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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. We begin this week, of course, with the country in grief and horror over Saturday night's apparent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, the life of a Trump rally goer that the gunman's bullet did take, and the two other people said to be critically wounded, and all their families.

Politically, the story of this year's presidential election is transformed yet again. Just 16 days after the debate that threw President Biden's very candidacy into question comes the apparent attempt to assassinate his challenger. I only say apparent because officially, the motive is still under investigation, but of course, it appears to everyone to be an assassination attempt. The Republican Convention is beginning today. Thankfully, Trump is well enough to be there in Milwaukee. He has arrived.

President Biden has addressed the nation three times calling on Americans to "lower the temperature in our politics." On the Today Show yesterday Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson used basically the same phrase.

Speaker Mike Johnson: We got to turn the temperature down in this country. We need leaders of all parties on both sides to call that out, and make sure that happens, so that we can go forward and maintain our free society that we all are blessed to have.

Brian Lehrer: Biden and Johnson both calling for lowering the temperature. Trump himself, lucky to be alive, posted a call for unity, similar, but different. As the convention begins and under these circumstances, former Republican Party Chair Michael Steele asked on NBC special coverage last night will Trump stand up at his convention now and say political violence is unacceptable. There are so many examples of Trump encouraging or winking at violence when it favors him.

David Frum, the former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, had a piece in The Atlantic yesterday with the lead line, Violence stalks the president who has rejoiced in violence to others. Frum's argument, Saturday shooting was a horror and an outrage, he wrote, and political violence is nothing new in America, but Trump's relationship to it, watching the January 6th riot on TV with glee according to his own staffers from sight, mocking Gretchen Whitmer after the kidnapping plot against her was foiled, and Nancy Pelosi after her husband was injured by an attacker looking for her.

Then Trump continuing to be embraced by the Republican establishment makes him, what Frum calls, a would-be dictator, unique in American history and with his unique relationship to violence, at least in this time. There are David Frum's attempt and Michael Steele's attempt, two former Republican Party stars, to put the horror of Saturday night in a larger and more complex frame, according to them than just saying that was horrible, and we should all come together.

What about the Democrats debate over Biden staying in the race? Does that all go away or does it somehow change? With us now NPR's senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, also co-host of the NPR Politics podcast. Tam, thanks for giving us some time today on what is surely a busier Monday than any of us expected when you accepted this invitation last week.

Tamara Keith: Well, that is surely true. I am in Milwaukee for the convention. It was always going to be busy, but it's different.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, what's the biggest thing on your mind right now after Saturday night's apparent assassination attempt? 212-433-WNYC, call or text. In human compassion terms, in political terms or anything else, what would turning down the temperature look like to you as President Biden and Speaker Mike Johnson both use that term? Does it apply to you yourself? Does it apply to your party, whatever party that is?

Is a structural response even the right response to an apparent lone gunman who from what we know so far, appears to have been a troubled young soul not part of a political movement or maybe you're thinking more about Corey Comperatore today who died a hero physically shielding his family members when he realized there was gunfire and paying the ultimate price? What's the biggest thing on your mind after this horrific attack? 212-433-WNYC. Call or text, 212-433-9692.

Tam, since you're a White House correspondent let's start with what the president's official role is at a moment like this, if we can separate it from his role as the candidate against the victim of the assassination attempt.

Tamara Keith: It is a little bit difficult to separate those things simply because the campaign has been so all consuming, but in moments of national trauma, it is the president's job to provide comfort and reassurance to the American people, and also, generally speaking, to call for calm, to try to bring some unity to the country. That is certainly what President Biden has done in the last couple of days. He has also urged people not to jump to assumptions about the motive given that investigators have not yet revealed what that motive might be or what connections this young man might have had. There may be none. Sometimes, mass shootings are just a mystery.

Brian Lehrer: Various executive branches of government, Homeland Security, FBI, Secret Service, what kinds of investigations are they doing?

Tamara Keith: The FBI is taking the lead on this investigation now, but there are also going to be investigations of what went wrong because frankly, this is a failure. This is a security failure. No one should have been able to be at an elevation with a line of sight to the former president and the Republican nominee for president. He simply should not have been able to be there with a gun. There were failures. Some of them are clear, some of them aren't clear.

