The NPR Politics Podcast - Mixed Messages In Trump's Response To Abuse Allegations

Episode Date: February 13, 2018

By many accounts, the White House is still in turmoil after the resignation last week of a top aide over domestic abuse allegations. Over the weekend, President Trump took to Twitter to issue what looked to many to be a defense of Rob Porter. It's not the first time Trump has shown sympathy for a man accused of abuse. Also, the NPR podcast EMBEDDED is coming out with two new episodes on the Russia investigation — the timeline, collusion, and obstruction of justice. This episode, host/congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson, with a guest appearance from EMBEDDED host Kelly McEvers. 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

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By many accounts, the White House is still in turmoil this week after the resignation of a top aide over domestic abuse allegations. Over the weekend, President Trump took to Twitter to issue what looked to many to be a defense of Rob Porter. He said, quote, people's lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. weekend, President Trump took to Twitter to issue what looked to many to be a defense of Rob Porter. He said, quote, people's lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. It's not the first time the president has shown sympathy for a man being accused of abuse, and we will talk about that. And if you're constantly confused by the latest twists of the Russia investigation, Embedded is here to help. The NPR podcast has new episodes out

focusing on collusion, obstruction of justice and everything else. And we will talk to Kelly McEvers about it. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. We talked last week on the Thursday podcast about Rob Porter, the White House staff secretary who resigned after two of his ex-wives said publicly that he had emotionally and physically abused them. Notably, one of them had photographic evidence. Over the weekend, another White House staffer,

a member of the speechwriting team, also resigned over domestic abuse allegations, though he has since put out a statement saying his wife was the one who was abusive, not him. And we should say here that Rob Porter denies these allegations, as do a lot of the men we're talking about here in various circumstances what they're accused of. But almost more than the allegations themselves, it's the White House's response that has stirred up a lot of criticism and turmoil. First, there's the fact that Porter remained in his position for as long as he did once the FBI began uncovering this in a background investigation. But what we're mostly going to talk about today is the public statements of support, first from Chief of Staff John Kelly and then from President Trump. So here's Trump being asked about Porter on Friday. Well, we wish him well. He worked very hard. I found out about it recently, and I was surprised by it.

But we certainly wish him well. It's a obviously tough time for him. He did a very good job when he was in the White House. And we hope he has a wonderful career. And hopefully he will have a great career ahead of him. But it was very sad when we heard about it, and certainly he's also very sad. Now, he also, as you probably know, he says he's innocent,

and I think you have to remember that. He said very strongly yesterday that he's innocent. So you'll have to talk to him about that. But we absolutely wish him well. Did a very good job while he was at the White House. Thank you very much. A lot in there. Yeah. A couple of things stand out to me in this. One, there was no mention of the women or any concern for those who might have been affected by this other than Rob Porter. Also, how this was in complete conflict with the massive shift that the White House had made over the previous 24 hours, where they admitted that they had mishandled how things had gone down with Rob Porter, where they said we could have handled it better, where they were trying to distance themselves, insisting, no, we fired him. We you know, he didn't resign. We said go away. And then the other thing is just sort of

the parallel language here, the similarities in the way that sounded to the way President Trump has talked about other things. Daniel. Right. Well, and on top of that, like to at the risk of stating the obvious, I mean, in this statement, he first of all, like Porter was the central focus of this statement. It was all about him. When abuse did come up, the word abuse did not. Like not only did the victims not, even any description of the allegations didn't come up. Instead, what Trump said, I have the quote right here. We found out about it recently and I was surprised by it, but we certainly wish him well.

So he says it. That it carries a lot within it. And he does not expand upon that. Aside from that, you know, he makes Porter into the victim here. It's not that what Porter allegedly did that is sad here. It's that it's what is happening to Porter that is sad here. Now, Mara, we're going to talk at length about this response and how similar it is to other ways President Trump has responded in the past when there were allegations. But first, this is a big story in the White House for a lot of different reasons. What have we learned over the weekend about when President Trump, when Chief of Staff Kelly, other top staffers learned these details and the choices they made?

