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CNN Live Event/Special

Donald Trump Accepts Presidential Nomination; Trump's Speech Examined. Aired Midnight-1a ET

Aired July 22, 2016 - 00:00 ET

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

[00:00:03] VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: -- it's available to him because of Hillary Clinton's position on trade. And the idea that he could go up there and he could make a good showing for himself, I thought -- I said from the very beginning, that's his way of -- that's his pathway to victory and don't count him out. But he said, he's got -- he would have to be able to do that without inflaming the African- American, Latino and other folks who are up there. It's not just working class, white guys up there.

And this speech inflamed. Listen, he just consolidated. I've got Bernie Sanders people who are now saying there, I mean, the last hold out for Bernie Sanders are saying they are now for Hillary Clinton because that speech was so shocking and divisive that he actually get some work that Hillary Clinton couldn't do.

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL REPORTER: Yeah, and I just heard from some black Republicans and that means he's going to need black Republicans who also very disappointed in the speech. You know, George Bush did do well with African-Americans, you know, Richard Nixon did fairly well with the African-American in 1968, I mean, get of a 15 percent, he got 32 percent when he ran in 1960. But this, I think you're going to -- he's going to ...

ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Listen, I'm getting texts from Republican Congress people who are saying to me, I'm embarrassed of my party. He sounded like a fear monger. This is not Republicanism.

JEFFREY LORD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Wow.

NAVARRO: I think a lot of Republicans today are cringing in just pain.

(CROSSTALK)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: I want to that recorder ...

LORD: Yeah, let me-- let me just say in here, these are the folks who, in essence, ignited the Trump movement because they were paying no attention to their own constituents, none, zero. Donald Trump got it. This isn't fear. This is a statement of reality. As I said to Gloria, when you've got six dead cops in the streets at Dallas, Texas, when you got dead policemen, black and white in the streets of Baton Rouge, when you have dead Americans on the streets of France, people are right to say there is something wrong and we are in a crisis. And Donald Trump is saying I hear you and I will fix it. And that's even ... (CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: There is absolutely something wrong and are in a crisis, we're in a divided crisis right now but if you think anything that man said tonight is going to solve that crisis, you will hardly ...

LORD: What is wrong with him?

NAVARRO: Go listen to their speech, go listen to the word of the trauma surgeon in Dallas. The guy who was there when those five dead policemen died, go listen to the words of the Chief of Police of Dallas. That's the kind of thing that will get us pass the crisis. They have to fear mongering, not this divisiveness ...

LORD: What is wrong --

NAVARRO: ... not this disgusting speech that we heard tonight ...

LORD: What is wrong Anna?

NAVARRO: ... that does nothing but bring out this darkness in America. It is terrifying.

LORD: What is wrong with having sympathy for people who are murdered by people who should not be ...

NAVARRO: Who the hell in that having ...

COOPER: Wait a minute now.

(CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: But you know what? Can you show a little sympathy for the people who were murdered by police inexcusably?

COOPER: I guess, Jeff, did you hear any -- I mean, Donald trump sort of identified what he believes is the problem. Was there any solutions? Was he actually offering anything in terms of -- I mean, how is he going ...

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: ... restore, restore law in order when he takes over?

LORD: Anderson, this is a nomination acceptance speech. It's not a congressional state of the union speech. They're not going to be -- there shouldn't be 10,000 detail (ph) centers. It should be the vision. This is where we're going to go and we're going to go in his direction and this is how, you know.

COOPER: But at a certain point, I know, at what point does he actually give details where he says -- I mean, he says he's going to defeat ISIS fast, that he's going to restore law and order that everybody will be treated equally.

LORD: Look, let's use taxes for a minute. I mean, he's already got a tax right now.

COOPER: Well, I mean, (inaudible) the law and order because that's what he say? How, how was he suddenly that they were store law and other.

LORD: Anderson, they will have plenty of people who flush out all of these. That's not what the speech, what about ...

COOPER: But he did give some -- he says, apparent where's he's going to appoint the best prosecutors and get law enforcement people to get the job done. I assume he's saying the current level of prosecutors are not very good or the law enforcement personnel are not up to the challenge?

LORD: What he's saying is we are living in a situation here where the current government doesn't get it. It's the status quo to go back to FDR, who said, you know, the FDR's big thing in 1932 was being the first person to fly to a convention, and accept the nomination because before they all waited at home for it. And he gets there and he says, I came here and broke a tradition because I think it's time that we break silly traditions. And some of what Donald Trump is talking about is breaking some the silly traditions we have here.

__: Look, this is about Donald Trump's doubling down.

LORD: Like inaugurating, how would you do stuff.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Doubling down on -- can I just, Jeffrey. This is Donald Trump doubling down on his strategy. The line that's about and Corey was talking about and John King was talking about it, which is the Rust Belt strategy.

These are the people to disaffected, disenchanted, people who feel left out of any kind of economic advantages. And he have sentence here. "I've join the political arena so there's the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves." OK.

LORD: Yeah.

BORGER: Remember Al Gore, the people versus the powerful and all the rest on side of people? Except a lot of the speech didn't look like that. That's the -- there was a little bit of disconnect for me there.

[00:05:05] LORD: When he's talking about the parents of Sarah Root. I mean, what do you mean it's different with them?

BORGER: Build a wall, all the right, you know, what I'm saying? Some of the rhetoric doesn't match the noble flaw of defending the defenseless, right?

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: OK, what he talked about in that, and he was very clear, we heard from Jamiel Shaw, we heard from Shaveen (ph) and we heard from people whose families were directly impacted by illegal immigration. And what he said was I'm going to stop that from happening because you don't have a voice. Where was the voice of the U.S. government when your family members were getting killed? Where was the voice of a Jamiel Shaw when his son was being shot in the face by an illegal immigrant?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: An African-American.

LEWANDOWSKI: An African-American was shot in the face. And so what he's saying I, I am going to stop that from happening. I'm going to inject myself. I'm going to build a wall we're going to have a legal immigration system. He said legal, he said legal multiple times we're going to reform the process so that we know who is coming in.

And he also points out the difference of the Syrian refugees that Hillary Clinton wants to bring in 550 percent more Syrian refugees and what's currently being in place. It's a significant difference. It's a tale of two cities. Its two complete philosophies of one of first, let's have a immigration system. Let's do it legally and the other is, hey, we'll let the people and we'll figure out later and if they kill a U.S. citizen, we'll solve that problem afterwards then.

JONES: Corey, so listen, I'm trying. I'm really trying. First of all there's two things here. There is what is said and what's not said. If you listen to that speech, you didn't know any better, you would think that every undocumented person in this country was a rapist or a murder or a killer.

LEWANDOWSKI: No.

JONES: Let me finish. You got a chance to talk quite sir, there are 11 million folks here, most of them working hard every day. They get up, they catch a early bus, they do a ton of hard work for this country and if you took them out here, the economy would collapse. There was no acknowledgment of that. That was very, very painful.

And then the other problem that you have is, listen, you saw the reaction of your fellow Republicans to the speech. The other problem, and I think you have to hear this, when you have someone like him get up there and with his law and order message is acting as if all of the violence and all the crime is coming from a particular set of people and there's no even acknowledgment that we want the police to obey the law too. We want the police to obey the law, too.

We want for our kids to do better and for our cops to do better. That would of given some sense that he understands these communities but instead, it seemed to me he was trying to have his cake and eat it too. He's trying to pretend he's for all Americans but he's picking on people.

