The NPR Politics Podcast - Democrats Are Skeptical Of Biden's Pentagon Pick

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

Civil rights and advocacy groups have been lobbying Joe Biden over his cabinet picks; Biden has promised to have the most diverse cabinet in history. Retired general Lloyd Austin, Biden's pick for Defense Secretary, will be the first Black man in that role — if he can overcome objections tied to civilian control of the military.This episode: correspondent Scott Detrow, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, national justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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And thank you. Hello, this is Robert from sunny Southern California. Today, I'll be sworn in on my city council, my first elected office at 50 years old. This podcast was recorded at... Congratulations, Robert. It is 2-0-6 Eastern on Tuesday, December 8th. Things may have changed by the time you hear them. Enjoy the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I'm covering the Biden transition. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Carrie Johnson, national justice correspondent. And today we are talking cabinet. Last night, we reported that President-elect Joe Biden plans to name Lloyd Austin as Secretary of Defense. He is a retired four-star general in the Army.

If confirmed, which is an open question, which we will get to later on, he would be the first black secretary of defense. Ayesha, we're going to talk about that for a few weeks because you have been doing some reporting on the fact that in recent weeks, Joe Biden has been getting a lot of pressure to name a more diverse cabinet. Yes, he's been getting a lot of pressure from civil rights groups and not just, so there are civil rights groups and groups, you know, specifically focused on black people that have been pushing for more black people. You've also had the Congressional Hispanic Caucus pushing for more Latino representation. So he's been getting a lot of pressure to not just necessarily have more people of color in the administration compared to the Trump administration, which, you know, was almost none other than Ben Carson or Elaine Chao. They want something more than that, and really more than what has ever been seen in the U.S. up until now.

That's interesting to me, because like you mentioned, I feel like one of the more glaring, shocking moments for me was seeing like that first picture of Trump's cabinet as a whole in 2017 and realizing it was almost exclusively white and male and just how different that was. And like it's interesting to me that just doing better than Trump and even making it a priority is nowhere near enough for a lot of these groups applying the pressure. No. And, you know, and I talked to Mark Morial, who is the head of the National Urban League. And what he said was, you know, look, he was very blunt about it. You know, he said that it's not just about getting people who are, you know, care about civil rights or care about, you know, the policies. Of course, they want that. But he wants Black people in the cabinet, in these important positions, making these decisions. And not only was it pressure to name a more diverse cabinet as a whole, but increasingly to make sure that people

of color were in those top level cabinet positions, the one that we all talk the most about. I was at the press conference on Friday when Biden was pressed on this. Will you name a secretary of defense or an attorney general who's a person of color? And here's what he said. I promise you, it'll be the single most diverse cabinet based on race, color, based on gender that's ever existed in the United States of America. And obviously, there are a lot of considerations to take into account when you name a cabinet, including past experience, including politics, including a lot of other things. But this pressure really did increase. And Aisha,

the Biden transition responded, they haven't announced it officially, but NPR has confirmed it as of other outlets. He is naming a person who could be the first black Secretary of Defense. Yes, because there was this focus on the big four, Treasury, State, Defense Department, and obviously the Justice Department. And so two of those have already been announced by Biden. And so people really wanted one of the big four to be a black person. This is what they were calling for. So they didn't want just positions. They want some of the highest ranking positions. And we should know, you know, the vice president is a black woman, woman of color, also Asian.

And there were other people that have been nominated, like Linda Thomas Greenfield, a black woman, for UN ambassador, but they had some specific ask here. And we'll get back to Austin in the second half of the podcast, particularly the fact that he only recently retired from active duty. But this is where Kerry Johnson comes in. So Biden has made his choice for the Pentagon. How does that affect how he finalizes his pick for Attorney General? You know, Scott, I heard from two sources overnight that the choice of Lloyd Austin gives the Biden transition a little more flexibility when it comes to naming a slate of Justice Department nominees, especially an Attorney General pick. You know, Biden and Harris

had both talked about diversity in terms of ethnicity and ideology. But some of the strongest candidates for the attorney general job are white men and women. And so with the Austin pick, the incoming administration may be a little more free to pick a white man or a woman. And of course, a woman would still bring some measure of diversity to the cabinet. Who are the finalists at this point, as far as we can tell? You know, I don't even want to speak in terms of finalists at this stage, because these people often change their plans. But names I've been hearing a lot include the former Obama administration Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, and people like Doug Jones, the outgoing Alabama senator who has a close friendship with

Joe Biden. And Doug Jones hasn't been in the Justice Department for over 20 years, but he had a big prosecution of two Klan members who helped blow up that church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963 that killed four little black girls, became really a historic moment. And we've got other choices as well. I reported that current appeals court judge Merrick Garland is a favorite of some of the people making these decisions. And he, of course, would bring some kind of gravitas back to a Justice Department that's been sorely wounded. There's a real loss of confidence in the Justice Department among the public and even among its own employees after the last three and a half years. And finally, we've got somebody like Lisa Monaco, who's also been a close advisor to Joe Biden

when he was vice president, worked for him at the start of her career on the Senate Judiciary Committee. And Lisa Monaco, of course, was the first woman confirmed as Assistant Attorney General for National Security Justice in the Obama years. And Aisha, before we take a quick break, let's end the segment on the flip side of some of the broader themes that we've been talking about. Obviously, diversity is something that is important to Biden. It is something that is important to a lot of these groups who are pressuring him. But it seems like there's a bit of a flip side here, too, that there's also been some pushback from some civil rights groups who feel like the way that Biden's transition is going about this makes it feel at times like they're there to check some boxes rather than being more

thoughtful about this. Well, yeah, and I think this comes back to this idea of wanting to be consulted on the front end before the decisions are made, rather than, I guess, being more proactive than reactive. And I've also talked to some, you know, people who say, look, yes, they absolutely want diversity, but they also want to make sure that the people being chosen, you know, especially for places like DOJ and what have you, that they are people who may be bringing new ideas, that you're not just bringing in kind of the same old status quo type of, you know, framework, because they think that the status quo is not what they want. They want some more dynamic changes in some of these departments.

