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CNN Live Event/Special
Meryl Streep Gives Rousing Speech Supporting Hillary Clinton; Bill Clinton Attempts to Humanize Hillary; Gov. Terry McAuliffe Says Hillary Will Flip on TPP. Aired 11p-12a ET
Aired July 26, 2016 - 23:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[23:00:01] MERYL STREEP, ACTRESS: So she took out a pen knife; she dug out the musket ball and she sewed herself back up again. That's grit --
[Applause]
STREEP: -- and grace.
Hillary Clinton has taken some fire over 40 years of her fight for families and children. How does she do it? That's what I want to know. Where does she get her grit and her grace? Where do any of our female firsts, our path breakers, where do they find that strength? Sandra Day O'Connor; Rosa Parks; Amelia Earhart; Harriet Tubman; --
[Applause]
STREEP: -- Sally Ride; Shirley Chisholm; --
[Cheers and Applause]
STREEP: -- Madeleine Albright; Geraldine Ferraro; Eleanor Roosevelt.
{Cheering]
STREEP: These women share something in common: capacity of mind, fullness of heart and a burning passion for their cause. They have forged new paths so that others can follow them, men and women; generation on generation. That's Hillary. That's America.
[Cheering and Applause.
STREEP: And tonight, more than 200 years after Deborah Samson fought, and nearly 100 years after women got to vote, you people have made history.
[Cheering and Applause]
STREEP: You did, and you're going to make history again in November -
[Cheering and Applause]
STREEP: -- because Hillary Clinton will be our first woman president.
{Cheering and Applause]
STREEP: -- and she will be a great president and she will be the first in a long line of women and men who serve with grit and grace.
[Applause]
STREEP: She'll be the first, but she won't be the last.
[Applause]
STREEP: And now -
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: a more perfect union, it's what our Founding Fathers set out to create 240 years ago, a union built on simple beliefs that all men are created equal with a right to life, liberty and happiness but writing these words were not enough, every generation would have to act on them. we would all need to be founders of this great nation.
I was born by the river --
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: These were the founders who fought to make sure all men were not only created equal, but treated that way. These were the founders who stood up to say that "all men" meant women too; and these were the founders who marched to stonewall and the Supreme Court for the right to be accepted for who they are, and to love who they want.
We needed founders who create the impossible, to say that victory was bigger than a game; to help us think bigger, dream bigger, to change the world, and the way we see it.
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But not all founders live in our history books, most are brave every day Americans who make our country greater one small act at a time; founders who fill us with knowledge and faith, who put food on our table, who heal us and keep us safe. Today we look around and see that our country is more perfect than it once was, that it is a place where more [23:05:01] people can live where they want, learn what they want, say what they want, be what they want.
And tonight we take another step forward. Tonight a little girl is watching this moment with her mother and grandmother, father and brother and realizing that she, too, can truly be anything she wants to be, even president. Tonight we nominate a woman who has spent the last 40 years fighting for families and children, justice and equality; a woman who will not stop fighting until our country is a better version of itself; then, a better version of that. A woman fighting to make our nation more perfect for all.
(END VIDEO CLIP) ALICIA KEYS, SINGER, "SUPERWOMAN": Women are the answer. We have the power to ensure that this country gets on the right path. I dedicate this song to the mothers of the movement and all mothers who have lost their sons and their daughters to senseless violence. Until we deal with gun violence in this country, we can't claim home of the brave.
(Alicia Keys Performs "Superwoman")
Where are my Bernie people at? Big up to Hillary Clinton, where are my Hillary people at?
[Cheering]
KEYS: It's time to stand together and be unified. We can't let politics divide us. We have to show the world that bigotry and fear will never win because we have so much in common.
(Alicia Keys Performs "In Common")
[23:10:02] KEYS: Let me see your hands in the air. Tonight is a celebration because we are stronger together. The way forward is with acceptance and love. Let's acknowledge our differences and celebrate them. As Dr. King said, the last word must always be love.
(Alicia Keys Performs "In Common")
KEYES: Are you here for love? If you feel what I'm saying, say yeah! Put your hands in the air. Tonight is an incredible night for American history and feminist history; don't waste a vote. Vote
for Hillary Clinton because love will always win!
(Video of Previous Presidents scrolls)
[Hillary Shattering Glass Ceiling Plays]
HILLARY CLINTON (D) PRESIDENTIAL NOMINESS, via satellite: Hello, Philadelphia. I am so happy; it's been a great day and night. What an incredible honor that you have given me. And I can't believe we just put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet.
[Cheering and Applause]
CLINTON: Thanks to you and to everyone who has fought so hard to make this possible. This is really your victory; this is really your night. And, if there are any little girls out there who stayed up late to watch, let me just say I may become the first woman president but one of you is next.
Thank you all. I can't wait to join you in Philadelphia. Thank you!
