[ back the blue ] >> i don't have to tell you here the choice in this election has never been clearer. and the stakes have never been higher. we're taking our case to the american people this week. but it will be you and the millions of americans involved in our party and every state and territory of this nation will be carrying that message to the phone lines and to the front doorsteps of the american people. and it's the reason why i wanted to be here today. and it's the reason why i got a good feeling you might just see a friend of mine at the republican national convention today.

>> because we wanted to say thank you. thank you for all the work you have done, and all the work you will continue to do in the days ahead. in the car on the way here, i was on the phone with more than 5,000 volunteers all across america. we're going to be getting people together in your state and in every state and territory across this land. we already have the largest grassroots campaign in american history, and we're going to secure 2 million volunteers before election day. >> it's really about re-electing this president for four more years. but it's about an agenda. it's about an agenda that made america prosperous, more prosperous than ever before. before this great global pandemic struck our nation about more americans were working than ever before. in the midst of this pandemic as

i'll speak about wednesday night, the leadership of this president and the compassion of the american people shone forth. and we'll continue to work every day. until we put this coronavirus in the past, when we re-elect president donald trump, remember, it's going to be four more years. that means more jobs, four more years means more judges. four more years means more support for our troops and our cop cops. it's going to take at least four more years to dwayne that swamp. so men and women of the

republican national convention, it's on. now is the time, this is the moment for each of us to do everything that we can in our power to re-elect this president, this team for four more years. let's do our part to elect republicans up and down the ballot, let's re-elect a republican majority in the united states senate, and let's make sure that leader kevin mccarthy is speaker. in a new republican majority in the united states house of representatives. [ applause ]

so we've all got work to do, and i know you're up to the task. i saw the way this party, this movement led our nation back in 2016. and i just know each and every one of you are going to do your part this year. to re-elect this president, and elect and re-elect republicans with strong sound conservative principles every day. you know, there's -- i heard the other day that democracy is on the ballot. but i think we all know, the economy is on the ballot. law and order is on the ballot. our most cherished of ideals and ideas of free market are on the ballot. that's why we need four more

years of president trump in the white house. [ crowd chanting ] >> i'm going to slip away, because i have a feeling somebody else will be here before too long. as i said, i'll have more to say about the action that you took today come wednesday night at ft. mchenry. but i mean to tell you, it's the greatest honor of my life to be your vice president. and i'm going to work my heart out to be your vice president for four more years. and i'm absolutely convinced that if all of us do all that we need to do between now and

november 3rd. if we organize, if we mobilize, if we hit the phones, if we hit the doorsteps, we do our part in every state and every territory of this country, we're going to elect and re-elect republican leaders all across this land. we're going to re-elect president donald trump for four more years and with your continued support, and with god's help. we're going to make america great again. again. thank you all very much. it's an honor to be with you today, god bless the republican party. and god bless the united states of america. >> mike pence in charlotte,

north carolina. good day, i'm andrea mitchell. he's been speaking at the republican national convention. president trump is about to hit the number of delegates to make him the nominee. the president prepares to make the case for four more years, during a convention that will be optimistic and upbeat, a theme of law and order. a friend and he would make way for someone else who's about to appear. we know the president is in shashl charlotte, he has landed. it's a critical moment for president trump. he's behind in the national polls. his sister called him a liar in recordings taped by mary trump. and were obtained by nbc news. this week, we expect to see a

clear contrast in things with the democratic convention. the republicans do have live events with live audiences. they will use the white house as a stage for the president and first lady, an unprecedented break with practice that the white house is supposed to be off limits for campaigns. joining me now, monica alba and kristen welker, rick tyler, author of a new book, and nbc presidential historian michael beschloss. it seems the vice president just laid out some very clear themes, he talked about law and order, second amendment rights, he talked about the -- being against abortion, against reproductive rights more broadly, those were the themes he talked about, and he talked about the economy which is not so great now, but he's talking about it, putting the economy first. >> it really stood out to me

that he framed it as the message we heard from former president barack obama last week in his address when he said democracy is on the ballot. mike pence directly taking that message on, saying in addition to that potentially being at stake, all those things you listed, the economy saying law and order is on the ballot. you can see a preview of how he wants to make that argument in contrast directly to the democrats, that is something we're really watching for here, a big departure from what we saw last week, we have an in person delegate count coming together. a community of 336 or so. scaled back, far more people than we're used to seeing in this pandemic. and color from the room. the delegates were all supposed to be wearing masks. there's an ordinance in the city of charlotte for indoor gatherings of this size. before the event officially started, we saw an inconsistent mask usage, also, they're trying to be socially distant.

