The NPR Politics Podcast - How young CPAC-goers feel about the war in Iran

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

This year’s Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, lacks many of the big-name conservative stars typically in attendance, but there’s still plenty of President Trump fandom. We discuss how some of the younger attendees at the event feel about the war in Iran. We also talk about the legacy of Robert Mueller, the former FBI director and special counsel who died last week.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, political reporter Elena Moore, and senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith.This podcast was produced by Casey Morell and Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.To manage podcast ad preferences, review the links below:See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And it's Friday. So let's do a look back on this week, starting with the death of former FBI director, Robert Mueller. He died at the age of 81. And Carrie, I think it's easy to focus just on Mueller's time as special counsel. We'll get to that in just a bit. But I want to start with his much longer career in law enforcement. Tell us about that. Yeah, he really was a towering figure. He had been a prosecutor for many years in U.S. Attorney's offices around the country. He ran the criminal division at the Justice Department. And then he was sworn in to leave the FBI just a week before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. And that really required him to turn the FBI into something of an intelligence gathering agency. His mandate from President George W. Bush was to make sure nothing like that ever happened again. And to try to get the FBI to gather intelligence, connect the dots to prevent those kinds of terror plots from taking hold in the U.S. And he actually was the longest serving FBI director since J. Edgar Hoover. He stayed through the rest of the W. Bush term. And then when President Obama arrived, he asked Mueller to stay on another two years. That required Congress to act. The Senate unanimously confirmed him 100 to nothing for two more years in that job. And then he thought, he would go into private practice and maybe teach a little. Things didn't quite work out that way.

Right. So getting into the more present time with Mueller, he became prominent during Trump's first term because he was appointed special counsel to investigate the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election. Tam, you were covering the White House at that point. Walk us through that moment in time because it really was a crazy political couple months. Oh, it was not just a couple months. It was a crazy political several years. And how this all happened is Attorney General Jeff Sessions had been one of President Trump's first supporters. I think he was the first senator to endorse candidate Trump in that campaign. Then he becomes Attorney General. And in March of 2017, he recused himself from the Russia investigation because, he was part of the president's campaign. And this investigation was all about the president's campaign and possible Russian interference in the election, possible coordination between the president's campaign and Russian actors. So Attorney General Jeff Sessions recuses. Then the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, who was acting as attorney general in this case, he announced the appointment of Mueller. And what he said is, based on the unique circumstances, the public interest requires me to place this investigation under the authority of a person who exercises a degree of independence from the normal chain of command. And, you know, I should say that Mueller came into this job, which turned out to be very controversial, having a wonderful reputation. Both Republicans and Democrats thought he was like the epitome of law enforcement.

And earlier in his life, he had been a war hero in Vietnam. He earned the bronze star. He earned a purple heart medal. He basically had been very highly respected, so much so that upon his passing, President Obama called him one of the most respected public servants of our time. And President George W. Bush talked about, you know, how he had handled every tough assignment the country threw at him. Which I feel like has a pretty stark contrast to what President Trump.

said about Mueller's death, right? Yes. President Trump put the news out on his true social platform. He said, Robert Mueller just died. Good. I'm glad he's dead. He can no longer hurt innocent people, exclamation point. Why did President Trump have such an issue with Mueller and with the investigation? Well, really, because Mueller uncovered a lot of evidence in Russia's interference in the 2016 election. And Donald Trump never got over that. Let's talk about. about what Mueller found because it's been so mischaracterized over the years that I think it's important to just do a top line of his findings. He and his investigators wound up indicting 37 people and entities, including several people tied to Trump's campaign like the campaign chair Paul Manafort and the former national security advisor at Michael Flynn. Mueller's investigators found

Russia interfered in that election in 2016 in a sweeping and systematic. way. He found numerous links between the campaign and Russia, although not enough evidence to charge a criminal conspiracy to that end. Remember, it's been a long time, but there was evidence that Paul Manafort, the campaign chair, passed along polling data to a person, the FBI and the intelligence community called a political operative for Russia. And several Trump advisors lied to investigators about their contacts with Russia, including Michael Flynn. And interestingly enough, just in the last few days after Mueller's death, Michael Flynn obtained a settlement from the U.S. government.

