Here & Now

McCoshen & Ross at the RNC: Trump, Vance and the 2024 Vote

Zac Schultz:
Good afternoon and welcome back to Milwaukee, host city for the Republican National Convention. This is a special presentation of Here & Now’s 2024 election coverage. We’re coming to you live from Panther Arena media row in downtown Milwaukee. I’m Zac Schultz:, senior political reporter for Here & Now, and I am joined, yet again, Bill McCoshen and Scot Ross. Thank you again for coming back. It is day four.

Bill McCoshen:
This is it, the finale.

Scot Ross:
Yup.

Zac Schultz:
All right, last night, day three, usually the VP’s night. How do you think J.D. Vance did introducing himself to a new audience to watch him for the first time?

Bill McCoshen:
I think he did well. He’s not a rah-rah speaker. He gave his backstory very matter of fact. Some today have called it workman-like. I would agree with that. His job was to connect with working people and people who think that their government has forgotten about them, and I think he did an excellent job last night. His position will be clearly a Big 10 candidate. He’s to go after Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. I think most of your viewers know the Penn State, the Big 10 now runs from New York City all the way to Washington, the state of Washington and California. So I think he’s going to add to the ticket. He’s going to have to continue to introduce himself. Folks don’t know him, even if they’ve read “Hillbilly Elegy” or seen the movie. Last night was their first real chance to get to hear him speak, and I think the next 110 days will prove whether or not he’s going to add or not.

Zac Schultz:
So is this the further reinvention of J.D. Vance? His story has changed in his time in the public’s eye.

Scot Ross:
Yeah, I mean, the fact is, and first, I just want to say the University of Pittsburgh, my alma mater is in that band, and we are in the ACC. What I saw last night was a guy who should have been introducing himself to the country, and instead he spent the first third of his speech basically apologizing for Donald, for his talk about Donald Trump. The over and over kissing up to Trump, but I guess that’s what Trump, you know, wants in a vice president. I joke that Trump’s the big dog, and J.D. Vance rolled over, sat, fetched, and spoke.

Zac Schultz:
So one thing that struck me is whether this speech could have been delivered at a Republican National Convention two decades ago.

Bill McCoshen:
No chance.

Zac Schultz:
Because attacking NAFTA, attacking the Iraq War. I mean, does he expect that most people in the building were probably cheering for George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004, and he’s the one that, well, he didn’t pass NAFTA. That was Clinton but Republicans also brought us into the Iraq War.

Bill McCoshen:
Surprisingly, the party has changed quite a bit in the last 20 years. The people in the building responded phenomenally well to J.D. Vance last night, and much to my chagrin, they responded reasonably well to Matt Gaetz. So I think the party has changed. Those who attended the convention 20 years ago, there’s probably a lot fewer of them than one might expect. You know, I went to a convention 20 years ago in Houston, Texas in 1992, and I think the party has changed. I think it’s more welcoming to working people and to the middle class, and I think that’s a good thing. We’re not the country club Republicans anymore. It’s more of the meat and potatoes working class party.

Zac Schultz:
But when it comes to talking about NAFTA, I mean, how much of this is a complete reinvention, is fair in this political party in this era?

Scot Ross:
I mean, again, truth went out the window, in 2015 when Donald Trump went down the escalator in his hotel. The fact is the Republican Party has never been more anti-union, anti-worker, and they got a guy who’s, lipstick on a pig basically, because this guy, has been an ardent, in the year he’s been in elected office, he’s been always supporting the Republicans’ anti-union stuff. The guys who financed him, Peter Thiel, the billionaire who put $15 million into his senate race, is one of the most rabid anti-union people in the country, and in fact, unions are what made Peter Thiel say he doesn’t necessarily think democracy’s going to work anymore. So it is complete fabrication. When they get out on the trail, it’s very clear. Democrats stand up for working families. Republicans are in the pocket of the billionaires, which is why they gave $2 trillion in tax cuts to rich people and corporations with the first Trump tax cuts, and now they’re promising $5 trillion more that our viewers are all going to be paying for.

