The NPR Politics Podcast - Roundup: What To Impart To Your Kids? Depends On Your Party

Episode Date: May 3, 2024

A new NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll highlights values differences between Democrats and Republicans, as well as a shift in President Biden's coalition of voters. And Donald Trump was fined nine thousand dollars for violating a gag order, meant to protect witnesses and jurors from harassment, during his criminal trial.This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, political reporter Ximena Bustillo, and national political correspondent Don Gonyea.This podcast was produced by Kelli Wessinger and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Casey from Holland, Michigan, and I just watched a Senate vote for the first time in my life at the Colorado State Capitol while visiting my sister in Denver. This podcast was recorded at 1238 p.m. on Friday, May 3rd. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but I will still think that was one of the coolest things I've seen in my life. Okay, here's the show. Democracy in action. Yeah. I'm glad somebody likes civics. Yeah.

I mean, you could go to Lansing, too. You don't even have to travel to Denver. Every state has one. I'm hoping you didn't miss tulip time in Holland, Michigan. It's one of the wonders of the world. Yeah. And Don, you make- I think Don works for visitmichigan.com.

Yes. But Don, you are the one who makes a point of going to every state capitol when you visit a state for a reporting trip. I do. I do. I stand under the dome of every state capitol and look up and kind of marvel at the majesty of it, some of them more majestic than others. And I'm known for going to museums, too. And it just kind of connects me to the place. I think you've got to go see the local treasures.

Resident Rick Steves, Don Gagne. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Don Gagne, tour guide and national political correspondent. Today on the podcast, our new poll explores the values Democrats and Republicans are prioritizing this election year. And spoiler alert, they are quite different. Domenico, this was a question in the latest NPR PBS NewsHour Marist poll. Run us through the options here.

Yeah, I want to talk about two of the poll questions that we mentioned for people, which was what are your biggest concerns for the future of the country? And what do you think are the biggest and most important values to impart to children? extremism, a lack of values, becoming weak as a nation, people like you having less opportunity and wealth, ignoring the country's flaws and past mistakes, or people like you losing power. Well, rise in fascism and extremism was tops, but really because of Democrats. Almost half of Democrats picked a rise of fascism and extremism. Nothing else was really close for Democrats. For Republicans, it was a lack of values and was really close for Democrats. For Republicans, it was a lack of values and becoming weak as a nation. Combined, two thirds of Republicans chose those. And then I want to get to those values, because I think this is really interesting. And it's, you know, it's like men are from Mars, women are from Venus, like the two parties,

they are not in the same place in terms of the things that they believe should be imparted to children. No. You know, there's some overlap, but not a ton. I mean, Democrats said treat others as you want to be treated was the almost half of Democrats. That's the golden rule. Said that the golden rule. They also then a little bit further back said that education is the key to success and to be happy and follow your dreams. Republicans said the largest number said faith in God was important to impart to children and that hard work and discipline pay off. Interestingly, since 2010, there's been a bit of a

shift and mostly in a decrease in the number of people saying that faith in God is the most important thing. Really? Yeah. Huh. I do think that this does in some ways match up with a shift in the parties where Democrats are getting more college educated lack of values as being a problem, becoming weak as a nation as a problem. And, you know, that is one area. Those two areas are sort of, I think, this sort of existential dread that a lot of Republicans feel about what they see as alerts toward liberalism in the country that really began, in their view, under former President Obama. Now, a whole other half of the country or a little bit more disagree with that and would like to see the country kind of go in that direction and are scared of what Donald Trump would bring in what they feel is alerts toward dictatorship and authoritarianism. OK, so and Don, you're out in the field a lot and you're talking to voters, and I would love to get your thoughts on this, too. But but is this just like a dread election? There is a lot of that, yes. And people in Michigan that I'm talking to, and I'm in Pennsylvania a lot, and other of these battleground states up in this part of the world, there is already kind of a sense of weariness among regular folks who you talk to that the state is getting so much

attention. And that's just a product of being a battleground. And Don, you went to one of former President Trump's rallies this week. You were outside talking to voters, in particular, looking for union voters. What did you find? Yeah, I was in Freeland, Michigan. That's not far from Saginaw, up near the Michigan Thumb, if you want to picture it on a map or on your hand. It was a Trump rally. And I was looking for UAW members who support Trump. Yeah, that's United Auto Workers. Yes. And I did find some. There was one brother and sister I talked to, both retired, but again, still UAW members in retirement. I asked about their union's full-throated endorsement of President Biden this year, but they said they don't take political advice from their union leadership. They're with Trump for other reasons. Some of them you've already cited.

