The NPR Politics Podcast - NPR Politics Live From Cleveland

Episode Date: February 24, 2018

This is a special episode, recorded in front of a live audience at the Ohio Theatre at Playhouse Square in Cleveland on Friday, February 23. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Asma Khalid and political editor Domenico Montanaro. 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 there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, live from Cleveland. We are here at the Ohio Theater at Playhouse Square. NPR is partnering with WKSU and WCPN IdeaStream on our latest live show. At the end of a week that seemed to maybe crack the paralyzed debate over gun policies, Florida's Republican governor wants to increase the age for gun purchases. That's something the NRA has long opposed. And it's been a very busy stretch for Robert Mueller's investigation. Yesterday, former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort was charged on 32 new criminal counts. He's since been charged with even more. Rick Gates faced all those charges too.

And today, that one-time top Trump aide has pleaded guilty and is now cooperating with the investigation. We'll talk about all of that, and then we'll take a big-picture look at what's changed and what hasn't in the broader midterm environment. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. All right. And Asma, first of

all, we have missed you so much. So it's so great to hang out with you in the podcast again. And I have clearly missed you all as well. I mean, I thought I was gone, but clearly that didn't last too long. But it's great to be back. Domenico said it was like we're a soap opera, and it's like, Asma's just been in a coma the whole time, and she's back! Her husband's name is Tad.

That would be fake news. Do not believe Domenico. Alright, so just for the record, since we did not have a time stamp tonight, it is 7.50pm on Friday, February 23rd. Like I said before, things changed between the printing of the script and now, so things will certainly change like they always do by the time you hear it. So yesterday, Tam, you and Mara and

Sue and Danielle talked a lot about this week and the gun control debate and just what a powerful week it's been at certain points seeing these students stand up go to state houses going to the white house and really immediately launch themselves into being advocates for something so there's a long conversation all about guns that's worth a listen to but we're going to keep talking about it for a little bit here and we're going to talk about a development that happened today one of the things we talked about on that show was how republicans ever go against the National Rifle Association. So it was pretty notable when Florida Governor Rick Scott, who's pretty conservative,

came out and called for a series of changes to Florida policy and law, which included barring people under 21 from buying or possessing firearms, with some exceptions, ban on bump stock purchases, about $500 million for school safety, including this idea of hardening schools, and hiring more mental health counselors for schools. Domenico, what did you make of this statement and how it compares to the other things we've heard from lawmakers, particularly on the conservative side? Well, you know, I mean, this is one thing for Governor Scott to come forward with this. I found it kind of fascinating when you listen to the language, just how similar President Trump was to Wayne LaPierre when he gave

his speech at CPAC. It was almost as if they had talked to each other and decided to share notes, because I don't know about you guys, but I had never heard the word hardened schools before those two gentlemen decided to say it. We might say something like, in all honesty, you know, I'm a dad of two kids. You might say, you know, I want to make sure my kid's school is safe. I want to make sure that the school is secure. You know, you might talk about, I remember having to go through metal detectors, for example, or whatever. But I never heard anybody say, we really need our schools to be hardened. I think it is a real policy idea, though, the idea that, you know, not being able to knock through a window or something like that. Sure.

And that schools are a soft target, or many schools are soft targets. So that's right. But the point was, when you see and you listen to Wayne LaPierre in the morning, and then you listen to President Trump just hours later, basically use the same language. And we did a post on this online on NPR.org. When you think about, you know, Trump talking about gun-free zones, same thing Wayne LaPierre was talking about. When you hear him talk about soft targets versus wide open. And then Trump sort of gave himself away a little bit in the White House when he was asked about whether or not he'd be going against the NRA because he said that he would be in favor of raising the age from 18 to 21 to have the ability to buy a rifle. He said, no, I don't think I'm going against the NRA. You know, we've been speaking a lot the last couple of days.

So, Tam, given all of that, though, getting back to this idea that pretty much that's typically how it goes with a lot of Republicans, especially House Republicans. But you have Florida's governor, incredibly conservative figure running for Senate, probably saying, no, I want to raise the purchase age. Well, and he's he's someone who, as governor, has signed a lot of legislation that loosened gun regulations or were pro sort of pro-gun rights legislation in his time as governor he however is the governor of the state of florida that hasn't just had this really terrible school shooting but also had the pulse nightclub shooting not that like 18 months before yes the fort lauderdale, as well as the airport. Yes, the Fort Lauderdale Airport, which a lot of people have forgotten, but which people there have not forgotten. And also, he is in all likelihood running for the Senate,

