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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. There's a lot we could say about day one of the Republican convention. You probably already heard a lot of other people say a lot of things. I'm going to start on a fundamental contradiction that I heard about the idea of freedom, from a president who runs flagrantly with authoritarian allies when they are in his corner, and authoritarian tricks. There was this authoritarian classic from early in the day when he spoke to convention delegates in Charlotte.

President Trump: The only way we're going to lose this election is if the election is rigged, remember that.

Brian: The only way he can lose the election is if it's rigged. Setting himself up for claiming a lost election is rigged whether it is or not. Now, as it happens, and I don't know if you know the story, that's exactly what democracy watchers think the president of Turkey, Recep Erdoğan did after losing a round of local elections there last year. As Yascha Mounk writes in The Atlantic, "After using his control over most of the country's media to spread the insane conspiracy theory that a powerless opposition had somehow been able to falsify the outcome of the election, Erdoğan went on to use his control over the country's judiciary to cancel its result."

Maybe you saw the recorded bit from the convention last night in which Trump was talking with Americans who had been held hostage in foreign lands. It was mostly about how he helped get them out. One of them was Pastor Andrew Brunson. Now, for the leaders of some of those countries, Trump had only disdain, but when it came to Brunson who was held in Turkey by Erdoğan, one of Trump's authoritarian allies who canceled that local election that his party lost, Trump said this right to Pastor Brunson's face.

President Trump: I have to say that to me, President Erdoğan was very good. I know they had you scheduled for a long time, and you were very innocent person, and he ultimately, after we had a few conversations, he agreed, so we appreciate that.

Brian: Brunson look weirded out, and they moved on. Trump makes common cause with Erdoğan, and Putin, and Brazil's Bolsonaro. Then Nikki Haley goes on in primetime and promotes Trump like this.

Nikki Haley: It was an honor of a lifetime to serve as the United States Ambassador to the United nations. Now the UN is not for the faint of heart. It's a place where dictators, murderers, and thieves denounce America, and then put their hands out and demand that we pay their bills. President Trump put an end to all of that. With his leadership, we did what Barack Obama and Joe Biden refused to do. We stood up for America, and we stood against our enemies.

Brian: Stood against our enemies, which apparently doesn't include authoritarians who Trump sees as his friends, Nikki Haley last night. They brought on Cuban American businessman Maximo Alvarez who is willing to insinuate the Joe Biden and his Catholic faith are the real authoritarians in waiting.

Maximo Alvarez: Through false promises, spread the wealth. Free education, free healthcare, defund the police, trust a socialist state more than your family and your community. They don't sound radical to my ears. They sound familiar. Fidel Castro was asked if he was a communist. He said he was a Roman Catholic. He knew he had to hide the truth.

Brian: Never mind that Joe Biden does not support defunding the police, or free healthcare for all, Maximo Alvarez at the convention last night blatantly suggesting that Joe Biden is using his Catholicism as a cover to become Fidel Castro. We'll talk about different angles of the convention today with different guests, pro, con, and mixed about the Trump agenda. Joining me now, New York Times columnist David Brooks, a conservative but never a Trump supporter. Among David's interesting columns recently, one that describes why he sees Trumpism as the long-term heir to Reaganism in the Republican party. Another in which Brooks describes himself as on the extreme right-wing edge of the left-wing movement. David, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

David Brooks: Great to be with you again.

Brian: I saw you posted one tweet last night, it looked like, in the primetime hours. It said, "This convention is targeted to one voter, Donald Trump. The whole convention is to make his lonely soul feel affirmed." Do you want to start there?

David: I guess so it was a banner Twitter night for me. One a day is about my max. Even in the conversations with voters, both the hostages and some of the COVID response people, it's so different to watch Biden have a conversation with voters than to have Trump. When Biden has a conversation, the subject of the conversation is the people he's talking to. When Trump does, the subject of the conversation is himself and they go around and say how awesome he is. You do get the sense that a lot of people who work for him and plan these conventions, they just want to give them a good meeting. They want him to feel good about himself. It's almost like a gigantic therapy session for one person.

