The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: May 8th, 2020

Episode Date: May 8, 2020

After months of wrangling following the Russia probe, prosecutors will not go ahead with the case against Michael Flynn based on the former national security adviser's false statements to the FBI. And U.S. employers shed a record number of jobs in April, as the unemployment rate climbed to the highest since the Great Depression.This episode: campaign correspondent Asma Khalid, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson.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

Hey there, it's Tamara Keith. We're trying to figure out who listens to the show and what you're looking for from our podcast. So we've put together a quick anonymous survey at npr.org slash podcast survey. If you could go ahead and hit pause and take it right now, it would be a big help. One warning, they don't ask you about the politics podcast until like the third screen, but it's totally worth it and we really appreciate it. I'll wait a few seconds for you to go over there. All right, here's the show. Hi, this is Madison. I'm a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, and I just submitted my last paper of college. Even though my graduation will be virtual, I can't wait to celebrate with my family and hopefully my friends too once everything gets back to normal. This podcast was recorded at 1 24 p.m. on Friday, May 8th. Things may have changed by the time you

hear this, but I'll still be done with my undergraduate degree. Here's the show. Yay. I remember that feeling. That was a good feeling. That's awesome. Congrats. Though I'm sure it'll feel so strange though right now, right? I can't even imagine what it feels like in this moment. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Michael Flynn lasted just 22 days as President Trump's first national security advisor, but the fallout from his tenure has stretched well into the fourth year of President Trump's administration. The Justice Department is now dropping its criminal case against Flynn, who had previously pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI

about his contacts with Russian officials. So Ryan, it has been a long time since we talked about Michael Flynn on this podcast. So why don't we just begin by having you remind us who he is and what this criminal case was about? Right. So Flynn is a former lieutenant general in the army. He once led the Defense Intelligence Agency, and he became a very vocal supporter of Donald Trump during the 2016... and went on to be his national security adviser as you mentioned for but a brief second uh... at the at the beginning of of the administration he left because officially he had lied to vice president mike pence about conversations that he had had

that's when it had with the russian ambassador uh... during the transition but ultimately uh... pleaded guiltyaded guilty to lying to the FBI about those conversations with the Russian diplomat. He cooperated with the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and was a key cooperator, really. He was one of the main people providing information to investigators during that investigation. This case, you know, was first brought by Robert Mueller. What do we know about why the DOJ decided to end this all?

So the official reasoning that the Justice Department gave in a court filing yesterday revolves around the January 2017 interview that the FBI had with Flynn. And what the Justice Department says now is that based on a thorough review of the case that was ordered by Attorney General William Barr, the thorough review dug up some new documents. There was newly declassified information. And the Justice Department says based on that information, it came to the conclusion that Flynn really never should have been interviewed. That interview never should have taken place. It was unjustified.

They say that there was no investigative basis for it. And they say that what Flynn said in that interview, even if he did lie, those lies were not material to the investigation into his activities, which, of course, is an investigation to try to determine the nature of his relationship with Russia. Ryan, the president could have achieved the same result with a pardon. What's different? What makes this so different? Well, there's no political cost to the president for having to pardon him. What this essentially is saying is this is the Justice Department saying that this prosecution was wrong, which is different than the president having to spend a political clout on pardoning Flynn. But it also, you know, this basically

dovetails with the allegations that we have heard from the president for several years now, which is that the FBI ran amok. It targeted people in the president's inner circle, targeted the president himself. And these prosecutions that are tied to Robert Mueller's investigation shouldn't have happened. That's what, in the case of Flynn's prosecution, at least the Justice Department is now saying. Right. And that's a huge political win for the president. I'm wondering how common is this? How many criminal cases have been dropped after a person pleads guilty to lying to the FBI? Well, I don't have a number for you. I don't know if anyone has a number. I bet it's pretty rare.

