The NPR Politics Podcast - 'Get Over It': Politics Is Part Of Foreign Policy, White House Says

Episode Date: October 17, 2019

White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney acknowledged on Thursday that President Trump expected concessions from Ukraine's president in exchange for engagement — but said that's just how business is done in diplomacy. Plus, ambassador Sondland testifies before Congress. This episode: political correspondent Asma Khalid, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and justice correspondent Ryan Lucas. 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

Hi, my name is Amelia Eskridge and I live in Dallas, Texas. This past week, my dad was approved by the Senate to be a federal judge for the Southern District of Texas. Dad, this is a huge honor, but let the record reflect that I will not refer to you as such. This podcast was recorded at 2.13 p.m. on Thursday, October 17th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but my dad will still be a law nerd singing Hamilton. Okay, I yield the floor. I am not throwing away my shot. I am not throwing away my shot. Congrats, dad. That is a big deal. Congrats. Well, hey there, it is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the 2020 presidential campaign. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House.

And I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And Ayesha, let's start with you because you were grilling the White House acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, today about the Ukrainian controversy. You were on fire. Some all-star questioning. Well, thank you. You know, it was an interesting thing. The White House called this press briefing just kind of at the last minute, which they do now. This was with acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. And he just was being asked about his role in this Ukrainian scandal at this point and what role he may have had in holding up aid. And was there this holding things up in exchange for getting Ukraine to look into political opponents of the president?

A quid pro quo. Yes. What did you say? A quid pro quo. Yes. That would be that. I don't say that word. It's a tongue twister sometimes.

It's a tongue twister. So I avoid it. But that's what it is. And at one point, he was asked about this by another reporter, and he seemed to say, look, this is the way we do business. You're using that phrase, which I don't use. You're using that phrase. You're saying that aid was being held up for political reasons, and he wasn't denying it, but he was saying this is kind of standard practice.

I have news for everybody. Get over it. There's going to be political influence in foreign policy. I'm talking to Mr. Carl. That is going to happen. Elections have consequences. And foreign policy is going to change from the Obama administration to the Trump administration. Elections do have consequences, yes. But what this administration is being accused of is not normal consequences of an election and foreign

policy changing. This is of a White House essentially conducting foreign policy for the betterment of the president's own political fortunes in an upcoming election. Those are two very different things. And that's a distinction that needs to be made. And so, Ayesha, you actually jumped in off of that previous question to ask for clarification about what exactly he was referring to. Let's take a listen to a little bit of that. Now, Biden is running for the Democratic nomination, right? That's for 2020. That's a hypothetical because that did not happen here. But I would ask you.

No, no. On the call, the president did ask about investigating the Bidens. Are you saying that the money that was held up, that that had nothing to do with the Bidens? The money held up had absolutely nothing to do with Biden. There's no question. That was the point I made to you. And you're drawing a distinction. You're saying that it would be wrong. Three factors. Again, I was I was involved with the process by which the money was held up temporarily. OK, three issues for that. The corruption in the country, whether or not other countries were participating in the support of the Ukraine and whether or not they were cooperating in an ongoing investigation

with our Department of Justice. So, Ayesha, spell out exactly what he's saying. It sounds like he's saying this aid was held up for political reasons, but not political reasons that would have anything to do with the upcoming 2020 election. He was trying to draw this distinction. He was saying that, yes, it was held up. But the reason why it was held up has to do with what is really a conspiracy theory about the DNC server somehow being held by Ukrainian company that that is not true, is not backed up by facts. And he did seem to say specifically, or he said this had nothing to do with the Bidens. He's trying to say that we were not

holding money up about investigating Joe Biden and his son Hunter. But the president did bring up the Bidens on the call with the Ukrainian president. It's really interesting that he's acknowledging one of these two instances of alleged corruption that the president himself asked the Ukrainian president to look into. He's saying, yes, we wanted them to look into one of them, but the other one had nothing to do with the aid. One of them did, the other didn't. And I'm curious whether that's going to hold water politically for them down the road. And how they make the distinction, because they were both because on the call, it's not like the president said, and this has to do with aid and this is over here. And then to look into the Bidens, please do that. But that has

nothing to do with the aid, just so you're clear. Right. And I mean, also, these foreign policy negotiations, there's a lot of things that are often not said, right, that there's an implied power tier here. Exactly. But it was clear, I think this is the first time you had Mulvaney on record saying that, yes, he was involved in holding up this aid to Ukraine and really giving the reasons why he said it was held up because this is key to this impeachment inquiry right now. Like, why were you holding up this money?

Do either of you feel like what Mick Mulvaney said today actually fundamentally changes anything around this impeachment inquiry? Does it shift the conversation in any way? From my perspective, it does not shift it, but having the administration on the record addressing some of these questions and essentially saying that, in reference to the aid, that we were holding it up and we were holding it up for these specific reasons. That's something that we had not heard in as much detail as we did today from Mulvaney. And they've been saying there

was no quid pro quo. Some people are looking at what he said today and saying, well, to me, this looks a lot like a quid pro quo. So speaking of the impeachment inquiry, we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk through another big day of testimony on Capitol Hill. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Aspen Snowmass, dedicated to meaningful action on climate change. For over 20 years, Aspen Snowmass has implemented large scale solutions from generating clean power to wielding it. They installed the first solar array in the ski industry, the first LEED-certified building, and currently operate the only coal mine methane-to-energy plant in the country. Learn more about what Aspen Snowmass is doing to combat climate change at giveaflake.com.

