The NPR Politics Podcast - London, the President's Tweets, Listener Mail

Episode Date: June 5, 2017

The President's comments following Saturday's attack in London, and a few of your questions, answered. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. 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

This week on Invisibilia, emotions. I felt at times that maybe my feelings were too intense for the situation. I had never felt anything like that before. We introduce a completely different way of thinking about your emotions. Listen in the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Keri Okamoto cooking dinner in Santa Monica, California. Today's podcast was recorded at 3.06 p.m. on Monday, June 5th. Things may change by the time you listen to it.

Keep up to date with all of NPR's political coverage at NPR.org, on the NPR One app, or with your local NPR station. Now, here's the show. It's the NPR Politics Podcast here to talk about the events in London over the weekend, the president's response, infrastructure week at the White House, and to answer a few of your political questions. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. So we had a busy weekend of news. And let's start with Saturday night with the terror attack in London.

Now, this was the third significant attack in the U.K. in recent months. The first was near British Parliament. And then on May 22nd, there was a bombing at the Ariana Grande concert in Manchester that killed 22 people. And then finally, Saturday, a van plowed into pedestrians on the London Bridge. The attackers then got out of the vehicle and began stabbing people at random. Seven people were killed. 48 people were injured. But last night, Ariana Grande and a ton of other big performers, big acts, held a benefit concert in Manchester. And people came, they sang along, they cried, and it was broadcast worldwide. I love you guys so much and I think that the kind of love and unity that you're displaying

is the medicine that the world really needs right now. So I want to thank you for being just that. And I want to thank you for coming tonight. I love you so much. Thank you. Meanwhile, on the internet, President Trump poured his thoughts about the London Bridge attack into a series of tweets starting Saturday night,

then picking up again Sunday morning and again early this morning. He started out about an hour and a half after the first reports, retweeting a drudge report alert. At that point, it wasn't clear whether it was terrorism or not, but the drudge report said it was. And then the president tweeted, quote, we need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights. We need the travel ban as an extra level of safety, exclamation point. Which presents a whole other level of potential problems for the president because this travel ban has been held up in the courts. And if he's going to use this, basically undermine the rationale for his travel ban, you know, that's

going to allow prosecutors to go back and rehash over everything Donald Trump has said to make sure that this travel ban is not watered down, even in the prosecutor's view. Yeah. And so that tweet was sort of the first mention of the travel ban. But then this morning he went on in a whole tweet storm about the travel ban. But before that, on Sunday morning, he tweeted a couple more things. He says, we must stop being politically correct and get down to the business of security for our people. If we don't get smart, it will only get worse. Then he says, at least seven dead and 48 wounded in terror attack. And mayor of London says there is, quote, no reason to be alarmed. Now, that quote was completely taken out of context. There was a lot of shocking things to me about the tweet specifically directed at London

Mayor Sadiq Khan. One, it's remarkable to me that the president of the United States would so directly criticize an elected official in a country that is one of our greatest allies. I mean, that's just not par for the course when these things happen. Usually allies stand by each other. Two, as you said, Tam, it was completely taken out of context. The no reason to be alarmed, the broader context was the mayor was saying

you may see an increased law enforcement presence on the streets of London in the coming days. No reason to be alarmed. They're on it. And the mayor also had a good point. One of the things that I thought was really striking about the response to the terrorist attacks in London was that from the moment of impact on the bridge where the drivers

hit pedestrians to the police shooting and killing the alleged attackers was eight minutes. That's remarkable. So, I mean, while the terrorist attack itself is terrible, the London response and the leadership shown there is not really the cause for criticism here, right? Like the law enforcement community, the political leaders have all sort of stepped in and done the things we expect them to do. It was just really striking to hear a president criticize British leaders. Well, and so then just to go full circle on this, the mayor's office, people reached out, asked the mayor's office, does he have a response? And the response was basically like,

the mayor has more serious things to worry about than responding to tweets from Donald Trump. And once again, picking fights with European leaders. You know, this is on a pattern of, you know, the president has provoked confrontations with German President Angela Merkel, with French President Emmanuel Macron. He got into it a little bit with British leaders when there was reports in U.S. media about British intelligence leaks that caused a little dust up between the president and British allies when he was there on his trip. The normal friendship and close ties between the U.S. and European leaders does seem particularly strained right now. So let's go back to something Domenico mentioned earlier, which is the president's tweets about the travel ban. And I also just want to say, like, we are calling them tweets, but these are statements from the president of the United States. Absolutely. They absolutely are. There's no question, right? I mean, I think

