The NPR Politics Podcast - NPR Politics Live From Chicago

Episode Date: October 23, 2017

This is a special episode, recorded in front of a live audience at the Athenaeum Theatre in Chicago on Sunday night, October 22. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Scott Horsley and editor-correspondent Ron Elving. 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

In 2014, we all heard this. The United States of America is changing its relationship with the people of Cuba. But Cubans heard something else. A closing door, an end to their special status, and the race was on. How a 90-mile journey by sea became a 3,000-mile trip by land. Find Radio Ambulante on the NPR Politics Podcast, live from Chicago. We are here at the Ackman Theater in beautiful Chicago in partnership with WBEZ. President Trump spent another week embroiled in and simultaneously stoking controversy.

We'll talk about why this just keeps happening. And we'll ask whether the never-ending feuding will keep Republicans from tax cuts and other big policy goals. And later this week, President Trump says he'll take a big step to fight the opioid epidemic, a step he first promised two months ago. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elbing, editor-correspondent.

So, Ron, two things. One, you're representing the very important non-Scott demographic of NPR, which is a small but important part of our staff. But two, importantly, Ron is a Chicagoan. He led us all over the city looking for pizza last night. It was a success. Yes. We found pizza all over the city looking for pizza last night. It was a success. Yes. We found pizza all over the city.

Indeed we did. Yes, no, I still consider myself to be from Chicago. I grew up on the north side. I went to Lyman A. Budlong Grammar School. I'm glad to know that some of our people are still going to school. Do they have a mascot? Came back later for graduate school, met my wife at the University of Chicago.

And, you know, I've said this many times, but I look forward to coming back here when I die so I can be with some of my ancestors and stay active in politics. Love you, Chicago. All right, so on to the show. Let's pick up where we left off in Thursday's podcast. Last week was filled with personal attacks and feuds that took twists and

turns that were just not used to seeing in either politics or day-to-day public life, and how many times have we read that sentence? This particular plot was about the death of American soldiers in Niger, and how it shifted into a public spat between President Trump and Congresswoman Frederica Wilson about what Trump did or did not say to upset the widow of Sergeant LaDavid Johnson. This sucked up all the political oxygen, even as the Senate spent the week approving a budget that's also a major step on the road to a tax cut bill. So we are not going to rehash the blow-by-blow here, but we're going to talk about the fact

that this keeps happening. So I guess, Ron, I'll start with you day to day, tweet to tweet. Have you seen any difference from the way that President Trump approached the job on January 21st to now in mid-October? You know, Scott, no journalist ever wants to say that they do not perceive change because change drives the news. But in truth, the tweets in particular, the sort of tent pole for the entire intellectual construct of the presidency and every other element of the president's behavior seems to be different from all of his predecessors in that unlike all those other administrations, there is so little sense of evolution. He is still the man who ran in 2015 and 2016, and he is governing very much the way he campaigned. And, Tam, we were talking about this earlier today.

NPR has another podcast called Embedded, which is a great podcast, but they've been digging into— Yeah, Embedded. Let's give Embedded the Daily Show clap. All right. But Embedded this season is digging into Trump's past. And, Tam, we were talking about the fact that there are so many consistencies. Obviously, Twitter was not around, you know, in the early 80s. But so many of the moves, so many of the reactions have been the same for decades for him. And I'm a regular re-reader of The Art of the Deal,

which it's just like every few weeks you go back, you look at his deal cards or whatever it was called, and you discover that, oh, yes, he's still playing by that playbook that he, well, that Tony Schwartz and he wrote about all these many years ago. On the Embedded podcast, they talk about the building of this golf course in California. And Donald Trump, not president then, Donald Trump wanted to put up this giant flagpole for an American flag.

And he gets in a fight with the city because it's not in compliance with city codes. And there's this big fight that suddenly becomes, well, you aren't patriotic. You don't want this giant American flag. And then it turns out he had that same fight at the golf course in Jupiter, Florida. This is a fight that he likes to get into because then

suddenly you're talking about the American flag, you're talking about patriotism, and you're in the press. And President Trump has found that feuds and fights and these things, I mean, he's been tweeting. Lots of people say, oh, he had this terrible week where he was fighting with Gold Star families. He keeps tweeting about this, which means that he believes it's working. Scott, going beyond the tweets for a moment. Sometimes we try to do that. Going beyond the tweets. When it comes to the budget, when it comes to big policies like a tax reform bill that the White House really wants to get passed for a whole variety of reasons,

