The NPR Politics Podcast - More On Mueller, Zuckerberg And Landscape For 2018 Elections

Episode Date: April 13, 2018

There may be movement on legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation into the Trump campaign. Also in this episode, the latest on the landscape for the 2018 elections and Mark Zuckerberg's second day of testifying on Capitol Hill. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Tim Mak, editor correspondent Ron Elving and congressional reporter Kelsey Snell. 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 is Vivian from Las Vegas. I'm currently at San Francisco attending the JEA convention for high school journalists. This podcast was recorded at 2.17 p.m. on Thursday, the 12th of April. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at NPR.org, the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. Okay, enjoy the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news. It looks like there's some movement on legislation to protect special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation into the Trump campaign. Mark Zuckerberg spent a second day on Capitol Hill and got grilled about diamond and silk. And if you don't know

who they are, worry not, we're about to introduce you. Also, the latest on the landscape for the 2018 elections. And of course, can't let it go. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Tim Mack, political reporter. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And spring has sprung. And it is springing, especially in that sauna where Kelsey Snell is trying to participate from the booth in the Capitol. My tiny, tiny booth in

the Senate side of the U.S. Capitol. And by the way, a message to Vivian in Las Vegas, we know you're coming after our jobs. We welcome it. Bring the competition. Bring on the next generation. Okay, so earlier this week, we did an episode where we talked about the FBI raids on President Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. The president called it a witch hunt. And when asked by a reporter why he doesn't just fire Mueller, he responded, we'll see what happens, which is apparently both the president's favorite phrase and my favorite phrase now. Many Republicans have said that it would be a mistake for the president to fire Mueller. Here's Chris Christie. You can't you can't fire the special counsel.

You just can't. And Chuck Grassley, who is the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. I think it would be suicide for the president to fire him. I think the less the president says about this whole thing, the better off he will be. Of course, since those two men said those two things, there have been multiple tweets from the president. And he has not been saying, yeah, totally. I'm totally happy. Well, and he's also, as we know, watching a lot of Fox. And on Fox, there is an absolute wave of people coming on to suggest very strongly that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is the guy who appointed Mueller, should be fired because of the Mueller investigation, because of the going on into Michael Cohen's office in New York.

All of the things that have people upset who are defending President Trump. And among other things, you've got folks like Joe DiGenova, who is an attorney and a Fox News personality, saying that James Comey, the former FBI director, is a, quote, dirty cop. On the other hand, though, you have senators going to the president's second favorite medium, Twitter, and saying that this is a terrible idea. Senator Orrin Hatch tweeted, anyone advising the president in public or over the airwaves to fire Bob Mueller does not have the president or the nation's best interest at heart. Full stop. It is a contest. It is a contest for the mind of Donald Trump, and it is being conducted largely through Twitter and on Fox News. Absolutely. Kelsey, there is a bill now,

though, that seems to be making some motion moving toward something that that is designed to protect Mueller. Can you describe what this is and where it is and what's up with that? Earlier this week, a bipartisan group of senators, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Republican, Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, Tom Tillis, a Republican from North Carolina, and Cory Booker of New Jersey, a Democrat, introduced a bill that's called the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act. The idea is that it would protect Mueller by if he happened to be fired, there would be a 10 day window for Mueller to seek some sort of review. So he would be able to go through the courts very quickly to figure out if the firing was for good cause, which is necessary to fire the special counsel. Now, this has been an issue that they've been discussing for some time. There were two different versions of a bill that did similar things, but there were constitutional questions and whether or not you could actually pass a bill

like this and have it be upheld. And right now, where it sits is in the Senate Judiciary Committee. There was an effort today, Thursday, to start debating it, but there were objections from Democrats, from Dianne Feinstein, who didn't want to go forward until the full text of the bill was written. So it's important to note that this is still kind of being the final negotiations are not done on this bill. And part of the reason why is that constitutionality question. Senator Chuck Grassley, who runs the Judiciary Committee, put out a statement at the beginning of a committee hearing saying that the thing that they're kind of figuring out right now is if they can put in what's called a severability clause. And that would allow any provision of the bill that is found invalid in court to be stripped out of the bill without killing the rest of the bill.