Well, last month said was this, if he had given the speech you just gave, I would have applause him out of bragging on him tonight. When he talks about the people at the top, the corrupt elites, I'm for that. The problem is, just as Corey was saying, he gives a little bit about the corrupt elites at the top, but he's mainly pointing to those scary dark others at the bottom, those scary Muslims, those scary criminals, those scary terrorist, those scary immigrants and that's why people are very ...

(CROSSTALK) NAVARRO: Hillary Clintons was watching tonight and her team was watching tonight and watching this entire week, I hope that they do draw that contrast of a tale of two cities. I hope what they take out of this is that he really went dark tonight and that she does offer some optimism and some vision for America. There may be people for whom this really resonates but there are a lot of Americans left wanting tonight. I am one of them.

LEWANDOWSKI: Look, look, the law and order candidate is not just about the police versus the non police. It's about Hillary Clinton and Donald trump. And there's two very separate things and we have one candidate who's running for president who was under FBI investigation who many people believe in the polls indicated this, that she was guilty for a crime and she got off on that.

And the reason for that is because there are two sets of rules. One set of rules for the powerful and the elite and one set of rules for everybody else and that's what he talks about when he says law and order. And the law and order for potential here is that Hillary Clinton skirted the law, she got buy on something that she should know and he wouldn't let that happen.

COOPER: I guess one of the things -- I mean, does he at some point before getting into, you know, office need to -- and I don't know the answer to this. I'm curious. Does he need to elaborate? How does he that restore safety? How does he, you know, restore and called that everybody gets treated equally? I mean, those are huge statements to suddenly promise, Ivanka Trump saying everything will be possible. I mean, some of that it's just political hyperbole that ...

LORD: I don't want to put my friend, David on the spot. But he'll remember the quote better than I do. I remember Senator Obama saying that he was going to what -- lower that race, lower the oceans and he was going to do this that you probably remember the phrase better than I. At the oceans gone down because of Barack Obama's presidency?

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think if he were here, he would say thanks for the help, brother, because he's been trying to do stuff on climate change and he's done more than any other president has, but he met a lot of resistance in the Congress. So he would argue that you can't exactly use his quote against him when Republicans have tried to block most of his initiatives.

[00:10:03] COOPER: Let's go back down to Wolf and Jay for some guest.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: All right guys thanks very much, clearly a lot of heated reaction and we have two guests here from the Donald Trump campaign who are getting ready to answer, we have a lot of questions for them. Jake, don't we?

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: Thanks, we do indeed, joining us heated before, the campaign chairman for the Trump for President Campaign, Paul Manafort and Senior Policy Advisor Steven Miller, who with Mr. Trump was the principal author of the speech.

Steven, before we get into the substance and the body of the speech, when you talked to Mr. Trump about what he wanted to accomplish with the speech, what did he say?

STEVEN MILLER, TRUMP SPEECHWRITER: First of all, it's great to be back on with both of you.

TAPPER: Thank you.

MILLER: Mr. Trump felt very strongly that the center of the speech had to be explaining how you can't have prosperity as the country if you don't have rule of law. He felt that had to be the moral philosophical center of the speech. And he spent, I would say, probably a month, at least, very in depth working on, building that out. And as events happened the in real life, obviously that shaped the focus of speech.

TAPPER: Mr. Manafort let me as you, there's a lot of reaction as I'm sure you can imagine. Some positive, some negative. Mary Kate Cary, former speechwriter for George H. W. Bush wrote on Twitter that she thought that the speech was very dark and frightening.

Now a reaction from Ari Fleischer who work for the Bush administration was for anyone out there who thinks it was too dark, keep in mind that 69 percent of the country thinks of the nation is on the wrong track and they will agree with it. Do you agree that it paints a dark picture of the nation?

PAUL MANAFORT, TRUMP CAMPAIGN CHAIRMAN: What Mr. Trump said tonight, he said it in his speech as well, is that he was going to tell the truth. He wasn't going to hide behind politically correct statements of conventional wisdom. He feels as Steven just said that the country is in a bad place. Sixty-seven percent of the American people think it's going in the wrong direction.

He wants to be honest with the American people because he feels that the problem with the gridlock and the things that aren't working in Washington are driven by the fact that they don't tell the truth of what's really going on. So he framed his -- the whole speech around on his vision around the reality of what's happening in to this country. So it wasn't dark, it was reality.

TAPPER: And Steven, do you think that there was a specific group of voters that you and Mr. Trump in writing the speech were trying to reach? For instance, one of your former colleagues, Mr. Lewandowski was talking about how he thought the speech would very appealing to Pennsylvania voters, Ohio voters about the jobs, about the immigration message about coal mines and Steelers. Were you reaching out specifically in terms of the states that your strategy hinges on winning?

MILLER: Well, as you know, he's been talking about trade for about 30 years in these exact same ways. So, I would say that, the speech really if you look at the structure was designed to appeal to all Americans. And he talked whether you're living in Detroit, whether living in Ferguson, whether you live in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and I want to talk about the optimism issue, real quick because it's important.

The speech laid out at the onset, what is wrong with the country in very truthful terms but then it presented solutions to all of those problems. And so in that sense, it's a profound the optimistic speech and you'll notice the key point in the speech, as he says, tune out the voices of the media elite and the financial elite and the political elite who tell you, you can't have the country you want. Don't listen to those people. Everything you've ever hoped is possible, can be possible if you embrace this new direction.

TAPPER: I want to visit your remark that he proposed solutions in a second. But first, I want to say, you think the people in Ferguson, Missouri, would like that speech? Because I think --

MILLER: I think that anybody who has suffered the debilitating impacts of crime and chaos in their lives, the failing schools, the effects of open boarders, the effects of terrible tax trade (inaudible) for policies would embrace that speech. And to his point, what has Barack Obama's policies given the people of Ferguson? What if Hillary Clinton's policies given the people of Ferguson? When we say we're going to be politically correct and we're not going to lie anywhere, the first lie we're going to stop telling is that politicians have done anything for the people in Ferguson.

TAPPER: Do you think that the speech will attract Latinos and African- Americans to Mr. Trump? Because that sounds like what Steven is saying?

MANAFORT: Well, like he spoke directly to Latinos and African- Americans, he talked about the fact that he recognizes what's going on in the inner-cities. He understands the problems that those Latinos who are legally suffering from illegals that are coming over and they effect serving under community, on their jobs and everything else.

So, well, are they listening? Yes, they're listening. Is this is the -- this is the beginning of a conversation though. It's not the end of a conversation. During the course of this campaign, we'll be talking specifically to all elite with communities. This speech didn't leave anybody out. It spoke to everyone and there are pieces of it for everyone and the course on this campaign will be just exploring it.

[00:15:05] BLITZER: So, as someone who has been listening to Donald Trump's speech is now for more than a year, there were differences in what said tonight that what he normally has said over the past year. He said we are going to build a great border wall to stop illegal immigration. Steven, what he didn't say is that Mexico is going to pay for it. Why?

MILLER: Oh I think that's already a pretty well kwown fact.

BLITZER: Why didn't he say Mexico is going to pay for it? Because that's what he says in every speech.

MILLER: Actually, he's doesn't say in every speech. I mean, he probably don't I would say, seven or eight speeches where he hasn't said it. You don't have to say everything at every speech that you give. But there is a level of detail on the speech on immigration.

BLITZER: Is Mexico still going to pay for the wall? MILLER: Hundred percent.

BLITZER: Will he say that again?

MILLER: A hundred percent.

BLITZER: Why didn't he say it today?

