>> the president makes his case for fou more years. president trump: this eltion will decid whether we will dend the american way of life or whether we will allow a radical movement to completely dismantland destroy it. >> as americans wrestle with another police shooting of a black man -- >> they st my son. seven times.. seven tim like he didn't matter. the republican national nvention rallies around message of law and order. but as thousands arrive in washington calling for racial justice, and the number of americans killed by the coronavirus tops 180,000, the democratic ticket pushes back. >> donald trump has failed at the most basic and important

job of a president of the united states. he failed to protect the american people. plain and imple. next.r: announhis is "washington week." funding is provided by -- >> when the world gets complicated, a lot goes through yourind. with fidelity wealth management, a dedicated advisorv can tailore and recommendations to your life. that's fidelity wealth management. announcer: additional funding isroved by the estate of arnold adams and koo and tricia yuen through the yuen foundation. committed to bridging cultural differences inur communities, the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions t your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you.

once again, from washington, substitung for robert costa, -- welcome toin "waon week." robert costa is off couldn't. republicans wrap their unconventional convention on thursday with president trumpmm ing democrats and presenting himself as the defender of amerin values. president trump: your vote will decide whether we protect law-abiding americans or whether we give free rein to violent anarchists and agitators andls crimiho threaten our citizens. the convention shattered long-standing norms and violated ethics law. the president used the whi house as a political stage, issuing a pardon and naturalizing citizens for the cameras. id the covid-19 pandemic, several speakers downplayed the some promoted questionable public health information. others fired new i roundsn the culture war being waged croorks

the country. viceenresident mike took aim at democratic nominee joe biden blaming him for protests in american cities. >> joe biden would double down on the very policies that are leading to violence in america's cities.ha th truth is you won'te fe in joe biden's america. meanwhile first lady melania trump shared a rare personal reflection on the president claiming he is best for the country. >> we all know donald trump makes no secrets about how heut feels a things. totaly hone what we citizens deserve from our presidenthether you like it or not, you always know what he> thinking. joining us tonight with more insight on the week our four top national reporters. maggie haberman is white house correspondent for "the new york times." errin haines is editor at large for the 19th. weijia jiang is white house

correspondent for cbs newsnd dan balz is chief correspondent for "the washington post." welcome to youll. and weijia, let's start with you. becauseou are out there traveling wit the president in new hampshire at his rally tonight. d the story going into the week from the democts last week was this is a nation in trouble. with the pandemic, the economy, and uncertainty ahead, you're with the president and his am do they think that they changedhat storyline? weijia: it is incredibly louder just because the crowd was he cheering for president. but i can tell you that what we ard tonight, what he's talkg about rig now is really an extension of what hep ented during his acceptance speech yesterday on the sou lawn. and, you know, the campaign promised that he would deliver praringsal message. e andas -- aspirational messagecaut e he focused so much on joe biden in order to draw that contrast it reallyn has b a long string of dire warnings to

americans about what kind of the country they would live in if t democrats were to win. and so instead o focusing on his priorities, and focusing on biden's, it's really not necessarily a hopeful tone. but rather one that sends, you know, stark warnings about w bt could basically saying that joe biden will demolish everying that you know and love about american life. errnes, pick up where weijia left off there. when you think back to the messagero delivered the r.n.c. stage each night, the topics they focused on, the voices they chose to elevaate, whos the audience they were speaking to? was it just the base or was there an fort to open the door a little wider? errin: i think who the president was speaking to was his america. you know, the president talked about the founding fathers and

ouisry's history as mostly white and mostly male. you know, the two americas were really on. displ the dual pandemics of coronavirus and racism largely not happening in the president's america. you had joe biden saying that he had talked with the family of jacob blake this week while the president didn't even mention jacob blake. nor a did heress the systemic racism around policing that has had protesters in the streets for weeks. instead, choosing to focus on things like cancel culture and, you know, the threat of looters and violenceha tis the minority of the activity that unrest acrs the country.ial and maggie, when you look athe location for that speech, where those remarks were delivered from, and caught a lot of atttion we've never seen the white house used in that way. the president even referenced it directly saying we are here and they are not. the lines were so blurred between the campaign and t