They're anti-abortion. They worry about the border. They think the left is getting too powerful, dictating how schools are run, all of that. The interesting thing is they were Democrats until Trump came along. Again, this was a brother and sister. He switched in 2016 to back Trump. She didn't get on board with Trump till 2020. Don, I do want to talk about the demographics of union voters. We talk a lot about Democratic candidates getting the endorsements of the unions, but then you just talked about to these people who are going to completely ignore their leadership's

recommendation. So what does the union voter electorate actually look like? Yeah, these folks I talked to there, they're not outliers. There are a lot of union members with those views, but they are also not the majority of union members. So, and this is really important, traditionally Democrats carry the union household vote. In a good year, it's as much as 60%. But in a bad year, it goes down. Take 2016. Hillary Clinton still won the union vote that year. People forget that, but she won just 51% of the union vote nationwide. She won them, yes, but that lower margin she got made a lot of difference, especially in places where it was very close, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. Right. And we are talking about those states again. Domenico, before we move on, I do want to get back to another item from the poll,

which was you looked at voters who don't like either Biden or Trump. We sometimes call them the double haters because they just don't like their options. I mean, it might be the lesser of two evil votes is another way to phrase it. How are they falling? Well, this is a pretty significant group because they make up a fairly sizable portion of the poll, to be honest with you, about half of the sample, because 56 percent of people say that they have an unfavorable opinion of Donald Trump. Fifty four percent say that they have an unfavorable opinion of Joe Biden. When it's Biden versus Trump head to head, they split pretty evenly. But then when you introduce Robert F. Kennedy Jr., that's where things kind of go a little haywire. And there's been a lot of polls that have been conflicting

with each other about which way does RFK Jr. sort of help or hurt either Biden or Trump. In our poll, he clearly hurts Biden a little bit more because Biden has a five-point lead with registered voters one-on-one against Trump. That evaporates when you introduce RFK Jr. And it's squarely because of these double haters. Because when you take the double haters and you ask them who they would vote for, 31% of them go for RFK Jr. When he's introduced, 31% go for Trump. Only 20% say that they're going to stick with Biden. Huh. But if RFK Jr. isn't an option, more of them end up going with Biden. Yes, definitely. It winds up being, you know, a pretty even split. But even that, Democratic pollsters will tell us, is an underperformance of what Joe Biden did in 2020, where they broke pretty heavily for

Joe Biden because they were banking on people just thinking that they don't like Donald Trump and that Biden was their alternative. And now if they're given an alternative to the alternative, that's what the Biden campaign is very concerned about. All right. We are going to take a break. And Don, don't go too far, though. We're going to have you back for Can't Let It Go. And when Domenico and I get back, wrapping up the week in Donald Trump's criminal trial in New York. And we're back and Ximena Bustillo is with us. Hey there. Hey there. All right. So you have been in the courthouse following all the developments in

Trump's trial this week. And before we go to the latest in the trial, let's talk about the gag order. That's something that we were talking about on last week's pod, that the judge was considering whether Trump had violated a gag order. Remind us about it and what the judge ultimately decided, Judge Mershon. Right. So on Tuesday, Judge Mershon came down with his decision on that gag order. He fined Trump $9,000 for nine violating posts. You might remember that the prosecution originally took issue with 10 posts. There was one post that managed to get by without it being a violation. And Trump was ruled in contempt of court. And so Mershon told Trump that he had until later that afternoon to delete the posts from both his Truth Social site and his campaign website, which Trump did.

And he has until today to pay the fine of $9,000. He also reminded Trump that jail time is an option should he continue to violate the gag order. And that kind of becomes a little bit more relevant coming into later in the week, because we had another gag order hearing on Thursday about some additional alleged violations. And we are waiting for the judge to rule on that. And Domenico, the gag order essentially says Trump can't talk about witnesses, potential witnesses or the family members and court staff or the jurors. Right. I mean, this is about like witness intimidation and about jury intimidation, trying to protect the jury, trying to protect the witnesses, you know, and trying to protect the staffers, as you said, of those in the court, because Trump has taken aim at a lot of these folks. And, you know, so this is a big piece of what they're trying to do to sort

of protect. Although I have to say, $9,000 for nine different posts for a guy who's a billionaire, like it's a very difficult sort of thing to really enforce with so many things that we've seen about Trump, that there's just not a lot of teeth to telling somebody to like him not to do something when he's prone to do it and thinks the benefit outweighs the cost. Well, I mean, $9,000 is nothing for him. All right, let's get to the case itself. The main witness this week was a lawyer for the two women who received payments allegedly at Trump's behest. Jimena, tell us who this lawyer is and what his testimony means to the case. So this was Keith Davidson, and he

represented Karen McDougal, who's a Playboy model, and Stormy Daniels, who was an adult film star. And they both had stories and allegations that they had affairs with Trump. And so Davidson was the lawyer who helped to negotiate the payments that they received from the National Enquirer magazine tabloid and from Michael Cohen in order to not have those stories go out. And so they were basically purchasing the rights to those stories with the understanding that they would never be published, they would never go. And so Davidson testified to how those negotiations took place, how the money was ultimately paid out, when the money was ultimately paid out, what those contracts looked like, and then also conversations that he had with Cohen,