Flynn said that he was maliciously prosecuted, and the U.S. government is now going to pay him more than $1 million. I mean, we have been talking about this investigation for almost a decade. And I guess I was struck by that when I was struck by that when I saw the news that Mueller had died, how do you think he will be remembered or what, what do you think the legacy of his report will be going forward? You know, one of the most controversial decisions he made was to not make a judgment about whether Trump himself had broken the law. There were allegations that Trump had obstructed justice, had obstructed his investigation and had dangled

pardons to people in an effort to convince them not to cooperate honestly with the FBI. And Mueller said because the Justice Department has a policy that you cannot indict a sitting president, that he couldn't even make that determination. But he also importantly said, if we could have exonerated Trump, we would have. And I'm not doing that. And so that's one of the many things that has stuck in the craw of this president. And certainly is something that he keeps in mind almost every day. He still calls it the Russia hoax all the time. And he's in process. of either hanging out with, getting advice from, or granting additional favors to some of the people who were caught up in that investigation. People like Michael Flynn, people like Roger Stone, who still gives him informal advice. Roger Stone was charged as part of the Mueller investigation and later got clemency from Trump. So all of these allegations seem so far away and yet we're still living in the shadow of them in some ways. Let me talk a little bit more about that shadow, as Kerry says, President Trump is like refers to everything. It's just like Russia, Russia, Russia all the time that hung over his first term in a major way. And I think informed the way he approached his second term. He made sure that he would not have an attorney general who would recuse herself. Having his first attorney general in his first term, Jeff Sessions recuse himself and then having those dominoes fall that led to this special counsel investigation is something that President Trump

never got over. He was very upset about it. He is of the view. And he says it out loud that his Justice Department should be doing what he wants it to do. And as an extension of that, he has now put a lot of pressure on his Justice Department to investigate and indict people like former FBI director, James Comey, who had a critical role in the original Russia investigation that ultimately led to that special counsel investigation. Well, we can leave it there for now. Carrie, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. Thanks for having me. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, a trip to Texas. And we're back with political reporter Elena Moore. Hi, Elena. Hey, Miles. So you are joining us from CPAC. This is the conservative political action

conference is taking place this year outside of Dallas. Tell us a little bit about what this conference is, Elena. Yeah, I mean, well, it's kind of, I think, historically, for decades now, been kind of a conservative party. It's long been held in National Harbor outside of D.C. And it's been a place, I think traditionally, a place where young conservatives especially can come and meet people and get organized. I think over time we've seen more models like this pop up in the conservative movement. Obviously, there's Turning Point USA as well. And now it seems a little less novel in some ways, but that is kind of the essence here. Obviously, people of all ages attend. There are a lot of older folks at this event. But really the focus of CPAC is to do, you know,

kind of like rally the base, get people involved and, you know, get people excited. Comic-Con, but for MAGA. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. Maga-prom. Right. Well, President Trump is the biggest name in Republican politics. And he is not there this year, Tam. Did the White House say anything about why that is? Yeah. So an official who couldn't speak on the record did tell us that the president isn't attending CPAC because of a schedule and that he is heavily engaged in the ongoing Iran conflict and managing other critical issues. Also, today, he is speaking at a business-related conference in Florida. But this is the first time Trump is missing CPAC in like a decade, Elena, right? I mean, has it changed the vibe? This is not the first one of these things that you've attended. Yeah. I mean, I think yes and no, right? Because everybody is aware of what's going on in the news. Saturday marks one month since the U.S. struck Iran. And that's kind of hanging over this event. So I think there are supporters who are cognizant of that. At the same time, I think there is a bit of a tendency. over the past few years to expect to see Trump.

We know he's a showman. We know he loves to close out events like this and do basically a rally type, you know, speech to really get people ramped up. And that's especially crucial in a midterm year. So that is surprising that he's not here. That said, make no mistake, this is like still very much a Trump party. And by party, I mean literally celebration. This is, you know, there are videos of him playing constantly throughout the program.