Bill McCoshen:
Let’s not forget Donald Trump ran against NAFTA in 2016, and he won, and working people understand what NAFTA is. They were sold a bill of goods back in the early ’90s that somehow this was going to be good for them. It wasn’t good for them. Donald Trump renegotiated the deal. It’s now the called the Canada-Mexico Agreement, which is far better for working people in the United States, but there’s more work to be done, and Trump is already talking about that, whether it’s China thinking about opening an auto manufacturing plant in Mexico. He said, “Yeah, well, good luck. We’re going to put tariffs on those cars if you try and take those jobs away from our people.” So this is an America-first party. It’s an America-first agenda, and the party’s changed dramatically, and I think that’s one of the reasons they’re doing so well.

Zac Schultz:
Ironically, in 2016, Russ Feingold also was talking about NAFTA and that didn’t help him in the fall, even though it helped Donald Trump.

Bill McCoshen:
Right. Well, Feingold lost in ’10.

Zac Schultz:
But he also ran again in ’16.

Bill McCoshen:
Well, true. That’s true. You know, I think people believe something different would happen with NAFTA 20 years ago, including your former boss, Ron Kind. It was a bipartisan agreement to do it. At the end of the day, it did ship jobs overseas.

Zac Schultz:
So one of the other issues that came up a lot last night was immigration. We saw posters that were handed out by the Trump campaign that said mass deportation. That’s also a different interesting stance to see at a Republican National Convention, to see in the public spotlight, because those aren’t words that most political parties wanted to be connected to in the past.

Scot Ross:
Yeah, I mean, it’s repellent. You know, it is the worst in our politic. We are all human beings, and we had a guy on stage last night with, you know, the governor from Texas who

Zac Schultz:
Greg Abbott.

Scot Ross:
Yeah, who, literally put razor wire in the Rio Grande, which caused the death of children. Like, that’s just beyond, and the rhetoric has continued. Again, build the wall, build the wall. Mexico’s going to pay for it. You know, that was eight years ago. We still don’t have a wall. Good. Mexico’s certainly not paying for it. They told us, you know, to go pound salt.

Bill McCoshen:
Greg Abbott may be the most responsible individual for making immigration a national issue. You had cities like New York City, Chicago, San Francisco who were sanctuary cities. He started busing migrants there. All of a sudden, their position started to change, right? When they were busting at the seams with migrants. They didn’t care when they were in Texas or Arizona. Once they were on their doorstep, things started to change. So I give Greg Abbott a lot of credit for making this a national issue.

Zac Schultz:
When are people going to make a connection, though, between immigration as a policy issue about border, versus the economy? Because, just yesterday, I was walking by and there was one of the big hospitality party tents set up for Republicans right outside the Fiserv being torn down by a group of Hispanic laborers, and they provide a lot of the work that goes completely unnoticed by the majority of Americans, and many of them are not here illegally, doing this work for lower wages. That is what’s needed to produce our economy.

Scot Ross:
Yeah, I mean, absolutely. I mean, the hypocrisy knows no bounds, and, again, when you’re talking about human beings, just the use of the term illegal, for instance. Nobody’s illegal, you know? Nobody’s illegal. They’re human beings, and we have to have a rational and reasonable immigration policy, because immigrants have built America. I mean, we’re a country of immigrants, you know? A lot of us, if we’re not Native American, weren’t born here. You know, our ancestors came here, so it is incredibly important that we are, cognizant of the fact of the impact of immigrants on our economy and that we’re standing up for them and not that grotesque display yesterday.

Zac Schultz:
Is this something that is a campaign issue, but won’t be a policy issue in your eyes if Trump makes it back into office?

Bill McCoshen:
No, it’ll be a policy. No question about that. Trump’s been very clear that he will deport, you know, migrants who are illegally

Scot Ross:
Mass deportation. It’s going to be a mass deportation. Families broken up

Bill McCoshen:
This isn’t a hide and seek kind of thing. He says that publicly.

