QAnon Spreading Beyond Dark Fringes Of The Internet, Infecting Mainstream American Life And Politics; House Approves $25 Billion Boost To U.S. Postal Service
BLACKWELL: A bill to provide $25 billion to the postal service has passed the House and is headed to the Senate.</s>PAUL: Yes. The measure passed largely along party lines with more than two dozen Republicans voting with Democrats. It's certainly almost dead in the Republican-controlled Senate. Sarah Westwood joining us now from the White House. So, we know the White House has already issued a veto threat there, Sarah. What are you hearing this morning? Good morning.</s>SARAH WESTWOOD, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Good morning, Victor and Christi. And, yes, the White House making clear that that bill would be dead on arrival if it were to reach the president's desk. But as you mentioned that's very unlikely. Because it's unlikely that the Senate will take up the bill as it is. They obviously have been pushing for postal service funding to be included in a larger stimulus package. And so there's very little interest in that bill advancing. But it did pass easily, 257 to 150, yesterday with as you mentioned more than 24 Republicans. Some of them in competitive races coming up this fall voting in favor of that bill. And, meanwhile, President Trump and the White House are preparing for the Republican National Convention to kick off tomorrow. Trump and Pence will travel to North Carolina for the roll call of delegates. The slimmed down 336 delegates that will be taking roll call tomorrow in Charlotte, North Carolina for the first big day of the convention. We know that President Trump wants a convention that doesn't look anything like what we saw from the Democrats last week. They want to have more live programming, more surprises. And we're told that President Trump will be involved in every night of the convention. But still, his big speech, his formal acceptance speech when he accepts the Republican nomination will be Thursday night from here at the White House. They're constructing a large stage behind me at the White House. So, that is something that the Republican National Committee and the Trump campaign have been amping up hopes for. Now, also on that trip tomorrow the president will be going to Mills River, North Carolina to give a speech, and Greer, South Carolina, in addition to Charlotte. So, a very busy day tomorrow for the president as the GOP convention kicks off. And, again, the White House and everyone around it really amping up expectations for that event, Victor and Christi.</s>PAUL: All right. Sarah Westwood, good to see you this morning. Thank you.</s>BLACKWELL: Thank you, Sarah. Now, the pandemic and some of the president's last minute calls have forced the changes in planning for the RNC. So, what will it look like? CNN's Ryan Nobles tells us what we know and really what we don't know.</s>RYAN NOBLES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Victor and Christi, President Trump really wants to outdo the performance that the Democrats put on with their convention last week. He wants it to look different than the Democratic convention. Of course, that was largely virtual. Hardly any of the speeches were in front of actual human beings. The Republican events will be a little bit different. In fact this auditorium behind me, the Mellon Auditorium in Washington, D.C., expected to host some of the speakers in front of live crowds. Among those speaking at this venue will be the second lady Karen Pence. Meanwhile, President Trump inviting people to the White House to be there when he delivers his acceptance speech on Thursday. Also, Melania Trump is expected to speak from the Rose Garden of the White House while Vice President Mike Pence will travel to Baltimore and speak at Fort McHenry. And, of course, many of the speakers that we're going to hear from at the Republican National Convention kind of reflect these culture wars that President Trump has been fanning since he took office. The McCloskeys, that couple from St. Louis that challenged Black Lives Matter protesters with guns out in front of their homes. And then Nick Sandmann, who is the young student from Covington Catholic School who got into a confrontation with Native Americans on the National Mall during the March for Life. He too expected to speak this week. The big thing that President Trump wants, though, is a show. He wants to outdo what the Democrats were able to do last week. But this is going to be difficult for President Trump and the Republicans because they had so many starts and stops to their convention planning, initially tried to do it in Charlotte, then move it to Jacksonville. They so much wanted to do it in front of a big crowd but were just were unable to pull that up because of coronavirus concerns. They've kept a lot of their planning under wraps. So, we'll have to see how it all plays out this week -- Victor and Christi.</s>PAUL: Ryan, thank you so much. CNN political commentator Errol Louis with us now, host of the "You Decide" podcast. Errol, good morning to you.</s>ERROL LOUIS, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Good morning, Christi.</s>PAUL: OK. I want to read to you something from "Politico." Russ Schriefer, the veteran Republican who actually helped spearhead some past conventions said this about what's going to happen this week. He said, "I think the bar is really going to be set on the messaging and how well they message. Going second has a great advantage in that you get to kind of rebut what the Democrats did last week." There was a lot of praise we know from people on both sides of the aisle regarding the DNC. The expectation is that President Trump is going to talk about policy. But how does President Trump talk about character?