The NPR Politics Podcast - Omarosa Manigault Newman Secretly Records The President; Plus Tuesday's Primaries

Episode Date: August 13, 2018

One day after she was fired from her post at the White House, Omarosa Manigault Newman secretly recorded a conversation with President Trump. Plus, four states hold primaries on Tuesday. We look at some key races in the run-up. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional reporter, and political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben. 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

Hi, this is Luke calling from one of Minnesota's 11,842 lakes, where I'm out paddleboarding right now and thinking about who I'm going to be voting for in this week's primary election. This podcast was recorded at 11 a.m. on the 13th Monday of August. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. All right, here's the show. Don't drop your phone. I know. And I think I would want to be thinking about something like the water or the fish or something other than elections. Also, is this a stand up paddle boarding, I imagine? Oh, like that's that is some coordination this guy has.

Core strength. All right. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. And tomorrow is another primary day. We've got Connecticut, Minnesota, Vermont and Wisconsin. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And we are going to help our dear paddle boater by discussing... Paddle border. Oh, yes. Oh, sorry. I'm being obnoxious.

Fact check. Come on. discussing. Paddle border. Oh, yes. Oh, sorry. I'm being obnoxious. We will help our dear paddle border figure out what's up in Minnesota. But first, we have to start with this thing that has consumed the weekend and has now bled into Monday. Omarosa Manigault Newman, former top high level White House aide, former reality TV star, Apprentice contestant, has a book coming out. She is on tour. And you've been covering this, Tam. What is going on? Yeah. Not only am I covering it, I've even read the book cover to cover. So this morning, she, as part of her book tour, was on the Today Show. And she provided to NBC's Today Show some audio that she recorded of herself talking to the president of the United States the day after she was fired. Marosa, what's going on? I just saw on the news that you're thinking about leaving. What happened? General Kelly. General Kelly came to me and said that you guys wanted me to leave.

No, nobody even told me about it. You know, they run a big operation, but I didn't know it. I didn't know that. Damn it. I don't love you leaving at all. That's pretty stunning. I mean, this isn't the only thing she's recorded, right? That's right. There are a lot of Omarosa tapes, including she actually recorded sound of herself being fired. Now, in an interview with NPR, she said she wasn't fired. She was forced to resign. But semantics here.

She recorded secretly in the situation room. Which we should be clear about. There's been a lot of conversation about this, right? About whether or not this was illegal, if this breaks norms. What does this actually mean that she was recording in the situation room? Well, I mean, one thing that this seems to mean, I mean, leaving aside that, you know, there's been all this commentary on she's a reality TV show star. So, I mean, of course, she's going to try to get all this attention brought on herself, blah, blah, blah. But honestly, like there was also this report from Axios out this weekend about all these men in the White House who were scared of her in one way or another, which our co-worker Aisha was tweeting says more about them than maybe it does about her. But at any rate, what I'm getting at here is the kind of drama there is in this White House. Like, is it at such a level that to watch your back at all times you feel you need to record things? Like, is that the message we're getting here?

Well, that is the message she delivered to us in an interview that she did with Morning Edition's Rachel Martin. Rachel asked her why she would make these recordings. And this is what she said. It is so incredibly important that you protect yourself. This is a president who lies without even thinking. People backstabbing one another, undermining one another. And so I have to tell you, I took great care to document every single exchange that I had. Now, back to the Situation Room question. It is not normal to secretly record things in the Situation Room. It is not normal to take electronics, personal electronics of any kind, into the Situation Room. It is the most secure place in the White House, one of the most secure

places in our government. There are cubbies outside of the Situation Room, which is actually a series of conference rooms in the White House, where you are supposed to leave your electronics. But the fact is, they weren't talking about top secret national security matters. They were talking about HR. Right. But it's kind of fascinating. I mean, matters, they were talking about HR. Right. But it's kind of fascinating. I mean, even if they were just talking about HR, fine. But I mean, you just repeated the phrase a couple of times there, most secure place. In this most secure of places, there's still what this, I think the phrase I've heard used is circle of trust. There's sort of an honor system about, hey, just, you know, be cool when you go in there, essentially. Don't record things. Well, as Omarosa said once on The Apprentice,

I'm not here to make friends. I mean, I guess what I what I mean by that is she was hired by the chief of staff and the president of the United States at in a job that paid one hundred and eighty thousand dollars a year is the highest level classification for a White House aide. They brought her into their White House, a top level aide, in theory, should be able to go into the situation room and not violate norms. Absolutely. Yes. I think while we're talking about the chief of staff, we should clear up the fact that her being fired by by the chief of staff is what his job is. John Kelly's job was to hire and fire and manage the staff. And so all this conversation about whether or not he should have been firing her is kind of crazy.

