The NPR Politics Podcast - Trump Takes Harder Line On Immigration And DACA, Feuds With Senator Bob Corker

Episode Date: October 10, 2017

President Trump sent Congress a long list of immigration changes that he says must be included in any plan to legalize DREAMers — including funding for the wall. The EPA is officially moving to repeal the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. And tensions are escalating further between Trump and Republican Senator Bob Corker. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, congressional correspondent Susan Davis and political editor Domenico Montanaro. 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

Hey, I'm Kelly McEvers, and Embedded is back. President Donald Trump has no record of public service, but he does have a record in business and on TV. In our latest round of stories, we introduce you to the people who were there as he built an empire and a name. Listen on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Megan Bronston calling from the year-round Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. This podcast was recorded at 210 Eastern on Tuesday, October 10th. 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. Here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, and it was a busy, long weekend. President Trump looks like he's walking away from the big picture immigration deal he talked about with Chuck

Schumer and Nancy Pelosi over Chinese food. And a one-time ally of the president is raising serious concerns about Trump's national security leadership, saying he's worried Trump could put the country on the path to World War III. Plus, the Trump administration takes another step toward undoing President Obama's climate change legacy. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Domenico, did you have a happy Columbus Day?

I did, although I did follow the debate over Columbus Day. I do follow it every year and whether or not it should be renamed as Indigenous People's Day. And I'd heard the Italian ambassador make a speech about Columbus Day and its relative positives versus the cons. So it's always an interesting debate. Sue, how was your Columbus Day weekend? You know, I just bought a house. So I use my Columbus Day weekend to do things like scrape glue off windows and shine furniture. But I have to say, it was fabulous.

All right. Well, let's start with what's going on between Trump and Tennessee Republican Bob Corker. We talked a bit about this on the pod last week after Corker said that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and Chief of Staff John Kelly were the only ones separating the country from chaos. Trump did not seem to like that because over the weekend he went on a tweet storm about Corker. First tweet, Senator Bob Corker, quote, begged me to endorse him for reelection in Tennessee. I said no. And he dropped out, said he could not win without my endorsement.

He also wanted to be a secretary of state. I said no thanks. He is also largely responsible for the horrendous Iran deal. Hence, I would fully expect Corker to be a negative voice and stand in the way of our great agenda. Didn't have the guts to run. And by the way, that was Domenico who stepped in for tweet three, because we always get confused, Scott. I know this is this is an ongoing problem for many listeners that probably didn't help it. By the way, Corker says that's false, said that he never begged to be endorsed for reelection and was not lobbying to be secretary

of state. Yeah. And then and we will get into Corker's response to the things Trump tweets in a moment. Because, boy, Corker's response. Yeah. Yeah. So so this starts Corker then on Twitter says it's a shame the White House has become an adult daycare center. Someone obviously missed their shift this morning. And then beyond that, Corker kind of went nuclear, pun slightly intended, in an extended interview with The New York Times. He expressed some serious concerns about Trump to the paper. Sometimes I feel like he's on a reality show or something, you know, when he's talking about these big foreign policy issues. And, you know,

he doesn't realize that, you know, that we could be heading towards World War III with the kind of comments that he's making. And Sue Corker kept going, saying that basically a big chunk of the White House spends their day trying to contain the president of the United States. You know, I'm still stuck on World War III. Yeah, good thing to be stuck on. which is an incredibly powerful position in Congress and a position that gives him direct access to not only people like Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the White House chief of staff, but also world leaders and is someone who spends his days and hours thinking about foreign policy and the U.S.'s role in the world. So for someone like him to he's not casually throwing out this World War Three line or these criticisms. These are coming from, I would say, a very well informed place. I spoke to Bob Corker on several occasions last week. And, you know, even in the course of last week, he was meeting with Rex Tillerson. He was having national security briefings. I mean, this guy is in the know. And that is what I think made these comments all the more striking is it isn't just a generic Republican criticizing the president of the United States. It is a very well-informed, high-ranking Republican launching what I think is fair to say the harshest criticism of Trump's performance as president to date. Yeah. And this always gets boiled down, Domenico, to, oh, it's another feud. It's the president

