The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Diplomacy, DOGE & Drawings

Episode Date: December 6, 2024

Even though he doesn't take office until January, Donald Trump is already busy, nominating cabinet officials and taking visits & calls from world leaders. How might his diplomatic efforts now impact policy later? Then, a look at the proposed Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which aims to reshape the federal government, and Can't Let It Go. This episode: voting correspondent Ashley Lopez, senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political correspondent Susan Davis, and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.The podcast is produced by Jeongyoon Han and Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Dane and Kim and we're at the Gallatin County Courthouse in Bozeman, Montana About to get our marriage certificate This podcast was recorded at 12 06 p.m. Eastern Time on Friday December 6 2024 Things may have changed by the time you hear this but one thing that will definitely have changed is it will be married Enjoy the show Love it was that a kiss at the end? I think it was. I kind of liked that. That was very sweet. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover voting. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And today on the show, we're going to be talking

about two facets of the incoming presidency. The first is how Donald Trump is doing more as a president in waiting than many of his predecessors before him. Tam, I want to start with his cabinet. Usually nominations for cabinet positions sort of trickle in and out throughout late November, December, and into January. But it looks like most of Trump's proposed appointees have already been named. Why do you think he's moving so quickly?

I think this is part of the whole shock and awe thing. Really, I think that Trump is trying to take Washington by storm. And part of that is just getting all of these out. In his last transition, he took a longer time. It was a little bit of a reality TV show with people coming in and out of the lobby of Trump Tower. This time, he has just been putting out one truth social post after the next with details about his intended appointees, and it's just been going really fast. So earlier this week on Wednesday, I counted more than a dozen administration picks announced in a single day. That is a whole lot. You know, there's no need for a getting to know you phase

this time around for Trump. I mean, let's just remember, you know, when Trump came on the scene in 2015, 2016, when he won, he didn't really have a lot of friends in Washington. He was reliant more on sort of the established Republican class, elected senators, et cetera. And he was kind of feeling people out, trying to figure out and taking people's recommendations on who should fill what spots. This time around, he's had years now to be able to say he has weeded out the people who

he thinks are actually loyal to him, people he likes, people he's seen on TV, what have you, who he really trusts. And he wants to, as Tam said, you know, sort of shock and all, but also show that he's ready right away, right out of the gate. Because as we know, you have a short amount of time after an election to be able to get done what you want to get done. And he has a slim majority in the House and a fairly slim majority in the Senate as well. But he has a lot of big priorities that he wants to try to get done very quickly.

And he is instantly a lame duck in a way. I mean, he is not running for reelection. So that gives him in some ways more power because he doesn't have to worry about politics. But also, there is an acknowledgement that he has an expiration date. That's true. He doesn't have to worry about politics anymore, which is also true. And he doesn't have the guardrails, you know, sort of the restrictions put on place by whether something you do is legal or not legal or whatever, you need Congress to do X, Y, Z. The fact of the matter is the Supreme Court has essentially given carte blanche to a president now to be able to do what they

want because there's presumed immunity essentially for anything a president does that's within a president's official duties. So get ready. I mean, Trump has said that he wants to do certain things like mass deportations and he's probably going to try to do as much as he possibly can without needing Congress as quickly as possible. But Domenico, I do wonder if there are any risks in naming so many people so far in advance though. Yeah, I think there are and I think one of the things that can be risky is that when you give too much time to, you know, whether it's senators on the Hill or it's the media, there's more time

to be able to get out some of these folks past skeletons, you know, in a deeper examination of their experience or lack thereof emails that might surface from your mother to say whether or not you've done things appropriately or not in past versions of your life. So you know, there's a lot of examination that winds up taking place that maybe if you put somebody out with a more crunch timeline, that there would be less of an opportunity for senators to jump off board. There is another explanation for this, though. They have put these people out so quickly that the typical vetting that would be done before you make an announcement so that if these skeletons come up in the vetting, you'd go, Oh, do you really want to put your family through this?