Like that. That is his literal job. Right. Although in that tape, Trump sounded genuinely upset. And surprised. Yeah, absolutely. But we don't know the further context. We don't know what was before that clip or what was after that clip. And we also don't know whether the president was just calling and trying to smooth things over with Omarosa, try to keep that personal relationship going because they have this sort of 15 year long relationship. And as evidenced by this book, the president had reason to try to keep her happy. Right. Yeah. The president is no longer trying to keep her happy. The gloves are off, as they might say. Tweeted four different times about her, calling her a lowlife, not smart, vicious, and any number of other things, but said that he kept her around because she only

said great things about him until she got fired. Okay, from that kind of drama to other drama, we're going to call this, I don't know, the scandal corner. We will get to- It's a drama moment of the podcast. The drama moment. A recurring segment. We are going to get to a bunch of primaries that are coming up tomorrow. But first, two stories that are overshadowing those primaries. One involves Keith Ellison, who is a Democratic congressman.

And even bigger than that, he is the deputy chair of the Democratic National Committee, and he's running for the attorney general of the state of Minnesota. He is being accused of domestic violence. We will get to that in a second. But first, Congressman Chris Collins from New York. His is a case that I think Democrats at least are hoping will define the entire midterm election. Chris Collins, New York are indicted. Yes, the first Republican, first person in Congress to endorse President Trump. He was indicted last week on charges that

he provided son Cameron with non-public information about drug trials from a company that Collins was on the board of directors. Now, there's been a whole scandal about Collins' relationship with this company for quite some time. This is not a new issue, but his indictment is new. Yeah. And his son and other co-conspirators are accused of insider trading. Yes. This hasn't all happened without some waffling on Collins' part, right? Because at first he said, you know, I'm going to fight this. I'm sticking with it. I mean, there's nothing that says he couldn't stay on the ballot. But then he suspended his campaign at the end of last week. Actually, you say there is nothing to say that he couldn't stay on the ballot. Actually, there is almost nothing he can do to get off the ballot.

To be convicted or to move out of state. Or to run for another office. Oh, great. So literally, he is on that ballot unless something really significant and almost impossible happened. Which is why Democrats are excited, to be clear. Like, they're excited because you have this indicted congressman who says he's not running for re-election on the ballot. That makes it so much easier for Democrats to try to take this seat because the thing that people are going to see when they go to vote is Chris Collins. So one of our colleagues, I think is one of our editors,

says like in a wave year, you don't know where the good waves are going to be, but you need to have your surfboard in the water. And Mara is the one that says, get your surfboards in the water. Yeah. And that sounds like something Mara would say, or your stand up paddleboard. Yes, if that's your thing. But, you know, this is not something that Democrats have been all that good at in the past several cycles. And this is one of the first times that we've seen Democrats be ready to have all of these candidates. They started fielding so many more candidates and some of it was just organic frustration with the political system, with President Trump. But Democrats are actually well equipped to handle this this time. Right. The increase in Democratic candidates this cycle is insane.

To be technical. Well, yes, absolutely. That's how political scientists put it. But I mean, you know, you look at the number of you look at the number of women who are running and that gets a lot of ink and as well it should. But I mean, the number of men running on the Democratic side has gone up as well, which is to say that this is not purely about, you know, an issue or a movement. This is about Democrats being very, very angry and very ready to unseat just about any Republican they can. And one theme that is already developing, it was developing before this Chris Collins news, but it is taking hold in a more significant way is the idea that Democrats are trying to push that Republicans are just swampy. Yeah, that, you know, and it was actually a very effective message in

