Nikki Haley Pitches Trump to Reaganites

MILWAUKEE—Happy Wednesday! We hope you have the chance to enjoy two great ideas today: the United States of America and the Taco Bell Big Cheez-It CrunchWrap Supreme—as Rep. John James did thanks to a joke from late-night host Stephen Colbert.

Up to Speed (Convention Edition)

• Protests in Milwaukee have been very subdued this week—a smattering of anti-Israel activists here, some pro-life progressive activists there—but nothing close to the raucous and widespread protests feared by city officials in Milwaukee. Just one lone protester could be seen at one location outside the Fiserv Forum on Tuesday. When Dispatch Politics viewed the motorcades for former President Donald Trump and vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance depart from their hotel on Tuesday evening, not a single protester was in sight—just dozens of onlookers, including a couple who silently pumped their fists as Trump did after he survived Saturday night’s shooting.
• After Trump picked Vance as his running mate, failed Arizona Senate candidate Blake Masters—who is running in a crowded GOP primary for the state’s safely Republican 8th Congressional District—touted his support from the vice presidential candidate. Observers noted that Trump endorsed Abe Hamadeh, who narrowly lost an election to be the state’s attorney general in 2022, over Masters in that race.
• As Tuesday night’s convention speeches wound down, Dispatch Politics noticed an interesting pairing departing the Fiserv Forum: Rep. Byron Donalds, the Florida Republican who is weighing a run for governor, and Susie Wiles, the Florida-based GOP operative and top Trump campaign official. Donalds and Wiles, along with a small entourage that included longtime Trump communications aide Dan Scavino, were spotted talking closely as they rode down the escalator Tuesday night.
• Another Trump campaign adviser, Chris LaCivita, spoke to attendees at a Tuesday brunch near the convention site—sounding as sunny and optimistic about the Republican nominee’s chances as can be. LaCivita also dropped some useful information ahead of Trump’s Thursday convention address. “It’ll be a great show, that’s for sure,” he said. “If you sit down and watch it, you better have an hour and a half, at least, prepared.”
• Spotted at Craft, the restaurant inside the hotel adjacent to the Fiserv Forum: Rupert Murdoch, chairman emeritus of the Fox Corporation, exiting just as former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson walked in. Fox News, which is owned by the Fox Corporation, fired Carlson last year amid settling a lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems for nearly $800 million, despite Carlson hosting the channel’s no. 1 rated program at the time. Another bystander caught the moment on camera and sent the picture to Punchbowl’s Jake Sherman, who posted it here. Carlson is set to speak at the convention Wednesday evening.
• Party conventions often attract interesting initiatives, and this year’s RNC is no exception. Dispatch Politics came across a booth with a petition to make Trump the 2024-25 poet laureate. Why? Because of Trump’s lengthy portfolio of tweets, which were compiled in a book entitled Collected Poems of Donald Trump. Chapters in the nearly 400-page book included “Free Verse,” “Idiom Study: Like a Dog,” and “Nocturnes,” (i.e. tweets Trump sent out in the wee hours of the morning).

Up to Speed (Beyond Milwaukee)

• President Joe Biden is planning to endorse reforms to the Supreme Court, including term limits for justices and a binding ethics code, the Washington Post reported Tuesday. The president is also considering support for a constitutional amendment eliminating immunity from prosecution for elected officeholders in the aftermath of the court’s decision in Trump v. United States. Biden’s anticipated move hopes to appease calls from his supporters to actively counter the court’s conservative-leaning majority following recent decisions and purported ethics violations. He allegedly discussed the reforms on Saturday with members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, one of whom, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, introduced articles of impeachment against justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas last Wednesday. 
• Efforts to drop Biden from the Democratic presidential ticket continue in private, CNN reported Monday. While most Democrats have hushed their public criticisms of Biden following the attempt on Donald Trump’s life on Saturday, congressional Democrats are reportedly still lobbying Biden’s advisers to persuade the president to end his reelection bid following his disastrous debate performance. Furthermore, Biden lashed out at Colorado Rep. Jason Crow in a tense Zoom call with moderate Democrats on Saturday, according to Puck. Afterward, Crow alluded that Biden should be removed as his party’s top candidate in a Sunday interview on CBS’s Face the Nation. 
• A Manhattan jury found New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez guilty Tuesday on all 16 felony counts of bribery, extortion, fraud, obstruction of justice, and acting as an illegal foreign agent. Prosecutors accused Menendez of abusing his former chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to advance Egyptian and Qatari interests in exchange for luxurious gifts. Many Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, quickly demanded Menendez’s resignation, though the senator refused to comment on his political plans. Judge Sidney Stein scheduled Menendez’s sentencing for October 29, where the 70-year-old may face decades in prison. 

Nikki Haley Is Coming Home—And Wants Her Supporters to Join 

More boos than applause greeted Nikki Haley Tuesday evening as she strode to the podium for her speech to the Republican convention, with delegates in the hall letting the former 2024 presidential candidate know they did not appreciate her bitter challenge against freshly minted nominee Donald Trump. 

