The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, April 27

Episode Date: April 28, 2017

A shutdown deadline deferred as the 100th day approaches. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, 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. Take our podcast survey at npr.podcastingsurvey.com.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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And support your local NPR station. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, here to talk through some of this week's political news. The federal government probably lives to fight another week, at least when it comes to its funding. The White House makes a lot of noise on taxes and trade, and the Obamacare repeal might be coming back. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. How's everybody doing? Hey, I think it's about time we had somebody giving us the

welcome to the podcast in real Deutsch. Oh, were those people German? I couldn't tell. Yeah. Deutsch speakers. Are we allowed to make fun of our brilliant listeners? No. It's not making fun.

No. As a woman with the most German name in this room, I can say that. Yes, Miss Kurzleben. Miss Kurzleben. Freulein Herzleben. Okay. I'm over it. Okay, I'm over it. Anyway. I'm over it.

All right, let's get serious. One big storyline at the end of the week, that symbolic but very important 100-day milestone for Trump's presidency. We talked all about that in an episode earlier this week, so just go back in your podcast feed to listen to that conversation with a very fired up Mara Liason, who tells Tamara and me several times, what's up? Or that we're wrong. Or that we're wrong. That happens a lot in that episode. But we also talked in that episode about the fact that the top Democrat and Republican on the House Oversight Committee say that Michael Flynn may have broken the law last year. He's Trump's departed national security advisor. And the problem was that he wasn't totally honest in a financial disclosure form he filled out in order to get security clearances. So we have a brief development on that today. The Pentagon Inspector

General has opened an investigation into Flynn over that same issue. We also learned from documents released by the House committee today that Flynn was warned about all of this. The Defense Intelligence Agency, that's the agency that he headed during the Obama administration but was fired from, sent him a letter notifying him that he was bound by the constitutional clause prohibiting foreign emoluments. Oh, goody. We used the word emoluments. And I said it right the first time, which is an improvement. Ron, this is yet another development of Michael Flynn being in really serious trouble, it looks like.

This could be, although we have not seen prosecutions over the years on the foreign emoluments clause. This is something that people bring up a lot, but it isn't necessarily something that we've seen a parade of people get prosecuted for over the years. But what about lying or not disclosing information on a security form? That can be a much more serious matter. And it does appear that he was specifically warned with regard to the payments he was taking from RT, which is Russia Today, which is a news service of the Russian government. It is basically a propaganda arm. And a number of

the other contacts that he had with Russia that were remunerative for him, these were things he clearly did not want to share or did not feel particularly called upon to be forthcoming about. And that could get into some various serious charges. The House Oversight Committee has been trying to get various forms and paperwork and documents from the White House. And Elijah Cummings, who is the Democrat on that committee, has been very critical of the White House for not turning things over. Today, Sean Spicer at the White House press briefing was asked about all of this. His answer seemed to be, thanks, Obama. The issue is, you know, he was issued a security clearance under the Obama administration in the spring of 2016.

The trip and transactions that you're referring to occurred in December of 2015, from what I understand. Essentially what they're trying to say is, oh, that was an Obama holdover, which he quite specifically was not. He was dismissed from his job in the Obama administration, and he came back into public note and much wider public note as an early supporter of Donald Trump and then as his selection to be his national security advisor. And a pretty constant presence on the campaign trail with Donald Trump. Yes. Hugely, he was on the stage at the Republican National Convention, and then he went up into the press area, into the media area, and went from booth to booth to booth, making himself available to do interviews. He is quite

closely at this point associated with the political rise of Donald Trump. Danielle? That's kind of where my next question goes, is he was so closely associated with Donald Trump, perhaps still is. He's gone now. Should something particularly damning come out of this, how much does that hurt Donald Trump now that Flynn is sort of out of the picture? Well, we know that he's going to be questioned by both the Senate and House committees that are investigating the whole Russian interference thing. There was it always feels like dog years in terms of all the things we're covering. I forget if it was a few weeks or like a month or more ago.

But a letter emerged where Flynn's lawyers were trying to get immunity for Flynn. But as far as we can tell, that has not been granted because it was very unclear what the exchange he was offering was for that deal. So anyway, that is the latest development in something that, if nothing else, gets more and more serious for Michael Flynn and his lawyers and his legal issues. Another thing happened this week, and Tamara, you were covering this more than any of us. We talked earlier this week about a government shutdown being a possibility because the money for the federal government expires at midnight Friday. Looks like that's not going to happen now. And as Mara said in the last podcast, it probably was never going to happen. But the latest update in the saga of funding the government is that the Republican leaders of both the House and Senate appropriations committees have endorsed the idea of a short term, week long spending bill to keep the lights on while the negotiations finish up.

