The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump at UN, GOP Pushes Health Care

Episode Date: September 19, 2017

President Trump gives a major speech at the United Nations General Assembly, while Republicans in the Senate battle a deadline to pass a new Obamacare replacement. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House reporter Geoff Bennett, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. 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

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. Before we start the show, a quick plug. More than 40 million Americans speak Spanish and millions more are learning. For all of you, we'd like to recommend NPR's Radio Ambulante. It's the podcast to hear incredible stories from

all over Latin America and across the U.S. Hosted by novelist Daniel Alarcon, Radio Ambulante covers the region like no one else, reporting and storytelling in Spanish. Radio Ambulante is on NPR One or wherever you listen to podcasts. This is Frederick calling from Malmo, Sweden. This podcast was recorded at 12.05 on Tuesday, September 19th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage on NPR.org, on the NPR One app, or on your local public radio station. All right, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, here to talk about President Trump's first speech to the

United Nations General Assembly. Standing before leaders from around the world, Trump delivered a stern, blunt, and very Trump-like warning to North Korea. The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea. Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime. The United States is ready, willing, and able, but hopefully this will not be necessary. That's what the United Nations is all about. That's what the United Nations is for. Trump called out several other nations too, but he also spoke repeatedly about the importance of sovereignty, of countries having control of what happens within their own borders. As president of the United States, I will always put

America first. Just like you, as the leaders of your countries, will always and should always put your countries first. A lot to sort out here. We will give it a try. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. I'm Jeff Bennett. And like Tam, I also cover the White House. And Jeff, from the waterfall behind you, it sounds like you may be in the Trump Tower lobby right now. Scott, can you hear the drip, drip, drip of the three-story waterfall and the melodious sounds of Frank Sinatra? Jeff, you are there because you've been following President Trump around the United Nations this week. Before we get into the speech, just real quick, what's the best way to summarize what the week has been like at the U.N.?

You know, for all the talk about how Trump would be received, I think he's been received fairly well. I will say, though, that he hasn't spent a lot of time around these diplomats and world leaders outside of the time that he is supposed to spend with them. That is to say, apart from the one-on-one meetings, apart from the scheduled dinners, he's not really sticking around to glad hand and to make nice. He has often come back to Trump Tower. We were just at the UN for a speech, and instead of sticking around there, he came right back here. He did the same thing yesterday, leaving the Palace Hotel where he had a couple meetings, and coming back here to Trump Tower before he had to go back to

meet with more of them. But by and large, apart from the speech that we heard today, you know, he spoke in measured tones on Monday. And the meeting that he had with Emmanuel Macron, with Benjamin Netanyahu, great allies of the U.S., no doubt, those meetings went fairly well, as best we can tell. And the speech before the General Assembly is the key moment of the U.S., no doubt, those meetings went fairly well, as best we can tell. And the speech before the General Assembly is the key moment of the U.N. General Assembly week. For every world leader, the president especially, this speech felt like several in one. At first, Trump was talking in a tone that you could almost frame as globalist to use the choices that Trump supporters have put out in terms of embracing the world versus an isolationist policy. He praised the U.N., praised bigger international efforts like the Marshall Plan.

Then he got into this idea of the sovereignty of countries. And I want to talk about that, but let's circle back because, wow, did President Trump take a hammer to North Korea and several other countries in this speech? Let's listen to one clip and then talk about this. The scourge of our planet today is a small group of rogue regimes that violate every principle on which the United Nations is based. They respect neither their own citizens nor the sovereign rights of their countries. If the righteous many do not confront the wicked few, then evil will triumph. When decent people and nations become bystanders to history, the forces of destruction only gather

power and strength. Tam, the wicked few, what did you make of this? I immediately Googled axis of evil to see whether that speech had been at the UN or whether it had not been. President George W. Bush had talked about the axis of evil. It turns out it was actually at a State of the Union address, but it was sort of similar language like that, except a whole new level. I mean, here is the president of the United States at the U.N. General Assembly saying, I don't want to do it,

