WSJ What’s News - Trump Secures GOP Nomination, With J.D. Vance as Running Mate

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

P.M. Edition for July 15. Donald Trump officially secured the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention, with Sen. J.D. Vance as his running mate. WSJ politics editor Ben Pershing discusses Vance’s selection. And the Secret Service is under the microscope after the near-assassination of the former president. Reporter Ryan Barber explains what went wrong during Trump’s rally. Plus, Goldman Sachs posts double-digit gains in investment banking revenue. Banking reporter AnnaMaria Andriotis has more. Francesca Fontana hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At Best Western, when you stay three nights this summer, you earn 10,000 bonus points. And while you're reliving your summer childhood road trip memories, they're creating new ones. So check into any one of our more than 2,300 hotels and make more memories to look back on. Here, we'll set the scene. You put the load right on me. Life's a trip. Make the most of it at Best Western. Visit bestwestern.com for terms and conditions. Donald Trump becomes the official Republican nominee, with J.D. Vance as his running mate.

And the Secret Service is under the microscope after the near assassination of the former president. You really have to go to the early 80s, to the administration of then-President Ronald Reagan, to find any similar occurrence like this. President Reagan was shot. It's been more than 40 years since anything like this has occurred. Plus, Goldman Sachs reports double-digit gains in investment banking revenue. It's Monday, July 15th. I'm Francesca Fontana for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News. double-digit gains in investment banking revenue. It's Monday, July 15th. I'm Francesca Fontana for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News,

the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. At the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee today, former President Donald Trump was officially nominated as the GOP's 2024 presidential candidate. And he selected Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. All those in favor, signify by saying aye. Aye! All those opposed, signify by saying no. In the opinion of the chair, the ayes have it, and the motion is adopted.

Without objection, the motion to reconsider is laid upon the table. Our Luke Vargas is in Milwaukee all week and broke away from the event to huddle with Journal Politics editor Ben Pershing about Vance's selection. Tell us about J.D. Vance. What do we need to know about him? Someone who in some ways is better known as an author than he is even as a politician at this point. That's true. He really came to fame as the author of a memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, about his upbringing in Ohio and his family's roots in Kentucky. He's a Marine veteran. He also worked in Silicon Valley. He is a fairly recent entrant into politics and relatively young for politics, too. You know, he's only 39 years old, making him half Donald Trump's age. So he's kind of a new and different voice on the ticket and brings

something very different than what Trump had before. Age, his background, seems like he has the potential to sort of shake up the race, his biography alone. Certainly possible. But one thing we notice is that on policy and issues, he's very pro-Trump. He's almost like Trump doubled down. He's a real MAGA enthusiast. He's a real popular figure in Trump's base. And so he definitely helps Trump double down on things he was already strong in, but doesn't necessarily help Trump expand his appeal to, you know, moderate and swing voters. Notably, though, has not always been a backer of Trump. Yes, that's absolutely right. In 2016, he mused about whether Trump could be compared to Hitler. He said he wasn't sure if Trump would be good for the country.

Needless to say, in the eight years since then, he's come around to be one of Trump's biggest supporters. How is the Biden campaign responding to this, trying to, I don't know, rain on the parade, if you will? A couple ways. You know, they're pointing out that J.D. Vance styles himself a champion of the working class, but they say that Trump's policies would really hurt the working class, particularly his tax policies and his tax cuts for wealthy. And they say, you know, Vance will just be an enabler of all of Trump's worst instincts.

They also point out that Vance has been sort of an election denier, someone who's questioned the 2020 election results just like Trump did, and that's going to be bad for the country. The primetime speeches have yet to begin tonight, but we've already heard from a lot of Republicans here in Milwaukee. What is the mood so far, especially in light of the events of the weekend? You know, we came into this convention with Republicans behind Trump, and that was true even before the shooting,

but now I think we've seen since we got here that they are just 100 percent energized, supercharged support for Trump. And I think we've already heard it just kind of walking around the hallways. And we're already starting to hear it when they they just handed him the nomination formally on the floor. And you could really hear the enthusiasm among the delegates. Some changes, though, maybe in the tenor. We spoke to Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson earlier in the day. We'll play that interview on tomorrow's podcast. But he admitted he took a few lines out of his speech, maybe trying to dial down some of the heat in the campaign rhetoric. Other Republicans have

