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--:-- Noel King: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Noel King. Today, we're talking to two conservatives who don't agree on whether Donald Trump's speech at the Republican National Convention was a success.
--:-- [Sound effects: Applause]
--:-- Noel King: Following introductions from his son Eric, Hulk Hogan, and UFC President Dana White, Donald Trump took the stage in Milwaukee last night to accept the Republican nomination, and the country got a glimpse of a man changed by proximity to death.
--:-- Noel King: It was a warm, beautiful day in the early evening in Butler Township, in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I went to the stage and the crowd was cheering wildly. Everybody was happy. And then 30 minutes in, that man changed right back.
--:-- Noel King: The late, great Hannibal Lecter. He'd love to have you for dinner. On Today Explained, Donald Trump's unity speech and his disunity speech.
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--:-- Noel King: Support for this show comes from ServiceNow. AI is only as powerful as the platform it's built into, don't you know? That's why it's no surprise that more than 85% of the Fortune 500 use the ServiceNow AI platform.
--:-- Noel King: While other platforms duct tape tools together, ServiceNow seamlessly unifies people, data, workflows, and AI, connecting every corner of your business. And with AI agents working together autonomously, anyone in any department can focus on the work that matters most.
--:-- Noel King: I've never met an AI agent. Learn how ServiceNow puts AI to work for people at servicenow.com.
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--:-- Noel King: Support for this show comes from Macy's. Layering is an art form. All it takes is a bit of intention, style, and, of course, the perfect cold weather staples.
--:-- Noel King: So find the perfect look for you with the help of Macy's Fall Fashion Guide, your one-stop shop for fall's latest trends and must-haves, curated by their experts.
--:-- Noel King: From leather to denim to cozy knits, find everything you need to piece together your new fall look. Explore the Macy's Fall Guide for yourself and shop in-store or online at Macy's.com.
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--:-- Noel King: Well, let me tell you something, brother. I'm Noelle King. On Today Explained, we're talking to two conservatives. Both of them used to be staunch Republicans. Today, one of them is not.
--:-- Noel King: And as you're going to hear, Donald Trump is the reason. Scott Jennings is a political contributor to CNN and a partner at Run Switch Public Relations in Louisville, Kentucky.
--:-- Noel King: And Sarah Longwell is publisher of The Bulwark and heads Republican voters against Trump. Sarah does a lot of Republican polling. And of course, she watched on Thursday night.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: What stood out to me is how much Donald Trump couldn't help himself from taking what could have been a halfway decent speech for him and turned it into one of his weird, disjointed rallies that, in addition to being very strange, he was trying to keep himself at an even keel, which made him look sort of bizarrely low energy as he was giving it.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together or we fall apart.
--:-- Noel King: He started out acting like he was going to give a speech about unifying people, about talking about how the divisions are hurting us. And then he went into just an absolutely insane, surreal session of grievance and name calling.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: Crazy Nancy Pelosi, the whole thing, just boom, boom. And was just the person that he's always been.
--:-- Noel King: The leader of the United Auto Workers should be fired immediately. and every single autoworker, union and non-union, should be voting for Donald Trump because we're going to bring back...
--:-- Scott Jennings: Sarah, you were not sold.
--:-- Noel King: Scott, what did you think?
--:-- Scott Jennings: Like most Republicans who are operating on Friday morning on nothing more than adrenaline and Hulkamania, I thought the whole convention was actually pretty well done.
--:-- Scott Jennings: Now, as it relates to Donald Trump's speech, it was a long speech, no disputing that, and he did use his prepared remarks, and he also used his unprepared remarks. So it did go on for quite some time.
--:-- Scott Jennings: But the part that mattered the most to me was the first section where he was recalling nearly being assassinated in Pennsylvania.
--:-- Scott Jennings: I will tell you exactly what happened and you'll never hear it from me a second time because it's actually too painful to tell.
--:-- Scott Jennings: It was riveting. And if you were in the arena, you could have heard a pin drop in there. And moved my right hand to my ear brought it down. My hand was covered with blood, just absolutely blood all over the place.
