Day 4 of the 2024 Republican National Convention

Former President Donald Trump described gas prices inaccurately during his keynote speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday.

He said that “gas prices are up 60%.” 

Facts First: The average price of a regular gallon of gasoline nationwide is $3.51 as of Thursday, according to AAA. That’s up about 47% from the day President Joe Biden was inaugurated, when the average was $2.39, not 60% higher as Trump claimed.  

Although the United States has a strategic gasoline reserve, which can be tapped by the White House to ease upward pressure on prices, as Biden did in May, gas prices are still mostly determined by market forces, such as global petroleum production and consumer demand, not solely by the decisions of a sitting US president. 

Balloons fall after Former President Donald Trump accepted his party's nomination on the last day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Thursday, July 18.

Ballons showered the crowd at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night after former President Donald Trump ended his GOP nomination acceptance speech.

Moments before, former First Lady Melania Trump joined her husband onstage and took his hand.

The stage of the Republican National Convention is seen through a sea of balloons as the event draws to and end.

The impassioned crowd erupted in cheers in an enthusiastic end to the four-day event. 

The rest of Trump’s family, many of whom had been sitting in the VIP box just moments before, walked up to embrace Trump, including his children Ivanka, Eric, Don Jr., Tiffany, and several of their children and spouses.

The former president’s running mate, JD Vance, and his wife, Usha, also appeared onstage.

Former President Donald Trump, while recounting a conversation he had with a waitress worried about the taxes on her tips, claimed that the government recently hired 88,000 IRS agents to audit individuals.  

Facts First: This claim is false.  

The Inflation Reduction Act — which Congress passed in 2022 without any Republican votes — provided an $80 billion, 10-year investment to the IRS. The agency plans to hire tens of thousands of IRS employees with that money, but only some will be IRS agents who conduct audits and investigations.

Many people will be hired for non-agent roles, such as customer service representatives. And a significant number of the hires are expected to fill the vacant posts left by retirements and other attrition, not take newly created positions. 

The 88,000 figure comes from a 2021 Treasury Department report that estimated the IRS could hire 86,852 full-time employees — not solely enforcement agents — over the course of a decade with a nearly $80 billion investment.

Former President Donald Trump has repeated his false claim that President Joe Biden wants to hike Americans’ taxes fourfold. 

Facts First: This is false, just as it was when Trump made the same claim during the 2020 election campaign and in early 2024. 

Biden has not proposed quadrupling Americans’ taxes, and there has never been any indication that he is seeking to do so.

The nonpartisan Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center think tank, which analyzed Biden’s never-implemented budget proposals for fiscal 2024, found this:

The Tax Policy Center found that Biden’s proposal would, on average, have raised taxes by about $2,300 — but that’s about a 2.3% decline in after-tax income, not the massive reduction Trump is suggesting Biden wants. And critically, Tax Policy Center senior fellow Howard Gleckman told CNN in May that 95% of the tax hike would have been covered by the highest-income 5% of households.  

The biggest burden under the Biden plan would have been carried by the richest households; the Tax Policy Center found that households in the top 0.1% would have seen their after-tax incomes decline by more than 20%.

That’s “a lot,” Gleckman noted, but it’s still nowhere near the quadrupling Trump claims Biden is looking for.

And again, even this increase would have been only for a tiny subset of the population. Biden has promised not to raise taxes by even a cent for anyone making under $400,000 per year. 

Former President Donald Trump speaks during the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, in Milwaukee.

Former President Donald Trump touted the “Right to Try” law he signed in 2018 in his convention speech Thursday, which gave terminally ill patients easier access to experimental medications that haven’t yet received approval from the Food and Drug Administration.  

Before the measure was passed, Trump claimed, terminally ill patients in the United States would have to go to foreign countries to seek experimental treatments or go home to die if they couldn’t afford it.  

“Sounds simple, but it’s not, and I got them to agree that somebody that needs it will –  instead of going to Asia or Europe or some place – or if you have no money, going home and dying,” he said.   

Facts First: This is misleading. It is not true that terminally ill patients would simply have to go home and die without any access to experimental medications or would have to go to foreign countries seeking such treatments until Trump signed the Right to Try. Prior to the law, patients had to ask the federal government for permission to access experimental medications – but the government almost always said yes. 

Scott Gottlieb, who served as Trump’s FDA commissioner, told Congress in 2017 that the FDA had approved 99% of patient requests under its own “expanded access” program. 

“Emergency requests for individual patients are usually granted immediately over the phone and non-emergency requests are generally processed within a few days,” Gottlieb testified. 

Former President Donald Trump claimed in his speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday that “Russian warships and nuclear submarines are operating 60 miles off our coasts in Cuba… The press refuses to write about it.” 

Facts First: Trump’s present-tense claim that Russian warships and nuclear submarines “are” operating close to the United States is misleading. While Russia did have a nuclear-powered submarine visiting Cuba in June along with other Russian Navy vessels, all of the vessels — including the submarine — have since left. 

A group of four Russian Navy vessels arrived in Cuba on June 12 as part of what Pentagon and State Department officials stressed is a routine activity and noted that Cuba hosted Russian ships every year between 2013 and 2020.

The vessels left Havana on June 17.  

It is also not true that media organizations “don’t want to talk about it.” CNN, along with most other major news outlets, reported on the Russian ships’ positioning.  

Former President Donald Trump, after a lengthy speech where he hit many of his campaign trail favorites, looked to end his remarks Thursday on a more hopeful note.

He said that the shooter that attacked his rally in Pennsylvania “wanted to stop our movemen,t but the truth is the movement has never been about me, it has always been about you,” he said. “It can’t be stopped.”

“Tonight, I ask for your partnership, for your support, and I am humbly asking for your vote,” he said. “Every day, I will strive to honor the trust you have placed in me, and I will never, ever, let you down.”

Former President Donald Trump repeated his claim, which he has made in speech after speech, that the US left $85 billion worth of military equipment to the Taliban when Biden pulled American troops out of Afghanistan in 2021. 

Trump said, “And we also left $85 billion worth of military equipment.”  

Facts First: Trump’s $85 billion figure is false. While a significant quantity of military equipment that had been provided by the US to Afghan forces was indeed abandoned to the Taliban upon the US withdrawal, the Defense Department has estimated that this equipment had been worth about $7.1 billion – a chunk of the roughly $18.6 billion worth of equipment provided to Afghan forces between 2005 and 2021. And some of the equipment left behind was rendered inoperable before US forces withdrew.  

As other fact-checkers have previously explained, the “$85 billion” is a rounded-up figure (it’s closer to $83 billion) for the total amount of money Congress appropriated during the war to a fund supporting the Afghan security forces. A minority of this funding was for equipment. 

Donald Trump claimed Thursday, as many others at the Republican National Convention have, that while he was president the world was at peace.  

Facts First: Trump’s claim about world peace under his presidency is false. There were dozens of unresolved wars and armed conflicts when Trump left office in early 2021.    

US troops were still deployed in combat missions in Afghanistan and Iraq; civil wars in Syria, Yemen and Somalia continued, as did the war in Ethiopia’s Tigray region; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was also ongoing, as were the conflicts between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, between Israel and Syria and between Israel and Iran; Islamist insurgents continued their fight in Africa’s Sahel region; there was major violence in Mexico’s long-running drug wars; fighting continued between Ukraine and pro-Russian forces in Ukraine’s Donbas region; and there were lots of other unresolved wars and conflicts around the world.  

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks armed conflict in countries around the world, said in a June email that it estimates there were active armed conflicts in 51 international states in 2020 and again active armed conflicts in 51 international states in 2021.  

The Biden campaign has been closely watching former President Donald Trump’s convention remarks Thursday evening – with a Biden campaign adviser characterizing the speech as “all about him.”

Despite some predictions that Trump would moderate his tone and message in the aftermath of the assassination attempt, the adviser said, “He’s playing the greatest hits from 2016.”

They added, “He has not changed, he has not moderated, he has gotten worse.”

Biden campaign rapid response director Ammar Moussa is also sharing real-time reactions to the remarks on social media platform X, quipping, “Lots of unity in this speech” and “Donald Trump can’t help himself.”

Former President Donald Trump speaks on Thursday, July 18, during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Former President Donald Trump laid out his promises for a second term in his speech at the Republican National Convention, including lowering the cost of groceries and gas, bringing back jobs, and securing the border.

He said the United States has “incompetent leadership” and claimed the “inflation crisis is making life unaffordable,” before slamming Biden’s border policies — two of Trump’s main campaign points.

The new RNC platform reflects Trump’s broader policy agenda on a range of issues as he continues to reshape the party in his third run for the White House. Trump said the platform is filled with “bold promises that we will swiftly implement when you give us a Republican House.”

You can read the Republican National Committee platform with annotations here.

CNN’s Zachary B. Wolf and Curt Merrill contributed reporting to this post.

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday at the Republican National Convention that “in Venezuela, crime is down 72%” because foreign governments are sending their countries’ criminals to the US.  

Facts First: Trump greatly overstated the Biden-era decline in crime in Venezuela, at least according to the limited statistics that are publicly available.

And while it is certain that at least some criminals have joined law-abiding Venezuelans in a mass exodus from the country amid the economic crisis of the last decade, there is no proof Venezuela’s government has deliberately emptied prisons for migration purposes or intentionally sent ex-prisoners to the United States.  

Former President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that immigrants are “coming from prisons, they’re coming from jails, they’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums. … Terrorists are coming in at numbers we’ve never seen before.” 

Facts First: There is no evidence for Trump’s claim that jails around the world are being emptied so that prisoners can travel to the US as migrants, nor for his claim that foreign governments are also emptying mental health facilities for this purpose. Last year, Trump’s campaign was unable to provide any evidence for his narrower claim at the time that South American countries in particular were emptying their mental health facilities to somehow dump patients upon the US. 

Representatives for two anti-immigration organizations told CNN at the time they had not heard of anything that would corroborate Trump’s story, as did three experts at organizations favorable toward immigration. CNN’s own search did not produce any evidence. The website FactCheck.org also found nothing. 

Trump has sometimes tried to support his claim by making another claim that the global prison population is down. But that’s wrong, too. The recorded global prison population increased from October 2021 to April 2024, from about 10.77 million people to about 10.99 million people, according to the World Prison Population List compiled by experts in the United Kingdom. 

In response to CNN’s 2023 inquiry, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung cited one source for Trump’s claim about prisons being emptied for migration purposes – a 2022 article from right-wing website Breitbart News about a supposed federal intelligence report warning Border Patrol agents that Venezuela had done this. But that vague and unverified claim about Venezuela’s actions has never been corroborated. 

Former President Donald Trump claimed at the Republican National Convention Thursday that “our crime rate is going up, while crime statistics all over the world are going down.” 

Facts First: Trump’s claim about a dramatic increase in the crime rate is false. Official data published by the FBI shows violent crime dropped significantly in the US in 2023 and in the first quarter of 2024, though there were increases in some communities; violent crime is now lower than it was in 2020, President Donald Trump’s last calendar year in office.    

