The NPR Politics Podcast - President Trump Addresses Congress

Episode Date: March 1, 2017

This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and editor/correspondent Ron Elving. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. 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 Tiffany Erdahl from Bloomington, Minnesota. This podcast was recorded at 1123 p.m. on Tuesday night. Things may change by the time you hear it. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at NPR.org, on the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. Okay, here's the show. It's the NPR Politics Podcast, here to talk about President Trump's address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday night. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House.

And I'm Ron Elving, editor-correspondent. And we are here in the studio, like 90 minutes removed from the end of the president's address to a joint session of Congress. This was not technically a State of the Union, though it sure did look like one. The president was introduced by the House Sergeant at Arms. Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States. Sue, what was it like in that room? Take us in there as the president walks in. You're up in a gallery sort of looking down on the scene. Right. So the press sort of is behind the

president and up above him. So you have sort of a bird's eye view of the whole chamber. I mean, the thing I would say my broad takeaway from tonight is that this was just normal, right? I mean, like that is what made this so unusual is that President Trump tonight was record scratch a traditional politician. It was very conventional. I had the same impression. Some of the policies he was talking about, they came across as maybe more conventional than they were. The things he said about immigration would represent a pretty radical change if we actually were to go through with adopting the kind of policies he talked about in terms of a reform. But the tone was very conventional for an unconventional person. Let's use the word.

We've talked for a year, a year and a half, wondering when Donald Trump would start to act a little bit more presidential. Tonight, he acted thoroughly presidential. It was the first time he gave a presidential performance. And I would hazard the guess it was the first time he really aimed at that. And these addresses are formulaic, right? And he followed the formula. He jabbed a little bit across the aisle. He called for a greater sense of unity. He had stories of Americans both outside the gallery and in the gallery. And he ended on a high note. I mean, it was, in that regard, an incredibly conventional traditional speech with a little bit of familiar Trump red meat thrown in to kind of remind you that he was still there. The president got up.

He read from the teleprompter. He stayed on the teleprompter basically the entire night. Does he stay on message past tonight? Should we like start a count up clock? I have quit the Trump predictions game. So who knows what he's going to tweet tomorrow or do next. But I do think it's worth making the point that he hasn't really had to do anything hard yet, particularly when it comes to Congress. They have not really they haven't had to whip a bill yet. And when we say whip a most, I think, tonight was reassuring lawmakers on Capitol Hill that he is a president that when necessary can deliver an optimistic, uplifting message and that he is someone that they can work with because for the most part, he really embraced their ideas. So let's go back to the very beginning of the speech. Thank you very much. And the president steps up. And the first thing he talks about is something that a lot of people

in America have been calling for him to talk about. Recent threats targeting Jewish community centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week's shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all of its very ugly forms. And then the president said that the torch of truth, liberty, and justice is passed by each American generation. An unbroken chain all the way down to the present. That torch is now in our hands, and we will use it to light up the world. I am here tonight to deliver a message of unity and strength, and it is a message deeply delivered from my heart.

That was a slightly different Donald Trump than we're used to hearing from. It's straight out of 1961. Let the word go forth from this place and time. The torch has been passed to a new generation of leadership. Except at the end of his speech, Donald Trump reiterated his nationalistic message. My job is not to represent the world. My job is to represent the United States of America. In effect, putting a lampshade over that torch and saying, we're not going to bear any burden.

We're not going to do anything for any other country. This is about the United States of America. Thus, Scott is picking up the baton from President Donald J. Trump of mixed metaphors and carrying it right through into this podcast. It was a chorus that became an earthquake that became a hat. I do want to hear that moment because that was probably the moment in this speech where President Trump, using much more presidential language, did the thing that he does basically every time we see him, which is somehow talk about his amazing victory. He started by describing his election as a rebellion that grew. But then the quiet voices became a loud chorus as thousands of citizens now spoke out together from cities small and large all across our country. Finally, the chorus became an earthquake

and the people turned out by the tens of millions, and they were all united by one very simple but crucial demand, that America must put its own citizens first, because only then can we truly make America great again. So not the torch of JFK, not the torch on top of the Statue of Liberty or the lamp from Emma Lazarus's famous poem, but rather the torch of Pat Buchanan's America First campaign in a campaign of 2000 when he was the Reform Party candidate running very much on an America First platform. There was a line in the beginning, too, where it struck me, especially because nothing in these speeches are there by accident. And there was an echo of something he said in his convention speech where tonight when he said, I will not allow the mistakes of recent decades past to define the course of our future. And it's the use of I there that I found so interesting. And it reminded me of the convention speech, the I alone can fix it. And that there was a couple times rhetorically in the speech tonight where he did rely again on the I will do this, not the we, the royal we of America.

