The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Friday, November 22

Episode Date: November 22, 2019

After a full week jam-packed with impeachment inquiry hearings we look back at the major moments that shaped what will happen next. This episode: Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, White House correspodent Franco Ordoñez, Congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales, and senior editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro.Connect: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 guys, before we get started, we have two live shows coming up. One is in Chicago on January 10th and the other one is at Drew University in Madison, New Jersey. That one's on January 22nd. We would love to see you there. To grab a ticket, just head over to nprpresents.org. Okay, here's the show. Hi, this is Grant Downs calling from beautiful Magnolia, Ohio, where after a meeting to certify the vote at our board of elections, I lost the tied mayoral race on a coin toss. Oddly enough, a coin toss also decided our town's last contested election for mayor 40 years ago. This podcast was recorded at

1 57 p.m. on Friday, November 22nd. Even after next week's automatic recount, the outcome of this election is unlikely to change. But something else has probably changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show. That is not the first election I've heard of where they get decided by like a coin toss or pulling a name out of a hat.

That's how we decide all the chores and decisions in our house. Tossing coins. That's too much work. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Capitol Hill. I'm Franco Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. TGIF, we have officially survived what we believe is the end of the public phase of the impeachment investigation.

What a week. It's unbelievable. This was really a historic and monumental week. So we're going to take this podcast to maybe take a step back and take a look at the week that was. I'd be curious to hear about what y'all think were your biggest takeaways or the moment or the big idea that you have as we come to what we think is the end of one phase and potentially the beginning of the next phase in the House Judiciary Committee. Yeah, so I found it fascinating that at the beginning of all this controversy going back as far as President Trump running for office, there was talk of Russia interfering in the election. And here we are, one of the final witnesses

yesterday, Fiona Hill, came in strong with the panel and said some of you are trying to push this debunk theory that Ukraine was involved in the 2016 elections. And I'm here to tell you, you have it all wrong. It was Russia. I think that, you know, what we're seeing here as a result of all of these narratives, as this is exactly what the Russian government was hoping for. If they see misinformation, they see doubt, they have everybody questioning the legitimacy of a presidential candidate, be it President Trump or potentially a President Clinton, that they would pit one side of our electorate against the other, that they would pit one party against the other. And I thought that was pretty direct and strong testimony she delivered yesterday,

kind of as a final note. It seems like for the Democrats, an appropriate note to end on that Russia did play this role in 2016. Fiona Hill, of course, being a former national security advisor who was a top official on Russia who left in late summer of 2019. Right. And also, it's crazy to me that at this point, after the 2016 elections, we are still having this conversation or debate over whether Russia meddling was real and it was intended to help Donald Trump get reelected. It is still a point of political contention, though it's certainly not a point of contention in the intelligence community.

But, you know, Fiona Hill never backed down, though. She was so strong and consistent with her message that I think it really was very effective, and I think it really put Republicans on their heels. And as I told the committee last month, I refuse to be part of an effort to legitimize an alternate narrative that the Ukrainian government is a U.S. adversary and that Ukraine, not Russia, attacked us in 2016. These fictions are harmful, even if they're deployed for purely domestic political purposes. You can see why Democrats initially planned for her to be their last witness.

They added David Holmes, who was an official over at the Ukraine embassy, but he was a late add to that schedule. She was supposed to be the standalone solo witness as their final day. Domenico, what about you? What about sort of the week that was that do you think is sort of has any lasting impact or takeaway? Look, I think, you know, Gordon Sondland was the person we were all waiting to hear from. And I think I heard you say on one of our broadcasts, Gordon Sondland, Gordon Sondland, Gordon Sondland. And I completely agree with you because he did come and deliver because he had changed his testimony a couple times. And he admitted, you know, that there

was a quid pro quo. And we should say Gordon Sondland is Donald Trump's ambassador to the EU. Was there a quid pro quo? As I testified previously, with regard to the requested White House call and the White House meeting, the answer is yes. Now, at least for a meeting with President Trump and Zelensky, Republicans, of course, are latching on to the fact that he said that he didn't hear directly from the president that there was anything he wanted for military aid. That's a really important distinction, right? Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, look, at this point, Republicans can still say, you know, that there's nobody who's come forward to say that

President Trump told me directly and personally, I heard from him firsthand to say that he wanted to withhold aid in exchange for these favors. Yeah, that was the criticism. You know, we were getting, some of us White House reporters were getting, you know, moment by moment emails from the White House, from their staff. They called it from their rapid response team. And those were the headlines, you know, just time and time again, that that the facts that Sondland was providing and other witnesses was based on presumption and hearsay and even guesses. So that was something certainly the White House was latching on to. Well, Sondland also his point that like and other, you know, Fiona Hill references to that it was a realization from hearing his testimony about how like there wasn't a regular channel. He didn't think he was operating outside the chain of command. He thought he was reporting directly up through it.

