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CNN Live Event/Special

Trump Flouts Norms, Speaks from White House to Accept GOP Nomination; Trump Speech Had 20+ False or Misleading Claims; Trump Defends Coronavirus Record in Front of Crowd Not Wearing Maska. Aired 12-12:33a ET

Aired August 28, 2020 - 00:00   ET

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

NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: See what that does for white moderates, what it does for African-Americans, too.

[00:00:06]

I thought what was so interesting about tonight was how boring Donald Trump was, how low-energy he was, how disconnected he was from the words he was speaking.

GLORIA BORGER, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: They weren't his.

HENDERSON: Even -- yes, I mean, even the attack lines on Joe Biden were delivered so flatly at the sort of end of the speech where you're supposed to kind of go up. It's -- it's like a crescendo and sort of a hopeful message. I mean, he was, like, going down. I mean, he was very limp, I thought, in terms of --

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: He was exhausted. I mean, it had gone on for a long time. I mean --

HENDERSON: He was exhausted. He was exhausted. You're right. He was exhausted. Which is why they probably shouldn't have -- have him speak for 72 minutes, or whatever it was. It might have been more effective to be, you know, shorter and much more conversational. Because I mean, it was -- He didn't really live up to, like, the strong commander in chief of all the videos we saw throughout this week. He was just out of it, I thought, for that whole hour.

BORGER: Look, this was teleprompter Trump.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes.

BORGER: And we know that he is low-energy, because these aren't his words.

But let's look at the evolution of the way -- and -- and David was talking about -- the way they've gone about defining and redefining and redefining Joe Biden. They've had a really hard time with it.

At the beginning, it was Ukraine, President Zelensky, the perfect phone call, and Joe Biden is corrupt. Somehow, that didn't stick alone. Then it was Sleepy Joe Biden, and somehow, seniors didn't kind of like

that. Their polling among seniors started to dip a little bit. Some may still like it. I think if it were up to Trump, he might have said it himself tonight. But that wasn't the message that his people want him to have.

The message that we've all been talking about, that they finally got, is that he is this stalking horse or this Trojan horse for the radical left. The demonstrations play into that. The shootings play into that. And they're going to continue to play that out.

And I think, Anderson, when you interviewed Joe Biden today, he was right out front about it in saying, yes, they're using this. They want more violence, because they think that it's going to help them.

And I think that's where this debate sits right now. Because they want to get it off of COVID. They don't want to remind you how many people are dying in this country every day. They want to be maskless, standing on a stage in the White House.

And Joe Biden wants to talk about COVID, and they want to talk about him and how he is dangerous. And there's a question. Will that label stick to Joe Biden? Dangerous.

AXELROD: Yes. And can Biden, frankly, can the Democrats take this argument up and ask people, do they believe that Donald Trump is a calming influence?

BORGER: That's right.

AXELROD: Is he the guy who can really bring peace to our streets? He's had the chance. He's provocative. He's certainly not calming.

COOPER: Yes. Our fact checker, Daniel Dale --

HENDERSON: Yes, and you saw -- Yes, you saw --

COOPER: Sorry.

HENDERSON: I think you saw Kamala Harris try to make that argument today, say the president you've seen for the past four years will be the same president you see for the next four years.

COOPER: Yes. Biden today was saying we need to kind of tamp this down. We need to kind of de-escalate things. Our fact checker, Daniel Dale, joins us now.

Daniel, certainly, there's a lot to break down from the president's more than hour-long speech.

DANIEL DALE, CNN FACT CHECKER: Anderson, this president is a serial liar. And he serially lied tonight. I counted, preliminarily, more than 20 false or misleading claims. I want to go through a whole bunch of them quickly, because I think it's all important.

Trump said Joe Biden is, quote, "talking about taking down the border wall." Biden has specifically, explicitly rejected that idea. He just said he'll stop further additional construction.

Trump claimed, as always, that he is the one who passed the Veterans Choice Law. Barack Obama signed that into law in 2014. Trump signed a 2018 law to modify it.

Trump said, "I have done more for the African-American community than any president since Abraham Lincoln." That is ludicrous. Lyndon Johnson, for one, signed the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act.

Trump, again, touted a, quote, "record 9 million job gain" over the past three months. He didn't mention, as usual, that that gain follows a record 22-million-job loss over the previous two months.