Now, Feinstein has her own worries about this. She worries that it's going to be a watered down and kind of an ineffectual way of dealing with protecting Mueller. We won't really know how this all plays out until next week. But, you know, the thing that's really important to remember here is that leaders in the House and the Senate don't support this. So even if it gets out of the Senate Judiciary Committee, it's not entirely clear to me that it'll ever get a vote in the full Senate or where it would need to go first before it would go to the even more unlikely place for passage, which is the House. So one would say, perhaps, that what this is really all about is not changing the legislative restraint, the actual law. It's more about providing a certain amount of protective coloration for

those senators on the Republican side who would like to be willing, would like to be able, rather, to say, I voted for a bill that would have protected Robert Mueller. So don't look at me as some kind of terrible partisan. I'm actually willing to restrain the president from firing Bob Mueller. Since we know it's not going to actually happen, that's just about the only purpose it has. Yeah. And I've also heard people say that it serves a purpose of kind of sending a message to the president that there are people who are willing to put their name and their vote behind standing up to him, which is not something they frequently do up here.

True enough. Jeff Flake, who's a senator from Arizona, who's a Republican, he's a frequent critic of Trump. He's basically serving out his last year in the Senate. Are retiring and speaking his mind. He's speaking his mind. He would otherwise be a go-to vote on something like this, but he can't really quite come around to supporting this type of legislation. He's worried about the constitutionality

of it and whether or not this type of legislation to restrain the president is legal. Well, so is the constitutional question that the president is under under the Constitution, allowed to make executive decisions about the executive branch. And Mueller is part of the Department of Justice, which is part of the executive branch. So in theory, the president, could interfere with the president's decisions about people in the executive branch and then bring in the judicial branch to review it further. And that certainly any constitutional scholar would see that as at least problematic, maybe not insuperable, but problematic. Ron, does this compare to any other time or any other instance that like this? Do we have any historical context for whether or not this could fly? Surely there must be some time in history that this compares to.

I guess we could think in terms of the Watergate time, the Saturday Night Massacre, things of that nature when Congress has been outraged at the president's behavior with respect to firing people in the executive branch and has tried to do something about it. But really, the only thing they could ultimately do about it in the Watergate case was to impeach the president. Okay. I have one more question about, since we're talking about the Constitution, and many, many people have used the phrase constitutional crisis. If the president were to do this, this would be a constitutional crisis. Professor Elving, can we just once and for all define a constitutional crisis? And do you think these things count? There is no legal definition of a constitutional crisis. I would say that a

constitutional crisis is any time when the guidance of the Constitution seems to be insufficient, because you can't really tell how the Constitution would have dealt with a particular question that isn't explicitly dealt with in the Constitution. What do we do now, founders? The founders are not available. They can't tell us. And of course we have many people in the justice system, a lot of judges who feel they're pretty good at interpreting what the founders believed, and that's how we get strict constructionists. And we get people who say we should only go by the original framers intent.

And they seem to be pretty confident about what that was. But when we get to a point where people really can't tell what we do next, that's what we call a constitutional crisis. I guess we'll know it when we see it. Yes. Okay, Tim. That too is a quote from a Supreme Court justice. We'll know it when we see it. Yes. Okay, Tim. That, too, is a quote from a Supreme Court justice. We'll know it when we see it.

In reference to pornography. That was in reference to pornography, but I think it works pretty well. Let's move on. We'll move on to the next thing. Yes. Although, actually, I think we have... I think we have a question. We're going to talk about a porn star in a little bit.

We are going to talk about a porn star in a little bit, But before we get to that, before we get to the porn star, Tim, you have been thinking about what were to happen if Mueller were fired, like whether that is actually a solution to the president's problems. Yeah, you know, we heard those clips from Chris Christie and the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. They're saying it's just totally nuts if you fire Mueller. And there's two reasons for that. There's the political outrage that that would generate. And that's kind of one stream. But the other thing is that the investigations would continue with or without Mueller. You look at where we are in the investigation already, we're kind of past the point of no return in terms of people have been charged. Those charges will continue and the Justice Department will continue to prosecute those. We've had issues that have been handed off to the Southern District of New York. That investigation and possible prosecution will

continue. The grand jury that's been impaneled here in Washington, D.C., that will likely continue as well. If there's evidence of any crimes that were committed in the state of New York where Donald Trump resides, the New York Attorney General could look into it. The DA in Manhattan could look into it. And, of course, the FBI was looking into the issue of Russian meddling well before the special counsel was appointed. All of these things will continue. And on top of that, you'll have this political firestorm about