--:-- Scott Jennings: I immediately knew it was very serious that we were under attack. And in one movement proceeded to drop to the ground.
--:-- Noel King: So I think that was extremely well done.
--:-- Noel King: And one of the most memorable things was when Trump went over to the firefighter's helmet and jacket and he kissed the helmet.
--:-- Scott Jennings: He lost his life selflessly acting as a human shield to protect them from flying bullets. He went right over the top of them and was hit.
--:-- Scott Jennings: What a fine man he was.
--:-- Noel King: Scott, you spoke to Trump's advisers. What was he trying to do in those 10 or so minutes?
--:-- Scott Jennings: Well, he was trying, I think, to do something that literally no one else, no other politician can do right now.
--:-- Scott Jennings: And that's talk about this, you know, a surreal moment of being at a rally at a political event and nearly being killed.
--:-- Scott Jennings: I mean, he still has the bandage on his ear.
--:-- Noel King: Bullets were flying over us, yet I felt serene.
--:-- Scott Jennings: You know, it's interesting. I think that first 30 minutes was a bit of a Rorschach test for how people feel about Donald Trump because I watched Donald Trump do the sort of kissing the helmet.
--:-- Scott Jennings: And there is just a way that he does things where it always sounds inauthentic and staged.
--:-- Scott Jennings: Donald Trump made it just sort of about him, right? Like he could have made it about the country, about political violence.
--:-- Scott Jennings: The problem is Donald Trump doesn't have any moral authority to talk about political violence.
--:-- Scott Jennings: He's a person who foments political violence. Knock the crap out of him, would you? Seriously.
--:-- Scott Jennings: I'd like to punch him in the face, I'll tell you. He's a person who has created an environment of political violence with rhetoric that has been incendiary from day one.
--:-- Noel King: I will end the agony of our people, the plunder of our cities, the sacking of our towns, the violation of our citizens, and the conquest of our country.
--:-- Scott Jennings: They're conquering our country.
--:-- Noel King: There's sort of a way in which you see some Republicans who want to try to polish Trump up for people. They say like, oh, he's going to be changed. He's going to have a new tone. He's going to be a person of unity.
--:-- Scott Jennings: But when I was talking to swing voters just very recently about the assassination attempt and asked people if they thought it would change Trump the voters are much more clear eyed than the pundits and the analysts because they were like absolutely not
--:-- Noel King: You've both identified that there was a big shift last night after about 30 minutes from an attempt at reflectiveness, thoughtfulness back to, you know, the Donald Trump who who is not entirely who is sometimes incoherent, loves to kind of puff himself up.
--:-- Noel King: Trump only referred directly to President Biden once last night. He made a point that he was only going to refer to him once.
--:-- Scott Jennings: If I may go back to something Sarah said just briefly, I'm quite surprised to hear her say that the guy who got his ear shot off and nearly died doesn't have any moral authority to talk about what it's like to go through a moment of extreme political violence.
--:-- Noel King: But we'll leave that there.
--:-- Scott Jennings: Here's what I think. I think that if you look at the prepared text that was distributed, Then you could see and follow along and feel the moments where he was adding in, you know, the Trump ad libs, the Trump asides and the sort of the Trump observations that were not part of the prepared text.
--:-- Scott Jennings: So he really did give two speeches, but he was sort of giving them at the same time.
--:-- Scott Jennings: He didn't give two speeches last night. He gave one speech. He gave one speech that was on a teleprompter that people were that was meant to try to, hey, no, no, no, don't don't go do the thing that you do.
--:-- Scott Jennings: And then he did the thing that he does, right, which is to call people names, incite people and continue to drag us down as a country.
--:-- Noel King: And so I don't for one second, I don't for one second shy away from being clear about who Donald Trump is and how he has brought us to this moment.
--:-- Noel King: Last night, what we saw after, I think, a couple of weeks of Democrats feeling like this was going to be a rout and that Donald Trump was headed to a landslide election. I don't think people feel that way anymore.
--:-- Scott Jennings: What should Donald Trump's goal have been with this speech last night? And do you think he achieved what he set out to achieve?