consider the irony here, charlotte, the site of the original convention which had been in the works, then the president uprooted to move it to jacksonville, florida. which he had to cancel because of the pandemic. today in charlotte, i'm sure he will thank the delegates, express his appreciation for that formal renomination. and something that's different from four years ago. we expect the state of florida to put him over the top. we expect to see a lot of the president, tonight he'll be appearing in some fashion by a campaign official as well as throughout the rest of the week when the action moves to washington. andrea? >> kristen welker, let's talk about what we do expect to see tonight, we saw the president getting out of air force one and getting in his car. we assume that he's heading over to the convention center right there. what about tonight, what are you going to expect to see when the rest of the convention convenes

with major events in washington as well? >> well, andrea, republicans are saying that this is going to be a more optimistic convention than the democrats. tonight's theme will be the land of promise, but they're starting off with a message of fear. they're going to paint a picture of what they will try to argue will be joe biden's america if he is elected. one of the things that is going to be striking about this congress vengs, is that this is largely targeted to the base, you're going to see that in the speakers that we hear from, a number of president's family members, don junior slated to speak tonight. and also, members of the gop party, key figures. we're also going to hear from the mccluskey's tonight. the missouri couple, that gun wielding couple at those black lives matter protesters. their defense is, they felt as though they were defending themselves and their home from

those protesters and president trump has been quite defensive of them as well. we will hear from them, we will hear from nikki haley and tim scott. why is this significant? if you look at what the democrats did last week, we heard from a range of different speakers, republicans john kasich, colon yin powell, range speakers from the democratic party, progressive speakers like senator bernie sanders and aoc. it's significant that this convention is going to focus so largely on the base. and based on my conversations over the weekend, this is an embattled president, this is a strategy that worked for him in 2016, so he's repeating it. will it work this time around? we also know that based on our polling, some voters who voted for him in 2016 feel alienated, are not sure they're going to be voting for him this time around. he can't afford to lose any of those voters, andrea? this is a real attempt to make

sure that none of his republican voters jump ship, but it's a risky strategy when you have the deficit that you are seeing with joe biden right now, andrea. >> we should point out -- i don't know whether they didn't add the delegates correctly. nevada has put the president over the top. it's not a big surprise, but he's officially the nominee of his party. not florida as we had been told by the republican campaign and convention organizers. the family will be front and center. we already saw ivanka trump getting off the plane with the president. we'll see a lot of headliners from the trump political party but not so many from the old line republican party, and many more today coming out against the president, including jeff flake and a large number of former lawmakers as well.

>> andrea, i think the strategy emphasizes it is no longer the republican party, but it is in fact the trump party, and the base mobilization strategy is what got trump to his pathetic poll numbers, and he's not been able to expand the base, which is what he'll need to win re-election, he won in 2016. because hillary clinton was not a popular candidate on the democratic side. he also lost because many of barack obama voters stayed home in wisconsin, pennsylvania, michigan and a lot of voters in detroit, philadelphia, pittsburgh and milwaukee, decided not to vote at all. and now all those constituencies are going to vote, and donald trump is going to try to appeal to his base. well, that's fine with me, but that is a losing strategy. look at what the republican party platform is, it's a list -- since the 1860s of the

republican party's beliefs for people to look at it and see what it is they believe. this year's platform doesn't exist, it's just a resolution that says we believe in donald trump, we believe in america, his america first agenda. there you go, that's the trump republican party of today. and it's really sad. >> they did not even adopt a platform, just in a resolution as you point out. there are a number of things unusual about this congress vengs. the use of the white house is not against the law for the president and the vice president, they are not covered by the law against using, having anyone on the white house staff campaign from the white house. they are the two people that are exempt. no staff can work on it, and the changes to the rose garden, i wanted to ask you about that. >> as close as a president has come before was 1940, franklin roosevelt accepted the democratic nomination, the convention was meeting in chicago, roosevelt stayed in