Brian: Did the contradictions that I saw on authoritarianism strike you as well, or did you see that thread, or those moments differently?

David: You saw that a little more deeply than I did that. I think the thing that first struck me last night was that on the one hand, this was a bit of an attempt on the party to reach out to minorities, people of color, and others. They had Tim Scott, and they had Herschel Walker and even Emilio Alvarez. Some of those I thought were moderately effective. I though Tim Scott, he's a good senator, a good person. I thought he gave a good speech, but you can't be that party, at the same time, you're the McCloskey party, basically preserve our white suburbia. You can't be that party when you're the same party as Don, Jr. talking about pillaging, rioting, and looting. Which I guess is the modern version of what was used against George McGovern, amnesty acid, and abortion.

To me, this is a party folded in on itself. One the one hand, trying to be open, on the other hand, trying to be closed. I think the deeper point that you get to is how the basic worldview, what kind of world do we live in? There was a time when the Republican party was, felt we lived in a friendly world and it was maybe too naive about globalization, too naive about what would happen if we allowed masses of people to cross borders. That was the party of Reagan.

Donald Trump's party has structured a very different mindset, a world of menace, American carnage. You can't have a basic worldview predicated on openness and welcome, at the same time you have a basic worldview predicated on menace and threat. I think the latter is the actual Trump worldview, but it's very different than the Reagan worldview which really was about openness, a kind world, and a secure world.

Brian: Listeners, your reaction to anything at the Republican convention last night, 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280. Trump supporters, Trump detractors, the undecided among you if there are any, 646-435-7280. Later in the program, we'll have a Latino critic of Trump. We'll have a Black supporter of Trump as we play more speech clips. We continue now with David Brooks, New York Times columnist.

We invite your calls, as I say, 646-435-7280. 646-435-7280. I want to get into your article, David, on the future of the Republican party that suggests, as you were suggesting a bit in your last answer, that there are common Trumpian premises that overthrow Ronald Reaganism that most Republicans now accept, including the free market is not working well. China changes everything and the managerial class betrays America, or as you put it, the answer to too much corporate power is not handing power to Elizabeth Warren. I want to start with the big picture of what you see Reaganism as having been, especially in the economic sense, and how Trump stands in opposition to it, at least in theory?

David: Yes, Reaganism was open markets, so more or less pretty wide open immigration policies. The word was openness, and it stood for just a much more libertarian party. I think it had its peak, Reaganism had its peak, at least intellectually, in the early 1990s. I covered the end of the Soviet Union, Mandela coming out of prison in South Africa, the reunification of Europe. It seemed to be a moment when democratic capitalism was triumphant, and was said to be the only form of government we were going to have, and that was a naive form of globalization.

We've seen reaction against it all around the world, and in the Republican party, it's Donald Trump. Close borders, close markets, grab power, use power in authoritarian way to preserve order. The main argument is you are unsafe, you need me to make you safe, and I think that's going to survive Donald Trump, if he loses. The party is no longer the party of sort of the suburbs, business community that was the Reagan constituencies. Orange County, California, a classic booming suburb.

The constituents of the Republican party right now is the white working class, and among white working class, he has phenomenal sport. Among people with college degrees, low support. It's turning into a working class party, and I think that's permanent, too. The model is the British conservative party. They have gone from being the party of the landed gentry for centuries, which they were, and now they're the party of Brexit and the working class. After that, they built a pretty solid majority. They defeated Labour party pretty badly doing, that so that's the model for current Republicans.

The problem is we live in a much more diverse society. If they're going to make that model work, they've got to unite working class whites, with working class Latinos, working class African Americans, and they've shown a willingness to do that, quite the reverse, but it's going to be a much more authoritarian working class party for the years ahead.