MILLER: Because the whole point in his speech like this is to flush out new details on immigration policy. He walked through specifically what he was going to do on immigration and how it was going to work, you know.

BLITZER: I have another question because there are specifics here, he changed, he deviated from what he's been saying for a long time. And let's go through this, he said "We must immediately suspend immigration from any nation that has been compromised by terrorism until such time has proven vetting mechanisms have been put in place."

What he didn't say is there is going to be a temporary ban on Muslims coming to the United States until the U.S. can figure out what the hell is going on. Why has he changed his position?

MANAFORT: He hasn't changed his position. If you go back to the foreign policies -- he gave three months ago in Washington DC, he used the whole, that exact same language. And he's used it over again this is not new language.

BLITZER: Is he going to ban, a temporary ban on Muslims or temporary ban on people coming from countries where there's terrorism?

MANAFORT: He's going to do what he said in this speech and he's been saying for three month which is areas that have a history of terrorist activity, he's going to create a temporary suspend for temporary purposes and the immigration committee until a system is set up. It's very clear and it's -- he's been clear over three months.

BLITZER: So, Steven, no more religious identification of refugees, it's going to be for only from country that promote terrorism?

MILLER: My job is to let the speech on that subject speak for itself. And I think it spoke very well but I really want to underscore again, you talked about appealing to voters in Ferguson. And it's just here an important question.

This speech offers things that those voters haven't heard for the Republican Party. That's what's so great about it. It's talking to those voters in a new and different and more sincere and authentic way. And I think those are respond that and I think any American will respond to that level of sincerity and authenticity.

BLITZER: Dana Bash is with us. She has a question as well you listened carefully to that speech?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I did and I was sitting on the floor with the delegates who were, frankly, you know mesmerized by the speech. And focused on a lot of the details and what I want to know from you all is on the whole again of LGTBQ, did you go over kind of what would happen if the crowd didn't react the way they did? Because it was a very positive reaction and that was where Donald Trump went off script and said that he was happy to be Republican and to have that reaction.

MANAFORT: Again, this speech reflects Mr. Trump's vision for America and tried to make it inclusive with everyone. He spoke to that point. He spoke the truth, which he said he was going to do. He wasn't looking to get what kind -- making speech that was going to affect certain applause or certain reactions. He was building a vision for America as he sees it. He laid it out tonight and Republicans, not just for him, but for Peter Real as well responded to those comments.

TAPPER: So we've been covering him closely since obviously last June when he first announced his presidential candidacy. A couple of things came to mind in terms of his behavior this evening that would be different, that were different than what we've seen at previous rallies.

One, when the crowd started chanting lock her up, Mr. Trump almost took his head and said, no, let's defeat her. And he also didn't use the term Crooked Hillary. He certainly had a lot of allegations that were made and we can get into those in a second, but there was -- I hesitate to use the word restrain, but it was a different kind of Mr. Trump than we've seen at rallies. Did you talk to him about that, if the crowd chants lock her up, don't join in, just say let's defeat her.

MANAFORT: We didn't have to talk to him about that. There are different forms in which different approached in the different forms, he's a professional. This man knows, you know, exactly who he is and he's comfortable whether it's at a rally -- political rally or giving a major speech like this or giving a major policy speech at a national press core.

You know, and this is not a new part of his personality. This is not a new presentation but with he new that this was an important moment. He understood the magnitude of it for the purpose of communicating through the largest audience probably that he's spoken to so far in his campaign and he wanted to communicate a message that was clear and precise and showed his vision. And he did.

TAPPER: It went an hour and 15 minutes long. I believe that's the longest Presidential acceptance speech in 44 years. Was that the plan?

[00:20:01] MILLER: I would know he's also received the most primary votes of any presidential candidate ever. So this campaign has said a lot of great records but I will just ...

TAPPER: Not really answering the question. I appreciate that, we've heard that. Fourteen million -- almost 14 million votes and more than any other candidate in history.

MILLER: But I would also not that --

TAPPER: His vote numbers do go up when -- as the population grows but, were you planning on it being an hour and 15 minutes long?

MILLER: Well, I think that the crowd planned on it being that long because the crowd's lengthy, sustained, continuous applause over and over and over again, line after line after line is what determined the length of his speech.

TAPPER: So you didn't plan on it, but the crowd wanted it that way.

MILLER: Yeah, everybody, the crowd wanted it that way. They wanted more and more and more. If you look at the actual length of the speech, word count wise, it's the same as most address in a given of that anything.

TAPPER: Steven, Paul, congratulations. You're candidate won in his Republican presidential nominee, we're going to have an action pack, three and a half months. I really appreciate you being here. Thank so much and congratulations.

MANAFORT: Thank you. We'll look forward to talking to you.

TAPPER: Thank you.

BLITZER: We'll go look toward to cover in this campaign, looking forward to those three presidential debates that are coming up, as well. Look forward to the Democratic convention if in Philadelphia next week. Thanks to both of you, very much for coming in.

MANAFORT: Thank you.

BLITZER: And coming up, we have the results of our instant poll of speech watchers. Did they hear anything from Donald Trump tonight that would change their vote? Much more right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:25:13] COOPER: And welcome back. The hall is still open, a lot of people in it. No one around talking with each other, celebrating what has been for them a very incredibly exciting week here, a culminating tonight, obviously in this speech by Donald Trump. We're going to do a check in with John Berman, who has been standing by with the group of Republicans and Independent voters in Ohio where watching down from the speech for reaction.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Anderson. I was watching this speech with these undecided voters. In realtime, they had no Twitter, no commentary, so they made their views based on what they saw. Let me first to ask everyone in the room, after hearing Donald Trump tonight, are you more likely to vote for him? If you're likely to vote for him, raise your hands.

So, the half the room watched the speech and liked what they saw. And I was interesting will I think a lot of the commentary is about how this speech was dark and ominous. That's not what people in here really found. Jen (ph), I want to start with you. You actually heard a more inclusive Donald Trump tonight. JEN (PH): He seemed a little more inclusive than he's been in the past. I usually when I hear him talk it's a lot of polarizing hateful talk, but he seemed more inclusive this time.

BERMAN: Kent (ph), you said you liked how he talked about what he can do.

KENT (PH): Yes. I liked the can-do attitude which is a very American attitude to me. And he laid out a vision tonight. He hasn't filled in any of the ways he's going take care of the vision, but it's a great start, I think.

BERMAN: We're talk about the how, how, how, because that's the negative a lot of people found in here also. But, one more note on the positive. Nick (ph), I want to ask you if I can, you liked how he turned the focus a little maybe from him back to the voters.

NICK (PH): Well, he absolutely starts to use the word humor than I'm with you, I will fight for you. I will win for you. And I think that the use of "you" was a powerful message.

BERMAN: All right, now, on the bad side. There worst of negatives here that people found. Brad (ph), you in particular, there's some words Donald Trump kept on using that really seemed to drive you crazy.

BRAD (PH): Believe me. I have a serious problem with that. The reason for is it's distrustful.

BERMAN: What do you mean?

BRAD (PH): I can't believe him. It's that simple.

BERMAN: Everyone hear agreed with him on that. And there was something else interesting. You heard here from Kent (ph). I think there was a feeling in here that there was a lack of specifics. And Lisa (ph), you said you missed the how.

LIZA (PH): He talks about I'm going to make America great, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do that. But, he doesn't seem to have a plan and how are you going to get there? You know, it's a great thing to say, well, you know, I want to do this, I want to do this. But, I can't believe that he has a ways and a means of getting there from here.

