On the first day of the RNC, from the White House, I joined my Scripps News colleagues for a live roundtable, as we looked at all that’s unfolded during the past several days. Here’s a clip.
Maya Rodriguez, I want to bring you into this conversation because obviously right now the focus with all the headlines with the VP nominee and the classified documents case and the survival of that attempted assassination. Former President Trump is in the the headlines a lot recently, but President Biden is also, it's also notable what he is planning to do this week. He has called for unity and is addressed to the country. He is among the many people, Republican, Democrat, international leaders that are condemning political violence of any kind, saying it has no place. How is his campaign deciding to move forward? Because it has to be very careful here about walking this tightrope, about not going after someone too hard who has just had his life in danger. Well, you know, it seems like the president is taking his own advice. I mean, we heard him talking about the fact that he wanted people to cool the political rhetoric. But he and his team have done at this point. They have pulled back on some of the TV campaign ads. They have put those aside for now. This is all temporary, of course. They've also stopped some outbound communications to supporters. Again, in light of all of this that has happened over the last two days. And we've heard from the president. He's been front and center. He's spoken to the nation. Three times since this attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump and we're going to hear from him again. He's set to sit down this afternoon with NBC anchor Lester Holt for a wide-ranging interview that is supposed to air tonight at 9:00 PM on that network. Now, of course, at the same time, we have the RNC going on and this announcement from former President Donald Trump about his VP pick. And so you have these competing new storylines going on in the political world. Which one? Rises to the top. Which one gets heard by the American people the most? I don't know if there's enough oxygen in the political world for both of these, but right now you have two storylines involving the current president and the former president that have sort of merged together because of this violent incident this weekend at that rally, you guys.
