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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. With us now, Charlie Sykes, editor-at-large for The Bulwark, the conservative but anti-Trump news organization. Charlie was previously a longtime conservative talk show host based in Milwaukee, which is where the Republican convention took place this week. We'll talk about the situation in both parties.

Charlie, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Charlie Sykes: It's good to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote on The Atlantic during the week that for a moment after the shooting last Saturday, a GOP tone shift seemed possible. Then the convention began. What kind of tone did you hear coming out of Milwaukee this week?

Charlie Sykes: I think there was a lot of spin about there was going to be a new tone or it would be a softened Donald Trump. What I also wrote on my Substack newsletter was, don't sleep on the screaming cognitive dissonance here. This is still Donald Trump. This is still a party that is completely committed to the forcible deportation of maybe 10 million migrants. I think it was somewhat naive to think that there was going to be a change in the tone. Then, of course, you have, in any convention that features Marjorie Taylor Greene or Tucker Carlson. It was all overshadowed, I think, by the selection of JD Vance, who has been really one of the most outspoken MAGA advocates, and somebody who put out a tweet within hours of the shooting on Saturday, essentially blaming the Biden administration for it. No real change in what Trump's party represents.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think politically for the campaign, or in implications for policy or democracy, about this election of JD Vance as Trump's running mate?

Charlie Sykes: I think it really put an exclamation point on the complete wrenching transformation of the Republican Party, represents a rejection of decades of internationalism, certainly raises questions about whether or not the United States will continue to be a reliable ally for our European partners and for NATO, clearly a very dangerous signal to Ukraine. Also is a signal that this party is not just with Donald Trump, but is moving on from what Republicans used to say about free markets and free trade, and certainly a rather dramatic break with Reaganism.

The selection of JD Vance is on one level not that important because, of course, vice presidential candidates never really in the end make a difference. This one is consequential because it signals where the party, I think, is going, and the direction, and that this nationalist, populist, isolationist approach is something that is going to outlast Donald Trump.

Brian Lehrer: As I've been hearing it, Vance is supposed to appeal to your part of the country, the Midwest post-industrial states of Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania. Do you see it that way?

Charlie Sykes: That's the strategy. I understand how it works on paper. There is some real vulnerability for the Democrats with the working class. This is not a new story, not just the white working class, but the African-American working class, Hispanic working class. There's been some erosion there. Clearly, Republicans see an opportunity to be the party of the working man. Again, going back to the cognitive dissonance, this is still the Republican Party. They're never going to be the party of the unions, of the working men.

Particularly in the JD Vance story, it's fascinating to me because he clearly is playing on his hillbilly elegy roots, but he is also very much part of the American elite, and his political career is basically sponsored and paid for by Silicon Valley billionaires and so on. [chuckles] I say this as a conservative, but it's like, "Hey, guys, you understand that-- " We don't like to use the term oligarch in American society, but JD Vance is the oligarch's boy, whether it's Elon Musk or it's Peter Thiel. I think there's going to be a little bit of stress and strain between that, "Hey, I'm the barefoot boy from Ohio, but meanwhile, the reason I'm in the United States Senate is because this billionaire wrote about a check for $12 million to put me there.

Brian Lehrer: If you're just joining us, Charlie Sykes is my guest, former editor-in-chief, now editor-at-large at the Bulwark, the conservative but largely anti-Trump news organization. He's a contributor to MSNBC these days. He's got a Substack newsletter, as he was just describing. A former longtime conservative talk show host based in Milwaukee, where the convention was held. 212-433-WNYC, if you have a question or comment for Charlie Sykes, 212-433-9692.

Charlie, I did a word search on the transcript of Trump's speech last night, and I found inflation 14 times, invasion, referring to immigrants, 13 times, the word fight, 10 times, abortion, zero times, equality or inequality, zero times each, racism, zero times, climate, zero times, environment, zero times, but also the word rigged, zero times. Can we learn anything from any of those counts?

Charlie Sykes: That's pretty good. That is interesting. This is the attempt, the hand wave that, okay, I'm not going to be talking about the rigged election. That, by the way, will last about five minutes. Very interesting message to the social conservatives that we take you absolutely for granted that I'm not going to mention abortion or Roe versus Wade, clearly an acknowledgment that he sees this as a negative.

Let's focus on the use of the word invasion because this is really central to the message. I was there for a couple of days at the convention. I won't say that anything surprised me. It was a surreal experience. The one thing that did really strike me is that they were actually handing out placards with the words mass deportation on them. You saw those? They're holding a mass deportation, throw them out. It's a breathtaking moment because this is a party committed to this policy.

