Amanpour & Co. - July 16, 2024
The RNC is being closely watched for answers about how the GOP will fine-tune its strategy for the Oval Office. How will Trump further shift the ideological foundations of the party? How seriously should “Project 2025” be taken? And what can the Democratic Party do differently? To answer these questions, Hari Sreenivasan asks Astead Herndon, New York Times National Politics Reporter.
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00:00Hello, everyone, and welcome to Amanpour & Co. Here's what's coming up.
00:13Trump riding high with J.D. Vance by his side. What this GOP ticket would mean for the world.
00:20Kurt Volker, former U.S. ambassador to NATO, joins me. Then...
00:23Everything that reflects connections with other people are going down.
00:26How many times last year did you go to church?
00:29How many times did you go to a dinner party?
00:32The United States of loneliness. I ask renowned political scientist Robert Putnam, author
00:37of Bowling Alone, how that can lead to violence in politics. Plus...
00:43The traditional kind of policy writing process, the platform process that we think about that
00:47happens at these type of conventions has been totally upended by Trump already.
00:52From Milwaukee, the New York Times' Ested Herndon talks to Hari Sreenivasan about the
00:57RNC at this critical moment.
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02:04Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London. Day two of the Republican
02:08Convention in Wisconsin has wrapped up, and a sense of dread has descended here across
02:14the pond since former President Trump named as his running mate the ultra-isolationist
02:19Senator J.D. Vance. Trump, his ear bandaged, had been greeted like a hero at the Milwaukee
02:25Convention Center on the first day, and it was his first appearance since the assassination
02:30attempt this weekend. Fight, fight, fight, the crowds cheered and chanted, we love Trump.
02:36And in a moment, we'll dive into the global implications of this new GOP ticket. But first,
02:41let's go to correspondent Jeff Zellney at the convention for the very latest. I guess
02:46I really want to ask you first, Jeff, thanks for being with us. What, why do you think
02:52it was J.D. Vance? It doesn't bring anything if Trump wanted to expand the base. He's a
02:59white man.
03:01Christiane, it's such an interesting question. I think what it brings, though, is an extension
03:07of Trumpism, what an extension of the Trump brand of politics from this populist strain
03:14that is coursing through domestic politics in the United States, and also an isolationist
03:19strain as well. He is a continuation of the Donald Trump era. So I think that is what
03:25former President Donald Trump, talking to his advisers, was looking for.
03:28Yes, their chemistry is good. And, yes, it's someone who doesn't threaten him in the short
03:33term. The longer-term question is a bigger one, because immediately, should they win
03:38an election in November, J.D. Vance will be thinking immediately about 2028. So that
03:45will be a complication.
03:46But in the shorter term, no, it doesn't necessarily bring him suburban voters like a Nikki Haley
03:51might have. That's what some Republicans here were hoping for, really an expansion of the
03:56base. We talked a lot about the unity message that Donald Trump claims to want to bring
04:02here. This did very little for that.
04:04But I think it's a sign that Trump is doubling down on trying to focus on some of these Midwestern
04:10states like Pennsylvania, like Michigan, like Wisconsin, turning out his own voters rather
04:16than trying to expand to perhaps win over some of the ones who are still skeptical of
04:22Donald Trump.
04:23Yes, and including, I mean, there was Senator Tim Scott, the black senator from South Carolina.
04:30There was Marco Rubio, the Hispanic senator from Florida. All of those groups didn't get
04:35picked, which is really, really interesting for people trying to read the tea leaves.
04:40I talked about the isolationism of J.D. Vance. And people may remember how he did not meet
04:46with Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine. And that's causing some worry that
04:50he just doesn't think there should be more aid to Ukraine.
04:55How's that going to go down in the GOP, which broadly supports Ukraine aid?
05:01Christian, what we can really see year by year, it's been becoming clear. Now it is
05:06even more so. This is not Ronald Reagan's Republican Party. This is Donald Trump's Republican
05:11Party. And the isolationist strain is first and foremost among the foreign policy.
05:17So that is one of the biggest divides. For all the talk of unity here, and there is unity
05:21around Donald Trump. But there are deep divisions inside this Republican Party about foreign
05:26aid first and foremost.
05:28Senator Mitch McConnell, who, of course, has been a big proponent of aid to Ukraine, he
05:32was booed on the floor of this convention quite loudly yesterday. I wasn't surprised
05:37that he didn't get a warm welcome. I was a little surprised at how loud and energetic
05:42the boos were.
05:43But, look, this is something that has been happening in the Trump era. And J.D. Vance
05:48signifies a lot of this isolationist strain in the party. And he's a young senator. He's
05:55not even 40 years old. He will be by November.
05:57So should they win, this is really taking that many, many years, perhaps even a decade
06:04or more from this. But we will see how those differences resolve themselves in the campaign
06:09if President Biden uses that as a way in here.
06:12But it's unclear that foreign policy really is on top of mind of American voters.
06:17And actually, when you consider, no matter what your politics are, that an elder of the
06:21party like Mitch McConnell is booed, it certainly puts paid to the notion of unity. If they're
06:27not unified within their own party, how can they be unified any other way, as Trump has
06:32said that he wants to be?
06:34And I understood that was the directive to delegates and others speaking, to just show
06:40a unity message.
06:42But we have to ask you a different question, because there's been some news that has just
06:46come in. And let me just read a little bit of it.
06:49It regards the conviction of Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey on a jury has found him
06:56guilty on all counts in his federal corruption trial.
07:00That's 16 counts.
07:02Just what's the significance of that at this time?
07:08Christian, it's very significant, found guilty on 16 counts.
07:12This is the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee in the U.S.
