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Trump, Biden & the US election: What could be next?
It’s been a week. In just seven days, former President Trump miraculously survived an assassination attempt, picked J.D. Vance as vice presidential candidate, and delivered the longest acceptance speech in history at the GOP convention in Milwaukee (he also holds the record for the second and third longest acceptance speeches). Oh, and through it all, the Democratic party continued its tailspin into crisis as internal clamor grew for President Biden to step aside. Amazing when the afterthought for the week is whether the sitting president will remain on the ticket for an election just months away. But that's where we are.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer reflects on this pivotal week in US politics and welcomes back media journalist and former CNN show host Brian Stelter on the show alongside Vanderbilt political historian Nicole Hemmer. “We're living in a period of escalating political violence and social and political instability,” Hemmer tells Bremmer. “That was true in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and I think that it's true today."
In a wide-ranging conversation that touches on all the major news of the week, Hemmer and Stelter dig into the political divisions that led to this moment of horrific political violence. “The real divides are not between Democrats and Republicans, although those are real,” Stelter adds. “But the biggest divide that we're seeing is between extremists and those who are moderates, the great silent majority."
Both guests also comment on the media's role in this fraught environment, with Hemmer critiquing prediction-focused coverage and Stelter advocating for better representation of casual news consumers and politically fatigued voters. The three also discuss the likelihood of Biden stepping down, an eventuality that Stelter argues is inevitable. “It is clear the Democratic Party elites are not with Biden. And I don't see that tide turning. I don't see how it changes.”
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Trump's close call and the RNC: Brian Stelter and Nicole Hemmer weigh in on a historic week in US politics
Listen: We're watching history happen in real-time. Never before was that fact more apparent than this week, when former President Trump narrowly survived an assassination attempt, picked his VP candidate, presided over a united GOP at the Republican Convention, and all while a Democratic Party in disarray continued to clamor for Biden to step aside.
It's amazing that the afterthought for the week is whether the sitting President will remain on the ticket for an election just months away. But that's where we are.
In the latest episode of the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer reflects on this pivotal week in US politics and welcomes back media journalist and former CNN show host Brian Stelter on the show alongside Vanderbilt political historian Nicole Hemmer. “We're living in a period of escalating political violence and social and political instability,” Hemmer tells Bremmer. “That was true in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and I think that it's true today."
In a wide-ranging conversation that touches on all the major news of the week, Hemmer and Stelter dig into the political divisions that led to this moment of horrific political violence. “The real divides are not between Democrats and Republicans, although those are real” Stelter adds. “But the biggest divide that we're seeing is between extremists and those who are moderates, the great silent majority."
Both guests also comment on the media's role in this fraught environment, with Hemmer critiquing prediction-focused coverage and Stelter advocating for better representation of casual news consumers and politically fatigued voters. The three also discuss the likelihood of Biden stepping down, an eventuality that Stelter argues is inevitable. “It is clear the Democratic Party elites are not with Biden. And I don't see that tide turning. I don't see how it changes.”
RNC shows how Trump has transformed GOP
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
What we're watching in US Politics this week: Trump's utter dominance of the GOP at the just-concluded convention.
So the Republican convention just wrapped up and a very different tone and style of the last several conventions. And particularly, you know, you were knocked out in 1992 and woke up today, you probably wouldn't recognize this Republican Party at all.
And that's because of the total dominance of Donald J Trump in the party now, which was really exemplified by his choice of a vice president. JD Vance, very young, senator from Ohio, wasn't an elected official as of two years ago and is likely to be the next vice president of the United States. Contrast this to Mike Pence, Trump's pick in 2016, who was a long-standing conservative but establishment Republican that helped Trump shore up his weaknesses at the time with evangelical voters.
Today, Trump doesn't really have any weaknesses in the Republican Party. He is their leader. He's their most popular person. He just survived an assassination attempt. And you saw that affect all over there of the Republican National Convention this week, particularly when it came to issues like trade and immigration, where the party has taken a significantly tougher line than ever has before and has moved in a significantly more nationalist and populist direction. Contrast this to the George W Bush era, or the era of even the last two speakers, prior to Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan, and John Boehner, neither of whom were major presences at this convention. Just to show you how far the Republican Party has moved from its roots, even from the pre-Trump days.
