The NPR Politics Podcast - Shutdown Deadline Approaches On Trump's 100th Day

Episode Date: April 25, 2017

Plus latest news on an investigation into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Scott Detrow, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. 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 Kelsey and Kristen from Butte, Montana, home of the richest hill on earth. This podcast was recorded at 312 p.m. on Tuesday, the 25th. Things may change by the time you hear this. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at NPR.org, 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 this week's deadline for Congress to fund the government as we approach President Trump's 100th day in office. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress.

And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Hey, guys. What is the richest hill on earth? Like, what does that mean? I Hey, guys. What is the richest hill on earth? Like, what does that mean? I don't know. What's the richest hill on earth? It was in the thing that they just read for us. The timestamp. I want to know.

I'll look this up. Yes. We have two deadlines to talk about, both on the same day. One real to fund the government. One, let's just say it's kind of arbitrary. But it's round. It is say it's kind of arbitrary. But it's round. It is. It's an even number. The president's first 100 days, his 100th day in office. But first, a quick news item. And again, like a lot of news items this year, it relates to Russia. Remember former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who was forced to resign less than a month into the administration because he had misled the vice president about contacts he had with the Russian ambassador?

Well, it turns out that when he filled out his documents to get security clearance, he left some stuff off. Yeah, this was a document that he filled out with the Defense Intelligence Agency. This is the defense arm that he used to run during the Obama administration before he was fired from that job. You have to, for security clearances like this, you have to disclose where you get your outside income, especially if it's coming from other countries relevant to security issues. He did not put on that form the fact that he got tens of thousands of dollars to go give a speech in Russia and appear at a gala for Russia Today, RT, the TV wing of the Russian government that has been... It is a state-owned television station. That's right. That has been used to kind of push the Russian propaganda line on a lot of issues. And this was something that Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat, and Jason Chaffetz, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, came out today and both said that it was wrong of him to do this.

They have a lot more questions. They have a lot of questions related to what he disclosed or didn't disclose on his White House security clearance forms. But the White House isn't turning those over. Jason Chaffetz had a really interesting kind of verbal gymnastics moment when asked whether or not Flynn had violated the law here. Personally, I see no information or no data to support the notion that General Flynn complied with the law. And that is he was supposed to seek permission and receive permission from both the Secretary of State and the Secretary of the Army prior to traveling to Russia to not only accept that payment, but to engage in that activity. I see no evidence that he actually did that.

The more direct way to say that is he did not comply with the law. And Elijah Cummings also talked about how they seen some classified documents, though he wouldn't get into precise details about how they know what they know. Right now, we cannot discuss the contents of the documents that we just saw because they are indeed classified. But we can say this. They are extremely troubling. We have concerns. And I believe these documents should be declassified to the fullest extent possible without compromising sources and methods. And there are other questions outstanding about another payment that Flynn received for work that his firm did on behalf of the Turkish government. It was about $530,000 total that his firm was paid. There are a lot of questions about whether that was disclosed, what the nature of that was, and why someone in his position who was about to become national security advisor to an

incoming administration, why he was receiving so much money from another government. Mara, is this just another blip? Does this matter? I think it only matters in the bigger picture if Mike Flynn is in enough trouble that he would cooperate with the investigators and tell them about something else, some other contacts with Russia. Mike Flynn, we do have to remember, was a key voice in Donald Trump's ear during a good chunk of his run for president. And I had actually totally forgotten this until I heard this in an interview somewhere else this week. Remember, Mike Flynn was briefly floated as a possibility for Donald Trump's running mate. That's just an indication of how high in Trump's orbit Flynn was. And one other Russia development, Scott. That's when former Assistant Attorney General Sally Yates is going to testify in front of a Senate subcommittee.