BERMAN: There was another interesting positive here. Everyone here really liked Ivanka. They thought that Ivanka did a good job on setting up Donald Trump. Sandy (ph), you specifically said you thought hearing from the family all week was helpful.

SANDY (PH): Very much so. They just were wonderful. They praised their father. They respect him. And I like that.

BERMAN: I want to get one last show of hands here. Raise your hand if you thought the speech was not long enough. Everyone in here thought the speech went on for a long, long time. But they sat through it watching very carefully and thanks go out to all of them, Anderson. COOPER: Yes, John, please thank them for all of us, a very nice for them to stay late, as well. I don't know. What else?

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think part of this -- we've gone through the particulars talking about the tone. I don't think he can, this is a risk and a bet by Donald Trump that the safety, security issues that are very paramount right now. That are in the news right now that everybody is thinking about what you're looking at this, friends, whether you're looking at Dallas and Baton Rouge, that these issue that are scaring people right now, that are making people think, are we doing the right things, are we on the right track, what's going on in my community?

He's making a bet that those issues that are on the front set on July are going to be the decisive. How I'm going to choose the President in November. We don't know that. The economy usually is number one. But, big of it, big jarring events like this, especially for a challenger. He used the incumbent especially for challenge who created change environment.

COOPER: And I mean you've talked about this a lot on the -- with the magic wall. When it comes to dealing with terrorism, when it comes to economic issues, Donald Trump does very well among voters.

KING: He came into this convention leading her about eight points on the economy, leading her in low double digits on ISIS and terrorism. She gets more broadly on best performing on foreign policy. But, ISIS and terrorism he beat her. And remember we talk coming in, what do you do to convention? You identify your strength and you try forcement them and then fortified. And you look at weaknesses and you try to improve them.

[00:30:00] I think on -- for his voters anyway, for those who are with him, he stills you probably to protect, especially on ISIS and terrorism probably protecting themselves.

I agreed to reach out to Sanders who was smart. I was looking -- I guess I was just looking for a little bit more on the economy. Just a little bit more connect the dots.

AXELROD: The issue of specifics that was mentioned in this room and that you were talking to Jeffrey about is going to become more important as time goes on. And we're going to have three big debates in the fall in which what he talked about tonight and the way he talked about it tonight just won't fly. So he's going to have to put some meat on the bone. Jeffrey promises it, I'm sure it's coming.

BORGER: Well, also I thought it was effective when he was talking about Hillary Clinton as the puppet of the elite. And he is, as Jerry Falwell Jr. said, you know -- what was it -- the blue collar billionaire. Right.

Blue collar billionaire versus Hillary Clinton the puppet of the elite who has been in, you know, Washington for decades, she's bought and sold by lobbyists and I'm not and I know because I used to be one of those people who bought -- you know, it's same old. But it does have resonance because of Hillary Clinton. I mean, it does. And he, you know, he touched on the e-mails. He touched on her being above the law.

By the way, he wasn't as tough on Hillary Clinton, there's a lot of other people in this convention I might add. There was a clear effort here to kind of tone him down -- tone it down to a certain degree. He didn't bite on the lock her up. And, you know, I think that that could be effective for his voters.

COOPER: But he just he -- I mean ...

NAVARRO: Let me tell you -- stressing me about this convention, for weeks, for months, I think some of us have been thinking that it was going to be a very dramatic convention, possibly a violent convention. There were news organizations that handed out gas masks to their correspondents and contributors. And what we saw ...

COOPER: I didn't get one of those.

NAVARRO: I know.

(CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: Jeff said was that at most he would give us a baseball cap. I have to tell you, I think the people of Cleveland, law enforcement in Cleveland, the people in this arena did an amazing job. We shouldn't forget to thank them. And I think there wasn't the violence amongst Republicans that many of us feared.

AXELROD: I want to add something to that. I don't know if you know this, but I actually was involved in politics on the other side for a while.

COOPER: I've heard that.

AXELROD: Yes. And I must say, I didn't know what to expect. I covered a Republican convention years ago when I was a young reporter, but I haven't been back in a long time. And people have been very, very generous and nice and warm. I appreciate that.

(CROSSTALK)

AXELROD: I did drop you names.

JONES: I had the same experience. And I think that speaks very well of the kinds of people who are here. You know, just that every day, you know, work a day Republican activists is at bottom, a good person, salt of the earth, even though we disagree.

Here's what I think Donald Trump revealed to Democrats. If Democrats want to take him seriously, he showed his hand a bit. He thinks that he can pull apart the Obama coalition at some of its weak points.

For instance, we talk about the Latino community, often its one thing. But there are recent immigrants who may or may not be documented and there are people from immigrant communities. There is, sometimes, a rub there where people feel like that the last people off the boat are now in my way. He started trying to probe at that. I think if Democrats want to hold that community together, they kind to take those probe seriously.

He also -- again, he did try to pull a little bit at the LGBT community. I think he did it in a way that was bazar because actually like the only people who don't like them are Muslims and he didn't point out his own platform held about this anti-gay stuff. And then he just got to appointments or anti-gay and his V.P. pick of anti-gay.

But you can see he's trying to pull. He also did reach out to black folks. He did it the in a way that, you know, kind of cut against himself because on the one hand he shows no sympathy for the concerns for criminal justice and police reform. But he does points out, that "Hey, I want those black kids to have opportunity."

So what you're seeing is he's trying to pull that apart demographically and geographically he's trying to pull away at that rust belt.

Now, the Democrats are going to have to ...

AXELROD: But those things require sustained effort and discipline. And if he goes back to his sort of improvisational approach to these things and leaves these things on the floor of this convention hall, they're not going to mean much.

HENDERSON: And I think it probably require a candidate who have more credibility in those communities than he does. And I think he was trying to do that repair work. But I think he doesn't realize that, for instance, when black people hear law and order ...

JONES: Yeah.

HENDERSON: ...they hear lock black people up you.

JONES: Yes.

HENDERSON: I mean, and that's actually something that Richard Nixon realized. In his speech, he talked about law and order and he said, you know, I do realize that people think that's racist.

COOPER: Let me just ask you, though hold on. Moving forward, does the campaign continue to have big events? I mean, it seems to me what has gotten to me are these huge events which have been extraordinary, huge turnout. But, you know, not a traditional campaign. Not a lot of town hall meetings, things like that. Not a lot of retail politics, just fly in, have a huge event, do it somewhere else.

[00:35:13] Is that enough to continue going or do they have to become a more traditional campaign?

LORD: My experience has been that fall campaigns, for the most part, tend to be this media market in Pennsylvania, because we have been five media markets and, you know, when you get to this stage, candidates go to one of the five, hold a rally and they'd leave. They don't do the intermittent type things either of custom primaries. I don't maybe Corey.

LEWANDOWSKI: I mean, look, I think, you know, at the beginning of this campaign, Donald Trump tried to do those small intimate gatherings in New Hampshire. The difference was, there were 1400, 1500 people showing up unlike the Jeb Bush event where six or seven people are showing up were just very, very intimate. Sometimes one showed up.

(CROSSTALK)

LEWANDOWSKI: And look, I don't think the crowd is going to get any smaller. I think what you'll find is Governor Pence isn't going to draw as large of a crowd as Donald Trump will. They'll get those probably intimate crowds and maybe 400 or 500 people where Donald Trump will continue to pack out arenas. You know you saw him Alabama with 30,000 people, some in Dallas, Texas for 24,000 people.