Right. Well, this has a lot of layers to it. One of the layers is just a basic competence question. When did White House officials know about these allegations? Before they became public. This is not unlike the General Flynn story. He only got fired after it became a news story. Then there's the question about how White House officials like Chief of Staff John Kelly talked about it and how they represented what they knew when they knew it and how that story keeps on shifting. Did he resign or was he terminated? Both of those. There's still no clarity. There's still no clarity. And for the

president, at least in a tweet, to bemoan the fact that there's no due process, well, then why was he fired? And as you said, this is very, very similar to the way he talked about Roger Ailes or Bill O'Reilly or Judge Roy Moore. You know, these guys all protested their innocence and the president stuck by them. He generally has a pretty partisan attitude towards these kinds of allegations. If it's a Democrat being accused of abuse, he piles on with tons of tweets, for instance, about Al Franken. And Weinstein. And Weinstein, Harvey Weinstein.

All right. So we mentioned the tweet up top, and I'm just going to read it again. This was over the weekend after that first Statement Friday. People's lives are being shattered and destroyed by a mere allegation. Some are true, some are false, some are old, and some are new. There's no recovery for someone falsely accused. Life and career are gone. Is there no recovery for someone falsely accused. Life and career are gone. Is there no such thing any longer as due process? So that's that's his tweet over the weekend. But then, of course, the Sunday shows happened. Tam, how did White House officials address this and what did they say compared to what President Trump was saying? And it's not 100 percent clear. I mean,

it was taken by all of us that, you know, he had two aides resign or be fired or whatever it was over the last 48 hours. He must be talking about them. Trump's surrogates on TV largely said, of course, there is no tolerance for domestic violence in this White House or beyond. It's not OK in our society. And Kellyanne Conway added that she believes the accusers. I was horrified and I was also very shocked. It's as many people have noted, Jake, this is not the Rob Porter we've worked with in the White House. And but once you see the allegations as put forth, once you see the photographic evidence, the contemporaneous police reports, as you say, speaking to the FBI,

it was very clear that Rob resigned very swiftly and was out the very next day out of the White House. And I think people should look at the result as to how this is handled. What is the result here? The result is that one week ago, Rob Porter was a top aide to President Trump. And today he's out of the White House. You know, that that's as good a positive story that you can tell, because people that I talk to who are supporters of the president, outside advisors, uniformly thought the White House did a terrible job of handling this. I haven't heard anybody defend the way the White House handled this. I would add, I mean, the White House itself acknowledged that it could have handled this better. Raj Shah last week on Thursday said, quote, I think it's fair

to say that we all could have done better over the last few hours or last few days in dealing with this situation. I mean, the White House itself seemed to be seemed to willingly admit, yeah, we bungled this. Yeah. But but Danielle, the things that Trump said both on tape and in that tweet, there's a lot of parallels there to things he said before about other circumstances. Yeah, he has a history of siding with men who have been accused of some sort of abuse or sexual misconduct, that sort of thing. He doesn't always side with the men, but he often does. So Roy Moore, for example, when Roy Moore was accused of sexual misconduct against minors, Trump said, well, he denies it. You know, he totally denies it. And one quote was, and, you know, you have to listen to him also, which sounded remarkably like what he said this week. So the best part about we went back and found that clip and the thing that's really

stunning about that clip is that it was one of these President Trump about to head out of town and he stops to talk to reporters. this was in november he was first asked about roy moore and then somebody asked him about the me too movement and we're just gonna i think we can play the whole clip because it's not that long yeah and it's just it's kind of a remarkable non-pivot or pivot or i don't know whatever it is is. Juxtaposition. Juxtaposition. That's the word. OK, let's take a listen. He let me just tell you, Roy Moore denies it. That's all I can say. He denies it. And by the way, he totally denies it. Go ahead. So here he's asked about the Me Too movement and whether he believes women. Women are very special. I think it's a very special time because a lot of things are coming out. And I think that's good for our society. And I think it's very, very good for women. And I'm