And she's a really key voice in all of this because you'll remember she was the one when she was acting attorney general who went to the White House and said, Hey, we have problems here in terms of what Michael Flynn said publicly about his conversation with Russia's ambassador during the transition and what we know he actually said. And there's so much of a discrepancy. The Washington Post and other outlets reported she told the White House that he might have opened himself up for blackmail. So she's a really key voice in the timeline of all of these interactions with Russian operators that happened during the transition and who said what in that series of events that led to Flynn being basically fired from his job. OK, let's move on to the looming deadline at the end of this week. And I kind of have to say I'm surprised that no cable networks have put up their countdown to shutdown

yet on the screen. There's a reason for that. Yes, Mara. There is not going to be a shutdown. But if you're having a countdown to like your John Kasich town hall, why not have one for that? Because there actually is a John Kasich town hall. That's a good point. It was last night. I watched it on the plane. But every party to this negotiation, such as it is, has said they don't want a shutdown. When you give up the ultimate leverage of a shutdown and you're not willing to go to the brink, then you lose leverage for the things

that you want to put in a government funding bill. And that has been the story of this week. Donald Trump negotiated with himself. Just to be clear on what's happening, at the end of this week, the temporary funding authority for the federal government runs out. Congress needs to pass new government funding legislation. They are not going to do a big formal bill. Well, no, what happens is under normal order, appropriations bills would be passed. When Congress fails to pass appropriations bills to fund individual agencies, they pass a big omnibus spending bill that keeps the entire government going. So the funding from the last

omnibus spending bill runs out on Friday night. They need to pass another one. What they might do if they can't resolve all of their issues is just pass another one that lasts a week and do it again. But the most important thing is that because this is a must-pass piece of legislation, if you don't pass it, the government shuts down. And that is a tremendous indictment of the Republican Party since they control every branch of government. People start thinking, wow, this is a must-pass piece of legislation. What important priority of mine could I stick on this piece of legislation? And the president, desperate for some 100-day accomplishments, started floating the idea, and his people started floating the idea, that he wanted funding for the wall, the border wall, the famous wall with Mexico. He wanted that

in the government funding bill. But there was such mixed messages about all of it. I mean, even if you just looked at the Sunday shows, you had, you know, like Mick Mulvaney saying, yeah, we're going, yeah, demanding money for the wall be in this budget bill. Then you had Ryan Supriva saying, well, you know, we'd like it, but we're working on it. So so while the White House was making this hard push, it was also kind of contradicting itself. And then, you know, Monday, the Senate starts to trickle back. The House isn't even back yet. But by Monday afternoon, President Trump has been has told a group of conservative reporters at the White House and the White House then confirmed this, that he said, yeah, I'm OK waiting until September. So he basically, as Mara put it, negotiates with himself and called his own bluff and back down. And I was I was talking to senators in the hallway before I came over here. And nobody is even treating this as a negotiating point anymore. Even top Republicans are saying, yeah, we're basically viewing that as off the table because Trump said so himself.

The thing that's so interesting to me is he is supposed to be a master negotiator, the art of the deal. He has not negotiated a single thing with Congress yet, and they're from his own party. And he went from a Friday afternoon interview with AP making a veiled veto threat when he was asked, if you get a bill on your desk that does not include funding for the wall, will you sign it? And he says, I don't know yet, meaning maybe not, to never mind. That's very similar to other things we've seen where he makes a big, bold demand and doesn't even try to get it. That tells your negotiating partners, whether they're Democrats or Republicans, that they don't have to take the things you say that

seriously. And just to recap, the last big showdown that Trump had with Congress and kind of the same pattern, he demands a public vote on health care up or down. The quote from his advisors to everyone was, we want to know who's with us and against us. We want a public record. No vote ever happens. As part of that negotiation, he says, if we don't pass health care this week, we're walking and never doing health care again. We're moving on. To tax reform, right? Yeah. And then, of course. Now it's, whoops, we've got to do health care first because it makes tax reform so much easier. He went from threatening the Freedom Caucus. We're going to run against them in 2018 to, you know, he has a great relationship with them. The other little bit of negotiating jujitsu, where he kind of jujitsu himself, which I thought was so interesting.