Yeah, I mean, he said, how can we be in a regular channel if we're being directed by the top people? He said this was, everyone was in the loop. He said that repeatedly. Everyone was in the loop from the president to the vice president to the secretary of state to the chief of staff. He went on and on about them. I'm not sure how someone could characterize something as an irregular channel when you're talking to the President of the United States, the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, the Chief of Staff of the White House, the Secretary of Energy. I don't know how that's irregular. If a bunch of folks that are not in that channel are aggrieved for some reason for not being

included, I don't know how they can consider us to be the irregular channel and they to be the regular channel when it's the leadership that makes the decisions. Now, what's irregular doesn't necessarily mean it's not official, right? I mean, the fact is, this is weird. It's not the way that business has been done in prior years. And Fiona Hill had said, look, we didn't know that official policy was changing at all, and that these two channels diverged. So you call it irregular, call it regular. It was clearly the official channel, as Special Envoy Kurt Volker had testified to, but it was also irregular. Yeah, and what Fiona Hill said, just adding to that, is Fiona Hill said there was the national security security channel and then there was a political channel. Because he was being involved in a domestic political errand.

And we were being involved in national security foreign policy. And those two things had just diverged. So he was correct. And I had not put my finger on that at the moment. But I was irritated with him and angry with him that he wasn't fully coordinating. I think when I cover weeks like this, I mean, these are the moments when you're covering something where you know you're covering history. Like these are the stories for the history books. And I think about what will be the images or the moments that matter.

And for me, I really think that that was the testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, partly for the image of seeing someone in full military dress, a purple heart, Iraq war veteran, essentially an active duty soldier testifying against the commander in chief. That was still a pretty provocative, both visual moment and then to the substance of it. I mean, he was the one that most directly refuted the president's assertion that this was a, quote, perfect call. It was a perfect call. Nothing went wrong. And him saying it was improper. And not only was it improper, but the second he heard it, he knew he would have to report it. I was concerned by the call. What I heard was inappropriate. And I reported my concerns to Mr. Eisenberg. It is improper for the president of the United States to demand a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen

and a political opponent. And that, I think, is a moment that will stick and an image that will stick well past this week. Yeah, and another moment that I found very striking was when Vindman was closing his opening remarks. He had this message for his father, who escaped the Soviet with him and his two brothers, and he wanted to tell his father, I'll be fine, I'm going to tell the truth.

Dad, I'm sitting here today in the U.S. Capitol talking to our elected professionals, talking to our elected professionals is proof that you made the right decision 40 years ago to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America in search of a better life for our family. Do not worry. I will be fine for telling the truth. That was the one that hit me as well. I mean, I don't think there was enough discussion about it, how he just, you know, directed to his dad and he just said, me being here, because if in the Soviet Union, he said he would be killed. Me being here means that you fought, my dad, made the right decision.

You know, the thing about that too, that really struck me was how many people this week were immigrants and talked about how proud they were of where they came from, but how much prouder they are to be Americans and didn't want their loyalty questioned. I mean, I think that that really resonates with a lot of people, considering that all of us come from somewhere ancestrally, you know, some of us a little more closely than others. I'm first generation. And I think that it's one of those things where you hear people start to sort of question Vindman's loyalty to the country. And it is striking to see how many people stood up to say that they're proud to be Americans, even though they may closely come from somewhere else. I thought it was very striking,

too. I talked to a freshman Democrat from Pennsylvania, Susan Wild, and she said that it was Vindman's testimony that put her over the edge and solidified her vote earlier to proceed in this impeachment inquiry. It was a difficult decision for her. She turned her district blue. And so it may have been a turning point for a few folks watching. I think that's a really good point politically, because if you look back to how this all began, part of what triggered the House Democrats saying they supported the investigation was the support of freshman Democrats with these military and national security backgrounds. And they are, I've talked to similar freshmen and lawmakers with those backgrounds that said that they, one, because they relate to Vindman through his service, that his testimony was particularly impactful in shaping the way they view these proceedings going forward. What really struck me is about, you know, we all saw and we all heard the same set of facts, Republicans and Democrats, but both sides are

