Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. You could be forgiven for waking up confused as you heard the news this morning about last night's New Hampshire primary because the two big headlines seem to be contradictory. Headline one, "Donald Trump beat Nikki Haley decisively in the early state where she was supposed to have the best chance to beat him. Trump won by about 12 points," and Nikki Haley gave her most anti-Trump campaign speech yet, in her remarks to her New Hampshire supporters, turning up the volume in her campaign as they head to South Carolina, where the recent polls have Trump way ahead by like 30 points. Here is Haley last night, like you've probably not heard her before.

Nikki Haley: The other day, Donald Trump accused me of not providing security at the Capitol on January 6th.

Audience 1: Geriatric.

Nikki Haley: Now, I've long called for mental competency tests for politicians over the age of 75.

Audience 1: Politicians [unintelligible 00:01:17].

Nikki Haley: Trump claims he do better than me in one of those tests. Maybe he would, maybe he wouldn't, but if he thinks that, then he should have no problem standing on a debate stage with me.

[applause]

Brian Lehrer: We will start there to discuss the state of the race with Atlantic magazine staff writer McKay Coppins, an award winner from the White House Correspondents Association for his coverage of the Trump presidency, and author of the book Romney: A Reckoning, which came out in October. Some of you will remember, he was last on the show for that book. McKay's current article in The Atlantic is called  Go to a Trump Rally, and of course, he'll explain why. McKay, always good to have you. Welcome back to WNYC.

McKay Coppins: Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: I was watching the news channels last night when the polls closed at eight o'clock, and I'm seeing the numbers pile up for Trump from around the state very quickly. They're explaining where Haley underperformed, what she needed to pull even or pull ahead, and then the AP called the results for Trump really fast like 10 after 8:00. Then right away, Nikki Haley comes out to give her speech, and boom, it's like a clip we just played taking it to Trump like she has not done up to this point after getting the floor wiped with her. How do those things fit together?

McKay Coppins: I thought that was really interesting. Coming into New Hampshire, the talk was basically about how well Nikki Haley had to do to stay in the race. All the pundits were on TV handicapping the margins. I was texting with Republican sources, strategists, donors who were supportive of Nikki Haley's campaign, and they're saying, "Oh, maybe it needs to be four or five points, or it needs to be in single digits, or whatever." What's interesting is that Nikki Haley, I think, basically went out there and gave that speech, to answer the question of would she drop out very forcefully.

There had been this idea that, if she didn't do well enough in New Hampshire, she'd quickly drop out and maybe even endorse Trump. I think she is trying to show with that speech, that she is not going away. She's not ending her campaign. She's going to keep taking it to Trump. Actually, as you point out, ratchet up the rhetoric. I think the one response that I heard from a lot of Republicans after that speech was, "Where was this Nikki Haley three months ago, five months ago? Why wasn't she coming out against Trump from the very beginning?" Maybe it's better late than never.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, and it's all strategy. We don't have to look back at why she didn't do it earlier, but suddenly, Haley is running by questioning Trump's mental competency and challenging him to debate her to prove it like we heard there. That's one thing. She started running harder on age, we even heard in that clip, one of the members of the crowd just shouted, "Geriatric." Little ageism there on the part of that individual, but age on electability, she said whichever party doesn't re-nominate, its 80-year-old will probably win the election. Here's another clip, as she said this, about what Joe Biden might want.

Nikki Haley: With Donald Trump, Republicans have lost almost every competitive election. We lost the Senate. We lost the House. We lost The White House. We lost in 2018. We lost in 2020, and we lost in 2022. The worst-kept secret in politics is how badly the Democrats want to run against Donald Trump.

Audience 1: Trump the loser.

Audience 2: He's a loser.

Nikki Haley: They know Trump is the only Republican in the country who Joe Biden can defeat. You can't fix the mess, if you don't win an election.

Audience 1: We want to win.

