The NPR Politics Podcast - NPR Politics Live From DC: The Road To 2020

Episode Date: November 9, 2019

This is a special episode, recorded in front of a live audience at the Warner Theater in Washington, DC on Friday, November 8th. The cast breaks down everything you need to know about who's running for president, and how impeachment affects the race. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political correspondent Scott Detrow, political correspondent Asma Khalid, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and senior editor and correspondent 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, I'm John Glenn Hill here at the Warner Theatre about to watch the NPR Politics Live Show. My name is Elliot and I'm here for the Politics Podcast recording for the fourth time. I'm Darren and this is the Politics Podcast and this is my fourth time here. Hi, I'm Lisa. I'm here for the Politics Podcast at the Warner Theatre. This podcast was recorded at... This podcast was recorded at... This podcast was recorded at... 815 was recorded at... This podcast was recorded at... 815!

On Friday, November 8th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, live! I'm Tamara Keith, I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the campaign. I'm Aisha Rasto. I also cover the White House.

Thank you. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. So we are here in Washington, D.C. at the Warner Theatre, and we are not alone. NPR is partnering with WAMU for this live show, and we want to say a huge thank you to them for supporting us. So on our show, we have a tradition that when someone drops out of the race, we play a little number from a band you may have heard of, NSYNC, Bye Bye Bye. Bye Bye Bye. And we've now done that more than half a dozen times.

And I sort of thought that that was the mode we were in, saying goodbye to people. And we don't even have a song for hello. There's no, like, hello, hello hello hello yeah you can do baby shark isn't there a Lionel Richie song that says hello hello that's like isn't me you're waiting for someone's singing that now right like to the campaign someone is singing that now or maybe singing it right now um yeah here here's the thing. We're less than 90 days away from the Iowa caucuses, and all of a sudden, Scott Detrow,

there is a new potential likely probably candidate. Yeah. There's a lot of New York City mayors in our lives right now. There's... I thought we got rid of one. There's former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who's he's in part two of the show. There is New York City Mayor Mike Billiani, who's, he's in part two of the show. There is New York City Mayor Mike, Bill de Blasio.

Who we said bye-bye-bye to. We did, but now we might be saying hello to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. He today filed to run for president in the state of Alabama. Not one of the key early swing states we spend a lot of time on, but a state that had a

filing deadline that is today. He is thinking of running. He has not fully decided to run for president. And this seems to be kind of the type of campaign that you would see, you know, not since like the late 70s of he's thinking of getting in the race. He's not sure. His advisors have told a few outlets he's not even going to show up in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, Nevada. He's going to wait and see how things go and maybe hop in around Super Tuesday. Sort of the white knight plan, ride in on a horse right at the right moment. I mean, you know, there's always this flirtation with billionaires or people of some means in either party because they can meet these filing deadlines, which are really onerous.

I mean, you have to go state by state to fill out all of the requirements. And it takes a lot of money and a lot of organization. And if you have that kind of money right away, you can just dump it all and say, OK, go. So Asma, what is the theory of his case? Like, what is he offering as a candidate? Where would he fit in in this field? So his theory of the case is that there is this moderate contingency of the electorate that would back a candidate like Michael Bloomberg. Now, if I were to poke some holes in that theory of the case, I would say he needs to win a

Democratic primary in order to get through. And right now, in order to win a Democratic primary in order to get through. And right now, in order to win a Democratic primary, you need a whole bunch of white liberal voters and you need a lot of support from African-Americans. Michael Bloomberg, as you all might remember, was sort of controversially linked to a, I should say, a controversial policy called stop and frisk. And this is a policy that he would inevitably have to defend if he jumps into the race. But look, I think the biggest thing to me is that whether or not he gets into the race or not, this is a pretty public rebuke, a pretty public vote of no confidence in Joe Biden's candidacy. That's what he's saying. Yeah. And Scott, you were talking to Ed Rendell, who is a Biden ally.

He's a Biden ally, but not a Biden ally who follows the script of Talking Points, which is why he's great to talk to. And he worked a lot with Mike Bloomberg when he was governor of Pennsylvania, and Bloomberg was New York mayor on a lot of things. So I call him up to ask what he thinks. And he said, I love Mike Bloomberg.