Zac Schultz:
Are the people ready to actually see that as opposed to see it on a sign board or talk about it?

Bill McCoshen:
Well, Trump’s leading in all the national polls, and he’s leading in all the seven swing states by as many as seven points, so it appears the people are responding to what he has to say.

Zac Schultz:
One other thing about J.D. Vance and the issue of immigration. We were introduced to his wife last night, who he met at Yale. She is, for everyone who doesn’t know, she was born in the United States, but she is of Indian descent, and it was just a couple days ago that a lot of Trump supporters found out for the first time that J.D. Vance’s wife is not a white woman. And Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist who has dined with Donald Trump, went on his show and talked about how can J.D. Vance define white Christian nationalism when he’s not married to a white woman? Is that an internal conflict the Republican Party has to deal with, or is that just something that gets shoved aside?

Bill McCoshen:
No, and we probably will get to this at some point today, but this whole Project 2025, Chris LaCivita, the campaign manager, was interviewed by Politico today on a panel. He got asked about that and he said it was BS. That’s not our platform. Our platform is Agenda 47. I would say the same thing about this. There are people that may have different views than Donald Trump about this issue. Donald Trump has no issue about Usha Vance, and I thought she was extremely eloquent last night, very impressive, and I think a lot of female voters across the country are going to relate to her.

Zac Schultz:
What’s your take on whether, why is it that these white nationalists are attracted to the Republican Party and not the Democratic Party? Is that something we should be looking at more closely?

Scot Ross:
I think it’s something we Democrats should be very proud of, you know? The fact that, you know, we’re not attracting that sort of, I mean, again, remember Trump’s speech when he came down June 2015 about rapists and immigrants? It’s just disgusting and it’s normal. The problem with it is it keeps normalizing because of the echo chambers which exist, amongst a lot of media outlets, and we’re in the midst of a bunch here. That the fact that you can act as though hating other people because of who they are, you know, whether it’s immigrants, whether it’s, you know, LGBT, trans. I mean, we know how much anti-trans stuff has gone on in the Republican Party in the last year and a half. Our school boards are inundated with the Moms for Liberty who want to ban books. Particularly here in Wisconsin, where 481 books have been banned since this movement started, and so my point is this. Racism has no place in politics. It certainly has no place in the Democratic Party, and I hope that, one day, it won’t have any place in the Republican Party either.

Bill McCoshen:
Donald Trump has made this the most welcoming party in my lifetime.

Zac Schultz:
And the optics show that from the stage.

Bill McCoshen:
100%.

Zac Schultz:
But what about the policy that is being proposed by the politicians?

Bill McCoshen:
I think his policy will match his rhetoric, and people will be

Zac Schultz:
Does he have a track record of having his policy match his rhetoric?

Bill McCoshen:
When he can get it done, right? I mean, at the end of the day, you still have a Congress. You have to get things done. Sadly, our presidents can do too much with executive order, and I say that to either party. I don’t agree with that part of the system, and I’m sure there’ll be executive orders on day one when Donald Trump’s in place, but if Republicans get both houses of the Congress, which if the election were today, they would, I think they’ll pass his agenda.

Scot Ross:
Republicans had control of the Congress with Donald Trump in the White House for two years. They passed a $2 trillion tax cut for rich people and corporations? And just back to the Project 2025 thing, 240 people are affiliated with the Trump campaign who are also affiliated with the creation of Project 2025.

Zac Schultz:
So you mentioned polling just a little while ago.

Bill McCoshen:
Yeah.

Zac Schultz:
And there was an Emerson poll that WisPolitics reported about that showed Trump up, but to me, the more interesting thing was that 53% of people polled said they want Joe Biden out of the race, but 45% of people said they want Trump out of the race as well. Do you think that’s accurate that that high of percentage of people just want a whole new slate of candidates?