Brian: Some of what you just called naive globalism, if I get your term right, which you associated with Reagan, which I guess you could also associate with Clinton, and that whole era of thinking that a rising tide of free trade, open borders for capital, was going to lift all boats, turned out to be somewhat naive and has caused this backlash, which has benefited Trump and also has benefited Bernie Sanders. That much, in your view at this point, is real?

David: Yes, that's my core story and my core understanding of what's happened over the last few decades. I'm a capitalist, I'm pro-capitalist. I think it led to the greatest reduction of global poverty in human history but it certainly hurt people with less skills in America. It certainly hurt middle-class folks in this country. It certainly didn't take into account the degree to which capitalism relied on a morality, which was not capitalism, which was much more about caring for others. It certainly was naive about the strength of community.

It was unaware that to have capitalism, you have to have really strong communities. You have to have a strong system of solidarity.

It was naive, that people actually do need some basic order in their life. They need a basic sense, if something goes wrong, somebody's got my back, and it left them naked and alone in the face of risk, basically. That was a series of layers of naivete, I would say

Brian: You acknowledge in your article that what you say about Trumpism in theory is not how he's governed. The corpse of Reaganism, as I think you put it, is actually alive and well with Trump's tax cuts, et cetera. Has he governed like anything, but a Reaganite really?

David: On foreign policy he's been the opposite of Reagan. He has been, "Let's get out of the world. The world is dangerous. Let's wall ourselves up." On immigration, he's been the opposite of Reagan. On a few other things, he has been the opposite of Reagan. The problem is, there is this power struggle early in the administration between Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon.

They both have their problems, but Bannon, at least had a theory of the case, which was populism, let's do big infrastructure bills. Let's really focus some money on helping out the people who elected us. Where it's those people who are struggling, especially in rural America. Bannon lost that power struggle and we went to Jared Kushner and we got nothing. As I think I said in the article, we got corruption and tax cuts, but the tax cuts were just like a spasm of old Reaganism benefiting people who didn't need to be benefited. It was mindless.

I would love to have lived through, not love to, but it would have been interesting to live through an era in which populism was actually tried, where they actually did use the power of government to help people who have been left behind even in a Republican way. It's an experiment we will never see.

Brian: Let's take some phone calls, Rebecca in Brooklyn. You're on WNYC. Hi, Rebecca.

Rebecca: Hi, Brian. I am a huge fan. I'm so excited to be on with you, and David Brooks as well. Thank you guys so much. I am a Warren Democrat as we're called, but now, I'm all in and riding with Biden. I tuned in to the RNC because I think it's important obviously for us to see the other side. Especially because they were talking about how we're going to have this hopeful message. I felt like, as you guys said, it was just doom and destruction, and violence and fear. I believe the couple, the McCloskeys from St. Louis was an extremely frightening, extremely racist position for the Republican party to take.

Maybe I'm just a naive white woman in Brooklyn, but I was shocked at how racist they were, and that they were given this huge platform. That, to me was really, really stark and terrible, and they were trying to scare people. That really stuck with me, and I think was a real big mistake, that they did.

Brian: Rebecca, thank you very much. We're going to play a clip of that couple later in the program with another guest, where we're going to be talking more explicitly about their programming of people of color last night. David, do you want to give us a reaction to that too?

David: Yes. I was shocked when they were announced. This is a couple, people who are walking by the sidewalk and not even paying attention to them, they come out waving guns. It is felonious. They did commit felonies allegedly. If you've read any of the profiles. One of the local papers did a profile of that couple, and they were like the neighbors from Hell. They basically sued everybody in their neighborhood over this issue or that. They seem like completely unpleasant people.

I guess to the extent there's a strategy here. It's a bit of the Nixon strategy that your white suburbs are under threat from them. It was not made very subtly. It was made very explicitly in their little comments. It was the core of the Trump scare appeal.

