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CNN Live Event/Special
J.D. Vance Delivers Republican National Convention Speech; Daniel Dale Fact-Checks RNC Speeches; Sources: Pelosi Privately Told Biden Polls Show He Cannot Win And Will Take Down The House. Aired 11p-12a ET
Aired July 17, 2024 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[23:00:00]
SEN. J.D. VANCE, GOP VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Come on, come on, we've had enough political violence, let's...
(LAUGHTER)
VANCE: Now after Ohio State I went to Yale Law School where I met my beautiful wife. And then I started businesses to create jobs in the kind of places that I grew up in.
Now my work taught me that there is still so much talent and grit in the American heartland. There really is. But for these places to thrive, my friends, we need a leader who fights for the people who built this country.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: We need a leader who's not in the pocket of big business, but answers to the working man, union and non-union alike.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: A leader who won't sell out to multinational corporations but will stand up for American companies and American industry.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: A leader who rejects Joe Biden and Kamala Harris' green new scam and fights to bring back our great American factories. We need President Donald J. Trump.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: Some people tell me I've lived the American dream, and of course, they're right, and I'm so grateful for it. But the American dream that has always counted most was not starting a business or becoming a senator or even being here with you, fine people, though it's pretty awesome.
My most important American dream was becoming a good husband and a good dad, of being able to give --
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: I wanted to give my kids the things that I didn't have when I was growing up, and that's the accomplishment that I'm proudest of.
But tonight, I'm joined by my beautiful wife, Usha, an incredible lawyer and a better mom, and our three beautiful kids, Ewan who's 7, Vivek who's 4, and Mirabel who's 2. Now they're back at the hotel and, kids, if you're watching, Daddy loves you very much, but get your butts in bed.
(LAUGHTER)
VANCE: It's 10:00.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: But, my friends, things did not work out well for a lot of kids I grew up with. Every now and then, I will get a call from a relative back home who asks, did you know so and so? And I will remember a face from years ago and then I'll hear they died of an overdose. As always, America's ruling class wrote the checks. Communities like mine paid the price.
For decades, that divide between the few with their power and comfort in Washington and the rest of us only widens. From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the Great Recession, from open borders to stagnating wages, the people who govern this country have failed and failed again.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: That is, of course, until a guy named Donald J. Trump came along.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: President Trump represents America's last best hope to restore what if lost may never be found again -- a country where a working- class boy born far from the halls of power can stand on this stage as the next vice president of the United States of America.
(CHEERING)
CROWD: J.D.! J.D.! J.D.!
VANCE: But, my fellow Americans, here on the stage and watching at home, this moment is not about me. It's about all of us. And it's about who we're fighting for. It's about the autoworker in Michigan wondering why out-of-touch politicians are destroying their jobs. It's about the factory worker in Wisconsin who makes things with their hands and is proud of American craftsmanship.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: It's about the energy worker in Pennsylvania and Ohio who doesn't understand why Joe Biden is willing to buy energy from tinpot dictators across the world when he could buy it from his own citizens right here in our own country.
(APPLAUSE)
CROWD: (inaudible)
[23:05:00]
VANCE: You guys are a great crowd. Wow.
(CHEERING)
CROWD: Yes we are! Yes we are! Yes we are!
(LAUGHTER)
VANCE: And it's about -- our movement is about single moms like mine who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up. And I'm proud to say that tonight, my mom is here. Ten years clean and sober. I love you, mom.
(CHEERING)
CROWD: J.D.'s mom! J.D.'s mom! J.D.'s mom!
VANCE: And you know, mom, I was thinking it'll be ten years officially in January of 2025. And if President Trump's OK with it, let's have the celebration in the White House.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: And our movement, ladies and gentlemen, it's about grandparents all across this country who are living on Social Security and raising grandchildren they didn't expect to raise. And while we're on the topic of grandparents, let me tell you another Mamaw story.
Now, my Mamaw died shortly before I left for Iraq in 2005. And when we went through her things, we found 19 loaded handguns. They were --
(LAUGHTER)
VANCE: Now, the thing is, they were stashed all over her house, under her bed, in her closet, in the silverware drawer. And we wondered what was going on. And it occurred to us that towards the end of her life, Mamaw couldn't get around so well.
And so, this frail old woman made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arm's length of whatever she needed to protect her family. That's who we fight for. That's American spirit.
(CHEERING)
CROWD: USA! USA! USA!