Bill McCoshen:
Yeah, but you can’t always get what you want. I mean, as of today, we have

Scot Ross:
But you try sometimes.

Zac Schultz:
That was Trump’s theme song in 2016.

Bill McCoshen:
We have a binary choice, you know? Beef or chicken, beef being Donald Trump, chicken being Joe Biden. You can order a dessert if you want, but you’re going to go to bed hungry. You’re not getting it. So these are the choices we have today. I think, Zac, that you opened up a bigger topic, which is the disarray on the Democratic side. We now have reports this morning that Former President Barack Obama is asking Joe Biden to reconsider whether or not he’s the strongest candidate for the Democrats. This is unbelievable. We’re 110 days from a general election. We have never in our lifetime or in the history of this great country seen a party who claims to be for democracy pushing their guy over the cliff with 110 days to go.

Zac Schultz:
Is that air quotes on democracy?

Bill McCoshen:
It is air quotes on democracy, because this party will not be able to say, for the next 110 days, if they short 14 million Democratic voters and take away their voice and they do a backroom deal to push Joe Biden out of the way and replace him with somebody else, they will never be able to talk about democracy again.

Scot Ross:
I’ll tell you what we will do. We’re going to make sure that we have the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump and defeat Republicans in the fall, and the one thing we won’t do if things don’t go our way is storm the Capitol. Cause the death of five law enforcement officers and injure 140 others while trying to undo the results of a democratically-decided election, which top Republicans were involved in, including our congressman, Derrick Van Orden, and top to bottom, Trump has said he’s going to pardon them if he gets in there, people who broke the law.

Bill McCoshen:
That’s a change of position. Yesterday, he said Biden’s the nominee. Today, he’s not ruling out a backroom deal to push him over the side.

Zac Schultz:
So if he steps down

Scot Ross:
Well, I mean, if I

Zac Schultz:
Is it a backroom deal? Because everything in politics is a backroom deal.

Bill McCoshen:
Listen, there’s no such thing as just stepping down. They are publicly humiliating this man who spent 55 years in public life. He knows that and he holds the cards.

Zac Schultz:
When you say “they,” that also includes Republicans because

Bill McCoshen:
No, it doesn’t.

Zac Schultz:
Do you think they want him out?

Bill McCoshen:
I think the Democrats want him out. We’ll take him. We’ll take Harris. It doesn’t matter to us. It doesn’t matter to us, but the notion that they set up this process to protect him from any primary opponents, and now realize after they chose to have an early debate that that was the biggest campaign mistake in the past 248 years in the United States of America, now they’re trying to get rid of the guy. That’s not democracy. That’s influence peddling.

Zac Schultz:
So how much of this, Scot, comes from pressure from the media and Democrats in higher positions being pressured and feeling that pressure, then therefore pressuring Biden, versus a groundswell that’s legitimate from the people?

Scot Ross:
I mean, the thing that I can’t understand is, Democrats get to vote and they get to choose a candidate, and I don’t understand why they suddenly can’t do that. You know, these are tough times.

Bill McCoshen:
They did in the primaries.

Scot Ross:
These are tough times for the president. That’s for sure, and again, layer on, layer on, layer on, and yesterday, COVID. These are challenging times. The best thing that Democrats have going for us is that the country has lived through a Donald Trump administration, and it was a disaster top to bottom. We lost three million jobs. Under Biden, we gained 16 million. Under Biden, we gained 21 million more people got healthcare. We had, infrastructure. Here in the state of Wisconsin, $7 billion in infrastructure that all Republicans opposed, you know? That’s where I come down on this. I come down on this, is that the people know what the record is of both of these candidates. They intently know what the record is and they’re going to choose the side that both stands up for them and has results, and it’s the Democrats.

Bill McCoshen:
Your viewers will get this. This is like a wedding. Democrats sent out the invitations. They paid the deposits. Joe Biden was going to be, they were going to marry Joe Biden. Now, they are leaving him at the altar, and they have no answer as to where this goes next. My advice to Democrats is be careful what you wish for, right? This could turn out a lot worse than going with Joe Biden.