administration. was there any consideration or conversation aroundhat from the trump team and the campaign befo that speech? maggie: look, there certainly was an awareness that ey were doing something that no president has done and no president has done for a ason. no president has sought to use what is really the people's house to suggt it's their o home. the president literally did that last night. the president is not subjeo the hatch act but certainly the staff members who work for him who weren involved i aspects of setting this up are subject to the hatch act. however, it's unlikely to come to pass oro be enforced here in any way. and the president likes thumbing his nose at this look, if o presidentma or president clinton or president bush had done something similar, they would he been destroyed for it. obama and clinton by the conservative med. and that media would have been correct. so the media did something that he knows is so shattering of, you know, for all of th norms he has busted, this took it

much further than what we've seen before. he is playing to an image of, you know, the force of the presidency and he wants people to see that. whether that is going to be enough for people to come around to hiside given where his poll numbers are, i think is a big question. dan will the me ask you about some of the messages that the president delivered in that speech. cause it's not uncommon at a convention, right? to do some storybulling. tre wasn't a lot of policy. there were a lot of big ideas. a lot of ideas that are feeding into these culture wars that we meioned earlier. even among trump supporters, though, some of the top issues are things like the economy. so was it worth it for the campaign to spend that much t time ose kinds of issues that aren't top of mind for most? dan: well, i think frankly that he believes clearly that it is worth theime t spend doing what he did rather than outlining policy. although i hav to say this speech sounded in many ways more like a state of the union address than an acceptanc speech or a campaign speech.

there was so much in it. it ran 70 minutes. it was only six minutes shorter than his 2016 speech. but he did have an opportunity to tout aomplishments that he thinks people don't give him enough credit for. he did talk a little bit about a second term. but the bulk of the speech was to deliver a very harsh message about joe biden and a very harsh message about law and order in this country and what the -- what that would mean ifd is elected and it is a gamble but iebhink as sy said to me today, they did what they felt they had to do at this convention in order to start to move the campaignack in his direction. some of that messaging of course was that only president trump can move the country forwar so even as republicans predicted better days ahead, the nation is still grathling multiple crises. today, thousands marched in washington calling facial justice. just days after police in kenosha, wisconsin, shot jacob

blake in the back at least seven times. hurricane laur delph stated parts of the gulf coast this week and the pandemic has now claimed more than 180,000 american lives. even as -- dem rats continued to hammer him. here is vice-presidential nominee kamala harris.>> onald trump has failed. you see, attsost basic level, donald trump doesn't understand the presidency. he thinks it's all about him. well, it' not. it's about you. it's about all of . the people. democrats are now also planning to hit the campaign trail in the coming weeks while harris spoke from washington, joe biden said this week he will campaign in person in battleground states like wisconsin, pennsylvania and arizona after labor day. weijia jiang, i want to bring you back in here now because one of the lines we hear most often from the president when

he's attacking joe bidenth is biden is hiding in the basement. the announcement that biden will now hit t d road,s that take some of the power out of that punch? weijia: well, we heard sort of, you know, i what the president going to continue saying until we actually see biden emerge and hold events in person. and tonight, president trump saidll he's s in the bament. doing anything for another 10 days which is a lifime during this campaign season. time to continue to aack joe biden and torp s that attack. but, you know, at some point, he will have to fe the reality that the vice president, the former vice president, will be in fact meeting with people and really gearing t up meet him debate. face for their first but i don't think we should

expect mr. trump to stop tha line of attack anytime soon. because he really feels it worked for him. because it's a way that he can also attack biden's mental fitness wch we have heard time and time again as well. and so i think part of this is also understanding who else the president is speak to and it really is those moderate voters in swing states who he wants to who has the capacity to make sure their lives are protected as they know i t andt's why he is going all in with this law and order persona. that's why he is not acknowledging the rootf e unrest instead focusing on thet protnd the riots that have emerged as a result. dan balz, i want to ask you about this as we mentioned those states, wisconsin, pennsylvania arizona, the democrats lost those, wire