Nikki Haley: A Trump nomination is a Biden win and a Kamala Harris presidency.

Brian Lehrer: Once again, very boisterous members of the crowd. I don't know if that was all scripted or what, but McKay, it is true that the polls show Haley beating Biden in a hypothetical matchup, and Trump only about tied with him. Do you think as she tries to close the big polling gap in South Carolina, which is the next primary, she starts to lean into that very practical electability argument much more?

McKay Coppins: I think that's probably her strongest argument. I remember a year ago talking to a Republican pollster who had been conducting focus groups with Republican primary voters. She said the stuff that the media often wants Republicans to use against Trump, mental acuity, for example, some of the lawsuits against him even the sexual assault allegations against him, that stuff doesn't work on Republican primary voters. What does is the argument that he would lose an election. If you can convince Republican primary voters that he will lose to Joe Biden, it's the most practical argument that wins them over.

I think electability is going to be her argument going forward. The problem she's going to run up against because she's right about one thing, and that little clip you just played, Donald Trump has actually been very effective at concealing the fact that he's basically a political loser when it comes to electoral politics. He won one election in 2016, and since then, has presided over a series of political disasters for his party, losing the White House, the House, and the Senate, but the reason that he's able to maintain this idea that he has some kind of magical hold on the Republican electorate is because he's really good at beating Republicans.

You remember the 2016 Republican primaries, he wiped the floor with that field. In the midterm elections that he wades into, he's really good at beating other Republicans in Republican primaries and getting his handpicked candidates nominated. They often don't fare that well in general elections. What's happening now is, once again, he has beaten all but one Republican primary opponent, she's still hanging in there, but in the two races that have happened so far, he's beating her. If she wants to make the electability argument, she is going to have to start winning some primaries, not just coming in distance seconds or even close seconds.

Brian Lehrer: Clearly. I guess the two arguments go together from the two clips we played, like Trump is becoming mentally unfit at his age. He's 77, but she started calling him an 80-year-old in the speech last night to equate him with Biden, and yes, Trump would turn in this next term, if he's elected. He's mentally questionable. Her other argument, the Democrats will exploit that, and then we lose. Mental competency/age-

McKay Coppins: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: -and electability combined and nobody's really leaned hard into those arguments yet in the Republican race. Maybe while many pundits are simply writing her off this morning, what we're really seeing is the start of a whole new shape of this race, so meaningful chapter in this race and on these new terms. This is day one of a month-long campaign to the next vote, which is February 24, in South Carolina, that happens to be one month from today, and we'll see how it goes. Now, we don't know.

McKay Coppins: I think that's right. Look, I've been a big voice of caution against us in the media, leaning too far into the inevitability of another Trump victory. I don't know that it's a foregone conclusion that he'll win the nomination because there are so many ex-factors. For one thing, you have now a Republican primary opponent, it's a two-person race, and his opponent now seems willing to make a much stronger case against Trump.

The other thing is that he is still facing criminal charges in multiple jurisdictions all over the country. He's going to be in courtrooms. He could be convicted in the coming months of at least one felony, and that could change the shape of the race as well. One of the scenarios that I keep hearing from Republicans who are supportive of Haley is that maybe she should just stay in the race, slowly racking up delegates. It's worth noting that as of the latest count in New Hampshire, yes, Trump beat her by 10, 11, 12 points, but he has won 12 delegates, she's won 9. The breakdown in delegates is not actually that dramatic. Maybe she should just keep winning delegates and hanging out and seeing if something happens. If Trump is convicted, that could change Republican primary voters' calculus when it comes to who they want to nominate.

That is one scenario. The question is whether she has the stomach for that. There's going to be enormous pressure from the party for her to drop out and to line up behind Trump if she has the stomach to stick it out and continue to take it to Trump. She at least has an outside chance of winning this nomination somehow.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I had a similar thought that Haley is maybe staying in as the last alternative standing because stuff happens.

