Hi everybody, I’m britney lewis, with forbes breaking news joining me now is charles lipson, professor ameritus, at the university of chicago charles. Thank you so much for joining me. I always enjoy it bradney charles.
I was telling you this earlier, but this week could really give anyone whiplash with the political news coming out. I mean it’s really enough for an entire election season jampacked in 6 days. So let’s take it back to last saturday.
That’s when former president donald trump survived an assassination attempt against him at a political rally in pennsylvania. What’s your reaction to that news? I don’t know about you, brittany, but I was uh. I followed it in real time, not because I had been watching the uh rally in u in butler pennsylvania, but because a friend who is in the financial markets immediately texted me and said trump has been shot.
So I turned on tv and I think the difference in experience for people who didn’t know the outcome immediately and people who tuned in a half an hour an hour later and knew he had been shot but survived and the injury was minor. That’s a very different um, that’s a very different experience. My experience was just shock and fear uh, and that was not a part of and fear it was just I’ve been through this in 68.
I can remember, as a child john f kennedy being shot. It disorients. Your entire world um and um, but I think, when donald trump raised his fist with that flag in the background that will define his every biography of him, that will define he, this c campaign uh and his memory in the future, and I think it yogi bar Once said, it’s hard to predict, especially about the future, but uh, it’s really hard to see how he is defeated in this election and equally important he’s going to carry.
It looks like a lot of swing districts, which is why you see a kind of widespread panic, but I think that when he, why did he raise his fist? A because that’s who he is and b? I think he was really trying to reassure the crowd. That was there, the crowd that was watching on tv and the whole world that he was safe as far as he knew and um that he said fight fight fight, I mean uh, it’s just uh it’s an iconic moment and it contrasts very sharply with an an Incumbent president, who needs a is why, for a former president to lead him off the stage to your point right there I mean he, pops down was bombarded by secret service, came back up and made it a point to raise his fist and tell the crowd fight. The crowd was chanting.
Usa. I was watching in real time as well. So what do you think the impact on the race is going to be after this moment? Decisive, decisive? I mean it um.
If you were looking for strength and endurance through any crisis. What could be better proof – and this wasn’t partisan – this was uh. The message itself wasn’t partisan of raising his fist. It was um.
I thought that the um, that the song that uh he should play was an old donna summer song from disco I will survive. I yeah I mean well, he walked out to at the rnc to a different song. Twice lee greenwoods um. God bless the usa and donald trump.
Many have pointed out. He looked different at the rnc. He looks like he was mti eyed at some points, his smile.
He people have described him as more human. What do you think of him at the rnc and the rnc as a whole, especially when this event less than 40 hours from the kickoff of the rnc, was the backdrop. I thought that uh, the rnc was a tremendous success for what they were trying to do and uh it was very focused and on point, and the least, focus and least on point was donald trump’s, the sort of second half of his speech.
I I completely agree with you by the way, the first part of that speech when he was recounting for what he says the first and last time what that experience of being shot was like he looked reflective, serious, um, um, the uh. The motto of aristotle is know: thyself, that’s what it looked like uh. I didn’t think that the second half of the speech did him any good um, because it ran on too long.
He if he cut 2third of it, he would have been much better off, but my favorite moment I didn’t watch all the convention uh as they say. I have a life to leave, but but uh I thought my favorite moment at the convention was the priest who did the imitation of donald trump before he did the benediction, and you could just see the smile on trump’s face and I thought having his granddaughter. Well. There were two granddaughter moments.
One was a great speech by the granddaughter I thought the granddaughter’s speech was better than her father’s or her uncles, but uh, seeing donald trump with the uh young granddaughter on his lap was a very humanizing moment. Um, it’s in a way. It’s kind of sad that we think about electing leaders uh because of these uh more personalistic elements, but we do and um, and I think that helps trump now and hurts biden now. I think that’s a really interesting point, because there were a few speeches like laura trumps like the granddaughter kai trump of hey, despite his mean tweets, despite maybe some tweets, you don’t like some rhetoric, you don’t like he’s my grandpa he’s like any other grandpa.
He sneaks me candy and soda he’s a great fatherinlaw he’s great with my kids. So what do you think the strategy of like you said humanizing donald trump was well. I i think that the point the main point of the convention was to draw sharp policy contrasts with the current administration um and to say, as reagan did in effect, about jimmy carter. Are you better off now than you were for years years ago? Are you safer? Are you more prosperous and so forth uh and it’s clearly now trump’s party and what uh, what what strikes me is both the transformation of the party into a kind of working class, populist nationalist party under trump.