Brian: Uju in Manhattan. You're on WNYC. Hello, Uju.

Uju: Yes. Hi, I'm Brian and welcome, hi to your guests as well. When the screener was asking me about what I thought about it. Last night, I wasn't going to watch because I was like, "I don't need this kind of negativity in my life." Then my sister was like, "You should actually watch." We actually, me and my friend, one person was watching CNN, another person MSNBC, another one Fox. I chose not Fox, because again, I didn't need that amount of issues in my life.

I am Nigerian. I was born in my Nigeria. Moved here when I was younger. The one thing that, bless my heart, for my country, is that-- the government and our country is very corrupt. The one issue that we take to, the corruption never ceases to end because the politicians always stay in power and they do a lot of scare tactic. There's a lot of violence around election. As we were watching last night, I chose the MSNBC watching. I was watching. I wouldn't come down at a convention whatever that was.

The one thing I kept on telling my husband, I said, "Babe, this looks very familiar." The ominous music, almost like projecting him as a man of strength. I said, "This is very familiar." It's almost like what you would see back home. Also, in countries like Turkmenistan. Like something you would not see here. I guess last night, everyone was saying tonight that I guess last night's them was, "Let's bring as many black people as possible to encourage those fringe, black voters who out there still support Trump."

This is a fun fact. I looked it on Nigerian, there are a lot of African men who do support those guys, the guy. I'm baffled, because on the one hand, you can social worker saying he's not racist, but on the other hand, you have the couple in St. Louis who, I just wished that the party would just be honest with themselves and say, "We do not like black people. We do not like Spanish people. We do not like anyone who's not a white man." I just wish the pandering would stop, because I feel like only then we can actually truly move forward, and then decide what kind of society we want to live in

They're saying, "He's going to eradicate those suburbs." It's literally classic gaslighting. It's also shocking because everything that he's talking about, the suburb, and again, I'm not affiliated with this author, but The Color of Law, the book, it literally lays out step by step, all this suburbia area that we're in. It's almost like we can never learn to move forward if people just stop play-- let's call a spade, a spade. You can't be the party and say, "We want minorities and we want Black people," but at the same token, we're going to feature two couples who are legitimately terrified of Black people walking into their neighborhood peacefully. You can't have it both ways, you just can't.

Brian: Trump's saying so many things that he does that's race-baiting. We'll play some of those later. As I said in a second, that's going to be explicit, but go ahead, Uju.

Uju: Right, but it's not even race-baiting. I just wish and again, I just wish the media and everybody would just call a spade, a spade. It's racist. This is what they do. This is what they're intentionally targeting. Like you said, working class people who have felt disenfranchised, who have felt less alone, just call a spade, a spade. We do not want Black people. We do not want Spanish people. We want it to be white and that's it. I feel like only truly then can the rest of society now decide, do we want to align with that or do we want to move forward? I feel like only then can we actually do something.

Brian: Uju the term that I usually use is the Trump is a practicing racist, because he uses racism for his political ends, but could I ask you one follow-up question because of something that you referred to? Again, we're going to deal with this explicitly in that upcoming segment as well, but the difference between Black men and Black women in supporting Trump. It was according to the Pew analysis after 2016, almost zero Black women, but 14% of Black men. Do you have any personal--? Go ahead.

Uju: My theory is and rightfully so. First of all, the African men that I know support him because in their mind, here's a guy who's a successful business person, but I'm like, "You're not successful if every single business you've had has been bankrupt." I've talked to the people in Atlantic City who know the destruction that this man has done. Even Herschel Walker, talking about how he's not racist. The USFL was destroyed because this man put his hand in it.

I feel like the issue is that Black and again, this is just my theory, my opinion, I feel like the reason Black men support him, again, very few, is because they feel like for so long, the country has left them behind. I actually also believe that it goes back to slavery. The one thing slavery was so effective at was destroying the Black community and how do you destroy the Black community and destroy the Black family? You break the Black man down. You make his children, and his wife, and everybody affiliated with them, the head of household, watch him get broken down.