how the president was trying or appears to have tried to interfere with an ongoing investigation into himself and his associates. Which some people would call obstruction of justice. Which some people would call obstruction of justice. And Ron, there is also a historical precedent for that as well, that getting rid of the top investigator doesn't make the problem go away. It did not for Richard Nixon. And ultimately, it was the point at which the nation began to take the entire Watergate matter far more seriously than it had previously. It was like a turning point. You could call it a turning point, an inflection point, I think we call them now. You could call it an inflection point. This will even became an issue

in the confirmation hearing for Mike Pompeo, who is currently running the CIA and is up for becoming the Secretary of State. Now, this, in theory, wouldn't necessarily have a lot to do with him. But he said in this hearing that's ongoing as we record this podcast that he was interviewed and has had a role in this investigation. And nearly every Democrat who had a chance to question Pompeo asked questions about Mueller. We heard from Merkley, Murphy, Menendez, Shaheen, Coons. They all had questions. Here's a little bit of what they asked. Do you think special counsel Mueller's investigation is a witch hunt?

Would you resign your post as secretary of state in order to demonstrate that we are a nation of laws, not of men? You are frustrating the work of the special counsel because you're associating yourself with some very poisonous political attacks. You have spoken to special counsel Mueller. Did President Trump ever discuss the FBI or special counsel Russia's investigation with him? I think it'd be really troubling if you couldn't say here today that you don't believe that the Mueller investigation is an attack on America. So I want to give you a second chance at that. So it's safe to say there was a little bit of a theme going on at the hearing today. And the second theme was the way he responded. Here's what he said. Senator, I haven't given that question any thought. Senator, I'm in

no position to make a comment on that legal question. I'm going to not speak about any of the three investigations that I have been a participant in today. Senator, I'm not going to speak to that. Senator, again, I'm not going to talk about private conversations I've had with the president. Now, that's all to say, why does this matter? Because it is bleeding into everything else that's happening on the Hill right now. There's not a lot else going on, particularly in the Senate, other than approving nominations right now. So all of the air is being taken up by these concerns about Mueller and this investigation. And every time, I guess we can assume, every time a nominee comes up for a hearing, a confirmation hearing that's going to be a high profile on television hearing,

they're suddenly going to get asked about the rule of law and Robert Mueller. Yeah. And part of the reason that it comes up in these situations, and particularly for cabinet level positions, is that these are people who would theoretically have the ear of the president and have opportunities to push back on the president. And Democrats in particular are asking them if they're willing to do that, if they're willing to step up and kind of push back on the president. And Democrats in particular are asking them if they're willing to do that, if they're willing to step up and kind of push back on the president if they disagree with him. And when he was asked, would you resign in protest if Mueller was fired? He said, my inclination is no. So there you have it. Okay. Related to this, although potentially tangentially, we don't know, is the news this week that when the FBI searched Michael Cohen's residences and office, they were looking for, among other things, the video was filmed in 2005.

And on that video, Trump brags about kissing and groping women without their consent. Tim, what does this have to do with the investigation at this point? Well, so this is an interesting question. What we talked about on the earlier podcast is that this has been turfed over to the U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York. So in theory, maybe possibly it is a separate matter from the Russia probe, from the strict outline of the Russia probe. And initially I was like, well, why would anybody be interested in the Access Hollywood tape? I have now been making some phone calls. And one idea is, and we don't know,

we honestly, the real answer is we don't know. But there are two very intriguing threads. One is that this could be related to possible campaign finance violations, that the Access Hollywood tape could get at motive for why Michael Cohen, the president's fixer and lawyer, was so motivated to silence Stormy Daniels. And also there's the matter that that video came out, and this gets more to Russia, that video came out just about 20 minutes before all of a sudden WikiLeaks is posting John Podesta's emails on the internet, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman's emails online. Could have been coincidence, could have been in some sense or another a response to the extraordinary media attention that was being given