And when he says the last several decades, that I think is quite pointed language to indicate he's not just talking about Barack Obama. He's also talking about the Bush presidencies and Bill Clinton, and that he is a divergence from all of that, really going back 30 years or more, and that he is setting a new standard almost as a kind of third party. He's talking about the entire international post-World War II, really going back to the end of World War II, an international order that for decades presidents of both parties saw in the enlightened self-interest of the United States. And he's talking about a more narrowly defined version of self

interest, a zero sum version of self interest, where any gain by another country comes at the expense of the United States. And you heard that early on. We've defended borders for other countries while everything atrophies here at home. We've watched our wealth be taken away by other countries. In Donald Trump's view of the world, any advance by another country means a setback for the United States. There was also this broader frame he put on the speech that I thought was also interesting. He talked about the fact that in nine years, we're going to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the country. And what country do we want to be at that inflection point? And I hadn't really heard him speak in that terms before.

And as someone who thinks about this kind of stuff, too, I thought it was really interesting and how he tied it in at the end of the centennial. At that celebration, the country's builders and artists and inventors showed off their wonderful creations. Alexander Graham Bell displayed his telephone for the first time. Remington unveiled the first typewriter. An early attempt was made at electric light. Thomas Edison showed an automatic telegraph and an electric pen. Imagine the wonders our country could know in America's 250th year. Let's just say that all through this speech, there was a push and pull.

There was an extraordinary effort at balance. Well, it was like two different speeches. There was the America First speech, and then there was the speech where he was trying to build bridges, and he was talking about paid family leave and infrastructure and making sure that families have access to child care. It is almost as if, say, as Steve Bannon and an Ivanka Trump were arm wrestling, were trying to influence that speech. Well, possibly or possibly it is something where he can recognize, he's savvy enough to recognize, that by having the Jared and Ivanka element in the speech, that lobe of the brain working, he can then sell more effectively the

Steve Bannon and Steve Miller lobe of the brain that we heard in the inaugural address and all through the campaign. Whether he is doing this as a savvy salesman or whether he is doing it because he truly is a divided heart, we will find out, or maybe we won't find out, but we'll certainly see a lot of evidence over the months to come. And at some point, we need to start talking about how the divided heart of the Republican Party is really receiving this, not the way we saw them jumping up and applauding and outdoing each other cheering tonight, but what they're really thinking when they listen to this balancing act. I want to go back to the speech and play a few more excerpts and sort of talk through them. At one point, the president spoke about the, quote, circumstances

that he inherited. Let's listen to that bit. 94 million Americans are out of the labor force. Over 43 million people are now living in poverty. And over 43 million Americans are on food stamps. More than one in five people in their prime working years are not working. We have the worst financial recovery in 65 years. In the last eight years, the past administration has put on more new debt than nearly all of the other presidents combined. All right, Scott Horsley, you were on our fact check annotation desk. And we should say that we are not going to get to everything that was in this speech, but we had a team of reporters going through the transcript, annotating the transcript, and you can find that at NPR.org. All right, Scott.

I think the Trump team also vetted this speech more carefully than some of his earlier comments have been vetted. So most of the numbers he cites are accurate as far as they go. They're sometimes lacking in context. For example, the food stamp and poverty numbers he gives are accurate. He neglects to mention that those numbers have come down in recent years. Since the peak of the Great Recession. Exactly. Likewise, we've added 15 million jobs since the trough of the Great Recession. The unemployment rate is less than half what it was at the worst of recession. So while clearly there is room for improvement in the U.S. economy, it's not quite so dire as maybe the president paints it. And it's certainly not

nearly as dire as it was eight years ago when his predecessor was giving this speech. And there's 94 million Americans out of the labor force. That would include children, seniors, retirees. In terms of prime age people being out of the labor force, that's usually defined as 25 to 54. We have seen a drop off both in the number of men and women who are working, and that is something that economists feel is a concern. But we're talking relatively modest drops in those prime age people leaving the workforce. For women age 25 to 54, we've seen a drop down to around 74% who are in the labor force. That's down from 75 back in 1994. For men in the prime working

years, the participation rate is down to about 88%. That's down from about 92% back in 1994. So there has been a decline. These have not fallen off a cliff. It's certainly a concern, but again, keep things in perspective. In the hours leading up to this address, there was a lot of suspense about whether the president would talk about immigration reform or overhauling the immigration system and in just what way he would. This became suspenseful because he had a lunch with television news anchors and he apparently expressed an openness to immigration reform. There was a lot of speculation about what he would actually say. And this is what he did say. I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible as long as we focus on the following goals.