Black men have always been left behind. In their mind, rightfully so, the Democratic party has not done their first. They've not done anything, and so until about maybe this year, it wasn't really trending. Black Lives Matter wasn't really trending. In their mind, why are we going to sit here and vote for someone or align with a party, who's never looked at us as anything other than criminals.

They have this view and they say, "Yes these people are coming to take our jobs," which in my opinion, if you're worried about a five-year-old taking your job, that's ridiculous, because if you're 40 and you're worried about a five-year-old taking your job, that mentality, I don't really get that, but in their mind is, why are we going to sit here and worry about women and children in cages when for so long they didn't care about us any?

Brian: Uju, I'm going to leave it there. Thank you very much. Please call us again. We're still with David Brooks, New York Times columnist. David, any reaction to those couple of callers, but also to your article on the future of Republicanism, how it relates to some of the things that Uju there was just saying. Your basic, and you said it before, you wrote, "None of this works, this appealing to the working class against the corporate class, both in the private sector and government, unless the Republicans deracialize their appeal and build cross-racial alliances among working class people," but every attempt at that has basically failed in this country, because so far, at least, the white working class, maybe as promoted by people like Trump and Steve Bannon, see working Black and brown people as being favored over them by the elite.

David: I don't think Trump is just practicing at racism. I think going back to his father's real estate empire, it's racial through-and-through. It's been interesting to me and this is something I don't understand, but something I'm grappling with. If we lived in a material universe, then what would matter in the selection was tax dollars and who gets what spending, but somehow we also live in a moral universe, and somehow the whole series of events have conspired to put racial equity at the center of our politics and even the center of our national cohesion. Somehow the moral consequences of slavery and the moral consequences of racism and Jim Crow and all that have rippled out and are really the cancer eating at society.

Somehow the healing of society puts racial equity at the center. Somehow this issue becomes the moral center of our politics. To me, the healing of what is a very bitterly polarized country comes out of dealing with this issue. I guess the thing that strikes me, as Uju was speaking with, I had a conversation with a political consultant to a Democrat, as it turns out. He said, "I feel very guilty because the only emotion I can appeal to these days is fear, and so I run ads that are all fear-based."

One thing that struck me from the Biden convention, Biden doesn't really appeal to fear. He appeals to compassion. I actually thought that worked because maybe people see where fear leads. Maybe somehow there's been a turn in the moral mood, and people want a different emotional tone.

Brian: In a way, that's the heart of the whole campaign I think from both sides, is Biden saying I have empathy, and demonstrating that he has empathy, and Trump doesn't. Trump saying, "Yes, Biden might have empathy, but he's a captive of the radical "mob" in his party, and therefore he's going to be more of a threat to you than I am, who's a con man, but I'm in your interest."

David: Biden again, going back to my basic point about security, he emerges from a world in which life is basically just, and so empathy is what we need. The system is basically fair and not rigged and so we need to look out for each other within a world that is basically just. Trump, even the electoral system, everything, everything is rigged. Even Nikki Haley, saying the UN is filled with dictators and murderers.

Now, Nikki Haley actually worked at the UN. The UN is filled with diplomats, but in her depiction to fit into the Republican mode, she can't say the UN is filled with diplomats from diverse sets of countries. She says it's filled with murderers, and dictators, and that's to portray danger world. The whole ethos of the party is now based on the illusion of the world is utterly rotten, and people like you and unlike you are utterly rotten. It's unfortunate that we live in a country with high social distrust, low sense of legitimacy. Donald Trump both is the product of a world of distrust and also the seller of distrust.

Brian: Mark in Manhattan. You're on WNYC. Hi, Mark.

