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Yesterday was day two of the Republican National Convention, when a collection of Trump's former challengers took the stage. Please welcome former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. Please welcome the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis. Vivek Ramaswamy of Ohio. Ted Cruz of Texas. Dr. Ben Carson. Marco Rubio.
and voiced their support for him, emphasizing a message of unity. So just as we did on day one, we're unpacking a couple big moments from the stage, just steps away from the convention arena. From the New York Times and the Barrett Center in Milwaukee, I'm Ested Herndon, and this is The Run-Up. Okay, first of all, cheers. Yeah, cheers. Ching-ching. I'm glad we're doing this. Okay. Hey, Michael, can you introduce yourself? Sure. Uh...
Sure. I can, and I can and I will. Thank you. I am Michael Barbaro. I'm the host of The Daily, and I'm a huge fan of The Run-Up. What number of convention is this for you? I know before you hosted The Daily, you were a political reporter. What number of RNC is this for you? Number four. Three in person. 2012, 2016, now 2024. 2020 was remote.
But this is number four, in theory. You know, the thing that we're specifically talking about this week is a moment that struck us about the day and trying to unpack it in terms of what it means for Trump's Republican Party. Is there one specific moment that stuck out to you today under this theme of kind of Trump challengers that we saw? Yeah, there was. And it was the moment that Nikki Haley came on stage. So as most of your listeners are going to know,
Haley stayed in the race the longest and was the most intransigent, even when she got out, about endorsing Trump. And when she was in the race, she questioned his mental fitness to be president. She questioned his morals. She called him the candidate of chaos. She called him unhinged. And she gets on stage. My fellow Republicans, President Trump...
President Trump asked me to speak to this convention in the name of unity. And she says, "I am here at the invitation of Donald Trump." Kind of basically says, "I'm not here because I just decided to show up." Yeah. "I'm not bending the knee exactly like everybody else." She immediately distinguishes herself. And she says, "I am here to bring this party together." I'll start by making one thing perfectly clear.
Donald Trump has my strong endorsement, period. She says, I strongly endorse Donald Trump. That's not the moment that interested me the most, though. The moment that interested me the most, and I felt was the most just genuinely surprising, was when she got around to saying, I now want to speak to all of the people who basically don't like Trump. Trump's in the room. He's looking at him.
We should acknowledge that there are some Americans who don't agree with Donald Trump 100% of the time. I happen to know some of them, and I want to speak to them tonight. And this is the moment that the speech just immediately enters slightly treacherous terrain. People don't do that in front of Trump, and not a single other one of his former rivals came close to doing this. My message to them is simple.
You don't have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for him. Take it from me, I haven't always agreed with President Trump. But we agree more often than we disagree. She opened up a safe space to say, for those of you who do not like this man, I want to talk to you. And then she started to, rather than praise Trump lavishly, compare him to Biden.
That was her tactic. She compares his foreign policy to Biden's foreign policy. She compares his approach to crime and the Middle East. And in this weird space of Nikki Haley saying, I support Trump, but I really embody those who are worried about him, have reservations about him. The camera in the room pans to Trump. And I looked at the big board and I saw it. And he has this like,
what can best be described as a kind of crumpled half-smile, half-frown, and everyone in the audience laughs. And it kind of let a lot of the tension out of the room. It was like she was giving permission for people to be nervous about him. He gave the audience permission to laugh at the funny dynamic of the room. And I thought there was something...
kind of like a deep breath, like relief in that moment where everybody was like, all right, guess what? This actually is a space and a party that's going to tolerate someone coming in this room and saying, you know that guy over there who you all worship and I don't? I'm allowed to do this. I'm allowed to be in this room. That to me was just a really surprising moment. Every other Republican tonight
Didn't do anything close to that. Yeah, I wasn't in the hall to hear the laugh but we were talking to people outside and someone actually mentioned this moment that you're talking about which I think Really makes it clear that the audience may have had some sense of tension when she got on the stage a person I was talking to who was a delegate was saying that they were worried She was gonna get a lot of booze and they were worried that people weren't going to let her kind of make her speech itself and
But even if there were some initial boos, it seemed by the end of her speech, people understood what she was trying to do. Yes. Is that fair? Yes. And he, Donald Trump, seemed to understand what she was trying to do. He stood up. He rewarded that speech with kind of like a physical response. I noticed actually he didn't.
for some of the other speeches that were given by some of his other rivals. So, yeah, I think that The Room accepted this speech, accepted Nikki Haley, and most importantly for her, Trump did. You know, it's funny, I was thinking back to this line that Nikki Haley said in her campaign. You know, she said, I don't have to bend the knee. I don't have to worry about my political future. And, you know, we think of most people when it comes to Trump as eventually...
saying something like that and then going back. In a weird way, she has stuck with it, right? Yeah. It's interesting because Haley's gone back and forth so much on Trump. I remember she was one of the Republicans who kind of made a big statement after January 6th to say that he pulled the party in the wrong direction, even after serving him in the United Nations. But you're right that that kind of flip-flopping
made her a more authentic messenger on this idea that, yeah, I do have some problems with him. Problems that you all are familiar with. Yeah, her criticisms were always credible because she was inside and said, I saw it and it was not good. It was chaotic.
