The NPR Politics Podcast - After Election Night, Trump Lashes Out; Pelosi Offers An Olive Branch

Episode Date: November 7, 2018

In back to back press conferences, President Trump and Nancy Pelosi both talked about what bipartisanship could look like for a split Congress. Yet their tones were starkly different as Trump lashed out against the press. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, political reporter Asma Khalid, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and editor correspondent Ron Elving. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Gabriella. I'm here with my parents, Gail and Michael, each of whom voted for both Democrats and Republicans. And I'm her little sister, Becca. I can't vote till next election, but I'll be sure to stay informed by listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. And I can't vote till 2026. This podcast was recorded at 2 40 p.m eastern on Tuesday, November 7th. Things may have changed since the time you hear this. All right, here's the show. That was sweet. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. Democrats have retaken control of the House of Representatives, but Republicans have expanded their Senate majority. And the day after, everyone is trying to frame and spin the results.

We will do our best to cut through it all. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. It's been about 12 hours or so since our early morning results podcast. Before we get into President Trump's press conference, which was something, I think that's the technical term for it, as well as likely next Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's press conference, some on to his seat in Montana. That limits Democratic losses in the Senate a little bit. But the Democrats could still lose one more seat. Bill Nelson, the incumbent in Florida, is trailing Governor Rick Scott.

But it's a really close margin and deja vu here, likely a recount in Florida. That brings you back, Ron? It does. It does indeed. And I would just as soon not go. And Democrats have added to their majority in the House. A lot of races on the West Coast still yet to be called. But in the end, it's going to shake out to something like 30 seats or so of pickups for Democrats, giving them a governing majority of a little bit more than 10. So we could say that the Democrats won a clear majority of the House contests, that they picked up seven governorships and the Republicans did not pick up any.

And we could also say that while the Democrats did lose a little ground in the Senate, they won two thirds of the contests that were on the ballot for the Senate yesterday. And yet President Trump in the East Room of the White House walks down the hallway to address the press corps the day after his party loses control of a chamber of the House. That's something Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush all did. And while those three presidents were all contrite and bipartisan and acknowledging that their party had lost, President Trump declared victory. When you look at the races that we won in Florida, which we weren't expected to win, and Georgia, which we weren't expected to win, and Ohio, which we weren't expected to win, and won, I mean, you look at some of them, the number of votes that we got is incredible. So

I'm really happy with not only the way it came out, but the response to me as your president. I mean, his main argument is that there are states that he visited, candidates who showed up on stage with him, and that those candidates overwhelmingly won last night. And that is true. You can point to a number of candidates that did show up on stage with him, that he campaigned for, who were successful in both the Senate and in various governor's races. The counter argument to that is that the president consciously avoided going to many, many House districts where his appearance there, you could argue, would not have been helpful. It also could have been hurtful.

And no matter what the president said today, he ran this election. He said it was a referendum on him. Everybody in the country went to vote for the House of Representatives. It was a this election. He said it was a referendum on him. Everybody in the country went to vote for the House of Representatives. It was a national election. They voted to put a check and balance on the president. And what we saw today in an extraordinary performance at the White House was Donald Trump, wounded, bitter and defensive because for the first time in his life, he's lost. Let's walk through a few key moments, and there are many to choose from, but we'll just focus on a few that tell us a larger story about how President Trump finds himself at this point in his administration. One thing that really jumped out to me was that he began talking.

He was very low energy would be a word he's used for his opponents, but he was very downbeat, staring at a piece of paper, reading. And the first moment that he became really animated was when he started walking through the list of Republicans who had distanced themselves from him and then lost their seats. And I wouldn't argue that he just walked through it, Scott. It was like a public shaming. Right.

I mean, he suddenly got animated and he went after them. So on the other hand, you had some that decided to, let's stay away, let's stay away. They did very poorly. I'm not sure that I should be happy or sad, but I feel just fine about it. Carlos Cubela, Mike Kaufman. Too bad, Mike. Mia Love. I saw Mia Love. She'd call me all the time to help her with a hostage situation. Being held hostage in Venezuela.

But Mia Love gave me no love. And she lost. Too bad. Sorry about that, Mia. Just to clarify a tiny bit, because that might have been confusing, it was one of her constituents who the U.S. government was able to free. And that's something she campaigned on, but she also repeatedly would point out criticizing President Trump.

And at the moment, she is trailing, though that race wasn't called. Mara, you said that this moment was more revealing than almost anything else that happened today. Why? Yeah, because it showed Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a very, very transparent, open, accessible person. His psyche is generally displayed for all to see. And you saw a lot of Donald Trump in this press conference. As I said, you saw him bitter and defeated and angry. But you also saw the transactional Donald Trump where he actually made the argument that losing the House might be better, because if he'd only held on to it, if Republicans had only held on to it by one or two, it would have been impossible to get anything done.

