This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘Swamp Notes — Trump pushes unity at Republican National Convention’
Sonja Hutson
This week on Swamp Notes, we took the show on the road. Can you guess where?
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Build that wall! Build that wall!
Sonja Hutson
I’m here on the floor at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, in the state of Wisconsin. This is a big sports arena that they have decked out in red, white and blue. Seen a lot of images of American flags. People decked out in red, white and blue. Lots of those iconic ‘Make America Great Again’ red hats. Things have kicked off here for tonight, so people are kind of milling around, talking to each other. Runs in a super good mood. I’ve been talking to a lot of delegates, and the one word that I hear over and over again is . . .
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A unity come together as a people.
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I think it’s been very united. I honestly feel like, it’s almost united the party.
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To me, the theme has totally been unity.
Sonja Hutson
We heard that idea in speeches throughout the week, and former president Donald Trump really brought it home on Thursday night.
Donald Trump audio clip
Together, we will launch a new era of safety, prosperity and freedom for citizens of every race, religion, colour and create. The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly. As Americans . . .
Sonja Hutson
Last weekend’s assassination attempt seems to have produced a somewhat softer version of him. But as the speech went on, he also slipped back into some of his old ways, and it started sounding a lot more like a classic Trump rally.
Donald Trump audio clip
Democrats crazy, Nancy Pelosi, the whole thing. It’s a massive invasion at our southern border. The election result? Were never gonna let that happen again. They used Covid to cheat and never gonna let it happen again.
Sonja Hutson
So there’s obviously still an open question about what unity actually means. Trump’s language is overall still a departure from his typical demeanour, but it wasn’t the only evidence at the convention that the shooting made an impact.
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Craig Berlin and I’m the chairman for Maricopa County in Arizona.
Sonja Hutson
Craig and some of the other delegates were wearing white bandages on their ears, just like the one that Trump’s been wearing on the ear where he was shot.
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Yesterday, another delegate and I were taking the bus here to the convention, and we heard so many comment about President Trump’s ear’s patch. And so he said, you know what? We’ll stand in solidarity with them. So the idea is to make him feel good and smile.
Sonja Hutson
But Trump needs to win over voters beyond the diehard Republicans who go to these conventions. The election looks like it’s going to come down to swing voters in a handful of swing states. South Carolina delegate Jennifer Cunningham told me that that’s why she actually supported former UN ambassador Nikki Haley in the primary before switching to Trump.
Jennifer Cunningham audio clip
I just thought it’d be easier, she would be easier to stomach with moderates and Democrats.
Sonja Hutson
How do you think that he’s going to do with moderates?
Jennifer Cunningham audio clip
I think he’s going to be great. I think when people, if people are really listening to what he’s saying, that they will support him.
Sonja Hutson
So if Trump does when, does that message of unity then extend to Democrats, too? Remember, he did spend some time in his speech bashing them. I talked to some delegates from Rhode Island about this idea of unity between the two parties. Amy Gregory was one of them.
Jennifer Narbonne audio clip
That’s a step in the right direction, and hopefully the Democrats can do the same.
Sonja Hutson
That’s Amy’s friend, Jennifer Narbonne. And she was asking Amy what happens when Trump wins in November?
Jennifer Narbonne audio clip
Well, I’m not sure the Democrats are going to unite with us, but that’s you know, we’re hopeful for that.
Sonja Hutson
So overall, there were a lot of messages about unity and also plenty of Democrat bashing, but I guess it just didn’t feel as aggressive or vitriolic as it usually does. So is this the new Republican Party, the party of unity? And if it is, what does that mean for the election?
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Sonja Hutson
This is Swamp Notes, the weekly podcast from the FT News Briefing, where we talk about all of the things happening in the 2024 US presidential election. I’m Sonja Hutson, and this week we’re asking, what do Republicans mean when they talk about unity? Here with me to discuss is Lauren Fedor. She’s the FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief. Hi, Lauren.
Lauren Fedor
Hi, Sonja.
Sonja Hutson
And we’ve also got Derek Brower, the FT’s US political news editor. Hi, Derek.
Derek Brower
Hi, Sonja.
Sonja Hutson
So, first of all, what did you both make of the convention and how did it feel to be in the convention centre?
Lauren Fedor
You know, it’s, it’s a jamboree, to say the least. It’s a huge event. I think it kind of met my expectations. It looked a lot like what it looks like on TV. That kind of delegates from different states wearing crazy costumes. The balloons falling from the sky at the end of it. A lot of MAGA caps, like you said. But I think, you know, the mood was a bit different maybe, than it would have been a couple weeks earlier had we not had that shooting attempt on President Trump’s life.
