The NPR Politics Podcast - New Executive Order; Trump's Wiretap Claim

Episode Date: March 6, 2017

This episode: host/Congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, and White House correspondent Scott Horsley. 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

Hey everybody, I'm Kelly McEvers, host of NPR's Embedded. On March 9th, we are back with our new episodes about police videos. Shots fired, shots fired. What did he do to deserve to be killed that night and shot so many times? People see what they want to see. Almost no one can see those videos from a neutral perspective. I was thinking, see the gun, see the gun, don't kill him until you see the gun. Find Embedded on the NPR One app or at npr.org slash podcasts.

G'day, this is Matt Smith from Melbourne, Australia. This podcast was recorded at... Monday, March 6th, 2.08pm. And things may change by the time you hear it. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at npr.org, through the NPR One app, or on your local public radio station. Over to you now, mates. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, here to talk about President Trump's new executive order on immigration

and his unsubstantiated claims that President Obama tapped his phones during the election. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. Oh, and I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. So, Scott, it is an all-Scott studio right now. Scott Horsley and I are here in studio. Tamara, you are on the line at home. And there seems to be a bit of a delay. No, there's no actual delay. That was just a mental delay on my part.

Well, I'm sorry you couldn't join the All Scott studio, but if you were here, that wouldn't be the case. Right. So let's get right into it because there is already so much news and we're only halfway through Monday. The big story today is a new executive order signed by President Trump affecting immigration and refugee policy. In the big picture, it's generally the same as the January ban. It restricts travel from six Muslim-majority countries, but there are a lot of differences beyond that. One of them is the number of countries affected, because this time Iraq is not on the list. Scott, what else is new here? Well, this only applies to people who are seeking

a new visa. So green card holders, people who already have in hand a valid visa are not affected by this travel ban. There's also a phase-in period. It's not going to take effect for about 10 days. And so what they're trying to avoid here is the chaos we saw in airports in late January when the ban went into effect suddenly. Right, because there were people literally in the air when the order went into effect who landed in America and were told that they could not come into the country. Exactly. People boarded airplanes thinking they were going to find a warm welcome. They had a visa in hand. And when they got here, the door was closed to them.

And this ban makes it explicit that green card holders not affected. People who have valid visas are not affected. And there's the 10 day phase in. So the green card thing, I think, is really an important thing to point out, because in terms of the criticism that came in waves after the initial order went into effect, a lot of the criticism from the Republican side centered on the fact that initially, at least, green card holders were affected by this ban. That's right. And then the White House Counsel's Office put out some guidance saying that, OK, well, if it makes it easier, we'll exempt green card holders. And when the case was litigated in the appeals court, the judges said, well, we can't just take the White House counsel's guidance as an integral part of the executive order. So now in the revised version, that's an integral part of the executive order that green card holders are exempted. Also, the Syrian refugees, they don't

have different treatment than other refugees. The specific things that were most criticized or made the most noise as relates to the last executive order, those things have been adjusted for in this one. Although in terms of refugees, while Syrians, there's no longer an indefinite ban on Syrian refugees, there is still a four month hold on refugees from anywhere in the world, although those refugees who are already basically in the queue with their papers in hand to come in are going to be allowed to come in. But for refugees who have not made it that far, they will be on hold for four months. And this order, like the original order, still sets a lower cap on the total number of refugees to be allowed into the country. Instead of 110,000 during the fiscal year that ends September 30th, the Trump administration only wants to take in 50,000 refugees. And we've already taken in more than 37,000 refugees. So even when that four-month ban is lifted, there won't be a whole lot more room for refugees under this order. So what's interesting is that the administration really continued to defend the initial executive order after all the criticism, after federal judges put stays on the executive order going into effect. But this time around, they have made a lot of changes that they were

criticized for the first time around. What happens now to the initial executive order? It is rescinded as of the day this one goes into effect, which is March 16th. And is that counter to what the White House had been saying would happen to that initial order? Yes. Well, I guess they had been saying that they were considering their options, but that they still, you know, Sean Spicer, the press secretary, continued to say that he felt that this thing would totally stand up to challenge and that they would win on the merits. So even though that this time around, it seems like there's going to be less chaos at the airports, there's time to put this in place. The Trump administration took a lot of pains to say that they consulted relevant

departments, that they consulted the legislature. I mean, still the broad goal of restricting entry into this country from six Muslim-majority countries. That is still the same. So what sort of reaction are we expecting or are we seeing already from the people who really criticized the basic premise of this, saying it was fundamentally un-American? A lot of the critics are not at all mollified by these changes that the White House has made. They say this remains, in their view, a Muslim ban.