Preliminary FBI data for 2023 showed a roughly 13% national decline in murder and a roughly 6% national decline in overall reported violent crime compared to 2022, bringing both murder and violent crime below 2020 levels. And preliminary FBI data for the first quarter of 2024 showed an even steeper drop from the same quarter in 2023 – a roughly 26% decline in murder and a roughly 15% decline in overall reported violent crime.    

There are limitations to the FBI-published data, which comes from local law enforcement – the numbers are preliminary, not all communities submitted data, and the submitted data usually has some initial errors – so these statistics may not precisely capture the size of the recent declines in crime. But these statistics and other data sources make it clear crime has indeed declined to some extent nationally, though not everywhere.     

Crime data expert Jeff Asher, co-founder of the firm AH Datalytics, said if the final 2023 figures show a decline in murder of at least 10% from 2022, this would be the fastest US decline “ever recorded.” And he noted that both the preliminary FBI-published data from the first quarter of 2024 and also “crime data collected from several independent sources point to an even larger decline in property and violent crime, including a substantially larger drop in murder, so far this year compared to 2023, though there is still time left in the year for those trends to change.”   

During his RNC speech, former President Donald Trump claimed that the Biden administration has done nothing to curb illegal immigration to the US. 

Facts First:  Trump’s claim that the Biden administration is doing “nothing” is incorrect. Illegal crossings at the US border dropped in June and the Biden administration has imposed significant restrictions on asylum along with other measures to curb illegal immigration. 

Arrests along the US southern border dropped 29% in June, according to new data released by US Customs and Border Protection, following the Biden administration’s order severely limiting asylum-seeker crossings.

“Recent border security measures have made a meaningful impact on our ability to impose consequences for those crossing unlawfully,” CBP Acting Commissioner Troy A. Miller previously said in a statement. 

Last month, the Biden administration invoked an authority to shut off access to asylum for migrants who cross the US-Mexico border illegally, a significant attempt to address one of the president’s biggest political vulnerabilities. It was the administration’s most dramatic move on the US southern border, using the same authority Trump tried to use in office. 

Eric Trump speaks on Thursday, July 18, during the Republican National Convention.

Eric Trump told the crowd at the RNC on Thursday that the “economy was struggling, jobs were scarce” and the US had poor standing on the global stage when his father was elected president in 2016. 

Facts First: Eric Trump’s claims are false. When Donald Trump took office in 2017, he inherited a strong economy, including a robust labor market, and a nation that was viewed favorably on the global stage. 

In 2016, the US added an average of nearly 194,000 jobs per month, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. In the two years before, those average gains were even higher: 226,000 in 2015 and nearly 250,000 in 2014.  

Job gains remained above historical averages in 2017 through 2019, with 177,000 jobs added on average per month.   

Eric Trump’s claims that jobs were scarce in 2016 are not accurate. In fact, the US labor market experienced its longest expansion on record starting in 2010 and continuing until March 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic crippled global economies, including that of the US.  

In addition to inheriting a labor market in good shape, the economy was growing when Trump took office. Real gross domestic product — the widest measure of economic activity — typically grows between 2% and 3%, and it averaged 2.4% between 2014-2016 and then nearly 2.7% during the first three years of Trump’s presidency, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis data.  

Also, the US was well regarded internationally when Barack Obama left office, and those sentiments plunged at the beginning of Trump’s presidency, according to the spring 2017 Global Attitudes Survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. 

Former President Donald Trump claimed Wednesday that grocery prices are up more than 50% during the Biden administration.  

“Under this administration, groceries are up 57%,” he said. 

Facts First: Trump’s claims of grocery prices being up 57% are not entirely factual and could use some context.  

Inflation’s rapid ascent, which began in early 2021, was the result of a confluence of factors, including effects from the Covid-19 pandemic such as snarled supply chains and geopolitical fallout (specifically Russia’s invasion of Ukraine) that triggered food and energy price shocks. Heightened consumer demand boosted in part by fiscal stimulus from both the Trump and Biden administrations also led to higher prices, as did the post-pandemic imbalance in the labor market.  

Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022, hitting a 41-year high, and has slowed since (the Consumer Price Index was at 3% as of June 2024). However, it remains elevated from historical levels. Three-plus years of pervasive and prolonged inflation has weighed considerably on Americans, especially lower-income households trying to afford the necessities (food, shelter and transportation). 

Food prices, specifically grocery prices, did outpace overall inflation for much of 2022 and 2023, driven higher by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

However, grocery prices didn’t rise to the extent that Trump claims. Annual food and grocery inflation peaked at 11.4% and 13.5% in August 2022, respectively. Through the 12 months that ended in June, overall food and grocery prices were up just 2.2% and 1.1%, respectively. 

Certain food categories saw much greater inflation: Notably, egg prices were up 70% annually in January 2023. However, the underlying cause of that sharp increase was a highly contagious, deadly avian flu. Food prices are highly volatile and can be influenced by a variety of factors, especially disease, extreme weather events, global supply and demand, geopolitical events, and once-in-a-lifetime pandemics. 

Former President Donald Trump claimed that the US was “energy independent” during his presidency, which changed under President Joe Biden. 

Facts First: This is misleading. “Energy independent” is a political phrase, not a literal phrase, that can be defined in various ways – and, under Biden, the US has continued to satisfy the same definitions it satisfied under Trump. US production of oil and gas has set records under Biden.  

“Energy independent” doesn’t mean the US uses no foreign energy or is untethered from global energy markets; this wasn’t the case under Trump and still isn’t under Biden. Experts in energy policy tend to scoff at the term “energy independence,” with three experts telling CNN in 2022 that it is a “horrible term,” “ridiculous term” and “stupid term,” respectively.  

But if the term is defined as the US exporting more crude oil and petroleum products than it imported, that has happened every year under Biden after happening under Trump in 2020 for the first time in decades. In fact, the US surplus in petroleum trade has grown under Biden as US crude oil production and exports have hit new highs.

And if the term is defined as the US producing more energy than it consumes, that has also continued under Biden after happening under Trump in 2019 for the first time in decades. 

You can read here about the various economic reasons the US has imported foreign energy under both Trump and Biden despite its so-called “energy independence.” 

Former President Donald Trump once again claimed that he signed the largest tax cuts in history during his administration. 

“We got credit for the war, and defeating ISIS, and so many things. The great economy, the biggest tax cuts ever, the biggest regulation cuts ever, the creation of Space Force, the rebuilding of our military. We did so much,” Trump said in his speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday. 

 Facts First: This is false. Analyses have found that Trump’s 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was not the largest in history, either in percentage of gross domestic product or inflation-adjusted dollars. 

The act made numerous permanent and temporary changes to the tax code, including reducing both corporate and individual income tax rates. 

In a report released in June, the federal government’s nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office looked at the size of past tax cuts enacted between 1981 and 2023. It found that two other tax cut bills have been bigger — former President Ronald Reagan’s 1981 package and legislation signed by former President Barack Obama that extended earlier tax cuts enacted during former President George W. Bush’s administration. 

The CBO measured the sizes of tax cuts by looking at the revenue effects of the bills as a percentage of gross domestic product – in other words, how much federal revenue the bill cuts as a portion of the economy – over five years. Reagan’s 1981 tax cut and Obama’s 2012 tax cut extension were 3.5% and 1.7% of GDP, respectively. 

Trump’s 2017 tax cut, by contrast, was estimated to be about 1% of GDP. 

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a nonprofit, found in 2017 that the framework for the Trump tax cuts would be the fourth largest since 1940 in inflation-adjusted dollars and the eighth largest since 1918 as a percentage of gross domestic product. 

Former President Donald Trump speaks on Thursday, July 18, during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Former President Donald Trump said Thursday that inflation did not exist during his presidency – drawing a contrast between his administration and that of President Joe Biden, whose early years in office were plagued by decades-high inflation. 

Facts First: Trump’s comment is false. Inflation was low, but not nothing. 

The Consumer Price Index, a common measure of inflation, rose about 8% during Trump’s four years in office. In January 2021, his final partial month in office, it increased 1.4% from a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Former President Donald Trump mentioned his likely opponent, President Joe Biden, by name during his speech Thursday night, although he said he wouldn’t do it again.

CNN reported earlier Thursday that Trump was not expected to say Biden’s name at all during his remarks, according to a source with knowledge.

Former President Donald Trump speaks on Thursday, July 18, during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

As he has done repeatedly on the campaign trail, former President Donald Trump claimed Thursday that under a new Trump administration, the United States would “drill, baby, drill,” and “by doing that, we will lead to a large-scale decline in prices.”

Facts First: Trump’s frequent campaign claim that the US can lower gas prices by producing more domestic oil is misleading.

Under President Joe Biden, US oil production has reached a new record this year, even surpassing output under Trump’s administration. The Energy Information Administration expects crude oil production to hit successive records this year and next, powered by an oil boom in the Permian Basin. As CNN has reported, the US currently produces more oil than any other country on the planet, at about half a million barrels per day more than the prior annual record set in 2019.  

Prices at the pump in the US are highly dependent on the global oil market and the US cannot be truly energy independent when it comes to gas prices, energy experts have told CNN.

Oil is a global commodity; the global price of oil determines US gas prices and it’s simply impossible to separate that price from shifting global dynamics like Russia’s war on Ukraine or OPEC’s recent decisions to cut oil production.  

Also, the US consumes a different kind of oil than it produces, McNally told CNN last year. McNally compared the light crude the US produces to champagne and the heavy crude it imports to coffee. US oil refineries are specifically built to separate out the “heavy and gunky” crude we consume, McNally said. 

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks on stage during the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, in Milwaukee.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump urged Democrats to drop the “partisan witch hunts” against him.

As an example, he noted that a Florida judge on Monday dismissed his classified documents case.

The judge found “that the prosecutor and the fake documents case against me were totally unconstitutional and the entire case was thrown out of court,” Trump said.

He also said the Democratic Party “should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy.”

He also noted the subpoenas that his family members had received from Congress.

“They got subpoenaed more than any people, probably the history of the United States every week, they get another subpoena from the Democrats, crazy Nancy Pelosi,” he said. “They’ve got to stop that because they are destroying our country.”

Trump said he had come out on top despite every impeachment and indictment against him. “The time that you have to spend — if they would devote that genius to helping our country, we’d have a much stronger and better country.”

Former President Donald Trump on stage with a firefighter uniform, representing Cory Comperatore, the firefighter who was killed during the rally where an assassination attempt was made on Trump's life.

Former President Donald Trump on Thursday asked to hold a moment of silence for Corey Comperatore, the man killed during the attempted assassination at a rally Saturday.

“I ask that we observe a moment of silence in honor of our friend, Corey,” Trump said during his remarks at the Republican National Convention.

“There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for others, this is the spirit that forged America in her darkest hours and this is the love that will lead America back to the summit of human achievement and greatness. This is what we need,” he said, telling attendees that tonight

The crowd chanted “Corey” and Trump at one point walked over to a firefighter uniform, representing Comperatore who was a firefighter, and kissed the protective helmet.

“What a fine man he was,” he said about Comperatore, who he said “acted as a human shield” to protect his family from bullets.

