The NPR Politics Podcast - Inflation At 40-Year High; Jan. 6 Committee Wants To Talk To Ginni Thomas

Episode Date: June 17, 2022

Take our survey: https://www.npr.org/podcastsurveyGinni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, reportedly said she'd be willing to speak to the committee following reporting by the Washington Post that Thomas was communicating with a Trump legal adviser at the heart of the probe.And the Federal Reserve escalated its battle against inflation Wednesday, announcing the largest interest rate hike in 28 years as the central bank struggles to regain control over soaring prices.This episode: White House correspondent Asma Khalid, congressional correspondent Deirdre Walsh, legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg, chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley, and voting reporter Miles Parks.Support the show and unlock sponsor-free listening with a subscription to The NPR Politics Podcast Plus. Learn more at plus.npr.org/politics 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, it is the final chance. Please head to npr.org slash podcast survey to help us help you and figure out how to make this show better. And thank you. My name is Camille, and I'm currently standing at the exact site of the Watergate break-in, which happened exactly 50 years ago. Today, it is home of my employer, which coincidentally publishes higher ed resources related to the scandal, which means it's really just an office space. This podcast was recorded at 1.49 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday, June 17th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, let's start the show. That was a really met-up timestamp. I appreciated that. I really did. Thank you. Very timely. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover that. I really did. Thank you. Very timely. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House.

I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress. And I'm Nina Totenberg. I cover the courts. And on today's show, I've got two names for you all to keep track of. The first is John Eastman. He's the outside attorney who was advising former President Donald Trump that Mike Pence, his vice president, he said had the power to ignore electors. He later reportedly asked for a pardon from Trump, which he never got. The other name is Ginny Thomas. She's the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and a conservative activist in her own right. And previously, there was reporting that Ginny Thomas had been in touch with the then White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, around the time of the insurrection.

Now there is some new reporting from The Washington Post that she was also in touch with Mr. Eastman. So, Deirdre, I feel like there's a lot going on here. But I really am curious as to what Ginny Thomas was saying to these men, as far as we know, in terms of what's publicly been reported. Well, NPR confirmed the text messages that The Washington Post first reported a few months ago. And these were about 30 text messages from Ginny Thomas to the chief of staff, Mark Meadows. And a lot of it was sort of pushing, advocating for this theory that John Eastman and Rudy Giuliani and other allies of then President Trump were pushing for Vice President Pence to not certify the election results. And then we learned this week, right before the hearing about the pressure campaign on Vice President Pence, that the

Washington Post reported that there were emails between Thomas and Eastman. And as you mentioned, Eastman was really the key Trump outside legal Trump advisor who was pushing this theory. And he was told repeatedly again and again that it was illegal and not in line with the Constitution. And they said he shouldn't pursue it. The thing that was interesting to me is that none of this came up in the hearing yesterday. I mean, the hearing was all about Eastman and all about his campaign with Trump's inner circle to push this theory. And we know the committee has some documents from Eastman. There's been a big court fight over him handing over emails to the committee. We know they have some, and The Washington Post is reporting they have these,

but they didn't actually come up in the hearing. So my sort of takeaway is the committee staff probably doesn't think Jenny Thomas was really kind of a driver of this. Maybe she was a supporter of the effort, but there were a lot of people sort of advocating for this strategy, you know, strong Trump allies. But, you know, there's no indication that she was in any meetings with, you know, the top lawyers like Eastman clearly was. But Nina, it does strike me, though, as pertinent because of who her husband is, right? I mean, Ginny Thomas is married to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. And there is a sense that he could have had a role in potentially adjudicating consequences for the president and those close to him around the insurrection. So there, I mean, I understand what Deirdre is saying, but there are, you know, dots that can be connected here. Well, he did in one sense have a role. He participated in a case about whether Trump had to turn over documents to the committee investigating what happened. And he was the lone dissenter. Now, I should note that the code that

applies to lower court judges, federal court judges, says that judges should disqualify themselves from any case in which they or their spouses have financial or, quote, any other interest that could be substantially affected by the outcome of the proceeding. Well, he voted in a case like that. He did not recuse himself. He has not said why. The court does not have a code that it says it abides by itself, that it is bound to abide by. So to be clear, there's no ethics code for the Supreme Court. I mean, I think of us here at NPR, like most employers, you've got an ethics guide that you're, you know, in theory supposed to follow. But you're saying the court doesn't have its own ethics book, per se. No, it tries to abide by the lower court code.