If Joe wasn't in the race or if Joe did terribly, I'd be for Mike Bloomberg. And he thought that Bloomberg was doing exactly this, seeing how Joe Biden does and being kind of a moderate establishment backup plan if Joe Biden does falter, because Mike Bloomberg is very worried about Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. He's got a personal reason to be worried about Elizabeth Warren, because according to the wealth tax calculator she tweeted at him last night, he would be paying $3 billion a year in taxes if her wealth tax went into effect. But he has like $52 billion. He's got some billions to spare.

But could you really just swap out a Biden and the constituency that is for Biden with Michael Bloomberg? I mean, as you were saying, African-American voters might have some issues with that. But even if you think of Biden as going for this everyman, you had Michael Bloomberg when he was in New York. Wasn't he trying to ban Big Gulp's you couldn't get soda and all these things? You're going to take the big gulp from my cold dead hands. That's what happened to me. I love my coke.

Coca-Cola. That was a very controversial policy too. And not in a small quantity of ounces. No, no, no. Who's going to go for this? 40 ounces or bust. Like, with the big,

like, doesn't fit on this. I mean, they got like 64, 128. Now you sound like Sarah Palin. Really? Remember when she went to CPAC and held a big gulp up and said, now I'm going to take this away.

But look, I just don't... I don't know. Somebody out there knows who you're talking about. I just don't know where the space is in the Democratic primary for a billionaire while a party that's lurching left, a centrist billionaire, it's a really difficult sort of thing to see when you also have, by the way, all of this talk of the consternation and the hand-wringing about the Democratic field is coming from the sort of elite establishment Democratic lane. When you ask actual Democratic voters how they feel about this field, you know, 75, 85 percent in many polls saying that they're satisfied with this field, and you've had these candidates campaigning for months.

For the podcast listening audience at home, we have now put up a slide with all of the candidates um there are 16 of them it's a lot yeah it is but it is fewer than last time so are there really 16 we topped out at 24 yeah yeah and we could go back up to 17 i guess guess. So, you know, I want to pull back for a moment and travel back in time to a simpler time a few months ago when this was in the early stages of the primary. And there was this sense early on that Democrats were so incredibly engaged that this was going to be a nationalized primary, that Iowa and New Hampshire weren't going to matter. I mean, I guess this is sort of the theory that Bloomberg has, that Iowa and New Hampshire wouldn't matter

because it was such a nationalized race. And you got the sense that Iowa and New Hampshire were sort of sitting back saying, oh, they say that every four years. And all of a sudden, now people say they're moving to Iowa. So what happened? I don't know who really believed that. I mean, if they did, you know, they haven't really... There were some campaigns that did. They re-evaluated since.

You know, I don't... The campaigns that are moving to Iowa. You know, I mean, the fact of the matter is, you know, every four years people pay attention to national polls and national polls matter far less than the early state polls and the reason for that is because of the kind of momentum that can be swept in you know we'll talk about Rudy Giuliani more in the show for some other reason but he also ran for president in 2008 you might remember where he led national polls for months and months and months and spent more than 60 million dollars to win one delegate because of his Florida, Florida, Florida strategy.

He led in Florida, led in Florida, led nationally, lost Iowa, lost New Hampshire, lost South Carolina, and he was toast. Well, and right now there is some differentiation. The national polls are showing something different than, say, the Iowa polls. Yeah, and I think Asma and I both were in Iowa a lot recently, and Asma saw this too, that I think the biggest difference there is that Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, another city, not

New York, South Bend, Indiana, has incredible organization, incredible resources, incredible enthusiasm and volunteer efforts out in Iowa. He has spent a ton of time in Iowa. And you have seen in poll after poll recently that he is really competitive there. And there is an outside, a very outside chance that he could win. But he is doing better than

Joe Biden. He is doing better than a lot of more name brand national candidates in Iowa. And if he were able to win in Iowa, I think that dispels a lot of the concern of, can this 30-something mayor of a relatively small city be a national candidate? And on the same token, I would say, I mean, that's sort of the organizational strength is what we've also been seeing from Elizabeth Warren's campaign. You know, for a long time, I think there were questions at the beginning of this race about, is she too progressive? Is she too sort of left and radical? And sure, some folks still think those things about her, but she has been amazingly effective at organizing in some of the early states. I think, Scott, you've reported on this in Nevada,

in Iowa, in New Hampshire. And those are the candidates that we've seen rise up in these early polls because they just have really good operations, volunteers, staff, working, knocking on doors, calling people, just doing sort of volunteer training events in these places. And if you're not doing those things, then you just don't have as much of an attraction in some of those early states. Well, and can we explain why in particular an Iowa organization matters? The caucuses are this weird thing, which until you see them, they are hard to explain. Even after you've seen them, it turns out it's hard to explain.

