August 2nd, 2016 – Second Reading Podcast

[0:00:00 Introduction] welcome to the second reading podcast from the University of Texas at Austin. The Republicans were in the Democratic Party because there was only one party chart. Tell people on a regular basis there is still a land of opportunity in America. It’s called Texas. The problem is these departures from the Constitution. They have become the norm. At what point must a female senator raised her hand or her voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room

[0:00:31 Jim] on This is the second reading podcast for the week of what week are we on 2nd 3rd Something like that. Second summer is flying by for us as well as for you. I’m sure I’m Jim Henson, director of the Texas Politics Project at the University of Texas. I’m joined by, as you can hear my colleague Josh Blank,

[0:00:52 Josh] Good morning, afternoon or evening.

[0:00:54 Jim] This week, we want to talk a little bit about the politics of guns on campuses. Thesis oh called campus carry law goes into effect here at U T and at public colleges throughout Texas. And if you’re wondering why I said public, you’ll find out shortly. Then we’ll circle back and wrap up the Democratic national convention last week and the somewhat surprising politics that have come out of it, especially the reactions to the speech by the Khan family. And again, if you don’t know what I’m talking about, the Khan family, you’ll find out soon enough. But right out of the barrel. Sorry, let’s start with guns. Monday, the concealed carry law passed by the last last Legislature went into effect in Texas. And, as it turned out by, I think, what can only be called an unhappy coincidence it went into effect on the 50th anniversary of the mass shooting on the U. T campus in 1966 which is now, you know, retroactively known is the first mass school shooting in American history. Rather than focus on that, it may come up. We want to focus on campus carry campus. Kerry was a big legislative issue for several sessions.

[0:02:05 Josh] Yeah, it’s something that has sort of been been around for a while, and it kind of, you know, you can say it, sort of. It persevere like there were some ideas early on about, you know, trying to allow for, you know, more guns on K through 12 campuses and That was really a tricky area. But campus carry was something that was sort of always sitting there kind of at the periphery until the 2015 session. And then it finally kind of burst through, although it took a lot of work. Yeah, in

[0:02:30 Jim] some ways, it’s, you know, without digressing too far. People are rolling their eyes right now. If I can feel this is all I can feel, the

[0:02:37 Josh] whole thing is a huge aggression. Keep but

[0:02:40 Jim] the campus. But the campus carry allies really is interesting test case, and this really does connect with things that are. We’ve written about that air in the textbook etcetera, of how ideas take a while to germinate in the legislative process very frequently and more largely in the public policy process, the Guns campus Kerry was a little bit of a fringe idea that was seized on by a legislator in 2011 who’s no longer in the Legislature, frankly, is a way of burnishing his conservative credentials. He was somebody that was I was a Republican from San Antonio, but who was known as something of a moderate, mainly because he was pro choice. He was really the only pro choice Republican in the Senate delegation, at least publicly. And so he would be in trouble for being pro choice. And then he would choose issues that he could prove that he was a conservative about in 2011. He really went to the mat on campus, Kerry and frankly, pissed a lot of people up in the Legislature by, you know, being insistent about it very late in the 2011 session nonetheless, that that terrain really shifted partially as a result of political change in this state and the infusion of uneven, more powerful conservative presence in the Republican Party and in the legislature. So that in 2015 we go into that session with lots of talk about guns, right? I mean,

[0:04:03 Josh] right. I mean, before the session even started, you know, there was a sort of ah, lard, let me say, Ah, very loud movement, Right? Ah, which was looking to ease gun restrictions in the state and particularly, you know, they were looking for an open carry prevention Kosek. Texas is actually when it was before the 2015 sessions on the few states that didn’t have some form of open carry we have, you know, like

[0:04:27 Jim] they had a certain form because you carry along carry

[0:04:30 Josh] a long gun. You couldn’t carry handguns open that you’d have to have ah licensed concealed handgun licenses. Therefore you could carry it. Just couldn’t

[0:04:37 Jim] openly strap it on.

[0:04:38 Josh] Right? But they basically early in the session had made clear that they wanted to do to push for something they called constitutional carry, which is basically the next

[0:04:46 Jim] even one step beyond open

[0:04:47 Josh] right. It’s a step beyond open carry. It’s the notion that because of the Second Amendment amendment were all legally allowed to carry guns, it shouldn’t be licensed it all that we can carry them anyway that we want. And this group is very, very loud and very reactive from really before the session even began.