And people withdraw before their name is ever announced. It's like the cart before the horse in some ways. And so some of these nominees who are out there twisting in the wind, having more and more skeletons come out and you've got a whole month until even Senate hearings begin, part of that process would have happened quietly. And Trump, by saying, I'm doing things my way, I'm doing it differently, is making it so these things

happen not quietly. Just this week, the Trump transition did sign an agreement with the Justice Department to begin FBI background checks, which will be needed for administration officials to get security clearances, to get into agencies early and begin their work. And also because senators were asking

for those FBI background checks. Pete Hegseth, for instance, the nominee who is getting the most attention this week to head the Defense Department, he and his lawyer have said he welcomes an FBI background check. We also are in this weird situation where we essentially have Joe Biden, who's essentially shrinking from the spotlight, and Donald Trump, who is kind of the flame for the moths in

how much he captures the limelight and attracts the limelight. So we have this kind of overlap and transitions we know can be times of angst, whether you're a teenager who's changing schools or, you know, person who's changing jobs, whether it's to the presidency again or not, you know, being in that office anymore when it was something you've wanted your entire life. Yeah, and this does bring me to the other sort of space where he has been filling the sort of power vacuum and that's in foreign policy. When Trump posted on Truth Social that he wanted to hit Canada and Mexico with tariffs, Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau flew to Mar-a-Lago to meet

with him and Mexico's President Claudia Scheinbaum called Trump to try and get him to change his mind. So world leaders are already treating Trump like he's the man in charge even before he takes office. Right, Tam? I want to be clear that world leaders always call to congratulate the incoming president. Conversations do happen. Trump is attempting to do foreign policy before he takes office. Another example of that, in addition to the social media post about tariffs, he also made a pronouncement about how there will be hell to pay if the hostages are not released from Gaza before January 20th. Part of this is these leaders

know that Trump doesn't do foreign policy in the way that President Biden does. He is not an institutionalist in the same way. He does business by tweet. He announces big tariffs and then he gets people to come and talk to him and then he backs down. That has typically been the pattern of the way he led the last time. And so you're seeing some of those same patterns emerge again where leaders are appealing to him. Yes, you had Trudeau fly to Mar-a-Lago. You had Trump get an invitation.

He's this weekend going to Notre Dame for the grand reopening of the cathedral there in Paris. We don't know yet whether he's going to have a meeting with President Macron, but we know that President Macron is someone who has done a really good job over the years of kissing up to Donald Trump. And there's an argument for this kind of approach when it comes to how Trump deals with foreign leaders. I mean, he basically sketched it out in Art of the Deal, the book that he'd written,

and it's kind of not unlike how he's operated in his business life because he'll throw out sort of big bombastic things to try to get people's attention and then he wants to get them in the room so that he can make a deal. And that's what he's all about. That's what he wants to try to be able to do. And you can argue over his success rate in those things, but that's really his approach. Yeah. I mean, he would say that his success rate is incredible.

The reality is sometimes people are calling him and promising him things that they're already doing and he can claim victory. And to the point about President Biden, let's just be honest, he shrunk the second that debate went wrong. And as soon as he dropped out, all the attention went to Vice President Harris and Donald Trump. Overnight, you know, the White House press briefing, you know, there were empty seats, which is just like an indicator of where the attention was. It wasn't on the outgoing incumbent president. And world leaders know that making a deal with him right now is kind of pointless. Yeah. Well, we're going to take a short break. Thank you,

Tam, for bringing your reporting and have a good weekend. Yeah, you too. When we come back, how Trump and his allies want to reform the shape of the federal government. NPR brings you the updates you need on the day's biggest headlines. The Senate narrowly passed the debt ceiling bill that will prevent the country from defaulting on its loans. Stories from across the world. Knowing how to forage and to live with the land is integral to Ami's culture.

And down your block. From CPR News, this is Colorado Matters. And you can find all of that and more in your pocket. Download the NPR app today. And we're back and joining us now we have NPR political correspondent Susan Davis with us. Hey Sue. Hey Ashley. So you've been reporting on an effort from two big Trump allies that's Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy and their effort to drastically shrink the size of the federal government. Can you talk to me about what they're doing? Sure. So back in November, Donald Trump announced what he's calling the Department of Government

Efficiency or DOJ and that it would be led by Musk and Ramaswami, Musk being a huge donor to his 2024 campaign and Ramaswami being a formal rival and turned big supporter and surrogate on the campaign trail. And it's kind of in the beginning when it was first announced, I think it's fair to say the beginning, when it was first announced, I think it's fair to say it was met with at least a little bit of ribbing on the internet because the name Doge, which I think several of our listeners

would probably get the reference to, but it's sort of steeped in internet culture. Back in 2013, there was a Doge dog meme. That meme was one of the most popular memes of the year. It went on to spur the cryptocurrency name Dogecoin, which is something that Elon Musk had been invested in. And then using that Doge moniker, which I think has sort of steeped in internet tech bro kind of culture for an effort that's going to be led by Musk and Ramaswami, it