which probably means that he has some polling and can see that these ideas, these are not hardcore banning AR-15s, reinstating the so-called assault weapons ban. These are sort of incremental ideas around the edges. This is not a wholesale attack on gun rights. Right, but Asma, one of the things we've talked a lot about, honestly, every time a school shooting happens,

but I think it's different that we've actually seen a little bit of movement or at least cracks in the fissures this time around, is that this is such a cultural issue for so many voters, especially if you're someone who supports gun rights. For you, that is a defining part of your personality and it's something that's foremost on your mind when you're going to the voting booth. And that not be the case for somebody uh who opposes who

wants to see assault weapons bans who wants to see uh big restrictions i mean they care about that but they care about a lot of other things you're right right and i think for so long we've seen the power dynamic and this gun debate fall to those who are concerned about gun regulation right like these are not two sides of an equal coin, certainly when it comes to like the ferocity of those issues. I think what we've begun to see in the last week is sort of an equal level of intensity from folks who do want some sort of gun regulation. And a lot of that we're seeing, frankly, from people who are not old enough to vote yet. So, I mean, there can be

questions about how effective this could actually be if you have a bunch of 15, 16, 17-year-olds who are spearheading this debate. I mean, we could talk more about that later, but I actually spent the week, in fact, interviewing a whole bunch of these people who are, you know, the post-millennial generation, Gen Z. A couple of them are old enough to vote or will be old enough to vote, but they spoke a lot about essentially the fact that they've grown up with these conversations. I mean, we're not so much older, but they shared with me the fact that they began doing active shooter drills in school at the age of, I believe, kindergarten, some of them told me, or first grade. I mean, this has become such a part of their lives in ways that I don't even think those of us who are in our 30s can understand.

Well, I think that's true because, you know, some of us who are in our 30s or late 30s still remember Cold War drills, you know, fallout drills and having the fallout shelter signs still there from... I don't know, I remember being told about them. You Californians. We had earthquake drills in California. But, you know, whatever, the signs were still up in my school. The Queen's Department of Education just hadn't taken those down yet, Domenica. No. But no, I think that you're right, Asma, that there's a change within the generations, right? I mean, on how this is viewed. And I always say you should really view politicians through the lens of whether or not they think they can still win.

There are people who have strong morals and strong ideals, but when it comes right down to it, it's going to be whether or not they can hold on to their seat. And we're seeing some differences in whether or not where the political pressure is coming from. Because the NRA and pro-gun folks in this country for a long time have been the ones with the enthusiasm, the energy, and the activism on their side. When you see what happened after Parkland and you have what Marco Rubio faced at his town hall with those students and then decided to soften some of his positions, like saying that he might be in favor of limiting high-capacity magazines, that's a difference for a guy who's an A-plus rated NRA member. And that only comes about where the pressure comes from one one question that i have is are these people are these politicians taking a position or are they actually going to get something done and typically and this is like a very cynical thing to say but after

these sort of mass shootings there's a lot of energy at the beginning, and then they, often they sort of run out the clock, and there is a clock ticking in the Florida legislature. They have a very short session, and it's almost over, and they're talking about pretty dramatic legislation. Is Governor Scott going to call a special session if they don't get it done? I don't know. So you want my, yeah, my real take assessment on this, and maybe I'm the cynic here like you? No, I don't think that some dramatic change is going to come about now.

But in part, I agree with Domenico. It's because the very people who have the power dynamic are not old enough to vote yet. But I guess if I were to project out 10 years down the road, one pollster I was talking to who's been surveying millennial voters, so young voters since about 2000, he said that the activism he's seen in the last week, the raw activism among the young people, is unlike anything he has ever seen in all his years of surveying young voters.

And so he wonders if that holds, right? And if they are 16 or 17, he wonders, and he doesn't know the answer to this question. He said, could this be this generation's Iraq war moment, their 9-11 moment? And what he meant by that was when you look at the people who came of age during the Iraq War, 9-11, they are far more democratic, he says, than even younger millennials. And we don't know the answer to that yet. But I don't think those folks have the political power yet to actually hold Governor Scott or anyone else really accountable. And I think the four of us are a good example of that because we're all ish the same age. But, you know know there's several years gaps on one side or another and I think that Asma and I are nearly identically the same age and

we've talked about how there are formative moments that influenced our lives but also the way we think about politics and the way we decide on who we want to vote for and what we think about political issue because it's it's something that happened at a certain age when you're just old enough to understand it and grasp it and have it affect you. But I think the two things that I think about when it comes to this are one, bump stocks, and two, gay marriage in terms of political action or inaction. Because bump stocks, after the Las Vegas shooting, a lot of conversation about bump stocks. A lot of Republicans in Congress saying, yeah, we should do something about this. I'd be for banning them. I'd be for taking action. Paul Ryan says, I am too. And that's why I'm calling on ATF to take

