RNC Night 2: Nikki Haley Endorses Trump, Hopes To Woo Skeptics

This episode delves into the key speeches and dynamics of the second night of the Republican National Convention, focusing particularly on Nikki Haley's endorsement of Donald Trump.

1. Nikki Haley's endorsement of Trump marked a significant political pivot, aiming to consolidate support within the GOP.
2. The episode underscores the GOP's complete ideological merger with Trump, particularly on issues like border security and electoral integrity.
3. Discussions highlight the internal conflicts and strategic alignments among Republicans, illustrating a party in transition yet firmly under Trump's sway.
4. The hosts reflect on the broader implications of Trump's influence on the party's future, particularly regarding the peaceful transfer of power.
5. The episode also critiques the GOP's use of security and immigration issues as central themes, noting their resonance with the party base.

1: Introduction and Overview

The hosts introduce the episode and set the stage for the night's analysis, highlighting the theme of making America safe again and the spotlight on GOP's future stars.
Asma Khalid: "What really stood out to me was that this was a night that showcased the potential future of the GOP."

2: Nikki Haley's Endorsement

Discussion of Nikki Haley's political journey and her endorsement of Donald Trump, analyzing her motivations and the implications for her future in the party.
Sarah McCammon: "Nikki Haley has had a complicated relationship with Trump... Tonight, she very much embraced Trump."

3: GOP's Ideological Direction

Exploration of the ideological shifts within the Republican Party under Trump, including stances on immigration and the rejection of a peaceful transfer of power.
Mara Liasson: "Trump has completely remade the party... This is now a party that does not accept the peaceful transfer of power."

4: Election Integrity and Voter Sentiment

Analysis of the Republican stance on election integrity and how it resonates with the party base, reflecting on the deep-seated beliefs among Republican voters.
Mara Liasson: "The majority of Republican voters believe Trump's lie that he won the election in 2020."

1. Stay informed about the positions and policies of political figures to understand their potential impacts on governance.
2. Engage in political discussions with a critical perspective, especially concerning claims made during campaign seasons.
3. Fact-check significant claims, especially those related to election integrity and public safety.
4. Participate in community and electoral activities to have a direct influence on political outcomes.
5. Encourage open and respectful political dialogue to foster a more informed electorate.

Night two of the Republican National Convention was full of speeches by former Trump rivals offering their full endorsement of the nominee. That includes former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who had previously warned that a Trump presidency would be "four years of chaos, vendettas and drama."

This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, national political correspondent Sarah McCammon, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.

The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Our intern is Bria Suggs. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.

People

Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Vivek Ramaswamy

Content Warnings:

None

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Asma Khalid
Hey, there. It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

Sarah McCammon
I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the presidential campaign.

Mara Liasson
And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.

Asma Khalid
And it is currently 10:19 p.m. central time on Tuesday, July 16. And we are just wrapping up night two of the Republican National Convention. The theme of the night was Make America safe again. But you know, what really stood out to me was that this was a night that showcased the potential future of the GOP, the bench, some of the very politicians who ran against Donald Trump to become the GOP nominee. Maura, who stood out to you?

Mara Liasson
Well, they were all there. Ron DeSantis, who, of course, had a hard time during the campaign figuring out how to run against Trump. He's now come into the fold. And here's a little bit of what he said.

Ron DeSantis
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.

Mara Liasson
So he's totally on the Trump train, keeping his, his options open for 2028. Then, of course, sitting in the reviewing stand, so to speak, with Donald Trump as JD Vance, who was, if they're elected, he's going to be the obvious person to run in 2028 because Donald Trump, if he's elected, would be a lame duck. He's already served one term. He can only serve one more.

Asma Khalid
We had a number of other folks, too. I was thinking of Marco Rubio, the senator from Florida, Vivek Ramaswamy, this indian american entrepreneur who also ran for president. But, Sarah, what was also, I think, very interesting tonight is that we heard an announcement from Nikki Healey, who both served under Donald Trump in his administration, then went on to become very critical of the former president. But in classic political fashion, she kind of came full circle and offered a full throated endorsement of the former president.

Sarah McCammon
Right. Nikki Haley has had a, you know, a complicated relationship with Trump. She was his United nations ambassador. You know, she presented really the most significant challenge in a primary. That was never very much of a primary, to be honest.