07:15Senate. This is someone who has had access and has continued to receive classified briefings.
07:20This is very extraordinary.
07:22But for the fact that a former president was also convicted just a couple of months ago,
07:27this would be incredibly unusual. Now it seems, I guess, a bit of a sign of the times.
07:32But it also pushes back certainly on the notion that the Justice Department was simply out
07:37to get Donald Trump. And this is a Democratic senator charged and found guilty of 16 counts.
07:44It also, I think, erodes some of the Democratic Party's attempt at moral high ground here
07:48in terms of corruption allegations and the like.
07:52I'm not sure that voters will pay that much attention to it across the country. New Jersey,
07:57obviously significant. Will he have to resign his seat? Will he not? We will find that out
08:01in the coming days.
08:02Of course, this is the not the first time the senator has been charged, but the first
08:05time he's been convicted of this. So it's an extraordinarily serious count, the bribery
08:11allegations, et cetera.
08:13But again, it's it's hardly a one-off in this political season here in the U.S.
08:18I mean, just hearing you say that is already sort of mind blowing. It's a sign of the times.
08:24And we'll dive a little bit more deeply into that later in the program.
08:27Jeff Zeleny, thank you so much for being with us.
08:29Now, as we said, Trump's choice of the 39 year old J.D. Vance is being watched closely
08:34over here. Vance is seen as one of the most isolationist and no friend of key.
08:40One senior EU official told Politico this is a disaster for Ukraine. He has argued against
08:45any further support and even refused to meet the president, President Zelensky, that is,
08:50at this year's Munich Security Conference.
08:52So what to make of this ticket and the consequences for the alliance? For that, let us turn to
08:57Kurt Volker, former U.S. ambassador to NATO and was special representative on Ukraine
09:03for President Trump.
09:04Welcome back to the program. Can I just start by asking you, Kurt, I don't know whether
09:09you're going to be able to answer this, but the notion that it is a sign of the times
09:14that all these consequential politicians, including the Republican nominee, are convicted
09:20of crimes and felonies. I mean, can you just relate to that?
09:28Yeah, I think each case is different. I think with Senator Menendez, you know, what we heard
09:33about his situation, gold bars hidden and cash hidden in the coat pockets of clothing
09:41in his closet, I mean, that's really extraordinary.
09:44What we have seen with former President Trump, this is payoffs to Stormy Daniels, because
09:51he didn't want her talking about having sex with him during the election campaign, something
09:56that everybody already knew, and everybody knew that he did pay that. He didn't even
10:00deny paying that.
10:02So very different circumstances there. I don't think it's necessarily a sign of the times,
10:08meaning that we're going to see more and more and more of this. But you do see a tendency
10:14towards using the justice system to talk at least about political opponents. You know,
10:22you have the Democrats referring now to President Trump as saying, oh, he's a convicted felon.
10:28And you have the Republicans going after President Biden and his son, Hunter Biden,
10:33now also a convicted felon. So it become part of the political dialogue in a way. I'm not
10:38sure it pretends much about the future other than individual behavior.
10:43And of course, Trump has notably racked up a lot of legal victories by the more serious
10:47allegations and indictments and, you know, charges having been delayed or dismissed altogether.
10:54But let's move on. From your perspective, former NATO ambassador, you believe very strongly
11:00in ensuring that Putin doesn't win, ensuring that Ukraine does survive. What do you think
11:07this ticket will do? And how do you react to at least one European saying that this
11:13is a disaster for Kyiv?
11:15Yeah, well, the first advice I would have for all my European friends and our allies
11:21is don't react with emotion and don't push back on, you know, don't be so negative toward
11:29Trump or J.D. Vance, because that's only going to cause a counterreaction from them about
11:35not liking Europe. I would say, don't make any assumptions about what policy would be.
11:41Europe should do its own homework on what needs to be done in Europe and what they're
11:45prepared to do. And then be proactive. Let's be problem solvers here about what needs to
11:49actually get done. Propose things to the U.S. that Europe would like to do. I think
11:54that's a much more pragmatic way to handle things.
11:57As for what this selection means, I have to say, I don't think it means very much. First
12:02off, Trump is going to be the president. And we already know Trump. We've seen him in different
12:08lights. And he's very much his own person. I don't think choosing J.D. Vance is going
12:12to make a difference in terms of what Trump decides to do.
12:16I would even think that the selection of Vance is aimed really more at that Rust Belt
12:21area of voters in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, trying to solidify that part of the voting
12:28base. I'm not sure that it's going to do a lot on foreign policy.
12:31Second, the thing that Trump has emphasized, and we got this from J.D. Vance when he was
12:36at the Munich Security Conference in February of this year, is about Europe doing more and
12:42the United States doing less, meaning that they feel that the U.S. has done more than
12:47its share. It's done too much. And so we need to push Europe to bear a bigger share of the
12:52burden.
12:54That is actually not that objectionable. In fact, many Europeans say the same thing. And
13:01when it comes to Ukraine, it was actually President Trump who gave political cover to
13:05Speaker Johnson when they pushed to get that supplemental aid package through the Congress.
13:11It was delayed for six months over a series of other issues. And when they finally decided
13:16to put it through, President Trump supported it. So I think that's also an indicator that
13:20it is not necessarily as dire a situation as some of this European commentary would
13:25make it out to be.
13:26OK, so let's just pick apart that for a little bit. I mean, listen, you're right. A lot of
13:30Europeans are saying, certainly since what happened in Pennsylvania and maybe even before,
13:36that they are essentially baking in the notion that Donald Trump will be president again
13:41and they have to learn to work with him, including Volodymyr Zelensky. He said the same thing.