It's not clear whether this is a systemic failure, whether there weren't enough resources on hand, or if it was just a communications breakdown between local police and the Secret Service. It's not clear why the Secret Service wasn't up on that building. There was a failure, and that is going to be investigated both by an independent investigation that President Biden announced. The Secret Service said they will be cooperating. Additionally, there will be congressional investigations. There's bipartisan outrage that this was even possible.

Brian Lehrer: On how it happened. A shooter was able to gain access to that rooftop with a clear line of sight 130 yards away from Donald Trump. I'm seeing that the Secret Service outsources that piece of it generally to local law enforcement, the areas outside of the actual site of the rally, where people are screened as they come in for weapons. Are you in that part of the story at all?

Tamara Keith: I'm not, but the other questions that are out there is why was that site chosen? Why did the perimeter not include buildings that were tall right next to the stage? There are just a lot of questions. President Biden has said that at least the independent investigation that he's ordered will be released to the public. In the absence of that, conspiracy theories can grow.

Brian Lehrer: Can I assume nobody serious is proposing conspiracy theories like the Secret Service purposely allowed this to happen or was in cahoots with the gunmen or anything like that?

Tamara Keith: I haven't seen anything that specific in terms of conspiracy theories, but I've certainly seen, especially in the early hours of this, Republican lawmakers attempting to cast blame on President Biden. Now, the reality is that the Homeland Security Department and the Secret Service and law enforcement failed. There is some responsibility for that failure. I'm not sure where that responsibility will ultimately lead to.

Brian Lehrer: When Biden and Mike Johnson call for people to turn down the temperature in our politics, what does that actually mean? Is Biden doing that himself in a way you can describe? Are congressional Republicans doing that to heed Mike Johnson's call in a way you can describe?

Tamara Keith: What I will say is that in the immediate hours, Twitter was a dumpster fire of anger and blame, and it was not good. Then after that, Mike Johnson came out and said, "Calm the temperature." President Biden spoke on the phone with former President Trump. We're told it was a respectful call. The DNC chairman called the chairman of the RNC to express condolences, and also to talk about the fact that political violence is not acceptable in any forms, and the need to turn down the temperature. I think that after this immediate burst of really bad social media, there has been an effort to calm things.

Former President Trump, in an interview with The New York Post, is saying that he is throwing out his speech which was going to be very tough and because of the experience that he had, this near-death experience, he intends to deliver a speech that is more about unity. What I will say is that former President Trump has through his career often talked about unity, but his vision of unity is generally people agreeing with him. His vision of unity is that unity comes through success and once there's success, people will just fall in line.

That has not proven the case throughout his political career, and the country is more divided than it has ever been. If he is at least nodding to the idea of unity, then we don't know. We don't know what this convention is going to look like and what tone it is going to take. I do think that there has been at least some shift in the rhetoric in these 48 hours. In terms of President Biden, who I cover more closely, he canceled one event today that was supposed to be in Austin, Texas.

He's still going to do his interview with Lester Holt on NBC News tonight. Then he is going to Las Vegas, where he's going to speak to the NAACP Convention and the UnidosUS Convention. He also has other campaign events that he's doing. We'll see what the tone is like. He is not shying away. The campaign has told me that he is not going to stop talking about what he sees and what many Democrats and beyond Democrats see as a dire threat to democracy as we know it that is on the line in this election.

That is still going to be part of what he is saying, but exactly how he says it, and whether that is different, I'm not sure. Because Friday night, he really changed his stump speech. He was going directly at former President Trump in pretty stark language, in stronger language than he's used before. I don't know what happens to that stump speech.

Brian Lehrer: We may learn Trump's Vice Presidential pick today, and you're covering the convention in Milwaukee. The three names mostly mentioned are Senators Marco Rubio or JD Vance, or South Dakota Governor, Doug Burgum. Some people say Senator Tim Scott is also still on the list. There may be none of those, but Vance's--

Tamara Keith: It could be none of those

Brian Lehrer: Vance's post-shooting statement was typical. He wrote, "The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump's attempted assassination." Now, I don't think that's a direct quote of Biden. I don't think Biden ever said at all costs or by any means necessary or anything like that.