very happy a lot of these things are coming out. And I'm very happy. I'm very happy it's being exposed. And you could hear a question about Al Franken there. The Al Franken stuff was out at the same time. Right. I should add, it's should add, it's not just those people that he has defended in the past. He has defended Roger Ailes from Fox News, Bill O'Reilly from Fox News. Just to point out, this is a longish history of defending people who have been accused of this. And in many of these cases, denied it themselves. But this is what he has done. And you asked what else was similar between some of these things. One is this whole idea of who the victim is. In this tweet over the weekend, this whole due process tweet, you know,

Donald Trump seemed to say he did say that these men are, their lives can be taken down with a mere accusation, right? And so what he's doing is he's shifting the blame. He's shifting the victimhood onto the men and away from the women who are accusing it. He even had this one quote that he said on the campaign trail that really I've been thinking about all weekend in terms of this. He said, all of the men were petrified to speak to women anymore. We may raise our voice. You know what? The women got it better than we do, folks.

They got it better than we do. Once again, now the women have the dominant position. We men are the victims. This is Donald Trump 101. So, Mara, a lot of different accusations in the air here. We're talking in this case about domestic violence. There's other sexual assault allegations, sexual misconduct allegations. But on all of these things, I mean, how much can you or can't you separate the fact that Trump himself has been accused by dozens of women of sexual misconduct, sexual assault? I don't think you can separate it at all. And many people have suggested that this is one of the reasons that he sticks to such a disciplined line on men who've been accused, because he also has denied the accusations against him. He famously threatened during the campaign that he was going to sue every single one of the women who accused him. He hasn't sued any of them. But sure. And those things are very closely intertwined. It's one of the reasons why some people think that there will be a political price for Donald Trump and the Republican Party to play with female voters. Now, he's not on that. I don't know. He's not on the ballot for

another couple of years. I think that one of the reasons that you saw Democrats go to extremes, some Democrats think they went too far to kind of heave over the side any Democrat that had been accused of sexual impropriety so they could have the, quote, moral high ground to prosecute this case against the president, is that they think that they will be able to make some political gains with women. And as a matter of fact, there is a theory that some of President Trump's deficits right now with women, in other words, his approval ratings have dropped and he's lost support among women, are because of these kinds of issues. Back to the political question, if I could go there.

During the campaign, near the end of the campaign, I did this story about all of these like very misogynistic things that President Trump was saying about Hillary Clinton. Of which there were many. Of which there were many. And there were also, you know, signs and T-shirts with some pretty crude things about Hillary Clinton calling her the B word. And they were aftermarket. They were not produced by the Trump campaign themselves or endorsed by the Trump campaign. But they were there and they were very much part of a number of including Republicans. Now they were sort of anti-Trump Republicans. But I talked to a number of Republicans who were like, this is a huge problem. Donald Trump is going to lose women. And if Donald Trump loses women, then but he won white women. And so all of the talk that he is just going to lose, it's going to be terrible. There, you know, people do not vote based on gender. People vote based on party. Those white women, they've supported Republicans in the past. They supported Romney, for example. They supported Trump. And so, you know, perhaps a shift was expected, but this may just show just how strong partisanship is. That said, you know, I've been out reporting on gender, on women, in both parties going ahead to this election, and women on the Democratic side are on giving. Like, as long as things like

this, the Rob Porter thing, the Sorensen thing, keep happening, like, I have more fuel. Now, you could argue that whosever mind has changed has already changed. But at the very least, this does not help you if you're Donald Trump. The one thing I want to add here is this on the domestic violence stuff. I was looking into the numbers today. This is not purely theoretical for a lot of Americans. One in four women in their lifetimes will experience some sort of intimate partner violence. One in seven men will. It feels gross to take something of this gravity and bring it into the political arena, I realize. But this is a harsh reality for many Americans. And so

