Biden-Harris Campaign Preps For Democratic National Convention; White House Withdrawing Nominee To Head Bureau Of Land Management; Mass Protest In Belarus Following Allegations Of Election-Rigging.
BLACKWELL: So the Democratic National Convention starts tomorrow and President Trump plans to try to take some of the attention away from it.</s>PAUL: Yes. Part of the strategy to upstage the Biden-Harris campaign. The Trump campaign tells CNN they're spending an amount in the high seven figures on digital ads and hours before Joe Biden formally accepts the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday the president is going to give a speech from Biden's home state of Pennsylvania. CNN's Sarah Westwood at the White House, right now. What do we know, Sarah, about the president's strategy ahead of the DNC beyond this?</s>SARAH WESTWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well good morning, Christi and Victor. Yes, that strategy is appears to be distraction. The president will engage in some of the most significant campaign travel since the pandemic hit. He'll make a number of trips this week. Just tomorrow he'll be going to Minnesota and Wisconsin as the Democratic National Convention gets underway. Later in the week he'll be going to Arizona and then as you mentioned Thursday night, the night that Joe Biden will be formally accepting the Democratic nomination, the president is set to give a speech in Pennsylvania outside Biden's hometown of Scranton. So, obviously the president engaging in a lot of counter programming there in states that will be key to his re-election. In fact those four states are some of the places the campaign is focusing the most attention right now. So very significant travel for the president there. And his campaign will also be engaging in this very significant digital ad buy. I mean, keep in mind that the Democratic National Convention also primary digital and that is where the Trump campaign will be focusing their efforts. They've picked up some spots and some very prime internet real estate including the banner of YouTube which they purchased for 96 hours and some of those unskippable ads on YouTube and Hulu. And, in fact, people will be -- if they're watching those videos forced to watch some of these Trump ads during the Democratic National Convention so another way that the president will be counter programming the DNC. And that is something we saw him do throughout the primary. He would frequently schedule rallies or speeches, for example, on the nights of Democratic primaries and Democratic debates. So the president is very used to trying to create a distraction. And all of this will come as Kamala Harris, Biden's new running mate, will be stepping into the spotlight in the most significant way since she was added to the ticket. And the president, after elevating an article that questions Harris' eligibility to be vice president which, by the way, is not up for debate. She is eligible. The president was asked again about that article yesterday in his briefing and I want you to take a listen, his refusal to clarify whether he believed in that article.</s>D. TRUMP: I have nothing to do with that. I read something about it and I will say that he is a brilliant lawyer that -- I guess he wrote an article about it. So I know nothing about it, but it's not something that bothers me.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: But, sir, when you do that, it creates doubt.</s>D. TRUMP: Why do you say that? I just don't know about it, but it's not something that we will be pursuing. Let me put it differently.</s>UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mr. President, you know.</s>D. TRUMP: Let me be -- let me put it differently. Don't tell me what I know. Let me put it differently. Let me put it differently. To me, it doesn't bother me at all.</s>WESTWOOD: Let's just be clear, Harris was born in Oakland, California, so there are no questions there. The article questioning here eligibility appeared in "Newsweek" and the president had elevated it earlier in the week during a press conference. So, we are sure to hear the president launch more attacks on Biden and Harris though throughout this campaign travel and his speeches this week, Victor and Christi.</s>PAUL: All right. Sarah Westwood, appreciate it so much. Thank you. Let's bring in historian and CNN political analysts Julian Zelizer as well as Errol Louis, CNN political commentator and host of "You Decide" podcast. Gentlemen, good morning to you. Glad to have you with us. So we know from the communications director for President Trump's campaign and ads, Sarah was just saying, President Trump is the counter programming weapon, Errol. We know distraction works with parenting. Does it work in politics?</s>ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: We'll see is the short answer but, look, the reality is even if you could stick an unskippable ad on a lot of different screens while people want to do something else like watch their favorite TV series on Hulu, the question becomes, what is the actual message? Are you trying to convey to people in 15 seconds that all of what they were planning to hear from the Democrats just doesn't make any sense? Is it going to be one of these divisive messages about keeping scary, dark people out of your suburbs and all of these things that we keep hearing from the president? I'm not sure that's going to have the intended effect. So we give them credit, I think we should give them credit for grabbing a lot of prime digital real estate, but, again, the content of the message is really what's going to be key. I think there are going to be lot of people watching the Democrats to find out what their message is. They're kind of -- they have the initiative frankly at this point. They've got something new. They've got something different. They're talking about changing the country. Trump doesn't have any of those advantages and all of the digital real estate in the world is not going to change that.</s>PAUL: Julian, when we look back at 2016, what did the Democrats learn then about President Trump and the way he works and the way he strategizes that they might be able to use now themselves?