To improve jobs and wages for Americans. To strengthen our nation's security. And to restore respect for our laws. If we are guided by the well-being of American citizens, then I believe Republicans and Democrats can work together to achieve an outcome that has eluded our country for decades. What I take from that is, to heck with family reunification, to heck with a path to citizenship for low-skilled immigrants who are living in this country illegally. From now on, we will define what our economic needs are in a narrow sense and open the

door to those migrants and everyone else stay the heck out. America first. And the talk we heard speculatively earlier today coming from him about how he might be open to some sort of a path to legal status and the talk we had heard that, well, in recent days he has really left the door open for the dreamers. These are the people brought here when they were children by their parents who came illegally. That all was pretty much missing in this speech because it was immigration reform as a compromise, but totally on my terms. To both of your points, what I think this is also a good reminder in the broader context of Trump is that, you know, he was really on message tonight, but it doesn't necessarily mean that this is what Trump believes, right? In the same context of the same day, he was talking reportedly to network anchors suggesting, hey, maybe I could be open to more comprehensive immigration reform. In private, he's saying this. And then publicly, he's sticking to a more traditional line or more traditional for his campaign. This is always the mystery of Trump,

right? Where is he ultimately going to come down on these issues if and when pieces of legislation are actually starting to be formed and making their way to his desk? And we talked about this a little bit earlier today when it comes to health care. There have been a lot of signals flying around. What does Trump want? What does the Hill want? What do Republicans on the Hill want in terms of a replacement for Obamacare? And it's kind of whoever the last person that Trump talked to.

You feel like that's where he is. It's a little bit like sticking jello to the wall. All right. I want to move up from the floor of the house to the gallery just above where First Lady Melania Trump was sitting with some guests. And about half of Trump's guests were people with relatives who had been killed by people in the country illegally. And this is what the president said. I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American victims. The office is called VOICE, Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media and silenced by special interests. So you were in the room. What the heck was going on there? Was that booing? What was that?

That was, I don't know if I would call that booing. It was like a viscer. It was groaning. Groaning is a more accurate way to describe it, certainly coming from the Democratic side of the aisle. And particularly because when you talk about these symbolic guests, yes, the president had these members of Families Here Democrats for their part brought in the other side of the immigration debate, right? They made a point to bring in what we call dreamers, who are the children of parents who are here illegally. They brought in Muslim Americans and other people who they say have been marginalized by the Trump administration.

So I think that their point in bringing these guests was to say they wanted Trump to be confronted with the people that his policies are affecting. This office that he's creating to give voice to people who have been victims of crimes committed by people who are in the country illegally. My understanding is that people who are here in the country legally commit crimes at a higher rate than people who are in the country undocumented. That's right. And this voice is really supposed to be a megaphone to call attention to a problem which the president has accused those of us in the news media of under-telling, just as he's accused us of under-reporting on terrorism. In fact, objective studies show that immigrants living in the country illegally are less likely to commit crime than native-born Americans. That's not to say that with 11 million people living in the country illegally, some of them will do deadly things and there will be

victims and their pain is real. The question is whether we're doing policy by anecdote here and exaggerating that threat in order to justify a particular set of policies that this president's advocating. By far the most dramatic moment of the entire night and possibly of many recent addresses to Congress was when President Trump turned up to the first lady's box and singled out the widow of William Ryan Owens, the Navy SEAL who was killed in an operation in Yemen. We are blessed to be joined tonight by Corinne Owens. She was there attending the speech sitting next to Ivanka Trump. Ryan's legacy is etched into eternity. Thank you. I mean, this was a remarkable moment because the applause lasted for a very long time and the cameras were just trained on her and she was doing everything in her power to not

just completely lose it emotionally. And then like the mascara was streaming down her face and she was just trying to hold it together. But all of this attention, all of these eyes were on her. This was the best moment for the nation, perhaps. This was the best moment for all the people attending in person and watching on television to feel a unified emotion of empathy for the widow. But it was also, perhaps, not to be overly cynical about it, it was probably the best moment of the night for Donald Trump

because it was a moment in which he could be seen as the magnanimous commander-in-chief, even though there's been a tremendous amount of controversy about this mission and particularly about the way he has talked about it and putting the blame onto the generals who told him it was something that they ought to have or something that they needed to do. Yeah, that's what he said in an interview with Fox News. Well, this was a mission that was started before I got here. This was something that was, you know, just they wanted to do. They came to see me. They explained what they wanted to do, the generals, who were very respected.