13:46Whoever is elected, we're not afraid. We will work with them.
13:50But when you say react emotionally, Europe is in the vice grip of a potential Putin expansion.
13:58So it's not emotional for them. It's actually territorial and really important.
14:05And so I just wonder whether you think that they need some assurance, for instance, that
14:11Trump, yeah, will be the president and he will make the decisions if he wins. But even
14:17he was the one who said, look, we're not going to defend you if you don't pay up. That's
14:22one thing. And the other thing is that it was Trump who told the House to delay, delay,
14:30delay this aid. And then he came on board after he, as you know very well, better than
14:34me, was persuaded by a lot of people. So I guess, again, yes, Europe and everybody is
14:41tired of this war. But how do you think it's going to end?
14:47Right. Well, several things here. Again, let's take them in pieces. So the war in Europe,
14:54Russia's war against Ukraine, which is the largest war in Europe since World War II,
14:59that is indeed serious business. It is a real problem. And it runs a great risk of escalating
15:05into a wider war if it's not stopped.
15:08So a lot of what we hear from the Biden administration right now is on not doing things that would
15:13escalate because we don't want a wider war. My own view is that we actually need to do
15:19more to defeat Russia in Ukraine in order to prevent that wider war.
15:26Now, one of the things I think will be a point of reference for President Trump will be Afghanistan.
15:31If you remember, he wanted to get out of Afghanistan. He started the negotiations with the Taliban.
15:37He kept urging the U.S. to get out. But he never actually pulled the trigger on getting
15:41out because he was briefed that if you do, it's going to be a catastrophe.
15:47We then saw that actually play out in the Biden administration, where we pulled out
15:51of Afghanistan and it was a catastrophe. So I think looking now at Ukraine, this is
15:56now a cautionary tale for President Trump. Don't create, don't make Ukraine your Afghanistan.
16:02Don't let this failure, don't let this become a failure on your watch. I think it's going
16:07to have to take a different approach than just pulling out the support for Ukraine.
16:11Ambassador Volker, as you know, President Trump negotiated with the Taliban. I mean,
16:16they excluded the actual U.S. and international recognized elected leadership of Afghanistan.
16:23So by your reckoning now, does that mean they could actually exclude Ukraine and just negotiate
16:30with Russia over this?
16:32Yeah, I don't think so, because I think the lesson from that experience was that it was
16:38a disaster. And so I don't think that's where this points. Indeed, I think the emphasis
16:44that you get from Trump and Vance is it's got to be Europe doing more and the U.S. doing
16:50less in order to end the war.
16:54So Vance has said some really weird things. He called Britain an Islamist state. I mean,
17:00I don't know whether he has a deep knowledge of history. So I think people are very concerned
17:06that this is the first move internationally, kind of, that had international implications
17:11at the at the at the convention. But the other question is, you know, he's very good
17:17friends with the Orban camp. But, you know, as you know, President Prime Minister Orban,
17:21very right wing, very conservative, no friend of Ukraine, believes in Putin, doesn't give
17:28aid to Ukraine. And Orban's chief political adviser tweeted a picture of him with Vance
17:35saying Vance Trump, that's just what we need. So how should Europe think about this? Yes,
17:40they have to pony up and pay more and do more. But but how should they think about
17:47a potential alliance of a conservative isolationist America and a more conservative Eastern European
17:54group?
17:55Yeah, so I think what you're seeing with those Orban posturing is an alignment of political
18:04forces, the right in Europe trying to align itself with the right in the United States.
18:11The difficulty with that is, on some of the substantive issues where Orban has taken a
18:14stand, they're very much at odds with what the right in the United States would be doing.
18:19Most important there is China, where Orban has described Hungary as open for business,
18:25the China's best friend in Europe. The U.S., under a Trump administration, if he's reelected,
18:30is going to take a very tough stance toward China and would expect Hungary to do the same.
18:35So these are political alignments because of left and right and domestic politics. But
18:40I I don't think that the foreign policies are really going to align that much.
18:44Ambassador, you bring up China and of course, Trump as president and now as candidate has
18:51made all sorts of statements, including heavily protectionist statements around the world,
18:55but especially to China, saying that whether it's China or others, he's going to impose
19:01a 10 percent tariff on just about every imported good.
19:06What do you think that is going to do for the American people?
19:11Well, in the short term, I think it's going to raise the cost of goods coming from China,
19:18at least certain goods like electronic vehicles, for example. He's going to be targeting things
19:23in order to prevent them from coming into the U.S. market. That will have a short term
19:28impact of preventing those goods and maybe raising prices. In the long run, launching
19:34tariffs always results in retaliation, which then hurts the ability of the U.S. to export
19:42and for the American people to benefit from that.
19:44So if we start down a road of tariffs and escalation of a trade war, that can get out
19:51of hand. I hope that what Trump would have in mind would be a shot across the bow in
19:57order to try to get some balance in trade. But if it goes down the road of many, many
20:02tariffs on many, many countries, I think it could actually end up damaging the economy.
20:08I want to again talk about growing economies and defense spending, et cetera. I just want
20:14to play what J.D. Vance said about this issue when he was at Munich.
20:22It's very hard, the juxtaposition between the idea that Putin poses an existential
20:27threat to Europe compared again against the fact that we're trying to convince our allies
20:31to spend 2 percent of GDP. Those ideas are very much in tension. I do not think that
20:37Vladimir Putin is an existential threat to Europe. And to the extent that he is, again,
20:41that suggests that Europe has to take a more aggressive role in its own security. That's
20:45number one.
