The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Friday, December 13

Episode Date: December 13, 2019

Despite partisan impeachment hearings, lawmakers reached a flurry of tentative deals on on Space Force, family leave for federal workers, and a multilateral trade package.On the campaign trail, candidates sparred over their past work in the private sector.This episode: political correspondent Asma Khalid, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and senior editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro.Connect:Subscribe to the NPR Politics Podcast here.Email the show at [e-mail] the NPR Politics Podcast Facebook Group.Subscribe to the NPR Politics Newsletter.Find and support your local public radio station.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey there, we're going to make a pitch for you to support our work by supporting your local public radio station with a donation. But it seems like listeners like you already know why you should support us. Hey, it's Tim in San Jose. A whole lot of politics happened today. Here at the Politics Podcast, we bring you the biggest political stories. This fine podcast was recorded. But there's a lot of work that goes into making the podcast before it's in your feeds. It takes a while to engineer it. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. And to do that work, from reporting to producing and editing, we depend on support from listeners like you.

And the best way to support our show is by giving to our member stations. Without them, this podcast just wouldn't exist. So if you like this podcast, maybe even enough to write a song about it, please consider giving at donate.npr.org slash politics. Okay, that's it. Hit it, Tim. NPR Politics, go, go, go. Okay, get ready. Here's the show. Hi, my name is Jared, and I'm graduating today from Appalachian State University with a degree in public administration, master's level. This podcast was recorded at 1.14 p.m. on Friday, December 13th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show.

Congratulations. Hey there. It is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell.

I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Well, you might recall that yesterday we ended the podcast by saying that we expected a vote on impeachment from the House Judiciary Committee at some point last night. But it turns out that we were wrong. So, Kelsey, what happened? We were wrong and we were surprised that we were wrong. We were waiting at the very end of the night.

It had been a very long night. We were 13 hours, more than 13 hours into debate when they seemed like they were wrapping up and everybody had given their speeches and committee chairman Jerry Nadler started to make a speech about how solemn an occasion this was and how much everybody needed to think about their votes. And then he said, It has been a long two days of consideration of these articles and it is now very late at night. I want the members on both sides of the aisle to think about what has happened over these last two days and to search their consciences before we cast our final votes. Therefore, the committee will now stand in recess until tomorrow morning at 10 a.m., at which point I will move to divide the question so that each of us may have the opportunity to

cast up or down votes on each of the articles of impeachment and to let history be our judge. The committee is in recess. The gasps across the room were audible to every single TV camera. The members on the Republican side were completely shocked and started yelling about it. Doug Collins, the ranking member on the committee, basically was incensed. That was the most Bush league play I have seen in my life, because they want to simply get it back on the cameras because it's after 11 o'clock tonight, and they don't think enough people is watching. Though hilariously, he was doing that in front of TV cameras. You know, a lot of the Democrats I talked to about this said they could not vote

on articles of impeachment doing something as historic and as contentious as that at basically midnight. That was not something that they felt like they could do without being criticized for trying to sneak through articles of impeachment in the dark of the night. This morning, we saw that it was a remarkably short hearing. It was incredibly different. The entire tone and mood of the hearing this morning, they were in and out in 10 minutes. Judiciary Committee will come to order a quorum being present. They just showed up and voted and laughed. Mr. Chairman, there are 23 ayes and 17 noes. Your article is agreed to.

Yeah, so these articles, obviously they passed by party line vote. Democrats control the committee, and now it's going to go to the full House where everyone expects that President Trump will be impeached. And the thing that has come out over the last couple of days of debate is the president himself saying that this is nothing but really impeachment light. This is the lightest impeachment in the history of our country by far. It's not even like an impeachment. So the thing is, I went back and looked at the Nixon articles of impeachment and the Clinton articles of impeachment to see, is this really that light? I think on the one hand, you know, Democrats gave Republicans a really big stick to sort of whack them with because they had litigated bribery for some time for a month or more and then didn't even include it.