Maddie Safaya here, host of Shortwave, a new daily science podcast from NPR. We'll bring you new discoveries, everyday mysteries, and the science behind the headlines, all in about 10 minutes every weekday. So you come away a little smarter, or at least you look that way, on Trivia Night. Listen and subscribe now to Shortwave from NPR. And we're back. So, Ryan, Gordon Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, is on Capitol Hill testifying today. Remind us how he's tied up in this entire impeachment

inquiry. Well, he is one of the key players in this. He, in his role as the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, became what has been dubbed the three amigos, three central figures, central U.S. officials who were kind of directing Ukraine policy for the administration. It would be Sondland, as well as the U.S. special representative to Ukraine, Kurt Volker, who we've talked about in the past, as well as the Secretary of Energy, Rick Perry. So Sondland, we talked about text messages that he sent with Volker and the president's personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, about trying to get pressure Ukraine essentially to open investigations or commit to investigations into the Bidens, as well as the 2016 matter that we talked about earlier.

And Sondland really is a central figure in this. He had a direct line to the president, spoke with Trump several times about these matters. And this is a big reason why Democrats wanted to talk to him today. So, Ryan, what is Sondland saying to the committees? So this is a it's a closed door testimony. We don't know what he has said since he has been inside. But interestingly, he did release the statement, his written statement to the committee. He released publicly, which a lot of the other witnesses have not done. This suggests that he wants to get his version of events out there.

And what he says essentially is that, yes, he did play a key role in talks with the Ukrainians, that it was normal as his job as ambassador to the European Union, because the EU does have a central role in dealing with the conflict, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine and trying to resolve it. And so that it was natural for him to take this active position in U.S. policy towards Ukraine. He says that he was instructed, along with Perry and Volker, to work with Rudy Giuliani on Ukraine policy, that the president instructed them to do that. He says that they were disappointed by that. They didn't feel that that was Giuliani's role because Giuliani is the president's personal attorney. He is not a member of the administration. He doesn't work for the State Department and he doesn't work for the White House. But they wanted to improve Ukraine's standing with the president. And they felt that the only way that they could do that was by working through Giuliani as the president instructed.

So Mulvaney addressed that, this idea that Sondland wasn't happy about Giuliani. And he basically just said it's not it wasn't Sondland's decision. It is up to the president and that the president can use whoever he likes as long as. And this is what Mulvaney said. As long as he's not breaking the law, he can designate whoever he wants to to be involved in these issues. And Mulvaney was pressed on this idea of basically who was Giuliani working for? Was he working on behalf of the president as a lawyer? Or does that conflict with working on foreign policy for the U.S.? But Mulvaney didn't really get into that. But he said whoever the president wants to use, he can use. And that's not up for anyone else to decide. for this impeachment inquiry in the sense that the national security and foreign policy

establishment was essentially frozen out by this Giuliani-led team on Ukraine policy. And that Giuliani and his efforts basically set up what people are referring to as a sort of shadow foreign policy on Ukraine, icing out then National Security Advisor John Bolton, the National Security Council staff, and folks at the State Department. Now, Sondland says that he's at the State Department himself. He was keeping Secretary of State Mike Pompeo informed. But certainly, we have seen over the past week or so this tension from the National Security Foreign Policy Establishment, folks whose job it is to coordinate and carry out U.S. foreign policy,

feeling as though they were sidelined by this sort of appointed team led by Giuliani. Talking about this shadow foreign policy or kind of this shadow diplomacy that was going on, Mulvaney also pushed back on that idea. Shadow foreign policy, look, that's a term you're using. That's a pejorative. What is a shadow foreign policy? The president asked... Operating outside the normal channel.

Normal channel. Who else is in the room? Who's in the room when the president is having this conversation? It's Gordon Sondland, our ambassador to the EU. Kurt Volker, who is our special designated envoy to the Ukraine. I sat next to Mike Pompeo yesterday at the meeting with the congressional leaders, and I said, look, I understand I coordinated a coup against you by putting Sondland and Volker in charge of Ukraine policy. He leans back to me and goes, you know, they both work for me. There's not a shadow policy here. The

president is entitled to have whoever he wants to work. I'm 100% comfortable with that. That leaves out Giuliani, who was not within the administration. And it also leaves out the national security advisor who's supposed to be advising on these matters. And it also sidesteps the fundamental allegation that Democrats are making and the question that hovers over this whole impeachment inquiry, which is if there was indeed this shadow foreign policy being directed by Giuliani, if its goal was to further the president's domestic political interests, his political gain, and to undercut a political rival here in the United States for the 2020 elections, that would be a shadow foreign policy with

nefarious ends and something that people would feel is, it may not be quote unquote illegal, it's certainly, people would say improper and Democrats would argue impeachable. All right, well, that is it for today. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow with our weekly roundup. In the meantime, you can check out npr.org for more of our coverage, including news that Turkey has agreed to temporarily halt its military operation in northern Syria. And a look back at the life of the powerful Democratic congressman and committee chairman, Elijah Cummings, who passed away early this morning. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the campaign. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department.

And I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.