[Cheering and Applause]
[Alicia Keys sings "This Girls Is On Fire"]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Alicia Keys closing out this night, which the [23:15:02] headliner, former President Bill Clinton, speaking about his wife in ways, I think, we haven't really heard publicly. There's been so much talk, over the years, of kind of reintroducing Hillary Clinton. We've heard that phrase time and time again. The former president did it in a way that was just telling a story that had this entire convention, I mean, just on the edge of their seat.
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: An incredibly personal story that has incredible political importance, if he can sell it.
Bill Clinton has been very effective over the years; Paul goes back with Bill Clinton. We used to always say after his State of the Union Addresses, boy, that was 20 minutes too long, but the reviews from the American people were good. His 2012 speech, David can tell you, people inside the Obama campaign said that it made a huge difference and a key moment in the case against Mitt Romney.
Tonight he's trying to say he's a reality TV star, she's the real one. Change is hard. I know you want it. A lot of you think she's been around for a long time, how can someone around for 25 or 30 years be different, be change, be new; trying to make that case tonight, in a very Bill Clinton way. He speaks very simply and sometimes you think it's kind of aw shucks. But, over the years, a lot of people who do what we do for a living have kind of said, eh, and then you find out the American people say hmm.
COOPER: Gloria?
GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: To me it made her relatable.
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes.
BORGER: Hillary Clinton has never been relatable to people.
HENDERSON: Mm-hmm.
BORGER: She was Secretary of State; she was First Lady and all the rest. Today he told the story of how they met and fell in love and how he courted her. Then, you know, to John's point, he made it a very simple choice: either you choose to believe it or you don't. It's real or it's fake. I'm telling you that the real person is the one that all these people love and respect, including myself, and made her into somebody that people can understand, particularly women, of course.
COOPER: Well, David, it was interesting, starting out, it was interwoven, their relationship, with also her resume.
BORGER: Yes.
DAVID AXELROD, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, and I -- first of all, let's just stipulate, this guy's one of a kind. There's nobody else who can turn an auditorium like this into as intimate a place as he did tonight. I think the first 25 minutes of the speech were the most important.
John talks about what he can sell. I think he did best when he wasn't selling. I think he did about when he was telling -
BORGER: Telling; right.
HENDERSON: Mm-hmm.
AXELROD: -- and relating the story of their lives together and giving a sense of dimensionality that, frankly, she's not good at doing. She's the very sort of defended person, in many ways, and she doesn't, you know, share these stories in that way.
[Cross Talk]
PATTI SOLIS DOYLE, CNN COMMENTATOR: I totally agree. I mean, so many people have said that, you know, people know her, she's been in the public eye for 30 years, 40 years. It's impossible to humanize her between now and the election. I think he just did. I mean, the story of their courtship, how he wooed her, dropping Chelsea off at college. I have a college to drop off in the Fall.
AXELROD: Yes, it's hard, -
DOYLE: These stories resonate with -
AXELROD: -- let me tell you.
DOYLE: I know - I'm not looking forward to it; but these stories resonate with people. They resonate with women, with mothers, with families. He did a great job.
COOPER: Paul, you worked for President Clinton; I mean, you've heard a lot of his speeches.
PAUL BEGALA, CNN COMMENTATOR: I kind of like the guy. I had nothing to do with the speech but I'll give you an idea of the process, the way he comes at this.
He has never - 25 years I've been doing speeches for him. He calls them a speech, not an address, not an oration. It's a talk; let's give a talk. I think what (inaudible) is really important. It's like sitting around the nail bend at the hardware store I used to work at as a kid, where people used to just sit around and they would talk. That's the first thing.
Part of -- the secret to doing that is he doesn't rebut; he reframes; right? Those of us who had high school debate, we're taught very classically, they say A, I say not A. He doesn't like to do that as. He likes to reframe. It's much more subtle. It's more gentle. It's more respectful, actually, to the opposition and of your audience. He loves the power of narrative and the story; and he is a Southerner to his core. He's Mark Twain.
You know, he thinks - you think he's going to take me on a little lazy trip down the river and by the end, he's explained the meaning of life.
HENDERSON: Yes. BEGALA: It's really a remarkable gift. You know I love the guy, but I think it's --
BORGER: Yes.
BEGALA: That's how he gets to that -
HENDERSON: I thought what was most effective was you really began to see Hillary Clinton at different stages of her life. I mean, he talked about the sort of cartoon character and the two dimensionality, the kind of figure that we have in some ways come to know Hillary Clinton as. But we began to see her at different places: registering Mexican immigrants; helping with the Children's Defense Fund; fighting segregation in the South. So I thought it was very effective and it wrapped up everything we heard tonight from other people who had similar stories. So it was very much, I thought, you know, it backed all of that up and I think it filled her in a lot.
JEFFREY LORD, DONALD TRUMP SUPPORTER: I love feel badly, you know, like the Grinch here or -
[Laughter]
AXELROD: I think that's why you're here.
[Laughter]
AXELROD: That's your job.
LORD: -- or look I'm about to steal the lollipop from all my happy, liberal friends.
