SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
And we're joined now by NPR senior editor and correspondent and someone who does not favor ketchup on his hot dog, Ron Elving. How are you, Ron?
RON ELVING, BYLINE: Good to be with you, Scott.
SIMON: The nominees, of course, are already in place at the DNC, for the Democratic National Convention. So will the next four days just be an infomercial?
ELVING: That's what these conventions have become now - four nights of pep rally, fundraising and free airtime for personal promotion. We haven't had a convention with real suspense about the outcome since the 1970s. It's all been decided in the primaries. Still, it's a major task to stage a successful convention, one that really boosts a candidate. And this one in particular has a lot at stake, both inside and outside the convention hall. Inside, it'll be about sustaining the energy that Vice President Harris has going for her right now. But outside will be a different story. As we just heard from the mayor, demonstrators angry about U.S. support for Israel or angry at the Biden administration for other issues are expected to turn out by the thousands, maybe tens of thousands, and this could well bring back memories of the street violence that ruined the Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968. That was when the Vietnam War brought huge crowds of protesters marching in the streets, where many were beaten by police.
SIMON: Lots of enthusiasm now and encouraging information in the polls, but there is a lot of road between now and November. What kind of challenges does the vice president's campaign have to keep up that sense of surge and popularity?
ELVING: She's made a good start, but she needs a strong follow-through. So for example, this week, she's been in North Carolina laying out some programmatic detail about her economic plan. She knows it's not enough to tell consumers that inflation has slowed, which it has. Consumers want prices to come down, and they are ready to believe that many businesses have profited, perhaps excessively, by keeping them elevated. So tax policy is another area for siding with working families, and here she is talking about the tax cuts in her economic plan.
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VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: Under my plan, more than 100 million Americans will get a tax cut, and we will do this by restoring two tax cuts designed to help middle class and working Americans - the earned income tax credit...
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HARRIS: ...And the child tax credit...
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HARRIS: ...Through which millions of Americans with children got to keep more of their hard-earned income.
SIMON: How is the Trump campaign responding?
ELVING: Trump and his campaign have struggled to find their footing since Biden dropped out and Harris stepped in. They had a playbook that was working for them all year until the end of June, and now it's largely irrelevant. Trump himself has not been out there stumping the way Harris has. He had a press conference at Mar-a-Lago and a rather glitchy two-hour conversation with Elon Musk, and both produced as much negative news as positive. In fact, both contributed to a storyline that's been circulating, asking whether Trump is in fact OK or whether he is showing signs of his age more than before. And this week, Trump did what troubled baseball teams sometimes do, Scott. He brought in a new manager. In this case, it's an old manager, Corey Lewandowski, a name from 2016. He was around for the first part of Trump's rise in the primaries that year, but he was replaced soon thereafter.
SIMON: I have to ask you about an unusual moment this week. Donald Trump, speaking at his estate in Bedminster, N.J., Thursday night, said that the Presidential Medals of Freedom he gave out while president are valued above the Medal of Honor. And he became, I think it's fair to say, what I'll call painfully specific.
ELVING: Those Medals of Freedom are certainly a worthy accolade, Scott. They've been used to salute achievement in many fields, sports and entertainment, but also at times used by presidents in both parties as a reward for political allies. Trump used it in office to honor radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh, for instance, and also to honor the wife of a billionaire donor, Sheldon Adelson - woman who is now his widow, Miriam Adelson. And she was at a Trump event this week, and he referred to his giving her that medal, and he called it the equivalent of the Medal of Honor, sometimes known as the Congressional Medal of Honor.
That's the highest and most revered honor in the military. It's given in recognition of the extraordinary actions of soldiers, sailors and Marines who risked and often sacrificed their lives for others. But Trump went further. He said what he gave Adelman's widow was, quote, "actually much better because everyone who gets the Congressional Medal of Honor - that's soldiers - they're either in very bad shape because they've been hit so many times by bullets or they're dead," end quote. And last night, the head of the VFW, the nation's oldest and largest veterans group, called Trump's remarks asinine and said they forced him to question Trump's fitness to be commander in chief.
SIMON: NPR's Ron Elving, thanks so much.
ELVING: Thank you, Scott. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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