The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, April 13

Episode Date: April 14, 2017

A week of notable policy reversals from President Trump. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, and editor/correspondent Ron Elving. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. If you haven't done it yet, check out NPR's new morning news podcast, Up First. It's about 10 minutes long and designed to give you a sense of the day's biggest stories. Plus, you'll hear members of the politics team on the show pretty much every day. Listen to Up First each weekday at 6 a.m. on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, everyone. This is Jenny from Georgia's beautiful 6th Congressional District. This podcast was recorded at... 3.09 p.m. on Thursday, the 13th of April. Things may have changed by the time you hear it.

Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at npr.org, the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. Okay, here's the show. It's the NPR Politics Podcast, here to round up some of the week's political news. A lot of 180s for President Trump, and we are not talking about skateboarding, from Russia to NATO, even Steve Bannon, plus a couple of special elections in Kansas and Georgia, where Jenny lives, and what they could tell us about the future. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress.

I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elving, editor-correspondent. All right, so Scott Detrow, you are in California. Beautiful California. I'm from NPR West Studios in Culver City, California. All right. So how are we going to differentiate between Scott Horsley and Scott Detrow? How about Detrow and Horsley? Can I? Is that OK, guys? It's better than Danielle called me Scotty a couple of weeks ago.

So I'll take. OK, how about Scott here and Scott there? OK, so Scott Detrow in California. We are going to talk about your trip and the reporting that you're doing out there in a bit. But let's get started with some news from today. The GBU-43 bomb, known as the mother of all bombs, was dropped today by the U.S. military in eastern Afghanistan, targeting a series of caves used by Islamic State fighters. That bomb has never been used in combat before. It weighs 21,000 pounds. That's equivalent to 11 tons of TNT. That is a fraction of a fraction of a nuclear weapon, which are measured in kilotons of TNT. This comes after last week's missile strike in Syria. And President Trump spoke about

this briefly at a pool spray at the White House this afternoon. We have incredible leaders in the military and we have incredible military and we are very proud of them. And this was another very, very successful mission. Thank you very much. I don't know if this sends a message. It doesn't make any difference if it does a message to North Korea? Thank you. Does it send a message to North Korea? I don't know if this sends a message. It doesn't make any difference if it does or not. North Korea is a problem. The problem will be taken care of. I will say this.

I think China has really been working very hard. And we are going to get to China and North Korea in a second. But Scott Horsley, what's going on here? What else has the White House said about this? What is this thing? There were questions both at the White House briefing with Sean Spicer this afternoon and questions directed to the president himself about whether he had specifically authorized this use of the bomb.

Sean Spicer didn't answer that, and the president himself was a little noncommittal. Did you authorize it, sir? Everybody knows exactly what happened. And what I do is I authorize my military. We have the greatest military in the world, and they've done a job as usual. So we have given them total authorization, and that's what they're doing. It sounds as if what President Trump has done is given his military commanders sort of a blanket authorization to use the weapons that they feel are appropriate against ISIS in Afghanistan. I remember back in 2001, when I was covering the early stages of the Afghan war, when the United States dropped what was then the largest conventional weapon on Taliban

forces in Afghanistan, they dropped several of the so-called daisy cutter bombs. The fact that we're still using these weapons in Afghanistan all these years later suggests that maybe they're not always decisive, but it is an interesting wrinkle in the military campaign there, both the fact of the weapon and the target that this was ISIS being targeted, not the Taliban. And all through the period of time of George W. Bush's presidency, there was continual talk of bunker busting bombs. Yeah, I've heard a lot about these bunker busters. And this was supposedly a threat to Iran, which was supposedly conducting its nuclear weapons program in bunkers underground.

And the idea was that we would be able to go after that program if they did not come to the table and negotiate it away. So sometimes there's a target beyond the target that you're actually aiming at. And of course, in this case, as we heard one of the reporters in the pool spray shouting a question about, is this a message to North Korea? And the president saying, I don't know if it was a message or not. I think China is going to take care of North Korea. But of course, we do have a battle group with an aircraft carrier

off the coast of North Korea, which doesn't happen all the time. And there does seem to be a message, at least implicit in some people's ears. Scott Detrow. I was just thinking all this one big picture thing to stop and think about is that we are still in Afghanistan, still dropping the same general types of large bombs that we were dropping years ago. This is going on 16 years. And even though it's not in the headlines right now, this has lasted the entirety of two two-term presidents. And Donald Trump is the third president to have

to deal with this. And we seem to not only not be making much progress, but now al-Qaeda has shifted to ISIS. And that's just remarkable. Okay, let's move on to Russia and Syria. We mentioned at the top that there have been a lot of these 180s policy reversals from President Trump this week. And I want to just start with the geopolitical ones. And at the top of that list is Russia. So here is Donald Trump this week at a joint press conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. As we were discussing just a little while ago, if NATO and our country could get along with Russia, right now we're not getting along with Russia at all. We may be at an all-time low in terms of relationship with Russia.