20:46OK. So as you've just said, as most people do think, he is an existential threat. But
20:51on the issue of defense spending, where do you think this is going to go? Because Europeans,
20:58after the fall of the Soviet Union, you know, they did decrease their defense spending.
21:04And now we can see that, you know, unlike Russia, which has turned its whole economy
21:09into a defense economy, the Europeans have struggled to do that. How do you see this
21:15actually ramping up, even with the best will in the world?
21:19Right. So we've seen progress already. When President Trump was elected in 2016, there
21:26were three countries in NATO spending 2 percent or more of GDP on defense, despite having
21:30promised to do so multiple times, including at the Wales summit in 2014.
21:35Today, we have 23 countries that are spending 2 percent or more of GDP on defense. And we
21:41are seeing that that is not enough, not enough in terms of the number of countries. There's
21:45still therefore nine other countries in NATO that have to increase spending. And 2 percent
21:50may be too low a threshold. It may have to be two and a quarter, 2.5, in order for Europe
21:55to have what is needed.
21:57Now, the trend line there has been positive. I think you're going to see more and more
22:01emphasis from the United States, particularly if it's under President Trump, on European
22:07defense spending. And when we talk about Ukraine, they're going to want to see more balance
22:12in that as well. The U.S. is providing over half the military aid there. They're going
22:16to want to see that Europe is doing more, spending more on the ammunition, the equipment
22:20and so forth for Ukraine.
22:23Kurt Volker, Ambassador, thank you so much indeed for joining us.
22:28So what about the post-shooting calls for unity and cooling down divisive rhetoric?
22:34America has never seemed more divided, with Republicans coalescing around Trump and Democrats
22:39fearing for the fate of democracy if he wins a second term. So how does a fractured nation
22:45attempt to reunite? Is it even possible?
22:48If anyone has answers, it might be the renowned political scientist Robert Putnam. His book,
22:53Bowling Alone, exposed and examined a collapse in Americans' participation in collective
22:59activities and warned of a similar collapse in our trust of civic institutions and of
23:05each other. A new documentary, Join or Die, takes us through Putnam's extraordinary career
23:11and his ideas. Here's a clip from the trailer.
23:14Everything that reflects connections with other people are going down.
23:18How many times last year did you go to church?
23:20Down.
23:21How many times did you go to a dinner party?
23:23Down.
23:24How many times last year did you go to a club meeting?
23:26In barely a couple of decades, half all the civic infrastructure in America had simply
23:31vanished. It's equivalent to saying half of all the roads in America just disappeared.
23:37Robert Putnam joins the show from New Hampshire. Welcome to the program, Robert Putnam.
23:42It's really an incredibly timely discussion, again, of your theories and to see this film.
23:49I just want to ask you, since what happened over the weekend, since also the collapse,
23:57it seems, of the whole sort of Biden situation, how do you relate all of that to your work?
24:09Well, thanks, first of all, for having me on your show.
24:13Yes, the film Join or Die and then a very large piece in The New York Times over the weekend,
24:23well before the assassination attempt, I said, echoing a woman named Hannah Arendt,
24:29who was probably the most important theoretician of the Holocaust and the Nazi takeover of power,
24:38I said, lonely young men are very likely to find themselves unmoored from other social connections
24:54and either attracted to anomic violence or to get drawn into some violent conspiracy.
25:04Now, that was true in the case of the Nazis, as Hannah Arendt said.
25:08It was true that the earliest, most violent recruits to the Nazi party were disconnected young Germans, men.
25:19And it's true. I don't mean that I was predicting. I want to be clear.
25:25I don't say that I was predicting the assassination attempt over the weekend.
25:30But it was before that that I had said we're suffering as a country from this isolation and loneliness of young people,
25:43of everybody, of course, but young people especially and especially young men.
25:51Sorry, I just wanted to build on that because you talk about social capital,
25:56which means connection, I think, is how you define it.
26:00And you're talking about the relative decrease in connections and the shifting kinds of connections.
26:07You talk about bridging social capital and bonding social capital.
26:11So explain those and how they're manifested today.
26:17Sure. Bridging social capital simply means my ties to other people just like me.
26:25So my ties to other white elderly. It's my ties to other people.
26:33Sorry, bonding social capital and my ties to other people just like me.
26:37So my bonding social capital are my ties to other white male elderly Jewish professors
26:44and my ties to people of a different generation or a different race or a different religion or a different political party.
26:50That's my bridging social capital.
26:52I'm not saying bridging good, bonding bad, because if you get sick, the people who bring you this chicken soup
26:57are likely to reflect your bonding social capital.
27:01But a modern, diverse democracy needs lots of bridging social capital.
27:06That's just my jargon for saying unless our social connections make it easy for us to walk in the shoes of somebody else,
27:14it's going to be hard to pull this country together.
27:19And this is the final empirical finding of my work and a lot of other people's work.
27:24There's been a catastrophic decline in those kinds of ties.
27:28The ties that once upon a time would connect us to people of a different generation or a different class or a different, you know, whatever,
27:37especially a different political party, those have tended to wane even more rapidly than our ties to people just like us.
27:43And that has set us up for polarization.
27:45It has set us up for demonization because too many of us now are living in an echo chamber.
27:50That's just the language.
27:52Some people use the language of echo chamber, and I use the language of our social ties.
27:57Are they just to people like us or are they to people other than us, people unlike us?
28:02So, Professor, walk us through a little bit of the history of these kinds of ties.
28:08I think you, in Bowling Alone, you talk about how at a certain time in American history,
28:14people joined all sorts of clubs or church groups or library groups or whatever it might be, sports, the whole lot.
28:20And now not so much.
28:22So walk us through from the beginning of the 20th century, the sort of ebb and flow of this to now.