Another unusual thing about the convention was that last night before Trump's speech, it was wrestling day. Hulk Hogan showed up, and Linda McMahon showed up. Dana White, the president of UFC, showed up, the Ultimate Fighting Championship. You don't expect to see these people at political conventions. But what they really reflect is kind of the heart and soul of the Trump campaign. Hulkamania is a throwback to the 1990s. And Dana White represents a demographic that Trump is hoping to make central to his political movement, which is young men. And young white men, young Hispanic men, and young black men are all groups that Trump is doing very well with and probably will be one of the keys to his victories in the fall if he wins.
You wouldn't expect any convention bounce coming out of this. Convention bounces are a little bit of a thing of the past. And Trump was really speaking to his base last night in a very long, rambling, rally-style speech. Not what you normally expect on primetime TV.
Donanld Trump at the RNC
| USA TODAY NETWORK |
RNC wrap-up: Trump's speech and the GOP's evolving identity
On the fourth and final night of the RNC, Donald Trump took to the stage for the first time since he was nearly assassinated at a campaign rally. He began his speech with a detailed, dramatic retelling of the shooting, in which he was saved by God, in the style of a grandfather telling their grandchild a war story at bedtime. Members of the audience cried, he kissed the firefighter uniform of Corey Comperatore, who was killed by the assassin. He called for unity.
"The discord and division in our society must be healed. As Americans, we are bound together by a single fate and a shared destiny. We rise together. Or we fall apart," said Trump, who went on to say that he was running to be president for "all of America, not half of America."
But Trump’s sedate and sentimental calls for harmony quickly evaporated, giving way to his more standard attacks on Democrats. “They’re destroying our country,” he said. Trump also repeatedly claimed that the Democrats stole the 2020 election, saying “they used COVID to cheat.” (For a deep dive into the stolen election conspiracy theory, check this out.)
And he went on. And on. And on. For more than an hour and a half – the longest nomination acceptance speech on record – he described meanderingly, an economy in shambles, a murderous job-stealing invasion of illegal immigrants, and a world on fire: all courtesy of Joe Biden, all fixable only by Donald Trump. When he concluded – nearly half an hour after first saying “in conclusion” – many of even the most faithful Trumpers in the room were reportedly fidgety.
Still, every party convention is a jamboree for its candidate, and in the wake of Trump’s near-death experience, this convention has had an almost-religious, over-the-top zeal. From the MAGA outfits (seriously, you need to look at the dresses), to Hulk Hogan tearing off his shirt to reveal a Trump/Vance tank top, and Trump repeatedly claiming that he survived the attack only because he “had God on [his] side” the final night cemented the impression of Trump as a kind of divinely protected figure, even a deity in his own right.
This is a changed Republican party. Traditional establishment figures like Mitch McConnell got a mild reception, while MAGA figures, regardless of whether they have a political background, were enthusiastically embraced – none more than Trump’s Veep pick, JD Vance.
The one thing Republicans avoided talking about. Speakers hammered Biden on inflation, immigration, and foreign policy. But one thing they didn’t talk much about was abortion. Despite Roe v Wade’s demise being one of the crowning achievements of the Trump presidency, abortion has barely received a passing mention, likely because the party recognizes that it is a divisive and politically toxic issue. Even JD Vance, an absolutist on restricting abortion, has stayed silent on the issue during the convention.
It's also another sign of the changing nature of the party. Abortion was once a rallying force within the GOP, but is now the latest example of how the Republican Party is departing from decades of party orthodoxy as it undergoes a historic realignment to woo younger, more diverse, and working-class voters.
JD Vance
Strongman politics and working-class appeal: GOP’s foreign policy
On the third day of the Republican National Convention, themed “Make America Strong Once Again,” the GOP laid out their vision for the world, outlining what US foreign policy could look like under Donald Trump and JD Vance.