Trump said during his remarks that over the past few days, they have raised $6.3 million for the the families of the victims.

Former President Donald Trump, in discussing the assassination attempt Saturday, said “I’m not supposed to be here tonight.”

He then paused and looked out at the crowd at the Republican National Convention.

The attendees started chanting “yes you are,” earning a quick smile from Trump.

“Thank you. But I’m not and I’ll tell you, I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of almighty God,” Trump said.

Former President Donald Trump remarked on the fact that the crowd at the rally shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, didn’t run for the exit or create a stampede after bullets were fired.

He said the reason the people didn’t move was because “they knew I was in very serious trouble.”

Former President Donald Trump speaks during the Republican Natio

Former President Donald Trump in his speech at the Republican National Convention Thursday night described the close call during the attempted assassination on Saturday.

It was a retelling he said he won’t undertake a second time “because it’s actually too painful to tell.”

The former president recalled the day of the rally in Pennsylvania – the crowd cheering and him walking up to the stage. “Everyone was happy,” Trump said.

He said he immediately knew they were under attack and dropped to the ground as “bullets were continuing to fly.”

Trump said that “very brave” Secret Services members rushed to the stage and “pounced on top of me so that I would be protected.” 

“There was blood pouring everywhere and yet, in a certain way I felt very safe because I had God on my side.”

See CNN’s visual timeline of the Trump assassination attempt.

Former President Donald Trump on stage during the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18.

Former President Donald Trump has formally accepted the GOP nomination for president for a third time at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Tonight’s speech marks his first public address since surviving an assassination attempt last week.

Trump beat multiple GOP primary challengers and became the first former president to be convicted of a felony in May.

Former President Donald Trump said he is running to be president for the entire county during his speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Thursday.

He said he came to the podium in front of the crowd with a “message of confidence, strength and hope.”

Lee Greenwood performed “God Bless America” before Trump came out on stage. The firefighter jacket and helmet of the victim of the rally shooting, Corey Comperatore, on Saturday was brought on stage.

It is Trump’s first public speech since Saturday’s assassination attempt. He will formally accept the nomination to be his party’s presidential nominee after winning enough delegates at the start of the convention on Monday.

The former president’s speech is expected to be “very forward focused,” one of his top advisers, Chris LaCivita, said earlier today.

Trump has been in the arena all week, watching remarks from his former primary rivals, allies and his running mate, JD Vance.

Watch his speech in the video player above the page and follow instant analysis here.

Allies of Vice President Kamala Harris are making calls to assess the political environment “just in case,” according to a Democrat close to her, who emphasized that at the present moment, “there is no ‘in case’.”

This Democrat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the calls from Harris allies include quiet conversations with Democratic convention delegates. 

This source said the Harris calls are being made with the full knowledge of President Joe Biden’s inner circle and that her allies are making clear from the start of every conversation that she expects the president to stay in the race.

This and several other Democrats described increasing tensions within the party over what is seen as maneuvering by competing interests.

Reached for comment, Biden-Harris campaign spokesperson Brian Fallon told CNN:

Dana White speaks during the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, in Milwaukee.

Dana White, Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO and longtime friend of Donald Trump, opened his Thursday address at the Republican National Convention by reading out the former president’s message to him after he accepted the invitation to speak.

White said Trump sent him a message thanking him for speaking and interrupting his family vacation to do so.

“Nobody in the Trump campaign has ever told me what to say. Nobody tells me what to say. And I’m nobody’s puppet,” he said.

Kid Rock performs during the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, in Milwaukee.

Rockstar Kid Rock took the stage to perform “American Bad A**” at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

At times during the performance he led the audience in chants of “say Trump! Trump!” and, “say fight! fight!” — an apparent reference to the former president’s gesture after he survived an assassination attempt on Saturday.

“Ladies and gentlemen, get ready for the most patriotic American bad a** on Earth, President Donald J. Trump,” he said.

Rock is a longtime Trump supporter, even attending dinner with Trump at the White House in 2017 alongside former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin and musician Ted Nugent. He also attended a 2020 presidential debate in support of Trump.  

Earlier Thursday, Rock said in a video posted on social media that he would be performing to “support our tried and true, red, white and blue, 100% American bad a** president.” 

Melania Trump joins members of the Trump family and other guests at the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18.

Melania Trump has entered the building for the Republican convention.

Her husband, former President Donald Trump, will speak later and is expected to formally accept his party’s presidential nomination.

CNN previously reported that Melania Trump has maintained a low profile throughout her husband’s campaign. She has attended just two public appearances since Trump launched his third presidential bid — the kickoff of his campaign in November 2022 at their Mar-a-Lago home and a brief appearance in March when she accompanied Trump to vote in the Florida presidential primary.

Former President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have scheduled a phone call on Friday, according to two sources familiar with the plans. 

The call would mark their first conversation since Trump left the White House, and comes amid concerns in Europe about what Trump’s policy towards the Ukraine war would be if Trump were to win the presidential election in November.

One of the sources warned that schedules shift frequently. There have been discussions for some time about the appropriate time for a call between the GOP nominee and the Ukrainian president, sources said.

Trump has repeatedly said he could settle the Ukraine war in a day, but it remains unclear how he would pursue peace. 

In last month’s CNN debate with President Joe Biden, Trump said that Putin’s terms for an agreement – which would include Ukraine ceding the four territories currently occupied by Russia – are “not acceptable.”

But the former president and his allies have also criticized US military aid to Kyiv.

Last week, when Zelensky was in the US, he said that “everyone is waiting for November,” including Putin. He also said that Biden and Trump are “very different” but both support democracy which is why he claimed: “I think Putin will hate both of them.”

Last week, Trump met Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for the second time in less than six months. The visit came less than two weeks after Orban met with Putin in Moscow. Following the meeting, Orban told European leaders that Trump is “ready to act as a peace broker” between Russia and Ukraine.

While backstage earlier, former President Donald Trump signed the official GOP nomination paperwork, a person familiar tells CNN.

Former President Donald Trump is set to outline his vision for America and describe the assassination attempt he survived Saturday during his remarks tonight, according to excerpts from his speech.

He’s also expected to call for unity and say that “discord and division in our society must be healed.”

Read some excerpts from his speech:

Evangelical leader Franklin Graham offered a prayer for Donald Trump on Thursday night, as the former president is poised to formally accept the Republican presidential nomination just days after surviving an assassination attempt.

On the same night Trump is expected to share a unifying message in his Republican National Convention speech, Graham said the nation was “in trouble,” as it is “divided politically, racially, economically with millions of people seeking refuge.”

Eric Trump said the moment his father raised his fist in the air after a bullet grazed his ear on Saturday will “be remembered as one of the most courageous acts in the history of American politics.”

Eric Trump led the crowd in a “fight, fight, fight, fight” chant – the word Donald Trump mouthed to those at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Calling his father “the greatest fighter” he has ever seen, Eric Trump said “by the grace of God, divine intervention and your guardian angels above, you survived.” 

“We love Trump,” chants broke out in the arena. 

Eric Trump’s daughter, Carolina, sat on Donald Trump’s lap in the VIP box during her dad’s speech. His wife, Lara, and their son, Luke, sat next to Trump.

“To all those Americans watching tonight, the greatest retribution will be our success,” Eric Trump said.

Repeating a campaign promise from 2016, Eric Trump said the swamp would be drained under a second administration for his father. 

Eric Trump speaks during the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, in Milwaukee.

Eric Trump reflected on his father’s decision to run for president in 2016 during his speech at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Trump said his father made the decision to get involved in politics “out of love for this country and a deep concern for America’s future.”

He then went on to mention what he considered difficulties his father faced while serving as president, including what he called “the efforts to cancel us.”

This post has been updated with additional comments from Eric Trump.

Donald Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, is sitting in the box next to the former president in the Republican National Convention arena ahead of his speech tonight.

Vance officially accepted the GOP nomination for vice president last night and delivered an address to the gathering.

Read up on key takeaways from his speech here.

Hulk Hogan speaks during the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, in Milwuakee.

WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan opened his speech by talking about the energy in the arena at the final day of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

“When I came here tonight there was so much energy in this room. I thought maybe I was in Madison Square Garden getting ready to win another world title,” Hogan said.

As Hogan spoke about his respect for Trump, he tore off his shirt to reveal a red cutoff tank emblazoned with Trump and Vance, the GOP presidential ticket.

“I didn’t come here as Hulk Hogan, but I just had to give you a little taste,” he said.

Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, said that as an entertainer he has tried to stay out of politics, but said he “can no longer stay silent” after the last four years of the Biden administration and the attempted assassination of the former president over the weekend.

“They’ve thrown everything at Donald Trump — all the investigations, the impeachments, the court cases — and he’s still standing and kicking their butts,” he said.

Hogan called the Trump-Vance ticket the “greatest tag team of my life standing upon us getting ready to straighten this country out.”

Ivanka Trump, Don Jr. and Eric Trump were among the family members in the box watching the retired pro-wrestler from the family box.

Watch:

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00:59 - Source: cnn

CNN’s Veronica Stracqualursi contributed reporting to this post.

This post has been updated with additional remarks from Hogan.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, in Milwaukee.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed on Thursday that President Joe Biden “won’t even talk about the fact that Americans are still being held” in Gaza.  

“And now of course a second war in Gaza. President Biden won’t even talk about the fact that Americans are still being held there by the Iranian regime,” Pompeo said.  

Facts first: The claim that Biden “won’t even talk about” the American hostages in Gaza is false. Biden has spoken about the Americans held in Gaza in the wake of Hamas’ invasion of Israel several times since October.  

Recently on May 31, speaking about a proposed deal for Israel and Hamas, Biden said American hostages would be released in the first phase of the deal: “[W]e want them home.” 

On October 25, Biden said his administration was working “around the clock together with our partners in the region to secure the release of hostages including American citizens … left behind.” 

On November 26, he spoke extensively about the release of an Israeli American little girl who was held hostage and said he was pressing for more Americans to be released, adding, “we will not stop working until every hostage is returned to their loved ones.”  

Most recently, at the NATO Summit in DC last week, Biden talked about hostages broadly, saying the US “has been working to secure a ceasefire in Gaza, to bring the hostages home, to create a path for peace and stability in the Middle East.”

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, in Milwaukee.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed at the Republican National Convention Thursday that the US-Mexico border was “closed” during Donald Trump’s presidency.  

Facts first: Pompeo’s claim is false.  

While Trump tightened the border during his tenure, illegal crossings into the US from Mexico still numbered in the tens of thousands each month leading up to when he left office. At the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Trump administration limited non-essential travel on the US-Mexico border and prohibited migrants from crossing it in an effort to mitigate the spread of the virus. President Joe Biden later extended the restrictions.  

The former president’s biggest effort to “close” the border was met with resistance by federal courts, and the Supreme Court later gave Biden the green light to end the controversial “Remain in Mexico” policy.

Two sources tell CNN that furious donors are now telling House and Senate Democratic campaign committees they would freeze contributions unless — and until — party leaders took stronger steps to get President Joe Biden to step aside. 

“They believe if Joe is at the top of the ticket, the House and Senate are gone, too,” said a Democratic strategist intimately involved in big-dollar fund-raising. “They don’t want to throw good money after bad.”