This is built for a long period of time. That is such a turnaround from some of President Trump's rhetoric back when he was candidate Trump on the campaign trail. Putin says very nice things about me. I think that's very nice. It has no effect things about me. I think that's very nice. It has no effect on me other than I think it's very nice. If we can get along with Russia, that's very good. If Russia wants to spend millions of dollars a day dropping bombs on ISIS, I'm okay with that.

You know, I'm okay with that. Some people don't like it. They say, no, no, that's our job. It's not our job. It's, it's, let's let Russia, if they want to do that, I'm all for it. No, I want to get along with all countries. And Tam, not only did he say that, he also consistently refused to condemn Russia for things that there's by and large bipartisan condemnation of Russia for. Human rights records, the fact that journalists are

typically targeted in Russia. Trump would consistently say, well, America has its own past as well. So the fact that that started to shift this week, especially coming out of Rex Tillerson's mouth, was really the first time that Trump had criticized Russia about basically anything. And Rex Tillerson, as the Secretary of State, who was on a trip to Russia this week, was sort of strung along as to whether he would even get to meet with Vladimir Putin. Which is kind of Putin's M.O. for meeting with anybody from, you know, the pope to Angela Merkel to the U.S. president. He kind of likes to leave people waiting. Well, and let it hang in the air for a while so that it seems like a big reward and a big deal if he actually comes into the room and appears.

And then, of course, it's much more meaningful than it would be if it were just another meeting. That's what Ron does with his office hours, too. Okay, so this is a major reversal from what he said during the campaign. But what does it mean now that Donald Trump is president of the United States for the U.S. to not be getting along with Russia? And how did that happen? It happened so fast. Some of it seems to be driven by Syria because there was this horrific gas attack, which is generally thought to have been the work of the regime, the Assad regime. This was

something that was horrifying to an American television audience that saw it again and again and again and again in powerful videos showing children suffering in hospitals. And this seems to have affected some change of attitude on the part of Donald Trump. And we've had the secretary of state say, look, Russia was the one that was supposed to be working with Syria to make sure they got rid of their chemical weapons back in 2013. So either they were incompetent or they were complicit. And that's that's when the fight started. Well, and Russia, it's not like Russia just started propping up the Assad regime. No, no, of course not. I mean, none of this is new. This has been going on all through a large part of the Obama

administration. But it has now gotten the attention of President Trump. And more than that, his attention turned into a missile strike. Scott Detrow, you have been following for weeks, months now, the Russian meddling in the election. And there's been a lot of criticism of the Trump administration for being too cozy with Russia. Now that they are being less cozy, significantly less cozy with Russia. Does that affect that other storyline at all? You know, I don't think any of these things happen in a vacuum. And there were some developments in terms of reporting from The New York Times

and The Washington Post this week that are worth talking about. Both papers reported that the Justice Department obtained a warrant to observe Carter Page last year during the campaign. Now, Carter Page was an aide in Trump's orbit. He's someone who had a lot of business ties to Russia. He did work with Gazprom, the big Russian oil and gas giant. And he made a lot of headlines for kind of advocating for a close relationship with Russia. And these reports were really remarkable because in order to get a warrant, you need to prove some sort of cause and you have to have a lot of documentation in these FISA courts. And it boils down to the fact that the FBI presented an argument to a federal judge, a panel of federal judges, that they had reason to believe that Carter Page

was not only interacting with Russia, but maybe working as a Russian agent, which is a pretty startling claim. Yeah. And Carter Page has been out on television doing interviews, even since that story broke, saying he did nothing wrong, but just remarkably continuing to talk. And it's the latest link on that big outstanding question when it comes to the FBI investigation that we know is ongoing and a separate House and Senate investigation of whether there was any collusion or conversation between the Trump campaign and the Russian operatives working to try and elect Donald Trump. And I guess these things are not mutually