But because it's different, because you can't substitute in a judge for a justice, it has unique circumstances, is what it says. And it doesn't have its own ethics code. And it hasn't written one. And it's getting harder and harder to defend that position, and yet it's not clear that even Congress could make the court create one for itself if it doesn't want to. It's a separate branch of government. And this comes at a time when public approval of the court has plummeted,

when the leak of the court's draft decision overturning Roe has put the justices' very lives in danger. At a time when huge metal fences have been installed outside the court to protect it. When the justices no longer sit in public session to announce opinions and dissents. Not even with the press there. And when, as we have been discussing, the wife of one of the justices was so involved in trying to get the election results overturned that she's been asked to testify before the January 6th committee. And it's also a time when you don't have to be a genius to see that there are big rifts, personal rifts, developing at the court. Justice Thomas, just a short while ago, said he basically didn't trust any of his colleagues anymore. Justice Sotomayor, I have to say, tried to repair the damage yesterday in a public appearance when she spoke quite glowingly about him as a person, even though she has profound disagreements with him. But she ended up this way. Look, there are days I get discouraged. There are moments where I am deeply, deeply disappointed.

And yes, there have been moments where I've stopped and said, is this worth it anymore? And every time I do that, I lick my wounds for a while. Sometimes I cry. And then I say, okay, let's fight. You know, Nina, it sounds like what you're saying is that morale amongst justices, it isn't great. Right. And I do think that the public trust in the court also, as you've spoken about, isn't great either. And yet it doesn't feel like any of those issues are going to be resolved for the immediate sense. But to move back to the January 6th hearings, I do think that

there's a curiosity amongst a lot of people, myself included, about whether or not Ginny Thomas will appear in front of this committee, given this level of communication we've seen that she was involved in around the insurrection and whether she'll voluntarily appear. She said yesterday in an interview with a conservative publication that she's anxious to appear and straighten things out. She has said in the past that she has her own thing she does and that Justice Thomas has his own thing that he does and never the twain shall meet. I think the other thing that we learned yesterday was that Eastman actually published a statement on Substack, which is an independent self-publishing platform, trying to sort of downplay the reports in the Post about

communications between him and Ginny Thomas. And he said, you know, he can't comment on whether the news accounts are true, but he says, I can categorically confirm that at no time did I discuss with Mrs. Thomas or Justice Thomas any matters pending are likely to come before the court. But we also know that, you know, he did have a deposition before the January 6th committee. Yeah, and he took the 5th. Right. And we don't know if at that time they had all these materials that included the communications between himself and Ginny Thomas, because there's just been some legal wrangling about, you know, handing over the rest of those records. between himself and Ginny Thomas, because there's just been some legal wrangling about

handing over the rest of those records. All right. Well, a lot of questions that we still don't know the answers to. And it is time now for a quick break. Nina, thank you so much for joining us. It is always a treat to have you on the podcast. And it's a treat to be here. And we will be back in a moment with a different friend of the podcast.

And we are back and joined now by NPR economics expert Scott Horsley. Hey there, Scott. Great to be with you. But I'm no expert. Of course you're an expert. And I was going to say it is great to be with you, but not perhaps great news in the economy this week. The Fed delivered the biggest interest rate hike since the mid-1990s to combat surging inflation. And we'll say, I know that we have a number of young listeners, and there is perhaps not a clear sense of why and what an interest rate hike might do to tame

inflation. So please help us understand that. Sure. By raising borrowing costs, the Fed makes it more expensive for people to carry a balance on their credit card. It gets more expensive to get a car loan. It's already gotten a good deal more expensive to get a home mortgage, for example. And so what the Fed is trying to do is cool off demand in the economy, that is demand for goods and services, because demand has been really overwhelming supply. And that's why prices have been climbing at such a rapid rate. And the concern, it seems like, is that's a really tricky balancing act, right? How do you curb demand without maybe squashing demand so much that you end up in a recession? Exactly. Consumer demand is a huge driver of the U.S. economy. It's been really strong.

It's been too strong for the Fed's liking. So they'd like to cool it off a little bit. What they don't want to do is see consumer demand go into a deep freeze and tip the economy into a recession. You know, Scott, to that point, you know, the president gave an interview to the Associated Press yesterday in which he stressed that a recession is not inevitable as the Fed tries to tame inflation. He tried to emphasize that the economy overall is in a relative position of strength to overcome this all. But I will say that feels like legitimately a complicated political argument to make. And Deirdre, the Republican argument feels a lot simpler.