[0:05:02 Jim] Well, and even if you think back, I don’t how much you remember. But there was, I mean, what they did, which was really smart. The open carry and constitutional carry folks were on the Capitol grounds protest ing toting long guns around legally right the first day of the session, opening day and really opening week that a series of open and constitutional carry

[0:05:23 Josh] on with their own of our is right there in his office, and he said, Right,

[0:05:27 Jim] the open carry guys went in there and got in an argument with with a Democratic Legislature letter late or and then that week and again, we’ll get into the weeds here. But we’re gonna get Louise a little bit here. Dan Patrick, the lieutenant governor, did ah open opening session interview for the Texas Tribune with our friend and colleague Evan Smith, in which he talked down the possibility of new open care of open carry legislation passing

[0:05:53 Josh] right. He just said he just said he didn’t think the votes were They

[0:05:56 Jim] didn’t think the votes were there, which just, you know, got everybody in an uproar. You know, consecutive had people accusing him of selling out the conservatives now that he was lieutenant governor and that really put open carry on his agenda for the lieutenant governor very quickly. So at the end of the session, we got both a new open carry law and end the campus carry law, which was implemented this week at the University of Texas and all over the state. So the idea here is that you know They passed a law that said that public universities and private universities asterisk would come up with their own policies, but that the public universities were really hemmed in on, ah, the degree to which they could limit concealed carry in different places. So the law was written in a way that made it de facto pretty impossible to keep guns out of classrooms. For example,

[0:06:48 Josh] they basically said that the public universities could designate gun free zones, but that those designations couldn’t have the effect of, basically, you know, removing concealed carry it from the campus. There

[0:06:58 Jim] had to be a rationale for this, and that was the outer bound

[0:07:01 Josh] while and while you know, sort of the campuses and then through the campuses, eventually the Board of Regents approving these law, these sort of, you know, let’s say, particular policies for implementation while this process was going on. Ah, you know, a lot of legislative leaders came out and were very clear. Your made very clear to the universities into the board regions. If you do create policies that have the effect of banning guns on campus, we will come back and make this much, much more search and take away and really take away any discretion you think you have

[0:07:30 Jim] right. And we should mention that now there are three professors at UT. They’re suing to have this, You know, this law overturned or at least altered that cases pending. Um, but the politics of this have really continued to evolve. We want toe. Wanna play an audio excerpt? Now, this is Senator Brian Birdwell, who was the Senate sponsor of the bill. The House sponsor was out was Alan Fletcher, and Senator Birdwell is a Republican from Waco, Um, who defended this bill but also defended the carve out, if you will, that is the right of public use of private universities. Toe opt out. So let’s this is Brian Birdwell on. Ah, I think I think it may be a syndicated radio show, but it’s definitely an Internet radio show that is sponsored by the National Rifle Association, the major interest group in favor of gun rights. And this is him on the Kammen companies show right after the bill, or as the bill was was going through the process and was about to be passed.

[0:08:30 (video) Brain Birdwell] Our constitutional duty is to protect all constitutional rights equally not favor one to the detriment of another. And you know, we could talk about other things that your show is not seemed to, and I won’t bore you with those but a private university. Education is a commodity just like coffee. So whether it’s the coffee shop that wants to preclude the concealed carry holder in Texas or or any other state, that, uh, honors the private property wishes of that that independent business that is, that property owners, right? And then, at that point, the Chl of the Second Amendment enthusiasts can make a marketplace decision on one of the two, um, patronize that business or not, There’s no different with the private property rights for universities and their property and education being a commodity. And so one of the things that we did was we came back over, ask for conference committee because I wanted that taken out so that we could not only protect the Second Amendment rights of citizens of Texas but protect the private property rights of the private property owners in those private universities. We still make them go through the decision making process that we make the public to go through but they have the ability to decide We don’t want this on our campus or not, because that is their private property no different than a mom and pop on the on the corner courthouse square.

[0:09:59 Jim] There’s a couple of interesting things about this, and and one is, you know, a kind of broad point that you know you get often have issues in which people are intensely interested, like gun rights. And one of the things that’s happened with gun rights is that it’s given rise to what some people when I think it makes sense. It sounds derogatory, but I don’t think it is called kind of Second Amendment fund fundamentalism, which views the right to bear arms expansively and fundamentally, and and as a right. You know, in some ways, the way people view the First Amendment almost is something that you know, it’s kind of gets a pride of place and that you really have to have a reason and a very good reason to toe limit people’s right to carry.

[0:10:41 Josh] Some people might call it a fundamental freedom.