In his keynote address, Vance officially accepted the nomination to be Trump’s VP running mate and used his working-class upbringing to make his key foreign policy points: that globalization has ruined neighborhoods like his, foreign intervention has led to his friends dying overseas, and that the working class is declining because Washington is in the pocket of multinational corporations.
He said the US needs “a leader who is not in the pocket of big business but answers to the working man, union and nonunion alike … a leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations.” This runs in contrast to an interview Trump gave this week callingfor a more than $700 billion cut to the corporate tax rate.
Vance couldn’t have been received with more enthusiasm. He called out his grandmother, who he referred to as “Mamaw,” and his mother Beverly, who struggled with drug addiction in his early life, as the crowd broke into chants of “JD’s mom” and “Mamaw.”
“To the people of Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and every corner of our nation,” Vance said, shouting out key swing states in this year’s election, “I promise you this: I will never forget where I came from.”
Before he took to the stage, the evening’s speakers painted Trump as a strongman necessary during tumultuous times. They also called for increasing US energy production, hammered Joe Biden on his trade policy and handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, and called for a crackdown on immigration through the Southern border.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott was met with a resounding chant of “Send them back! Send them back! Send them back!” during his speech in praising Trump’s immigration agenda, which he said includes plans to deport migrants who enter the US illegally. He was followed by Trump’s former ICE director, Tom Homan, who told undocumented immigrants “You’d better start packing now. You're damn right. Because you’re going home.”
Doug Burgum gave a hint at what energy policy would look like under Trump 2.o. The North Dakota governor is a likely pick for Trump’s Energy Secretary and linked US energy independence with national security, saying that Biden “is using mandates to shut down reliable baseload electricity. That is why your electric bills have shot upwards.” He ended by taking a knock at Biden’s efforts to incentivize Americans to purchase electric vehicles, saying that Trump will let the crowd keep driving gas-powered cars.
He was followed by the parents of the 13 US soldiers killed in the bombing in Kabul amid the Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021 who, alongside military officials, criticized Biden’s handling of the withdrawal and response in the aftermath.
But could Republican criticisms of the withdrawal from Afghanistan under Biden come back to bite them when it comes to defending Trump’s plans for Ukraine? Vance said at the Munich Security Conference earlier this year that it is unrealistic for the US to continue providing the same level of assistance to Ukraine moving forward, and Trump has signaled that he would reduce aid to Ukraine. But would the former president – who prides himself on being a winner – be willing to lose Ukraine?
Tomorrow, on the RNC’s final day, Trump will address the country for the first time since becoming the official Republican nominee – and less than a week after he was nearly assassinated.
Trump's pick for VP: JD Vance
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
President Trump has made his VP selection, JD Vance, Senator from Ohio, a 39-year-old who rose to prominence as the author of a book explaining the troubles of the white working class who voted for Trump in 2016, to a much broader population of Americans who were at the time, struggling to understand how Trump pulled off his surprising victory. Vance then reinvented himself as an investor and then a prominent Trump critic, warning about Trump's dangers to America, and saying that he is America's Hitler. And then went on to reinvent himself yet again as a populist champion of the working class, running for Senate in the seat he ended up winning.
Vance is obviously extremely smart. He's a Yale law graduate, and what he's going to bring to the Trump campaign is to complement the populist energy that President Trump brings. Vance has been an outspoken critic of aid to Ukraine, he has been somebody who's questioned how much the Republican Party has done over the years for the US corporate community, meaning he's going to bring probably an anti-trade and even potentially a tax-hiking voice into the White House. And he's going to instantly become a target for the campaign of President Joe Biden, who will happily pull out all of Vance's old quotes criticizing Donald Trump, even though Vance now credibly says he's been converted to Trumpism.
They're also going to try to attempt to tie Vance to Project 2025, which is a white paper introduced by the Heritage Foundation that introduces all of Trump's plans that he plans to do as president, many of which will be very closely aligned with the persona that J.D. Vance dug out in the Senate. Now, I should also say that persona has been bipartisan at times, as Vance has teamed up with Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren on several populist causes, including cracking down on big banks. So, Vance is probably one of the more interesting people in American politics today. He's young enough to be a credible presidential candidate in four years at the end of a second Trump term, and he's going to be a lightning rod for controversy.