that a lot of the conversation that we had journalistically around these tweets when they first started popping up was how much do you cover them? Do we over cover them? You know, we came up with this tweet annotator to decide which ones we wanted to pull in and which ones to annotate and give more context to. But these are statements from the President of the United States. My argument for covering these things was to say, if the President of the United States took a microphone and went to the corner of 6th and H or something in DC and decided to make a statement, take no questions and move on, you would still report on those. And that's what these are. And I developed this sort of personal philosophy or whatever. I started thinking about them as

press releases. And that helped me sort of gauge whether it was, you know, a five alarm fire and we need to cover this immediately or whether it was like a thing that the White House put out as a statement. Because some of his tweets are not news per se. Some of them really are just like commentary, commentary, boring press releases. Guy watching television says some stuff and some of them are news and actionable and worthy of coverage. There's this new Twitter bot that popped up in the last 24 hours or so that takes each tweet from President Trump and puts it into the format of a press release, into the format of a statement from the president of the United States. It's really striking when you look at it that way.

When you see his tweets presented as an official statement from the White House, it is just very jarring to see it in the different format. Yeah. And on the Today Show this morning, Kellyanne Conway, counselor to the president, was asked about the tweets and she argued they're nothing. But, you know, this obsession with covering everything he says on Twitter and very little of what he does as president. That's his preferred method of communication with the American people. That's not true. Well, he hasn't given an interview in three weeks. So lately it has been his preferred method. I do want to talk about the travel ban.

And that was Craig Melvin with NBC News on the Today Show. The thing is, Twitter is a preferred method of the president of the United States. He's said this many times. He said it about Twitter. He said it about Facebook because he wants to be able to go around the media filter. Yeah. And and he has also said that he only he can speak for himself, that that his spokespeople, that members of his administration don't necessarily speak for him, but that only he can speak for himself. And, you know, like when we were on that foreign trip and President Trump wasn't really tweeting very much, there was this strange silence. He was basically only giving speeches. He wasn't taking questions and he wasn't tweeting. And there was

this it felt empty, like we were missing the thoughts of the president of the United States. You don't normally get this sort of unfiltered distillation of what the president of the United States is thinking. Usually there are a million filters at the White House before you ever get to the filter of the media. Well, it's the contrast. Remember during the campaign with Hillary Clinton tweets and how the joke was that it required like eight staffers in a day of deliberation. I think it was actually 30 to just get every word exactly right. The president himself is typing these tweets, which is also kind of unusual for a politician. A lot of politicians now are on Twitter, but a lot of their Twitter feeds are manned by staff. And when they're signed by the principal, they would be initialed, similar to how President

Barack Obama did it, First Lady Michelle Obama. They would initial it when it was actually from them. But because the president himself is typing these words and hitting send, I don't know how you could view them as anything other than a statement from the president. I want to just read a few more of the tweets from today and then discuss some of the reaction that has come through to those tweets. So here we go. The president in a statement on Twitter said, people, lawyers, and the courts can call it whatever they want, but I am calling it what we need, and what it is is a, all caps,

TRAVEL BAN! The Justice Department should have stayed with the original travel ban, not the watered-down, politically correct version that they submitted to SC, Supreme Court. The Justice Department should ask for an expedited hearing of the watered down travel ban before the Supreme Court and seek much tougher version, exclamation point.

So... I am not a lawyer. I don't know if you guys know this about me. But it does seem to me that these tweets may be used in court in the potential court cases that are coming up about the legality of it and also how much the White House had previously litigated. Is it a ban? Is it not a ban? And having the president sort of go on the record and use those words could again come back to haunt him. And it would seem to me that pretty much any lawyer would tell their client to stop talking about these things until you can present your case to the judge.

You know, and to that point, one attorney, Neil Katyal, who's the lead attorney for the state of Hawaii, which is one of the states that's challenging the ban, tweeted today, it's kind of odd to have the defendant in Hawaii v. Trump acting as our co-counsel. We don't need the help, but we'll take it. Well, that's that's a good point, though, right? That's what I mean is, is are his own tweets undermining his own case and giving fuel to his legal opponents who say he doesn't have a chance in court? I don't know. But it doesn't seem like a legal strategy that he's employing, but maybe a political one. And one other lawyer who also turned to Twitter today is this is good is none other than George Conway, Kellyanne Conway's husband. It was his first tweet in two years and then he went on quite a storm. He had been up for a top position at the Department of the Solicitor General get five votes in SCOTUS, which is what actually matters. Sad.