Remember that during the presidential campaign, President Trump said he wanted to have a complete shutdown on Muslims entering the United States. Rudy Giuliani then went on television and said that the original travel ban was the sort of legal way to begin to implement that Muslim ban. A lot of the critics take the president and Rudy Giuliani at their word, and they say even with the tweaks that have been incorporated in this revised ban, this is still an attempt at a religious discrimination test, even though in the revised ban they've taken out the provision that was supposed to give preferential treatment to religious minorities, which the president himself said in an interview with Christian Broadcasting, referred to Christians. That was legally dubious provision in the original travel ban.

That's been taken out. Nevertheless, the critics still say this is a Muslim ban, and they plan to continue to challenge it. Now, the Trump administration says this is all about security. This is all about preventing terrorism. What are the facts when it comes to people coming from these six countries compared to the rest of the world and the United States of America when it comes to terror threats? Well, we can say that since 9-11, of all the deadly terrorist attacks that have been carried out in the United States, and there aren't that many of them, but of all those attacks, many were carried out by native-born citizens of the United States, and none were carried out by someone from any of the six countries on this revised travel ban.

However, what we can also say is that the Trump administration is beginning to offer some rationale for this travel ban, something that they didn't do really with the original ban in terms of security. One of the things they pointed out is that they say the FBI is currently monitoring some 300 people as part of its broad oversight of suspected terrorist plots, that the FBI is keeping tabs on 300 people who initially entered the country as refugees. But when they said that, they didn't say specifically from these six countries. They didn't really clarify that, did they? Well, right. But remember, the refugee ban is not just in these six countries. The refugee ban applies to refugees from anywhere in the world. And one of the arguments that's been made is, look, refugees are vetted more than anybody else. Refugees usually take years to get permission to come into the United States. So the Trump administration is pushing back and saying,

well, look, even with all the existing vetting for refugees, there are some 300 people who made it to our doorstep and who, for whatever reason, and they didn't elaborate on this, but who are now under surveillance or being monitored by the FBI. Have they provided any backup at all for that number? No, no, they haven't. But the fact that they even feel compelled to offer such a rationale reflects some movement from the initial. One of the big criticisms of the last order that has, in some ways, carried through to this order is that these six countries, previously seven countries, are not the source of, say, the people who committed 9-11 or other major, notable terrorist attacks. And in the executive order, there is, you know, examples explaining

why something like this might be needed. And one of those examples is two Iraqi nationals admitted to the United States as refugees in 2009. And those two people were arrested on terrorism related offenses. But Iraq isn't even on the list anymore of those countries that would be part of the travel ban. Well, let's talk about the rollout here, because that was really interesting to me. and it couldn't have been any more different than the first time around. And in January, the cabinet was by and large cut out of the process. So was Congress. That's when it came to drafting the order. This time, President Trump signs the executive order in the Oval Office by himself. We only got a picture of it afterwards from the White House, not from an independent

photographer. And the public face of the rollout came from three cabinet members, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and the head of Homeland Security, John Kelly. Here's Kelly. I have spent much of the day today on the phone with members of Congress, the leadership, explaining the ins and outs of this EO, and I did the same thing last week. So there should be no surprises, whether it's in the media or on Capitol Hill. The White House never really fully admitted that they botched this the first time around, but it was really different on so many different fronts this time. Absolutely. I mean, just little things like the language for the executive order. We got it

almost immediately after they announced it. The first time language for the executive order. We got it almost immediately after they announced it. The first time they signed the executive order, it took hours and hours and hours to get that language. And there were questions that the White House simply couldn't answer. Now there's a fact sheet and a Q&A that they've sent around. They did a background briefing with reporters. They've been briefing people up on Capitol Hill. It's as if they, well, they got a do-over, right? So they actually thought about all the things that they