The contrast with other headliners, on Night 2 of what some delegates told Dispatch Politics is the most unified Republican convention in decades, was striking. Even Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who immediately followed Haley—and like her prosecuted an aggressive case against renominating Trump in the party’s 2024 primary—was uniformly welcomed with roaring cheers that persisted throughout his address. Still, Haley managed to soften up the crowd with one quick declaration. 

“I’ll start by making one thing perfectly clear,” she said from the stage inside the Fiserv Forum arena, less than one minute into a roughly 12-minute prime-time speech. “Donald Trump has my strong endorsement; period.”

Evidence of hostility in this most pro-Trump of pro-Trump rooms was expected, delegates told us in interviews on the convention floor prior to Haley’s remarks. But the longer the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations spoke, the warmer the response from the audience got. Perhaps Haley put them at ease by explaining why she was there. 

And Haley was there, she emphasized, to appeal not to them, but to the millions of Republican voters who supported her over Trump in the primary—and who are still hesitant, if not opposed, to voting for him over President Joe Biden. Indeed, that was the whole purpose of Haley’s speech, a source familiar with her planning revealed to Dispatch Politics earlier Tuesday. It was almost as though Haley was a Democrat and chose to speak at a Republican convention to give center-left voters permission to cross the aisle (an occurrence at these events from time to time). 

Except in this instance, Haley—a demonstrated conservative, but of the pre-Trump, Ronald Reagan variety—was there to explain to the millions of like-minded Republicans who supported her in GOP primaries why it was not just okay but imperative that they put aside sharp differences with the former president and oust the current president.

“We should acknowledge that there are some Americans who don’t agree with Donald Trump 100 percent of the time. I happen to know some of them. And I want to speak to them tonight,” Haley said. “My message to them is simple: You don’t have to agree with Trump 100 percent of the time to vote for him. Take it from me, I haven’t always agreed with President Trump. But we agree more often than we disagree.”

On balance, the delegates appeared satisfied.

“I think she gave us everything we needed from her,” Kansas delegate Vonda Wiedmer said. “I love Donald Trump.” Regarding the impact of Haley’s speech on her fellow delegates, Wiedmer added: “I don’t think they knew what she was coming to say, and I think when they heard what she had to say, they were very pleased—and I was very pleased. And I was pleased in the fashion that she said it.”

“I would be more concerned if Nikki Haley didn’t speak, than having her here,” explained Illinois delegate Travis Akin, who was wearing a bright red “Make America Great Again” baseball cap.

The exception in the room was the South Carolina delegation, whose members jumped to their feet and cheered from the moment Haley stepped on stage. Rep. Joe Wilson, the longtime Palmetto State congressman, told Dispatch Politics after the former South Carolina governor’s speech that she was “so unifying” and “so clear.”

“It’s critically important. There are legitimately people who—and I can identify with them. Trump was my fifth choice. And I’m a convert, but I can understand mainstream, traditional conservatives, Reagan conservatives, are concerned,” Wilson said. “Except for one thing, look at his policies. What did he do?”

Recent public opinion polls suggest Trump is in good shape for the fall despite lingering resistance from Reagan-era Republicans—lately referred to as Haley Republicans. The GOP nominee leads Biden nationally by 2.7 percentage points. He also tops the Democratic incumbent by 4.2 percentage points in the key battleground states. But Trump nonetheless invited Haley to address the convention just days before it kicked off Monday, and she accepted. (Like all convention speeches, hers was vetted and approved by the Trump campaign.)

Unknown is whether Haley’s appeal to her supporters will succeed. 

Biden’s disastrous performance in his June 27 debate with Trump in Atlanta, and his political struggles since, had left Haley Republicans more open to the former president and less likely to cross the aisle to vote for Biden. The president’s age and infirmity have influenced them like his condition has other voters. Yet on the heels of Trump selecting as his running mate Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio—a conservative populist who rejects many of the tenets of Reagan Republicanism—Haley Republicans were dispirited, with some thinking anew about backing Biden.

“The best hope for Haley voters is that Sen. Vance will be as disloyal to MAGA as he has been to conservatism. But that hope is nothing to base a vote on,” said Michael Worley of Utah, who is active in the “Haley Voters for Biden” working group, an offshoot of the Haley Voters for Biden super PAC. “I am profoundly disappointed in this choice and it reaffirms numerous concerns I have had for a long time about Donald Trump ever holding an office of trust or profit in the United States again.”

“This selection is an appeal to the Trump base voter, and will not be helpful in the suburbs of Detroit and Grand Rapids, where the race will be won or lost,” added Chris Roosent of Michigan, another working group activist. “The Trump campaign for the third time is now betting on winning by turning out low propensity voters who are not traditional Republicans”

The Haley Voters for Biden working group has been in contact with the president’s campaign and, like the related super PAC, exists to help convince disaffected Republicans to back the Democratic incumbent. However, not all members of the working group are committed to doing so. Some might still vote for Trump; some might write in Haley or some other preferable albeit completely nonviable Republican; some might leave the top of the ticket blank.