My generals are the most respected that we've had in many decades, I believe. And they lost Ryan. And I was at the airport when the casket came in, the body came in, and it was very sad with the family, and it's a great family, incredible wife and children.

So this was a bit of a controversy and had been pretty much since the raid itself and the loss of Owen's life. And a large number of civilians were killed, including children. And it was not clear what exactly was gleaned. So the president tonight, not to sound terribly defensive, said he had just spoken to the Secretary of Defense. I just spoke to our great General Mattis, just now, who reconfirmed that, and I quote, Ryan was a part of a highly successful raid that generated large amounts of vital intelligence that will lead to many more victories in the future against our enemy. All of that would have still been more or less a negative until the moment with the widow,

and that obliterated everything else. The thing that was interesting about his comment to me, too, is that when he talked about the actionable intelligence, it's because there has been media reports that the raid resulted in no actionable intelligence. So he's clearly shooting that down. But he also, again, did not take responsibility for it. He made a point to say to put that burden on Mattis and say, well, Mattis has told me this information. So if that information later turns out not to be entirely accurate, then again. I was misinformed.

Exactly. And one other thing about this that has been controversial is that Owen's father said in an interview that when President Trump came to Dover to meet with the family, his father didn't want to meet with the president, that he had real concerns and wants this raid and this mission to be fully investigated. And given that backdrop, I think there will be some who may view this not as the commander-in-chief acting in a unifying and compassionate way, but as a rather cynical and manipulative person using the widow of this Navy SEAL to deflect attention from criticisms of this raid. Absolutely. No doubt there will be people who see it that way as well.

But what I'm saying is that all of the emotions of the night, certainly in the room, in the room, call it manipulative, but it worked. And then at the very end of this very long applause, President Trump goes off script. And Ryan is looking down right now. You know that. And he's very happy because I think he just broke a record. That was off script and perhaps not something that everyone reacted to positively. And while we're talking about applause, Sue, you were there in the room. What was the applause like throughout the speech?

Were there standing ovations? And you don't have to tell me how many. He, of course, got a very wild and rousing and supportive response and reception from Republicans. Democrats on the other side of the aisle were a different story. It is not unusual that the minority party is less enthusiastic about these kinds of addresses. But this one seemed more sullen and maybe more sedated than usual. The minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, did sort of put the word out to her colleagues that they were not to do anything undignified during this speech. If you recall, a couple of years ago, Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina famously yelled out, you lie

to President Obama. In other words, don't become the story. So but they did. There were forms of protest. One, I would say that a large group of women in the House all wore white to the speech. It was very visible on television. I couldn't, I didn't know how much they showed the crowd because I was in the room, but it was very stark inside the room as well. And they were sitting sort of as a block. Yes. So it heightened the notice.

There are a great number of women among the Democrats in the House of Representatives. Yes. And the House Democratic Caucus is majority female minority caucus. Female or minority or both. Yes. So the white Democratic Caucus is majority female minority caucus. Female or minority or both. Yes. So the white males are the minority. Are the minority. And that's the first thing that's been true of either party in American history. And is the complete opposite on the Republican side of the aisle. So the two sides of the chamber look very different as it is. So they wore white, white being the color of the suffragette movement, although they also wear white as sort of a show of support for women's rights. Hillary Clinton wore white at her convention speech.

It's been sort of a major. It's been very in vogue in politics recently for women to wear white. I would also note, though, that Karen Pence, the vice president's wife, also wore a white blazer. Probably not for the same reasons as Nancy Pelosi, but she was also wearing white. And that I would say Democrats, you know, it's not unusual that they don't stand or applaud as much. But there was a real almost it just seemed like they made a sort of concerted effort to be sort of silent and still during the speech. And that at certain points, yes, they did applaud. I mean, there were certainly moments. What about infrastructure? He talked about a trillion dollar infrastructure plan. And I wasn't quite sure.

