The NPR Politics Podcast - Roundup: Ron DeSantis Wants GOP Backup; John Fetterman Gives A Mental Health Update

Episode Date: April 21, 2023

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is mulling over a 2024 run for the White House — and he currently stands as the biggest threat to former President Trump in the primary. But the Republican Governor has a tough race ahead of him, and it's unclear he can shore up enough support within the GOP. Also, NPR's Scott Detrow sits down with Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman for his first interview since returning to the Senate after a six-week hospitalization for clinical depression. This episode: political reporter Ashley Lopez, political correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspondent Scott Detrow and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. It is edited by Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Research and fact-checking by Devin Speak.Unlock access to this and other bonus content by supporting The NPR Politics Podcast+. Sign up via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Kauffman.org Hi! We're at the Tosca University Wing Ensemble Spring Concert. This podcast was recorded at 12.09 p.m. on Friday, April 21st, 2023. Well done. well done. Oh, listen to that.

It's like the presidential march version of the NPR Politics Podcast. So classy. Yeah, that's how we do. We keep it classy with a capital K. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover politics.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was in Washington, D.C. this week, hoping to get a little love from his fellow Republicans and maybe boost his cred as a possible challenger to Donald Trump. And it did not go well. It didn't. You know, Ron DeSantis has not formally declared he's running for president, but he's doing all the things you do when you want to run for president. He's written a book. He's traveling to early states. He's formed a super

pack. And he came to Capitol Hill to do sort of, you know, a bit of a charm offensive. And it had the opposite effect. You know, he came to Capitol Hill, he met behind closed doors with a lot of Republican members. And by the end of this week, Donald Trump has racked up more endorsements, not just from members of Congress, but from now half of the Florida Republican delegation. I mean, after these meetings, more Republicans came out and said, we support Donald Trump. And, you know, obviously just bad PR. But also in the olden pre-Trump days of politics, if a governor was running, you oftentimes had your delegation behind you. If for no other reason than it was good state politics.

Right. In the short term. And the fact that so many are breaking with DeSantis and saying, you know, Donald Trump is the right nominee for us is just obviously not good for him. And I think it does speak to one of the deficits that DeSantis has in this primary is he has a personality deficit. One of the reasons, you know, a lawmaker like Greg Stube, one of the Republicans who came out this week, basically just said he's got a personality problem. And people don't think that he has sort of the retail political charm it takes to win and especially to beat a guy like Trump. And politicians like voters want to be wooed. And, you know, DeSantis really hasn't done a lot of that spate work that a lot of these politicians want to see. And, you know, through the years,

when you start adding up the public endorsements, they do tend to be an indicator of who winds up winning a presidential primary. And right now, it's not looking good for DeSantis. You know, he's really struggled over these last few months. He's been pummeled by former President Trump on the airwaves, nonetheless, pretty bold move. And DeSantis really behind the eight ball. He, you know, started running one ad, at least a super PAC that was supporting him, but really hasn't landed as firmly as what Trump has done. So, I mean, he hasn't really made inroads right with lawmakers on the Hill, but he's been traveling the country. I mean, he was in New Hampshire, Ohio, Iowa, trying to gather some momentum among Republican voters who, you know,

at least a small percentage who seem eager for an alternative to Trump. who, you know, at least the small percentage who seem eager for an alternative to Trump. But, you know, so far, it seems like he has avoided taking on Trump directly. Especially following Trump's recent indictment, you know, DeSantis made a big point to, as all potential rivals did, like get behind the president. He even went so far to say that he wouldn't participate in any role to extradite him out of the state of Florida and send him to New York. You know, DeSantis is a rough and tumble politician, right? Like he has a reputation for being really aggressive, but towards the media, towards what he would call the quote unquote woke left, like he has, he has it in him. But I think he's facing the same problem that a lot of other Republicans have, is that like, how do you go at Trump without alienating the Trump voter?

Right. Like if it's not going to be Trump and you want it to be you, you still need Trump's people. And that is the magical, impossible needle for any Republican rival to thread. And I think in the beginning, a lot of people thought DeSantis could be the guy because he does seem to have like a grit and an intensity to him. And again, he won big in the 2022 midterms. Like the tale of the midterms was that like these Trump endorsed candidates lost. The more Trumpier you were, you didn't have a chance. And DeSantis won Florida big by double digits. He won Miami Dade. It was like, oh, wow, is he is he the guy? And you've just sort of seen this precipitous decline in his favorability among Republican primary voters since that point. And I think Trump still has the power to define his opponents and land the punch. And his opponents, none of them really, I don't think, have found a way to land a punch against Trump, but not piss off the Trump voter. Well, and to that point, what is their message? You know, what are the Trump alternatives messages rather than, oh, you know, I'm pretty good too. You know, that's not going to work.

