[Baldwin:] Welcome back. You're watching CNN. I'm Brooke Baldwin. Some news just into us here. It appears Mitt Romney is giving up hope of finding someone to launch a third party bid against Donald Trump. A source familiar with Romney's thinking tells CNN that the 2012 Republican presidential nominee is not actively recruiting anyone else now for this third party bid. As we've been talking about, you know, he reportedly had reached out to Nevada Senator Ben Sasse and Trump'former rival Ohio Governor John Kasich. They have both said no. So let's begin there with CNN's chief political correspondent Dana Bash and "Washington Post" political reporter Ed O'Keefe. So, Dana, hello.
[Dana Bash, Cnn Chief Political Correspondent:] Hi, Brooke.
[Baldwin:] A piece of this reporting, a never Trump adviser acknowledged to and I think this is Jim Acosta's reporting, that their efforts, the never Trumpers, that it's looking grim.
[Bash:] Right.
[Baldwin:] Is this the end of never Trump?
[Bash:] I don't necessarily think it's the end of never Trump, but it's the I should actually, in answering that question, make clear that never Trump has been shrinking dramatically since it became clear that Trump was going to be the nominee. People who we never thought would be anywhere but the never Trump camp are now shifting and that what these conservatives, and I've been talking to many of them for weeks if not months, but in the past couple of weeks were hoping to do, as you said, is push a third party idea. But their big problem was they haven't been able to find a candidate.
[Baldwin:] Everyone's saying no.
[Bash:] Everyone is saying no and that continues to be the case and so, you know, the end of this road appears to be pretty close, if not here for them.
[Baldwin:] Ed, would you like to chime in before we move on to Ivanka Trump?
[Ed O'keefe, Political Reporter, "the Washington Post":] I think the only the only element of the so-called never Trump movement at this point that really has a shot at doing anything to slow or blunt Trump, if you will, are the conservative activists who have been elected delegates to the convention who might try to use the different rules committee
[Baldwin:] Yes.
[O'keefe:] And credential committee meetings that happen before the convention begins to either tweak the party platform, make a last- ditch effort to allow somebody else's name to be put into consideration, or make other changes that at least require Trump to make some concessions. But this idea of finding a white knight to ride in, I think that died, frankly, back in the spring when Mike Bloomberg decided there was no way to do it. He's one of the few Americans who has the billions and the bandwidth to do it and he said it just isn't possible.
[Bash:] And the one thing I will add to that, Brooke, and I, of course, agree with my friend Ed on no white knight, but there are tactics that they still insist that they're going to use, like trying to convince fellow grass roots conservatives who simply don't trust Trump as a conservative, to write somebody in, to basically have a protest vote. Obviously most of them are not going to vote for Hillary Clinton, but to have a protest vote, focus their efforts on the Senate and the House
[O'keefe:] Yes.
[Bash:] Which is still not a great thing for Donald Trump if you need to, you know, rally the base behind you, as every presidential candidate needs.
[Baldwin:] Get everyone together. Yes. Yes. Let's move to Donald Trump's oldest daughter. She is speaking out. She's coming to his defense. Ivanka Trump is calling "The New York Times" much talked about expose from over the weekend of her father and his alleged mistreatment of women. She's calling it disturbing.
[Ivanka Trump, Donald Trump's Daughter:] I was bothered by it. But it's largely been discredited since. So most of the time when stories are inaccurate, they're not discredited. And I will be frustrated by that. But in this case, I think they went so far. They had such a strong thesis and created facts to reinforce it.
[Baldwin:] You know, looking at you and watching all of that it's like, I don't know if it's I mean she's so extraordinary, Ivanka Trump, right, that that's sort of one piece, or the fact that you have to hear Donald Trump's oldest daughter saying, you know, essentially, my dad isn't a groper.
[Bash:] You know, in any other year, in any other cycle, for any other candidate, having a candidate's daughter come out and say, my father's not a groper, would mean that there is a five-alarm fire going on inside the campaign. But for Donald Trump, it's not good. It's clear that it shows that he needs to work on female voters for the general election.
[Baldwin:] Yes.
[Bash:] But it's not the end of the world for Donald Trump because he's been through this kind of thing for months and months during the primary. It's a different electorate. It's a different kind of vote that they need. They need to pull over independent voters and women who don't necessarily vote in primaries, who didn't necessarily vote for him if they did.
[Baldwin:] Right.
[Bash:] But are more tend more to vote Republican. I mean that is clearly a problem. And the fact that she had her come out and they had her come out or she chose to come out and say, I'm a feminist and I don't think my father is bad for women, pretty pretty intense.
[Baldwin:] I agree with you.
[Bash:] Yes.
[Baldwin:] I agree with you. And, finally, Ed, on, you know, Trump ending his self-funding promise, you know, reached this deal with the RNC. Tell me more about that.
[O'keefe:] Yes. It looks like a deal that will allow them to raise almost $500,000 in some pops from individuals that would go to his campaign, to the RNC, potentially to some other accounts and down ballot races. This is tradition, what goes on, between a presidential nominee and his or her party. The Democrats have already set up similar accounts. It hadn't happened on the Republican side. They've been desperate to do it because they need the cash and they believe they can raise a lot of it quickly now. Trump is going to have to rely on at least some outside financial support. He can't bank roll the whole thing. And this looks to be further evidence that the party is now beginning to coalesce around him. And another reason why, as Dana pointed out, if you have certain members of the party saying focus on the House, the Senate, the statehouses and don't worry about the presidency, that there is potential there's a potential that tens of millions of dollars could be left away from the RNC and Trump as they try to take back the White House.
[Baldwin:] OK. Ed O'Keefe, Dana Bash, thank you so much. Up next, would Donald Trump rewrite the U.S. foreign policy playbook? The presumed Republican nominee definitely raising some eyebrows, saying he would have, quoting him, "no problem" speaking with the leader of North Korea. Now a top member of Congress is using Trump's plan as a punchline. We're going there. Also, more than two years after they vanished, a significant development today involving one of the more than 200 Nigerian girls kidnapped by Boko Haram terrorists. Where she was found alive.