Thursday Morning Politics: The Buzz from the RNC

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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, and here we are again with just one day gone by since yesterday's show, and another unexpected turn in the presidential race. If we thought the Democrats were settling in now to President Biden being their nominee after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, well, that lasted for four days.

There was the most prominent Democrat yet going public yesterday, California Congressman Adam Schiff, calling for Biden to drop out, and with the new reporting that Chuck Schumer had explicitly asked the president to drop out in private last Saturday. Hakeem Jeffries also had a frank conversation with him, and The New York Times reporting now that Biden is more open to considering ending his campaign than he had been. Oh, and Biden has COVID around 6:00 PM yesterday. That came out, but they say his symptoms are mild.

I also want to play what, to me, has been the most interesting moment so far at the Republican Convention. One of the themes they are promoting is that people who have previously criticized Donald Trump have now come to support him, Nikki Haley, J D Vance, but then there's the speaker who you wouldn't think would even consider the Republican nominee, any Republican nominee who showed up to express an open mind. Maybe it was just theater, but it was Teamsters Union President Sean O'Brien. Listen.

Sean O'Brien: Several months ago, I asked the RNC and the DNC for the opportunity to speak. To be frank, when President Trump invited me to speak at this convention, there was political unrest on the left and on the right. Hard to believe. Anti-union groups demanded the President rescind his invitation. The Left called me a traitor, and this is precisely why it's so important for me to be here today.

Brian Lehrer: Teamsters President Sean O'Brien at the Republican Convention. O'Brien may just be playing smart politics, getting both parties to compete for union members' votes. Why not? For the moment, his both sides language there alone, plus even just the fact of his appearance at the convention, could be taken as giving his approval for considering Trump to workers who don't generally see the GOP as ever acting in their economic interest versus their bosses' interests.

We'll start there as we welcome back McKay Coppins, staff writer at The Atlantic, a White House Correspondence Association award winner for his coverage of the Trump presidency, and author of the books, The Wilderness, about the battle over the future of the Republican Party, which came out in 2015 as the Trump era was beginning, and Romney: A Reckoning, a biography of Mitt Romney, which came out last year. He is in Milwaukee this week covering the convention.

Mckay, always good of you to come on. Welcome back to WNYC.

McKay Coppins: Thanks for having me, Brian. Good to be here.

Brian Lehrer: In the context of all your coverage of the Republican Party over the last 10 years, how surprised were you to see Teamsters President Sean O'Brien as a convention speaker this week, if at all?

McKay Coppins: It's hard to overstate how dramatic a departure that moment was from the Republican Party of, say, 2012, which was the first Republican convention I covered. That was the year that Mitt Romney was the nominee. The GOP was still very much in its Reagan era, conservatism era. You had tremendous skepticism about unions, general skepticism of any kind of government regulation or labor policies. It was still a small government, pro-business party.

You could argue that in its policies, the GOP has not changed that much, but I think it would be a mistake to ignore the kind of symbolism of having a Teamster on stage as the keynote speaker at the Republican Convention. It is part and parcel of a Trump campaign strategy to broaden the tent of the GOP, specifically in targeting disaffected elements of the Democratic coalition, white working-class voters, Black working-class voters, people who belong to unions, people who are not part of the suburban gentry that used to make up the core of the GOP.

Brian Lehrer: If that's the Trump strategy, what's the Sean O'Brien strategy? Because ultimately, the Republican Party, except for trade, and we'll talk about trade, still supports their bosses, the union members' bosses economic agendas. No living wage, or minimum wage bills to speak of, making it harder to organize, not easier, and I could go on.

McKay Coppins: I think if you're looking at this from Sean O'Brien's perspective, you could make two points. One is that, as he said in the speech in the clip you just played, he reached out to both the DNC and the RNC. He is not saying necessarily that he's endorsing Donald Trump and union members should all back him, but he perhaps sees it as in his best interest, the interest of his union to develop relationships with both parties, and if he could get the American political alignment to shift in such a way that both parties are competing for union endorsement that could be good for his members.

I think he's also, though, probably responding to a political reality, which is that a lot of the members of his union are Republican voters. They are Donald Trump fans. This is always a tricky thing to navigate the internal politics of unions. I do think that he probably sees that a whole lot of Teamsters in this country, regardless of whether you think they're voting in their self-interest, are supporters of Donald Trump, and this probably doesn't hurt him with those people.