Right. But if you were to look at this in a big picture, right, Bill Clinton lied to a grand jury to cover up sex. Nixon, he may have committed a host of crimes, misused government to help him win an election and spy on domestic political rivals. What Democrats will say about Trump and why what he did was such a big deal was that it goes to the heart of democracy, saying that he used foreign interference to corrupt an election. And that's really what it all comes down to, whether it's watered down or not compared to what it could have been. Well, and I think what Republicans and President Trump would say is like, well, there's only two articles of impeachment here. And Clinton had four and Nixon had what, six or eight or the sheer number. Nixon had three. There were three articles of impeachment

against Nixon. There were four articles against Clinton and only two of them actually passed the House. So it doesn of the Democrats or nearly all of the Democrats could get behind it. So in the midst of this entire impeachment process, Tim, you had an interview yesterday with one of President Trump's top advisors, his daughter, Ivanka, which I found really interesting because we don't actually hear that frequently from Ivanka. But what did she have to say about impeachment? Well, and we should say that this was for a story about paid parental leave, which is one of the issues that she really cares about and has been pushing on. But of course, I asked her about impeachment. I asked her if it was weighing on her father, the president, whether it was affecting the White House. And in terms of people in the Trump White House, Ivanka Trump is incredibly disciplined. And so talking to Ivanka Trump gives us an idea of what the sort of perfect White House talking point would be, like what they would like their talking point to be. And and her message was, we're getting all kinds of stuff done.

And the Democrats are just doing impeachment. This whole process is a continuation of what he has been experienced since he arrived in Washington, D.C., the swamp kicking back, so to speak. So he continues to punch through, deliver for the American people and secure wins. Yeah. And that is the funny thing about what's happening right now. First off, their message is we're doing all these things. We're getting all these things done. Part of what they've been able to get done is bipartisan. Pretty much everything they've gotten done is because of this sudden flurry of bipartisan agreement on a defense bill that includes paid parental leave, which is this issue that that Ivanka cares about a lot, and the Democrats really care about. There's something that Nancy Pelosi said. They gave the president space force because they wanted this so bad. And the thing that Democrats also argue and have said about why they wanted to

work with the White House on this specifically is they think that having the federal government set this standard will pressure more private employers to follow suit. They think that it's bigger than just the federal government. But when you talk about accomplishments, it's not just this paid parental leave. I mean, it was trade, USMCA earlier this week. I mean, there are other issues. Yeah. If impeachment weren't happening this week, we would all have whiplash from all of these bipartisan agreements that are breaking out in Congress. Now, this is a time of year that Kelsey knows better than I do, is highly productive because they are running headstrong into the holiday break and they want to be able to get the time off. And then the next year is there's going

to be a lot of campaigning. So this is when stuff would get done. But oh, my God, so much stuff is getting done. Yeah. And I think part of that is that Democrats want to be able to tell their voters that they got things done with the president. A lot of these, particularly freshmen from moderate districts or freshmen Democrats who represent districts that were once held by Republicans, were elected on the promise that they were going to work across the aisle. And they really haven't done a whole heck of a lot of that because there hasn't been a whole heck of a lot of anything done in Congress lately. And if they're going to impeach the president, they had better be able to defend that promise as well. So they are making up for lost time this week. The other thing about what Ivanka Trump said as she was saying this, President Trump was in the midst of the most remarkable record setting string of tweets and retweets, both commenting on the Judiciary Committee as it was going on and

retweeting members of Congress who support him. It was more than 110 tweets. I stopped doing my spreadsheet. What time frame? What was the time you were looking at? 110 tweets in? From like, you know, midnight until 3 p.m. when I last did my spreadsheet. And then he kept going all night. That must have been. Did you mute your phone? No, but my phone. I was like, why is my battery dying? Trump tweets.

Which is all the push notifications. Trump notifications. But so while the White House wants to say we are focused on getting things done, at the same time, the president is clearly very focused on impeachment. All right. Well, Kelsey, I know you've got more reporting to do, so we'll let you go. Thanks. Off to ask lots of questions about what's in this spending deal. And yes, there is more going on in the world of politics than impeachment, including a presidential primary.

