The NPR Politics Podcast - Cohen Leaks Secret Recording Of Trump & New NPR Poll After Trump-Putin Summit

Episode Date: July 25, 2018

Cohen released a tape of himself seeming to talk with then-candidate Trump about payments to a former Playboy model who alleges she had an affair with Trump. But the quality of the audio has left it's meaning up to interpretation. Plus, NPR, PBS NewsHour & Marist released a poll that shows how Americans received the president's summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. This episode: reporter Sarah McCammon, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. 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

Hey everyone, this is Colton Poole walking my bike up a French mountain after biking along with the Tour de France and having my derailleur brake clean off my bike. This podcast was recorded at 1146 p.m. Eastern Time, Wednesday, July 25th. AM. Oh gosh. Can I do that again? 1146 a.m. Eastern Time, Wednesday, July 25th. It's Tuesday. It's not. It's Wednesday!

It's Wednesday. I'm sorry! God! Things may have changed since you've heard this, including me having a bike that works. Keep up with all of the news and great analysis, as I am while stranded on a French highway, at NPR.org, on the NPR One app, and by listening to your local NPR station. All right, here's the show. Oh man, I hope he got out of that situation. That's impressive. Hey, there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast, here to talk about some very confusing audio recordings of President Trump

and a poll by NPR that looks at how Americans reacted to Trump's big summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. I'm Sarah McCammon. I'm covering the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. I'm Domenica Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. Okay, guys, so this tape popped the other night, an audio recording of Trump sent to CNN by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen's legal team. We knew it was out there for a while, but we get to hear it now. Have you guys heard it? Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay okay so let's listen to some of it um told you about charleston um i need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that

info regarding our friend david you know so that i'm gonna do that right away i've actually come up and i've spoken to alan weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with funding. Yes. And it's all the stuff. All the stuff. Because, you know, you never know where that company, you never know where he's going to be. Correct. So I'm all over that.

And I spoke to Alan about it. When it comes time for the financing, which will be... What financing? We'll have to pay you. No it comes time for the financing, which will be... What financing? We'll have to pay you. No, no, no, no, no, no. I got... No, no, no. Hey, no, how are you?

So that's where it cuts off. Yeah. Yeah. So some of it's hard to hear. There's a lot of crosstalk. It's not always clear who's talking to who or who he's talking about. We hear some names. We hear our friend David.

We hear about financing. What do you guys make of what we just heard? First off, this is a conversation between, obviously, Michael Cohen and then still candidate Donald Trump. It's in September of 2016 at Trump Tower. This is all what Rudy Giuliani told me when I spoke to him over the weekend when news of this tape first came out. So Cohen shows up.

He's taping this conversation. Trump does not know that it's being taped. As for who David is, David could be David Pecker, who is with American Media Inc., which is the parent company of the tabloid The National Enquirer. This is the company that bought the rights to the story of Karen McDougal, who is the Playboy playmate who alleges that she had an affair with Trump around 10 years ago. Alan Weisselberg, that is the chief financial officer of the Trump organization, kind of the money man for the Trump organization. And what Cohen and Trump are discussing, according to both Lanny Davis, who is Michael Cohen's lawyer, and Rudy Giuliani, who is the president's lawyer, is potentially buying the rights to this story of Karen McDougal's alleged affair with Trump and buying the rights from AMI because you're never quite sure what's going to happen if it's in the hands of a tabloid publisher, even a tabloid publisher that is as friendly with Trump as AMI and the