Yes, he also talked about. Democrats have proposed a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan, and I wasn't quite sure. Yes, he also talked about— The Democrats have proposed a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. What was interesting about that, you know, first of all, in Donald Trump, it's not a trillion dollars of government spending. It's some tax credits to lure in private capital, which would then be repaid through user fees. But he, like President Obama, invoked President Eisenhower as the last great road builder in this country, just as Obama always did. I was curious, did the Republicans applaud more at that than they did when Obama used to try to justify big infrastructure spendings by citing Lincoln and Eisenhower? Well, these funny moments you have, because I also think Republicans were really trying to applaud and be even more enthusiastic to counter Democrats' sort of like quiet sullenness. But then they also caught themselves like getting up in applauding points where Trump was saying things that like traditionally Republicans have opposed.

Like at the moment where he was going through the laundry list and said paid family leave. My administration wants to work with members of both parties to make child care accessible and affordable to help ensure new parents that they have paid family leave. And you're like, this is weird. These are the moments where Trump is challenging our politics. In theory, in theory, if Donald Trump wanted to do something like paid family leave, it is one of those ideas that has the potential, in theory, to bring about Democratic support. I would urge extreme skepticism at the notion

that there's going to be any grand bipartisan compromises in this Congress. Like on anything. Like on anything, in part because Democratic lawmakers don't seem particularly keen on it, that they don't believe that, yes, like you said, infrastructure, they support it, but they have very different views on how you get there. And the Democratic base right now is keeping lawmakers' feet to the fire to really just see themselves as a party of resistance, that they do not see any political benefit in working with Donald Trump at this stage, at this very early stage of his administration. When the Democrats had full control of the House and Senate back in the early 90s before Bill

Clinton was president, they passed or tried to pass a Family and Medical Leave Act with paid family leave in it. They could not even get the family leave without paid leave passed a presidential veto by George H.W. Bush. They could not get family leave with paid leave through the House and Senate that were democratically controlled. And the main reason was because all the business lobbies were against it and the Republicans didn't want to go against the business lobbies. Those lobbies have not changed their minds on that issue. Okay. Let's get to the end of the president's speech because he closed it out with some of the more sweeping language that

that you might expect in an address like this. The time for small thinking is over. The time for trivial fights is behind us. We just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts, the bravery to express the hopes that serve our souls, and the confidence to turn those hopes and those dreams into action. Wow, did you ever hear anybody sound so much like they were reading something? This is definitely the part in the speech where I just kept thinking, who was the speechwriter on this? And who, because this is not Trump himself.

This is not the speechwriter, Stephen Miller and Stephen Bannon, who helped worked on his inaugural address. This was a distinctly different tone. And if I can say so, sounded like Barack Obama. I mean, if you would have read... If I could be Melania's speechwriter, who knows a little bit about cut and paste. I know we should all have our knuckles wrapped for saying these things because we don't really know absolutely who wrote these words. But it surely did not sound like Donald Trump.

We have heard Donald Trump saying his own words when he was being spontaneous a thousand times in the last year and a half. And this truly sounded like a man reading a several-sentence conclusion to a speech that was supposed to have an uplifting end. But also listening to Donald Trump say the time for trivial fights is behind us is I'm sorry. It's a little bit laughable. I mean, this is a president. You could hear people laughing on the floor of the House. Who kind of responded in a similar way. But come on. I mean, at some point.

It's not trivial when you pick a fight with a union local leader in a steel town. No, I'm referring more to like his fight with Meryl Streep and those kind of things that he did during the campaign that people thought he would stop doing as president, and he has not stopped doing it. President Trump likes trivial fights, which is why when I saw this line, I thought, he did not write this.

These are not his words. Maybe someone is trying to reach him. Yes, it sounds like somebody writing someone is trying to reach him. Yes. It sounds like somebody writing a letter earnestly to him. All right. Let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we will talk briefly about the Democratic response to tonight's address and a particular Democrat with a sweet new book deal. We know you love podcasts. We also know you know people who don't.

That's why this March you're going to hear a lot about Tripod. It's a month-long campaign from all your favorite podcasters, including NPR, to get you to recommend a podcast that's any podcast to a friend. And if they don't know how to listen, show them. Then give us your recommendations with the hashtag tripod. That's T-R-Y pod. Thanks for spreading the word. OK, back to the show. OK, we're back. When the president gives a speech like this or a State of the Union, the opposition party selects someone to give a speech in response.