Brian Lehrer: The traditional thinking on this is that some, at least white working-class workers, many vote Republican because race and culture war issues move them even more than their own economic interests, and they buy Republican trickle-down theory enough even if it doesn't actually work for them. Do you accept that frame, and do you think the Republicans are serious about actually trying to compete on direct union members' economic interests in a new way? Could there be, for example, a Sean O'Brien, Donald Trump deal for counterintuitive Republican economic policy that we haven't heard before?

McKay Coppins: It's in some ways the big question of the Trump era, was whether Donald Trump's newfound popularity with these elements of the electorate that previously tended to vote Democrat would actually shift the policies of the GOP. In first term, it didn't happen. When he was in office from 2017 to 2021, the GOP governed more or less, with the exception of trade, which you just noted, more or less like the traditional GOP that we've been used to.

I do think this is where his selection of J D Vance, though, may signal something. J D Vance came into the Senate as a Republican who actually was proposing legislation that you would not have seen in the old Republican party. He has tried to regulate the--

Brian Lehrer: Like what?

McKay Coppins: Actually, just one interesting moment is he showed up at a union protest, for the Auto Workers Union, which, again, you could argue is a symbolic gesture, but I think just seeing a Republican there was pretty strange.

He has worked with Democrats to propose railway regulation in a way that previous Republicans probably would've not done after the derailment in East Palestine. In general, he is very skeptical of large corporate mergers corporations. He sees himself as an antitrust hawk and anti-monopoly hawk. Has praised the Biden administration for the way that they have gone after large corporations, and has also proposed more aggressive regulation of big tech companies.

Put this all together, and it is a different Republican than we are used to when it comes to corporate power.

Brian Lehrer: On trade, because it deserves to be mentioned out loud because that's where the biggest switch has been previously, how much do you think it represents an actual swap of the two parties positions over time? The Reagan Republicans used to be all for open global trade, with Democrats opposed because of wage concerns. Now the Trump Republicans are the bigger hawks on the issue than Democrats today, maybe.

Honestly, McKay, I only hear Trump and other Republicans vilify China, not the multinational corporate CEOs. They want to tax the imports, the tariffs, but I'm not hearing policies that guarantee living wages, or stop corporations from moving those jobs if they find it in their interest.

McKay Coppins: No, and I think that their argument would be that by imposing tariffs on, for example, steel and aluminum, that that will force American companies to create more jobs here in the US. You're right that they're trying to strike this balancing act where, at least Trump has traditionally not wanted to alienate corporate America. Those are his donors. Those are his allies. Trade is honestly the thing that you hear the most griping about when you speak to the Republican donor class who has mostly gotten on board with him. They don't like his trade policies.

You're right that he focuses on China, maybe for demagogic reasons, though. I think also, he did extend some of his tariffs on steel and aluminum to the European Union as well. I think that the trade war rhetoric does matter. Again, this is not something you would have heard from George W Bush, from John McCain, from Mitt Romney. As for whether the parties will really swap positions, I think that partly depends on the Democratic Party.

I still think the Democrats are, although skeptical of the way that Trump has imposed tariffs, you still hear plenty from Joe Biden, for example, on bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. It's one of the most common talking points in American politics.

Brian Lehrer: He has kept some of the Trump tariffs from when Trump was president.

Listeners, any Teamsters, or retired Teamsters out there, or other union members, or people in so-called working class jobs, let's say this kind of working class job, manufacturing, or other jobs that can be outsourced to other countries. 212-433-WNYC. Let's hear your take or questions. Any reaction to Sean O'Brien, even agreeing to speak at the Republican convention, any change in your thinking over time about which party represents your economic interests? 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. Call or text, or anyone with anything as conventionally continues. McKay Coppins covering it for The Atlantic.

On JD Vance, one analysis I heard is that Trump is doubling down on trying to win the election through white male turnout in Midwest swing states. White male turnout in Midwest swing states. That's why not Marco Rubio, not Nikki Haley, not Tim Scott, but JD Vance. Does your reporting indicate that?

