The NPR Politics Podcast - Democrats Reject Trump's Border Wall Proposal; More Dems Enter 2020 Race

Episode Date: January 22, 2019

With negotiations over reopening the government at a standstill, President Trump offered to back temporary protections for some immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, in exchange for funding for a wall on the Southern border. Plus, Senator Kamala Harris adds her name to the growing list of 2020 presidential hopefuls. This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, and Congressional reporter Kelsey Snell. 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 y'all, it's Dane. It's Glenn. And we're here on the regular route on Fairview Dome in Tuolumne Meadows, Yosemite National Park, California. I'd say we're about 600 feet. This message was recorded at 2.24 p.m. on day 32 of the government shutdown, also known as Tuesday, January 22nd. Things may have changed since this podcast was recorded. Enjoy the show. So I feel like to every time stamp there is a bit of a backstory and I just want to tell you all what happened. So we got this time stamp and Dane, poor guy, about a week after he recorded this, he fell out of a tree and he broke his neck, his back, his forearm. He has made a full recovery. We are very glad to hear that, Dane. But he recorded this actually in 2018 and poor guy didn't get a chance to send it to us till now. He's obviously been busy doing a lot of other things. So, Dane, we are glad you are feeling better. And thank you for taking the time to resend your timestamp to

us. Wow. Wow. That is something. Well, hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. On Saturday, the president made an offer to the Democrats to reopen the government, which the Democrats are rejecting. And more Democrats continue to throw their names into the 2020 election ring. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. So let's start, Tam, with what exactly President Trump proposed on Saturday to potentially end this government shutdown. All right. So what he proposed was five point seven billion dollars for the wall. So that is exactly what he has been asking for the entire time. And then some things that he described as a compromise,

including some protections for three years for young people known as dreamers. Now, he said it was modeled on a piece of legislation that Democrats have supported called the Bridge Act. It was actually he's offering less than was in the Bridge Act. Right. This is not the entirety of the dreamer population or really even the entirety of the population that was protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which people known as TPS, temporary protective status. The people who came right after like the Haiti earthquake and whatnot. Right. And about 300,000 people would be covered under this, again, for three years. OK, so let me just say that these things that the president is offering as a compromise, the DACA and the TPS. These are both things that existed, programs that existed, that President Trump moved to end and take away earlier in his administration. Now, as part of this deal that he's offering, to the Democrats, I feel like I already heard Democrats rejecting this potential deal, if we can call it that. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put out a statement even before Trump spoke saying that it wasn't acceptable.

And part of it is because of what Tam just said. It is a temporary solution for what Democrats would call a problem that Trump created. And not only is it a temporary solution for that situation, it is temporary in exchange for him having everything he wanted in the original negotiation. Also, they're saying that he negotiated it not with, you know, them, as you normally would in a negotiation. This is a really interesting negotiation. Right. He negotiated with himself and the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, which is not usually how these things go. I mean, has he spoken to the Democrats at all recently?

No. As far as we know, as far as I was told this morning, he hasn't. They haven't spoken since the talks broke down on that day. And if you remember, there was a meeting at the White House and Democrats left after they said the president slammed his fist on the table and walked out. This was a long time ago that the president asked Nancy Pelosi in this meeting, if I reopen the government, if I release the hostages, will you give me what I'm asking for? Will you give me five point seven billion dollars for the wall or other wall funding? And she said no. Right. So that's the other reason why they're rejecting this. And we'll be hearing this from them for many days to come. Democrats are saying you can't keep holding federal workers as hostages in this situation.

Reopen the government and then we'll have a conversation about immigration and all this other stuff. Another part of the reason that they're saying that is they've been trying to pass immigration bills for literal decades. And if they were to make the reopening of the government contingent on them suddenly being able to work out their differences, not just between Democrats and Republicans, but Republicans and Republicans and Democrats and Democrats, we could be waiting for that for eons. I mean, to your point, I feel like some of the people who did receive this deferred action through childhood arrival program, some of the earliest dreamers are now people who have their own children. I mean, this is a problem that has been going on for a long, long time. And there doesn't seem like there's an immediate resolution to this. But is, Kelsey, is there any pressure, let's say even on the Democrats, to potentially reopen this government? Any moderate Democrats

that you're hearing from who are saying, you know, hey, Nancy Pelosi, we really should do something because this doesn't play well, say, in our district. So I spoke to a lot of moderate Democrats, in particular freshmen, who came into Congress, who were elected on the idea that they would negotiate with Republicans and they would do whatever they needed to to make Washington work right. Now, this was before the president put his offer out there. But at the time, they were telling me that they actually think that this strategy is right. The idea is open the government first and then have the negotiation later. Also, I will say that's convenient politically because it's way easier to agree

