The NPR Politics Podcast - Hill Leaders Turn Down Additional Tests For Lawmakers

Episode Date: May 4, 2020

The top lawmakers on Capitol Hill, both up for reelection this year, denied the administration's offer of more testing for lawmakers. Many Americans remain concerned about the availability of testing in the United States. And exclusive NPR reporting sheds light on what the president was told in January coronavirus briefings.This episode: White House correspondents Tamara Keith and Ayesha Rascoe, and ongressional correspondent Susan Davis.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.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 stationLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's Tamara Keith. We're trying to figure out who listens to the show and what you're looking for from our podcast. So we've put together a quick anonymous survey at npr.org slash podcast survey. If you could go ahead and hit pause and take it right now, it would be a big help. One warning, they don't ask you about the politics podcast until like the third screen, but it's totally worth it and we really appreciate it i'll wait a few seconds for you to go over there all right here's the show hi this is tanner mcguire from tennessee it's approximately 6 a.m now and i woke up so early just so i could get up and watch the first episode of season seven of star wars the Clone Wars before I go into work. This podcast was recorded at 2.05 p.m. on Monday, May 4th. May the 4th be with you. Things may have changed by the time you hear

this. That is a man after your own heart, Tam. Indeed. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamar Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Aisha Rasto. I also cover the White House. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. The Senate is back in Washington today after a six-week break. That means up to 100 senators will return to the Capitol building with some new health guidelines in place, or maybe a lot of new health guidelines in place. Sue, what lot of new health guidelines in place. Sue, what is it going to look like? Well, if the attending physician of the Capitol's guidance is adhered to, it will be socially distanced and covered in masks.

The attending physician is Brian Monahan. He put out guidance, about seven pages of guidance, on Friday ahead of senators coming back. But the caution here is it's just guidance. They're not telling senators or staff that they have to do anything. They're just being given sort of best practices for what they should be doing when they come back. So like, what should they be doing? I mean, it's a lot of the stuff that people are familiar with. They are advising that people wear masks, although they're telling them they don't have to. They're saying if you do choose not to wear a mask, that you must adhere to social distancing and stay six to 10 feet away from all other people. They've advised things like keeping limited staff inside their congressional

offices if they have any staff come in at all. They're saying maybe staff can still telework. Meetings should still happen via conference call or Zoom. There's even guidance in there that says things like people should consider bringing their lunch instead of trying to go to the cafeteria to limit the interaction among people. This is all the guidance that just goes around to the Capitol complex. What actually happens on the Senate floor is really much more up to leadership. And what they will try to do or what the intention is, is also just to limit the number of senators on the floor at any one time. We've seen this when they have to vote in socially distanced vote. They do much longer votes, much slower votes to allow senators to stay apart from

each other. But it's really going to be up to the senators to adhere to these practices. And we will find out soon enough which ones are and which ones aren't. And Sue, so what are they going to be doing when they get back? I mean, we've already had like at least one senator who got the coronavirus, right? And a lot of them seem like they're older, these senators, and maybe at risk. They don't just seem like that. Yeah, they are. They are. They are older and they seem like they would be at risk. That's one of the at-risk groups. So like what important business are they doing like they have to get back to do?

Right. I mean, this isn't a decision that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made without some criticism. Although I would say that I don't think that this is a normal Republican Democrat disagree. I think that there is equal numbers or there's certainly voices in both parties that some want to come back and some want to stay home. And he made the call. Now, there's some pushback to why this isn't necessary, because they basically have said that they're not going to do any more urgent coronavirus related legislation for a while. Mitch McConnell

wants to take a pause. But the Senate still has work to do. And this has been the argument for coming back. They have a lot of nominations that need to be filled. They're going to have a hearing this week for the director of national intelligence, which is a pretty important job that's been sitting vacant. They want to do oversight hearings for how the corona pandemic funds that they've already, the trillions they've already put into the economy, how that's working, how things need to be fixed. And sure, there's definitely some politics involved here. Mitch McConnell has said time and time again that he wants to confirm as many judicial nominees as possible. Being away from Washington was making that a whole lot harder. And he has a personal political interest in getting senators back here so he can get as many nominations as possible through the Senate before the election.

And I can't imagine that the Democrats are thrilled about coming back just for nominations. I mean, they've already been upset that McConnell has seemingly prioritized judicial nominations over pretty much anything else for months. It's true, although there are certainly some Democrats who do want to be back, because I think there's a lot of senators in both parties who just think it looks bad for Congress not to be in session, that Congress needs to look like it's governing, that it's working. And there is significant interest among Democrats in having these oversight hearings and being able to look in to how the administration is sort of executing the money that they've approved,

if it's going well. And yeah, it's an election year. They want to have a say in this. They want to be seen as if they're being responsive and fighting for people and doing the things that the country wants them to be doing. And they don't have like testing for everyone, right? Like they're not going to be able to just test all 100 senators and all their staff. There was this whole thing over the weekend about that, right? Yeah. and this is where it's a perfect example of where politics and public health don't always meet or have the same metrics, where the White House said, hey, we're going to send up to Capitol Hill these rapid tests where you can take a test and you'll know very quickly whether you have coronavirus or not. And they could give that to senators so they could test them.