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You've probably heard of the Freedom Rides when activists took buses from the north to the south to demonstrate against segregation on public transit. But what about the reverse freedom rides? It was one of the most inhuman things that I have ever seen. Get the full story on NPR's Code Switch podcast. And we're back. And we're joined now by our expert policy reporter, Danielle Kurtzleben. Hey, Danielle. Hello. So, Danielle, you did a lot of stellar reporting this week. And the first thing I want

to talk about is Elizabeth Warren's campaign, because you took a look at how health care has been affecting her so far. What'd you find? Right. So, I mean, listen, when you're looking at polls, it's impossible to know 100 percent. Here is the one reason why someone's poll numbers have dipped. But you and I, everybody in this room knows that Elizabeth Warren's poll numbers have trailed off. At one point, she and Biden were neck and neck for leading in national polls for among Democratic primary voters. Now she has trailed off. She there's sort of a four person top tier with Biden seeming to lead. And she has fallen off in those early states as well.

But why? So one thing is that her poll numbers started dipping off before she released that Medicare for All revenue plan, the pay for plan that everybody was asking for, that everybody was sort of pummeling her for on the campaign. So that started it. The trail off sort of started around the time of that. I believe it was the October debate where Pete Buttigieg started saying to her, all right, your signature is have a plan for everything. Where's your plan for this? They went to the thing that had been her selling point and said, oh, well, maybe that's a weakness.

Yes. Well, this exactly. And this kind of gets at the second thing that I got to, which is a guy named Chris Jennings, who was a health care advisor in the Obama and Clinton White Houses. I asked him, OK, what do you think of all this? And he was like, look, it's not that voters looked at her plans and were really digging into the nitty gritty and going, you know, I just don't think that tax is going to be big enough. It's nothing like that. No, it's what it is, is that Warren, the way he put it, more or less, I'm paraphrasing, is that Warren had set up this thing for herself where she was the woman with the plan and that she not only could answer any question you threw at her, but she kind of welcomed it. Like she welcomed you trying to poke holes in it. And she like she was a little bit ready to punch back. But on this, suddenly she was on the defensive. And in short, it kind of ruined or at least it poked a hole in the story that voters had of her and her in their heads as this untouchable policy person where suddenly she couldn't immediately answer questions.

She's in something of a difficult position politically because she has to sort of walk this line between progressives who might be more inclined to the policies of Bernie Sanders, who's really been the one who pushed all of this and pushed the party to the left in the way that he had given the 2016 election. So there's a deep well of support and affinity for Bernie Sanders because of the leading role that he's played on policy. So if Elizabeth Warren was going to peel off any of the people who had that affinity for Sanders, she had to go as far as Sanders was. But then in order to maintain the support or get the support of maybe some of those more pragmatic Democrats, she couldn't look like she couldn't win. So that's a very difficult thing to balance. Right. And clearly it put her off off balance. And I think what we're beginning to see is she was getting squeezed on both sides. And there are certainly people I've met, you know, during the course of this campaign, even at her events, who will sometimes say, I don't know about Medicare for all. I mean,

they like her the candidate, they will say. But I think what we're beginning to see exactly to your point, Domenico, I was out in Nevada this week, and I met a woman at a Bernie Sanders rally who candidly told me that she was an Elizabeth Warren supporter until just maybe three weeks ago. Her name is Allie Brooks, and she lives in Las Vegas. And she said essentially that she was pivoting now more towards Bernie Sanders because she felt that Elizabeth Warren was too wishy-washy on health care, which I think is really interesting because it sounds like you were saying what she needed to do was peel away some of Sanders supporters, but maybe the transition plan and all the details