conversations that he had with leadership at the National Enquirer, and kind of all of that surrounding the few years, the 2015 kind of time period to just a little bit after Trump was elected. And Domenico, he is what you might call a corroborating witness. He is someone who can and did testify to various things happening at certain times that later we expect former President Trump's former fixer, Michael Cohen, to come in and talk about in more detail. But nobody likes Michael Cohen, apparently, is the message that came away from this trial. Like he's not the he is not the most sympathetic witness. Well, Michael Cohen has had has gotten himself into some trouble with making false statements.

And he had served some prison time for that actually. So, you know, if you're a defense lawyer, you're going to say that the guy who is accusing my client of something, how can you believe that guy? He's a convicted liar, right? I mean, that's an easy argument to make, right? So that's why you need these corroborating witnesses to come in to say, maybe so at the same time, here's why all of these things are true and how it puts Donald Trump at the center of this conspiracy to cover up these hush money payments to be able to try to help him win the election in 2016. And Tamina, this week, prosecutors introduced a piece of evidence, an audio file where you can hear Trump's voice.

Right. And that was an audio file brought up by one of the analysts, forensics digital analysts that was also brought up to testify to how they searched Michael Cohen's phone and gathered information. It is a piece of tape recorded by Michael Cohen of an interaction he had with Trump and it was played and the jury could hear it. I need to open up a company. It is a piece of tape recorded by Michael Cohen of an interaction he had with Trump. And it was played and the jury could hear it. I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend David. And I spoke to Alan about it when it comes time for the financing, which will be. What financing?

We'll have to pay you. No, no, no, no, no, no. Yeah, and that was one of many examples in which Trump's voice has been heard or Trump has been seen speaking even though he has not testified yet. Now, the David here that could be referred to, we're not sure if it's David Pecker, who was the former publisher of the National Enquirer magazine that facilitated some of these payments, or if it was David Dennison, which is the pseudonym for Donald Trump, on some of these contractual paperwork, particularly with the contract for Stormy Daniels' payment. Well, and you know, the fact is, with this recording, it's trying to show that Donald

Trump knew of the payments, knew of the shell corporation that was being created, because the problem was that Stormy Daniels' attorney was upset because they hadn't actually gotten any payment. And Trump was suggesting that Michael Cohen should delay. And Cohen is sort of saying, you know, this is going to come out if we don't do something about it. So Michael Cohen put it up himself and created this company. And just this morning, Jimena, another witness came up, Hope Hicks, who was a really close aide to the former president, who sort of led communications for him off and on during the campaign and also in the White House. What has her testimony been like? Yeah, so Hope Hicks barely just took the stand at this point in time

in the day. And so she has mostly been testifying to her background with the Trump administration and also the Trump organization, kind of how she came into working with the entire Trump family. But she's also began testifying a little bit into that stage in the campaign where they were hearing about the Access Hollywood tape coming out. They were receiving requests for comments from members of the media and needing to kind of do some of the damage control in response to that. Former witnesses have brought up Hope Hicks' name, so we were kind of assuming she would be one of the key witnesses upcoming. Other folks have already began to

testify that she was privy to some of the meetings, particularly the meeting with Trump, Pecker and Cohen, where they created that catch and kill plan to stop bad press, promote good press and catch and kill any stories that could be damaging to the campaign effort. Yeah, I mean, this is fascinating, Domenico, because she has been so loyal to Trump, quietly loyal, and was just so very close to him. Absolutely. And I also think it's interesting. This is the NPR Politics podcast. Right. They gave a little bit of background into how politics is played and how it operates and

crafting these statements that sometimes come out because Hope Hicks noted about a draft that she sent to Michael Cohen about her response to Wall Street Journal story to get Cohen's input before responding about the accusations about Karen McDougal, the Playboy playmate, who was also on the receiving end of these hush money payments. And Cohen replied, according to her, instead say these accusations are completely untrue and just the latest despicable attempt by the liberal media and the Clinton machine to distract the public from the FBI's ongoing criminal investigation to Secretary Clinton and her closest associates. A lot going on with that statement. But you see how the truth is sometimes a casualty of campaigns.

