The NPR Politics Podcast - Democrats Release Impeachment Report; Kamala Harris Drops Out Of 2020 Race

Episode Date: December 3, 2019

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee unveiled the report summarizing their case for impeachment on Tuesday. Plus, California Sen. Kamala Harris is dropping out of the presidential race, citing a lack of funds. This episode: political correspondent Asma Khalid, political correspondent Scott Detrow, national security editor Phil Ewing, and senior editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.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

Hey there. Before we get started, happy Giving Tuesday. Today's a day for giving back to causes that you care about. And we're hoping that you'll consider donating to NPR. Our podcast went daily just over two months ago. And to put it mildly, a lot has happened since then. There's been an impeachment inquiry, which we've got a lot to talk about today. And we've said hello and bye-bye-bye to a lot of presidential candidates, including another one just this afternoon.

And many of you have emailed or sent us notes on the Facebook group wanting to send us reinforcements like coffee. And chocolate and pizza. Which is, of course, very kind. So thank you very much. But the best way to support the show, even better than snacks, is to give back to NPR's member stations. This podcast and our reporting wouldn't be able to happen without them.

That's true, even if you listen on NPR One or Spotify. So if you like this podcast, please take a second to give back. Donate online to support us and your local public radio station by heading to donate.npr.org slash politics. That's donate.npr.org slash politics. Now on with the show. Hi, this is Haley. Tyler, Tim, and Anna. We just sailed 10,000 nautical miles from San Francisco to New Zealand. This podcast was recorded at 3.10 p.m. on Tuesday, December 3rd. We've been without internet for a very long time.

Things may have changed by the time you hear this. So anchors away. Here's the show. Wow, sailing across the Pacific without internet. That sounds fantastic. I mean, no internet, they're gonna have to download a bunch of podcasts. It sounds like well, hey, there it is the NPR politics podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the 2020 campaign. I'm Phil Ewing, election security editor. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. So yesterday we were eagerly awaiting the House Intelligence impeachment report. The burning question we had was whether this report would show us precisely what articles of impeachment the House intends to bring against President Trump.

Well, now that report has officially been released. And Phil, does it give us any clarity? Short answer, no. Long answer, yes. The report is divided into two sections. One about what it describes as the scheme wrought by President Trump involving the Ukraine affair this year, and two about the obstruction that Democrats say his administration has waged against Congress in investigating that scheme. So this report doesn't say, to your Judiciary Committee, we believe you should write impeachment based on these things. But the structure makes it seem as though Democrats believe these are their two strongest

elements for that case. You know, Democrats believed that what they were doing with the House Intelligence Committee was gathering facts. So when you discern what they were looking into and what the House Judiciary Committee might do, you can look to the past. You can look to the articles of impeachment, for example, that were filed against Richard Nixon. There were only three articles of impeachment. And there are some that are fairly similar. Obstruction, obstruction of Congress, considering the fact that others in the administration who've been subpoenaed have not come forward, and abuse of power. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Congressman Adam Schiff, talked with our Steve Inskeep on Tuesday after this report came out.

He said he is going to leave it up to the Judiciary Committee to write the articles of impeachment. But he also said that Democrats believe this case is very serious. I think our report shows abundant evidence, really overwhelming evidence, that the president used the power of his office, conditioned official acts, a White House meeting, and hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to a nation at war in exchange for things of value to him, political favors. So this wasn't the only report that's come out. There was also a separate minority Republican report. What do we't the only report that's come out. There was also a separate minority Republican report. What do we need to know about that? That's right. That report came

out on Monday evening. It was written by the Minority on Shifts Committee, led by Congressman Devin Nunes, who's also of California. And what it basically says is Democrats don't have a case here. Nunes's report says Trump didn't do the things that Democrats are accusing him of. There was no bribery, for example, because the military aid that was frozen for part of this year for Ukraine ultimately was released. The president of Ukraine didn't commit to the investigations that Trump wanted in this case of the 2016 campaign interference and Joe Biden, which Trump thought would help him in the 2020 election. And Republicans also made the point in their report that Democrats have been talking about impeaching Trump for years, since almost after he was inaugurated.