and somebody else going back and forth on Twitter. But Trump is throwing these personal insults. Later today, he called Corker little with a D. But Corker is not just slinging insults. He's saying, like, the president takes actions that can put the country's national security in jeopardy. Yeah. And I think that that does wind up getting lost because of the if there's any bias in the media, it's toward conflict and simple conflict. Yeah. When you have this kind of back and forth between people, that's where the drama is at. And it's certainly a good drama. You don't have many people, especially high ranking Republicans or Democrats within their own party, criticizing their president or their leader and calling them saying that you have to have an adult daycare center. When it comes to foreign policy, you know, someone like Corker is concerned about the way President Trump talks about other countries in you have a president who speaks as loosely as he does and throws out these rhetorical flourishes that he seems to be teasing toward things. I mean, if you think about what happened

Thursday night, where President Trump is in the White House with military leaders, and he sort of teases for the media, oh, you know, maybe you could call this the calm before the storm. And reporters are there saying, what storm? What are we talking about? ISIS? North Korea? What's going on? He says, you'll see.

You'll see. And he says that about a lot of things. You don't know if that is intentioned, if something is real, if something is coming, or if he's just kind of playing a ratings game. What I think is interesting about Corker, too, is that he was not a never-Trumper. Right, this isn't Ben Sasse. Yeah, he was not a frequent Trump critic the way senators like Ben Sasse of Nebraska or Lindsey Graham of South Carolina or even John McCain of Arizona. You know, there have been a lot of voices that have been consistent critics of the president.

But Bob Corker was on Trump's side. You know, he campaigned for him during the 2016 elections. Spent a lot of time talking to him on the phone. Absolutely. When the Access Hollywood tape broke, Corker gave one of those statements that he was disappointed in the comments, but he was not one of those Republicans that disavowed or withdrew an endorsement. He was on the short list to be secretary of state in the Trump administration. Obviously, that went to Rex Tillerson. But as the course of this year has played out, we have seen this sort of, I've called it a devolution of Corker's estimation of the president and his ability to do the job. I mean, this latest spat is, I think we've reached the

boiling point here. But, you know, in previous iterations and most recently, I think the president's handling of the racist protests in Charlottesville. You know, Corker was one of those very prominent voices out there and suggested that Trump didn't understand, in his words, the character of the nation. Let's take a listen to that, because this is worth pointing out. Corker did a couple of weeks ago say he's not running for re-election, and obviously that allows you to be more blunt, but he was pretty blunt before that. Sue, the moment you're talking about was in August. Here's what Corker said.

The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful. So the thing I wonder here is if you are the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and if you think the president of your own party isn't stable, isn't competent, has to be contained by staff, and these are all pretty direct paraphrases of Bob Corker. And on top of all that, you worried he could lead you to the path of World War III. What do you do about that? Well, I would, you can make the case that part of what you do about that is do what he just did, right? You know, I mean, politics is the art of words. And Corker knows what he's doing when he's giving taped on the record

conversations with the New York Times questioning the competence of the president. In real terms, the Senate, more uniquely than the House in Congress, has a pretty profound check on the president's foreign policy capabilities. You know, the Senate approves treaties. They approve all the nominations to serve in the Trump cabinet. And they have an oversight and a check on that power that he could exercise in varying ways. One thing to look at in real time is whatever the decision is, and we don't know what it is, what the Trump administration is going to do on the Iran deal, the deal that was reached by the Obama administration, they are considering whether or not to decert says that the vast majority of Republicans in the Senate feel the same way he does. And that this is the topic of private conversations.