HENDERSON: Will he go to Baltimore, will he go to Ferguson, will he go to Chicago?

LEWNDOWSKI: I think, look, he's been to Chicago. I was there that night when he where in Chicago. We didn't get to do the rally but Trump did.

HENDERSON: Yeah, it was canceled because people were objecting.

LEWANDOWSKI: It was canceled because of protest, because it was, you know, there was no law and order in Chicago that night.

HENDERSON: Because people didn't want to see Donald Trump because they think he's a big idea.

LEWANDOWSKI: Yeah, but there's a right place and right time with that private event that you were renting the facility at and to stop someone from using that, that's not the appropriate place.

If you want to have a free speech zone, you're welcome, do that outside. But to take over someone else's event and cause mass riot ...

HNDERSON: So, he's going to go to Baltimore. Is that what you're ...

LEWANDOWSKI: What I said was Donald Trump has already been to Chicago and there is no state that he's not willing to compete in. To that's California.

HENDERSON: So he's going to go to Baltimore?

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: One at a time, one at a time ...

(CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: ... question was about where the campaign goes now. The campaign, the structure, the apparatus has to get better. Because let me tell you some of the things that happened this week.

The first thing the campaign manager did on day one was get into the fight with the governor of Ohio, a must-win state. Second thing he did was let Melania Trump go out there and give a plagiarized speech. Third thing he did was completely mishandled, that plagiarism story and let it go on for 36 days -- 36 hours. Fourth thing he did was let Donald Trump's speech leak out today hours and hours before it was given.

The other thing he did was say today that women are going to vote for Donald Trump because they're worried that their husbands can't pay the bills. Well, I don't know where those husbands are because I got to pay my own damn bills.

LEWANDOWSKI: You know what, none of those matters. None o that matters on Election Day in November and, look, who know ...

NAVARRO: It matter a lot.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: One at a time, one at a time. And no one listen when -- David.

LEWANDOWSKI: No one listens when we all talk. David.

ALEXROD: Here is the point these things are symptomatic. You guys ran an extraordinary campaign in the primary and it's was very much built around Donald Trump, his persona, his instincts.

Once you get to a general election, and we saw some of it here, some of the impacts of lack of infrastructure, lack of organization, somewhat lack of discipline. Things happen and you need to compete in a general election, you need the apparatus, you need the infrastructure, and you need the discipline to compete.

BORGER: And I have two words.

COOPER: Look, Corey response.

LEWANDOWSKI: I think that counts. I think you're exactly right, David. I think what you find now is that the fund-raising is picking up. They raised $3.5 million yesterday, their first day out with Governor Pence on the ticket, right? So that gives them the resources.

As you know, that campaign was self-funded through the primary process. Donald Trump spent about $47 million of his own money for team was small and efficient. Now that it's growing, now they're raising, you know, millions of dollars every day that team going to continue to grow and you saw that with the convention team today and all of the resources that the RNC will not have available.

BORGER: And Corey, I have a question to ask you because I two words that I want to ask about which is debate press because, of course, the next big moments are going to be the debates. And he's going to go up against Hillary Clinton, who is well versed in policy, who is terrific at debates, as you know. COOPER: But wait a minute. Let me just add, is that really the next big moment? It feels like we don't know. I mean, given what Donald Trump, you know, the campaign that's been run so far. We have no idea ...

NAVARRO: Well, those are the most predictable.

COOPER: Yes, in a traditional election those would be the ...

NAVARRO: But Donald Trump to his credit, vanquished 16 other candidates most of whom ...

BORGER: Debates were his not strong ...

NAVARRO: We're better debaters and we're much well versed on policy job. So, you know, I wonder what we saw of today, I give the guy credit for consistency.

(CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: What I think we saw today is that he's not going to change from the Donald Trump we've seen for the past 14 months.

ALEXROD: But the question that he is going to have to answer, I believe, in order to get elected is he's going to have to persuade a certain number of voters who aren't with him right now that he is capable of being president of the United States, that he's can go beyond the rhetorical and offer real ideas.

Those debates are going to be important. I will say this though. I think expectations may work in his favor. Because I think people are assuming that he can't perform on the same stage with Hillary Clinton. That puts him in a better position.

[00:40:07] JONES: The debates are not going to save Hillary Clinton. If he does terrible at the debates, he'll be fine because people expected him to do well at the debates.

If she does bad, it will be a problem for her. I'm sorry.

KING: You know what, well, I just screw there's different question that they're going to push the temperament argument. We'll see what happens. But when David Axelrod was a young reporter, I was around then, too.

ALEXROD: I was covering that day of those speeches back in the Roosevelt ...

(CROSSTALK)

KING: Presidential campaigns were very, very different. When the balloons are done next week, when we're done with Philadelphia then we have a100 days left. And to the point of Donald Trump trying to expose those cracks in the Obama coalition or the weak point anyway, and to create cracks, you know, in the modern day -- in the old days, you had to knock on doors. You have to call people on the telephone. Are you still with me? Are you sure you're going to vote. What about your spouse?

Nowadays with data and everything else, they know their voters. They don't just know their number. They don't know the percentage, they know who's hard, a 100 percent. Who's a 70 percent? They know their names, they know where they live and they know what motivates them.

And so what the Clinton campaign will do after this is go back through their file. Did he move African-Americans in Ferguson Missouri? Did he Latinos in Miami Dade County? Did he do anything? And so the infrastructure implementation and management of the campaign, but we have to see some of the mistakes here this week. That's important for Trump going forward.

COOPER: We got to the take a quick break. Coming up, Americans who watch Donald Trump's speech weigh in. Do they like what they heard? Our instant poll results, ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:45:32] BLITZER: We got breaking news. We got the results of our instant poll among people who actually watched the Donald Trump speech, David Chalian, our Political Director is here. Pretty good news for Donald Trump.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: It is, but before we get to that news, I just wanted to give a couple caveats of what this is. This is a poll of speech watchers. This is not representative of all Americans as we normally talk about polling.

So this is people who tuned in. The next thing you need to know is people who tune in to a Republican convention to hear their Republican nominee are predominantly Republican. So the speech watchers, it's like when we do the President State of Union Address, they are predisposed to like what they're tuning in to see. With that being said, it does tell us how he did tonight among those watches.

Take a look at these results, reaction to Trump's speech, very positive reaction 57 percent of speech watchers had a very positive reaction, 18 percent had had a somewhat positive reaction and adds up to a 75 percent there and 24 percent said it had a negative effect. What about whether or not Trump's policies will move the country in the right direction or the wrong direction?

Seventy -three percent of speech watchers say it will move in the right direction, 24 percent say the wrong direction. And now you can see the progress Donald Trump made this week. Because look at that 73 percent number. We asked this question of the same poll respondents in our pre-convention poll and take a look at this. Sixty percent pre- speech said that Trump's policies will move the country in the right direction.

After watching the speech tonight, that number is up to 73 percent. So he made progress with these folks who watched the speech today. And then finally, how did Trump's speech affect your vote? Fifty-six percent of speech watchers are more likely to vote for Trump after watching the speech tonight here in Cleveland, 10 percent only say they're less likely and 32 percent not much effect at all.

BLITZER: Pretty good news among the speech watchers and millions of people watched the speech, Jake, so that's all pretty encouraging if you're Donald Trump.

TAPPER: Yeah, like I said, and this is how he won the nomination with these themes and so it doesn't surprise me. And at the end it's been, it is a very competitive Presidential race. It says to me, although we don't know the party breakdown of these individuals. It says to me that Republicans, who tuned in, liked it and probably a lot of undecided who were leaning towards Trump but maybe a little bit unsure, he -- in terms of temperament, he was on his best behavior.

