Brian Weir on WNYC.

With us now Charlie Sykes, editor at large for the bulwark, the conservative but anti-Trump news organization.

Charlie was previously a long-time conservative talk show host based

in Milwaukee, which is where the Republican Convention took place this week. We'll talk about the

situation in both parties. Charlie, thanks for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC. It's good to be with you.

You wrote on the Atlantic during the week that for a moment after the shooting last Saturday,

a GOP tone shift seemed possible.

Then the convention began.

What kind of tone did you hear coming out of Milwaukee this week?

Well, I think there was a lot of spin about, you know, there was going to be a new tone or it would be a softened Donald Trump.

And what I also wrote

on my substack newsletter was, don't sleep on the screaming cognitive dissonance here. This is still

Donald Trump. This is still a party that is completely committed to the forcible deportation of maybe

10 million migrants. And so I think it was somewhat naive to think that there was going to be a change into the tone.

And then, of course, you have, I mean, in any convention that features Marjorie Taylor Green or Tucker Carlson.

But it was all overshadowed, I think, by the selection of J.D. Vance, who has been really one of the most outspoken MAGA advocates

and somebody who put out a tweet within hours of the shooting on Saturday, essentially

blaming the Biden administration for it.

So no real change in what Trump's party represents. What do you think

politically for the campaign or in implications for policy or democracy about this election

of J.D. Vance as Trump's running me. Well, I think it really put an exclamation point on the complete wrenching transformation

of the Republican Party, represents a rejection of decades of internationalism, certainly raises

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