washington. there's a room at the bottom of the white house that in those days was called the broadcast room, roosevelt gave his acceptance speech from that room, but that's nothing like having a big political partisan rally on the south grounds of the white house, we've never seen that before. in a national convention, and the white house, as you mentioned, andrea is changing. the rose garden, which jacqueline kennedy and her friend redesigned in 1962 with crab apple trees and the splendid array of flowers. an awful lot of grass. >> let me see, michael if we can put up those pictures. there's a before and after you tweeted out yesterday. if we could show people those crab apple trees along the colin aid which have now disappeared. i think we have those ready. we really want to show the change. if you can see on the left, the beautiful flowering trees that

have always been there since jackie kennedy and her friend mrs. bunny mellon. now, for the first time you have a concrete walkway through the rose garden and some hedges. that's a big change. it's run by the national parks service, correct? it's not the white house historical society? >> yes, but this was done at the insistence of the president and the first lady. it's going to be a big change, we're accustomed to seeing john kennedy awarding medals in that garden, richard nixon in his last couple days in office in august 1974, walking with his daughter tricia, this scene is woven into the presidency, it's going to look extremely different from now on. >> that is the location where melania trump, we believe, will be doing her speech this week as well at the convention. and the south lawn, michael, we see -- we've seen pictures of a

stage structure, so that is going to be the president's acceptance. >> it's going to look like a rock concert. i'm agreeing with you, it's going to look like a rock concert with the sound equipment that's going up, and the lighting equipment. it's going to look like live aid or something, much more than a traditional political convention or the traditional things that have happened at the white house. one other thing if i could mention, we heard vice president pence talking about giving his acceptance speech wednesday night at ft. mchenry. just to illuminate what that's all about, ft. mchenry is where the star spangled banner was raised in 1814 about a month after the burning of the white house in the capitol in washington, d.c., by the british, which happened this day in 1814, so i'm supposed to know only about the past, but i will make a wild prediction, and my wild prediction is, wednesday night mike pence is going to

say, this is a metaphor for america in 2020, we went through the bad time, and now we're going to have a renaissance. >> and in fact, monica alba, you're still there at the convention itself where the president is heading that way, we should be seeing him shortly, they did get the permit today from the national parks service for fireworks on the national lawn on thursday night when the acceptance speech is given. >> exactly, andrea, it's interesting, because we saw that scene of fireworks from the biden/harris ticket about this came about a week and a half ago when republicans applied for the permit, there were a lot of ethical concerns, there were questions about how the national parks service, the staff, employees would be abe to work on something like this, on the national mall set to take place after the president's speech on thursday night, after he

formally accepts the renomination on the south lawn as you're discussing. that permit has been approved and they will be reimbursed fully by the republican national committee and the interrupt campaign, those staffers will have to be the ones working on any of the fires and the production around it. government employees are prohibited by the hatch act, working on anything for political gain. this is where you have a lot of murky territory this week. speech writers for the white house are working on remarks for the first lady and the president for those respective speeches on tuesday and thursday. they do so again in their capacity, they have separate laptops they write more political speeches on versus the official white house remarks. all of this will be fascinating given who is in attendance. they would have to say they're there in their personal capacity, that's how kellyanne

conway will appear. this question comes up when you think about ivanka trump, who will be introducing her father on thursday in her personal capacity they say, but from the white house south lawn. we can't stress enough just how unusual it is. we do expect now, we can report fireworks will be launched from the mall after that speech, no big balloon drop for either convention this year, the democrats or the republicans, instead, i guess in a pandemic, you have to sub those balloons for fireworks. we expect the motorcade in charlotte could be arriving momentarily, and we will be expecting the president to address the delegates. now, again, this is unusual that you have a convention, and you have the president sort of speaking during the daytime, ahead of the prime time programming this is someone who took notes and is a reality television producer at his core, and said i want to be featured and i want to be a part of this, more than i saw vice president joe biden featured. that's why you're likely to see

him speaking here today, he'll have an event in asheville, north carolina later and then in south carolina. tonight at the white house, we see him featured in the programming, in videos or another surprise which they continue to tease plenty of those throughout the week, andrea. >> kristen welker, one thing that was definitely not in mike pence's speech, we did not hear any mention of covid-19 or the pandemic. >> we didn't, and i am told that while there will be elements and moments throughout this convention that address covid head on, for example, we're going to hear from front line workers, president trump expected to thank some of those front line workers. this is not going to be a centerpiece of president trump's speech when he delivers it on thursday night. why is that significant? vice president biden did make that a key part of his speech, he laid out the steps that he plans to take to address the

covid crisis, and he said, that essentially he wants to do that first before the economy can really start to have a resurgence in ernest, and so that is a key part of his platform, andrea. joe biden talking about the need to get out rapid tests, a mask mandate which is somewhat controversial. president trump is going to take a different tactic, he's going to be more forward looking and looking beyond the coronavirus crisis. i want to go back to something that monica was talking about, which is, hugely significant, i think, which is this fact that you have the president speaking in the white house, which is a departure with tradition. i've been talking to republicans throughout the weekend, i can tell you a number of them are very uncomfortable with that decision. one top republican telling me, even though these are extraordinary circumstances, it does not justify using the white house as a backdrop for a political event. that is one of the things that we will be watching for this week.