but I might have to destroy another country. Yeah. Mara, not just North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, but North Korea is certainly getting all the headlines here. North Korea is getting all the headlines because he called him Rocket Man, I think. To say that the United States... Which is something he had said in a tweet over the weekend. Yes. It was kind of a tweet embedded in an otherwise pretty restrained speech for Trump. I thought this was a very Trump-tamed speech. Rocket Man, of course, was this little errant tweet stuck in the middle of it. It seemed like the harsh aspects of nationalism were really toned

down. They were almost relegated to rhetorical flourishes. Stephen Miller, his nationalist advisor, one of the few left in the White House, did write this. But you mentioned before that he praised big international efforts like the Marshall Plan. That's the ultimate anti-nationalist effort. It was to rebuild Europe after the horrific nationalist eruptions of World War II. So I thought that it was pretty, he really pulled back from some of the go-it-alone, isolationist rhetoric, the things that his audience at the United Nations would be most worried about. But he did have not only harsh words for North Korea, but also for Iran. He said, we can't abide by an agreement if it provides cover for an eventual nuclear program. The Iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.

Frankly, that deal is an embarrassment to the United States. And I don't think you've heard the last of it. Believe me. Now, that sounds like someone who's about to pull out. Right. And that's why I think I have to circle back on you saying for Donald Trump, this was restrained because this is a speech where he talks about possibly destroying another country. He rips apart an international agreement that several countries spent years working on.

Venezuela, Cuba, several other countries came under harsh criticism. The reason I think it was a little restrained, Donald Trump during the campaign called the United Nations an enemy of freedom and an enemy of democracy. You didn't hear that anti-United Nations rhetoric in this. He made complaints that other presidents of both parties have made about the fact that the United States pays so much more disproportionately to the UN, but he didn't bash them. Now, in terms of saying that I will destroy North Korea if the U.S. is forced to defend itself and its allies, that is the policy of the United States. That predated Donald Trump. Yeah, but people don't usually go to the UN and start talking about

destroying other countries. Yeah, but he's said that before, fire and fury. To me, the question is, does calling Kim Jong-un Rocket Man help Donald Trump or Kim Jong-un? My initial take, not being an expert on this, is Kim Jong-un's whole raison d'etre is that North Korea is locked in this existential battle with the United States. And here he has the American president playing right into that by standing up and saying, we're going to destroy you and belittling the leader there. Jeff, go ahead. The Rocket Man bit struck me as one of the elements that Donald Trump inserted into the speech. I mean, one of the things in the room that I was looking for was to see whether or not he stayed on script. And what struck me was that that was among the, I counted three times, that there were Trump-isms or things that he had tweeted that were actually written into the script. He also said, as Mara just alluded to, the Iran deal is an embarrassment to the U.S. You haven't heard the last of it, believe me.

And then he said, later on in the speech about something else, he said, parts of the world are going to hell, believe me. Any other moments that jumped out to you when it came to the tone or the body language or the response in the room itself? Well, in each of those moments, I think the room was a little abuzz. I'll tell you, though, walking in, again, with these lingering questions about how Trump would be received, these diplomats were in the room taking pictures of him and some were taking selfies of themselves, turning around in their chair to get them in the shot with the president in the background.

So, you know, apart from the ways in which Donald Trump has set himself apart from previous presidents, I was still struck by the fact that he is the leader of the free world and still commanded that respect and commanded that attention, standing in the well of the U.N. as previous presidents have. And he even put his America first rhetoric into a framework that made it almost anodyne. He said, as president of the United States, I'll always put America first, just as you would put your country's first will, of course. He didn't turn it into a cudgel to beat the rest of the world with. Let's listen to that for a moment. We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions,

or even systems of government. But we do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties, to respect the interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation. This is the beautiful vision of this institution, and this is the foundation for cooperation and success. Strong sovereign nations let diverse countries with different values, different cultures, and different dreams not just coexist, but work side by side on the basis of mutual respect. Tam, Peru first, Portugal first, Cameroon first. So some have interpreted this as President Trump basically saying, as he essentially said when he was in Saudi Arabia earlier this year, human rights. Oh, that's your country's issue. If you want to have a different view of what human rights are