Somebody's sleeping on the sofa tonight. Well, and then he went on to tweet, you know, when you talk about the sofa, he says, just to be clear, in response to inquiries, I still very, very strongly, all caps, support POTUS, his administration, policies, the executive order, and of course, my wonderful wife, which is why I said what I said this morning. Every sensible lawyer in the White House counsel's office and every political appointee at DOJ would agree with me. The point cannot be stressed enough that tweets on legal matters seriously undermine the administration's agenda and the president of the United States and those who support him, as I do, need to reinforce that point and not be shy about it. So somebody got a phone call. This is so good, though, because, you know, it's like the more he talks about it, the worse it's the criticism seems even worse, where he uses the phrase every sensible lawyer, which these the implication to that to me is the

president is not acting sensibly. Well, he's certainly not a sensible lawyer, which the implication to that to me is the president is not acting sensibly. Well, he's certainly not a sensible lawyer. We can say that for sure. Or he's not heeding the advice of sensible legal counsel. But fascinating that it's coming from Mr. Conway. Yes. So also fascinating. This was supposed to be infrastructure week. This was supposed to be the week that the White House was going to stay on message and focus on infrastructure, infrastructure, infrastructure. So today at the White House, President Trump held a signing ceremony and it was a signing ceremony for a memo expressing his support for a proposal to privatize the air traffic control system. A strongly worded letter. But when you're president of the United States, you can invite a lot of people over to the White House, do it in a very fancy room, hand pens out to lots of people as you sign this thing. That is, you know, that's part of the

presidential prerogative. That's part of the trappings. The bully pulpit. Yes, the bully pulpit, the trappings of the presidency. Tam, what is the argument for privatizing air traffic control? Why now? It's not something I've heard a lot of debate about. Well, and it turns out this is something that has been discussed going back as far as the 1990s and hasn't really been on a fast track, you could say. The argument that the administration is making is that the FAA, the Federal Aviation Administration, both runs the air traffic control system and is supposed to provide oversight for it. And so one of the arguments would be that you don't want the overseer also running the thing so that you would have better oversight if you just carved out all of the air traffic control functions from the FAA

and just left the FAA to regulate and oversee air traffic control and air traffic and other things in general, aviation more broadly. It's a pretty popular position among Republicans, right? chairman of the Transportation Committee, the Republican chairman in the House. And he had also been trying for this in past years as well. And what the president is proposing and supports is very similar to what Schuster had been pushing for. And that proposal was in a bill that Congress passed last year that reauthorized the FAA. It was in the House passed version of the bill to privatize air traffic control. When it got to the Senate, senators took it out because it was too controversial and it was going to hold up the underlying bill, which was too important and very bipartisan otherwise. Generalized support is different than the support of specifics. And that's where all legislation runs into more trouble.

OK, so we are about to take a quick break. But speaking of specifics and complications, Sue, you have been checking in on the status of the plan to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, which is over on the Senate side now. How goes it? It's not going great. And we'll probably have a better sense maybe as early as tomorrow as to which way this is going. Senators were gone all last week. They were home for the Memorial Day recess. They're coming back into session tonight. And on Tuesday at their weekly luncheon meeting, I'm told by many sources that they're going to have a conversation.

They're going to have a pulse check with their colleagues and say, you know, look, here are our options and here are the decisions we have to make. Multiple people I've talked to, Senate sources say they are increasingly viewing June as sort of the make or break month for health care. It's either going to happen or they really are going to move on this time. And it's June now. Well, you know, in the beginning of the year, when the House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell back at the Republican retreat laid out what they wanted this year to look like, President Trump was supposed to have signed their repeal-replace bill in early April. So they're already running way behind schedule. And we're now approaching the halfway mark of the year where Republicans really haven't sent the president any major legislative achievements. And that is increasingly frustrating to Republicans here. And, you know, there still isn't a bill in the Senate that can get 51 votes. Is there a bill, period? working and discussing what they want to do. But those discussions have mainly just stayed in the

camp of, OK, we really don't like the House bill and here's why. They haven't really evolved to this is what we're going to do about it. And they don't have easy answers to any of those questions. And if they are at an impasse and they do not think that they can get answers to those questions, I am increasingly being told that there is a possibility and there is a real chance that they just put the closest approximation to the House bill on the Senate floor and let the votes fall where they may. And yes, that means they might just vote down the bill and say health care on Republican votes alone can't happen. And we need to address the problems in the system with Democratic buy in. Isn't this kind of always what happens in some respects that the schedule, the best laid plans in Congress wind up taking a couple extra months?