It is highly, highly unusual. And it's certainly not without controversy. And I think that if you look at the filing yesterday that the Justice Department made, it was signed by the interim U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., a man by the name of Timothy Shea, who used to be, until January or early February, a close aide to Attorney General William Barr. He was the only one who signed that. There were no career prosecutors who signed this filing to dismiss this case. And notably, the lead prosecutor on the case for the past several years, a man who was part of the Mueller investigation team, Brandon Van Graak, about an hour before the Justice Department filed its motion to dismiss this case, Van Graak filed with the court to withdraw from the

case. He did not provide a reason, but it would certainly suggest that he disagreed with this decision. And you may remember that there were three or four prosecutors in the Roger Stone case who withdrew from that after Barr intervened to try to lower the sentencing recommendation that the Justice Department was making in that case, which of course blew up and became a huge controversy and raised a ton of questions about the possible politicization of the department under Barr's leadership. Ryan, you've been saying that this is a controversial decision.

And we should point out that Democrats, some Democrats have already begun to decry this move. Right. So it's not one that is going to be not seen as political in any way, regardless of whether this happened through a sort of allegedly more official channel than a presidential party. Right. And Attorney General William Barr spoke to CBS News yesterday and was asked about how much flack he's going to take because of this decision, how much incoming. And he said, yeah, I know that I will. But he said that he thought that it was his duty to make this call and that it was the right call to make in the interest of justice.

I want to make sure that we restore confidence in the system. There's only one standard of justice. But certainly for critics of Barr in his tenure in the department, this does the exact opposite. This points to the, for them, the indication that if you are a friend of the president, the attorney general will put his thumb on the scale to help you out, which is what they say happened in the case of Roger Stone and what they certainly will point to as happening here in the case of Michael Flynn. All of that said, certainly conservatives, Flynn supporters, the president himself, and

Barr and other folks high up in the Justice Department, political appointees there, have a very different view of what transpired during the Flynn case. They view this as basically the FBI targeting Flynn to try to bring him down, to try to harm the president, going after Flynn very, very specifically. The president would call this FBI agents run amok. Barr didn't go that far. But certainly the viewpoint that, you know, you get from Trump world and from Flynn is that Flynn was the victim here. And, you know, it's interesting because the president who fired Flynn for lying to the vice president about the conversations with the Russian ambassador has not said whether he would welcome Flynn back into the administration. In other words, he hasn't said whether he's rethinking Flynn's firing. He did say yesterday that Flynn was

innocent and he called him a great warrior. So I'm very happy for General Flynn. He was a a great warrior and he still is a great warrior. Now in my book, he's an even greater warrior. What happened to him should never happen again. And what happened to this presidency to go through all of that and still do more than any president has ever done in the first three years. What Trump hasn't said is whether he is rethinking Flynn's firing. He says he fired him because Flynn lied about his interactions with the Russian ambassador to the vice president. He hasn't said whether he would want Flynn to come back into the administration. But Trump supporters are saying that Flynn will play a role in the campaign because as far as the Trump world is concerned, Flynn is a martyr.

All right, Ryan, we are going to let you go there for now. Thanks so much. It was good to be back. Good to talk to you guys. And we're going to take a quick break. When we get back, we'll talk about the economy. The U.S. now officially has its highest unemployment rate since the Great Depression. There's a lot going on in the world right now. You ever just feel like you want to talk it all out? Well, I'm here to help. My name is Sam Sanders. I host NPR's It's Been a Minute. Each week on my show, a bunch of smart guests and I talk about the news and the culture without making you feel overwhelmed. Join us every Friday on It's Been a Minute from NPR.

And we're back and we're joined now by Danielle Kurtzleben. Hey, Danielle. Hey, Asma. So, Danielle, I am definitely excited to have you here, but I will be candid. I am not thrilled about the reason that you are here. That's fair. And that is because a truly historic number of folks are now out of work. So let's talk about the unemployment rate first. What do these new numbers tell us?