exclusive, that President Trump can have a policy shift towards a country regardless of what did or did not happen during the campaign. We were talking about Syria, and this is another area where we've had sort of a 180 from the president of the United States. And we got a letter, though, from Katie that I want to read. It's about Syria. She says, Hey, politics gang, I'm 18 years old. I feel like my entire life I've heard reports of U.S. drone strikes and military force being used around the Middle East. I guess I'm desensitized or just confused. But in what way is what Trump did in Syria last week new and different? Thanks, Katie. Ron. Well, for starters, it's Donald Trump and the actions that have been taken in the Middle East

using drones and using special forces over the last so many years were done by two other presidents with very different approaches to the overall Middle East situation. Donald Trump said a lot of things during the campaign about how he was going to not get us involved and how we were going to stay out of this kind of thing, and it was going to be America first. But here we are still within the first 100 days. The president has already stepped over a lot of lines that he suggested before should not be stepped over, and this is one of them, so that makes it quite different. Whether or not this changes anything significant in terms of the military balance in Syria, of course it doesn't.

It was a pinprick of a strike that was meant to signal a different attitude. Scott Horsley. The missile strikes were also aimed at a different target, which was the airfield of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad. Less than two weeks ago, we had Trump administration officials saying the removal of Bashar al-Assad was not a priority for this administration in the way it had been a priority for the Obama administration. The other thing that's different is even though the Obama administration said for years Assad must go, he has no legitimacy as a Syrian leader, President Obama was not willing to commit U.S. military force to ousting Assad or even targeting Assad or punishing him for crossing the red line with regard to chemical weapons without the authorization of Congress. And President Trump was willing to

take that step. And that's what we saw last week. We might say that in 2013, when President Obama was contemplating the use of military force, ordinary U.S. citizen Donald Trump was tweeting up a storm saying, under no circumstances should you use military force in Syria. And if you do, you better get congressional authorization. So that's one more 180 from Donald Trump. And for Katie, our listener here, one short little article I was reading in The New Yorker that is worth taking a glance at. It's by Steve Call. And he talks about how in 1998, al-Qaeda had struck two U.S. embassies in East Africa and President Bill Clinton, two weeks later, did an airstrike in Afghanistan. So this sort of responding to something out there with a sort of a targeted airstrike that then doesn't become something broader. It's just an airstrike and then it goes away. This has become, since that point, Call argues, sort of a standard part of the problem with the use of some sort of authorization from

Congress is that when asked for, Congress does not necessarily make a decision. So when Barack Obama asked Congress for an authorization of the use of military force, specifically with respect to Syria, after the provocation during his presidency in 2013, Congress didn't even really have hearings on it, let alone a vote in either chamber. They dithered over it because, frankly, they didn't really want to handle that particular hot potato. And they had an election coming in 2014, and they didn't particularly want to be responsible for whatever consequences might come. And they were sort of saved by the bell by the deal that then Secretary of State Kerry worked out with Russia

to do away with the chemical weapons, which, of course, we now seemingly know was not a fully... At best, incomplete. Yes. Okay. So that is not the only reversal in foreign policy that we have seen from President Trump in the last week or so. Let's go through some others. First, there was NATO. Here's what Trump said in a GOP town hall last year on CNN. NATO is obsolete. It was 67 years or it's over 60 years old. It is many countries doesn't cover terrorism. OK, it covers the Soviet Union, which is no longer in existence. And NATO has to either be rejiggered, rechanged or changed for the better. I'm not saying the other thing is bad about NATO. We're paying too much.

We're spending a tremendous billions and billions of dollars. That was April of 2016. And here's what Trump said this week in that press conference with the NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg. The Secretary General and I had a productive discussion about what more NATO can do in the fight against terrorism. I complained about that a long time ago and they made a change. And now they do fight terrorism. I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete.

Yeah, well, I think, first of all, NATO had been pushing back against terrorism before President Trump came along. I mean, the fact that right after the 9-11 attacks was the first time that the key article in NATO, attack against one country, attack against every country, was ever triggered. But more broadly, this is a big shift from something that Trump was really consistent on during the campaign. But this is also a shift in the direction that makes a lot of foreign policy experts in his party, especially, very happy. Trump's criticism of NATO, Trump's skepticism of NATO really freaked out a lot of foreign policy officials in this country, because that's such a keystone of America's most important relationships with Western Europe. So I think a lot of people are probably really happy to see Trump walk into the direction of saying, yeah, I'm on board with this whole NATO thing.