you've covered the White House for a while with different people in the White House, different staffs in the White House really wants to get passed for a whole variety of reasons. You've covered the White House for a while with different people in the White House, different staffs in the White House. How different is this White House operating in terms of rolling out the policy, working on it, working with Congress on it, things like that? How different is the Trump White House than the other ones you've covered? You know, you see some of the traditional trappings of a policy rollout. This White House has been trying to push through this tax reform, and so you've seen the president on the road campaigning for tax reform, doing the sort of normal things that any other president might do. But at any given moment, that carefully orchestrated rollout

can be thrown overboard for days or weeks at a time by a random tweet from the commander in chief at 7 a.m. Sometimes that can be an effective smoke screen. I mean, the administration can carry out things that it wants to do and that it doesn't want to attract attention for while they're kind of dangling a shiny object over here. But for something like tax reform, where they're actually going to need votes in Congress and they're really trying to build public momentum, this can be really unfavorable distraction. Ron, there's several schools of thought on this, and you saw a lot of discussion about this early

on especially, and most of it was in all caps on Twitter. But the idea that these tweet feuds, these tangents are hashtag all caps distractions as some sort of nine-step plot meant to wiggle the keys over here while you're doing that. And then there's the fact that people go back and say, oh, no, actually, if you just look at Fox and Friends, they mentioned that five minutes before he tweeted. Do you think it's more of A or more of B when you look at the way that the narrative goes nine different places each day?

I think it depends on the audience you're concerned about. With respect to journalists, we have a super case of adult attention deficit disorder. We are, oh look, there's a kitty back here, isn't there? There's no ability on our part to pay attention to one subject for more than a few days. We like to think that at NPR we do that better than maybe most journalistic organizations, but as a rule, we move right along with everybody else. So for that audience, the look at the bright, shiny object works pretty well. On the other hand, I think the other purpose of these tweets is to speak very constantly to a base audience that is what Donald Trump is all about.

It's what carried him to victory in the Republican primaries, and then with an admixture of more normal Republican voters, people who had been voting Republican for many years, they were able to elect him president. And he, the president, sticks with that group, and they stick with him, and that communication is handled largely through Twitter. There's obviously a lot of stuff going on. There are however many administrative departments going through rules and regulations and day-to-day

government decisions. There's foreign policy decisions that are being made, but it seems like kind of the cultural center of the administration is the Twitter feed and the arguments that are picked with it. So, Tam, how much harder does that make it to get your agenda done? Because here we are in mid-October without an Obamacare repeal, without taxes passed, and you could go down the list. I think you could probably say that the tweets are a symptom of something else. There's something else, I mean, it comes through in the tweets, but the president does not have firm feelings about policy. He does not have strong positions. And sometimes he does form a very firm opinion that, like, for instance, with the insurance payments, that there is a bail

out happening, that insurance companies are getting bailed out, or that NAFTA is a terrible deal. Sometimes he has a strong, firm opinion. But you said firm opinion. That firm opinion changed four times last week. That is right. And it was a strong, firm opinion. But you said firm opinion. That firm opinion changed four times last week. That is right. And it was a firm opinion for him. But it was always a strong opinion. No, but actually, his opinion didn't change. He doesn't want a bailout.

He's just not clear on whether this thing is doing that or not. And that's what changed four times in a week. So really, he's tweeting what's on his mind. He's tweeting what he's thinking. And what is hard for Congress or for other people who are trying to make policy with the White House is not the tweets so much as what they represent, which is he could be saying something different in any given moment, and in any given moment, he could be hanging allies out to dry and teaming up with people who are not supposed to be his allies.

