Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Republican National Convention Day 2; Former Rivals Speak at RNC, Make Case for Electing Trump; California Bans Schools from Outing Transgender Kids to Parents; Republicans Fight for Control of U.S. Senate; Paris Mayor to Swim in Seine to Dispel Pollution Fears. Aired 4-4:30a ET
Aired July 17, 2024 - 04:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:00:00]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NIKKI HALEY (R), FORMER SOUTH CAROLINA GOVERNOR: Donald Trump has my strong endorsement period.
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He stood up and raised his fist and reminded us that our people and our country are always worth fighting for.
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: God spared President Trump from that assassin because God is not finished with him yet.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: America cannot afford four more years of a weekend at Bernie's presidency.
(APPLAUSE)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We're going to flip the United States Senate.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANNOUNCER: Live from Atlanta, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Rosemary Church.
ROSEMARY CHURCH, CNN ANCHOR: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from all around the world and to everyone streaming us on CNN Max. I'm Rosemary Church.
It's Wednesday, July 17th, 4 a.m. here in Atlanta, 3 a.m. in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where the third day of the Republican National Convention begins in the hours ahead with the theme, Make America Strong Once Again. It follows a show of party unity on day two when a number of Donald Trump's former rivals took to the stage to make the case for electing the former president. Among them, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, the last challenger standing between Trump and the nomination until early March. And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
GOV. RON DESANTIS (R-FL): Donald Trump has been demonized, he's been sued, he's been prosecuted and he nearly lost his life. We cannot let him down and we cannot let America down.
HALEY: Putin didn't attack Ukraine because he knew Donald Trump was tough. A strong president doesn't start wars, a strong president prevents wars.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): Today, as a result of Joe Biden's presidency, your family is less safe. Your children are less safe. The country is less safe.
But here's the good news. We can fix it. And when Donald Trump is president, we will fix it.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY, FORMER U.S. REPUBLICAN PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: If you want to reignite the economy in this country, vote Trump. If you want to revive national pride in this country, vote Trump. If you want to make America great again, vote Trump.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Trump and his VP pick, Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio, were side by side for the second straight night at the convention where they listened to speeches not just on unifying the party, but also crime and illegal immigration. CNN's Julia Benbrook has more on day two of the RNC from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JULIA BENBROOK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: The second day of the Republican National Convention here in Milwaukee was full of energy and full of big name speakers.
BENBROOK (voice-over): On the second night of the Republican National Convention, former President Donald Trump arrived just in time to watch his prior primary opponents prove their loyalty. Former South Carolina Governor and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley was a late addition to the program.
HALEY: Take it from me, I haven't always agreed with President Trump.
BENBROOK (voice-over): When she suspended her campaign, she did not immediately pledge her support to Trump. But she's now urging voters who are still uncertain to get on board.
HALEY: I'll start by making one thing perfectly clear. Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period.
(APPLAUSE)
BENBROOK (voice-over): Another 2024 primary challenger, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, is also calling for party unity.
DESANTIS: Let's send Joe Biden back to his basement and let's send Donald Trump back to the White House.
BENBROOK (voice-over): Sitting next to Trump in the crowd, his running mate, Ohio Senator J.D. Vance. Just a day after learning he was not selected to be Trump's running mate, Senator Marco Rubio praised the ticket.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): President Trump has not just transformed our party. He has inspired a movement.
BENBROOK (voice-over): Vance will speak at the convention on Wednesday.
[04:05:00]
BENBROOK: Vance's speech is expected to focus on his personal story, his journey from an unstable childhood to Yale Law School to the Senate.
Reporting in Milwaukee, I'm Julia Benbrook.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: J.D. Vance says he has finally spoken with Vice President Kamala Harris after missing her call on Monday. Harris called to congratulate Vance on his nomination. He actually ignored the Vice President's first call when it came up as an unknown number.
Here's what he told Newsmax about their conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), U.S. REPUBLICAN VICE PRESIDENT NOMINEE: President Trump offers me this job, OK, and my phone starts blowing up and I get a call from actually an unknown number and it was apparently Vice President Kamala Harris. We talked today actually. She was very gracious, very cordial.
And you know, I appreciated the call. Obviously we're going to do everything that we can to persuade the American people to vote for the President Trump-Vice President Vance ticket.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie is urging Donald Trump to help rein in the violent rhetoric in U.S. politics. The one- time Trump ally, now a vocal critic of the former president, wrote an op-ed in the New York Times in the wake of Saturday's assassination attempt. He was critical of Trump's vice presidential pick, Senator J.D. Vance, after the shooting.
Christie says Vance, quote: Turned directly to the current flawed playbook, demonized the other side and lay the blame at the feet of the Democrats as if they had pulled the trigger themselves. President Joe Biden talked about the growing calls for him to step
aside from the 2024 race in an interview with BET News. He said he's reluctant to walk away because there's more to do for the country and only a medical condition diagnosis might convince him to drop out.