should have maybe thought about the first time, and they adjusted. But we should not kid ourselves into thinking this is the end of the line and that all the criticisms will go away. There will undoubtedly be more legal challenges. There will be more practical challenges in putting this in place. There was a statement earlier today from Bob Ferguson, the Attorney General of Washington, who brought the successful suit that led to the original order being suspended. He says, by rescinding the earlier executive order, President Trump makes one thing perfectly clear. That original travel ban was, quote, indefensible legally, constitutionally, and morally. We're still waiting to hear from Attorney General Ferguson about what his legal plans are going forward.

But we do know that other critics will be back in court. There will be more challenges to this new ban. Right. The ACLU had a very similar statement. They were another high profile opponent of the initial order. Scott, what do you make of the fact that President Trump himself was largely MIA today during the rollout? He signs this behind closed doors and he has no public appearances on the day that they basically reboot one of the administration's highest priorities. I think President Trump was nervous that if he were in front of reporters, he would be getting

questions about that tweet storm he had over the weekend in which he accused former President Obama of tapping his phone lines at Trump Tower. And it's not just that President Trump didn't sign this thing in a more public ceremony. Rex Tillerson, Jeff Sessions, John Kelly, they didn't take questions. They merely delivered a statement. And when questions were shouted at them, they continued to walk out of the room. So the last thing that I think is worth pointing out, and we don't know the answer to it right now, again, it's around two o'clock on Monday as we tape this, is that when the first order came out, the response to it, the pushback to it was high profile and massive and unexpected. Airports across the country flooded with protesters. The streets outside the White House flooded with protesters. I think it'll be really telling to see whether a similar pushback happens this time around. We don't know the answer to that right now. Again, we're just a

few hours into this, but that's something to look for over the next few days. And the other thing that we don't really know at this point is what comes next. Let's say that this ban is able to stay in effect. If they want to improve the vetting, how do they do that? What does that look like? The vetting process for refugees and for visa applicants is already pretty darn extreme, especially for refugees. So it's just not clear, and it's not clear from this order, how they proceed, how they make more extreme vetting. We do know that one reason they were comfortable in lifting the travel ban on Iraqi travelers is that they've gotten guarantees from the Iraqi government of more information sharing, more

cooperation in vetting those would-be travelers. How would that work in a country like Yemen or Sudan? Or Libya, where there basically is no central government right now. Yeah, where there is no partner to talk to, really. And that may very well still be the case 90 days from now, in which case the travel ban may be extended well beyond the three-month mark. So this is obviously a big story. It directly affects people all over the world. But there's another big story to talk about from this weekend, and that's President Trump making an explosive, but this is very key, unsubstantiated claim on Twitter. Trump says that President Obama ordered the tapping of phones in Trump Tower last year during the election.

There's no evidence for this. Former President Obama denied it through a spokesman. So did the former director of the National Intelligence at the time, James Clapper. He was on NBC on Sunday. If the FBI, for instance, had a FISA court order of some sort for a surveillance, would that be information you would know or not know? Yes. You would be told this? I would know that. If there was a FISA court order on something like this?

Something like this, absolutely. And at this point, you can't confirm or deny whether that exists? I can deny it. There is no FISA court order? Not to my knowledge. Of anything at Trump Tower? No. Scott, what do we know in terms of facts at the moment?

Well, the president himself offered no factual backup for this notion. What we do know is that there was a story in Breitbart, the conservative website formerly run by Trump advisor Steve Bannon, the day before, on on Friday about a sort of roundup of information, some of which came from right-wing talk radio. Again, not directly making the case that former President Obama had given any such directive, but sort of insinuating that the Obama administration had, for political reasons, tried to undermine the Trump candidacy. One of the things that was interesting during the weekend was you saw a lot of head scratching from members of the president's own party in Congress, for example. Here's why. Look, there's three possibilities

here. One is former President Obama really did order wiretapping at Trump Tower. That would be an enormous scandal. Another possibility is that there was wiretapping at Trump Tower that was a result of a legitimate investigation, which means a federal judge had to sign off on it and had to be convinced that there was ample evidence that there was something going wrong in the Trump campaign that warranted that kind of extraordinary surveillance. Which would also be a scandal. Which would also be a scandal. And which Clapper seemed to say probably didn't happen. And then the third possibility is that the president simply made it up.

