The NPR Politics Podcast - Pelosi's Democratic Challengers Go Public; Trump Says He Answered Mueller's Questions

Episode Date: November 20, 2018

Eleven House Democrats and five incoming freshmen have signed a letter promising to vote against Pelosi in Democrats' internal caucus leadership vote as well as on the House floor in January. Plus, President Trump says he completed written questions for the special counsel. Now, the ball is back in Robert Mueller's court. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, and justice correspondent Carrie Johnson. 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 everyone, this is Tony from Nashville, Tennessee. It's the middle of the night and I'm driving my infant around hoping that he'll go to sleep in the car. This podcast was recorded at... 1.10 p.m. on Tuesday, November 20th. And James Henry, if you're listening, please go to sleep. We feel ya, man. We feel ya. Hey there. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. Nancy Pelosi is facing the toughest challenge of her career,

but she still does not have a Democrat who has stepped forward to challenge her for the House speakership. And President Trump says he has answered questions from the special counsel, and that is that. We've wasted enough time on this witch hunt, and the answers probably were finished. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. Hey, everybody. Hi.

Thanksgiving Eve Eve. We've got some news to talk about. There were a bunch of Democrats we knew were coming after Nancy Pelosi who were going to promise they were not going to vote for her on the floor. They said, a letter is coming. A letter is coming soon, and it will reveal just how many of us there are. And then they actually put out the letter. But the letter came up with one fewer person than they said was going to be on the original group of people signing the letter. It involved 14 men, one of whom may or may not be in Congress when the Congress actually comes together in January, and two women. And they all say that they want a change. They are not saying that they will

vote against Nancy Pelosi as speaker, but they are committed to voting for new leadership. So guys, did they say what their beef is with Nancy Pelosi? Like, what are they specifically saying she is doing wrong? The letter did not, interestingly, get into any specific reasons as to why Nancy Pelosi should go, any specific policies the group had a problem with. By and large, the Democrats who have been talking about why they'd like a new leader have all come back to the same thing, that she has been leading the House Democrats for a really long time, that the rest of her leadership has been there for a really long time. And they're frustrated and ready to see some new leadership

step in. Yeah. And Seth Moulton, who is a Democrat from Massachusetts, is kind of one of the big leaders of this letter push. And he put out an op-ed today on CNN, and he explains that current leadership falls short by basically not moving new people up in the leadership structure. He says committee leaders have mostly been chosen based on loyalty and tenure, leading to a lack of diversity and new thinking in some of the most important positions in our government. Now, that is maybe true in terms of the committee, the people who are leading the committees. But Pelosi and her allies will say that she's made a really strong effort to move people of younger people,

a more diverse group of people into the actual leadership positions. You know, a lot of these people had been warning all along that Nancy Pelosi as the head of the party would be something that would really hurt House Democrats with voters. Democrats are on track to pick up just under 40 seats at this point. This is their biggest gain in decades. Hard to argue that Pelosi was this, you know, this anchor around the neck of House Democrats, given how well they did. Though a bunch of those Democrats did promise to not vote for her or or they did some wishy washy things that where they were like, yeah, we think that there should be new leadership.

Or they just ran away from questions from several months. There were a lot of those people. Yes, you guys chased after both of them, all of those. Where does this leave us? Where do those people stand? Most of them didn't even sign this letter. Well, they have a third option out there. One is that they could just decide not to vote at all when it comes down to this big leadership vote on the floor of the House in January. They could just happen to go for a walk when the votes are happening, and then Pelosi could have an opportunity to potentially be elected with a little bit less support. And we should probably just take a moment here to explain the couple rounds of voting that's going to happen, what matters,

what doesn't, how this doesn't? Yes, please. Congress is nuanced, right? It's not a straightforward vote. Nothing is straightforward. So a week from tomorrow, all the House Democrats are going to meet without reporters in the room, unfortunately for us. And they are going to hold their votes for all of their leadership elections. These are anonymous isn't the right word. It's secret ballot, right? Yeah, it's a secret ballot.

And it only takes a majority to win. You need them basically. It's not that hard to win inside of leadership. Pelosi is definitely going to have to support in this vote to win. Even if some candidate emerged between now and then, I feel like it's almost fairly certain she would have that support. And most of the people that I talk to who are working on this letter or somehow are marginally opposed to Pelosi, basically they admit that she will win when it comes to this

vote next week. The big question is what happens in January. Okay. So, Scott, you described the first vote, which is next week. Indeed. Then there is a second vote in January, and that is the floor vote, the one in public that we get to see. Yes, this is one of the first things that a new Congress does is once everybody's sworn in, you have the formal vote for who will be the next speaker of the House. And how it typically goes is all the Republicans vote for the leader of the Republican elections, which was Kevin McCarthy. And all the Democrats would vote for the leader of the upcoming Democratic elections, which would probably be Nancy Pelosi. Except for the fact that there are always a few people, or almost always a few people, who vote for somebody else. So we saw at one point in time

people were voting for this Congressman Daniel Webster, a Republican. Then we saw for a while there were some people who were voting for John Lewis just because they wanted to vote for John Lewis. And Condoleezza Rice, you can vote for whoever you want because this is the fun fact that everybody likes to trot out about right about now. You don't have to be a member of the House to be the Speaker of the House, but it doesn't hurt. We've been waiting for that boomlet of, like, could so-and-so be Speaker? Has it arrived yet?