You know, she was the last woman.

And, you know, her trajectory has been really interesting. I mean, she started out in February right before the South Carolina primary. She made this, this big speech where she said she wasn't dropping out, she didn't need to kiss the ring. And she said that many of the same politicians who publicly embraced Trump privately dread him.

Tonight, she very much embraced Trump. She said, make no mistake, this is a, this is. I strongly endorse Trump. And, you know, it just illustrates Asma Trump's dominance of the party. There's really no non Trump lane anymore.

Asma Khalid
I mean, what is the future for someone like Nikki Haley in Donald Trump's republican party?

Mara Liasson
She can run in 2028 if she wants to. I mean, we have no idea what the world is going to look like or what the Republican Party is, how it's going to be judged by 2028. It's four very short years away. She's still young. There is no doubt that one of her reasons to come here to endorse him is to keep her options open to run again in four years.

Asma Khalid
Sarah, what was the purpose of Hailey's speech tonight? What was she aiming to do for Donald Trump?

Sarah McCammon
Well, rhetorically, the purpose was to try to persuade the fence centers, the people who, you know, might be conservative leaning or typical republican voters but still have misgivings about Trump to come out for him. You don't have to agree with Trump 100% of the time to vote for, for Haley, though. It seems like the purpose is to stay relevant, you know, to stay alive in this party. She had to come around. There was really no, I mean, yes, people supported her in the primary. There were, you know, I reported on the fact that even after she dropped out, you know, she was still on a few state ballots and she still had a decent showing. But, you know, 15, 20%, that's not a movement. And Trump, again, is so in control of this party. This looks like Hailey and many others that we saw on the stage tonight trying to lay the groundwork for a.

Mara Liasson
Future in this party and to accommodate themselves to somebody that they criticized very, very bitterly over a long time and had profound differences with. And they decided they weren't going to be like Mike Pence, Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney. They were not going to go that route. They wanted to stay relevant in the Trump Republican Party.

Asma Khalid
Mara, you mentioned there a number of names of people, former party nominees. I mean, I'm thinking of someone even like George W. Bush. You mentioned Mike Pence, Trump's former vice president. Weren't there. What do you make of that?

Mara Liasson
What? This is a very deep and clean break with the old Republican Party. Trump has completely remade it. And the biggest change of all is not just the policies on Trump or immigration or corporate America. The biggest change is this is now a party that does not accept the peaceful transfer of power. Donald Trump has never said he'd accept election results unless he won. Today there was a videotape of him telling republican voters that democrats cheat. He said it's the only thing they're good at. His message is basically, heads, I win. Tills, you cheated. Getting ready to contest the results of this election if, in fact, he doesn't win. Now that I believe that that videotape was made before some of the recent events that caused this party to be so incredibly confident about their chances.

Sarah McCammon
And I think that idea has been totally absorbed by Republicans. I mean, I don't know about the two of you, but when I travel, when I talk to voters, very rarely do I hear republicans that come out to events like this, you know, give a full throated acknowledgement of the fact that Biden won the 2020 election. They always express doubts.

Mara Liasson
No, no, no. The majority poll after poll has shown that the majority of republican voters believe Trump's lie that he won the election in 2020.

Asma Khalid
All right, well, on that note, let's take a quick break and we'll be back in a moment.

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Asma Khalid
And we're back. And you all can probably hear some of the music. That's because we are here in the arena, where night two of the Republican National Convention just wrapped up. So, you know, it's a bit of a mood and an atmosphere I want to talk about. I want to talk a little bit more about some of the specific policy priorities that came up today. We heard about illegal border crossings. We heard a lot about fentanyl, a lot about the need to make America, in the view of the Republican Party, as they say, safe again and safer than it has been. Mara, border crossings is something we hear a lot about from Republicans. They were indeed, at one point during the Biden administration at all time record highs. But, you know, the White House has been saying that after some executive actions by the president, they have fallen off precipitously.

Mara Liasson
Yes, and the Republicans are certainly not going to give the Biden administration credit for that. But the border, border, which is conflated with crime and drugs and illegal immigration, that is Donald Trump's signature issue. When he came down the escalator in 2015, he talked about Mexico sending rapists. And this is just an issue that is so deeply associated with him.

You heard a lot about it tonight, and you're going to hear a lot about it for the rest of the campaign.