It’s an effort the Biden campaign continues to devote resources to, although it seems less significant amid efforts by the president to avoid being pushed out of the race by members of his own party. 

“Ambassador Haley said it best herself: someone who doesn’t respect our military, doesn’t know right from wrong, and ‘surrounds himself in chaos’ can’t be president,” Austin Weatherford, a veteran Republican operative leading GOP engagement for Team Biden, said in a statement responding to Haley’s speech. Regarding Republicans who supported Haley in GOP primaries this year, Weatherford added: “There’s a home for every single one of these voters in the coalition President Biden is building of patriotic Americans who will always put country over party.”

Meanwhile, Haley’s decision to offer a full-throated endorsement of Trump elicited snickers in some political quarters. 

The former South Carolina governor has had an off-again, on-again relationship with Trump, and she was mocked and accused of flip-flopping on Trump yet again in some political quarters. 

Haley opposed Trump in the 2016 GOP primary;  then joined his Cabinet as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations; then essentially disavowed him after he refused to concede his 2020 loss to Biden; then said she would not run for president in 2024 if Trump ran; then she ran against him anyway and ended up the last candidate standing in the race for the Republican nomination. And then, after a primary battle that was often bitterly personal, Haley returned to the fold and endorsed him.

“Americans were well served by his presidency, even if they didn’t agree with him on all things,” Haley said.

Rubio Then, Rubio Now

When Marco Rubio spoke before the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida, 12 years ago, he asked for the indulgence of his audience before his official remarks. “Before I begin,” he said, “this is such an important night for our country, I want to take with your permission just a few seconds, to talk about another country, a country located just a few hundred miles from this city. The country of my parents’ birth. There’s no freedom or liberty in Cuba. And tonight I ask for your prayers that soon freedom and liberty will be theirs.”

The crowd cheered for a full 10 seconds, taking no apparent offense at Rubio’s decision to put America, if just for a moment, second.  

Rubio spoke for almost 20 minutes immediately before the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney. Rubio, two years into his first Senate term, used the prime speaking slot to deliver a rousing, optimistic, and passionate speech—a paean to free markets and upward mobility, a testimonial to the character of the man he was introducing, a hopeful narrative about his own improbable rise to become one of the most celebrated Republican elected officials in the country. 

The speech was so well received that many in the crowd worried that Rubio’s introduction of Romney would overshadow the nominee’s own remarks. And six months later, following Romney’s loss to Barack Obama and after weeks and weeks of very public Republican introspection, Rubio graced the cover of Time magazine as “The Republican Savior” in a story that sought to explain “How Marco Rubio became the new voice of the GOP.” 

When Marco Rubio took the stage here in Milwaukee last night on the second night of the 2024 Republican convention, something had clearly changed. Rubio, who had been vetted for vice president, was just one of many voices who spoke on behalf of Donald Trump, a nominee whose brand of Republicanism is something close to a direct repudiation of the things Rubio was thought to represent. Perhaps the most notable thing about Rubio’s speech was how unremarkable it was. 

After a compelling tribute to Corey Comperatore—the Trump supporter who was killed Saturday by the would-be Trump assassin at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania—Rubio retreated to MAGA talking points, delivered in the defensive, unconvincing tone of someone who might still believe, when he’s alone with this thoughts, that Trump remains the con man who so disgusted him before he was elected president. Rubio acknowledged the massive changes Trump has brought to the GOP and the country: “By giving voice to everyday Americans, President Trump has not just transformed our party, he has inspired a movement.” 

But he spent more time explaining and defending Trump voters than extolling the virtues of their leader. 

“For those still wondering, who are in the press and many watching at home these—these are the Americans who wear the red hats and wait for hours in the blazing sun to hear Trump speak. And what they want, what they ask for, it is not hateful or extreme,” Rubio said. “What they want is good jobs, and lower prices. They want borders that are secure and for those who come here to do so legally. They want to be safe from criminals and from terrorists. And they want our leaders to care more about our problems here than about the problems of other countries far away,” he said. 

And, after a 10-second pause for some tepid applause and a brief “U-S-A, U-S-A” chant, Rubio added, “There is absolutely nothing dangerous or anything divisive about putting America first.” 

Notable and Quotable

“America cannot afford four more years of a Weekend at Bernie’s presidency.” 

—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis referring to Biden during his speech on night two of the RNC in Milwaukee. 

“I got the chance to take my 4-year-old son, Huck, to ‘Bring Your Kid to Work Day,’ much like how Jill now drags Joe to ‘Bring Your Husband to Work Day.’”

—Arkansas Gov. and former Trump White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in her speech on night two of the RNC in Milwaukee.