as this remarkable and extraordinary convention gets underway. or i should say, gets underway against the backdrop of these extraordinary events. andrea. >> indeed. kristen and monica and rick. 23 you will stand by. another breaking story today, live pictures of capitol hill, where the postmaster general is testifying -- being grilled really, before the democratically led house committee. a bill the republican senators will not take up, and the president said if they did, he'll veto it, i'll have the latest from the hearing coming up. you say that customers make their own rules.

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the postmaster general louis dejoy is on the hot seat today getting grilled by the democratic led house oversite committee including delays in mail delivery and its possible impact on mail-in voting. >> after 240 years of patriotic service delivering the mail, how can one person screw this up in just a few weeks?

now, i understand you bring private sector expertise, i guess we couldn't find a government worker who could screw it up this fast? it would take them a while. the president is running this post office like a business, like he said, he's runging it into the ground. >> actually -- >> will you put the high speed machines back. >> no, i will not. >> you will not? >> will not. >> threw go. >> this comes after a rare weekend vote where the house passed a $25 billion emergency funding bill for the postal service, the senate is not expected to take it up. joining me now, msnbc's garrett haake who's on capitol hill and former democratic senator claire mccaskill joining us. first to you, garrett. this hearing is contentious, more contentious than the senate led hearing last week, it really isn't going to do anything, is it? >> contentious is a nice word for it. these house hearings have a

tendency to generate heat more than light. i think we're learning some interesting things here, you played the end of that exchange, you see dejoy really digging in on the question of restoring some of the cuts to service that have happened. the removal of the high speed sorting machines that have been reported on. no matter what you think the motivations are, they're not going back, i don't think they're needed. the other thing i've been struck by, and we alluded to this on friday, this refusal to show his work. there were a lot of questions in the senate hearing where folks would ask him, can you bring documentation of the reviews that you took before taking this step? can you tell us who you spoke to or what other effects you considered, they asked him for information by sunday night, so it could be useful on monday. in this hearing, he's refusing to provide that documentation. and in the interest of cutting overtime, actually told one of the questioners that he made it his business not to ask who gave that order, so that the idea of not showing the work, not seeing

the follow through, isn't a bug, it's a feature of the way he's running this postal service. so in the broader sense of whether it will affect legislation being passed, the house has passed its legislation, and as you pointed out, it's not going anywhere. i think we are learning a little bit more about how we got to this point. >> and claire mccaskill. it really is striking me as political malpractice for the republicans, the elected republicans, senators who are identified with taking on the postal service, which is known for its reliability in war and in peace in past pandemics, 100 years ago. and it's so important for farmers, especially rural america, mostly red areas for the military, getting their mail back. it's just -- it seems like something that is mom-and-pop and apple pie.

>> yeah, very, very popular, especially in the most red areas of the country, is the postal service. there's one inescapable reality after these hearings, that is the mail slowed down after this guy took over, period. and by the way, this controversy, the misinformation, the politicization of this issue, really is owned by the white house. donald trump publicly started talking about the unreliability of mail-in ballots, which is untrue. and this guy knows it, as do most of the people in congress who vote by mail. so he really started -- the president started really calling into question the reliability of the mail service as it relates to ballots. you juxtaposition that against a new guy taking over and on his own saying we're going to stop running trucks at certain times and the mail slows down and piles up in the middle of a pandemic, and that is what we're

faced with today. and the republicans are losing on this issue with the people out there. that's why you saw 26 republicans break with the president and vote with the democrats on saturday. >> and garrett, i heard congressman cooper from tennessee talking about trucks going out empty, just being sent out with nothing on them? when you talk about mismanagement, another issue i have not heard raised. maybe it has been when i was on the air and we were covering the actual rnc, the postal service by law is required like no other business is, and no other government agencies or semigovernment agencies, public or private, to completely fund their pensions and all their health and welfare funds, which no business could survive without running a deficit. that's when the deficits started piling up. it's true they're running deficits, you can't run it like a business if you're funding and required to put that money aside for all your pensions, which