Tamara Keith: Or fascist for that matter.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, but a lot of people do say fascist. I don't know--

Tamara Keith: Yes. I don't think President Biden does.

Brian Lehrer: Got it. I don't know if that counts what JD Vance wrote as turning down the temperature. We have--

Tamara Keith: He wrote that before the calls to turn down the temperature. He hasn't taken it down. Former President Trump's campaign manager or I'm not sure his exact title, Chris LaCivita, his lead advisor had also written a pretty inflammatory Twitter post, and then he took it down.

Brian Lehrer: I see. I mentioned in the intro some of the critiques or reality checks as they would argue that they are from former prominent Republicans Michael Steele and David Frum about Trump's long history in this respect. Telling the proud boys to stand by when Chris Wallace from Fox News asked him if he would tell the proud boys to stand down. Trump watching with glee, according to staffers, as the January 6th riot was unfolding. The Washington Post recently published a long list of such things.

This was before the shooting but just one of them, "Trump warned last march of potential death and destruction." If he were charged by the Manhattan District Attorney, he also mocked those who urged his supporters to stay peaceful. Trump saying, "Our country is being destroyed as they tell us to stay peaceful." To Michael Steele's question on NBC Special Coverage, will Trump stand up at this convention and say political violence is unacceptable? Any indication to you yet of an answer to that question?

Tamara Keith: We certainly haven't seen any previews of what his speech will actually say. We can't say for sure. I will say that he doesn't like to adopt the language that other people want him to adopt. That has been a longstanding characteristic of Trump. He was asked in the debate, in fact, whether he would condemn political violence. He said, "I shouldn't have to--" Here, let me see. "I shouldn't have to say that, but of course, I believe that it's totally unacceptable." When pressed he will concede that, but he doesn't necessarily always volunteer that. I honestly don't know what his speech is going to say, and what he will say in the next four months.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a little breaking news as if there wasn't enough going on in Trump-Biden world. I don't know if you've seen it yet. This has just come across New York Times headline. Really this is the subhead. "Technically, Judge Eileen Cannon has ruled--" oh, here's the headline, "Judge dismisses classified documents case against Trump," and here's a subhead--

Tamara Keith: The reason--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. You want to do it?

Tamara Keith: Yes. The reason that she is dismissing it is that she says that the special counsel was not properly appointed. "None of the statutes cited as legal authority for the appointment gives the attorney general broad inferior officer appointing power or bestows upon him the right to appoint a federal officer with the kind of prosecutorial power wielded by special counsel Smith." This closely tracks with reasoning outlined by conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in a recent concurrence to the case that had been brought to the Supreme Court about presidential immunity. Essentially, Clarence Thomas gave her a fig leaf to dismiss these charges. It's not clear where this goes from here.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Let's take some contrasting phone calls. Sharon in Queens. You're on WNYC. Hi, Sharon.

Sharon: Hi. As a Black woman, 70 years old, I've seen my share of assassinations. JFK, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, RFK. In fact, I was in public school when RFK or JFK was killed. The PTSD that we as Black women with families, Trump just got a taste of it. He created the storm. I was waiting for something like this to happen. It's not political violence, it's gun violence that we as citizens, Black citizens live with every day.

He's a felon, and it does not surprise me that someone took a shot at him because when you create so much malice and venom, you stir people's emotions up to the point where they do crazed acts. I'm so sorry that this had to happen to anyone because innocent people suffer. It's not political violence, it's gun violence, and we need to deal with that issue the way it is.

Brian Lehrer: Sharon, thank you very much. A very different point of view, I think from Dennis in Brooklyn. Dennis, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Dennis: Hi, good morning. I really like your show, even though I'm a Trump supporter. I just wanted to point out that when they say to lower the temperature, and you and every other radio host is talking about what the politicians should do, what about what the media should do. On your show, you had a guest probably two, three years ago, who compared Trump rallies to the Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939. I'm Jewish and I'm being called a Nazi by yours truly. Maybe you should lower the temperature.

Brian Lehrer: Dennis. Thank you very much. I don't remember that guest. I don't say that that didn't happen. We're certainly not out there calling Trump a Nazi, but it's also a critique that a serious policy discussion that a lot of people are having as to whether Trump would rule as an authoritarian. Trump has said complimentary things about Hitler as a leader, not his philosophy.