I'm here to tell you it's not OK. It can't be the future. And now she's credible because she's been on the other side. Yeah. Yeah. And your moment kind of relates to mine, which is actually a contrast in how some of the other failed Trump candidates spoke tonight. I'm thinking about Ron DeSantis, whose speech was not that direct about his problems with Trump, even though he did criticize him as a candidate.
And he kind of stuck to a normal stump speech. Cultural warrior. Cultural warrior and mostly focusing on criticisms of Biden. The ones that stuck out to me that have come out at other times this week is really using Biden's own problems right now as the reason to unify.
We need a Commander-in-Chief who can lead 24 hours a day and seven days a week. America cannot afford four more years of a weekend at Bernie's presidency.
This also came up to one of the delegates we talked to today. Because when I was asking about where the unity is coming from, you know, someone said, you know, Haley opened up the stage and the person next to him said, I think it's coming from Joe Biden's weakness. And that being the reason a lot of Republicans are uniting right now. For you, like, what do you think is driving what I think is a surprising sense of confidence for Republicans right now? Why are Republicans brimming with confidence right now?
I think they are really confident for two really immediate reasons. One is that their rival is facing an open rebellion, public rebellion among elected officials in his party. Democrats are, if they're not calling for Biden to step aside as nominee, they are talking about it privately. So imagine the good fortune of a Republican party having its convention as the other party is talking about ditching their nominee.
So that's number one. And the other, and I heard it a lot tonight, is frankly a sense of almost like divine intervention that Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt. I mean, it happened several times tonight that people on the stage invoked the idea that God saved Donald Trump. I've heard so many delegates use that language. And I think...
When you are a Republican, just sort of stepping back and thinking, here was a nominee who was supposed to be in all this trouble, who was never supposed to be here. He's here. He's in the lead. And the guy who beat him four years ago is grasping, you know, trying to hold on to his nomination. I mean, it's like a...
it's an extraordinary set of circumstances. Yeah. The language of kind of divine savior, the kind of providential touch of Donald Trump has always been somewhere in the air of Republicans, but it's never been more explicit than I think we've seen this week. Tim Scott yesterday, or even Laura Trump today, both call him an American lion, you know, kind of makes me think Chronicles of Narnia, that kind of Christian language that seems really Trump has started to embody. I think that
puts together three things for me. Unity because of things like Haley kind of making a direct pitch to people on the fence. Unity because of Joe Biden's own weaknesses. And also unity because of what happened over the weekend really driving people back to
to Trump. Does that make sense? Yeah, and I think the attempted assassination drives people back to him in a deeply personal way that transcends all the normal rules of politics. Like, when you care about someone and they almost die, it's a pretty basic rule of life that you are drawn closer to them. Yeah, yeah. Imagine if you revere them as a political leader and that happens. Last question would be, what are you looking ahead to for the rest of the week?
I mean, I'm looking ahead to whether or not Trump himself can carry forth the message of unity. It's just not his nature. He is a candidate of us versus them.
So I'm really curious in this moment when he has an opportunity on the biggest stage, biggest night of the campaign so far for him to speak of unity in a unique way that leaves behind the kind of traditional polarizing nature of his candidacy. And is he going to do it? And even if he does it, is it going to matter? But if he does it, it just says something interesting about what the next three months are going to look like.
Right. There's been so many kind of false hope Donald Trump pivot moments. But Saturday does feel like one that's worth asking this type of question. And because we've seen them kind of pivot their message in the last couple of days, it feels like starting on Thursday and going forward to November, there's a question of can Donald Trump be the type of person who can unify the party and really seize the electoral opportunity that seems to be in front of him? Yes. And we should be honest and say there was already a true social post today where he
very much was not the candidate of unity. He did his normal ranting and raving. And so, you know, let's keep ourselves honest. Yeah, you know, I can relate to Donald Trump for being your worst self on Twitter. I'm my worst self on Slack. If I, like, committed to reading Slack, I would probably be bad there, too. Thank you so much for coming on. I'm going to do something I've always wished guests would do on The Daily, and I'm going to say, you're welcome.
No more thank. Why are we thanking each other? Thank you. Thank you for coming to my show. Thank you for having me. You're welcome. Appreciate it. The Run-Up is reported by me, Ested Herndon, and produced by Elisa Gutierrez, Caitlin O'Keefe, and Anna Foley. It's edited by Rachel Dry and Lisa Tobin, with original music by Dan Powell, Marion Lozano, Pat McCusker, Diane Wong, Sophia Landman, and Alicia Baitube.
It was mixed by Chris Wood. Special thanks to Paula Schumann, Sam Dolnick, Larissa Anderson, David Halfinger, Maddie Maciello, Mahima Chablani, Nick Pittman, and Jeffrey Miranda. Do you have questions about the 2024 election? Email us at therunupatnytimes.com. Or better yet, record your question using the Voice Memo app on your phone, and then send us the file. That email again is therunupatnytimes.com.
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