VANCE: Now, Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington for longer than I've been alive -- 39 years old. Kamala Harris is not much further behind. For half a century, he's been the champion of every major policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer.
And in four short years, Donald Trump reversed decades of betrayals inflicted by Joe Biden and the rest of the corrupt Washington insiders.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: He created the greatest economy in history for workers. Really was amazing. There's this chart that shows worker wages, and they stagnated for pretty much my entire life, until President Donald J. Trump came along.
[23:10:03]
Workers wages went through the roof.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: And just imagine what he's going to do when we give him four more years.
(CHEERING)
CROWD: Four more years! Four more years! Four more years!
VANCE: Months ago, I heard some young family member observed that their parents' generation, the Baby Boomers, could afford to buy a home when they first entered the workforce. But I don't know, this person observed, if I'll ever be able to afford a home. The absurd cost of housing is the result of so many failures, and it reveals so much about what is broken in Washington. I can tell you exactly how it happened.
Wall Street barons crashed the economy and American builders went out of business. As tradesmen scrambled for jobs, houses stop being built. The lack of good jobs, of course, led to stagnant wages. And then the Democrats flooded this country with millions of illegal aliens.
(BOOING)
VANCE: So citizens had to compete with people who shouldn't even be here for precious housing. Joe Biden's inflation crisis, my friends, is really an affordability crisis. And many of the people that I grew up with can't afford to pay more for groceries, more for gas, more for rent, and that's exactly what Joe Biden's economy has given them.
(BOOING)
CROWD: Send them back! Send them back! Send them back!
VANCE: So prices soared. Dreams were shattered. And China and the cartels sent fentanyl across the border, adding addiction to the heartache.
But, ladies and gentlemen, that is not the end of our story. We've heard about villains and their victims. I've talked a lot about that. But let me tell you about the future. President Trump's vision is so simple and yet so powerful. We're done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street. We will commit to the working man.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: We're done importing foreign labor. We're going to fight for American citizens and their good jobs and their good wages.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: We're done buying energy from countries that hate us. We're going to get it right here from American workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio and across the country.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: We're done sacrificing supply chains to unlimited global trade and we're going to stamp more and more product with that beautiful label, "made in the USA."
(APPLAUSE)
CROWD: USA! USA! USA!
VANCE: We're going to build factories again, put people to work making real products for American families made with the hands of American workers. Together...
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: ... we will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: Together we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace. No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: Together, we will send our kids to war only when we must. But as President Trump showed with the elimination of ISIS and so much more, when we punch, we're going to punch hard.
(APPLAUSE)
[23:15:00]
VANCE: Together, we will put the citizens of America first, whatever the color of their skin. We will, in short, make America great again.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear...
(CHEERING)
VANCE: You know, one of the things that you hear people say sometimes is that America is an idea. And to be clear, America was indeed founded on brilliant ideas, like the rule of law and religious liberty, things written into the fabric of our Constitution and our nation.
But America is not just an idea. It is a group of people with a shared history and a common future. It is, in short, a nation. Now, it is part of that tradition, of course, that we welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: That's the way we preserve the continuity of this project from 250 years past to hopefully 250 years in the future.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: And let me illustrate this with a story, if I may. I'm, of course, married to the daughter of South Asian immigrants to this country. Incredible people, people who genuinely have enriched this country in so many ways. And of course, I'm biased because I love my wife and her family, but it's true. Now, when I proposed to my wife, we were in law school, and I said, honey, I come with $120,000 worth of law school debt and a cemetery plot on a mountainside in Eastern Kentucky.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: And I guess standing here tonight, it's just gotten weirder and weirder, honey.
(LAUGHTER)
VANCE: But that's what she was getting. Now, that cemetery plot in Eastern Kentucky is near my family's ancestral home. And like a lot of people, we came from the mountains of Appalachia into the factories of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: Now, that's Kentucky coal country, one of the ten --
(CHEERING)
VANCE: Now, it's one of the ten poorest counties in the entire United States of America. They are very hardworking people, and they're very good people. They're the kind of people who would give you the shirt off their back even if they can't afford enough to eat. And our media calls them privileged and looks down on them.
But they love this country, not only because it's a good idea, but because in their bones, they know that this is their home, and it will be their children's home, and they would die fighting to protect it.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: That is the source of America's greatness. As a United States Senator, I get to represent millions of people in the great state of Ohio with similar stories, and it is the great honor of my life. Now, in that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time of the Civil War.