He said he'll, quote, "continue to lower drug prices." They've increased during his presidency. He said they opened the Jerusalem embassy for less than 500,000. Early documents show it was at least 21 million. He claimed NATO member spending has increased for the first time in about 20 years. Spending, in fact, rose in 2015 and in 2016, before he took office.

He said he will always, and Republicans will always strongly protect people with pre-existing conditions. That pledge has already been broken. He and they have repeatedly tried to weaken those protections in Obamacare.

He claimed again that he banned travel from China and Europe. No, he imposed partial restrictions with many exemptions. Tens of thousands of people continue traveling over.

He boasted about the COVID testing system and about his general response. Look, experts near universally say the U.S. was fatally slow in its response, especially slow in setting up adequate testing.

He said that he ended what he called the NAFTA nightmare, and he signed a brand-new U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, the USMCA. That agreement preserves, maintains most of NAFTA.

[00:05:07]

He boasted about building about 300 miles of border wall. What he didn't say is that most of that is replacement barrier. As of August 7, according to official data, just five miles have been built where none existed before. He suggested that Joe Biden would confiscate guns. That's baseless. Biden is running on a non-mandatory buyback of so-called assault weapons.

He said Democrats want to defund the police. Biden, again, doesn't, has rejected that.

He said he has, quote, "very good information" that China wants Biden to win, because Biden is soft on China or cheerleads for China. The U.S. intelligence community says China wants Biden to win, because it sees Trump as unpredictable.

He said Biden vowed to close down charter schools. Biden's plan is skeptical on charters, but would not abolish them entirely.

He denounced Biden for voting for the Iraq War. Biden did, indeed, vote for the Iraq War, but with Trump doesn't mention is that he also supported that invasion.

He said Democrats twice removed the word "God" from the Pledge of Allegiance at their convention. Two individual caucus meetings outside the main primetime programming did leave it out, but it was uttered in every primetime event.

Trump denounced so-called "cancel culture" as, like, an insidious left-wing thing. He, Donald J. Trump, has tried to give dozens of people and entities canceled, fired, boycotted, including literally last week, Goodyear.

He said he imposed an order to give 10 years in prison to rioters. That's a maximum, discretionary sentence up to judges in existing laws. His order just asked the government to fully enforce.

And he said that Biden's plan would eliminate America's borders. No, just no. It's wrong.

COOPER: Oh, that's it? Just kidding.

DALE: There's more.

COOPER: Wow.

DALE: How much time do you got, Anderson?

COOPER: Wow. Daniel Dale, keep at it. Thank you.

DALE: Thank you.

COOPER: We'll check in with our other panel. Rick Santorum, what did you make of tonight and the week?

RICK SANTORUM, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Well, I think they did what they needed to do that they hadn't accomplished the last three nights, which is to -- to sort of rip the bark off Joe Biden. That was something that was -- I thought they were actually pretty easy on Biden for the first three days.

And I think you saw, you know, incredibly effective, not just the president, who I thought did a great job in -- in drawing the contrast of what a Joe Biden America -- I mean, that's what he had to do. What does -- what does America look like under Joe Biden? What's it going to look like under Donald Trump? What's he going to do? What's Biden going to do? I think he did that. I think he did it effectively.

I think the low energy actually works for him in the setting of the White House. It wasn't a rally. I think it was a more serious speech, and I think it came across that way well.

I think the most devastating attacks on Joe Biden were, frankly, a couple of -- a couple of speeches. The Muellers where I just, I mean, as -- you know, as the dad, just sitting there watching them talk about their daughter, Kayla, was just -- I just thought, you know, just devastating attack on the Biden-Obama foreign policy. I just -- that was gut-wrenching, as well as Ann Dorn, and talking about her husband, the police chief, that was shot.

I mean, I think those two -- those two segments are going to stick with people who saw them and have a -- have an emotional connection to people.

That's going to raise some questions about whether we're safe. Not just safe from the standpoint of security here at home, but whether we're safe and whether Biden, who Tom Cotton and others made the case, has made every wrong policy decision. Even the secretary of defense under Biden and Obama said, he's never gotten it right.

And I served with Joe Biden, and I said it on the floor numerous times, Joe Biden has been wrong on every foreign policy issue that I can remember, and he continues to hold that record. So I think they made a very effective attack on him.

COOPER: Van Jones.

VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Look, I -- I thought the speech was not great. It kind of felt like they kind of just dumped out the sock drawer. And so I don't think the speech was great. But I don't -- I agree with the senator that it was effective.

I just want to be very clinical. If you're a Democrat, we are now entering the real fight. There is now a coherent strategy to take down Biden. And they -- you can see now where they think they're weak and where they think they're going to have to move.

First of all, they're scared that they've lost white women. So they're going to try to scare the crap out of white women and try to get them back under camp. You saw that.

They think that they can scrape away some black men. You saw them going after that.

But tonight, you also saw a much harder play on this China card. They're trying to lock down the white, male, working-class folks who may, you know, have some fears about these trade deals.

We are going to have to get very serious now on knocking back all three of those -- those moves, especially the China piece. That China piece could be very dangerous for Democrats. And it's ridiculous, because I think that the thing that Trump has mishandled the most has been China.

China has risen to global supremacy. These trade deals are oversold. They've devastated farmers. But we're going to have to protect Joe Biden from this new China attack. That was the most -- I think that was the clearest that I've seen.

We now know what they're trying to do. We're going to get very serious. These guys have a coherent line of attack now. They showed their hand in this convention. Let's take it seriously and deal with it.

[06:10:09]

COOPER: David Urban.

DAVID URBAN, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Yes, so look, I think Van got it right. Game on right now.

I think, interestingly, I watched your interview with former vice president and was kind of set back on my heels about how just bad he was, reading from his notes while you interviewed him in a taped interview, you know. I can't wait to see this debate.

I think that -- I think that Democrats saw this week, they saw the production. They saw the people that came out. They saw how moving it was. I think they did an incredible job as highlighted earlier by Abby and Dana, in defining Joe pres -- Joe Biden as an empty vessel, Trojan horse, weak.

You know, not surprisingly, the vice president has now said he's going to get out and campaign. As Jake noted, you're going to see some really narrowing of the polls here.

And Anderson, remember, this -- this election last time was decided by 77,000 voters in three states. Right? So it's going to be incredibly close. Anyone who thinks it's going to be a blowout one way or the other is sadly mistaken.

COOPER: Yes.

URBAN: And, you know, stay tuned.

COOPER: Yes. I think you're right on that, David.

Governor, I mean, it's so fascinating to me how -- It seemed like Democrats have been very, sort of reciting polls over the last couple of months and seemed kind of smug, in some cases, of how, you know, far in advance in the polls they have been.

Do you still feel that way, and do you still feel that confident?

JENNIFER GRANHOLM, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: There is not a single Democrat that I have talked to, and I've talked to a lot of them, who feel smug in any way. Democrats know that, in 2016, there were a lot of people who were not counted in any of those polls. No one is on their laurels. This will close.

But let me say this. This tonight, just as a human, knowing a little bit of history, and watching this, I feel so -- so disgusted by the use, not just of the White House as a prop, which has never been done before, but the semi-truck of lies that were uttered by the president of the United States.

I mean, people are living in this COVID world. They see what other countries are experiencing, and they see what we're experiencing. I don't -- I guess I don't get it. I don't get how Trump can think that he can craft this escapist convention, and have people believe his world, and not what people are living in.

We yet -- Our people, our Americans, are six times more likely to die because of COVID than the other industrialized nations. That's not me making that up. That is just a fact.

I mean, he puts out all of these people of color and women, as though he embraces diversity. And yet, he has one African-American on his cabinet. Only 17 percent of the people in his cabinet are women. He has the most white males in his cabinet of any president of any of the past six presidents of the United States. And he wants us to believe that he is, like, Mr. Diversity.

It is -- the whole thing, to me, was constructed as one big lie. And that is so -- what's -- he's the president, you know? It's just very, very infuriating.

COOPER: Van.

SANTORUM: Yes. It's sort of -- it's sort of --

COOPER: Sorry, sorry.

SANTORUM: It's sort of typical for --

COOPER: Go ahead, Senator.

SANTORUM: -- Democrats to -- yes, it's sort of typical for Democrats to look at -- look at the issue of how it affects, you know, people of color, and to -- and to bring up quotas of secretaries of departments.

I don't think most people in America care what the secretary of the department is and whether they're meeting some sort of quota of what reflects America. What they care about is what are you doing for me? That's what they care about.

GRANHOLM: Of course. And so what policies?

