The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: May 22nd, 2020

Episode Date: May 22, 2020

In an at-times tense exchange on the radio show Breakfast Club, former Vice President Joe Biden said, "If you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump, then you ain't black." The comments drew widespread criticism.Plus, China moves to exert more control over Hong Kong causing more tension with the United States.This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, reporter Juana Summers, editor & correspondent Ron Elving, Congressional correspondent Kelsey Snell, and chief economic correspondent Scott Horsley.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 stationLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Coral from Falls Church, Virginia. I just helped my brother get connected to a video call with Tam's son so they can play Battleship, while Tam is recording today's podcast. This podcast was recorded at 2.08 p.m. on Friday, the 22nd of May. Things may have changed by the time you hear this, and someone's battleship will be sunk. Okay, here's the show. Aww. Hey there, it's the morning. The Breakfast Club. Vice President Biden, how are you today? Good. Good to see you.

Biden said something that is causing a lot of controversy, to say the least. Juana, can you set this up by telling us about The Breakfast Club? Yeah. So to kind of set the scene here, the Breakfast Club has been around since about 2010. It's a nationally syndicated show. And if you watch it, you know that it's the kind of show that's built to generate viral moments like this one. They do a lot of interviews with big hip hop heavyweights and other pop culture figures. And during the course of the 2020 campaign, it became a must stop for Democratic presidential candidates and big name Democrats. They don't leave any question off the table. They spare no punches whatsoever. And I think you saw that today. This, this remark came towards the end of the interview. And I want to say it wasn't in response to a question, but it was when there was a little bit of back and forth when Charlamagne, who's probably the show's most well known host, was trying to get into it with former Vice President Joe Biden about whether he would indeed name a Black woman as his running mate. And Black people saved your political life in the primaries this year. They have things they want from you. And one of them is a Black woman

running mate. What do you say to them? And you can hear an aide saying, you know, hey, we've got it. We got to wrap this up. Thank you so much. That's really our time. I apologize. And so they got into a little bit of back and forth. Charlemagne says, you know, that he's got to come back and see him. And then there's this. Listen, you got to come see us when you come to New York, VP Biden. I will.

It's a long way until November. We got more questions. You got more questions. I tell it if you have a problem figuring out whether you're for me or Trump and you ain't black. It don't have nothing to do with Trump. It has to do with the fact I want something for my community. I would love to see my record, man. In a way, it sounds like he's kind of taking the black vote for granted or like, you know, I'm running against Trump. Like, what are you going to do? Yeah. So as you might imagine, this has sparked a lot of outrage, particularly online.

The tone of some of it is essentially that people, Black people, are uncomfortable. And I'd say rightfully so that Joe Biden seemingly in that moment is coming out to be the arbiter of who and what is Black and what isn't Black. A lot of people are calling it a gaffe. Other folks are concerned that it may indeed offend the very young black voters that former Vice President Biden would want to turn and vote for him in November. And he did not do as well in that group as other candidates, most notably Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. You know, maybe he thought he was being funny on some level, but you don't have to

be young and black to be offended by hearing what he said. You don't have to be anything in particular to be offended by the idea that someone is saying your vote is determined by your race, whether you're going to vote is determined by your race or for whom you vote is determined by your race. Just a terrible thing to say. And he's got to figure out some way to walk it back more effectively than just saying it was in jest. I do think that former Vice President Biden, as we know, who's someone who has a lot of familiarity with the Black community, he talks about it a lot, his deep relationships and ties in the community, dating even further back than his eight years as the Vice President to the nation's first Black president. And so I think for some, you know, he's making a joke, as advisors suggested, Simone Sanders, his senior advisor saying that today.

But I think that the concern is there that he's speaking about people who aren't of himself. I think that Joe Biden knows that Black voters are what delivered him a victory in South Carolina and set him on a path to be the party's presumptive nominee when that day comes. But it's certainly an artful statement, to say the least, and I think has a lot of people scratching their heads. Well, and the Trump campaign pounced on this fast. They were retweeting clips of the video, helping to make it go viral. And then they held a call with Katrina Pearson, who is a top aide on the campaign, and South Carolina Senator Tim Scott. And he said this. I was struck by the condescension and the arrogance in his comments, I could not believe my ears that he

would stoop so low to tell folks what they should do, how they should think, and what it means to be Black. That is as arrogant and offensive and demeaning as I can imagine in this time that we're living. The Trump campaign has made some efforts and certainly has talked about its efforts to win over Black voters. But for the Trump campaign, something like this could benefit them even if they don't convince people to vote for Trump, if they just decide that they're not that excited about Joe Biden. It's generally speaking easier to get American voters not to vote for a candidate that they're not enthusiastic about than it is to get them to vote for another candidate they're not enthusiastic about. And if all you're trying to do is get Americans not to vote, that's just about the easiest thing that any political movement can