I keep asking these questions. At some point, are they going to explain how they're going to do this? Are you going to use the military, police, National Guard? You're talking about 10 to 20 million people forcibly removed from the country. How does that happen? Do you go door-to-door? Do you separate families? Will there be any due process? Are we going to create massive internment camps where we see pictures of hundreds of thousands of people being put into boxcars and sent south? How does this work?

Yet at this very upbeat, optimistic convention, they're actually waving signs saying mass deportation, because the wall wasn't enough. They've moved on from the wall. They're not talking about the wall anymore. Now it's like, "We're going to remove these people." I guess it's hard to reconcile that with a kinder, gentler, new Donald Trump. Look, there's no question about this was a very optimistic Republican Party, a very united Republican Party, at least in Milwaukee, and a Republican Party that is almost giddy in its embrace of Trumpism and going into this campaign. I can't recall a time when the mood between the parties is greater than it is right now.

Brian Lehrer: We'll get to the Democrats in a minute. Nick in Manhasset, you're on WNYC with Charlie Sykes. Hi, Nick.

Nick: Hi, Brian. I'm concerned with the attempted assassination last week that the media is going to be afraid to do a harsh coverage of Trump out of fear of offending his supporters. I'd like to know what you and your guest think if the media is going to give Trump more favorable coverage because they're afraid of angering his supporters.

Brian Lehrer: Nick, thank you. What do you think, Charlie? Does the assassination attempt, which, of course, everybody is going to condemn, lead to going softer on Donald Trump at the campaign level, and the implications for a second Trump term than otherwise would have been the case?

Charlie Sykes: It's a very good question, and it's an important question because there were more than a few brushback pitches. You could see that there was this growing sense that if you now criticize Donald Trump, somehow you were fomenting violence. I think that this is where I think we need to draw a very, very clear line. Democracy is about vigorous debate. It is about criticism. It is about the warnings of the threats to democracy.

The worst threat to democracy is violence. It would be ironic if an act of violence would lead to shutting down or silencing the warning. I would caution against that kind of an approach, which is, we need to not hold Donald Trump accountable.

You will see a lot of that. You will see social media pushback, "How dare you trash Donald Trump when he has just survived this assassination attempt?" I also think it's very, very important to note that as this investigation is unrolling, not only is it raising really serious questions about whether the secret service screwed up, they did, but also about the motives of the shooter, which I think certainly far from clear what his motivations were or whether or not criticism of Donald Trump led to that shooting.

In any case, this is what democracy looks like, that we continue to have a vigorous debate despite that, and that we are not silenced by an act of terror like this.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, very confusing about the shooter.

Charlie Sykes: Very.

Brian Lehrer: He was registered as a Republican but had donated to a pro-Democratic party group, and reportedly, in the last couple of days, he was also staking out the site of the Democratic Convention coming up next month. Who knows at this point about him?

I want to play a certain clip from Trump's speech last night, because we've been covering on this show policies to fight inflation, inflation being the number one issue cited by so many Americans and polls regardless of party. I keep finding that all the Republicans usually talk about regarding how to fight inflation, is to double down on fossil fuels, to keep energy prices as low as possible. That's what we heard last night. Of the 14 mentions of inflation by Trump, they were all only to say that inflation is bad in the last four years, and then only this on what he would do about it.

Donald Trump: We'll end the ridiculous and actually incredible waste of taxpayer dollars that is fueling the inflation crisis. They spent trillions of dollars on things having to do with the green new scam. It's a scam. That's caused tremendous inflationary pressures in addition to the cost of energy.

Brian Lehrer: Charlie, you're a policy wonk. How would you characterize what either party is actually offering to fight inflation?

Charlie Sykes: Well, this is interesting because the ability of the president to actually affect that is quite, quite limited. I also think that it's worth mentioning that at the very, very heart of his economics and JD Vance's economics, are these proposals for these massive new tariffs on virtually everything. A tariff is a tax, and it is a tax paid largely by American consumers. Middle-class, lower-class, working-class individuals, when they go and they buy anything that is imported, that price tag may go up rather significantly. He's been talking about a 10% tariff across the board. That is a 10% sales tax.

I guess part of the, again, the cognitive dissonance is he's talking about inflation and bringing prices down, when his core economic argument seems to be that, "Yes, I'm going to impose this surcharge on a lot of things that Americans buy."

Brian Lehrer: I guess in theory it balances out if American wages go up more than the prices because the jobs or as many jobs can't be outsourced to China and Guatemala and wherever.