That's just called tripping, I think. Yes, tripping thought was so interesting. He said that the Democrats would come begging him to continue funding for the insurance subsidies for Obamacare because they really want that, because without that, Obamacare will implode, and that he was going to exact a price from them for continuing those subsidies, and that would be funding for the border wall. Democrats didn't bite, and that disappeared. Let's talk about that border wall, because this is not a small thing. This is fundamental to what President Trump campaigned on from the very first day of his

campaign. I would build a great wall, and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me, and I'll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border and I will have Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words. And now the administration is saying, well, we're going to get money for border security. And that's something that both parties agree on. I think, you know, Democratic leaders like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer

are happy to fund things like increased surveillance, increased security on the border. The general idea of border security is something that both parties agree on. But the thing that's interesting about the wall is that this is simultaneously an incredibly powerful issue for President Trump's base and also an idea that is not that popular among mainstream Republicans in Congress. It's not something that the party overwhelmingly wants to do. And it's not something when you look at national polls that the majority of the country wants to do. So there's kind of a clash there. Well, and that is why Republican leadership in the House and the Senate, you know, the White House said a while ago,

put in this request for border wall funding and among other things. And they basically were like, yeah, we're just not going to deal with that as part of this larger fight. We're not going to let the government shutdown be leveraged for this. And so it was weird when then the Trump administration came back and was like, well, actually, we want this to be a thing. And then five minutes later, they're like, well, border security. But the thing is that he missed the chance to declare victory. One of Donald Trump's most significant attributes is that he can declare victory even when he's failed. And what surprised me is that he could have declared victory. He could have said that any dollars

contributed to border security was a win for him. He could have called it a wall, even if it wasn't a wall. He could have spun this as a victory. But because he staked out a maximalist position and then scuttled back from it without getting anything in return, he missed the opportunity to declare victory. I don't know if I agree with you. He's going to declare victory. Oh, he could try, but it's going to be harder since he already said. He's totally going to declare victory.

Well, but wait a minute. He already said that he's pushing off the wall until September. Oh, you mean he'll come back and he'll say whatever money there is in there for border security is actually for a wall? Fine, he can, but without all this Sturm und Drang. And here's the thing.

It might look like a victory to his base. As he said to AP, my base understands the wall is going to get built whether I have it funded here or I get it funded shortly thereafter. 100% it's getting built. Sounds like a concrete wall that he's describing. But there are people in Washington, D.C. who are paying careful attention to him and they are sizing him up, Democrats and members of his own party. And

he has created a lot of indelible impressions this week about how he acts and reacts. It's impulsive. He backs off. You don't have to worry about what he says or necessarily be afraid of him because he doesn't follow through. I mean, this is about leadership and about getting 535 people in the House and 100 people in the Senate to do what you want them to do. Okay. So, Mara, I know you say that there will be no government shutdown, but could there be a government shutdown? And could that be, Mara, I know you say that there will be no government shutdown, but could there be a government shutdown? And could that be, you know, President Trump shows a sign of strength and pushes back? I mean, could something like that happen? It doesn't look like it because he's backed off of every one of his demands.

I mean, the only way there's a government shutdown if somebody says, I won't sign a bill unless you put in it what I want you to. And he is backed off of that. That's what government shutdowns happen when one party will not budge. And both parties have shown they are not going to the wall, especially about a wall. They're not going to push this to the wall. They're just not. So, OK, no wall. But what else is part of this? One other thing that's up in the air and then we don't quite know how it's going to be resolved yet, is a complicated issue about basically a pension plan for minors. This was something that you may remember was an issue in December,

the last time we did one of these ticking clock situations where the government was funded for a few months. Senate Democrats really pushed back about it. Long story short, the government took over responsibility for some pension plans for coal miners who work for companies that went into bankruptcy. There were funding problems that was solved on a short term basis. It's about to run out of money again. And it seems like there is actual shocking bipartisan consensus on figuring out a way to make a permanent fix for that. So they're not doing month to month solutions for for putting money into this fund to make sure these miners can get their pensions. And while we were taping this conversation, reporters shouted to President Trump a question about whether he would sign a government funding bill without funding the border wall. And this is what he said.

The wall is going to get built, folks. Just in case anybody has any questions, the wall's going to get built, and the wall is going to stop drugs, and it's going to stop a lot of people from coming. He's not saying that the wall will be built. He's not saying when or how it will be funded. We're doing a lot of work on the wall, and the wall gets built. The wall is very, very important. In your first term? Well, it's certainly going to. Yeah, yeah, sure.

