The Press Box - A Report From the Republican Convention With the Washington Post’s Chris Suellentrop

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

On the Final Edition, Bryan welcomes The Washington Post’s Chris Suellentrop, who joins the show from Milwaukee, where he's covering the Republican National Convention. He kicks off the show by discussing how the Republicans are ecstatic right now at the convention (1:40). Then they discuss Republican vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s speech (4:16), whether Donald Trump will be more effective if he's elected president again (9:27), how the assassination attempt has become a part of the convention (16:07), and more. Host: Bryan Curtis Guests: Chris Suellentrop Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Bill Simmons. I am thrilled to announce our newest YouTube channel. It's called Ringer movies. If you're a fan of our movie coverage here at The Ringer, then you're in luck because every episode of the rewatchables and the big picture, now on YouTube. Like Bill said, Ringer movies will feature full episodes of my show, The Big Picture, the Rewatchables, as well as special live episodes, deep dives into movie history and a bunch of other fun stuff featuring other movie-loving Ringer personalities. Search Ringer movies on YouTube and experience the joy. Chris Ryan impersonating Wayne Jenkins on camera. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox. Brian Curtis the Ringer here, along with producer Brian Waters. Let us begin today by going to Milwaukee to talk to our guest host.

He is Chris Sullentrop. He is the politics editor for opinions at the Washington Post. You've heard him on Post Opinions, new Impromptu podcast. He joins us from the Republican Convention, where he's doing his best impression of David Broder and Jack Germand. Chris, welcome back to the press box. The older I get, the fat man in a middle seat was Jack Germann's political memoir. I'm more like fat man in an aisle seat. You're only willing to go so far.

He went farther to get the story. For folks who are not on the Zoom, you were actually wearing a Washington Post t-shirt, which reminds me of when your flight gets canceled and United Airlines gives you like a pack of clothes to take to the hotel that night. Yeah, I'm compensated in gear. know, that's, you know. That's journalism today. Well, we can't give you in money. We will give you in swag.

All right. Let's start by you giving us your best Broder and Germand. The mood in Milwaukee this week is. Ecstatic. This is the, I've, I haven't been to every Republican convention since 2000, but I've been to most of them. And this is the happiest I've ever seen a political convention. They are, it's an interesting reaction to your candidate getting, you know, surviving an assassination

attempt. But doesn't this moment feel like the reverse of 2016? The Democrats are totally unified. They're thrilled to have a candidate. And the Democrats are at each other's throats saying, this guy's going to destroy us. He's going to bring us down. The whole party will end. You know, of course, the Democrats, I mean, the Republicans won that election with Donald Trump.

so we'll see what happens so republican ecstasy is a combination of everybody lining up behind trump including niki haley as we saw this week true the the sort of relief and and from trump surviving an assassination attempt last weekend and then the mess that is the democratic party and the joe biden campaign exactly all altogether yeah i remember that 2016 republican convention because there were very very few actual elected republicans there but chris christie was one of the few and then you had the rest of the convention with Scott Beow and the Duck Dynasty guy and basically anybody they could get to speak. Now you have a very formal Trump convention that looks like a Republican convention. Yeah, this is Trump's first normal convention. I mean, no Trump,

nothing Trump does as normal, but in the universe of 2016 when Ted Cruz urged Republican delegates to vote their conscience when they went into the election booth rather than formally endorsing Donald Trump, when Paul Ryan was sort of flirting with not attending the convention, then 2020 was this COVID convention that was done at the White House, which was probably illegal, but let's put that aside. And then this, yeah, I mean, the dissenters are gone. They've been, they've either been assimilated or banished. Tuesday was dissenter night, right?

Because we had DeSantis, we had Nikki Haley, all of the Vivek Ramoswamy, all of his former primary rivals coming up to praise him as one does, as you say, at a normal convention. Yeah, those aren't dissenters. Those are just losers. There's a difference between heretics and I didn't win. Let's talk about J.D. Vance. Trump announced on Monday that Vance would be his running mate. This is perhaps the first vice presidential candidate whose candidacy began with an AP style note. It is J.D. with no periods rather than J. period D. P. P. P.m. Vance. He's spoke last night. What did you make of his speech? It was interesting. I was reminded. I'm turning into Jeff Greenfield. Well, I was reminded of the 1972 convention. But I was, in 2004, the Democrats

put forward a sort of all positive convention. John Edwards was the running mate, the sunny new face on the scene under John Kerry. And he was going to talk about his life story and his personality, and they didn't really prosecute the case against George W. Bush, this convention feels a little bit like that. The euphoria may be leading them not to, normally the vice presidential candidate is the attack dog, the running mate, the person who's just going to, doesn't matter if I'm popular because no one votes for me. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to be a heat-seeking missile at the other party and just destroy them. And then the presidential candidate will come out and be warm and fuzzy and uniting.