SANTORUM: And Trump has said over, and over, and over that they are -- that he has done a lot for the minority community. He has focused on some of the big issues that are -- that are confronting, particularly, jobs.

JONES: Senator --

SANTORUM: (UNINTELLIGIBLE) That -- that's what the president wants to talk about. That's what he did talk about.

JONES: Here's the thing.

SANTORUM: And I think he was a credibly effective in doing so. And let me -- and let me just make one final point on -- on the pandemic, which is, look, what he made an effective case of today and what they've done at this convention is show that, you know what, Joe Biden wouldn't have done half the things that Donald Trump did.

JONES: Not true. SANTORUM: In fact, he was behind the curve. He criticized Trump in making some of these moves.

So I think it was -- it was an effective pairing that --

JONES: It's going to take --

SANTORUM: -- that Biden would have been -- things would have been worse under Biden than under Trump.

COOPER: Van.

JONES: There's so much there to respond to.

Listen, if you want to make the case, and that's apparently what they were trying to do, that this is a very friendly administration on the question of diversity, you are opening up the record. The Republican Party itself opened up that record.

[00:15:09]

And you may not care who has a job in the White House, and what color they look like. I'm going to tell you what. Representation does matter. I have worked in that building. I have worked with numerous presidents. Who's in there does matter. And I think it's a point well- raised.

The other point that you just said, I cannot tell you, before I get to the Kenosha stuff, to -- to look at all those people sitting out there. As many Americans -- enough Americans died, today alone, to fill up every one of those seats. And in the rest of the industrialized world, they have almost no cases.

Herman Cain was never mentioned. Think about that, a great African- American Republican, who died at an -- because he went to an event, just like that, a super-spreader event by the president. Died. Never mentioned by this party. That is -- that is, from my point of view, is just an unforgivable affront to so many African-Americans who have died and especially someone who went to a super-spreader event, just like that.

And then the other thing is this whole -- this whole failed attempt -- you've not got to run -- let's put it this way. You're proud, as you should be, of some of the good stuff they've done. That was not the stress on the speech. That was the stress during the night. During the night, it was beautifully laid out.

But the speech itself gave you the pathway. And the pathway is to scare the crap out of people about, essentially, black rioters, black crime, coming into the suburbs. That was the subtext of a lot of that speech.

So I think he actually rolled back. I think he actually rolled back some of the good that was done.

URBAN: Hey, Van -- JONES: And that's a dangerous path to go down. And I think you guys should be pushing back on that tendency in this presidency, and in this candidacy. It's a tale of two stories, but that tonight, the story that dominated, from that speech, was a negative story.

COOPER: David Urban.

URBAN: Van, it's -- this administration isn't scaring the heck out of people at home. They turn on their televisions, and they're scared out of their wits. Because they're seeing what's happening in their communities.

This administration isn't -- isn't coordinating what's going on in Chicago, or in the streets of Kenosha, or in D.C., or in New York City, or pick your place where -- where fires are being set. Seattle, Portland.

JONES: You don't think there's -- you don't think there's --

URBAN: This administration isn't doing that. This administration isn't scaring them. They're being scared on their own, Van.

JONES: You guys may see it very differently than I do. I'm going to tell you this. If you talk about -- everyone wants to talk about, like, Portland and what's going on there. That was one block, one city block. The rest of the city was totally peaceful.

If you look at FOX News, you would think the whole city was burning down. It was one block.

There's a demagoguing going on. Most of the protests are peaceful. Some of this rioting stuff that's going on in Kenosha, the white vigilante groups were in there burning stuff and killing people. There was no attack on those white vigilante groups.

URBAN: Let's condemn. I'm condemning that, too, Van. It's bad.

JONES: But I didn't hear it tonight. I didn't hear it tonight.

URBAN: To say this administration -- but to say this administration is scaring people, what's scaring people is the reality outside their homes, Van. That's what's scaring people. Let's acknowledge that. You've got to be truthful. No one's going to buy your stuff, Van.

GRANHOLM: And the -- and the reality is that this administration has been provoking it. There was a study that was done in --

URBAN: Governor, come on. This administration is not provoking it.

GRANHOLM: Would you please let me finish?

URBAN: No one's buying it, Governor.

COOPER: Let her finish. GRANHOLM: Let me finish, please. There was a study that was done in May. And 54 cases were documented of hate crimes where Donald Trump's name was invoked, where people were -- were injured who were people of color.