His face is on everything, classic red hats. I saw those sequin jackets that are red, white, and blue. I saw one woman wearing leggings that had Trump and First Lady Melania Trump's face on them. So, like, he is still very much the focus. But it is kind of striking that he's not here. He's looming all around, but he is not present. So who is there, then, if Trump isn't? I mean, who have you seen speak, who's on the schedule, kind of who's kind of driving the conversation

at CPAC this year? So yesterday's schedule did look pretty different. These conferences are usually kind of, you know, from top to tail, you're seeing the biggest names in both MAGA politics and MAGA media. A lot of those people were missing. You know, I'm thinking of people like podcasters like Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, but then also those conservative fire brands like Marjorie Taylor Green, the former congresswoman from Georgia, you know, those names are missing. And those people are regulars at. these kind of events. And so looking at the schedule this year, there were a lot of, you know, conservative commentators and influencers, so to speak. But I would say they're folks who are relatively newer to the movement or just have slight, like, smaller followings compared to some of these names that have millions and millions of followers and have been around for a while.

Nick Shirley was the last speaker yesterday. You may remember that name because he was the content creator influencer who was posting a lot about alleged fraud in Somali daycare centers in Minnesota earlier this year, which kind of in part fueled this larger discourse around immigration crackdowns in the city of Minneapolis. That's a speaking slot that typically goes to a prominent elected official or political figure in the party. So it's interesting that this year it went to a relatively newer face and a content creator. I mean, this is a time where the president's approval rating is lower than it has been this term, right, Tam?

It is. This is actually, he is currently based on several recent polls at his highest disapproval of either of his terms. Oh, wow. I didn't realize we had passed that threshold. We have passed that threshold. You know, the other thing that I think is fascinating about that list of names of people who aren't there that Elena mentioned, those three big blockbuster names have all broken with Trump on the Iran war. You're talking about like Tucker Carlson, Megan Kelly, Marjorie Taylor Green. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, that, that dissent is definitely felt around. People know there's infighting in the party. People are not really, they're dancing around maybe larger fighting on Iran and whether there's, you know, unified support for going in, or striking the country. But there is a lot of talk of, we know there's divides. We know there's fighting, but we have to unify. We have to unify.

The folks that are attending CPAC are very representative for the most part of that MAGA base of Trump's core voters. These are people that have stood by him since 2016 for the most part. And I heard that yesterday talking to voters. I was trying to get kind of a temperature check on how people were feeling about the decision to go to war with Iran. One person I talked to was Jeff Hadley. He drove down from Raleigh, North Carolina to be here. And he argues that Iran has been a threat for decades. but Trump was the only precedent that he says had the guts to do anything about it.

He's the one that's going to do it. And I think a lot of people feel more confident in him doing it than a lifelong politician that wants to follow the rules of their party. Yeah, I heard that from a few people, this idea of, oh, this isn't a new war, you know, kind of implying that Iran has been a threat to the U.S. and there have been tensions for decades. And so I think some people kind of fact-checked the argument of, oh, he's not starting a new war. this is him ending one. And I do think there are people within the base that are a little bit more

cautious. Like maybe they're willing to give Trump more time to see his agenda through and feel confident in him. But it's still, I think, for some people, risky. And that's how Andrew Belcher felt. He's a student from Miami University in Ohio. He's a college Republican. And he told me he thinks Trump is prepared to handle this moment, but he also said this. I think he understands the political risk of if this were to fail, this is the nail in the coffin for the rest of his presidency and will be his reputation for the rest of time. I think the American people do not want another failed in long-term regime change war. I mean, how worried is the White House, Tam, about sort of the potential. There's all this talk the last few weeks about the potential fracturing within the

MAGA movement over the Iran war. Is that something the White House is worried about? The White House has a favorite video that has been going around online, which is of the CNN numbers guy, Harry Inton, talking about how MAGA is still fully behind President Trump. And that is certainly something that President Trump himself has amplified. You know, when you are focusing on the level of support you have within your base and not the level of support you have within the broader electorate, that is generally a sign that you're sort of hunkered down and you're not trying to win over. the very voters that brought President Trump back into office, the independent voters, and the not quite so 100% MAGA voters. He's not trying with those.

We've seen in polling that when you peer behind the curtain, yeah, there's that overwhelming majority of Republican voters that are backing Trump and say his handling of the war has been good or they approve of it. But then when you look at groups like you said independence, but also, you know, another key group that really has. helped Trump on the margins was young voters, especially young men. And Pew Research Center has a new poll out that shows, you know, while Republicans as a whole more than 80 percent support the war, that number drops to like just under half when looking at Republican voters under 30. And so, you know, it's not to say necessarily that people are outwardly, you know, protesting, super opposing this idea, but there's less enthusiasm for it. And as we know in a midterm year, enthusiasm is a huge, huge factor and what brings people out.