McKay Coppins: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Trump has all these criminal charges, also maybe at his age and state of fitness and diet and everything something does happen and a month to South Carolina is a long time. Something like that is perhaps in her mind though, I certainly hear what you say about the likely gathering pressure for her to drop out. There is, as I saw in some of the reporting last night, a sort of opposite pressure for her to stay in, which is that a lot of Republican donors, not the little donors who Trump racks up, but a lot of the more business-sector donors, is that the right way to put it? Who don't want Trump, again, are probably willing to keep writing Haley checks so she can stay in. She had a very good fourth quarter of 2023 in terms of fundraising. Have you seen anything like that?

McKay Coppins: That's right. Her campaign is very well-funded right now. She has enough money, certainly, to at least wage a real campaign through South Carolina. When I was texting with one Republican donor yesterday I was just asking him, "Look, what will it take for people to keep writing checks to Haley?" He was kind of handicapping and he was saying, well, she needs to come in a close second in New Hampshire but the reality is there probably are a certain segment of true believer anti-Trump Republicans in the donor class, who as long as there is somebody to write a check to, will continue to fund her campaign.

That said, a lot of these guys are pretty practical, and if they see the writing on the wall that Trump is going to be the nominee and has a 50/50 chance of winning the White House, a lot of those guys will bail out, and start lining up behind Trump too for their own business reasons. Haley really needs to show signs of life in South Carolina, I think to go beyond that race.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your thoughts or questions about New Hampshire primary night and what comes next and anything related for McKay Coppins from The Atlantic 212-433-WNYC call or text, 212-433-9692. There's so many interesting angles from the last few days. Let me pick a few here. One is, I noticed in that electability clip that we played, she used Kamala Harris as a scary monster. Did you catch that? Like, if Trump runs, he will lose, and then Biden will be president. Oh, and we know that means then Kamala Harris will be president, meaning Biden's going to die in office. She used Kamala Harris as a scary monster. What'd you make of that? Had you heard that before?

McKay Coppins: Well, not necessarily from her, although it's possible I've missed it, but that is consistent with a strategy that we've seen from Republicans over the last few years. I remember early in the Biden presidency writing a piece about the conservative book publishing industry and specifically what they called The Biden Problem, which is that to sell these conservative books, they need a boogeyman. They need a villain. Over the last 30 years, they've had a series of obvious villains. Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, all--

Brian Lehrer: Nancy Pelosi, big one.

McKay Coppins: Nancy Pelosi, they all moved books. You could write books about those people. You could put scary-looking pictures of them on the cover, and conservative book buyers would snap them up. Joe Biden didn't work as a villain, and in part that's because the predominant conservative narrative about him is not that he's a villainous radical trying to destroy the country, it's that he's feeble and losing his mind. That might be fun to talk about on Fox News, but it doesn't move books and it doesn't scare people. If they think of Joe Biden as just this kind of old confused man, they might not like the idea of him as president, but they're not scared of him.

I think what you saw Nikki Haley doing was pointing to Kamala Harris, who actually is somebody who a lot of Republicans are filled with hostility toward fear of resentment toward, for all kinds of reasons. I think making her the face of the Biden campaign to the extent that she can, or that other Republicans can, that'll be a strategy I think we'll see all this year.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I guess it's worth saying out loud that I usually think portraying Harris as a threat, as playing the scary Black woman card like Biden is bad enough, but if he dies, you're going to have the radical in the White House, which isn't really based on policy differences between Biden and Harris that they're citing just, oh-oh, Kamala Harris, who Trump makes fun of her first name to make it sound foreign. He still says Barack Hussein Obama, as you point out in your article about the Trump rally, and it's really race and gender-baiting. Tell me if you see it differently, but maybe that's what we saw from a woman of color herself in New Hampshire last night.