than we do, go right ahead. And there are other parts of the speech where he was very much Donald Trump, the man who ran for president, you know, talking about, you know, we got talked into these big global trade deals and it was basically all a lie. That would be a summary. You know, talking about, you know, we got talked into these big global trade deals and it was basically all a lie. That would be a summary. You know, we have to put the middle class first. They will not be forgotten. Jeff, I'm listening to the speech and he's talking about the importance for the U.N. to act on big issues, that that's what the U.N. is there for. And then he's talking about the importance of sovereignty. And then he's talking about we have to be unified. But then he says our values are different. I mean, how would

you, you've had about an hour or so to sit on the speech. How would you summarize what he was trying to say with the sovereignty stuff? Setting apart the speech itself, because the thing about Donald Trump's speech is I do think they have an element to them where it's really hard to find a sort of a narrative through line. I will say that trying to square the circle of the America first thing, I will have to credit Stephen Miller for this. Because to say that America first does not mean America alone as it relates to international cooperation, I think was a really crafty way to frame that campaign slogan ahead of the visit to the U.N. And so what the White House says is that America first is not only consistent with international cooperation, it really is the basis for which every nation should cooperate to tackle global challenges.

So, you know, you say Peru first, Cambodia first. Well, yeah, if we're all supposed to, you know, work together to combat ISIS, if we're all supposed to work together to prop up Venezuela, if we're all supposed to work together to, you know, deal with the next whatever major health crisis is. And here's one moment where he did try to thread that of America first, but global community. We cannot wait for someone else, for faraway countries or far off bureaucracies. We can't do it. We must solve our problems to build our prosperity, to secure our future, or we will build vulnerable to decay, domination, and defeat.

Can I just, I just want to push back on just one thing Jeff said. I don't credit Stephen Miller for this because America First Does Not Mean America Alone was an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal written by, I think it was, was it Mattis and Gary Cohn or McMaster? It was McMaster and Gary Cohn. The fact is that Mattis, McMaster, Cohn, Tillerson, have been trying to take the hard-edged America first isolationist populist nationalist stuff that Stephen Miller represents, and he's increasingly lonely over there without Steve Bannon. They're still writing all the speeches. Yeah, still writing the speeches.

So he gets, he's the author of the rhetorical flourishes. But if you really listen to what's in the speech, it's not the Donald Trump of the campaign. It is more America first, isn't America alone. And that's how they're trying to take his nationalist, isolationist instincts and put it into something that's more mainstream, into something that can work in the community of nations. And don't forget, this is a candidate who said the UN was the enemy of freedom and the enemy of democracy. Now he wants the UN to help him on North Korea and Iran. So I really, I see something different happening here. I'd gladly stand corrected on that because even though Miller wrote the speech, as you rightly point out, it was a collective effort of which he should not bear all the credit.

So you're saying America first is not America alone. But let's just look at the wrong path. So he basically seems to want other countries to help with problems like North Korea and Iran, though not the Iran deal, and Venezuela. But he doesn't want to participate in sort of these global efforts that have been underway from before his administration. And one thing that I thought over the course of the speech, something I didn't hear, and I do think it's worth just pointing out, that in the whole list of authoritarian governments, of global problems that Trump lists, there was one country that did not make that highlight reel, the new axis of evil, whatever you want to call it, and that was Russia. But if you want to talk about sovereignty, Ukraine might have some thoughts about its own sovereignty.

He mentioned Ukraine. As a matter of fact, right up on the front, he said, we must reject the threats to sovereignty from the Ukraine to the South China Sea. I really thought if you were a U.N. member worried about Donald Trump, the isolationist, America totally exiting its former role as leader of the free world, I would say there was some reassurance for you in the speech. When he complained, as every other American president has, about the disproportionate burden and how much dues we have to pay, he then said, but if the U.N. can accomplish its goals, the investment will be easily worth it. That was the nicest thing I could ever imagine Donald Trump saying about the U.N. can accomplish its goals, the investment will be easily worth it. That was the nicest thing I could ever imagine Donald Trump saying about the U.N.

