With J.D. Vance and a Bandaged Ear, Trump Gets His Party Started
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at fxnetworks.com/FYC. -Delegates and alternate delegates, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 2024 Republican National Convention. -So, yesterday was the first day of the Republican National Convention. And this week, we're in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to watch up close as more than 2,400 delegates gather to officially nominate Donald Trump.

We'll be on your feed during the convention to tell you what we're seeing and, more importantly, what it tells us about Trump's Republican Party. From The New York Times and the Baird Center in Milwaukee, I'm Astead Herndon. This is The Run-Up. So fun. Yeah.

Jess, can you introduce yourself and, you know, welcome back to the show. Thank you for having me. I'm Jess Bidgood. I write the On Politics newsletter for The New York Times. And I am here in Milwaukee, Tennessee.

Also, I mean, I'm talking tonight to debrief the first day of the convention as someone else whose job requires kind of sifting through some of the political noise. It's just after 10 p.m. The Republicans first day just ended. And we're sitting in this improvised sound booth in downtown Milwaukee. You know, Jess, I remember that four years ago we were both here for the Democratic National Convention. But that was during covid where basically nobody else was.

was here. It's the exact opposite this year, where the city is swimming with people and swimming with security barricades also. Yes, that was a very different experience than the one we're having this week. It was locked down. We had no choice but to watch the convention on TV.

and go to your favorite bars through Milwaukee. We were both sent here on missions to write stories about how nobody was here. Right, except us. Except us. So four years later, it seems like we're both at like a shockingly different time, but obviously we also have the same two presidential candidates. Let's go through one moment that really stuck with us from the first day of this convention. Is there something that happened today that really struck you as super important?

Yes, I think so. I mean, the moment from today that will kind of last the longest and possibly shape the Republican Party for the longest period of time is the nomination of J.D. Vance to be Trump's vice president. Delegates and alternates, ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce that Senator J.D. Vance has the overwhelming support of this convention to be the next vice president of the United States.

Vance seemed kind of overcome with emotion. He's standing with his wife. He's beaming. The crowd is starting this chant of J.D., J.D. And it was really this like moment of jubilation and celebration for a party that is so

feeling really good right now. Yeah, I mean, I think this is a moment that Trump has been teasing for a while. There were these vice presidential options that were made really public. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum, Florida Senator Marco Rubio,

Those were the three, like, tippy-top contenders. I was like, were there three or were there four finalists? There were three finalists, but for months he has been floating different names. You know, Byron Donalds. Nikki Haley was kind of in the ether. Tim Scott, Elise Stefanik. There was some sense in the air that Trump could go a wildly different direction with this pick. What do you think it says that he chose J.D. Vance? I think it says...

A bunch of things. One thing it says really clearly is something about Trump that we already know, that in this moment, he doesn't really care about traditional political calculations. You know, who's going to help him win a super...

potentially close swing state like Pennsylvania or whatever. Ohio is pretty safely a red state, at least for presidential candidates at this point. Trump didn't need to choose somebody who felt safe in some way. He didn't need to choose somebody who felt politically advantageous in some way. He needed to choose somebody who could fight the

battle that he's fighting in the way that he's fighting it that's gotten him here. He cares about someone who he sees as a fighter and somebody who shares his political instincts. Can you make that make sense for me? Why is J.D. Vance a sign that he's thinking more about political ideology than political calculation?

There was a moment over the weekend, actually, that I think really crystallized this. Shortly after the shooting at the Trump rally, when nobody really knew what was going on, there was a lot of confusion. J.D. Vance gets on X and blames Biden and Democratic rhetoric for this shooting very squarely. And this is a moment where

certainly among the people closest to Trump. There's talk about, you know, do we dial this down? How do we respond to this? Vance didn't wait. He just got right online and said, this is whose fault it is. I am assigning blame. And I think that...

In a way, that's like the J.D. Vance equivalent of Trump pumping his fist in the air right after it happened and saying, you know, fight, fight, fight. That to me shows how they share this instinct. I think another piece about Vance that's really interesting is he really tells a story of how Trump has come to dominate the Republican Party. What do you mean? J.D. Vance kind of came to prominence as a publicist.

a public intellectual type figure as a critic of Trump. And then when he decided to run for Senate in Ohio, he completely changed his political identity and totally kind of, he remade himself in Trump's image. And in choosing Vance, Trump is saying that the future of his party, Vance is only 39 years old,

it's going to talk like Trump, it's going to sound like Trump, it's going to believe a lot of the things that Trump believes. And the other thing that I think is really remarkable about this moment is Trump doesn't usually even acknowledge the idea of who his successor might be. He doesn't like to talk about, you know, a post-Trump world. And that's true for, you know, The Apprentice. That's true for his, like, business enterprises.