But, I mean, people go to gymnasiums and other large rooms and try to persuade their neighbors to support their candidate. And then there's like shuffling into corners. And this is also happening in like the bitter cold of Iowa. So you actually have to feel fairly passionate about your candidate to get up. I mean, I feel like you have to be fairly, like fairly passionate to get up out of the cold and actually show up on a cold day in Iowa. The thing that I'm watching in Iowa is the 15% threshold. And for those of you who don't know, when you go to these corners, you have to have at least 15% after that first vote for them to then resort and for your delegates to count. So when you have a four-person race, like we have

essentially right now in Iowa, there are a couple candidates who are perilously close to that 15% line. You know, Joe Biden, for example, in a couple of these polls has been at 14%. And if you're to get 15 in one place, 14 in another, you know, you're going to see a lot of really janky kind of results when it comes to, you know, who's able to get their delegates through to the next round. And this is why Bernie Sanders' campaign feels very confident because he has had a consistent, he has been in a field of steady polls, the steadiest. He has been hanging around 20% by and large, with some exceptions, since the beginning of this race, consistently the number two poller, consistently the number

one fundraiser. His campaign has spent a lot of money on ads so far in Iowa and just announced they're going to spend a ton more on TV ads. And he's got a track record of four years ago, even though many of his supporters may be going elsewhere, he still has these core supporters. And they feel like once you factor in 15%, they are past 15% with their hardcore supporters, and they can do pretty well. And we should be clear that 15% isn't just 15% in the state. You've got to get 15% in various congressional districts. So that's a decently high threshold in every library in every one of those those places that they do this you've got to get 15 percent

so would it be possible this idea that you could lose iowa and that you could lose new hampshire and then say go to south carolina Are you thinking of a candidate in particular? There might be a candidate, Biden, who obviously has a lot of support with African-Americans who are not key in Iowa and New Hampshire, but will play a huge role in South Carolina. Can you lose those two and then go into South Carolina and finish strong? So sorry, I think that the theory of that is being tested by Joe Biden.

To me, the question is, how significantly do you lose Iowa and New Hampshire? If you are in second place in both of those states, and then you win South Carolina by 30 percentage points, then you're golden. That's fine. You're kind of talking about the Hillary Clinton path to nomination in 2016. She won Iowa. But barely.

And if you were Hillary Clinton going, that was 2016. She won Iowa, but by- But barely. And if you were Hillary Clinton going, that was effectively, in terms of momentum, in terms of the story, in terms of the resource disparity, that was like effectively a loss in the way that it was covered. Got clobbered by Sanders in New Hampshire, and then won in South Carolina big,

and turned it around and started racking up enormous win after enormous win on her way to the nomination. I think if she had actually lost to Iowa, it would have been different. What was the margin? I think it was like a coin flip in one of those gymnasiums somewhere. It was essentially a tie. There were actually some coin flips.

I mean, the thing is, it's true, right? We talk about Iowa, and they always talk about the tickets out of Iowa. And what they're talking about is placing first, second, or third, win, place, or show in horse racing, right? And, you know, if you're fourth, that really doesn't help your momentum. It really hurts your momentum. And, you know, African American voters are very practical. You know, Barack Obama was losing by a whole lot of votes, by a whole lot of percentage points to Hillary Clinton in 2008 through most of that campaign until he won Iowa. And when I was in South Carolina in 2008 and I would talk to African-American voters, they would say, look, if Lily White Iowa could vote for a black man, then fine, he can win. So, you know,

these candidates have something to prove. The issue is if Biden finishes fourth in Iowa and black voters decide, all right, this guy can't win. Where do they go? And in the current top four, I don't know if there's a clear answer in a way that when the field was broader before, I mean, you had a lot of campaigns. Kamala Harris's campaign in particular was kind of blunt about saying, you know, we expect that we could pick up support from African American voters if they step away from Joe Biden. Asma, one thing that I know we've talked a lot about in the newsroom that I feel like is an interesting thing to talk about is when you were last in Iowa, how hard were the Pete Buttigieg people

trying to say, he's kind of like Obama, he's kind of the Obama of 2020. This is a narrative that you hear all the time. I mean, I've heard it in such crude ways to say, oh, he's like Obama's gay younger brother. Their words, not mine. Wait, wait, wait. Somebody from the campaign said that? No, no, no. This is a random person.

