Alz Media America. Is Trump strong?
Okay, it is so funny.
Welcome to it could happen here a podcast recorded from the Republican National Convention, specifically the hotel where the Idaho and North Dakota delegates are gathered. Yeah, fascinating elevator rides.
And we're thinking today about the memory of that guy that Trump does not know the name of who got shot to death, Corey k. They've definitely pronounced every time they've said it wrong.
Every single person who spoke the last few days pronounced his name differently, And I was like, well, finally they have somebody's name to pronounce more incorrectly than they do Kabla Harris or Ramaswami.
And it's look, folks, I'm not gonna laugh at his kids. You know, that's a tragedy for them. But what I will say is that objectively, it's really funny that this guy died for Donald Trump. And Trump very obviously doesn't care, couldn't, could not be less important to him, Like there is nothing that matters less in this election the man who took a bullet for him, And that's really funny. That's really funny.
Anyways, Uh, this is it could happen here. I'm Sophie Licht, but we're, like Gara said at the R and C. I have Garrisaid Davis with me and Robert Evans.
Uh huh, very professional, Sophie, Thank you so much.
I am your boss. Do you want to tell me a little bit about this morning?
Well, I think first's talk about some of our late night escapades.
Oh wait, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
Time travel cigar Bar.
Yes, wow, I did not go with you to that event, so I go call.
I agree, that was a good call.
I counted on the main floor of the cigar Bar where the Young Republicans had their party, and six of forty people had cigars. I had a cigar you did you had acause I brought a selection of my finest Cubans.
Yeah.
That was very, very kind of you, Robert.
I had one of John F. Kennedy's favorite cigars that I had been aging for two years waiting for this moment.
I did like that you had the foresight to bring cigars to the art, to.
Bring extremely high quality. Our buddy Lenny had a three year aged partias you had. But I've been drinking and I had a lovely have you been quality the best cigars there. I talked to everyone who happened to be smoking a cigar, and they were all smoking trash like a rowin and American garbage, because none of them had any kind of look. I don't get into this often. I don't want to be like some of our friends in the in the far right and and use cigars
as a totem. I enjoyed my cigars privately, but we were going to a cigar bar, so I brought my nice cigars and oh was it a cigar bar?
Were there cigars there? You're just at the word cigars seven.
It was not lost on me that none of them smoked good cigars because they're children, are you know what? We had an interview with Rudy Giuliani, and Rudy would have understood that man has nice cigars. I'll say that about Rudy Giuliani. He knows the cigars, That's all I'm saying.
Great.
So we've been trying to hit the kind of the after part already seen at the RNC, just to see kind of what's up. This little cigar party was put on by some of the young Republicans from.
New York primarily in New York. They are very confident of a victory, potentially a statewide victory in a national election. And uh, you know what, the evidence doesn't make it impossible. It doesn't look like it's going to happen from this cycle. But twenty twenty eight, New York could be in play. And one of the interesting things is that Florida also seems to be tightening. Two poles recently show Trump just four points ahead of Biden. He won by ten in
twenty twenty. That's a significant tightening and within kind of swing state margins, And so it is kind of interesting to conceive of the possibility that by twenty twenty eight, both New York and Florida could be in play.
Yeah. So I dressed like a nineteen fifties FBI agent and trench coat and smoke well done one of these cigars as best as I could.
How'd you like it?
It was fine.
It was a nice cigar. It's no clove, good way, God, oh my fucking so, give me a gun.
It was it was. It was a nice little party. We talked, We talked to some people. The best thing about the party, though, is that there was a series of speeches put on by these guys from New York
that kind of just kept going on. And the longer that these speeches and like these fre diferent guys kept going on, the music on the roof started to get slowly louder and louder and louder, until it was completely draining out the speeches, until they just stopped because like, okay, the music's too loud now.
Now and again there are heroes.
So someone was on that dial just every every two minutes it up a little bit.
There's a guy I follow who has started who followed me back in twenty twenty, who was like an election poll analysis expert and was like, and it's not a political guy, but was like, look, if you show up at a convention after party to talk, fuck you like people are there to drink, all you should say is the bar is open. And I agreed with that, and then you know what to skip. We had credit to the Heritage Foundation. Nobody ever said anything but that we could drink all we wanted.
That is a Heritage Foundation party, that is right, which we will get to later. We were up way too late, way too late at some of these after parties. The other night and then we had to get up pretty early in the morning because we had an interview with the CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which is kind of like a mini version the Heritage Foundation, but
just for Texas. Yeah, the former guy who ran this now runs the Heritage Foundation itself, so it's kind of like a little bit of a training ground and they kind of swap members often. We had a pretty long interview that we will turn into some kind of future piece of content, discussing everything from woke ideology to the mortal rot infecting America to.