They can just point at high gas prices. Definitely. I mean, they are on the floor of the House and the Senate regularly with big posters of how much a gallon of gas costs in their home states. I mean, this has been the Republican playbook going into the 2022 midterms for months. I did a story back last September in terms of like what the Republican message was. And it was all about the worries about inflation. And obviously, inflation has gotten a lot worse since last fall. So I think that, you know, as we've been covering, or I've been

covering the January 6 hearings, the last couple of weeks, you know, a lot of Democrats in Congress think those are important, but they really admit that it's not what they're hearing about from their constituents back home. They're all worried about the costs of, you know, their grocery bills and filling up their cars and just everyday costs that are going up and are harder to manage. And I think that they're struggling to try to figure out how they're trying to address those concerns. And, you know, while we were watching the January 6th hearing yesterday, a group of senior White House officials was meeting on Capitol Hill with the House Democratic Caucus trying to carve out a message going into the midterms. And obviously, maybe this AP interview that the president did

was part of that public effort to try to show that they understand people are hurting. And here are the things that they're going to try to do to get over the finish line. I mean, the president was talking about reviving some of this domestic policy legislation addressing prescription drug costs and other things that are ways that they could try to fight inflation. It's an unfortunate political fact of life for the Democrats that whichever party is in power tends to get blamed when gasoline prices climb or when the price of groceries climbs. And that's where they are. And the Biden administration and congressional Democrats are trying to do what they can to show that they understand the hardship and maybe take some steps that might ease price hikes at the margins. But the truth is there's not a

whole lot the White House or congressional Democrats can do about these soaring prices. The cost of gasoline is largely being driven by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which has raised oil prices around the world. To a lesser extent, it's also being driven by very high refinery margins in this country. The invasion has also driven up food prices. And of course, you've still got the ongoing supply disruptions caused by the pandemic. That's what's really causing all of this inflation. But if people are paying high prices, the Democrats are going to pay a price as well. The one thing that is interesting is that the White House has absolutely given the Federal Reserve full running room to raise interest rates as high as

necessary to try to get prices under control. That is not always the approach that presidents take. Historically, it's often uncomfortable for presidents when the Federal Reserve raises interest rates. And we saw that with former President Trump. If you go back to the 70s, we saw it with Richard Nixon putting pressure on the Fed not to raise interest rates and slow down the economy. Biden has given Jerome Powell and his colleagues at the Fed full independence to do whatever it takes to get prices down. A sign, do you think, Scott, that they're so deeply concerned about inflation that they feel like whatever it takes is necessary to bring this down. And that feels like a really different space than where this White House was at just a year ago when they

seem to think inflation would not be here as permanently. I think that's right. I think it's both the right thing to do to respect the Fed's independence, but it also in this case is the politically astute thing to do because frankly, inflation is a bigger and more immediate threat to the Democrats right now than any potential slowdown in economic growth. All right. Well, a clear sign, too, perhaps, Scott, that the economic timeline to bring down inflation and the political timeline for Democrats with the midterms may not necessarily align. And that is definitely a challenge for them. Scott, thank you very much. Always also a pleasure to have you on. Good to be with you.

And let's take another quick break. When we return, it will be time for Can't Let It Go. And we are back and it is time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go. And we are joined now by celebrity guest, Miles Hart. Hello there, my friend. Hi, Asma. Happy Friday. Thank you. Hi, Miles. Hi, Deirdre. Hi, Asma. Happy Friday. Thank you. Hi, Miles. Hi, Deirdre. So Deirdre, why don't you kick things off for us? What can't you let go of? So I normally in a busy news week, you know, try to get a break and do think about something outside of politics. But I could not look away and I cannot let go of Eric Hirschman's Zoom background in the January 6th hearings. For those who haven't watched the hearings, Eric Hirschman is a Trump White House lawyer who appeared in taped depositions before the January 6th committee.

And several clips of his testimony were sprinkled throughout the hearings last week and this week. But he, like we all have done living in a pandemic world, we've been on Zooms and you sort of see the bookshelves or mantles behind, you know, people at work or in congressional hearings. But I could not figure out what was going on behind Eric Hirschman's, you know, home office. I feel like I spent 15 minutes just like trying taking it all in. It really was a lot like a lot to behold. So we should describe it over his I guess it would be his left shoulder was a massive painting. I believe it was a painting. I don't know if it's a lithograph or something else of a panda. Yeah, but it's like two pandas, right?

Yeah, it took up like half of the wall behind him. And then over his right shoulder was this black baseball bat with the word justice on it. And then there were these three look like sort of aluminum sculptures mounted to the wall underneath the bat. And you just were like, what are they? What are they supposed to represent? Well, thankfully, our friends from Politico were on the case, and they tracked down what was going on. And it turns out they reported that Hirschman is an avid art collector, and that the panda painting is by an artist named Robert Pruitt, who I'm not familiar with. But Matt Fuller, who was a longtime Hill reporter, works for the Daily Beast, noted that similar paintings were in the movie Fifty Shades of Grey. But evidently, Hirschman has had this art since before that movie came out. So he was a trendsetter. So don't draw any conclusions. And the baseball bat was a gift from somebody after he won a big case. And then this is the interesting part to me.

