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Laura Coates Live

Sarah Huckabee Sanders Makes Personal Appeal For Trump

On the second day of the Republican National Convention, big names in the Republican Party deliver remarks, working to convince American voters to support Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race. Our panel of experts break down the events of the day and fact-check key moments.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Duration:
39m
Broadcast on:
17 Jul 2024
Audio Format:
mp3

On the second day of the Republican National Convention, big names in the Republican Party deliver remarks, working to convince American voters to support Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential race. Our panel of experts break down the events of the day and fact-check key moments. 

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

All right, Laura Trump, wife of Trump's son Eric Trump. She is the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, former TV producer for Inside Edition and former Fox News contributor John King. We've heard from a lot of individuals tonight, Laura Trump, Senator Marco Rubio, obviously heard from Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis as well. What are your thoughts? Well at number one, as you mentioned them, Cruz and Rubio opponents in 2016. The Santas and Haley opponents in this past campaign. Trump has a history of isolating, punishing, shoving his opponents out, blocking them out, and yet he sat there tonight and listened to all their speeches. Why? Look around this hall. He does not have to fear them anymore. He doesn't have to worry about them anymore. There is no one in the Republican Party that has a threat to his leadership. So he sits there and listens to them, say, vote for Donald Trump. We've talked about this before. If you have any doubts, anybody out there thinks the takeover is somehow incomplete. You're wrong. This is Donald Trump's party, fascinating for them, in the sense that they still have national political aspirations, and Trump has picked JD Vance, about to be 40 years old. It doesn't mean he's the automatic heir, it doesn't mean the voters will agree with that. But if Donald Trump keeps the hold over the party that he has in this room, number one, right now he's on a path to winning. The other point I would make about that is that the president's party always goes last. The president of the United States also decided to have an early debate. The calendar of this campaign may become Joe Biden's enemy. Also, the debate put him in such a horrible position, and now he has to wait a month for his convention, and all of the numbers say he is in deep trouble. The other thing when you watch Laura Trump, Jake, as you mentioned, she is not just a daughter-in-law, she is now the co-chair of the Republican National Committee, is to think back to 2016 when we were at the convention, then the RNC was one of the biggest things standing in Trump's way, in his view. That is how he felt in the 2016 campaign, that they were against him, that they abandoned him after the Access Hollywood tape came out, and so to see her getting a 21-minute speaking slot, when Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who wants to be the majority leader, should they retake the majorities in that race, he got four minutes earlier. It speaks to the weight that they give her, and the emphasis and the standing that she has. The RNC, the night before the election, the chair of the RNC, and the leadership of the RNC went to New York to the networks to explain how Trump's loss was not their fault. He took him in 2016. The 2016. The 2016. That is the difference between the party today and the party in 2016. Completely it odds, as you're saying, Kayla. Can I just say something else about the Laura Trump speech, and connect it to another speech that really held this room in a way that we haven't seen a lot of, and that is Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and the connection is that they are both women who know the former president well, and are trying to do something that certainly the JD Vance pick didn't do. The Marco Rubio speech, the Ted Cruz speech, and the above, which is to try to humanize him, to try to dispel all of the things that we have seen on his social media, and other very well-reported incidents that he has had in talking about women. Let me just interrupt for one second. We have a clip from Sarah Huckabee Sanders. I'd love to get your response. Okay, great. Here's a little clip from Governor Sanders of Arkansas, President Trump. Pulled me aside, looked me in the eye, and said Sarah, you're smart, you're beautiful, you're tough, and they attack you because you're good at your job. Never let them stop fighting. That was a story she told about President Trump bucking her up after, apparently, she had been criticized by some MSNBC makers. Because of her appearance, and the juxtaposition of that story with the Donald Trump that we saw when he first came on the political scene, his fights with Rosie O'Donnell, his fights with other women, which put him in not very good stead with a lot of female voters. He still struggles with those voters, and those voters are going to, once again, determine. Just to give a little back story, I don't want to get too much into the Donald Trump versus MSNBC, that I think he had insulted Mika based on Mika Brzezinski, based on her physical appearance. Exactly. That's my point. They're