28:30I'm very glad you asked it in that wider framework because about 125 years ago right now, America was in the same pickle that we are now.
28:43America was a very fragmented, socially disconnected state.
28:48We were very polarized politically.
28:50Our politics were tribal in that period.
28:53We were very unequal economically.
28:58Just as we are now.
29:00That was the first gilded age, and now many people say we're in the second gilded age.
29:04And our culture was focused on in that at the beginning of the 20th century, around 1900, it was very much focused on me, I, I, I, and not focused on what we have in common.
29:17And then in about ten years, roughly speaking, those we, we, that is a group of younger Americans, were able to turn those trends around.
29:28I don't mean it happened overnight.
29:30It didn't.
29:31It took a decade or two.
29:34In the 1920s and 30s and 40s and 50s and into the 60s, every year we got a little less socially isolated, a little less polarized, a little less unequal, and a little more in the sense that we were all in this together.
29:49And, and then there was a turn and the last 50 years we've gone downhill.
29:54The last 50 years, it's not just in the last five years we've become more polarized, it's in the last 50 years and more unequal and more socially disconnected and more focused on I.
30:04That's relevant.
30:06Interrupt me if you want, but I want to link this back to our earlier conversation.
30:10That was especially true of young men and young people in general in that period.
30:16At the time it was called the boy problem.
30:18That's the language at the time.
30:20And, and young men disconnected just as they are now, and to some extent young women, but it was mostly a boy problem.
30:29Yeah.
30:30They were causing havoc, just as they are now.
30:33And then this is the really interesting point.
30:36In about five years between 1905 and 1910, almost all of the major kids organizations in America were founded.
30:47The Scouts, both the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts, and the Campfire Girls, and Boys Clubs and Girls Clubs, and Big Brother Big Sister.
30:54I mean, all those things happened right in that period.
30:58Why?
31:00Because people at that time, the reformers at that time, understood that kids need mentors.
31:06They need coaches.
31:08They need clergy people.
31:09They need teachers.
31:10And that's what's missing, was missing then, and eventually they corrected it.
31:14And that's exactly what's missing now.
31:16That's the core of what I want to say.
31:18We are just, our kids especially, don't have those ties.
31:22So I'm going to play a little bit of the film, the documentary, which is called Join or Die, on this issue.
31:31And then I'm going to ask you how, if possible, to try to find those mentors and ties again.
31:39There's what's called specific reciprocity.
31:41That is, if you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you.
31:44I'll be nice to you.
31:45But much more powerful is what evolves in a context with large numbers of people connecting with one another, is a norm of generalized reciprocity.
31:52That is, I'm going to be nice to you just because you're in this community, and you're likely to be nice to me.
31:58Well, that's a huge deal.
31:59If you can have generalized reciprocity in a community, that community can be enormously more productive, because they don't have to be constantly checking up on one another.
32:10So it's so interesting, this, and what you just said about the mentors and how people figured out the reformists, that that's what's needed.
32:20What is happening now, which is acting against reciprocity and much more in sort of moving people to isolation and individualism?
32:32Exactly, the me, me, me.
32:34Where are these people going?
32:37Where are these young people going?
32:39Who are they following?
32:40Who are they seeking inspiration from, if anybody?
32:46Well, honestly, I don't mean to be a total voice of doom and doom regarding social media, but that's what a lot of them are doing.
32:56I mean, I could cite you chapter and verse, but probably I don't need to.
33:01So much of the time with young people now is focused entirely on the screen in front of them.
33:06And sometimes it's actually the television screen, but more often than not, it's the iPhone or the smartphone screen.
33:14And they're not actually – sometimes they're using those to connect with other real people, but often they're living in some fantasy world.
33:22So it isn't at all the equivalent of, let me say, the Boy Scouts or the Girl Scouts, or the team on which there's a coach.
33:30It's a very self-isolating kind of technology.
33:36And they can see – the movie highlights a number of really important new initiatives being pursued across the country.
33:46A religious group is reaching out to young kids who are interested in the environment, interested in gardening and so on, but are also wanting to connect with other people.
33:55Or a biking group in Atlanta, basically a black biking group.
33:59So there are things that we can do.
34:01So let me ask you then, because we're obviously clearly talking to you in the context of what's happening in this incredibly polarized and violent political era that we live.
34:12So the RNC is going on now.
34:14The DNC will happen at the end of August.
34:17How do you fit this into politics right now?
34:25Oh, it's directly related to politics.
34:27Indeed, my earliest work in this field showed that there's an intimate connection between whether people are connected with one another, in all the ways we've talked about, in voting leagues and in civic groups and so on, and how well the government works.
34:43That's been shown around the world, really, that it's not so much what the Constitution says on paper.
34:50It's whether people actually connect with one another and therefore can give life to the Constitution.
34:55And we have had periods in our country, most of the time in our country, we've been a nation of joiners.
35:01And that's why our Constitution, it's not just that the words on the paper are good, they are, but it's that they've been sustained by this living Constitution among us.
35:11And that's what, you know, 125 years ago, because of the Industrial Revolution, basically, had begun to collapse.
35:18We restored that.
35:20And now we've got to restore it again.
35:22In the very short run, I mean, you know, I'm a historian.
35:25I'm not going to tell you what's going to happen next November.
35:27I kind of fear that we're not going to move in the right direction.
35:30But I'm talking about the next decade or two.
35:34I'm suggesting ways in which we can begin to reconnect across lines of politics and religion and race and so on.
35:42We've done it in the past.
35:43I'm just going to play you a little soundbite of an interview I did with Vivek Murphy, who, of course, was the Surgeon General, about loneliness.