Now he can make deals with the Democrats, they can come to him with what they want, he'll tell them what he wants, and then they can make a deal. However, that olive branch came with a big condition, because he said if they investigate him, then the deal is off. He says you can't do both things at once. You can't have oversight and also bipartisan dealmaking. He said if they do that, then all of this is a warlike posture. If they start investigating you, that you can play that game and investigate them. Better than them.

Can you compartmentalize that? And I think I know more than they know. Can you compartmentalize that and still continue to work with them for the benefit of the rest of the country or are all bets off? No. If they do that, then it's just all it is is a warlike posture. And speaking of warlike postures, a lot of moments where Trump went toe-to-toe with reporters, insulting them, criticizing them, instructing White House aides to take the microphones away. It's pretty clear that losing control of the House of Representatives is not going to cause the president to recalibrate any of his approach to this job. I mean, also, some of the questions that he was responding really negatively

were about his rhetoric. They were about the questions that he was responding really negatively were about his rhetoric. They were about the idea that he ran a divisive campaign that that played upon people's fears. I would say specifically as they involved sort of, you know, white supremacy, white nationalism, racism. And those were the questions that he responded really negatively to. And any time there was a question raised about this, he kind of just pointed his fingers back at the reporter. On the campaign trail, you called yourself a nationalist. Some people saw that as emboldening white nationalists. Now people are also saying that the press... I don't know why you'd say that. It's such a racist question. There are some people that say that now the Republican Party is seen as supporting white

nationalists because of your rhetoric. What do you make of that? I don't believe it. I just, well, I don't know. Why do I have my highest poll numbers ever with African-Americans? Why do I have among the poll numbers ever with African Americans why do I have among the highest poll numbers with African Americans I mean why do I have my highest poll numbers that's such a racist question honestly I mean I know you have it written down and you're gonna tell me let me tell you it's a racist question and mr. president I love it you know what the word is I love love our country. I do. You have nationalists, you have globalists. I also love the world. And I don't mind helping the world, but we have to straighten out our

country first. We have a lot of problems. Excuse me. But to say that what you said is so insulting to me. It's a very terrible thing that you said. And I would say to me, that is something we saw him do leading up to the 2016 campaign. He seems just as emboldened as ever before. Yeah. And at the same time, though, when he was asked, you know, what happened to the middle class tax cut? What if the Democrats want to raise taxes on corporations or the rich to pay for that? He said, well, I might adjust. You know, he he he seemed open to compromises. We should get along and get deals done. And only in the understanding

that he would not be under investigation by those same House Democrats. And if they were going to investigate him, he was going to retaliate. Right. But here's the thing. I've covered a number of presidents in this exact same situation. It's kind of when you lose a House of Congress or both, it's like you've been hit by a freight train. It takes a while to absorb the information and decide what you want to do going forward. Do you want to be combative? Do you want to triangulate if you can? And he hasn't completely processed this. This is his first reaction. Most other presidents I've covered in these situations, like George W. Bush or Barack Obama or Bill Clinton, will take responsibility. You know, they were kind of mensch-like. They would say, I got shellacked. You know, it's on me. The buck stops with me. But we don't know

where Donald Trump is going to come out. He seems to have laid down his parameters. If you investigate me, I'm going to fight you and I'm better at the game than you are, he said. And it's going to be good for me politically. But we don't know if that's where he's going to end up. This is a really new situation for him. And I don't think he or his aides have completely thought this through. But, Laura, I guess my question is, do you see the president actually processing fully that this was a loss for him? Do you think that this was just a facade as he was talking up his wins? Oh, no.

I think this guy knows exactly what happened to him. Otherwise, he would have been the super salesman, and he would have been more believable in the narrative that he was selling that it was a great night for him, but he wasn't. But he was exalting in several of the races that Republicans won, particularly Florida. As he should. Those were his great victories, and he can't claim credit for them. Contrasting his role in those wins for Republicans with the role of Oprah Winfrey. He went back to this more than once.

He was really dwelling on Oprah. Yes. A lot. Even more than Obama. Because that's how he sees himself. He's a celebrity going up against another mega celebrity. Obama is a mega celebrity. He called those candidates celebrities in their own right.