trying to inoculate that and tell a different version of the story. I'm totally agreeing with you. We can't forget all of the comments that we heard from him about women, and what was so clearly intentional with that Sarah Huckabee Sanders story saying he pulled her aside privately and said, "Don't let them upset you." That was a very clear, intentional way to try to show another side of him. I don't know that the suburban women are even men who find the previous behavior repugnant are going to buy that, but it certainly was an attempt to try. Look, this is a convention, this is what they're supposed to do, is to paint the best picture of the candidate. But with Donald Trump, it's not, frankly, he's a public figure, he's a political figure. It's really not about what he's like when nobody's looking. It's also about what he's like when everyone is looking, and that has been his problem consistently on the political stage. I thought that the juxtaposition of this picture of Trump as this sort of soft, loving person, parent, grandparent, was so interesting on the very same night that they're also painting an extremely dark picture of the country on crime, on immigration, on all of these other issues, and those two things going hand-in-hand, maybe it was intended to soften the effect of some of the harsher stories on crime, but I'm not sure what to make of it, and I also think that the American people, I think it was Sarah Huckabee Sanders who said this herself, they have lived through Donald Trump. They remember those years. They remember his candidacy in 2016 and 2020, and I think it's going to be hard for them to just tell people that he is, you know, a kind, gentle man in private when they have seen him in public doing quite the opposite. Jake, one of the other things that struck me about this evening is that there was a lot of talk in the aftermath of the shooting on Saturday that there was going to be unity, and there was going to be an effort to take down the temperature, and it really lasted until tonight, and there were, over and over again, there were efforts. First to Santa said, "Donald Trump has been demonized, he's been sued, he's been prosecuted, and he nearly lost his life." He didn't make a direct connection there, but later on, former HUD Secretary Ben Carson did. He said, "First, they tried to ruin his reputation, then they tried to bankrupt him, then they tried to put him in prison, and then last weekend they tried to kill him." I don't know who there is, but there was the sense of victimization, the sense of us against them. There was a lot of media bashing tonight. This was very much a different tone than what we were hearing about in the immediate aftermath of the shooting on Saturday. Well, I'll take this from a clinical standpoint, having been involved in trying to put these things together. This was a well orchestrated night. They did a lot of business tonight. They spent part of the night trying to scare the hell out of people in some very disingenuous ways at times, and I'm still getting my arms around back the blue thing, and I'm wondering what the families of the officers who were killed on January 6 were thinking when they watched that. But setting that aside, the speakers at the end, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, certainly, Larry Trump, but even Marco Rubio, they were sanding down the sharp edges on Donald Trump who was seen by a lot of people as crass and cruel and vengeful, and this was designed to take that down some, and the fact that he comes under these circumstances and is clearly subdued and somber because of what happened has created an environment in which I thought it was pretty effective tonight. Well, I just want to say, to your point, on the back of the blue piece, Madeleine Brain, who was the speaker who talked about backing the blue, whose son of the combat was the military veteran, the army veteran, who stabbed, I think she was the highlight of the night. I mean, her speech was incredibly compelling, incredibly powerful. You can hear a pin drop in here, I think. And I think that they should have, Abby and I talked about, they should have let, maybe had to play the little music, let that sit in a little bit, because that was such a powerful moment. And it really, I think, affected people here. I don't know how it affected people, it affected me. I think she was a really great messenger or messengers, right? All of those stories were very compelling, with everyday people. The mother who lost her son to fentanyl, I think it's always a good call at these conventions to lean on real people. However, it's incumbent upon us to, for now, that crime is down in this country, that immigrants are not more likely to commit crime in this country. That fentanyl, David pointed this out, fentanyl is not mostly coming over from the border. So the stories are important, but so are the actual facts behind the argument that's being made. And ultimately, the families are entitled to feel how they feel about the tragedies that happen to them, but from a factual perspective, some of those things are not trending in the same direction as they were painted on that same crime. But those are the top issues, immigration, crime, in this campaign. Those are the top issues. Well, they were. They were. They identified by voters. I think they were the top issues. The economy is still one of the biggest issues. And again, crime is down, like 30%. So it's a significant drop, and it's improving