[Laughter]
[23:20:03] LORD: Tonight in "Politico" there's a story tonight that Governor McAuliffe, of Virginia, a Clinton friend, is on record saying that Hillary Clinton will flip on TPP. He's had to walk it back apparently. My point is that what that speech was designed to accomplish, in part, was to say that the view of Hillary Clinton as not a cynical politician - that she's not a cynical politician, et cetera, headlines like this reinforce that notion and that's going to be part of the problem here, ongoing, for her is that she's not trusted by a lot of the American people. They don't believe her. We can go back through all the Clinton things, et cetera. That's going to be a problem for her, I think.
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: You know something? What's so remarkable though is that there are going to be some people -- Hillary Clinton was just like a bunch of dots until tonight.
DOYLE: Mm-hmm.
JONES: She's this; she's that; she's this; she's that and she's kind of allowed herself to be interpreted by her enemies way too much. So you can definitely cherry pick some dots. I've never actually heard the dots put together in a way where I go, oh, that's who she is. She's kind of like this workaholic do-gooder chick.
DOYLE: Yes.
JONES: Hey, great! Like, that's - I know people like that. Up until now she's been this mystery and almost you're able to then project whatever you want to on her. This is the most -- tonight was the first night I actually saw the dots put together in the right way.
COOPER: It's also interesting because you think back to what do we know about Donald Trump in college? We know Donald Trump saying I went to one of the best schools, Wharton School, you know, and it's a great school and I'm really smart. We actually now, for the first time at least, I've heard, oh, okay. So Hillary Clinton did all these things in college; like, oh, she worked at the Yale Child Studies Center, where I actually took a class. She, you know, did all these -- she worked in the hospital. Oh, I mean -
DOYLE: Registered -
COOPER: It did sort of fill in a gap in a chronology that I think a lot of people -
JONES: I think people wanted to give her the benefit of the doubt, a story line. Up until now I don't think that --
AXELROD: Jeffrey, lets stipulate your point because I'm sure this is one of the vulnerabilities that she has and it's going to -- you guys will prosecute that and it's not going to be wiped away in one day, or maybe one convention, but what we saw tonight was what we didn't see as much as we should have in Cleveland, which was the fleshing out with stories and anecdotes from the life of Hillary Clinton that gives people a richer sense of who she is.
LORD: I thought his kids did that. I thought his kids were very good with that.
AXELROD: They were mostly stories about their -- and this may be just because they didn't actually grow up with him as much, but there were stories about his interaction with them as a mentor in business as much as anything else.
LORD: Well, I mean, that's their family life story. When you listen to these stories about Hillary Clinton, what are they? They are stories about her involvement in politics and government and public service.
AXELROD: Well, and also they're stories about her as a mother and -
BORGER: But what Bill Clinton did was he -- you know, the old phrase "all politics is personal," he took the politics and he made it personal, whether she was a young woman at Yale -- and also one other thing that I must say that struck me was this notion that Hillary Clinton is old, she's been around a long time. He said, yeah, she's been around a long time, that is absolutely true and she's worth every single year of it and then he went on to describe what she's done over those decades. COOPER: John?
KING: Bill Clinton's gift, whenever his personal campaigns, go back to the 1992 primaries, Gennifer Flowers, the draft controversy -
BORGER: Yes.
KING: -- when he's been in trouble, the presidency, mostly because of Monica Lewinsky, other issues that had hurt his approval, his gift has always been when he is challenged, to say, yes, there are some questions about me but I'm trying to fight for you to turn to people. I think that's what he's trying to do today. They're going to say she's old; they're going to say she's changed; they're going to say she's part of the status quo but look at her life fighting for you. She keeps coming back. That's what he did for President Obama in a tough time in 2012.
We can't double-down on trickle-down. What the President's doing is very hard. Trust me; it's very hard. Yes, he hasn't given you everything you want. Yes, progress hasn't come as fast as you would like; but trust me, I know this job and he's fighting for you. That's always been his gift. Will it work this time? We'll see. Jeffrey makes a key point. This is an incredibly tough dynamic, to be part of the political establishment, because people are clamoring for change -
LORD: Right.
KING: -- but he makes the distinction between what politicians do and how it can affect real --
[Cross Talk]
COOPER: Let me also add something though. You know, tonight was the first night the word "ISIS" was actually mentioned. This is Night Two now of this Convention. We've had another terror attack; a priest killed during a service. Are they missing something here by not bringing this up? I mean, I think it was mentioned once, perhaps twice, tonight. Bill Clinton also kind of made a reference to Muslims in America. But for - I mean, is it -- does it strike anyone as odd?
[23:25:01] AXELROD: Well, I think it's a very good point and, again, I'll say what I said before, which is I think we have to judge this at the end of the thing -
BORGER: Right.
AXELROD: -- because, you know, General Allen is speaking on Thursday night and you know he's going to address that. I suspect you'll hear some of this from the Vice President, from the President tomorrow and others. So, you know, they clearly have a plan here and we shouldn't --
COOPER: Right; and going to a plan more than the Republican Convention -
BORGER: Yes. HENDERSON: Yes.