It's not something that you're going to be able to just hope Trump fades away. There has to be, when I talk to Republican strategists, a concerted, sustained effort to take on Trump with his most glaring vulnerabilities. And nobody in the party has been willing to do that so far, including DeSantis. It's to exactly the point of what you're talking about. I mean, I listened to an NBC interview, for example, with Tim Scott, the senator from South Carolina, who's launched an exploratory committee, not 100 percent in the race yet, but he was asked a couple of times about Trump and he just said he wanted to talk about himself. And, you know, that's not going to work. I mean, I wonder how much is just like the fear of coming out of this totally scathed.

You know, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced this week that he's not going to be jumping into the race to unseat Trump. I wonder how much of that was just a little bit of fear of getting in a race like this. I wonder what you make, Sue, of what the slate of Republican potential candidates is now. You know, it's still really at this point looks like a Trump-DeSantis race and then everybody else. I mean, the only candidate that's even polling in a way that raises Trump-DeSantis race and then everybody else. I mean, the only candidate that's even polling in a way that raises eyes is DeSantis. Everyone else's single digits are in the rounding error. So, you know, it's still really early. DeSantis isn't even formally in the race. We've got months and months and months before Iowa. He does have a lot of credibility among

evangelical voters, which play an outsized role in determining the Republican nomination. He polls really well with people who have college-educated degrees. Trump polls better with blue-collar, you know, the sort of divisions within the party. Like, I don't want to dismiss DeSantis as a real contender in this race. He just had a really bad week. But at the same time, I think that part of the bigger picture here is that Donald Trump remains the favorite to win the nomination and that it's going to be really, really hard to beat him, especially if the field does not consolidate behind one alternative. get out, but other people are still looking to get in. The more candidates that get in, and Domenico's made this point a lot, might actually make Trump stronger because it will dilute the anti-Trump vote and create more of a path for him to get what he needs to win with a plurality. Yeah. Well, let's pivot then to the Democratic side. President Biden, as we know, has not yet formally announced. But this week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he would be running

against Biden. Two things come to mind here. I mean, Kennedy, this is one of the most famous political family names in America. And he's probably most famous now for being anti-vaccines, which is sort of an interesting resume there. Domenico, your thoughts on him entering the race? Well, you know, Democratic strategists sort of like raise eyebrows a little bit on this or texted me this week about how concerned they are somewhat with the Kennedy name as something for people who don't pay that close attention to politics, you know, that this could be a potential problem. And not necessarily in a primary. I mean, it could be a bit of a nuisance. But if for some reason, he decided to run as an independent in a general election, there'd be a real problem for Biden, because just think about like what name means, you know, people see a name, they recognize a name, they have an immediate draw to it. And they might go for that. And at them when you have an election

that's at the margins, it can be a real problem. But you know, the Republican electorate is very divided over who they want to be their nominee. The Democratic electorate is not. Democrats want Joe Biden to be their nominee. And the thing about a candidate like RFK Jr., who's pretty controversial, I also remember we don't know what the debates and what things are going to look like. But remember, in the last presidential election, and it's reasonable to conclude Democrats might do this again, they did set up barriers for entry. Like in order to get onto a debate stage, in order to move forward, you had to be polling at a certain number, you had to raise a certain amount of money. So he's probably going to have to prove that he has some critical mass of support for the party to put him on a debate stage with an

incumbent president, particularly considering the controversial views that he holds about vaccine science that I am doubtful that the Democratic Party would be very interested in giving a platform to. Well, Domenico and Sue, thanks for joining. Sue, don't go too far because you'll be back for Can't Let It Go. And coming up in February, Senator John Fetterman did something incredibly rare for politicians. He checked himself into a hospital to treat clinical depression. Fetterman stayed in the hospital for six weeks. He's back in the Senate now, and he sat down with Scott Detrow to talk about it. More on that after this break. And we're back and now joined by Scott Detrow. Scott, this week, you were able to sit down and get a pretty extended interview with Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman. So this was his first sit down since he returned to the Senate after a six week hospital stay to treat clinical depression.