That’s by the way, the reason I think that he picked jd vance uh because he uh he is the emblem of that trans formation and he will ensure that it continues into 20 uh, 28 and beyond, but uh. I also think uh that the democrats are still running against the party of george hw bush. Every time they talk about tax cuts and so forth. It’s all for the rich.
They think they’re running against country club republicans, but but republicans don’t think that, and I don’t think that independence uh in the country think that, but I don’t I i a final point. I don’t think that this race will be fundamentally a positive race. I think it will be uh a pleite in which people vote negatively either about biden or whoever replaces him, because biden’s policies are not idiosyncratic, they are mainline democratic policies and because of that, I don’t see, kamala definitely can’t run away from him, she’s, the vice president. It’s the hubert humphrey problem in 1968.
How can you run away from lyndon johnson right and uh? All the other democrats supported it, and they were part of a cover up. They all knew that joe biden was declining, cognitively and physically and they and the mainstream media covered it all up, so it’s very damaging to them. Let’s talk about that contrast, really quick, because at the rnc, what we all saw was a very unified gop.
I mean you had everyone from nikki haley to donald trump himself, speaking even the teamsters president making history as the first time, a teamsters president was speaking at the rnc, and then this is happening as there is waves in the democratic party. I mean, after the assassination attempt on saturday call’s publicly quieted for joe biden to step aside, and they reignited this week with adam schiff, calling him uh on him to step down a a letter from jamie rasin, essentially saying you’ll make the right decision, even though president Biden said he already made his decision. He said I’m running and democrats seemed to say we’re we’re leaving it up to him we’re we’re looking for his decision.
So what do you think of this contrast between democrats and republicans right now? Sharp it’s a sharp contrast and it benefits uh the republicans, the party of trump. But I would say this one of the things. But just because you say something doesn’t mean what you say is credible to the people who are receiving the message and that’s been part of biden’s problem on the international stage and it’s part of trump’s strength. Uh, you know, putin doesn’t know it.
The heck he’ll do kim, doesn’t know what the heck he’ll do. Um she doesn’t know what the heck he’ll do so his his threats. I might do something and I might do something harsh and and if he does it, he won’t wait a week and a half and listen to uh, anthony blink and other people. He’ll just do it and uh, so that lends a deterrent credibility to his threats.
Now, as for biden saying I’m staying in, I mean look the fir last job biden, hell was mowing lawns for a quarter or something he’s been in politics all of his adult life and it’s how his family made his money. It’s all that they do and it’s very clear that jill biden wants him to stay in and he has the votes to win uh the nomination. What was striking to me britney was that he wanted the convention to hold an early zoom session to lock in the nomination, and I’ve never seen a situation where the party overrode the incumbent president to do uh to do something. Uh uh against his wishes like this.
They said no we’re not going to do it, and I think that was a real signal to him, but don’t believe everything you here he may get out. He may not um uh. I think the main problem uh with him continuing to try to run is that nobody believes he can make it even through the rest of the year much less through four years. So it looks like he’ll be turning over the uh the oval office at some point.
To kla harris, well, if he’s going to do that, why not let the voters decide? Do you think that, within the upcoming days weeks to the dnc, do you think he will step aside? Do you think that will reach a fever pitch where he’ll come to that decision on his own? Well, he’s not exactly coming to it on his own he’s coming to it under tremendous pressure, but we don’t know if he’ll make that decision, they don’t have a horse’s head to put in his bed as a threat and it’s unclear what the incentives, the so of Carrot and stick: they don’t have any sticks, they don’t have any carrots now. What what has changed over the past couple of weeks has been that the money has dried up and the private conversations with him have been important. But a couple of days ago, three, four days ago, he went to michigan.
You remember that britney and did you notice that there were no major elected officials from michigan who are willing to appear in the crowd, none, and that tells him something very important. That’s like those when you call up some lovely woman for a date uh in high school and she says uh in three weeks and she says no, I’m sorry. I have to wash my hair that night is so what you’re saying basically is it’s a message received? Yes, well, it’s a message sent now, that’s been the problem.
Does he receive the message? Well, he may receive the message, but it does it convince him. I think the problem he now faces and he must realize it is that he won’t have money to run the campaign and uh. I thought.
Okay, the money is being diverted down ballot because those people are petrified. The people are coming out public publicly against him. This is different from the private conversations with schumer and pelosi, and so forth. People who are coming out publicly are people who are who are in very embattled reelection efforts they’re in purple, stat they’re, john tester.
If you hear the same thing from casey in pennsylvania or some of the other uh close races, jackie rosen in nevada, um, that will add to the pressure. But frankly, it’s unclear if kamla harris will help much more at the top of the ticket and if they bypass her they’ll blow up their coalition within the uh biden presidency, I mean kamla harris has seen worse approval ratings than president biden himself, and I want to Talk about the republican counterpart there jd vance, that was the big news out of the rnc donald trump selected, the senator from ohio to be his running mate. What do you think of that choice? Uh? I? I wrote an article a couple of days ago that that said, why didn’t he choose x or y? Why did he choose shady vs? So let’s look at that. He did.