[0:10:44 Jim] Exactly. And so you know what you’re seeing here is that Is that as this went through the process. I kind of suspect that this was something that folks had not really thought through completely, that the private universities were going to be a different kind of issue and that it did bump up against another can fundamental right, particularly for conservatives. And that’s property rights. And, you know, you really have to expand. I think Senator Birdwell made a pretty good. I gave a pretty good explanation for why he was thinking about that. And the political process tends to bring out these competing interests. And in this case there was a real fundamental collision. And in terms of the politics of this, we should also note that Senator Birdwell has one of the major private universities in this state. Baylor is in his district, and it’s hard for me to imagine he didn’t get in earful from the Baylor regions and maybe even the then Baylor president Ken Starr. And in fact, Baylor hat did fairly quickly opt out. And not a lot does not allow concealed carry on campus,

[0:11:47 Josh] right? Only only one private university actually decided to allow concealed carry on campus, and the politics of this are really interesting, too, because you know if you think about the mechanics by default, the private universities were basically, by law, adopting concealed carry on their campuses unless they opted out. So what this allows a politician to do is to say, Yeah, I passed, you know, concealed carry on college campuses statewide, to the extent that these private universities chose not top into it. One if their property rights and to on no, that’s not on make right. Exactly that is on them. I mean, it’s interesting. I think there’s a sort of I mean, the time I kind of haven’t thought about this is much, but there is a sensory say. Well, you know, does does the state have the ability to, you know, force, you know, conceal carry into private institutions, and that is a sure because the fact is, there’s tons of state money that goes to these institutions in the form of scholarships and other things that they could say they would withhold or whatever if they didn’t passes law. There are ways that the Legislature could have done this, but they didn’t want to deal with the politics of it. And so this is actually a very nice and neat way to get around it, right?

[0:12:53 Jim] Yeah, I think that’s right. Now the the other. The other piece of this that we want to talk about quickly, I think, is the fact that public opinion is very interesting around guns, particularly in Texas. I think we have this sense. Texas is a conservative state. Ah, you know, self images and cultural images around guns very powerful. But public and public opinion looks kind of evenly divided, edging towards gun rights at times. But then, when you really unpacked that, we see a pattern that we see in a lot of issues like this, where public opinion looks at the top level overall, even kind of evenly divided,

[0:13:30 Josh] right? So going into that session, ah, you know, in February of 2015 you know, when asked about campus carry, 47% of Texas voters said they supported this notion of the right of individuals to carry ah if their license concealed on campus and 45% were in opposition. So it’s basically evenly split, but

[0:13:49 Jim] a result which we got a lot of crap from from our colleagues.

[0:13:52 Josh] If you look just a Republican, 69% were supportive of a 25% of were opposed. And if you look at Democrats on Lee, 23% were supportive, 70% were opposed. So the way you get to serve an even split is the fact that the parties were completely, you know, in opposite ends of the spectrum on this issue. Right? You know, among self identified tea party Republicans, 86% were in favor.

[0:14:15 Jim] But the tea party being of the conservative core of what it is, you know, the Republican Party. And you know, folks that were you know, that the driver seat dramatizes it over dramatizes and maybe a little too hyperbolic. But, you know, the tea party people that identifies the tea party are mobilized, politically active conservatives who, you know, are given a lot of attention by Republican elected officials in the legislature that have strong part tea party contingents in their districts.

[0:14:44 Josh] Right, because you know what it really comes down to is these are the people who are gonna vote in primary elections, which is the main concern for a lot of these legislators. I mean, an interesting thing. That kind of comes out of sort of the overall politics of that session around guns that we sort of started with. You know, we asked in that same poll about, ah, basically how people felt about Texans right to carry guns around the state

[0:15:04 Jim] in a more universal and

[0:15:05 Josh] more universally in public places. And what we found is that, you know, 45% of Texans were basically happy with the status quo at the time, which is, you know, you can carry a, you know, a concealed handgun. If it’s licensed, that’s again 45% overall, that include 50% of Republicans, actually, so most Texans were pretty happy with the status quo.

[0:15:22 Jim] And interestingly, in terms of political culture in this state, 43% of Democrats

[0:15:26 Josh] yeah, 43% of Democrats how the other 40 or 43% of Democrats wanted there to be no guns carried in public places. But this sort of X gonna comes to a theme in public opinion in Texas, which is the Texas Democrats, and to be a little bit more conservative than elsewhere. And that’s kind of actually what oftentimes drives a sort of actual conservatism of Texas beyond other states. But when we asked you about constitutional carry only 10% of taxes wanted to make the states of a constitutional carry state. This is only 14% of the GOP, but is 30% of tea of self identified tea party Republicans of the same group. So one of the things that you can also see in this process is serving the season. Public opinion is one has to have These overall trends can hide some important underlying partisan differences. And when trying to understand why something becomes a priority if you just look at the overall results, you’re actually missing a lot of the story. But the other piece of this is sort of, I guess, the case of, you know, pluralism or whatever. You know, if you want to call it that

[0:16:21 Jim] pluralism or whatever they call it in political

[0:16:23 Josh] sign political science. I now I wish I was a little scientist. Um, but 30% of tea party Republicans were four served for this, um Ah, constitutional carry. And again, this is a very active group. So it wasn’t a large