Trump has explicitly refused to distance himself from neo-Nazis instead saying things like, "I don't know anything about David Duke when he was running in 2016." There are serious policy questions about whether he would govern as an authoritarian and with the rhetoric that he uses, not with respect to Jews, but with respect to certain immigrants. I don't know. Tam, I don't know if you want to weigh in on this at all with respect to the media in general. What counts as out-of-bounds, I guess is the question.

Tamara Keith: I don't think I am equipped to answer that question.

Brian Lehrer: To the first caller who talked about this being a gun violence problem rather than a political violence problem, people are calling it an attack against democracy, which it is. You could even call it an act of terrorism, assuming they confirm it was an assassination attempt, because what's terrorism? Terrorism is using violence to accomplish political ends by hurting or killing or scaring people. What we're learning about the shooter seems to be the profile of a classic school shooter, I might call it. A 20-year-old kid, barely out of high school who is an extreme loner and relentlessly bullied, according to one of his classmates who I saw interviewed.

He dressed in hunting fatigues at school. He was considered weird, and they bullied him, an extreme loner. Only in this case, instead of shooting up his classmates, he went after a politician who he somehow concluded was his enemy, but that's a lot different than being part of a guerrilla movement like we see in other countries, or a terrorist cell, or even being an action-oriented member of a militia or vigilante group like, say, the one that planned to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. I wonder if you have any take that you're hearing on how we should really think of the shooter and what he was doing.

Tamara Keith: I think that it is too soon to truly be sure or to read anything into the motives. The FBI is still trying to crack into his cell phones, as far as we know, into his cell phone to see who he exchanged messages with, what he was reading online, where this came from. Sometimes they never find out the answer. I will say that a politician was shot, was thankfully only just grazed by a bullet, and that is an assassination attempt.

The FBI called it an assassination attempt. Whether there were political motives or motives that are unclear, it was a very powerful weapon that, yes, has also been used in school shootings, the same type of weapon. A very powerful weapon, was aimed into a crowd of people that included a prominent politician.

Brian Lehrer: About half the calls on the board are calling to make the same point, so I'm going to take one of those. It's a point that hasn't really been made yet. Lucy in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hello, Lucy.

Lucy: Oh, hi. Thank you so much. Oh boy, this has just brought up so much emotion for me. It just was horrible to watch that and to learn more about that kid, just was so upsetting because I grew up in the Midwest, and my teenage brother went through a really aggressive period. In fact, I came home one day, and there was a switchblade in my picture over my bed. He was really angry and aggressive. He's such a sweet bird-watching man now, a senior citizen, and I'm just like if he had had an AR-47, God knows what he would have done. These white boys, they're just terrifying. They get over it, a lot of them, and just don't give them guns. Just don't let them have guns.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, white boys, black boys, any boys. Not to bring race into it where it may not belong. Yes, AR-15, AK-47. I guess what a number of people are asking, Tam, is it going to change any of the rhetoric about the Second Amendment at the Republican Convention this week?

Tamara Keith: I find that very hard to believe. The Second Amendment and gun rights are so fundamentally entwined with the Republican Party, and just the identity of Republicans, that I can't possibly imagine that there's going to be a discussion about guns. As you will have noted, there was no discussion of guns in this conversation. It immediately turned to violence, political violence, and rhetoric, and it just did not address the weapons.

Now, President Biden has consistently, since he was in the Senate, called for an assault weapons ban. He will no doubt continue making that call. The numbers do not exist and will not exist, even if Democrats had the kind of night no one is expecting on election night. The numbers just don't exist to pass a ban like that or to make any significant reforms. In this case, we know that the shooter's father purchased the weapon.

We don't know if the father is cooperating, but investigators haven't yet said whether he had permission to use the gun. We do know that he purchased the ammunition shortly before the attack. This is a political moment with the Republican convention starting. In fact, as we understand it, people attending the convention are not allowed to bring insulated water bottles into the perimeter, to the outer perimeter, but they can bring guns because of state law in Wisconsin.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute.

Tamara Keith: They're trying to get that changed, but that's where it is right now.