They tell us bad things, like you were saying right there. The unemployment rate is almost 15 percent. That's just shockingly high. It's 14.7 percent. So around one in seven Americans who want a job can't find one or don't have one right now or don't have work right now. They might be temporarily out of work. This encompasses a whole bunch of people who have been hurt by this coronavirus crisis. I mean, to give you a little bit of perspective here, the highest unemployment rate that we hit during the Great Recession, the last financial crisis, was 10 percent, one in 10. Right now, again, we are at almost 15. So we are well past where we were during that awful recession that we just had. This is also the highest unemployment rate that the Labor

Department has ever counted since 1948. Now, they didn't count people exactly the same during the Great Depression. What we can say is it doesn't look like we're quite to the levels we had back then. Thank God. Unemployment back then hit a high of around 25 percent. So right now, you know, around 15s, we're not at great depression levels, but that is about as cold of comfort as you can get. This is bad. Danielle, I just want to get some kind of concrete numbers behind that, because I think when people hear an unemployment rate, it's a little abstract. So do we know how many jobs were actually lost last month? Yes. According to this jobs report, again, this is from around the middle of April, early to mid-April, we lost 20.5 million jobs last month as the nation locked down.

That's staggering. And do people expect what the president wants, which is a V-shaped rebound or a much, much slower recovery, the U-shaped rebound? Employers and employees, if you look at what they say, we've had a couple of surveys on this. You have around three quarters of employees who told The Washington Post in a poll, yes, yes, I have been laid off and I expect to be hired back. So three quarters of people laid off say they expect to be hired back. Meanwhile, CNBC did a survey of small businesses. So this isn't all businesses, but around half of those businesses said they expect to hire everyone back. Another 37 percent said they expect to hire some back. Now, that all

sounds like, OK, maybe things are going to get better and maybe we expect things to bounce back just fine. But then again, some businesses will close. Maybe not all those people are going to have jobs to go back to. Maybe some of those businesses are looking, are feeling a little too rosy. We really don't know. And, of course, the question about how fast these jobs come back, how many of them come back, has a lot to do with the virus. You know, Anthony Fauci says,

you don't make the timeline, the virus makes the timeline. That's a very good point. I mean, and you see that to some degree reflected in these numbers. I just said that, you know, we had over 20 million jobs lost. More than 5 million of them, 5.5 million, were at restaurants. And we have seen in these polls that a lot of Americans, a majority of Americans, say they're uncomfortable about the idea of going to a restaurant right now. So even if there were no lockdowns, the question is, would that employment come back right now? And it's easy to make the case that it wouldn't. Yeah. And for me, the political question is, do people blame the president for that? We know historically incumbent presidents get reelected,

but incumbents who run in a recession usually lose. And right now polls show that 89% of Democrats say we're already in a recession. 50% of Republicans think we are. The president says over and over again, it wasn't my fault, even Democrats don't blame me. I think he's exaggerating there. But that's the big question,

because, you know, President Obama had 8% unemployment. Of course, he wasn't in a recession when he ran for re-election. And somehow or other, he did get re-elected in high unemployment, not in a recession. So the big question is, so far, this does not seem to have affected the president's job approvals. They're not lower than they have been since 2016. He's still in that 43 to 46% zone. So what does that mean? But Mara, wasn't the question always that he needed to raise those numbers up, right? And I think we were always all looking at the pretty healthy, robust economy we were in. And then we were looking at his job numbers and being like, hey, there's a disconnect, like they should have been higher. And so there's no doubt

that he didn't get the benefit of a great economy. But now he doesn't seem to be suffering from a horrendous economy. And so there is this idea, right, that his floor is ceiling, it's all in one, right? And I think there is this idea that maybe he can't. Yeah, high floor, low ceiling, and he's just stuck there. And the question I have, though, is on the other side, though, that now he's facing an opponent in Joe Biden, who is very eager. And while we may not see loads of him out here in a sort of a traditional campaign, I mean, he was delivering an economic agenda message today to a primarily young audience on this platform called NowThis. I mean, he and his campaign are eager to point to the fact that in Joe Biden, they've got somebody who did help steer this 2009 stimulus bill. So while, you know, Trump may say it's not my fault, I do think that

Democrats are increasingly trying to present this narrative that they've got a candidate on the other side who has some idea of how to kind of steer the ship and steer the country out of a recession. Right. And the president has had to adjust his message. His original message was, I have created the greatest economy in the history of the world. Now his message is, I created the greatest economy and I can do it again. So he's adjusted that. But, you know, but in addition to just high unemployment, the pandemic has revealed a lot of preexisting economic conditions that weren't so good to begin with. The fact that people don't have a cushion when they lose their job.