[0:16:36 Jim] group of constitutional carry being free, unfettered, complete, unfettered, actually, no government regulation of guns carrying guns

[0:16:46 Josh] right And so this is, you know, not a large group in Texas, but it’s an intense minority. So to some degree, some of it was the way Patrick handled at the beginning of sessions. Some of it was this group sort of loud intensity before the session started. But also, you know, this is how a small but intensely mobilized group can actually make policy change. They didn’t get exactly what they wanted. But to the extent that you know, campus carry had been this this sort of fringe policy, they’d been floating around for a couple of sessions and all of a sudden got passed in the session. Part of it was we moved to an open carry state, but also we didn’t go to concerts. Carry What else? What else can we give you? What else can we say we’ve done

[0:17:25 Jim] right is going into the session. I think, you know, people that were inside the process and we had both higher education shares here. You know, basically, there was very little doubt that we were probably going to get campus carry Thean trusting thing is that we got open carry, and I think open carry was seen as a much more extreme position. And, you know, they passed it. I mean, you know, it took some effort, but it wasn’t.

[0:17:49 Josh] Yeah, most of the arguments around open carry where I mean, that I recall, were pretty fringe. I mean, there are fringes of acceptance that the law was gonna get past. It was more about you know what, Her How does this affect policing? You know, police ask you to see your license.

[0:18:05 Jim] If they can’t see you open, carry

[0:18:08 Josh] enough. So there’s things like that were some of the big arguments. Actually, there were interesting and complicated in their own way, but it wasn’t about whether this was gonna pass.

[0:18:15 Jim] And it did make us look to the rest of the country a little bit on the fringe again. It was one of those things where the subtleties really get lost. When The New York Times is writing a story that says, Hey, in Texas, they want to be able to openly carry guns. There they go again. All right, so there’s some of the background on as we’re going to come with campus, carry on campus, and I think ah, on the U. T campus um, you know, I think we’ll hear a lot more about this once the long semester resumes

[0:18:45 Josh] one p one like fact, we should add just before we jump to the next topic, as you know, and people said this a lot, and I think you know this will change. But remember, you have to be 21 years old, carry to get a concealed handgun license. So the fact is, we don’t

[0:18:59 Jim] want to give anybody the wrong idea. You do have to have a permit, right? Chl and go through the training to have a gun on.

[0:19:05 Josh] It only takes like, four hours. I hear it’s pretty easy.

[0:19:07 Jim] It’s It’s worse than easy having gone through it.

[0:19:10 Josh] But the point being, most college students on campus are actually not eligible to get the license and therefore legally carry the gun on campus again. When he changed the rules, all the stuff changes. But having said that,

[0:19:22 Jim] that rule did not take. That rule

[0:19:23 Josh] did not change, and the expectation is not that there’s gonna be just, you know, tons and tons of students of guns on campus.

[0:19:29 Jim] Yeah, President benefits was on the news hour last night and repeated this statistic that’s been widely, you know, sort of circulated came out of study group at UT that less than 5% of the UT population is expected to even be eligible to carry a gun that is to be old enough and have the permit. All right, so maybe that’s like So it’s cool.

[0:19:49 Josh] Yeah, he’s cool, guys.

[0:19:51 Jim] Not exactly what I meant to say, but it’s kind of what it sounded like. And, you know, I think we’ll hopefully well, am I gonna say that, All right, um, topic to let’s go back to the convention. So So what do you think, Josh? How did the Democratic National Convention go for Hillary Clinton? And how do we know?

[0:20:06 Josh] Well, I think it went pretty well.

[0:20:09 Jim] I’m just going to step out.

[0:20:10 Josh] Okay, so there’s there’s two, you know? I mean, really, what you look at a lot of cases is the news coverage, because the convention is a blip in time. But the news coverage kind of lives on, and it’s not only that it lives on in the way that it’s reported on in the moment, but it’s sort of, you know, what is this story that carries forward from these two conventions and, you know, sort of on the heels of the DNC. You know, the news coverage focused on basically to two main themes, right? One was just, you know, the the disparity and management between the Republican National Convention of the Democratic National Convention. We talked last week about some of those issues with the Republican convention, and the Democrat Convention was just seen as of just a very well managed affair from kind of start to finish in terms of the themes being consistent. The fact that there was nobody, no big time speakers didn’t endorse Hillary Clinton. You know, the concern about unity with the Sanders people was basically taken, taken out of the out of play after it was first this moment on Monday,

[0:21:07 Jim] But it was a big thing on Monday. I mean, when we did the last podcast, that was still a little bit of an open question about how that was gonna play out.

[0:21:14 Josh] He really doesn’t issue the rest of the week.