Country superstar Jason Aldean is attending the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee tonight. 

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz posted a photo of himself with the singer in former President Donald Trump’s box at the convention. 

Aldean has been a vocal supporter of Trump, and after Saturday’s assassination attempt on the former president, he dedicated a performance of his controversial song “Try That in a Small Town” to the former president, according to reports. 

Aldean is set to headline a private RNC fundraiser in Milwaukee after the convention wraps, RNC host committee chair Reince Priebus told The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. 

Montana Sen. Jon Tester and California Rep. Jim Costa are the latest Democrats calling for President Joe Biden to withdraw from the race.

Costa, a center-left Democrat, complimented the president’s leadership but added in a statement that “for the good of the country, I think it is time for the President to pass the torch to the next generation to carry on the legacy he started. Democrats need to unite and deliver their strongest team to the American people in this election.”

Costa represents part of central California and won his election in 2022 with 53% of the vote.

When he takes the stage tonight, former President Donald Trump will have a helmet and firefighter’s jacket that belonged to Corey Comperatore, according to a source familiar with his plan.

Comperatore is the man who was fatally shot at Saturday’s Pennsylvania rally where Trump survived an attempted assassination.

Former US Administrator of the Small Business Administration Linda McMahon speaks on stage on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, in Milwaukee.

Linda McMahon, who served in the Trump administration as the Small Business administrator, suggested at the Republican National Convention Thursday that China paid the tariffs that the former president put on roughly $300 billion of Chinese-made goods.

Facts First: This characterization of Trump’s tariffs is misleading.  

It’s true that Trump’s tariffs on China raised billions of dollars for the US government, but the duties were paid by US companies — not China.  

Study after study, including one from the federal government’s bipartisan US International Trade Commission (USITC), has found that Americans have borne almost the entire cost of Trump’s tariffs on Chinese products. 

Once an importing company pays the tariff, it can decide to eat the cost or pass all or some of it to the buyer of its goods – whether that’s a retailer or a consumer. 

Many economists agree that tariffs act as a tax on American consumers.  

“A tariff is just a form of a tax,” Erica York, a senior economist and research director at the conservative-leaning Tax Foundation, told CNN earlier this year.  

Tariffs can benefit some companies by raising the prices of competing foreign-made goods, but the duties can hurt other companies by raising component parts they need to manufacture. 

For example, Trump’s tariffs were imposed, in part, to boost the US manufacturing sector – but that industry lost jobs.  

Federal Reserve economists found a net decrease in manufacturing employment due to the tariffs in 2019. That’s mostly because goods became more expensive to US consumers. Plus, retaliatory tariffs put on American-made goods made other US manufacturers less competitive when selling abroad.

A video played on the final night of the Republican National Convention tried to attack President Joe Biden by featuring quotes from then-candidate Ronald Reagan’s famous rhetorical questions about the President Jimmy Carter era at a presidential debate against Carter in 1980. 

At one point, the video featured Reagan’s voice asking if, compared to four years ago, “Is America as respected throughout the world as it was?” On-screen text answered the question with the words “allies no longer trust the United States,” attributing them to a September 2021 article in Foreign Affairs magazine. 

Facts First: This quote is misleading. The article in Foreign Affairs didn’t actually declare that allies no longer trust the United States. Rather, the article noted that “critics of President Joe Biden” make the “claim” that allies no longer trust the US after Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan – but the article then went on to argue that “these concerns about credibility are overblown.” 

The convention video also featured Reagan’s voice asking, “Is there more or less unemployment in the country than there was four years ago?” But if you go back precisely four years from the most recent unemployment rate, the answer is: less unemployment. The current unemployment rate is 4.1% for June 2024; four years prior, in June 2020, the unemployment rate was 11.0% amid the Covid-19 pandemic. 

There is a reasonable basis for this part of the video, though, if you interpret “four years ago” more broadly to refer to any time in 2020. Before the pandemic, in the first two months of 2020, the unemployment rates were 3.6% and 3.5%. 

Tucker Carlson speaks during the Republican National Convention on Thursday, July 18, in Milwaukee.

Conservative media figure Tucker Carlson in his speech to the Republican National Convention Thursday said former President Donald went through a transformation following the attempted assassination last week.

“Everything was different after that moment,” Carlson said of the shooting. “This convention is different, the nation is different, the world is different. Donald Trump is different.”

Carlson described the scene when Trump raised his fist following the attack: “I thought at that moment, this was a transformation.”

“I think it changed him,” he said, adding that he talked to Trump hours after the shooting and the former president “said not a single word about himself. He said only how amazed he was and how proud he was of the crowd, which didn’t run.”

Carlson noted that Trump did not jump on the assassination attempt to “inflame the nation.”

“Which is an opportunity that almost every politician I have ever met, and certainly his opponents, would have taken instantly,” Carlson said.

He also called Trump, whom he said he knows well, the “funniest person I have ever met in my life” and someone who “actually cares because he’s interested in the people who live here.”

Carlson was ousted from Fox News last year, but has continued to host shows on various platforms, including a praise-filled interview with Trump last year.

Carlson was fiercely critical of Trump in private text messages released as part of Dominion Voting Systems’ $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit last year, with the former Fox News host saying he “passionately” hated the former president.

This post has been updated with remarks from Carlson.

President Joe Biden remains unconvinced by arguments that he should step aside, according to a source close to him, even as the party’s largest donors angrily warn the campaign that the money will stop flowing up and down the ticket if he remains the nominee.  

Biden is weighing all of the information being presented to him. But this person said he views the calls for him to leave the race as being driven by donors and divorced from the grassroots of the party. 

Biden is also wary of calls for him to leave the race being driven by people in the party who are pushing for an open convention, which he views as an effort to sidestep Vice President Kamala Harris, this person said.

The president is receiving updates, not only from his staff but from his allies about his support among the delegates in the party — the only metric that he believes matters at this stage. At the same time, a separate source said the campaign is being told by major donors that there is no money left. 

The donor pressure is not just at the top of the ticket. Some Biden allies, according to the first source, are being pressured by donors to abandon support for Biden. They are being warned that no more money would flow to their campaigns and races if he remains on the ticket.

Those who have worked for Donald Trump often say he is influenced the most by the person he hears from last. This was certainly the case as the former president wavered over who to select as his running mate, a process that highlighted those who are influencing Trump the most this campaign. 

In 2016, Trump often sought advice from figures like Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump and Rupert Murdoch. They maintained a heavy influence over his 2020 campaign, but four years later, the ground has shifted. 

People around him now emphasize how Trump is often influenced by voices like his son Donald Trump Jr., Elon Musk and prominent figures in the rightwing media ecosystem, from Charlie Kirk to Tucker Carlson, a trend that will likely continue if he is reelected. That was evident in his selection of Vance as vice president.

Senior-most West Wing advisers to President Joe Biden tell CNN Thursday night that they have had no discussions amongst themselves – or with Biden – about him dropping out of the presidential race. 

This follows CNN’s previous reporting that Biden still believes there is a path to victory for him in November and is unconvinced that the data and polling presented to him so far prove that he cannot win, according to a senior Biden source.

The president, who is currently isolating in Rehoboth Beach after testing positive for Covid-19, is said to be weighing a flood of information that is coming his way about the state of the presidential race and taking in the calls for him to leave the race.  

For the fourth straight night, the Republican National Convention played a video in which former President Donald Trump urged Republicans to use “every appropriate tool available to beat the Democrats,” including voting by mail. Trump relentlessly disparaged mail-in voting during the 2020 election, falsely claiming it was rife with fraud, and he has continued to sharply criticize it during the current campaign 

But Trump’s comments in the convention video also included some of his regular false claims about elections. After claiming he would “once and for all secure our elections” as president, Trump again insinuated the 2020 election was not secure, saying, “We never want what happened in 2020 to happen again.” And he said, “Keep your eyes open, because these people want to cheat and they do cheat, and frankly, it’s the only thing they do well.” 

Facts First: Trump’s claims are nonsense — slightly vaguer versions of his usual lies that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen and that Democrats are serial election cheaters. The 2020 election was highly secure; Trump lost fair and square to Joe Biden by an Electoral College margin of 306 to 232; there is no evidence of voter fraud even close to widespread enough to have changed the outcome in any state; and there is no basis for claiming that election cheating is the only thing at which Trump’s opponents excel. 

The Trump administration’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, part of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a post-election November 2020 statement: “The November 3rd election was the most secure in American history.”

Former President Donald Trump is expected to walk through his experience on Saturday in a detailed way when he takes the stage tonight, explaining what it was like to experience the assassination attempt, according to a source with knowledge of his speech.

He has also told allies he is going to bring up that he believes he is only alive due to some sort of divine intervention, and talk about faith and God during his speech, a source familiar told CNN. This is a sentiment Trump has displayed previously since the rally shooting, CNN reported.

Alina Habba, an attorney for Donald Trump, opened her address on Thursday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by speaking on the former president’s “kindness” and his “commitment to saving this great country.”

She is involved in Trump’s defense across multiple court cases that the former president is facing. She addressed the criminal cases Trump is facing, calling them “sham indictments and baseless investigations.”

Habba said Trump’s “unwavering support” shaped her career.

“President Trump loves this country,” Habba said. “And he lifts up those around him.”

Watch the speech in the video player above the page and follow live analysis here.

Former President Donald Trump enters the arena on the fourth day of the Republican National Convention in Milwuakee on Thursday, July 18.

Former President Donald Trump has entered the Republican National Convention in its fourth and final night of programming.

He’s set to speak later tonight and formally accept the GOP presidential nomination for a third time.

Trump is still wearing the bandage on his right ear.

In the box: Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Nevada Senate candidate Sam Brown were among those who greeted Trump when he entered the box at the arena.

The speech: Trump has said he scrapped his initial prepared remarks for the RNC and wrote a “whole different speech” after surviving an assassination attempt on Saturday in Pennsylvania. “This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different,” he told the Washington Examiner.

One of his top adviser, Chris LaCivita, said the speech will be “very forward focused,” while another source told CNN that Trump is not expected to say President Joe Biden’s name once during his remarks where he will accept his party’s presidential nomination.

The post was updated with more details on Trump’s arrival.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks on Thursday, July 18, during the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday evening that under former President Donald Trump’s administration, “not a single Chinese spy balloon flew across” the US. 

“We’d begun on an honorable exit from Afghanistan, and not a single Chinese spy balloon flew across the United States of America,” Pompeo said. 

Facts First: The claim that there were no spy balloons under Trump is false.   

Three suspected Chinese spy balloons transited over the continental US during the Trump administration, but they were not discovered until after President Joe Biden took office. Gen. Glen VanHerck, then commander of US Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command, said in 2023 that a “domain awareness gap” allowed the balloons to travel undetected.  

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo speaks during the convention on Thursday, July 18.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo highlighted what he considered former President Donald Trump’s accomplishments while serving under his administration.

He mentioned that there were no new American wars under Trump’s administration and noted the efforts made to close the US southern border.

