we want to thank house speaker paul ryan for joining us tonight. the audience. and of course the racine theatre guilt. cnn tonight with don lemon starts right now. jake, thank you very much. it was a great town hall with the house speaker paul ryan. a lot to discuss on this busy news night. we ll analyze it all. this is cnn tonight. i m don lemon. thanks for sticking with us. we have a lot of breaking news. president trump speaks to the nation about the war in afghanistan, vowing america will fight to win, but refusing to reveal numbers of troops or timetables. our military experts on what america s new strategy is, they ll talk, they ll join us. and in our live town hall that you just saw, the speaker, house speaker paul ryan, says the president, in his words, messed up, with his shocking comments about neo nazi violence in charlottesville.
the oval office. in other words, when you re president of the united states. reporter: trump has used past campaigns to diminish his base, refli i reveling in the crowds of support. with the exception of the late, great abraham lincoln, i can be more presidential than any president that has ever held this office, that i can tell you. reporter: tonight s rally coming during a particularly tough time. a new poll showing his approval at just 48%. paul ryan told a cnn town hall that president trump, quote, messed up. i think he made comments that were much more ambiguous, much more confusing. i do think he could have done better. i think he needed to do better.
in charlottesville, virginia. bring back our panel to discuss. chris cillizza and jeremy diamond. he acknowledged he messed up. not often you hear the speaker of the house acknowledging that that president messed up. right. the comments speak to the degree to which donald trump messed um to use the speaker s words in this instance. yesterday we heard the president, again, return to his scriptive remarks and make unifying remarks about not directly charlottesville but essentially the state of affairs in the country right now, and but the problem is we ve already heard from donald trump. heard him speak from his heart, offer prompter, frustrated with the state of affairs in the media at the moment, and i hate too say it. i ve seen this movie before and we re looking at it again potentially tonight as the president heads to phoenix to
president s overall approval at 37%. and just 28% approved of his response to the deadly violence in charlottesville. very fine people on both sides. reporter: monday night house speaker paul ryan told a cnn town hall that trump, quote, messed up. i think he made comments that were much more morally ambiguous, much more confusing. and i do think he could have done better. i think he needed to do better. reporter: today vice-president mike pence coming to trump s defense. the president specifically denounced white supremacists, neo-nazis and the kkk repeatedly, and he did it when he denounced hate and violence on saturday. he did it in his address to the nation monday. and he did it again in the press conference. there was no moral equivalency drawn by the president. reporter: that fall out had the potential to get worse if the president follows through on pardoning the deeply controversial sheriff joe arpaio convicted of criminal contempt
they have a great responsibility now. i, personally think those members of congress, republican or democrat, those who don t call out donald trump by name at this point are going to have a legacy they are never going to be able to repair. should congress sensor the president? i think they should for a lot of things. here is the enabler of what the white nationalists are doing. he is the validater. he is not somebody who sits there and failed to say the right things. you know, he kind of messed up, didn t say the right things when this happened. he is the person who gives them the credibility to say, look, the president does this, why can t we. yeah. what do you say to members of congress who are in, you know, still actively in politics who say, if we turn against this president, we will lose our seats. then they lose their seats. the united states is more important than who stays in