taking away something completely different. Obviously, Sondland's testimony was so strong and Democrats are calling it the most significant evidence to date, calling it a historic moment. Representative Schiff is saying it proves bribery is at the heart of the matter. Meanwhile, Republicans and President Trump are, you know, saying that Gordon Sunlin exonerated them. The White House released a statement saying that completely exonerates President Trump. At the end of the day, after that testimony, President Trump is tweeting out that if this were a prize fight, they'd stop it. It's just fascinating to me how two sides can get completely different scenarios. And also in the way and how they describe Rudy Giuliani. On Fox News, President Trump came on this morning to kind of give a recap of the testimony

with so many people questioning Rudy Giuliani's role in kind of leading this kind of alternate channel. President Trump defended him. Rudy is a great crime fighter. Rudy is the best mayor in the history of New York City. Rudy Giuliani is a very legendary figure in our country. Rudy Giuliani was really probably the second most named person in this week's testimony. All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, I want to talk about whether these hearings moved the needle at all, either in the public or on Capitol Hill. And we'll talk about what comes next. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Google.

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It's just frightening because it's fast. A new look at the country on the other side of the impeachment scandal on Rough Translation from NPR. And we're back and we're talking about whether the effect of this public phase of the hearings had any impact on how the country or how lawmakers are looking at impeachment. And NPR was out in the field recently, Domenico, and it still seems like the country's pretty divided on this. Yeah, you know, the thing is, I'm going to be curious to see what polling says that's conducted this week and next week, because our polling was in the field, we really should say, just before the first testimony and during it. So, you know, I don't know how much it really sank in for people. But what was fascinating to me because of that, looking at this big number where we asked people,

is there anything you could possibly imagine that someone could say in this testimony, in these public hearings that are happening or coming up, that you could possibly change your mind at all? And two-thirds of the country said, no. Just 30% of people said maybe. But, like, that is striking to me, just how locked in people are to say, you know, there's nothing that can really change my mind. I've got a blue shirt on. I've got a red shirt on.

It doesn't matter. Can I say, though, can I say I sometimes look at that number and have the counter thought to it, that a third of the country still not having their mind made up is still a heck of a lot of Americans who are watching. And the question to me is how engaged are they in watching this process? Or is it like the low information kind of voter who doesn't know because they're not paying attention? Yeah, I mean, 30% didn't say they don't have their mind made up. They were just saying that they maybe could change their mind if there's anything they could possibly remotely imagine that could come up in these hearings. It's a little different than saying, I'm not sure what happened with President Trump. You know what I mean? I mean, because we asked also, do you support

the inquiry or not? 50% of people said they do support the inquiry. And when we asked, are you more likely or less likely based on what you've heard to support impeachment, it was a split of 47-41. 47% said that they have moved more toward feeling like the president should be impeached. 41% saying that they're less likely to feel like the president should be impeached. And that's essentially where they start when it comes to the Democratic and Republican base. Do we think, Claudia, I mean, we've talked to a ton of lawmakers this week, and it doesn't feel like any lawmakers are struggling with where their vote's going to be on this. Exactly. Talking

to Republicans, the same theme over and over, it didn't move the needle. I'm not hearing about this in my district. It's crickets. People are bored with this issue. So yes, I'm not seeing a shift. Democrats, of course, are saying with each new layer they uncover, this is stronger evidence. We're heading stronger in this direction of impeachment. It didn't seem like we saw much of a shift. Well, we know in terms of at least the next steps, right? Adam Schiff, before they headed home for the Thanksgiving holiday, said the Intel Committee was going to take a few days and see where they're at. But we expect this to be the end of the Intel Committee's work.

And they are charged with writing a report on the findings of this phase of the investigation. And then they're going to send that over to the House Judiciary Committee. And then what? Exactly. I think there's a lot of question marks right now. What is the next step? It seems like Thanksgiving could be a quiet week unless someone like former National Security Advisor John Bolton or Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney suddenly say, or Rudy Giuliani suddenly say, I would like to come down and testify. I heard a couple of lawmakers say, I will fly down for Thanksgiving to hear that.