He claimed that the Biden administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan prompted Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It was that very weakness, that very weakness in Afghanistan that prompted [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s butchery in Ukraine. Last week we saw what it meant – a children’s hospital bombed, innocents killed. It did not have to be,” he added.

Russia launched its massive invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, although it had occupied Crimea in 2014.

There has been little mention of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the RNC, as Trump and Vice President nominee JD Vance have previously argued for US aid to Ukraine to be scaled back.

Pompeo, who was a close ally of Trump’s during his administration, is the first person to have served as both director of the CIA and secretary state. He was previously a congressman representing Kansas’ 4th District but left office to join the Trump administration.

CNN’s Kate Sullivan and Shania Shelton contributed reporting.

This post has been updated with additional comments from Pompeo.

Republicans attending the Republican National Convention on Thursday argued that President Joe Biden remaining in the race would only help Republicans win in November.

Carolyn Bonkoski, an alternative delegate from Pennsylvania, told CNN that Biden is “so ruined, that I don’t think he stands a chance” against former President Donald Trump. 

However, Lynn Mowrey, of Kansas City, Kansas, said “it would be nice to know who we’re running against.”

“I think that’s why we’re probably taking a more positive approach tonight, just because we don’t know who the opposing candidate is,” she told CNN. 

Mowrey believes Vice President Kamala Harris would be easier to beat if she replaces Biden at the top of the ticket, because of her “lack of experience” and “the way she presents herself, she’s really not a serious person.”

Bonkoski felt the same, arguing that with Harris at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket, Republicans’ chances of winning in November “go up.”

President Joe Biden is more isolated than he has ever been, with many senior-ranking White House and campaign officials now privately believing that he must abandon his campaign for a second term – and soon.

In interviews with CNN, more than two dozen sources familiar with the dynamics inside the West Wing and the campaign said there is now widespread acceptance that Biden remaining in the 2024 race is wholly untenable. 

Another top Democrat close to the White House described Biden as having become “exceptionally insulated and isolated” since the CNN debate on June 27. Multiple sources said some of the most senior advisers to Biden — including adviser Anita Dunn, attorney Bob Bauer and campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon — faced the ire of the president’s family in the aftermath of the debate. 

That has only had the effect of making Biden’s inner circle of advisers with free access to the president — which had already been famously small and impenetrable — even tighter.

After the debate, a stunningly small number of his most loyal aides — chief among them, his decades-long advisers Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti — and members of the Biden family appear dug in along with the president. Deputy White House Chief of Staff Annie Tomasini joins Donilon and Ricchetti in forming a protective bubble around the president.

Anthony Bernal, chief of staff to Jill Biden, has grown even more powerful during the deepening crisis and has tamped down any signs of dissent, two sources say, reporting any naysayers to the first lady.

In response to questions about this story, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said Biden is “proud of the well-rounded team he has built.”

CNN has reached out to the Biden campaign for comment on this story.

More than 1,000 Black female leaders and organizers from across the country have signed a letter in support of President Joe Biden.

In the open letter to Democratic leaders, they voice deep disappointment with what they describe as a “lack of unity” during a fractious period that has seen a growing number of high-profile Democrats call on the president to step aside in the 2024 race.

“During the primary election process held across the country earlier this year, 14 million Americans cast ballots for President Biden and Vice President Harris. They are the duly elected democratic party nominees for the 2024 Presidential election,” the letter reads. 

Former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, Actress Vivica A. Fox, and the first Black woman elected to the US Senate, Carol Moseley Braun, are among the list of signees.

The letter suggests there could be a potential showdown among different coalitions of the Democratic Party, with Black voters having routinely illustrated their steadfast support for Biden.

A copy of the letter was shared with CNN by Melanie Campbell, chair of the Power of the Ballot Access Fund. News of the letter was first reported by The Hill.

Democrats are making two key arguments to Joe Biden’s inner circle as chaos continues in the Democratic party over the viability of the president’s reelection bid.

First: The steady rise in the percentage of voters, including Democrats, who believe Biden is not fit for the job. 

“Who is in charge there?” said a top Democratic strategist who posed the question despite being close to several members of the president’s inner circle. “The latest BET interview was awful. Why are they doing this to him.”       

Second: Trump is making substantial gains in the race at a time he is spending nothing on television ads. 

The numbers there are stunning. The Biden campaign has spent $8.8 million on TV ads in the week from July 11 to July 18. The Trump campaign spent just $33,000 in that same time frame. 

Overall Democratic spending in this past week — the campaign and pro-Biden super PACs — totaled more than $11 million. Overall pro-Trump spending totaled $6.9 million.

One prominent Democrat described a “slow bleed” of Biden fundraising at a time Trump is using his convention to make giant fund-raising gains. The national and battleground polling is moving in Trump’s direction already, “and what will happen when Trump buries Biden with money?” this Democrat asked.

“The post Republican convention polling is going to change the race,” this Democrat said. “That with the money metrics are the data point to look for.”

Melania Trump seen on September 3, 2020

When former first lady Melania Trump enters the Republican convention Thursday night, she won’t be doing so on stage as she did in 2016 and 2020. Though several people appealed to her to give a speech multiple times lately, she declined to do so, two sources familiar told CNN. 

That breaks with a modern tradition at political conventions where the candidate’s spouse can showcase their softer side, typically in remarks devoid of politics but instead with a focus on the personal. Instead, Melania Trump is expected to accompany her husband in the VIP box at the back of the arena.

Former President Donald Trump is expected to accept his party’s nomination tonight in a speech that is expected to part from his usual combative tone and appeal to national unity.

This will be the third Republican National Convention speech Donald Trump will give in his brief political career, and while advisers say the former president remains Trump, his campaign co-manager Chris Lacivita pointed to that experience as a core element in this moment.

Another adviser sharpened that point as it pertains to tonight’s remarks. “You don’t get shot in the head and not experience some kind of a change,” the adviser said.

That has been an animating feature of Trump’s rewrites and new drafts of what is expected to be a lengthy speech this evening.

As for whether he’ll stick to that script, the adviser just shrugged. “It’s Trump. That’s up to him in the moment.”

Sen. Chris Coons appears on CNN on Thursday, July 18.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons, the co-chair of the Biden-Harris campaign, is asking that President Joe Biden be given time to hear from people about his reelection campaign, and insists Biden is the best candidate to beat former President Donald Trump.

Coons told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Thursday afternoon that at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next month, “I’m confident that we will nominate the best candidate to take on, defeat Donald Trump. For me, that’s Joe Biden. For some of my colleagues they have different views.”

In the face of extreme pressure from many Democratic leaders and voters who believe Biden should step aside, Coons said, “Our president deserves the respect, the recognition of his incredible record of success, his 50 years in public service – to give him the time to hear from trusted partners and leaders, to hear from Democrats around the country and to make the path forward clear for the American people.”

Moments later on CNN, Democratic Rep. Mike Quigley, who has publicly called on Biden to leave the ticket, responded to Coons’ remarks.

“You’re a good and loyal friend, and there’s a lot to be said for that, and it’s perverse to think it, but right now that loyalty is working against the future of our democracy,” Quigley said. “It is horribly sad. I would rather do anything else than work against a second Biden administration, but it can’t happen, it won’t happen.”

The lawmaker said he hopes Biden will “take the next couple days” and then “save democracy for us in time.”

Read more comments from Democratic lawmakers today.

Vice President Kamala Harris campaigns at Westover High School in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Thursday, July 18.

Donald Trump advisers privately say they want President Joe Biden to remain their Democratic opponent, and their actions attacking a potential Democratic shift say as much publicly. 

But that doesn’t mean they aren’t preparing for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Several close allies have made a point at leveling attacks at Harris during their speeches this week, something that was closely coordinated with the campaign.

And Trump’s advisors make clear they are ready to tee off with Harris if Biden drops out — on policy, but also on her public assessments of Biden’s health and mental acuity.

That would immediately be deployed in ads, with Trump advisers carefully watching the Democratic disarray play out in the media.

When Donald Trump takes the stage in Milwaukee tonight, it’ll be his first time in front of a major crowd since he was nearly assassinated at his Pennsylvania rally Saturday night.

That’s by design, several sources familiar tell CNN, who say Trump has mostly stayed away from cameras to let the anticipation build.

His advisers and children have promised that the message will be vastly different than it would have been before the shooting. Trump was directly involved in rewriting it, as his political operation reworked the speeches of those who preceded him at the convention, personally reviewing them before they were loaded into the teleprompter. 

While many wanted to add references to the assassination attempt, several told CNN they were urged to stay on message and let Trump focus on that instead. Trump has been involved in orchestrating nearly every moment of the convention, down to who is speaking when.  

A source familiar tells CNN that Trump’s speech, which will close out the convention, is expected to last a little over an hour, though it could go longer given the applause lines.

He’s continued to work on it this afternoon.

Mary Millben opens there fourth day of the Republican National Convention with the National Anthem in Milwaukee on Thursday, July 18.

The fourth and final night of programming for the Republican National Convention at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has commenced.

Former President Donald Trump is expected to be the headline speaker tonight as he formally accepts the Republican presidential nomination.

It will be his first public speech since he survived the attempted assassination on Saturday at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Here’s a look at other notable speakers scheduled for tonight:

Read the full list of speakers here.

President Joe Biden is in a “contemplative stage” as he isolates with Covid-19 in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and calls among Democrats grow for him to reconsider his re-election bid.

A source familiar with the president’s mindset said that he is “thinking things through” and “deliberating” about how to proceed while in isolation. He’s reviewing polling, fundraising numbers and other data that paint a grim picture of his chances of succeeding against former President Donald Trump. He has privately acknowledged to others that there is a limited path, given the all the unfavorable data, the source said.

The source went on to say that this is a new moment in the campaign, where the view within Biden’s orbit about his political future has grown increasingly dim, leading some to now believe that Vice President Kamala Harris would fare better as the party’s nominee.

It’s unlikely the president will make any sort of announcement before the weekend, the source said, cautioning that anyone who thinks they know what Biden will ultimately do doesn’t actually know.

The Trump family is expected to attend the Republican National Convention on Thursday as Donald Trump accepts the GOP nomination for president, according to a source familiar with the plans.

Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, are expected to attend, the source said. Trump’s sons Don Jr and Eric Trump have been present at the convention over the last few days. 

CNN previously reported that Melania Trump has maintained a low profile throughout her husband’s campaign, having attended just two public appearances since Trump launched his third presidential bid — the kickoff of his campaign in November 2022 at their Mar-a-Lago home and a brief appearance in March when she accompanied Trump to vote in the Florida presidential primary.

A new CBS News/YouGov poll finds former president Donald Trump leading President Joe Biden among likely voters nationally, 52% to 47%.

The poll was conducted Tuesday through Thursday, in the wake of the assassination attempt against Trump over the weekend and during the beginning of the Republican National Convention. The results mark the widest advantage yet for Trump in the CBS/YouGov poll, which had previously shown a consistently tight race between the two candidates.

Head-to-head polling released earlier this month from other outlets ranged from showing an advantage for Trump to a near-even race.