So last question on that before we take a quick break and then talk about the House Democrats, is that in the end, when you're all looking at the results, do you see more of an affirmation of President Trump's approach in the seats that the Republicans picked up at the Senate or a rebuke of President Trump's approach in the suburban voters who shifted sides and flipped a lot of seats to the Democrats in the House? In the world of the suburbs and metro areas, which was the House battleground, Donald Trump was repudiated and he was repudiated across the country. However, in the deep red bastions of rural small town America, in the red states where he did heave candidates over the finish line, there his base is as solid as ever, and he

has the ability to turn those voters out, even in swing states like Ohio and Florida. So on that one, you know, what we end up with is a extremely divided country, even more divided than we were before Tuesday, and that's how we're going into this next cycle. And that division between metro areas, if you will, and non-metro areas, a variant on the old urban versus rural, it's been with us forever. That division is probably as significant in terms of our politics as any between the two parties or between pro-Trump, anti-Trump, or between races and other forms of identity. Between the Senate and the House. But you could make the argument, though, this is not necessarily a positive movement overall for the Republican Party to continuously lose the suburbs if this is an ongoing trend.

No, they might be able to pull out. Strategy. And we saw last night that in some really highly educated congressional districts like Virginia's 10th district outside of Washington, D.C., or Georgia's 6th congressional district outside of Atlanta. These are really highly educated places that had Republican incumbents. And I believe Georgia's 6th hasn't officially been called yet, but the Democrats are up. But that's a long term problem. In other words, the places where Donald Trump lost are the places in America that are growing, the communities that are growing. The demographic groups where he lost are the demographic groups that are growing. So in the future,

those voters are going to get more and more out of reach for Republicans. But Republicans believe they still have a cycle or two in them where they can ride the white vote. And Donald Trump showed that they could at a time when many Republicans thought it was time to start making a big pitch to minorities and young people because they thought the future was upon them. Donald Trump said, nope, I can stave off the future for a while. And one more thing to quickly mention before we go to a break. In the hours after election, a lot of news happens and things may have changed by the time we finish talking about the news. That is the case right now. We have just learned that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has been forced out.

Obviously, that has major implications for the Mueller investigation, among many other things. We will talk about that at length with our Justice Department experts like Kerry Johnson later in the week at a whole separate podcast. But real quick, this is obviously a big deal. Let's remember Jeff Sessions was the first member of the United States Senate to endorse Donald Trump for president. And for many, many, many months, when no one else wanted to touch him, Sessions was the only member of the Senate to endorse Donald Trump. And that loyalty was initially rewarded with this job that was Jeff Sessions' dream job. But immediately the president was unhappy because under the rules of the Justice Department, Sessions recused himself from any consideration of the Russian interference in the 2016 election as he had been part of the Trump campaign.

And it shows you that loyalty to him is the most important thing for Donald Trump, more than the agenda on criminal justice or immigration or voting rights or anything like that. And that loyalty is a one-way street. Again, big implications. We will talk about it at length later this week. Right now, we're going to take a quick break and then we will come back and keep talking about the political implications of last night's results. By midday on November 6th, 1985, Columbia's Palace of Justice in Bogota was a battleground. Guerrillas held dozens of hostages and the army had the building surrounded. What happened that fateful day? This week on Radio Ambulante. And we are back and kind of a metaphor for a lot of things. Nancy Pelosi, the likely

incoming House speaker, was going to speak to reporters around 1230. She decided to wait until President Trump was done speaking. She waited for more than an hour over at the Capitol for President Trump's press conference to wrap up. Then Pelosi did begin speaking to reporters, incredibly different tone, incredibly different context. And she started off by saying the Democrats had a message from day one and we stuck to it. Healthcare, healthcare, healthcare. While the GOP tried relentlessly to distract and divide, our candidates kept their focus on that subject. We've been talking for weeks about how the biggest implication of Democrats taking back control of the House would be their ability to do

oversight. She talked about her approach to that. You can be sure of one thing. When we go down any of these paths, we'll know what we're doing and we'll do it right. First off, I'm curious if you guys all think that given how the Democratic base out there feels about the president, if you think Pelosi and Democratic leaders are going to be able to stick with this disciplined, a little bit cautious approach to what leaders are going to be able to stick with this disciplined, a little bit cautious approach to what they're going to look into? I think it'll be hard, but I think the fact that Democrats didn't have a super huge victory last

night makes it a little bit easier for the leadership to say, we need to do this step by step. We don't want to be the left-wing mirror image of Donald Trump. We didn't like it when he said, lock her up. So we're not going to say you should be impeached immediately. That's the same thing. And we want to lay down a kind of legislative marker, pass some things about health care, maybe it's tax cuts, ethics reform. And then we want to methodically and carefully prepare these investigations, which will be pretty much administration wide. It's not just Donald Trump. It's every cabinet secretary. And it's probably just about every committee chairman.