Why mass shootings happened in this country.
Yeah. Yeah, he was. He was very polished, very media trained.
He easily the best interview subject in terms of his like skill liet talking, yeah, that we've had.
And similarly, I don't think he was quite prepared for our line of questioning either, you know, so that he got taken it back a little bit by some of the questions we were lobbing him. Probably very different from the rest of the interviews that he's been doing. I'm trying to think if there's any anything specifically about that interview that's worth mentioning. Now, you know, what really.
Interests me because the shooting is so relevant, I will bring up the shooting. We talked about why the guy who tried to kill Trump had done it, and he and I were kind of the same mind, the same mind that you are, Garrison, which is that this was a school shooter type thing and that was the primary reason behind the ideology. And this is before now some stuff has come out since that has made that seem
even more likely. But it was interesting to like, kind of have that not be a controversial part of the conversation. This was not a radical left shooting. There was no sort of attempt by him to claim it as that. He was like, yeah, this seems like a guy. We have a deep sickness in this country, and we clearly disagreed with him about the specifics of where the sickness comes from. But the sickness leads to some people who just want to do mass shootings that are not political.
And uh, that was interesting to me.
No, And and one of the big things talked about in terms of this moral rot is that there is something lacking in our country, specifically with young men. There's there is there is this lack of purpose among the young men which makes them do these kind of violent acts.
I don't disagree with that, sure, and I think I think I disagree with.
His solutions and some and some some of his diagnosis in certain ways, right because he he'll attribute that lack to certain things that we might.
Not morality at the home, and sure, you.
Know, all these all those kind of things, but you know, that was that that was kind of his his take, you know. And then we also talk about everything from like the influence of billionaires on these right wing think
tanks and political candidates, Catholics versus Evangelicals. It was an interesting conversation that I'm sure you'll hear in becoming weeks and we'll kind of explain why we want you to hear from this guy who's, you know, typically probably pretty adversarial to the type of stuff that we talk about
on this show. But after this interview, I met up with Sophie lichterman Hey and we talked to the people at the actual Heritage Foundation booth who had many a pamphlet and I collected all of the gender ideology pamphlets, which will also be a future deep dive. Kind of Curiously, they did not have a single pamphlet about Project twenty twenty five. Nope, No, And they didn't like talking about
it either. They said that Project twenty twenty five is, you know, a coalition effort between both Heritage and all these other groups, but they're not really talking about it here today because it's not Trump's policy platform. Trump has his own policy platform. This is just a list of
policy suggestions for lawmakers once they get into office. So they like to talk about a whole bunch of other stuff, you know, certain things that are kind of a part of Project twenty twenty five, but nothing about the actual you know, document itself, partially due to the kind of negative backlash that it has received, and you know, it seems to be kind of widely unliked for various reasons. So I think it was interesting that they weren't even pushing it at an event like this.
You know, again with the Texas Policy Foundation, gut we talked about when we brought it up. He was pretty open about the fact that it's not popular. Yeah, and his attitude was that in the future, once we win, we can try and build consensus around it. But he didn't try to deny the fact that, like, it's widely disliked by the electorate.
And it is against a lot of things that are on the Republican policy platform for the actual party. Sophie, you had a wonderful conversation with some of they's heritage folks.
Let's just say that my very blonde hair and the pig tills that I or most of this week made it very easy for these folks to talk to me, which is unsettling.
A little bit frightening, but useful.
But very very very scary.
Yeah.
A question I've been asking a lot of the folks that I've talked to this week is mostly about their opinions about education. And you know, if there is a shift in power with Trump being elected in a v what exactly they would want to do. And the overall majority answer from these groups is that they want to take away power from the federal government and bring it to the states, and that would be universal school choice. And so got a little bit of that from them.
They also mentioned something about one of the biggest roadblocks being student loans.
While also being very against student learned for forgiveness specifically, So it's kind of a it was an interesting position. I'll want to read some more of their pamphlets on.
That but anyways that just talks with them more, got more of their pamphlets, and Garrison and I asked them about the states that they choose to operate in.
And specifically for their lobbying group as opposed to just like the think tank, they have this other thing I think called Heritage Action, which operates differently because of certain laws around lobbying.
It's kind of where they try to train a lot of new people up. They had a lot of advertisements that they did something like fifteen.
More on the ground activism type stuff.
And Garret, what was the answer they gave? I thought it was interesting you asked a question for why they didn't go in certain states.