does not happen in any private sector, in any business, they put a downpayment on it. >> andrea, i started to dig into this on friday, my understanding is, the pension portion of this, is consistent within government, but the health care funding that the post office has to do is more onerous than it would be expected certainly, in any of its private sector competitors. this is not the u.s. postal business, it's the u.s. postal service, it's not been run in that same way. as to cooper's comments, i think this is instructive, and it speaks to senator mccaskill's point, why you had so many republicans crossing over to vote on saturday. every single member has a post office in their district, who has postal employees who vote, and constituents that get and receive mail that's important to them. unlike so many other issues we get rapped up in here in washington. this is absolutely real to everyone involved, and everyone has a story.

it's not hard to humanize this, and make it very personal for a chief executive in this case of this postal service who democrats in particular believe is just falling down on the job. whether he's deliberate when i tripping over his shoes to do so is the thing we don't yet fully know. >> and the other thing that was brought up today, really very aggressively, senator mccaskill is the whole issue of his conflicts of interest which are alleged by the democrats that he has not disclosed funding, he has investments in competitors to the mostal service. he's not met the standards, he's denying that, that was certainly put on the table today. >> yeah, the whole thing stinks. how he got there, i mean, this is unusual that you would have a postal board of governors all put in place by one president. every single person on this board of governors was nominated by president trump. the way that mnuchin stuck his

nose into the nomination of this guy, and his financial conflicts. and you wrap that up with donald trump talking about houp mail-in ballots are not safe and secure. they're seeing their mail slowed down, that's real people feeling it, and all of the protests on the republicans by this committee that this is some conspiracy. that's a truth they know is true in their districts and they're responding to that by so many of them siding with the democrats trying to get the post office funded appropriately. >> it's like the pandemic, what do you believe, the president or your lying eyes. they're feeling it for real. we're going to go back to the convention where they are now introducing the president. let's go back to kristen welker, monica alba. the president is about to come out on stage.

monica. >> so florida was technically the state that came just before the president who's now taking the stage -- yes. >> and i'm sorry, monica, because as we can see, the president is on stage. and they did take things out of sequence in terms of where it went over the top, but he's out on stage, he's at the convention, which has just renominated him. [ crowd chanting four more years ] >> if you want to really drive them crazy, you say 12 more years. because we caught them doing some really bad things in 2016. let's see what happens. we caught them doing some really bad things. we have to be careful, they're trying it again with this whole

80 million mail-in ballots that they're working on, sending them out to people that didn't ask for them. they didn't ask, they just get them, and it's not fair, and it's not right, and it's not going to be possible to tabulate in my opinion. it's just my opinion. we have to be very, very careful. and you have to watch, every one of you, you have to watch, because bad things happened last time with the spying on our campaign, and that goes to biden, and that goes to obama. and we have to be very, very careful, to be very careful and this time they're trying to do it with the whole post office scam. they'll blame it on the post office. you can see them setting it up. be very careful and watch it very carefully, we have to win, this is the most important election in the history of our country. this is the most -- you know, for -- [ applause ] >> -- a long period of time, i would say, well, 2016, how special was that evening? was that one of the great

evenings? that was one of the great evenings. we have to be very very careful and we have to win. our country is counting on it. this is the biggest, this is it, our country can go in a horrible, horrible direction or an even greater direction. and before the plague came in from china, that's where we were going. we were going in a direction like we had never seen. the most successful economy in the history of our country. the best unemployment numbers in history for african-american, asian-american, hispanic american, women, college students. bad students, good students, everybody. if you had a diploma, if you didn't have a diploma, it didn't matter, you were doing well, everybody was doing well. and we were actually coming together, you know, success brings people together. maybe better than anything else. success brings people so many times they say, we're divided.

well, we were very divided under president obama. very divided. people have no idea how divided. they didn't talk about it as much, they didn't say it as much, but we were really coming together. and i was speaking with democrats all of a sudden, because the success -- the markets were at an all time high, and by the way, take a look at what's happening with the markets. take a look at your 401(k)'s, which you problably do every hour. take a look at your stocks, we're close to breaking the record. and nasdaq has already done it. nasdaq has broken the record i think 16 times already during a pandemic. hopefully we'll call it the final phase of the pang demick, biden the other day said, no, he would shut it down, he listened to some guy say, and i would shut it down. we just broke a record on jobs, an all time record.