McKay Coppins: There's no question, that's a part of it. I remember talking to conservative book editors back then, and they would admit as much off the record on background, they'd say, look, you put a picture of an angry-looking Kamala Harris on the cover of a book maybe that scares Republican voters into buying it. That said, it's also true that Joe Biden is seeing his reputation is that of a more moderate, pragmatic Washington dealmaker. Kamala Harris had shaped her image as more of a progressive champion. She came out of California politics, she was more vocal about issues like abortion. These social issues that Republican voters are really motivated by. There is, I think, a policy and political component to it but you can't separate that from her race and gender. No question.

Brian Lehrer: Also from one of the clips we played, there really has not been any pressure on Trump to attend a Republican debate. I think everybody's shrugged it off as, yes, well, of course, he's way ahead. That's what any politician who's way ahead does they say, "No, I need to debate." Haley raised that in one of the clips last night. I don't think the pressure becomes too much for him to resist between now and South Carolina, but do you see a path to a one-on-one debate?

McKay Coppins: Not before South Carolina. I would love to be proven wrong as a journalist, obviously. I think the more information we can get about our candidates, the better. I think Donald Trump would fare pretty poorly in a debate with Nikki Haley. Maybe I'm wrong, he has been very good in past Republican debates, good in that he's good at mocking and bullying and taking over the stage. That said, I think that, again, Nikki Haley needs to win some primaries if she wins in South Carolina or comes very close. If she wins in some states beyond, and Trump actually does feel the pressure to knock her out, then maybe he does need to do a debate.

I will say the thing that I detected from his speech last night is that he is really irritated by the fact that Nikki Haley won't just drop out and endorse him like everyone else. He seemed to really bothered by that. The sense of entitlement he has to just be coronated is palpable. That is the X factor, and maybe the one caveat that I'd add to my answer is that it's possible that he just gets so angry and annoyed by Nikki Haley that he blows off his advisors who are telling him it's not a good idea and agrees to do a debate just because he wants to yell at her, or something like that. That is something to watch.

Brian Lehrer: Richard in Cold Spring, you're on WNYC. Richard, thank you for calling in.

Richard: Hi, Brian. Great to be with you. I'm a registered Democrat. I'm going to preface this with that, I was watching Fox News this morning as the alternate, and not the people on the couch, but their reporters in New Hampshire were reporting that unaffiliated voters and a 17% of their exit poll Republican voters said that they would not support Donald Trump in an election. In fact, they would support Joe Biden.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, there are a lot--

Richard: I think that really signals a problem for Donald Trump.

Brian Lehrer: Richard, thank you very much. You know what? Hold your thought on that for a second, McKay, and attention controller. We're going to take a break right here because that's a good call on which to make a segue to breaking down the actual results in New Hampshire a little bit. Even as interesting to me what some people were saying in the exit polls like what Richard just cited there. There's the Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis dropping out factor, which I think also was really interesting and not that much discussed over the last day. A lot more to get to with McKay Coppins from The Atlantic, and some of your calls. 212-433-WNYC. Calls or texts as we continue on The Brian Lehrer Show.

[music]

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. As we continue to talk about New Hampshire and what comes next with McKay Coppins from The Atlantic. He's got an article called You Should Attend the Trump Rally. We will get to that, but let's pick up on what the caller before the break was saying and look at some of the exit poll results last night. He cited one that's related that I picked up on was that people identifying as Republicans made up only about half the electorate in New Hampshire. The other half was independents who were allowed to vote in that state. That's why it was even as close as it was 55 to 43. Haley only won a quarter of those calling themselves Republicans. I think the caller was focused on the other side. Trump didn't win that many of those calling themselves independents. What do you take from that?

McKay Coppins: On one hand, it's a good sign for Trump's prospects of winning the Republican primary. New Hampshire is famously a more moderate state. The New Hampshire primary voters tend to attract a lot of independents, moderates, and so it's possible that this is actually the one of the better states that Nikki Haley could perform in and that it's downhill from here for her.