2006. Yes, 12 years ago. And they they're reprising it in part because you have members of Congress who are under clouds like Collins is you You have members of the Trump administration who have been forced to resign under clouds of, you know, misusing government funds potentially and other scandal. Yeah. I mean, you will see Democrats already starting to roll out this message that you can't trust the party of Trump. And that is I mean, that's definitely going to be a theme in a lot of these primaries. Right. And for example, in a state we are about to talk about, Minnesota, we've seen a former ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush administration, Richard Painter. You've probably seen him as a talking head on cable news,

but he has an ad called Dumpster Fire where he comes out and essentially says, Washington is a dumpster fire. I'm an ethics lawyer. I'm going to clean it up. And that to me just feels like a sort of microcosm for just how this year looks in a lot of states. Some people see a dumpster fire and do nothing but watch the spectacle. He is standing in front of a dumpster in full flames. To be clear. There is an inferno raging in Washington. But here in the land of 10,000 lakes.

And then it gets doused in water and put out. It's amazing. It's a very non-subtle visual. Okay, so with that, let's go to Minnesota. Let's go to Minnesota. Democrats may have a slight challenge to their message about swampiness because there are also a lot of scandals that have involved Democrats and Minnesota and two involving Minnesota. Let's get this Keith Ellison story out of the way. First, he's running for attorney general of Minnesota, not a national race,

but he is a national figure. Absolutely. He is a very loudly progressive Democrat. He is the first Muslim elected to Congress. Yeah, but he stands accused of domestic violence by a former girlfriend, long-term girlfriend. Her name is Karen Monaghan. And she started responding after her son put out on social media that his mother had suffered abuse at the hands of Keith Ellison when they were in a relationship. That relationship ended around 2016. And our colleagues over in Minnesota Public Radio have reviewed hundreds, they say, of texts and Twitter messages between Ellison and Monahan.

And while they say that the tenor of the conversation switches between friendly and adversarial over the course of that. They say that there really isn't any evidence in the messages that they reviewed of physical abuse, but that they aren't ruling out that this is something that is a very serious allegation. Right. Because also Ms. Monaghan's son in his Facebook status laying all of this out, he also said that there is video of this. And our colleagues at Minnesota Public Radio have asked to see it, they said. And they said they have not seen it. For her part, Ms. Monaghan has said, it's embarrassing. I would prefer for it to not get out. So that is something that has been floating around and that these allegations are familiar to some reporters locally there, but that they were not able to do the work to substantiate it. And that's a difficult conversation that we've had many times before in this moment where we're talking about abuse and about sexual violence, where, you know, there is a question about what do you do to verify? What where's the line? And it's a it's a very difficult situation. And just to add, Ellison firmly denies that there was any abuse at all.

Correct. And at this moment, there is no evidence to substantiate it. And and those text messages that Minnesota Public Radio reviewed were were given to them by the accuser. Yes, that's right. Though this is going to be no matter what happens, this is a significant cloud over Allison's career in his own life. So this is something that is fresh and new, but is likely to stick around. And while we're still in Minnesota, there are a bunch of races. In fact, there are two Senate races. And a reason for that is because the senator, Al Franken, Democratic senator, was sort of run out of the Senate in the early days of the Me Too movement. And his seat is now up for election. Right. Tina Smith is running to keep that seat. And she's she seems fairly safe when people if the polls look like she'll be fine. Richard Painter, the guy in the dumpster fire ad, he is running against her.

And and so she is a Democrat. She was appointed by the governor. She's former lieutenant governor. And Richard Painter, who served in the Bush administration, is a Republican running as a Democrat. Yeah, there's some complicated politics going on in Minnesota right now. Absolutely. And then you have Senator Amy Klobuchar, who's also running for re-election. She's popular. She's a national figure. She's talked about as a potential 2020-type Democrat. But people think that she's mostly fine.

Okay, that's Minnesota. There are also a couple of very competitive house races in that decidedly purple state that you should watch. And you can do that tomorrow night at NPR.org. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to look at who's competing to fill Paul Ryan's shoes in Wisconsin. Support for NPR politics and the following message come from Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans.