And if, as I hope, my wife and I are eventually laid to rest there and our kids follow us, there will be seven generations just in that small mountain cemetery plot in Eastern Kentucky. Seven generations of people who have fought for this country, who have built this country, who have made things in this country, and who would fight and die to protect this country if they were asked to.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: Now, that's not just an idea, my friends. That's not just a set of principle. Even though the ideas and the principles are great. That is a homeland. That is our homeland.
(APPLAUSE)
VANCE: People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home. And if this movement of ours is going to succeed, and if this country is going to thrive, our leaders have to remember that America is a nation, and its citizens deserve leaders who put its interests first.
(CHEERING)
[23:20:00]
VANCE: Now, we won't agree on every issue, of course, not even in this room. We may disagree from time to time about how best to reinvigorate American industry and renew American family. That's fine. In fact, it's more than fine. It's good.
But never forget that the reason why this united Republican Party exists, why we do this, why we care about those great ideas and that great history, is that we want this nation to thrive for centuries to come.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: Now, eventually, in that mountain cemetery, my children will lay me to rest. And when they do, I would like them to know that thanks to the work of this Republican Party, the United States of America it is strong, and as proud and as great as ever.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: That is who we serve, my friends. That is who we fight for. And the only thing that we need to do right now, the most important thing that we can do for those people, for that American nation that we all love, is to re-elect Donald J. Trump president of the United States.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: Mr. President, I will never take for granted the trust you have put in me. And what an honor it is to help achieve the extraordinary vision that you have for this country.
Now, I pledge to every American, no matter your party, I will give you everything I have to serve you and to make this country a place where every dream you have for yourself, your family, and your country will be possible once again.
(CHEERING)
VANCE: And I promise you one more thing. To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and every corner of our nation, I promise you this: I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.
(CHEERING)
CROWD: J.D.! J.D.! J.D.!
VANCE: And every single day for the next four years, when I walk into that White House to help President Trump, I will be doing it for you, for your family, for your future, and for this great country. Thank you. God bless all of you, and God bless our great country.
(CHEERING)
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST (voice-over): Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, 39 years old, in the Senate for about a year and a half, introducing himself to the American people and accepting his party's nomination. There he is with his wife, Usha, an attorney and the mother of their three children. There he is hugging his mom, who is about to celebrate 10 years of sobriety.
J.D. Vance, basically two parts of his speech. One was autobiographical, explaining who he is, where he comes from, his very compelling personal life story. Already, as his wife pointed out, the subject of a Ron Howard movie, "Hillbilly Elegy," a best-selling book, telling about his hardscrabble roots in Appalachia, his mom with an addiction problem, and a father who disappeared. He was raised by his grandparents.
Part of his biography was cementing himself to three battleground states. The son of Ohio talked about Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. I think I counted four or five times that he referred to those three specific states that President Trump and Senator Vance would like to win in November.
The second part of his presentation was as clear as the introductory music we heard. Merle Haggard's "America First," which, if you listen to the lyrics, came out in 2005. That song is a protest song against the Iraq War. That is a song that is explicitly a rejection of George W. Bush, saying that George W. Bush should have been rebuilding America, not Iraq.
[23:25:06]
And in J.D. Vance's message, Dana Bash, not only did he criticize the foreign policy of the Republican Party of old, but the economic policy of the Republican Party of old and the Democratic Party of today, noting how President Biden, as a senator, supported both NAFTA and most favored nation status for China. Those were trade deals that hurt people in Ohio and, if you weren't sure, he did mention Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: You know, the way that he talked about economic policy was so stunning, Jake, because --
(END VIDEOTAPE)
-- you almost forgot, for those of us who have covered republican conventions in the past, that we were actually at a republican convention. I mean, he was trashing the free trade policies that Republicans espoused for a very long time, went after Wall Street, went after big corporations, and talked over and over about the working man. I mean, aside from some of the other issues that he doesn't disagree with -- doesn't agree with, Bernie Sanders could have given some of these talking points tonight. Elizabeth Warren could have as well.
But the way that he wrapped what I just described into the generational sort of frame, talking about how he was in fourth grade when Joe Biden supported NAFTA, he was a sophomore in high school when Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart deal. So, he not only made himself clearly the populist that he is, and Donald Trump is to a lesser extent, but he reminded people throughout that riff how young he is and what a generational difference there is between him -- I mean, also between him and his -- the guy at the top of the ticket.