The three sculptures represent his three kids. And I was looking at a still picture the other day, and it looks like it's sort of their hair, like the top of their heads. Like one looks like a ponytail. I mean, the one question I have for you, Deirdre, at the end, though, is like, why does he not do that thing where you just zoom the back, like blur the background? Unless he was very proud of all his artwork, maybe, right? It sounds like he's into art. So I think he wanted to show it off. Asma, what can't you let go of this week? Okay, so this week, I cannot let go. I feel like it was the week of the return of Beyonce. It was a big week for Beyonce. I don't know if you all have been paying much attention to this all, but she has announced a new album.

It's going to be called Renaissance, and it is her first release since 2016. It doesn't seem like it's been that long. Wow. I know, right? This also makes me feel like time goes by really fast. Yeah, she had that live concert come out a couple years ago, right? I feel like that thing came out, so it made us feel like we've gotten new Beyonce in the last few years, but it actually hasn't. We haven't gotten any new songs. I know. Beyonce's one of these people who I feel like has been with me for so long, right?

That you're like, at some point, you forget. You're like, there's all these monumental moments. I was like, I remember you were there with me during the 2016 election, Beyonce. You were there. There's all these critical moments. But then the other thing that I saw was actually wilder to me. Her daughter, Blue Ivy, there was this picture of Blue Ivy and Jay-Z at the Warriors game. Yes.

They flashed. Did you see this? Yes. And I was completely struck because I was like, oh, my God, Blue Ivy is like a tween now. I felt 60 years old. I literally, I mean, it was visceral. I felt like my whole body shriveled. I was like, I thought you were just born.

So if y'all have not seen this, you should Google it. But Blue Ivy, she's adorable, but she's like 10 now, I believe. Already has better style than me. You know, the one thing I did hear about this album, Asma, is that there's going to be some country-inspired songs on it. And I'm fascinated by that. How do you feel about that? I want to hear it.

I feel like my unpopular opinion is that Irreplaceable Beyonce is still my favorite Beyonce. And like, I know, I mean, I love Lemonade, but I still just go back to Irreplaceable. I think that's like the greatest song ever written. All right. Well, what about you, Miles? What can you not let go of? So what I can't let go of also comes from the Golden State Warriors. They won the NBA finals last night. And specifically what I can't let go of also comes from the Golden State Warriors. They won the NBA finals last night. And specifically what I can't let go of and I keep thinking about is Steph Curry, the Warriors' best player, introduced this playoffs like a new kind of celebration that has been really subtle that some people kind of started picking up on a couple weeks ago. And I am a trash talk connoisseur. I play a

lot of basketball, not really to go out and get exercise, but mostly just to yap at people for two to three hours. And so Steph Curry, at the end of these series where he's basically ending the season for the other team who have been working all year to get to this moment, when he hits this shot, he did this last night, he did it a couple weeks ago against the Dallas Mavericks. When he hits the shot that kind of ultimately, you know, stabs them in the heart to end their season, he does this hand motion that indicates night-night, like where you put your two hands and you say, like, you're going to bed now, like dad is putting you to bed. And that is like, he did it again last night, ending the NBA finals. And I just respect it so much.

So you're a Warriors fan. I did not know that about you. I'm a basketball fan. I'm an NBA basketball fan. But more than anything, I'm a trash talk fan. I'm a Steph Curry fan. He's just amazing. Just he's amazing to watch.

I will say I fall into the camp of like, look, I was really bummed that the Celtics weren't able to take this. I don't know that I expected the Celtics to win, but I was incredibly proud of them. I think that there were very low expectations for the Celtics, and they made it far. Yeah, I think that's right. I mean, I do feel like they didn't have a Steph Curry out there. He was like one of the greatest players of all time. And at the end of the day, that kind of matters. All right.

Well, that is a wrap for today. A reminder to please go take our survey if you haven't yet. You can check it out at npr.org slash podcast survey. Our executive producer is Muthoni Mathuri. Our editors are Eric McDaniel and Krishnadev Kalamar. Our producers are Elena Moore, Casey Morrell, and Lexi Schapiro. Our intern is Maya Rosenberg. Thanks to Brandon Carter. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the White House. I'm Deirdre Walsh. I cover Congress.

I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And thank you all, as always, for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.