National Enquirer are. And this was a process known as catch and kill, where there was a lot of this kind of thing that went on or goes on with celebrities who don't like stories and might try to catch that story and kill that story. Trump was apparently doing this and had this relationship with the National Enquirer, which was carrying this out for him as as the Trump organization or Trump through some shell corporation would pay them. Trump denies having this affair with Karen McDougal. That's correct. And he has argued that this is and Giuliani as well. They've argued that this is common for celebrities to have to pay off

these kind of salacious stories that people bring up and that this is just all about being a celebrity and being rich and you get targeted. And so what does, I mean, Ryan, you talked to Giuliani, like what is his take on what this actually means? Does this mean that an affair happened? Does this mean a payment happened? I mean, what do we, there's a lot of allegations being thrown around, but what do we actually know? So what Giuliani says is that one, this transaction never happened. Team Trump never paid AMI for McDougal's story. AMI, he says, decided to hang on to this for its own reasons. He didn't say what those reasons were. I'm not sure that he's privy to what those reasons are.

The big question for us, of course, is what other tapes Michael Cohen might have, what other recordings there might be of conversations with Donald Trump. We know that there are other audio recordings. wrapped up in after the FBI seized basically his whole range of files back in raids on his hotel and residence and office back in April. That's where this comes from. So this raises really, one, a lot of questions about what else Michael Cohen has in those recordings, what else Michael Cohen knows about President Trump's personal and business dealings. And then this has also led to a pretty, pretty nasty and escalating clash between Michael Cohen's legal team and the president's. So it's interesting that they say that there was no payment because AMI did pay Karen McDougal for the rights to her story. She says, right. This is not about payment from AMI to McDougal. It's about paying AMI for the rights to those stories.

Right. So that Team Trump would have the own the rights to McDougal story instead of having AMI on them. What what has the White House what has Trump said about this? Well, Trump is just more focused on this question of the ethics of Cohen recording his client at the time and how that's a violation. And when, Ryan, when you talk about that debate between Cohen's legal team and Trump's legal team, Lanny Davis is arguing that this recording shows that President Trump or then candidate Trump was saying pay cash. Or there's a question of don't pay cash or pay cash. When it comes time for the financing, which will be. What financing?

We'll have to pay. Don't pay for cash. No, no, no, no, no, no. I got. No, no, no. Cohen's lawyer is arguing that Trump was saying pay cash for if they did buy this and that that shows that he was trying to hide this transaction. Giuliani disputes that, right?

Giuliani is saying, no, no, no. Donald Trump was saying, pay in check. I want everyone to know. I want this to be above board. I want there to be a record of it. Yeah, and that's pretty much how Giuliani defended Trump on Fox News. The transcript makes it quite clear at the end that President Trump says, quote, don't pay with cash. Cohen then interrupts and says, no, no, no.

I got it. And then you hear distinctly, if you're careful and you slow it down, check. And then Cohen follows with no, no, no, and then quickly cuts off the tape, which indicates exactly what President Dershowitz was saying, that Cohen doesn't want the rest of the court. When it comes time for the financing, which will be... What financing? We'll I have to pay you, so... No, no, no, no, no, no. I got... No, no, no.

Hey, no, how are you? Unfortunately, the tape is muddled. We can't really tell what exactly is said. But yeah, Giuliani is saying everything's above board. There's nothing to worry about here. Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen's lawyer, is saying Trump is clearly saying pay cash. And hint, hint, we know who pays in cash. Drug dealers and the mafia.

And he actually said essentially that in the past couple of days. And the question here, of course, hanging over all of this is whether campaign finance laws were. I'm also not sure what sense it makes that you would want a record of this. Why would you set up a shell corporation to funnel the money through if you wanted everything to be above board and everyone to be able to follow the money? Well, Cohen hasn't told us why he recorded it, but I mean, it does give him some leverage, right, to have these tapes? What does it do for him? the FBI and the raids on Cohen's residences and office in April have been part of a dispute between prosecutors in New York, federal prosecutors in New York, the FBI as well, and Cohen's legal team. Also fighting over those materials is President Trump's personal lawyer. He's got another lawyer

that's involved in this, as well as the Trump organization. And the question is, what is privilege? What conversations did Trump have with Michael Cohen that are privileged? We know at this point that there are 12 other audio conversations that both Michael Cohen and President Trump have waived attorney-client privilege on. So there are at least 12 recordings that we know of that federal authorities have and will be able to use as they look to build their case against Michael Cohen. And we don't know what's what's in those recordings. So that's the that's the argument Trump's making, right, is that this kind of recording is unacceptable.