That study also went back to look back at Obama and Bush. Never did it happen under those two. But Donald Trump has created an environment that is giving permission for white supremacists, for the militia, to come in and feel like they can take people out with -- and have been blessed by Donald Trump.

URBAN: So Governor, Donald --

GRANHOLM: That is what's happening.

URBAN: Governor, you're saying --

GRANHOLM: These crimes have increased by 57 percent.

URBAN: I don't see any of those people burning down the buildings and looting. I don't see any of those people burning down buildings and looting.

GRANHOLM: They were coming in and killing people.

COOPER: Hold on. David, one of those people, a 17-year-old, killed two human beings. I know you care a lot about property --

URBAN: Anderson -- Anderson, look --

COOPER: I know you care a lot about property --

URBAN: Anderson -- Anderson, Listen --

COOPER: -- but human life actually matters, too.

URBAN: I condemn it. No. No, no, I do, I agree. Listen, I condemn that. It's a terrible thing. And that person should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

But Anderson, I didn't hear you calling to dial back the rhetoric --

COOPER: The night before -- the night before --

URBAN: Hold on, hold on.

COOPER: -- the McCloskeys were on and were treated as heroes --

URBAN: And I said -- and I said it was bad.

COOPER: -- for doing the exact same thing, only they happened not to pull the trigger.

URBAN: Listen, and I said it was bad. I don't think you should have the McCloskeys on. But I didn't hear for anyone calling, dialing back the rhetoric of Bernie Sanders, or the radical left, when a Sanders supporter went and shot up the --

GRANHOLM: David --

URBAN: Republican congressional baseball team.

GRANHOLM: David, Joe Biden has condemned violence.

URBAN: I didn't hear anybody calling for dialing it back on attacking the Republicans.

[00:20:06]

GRANHOLM: Joe Biden has condemned the violence.

URBAN: Did you call for dialing back aggressive rhetoric?

GRANHOLM: Donald Trump didn't say one word tonight. Joe Biden has been saying, we do not condemn -- we condemn violence. But Donald Trump has -- had his opportunity tonight to say something, at least acknowledging the pain of African-Americans who are being shot in the street. And he didn't do it.

He needs to take the temperature down. It's his responsibility, as the leader. It's his responsibility that 57 percent of -- hate crimes have increased by 57 percent under his watch. He needs to take it down. He's causing the fear out there.

URBAN: Listen, I think --

SANTORUM: Everyone needs to take it down.

JONES: Look, I wanted to --

SANTORUM: What the president talked about tonight --

COOPER: Senator Santorum, go on.

SANTORUM: What -- what the president talked about tonight was -- and he focused on, wasn't talking about vigilantism. He wasn't, you know, calling for violence. He was calling for law and order.

GRANHOLM: Well, of course not.

SANTORUM: He was calling for respect for law. He was calling for respect for the police. And -- and making sure that they had the resources to be able to do their job. And if they don't do their job, I mean, you've seen commercials.

You know, the people who are going to be harmed the most by the police not doing their job are the people in these poor communities. So you know, I --

SANTORUM: Let me just -- can I just jump in here? Let me just say, though, I know the administration likes to label itself as a law and order administration. I don't understand. Who thinks that black Americans don't want law and order? That black Americans don't want equal treatment under the law? For them, that is law and order. That is what they are asking for.

Everybody in America wants law and order, except for some extremists, on all sides. And those people should be condemned, and violence on any side should be condemned.

But Van, I don't hear a lot of protesters saying, I don't want to be treated equally under the law. I want special treatment. They just want the same kind of treatment that I would get, when -- if I call the police.

JONES: Amen, look, and here's the sad irony. The common ground here is the vast majority of people are against lawlessness. The problem that we have right now is that there are three sources of lawlessness. There's lawlessness in our police departments, all too often, where bad cops are getting away with stuff, and some departments themselves are way out of line. That's a problem.

You also have some street violence, which, again, people like myself have been marching for, you know, silence the violence, put the guns down, for years. Never get credit for that from the Republicans.

And then, to this third piece of lawlessness, these vigilante groups that are coming on, some of which are actual hate groups, which, under the Trump administration, we're not monitoring as closely.

So if you want to be law and order, you need to say stop the lawlessness from the police, and the streets, and the vigilantes. That's not happening.

