The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: June 5th, 2020

Episode Date: June 5, 2020

As the country erupts in protests over police brutality and racism, two-thirds of Americans think President Trump has increased racial tensions. That poll comes as news that 2.5 million American jobs were added in May as Trump encourages the country to reopen. Plus, a look at the type of leadership Americans want in this moment.This episode: campaign correspondent Scott Detrow, campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, and editor & correspondent Ron Elving.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, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. It is 1245 Eastern on Friday, June 5th. I'm Scott Detrow, I cover the campaign. I'm Asma Khalid, I also cover the campaign. And I'm Ayesha Roscoe, I cover the White House. As protests against police violence continue throughout the country, we did wake up to a surprise. And in quite the plot twist for 2020, it was, wait for it, a positive surprise. The U.S. added jobs to the economy, two and a half million jobs. President Trump was eager to trumpet this news today. The prediction was that the unemployment rate would rise to over 20 percent and instead it dropped to around a little more than 13 percent, slight difference. And this time, the greatest comeback in American history. Today is probably, if you think of it, the greatest comeback in

American history. But it's not going to stop here. It's going to keep going. This is a big deal because economists were expecting the economy to shed more jobs in May, but actually they were created. And it's a sign that maybe the economy or that the economy seems to be bouncing back much quicker than people expected. We knew that things were opening up, but we didn't know how soon the recovery would start happening. And right now, as of what we saw in May, it looks like there is some recovery happening. But at this point, the unemployment rate is still over 13%. And I mean, that is really high.

I mean, we look back at the Great Recession and at the worst points during that financial crisis, the unemployment rate was never as high as it is today when we have the president trumpeting how wonderful the economy is right now. Yeah, it seems like this is the beginning, possibly, of a slow return to normal. And one stat that for me really clarified that, what came from Sarah Cliff in the New York Times, she's a reporter there, she pointed out a full 10% of these jobs is just dentist offices reopening. So it's just, it's not like new jobs are being created, but people are getting back to work a little bit.

And it's not clear necessarily like how much this will be sustainable and how much, like you said, with the unemployment rate being so high, how quickly that is going to come down. There are some places where things are some areas, like in addition to what you said, like with the dental offices, there are some areas like leisure and hospitality. They added some workers back, construction, education and health services. So there is something happening, but we lost a lot of jobs. And it's not clear that they're all coming back. And one stat that stood out to me was I believe there were over 2 million people who say they've lost their jobs permanently, right? And so I think a lot of us are thinking about restaurants and business is going to go back to normal,

but there are definitely people because of this pandemic whose jobs are no longer here. Yeah, and former Vice President Joe Biden is speaking to this this afternoon. Here's what he's saying. Today, like all Americans, I'm truly glad to see that two and a half million Americans have gotten their jobs back. For those families, that's a sigh of relief. For all those of us, it reminds us that resilience of the American people. To those Americans, I'm so proud of you, so happy for you and for your families.

I was disturbed, however, to see the President crowing this morning, basically hanging a mission accomplished banner out there when there's so much more work to be done. And one other thing that Vice President Biden pointed to and criticized was President Trump saying that he thought that George Floyd would be looking down on and happy about today's jobs report. Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying there's a great thing that's happening for our country. There's a great day for him. It's a great day for everybody. There's a great day for everybody. This is a great, great day in terms of equality. Yeah, I mean, that was an extremely, I mean, it was a moment that felt very off and especially because this man just died last week. He has a young daughter and black unemployment went up this month.

And even if black unemployment was low, it would not have saved his life. And so nothing has happened that would have saved George Floyd's life. So to say that he would be happy looking down, it was off-putting. And it's probably not fair to call it a recovery just yet, despite what President Trump was framing it as today at the White House. I mean, there's a long way to go, and again, a contagious virus still out there that has not been fixed yet. But, you know, we have talked a lot about just the overlapping, enormous crises the country is facing right now. And let's take a few minutes here to talk about the state of that presidential race that's taking place amidst

all of this. We got a lot of interesting data this week about this race, including a brand new poll from NPR Marist and PBS NewsHour. And a lot of it shows that Joe Biden has really opened up a substantial lead over Donald Trump in this race. I mean, what stood out to me is that, you know, we ask folks quite often about whether or not they approve or disapprove of the president. And what we saw in this latest poll is that the president is at the highest rating of being strongly disapproved in his entire presidency. I believe it was 47% who disapprove of the job he's doing. And in fact, 67% say they think that he's made racial tension worse. I mean, one of the big questions I have is,

