The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: August 21st

Episode Date: August 21, 2020

The head of the United States Postal Service testified before the Senate today about controversial changes that good governance watchdogs say undermine election infrastructure. Louis DeJoy denied he was responsible for most changes, that he now says won't be implemented until after the election.Steve Bannon, who oversaw President Trump's 2016 election effort, was arrested on fraud charges tied to a $27 million "build the wall" crowd-funding effort. And bipartisan Senate investigators released a final report detailing Russia's extensive contacts with that campaign.Read our newsletter. Like a podcast, but for your eyeballs.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, voting reporter Miles Parks, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and justice correspondent Ryan Lucas.Connect:Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Listen to our playlist The NPR Politics Daily Workout.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Brian from Chattanooga, Tennessee. Two of my three kids are taking a nap, which is giving me an opportunity to clean my car. The time of this recording is... 1.27 p.m. on Friday, August 21st. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but one thing won't have changed. The next time I say no snacks in the car, I'm going to mean it. Oh, every time you try to have a no snacks in the car policy, it lasts like a very short period of time. And then it's like, yes, I'll give you the fruit snacks. Just be quiet.

Goldfish just tastes better in the car, okay? That's just a fact. It's true. I feel him so deeply on the naps thing. It's the only time you can get anything done. Oh, yes. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. Here is a name that you've been hearing a lot and you're about to hear a whole lot more. Louis DeJoy. He is the postmaster general and he was called before a Senate panel today. He has announced that he will suspend the controversial changes at the U.S. Postal Service that had been in place until after the November election. Miles, what were those changes and where do

things stand now? So honestly, after this hearing, it's even more unclear what the changes specifically imposed by DeJoy were. Going into this, we had thought that it involved cutting overtime. We had heard from postal workers across the country, postal unions, media reports that it involved cutting overtime. It involved the removal of these high-speed mail processing machines. And then there was also basically a change in policy on when late mail would be delivered, whether it be delivered the same day or the following day. But on Tuesday, DeJoy released a statement that said he was walking that back because of all of this concern, this kind of firestorm of criticism from both sides of the aisle, Democrats and Republicans, forced him to basically say, no, we're not going to put into any of these transformational changes until after the November election,

just so people have confidence in their election mail being delivered. But on Friday, he basically said that some of those changes that we thought that we were attributing to DeJoy, the overtime and the removal of those high speed sorters, that that wasn't part of his plan. The only thing that he actually implemented, he says, is the change in when that late mail would be delivered. But like, we've seen pictures of mail sorting machines that have been disassembled or moved. You know, like there's, there are things that have actually happened that postal workers are actually complaining about it. This is confusing. Right? Like, so there are two

things happening here. One is trying to figure out who is to blame for what people are seeing in these photos. And as Miles has pointed out, anecdotal evidence of changes that are happening across the country and then trying to parse out what the actual effects of those changes are. So what we were seeing in this hearing and part of why it was probably a little confusing to watch is Democrats in particular were attempting to parse both of those things at the same time. So what actually happened and how much of it is DeJoy's fault? And how much is it going to be reversed now, you know? Right. Yeah, because it doesn't sound like those mail sorting machines are rapidly being put back in the warehouse,

in the mail sorting warehouses. It seems like this is sort of just frozen in time now. Right. We saw a video on social media circulating of, you know, some of them actually were already taken apart and being put into dumpsters outside of some mail sorting plants. And so part of that is routine. You know, DeJoy said that in today's hearing that every year these machines, you know, basically we go through and look at the data and we change some things. But there has been some reporting already about how there has been more of these machines taken out of the rotation, so to speak, than there were in previous years, though some level of that is fairly routine.

And DeJoy said that these are not going to be put back into the system. He says that they were pulled out of the system because they were unnecessary. He said that they're making room for package sorting because people are just ordering more packages right now. They're at home. They're ordering stuff on Amazon, as you do. But the thing that Democrats have pointed out to me is that, you know, ballots are not packages. Ballots are mail. They go through the letter sorting machines. And so there are real concerns that if you don't have letter sorting machines in post offices, that could be a real problem. that this is such a big issue right now is because there is an election coming on November 3rd and more people will vote by mail in that election than ever before because of the coronavirus pandemic.

And there are real questions about how quickly ballots can be delivered. Was there any clarity on that in this hearing? Yeah, I think DeJoy made a really big point, especially in his opening remarks, to say election mail is my biggest priority over the next few months, which I think may go a fairly long way in easing some of those concerns, especially from the election officials I've talked to. One of the more concrete things he said was that there had been some fears about whether there were going to be changes around how election mail was going to be priced. Obviously, local and state election officials are really crunched on money right now. And so in previous years, election mail had been treated as first class mail, but was getting this bulk rate.

