The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Defends Use Of Tear Gas At The Border; Mississippi Senate Heads To A Runoff

Episode Date: November 26, 2018

The U.S. briefly closed border entries in Tijuana and used tear gas on the protesters after several migrants began approaching the border fence. The president has defended their actions. Plus, the president heads to Mississippi to rally for the Republican facing a formidable Democratic opponent. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, 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

G'day NPR crew, it's Clayton here from Melbourne, Australia. I've just voted in my local state election where it's compulsory voting. I get a fine if I don't show up. Preferential voting, I have to number every box. And everyone really just cares if they get a sausage at the sausage sizzle out the front. This podcast was recorded at 3.24pm on Monday, November 26th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Hey, can I have mine with onions?

On with the show. Well, wait. I want to know, are the sausages free? Yes. You get them if you vote? Well, but you have to vote. You have to, but the point is they give you a free sausage. But they give you a free sausage.

I think that's just awesome. I think that's just a reward for being in Australia. I just think that is one of the main reasons we should have mandatory voting. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. Over the weekend, U.S. border agents fired tear gas into Mexico as migrants tried to cross into the United States. And the election is still not yet over. Tomorrow in Mississippi, there is a runoff in the race for Senate. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent.

So let's start with what happened over the weekend along the border. Well, what happened this weekend was really sort of the culmination of something that's been building for a long time. There's been a large number of Central American asylum seekers making their way to the United States. The Trump administration has deliberately tried to funnel all of those migrants to official ports of entry. That's the official doorways in the border between the U.S. and Mexico. The biggest doorway is the San Ysidro port of entry between San Diego, California and Tijuana, Mexico. I used to live there. I've spent a lot of hours waiting in that border line. It's a very busy port of entry. It's a very busy port of entry at the best of times. And it's more complicated now because you have several thousand

additional Central American migrants who've been waiting to go through there and apply for asylum. And under the Trump administration, they've only been letting fewer than 100 through per day. I want to try to understand this. There were people who had already gathered trying to cross into the United States to seek asylum. Then caravan people have shown up, making the crowd of folks in Tijuana larger. You have a combustible situation. You have folks who've been waiting weeks and now looking at the prospect of waiting months to have their asylum claims heard.

There was a protest. They got impatient. Some of the protesters also rushed to the border in an ill-conceived attempt to think maybe they could climb over the fence or sneak under the fence or somehow get across the border. And that's when the Border Patrol responded with tear gas. It was a windy day. Some of the people who were affected by the tear gas were the folks who were not rushing the border, were just having their protest.

But it turned what was already a difficult situation into a really chaotic scene. And then the authorities along the border took the additional step of actually closing the door altogether, including to the ordinary commuters and tourists and the tens of thousands of people who pass back and forth between San Diego and Tijuana every day for hours on the Sunday after Thanksgiving. So the tear gas being lobbed into Mexico gives us this what has become already an indelible image of this mom wearing a frozen T-shirt with her two kids. Frozen as in the Disney show. Yes, as in the Disney movie. Yeah. Running away from smoke. And our reporters on the ground have said that it's been windy, that air was moving around, that the tear gas went beyond maybe the people that were

trying to charge the border. Right. So this iconic picture of the mom and her kids with somebody trying to get away from tear gas. One thing that, Scott, you and I know because we have lived in California and have crossed that border crossing, this is a pretty heavily fortified part of the U.S. border. Like if you're talking about build a wall, there's something that looks a lot like a wall there. Absolutely. And even more so in recent weeks because the authorities have been fortifying it with additional concertina wire. They've closed off some of the what are usually traffic lanes. So it's even more fortified than usual right now. And today out on the South Lawn of the White House, President Trump was asked about this and he defended the action that the Border Patrol took.