try to achieve. This is not a country that is particularly distinguished by high turnout rates of voting. And certainly it was not particularly appealing to a lot of younger black people to vote for Hillary Clinton, particularly young black males in 2016. So if you were looking for a way to step in it, this would be just about as good a way as you could do it on a Friday. This is also a day in which one might think there would be a lot of things that Joe Biden could talk about. That would be vulnerabilities for the Trump presidency. The numbers that we saw on how many people may have died unnecessarily because of the slow movement to respond to the coronavirus. So this is it's one of those things that makes

people wonder about what's going on with Joe Biden. Yeah, you know, I think for some folks out there, this certainly exposed some of the wounds that Democrats have dating back to the last election, when many black leaders felt that the party took black voters who reliably vote for Democrats up and down the ballot for granted. And I think that's one of the reasons why you saw such immediate pushback from activists, as well as, you know, rank and file Democrats who are concerned about seeing the same thing happen again. We know in 2016 that Black voters turned out, but they did not turn out anywhere near the record numbers that they did for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012 during

his two campaigns. And so I think that these Black voters are wanting to see the party take them and their issues seriously and recognize their importance. A lot of folks that I've been talking to over the last few weeks and months about this campaign say relationships are not enough. They want a seat at the table and they want to be heard and valued and to see Biden center the issues of Black Americans in his campaign. All right. Well, Ron and Juana, we are going to let you go. Thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Tam. Good to be with you. And after we taped this podcast, Joe Biden tried to walk back or clarify his statements on The Breakfast Club, saying in part that he should not have been so cavalier and wants to earn the votes of African-Americans. And we are going to

take a quick break. And when we get back, China. Support for NPR and the following message come from DuckDuckGo. Do you want the same internet but more privacy? DuckDuckGo can help. They help millions of people like you get privacy online without any trade-offs with one download you can search and browse privately avoiding trackers duck duck go privacy simplified on bullseye this week tina fay on creating unbreakable kimmy schmidt 30 rock and being the best everything. There was a window of time when we would just go to awards things and pick up our prizes and party with the people from Mad Men. That's this week on Bullseye from MaximumFun.org and NPR.

And we're back. And I have a whole new crew here with me, Kelsey Snell and Scott Horsley. Hey, guys. Good to be with you. Hello. So we are going to turn to some international news here that has political implications here in the U.S. China is making moves to tighten its grip on Hong Kong by pushing forward with a law that would allow China to crack

down on protesters or really anything that is critical towards Beijing. That's right and the U.S. and really the rest of the world have reacted very strongly to this because back in 1997, when the former British colony of Hong Kong reverted to China, Beijing promised that they would allow Hong Kong to maintain a semi-autonomous status. It would maintain some independence, some semblance of democracy, a sort of gentleman's agreement that's been enshrined in China as the one country, two systems notion. And that was supposed to remain in place at least until 2047. So this is seen as Beijing backsliding on the commitment it made back in the late 90s. Let me just check my clock here. 2047 is a long way away.

It is. So, Scott, this is a pretty quick acceleration. Does this mean that this would be a complete end to the one country, two system? Well, our Beijing correspondent, Emily Fang, described this as effectively an end to that in practice. They're not calling it that. They're not overtly saying that they're rejecting that. But as a practical matter, that's how she describes it. And certainly that's how the world is treating this. Right before coronavirus sort of took over everything, there were massive protests in Hong Kong against other moves by China to try to gain more control over Hong Kong.

So, like, what is the international community going to do about it? Good question. Well, there's already been a lot of grousing. For one thing, the United States has said it may strip Hong Kong of the special economic status it enjoys by virtue of being quasi-independent from the mainland. That's a law that Congress actually passed last year, which says that the State Department has to certify that Hong Kong continues to be autonomous or it's going to lose all sorts of special economic privileges that Hong Kong has enjoyed. So that's one thing it could do.

There's also talk of sanctioning Chinese officials that are involved in this. Kelsey, there's been a lot of noise on Capitol Hill about steps that the U.S. might take. And then certainly the broader international was looking through the details of that bill that you mentioned. It's called the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act. And it was approved with near unanimous support last year from Congress. And it was in response to these pro-democracy movements that were happening in Hong Kong at the time. And we actually just saw yesterday that the Senate passed a unanimous consent. So they didn't even bother holding a vote. They had unanimous support for legislation that could force Chinese companies off of U.S. stock exchanges. Now, this was before all of the movement from China. But the idea is that they would delist companies that refuse to get an audit that is subject to U.S. accounting and oversight.