that is a painful scar. When you see the president, if you perceive that he is making light of it, you know, the personal is political. There's a reason that's a cliche. That is not going to endear him to you. Now, Mara, I wanted to ask you about this. There's an article in Bloomberg View over the last few days from Michael Lewis. The great Michael Lewis. The great Michael Lewis, one of my favorite writers. Me too. Me too. So big, big Michael Lewis fans here on the podcast. So he, in part of this article on Trump, he's talking to Steve Bannon and Lewis writes about how Steve Bannon in nothing else

understood anger, rage, the gut motivations that drive people to the polls. That's what motivated so many people to show up for Donald Trump. And Bannon thinks that the Me Too movement is real and has real political implications. And he told Michael Lewis, quote, I think it's going to unfold like the Tea Party, only bigger. It's not just Me Too. It's not just sexual harassment. It's an anti-patriarchy movement. Time's up on 10,000 years of recorded history. This is coming. This is real. Bannon-esque quote.

I don't know. If you're a pollster, you have to wait for grandiosity. I'm not exactly sure how you do that. But if you discount the standard Bannon grandiosity and his love of making sweeping historical generalizations and pronouncements, look, he's onto something. He thinks that this has hit a real chord with women. I think we can leave it at that and agree with him. OK, 10,000 years of the patriarchy is coming to an end. Hmm. Not so sure. But on the flip side of that, I was talking to a woman in charge of a Republican group that's in charge of recruiting women and supporting them. And what she told me was she thinks that if the Me Too movement, if women on the left are perceived

as too angry, now take that however you will, that some voters will be turned off by that, will think that the Me Too movement is overplaying its hand in her words. And what's so interesting about that is that the Rob Porter story, and of course, Trump's comments, which kept it alive in a not positive way, according to many Republicans, came right at the exact moment that the Me Too movement was experiencing a kind of backlash and rethinking, that it had gone too far, that it had ignored due process, that it was lumping together a whole range of activities, not all of which are sexual predation or assault. So, you know, there's a lot

of things happening in this discussion. But as long as President Trump wants to keep it on the level of domestic violence, on which there is not much of an argument, he's doing himself, and this is what many Republicans think a disservice. And again, like Danielle, like you said, it does feel gross to talk in political raw terms. But the disclaimer on such things, we are the politics podcast. But Mara, you said this comes at a point when when Me Too was seeing some real backlash in some quarters. It also comes at a time when President Trump was seeing his approval level go up, particularly with Republicans. It comes at a time when people are seeing the tax cuts come in and the bonuses from the companies and the overall state of the economy, and especially Republican voters saying, you know what? Yeah, sure. Right

now I'm fine with Donald Trump. Right. See, this is a really interesting question. In Washington, we have this constant conversation. The president has stepped on his message. The president's talking positively about someone who's been accused of domestic assault at a time when the rest of the Republican Party wants to talk about the tax cuts and the fact they're getting more popular and the economy and the fact that it's not only doing fine, but more voters are experiencing it that way. I don't know if the conversation in Washington totally obliterates those things as they're being felt by people outside of Washington. I truly don't know. Republicans in Washington would really like it if the president only talked about the tax cuts and about the economy and never waded into these other controversies. The president likes to be

at the center of any controversy. He thinks all publicity is good publicity. That's his driving instinct. But I think that we are at a time when we saw all sorts of political indicators finally breaking to the benefit of the Republicans. In other words, one of the biggest questions has been, how can this guy be so unpopular if the economy is doing so well? And people think it is because usually a president's approval ratings track with the economy. And it looked like finally his were going to get more in sync with the economy. I don't know what the effect of the Rob Porter story will have on that. Right.