you know, if you are a voter who is sort of on the fence about Joe Biden, you're not sure whether you're sort of on the left wing or whether you independent regardless, if you're seeing the way that the president is responding, and you do believe he's making racial tension worse, does it just make you decide to go with the alternative regardless of how you actually feel about the alternative? Yeah, Biden has a 50% to 43% lead in the head to head matchup with Trump. And something we've talked about, and we'll talk about again, is the fact that Joe Biden being at 50%, I think, is notable and makes it different than some of the leads that Hillary Clinton had over Donald Trump in 2016, because she was always kind of in the mid to lowish 40% range, showing a lot of voters were just undecided between the

two of them. Being at 50% is a big deal for Biden. And there were three national polls this week that gave him a double-digit lead over Trump and a lot of good polls coming out of swing states showing Biden ahead or very close. So it's been a good stretch for Biden. I will point out, I talked to a lot of his allies this week. They're pretty clear eyed about the fact that they do not think that this is a race that would be decided. You know, if those polls held, it would be the biggest presidential win in like decades. They don't see that. They think it's tightening. There's just a lot going on right now that's pretty particularly bad for the president. And is this really driven by independence? I know that, Asma, I know that you were out on the road this week. Like,

were you talking to some people who maybe were independents undecided? Yeah, I went to Kenosha County, Wisconsin. It's just right on the border of Illinois and Wisconsin. And part of why I went there is it's, you know, this classic swing county in a swing state of Wisconsin. And in that race in 2016, Donald Trump won the county in 2016, the first time a Republican had won in decades. And it was such a tight race. I believe he won by like less than half of 1%. And so, you know, I spent some time talking to folks and I certainly heard from both young Bernie Sanders supporters or people who had voted third party in 2016, who are really disgusted by how the president has handled the racial tension in this country, how he's been a leader they, or not a leader since the killing of George Floyd. And then I also did talk to some independents. And I think, you know, again, one of the key

questions that I find keep coming up again and again is people are not particularly satisfied with the president's leadership in this moment, but they are not thrilled with the alternative being Joe Biden. And I asked one guy who I met, he told me he voted third party in 2016. And I asked him, you know, okay, if you don't like President Trump, and the alternative is Joe Biden, and you want to get him out, will you just go with Joe Biden? And he paused and he said, you know, that's something I've been kind of wrestling with and thinking about. And I get it. And I might just have to go there and do that. And I wonder if there are more people who are beginning to feel that way about Joe Biden. But with everything that's happening there this week, there is some thought that his base seeing President Trump do this law and order, he's going to crack down on the protesters, that that might help him, right?

That is definitely a sentiment I heard amongst Republicans. You know, there was one woman I met who seemed particularly not satisfied with how the president had handled the coronavirus. She wishes he would have acted sooner. But when it came to the protests, she was really firm and said that, you know, she felt like the president was handling the rioting and the looting appropriately. And there does seem to be this distinction amongst the folks that I talked to. You know, many Republicans that I met did condemn what happened to George Floyd, you know, but in the next breath, they would defend what the president has done.

And I met with the local Republican county chair in Kenosha. Her name is Erin Decker. And I asked her, you know, what was her response when the Trump administration forcefully cleared out peaceful protesters near the White House? She said she did not know the specifics of that incident, but... You can't allow the people that have infiltrated the peaceful protests to turn it into riots and looting.

And so basically what Erin was telling me is that she feels like maybe the president had to act preemptively. All right, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to take a close look at that message that President Trump is trying to send and browse privately, avoiding trackers. DuckDuckGo. Privacy Simplified. Support also comes from SimpliSafe Home Security. SimpliSafe blankets your whole home in safety. You can set up the whole system by yourself in under an hour,

without a technician or salesperson needed on-site at your house. Get free shipping on your order, plus a 60-day risk-free trial at simplisafe.com slash NPR politics. SimpliSafe, wishing you safety and good health. Cell phone footage shows police killing unarmed Black people, protesters take to the streets, rinse and repeat for a decade. Why? Everyone moves on. A blunt reminder that we've been here before on Code Switch from NPR. We're back and we are now joined by editor and correspondent Ron Elving. Hey, Ron. Hey, good to be with you, Scott. I'm glad you're here because this is one of those