COOPER: -- which was many repetitive messages.
LORD: One of the underlying things -- I mean, the Clintons, both of them and for that matter myself and looking around here others, are of the Baby Boomer Generation of the 60s and all this kind of thing, and there was
finally sort of a fissure there -
COOPER: Don't let the gray hair fool you.
[Laughter]
LORD: There was a fissure here and you had -- you had sort of a lot of us who might have been more liberal in our youth, that were Reaganized and what have you and became more conservative, and we were opposed to the McGovernites of the world, et cetera. The McGovernites world view, more or less, controls the Democratic Party to this day, and what it says to a lot of people in subtext is weakness on foreign policy issues. So that's one of the problems and then do you want to feed in her record, whether it's Russia or Benghazi or any number of things that feeds into that and that it's - in this situation with ISIS that's a difficult -
BEGALA: It's often a problem with Democrats. It's often a problem with women. It's not a problem with woman Democrat. Again, I've known her 25 years. People ask me all kinds of things, never once has anyone said, gee, I wonder if she's strong. Holy Moly. Two beers into it they're making all kinds of comments about how strong she is.
[Laughter]
COOPER: It's also interesting because you have a lot of the Republican foreign policy establishment actually backing her over Donald Trump.
LORD: And the emphasis there would be establishment as opposed to Republican I would suggest.
BEGALA: I wonder if President Clinton wasn't watching Jeffrey last night because he raised one of the most important structural things about this race. Two-thirds of the country is unhappy with the direction we're going in.
COOPER: Yes.
BEGALA: My party is the party of continuity. We're the party - the White House is the party of President Obama. Hillary was in his cabinet. She's not breaking with him. She didn't in the primary. She's not in the general election. Jeffrey, you made that point. I think President Clinton tried, really effectively tonight --
DOYLE: Yes. to
BEGALA: -- to reframe it when he said, "This woman has never been satisfied with the status quo."
DOYLE: Right; exactly.
BEGALA: "She always wants to move the ball forward."
LORD: And you're making me sound like David Gergen.
BEGALA: He cast her as a change-maker. I have not talked to him about the speech but I bet you he got that from (inaudible). I bet he was sitting there listening to Jeffrey last night saying, oh, wait; I've got to address that.
KING: Jeffrey's hero made that same point and the only other time in our lifetime it's happened -
LORD: Right.
KING: -- when George H.W. Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan. Normally, after a two-term presidency you have the switch in parties, and Ronald Reagan came to the convention in '84 and said we are the change.
LORD: Right.
KING: And made that case for George H.W. Bush.
AXELROD: I just wonder, again, I mean, I may be dead wrong about this, because this guy is so skilled and so good at what he does, but I just believe that the most effective part of that speech was the storytelling part of that speech.
I think when - you know, everybody's seen Bill Clinton make these political arguments a million times. What they haven't seen is those personal kinds of observations and I think those were the things that were most necessary.
JONES: I think even bigger than that, though, was just the willingness, finally, to call this for what it is; a huge moment in history. When you saw that breakthrough, you saw male after male after male president, I mean, just an endless sea, and then finally her and she's surrounded by these younger women. I think that reluctance to own that in 2008 -
BORGER: Right.
JONES: -- hurt them. I think tonight, if you're Republican, if you're a Democrat, if you're an Independent, you got to take some pride in the country right now and I think they did a very good job of opening that door; and also Alicia Keys coming out, who is kind of this new, hip, feminist spokeswoman, who is also working very hard on criminal justice issues and I got a chance to see her do that stuff up close. You know, for her to come out and bring that spirit and to come out to all the crowd, hey, let me hear from my Bernie people, let me hear from my Hillary people, we have to stand together against bigotry; all that stuff, this was a feel good convention, whereas the last convention, the Republican Convention was a feel bad convention.
BORGER: Right; can I talk to David's point for one second, about the personal side? You know, he came out as a husband -
AXELROD: He's a guy too.
BORGER: And he's a guy.
[Laughter]
BORGER: But he's Bill Clinton and nobody is like him.
AXELROD: Fair enough.
BORGER: -- and he bragged about his wife. He just bragged about his wife. He said you plop her down anywhere and there's a problem, she's going to figure out a way to -
JONES: Make it better.
BORGER: -- to make it better. I thought, okay, that's a husband bragging on his wife, which was nice.
DOYLE: The other part that was really endearing too was he pursued her and she rejected him many times, it was like, you know, I asked her once. I asked her twice. I followed her around. I mean, that's just very endearing. He's clearly still in love with this woman; you know? He's smitten.
LORD: One of the interesting things I found here, in the speech, was when they ran through the list of women,
[23:30:06] I guess it was Meryl Streep who ran through the list of women. Now, admittedly this is the Democratic convention and they're not going to mention the name Sarah Palin. However, Sarah Palin is, other than Geraldine Ferraro, the only other woman who has been on a national ticket. What I'm suggesting to you is, and we've had more than our share of discussions on race, I suggest this applies to gender as well, that there is an assumption here that to be a woman means that you are a liberal; and you get outside of, you know, a lot of places in New York and Washington and that's not the case. There are a lot -
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: They did mention Sandra Day O'Connor, I think.