Brian Lehrer: The party is trying to get that changed?

Tamara Keith: No, the Democratic governor is trying to get a dispensation, but as of right now, the guidance is don't bring your water bottles, but you could potentially bring your guns.

Brian Lehrer: Well, we remember the January 6th rally before the riot when reportedly, according to testimony in the January 6th hearings, Trump didn't want people screened by the magnetometer as they came in, screened for guns because he said they're not here to hurt me. Right?

Tamara Keith: That is the reporting, that is the testimony before the January 6th Committee. That has nothing to do, though, with the attack that happened this past weekend. There were magnetometers, everyone went through a magnetometer, but the gunman was outside of the perimeter. Question being, why was the perimeter so small?

Brian Lehrer: When it came to Trump's own security, they did want metal detectors and guns prohibited from the premises, even as a lot of Republicans call on policy to allow open carry in public under the theory that the best way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun so I guess that as a policy question kind of gets thrown into question.

Tamara Keith: Certainly, there was a good guy with a gun, a Secret Service sniper on a different roof, and that is why it stopped so quickly.

Brian Lehrer: Right. Well, law enforcement as opposed to some civilian. I guess a question to ask today maybe is what is the Republican leadership's comfort level with the permission of guns at the perimeter, as you were describing. We'll continue in a minute with NPR Senior White House Correspondent Tamara Keith and co-host of The NPR Politics Podcast. We're going to change the subject a little bit. We're going to ask if the assassination attempt against Trump ends or otherwise changes many Democrats' calls to replace Biden as their nominee.

Listeners, we're going to clear the board, so for our last minutes with Tamara Keith, we're going to focus on that question. Don't be insulted, we're not censoring you or anything like that, but we are going to clear the board. Everybody so far is calling with respect to the assassination attempt itself. Now we want calls from Democrats on whether this changes your position or not on whether to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee, no matter which side of that question you were on last week. Listeners, should it in your eyes? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call us, text us, stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we talk Monday morning politics as we usually do in our first segment of the week. This week with so much obviously going on. The horrific assassination attempt against former President Trump and candidate Trump and the person who was killed and the two others who were critically wounded on Saturday night. Tamara Keith is our guest, NPR Senior White House Correspondent, and co-host of The NPR Politics Podcast.

Tam, in our show's newsletter last week, these go out on Thursday afternoon, obviously this was before the shooting, we invited readers to respond to the question of whether they thought Biden was the best candidate to beat Trump. I thought you and everyone might find the results interesting, 247 people responded by yesterday. It was 184 saying Biden is not the best candidate to beat Trump and 63 saying yes he is. 184 to 63, that's an almost 3:1 ratio of people saying Biden is not the best option among our readers. Obviously, this is not a scientific survey, but this would measure something about readers who felt strongly enough to respond one way or the other.

Interestingly to me, the ratio among people posting after Thursday night's news conference was almost exactly the same as among people posting before it. Also, there were just four responses that came in yesterday after Trump was shot, and all four of those said Biden should give way to someone else, though none of them mentioned the shooting as a reason. I'm just curious how you think any of that matches up with however that looks to you, based on NPR's reporting, at least before the Saturday shooting.

Tamara Keith: Well, one interesting thing is that on Saturday before the shooting, I was out with the top Democrat in Wisconsin, who was knocking on doors of undecided voters here in Wisconsin, which is a key swing state. Amazingly, no one brought up, we knocked on several doors, and not a soul brought up the president's age or that they thought he should drop out.

It was remarkable actually, given how loud the conversation is in elite circles, editorial pages and donors and Democrats who are extremely either online or listening to the radio, heavy news consumers. The people who answered those doors were, to my mind, based on what they were saying, not heavy news consumers. It was not--

Brian Lehrer: Obviously, the respondents to our survey can be assumed to be heavy news consumers.

Tamara Keith: Heavy news consumers. I'm not saying that what I saw was a scientific sample, and I am certain that what you got was not a scientific sample, but I'll also say that if you looked at polling from a year ago, you would see something very similar, which is voters saying they thought Democrats should have somebody else as their nominee. Democrats had a collective action problem because clearly president Biden being old is a preexisting condition.