Previously, there was fear that that was going to go away under DeJoy. He said today that no, election mail was going to be treated the same as in previous years, and that it was going to be treated as first class or even better than first class is what he said. You know, though, as much as this might be, you know, making local election officials feel better, it is a full blown political issue right now. It's not going to go away because DeJoy said he wasn't responsible for the changes. If anything, this is getting Democrats even more wound up. And so I would expect that this becomes an issue that sticks around. People are going to continue to be concerned about whether or not their votes are getting counted. And it also kind of plays into a narrative that Democrats were already trying to build

about what happens within the Trump administration, how decisions get made. And, you know, some of this is because the president himself said that he thought that curtailing mail and voting was good for him. One more Congress question for you, Kelsey. Postal relief funding for the post office for the Postal Service is part of what is being discussed as an element of this long sought and now, gosh, don't even know where it stands, coronavirus relief legislation. So where does it stand? And is this likely to be a hang up in that or not really? So this gets a little complicated because the House is going to vote tomorrow on Saturday, a pretty rare Saturday vote on funding for the Postal Service, standalone money for the

Postal Service. That'll probably pass a fairly partisan, along fairly partisan lines. We don't really know how Republicans are going to handle it in the Senate, though I don't expect it has very good prospects, in part because Republicans say that they are fine with more money for the Postal Service, but it has to be part of a coronavirus relief bill. Well, the coronavirus relief bill isn't really moving anywhere. When I talked to Democrats earlier this week, they said that a Republican proposal that's kind of brewing over in the Senate actually is moving them further away from any agreement. So it's hard to see how money that there seems to be some agreement on can even get passed.

Miles, we are going to say goodbye to you briefly, but not for too long because you're coming back for Can't Let It Go. So goodbye for now. All right. Thanks. Bye. And we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, Steve Bannon joined the list of former Trump associates to face federal charges. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Google. Google's free tools are designed to help millions of businesses around the country adapt to a new way of working from updating their business hours,

to switching to curbside pickup, to activating online booking, small businesses are staying connected to their customers with Google. They can even add gift card and donation links on Google so they can get support from their community. Explore Google's free tools for small businesses at google.com slash small business. How do we reinvent ourselves? And what's the secret to living longer? I'm Manoush Zomorodi. Each week on NPR's TED Radio Hour, we go on a journey with TED speakers to seek a deeper understanding of the world and to figure out new ways to think and create. Listen now. And we are back and we are joined by Justice Correspondent Ryan Lucas.

Hey, Ryan. Hey there, Tim. So Steve Bannon, who was at the helm of President Trump's 2016 campaign and also worked in the White House for a time, was arrested yesterday on a yacht on fraud charges by the Postal Service. Ryan, what do we need to know about this? Well, this is a case that ties into a crowdfunding campaign called We Build the Wall. And basically what federal prosecutors in Manhattan allege is that Bannon and three

other defendants who have been charged in this case basically told prospective donors, promised them that all of the money that they donated to this campaign, which raised in total $25 million thereabouts, all of this money would be put towards building a wall along the southern border. And they made this promise repeatedly when soliciting donations. And ultimately, what prosecutors say is that that wasn't true. They say that Bannon and the other defendants were siphoning off hundreds of thousands of dollars for their own personal benefit, to line their own pockets, essentially. The indictment says that Bannon, through a nonprofit that he controlled, basically had around a million dollars funneled to him, some of which he passed on to other defendants, some of which he kept for himself. One of the

defendant that did receive a lot of that money that came through Bannon was a co-defendant by the name of Brian Colfage, who prosecutors say allegedly received around $350,000 despite promising, again, promising donors that all of this money would go to the wall. They say that he got about $350,000, which he used to buy a boat, to buy a golf cart, to buy jewelry, to do home repairs. So ultimately, this is kind of garden variety fraud is what it comes down to. Just happens to be garden variety fraud that is connected to something that is this like big part of the identity of the Trump message, the wall. Tim, what has the president said about this? Well, President Trump said that as he frequently has done, I mean, I guess we can say frequently, because it has

happened several times for him that someone who was a close associate has been indicted or pled guilty or otherwise gotten in trouble to something. The president basically did the I hardly knew the guy. I mean, obviously, Bannon played a key role in his campaign. But but Trump said, you know, I haven't spoken to him in a long time, he kind of left the White House on. But Trump said, you know, I haven't spoken to him in a long time. He kind of left the White House on bad terms. And, you know, President Trump has. About a month ago, he tweeted basically saying, like, he didn't like this project and that this wasn't his wall.