Now this comes as a growing faction of House Democrats are calling on the Democratic National Committee to ditch plans to virtually nominate Mr. Biden before the party convention in Chicago next month. A clear sign some are still concerned about the president staying at the top of the ticket.
At the NAACP convention, the president spoke about the need to address political violence following the assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our politics has gotten too heated. I've said the Oval Office on Sunday night, as I've made clear throughout my presidency, we all have a responsibility to lower the temperature and condemn violence in any form.
Just because we must lower the temperature in our politics is related to violence, it doesn't mean we should stop telling the truth.
Who you are, what you've done, what you'll do, that's fair game.
Well, here's the truth about why Donald Trump's presidency was held for Black America. He tried to repeal Obamacare to kick millions, I mean millions of Black Americans off their health insurance.
He had a $2 trillion tax cut that overwhelmingly benefited the super wealthy, the biggest corporation, and exploded the federal debt larger than any one president has in one term. He left no room for us to do what we should be doing, invest in things that affect people's lives, like child care, elder care, and so much more, that grow the economy to help people.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: Larry Sabato is the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. He joins me now from Charlottesville in Virginia. A pleasure to have you with us.
LARRY SABATO, DIRECTOR, CENTER FOR POLITICS, UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA: Thank you so much, Rosemary.
CHURCH: So night two of the RNC focused on immigration and crime. We heard from previous fierce critics of Donald Trump, including rival Nikki Haley, who offered her strong endorsement for Trump.
She called for unity and an expansion of the Republican Party. Did she make the case for her supporters to get behind the former president, despite previously calling him unhinged? SABATO: I couldn't imagine that that speech made much difference at all. Look, she already said she was voting for Donald Trump. That happened months ago. And as a result, I think the Republican-leaning members of her coalition went to Trump. But she drew a fair number of Democrats and independents, particularly in states that didn't have contests on the Democratic side. They're not going to go to Trump because she asked them to. They were just voting for her to signal their displeasure with Trump.
So, you know, we exaggerate the importance of these things. Now, at least she did it.
Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida, another Trump opponent, did it. I'll tell you, somebody who didn't do it was Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey. He appeared on one network to denounce Donald Trump, and he threw in a denouncement of Nikki Haley, too. So that one was interesting.
[04:10:00]
CHURCH: And, of course, another former critic and rival of Trump, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, also got up and spoke. He rallied support for Trump on immigration and, of course, criticized President Joe Biden.
Some analysts suggest Trump seemed happier with DeSantis' speech rather than Haley's. Was that your reading of this?
SABATO: Well, if you can read Trump's face, and usually you can, I'd agree with that interpretation. I don't think he was particularly thrilled with any of his former opponents endorsing him. After all, DeSantis has influence mainly in Florida. And if there's one state that Trump is guaranteed to carry already, it's Florida.
So, you know, this is something that parties have to do at conventions so they can come out of it saying, we are so united, we love one another. It isn't true, but it will do until November.
CHURCH: And what was your overall assessment of this second night of the RNC and, of course, Trump's continuing effort to unite a fractured party? And what are you looking for in day -- night three, I should say?
SABATO: As far as today goes, it was what I expected, which is a lot of different people from different backgrounds, including those who have suffered terrible losses in their family because of deaths from drugs or murders from illegal immigrants and so on. That probably has some emotional effect on some Republicans who are watching.
The past patterns of audiences are revealing. Conventions normally draw wide audiences, including people from the other party and independents, for the announcement of a vice president and for the closing speech by the presidential nominee. The rest of it is for the party base. And today was for the party base, and tomorrow mainly will be, too. They'll cover a wide variety of subjects, and the base will be very excited and very impressed, and they were going to vote for Trump anyway.
CHURCH: Meantime, of course, the Democrats are struggling with a path to victory, with President Joe Biden digging his heels in while efforts continue behind closed doors to ease him out. And on top of that, the party is now dealing with the corruption conviction of Senator Bob Menendez. What do the Democrats need to be doing right now to correct course?
SABATO: They, what assumes, they should be organizing the expulsion of Senator Menendez. That would be the logical thing to do, and some of them have come out in favor of that. Now, it needs a two-thirds vote in the Senate, so the Republicans and the Democrats have to cooperate on this one thing.
We'll see whether they can do it. It's not easy to expel a senator, even one as guilty as Menendez, but it's so much broader than that. Democrats, having been the incumbents in the Senate and the incumbents in the White House, they're not in the House, House of Representatives, they have a lot of the establishment in the current conditions to defend. And that's never as easy as attacking from the outside because the opponents can always present the world as controlled by them after the election as nirvana.
Nirvana is never achieved, but they paint a good picture before the election results are in.