35:52And he's really on a campaign about it.
35:55And I'm just going to play you this snippet.
35:57When I was in university, the loudest place on campus was actually the dining hall.
36:01We would all finish our classes, come there, and everyone wanted to talk, talk, talk and catch up.
36:05But not only is it quieter there because people aren't talking, they're on their devices.
36:09They ask you, how are we supposed to even meet people and have conversation?
36:12That's right, because it feels intrusive, they would say, to approach somebody when they've got their earbuds in, when they're looking at their phone.
36:20And the harder, the less you do it, the harder it gets because our social muscle has to be built over time.
36:27So, again, you know, just quickly, finally, how does one build that social muscle?
36:35Practice. That's the way you always build muscle.
36:38And practice means we adults have to get more involved in mentoring our kids and other people's kids.
36:48And we need to get them to realize that there's a wider world out there that's fun.
36:55I mean, the Boy Scouts was not just eat your spinach.
36:59It was having fun and at the same time learning a kind of character formation.
37:05I was in Scouts and I can still pledge now, 70 years later, a Scout is trustworthy, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and loyal and reverent.
37:16OK, how did I do that? It's because I had lots of hikes in which we taught each other that.
37:20And that's what we could do now. It doesn't have to be spinach. It just has to be rediscovering the joys of being together.
37:28Robert Putnam, thank you so much. Really fascinating.
37:32So the RNC is being closely watched for answers about how the GOP will fine tune its strategy for the Oval Office.
37:39How will Trump further shift the ideological foundations of the party?
37:43How seriously should Project 2025 be taken? And what can the Democratic Party do differently?
37:49To answer these questions and more, Hari Sreenivasan asks Astead Herndon,
37:54the New York Times national politics reporter and the host of the Run Up podcast.
38:00Christiana, thanks. Astead Herndon, welcome to the program again.
38:04Here you are in Milwaukee. I think the big story for most people is how does Donald Trump,
38:11how does the Republican Party react to the assassination attempt on the former president?
38:17Yeah, I think that certainly looms over this convention.
38:20You know, you've seen Republicans and Trump try to say that they will seek to strike a unifying tone.
38:27They're going to use this moment to try to pivot their message to one that can bring in more people.
38:32I think that also reflects the Republican Party and feels fairly confident in their electoral position.
38:36Even before the events on Saturday, they were reading the polling.
38:40They were reading the kind of the angst in the Democratic Party and feeling like this is their election to lose.
38:46And so I would say that's on one side.
38:48But I think we should also acknowledge that Donald Trump and Republicans have been part of raising
38:53the political temperature and division and rhetoric throughout the last several years.
38:58And that is who Trump is. I mean, even when we think about J.D.
39:02Banz using the moment on Saturday to frankly target Democrats and place blame at Joe Biden for the events,
39:08when we know that that's not really a causal relationship.
39:11And so, you know, I think that we can we can say that their kind of political ambition will be to pivot a message,
39:18try to strike a chord of unity. That's clearly the intention.
39:22But I think we have enough evidence over the last seven, eight years to know
39:26Donald Trump has not made his political kind of calling card one of bringing people in together.
39:31And so this will be asking asking a leopard to change its spots here.
39:35And I think we should be pretty skeptical of that.
39:38Are there concerns about security? There was conversations as soon as the shooting happened.
39:43You know, was the Secret Service prepared?
39:46The Secret Service came out and said in their own press conference the steps they took.
39:50And President Biden had said that he had had a conversation with President Trump.
39:54He made a national statement about political violence.
39:57Is there any increased anxiety about not just the safety of the president, but anybody who's there?
40:03Well, I can say that, you know, even being here for the first couple of days, the downtown of Milwaukee is locked down.
40:09There are so many security checkpoints. There's such a perimeter around Pfizer Forum.
40:14I think I went through about five or six checks even to get there when I was going there earlier today.
40:19So I am pretty sure the security has already was already beefed up.
40:23And he was probably even more so since the events on Saturday.
40:26But I would also say that we shouldn't see political violence and the incident on Saturday as a isolated one.
40:32When we look back over the last six years, violence has been a pretty core to a lot of what's happened in our country.
40:40We think about the Tree of Life shooting, Paul shooting, El Paso shooting, the attack on Paul Pelosi, the attack on Steve Scalise.
40:47I mean, these have been consistent incidents over the last several years.
40:51And it reflects a growing tenor of division and discord that is in our politics.
40:56And so I think Saturday was certainly a bracing moment for a lot of people who watched.
41:02But unfortunately, I think it's an American public that has come to expect a political system where violence seems at its core.
41:08I left out January 6th, but that obviously was a big one as well.
41:12It's been a steady drumbeat of increased political rhetoric.
41:16And that has people scared, not only at this convention, but I think we'll see that at the DNC.
41:21I think that we'll see that going forward for both candidates.
41:25I want to pick up on something that you said, which is really how politicians are framing the events that happen.
41:31It was Representative Mike Collins of Georgia.
41:35He said specifically, I want to quote, Joe Biden sent the orders.
41:39Then you have Matt Gaetz of Florida. They tried to impeach him.
41:43They're trying to imprison him. Now they have tried to assassinate him.
41:47How do you square that rhetoric where there's clearly some political opportunism going on with the campaign saying we want to try a unifying message?
41:59Particularly when we think about the attack dogs of the Republican Party, the Matt Gaetz, the Freedom Caucus wing, even J.D. Vance.
42:07They've been the ones who've been most explicitly trying to link this to Democrats and frankly creating an argument that says that Democrats have been violently targeting Trump for years.
