The NPR Politics Podcast - They Want To Pitch Grand Plans — Instead They're Talking Trump

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

The big issues in the Republican presidential primary swirl around the fate of one man: Donald Trump. His primary opponents would love to sell voters on how they'd improve on President Biden's leadership — instead they have to answer whether they'd pardon the former leader of the free world.This episode: voting correspondent Miles Parks, political correspondent Susan Davis, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.The podcast is produced by Elena Moore and Casey Morell. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. 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 this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at AutographCollection.com. Hi, this is Noah. Over the past 20 years, my wife and I have lived in Oregon, Rhode Island, Maryland, Florida, Mississippi, California, a different part of Maryland, a different part of California, and over the past three years, we've lived in Japan. Today, I'm at London Heathrow Airport

picking up my family so we can complete our move to the United Kingdom. This podcast was recorded at 1.33 p.m. on June 14, 2023. Things may have changed in the time you hear it, but I'll still be using NPR Politics Podcast to get caught up on what's going on at home. All right, here's the show. I had no idea where that timestamp was going. I feel like I did not know what location he was going to be in next. Yeah, what does the guy do? Good question. Good question. Hey there, it's the guy do? Good question. Good question. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting.

I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. I have demanded that every other candidate in this race either sign this commitment to pardon on January 20th, 2025, or else to explain why they are not. You might recognize that voice. It's Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and investor running against Trump for the Republican nomination for president. Ramaswamy was outside the federal courthouse in Miami yesterday, pledging to pardon Trump for his alleged hoarding of state secrets

and confidential documents at his resort in Florida. So let's start here. We're going to be talking a lot about pardons today. Sue, where does Ramaswamy fall in terms of the Republican candidates on this issue? He's certainly been the most out there and the most aggressive in saying unequivocally, as soon as the indictment was delivered, that he would pardon Donald Trump if he were elected president. One of the most fascinating dynamics of the Republican presidential nomination fight right now is that you could have a frontrunner indicted on federal crimes and none of his opponents are trying to use it against him, essentially.

Yeah. Instead, they're like basically like, no, it's great. It's fine. Everything's fine. You know, on the whole, I would say his rivals, almost to the one, have criticized the judicial system. There is this idea, particularly among Republican based voters, that the judicial system has just not been fair to Donald Trump and cannot be trusted and that this was a politically motivated prosecution. The question of what to do with Donald Trump if he is convicted in this case is one that his rivals are going to have to answer. Ramaswamy, quick out of the gate to say he would pardon him. Others have been more reticent. But I would note that another one of his rivals, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, said while she considered what the president did was reckless, if he was convicted, it would have put our national security at risk. But she even went on to say if she was elected, she would also be inclined to pardon the president. And that might have to become sort of a set point in the Republican field going forward.

So, Mara, Trump is obviously innocent until proven guilty, but he is accused of some pretty serious things here, putting the country's nuclear secrets at risk, for instance. What do you make of the candidates in the field kind of potentially jumping on board to say, no, it's fine and Trump should get a pass here? Well, this is the really tough part for the Republican field. All along, they have been trying to figure out what to do about Donald Trump. You know, a lot of the Republican establishment, a lot of Republican voters would like for him to be in the rearview mirror, but instead he's on the hood of the car and he is once again. Every time he gets into some kind of legal trouble, and he is once again. Every time he

gets into some kind of legal trouble, the other candidates have to come to his defense because they haven't figured out how to go after Trump to deny him the nomination while not alienating his voters, which are the biggest chunk of the Republican primary electorate, and they just can't figure out how to do that. And this is just the latest example of this. They don't talk about the charges. They don't say what he did was fine. They just say that this is an example of the weaponization of the Justice Department and that he's being unfairly treated. So I think that every one of these things puts them in his camp, every one of these legal problems. And only Chris Christie, who I would say is a minor candidate, he's become kind of the heat-se a lot of the pressure is actually coming from conservative media. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a good example. He is probably Trump's closest rival in the race. And he had already been asked

prior to the indictment over the documents case by conservative talk radio, hey, would you consider pardoning Donald Trump if he was convicted in a separate federal investigation related to the January 6th attack? And he didn't rule it out. He said if he were president, day one, one of his day one activities would to review any number of pardons for cases that he considered to use it, and if you should use it for a potentially convicted former president, I think has just become very salient, not only to the primary fight, but to the general election. Certainly should Trump win the nomination or anyone else who's on record about this very issue? There really are two different issues here. One is, would you pardon him if he's convicted? And you can make a very strong argument that it would be a good thing for the country, a kind of healing act. This is what Gerald Ford did for Richard Nixon. That's quite different than being asked about what Trump did. And if other people go to jail for the same thing, and we now have a whole lot

of examples of people who have gone to jail for a number of years for doing exactly what he did. What do you think about what he did? Do you think it was just sloppy housekeeping? Do you think he had the right as former president to handle these classified documents any way he wanted? That's what they haven't weighed in on yet. But I do think they will be asked about this. I also think in that same interview, Haley made a very interesting point that I could see becoming a position that other candidates in the race hold on to, in which she said, oh, he was reckless. He might even be guilty.

