The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Threatens To Move The Republican National Convention

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

President Trump has threatened to relocate the Republican National Convention, which has been scheduled to take place in Charlotte, N.C., in August. He is objecting to the governor's safety measures.Meanwhile Democrats weigh options for how they may host their own convention.This episode: Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and political reporter Juana Summers.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio stationLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, this is Burnley from Evanston, Illinois, and I am relearning the trombone at home after a gap of many decades. This particular episode was recorded at 2.06 p.m. on Tuesday, May 26th. Things have surely changed since then, and I've hopefully become a slightly better trombonist. And now on with the greatest politics show on Earth. I have to admit, all I can think right now is I wonder how his neighbors feel about him taking up the trombone at this particular moment. Hopefully there's

some space. Hopefully he doesn't share any walls with anybody. Maybe he can go outside and play a little concert. It'd be fun. Find your joy. Just find your joy. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. So states are slowly beginning to reopen. But this idea that we would start having large mass gatherings still seems like it could be a way off. And that's forcing Republicans and Democrats to rethink what they're going to do with

their nominating conventions this summer. And Tam, all I can think is, please don't be done on Zoom. Please don't tell me we're going to have Zoom conventions. It would certainly be sanitary. So the Republicans had been planning to hold their convention in Charlotte, North Carolina. I believe it's the last week of August. At least they were planning on doing it until President Trump started tweeting over the weekend and suggesting that they could potentially move the convention to another state. Yeah, the president, in a series of tweets, says that although he loves the great state of North Carolina,

he is not getting the kind of answers that he wants from the state's Democratic governor, Roy Cooper. He says Cooper is still in shutdown mood and unable to guarantee that by August we will be allowed full attendance in the arena. In other words, we would be spending millions of dollars building the arena to a very high standard without even knowing if the Democrat governor would allow the Republican Party to fully occupy the space. And he suggests that basically, if they can't make these guarantees soon, he'd be willing to move on. Yeah, I saw that. And you know, the challenge with all of this in my mind is that the president likes to tweet. And oftentimes, the things that he tweets don't actually reflect the reality of what's happening. So where I get tripped up is, are these from your reporting, are these actually threats?

So it's sort of a mixed situation. Some people have described these tweets to me not as a threat, but as the president merely expressing that they really want to work with the governor of North Carolina to figure this out. The reality is that if they are going to change locations, they need to decide soon. Because a convention is not just a rally. It is this huge undertaking. I mean, the current plan, or at least the plan before everything changed, was an in-person convention with 50,000 people, many of them in an arena with events all around, but 50,000 people coming into Charlotte, North Carolina. If you want to move that to Tampa,

Florida or Atlanta, Georgia, that would take a huge amount of logistics and planning and all of that. So the signals seem to be like, please, North Carolina, let's figure this out. Although you already see, based off of the president's tweets, that some governors are saying, hey, if you want to come to my state, come on down. Oh, yeah. Governor Kemp in Georgia has tweeted. The mayor of Jacksonville, Florida, sent a long series of tweets promoting his city as a potential place to hold the convention. And Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida said that he has reached out to people in the White House to say that they are absolutely open to it. And he's got, you know, a whole handful of cities who who would love to host the convention.

I mean, this is big money. This is big business. And right now, every city in America is full of empty hotel rooms. Yeah. I mean, that's one of the things in this spat with North Carolina. Obviously, the governor is a Democrat and the president has been much more critical of Democratic governors and their handling of the pandemic. But to your point, Tam, conventions are good for business. I mean, the governor, Roy Cooper, seems to be balancing this decision between sort of the public health concerns of his state and the business needs of the state. This is the knot of the pandemic right here. And the governor, I mean, I think as of right now, North Carolina's advising, they just started reopening. They're rolling back some of their public health guidance.

But they're still saying they don't want more than 10 people gathering inside and no more than 25 people outside. And logistically, I don't know how you can have that be the standard for your state and then say, OK, 50,000 people jammed into one arena. Let's do this, even if it could be really good for the local economy, which right now could probably really use it. So why is it that President Trump and some top Republicans are so committed in the middle of a pandemic to doing this in person? So do you remember the convention four years ago? President Trump put on a show, you know, there was that moment where he walked out and he was backlit. And, you know, we are the champions played.

We're going to win. We're going to win so big. Thank you very much, everybody. He wants to put on a show. And in particular, following months of people being stuck at home, following all of this fear and concern at a time when the president is trying to message to all of America that, hey, guess what? We've survived this and I'm going to take you on the transition to greatness. Having a convention is with, you know, people not standing six feet apart wearing masks, but like a real big in-person show is the kind of messaging that the president wants,

that the president needs. I was talking to Mark Lauder, who is a top official on the Trump campaign about it. This is an opportunity for America to see that we are coming back from this coronavirus pandemic. We are open again and we can get back to work, get back to our lives, celebrate freedom, and do so in a way that also respects public health. So when, practically speaking, do Republicans in the RNC need to make a call about whether it'll be Charlotte or somewhere else or remote or how it's going to go? Ronna McDaniel, the RNC chairwoman, said that they need to know by late June. I was talking to a man who was the CEO of multiple Republican conventions,

has planned and been involved with conventions going back to 1972. He said it is possible to change locations, but it would not be easy at all. And that if he were doing it, he would not want that decision made any later than mid-June. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about what the Democrats are planning. This message comes from NPR sponsor StoryPoint Wines, maker of StoryPoint, a bold new wine brand with a rich layered taste profile. Enjoy StoryPoint wine while you connect with those you love, either at home or at a virtual happy hour.