Yes, so they had this map of what states they were active in, and there were certain states, you know, like Oregon, Washington, or whole bunch of the New England states, and they just weren't active in because they didn't think they would be very effective. They weren't make any leeway. It's just it's just not worth it. It's not going
to move towards actual electoral victories. But there was other there's other states like Wyoming and a few others that they weren't active in for different reasons because of specific regulations regarding donor transparency that they were strongly against the states that require there to be transparency for people who donate to these kind of political groups, and in protest of those regulations and laws, they are completely inactive in those states, which is a funny way of saying, we
just want to hide whoever gives us money. And that is that was a little interesting piece of information regarding you know, there's just states they just don't operate and because they do not want to see or have it made public where their kind of money is coming in and out of, at least for the Heritage Action part of the group.
Yes, it was overall just interesting that there was you know, at this booth, there was about five different I would say, twenty something.
Women, twenty something died blonde to women.
Yes, And they invited me to their Heritage social party that they were having that was across from the main convention where you needed an access code to get in, and they gave you that flyer and.
You will hear all about that. We took advantage of that. At the end of the episode. You will get a special inside look at the Heritage Foundation's private invite only exclusive.
Part was off the record. Now does it count? No, of course not. I promised that lady that what she said to me was off the record, and I won't say any more about that. But I didn't promise that to anyone else.
Do you know what's on the record, Robert, what you said later?
These products and service, the products and services that support this podcast.
That also that also is off the record. On the record. Whatever, here's the ads.
We are back, and don't worry. You will hear about this special Heritage Foundation party in a sect. But first I want to play for you a whole interview that I collected. Just down the hall from the Heritage Foundation booth, the American Conservation Coalition had at a pretty large section of the RNC convention fest you know, list of vendors, kind of more typical like you know, convention type stuff.
You know, like if you go to like a comic on or something, it's a lot of like vendors and booths that this kind of section of the r and C. So they had this pretty big booth and it was the only time I've ever seen anything mentioned about climate change. So I was interested to see what conservatives talking about climate change sound like what they're saying, and I'll just play that interview here right now. Do you want introducing yourself in the organization you're with. Sure.
My name's Carl Matthews.
I'm the vice president of Communications at the American Conservation Coalition, which is the largest conservative grassroots environmental organization in the country.
So the few things that interests me about your group, I mean, especially if you look back in the last one hundred years, like environmental conservation has been historically a much more conservative standpoint. You can look at like presidents in the nineteen twenties, there was a huge push for that, and somewhere along the lines that's kind of been lost for like a number of reasons. I guess what is your main mission here with this organization?
Yeah, well, it's interesting you bring up kind of the history of conservative conservation because we have a timeline here at the RNC showing all the Republican presidents who have really engaged on this issue, from Ulysses Grant to Teddy Roosevelt to more modern presidents like Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan
and even HW Bush. So what we're really doing here with the American Conservation Coalition is building the conservative environmental movement, specifically among young Americans who frankly feel kind of disenfranchised by both parties on the issue of climate and the environment. The left has taken a really doom and gloom approach to these issues that isn't very inspiring for a lot of young folks, and in the last thirty years, conservatives haven't.
Engaged very productively.
So we're here showing that conservation is conservative, those values are inherently entwined, and it's okay to call for action on environmental issues like climate change.
I guess. Yeah. Let's start more on like the big topic, which is which is climate change, and we can get into like local conservation. What is your take on the current climate scenario, because like ever since, ever since the early two thousands, there's been this, you know, for a lot of young people, slightly worrying trend of you have the politicians just either either seriously downgrading, you know, the scale of this problem or just thinking there is no problem.
What is your take both on I guess on that part, and then how you see the climate you know crisis, the climate issue that we are dealing with. Where do you see it? Heaving?
Yeah, so was founded because conservatives weren't engaging on this issue. So for the last six seven years we've been really pushing conservatives, especially conservative elected leaders, to re engage in a productive way. And I think we've done that really effectively. In DC where I live, the Conservative Climate Caucus in the House, which is a group of Republican lawmakers interested in tackling the issue of climate change, has eighty seven members.
It's the fourth largest in the Republican conference. So we're seeing a big kind of shift in the Overton window there. But yeah, I think young people want elected leaders who recognize that we have an issue, recognize that we have a challenge in climate change, and want practical solutions like expanding clean, reliable nuclear energy, like pursuing permitting reform to
actually allow American energy projects to be built. So I think we take a really kind of level headed, rational approach to these issues that really resonates with young people.
What's the main difference in how you view the climate issue as opposed to someone like AOC right or like these these more like progressive democrats of view, this is a very existential crisis. You have to get fossil fuels under control. These kind of timelines that we hear, you know, by twenty fifty, by twenty seventy, by even like something like twenty thirty, Right, how it becomes like a cascading problem.