Think about his Twitter feud with Bob Corker. I mean, what advantage can it possibly be for the President of the United States to get in a fight with the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee? You know, part of a narrow Republican majority, every vote he's going to need, why pick a fight like that? You don't need a key vote on the tax cut bill, a key vote on whatever happens with Iran, a key vote on any appointments he needs to make. If his Secretary of State leaves, I don't know why we would think that that might be something that could happen, but it would be a key vote. But Bob Corker said something in public that the president could not let go. He challenged him. He said that he had put us in danger of World War III and said a

number of things that went beyond what any other Republican senator, even Jeff Flake of Arizona, and some of the others who have spoken out against Trump, had ever said before. And that could not go unchallenged in the Donald Trump universe. So let's shift gears here and talk about one serious issue that last week really brought into focus, something that John Kelly mentioned during that briefing. And that's the fact that the number of active duty service members is less than one half of 1% of the United States population. And many people in the US just don't know someone currently serving. And I think that comes into focus at moments where we're having a debate over whether we send more troops

into a place like Afghanistan or something that happened, you know, like last week where many people just didn't know that we have any sort of presence in a country like Niger. So Ron, the question for you is, how has the fact that this percentage total has dropped and dropped and dropped, how has that affected the way that Congress and the president make these decisions or talk about

these decisions? It's a great deal easier to send a volunteer force that is connected to less than 1% of the population into combat situations that are really unknown to the rest of the country, such as Niger. and there are others too in Africa that we know about, and we don't really know what their missions are and so on. That's a lot easier to do when the force is volunteer than the democratic war that assumes that the people who are being fought for are going to actually be participant and that their loved ones are going to be the people actually in the field. It certainly changes the way civilian leaders will use the military. It certainly changes the way civilian leaders will

use the military. It also changes the way the military thinks about the civilian population they're protecting. Tom Ricks, the great military writer, wrote a book, Making the Corps, all about the forging of Marines. And he raised the alarm that we are creating a military class that often held the civilians they were sworn to protect in something like contempt. John Kelly talked about this at the White House this past week, where he said, it's not that we hold civilians or those who've never served in contempt. In fact, we feel sorry for them because they don't know the tremendous fraternity that military service brings. But I think there is a real danger for our governance and our society when not only do you have civilian leaders who feel like they can send the military into harm's way and 99% of the public is not going to be directly affected by that, but also when those military people who are carrying out the security are doing so on behalf of a population that they may feel is qualitatively different than themselves.

Pam? I have a question that I don't have the answer to, and I'm hoping one of the Scots or Ron knows the answer. The forces who are in Niger, or there, who are in the African continent broadly, are they there under the authorization of the use of military force that was put in place after 9-11? Yes, they are. It's all part of the war on terror,

because they're fighting elements of organizations that align themselves with ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and they have been quite effective, and they are a large force, and our military fears that they will get larger and more effective and move into Libya and from there on into Europe. So Congress last signed off on, made any active decision on this in 2001? And continually shows no interest in having that reauthorization vote again. You'll have pockets of lawmakers saying, we need to do this because this is wildly out of date

and we are fighting groups that we had never thought about when it was first authorized. Tim Kaine, Virginia Senator, Vice Presidential nominee, is one of those. But every time there's a moment to hold that vote or not, Congress says, actually, we don't want to hold that vote. Never mind. But I was thinking- And Tim Kaine has a son who's in the military.

Yeah. And the one thing I was thinking is maybe a counterbalance to the fact that this has become an increasingly segmented part of the population is that I think it is a pretty, I don't know the percentage offhand, but there is a consistent amount of veterans who do end up in Congress still. Younger, newer members of Congress like Seth Moulton on the Democratic side, Tom Cotton on the Republican side, both served. Moulton was a Marine, Cotton was in the Army. So I think that's something- The military is overrepresented in the halls of Congress because both parties have found it advantageous to run a candidate who can have in a brochure a nice picture of him or her in uniform. And you're seeing on the Democratic side in next year's

election a ton of veterans, especially women who are veterans, running for Congress as Democrats. Can I just toss out some women? Yeah, Tammy Duckworth, who is a senator from the great state of Illinois. What state does she represent again? I don't know who she represents. And also Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, who is a reservist. From the Iowans. Iowa! We'll be back.

I rode my bike through your state this summer. It was great. So let's shift to one last topic, and that is something to look forward to this week, something the president has said that he's going to make an announcement on, a major announcement on. President Trump says he will be announcing something when it comes to combating the opioid crisis.

We expect that to be him declaring the crisis a national emergency. Tam, I think we had this exact same conversation this summer because that was something he promised to do. He seems to have not done that. Yeah, so let me just run through a little of the history. July 31st, the opioid commission that the president formed in the spring put out a report, and it was pretty stunning.