makes folks actually more confused about what she stands for. I mean, that makes sense, especially if you had so many people as soon as her plan came out. And just before that, by the way, you had a lot of Democrats who are worried about winning in the suburbs, criticize her and criticize her plan. You didn't see that before she caught up to Joe Biden in national polls. Once she did and it looked like she might become the nominee, suddenly you kind of had that establishment strike back. Can I ask you guys about another thing that has been a big story for the last couple of weeks that involves Pete Buttigieg and Elizabeth Warren and sort of this back and forth, this fight of radical transparency about purity tests, I call it. Yeah, like their previous work. What is up with that? I mean, they have consumed so much oxygen with this back and

forth. I mean, so there's clearly the politics of why they are doing this and in terms of them seeing one another as a threat. But I mean, you know, you have Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg, to your point, both sort of arguing over who can be the most transparent person. For Elizabeth Warren, it comes down to past legal work that she's done in the corporate law world. For Pete Buttigieg, it came down to consulting work he did for McKinsey when he was essentially a freshish, relatively newish college grad. Right. And I mean, a couple of things to add there is that, listen, one, Warren and Buttigieg, we're seeing this huge fight between them. It's not just on their McKinsey work and their corporate work. That is a part of it. And I'll come back to that. But it's also on policy. We're seeing them just slam each other at every opportunity. Part of it, I think,

and I know Asma and I have talked about this, is that in terms of voters, they're kind of fishing from the same pond. The two of them are both very popular, in particular among white educated voters. Like when you look at the poll breakdowns, that is who they are very strong with. And their campaigns know that. I mean, their campaigns clearly are tracking that. They see the Venn diagram. They know who they need to get to be able to gain that last piece of support so that they can win in places like Iowa and New Hampshire. But I think some of it comes down to like just an actual irksomeness that they see with one another and how you think it's personal.

I think some of what we're beginning to see is like they find one another's tactics annoying, right? Like, I mean, we see that Warren and Buttigieg are individually. We see Warren going after Buttigieg. We don't actually see her campaign routinely criticizing him in a way that, you know, we don't see them going after, say, Bernie Sanders or even Joe Biden that often. Here's the thing, though. Like, this is a thing that I'm curious about, is that at Warren events, you will find, and this is not just some randos. This is a fair number of people who will tell you, yeah, I'm considering Pete Buttigieg

as well. It's all fine. They're both great. But so, like, all of this back and forth is happening. Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden are still basically front runners in this race. And they're like pretty quietly just hanging out. Right. Well, and think about why.

I mean, this is such a fractured field that there that there are a degree to which they have coalitions that are pretty locked in. Joe Biden has older voters and African-American voters so far. That's a significant chunk of the party, but about a quarter. OK, you look at someone like Bernie Sanders. Bernie Sanders has a significant chunk of especially younger, more progressive voters, even voters of color, but voters of color who are younger. Right. And who want to move in a direction that they feel the Democratic Party has been too moderate on. So those blocks aren't really budging terribly. And then you're left with Warren and Buttigieg fighting it out to try to peel off some of those others to gain at least a plurality of support.

But to get back to exactly what Tam started asking this with to sort of bring us back full circle is that, you know, talking about Buttigieg's work with McKinsey and Warren's corporate law legal work, there is, of course, a big anti-corporate strain in the Democratic Party right now, a very anti-corporate vein of thinking that, I mean, you can definitely make a case that Bernie Sanders did a great job of really raising that in prominence. So, of course, Buttigieg and Warren are both trying to establish and burnish their bona fides. So, of course, Buttigieg and Warren are both trying to establish and burnish their bona fides on that, of course. But aside from that, jumping off from what Domenico said, Biden and Sanders are very well known to voters,

whereas Warren and Buttigieg were relatively newer to most voters this year. I mean, I'm sure you had some who knew who they were. So I think that this is a thing that they both probably felt like, yeah, we need to get out ahead of this. We need to be transparent. Otherwise, we can be cast as having secretive corporate ties. Because, listen, you can make a case against Biden on corporate grounds. I mean, absolutely. Credit card industry. Yes, absolutely. But he has people who love him. And that's kind of baked in, I think. And I will just say, you know, stepping back from all of this, this is where Democratic strategists get a little itchy about what it's going to mean for a general election, because the more you as a party vilify corporations, the people who... Which many people work at in this country. I mean, this is the point, right? We have an economy that is very strong right now. Sure, there are some warning signs. Sure, there are some people who say there could be a recession potentially at some point soon. But the corporations are where people have