This year's Democratic response came from former Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear. I'm Steve Beshear. I was governor of Kentucky from 2007 to 2015. Now I'm a private citizen. I'm here in Lexington, Kentucky, some 400 miles from Washington. This is always a tough assignment. Usually it's an assignment that goes to a young up-and-comer that the party is trying to highlight. Somebody like Bobby Jindal. Exactly. Or Marco Rubio, who drank some water.

But this time, they were kind of looking back. I mean, he's a retired governor. What was the message here? The message was that people who look like Steve Beshear, talk like Steve Beshear, come from a place like Steve Beshear and used to be the bedrock of the Democratic Party but now pretty much have gone over to Donald Trump could be possibly theoretically brought back if they could see things the way Steve Beshear does. most successful hybrid Obamacare and KentuckyCare, as they called it there, programs over the last six, seven years that has really been a success story of Obamacare. They brought the uninsured rate in that state down from more than 20 percent, cut it by more than half, and did it in a way that was not too offensive to the sensibilities of pretty much traditionalist Americans in Kentucky. And that was Beshear's message. He was there to hit President Trump and Republicans on their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare.

These ideas promise access to care, but deny the importance of making care affordable and effective. They would charge families more for fewer benefits and put the insurance companies back in control. Can we all just say for a minute, too, I have like my own personal soapbox about these rebuttals. I think they're ridiculous. And I don't necessarily understand why. Like, it's a relatively recent tradition and it never works out well. It's a rebuttal in a can.

Nobody looks good doing it. The president is the hardest act to follow, particularly in prime time. I don't know. I just find them to be a little bit tiresome. They the president. It's a huge audience. Some of it's going to stick around. And the ones who do stick around sometimes are positively impressed. Kathy McMorris-Rogers, I think, did a pretty good job a few years ago. But also people remember the Bobby Jindals and way back to Bob Byrd and Jim Wright in the 80s who really were kind of embarrassing and made everybody realize why Reagan Democrats existed. Why they voted for the other guy. Why Reagan Democrats existed. Why they voted for the other guy. Why Reagan Democrats existed. The best you can do in this is be forgettable. And the sooner the better.

There was also a Spanish language response from Democrats that was delivered by an immigration activist, Astrid Silva. She is a dreamer and she spoke Spanish. Buenas noches. Mi nombre es Astrid Silva y soy una dreamer and she spoke Spanish. She was brought to the U.S. when she was four years old and has become a very visible activist for these young people who, at the moment, are not being affected by Donald Trump's policies on immigration at the moment. And if the political point of these rebuttals isn't obvious enough, it's that the Democrats are trying to make a point that they are a big tent party, that they can be a party of dreamers and they can be a party of old white guys like Steve Beshear. Hanging out in diners in Kentucky.

But you have this like this interesting tug of war happening in the Democratic Party right now. And I think this choice of rebuttal reflects that in that you have one element of the party that's saying our response to this election should be we need to get back these white working class voters and bring them back into the fold who are traditional Democrats. And then you have a wing of the party that says, hey, maybe we shouldn't work so hard to reach it back out to poor or white working class voters and lose minorities. Who are, they still believe, the party still believes, are the future of the party. Exactly. So let's have both respond and not have to make a decision the traditional democratic way. And a final note of political news, Penguin

Random House announced tonight that it will be publishing books by Barack and Michelle Obama, reportedly not until 2018. That means they have to write them first. The Financial Times, which originally broke the story today about the book deals, has reported that it could be as high as a $60 million advance for both books, which would be, of course, the biggest book advance for any presidential memoir ever. President Bill Clinton got a reported $15 million advance for his book, and George W. Bush got a reported $7 million for his. So in a statement, the publishing house also said that the Obamas plan to donate in their, quote, a significant portion, although we don't know how much that is, of the proceeds to charity. That charity includes the Obama Foundation. How much did Bush have to pay them? Bush got... All right, that is it for us tonight. We've got to go home and sleep.

We will be back on Thursday with our regular weekly roundup. Sign up for our newsletter at npr.org slash politics newsletter to keep up with all of our reporting. And of course, tune in to your local public radio station, which you can support by going to npr.org slash stations. Find your station and donate. Again, npr.org slash stations. Tell them we sent you. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics

Podcast.