That said, I think the point the caller made is a good one, which is, this does not bode well for Trump's general election prospects. The fact that not only independents, moderates, people who might have already been inclined to vote for Joe Biden, but people who are voting for Nikki Haley are saying that if it's Trump, I'm going to vote for Joe Biden. That should be a five-alarm fire for the Trump campaign. We'll see how it bears out. We'll need to keep watching exit polls in the coming races, but that is something I know that the Trump campaign is going to be worried about.

Brian Lehrer: I picked up on another exit poll detail along the same lines. Did you see this? Two-thirds of the voters last night in the exit poll report that I saw said they do not identify as MAGA. Then they look back to Iowa and they said even half the voters in Iowa said that, that they do not identify as MAGA according to the entrance and exit polls there where, of course, Trump won bigger. Does that suggest an actual electability issue for Trump in the general or is it just words?

McKay Coppins: It might just be a case of the difference between the most hardcore Trump supporters and then people who will vote for him despite not seeing themselves as their identity is based around that. New Hampshire, especially, is a state full of contrarian voters. They don't like to see themselves often as associated with a movement. They see themselves as discerning voters who are picking their candidates based on their own reasons and judgment.

That was notable to me as well, that the core of Trump's support might be smaller in the Republican Party than I think a lot of people realize. I think it's still notable that in both Iowa and New Hampshire, Trump is getting around 50%, 55% of the vote. That means that there are a lot of Republican voters, maybe not the majority, but a very large swath of Republican voters who are ready to move on from Trump. What those people do if he's the nominee, again, is going to be a really key question. Maybe not all of them will vote for Biden, maybe a very small percentage will, but if they stay home, if they're not willing to donate, if they're not willing to knock doors or work for the campaign, volunteer, get the word out to their friends, that's going to be a real problem for him in swing states.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a Kamala Harris comment from a listener who texted us after we mentioned how Haley used her last night. Listener writes, "Harris made her reputation and showed competence as a tough lawyer." Oh, I'm sorry. That's that's the wrong one. Let me get to the right one. I apologize. You know what? I'll have to come back to that. Let's take Pete in Sherman, Connecticut, who's been talking to his father who lives in Charleston, South Carolina. South Carolina, the next state where there'll be a primary. Pete, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Pete: Hey, Brian. Love the show. My dad, he's born in New York, raised in New York, moved to South Carolina in his 50s, total liberal, lives in Charleston, and he's been telling me that people, especially in Charleston, the Republicans are completely done with Trump and are with Haley. Hopefully, I think, nine-point deficit that she had last night isn't bad. If she can keep a momentum and get something, even a half of South Carolina, not half, even a third of South Carolina starts to vote for her, it will change things. That's what my dad says of the feeling he gets down there, and he's pretty bright guy. Just wanted to tell you. He listens to you on his computer down there.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Go, South Carolina elections. Pete, thank you very much. Any thought about that observation? Obviously, it's a focus group of one, McKay, but still.

McKay Coppins: Well, no. Look, Nikki Haley was a popular governor of South Carolina. There's a reason that her campaign thinks it would be worth sticking it out through her home state. Now the polls do not look good for her right now. Trump has a significant lead there, but the campaign is about to go up with a $4 million ad buy in the state trying to remind voters of her accomplishments as governor, why they elected her in the first place, why they like her. Her case is going to have to be in addition to electability in South Carolina, reminding people that you may have liked Donald Trump as president, but you also liked me as governor. I have a lot less baggage and I'm several decades younger, and so vote for me. I think that's going to be the case that she has to make there.

Brian Lehrer: Here's that Kamala Harris comment. Listener writes, "As an independent Jew who was more supportive of Israel, Kamala does indeed frighten me. It's been said that she is far more a pro the ceasefire camp, and yes, more progressive. Don't forget, Haley is also a woman of color, and I support her, although a Biden presidency is totally fine with me too as long as it isn't Harris. This isn't a race or sexism concern," writes this listener.

