It's the Brian Larry Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. So no matter what you think of Donald Trump, I think it's fair to say, it's hard not to be at least somewhat moved by a presidential

nominee who was shot in the head, surviving an assassination attempt by a fraction of an inch two days

ago, appearing at his nominating convention. And appropriately enough, people had tears in their

eyes, even if you think Trump is bad for democracy, not having this election decided

by a bullet is good for it. As you've heard, Trump also had his classified documents criminal case

dismissed yesterday, at least for now, and he named Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate.

Vance was on this show in June of 2016 when he released

his book, Hillbilly Elegie, a memoir of a family and a culture in crisis. The culture and

crisis part of that is why Vance said at the time that he couldn't support Trump for president.

The good side of Trump is that I think he recognizes that there are a lot of folks in the Republican

electorate and the Republican base who are struggling economically, who are struggling socially.

I think that for too long the Republican establishment has sort of ignored those folks,

and in some ways, Trump's

election or Trump's nomination is just the result of people finally having enough and saying,

look, we're going to vote for somebody who represents our interests. The flip side of that

is that I think Trump, in many ways, represents a very, very simple solution or an attempt to find a simple solution to very complex problems.

I mean, if you look at my life, right, what characterized my life was a very broken, very unstable family, drug abuse all around me, an extraordinary sense of cultural resentment.

And I was able to overcome those things because I had a really loving family because my

grandmother and grandfather were frankly saints. But I think that the message of Trump in some

ways makes that resentment worse. I don't think that he's

going to do anything to make the drug addiction or some of the economic problems better. He

doesn't really have policies that would address those problems. And so what we're left

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