in people's lives as matters. As we hear the beautiful song by Cree, I want to throw it back to you. David's favorite band. You have Shazam, right? Anderson. A lot to talk to, a lot to just, Alyssa, what stands out to you? So watching Trump just take this all in kind of reminded me of his old cabinet meetings where he would kick them off and everyone would go around the horn and just praise him for a while. Because I was thinking, like, is he bored watching these speeches? No, he loves seeing people line up, talk about his accomplishments and why they're with him. And to John King's point, he was not threatened by a single person out there because the remaking of the party and to the Trump party has happened. He can have Ruby out there. He can have Haley out there. And that was, that was shown tonight. But these are also nights, conventions are a time for stars to rise and potentially stars to fall. And I think in some ways, the Rubio's, the Rick Scott's, they didn't, they kind of just, they fell a little flat tonight and those are from the before times, before Trump. You see someone like a Sarah Sanders, that was what a Trump, you know, a 2028, somebody with a national profile, that's the kind of speech you're going to see. So a little bit of kind of the separation of the old guard and the new guard and so on. Is time now going to be divided between BT and AT? Yes. That's how we'll measure it. From Michael. I think you can break this doubt into three different themes. We heard a lot about continuity. People who are tired of broken promises. You heard the one mother whose son was an army veteran, lost his life to an illegal immigrant. We heard a lot about stability. If you want economic stability for the working class, for lower end workers, low wage workers, you heard a lot about opportunity. If you want a future that's better than the past, and you can trust that with Joe Biden. You have an economy that frankly is hard for most people. The idea of a middle class is almost something of a healthy end days to be quite frank. You think about an open border where the doors are saying come on into America and Americans are asking themselves, Anderson, what about me? The Republican party is answering that question, "We have the solutions for you." I mean, look, conventions are about storytelling, and I think there were a lot of really effective moments for the Republicans tonight. I think a lot of the personal stories that we heard from some of those speakers, no doubt. They were powerful. There actually wasn't a whole lot of, there weren't a lot of solutions put on the table. There was a lot of criticizing Joe Biden. There was a lot of focus on crime and immigration, and again, kind of painting this picture of America as a dark place where crime is running rampant. I think Abby Phillip was rightly saying crime is actually, in fact, down, and I would expect we're going to hear the Democrats make that case. I mean, again, this is the thing about conventions. They are a moment where you get to put forward your message. Let's look at some facts right now, because we have a lot of prominent Republicans taking the stage tonight, including members of the Republican House leadership. And I want to bring in our fact checker, senior reporter Daniel Dale. Daniel, you listened to all of tonight's speeches. Talk a little bit about what stood out to you. Yeah, Anderson, there was a lot of stuff you can't really try to fact check. There were personal stories, general praise of Trump, broad denunciations of Biden. Subjective accusations that Biden was personally responsible for drug overdose deaths, which I think we should note, rose under President Trump as well. But there was also some significant inaccuracy. We can check. Arizona US Senate candidate Kerry Lake made a wildly false claim that her Democratic opponent, Ruben Gaego, voted to allow illegal immigrants to vote in this election. That's a brazen distortion of a recent House vote on voter registration requirements. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas claimed with no evidence at all that Democrats deliberately let in illegal immigrants to somehow get their votes, non-citizens cannot legally vote, and the data shows almost never do. And I thought it was notable that some of the most significant false or misleading claims tonight came from members of the House Republican leadership. According to what GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik and House Speaker Mike Johnson sent about violent crime. Biden's violent crime crisis fueled by Democrats, pro-criminal, sanctuary cities, and deep on the police policies like we have seen in my home state of New York. We can't survive the dramatic increases in violence, crime, and drugs that the Democrats' policies have brought up on our communities. Well, I'll do it again. This claim that there have been dramatic increases in violence and crime under Biden is false. In fact, both violent crime and property crime have fallen under President Biden, and there have been big declines over the last year and a half. Preliminary figures from the FBI show that violent crime is down roughly 6% in 2023, and then it dropped by a staggering 15% in the first quarter of 2024 that declines in murder in particular were even bigger. And so now, key fact here, murder in particular in violent crime in general are both below where they were in 2020 Trump's last year in office. Now, Congresswoman Stefanik's claim of a violent crime crisis is