Not a campaign staffer. But my point is, you know, yeah, like ahead of this liberty and justice dinner, which was last week in Iowa, it's the big dinner where Barack Obama gave this electrifying speech in 2008 that kind of catapulted him into winning the Iowa caucuses. Pete Buttigieg's campaign was essentially setting up his performance at this speech in much the same way, highlighting how significant the speech had been for Barack Obama. I was there and I would say, you know, look, Pete Buttigieg had a strong night there. Did he give the type of speech that Barack Obama did? Did he walk away from that night in the same way? I would say no. You know, but did he still convince a whole lot of people who might

have been skeptical about him that he has potential? I think he has increasingly been able to do that. To me, though, the overarching question, you know, to what you were saying, Aisha, is could somebody lose Iowa, lose New Hampshire, and win South Carolina? I think this is a question that the Democratic Party is going to need to wrestle with, because increasingly the problem for them is their electorate really doesn't look that much like Iowa and New Hampshire. And we talk about this every four years, but it's increasingly becoming a problem as the party is changing. Well, look, I think the big argument for Buttigieg when you're looking at the race is it's not a great place to be the front runner in November, a few months before that caucus, because what happens is now Elizabeth Warren is facing all this scrutiny that she hadn't faced previously based on Medicare for

all, right? And Medicare for all as a replacement to private health insurance, as she has put out her own plan now and can't use Bernie Sanders as a heat shield anymore. Now she has to defend that plan. She has to defend the cost. And you're hearing a lot of Democrats from suburban areas saying, pump the brakes here. This goes too far. The objective needs to be to beat President Trump, not to try to institute something that can't pass in Congress anyway and is going to turn off the middle of the country. If she loses that argument over the next few months or scares off enough Democratic voters who want to beat Trump

and think she's not electable, there's a path for Buttigieg to rise in Placic, Iowa. All right, we are going to leave it here right now. and thinks she's not electable, there's a path for Buttigieg to rise in Placic, Iowa. All right, we are going to leave it here right now. When we come back, impeachment on the road to 2020. offering online financial tools to give you a 360-degree view of all your accounts in one place. Want to talk? Personal Capital has registered advisors who can help you invest smarter and plan for retirement. Download the Personal Capital app or start investing today at personalcapital.com. Personal Capital. Invest with logic. Plan with heart. Wake up to a fresh take on the day's news with Up First every weekday morning,

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And all week, we love it too, all week we have been covering the latest developments from the transcripts being released. But tonight, we're going to take a step back and focus on a couple big-picture questions about impeachment. And the first is this. Tam, Aisha, you have spent a lot of your time this week reading transcripts. Oh, yeah. Yes. Yeah. A lot

of them. What big picture things did we learn from all of the document dumps this week that we didn't know before the documents start coming out? What changed the story big I think one of the biggest things was you had European Union ambassador Gordon Sondland he changed his or he updated his memory was refreshed his memory was refreshed for his testimony and it turns out that he had told a Ukrainian official that, in fact, money was being held up and that they expected to get investigations in return. There's a word for that. Quid pro quo. I have a very hard time.

It's as hard as Beto O'Rourke for you. It's as hard as. I have a very hard time. It's as hard as Beto O'Rourke. Now he drops out and now we have and now we have quid pro quo or whatever. So his memory is miraculously refreshed. Yes. He now recalls something that many lawmakers have thought was all along would be the most damning thing if there's a clear trail that the military aid was hung up. Tam, what else? So for me, for two weeks, I have been digging into the whistleblower complaint

and annotating every sentence in it, which has been a task. And today, I got the last element, the last element of the whistleblower complaint, the last thing that we hadn't seen in publicly released testimony, which Alexander Vindman, the NSC official that dealt with Ukraine, he talked about how the transcript, the rough call log, was moved to a secure system. That was the last piece of the whistleblower complaint that I had not been able to find in either public statements or public testimony. So let's just say the whistleblower complaint is corroborated.