That's one person's point of view, but it makes me wonder how the Middle East could potentially play in a Biden-Trump assuming it's Biden-Trump or Biden-Haley. I don't know that Haley and Trump are very different on the Middle East in any case. I don't know that Biden has been so different from them either or that Kamala Harris has said anything different from Biden, but there's a perception of one person going in that might be telling. Oh, by the way, Kamala Harris's husband is Jewish, and he would be the first Jew in the White House.

McKay Coppins: I thought it was notable that yesterday President Biden, Vice President Harris were holding a rally in Virginia in support of abortion rights. At that rally, I don't know how widely this was reported on, it was interrupted, I think, four or five times by pro-Palestine protesters who were demanding that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris stand up for Palestinians, call for a ceasefire, put more pressure on Israel.

This is a real generational divide within the Democratic Party. You see younger, more progressive voters, much more skeptical of Israel, much more supportive of Palestine, and angry that the Biden administration isn't doing more to align with their views on the issue. If he was in a real primary race, I could see that issue becoming really salient. Going in to the general election, I think your point is right. I'm not sure that there's enough of a contrast in voters' mind between Joe Biden and Donald Trump or Nikki Haley and Kamala Harris on how their approaches would differ. Maybe that'll change, but at least as of now, I don't see a huge amount of daylight between their positions.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another text from somebody in New Hampshire who voted yesterday. It says, "I am a New Hampshire voter registered as an independent, and I voted yesterday. Most of my life I've been a registered Democrat, but when we moved up here, I became an independent. It's important to state that New Hampshire makes it really easy for independents to vote in primaries. My wife and I vote in Joe Biden yesterday, but I know a bunch of Democrats though registered as independents who voted for Nikki Haley in the Republican primary and plan to vote for Biden in November."

An interesting take. Yes, the independents can choose which primary to vote in. There was no meaningful Democratic primary yesterday. McKay, it's probably worth a moment anyway to say there was voting for Democrats yesterday. Not very meaningful because officially their first primary is in South Carolina. There were like 20 Democrats on the ballot, not including Joe Biden, and yet he won handily by people writing him in. I don't know if it means anything, it's like a footnote to history, but does it mean anything?

McKay Coppins: Well, his opponent, Dean Phillips, I think will be an answer to a jeopardy question one day. I think he got 20% of the vote or something. Look, I don't think there's any question about Joe Biden's renomination at this point, but this does raise an important point to make. Yes, New Hampshire makes it really easy for independents to vote in either primary. That said, South Carolina is also technically an open primary and so are a number of states going forward on Super Tuesday.

There are a number of states where you don't have to be a registered Republican to vote. Nikki Haley is going to count on those independent support. That said, the fact that South Carolina is actually officially holding a Democratic primary, probably, I could see that hurting Nikki Haley because a lot of Democrats in New Hampshire probably changed their affiliation to independent so that they could vote for her. In South Carolina, they're probably just going to vote for Joe Biden, and that's going to be a problem for her because she needs those people.

Brian Lehrer: He actually caress there. He wants to run up his vote there. I haven't seen a breakdown of who former Chris Christie supporters and former Ron DeSantis voters who both dropped out in the last week, wound up voting for. Did you?

McKay Coppins: No. Not yet. I'm hopeful that we'll get some more information like that. The polls going into New Hampshire suggested that people who were supportive of Christie were breaking largely for Nikki Haley, but we haven't seen exit poll data along those lines.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I think people who supported DeSantis were expected to break very strongly for Trump. Which could even-- because there seems to be no love loss between DeSantis and Haley at all. I even thought maybe this is conspiracy theory, but I thought DeSantis might've dropped out specifically to help Trump and hurt Haley because he could have siphoned off some MAGA-leaning voters from Trump, and that could have helped Haley percentage-wise if DeSantis had stayed in.