[0:21:16 Jim] It was it was pretty fine. And you know this, you know, we’re conservative media. I think, you know, accused the networks with maybe a grain of truth, but not a lot that they were under covering. What dissent there? Waas. But nonetheless, the convention was managed in a way that that was easy. And that was something that obviously the GOP had not managed,

[0:21:37 Josh] right? I mean, part of it is, you know, I mean, you know, we don’t need to beat on the Republican National Convention that much, but like, if you think about you know, the line up in the in sort of the level of the speakers, you know, it’s pretty easy. The Republican convention to cut away from Scott Baio or

[0:21:54 Jim] this about a junior.

[0:21:55 Josh] Yeah, sorry, but even or even, you know, sort of like, you know, someone who’s seen is a right and start like like a Mary Fallon or whomever, and trying to, you know, basically, he’s giving a, you know, a pretty un interesting speech. By all accounts,

[0:22:05 Jim] it’s out there now are Googling Mary Fallon.

[0:22:07 Josh] Hopefully, I hope you did or not, but, you know, with Democrats serve you. Were they gonna cut away from Bill Clinton to show somebody? Not really, you know, And

[0:22:16 Jim] I think, let alone Katy Perry,

[0:22:18 Josh] right? And but The fact is that George W. Bush smokin for Donald Trump at the convention, they wouldn’t have cut away from him either, you know,

[0:22:24 Jim] But he was nowhere to be found.

[0:22:25 Josh] He was nowhere to be found. So the ones so that said one of the big takeaways was sort of the focus on management. The other was this sort of usurpation of, like, the Patriot has a mantle

[0:22:34 Jim] patriotism slash optimism,

[0:22:36 Josh] right? You know, basically, since Reagan, the Republicans have sort of tied. They’re, you know, sort of conservative principles with this idea of seeing America, as you know, exceptional and this, you know, place where anything can happen.

[0:22:47 Jim] It’s always morning in the marriage,

[0:22:48 Josh] always morning in America, the Republican Party. And if you watch the problem convention. It was not morning in America. It was very dark. Very. It

[0:22:55 Jim] was like it was like, four. In the morning, right? You can’t. You’re locked out of the house. Can’t get in,

[0:23:00 Josh] right? Your buddies home? You’re ordering a weight loss band on TV or something? Yeah, now, but basically for the Democrats. And there was these American flags and chants of USA, and in addition, it like not only served taking on the mantle of the Patriotic Party, which the Republicans have kind of owned for themselves or better, worse and cancer popular understanding. You know, they also were able to inject into patriotism this idea of diversity that what patriotism really means in love for country really means is love for inclusion. And they’re able actually redefine the term in a way that was beneficial to them. So this result of the two kind of thing. There’s a lot of prominent Republican elites taking to Twitter and elsewhere in saying the Democrats just stole our stuff.

[0:23:41 Jim] Yeah, I mean, you know, and some pretty has some pretty prominent some pretty prominent Republicans you have saying, you know, I wish our convention had been like this, right? In terms of the tone and the optimism. So, um,

[0:23:54 Josh] so that’s 11 That is the media coverage, right?

[0:23:56 Jim] That was the media

[0:23:57 Josh] cover, their sort of the polling stuff which were always kind of interested, right, which

[0:24:00 Jim] we talked about last time we talked about the idea of a bounce that is the the notion that you know, we X one would expect that if a convention goes reasonably as planned, and people are paying attention to it. That the poll numbers of the candidate being promoted by that party that at their convention will go up. And we call that the poll bounce

[0:24:19 Josh] right? Remember, this is a reflection of the fact that the party has basically a week to control the content that the media is going to cover. Theoretically. So theoretically, that’s the idea. So in NBC, basically looking to today on NBC News Surveymonkey Poll Ah, you know, Clinton was up by one point last week. This week she’s up by eight over Donald Trump. Ah, in a CNN Oh RC poll Among Clinton supporters, 58% said that they were voting for her as opposed voting against Trump. And that was up 10 points from the last time they pulled that. Ah, Gallup found a slight bump for her so that for people watching the Democratic convention ah, those saying they were they were likely to support Clinton increased by four points. However, for those of you who watched the GOP convention, this was like, this is the This is the big results.

[0:25:06 Jim] Yeah, this is a lot of this is for

[0:25:07 Josh] people watching the GOP convention. There was a 15 point drop in those say that they were likely to support Trump after watching the convention.

[0:25:14 Jim] I think the one thing you can say that is ouch, that really hurt.

[0:25:18 Josh] And just to kind of go back to what the conventions air for. This is the first negative effect ever measured by Gallup, and this goes back to 1984 that they’ve been asking. So you watch the convention. Did it make you more likely or less likely to support this candidate? And in all instances, Democratic convention Republican convention, It always increases the likelihood of supporting that candidate. Cause of these things that we’re talking about to see a drop and a big drop is just totally unprecedented.