So when President Trump and his allies say, this whistleblower, he wasn't there, he's not coming forward, out him, that's kind of irrelevant at this point, right? Like all the key facts. All the key facts are there in testimony from people whose names we do know. People who are on the record with decades of experience who have come forward to say that these are the things that happened, that they saw happen, and that they were involved with. I mean, if you think about the Sondland testimony, Sondland only amended his testimony because there were other witnesses who testified and said things that were different than what Sondland had said. So then he said, oh, I do now recall that. And you know why he recalls that? Because it's under threat of perjury. When you go before Congress and you

testify, you know, you could go to jail if you lie. And how many people got caught up in the Mueller investigation and wound up being penalized because of that? Roger Stone is on trial right now for misleading Congress. Domenico, President Trump thinks in terms of TV pictures more than anybody else, TV matters. Podcasts matter too, but TV matters more. And next week, this goes from people behind closed doors and statements being leaked and people like us speed reading transcripts and relaying them to live hearings. Yeah, I mean, I think this is the big thing. It's not what they're going to say. I mean, we've read thousands of pages now of what they have said. I don't know

that there's anything different that they're going to say. But they have picked three particular people because of the strength of their testimony that are going to now say this on camera, in public, and are going to face Republican supporters of President Trump who are going to try to pick apart their stories. And they're champing at the bit to do that. So you have these individuals who, how they stand up, how they're able to deliver this message, could go a long way in either shifting public opinion more in favor of the impeachment inquiry, or going the other direction. But Aisha, I feel like we have done

live special coverage of all of these big hearings. We have done podcasts on all of them. But I feel like so many times we've gone into this thinking, oh my gosh, this could be the thing that really changes the political dynamics. Michael Cohen, Robert Mueller. Yeah, James Comey. James Comey. Yeah. Is there, I mean, how much of a reality could it be that these hearings come and go and the political dynamics are exactly the same? I think the political dynamics, the overall kind of arc of it are probably set in, but there's just this idea, I think, that what you have now with what's going on with this impeachment inquiry, that it shows that, like, this is just negative news for President Trump, regardless of where you sit. Republicans in Congress don't want

to be on this. They don't want to be having to defend the president this way. They will do it. But every time they're doing that, they're not making a case for President Trump getting reelected. They're not making a case for policy. And what we have seen is that President Trump is not one who is going to sit back and kind of just keep, you know, just be not be out of the drama. There's going to be drama. And this is more of it. He's going to armchair quarterback the defense that is being provided by his republican allies in congress but let's be really clear we're talking about like seven percent of the country that's persuadable like i and i'm not even like i'm seven like i'm not literally folks

i'm not exaggerating right that's a little that was an attempt well no but look pew pew had found that there's like seven percent of the country that is essentially could go one way or the other. And I think we have seen movement in the polling, and it's from independents, right? On every single issue, I've said this many times, but on every single issue since the president took office, independents have tracked with Democrats except on impeachment. They have over and over again said that they're against an impeachment inquiry. They're against impeaching the president until about three weeks ago

when suddenly that flipped. And we saw a 19-point net change in our polling and other polls that came out where independents suddenly now are in favor of the impeachment inquiry. And that's a huge shift for Republicans, and that's why you see them on their back foot trying to come up with every other different argument that you hear. You just have to listen to Lindsey Graham to figure out which direction they're going. Asma, how many different ways does this affect that other thing that's going on, the 2020 primary, where we're months out from voting beginning? Gosh, I mean, in so many ways. I mean, at this point, if you think about it, so we've got six candidates, right,

who are running, who would essentially be jurors in the Senate, if this is, and you've reported on this, Scott, and like, look, if this goes to a vote in the Senate, you've then got this happening in January, a month ahead of the February caucuses. And we were just talking about Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren. That would be a blessing for someone like Pete Buttigieg, because someone like an Elizabeth

Warren just wouldn't have the capacity to be on the ground campaigning in January in Iowa if she needs to be. Talking about a six-day-a-week trial. Yeah. Mandatory attendance, right, Scott? And so, I mean, this is a sort of complicated things for some of the candidates who are running. I think the other bigger question to me, and I know, Demyco, you were talking just about the polling, is that when you talk to voters in Iowa, I just

spent a long stretch. I was in Iowa for pretty much the last week or so. And every time you talk to people, I was at a Biden event. I was at Warren events. I was at this big liberty and justice dinner. I don't recall a single person I met bring up impeachment as a factor for their vote or even a factor of what they were plausibly considering in terms of their decision making. So to me, maybe it's just a non issue for Democrats, but it's not what they're talking about. So is there a distinction between any of the key candidates on impeachment, how they would approach impeachment? Is that something where you could say, well, I'm for impeachment, and therefore I lean more one candidate than the other?

