>> c-span has been delivering unfiltered congressional coverage for 45 years. here's a highlight from a key moment. >> it's hard to speak after 25 years. i've been retired from baseball for 25 years. and none of the numbers that were on the back of my card have changed in that time. they're all the same numbers that i retired with. and so it's been a long waiting process. thank god it happened while i was still on my feet. sometimes it happens posthumously and i really deeply appreciate the veterans committee. and as henry said, those are some of your peers that voted you in. particularly i talked with yogi bera who was on the committee and i talked with peewee rees who was on the committee. i talked to bill white, one of my teammates from philadelphia,

after the vote was taken today. so it's deeply appreciated. >> c-span, powered by cable. wen milwaukee and are joined by the president of the national federation of republican women. julie harris comes out of arkansas. she spoke last night at the convention. miss harris, what's it like to walk out on that stage, see that, what does it feel like? guest: well, i was there representing the national federation of republican women, 60,000 members strong, many of them were in the audience, so it was energizing to look out there and see all of their special signs, hear the cheers, to know that i have their support and was there representing them, it was exhilarating. host: how long have you been inv

olved in nfrw? guest: over 20 years, but i'm the newly elected president, took office in january. with it being a presidential election year, we hit the ground running. there was no time to learn on the job. you had to come in with experience and for motivating the grassroots. that's what we are known for. what makes us so successful is our women are involved at every level in politics. our values and our strength is at the local level. we are 86 years old, celebrating our 86th birthday. we have been doing grassroots for 86 years and are quite good at it. host: 2004, 20 years ago you said you been involved. what motivated you to join the national confederation of

republican women -- national federation of republican women? >> i was invited. i was interested in doing what i can. i had been screaming at the tv, seeing the various media and their spin on things and i wondered if there was anyone else that cares about our country as much as i care about our country. what do you do, what do you do with this passion for your country? at the time i was homeschooling my children and was invited to some type of leadership meeting -- i didn't know at the time but it was. my children were doing a school project with the homeschool community where they needed to cover the election and collect information on both parties. that's actually how i first found the republican party and was invited into the leadership meeting. turns out it was actually a phone bank [laughter] . [laughter]

so, that was my first experience with republican women, immediately going to work. host: when we hear about so-called women's issues, we often start with abortion. is that fair? guest: i do not think that's fair. the democrats and the media like to paint republican women were any women, talk about the women in america, as one issue voters. we are not. women's issues are american issues. it would be fair to say how do you message women. certainly women and men look at things differently, different things appealed to us than they do to men. maybe the package in which to carry those issues to women might be different, but the issues are the same. it's a safe and secure country, meaning we have to have borders. you are not a country if you don't have borders. nothing racist, nothing unpatriotic about wanting to

seal the borders. you can be the wonderful melting pot that we are here in the united states and still have secure borders. women want to feel safe and secure. they want to know that their daughters can go jogging without the fear of being murdered by someone who shouldn't even be in our country. like i said in my speech, women want to be able to see their families. they don't want to just survive, they want to thrive. you know, our grandparents, their parents, they talked about the american dream. that's what makes us so great in america. we want our children to have the chance to have that american dream as well. we want to be able to afford housing, college, and go on vacation host:. numbers are on -- vacation. host: numbers are on the screen if you want to join in the conversation this morning. julie harris will be with us for another 20 minutes or so.

we will put the numbers on the screen, go ahead and dial-in. what do you think of the republican platform this year and the way it -- you can yell at me if you think i'm saying the wrong word -- downplay the issue of abortion. guest: so, i was on the platform committee and i represented arkansas's nfrw with 27 members on the platform. we actually had i believe it was 83, 87 of our members that served on the rnc committee going into convention. the platform went from 60 six pages down to 16. i wish i had a fit me so i could pull it off on the screen for everyone to see. it's a pocket platform. all of the major planks, it wasn't that the language was taken out because we no longer support it, but it was put down

into a condensed easy-to-read format. it's still in there, we proudly support families and life. israel is still in there. that's an issue i care very much about. i'm wearing my american israel peace pin. the language was also reduced concerning israel. we still stand with israel. marriage, sanctity of marriage is still in there. i think there has been a lot of misinformation and certainly we all have our special interests and the things that brought us to the party that we would like expounded upon. when you expound upon one issue, you have to expound upon all. the different planks are important to different republicans within the party. we are still a pro-life party, that is still in there. i understood the concept of making it a document that the average voter could read, that our youngest voters could read.