And that's true for his kind of political identity. And so in elevating somebody who is the youngest of, you know, the serious contenders, he's also kind of nodding to the idea that there's going to be a Republican Party after him. He's highlighting this potential successor and he's indicating he's

it's still going to sound like me. This brings up a couple of questions for me. One is that Donald Trump famously like holds things against people. Like it kind of surprises me, maybe surprise in the right word, but it's interesting to me that he chooses someone who is such a known former critic, right? Like what do we, I get what it says about kind of Vance's transition towards Trump, but what do we think Trump gets by choosing someone like Vance? Yeah.

I think a couple of things. I mean, I think one sort of reality of the GOP is that there's actually not a lot of prominent Republicans who weren't at some point a Trump former critic. Yeah, that's a good point. But I think, like...

I think that there's an interesting distinction with Trump around loyalty, right? He gets very, very angry when he perceives somebody to be disloyal. But that happens with somebody who was close to him first and then betrayed him in some way. Someone like Jeff Sessions is a good example of this. Or like his former vice president, Mike Pence, who he perceived as doing that. Absolutely, absolutely. But when it happens in the...

opposite way when it's somebody who is a critic of him who then becomes close to him he doesn't hold grudges so much in those instances I think maybe because it acts as a signifier of his power and of his status as the center of gravity in this party yeah you know

As we talk to people all across this convention, there's a sense from Republicans that this is their race to lose. There's a sense from Republicans that they are on the right track and Democrats are headed in the wrong direction, whether that is polling, whether that is fundraising, whether that's the events of the last couple weeks from debate to last Saturday. I think there is a sense from Republicans that all the stars are kind of aligning. And for me, like,

I wasn't quite sure what to expect coming here today because two days ago there was an assassination attempt against Trump. I wasn't sure if the notes they would hit would feel sober. I wasn't sure if things would be a little bit more tentative. And

What I actually heard from a lot of the people I talked to around Milwaukee today and around this convention was a kind of acknowledgement that, like, they think this shooting, tragic as it was, somebody died, two more people are critically injured. They see this shooting as something that politically helped Trump. They see it as something that helped Trump emerge looking stronger. Yeah. Which, you know, brings me to my moment of the...

evening, which was very simply the bandage on Trump's ear. I mean, I hate to laugh because it was serious, but just the image of kind of Van Gogh Trump, you know, the person who has clearly experienced this thing. And I think the other moment that really stuck out to me was after Donald Trump had emerged from the arena, you know, Lee Greenwood had sang God Bless the USA.

Trump makes his way to his seat. They do the chant of USA, but then they also, the crowd, do the chant of fight, fight, fight.

Which now seems to be a new version of a Republican rallying cry since the incident on Saturday. And that level of enthusiasm and unity is not where people expected Republicans to be. I mean, if we go back to the beginning of last year, you know, things that Democrats were telling me, and I think some Republicans believed at the time, I would say some national Republicans were saying this too, was that

was that they were going to have a struggle to unify around the candidate come next November. And we've arrived to this kind of surreal point where only 30-something percent of Democrats are happy about their nominee, and more than 70 percent of Republicans are happy about their nominee. And this does feel like a unified party around this candidate. I'm wondering what you thought about Trump's appearance tonight.

It was a really remarkable, remarkable moment. I mean, the way that he came in, he walked in, the camera was following him from backstage. There was a while that the camera just rested on his face so you could see that bandage on his ear. And it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it was just, it

you know, the images that came out of Saturday of Trump with his, you know, his face bloody, his ear bleeding, his fist pumping in the air. Republicans were very quick to seize on those images and hold them up as images of strength. And it felt like they were doing the same thing tonight, trying to show his sort of triumphant return to the convention on a night that he wasn't even scheduled to speak and did not in fact speak. And I think that's,

interesting as well. We have seen over the past couple of weeks, as all of the drama has been playing out around Biden, Trump has stayed out of the spotlight for the most part, which is a place that he tends not to like to be. He likes to drive news cycles. He likes to be in the middle of it all. We didn't hear him talk a lot about Trump

the Democrats' dilemma and Biden's issues. We heard him choose more silence than usual. And it was striking to me that tonight he also decided to let the bandage and, you know, this kind of

fervent, jubilant, and totally united reception speak for itself in the hall. Yeah. If I could put this together, right? Like he's choosing a VP that really double downs on his own ideology. He's not kind of being front and center in terms of his own messaging tonight, but

But I think there is a sense of democratic erosion that is so in the air that I think what I feel like I hear you saying is they don't really feel like they need to change their message. Right. What they think is that their message is now more appealing because other folks have lost it. Absolutely. Till tomorrow. 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 Donick, 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. And finally, if you like the show and want to get updates on latest episodes, follow our feed wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening, y'all.

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