margin in arizona and can you tell me what is the biden-harris plan? 's the message that they're carrying into tse states? dan:he message that they're going to carry is that the problem that we areiseeing at oint is in donald trump's america. i mean, one of the issues about the law and order argument that donald trump h made consistently is that he will be able to stop this. but thiis happening under his watch. and i think that one of the arguments that we are hearing already from vice president bide is that donald trump has actually made tngs worse. donald trump has divided the donald trump has torn the country apart. and that if you want to get ck to a more peaceful america, part of the answer to that is to ect joe biden and not to re-elect donald trump. that they're going to carry into these states.

but again, in talking to people today, there is a sense on the rt of both -- some democrats and republicans that vice president biden will need to walk a careful line about this.h th may need to be more forceful in talkingbo the violence and denouncing the violence. so he's got tudnces he's got to worry about. but i think his main focus will continue to be that donald trump is the divider and causen of the mai problems. > dan, that message that you a central team at the r, it was republican convention. while that was happening, protests calling for racial justicenfolded in kenosha, wisconsin, in the aftermathf the shooting of 29-year-old jacob blake who was shot in the ck at least seven times by police. blake's family said he is unlikely to ever walk again. two protesters were later shot and killed, allegedly by 17-year-old kyle rittenhouse. he had spoken to the conservative website the daily caller moments before the shooting. telling them that carrying a

rifle to protect local property was, quote, part of my job. i want to ask errin aboutyo somethin mentioned earlier which was the fact that jacob blake's name, even though the shooting happenedun ony, really didn' even come up at the republican nation convention until a few days in. did that surprise you, didou expect someo mention it sooner? errin: well, you know, given that there was attention paid to the protests, although that attention was focused as others have mentioned on the -- on looting and violence,no you and given that the president is -- is touting his record on criminal justice reform you have been some recon of ould the national reckoning on race that is happening. again, on his watch this summer. but th isn't something that happened. and i think that that actually is in kraeeping with thal playbook that this president has been operated under, you know, that got him elected in

2016. that he used again in 2018 and that we've already seen him using in this campaign and headed into november. listen, you know, the president is -- the messaging that he's using is reay aimed at energizing his base. really aimed at expanding the electorate even though you did see kind of a parade of black peoplehen the lineup for r.n.c. this week. that is not reflective of his administration. that is not reflective of the electorate that got him into office. we know that black voters overwhelmingly rejected this edesident in 2016 and are not necessarily inclo vote for him in any large numbers headed into 2020.ra sm is on the ballot for a lot of black voters that i talk to. and, you know, them not hearing anything from this president in the wayf empathy orde tanding around george floyd, breonna taylor, ahmad arbrier, rashard brooks or others is not surprising to them. and the differce for those voters in particular is going

to be whether a biden-harris ticket how responsive they are could make the difference between those voters being galvanized to really turn out for them and the numbers that are going to oust incumbent president in general and this president in particular or whether those people stay home. maggie haberman, the president comes back to the white house in the words black lives matter are now painted in the nearby street. there were historic marches here in the nation's capital today. they continue. protests continue in cities across the country. and yet even during the convention, the president was talking about law and order. the president had athletes, black athletes, as errin just he mentioned and ballock republicans coming in talking about the fact he he right leader and there's a dissonance that's clear and is thatsonnable in t wks and months ahead?ig >> a difference between 2016 and now is there is an expectation that blacers will turn out in bigger numbers than they did last time. and that they are more motivated to vote after seeing