i'm ok with it. certainly, i have certain languages i would have liked to have added, but overall i was ok. it's a good platform. host: "new york times" poll has joe biden bleeding amongst women voters by 8%. do you think that the republican party today is a big tent party? guest: i think that we are. i think that being a big tent party doesn't mean that you have to compromise on truth. you can still know what a woman is and be a big tent party. those can coexist. i think we are a big tent party. also seeing the women's support of the republican party all and president trump, it's growing. i'm out there traveling the whole country, speaking to thousands of women. certainly most of them are republican women, but republican

women, our 60,000 women represent their local communities. it's not just women at a national level. they are in a town, county, state. as i'm traveling and speaking to them, they are giving me feedback. these are grassroots women. the ones who win elections, from school boards all of the way up to the u.s. senate in the presidential election. as i'm hearing from them and given them talking points on our issues, i'm getting great feedback and i think we will see the number arise this election. host: we will show a little video from last night, a woman spoke to mention. here she is. [video clip] >> if we have four more years of biden or a single day of harris, our country will be badly soft. for the sake of our nation, we have to go with donald trump.

[applause] but there is more to it than that. we should acknowledge that there are some americans who do not agree with donald trump 100% of the time. i happen to know some of them. i want to speak to them tonight. [applause] my message to them is simple. you don't have to agree with trump at 100% of the time to vote. take it from me, i haven't

always agreed with president trump. but we agree with more often than we disagree. [applause] we agree on keeping america strong. we agree on keeping america safe. we agree that democrats have moved so far to the left that they are putting our freedoms in danger. i'm here tonight because we have a country to save. a unified republican party is essential for saving her. host: julie harris, what's your reaction to nikki haley last night? guest: i thought she did fantastic.

i agree with her. one of the things i've been speaking to since january is that there are not enough republicans who think just like me to win this election. there are not enough republicans who think just like nikki haley, governor sanders, or even president trump to win the election, but collectively together we can win the election. i think of republicans as a wide spectrum and we need the whole spectrum to come together to win . nikki haley's speech was fantastic and i really appreciated it. i think it did a lot to unite the party. host: how much of your time in a week is spent with the nfrw? guest: 60 to 70 hours per week. our president lives in alexandria, right there close to the nation's capital. so, for i guess a year and a half now, for my two years as president, i'm often on the job

24/7 and in the office anywhere from 40 to 60, 70 hours a week, and traveling, it's a full-time job. host: moving from your home in arkansas to alexandria, virginia? guest: correct. i keep my home in arkansas, my family is there and my family comes to see me but i am primarily there in our nation's capital. host: let's take some calls. chuck, you are on the line with julie harris, president of the nfrw. caller: good morning. i'm nervous, i keep hearing biden mentioning charlottesville being the reason he entered the race. he keeps mentioning it in his speeches, trumped calling nazis good people. i was curious about that.

i read the speech in the only thing i can conclude is that biden is either trying to divide america, he's ignorant, or he's a liar. i read the speech. anybody can tell that it was about the statues being torn down and there are good people on both sides about that situation. i don't want them to tear down george washington's statue. who does? that would be crazy. host: any comments? guest: first of all, thank you for calling in, love the accent, makes me feel like i'm home. not from alabama but that's a familiar sound to me. i agree. i hate to see so many statues torn down. you can't erase history. statues, monuments, landmarks, these are things we take our children and grandchildren to. we talk about history. it's an educational moment.