Scot Ross:
I am for sure going to let the Republican Party, whose top guy, has three spouses, and was convicted of 34 felonies related to hush money illegally paid to a porn star he had sex with while his third wife was recovering from her having his fifth child. I will let the Republicans talk about marriage, for sure.

Zac Schultz:
Let’s talk about Trump, because that is the keynote for tonight. He is the final speaker. According to the schedule, he’s listed for an hour and a half. Are we going to get sharks and batteries, or are we going to get unity Trump?

Bill McCoshen:
I think we’re going to get unity, but we’ll see, right? There’s gotta be a few razor blades in there. It’s Donald Trump, right? And the party loves that. So he has said that he rewrote the speech so that it’ll be more about uniting the party and the country. I expect that to be the case mostly, but will there be some sharp barbs in there? Sure, you know? And that’s when the place will explode. I think that Donald Trump’s going to blow the roof off the Fiserv Forum tonight, and I’m looking forward to it.

Scot Ross:
I mean, listen, they promised unity, and by the second speaker on day one, they had broken that promise. What are the themes for them? The themes are, you know, make America wealthy again. Well, their plan is $5 trillion in tax cuts for rich people, including Diane Hendricks, who’s speaking tonight. The everyday American.

Zac Schultz:
Oh, we’ll get to that. We’ll get to that.

Scot Ross:
They want us safe, but they assault democracy. They attack our rights. They want to undo the Constitution, and they want one man, Donald Trump, to be above the law. And then the third thing is they want us to be strong, and they want us to be strong by capitulating to Vladimir Putin and doing what he wants, which both Donald Trump and J.D. Vance will do if they are in power.

Zac Schultz:
So the unity thing, to me, seemed, on the first day, it was unity for America, but by that first night or the second day, for sure it was unity within the GOP. Do you think that’s more important for Donald Trump than unity for America?

Bill McCoshen:
No. He’s got unity within the GOP. I’ve never seen anything like it. Now, I think the next challenge is uniting America, and honestly, if I were giving him advice, you know, sort of that stretch goal, that thing you might not want to say tonight, I’d consider saying “I’ll pardon Joe Biden on day one.”

Zac Schultz:
For what?

Bill McCoshen:
Crimes, the business dealings with his son Hunter. I would say tonight that “we’re going to put partisan differences behind us and I’m going to pardon Joe Biden on day one.”

Zac Schultz:
Do you think Donald Trump pardons himself and his children before he pardons Joe Biden?

Bill McCoshen:
No. I don’t think it’ll be necessary.

Zac Schultz:
Why is that?

Scot Ross:
Because the Supreme Court changed the law to make him immune from prosecution because it’s corrupt.

Bill McCoshen:
Yeah, and I think the hush money case is going to go away in September.

Zac Schultz:
So we’ve already seen Miami being thrown out, but it’s being appealed. There’s still other cases that are pending appeal.

Bill McCoshen:
Yep.

Zac Schultz:
But you think he won’t even need to pardon himself?

Bill McCoshen:
I don’t. I don’t.

Scot Ross:
Trump promised he would be a dictator on day one, and you are seeing the foundation for that being laid.

Zac Schultz:
So one of the other things that we heard a number of speakers this week say is talking kind of the 2016 version of Donald Trump, of he didn’t have to run. He didn’t have to run. Well, there were a lot of people saying he did need to run to avoid prison, to avoid prosecution in some of these cases. Is that fair to say he didn’t need to run, that he could just, you know, safely retire and golf all he wanted to?

Bill McCoshen:
Yeah. Do you think all of these things would’ve happened if he hadn’t run? I mean, do you think he would’ve been

Zac Schultz:
Well, some of these cases started years ago.

