The Daily - At the Republican Convention, Trump Achieves Mythical Status

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Donald J. Trump’s acceptance of his party’s nomination put an exclamation point on a triumphant week for a Republican Party that emerged from its convention confident and unified. At the same time, the Democratic Party is moving closer and closer to replacing President Biden on the ticket.Jonathan Swan, who covers Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign, gives a behind-the-scenes look at the Republican National Convention, and Reid J. Epstein, who covers Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, discusses where it stands as expectations are rising among Democrats that the president will reconsider his decision to stay in the race.Guest: Reid J. Epstein, a reporter covering politics for The New York Times.Jonathan Swan, a reporter covering politics and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign for The New York Times.Background reading: Here are six takeaways from the Republican National Convention.Mr. Trump ended the convention with a lengthy speech that started solemn and turned rambling. Read the transcript.As Republicans rally around the former president, Democrats are circling Mr. Biden like sharks.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro, and this is The Daily. From inside the Republican National Convention Hall, where Donald Trump has just accepted his party's nomination, and the balloons are falling all around us. that was as the Republicans here unified around Trump while Democrats moved closer and closer to replacing President Biden. It's Friday, July 19th. Delegates, guests, elected officials, and Republicans across the country, welcome to the 2024 Republican National Convention. On the first day of the Republican National Convention, the spotlight belonged not to Donald Trump, but to his new running mate. Are we ready? Are we ready to nominate a vice president? Whose identity Trump dramatically revealed at the very last possible moment

before delegates had to vote on the VP nomination. All eyes were on J.D. Vance. It was his day. Until about 9 p.m. Check, check, check. Let's go. Okay. You're good, thank you.

Thank you. We made it past the last layer of security, and now we're on the convention floor. We're on the convention floor. That's when word got out that Trump was about to enter the convention hall and make his first appearance since the attempt on his life. Nine o'clock, two minutes. There was a slow and deliberate buildup. Please welcome the next president of the United States. Here we go.

Walking down a, kind of like in a sports arena. He's walking through the back area. A camera followed Trump inside of a tunnel, and to the audience in the arena, he looked like a boxer backstage, ready to enter the ring. And finally, he emerged onto the convention floor. He's saying thank you, everybody. He's pumping his fist.

And he's about to walk up these stairs. Right as I'm proud to be an American hits. There he is. Hey, look, the extraordinary thing is just how visible that bandage is on his ear. From the lake of Minnesota He shakes Vance's hand, and for the first time, we get a look at the full 2024 Republican presidential ticket. Because there ain't no doubt I love this land God bless the USA

We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump! We love Trump! But what really stands out is the level of genuine emotion in the room. They're chanting the words that Trump himself chanted in the seconds after he was almost killed. Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight. People standing on their seats to get a better view. Oh my God. How do you feel? I love him and I've always loved him. I have been a supporter for so long. I've been to seven Trump rallies. I love him. Emotional.

What is it like to see him with that bandage on his ear knowing what just happened? He is so brave. First of all, I feel it was divine intervention. I 100% believe that God was with him. And I think that this is a fight between good and evil. And I think evil is going to lose. If he created this world and loves it so, why would he let the evil one win? We really need him.

This country's a mess. You're a delegate from? Wisconsin. I don't want to go into debt. Thank you. You're welcome. It's really from this moment on, with a triumphant Donald Trump now on site, that it becomes clear what kind of a story

this entire convention is trying to tell. The first part of that story is what we heard from that delegate on the floor, that saving Trump's life was God's plan. Let me start by giving thanks to God Almighty for protecting President Trump. That message was echoed by a series of speakers on stage. Two days ago, evil came for the man we admire and love so much.

I thank God that his hand was on President Trump. I thank God that his hand was on President Trump. The devil came to Pennsylvania holding a rifle, but an American lion got back up on his feet and he roared! God spared President Trump from that assassin because God is not finished with him yet. These speakers were explicit. God saved Trump so that Trump can save America. I don't believe in coincidences, but I do believe in God's plan.

If you didn't believe in miracles before Saturday, you better be believing right now. Another part of this story, and this one required a big rewriting of history, is about who Trump really is. Now that's the man I've gotten to know personally over the last few years. He is tough, and he is, but he cares about people. I can tell you that my personal experience with Donald Trump has shown me his heart.