CHRIS WALLACE, CNN HOST: My favorite line in the speech was what he said, America's ruling class wrote the checks and our communities paid the price. And it seemed to me, it really harked back to the original message that Donald Trump made that was so effective back in 2016, which is the idea that there's a kind of rig game in America. There's a ruling class, he used that phrase, that makes the deals, makes the money, and it's the forgottens. He talked about forgotten people, he talked about forgotten communities like his that end up paying the price. And he really cemented himself as part of that forgotten community and those people who don't feel that they have anybody looking out for them in Washington or Wall Street.
I also thought the reference to the cemetery. It specifically was about the idea, it seemed to me, he said America is an idea, but it's a lot more than that, it's a nation, it's a homeland. And I think he was saying, in effect, you know, there's a lot of principles and social policies and all of that out there, but this is a nation, and we have to protect it and cherish it, whether that's in terms of enforcing our borders, whether that's in terms of protecting our jobs and businesses and industries that -- you know, it was a different slant on America First, not isolationist -- BASH: Yes.
WALLACE: -- but protecting what we have and holding it dear. I thought it was a very powerful speech, and very well written.
BASH: Can I just add one thing that I forgot to mention? You know what we didn't hear at all when it comes to economics? There was no call for tax cuts. There was not a discussion about the national debt, but specifically on tax cuts. When was the last time you heard a Republican give a speech and not call for cutting of your taxes?
TAPPER: Yeah.
BASH: It has been a long time.
TAPPER: He, um, well, that's certainly not in keeping with his message, J.D. Vance's personal message.
BASH: Yeah.
TAPPER: It is certainly what the guy at the top of the ticket, Donald Trump, has said to big donors behind closed doors, that he wants to give them another big tax cut.
It is also interesting, I would note, there was only the briefest of allusions, unless I missed it, about -- he didn't say the word "Ukraine." I don't think -- he is, you know, famously or infamously, depending on your point of view, opposed to military aid from the United States to Ukraine. He did talk about the fact that it is important for the Republican Party to be a place where these ideas can be debated. And I thought that was him, Anderson, leaning into the idea of -- I mean, obliquely, but leaning into the idea of, yes, I look at some of these things differently, but let's hash it out. That's my interpretation, anyway. Anderson?
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Jake, thanks very much. John King, I mean, you've heard a lot of vice-presidential nominees' speeches. What did you make of this one?
[23:30:00]
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, let's start with the most important fact. There is nothing in American political history that says a vice president actually makes a difference. Come election day, people vote for president. You can scour the books, you can scour the data, and you will find no compelling case that any nominee for vice president ever has been the factor in making a difference come election day.
However, they can hurt. He didn't do anything to hurt them tonight. He gave a very compelling speech. We can argue about the policy. That's what debates are about. He told a very compelling story. And the forgotten part, where he's from and where he will be.
Look, the people of Erie, Pennsylvania and Grand Rapids, Michigan and Oshkosh, Wisconsin are going to see a lot of J.D. Vance. He's going to talk about growing up in Middletown. His family grew up in Kentucky. He grew up in Middletown, which was once an industrial town. There was a canal that ran all the way up the side of Ohio. In the old days, that's where the jobs were. They were all people who worked with their hands, manufacturing jobs. You can go to a lot of those communities across America. Main Street is nothing anymore.
And he knows that. He can tell that story. And you find those places in Pennsylvania, in Michigan and Wisconsin. So, he's a very compelling campaigner. We're going to see him on local TV markets and all those places forever. So, he's a good ad. I don't want to overstate the idea that he's going to make any huge difference because there's no history. It has never happened.
DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Can I just say something about the -- I mean, you're absolutely right about his story, which is compelling, which makes you wonder why his story wasn't his entry point into this speech.
KING: Right. Yeah.
AXELROD: This speech had, you know, four or five pages of pay-ons to Donald Trump and his courage and all of that. And I actually was really disappointed. This guy wrote a great book, a great memoir that was moving and filled with stories that told a larger story about the struggles of people. And I was really expecting him to be a great storyteller tonight and really --
ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: This is what you're seeing with somebody who has been on the political scene for less than two years now. It's a work -- it's a work in progress, I think, is the best way to describe it.
