The NPR Politics Podcast - How Does Trump's Return To The Public Eye Impact GOP Lawmakers?

Episode Date: June 7, 2021

Former president Donald Trump spoke at a North Carolina Republican Party meeting over the weekend. The appearance demonstrated his lasting control of the conservative political ecosystem.This episode: congressional correspondent Susan Davis, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.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

Hey y'all, this is Morgan Schenkel from Colonial Heights, Virginia, and today is a very special day for my family. This evening, my son is going to graduate from preschool, and this will be our first in-person school event since February of 2020. This podcast was recorded at 2.26 p.m. on Monday, June 7th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but I'm going to get a good in. All right, here's the show. Oh, that's so sweet. It's always cute to have kids part of it. Kids and dogs, though, always tough to work with when it comes to showbiz.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And former President Donald Trump returned to the political arena on Saturday night with a speech at the North Carolina Republican Convention. So, Domenico, you followed the speech. What was it like? Well, you know, this was Trump getting back into his comfort zone, so to speak. You know, he's been kicked off of Facebook for at least another two years or up until January 2023 anyway. So he's been really silenced on a lot

of those mainstream social media platforms. And, you know, he was there in front of a friendly crowd, which we know always energizes him. And you can imagine what he talked about is a lot of the greatest hits. I'm going to guess the election results came up. The election results came up, but not till later. He did continue the lie about the election that he won and that it was rigged and all of that. He started out with a very dark and cynical view of the country, very much similar to that, you know, 2017 inauguration speech. You look at our border is wide open. Illegal immigration is skyrocketing at a level that we've never seen before. And this is over a period of a few months. Drugs are pouring in. Gas prices are soaring.

Our industries are being pillaged by foreign cyber attacks. That's a lack of respect for our country and for our leaders. Yeah, it was definitely an oldie but goodies grievance list. There were some new things, like attacking Anthony Fauci because he's the right's new punching bag. But a lot of these complaints were really familiar. He also complained about his press coverage. Although he perpetuated this lie about the election being stolen from him, he also bragged about getting the vaccine ready in record time. And on that, he was on solid ground, at least on that one.

But what's funny about that is that he said most of you talking to the people in the room have been vaccinated. And we know Trump himself has been vaccinated, did so privately. You know, Trump supporters continue to say in surveys that they're the least likely to get vaccinated. And when you look at the states with the lowest vaccination rates, 18 of the bottom 19 states were all states that went for Trump. And according to reporters who were there, those comments about vaccines were met with stony silence. Right.

So this is not a vaccine-friendly crowd. No. And the biggest applause line was for him saying that he's not the one undermining the democratic process, which we all know is kind of a Trump jujitsu usual trick, where he tries to take something that is a big vulnerability and make it something that's a strength. We know that Republicans, especially on the congressional level, continue to want Trump to be involved in the midterm elections. We know that Trump wants to be involved in the midterm elections. And he even used this speech to wade into the North Carolina Senate race. Yeah, I mean, this was really a fascinating thing that he wound up pulling off this orchestrated political maneuver, where let's just set a little bit of background here. The Republican Party convention that was taking place, they held a straw poll just minutes

before Trump got on stage for who they wanted to see get into the open U.S. Senate race. And they overwhelmingly wanted a former congressman, Mark Walker, to get into the race. But not so fast, said Trump. He really flexed his muscle, got up onto stage, first had his daughter-in-law, Laura Trump, get up on stage, say that she was not going to be running. She's a North Carolina native. She had been rumored to be considering running. Right. And she said she was very seriously considering it, but she's actually moved to Florida with Eric Trump, Trump's senior son. But Trump then endorsed Congressman Ted Budd,

which was a really fascinating move because then he had Budd come up on stage and Trump said that Budd didn't even know this was happening until about 15 minutes before, although I know that's usually one of his timestamps. Mara, this is just a reminder to me that Trump can be such a chaotic figure, especially in primary politics, where normally a former president or president sort of works with the party on candidate endorsements. Who does, you know, the House and Senate Republican campaign operations one, all speaking with one voice. And Trump doesn't always do that. He's going to endorse the candidates he likes, regardless of what Mitch McConnell or Kevin McCarthy might think about it. But he is a huge kingmaking figure inside the Republican Party. And he's going to wade into these primaries. He's going to hold more rallies, give more speeches, endorse more primary Republicans

in primaries. And we'll see if the candidates that he endorses win every time or not. Mara, this speech was billed as sort of a soft launch for Trump. He plans to, at least according to his allies, talk out more. I think this was the first speech he gave since CPAC back in February. Do you know what Trump wants to do with these speeches? I mean, is there a strategy here? What does he want to accomplish with this? Well, I think he wants to stay in front of the public's eye. Trump has always been all about ratings. He's been shut

out from some of his favorite platforms. But the speeches and the rallies allow him to remind Republicans that he is the dominant figure in the Republican Party. And in terms of his long-term goals, he wants to at least be a possible presidential candidate. He wants to keep the idea alive that he will run for president, whether or not he actually does in the long run. So this not only makes him an important figure in the Republican Party, where people are going to go and kiss his ring and hope for his endorsement, but also for his own possible political plans. It allows him to continue this idea that he's going to run again and be the president again.