</s>LOUIS: Well, yes, character is an important question that, of course, the president is going to try and move past. In fact, whenever asked about character, ever since 2015 when he began to run, he always went to performance. Judge me by what I do, the jobs that I create, the larger standing in the world that I'll create for you, the more firm security of policies that I'm going to put in place. And the reality is that this is not going to be easy for them to do. There's a much bigger problem out there, Christi, than just messaging. People know that when they turn on the screen just as you had not that long ago, 176,000 deaths, it's affecting everyone. Mass unemployment, it's affecting everyone. The inability to go out without putting on a mask. The social distancing requirements in so many places, including Washington, D.C. They're going -- if they are going -- if they think they're going to get people to forget all of that it's going to be much, much harder task I think than they realize. But the task is really going to be to skip over character, skip over mass unemployment, skip over the pandemic and try and spin a vision of the future that goes beyond all of those questions and that is going to be some heavy lifting, Christi.</s>PAUL: Some people might look at this and think that it's curious -- the lineup that Ryan just went through. We know that -- we can assume what some of the intentions are of some of the people that will speak, right? I mean, when you talk about Alice Johnson who President Trump commuted her sentence, mostly speaking to criminal justice reform. When you've got the McCloskeys, most likely going to -- expect that there will be a Second Amendment conversation there. What is the value -- and I'm really not being flippant. I'm curious. What is the value of Nick Sandmann?</s>LOUIS: Look, Nick Sandmann for those who don't remember, was involved in kind of a one or two-day story, frankly where he got into a confrontation with some protesters, there were accusations of racism, further investigation suggested that it wasn't quite as bad as it has been first portrayed and so forth. And then he sued new organizations for making him look bad. It touches on a lot of what the Trump base wants to hear about. That racism accusations are overblown. That the media is on it. That people how were just kind of going about their business, trying to be good Americans are being unfairly maligned. But these are all very small questions, Christi. That's the thing that is striking. We're going to be on the small screen because of the pandemic and the fact that everybody has to watch this at home. That means that we're going to be on a small screen and the president and the programming for this convention seems to be a series of these little kind of one-day stories that have taken on some life in the world of Trump supporters and Fox News viewers and they want to sort of rehash all of those. And kind of stoke the fires of grievance and pull together his base around this kind of momentary bits of anger that have accumulated over the last few years. The problem with that, of course, is that there are much, much bigger problems out there. There are much bigger issues than whether Nick Sandmann was treated fairly by the media to say the least. You know, like I said, they've got a lot of work ahead of them. If they think they're going to take people's minds off the major problems that are actually confronting us.</s>PAUL: OK. But what does it mean for people in the middle who may have been able to decide what they're going to do yet? They love maybe the character conversation of the DNC but they didn't hear enough policy. They'll certainly -- the expectation is going to hear some policy here. Can he do anything to attract someone other than his base? And is there any indication that he will try?</s>LOUIS: He almost never does that. He almost never does that. He didn't do it in Cleveland in 2016. He hasn't done it in the three and a half years since then. I'd be very surprised if he does make a genuine serious effort to reach beyond his base. So, that's the first thing. The second thing though, Christi, is when you say character really what you're talking about or I should say what the Democrats tried to focus on was not so much character as ability. Saying that he can't do the job because of character flaws. So, you have to kind of put those two things together. If Donald Trump wants to say, I have the character to lead this nation forward and I can do it, what the Democrats are saying, the last part of that is not in question. He simply can't do it. So, we can debate, this is the Democratic point of view. We can debate whether or not he's a good guy, a bad guy, a racist, so forth and so on. But what we can't debate is that he couldn't handle the pandemic. He couldn't handle the economy. He's unable to do the things that are needed to bring the country back together and move the country forward. If he's got an argument that he can do those things and he can be persuasive about it, well, sure, he can take everybody along. Beyond his base, anybody would vote for a leader who you sensed was both genuine and capable of doing what this country needs right now. The question on the table is whether or not Donald Trump is that person.</s>PAUL: All right. Errol Louis, always appreciate getting your perspective. Thanks for getting up early for us on the weekends. You know we appreciate it.</s>LOUIS: Thank you, Christi.</s>PAUL: Of course. The Democratic National Convention as we just said is behind us. So, all week long for the RNC. We're covering the big speeches, important moments and President Trump all starting tomorrow. Special coverage beginning at 7:00 p.m. Eastern live right here on</s>CNN. BLACKWELL: We've got two tropical storms that are positioned to make landfall along the Gulf Coast in the next few days. And we are now learning they could make landfall as hurricanes within 48 hours of one another. Meteorologist Allison Chinchar is tracking the storms next.