I thought that in a lot of ways his best choice was yunan, because yunan could help a lot not only in virginia but in swing states like pennsylvania, um. He didn’t it’s unclear uh, some of the others why he didn’t choose them, but I think first of all, vance is whipped smart. Secondly, trump was willing to ignore some very harsh statements that vance had made earlier against trump um, because vance has obviously changed his position.
Now you could say that’s opportunistic, but I i think vance sees uh which side his bread is buttered on, and this is trump’s party and you do not want to be uh uh against trump. I thought the reason to choose v uh to choose a guy like yunan. Was that the thing that undid trump last time was that he was never able to get control of the permanent government, what some people call the deep state or the permanent bureaucracy? So a really competent guy who’s been in business and then uh.
Let a state government would be helpful there, and I do think that trump will have some of those people around him, led probably by john radcliff, but who, who is formerly the head of dni and so forth, and a lot of his people uh are experienced uh. Now at managing the government from the first, but I think what the jd vance selection tells you is that trump is completely confident he will win. He is not picking somebody who will help him to the extent any vice president can in swing states he’s picking somebody who is a maga republican to continue the party in that vein after his presidency, because remember trump will be a lame dog on the day. He removes his hand from the bible.
Let’s talk about what you think that future will be, because something that has loomed large over this election definitely has been age. I mean bill clinton as of right. Now is younger than both trump and biden, and he was president 30 years ago. So what uh jd vance is 39 years old.
Not a career politician was elected to the senate in 2022 is less of a traditional republican, more of that trump mag of republican. So what do you think this indicates about the future of the gop? Well, I think the main thing that it indicates is that the party has been transformed. Now they can’t emphasize uh too much jd vance’s youth, because it it contr with trump what they’ll indicate what they’ll do is contrast the vigor of vance and trump against uh biden’s decrepitness. If biden stays in and then you know, if uh jd vance will just shred uh kamla harris in a in a debate he’s just whip.
Smart and um he’s uh he’s a great debater, but I think what it all indicates is that they’re building a not so much a youth movement but a workingclass movement. I mean this is a guy who can go into a rural community. I grew up in a town of 2000 people. The main industry was farming.
The the second largest industry was crushing soybeans for their oil soybean oil, so uh, but it was mostly cotton farming and soybeans 2000 people. That’s how many uh people lived in the town, jd vance can go into a town like that kamla harris just flies over it. I think a big question going into this weekend heading into monday, is the question of will he or won’t he meaning? Will president biden step aside from the race or won’t he he’s he and his campaign are saying he will not. So what are you you looking out for this weekend and come monday? Well, I thought the most important signal was that he he no longer refer to getting a message from god to take him out, but rather a message from his doctor.
If his doctor told him that there were um reasons he shouldn’t continue, then he would get out. Well, look: those reasons are already there so that that’s a builtin excuse um, but long ago, before richard nixon changed um, the dollar uh role in the world. There used to be what we call fixed exchange rates, so the the exchange rate between the dollar and the british pound was $ 240 and um. Today, if you want, if you’re planning a trip to to london or france or whatever you, you look at the pound, you look at the euro and it’s going to have a different rate every day in the same way that ground, beef or milk has a different Uh price every day, but that was not true in the past.
How does that relate here? Well, if you’re going to devalue a currency, you always said we’re never going to devalue, we’re never going to devalue, we’re never going to devalue oops. We just devalued because as soon soon as you say you might, the markets will move in and force you to do it. So you couldn’t say it, and the same is true.
If you look at um sporting managers, the manager of baseball team m football team or soccer team uh, the owner comes out and says we’re 100 % a th % behind our current management, and they say it repeatedly until they fire the guy. The difference here is that biden owns the team, he’s not only the the the manager on the field, he would have to fire himself and that’s why the pressure is on. And if you read those headlines even from nancy pelosi, she she doesn’t say he’s going to resign. She says we think we can convince him to this weekend and so forth.
That’s just designed to put more pressure on him, but unless joe and jill and hunter and joe’s sister make that decision and they’re going to make it privately in a beach house or in wilmington, we just don’t know what he’s going to do. Well, a lot remains to be seen, there’s definitely a lot in the air between now and the dnc at least, and I’m sure in between there. You will come back on hopefully and continue to discuss with me, charles lipson per usual. Thank you so much it’s my pleasure.
The dnc is 22 blocks away from my house. So let’s hope it is a calm convention fingers crossed for sure byebye.