And if they were sick, they could stay away. And in a very weird and unusual joint show of bipartisan agreement, Speaker Pelosi and Mitch McConnell put out a joint statement very quickly after the administration said this saying, basically, thanks, but no thanks, that while we still have people on the front lines who need these tests, you can't send them up to Capitol Hill. You know, I think politically, the members are just really mindful of the fact that they don't want to look like they're being given special treatment when average citizens are suffering.

But this really gets at what I find to be a super interesting political dynamic, where you have President Trump and his administration wanting to say there are no problems with tests. Testing is available. Hey, there's this awesome machine, and you can get the results really rapidly. And the Trump White House has been very liberal about using these tests. They've tested reporters. They have tested people who come in to meet with President Trump. It's like, hey, you want to test? You want to test? These tests are super available. Yeah, he was offering it to some oil executives who came in like, did you get a test?

Make sure you get a test. Yeah, although I do think elected officials are, or a lot of elected officials are aware of sort of the sense that these tests have gotten to the wealthier, the well connected or the important and powerful much faster than they have to average citizens. And again, election year, members of Congress, many of them up in the Senate, all of them up in the House, definitely don't want to be seen like they think of themselves as sort of above the law or getting special treatment than the people they represent. All right. We are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll share some news on President Trump's coronavirus intelligence briefings. The biggest story in the world is a science story. And keeping up with all the latest coronavirus research, it's a lot. So on Shortwave, we translate the science you need to know into short daily episodes. Listen and subscribe to Shortwave from NPR. And we're back. And Aisha, you broke some news over the weekend with this story about when President Trump knew particular bits of information about the coronavirus.

Yeah, so there's been a big question about what President Trump knew and when he knew it about the coronavirus. A White House official told me this weekend that President Trump had two briefings in January on the coronavirus. And the first one happened January 23rd, so pretty late in the month. And at that time, the president was told that the coronavirus was potentially going to spread globally. But there was some good news, and that was that it wasn't deadly for most people. We should note that that was a couple of days after the first diagnosed U.S. case of coronavirus, someone who had traveled to Washington state from China. And then about five days later, he got another briefing where he was told that the virus was

spreading outside of China, but that deaths from the disease were happening only in China at that point. But pretty importantly, he was also told that China was withholding data. And that's what he was told in that second briefing in January. Of course, near the end of the month, President Trump would then cut off or do his partial ban on travel from China in response to the coronavirus. Yeah, I mean, this seems like the administration wanting to sort of put a marker down on what the president knew, because there been a lot of stories about how President Trump was briefed, had these intelligence briefings, had been told that there was a problem before he actually acted. And until this point, the White House had not been very specific on dates and time, like when he learned about these things. And what President Trump was trying to say last week was that he didn't know about it as early as some of these reports are saying.

At a Fox News town hall yesterday, President Trump was basically saying that he was told that this wasn't a big deal. Intelligence agencies told me on the 23rd, shortly thereafter, I closed down the country, but I didn't do it because of what they said, because they said it very matter-of-factly, it was not a big deal. I think that President Trump wants to say that he acted appropriately. He always points to what happened with him partially shutting down travel from China. But even with these dates for the January 23rd and the January 28th, so he knew on January 28th that China was withholding data. But at the State of the Union, which happened just a few days

after that, that briefing on January 28th, he said that the U.S. was working closely with China to combat the coronavirus. You know, so even there, there was some disconnect. And of course, for the for the month of, you know, February and March, President Trump was still saying that the virus was going to go away and all of these. I mean, he was saying that this was basically no big deal. And I can say that I was not told by that White House official that he was told that it was no big deal. He was told that it wasn't deadly for most people that and that's true. It is not deadly for

most people that didn't make it not a big deal. Which gets to something else. President Trump said yesterday, he has revised his understanding of how many people might die. For a time there, he was saying, well, maybe it'll only be 50,000, 60,000 people. We've passed that. And at that Fox News town hall last night, he laid out a new number. We're going to lose anywhere from 75,000, 80,000 to 100,000 people. That's a horrible thing.

We shouldn't lose one person over this. This should have been stopped in China. It should have been stopped. But if we didn't do it, the minimum we would have lost is a million two, a million four, a million five. That's the minimum. Not long ago, President Trump was saying that we were going to come in way under 100,000 and that this was going to be, you know, that that was a big success for the administration, that they were going to be able to bring this. The death toll would be way under 100,000.

And that clearly is not the case. And that's an acknowledgment of that. Yeah. And and as this month gets started, it's the beginning of a really big experiment as states begin to allow some parts of their economies to reopen as people sort of come out from quarantine in some areas. There is a very open question of what happens next. And of course, we will be watching that. That is a wrap for today. If you can't get enough NPR Politics, we've got a newsletter for you. It's our roundup of our best online analysis in your inbox every week. To subscribe, head to npr.org slash politics newsletter. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and I also cover the White House. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.