Was the chaos at the convention actually a campaign strategy?

James Fallows, national correspondent for The Atlantic and author of China Airborne (Vintage Reprint ed, 2013), talks about how Trump displayed extraordinary performance skills for his speech last night, attempting to present himself in a different way. 

On the last night of the Republican National Convention, listeners and guests called in to answer the question "what do you want a president to do to keep us safe from our enemies without repeating the mistakes of the Iraq War? "

Guests included:

Hit "play" above to hear our #30Issues segment from this week about the Republican nomination process.

You'll hear: 

Geoffrey Cowan, the author of Let the People Rule: Theodore Roosevelt and the Birth of the Presidential Primary (W. W. Norton & Company, 2016), and David Eisenhower, the son-in-law of President Nixon and the grandson of President Eisenhower, talk about the audio history of nominating conventions for Republicans.

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It had been a relatively sleepy convention until Senator Ted Cruz's speech amped everything up to 11. Juan Manuel Benítez, NY1 Noticias reporter and host of Pura Politica, and Matt Katz, WNYC reporter and the creator of  The Christie Tracker and the author of American Governor: Chris Christie's Bridge to Redemption (Threshold Editions, 2016), join us from the convention center.

Peter Navarro, business professor at University of California-Irvine, a policy adviser to the Trump campaign and author of Crouching Tiger: What China's Militarism Means for the World (Prometheus Books, 2015) talks about Trump's emerging foreign policy.

Pulling from Reagan's practice of "peace through strength" and Roosevelt's "walk softly and carry a big stick," Navarro says that the best weapons are the ones you don't have to use.

Oklahoma City's Mayor Mick Cornett talks to us about his hopes for Trump's urban policy and Congressman Mark Meadows of South Carolina on being the Donald Trump of the House of Representatives and what Trump can do to win the swing state.

Senator Ted Cruz defiantly refused to endorse Donald Trump in a speech he delivered at the convention center yesterday, stirring the crowd into a frenzy of booing. 

David Frum, senior editor at The Atlantic, chairman of Policy Exchange and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, says that the Trump campaign saw the speech and approved it, only to have adviser Paul Manafort orchestrate the booing and tell reporters that he did it. He also talks about his latest article on why Melania Trump's speech will have a lasting impact.

Then, Congressman Leonard Lance, representing New Jersey's 7th District, and Congressman Lee Zeldin, Representative of New York District 1, give their take on Cruz's speech.

Zeldin was at the convention center during the speech and said that the outcry began when "the end was near and it was clear an endorsement wasn’t coming." He is hoping on the final day that "the best parts of people’s speeches is what punches through." 

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post columnist and writer of the paper's Right Turn blog, joins us from the convention center in Cleveland and gives her conservative critique of Donald Trump.

On the top of her list of concerns is the unclear ties with Russia's President Vladimir Putin and how that will play out in Turkey, among other foreign policy issues.  

In 2008, America was 54% white, non-hispanic Christian, today those numbers hover at 45%. Robert P. Jones, CEO and founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, columnist at The Atlantic and the author of The End of White Christian America (Simon & Schuster, 2016), looks at how the culture and politics of America are changing now that it is no longer a majority white Christian nation.

Many white Christians never gave this a thought until we met this transition point. Jones says Trump tapped into nostalgia voters, driven by deep longing for past. 

Lloyd Grove, editor at large for The Daily Beast talks about Gretchen Carlson’s sexual-harassment lawsuit against her former boss, Fox News’s Roger Ailes.

The lawsuit has prompted an avalanche of women coming forward to testify against Ailes, who is amid negotiating his severance agreement. Roger Ailes's vision created Fox News, and a clause in the contracts of pundits Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity could mean an exodus from the conservative news network.

MTV News correspondents Jamil Smith and Ana Marie Cox, who also founded the blog Wonkette and is a contributor to The New York Times Magazine, discuss free-wheeling rhetoric against Clinton at the Republican National Convention. From Chris Christie's inflammatory show trial to Ben Carson overtly linking Clinton with Lucifer, the statements made by speakers at last night's convention 

Tom MacArthur, U.S. Representative of New Jersey’s 3rd Congressional District, is the only New Jersey congressperson to attend the Republican National Convention in Cleveland. He talks about the high stakes of the election in November and unifying the GOP despite his disagreements with the Republican presidential nominee.

Renee Amoore, registered nurse and deputy chairman of Pennsylvania's Republican State Committee, talks about what makes her a Trump supporter as an African American woman and how the Republican party can reach out. 

"That’s what we need to do more and more, going out into the minority," Amoore said. "You can’t have us unless you reach out to us."

In part two of our coverage of the Republican National Convention:

Jane Eisner, editor-in-chief of The Forward, discusses the Republican platform opposing a two-state solution. She argues that just because Israelis don't want a two-state solution imposed on them, it doesn't mean they're opposed to a solution.

And,Bruce LeVell, executive director of the National Diversity Coalition For Trump, says that "all of this is going to clear itself out by the time we get to November," regarding Trump's prior racist remarks. LeVell hopes that Trump's transparency as a candidate, and that he doesn't take money from special interests groups, will outshine his blunders.

Then, WNYC's own Keli Goff, host of Political Party with Keli Goff, and columnist for the Daily Beast, joins us to talk about what she's watching at the RNC. In particular, how the opportunities for growth in terms of the GOP and people of color have been blown up by the "Trump bomb."

On our live call-in special Tuesday night, listeners shared their thoughts on how Donald Trump is addressing the needs of the middle class. Entrepreneurs from around the country called in to talk about what they can take from Donald Trump’s vision of business.

Randy Bradley, who owns two Burger Kings, one in Iowa and one in Missouri, said that Trump was more realistic about labor costs, and the minimum wage than Clinton. "Let me put it this way," Randy said, "if you pay someone fifteen dollars an hour and they only produce twelve dollars of work, that's a recipe for bankruptcy." 

Other callers liked that Trump would end free-trade and raise taxes on Wall Street. Others admired the way Trump handled money in his personal life, from being a "great business man" to "funding his own campaign."

Cherie Corso, the founder of G2 Organics, a Pelham a New York–based company selling health and wellness products, felt strongly that Donald Trump had already moved the economy forward. "Anyone who is selling anything with Trump on it, is selling out like crazy," she said. "Donald Trump has sprinkled pixie dust all over this country."

Also, Dr. Tony Beam, radio host of Christian World View Today in Greenville South Carolina, acted as a cultural translator, explaining why his listener-ship was strongly for Trump.

Not all callers were pro-Trump, even staunch republicans. American businessman and former Mayor of Bogota, Steve Lonegan, talked about how ending free trade, a key piece of Trump's economic platform, would ruin the economy.  

In the first part of our Tuesday coverage of the Republican National Convention:

Ruben Navarrette, Daily Beast columnist, and Mary Jordan, Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist covering the presidential campaign for The Washington Post, talk about what's going on at the Republican National Convention.

@BrianLehrer FDR "Only Thing We've to Fear Is Fear Itself". Giuliani "They fear for their children and they fear for themselves". Progress?

Then:

Ying Ma, deputy director and senior strategist of the Committee for American Sovereignty, discusses the Committee for American Sovereignty super PAC's proposal to make America's streets safe again.

And, Dr. Kelli Ward, running against Senator John McCain in Arizona, joins us live from the convention center in Cleveland to talk about why she supports Trump.