Derek Brower
I was a bit surprised that the mood sometimes because in comparison with some of the rallies where you get a real like raw energy sometimes and almost anger at times. There wasn’t the same level of craziness that you sometimes associate with some of the Trump rallies. There were some oddballs and some cranks. Occasionally he popped up on the on the floor and from the podium, in fact, one or two times. But the I’d say the crank factor was lower than I would have expected this time.
Sonja Hutson
I’m going to rate everything based on a crank factor now, I love that. So I want to kind of contrast this convention with the 2016 convention, where we saw people like Texas senator Ted Cruz kind of step up on the stage and push for them to choose a candidate other than Trump, who was the frontrunner, the presumptive nominee at that point. There was none of that at this convention, was there?
Derek Brower
No. This one was all about adoration for Donald Trump, and there was almost a messianic streak. Some of the speeches talking about how he’d been saved from the assassin’s bullet by God because he had a mission to complete, and everything was about his goodness, his wisdom, his grandfatherly nurse, his ability to see beyond the petty issues of the day. It was very much a speech all about how they all love one man, Donald Trump.
Lauren Fedor
Yeah, and I would say that those kind of messianic moments, they weren’t outliers. It was like at least once an hour, if not more. On the narrow example of Cruz. You know, I think at the end of his ‘16 speech, he said people should vote their conscience.
Ted Cruz audio clip
And vote your conscience. Vote for candidates up and down the ticket who you trust to defend our freedom and to be faithful to the Constitution.
Lauren Fedor
This time round, he concluded with ‘Make America Great’ once again. But there were also two really notable examples earlier in the week, when Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley took to the stage and gave their very full throated support for Donald Trump. Haley in particular, who had really drawn a lot of space between her and Trump in the final stages of that campaign. There were a lot of boos in the crowd when she took the stage, but she also in her speech, I think was very clear at some point. What did she say? It wasn’t read my lips, but it was something to the effect of like, I am endorsing Donald Trump, period.
Sonja Hutson
Yeah, no. I talked to some delegates who were very impressed by that speech, like that, those Rhode Island delegates that we heard from at the beginning were saying, you know, I’m not really a fan of Nikki Haley, but I got to respect that she did that. And if she can, you know, get on board and put aside her differences within the party, then so can I. The big news of the week, though, was Trump’s selection of Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate. Vice presidential picks obviously ouarer strategic, they’re designed to kind of broaden the presidential candidates’ appeal to new voters typically. Which voters do you think Trump is trying to reach with this pick?
Derek Brower
Well, I think JD vance, I don’t know how many times it didn’t count, but he definitely made a few references to Michigan and Pennsylvania and to the voters in blue collar industrial parts of the US Midwest, which, of course, is where the the race is probably going to be decided. The picking of JD vance by Trump was a really brazen attempt to to reach those voters. And he has, he will appeal to many of them because of his background in Ohio as a, you know, impoverished background and so on. And his kind of poor-person, come-good story. And the American dream he tapped on in his speech. So it was really clear attempt to address a certain demographic in the US that they really need to win if they’re going to reclaim the White House.
Sonja Hutson
Yeah. Which is the demographic that arguably won Trump the White House in 2016, right?
Lauren Fedor
Absolutely. Yeah. It is very clear, as Derek says, and I think some Trump campaign officials have been saying they’re just going to park JD Vance in Pennsylvania for the next three and a half months. And I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what they do, because that is seen as the ultimate bellwether state, right? I will say, though, that there are just as many, if not many more people who see Vance as a huge risk, actually, for the ticket. And it would have been a safer bet to pick someone a bit more vanilla like Doug Burgum, whereas Vance has, as we’ve seen, the Democrats bringing out all of these lines that he’s made in the past, whether it’s about abortion, family structure, all sorts of very socially conservative views. There’s a view among some that Trump has gone out on a limb a little bit here. And Vance may end up turning off some voters at the same time as he’s winning others over.
Sonja Hutson
Yeah, he I mean, I want to just pick up on what you were talking about, Derek. A lot of these ideas of the American dream, and we heard a lot of populism, obviously in lots of speeches. But I think really in Vance’s speech, what does that message say about the strategy of the Trump campaign?
Lauren Fedor
Well, you know, he wants to be the president for the everyday, you know, American and the ordinary American. I do think there’s a little bit of a tension there, though, and we saw some of that tension playing out in the arena. Earlier in the week the keynote speech came from the president of the Teamsters union, and he really railed against big business, the elites, with something like you’d never heard on a Republican convention stage before. And, you know, Trump, on the one hand, has this amazing connection with that white working class voter. We’ve seen it for eight plus years now. But he also does rely on big business, Wall Street, the cash flow coming in from some of these megadonors that we write a lot about and who have now kind of bolstered his campaign to the point that he has more money than Joe Biden does. He needs them, too. And I just think it illustrated very clearly this delicate dance to appeal to these two very different demographics, while at the same time carving out his own, you know, economic platform agenda. Remember, he’s talking about helping the working class, but he’s also talking about cutting the corporate tax rate by another six points. He’s trying to have his cake and eat it too. I think.