Yeah, he's arguing that this was wrong. He shouldn't have been recorded by his lawyer. He should have had the privacy of talking to his lawyer. So that's their argument. But are they also saying that Trump didn't know about this until this conversation, didn't know about this AMI story and Karen McDougal? Are they still making that case? They have made the case, at least over the weekend, that this is the first time that Trump found out about it. It appears from listening to this conversation that he was aware in some way, shape or form because he throws out the figure $150,000, which is something that that's how much AMI paid McDougal for the rights to her story. And he doesn't seem flabbergasted by this coming up out of the blue. He seems to have some sort of prior knowledge to it. One thing that we do need to bear in mind in the complaints that the president and his legal

team have made about this recording, while it certainly is unorthodox. It's not illegal for Cohen to do this, according to New York law. As long as one party to the conversation consents to the recording, it's above board. Okay. So there's still a lot that's unknown about what's on this tape, what it all means. But obviously the big question or one of the big questions is going to be, what does it mean politically? How does this play with the public? Well, look, I mean, the politics of this is just, you got to think about the fact that Trump is coming off this summit in Helsinki with the Russian president. He got all this bad press. It's just another thing that keeps coming out with Trump that, you know, if you're somebody who

didn't necessarily trust the president or think that he was completely above board with everything that he was doing. This doesn't help his case. And it just provides another kind of thing on cable news to that they're going to have to combat. I mean, if you look at our poll, I know we're going to talk more about this afterward, but the NPR PBS NewsHour Marist poll found that, you know, over 60 percent of people think that this president doesn't tell the truth most of the time. You know, that's a pretty stunning figure. I think Domenico is exactly right. I think that even though we follow the news very closely and are covering it, when a tape comes out like this, it's not that the tape itself is so, like, surprising,

but it just kind of fits into this narrative. You hear President Trump talking, not really in a presidential way, our friend, let's make some payments. And I think that it can just lend to this idea that if you're already skeptical about Trump, it lends to this idea where you're going to continue to raise questions like, what is he really up to? What was going on with this? At the same point in time, I will say, if you are a supporter of the president, and we see all the hubbub that this tape has generated in the public and then you hear the tape and there's not a whole lot in there for you to sink your teeth into, you may come away saying, well, why are people making such a big deal of this? This is once again, this is the media going after Trump for something that really doesn't seem all that big of a deal.

Yeah, I think because the tape is hard to understand, is less than clear in a lot of places. I mean, there's been a lot of reporting about what it means, but when you just hear the tape, it's hard to make out. I think it could be yet another Rorschach test. You know, what do you think of Trump? Therefore, what do you think of this tape? But the bigger question is sort of moving forward. Is this just sort of one more thing, as you alluded to, Domenico, that erodes trust in the president, erodes his his public perception, maybe sort of one thing at a time? Yeah. And one thing worth worth emphasizing here is that there really is this kind of escalating conflict between the president and Michael Cohen. And Michael Cohen is somebody who always presented himself as a very loyal friend of the president. And we are now seeing this gap open up and it's getting bigger and bigger between the two.

And of course, when Cohen was raided by the FBI, we all wondered, what does Cohen know? What can Cohen tell the feds? We may be getting closer to the point where under the incredible legal pressure that Michael Cohen is, he may be getting closer to the point where he's going to decide that he wants to cooperate. He hasn't been charged yet, but this is all possibilities. This may be signaling to the president that, you know what, it's worth remembering that I am who I am. Or it's like, pardon me. Sorry. But he said, Lenny Davis said that he's not looking for a pardon. Cohen's not looking for a pardon. And you're never looking to be vice president. We are going to take a closer look at Trump's poll numbers in a second.