It's a little like infrastructure, right? Absolutely. Oh, you mean like, oh, but we forgot to put the drywall in the bid. Absolutely. And like Congress, you know, they never run on time and they usually only do things when they're up against deadlines. The deadlines that are coming up are unrelated to health care, but they're real and they're fast approaching. You know, the fiscal year ends at the end of September. They need to work out a new budget.

They want to start moving on tax reform. They need to figure out their spending levels for next year. And Treasury Secretary Mnuchin has already asked Congress to take a very tough vote in July to raise the debt ceiling, which is the federal borrowing limit, which is a tough, tough vote for Republicans. And I think it is increasingly the view of Republican leaders and chairmen to say, either we need to solve this health care puzzle, we need to vote on what we can vote on or let fail a bill that we can't pass and move on. And I don't think that means we'll never touch health care again. I think it would just be a recognition that using this budget reconciliation process, this process that only allows for Republican votes to pass legislation, gets around the Democratic filibuster, but also puts really tight restrictions on what they can do isn't going to work. And that health care is too big and too complex a problem to do on their votes

alone. And that a lot of them increasingly don't want to politically entirely own the health care vote, that they don't think it is a good process to do this without any Democratic buy-in. I mean, is that a real thing, though? I mean, working with Democrats, not just on health care, but I mean, they're probably going to need Democratic votes on the debt ceiling. I mean, John Boehner's needed it, right? Yeah. And traditionally, spending bills on the debt ceiling. I mean, John Boehner's needed it, right? And traditionally, spending bills on the debt ceiling are bipartisan votes. You know, the health care question is really interesting. And hypothetically, let's say the Senate does not move forward on the health care bill.

Let's say they don't come up with the votes. And they say, well, we're going to have to do it with Democratic buy-in. That would tacitly be Republicans acknowledging that Obamacare is the law of the land. Oh, wait. I remember one who said that. Paul Ryan. Paul Ryan said that. When the House failed the first time.

But in order to get Democrats to the table, Republicans would have to acknowledge that repeal is off the table, that it would be about repair. And I think you have some Senate Republicans, Tennessee's Lamar Alexander is one, who has in past statements kind of hinted that that may be OK, that maybe it's a repair mission, not a repeal and replace mission. Yeah, that'll play well. Now, I would also say this, a lot of Senate sources that I've talked to have said, look, it doesn't look good right now. There's nothing that has 51 votes. No one's feeling particularly optimistic. But again, people didn't think the House was going to come back and vote on this issue and pass it either. I don't think we can undercut the still strong prevailing wins in the Republican Party that they need to act on this issue.

And do something. I don't know where that pressure plays. And people I've talked to said they wanted senators to go home for a week and get a sense of what they were hearing back home and have a little family meeting tomorrow. And we may have a better sense when they're coming out of that meeting, whether they're ready to just, you know, have this fight and vote or if they're ready to move on. All right. Well, this will not be our last conversation about this. Definitely not. It is the end of our conversation about it for now. We are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, some of your questions. All right, we're back. Thank you for writing us with your questions and comments at NPR politics at NPR dot org. We get a lot of notes there and wish we could answer all of your questions, but it does help us to hear what you're curious about. So thank you guys so very much. The first question today comes from Linda, who emailed.

She writes, I keep wondering, since Trump had wanted a 90-day travel ban so his administration could examine and strengthen our vetting practices, what has Trump's team actually done in this regard so far? Thanks for all your great reporting and commentary, Linda. In short, the travel ban executive order called for a total review of the screening and vetting processes and information sharing arrangements with basically every country in the world. That review was put on hold along with the rest of the executive order by the ruling out of Hawaii. As a result, the Trump administration has not made any progress on that part of it. However, when it comes to extreme vetting, that has started. And I'm looking here at a new form,

the Supplemental Questions for Visa Applicants form that is newly released and newly out, and it includes a section for social media. Please provide your unique username for any websites or applications you have used to create or share content, photos, videos, status updates, etc. as part of a public profile within the last five years. Wow. So in short, extreme vetting is beginning, is happening, is in process. But the rest of the stuff that is in the travel ban or whatever we're allowed to call it now has not happened.

