The NPR Politics Podcast - Can GOP Hopefuls Build A Winning Coalition Without Losing Base?

Episode Date: March 27, 2023

Six in ten Americans say in a new NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll that they don't want Trump to be president again, but it's unclear whether the other GOP hopefuls can build a wider base of support without tarnishing their image among voters they'll need to win a primary.And in his trip to Canada last week, Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau discussed resettling asylum seekers, rising violence in Haiti, and a new area of attention: America's resurgent manufacturing economy.This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It is edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Giveaway: npr.org/politicsplusgiveaway Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hello, NPR Politics Podcast. Last week I was delivering mail to the Tacoma Art Museum, 1701 Pacific, 98402. Today I am standing in front of Picasso's Guernica in Madrid. This podcast was recorded at 1.06 p.m. on Monday, March 27th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but art is eternal. Enjoy the show. I have, too, been to that museum in Madrid and seen Guernica, and it is an amazing piece of art. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Former President Donald Trump faces at least four criminal investigations, two federal and two state in New York and Georgia. He has not been charged with any crimes. A majority of Americans say these investigations are fair, according to the latest NPR PBS News Hour Marist poll. Domenico, no surprise in the results here. There's a huge partisan divide on this question. Nine in 10 Democrats say they're fair. Eight in 10 Republicans call them a witch hunt. But there's some interesting gray area here. Yeah, you know, it's 56-41 where people said that they see these investigations as fair as compared to a witch hunt. But as we know, that's sort of become a proxy for how people

view Trump. You know, 41 is kind of what his approval rating had been all throughout his presidency. Overall, it continues to show that Trump has a difficult time, you know, with independents and others, and really is toxic outside of the Republican Party. Can we talk about the nuance here a little bit? Because when you dig into the numbers in the poll, people don't necessarily think Trump did nothing wrong. They just have different takes on what he did. Yeah, we tried to ask a kind of gray area question, which I know gray is never the color of politics. But three quarters overall say that Trump has done something wrong, at least something, right? 46% say that he's done something illegal. 29% say that he's done something unethical,

but not illegal. And only about a quarter of people say that he's done nothing wrong. When we look, though, at the split inside of the parties, no surprise, you've got Democrats, independents who largely feel he's done something wrong. But Republicans are really split between whether he's done something unethical or whether he's done nothing wrong at all. We had 45% of Republicans saying that he's done nothing wrong, and 43% of Republicans saying that he's done at least something unethical. And it really does mirror the split we're seeing in the Republican primary right now. D'Amico, this poll seems to me to capture a dynamic that we're probably going to talk about throughout the Republican primary in that Donald Trump, through it all, remains rather popular and

pretty stable with the Republican base. But you can see in a general election electorate, especially with independents, he's got a ceiling. Yeah, it's rough. I mean, six out of 10 people say that Trump should not be president. And that's a difficult place to start if you want to win reelection. And, you know, worse for him than, you know, Democrats or whatever. But independents largely do not think Trump should be president. Two thirds of independents say Trump should not be president again. That is a really difficult place to win a general election. At the same time, three-quarters of Republicans think he should be president.

So it makes it really difficult to see how he wins a general election but also really difficult to see how he loses a Republican primary. Franco, it does make it pretty clear to see why President Biden is probably hopeful that Donald Trump ultimately ends up the Republican nominee, beat him once before. And with these numbers, you could see a path for the president again. Yeah, it's kind of interesting because when you ask, you know, some of their officials, like, do you hope that that Trump wins? And the answer is always, you know, look, he represents an extreme part of the Republican Party. They don't want to go through that again. They don't think the country should be, you know, inflicted with that type of energy again. But at the same time, underneath, there's, you know, a little bit of a smile. Like, look, I mean, Joe Biden beat him before. And a lot of

people in, you know, Biden's orbit feel that he could beat him again. You know, I think there's certainly parts of the Democratic Party who kind of hope that him again. You know, I think there are certainly parts of the Democratic Party who kind of hope that Trump does, you know, continue because they have proven to and shown that they can beat him. And I think there is an aspect to that because, look, it's politics and, you know, they want to they want to take on a beatable person. Yeah. And Biden has been vulnerable himself. I mean, his numbers with independents have not been great either. And really, it seems that Trump and Biden are each other's best friends as much as they don't like each other politically. They're each other's best

chance. And, you know, when you have somebody like Trump, even though his numbers are so bad with persuadable voters, anytime you get somebody on the ballot, that person has an even money chance of winning a general election because you've only got two choices and because of how partisan everyone is right now. There's just so many boxes that you can check off. That is an advantage for Biden way. One, the big one, obviously he beat Trump before, but also one of the biggest vulnerabilities for Biden is obviously his age and concerns about his age. Trump's, you know, not so young either. And that kind of wipes that one away. I mean, the juxtaposition between a Biden versus a DeSantis in age, that gap is just not there

when it's not there for many of the other, you know, potential Republican hopefuls. Well, I think DeSantis and we're seeing him sort of struggle to walk this line because you have a pretty sharp split among Republicans about the kinds of Republicans who are open to somebody other than Trump. And they're not the culture warrior base of the Republican Party that DeSantis has really enamored himself to. You know, he's sort of become the 1A choice for a lot of those very pro-Trump people. But he needs to appeal to the, you know, college educated suburban Republicans who are kind of tired of the chaos and drama. And I think that's part of why you saw him flip flop this week on Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, who he had, you know, essentially dismissed this, the war in Ukraine saying, you know, it's just a territorial dispute. And now has walked that back completely calling Putin a war criminal. All right, let's take a quick break. And we'll talk more when we get back.