Yeah. And Scott Horsley, that came up pretty much in every single confirmation hearing for all of his cabinet members. But do you think it's obsolete? And they would say no. Yeah. I mean, Trump is surrounded by a foreign policy team that generally subscribes to the more mainstream and more internationalist wing. That would include H.R. McMaster as national security advisor, Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, General Mattis, the defense secretary. These are all people who believe in the sort of international order that Trump spent the campaign running against. So they are leaning on him. OK, just to keep going in the direction that we're going. Also on China, President Trump repeatedly made this promise. I'm going to instruct my treasury secretary to label China a currency manipulator, which should have been done years ago.

So that was June 2016. More recently, he told the Financial Times on April 2nd about China, quote, you know, when you talk about currency manipulation, when you talk about devaluations, they are world champions and our country hasn't had a clue. But this week in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, he said about China, quote, they're not currency manipulators. OK, so Scott Horsley, this is right up your alley. What is true and what happened? Well, when he said back in 2016 that we should have labeled them currency manipulators long ago, maybe long ago we should have because years ago China was artificially manipulating its currency, depressing its currency to make its exports more affordable in the rest of the world. But economists will tell you China has not been doing that for a long time. And in fact, if anything, now they are interfering in the currency markets to prop up the Chinese currency.

So I have a question in all of this. Scott Horsley, when you talk about things that should have been done long ago, I should have asked this long ago. Can you explain what currency manipulation is? How would you say it works? The value of currency is determined like the value of anything else on the market by supply and demand. So if a big buyer like China comes in and buys a bunch of one currency or sells a bunch of another currency, they can adjust the relative values of those currencies. Thank you. But so when Donald Trump, you know, belatedly comes out and says, you know, China's not a currency manipulator, as if maybe he had convinced Chinese President Xi Jinping not to quit manipulating the currency. No, he's just, his rhetoric is finally catching up to reality. This feels like the kind of thing where he went into a meeting and we don't know, but that he went into a meeting and President Xi said,

actually. Or perhaps one of his own economic advisors told him, you know, by the way, Mr. President, they're not manipulating the currency that way. And another China-related reversal, this one on North Korea. Trump has long called out China for not doing more to contain the threat posed by North Korea. And in that Wall Street Journal interview this week, Trump said that President Xi of China had given him something of a history lesson. He says, quote, after listening for 10 minutes, I realized it's not so easy. I felt pretty strongly that they had a tremendous power over North Korea, but it's not what you would think. I mean, I think there's two trends that jump out here.

One is just the remarkable learning on the job aspect here. And the second is I have to wonder what heads of state of other countries, what foreign ministers of other countries are making of all of this. Because these are three different key areas where Donald Trump campaigned saying X. Suddenly he says, you know what? Change my mind. Why? Like, how do you prepare to negotiate with the U.S.? How do you prepare to be in an alliance like NATO with the U.S. when you don't know what the president's going to say the next day? Scott Horsley? This is a president who does not really have a lot of sort of core ideological principles. Donald Trump himself has said he sees a virtue in being unpredictable. The other thing is, I think we, at our peril, assume that the position that Donald

Trump has adopted now is a fixed position. We've talked about how many things he's changed in the last two weeks. He could change again in the next two weeks. We could be back to where we started from or some third position. And Scott Horsley, you're not just saying this. The president has said this last week in a press conference right before making the decision to do that strike in Syria. He said that he considers himself to be very flexible. I like to think of myself as a very flexible person. I don't have to have one specific way. And if the world changes, I go the same way. I don't change. Well, I do change. And I am flexible. And I'm proud of that flexibility. President Trump does not see this as a bad thing. Here is The Art of the Deal,

President Trump's bestselling book, Maximize Your Options. I never get too attached to one deal or one approach, he writes. For starters, I keep a lot of balls in the air because most deals fall out, no matter how promising they seem at first. In addition, once I've made a deal, I always come up with at least a half dozen approaches to make it work because anything can happen even to the best laid plans. But here's the thing. It's what Scott said before, that when you're in the development world, you have this near infinite universe of people to make deals with. It's much more of like a zero sum game in the world of politics. You have our set allies and the countries we have tense relationships with. And domestically, you have Republicans and Democrats. And now Trump's starting to pivot away from Republicans in a lot of stuff. But it's not like Democrats are willing to work with him on basically

everything. So all he's doing is like really alienating all parties, it seems. I think you're going to see a lot of suspicion at every turn of people feeling like, hey, am I being sold out? You've got isolationists now worried that Trump has suddenly become this international globalist. You've got sort of mainstream globalists saying, well, we're glad that he seems to have come to our side, but who knows that he won't change his mind again tomorrow. Okay. There is one more reversal that we are going to talk about, but first we are going to take a quick break and then we're going to talk about the potentially waning influence of top White House advisor Steve Bannon.