How differently do you view the current situation than you know, these progressive Democrats.
Sure, like I said, climate change is a challenge. It's certainly something that we need to tackle, but we don't view it through kind of this doom and gloom lens where we're going to die in twelve, ten, five years, whatever the current timeline is on the left. But we do see a need for all of the above energy. So we recognize that energy demand is continuing to expand,
but we also need to protect our environment. So we need to kind of consider that trilemma reliable, affordable, and clean when we're looking at our energy portfolio in the future. And I think that's what really kind of distinguishes us from the left in that we're not calling for a divestment of fossil fuels.
We're calling for a.
Rational, level headed energy strategy that will lower emissions. But in kind of a more realistic way.
Do you think that time land's gonna be more stretched out? Because I mean, if if you look at you know, the way current current levels are heading. As soon as we hit like two point five degrees, not just that change, but the level of cascading environmental effects, right, one thing changes. Now everything gets worse because when stuff melts, then it changes the way like thermal regulation of the whole planet works,
and then it becomes this kind of cascating problem. And I feel like we're trying to get out in front of it before it happens that every day that kind of feels less and less likely, at least for a lot of people like my age, and it can be a very doom and gloom scenario because you feel like no one's taking this problem seriously. Even Joe Biden's climate policy is very inadequate according to like a lot of
a lot of the people that I talk to. I guess seel like, how do you view like the scale of this problem right now?
Yeah, climate change is the kind of environmental challenge of our time, right it should be what you know we're thinking about and focusing on when it comes to environmental policy. But I really think we need to kind of take a step back, and that kind of push for urgency hasn't gotten us anywhere to your point. You know, Joe Biden is kind of branding himself as the Climate President. You know a lot of young people are unhappy with
the platform that he's put forwards. So I think when you're talking about the timeline, we're talking about what we can do right now to kind of unleash American energy, to reduce American emissions, but also global emissions.
And really think of this on a global scale.
So that urgency piece isn't quite you know, realistic, or isn't quite what we want to focus on because I don't think it.
Leads to action.
There's kind of two trains of thought in terms of like climate policy stuff. There's taking like adaptation roots, right, trying to adapt to a changing environment that we're going to have to face it it's going to happen, versus mitigation.
Right.
For a while, we were trying to find ways to mitigate the problem to kind of get ahead of it, right, and that is feeling less and less likely, and we are seeing more of these adaptive strategies getting adopted.
Right.
There's everything from like you know, people are trying to develop better carbon capture, which has its own problems as a technology. And you know, everything from like geoengineering even to like solar blockage. There's a lot of things people are thinking, like, if we don't get like emissions under control, we're gonna have to go to similar more of as extreme measures. How much of your focus is on adapt developments versus just mitigation, Well, we definitely need both.
To your point, we have to adapt to a change in climate, but we also need to be reducing emissions to kind of prevent future effects. So I think we kind of set a balance between adaptation and mitigation, and frankly, I think sometimes they can be really kind of connected and entwined. So something we focus on, for instance, is regenerative agriculture, which lowers emissions associated with agriculture but also helps the land kind of adjust to a change in climate,
keeps the soil healthy, things like that. So I really think when we're talking about climate we can talk about adaptation and mitigation kind of at the same time.
How do you try to do outreach to a vast number of Republicans conservatives who simply don't think this is a problem, who like just deny this as a problem. I think this is like a scam in some way. How do you try to tackle that as coming from a like an also conservative position.
Yeah.
So, I mean we're here at the Republican National Convention, and it's been really interesting talking to a lot of folks from diverse backgrounds about the issue of climate and also environmental conservation.
I really do think it matters how you start the conversation.
We talked earlier about kind of our timeline of the legacy of conservative environmentalism. Starting there and talking about how we can carry on that legacy and how we can tackle kind of this environmental issue of our time has been really effective and we've gotten a lot of positive reception.
You know, there's always going to be disagreement, there's always going to be detractors, but I do think that there's more and more of kind of that acceptance that we need to take care of our own backyard, and that includes, you know, tackling climate change.
How much stuff do you end up having to you know, talk about our not necessarily focused on at least talk about like actual fossil fuel emissions, for racking, these types of things that are like mainstays of politics because of how much money goes into them, but undeniably are a massive contributing factor, and we do need to move to probably some more nuclear options to forgive the expression, I guess, and you know as well as like a like a solar hydro, which are you know, less good than nuclear
on like a large scale. But like you know, especially for the for the Republican Party, trying to trying to point out certain things about how we will have to scale back some degree of fossil fuels, if not you know, a majority of it in the next twenty five years, if we want to, if we want to not have like a pretty bad scenario at least for not even just for humans, but for like animals in other parts of the environment.