All right. So we are going to take a quick break now. Danielle and Mara are leaving us. Thanks to both of you. Thank on that. Right. All right. So we are going to take a quick break now. Danielle and Mara are leaving us. Thanks to both of you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. And when we come back, Tam and I will be here and we will be talking to Kelly McEvers, who has a new couple episodes of Embedded Out, digging all into the Russia investigation.

What does it take to start something from nothing? And what does it take to actually build it? I'm Guy Raz. Every week on How I Built This, I speak with founders behind some of the most inspiring companies in the world. Find it on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, we're back. And we have a special guest with us now from NPR West, Kelly McEvers, host of the Embedded podcast. Hey, Kelly.

Hey. podcast hey Kelly hey so I am really excited about this latest season of embedded because every couple weeks on the podcast we have our this week in Russia segment where Ryan or Carrie come on and explain it to us and this for them I still think we need music for it but I do too but I think we've we've lost that battle but like I semi-professionally follow this you know peripherally and I'm confused every week. I'm like, wait, who's that guy? What's that? When do we learn that? So luckily you have a few episodes that are very detailed,

all about this whole Russia Trump thing, as Trump famously put it at one point. But you're looking at the obstruction issue and you're also looking at the collusion issue and just how long Trump's ties to Russia go back. Yeah, I mean, I think the idea for the whole thing was like, we follow this professionally, like you said, and even we sometimes are like scratching our head being like, wait a second, how does this all fit in? I feel like everyone from like Uber drivers to like people I'm related to are always like, what's going to happen? You're like, okay, so it all goes back to 1986. You know what I mean? And then I was like, well, you know, I think we at Embedded were like, what if we just did that in podcast form? What if we just sort of told the story as we know it, everything that we know up to now, everything that's on the record.

And we quickly became clear that we needed to split it into two, right? Things that happened before Donald Trump got elected, which would be sort of fall under the, quote, collusion category, and things that happened after he was elected during the transition period and then after he was inaugurated, which would fall under the, quote, obstruction of justice category. So we split them into two and we're laying it all out. Yeah, I mean, I think that to me, the thing that's really interesting about this story is that, you know, we watch it unfold in little bits and pieces. Yeah. And there are things that a year and a half ago seemed very different than they seem now. Yes. And in the broader context that you bring to it in the podcast. Right. You'll get a headline, right? That's like, oh, my gosh, now we know that the president told his White House counsel to fire somebody. And like, if you don't actually know how that fits in with what has happened over the months and like different conversations that

happened in different testimony, sometimes you can just sort of get lost in it all. So we felt like we were doing like a service for ourselves and for people listening to just put it all in one place. And I think a perfect example of something that you don't make much of at the time and then only later is it viewed in a much different context is something you spent a few minutes on. And that is a 2013 Miss Universe competition. Yes. That took place in Russia that clearly did not have many political implications at the time. But now you think about it a little bit differently. Right.

I mean, there's so many things to think about. Right. The obvious one, the elephant in the room is this dossier that has not been verified by NPR or other news organizations. It has all kinds of allegations about what happened that weekend. But that's not the only thing about that weekend in Moscow. Right. It's who's there.

You know, the Agalarov family, Emin and Aras Agalarov. Aras Agalarov is this Russian Azeri oligarch. And Emin, his son, who's a pop star, is the person who later goes on to set up this kind of infamous meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian attorney and several other Russians, one who works as a lobbyist, with this offer to Donald Trump Jr. of, quote, dirt on Hillary Clinton. And Donald Trump Jr. responds in an email saying, if it's what you say, I love it. Right. And so it's like if you know how these people connect back, it sort of helps you get more context. Yeah. So it's the same cast of characters involved in a key moment in this investigation,

but also in a music video with an Apprentice-type theme in the middle of it. With a bunch of Miss Universe pageants. Starring Miss Universe contestants who were required to be in this video, but weren't paid for it, reportedly, according to the New York Times. They spoke to Miss USA, who told them that she had to be in that video, and didn't get paid for it. Yeah. Wake him up right now.