After being told that “after the debate, some Democratic officials reportedly said Joe Biden should step aside as the Democratic Party’s nominee for president in 2024,” 56% of registered voters say Biden should step aside and give another Democrat a chance to run, the poll found, with 44% saying he should continue running. But those numbers are reversed among Democratic registered voters, who say, 56% to 44%, that Biden should continue running.

How this poll was conducted: The CBS News/YouGov poll surveyed 2,247 registered voters on July 16-18, using a nationally representative online panel. Results among the full sample of registered voters and among the full sample of likely voters have a margin of error of +/- 2.7 percentage points. Results among likely voters in battleground states have a margin of error of +/- 4.5 percentage points.

Donald Trump attends the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, on July 17.

Former President Donald Trump’s first public remarks since Saturday’s assassination attempt. The official Republican Party presidential nomination. Kid Rock.

The final night of the Republican National Convention boasts a busy lineup. Here’s what to expect as the programming kicks off soon:

Trump’s speech: The highlight of the final night of the RNC will be Trump’s speech.

“Honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now,” Trump told the Washington Examiner of his convention speech following the assassination attempt.

“This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago,” he said. 

High-profile Republican remarks: In addition to Trump, there are a number of other notable speakers, including Dana White, Tucker Carlson, Hulk Hogan, Mike Pompeo, Eric Trump and the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

A performance from Kid Rock: The musician and Trump ally is expected to perform tonight before Trump takes the stage, a source familiar with the schedule tells CNN.

Former President Donald Trump, who will give the keynote address on the final night of the Republican National Convention, is expected to appear at the arena earlier than previous nights, a source familiar with the planning tells CNN.

Trump is expected to arrive at the arena just before 8 p.m. ET.

Former President Donald Trump is not expected to say President Joe Biden’s name once during his Republican National Convention remarks when he will accept the party’s nomination, according to a source with knowledge.

One of Trump’s top advisers, Chris LaCivita, said earlier Thursday that the former president’s speech will be “very forward focused.”

CNN reported Monday that Trump, who has long believed he could be a target of political violence, has responded to Saturday’s harrowing events by calling for the country to come together. In a series of interviews on Sunday with conservative media, Trump said he threw out the searing speech he intended to deliver when he accepts the Republican Party’s nomination Thursday night.

“The speech I was going to give was a real humdinger,” Trump told the Washington Examiner. “Honestly, it’s going to be a whole different speech now.”

Ohio Republican Gov. Mike DeWine said he knows what he is looking for in the person he will appoint to fill Sen. JD Vance’s seat, but declined to say the names of anyone on his short list until after the election in November.

Vance was tapped to be former President Donald Trump’s running mate and officially accepted the nomination at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday. If Trump wins the presidential race, Vance will have to resign his Senate seat.

DeWine, who served in the Senate for more than a decade, said he wants someone who will “go there and work, wants to make things happen, get things done.” He said he knows “what type (of) person” could accomplish that.

The governor also said he is looking for someone who will be willing to continue to campaign. The person he appoints will eventually have to run to win the seat.

“I think we have a lot of good people, we really do. I just don’t want to get into the names yet,” he said.

Rep. Jamie Raskin speaks during a committee meeting at the Rayburn House Office Building on June 11.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, penned a deeply personal letter to President Joe Biden earlier this month privately encouraging the president that there is “no shame in taking a well-deserved bow” out of the 2024 presidential election.

Raskin’s July 6 letter, first reported by the New York Times and obtained Thursday by CNN, offers rare insight into the delicate situation some of Biden’s top allies are navigating as an isolated Biden weighs his political future. Biden has repeatedly vowed to stay in the race. 

Raskin confirmed the letter’s authenticity in a statement shared with CNN, saying, “I wrote that letter to the president over the Fourth of July weekend. My point was that we needed a strategic internal discussion about how to move forward to decisively win the election, which is of immeasurable importance to the future of America. The letter expressed my profound affection for the president, my great concern for the future of the country and my confidence in the judgment he would make. None of those things has changed.”

The Maryland Democrat said that in the coming months, “We have an overriding obligation to defeat the forces of resurgent monarchy and oppression. Everything else pales in comparison to this struggle, even your magnificent policy achievements.”

For context: You can read the entire letter here

Chris LaCivita speaks duringan event hosted by Politico at the CNN-POLITICO Grill in Milwaukee on Thursday, July 18.

Former President Donald Trump’s speech that he’s set to deliver at the Republican National Convention will be “very forward focused,” according to one of his top advisers, Chris LaCivita.

LaCivita would not divulge details about the speech and said it will continue to change throughout the day. 

LaCivita said the campaign had not raised security concerns, “because we have a phenomenal detail.”

But he said, “I was always worried about safety, just was. And unfortunately, it was something that played out in front of everybody.”

LaCivita said he was not at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally on Saturday when the shooting took place. 

President Joe Biden is getting an earful about his decision to keep his re-election campaign alive — but he’s not just hearing from Democratic lawmakers. The White House is fielding a steady stream of letters, telephone calls and message from Americans, too, from voters like Terri and John Hale.

The Hales, longtime Democrats from Iowa who said they met Biden “many moons ago” and proudly voted for him in 2020, shared a 2-page letter they sent to the White House with CNN. Worried about the prospect of Donald Trump winning a second term, the Hales said they decided to voice their opinion directly with the president.

A White House official said the president routinely receives correspondence from Americans with a range of viewpoints, including many on the wisdom of him seeking a second term. The official was looking into whether the opinions on this particular question have been tallied or shared with the president.

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders and New York Rep. Elise Stefanik have been named chairs of the Trump Women’s Leadership Coalition, according to two sources familiar. 

The announcement came at a closed press Women for Trump event in Milwaukee on Thursday.

They both spoke at the Republican National Convention this week.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks during a political event in Portage, Michigan, on July 17.

Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday said the story Ohio Sen. JD Vance told the crowd during his speech at the Republican National Convention the previous day was “compelling” but “not the full story.”

“Frankly, what is very telling is what he did not talk about on that stage,” Harris said during a rally in North Carolina, referring to former President Donald Trump’s running mate.

“He did not talk about Project 2025, their 900-page blueprint for a second Trump term,” Harris said. She added: “He did not talk about it because their plans are extreme.”

She also criticized Vance for his party’s stance on abortion, the economy, and the Republican Party’s call for unity in the wake of the attempt on Trump’s life last weekend.

“You cannot claim to be for unity if you try to overturn a free and fair election and threatened to terminate the United States Constitution,” Harris added.

Remember: Project 2025 is a policy blueprint for the next Republican president produced by a conservative think tank, The Heritage Foundation. Trump has attempted to distance himself from the document, but at least 140 people who worked in his administration had a hand in its creation, a CNN review found.

Vice President Kamala Harris is about to deliver remarks weighing in directly on Donald Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, a campaign official tells CNN, saying, “You can’t pretend to stand for unity when your agenda is as divisive and extreme as Trump.”

The vice president will use a campaign rally Fayetteville, North Carolina, to react to the speech Vance gave at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night. She’ll say people aren’t going to fall for Vance’s attempt to cast Trump as a fighter for the middle class, per a campaign aide.

Harris will argue that Vance and Trump’s calls for unity do not hold up given their divisive agenda, and she’ll defend President Joe Biden as person who lives middle class values, the aide said.

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle attends a press conference on June 4, in Chicago.

GOP Sen. Kevin Cramer was one of four Republican senators who chased Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on the floor at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday, shouting at her about the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

Cramer told CNN’s Manu Raju that the lawmakers followed Cheatle because she refused to answer their questions about why Trump was allowed to go on stage at the event on Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Several Senate Republicans have publicly criticized a briefing they received from Cheatle and FBI officials, saying it was “uninformative.”

Several Senate Republicans have publicly criticized a briefing they received from Cheatle and FBI officials, saying it was “uninformative.”

“There was a little built-up frustration going into that moment, because they she didn’t want to talk to us on the phone either when they did a quick briefing, where they told us very little that was new. And then, again, avoided that very same question that several of us tried to ask,” Cramer said.

The North Dakota Republican said the lawmakers specifically want to know why Trump was allowed on stage when law enforcement was aware of a suspicious person in the area.

Follow live updates on the assassination attempt investigation here.

Watch a clip of the tense interaction below:

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President Joe Biden is “focused on getting better” but is still being “kept up to speed” on national security matters, the White House said Thursday.

National security spokesperson John Kirby made the comment to reporters during a phone briefing, saying he didn’t have any specific briefings or schedule items to speak to, “but I do know that he’s being kept updated and up to speed as he normally would.”

Meanwhile, an administration spokesperson said there’s still “every expectation” Biden’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will go ahead in Washington next week.

Kirby said in his call with reporters that it was important to “make sure that that the President’s health and his recovery from Covid takes priority.” He said it was too early to know how that would impact the Netanyahu meeting.

Following President Joe Biden’s recent diagnosis with Covid-19, his campaign says he’s doing fine as they use social media to troll their supporters.

Biden’s deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks on Thursday said the president has been doing fine, self-isolating in Delaware, and will continue to hold official meetings and campaign calls virtually.

The Biden campaign trolled supporters Wednesday evening in the moments after Biden was diagnosed with Covid-19. And the viral post (pun intended) was successful, the campaign said — a bright spot for the president’s embattled campaign. 

Three long minutes later, a second post followed up: “of Elon Musk and his rich buddies trying to buy this election. And if you agree, pitch in here,” linking to a fundraising page. 

As of Thursday morning, more than 133 million accounts had viewed the original post and 18 million viewed its follow-up post. It was one of the best social media fundraising posts for the Biden campaign in more than a year, a campaign official said, second only to a post in the aftermath of former President Donald Trump’s conviction in a hush money trial. 

The official declined to share how much the post raised. But the moment signals how the campaign is looking to less traditional, more creative means of reaching grassroots audiences at a time when big Democratic donors are holding back checks amid concerns about the viability of Biden’s candidacy.

President Joe Biden speaks to supporters during a campaign rally on July 5, in Madison, Wisconsin.

President Joe Biden’s deputy campaign manager Quentin Fulks on Thursday said the campaign is “not working through any scenarios” where Biden is not the presidential nominee.

“The vice president is a part of the Biden-Harris ticket. Our campaign is not working through any scenarios where President Biden is not the top of the ticket. He is and will be the Democratic nominee,” he said during a DNC news conference in Milwaukee.

Asked if Biden is receptive to conversations about leaving the race, Fulks replied, “The President has said it several times, he’s staying in this race.”

Asked how Democrats plan to counter Republicans’ seemingly unified front at the RNC, Fulks said, “We have to counter with unity.”

After Sen. JD Vance addressed the RNC as the GOP vice presidential nominee on Wednesday night, Fulks on Thursday called Vance a “spineless backbencher desperate for Trump’s approval” and his speech “boring.”

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Matt Gaetz.

Former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, a fellow Republican, “looks very unhinged” after interrupting McCarthy yesterday during an interview with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins at the Republican National Convention.

When asked if the Trump campaign should have given Gaetz a speaking slot at the RNC last night, McCarthy said, “That’s up to their decision.”