McKay Coppins: I think that's one way to interpret it. He clearly identifies best with those voters in places like Michigan and Pennsylvania. Though, I guess I'll say that if you hear the Trump campaign talk about it, they will grant the working class part but not the white part. They point to polls that show that they are outperforming every Republican presidential candidate in the past several decades with Black voters and Latino male voters. A lot of them are men. I think that that is an important distinction, but they see themselves as building a cross racial working class coalition.

That, of course, has been the dream of both the Republican and Democratic Party over the years. The Democratic Party succeeded for a long time, but I think the Trump campaign sees JD Vance as a tool in courting working class voters in those states. To be honest, when I talked to a lot of Republicans here, they actually don't see JD Vance as especially politically helpful in winning the election. They see his value more in if Trump is reelected, having a governing partner, and frankly, a successor to the MAGA movement because he has so thoroughly remade himself in the Trump image.

There's an old truism in campaign politics, which is that voters ultimately don't vote for the vice president, they vote for the president. The top of the ticket is what matters. I think Trump probably just likes JD Vance, and that's probably what drove this more than anything.

Brian Lehrer: Overanalyzed, perhaps the pick. Listener writes in response to the Teamsters president's language in the clip about the left considering him a traitor for even speaking at the Republican Convention. Listener writes, "Who's the left who considered him a traitor? Like Trump, he's not specific. So tired of these generalizations."

You're at the convention, you may not be reporting on this aspect, but if you have anything, are there other union leaders from other unions, or others who consider him to be a traitor for even speaking there, because certainly, the Teamsters have endorsed Democratic presidents going back at least to Barack Obama.

McKay Coppins: Yes. I don't know who he was responding to, and obviously, reporting on the left is not the easiest thing to do when you're inside the Republican National Convention. I will say that some of the delegates and attendees were a little uncomfortable with him being there. As much as Trump has reinvented this party, and as much as this convention really is thoroughly unified behind Trump in a way that was not true in 2016, I was at that convention and there was a lot of factionalism and disputes within the party that you could see, here, everybody is on board. There are still a lot of Republicans who have that traditional hostility skepticism toward unions who didn't quite know what to make of the head of the Teamsters being on stage in prime time at the Republican National Convention. I do think if Trump is committed to this strategy, he's going to have to pull along some portion of his party that is not naturally excited about it.

Brian Lehrer: Can you go one step deeper on this in terms of what it was like when O'Brien spoke there this week? Listener writes, "I would be interested in hearing how the crowd reacted to the call for backing and strengthening unions."

McKay Coppins: There was not like booing that I saw, and there was not a lot of in-the-moment signs of rejection or hostility. There actually was some applause, but it's more in the conversations afterward, and since where you sent some, I wouldn't say overt rejection of it, more just a sign of surprise.

Something that I think is important context here is that this convention, the overwhelming mood here is just extreme confidence. They feel very good about where the ticket is right now, where Trump is in the polls, that disarray on the democratic side certainly contributes to it, but everybody here is filtering every development through a prism of believing that Donald Trump is almost certainly going to win. Because of that, I think that they're probably more open-minded about some things that might've caused some heartburn in a different political context.

Brian Lehrer: Interesting. Are you hearing anything there about which path for the Democrats the Republicans think would be harder for them if Biden stays in or Biden drops out?

McKay Coppins: Yes, that's been really interesting subplot running through this convention. They're obviously enjoying the disarray and disunity on the Democratic side, and they're taking some sense of partisan schadenfreude. You can also sense in some of the conversations that a sense of worry that Joe Biden might actually get kicked off the ticket or step aside. I've been to a couple briefings from Trump campaign officials where they're talking about expanding the map and competing in places like Virginia, New Mexico, and even New Jersey.

I always take that stuff with a grain of salt whenever you hear a campaign official talk about expanding the electoral map, but it is true that Trump is doing better in the polls in some of these states than you would expect, and they have a lot of money.

I think that there is a sense of concern, frankly, on the Republican side that shaking up the status quo by replacing Biden on the top of the ticket could make things much more uncertain for them and create more paths for the Democrats. Whereas right now, they're pretty confident that they're going to win.

Brian Lehrer: We have some Teamsters and retired Teamsters calling in. I'm going to take a few of these calls in a second. I'll just read this other text first since we were talking about JD Vance. Listener writes, "Please mention why Trump had to pick a new vice president. His last vice president will not endorse him." Of course, Pence tried to uphold constitutional democracy by not throwing out the election on January 6th, all of that. Just a reminder from a listener about why, or even talking about someone other than Mike Pence right now.