Support for this podcast and this message come from Harry's, the razor company started by two best friends who believe a great shave shouldn't cost a fortune. Harry's makes high quality razor blades and sells them online for half the price of the leading brand. Harry's is so confident in the quality of their blades, they'll send you a five-blade razor and shave gel for free. Just pay for shipping when you sign up. To redeem your free trial offer, go to harrys.com slash NPR politics. We're back. There have been a lot of palace intrigue stories about the White House these past couple of weeks. Reports that Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law, is exerting more and

more influence alongside reports that the influence of Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News, is waning. The president himself gave some real credence to those reports this week. He was asked by Michael Goodwin, a columnist for The New York Post, whether he has confidence in Bannon, which I feel like is like the classic question where the answer, unless it is the absolutely, I totally have confidence. It's a setup question. It is a setup. And here was President Trump's answer. Quote, I like Steve. I like Steve. But you have to remember, he was not involved in my campaign until very late. I had already beaten all the senators and all the governors, and I didn't know Steve. I'm my own strategist. And it wasn't like I was going to change strategies because I was facing crooked Hillary. Steve is a good guy, but I told them

to straighten it out or I will. So where do I begin? Before we truth squad that, guys, what would it mean for Bannon to have less influence at the White House? It would probably look a lot like what we've seen in the last several days would be would be a first guess. We don't really know what's behind the curtain. But what it appears has happened is that there has been something of a power struggle between the family members, people like Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump and people who have allied with them, and the Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer, people from the RNC contingent over here, and then the alt-right Breitbart graduates such as Steve Bannon and Steve Miller, and that in that whole power struggle, the Bannon team has wound up third in

a three-team league, for the moment at least, and that it is the family members and their allies from New York, sometimes referred to as the Manhattanites or the New Yorkers, by those who are losing, including Gary Cohn and Steve Schwarzman and some of the other powerful economic figures in the administration who do come from Wall Street, and that those folks have been getting Donald Trump's ear more strategically, and they have pulled him in a more conventional Wall Street view of the world direction. It almost seems like, from a policy perspective, there are multiple tracks. And there was a time when it seemed like Bannon's influence was all encompassing and it was affecting all of the policy.

But now it seems like there is still the we're going to build a border wall. We're going to deport more people. Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, is still very much doing things in his lane that are in line with the Breitbart worldview. But if you look at everything we talked about in the last segment, all of those we talked, all of those shifts we talked about are shifts from the Steve Bannon worldview position away from it. That's right. But I think Tam makes a very good point, which is it sort of quietly over the Justice Department. Jeff Sessions is continuing to carry out sort of quietly, maybe a little below the radar, because undocumented workers don't make the news as much. That program is still going forward.

Obviously, the travel ban, which Jeff Sessions had a hand in, and Steve Miller, his former staffer who's at the White House, had a hand in. And Steve Bannon did. And Steve Bannon had a hand in. That's been put on hold temporarily by the federal courts. But what the Justice Department itself does and what the Department of Homeland Security do in terms of immigration, that precedes a pace. Yes, it does. And just to go back to this quotation from that interview, when Donald Trump says, you know, I didn't really know Steve, there is this sense that he came on in August as the campaign boss, and that was supposedly their introduction. But there were a lot of ties. There were a lot of communications between the inner circle of the Trump team and Steve Bannon throughout the campaign. Steve Bannon obviously does still work in the White House.

But, you know, it seems really clear that he's kind of been pushed to the fringe or at least kind of de-emphasized in terms of importance. And it's just really remarkable, especially when like the idea of loyalty comes up so much when you talk about Donald Trump and his career and his advisors and how Trump pays a real big premium on that. It's really interesting how many top level Trump allies or staffers kind of come and go. All of the big surrogates who Trump campaigned with on stage, Rudy Giuliani, Newt Gingrich, you know, Michael Flynn, a lot of other names who are really high profile, close Trump allies are no longer really in the picture. And people kind of rise and fall and kind of, you know, go out to tide when it comes to his inner orbit. Some people would say that the Time magazine cover that showed Steve Bannon's face in what would have been... A great manipulator. Time magazine pitched him as the second most

powerful man in the world, question mark. I think that the implication there that he was the Svengali was not good for his trajectory in the White House. Okay, let's shift gears. And Scott Detrow, before we talk about your big reporting trip out there in California, let's talk about a couple of special elections happening around the country. One from earlier this week, Tuesday, the Kansas 4th Congressional District, this was a seat vacated when Trump appointed Congressman Mike Pompeo to be the CIA director. This was between Republican Ron Estes and Democrat James Thompson. Estes won, but only by about seven percentage points, which sounds like a lot, except when you look at the makeup of that district. Yeah, this is a district where Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton. And Mike Pompeo had held the seat for a long time, had won by wide margins for several cycles in a row.