--:-- Scott Jennings: I think his goal, honestly, was to put a capper on a convention that had a couple of missions. Number one, obviously, they spent the entire week trying to appeal to people who are non-traditional political audiences.
--:-- Scott Jennings: That was sort of the purpose of the programming. Hulk Hogan on Thursday night was extremely unlike anything I've ever seen at a political convention.
--:-- Scott Jennings: You know something? I've seen some great tag teams in my time. Hulk Hogan and ooh yeah, the macho man Randy Savage. But you know something? I see the greatest tag team of my life standing upon us, getting ready to straighten this country out for all the real Americans.
--:-- Scott Jennings: You know, you had a dog in a wagon at one point. Now, Baby Dog's got a prediction for everybody here. And here's the prediction. Baby Dog says we'll retain the house, the majority in the house.
--:-- Scott Jennings: We had an Instagram influencer named Amber Rose. These are my people. This is where I belong.
--:-- Noel King: I mean, these are not people who were there to talk to frequent Republican voters. They are there to expand and alter the composition of the electorate.
--:-- Scott Jennings: The other thing they were trying to do, I think, was just show that there are two major American political parties. One of them is functioning properly, and the other one is a complete mess.
--:-- Noel King: First of all, I agree with just about everything Scott said.
--:-- Noel King: I think that it was very clear that they wanted to appeal to a nontraditional audience. Kid Rock. Thank you, Kid Rock. Sometimes referred to as Bob. Paul Cogan, that person I had never heard of who's like an influencer who does naked walks, like they just had a lot of, you know, very strange programming.
--:-- Noel King: And I think it depends on if you want a Republican Party that is sort of steeped in super online influencer culture or whether you want somebody who's going to talk about improving people's lives, bringing the country together.
--:-- Noel King: And I always think it's notable who wasn't there. Hulk Hogan was there, but George W. Bush was not. Mitt Romney was not. Liz Cheney was not. Paul Ryan.
--:-- Noel King: And so people who are in not so distant memory, leaders of a Republican Party that no longer exists, like they're not there. But this Amber Rose person is.
--:-- Noel King: And so I think that it really spoke to how different the party is, how much it's changed and what is valued now in the Republican Party.
--:-- Noel King: I mean, the only thing it was about was Trump.
--:-- Scott Jennings: If I may respond to that for just a moment, I disagree that the entire convention was about fawning over Trump.
--:-- Scott Jennings: Noelle, if you took Scott Jennings from 10 years ago, just a younger, he's still, he's handsome today, but let's just say he's 10 years younger, and you showed him Donald Trump's speech from last night, Scott Jennings, Republican, just like me 10 years ago, would look at that and go, who is that lunatic and what is he talking about?
--:-- Scott Jennings: But he would – there is no world in which Scott Jennings, without having gone on this journey in which he learns to accommodate the insanity that is this Republican Party, would watch that speech cold and think – not think like aliens have taken over the Republican Party and this is lunacy.
--:-- Noel King: I agree with Sarah that if you had taken us all back in time 10 years ago and said here's some video from the future, respond to it, we would all probably say, oh, gosh, this is – this must be some sort of prank, right?
--:-- Noel King: But that all changed when Donald Trump came onto the scene and completely and totally changed our politics and changed the way we consume the politics and changed the way the Republican Party operates.
--:-- Noel King: And would I have been able to predict that in the year 2014? Doubtful.
--:-- Noel King: If I were that good of a prognosticator, I'd be rich and neither one of you all be able to find me right now.
--:-- Noel King: Scott Jennings and Sarah Longwell. Coming up, we're going to talk about what voters want from Donald Trump.
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--:-- Noel King: Support for today's show comes from Adio. What is Adio?
--:-- Noel King: Adio is an AI-native customer relationship management system built specifically for the next era of companies.
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--:-- Noel King: That's A-T-T-I-O dot com slash todayexplained.
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--:-- Noel King: Let's be honest. Are you happy with your job? Like, really happy?
--:-- Noel King: The unfortunate fact is that a huge number of people can't say yes to that.