Asma Khalid
And border crossings that at one point were indeed at all time record highs during the Biden administration lately after some executive actions taken by President Biden have indeed fallen off. In fact, I got some information earlier from a White House official that indicated that the number of encounters at the southwest border have decreased by more than 50% after the actions taken by Congress.

Mara Liasson
And also, just to fact check, something else that was a big theme tonight was crimes committed by illegal immigrants, the people who've been raped and murdered. And there were, there were many, many speeches about this tonight. In fact, crimes committed by illegal immigrants are way, way, way lower than crimes committed by legal immigrants or american citizens. And one other tiny fact check, there was a video they played tonight that showed over and over again Joe Biden saying, we're going to surge the border, as if he was inviting illegal immigrants to surge across the border. That is taken totally out of context. What he was saying, we're going to surge more judges and, and border patrol officers to the border to deal with.

Sarah McCammon
This, the opposite of the opposite of what they. But, you know, but this is an issue, regardless of the reality on the ground, this is an issue that we've seen has so much staying power. It was, of course, just, you know, sort of the banner issue for Trump's first campaign, and it's still one that voters say is high on their priority list.

Mara Liasson
We hear there was a tremendous amount of uncontrolled cross.

Sarah McCammon
There was a tremendous influence.

Mara Liasson
Yeah.

Sarah McCammon
And I think the polls suggest that across the board or in general, voters say they have more confidence in Trump on that issue.

Asma Khalid
You know, there's also this matter of the fentanyl crisis, which has continued to be severe for a number of years. Sarah, I'm curious if you see the Republicans really being able to own this issue. And I guess I'm asking this in part because of where the vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, hails from. He certainly has spoken about this issue in the past. He seems to take an interest in it.

Sarah McCammon
You know, the opioid epidemic, the drug crisis. This was a major theme of his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, that bestseller through which I think a lot of people probably first heard of JD Vance before he was elected to the Senate, you know, just, just sworn in last year.

You know, he talks about his mother's struggle with addiction and the way that drugs personally affected, you know, people in his community in a way that I think a lot of people understand as this problem has, has touched so many communities. I was thinking about, you know, we heard so many speakers tonight talk about addiction, sort of blame Joe Biden for it in some way. But, but the reality is this has been a growing problem for many, many years. It was something we heard about back in the 2016 campaign from a lot of candidates who, some of whom also had had personal family experiences with drug addiction.

So, yes, I think we'll, it's something that Vance can speak to as somebody from Appalachia, but it's kind of an intractable problem that neither party really seems to have a solution for because there's no easy solution for it.

Asma Khalid
One thing that has stood out to me from this convention so far is just how different the energy feels, the energy that we're hearing on stage and speeches, the conversations that I'm having with delegates and voters compared to the last in person republican convention we heard in 2016. You know, the themes are very much the same. We heard a lot, you know, as we say tonight, about the border, immigration, but the mood now feels more confident, more optimistic, not as angry and combative as it was then?

Mara Liasson
Well, I would say very, very confident, very optimistic about witting, but just as angry and combative as they were?

Oh, absolutely. Listen to those speeches. The amount of grievance and anger and talking about how Donald Trump is a victim and a martyr and how he's been treated terribly and the unfair convictions. And to hear Sarah Huckabee Sanders talk about all of the times that she'd been dissed in a restaurant, in a parking lot by the elites and by the horrible radical left, I mean, I think this is a party. Donald Trump is the grievance candidate. It's like grievance is their jet fuel, and that hasn't gone away. Now, are they extremely confident about winning? Yes. He's ahead in the polls, and it seems like he's gaining almost every day.

Asma Khalid
And a lot of people seem to be in a good mood. And even that thinking you're going to.

Mara Liasson
Win will do that.

Sarah McCammon
Yeah. I mean, as I see it, the message is the same. The vibes are a little happier. I mean, when I talk to individual delegates, they're feeling really confident, really good. But as you say, Mara, I mean, the fundamental message hasn't really changed.

Asma Khalid
You don't think, though, that we're hearing a little bit more about the need to expand the party? It's something I heard at a delegation.