CHURCH: Larry Sabato, always great to have you with us. Appreciate it.
SABATO: Thank you so much, Rosemary.
CHURCH: Donald Trump is giving hints about his economic team if he's re-elected in November. The former president tells Bloomberg he would let Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell serve out his term. Trump says the central bank should not cut interest rates before the election, and he wants to reduce the corporate tax rate to 15 percent.
Trump also says he would consider JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon as his Treasury Secretary. That's a notable departure from last year when he called Dimon a highly overrated globalist.
Well investors on Wall Street are betting on a rate cut from the Fed in September, and that's driving financial markets higher. The Dow gained more than 700 points on Tuesday to finish at a new record high. The Nasdaq was up slightly, and the S&P 500 gained 36 points on the day for another record. The Commerce Department reports retail sales were stronger than expected in June, and positive corporate earnings reports also helped boost the markets.
Well California is the first state to bar schools from outing transgender students. Governor Gavin Newsom signed the new law on Monday. It bans school districts from passing policies that require schools to notify parents if their child asks to change their gender identification.
[04:15:02]
It means school staff cannot be required to disclose a student's gender identity or sexual orientation to anyone without the child's permission. The law comes amid a broader debate over schools and the rights of parents and LGBTQ students.
Supporters of the legislation say it will help protect those students. Opponents say it will hinder the ability of schools to be straightforward with parents.
Well for Elon Musk, that new law in California was, in his words, the last straw. On Tuesday, the head of X and SpaceX announced he's moving those companies from California to Texas. SpaceX will relocate to a company town being built in southern Texas, and X will move from San Francisco to Austin.
Governor Newsom responded to Musk's announcement with a post on X that read, you benched for me. Along with a screenshot of a post from former President Trump criticizing the billionaire.
Well meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reports that Musk has pledged to donate $45 million a month to Trump's campaign. Musk tweeted his endorsement of Trump shortly after Saturday's assassination attempt.
Well the battle to control the U.S. Senate is also featuring prominently at this year's Republican convention. Senate candidates took to the stage in Milwaukee on Tuesday night to stump in front of a primetime national audience. Republicans need either one or two seats to flip the chamber. Earlier, CNN's John King broke down how Republicans are thinking about the fight for control of the Senate.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF U.S. NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Republicans believe this is a great map for them anyway. They've believed this for months, and they think with Trump's strength in the election right now, the Senate map is improving for them even more. So 51-49 for the Democrats.
Now, come forward to this map here. You see Manchin State, West Virginia. We've already turned it red. He's not running for reelection. That's a big state for Donald Trump. That seat is almost guaranteed to go Republican and to go red.
So then you see, why are Ohio and Montana, why are they yellow? Well, these are big Trump states. Ohio, Sherrod Brown, a Democratic incumbent, great personal brand back home.
But Donald Trump's going to win that state, or at least he has in the past, by six or eight points. He just picked Republican Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. So Democrats think they're in more trouble. You see Sherrod Brown raising money all the time. So what if that happened? What if this went over to red?
We'll try to click it over. There you go. That would give right there.
John Tester, again, a Democrat with a great personal brand back home. Donald Trump won by 16 points last time in Montana. If Joe Biden's numbers are down even more, can John Tester hang on?
So this is what Democrats have been thinking about for months, that these would be the two suffices. But as you see these speakers come to the stage tonight, here's what they're worried about now. Let's just come back and make those toss-ups.
They're also worried about Pennsylvania. They're worried about Michigan. They're worried about here in Wisconsin.
You just heard Carrie Lake. She's losing in the polls right now, but they're worried about Arizona. They are worried about Nevada as well.
You can make a scenario here, a reasonable scenario. The Republicans not only get 50 in the majority, but they get 51, 52, 53. Now Democrats watching are saying, you know, you're being overly pessimistic.
Most of the Democratic candidates, I want to make this clear, most of the Democratic candidates right now are leading in these races, narrowly in most of them, but they're leading in these races. The Democratic Senate candidates are outperforming Joe Biden in these states. But ticket splitting in presidential elections, one party for president, the other party for Senate, has become almost nonexistent.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: John King reporting there.
One Republican running for Senate is West Virginia Governor Jim Justice. And when he took to the stage at the RNC to voice his support for President Trump, the crowd was happy. But most of their enthusiasm was reserved for his sidekick, a 60-pound English bulldog named Baby Dog. She sat wagging her tail as her owner sang the praises of Donald Trump and promised a Republican return to power on Capitol Hill.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JIM JUSTICE, (R) WEST VIRGINIA GOVERNOR: Baby Dog says we'll retain the House, the majority in the House.
(APPLAUSE)
We're going to flip the United States Senate.
(APPLAUSE)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: CNN talked with Justice about his history with Baby Dog and what she means for his campaign.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Governor, I just wanted to ask, how critical is this dog to your political success at this point?