Thanks to that new poll from NPR, PBS, NewsHour, and Marist. We'll take a deep dive on that right after this break. And, Ryan, we're going to let you go. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Always a pleasure. We'll be right back. I'm Shankar Vedantam,

host of the podcast Hidden Brain. All summer long, we're sharing stories about reinventing yourself as part of a series that we call You 2.0.

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And we're back and we're going to talk now about that new poll we mentioned, Subscribe and embrace your inner rebel. No leather jacket required. After Helsinki, what are people thinking? Well, what was fascinating in this poll is that two thirds of Americans don't think Trump's been tough enough on Russia. You know, that comes after this meeting with Putin where Trump essentially said he didn't really you didn't commit to whether or not he believed the U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election. We asked people about that. And 69 percent said that they do believe that Russia interfered with in the 2016 election. We asked people about that, and 69% said that they do believe that Russia interfered in the U.S. election. A very similar number said that they believe U.S. intelligence over Putin's denials, and a majority of Republicans say so. So this is one area where President Trump looks weak when it comes to even his base, even among Republicans. They don't think that the president's posture is something that they're comfortable with as the U.S. puts this new foot forward in the rest of the world with Trump as president.

And the White House argues that they have been really tough on Russia. And President Trump makes this argument. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just yesterday was saying what's lost in all of the talk about Russia is how this administration has been determined to stop Russian malign activity really more than any other administration, according to him. President Trump was standing right beside Putin, that he just didn't have any of that tough rhetoric that he has for most other world leaders, whether it's, you know, for the leaders of Germany or Canada. He just doesn't have that for Putin. And so even as the White House makes the arguments about their policies and say and they say that's tough, as with everything with the public, you have to sell it. And so President Trump isn't really selling this idea that he's tough with Russia. Yeah. I mean, the one line that people do seem to buy is when Trump says that, you know, it's a good thing to have a better relationship with Russia. Almost 60 percent of people say that they want to have a better relationship with Russia, and about a third think that Russia should be treated as a threat. And to your point, Ayesha,

as we've talked about before in this space, let's remember that the president has had many opportunities to clearly denounce Russia, to clearly affirm the findings of the U.S. intelligence community that Russia did interfere in the 2016 election, is trying to interfere in the future. And again and again, he has either not done so or made statements that were at minimum open to misinterpretation, at worst, intentionally misleading, you know, and the White House has had to walk those statements back multiple times, not just not just the Helsinki statement. And for as much as President Trump has kind of gone after the FBI and gone after the Mueller investigation, you know, as a witch hunt, as a hoax, Americans aren't believing that,

you know, more than two thirds say Mueller should finish the investigation. That includes 60% of Republicans who say he should be allowed to finish and a significant majority think that the FBI is doing its job and is not biased against Trump or the Trump administration. So on this issue, it's a bit of a boulder that Trump's trying to push uphill to say that the Mueller investigation is just a witch hunt. Right now, the public isn't believing that. And that's really interesting to me because I really wanted to see, like, are the comments from President Trump having an impact? Because obviously he keeps calling it a hoax and a witch hunt. And he has help on Capitol Hill from some Republicans who are raising questions about this investigation should have never happened.

So it's interesting to me that it doesn't seem like that is working just yet. The rhetoric has had a little bit of an impact where you look at whether or not the investigation has been fair. And you have half of Republicans saying they don't think it's fair. Now, Democrats think it is fair. But when it comes to Republicans, half of them say no. And we're going to talk about the bigger picture, too, next. Also in this poll, Trump's overall job approval. Where's that headed, Ayesha? Well, it's still not great, but it's pretty stable.