Yeah, well, I think that goes back to the all of the above energy approach and really diversifying our energy portfolio, which frankly is not only good for the environment, but good for energy security. We've seen you know, hacking of pipelines or other kind of cyber energy attacks. So by diversifying sources, we're really setting ourselves up to have a
more secure energy grid. So I think there's other ways that you can talk about you know, environmental actions, climate actions that have co benefits, and we can talk about that in a really productive way with Republicans.
Do you also focus on like local ecology efforts, like you know, like some of the more like Roosevelt style a conservation is that thing that you also kind of try to like advocate for. Also, it's like an on ramch talk about these like broader climate issues.
Absolutely.
I love that framing that you used as kind of the entry point to climate issues. We have fifty thousand young members across the country in about one hundred branches, either on college campuses or in young professional communities, and they go out and they plant trees in their communities, They do park cleanups, they clean up a waterway, They have educational speakers to learn more about these issues.
And we found that that's really really.
Effective in building this conservative environmental movement and showing that these values are connected, they're compatible, and then that can lead to advocacy on the national level for things like we talked about nuclear energy or other clean energy sources.
So that's been really effective for us.
What would you like to see as a conservative climate policy in like ten years, Like what would you hope gets adopted to help curtail like you know, these more catastrophic scenarios.
Great question, and I would hope it perhaps a little bit earlier than ten.
Years absolutely, but I'm just based on how things have gone.
Sure, So we have kind of a big three that we're focused on right now.
Permitting reforms, so getting the government out of its own way, frankly, to fight climate change, and unleash American energy in the form of clean energy, nuclear, solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower, and really kind of expand what we can build in this country. Again, nuclear energy is really one of the focuses for us because it's a baseload energy source that can run twenty four to seven, it's clean, and it's really secure. So we're really focused on nuclear. And then the last thing
is American energy dominance. Here in the United States, we produce energy safer, cleaner, and more efficiently, and we really want to be a leader on the world stage when it comes to energy.
I think that there is a lot of people, both like you know, progressive Democrats who really care about this issue, as well as you know a lot of Republicans and liberals who have a lot of skepticism about nuclear energy. Right for some good reasons. There have been some unfortunate events that have happened, and I know like fission and fusion have been slowly getting better where I feel like we're close to some kind of breakthrough, but we do
have like kind of a limited time. How do you approach kind of talking to people who have a level of risk in terms of nuclear energy and like the possible dangers that it's had based on a few accidents, even though a lot of a lot of these plants are relatively safe.
Yeah, I love this question.
I grew up an hour south of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania, so I have a lot of experience with nuclear skepticism. Look, I mean nuclear energy is the safest and cleanest form that we have in our back pocket. Yes, there have been some unfortunate incidents, frankly they're human error,
and we understand nuclear power a lot better now. We have more safeguards in place since incidents like Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, and we haven't seen a nuclear meltdown that we were promised in the Simpsons or the China syndrome or something like that. The fact is nuclear quote waste is really nuclear spent fuel, and we can recycle
that and keep producing clean nuclear power. We have incredibly well trained nuclear experts at all of our power plants across the United States and they produce clean, reliable energy for consumers all over the country. So we really need to kind of get over those messaging hurdles with nuclear and expand the industry here.
What do you think will happen if your concerns go unheard? Like if this just doesn't this just does doesn't work. I think it's kind of continue at the scale and like a timeline they have been. What worries do you have?
Yeah, that's a really existential question.
Yeah, I mean, I think we're in the seven years since we've been founded, we're working really hard to build coalitions with a lot of different stakes and be heard by a lot of different folks in power, and frankly, I'm hopeful that we will you know, pursue solutions to climate change. That we will you know, for lack of a better term, get our act together and pursue these solutions.
And really, I think the biggest thing that I like to focus on when it comes to climate advocacy is optimism and this idea that you know, the planet is our one common denominator and we can unite around that and you know, already in Congress, we've seen bipartisan legislation in a really polarizing time that focuses on climate.
Probably the last big package.
In the one hundred and eighteenth Congress was a nuclear package to unleash next generation nuclears. So, I know, I'm not exactly answering your question, but I am extremely optimistic about the future.
Do you think there's a path towards some kind of bipartisan advocacy not just in like the Senate, but also like in terms of like environmental movements and like protests. And obviously there's certain people who employ very theatrical tactics that maybe don't correlate to much improved means, But do you see there's a possibility of, like you know, a
larger public call for action on this issue? I mean mean, something that we've covered on our show a while ago is like will it take something like a general strike to even like get people to like realize like we need this to be done? Like not necessarily that option, but like do you see like a route towards more of bipartisan activism and advocacy of this issue.