All right, let's take a quick break and we'll talk more about that in a second. What happens to police officers who get caught stealing, lying or tampering with evidence? Each week, we open up an internal affairs investigation that used to be secret to find out how well the police police themselves. And we're back. And I'm sure a lot of our listeners are hearing another podcast where we're talking about Donald Trump again. And I've been hearing this a lot from listeners, from readers, from sources. It's this question of, like, why are you still talking about Donald Trump? And on the one hand, he's a former president. He keeps saying lies about the election.

Why give it a platform? But on the other, as Mara was just saying, like he's still this very dominant figure in politics. So I think the question I would have for the both of you is, how are you approaching covering the former president in this moment? Well, it's pretty easy to know why we cover the former president, because there are two major political parties in this country. And one of them, the Democrats, you have President Biden in the White House, and then you have the Republicans. And quite clearly, the leader of the Republican

Party, the person with the most influence, the most popular figure in the party is still Donald Trump. So, you know, people may not want that to be the case necessarily. There are probably a lot of Republicans who don't want that to be the case because they're eager to run themselves in 2024. But until he shuts the door and says, I am not running officially, he is still going to be part of the conversation. Right. And even if he shuts the door, as long as he's the most important person in the Republican Party, the person whose endorsement matters the most, we're going to cover him for that reason.

We are not covering every email or statement that he issues. We're not repeating his lies about the election. But if he goes and gives a speech, because he's a major political actor, we're going to we're going to cover that. Certainly, it presents a difficulty in some respects, but it's not any different than the difficulty Trump presented while he was president, given, you know, his countless number of falsehoods that he tends to throw out there and exaggerations. So we have to put those things in the proper context. And that's something we've gotten pretty good at. I also think from my perspective, covering Republicans from the Hill, and just you

see the impact and influence he still has. And if you look at everything Trump, if you take him at his word of what he's saying, what he's doing with these speeches, with still engaging in politics, with fundraising, with teasing 2024, if he were to run, he could probably walk to the nomination. I mean, you look at how much support he still has. And as we sit here today, Donald Trump has the best claim to the 2024 nomination for president. And I think that we have to cover him as such, even if it comes with all of the sort of baggage of continuing to cover Trump in the Biden era. Yeah, just a perfect example of that is how Republicans were considering voting for that January 6th commission until Donald Trump made it really clear that he did not want them to and

that he would go after anybody who did. But you know, putting aside 2024, there's a big debate inside the Republican Party in private about whether Donald Trump is a good thing or a bad thing for them in the next cycle in 2022. How big of a debate is that, though, Mara? I mean, I hear that a lot that there's this debate inside the Republican Party, but it feels like it's like a 90-10 debate, not a 50-50 debate when it comes to Donald Trump. Putting aside the primaries, where he's a major, major factor, and nobody disputes that. But the question is, this is going to be another midterm election where he's not on the ballot. Last time he wasn't on the ballot, the Democrats did very well. And I think the debate inside the Republican Party, at least from the conversations

I have, is whether Donald Trump being actively engaged in the 2022 congressional elections, is that something that energizes Republicans more or Democrats more? I think Republicans aren't sure. That's a good point. Well, you know, Democrats had the same problem with Barack Obama when he was president because Obama won the presidency twice. But Democrats, in his words, got shellacked, remember, in 2010 because he wasn't on the ballot. And we've got this politics of personality now in the last decade or so where we're seeing that repeatedly. And look, this isn't Mar Eliasson or Domenico Montanaro saying that Trump could walk to the nomination in 2024. These are based on conversations we're having with Republicans.

And polls. I mean, two of the people I – well, yeah, but put those aside. I mean, think about the people who are practitioners here. They're the ones who are saying – like I had a couple people who I quoted in my story said that I think a lot of GOP voters are excited about the next generation of candidates, this guy said. But if Trump ran in 2024, he'd be hard to beat. Another said that, you know, these other candidates will go to New Hampshire and Iowa and places like that. They won't be able to make a ton of hires. Then they absolutely cannot announce a campaign because they'll take all sorts of incoming for Trump. And look, he's going to decide sooner rather than later. And this

person said, I'm not sure if it matters. Trump got into the 2016 race relatively late, had no campaign and still won. I mean, he does continue to keep the entire field on ice. I mean, nobody's making any moves. Because I also think to the point of the primary dynamic, no Republican wants to be seen as maneuvering against Trump. So as long as it's not clear what he's going to do, everyone's kind of holding back. So how do you make a kind of shadow campaign or a secret campaign that's on a box ready to go if he decides not to run? That's kind of hard. It's really hard. You saw Mike Pence try to do it in New Hampshire on Thursday, where he's up there touting everything that President Trump and he, he said, accomplished and then yet try to distance himself some about the January 6th insurrection. He's really trying to thread this needle that's really difficult to thread.

You see Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor, going on Fox News only events to cover news in his state. Nikki Haley, you know, the former ambassador, you know, putting up a group that is supposed to push conservative principles, but really looks like a campaign in waiting website because it's all about Nikki Haley. All right, I think we're gonna leave it there for now. I'm certain we will have more conversations about Donald Trump on this podcast in the future. Susan Davis, I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.