But if I were president, I would be inclined to pardon him because it wouldn't be good for the country to see a former president behind bars. Right. That's the Gerald Ford defense. Yeah. And that to me is not necessarily a radical political position for someone to take. And I could see other rivals in the field land on the Haley answer of like, even if he did do it, he shouldn't go to jail. or should never be, should be pardoned for any crime? Or is it specific to this classified documents issue that this is, oh, it was only national security? Was this crime not enough? You know, exactly. Or is, are you boxing yourself in then to say, like, I don't know, I just feel like doesn't that open the door up to a lot of potential issues down the road? We are in completely uncharted territory here, Miles. But I would say that, and Haley at least

said she specifically was referring to a documents case, that she thought it would not be good for the country in the case of the classified documents case to ultimately see Trump behind bars. And a lot of the country might actually agree with her. Oh, I think so. I think that would be a very defensible lily pad for her to land on and for other candidates to land on. Okay. Let's take a quick break. And when we're back, more on pardons. And we're back. And Sue, pardons were already becoming kind of a pretty big issue in this kind of burgeoning Republican primary field related to January 6th and the more than 1,000 people who have now been charged by the Justice Department been campaigning on this effect, as has Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Both have said if they were elected, they would be very aggressive at looking at the convictions in January 6th related cases. Both have suggested they could be offer

mass pardons to people that were involved, obviously not towards people that were convicted of violent offenses, any of the oath keepers or sedition charges. But there is a view among Republicans, and I have talked to even non-Trump supporting Republicans, who have some level of support for people that entered the Capitol and walked around and walked out of the building. Now, that was a crime. That was still a crime. But I think certainly among Republican voters, I think they see two distinctions here. And Trump has certainly used the power of his campaign and of has not actually been that unpopular of a position to take. However, it is also one of the rare dividing lines in this Republican primary fight because you do have candidates like former Vice President Mike Pence, former Governor Chris Christie, all saying, no, we wouldn't consider pardons for people who broke the law. I have no interest or no intention of pardoning those that

assaulted police officers or vandalized our Capitol. They need to be answerable to the law. We're the party that upholds the law. And if you committed a crime, you should trust the rule of law. And I think it's also worth noting that these are candidates that aren't doing too well right now in the Republican primary field, right, Mara? I mean, that's not necessarily the message that is speaking to the hearts and minds of the Republican water base. You know, you keep on saying, and rightly so, that we're not in a general election, we're in a primary season. However, everything is permanent. Everything is on the internet. And let's just take a listen to what Republicans are talking about. So much for elections being about the future. They're talking about Donald Trump and what he did with some documents.

They're talking about January 6th, which is also in the past. So the Republican Party is stuck talking about Trump, is stuck talking about January 6th, and you're not hearing a message, an optimistic message about the future and how they're going to make life better for people. And I think that's significant. It is. And I also think part of what's risky about this, and we learn this, I think, in the midterms, and I admit, I've admitted on the podcast, I'll admit elsewhere that this surprised me in the midterms, how much sort of upholding democratic institutions and norms did seem to resonate. Yeah, posters just missed it completely, but it did resonate.

And certainly some reporters, you know, that people who ran as election deniers that ran, you know, questioning whether January 6th was really an attack didn't do as well. And I do think that it does speak particularly to independent voters, swing voters. They're really turned off by this kind of stuff. So you have to question the wisdom of going too hard and too loud, one about the past and two about a controversial event in the past, whether it can ultimately really become an anchor in a general election. Well, the thing I wonder too, right, is the January 6th, pardoning the people who went inside the Capitol on January 6th does feel slightly different than pardoning, potentially pardoning Trump in terms of like what you mentioned about like being for the public good, like not having a president behind bars is one thing, but like what public good does it serve to pardon those folks?

Is that a harder case to make? That's a good question. You know, I talked to a guy named Jeffrey Crouch. He's a professor at American University and he's an expert on the use of pardon power. And I asked him, like, is there any precedent for a president pardoning people associated with an event like mass pardons associated with some kind of event? And he noted that there was. Presidents Lincoln and Johnson issued mass pardons to Confederate soldiers after the Civil War. Presidents Carter and Ford did similar things to offer amnesty to people after the Vietnam War. I think for Republicans and certainly for Donald Trump, I think that they would look at January 6th through a similar type of lens, that they do think that regular citizens were prosecuted maybe unfairly or too harshly.

And that to move past that event, you could argue, pardons for some number of the accused would be appropriate. I think there is also an argument, certainly among another vast segment of Americans who think that this was a really violent attack on democracy, on elections, on the very core of our institutions. And they were not insignificant crimes, even if you were just walking in and walking out and that they should be taken very seriously. Well, and I do wonder, Mara, about how this all plays into, is this, you know, committing to pardons, does it still continue moving us towards a place where this is another moment of Trump having a role in a democratic norm, just kind of being shifted a little bit to the side? Yeah, look, there are two very different things. The idea of pardoning a former president so he doesn't go to jail because it's a healing thing for the country, that's very defensible. There's another thing.

Trump tells his supporters, and now he has a lot of support from other primary candidates, that any indictment of him is by definition corrupt, weaponized, politicized, that you shouldn't trust any democratic institution, especially the Department of Justice and the FBI. That's just bad for democracy. I mean, the only way democracy survives if people have faith that democratic institutions are fair and unbiased. And, you know, his whole message is the opposite, that unless he controls that institution, every single institution is corrupt and suspect. And that's just a bad thing for the country. And, you know, having the one administration indict the president of the Justice Department because he wouldn't turn them over. He obstructed. He lied. And they had no choice if they were going to stand for the rule of law but to indict him. But it's also a political case, and they have to convince the court of public opinion that what they did was fair and not overreach. And because we're in such a weird through the looking glass moment in politics, once again, you know, it also raises the question, Trump is in a position to win the nomination. Should he win the White House next November?

We go back to the question, can the president pardon himself? Oh, no, don't do it. Which is something that was debated at the end of Trump's term. There was a thought before he left he might try to do it. And if he is reelected and is convicted or facing convictions, you know, we don't know the answer to it. It would almost certainly be challenged up to the Supreme Court. But we might ultimately get the answer if he can or can't. All right. Well, let's leave it there for today. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics.

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