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Sonja Hutson
Lauren, I want to pick up on something that you were talking about, which is this kind of tension between the economic populism but also the support that Trump gets from Wall Street. To me, it seems like that’s a tension between the old guard of the Republican Party, traditional Republican Party views and this new direction that they’re trying to move in. The Republicans are trying to become this big tent party again. We heard that a lot during the speeches, but that involves, you know, putting together a coalition of sometimes groups that can be at odds with each other. Does it seem like the figure of Donald Trump, which, you know, like you mentioned, is kind of this messianic figure to so many people now? Do you think that that is enough to kind of hold those disparate pieces together?
Lauren Fedor
I have no idea. But I will say that one thing that I thought was very interesting, actually, in Vance’s speech the night before Trump, that didn’t get like a lot of pick-up because it wasn’t the sexiest or most exciting thing, but he basically nodded to the fact that there are these pretty steep kind of policy disagreements within the party. He embodies a lot of that, right? Like we’re talking about him and Trump as being simpatico on everything. But actually, the Vance election, he’s extremely isolationist. It’s been incredibly vocal about his opposition to US support for Ukraine, for example, his kind of economic policy vision is also includes adopting a lot of ideas that are actually arguably more at home on the left, higher minimum wages, more aggressive antitrust, breaking up big companies. I mean, these are the kinds of things that, like, raise a lot of eyebrows among traditional Republicans, including those in Trump’s inner circle. And he acknowledged that on the stage and said, like, I think it’s a sign of a good party when we can have a disagreement and a discussion and figure out the right way forward. So there’s certainly a public acknowledgment and intention that they want to be this party in the future. That said, I mean, Republican Party politics for however many years now has not really been about policy. It’s been about personality. And I think if I were betting, at the end of the day, if we see another Trump White House, there’s going to be a singular personality driving the agenda.
Sonja Hutson
I want to talk about Democrats just for a little bit. Even though we are at the RNC, there’s obviously been a ton of news this week about them. And something I heard from people talking to delegates is that this unity that they all feel coalescing around Donald Trump and the MAGA movement stands in very sharp contrast to what’s going on in the Democratic Party right now.
Derek Brower
Yeah, it really does. The Democrats are in absolute chaos at the moment, and by the time people are listening to this, especially if they listen to this a bit later than it’s published, Joe Biden may not even be the Democratic candidate. And that contrast at the convention was really stark. And for Republicans, that is both good and bad. They obviously want the other party to be in the kind of disarray that they see, but they don’t necessarily want Joe Biden to drop out of the race because he’s a very weak candidate for the Democrats right now, and is a kind of limping along. And if he drops out, there’s a possibility that the Democrats get a lot more momentum behind and some other candidate comes forward that is that can provide a much more, useful, energetic campaign to oppose Trump.
Lauren Fedor
Yeah, I completely agree. I just think I would I would note it when it comes to the mood of the place, there seem to be a real kind of schadenfreude about it that everyone was really relishing the opportunity to stick it to the Democrats and watch them struggle through this dramatic party infighting and intense media scrutiny. One thing that I think really illustrated how the Republicans are actually having a little bit of fun with this, is that JD Vance was named as the VP. As we talked about, everyone then was questioning, OK, when’s his debate going to be with Kamala Harris? And the Trump campaign came out and said, we’re not committing to a debate until we know who the presidential nominee is going to be. We think that it’s going to be Kamala Harris. So until the DNC comes and goes, which we’re now looking at a month away, we’ll do this all over again with the Democratic National Convention. They’re not ready to commit to a debate. So, you know, it tells you where they’re at.
Sonja Hutson
All right. I want to thank our guests, Lauren Fedor, the FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief. Thanks, Lauren.
Lauren Fedor
Thanks, Sonja.
Sonja Hutson
And Derek Brower, he’s our US political news editor. Thanks, Derek.
Derek Brower
Pleasure.
Sonja Hutson
This was Swamp Notes, the US politics show from the FT News Briefing. If you want to sign up for the Swamp Notes newsletter, we’ve got a link to that in the show notes. Our show is mixed and produced by Ethan Plotkin. It’s also produced by Lauren Fedor and Marc Filippino. Special thanks to Pierre Nicholson and George Drake Jr. I’m your host, Sonja Hutson. Our executive producer is Topher Forhecz, and Cheryl Brumley is the FT’s global head of audio. Original music by Hannis Brown. Check back next week for more US political analysis from the Financial Times.