to the Access Hollywood tape. Right. Now, Tam, some of the president's supporters will say, hey, why are we talking about the Access Hollywood tapes? The special counsel was brought on to investigate Russia and the Trump campaign. And suddenly now we're veering off to all sorts of other topics. What relevance does this have? Well, and so either it has great relevance to Russia because it's related to the WikiLeaks, which is one possibility, or it has no relevance to Russia. And that's why they turfed it over to the Southern District of New York. And then it is about potentially campaign finance related violations and, you know, a donation to help President Trump's campaign, allegedly, by Michael Cohen to pay for this nondisclosure agreement, this $130,000. And Stormy Daniels specifically says in one of her legal filings that she, after the Access Hollywood tape came out, she basically was like, yeah, my story is more marketable now. videos and payments to porn stars or other things? I mean, what does this have to do with campaign

finance, which I've always seen as a pretty, you know, staid topic? Yeah, this is not your mother's campaign finance. No. So the issue or the question that investigators might be trying to answer here is this payment did come on the eve of the election. If this was a payment intended to prevent Stormy Daniels' story from getting to voters in order to help President Trump's campaign, then it could be an in-kind campaign contribution. However, if this was simply an effort to keep this story away from Melania Trump and to protect the president's relationship with his wife, then it wouldn't be a campaign finance violation. And so that might be the evidence that they're looking for, is to try to figure out whether, you know, this came at a pivotal moment in the campaign, whether the Access Hollywood video made them more likely to sign a deal with Stormy Daniels. Well, does the president have a prenuptial agreement? What does it say? Would he benefit from from deep sixing this porn star's allegations in his own kind of personal relationship versus an election? It creates a whole bunch of other questions, all of which I think are probably going to be embarrassing for the president in some way. Which is why also it's just a tough case. Like these campaign finance type cases as a criminal matter are really hard to prove. OK, so we are going to take a quick

break. And when we come back, we are going to talk about Mark Zuckerberg's second hearing on Capitol Hill. Support for this NPR podcast and the following message come from ZipRecruiter. Are you hiring? Every business needs great people and a better way to find them. Something better than posting your job online and waiting for the right people to see it. ZipRecruiter can help. Their technology identifies people with the right experience and invites them to apply to your job. Try it for free

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That's Late Night Whenever. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, but don't subscribe whenever. Subscribe now. All right. We are back. Mark Zuckerberg was back yesterday on Capitol Hill for his second hearing. We talked about the first one on Tuesday. Tim, you have been paying attention to both of them. And what was different about Wednesday's hearing? So senators are typically older politicians. They're probably a little less partisan. They're probably a little less tech savvy. House members, a little bit closer to the grassroots. And so they had a lot more red meat that they were flinging into the crowds. And part of that is this idea that Facebook is biased, that Facebook is ideological, that it doesn't respect conservatives, that it's ignoring fully half of the political spectrum and, in fact, suppressing conservative ideas and conservative politicians and conservative celebrities. And one of these issues is the issue of Diamond and Silk. Diamond and Silk are these two Trump supporters. They are enormously popular on Facebook and Twitter.

They've got 1.4 million likes on Facebook, far more than I have. I mean, Tim Mac is a pretty big deal, guys. I'm working on it. I'm not at 1.4 million, and I still haven't set up one of those fan pages, so it's going to take a while. But they are real icons on the right. You know, they're not particularly mainstream celebrities. But the president has tweeted about them a lot.

But the president is a big fan, and a lot of conservative politicians are a big fan, and a lot of conservative voters are big fans. So here's some of their most viewed video. Listen, let me get this straight. Get it straight. You low blow. A lot of conservative voters are big fans. So here's some of their most viewed video. Listen, let me get this straight.

Get it straight. You low blow. You hit me low the belt, Kelly. And this is Megyn Kelly. She's talking about. But blow on this. Blow. Leave my man Donald Trump the hell alone.

If you got something to say. Yeah. You got something you want to tell him. Yes. Run it by us first. That's right. Run it by me first. And I has really caused a lot of waves on the right. We've got Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee.

I'd like to ask you, do you subjectively manipulate your algorithms to prioritize or censor speech? Congresswoman, we don't think about what we're doing as censoring speech. I think that there are there are types of content like terrorism that I think

that we all agree we do not want to have on our service. So we build systems that can identify those and can remove that content. And we're very proud of that work. Let me tell you something right now. I, diamond and silk is not terrorism. And then there's Congressman Joe Barton who went down a similar line of questioning. Why is Facebook censoring conservative bloggers such as diamond and silk? Facebook called them unsafe to the community. That is ludicrous. They hold conservative views. That isn't unsafe. What's your response to?