this president in action for four years. seeing his policiesg and see what he says. and hearing what he says. th anconsistent thing between 2016 and now is that the president has talked about law and order. itas a defining theme of his convention in 2016. it's a defining theme now. problem for him as dan correctly said is that the biden folks are going tot highliat this is -- he is the psident right now. not joe biden and joe biden said as muc thi week. but i do think that look, the president, a lot of what we saw in terms of themus fg on black voices during this convention was less a frankly appealing to black voters than it was about reassuring subban white voters and women who have recoiled from t president's a langua in some cases his policies to try to convince them to come back and vote for m. you know, frankly don't expect that to be a consistent theheme thatresident articulates and i do expect it to be a consistent theme his campaign tries to push. but as we have on seen, there is a split between how

the president conducts himself d on the trail what his campaign would like him to be doing. dan, we heard joe biden accuse president trump of fueling the flames of the unrest saying he's leveraging these protests for political advantage. when you look at a small dwestern city like kenosha, when you look at a place like wisconsin, does turmoil in the president?ere actually help the dan: well, we'll have to see what tnspires. you know, there has been some evidence that there's been at least some shiftn public opinion away from broad support for the black lives matter movement. what we saw after the george floyd killing obviously was just an outpouring of support and they -- the pollumrs moved significantly and have been moving significantly. we'll hase t whether that begins to move away fro support for the black lives matter movement. at the same time, what i'vebe

told a number of times is that that doesn't necessarily change the attitudes of people toward president trump. anso there continues to be a perception on the part of lots ofri ans, a majority of americans, that there are serious racial pblemshat have been left unattended and need to be attended to. so we don't know at this point look like in late september or mid october when people are actually casting their votes. if there is continued violence in the streets, certainly the president will do everything he can to point to that and warn that it would get wor under biden but it is a bit of a t. heavy l weijia, you are out there with the president and his team eling. there's a rally in the background and we hope you can still hear us. but we've heard again and again from the president and joe ct biden this en is historic, it matters that right now there is a battle for the

soul of the country. we've only.5 got minutes left but when you talk to the voters out there do they see it the same way? weijia: the voters here do. and the voters at trump rallies do. these are the a people w at the core of his base. and he feels f the energm them. he responds to them. and when we talk to voters, they do hear the president's very stark warning that everything that he standsis for t stake. because i think the campaign and certainly president trump himself have done an effective job at paintingon theseasts and portraying joe biden and kamala harris as these left radicals w will again tear apart everything that they believe in. and so when you come to these rallies, certainly. but again, it's not necessarily theseoters who attend, who -- that they really want to focus on. it's those peoe who have not

decided. and there's still a lot of time betweenow and november and the campaign thinks as they continue this message, that they'll be able to court some of those people. there is still l of time indeed. and that is it for tonight. for this conversation. many thanks to the reporters for joining us tonht. that's maggie haberman, errin thank you all vy much for lz. your time. well. ank you for joining u we're sorry we have to leave you a little bit earlier this week. it's so you tan suppors show and your local pbs station. our conversationti will ce on the washington week extra. find it on our social media and on our website.od ight from washington. he[captioning performed by national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accucy. visit ncicap.org]

fnouncer: corporateding for "washington week" is provided by -- >> when the world gets complicated, a lot goes through your mind. with fidelity wealth management a dedicated advisor can tailor advice andmm redations to your life. that's fidelity wealth management. announcer: additional funding is provided by the estate of arnold adams and koo and t patricia yueough the yuen foundation committed to bridging culturalifferences

in our communities, the broadcasting and by ic contributions to your pbs station from viewers lik you. thank you. an

uncer: this program was de possible in part by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thanyou. [applause and cheering] announcer: tonight join the american legends of rock, ptown and doo wop for a celebration of america's greatest songs. ♪ celebrate, celebrate, dance to the mus ♪ ♪ sugarie, honey bunch ♪ sugar pie, honey bunch ♪ you know that i love you god bless america! woo! announcer: 40 great ndcal groups and lejoin pbs in an american celebration of freedom. ♪ say yeah! ♪ yeah! ♪ oh, life could be a dre ♪ sh-boom, if i could take you off to paradise up above ♪ announcer: red, white and rock begins right now here on public televisio [cheering] jerry butlerwewell, well, well, , thank you, thank you,