signaled they wish to do that as well. But we're not getting the sense they're jettisoning their agenda for this week, right? They're still drawing sharp contrasts with Democrats. That's totally true. And this is a real test of Trump and the party, because Trump has signaled that he wants to be more of a unity candidate in the wake of the shooting and tone things down. But, you know, Republicans are a big party with a lot of people. And just because Trump suggests that doesn't mean they'll do it. And also, we'll have to see, it doesn't mean he'll do it. You know, he has a long history of nodding toward the middle, but then reverting to form and being sort of aggressive in his rhetoric. And we'll just see if he actually is a changed person by Thursday. And so we'll see if

Trump changes his tone, though, in a signal that at least some unity within the Republican Party is taking shape. We're expecting Nikki Haley now to pay a visit here and speak. That's a notable bit of news. It's a notable bit of news. It's a really interesting development after the shooting. You know, Haley hadn't been invited to speak. She hadn't planned to speak. She had remained one of his biggest critics in the party. And in the wake of the shooting, suddenly we got news that she is on the speaker's lineup

now. And it's just a real signal from her that she thinks the party needs to unify behind Trump. Presumably that's an endorsement live in front of the audience. That's a good guess. But we'll have to wait and see her speak on Tuesday. Ben, thanks so much. Thank you. Earlier, a federal judge dismissed the classified documents prosecution against Donald Trump. He had been facing 40 felony counts alleging that he kept restricted material after he left the

White House and that he got in material after he left the White House and that he got in the way of the government's efforts to get those documents back. Judge Eileen Cannon ultimately sided with Trump's argument that special counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed to conduct the prosecution. Trump welcomed the ruling in his response via social media, while Smith's office didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The government can appeal the ruling. Coming up, the attempted assassination of Donald Trump is the Secret Service's biggest failure in decades. What went wrong? That's after the break. AI may be the most important new computer technology ever, but AI needs a lot of Thank you. application development, and AI needs. Do more and spend less like Uber, 8x8, and Databricks

Mosaic. Take a free test drive of OCI at oracle.com slash wallstreet, oracle.com slash wallstreet. Former President Donald Trump's near assassination on Saturday has presented the biggest crisis for the Secret Service in decades. As Trump addressed the crowd during a campaign rally, a 20-year-old lone shooter was able to make his way onto an open rooftop about 100 yards away and fire multiple rounds, injuring the former president, killing one spectator, and critically injuring another two before being killed himself by a Secret Service sniper. Joining me now is Ryan Barber, who covers the Justice Department and legal affairs. Ryan, the question on everyone's mind is, how was the shooter able to do this? And where did the Secret Service fail?

It's a question everyone's asking. It is the nightmare scenario for the Secret Service, which has a zero-fail mission, and that failure is what happened on Saturday. So there are calls for inquiries from all over. Today we heard the Secretary of Homeland Security and the Secret Service Director are going to be working on creating an independent panel for an inward look within the Secret Service Department of Homeland Security, although led by outside figures, to really assess what went awry here. We have House Republicans, namely the chairman of the Oversight Committee, James Comer, calling for briefings, scheduling a hearing for next week

with Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheadle. And then, you know, we just have an entire country scratching its head saying, how did this 20-year-old with a rifle, with the Secret Service protecting the former president, get about a football field away from the former president and take a shot that killed a spectator, grazed the former president, seriously injured two other spectators at the event? What'll be the focus of the investigation? One issue that was being raised was how much the Secret Service relied on local law enforcement. The initial big flashing question is going to be exactly that, their level of engagement with local law enforcement. It is the standard protocol of the Secret Service to have an immediate detail, obviously, around the protectee in this case, Donald Trump, and then they establish a very secure perimeter. And then beyond that very secure perimeter that is the primary focus of the Secret Service,

they have an outer perimeter. And what the Secret Service does in advance, partnering with local law enforcement, is they survey structures that might provide a line of sight to a protectee. And at that outer perimeter, beyond the limits of the secure area, they rely on police departments, sheriff's offices, state and local police to secure those buildings. So that's exactly where they're going to be looking, of what was the breakdown. Was it a breakdown in planning, communication? Was there any technology that could have been used that wasn't?