That he is a man of compassion. I'm speaking today to share the side of my grandpa that people don't often see. To me, he's just a normal grandpa. He gives us candy and soda when our parents aren't looking. And instead of sailing off into the sunset after an illustrious real estate and television career, he decided to give back. He's not doing it for himself. He's doing it for everyone here tonight, for everyone watching at home.

And that he's a unifier. No matter who you are, you can be a part of this movement to make America great again. I want to respond to his call for unity myself. We have a big tent in this party on everything from national security to economic policy. But my message to you, my fellow Republicans, is we love this country and we are united to win. And that Trump is transforming the Republican Party into a big, tolerant tent, open to all, including Trump skeptics. You don't have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him. Take it from me, I haven't always agreed with President Trump.

It was no accident then that January 6th, election denialism, violent rhetoric, and a decade of nasty name-calling by Trump was nowhere to be found in these primetime speeches. And honestly, who is actually running the country anyway? And the final element of this story being told at the RNC... Does anyone really know? ...is that Trump's opponent, President Biden, is ineffective, weak, and barely functioning in the job. We need a commander-in-chief who can lead 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

America cannot afford four more years of a weekend at Bernie's presidency. But let's be honest. Let's be honest here. And by Wednesday night, in an extraordinary stroke of good political timing for Trump, we find out that the final part of that story about Biden's ability to lead was being openly embraced by the leaders of the Democratic Party, who, one by one, were turning on Joe Biden. We'll be right back. Reid, we just got off the convention floor and emerged into a world that seems to have changed since the evening programming began here on Wednesday night.

Just give us a quick summary of where things stand with Biden's nomination. It's bad news for Joe Biden at this hour. Right now, it feels from talking to an array of Democrats inside and adjacent to the Biden circle, that the end is near. My colleague Reid Epstein covers the Biden campaign and was in Milwaukee for the Republican convention. We heard from people close to Biden that the only voices that could really push Biden out of the race would be Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi and Hakeem Jeffries. And what we've seen in the last 24 hours is those three trying to do that. We heard that Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, and Chuck Schumer, the majority leader in the Senate, have gone to the president and all but said he should not be the nominee. And what's interesting is that Schumer and Jeffries delivered this message on Saturday and then waited a number of days until it leaked out into the public.

That's probably not an accident. Just explain that. It's not an accident because they were maybe hoping he would act on it and he didn't? Perhaps hoping that he would act on it before they felt compelled to leak it out publicly to increase the pressure on him. Got it. Adam Schiff on Wednesday called for Biden to get out. He's an extremely close ally of Nancy Pelosi's. And that was really seen as a signal for a lot of Democrats about what her thinking was. And then later in the day after Schiff made his announcement, we started to see various news outlets have different pieces of the Pelosi puzzle that she is making a move against him, unmistakable,

viewing all of these pieces in concert, kind of what it is that she is doing. Right. I mean, I think we should just pause and reflect on the enormity of what's happening. Right. I mean, I think we should just pause and reflect on the enormity of what's happening and what you're describing, which is that the most senior Democrats in the party whose loyalty should be kind of unquestioned to the president are, in their minds, reaching a point where they need to take him out of the equation. Right. And what the other side of that is, all of these Democrats are getting back this week reliable polling that really shows the damage that Biden's debate performance has had on his standing states like New Hampshire and New Mexico and Virginia. States he won handily. Tied in Minnesota, barely ahead in Maine, only up three points in New Jersey.

New Jersey? And two in Colorado. Like these are... Blue states. Blue states. And the key section of this polling, as it relates to down-ballot Democrats, is about the impact of supporting Biden has on their political futures, saying as many as half of voters think they're lying to them when they vouch for Joe Biden's fitness as a presidential candidate.

And that is sort of all being presented to the White House in an effort, almost a collective party-wide effort, to convince Biden and the people closest to him that he should end his presidential campaign. All right. Well, thank you for the update. And we'll keep talking to you as we get more and more information. This is really helpful. Thanks, Reid. Thanks, Michael. Get some sleep. You get some sleep. These people are all just turning in. Maybe we don't need to do the loopy, though.

That is not the entrance, though. Oh, it's not? Oh, it's the next one. Is it? Yeah. So it's Thursday morning. It's the final day of the RNC. And we are now making our way into the security perimeter. One last time.