[Cross Talk]
LORD: But who is viewed, I think, by a lot of these folks as a moderate and all these kind of things.
AXELROD: Let me try -
LORD: They're not celebrating Ann Coulter here tonight.
AXELROD: Let me try and -- decidedly not.
[Laughter] AXELROD: Let me try and weave your point together here. You know, when I was working for Barack Obama, and he was running for president, and I got a -- in 2008, I got a call from a school teacher on the west side of Chicago who taught -- he was a young man who grew up with my son and he taught a mostly black and Hispanic class on the west side of Chicago and he called and he was teaching history. He said we were teaching the Presidents and a kid raised his hand and said "how come all these dudes are white guys?" He said, well, you know, that's true but, you know, our Senator, Barack Obama, is running it. He could be the next president. He said, these kids, their eyes got wide and their vistas got wider.
I think, you know, even though we said earlier we take for granted partly because of - partly because of Barack Obama, partly because Hillary Clinton came so close in 2008, we take for granted that a woman may become President of the United States, but let's not discount what it means to young kids.
VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes; listen, the power of Barack Obama, as you call him, President Obama, those of us who aren't as close, but the power of President Obama, as president, has always been less than his power as precedent. It's the precedent that he set that you could dream that big. And I know for myself I have my little boys, now my big boys, sitting on my lap and when Obama got -- when he won, I was crying on my son and my son got up and ran over to my mother and he said, "Mommy, what is history and why does it make Daddy cry?"
[Laughter]
JONES: I said, It's history, Son. It's history, Son. I think there's going to be a lot of moms and grandmoms telling their daughters this is history, this is history.
LORD: We are going to have, I mean, when you pull back and look at the existence of the United States now, wherever we are here, 200 some-odd years old, we're going to have Presidents of the United States - we're going to have men, we're going to have women; we're going to have Latinos, Black, Jews, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera; but, again, I don't want to be mean to all of you, they're not all going to be liberal.
[Laughter]
JONES: But why -- where is Nikki Haley? Where are some of your women who, maybe they're not as liberal as I am, but they're certainly not in the Donald Trump camp, in your party.
LORD: Yes, well, I think that some of this is Trump specific, some of these folks, but I assure you, if Donald Trump didn't exist and Nikki Haley were the Republican Nominee for President, this moment, I assure you, as they did with Sarah Palin, they'd have gone after her, tooth and nail, and she would have emerged as some sort of dumb, you know, I mean, there's a stereotype here that goes on with conservatives. When I talk to a lot of conservative women, African-Americans who are conservative, Latinos who are conservative and they feel that they are, you know, attacked because they, more or less, from their view, to use a phrase common on our side, "left the plantation," and they think for themselves and et cetera.
You talk to my African-American friend, Dineen Borelli, from Conservative Review", with me, I mean, she can give you chapter and verse on this kind of thing. So I just think that that's a --
PAUL BEGALA, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I think it is fair to say that Hillary has occasionally been criticized.
LORD: Yes, of course.
BEGALA: So, whoever the Republican's nominate, Democrats are going to attack. Whoever the Democrats - Republicans -
LORD: Right.
BEGALA: It is something that this country, which was founded walking distance, a long walk but it's a walk, walking distance from where we are sitting, for 144 years did not let women even vote.
LORD: Right; and you know what?
BEGALA: And now we've nominated from one of our major parties.
LORD: And when we finally persuaded your party to go along with this, we got it passed.
GLORIA: You know, --
[Laughter]
AXELROD: Jeffrey hangs on to that 19th Century -
[Laughter]
AXELROD: It's his go-to thing.
LORD: Actually, that was 20th Century; it was.
AXELROD: Yes, it was.
BORGER: And you know how you talked about how we were talking about earlier how you hadn't made the appeal to those white men who, you know, are -- don't like Hillary Clinton, et cetera, et cetera. I think Bill Clinton did that tonight. I think he started doing that tonight. She sent me to coal country [23:35:03] because we're going to work for you. She told me to tell you; she sent me down there, and we all know she had made a mistake in West Virginia. So, I think he started to reach out and broaden and make that appeal.
I mean, nobody can give a speech like Bill Clinton, but I think he did everything he had to do, and more.
LORD: If he couldn't do this for his vice president, can he do this - I mean that seriously. If he couldn't do it for Al Gore can he do it for her? His vice president --
BORGER: Al Gore didn't want him too, by the way.
AXELROD: And I don't - you know, I think that's the wrong question -
[Cross Talk]
AXELROD: I think it's the wrong question because he did a different thing tonight. He wasn't here as a president handing off. He was here talking about his wife and trying to give people a richer appreciation.
Look, everything is going to be resolved this week. We're not - as I said last night, we're not going to know what impact these conventions have -
BORGER: Right.
JONES: Right.
AXELROD: -- had for some time.
JONES: I agree.