You have to go back to the early 90s for the last time a Democrat won this district. So it was really remarkable that it was so close. And it was interesting to watch over election night. It was kind of like a small repeat of the presidential race last year, because when the early voting numbers came in, Thompson had a pretty sizable lead and that got a lot of attention. And people were saying, oh, my gosh, could he pull this out? And as the election day vote itself came in, Republicans had a big lead over Democrats in terms of people who actually voted on election day. So kind of a repeat of what you saw in places like Florida and North Carolina of the continuing

trend of Democrats seem to do really well in early voting. Republicans do well on Election Day. But yeah, it was an interesting race. And I think it raised a lot of questions because the Democrats nationally, Democratic activists nationally have just poured money into this Georgia special election for Tom Price's seat, millions and millions of dollars. But Thompson got hardly any support next to no support until the very last minute. So a lot of questions being asked of, well, maybe should we have directed some of that money to this race? Yeah. And the Georgia district that you're talking about, this is the sixth congressional district.

The election day is April 18th. It's a primary, but it's a jungle primary. And the Democrat... That was Scott Horsley pounding his chest. My money's on the gorilla. But the 500 pound. Only if the gorilla gets more than 50%. Right. So it is a jungle primary. If one of the candidates can get more than 50 percent of the vote, they can win. Democrats are hoping that their guy, John Ossoff, can knock this thing out on the first round. That's not clear. But these races are high stakes and getting a lot

of attention and getting a lot of money, both from Democrats, a lot of out of state Democrats, putting a lot of money into Georgia and Republican outside groups dropping a lot of money in there. And these are special elections. These are little one offs, you know, a year and a half, more than a year and a half, I guess, a year and a half before the midterm elections, the 2018 elections. Okay, so why and what do they tell us, if anything? It's not unusual for a new president to see the races that take place next be a bit of a pushback. For example, the states of Virginia and New Jersey elect their governors in the year following presidential elections. And typically, typically now, we've had some interruptions in this and may see some interruptions going forward. But typically, those two governorships go to the party that had lost

the presidential election a year earlier. It's like the first canary in the coal mine saying, hey, maybe everything isn't rosy for the party that is supposedly ruling the country. And we've seen some of that with congressional districts in the past where, you know, after a triumph by a president of one party, the next several special elections don't necessarily go the same way. This would have been a big deal for the Democrats to win in Kansas because, as Scott was saying, the Democrats hadn't won this district since 94. They hadn't put a new Democrat into that seat since the 70s. And it would have been just a huge deal to win Wichita again in Kansas. Of course, at the same time, when we got to November of 2018, in all likelihood,

that Democrat would have been extinct. They would have wiped him out in the next regular election when all the other voters came back. So it's symbolic to a large degree. It doesn't mean that there's really been a fundamental change in a district or a fundamental change in the country's attitude. What it mostly means is that the Democrats are juiced. They've got the intensity that they unfortunately, from their perspective, lacked in 2016 when there actually was a big national election. So, Scott Detrow, you are in California. Aside from eating tacos and In-N-Out burger, what are you up to? Yeah, so I'm working on a couple of different stories, but one interesting one that will air in a couple of weeks around the 100-day mark, I'm really trying to check in with kind of the democratic world to see how they're feeling about

the first 100 days of Trump's administration. So when I was out here, I was talking to a lot of activist groups, including going to some of those indivisible meetings, which was really interesting. And I think one big picture trend is that there is a lot of excitement when it comes to democratic grassroots, when it comes to people feeling kind of wanting to be involved, getting energized. But I think that might be a double-edged sword for Democrats in terms of the party itself, because at these meetings I've been hanging out at, there has been a lot of frustration with Democrats in Congress, and there has been a lot of frustration with the DNC from these people who are just getting energized for the first time, feeling like this Kansas race especially especially the DNC should have stepped

