Brian Lerer on WNYC, now a stand to New York Times political reporter and host of their 2024 campaign podcast, The Run Up.

He had two episodes after the Biden-Trump debate that focused on that

obviously significant evening on June 24th. He spoke to a group of Americans from Democratic and

Republican perspectives who had come together in a dialogue group called Braver Angels, and he revisited

interviews he had done with prominent Democrats over the last 18 months

about Biden's age as a concern. So we'll play some clips from both and get his take. Always good

to have you instead. Welcome back to WNYC. Thanks, Brian, for having me. I appreciate it.

Let's start with a focus group, if that's the right word for it. Tell us about the group,

Braver Angels. Yeah, this is a political group that came together in the wake of the 2016 election,

when frankly people were having the discussion with themselves. How do we transcend political divides?

Is there a safe space where we can talk about political differences with families, communities,

relatives, and the like. And what

they came together with was this group kind of called Braver Angels, which tries to create

discussions amongst ideologically mixed groups of people and have kind of these policy debates

where kind of mimics a high school public forum style, where they can talk about more contentious issues,

but they want to do it in a kind of safe space of respect. And so when we saw that they were having

a debate night watch party and that they were having a convention in Kenosha, Wisconsin,

kind of thought it was a great place to get a mix of DR and independent, but also a group of people

who I know are committed to wrestling with the kind of

divisions in our political system and frankly what we can do about them. Good group. And they actually

identify their basic politics in the group by wearing different color wristbands? Yeah, they all have

lanyards that correspond with red for Republican, blue for Democrat, yellow for independent, and a white

...