Tonight what I heard was just a narrow focus on one piece of it: the rioting and the crime. And that begins to make people think you're exploiting it. Because if you're at -- if we're at the effect of all three in the black community, but only one is being called out, and I think that is the error that's being made by decent Republicans. But there's -- I fear that it's being exploited deliberately.

COOPER: We've got to check in with our White House correspondents --

URBAN: Van, I --

COOPER: Sorry, David.

URBAN: I agree.

COOPER: I want you to comment.

URBAN: We should dial it down.

COOPER: Dial down. Yes, amen to that. I think everybody should dial it down. I'm going to start dialing it down. So I'll -- I'll speak for myself. I'm going to dial it down.

Let's check in with -- let's check in with our White House correspondent. Oh, sorry, let's go to Wolf Blitzer -- Wolf.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: You know, it's interesting, Anderson, the basic theme of the president's speech tonight is when he said this was the most important election in the history of our country. There has never been such a difference between two parties, or two individuals, in ideology, philosophy, or vision, then there is right now.

I want to check in with our White House correspondents. Jim Acosta, first to you. First of all, what are you hearing from the White House about the lack of social distancing tonight? You had about 2,000 people sitting very close, and most of them were not wearing masks.

JIM ACOSTA, CNN CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Wolf. We not only heard a lot of gaslighting tonight, we possibly saw and witnessed, some super-spreading from this event.

And I talked to a senior White House official earlier this evening about all of these people, hundreds of people, sitting side by side in the audience, not wearing masks. And the senior White House official brushed off these concerns about the lack of social distancing at the president's speech tonight, saying, quote -- and get this, this, this quote me might blow you away -- "Everybody is going to catch this thing eventually." That -- those were the words coming from a senior White House official about the concerns being raised about this being a possible super-spreader event tonight.

Now, the president, repeatedly, whitewashed his record on the virus, saying he was focusing on the science and the data, making this false statement, again, at an event where people were sittings shoulder to shoulder, without wearing masks.

The way that this place, tomorrow morning, the speech tomorrow morning, and what we saw here tonight, may not be as important as what we see in a couple of weeks from now.

[00:25:05]

Recall what happened after the president's rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where you had staffers, you had Secret Service agents, you had people in that audience coming down with coronavirus. It reminds me of what a White House task force, coronavirus task force told me one time about the president's grasp of this pandemic. He simply doesn't get it -- Wolf.

BLITZER: And I just want to point out, Jim, and correct me if I'm wrong, you're on a platform removed from where the crowd was. So you weren't very close to anyone, right?

ACOSTA: That was exactly right, Wolf. And while I'm broadcasting to you right now without a mask on, throughout this evening, I had my mask on, as did our -- our entire team. We wanted to make sure we were staying safe here, Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes, which is smart. This is still a deadly, very, very dangerous coronavirus.

ACOSTA: That's right.

BLITZER: Kaitlan, you're over at the White House. So what's next for the president and his campaign? Usually, a presidential candidate, a Democrat, or a Republican, they wind up getting a bit of a bump in the polls as a result of their respective conventions.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's what the president's campaign is hoping for. It's not clear that will happen. But he has now formally accepted the nomination to be the Republican nominee. And tomorrow, he's already going to be back on the campaign trail, Wolf.

He's going to New Hampshire. He's got a rally in an airport hangar. I'll be there. And I've already heard from several sources who said they're already planning several more stops, because they want the president to be back on the road.

So you saw this event tonight, as Jim said, where there were so many people here. We're expecting the president to be on the road in the next -- much more often over the next 70 days.

But Wolf, one thing that came through very clearly in the president's speech tonight was they have heard the criticism that he has struggled and failed to lay out what his second-term agenda would be. He didn't do it until the end of a very, very long speech that was not edited down.

But he did list off several things that he wants to do, if he is reelected. Some of them, or a lot of them, are things that we have already heard from the president before. Two of them, talking about Social Security, and protecting pre-existing conditions, are two things the president has actively threatened in recent months.

But one thing that he said reminded me of what he said in 2016 when he was accepting the nomination the first time around. And that was when he declared that he would fix American cities. He talked about law and order. I think he mentioned it four times in his speech in 2016. And of course, you saw the president mention it again tonight.

The thing that the Biden campaign has seized on, and what they are using to push back on that, is Donald Trump has been president for the last several years. He's the one who's been in office now when he's talking about what those American cities look like.