subjective, I guess, but she certainly did not note that Trump had a violent crime crisis when he had worst numbers. I'm going to cough. Now, I'll caution again, this is preliminary data. A big chunk of local communities haven't submitted their numbers yet, so the precise extent of the decline in violent crime is to be determined, but it's clearly falling and not rising. And I also want to address Anderson, a claim from House Majority Leader Steve Scalise on the Biden administration's record on US energy production. Take a listen. Let's talk energy. They've eroded the American energy dominance that President Trump delivered. We will end the Democrats' assault on American energy once and for all. This claim about a Biden-era Democratic assault on American energy is misleading at very best. While it's true that Biden is pushing for a transition to renewables, the US under Biden is producing more crude oil than any country ever has. It is a fact that the US is setting fossil fuel world records under this administration. The US produced a global record, 12.9 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2023, easily beating the Trump-era high of about 12.3 million barrels. And Scalise also spoke of US energy exports under Biden. Well, US crude exports in 2023 were also the highest on record for anybody. Now, we should be clear here not to suggest these records are being set because of President Biden, who certainly has taken a bunch of steps the fossil fuel industry oil companies don't like. These are market-driven increases. A lot of them caused by improvements in fracking, horizontal drilling technology. But nonetheless, Republicans, including former President Trump, keep pushing this notion that Biden has crushed US oil and gas production. Trump sometimes says Biden has ended it entirely, and all this stuff is not close to true. Anderson. Daniel Dale, thank you so much for more. You can visit cnn.com/factsfirst. Look, we saw a lot of speeches. I'll talk about three. He was terrible. Ron was terrible. He sounded like chat GPT for mean people. I mean, just every mean thing a Republican could say, he said it really fast and it didn't really work very well, Nikki Haley looked like somebody who had to go to her ex-husband's wedding and get a toast. She was miserable saying it, and Trump was miserable hearing it. So all that stuff just did not work at all. But Sarah Huckabee Sanders, she was incredibly compelling to me. She told personal stories that landed, you know, there's a sense of agreement I think that conservatives feel that liberal culture demeans them, attacks them, cancels them. She didn't use rhetoric. She told a personal story, and it was moving, and it was powerful, and I think having a southern storyteller to bring that stuff home worked really, really well for them. So I think she gave the speech of the night, obviously, the mother who lost her son to the stabbing also, very powerful, two very powerful women telling stories, personal stories, that landed. I wanted to say something. I felt very badly about the way that the immigrant community was portrayed. It is not true that immigrants are responsible for crime, not only are they not more likely, they're much less likely to commit crime. People come here because they want to work, and they come here because they want a better life. They're often afraid of getting in trouble, and so if you want to know where the real trouble is coming from, it's coming from US-born men who don't have high school, who have not finished high school. That's the real source of our challenges, and so to blame this group, it's actually less responsible for crime, for all the crime, I think, is unfair and is unwarranted. And lastly, I lost a friend to fentanyl. Fentanyl deaths went up under Obama. They went up under Trump. They're going up under Biden. Because this is a very addictive, horrible substance that's killing Americans in very, very large numbers. I don't blame President Obama or President Trump or President Biden, and I think to take the pain of people, I don't like people pimp in funerals, to take the pain of people and say, "This is all Biden's fault." That's not true. This is a national crisis. We've got to get our arms around it, but to blame immigrants for those deaths, to blame Biden for those deaths, I just think it's in poor form, and I just think it's not fair to a community that's actually doing a lot better when it comes to crime than most of us are. Scott Jones, how do you say the name? I was looking at Trump tonight and thinking like the great Petey Pablo, he was taking in requests on the request line, and he got everything he wanted tonight. Sarah Sanders, I agree with you. Brilliant. I mean, Lord have mercy. That would have made a bishop kick out a stained glass window what she did tonight. Delivery, message handling, hailing into Santas hit their marks, did exactly, delivered the product they needed to deliver, disagree with you on to Santas, but you're not the audience for that. But that convention hall was, and Republicans were, Rubio good as always, delivers an inspirational sort of look at what the American story can be for different kinds of people. Baby dog from West Virginia managed to come to the convention on a night that Christie know him was not there and avoided any kind of unfortunate interactions, but she stole the hearts of the whole convention tonight. Puppy dog. The everyday Americans did a good job. Look, the bottom line tonight is the RNC