They want fresh outlooks. You know, and if I could interject here, Aisha, I hear that at the Justice Department too. And the argument that some people are making there is that you cannot effectuate change, major change at the Justice Department from the Trump years, if you don't know how the place operates and where to look for all the things that might be hidden below the surface. And so that's why some people are arguing for a person who has had a lot of Justice Department experience in the recent past to be the Attorney General. All right, Carrie, you've, as always, nothing ever changes, have a lot of reporting to do on this as this decision gets finalized. So we are going to say goodbye to you.

Come back and talk a little bit more about cabinet politics with Franco Ordonez. So, Carrie, thanks as always. Thank you. All right. And we'll be back in a moment. Support for NPR and the following message come from YouStudio. Today's business world requires remote communication for training, sales enablement, and more. That's why companies like Nike, AT&T, and Dell all trust UStudio.

UStudio securely hosts and distributes fully branded podcasts for businesses to communicate effectively with their employees, customers, and partners in a media-first mobile experience. Get started for as little as $1 per user. Visit theletterustudio.com today for your personalized demo. Writer Baratunde Thurston says this democracy experiment requires more than just voting. This is incumbent on all of us. It takes two. It takes two to make a thing go right. It takes two to knock it out of sight. And both parties in a national level discourse, both sides have to

still remain committed. How to be a good citizen. That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. We are back. Franco Ordonez, welcome to the party. Thank you so much. Great to be here. Aisha, as we were talking earlier in the podcast, obviously diversity is a big part of the mix, but there are so many other things under consideration as well, including people's backgrounds, their policies, their politics, the interpersonal dynamics of getting these picks through a closely divided Senate. I could go on and on and on. So let's talk about some of those other things, particularly with Lloyd Austin. He is a retired four-star general. He was head of Central Command. Franco, you were reporting last night that Biden

got to know him in the Situation Room during the Obama administration and feels a level of comfort. But there is also a big challenge here that could be a problem, and that is the fact that legally you cannot be defense secretary if you retired from the military within the previous seven years. Franco, he's only been out of the military for four years. Yeah, that's right. He has only been out four years. And as you know, by law, military leaders are supposed to be out seven. And, you know, that is an issue because the law was designed to ensure civilian control. And an exception has only been granted to that for two secretary nominees in the last century. And one of them was General Jim Mattis, who served in the Trump administration. Now, we've heard from former military officials who hold, you know, Austin in

the highest regard, but they are also raising concerns about that there may not be enough separation. And of course, as you know, this could be an issue in Congress. Senators are going to have to wrestle with this. You know, a good number of Democrats, 17 senators, mostly Democrats, you know, and independents as well, voted against granting retired General Mattis a waiver to serve in the Trump administration. It did pass, but, you know, folks like Senator Richard Blumenthal, Tammy Duckworth, Kirsten Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren all voted against that. And it's really they're going to really be, you know, put to a test about whether they will do the same for Austin. And that raises a big question, because do they want to do that? Do they want to follow that ideal? And do they want to vote against potentially the first African-American leader

of the Pentagon? Just to underscore that, what's interesting is like Democrats will either be in the slimmest of slim 50-50 majority or in the minority. They need every Democratic vote on everything. This might be an issue going forward. Biden is supposed to be meeting with civil rights groups. Part of that is that these civil rights groups would be rallying, you know, Democrats to make sure that they candidates can get through the confirmation process and putting that pressure on or at least backing up the administration if they agree with the pick to kind of help, you know, Biden get his picks through. Yeah, I mean, I was told that Austin really started to become the front runner last week. And you would think, you know, the Biden team has been doing their diligence. They've been very deliberate in the way they've gone about things. And you would think that, you know, they would have, you know, kind of sussed some of these things out. That said, they also must know the challenges they face,

but also felt like it was very important to have, you know, that Biden had to fulfill his promise. And as, you know, Aisha said in the first segment, to, you know, get more people of color in top cabinet officials. And let's just kind of zoom out a little bit. It's like putting together a cabinet, especially with a narrow Senate, there are so many dynamics that all factor in the same thing. And sometimes they go against each other. Diversity is very important. Austin is somebody who Biden knows and trusts. But at the same time, this creates a big problem for Democrats on this particular front. So many of these different picks in recent weeks have these big upsides and these big downsides. And it's just a puzzle for an incoming administration to put together. And it really does look kind of like a puzzle. Like

if you let this person in, then you might not be able to get this person. And if you have a woman in this position, then maybe you can. And it's not just about checking boxes, but it is about we have had a government that has not looked like America for all of American time, right? For all the time that America has existed. So there is a lot of work to be done. And that needs to be intentional if you are going to have a more diverse administration that doesn't just kind of go with mainly white men. All right. More cabinet picks to come as the week goes on. We will talk about them. That's it for today, though. Remember, you can support this podcast and all of us by supporting your local public radio station.

Just head to donate.npr.org slash politics to get started. I'm Scott Detrow. I'm covering the Biden transition. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Frank Ordonez. I also cover the White House. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.