Mara Liasson
He wouldn't have picked JD Vance if that's what he wanted to do. Well, I think JD Vance is to double down on Maga. Now, of course, are there African Americans on stage? There are always more people of color on stage at a republican convention than in the audience. That's been true for decades. Nothing has changed there. But, yes, there is great hope among Republicans that we see polling that young men, young african american men, young hispanic men, they find the Republican Party more appealing or they find Trump more appealing. But I don't think that there has been a change in tone.

We'll see. When Trump himself comes out on Thursday and gives his speech, is he going to be warm and fuzzy, or is he going to be the same kind of slashing, cruel candidate that he's been, which thrills his supporters?

Sarah McCammon
I mean, we did see Laura Trump in the final speech of the night tonight, talk a lot about, you know, how everybody is included and sort of, it doesn't matter your skin color, it doesn't matter your religion. When you go to a Trump rally, everybody is welcome. I mean, we did hear that message.

Mara Liasson
As Mars hearing that message, vermin poisoning the blood of our country is not that message.

Sarah McCammon
But this is, but this is very trumpian Trump. Trump is very good.

Mara Liasson
Trump says many different things, sometimes in the space of 1 hour, and he.

Sarah McCammon
Becomes a Rorschach test. So you hear what you want to hear and you see what you want to see.

But I will be very curious to see the exit polls in November, to see if those polls that you just mentioned where young black men and young latino men seem to be, you know, Trump seems to be gaining support among them compared to last time, if that turns out to be real.

Asma Khalid
So before we wrap up today's show, we have a bit of news that we want to update you all. Coming from the other side of the political aisle. President Biden is preparing to call for, for Supreme Court justices and an enforceable ethics code. This was all first reported by the Washington Post. It was also confirmed by our colleague Deepa Shivram. You know, real talk here, these proposals will require congressional action or a constitutional amendment. So they are a long shot. Let's be clear here. But, Mara, what is really going on?

Mara Liasson
If I were a democratic strategist, I'd be asking, gee, what took you so long? You know, they had that court task force, Supreme Court task force, to look at various reforms.

The term limits is the simplest way to make sure that every president gets two chances, two nominees. If the term limits are 18 years, that would guarantee that every president would get two.

And somehow, I don't know what you do with the emeritus justices, but they'd have to work that out. As far as the ethics code, Congress has the ability to do that. Congress can change what is in the purview of the court. And it sounds like finally Biden has decided what he's for. He's not for expanding the court. He is for term limiting the justice.

Asma Khalid
But here we are just a few months away from the court.

Mara Liasson
Oh, nothing is going to happen with this. But because of the way the court has acted, the fact that they have completely rejected any effort to have an ethics code of their own, there have been conflicts of interest that they have dismissed.

I think this is going to become a staple for Democrats. I think they're now going to settle on this term limits, not court expansion.

And, you know, we'll be hearing about it for many, many, many years.

Sarah McCammon
I wonder if it's enough to excite the democratic base. I think a lot of progressives really want an expanded court. But, you know, polling suggests that term.

Mara Liasson
Limits, I think they will accept much.

Sarah McCammon
Broader support for term limits.

Asma Khalid
It'll be interesting. Biden needs a lot more than that.

Mara Liasson
To excite the democratic base at this point.

Sarah McCammon
Fair enough. And as you said, nothing's going to happen with this before the election. But it reminds me really of the way that Republican spent so many years, decades building toward getting this conservative Supreme Court. And now Democrats understand that they have to pay attention to this, too.

Mara Liasson
Amy well, this is something that Democrats have been beyond negligent for 50 years. Republicans kept their eye on the ball. They wanted to overturn Roe.

They never wavered. They kept on trying. They created the federalist Society. They got the judges in the pipeline. They did whatever they needed to do. They never were deterred.

Sarah McCammon
ROBERT they got Trump elected.

Mara Liasson
They got Trump elected. Meanwhile, Democrats laid back and figured that court will always protect them, which I think was political malpractice. And now they know that that's not true.

Asma Khalid
All right, well, let's leave it there for today. We'll be back in your feeds again late tomorrow night. And one final note. We want to thank member station WUM 89.7 Milwaukee's and PR for production help this week. We're very grateful for their hospitality and their warm welcome to their city. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the white.

Sarah McCammon
I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the campaign.

Mara Liasson
And I'm Mara Liasson, senior national political correspondent.

Asma Khalid
And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR politics podcast.

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