there's never been three months where we've put more people to work. over nine million people, and again, we're just about ready to break the all time stock market record. i mean, you look at it -- we're just about ready to do it again. and what that means is, everything else is ready to follow, very smart on wall street, everything else is going to be there, the economy is coming up rapidly, our farmers are doing well, our farmers are doing well, because i got china to give them $28 billion because they were targeted by china. i got the farmers $28 billion. 16 and 12 about in spite of the pandemic. our farmers did a great job of supplying food and all of the difficulties during this period of time. but we're getting ready to do things like nobody's ever seen before. but the best way to bring unity is success, success brings unity

and we were there, and then we got hit with the plague. but we won't forget that. i want to thank the people of north carolina, because to be honest with you, i felt an obligation to be here. you have a governor who's in a total shut down mood. i guarantee on november 4th it will all open up, it will be fine. on november 4th, you know, these democrat governors, they love shutdown until after the election is over, because they want to make our numbers look as bad as possible for the economy. our numbers are looking so good. frankly, i used to say -- well, maybe not, i don't think so. we have a super v. it's now looking like it's a super v, our automobile numbers are incredible, both used cars and new cars, our manufacturing numbers are incredible, we're putting a lot of manufacturing jobs to work.

the previous administration said we would need a magic wand. i don't think so. we are putting them back, bringing them back. think of your life just prior to the plague coming in, it was the best it's ever been. your state had the best numbers they've ever had, ever had by far, and we had the best employment numbers also. we were up to 160 million jobs. we were never anywhere near that. and then we had to shut it down, we saved millions and millions of lives, we learned the enemy, we learned all about the invisible enemy. how it affects really people that are older, especially older people, the elderly. but older people with problems with heart, with diabetes, with other problems. and we learned. and most of the country is right now doing very, very well. they've done an incredible job, and to have a man sitting on

television the other day say, oh, i'd shut it down. like it's easy, shut it down. by the way, when you shut it down -- we shut it down and we reopened. that's what we're doing now, we're well into it. if we didn't shut it down at that point, we would have had millions of people dead, millions of people. you see the numbers, the job that mike pence and the task force and all of us together have done has been incredible what we've done, what we've achieved. whether it's ventilators, supplying equipment to governors that were totally ill prepared. many of the governors were totally ill prepared. nobody wants to say that, but it's supposed to work that way. federalists, the governors are supposed to do it. many of them did a fine job, most of them didn't have the equipment they should have had. few of them had the ventilators, which are very complex machines

and hard to make and hard to manufacture and expensive. and we're right now making thousands of ventilators a month, and sending them -- we have all we can use, our whole country, every state, we're stocked, we're stocked. i always say it, i'll say it again, there's never been a person that needed a ventilator that didn't get a ventilator. every single person that's ever needed a ventilator, with all you've heard with how much -- they said we didn't have, again, i took over a country whose military was depleted and whose cupboard on this front were bare. the cupboards were bare. we didn't have anything. we didn't have a thing. we had very, very little. and we did a great job. we haven't been given -- and it's not for me, it's for the incredible people, the generals, the admirals, the doctors, the nurses, and yet you saw

yesterday remdesivir, you'll see vaccines pouring out years ahead of what they would have been under a more traditional -- let's use that term, because it's a nicer term, a more traditional administration where they would have taken years with this stuff. we're coming up with it like nobody's ever seen before. the fda, i want to thank dr. hannah, alex azar, they've come with things and done things that have never been done in terms of speed, and frankly, in terms of quality. if you look at what we're doing and what we're coming up with, drug companies are coming out with vaccines that are -- i've seen some results already, it's going to be very, very soon. they're in stage three trials, it's unheard of. we wouldn't be there for two years if this were a more normal situation. so i just want to thank everybody for being here. and --