Yeah. Why don't you tell us, you know, how that came to be and what happened. It has been a very intense 12 months for John Fetterman. To recap, he ran in the most high profile Senate race in the country last year, the race that everyone rightly viewed as the one that would decide control of the Senate. And right in the middle of that race, he suffers a serious stroke. He's off the trail for months. When he gets back, he really struggles to communicate and process speech. It's something that he needed help with, with closed captioning devices. And there was just incredible pressure. And that's something he talked about in the interview and

how that intense pressure and that health scare and that recovery really made depression that he had struggled with for years a lot more serious. And it just got worse after he got to D.C. So he made this decision to pull himself from the Senate to enter Walter Reed Hospital and get six weeks of treatment for clinical depression. So he's been back. This is his first week back. And I sat down with him in his office at the end of that first week. So you're back. You chaired your first subcommittee hearing this week. It's been a full week. Your colleagues gave you a standing ovation when you came back into the Democratic caucus meeting. How's everything feeling? I can't tell you how moving it was to me. Now, I would have been blown away if it was just warm, but a standing ovation and hugs.

And I'm so grateful to our colleagues and to Leader Schumer also, so that it made it possible for me to be there, setting the tone from the top down that either me or anyone in this kind of situation, it's one of us, and we need to provide the opportunity to get healthy. How different did it feel coming into the Senate, being in the Senate this week, compared to when you first arrived in January? It was just a big smile. I've really missed being here. When I was in the throes of depression, to be 100% honest, I was not the kind of senator that was deserved by Pennsylvania. I wasn't the kind of partner that I, to my wife, Giselle, or to my children, you know, Carl, Grace, and August, I wasn't the kind of father. One of the best sentences that I ever heard in

my life was my doctors just sitting when we were in a meeting, and they said, John, we believe your depression is in remission. And at first, I didn't believe that. And now, my depression is in remission. And that's why coming back to home and coming back to the Senate has been joy. You've said you want to use this moment to talk about mental health, to talk about depression. Can you tell somebody who's maybe lucky enough to have not had to deal with depression what it felt like in those moments early on in the Senate term? You've talked about feeling empty, being sworn into office. It should be this big moment in your life, and you said it didn't feel that way at all. Yeah. You know, I'm grateful to have the ability to try to pay it forward. And I would just say

this. I try to be kind of, I want to be, say the kinds of things that I would have heard years ago that got me, you know, into action. Yeah. And I would tell anybody listening to this is if you suffer from depression or you have a loved one, you know, please let them know. Please know that you don't need to just suffer without treatment. If I had done that years ago, I would not have had to put my family with that if I had gotten help. When you were dealing with depression for so long, how would you characterize how you were personally dealing with it? Were you denying that it was even there? Or were you saying, this is here, this is a real thing, but I'm going to push through it, I'm going to ignore it?

I was, I was so depressed that I didn't even realize how I was depressed. Yeah. I didn't even understand it. To me, that just became the new normal. I wasn't realizing I wasn't eating. I wasn't eating. I didn't realize that I wasn't really drinking much. I dropped 25 pounds and sometimes would say inco sometimes would say things, incoherent things.

I knew I was, something was wrong. They knew that I was not, wasn't right. But even at that moment, I was still kind of, I pushed back about it too sometimes saying, are you sure? I don't really need it. I'm good. Okay. No, no, no.

I got it. Because then when it was really come to that choice like you need to i'm going to walk in here and and sign myself in i thought for a second i'm like oh no no wait a minute i i i'm fine all right never mind i got this i got this i got this i got this i'm noticing that you're you're being really reflective and looking back saying i wasn't i wasn't doing this the right way with my family. I wasn't approaching this job the right way. I was ignoring this. What did you learn about yourself during the six weeks in the hospital that you didn't know before? For my family, it was hard because I was ashamed. Yeah. I was ashamed.

And that was probably the single hardest thing in all that, is when I think about that. Did you talk to your family about those feelings, and what did they tell you? The day I was signed in to the hospital was my son's 14th birthday. And I think back when I was 14 years old, what if this would have been what happened to me? But, but, uh, only thing he wanted to do was he just wanted to go to a restaurant and, and, and my wife was on his way to take him there and she,

they all had to turn it around. And my fear is that his birthday will only remember as the day that dad was signed in. But in the six weeks was about me kind of redeeming, trying to redeem myself in their eyes. And they were never harsh on me. This just created a path to a safe place. But I felt like I didn't deserve to have like a safe place there. You still sound very hard on yourself. No, no, I wasn't hard on me. Because they, you know, the family was put through a really difficult. This is really hard for myself my oldest son had a

conversation where he was having a hard time understanding why dad why aren't you depressed like you ran and you you won and and i i tried to explain to them like you know geez you know carl like i i had a stroke and and you know, all of these ads and everything. And he's like, but aren't we enough? Aren't we enough? And when he asked, aren't we enough, he's that they should be, that they are enough. But at that time, I wasn't able to not feel this kind of depression. And that's, you know, those six weeks was, for me, was like every week was about me trying to work back enough to be worthy.