JUSTICE: Well, I don't know, to tell you the honest truth. It wasn't meant to be, really and truly. You know, on Christmas Eve four years ago, her son and daughter just handed this 10-week-old bulldog puppy to us, and I thought, oh, my gosh, she's going to grow into a 60-pound brown watermelon, to tell you the truth. And she did and everything.
But with all that being said, then she started to go with me. COVID, lots and lots of sadness, lots of folks dying and everything.
[04:20:02]
And I noticed so many times she made people smile and she made absolute people laugh. And more than anything, and a bulldog's not supposed to this, but she loves everybody. And so I said, that's it. How could the message be any better?
And so she's really good. She's really good. She just loves everybody.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
CHURCH: All right, coming up, hoping to prove the River Seine is ready for swimmers at the Summer Olympics, the Paris mayor gets in the water, and so does our Melissa Bell. There she is. We will go live to Paris next.
Plus, heavy storms dump more than a month's worth of rain in Toronto in a matter of hours.
And protesters in Kenya are calling for a change at the top of their government. Still ahead, why some say they plan to fight on despite violent clashes with police.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
CHURCH: Sports fans are just nine days away from the opening of the Paris Summer Olympics. As host, France is looking to showcase the country's natural and cultural landmarks. The River Seine will play a central role as the scene for the triathlon and marathon swimming events.
The government has spent more than $1.5 billion to clean up the river to suitable levels for swimming. And the mayor of Paris is hoping to allay any fears of pollution by taking a dip in the water.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ANNE HIDALGO, PARIS MAYOR: Very nice. It's very, very cool to be here. It was a dream and now it's real.
And after the games, we will have a swimming pool in the river for all the people, for the Parisian people and for the tourists also. And you can look. It is so beautiful to be here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
CHURCH: Well, let's go live now to Paris and CNN's Melissa Bell, who's also in the water. Melissa, how did they get the river clean?
MELISSA BELL, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Rosemary, it has taken eight years and about $1.5 billion to be able to get here. Actually, I'm clinging on to the side of this boat because the current actually in the Seine is so strong that if I don't, I'll quickly be swept downstream. It's taken huge amounts of money, huge amounts of time.
Even a month ago, it wasn't clear whether this event here today, where the Paris mayor and I and a bunch of other Parisians have been able to jump into the Seine. And until about a month ago, this would have seemed completely impossible.
What's changed, according to specialists who've talked to us about the water quality, is the fact that they've managed to complete one huge infrastructure project upstream that collects a lot of the sewage and the rainwater that used to pollute the Seine so much, bringing E.coli levels dangerously high. This would have been impossible a couple of weeks ago.
[04:25:03]
Still, the point of today's event, Rosemary, is to show people that it's safe, to reassure the world ahead of the Paris games.
Remember that it isn't just the opening ceremony that's going to be held for the first time ever on a river, not in a stadium. It is also for swimming events, things like marathon swimming, the swimming part of the triathlon. We've spoken to a bunch of athletes who are extremely concerned about whether or not it's going to happen.
Today, the conditions are fine, the current's very strong, but the sun is out, the pollution levels are down. Still, it remains in question whether the conditions will be as good when it comes time for the events. What Paris officials say is that they've planned so that they can do the events on different days and give time for the conditions to change.
But for today, I can report, Rosemary, whilst the current is exceptionally strong, it's actually really not as smelly as I thought it would be, and feels not quite clean, but certainly swimmable.
CHURCH: Well, indeed. You are very brave, our Melissa Bell, taking a dip in the River Seine, now apparently clean, wonderful, and proving it so. Appreciate it. Thank you.
So Uber is offering visitors in Paris for the 2024 Summer Games a free riverboat tour of the Seine, the cruises run every 20 minutes and last about an hour. They also include a bottle of French champagne so riders can toast each other in style.
The cruises started running on July 12th and sold out quickly. However, Uber has announced plans to bring the tours back from July 28th to August 3rd during the first full week of Olympic competition.
All right, that is video from rapper Drake as floodwaters inundated his mansion in Toronto Tuesday. Despite all the damage that was likely done, he seemed to be taking it in stride, posting about the murky brown water, quote: This better be espresso martini.
Sadly not. Well, the severe storm and flash flooding that hit Toronto left tens of thousands of people without power. Parts of the city got more than 75 millimeters of rain in just four hours Tuesday, more than Toronto's average rainfall for the entire month of July. Some subway stations were forced to close and residents were warned to stay off the roads.
We'll take a short break.
Still to come, investigators are still trying to find out what motivated the shooter who tried to kill Donald Trump. We will have the latest on the investigation coming up next.
Plus, former rivals come together in Milwaukee, all in support of Donald Trump and his bid to retake the White House. The latest from the Republican National Convention next.
[04:30:00