The fact that when they lose their job, they lose their health insurance. The fact that some people who can work at home are doing okay. Some people who can't are not. Tremendous inequalities. So to say it's the economy stupid and that every election is about the economy is in the economy. We are currently in a downturn. But for especially older millennials, mid-millennials, maybe not Gen Z or young millennials, this is the second major recession of their adult lives. You are preaching to the choir, Danielle. Yeah, exactly. You and I both. They are the screwed generation. They were already screwed, if I can use that word on the pod. They had the least wealth, the least rates of marriage, the least rates of childbearing, the least chance to be economically mobile, upwardly mobile. And this was like a double whammy for them.

The question is how those people react. Listen, they're already more likely to be Democratic. I'm curious how Joe Biden's message resonates with them. Do they give him some sort of partial credit for President Obama and that administration's ability or efforts to pull the country out of that recession? And if so, to what degree does that affect their voting for Joe Biden and or their voting at all? Because as we all know, young people also tend to vote at lower rates. We're not sure. Right. Will it make them more enthusiastic about coming out in November? True. All right. Let's take another quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go.

One of the many ways the coronavirus pandemic has changed the world is that it has greatly limited the choices we get to make every day. It gives you a greater recognition of what you really have in your control and what things you really don't have as much control over. This week on Hidden Brain 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. That's the part of the show where we talk about the things that we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Danielle, do you want to start? Yes, this falls firmly in the otherwise category. So I have a question for you too. When I say the floor is lava, does that mean anything to you? No. A volcano? No. When you guys were kids, did you ever play this game where? No.

No. No. No. I thought this was universal okay so it's a it is the simplest game in the world you and your siblings stand on the couch in the living room your mom yells at you like you can't touch the floor you have you jump to the chair you jump on a cushion you're invariably it angers your parents and you just keep doing it because and the the whole thing is the floor is lava if you touch it you lose if you don't touch it you win and you just keep doing it. And the whole thing is the floor is lava. If you touch it, you lose. If you don't touch it, you win. And it just devolves into silliness. Okay. Though the two of you have never played it,

trust me, it's pretty common because I ran across a blog post written by a game designer in the UK. Her name is Holly Gramazio. She put up an online poll. Maybe it doesn't meet the standards of our usual political polls, but she got 3,500 respondents and she asked people all over the world, how did you play

The Floor is Lava? And it turns out in the US, 85% of kids said yes, the floor was always lava. In different countries, the floor is different things though, as it turns out. If you're in Spain, the floor is water. If you are in, hold on, one country had crocodiles. Oh, France. A quarter of French kids played the floor is crocodiles. If you're in Sweden, there's no reason.

You just don't touch the floor. You just play it however you want. So the idea is to jump from one piece of furniture to the next. Correct. The idea is to touch anything but the floor. Stand on the end table. You know, stand on the dining room chairs. I think the goal is... Sounds like your parents would really love that. Oh, they thought it was great. Trust me. But anyway, during a week where

things were pretty glum, it was, you know, it's been delightful to read about, oh, you know, some things are somewhat universal. Kids like jumping on furniture the world over. They just have different reasons for doing it. So I will post the link to this on Twitter so people can read it. That's my Can't Let It Go. Okay, how about I go next? Yeah. And since this is an all ladies pod, well, I should say it's an all ladies can't let it go sure why don't we start by just asking um have all of you ever had a manicure yeah at some point of course a manicure i mean i'm not a huge manicure person i will say i find it a little bit like not entirely economical lately when you're like washing your dishes and then it chips off lately

but i bring this up because apparently Dr. Birx, we all know Dr. Birx, member of President Trump's Coronavirus Task Force, said this week during a meeting with the governor of Texas that she didn't really understand this issue of opening nail salons because she had never had a manicure. And I think many people know

I don't understand the nail salon piece because I've never had my nails done. So I couldn't understand. It's true. So I didn't really understand it. He's saying, is that true? That was my reaction. I just think it's hilarious that President Trump actually has more. She's got the scarf, but she doesn't have the nails. Yeah. But I mean, I guess it's sort of understandable. Maybe people just started doing them on their own in a certain generation. I feel like my mom would often say like, it was one of these things that was not maybe

considered always, maybe it was considered too luxurious of certain generations. I don't know. Yeah. I mean, the only reason I've ever gotten them is like, because I'm in a bridal party or something and it's expected or something like that. No, no. No. All the time.