Which would also be a scandal. And there's another angle as well that South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham talked about when he was responding to this this weekend, that if there was a politically motivated wiretap, that's a big problem. But if there was a wiretap that was acquired through the normal legal process, that would be pretty bad for the Trump administration and Trump campaign as well. Because in order to get such an authorization, someone would have had to go to a federal judge and make a convincing case that there's a lot of smoke around the Trump campaign and it warrants that extraordinary surveillance measure.

I think it's important to point out that all of this came at a point in time where, according to a lot of outlets, President Trump was pretty frustrated. He gave that speech earlier last week that got positive reviews all around. He felt like he was turning things around. And then this Sessions story happens. Attorney General Sessions announces that he's going to recuse himself from any investigation into last year's campaign. According to a lot of reports, President Trump, frustrated by that, angry that Sessions did that, felt like it was a concession to critics.

So that is the point in time where these allegations appear out of nowhere. And it's really telling that from Saturday morning to Sunday morning, it was basically radio silence from the Trump administration in terms of clarifying or explaining what the president was talking about. Not that Tam and her colleagues weren't trying. Yeah. I mean, I think the first email I sent was sent before 7 a.m. on Saturday saying, I need context here. Where did the president get this from? Is he what is he saying? So then on Sunday morning, Trump staffers did start responding to questions. ABC's Martha Raddatz asked Sarah Huckabee Sanders some similar questions on this week.

Was the principal source the Breitbart story, which links to The New York Times? But The New York Times doesn't say anything definitive. Donald Trump does. There is nothing equivocating about what he says. I just found out that Obama had my wires tapped. That's not looking into something. He says it happened. Look, I think the bigger thing is you guys are always telling us to take the media seriously. Well, we are today. We're taking the reports that places like the New York Times, Fox News, BBC, multiple outlets have reported this. All we're saying is let's take a closer look.

Let's look into this. If this happened, if this is accurate, this is the biggest overreach and the biggest scandal. But you're not saying let's look into this. The president of the United States is accusing the former president of wiretapping him. I think that this is, again, something that if this happened, Martha, if this would if if I agree, why is the president saying it did happen? Look, I think he is going off of information that he's seen that has led him to believe that this is a very real potential. And if it is, this is the greatest overreach and the greatest abuse of power.

Let's just clarify, the only reports suggesting that there was a politically motivated wiretap are coming from right-wing talk radio and from Breitbart. Those sources that Sarah Sanders mentions, the New York Times, the BBC, they don't make that claim. And then President Trump went beyond reports and said definitively that Barack Obama had personally ordered his phones tapped. Which they never even said. Those outlets never pinned it on Barack Obama himself. And then Sunday morning, you have Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, calling for congressional intelligence committees to investigate these troubling reports. This is not the first time

that President Trump has made a wild claim via Twitter, and then his aides have gone and said, well, maybe this is something we ought to investigate. It's very similar to what happened with his, again, totally unsubstantiated claim about millions of illegal votes cast in the November election. And I don't believe that investigation into voter fraud that they said would happen has actually gotten started. That task force, they're putting that task force together with all speed. There have been sort of reports that they're trying to put together a task force. Tamara, you were at Mar-a-Lago this weekend covering President Trump.

What did you make of all of this as it happened? Yeah, I mean, we were expecting this to be a quiet weekend of presidential golf, thinking that maybe he would be getting ready for the travel ban executive order. Nobody was expecting this. And these tweets started showing up at 630 in the morning on Saturday, and it turned into this very wild weekend. I'll have to say a Saturday morning of quiet golf interrupted by a tweet storm is getting

to be kind of a part of the regular routine at Mar-a-Lago on. Well, there is that. But we're used to at this point, we're used to tweets from President Trump making all sorts of claims, often out of the blue. But to say that the former president directly ordered a politically motivated wiretap is pretty remarkable, even given the shifted norms that we're used to at this point in time in terms of what to expect on a daily basis out of this White House. I mean, I think the thing that really stands out about what Sarah Sanders said and Martha Raddatz points it out, it's if, if, if, if, potentially, that's conditional. That's not a statement of believing something actually happened. And then one other