It said that approximately about 150 Americans are dying every day from overdoses. That works out to another 9-11 every three weeks. The report said this is so urgent that we're coming out with this interim report, and we believe that you should do this thing right now, which is declare a state of emergency regarding the opioid crisis to direct funds and sort of really just put an infusion of attention and funding and other powers into this crisis. So fast forward two weeks, and the president has asked about it. Your opioid commission has recommended this. What are you going to do? And he says, it's an emergency. I say it's an emergency. We're going to make it an emergency.

We're drawing up the papers now. So now the president last week was asked about it again and said, it's happening next week. Yeah, which is a lot the way that the tax reform came out. You know, the president says we're going to have a tax plan next week and the Treasury Department had to hustle and put something together. But the odd thing about the opioid commission was when the president was on the first week of his working vacation up in New Jersey, they had Chris Christie go up there and brief him on the recommendations of the commission.

It would have been very simple for the president to come right out and say, thank you for these recommendations. I'm going to follow your recommendations. We're going to declare an emergency. We're going to tick down three things. That's why you have commissions, right? You make recommendations. It at least creates the appearance of action. And they didn't do that. He said, thanks, we're going to take these recommendations, but I don't think there's any need for an emergency just yet. And then there was pushback. And then he said, oh, yeah, we're

going to declare an emergency. Tim, you've looked at states that have done this on the state level. How much of a difference does it make? People in these states say that it makes a big difference. It allows them to waive some of the rules about doctor-to-patient ratios and some of these other things. It allows them to push money. People say, I guess that's a presidential phrase, but a lot of people are saying that it...

It's hard sometimes. I still give thumbs up, and as I do it, I'm like, oh, that's hard sometimes. I still give thumbs up, and as I do it, I'm like, oh, that's a thing. But they say that in the States, it's helping. It's made a difference. It's not clear 100% that this emergency really is going to be declared, and it's also not clear what kind of emergency and what it will actually do. I mean, people have known for a long time, there's been a consensus, a bipartisan consensus,

on the best ways to proceed, and we're nine months into the administration. And the administration also suffered a black eye this week when their nominee for drug czar had to withdraw his nomination because it turned out he had co-authored a bill that did a favor for the pharmaceutical industry that was peddling opioids. Yeah, the drug distributors had been lobbying hard and this congressman who was the nominee, his chief of staff, then shortly after the legislation

passed, according to 60 Minutes reporting, went and became a lobbyist for the very drug distributors that had been pushing for that legislation. It was actually remarkable. Rep Marino withdrew just two days after the 60 Minutes report. I thought it would have been at least like, usually it's Friday, but he only made it to Tuesday. But as has been pointed out a lot, I mean, he came under such scrutiny for shepherding this bill. It's a bill that passed unanimously. President Obama signed it into law. Has there been any real conversation about revisiting or repealing this law? And where does that stand?

Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill and Jerry Connolly, I think, from Virginia, have authored legislation that would reverse that rule change and give DEA more power to stop or halt or get in the way of these large shipments of opioids. Let's watch and see how far the probably well-meaning and probably supported by many people legislation proposed by that senator and that congressman can get. And I will just add that Mr. Marino is not the only position that needs a nominee. There is currently no nominee for HHS secretary and no nominee for DEA administrator. If you wanted to fight the opioid crisis, those would be three key generals. That announcement is going to come later this week. That is something we will be keeping tabs on. We'll have to see what happens. We'll have to see what happens.

We'll have to see what happens. And we will have to see what happens with the rest of the week's news before we are back in your feed. But for that, that is a wrap for this show tonight. Thank you, everybody. We love coming to Chicago. Thanks for being here. Thanks to everybody at WBEZ.

Thanks to you guys. Thank you. Thank you. Huge thanks to the WBEZ podcast passport series curated and produced by WBEZ's live events producer, Tyler Green. More great shows at WBEz.org slash events. Also thanks to the WBEZ events team, especially Mary Kathleen Nadelson and Simon Tran. Thank you to our recording engineer Colin Ashmead Bobbitt and everyone at the Athenaeum Theater. The visuals you see were made by the lovely and talented Renee Klar. The podcast is produced by Samantha Fields

and edited by Mifani Maturi, Shirley Henry, and Beth Donovan, as well as Barbara Sprunt. Thanks also to our awesome intern, Lexi Schapittle. And thanks most of all to you guys in the audience tonight for coming out here. Thanks so much. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elving, editor-cor-Chief of Correspondent. And thank you Chicago. Thank you Chicago. For being with us on the NPR Politics Podcast. © BF-WATCH TV 2021