We have plenty of time. Got a lot of time. Thank you. Thank you. OK, we have to take a quick break and we will be right back to talk about the 100 day milestone, such as it is. Support for NPR Politics comes from ZipRecruiter. When you own a business, if you want to find the perfect hire, you need to post your job on all the top job sites.

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Okay, we are back and we're here to talk about this 100 days thing. So last week, President Trump tweeted, no matter how much I accomplished during the ridiculous standard of the first 100 days, and it has been a lot, including SC, which means Supreme Court, media will kill! And he has a point about the ridiculousness of the standard, yeah? He certainly has a point. It's a completely arbitrary, silly measurement. On the other hand, he fell into the 100-day trap himself because he campaigned on the things that he would get done in his, quote, 100-day action plan to make America great again. Yeah, so October 22nd, Gettysburg. Were you there, Scott?

I was not there. I was not there that particular day, but I was paying close attention. Because at the time, the speech got a lot of attention for him threatening to sue the women who made allegations about sexual assault, sexual misconduct. But the thing is that once he was elected president, everyone looked back at this as the blueprint for what he was going to do in office. On November 8th, Americans will be voting for this 100-day plan to restore prosperity to our country, secure our communities, and honesty to our government. This is my pledge to you. And if we follow these steps, we will once more have a

government of, by, and for the people. Yeah, so he like actually signed a contract between Donald J. Trump and the American voter for his 100-day action plan. That plan contained a promise to introduce 10 pieces of legislation in his first 100 days. Only one of those pieces of legislation has been introduced. That was the bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. And, well, we know how that turned out. You know, the thing that's so interesting is the White House has been pushing back against this metric that past legislation should be the measure of a president's success or failure. But also embracing it. Also embracing it. Well, they wanted to get something passed by 100 days because the president cared about this. He cares about his box office. He cares about his ratings. He cares about his reviews. But actually,

well, first of all, not only is 100 days silly to measure whether a presidency is going to be successful or not. I think a year is a much better time to take a look at that. But also, why is legislation passed the way we judge whether presidents are successful or not? A lot of conservatives right now would be completely happy if all Donald Trump did was roll back a lot of Obama-era regulations and put Neil Gorsuch on the court and maybe one other Supreme Court justice. That would be fine for them. He would have a huge impact on American life for the next 40, 45 years. But he fell into the 100-day trap and really wants to pass stuff, and he's having a hard time doing that. That's the exact point that Mick Mulvaney made this weekend, that a lot of the bills that have

been signed into law used up until now this process that hadn't been used much called the Congressional Review Act that allows Congress to repeal actions taken recently. So a lot of environmental regulations, a lot of kind of workplace regulations that the Obama administration put in place on its way out the door have been clawed back by Congress and President Trump. So I recently did this story about where this 100 days measure even comes from. And it comes from, and Mara, you've done this story many times before, too, because we come to 100 day measures every four or eight years. But where it comes from, and it comes from Franklin Roosevelt, who FDR, working with Congress, passed 15 major pieces of legislation

in his first 100 days. During a national crisis when he had super majorities in Congress. A lot has changed since then. But the thing about 100 days is that so much changes after those first 100 days. Yes, some presidents got some stuff done in their first 100 days. But you go back and look at how they were assessing George W. Bush's first 100 days. And they were like, well, he started some stuff,a, in one story, described it as he was buried in pundit sc tax reform by the end of the year. I mean, very, very ambitious. But, you know, look, he's got a small window, especially with a midterm election that's going to be very difficult in the House for Republicans, maybe a little bit less difficult for them in the Senate. He needs to show them that he can be successful so that when he asks them to take a tough vote on something, they say yes. And I think actually Obama is a good counterpoint to what you were just saying, because obviously health care wasn't done in 100 days. And neither was Dodd-Frank. Yeah, but the wheels were rolling. The big stimulus bill was passed.