AXELROD: No one, I guarantee, there's no one in this election is going to come out with a flag, a white flag and say, man, that was a great convention. I surrender.
BORGER: Right.
AXELROD: I don't expect that. But this was -
LORD: Donald Trump does -
[Cross Talk]
AXELROD: Well, and I'm glad he went home happy.
LORD: He did.
JONES: And I think the Democrats may have a little bit of a problem though, which is, with Donald Trump, you know, he says, basically, this is about inclusion. They Democrats, they're about inclusion. Trump seems to be about exclusion. We don't like the Muslims; we don't like the Mexicans, et cetera. But guess what? That actually gets him something. It gets him a very easy answer on two problems, national security -
BEGALA: Right.
JONES: -- I'm going to exclude the Muslims; that's going to make you more secure. And then economic security; I'm going to exclude the Mexicans and I'm going to beat up on China. That's going to make you more secure economically. So even though we maybe react to that exclusivity and we say we want inclusivity, inclusivity, well, hold on a second. His exclusivity got him to some answers that are important. I have not heard us round the bases yet. I think we are still making the case tonight about inclusion, inclusion, inclusion; but we have not hit powerfully on national security and not powerfully yet, compared to what you said earlier -
AXELROD: I mean, we should review this on Thursday night, because if those bases aren't rounded by Thursday night, --
JONES: Then I think we could be -
AXELROD: -- this is a legitimate critique; but they clearly have a plan that they were going to do what they did yesterday, which was largely getting to Trump. Tonight was personal insights into Hillary Clinton; people who have been touched by her, finishing with the President. Tomorrow I think you're going to get into some more of these issues, with the President of the United States, with the Vice President of the United States.
BORGER: Right.
COOPER: It was also, to our earlier point talking about police officers and the difficult job they have, the dangers they face routinely, every day, Bill Clinton did, sort of, try to thread that needle. I mean, he talked about African-American, you know, males who are scared on the streets to also acknowledge, given what we saw in Dallas on Friday, the brave response by police officers.
AXELROD: Yes.
BORGER: He tries to -- he did. He tried to navigate that. He tried to navigate men. He tried to make Hillary Clinton likeable, not a caricature anymore, you know, I think; and tell a story about her life and a=how she came to be who she is. I mean, I think he hit every point, but I agree with David. One thing at a time; first have people actually like her.
JONES: Well, first like each other because we thought we were going to have a civil war yesterday.
BORGER: Like each other.
JONES: Like each other.
BORGER: Like each other, then like her; okay.
LORD: Just very - while we've been in here, Phili.com, which is "The Philadelphia Daily News" has been putting out stories here that there was, in fact, a protests outside with some flag burning, which has now moved apparently to a candlelight vigil, so - and these were Bernie people. So -
JONES: Yes, and what I'll say about that is, as a good, California lefty, every single convention, of my entire adult life, the far-left, of which I used to be a proud member, will come and will -
LORD: Used to be? JONES: Used to be. Now I'm just like the - now I'm like the near far left.
AXELROD: See, you're rubbing off on him.
LORD: You've moderated him.
JONES: Now I'm the near far left; but every convention - it's not about Bernie. Every convention a certain section of the far-left comes and protests and does this kind of thing. I don't think it necessarily translates into the actual mechanics of this election. I just don't.
BEGALA: Can I bring up a different point? We saw a spouse tonight, not a former president.
DOYLE: Right.
BEGALA: He didn't talk about his legacy and his record, which he's sometimes prone to do.
AXELROD: Although they had a -
BORGER: They did it in the video.
BEGALA: Thank God for that; but also they didn't talk very much about what President Obama has done, as he did four years ago.
AXELROD: Right.
BEGALA: He talked as a spouse and, you probably won't believe this. Hillary Clinton didn't speak at the 1992 Convention. She didn't give a speech. Back then spouses didn't speak, and she was our best validator. I mean, she's the reason he survived and got nominated. She did go on "60 Minutes" when she was in trouble. She didn't give a speech at all. Now it is the norm.
[23:40:01] Melania Trump I thought did a fine job. She had a hiccup and it caused problems; they didn't handle it well. How they handled it was worse than what she did; but the current First Lady set an impossibly high bar. Now the spouse of the current nominee, it's just going to be a part -- Anne Romney, in 2012, gave one of the best convention speeches at the Republican Convention. Now this is going to - so all of you that are thinking about going into politics, marry up.
[Laughter] COOPER: So let me get to -
AXELROD: So let me step on a third rail here. If I'm not here tomorrow night, you'll know why. But one this evening I wondered about as would he in any way -
BORGER: Me too.
HENDERSON: Me too. AXELROD: -- talk about the fact that he had inflicted burdens and pain and that she kept their family together and led through? I really wondered whether he would go there?
KING: He said heartbreak at one point.
[Cross Talk]
DOYLEL: In good times and in bad, he said.
BEGALA: In the mud huts in Mongolia they know about that. I just don't think he wants to cover that again.
AXELROD: No, I understand that but -
JONES: It could have been powerful.