--:-- Noel King: Far too many of us are stuck in a job we've outgrown, or one we never wanted in the first place.
--:-- Noel King: But still, we stick it out. And we give reasons like, what if the next move is even worse? I've already put years into this place.
--:-- Noel King: And maybe the most common one, isn't everyone kind of miserable at work?
--:-- Noel King: But there's a difference between reasons for staying and excuses for not leaving.
--:-- Noel King: It's time to get unstuck. It's time for Strawberry.me.
--:-- Noel King: They match you with a certified career coach who helps you go from where you are to where you actually want to be.
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--:-- Noel King: So don't leave your career to chance. Take action and own your future with a professional coach in your corner.
--:-- Noel King: Go to strawberry.me slash unstuck to claim a special offer.
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--:-- Noel King: Support for the show today comes from LifeKit, the podcast from NPR.
--:-- Noel King: What's in your life kit? I'm asking.
--:-- Noel King: They didn't ask that. Every day you have to make choices that might shape the direction of your life, but you can't flip to the back of the book to find an answer key.
--:-- Noel King: Instead, you can listen to the LifeKit podcast from NPR.
--:-- Noel King: LifeKit offers real stories about common issues like relationships, finances, parenting, and your career.
--:-- Noel King: If you're looking to move with more intention or just need thoughtful guidance on living better, LifeKit delivers strategies to help you make meaningful, sustainable change.
--:-- Noel King: From fitness routines to mental resilience, navigating personal goals to tackling burnout, each episode is full of relevant insights and clear takeaways about things we all could use a little help with.
--:-- Noel King: LifeKit wants to help you approach your own life with confidence and clarity and walk away with a game plan you can implement right away.
--:-- Noel King: Enough from me. Go listen to the show Life Kit. It's a podcast from NPR.
--:-- Noel King: The president is a product. Don't forget that.
--:-- Noel King: Today Explained, we're back with Scott Jennings, political contributor to CNN, partner at Run Switch Publications in Louisville, Kentucky, Republican.
--:-- Noel King: And Sarah Longwell, publisher of The Bulwark and head of Republican Voters Against Trump.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: Donald Trump's speech included the three main themes of the convention, populist economy, strong national security, isolationist foreign policy.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: Sarah, did Donald Trump last night paint a clear picture of how he would run the country if he's elected to a second term?
--:-- Sarah Longwell: Sort of. I mean, I think that it was clear that he would continue to be the chaos agent that he has been.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: And most specifically, I think he's clear when it comes to policy just on a couple of places. One is on foreign policy.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: The Republican Party now is a much more isolationist party. When I do focus groups with Republicans, two-time Trump voters, one of the things that you hear a lot about is how people do not want America to be involved in any of these foreign conflicts, including funding them in any way.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: Also, obviously, immigration is one of the issues where I think the Democrats are the most vulnerable.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: And I think that Donald Trump has really built his political – his entire political persona on sort of the build-the-wall anti-immigration platform.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: And I think he's been successful with that because that was one of the things that I think had been under the surface that nobody had really put their finger on until Donald Trump came along is how frustrated Americans are with the lack of immigration policy that we have in this country.
--:-- Noel King: One of the things that's been interesting to me is how little Donald Trump and his team seem to be interested in winning back sort of those college-educated suburban swing voters that cost them the election in 2020.
--:-- Noel King: And instead, they're trying to expand the electorate with new people. And I think that they are trying to build a multiracial working-class party.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: Do you know what the smell of rotting flesh smells like? The people of my city do.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: In Donald Trump, I see a leader who will end the urban nightmare.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: It is just not the party of Mitt Romney. Like, it is a different party. It is with a different set of values.
--:-- Noel King: I think Sarah's right. They're not necessarily trying to, you know, overcompensate for winning back those suburban voters that went away from the Republican Party in 2022 or 2020, even as you have some of those people flowing out of the Republican Party, the algebra is this, who's flowing in?
--:-- Noel King: And you have all these working class voters, non-college of all races flowing into the party, Hispanics, African-American men, and these sort of disconnected working class white voters, maybe people who've never even voted or registered to vote before.