That's what I was going to say. That enthusiasm thing is a big deal for midterms. And I wonder, are the midterms coming up at CPAC? I mean, I understand that Trump is looming large at the conference, but are people talking about, you know, getting out to vote for Susan Collins to make sure that Republicans, you know, keep a hold of the Senate and things like that. Not a CPAC favorite that Susan Collins. What an important election that Republicans need to win this fall if they want.

if they want to control the Senate, right? Right. And I feel like Trump has always been very perfective at kind of putting all of these races under his larger umbrella of, you know, keep the movement going. We need this majority. But when he's not there, it is, I think, a harder message to sell. And again, we saw that kind of in the set list yesterday. There were really only a few midterm candidates that spoke. We kind of got an idea of what the midterm messaging could look like. Michael Watley, he's a Republican running for Senate in North Carolina. He said yesterday that MAGA voters need to come out and support Republican candidates in the midterms. And he argues it's to make sure Trump is a four-year

president instead of a two-year president with the implication being if the president's party loses a majority in the senator to the House, it's going to be a lot harder to pass the president's agenda, if at all. So I thought that was interesting. But really, the messages that we're hearing way more from speakers are about those core issues we know rally up this base. And that's like immigration, lots of talk about safety, crime, in relation to immigration, you know, there's stuff on the culture war issues, lots of talk about being like anti-transgender rights. So I was kind of struck. Some of the panels yesterday really felt like that you could have taken them from really any past years and put them in when there are these glaring big news events.

happening right now that did seem to be less of the focus. One other fun subplot is this CPAC meeting is happening in Texas, which is a state that has a Republican primary for the U.S. Senate that has not been settled and there is going to be a runoff and President Trump said he was going to endorse a candidate and asked the other one to drop out. I talked to the White House yesterday. Trump still hasn't made up his mind, also known as this endorsement may not be coming after all. And Ken Paxton, certainly the more MAGA of the candidates, is on the CPAC schedule. John Cornyn, the incumbent senator, nowhere to be seen. Okay, we're going to take a quick break.

But before we do, I want to take a moment to remind everyone of something cool we have coming up. You can join our colleagues at NPR's National Security Podcast, Sources and Methods, for a virtual event on March 31st. Host Mary Louise Kelly and reporter Greg Myrie will talk about the latest news from Iran, covering the intelligence community, and they'll answer your questions on Iran and the national security beat. To get your invite, just sign up for NPR Plus. You'll receive a registration link by the end of this week, and your membership supports

the reporting you hear on this show every day. Sign up now at plus.mpr.org and watch your email. That's plus.npr.org. Can't let it go is right. after this. And we're back. And it's now time for Can't Let It Go. The part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just cannot let go of, politics or otherwise. Tam, why don't you start us off? And I'm doing it again. It's politics. It's sort of politics. Here we go. So yesterday President Trump held court in the cabinet room at the White House. It was his first cabinet

meeting since launching Operation Epic Fury in Iran. And the president asked if we had any questions, and I had a question. I ended up going first. Oh. Do you have any questions? Mr. President, are you going to go in for the uranium? Like, how do you secure Iran and prevent them getting a nuclear weapon? Why would I ever answer a question? Can you accomplish your goals without it? Am I going to go in for the, oh, yeah, we're going tomorrow at 3 o'clock. How could you possibly ask a question? Just do it bits. And expect an answer.

I don't know. But I don't know. I think you're a friendly person, too. It's just such a ridiculous question. You are a friendly person, Ter. I am a friendly. You're so friendly. I am a friendly person.

I do smile. I once had someone I was interviewing, asked me if I was flirting with him in the middle of the interview, simply because I was just making eyes that said, please say something good. So that happened. And then like, I don't know, maybe a half an hour later, the president came back and looked over at me. I can't talk about specifics. A lot of people said that it would matter.

Maybe it does matter. Who knows? But I wouldn't talk. It's like the question this young lady asked, sorry, but I'm embarrassed her. I don't want to embarrass it. Oh, my God, he loves you. I think she's a friendly reporter, so I'm sorry. But, you know, I can't say what are we going to do?

Because if I did, I wouldn't be sitting here for long. They probably, what is it called, the 25th Amendment? Anyway, it was so weird. He never apologizes. Yeah. I would have been more prepared for him to say, who are you with? Right. Or to more forcefully insult my intelligence, because that's typically what he does.