It's starting. There's also jokes about which reporters are going to be Speaker. Ron. Ron Elving could be Speaker. He wrote a book about Congress. He did. So those people never actually become speaker, though, even though they are eligible. Eligible. So what happens? So the question here is, will Nancy Pelosi get 218 votes, which is the magic number unless people go for a walk? Would she get the 218 votes that she would need? Right now, this letter has 16 people signing it. And that's like, just under the amount. Yeah, I mean, if things stay roughly where we expect them to be in terms

of the number of Democrats who will be in the House, it's just under the number. It's a threat. But I've been talking to a lot of Pelosi loyalists who say, yes, it's sort of a threat. But the fact that they put out a letter with a less than fatal number of signatures on it actually kind of undermines them because it shows other people who might have been thinking about challenging Pelosi that the votes aren't there. Now, that's from the Pelosi loyalists, and they have their own very big incentive to spin this as, you know, as not a negative. But that's the way they put it to me. White House person here. Over the weekend, President Trump tweeted, and I don't have the

exact tweet, but it was basically like, that Nancy Pelosi, she's OK. And if she needs some Republican votes, I'll whip them up for her. Yeah, it's very hard to see exactly how President Trump is going to feel about Nancy Pelosi once she starts that whole investigation plan that she has in her back pocket, the plan to investigate the Trump administration as a whole on many fronts. It's possible that he thinks that she would be a really good political foil for him, somebody for him to fight with. And, you know, she's been a really potent person for Republicans to push back against for the entirety of this past election and the previous election cycle. But there's also the possibility that maybe he does actually get along with her, which is something that we've seen. But also, like, is he really going to be able to convince any Republican to vote for Nancy Pelosi? I think this is yet another tweet that's just kind of put

out there. And in the meantime, Nancy Pelosi has not put any stock in this tweet. And we've seen her do a lot of campaigning over the last few days, few weeks. She's met with a ton of these incoming Democrats. And and very interestingly, a lot of these these freshman Democrats who all campaign avoided the question have been putting out statements saying, I met with Nancy Pelosi, I'm going to vote for Nancy Pelosi. I love that Kelsey is like leaning back, sipping on a big cup of water as she like... I have thoughts about Democrats. Congress thoughts. Kelsey, thank you very much. Please take your giant cup of water out of the studio and we will talk to you soon. I'm going to go have Congress thoughts over at my desk. Okay. Happy Thanksgiving. Happy Thanksgiving. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back.

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And we are back and we have Kerry Johnson with us. Hey, Kerry. Hey there. Okay, so let's just start with this. President Trump was on Fox News Sunday this weekend. He was asked about Robert Mueller's investigation and whether or not the president was going to answer questions from Mueller. Your team is preparing written answers to questions about. No, not my team. I'm preparing written answers. I'm the one that does the answer. Yes. Are they writing them out? Yes. Yeah. They're writing what I tell them to write.

Are they going to be submitted at some point very soon? Yes. I've completed them. So you're you are submitting. It wasn't a big deal. By the way, it wasn't a big deal. The answer, the questions were asked and answered. It wasn't a big deal. You know, they make it like I had meetings for many, many hours. I got the questions. I responded. We wrote them out. I read them once. I read them a second time. We made some changes. That's it. They're very simple. You know why? I did nothing wrong. Over the many months, President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, many other people on the White House orbit have said a lot about whether or not they were going to talk to Robert Mueller, what form they were going to talk to him, so on and so forth.

So how do we sort this out? Yeah, I'm old enough to remember when the president said, sure, 100 percent, he'd sit down for an interview in person with Robert Mueller, which seems to have not happened over the last year. So I'm taking some of these remarks about his cooperation with the Mueller special counsel investigation with a grain of salt. After all, you know, he got these questions which appear to be a conspiracy or alleged collusion with Russia in the course of the campaign. But as with all take-home tests, it doesn't count until you turn the answers into the teacher. I don't think that's happened yet as of this moment. Yeah, we have no indication that they've been turned in. It feels like enough grains of salt to brine a turkey in, Carrie. You know, maybe so. I don't cook, so I'll leave that up to you. I would say yes, as someone who brines a turkey, who will be brining a turkey tonight.