Rocket Mortgage gives you confidence when it comes to buying a new home or refinancing your existing home loan. With Rocket Mortgage, you can apply simply and understand all the details so you can mortgage confidently. To get started, go to rocketmortgage.com slash NPR Politics. Equal housing lender. Licensed in all 50 states. NMLSconsumeraccess.org number 3030. Hey, this is Stretch Armstrong. And this is Papito Garcia, the hosts of What's Good. We're back with a brand new season.

We've got Erykah Badu, Lenny Kravitz, Black Thought, and more. You'll hear B-side stories from A-list guests. Subscribe now. And we're back and let's head to Wisconsin, where all eyes are on what? Paul Ryan's seat. Absolutely. Yes. Specifically the Democratic primary.

Yeah. I mean, so there are five Republicans and two Democrats running for the seat being vacated by House Speaker Paul Ryan, who, as we know, is retiring or something like that. He's leaving Congress. Retiring under pressure. You know, there are some really interesting things happening in the Democratic primary. But just to pause really quickly on the Republican side, this is a weird race in a lot of ways, partially because there's just so many people in there. You've got this guy who's kind of the handpicked successor that Ryan really likes. Then you have this other guy, Paul Nalen. This is the second time that Paul Nalen is

running for this seat. And he is an alt-right candidate. He lost in 2016. He had less than 16 percent of the vote. But he was running against Paul Ryan. Yeah. And he's now, like we said, one of five Republicans here. But he's been kicked off of Twitter. He has a reputation. The thing that actually got him kicked off of Twitter was was a racially charged post about Meghan Markle and comparing her to a like a Cro-Magnon man. So not flat out racist. Yeah. Let's just say that. Yeah. Or like white supremacist. He has he has tweeted a lot of really of a lot of really offensive things. Yes. And I

mean, he is attacking Jewish people. He is attacking African-Americans. He is, yes, outright racist. And he is very, very, very disliked by the Republican Party. And the fact that he keeps coming back is something that they absolutely do not want to see. Is there any chance that he wins this primary? Probably not. I mean, it doesn't look that way. He's largely disliked. Right. And he's well behind, for example, in fundraising, that sort of thing. He is, I would be surprised. Yeah.

Leading in social media conversation, not leading in other things that matter. And we've talked about this. The Republican Party in Wisconsin is really powerful. They funnel a lot of their money through their party system. And if you don't have the backing of the state party, you just really don't have a lot of power. And Nalen does not have that power. Right. All right. The Democratic side that power. Right. All right. The Democratic side, Danielle. Yeah. All right.

So on this side, there's a guy you may have heard of him. His name is Randy Bryce, or also known as Iron Stache, as he has come to be known. He had that amazing ad months ago. He had this ad that went kind of viral where he has his mom in it. She is suffering from multiple sclerosis. She talks about how much her drugs cost. There's no doubt in my mind that there are thousands of people like her that don't have what she has.

There's a lot of shots of him with his helmet on, you know, going out and, you know, working with these big steel beams and all of that sort of stuff. I mean, and so he, like a lot of other Democrats nationwide, is running heavily on health care. But also, you know, he's a union guy. Yeah, he's got a strong labor message. Absolutely, yes.

I think it's time. Let's trade places. Paul Ryan, you can come work the iron and I'll go to D.C. By the way, this guy has done an incredible job of fundraising, or rather this ad and his national recognition have done an incredible job of getting him fundraising he has last i checked what over upwards of six million dollars he had raised he is very well funded and he's been endorsed by senator bernie sanders which is i mean which is a bernie sanders has some fans out there he does in the great state of wisconsin so he this is this is a primary though this is an actual. Yes, because he is running against a woman named Kathy Myers.

Nothing about my story is unique. The early mornings and the hope and the hard work. Kathy Myers has been a teacher for 23 years. She has and her ads are also very powerful. Her ads, I've watched a few of them. And one thing that I've noticed, it's hard not to notice, is these ads are all women. Yeah. You are hard-pressed to find a lot of adult men in these ads.