Mark: How are you? I'd like to talk about foreign policy because I think that's a very important aspect of the debate between the candidates. First of all, a clarification Brian, on the point. Love your show, but you made a point about the election in Turkey and the fact that Erdoğan contested the election and that's true, but then after that, he lost in a landslide. He lost in all the major cities. To my mind, as far as I have heard, the OSCE that came in to watch the elections, generally, and even the opponent in the national election some years ago, said it was a fair election so I just want to clarify that.

Two other points on foreign policy, on Iran. The Iran nuclear deal to my mind was a terrible deal. I think President Trump was correct in pulling out. To Nikki Haley's point, and to Mr. Brooks's point, I definitely respect him and respect his writing, but I think he misconstrues the point that Nikki Haley was making because the Iran deal was a terrible deal. It was even Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a very, very fine and brilliant individual, who called the UN a dangerous place so let's pay attention to Moynihan, he knew of what he speaks.

The United States went to the Security Council and asked the Security Council to put sanctions back on Iran and guess what? Nobody voted with the US except the Dominican Republic. It's extraordinary. Now, if Biden comes in, we're going to be back doing the Iran deal, which is a terrible deal. Last point, Cuba. Mr. Alvarez's comments definitely resonated with me. If the Democratic party has a large, fringe, or element of Democratic Socialist, then they have to be prepared to be criticized.

We even have leading Democratic politicians who have complimented Castro. This is documented. Even one of the candidates under consideration for VP. It is fair game for Mr. Alvarez to criticize Cuba for what it is, which is a terrible, terrible, terrible place.

Brian: Do you so easily accept that A equals B, that if Joe Biden wins, and Democratic Socialists in his party have some influence, that we're going to wind up like Cuba with Joe Biden as Fidel Castro, or some future Democrat as Fidel Castro rather than say the actual Democratic Socialists, which is what the Democratic Socialist group is, like Scandinavia?

Mark: That isn't my point at all. My point is that if you call yourself a socialist, then you have to be prepared for criticism about that terminology. I have the greatest respect for Bernie Sanders. I think he's a brilliant politician and AOC and the others, but Mr. Alvarez's story is compelling about what happened to him in Cuba. As far as Iran is concerned, it's the major menace in that area, and Kerry, and the people in the Obama administration, missed the boat on that completely.

Brian: Mark, thank you very much. David any thought on that, we're going to run at a time in a minute.

David: First I thought the Iran deal was a bad deal. I thought Trump's foreign policy in the Middle East has actually been pretty good. The killing of Soleimani I think it was the right thing. Moving the embassy to Jerusalem was the obviously true thing. If they bragged about their policies, that would be the thing to do. This would all be on socialism. If Bernie Sanders was the nominee, this would be a much cleaner argument. It almost seemed like the Trump's built their convention around to fight a Sanders presidency or nominee. Joe Biden is the nominee, and it's just a lot harder to make that case with Joe Biden sitting up there, pretty much being at the center of the Democratic party for the last 40 years.

David: Do you have a quick take on the presentation compared to the Democrats? They tried to make it look like an in-person convention rather than all these people being featured on Zoom and in their natural environments, in the 50 states and things like that, like the Democrats did. It was people speaking from the same podium last night. More of a live feel, even though it was a pseudo live feel, but on that or anything else, in terms of what you think they were trying to message in the contrast between the two presentations?

David: They didn't understand how different the medium is. The virtual convention is a great equalizer, and the crowd is no longer just a crowd cheering the leaders, the crowd gets to speak. The Democrats handled that well by letting people in the crowd speak, letting regular people, even in their roll call.

The convention center where the Republicans are speaking, the the room, it's called the Mellon Auditorium, it's on Constitution in DC, and it's a big cavernous marble room. Speakers have a tendency to want to shout to the back of the room and when it's empty you just get the echoes. I'd say that it's a failure of imagination to understand how different in medium this convention is with a normal one.

Brian: New York Times columnist, David Brooks. David, thank you very much.

David: Great to be with you.

Brian: More clips and Maria Hinosa next.

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