Now, I would note that since this story was given and the Senate is out of session this week, but local papers back in states have asked senators, you know, do you feel the same way? And there hasn't been a cascade of fellow Republican senators stepping forward to echo Bob Corker's statements that might be the freedom of not running for reelection. Domenico, who are President Trump's allies in the Senate at this point? I mean, we have seen basically all summer along, Trump has attacked or alienated one key Republican after another in a chamber that's pretty important to his agenda. And, you know, Sue noted Lindsey Graham as one of those people who was a never-Trumper during the election. And yet you had President Trump trying to woo Lindsey Graham, taking him to go play golf, you know, in one respect to show that he has an ally in the Senate or somebody who he'd like to promote his health care plan potentially.

But you're right, Scott. They're implicit in your question is that he doesn't have a lot of allies in the Senate. running for president and has even taken to kind of throwing him under the bus on Twitter to the point of pushing him almost over the cliff to resign from the attorney general's job, even though he's still in it now. The caveat I would say to that that I think is worth noting is he may not have a lot of obvious allies the way he did in Jeff Sessions. But the fact that no Republican in the Senate has come out to back up Bob Corker in any way is also very telling that I think the Republican Party and certainly elected lawmakers up here are very aware of the fact that the Republican Party is Donald Trump's party now and that going up against the president has very little to gain from it if you actually

are running for reelection and want to stay in Congress. So that is where I think where you may not have allies in the traditional sense, but the president is still incredibly powerful when it comes to just sort of base politics in the Republican Party. I think it was funny. My favorite quote in the reaction to Corker's comments came from Chuck Grassley, who just said, I think they both ought to cool it. not directly related to another important development, but it kind of is because the bottom line of all of this conversation is that Trump is lashing out at and distancing himself from someone who used to be an ally. And Corker is someone that Trump needs outside of the foreign policy realm, but he needs him a lot over the coming weeks and months when it comes to taxes. Yeah. And we've used this math before, And this is kind of the story of this Congress is Republicans in the Senate have a really narrow majority. And if you want to get anything done, you really need almost unanimous party loyalty. There's only

52 Republicans in the Senate. And on the tough stuff that they're trying to do, health care on which they failed, tax legislation what's up next, they can only lose two Republicans and still advance this agenda. They couldn't do it in health care. And Bob Corker, in a completely different policy realm, has been sounding all kinds of alarms on Capitol Hill that he is deeply skeptical of what he has learned of the tax legislation so far and has very publicly drawn a red line saying he will not vote for a tax bill if he believes that it will add to the deficit in any way. So even beyond this spat, which is largely personal in nature as well, in a very real policy sense, Bob Corker is shaping up to be an incredibly critical vote this year on the tax bill. And as I think this interview showed, he just is an independent operator.

He has no loyalty to the president. He may not even have loyalty to the party at this point because he's retiring. And I don't think that he's going to vote against something because he's mad at the president or a personal spat. But again, it doesn't help. All right. With that, we are going to take a quick break. When we come back, looking at the repeal of the Clean Power Plan and what's in the president's list of immigration changes that he says need to be included in any legislation that would provide a permanent fix for DACA enrollees. It's all up ahead. Hey, Sam Sanders here. Want to tell you about the only NPR show where you can hear about the latest White House drama and the return of TRL to MTV.

Show is called It's Been a Minute. Every Friday, we catch up on the week of news and culture, everything. And every Tuesday, I sit down for some long interviews with authors, filmmakers, directors, and more. You can find It's Been a Minute on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we're back. And it was just about a month ago that the president

had that White House meeting with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi. They ate Chinese food and they all came out of that meeting saying they'd agreed on at least the big picture outlines of a deal to provide a fix for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which, of course, is the program that President Trump made the decision to end in September with an expiration date of March. So that deal, it sounded like at the time, did not include funding for a border wall. President Trump said he'd be happy to deal with the wall down the line. But it was basically a trade of Democrats provide votes for beefed up border security and Republicans provide votes for some sort of permanent status for people in DACA. So that all seems to maybe be out the window because Sunday night, the White House released a long list of immigration changes that had to be included in that legislation. Domenico, it was some pretty hard line stuff when it comes to