You see her walking into a classroom, setting stuff up. You see a few boy students and this and that. But you see a lot of women, a lot of multicultural women, women in headscarves, black women, women of all shapes, colors, and sizes. We will not be ignored. We will not be ignored. We will not be ignored. We will not be ignored. We will not be ignored. She is doing everything but saying I am running as a woman. She's saying instead things like we are in this together. We won't be ignored. We will. We are standing up. Well, and Wisconsin, let's just remind people that there was this big fight over sort of anti-union measures in the state. And a

lot of the energy in that fight came from teachers unions and from women. Yes. And which also, by the way, I mean, all politics being national these days, I mean, a lot of union energy in the last year, by the way, also woman led energy because a lot of teachers tend to be women has been from teachers unions in states that are even redder than Wisconsin. Wisconsin, I think it's fair to say, is pretty purple. But, you know, in states like West Virginia, Oklahoma, you have a lot of women in these unions coming out and marching on the Capitol. So I guess it's not surprising to see it come up in a big way in a really heavily, hotly contested congressional primary. And you're going to see it happen not just in the primary, but in the general election, because the person who led that big union fight is Governor Scott Walker, who is on the ballot again running for reelection for his third time. And there's no way that Democrats don't turn this into another conversation about those union rules. Let's head to the Northeast.

Beautiful this time of year. Connecticut and Vermont. Let's start in Vermont. What are you guys watching in Vermont, Danielle? The governor's race, first and foremost. So on the Republican side, you have Phil Scott. He is he's interesting. I mean, not in the sense of the primaries, but in the sense of he is a Republican governor in a pretty blue state. And he is still relatively popular for being in a pretty blue state. He's and he's heavily he is heavily favored to win this race in November. Let's be clear here. It's another Republican in politics with Scott either as their first name or their last name. There are so many Republican governors with Scott in their name.

It is so confusing. Are you trying to send a tip out to people who are planning their baby names if they want to have future Republicans successful? Or handicapping the races, putting money down on this. I don't know. But on the Democratic side, you have four people running. And this is a very interesting race in part of just because of who is running. First, you have Christine Hallquist. She is getting a lot of attention because she is a transgender woman. She is the former executive of the Vermont Electric Co-op. So she is running on conservation.

She's running on getting economic development to rural areas. And Vermont is a heavily rural state. A majority of people in Vermont live in rural areas. On top of that, you have James Ehlers. You have James Ehlers, who is the executive of a conservation nonprofit. You have Brenda Siegel. But you also have a guy named Ethan Sonneborn, who is distinguished because he is 14. Which is exactly when we were talking about this earlier. I didn't even know that you could run for governor at 14. But apparently in Vermont, you can. In the great state of Vermont, there is no age cutoff for running for governor. You do have to be a resident of the state, of course, and Mr. Sonneborn is. But I've seen these stories

where his his senior campaign staff are also teenagers like he has his friends on his campaign. And this just reminds me of Parks and Rec and Kid Mayer. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that you can run for governor of Vermont at any age, but I don't know that you can win. But at any rate, I'm watching the watching the Democratic primary on that side. That is going to be interesting just to see, you know, what happens. And, you know, should Ms. Hallquist win, it could potentially be historic. Okay. And finally, we have Connecticut.

Yeah, we're watching the congressional race there. It is the seat being vacated by Elizabeth Esty, who it's important to remember she was rose to prominence because she's the congresswoman who has Newtown in her district. And she was a powerful, powerful voice about gun control. So she's been out there and she was also a major voice in the Me Too movement. But she chose not to run for reelection after it was after reports that her she let a former chief of staff stay on despite allegations of some pretty serious sexual harassment and that she didn't intervene, though she knew. And so she chose not to run again. And now her seat is up in the air. This is also a toss up?

Well, this one is, I don't know, it's not a toss up. Right, but it's in play. The seat is now in play because of this. And it's one of those situations where we go back to Democrats not without their scandals. And there is a primary here on Tuesday, both sides of the aisle. Right, but I think the one that we're watching most is the Democratic primary because we largely expect a Democrat will win this seat. But this is a classic argument that we have seen play out in so many Democratic primaries. Are you progressive enough? You have one person who is running on single payer health care. And it's it's it's

become an argument about not just that progressiveness, but also about whether or not it's time for somebody to be representing Connecticut who isn't white. We will be watching all of these primaries tomorrow and we will be back in your feeds on Wednesday. Unless some other news breaks out that forces us back into the studio before then because our promise is always to jump back in the studio if there is big political news. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. because our promise is always to jump back in the studio if there is big political news. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.