Bill McCoshen:
Oh, no, these cases all happened in the last 18 months. They had three years, or in some cases, the one in New York, that goes all the way back to 2016, and they had to do some mental gymnastics just to overcome the statute of limitations on that. So these things have been sitting around, cold cases for a very long time. They all came together in the last 18, 24 months, so he did not need to do any of this.

Zac Schultz:
If they were cold cases, why wouldn’t they get them prosecuted early, so then he would have been a convicted felon and he

Bill McCoshen:
So the FEC, for example, on this stupid case in New York, said there is no crime here. So Alvin Bragg had to make some unbelievable mental gymnastics and then convince a jury of Trump haters that he was guilty of it.

Zac Schultz:
Will the convictions matter in the fall even if they are thrown out? Will people still be thinking of them? Democrats, moderates, independents, those who are not already attracted to Donald Trump in that way.

Scot Ross:
I think swing voters don’t want somebody in the White House who has 34 felonies. As simple as that. You know, it is as simple as that. Talk about crime and you got a guy who’s got 34 felonies and would be facing prison if not for a Supreme Court where he put half of the members who decided to allow him to have life-time immunity, a get out of jail free card.

Zac Schultz:
One of the things that’s been overlooked, in my opinion, is foreign policy. We have not heard very much other than J.D. Vance saying he now opposes the Iraq War, that talking about Ukraine, talking about Putin, even talking too much about Israel and their war in the Gaza Strip, does that need to be brought up tonight? Do you think Donald Trump will address that?

Bill McCoshen:
Oh, I think he will. Yeah. I think there are huge differences on the Israel issue with Gaza, on the Ukraine issue. Absolutely. I think Donald Trump’s going to show the differences between his vision and whomever the Democrats ultimately nominate as their party, ’cause at the end of the day, Democrats agree on Biden’s agenda, so it really doesn’t matter if he’s the guy or not.

Scot Ross:
Yeah, I think what it comes down to is we know that Donald Trump has been in the pocket of Vladimir Putin. You know, there’s no doubt about it, and the fact is that Democrats under Joe Biden and his leadership have charted a path that respects foreign policy, that allows us to be respected in the world again, allows us to be respected in the world again. And the reason that we’re in this mess is because Donald Trump can’t say no to attention. That’s why he running again.

Bill McCoshen:
We’ve got a commander in chief who can’t even stay awake long enough to go to meetings with the German chancellor. Come on. We are not respected around the world.

Scot Ross:
There was a video on the first day of Donald Trump nodding off at the RNC.

Bill McCoshen:
No. He was praying.

Scot Ross:
Oh, all right.

Bill McCoshen:
I know you don’t understand that, but he was praying.

Scot Ross:
Oh, I’m sorry.

Zac Schultz:
There were a lot of camera shots of him praying then.

Bill McCoshen:
Yeah, yeah.

Scot Ross:
Yeah. And in the courtroom, a lot of praying. A lot of praying.

Zac Schultz:
So what is your thought then on Ukraine? Because it was Biden. Whether he was awake or not, Biden is the one who got all the aid passed that allowed Ukraine to fight back against Vladimir Putin in Russia. Does that continue under Trump, who has been very cozy with Vladimir Putin in the past?

Bill McCoshen:
I would say there’s going to need to be some answers for all the money that’s going to Ukraine. Where is that money going? How’s it being used? I mean, that’s where our party is today. They are deeply concerned about blank checks for foreign wars. Donald Trump didn’t get us into any conflicts. He got us out of conflicts. Joe Biden’s got us in at least two right now, possibly more coming. So I would say Zelenskyy is going to have to explain how he’s using that money. I think the United States will do their part. There’s no question in my mind we’ll continue to be a leader in NATO, but Donald Trump is going to force those other countries to pay their fair share.

Scot Ross:
You know, and I think this is where the influence of the vice presidential pick comes in on this, because there has not been a bigger champion for getting out of, for us taking our assistance away from Ukraine than J.D. Vance. He’s been at the tip of the spear on that, like he’s been with abortion. Which remains a top issue in this election. He’s the most extreme when it comes to that issue of anybody who’s ever been on a national ticket. You know, he wants a national abortion ban. He wants women to be second-class citizens, and if Donald Trump is reelected with this guy, that’s what’s going to happen. We’re going to have a nation-wide abortion ban.

Zac Schultz:
Sticking to foreign policy though, is it fair to say that Donald Trump is an isolationist? Are we reverting back? Is that where the populist message is in America?

Bill McCoshen:
He thinks we oughta take care of our people first. You can call that isolationist if you want, or you can call it a leader for the people in this country. I mean, at the end of the day, some have said since Saturday that the Secret Service budget is too low. They don’t have enough resources. Now, why then are we sending money to Ukraine instead of taking care of something as important as that here in the United States? Why is our education system, especially in urban areas, falling apart when we’re sending all this foreign aid away? I mean, yeah, there are priorities here.

Zac Schultz:
Do you think there are Republicans in Congress that want to send more federal dollars to local schools?

Bill McCoshen:
Too soon to tell. No. I don’t think they want more federal dollars. I think they view education as a local issue.

Zac Schultz:
But education then wouldn’t be competing with federal foreign aid.

Bill McCoshen:
Well, it does though. There are, whether it’s the student loan forgiveness. That’s $160 billion. Whose money did that come? Where did that come from, right? It came from all us.

Scot Ross:
It came from the same place that the $867 billion in PPP loans that were forgiven. Let me just say

Bill McCoshen:
We forgave loans for doctors and lawyers.

Scot Ross:
Let me just say this. You know when you’re talking about not being able to finance the Secret Service, which I heard the same thing. I think people are talking about the fact that this is a challenge with the Secret Service. Sunset the $2 trillion in tax cuts for the rich that Trump wants to extend to $5 trillion. There.

Bill McCoshen:
Or make it a priority. How can it not be a priority, right? Let’s do a little prioritization of the federal budget. It’d be a good idea.

Zac Schultz:
Speaking of Secret Service, President Biden did authorize Secret Service protection for RFK Jr., who was the third-party candidate. What is his impact, if anything, in this race in November?

Scot Ross:
Well, he’s financed by Republicans. He’s supposed to be a spoiler in states, but I think Democrats and swing voters are a little smarter than RFK Jr. You know, they support vaccines, and I think that they’ll not support RFK Jr.

Bill McCoshen:
I think his impact is less and less every day. I think after he chose his running mate who I can’t even name, I know it’s a female from California, his campaign sort of ended. He’s still out there. He still polls at 6 to 10% depending on the state, but I think over the next 110 days, he’ll have less of an impact.

Zac Schultz:
I mean, we’ve seen historically that third-party candidates do poll well over the spring and the summer and up to the conventions, and then they end up getting at best 2 to 3%. Going back to 2016, the third

Bill McCoshen:
Which was enough in Wisconsin. Jill Stein getting 2% was enough to prohibit Hillary Clinton from winning here.

Zac Schultz:
Do you think RFK Jr., I mean, we saw the phone call that he had with Donald Trump. Do you think he is

Bill McCoshen:
That RFK’s guys leaked.

Zac Schultz:
Is he part of a Republican plot to try and-

Bill McCoshen:
No. No.

Zac Schultz:
Interviewer: Who does he take voters from?

Bill McCoshen:
The polling would say both. The polling would say both, maybe one and a half to one for Joe Biden versus Trump, but the polling says it’s fairly even.

Zac Schultz:
Any other third-party candidates that we need to think about? I mean, there are more on the ballot this time than in 2020. The Green Party has one. There’s some other names out there.

Bill McCoshen:
I think we’re interested in who the Democrat nominee’s going to be first. Let’s settle that first.

Scot Ross:
So, we have one

Bill McCoshen:
Let the coup finish on the Democratic side.

Scot Ross:
We have a candidate right now that is the president of the United States who’s been incredibly successful. He’s done the job. If he wins in November, he’ll do the job great as well. We know what we got with Donald Trump.