Marshall in Nassau County, a Teamster. You're on WNYC. Marshall, thank you for calling in.

Marshall: Hey, how are you?

Brian Lehrer: Good. What you got?

Marshall: I was very disappointed that he's there. I understand it's politics and everything, and I feel that it's more for himself than for the Teamster. I see a lot from about my brothers here, they support Trump, but in general, my 804 are supporting Biden because we saw Biden as an actual was supporting the union, supporting us directly when we were trying to go on strike. We saw how Trump was talking about us. The whole idea that the Teamster trying to vote Republican, it's ludicrous, it's oxymoron because the Republicans always against union.

Brian Lehrer: You said some of your fellow Teamsters there are for Trump. Why, as far as you could tell?

Marshall: Just for their pocket. They think Trump is better for them in the long run. I never thought that. I see the politic, I see that the stuff Trump tried to do was against us 100%. We saw what he did with the union or the post office when he kicked them out from the API building. We saw them when he went to a non-union shop when the auto-

Brian Lehrer: Auto workers.

Marshall: -union worker. Yes, the auto workers trying to strike. He went to non-union shop with fake union sign. We saw that, and I'm like, "I just don't understand." O'Brien is going to--

Brian Lehrer: That's right.

Marshall: He's losing me.

Brian Lehrer: I think was at a non-union shop. He's losing you. Marshall, thank you for calling in. Call us again. Mark in Babylon, a retired Teamster. Mark, you're on WNYC. Hi.

Mark: Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: What you got?

Mark: I was responding to what you said about showing up, Brian, and everything, and I do trust him. I was a little offput by his attendance there. I think your guess is 100% right why he went and because he has to appeal to the union members on the right. Most of the union guys, they're not one-topic voters. They like their guns, they like this and that. Not to say there aren't many union men that are just going to vote for Biden.

The previous caller was 100% correct, that Biden does so much of the union movement and these Teamsters and other union members, they don't see it. They don't see it. They just want to stick with all that ration that Trump provides and everything else.

Brian Lehrer: Mark, thank you very much. Earl in Toms River. Not a Teamster, I don't think, but has a point to make. Earl, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Earl: I was in a union for a brief period of time, actually, I'm sorry, two, in a food union and a construction union. I am a sole proprietor construction business. One of the things that I think a lot of people don't care for is that Biden has been pushing us paying for other people's college educations. I paid for my own. I have a chemistry degree. I was going to be a pharmacist, but I didn't really care for the working conditions. I did what came naturally to me, to have my own business.

Donald Trump, he has a lot of faults, but he's the only person that's ever given small business sole proprietors a tax break. Everybody thinks it's about the rich people that got the tax break. It's little guys like me that are making $80,000 a year. I got a tax break. That's something that no Democrat, my governor included, I'm in New Jersey, has never given any care to the little people. That's why there's a lot of support out there for him.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you, Earl. Appreciate your call. Mckay, an interesting call in terms of at least the resentment that he mentioned at the beginning of what Democrats pay for, that some union members resent, like the student loan forgiveness,

McKay Coppins: The student loan forgiveness has been a political [unintelligible 00:25:25] that Republicans have wielded against Democrats ever since it was proposed. Obviously, the Biden administration have numbers to argue that that program would help a lot of middle-class and working-class people. Look, a lot of people who didn't go to college, they look at that as a massive, very expensive handout to college kids. Whereas a lot of them feel like that's not what the government needs to be spending money on, it's not what the Democratic party needs to be spending money on. It's a sign of, if nothing else, where the Democratic Party sees its core constituency, and it's not with non-college-educated union workers. That, at least, would be the argument that Republicans would advance, and that I think a lot of people find pretty resonance.

Brian Lehrer: We'll take one more call in this set. Charlotte in Manhattan has a question about Sean O'Brien, president of the Teamsters appearing at the Republican Convention. Charlotte, you're on WNYC. Hello?

Charlotte: Hi. Thanks for taking my call. Yes, I was wondering why the Democrats didn't take up on O'Brien's offer to speak at their convention, and wouldn't it be important for them to do so, and wouldn't it also be important for them to have Sean staying of the United Auto Workers also at their convention?