Raise a glass and share a story. StoryPoint believes that the stories we share can bring joy even in trying times. Visit storypointvineyards.com slash politics to purchase. Shipping is included in your online order, so consider shipping a bottle to a friend, too. Let's all close our eyes, take a deep breath, let it out, and listen to NPR's All Songs Considered. It's a music podcast, but it's also a good friend and guide

to find joy in troubled times. Hear All Songs Consider considered with new episodes every Tuesday and Friday, wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back. And the Democrats were originally planning to hold their convention in July, but many weeks ago they announced they would also push it back to late August. Juana, what do we know about what Democrats are planning right now? Yeah, Sue, so I think in a lot of ways, they are a little bit in wait and see mode.

About 10 days ago, I spoke to Joe Solomons, who is heading up Democrats convention efforts. And he made a point to me that I think will make you guys pretty happy. This isn't a decision between, say, a five day Zoom call being their convention. Thank you. Thank you. Good God. Yes. And everybody, 50,000, tens of thousands of people being on the ground in Milwaukee. He said, you know, there's a lot of space in between that.

And he and other officials are working through figuring out what that may look like. We've heard former Vice President Joe Biden himself even openly say that there's a chance that some or all of this convention could need to be virtual. So I think that as opposed to what we've heard from the president, there's been some more open acknowledgement that the conventions that we're used to where you know, you're standing on the arena floor, and there's the big balloon drops, it just fundamentally may not be able to look like that. The other thing that's been kind of interesting is a lot of top Democrats and strategists have been really open with some creative ideas about what this could look like.

We heard House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggesting that the Democrats should just get a huge stadium and put people six feet apart for one day, get the work done, and then everybody goes home. Smith, who was an advisor to Pete Buttigieg's campaign, alluded to the virtual event that Travis Scott held in the online game Fortnite, which I will admit that I play as a source of inspiration. So there's a wide gamut for what this could look like. But like Republicans, Democrats tell me it's too early to know for sure they're working ahead as though some of this convention will be able to happen in person. But they're also thinking of new ways that they can innovate to reach people who may not be able to come together in person to be able to conduct a party business and to nominate Joe Biden. So Democrats have already changed the rules, the bylaws of the DNC to allow for some remote proceedings. But Republicans haven't done that,

right? Yeah, that's right. I mean, we heard Ronna McDaniel, the Republican chairwoman talking about this last week, and she essentially made the point in an interview that her party's rules don't allow for conducting this business remotely, that they have to come together in person to do the work of nominating their candidate, despite the fact that we should note that obviously their candidate is the incumbent president. They know who it is. There was really no contest. Yeah. I mean, the thing I keep coming back to, I've covered every convention since 2004, and they're kind of wild and intense and largely theatrical. And it just makes me wonder in this moment, in this public health crisis, is it raising the question of like how necessary are they really

if we know who the nominees are well but then what about all the women with the hats made of sequins and the buttons yeah like how critical are conventions to our like political lives right now yeah so i think the scene that most people are familiar with is the final night of the convention when the party's nominee gets on a stage they They give a great a big speech with their their spouse comes out, there's a balloon drop or some other sort of fanfare. But that's just the culmination of days of work. What you don't see is delegates actually coming together, the discussions around the party's platform, the slew of fundraisers that are happening outside of the convention space, and of course, the parties. So while it's about nominating a candidate,

it's also doing the work of the party and putting forth what the party stands for, and what the message is going into the general election. There's actually a lot of work that goes in behind the scenes. But the idea of the optics of this, like what Juana's point about, what Pelosi said, maybe we have people in a stadium standing six feet apart, social distancing. I mean, if conventions are all about the media and the optics and the sequin hats and the partying on the floor, I'm just picturing what a semi-empty stadium with people standing distant wearing masks just doesn't actually seem like an image that if you're a candidate for president, you think you want to be sort of a lasting image for you. I don't know.

It's not exactly a party. It's not. But I was having some conversations with folks who have been organizing for a long time, including Emmy Ruiz, who is a digital, who's an organizer, a veteran organizer in Texas. And she was telling me that she actually thinks this is an opportunity for her party to think about innovating what conventions mean and look like and what their utility is. She was telling me that she thinks that even if the pomp and circumstance is largely gone, but by the by necessity due to the fact that we're in a pandemic, that there may be an opportunity here to engage people who may not normally tune in to four to five days of coverage of a convention to organize them to get them to do whatever work

they can on behalf of not just the presidential nominee, but Democratic candidates up and down the ballot and to build some relationships. So I don't know, I think that we could see some really interesting and innovative outcomes that come out of this. And I mean, I take the point that yeah, I'll miss the ladies with the sparkly hats. I'll miss the balloons. I will miss the balloon drops terribly. But I think that, you know, it's 2020 and our conventions have looked the same for so many decades. It might be a little refreshing to see something that feels different.

Does this mean that we're going to have to do a podcast soon where Juana explains Fortnite to the rest of us and how people are going to campaign in it? Yes. Yes. I'm here for any gaming podcast that our bosses will allow. All right. Well, I think that's a wrap for today. We'll be back tomorrow.

But until then, send us your timestamps for the top of the show. We love them. We want them. We need them. Just record yourself on your phone and send the file to NPR politics at NPR.org. Maybe put like timestamp in the subject line so it's easy on our producers to find them. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Juana Summers. I cover demographics and culture. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.