Hello. Good morning. Turn the car off, pop the hood and pop the trunk, please. Sure thing. Thank you. Thursday morning began with even more doubts from prominent Democrats about Biden, including former President Obama and Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, whose private letter to Biden ended up in the hands of my Times colleagues.

In that letter, Raskin told Biden that there was, quote, no shame in leaving the race. So as Donald Trump prepared to take the stage on Thursday night for arguably the biggest moment of his campaign, it wasn't even clear how much longer his rival would remain in the race. The only thing that was clear was that Biden and the Democrats were in disarray and that Trump and the Republicans were, in their minds, on top of the world. And we could really feel that in the air

as we talked to people at the convention just before Trump's acceptance speech on Thursday night. We are headed over to the convention hall to talk to delegates and rank-and-file Republicans about how they're feeling about their chances right now, given how this convention has gone and the mess over on the Democratic side. Hi there. Hi there. Hey there. What do you think the odds are that Trump wins in November right now? 97.99999999%?

I didn't know there were that many nines in the universe. I don't know. I think the chances are pretty good. 100%. Oh, I think he's got this in the bag. Trump is going to win. If the election was today, he was going to win. If the election was tomorrow, two months from now, he's going to win and he's going to win in November.

He's going to win. Why are you so confident in his chances of victory? I don't think anything can hurt President Trump at this. I mean, he shed blood for us. You know, he's a hero. You mean this past weekend? Yeah. I believe that when they shot at him on Saturday, they shot at me.

Okay, I feel I had a grazed mist. He loves America, and we do too. And I'm tired of America being torn down by these crazies. We're going to fight against that. of America being torn down by these crazies. We're going to fight against that. Do you worry that if Biden drops out of the race, that some of the assumptions and dynamics of this moment change?

Suddenly it's not such a straightforward election for Trump. He's in the lead now, but what happens if it's Kamala Harris or some governor? Doesn't matter who they put against them. Doesn't matter who they put up. Doesn't matter how strong they are. I don't think so. What are you going to put up? Newsom? Look at California the way it is. People can't walk the streets.

Kamala Harris? Kamala Harris. What is she? She only knows how to laugh. She couldn't even control the border. Look at the border. It's out of control. People are tired.

They've woken up. You've poked a sleeping bear. And the unity that has come together with the Republican Party now is just unbelievable. I love that you're wearing an American flag pin. Someone put it on me.

You know, because I became a citizen on Saturday. A Mazel Tov, that's right. Welcome to America. Thanks, man. Once Trump's speech was over, we spoke to our colleague, politics reporter Jonathan Swan. Are you ready? Mm-hmm.

Okay. There's just going to be some noise in here because the New York Times Media Center here at the convention is literally being deconstructed as the walls are about to be taken down. Jonathan, we know that this convention has been trying to recast and in a sense rewrite the story of Donald Trump to make him a compassionate unifier. History be damned. So how did Trump's speech fit into that objective? The way his team conceived of this speech, there's a couple of things that are important to think about here. One is they saw this moment as unique in that Donald Trump is a very well-defined figure.

Everyone pretty much has an opinion about him. If there was ever a moment where they could persuade a thin slice of Americans to re-evaluate Donald Trump, it's probably after he gets shot. And after a week of people saying that Donald Trump, after the shooting, you know, he's contemplative, he's talking about God, you know, there was actually very powerful footage on Monday. I was in the convention hall when he came in and he looked like he was on the verge of tears. So there's been all of this imagery during the week inside the hall of this new Donald Trump. Right. We talked about that when he walked into the convention hall, the feel was of a changed man with a different relationship to everything. Yeah. Look, I mean, I've talked to a number of elected Republicans, people who've

been interacting with Donald Trump since the shooting, and that's what they've been saying. So this was his first address to the nation since the shooting. They wanted to build up suspense for it. And they knew they had this period of time where all the networks were forced to cover him. What they were pre-selling before this speech was, he's rewriting his speech, and it's going to be this unity speech. And, you know, we've been through this many, many times with Donald Trump, the quote-unquote new tone. It's sort of a running joke, capital N, capital T, new tone.