Okay. Mara, Danielle and I are of the millennial generation who worries we're always going to be poor. I didn't do them all the time when I was your age, but I do them all the time now. Except for now. Well, of course. Except for, you know, in the pandemic. I suppose also this betrays a lack of knowledge of Dr. Birx's past, but if you're a practicing doctor,

maybe a manicure makes it harder to do your job. I don't know. That's possible. Okay, I'm just saying in some ways. It's like you could wear gloves. This needs a follow-up. To understand. Someone needs to look into it.

We need to follow up with Dr. Birx. All right, Mara, your turn. My turn. Okay, so my dog Buster barked during the last podcast. Normally, I'm horrified if my dog does that. Much to my surprise, NPR listeners are not horrified. I tweeted a picture of Buster that said, this is Buster the dog, occasional commentator on NPR listeners are not horrified. I tweeted a picture of Buster that said, this is Buster the dog, occasional commentator on NPR, and it got something like 6,397 likes. And people wrote in with their pictures of their dogs that were named Buster. They replied with pictures of their dogs

who were not named Buster but looked like my dog Buster. And I am going to try to take the camera over to Buster, who's right here. Busty. But. Wow, it's being so quiet right now. But my favorite comment was Buster looks like a walking package of ramen noodles. There he is. Buster.

Wait, can we see? Oh, there he is. Buster. Wait, can we see? Buster Bear. There he is. Buster. Kind of deuces with the package. Okay, how am I doing on the camera?

Whoa, he has a bone and he doesn't want to lose it. Buster, Buster, Buster. I think he's being very quiet. Here, come on. Look in the camera. He's pretty chill today. Buster.

He thinks I'm taking his bone away. Okay, that's okay. Just take your bone. There he is. There we go. There we go. Okay, that's okay. Just take your bone. There we go. Okay, that's enough of Buster. And if you want to see Buster with your own eyes, as Mara mentioned, she tweeted out a picture of him earlier this week. And we also shared it in our Facebook group.

And we'll be adding more pictures of all the dogs from the NPR politics team to that Facebook group. If you want to take a look, you can head over to n.pr slash politics group to request to join and see all the dogs there. And before we go, we asked you all, our listeners, to let us know what you could not stop thinking about this week. And you all definitely delivered. We cannot, unfortunately, play all of them, but please continue to keep sending those to us. And this week's Can't Let It Go comes from Ryan. Hello, it's Ryan from Virginia. And what I can't let go of this week and every day in quarantine is this sponge. Because I'm doing dishes.

Because I do dishes all the time. Because when you have to cook at home three meals a day, there are never not dirty dishes to do. I think a lot of us feel that. For real, for real. I now run my dishwasher way more than we ever used to as well, I will say. Oh, Lord. Absolutely, yes. And I've become very liberal about what can go in the dishwasher as well. Yeah.

My household, I have to say, we've been pretty conflict-free, except, you know, there have been some clashes over how one loads a dishwasher. I have some pretty religious beliefs on this. I won't get into them here, but anyway. That's so interesting, Danielle. We have to discuss this more at some other time because my husband, I think, and you may behave the same way. I feel that there are those who have strong opinions about that matter and those of us who feel that it can be done in any way.

Yeah, I think there are different schools of thought. All right, well, that is a wrap for today. Our executive producer is Shirley Henry. Our editors are Mithoni Maturi and Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Barton Girdwood and Chloe Weiner. Thanks to Lexi Schipittel, Dana Farrington, Brandon Carter, and Elena Moore. I'm Asma Khalid. I cover the presidential campaign. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the economy. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.