on reopening the government than it is on the finer points of immigration. But that's another thing altogether. And one other thing that happened this morning, the Supreme Court declined to take up a DACA case. Everyone had been waiting for this case because it would settle whether the DACA program could continue, which it currently is continuing, even though the president tried to end it. And the Supreme Court didn't take it up, which means the DACA program remains intact under the law for like probably another year. So then presumably the president loses somewhat of a bargaining chip. I mean, why would Democrats be incentivized to negotiate around a program that for now,

at least, is still in existence? Well, one of the pieces of this that I think Republicans are thinking about a lot here is that if they vote on something in the Senate, they take away the potent argument from Democrats that they've done nothing. And they also put Democrats on the record voting against something that would reopen the government. They also think that there is a calculus here that as much as we talked about 2018 being an election about a referendum on the president and about Democrats, you know, verifying that their policies spoke to voters in the country, that was the story of the House. That was not the story that happened in the Senate. What happened in the Senate is Republicans learned that sticking with the president was the only way to survive in Trump country. And there are plenty of Republicans who are up for reelection Right. There will be a procedural vote at some point in time this week. We don't know exactly what date, but likely somewhere around Thursday.

And at that point, we would see, you know, we'll see how many Republicans support it. And we'll see if there are any Democrats who change their minds. But we don't expect it to pass. And just to put some reality on this, by the end of this week, federal workers will go a second paycheck without getting a paycheck. Yeah, very much so. I mean, well, Tim, thank you very much. We're going to let you go for now. And when we get back, we'll talk about Democratic presidential hopefuls. Bye, guys. See ya.

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with comedians and celebrity guests. We got silly limericks. We got terrible impressions. If you think the news is a joke, wait till you hear our show. New podcast episodes are available every Saturday. And we're back. And we've got Scott Detrow here with us now. Hey, Scott.

Hey there. So, Scott, you and I were both out yesterday covering a press conference that Senator Kamala Harris had after she made her big announcement to run for president. So, Scott, talk to me about what you thought her sort of main reason or mission was for entering the race, particularly at this point. Yeah, Harris enters the race. And I think early on, you have to view her as a pretty serious candidate for a lot of reasons. She's got a compelling background story. She's been viewed as a high profile rising star within the Democratic Party. She's only been in the Senate for a couple of years. But during the two years, she's really

made a name for herself, among other things, by being in a lot of high profile hearings that got a lot of national attention, really grilling Trump administration officials, grilling Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other moments like that. What's interesting is that Harris has made a decision to frame her campaign and the story she tries to tell, not around her time in the Senate, but her long time as a prosecutor, first San Francisco district attorney, then California attorney general. That is something that, you know, gives her a lane in a very crowded primary field, but also in progressive politics in a Democratic primary has a lot of potential downside because it's not exactly like primary voters or the activists who really shape the narrative are like in love with prosecutors or the police. You know, Black Lives Matter is a very

powerful force in Democratic politics. So what was Harris's message here? You know, Kelsey, I've been out with some of the other candidates. And what I think struck me is that some of the other candidates in the race, and we can talk about this later, but say like Elizabeth Warren, they have a very clear mission. You could argue a very clear sort of like raison d'etre for running. And it is all about the middle class for Elizabeth Warren. When Kamala Harris is asked this, it's a very broad view. Yeah, I think that's something that I was thinking a lot about yesterday. She has a lot of signs of a front runner. Her campaign says she raised a million and a half dollars in the first

24 hours of her campaign. Very flashy rollout, high profile political staffers with a lot of experience. Right. But during the press conference Asma and I were at, she was asked at one point, pretty point blank. What are you focusing your campaign on? And here's what she said. The core of my campaign is the people. It's about the people. Which people? Like who? Who is who is her target? What does she what does she want people to say proactively they're going to the polls for her about? Exactly. And I think as soon as she said that, Asma, you and I, there was an eyebrow-raising exchange.