weeks, even in all of the news that has happened over the last few years, that just feels like it is just a standout week in American history, and it's hard to process in real time. But you wrote a really great piece on our website about that, about President Trump's choices he made this week, and what that means for the country, and for his political future, and for a lot of other things. So I just want to start with a sentence from that piece. You wrote, in the days ahead, the nation will need a way forward and a new sense of resolve. It will need people to show the way and provide that resolve. In short, people will need leadership. What kind of leadership does the country have right now? You know, you can't sum up a president in one incident, but sometimes a moment can epitomize

the character of one president's leadership, the strongman concept that clearly Donald Trump personifies and aspires to. And now we have that iconic photograph of the president holding up a Bible in front of a boarded up church and the juxtaposition of that with the images of the officers on horseback clearing peaceful protesters from the square so the president could walk across the square and have that photo op. Now, that's seared into many people's minds at this point. And his threatening to send U.S. troops into American cities, that set off a wave of negative reaction, even among Republicans and especially for military figures. And it seemed like this moment in particular, it was a breaking point for like, you know, Trump's former defense secretary, General James Mattis. But is this like the first time something like this has happened in U.S. history? Are there any like comparisons to other moments? You know, there have been isolated cases of troops entering cities of presidential

order. In 1992 in LA, after another case of police violence set off a violent rioting there. And in 1957 in Little Rock to provide protection for black children integrating a public school. And then there was the episode, now largely forgotten, that happened right here in Washington, D.C., back in the Great Depression and involved two generals that President Trump often praises, Douglas MacArthur and George Patton. The president was holding them up as models for the mayors of America even this past week on Twitter. And these were two of the most famous, controversial U.S. Army generals in World War II. But years before World War II, there were demonstrators who were unemployed, asking for the bonus payment they had been promised.

And MacArthur mounted up in his dress uniform and led a cavalry charge to drive them out. And George Patton was among the Army officers on horseback doing that. And even before cell phones and video, there were enough pictures and accounts of that day to seriously damage the image of the president of that time, Herbert Hoover. Yeah. I mean, just the parallels there, Ron, are striking. And you've got to wonder if the president was aware of that, given how often he praises those two men. You know, you have to step back from speculating about what the president was aware of at any given moment. But it's hard to imagine that he was really conscious of the Bonus Army story

and the routing of those men in that fashion when he was comparing MacArthur and Patton to the mayors of the United States today. It's hard to imagine that's what he was thinking of. He was thinking of them as great commanders, of course, and that's the image, that's the model of leadership that he likes to think of himself emulating. So, Ron, I actually want to switch to a contemporary general, General Mattis, who Ayesha mentioned really spoke out against the president this week. This is someone who is held in such high regard by the military from his time as a Marine general, from his time as Secretary of Defense. It was clear before that he had disagreements with President Trump, but he made a point not to air them publicly.

And then this week, he issued a pretty remarkable statement. He said that that moment in the park violated constitutional rights. He also wrote, Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people, does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us. I wonder what you made of that statement and how much of an effect you think that may or may not have. I suppose I was as stunned by it as everyone else was. It speaks to the essence of the moment and the heart of the question, what kind of leader does America want? We suddenly have books being published, two just in the past week, describing the United States under Trump as being on the brink of being an autocracy rather than a democracy. And those books are written by journalists, people that have been observers of the president, but so different, of course, to get this statement from James Mattis, the

president's own first secretary of defense, denouncing his leadership. And he was far from alone. There were several other formerly high-ranking generals and former national security officials also weighing in, especially a powerful piece written by John Allen in Foreign Policy Magazine. Allen is a retired four-star Marine general. And he said the events of June 1st that we've been describing could mark the beginning of the end for American democracy. Wow. Wow. Asma, part of, you know, the theory of the case for Joe Biden is this idea that he's going to offer a different type of leadership than Trump. Do you have any sense of whether that's, you know, resonating with voters? In my reporting out this week in Wisconsin, I think what's resonating more than anything has been the disgust that some voters have with President Trump's leadership. You know, I heard that again and again from voters who felt like

he was dividing the country. They felt like he was coming out against peaceful protesters. I think the challenge is that, you know, Joe Biden, his leadership argument is largely about empathy and unity. And these are very, you know, sort of noble messages, particularly in this moment. But one thing I've heard from some folks, including Democrats, is this idea that they're just not feeling like they're hearing or seeing enough of Joe Biden. Now, this is a criticism that obviously his campaign takes issue with. They say that he is giving speeches. They're not being covered enough. But regardless, I think the issue is voters are saying to me that they don't feel like they're seeing or hearing enough from