So it was it was an effective speech in the sense that in this race between two, you know, almost octogenarians were desperate for new faces, were desperate for new people. So there was a curiosity factor. He's kind of a celebrity who has a movie and a book about him, the story about his mother and, you know. But it was pretty flatly delivered, and I'm curious to see how, you know, predictions are dangerous, but I'm curious to see if this convention is actually an effective one. It's interesting with him because I would think that he, in a way, had the most straightforward

or easily predictable vice presidential speech ever, because as you mentioned, it's his personal story, right? His personal story became a bestselling book. It's the reason he has a political career. It's the reason he is on the ticket with Donald Trump. So in a way, you deliver that, you either remind the audience of it or tell an audience that hasn't plugged in what your personal story is and then marry that to Trumpian policy proposals. But watching that, he stopped so many times to pledge fealty to Donald Trump. He's at the beginning of the speech and he told a little bit of his life story and then he stopped again to talk about Donald Trump and then he went back to Mamaw and back to his mom and then back to Donald Trump again.

I thought it almost got diluted a little bit over the course of that half hour and change. I think that's exactly right. I expected a speech that was kind of the J.D. Vance version of Trump's 2016 campaign, which was, I came from Ohio, working class background. I infiltrated the elite circle. So I understand them. I know where the bodies are buried. I can take down the deep state root and branch because they're my neighbors and class.

classmates and he didn't he didn't give us that and that's why i'm just that's why i'm curious about whether it worked it was interesting too like i want to ask you about the ideology of the speech because on the one hand it's not subtle when you come to the podium with merle haggard's america first playing over the speakers he did talk about nafta uh which you said that joe Biden was a supporter of when he was in fourth grade. He talked about Biden supporting the war in Iraq when he was a senior in high school. He had the line Joe Biden screwed up in my community paid the price. What did you make of the ideology of the speech? I mean, the most intellectually interesting and possibly politically meaningful section of the speech was the part where he argued

against the notion that America is an idea, you know, which is a common political sentiment, almost a cliche, and said, no, it's not an idea, it's a place, it's a country. It's a normal country, basically. This is not an exceptional nation with a Reagan-esque city-on-a-hill mission to lead the world toward democratic self-government and human liberty, but instead is France. You know, it's got borders, it's got people in it. And this is an old Pat Buchanan line, you know, and it's. And there's truth to it.

It's clearly a place, you know, but that has not been the message of the Republican Party or really of either party for generations. And this kinder, gentler Buchananism, by which I mean Pat Buchanan, the former political columnist who ran for president and lost to George H.W. Bush and was sort of the intellectual forebearer of Donald Trump, we'll see this is another really big mystery. Is this rhetoric people warm to, or is this something that they recoil from? Do you think, how much of that rhetoric do you think actually makes it into Donald Trump's administration if he gets elected again in November? So this is the other great mystery of the moment. If Donald Trump becomes

president again, will he be more effective? than he was last time. Vance is used as a signal that he would be, you know, Pence was a sign, Vice President Mike Pence was a movement conservative of the old kind, a sort of Reagan-Bush conservative. So this would be a sign that he would have fewer divisions inside his administration.

But Trump is Trump is Trump, and Trump is going to do whatever he wants. Trump doesn't, this is, I have, None of us. We can't predict what Donald Trump will do or whether he will be more consistent, whether he, I just, I also, do we believe a man who has never been disciplined in his entire life would be a disciplined president?

That seems beyond implausible. We keep hearing about a more disciplined Trump during this campaign. And in terms of perhaps the operations of the campaign, maybe. But then people just put up the true social posts that we're not seeing on Twitter, which is not exactly a disciplined in any sense. sense of the word kind of rhetoric. Right. He does look changed.