McKay Coppins: The best-case scenario for Nikki Haley would've been for Christie to drop out DeSantis to stay in. That could have cut the margin maybe in half for her. Ron DeSantis knows what he's doing. He wants a future in Republican politics. His base is the Trump base, and he wants to stay in Trump's good graces. I think he knew what he was doing.

Brian Lehrer: I want to play a clip of DeSantis from his dropout video. He noted that he had pledged to support whoever the Republican nominee is, but then he specifically endorsed Trump and took this hard swipe at Nikki Haley.

DeSantis: He has my endorsement because we can't go back to the old Republican guard of yesteryear. A repackaged formed of warmed-over corporatism that Nikki Haley represents. The days of putting Americans last of kowtowing the large corporations of caving to woke ideology are over.

Brian Lehrer: He puts corporate interests and "woke interests" in the same breath. When he frames Haley as a corporate Republican, help me out on this, McKay, as somebody who has covered Republicans per se, so much as you've done. It strikes me as funny because Trump's policies were pro-corporate like most Republicans. Now he supports the business lobby over union interest. He supports "Drill, Baby, Drill," the fossil fuels industry. He wants to weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Board to stop the banking industry. He cut taxes on corporations. What is the distinction that DeSantis is trying to make there?

McKay Coppins: Well, I think the point you're making is that the way that Donald Trump actually governed as president was actually quite different from the way that he ran, at least in the Republican primaries when he was drawing contrast in 2016 between himself and other Republicans. Trumpism, the kind of general program that he was advocating for, if you can figure it out based on his often incoherent speeches and social media posts is more hostile to corporate power. Desantis as a manifestation of that, has famously picked fights with, for example, the Disney Corporation in Florida as in part--

Brian Lehrer: For its diversity initiatives.

McKay Coppins: That's right. The way that he has threaded that needle and the way that you see more so-called populist Republicans doing this, is that they single out diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives in large corporations as a way to look like they are doing battle with corporate power. I do think there is actually a strain of this new generation of Republican leaders, set Trump aside, but DeSantis people like Josh Hawley and J.D. Vance in the Senate, who are generally less in bed with corporate interests, less interested in catering to the Chamber of Commerce, Republicans and they see themselves as helping to bring about some kind of political realignment.

Nikki Haley, I think is less self-conscious about just being an old-school Reagan Republican in wanting to support businesses and corporations. You're right that when you actually look at the policies of Donald Trump versus Nikki Haley it's not clear to me that Trump's first term is when it comes to corporate power, radically different than Nikki Haley's would've been.

Brian Lehrer: Your article in The Atlantic, You Should Go to a Trump Rally. I know you got to go in a couple of minutes, but I want to make sure to touch on your article. By way of background, I'd tell people, you went to a lot of Trump rallies when you were covering the 2016 campaign, but you wrote, you hadn't been to one since 2019. What were you looking for, and in a soundbite length, what did you find?

McKay Coppins: What I found was that I think a lot of Americans have had managed to tune Trump out. I had this image of him based on my years of watching his rallies. Being there in person gives you a tactile sense of what's at stake in this election, both from the movement that he commands talking to his supporters and watching Trump speak himself. I watched an hour and a half of Trump up on stage talking. On the one hand, it's darker and more shocking than you can imagine if you're not paying close attention.

On the other hand, he also seems to have lost his instinct for entertainment the way that he was able to hold and capture people's attention in 2016. I'm not sure he has that. The point that I'm trying to make is that we have started to see Donald Trump as an abstraction. I think if you want to be a good citizen, regardless of what party you support, where you are in the political spectrum, you need to tune back in and really watch this guy to understand what is at stake in 2024.

Brian Lehrer: You're making a media point here to some degree too, that it was bad of the media to give his rally so much oxygen in 2016 because it was like, "Oh, what is he going to say?" But that entertainment spectacle helped fuel the rise of Trump, who many people consider really dangerous. Now it's become normalized, so they're not looking at really outrageous, scary things that he says.