up more and that that Democratic office holders in general need to be a lot more aggressive. Beware your grassroots. They might just take you out. A lot of conversation about should we primary this person or not in the meetings I've been going to. Which is kind of what happened with the Tea Party. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of when you say, so you guys like a liberal version of the Tea Party, that's not something that Democrats want to hear. But there are a lot of early similarities, and that's a storyline to keep close tabs on. In the past, one of the early indicators of a

big wave year has been a lot of primary challenges. Okay, we're going to take one more quick break, and we'll be right back with Can't Let It Go. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Tommy John, the 21st century men's underwear brand that's working to redefine comfort for guys everywhere. Whether you're on the go or sitting at a desk, Tommy John's patented design can give you the perfect fit. Experience why Tommy John has sold over 2 million pairs of underwear and counting, all backed by the best pair you'll ever wear or its free guarantee. Save 20% on your first order with code POLITICS at TommyJohn.com. Before we get back to the show, if you are a news junkie, check out 1A, NPR's new daily show inspired by the First Amendment.

Hear newsmakers, great guests, and topical debate in a new episode posted every weekday afternoon. Check out 1A with Joshua Johnson from WAMU and NPR on the NPR One app and wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, we are back and it is time for Can't Let It Go. Scott Detrow. So being in Los Angeles, I will say that I made the semi-rookie mistake, I've been here a few times, but not an LA regular, of booking interviews and meetings on opposite sides of town and driving back and forth. So I've been spending a lot of time on the freeway, sitting in traffic. That's why we're so huge in Los Angeles.

Just recreating the first scene of La La Land a lot. But as a result of that, listening to a lot of Morning Edition and Morning Edition talk to George W. Bush this morning, David Green was in Dallas interviewing him. And it was a really interesting interview. One of the things that David asked Bush about was kind of his resurgence in popularity among Democratic voters over the last few months during the Trump administration. Suddenly, a lot of this looking back fondly on George W. Bush from people who did not feel too fondly about Bush at the time. And Bush had a measured answer. He seemed kind of amused by that. One publication, The New Statesman in Britain, that said you have gone from war criminal to the Internet's favorite grandpa.

That's nice of him. You know, that's just the way history works. The job of president is complicated and difficult no matter who holds the office. And, you know, after eight years, people got pretty tired of me. And after eight years of President Obama, some people got tired of him. And everything's kind of relative. But David also asked Bush about a report about Bush's view on Trump's inauguration. It was kind of a funny exchange. There were several people who say they overheard you after Donald Trump's inaugural speech. Oh, really?

Saying, quote, that was some weird. You know, I can't, if I said it, I don't remember it. But I'm glad I went to the inauguration. You know, it's a really beautiful experience to watch a peaceful transfer of power. I wish that I'd gotten the rain poncho on a little more cleanly. It was a little sloppy. Yeah, my daughters were aghast. You know, Dad, you're a national tweet sensation or whatever they say.

You know, you're trending or whatever the words are. And I said, I don't know what the heck that means. But then I saw the pictures. I can see why I was trending. But that doesn't characterize your reaction? You know, I just don't remember, David. I really don't. So I'd say, one, that was kind of a non-denial.

That was interesting. Two, David Green cursed in front of a president. So, you know, good for you, David. And three, that was just a reminder that Twitter plays such a big deal in our politics right now. But, you know, Bush wasn't president that long ago. And it was by his answer there. That's just a reminder. Twitter was a total non thing when Bush was president. Yeah. And it's a total reminder of how Bush nostalgia is just off the charts. And here's an ex-president who can laugh at himself. Tam, what can you not let go of? OK, so mine is about chocolate cake. Actually, it's only sort of about chocolate cake. President Trump, in his interview with Maria Bartiromo on the Fox Business Network,

talked about where he was and sort of the surroundings when he made the decision to carry out that missile strike in Syria. And the audio here, it's about two minutes long. I was sitting at the table. We had finished dinner. We're now having dessert. And we had the most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you've ever seen. And President Xi was enjoying it. And I was given the message from the generals that the ships are locked and loaded. What do you do? And we made a determination to do so.

The missiles were on the way. And I said, Mr. President, let me explain something to you. This is during dessert. We've just fired 59 missiles, all of which hit, by the way, unbelievable from hundreds of miles away. All of which hit. Unmanned. It's so incredible. It's brilliant. It's genius.