I don't know that I believe that he's more of like a shark. I don't know that I believe he's capable of change. But are we all reading something into this? But he does look more emotional than I've ever seen him. You know, he was a little weepy when his granddaughter gave the speech last night. He looks, I don't, he's certainly not a humble man, but he looks, you know, humbled is the word we use for the expression. he's been given, he's been smiling and not in a smug way, but in a sort of

this gets back to the ecstasy I was talking about earlier. There's a sort of happiness instead of a vengeful anger emanating from the top down. This is clearly something the Republicans are trying to accomplish at this convention. You heard Vance talk about Trump kissing his adult

sons in his speech last night, right? They're trying to sand the rough edges off Trump. They're trying to humanize Trump to whatever degree that is possible here in 2024. Right. He's he's sort of America's grandpa. He doesn't understand the country. He's a little, you know, our part of, you know, our part of the country, if I can say that. He, you know, he's out of touch with the culture. Sometimes says something a little insensitive or weird, but, you know, he loves kids and he loves you and he loves, I don't know if this cell is going to work, but this is the, this is the message I'm feeling from this convention. In terms of the election, what does J.D. Vance do for the Trump ticket, do you think? I mean, inside Republicans don't believe he does much because he doesn't expand Trump's appeal

beyond the voters he already has. Vance ran hundreds of thousands of votes behind the governor of Ohio, Mike DeWine, who's also a Republican when he ran for Senate a couple years ago. So there's strong evidence that Vance does not have a sort of magic hillbilly elegy touch in what we might call Big Ten Country. Can I say that on this podcast? Although Big Ten Country, that's California, right? I'm sorry, but I mean, you know, the Rust Belt. Yes.

And so we'll see. But that is where if Joe Biden stays on the ticket and even if he doesn't, this election will probably be fought in Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. That's why J.D. Vance was chosen. again, John Edwards did nothing for John Kerry in the South, and it's possible that J.D. Vance does nothing for Donald Trump. But I'm not sure Donald Trump needs much help in that region either.

They were doing a little bit of the Michigan versus Ohio rivalry during the Vance speech last night, which I find oppressive at all times. So I really don't need that mixed into my politics either. Yeah, is picking someone from Ohio actually? alienating to the state of Michigan. Will Gretchen Whitmer be, you know, wearing Wolverines gear and saying we can't vote for no Buckeyes? It's not the craziest thing in the world.

It really isn't. The way our politics has gone, I'm not sure that wouldn't actually be a factor. I was really interested in the way the media wound up being sort of a factor in the Vance pick. I read Jonathan Swans, TikTok in the New York Times, and there were several really good ones. He talked about how some of J.D. Vance's biggest fans included Tucker Carlson, now formerly of Fox News, Matthew Boyle at Breitbart and Charlie Kirk, who we saw speak at the Republican Convention. On the anti-Vant side was Rupert Murdoch, who Swan writes, went so far as to dispatch

senior executives and columnists at the New York Post to meet with Mr. Trump and dissuade him from picking vance. The Murdoch crowd lobbied aggressively for Doug Bergam in private and in editorials in the New York Post. That might be the most aggressive lobbying for Doug Bergum that has ever existed. How do you read that? Is that new conservative MAGA media versus old conservative media that would prefer a more conventional Republican candidate? Maga. Is that like Nevada? I think I've always said MAGA. Well, I've always said MAGA, but I don't know that

there's a Merriam-Webster pronunciation guide. It's like JD Vance. We need the APA. J.D. Vance. Is that what you call him J.D. Vons? Is that what you call him J.D. Vanga. Look, Murdoch's obviously been tremendously influential in conservative media. I know nothing more about this than what Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman reported in the New York Times. But that alternative media is ascendant and not just in the Republican Party, but everywhere. I mean, this podcast might be one sign of it, right? Not that you're a political power broker, but like that there, you know, there is no,

Jack Germant. There is no, you know, David Broder who, who everyone turns to to explain the moment. And those people are now right in the center of, they're no longer on the periphery of this party. They're right in the center of it. I saw some of the delegates on television wearing bandages on their ears. How else has the assassination attempt become part of the Republican convention? The bandages are the big thing. They didn't have time to print, you know, T-shirts and signs from Sunday. So you see a lot of like, I'm going to vote for the felon gear and T-shirts and things

like that. They were prepared to make a case against the prosecutions of Donald Trump. But they have, you know, beyond the, if you're talking just about sort of festive convention where I think it has imbued the whole mood. And sometimes in an ominous way. I mean, you know, Ben Carson said, they tried to kill Donald Trump. Well, who is the they?

And, you know, this was a lone shooter who fits the profile of all mass shooters. Appeared to be acting in isolation. Appeared to be, and again, I don't, I should prefer this by saying there could be new information. We know nothing. But so far, this is a shooter

who fits the exact profile of the mass shooters we've seen in this country for decades, and he had no political motivations that we know of. And if the they is the Democrats, the media, the deep states, like that's a pretty ominous and dark place to go with your rhetoric. And that was said from the stage. So I don't want to wash over the idea that this has merely been a lot of happy talk. Yeah. And there was a sense from, even from Trump himself before the convention started that there would be this new tone.