That said, there aren't a lot of major sticking points left. Democrats are saying that they would be open to supporting this short term kick the can extension, whatever you want to call it. But they are concerned Republicans might be asking for this short term spending thing so that they can then rush in and do a vote on the health care bill that President Trump wants to vote on before the 100 days. This is all very confusing. Yeah. And we're going to we're going to talk about health care in like a few minutes. But Danielle. Well, but speaking of kicking the can down the road, by the way, I mean, part of this whole avoiding a shutdown fight, right, was Trump kicking the can on the wall,

correct? Like he softened on his border wall this week. In fact, he got into this on Twitter. He said eventually, but at a later date so we can get started early, Mexico will be paying in some form for the badly needed border wall. Now, that is both, you know, him being apparently trying to be harsh, badly needed border wall and also being phenomenally squishy on this thing that he's been promising for so long. Right. And again, we kind of dug into this in the last episode. The reason this may have been a big issue this week, but then not being an issue, was that at first the White House was insisting that this funding bill that was coming for a vote had to include money for a border wall. Correct. And then very quickly, Mara kept calling it negotiating with it himself,

very quickly dropped that demand. So it was never really a factor in negotiations. And we have also had some controversy over whether or not the continuing resolution that keeps the government open would be hung up on the question of subsidy payments under Obamacare to insurance companies to keep them offering the program that is the insurance program to lower-income people that they are currently offering under Obamacare. And we are still in a climate of threat. And we still hear that Donald Trump wants to get rid of that, or maybe some of the Republicans in the House want to get rid of that.

And the Democrats are trying to get something into the CR language that would say that's never going to happen. So the White House has said that they support extending those payments and that they will extend those payments. What they aren't saying is for how long. But hadn't they publicly floated the idea of not funding those payments as some sort of leverage? Yes. And then they negotiated with themselves. As on many issues, they have played both sides of this at some point or another. And that's why the Democrats have been saying what they would like to see is a permanent commitment that as long as Obamacare exists and this is the system, that the government

will continue to hold up its end of the bargain. Right, because it's pretty generally agreed that were you to get rid of these payments, that Obamacare actually would, quote unquote, implode or, in other words, fall apart. Yeah. And given that they are probably going to extend funding for a week and do this all again, maybe we'll be talking about all of this again next Thursday. Another Cinco de Mayo when the government would potentially, when the deadline would be.

Because that's fun. Festive. I mean. Oh, well, how about a government shutdown on Cinco de Mayo over a border wall? Yeah. And all that they're negotiating right now, the big thing that they're negotiating is funding for the government through the end of September. And that's if they get a long term deal. Right. So we will be having the same conversation in September.

But when every month feels like a year, that's like a decade long spending plan, you know. Good for them. Let's plow forward into things that actually did happen this week as opposed to were going to happen and didn't happen. So that fiscal deadline floating until next week, the deadline that's really at hand, even though it's kind of symbolic, is that 100-day mark, which comes on Saturday. And that 100-day mark led to a very busy week in the White House. We had a new tax proposal, more executive orders. We'll talk about those in a bit. But Tam, what was the message the White House was trying to send with all this busyness? That President Trump has done stuff. And there was even one press release where they said that

the president has done a historic amount of stuff. However, political scientists would tell you that these things are best measured by looking at the substance. Professor Ron, has Trump done more historic stuff than any other president? No. In a word, no. But let us give him his due. The most important thing that a president can do in the first hundred days is to set a new course from his predecessor. And that, I think it is fair to say, Donald Trump has done. He has clearly established that he is going to, by executive order, if not by legislation, dismantle as many of the achievements of the Obama administration as he possibly can and has done everything that he could to undercut some of them and to change our policy with regard to immigration, with regard to trade, with regard to taxes. And I don't think anyone could question that he is out there being a very activist president in his first 100 days. Okay. So one of the big things that the White House talked about this week was taxes.

Danielle, I'm going to be honest with you. We all have our little, like, wonky areas. This is not my wonky area. I am not the person in my house who does the taxes. I just don't really understand what's going on here. So I'm going to ask you to explain it. Okay, let's do this. And I might have a lot of questions.