And as always, watch what you tweet. Okay. On to our next question. It's an email from Dave in Kansas who writes, NPR Politics podcast team, I have two questions regarding the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel in the Russia investigation. One, isn't every counsel special, each in their own unique way? Aw. Is that like the Stuart Smalley rule of counsels? They're good enough. They're smart enough. Okay. That was cute.

And two, how is this going to change the investigation already underway by the FBI as well as the investigations by the House and Senate? Well, I can take a crack at that, Dave. Please. So Mueller's special counsel runs his own special investigative team. They report only to Mueller and they conduct an independent investigation. The way that's different from what Congress is doing and the intelligence committees in the House and Senate continue their investigations, the questions Congress will likely have to confront is, if they draw any conclusions, should the U.S. level sanctions against Russia? Is there any legislative action they can do there? Should our laws change?

Should our laws change? Should any, and if they were to uncover in their own investigation any legal wrongdoing, then Congress would refer that to the FBI. The FBI and Mueller's special Mueller's special counsel is conducting a criminal investigation. Did anybody break the law? What that is focused on is potential allegations of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian officials, any kind of element of legal wrongdoing. Congress can't prosecute. They have no ability to prosecute. The FBI does now where they kind of overlap, there are some obvious

elements of overlap. They want to talk to some of the same people. James Comey is a very good example of one of those people. Jared Kushner, probably. Another good example of those people. Michael Flynn, another good example. What I would say is traditionally, Congress is very deferential to the FBI or to special counsels when they're conducting an ongoing criminal investigation. Now, that does not mean that they don't get to talk to those people. And proof of that is James Comey coming to talk to Congress this week. But they are deferential if Mueller were to say, can you slow down on this? Can you not talk to them just yet? Can you not ask for this information just yet? Because we're kind of in the middle of it. One good example of that is the Comey memos

that Congress has requested that any memos that James Comey wrote as FBI director detailing his interactions with the president, they want to take a look at them. Mueller essentially told Congress, yeah, I'm going to hold off on sending you those memos. And Congress essentially said, OK, we'll wait for them. Does that mean they're never going to get them? Probably not. But there was no pushback to Mueller for that request. Yeah. I mean, the FBI investigation is going to supersede anything that Congress does. Yes. And one little coda on Comey. He is testifying Thursday before the Senate Intelligence Committee. There had been some question about whether President Trump might try to invoke executive privilege to prevent Comey from testifying.

Or attempt to. Yeah. Or attempt to. Because, or attempt to, because it was not a clear legal situation regardless. But today, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that the president will not try to get in the way of Comey's testimony, which means Thursday, which also happens to be the day of our next podcast. So much for Infrastructure Week. Yeah, exactly. So much for Infrastructure Week.

Okay. We have a question here from 13-year-old Zoe. And Zoe, thank you for listening. She had a bunch of questions, so we picked just a few. She writes, is the entire House up for election? Yes. How many seats in the Senate are up for election? One third. Right. This time there's actually 32 seats that are up for reelection and Republicans have a 52-48

majority. But Democrats are largely on defense with 23 Democrats up, nine Republicans only. And a lot of those Democrats are in moderate or right-leaning states. And we are talking about 2018. Yes, we are, in fact, already talking about 2018. Every two years, a third of the Senate is up for reelection. And the entire House. And which is why they're constantly fundraising, especially on the House side. It's just like a constant dash for cash because they're also always running for office. And Zoe's third question, what are the chances that the Democrats take back the House? That's the billion dollar question. Yes, I will now step away and let you guys answer that.

You know, Republicans hold a 241 to 194 advantage in the House. Democrats need to pick up 24 seats to take back the House. Fun fact here, there are 23 Republicans representing districts that Hillary Clinton won. So that's one short of the 24 that Democrats need. So even in that case, even if Democrats were to pick up every single one that Hillary Clinton had won, then they would still need to move into some of those more moderate leaning districts, which is why a race like the June 20th runoff in Georgia 6 in the 6th congressional district there is being so hotly watched as a potential bellwether, although I'm very cautious to say anything is a bellwether because there are plenty of races represent districts that Donald Trump won. So you split the difference and that's actually about how many seats people at this point are saying Democrats will likely pick up.