I don't think I've heard that at all from anybody. There's no daylight, right? There's no difference between... I mean, Elizabeth Warren will say that she was for impeachment, you know, as soon as she read the Mueller report, that she was for it before some of the others. I don't think that it matters.

I mean, I don't know if you all watched the last debate, but we heard about impeachment, and it sort of was like line by line. You pretty much heard... It was to me the one issue where we heard the most unanimous agreement amongst Democrats. So getting Trump out of office is essentially a control factor for Democrats. I mean, I guess it's the point of all of their efforts at the moment. I mean, they all agree on it. So then they can talk about the sort of utopia they want to create. Yeah. I mean, to me, the interesting question, though,

and I'd be curious what you guys, Aisha and Tam, think, because you cover Donald Trump, is the factor to which this is galvanizing his base of supporters. And this is something I think anecdotally you sort of see, right? But at his rally the other day, there were supporters of his wearing these T-shirts that said, read the transcript, it's a line that he says. Well, and I'm pretty sure that they didn't buy those shirts in a store.

That's some top-notch investigative journalism they're saying. Funny story, I have sent multiple emails to the campaign asking where they got the shirts, and I keep saying, let me move this up to the top of your inbox. I haven't gotten a response yet.

Not selling these in the trump store they probably they might be i would think they are but i was looking at the christmas ornaments i may have missed that i did see the christmas ornaments yes but more broadly i mean you're both covering the that other campaign happening right now trump's re-election campaign how is the campaign engaging with this they're saying read the transcript but obviously even when trump tweets read the transcript he never tweets a link to the actual transcript and you see that they could put the transcript on the shirts i mean i'm just saying like they you know i mean they're saying it like they could have put it on the shirts you i mean people could have read it on the shirts

but there's a lot of white space they could have put it on the shirts. But there's a lot of white space. They could have put it on the shirts, but they didn't. Fascinating side note about search engine optimization. Declaration of Independence. I have been searching the transcript occasionally in the last few days because I need it. I had to Google transcript.

The White House has actually, through its search engine optimization, done all caps, transcript, exclamation, exclamation, exclamation. So it comes up as the first item when you google it so the white house comes the white house is like pushing the transcript in a search engine optimization okay sorry that was random but you know i mean i think that what you see at these rallies or when i've gone to a rally since uh impeachment happened is that i mean

the people there are obviously fired up for President Trump. They think this is all Democrats just trying to come after Trump because that's what they do. But there's also even some people who are Trump supporters did say at the Minnesota rally that I was at, said that they weren't really happy with the call. They weren't really pleased with it, but they still backed Trump. They didn't think he should be impeached. And so, I mean, he's not going to lose his base over this at all. I think in recent elections that we just had this week, we didn't really see in Kentucky and other places, I mean, Domenico, we didn't really see this kind of backlash against Democrats over

impeachment, did we? No, and I think that's a key point. I mean, I think that was the first test in Kentucky and in Virginia and other places, whether or not, as Republicans were promising, that this would be some kind of third rail for Democrats, that pushing forward with impeachment would mean that rural Trump-based voters would come out in droves because they're so angry and irritated with this. In fact, that's not what happened at all. In fact, we saw the opposite. We saw that Democratic voters in urban areas, very fired up, came out in big numbers,

and those suburban areas are still being won by Democrats. And that is a giant warning sign for Republicans heading into next year. Can I ask you about that, though? Because I think we saw a similar result in the 2018 midterms. And I've just been cautious about over interpreting those results, because at the end of the day, Donald Trump is not on the ballot. And what I always hear from his supporters is it's about him. And there's a clear defense when they want defense when they want to defend him, right? They don't see necessarily him to be synonymous always with the party. I think that's absolutely true.

And I think that you can't look at 2018 versus 2016 or 20, you know, it has to be analogous to 2014. But when you look at overall enthusiasm, for example, among Democratic voters, Gallup just came out with new data this week that showed them at similar levels, if not higher, to 2008 compared to what it is today. It's almost 20 points higher than what it was in 2016. So if you've got those kinds of numbers and you've got a Democratic, you know, sort of, you know, wave of people who are staying engaged, who are voting in special elections, who are voting in off elections, who are voting in