[0:25:42 Jim] So in terms of the technique, you know, the technicalities of the bounce. She got a single figure bounce, it looks like, but higher than what Trump got in his.

[0:25:50 Josh] Trump was looking around 45 points,

[0:25:54 Jim] right, But the but the but the other kind of things that are coming out of the polling is that there was there was something of a negative effect coming out of the the Republican convention have to go back to. What we said last week is that you know, these don’t tell us what’s gonna happen. The election right now. They tend to come out in the wash over the long run,

[0:26:10 Josh] and for the most part they tend. They tend Teoh remind the faithful. It’s not about necessarily, you know, it’s not that the Democratic convention made a bunch of Republicans say, Oh, now I really like Hillary Clinton I’m gonna vote for But it’s all it’s more so about solidifying the Democratic base. Republican convention is supposed to be more about solidifying the Republican base and then moving on from there

[0:26:29 Jim] right now. I guess, you know, as we look at those Gallup numbers and we’ll see whether they’re out liars or you know how durable those effects are, it may well be that the the conventional patterns will reassert themselves. But there is the possibility that, like so many other unconventional things here, that it it’s gonna look differently this time and largely because of the dynamic involving Donald Trump in his essentially usurpation of the Republican Party. From you know, the the plurality of Republican elites and I think this is nowhere more apparent than the big story that really came out of the Democratic convention. It turns out that is gag continuing as we go. And you know this This ah revolved around this speech by zero and Ghazala Khan, who talked about their son. Who Miljan, who at the Democratic convention and their son was a veteran who was killed in Iraq,

[0:27:23 Josh] Right As a captain, he was a captain who was killed in 2004 by a by a car bomb.

[0:27:28 Jim] Right? And he and he was, you know, he received medals for this. I mean, I think he ran out in front of his company. Was kind of an undeniably heroic act in situation. Should see him. Muslim Americans and the Muslim Americans, they were, Ah, the parents. He was American born the parent, I believe the carrots they immigrated here is two years old. Okay, so they emigrated when he was two years old from Afghanistan, But prior But prior, this was in the nineties. This was was prior to the war in Afghanistan and prior toe 9 11 So let’s hear one of the audio excerpts from the con speech at the Democratic convention.

[0:28:05 Video] Have you ever been to Arlington Cemetery? Go look at the graves off brave patriots who died defending United States of America. You’ll see all faiths, genders and ethnicities. You have sacrificed nothing on DNA. Way cannot solve way, cannot fall our problems by building walls. Swelling division. We are stronger together.

[0:28:55 Jim] Now we should, you know, point out that the you that Mr Khan is referring to is Donald Trump is a direct. It was a direct address to Trump and obviously spoke to many of the elements of the trump campaign. Uh, got lots of Got lots of publicity. Um, Trump was asked about this then on the Sunday morning talk shows. Uh, let’s just go straight to an excerpt from this is Trump talking to George Stephanopoulos on this week on ABC,

[0:29:23 Video] there was a man named Kaiser Khan speaking at the Democratic convention. His son, Captain Humayun Khan, was killed serving in Iraq, and he had some very tough questions for you. He said you wouldn’t have even let his son in America ] don’t know. He doesn’t know that I saw him. He was, you know, very emotional and probably look like a nice guy to me, his wife If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say. She probably Maybe she wasn’t allowed to have anything to say. You tell me. But plenty of people have written that she She was extremely quiet and it looked like she had nothing to say. A lot of people have said that and personally, I watched him. I wish him the best of luck. What would you say to that father? Well, I’d say we’ve had a lot of problems with radical Islamic terrorism. That’s what I’d say. We have a lot of problems where you look at San Bernadino. You look at Orlando, you look at the World Trade Center, you look at so many different things. You look at what happened to the priest over the weekend in Paris, where his throat was cut. 85 year old beloved Catholic priest. You look at what happened in Nice, France a couple of weeks ago. I’d say you got to take a look at that because something’s going on and it’s not good, he said. You have sacrificed nothing and no one. Well, that sounds. Who wrote that? Hillary’s script writers write it. How would you answer that, Father? What sacrifice have you made your country? I think I made a lot of sacrifices. I work very, very hard. I’ve created thousands and thousands of jobs, tens of thousands of jobs. I think those their sacrifices. Oh, sure, I think their sacrifices. I think when I can employ thousands and thousands of people take care of their education, take care of so many things, even in military. And I was very responsible, along with a group of people, for getting the Vietnam Memorial built in downtown Manhattan, which to this day people thank me for I raised and I have raised millions of dollars for the vets. I’m helping the vets a lot. I think my popularity with the vets is through the roof.