a look at this. And then we never talked about bump stocks again until President Trump brought it up this week. Just moving on. I'd like ATF to look at that. Yeah. Quickly. Right. But the point on- And they already have. Yeah. Yeah. But on gay marriage, I think that's the best recent example of how something won't change and won't change and won't change. And then suddenly public opinion shifts and politicians realize they have to scramble to get on the right side of it. And then suddenly it's an avalanche. And here we are, gay marriage is legal in every single state in America. And in 2004, Democrats didn't want to talk about it at all and would get a paralyzed look on their face and say,

well, I mean, civil unions got to go by, you know? Well, and I was in this great state in 2004, and there was a ballot initiative. And that ballot initiative helped drive Republican turnout and helped George W. Bush win in the state. Right. So in a short, in a short term, in the short term, if you look at the Pennsylvania special election, you have the Democrat there who is not running on an assault weapons ban, right? He is, this is like, that's a district president Trump won by 20 points. The Democrat there, Conor Lamb has a 50-50 shot of winning that district. So Democrats have not quite figured out how to go about campaigning on that issue or wanting to be the

ones to stick their necks out in places that are purple to red leaning. And, you know, it may very well be like you say with gay marriage. And I was thinking about that issue as well because, you know, it was 2005 when Democrats were still talking about well civil unions are really the way to go I mean it was 2012 and Barack Obama's re-election before Joe Biden went over his skis so to speak and you know came out and endorsed same-sex marriage fully when President Obama wasn't quite there yet. Can I share just two quick stories from some of the kids I talked to this week? So one is a self-identified conservative from Indiana. He's a college kid. And to your point about Democrats not yet feeling comfortable, right, in the older generation, in a place like

Pennsylvania to talk about this, he says that he thinks, after Parkland that something possibly needs to be done around regulating AR-15s and he said I don't think I would have thought that before self-identified conservative you know but but much younger and to me that was really interesting because he saw in his himself sort of a shift and I said well what was, what was the shift? And he says, I don't know. It's been happening over the last couple of months, but Parkland certainly played a role, right? The other person I talked to was a woman who, a young girl, actually, she's still in high school, who told me she was a junior NRA member. And her attitudes had also begun to shift in part because of conversations she'd had with friends and whatnot over the last little while. And she told me she ended up participating in a walkout at her school. She said she went shooting just last summer. The family shoots and she's been around guns all her

life. But to me, those both conversations were really telling because these are not just like staunch anti-gun families. These were two young people who had grown up around guns their whole lives, who felt fundamentally different than the conversations I've had with older people. And I don't know the answer to this, but I'm just curious if they will continue to feel this way as they get older. And then beyond that, I mean, are they symbolic of something bigger or were they just two random people that I talked to? So we're going to shift gears in a moment here to talk about the latest news in the Russia investigation. But just to close this out, I want to hear from all of us, what's one thing that you're looking for that you think would be

a good benchmark as to whether things actually will change, whether bills will actually get passed, or whether this will end up as it often does beforehand where status quo nothing changes i i mean i would be looking to the house and not just the senate because i i could see a lot of these things getting through the senate maybe but the house is a whole different ball game i mean does the president continue to lobby for it in a way that is really leaning into it with specificity? I mean, does he tweet about it? You know, does he go on a tweet storm about the necessity for bump stock legislation? Right. I mean, I don't know.

And I would look to when you talk about Capitol Hill, you know, Congress is back next week. Do they start to move on things? Do these committees start to do real work in a bipartisan way? Does Marco Rubio stick to this position of wanting to limit magazines? Or does he start to recede into the background and defer to someone else? He's done that in the past. Asma? So I'm really curious to see how things play out on a micro level in the state of Florida. I just think Florida in a lot of ways is a microcosm of this country. And so as much as there may be pressures for Rick Scott to come out and talk about raising the age to purchase a rifle, there are a lot of equal pressures from an older constituency who feels really differently.

And I don't know if we'll see much change in Florida, but I think if we do, to me, that's a really interesting sign of potentially shifting winds. For me, I want to see what Democrats running for the House do in the suburbs. I mean, the suburbs are going to be ground zero for whether or not Democrats take back the House or not. So obviously going and campaigning for gun control in a lot of Republican House districts in America isn't going to go too far. People in those districts have very firm views. They're not going to change them anytime soon. But is this something that Democrats think is one of the top issues they can campaign on in the suburbs? And if they do, does that work? Does that turn off voters and get them back into the Republican corner where they've been for a

while? So for me, that's something I'm going to look at. All right. Other news has happened, and we are going to shift gears. So today, Rick Gates, former deputy campaign chair for President Trump and the business partner of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States and making false statements. Now, just yesterday, prosecutors had unsealed a whole slew of additional charges against both Gates and Manafort, mostly related to tax and bank fraud. They had already been facing charges of money laundering. So, Tam, Rick Gates pleads guilty.

