWD: Twelve more years, 12 more years, 12 more years.

TRUMP: Because we caught them doing some really bad things in 2016. Let's see what happens. We caught them doing some really bad things. We have to be very careful because they're trying it again with this whole 80 million mail-in ballots that they're working on. Sending them out to people that didn't ask for them, they didn't ask, they just get them. And it's not fair. And it's not right. And it's not going to be possible to tabulate, in my opinion, just my opinion.

We have to be very, very careful. And you have to watch every one of you, you have to watch, because bad things happened last time with the spying on our campaign. And that goes to Biden and that goes to Obama. And we have to be very, very careful, and to be very, very careful. And this time they tried to do it with the whole Post Office scam. They'll blame it on the Post Office. You could see him sending it up. Be very careful and watch it very carefully because we have to win. This is the most important election in the history of our country.

This is the most, you know, for -- for a long period of time. I would say well 2016, how special was that evening? Was that one the great? That was one of the great interest. But we have to be very, very careful and we have to win. Our country is counting on it. This is the biggest. This is it. Our country can go in a horrible, horrible direction or in an even greater direction. And before the plague came in from China, that's where we were going. We were going in a direction like we had never seen the most successful economy in the history of our country, the best unemployment numbers in history for African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, women, college students, bed students, good students, everybody.

If you had a diploma, if you didn't have a diploma, it didn't matter. You were doing well. Everybody was doing well. And we were actually coming together. You know, success brings people together, maybe better than anything else. Success brings people. So many times they say we're divided. Well, we were very divided under President Obama, very divided. People have no idea how divided. They didn't talk about it as much. They didn't say it as much. But we were really coming together.

[12:40:07]

And I was speaking with Democrats all of a sudden, because the success the markets, we're at an all-time high. And by the way, take a look at what's happening with the markets. Take a look at your 401 case, which you probably do every hour. Take a look at your stocks. We're very close to breaking the record. And NASDAQ has already done it. You know, NASDAQ has broken the record, I think 16 times already.

During a pandemic, hopefully we'll call it the final phase of a pandemic. You know, Biden the other day said, no, he shut it down. He listened to some guys say and he'd shut it down. We just broke a record on jobs, an all-time record. There's never been three months where we've put more people to work, over 9 million people. And again, we're just about ready to break the old time stock market record. I mean, you look at it. We're just about ready to do it again.

And what that means is everything else is going to follow, very smart on Wall Street. Everything else is going to be there. The economy is coming up very rapidly. Our farmers are doing well. Our farmers are doing well because I got China to give them $28 billion, because they were targeted by China. I got the farmers $28 billion, 16 and 12, that why. And so in spite of the pandemic and our farmers did a great job in supplying food and all of the difficulties during this period of time. But we're getting ready to do things like nobody has ever seen before. But the best way to bring unity is success. Success brings unity. And we were there and then we got hit with the plague. But we won't forget that.

I just want to thank the people of North Carolina because to be honest with you, I felt an obligation to be here. You have a governor who's in a total shutdown mood. I guarantee on November 4th, it'll all open up. It'll be fine like most other stuffs. On November 4th, you know, these Democrat governors, they love shut down until after the elections over because they want to make our numbers look as bad as possible for the economy. But our numbers are looking so good.

And frankly, I used to say a V and people would say, well, maybe not. I don't think so. Some would say, no way. We have a super V, you're right. It's now looking like it's a super V. Our automobile numbers are incredible. Both used cars and brand new cars, our manufacturing numbers, incredible. We're putting a lot of manufacturing jobs to work that the previous administration said you'd need a magic wand. You'd need a magic wand for manufacturing jobs. I don't think so. I guess we had the magic wand. That's all. But we're putting them. Again, we're putting it back. We're bringing them back.

But think of your life just prior to the plague coming in, it was the best it's ever been. Your state had the best numbers they've ever had, ever had by far. And we had the best employment numbers also. We were up to 160 million jobs. We're never anywhere near that. And then we had to shut it down. We save millions and millions of lives. We learned the enemy. We learned all about the invisible enemy, how it affects really people that are older, especially older people, the elderly, but older people with problems with heart, with diabetes, with other problems. And we learned.