[0:31:25 Jim] So where do you really begin on that? I guess you could begin by rounding that up, branding that doing a round up of those comments by saying he basically, you know, jumps in the hole on gender, on culture and ethnicity and on class, he basically you know, So he makes this cultural reduction. Ah, Mr Khan’s wife was standing there. She later came out had an op ed the next later that Sunday and saying, Basically, she’s just too crushed by the loss of her son to really address it without breaking down. She was in tears as she left stage. So he looks, you know, we kind of implies she was not allowed. He didn’t apply, he says. Basically, she wasn’t allowed to speak just kind of a cultural slight

[0:32:08 Josh] trading in stereotypes, certainly.

[0:32:10 Jim] And then when they, you know, they they asked what he would say said, Well, you know, we have to worry about people of the Middle Eastern and Middle Eastern countries being terrorists. Ah, when their son had been in the military and then when asked about whether he sacrificed his sacrifices basically all the time that he spent

[0:32:31 Josh] his best

[0:32:32 Jim] buildings, his business. Now Donald Trump has gotten pretty far by being unconventional. And every time we think he’s hit a limit case, it seems like maybe he is not right. So now the question is, Is this a limit case and what what does that mean?

[0:32:49 Josh] Well, it also what well, with the conventional responsive and the conventional response would have been first with a couple things here. I mean one. You know, this speech was really well received that that Ah, because you’re Khan gave, But it wasn’t in prime time. It wasn’t something that was gonna be this perpetual thing. That was likely. Teoh, you know, kind of continue throughout the campaign. It’s not like the Clinton campaign really wants toe have, because you’re kind out there, like, is a surrogate for them. It was, you know, is a It was, ah, good moment for the campaign. And they picked it for a reason. Right. You have this, You know, again, a Muslim family has emigrated to America Military service, military service. They’ve made you feel, you know, the ultimate sacrifice. Um, you know, in a lot of ways, they’re sort of unimpeachable. You now is sort of his Americans and its citizens and is contributing to the country. One would think one would think it would be so easy to just say something along the lines of Hey, I think them for their service and their sacrifice. And, you know, they’re certainly allowed to have their opinions. I don’t

[0:33:45 Jim] agree with you really feel their loss and then wish them the best

[0:33:49 Josh] and period right, but in some ways, by being so unconventional and by going back and sort of, you know, needling them back. You know, this isn’t some public figure. This’d isn’t, You know, a politician of the of the other party or the Republican Party where he’s saying, You know, basically, this is not some elite or some, you know, media personality. This is just an ordinary family he could

[0:34:15 Jim] even gone halfway and just picked on the husband.

[0:34:17 Josh] Yeah, I could have. I would have been something right now. I mean, so what? You know, But what is what is he trying to do here? I mean, what he’s trying to do is he’s trying to sort of keep this in his terrain, which is to say, This isn’t about I’m not criticizing them. This is about, you know, Islamic terrorism put it back

[0:34:34 Jim] in a different frame, but it’s

[0:34:36 Josh] but it’s really tricky here. I mean, the problem is, and this is our look, you know, let’s

[0:34:39 Jim] and I think it would take subtlety to do that.

[0:34:41 Josh] It would take some subtlety, but I mean, here’s an example why this is sort of a tricky area, and this is why the Democrats chose to put him up there, too, which is even in Texas. You know, we asked in the LAT in our last poll in June about different groups in society and how much discrimination they face. And in Texas, 73% of undersea that Muslims face a lot or some discrimination

[0:35:00 Jim] politically, 64% of Republicans.

[0:35:02 Josh] This is not one of those, you know, polarised response. Things that we talked about with gun control or Democrats and Republicans feel differently again. A majority of Republicans say so, even amongst those who say they’re voting for Trump because they want him to be president again, not voting ancillary. These air solid Trump supporters a majority 54% say that Muslims face a lot of some discrimination. Even among those who support a ban on Muslim immigration, 63% say Muslims face a lot or some discrimination. If you

[0:35:27 Jim] want a ban immigration to prevent them from being discriminated,

[0:35:30 Josh] maybe they’re doing it for their own good, Um, but at the same time, you know where this kind of gets complicated. For. Trump, especially, is you know, the military is the most favourably viewed institution you know, basically, ever.

[0:35:43 Jim] And that is the thing that really just it’s hard not to look at that and think. Synaptic misfire. Rookie mistake. There’s just no way,

[0:35:52 Josh] right. I mean, 92% of Texas Republicans have a favorable view of the military. So to the extent that you’re attacking, you know what they call a gold Star mother. It’s just there’s no win there for

[0:36:03 Jim] letting Gold stars the designation for parents that have lost Ah, uh, the son or daughter in combat.