So unless that happens, which seems unlikely right now, then there are question marks on what judiciary does next. I spoke to judiciary members in the past few days, and they didn't seem to have a clear picture either. So it's a bit of a wait and see. And it sounds like they're going to figure that strategy out over the next few days on what's next when they come back from this Thanksgiving recess. But Franco, I'm really curious what the White House is saying, because in this next phase of engagement, the White House is going to start to get all the things they've been asking for. You know, they've attacked this process because they've said, we don't have due process. We can't have counsel there. We can't have all these things in the Intelligence Committee. And once it moves over to judiciary, they will have the right to have

those things. They can have counsel present. They can offer written testimony. They can ask for certain witnesses. And I don't know if they think it's smarter to continue to sort of blockade the process or start to engage. You know, I asked the White House that question this morning. I've not heard back yet, but it certainly looks like President Trump is already looking past that step to when this could possibly go to the Senate. I mean, in that same interview on Fox News, he was talking about wanting a Senate trial. I mean, he literally said, I want a trial. And he's already, because of those reasons that you just point out, because he says that they didn't have due process and they want to be able to call their own witnesses. And he listed some of the witnesses that he wants to call, that he feels should be called.

They include the whistleblower, Hunter Biden, and he also wants to call Representative Schiff, who he accuses of lying about the call that he had with the president of Ukraine. Well, there's only one person I want more than Where's Hunter, and that is Adam Schiff. I want to put that guy with his way. What's your first question for Adam Schiff? I almost said something that might have been slightly controversial. I didn't just say I'm learning. See that, Steve? I'm learning. It seems as sure a sign as any that he's going to be impeached, that senators are already preparing for trial. Yes. And so I heard about that recently in recent days. Republicans have been meeting with

White House officials. I learned yesterday there was a meeting at the White House with the general counsel as well as advisors, including Kellyanne Conway and Jared Kushner and Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney. And they went over the strategy of what a Senate trial could look like. Lindsey Graham spoke to me about it for some time in terms of what that outlook would be. He signaled that the hope would be it's a short deal. It's two weeks. And perhaps Democrats would favor that as well with some of their candidates in the Senate running for president and hoping that this doesn't run into their election work and in running for that office. And hopefully it'll be a predictable process, if you will. But if you start calling witnesses, Graham warned, then it's going to drag into weeks and weeks and weeks. And he thinks nobody wants that in the end.

And as we well know, six of those 100 jurors are running for president and would much rather be in Iowa in the month of January than stuck in their seats in the Senate. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll do Can't Let It Go. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Aspen Snowmass, dedicated to meaningful action on climate change. For over 20 years, Aspen Snowmass has implemented large-scale solutions, from generating clean power to wielding it. They installed the first solar array in the ski industry, the first LEED-certified building, and currently operate the only coal mine methane-to- energy plant in the country. Learn more about what Aspen Snowmass is doing to combat

climate change at giveaflake.com. As the impeachment clock is ticking in the United States, Ukraine is in a race to fix a broken system before time runs out. It's just frightening because it's fast. A new look at the country on the other side of the impeachment scandal on Rough Translation from NPR. And we're back and it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the thing from the week that we can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. And I'm already starting to giggle just thinking about my click. I am too. I know what it is. I think everyone's going to know what it is.

The thing I can't let go this week is a little something that's been called fart gate. What? If you are not a person of the Internet, you may not know this. But on Monday night, Eric Swalwell, a Democrat from California, frequent presence on cable news, made an appearance on MSNBC's Chris Matthews hardball. And in the middle of a talking point, this happened. The evidence is uncontradicted that the president used taxpayer dollars to ask the Ukrainians to help him cheat in elections. It's funny every time I hear it. It is. It doesn't get old.

Clearly sounds like he farted live on television. And the internet lost its mind. And I think we finally discovered this week the one thing that can bring Washington together. Because Republicans are laughing. Democrats are laughing. It was this, like, very hilarious thing. Eric Swalwell immediately denies it, says it wasn't him. People are calling him a liar.

And Hardball puts out a statement that says the cause of the noise was not Eric Swalwell. It was the sound of the Hardball mug sliding across Chris Matthews desk. Yeah. Do we believe this? Wrong. Well, cover story. Cover up. There's a cover up here. I don't know. I mean, look, number one, I don't think it was Swalwell, so let's just

put it there. I agree with that. I agree with that, too. So the source of the material was somewhere on the MSNBC side of things. And Domenico, you're a good source on this. In the Fargate investigation, you're a fact witness as a former NBC employee. It's hearsay, but it's important hearsay.