our country has come a long way and our effort to have a more perfect union. i don't know, you know, it's a political soundbite that biden uses to say what about why he got in the race. it's meant to divide. it's meant to bring in or excite and enrage the black voter in the hopes that they will come to the democratic side. seeing that demographic become more republican amazingly enough that i'm thankful for it, we are seeing them turn to trump. realizing that just like the rest of the country, we were all better under a republican presidency. i don't think that these soundbites are going to work in this election. host: next call is from lynn,

herbert saville, north carolina. caller: thank you for taking my call. i just wanted to ask why people don't seem to realize that this whole thing is a money game. money. it's sort of obscene, absently, -- actually, that elon musk would be donating $45 million a month for a job that pays $400,000 a year. this is on both sides. it seems to me that the people that have lots and lots of money, it is in their interest to keep us all divided. they do that by talking about race, talking about this and that. we are at one another's throats while they suck all the money up to the top. so, any comments? host: julie harris? guest: well, i would say it is up to us on the ground, citizens

of america, the grassroots, to unite. certainly, there is always something informing us, but if we are educated, and by educated i mean do our own research, engaged in the process, you are left with those who are flooding the system with money. when i first got involved in elections, we would persuade and go door to door, phone call and educate the voters. we need to get back to that. i think that having a generation where the information is in the palm of their hands and where we look to get our facts on little soundbites, tiktok, instagram, facebook, it's a serious influence on a person who looks at their facts and that way. but i would say that we need to do our part.

if this is something that matters to you, get involved, join the republican women. we will put you to work and show you how to unify the party. we are quite good at it. host: the next call is from takoma park, maryland, democratic line. caller: i've been listening to the republican national convention over the radio and i'm just a little dismayed over this blatant untruths being told. the ideas of prisons being emptied into the u.s., our daughters not being safe because of the border. there is no evidence to support that whatsoever. there's been a decrease in violent crime since 2020. just because of this idea that things were better under trump than under biden, i think it comes with a little bias

timewise. people don't exactly remember correctly. this idea that presidents control gas prices, which they don't. just this reoccurring theme that the life of the average american is better under trump than biden is unfathomable because biden is doing tangible things for working-class people around student loan debt, forgiving medical debt, expanding medicare and medicaid. host: we got it, let's get a response. guest: the facts are just not what she is saying. if you are even tuned into the news, you see crime rates going up. it's the illegal criminal immigrants coming across the border. we cannot forget these stories. lincoln riley and many more. the facts are there. the data doesn't support what we just heard from the caller. we were better under a trump administration.

host: how does miss harris feel about project 2020 five getting rid of the department of education, ending title ix protections for women in education. that's from jesse in albuquerque, new mexico. guest: i certainly support the title ix project and 2020 five, project 2025, i will be honest with you, i haven't dove into that enough to give an expert opinion on it. it's something i intend to read. getting 60,000 women activated and motivated in this election has taken a great deal of my time and i am certainly not an expert on it. i have heard of project 2025 and look forward to hearing more about it. i have quite a few friends at the heritage foundation and i'm sure that they will fill in the gaps, but i don't have a lot to say about that this morning.

host: how many conventions have you attended? guest: my fifth, keeping in mind that in 2020 we didn't get to go, but it's my fifth time being a delegate. host: compare and contrast, you have been through 2004, 2008? guest: well, this one is energizing, of course, and i'm sure a lot of it has to do with the fact that we saw an attempt to assassinate president trump during the convention. watching it at the beginning and on television, following the pennsylvania rally, we had a lot of our republican women there to rally. watching in the hotel room, i was with friends. to see the president go down in that way and then get up, to show his strength and come in to this convention, to see him