Remember: Gaetz and the former speaker have publicly feuded since the Florida lawmaker led the effort to oust McCarthy last year. Gaetz has repeatedly denied the allegations against him.

On Biden: McCarthy also said he saw “a real decline early on” in President Joe Biden, saying he walked out of one White House visit “actually depressed as an American” because Biden seemed confused during the interaction.

President Joe Biden arrives for a news conference at the White House on July 1.

As President Joe Biden isolates at his Delaware beach home after testing positive for Covid-19, he is growing increasingly isolated from many corners of his Democratic Party.

The announcement of Biden’s positive test on Wednesday came as calls from his party for him to step aside in the 2024 race are growing louder. In the last week, multiple incidents have been held up as signs that Biden is not sharp enough to convince voters that he could defeat Trump, let alone serve another four years as commander-in-chief.

An interview with BET that aired Wednesday is the latest moment that’s being scrutinized by nervous Democrats. In that interview, Biden said only a “medical condition” would convince him to leave the race — a statement made just one day before he tested positive for Covid.

He stumbled while referring to Black members of his administration, describing Lloyd Austin as the secretary of defense rather than saying his name.

“For example, look at the heat I’m getting because I named a, uh … the — secretary of defense, a Black man. I named Ketanji Brown, because of the people I’ve named,” Biden said, also referring to Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, whom he appointed to the high court.

The White House said Wednesday the president had “upper respiratory symptoms, to include rhinorhea (runny nose) and non-productive cough, with general malaise” as a result of his infection.

Read more about how Biden’s health and age is under even more scrutiny here.

Sen. Alex Padilla speaks to the press outside the US Capitol in May.

Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla of California, who also serves on the Biden-Harris campaign’s advisory board, maintained his staunch support for President Joe Biden’s candidacy on Thursday amid questions by other Democratic lawmakers about his viability. 

In an interview with CNN’s Kate Bolduan, Padilla said that he disagrees with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – who has privately told Biden that polls show he is unable to win this November and he may hinder Democrats’ ability to retake the House – and Rep. Adam Schiff, who has recently called on Biden to drop out.

“There’s 14 million Democrats that have voted,” Padilla added. “Until Joe Biden decides and says otherwise, he is our nominee.”

Meanwhile, Democratic Sen. Mazie Hirono would not say whether she still had confident in Biden as nominee when speaking to reporters.

Without explicitly calling on Biden to exit the race, Democratic Sen. John Hickenlooper told Reuters that there are “more and more indications” that Biden’s exit “would be in the best interests of the country, I think,” adding “that’s his decision to make.”

CNN’s Morgan Rimmer contributed to this report.

JD Vance speaks at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday.

Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance on Thursday vowed that social conservatives would always have a place in the Republican Party.

“There has been a lot of rumbling in the past few weeks that the Republican Party of now and the Republican Party of the future is not going to be a place that’s welcoming to social conservatives,” Vance said before the Faith and Freedom Coalition breakfast.

Vance said social conservatives should put their faith in Trump, who he said is “uniquely capable and aware of politics being the art of the possible.”

“As you see the administration unfold, as you see the campaign unfold, remember that this is a guy who delivered for social conservatives more than any president in my 39 years of life,” Vance said.

Vance also referenced the 1994 Quentin Tarantino movie “Pulp Fiction” when the character Jules is shot at point blank range but is fine. “He gets into an argument with his fellow violent gangster about whether this was a miracle, whether God had come down from heaven and stopped these ‘mother-effing bullets’,” Vance said. “That was the exact phrase from that movie.”

Vance explained how Jules Winnfield, Samuel L. Jackson’s character, said, “It’s not about whether God changed Coke to Pepsi or found my car keys. What matters is that I felt, I felt a touch of God.” 

Vance said it was in the morning before his RNC headline speech, when he woke up at 3:30 a.m. feeling anxious, that he “felt the touch of God.”

CNN’s Kit Maher contributed to this report.

The highlight of the final night of the Republican National Convention will be former President Donald Trump’s speech.

He will formally accept the nomination, in his first public remarks since the assassination attempt Saturday. In addition to Trump, there are a number of other notable speakers, including Tucker Carlson, Hulk Hogan, Mike Pompeo, Eric Trump, and the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

The program will begin at 7 p.m. ET. 

See the full program list below:

Hulk Hogan attends an event in Tampa in December.

WWE Hall of Famer Hulk Hogan will speak at the final night of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, according to a source familiar with the schedule.

As calls for President Joe Biden to reconsider his candidacy are poised to grow even louder today, some of the reasons why are coming into sharper focus: Not only is Biden falling short to Donald Trump, Democratic candidates are afraid voters could see their own defense of Biden as dishonest. 

CNN obtained a polling memo from Blue Rose Research, which is distributed daily to operatives and officials across the Democratic Party. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is among those who pore over the details and findings in documents like this that are rarely shared.

The memo, dated Wednesday, shines a brighter light on the reasons behind the calls for Biden to step aside.

While partisan polling does not meet CNN standards, the 16-page document has value because it offers a window into the panic and alarm across the Democratic Party. 

An AP-NORC poll released Wednesday found 14% of all Americans are extremely or very confident that Biden has the “mental capacity to be an effective president. Among Democrats, that number is 27%.

The internal polling data shows an expanding battleground in the presidential race, with New Hampshire, Minnesota, New Mexico, Virginia and Maine becoming highly competitive in the race between Biden and Trump, in addition to the seven current top battleground states.

Dana White is seen during the UFC Fight Night event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in June.

Dana White, the CEO of Ultimate Fighting Championship, is expected to be the final speaker ahead of former President Donald Trump at the Republican National Convention tonight, a source familiar with the plans tells CNN. 

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaks at his weekly press conference on Capitol Hill on July 11.

Christie Stephenson, a spokesperson for House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, issued a new statement about the Democratic leader’s recent meeting with President Joe Biden, calling reports that characterized the meeting “speculative and uninformed.”

Here’s the full statement:

Jeffries met with Biden last week when he “bluntly” shared the views of the caucus that he “directly expressed the full breadth of insight, heartfelt perspectives and conclusions about the path forward that the Caucus has shared in our recent time together” in the meeting.

Following the conversation, Biden has embarked on a series of calls to key groups of Democratic lawmakers as defections in his Democratic coalition in Congress continue.

Miwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson speaks during a press conference on Thursday morning.

The mayor of Milwaukee has assured attendees of the Republican National Convention that the event has the “highest designation of security that a community can get provided” ahead of former President Donald Trump’s speech on Thursday night.

Speaking at a news conference Thursday morning, Cavalier Johnson described the level of security as “like taking the security apparatus around certain institutions in Washington, DC, and planting that here in Milwaukee.”

Security at political events has come under intense scrutiny since the former President was shot while speaking at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. Some have questioned how a shooter was able to obtain rooftop access roughly 150 meters from Trump’s position at the podium.

President Joe Biden said Sunday he has directed US Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle “to review all security measures” for the RNC. Cheatle told CNN Tuesday that the agency was “solely responsible” for the implementation and execution of security at the site of the rally.

President Joe Biden said in an interview with BET News taped on Tuesday that, while questions around his age and fitness are “legitimate,” he is in better physical shape than his rival Donald Trump and those concerns should be put aside if he can show his “ability to compete.”

Gordon then pressed Biden on whether he would be willing to be a more temporary transitional candidate and, if he wins in November, to look at his health and capabilities from year to year in a second term.

Biden was also asked about Trump’s vice president pick, JD Vance. Biden complimented him as a hardworking senator but said that he believes him to be a “really, really conservative MAGA Republican.”

President Joe Biden waves as he walks down the steps of Air Force One at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Wednesday night.

While he “doesn’t need an excuse” to step aside from the 2024 presidential race, President Joe Biden’s Covid-19 diagnosis could be an opportunity for him to let someone else take over as Democratic candidate, CNN political analyst S.E. Cupp said Thursday.

Biden’s tenure as Democratic presidential candidate is becoming increasingly uncertain after Democrat heavyweight Nancy Pelosi privately told him he no longer has the polling to win against Donald Trump in the November election, and should step aside.

Biden has so far resisted calls to do so, reiterating in an interview taped Wednesday with Univision that “with age comes wisdom.”

Cupp said Thursday that Biden could take this opportunity to say:

President Joe Biden and campaign adviser Maritza Rodriguez greet patrons at a restaurant during a stop in Las Vegas on Wednesday, hours before his Covid-19 diagnosis.

Joe Biden’s campaign will do as much as possible remotely after the president tested positive for Covid-19 on Wednesday, according to a campaign source.

The White House said Biden has been experiencing mild symptoms.

Biden, 81, tested positive after his first event in Las Vegas, where he was expected to later speak at the UnidosUS annual conference.

The president’s doctor said Biden has received his first dose of Paxlovid, and will be self-isolating at his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, in line with US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance.

Biden has had Covid-19 before and got through those periods by doing a lot of video calls, a White House official said, adding that we should expect similar in the days ahead.

President Biden, who was spotted not wearing a mask after it was announced he has Covid-19, was wearing one in the car and is wearing one on Air Force One now, a White House official said.

Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, will stick to her scheduled appearance at a campaign event in Fayetteville, North Carolina, on Thursday, per an administration staffer.

JD Vance speaks at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, on July 17.

Many of America’s closest allies were already dreading the prospect of Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Now that the former president has picked JD Vance as his running mate, they potentially have a lot more to worry about.

By choosing Vance, Trump has sent a clear signal that, if elected, his America-first foreign policy will be back in force.

Vance, a junior senator for Ohio, is a staunch critic of sending support to Ukraine as it tries to defend itself against Russia. Like Trump, he has repeatedly criticized NATO and its European members for not spending enough on defense. And he has made a number of comments that have raised eyebrows across the pond – including when he said the United Kingdom would become the “first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon” under the new Labour government.

His nomination puts an end to the hopes by some of America’s allies that Trump might soften his foreign policy stance if reelected.

At the Munich Security Conference in February, Vance suggested Ukraine should negotiate with Russia because the US and other allies do not have the capacity to support it. Ukraine and NATO have dismissed that scenario, because it would most likely mean Kyiv would have to give up some of its pre-war territory.

Vance has also argued that the US should turn its focus away from Russia and toward East Asia. Earlier this week, he said the war in Ukraine must be brought to a “rapid close” so that America could focus on “the real issue, which is China.”

Read more about Europe’s concerns about Trump’s VP pick here.

Brad and Andrea Neuser pose with their merchandise being sold outside of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

Days after President Donald Trump survived an assassin’s high-caliber bullet, photographs from the immediate aftermath of the shooting – as Secret Service agents rushed him offstage during a rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania – are unavoidable on the streets of Milwaukee outside the Republican National Convention.

His bloodied face and raised fist are plastered on T-shirts, hats, pins, as well as framed art, all for sale to the faithful.

Andrea Neuser and her family made shirts to sell at the convention with the word “FEARLESS” spelled out above the historic photograph of Trump.

Another would-be customer, Mississippi Republican Party chair Mike Hurst, was on his way inside with his wife when he spotted the “FEARLESS” t-shirts. Hurst already purchased one online, he said, a day earlier.

The appeal, to him, was self-evident.