And most of the country is right now doing very, very well. They've done an incredible job. And to have a man sitting on television the other day say, oh, I shut it down. Oh, I shut it, like it's like it's easy. Shut it down. And by the way, when you shut it down, and we did the exact right thing, we shut it down, then we reopened, and that's what we're doing now. We're well into it.

But if we didn't shut it down at that point, we would have had millions of people dead, millions of people. You see the numbers, the job that Mike Pence and the task force, and all of us together have done has been incredible what we've done, what we've achieved, whether it's ventilators, whether it's supplying equipment to governors that were totally ill prepared. Many of the governors were totally ill prepared. Nobody wants to say that. But it's supposed to work that way, federalists supposed to work that way. The governors are supposed to do it.

Many of them -- and many of them did a fine job. And many of them came back well. But most of them didn't have the equipment that they should have had. Few of them had the ventilators which are very, very complex machines and hard to make and hard to manufacture and expensive. And we're right now making thousands of ventilators a month. And we're sending them. We have all we can use. Our whole country, every state, were stocked, were stocked. And I always say and I'll say it again, there's never been a person that needed a ventilator that didn't get a ventilator.

[12:45:13]

Every single person that's ever needed a ventilator, with all that you've heard, with how much, you know, they'd said, we didn't have, again, I took over a country whose military was depleted and who's covered on this front were bare. The cupboards were bare. We didn't have anything. We didn't have a thing. We had very, very little. And we did a great job. We haven't been given, and it's not for me, it's for the incredible people, the generals, the admirals, all of -- the doctors, the nurses. Then yet you saw yesterday, convalescent plasma, you saw Remdesivir, you'll soon see vaccines pouring out years ahead of what they would have been under a more traditional, let's use that term because it's nicer, a more traditional administration, where they would have taken years to come up with this stuff.

We're coming up with it like nobody has ever seen before. The FDA, Dr. Hahn, I want to thank him, Alex Azar, I want to thank them. They've come with things and done things that have never been done in terms of speed. And frankly, in terms of quality, if you look at what we're doing, and what we're coming up with drug companies are coming out with vaccines that are I've seen some results already. It's going to be very, very soon. They're in stage three trials. It's unheard of. We wouldn't be there for two years if this were a more normal situation.

So I just want to thank everybody for being here. And again, I felt an obligation to come to North Carolina. It's been a place that's been very good to me. You know, we won a lot of victories here. I haven't been doing this that long, but I want every chance I had in North Carolina. I even stole a great chief of staff, Mark Meadows, right? I stole him from North Carolina.

And he left Congress as a very popular guy. It could have been there for a long time if he wanted and he came in. And by the way, you have a fantastic young gentlemen going to take his place. He's a fantastic young guy. And he's going to be a real star in the party. He's going to be a real star in the party. So I just want to thank everybody from North Carolina.

And I do, I do want to show a little bit of a difference because another state has been very good to me is Wisconsin. And Joe Biden was going to have their convention in Milwaukee. And they didn't go there at all. They didn't do this. We did this out of respect for your state. We didn't do this for any other reason other than respect for the State of North Carolina, because we said we wanted to hold our convention in North Carolina. And I think you're going to remember that, frankly, on November 3rd. We wanted to hold our convention in North Carolina.

So I did that out of respect. And if you had a governor that would have let us have some people, he actually told me this. We had an arena that holds 19,000 people, it was totally jam, sold out, every hotel was full, everything. And I call him, he said, but we have a shutdown going on. And according to the rules and regulation, now this is 19,000, he did say it. I don't think he'll deny it. But he said according to the rules and regulations, the most people you're allowed to have in that room, meaning that arena he viewed it as a room, is 10 people.

I said, so governor, so I'm at 19,000, you're 10. Can we work something in the middle? And it didn't sound too good. So we really had no choice. It was a terrible thing. But I felt so badly because you could have -- I mean economic development, money, all of the things that happened. But we decided I was with Ronna, the Vice President, everybody, Mark. And we said, let's have our big deal, the roll call. Let's have it right here. And let's do it. And I'm going to show up and I'm not going to tell anybody, you know, until a few minutes ago, nobody knew I was coming, right? Nobody knew I was coming.

So but what's more important than the roll call, you're the ones calling it, so what's more important.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We love you Mr. President. We love you.