But this was actually a moment where it seemed deliverable in a believable way for a number of voters that matter. Right. So how did that actually play out once he took the stage and once he started delivering this speech? I was in the arena for it, and it's hard to explain to people who aren't there just how electric the feeling has been in that arena all week. Donald Trump has reached this sort of mythic status in the party. Thank you very, very much. Wow. So when he came in, you could feel everyone's

excitement. I stand before you this evening with a message of confidence, strength and hope. The start of the speech, you did get this feeling, well, Donald Trump is delivering a very different speech. We rise together or we fall apart. I am running to be president for all of America, not half of America, because there is no victory in winning for half of America. He was reaching out to all Americans. I reach out to you in friendship.

In an age when our politics too often divide us, now is the time to remember that we are all fellow citizens. We are one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. He was sort of almost getting to the Barack Obama, there's no red America and blue America, we're all Americans. The discord and division in our society must be healed. We must heal it quickly.

Right. He used the word healing, which I don't associate with. Healing and love. So many people have asked me, what happened? Tell us what happened, please. And then he goes straight into the story. And you'll never hear it from me a second time because it's actually too painful to tell. Told from his perspective of the shooting.

It was a warm, beautiful day in the early evening. And I was watching his face. It looked like he was almost in tears at certain points. When I heard a loud whizzing sound and felt something hit me really, really hard. It was a very sombre, very reflective Trump. I immediately knew it was very serious, that we were under attack. And then you had this huge imagery of the photographs

from Saturday in Butler, Pennsylvania, the bullet whizzing by his head. I said to myself, wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet. Wow, what was that? It can only be a bullet. Him pressed down on the ground with blood dripping down his cheeks with the agents pressed on him. My hand was covered with blood. The fist in the air and the crowd started chanting,

fight, fight, fight. Again, it was not really political. It was moving and emotional and drenched with religious imagery, saying God was on my side. I'm not supposed to be here tonight. Not supposed to be here. You know, he was openly grappling with his own mortality. He said, I'm not supposed to be here.

And the crowd started spontaneously shouting, yes, you are. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. Yes, you are. That was the tone of the speech for the first, I don't know, 15 minutes. Right. And I really did think, okay, well, they really have got him to deliver quite a different speech. Right, very much in keeping with the themes of the convention.

That's right. And then... And then not so much. The speech went in a very different direction. Democrats, crazy Nancy Pelosi, the whole thing just boom, boom, boom. I could tell that he was getting bored of reading the unity speech. And so he stopped turning to heal his teleprompters and just stared straight ahead. Right.

And the teleprompter literally, and I was watching it, just froze. Right. Because you could tell that the person operating it was no longer in a relationship with Trump. Right. And his teleprompter operator is a guy named Gabe. Long-suffering guy named Gabe. People do know that. Yes.

But so Trump goes into these rifts. It's a massive invasion at our southern border that has spread misery, crime, poverty, disease and destruction to communities all across our land. Nobody's ever seen anything like it. And basically from that point forward, it really became a typical rally speech. They're destroying our country. Extremely meandering, long digressions.

We had the most secure border and best economy in the history of our country, in the history of the world. We had the greatest economy in the history of the world. He made false claims about his record, lots of hyperbole. They're taking their criminals and they're putting them into our country. And a lot of the rhetoric that we've come to know Donald Trump for over the last eight years, which is basically portraying America as a nation on the brink of collapse, decline.

We had that horrible, horrible result that we'll never let happen again. And when I really realised that the unity speech had sort of gone out the window... The election result, we're never going to let that happen again. They used COVID to cheat. ...was when he couldn't help but slip back into talking about cheating in elections. You know, that's something his team is desperate for him just to avoid talking about and keep it a focus on the future.

They're coming from prisons, They're coming from jails. They're coming from mental institutions and insane asylums. And he talked about how countries to the south of America are emptying out their insane asylums and sending psychopaths like Hannibal Lecter into America. There's no evidence that any of that's happening, but it's a claim that he repeats in his rallies over and over again. Yet another American life was stolen by a criminal alien

set free by this administration. It really did get back into his old comfort zone. And that kind of continued on and on and on. And what was interesting being in the crowd, I was on the floor. I like being right in there, in the thick of it, seeing everyone. People were starting to get listless. You know, I could see a guy near me was yawning. People were checking their phones.

And you could just see the energy was just sort of lagging. And he would get them back. I mean, this is a room that, you know, is in love with Donald Trump. And you could just see the energy was just sort of lagging. And he would get them back. I mean, this is a room that is in love with Donald Trump, so there would be applause lines, they would cheer. But it really became a very different speech. One of our colleagues put it very well, saying that the message of the first half of the speech seemed to be,

I have been changed. And the message of the second half was, I haven't really changed at all. Right, right. And for those of us who've covered him, you know, it's hard to imagine Donald Trump changing, but it's also, you know, he's been shot. So you want to at least be open to the possibility of that. But I think he answered that question pretty decisively tonight. No matter what dangers come

our way, no matter what obstacles lie in our path, we will keep striving toward our shared and glorious destiny, and we will not fail. We will not fail. He did make a final turn back towards the teleprompter and sort of finished with these lines of, you know, American greatness and reaching for the stars, etc., etc. By that point, though, we'd had more than 90 minutes of fairly meandering rally speech, so... God bless the United States of America, our great country. Thank you very much, everyone. The crowd seemed relieved at the end

when it finally wrapped up with the big balloon drop. Well, I want you to reflect a bit on the impact of a speech that didn't seem to quite know what it was. It could have been an extension of the messages we've been hearing all week, like Nikki Haley's invitation to skeptics. It could have remained the story of a changed man post-assassination attempt, but it wasn't really in the end. And does that make it a

missed opportunity or does that make it exactly the speech that Trump should be given, given that this kind of message is what got him the nomination in the first place? I have to think for those voters who aren't already with Donald Trump that are really persuading, this ain't going to change their mind unless they stopped watching after 15 minutes. And maybe some of them did. That's the missed opportunity take. Yeah, I think that's right. All he needs is a very small number of people in Pennsylvania, Georgia, North Carolina, some of these states to block off Biden's path.

I don't really see how tonight would have accomplished that. So, Jonathan, here we are. It's midnight. The convention is over. General election, you know, in some sense is officially now underway. Trump survived this assassination attempt, didn't change his strifes, but he's ahead in the polls. He seems stronger than ever. The party's completely unified behind him. That's all in his favor. But the race could fundamentally change in a few hours or a few days if, as increasingly it looks like, Joe Biden decides to get out of this race. And then Trump's going to be in a different race. And like you said, he decided not to take the opportunity to

speak to those swing voters who he may need even more than ever if he faces a different and stronger Democratic rival. So how should we think about all of this? I think it would be really kind of foolish to imagine that there's some great change as a result of this speech. I do think it's a missed opportunity, but Trump has so many advantages right now. He's facing a party in complete disarray with donors fleeing. Trump's team is hoarding cash. And you saw over this week a party that is completely unified under Donald Trump. They're not unified on policy. You had an OnlyFans performer who's pro-abortion talking on Monday night.

You had a union leader talking about the evils of corporate America. Then you had like Nikki Haley and traditional Republicans. You had Tucker Carlson. This was a mishmash. You talk about big tent. This was like the biggest tent you've ever seen in your life. There was no consistency, but they're unified around this almost mythical figure of Donald Trump. That's a very powerful thing. And the Democrats don't have that thing. They've got a fractured coalition. They've got people at war with each other.

There's going to be resentment. And there might be even more fighting if and when Biden drops out and there's a debate over who should replace him. So the way I look at it is all of the advantages in this race right now... Remain with Donald Trump. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Jonathan, thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

On Thursday night, the Times reported that several people close to President Biden believe he has begun to accept the idea that he may have to drop out of the race in the coming days. They emphasized that Biden has not made up his mind and could ultimately remain in the race. But one of them told the Times that, quote, reality is setting in. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Thursday, amid new revelations about security lapses at the rally where President Trump was shot, the Republican Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, called on President Biden to fire the director of the Secret Service.

Lawmakers were shocked to learn that Trump had taken the stage at Saturday's rally, even after police officers at the scene had identified the would-be assassin as a potentially dangerous person, and passed that warning on to the Secret Service. In the end, it appears authorities lost track of the shooter until it was too late. Until it was too late. A quick reminder to catch the latest episode of The Interview right here tomorrow. David Marchese talks with NBA star Joel Embiid. If I was healthy and all the seasons, that would be a different conversation.

Is the implication that you think you would be in the greatest player of all time conversation without the injury problems? I think so. I think I'm that talented. Today's episode was produced by Claire Tennesketter, Carlos Prieto, Rob Zipko, and Alex Stern. It was edited by Rachel Quester, contains original music by Marion Lozano, Dan Powell, and Pat McCusker, and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Van Lianthorpe of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you on Monday.