Yeah, I will just say as someone who has sat at that table, if someone were to drag a mug across the table, there's nothing to keep the sound out because it's a kind of hard plastic glass table and it can make sort of a jumpy, loud noise. So anyway, I'm just going to put that there. I don't know where else to go with it, but it doesn't sound like it was from the Swalwell side. Sitting in front of me, I have two mugs, one empty, one with water,

because we don't know what was in the mug. I'm going to move the mic down for a second and just slide the mug. I haven't done this yet, so I don't actually know. I was going to do it in real time so we could live it together to see if these mugs make anything, anything replicating a fart noise. This is the one with water. This is the empty one. No. Conclusive. This is totally unscientific. We do have, we should just play it to let the audience, if we report, you decide. We have a slowed down sound of it to see if you can decide what you think the source of the sound is.

Just to ask the Ukrainians to help achieve. That sounds like sliding. No. So you believe hardball? Now I kind of do. I didn't at first. The sped up version doesn't sound like sliding. No.

But that sounds more like sliding. I thought there was a little bit too much of a crescendo. Yes, exactly. I think there's a list of suspects over there. There's a cover up. Somebody did this. And I guess we'll never know who did. Send me your tips.

Find out who's on the grassy knoll. Franco, what can't you let go this week? Well, I guess I have another kind of light moment in this week of very tense testimony. I want to talk about a woman who takes a big chug of her coffee in the middle of Colonel Alexander Vindman's testimony. She has this giant cup. She tilts her head back way back, like 90 degrees to get kind got that last sip. And as you can imagine, it caught fire. People are tweeting, that mysterious woman chugging her coffee is more interesting than the testimony. Hilarious. And then someone tweeted, that woman

drinking coffee is all of us. And it just blew my mind. And I must say, I'm a little bit biased because she is a former colleague and she's a great person. She is. Emma Dumaine is the reporter. She did an interview with Slate about it. And she joked that, you know, she's just a working mom trying to cover this like the rest of us. And I will say, as a member of the Congressional Press Corps, a lot of working moms up there, a lot of people right now with young babies. And the part I liked about it was when she turned the cup upside down, that it went like full bottom to the ceiling. You know, like when you're trying to get your last sit up out, she went like full head tilt back like like praying there was more coffee in the bottom of that cup seriously goodness Domenico what can't you let go this week I can't

let go of a picture that was taken of the president's notebook for the notes that he took for what he wanted to say after and during Gordon Sondland's testimony when Sondland said, as Republicans have latched onto, that he did not get an explicit directive from the president about whether aid was going to be withheld and what he wanted from it. And the president has, in all caps, in sharpie, I've never seen these kinds of notes before, I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. Ready? You have the cameras rolling? I want nothing. That's what I want from Ukraine. That's what I said. I want nothing. I said it twice. So here's my answer. I want nothing.

I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. And it goes on this way for, you know, a very small notepad with White House letterhead on it. And this just caught the Internet by storm and people were tweeting about it, making all kinds of memes. I don't know if you guys saw that. I want nothing. I want nothing. I want no quid pro quo. I like that he had to write down no quid pro quo as a talking point, as in like he doesn't remember that. Just to emphasize. Just to emphasize. Claudia, what can't you let go this week?

Well, what I can't let go of this week is something that is equivalent to a terrible nightmare for me, which was the discovery this week by our editor, Eric McDaniel, that we have a new neighbor in the NPR politics area, a mouse. The mouse was in a garbage can, and then it crawled out of the garbage can. Oh, my goodness. And they couldn't trap it. We got a lot of great name suggestions for this mouse. That was the highlight for me anyways. One of the names was Domenico Musonaro.

Oh, that's good. That was the highlight for me anyways. One of the names was Domenico Musonaro. Oh, that's good. Another top running name was Whiskerblower. Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, that's a great one. Oh, I get it. Yeah, Anonymous. Anonymous. Anonymous.

I don't know if they want Anonymous to testify. We'll see later. Burismouse. Burismouse. Burismouse. I thought you just said Burisma. Just Burisma. Burismaus. I can barely get it out. The others were Asmaus Khalid, Steve Insqueak, and Mary Lucchese Kelly. I think the running name we've been using for it is Impeachmouse Impeach Mouse. I think that's perfect. It's a little, it's simple. It's simple. It's classic. It's simple.

It's NPR. Yeah. This begins the beginning of the public phase of the Mousegate investigation. We will keep you updated as facts warn. Alright, that's a wrap for today. Our executive producer is Shirley Henry. Our editors are Mathoni

Mottori 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. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Capitol Hill.

I'm Franco Ordonez. I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.