Okay. Yeah. Me too. Lots of grains of salt. Even though it's controversial. But Tam, you were saying that- Wait, brining is controversial? Check out the internet. This has been, before this becomes a cooking show, this has been a matter of some angst for the president and his orbit for a while, hasn't it? Yes, it absolutely has. And how can I tell? Because the president communicates with all of us in all caps on Twitter, and he has been tweeting up a storm about his greatest hits, the 13 angry Democrats, the page and struck. And basically, he has been sort of beating up on the investigation. It's really interesting. He hadn't tweeted Robert Mueller's name

since around September 15th. And then last week, around the time that there were widespread reports that he was spending hours and hours working with his attorneys to answer these questions, he started tweeting in all caps again about the Mueller investigation. Would we get any sort of indication that these answers have been turned in from the special counsel's office or would we just have to wait for whatever they do or don't report or charge? Yeah, the special counsel's office is not going to be commenting on any hypothetical responses to possible questions that Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump have been talking about.

They're going to include those responses in their work product, which we may or may not see. But they're not going to be talking about whether the president answered their questions fully or incompletely, as seems more likely. What else should we look for in this investigation? Yeah, a number of things are coming together. One is that Michael Flynn, the president's former national security advisor, is set to be sentenced right before Christmas, December 18th. On a couple of other matters, we're in a bit of a holding pattern. Paul Manafort, the president's former campaign chairman, we were supposed to get an update this week as to what's going on with his cooperation. We're now going to get something in writing after Thanksgiving. And Rick

Gates, Rick Gates, who was Manafort's right-hand man and the deputy campaign chairman, he had been maybe in a holding pattern expecting to be sentenced this year. The special counsel's office in some court papers has now said he's cooperating with several ongoing investigations and they don't want to give the court an update until 2019. So part of this thing is kicking into next year. Tam will appreciate this because she remembers talking with Ty Cobb, who used to work for Donald Trump in the White House, about his deadline for this investigation ending. Yeah. So this is this would be the anniversary of the time at which Ty Cobb said he thought the investigation would be over. Ty Cobb, the former White House special counsel,

predicted it would end by Thanksgiving 2017. And it is now 2018. Can I just say that when you started talking about Ty Cobb, I inadvertently doodled a big mustache? I thought you might inadvertently doodle a baseball or something. No, I had the big mustache. Carrie, the fact that Michael Flynn is being sentenced around Christmas is interesting because it was Christmas greetings that became much more than Christmas greetings with the Russian ambassador that really started off a whole lot of the holidays in 2016. And Flynn says, according to his court documents, that he reported back to people in the Trump campaign about those contacts. We still don't know who exactly he talked to. Clearly, the special counsel does. And we're

going to find out, I think, over the course of his sentencing, who exactly he was reporting back to in the campaign at the time about these contacts with Russia. Last, I have a really important criminal justice question for you, Carrie. All right. Can you give us an update on the turkey pardon? OK, so I did watch the turkey pardon pitting peas, the turkey, against carrots or carrot, the i forget which and the president actually in a nod to current events warned the turkeys that the democrats in the house may subpoena the turkeys next year so get ready for it so i was watching the voting very closely on twitter because the

american people were going to get to decide which bird would be pardoned and which bird would become america's turkey okay and wait it's one or the other well or can you get both if you're pardoned and which bird would become America's Turkey. Okay. And wait, it's one or the other. Well, if you're part in your America's Turkey. Yes. Okay. It's a little confusing.

There may have been some improper branding, but whatever the case may be, peas and carrots in the end, the final vote tally, it was 50% to 50%. So it's, it's like Florida all over again, man.

We need a hand recount of this. Today's lucky bird and guest of honor is named Pease, along with his alternate named Carrots. The children will understand that. The winner of this vote was decided by a fair and open election conducted on the White House website. This was a fair election. Unfortunately, carrots refused to concede and demanded a recount, and we're still fighting with carrots. And I will tell you, we've come to a conclusion. Carrots, I'm sorry to tell you the result did not change. It's too bad for carrots. That's good.

Good for peas. Because, you know, Americans love carrots more anyway. Yeah, that's probably true. Like, who is like, oh, I got to choose. Peas or carrots? Peas or carrots? Nobody chooses peas. There's a more wide range.

I would choose peas. What's wrong with you people? There's like sweet peas. They taste like candy. That's true. There's better peas. Carrots is a narrow lane, you know? All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. I hope you have a happy Thanksgiving. Usually we do our weekly roundup on Thursday. Obviously, we are not going to do that this week. We'll be back in your feed early next week. Happy

Thanksgiving. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.