Brian Lehrer: Charlottes, thank you. Just so people know where that stands, yes, Sean O'Brien said in the clip from his Republican convention speech that he offered to speak at both parties' conventions. The Republicans, in a historic surprise, took him up on it. The Democrats haven't said anything yet. I think, McKay, the Democrats have just said they haven't finalized their convention speaker lineup yet, but I would imagine they're going to allow him to speak, or do you have any other intelligence on that?

McKay Coppins: I don't. I would be very surprised if he wasn't at that convention. The Democrats do not want to cede any ground here. I think if they didn't have him on stage, even if it's not in quite as high profile a speaking slot, if he got at the RNC, it would be an acknowledgment that they were basically letting the Republicans take his support and the support of a lot of his members. Look, it's also important to note here that the Democratic Convention is not only not finalized, the ticket that might be nominated is in flux. The Democrats might have bigger problems to be dealing with at the moment.

Brian Lehrer: Details, details. One more text. Listener writes, "No mystery why union members support Trump. He's the first president to raise hell about moving manufacturing overseas." We'll continue in a minute with McKay Coppins covering the Republican Convention for the Atlantic. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC with McKay Coppins, who's been covering the Republican party for a decade now, and is covering the Republican Convention for the Atlantic this week. I want to turn to foreign policy, and Nikki Haley and something in particular that she said in her convention speech this week caught my ear. I want to get your reaction to it in the context of some of your recent reporting about Europe. First, I just want to remind people how far Nikki Haley traveled to endorse Trump and wind up as a speaker this week. Here is Nikki Haley in January.

Nikki Haley: Kristen, look at what happened just in the 48 hours after the election. Here, he was totally unhinged, went on a rampage election night talking about revenge. Then the next day he goes and says, "Anybody who supports me is not going to be allowed to be part of MAGA." Well, that means those people that voted for me in Iowa and New Hampshire, and those people who donated to me, really, you're going to go and say they're not in your club. You're supposed to be president representing everyone.

Brian Lehrer: That was Nikki Haley with Kristen Welker on NBC's Meet the Press after the New Hampshire primary. Then there was this, remember, it's so easy to forget because so much has happened since, including in courts of law for Donald Trump, but a jury found him liable for sexual assault. Remember that? Nikki Haley had this to say about that on Meet the Press.

Nikki Haley: What is unique about this case is that the jury has now ruled. They have found him liable of sexual abuse. Do you not trust the jury and their findings, Ambassador?

Ambassador: I absolutely trust the jury. I think that they made their decision based on the evidence. I just don't think that should take him off the ballot. I think the American people will take him off the ballot. I think that's the best way to go forward, is not let him play the victim, let him play the loser.

Brian Lehrer: McKay, that is a long way to travel from supporting the jury that found him liable for sexual assault, and then say, "Never mind."

McKay Coppins: Yes, this is part of the humiliation of Republicans, and this has been happening now for eight years, making really full-throated, in often cases, witheringly personal cases against Donald Trump and his character, and then lining up behind him once he wins the nomination or gets to the White House.

In Nikki Haley's case, she reminds me of Marco Rubio's candidacy in 2016, where he took pride in being the member of the Republican primary field, who was most willing to expose Donald Trump's many character defects, and often in very full-throated terms, and then he was at the convention in 2016 endorsing him.

Nikki Haley, I guess what surprises me most about her, and it sounds like we're going to get to that, is that her differences with Donald Trump on substantive policy mostly have to do with foreign policy. She had a front-row seat to the way Donald Trump thought about and executed foreign policy in his first administration. She was the US Ambassador to the UN under Trump. She sounded the alarm bell throughout her primary about the way that Trump cozied up to strong men and autocrats around the world, about how he was skeptical of American alliances, about his handling of the war in Ukraine. That is where she had her sharpest policy differences with him. She doubled down on his foreign policy with his selection of JD Vance, who is a staunch nationalist who has said, "I don't care what happens in Ukraine."

To see her go out on that stage, and offer him a yes, qualified, but still pretty enthusiastic endorsement, I think really raises some questions about what happened to those grave concerns about the way that Donald Trump sees American power in the world.