The Republican National Convention takes place over four days every four years. This year, it’s in Milwaukee from July 15 to 18, and the city is expecting more than 50,000 guests for the event, according to the RNC website.

Milwaukee is a center of Democratic power in Wisconsin and home to more voters than any other city in the state. Former President Donald Trump reportedly called the city — in a key swing state in this year’s election — “horrible” behind closed doors in the month before the convention began, although his campaign has rejected that characterization.

At the convention, the presidential and vice presidential candidates for the upcoming elections are nominated by GOP delegates from each state and territory. This year, that’s Trump and Ohio Sen. JD Vance. While Trump was officially nominated at the RNC, it was known he would become the GOP nominee since he won 1,215 Republican delegates in March.

The convention provides an opportunity for Republicans to make their policies clear going into the November election and to publicize some of the key elements of their platform.

A variety of events — from film screenings to delegate breakfasts — are held, and the official sessions take place in the evening during the convention.

These are the four themes for each day of the gathering:

On Monday, Trump picked Vance as his running mate, with the Ohio senator introducing himself to Republicans across the nation in a speech on Wednesday night. Trump will speak on Thursday evening, and aides have said Trump rewrote his speech since the attempt to assassinate him on Saturday.

CNN’s Steve Contorno contributed to this report.

Students participate in a graduation ceremony at Pasadena City College in June 2019, in Pasadena, California.

President Joe Biden announced another round of student loan debt forgiveness Thursday, totaling $1.2 billion for 35,000 public-sector workers including teachers, nurses and firefighters.

The borrowers qualify for the debt relief through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program, which was created nearly two decades ago and expanded by the Biden administration’s efforts to make it easier to qualify.

The administration is eager to show how it has canceled more federal student loan debt than any prior administration – now totaling more than $168 billion for nearly 4.8 million Americans – despite its signature, one-time student loan forgiveness program getting knocked down by the Supreme Court last year.

Thursday’s announcement comes as the Biden administration is fighting two legal challenges, which have been filed by several Republican-led states, to a separate student loan repayment plan that it launched last year, known as SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education). The plan offers the most generous repayment terms for low-income Americans by reducing their monthly payments and creating a faster path to debt relief.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide soon whether to block part of the SAVE plan while the matter is fully litigated.

Rep. Jennifer McClellan speaks at a press conference in Washington, DC, in July 2023.

Virginia Democratic Rep. Jennifer McClellan pushed back against former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s conclusion that President Joe Biden will lose to Donald Trump and bring the House with him in November if he continues to run.

“I don’t,” McClellan said on CNN This Morning when asked by Kasie Hunt if she believes Pelosi is right. 

CNN on Wednesday reported that Pelosi privately told Biden that polling shows he can’t defeat Trump and that Biden could destroy Democrats’ chances of winning the House this fall if he continues seeking a second term, according to four sources briefed on the call.

McClellan argued that “the polls are all over the place” and repeatedly stressed that Democrats must defeat Trump this fall to avoid elements of Project 2025 from being enacted into law. 

The launch of the Republican presidential campaign ticket of Donald Trump and JD Vance this week has been closely scrutinized by governments around the globe looking for clues to what a return of an “America First” foreign policy might look like – including in the world’s second-largest economy.

Vance, a junior senator from Ohio, wove several mentions of China – and what he painted as its negative impact on the American economy – into the introduction of his own life and views to the Republican National Convention on Wednesday when he accepted the nomination to be Trump’s vice-presidential candidate.

Much like his running mate, Vance claimed that policies in past decades supported by President Joe Biden and “out-of-touch politicians” in Washington meant the US “was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labor, and in the decades to come, deadly Chinese fentanyl.”

“We’re going to build factories again… together, we will protect the wages of American workers and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens,” Vance said.

The comments, which were among the few direct references to foreign nations throughout the nearly 40-minute speech, come in a week where Vance and Trump have shown signals of how their administration would shape US policy and relations with China – and US partners in Asia.

That’s drawn attention from the region, where countries’ ties with the US could change if power changes hands in the November elections.

Read more about the impact it could have.

Former President Donald Trump’s running mate JD Vance speaks at the 2024 Republican National Convention hosted at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee on July 17.

Two days after being tapped as Donald Trump’s running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance introduced himself to voters in a speech that highlighted the populist direction the two aim to take the Republican Party — and the nation.

Vance’s Republican National Convention speech capped a night Republicans spent prosecuting what they see as President Joe Biden’s biggest foreign policy failures and their consequences.

Republicans, including the former president’s granddaughter, 17-year-old Kai Trump, also spent much of their time attempting to show Trump’s human side.

Here are five takeaways:

Vance introduces himself and slams Biden: Vance spoke of being raised in rural Ohio, joining the Marines and attending Yale Law School, where he met his wife, Usha. He also used his political leanings — populist and isolationist — to target Biden’s career as a politician.

A softer edge: Though parts of Vance’s speech were Trumpian, Vance used his speech to paint himself as an everyman and appealed to poor and middle-class voters across the political spectrum.

Usha Vance takes the stage: JD Vance’s wife, Usha, laid out her husband’s biography and compared it to her middle-class upbringing in suburban San Diego with Indian immigrant parents. In a humanizing moment, she noted that JD adapted to their differences.

Gold Star families lambast Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal: The audience heard sharp criticism of Biden from the families of some of the 13 service members who were killed in a suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul during the United States’ 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

GOP senators confront Secret Service director: Republican senators confronted Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and chased her through Fiserv Forum, demanding answers to questions about Saturday’s assassination attempt.

Read the full story.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi attends the Munich Security Conference on February 17.

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi privately told President Joe Biden in a recent conversation that polling shows that the president cannot defeat Donald Trump and that Biden could destroy Democrats’ chances of winning the House in November if he continues seeking a second term, according to four sources briefed on the call.

The president responded by pushing back, telling Pelosi he has seen polls that indicate he can win, one source said. Another one of the sources described Biden as getting defensive about the polls. At one point, Pelosi asked Mike Donilon, Biden’s longtime adviser, to get on the line to talk over the data.

This phone call would mark the second known conversation between the California lawmaker and Biden since the president’s disastrous debate on June 27. While the exact date of the conversation was not clear, one source described it as being within the last week. Pelosi and Biden also spoke in early July.

None of the sources indicated whether Pelosi told Biden in this conversation that she believes the president should drop out of the 2024 race.

Pelosi has spent the weeks following the debate listening to concerns from her colleagues. Pelosi made waves when she said in an interview last week:

When asked for comment, White House spokesperson Andrew Bates did not respond to the details of CNN’s reporting on the recent Pelosi-Biden call. “President Biden is the nominee of the party. He plans to win and looks forward to working with congressional Democrats to pass his 100 days agenda to help working families,” Bates said.

A Pelosi spokesperson told CNN that the former House speaker has been in California since Friday and she has not spoken to Biden since.

Read the full story.

President Joe Biden speaks at the NAACP National Convention on July 16, in Las Vegas. 

President Joe Biden has again responded to calls for him to drop out of the presidential race, telling media outlet Univision that “with age comes wisdom.”  

The interview with host Luis Sandoval was taped Wednesday, shortly before the White House announced that Biden tested positive for Covid-19.  

Asked about calls for him to exit the race, including from Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, Biden addressed the debate performance that sparked the concerns.

Biden also addressed concerns about his age, saying: “with age comes wisdom.” 

“I know the difference between truth and lies. I know the difference between good and bad. I know the difference between what has to be done,” Biden said. 

When asked how confident he is that he’ll get the Latino vote, Biden responded “I feel good,” adding: “I’m indebted to the community.”

“Most communities don’t really begin to focus on the election until they get into September” Biden told Sandoval. “All the talk about who’s leaning where and how is kind of, everything so far between Trump and me has been basically even.” 

The full interview is set to air Thursday afternoon across all Univision-Uforia radio stations.

Donald Trump will pull off his greatest feat yet as Joe Biden confronts his darkest hour.

The ex-president, 78, will accept the Republican nomination Thursday, advancing one of the most stunning comebacks in political history after his bid to steal the 2020 election, an unprecedented criminal conviction and an assassination attempt.

Biden, 81, is meanwhile being rocked by a Democratic rebellion. Concerns about whether he can again defeat his 2020 opponent have boiled back up amid lawmakers’ concerns about his health and cognitive state and despair over his chances of blocking the extreme possibilities of a second Trump term.

Sources told CNN Wednesday that former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi recently told the president that polls show he can’t beat Trump and could crush Democratic hopes of winning the House if he stays in the race.

A White House race that slumbered for months has suddenly erupted over a momentous three weeks bookended by Biden’s cataclysmic debate performance and the attempted assassination of Trump – a whiplash of events unseen in half a century.

The 45th president’s comeback will only be fully realized if he becomes the second one-term president to win a return to the White House in November. But his rebound to this point may be even more unlikely than his unexpected win in the 2016 election.

His return to the top of the GOP ticket means it is now clear that Trump was not simply an aberration, but is becoming a historic political force who has utterly transformed his party and could do the same for the nation, for better or worse, if he comes back to White House on January 20, 2025.

Read the full analysis.

Trump and Vance at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 16.

With Donald Trump’s choice to make JD Vance his running mate, he adds to the ticket the Ohio senator once known as a “Trump whisperer” for his understanding of the former president’s voter base.

The onetime “Never Trump” Republican, Vance, 39, shot to fame over his 2016 memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.” The former lawyer and venture capitalist has since become a loyal follower of Trump and heir-apparent to his particular brand of Republican populist politics.

Here are some key things to know about Trump’s VP pick:

Once a Trump critic CNN reported last month that Vance liked tweets in 2016 and 2017 that harshly criticized Trump and his policies. CNN previously reported that Vance deleted past anti-Trump tweets ahead of his announcement in 2021 that he would run for the open Ohio Senate seat.

Vance in 2016 privately wondered whether Trump was “America’s Hitler,” and a few months later wrote in The Atlantic that Trump was “cultural heroin.”

Senate The freshman senator won his election after receiving Trump’s endorsement. He was also funded heavily by pro-Trump tech mogul Peter Thiel.

Vance has been a vocal opponent of foreign aid in Congress, opposing legislation to send more aid from the US to Ukraine amid Russia’s war.

A day after Ohio voters approved a 2023 ballot measure to protect access to abortion, Vance urged Republicans to embrace a federal ban on the procedure to more effectively make the case to voters about the GOP’s position — breaking from Trump’s stance that the issue should be left up to states.

Pivot to support Trump “Like a lot of people, I criticized Trump back in 2016,” Vance told CNN in 2021. “I regret being wrong about the guy.”

Vance stood by Trump’s side at a New York courthouse during his hush money trial. He has also made clear that his view of the constitutional limits on a vice president’s role in certifying election results differs from that of former Vice President Mike Pence, who drew Trump’s ire in 2021 when he opted not to interfere in the process of approving electoral votes for Joe Biden.

Vance earlier this year told ABC he would not have certified the 2020 election results until states submitted pro-Trump electors.

He committed to accepting the 2024 election results in May in an interview with CNN, provided it’s a “free and fair election” and despite the winner.