And so for them, what this is about is political animus, not the president's acts in the Ukraine affair. So this Intelligence Committee report is going to be voted on this evening, and that will mark the end of phase one of this impeachment inquiry. Tomorrow, we're going to move into phase two, which will be when this all moves to the Judiciary Committee. Phil, what should we be paying attention to there? Well, one thing is the face of this is going to change. Adam Schiff has been the chairman of this process so far. His role is ending. The new role will be led by Chairman Jerry Nadler of the House Judiciary Committee.

He has the responsibility to actually write legislation that would become articles of impeachment for Trump. The Judiciary Committee would then mark those up. And eventually, if Democrats decide to do this, move those to the House floor. That's the equivalent of a grand jury indictment. And if we get to the point, whatever we do, that the House agrees to vote on impeachment, this process would then go to the Senate. So although this is moving forward and the gears are turning, we're not anywhere near the finish line. And I wonder what lessons that Jerry Nadler learned from watching Adam Schiff and how he conducted himself. You know, Nancy Pelosi's decision to put Adam Schiff in charge of this first phase of the open public impeachment process. There's a reason for that. You know, he was able to articulate what he was able to articulate in a very calm, sober way. So now this changes.

They're different personalities. They're different types. You know, what lessons were there that were learned and how does that affect public opinion? All right. Well, there is a lot more impeachment news that we'll be talking about. And Phil, I am sure we will talk to you more about that then. But goodbye for now. Goodbye. And we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, Kamala Harris, the California senator, has dropped out of the 2020 race. Irene Pemberton is a very responsible person, so it's hard for her to understand how she made the same risky decision twice. I was telling my friend about this and I'm like, I don't know that girl. How we become strangers to ourselves on Hidden Brain from NPR. All right. And we're back. And before we get to saying goodbye to any presidential candidates, we actually need to say hello to somebody.

Scott Detrow. Hi, hi, hi. Hello. Scott just popped into the studio to join us in this part of the conversation. And you're here because you've covered Kamala Harris for quite a bit. Yeah, and we are saying bye-bye-bye to her today. That's right. California Senator Kamala Harris suspended her presidential campaign today. She put out a video just a few minutes ago. But I want to be clear with you. I am still very much in this fight.

And I will keep fighting every day for what this campaign has been about. Justice for the people. All the people. And Scott, I want to start with you because you've covered her. I mean, you've covered her from even before she was a presidential candidate. You covered her in the Senate. You were there when she gave her big kickoff announcement speech with some 20,000 plus people in Oakland. What do you make of her dropping out? It seems rather abrupt. Yeah. I mean, this is something that if you frame it from the last few weeks or months, it's not that surprising. She's really struggled. She peaked in the polls at some point early

summer and has really been losing a lot of support, having a hard time raising money, having to lay off staff. So that's not too surprising. But if you go back to that moment where she announced her campaign again in front of 20,000 people. I stand before you today to announce my candidacy for president of the United States. For all spring and a good chunk of the summer, she was in that top tier of candidates in the polling. She had big moments a few were we're going to talk about, and really seemed like a candidate who could be one of the contenders for the nomination.

So the fact that she doesn't even get the campaign into 2020 itself, yeah, that's really surprising. I mean, it was stunning to me the fact that she started her campaign with 20,000 people in Oakland who came out to hear her speak and then had this rise after her first debate performance back in July. And then she just petered off. And really, I would still point to that second debate where she wasn't able to really take any of that momentum. She'd already started a little bit of a decline. The Biden people were saying that it was just a bit of a bubble for her. But she wasn't able to capitalize in that second debate and continue any kind of momentum. And it's just all been downhill from there.