Like, hmm. This is a very unclear vision. And she talks about the idea that people all over this country share common concerns and they, you know, are dealing with common problems. And, look, I think there's truth to that. But it strikes me as what does the Democratic base want right now? That was an Obama-esque message in a way. I'm not convinced that the Democratic Party base feels that way right now. Yeah, and she ticked off, you know, a half dozen or more different policies

and then made this argument at the end of that answer. Nobody is living their life through the lens of one issue. And I think what people want is they want leadership that sees them through the complexity of each of our lives and pays equal attention to their needs. Let's not put people in a box. And I think as they make their decisions, let's give them credit for being smarter than that. That might be true, but I do think people decide to volunteer for a campaign or contribute to a campaign because of one or two motivating causes. And we know, you know, for all their differences, Donald Trump and Barack Obama, you could boil down to ran for a clear cut reason. And I didn't hear that yesterday. She is going to be giving a big speech laying out her campaign,

kicking it off next weekend in California. I'm going to be looking for that message there because it really wasn't there yesterday. Scott, you mentioned single issue voters. Are there people who are kind of trying to take advantage of the fact that those people exist? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we've spent a lot of time focusing on these higher profile names, but there's a wide number of Democrats who have also declared for presidency. One who's gotten some buzz online is somebody named Andrew Yang, who's really focusing on this idea of universal basic income. A big part of his campaign pitch is giving everybody in the country $1,000 a month. This is a progressive idea that has gotten a lot more attention lately as one possible solution to the big shifts that we've been seeing in the economy and jobs going to other countries and

just kind of a fundamental shift toward, you know, the Uber type economy that so many people are frustrated with and feel marginalized by. One possible answer out there is just give everybody money. But look, I mean, the field is so crowded. I think that, you know, to the point that we're talking about, Andrew Yang does have this very clear vision of why he's running. But, you know, his name doesn't necessarily bubble up as much because of the amount of, say, sheer senators that are running this election cycle, because there are other people also in this race. John Delaney comes to mind. He's already announced a candidacy as well, been doing some outreach to voters in Iowa. Maryland congressman. Yeah, former Maryland congressman John Delaney has been out in Iowa

trying to reach out to voters there. And then there's Richard Ojeda. I actually profiled Richard Ojeda during the midterms. He was a really sort of interesting populist guy running for the third congressional district in West Virginia, a district that Trump did very, very well. And he lost that race. What I will say is he did remarkably better than people maybe would have anticipated a Democrat to do there, but he was not successful. He has now decided to run for president. It's going to be a crowded primary field, even among the candidates who established themselves with a national track record and raising a lot of money and catching on with voters, so much so that the Democratic National Committee is already

trying to figure out how it's going to fit everybody on a debate stage late spring when those debates begin. And the solution they came up with that they announced last month is they will not do the top tier undercard debates that the Republicans got so much grief for, but rather, you know, splitting into two different back to back nights of debates. So part one of the debate. There'll be a lottery, they say. I just imagine this like wheel, raffle wheel. I don't know that that's actually how it's going to be done. It should, though. So we've talked a lot about people who have already declared, but there's one name kind of hanging out there that we keep hearing over and over, and that's Joe Biden.

Do we have any idea what's going on with him? That's an excellent question. He definitely has a lot of name recognition and a lot of favorability. He's quite a popular guy when you look at polling among Democrats. But look, I think that Biden has questions about his record that he will have to answer if he wants to enter this race. I was with him on Martin Luther King Jr. Day at the National Action Network breakfast. It's this big breakfast that the Reverend Al Sharpton puts on. And he seemed to express regret, at least the most sort of speak to this more candidly than I've ever heard him before, about a 90s era crime bill that disproportionately affected African-American voters. He says that mistakes were made. They trusted the experts and that this really affected an entire generation.

And then he went on to talk about issues of race and structural racism pretty candidly. The bottom line is we have a lot to root out. But most of all, there's systematic racism that most of us whites don't like to acknowledge even exists. We don't even consciously acknowledge it. But it's been built into every aspect of our system. You know, and there are possible candidates who are waiting to announce who we're like 99.9% sure they're going to run like Cory Booker, right? But I think Biden, there are a lot of questions and a lot of the race is waiting to see what he's going to do for a couple reasons.

Because if he does run, I think right off the bat, he has the high name ID. So many people in the party love him. But he's been through a lot personally. His son died, you know, a few years ago, and that's clearly still been hard on the Biden family. And as Asma said, there's a lot of stuff from earlier in his career that a lot of Democratic voters might have real problems with in 2020 and 2019. And I think he has to think that through of whether kind of the soft affection for Joe Biden changes when he's in a competitive race. So everyone's really waiting to see what he does. And I think that's the biggest unanswered question going forward about what this field looks like.

All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. We'll be back as soon as there is more political news that you need to know about. Until then, head to npr.org slash politics newsletter to subscribe to our weekly roundup of our best online analysis. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. And I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.