KING: Yeah. It's also the price of admission to a Trump event, as you say --
PHILLIP: Yeah. The speech was upside down. He should have started with the best part, which is his life, his mama. That story was what lit up this audience. The rest of it kind of fell a little bit flat. But look, I don't think Trump picked him because he was a really great speaker, somebody who could liven up this room. He picked him because he had the right message and the right biography and probably wasn't going to upstage him. And I think he did probably all of those things tonight.
SCOTT JENNINGS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I mean, look, so J.D. Vance isn't going to be a Vegas act. That's okay. He needs to be vice president. He doesn't need to overshadow Donald Trump. I was listening --
AXELROD: Mission accomplished.
(LAUGHTER)
JENNINGS: I was listening to the song they played when he finished. "Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow." So now they've got Bill Clinton's song. And increasingly, they have Bill Clinton's voters. The people who are gravitating to this ticket are the same people who voted -- that working-class base voted for Bill Clinton in the 90s. They largely gravitated to the Republicans over cultural issues. And now, Vance and Trump are going to give them the economic agenda to go with it, a couple of issues.
I think the riff on the seven generations who built things and made things, I thought that was effective and that will resonate in the kinds of areas where he's going to campaign. And I loved the homage to his mother, clean and sober for 10 years.
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: That's beautiful.
JENNINGS: That was a powerful moment. And that is an issue that every family in this country someway, somehow, is dealing with.
PHILLIP: Including the Biden family, by the way.
DAVID URBAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I was going to say, look, when J.D. Vance was strongest out there, he was talking about his mom, his grandmother, his mother, he was relating, he was being human. That's what he was the most. When he was giving the kinds of the raw meat to the base, kind of an off message. It really wasn't -- he wasn't his best. I'd like to hear him talk more about his Marine Corps experience. He'll be the first Marine Corps veteran on any major party ticket, which is something in a country that has lots of military veterans.
COOPER (voice-over): Van?
JONES: Um, I think he put a very friendly face on a pretty disturbing agenda. The good part of his agenda, I could tell him, guess what, you don't have to run for vice president for the good part of your agenda. You can just vote for Joe Biden. He's talking about supply chains. Joe Biden passed a bill called the Chips Act that takes care of that and moves in the right direction without his support. He's talking about not buying energy from people that don't like us. We're a net energy exporter. He's talking about manufacturing. The manufacturing peak under Biden is higher than the peak under Trump. So, if he wants his policy agenda, he can just stay home and vote for Joe Biden.
URBAN (voice-over): Joe Biden might not be the candidate by tomorrow morning.
JONES: But that's not the problem with the speech. The problem with the speech is he's putting a very friendly face on a very selfish and narrow vision of what America is supposed to be. And unlike Trump, who is an intuitive, impulsive, instinctive nationalist, this is an ideological nationalist. That is a very different strain of the virus. He can sell this stuff to Silicon Valley, Wall Street, and normal people. But his vision will make America smaller, more narrow, and weaker.
[23:35:02]
That's the problem. AXELROD: But what Dana said earlier is actually true. His economic agenda sounded just like Bernie Sanders. Not Bill Clinton, but Bernie Sanders.
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: And it's fascinating because --
AXELROD: The problem is that Donald Trump's program as president was very much a Wall Street-oriented program. It wasn't a populist agenda.
COLLINS: Well, that's why it's fascinating. I mean, if they are -- if there is a Trump-Vance administration, the FTC is going to look just like it does now, at least on running it.
AXELROD: Exactly.
COLLINS: She's actually an ally of J.D. Vance.
AXELROD: He's a supporter of her.
COLLINS: But can I say, as this speech is going on, the person I was watching was not always J.D. Vance, but Donald Trump, because I think the understated part of what Mike Pence did for four years was how he navigated an incredibly challenging president to work with. I mean, ask half the cabinet. And when he had started out with everything he was saying about Donald Trump, you kind of have to do that if you work for Donald Trump. That is not just happening at the convention. That is going to be his role over the next four years.
COOPER: I want to bring in CNN fact-checker, senior reporter Daniel Dale. He has been listening to all of tonight's speeches. Daniel, what stood out to you?
DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Anderson, tonight was a fact-check doozy, a whole lot of false and misleading claims. I want to start with a claim that J.D. Vance made in his speech. He strongly suggested that, in contrast to Joe Biden, Donald Trump opposed the invasion of Iraq. Listen.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
VANCE: When I was a senior in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq. Somehow, a real estate developer from New York City by the name of Donald J. Trump was right on all of these issues while Biden was wrong.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DALE: This claim is highly misleading at best. In reality, Donald Trump was supportive of the invasion of Iraq. When he was asked six months before the invasion by Howard Stern whether he was for an invasion, he said -- quote -- "Yeah, I guess so. I wish the first time, it was done correctly." Then two months before the invasion, he said on Fox News that President Bush, and this is a direct quote, "has either got to do something or not do something, perhaps." Not the words of an explicit opponent. Now, he did become an opponent of the war in 2004. But Vance's suggestion that Trump was on the opposite side of Biden on the question of starting the war, that Trump got this invasion question right while Biden was wrong, that's just not true.
And that was not, Anderson, the only assertion tonight that was misleading or flat wrong, and I'll give you just some of them. A former Trump advisor, Peter Navarro, who's fresh out of prison, falsely claimed Jack Smith prosecuted him. Smith did not. A Florida congressman, Mike Waltz, mocked Biden for allegedly being focused on building electric tanks. That is pure fiction. Biden has made no push for electric tanks, though the army does want some other vehicles to be electrified.
Various speakers depicted a country with rampant crime and violence without acknowledging that violent crime is now lower than it was in Donald Trump's last year in office, 2020. A former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, said Trump orchestrated an orderly end to the war in Afghanistan. Trump didn't actually orchestrate a withdrawal at all. Gingrich also claimed no U.S. soldier was killed in nearly two years there. There was not any two-year period under Trump when zero U.S. troops were killed in Afghanistan.
And finally, conservative commentator Kimberly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump, Jr.'s fiancee, declared that Trump handed Joe Biden a booming economy. You might remember what things were actually like in January 2021. The unemployment rate was 6.4%. Anderson?
COOPER: Daniel Dale, thanks very much. We're going to take a short break. Just ahead as we wrap up night three of the Republican National Convention here in Milwaukee, there's new information just coming to CNN about the deeply or I should say the deepening divisions among Democrats. We're going to tell you what sources are now sharing with us about a recent phone call between President Biden and Nancy Pelosi. We'll have that news ahead in a moment.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[23:42:35]
TAPPER: Night three of the Republican National Convention just wrapped up here in Milwaukee, in battleground state, Wisconsin. Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio introduced himself to the party and to the nation as Donald Trump's running mate. He accepted his party's nomination formally this evening.
There's also news on the other side of the aisle from the Democrats' sources, sharing with CNN details of a recent phone call between President Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who remains a very powerful and influential Democrat in Congress.
CNN's MJ Lee is joining us from the White House with more. MJ, what can you tell us about this call?
MJ LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Jake, we are learning that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Biden spoke again recently and that Pelosi told the president that polling shows that the president cannot defeat Donald Trump and that he could destroy Democrats' chances of winning the House if he were to continue seeking a second term.
Now, we are also told by our sources that the president responded by being defensive about the polling, telling Pelosi he has seen the data polling that shows that he can, in fact, win, and that at one point, Pelosi asked Mike Donilon, the president's senior adviser, to get on the line to go over the data.
Now, none of our sources said whether in this phone call Nancy Pelosi privately told President Biden that she believes he should drop out of the race, but it's important to note this is the second known conversation now between Nancy Pelosi and President Biden since his debate performance that really shook the party at the end of June.
I should also note the White House wouldn't comment on our reporting in this meeting. They said President Biden is the nominee of the party. He plans to win. And a Pelosi spokesperson said Pelosi has been in California since Friday and has not spoken to Biden since.
Obviously, Jake, we cannot overstate just how important Nancy Pelosi is to all of this. She has so much sway within the party. She probably has the best pulse on where all of her colleagues are on the Biden situation than probably anybody else. And the big question going forward is, at some point, does she get to a point where she may be publicly says that she believes that the president shouldn't stay in the race?
TAPPER: All right. MJ Lee, amazing stuff. Jeff Zeleny also has been reporting on the story. Jeff, tell us more about these conversations between former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Biden.
[23:45:00]
JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: Look, Jake, a lot of Democrats have been taking their worries and fears to former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and we have really seen an evolution of her thinking over the last now nearly three weeks since that debate.
Now, when President Biden said he is going to run, he's not reconsidering, she reopened the door for him, and that allowed some other House Democrats to have conversations with her. So, she has been trying to handle this behind the scenes, if you will, but what we are hearing is that it hasn't worked, so they are being slightly more public with this.