Right. As she listed today. And those people can get started with those investigations more or less quietly at the staff level now while they pursue the ambidextrous function of Congress of also working with the president. The other thing to remember is that the results last night were not a resounding success for left-wing Democrats. As a matter of fact, most of them lost. Ben Jealous, Kara Eastman. I mean, if you go through the list, there is a much younger, more diverse Democratic caucus, but it's not necessarily more to the left. So I think even though the base of the party is to the left, and there is a tremendous amount of energy that wants to impeach the president, I think that Nancy Pelosi comes into the new Congress with a pretty strong hand for the moment, and even stronger because she has let it be known

that she does not want to be speaker forever. And that is so interesting because, first of all, we're talking about the fact that Pelosi is going to be the next speaker as a given because it seems to be a given at this point. And that's so interesting, given all of the criticism she got over the last year and how many Democrats thought that it was a liability to say they would support Nancy Pelosi. A lot of voters also have felt that way. I mean, you can look at her favorability ratings. They are under Donald Trump's, which, you know, people don't care for her as a sort of a character. And I would say you hear that a lot on the Republican side. But I heard that from Democrats who you would go out and certain Democrats refused to say whether or not they would support her as a speaker during the campaign cycle.

Or outright cut ads saying they wouldn't support her. But Ron, her argument all along is nobody else can do the job like me. And it seems like she's right because nobody is stepping up to challenge her. And she's going to be the first speaker since Sam Rayburn to be speaker, lose the majority and come back as speaker. The question has changed here. The question is different when the Democrats suddenly have the majority in the House. Now the question is who can run this place? And they know that she can. And she has raised a ton of money almost for each and every one of them. So even if she lights up all of the warning lights for Republicans, because she's a coastal,

liberal, elite, wealthy Democrat, even if all that is true, now the question is, who's going to help us effectively run the House, make our bid to hold it in 2020, oppose the president, and maybe even do some favors for our brothers and sisters in the Senate. And as time goes on, it's going to be really interesting to see how she makes good on her statement that she sees herself as being transitional, that she is interested in grooming a new generation of leaders, and that she sees herself as being transitional, that she is interested in grooming a new generation of leaders, and that she doesn't intend to be speaker all the way through the next Congress. You know, I just want to step back for a moment, because I think there were a lot of questions within the Democratic Party leading up to Election Day about what direction

the party was going to take and whether or not these, quote unquote, progressive stars were going to have successful nights. And that meant we were going to see a sort of more tilt to the left leading up to 2020 or not. And, you know, Mara, you were talking earlier about we didn't see a number of these progressives win seats in Congress. And I think that that is true. But the counter argument to that, and I'm hearing this from folks, is that we can look at certain progressive candidates. You can make the case Stacey Abrams in Georgia who ran for governor or Beto O'Rourke who was running against Ted Cruz in Texas and say, look, no Democrat has ever come within striking distance in recent history in either one of those states. And so you had the last Democrat in Georgia run for governor and he lost by like eight points. Stacey Abrams is down by less than two points. And she hasn't conceded yet.

What's the strategy going forward? But Gillum, O'Rourke and Abrams, they are heroes to the Democratic Party, including the Democratic establishment, because what they've done in their states to build the Democratic Party's infrastructure, register new voters, get more people to vote for Democrats. So they are moving Georgia down the road to being a purple state. They are moving Texas down the road to being a purple state. That is different than are they offering a model for the kind of candidates Democrats can beat Donald Trump with in 2020. Those are two different things. But Mark, couldn't you also say that like the idea of a leftist, if we could say that, right? That could also be someone like Sherrod Brown, who's this populist Democrat from the Midwest. Who won easy in Ohio. Yes, but Sherrod Brown does not belong in that category. Let me explain what I mean. I talked to a Democrat today who said the message from the election for Democrats, he said no Democratic primary voter will ever take this lesson to heart. But the lesson is charisma is overrated. You have to eat off the other guy's

plate. Sherrod Brown eats off the other guy's plate. Andrew Gillum, O'Rourke, and Abrams do not. In other words, Sherrod Brown figured out how to be a progressive in Ohio and win. But those other three guys couldn't figure out how to appeal to enough white voters or enough centrist voters or whatever you want to call them. That's a good argument, though. Isn't it also, though, that a state like a Georgia or a Texas has historically just had a really different electorate than an Ohio, right? Like we're now seeing Georgia and Texas tilt more to become purple, but I don't think anybody would consider those not red states. And Ohio is now maybe becoming more of a red state, you could say, but it's always been more of a toss up for years, at least when Sherrod Brown was first elected. I would say that has more to do with demography in each of those cases than it has to do with ideology. And that right there is the first full-born unapologetic conversation

about the 2020 presidential election that we will have. Because we don't have to hide it anymore. There's no more election between now and the presidential election. So we're going to talk about that a lot more, as well as all the governing that's going to take place. We have a ton of analysis on NPR.org that is worth checking out, including a long look at the record number of women who are headed to Congress by Daniel Kurtzleben, analysis from Ron and Domenico and everybody else about what happened Tuesday night. Check it out at NPR.org. We'll talk to you tomorrow. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Mara Liason, national

political correspondent. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.