thing happened Sunday afternoon that is a pretty big development. The New York Times reported this first. NPR later confirmed it. FBI Director James Comey, behind the scenes after Trump made this claim, went to the Department of Justice and asked them to refute it, to say this is not true. That's pretty remarkable. Well, this would be a terrible black eye for the FBI if it were true that somehow they had been doing a politically motivated bidding of a president like this. Which is something that earlier in the history they did do. Absolutely. And James Comey is very much aware of that and wants to avoid that kind of reputational damage. He asked the Justice Department to discredit the president's Twitter claim.

So far, there's been no such statement from the Justice Department. And again, you know, this all came in a context of Jeff Sessions getting in trouble for misstating facts about a meeting with Russia's ambassador, which is exactly what Michael Flynn had done a few weeks earlier. These are two top Trump advisers who got in a lot of trouble for a politically charged topic. And then the conversation was was by and large changed over the course of the weekend by these new claims. Though it's all still about Russia and investigations into the Trump campaign. Well, it seems like with the story, every time one thing is clarified, a whole other door opens and creates even more questions. So I assume we will continue to talk about this in future podcasts. A couple more things to talk about before we go. Obamacare, that other big thing happening. Oh, yeah. We talked last week about

how secretive the process has been of drafting the replacement bill. The Republicans are drawing up a replacement, and it looks like they're going to finally unveil it this week. What do we know about this at this point in time? We don't know very much about the details, and that's where the big questions lie here. We know that there's going to be some kind of subsidy for people to buy private insurance. What shape will those subsidies take? How generous will they be? Who will benefit most relative to the current system? We don't know what's going to happen with the Medicaid expansion. Those are the kinds of questions that we will get some answers to if and when we actually see a replacement bill. And rather than hypothetically talk about the different ways

the bill could go, I think the best thing to do is say, download the episode on Thursday, because a big chunk of our weekly roundup will be talking about this bill, how it would change the system, and how different factions of the Republican Party are viewing it. Because it's been clear so far that it is going to be hard to get enough Republicans on board with one plan to get it passed through the House and the Senate and to President Trump. And we say enough Republicans because the assumption is the Democrats are not going to be playing along. I think that's a fair working assumption at this point in time. One more piece of news today. The Supreme Court had been scheduled to hear

the case of Gavin Grimm. He's a transgender student from Virginia who sued his school district after it said he could not use the boys' restroom. Today, the Supreme Court said they would not hear the case after all. And that's following the policy change from last month when the Trump administration revoked some guidance from the Obama administration that basically said transgender students should be allowed to use the bathroom corresponding with their gender identity. So that case now goes back to the lower court, and that court will have to decide whether federal law protects from discrimination based on gender identity. When the Trump administration reversed the Obama administration guidance to states on how to deal with transgender students,

the argument was made this was going to leave it up to states' rights. Keep that in mind. We might be hearing another twist on that states' rights argument when different issues present themselves to this administration. And our own Sue Davis is now reporting that the health care bill is likely to drop tonight. That will be great because there's so many questions. What shape are the subsidies going to take? How are the Republicans planning to deal with the Medicaid expansion? Lots of unanswered questions. Maybe we will finally get those answers when we see the actual legislative

language. And that is a wrap. We'll be back in your feed Thursday with our weekly roundup. If you like the podcast or any podcast for that matter, take a moment this month to get someone new into podcasts. And if you do it on social media, let us know with the hashtag Tripod. You'll be hearing a lot about Tripod all month. This is a big industry-wide push to get more people into podcasting. Because a fun fact, more than half of Americans have no idea what a podcast is. So let's change that. Should we spell that T-R-Y-P-O-D?

T-R-Y-P-O-D. You forgot the hashtag, though, Scott. Hashtag T-R-Y-P-O-D. All right. So let us know what podcast you're listening to in addition to our podcast. You can keep up with more of our political coverage at NPR.org and on your local public radio station. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Scott Horsley. I do, too. Thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.