The protester was dragged out and he disgraced the police when they started chanting lock her up. He said let's defeat her for Donald Trump, that was very restrained and I think a lot of people liked it, I can't wait to see and it's going to be so strange because the Democratic convention is going to step on this in so much. But I can't wait to see what the polls in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida have to say.

CHALIAN: And you're going to wait till like the middle of August for this to settle down after voting ...

TAPPER: Yeah.

BASH: But I do think that even if this audience is predisposed to like Donald Trump, the fact that 56 percent, more than half of them said they're more likely to vote for him, that is highlight.

CHALIAN: Without a doubt, again, these are his few people, it is predominantly Republican. But he hit his mark tonight the speech watchers. He wasn't trying to close the sale. He was beginning to sell them on in for the next few months.

TAPPER: And you hear what Paul Manafort said, I said was it too dark? Is some people complaining, he said, he was telling the truth.

BLITZER: And the people who watched it apparently liked it a lot more than a lot of people probably thought.

[00:48:58:Coming up, Trump's attacks, on Hillary Clinton tonight and how she may respond at her convention, next week.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: And welcome back to the final night of the Republican national conventions just some final thoughts before we go, Van.

JONES: I just want to say, look, if his excuse for giving that speech is that he's telling the truth, all of the fact checkers now have carpal tunnel saying that, you know, that the crime -- just like he said Anderson, the crime's actually been going down. When a ball goes down the hill, it may bounce on the way down. There have been a couple of cities where it's spiky, it's actually going down. So the lot of stuff that he said it turns out to be completely inaccurate. COOPER: Ana.

NAVARRO: I think he has made his back. I think he's got his strategy, I think he's got his plan. It is to stoke more fear, energize the base that he found in the Republican primary, hope to grow that base, to grow that niche of voters. And I saw very little about inclusion, very little about growing the tent in the speech. We've really are yet to see whether his bet works or not. As I've said many times, I have learned in the last 14 months not the underestimate Donald Trump and not to overestimate Hillary Clinton.

COOPER: Corey, you got to feel pretty good about just that snap poll that CNN did, just convincing people again predisposed to like it, but it grew the numbers.

LEWANDOWSKI: It grew significantly, actually, and what he's talked about and the messages is clear. Two things, one, make America great again. That's been the message from the day one on his campaign, number two, America first. It's a true philosophy that the other candidates don't think about.

America first, which means everyone else in the rest of the world, we're going to go and help you anymore if it isn't in the interest of our country and he talked about that at NATO today. And he's talked about things that other candidates refuse to talk about which is just because we've had trade policies in place, that have been there for 30 years, it's time to re look at those and make sure that we are doing what is best for our country and our people first. There's nothing wrong with that, that's what we want for a leader.

COOPER: It's also interesting, you know, you come out of this convention and if you just ask the average person in the street what is Donald Trump stand for? Its make America great again law and order.

I mean that's one of the big things. Tonight, and the wall -- if you ask people what does Hillary Clinton stand for? I'm not sure.

[00:55:05] I mean I think it shows the marketing genius of Donald Trump. I'm not sure that the average person may -- who would be able to say any sentence with Hillary Clinton.

LORD: Right, although he is a deliberate devastating take honor (ph) that she is the secretary of the status quo. That is true in more ways than one. She's an elite, et cetera, et cetera.

I think I want to emphasize here, I mean I think this was FDR, as it were, I know David smiles at this. But these appeals to people -- we're not talking on New York, Washington and Corridor here. We're talking about people and places in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, et cetera.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: Look, I think the most effective part of the speech was Donald Trump saying this is a note to a nation in danger, on edge, fearful, and I'm your voice. But I'm not sure that he expanded his base in saying that. We're going to have to see how that plays out. ALEXROD: I think the most important that has been said was said by David Chalian, which is we don't know and we won't know until August when both conventions are over and then we take a look that whole.

COOPER: We have to wrap it there. Our coverage continues with Don Lemon at the CNN Grill in Cleveland right after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:30:05] JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: For those who are already with him, he's totally probably did protect, especially on ISIS and terrorism, he probably protect himself.

I agree to reach out to Sanders supporters. I was looking for, I guess I was just looking for a little more on the economy. Just a little more connect the dot.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: The issue of specifics that was mentioned in this room and that you were talking to Jeffrey about is going to become more important as time goes on. And we're going to have three big debates in the fall, in which what he talked about tonight and the way he talked about it tonight just won't fly. So he's going to have to put some meat on the bone. Jeffrey promises it. I'm sure it's coming.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, also, I thought it was effective when he was talking about Hillary Clinton as the puppet of the elite. And he is -- as Jerry Falwell Jr. said, you know, the opposite of blue-collar billionaire.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Blue-collar billionaire.

BORGER: Right. Blue-collar billionaire versus Hillary Clinton, the puppet of the elite who has been in, you know, Washington for decades. She's bought and sold by lobbyists. And I'm not. I know, because I used to be one of those people who bought -- you know, it's same old, but it does have resonance because of Hillary Clinton.

AXELROD: Yes.

BORGER: I mean, it does. And he, you know, he touched on the e- mails. He touched on her being above the law. By the way, he wasn't as tough on Hillary Clinton as a lot of other people at this convention, I might add.

There was a clear effort here to kind of tone him down, tone it down to a certain degree. He didn't bite on the "Lock her up." And, you know, I think that could be effective for his voters.

(CROSSTALK)

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: But I do think that he -- I mean --

(CROSSTALK)

ANA NAVARRO, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Let me tell you something that struck me about this convention. For weeks, for months, I think some of us have been thinking that it was going to be a very dramatic convention, possibly a violent convention. There were news organizations handed out gas masks to their correspondents and contributors.

COOPER: I didn't get one of those.

(CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: And what we thought -- I know.

(LAUGHTER)

Just to present at most, he would give us baseball cap.

(LAUGHTER)

I had to tell you, I think the people of Cleveland, law enforcement in Cleveland, people in this arena did an amazing job. We shouldn't forget to thank them.

AXELROD: That's right.

NAVARRO: And I think that there wasn't there violence amongst Republicans that many of us feared and expecting to worry.

(CROSSTALK)

AXELROD: I want to add something to that. I don't know if you know this, but I actually was involved in the politics on the other side for a while.

COOPER: I heard that.

AXELROD: Yes. And I must say -- I didn't know what to expect. I'm, you know, I covered a Republican convention years ago when I was a young reporter, but I haven't been back in a long time. And people have been very, very generous and nice and warm. I --

(CROSSTALK)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I sent out a mass e-mail.

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

AXELROD: I did drop your names.

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: It works. I have the same experience, and I think that speaks very well of the kinds of people who are here. You know, just the everyday, you know work-a-day Republican activist is at bottom a good person, salt of the earth, even if you disagree.

Here's what I think Donald Trump revealed to Democrats. The Democrats want to take him seriously. He showed his hand a bit. He thinks that he can pull apart the Obama coalition at some of its weak points.

For instance, we talk about the Latino community often as one thing. But there are recent immigrants who may or may not be documented and there are people from immigrant communities. There is sometimes a rub there where the last people off the boat are now in my way. He started trying to probe at that. I think if Democrats want to hold that community together, they've got to take those probes seriously.