Yeah, that's a great question. We do a lot of bridge building work. I was actually in Los Angeles earlier this year with a group of conservative climate advocates and progressive climate advocates and we talked about solutions where there's common ground, and then we finished the day by doing a beach clean up together. So I really do think there's a lot of opportunity to kind of unite on
this issue, especially in younger generations. When I talked about hope earlier, they're the ones who really give me hope, and I think there's a lot of common ground that we can pursue together.
That's all I had, and less you have any other notes, w or points you wanted to mention.
If you want to find a ACC, you can find us at a dot eco or ACC Underscore National on social platforms.
But that's it for me.
Well, I hope that was slightly informative, and now we will inform you about the Heritage Foundation's private exclusive party after these messages. Okay, we are back.
We are back, and we are ready to tell you, Oh, five pigtails. Let us infiltrate famous hate group, the Heritage Foundations social house party.
We got all up in the first off, a lot of microwave great food.
It was the worst food we've had in all of Milwaukee was the Heritage and Foundation Great Meals. Yes, that is a very notable that the Heritage Foundation had the worst food that we've had this entire week.
Not shocked.
First of all, they let you two as well as another one of our friends come in off of my access code, which is very funny, and that we took one of the most hilarious photos we've ever taken together.
And then we then we met with one of the producers the Daily Wire and watched him try to figure out who we are as I introduced him name he was. He was just calculating and then some lady came up and disrupted and we just fucking.
You can see the little like thinking thing.
Like third grade edition, and it wasn't the math was not mathing.
It was like that one BABC Sherlock scene. He was trying to pull up. He was trying to pull up the files. Didn't work, didn't work, didn't have enough time. We stayed in that party, Robert, you seen that party for like five straight hours.
I was there for a long time. For every drink I wanted to drink, I would order another and just pour it out because I wanted I wanted to make them spend the money.
It was going to go somewhere free for us, but not free for them. So as Robert was was schmooshin with the Heritage Foundations, guys. Mean, so he went into the Connection Center to hear some speeches, and them today honestly pretty boring, and even even the notable ones were also kind of boring. The one I guess we'll talk about just very briefly is Don Junior's speech. First, he brought out his daughter, Trump's granddaughter.
Before you get to that, do you want to go over what the theme of the day was.
No, I mean, maybe we can, we can mention it. I don't feel how relevant it was to any of the speeches. It was just make America strong.
It was strong once again, sorry once again?
All right, interesting that they didn't want to sound out Massa.
You know.
Anyways, I guess I guess it's really not that relevant. I just just to point out that on the previous days for the different themes, there was very intricate backgrounds that were up.
They didn't anything too strong again, they were like they.
Phoned it the fucking yeah, and there was no interesting background Anyways, Garrett, what were you saying?
So Donald Trump Junior's daughter, So Trump, the actual real ones granddaughter gave this little, this little speechman to humanize her.
Grand Grandpa is a nice guy, calls me and asks me how I am.
That was basically the speech, which is lovely. Is sure? Why not?
It was her first speech. I don't think any of the other grandchildren have given speeches before.
No, this is kind of the first appearance of one of Trump's grandkids.
Yes, And the way it was framed is Don Junior came up and then was like she just called me. It was very intentionally propaganda's.
It was also the most happy I've seen Trump this entire week, though.
He might actually care about his granddaughter.
Yes, definitely more than his son hard it would be hard to care less.
And I'm not sure how much they've they've shown it on TV, but you know, I had a view of him the entire night tonight right from where I was sitting. I was an angle where I could see his face, and they showed his face on the screen a bunch,
and he was genuinely stoic. I would say he smiled for his granddaughter, definitely the most and maybe one stirring Kimberly Gilfoyle's speech at the very end, but other than that, I did not see much emotion from him today, and it was pretty similar to the rest of the week.
I think, you again, you have to keep in mind with him whatever I mean, we hate him. He's a bad man, he's a monster, would be the worst possible president we could have. But he's also a person who got shot and he's traumatized, you know, and like you don't have to like make up excuses for that. Like, he is a human being who was scared because a man shot him in the head, and that's really not not a complicated thing to diagnose.
So after the granddaughter gave her a little spiel, Trump Junior himself had a little speech that he was basically just doing an impression of his father.
For the entire time, dog shit impressing.
It's not a very good impression, but compared to Vance, it was still it was very impressive.
We'll get to that in a sec I will say the crowd did really really he.
Seemed to like him. There was chance, so you know, Trump Junior, twenty twenty eight.