Eamon, wake up. Come on. What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you, Eamon? Eamon, let's get with it. You're always late. You're just another pretty face. I'm really tired of you. You're fired. There's a lot that happens that weekend, and it's really interesting. Trump reportedly know, Russian businessmen. And then at the end of that weekend, right, what does he tweet? Trump Tower Moscow is next. Right. And so there's this thought that going back for a really long time, there has been this kind of reciprocal interest. There's been interest on the part of the Russians to cultivate him, according to a lot of the sources in our piece. And there's been interest in Donald Trump to do business with Russia. And it's that relationship that worries people. That's sort of the key or that's the kind of the heart of this investigation. What is that relationship? Does that relationship involve any kind of criminal conspiracy to then influence an election? And you don't reach any conclusions. On that? Nope. I mean, I think Robert Mueller is the one who's got the answers. Yeah.

Yeah. He knows and we don't. And maybe he doesn't even know at this point. On collusion, which isn't actually a crime, as Ryan Lucas so wonderfully explains in our episode, it's like it's all about coordination. And like, you know, is there a criminal conspiracy to coordinate with the foreign power? It sounds like it's a pretty high bar to establish that kind of criminal situation. But yeah, at this point, I just don't think we just don't know. So one last thing that you got to, your podcast ends with an interview with Jay Johnson, former Homeland Security Secretary. And I've heard him talk about this at congressional hearings, and he talked to you about it as well. It's kind of this scoldy Jay Johnson take that I tried to warn you and you, the media, failed and it's your fault.

Yeah. Yeah. His line is like when the U.S. government started to realize how much Russian intelligence was doing to hack the Democratic National Committee, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, John Podesta's emails. And then what he calls scanning and probing of state electoral databases. They didn't necessarily do anything, but they were scanning and probing as if either to show that they could or just to see how far they could get. When they started to realize this, he's like, it was a big deal. Like, fireworks started going off inside different agencies. Like, oh, uh-oh,

what's happening? I mean, he later calls it a cyber Pearl Harbor. And such a big deal that he posted a press release on a Friday afternoon on a website. Right. And so what, yeah. So he's saying, on the one hand, he's saying it's like this huge deal that this was happening right in the summer and fall of 2016. But yet the Obama administration doesn't say anything about it for a long time. They don't say anything about it until October 2016, just a few weeks before the election. And when they do say something about it, it's a press release on a Friday afternoon on the website of the Director of National Intelligence. Like, not a website that everyone's checking all the time, right? I mean, once you knew it was out there, it was out there. Okay, so this day, when this was released, is also the day. What happens? Access Hollywood. The Access Hollywood video. Yes, right.

And John Podesta's emails start coming out. And John Podesta's emails get released. All of this happens on the same day. And he's like, you know, we put out this statement. We've been, you know, we sounded the alarm bells. And you guys, you guys were so focused on the sex and the greed and the lust. I expected that our statement would be big news, possibly even full banner headline above the fold in both the Times and the Post. I was surprised and a little disappointed the next morning to see that it was below the fold news in both newspapers because of the Access Hollywood video.

Basically, the press went off to the other corner of the pasture after the story about sex, greed, and lust. That you didn't cover it. It should have been above the fold. And, you know, it's like, I don't know. I mean, look, I understand their position, too. It's like, you've got this very polarized, obviously, campaign. And you have a candidate who preemptively is saying that the election is going to be rigged. And almost everybody in the Obama administration probably was assuming Hillary Clinton would win. Everybody was probably assuming that Hillary Clinton would win.