So yesterday at some point a reporter asked him, what is your message to the General Assembly going to be? And he said, we are going to make the U.N. great. Not again. We are going to make the U.N. great. So when he says the U.N. could be terrific, he's basically saying, well, now that I'm here. Well, yes, but the point is that what I'm interested in watching is we no longer have Steve Bannon in the White House. John Kelly's in the White House trying to manage the president's information flow, manage how he approaches the world. And I'm looking for the fingerprints or the footprints, and I see them in this speech.

Of course, he's a complete outlier, norm-breaking, disruptive figure in the world. We know that. But I think that if Steve Bannon had. is forced to defend itself and its allies, it's going to destroy North Korea. That is the position of the United States that predated Donald Trump. Yeah, that isn't to me not so kind of revolutionary and outrageous. All right, Jeff, you got a lot of stuff to do. Last question for you. I mean, you've been in this this bubble in the U.N. all week going around Manhattan in motorcades. Any one moment that strikes out to you as kind of really interesting or just weird?

Yeah. So what's weird is I thought there would be more New Yorkers who would, you know, be visibly angry, holding signs, maybe giving the finger, that kind of thing. But by and large, people are just, you know, standing there taking selfies and taking videos of the motorcade as they pass by. I mean, there is sort of like a New York indifference, I think, across many people's faces where they just kind of wait for the whole thing to be over. But, you know, even New Yorkers who aren't necessarily Trump fans, by and large, are just kind of, you know, at least as far as I can see, just kind of interested in all that's going on here. There's probably like a hundred different motorcades this week. And this is something that New York City goes through every year. And mostly it's about traffic. All right, Jeff, it seems like one takeaway is that the president is still the president. And when they show up, you take pictures. Yeah. Yeah. Jeff

Bennett on pool duty. Have some of that Trump Tower meatloaf and have a good rest of the day. All right. You too. Take care. All right. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk a little bit about the latest final last ditch push to repeal Obamacare. All right. We're back. And now Jeff is gone, which means we do not hear that Trump Tower waterfall anymore. There is one other thing to briefly mention before we go, though. There is, as you may have heard, an increasingly serious effort for one final push by Republicans to repeal and replace key parts of the Affordable Care Act. This is coming from Republican Senators Lindsey Graham and Bill Cassidy.

We briefly talked about it last week, and at the time we said it did not look like it had much of a chance. That was true at the time we said it. But things have rapidly changed since then. And while it still doesn't appear to have the votes it needs, this is a serious effort that Republican leaders are now backing. So real quickly, Tam, what is the difference between this latest version, the Graham-Cassidy effort, and the plan the Senate voted down over the summer and the plan that passed the House. What this does is it repeals the mandates in the Affordable Care Act. So that is the thing that says that people have to buy insurance and that large employers have to buy insurance for their employees. And then what it does is it takes a bunch of the money that would have been spent on the Affordable Care Act, would have been spent to help lower income people pay their insurance premiums.

And it turns it into block grants and sends it out to the states. And then it's sort of like choose your own adventure. Right. Here's the money. Do with it what you will, states. Yeah. So California could be like, yeah, we want single payer. And another state could be like, yeah, we want to just like, I don't know, whatever. Except for the money goes away. Completely and utterly at a certain point. kicked off this latest push. And he modeled it on the big welfare reform effort of the of the late 90s, bipartisan effort. President Clinton signed it. And he said it had to do with getting rid of a lot of federal regulations and saying states go to town. Tam, in terms of the politics, it's the same issue that it was all along in the Senate. Narrow majority, three votes kills it.