This was their wall. And it was substandard. He accused this project of being essentially a showboating project. Right. Is what he said and also what the White House said after this news broke about the charges against Bannon. But as you said, Tam, he'd really tried to distance himself as quickly as possible from both Bannon and this project. Now, it's worth pointing out, of course, that in addition to Bannon being on this We Build the Wall project, there's also Chris Kobach, former Secretary of State of Kansas, who Trump allegedly once considered for a role in the administration. I mean, allegedly, he interviewed for a job

in the administration. Fair, fair. Yeah. So this is this is not some sort of project that has no connection whatsoever, at least rhetorically and through personalities to folks within the Trump orbit. I mean, this is not the first time that people who worked on the Trump campaign in 2016 have been indicted, right? Like this is, this is, the list is getting long. Bannon joins, yes, Kelsey, a very long list of former Trump insiders who have faced federal charges. You have former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. You have President Trump's former personal attorney and fixer, Michael Cohen.

You have President Trump's former advisor, Roger Stone. You have, man, there's a long list to the point that I'm, Tam, help me out here. Manafort, Flynn, Gates, Stone, Papadopoulos. Paul Manafort. Yeah, Manafort. Former campaign chairman, Rick Gates, his deputy. It is a long list of former Trump insiders who have faced federal charges. Let us pause, however, and say that although many of them have either, all of them, have

either been found guilty or pled guilty, in the case of Bannon, you are innocent until proven guilty. And at this point, he pled not guilty, right? What did he have to say? That's right. There was a brief hearing after his arrest, a brief hearing in federal court in New York on Thursday in which Bannon did plead not guilty to the two charges against him, which are conspiracy to commit wire fraud and and money laundering.

And as he exited the courthouse in in in Manhattan, he said, and I quote here, this entire fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall. There was other big news this week out of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. They released a bipartisan support on Russian interference in the last presidential election and the Trump campaign's connection to that interference. What do they conclude? Well, this is a massive report. It comes from a three and a half year investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. As you said, it is bipartisan. You had Republican and Democratic staff working on this. It's a thousand pages long, thereabouts. They reviewed around a million documents, interviewed hundreds of witnesses. And what they conclude from all of that work is that Russia did indeed conduct a pretty aggressive influence campaign in 2016 to influence the election, to help Donald Trump win, and that people on Team Trump were

quite happy to accept Russia's help in that. This report focused on the counterintelligence threat to U.S. national security from Russia's interference. And the committee concluded that the Trump campaign posed a massive, a massive counterintelligence threat. And what is important about all of this is that this conclusion is one that was reached by Democrats and Republicans. Not just Republicans, Ryan. The people on this committee are not a bunch of never Trump Republicans, right? Tom Cotton's on this committee. Richard Burr's on this committee. John Cornyn's on this committee. And these are serious senior Republicans who care about national security. And these are all conclusions that this committee endorsed. This would seem to say that there was something going on. There was a there there. There were extensive contacts between Trump associates and Russia.

And sources of mine who I have talked to over the past four years have all said that there was ample reason to investigate. And this report really kind of hits that home, that there was ample reason to have concern about contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. And this report does not conclude. It doesn't draw a conclusion on the question of whether there was collusion or coordination between the Trump campaign and Russians. What it does is lay out the facts and let the reader come to his or her own conclusions. But Republicans, in an annex to the report, declare that, you know, we found that there was no collusion, whereas Democrats in their annex to the report say what we conclude from all of this is that Trump and the Trump campaign posed one of the gravest threats to national security,

to American national security in U.S. modern history. Politics question real quick, Kelsey, before we go to the break. Do you think this matters? I mean, you know, we've been talking about Russia for years now. There have been other reports. Does this change anything in the politics? Or, you know, is this sort of an afterthought now with coronavirus dominating all? I mean, this, this would have been a fairly blockbuster report in a normal news environment. But it, it kind of became a quieter background narrative this week with all of the other things going on. And in a lot of ways, it falls into the category of things where people who want to believe it will believe it and people who don't want to

believe it will not believe it. And the president's interpretation, continuing to talk about the witch hunt and being spied on, you know, many of his supporters will hear just that part. And while it might be getting lost a little bit in the conversation, this goes to a fundamental question people have about the security and reliability of our elections. It goes back to the same kinds of questions people are raising with the Postal Service. There are real concerns out there about whether or not the election in November will be decided fairly and securely. All right. Well, Ryan, we are going to say goodbye to you. So goodbye.

Goodbye. And we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. Hey, y'all. I'm Sam Sanders, host of It's Been a Minute. On my show, we catch you up on all the things in news and culture. The Space Force? I totally missed this. What is the Space Force? Stop it. Stacey, you don't know about the Space Force? No. What? I've been in my apartment for four months. Oh, man. Crushing it, Stacey. Thank you. Feeling good. News without the despair. Listen now to the It's Been a Minute podcast from NPR.

And we're back. And hello again, Miles. Hello. It is time to end the week with Can't Let It Go, that part of the show where we talk about the things we cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Kelsey, what can't you let go of? Oh, I'm going otherwise, as usual. I can't let go of pandas this week for a couple of reasons. Now, not in the same way as some of our other politics podcast family feels about pandas.