He also, again, he did try to pull a little bit at the LGBTQ community. I think he did it in a way that was bizarre because he acted like the only people who don't like them are Muslims and he didn't point out his own platform has a bunch anti-gay stuff in it.

His judicial appointments are anti-gay and his VP pick is anti-gay. But you can see he is trying to pull. He also did reach out to black folks. He did it in a way that, you know, kind of cut against himself because on the one hand he shows no sympathy for the concerns for criminal justice and police reform. But he does point out that, hey, I want those black kids to have an opportunity.

So what you are seeing is he is trying to pull that apart, demographically and geographically he's trying to pull away at that rust belt.

Now Democrats are going to have to --

(CROSSTALK)

AXELROD: Those things require sustained effort and discipline. And if he can -- if he goes back to his sort of improvisational approach to these things and leaves these things on the floor of this convention hall, they're not going to mean much.

(CROSSTALK)

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: And I think this probably require a candidate who have more credibility in those communities than he does. And I think he was trying to do that repair, but if he doesn't realize that for instance when black people hear law and order, they hear lock black people up.

JONES: Yes.

HENDERSON: I mean, it's actually something that Richard Nixon realized. In his speech, he talked about law and order. And he said, you know, I do realize that people think that's racist.

NAVARRO: Let me tell you something else that came out --

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: Let me just ask you, though. Moving forward, do the campaign continue to have big events? I mean, it seems to me -- what has gotten to me are these huge events which have been extraordinary, huge turnout but, you know, not a traditional campaign. Not a lot of town hall meetings. Things like that. Not a lot of retail politics. He's flying and have a huge event. Do it somewhere else.

Is that enough to continue going or do they have to become a more traditional campaign? I don't --

(CROSSTALK)

[00:35:22] JEFFREY LORD, TRUMP SUPPORTER: I mean, my experience has been the fall campaigns for the most part tend to be this fly to this media market. In Pennsylvania, for instance, we have five media markets. And, you know, when you get to this stage, candidates go to one of the five, hold a rally and they leave. They don't do the intimate type things that are more accustomed to primaries. I don't mean the, Corey --

(CROSSTALK)

COREY LEWANDOWSKI, FORMER TRUMP CAMPAIGN MANAGER: I mean, look, I think, you know, at the beginning of this campaign, (INAUDIBLE), the small intimate gatherings in New Hampshire. The difference was, he had a 1400, 1500 people showing up unlike the Jeb Bush event with six or seven people showing up, which is very, very intimate. Sometimes one comes up.

(LAUGHTER)

NAVARRO: That would be me.

LEWANDOWSKI: You know, that's the big difference. And so -- right.

(LAUGHTER)

And, look, I don't think the crowds are going to get any smaller. I think what you'll find is Governor Pence isn't going to draw as large of a crowd as Donald Trump will. He will get those probably intimate crowds, maybe 400 or 500 people, where Donald Trump will continue to pack out arenas. You know, you saw him in Alabama with 30,000 people. You saw him in Dallas, Texas with 20,000 people.

(CROSSTALK)

HENDERSON: Will he go to Baltimore? Will he go to Ferguson? Will he go to Chicago?

LEWANDOWSKI: I think, look -- he's been to Chicago. I was there that night. We're in Chicago. We didn't get to do the rallies but I was there.

(CROSSTALK)

HENDERSON: Yes, it was cancelled because people were objecting.

LEWANDOWSKI: Because of protest. Because it was in -- you know, there was no law and order in Chicago that night.

HENDERSON: Because people didn't want to see Donald Trump, because they think him as a bigot. (CROSSTALK)

LEWANDOWSKI: You know what, there's a right place and a right time to have a private event that you are renting the facility and to stop someone from using that is not the appropriate place. If you want to have a free speech zone, you're welcome to do that outside. But to take over someone else's event and cause mass riots --

HENDERSON: So he's going to go to Baltimore? Is that what you --

LEWANDOWSKI: What I said was Donald Trump has already been to Chicago, and there is no state that he is not willing to compete in. Whether that's California --

(CROSSTALK)

HENDERSON: So he's going to go to Baltimore?

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: One at a time. One at a time.

NAVARRO: I think my next question was about where the campaign goes now? The campaign, the structure, the apparatus has got to get better, because let me tell you some of the things that happened this week.

The first thing the campaign manager did in day one was get into a fight with the governor of Ohio. A must-win state.

Second thing he did was let Melania Trump go out there and give a plagiarized speech.

Third thing he did was completely mishandled that plagiarism story and let it go on for 36 hours.

Fourth thing he did was let Donald Trump's speech leak out today hours and hours before it was given.

The other thing he did was say, today, that women are going to vote for Donald Trump because they're worried that their husbands can't pay the bills. Well, I don't know where those husbands are, because I got to pay my own bills.

LEWANDOWSKI: None of that matters. None of that matters on election day, November. Look, who knows --

(CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: It matters.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: One at a time. One at a time. No one listens when we -- David? AXELROD: Here's the point. These things are symptomatic. You, guys, ran an extraordinary campaign in the primary and it was very much built around Donald Trump, his persona, his instincts. Once you get to a general election, and we saw some of it here, some of the impacts of lack of infrastructure, lack of organization. Somewhat lack of discipline. Things happen. And you need -- to compete in a general election, you need the apparatus, you need the infrastructure and you need the discipline to compete.

COOPER: And I think that will come.

HENDERSON: And I have two words.

COOPER: Let Corey respond.

LEWANDOWSKI: I think that comes. I think you're exactly right, David. I think what you find now is that the fundraising is picking up. They raised $3.5 million yesterday, the first day out with Governor Pence on the ticket, right? So that gives them the resources.

As you know, that campaign was self-funded to the primary process. So Donald Trump spend about $47 million of his own money so the team was small and efficient. Now that it's growing, now they are raising millions of dollars every day, the team is going to continue to grow. And you saw that with the convention team today and all the resources that the RNC will now have available today.

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: And, Corey, I have a question to ask you, because I have two words that I want to ask you about, which is "Debate prep." Because, of course, the next big moments are going to be the debates. And he's going to go up against Hillary Clinton who is very well-versed in policy, who is terrific at debates as we know.

COOPER: But let me just ask. Is that really the next big moment? It feels like we don't know -- I mean, given what Donald Trump -- you know, the campaign that's been run so far, we have no idea --

HENDERSON: Well, those are the most predictable.

COOPER: Yes, in a traditional election, those would be the --

(CROSSTALK)

NAVARRO: He vanquished 16 other candidates. Most of whom were much...

(CROSSTALK)

BORGER: Debates were not his strong suit.

NAVARRO: ...better debaters. And were much well-versed on policy chop. So, you know, I don't know what we saw today. I give the guy credit for consistency. (CROSSTALK)

But what I saw today is that he is not going to change from the Donald Trump we have seen for the past 14 months.

AXELROD: But the question that he is going to have to answer, I believe, in order to get elected is he's going to have to persuade a certain number of voters who are not with him right now, that he is capable of being president of the United States, that he is -- can go beyond the rhetorical and offer real ideas. Those debates are going to be important.

NAVARRO: Exactly.

AXELROD: I will say this, though. I think expectations may work in his favor because I think people are assuming that he can't perform on the same stage with Hillary Clinton. And that puts him in a better position.

(CROSSTALK)

JONES: The debates are not going to save Hillary Clinton. If he does terrible at the debates, he'll be fine because people don't expect him to do well at the debate. If she does bad on the debates, it's going to be a problem for her. I'm sorry.