TRUMP: So and I have to tell you, you know, we're going to do a lot of things. I'm just going to go over very briefly because we're going to make a speech on Thursday night. I hope you're all going to be listening it.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

TRUMP: Because I came in and I'm on Air Force One and Air Force One has more televisions than any plane in history. They've got them in closets. They've got them on ceilings, floors. They've got more television, you can't escape a television. And I turned to CNN and they didn't have this. They weren't having it. Can you believe it? They didn't have it. No, no, CNN didn't have our roll call. Then I turned to MSDNC, as I call it. MSDNC, which is truly, it is a branch of the Democrats, right?

[12:50:22]

It's a -- I wouldn't say fully owned corporation, but it's certainly a fully controlled or they control them. Nobody really knows who's controlling who. But, you know, they had it on television. I remember watching it. And it was interesting. You know, you see the different states and we say this and we say that, the great state of Alaska, the great state of Alabama, the great state of North Carolina, the great state of all of them, and it's very interesting to me, they had their zone. But they didn't show it. Instead they're showing the scam because they're trying to show the Post Office so that when their whole mail-in thing fizzles, they'll try blaming it on the Post Office, OK. So they show in these hearings that are very boring actually.

And they're not showing this either. They weren't showing this. And Fox added on but unfortunately Fox wasn't showing it too much because they had the announcers talking, talking, talking. I said, I want to hear what they're saying, the delegates, I want to hear what they're saying. So I think we had to switch over to C-SPAN or to OAN or somebody, but I wanted to hear them.

But I can promise you, I can promise you a few things. Number one, we will not be taking the word God at of the Pledge of Allegiance, OK. Like they did a number of times at their caucuses, so they took the word God out. I heard it. I was listening. I said, that's strange, you know, sort of weird. You've heard it all your life, right, under God, under God. Those two words are missing.

I said, oh, he must have made a mistake. He must have maybe the teleprompter wasn't working or his. His book wasn't working that I have right here. Something wasn't working, must have met. But the problem was then the next day I heard it again. I said, that's not a mistake. That's pretty -- and then they immediately went into a mode. Oh, no, no, no, we didn't mean that. No, no, we didn't say for the convention, we didn't say. No, that's where they're coming from. That's where they're coming from.

You can say it or not say it. That is where they're coming from. Just like with energy, they don't want energy. Not working well in Texas, by the way, just looked at a poll. It's a -- and by the way, just came out that we have received 51 percent in the big and very important recipes (ph) in poll. And my numbers actually went up during the Democratic National Convention, 51 percent. So think of it.

CROWD: Four more years, four more years --

TRUMP: Think of it.

CROWD: -- four more years, four more years, four more years, four more years, four more years, four more years, four more years, four more years --

TRUMP: Thank you.

CROWD: -- four more years.

TRUMP: I love the state. I like this place and hear from all over the place. But this has been a good one for me. No, but think of it. So we're at 51 percent and recipes (ph). Do you read about it, you hear about it? You don't hear about it. They give you the suppression polls where they do registered voters instead of most likely, it's supposed to be likely, likely.

In other words, how about you, you're likely to vote, but how about you? You're registered. But I'm not voting. But see under their plan, where they send these ballots. You don't have to want to vote. You get the ballot. And then they have harvesting. They get guys to go, you want to vote? No, not really. But I have a ballot. All right, good. Who's it for a Sleepy Joe, I'll put it here, Sir. OK, Can I have it? And they'll take it. In fact, harvesting is illegal in your state. They wanted to put a Republican fine man, a pastor, they wanted to put them in jail because he harvested. Now they want to make harvesting legal all of a sudden. They'll put him in jail as a Republican, right? If he was a Democrat, they wouldn't even be thinking about it. In California, they do the same thing. No repercussion. In North Carolina, you had a fine pastor, a fine man. And they got them in harvest, and they wanted to put them in jail. And now they want to make it all so that everybody can harvest because they know it's not a good thing. So people that don't want to vote are going to be sitting there. They'll be making them, if you talk about 80 million ballots, it's 80 million, it could even be higher than that. I used to say 51 million, now it's 80 million.

They said, Sir, you're a little obsolete with the 51. I said, all right, what is it? Eighty. I said, 80? How is it possible to -- think of it, they'll be sending them. They'll be dumping them in the neighborhoods. There'll be people are going to be picking them up. They'll be bribing. They'll be paying off people to grab some. This is going to be one of the greatest gifts and its common sense. This has nothing to do with politics. It's common sense.