>> thank you. >> i felt an obligation to come to north carolina, it's been a place that's been very good to me. you know, we won a lot of victories here, i haven't been doing this that long, but i won every chance i had in north carolina, i even stole a great chief of staff from north carolina. and he left congress as a very popular guy. he could have been there for a long time if he wanted. by the way, you have a fantastic young gentleman going to take his place, he's a fantastic young guy, he's going to be a real star in the party. he's going to be a real star in the party, i want to thank everyone from north carolina, i do want to show a little bit of a difference, because another state that's been very good to me is wisconsin. and joe biden was going to have their convention in milwaukee,

and they didn't go there at all. they don't do this. we did this out of respect for your state. we didn't do this for any other reason other than respect for the state of north carolina. we said we wanted to hold our convention in north carolina, i think you're going to remember that, frankly on november third. we wanted to hold our convention in north carolina. so i did that out of respect. and if you had a governor that would have let us have some people -- he actually told me this, we had an arena that holds 19,000 people, it was totally jammed, sold out, every hotel was full. i called him, he said, but we have a shutdown going on. and according to the rules and regulations -- now, this is 19,000, he did say it, i don't think he'll deny it, but he said, according to the rules and regulations, the most people you're allowed to have in that room -- meaning that arena, he viewed it as an room.

he said the maximum number of people we could have in that room was 10. i said, can we meet in the middle. i felt so badly -- economic money, let's have our big deal, the roll call, let's have it right here, let's do it, i'm going to show up and i'm not going to tell anybody. until a few minutes ago, nobody knew i was coming. so. what's more important than the roll call. you're calling it. >> we love you, mr. president. >> i have to tell you, we're going to do a lot of things, i'm going to go over briefly, we're going to make a speech on thursday night, i hope you're all going to be listening. because i came in -- i'm on air force one, and air force one has

more televisions than any plane in history. they they've got them in closets, on ceilings, floors, you can't escape a television. i turned to cnn and they didn't have this, they weren't having it, can you believe it? have it. no, no, cnn didn't have our roll call. i turned to msdnc, as i call it, msdnc -- which is truly a branch of the democrats, right? i wouldn't say fully owned corporation but is certainly a fully controlled -- or they control them. nobody really knows who is controlling who, but they had it on television. i remember watching it. and it was interesting. you see the different states and we say this and we say that. the great state of alaska, the great state of alabama, the great state of north carolina, the great state of -- all of them. and it's very interesting to me. they had theirs on.

but they didn't show it. instead they're showing the scam because they're trying to show the post office, so that when their whole mail-in thing fizzles they'll try blaming it on the post office. so they're showing these hearings that are very boring, actually, and they're not showing this either. they weren't showing this. and fox had it on but, unfortunately, fox wasn't showing it too much because they had the announcers talking, talking, talking. i said i want to hear what they're saying, the delegates. i want to hear what they're saying. i think we had to switch over to c-span or oen or somebody. i wanted to hear them. but i can promise you -- i can promise you a few things, number one, we will not be taking the word god out of the pledge of allegiance. [ cheers and applause ] like they did a number of times at their caucuses. they took the word god out. i heard it. i was listening. i said, that's strange.

sort of weird. you've heard it all your life, right? under god. under god. those two words are missing. i said, oh, he must have made a mistake. he must have -- maybe the teleprompter wasn't working or his book wasn't working that i have right here. something wasn't working. must have -- the problem was then the next day i heard it again. that's not a mistake. and then they immediately went into a mode, oh, no, no, no, we didn't mean that. we didn't say it for the convention. that's where they're coming from. that's where they're coming from. you can say it or not say it. that is where they're coming from. just like with energy, they don't want energy -- not working well in texas, by the way. just looked at a poll. by the way, just came out that we have received 51% in the big and very important rasmussen poll and my numbers actually went up during the democratic

national convention. 51%. >> four more years! >> think of it -- >> four more years! four more years! four more years! four more years! four more years! four more years! four more years! >> thank you. >> four more years! >> i love this state. i like this place. and you're from all over the place, but this has been a good one for me. no, but think of it. so we're at 51% in rasmussen. did you read about it? did you hear about it? they give you these suppression polls where they do registered voters instead of most likely. it's supposed to be likely. in other words, how about you? you're likely to vote? but how about you? you're registered but i'm not voting. you see under their plan where they send these ballots, you don't have to want to vote. you get the ballot and then they have harvesting.

they have guys that go, do you want to vote? no, not really, but i have a ballot. who is it for? sleepy joe biden. i'll put it here. okay, could i have it? and they'll take it. in fact, harvesting is illegal in your state. they wanted to put a republican, a fine man, a pastor, they wanted to put him in jail because he harvested. now they want to make harvesting legal all of a sudden. they'll put him in jail as a republican, right? if he was a democrat they wouldn't be thinking about it. in california they do the same thing. no repercussion. in north carolina you had a fine pastor, a fine man, they got him on harvesting. they wanted to put him in jail. and now they want to make it all so that everybody can harvest because they know it's not a good thing. people who don't want to vote will be sitting there, making them -- if you talk about 80 million ballots, it could be higher than that. i used to say 51 million. now it's 80 million. sir, you're obsolete with the 51 million.