--:-- Noel King: And that's the bet, right? is that you can replace these college-educated, suburban, traditional Republican types that float out and replace them with this working-class group. That's the point of this election.
--:-- Scott Jennings: All right. So in part, Trump wants to draw new voters.
--:-- Noel King: Sarah, a couple of weeks ago, you talked to a group of Hispanic voters who previously voted for Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. They were Democrats. Now they're leaning toward Trump.
--:-- Noel King: What did they tell you about why that is?
--:-- Sarah Longwell: Immigration was a big part of it. The economy was a big part of it.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: The Hispanic voters and the black voters that are sort of leaning Trump now who sort of traditionally been Democrats, they sound exactly like white Trump voters.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: Everybody who sort of liked Trump sounds basically the same about why.
--:-- Noel King: And it tends to be issues around the economy and feeling like they can't afford a house, can't afford an apartment.
--:-- Noel King: Groceries are very expensive. And so there's this sort of economic piece, and they just happen to – they sort of trust Trump more on the economy.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: When we talk to Hispanic voters, it is pretty consistent that Hispanic voters, are very concerned about immigration policy.
--:-- Noel King: And I think sometimes people think that it would be the opposite, that they'll say, I came here the right way. And so Trump's tough words on immigration and on immigrants last night, that was one of those moments where people said, hey this is not unifying This is standard Donald Trump
--:-- Sarah Longwell: Sounds like standard Donald Trump on immigration is what a lot of American voters seem to want
--:-- Noel King: Well I would just somewhat disagree with your characterization that it's not unifying because I agree with what- Cannibal Lecter? Come on. Insane asylums? They're emptying out their insane asylums. And terrorists are coming in at numbers that we've never seen before.
--:-- Noel King: Bad things are going to happen. He talked, Donald Trump talks about fictional cannibals. Joe Biden talks about the real ones that ate his uncle.
--:-- Noel King: And they never found the body because there used to be a lot of cannibals for real in that part of New Guinea. So I guess we have cannibals in both parties now.
--:-- Noel King: But on the immigration issue, I actually think what he's saying, I agree with Sarah, immigration is his brand.
--:-- Noel King: I mean, that's what got him into politics in the first place back in 2015.
--:-- Noel King: And now if you look at his policy preferences, a majority of the American people prefer what he is selling as a prescription to the crisis we have, including a majority of Hispanic Americans say they support what Trump wants to do on immigration.
--:-- Noel King: So when you talk about something being divisive or, you know, not unifying, well, how are you defining that?
--:-- Noel King: Right now in this race, Trump's positions are preferred by a majority of the American people.
--:-- Noel King: That's what I would call unifying. And I would also say that Joe Biden's job approval on immigration is so bad that that's also unifying.
--:-- Noel King: People universally basically agree he's done a terrible job on it.
--:-- Noel King: All right. The other big line from Donald Trump last night, I was actually drifting off because the speech was very long.
--:-- Noel King: I felt my eyes closing. And then all of a sudden he said, no taxes on tips. And the crowd went wild. No tax on tips. No tax on tips.
--:-- Noel King: All right. So no taxes on tips is a message aimed at people who work for tips. There are about four million Americans in that position.
--:-- Noel King: What did we hear from Trump on the economy, an area where we know Americans have real problems with how Joe Biden has handled things?
--:-- Scott Jennings: If you heard Trump in his speech last night, he said, you know, all these people have all these ideas. I got this idea from a waitress. But I said to her, let me just ask you a question. would you be happy if you had no tax on tips? She said, what a great idea.
--:-- Scott Jennings: I got my information from a very smart waitress. That's better than spending millions of dollars.
--:-- Noel King: The crowd did go wild for that last night.
--:-- Noel King: So it's sort of a brilliant idea because it's a way for him to appeal to the low-tax conservatives.
--:-- Noel King: Maybe some of them live in the suburbs that Republicans have always been. And it's a way to appeal to this working-class cohort, this several million people who work for TIPS at the same time.
--:-- Noel King: So I think he's actually hit upon a pretty smart idea there.