That was a major piece of legislation. And it was clear the agenda was being laid out in a public, this is where we're going way. And it's also clear that it got harder the longer Obama was around, the harder it was to get his stuff passed through Congress. Yes. Though Bill Clinton did his biggest accomplishments after Republicans took control of the Congress. The same thing with President Reagan. His biggest accomplishments came in a second term, but only by working with Congress, both parties of Congress. And so far, this president has only wanted to work with one party of Congress. Right. I think one of the most revealing things, Mara is actually paging through this right now,

and I really wanted to talk about it, this interview that Trump did with the Associated Press. There is so much interesting stuff in there, a lot. We could talk about that for two hours. But one of the interesting things he said was that going back to the border wall, he's saying his base wants it. He says, I have a big base, 45 percent. To him, 45 percent of the country is a big base. And he doesn't really seem interested in expanding it to a majority of the country. He's happy with the very sizable but minority amount of Americans who support him. And kind of that coalition building just doesn't seem to be something that the Trump administration really cares about. Yeah, well, there were so many things. As Scott said, I recommend every listener to the

podcast should go to the AP website and read the transcript of this. It was extremely revealing. He talked about his learning curve where he said he was describing about how he had once said that NATO was obsolete. He said, well, they asked me, Wolf Blitzer asked me about NATO. I said two things. I said, NATO is obsolete, not knowing much about NATO. Now I know a lot about NATO. In other words, he just used to say things not knowing much about them. Now he's learning more. You know, he was asked about whether he's been able to bring business skills into office and where some of the business background didn't translate. He said, well, in business, you don't necessarily need heart, whereas here, almost everything you do affects people.

He said, in business, you're actually better off without heart. And that was really, really interesting. Yeah, I think that one of the remarkable things about President Trump is his transparency. And I don't mean that they share documents and, you know, let us know who is on the visitor logs and things like that. Because they don't. Because they don't. But he is. He has no filter is what you mean. Yes. He's incredibly transparent about what he's thinking at any given moment. And even his Twitter feed, too. I mean, set aside these interview transcripts, even his Twitter feed when he was negotiating with himself, as you put it. He said, you know,

well, you know, we'll fund this wall. Maybe I won't fund Obamacare in the budget, basically kind of laying out all the scopes of his thinking on an issue. You could argue pretty well to his detriment.

You know, this will be a subject of study by presidential historians for many, many years. But this is so challenging for his staff, for his party in Congress. He likes being unpredictable. This clearly worked for him as a reality TV celebrity. And as a candidate for president. And a candidate for president. But it's different when you're trying to communicate to our allies, to our enemies, to your teammates on Capitol Hill what you want to do. And if they don't think they can be sure that what you said you were going to do is actually what you're going to do,

that causes a tremendous amount of uncertainty. And it also can cause for potentially disastrous misunderstandings in foreign policy. But even on Capitol Hill, I mean, he's going to be asking Republicans to do things that are unpopular. And they need to know that he's not going to throw them under the bus when they do that. And flexible and unpredictable and every other adjective that Mara just said, none of those subscribe big pieces of legislation. Those take a lot of time to cook. Those take a lot of people to draft and write and build out. And you kind of need that steady predictability in terms of does the tax policy we're going to start talking about in May of 2017 look like it will in February of 2018 or whatever it takes? And if you take 15 different views on Twitter in between, it's hard to keep writing that bill. Well, and also, even more importantly, these bills are about real people. As he said, you've got to have heart. What killed the Obamacare replacement bill? It would make health care more expensive for his own voters and kick people off of the Medicaid expansion.

Those are real people's lives. These policies affect real people's lives. When and if he comes out with tax reform, which is supposed to be this week, he's going to be tomorrow. Tax reform has winners and losers. Are the winners going to be Goldman Sachs? And are the losers going to be Walmart shoppers or vice versa? We don't know yet, but that's going to really matter. And he can't talk his way out of everything. We will talk about whatever that tax proposal ends up being on Thursday's roundup. But that is it for today. So thank you to those of you who went ahead and filled out the survey that NPR is doing in partnership with the Knight Foundation. We told you about this last week.

It's a survey to understand how listeners like you spend time with this and other podcasts. You can help us out by taking the survey at npr.podcastingsurvey.com. Again, that is npr.podcastingsurvey.com. Thank you for that. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress.

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