Congressman, in that specific case, our team made an enforcement error, and we have already gotten in touch with them to reverse it. There might have been people who thought that these Zuckerberg hearings were going to be largely about Cambridge Analytica and the apparent sins that Cambridge Analytica committed using data that they had obtained through Facebook. But, of course, there are other narratives to bring up. And this is a point where a lot of conservatives have felt persecuted over time that in the media in general, they are suppressed. Now they have Fox News or they have this Twitter account or they have many, many websites, many, many websites that have many followers, but they still feel as though in some sense or another, they're being singled out for abuse. They're being persecuted.

That's absolutely true. And I think if Zuckerberg was not aware of these complaints, that would be a failing on the preparation side for him. I mean, even today, Ted Cruz, while we're recording, was just tweeting that, quote, Facebook rejects GOP candidate ad as shocking and offensive because ad says he's pro-life and pro-Second Amendment. How many Americans do they consider deplorable? Why should Facebook have the power to censor half the country? This is something they've talked about a lot. This is not a new issue. This goes to a broader point about our political moment, that amongst a lot of folks on the right, they feel like they're being victimized, despite the fact that the right does control most of the political power in America today, that they control the House of Representatives, the Senate, the White House, the Supreme Court. They control most governorships, a lot of state houses. They are in the driver's seat in a lot of ways. But I think culturally, they feel they're not at all in control. They don't feel like they're in control of things like Hollywood or what they see on television or what they see in the newspaper.

And that's why there's so much salience with an issue like Diamond and Silk. They're thinking, why don't we see more people that agree with us in pop culture, in the news, on television, and things like that. So this gets to a broader point about how conservatives feel right now. Well, like there is no conservative Jimmy Kimmel. I don't think. At least not one that... And there's never been a conservative Saturday Night Live. And there has been a lot of complaining about that.

There have been people who have attempted, by the way, to do regular commercial television comedy programs with a conservative bent. And so far they have not been successful. That's not to say they won't be. And even with the reboot of Roseanne, that is not a show that is a conservative show. That is a show about sort of the fissures between a conservative grandparents and liberal kids. To finish off that circle, Roseanne Barr, big fan of Diamond and Silk, tweeted about it, says, we got to make this right with Facebook. We are going to take one more quick break.

And when we come back, a listener question about Paul Ryan's decision to retire and what it means for House and Senate races. And, of course, can't let it go. Support for NPR politics and the following message come from Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans. Rocket Mortgage gives you confidence when it comes to buying a home or refinancing your existing home loan. Rocket Mortgage is simple, allowing you to fully understand all the details and be confident you're getting the right mortgage. To get started, go to rocketmortgage.com slash NPR Politics. Equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states. NMLS consumer access.org number 3030.

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It is about the pleasures. It's just electric. And the dangers. There's just nothing more scary. Of trying to live between two worlds. You can find Invisibilia on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back. If you rewind in your feed one podcast, there's a really great pod all about House Speaker Paul Ryan's decision to retire at the end of this year. But we got a question from a podcast listener that I want to throw out to you guys because I think it's an interesting one and gets at what this all means for 2018.

So his name is James Cath. He tweeted at me. Do you think the GOP is shifting effort away from defending their House majority to defending their Senate majority? If so, wouldn't that seem to be a bad strategy? It is and it isn't. Officials in the Republican Party, people whose job it is to run campaigns, they would say they are absolutely not shifting their attention away from defending the House majority and defending individual seats.

That being said, Ryan stepping away sends a big message, particularly to donors and voters, that there's a lack of confidence and that there's a lack of confidence and that there's a lack of confidence in the ability to keep the House majority and a lack of confidence in the Republican brand right now in the 2018 election. Now, that message could be pretty toxic for keeping more people in the races, keeping those people who have not yet retired from retiring and keeping people who are major donors interested in giving money to prop up candidates in the House. Now, the demographics and the issues in the Senate are just different.