He said, I was going to deliver a quote unquote humdinger of a speech about Joe Biden. Now I'm going to deliver a different speech. There was a little bit of a sense of that on Monday. Did you find that has continued throughout the convention? Monday was absolutely a new tone. And I do think they've dialed back the anti-democratic anti-Biden rhetoric. I mean, there's still a substantial amount of it. but it's sort of the beyond meat version of red meat.

You know, it's not quite as impressive as the real thing. But Tuesday night was pretty, you know, pretty red meat. Carrie Lake came out and pointed at the media and said, hey, you guys, I don't trust you. You tell lies all the time. You lie about everything. Last night, Trump ran a video talking about how Democrats can only win by cheating and we can't let what tooth that happened in 2020 happened again.

I mean, so there's election denialism, calls against the fake media. I mean, this is Peter DeVarro came out on the day he was released from jail and accused Biden of weaponizing the Justice Department, which he called the injustice department against his political opponents. These are extremely serious allegations that have no basis in any reporting or evidence that we've seen. And in fact, there's substantial evidence that that's not the case. And that, you know, so yeah, new tone, but, you know, again, again, but what matters is what Trump says tonight. We should, we should also note that Donald Trump's new tone is one of the longest

standing jokes about the Donald Trump's political career. Going back to the Fareed Zakaria, this is the day Donald Trump became president. I think it was Van Jones saying this was the night Donald Trump became president. There was talk about this for Nixon, too. Nixon's before my time. But the new Nixon, I think, so the new Trump will, you know, but will the like-time fans make some terrible new Coke joke here, Brian, but I don't know. I mean, he's, look, that's why I said earlier, I'm not sure how capable of change

Donald Trump is. But again, we'll see. He did go through a near-death experience. And we'll have to watch. Political conventions, Chris, are somewhat wacky affairs. There was a video of Donald Trump dancing they showed in Milwaukee, after which all the delegates began dancing to YMCA. Any wild or wacky moments you would like to share?

Brian, not just a video. They play that video every night. Three nights in a row we've had video clips of Donald Trump making YMCA-ish gestures, and then the crowd breaks into YMCA. I think that is the wackiest thing we've seen. Tapper called YMCA, the most misinterpreted political song since Springsteen's born in the USA. Any moments of silliness or levity you'd like to share from Milwaukee? There's a vegan barbecue stand that is more popular than you would think at Donald Trump's

political convention. And apparently quite good, though, they serve meat too, which I found confusing. So I ordered actual chicken. Couldn't move on your part. All right. So last topic for you here on our media podcast. What do reporters do at political conventions? And it depends what you're doing. I've been hanging out with Karen Tummeltie, who is our lead political columnist. And she's practically a celebrity at these things. Like people just approach her and talk to her. She doesn't, I mean, she doesn't really, she doesn't. I mean, she doesn't really, she doesn't. does chase people down, but also they come to her, you know, big and small. So some people are here to watch the podium and report on the speeches.

Some people are here to schmooze with delegates and power players and find out what's going on behind the scenes. What the, you know, it's a place to get, you know, the entire parties here in one place. So if you want to source up, it's a good place to do that. then I'm staying in the hotel where Fox News and CNN are both staying. And the brunch scene is like the Sports Center commercials where the mascots and all the hosts are all hanging out together. So you'll just see like Brit Hume and Maria Bartoromo bumping into John King and Jake Tapper. It's either a Steve Bannon fever dream or or, or, uh,

a budding sports center cable news crossover event. Or the scene in Anchorman, where the rival anchors from the different stations meet up. Yeah, we're trying to lower the temperature and have a big throwdown. That's kind of what I'm imagining. We don't want anything like that to happen. We've been trying to avoid it. So there's reporters that are reporting on the actual substance of the convention. There's reporters working over their sources for information.

And let me add a third category from my experience at the Super Bowl. reporters who want to tell fellow reporters that they are covering this big event, that they have been sent by their publication to cover this event. Can we add that category as well? You can, Brian. Absolutely. I don't want to get anybody in trouble here, but, you know, that's just my experience. Allentrop, Washington Post, check him out on the impromptu podcast, which is broadcasting live from Milwaukee. Chris, thank you for coming on the press box. Anytime. Thank you. That is the press box. I'm Brian Curtis.

Productive Magic by Brian Waters. Coming up next Thursday, it's Logan Murdoch. Yep, the ringer's very own talking to us about the Summer Olympics and specifically men's Olympic basketball cannot wait to connect with him. Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you that.