delivered hit after hit, and the entire thing was aimed at unity, unity, and the party is unified, and it's functioning, and it's against the backdrop of an opposing party that is stuck with an unpopular incumbent who cannot find his way out of a wet paper sack right now. Two nights at this convention are done. Both of them have been a success, and now we're going to hear from the candidates for the next two days. >> The unity message, though, I think a lot of people thought going into this was a unity of the country. >> Right. >> You're talking about unity of the Republican party, which is- >> The Republican Party convention. >> Right. >> No, no, unity for Trump, unity in service of Trump, unity in surrender to Trump. Unity in servile obedience to Trump, but not unity for the people in the country who felt insulted and left out by a lot of the stuff. Listen, if this is the unity you're talking about, it's the unity that scares me. >> Actually, can I just say quickly that I mean the test I think you were laying out earlier in our conversation was, you know, Trump can put this race away if he reaches out to the country and he displays unity, and you had, I mean the DeSantis speech couldn't have been farther from an attempt to do that. I mean, that was like red meat, the most divisive kind of language. >> This is a what? >> So I don't buy your own standards. >> I'm sorry. >> I don't buy your own standards. >> Last night you were saying that we got to start calling Trump Hitler again, because J.D. Vance on the ticket. Now it's Rhonda Sanders. >> I said no such thing. >> It's like, look, look, absolutely did not. >> Look, it's a political convention, and somebody's going to make a political speech. The thing that will matter is what Trump says Thursday, I'm hopeful. I hope I'm right. Maybe I won't be, but I hope I'm right. And so far, the political party is delivering a political convention. >> And let's be clear, no one at this table has said anything as offensive about Donald Trump as J.D. Vance has. But I do want to note one thing, Donald Trump was not threatened by everyone tonight. There were strong performances, there were some that were less strong. In about a month, we're going to see a Democratic convention where you're going to see young rising talent left, right, and center of the Democratic Party. And then you're going to see a president who's less popular than most of those people who is able to perform less well. Not to me as a big juxtaposition because people are watching, but they're watching for the big ticket item, which is the Donald Trump show. That's where the Republican Party is. I think that's going to be a challenge for Democrats. >> But, Anna said, I want to bring it back to the voters. The voters are yearning for recognition for their daily plight. When you say that there isn't a crime issue in this country- >> I didn't say that. >> No, no, not you. You mentioned crime is going down, but Washington, D.C., we're here in New York City, go talk to people who live in impoverished areas, or poor white areas, and ask them about crime. Talk to those people about the economic instability that we have under the Joe Biden- Kamala Harris administration. Talk to those people about immigration, and it's not about demonizing immigrants, Van. I agree with you that immigrants come to the country assuming for a good life, but people want an order to process, people want to make sure that their plight is addressed first before the plight of other people. >> We didn't talk about it all the process, we didn't talk about it all the process. We called people a rapist murderers, and we said that they were bringing drugs here and killing people. >> That's not a rape. [CROSSTALK] >> We got to take a break, still had more of our lives covered from Milwaukee, have Democrats are dealing with their own disarray, Republicans unite, what it all means for the Biden Trump rematch. >> They say opposites attract. That's why the sleep number smartbed is the best bed for couples. You can each choose what's right for you whenever you like. 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Let's begin seeing as Jeff Zeleny who has more on the Democrats in, as is said, Democrats in disarray. Jeff, what are you picking up? Jake, we heard throughout the evening the Democratic disarray and disunity really was the subject of punchline from Republican speaker after speaker. It's anything but amusing to Democratic officials who are still dealing with this anger and alarm and panic that is coursing through the Democratic Party. Yes, the attention this week is focused on Republicans, but inside the Democratic Party there are party leaders who are even more worried by the day as time is running out, who believe that President Biden is a drag on the Democratic ticket. So talking to a variety of Democratic officials here in Wisconsin and other battleground states as well as nationally, they are concerned that, A, these punchlines about the president's age, his fitness for office, his command of the office will become a fate of complete in the general election campaign. And it's sort of ironic here, Jake, that, well, one year ago, right here in this very hall, Republicans had their first debate. So it was thought at the time that the Republican primary would be messy and divisive. And Democrats thought they sort of dodged a bullet, if you will, by not having a primary on the Democratic side. Now it looks considerably different. There is disunity in the Democratic