was not as serious as a lot of Washington acronyms often take themselves. There was also some jokes about needing two men to run an efficiency organization. But this has broadly been a long-term, long-existing goal of the Republican Party to shrink the size of the federal government and to make it run more efficiently. It's not a new idea. It might be one of the oldest ideas in Washington. And we're just starting to see the framework by which it will take shape. And Musk and Rameswamy were up on Capitol Hill this week talking to those key lawmakers

who could be their partners in this effort to basically start to begin buy-in and support for what they're trying to do. Aaron Ross Powell The thing I find interesting about this, always this claim, never mind Doge and sort of the way that, you know, Rameswamy and Elon Musk sort of push that out there, you know, almost in a PR kind of way, you know, where they gain a lot of attention. There have been a lot of efforts in the past to try to, you know, get rid of, quote unquote, waste, fraud and abuse within the government.

There's a lot of discussion, you know, dating back to the Tea Party about the size of government and how they want to get rid of certain agencies and talking about the national debt, which was a big thing that a lot of people ran on. The problem is the drivers of the national debt are things like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, which are things that are essentially walled off where nobody wants to touch them. And there just isn't enough discretionary spending, you know, domestically that you would be able to make the kinds of amount of cuts that they're talking about doing despite

the fact that it seems to be popular among people to, you know, say government is inefficient and need to make these big cuts. And Domenico is right. This is not the first effort. During the Obama administration, there was two very high profile efforts to try to create debt commissions to reduce the debt. There was a super committee made up of members of Congress that tried to do it and ultimately

failed. I have the reporting battle scars from both of them to prove it. And so this time around, it's like, what could be different? And I do have to say that there's a lot about this that might just not make it work. To that I mean, it's a bit of a mirage. This is not a government agency. It hasn't been authorized by Congress. There's been no money or resources appropriated to support it. Musk and Rameswami are doing it for free. There's no money to hire staff. And they don't have any decision making authority. It doesn't have any real power behind it. But I will say this, it does have buy-in. A lot of these ideas are incredibly

popular on Capitol Hill, especially when it comes to streamlining the federal government. And I talked to a bunch of senators about that this week in anticipation of their visit. And one thing they clearly want Musk and Ramaswami to focus on is on the executive branch of government. Like what the president can do within his own power to reduce the size of the government. Which is obviously something that Donald Trump campaigned very clearly on, reducing the size of the federal workforce, and also just making government agencies much more efficient. They say they want to embed people into the agencies once the Trump administration starts to sort of identify the areas which they can make these agencies run more efficiently.

And also they've been very clear and I admit that this will start to veer into a policy lane that I don't have a ton of expertise on, but in the post-Chevron world, that Supreme Court decision in the last session that basically will make it a lot easier for an administration to slash regulations. They think there's a huge opportunity there to change the regulatory framework of the United States government that will make things a lot faster to happen. So in that regard, a lot of support in Capitol Hill, and maybe even some buy-in on some of those efforts from Democrats. One thing that has not changed, and this is where I think the buzz saw is that they're going to walk into,

is it's so easy to be on the outside of government and be like, we don't need to spend money on that stuff. Right? And I think where the rubber will meet the road is if and how they make suggestions to Congress, which has the power to spend money to say to them, hey, eliminate these programs, stop funding this. As anyone who has ever covered any element of that, you soon learn that one person's wasteful spending is one senator or lawmaker's favorite project or program. And the idea that you could balance the budget by somehow making trims to discretionary spending, which is not the money spent on social security and Medicare that has to be spent, it's on things like the Department of Education, on law enforcement agencies, on childcare funding, like that stuff's popular. And that's going to be really, really hard to find the

political will to make substantive deep cuts to anything that lawmakers actually support. There's also a risk in cutting while still being efficient. I think that that's a huge key here because Elon Musk, if you look at his business practices, yes, he's one of, if not the wealthiest man in the world and has certainly done quite well for himself and has been a visionary on a lot of different things. In his taking over Twitter, now X, he cut back on a significant number of employees and there have been a lot of complaints about customer service or what even the company is seen as

being worth anymore. So you know, there's going to be some risk and some discussion about when these cuts are suggested, whether or not the government and those agencies can still do their job well. I agree with that. And look, I talked to Democrats this week, because I think this this proposition puts them in a little bit of a political box right now, because broadly speaking, who is against a department that's looking for a more efficient government? That's a really easy thing to sell. Hey, we want to make government