Yeah. I want to use the rest of the interview to talk about what comes next and talk about how you're going to approach your job now that you're back in the Senate. And I wanted to start by just taking a moment to ask you about some of the criticism and also some of the concerns. You said yourself a moment ago that when you were depressed, you didn't feel like you were the senator that Pennsylvania needed.

I'm paraphrasing. But I mean, the central attack against you during the campaign was you couldn't do the job due to your health problems. Then you got here and you had to spend six weeks in the hospital. And I'm wondering, do you feel yourself any extra pressure at this moment to say, hey, Pennsylvania, I'm here to represent you? Yeah, certainly. But I bet you some of those people that are criticizing me know somebody or they might be someone that faces depression in their lives as well. And I just always try to tell people by saying it's not a Democratic or a Republican area. It's humanity

and you know there's people from no matter where you live no matter what your political views are is is that that you suffer from depression or you know somebody there and and uh you know what a critic of me was it's my wife yeah she said you have depression you got it you should do something to it so so she was right you know just because you know like i thought every night when i was laying in bed uh when i was in the hospital over here and like why if i just would have what if i just would have done done something about this before you know and i could kick myself and i guess think about you know you know my family wouldn't have put through it. And even again, you know, my constituents.

But but right now, now that I am back to me, I'm really committed to paying it forward on all of that and letting people know to anyone that that has any of these feelings. You know, there's there's there's a path and you can get better. You know, hearing politicians talk about emotions like shame, that seems so rare in public life. And I'm struck by just how deep he got into some of these more vulnerable emotions that he was feeling coming into and coming out of his treatment. I mean, I don't know that that's a very common thing in politics. Yeah, the phrase that he and his staff and we at NPR and people have heard it keep saying over and over again is this was just like a very raw conversation. And, you know, you could feel the emotion through all of it. And you could feel him being so frustrated at all of the lost time that he feels like he missed out on because he didn't want to try and treat this depression for so long and how hard he wants to work to actively address this going forward. And of course, at the same time, try to get back into this very high profile job of being a United States senator. Yeah, I also think it's interesting that this happened

right after him winning a big election. So much of like the expectation of getting a thing you want or winning something is that it solves all your problems. You feel better about your life. But I mean, this is a really interesting example in which, you know, getting the thing that you worked hard for doesn't necessarily make your sort of mental health battles any easier. Yeah, he talks so much about the pressure of that race, feeling like control of the Senate comes down to you, the millions of dollars of negative ads that just inundated from the campaigns from outside groups. And the pressure didn't let up after he won. In fact, I think it got worse. And he said something interesting right after the interview ended. He said that he would suggest anybody running statewide, anybody running in a high-profile race,

hire a wellness coach or somebody on the staff whose job it is to make sure that they are mentally doing what they need to do to survive the intense pressures of running on a campaign. Well, that was a really beautiful interview, Scott, and amazing work. But don't go away. We're going to take a break, but I want you to stick around because when we come back, it's Can't Let It Go. And we're back. And Sue Davis is back for our favorite segment when we get to talk about the things that we just cannot let go of, politics or otherwise. Actually, Sue, let's start with you. What can't you let go of this week? The thing I can't let go this week, or I should say the person I cannot let go this week,

is a woman named, I want to make sure, I'm going to try to give her name due diligence, Beatriz Flamini. Beatriz is a endurance athlete. She's a 50-year-old woman from Madrid. And she made national, I should say global headlines, because she lived in a cave 230 feet underground for 500 days. I saw this. Oh, wow. But the thing I can't let go about it is she came out of the cave and they had like a whole press conference. She loved it. Like she didn't want to leave she was like annoyed that they came down to get her and tell her that it was time to go

and she spent like 500 she said she just really focused on like pleasure pursuits she didn't have internet or any kind of like communications she was totally unaware of what had gone on in the world but she said she she read she knitted, she did crafts. She's an endurance athlete, so she did a lot of exercise. It sounds great. She thrived. She found her best self alone in the dark underground. This sounds like an introvert's dream.