But she's not alone. Last Saturday, a key meeting in all of this. History may show this to be a pivotal meeting here, depending on what happens. Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, traveled to Rehoboth Beach. That's where the president was spending the weekend. He had a private one-on-one meeting with the president, expressing concerns of Senate Democrats as well that they do not think that they can win and are worried about him winning in November.
So, Jake, taking together all of this, this is a different moment here as we hit the three-week period. As for the president, he's back in Delaware. The campaign tells me tonight he's in this race, he's not changing, and they say he'll be the Democratic nominee. Of course, we'll see about that, Jake.
TAPPER: We will. Jeff Zeleny, stick around. Let's talk about this with my panel. Chris Wallace and Dana Bash, I want to show some recent video, the most recent video we have of President Biden. He has COVID. He had to cancel an appearance at an event. Here he is earlier tonight at Dover Air Force Base, Delaware walking down the stairs, looking, I don't know, around, let's say. And it's a very halting procession down the stairs, though.
And the reason I wanted to show this video is I'm not sure in all these conversations how much it's being illustrated to President Biden, not just that Democrats worry he cannot turn this around, that he's a drag on the ticket, that he is going to lose, but that the reason he is the drag on the ticket, the reason that his poll numbers are so bad, is irreversible.
It is because the American people think he's too old, not competent to do the job. That was highlighted even more in the debate. But that's where the American people, according to polls, have been for months, if not years. This is not something that he can turn around. We've seen him speak before the NAACP and lose his train of thought. We've seen him give interviews to speedy --
WALLACE: Stephanopoulos?
TAPPER: No, not Stephanopoulos. No, the YouTuber.
BASH: Yeah, the YouTuber.
TAPPER: And he loses his train of thought in those interviews as well. This is not something that he can turn around. It's -- you can -- you can beat Donald Trump, but you can't beat father time.
BASH: Yeah. Listen, I mean, that is why what you are seeing, the private conversations that MJ was just reporting on, even more so with Nancy Pelosi, what we know, Chuck Schumer, we know that he was very direct with Joe Biden when he spoke with the president on Saturday, and we know about the series of conversations that he's had with House Democrats, particularly the one with some of the front liners, the more centrist Democrats, who were very blunt with him on the polling, but also on the fundamentals that you were just talking about.
I mean, now he has COVID. I mean, we both have COVID, have had COVID. I certainly have not felt great. But this is far beyond the moment that we are in right now. Jake, I have talked to House members. I've been texting with them, listening to what has been going on publicly, even in the last 10 hours, 12 hours, knowing what has already been going on privately, seeing it become more public. One said to me, the walls are closing in on the president because the desperation, the frustration, and in some cases, anger is overwhelming that they can't get through to him.
WALLACE: You know, sometimes you see an image, and it's almost a perfect metaphor for a situation. And to see Joe Biden looking so slow, so halting, so old as he came down the steps, and when it originally happened, CNN put it on live in a split screen. I forget exactly what was going on at the convention at that point, but, you know, there was energy and excitement and a plan for the future, not saying it's necessarily the right plan.
[23:50:00]
And you see Joe Biden, as his political support is crumbling, as his financial support is crumbling, as he has suffered a health setback, as he has had a series, as you say, of troubling interviews, as he's making the effort to show that the debate that you co-moderated was somehow a bad night, it isn't going away, and tonight just seemed to be a culmination of it.
Having said all of that, you know, it's one thing to say to a guy, hey, your numbers in Ohio or Pennsylvania are really, really bad. It's another thing to say, you're no longer up to the job. That gets to a whole different, not a political level, a personal level, and for him and his wife, Jill, and his family to come to terms with that is going to be very hard, and I'm not sure that he will.
TAPPER: Yeah. And Anderson, that's one I'm wondering, these blunt messages that are being given to President Biden from Speaker Pelosi, from Leader Schumer, the Democratic leader of the Senate, and on and on and on. How many of those messages are performance-based as opposed to just your polling numbers are bad?
COOPER: Yeah.
TAPPER: How many of them are the kind of blunt conversation that so many of us have had to have with parents or grandparents because of the inevitability, the situation, that if we're lucky enough to get to be that old, we all face?