Probably two votes already know everybody else has to vote yes. Well, and the other thing that is really driving this right this second is the clock is ticking. Republicans, if they want to do it with just a 50 vote majority, plus the vice president casting the tie breaking vote, they need to do it by September 30th, which means the race is on. And this is now seen as the last best hope to repeal and replace and they want to do that. However, Rand Paul, for instance, who is a senator from Kentucky, says this isn't repeal and replace. This doesn't repeal it at all. And so he's a no vote. He had voted yes on some of the previous versions, which changes the math a little bit. But then it's the usual suspects, Lisa Murkowski, senator from Alaska, and Susan Collins, senator from Maine. Also, John McCain, who is a Republican from Arizona, who cast that deciding vote before. And now he says he doesn't like the process. But now it's his BFF who's the author of the bill.

Exactly. So it's not so clear. The interesting thing is McCain was the final no vote last time. But not only is his BFF, Senator Graham, the author of this bill, his home state governor, who he said if the governor of Arizona was for it, that would make him more inclined to vote for it. Governor Ducey did come out saying he would support this. So it actually looks like they might have a way to pass this. Now, the House, really interesting, the taxes of Obamacare remain in this bill, which you would think, oh, the Freedom Caucus isn't going to like that. But the head of the Freedom Caucus, Mark Meadows, has said he's fine with this. So this looks like it has a pretty good chance of passage. And one other sort of wild

thing about this process, because there is a rush to do it, the Congressional Budget Office, which has provided a score for all of the past pieces of legislation in this ongoing effort. A score that has provided a lot of fodder for critics of these bills. Yes. That has said how many people would lose coverage and what it would mean for the deficit. Well, the CBO says that they will have sort of a quick back of the envelope estimate to determine whether this qualifies for reconciliation, but they won't have a full score, meaning that you won't know exactly how many people they estimate would lose coverage or gain coverage or what precisely it would mean for the deficit. I think that in a lot of ways, this is the only way to pass a health bill without a CBO score. when everybody thought the effort had been given up for dead with John McCain's best friend on the bill. This has a chance of passage. And I think the fact that people weren't realizing how seriously this was being taken has put the opponents of this bill on their back foot.

They're kind of scrambling to say, whoa, if you really read this, this is almost tougher than any of the other Obamacare replacements because there is a hard and fast total sunset in this. You've seen a lot of social media from Democratic lawmakers basically urging, begging people to get active, which suggests that there is not that groundswell of activity at the moment that there was. There are ads. There are ads. There are ads now, and it seems to be ramping up. But you're right. This kind of snuck up on a lot of people, including this podcast. We can and we will talk about this in much greater detail on Thursday's Weekly Roundup. One last very important follow-up to last week's show.

During Can't Let It Go, I was talking about the fact that Lin-Manuel Miranda spent a day on Capitol Hill last week singing on the Underground Subway. And Tam asked me if I had had a song ready to sing, if I happened to encounter him on the subway, which of course I didn't. And I said, yes, I was thinking something related to Under the Sea. And then she asked me for lyrics. And I really whiffed because there was a really obvious lyric and I didn't think of because I was so focused on getting Congress train into the lyric. And lots of listeners pointed out the obvious lyric was under DC, not the C. So lots of tweets about that.

One person took it many steps further. Fred Zeleny, who did today's timestamp, wrote lyrics and recorded them and sent us his version of Under D.C., which I think we should end today's show with. Love the backing band. Under D.C., Under D.C. Darling, it's better down in the metro.

Take it from me. Up on the hill, they work all day. Stonewalling bills raise in the pay. While we support in politics, reporting under D.C. Mara, you missed. That is really cute. That's great. Good job, Fred.

Thank you. There's nothing else to say after that. Drop the mic. That's a wrap for today. We will be back Thursday with our weekly roundup. In the meantime, keep up with all of our coverage on NPR.org, on your local public radio station, and on the NPR One app. And if you live in or around Chicago, we are coming for you.

We will be live at the Athenaeum Theater Sunday, October 22nd. I do not think I will sing, but I will be there. Pam will be there, too. I might try to encourage you to sing. We'll just see what happens. Buy your tickets. Go to WBEZ.org slash events. I'm Scott Detrow.

I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And before we add Jeff Bennett with us from Trump Tower in Manhattan. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.