Thanks for watching and stay tuned for more on the Republican National Convention this week.
Sen. JD Vance addresses the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference in February 2024.
Who is JD Vance, Trump’s VP pick?
Updated July 15: JD Vance will be the Republican nominee for Vice President.
From holler to white collar. That’s the unusual life arc of J.D. Vance, the 39-year-old junior senator from Ohio.
Born into extreme poverty in rural southern Ohio, he grew up in the holler – “the hollow” – surrounded by abuse, addiction, and despair. But he made it out: He joined the Marines, graduated from Yale Law School, and became a successful tech venture capitalist.
He recounted all of this in his bestselling 2016 memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” which became required reading after Trump’s shock victory over Hillary Clinton spurred interest in the disaffection of white working-class America. In the book, Vance criticized a culture of victimhood and dependency among poor whites while also blasting the establishment’s condescension and neglect.
Initially a fierce critic of Trump – he once called the 45th president “unfit,” and his Indian-American wife criticized Trump’s racist language – he had changed his views by the time he ran for Senate in 2022. Vance broadly supports Trump’s populist challenge to the traditional bipartisan establishment and has said Trump’s legally disproven claims of fraud in the 2020 election had political merit.
What are Vance’s policy views? He wants to slash immigration, raise tariffs, and increase the minimum wage to boost employment, industry, and productivity among the US working class. He is certainly no old-school “limited government, free trade” Republican.
He is socially conservative – he favored a national 15-week abortion ban, although he softened his view when his own constituents voted strongly against it. Echoing Trump, he says he supports access to mifepristone, the “abortion pill.”
On foreign policy, he says he is a “realist,” willing to deal with countries based on American interests. He considers China a bigger threat than Russia and wants to cut support for Ukraine, where he seeks a settlement along current front lines that includes sovereignty, US security assistance, and neutrality for Ukraine.
He has strong support from the MAGA wing of the Republican Party, which wants to leave the traditional GOP behind.
Why would Trump choose him? “To bolster his standing with persuadable Republicans who dislike Trump’s personality but love his policy,” says Clayton Allen, a US politics expert at Eurasia Group. “And because he’d gamble that Vance’s naked ambition can be held in check long enough not to cause problems.”
What else to read: For a good one-stop look at what J.D. Vance believes, check out this Q&A by the Times’ Ross Douthat on “What J.D. Vance Believes.” And to learn about Trump’s other possible VP picks, check out our Veepstakes series here.
Will the Trump attack shift GOP approach at the RNC?
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
What we're watching in US Politics this week: The Republican National Convention after an assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Wild weekend with the first assassination attempt in over 40 years against President Donald Trump, former President Donald Trump, this weekend that barely missed lodging a bullet in the back of his brain by several inches. That could have been a history-altering shot if it hadn't missed. And Trump was lucky to get out alive. But he also was able to rally his supporters and the base of the Republican Party behind him. And we're seeing that online this weekend, which is great timing for President Trump as he begins the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Trump has already said that the assassination attempt is changing his approach towards the convention and the campaign, offering up that he's going to take a more moderate and unifying tone, as opposed to one that was attacking current President Joe Biden. Biden gave an Oval Office address last night to also ask for unity in American politics, which is something that has been lacking in recent years as the two parties have increasingly defined themselves in opposition to one another. Prolonged unity is probably too much to ask for both of these guys. There is too much at stake for both parties. Both bases believe that this election is an existential risk to their way of life, and they are willing to fight it out until the very, very end.
But you still might get a very different tone at the RNC than you would have otherwise, as Republicans attempt to capitalize on the momentum from Trump's assassination attempt. No big policy announcements coming this week; the Biden campaign is going to try to get his footing underneath them, once again, as he tries to recover from the terrible debate performance he had two weeks ago. The conventions typically give a small but fading bounce to the candidate that's holding them, and I wouldn't really expect anything different this time around, even as Donald Trump looks like he's starting to open up a reasonable lead in what still looks like a fairly close race.
Thanks for watching, and stay tuned for more this week on the RNC.