COOPER: It also, again, --
[Cross Talk]
COOPER: -- and I've got to say, early on, when he was talking about some of the things, the skirt she wore. I think certainly in some people's minds perhaps some people are inclined not to like former President, you couldn't help but sort of think, wait a minute. He's --
HENDERSON: I think in everyone's mind -
AXELROD: I think that made it an authentic story.
COOER: Well, --
LORD: Donald Trump has retweeted a Juanita Broderick post from January of this year. So, I'm just saying -
BORGER: Maybe that's why he didn't -
KING: Donald Trump also tweeted the night he spoke at the Obama Convention in 2012, what a brilliant idea it was for the Democrats to have Bill Clinton speak. That was a different Donald Trump back then; his politics -
[Cross Talk]
KING: Everything about Bill Clinton is a two-sided coin. He has amazing gifts, as David said. I covered him for a long time, back in the Eighties. I drove Paul crazy a lot during that time, the Eighties and the Nineties, and he's as gifted as they come. That's not taking sides in politics; the Republicans will tell you that because he drove them nuts for 20 years.
LORD: He is gifted. He is gifted.
KING: He's as gifted as they come, but there's also the baggage. There's the Monica Lewinsky baggage, the personal character baggage. There's also, in the Republican primaries we learned voters didn't want a dynasty. They didn't want a Bush and now you have a Clinton who was a president, talking about a Clinton, let's make her president. Some people will love that, other people will say that's not what we want. We don't need this. That's what you get with Bill Clinton.
HENDERSON: Yes; and I think for Bill Clinton, who often times has, I mean, not only within their marriage, had some heartbreak there, but often times as a surrogate has hurt his wife. I think the question is out of this speech can he sort of maintain ability to really humanize his wife and really be a powerful surrogate, without stepping on whatever their message is of the day?
AXELROD: Yes; there are so many surrogates out there for her.
KENDERSON: Yes.
BORGER: Yes.
AXELROD: I think what he did tonight and speaking about the personal side of her and her -- what motivates her and who she is, as a mother and you know - I just think that's so much more valuable than him being just another political surrogate out on the stump. She's got plenty of those.
BORGER: And it wasn't phony. I mean, you talk about the baggage and the Lewinsky and all this, but they've survived it.
HENDERSON: Yes.
DOYLE: Yes; and they love each other.
BORGER: Well, --
DOYLE: They do.
BORGER: -- you would know that better than I do, but -- because I don't know anything about it at all, but if you say so.
DOYLE: I say so.
BORGER: But when he talked about her, when they met, it was very lovingly, you know, describing the skirt that she was wearing, the little hippie skirt with the flowers on it, whatever it was; the thick high glasses. We've all seen those pictures of Hillary Clinton; how he was kind of shy about tapping her on the back. These are - these are not only humanizing, but it tells you something about their relationship that has survived all of this and that he can go back to those days and talk about it, public.
DOYLE: And I agree with David. He's fantastic. He's a political genius in my view, but when it comes -- when people attack his wife, he's not so good. When he defends his wife, he's a husband as opposed to a political genius. So I agree with David. I think we have so many surrogates. Hillary has so many surrogates out there. He's better served humanizes her. AXELROD: Can I note one thing that will be buried in the reporting of the Bill Clinton speech and some of these other things? Madeleine Albright -
BORGER: Oh.
AXELROD: Madeleine Albright, when she was speaking -
COOPER: That was tough.
AXELROD: -- made -- just flat out suggested that -
DOYLE: Yes.
AXELROD: -- Vladimir Putin -
DOYLE: Yes.
AXELROD: -- was rooting for Donald Trump in this race, and it comes at a time when the "New York Times" tonight -
JONES: Right.
AXELROD: -- printed a story that basically validated the notion that these leaks -- the hacking of the DNC computer may have been done by Russia. Jeffrey, I'm not trying to incite you because I don't know -
[Laughter]
AXELROD: I don't know the facts --
[23:45:01] LORD: Do I like insightful?
AXELROD: -- but the fact that she made that point, suggests to me this is not going to go away.
COOPER: We're going to take a break. I think this is our first break in like an hour. Coming up, Bill Clinton's response to Donald Trump. Did the former President counter the Republican's claims that his wife represents the status quo? More convention coverage after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Welcome back to the Democratic Convention here in Philadelphia. History was made today. For the first time in American history a woman will lead a major political party in a Presidential election. and Bill Clinton is now playing the role, a very important role, the political spouse. He had this to say about his wife, recounting their courtship.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON: I went up to her and she said she was going to register for classes for the next term. I said I'd go, too; and we stood in line and talked. You had to do that to register back then -
[Laughter]
CLINTON: And I thought I was doing pretty well, until we got to the front of [23:50:01] the line and the registrar looked up and said, Bill, what are you doing here; you registered this morning?