--:-- Noel King: Donald Trump is telling a story. He's speaking, this actual, it's a policy thing that would affect a great number of people, but it's not like a big national policy that you'd hang your head on, but it's a good story.
--:-- Noel King: And in it, it encapsulates a vision or an orientation around sort of the economy in general, even though it's just one very specific piece that even lots of people might not have context for.
--:-- Noel King: But because it's a good story, because it's easy to understand, right? Donald Trump tells a story and people like can impute a broader economic message from that one story in a way that some kind of long laundry list of like, and we did this and we did this and we did this and we want to do this, is never going to land with people.
--:-- Noel King: And so I feel like Democrats have got to figure out how to be a little bit more like Republicans on the communication side and being clear, because that is a place where they are just getting— there are lots of good stories that they could tell on economics, and instead they just try to throw the kitchen sink at it and people don't remember anything.
--:-- Noel King: All right, as we close out, we are about four months until the election.
--:-- Noel King: What does last night's speech tell each of you about what we should expect from the Trump campaign over the next four months?
--:-- Sarah Longwell: Well, look, I hope that we see a lot more of Donald Trump because one of the things that has really helped Donald Trump, and it's always been like this.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: I do focus groups and have every week for the last four or five years. And also in the polling, one of the things you see is that when Donald Trump is less visible to people, his poll numbers go up. When he is more visible to people, his poll numbers go down.
--:-- Sarah Longwell: I got to say, the point of the unity piece of this, though, that was potent. Like the fact that they've kicked everybody out who was anti-Trump, the fact that like you cannot be that person in the party means that they are now down to the party faithful where Trump is like a messianic figure.
--:-- Noel King: And so Democrats need to realize what they're up against and they need to get it together fast.
--:-- Noel King: And they need to find a candidate who can prosecute the case against Trump effectively because Trump has more baggage than someone going to Europe for a year.
--:-- Noel King: Well, I love the at the end of Sarah's speech, she said, and the Democrats need to find a candidate here on July the 19th, 2024, with a month to go before the Democratic convention.
--:-- Noel King: And therein lies part of the message of the Republican National Convention.
--:-- Noel King: This is a functioning political party that's interested in having a big conversation with a wide variety of people about a lot of issues.
--:-- Noel King: And the convener, Donald Trump, said, you know, not everybody you see here may agree on everything this week, but you can all agree that it's good if we talk to each other and try to welcome more people in instead of kick people out.
--:-- Noel King: And the Republican Party said, hey, we're the party of fun. And Donald Trump was ahead when it started, and he's ahead by a little bit more now that it's over.
--:-- Noel King: Scott Jennings, CNN, Run Switch PR, and Sarah Longwell, the bulwark Republican voters against Trump.
--:-- Noel King: All right. As we close out today's show, I want to ask you a favor.
--:-- Noel King: Vox is making a new podcast that's going to answer questions from our readers and listeners.
--:-- Noel King: These questions can be about anything. They can be heavy. They can be funny.
--:-- Noel King: If you want something in your world explained and Google can't get you answers, you can submit questions to us at askvox at vox.com or give us a call at 1-800-618-8545.
--:-- Noel King: Today's episode was produced by Peter Balanon-Rosen and Miles Bryan with help from Victoria Chamberlain.
--:-- Noel King: Miranda Kennedy edited, Matthew Collette fact-checked, Andrea Kristen's daughter and Patrick Boyd engineered.
--:-- Noel King: The rest of our team includes Avishai Artsy, Hari Mwagdi, Amanda Llewellyn, Miles Bryant, Denise Guerra, Rob Byers, and my co-host with the co-most, Sean Ramos-Firm.
--:-- Noel King: Amin El-Sadi is our supervising editor. Miranda Kennedy is our EP.
--:-- Noel King: We use music by Breakmaster Cylinder.
--:-- Noel King: Today Explained is distributed by WNYC.
--:-- Noel King: The show is a part of Vox.
--:-- Noel King: If you want to support our journalism by joining our membership program, go to Vox.com slash members to sign up.
--:-- Noel King: It's Today Explained. I'm Noelle King.
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