They had to use because they were being rushed by some very tough people and they used tear gas. And here's the bottom line. Nobody's coming into our country unless they come in legally. Now, we should say under both American law and international law, if you reach the U.S. border, you are allowed to petition for asylum. So that would count as coming in legally. The president has been resisting this. And what he'd like to set up is some sort of system where asylum seekers stay in Mexico while their asylum claims are being heard. Yeah. And, you know, the interesting thing about the politics of this issue is that generally when the issue is border security, the president

and the Republicans win. When the issue is maltreatment of women and children, the Democrats win. So you had this picture of the mom and her kids running on the border to get away from tear gas. Now, is that a redux of family separation, which was the one moment in this entire debate where the Democrats were on the offensive, not the defensive? Or can Donald Trump continue to say that pictures like this of women and children are somehow an imminent national security threat to the United States. Well, and if that was the only picture, then that would be one thing. But there were also images and moving images of these people trying to jump the fence or climb the fence. And that certainly plays into the hands of the president

and other immigration hardliners who want to say, look, this is a threat. This is a large number of people trying to come into the country against the will of the United States. And just to reiterate, one reason it's a large number of people in one spot is because the Trump administration has deliberately said, if you want to apply for asylum, you've got to go to a port of entry. And the other reason is because they have slowed down to such a great extent the asylum process that it's just more people are massing on the border because so few of them can be processed per day. So this morning with all of this on cable news on a loop, especially Fox News, I was in the office of an ally of President Trump's today. As on the television set in his office, there were moving pictures of this protest

and what happened yesterday. And he pointed up there and said, this is going to help the president in his effort to get funding for the wall. And that is going to be a very big matter very soon because there is a government funding deadline of December 7th where wall funding is going to be a big part of that discussion. This ally of the president says, you look at that image of people trying to get into the United States, this large group of

people trying to get into the United States, that makes people want to have a wall. It makes Democrats want to give him funding for the wall? No, no, he didn't think that. But he said it would make moderate Republicans and independents more interested in a wall than maybe they would have been a week ago. As they cast their vote before they are no longer members of Congress. Because they're about to be extinct. Yeah, and lame duck politics are very interesting. And we don't know exactly which way this is going to go. Don't forget, the Democrats have now won 38, they might get up to 40 more seats.

In the border. They're from moderate suburban districts. They're not from the places where the wall is the most popular. So we don't know exactly how that's going to play out. And when we talk about the budget, we're talking about the budget for the Department of Homeland Security. A lot of the government has already been funded for the new year, but the Homeland Security Department and a number of other branches of the government have not yet been funded. So one of the things this lame duck Congress has to do is pass a funding bill for those remaining departments.

By December 7th. And it's an opportunity for the president to push for a wall, but there's certainly no guarantee, even if his ally thinks that this kerfuffle in Tijuana helps him, there's certainly no guarantee. I don't think there's a tremendous appetite in Congress to spend anything like the multiple billions of dollars that the president wants on a border wall. And don't forget that the president has said several times that he would be willing to shut down the government if he didn't get full funding for the wall. Now, he said he didn't want to do it before the election. He understood the politics of shutting down the government, but he has suggested that he might be willing to revisit that. So just as a reminder, what happened is in September, there was a government funding

deadline and Congress funded something like 80% of the government for the next year. And then about 20% of the government that includes the Department of Homeland Security was funded temporarily through December. So now. December 7th. Through December 7th. It's the next front. It's the next fight.

It is. And once again, it's about immigration. And don't forget, in the past, the president has been close at several times to making a deal with Democrats where he would get the wall funding, but in exchange, he'd have to either do something about DACA, the kids who are given temporary relief from deportation, or something else. Those deals always fell apart at the last minute. And it's hard for me to imagine with the Democrats knowing that they're going to be in control in just another short month and a half after that, that he can get a deal like that again. Now, we should say whatever happens in this budget fight in which the wall may be one of

the big bones of contention, as with previous government shutdowns or partial government shutdowns, it's important to remember that essential government personnel are going to stay on the job. So border patrol officers, TSA agents, the quote unquote essential members of federal government will stay on the job even if their departments are not funded. But this is still an opportunity when lawmakers have some leverage. The need to pass a spending bill does force lawmakers and the White House to wrestle with some of these issues that maybe they've been putting off for some time. Okay, we are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, Mississippi and the Senate race there. Google is providing free online training and tools to help Americans learn the skills they need to succeed.