Charlie Sykes: It's always one of those things of trickle-down economics. It feels like it was where if we do this, we'll pay for it if something else happens. The economy is an incredibly complicated, and in fact it is almost infinitely complicated, and anyone sitting in Washington, DC making these sorts of policies ought to be a little bit more humble about what all of the secondary sources are. The obvious other alternative there is that we learned during the Great Depression when Congress and the President enacted the Smoot Hawley Tariff Act, is that you might have a trade war.

What happens if countries all around the world begin retaliating against American products? Nothing happens in a vacuum. If we have a trade war, don't count on all those jobs. Don't count on that increase in wages, because the last time we've done this, it did not work out well.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Here's Kai in Prospect Lefferts Gardens in Brooklyn, who says she's from JD Vance's hometown. Kai, thanks for calling in. Hi.

Kai: Hi. I am actually from Hamilton, about 20 minutes, but both of my brothers who are union carpenters work in Middletown. As soon as I heard that he was the nomination, I was like, "Oh, Trump won." Just understanding the psychology of the people that work there and in my family, he is a come-up story. Yes, he was maybe backed by Silicon dollars, but not initially. He came from a hardscrabble addicted family, and he really does give voice to that narrative, whether it's true or not, of if you work hard, you can make it.

Both of my brothers were super pro-Biden until the continuing Palestinian Holocaust is continuing, and now that JD Vance is nominated, they're both considering voting for Trump. One of my brothers is half black like myself, and the other one is white, and it really, really-- JD Vance, yes, he's a con artist, for sure. I would never vote for him or Trump, but that narrative is powerful.

Brian Lehrer: Explain one thing to me, Kai, if your brothers, if I understood you correctly, are concerned about the fate of the Palestinians and Gaza, why would Trump be better for them than Biden?

Kai: He wouldn't, but you take the situation as a whole, and people, and I'm not talking just about my brother in case they hear this, I don't want them to be mad at me, but people are really struggling in those areas. When they see that there is maybe possibility for their family, their children to grow up to be somebody like JD Vance, the economic issues at home really override everything else. Initially, yes, they were on Biden's team, but now there's talk of voting for Trump.

Brian Lehrer: Kai, thank you very much. Wow, Charlie, swing voter narrative.

Charlie Sykes: Well, also as you point out, I'm not sure how the Palestinian thing lays him. By the way, I have to push back against the use of the term Palestinian Holocaust. I don't think we ever ought trivialize the Holocaust, or engage in that kind of false equivalency. Look, this is what I think Trump was thinking about when he chose Vance. He's thinking about that story. He is thinking about that image. Ultimately, I don't recall any election that was turned by the vice president. People will vote for the top of the ticket.

I do think, and this is something that progressives like Ruy Teixeira have been warning about for some time, and warning the Democrats, that they need to begin addressing the working class and this sense of this you work hard, you play by the rules, and you get ahead. There's nothing new about this, but I think this sharpens this, that they need to do that. They need to counter that.

Brian Lehrer: Before you go, on that point, what what do you think about the mess among the Democrats right now? Do you have an opinion about whether Biden or an alternative would be best at this point to beat Trump?

Charlie Sykes: I do have an opinion, and apparently it's quite unpopular. All of the red lights are blinking. All of the warning signs are there about the Democrats right now. Let's be honest about it. Donald Trump has never been more powerful, and Joe Biden and the Democrats have never been weaker, and you have virtually every prominent Democrat who is behind, I think in private, they've been trying to stage an intervention saying, "We need to turn the page, that we are headed toward the iceberg."

I understand there are people who say that it is the debate that is the problem. No, I don't think it is the debate. I don't think it's the people who are saying, "There's an iceberg out there. We ought to avoid the iceberg. Don't hit the iceberg." They're not the problem. The problem is the iceberg. Right now the iceberg is the fact that voters have lost confidence in Joe Biden's ability to win this election and to serve another term. If you have 80% of the voters who think that you are too old, that is a signal.

Right now, whether you're talking about the polls or the donors or the people who have interacted with him, they are trying to send this message. I think it needs to be resolved quickly. I think it needs to be resolved with a great deal of humility and graciousness on Joe Biden's part, because if they turn the page, they're going to have to, again, stop fighting with one another and confront the danger that Donald Trump poses, not just to them, but I think to the constitutional order.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, in 20 Minutes, House Minority Leader and Brooklyn Congressman Hakeem Jeffries is going to join us and we'll see where he is on all of this now. He's obviously a very crucial leader in the party. For now, we thank Charlie Sykes from The Bulwark and an MSNBC contributor.

Charlie Sykes: Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Charlie, really appreciate it.

Charlie Sykes: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More in a minute.

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