Brian Lehrer: In that context, I can hardly believe that Nikki Haley got on stage this week and said this.

Nikki Haley: When Barack Obama was president, Vladimir Putin invaded Crimea, with Joe Biden as President, Putin invaded all of Ukraine, but when Donald Trump was president, Putin did nothing. No invasions.

[cheering]

No invasions, no wars. That was no accident. Putin didn't attack Ukraine, because he knew Donald Trump was tough.

Brian Lehrer: McKay, I have to admit, I've never heard that argument before, for why Putin did what he did and didn't do what he didn't do at any particular time. I'm curious based on your reporting a recent article about how European leaders fear another Trump election. How would European leaders have heard that kind of framing of Putin and Ukraine, if you can speculate?

McKay Coppins: Yes, it's interesting. That talking point, I had not heard before either, until I got to Milwaukee, and a couple of days leading up to her speech, I started hearing that idea, that argument in multiple conversations. I don't know if that's a talking point that's circulating now in Republican circles or in conservative media, but it is a big talking point.

I think that probably most European leaders would find the argument preposterous on its face, the idea that Vladimir Putin is intimidated by Trump, or thinks he's too strong or tougher, whatever, to go through with his plans of conquest and territorial annexation. There isn't a ton of evidence for it, except for that data points that she lays out.

There are some people in Europe and foreign policy experts around the world who do have theories of the case that hold that basically because Trump was so friendly with Putin, because he had made these efforts to normalize relations with Russia, that he and Putin had a mutual admiration society, that Putin maybe did at least in that first term hold off on overtly provocative moves that might have politically damaged Trump. If Trump is reelected, he'll be a lame-duck president, he only has one term. It's not clear to me that that would affect Putin's plans.

It's also true that Trump, and I think this is an important context in any discussion here, Trump has signaled pretty clearly that he is open to and in fact, pretty supportive of a peace deal that would cede large portions of Ukrainian territory to Russia, which is something the Biden administration has not entertained, that so far, Western governments have been very hostile to. The idea that Vladimir Putin is cowed by Donald Trump's strength, I think we just don't see a lot of evidence for that.

Brian Lehrer: We're just about at a time, but anything you want to say that you're expecting to hear from Donald Trump tonight in his acceptance speech based on everything else we've been talking about this week from the convention? Or they may have been different, that may now be different because of the assassination attempt?

McKay Coppins: Yes, the thing that I'll be keeping an eye on is just what kind of tone he strikes in his speech. He has said, after the assassination attempt, that he rewrote his nomination speech to make it about national unity. Whether that ends up being true, I think that'll be an interesting question. That is not his natural first language, trying to unify the country, obviously.

Speaking to Trump campaign officials here, they claim that he wants to seize this mantle in this moment of being a unifying figure, of reaching beyond his base. That'll be the question. I don't know if he's capable of it, but it certainly would be an interesting development to see him try to make that pivot. That's what I'll be most interested in.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. One way to listen for the word unity tonight, might be in the context of how he uses it, right? We had another journalist on the show earlier in the week who deconstructed what people were saying right after the assassination. Joe Biden and House Speaker Mike Johnson, were calling on everybody in both parties to turn down the temperature. Trump himself called for unity. That journalist pointed out that Trump has often called for unity in the past, but what that means when he says it is, "Everybody should unify behind me." We'll see if it comes with any kind of other outreach tonight.

McKay Coppins: I will just, as a public service announcement, add one other little bit of intelligence I picked up here, which is that, Chris LaCivita, the chief strategist at the Trump campaign, said that the speeches are going to be quite long. If you're planning to sit down and watch it, you should set aside at least an hour and a half.

Brian Lehrer: Wow.

McKay Coppins: Maybe just a little programming note for anybody who's planning to tune into the RNC tonight.

Brian Lehrer: Well, Donald Trump, no stranger to knowing how to dominate prime time, so there you go. [chuckles] Have a cup of coffee around eight o'clock. All right. McKay Coppins, covering the Republican Convention for the Atlantic. He's also author of the books, The Wilderness, about the battle over the future of the Republican Party, which came out in 2015, and Romney: A Reckoning, his biography of Mitt Romney that came out last year. McKay, we always appreciate it. Thank you so much for taking the time in a busy week for you out there.

McKay Coppins: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, much more to come.

 

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