Some people in Ireland follow American presidential elections as if they were a sport. I think we knew all the counties by name. We knew Fulton County. What's the funny one in Wisconsin? There's a very funny name. Waukesha? Oh, there we go. Yeah, Waukesha. But that does not mean their politics are just like ours.

When an Irish politician arrives to America, they say, oh, I am Senator whoever. I am Senator Omar Cajon. And the American person is like, wow, Senator. Whereas the Senate in Ireland is a much different kettle of fish. An Irish view of politics both at home and abroad. That's in our recent bonus episode for NPR Politics Plus listeners. If that's you, be sure to check it out. And thank you for your support. If it's not, it could be. Sign up and support public media at the link in our episode notes. And we're back and President Biden is back from his latest foreign trip to Ottawa, Canada.

Franco, you were on that trip. It might come as a bit of a surprise that the president had not yet stepped foot in Canada as president. Yeah, it was actually a really big deal because traditionally the first trip of an elected U.S. president is to go to Canada. But that didn't happen this time because of COVID. It was delayed. But then President Biden basically, or not basically, literally traveled around the world, visited many countries, including war-torn Ukraine, before making it to Ottawa. So that was certainly noted by the Canadians. That said, you know, the love fest for Biden from Canada, from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was immediately there. They really rolled

out the red carpet for him. So these trips always have very long agendas, but let's talk through in terms of importance, at least in terms of the president's eyes, what did he go to Canada to do and what was his key message here? I mean, a big part of reason to go to Canada is because he hadn't gone yet and to make sure to strengthen that bilateral relationship, but also kind of strengthen some of the alliances on things that they've been working on, on Ukraine, on climate, on trade. But there were some key issues where there were some tensions that they tried to work through with different you know, different levels of success. One issue where they've been having challenges and continue to not yet work out is Haiti. They've really been struggling with the conditions in Haiti.

You know, basically the capital has been taken over by gangs. Both Canada and the United States are trying to help. The United States has actually been trying to pressure Canada to lead a international peacekeeping mission. This would be military intervention to try to help Haiti kind of help bolster the police. And while Canada actually was at first open to the idea, they have a longstanding relationship with Haiti, Justin Trudeau has backed away saying outside intervention doesn't work. A former ambassador I talked Biden, you know, on Friday backed away some, saying that military intervention is not going to happen right now. He didn't totally take it off the table, but he kind of agreed with Trudeau in saying, hey, we're going to focus on training

for the police, maybe some sanctions. So it was definitely kind of a backing down on that issue, which is a very sensitive issue for both countries for obvious reasons like migration. And there's some to do with China as well, right? I mean, you've got the manufacturing piece of this with semiconductor chips that the U.S. wants to have made in the U.S., but also partially in Canada as well as the U.S. sort of continues to try to put pressure and encircle China a little bit. Yeah, the United States and Canada are very aligned in wanting to counter China from a national security perspective, but also from an economic perspective. And one of the big ways that the United States is doing that, as we all know, is the made in America policies that are in the infrastructure law. Well, those same policies are a big problem for Canada and other foreign partners because of those provisions that require more of these products be made or parts of these products be made in the United States.

And Canada has been kind of raising concerns about that ever since the law was passed last year, ever since it was even talked about, have been raising those concerns. But last week on Thursday and Friday, President Biden kind of made the argument that the law is actually in Canada's favor, basically saying that the United States needs critical minerals that Canada has, minerals for batteries, minerals for the semiconductors you're talking about, Domenico. There's money in the package that can go to Canadian companies to do the mining, to do the drilling, to extract those minerals. There's also money there to help package some of the semiconductors that are allegedly going to be built in the United States, built in places like Vermont. Canada can kind of help package those. So there is money there. It is an interesting argument. I'm not sure it's really going to, you know, pass total muster. I really think this is going to be

an issue that continues to be talking about. But you're absolutely right. China is kind of the underlying issue there. There's so much focus on the U.S.-Mexico relation when it comes to the border, but U.S.-Canada relations, especially when it comes to migrants and asylum seekers, it doesn't get as much attention, but it's still a significant part of the conversation between our two countries. I mean, a big part of the interest of the United States on Haiti is the fact that many of the Haitian migrants are now coming to the United States. They're part of kind of this new wave of migration that we've been talking a lot about at NPR. Well, Canada, as you're noting, has also been experiencing a heavy wave of migration. And it's also become

much like a political problem for Biden. It's become a political problem for Trudeau, where political opponents are blaming him and using kind of a similar type rhetoric that Republicans do against Biden. And that kind of thing is happening in Canada. And it got to such a point that Trudeau was pressured to kind of try to broach a treaty between the United States and Canada that is blamed for allowing more of the migration, illegal migration. Interestingly enough, Biden agreed to make some changes to this major treaty, which will allow both countries to kind of push back more of their migrants. And I'm talking about asylum seekers here. So it's kind of interesting because both countries are known for welcoming refugees, welcoming asylum seekers. And now both the United States and Canada are pushing back on that.

All right. And that is it for us today. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Frank Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.