him. And not just in this moment around race and protests, but even prior to that, around the coronavirus pandemic, there was one woman I met. Her name is Wendy Schenke. And she told me that she considers herself an independent. She doesn't care for how, her name is Wendy Shanky. And she told me that she considers herself an independent. She doesn't care for how President Trump talks, how he tweets. She had voted for President Obama, but then just said she isn't so sure that she's going to land on Joe Biden. You know, I voted for President Obama. You know, I liked what he had to say. You know, Joe Biden was right underneath him. Will I go that way? Not sure. What gives you pause about him? I don't know. I don't think he's been out there enough speaking. you know, Joe Biden was right underneath him. Will I go that way? I'm not sure. What gives you pause about him? I don't know. I don't think he's been out there enough speaking.

You know, I saw him a couple times this past week because of everything going on. But I feel, let's not wait for something to happen to be out there. He still needs to make his case, right? I mean, in theory, or are people, are voters just so turned off by the leadership that they're seeing on the other side? And that's something that they didn't see in 2016. Like now voters will tell me, I have seen Trump govern, or in their case, some of them think he's not really governing appropriately, but they've seen him in action for a couple of years. And I think one of the

questions that we just consistently don't know is despite, you know, the fact that Biden hasn't really been crisscrossing the country campaigning in person places, his poll numbers still look pretty good. And some of that could be tied to the fact that voters are turned off by the leadership style they're seeing from President Trump. So in some sense, it makes a certain strategic sense for the Biden people to have been okay with him being less visible during a period of time when President Trump is struggling with the huge problems that the country has at this moment. On the other hand, the people who support President Trump see him contending with those problems. They see him doing something, and no one is seeing Joe Biden do much at this point. So while there's some advantage in keeping the focus on the president,

it also just tends to emphasize, once again, that big split between the people who see the president as the strong leader he sees himself as and those people who see him making all of these things worse. And Ron, that's a point that the Biden campaign has been making itself in recent weeks, especially during the coronavirus handling from the White House. All right. Well, Ron, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Scott. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to take a moment to reflect on everything

that's happened this week. It feels like nothing in the news these days makes any sense. So Hassan Minhaj turned to his father and his faith for answers. He said, don't worry

about the number of questions. Just worry about which questions become more clear and solidified. Comedian Hassan Minhaj on how his spirituality is getting him through. Listen and subscribe to It's Been a Minute from NPR. And we're back and it's Friday. And normally we would end the week by talking about the things we can't let go of, the things that make us laugh or smile. But we were all

talking about it. And that just didn't really feel like the right thing to do this week. So instead, Asma, why don't you tell us about one moment that stuck with you throughout the week from that reporting trip you made in Wisconsin? Yeah, the other day when I was in Wisconsin, I attended this rally in memory of George Floyd. And hundreds of people were there. They packed this park, and everyone knelt for nine minutes. It was in memory of the fact that an officer had put his knee on George Floyd's neck for nine minutes. And for every minute that they knelt, they would all chant something together. And for the first full minute, one of the organizers would say, I can't. And you'd hear the entire crowd of people say back, breathe. And, you know, what struck me was that a minute

doesn't always seem like a lot of time. I feel like a minute in your day-to-day life feels like sometimes it just flies by. But when you heard this crowd of people chanting, I can't breathe, I can't breathe repeatedly, it just struck me of how long that time felt and how could an officer kneel on somebody's neck for nine minutes hearing protests of the fact that the person couldn't breathe and just continue to do that. I can! breathe! Breathe! Breathe! Breathe! Breathe! Breathe! Breathe! Breathe! Breathe! Breathe! Breathe! It is incredible to think that that was just one minute. And those people, I mean, it was hard for them to even keep that was just one minute and those people I mean it was hard for them to even keep that up for one minute and what we're talking about is nine minutes and ultimately someone's death um and so that's what this week and the that's what the yeah that's what that's what the, yeah, that's what, that's what this week has been about and the pain that people feel.

And, you know, my, the bishop at my church said something. If you do not listen to people's pain, they will make you feel their pain. And, and that is what people are feeling.

Yeah. Thank you for listening. We'll be back next week.