But instead. He was like, oh, but you seem friendly. And then he apologized. And then yesterday afternoon, multiple people came to me and they were like, I don't think I've ever seen him apologize before. That's what I was going to say. It's like listening to that clip. I'm like, I don't think I've ever heard both the way, literally what he said, but the tone of it. I don't know.

That's a very unique thing that you hear. Miles, why can't you let go of? Also politics. I feel like we're politics people, you know. It is what it is. And this was just an interesting one because I had jury duty a couple months ago. And D.C., I don't know. I haven't looked at the numbers on this, but I'm pretty sure we get it more often than the average person in America.

I get it a lot. And I'm always like, ugh. But Idaho just passed a law that says for some people, you can swap out jury duty to work the polls for. for local elections, like swap out one civic duty for another one. And I don't know. I just thought that was kind of cool. I just feel like you never hear new ideas about things like this. These are things that I just assume were always going to be the same forever. And I was like, huh, that's kind of like interesting. I imagine the people who have to get these juries together might not be as thrilled about the idea that they're losing their pool potentially. But

for local election workers who have had trouble getting people sometimes, I don't know, kind of interesting, right? I like it. That's super. Yeah, that's super interesting. So have either of you served on a jury? No. I have showed up multiple times and then been told to go home.

Yeah, same, to be clear. I served on one jury very shortly after turning 18 years old. And I struggled to stay awake. You had to be there so early. I mean, to be fair, to work on the polls, it's going to be the same thing. You're going to have to get there early. It's going to be a long day regardless. So it might not actually be an easier job, but I could imagine some people would

prefer it. I don't know. Yeah. I was like, I have spring break and the judge was like, do you have a flight booked? I'm like, no, I was going to drive. Great. You can do your civic duty. That's crazy. When the judge was asking me, when I said, I have ADHD, so I don't know if I can serve on this jury. And she said, you have to sit for like an hour at a time. Can you do that? And I thought about it. I like, I was like, your honor, maybe. You guys would both be great. If it ever comes to it for me, I would love to have both of you guys. You're very good listeners. I feel like you think critically about things.

Elena, what can't you let go of? The thing that I cannot let go of is not politics. I cannot let go of the world of reality television right now. Huge pivot. I don't know if you guys have been following the drama about The Bachelorette. Have you guys been following this? Vaguely. I don't know who the people are, but I do know that bad things.

have happened and the show had to be canceled. Yes, this is a TLDR. Some of this stuff is a little bit serious, so I'm not trying to make light of some serious stuff. But basically, the Bachelorette was set to be Taylor Frankie Paul, who is an influencer from Utah, who has been on this other reality show called Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. She is very open about her life. She's had some pretty drama relationships. And there's lots there. Do a Google. But in an upsetting turn of events, some video was released showing her and her ex-boyfriend having like a pretty violent fight. And there's like allegations of potentially child endangerment and just really bad stuff. And we hope everyone is okay.

But basically really, really soon before the show was going to air, and you know, The Bachelorette is pre-taped. This has been in the can. I think it was supposed to air on a Sunday and they canceled it on like a Friday. Wait, so they have the whole show already, like, done? Yes, somebody has the rose, and now there's, like, different accounts online that kind of follow the rumors in pop culture, and there are speculations about who might take over this Bachelorette slot, and there's, you know, rumors that maybe it'll be a live season, which would be, like, nuts so. People are, like, give me something. We were so excited. I know that producers, Brea and Casey, were, like, very much on the edge of their seat, getting ready to watch,

every Sunday. And so there's just like so much drama right now in the like the secret lives of Mormon wives world. There's like multiple women in that show that like filed or been, you know, are getting divorced. And so there's like my TikTok algorithm is just like all the drama right now. I have probably consumed more content about that than like, you know, read in the last few weeks. So maybe this is just a sign that I'm supposed to read a book in the next few weeks instead. The books are calling, Elena. The books are calling. But I'm not, I'm screening the call. Right. Screening the call. And I would really like to watch more TV. All right. Well, that's all for today. Our executive producer is Beth Rheonie Metterrey. Our producers are Casey Morel and Brea Suggs. Our editor is Rachel Bay. And special thanks to Christian Neff Kalimer and Jason Breslo. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Elena Moore. I cover politics. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics podcast. Thank you.