all right, what is it? 80 million. i said, 80 million? how is it possible -- think of it. they'll be dumping them in neighborhoods. people will be picking them up, they'll be bribing, paying off people to grab some. and it's common sense. this has nothing to do with politics. it's common sense. anybody -- you don't have to know politics. they're going to mail out 80 million ballots. it's impossible. they have no idea. who is mailing them? mostly democrat states and democrat governors. supposing they don't mail them to republican neighborhoods, that means they're not going to get them. they're going to complain and the election will be over and they'll complain and they'll say, oh, well, we didn't get it. big deal. in the meantime, you might lose the election. this is the greatest scam in the history of politics, i think, and i'm talking about beyond our nation. and they act like they're

aggrieved, like by saying this we're saying such a horrible thing. we're not patriotic by saying this. no. we voted during world war i. we voted at the voting booth during world war ii. the pandemic, we're doing very well, and people know how to handle it. look at the crowds. they're doing very well. it's very safe. it's going to be very safe. if you have an absentee ballot where you request it, we're all in favor of that. absentee, like in florida, they have absentee is good. but other than that they're very, very bad. there will be millions of ballots. take a look at new york. take a look at virginia. take a look at new jersey. all different cases. they just had one last night. now they're thinking about recalling certain elections that took place with mail-in, and these are small, little elections that are locally based easy to run. not millions but thousands. hundreds of ballots.

these are small and they can't control it. they said 23% of the ballots were defective. what does defective mean? it means fraud, it means -- it means a lot of things that we won't get into because i don't want to be accused -- you see all the cameras back there. it's the fake news. i don't want to be accused of anything. what it means is they're trying to steal the election from the republicans. that's what it means, in a very nice way, i will tell you, they are trying to steal the election just like they did it last time with spying and we caught them and that included president obama and that included -- >> spy gate! >> that included -- let's be nice, biden. this can only happen in north carolina. but that included them and they got caught and then somebody said, well, what are you going to do? we can't attack a president. oh, i see. if it was me, we can't attack a

president. we caught him. we caught him cold. and they say we can't attack him he was at meetings talking about it. and, by the way, this was spying before and after. and i think it's a disgrace to our country. i think we can never let that happen again. but now they're doing something that in a certain way is more dangerous because it's more effective. they spied on my campaign, do you know what they found? nothing. but this is big stuff. this is stealing millions of votes and it's going to be very hard. now we're in courts all over the country and hopefully we have judges that are going to give it a fair call because if they give it a fair call, we're going to win this election. the only way they can take this election away from us is if this is a rigged election. we're going to win this election. we're going to win this election. >> four more years! four more years!

>> so just -- i'm just saying we cannot have these live, some people call them universal, these live mail-in ballots sent to everybody including mostly people that never asked for them. think of it. you're sitting there, you get a ballot. here's the bottom line. it was just given that in the polls, believe it or not, that -- because the polls try and treat us -- that's why i respect rasmussen because they did well. a few of the others feel a same way and they did well last time. those are the ones i look at, the ones that did well last time. and rasmussen was very good. if you look at it, every single vote that they have, every single vote, it's going to be looked at. a man is sitting, or a woman, sitting waiting for nothing, watching television, has no enthusiasm because on enthusiasm the polls are saying that i'm up by massive numbers. not just a little. i'm also way up on the economy, by the way. way, way up. but i'm up by massive -- and

when i say i'm up, we're up. so if you could, please -- >> we love you, mr. president! >> up by massive numbers on enthusiasm. our voters are saying, i'm very angry about this. i'll go to the poll directly and vote. but their voters are saying i don't care if biden gets in. he doesn't have any enthusiasm. when you go to ohio, when you go to wisconsin, when you go to north carolina, when you go they have the trump/pence sign on their lawns. indiana, too. indiana's great. bobby knight, we love bobby knight. they love us and we love them. indiana is great. thank you. if they don't enthusiasm, you say, are you going to vote? i'm not getting up to vote. okay. i want to watch television. all right. but here's a ballot. he opens it, here is a