Learn more about Grow with Google and get started by visiting google.com slash grow. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Sotheby's Institute of Art, offering educational programs including fully accredited master's degrees, online courses, and summer courses for adults and teenagers. Learn about the business side of art, art history, how galleries and auction houses work, and how to begin your career in the art world in New York, London, and Los Angeles. Learn more at Sotheby'sInstitute.com. This week on Ask Me Another, we have comedian Michelle Wolfe, and she shares her opinion about the White House's recent decision to not have a comedian at this year's Correspondents Dinner. They want to make a case for the First Amendment, which first of all, if you have to make a case for the First Amendment, you're losing.

Yeah, it's not happening. And you know, that won't be all on NPR's Hour of Puzzles, Word Games and Trivia. And we're back. And President Trump right now is on Air Force One, headed to Mississippi tonight to hold two rallies. And why is he holding rallies the Monday after Thanksgiving? Why is there a campaign rally after Thanksgiving? Because there's a runoff election because neither there were three candidates running, two Republicans and a Democrat. Nobody got over 50 percent. Rules in Mississippi say you got to go to a runoff. So now we've got Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was appointed to the position, Republican, running against Mike Espy, Democrat. He is an African-American candidate. If he won,

he'd be the first African-American senator from Mississippi since Reconstruction. That's why there's an election on Tuesday. Okay, that's why there's an election, but that's not why the president is going there. The fact that the president, the Republican president, is having to hold not one but two campaign rallies for a Republican senator in the ruby red state of Mississippi, that's the story. Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith is facing a surprisingly stiff challenge from Mike Espy in this runoff, mainly because of her own missteps. Although she's made several racially insensitive remarks, that's one of the reasons the race has tightened. She doesn't have the kind of baggage that Roy Moore did in Alabama. And Espy, let's just explain who he is. He's the former Agriculture Secretary in the Clinton administration. He comes from a very prominent African-American family in Mississippi.

He was a former congressman. Former congressman also. What he's trying to do is run the Doug Jones playbook in Mississippi. And he was a former congressman. Doug Jones race. So he's trying to use the same playbook, which is get a certain amount of the white vote, 25 to 30 percent, perhaps, and then boost African-American turnout to historic levels. And most people I talk to on both Republicans and Democrats say that Espy's job is not impossible, but it's extremely difficult. But again, the fact that President Trump is taking a Monday afternoon and jetting down there to do two rallies suggests that Republicans at least are hearing footsteps. Maybe they're footsteps in the way back, but they are hearing some footsteps. the finish line. He wants to be there to take credit. He might have done this even if she was, maybe he would have only held one rally, but I think he would have gone down anyway. This is a

state where Donald Trump can make a difference. This is the kind of very red state, very pro-Trump state where he can boost Republican turnout. Yeah. And as Mara says, for President Trump to hold a campaign rally is not really a sacrifice. He doesn't need a big excuse. No, I mean, he had his groove heading into the midterms because he was doing all these rallies. 30 between Labor Day and election day. In mostly red states where he won and where he was very popular. And then the midterms happened. A lot of Republicans lost.

He lost the House. The president kind of lost his groove. He's going to get his groove back. But the other thing to remember is this does not affect the balance of power in the Senate. Republicans are going to have either 52 or 53 votes there. Well, it affects it. It's not we're not at the tipping point. It doesn't affect the majority, but 53 is better than 52. It doesn't change the balance of power. It's going to be a Republican majority no matter what. The other thing we should mention, just so people don't forget about it, is the following Tuesday, we're going to have another runoff in Georgia for the secretary of state.

There's Democrat John Barrow. He's in a runoff with Republican Brann Raffensperger. Donald Trump has already been tweeting about this race. And the reason this race is so significant is that this, whoever wins, would replace Brian Kemp, who's the governor-elect. He was the secretary of state before. And don't forget that Georgia politics has been consumed with this debate about voter suppression, voter fraud. Already in this runoff election for secretary of state, whose job it is to oversee elections and ballot security, etc. The Republican is already accusing the Democrat, saying if he wins,

his policies would lead to, quote, more illegal voting than ever. We are going to keep an eye on all of those results, and we will be back in your feeds on Wednesday with the news, along with the latest in the Democratic leadership fight, election, whatever you want to call it, in the House. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.