I'm not of the anti-panda group. But the panda here in D.C., one of the pandas here in D.C., might be pregnant. So we might be having baby pandas in D.C. And I'm very excited about it. Pandemonium! I learned a lot about pandas this week. I learned that they can appear to be pregnant, but then they can reabsorb the baby. I don't understand how this works.

Wait, so are they not sure that this panda is actually pregnant right now? Yeah. So they think the panda is pregnant, but apparently pandas get pregnant pretty frequently than then don't actually have the babies. They have weird quirks of their reproductive system, among many weird quirks of pandaness. And so, yeah, we may have a panda baby in dc we may not have a panda baby in dc it's 2020 i fear we won't have a panda baby we'll get very excited i feel like we need it we need it so badly we'll get false panda baby hope i also learned this week that all pandas are basically just giant toddlers there's this video going around the internet of these pandas of a zookeeper in China attempting to clean out a panda cage and the pandas are just like crawling into her basket and taking away her broom and falling all over themselves. I was like, oh, I'm familiar with

that. I know what that looks like. And that looks like having a toddler around. All right, Miles, what can't you let go of? So what I can't let go of is something that happened earlier today that I have now watched this video at least 15 times. And it makes me giggle every single time. This was during today's hearing, which we talked about earlier about much more serious topics. But when Senator Tom Carper got called on for this virtual hearing, there was like this moment of silence where Ron Johnson is like, Senator Carper, Senator Carper. Is Senator Carper there? And there's nothing. And then you kind of hear a little bit of rustling.

And then the camera pans to him. And he just drops three F-bombs. Like F, F, F. And it was, like, it's, like, the most amazing thing because then he clearly has this recognition and a staffer is there, too. And they both have this recognition of, like, oh, did that just happen? And they look in the camera, like, the way that, you know, like, six-year-olds look at themselves in the camera. And they're both just, like, doing this, like, look, like, oh, is that thing on? And it's, like, and I feel like somehow all of the senders don't really react. They're just, like, oh, well, thing on? And I feel like somehow all of the senators don't really react. They're just like, oh, well, yeah, he seems to be there. OK. And they just move along with the hearing. But I've just watched it on loop over and over and over again.

I love the part where Senator Johnson is like, well, we don't want to end up on TV. Yes. And it was like, yes, you just did. You definitely did. They also ended up in the official transcript. Somebody tweeted it just a moment ago that the official transcript of the hearing has all three F-bombs just spelled right out. No way. Oh my. I'm dying. not let go of today well it's related sort of um uh our colleague juana summers uh drew my attention to this um you know balloons are a classic part of conventions at the after the after the candidates big speech they're the balloon drops from the ceiling and then i mean they did they actually didn't do a balloon drop yesterday they did fireworks instead. But if you need some balloon drop joy, go back to 2004 when inexplicably CNN carried the producer's voice ordering that the balloons be dropped.

I remember this. No confetti, no confetti yet. No confetti. All right, go balloons, go balloons. We need more balloons. Balloons, balloons. Hurry up, balloons. But then there's like increasing urgency

as these 100,000 balloons are just not falling as he wanted. All balloons, all balloons should be going. Come on, guys, let's move it. And then there's the F-bomb. All balloons, where the hell is nothing falling? What the f*** are you guys doing up there? And you could tell, like, you could tell that part of the plan was clear. Like, he had, like, been planning for this.

Obviously, these things are, like weeks in advance. Right. And he's like he knows that during this moment, it's so important for all those millions of TV viewers to see balloons right after a nomination. And it's like you can like hear the culmination of everything he's like hoped for this balloon moment just not happening. And I feel like anyone who's I've worked on the back end of the NPR shows in my previous life. And it is like the most upsetting. Like you could feel the sweat drenching off your face as something you expected to happen. Didn't it's just not happening. And you're live.

And it's just like this is going to be how people are going to remember this event. I appreciate his insistence on no confetti balloons. Balloons. I wanted the balloons. Well, his name is Don Misher. I found an LA Times article from 2004 where he says that he feels terrible and deeply apologizes for offending anyone. that his, you know, his microphone to the producers, to the production team, you know, to the guys that would drop the balloons, that microphone was being broadcast live on national television. All right. That is it for now. We will be back on Sunday with a preview of the Republican National Convention and also every night next week to break down the key moments from each night. Until then, be sure to check out all the ways to stay tuned with us by following the links in the

description of this episode. Our executive producer is Shirley Henry. Our editors are Mathani Maturi and Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Barton Girdwood and Chloe Weiner. Thanks to Lexi Schipittel, Elena Moore, Dana Farrington, and Brandon Carter. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. And I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.