Zac Schultz:
All right, there is one other topic you guys already teased, and that is Diane Hendricks giving a speaking slot. She’s not in prime time. For those that don’t know, she is the owner of ABC Supply. She is a billionaire from Beloit. She is listed as an “everyday American,” and I know what your response is, Scot, to her being listed as that, but doesn’t she deserve a bigger title than that? Because she’s a very successful businesswoman and an entrepreneur and a philanthropist.

Bill McCoshen:
I think she’ll talk about that tonight, and her story literally is her and her husband Ken, her late husband Ken, started with nothing, and as the story goes, they couldn’t get a loan from a bank, from any bank in Janesville. They ultimately got a loan from a bank in Beloit, which is why ABC Supply is in Beloit and why Diane has invested so much in revitalizing that city over the last 20 years, but they had nothing. They literally had nothing. Ken had a high school degree. I believe she did at the time too. She’s now got advanced degrees, but she’s now one of the richest women in the world, so that is a true American story that you can start from zero and be this mega success. I think it’s great.

Zac Schultz:
And deeply connected to Wisconsin Republican politics.

Bill McCoshen:
Yep.

Scot Ross:
Absolutely, absolutely, and Bill has said something correct. She is one of the richest women in the world. She is the richest woman in Wisconsin, and what has she done with that money? She is Scott Walker’s biggest donor. Simple. We also know, again, when we’re talking about, like, the Republican outreach to labor, she was the architect of Walker’s take-over or his dropping the bomb on unions. We knew from the leaked video where he talked to her about divide and conquer, that led not only to the canceling of union rights for public employees, but then with right to work of private sector employees, and then the last thing is, you know, the last thing, and this is, she and the two billionaire Uihleins spent about $30 to $40 million for Ron Johnson in racist ads to put Ron Johnson back in office after he publicly extorted a tax break out of the Trump tax cuts that benefited himself and those three. I don’t know if it was S-corp or C-corp, but it was that.

Bill McCoshen:
She uses her money to make her voice heard. No doubt about that, and thankfully for us, it’s on the conservative side.

Scot Ross:
With the same kind of impact that

Bill McCoshen:
No different than George Soros on your side.

Scot Ross:
The impact that any everyday American would have.

Zac Schultz:
All right, we have just a couple seconds left. Give me a quick wrap-up of what you are hoping to hear from tonight.

Bill McCoshen:
Well, first of all, I want to get a T-shirt that says “Mamaw” on it, which is J.D. Vance’s grandma. I thought that those stories were phenomenal. I want to hear Donald Trump give his vision for the next four years. That’s what I’m looking forward to. Whether it takes him 60, 80, or 90 minutes to get all the way through it, we couldn’t be more excited. My whole family’s going to be here tonight, and it should be an awesome night for the Republican Party and for the state of Wisconsin.

Zac Schultz:
What are you listening for?

Scot Ross:
I mean, what I’m most concerned of is that he would be as aggressive as he has been out on the campaign trail and say those things that are not just false but incendiary, you know? Certainly some of the calls for violence that he’s done. I don’t want to see that. It has no place in politics. We talked about that on Monday. So I’m going to be looking for that. I’m going to be looking for what’s he saying and, will any of these dog whistles that he, does to the white nationalists be actual, loud calling cards?

Zac Schultz:
All right, Bill, Scot. Thank you for the week. It’s been a pleasure.

Bill McCoshen:
It’s been fun.

Zac Schultz:
I really appreciate having you here. All right, and thank you for watching our special presentation of Here & Now’s 2024 election coverage. Tune in tonight for PBS’s final night of coverage of the convention, where Here & Now will have another update on the day’s events, and finally join us on Friday to wrap up the week with a special one-hour presentation of Here & Now, starting at seven o’clock instead of our normal 7:30. I’m Zac Schultz. Have a great day. We will see you on the air tomorrow. Thank you.