He has been messing up people's names and staring off into space at times and all of the things that people saw in the debate. That was a very focused moment, but all of that existed, all of that was there. Democrats, telling pollsters, I think that the party should have somebody else, I think there should be more choices. I think there should be a different nominee.

In the end though, Biden is the president of the United States. He's an incumbent president. He and his team prevailed upon elite Democrats that the best way to defeat Trump was not to have a primary or a competitive primary. In the end, all of these promising names, the democratic bench that everyone talks about, they did not put their hands up, or maybe we should say, stick their necks out.

They were like, "Okay, we're waiting for 2028." As a result, it was not a robust primary. Voters said they didn't want Dean Phillips or Marianne Williamson in any large number. Biden is the nominee, getting him not to be the nominee anymore, it's really the ball is in his court no matter what everyone is saying. It is a challenging moment for Democrats who in some ways wish that they had had this conversation two years ago.

Brian Lehrer: Well, you say the ball is in his court, but let me play one moment from Biden's Thursday night news conference and ask if this might be consequential. He was asked if he would release his convention delegates. The way this works, they are pledged to him, and I know you wrote a whole article on this-

Tamara Keith: I did.

Brian Lehrer: -for NPR, they are pledged to him because of the primaries, unless he releases them. He was asked if he would release them, and at the news conference on Thursday, Biden said this.

Joe Biden: Obviously, they're free to do whatever they want, but I get overwhelming support, overwhelming support. I forget how many votes I won in the primary. They're overwhelming. Tomorrow, if all of a sudden I show up at the convention, everybody says, we want somebody else, that's the Democratic process. It's not going to happen.

Brian Lehrer: He whispers it's not going to happen at the end, but that was the end. Should that be headline news. Did Biden on Thursday officially release his delegates making the decision on whether to stay in not only up to him anymore?

Tamara Keith: Well, it's more complicated than that, as you might guess. At the moment, Biden is the only candidate qualified to receive votes at the convention from delegates. In order for someone to qualify, they would both need to say that they were running for president and sign to the fact that they were a candidate. Then they would need to gather the signatures or their supporters would need to gather the signatures of between 300 and 600 convention delegates.

These are convention delegates who were chosen to express the will of the people in their states and the will of the people in their states based on the limited options they had was that Joe Biden should be the nominee. The same collective action problem that has existed this entire time continues to exist, which is you would need one of these people who Democrats say would be great to replace Biden.

You'd need Vice President Harris, you'd need Governor Westmore or Governor Gretchen Whitmer. You would need one of these people to actually say that they were going to run against Biden at the convention. They have all, thus far, very publicly said that they are backing Biden. There would have to be a dramatic shift. There have been a series of benchmarks. There was the press conference, there was the interview with Stephanopoulos. There's the interview tomorrow with Lester Holt.

There are these campaign speeches. There are the meetings and conversations President Biden is having with elected Democrats. At each one of these benchmarks, there hasn't been a moment that caused the snowball to turn into an avalanche. As a result, there is no one putting their name forward saying I'm going to challenge Biden at the convention. Without that, he didn't have to formally release his delegates anyway, and it's not clear that that's actually what he did.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. By the way, is that tonight or tomorrow night with Lester Holt?

Tamara Keith: Oh, sorry. It is tonight. I have lost track of days. Today is in fact Monday.

Brian Lehrer: You were hoping it was still Sunday, but I'm sorry, the work week has resumed. Not that you didn't work yesterday.

Tamara Keith: No, this weekend was a year. I don't need it to be any longer.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a quick sampling of people calling in on the question of whether the assassination attempt should change whether Biden drops out and is replaced by another Democrat. Obviously, this is going to be more thoroughly unscientific commenting. We don't do this to count heads, we do this to have the conversation. Nick in Manhasset, you're on WNYC. Hello, Nick.

Nick: Brian, I saw two stories yesterday, Politico and CBS news both reported that there's no momentum to replace Biden with the assassination attempt. It totally destroyed the momentum to replace Biden with another Democrat. This is an academic exercise. We're going to lose with Biden. Unfortunately Bill Clinton once said strong and wrong will always defeat weak and right, and that's what we have. Donald Trump is strong and wrong, and Joe Biden is weak and right, and he is going to lose in [inaudible 00:37:33] Donald Trump.