It reminded me of when I was at my first Trump rally. This would have been in the late spring, early summer of twenty sixteen, when fucking Chris Christie conceded to Trump. There was a British naturalized citizen in the crowd of the rally, and I was like, you want them to be president for eight years? And he was like, well, I wanted to do president for eight years to start, and I was like, to start, what happens next? He's like, well,
he's got three kids, doesn't he? Then he like walked through his basic plan for Trump to have a dynasty like the royal family. And I wish I had said, go back home, go back home to your fucking country with your goddamn royal family. We don't have that here, but we might. They wanted it.
Yeah, late here the idea of the king's becoming increasingly popular.
You have never told me that story. And I am, oh, well, thank you.
I got so much great audio of that guy, Thank you so much.
That is going to haunt me tonight. Garrison. What else?
Yeah, I mean Trump and had a few funny lines making fun of build back better, making some corn pop jokes, a corn.
Pop jokes in the bulbit, very funny.
The One line I do want to mention is that he talked about how the left wants to use the First Amendment to show kids explicit drag shows, but they want to put you into jail for making a meme, something that has never.
Happened, not a single time, not once. Not Why they barely put people into jail for assaulting the capital.
Yeah, so that was most of his speech. We then heard from Vance's wife, who gave a typical vice first lady speech. It wasn't notable. And then we heard from Vance himself, the the the hopeful future vice president.
What sorry, I was taking a nap.
Wait, Sophie, Sophie, wake up, wake up, we're recording a podcast here.
Oh sorry that just the sound of JD. Vance's name put me right to sleep.
He gave what I would describe people have since described. It's kind of a bad speech.
You guys were in the stadium. I was sitting at the Heritage finn Ocean party on an upper roof.
Do Yeah, what'd they think?
There were three people during most of it, and then like four others filtered in when those guys left, every single one of them was disappointed. The only guy who liked it was a Fox News reporter, and when he left, the people who had been like, well he was okay, said well, I hate that I had to lie in front of that guy, but he was media. I was kind of just sitting on my phone pretending to be texting and listening to them, so they didn't really notice me.
But the ultimate feeling that they expressed repeatedly was that was really disappointing. It was really boring, It was really long. He is not a great speaker. There was one guy who repeatedly said, I don't like that his wife isn't white. I wish his wife was white. And then there was a guy who was kind of a more libertarian member of the Republican Party who I had chatted with, who came in and sat down to have a drink and
you know, was expressing that he liked Vance's speech. And the guy said, what are you a Cuban And the guy said no, and he's like, well, you're not white.
So that was great, amazing stuff happening in the Heritage Foundation private party.
The Foundation party was a was a good time. Yeah, so this is.
Something I was even seeing in the convention people there, you know, there was there was some like you know, respectful clapping, but people weren't super into it, at least of in the sections that we were at. The lady sitting next to me he was, you know, just like a Republican woman her maybe fifties or sixties, very very lucid, kind of just like kept dozing off just because she was so bored, not like because she was sleepy, just because she was bored.
Wasn't a good speech.
No.
She looks at me and she said, he's so dry.
Yeah. So at a certain point, I just I just kind of whispered to Sophie like, wow, Vance is a really dry speaker, and she kind of she kind of like nodded awake and started and started started like nodding her head in agreement and repeated the same thing to us. And I asked her, you know, like, well, who do you think would have been a better pick? And she said, well, I don't know. I just expected Advance to be a better rhetorical speaker. And that was all she would say.
And I feel like that was kind of generally the vibe. Like something else I noticed that he was like actually okay, and you know, the certain things he was talking about, you know, what he was actually saying. You know, there were certain things that were interesting, it was more like the way he was saying it. It was it was specifically he had no ability to do crowd work. He was just reading out the teleprompter and kind of doing a slight smile every thirty seconds, and that's all was.
He wasn't actually really seriously engaging people.
Make fun of the bits where Trump dances or whatever his little moves, but those play those work.
Even like pointing out people using gestures, kind of anything to connect you to the audience. Vance was just so was so dry, was so plain.
I think the biggest action from his speech was just the people in the crowd who liked to chant.
They were just really into chanting.
Ted Kruz gave him a great He like that he kind of lost them early in his speech the night before and won them back because he gave them a chance to chair repeatedly went through they like that, they like to chat, they're chanters.
Want to give us some of the chanting highlights.
Gar Yeah, so he was definitely leaning into his hillbilly or faux hillbilly background.
Motherfucker, sorry, your parents made one hundred and seventy five thousand goddamn dollars a year speaking to somebody who grew up in a fucking rural ass Oklahoma, like fucking carpetbagger.
That was what he was using for most of his speech. He was telling stories about the woman who raised him when his own mom was dealing with addiction, who he referred to as his mem.
Uh huh, and fucking goddamn it.
