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Right. The Republican National Convention wrapping up last night, former President Trump accepting his party's nomination. Now, the attention shifting to the Democratic side. Rumors swirling that President Biden may bow out of the presidential race as early as this weekend. Here to discuss, we want to bring in Bill Crystal. He is the Bulwark editor at large, Bill. It's great to have you. So, I'm curious where you stand on on the reporting that we are seeing and whether or not it's more of a question of when this is going to happen and ultimately what that timing means.

I think it's likely to happen, but um, you know, it's not certain. He's very stubborn. His campaign manager was on TV this morning saying, oh, no, he's he's not going anywhere. But it's it's not just rumors obviously at this point. We have very good reporting about what Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker is doing, uh, Senator Schumer, the majority leader, uh, Hakeem Jeffries, the current House minority leader, uh, various governors. They are all on board, the notion that uh, President Biden's going to lose most likely. And also, they can't really make the case that he's the right guy for four more years. He's done a good job as president, they would all say, but can we really look at him and say at 81 and aging that, you know, four more years is right? So, I I think there's awful I've never quite seen in my day in Washington this much coordinated pressure, almost universal, I'm going to say, from the serious leaders of the party. Some of them are saying it, some of them not saying it. Um, but Biden could be stubborn.

It's interesting because you say it's a coordinated effort. I was just thinking about uh, some reporting we had on AOC last night talking about the conversations she's been having with her peers in Washington about the next step, right? If Democrats are saying you don't want Biden on the ticket, okay, then what's the process? What do we see at the DNC? Where do we go from here? Is it just Kamala? And from her point of view, that's where the conversation starts to go off the rails. There's not a lot of clarity to that end. So, from your perspective, Bill, does that lack of clarity lead to some questions about the state of democracy for voters that feel like they're not really getting a say in who is going to be on the Democratic ticket?

I think it's paralyzed or at least made some people pause as you would expect. I mean, the analogy someone uses is, you know, you're in a car that's heading towards a cliff and it's not slowing down as much as you'd like for you to jump out. You still have to jump out, you know. Now, you we prefer to jump out when it comes to a full stop, but if it's going at 20 miles an hour, better than 60 miles an hour. And I think people are overdoing a little bit the the notion that it would be total chaos. Okay, it would be a little crazy. We haven't gone through this that much recently. Maybe Vice President Harris would sew it up very quickly and everyone would be for her. Maybe there'd be a competition, kind of a mini primary, some debates. You guys could host them all, you know, host the three or four who wanted to run and make their case to the delegates uh, on your show and everyone else could do the same. There'd be town halls, people would do some campaigning and then the delegates would meet and vote at a convention. Is that really that chaotic, that impossible to imagine? And I don't believe Biden's argument personally that everyone's feelings would be wounded and there'd be bitter divisions. Really, the Democrats are going to unite against Trump and they'll be excited, I think, by a little seeing these younger candidates and you'll end up with a younger ticket and a better ticket. So, I think people come to that view gradually. I'd say three weeks ago, I mean, I've been pushing this for quite a while, so I'm somewhat familiar with the pushback to it. And the pushback three weeks ago, four weeks ago, certainly before the debate was, oh my god, it just would be so impossible to pull off and there'll be Harris supporters and Pritzker supporters and Shapiro supporters and, you know, they'll actually have one or two arguments with each other. Now, people are like, can we just get to this and have this process go and get to a younger ticket?

Well, I'm curious what you make of the transformation that we've seen within the Republican Party because that really has been on display these past couple of days through the speeches that we've heard, uh, almost everyone who took the stage and ultimately how you see that shaping the economy and then ultimately the markets here if we were to see Trump elected as the president in November.

You know, I think people are too reassured by the first term where Gary Cohn and a million other people stopped Trump from doing a lot of stuff he wanted to do and Paul Ryan was the House speaker and Mitch McConnell was a powerful Senate majority leader at that point and they basically implemented mostly a traditional Republican agenda for better or worse, but it was pretty good for the markets. That is no longer the case. Paul Ryan's not the House speaker and Mitch McConnell is not going to be the leader and there're not going to be a lot of Gary Cohns and Mike Pences and traditional business friendly Republicans in this next administration. I think Vance's pick is very important, the pick of JD Vance. He's committed to an America first agenda, which involves anti-immigration, uh, nativism, but also protectionism, tariffs. Trump was laughing at the tariffs. I I think he could do it, you know. And so I think people need to factor in a much more trumpy Trump second term than they remember from the first term.

Really quickly here, Bill, if you are thinking through factoring that in, what is the single biggest impact that could have from the foreign policy side of things if Trump does enter office again come November?

I think Ukraine is in very, very bad shape. Putin is emboldened. Other dictators are emboldened. I think global instability would be real and would happen pretty fast if Trump won.