They are not really defending their majority so much in the Senate as they are trying to get Democrats out and bring in new Republicans. And when you're on the defensive, it's just the defensive versus the offensive are just completely different political games. And it's an easier game to win when you are on the offensive like they are in the Senate. Kelsey, I'd love your thoughts on this. I mean, it just seems that some context for Paul Ryan's decision making would be used by Republicans as a counterpoint to what you just said, right? That they would say, oh, Republicans are not trying to send any message and that Paul Ryan never wanted to be speaker, had to be kind of forced almost into that role. To what extent does his personal views about whether or not he ever wanted to be speaker and his views on politics and the role it holds in his life.

How does that fit into this? It absolutely fits in. And you are absolutely right. That is the thing that people are saying. They're also saying that it is completely valid for the speaker who is young and has a young family to want to spend more than one day a week with his children. His father died when he was quite young, and he is very conscious about being a more present father. All that being said, it can be difficult to separate those two things and to say that it is that one discrete thing and not the other thing. And it's very hard to keep voters from conflating that there are fears and there has been a narrative of fear about a wave election for Democrats and Ryan's decision to leave.

And there are plenty of people who would push back and say, hey, I'm leaving for personal reasons is something we hear a lot from politicians. That is like the Washington punchline, like, oh, he's leaving to spend more time with his family. That's absolutely true. But as I talk to Ryan's staff and as I've talked to them over the course of many months, this issue of time with his family really was very seriously weighing on him. And it isn't a particularly fun job. He readily admits that there are some parts of doing the job that are a drag. He says that it is the great honor, one of the greatest honors of his life to have had this job. And he says that he doesn't regret having been speaker.

But it's, I mean, I wouldn't have fun being Speaker of the House. He is 48. And he can come back and have yet another act. He has been on the national ticket as vice presidential nominee in 2012. He has been Speaker of the House. He's been successful in many ways as a policy guy, and also as a fundraiser, as he will remind you. And he has every right to take some time away to announce it whenever he sees fit to announce it and to come back either as a statewide figure in Wisconsin or possibly as a national figure in a very different environment four years, eight years, 12 years from now. He has every right to do those things. I know

he says that he has run for office for the last time. We've all heard that kind of thing many times as well. Oh, I guess that's another Washington punchline. He has also said that he wants to, at some day, many years from now, be the ambassador to Ireland. So maybe that's where he comes back. We all have some ambition of some country we want to be ambassador to. We won't ask everybody to confess. But in this particular case, he is an unusual figure because he was elevated to the speakership rather abruptly, not exactly against his will, perhaps, but almost. seventh speaker who leaves under one kind of cloud or another in a row, either because their party lost control or because they lost their own seat back in their home district, or because they were

forced into resignation in an atmosphere of scandal. So this has become an extremely difficult job. And all of these factors together, I would say Paul Ryan's decision to do this makes a lot of sense on a lot of levels and doesn't necessarily constitute a judgment about Republican prospects of winning or losing the House in November. That's probably right. And I understand that it was an extremely arduous process of him making this decision, something that he had been discussing with his wife and a small circle of advisors, roughly six people, since sometime in December. So this is something that he spent a lot of time on. And it was

something that came up a lot yesterday as we were talking to lawmakers and talking to staff, is that people were not particularly surprised that he would choose to go. They were just surprised by the timing. Okay, so we have already seen a lot of members of Congress, Republican members of the House in particular, say that they are retiring this year. What number more would we say, oh gosh, Paul Ryan actually did cause, you know, people to retire? Paul Ryan's move had a morale effect. People familiar with his thinking say that he made this decision and the timing of his decision was based in part on the fact that they thought that it was that most of the retirements that were coming had already happened.

So there is a feeling that it's possible that not that many more are left. All right. It is time to move on to our favorite part of the show, where we talk about one thing we can't let go of, politics or otherwise. Tim, last week, you were a total downer. Let's start with you now. What have you got for us, Tim? What have you got for us? Warning, the thing I can't let go of is pretty much a downer again.

Womp, womp. Look, the Syria civil war is a total humanitarian catastrophe. The president is now looking at airstrikes, at some options for airstrikes or other types of military action against Syria. And the thing is, though, that the White House hasn't outlined why they believe they have the legal authorization to conduct those airstrikes. Usually the president, if there's an imminent threat of danger to the United States, has the authority to act without Congress's approval. But they're not claiming that in this case. What they do have is a secret seven-page memo that they're refusing to release. And so I wrote a story about this, and six pages of those seven

pages are fully unclassified, and they lay out the legal rationale for striking Syria. But the White House is declining and refusing to kind of outline why it thinks it has the power to do what it's now contemplating. Yeah. And what they said yesterday in the briefing in the White House press briefing was, well, we aren't going to say what we're thinking about doing because we wouldn't want to telegraph. But we do believe that we have the legal authority to do it. And we'll tell you when we tell you. Right. Well, this memo has to do with the strikes from last year. So this memo was originally outlining, hey, why did we have that legal authority to do the strikes that we did in 2017?