immigration reform, the type of stuff that Trump was talking about running for president. And look, this very well could be Trump, you know, with his first opening offer. There have been plenty of times where Trump has backed away from the wall. That could be some of what's going on here. I wouldn't say that this is the end of the road when it comes to the discussion, but it certainly dampened real hopes on the Democratic side that they could get something like DACA or a DREAM Act through without a whole lot of other baggage coming with it. So what was interesting to me talking to people in Congress right after that initial outline of a deal broke was it's that exact dynamic that you're talking about. The president is still the president and he's in charge of the Republican Party because a lot of House Republicans were saying, well, look, we trust the president. You know, he he's a dealmaker. We'll see what he has to say. But you add a few, like including Steve King from Iowa, who's a real hardliner on immigration, saying that, sure, there's a lot of flexibility on policy in get it. It doesn't to me seem like there is a long view strategy here as much as more of a knee jerk retraction of that effort to be bipartisan. Right. Like it didn't seem like if there is a longer term strategy to like, oh, this is the problem will have to be confronted either by the end of the year or by early March, which is figuring out what to do with the people that were brought here illegally as children who are now adults and exist in this limbo. And it's a lot of people.

It's estimated to be between 700 and 800,000 people in the country. I mean, there's a very real policy problem that needs to be fixed. And all of this back and forth just seems like it's making that more complicated and not easier. And to me, the bigger question is, well, who's he telling the truth to, right? I mean, it just seems so maybe three more weeks from now, he's back to wanting to cut a deal with Chuck and Nancy. Or maybe he sits down in a meeting with them and again walks out of the room agreeing with them as has happened a couple times. Exactly. That's what I'm saying.

If there's a strategy here, I don't get it. And part of what makes you effective in politics is, and I think in the Senate in particular, is sort of like your word is your bond. You know, how you're going to vote, yes or no, what your positions are. And Trump just moves back and forth so much. And maybe this is part of, you know, this is the art of the deal. This is the approach he's brought to other arenas in his life that has been successful for him. I'm just very confused as to how it can work politically when no one can really trust what you're telling them. And Democrats responded to this long list of demands by saying this is a nonstarter. This is not what we talked about at all.

And the thing to remember is they do have some leverage when it comes to this because of that other Chuck and Nancy deal, the original Chuck and Nancy deal, which is, of course, how Trump kept talking about these. And that was the three month extension of funding for the federal government and three month extension of the debt ceiling, because you're going to need Democratic votes to do both of those. And both of those will have to be voted on between now and when DACA expires. It's also politically weird to me when I read through this, because what the administration put forward is something that even Republicans can't pass. Even if you didn't have a filibuster, even if it was just up to Republicans, this proposal in its totality couldn't pass

Congress. There's stuff in particularly like crackdowns on legal immigration. You don't have 218 votes for that in the House. And yet Trump stood in the White House with senators who wrote a bill. Right. I mean, there's certainly some elements of support in Congress for this. But I'm saying if this is the marker that he is now drawn, one, it's not bipartisan, so you can't get Democrats on board for it. And two, you can't even pass it with your own party. So do you create the political problem down the road that if and when they come up with an immigration bill, some element of the Republican Party and the conservative wing is going to say, well, this isn't conservative enough. This isn't what the president asked for. I don't I don't get how this advances the ball in any way except as a purely base political move, because maybe that sort of olive branch to Chuck and Nancy just got, you know, the snapback from that, from the base and from the political advice to say this is your most core issue that you won election on. This is not what you want to be cutting a bipartisan deal with Democrats on. To me, that's the only explanation is just a pure political calculation. If you're actually trying to get a bill done, I don't think that this move that they made, made that any easier.