McKay Coppins: Yes, but I would also add to that, that we're now making the opposite mistake. We overlearned the lessons of the first Trump term to where now we don't take his speeches live. We don't cover every social media post. I get it, I get the instinct, but at the same time, I think that's allowed a lot of Americans to just stop paying attention to him. He's gotten, in many ways, more radical and more extreme since 2016. I think that Americans need to tune back in and pay attention to that.

Brian Lehrer: I know we're at the end of our scheduled time. If you got to go, just tell me and it's fine. I would extend you for a couple of minutes on this point if you have the time, so you just tell me.

McKay Coppins: Yes. Sure.

Brian Lehrer: Here's an example of what you were just saying from his Manchester New Hampshire rally on Saturday. That for people who are paying attention strikes them as Trump leaning into wanting to be an authoritarian, a strong man in the way he praised Hungary's increasingly authoritarian and cultural war-based leader Viktor Orbán. Listen to the words.

Donald Trump: There's a great man, a great leader in Europe, Viktor Orbán. He's the Prime Minister of Hungary. He's a very great leader, a very strong man. Some people don't like him because he's too strong. It's nice to have a strong man running your country.

Brian Lehrer: He taunts the country of the United States by using the term strong man and praising it and praising Orbán who is that. Is that the kind of thing you want people to see at his rallies and why you wrote the article to some degree?

McKay Coppins: That's right. That's one of the things. I do think that the authoritarian tendency that has always been subtext to his campaign has become much more on the surface. He talks about wanting to be a dictator for a day. He talks about using the Justice Department to go after political enemies. We at The Atlantic recently published an issue called If Trump Wins, that just goes through all the implications of another Trump term.

Take some time to read that. This isn't wild speculation from alarmist writers. This is based largely on what he and his closest political allies say that they want to do if he gets back into the White House. I would urge people to read that issue and, again, to start watching his speeches. He is being very clear about his lack of care about any kind of democratic norms, any kind of constraints on the president. I think that it's important to understand what he will do if he gets back into office. I don't think you can really fully grasp it unless you are going to his rallies or at least watching them in full and really taking the time to listen to him.

I know that that sounds unpleasant to a lot of people, to your listeners. There's a reason that I stopped going. I had other assignments and a book project, but I think that it's time to tune back in. This is the moment. It's an election year. He is going to be the nominee most likely. I think we need to start paying attention again.

Brian Lehrer: I'm going to stretch your goodwill by another 30 seconds because I think you'll like this. I think you've inspired at least one listener to try to attend a Trump rally. Elijah in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Elijah: Hi. A big fan of the show. I just wanted to say I'm curious about the guest's opinion about attending the rallies as a form of protest. I think that the lack of norms on the part of his base is a huge part of the story. I wonder if civil obedient protests in the tradition of King and Gandhi could bring out the nature of what's going on with his base in a way that might be informative to other citizens.

McKay Coppins: It's a great question. Like I said, I've probably attended 100 Trump rallies in my life. Some of the scariest ones were those where protesters showed up, disrupted the event trying to make a point about immigration or another issue. Some of his supporters would surround them, scream violent threats at them, shove them. That happened I think just recently at a Trump rally. Obviously, am all in favor of protest of any kind. I think that's part of what makes our country great, but I would I guess just say as a note of caution that, yes, Trump supporters in many of these events will get physical with protesters. If you go there planning to disrupt the rally, just be prepared for those consequences. To the caller's point, I think it could illustrate the nature of his movement, at least a certain strain of his movement.

Brian Lehrer: Atlantic magazine staff writer McKay Coppins, also author of the book that came out in October, Romney: A Reckoning, and now his new article in The Atlantic called You Should Go to a Trump Rally. Well, you convinced Elijah at very least. McKay, thanks as always for coming on. Really appreciate it.

McKay Coppins: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, more in a minute.

 

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