Party and division. So even as President Biden is vowing to stay in the race, senators and House members we are speaking with are still very concerned about this. So look for all that to continue. And one other Democrat was watching Nikki Haley very carefully as well for a time they thought that her voters may be open to them. That is unclear. I talked to one Haley voter tonight who lives in the suburbs of Milwaukee. She told me I'm voting for President Trump, not her first choice, but she said the choice she'll make in November. Jake. All right, Jeff Zeleny. Thanks so much. And let's talk about what Democrats are doing behind closed doors, because I was able to get my hands on some polling from the firm Blue Labs. This is a polling funded by some Democratic donors. And this kind of project is going on all over the country right now. It looks as a survey of 15,000 voters in several battleground states. And it shows, first of all, there's an early July polling that has already been reported on showing that President Biden is losing ground to Donald Trump in 14 key states across the country. This includes not only the five that Biden flipped against Trump in 2020. That's Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. But in addition, post debate, it's like Waterloo. He's vulnerable in Colorado. He's vulnerable in Minnesota. He's vulnerable in Maine. He's vulnerable in New Mexico and Virginia and New Hampshire. Now, what this poll did was look at alternatives. First of all, it found that nearly every tested Democrat that this polling firm looked at performs better than the president. This includes Vice President Harris. But the top four in these seven battleground states, Senator Markely of Arizona, Westmore of Maryland, Joshua Piero of Pennsylvania, Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. And they have a whole complex way of looking at it and whether or not these people can take votes from Trump that Trump is currently winning and bring them back. And those are the top four. And again, this is just one poll, but this is really indicative of where the Democratic Party is with the exception of maybe two or three of President Biden's aides. But I assume his immediate family, the Democratic Party is really looking for an alternative. And so polls like that, other internal polls I've looked at, all the public polling is being forwarded to the White House every day. Forwarded to the president's top advisor saying, please read this because it shows how deep trouble you've taken. Right to the shredder. So let's just look at some of it. Let's just look at some public polling now to again, to reinforce what Jake was just talking about. This is where we were just after the debate. This is the CNN projection. But because of all that polling, Donald Trump at 272, the light red is lean Republican. The dark red is solid Republican. The gold are toss-ups. Right now, we know, though, that Donald Trump is actually leading here as well. And he's leading here as well. Maybe not by a lot Democrats watching might be complaining and that he's leading here as well. And he's going to get the congressional district. If the vote was today, he would get all of Nebraska's electoral votes to two. So there's 302. As Jake just noted, you come over here. There are people who think New Hampshire right now is in play. There are people who think Virginia right now is in play. Arizona is blue here. That's my mistake. He's trial Trump is leading there as well. So there's 330. Right? Jake also mentioned Colorado. The governor of New Mexico has warned the White House. The governor of Minnesota has warned the White House. Why? Why? Let's look at just some. This is new public polling battleground, seven battleground states released just today. Forgive me for turning my back. I want to turn this out. Look at the incumbent president's vote chair. Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada. 42 is the highest the incumbent president gets in vote chair in these battleground states. A path to big loss, even if Donald Trump can't get to 50 because of the third party candidates. Look how closely it correlates to the president's approval rating. This is the president's approval rating, 36%, 37% in Arizona, 42% in Georgia, 40% of the vote. You get it. You follow it through. If he cannot get his approval rating to go that way, he can't move that. And that number has been stuck or getting worse since the debate. That's one way to look at it. The other question is voters are asking is Biden up to the job? Again, forgive me for turning my back. I just want to stretch this out. Is he too old to be president in these seven battleground states? 