[Laughter]
CLINTON: I turned red and she laughed that big laugh of hers, and I thought, well, heck, since my cover's been blown, I just went ahead and asked her to take a walk down to the art museum. We've been walking and talking and laughing together ever since.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BLITZER: I think that was a very effective part of the speech, recounting their own personal history, going back to 1971, when they were students at Yale Law School.
JAKE TAPPER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: His basic pitch was, I fell in love with this woman and I've been seeing her, through the years, making change for people like you and your children, talking to the voters, for years and years and years. My life was better when that happened. Your life will be, too - your lives will be too.
It was an interesting speech in the sense that it talked about these human moments, also, trying to humanize her, but, really, I felt like more of the speech was devoted to trying to convince the American people that she represents change, in what seems like it will be a change versus status quo election.
DANA BASH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: No question. As we have talked about, as really only Bill Clinton can do, he wove those two themes in seamlessly and delivered it, obviously, in a Bill Clinton kind of way, in a way that even the most partisan republican will tell you that he is the best of a generation, or beyond, at doing. But, you know, I do think that certainly it is wonderful for him, and important for him, to give that personal story, but I do think back to 2012, about how incredibly effective he was at tearing apart Mitt Romney, policy wise, because he is such a policy-wonk too. He can take the most complex contrast and what people are for and what people will do in government and because he is a political spouse, you don't have that as much. I mean, he did a little bit talking about the fact that she's a caricature and that you shouldn't believe what Republicans say but it's too bad he couldn't do both because, for the Democrats, there's nobody better at doing that.
BLITZER: Having said there was one version of Hillary Clinton we saw at the Republican Convention, referring to Donald Trump; one is real. There's another version of Hillary Clinton -- the real one, that he's talking about; the other one was the one at the Republican Convention, that one is "made up" and then he said this:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP, no audio)
BLITZER: All right; we're going to get that sound bite. We're going to be able to hear it, but the point he's trying to make is that I know the real Hillary Clinton. What you heard at the Republican Convention was false.
TAPPER: You know, I just want to touch on a point made by David Axelrod in the previous panel, which was, he was arguing, Ax, that he thought the speech would have been more effective if President Clinton had addressed the proverbial elephant in the room, and that is his behavior in the late 90s that caused Hillary Clinton to become a very sympathetic figure and just the burdens that that left her with, in Ax's view; and I'm reminded of the George Orwell quote, "autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful." It's possible that Ax is right, that if there had been a moment in there, and he eluded to it here and there, about heartbreak and about -
BASH: She never quit on me.
TAPPER: She never quit on me; he eluded to it, but not that I expected, as Begala said, you know, people in the mud huts of Mongolia know the story, but if there had been something more about that, I wonder if it would have been more effective even, because, obviously, you think about that when you look at Bill Clinton.
BASH: Yes; no question, and to your point, that is one of - never mind calling her a liar and saying that she should be in jail and all of the political attacks on her from republicans, the other line you hear from Donald Trump himself, and it goes down the line, is that you know, she is married to somebody who did these horrible things. So it is not like it is not out there for somebody who are younger and might not know about it because they didn't live through it, like we did, especially you Wolf Blitzer; or just those who are kind of aware of it. It's not like it's not getting out there.
So perhaps it would have been something, but, you know what? Listen; if I'm Hillary Clinton, I wouldn't want to talk about this in this forum. This is her night and this is about trying to explain things that she did in her life, not things that he did to her.
BLITZER: But you're right, he did, at the beginning of the speech, he eluded to it by saying there have been good times and bad times -
BASH: Yes.
BLITZER: -- and she stayed with me throughout. This is sort of an illusion to that, I would suggest.
TAPPER: Ax made the point that it would be stronger, I'm saying it is a decent subject for a debate because when you think about the relationship of [23:55:02] the Clinton's, it is clearly a nontraditional relationship. We can't pretend that it is like Wolf and Lynn Blitzer. It is a very different relationship. I mean, he, you know, -- they're very high powered and often in different cities. From when she was Secretary of State, she was jetting around the world.
BASH: Right.
TAPPER: It's not the same thing, they're meeting, you know, the story, whatever it was, I'm thinking - I'm trying - about this quote "To Kill a Mockingbird" instead, but when I was in the Spring of 1971, I met a girl or something like that. Their meeting is the way that normal people meet but their lives together have not necessarily been, although he tried to talk about the moments that we can all identify with: having a child, taking the child to college, et cetera.
BASH: The other thing I thought was interesting and that part that you were going to play, really, sort of eludes to that, the idea that she -- that they're trying to make her two dimensional because that's easier to fight against, and him noting that never mind when she was a sympathetic figure in the Nineties because of the Lewinsky scandal, but more importantly when she was Secretary of State, she did have a lot of Republican support. I mean, I watched it and I heard them -
TAPPER: Sure.
BASH: -- and he is right about that, that it changed the minute she became the political opponent.
BLITZER: Bill Clinton spoke for 40 minutes tonight. Whatever you say, he is Bill Clinton and he is unique. Still ahead, a powerful image: Hillary Clinton breaking the glass ceiling as the Democrats celebrate her groundbreaking nomination; stay with us.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