So that's something that the Trump campaign, while they're back on the campaign trail, is going to have to square with.

BLITZER: Yes, that at the end when he listed what he wants to do over the next four years, if reelected, for all practical purposes, that's the Republican Party platform. There wasn't a formal platform this time.

COLLINS: No.

BLITZER: I want to bring -- bring back Jake, Dana and Abby.

Jake, the president flatly said, "We will have a safe and effective vaccine this year, and together, we will crush the virus."

Let's hope he's right, but there's certainly no guarantee of that.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: No guarantee at all. And we've been talking about that all week, the revisionism and the way that President Trump is trying to portray his leadership, or lack thereof, in the coronavirus pandemic.

With Kaitlan talking about what the president is doing, there are three things that I'm going to be looking forward, too, to find out as we go forward in this campaign, as it's a mad dash from here until November 3.

First of all, is there any bounce? I suspect that there probably will be some tightening that won't only be people going to Trump. I think there will be some shuffling of different groups. Perhaps some older white voters going to Trump.

Perhaps, the tone and tenor of this campaign this week is solidifying some of the soft Biden voters in the black and Latino communities, and independent young voters. I think you're going to see some shuffling of the subgroups when it comes to the polls.

Also going to be interesting to look at what happens in the states, like Wisconsin, obviously, where there is all this unrest.

Second thing that I think we need to keep an eye on is Trump. Does he stay as disciplined going forward as he was this week when he doesn't have this filter; when he appears live and not on tape; when he doesn't have the teleprompter?

I doubt it. But I think his -- his team would like him to be as disciplined going forward as he has this week.

And then the last part is what is campaigning going to look like from now until November 3? President Trump, it seems, based on what we've seen tonight and at -- in Tulsa and other places, wants to have rallies. And my guess is he's going to start having rallies, regardless of the fact that those rallies will be health hazards to his own supporters.

What is Biden going to do? Is he going to feel pressured to have some sort of events going forward, or is he going to stay as disciplined as he has been in terms of not spreading the virus, Dana?

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and Jake, the former vice president actually said at a fundraiser today that he was open to going out and doing some campaigning, which he hasn't done, in the most safe way he possibly can and in the states where the laws actually allow it, depending on where he's coming from.

[00:30:07]

This, if you kind of take a step back, is -- there was one thing that really struck me that the president said a couple of times, which is similar to what we heard from Joe Biden last week, which is that this is the most important election of our lifetime. We hear that a lot in campaigns. We're kind of all used to it as a standard stump line, but the two of them actually match in this case.

And there are a lot of people who actually agree with both of them. And the Joe Biden line, of course, is that it's about the soul of America, and that there's -- that the actual fate of democracy is possibly at risk.

And you heard Donald Trump push back on that, about using the word soul, trying to turn that on its head. And when you look at the sort of two ideas, there's a photo that I want to show that our -- that our team saw from outside the White House.

There were Black Lives Matters [SIC] protesters. And if you just look at that photo, how that is capturing what we were just talking about. The collision of that unprecedented event and the people outside, who by the way, you could clearly hear -- I got a text from inside -- inside the perimeter of the South Lawn. That speaks volumes, Abby.

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: It really does. And -- and Dana, you're right that I think that that does really capture what we are heading into.

I do think that, between this convention and last week's convention, we see a clear picture of both the Democrats and Republicans believing that their path to the White House is going to go through the suburbs, whatever that means in this day and age.

The Biden campaign, I think they believe that there are many people who see coronavirus as the top issue, who are repelled by the president's character or lack thereof, and are going to shift to the Democrats on those issues.

And on the Republican side, they are going hard on this law-and-order message, because there are some folks, perhaps some suburban women in the suburbs, who are looking at violence, and they're saying that this is a reason to not put a Democrat in the White House.

What we don't know is how many are there in each of those two camps. That is what the battle is going to be over the next couple of months. I don't think either party even knows the answer to that, either. And so this is why this could be the most unpredictable cycle that we are heading into in this fall.

We are battling over an electorate that we can't even fully define. I think both of these candidates are really just trying to do the best to get their folks out, Wolf.

BLITZER: Yes. This contest is only just beginning. What, about 67 days to go. Let's not forget, three presidential debates, one vice- presidential debate. It's going to heat up, big-time, over the next 67 or so days until November 3, the election.

Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon are standing by. They're getting ready to pick up our special coverage, right after a quick break.