jobs. And if you're going to continuously say that the corporations are terrible and bad and they're not good, and yet the economy is doing well. That can have potential ramifications with people in the middle. Counterpoint, counterpoint to that. You're absolutely right. And the economy is great. The question in this election, unless a recession happens before the election happens and we have a big spike in the unemployment rate, I think a needle that Democrats are going to try to thread is quality of jobs, not quantity of jobs. For example, you may have a job, but also the labor share of income, the amount of income in the U.S. that goes to workers has declined significantly. You might see your employer doing well.

You might not feel like you're doing well on your paycheck. So I'm not saying it's an easy needle to thread. I think it's a needle they're going to try to thread. And it's one Elizabeth Warren has tried to do because she says, I'm a capitalist. Unlike Bernie Sanders, who's willing to say he's at least a democratic socialist. So I imagine we'll hear more about a lot of this during the next Democratic primary debate. That'll be on Thursday. And it'll only have seven candidates on stage. But we should point out that most of them are white, with the exception of Andrew Yang, who is Asian American, who also qualified. Who just qualified. He was the last one.

All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, can't let it go. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Google. From Connecticut to California, from Mississippi to Minnesota, millions of American businesses are using Google tools to grow online. The Grow with Google initiative supports small businesses by providing free digital skills workshops and one-on-one coaching in all 50 states, helping businesses get online, connect with new customers, and work more productively. Learn more at google.com slash grow. Support also comes from Doctors Without Borders.

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And President Trump decides to tweet about a 16-year-old girl. And he tweets, So ridiculous. Greta must work on her anger management problem. Then go to a good old-fashioned movie with a friend! Chill, Greta, chill! I feel like he's trolling her, but I'm a little unclear on the actual attempt. It's not like he's ever angry, you know? His base is really fired up about Greta Thunberg for some reason. But like this also is like mad trolling

of all of America because now all of a sudden you have the first family had just been outraged that someone testifying in the impeachment hearing had mentioned his son, Barron, his minor son, Barron. And then all of a sudden now the president, whose wife has a whole thing about be best, is mean tweeting at a 16 year old girl. You know, Greta Thunberg had a pretty good response because she wound up making her profile, you know, saying, oh, Danielle's got it. It says a teenager working on her anger management problem, currently chilling and watching a good old fashioned movie with a friend. That's pretty clever. She pretty quickly changed her profile. That is pretty clever.

Dominica, why don't you go? Well, what I found really fascinating this week was, I don't know if it was all of the stuff around what happened in one of the congressional hearings or if it was the act itself, but it was Republican lawyer Steve Castor showing up to the hearing that he was testifying at, bringing his briefings. His business papers, if you will. His business papers, et cetera, the things that were going to help him during this hearing. Not in a briefcase like lawyers would, but in a shopping bag, like in a fresh market recycled shopping bag. Reusing.

All of us have and have used. He was saving the five cents. I will admit I've gone to the gym that way. You know, I couldn't find my duffel bag and use that. That's fine. Yeah. So I just found it fascinating. I mean, people were, you know, tweeting all kinds of things about it.

The one that I think got retweeted a lot that I kind of liked was from JD Durkin, where he says, quote, I assume this is a conversation between Castor and maybe his significant other saying, hey, you're bringing your briefcase today to your nationally televised impeachment hearing. Right. No, no. I'll be fine with this. Hey, they carry a lot of stuff and they're strong. I mean, if it can carry two gallons of milk, why not all of the briefing papers for the impeachment? Maybe now this is the it bag of Republican lawyers everywhere. Asma keeping her tongue tied. Asma, give us your passion opinion. This will be the it bag indeed. No comment. I'm trying to put a positive spin on this. All right. Well, I will go next. And I want to put a positive spin on this. All right.

