The NPR Politics Podcast - Tensions Between Pelosi and Trump on Display After Senate Acquittal

Episode Date: February 6, 2020

The impeachment trial is over, but there are still hard feelings between President Trump and Democratic leadership. Those tensions were on display today at the National Prayer Breakfast, during House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's weekly press conference and at President Trump's White House address on acquittal. This episode: Congressional correspondents Susan Davis and Kelsey Snell, and White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, this is Dylan. I'm currently in beautiful Joshua Tree National Park, where I just encountered a fresh mountain lion print. This podcast was recorded at 2 14 p.m. on Thursday, February 6th. Things may have changed since the start of this episode, but what hopefully will not change is I will not have another close mountain lion encounter. Well, here's the show. Yeah, I hope he made it out of that all right. That's why I don't hike. Is it wrong that I kind of want to see a mountain lion? I mean, like, yeah, kitty. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House.

The impeachment trial of President Donald Trump is over. But the hard feelings in Washington are sticking around. Today, President Trump attended the National Prayer Breakfast, which is, generally speaking, one of these events where everyone in Washington comes together and has a really unifying, warm conversation about faith in public life. Because it's about prayer, right? Yeah. They have breakfast and they talk about prayer. It's supposed to be not just bipartisan, but pretty much nonpartisan in the past.

Postpartisan. Yes, it is. It is a happiness room. But this also comes the day after the president's acquittal and he came equipped with the headlines, literally holding up newspapers that had the big bold face saying, And Aisha, we were talking about this earlier. equipped with the headlines, literally holding up newspapers that had the big, bold face saying acquitted. And Aisha, we were talking about this earlier. There's this sort of funny moment in the prayer breakfast where there was a speaker who said, if you love someone who you don't agree with politically, raise your hand. And, you know, everybody in the room raises their hand.

And at the I mean, this is at the lead table. You see trump with his hands not raised very pointedly not raised and arthur i don't know if i agree with you but i don't know if arthur's gonna like what i'm gonna say and then he had this to say. I don't like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong. Nor do I like people who say, I pray for you when they know that that's not so. Two pretty thinly veiled attacks against Utah Senator Mitt Romney, who voted to convict him on one of the articles of impeachment, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who often says she prays for the president

and at this breakfast was seated just a couple seats away from him. You know, I think it's probably important here to point out that these are two of the people whose faith, very different faiths, but their faiths are very much out in front and center and part of their political identities. And rarely questioned. No. If ever questioned. And the thing that he was saying when he said he didn't agree with Arthur might not like what I have to say. I think Arthur was talking about loving your enemies, which is in the Bible.

So that's what he was quoting and talking about. And he said later on in the speech, you know, I don't know, you're supposed to like people. If they impeach you for nothing, how can I how can I like them? Essentially, I'm paraphrasing him. But he said, I'm trying. And at one point in time, he said, I'm learning. It seemed like he was kind of self-aware of the fact that this was not the venue to be having this conversation, but he just plowed right ahead. And then a couple hours later, Nancy Pelosi goes back to the United States Capitol and has her weekly press conference where Kelsey, as we know, like she almost never tries to talk about Trump in her opening remarks.

She always tries to make it about something else. And today it was all about the president. Oh, yeah. And she almost always ends her remarks by saying, does anybody have any questions on the topic at hand? Yeah. Trying to remind people that she doesn't want to talk about whatever it is that Trump has been doing. And she did not give that warning. No, she gave like a rebuttal of the State of the Union address, criticizing what the president had to say, and also defended her much talked about decision to tear up the State of of the Union in front of the TV cameras after the speech. It was necessary to get the attention of the American people to say, this is not true, and this is how it affects you.

And I don't need any lessons from anybody, especially the President of the United States, about dignity. Yeah, that was basically her tone throughout the entire press conference. There was a light moment where she had her customary conversation about football or whatever sport is going on right now. But by and large, this was one of her most aggressive and frustrated press conferences that I think I've seen since she became speaker again. that they were going to have this, you know, victory celebration at the White House where we know the president was going to talk about his acquittal. And she seemed to want to get in front of that by reminding people that impeachment doesn't go away. He's impeached forever, no matter what he says or whatever headlines he wants to carry around. You're impeached forever. You're never getting rid of that scar. And then at the White House around lunchtime, the president had what almost felt like a campaign rally of sorts in the East Room. clear he didn't have a teleprompter. He had some maybe some things written down, but he was just going to talk. And he said, this isn't a speech. This is a celebration. And what it really became

was just this stream of consciousness, rambling. I mean, I think you can say that and just going off on tangents, but a lot of grievance, a lot of grievance. And President Trump, as we expected, used this moment to claim exoneration. But now we have that gorgeous word. I never thought a word would sound so good. It's called total acquittal. It was also sort of like a roll call of his enemies and his allies. Right? He name checks Nancy Pelosi and House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff. But he also goes through this roll call of all the Republicans on Capitol Hill who were really prominent in defending him over the course of the impeachment trial. So, Mitch, I want to thank you very much. Incredible. And you have some of your folks here. And Mike Braun, you have done some great job. Thank you very much.