[0:36:09 Josh] So the question is, you know, military service. There’s a sort of idea down a lot of because Trump is still talking about this. And there’s a lot of sort of, you know, buzzing in the media

[0:36:17 Jim] because we record this two days later,

[0:36:19 Josh] right? And this is still

[0:36:21 Jim] going strong and PM They’re still commenting on it, but the president, you know, kind of came down this morning on Trump about this over the weekend. Greg Abbott, governor of Texas, uh, also said that, you know, essentially, Trump should shut up about these people.

[0:36:38 Josh] Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell said that they didn’t agree. You know, John McCain, who certainly is no fan of Trump it, Lindsey Graham, likewise, have come out pretty strongly, saying this is not

[0:36:47 Jim] McCain, and McCain was really you know, this has been connected with the comments that Trump made about McCain last year. He was at a forum, I think, or one of these town hall meetings and asked about. And he asked about McCain criticized in him, and he basically said that McCain, who had been obviously a POW for many years the door there and tortured during the Vietnam War that, you know, he basically didn’t think much of McCain because you got that he preferred soldiers to not be captured,

[0:37:13 Josh] right? So he’s not a war here.

[0:37:15 Jim] And he survived that. Maybe, And maybe that’s, you know, maybe he survived that he feels like he can survive. You know anything when it comes to the military, but it’s, I think it’s it’s hard to really look at this and think of it as strategic.

[0:37:30 Josh] No. And there were

[0:37:31 Jim] talking about it earlier. I was thinking about you saying, You know, you know, there’s you know, what is the strategy here? You know, I don’t This is one of those things where it’s hard to see that there’s a strategy here

[0:37:41 Josh] now. And so then the question becomes, Doesn’t matter, right? And I mean, the thing is is on its own, Probably not right. And part of this is, you know, there’s a bunch of things that people learn about the candidates over the course of the campaign. And, you know, whether you’re likely to, like, internalize that and make it part of like your store of information about a candidate depends on how you feel. If you’re Hillary Clinton supporter, this is This is terrible. This is awful, right? If you’re Donald Trump supporter, you know, either you’ll kind of you can. You can couch it in terms that make you sort of accept why he’s doing what he’s doing or, you know, whatever. Or you just ignore it. Well,

[0:38:12 Jim] this is something we talked about a little bit last week. In another context, I mean, to the extent that it causes you maybe some cognitive dissonance that you’re having to say, Well, I really support Donald Trump, but I think this is really kind of awful, you know, in a partisan setting like this with negative feelings you have about Hillary Clinton, you wind up adjusting the dissident part to your support for Trump. You de emphasize it, you rationalize it. You look for other kinds of information that help you rationalize it, You know so well. You know, Khan is of immigration lawyer who works on visas. So of course, he must be a bad guy.

[0:38:46 Josh] Exactly. Yeah. And so the thing is, but for the people who aren’t so I don’t have such strongly attached opinions either way, let’s say especially, you know, this gonna goes,

[0:38:55 Jim] goes in the compost.

[0:38:56 Josh] Well goes, I would say it goes in another mark in the negative ledger, right on your intercon column. Right? Right. CEO in con right. And you know, the fact is, if you if you just add up enough of those over time, it forms a general impression that’s gonna eventually hurt. Does this one incident? Is this one incident gonna make some big change among you know, we’re gonna see among the polling all of a sudden. Now we’re going to see Clinton up 20 because of what? No.

[0:39:22 Jim] Yeah. There’s no silver bullet here for the for the for the Clinton campaign or for the Democrats party

[0:39:28 Josh] painting an overall impression that is, you know,

[0:39:31 Jim] I think, and again the sounds a little mercenary butting pure political terms. If you’re a demo, if you’re a Democrat or Democratic strategist, you’re handy. Capping this campaign. It’s undeniably a windfall, at least in the short and medium term. Plus, for the Democrats that just came out of the convention is almost like an accidental. You know, it’s like an extra Yeah, that’s a bonus is a little bonus on. And for Republicans, it’s another headache. And for your Republican elite, I think the people we’ve been talking about if your ah, you know, a Mitch McConnell or Paul Ryan or John or John McCain, it’s just it’s just a forehead slapper. You just you just going, Ah, this is gonna be a really long camp,

[0:40:15 Josh] self inflicted wounds or the worst, And the thing is amazing. And for those Republican elites, I mean, they don’t want to be running, you know, spending most of their time campaigning, trying to deal with Donald Trump’s comments,

[0:40:26 Jim] and they’ve got their own stuff going on. I mean, they’ve got their own races, the win or their own, you know, irons in the fire here exactly. All right. So I think I think we’re gonna close it out there. That’s it for this week’s second reading. Thanks for listening, and we’ll talk to you next week. Second reading Podcast is a production of Texas Politics Project and the Project 2021 Development Studio at the University of Texas at Austin.