[12:55:12]

Anybody, you don't have to know politics. They're going to mail out 80 million ballots. It's impossible. They have no idea. Who's mailing them? Mostly Democrat states and Democrat governors. Well, supposing they don't mail them to Republican neighborhoods. That means they're not going to get them. So they're going to complain that the election is going to be over and then they're going to complain. And then they'll say, oh, well, we didn't get it, big deal. In the meantime, you might lose the election.

This is the greatest scam in the history of politics, I think. And I'm talking about beyond our nation. And they act like they're aggrieved like by saying this, was saying such a horrible thing. We're not patriotic by saying this. No, we voted during World War I. We voted at the voting booth during World War II. The pandemic, we're doing very well and people know how to handle it. Look at the crowds. They're doing very well. It's very safe. It's going to be very safe.

If you have an absentee ballot where you request it, we're all in favor of that. Absentee like in Florida, they have absentee is good. But other than that, they're very, very bad. There'll be millions of ballots, take a look at New York, take a look at Virginia, take a look at New Jersey, all different cases. They just had one last night. Now they are thinking about recalling certain elections that took place with mail-in and these are small little elections that are locally based, that are easy to run. Not millions, but thousands of ballots, thousands, hundreds of ballots. But these are small. And they can't control it.

They said 23 percent of the ballots were defective. What is defective mean? It means fraud. It means --

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: You've been listening to the President speak at the Republican Convention moments after being formally nominated for President by the party and for vowing to have a positive convention, the President goes negative in its first moments. He started off falsely attacking mail-in voting. He's continuing to attack mail-in voting. And as his Postmaster General testifies that the attacks are quote, unhelpful. That's his own Postmaster General. He also criticized the media for airing the Postmaster's hearing instead of his roll call. He falsely accused Democrats of wanting to shutdown the country to hurt the economy and somehow help them at the ballot box, unclear how angering the entire country by shutting down would help them in the ballot box.

He attacked North Carolina's governor for putting limits on crowds during a convention. Here now, John King, Dana Bash, Ryan Nobles is in Charlotte. John King, I mean this was very similar. I mean, it is sort of all the most recent greatest hits and fall statements by the President. And I imagine what we're going to hear a lot this week from the President who clearly wants to be out front every single day.

KING: And underscores the challenge, Anderson, for us in the news business. And really for people watching at home, if you are a voter who has not decided, if you are a voter who is not affirming your decision to watch the next four days, because it's -- this is a sad thing to say, but a lot of what you just heard from the President of the United States is wrong, misleading, or outright lies, wrong, misleading, or outright lies.

And the President knows that. He came in with a script. He started with a riff, right? He just decided to talk about himself. All the points he were just making about the mail-in voting, states across the country have done this for years, including Republican states, it increases turnout. There's very little fraud. The President knows that. Look at a state like Utah, look at Colorado, look at Washington State, and now in the middle of a pandemic, yes, just about every state is saying we have to have more mail-in voting. And they're working to do it.

The states administer these elections, they do not decide, we're only going to send ballots to Democrats or only send ballots to Republicans. The states don't do that. The secretaries of state even though they're elected as Democrats or Republicans, some are appointed, tend to operate on a bipartisan basis and they run their elections efficiently. Are they perfect? Absolutely not. A number of other things, you mentioned, the President was talking about the economy.

I will just say this, again. He did have a very strong economy. His tax cuts early on the administration did juice the economy. If you take the pandemic out of this, right, to be fair to the President, there are 11.5 fewer million -- 11.5 million fewer Americans working today than in January 2020. That is because of the pandemic. Let's be fair to the President. Let's take 2020 off the map.

In the final four months of the Obama administration, the economy created 7.1 million jobs. In the first 35 months of the Trump administration, the economy created 5.8 million jobs. Now there are other ways to judge the economy. And you can come to the conclusion the Trump economy was stronger than the Obama economy. That's a perfectly fair place to land. But it was not like the economy was dead. The President inherited a very strong, vibrant, robust job creating economy. And he likes to convince people that have walked into a ditch and somehow turned everything around.

[13:00:03]

So those are just a couple of examples. You mentioned the shutdown. If these states reopened more quickly, we know what happened.