If anything, it just made it harder. I think you're right. I mean, it doesn't seem like there is any real strategy behind it. And the problem is, if they don't get taxes, you're talking about going down in flames on health care, going down in flames on taxes when Republicans run the House, run the Senate and have the White House. And it doesn't seem that Trump's strategy of browbeating members of his own party is actually working if he can't get any major pieces of legislation through. So let's just walk through some of the things that were in this White House proposal. I'm just going to flag some of the more high profile and controversial proposals are the ones that I think everyone can assume would have a tough time getting the votes they need in Congress. One was, of course, funding of a border wall, which, as we have talked about many times before, every time there's come up for a tension point

where Trump could try and force Congress to vote on this, the Trump administration had said, yeah, we'll just do it next time. But they're saying, no, they want a border wall. Another is getting rid of any sort of federal support for sanctuary cities. These are local governments that do not share information with ICE about immigrants in the country illegally that they have information on or arrest or things like that. Ending extended family chain migration by limiting family-based green cards and establishing a point-based system for green guards to protect U.S. workers and taxpayers. Those last two, that would be a fundamental shift to how legal immigration in this country works. All right. Well, one quick thing to mention before we go. The Environmental Protection Agency officially began the process today of repealing a

major Obama era environmental rule called the Clean Power Plan. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt made the announcement this weekend. Here's the president's message. The war on coal is over. So this move was long expected and it formalizes what Pruitt and the Trump White House had been promising to do for a long time. So the Clean Power Plan never actually went into effect, and that is important, but it would have required states to shift away from coal-produced energy and toward energy sources with lower carbon footprints like natural gas and renewable energy. And that was really important because it was the main way the U.S. was going to meet the goals set in the Paris Climate Accord. Of course, the Paris Climate Accord, the U.S. is now withdrawing from, and the Clean Power Plan, the U.S. is now repealing. So both of those out the window.

Domenico, this is just another political example of President Trump trying to undo as much of the Obama administration's legacy as it can. Certainly. And look, Scott Pruitt, somebody who came in who was completely antithetical to the EPA's mission. This is somebody who sued the Environmental Protection Agency multiple times as the attorney general in Oklahoma. And this has been something that he has wanted to do to be able to try and roll back a lot of these regulations, even if they haven't fully gone into effect. And President Trump certainly promised the coal industry that he would work as hard as he could to get whatever he could back for them. And the other context in all of this, and we've mentioned this when we've talked about it before, is that the Clean Power Plan would have, broadly speaking, it's technical and there's some caveats, but it would have created about a 30%

drop in the carbon dioxide footprint from the energy sector, from power plants. A big part of this shift toward a smaller carbon footprint has been happening already for years and will continue to happen. And that's because natural gas is cheaper, it's more flexible, it's easier to get around once pipelines are in place. And also solar power and other renewable energy has continued to become cheaper and easier to put on the grid as well. So that shift has been happening and will continue to happen. But without requirements like this, I think we can expect to slow down a little bit. Scott, is there any link between the Clean Power Plan and the Paris climate deal? Yeah, this was basically the roadmap to reaching the goals that the U.S. agreed to. U.S. said it was going to reduce its carbon footprint by X amount.

And the Clean Power Plan was going to get the U.S. almost all the way to the finish line there. Not anymore. Not anymore. That is a wrap for today. We will be back on Thursday with our weekly roundup. In the meantime,

you can keep up with our coverage on NPR.org, on your local public radio station, and on the NPR One app. One of the podcasts you can listen to on that app is, of course, Up First, which one of us is on

pretty much every morning. And those of you in Chicago, there are still a few tickets left for the live show we're doing on October 22nd at the Athenaeum Theater. For tickets and information, you can go to wbez.org slash events. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And Domenico is wearing a very sharp new tie today. Thank you very much. Well, you know, you go to L.A., you need to, you know, step it up.

That's what they say about L.A. Everybody wears ties there. That's right. You got to put your tie on for L.A. It's a very L.A. look, I'll just say. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. our politics podcast.