Things like that that are going to be coming up in this months-long period of inquiry. Of course, the Republican National Convention started today. What are the authorities saying about the security there? Yesterday, there was this period where everybody was questioning whether the attempted assassination of Trump would prompt any kind of change in the security plan for the RNC. And what we've heard from the Secret Service coordinator for the RNC to the Secret Service director herself, Kimberly Cheadle, is that they feel confident in their plan and that they're not changing anything about their security plan or protocol in light of Saturday's shooting. That was WSJ reporter Ryan Barber. However, in Milwaukee, District 4 Alderman Robert Baumann told Our Luke Vargas that he worries the number of firearms allowed near the

site of this year's RNC invites the risk of more political violence. We were told that there was a state statute that prohibited cities from enacting gun control measures that were stricter than state statute. And I was prepared to challenge that law in court on the grounds that the drafters of that statute never intended it to apply to a national security event of this scale. And I amended, I proposed an amendment to that regulation, and I got that file here, too. I mean, you can go down the list. You can't have tennis balls, coolers, sleeping bags, water guns, but you can have an AR-15, fully loaded, ready to go.

I found that absolutely absurd. And there's a lot of tall buildings. There's a lot of buildings with openable windows. There's a lot of buildings with balconies, a lot of buildings with rooftops, and that you can march around the soft security zone with shotguns, rifles, pistols, semi-automatic weapons, maybe converted to automatic, who knows? Because to my knowledge,

the pedestrian access points are not secured in any way. Anybody can walk in with anything as long as they don't have tennis balls with them. In other news, today was Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell's last chance to set expectations for interest rates before the central bank's meeting at the end of July. During a question and answer session in Washington, Powell did say that recent data on price pressures do add to confidence that inflation is coming down, but he declined to change the status quo. Investors broadly expect the Fed to hold interest rates steady at the next meeting and start

reducing rates in September. Major stock indexes rose alongside government bond yields with the return of the so-called Trump trade following Saturday's attempted assassination of Donald Trump. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 0.5% to close at a new record, its first since May. The S&P 500 was up 0.3%, while the Nasdaq Composite was 0.4% higher. Wall Street's comeback gave Goldman Sachs a big boost in its latest quarter. Today, Goldman posted double-digit gains in its investment banking revenue, joining peers like JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo. Goldman has refocused on its Wall Street operations after

its decision to exit consumer lending and reported a 27% jump in revenue in its asset and wealth management business. Anna Maria Andriotis, our reporter who covers Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, says a stronger economy and the stock market rally have helped Goldman and other big banks. The stock market touched record highs in June. So that's helped Goldman and a bunch of the major banks, both at their trading desks, also within their asset and wealth management business, because accounts, holdings, assets, et cetera, will only in most cases grow as the overall market reaches new highs. In addition, there is on the investment banking front, a few factors playing out.

Number one, a bit more certainty around the interest rate environment. That mixed with pent-up demand by company CEOs and boards that have been sitting on the sidelines for a couple years or so waiting for better macroeconomic conditions. All of this is contributing towards an increase in M&A activity and other types of deal making. Certainly, Goldman Sachs on its earnings call sounded very bullish with its CEO, David Solomon, saying that we are in the early innings of a capital markets and M&A recovery. JP Morgan, which had a pretty strong quarter on the investment banking front, it posted a bigger increase in investment banking revenues than Goldman, put out a bit more

of a conservative, cautious outlook on things. But it does seem like things are starting to turn here. And the roughly two years of 2021 and 2022 of the slowdown in investment banking is finally starting to pick up. We saw signs of that in the first quarter and saw more signs of that with the big banks in the second quarter. And that's what's news for this Monday afternoon. Today's show was produced by Pierre Bien-Aimé and Anthony Bansi with supervising producer Michael Kosmides. Additional reporting by Luke Vargas. Thank you.