And like we said before, since then, Paul Manafort has now been charged with additional charges. Yeah, they unsealed another indictment, five more charges. But just to be clear, walk us through what exactly Gates is pleading guilty to. And of all the charges against them, none of them are specifically related to Russia and sort of this ongoing criminal enterprise of making a lot of money from the ukrainian regime that was in place until 2014 um hiding that money in various bank accounts in various countries and islands and whatnot and then laundering it back into the United States. $30 million. It's a lot of money. But none of this document says anything about President Trump's campaign.

But the big picture is that you now have Michael Flynn cooperating with investigators. You now have George Papadopoulos cooperating with investigators. You now have Rick Gates cooperating with investigators. How are you feeling if you're Paul Manafort over the last week? Even over the last few hours, Paul Manafort has got to be feeling pretty lonely. Not only did he get this new raft of 30 charges, 20 charges, something yesterday,

then today his longtime business partner pleads guilty, doesn't just plead guilty, but says he's cooperating with the Mueller investigation. And then, bam, they unseal another indictment with five more charges. Manafort did put out a statement, which is, I think, relatively remarkable, and so I will read it. Okay. Sounds like a good news decision. I'm not going to paraphrase. Okay, so here it is. Notwithstanding that Rick Gates pled today, I continue to maintain my innocence. I had hoped and expected my business colleague would have had the strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence. For reasons yet to surface, he chose to do otherwise. This does not alter my commitment

to defend myself against the untrue piled up charges contained in the indictments against me. So here's the reality of Rick Gates is that he was squeezed. He has four young children. He's 45 years old. He has his life children, he's 45 years old, he has his life ahead of him, and he doesn't have enough money to pay lawyers. Yeah, because your entire business life has been blown up by this, and you've got legal bills, and you've got, yeah. So Domenico, obviously this is happening

on like a criminal investigation, criminal charges, judicial plane. But there's an equally important political plane this is playing out in. And over the last few months especially, Robert Mueller never talks in public, never holds press conferences, has been doing his work behind closed doors. And President Trump and his allies have been hammering on him, hammering on the FBI, saying the entire thing is a witch hunt, that the FBI is out to get him. You know, everything you can think of, and you've seen the public approval number of the FBI drop and become more partisan. So the fact

that you've had this intense week where Mueller charges a bunch of Russians for operating a troll farm and doing misinformation campaigns on social media, more charges against Manafort, Gates' lawyer pleaded guilty, does this change the political dynamic at all when you see this much activity? The fact is here that these prosecutors that Robert Mueller has hired are not the prosecutors you want knocking on your door if you may have done something shady. I don't think I'd even want bad prosecutors knocking on my door, you know, to be clear. Totally mediocre prosecutors.

Meh. If you had to make a choice, you wouldn't want to choose the team Mueller's hired. This is the A-team, okay? And I don't mean the guys with the chains and the van. These are the ones with subpoena power. You're not driving up in a van. These are the ones with subpoena power.

That's much scarier. And the fact is that, you know, they are going to leverage everything they possibly can. And when it comes to money and bank fraud, all that stuff has trails, right? You know how much money is in your account. Your app on your phone knows how much money is in your account. You know how much you're putting in the Caymans

and not telling your wife about, you know, if you're doing that. No, I mean, the fact is, like, my point is that this team will go and flip the people it needs to flip to be able to climb the ladder. And that's what they're doing. And that's what that statement that you read from Paul Manafort is about. He's saying, essentially, if this were a mob movie, you snitch, you know, you dirty rat. You weren't supposed to tell, right? And the target then becomes Paul Manafort because Manafort is digging in and has this defiant stance. And it's not, you know, insignificant that Paul Manafort was the campaign chairman for President Donald Trump. And the reason I say that is because even if this doesn't prove conspiracy to defraud the United States on behalf of Russia and is tied to the

Trump campaign, Paul Manafort knows stuff about the Trump campaign. Remember, he was the person who was also at that meeting that Donald Trump Jr. had set up with the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya. So does Paul Manafort flip on anybody? Does he eventually get squeezed while facing a significant amount of jail time? And it goes to judgment of Donald Trump. You know, the kind of campaign that he decided to set up, thinly vetted, if vetted at all. The other question, though, is, is Manafort, in this case, with Rick Gates and that lawyer who pled out, is Manafort the end goal? Is Manafort's scheme the end goal on that?