So, Scott, you actually sat down with her over the summer when we did all of these interviews with different presidential candidates. And you talked to her about her campaign message. I should say campaign message at the time, because it seems like it has evolved somewhat. But talk to us about that. How did she frame things? At the time that we talked to her, she was really focusing on this idea that her campaign was for the people. That's a phrase that obviously tied into her criminal justice background as a district attorney, as an attorney general. And it's something that Clay Masters from Iowa Public Radio asked her to define what it meant. How do you define your campaign? For the people. There's so much of our campaign that for me is about, I mean, honestly, I think

of it often through the lens of my mother, you know, and a parent who after putting, you know, feeding the kids and putting them to bed is sitting at the kitchen table, you know, until midnight, figuring out how to make everything run, make everything work. Even though that that interview made a lot of news for another answer when she talked about the fact that if she was president, her Department of Justice would likely prosecute President Trump. remember that that made a lot of news but this was actually enlightening because you could hear her kind of struggling to really put a purpose on her campaign and on that message and it's one of several slogans that her campaign actually centered around there was for the people i walked into the courtroom

for the first time and said the five words that would guide my life's work. Kamala Harris for the people. Then there was this idea of 3 a.m. pocketbook issues. People want a president who is going to be interested in the things that keep them up at night. Then that wasn't working and she went back to a justice type message talking about justices on the ballot. In 2020, justice is on the ballot. You know, you guys have mentioned that she certainly entered this race with a lot of high expectations.

And she did have some pretty big blockbuster moments early on. I mean, I'm thinking of one in particular where she took this shot at Joe Biden in a summer debate. It went kind of viral. She criticized him for his opposition to mandatory school busing. You know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me. So I will tell you that on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. And I think that moment really got into the promise

and the flaws of the Kamala Harris presidency in one moment. Okay, so explain that. So the plus side, her ability to prosecute a case, to ask tough questions, to interrogate a witness, that is the Kamala Harris that was a law enforcement official and the Kamala Harris who really shined to Democratic activists in Senate hearings. Right. And then over the next few days, when she was pressed on it, she revealed that she essentially held the same belief as Joe Biden about the federal government's role in setting local busing policy, that there really wasn't any difference in what she was criticizing him to begin with. And then thirdly, her campaign, as soon as that moment happened, started to sell t-shirts of that little girl was me with a picture of Kamala Harris as a school girl. So the idea of shifting on issues and also an authenticity question of if you have prepackaged your attack line to the point where your campaign

was ready to drop the merchandise a couple minutes later, what does that say about you as a candidate? So with Kamala Harris's departure, there's one broader theme that I just want us to talk about for a minute. And that is that, you know, we entered the Democratic presidential race this year with arguably the most historically diverse field of candidates that the country's ever seen. And now, as of this point, you're going to have an all-white candidate field up on this debate stage in December. Kamala Harris was the only candidate of color to have qualified for that December debate. And already, I'm seeing folks on Twitter in the Democratic circle who are unhappy with that. You know,

folks who say that, how can this be that the Democratic Party that, you know, rests upon diverse voters and all these black and brown voters is going to have no non-white candidate up on the debate stage? I just think it's something that the Democratic Party is going to have to wrestle with in the months to come. Absolutely. And I think that gets to this bigger, big picture surprise of how this race has played out, that for a party that is so often energized by, mobilized by communities of color and trying to be the diverse party. The African-American candidates have had a hard time cutting through, and you have

this field dominated by white candidates in their 70s. So given the fact that Kamala Harris, I believe when I looked at the real clear politics national average, she was having around like 3% nationally. So given that, is her exiting the race likely to kind of change the momentum of the race? Where do you see things going? More than you would think from the polls, because she is somebody who had gotten so many high profile endorsements, so many elite Democratic leader donations, right? Now all of those people who've been backing her campaign and the top strategists who were working for her, among other things, those donors, those leaders, those staffers are all free to migrate to another

campaign. I'll make this call right now, too, because, you know, there are already top Democratic officials talking about the fact that if one of these white candidates winds up being the Democratic nominee, look for someone who is a different gender and a different race to be the vice presidential pick. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign as well. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.