The first big chant I took note of is he told a story about how he was hanging out when he was like a kid or like a teen. He was hanging out with someone who was known to be like a local drug dealer, and his mem told him that if she saw him hanging out with that guy again, she was going to run him over in a truck, run over the drug dealer, and no one's gonna find
out about it. And the crowd ate this up, chanting me ma, me ma, So they were They weren't chanting about killing this drug dealer, right, they were chanting about murdering, murdering this drug dealer.
G d Vance never met a drug dealer in his fucking life, I'll tell you that one.
So that was the first one, and the next little Bema story he told is that when she was a little bit older. He said that after she died, they found nineteen loaded handguns all over her house and they realized it's because she wasn't able to move very fast, so she always wanted a gun no matter where she was, she wanted to be in armslength the gun, whether that be in the cutlery drawer, by the TV remote, under the bed, because because she wanted to protect her family
even though she was old. And this this led into another another chance. Specifically, the nineteen loaded handguns just again went the crowd ate that up, and the crowd even started just chanting about how good they were at chanting. It became very self referential, very like patting yourself on the back for chanting.
Funny, these people love chanting.
And yeah, that was that was That was most events speech. It wasn't very good, it was too long. Almost unanimously, people at the Heritage Foundation party did not like it, so they did not get that reproval.
One pseudo positive, which was the Fox News journalist.
Who I'm sure is contractually obligated to like it.
Yeah yeah, yeah, and who the people there made fun of when he left.
Yes, well, we talked to a campaign manager earlier at the at the Heritage Party just regarding kind of the race in general, mentioning stuff about the upcoming vice presidential debates, which the Trump Badman put out a statement saying they didn't want to lock down any details on this until he actually know who the vice president's going to be.
That which is a good piece of propaganda. And so, and we were talking about that and and bringing it up to some of these people at the Heritage Party, like who do you think actually is going to be the Democratic nominee? Many of them did not believe it
was going to be Joe Biden. Many of them thought that it either could be an unknown candidate at this point, or more likely probably kamalaw And this is something that I've been noticing is that every time in these speeches where they're talking about Joe Biden's policies, they're not just saying Joe Biden, They're saying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's, well, well,
Kamala Kamala harris in one instance, Kamala Harris's policies. So they are already preparing to start shifting their rhetoric onto kamalaw. That's something that the opposition's already planning to do. And you know, as as of today, which is which is Wednesday night, we've heard that both Biden made announcements in the same day that he would step down if he was to face this serious medical diagnosis. And he also got COVID the same So.
The look on your face when we told you that Joe Biden had COVID you were you were thrilled.
Okay, well we shouldn't say that either. Anyway. That is kind of a brief glimpse into the Heritage Foundation party. I guess that the vibes were more similar to what is I think well known now as the least a good episode of The Boys, that that private tech night party combined with like a frat, a frat bro bar hop.
What I'll say about this is they had an EDM track set to Country Road Take Me Home. I will say that like if you were to if you were to put that side by side with the plane crash that killed the author of that song, I think he would agree with you. This party was worse.
One more thing I wanted to note was I did not go to the party for seven hundred hours like the two of you. I went home after all the speeches home, I went back to the hotel after all the speeches.
Did that country road take you home?
That country road took me home place you belonged. And I had a very very very nice lift driver. Sir, if you're if you buy a sub chance, listened to podcasts. You were very nice.
Thank you.
After what was a very loud day, there was a guy holding a rest in peace sign with the photo of the guy who attempted to a set state the president, with the caption.
In American hero great stuff.
Yes, I took a photo of it. And the amount of people leaving the yards see that just shouted their worst. Many slurs at him were countless. And I don't know if anything else happened further after that, but very strange choice.
That is an interesting move.
All I know is that based on the last postings of the victim of that shooting, Corey comparatour, he'll get over it.
The Japanese dead Well. Anyway, That wraps up our coverage this week of the Republican National Convention. We will lead next week with Trump's first public speech since the shooting. That'll be dropping Sunday night.
Maybe a little bit of mere rudy sprinkle of squeeze in, some rudy as a tree, some squeeze in like like he squeezed down some of that hair juice.
That's Jesus Christ.
Well, thank you for listening to our initial conver of the RNC. We have more scripted episodes, more kind of polished deep dives about the people and conversations that we have had here in beautiful Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
And remember, folks, if you're going to take a bullet for somebody, Donald Trump does not care, not interested at us.
Not making the funeral is not He is not going to show up at your funeral.
Wow, that's a loud chair, painfully loud chair. You know what else is painfully loud? The Heritage Foundation party. Anyway, we're done, goodnight, good night.
It could Happen here as a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at cool Zonemedia dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening.