The NPR Politics Podcast - RNC Night 2: Nikki Haley Endorses Trump, Hopes To Woo Skeptics

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

Night two of the Republican National Convention was full of speeches by former Trump rivals offering their full endorsement of the nominee. That includes former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who had previously warned that a Trump presidency would be "four years of chaos, vendettas and drama."This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent.

And it is currently 10.19 p.m. Central Time on Tuesday, July 16th. And we are just wrapping up night two of the Republican National Convention. The theme of the night was Make America Safe Again. But, you know, what really stood out to me was that this was a night that showcased the potential future of the GOP, the bench. Some of the very politicians who ran against Donald Trump to become the GOP nominee. Mara, who stood out to you? Well, they were all there. Ron DeSantis, who, of course, had a hard time during the campaign figuring out how to run against Trump.

He's now come into the fold. And here's a little bit of what he said. 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. So he's totally on the Trump train, keeping his options open for 2028. Then, of course, sitting in the reviewing stand, so to speak, with Donald Trump is J.D. Vance, who is, if they're elected, he's going to be the obvious person to run in 2028, because Donald Trump, if he's elected, would be a lame duck.

He's already served one term. He can only serve one more. We had a number of other folks, too. I was thinking of Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, Vivek Ramaswamy, this Indian-American entrepreneur who also ran for president. But, Sarah, what was also, I think, very interesting tonight is that we heard an announcement from Nikki Haley, who both served under Donald Trump in his administration, then went on to become very critical of the former president. But in classic political fashion, she kind of came full circle and offered a full throated endorsement of the former president. Right. Nikki Haley has had a, you know,

a complicated relationship with Trump. She was his United Nations ambassador. You know, she presented really the most significant challenge in a primary that was never very much of a primary, to be honest. You know, she was the last woman standing. And, you know, her trajectory has been really interesting. I mean, she started out in February, right before the South Carolina primary. She made this big speech where she said she wasn't dropping out. She didn't need to kiss the ring. And she said that many of the same politicians who publicly embraced Trump privately dread him. Tonight, she very much embraced Trump. She said, make no mistake, this is a strongly endorsed Trump. And, you know, it just illustrates, Asma,

Trump's dominance of the party. There's really no non-Trump lane in it. I mean, what is the future for someone like Nikki Haley in Donald Trump's Republican Party? She can run in 2028 if she wants to. I mean, we have no idea what the world is going to look like or what the Republican Party is, how it's going to be judged by 2028. It's four very short years away. She's still young. There is no doubt that one of her reasons to come here to endorse him is to keep her options open to run again in four years. Sarah, what was the purpose of Haley's speech tonight? What was she aiming to do for Donald Trump? Well, rhetorically, the purpose was to try to persuade the fence centers, the people who, you know, might be conservative

leaning or typical Republican voters, but still have misgivings about Trump, to come out for him. You don't have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him. For Haley, though, it seems like the purpose is to stay relevant, you know, to stay alive in this party. She had to come around. There was really no, I mean, yes, people supported her in the primary. There were, you know, I reported on the fact that even after she dropped out, you know, she was still on a few state ballots and she still had a decent showing. But, you know, 15, 20 percent, that's not a movement. And Trump, again, is so in control of this party.

This looks like Haley and many others that we saw on the stage tonight trying to lay the groundwork for a future in this party. And to accommodate themselves to somebody that they criticized very, very bitterly over a long time and had profound differences with. And they decided they weren't going to be like Mike Pence, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney. They were not going to go that route. They wanted to stay relevant in the Trump Republican Party. Mara, you mentioned there a number of names of people, former party nominees. I mean, I'm thinking of someone even like George W. Bush. You mentioned Mike Pence, Trump's former vice president. They weren't here.

They weren't there. What do you make of that? This is a very deep and clean break with the old Republican Party. Trump has completely remade it. And the biggest change of all is not just the policies on Trump or immigration or corporate America. The biggest change is this is now a party that does not accept the peaceful transfer of power. Donald Trump has never said he'd accept election results unless he won. Today, there was a videotape of him telling Republican voters that Democrats cheat. He said it's the only thing they're good at. His message is basically, heads I win, tails you cheated. Getting ready to contest the results of this election if, in fact, he doesn't win. Now, I believe that videotape was made before some of the recent events that

caused this party to be so incredibly confident about their chances. And I think that idea has been totally absorbed by Republicans. I mean, I don't know about the two of you, but when I travel, when I talk to voters, very rarely do I hear Republicans that come out to events like this, you know, give a full throated acknowledgement of the fact that Biden won the 2020 election. They always express doubts. No, no, no. The majority of poll after poll has shown that the majority of Republican voters believe Trump's lie that he won the election in 2020. All right. Well, on that note, let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment. And we're back and you all can probably hear some of the music. That's because we are here in the arena where night two of the Republican National Convention just wrapped up. So, you know, it's a bit of a mood and an atmosphere. I want to talk about I want to talk a little bit more about some of the specific policy priorities that came up today.

We heard about illegal border crossings. We heard a lot about fentanyl, a lot about the need to make America in the view of the Republican Party, as they say, safe again and safer than it has been. Mara, border crossings is something we hear a lot about from Republicans. They were indeed at one point during the Biden administration at all-time record highs. But, you know, the White House has been saying that after some executive actions by the president, they have fallen off precipitously. Yes, and the Republicans are certainly not going to give the Biden administration credit for that. But the border border, which is conflated with crime and drugs and illegal immigration, that is Donald Trump's signature issue. When he came down the escalator in 2015, he talked about Mexico sending rapists. And this is just an issue that is so

deeply associated with him. You heard a lot about it tonight and you're going to hear a lot about it for the rest of the campaign. And border crossings that at one point were indeed at all-time record highs during the Biden administration, lately after some executive actions taken by President Biden, have indeed fallen off. In fact, I got some information earlier from a White House official that indicated that the number of encounters at the southwest border have decreased by more than 50 percent after the actions taken by President Biden. And also, just to fact-check something else that was a big theme tonight was crimes committed by illegal immigrants, the people who've been raped and murdered.

And there were many, many speeches about this tonight. In fact, crimes committed by illegal immigrants are way, way, way lower than crimes committed by legal immigrants or American citizens. And one other tiny fact check, there was a video they played tonight that showed over and over again, Joe Biden saying we're going to surge the border as if he was inviting illegal immigrants to surge across the border. That is taken totally out of context. What he was saying, we're going to surge more judges and border patrol officers to the border to deal with this. The opposite of what the application was. Yes, yes.

Yeah, but this is an issue, regardless of the reality on the ground, this is an issue that we've seen has so much staying power. It was, of course, just sort of the banner issue for Trump's first campaign, and it's still one that voters say is high on their priority list. Yes, because there was a tremendous amount of uncontrolled crossings on the border. There was an influx. And I think polls suggest that across the board or in general, voters say they have more confidence in Trump on that issue. You know, there's also this matter of the fentanyl crisis, which has continued to be severe for a number of years.

Sarah, I'm curious if you see the Republicans really being able to own this issue. And I guess I'm asking this in part because of where the vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, hails from. He certainly has spoken about this issue in the past. He seems to take an interest in it. You know, the opioid epidemic, the drug crisis, this was a major theme of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, that bestseller through which I think a lot of people probably first heard of J.D. Vance before he was elected to the Senate, you know, just sworn in last year. You know, he talks about his mother's struggle with addiction

and the way that drugs personally affected people in his community in a way that I think a lot of people understand as this problem has touched so many communities. I was thinking about, you know, we heard so many speakers tonight talk about addiction, sort of blame Joe Biden for it in some way. But the reality is this has been a growing problem for many, many years. It was something we heard about back in the 2016 campaign from a lot of candidates who, some of whom also had personal family experiences with drug addiction. So yes, I think we'll, it's something that Vance can speak to as somebody from Appalachia, but it's kind of an intractable problem that neither party really seems to have a solution for because there's no easy solution for it.

One thing that has stood out to me from this convention so far is just how different the energy feels. I would say the energy that we're hearing on stage and speeches, the conversations that I'm having with delegates and voters compared to the last in-person Republican convention we heard in 2016. You know, the themes are very much the same. We heard a lot, you know, as we say tonight about the border, immigration. But the mood now feels more confident, more optimistic, not as angry and combative as it was then. Well, I would say very, very confident, very optimistic about winning, but just as angry and combative as it was then. Well, I would say very, very confident, very optimistic about Whitting, but just as angry and combative as they were.

You think so? Oh, absolutely. Listen to those speeches, the amount of grievance and anger and talking about how Donald Trump is a victim and a martyr and how he's been treated terribly and the unfair convictions. And to hear Sarah Huckabee Sanders talk about all of the times that she'd been dissed in a restaurant, in a parking lot, you know, by the elites and by the horrible radical left. I mean, I think this is a party. Donald Trump is the grievance candidate. It's like grievance is their jet fuel. And that hasn't gone away.

Now, are they extremely confident about winning? Yes, he's ahead in the polls and it seems like he's gaining almost every day. And a lot of people seem to be in a good mood, and even in a chat. Well, yes, of course. Thinking you're going to win will do that. Yeah, I mean, as I see it, the message is the same. The vibes are a little happier. I mean, when I talk to individual delegates, they're feeling really confident, really good. But as you say, Mara, I mean, the fundamental message hasn't really changed much. You don't think, though, that we're hearing a little bit more about the need to expand the party? It's something I heard at a delegate breakfast this morning.

He wouldn't have picked J.D. Vance if that's what he wanted to do. Well, I think this is— The J.D. Vance is to double down on MAGA. Now, of course, are there African Americans on stage. There are always more people of color on stage at a Republican convention than in the audience. That's been true for decades. Nothing has changed there. But yes, there's great hope among Republicans that we see polling, that young men, young African-American men,

young Hispanic men, they find the Republican Party more appealing or they find Trump more appealing. But I don't think that there has been a change in tone. We'll see when Trump himself, you know, comes out on Thursday and gives his speech. Is he going to be warm and fuzzy? Or is he going to be the same kind of slashing, cruel candidate that he's been, which thrills his supporters? I mean, we did see Laura Trump in the final speech of the night tonight. Talk a lot about, you know, how everybody is included and sort of, it doesn't matter your skin color, it doesn't matter your religion. When you go to a Trump rally, everybody is welcome. I mean, we did hear that message. I don't recall hearing that message.

Vermin poisoning the blood of our country is not that message. But this is very Trumpian. Trump is very... Trump says many different things, and sometimes in the space of one hour. And he becomes a raw shock test. So you hear what you want to hear, and you see what you want to see. But I will be very curious to see the exit polls in November, to see if those polls that you just mentioned, where young black men and young Latino men seem to be,

you know, Trump seems to be gaining support among them compared to last time, if that turns out to be real. So before we wrap up today's show, we have a bit of news that we want to update you all coming from the other side of the political aisle. President Biden is preparing to call for term limits for Supreme Court justices and an enforceable ethics code. This was all first reported by The Washington Post. It was also confirmed by our colleague Deepa Shivaram. You know, real talk here, these proposals will require congressional action or a constitutional amendment. So they are a long shot. Let's be clear here.

But Mara, what is really going on? If I were a Democratic strategist, I'd be asking, gee, what took you so long? You know, they had that court task force, Supreme Court task force to look at various reforms. The term limits is the simplest way to make sure that every president gets two chances, two nominees. If the term limits are 18 years, that would guarantee that every president would get two. And somehow, I don't know what you do with the emeritus justices, but they'd have to work that out. As far as the ethics code, Congress has the ability to do that. Congress can change what is in the purview of the court.

And it sounds like finally Biden has decided what he's for. He's not for expanding the court. He is for term limiting the justices. But here we are just a few months away. Oh, nothing is going to happen with this. But because of the way the court has acted, the fact that they have completely rejected any effort to have an ethics code of their own. There have been conflicts of interest that they have dismissed. I think this is going to become a staple for Democrats. I think they're now going to settle on this, term limits, not court expansion. And, you know, we'll be hearing about it for many, many, many, many years. I wonder if it's enough to excite the Democratic base.

I think a lot of progressives really want an expanded court, but polling suggests that there's much broader support for term limits. It'll be interesting to see how it's campaigned up. But Biden needs a lot more than that to excite the Democratic base at this point. Fair enough. And as you said, nothing's going to happen with this before the election. But it reminds me really of the way that Republicans spent so many years, decades, building toward getting this conservative Supreme Court. And now Democrats understand that they have to pay attention to this too. Well, this is something that Democrats have been beyond negligent. For 50 years, Republicans kept their eye on the ball. They wanted to overturn Roe. They never wavered. They kept on trying. They created the

Federalist Society. They got the judges in the pipeline. They did whatever they needed to do. They never were deterred. They got Trump elected. They got Trump elected. Meanwhile, Democrats laid back and figured that court will always protect them, which I think was political malpractice. And now they know that that's not true. All right. Well, let's leave it there for today. We'll be back in your feeds again late tomorrow night. And one final note, we want to thank member station WUWM 89.7, Milwaukee's NPR, for production help this week. We're very grateful for their hospitality and their warm welcome to their city. I'm Asma Khalid, I cover the White House. I'm Sarah McCammon, I cover the campaign. And I'm Mara Eliason, senior national political correspondent.

And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.