work better. Who's going to stand on Capitol Hill and say I'm against this? One of the Democrats I talked to, Chris Van Hollen, he was a veteran of a lot of these past budget wars. He sits on both the budget and appropriations committee. And I said, like, look, what are you going to do here? Like they are provoking a conversation that don't Democrats at least want to seat at the table. And he was like, is this good faith or not? He's like, look, if they really want to have a broader conversation about how to make government work better, we should absolutely put ideas forward and engage. But I think Democrats are very skeptical to your point, Domenico, that the efficiency is code for just gutting the federal government.

That if they just want to do this to significantly reduce the federal workforce, like take a hatchet to it and not a scalpel, I think people like Van Hollen are going to be very much against it, especially for senators like him who come from a state like Maryland where, look, the federal government is the biggest employer in the country, and it is one of the biggest employers in states like Maryland and Virginia that border the District of Columbia. So again, even efforts to shrink the federal workforce, I think, could be met with significant pushback,

especially from people that represent the broader DC area. Yeah, I mean, I do think it's interesting too, because when you look back to the George W. Bush administration, after 9-11, there was all this discussion about the inefficiency and the lack of discussion between the CIA and the FBI. So what was the conservative solution to that and making it more efficient? Creating a new agency in the Department of Homeland Security, which now employs thousands of people.

So trying to roll back those things is really, really difficult once they get in place. And I also think people should keep this in mind going into the second Trump term. Donald Trump, historically, and not in his first term, had much interest in actually cutting spending. Donald Trump raised spending more during his administration than Barack Obama did during his. And I think that fact surprises a lot of people sometimes, but it's the truth. And so the idea that Trump wants deep spending cuts isn't something that's been borne out by history. Donald Trump really wants tax cuts. He really likes business-friendly solutions, but he doesn't

have a strong record of wanting to cut spending. And if anything, he has campaigned as wanting to protect social security and Medicare, which is not a position that has been taken by past Republican presidents who had been more interested in potentially privatizing these services. So I'm really curious to see how far he is willing to go, how much buy-in he will give Musk and Rameswamy if they go to him with some more provocative spending cut proposals. Which does bring me to a practicality question here because both Ramaswamy and Musk say they want to find two trillion dollars in spending cuts but like as Domenico mentioned they're not gonna be looking at things like

Social Security and Medicare. I mean what is on the chopping block here? Yeah I mean I always try to avoid math but it's worth doing a little bit of it. $2 trillion, if you think about it this way, that is more money than the federal government spends in an annual year on everything on the Pentagon on the entirety of domestic program funding. It's a lot of money, but $2 trillion to cut it out of the existing budget. If you take social security and Medicare off the table, it's almost impossible. And I don't think that that's a that's not a partisan statement. I don't think there's a conservative or liberal budget expert who could tell you you can balance the books on

non-defense discretionary spending because Republicans will fight tooth and nail to protect defense spending. Democrats will fight tooth and nail to protect domestic spending, particularly programs that help poor people. And so how you get there, I don't know. I will say this, there's a million and one creative ways to come up with a budget gimmick in Washington. And wherein they come up with that $2 trillion figure, things I would look for is things like reduction in workforce. You can argue money saved is money not spent, which is different than a spending cut. I also think in the reduction of regulations, I think that they will likely be able to say, hey, if we reduce all these regulations, it'll save time and money. So how they get to two trillion could be kind of a creative solution.

There's virtually no way you can do it on the federal budget if you take mandatory spending off the table. Yeah. And I'm just curious about the optics of having two rich guys do this. That's a great question. Tell the government how to spend its money. Look, I think that's a really good point. And I think that's why Democrats are a little bit hesitant to fully lean into this right now. Musk and Rameswami in this role, they're not really accountable to anyone. They're unelected. And two very wealthy men putting forward potentially spending cuts that could help less advantaged

people in the world has the potential to create political backlash and I think that that's something that Democrats might also see a political opportunity in depending on where they take this. I do think though that Trump ran on cutting the federal government and you know talking about the deep state over and over again and he's putting two people in charge who he trusts, who he thinks are smart, who also have a similar point of view when it comes to the efficiency of the federal government. So I do think that there are likely to be cuts, you know,

because if there's something that Donald Trump winds up pushing, and there's, I think, some degree of sympathy for sure on the right with that and wanting to make those cuts. And the last thing I'd say is this won't last forever. It's a short-lived effort. They're expected to wrap their work by July 4th, 2026, which will coincide with the 250th anniversary of Our Great Nation, by which point Donald Trump says he will have made America great again.