But Josh Hawley, I want to thank you. You were. They love Jim Jordan and we love you, too. It's incredible what's going. Thank you very much. But Josh Hawley, I want to thank you. You were well. They love Jim Jordan and we love you too. It's incredible what's going on with you, Elise. Devin Nunes. Chuck Grassley is an incredible guy. It was almost like a real life retweeting session on Twitter for him. I mean, that's essentially what he does

is he goes through and finds the people who've been supporting him and who have said nice things about him and then, you know, brings that to people's attention. And as you and I have talked about, that is one really good way to cut a campaign message if you're one of those members of Congress. They could splice and dice that event today at the White House for their own needs. And impeachment has been really good for a lot of Republicans just in terms of fundraising. Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, she posted bigger numbers in the fourth quarter than Adam shifted. It was one of her best

fundraising haul ever. And part of that is because of the national profile she was given as a defender of Trump on Capitol Hill. He said that all Republicans have benefited from the impeachment process. That's not exactly true. No. And we it always is worth clarifying again here that, you know, the president was acquitted, but it came with a lot of condemnation from within the party. A lot of Republicans didn't feel that it merited removal from office, but they were not OK with the president's behavior. And you had I mean, those were the Republicans who were not in that room. They were not invited. You had Senator Lamar Alexander and others say that the Democrats proved their case, that he believed that this is why that the president held up money to pressure Ukraine for investigations into the Bidens for political reasons.

But he just said that he didn't feel like that was a reason to remove him from office. But there were people in his own party who believe what the Democrats said about him or at least are open to believing that. I also think, too, just in terms of the stagecraft, it really was such a striking difference to Bill Clinton in 1999, who also gave a speech at the White House after his acquittal. But he was alone, standing in the Rose Garden, spoke very briefly and essentially used his time to apologize to the American people and to the Congress for the distraction and basically promised to do better. And man, that was not what that was today at the White House. He did at the end apologize, but he apologized to his family for them having to go through what he felt like was this horrible, evil process. OK, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll talk about where the relationship between the president and Congress goes from here.

Support for this podcast and the following message come from here. helping businesses get online, connect with new customers, and work more productively. Learn more at google.com slash grow. The world is complicated, but knowing the past can help us understand it so much better. That's where we come in. I'm Randha Dutt. I'm Ramteen Arablui, and we're the hosts of ThruLine, NPR's history podcast. Every week, we'll dig into forgotten stories from the moments that shaped our world. ThruLine from NPR. Listen and subscribe now. And we're back and we're talking about where Washington goes from here, because after the State of the Union, after the impeachment process has been over, there is this question of, OK, what's Congress going to do now? And one of those questions lingering is, do they keep up these investigations into the president or do they try to move on?

Yeah. And we thought at the outset, thanks in part to Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, that, yes, they're going to go steaming straight ahead and potentially put out subpoenas for John Bolton. But then today, the response from Speaker Pelosi and from Adam Schiff was a little bit more nuanced than that. It seems like they are not prepared to go that far. Why do you think that is? I mean, in part, because there's not a lot of time left between now and the election. And that took an enormous amount of political capital to get the impeachment through. There are still vulnerable Democrats out there. I know we talk about the vulnerable Republicans in the Senate a lot, but there are plenty of Democrats in the House who represent districts that easily voted for President Trump. And he's going to be on the ballot again. It brings out the Trump voters that maybe just decided to stay home in 2018.

So if they can work with the White House or the White House can work with Congress, what's the orbit of issues they can work together on? The main thing, and President Trump did bring this up at the very end of his speech, was this idea of infrastructure. Tell me if you've heard that before. It's always infrastructure week in our hearts. And prescription drugs. And so there, I mean, there is a measure that has passed the House on prescription drugs, but it's right now going nowhere in the Senate. So there are these two issues where there seems like they could try to work together. But of course, when Trump brought that up, that was after he had called Democrats evil and talked about sleazebags and horrible people. So that's the conflict there.

I mean, I think that the way Democrats handled his discussion of prescription drugs in the State of the Union is a pretty good indication that they may be on the same page that prescription drugs are a problem, but not at all on the same page about how to solve it. I mean, you were in the room, Sue. Yeah. The thing I keep going back to is I think that Pelosi has incentives to cut deals with the president. And she mentioned that again today, like the reason that she did USMCA. And she talked about this, that people said to her, why are you going to give them a win? And she was like, if it's a win for voters, if it's a win for the American people, it can be a win for us too. And the only reason why I could see some potential compromise is to that point of she's got a majority to worry about too, right? Like she needs to give her

vulnerable Democrats something to point to and prescription drugs, even if it ends up being a bill that isn't as close to the one that the House passed, could that be good enough? I don't know. Yeah, there are some Democrats that I've talked to who feel like it might also just be good enough that they keep trying. And to have Trump and McConnell stop them is almost more effective for their message. So they see value in just trying it all. Although we should note that Pelosi today did make a point to say, she was asked, can you still work with this president? And she said, I can work with him if he can work with me. And she made this point of what she tells her own Democrats all the time. I say to my members all the time, there's no such thing as an eternal animosity. There are eternal friendships, but you never know on what cause you may come together with somebody who may be perceived as your foe right now. Everybody is a possible ally in whatever comes next.

That may be true for Nancy Pelosi, but this is a year where there are presidential candidates running whose base does not believe that. And it may be her desire to get things done. But if you have fervent supporters of, say, Bernie Sanders, who see no value at all in working with President Trump, there may not be political value for her right now to do that. Yeah, I mean, at this point, the president is going to be going out talking about his record. And the White House feels like they have a very good record to run on. They're going to talk about the economy. They're going to talk about USMCA. They're going to talk about, you know, the deal that he made with China. And so we got a taste of that in the State of the Union. That's what they're going to talk about. The president will also likely be

talking about his enemies and people who tried to take him out. This week, we got a taste of what we will be seeing on the trail, the State of the Union, and then the president's speech today. All right, that's a wrap for today. We'll be back in your feeds tomorrow, but late after the Democratic debate in Manchester, New Hampshire. That begins at 8 p.m. Eastern Time. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. And I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.