But you never know how things go between now and next year. Well, Democrats also have history on their side, which is that the party in the White House historically loses elections in midterms. And so they have that going for them, although I always feel like in the Trump era, historical precedents don't seem to apply anymore. And one of the things that early polls and these special elections have shown us as indicators is that there's a lot of enthusiasm on the Democratic side. And that is not something you usually see from Democrats in midterm elections. The traditional Republican voter, older, whiter voters tend to show up much in much higher numbers for midterms than Democratic voters, too. So it's a really

interesting mix. And I always say, you know, of course, you really need good candidates or good candidates matter. And it's just way too early in the cycle to know who's running and who they're running against and who's any good and who's any good. So there's a lot there's still a lot of things that can change between now and 2018. But what these kinds of environments can help to do for at least Democrats right now, because Donald Trump is facing so many headwinds and so many bad headlines, is it can help to recruit some of those top tier candidates. Sue's point about how many seats a first term president's party usually loses on average, going back to World War Two, it's twenty nine seats, which is five more than Democrats need currently. But Democrats have actually won fewer than that as an average. And I think with things getting so partisan and being drawn differently, that's still a high number to think of.

And you're talking about like the way the districts are drawn. Correct. Correct. Yeah. OK, moving on to this question, which we heard a lot of last week. This one comes from Shelly. She emailed. I understand that the United States withdrawal from the Paris Accord cannot officially take place until around the date of the election in 2020. Can a new president, if we were to elect one, reverse Trump's decision and reenter the Paris

Accord under the original terms? Thank you so much, Shelly. new president, if we were to elect one, reverse Trump's decision and reenter the Paris accord under the original terms. Thank you so much, Shelley. Easy answer. Yes. That's it. Moving on. Yeah, moving along. The only thing I would add is that a bunch of European leaders put out a statement last week saying that, no, President Trump, you cannot renegotiate Paris. But in this case, if the new president, if there is a new president were to say, yeah, that's cool. Let's go back to that. Reset the clock. They would say, we welcome you back into the fold. Because it's voluntary, right? Yeah, the whole thing is voluntary. Every aspect of it is voluntary. The Paris Accord is basically the peer pressure model of carbon reduction.

And we know Democrats want to make it an issue. The Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz, who's the Democrat from Hawaii, he tweeted in response last week to the president's decision that climate change is on the ballot in every election between now and 2020. And it seems like a pretty sure bet that whoever the Democratic nominee is going to be is going to make this an issue as well. OK, one last question today from Meredith, who wrote, many people are saying Trump has been making decisions to appeal to his base. But how big is his base really? If only 25 percent of the country voted for him and his actual ride or die supporters are only a fraction of that.

Is it smart politically to make decisions to appeal to this minority of the country? Thanks for all your hard work, Meredith. My first question, guys, is are her numbers right? Well, let me give you some numbers here. The number of registered voters in the United States hit 200 million for the first time last October, 200 million, 81,000 or so. 137 million of them voted in this past election. 62.9 or about 63 million of those voted for Donald Trump. That is, if you do your math quickly on the back of your envelope, that's 31 percent of all registered voters. So not too far off, Meredith. So clearly, that's not a majority of voters. However, we're in a different kind of partisan era of politics.

It seems that that middle is shrinking and that there isn't really a persuadable voter as much as there is the need to motivate your base. And what Republicans talked about in their campaign managers follow up at Harvard late last year was they talked about how Trump's base was made of titanium. And you've still sort of seen that in this election. I was during the primary that they just couldn't break into that base of voters. And you're seeing that still, you know, there are these different realities that people live in. And, you know, there are a couple polls that have shown a bit of softening with Donald Trump's base, but it's not overwhelming. And his drop in approval is actually quite smaller than a lot of other past presidents.

Part of that is because he started so much lower than other past presidents. But anybody who thinks that Donald Trump's base is going to turn away from him, it's unlikely. And because these elections have become so much about motivating those bases, that's the play that they're making. It's almost like he could shoot somebody in the middle of Fifth Avenue and people would still vote for him. Someone said that once. I forget who it was. People are saying. Many people. Okay, we are going to wrap it up there. Make sure you're downloading Up First each weekday morning for more political news and more of our voices. And find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at NPR Politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico

Montanaro, political editor. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.