This group, Protect Democracy, has sued for this memo, hasn't gotten very far with it, though. So, Tam, what can't you let go this week? So earlier this week, John Bolton, the man who makes Ron's mustache, puts Ron's mustache to shame. I'm a pencil thin. I'm a pencil thin.

He is President Trump's new national security advisor. There was some thought that he might shake things up. Well, yes, he has. And he has been cleaning house in a big way already this week. There have been four resignations announced that are tied to his arrival. Some of them will stay around for a little while to help with transition. That's a lot of people leaving. And the general feeling is that it may not be over. Now, the real thing I can't let go of is that I have been closely following turnover in the Trump White House, which is completely and totally off the charts. And there is a researcher at Brookings named Catherine Dunn-Tempest who tracks these things. The way she does it in order to do an apples to apples comparison means that she's kind of lowballing it. The number is not as high as it might be because she only counts each position once. But with Bossert's departure, it's up to 49 percent turnover in the first year and 80 some days of the Trump presidency of top level White House aides. And that to me is remarkable.

All right, Kelsey, what can't you let go of? All right. Mine is a little bit more on the light side, as usual. Thank goodness. Mine is about this story that's been kind of playing out since January. A New York Times reporter in Cairo, Liam Stack, tweeted, Today I learned that my cousin's 11-year-old daughter somehow downloaded the Washington Post app without my cousin's knowledge at the age of nine and has been a loyal reader for the past two years. Now... Too late now. Now, he went on to say that she talked about it in her class and about how when she grows up,

she wants to be a journalist and work at the Post. And the Post responded and they said, please tell her she is an open invite and said that Marty Barron, the executive editor there, keeps a jar of peanut butter M&Ms and they would let her know where they are. So the update that came just the other day was that she went and she's really excited. And there are pictures of her in front of the big Washington Post sign and like the common area and in front, like in the conference rooms and taking a tour. And hopefully she found those peanut butter M&Ms because we could use some excited new journalists over in these parts. Well, you know, I started at NPR when I was 15. Tam has good stories to tell about picking your career at a young age and going for it.

I, at 11, wanted to be a marine biologist. So I am talking to you all and not taking care of dolphins. What did you want to be when you grew up, Tam? I don't know. When I was a teenager or early in college, I probably wanted to be a politician. But I lacked the charisma. That was a deeply idealistic version of myself. Hey, I know a lot of politicians who are not particularly charismatic.

So there's a future to it. Hey, I know a lot of politicians who are not particularly charismatic, so there's a future to it. Thanks. Oh, Ron. Well, speaking of speakers who left their office under a cloud, the cloud under which John Boehner left has changed character a bit this week. I am quoting now from a tweet from former Speaker John Boehner, who left that office in 2015. He says, I'm joining the board of Acreage Holdings, which is a company that grows and sells marijuana in 11 states where that is legal, because, John Boehner says, my thinking on cannabis has evolved. I'm convinced that descheduling the drug, that means rolling back the federal efforts to actually enforce drug laws against it, is needed so that we can do research, help our veterans, and reverse the opioid epidemic ravaging our communities. His spokesperson said that he is, that is, John Boehner's thinking had, quote, evolved as the result of close study after leaving office.

Close study, huh? Close study. Well, just a few years ago, he said he was unalterably opposed to legalizing marijuana because he said it would just lead to legalizing all kinds of other things and that he didn't think that that's what the culture needed. But he has had a couple, three or a couple years and a half to rethink that particular position. Perhaps it improved his golf game. It's hard to think how it would exactly improve his golf game.

But I'm thinking this is the worst hit for Merlot since the movie Sideways. All right, that is all we've got for today. We will be back in your feed soon. Keep up with our coverage on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and of course, on your local public radio station. And if you like the show, leave us a review on iTunes that helps other folks find the podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Tim Mack, political reporter.

And I'm Ron Hilping, editor and correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.