Brian Lehrer: Nick, thank you very much. I will say that I saw a different kind of article on Vox yesterday, which I won't go into the details of because we don't have time, but just to say that it was arguing that this assassination attempt could help Trump, or it could make very little difference. The way these news cycles go and change and react to events and Thursday at the end of the Republican Convention or Friday, we may be having a wholly different conversation, or if Biden seems incompetent with Lester Holt tonight or whatever else might happen. I'm trying to stay away from predictions and just asking people what you want. Lauren in the Bronx, you're on--

Brian Lehrer: I want to ask the callers-- sorry, I want to ask the callers too, based on their feelings, how do they think they'll vote in November if Biden remains the nominee? Just very, very curious about that.

Brian Lehrer: You mean if people's-

Tamara Keith: Even all the misgivings.

Brian Lehrer: -vote may be switched because of the assassination attempt or something else?

Tamara Keith: My question is, if they have incredible misgivings about Biden and his age, what are they going to do about it as voters?

Brian Lehrer: For a lot of people, I guess, that would depend on whether their misgivings about Trump and his policies overwhelm their misgivings about Biden and his age. Lauren in the Bronx, you on WNYC. Hello, Lauren.

Lauren: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I think the assassination attempt absolutely makes it even more important to replace Biden. Listening to Tamara Keith just now, it sounded to me very much like somebody who realized they had the wrong man for their husband but the wedding is already set, but we hired the band, we have the flower arrangements. You have to cancel the wedding. That's all inconvenient, but you have another primary or somebody has to stick their neck out and say, I'll run. He can't win, and he can't drag the entire Democratic party down with him.

Brian Lehrer: Why in your view does the assassination attempt make it more imperative to switch horses as you said?

Lauren: Oh, because now Trump is a martyr. Because he's a martyr.

Brian Lehrer: And it presumably helps him. Lauren, thank you. One more. Rob in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi Rob.

Rob: Hey Brian, can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes. We got you.

Rob: My gut still says that Biden should drop out because I think he's still a weak candidate and I would love a younger more exciting. I think that changing it up would be exciting. I'm going to vote for Biden regardless. I'll vote for anyone who's on the Democratic ticket, who's not a crazy person, who's not RFK Junior, to defeat Trump because I think that's all that matters. Like your last caller said, I don't know how much it helps Trump, because I don't think that this changes the polarization.

The only people that, to me, matters in this conversation about replacing Biden and about whether the assassination attempt helps Trump is whoever these swing voters are or these people who aren't paying attention to the news or that 2% to 3% in the polls that are different when it's Kamala Harris or Hillary Clinton instead of Biden versus Trump, to me-

Brian Lehrer: You don't know.

Rob: -Biden being old doesn't matter. He has a team that I agree with. It's just defeating Trump and convincing whoever these people are who can be swayed. That's what it's about.

Brian Lehrer: Rob, thank you very much. Tam, last question. I was surprised to see Bernie Sanders, New York Times op-ed Saturday, this was before the shooting, telling fellow Democrats enough. That was maybe the keyword in the op-ed. Enough. That Biden is the best to be Trump, and he is up to the job. Why, for Bernie Sanders, if you know anything about that or have any speculation?

Tamara Keith: Bernie Sanders and President Biden have a surprising relationship given that they were rivals in that primary, they were the last two men standing but they are allies. Biden has been a very good ally for Sanders in terms of policies that Sanders really cares about a lot, including prescription drug prices and the environment. You also have seen Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez backing Biden and telling people to back off. It's been an extremely interesting dynamic.

Of course, they are in safer seats than some of the people who are most loudly on the elected side saying that they are concerned. For as much as the conventional wisdom says Biden is definitely going to lose, I still talk to a lot of professional Democrats who say they're not so convinced of that.

Brian Lehrer: Tamara Keith, Senior White House correspondent for NPR and Co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast. Tam, we really appreciate you keeping this appointment with us, which you had before Saturday night with even more news to cover than you thought there was going to be today at the Republican Convention. Thank you very, very much.

Tamara Keith: You're welcome. Thanks for having me.

 

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