COOPER: Yeah, Adam Schiff, as well, has come out very publicly. I mean, David Axelrod, of course, you know, Jake makes the point about conversations people have had with family members, that we've all had with family members, and that's what this may boil down to, conversations with Biden family members. And from all the reporting, it seems that there --
AXELROD: His world has shrunk, Anderson, to his family and a couple of close advisors. And someone has to recognize the reality of the situation. There was a memo circulating today among the congressional leadership done by a PAC for the Senate and House -- PACs for the Senate and House. And in it, it said that 18% of people now say they believe the president is fit to serve. Eighteen percent, including just a third of people who voted for him last time. You put that together with the meeting with Katzenberg, which reflects, I think, the reality. The money has dried up. And I said earlier --
COOPER: There's a report that Jeffrey Katzenberg, a large fundraiser --
AXELROD: Who is his key fundraiser. No one has done more for the president than Katzenberg. He's devoted his life to this project. You know, someone has to say, here is the reality, there is not a path forward. He said in an interview that he would get out if he was told by his advisors that there wasn't a path forward. If his advisors don't tell him that now, they're not doing him a service, and they shouldn't be his advisors.
JONES: You know, this is -- this is the endgame now. He may be able to run out the clock and stay on the ticket, but you've got to lead, and we have a big coalition. You have a lot of African-American voters who are still with Joe Biden. They still want him to stick in there. We're used to seeing our leaders stumble. We're used to seeing our leaders be attacked by the media in ways that aren't fair. And we're slow to let go of somebody's hand. So, I'm proud that the Black grassroots are standing with Joe Biden.
But the party is bigger than that. The donors are walking away. The best people in our party, the smartest people in our party are looking at the math and saying, the math don't math. And so, it's important, I think, that we recognize that this could be -- this is the endgame. One way or the other, it's the endgame. Tonight --
AXELROD: One more -- just one more thing I want to --
COLLINS: Yeah, and --
AXELROD: I'm sorry. Just one last data point, which is that there was an AP-NORC poll today that said two-thirds of Democrats want him to drop out. And that -- you know, yes, he's got stronger support among African-Americans, but there are a fair number of African-Americans.
JONES: Yeah.
AXELROD: And it's a reflection of what they see.
COLLINS: Well, and Jeff Zeleny makes a great point that tomorrow marks three weeks since the debate. And I talked to White House officials. I was at the White House last week. They really thought they were going to hit the ground running coming out of this. He was going to do a lot of public events. He was going to do a bunch of interviews. Well, now, he's going to self-isolate for a few days.
And every interview and public appearance he has done has not done enough to materially change what you were hearing from Democrats behind closed doors, who do believe that it is up to the Pelosis and Schumers and that small group of advisers around him, the Mike Donalds, the Steve Ricchettis, to kind of have that conversation. And even they, behind the scenes, seem to be getting closer to that point.
KING: And so, add to that what we heard from J.D. Vance tonight, which is not on Daniel Dale's list because it's true. It is true. We have a big tent in our party. We love this country. We are united to win. The Democrats see this here. This party has rallied around Donald Trump. For all the controversy about Trump in the past, this party has rallied around Donald Trump. So, Democrats are looking not just at the polling, but to David's point and to Jake's point. If you make a policy mistake or you did something out there, you can change that.
[23:55:00] You can apologize. You can change your policy. You can have an event. This is a performance question. It's not just that they're telling the president, you're losing Michigan, you're losing Pennsylvania, you're losing Wisconsin, you're losing Nevada, you're losing Arizona. You're beginning to put New Mexico in play? What? You're beginning to put New Hampshire in play? What? You're putting Virginia in play? Hello? It's not just that. They're saying the reason is because the American people, to David's point about the poll and they're showing the data, they do not believe you are up to the job. That's not something you can change.
At least if you come out of the debate, you knew they were raising that question. To Kaitlan's point and Abby's point about the interviews and the performances, if you thought you could change it, you have not succeeded because the numbers are getting worse.
COOPER: Scott?
JENNINGS: I -- I continue to think that this is more than just a political problem. I mean, if Democrats are saying that he's not fit to serve in January and we're seeing the rapid deterioration of the president before our very eyes right now, I still think we need to have a conversation about who's running the country today and is he fit to serve for the next few months. I'm just not satisfied that this is only a political campaign problem. To me, the country still has to operate and he's still supposedly the president.
URBAN: I would just say quickly, you know, the split screen of Joe Biden walking off that airplane and the imagery from this evening should have Democrats very concerned.
COOPER: Yeah. Stay with CNN as the republican convention heads into its fourth and final night. Laura Coates is at the CNN grill to break it all down. She's coming up next.
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