Yeah. All right. Well, one more break and then it's time for Can't Let It Go. And we're back and it's time for Can't Let It Go. That's the part of the show where we talk about the things from the week that we just can't stop talking about politics or otherwise. Domenico, I want to start with you. What can't you let go of this week? Well, I just want everyone to pull up the Billboard Top 100 and see if you notice a theme. All right, you're gonna hear me type. I'm actually doing this.

Oh my gosh, it is Kendrick Lamar's entire album. Oh wow! I contributed to this, to be honest. So did I. Ten of the top 14 songs are Kendrick Lamar songs from his new album, GNX, including the top five. Squabble Up, TV Off, Luther, Wacked Out Murals, and Hey Now, which are all, in my view, great songs.

And this is all in preparation for the Super Bowl, which Kendrick Lamar is going to be the halftime show for. He got some very well-produced songs that are going to be bops. And I think this is Kendrick Lamar, he's always been kind of a big deal in the industry, but this is him sort of taking it to another level where he's trying to really cash in on what has been all this attention he got through the Drake beef that he had and now being able to use this for the Super Bowl. And then he's going on tour.

We're seeing a new era here and it's kind of fascinating to see all of these songs on the Billboard top 30. Big year for Kendrick, man. First the Drake beef and now like he's coming up on top. Mm-hmm. It's been, it's all coming up. Yeah, I wonder who won that beef. Yeah. Not an open question. Mm-mm.

Ashley, what about you? What can you look of? Actually, I read something in the Los Angeles Times that made me laugh a lot. This is the perfect time of year to have this conversation about how much I dislike the movie Love Actually. Okay. I like that movie. I know a lot of people do. I'm a hater.

Although I do feel like more people are hating it every year, which I love. It's like my own version of like Grinch type Christmas joy. I am a rom-com sucker though. Yeah, me too. But I feel like this is not a romantic movie. And here's a good example of why. So the interview in the Los Angeles Times was with Keira Knightley.

And I don't know if you know this, but she was 17 when they filmed that movie. And when she was filming her character in that scene with the cue cards that's really famous, she apparently had to do a couple reshoots because she was looking at the guy like he was a creep, because she was like really creeped out by the storyline. Like this guy was basically a stalker who was like really creeped out by the storyline.

Like this guy was basically a stalker who was like also hitting on his friend's wife. It was just like a very weird storyline anyways. And she said, yeah, I always thought that that was a really creepy role. I'm glad that people like Lava actually, but I thought that whole storyline was super weird. Yeah, I mean, it came out in 2003.

So maybe it doesn't carry into this decade and generation as well. I haven't seen it in a long time. Yeah, I mean, it came out in 2003. So maybe it doesn't carry into this decade and generation as well. I haven't seen it in a long time. Yeah, you should. I think it has aged like a glass of milk. I'm curious to hear what you think of it now. I just like that this time of year is when the two great American debates are reignited over movies. And one is about love actually, where people feel very strongly whether it's a great movie or terrible, and also whether die hard is a Christmas movie or not. And those debates get kicked up every single year.

This nation will never be unified around one answer of those two questions. All right, Sue, what can't you let go of this week? The thing I can't let go of is a very silly thing that just gave me a ridiculous set of the giggles this morning. I don't know if this ever happens to you or something that's ultimately not that funny, but hits you at the right moment, just cracks you up. And for me this

morning, it was a New Yorker cartoon, which is not words I normally say. I was doing the thing all of us do in the morning after Kid Drop Off, I was disassociating and scrolling through Instagram, and I came across a New Yorker cartoon, and it is a picture of Santa Claus sitting at a computer and it has that tab that we all get haunted by that just says do you accept cookies? You know and you always have to click it yes or no and the caption just says hells yes I do. It's so cute. He just loves cookies. All right well that's a wrap for this week. Our executive producer is Mathony Maturi. Our editor is Casey Morrell. Our producers are John Yoon Han and Kelly Wessinger. Special thanks to Dana Farrington. I'm Ashley Lopez. I cover

voting. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. And I'm Domenica Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen to this podcast, sponsor free on Amazon Music with a Prime membership or any podcast app by subscribing to NPR Politics Plus at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.