Well, I will go next, and I want to turn the conversation to the classic holiday movie, Love Actually. I like Love Actually. I like it, too. I know it's controversial. I've got very polarized opinions about this. And now I will hold my tongue. I have not seen it. I have no opinions.

How? Tam, earlier, I just want to actually sort of disclose something. I was just mentioning this outside, and Tam goes, what's that movie? Love Everything? And I was like, what? You've never seen this? And it's not called Love Everything. It came out before you had kids.

You have no excuse. Taste? I don't know. In any case, Love Actually is a very polarizing movie for those kids who haven't seen it. I happen to fall into the camp that I really like it. I think it's a very, like, touching, romantic Christmas movie with lots of nice holiday scenes. And there's this scene in the movie where this guy goes up to this girl. And this is a little weird as I'm describing what actually happens in the movie.

But this guy goes up to his best friend's wife to tell him how much he loves her and opens up the door and like basically puts on Christmas carol music but displays these signs right do you just ring a bell oh so this is why every time I've ever seen a thing where there's somebody displaying signs I'm like what's that SNL did it with Hillary in 2016 yeah so apparently in the UK, Boris Johnson, who is the prime minister in the UK, decided that he would take this as a political ad strategy. And there is an ad of him going up to the door to tell people to vote for the Conservative Party. I was told by folks in the UK that there was actually a Labour Party version of the same ad as well. Of course, the Conservative one did include Boris Johnson. It would be kind of like President Trump in an ad for himself with love action. I really can't imagine that as I'm saying this out loud. It's a weird look for Boris Johnson.

Anyhow, I thought it was a really interesting, possibly like compelling ad. I felt like people also felt very polarized about the ad's effectiveness as well. In any case, maybe it's the reason why Boris Johnson's party was majorly successful in the UK elections. Asma and Domenico say, go watch the movie. Danielle? I think you have better things to do. All right, Danielle, what can't you let go of? All right. The thing I can't let go of, this has everything. It has pigeons. It has cowboy hats. It has a rodeo. It has fashion reporting. Wait, wait. Fashion reporting too? It has over-reporting by the New York Times.

It has country music. I am talking about this incredible story that was on the New York Times website this week. It is by Christine Hauser who reported the living bejesus out of a story called Someone is Putting Cowboy Hats on Pigeons in Las Vegas. I just got back from Vegas. How did I not see this? I don't know. I don't know how many pigeons actually have cowboy hats on.

I love the idea of this. I urge you all to read this because it has some of the greatest quotes in it. For example, the reporter asked the New York Times fashion critic to give a ruling on whether they were cowboy hats or top hats. They are cowboy hats, apparently. Not only that, they called up an ornithologist at Cornell and asked him about the birds' welfare. And he says, I think the thing that I would emphasize is that I can't see that it is causing any great harm to the pigeons. They look like happy pigeons to me. It is hard to know, of course, because they will not talk to us.

Which, by the way, is a great quote because it makes the pigeons sound stubborn. It's not that they can't talk,'s what they pigeon declined to comment one final thing though is that some comedian on twitter her name is hannah solo made a song about this that i have caught myself singing around the office all day oh wow someone's cowboy hats on pigeons in las ve, nobody seems to know why. They say it's a rodeo, but the rodeo says it just ain't so. The police say they're not investigating at this time. Merry Christmas, pigeons.

Merry Christmas, pigeons. It's performance art. All right, well, we are going to leave it there. And that is a wrap for now. Let's end the week by thanking the team that puts our show together. Our executive producer is Shirley Henry. Our editors are Mathoni Maturi and Eric McDaniel. Our producer is Barton Girdwood.

Our production assistant is Chloe Weiner. Thanks to Lexi Schapittle, Dana Farrington, Brandon Carter, and Elena Burnett. Also, a huge thank you to Elena because today is her last day as our intern. Aw, and we are really going to miss her. Very much. Remember, you can support all of us and our work by supporting your local NPR station. You can go right now to donate.npr.org slash politics. And thank you.

I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the 2020 campaign. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Daniellema Khalid. I cover the 2020 campaign. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.