[00:40:20] KING: You know what, I disagree. There's a question about that they are going to push the temperament argument. We'll see what happens. But when David Axelrod was a young reporter, I was around then, too.

AXELROD: I was covering those speeches back in the Roosevelt administration. I knew that.

(CROSSTALK)

KING: But presidential campaigns were very, very, very different. When the balloons are done next week, when we're done with Philadelphia, then we have 100 days left and to the point of Donald Trump trying to expose those cracks in the Obama coalition or weak points, anyway, and to create cracks, you know, in the modern day, in the old days, you had to knock on doors. You have to call people on the telephone. Are you still with me? Are you still with me? Are you sure you're going to vote? What about your spouse?

Nowadays, with data and everything else, they know their voters. They don't just know the numbers. They don't know the percentage. They know who is hard 100 percent, who is 80 percent, who is 70 percent. They know their names. They know where they live and they know what motivates them.

And so what the Clinton campaign would do after this is go back through their file. Did he move African-Americans in Ferguson, Missouri? Did he move Latinos in Miami-Dade County? Did he do anything so that the infrastructure, implementation and management of the campaign, well, we've got this some mistakes here this week. That's important for Trump going forward.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: We've got to take a quick break.

Coming up, Americans who watched Donald Trump's speech weigh in. Do they like what they heard? Our instant poll results ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:45:33] WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: We got breaking news. We got the results of our instant poll among people who actually watched the Donald Trump speech.

David Chalian, our political director is here.

Pretty good news for Donald Trump.

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: It is. But before we get to that news, I just want to give a couple caveats of what this is.

This is a poll of speech watchers. This is not representative of all Americans as we normally talk about polling. So this is people who tuned in. The next thing you need to know is, people who tune in to a Republican convention to hear the Republican nominee are predominantly Republican. So speech watchers, it's like when we do the president's state of the union address, they are predisposed to like what they are tuning in to see.

That being said, it does tell us how we did tonight among these watchers.

Take a look at these results. Reaction to Trump's speech, very positive reaction. 57 percent of the speech watchers had a very positive reaction. 18 percent had a somewhat positive reaction. That adds up to 75 percent there. And 24 percent said it had a negative effect.

What about whether or not Trump's policies will move the country in the right direction or the wrong direction? 73 percent of speech watchers say it will move in the right direction. 24 percent said the wrong direction. And now you can see the progress Donald Trump made this week.

Because look at that 73 percent number, we asked this question of the same poll respondents in our pre-convention poll and take a look at this.

60 percent, pre-speech, said that Trump's policies will move the country in the right direction. After watching the speech tonight, that number is up to 73 percent. So he made progress with these folks who watched the speech today.

And then, finally, how did Trump's speech affect your vote? 56 percent of speech watchers are more likely to vote for Trump after watching the speech tonight here in Cleveland. 10 percent only say they are less likely. And 32 percent not much affect at all.

BLITZER: Pretty good news among the speech watchers. Millions of people watch this speech, Jake.

So that's all pretty encouraging if you're Donald Trump.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And like I said, this is how he won the nomination with these themes. And so it doesn't surprise me. And it has been -- it is a very competitive presidential race.

It says to me, although, we don't know the party breakdown of these individuals. It says to me that Republicans who tuned in liked it and probably a lot of undecideds who were leaning towards Trump, but maybe just a little bit unsure.

In terms of temperament, he was on his best behavior. The protester was dragged out and he just praised the police.

When they started chanting "lock her up," he said, "Let's defeat her for Donald Trump." That was very restrained. And I think a lot of people liked it.

I can't wait to see, and it's going to be so strange because the Democratic convention is going to step on this so much. But I can't wait to see what the polls in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Florida have to say.

CHALIAN: And you're going to want to wait until the middle of August for this to settle down after both --

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: But I do think that even if this audience is predisposed to like Donald Trump, the fact that 56 percent, more than half of them said they are more likely to vote for him, that is telling.

CHALIAN: Without a doubt. Again, these are his people. It is predominantly Republican. But he hit his mark tonight with these speech watchers. He wasn't trying to close the sale. He was beginning to sell them on him for the next few months.

TAPPER: And you heard what Paul Manafort said. I said, was it too dark because some people are complaining. He said he was telling the truth.

BLITZER: And people who are watching it apparently liked it a lot more than a lot of people probably thought.

Coming up, Trump's attacks on Hillary Clinton tonight and how she may respond at her convention next week. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:52:57] COOPER: And welcome back to the final night of the Republican National Convention. Just some final thoughts before we go, Van?

JONES: I just want to say, look, if his excuse for giving that speech is that he is telling the truth, all of the fact checkers now have carpal tunnel saying that, you know, that the crime statistics -- just like you said, Anderson, the crime has actually been going down.

When a ball goes down the hill, it may bounce on the way down. You've got couple of cities, where it is spiking, but it's actually going down. So a lot of stuff that he said, it turns out could be completely not true.

COOPER: Ana?

NAVARRO: I think he has made his bed. I think he's got his strategy. I think he's got his plan. It is to stoke more fear, energize the base that he found in the Republican primary. Hope to grow that base, to grow that niche of voters. And I saw very little about inclusion, very little about growing the tent in this speech.

We really are yet to see whether his bet works or not. As I said many times, I have learned in the last 14 months not to underestimate Donald Trump and not to overestimate Hillary Clinton.

COOPER: Corey, you've got to feel pretty good about just that snap poll that CNN did. Just convincing people again. Predispose to like it, but it grew the numbers.

LEWANDOWSKI: It grew significantly, actually.

COOPER: Yes.

LEWANDOWSKI: And what he's talk about, the message is clear. Two things: One, make America great again. It has been the message from day one in this campaign. Number two, America first. It's a true philosophy that the other candidates don't think about.

You know, America first which means everyone else and the rest of the world, we're not going to go and help you anymore if it isn't in the interest of our country. And he talked about that at NATO today. He's talking about things that other candidates refuse to talk about, which is just because we have had trade policies in place that had been there for 30 years, it's time to re-look at those and make sure that we are doing what is best for our country and our people first. There's nothing wrong with that.

That's what you want for a leader.

COOPER: It's also interesting, you know, you come out out of this convention and you just ask the average person on the street what does Donald Trump stand for? Make America great again and law and order. I mean, that's one of the big things. JONES: Tonight.

COOPER: The wall.

[00:55:00] If you ask people what does Hillary Clinton stand for? I'm not sure. I mean, I think it shows the marketing genius of Donald Trump. I'm not sure that the average person would be able to say in a sentence what Hillary stands for.

LORD: Right. Although I think he has delivered a devastating take on her that she is the secretary of the status quo. That is true, in more ways than one. She is an elite, etcetera, etcetera.

The thing I want to emphasize here, I mean, I think this was FDR, as it were. I know David smiles at this. But this appeals to people who are not talking to New York, Washington corridor here, we're talking about people in places in Pennsylvania and Ohio, etcetera.

(CROSSTALK)

COOPER: And that's what matters right now.

Gloria, quickly.

BORGER: I think the most effective part of the speech was Donald Trump saying this is a nation in danger, on edge, fearful, and I'm your voice. But I'm not sure that he expanded his base in saying that. We're just going to have to, we're going to have to see how that plays out.

COOPER: Just a few seconds.

AXELROD: I think the most important thing that has been said was said by David Chalian which is we don't know and we won't know until August when both conventions are over and then we take a look at that poll.

COOPER: We're going to wrap it there. Our coverage continues with Don Lemon at the CNN Grill in Cleveland right after this.

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