What do you think? You know what? Here's what I like to say. Robert Mueller knows what's going on. Well, I don't. And I think that's something that, speaking of A-teams, when it comes to the A-team for NPR coverage of this,

none of us are on it. No. I was doing my best to try to pretend to be Carrie Johnson, and I did a woefully inadequate job. Carrie Johnson and Ryan Lucas have been doing a great job covering this, and if anything we're talking about leaves you with more questions, they and Kelly McEvers, who does another great NPR podcast, Embedded,

just, yeah, Embedded, alright. They just put out two episodes. One of them looks into the question of collusion, what exactly is being investigated, and the other looks into the obstruction of justice question. Which Kerry Johnson would say

is not an actual charge. Collusion is not a crime. But Asma, let's go back a week. And let's go back to one of the key charges here, that Russians were putting stuff out on Facebook, that they were running a disinformation campaign. And part of it was about suppressing the vote, particularly among minority voters,

getting them to just feel so discouraged that they wouldn't show up at the polls. You were having some conversations with people here in Cleveland about that today. Yeah, just this morning. And I'm just starting to report this story out, right? So I haven't sort of done as much reporting out as I would like on it. So this is a sneak peek for Morning Edition for you a week from now. But I was having some conversations with some people within the Ohio Young Black Democrats group. I know someone's here. I know you all told me. But one thing that I posed was essentially this very question of one of the things we learned from the indictment was that there was a clear attempt to suppress minority votes, right? That was something that a claim

across very clearly, particularly in the African-American community. And so just a quick snapshot of that, if you are not familiar, there were specifically Instagram posts. Instagram posts that were being crafted by Russian actors that highlighted Hillary Clinton's early stances, I shouldn't even say highlighted, perhaps somewhat distorted at times even stances, around criminal justice, that criminal justice conversation in the 90s, and then encouraged specifically black voters to stay at home, that it was not worth their time to go out and vote, and sometimes use somewhat, I think, derogatory language as well. So what I've been trying to figure out is what, to what degree that actually matters, and to what degree it actually mattered both electorally, but also in people's sort of public perception of what's going on. And I would say it's kind of unclear. So, you know, I think that everybody

feels so far that I've talked to that there is definitely indication that there was an attempt to suppress minority votes. But the big question I asked is, you know, like, say that this hadn't happened, would we have seen a higher minority voter turnout rate in last year's election? And people didn't know that they would. I was looking just recently back at census data of the black voter turnout rate, and it was lower in 2016 than it was for John Kerry in 2004. I mean, that's just sort of mind-boggling to me. This is why we're glad Asma's back, because the sentence of like,

so I decided, just because I was bored, to go look back at Sensational. Well, because I was looking at it to be like, okay, how bad was it? Because I had heard it was quite bad. And then you're like, wow. Speaking of John Kerry. We are all nerd emoji up here. And Scott is about to get super nerd emoji up here. And Scott

is about to get super nerd emoji. I need to say this. This blew my mind. The Washington Post did a profile of Robert Mueller today. They showed a picture. Robert Mueller and John Kerry played on the same high school hockey team with each other. I don't think they were like the pranksters in the locker room.

I don't get that vibe from either of them. Hello. They must have been like the total straight arrows of the bunch. I don't get that vibe from either of them. They must have been like the total straight arrows of the bunch. I don't know. They're sitting next to each other in the team picture. Oh, wow. I always thought they looked similar, too. Even in high school, they were old white guys.

Alright, that is it for the show tonight. Thank you, Cleveland. We loved coming here to the beautiful Ohio Theater. Thanks to our partners, WKSU and WCPN, and especially to Ann Verweeby, Ellie Ellis, and Dan Nelson. You can support this podcast by supporting them, your local public radio station.

Thanks also to the City Club and Dan Malthrop and to Alicia Glasser, Michelle Triplett, Joe Corsica, and everyone here at the Ohio Theater. We couldn't have done it without Allie Prescott, Jessica Goldstein, and Cy Sykes, and the NPR Events team. The visuals behind us, which you can't see in the radio, are by the talented Renee Klar with help from Mina Tavakoli. The podcast is produced by Samantha Fields

with much help, especially on this live show, from Barbara Sprunt. The show tonight was engineered by Andy Huther. Our editors are Beth Donovan, Shirley Henry, and Mithani Mutturi. And most of all, thank you to all of you in the audience tonight and for everyone listening. Thank you for listening to this podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. And thank you, Cleveland, for being with us for the NPR Politics Podcast. © BF-WATCH TV 2021