42:17This plays within a Republican narrative that they've been creating for a long time, one that started with him as president being obstructed by Democrats.
42:25They point to the impeachments as things like trying to invalidate his presidency, certainly the legal proceedings that have taken place since he's left office.
42:32Now this recent assassination attempt plays within a script that the right wing is trying to say, which is that the left and Joe Biden are trying to do whatever they can to stop Donald Trump from coming back into office.
42:48I think it's important to not conflate those things.
42:51The things we know about the shooter on Saturday do not link him directly to Democrats.
42:55There's no evidence to say that there's any kind of connection with the parties here.
43:00And frankly, if it's a profile of kind of a mixed ideology school shooter type that we've seen often in these type of incidents.
43:10And so Republicans are doing a slight of hand here to play their political purposes.
43:15But I do think that the seriousness of what happened does cause a kind of question mark for Democrats about what the message is going forward.
43:25The clear message from Democrats up until this point was that Donald Trump was a threat to democracy and that created an emergency that forced people to act.
43:35And you even hear some Democrats now saying, is that tenor a little too is little too intense for this moment?
43:43Are we contributing to the kind of polarization of this moment with that argument?
43:48That's going to be interesting to Democrats back off from what has been their most potent message to rally their base.
43:54You know, we just had Judge Eileen Cannon outright dismiss the documents case.
44:00It will be appealed. But I wonder if that impacts the overall standing and strategy when it comes to how the RNC frames the former president going forward.
44:14I think it will, partially because they've already tried to frame these cases as an effort of weaponization of the government against Donald Trump.
44:22So the actions from Judge Cannon today, even the events over the weekend, will play into that sense of persecution and kind of Republican victimhood that's already been core to that message.
44:33I don't want to conflate those two things because I do think the shooting in this are a little different, but they get to the same type of message that Republicans are going to pitch.
44:41They are going to say this is a candidate that has been under attack.
44:44And I walked past the big billboard today in the Pfizer forum where they're going to hold this that said, you know, one of Trump's quotes from his speeches, which is that, you know, they're not coming after me.
44:54They're coming after you. I'm just in the way. That's going to be their message.
44:58What about the very location? You're in Milwaukee.
45:01That has been in some ways a Democratic stronghold, but we know Wisconsin's been a battleground state that's swung in different directions before.
45:09So what's the GOP trying to accomplish by holding the convention and starting the national conversation about this campaign there?
45:18I think it's a really critical point you're mentioning of why is this convention here?
45:22Democrats, remember, tried to have their 2020 convention there before it was upended by COVID, partially because Milwaukee and Wisconsin remains a bellwether for the rest of the electoral college.
45:32Many of the last presidential elections have been decided by less than a percentage point.
45:36Wisconsin is a clearly purple state, but that's not been reflected in their state politics.
45:40They had a huge gerrymander that allowed Republicans to really control power on a state legislature front for years here.
45:47Think the Scott Walker era and that time.
45:50But what Democrats have been able to do is slowly claw back to the point.
45:54I think the onus is now on Republicans to do a little better here.
45:57Here's something I would say. Wisconsin's not necessarily a really Trumpy Republican state.
46:02There's a lot of Milwaukee suburbs that have drifted away from him.
46:05You saw Nikki Haley put up pretty good numbers in Wisconsin, even though she dropped out.
46:09And they've kind of been pulled between the Trump base and a more and a more, I would say, a traditional conservative type in this state.
46:18And it's actually hurt him. It's actually hurt Republicans here.
46:21Where Democrats have struggled is in motivating in places like Milwaukee and Madison.
46:26Milwaukee has had a full drop off in terms of people of color in these type of places, which has allowed Republicans to seize on some of that.
46:33So I think it's important of why the why the Republicans are coming here, because they're trying to do two things.
46:39They're trying to limit their losses in the suburbs in places like Waukesha and Oshkosh outside of Milwaukee.
46:46And they are trying to claw back some of the black and Latino voters in Milwaukee because they think that is a recipe that allows them to make up what is sure to be a razor thin margin.
46:55I wonder a little bit about the sort of the stuff that's off camera that happens in these conventions.
47:02It's usually the party hashing out the planks of what they stand for, their values.
47:08They put it literally in writing. Right. And I wonder, what is this party been able to do?
47:14Have you noticed shifts in one direction or another? Is there more of an emphasis on executive power, et cetera?
47:24Yeah, I think this is an important point, because one of the subtle things Trump has done is really take over the levers of the Republican Party.
47:31And so the traditional kind of policy writing process, the platform process that we think about that happens at these type of conventions has been totally upended by Trump already.
47:40Last week, there was a lot of reporting about how the Trump campaign, frankly, steamrolled a lot of the traditional conservatives who are a part of that process to make sure things like abortion were not mentioned in the party platform,
47:52because he wants to have a really mushy position on that. Instead, you had kind of a series of Trump pronouncements that were largely pretty vague that now make up this party platform.
48:02Things like saying we'll make America safe, we'll bring back energy independence, just kind of the things you hear Donald Trump say on the campaign trail.
48:09And I think this is partially why things like Project 2025 and the Heritage Foundation's attempts to make up a policy platform have really exploded,
48:18because Donald Trump and Republicans have been fairly vague on what they're going to do on that front.
48:23And they intentionally have done that because they don't want to be kind of pushed into unpopular positions.
48:29I think this is going to be a big thing to watch going forward.
48:33I wonder, is there a specific reason that you've got Project 2025 with 900 pages of policy prescriptions that any administration, a Trump administration in the future, could take and run with?
48:46And then you've got the official position of the Republican Party, which, as you point out, is very vague.