So right now, this poll found that he's at 39 percent approval to 51 percent disapproval among all Americans. And there are some gaps there. But what's remarkable to me is that his approval has been pretty stable. Yeah, I mean, he's been in the mid to high 30s or low to mid 40s for basically his entire presence as a public candidate. I mean, even as a candidate, his favorable ratings didn't rise much higher than that. But there is a huge gap when it comes to women. Right. We are seeing, is this sort of some cracks in the armor? Let's just throw this out there. Among men, half of men approve of the job he's doing, but 62% of women overall disapprove of what he's doing. And when you look at the really key numbers when it comes

to those suburban women, 57 percent of suburban women strongly disapprove of the job he's doing. Interesting. But that gap between women and men and especially with the suburban women, that's what Republicans in Congress are really worried about, right, for the midterms, is that those suburban women who would be Republican may not come out. The even more damning thing, I think, is the personal attributes of the president. You know, you have 61% of people saying they don't think Trump is honest most of the time. And that's pretty baked in. That's a big number. You know, that's higher than the disapproval rating for him. So, you know, that's kind of tough to get over. You have 60 percent of people saying they're embarrassed by Trump's behavior.

Now, the one thing that is helping him and Republicans hope blunt the midterm enthusiasm for Democrats is that the economy is something where people think he's doing a pretty good job. have this Supreme Court justice nominee in Brett Kavanaugh. There has been a focus on Roe v. Wade because the structure of the court could be changing. And these polls are actually showing that support for Roe at this point is actually really high. Isn't that the case? Right. So our poll looked at some of that. And also the NBC Wall Street Journal poll that just got some attention this week showed support for keeping Roe versus Wade. Of course, the decision that legalized abortion nationwide in 1973 support at its highest ever 71 percent. Interestingly, happening at a time when the abortion rate has been at its lowest rate since Roe. Our poll goes into more depth. The NPR Marist poll, on the question of overturning Roe.

Only 17 percent support overturning it. Twenty four percent, about a quarter, support keeping it, but adding more restrictions. Overall, what we're seeing is support for abortion rights, support for Roe versus Wade. I mean, overall, you're looking at three quarters of Americans saying that they don't want Roe overturned, which is kind of fascinating. Even among Republicans, you don't see this mass wave of Republicans saying that they want Roe overturned. They do want more restrictions added. And that's one of the things when you talk to legal experts about Kavanaugh's record, a lot of people think that he is more likely to take a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer to Roe. Now, there are a couple of really interesting demographic groups breaking down in here.

When you look at all of the energy on the left and right, you know, everyone looks at this as kind of a woman's issue, right? Well, not surprisingly, maybe, or maybe surprisingly for some people, the group of people that really stands out for who want to outright overturn Roe are Republican women. Right. Forty three percent in our poll of Republican women said they want to overturn it. And that is more than Republican men. Thirty percent. It's substantially more than Republican men. It's hard to pull on abortion. How you ask the question makes a big, big difference. But overwhelmingly, as I look at the polling from Gallup, from Pew, from other organizations, the one thing you can say is that most Americans think abortion should be legal in some cases and not in others. Where you draw the line is the big question.

That's the key. And so what do you think? What does this mean then for like the midterms and trying to translate that into enthusiasm on either side. Well, interestingly, Kavanaugh didn't pop in the poll as something that was a major factor in people's decision making. But what it also found was that there are slightly more Republicans who were fired up about his nomination than there were Democrats opposed to it. So, you know, a lot of people thought, well, maybe, you know, abortion rights will the fact that the court for a generation will likely be conservative if a Trump nominee is picked, that that would finally get Democrats to be fired up about it.

So far, the early evidence suggests that that they're not as fired up as Republicans once again. And we're going to leave it there. There has been so much news this week, so many little things and big things to catch up on. And we will do that for you tomorrow in the weekly roundup. So come back tomorrow and catch us then. Till then, send us your questions and timestamps recorded for the top of the show to NPR politics at NPR.org. I'm Sarah McCammon. I'm covering the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro,

political editor. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.