Indeed, indeed. I do want to ask, though, about the political implications of this trial. It's been going on for a while now. It seems as though it will continue going on for a while. Is it breaking through with voters? In the last segment, Domenico, you talked about our NPR-PBS NewsHour Marist poll. What do voters say about this? Well, what's interesting is that there has been some movement with Republicans in our survey. In February, only 34 percent of Republicans said that they thought that Trump may have done something at least unethical. This time it was 46 percent. So it's moved up. When you combine those who say that Trump has done something illegal in addition to unethical, then you have a majority of Republicans overall saying that about Donald Trump, whether he's done something unethical or something illegal. So that is some movement. Now, are Republicans going to be moving away from Donald Trump to suddenly vote for Joe Biden? Not likely. You know, you have 83 percent

favorable opinion among Republicans of Donald Trump. Ninety five percent of Republicans in our survey said that they're going to be voting for Donald Trump. Where this does matter is with independents, with those older voters who now have moved toward Joe Biden. And those are some key groups, as well as college-educated white voters who've now trended toward Joe Biden. And we've seen that for college-educated white voters, this fear of a rise of extremism and fascism that they also link to Donald Trump Trump all enmeshed together, that that's a big issue for them as well. All right, we're going to leave it there for now. Jimena, thank you so much. Thank you. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go.

And we're back. And Don Gagne is back as well. I am. And it is time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the pod where we talk about the things that we cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Don, you go first. Okay. Detroit just hosted the big NFL draft. It was very big. 775,000 people downtown for the event. It was over the last weekend.

It all ran smoothly. Lots of warm afterglow this week. But I want to talk about my favorite hole-in-the-wall hot dog place downtown. It's called the Lafayette Coney Island. You go there for lunch. Maybe there's 25 people there. Maybe there's 10 people there. You go after a ball game late at night, it's still open. Maybe it's full, but it's still a small place, right? Well, the owner says they sold 10,000 Coney dogs, hot dogs with chili on top during the draft. I can't imagine that place cranking out 10,000 hot dogs. And very helpfully, he pointed out that doesn't count all the chili fries and the glasses of beer that they also sold. So, folks, come to Detroit.

I'll meet you for a Tony and you may even want to move here. Sign me up at least for the cuisine and the beer. You know, it's funny. The draft, most of the time, almost 90% of the time or so, there's nobody on the stage. So you had all these people sort of mustering around and sticking around for something where there's very little activity actually like on the stage. So it was just a big downtown Detroit party, which is kind of cool. Don, how many people live in Detroit? The Detroit population, I believe, is in the range of 600,000 now. So it was more than the population of the city.

There were more visitors. Wow. There were was more than the population of the city. There were more visitors. Wow. There were more visitors than there are people who live here. That is amazing. So I will go next. And we would be remiss if we didn't do this as a Can't Let It Go. But Kristi Noem, who is the governor of South Dakota and has been talked about as a potential vice presidential pick for former President Trump.

She has definitely been promoting herself a lot over the last several years. And as part of that has a book coming out, a book about, you know, her getting into politics and her vision and all of that. You know, a pretty classic politician thing to do. It's called No Going Back. Unfortunately for her, she included an anecdote in the book that is just like political poison. Noam wrote a pretty graphic story in her new book about killing the family dog named Cricket. She said that it was untrainable, dangerous to anyone who came in contact with it, and, quote, I hated that dog. And so she writes about killing it. She then writes, it was not a pleasant job, but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.

Yep, that's it. That's the whole can't let it go. That is the whole can't let it go. I don't know how she recovers from it. Like it was a massive it just blew up into this huge scandal and lots and lots of people tweeting out pictures of their very good dogs. reporter who, you know, heard a thing. And then there's going to be all this doubt about the authenticity of this story. And it's going to be a typical like political thing. And I was like, where did this come from? Oh, she wrote about it in her book herself. She did. It's not what the typical thing you do in a book when you are angling in some respects to be the vice presidential running mate. So I think big miscalculation there. Dominica, why can't you let go of? Follow that.

Follow that. Well, I also cannot let go of something involving animals. And this is about bees at the Arizona Diamondbacks game. Don, I think you would appreciate this. Sitting behind home plate, imagine looking up and seeing a massive swarm of bees on top of the net behind home plate. They could not get rid of these bees. It delayed the entire game. The Diamondbacks actually wound up calling in a man named Matt Hilton, who was a beekeeper. He came in and he got rid of the bees. He was greeted as a hero. He was super enthusiastic about it.

And they let him wind up throwing out the first pitch. He took his beekeeper mask off. He revved up the crowd. And the coolest part of this, he actually left his kid's baseball game and got called up to the big leagues to be able to do this job. That is amazing.

Salute to him and to be able to get baseball moving. And I bet those bees were rehomed. You know. To a hive somewhere. I don't know what happened to the bees, but bees are survivors, I hope. How do you score that in your scorebook? Is there anything for delay? I don't know.

That was a massive delay of game. All right, that is all for this week. Our executive producer is Mathani Mathuri. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Jung-Yoon Han, Casey Morrell, and Kelly Wessinger. Special thanks to Krishnadev Kalamer. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.

And I'm Don Gagne, national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.