48:54So how do you kind of reconcile those? Is it, you know, is that part of the strategy?
48:59Because the president has tried repeatedly to distance himself from Project 2025.
49:04Yeah, they have. And I think the truth that we know is somewhere in the middle here, but I think Democrats have an important point.
49:11Donald Trump cannot fully distance himself from Project 2025 because the writers and the policies come from a lot of people who worked in the Trump administration, are close to Donald Trump,
49:20and are very likely to be involved in the Trump administration if he was to come back.
49:25I think it's pretty obvious why Trump wants to remain vague on these policy platforms.
49:29It's because a lot of the things proposed in Project 2025 are massively unpopular.
49:34Think about eliminating the Department of Education, a refusal to mention gender in any policy regulation or law.
49:41Some of the some of the goals they have specific to abortion, some of the goals they have specific to LGBTQ rights are unpopular.
49:49The other thing I would say is Project 2025 is very explicit about kind of the unitary executive theory that's at the heart of a lot of this kind of Trump policy rhetoric.
49:59And what that is, is a belief that the chief executive, the president, has kind of ultimate power over a lot of the legislative branch and that that power, and more importantly, over the regulatory and kind of civil service ecosystem.
50:13And so when Republicans talk about drain the swamp, this time around in 24, they have a plan to do so.
50:20They have a plan to upend kind of the normal kind of dreaders of federal government and to install loyalists in those positions.
50:29And so I think the reality of those plans is why we see Donald Trump distancing himself from something like 2025.
50:37And I think you also have the Biden campaign focusing on it because it adds a little meat to the bones of the regular old lesser of two evils argument where he used to hearing Democrats make.
50:49Let's talk a little bit about the Democrats right now in the past couple of weeks ever since the debate, the narrative that the Democrats have struggled to overcome is Joe Biden's age.
51:00In your conversations with Democratic strategists and leadership, where is that process at on the possibility of him not being the top of the ticket?
51:12Because day in and day out, Joe Biden says it would take the Lord Almighty to stop him.
51:19For the last year and a half-ish, we've been hearing from voters consistently concerns about Joe Biden's age.
51:25It was the biggest thing that would come up if we talked to anyone, when we talked to most people about how they feel about the president.
51:32It wasn't really a feeling about him as a leader right now, but a sense that the idea of four more years, it frankly frowns kind of ridiculous.
51:40And the caricature of him, a kind of doddering old man, had really set in with the electorate long before the debate.
51:48And so when we took these questions to Democratic strategists, folks close to the Biden campaign, even some leaders in the Biden campaign, for the last year, I was frankly shocked at how much they were dismissing the idea that Joe Biden's age was a big political liability when we looked ahead toward November.
52:06What the debate did was nullify their ability to stick their head in the sand, because frankly that's what they were doing.
52:15And it was such a frankly disaster for Biden that it swung from one end to the other, where they went from I can't acknowledge this to what do we do about it.
52:27But the year of time between those two things gave them very few options about what to do about it.
52:34And so if they wanted to have a more robust conversation about this, that time was last year in the early stages of that primary.
52:41At this point, they've become kind of hamstrung, and I think you see that realization here.
52:46And so to actually answer your question about what is the current state of the kind of movement to maybe replace Joe Biden, is that that is much more acceptable among the broader Democratic electorate than it is among the inner rungs of the Democratic Party.
53:01But when I talk to Democrats, kind of professional Democrats, the idea of replacing him at this stage is such that it would take kind of another moment like the debate to make that kind of come even semi-close to fruition.
53:16That decision is going to come from Joe Biden and the people around him, and that's going to be a hard hill to climb.
53:23And so you still see some evidence, you still see some reporting, people like Nancy Pelosi calling around, seeing if that temperature's still there.
53:31But I really don't know what happens, to be honest with you, because at this point, we're going to be in a situation where 70, 75 percent of the public might think he's unfit to serve a second term, even if he's close in the polling.
53:43And so if you're a vulnerable Democrat, if you're someone running for Senate in a close race, Sherrod Brown, Jon Tester, if you're a House member who's trying to hold on to your seat, how do you not say, how do you align yourself with the president that most Americans would think is not fit for next four years?
54:01That's going to become the real tension here, is how do they have a singular message of unity behind Biden if that message is completely out of step where most people are?
54:10And so I think that's going to be the real tell for me. Does some of this, does some of the polling and incentives start to favor Biden?
54:16And then maybe those frontline Democrats walk back what they say and say, you know, actually, I'm fine with him, we're rocking with him, I'm riding with Biden.
54:24Or do things move in the opposite direction, and it frankly becomes a party, an open revolt against the top of the ticket?
54:31And I think both those possibilities remain on the table.
54:34New York Times political reporter and host of the podcast The Run-Up, Estan Herndon, thanks so much for joining us.
54:40Thank you so much for having me, I always appreciate it.
54:42And finally tonight, in an increasingly divided world, there is one thing that has the power to bring us together.
54:49Fans are uniting across the globe to celebrate a summer of sport.
54:53In Madrid's main square, a sea of red and yellow shirts as fans welcomed home the Spanish soccer team after their triumph in the European Championships.
55:04And thousands of miles away, another hero's welcome along the streets of Argentina.
55:09Crowds cheered the return of their victorious football team who brought home the Copa America trophy for the second time in a row.
55:17Meanwhile in Paris, thousands of people flocked to the capital's iconic landmarks to watch the Olympic torch tour of the city for two days of festivities before the summer games kick off in just 10 days' time.
55:30And that is it for our program tonight. If you want to find out what's coming up every night, sign up for our newsletter at pbs.org.
55:38Thank you for watching and goodbye from London.
55:47.