off-year elections, you know, those things are indicators of what the turnout could be next year. And, you know, look, there's a lot of time left to go. You're not going to, I think all signs point to, you know, still a close election where turnout matters, right? But all of the signs that we have right now are that Democrats are fired up and there's no evidence that impeachment has fired up Republican rural voters. All right, we're going to take one more break. You are listening to the NPR Politics Podcast live at the Warner Theater in Washington, D.C. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Google. Thank you. one-on-one coaching in all 50 states, helping businesses get online, connect with new customers, and work more productively. Learn more at google.com slash grow. When a whale dies in the

ocean and its body falls down to the seabed, something amazing happens. When they hit that deep sea floor, it's like Thanksgiving. Whale Falls, the science of a deep sea feast. This week on Shortwave, the daily science podcast from NPR. And we're back. And now it is time for our favorite part of the show, Can't Let It Go. Where we all share something that we just cannot stop thinking about politics or otherwise. Aisha. Yes. So this week, what I cannot let go of,

it actually doesn't have to do with Kanye West or Beyonce or anything like that, but it has to do with the Roger Stone trial, which we've mentioned. Roger Stone was a friend of the president. I mean, yeah. Could still be be a friend it's not really clear but uh he is now on trial for among other things intimidating witnesses and threatening people and one of the people that he threatened was this guy named randy credico randy Credico has a dog

named Bianca it's his therapy dog and he takes it with him everywhere he took it with him to court to the grand jury before all this happened with Roger Stone or before this actual trial started but today he was talking

about basically part of why he was there is because Roger Stone threatened Bianca the dog and I think we we have and this is thanks to Tim Mack our colleague Tim Mack he actually ran into Randy last year and he got a picture of him with Bianca because he always has his dog with him. And apparently Roger Stone sent Randy an email and said, he called him a rat and a stoolie, I think. And then he's like a stool pigeon, like a stool pigeon. And he said, I will take your dog or your dog will be gone now but anyway today Randy said in Roger Stone well he's really testifying against Roger Stone but he did say in Roger Stone's defense

that he did not think that Roger Stone actually would have hurt his dog um he thought that that was hyperbole Roger Stone did also threaten to kind of kill him. He said he was a dead man. They didn't really get into that, but he said he did not think he was actually going to kill Bianca. He probably would have kept Bianca. He would have kept Bianca. But I thought that was so mean.

Who threatens a dog? It's just mean. Roger Stone. Well, allegedly. Allegedly. This is all allegedly. Yes. Domen allegedly. Allegedly. This is all allegedly. Yes. Domenico, what can't you let go of?

Well, you know, pouring through a lot of these transcripts this week, you know, one testimony in particular has stood out for a while, and that's of Acting Ambassador William Taylor to the acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. He's delivered some of the most explosive testimony of anybody. He's very credible. He was appointed by George W. Bush to be Ukraine ambassador. He was handpicked by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. He delivered a raft of things that seemed particularly damning to the president up and down. That's not what I can't let go of. It's this nugget that was in his testimony, you know, buried inside all of this explosive stuff, was how he tried to, you know,

communicate back to Washington to see what the foreign policy was supposed to be and he's essentially getting uh you know the musak from you know the bank and it's because the nsc the national security council at that time he said was consumed with trying to purchase greenland yeah yeah i was like really that story was true from a few i mean they said it was true but they were seriously looking at it, right? Well, the president confirmed it. The president confirmed it, and they were seriously studying it. And so he said that, yeah.

Hey, Finland, what does Finland think of that? Asma, what about you so anybody who heads to Iowa much knows that if you're a candidate you've got to be pretty careful when you eat food this is sort of a thing that a lot of people watch and they want to see you know are you like slicing up your pizza

and eating it with a fork and knife because nobody does that in any case Trump sliced his pizza and look at him now. That is like the reasoning that everybody has given over the last two years for why they shouldn't have to follow everything else.

It's not okay! In any case, food etiquette is a big deal, especially when you're in Iowa. So Eater, I don't know if you all know about Eater blog, they have like good, you know, food recommendations, whatnot, and restaurants. So they had reached out to a bunch of campaigns to see if they could follow anybody, you know, and watch essentially what this candidate eats 24-7, take pictures of them. And apparently there was really

only one campaign, they say, that bit at this idea, and that is Pete Buttigieg's campaign. So he was followed around, trailed by Eater, took pictures of, and the whole premise of this story was like, you know, look how food has been disastrously, like, perilous for candidates. Well, it turned out for Pete Buttigieg, there was like a bit of a slip to it. I don't know if we have a picture. Do we have a picture? Oh, there it is. Yeah.