standing strong and to have that real emotion that he had to. sometimes we don't realize that these public figures are also human. they have real human feelings. to see him come, to be strong, to be strong enough to show emotion, it was energizing. in that way it's been fantastic. now, security has been extremely, extremely tight, that's been somewhat difficult to navigate. but once you get to where you are going, it has been fantastic. host: have you had a chance to get into milwaukee at all outside the perimeter and if so, what has been your experience? host: yes, so i went with the arkansas delegation on saturday night, maybe sunday night. i've been here for almost two weeks now. my days are running together. we went out on lake geneva. we did a boat ride, it was

fantastic, i loved being with the arkansas delegation. i have found that the everyday folks walking the streets here in milwaukee, they seem unphased by all of this, friendly and hospitable. a beautiful city when you look over the lakes and the rivers. so, it's been great. host: the next call comes from joyce in portland, oregon, welcome. caller: thank you for taking my call. miss harris, i'm a black woman. i was raised up during the jim crow era. i know a little bit about abortion and that and everything. i have a friend who was molested by her uncle. she was too young to have that baby. she died.

my thing is, i know the republican party, they think they know what's best for all america, but you can't get anybody to vote for trump. i don't dislike the man or anything like that. i pray vigorously that he's ok. thank god that he was. but he has said some terrible things about black people. and everything. i went through hell and high water growing up in the jim crow era. i lived in a time when my parents couldn't vote, but had to pay taxes. so, either way the pendulum falls, i don't think it was so great under him. he was very chaotic. he didn't want certain states to have certain things and everything.

i tried to be even keel about everything. i understand about life. but my friend, we were both young. she was molested by her uncle. host: i think we've got an idea where you're going with the conversation. let's hear from julie harris. guest: i'm not aware of awful things that president trump has set about the black people or the overall community of any minority group, for that matter. i would say that i'm a little bit not sure how to comment on that. i just haven't heard them. i know that we are told that. i know that the media tries to make him out to be a racist. i haven't seen that. as far as jim crow laws, those are democratic policies. that was a reaction to the republican policies that came before it.

so, that again falls on the democratic party. i really can't even answer for it because it was republicans who were plotting against the jim crow laws and trying to make our country, as i said earlier, a more perfect union for everyone to be treated fairly. host: julie harris, who was your favorite for veep before j.d. vance got tapped? guest: well, i would have to say my own governor, governor sarah sanders. she was fantastic, she was the real deal. what you see coming out of arkansas and how great she is, her strength, i can tell you that that is really who she is. certainly, we would like to see our own arkansas daughter up there. but i am happy with who trump has picked. i really didn't know, i wasn't

trying to put my pic out there, but we were all secretly hoping and arkansas for our own governor because we know how fantastic she is. but in some ways we are happy that he picked j.d. vance, we get to keep our governor for the rest of her term and hopefully another term, a total of eight years. host: one more call with julie harris. mount hope, arkansas, republican mine. do you know where that is? guest: i do know where that is. good to hear from someone back on. host: go ahead. caller: good morning, how we doing? thank you for taking my call. i'm the last call, so i get at least two minutes. [laughter] i gotta tell you, joe biden, he caused me thousands and thousands of dollars. -- costs me thousands and thousands of dollars. i retired military, 82, have my

own business. when he took office, the first thing he did along with 17 other items, he stopped the production in our country with the oil. you don't have oil? you just at a disability with other countries. we are buying oil from communist countries, now. i can't name them. i'm too old. that was a mistake and he won't admit to that. another mistake he made, the open border. now we have untold amounts of people in this country. we don't even know where they are. host: we are going to leave it there and thank you from calling in. where is your home and arkansas, julie harris?

later today we will bring you coverage of the rnc. to be spanned will be on the ground with a preview starting at 6:00 m.astern te where we will take your calls leading into the start of the rnc around 6:45 then we will return at the convention around 11:00. you can watch live coverage of the preview shell and the convention right here on c-span, the c-span now video app, and online at c-span.org. during our coverage of the convention this week, c-span folk with father michael bertram from st. ben's parish in milwaukee about the state of the city's homeless population during the rnc and his church's outreach program.