</s>JULIAN ZELIZER, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, they learned they have to be more direct about what he's about and what he's saying. I don't think they have to be so restrained as Hillary Clinton often was in calling things for what they are. And the politics of distraction is his central strategy. He would do this throughout the campaign. He will try to distract the media. He will try to distract the Democrats from what they're trying to say. The biggest problem, though, for President Trump right now, is the more he speaks, the worse he does. So I'm not sure having more of President Trump out there in the next few days will necessarily hurt Democrats. It might be exactly what they need. It might unify them and it might remind many voters of what is going on in the country and how that connects to the White House.</s>PAUL: Errol, usually when an incumbent president is vying for another four years they work off what they've done thus far and where they're going to go. What do we know about where the president is going to go, in the next four years?</s>LOUIS: Unfortunately, that is all he's got as message is to say, if you listen carefully, Christi, what he keeps saying is we're going to have a great economy next year. Things are going to be great after we get a vaccine. He's projecting forward because the last four years have been a disaster. He can't talk about the economy because we have got mass unemployment. He certainly can't talk about controlling the pandemic because the numbers keep ticking upward. He's in a very difficult position when it comes to talking about his record. And so he has to talk about sort of a rosy future. Unfortunately, for him, people aren't feeling that. That's not what people are seeing. What people are seeing is we're still on lockdown, we can't figure out what is going to happen with schools in the fall, we've still got people who have yet to mourn their loved ones as this horrific number continues to tick ever upward of people who have died from the coronavirus. So he's going to have to try to imagine a new future and that's -- you know, he's a great salesman so we'll expect him to try that. But voters, I'm not sure, are in the mood for a lot of fancy talk when they're dealing with so many serious problems right now.</s>PAUL: And imagining a new future is going to be the whole crux of the Democrats' argument about what they're going to do and what they're going to change. I want to look up the lineup for the convention here starting this week. We've got the Obamas. We've got the Clintons. We've got Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren. How persuasive, Julian, are voices like this that are so popular in the party, at a convention, and especially at a time when it is going to be very different? This is a virtual event. And you have to wonder have people made their minds up already, is this going to change anything?</s>ZELIZER: I'm not sure it is going to transform any kind of public opinion. I'm not sure you're going to see any huge shift. But I do think Democrats have an opportunity to use this format in an effective way. For decades we've been talking about how conventions are more about what appears on the screen. So now it is almost entirely on the screen. And I do think it is an opportunity for Democrats to set the terms of the debate for the next few months. Even if they're not changing public opinion. To lay out what are the basic ideas of the party and how do they differ from what the administration and the Republicans have to offer. And to show case some of the brightest voices in the party. Not only the people at the top of the ticket, but also some younger legislators, candidates, and even citizens because of the virtual nature of this who are going to define what does it mean to be a Democrat in 2020. And so in that way I think they could use this very well to start the debate that begins now and goes through November.</s>PAUL: Julian, real quickly before I let you go. I'm sorry. Did you want to say something, Errol?</s>LOUIS: Just real briefly that keep in mind that this is a chance for affinity groups within the Democratic Party to make their own internal strategies. There are all of these different meetings that are going to happen outside of the primetime speech making and that's where a lot of the real work gets done. They get their marching orders. They make connections. They develop strategies, union groups, ethnic affinity groups, all kinds of different organizations within the Democratic Party. That is where the real work is going to get done.</s>PAUL: OK. So but, Julian, I wanted to ask you about this because you an op-ed out right now and you write that President Obama -- quote -- "initially reluctant to criticize President Trump in direct terms." That has changed the last few weeks. What do you think happened?</s>ZELIZER: Well, I think he's very concerned not just about the race but about the state of our democracy. And today, this week, he had comments about what is happening with voting, what is happening with the post office. And I think the former president has a huge role to play in being a truth-teller in the coming months about threats to our democracy and insisting that we preserve the basic mechanisms that allow voters to make their decision in November.</s>PAUL: Errol Louis, Julian Zelizer, it is always a pleasure to sit back and watch all of this with you and get your analysis. We appreciate you both. Thank you, sirs.</s>LOUIS: Thank you.</s>ZELIZER: Thank you.</s>PAUL: And a quick programming note for you. Be sure to watch CNN's special live coverage of the 2020 Democratic National Convention, kicks off tomorrow night at 8:00 Eastern.</s>BLACKWELL: A Trump administration official tells CNN the White House is withdrawing a controversial nominee to head the Bureau of Land Management. William Perry Pendley has been the agency's acting director since July of last year. He has repeatedly denied the existence of climate change. He's also made disparaging remarks about Muslims and immigrants. Pendley was a conservative activist, a commentator and a lawyer before taking the job. And later this morning be sure to watch "STATE OF THE UNION." Jake Tapper has his guests White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, Senator Bernie Sanders and Senator Cory Booker. "STATE OF THE UNION" airs at 9:00 Eastern here on</s>CNN. PAUL: Well, the FDA has approved what could be a game-changer for widespread COVID-19 testing. It's already been used inside the NBA bubble. We're going to tell you how it works when we come back.