Our technology, our equipment is better than anybody by a factor of five. I mean, what we have in terms of technology, nobody can even come close to competing. Now, we're going to start getting it because, you know, the military has been cut back and depleted so badly by the past administration and by the war in Iraq, which was another disaster. So what happens, as I said, we've just launched 59 missiles heading to Iraq. Well, you headed to Syria. Yes. Heading toward Syria. And I want you to know that because I didn't want him to go home. We're almost finished. It was a full day in Palm Beach. We're almost finished. And what does he do? Finishes dessert and go home. And then they say, you know, the guy you just had dinner with just attacked.

How did he react? So he paused for 10 seconds and then he asked the interpreter to please say it again. I didn't think that was a good sign. And he said to me, anybody that uses gases, you could almost say or anything else. But anybody that was so brutal and uses gases to do that to young children and babies it's okay he agreed he was okay with it and i and i think we all assume that it was in fact chocolate cake uh while it might not have been iraq it was actually syria the focus on the chocolate cake tells me that he was right about it being chocolate. Yeah, it's just like it's very striking to hear the president of the United States describing in such vivid detail the moment when that decision was made.

Usually that stuff, you know, it's like in a situation room and you don't really learn that much about it. But here he is describing it in detail along with the chocolate cake. Ron, what can you not let go of? Well, it's a sad, sad chapter, of course, in American political history. But the governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, swore many, many, many times he would never resign. In fact, quite a number of times on Monday said he would not resign. And in fact, he had resigned. And the next day, the state of Alabama spent $16,000 removing his name from all the Welcome to Sweet Home Alabama signs in the state, and there are quite a few, and replacing it with the name of the new governor, Kay Ivey, who stepped up from the

lieutenant governorship to take his place. Now, as, of course, all America knows, Governor Bentley was involved in some sort of a relationship with one of his staffers, which he denied and used, apparently, state funds to cover up. Whatever the nature of that relationship was, he's always denied it was any sort of romantic relationship. That's impressive they changed the signs that quickly. Usually, I feel like there's like a multiple-year lag when a new governor comes in before states get all those signs changed. Not in a down-to-the-minute 21st century state-of-the-art state-like sweet home Alabama.

Scott. Now, is the new governor making any sort of history as a female governor of Alabama? Well, actually, they have had a female governor before. The wife of George Wallace served as – Lurleen Wallace served as governor for a while after he was governor. Okay. From the Love Gov to Scott Horsley. Sounds like Governor Bentley could use some scented candles, and I know where he can get some. Scents by Jan?

My Can't Let It Go is what I call a USSSCU. That is a United States Secret Service scented candle update. Every morning on my way into the White House, I pass through a little security gate, the Northwest Gate, just on Pennsylvania Avenue there. And you go through a metal detector and there's some uniformed Secret Service officers who do check you out, make sure you're not bringing anything you shouldn't into the White House grounds. And about a year ago, they started putting a scented candle next to the metal detector. Yeah, like on top of the metal detector. On top of the metal detector. Now, it wasn't really for cover-up type purposes. There was no offensive odor in the guard shacks that they needed to disperse. Are you sure? No more than any guard shack. Not one that I could detect, but they do. I call it an update because it's an ever-changing scent, often matching the seasons. On the first winter day or first crisp fall day, they might go to

sort of an apple and spice, apple and cinnamon spice candle. And on this lovely April day, it was pineapple mango was our new scent at the guard shack from, I'm told, Bath and Body Works. And so I just want to say a little thank you to the men and women of the uniform division of the U.S. Secret Service. They're secret, they're sensitive, and they're scented. And they have a veritable aromatic kaleidoscope. Scott, just for our audience and all civilized humans, Scott actually does send an email update to the rest of the White House correspondents when he goes through the guard shack to update us on what the scent of the day was. Caramel vanilla. You know, there was one day where there was a sense of the news. There was a pear scented candle that I could smell all the way out on Pennsylvania Avenue. Between the Tom Hanks funded espresso and the candles, you have a lot of scents through your workspace over there.

Well, and we've got a nose for news. Is there a little placard that says today's scent? No. In the guard shack in the U.S. No, I like to think that my email message sort of serves that purpose. All right, I think we're done here. Okay, that is a wrap this week. We will be back in your feed next week.

As usual, there's a lot going on. Make sure you're downloading Up First each morning for a quick rundown of the day's big stories. And if you want to support the podcast, the best way to do it is to support your local public radio station. Go to npr.org slash stations, find yours, donate, and please tell them that we sent you. Okay, I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the scented White House. And I'm Ron Elving, editor-correspondent.

And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.