72% in Arizona say yes, 67% in Georgia, 70% in Wisconsin, 70% in Michigan, same in Pennsylvania. Close to that 68 in North Carolina, 70 again. That's a lot of Democrats and a lot of independents. That's not just Republicans. You get into the 60s and 70s. You're talking about a lot of the president's own party saying they don't think he is up to the job. How do you change that? And then there's this. What's the number one issue in the country right now? One more time. Sorry again. I just want to stretch this out so you can see it. The percentage of registered voters rating the economy as fair or poor, he's the incumbent. He wants four more years, 73% in Arizona. Close to 70 in Georgia, 74% in Michigan, 74% in North Carolina, near 70, just below 70% in Nevada and 73 and 72 respectively in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. He's the incumbent president saying stay the course, Jake. That's what people in these battleground states think about the economy. That's a tough sell. That is an incredibly hard sell. And these numbers, many Democrats say this poll was taken over a long period of time. Most Democrats are traded. They're actually worse now. They're worse now. They expect Donald Trump to get a bounce because of what happened in this hall tonight and what will happen for the next two nights in this hall and the Democratic convention is a month away. You want to know why Democrats are? Use the term disarray, panic, worried, nervous. Look at that. Yeah, and you said, how do you turn that around and I know you meant that as a rhetorical question because the answer is it really hasn't ever been done. It has never been done. David knows this, both David's know this. There's been no incumbent president in our lifetime. Again, Democrats will argue, well, wait, the national polls are a point or two. Some of these state polls are only three or four points. It's underneath the polls. It's the approval rating. It's easy up to the job. Is he too old? What people think about the direction of the country and the state of the economy? You need some magic potion to change people's minds on six or eight fundamental questions. The question is whether the president can accept this verdict, but he says it's early. People will focus in September. It's not early. People are going to start voting in September. And what's very clear is that these concerns have been hardened, that they've been there for a long time. They were hardened by the debate. He's in a situation that is, in my mind, irreversible. And I believe him when he says the stakes are huge of this election, if he believes it, he needs to take into consideration what the stakes are and make the best decision, not just for himself, but for the country. And Abby, one of the things that the Democrats are trying to do right now, the Democratic National Committee, you said the voting is takes place in September. That's voter voters. But the delegates, they're trying to get the delegates to start voting next week in days. They want the train to leave before the convention. They want to lock this in because they know that Democrats are really trying to push him out. And party officials privately are pushing back on that hard. And the reasoning that they've used is this Ohio ballot situation that Ohio officials say has been resolved. It's a lot. Right? But the DNC is saying that their lawyers are telling them that that's not the case. But here's the other thing that I've been paying attention to privately. There's been a lot of great reporting about what Speaker-American Nancy Pelosi is doing. And she's hearing from frontline members. She's hearing from all kinds of House members. She's concerned about control of the House and concerned that control of the House is going right out the window as well. And it's been interesting to see so much reporting about the concern, it seems, almost shifting away from Biden toward the down ballot issues. I'm not even sure that people who want Biden to step aside believe that it is still possible to completely turn this around. But they do believe that it might be necessary to prevent it from the House and the Senate. The House and the Senate are going to shift from Biden to those congressional races. And the candidates are going to start arguing, "We need to be there to be a bulwark against Donald Trump." Look at why he's suggesting all these changes to the Supreme Court that he's expected to come out and call for, which we know he's been having these discussions behind the scenes. When Joe Biden was running in 2020, he was facing a lot of pressure from more liberal members of his party who ran against him to make changes to the Supreme Court. He resisted that commission to study when he was in office. I remember when it came out, it was 300 pages. It was December of 2021. He never acted on that study. And now he's preparing to come out and call for maybe a constitutional amendment or changes to the Supreme Court. It's because look who stood by him in these days when other more moderates are calling on him to get out. It's the progressives. Can I connect what John was showing us with these new polls and specifically the key states to what we saw here tonight and that was the first really big speech by Nikki Haley, Wisconsin. We're in Wisconsin right now. And if you look back at the Wisconsin primary, which she was still on the ballot for April 7th, April 2nd, even though she had already dropped out, she got more than 76,000 votes in that primary. And what she did here tonight was she said, go ahead, please go and vote for Donald Trump. It was like more than 20,000 votes. That made the difference in both the general election in 2016 and 2020. All right. Stay with CNN as the Republican convention heads into its third night. Lara Coates picks up our coverage after this break. They say opposites attract. That's why the sleep number smartbed is the best bed for couples. You can each choose what's right for you whenever you like. You like a bed that feels firm, but they want soft sleep number does that. You want to sleep cooler while they like to feel warm sleep number does that too. You have to feel it to believe it. Find the bed that's for both of you only at a sleep number store sleep better together. 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