It does a little bit. I don't know if you guys have ever been in a cave. I love being in caves. It's like the perfect temperature, and it's kind of like damp inside. I remember the first time I went into a cave here in Texas, I was like, I think this is where I'm supposed to be. Like being above ground just sucks so much in comparison. So I do like relate to her in this way. Although I don't know that I could be without seeing people for that long because I'm not an introvert. But I think it's so interesting that she was able to do that.

Very impressed by her. I mean, like, there's days where I feel like I would love to go to a cave and read and not be talked to for 500 days. But do we know why she did this? Was she just like, I want to go to a cave. See you later. She was part of a scientific study in which they were trying to understand what isolation and lack of sunlight does to your circadian rhythms,

which is like you're awake and asleep cycles. And apparently it does wonders. I agree with you, Scott. Like, I don't think I could do 500 days, but like a long weekend in a cave with some good books and some snacks. Like I might sign up for that. Her cave itinerary sounded like my aspirations for like weekdays off that never quite happened. Yeah, like a productive alone day, but, you know, on repeat. So congrats

to her and maybe we'll give it a try someday. Yeah. Ashley, what can't you let go of? Well, so according to CNN this week, it turns out that the Great Pacific garbage patch, which is that 620,000 square mile swirl of trash that's like somewhere between California and Hawaii, has actually become like a thriving ecosystem for a bunch of creatures usually found on coasts. So a team of researchers found that dozens of species of coastal invertebrate organisms have been able to survive and even reproduce on the plastic garbage that we have all discarded and is now floating in the ocean and has been for years. I mean, it's kind of horrific, but I guess it's cool to hear some animals have found home there.

Honestly, this is a Disney Pixar movie. It just sounds like these creatures that find something and make some kind of like tale out of it. I could see this being like an animated film in some way. I think they made that movie already. It was called WALL-E. Yeah. WALL-E with more trash. WALL-E. WALL-E in the ocean. Even more trash.

WALL-E part two. I find it hard to get my head around that much trash just sitting in a blob in the ocean, but I guess it makes sense. It's very hard to comprehend. Yeah. All right. Scott, how about you? What can't you let go of this week? So original podcast listeners, the real ones, know that there was a time where I spent a lot of time on this podcast talking about the various merits of Sheetz and Wawa, the two convenience stores of choice for Pennsylvanians. Senator John Fetterman is very passionate on this issue.

As all elected officials in Pennsylvania need to be. He is, and he is not somebody who tries to play both sides. He made it very clear when he ran for Senate, he was a sheets person, ripped on Wawa all the time. Since he's won, he has made some diplomatic visits to Wawa's and seems to be working on that. I'm a Wawa person, so I appreciate that. That's fair. But obviously he and I had a very serious conversation.

But given this, at the very end of the interview, I decided there was something I needed to ask him. And I guess one last very important question for you. It's been such an eventful year. So much has happened. I'm wondering if you've reconsidered whether Sheets is better than Wawa. But I tell you what, I also have to say something, and this is, please don't, Sheetz Nation doesn't go too hard on me. But I've been cheating on them with Royal Farms. Wow. Yeah. That's the news from the internet.

Controversial. Rafa, Rofa, yeah, has really been my, I have to admit it, I have to admit it, Royal Farms was pretty good. And their chicken. At first, I was a skeptic until I got it, and it's like, you know, check it out. You know, Rufa, you know, chicken is the real deal. So that's the news of the interview. That's what's going to make news back in Pennsylvania out of that interview. I told his staff that we were going to be playing this today. I said,

just so you can prepare for censure votes from the Altoona Democratic Party. The state house is going to impeach soon. I will say, as a native Pennsylvanian, I grew up in the Philadelphia area, so obviously I grew up in a Wawa family. But I would say that my family, when we get together at my brother's house, he lives in central Pennsylvania, increasingly have also become a Royal Farms family because the senator is correct. They have fried chicken. It is a cult favorite in Pennsylvania. And oftentimes at family gatherings, my brother Jerry will stop at the Royal Farms and pick up some chicken to bring to a family gathering. So fact check true.

All right. That's a wrap for today. Our executive producer is Mithoni Maturi. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Elena Moore and Casey Murrell. Thanks to Krishna Dev Kalimer and Lexi Shapiro. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover politics. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover politics. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. One last thing before we go. Thanks also to our NPR Politics Plus listeners for supporting public media. Be sure to check out your feed this weekend for a new bonus episode where we'll take you inside the White House Correspondents Dinner.

And if you're not a supporter, you can sign up to hear that episode at plus.npr.org.