So, like, you let the election go by, then you do the investigations, then you look into this, then you figure it all out. Like, knowing all of these things, fair enough. But also, like, don't just, I mean, as Ryan Lucas says, I think a lot of people who covered this in Washington at the time were like, you know, if you really wanted to make a big splash about this, then there are other ways to do it than to put it on a website on a Friday afternoon. Yeah. And, you know, it wasn't until after the election that the administration, the Obama administration, which was still in place before the inauguration, right, in this transition period, you know, finally orders a review and gets all the agencies to sit down yes, Russian intelligence interfered, influenced an election in the United States of America.

Big deal. So all the stuff that we just talked about is in the episode that already posted in your feed and the embedded feed. You've got another episode coming out later this week. What does that gets into after the election, sort of after Donald Trump is elected, during his transition period, and then, of course, during his time as president, this question of whether or not he obstructed justice by doing, by trying to thwart the investigation into whether or not he and his campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election. So it's this really interesting thing, right? Even if there was no crime committed whatsoever in terms of coordination with Russia, even if that turns up nothing, it's possible that another crime was committed in trying to cover up or thwart or slow down or influence that investigation. All right. Well, Kelly McEvers with Embedded, thank you for talking to us for a few

minutes. Thanks for having me, you guys. You can check out both of those episodes wherever you get your podcasts from NPR's Embedded. Thanks, guys. Bye. Bye. All right. So one other note somewhat related to all of this. Late on Friday, President Trump said he would not allow the release of a memo written by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee. This is the other memo written to rebut many of the points in the Republicans memo. Confused by the memos, we did several episodes. They are all about memos and you can listen back to them in your podcast feed. But as for this latest twist, Tam, Democratic response memo goes to the White House for declassification. President Trump says, I'd love to. I'd really love to, but I can't. I'm told it's classified. Yeah. And so here's the thing. The complaint with the Republican memo is that it was incomplete,

that it didn't paint a full picture. And Democrats in their rebuttal memo, which was longer than the Republican memo, say that they're trying to paint a fuller picture. Well, the FBI and the Justice Department had objections to the release of the Republican memo, and they also have objections to the release in full of that Democratic memo. So they have gone through that memo, marked up things that they have concerns about, and they are sending that back to the committee committee along with President Trump's letter that says, yeah, I wish I could. I totally wish I could, but I can't yet. So I guess that, you know, in the grand tradition of President Trump, we'll have to see what happens.

But we should say that many of these same officials from the FBI and other places objected to the release of the first memo for those same reasons. For those same reasons. And the president felt that there was a compelling reason to release it in full with no redactions and completely declassified the Republican memo. The Democratic memo, not so much. He is now claiming that the Democratic memo was written in such a way to force him to do this, to make him look bad. But given that he views the Republican memo as a vindication of his view that the entire Mueller investigation is a witch hunt. Why in the world would he want to release a Democratic memo that adds more context?

Exactly. Any idea what happens next? It goes back to the committee. I think that that committee, as we've discussed on this podcast before, is a utterly the House Intelligence Exactly. Any idea what happens next? you know, see eye to eye to find a way to release some portion of this memo that doesn't raise those red flags with the FBI and Justice Department. All that said, for all of their disagreements, the committee did vote unanimously to release this memo, the Democratic memo. So in theory, with that vote outstanding, there would be some political pressure for them to find a way to release at least part of it. OK. We'll see. As the president says, we'll see what happens.

We will see what happens. All right. I think that is enough Russia for all of our brains for one place today. Thanks again to Kelly McEvers for coming on and talking to us for a few minutes. You know where to find our podcast you can generally find Embedded in the same places in iTunes or wherever you get your podcast one of their episodes is up now the next one comes out on Thursday

we will also be back in your feed Thursday in the meantime you know where to find the rest of our coverage npr.org on your local public radio station and on the NPR One app another reminder if you live near Cleveland you can come see us live on Friday, February 23rd. We're doing a show at the Ohio Theater at Playhouse Square. I'll be there.

Tam will be there. A couple other people will be, too. Should be fun. And you can get your tickets at NPR Presents, all one word,.org. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.