And so far, the accounting firms that Chinese companies use have refused that kind of oversight. But this is an opportunity for Congress to push back on China. They don't have to mention the human rights issue. They don't have to mention any of the other political issues that are swirling around China right now. There is already anxiety in Congress about the relationship with China. Yeah, I mean, this is going to be another irritant in relations already anxiety in Congress about the relationship with China.

Yeah, I mean, this is going to be another irritant in relations that were already polarized because of what we've seen with the coronavirus pandemic. Now, there's lots of fingers being pointed at China, both legitimately for things that they did or didn't do when the coronavirus began to take hold in that country. There's also probably some scapegoating going on as kind of a distraction from the missteps of our own government here. And that's become kind of a partisan football where you had, I think, Republicans backing the president being more outspoken in their criticism of China. But now with this, with this Hong Kong move, you're also going to see a lot of Democrats piling on and being very critical of China as well. You know, what's happening here is this is an election year strategy for President Trump to push as much blame onto China as possible to say for coronavirus, to say that he is tough on

China and that Joe Biden would be weak on China. I mean, last week, the Trump campaign rolled out a bunch of ads in swing states aimed at sort of making Joe Biden into this this figure who would be weak on China, who wouldn't stand up to them. And polling shows that overwhelmingly the public is not happy with China right now, the American public. So having China out there as sort of a boogeyman works for President Trump politically, or at least his campaign sure hopes it will. But this on Hong Kong could lead to a more bipartisan moment of pushback on China. It's also going to be interesting to see how the administration handles this, because even before the coronavirus, there were certainly factions within the administration that really wanted to disentangle the U.S. economy from China, really wanted to separate ourselves. Peter Navarro, the economic advisor, trade advisor, Matt Pottinger and the National Security Council, those voices have been very, taken a very hard

line to China all along. There have been other voices, like the Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and Larry Kudlow, another economic advisor who said, look, this is the world's second biggest economy. It's a major trading partner. We don't want to get too much at odds with China. Of course, the president has touted or was touting that big trade agreement or phase one trade agreement he struck with China earlier in the year as an accomplishment before all this happened. And the president himself has kind of waffled between touting his own friendship and cooperation with Chinese President Xi Jinping and taking a more aggressive stand on things like the coronavirus. So, you know, where the president comes down on any given day is kind of a mystery. Yeah, I mean, this is sort of this fascinating

thing that I haven't quite figured out how to square, which is that the president at times has, you know, wanted to be friendly with Xi and actually didn't speak out as strongly in favor of protesters in Hong Kong, for instance, you know, before coronavirus, in part because they were trying to get this trade deal. But now you have the president and his campaign running on this idea that he is tough on China, which may make him more likely to side with Hong Kong this time. Isn't this kind of a classic tension, though, the struggle that U.S. presidents and congresses have faced over time has been how strong they should be against China

and how interdependent they should become with China, right, Scott? Sure, because China is such an economic powerhouse. It's such a geostrategic player. And of his own accord, I don't think that President Trump would be particularly concerned about an authoritarian crackdown in Hong Kong by Beijing. I mean, he has not— He praises the strongmen at times. authoritarian moves by other world leaders. But in the current environment and in the political situation he finds himself, he may be more outspoken than he would otherwise be. All right. Well, we are going to leave it there. We're going to take a quick break.

And when we get back, it is time for Can't Let It Go. Support for this podcast and the following message come from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, developing solutions to support strong families and communities to help ensure a brighter future for America's children. More information is available at aecf.org. A rabbi, an Arab, and a comedian, all with COVID-19, walk into a luxury hotel. There was a Zumba class, old, young, religious, secular, Arab, Jewish.

I was like, where am I? It's the Hotel Corona on NPR's Rough Translation. And we're back and it is time to end the show the way we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show

where we talk about the things that we can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. And we've been asking our listeners to send us what they can't stop thinking about politics or otherwise. And we've been asking our listeners to send us what they can't let go of. And this week's comes from Tatiana. Hi, this is Tatiana from San Francisco. I'm currently quarantining with my husband and something I cannot let go of in this quarantine is how my husband refers to podcast. For example, this is how he refers to the npr politics podcast

and this is how he refers to the up first podcast all week i've been listening to them on full blast in our house as we work from home and this has been the highlight of my week so hope you guys are staying safe and have a good new week it's awesome that's great he is multi-talented or at least one talented oh i'm glad i'm glad tatiana thinks of that as a highlight because that could easily go the other way yeah i feel like the longer he sings them the more she's gonna question whether or not it's actually charming i think it's charming right now because I don't have to listen to it every day. 100% charming. And if you out there have something next week that you can't let go of, record it and send it to us at nprpolitics at npr.org.