Pete Buttigieg here. I can't really see the most important part. Yeah, so Pete Buttigieg here, you can't tell exactly, but he is eating a cinnamon roll that he cut up with a knife and then is starting to eat like they're chicken fingers or something. A chicken wing. He's eating it like a chicken wing. If this was

chicken, it would be acceptable, but this is a cinnamon roll. I was thinking about this. He cut it all up into pieces. I was thinking about this, and in his defense, Pete Buttigieg has a very common campaign uniform. It's his white button-down shirt. I was thinking about this, and in his defense, Pete Buttigieg has a very common campaign uniform. It's his white button-down shirt. And I was thinking, how would one eat a cinnamon roll with a white button-down and not actually destroy the white button-down?

It doesn't matter. It's not a meatball. It's a cinnamon roll. Cinnamon rolls are tricky. You stick the fork in, and you use the fork to cut off a piece, and then eat it that way. Or you could pick it up with your hand. And then a voter comes up and says, Mayor Pete, hey, nice to meet you. Oh, it's already sticky. a piece and then eat it that way. Or you could pick up with your hand. You could do that.

And then a voter comes up and says, Mayor Pete, hey, nice to meet you. Oh, it's very sticky. Very sticky. So as you can see, eating food is quite perilous when in Iowa. But look, I will say, I credit him for giving someone full access to his food. Could you imagine if someone followed us on the campaign trail and be like, fries, coffee, more coffee. more coffee. One of the weirdest things for me this year was going to the Iowa State Fair and following

all the candidates around, which would be weird to begin with, but because so many people are following this race, these candidates were all walking around the State Fair with 50 of us in a circle, this this like roving planet with like an asteroid belt going through the fair and like knocking into people and they go up to this poor person who's like at the ice cream stand like okay everybody and then eating with all of us

like up in their face it was bizarre I feel like they'd be so uncomfortable to eat in that way and yeah high pressure steaks well so you know yeah if he doesn't win Iowa we know why did you say that on purpose it was, high pressure stakes. Well, so, you know. Yeah, if he doesn't win Iowa, we know why. Did you say that on purpose? High pressure what? Stakes. Is that like

sous vide except under pressure? Alright, so for My Can't Let It Go, I need a little audience participation. I think Barbara Sprunt, our producer, is out there somewhere. Do we have any volunteers to come up on stage? We have.

We have a volunteer who is going to try to get up. We have two volunteers who are trying to get up on stage. This could take a minute. So, Scott, could you please do your Bernie Sanders impression now? Well, you forgot to ask me my can't let it go. Oh. Well, perfect. Scott.

Luckily, it's very quick. We are celebrating an anniversary today. Aw. Four years ago tomorrow, we posted our very first episode of the NPR Politics Podcast. Oh.

Ooh. We have, you could say we have completed our first full term. Yes. I feel that this relationship has gone on really long because I couldn't remember this anniversary.

I honestly thought it was five years for a while and had to be corrected. But yeah, four years ago yesterday, we've gone four years, we have gone more than 500 episodes, and we are clearly going to be going for a while longer. I don't think we run for re-election, but you know, we're gone.

Thanks everybody for celebrating. Four more years. Four more years. Four more years. Do we have our volunteers? All right, come on up. Hello. All right, can you guys tell me your names? Valerie.

Hi, Van from Washington. All right, and Van, you had something you wanted to say? Yeah. Valerie. Van from Washington. All right, and Van, you had something you wanted to say? Yeah. Valerie? You're who I can't let go of. I love you more than I love NPR. Did she say yes? She said yes, right?

Congratulations. Congratulations. And thank you to our partners, WAMU. You can support this podcast by supporting them, your local public radio station. And a huge thank you to all the staff at this beautiful theater, the Warner Theater. And we couldn't have done it without Allie Prescott, Jessica Goldstein, and Ellen Jorgensen

from the NPR events team. This show and the podcast are produced by Barton Girdwood, Barbara Sprunt, and Chloe Weiner. Our social engagement editor is Brandon Carter, and our audio engineers are Andy Huther and Natasha Branch. Our editors are Shirley Henry, Mathani Baturi, and Eric McDaniel. Thanks to Lexi Schipittel, Dana Farrington,

Brandon Carter, and Elena Burnett. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Asma Khalid. I also cover the campaign. I'm Aisha Roscoe,

and I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you, Washington, for being with us for the NPR Politics Podcast. Thanks, everybody.

Thank you.