So Kelsey, what can you not let go of? Well, this is the time of year when lots of people are graduating. And I actually was out on a run the other day and I saw some people having a graduation in Nebraska, where Nebraska Republican Senator Ben Sasse delivered an online graduation commencement speech. He did this eight-minute speech, and it was one of the weirdest things I have seen on the internet. Wow. Congratulations, graduates. This is a big moment. Not on graduating high school, but on making the journey down the stairs from your bedroom to the living room and putting on something slightly more formal than sweatpants. Your grandparents are proud of you. We're all proud of you. It took a lot of effort. We want to recognize your sacrifice. He was clearly trying to be funny, but some of the things went past dad joke to just kind of bizarre. Like he was at one

point in time talking for some reason about climbing a rope in gym class? Graduates, adults don't tell you this, but once or twice a week in real world life, someone's going to ask you to climb a giant rope. No reason. Just climb the rope. Sure, every now and then the rope is a metaphor, but honestly, most of the time it's just a big rope. Right. What do they do at the Senate gym? I don't know. And then there was a whole section about psychology majors. There will always be money to be made in psychology. Now, that's a joke. Do not, if you're headed to college, do not major in psychology.

That part's not a joke. He also told them that basically they weren't missing anything because nobody remembers their high school reunion. And for some reason, at one point in time he just said everybody named jeremy is the worst i mean so like i in some ways like i sympathize with him it's really hard to read the room when the room is just your iphone kitchen that's a good point yeah but like somebody should have vetted these jokes i i just don't even know. And I also feel like if you are a kid who's graduating by just watching this in your own kitchen, imagine what you're thinking. All right, Tam, what about you? What can't you let go of this week? that we all know would be familiar with, who are sort of national chains, have realized that in the age of social distancing with shutdowns and restaurants all over the country closed, you

know, they're having a problem. They need to be able to make money. But people generally are trying to support local restaurants. And so these two restaurants in like Grubhub and other apps have changed their branding. So what was Chuck E. Cheese, if you go to order on Grubhub, you might find pizza from Pasquale's, which sounds like a nice local Italian eatery. In fact, it is Chuck E. Cheese. And Pasquale, I don't know if you've been to Chuck E. Cheese in the last, you know, several centuries. But for a while there, Chuck E. Cheese had like this animatronic band that would perform. Oh, sure, yeah.

Oh, yeah. Do they still have those? I think it actually went away. With the rat. Yes. And, sure, yeah. Oh, yeah. Do they still have those? I think it actually went away. With the rat. Yes. And the bears. Yes. And the chef, Pasquale.

Oh. The animatronic chef is now, has a pizza eatery available on Grubhub named after him. If you were going to Chuck E. Cheese not for the ambiance, but just for the delicious pizza, this is what you're aiming for. I don't remember.

I mean, I don't have very strong memories of the Chuck E. Cheese pizza. And that probably says something, right? Like, it's just like kid food, right? But they say, Chuck E. Cheese corporate put out a statement saying that Pasquale's is higher end. It has more sauce and a thicker crust. Wait, that's what makes something high end? Scott, what can't you let go of? You know, we learned this week

that another 2.4 million Americans filed for unemployment. More than 38 million have done so since the coronavirus took hold. And I've been spending a lot of time talking with folks whose jobs have been interrupted by this pandemic. And this week,

I talked to the guy named Franklin Hessler. When he is working, he has what has to be one of the great jobs I could imagine. He's a tour guide in Yellowstone National Park. Unfortunately, that is on hold right now on the Montana side. Montana is requiring visitors to self-quarantine for two weeks. And so that kind of puts the kibosh on park tourism where Hessler is. He's been struggling a little bit. He hasn't been able to collect unemployment yet, but he told me times are hard, but not too hard. And he said he's really eager to get back to his job

as soon as the quarantine is lifted. I'm excited. I want to get into the park. This is literally the best time in Yellowstone. You get all the bison babies, little baby bears, wolves all over the place. I mean, there's a lot of action going on in Yellowstone that's being missed right now. And that conversation stuck with me because I think so many of us feel like there's action that we'd like to be a part of right now that we're missing out on in this time of suspended animation. Our friend Scott Detrow heard that conversation,

and he told me, you know, I'd really like to see some baby bison and wolves right now. So a quick reminder, though, with wolves, you do want to stay at least six feet away. Yeah. All right, that is a wrap for today. Our executive producer is Shirley Henry. Our editors are Mathani Maturi and Eric McDaniel.

Our producer is Barton Girdwood. Our production assistant is Chloe Weiner. And thanks to Lexi Schipittel, Elena Moore, Dana Farrington, and Brandon Carter. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Scott Horsley. I cover the economy. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. podcast.