That is fine. All right. Donald Trump released what you could loosely call a tax plan. I say plan loosely because it is very broad. It is not detailed in any way. I am holding a piece of paper here. So what did they unveil? All right.

So here is what we do know. One of the big things that we knew running up to this was that he wants to cut the corporate rate in a very big way from 35 percent to 15 percent. So this is taxes on businesses. Right. And the corporate rate right now, as you will often hear politicians say, is among the very highest in the world. We do have a quite high corporate tax rate now. Usually when people say they're going to lower the corporate tax rate, they also say they're going to close loopholes in some way, shape or form to offset that big, giant reduction. Why is offsetting important? Well, otherwise, you're going to blow a giant hole in the deficit and increase the debt.

So basically, you're lowering the amount of money you bring in here and raising the amount of money you're bringing in elsewhere to kind of even it out? You're lowering the rate that businesses are paying, but you're getting rid of ways for them to cut their tax liability. And so like right now there is a 35% corporate tax rate, but basically none of the major corporations pay a 35% tax rate and their effective tax rate is significantly lower because they, you know, use this deduction or this depreciation. There are all of these things in the tax code that make it so that they never pay that 35%. So if you're going to lower it to 15%, in theory, you have to get rid of some of those things that they use to reduce their tax burden.

And that seems like that would be very hard to do because lots of people would fight for all those different loopholes or deductions that affect them. Right. I mean, there are bajillions of special interests and bajillions of... And bajillions is a very technical term. Most definitely. Most accountants will tell you that. No, there are lots of special...

This is why tax reform is so hard, or at least one big reason. There are many reasons. But you have so many different organizations fighting for so many different things they want. All right. One other thing we should point out on business tax. I could go on for hours about this, but this tax plan lowers the rate on what are called pass-through businesses. This might sound wonky, but this is important. It is.

Yes, because pass-through businesses, many but by no means all, are small businesses. You have partnerships, things that are called S-corporations. Now, guess who happens to have owned some pass-throughs at some point? Oh, are you saying the Trump Organization is a pass-through? Yes. The Trump Organization consists of many pass-throughs. Okay. All right. Interesting. I don't think we mean to imply that this whole tax reform is somehow a gift to

the Trump Organization. It may be that as well, but the idea here is not unlike the idea behind tax reform in 1986 and in previous years when it's been done, which is if you lower rates, you encourage business activity. And if you can widen the base on which you apply that lower rate, you can get the same amount of revenue or theoretically even more. So that works for everyone. It's a win-win proposition. And they're applying the same thought on personal income taxes, where they would lower the top or theoretically even more. So that works for everyone. It's a win-win proposition. And they're applying the same thought on personal income taxes, where they would lower the top income tax rate to 35, then they'd have a 25 bracket and a 10 bracket. That's very similar to what was done in 1986. The numbers are slightly different. But in fact, the higher rate is even higher than it was in 1986. So they can say that they are being consistent across the board

here. Yes, it will be good for a lot of wealthy people. For example, the estate tax would be eliminated. This is what some people call the death tax. So this is when someone dies and they have a big inheritance and that inheritance gets taxed. That's right. And it has to be a really big inheritance. It has to be millions of dollars. And the argument against it is they were paying taxes their entire lives and saving that money. Don't tax them just because they were wealthy one more time. And that is an argument. And this has been a longstanding argument in tax policy, but it will cost a lot of money, as will some of these other changes. So the big result of all of this seems to me that the federal government would be taking in a lot less money. What is their answer to that problem that's raised?

One is that all of those lost revenues would be made up for an economic growth. The other is that it would be offset through deductions, though we don't really have a lot of specifics on that. But what I'm getting at here is you do have things like doubling the standard deduction and cutting tax rates to a certain degree. In some cases, that would help middle class and lower to middle class Americans. But things like keeping the mortgage interest and charitable giving deductions are regressive. The estate tax largely paid by higher income people. The capital gains tax overwhelmingly paid by higher income people. So you can see where a fair amount of the lost

revenues just might be under this. However, we don't know exactly how big those losses are going to be. Now, the Trump plan on the campaign trail costs $7.2 trillion over 10 years. That's a lot. That is a that's a huge amount. So cost is the the lost money that is not coming in. That is how much it would add to the deficit. Okay. Counting interest. So my point here is that we don't know how much this could increase the deficit by, but it could be a lot. And so if you are a Republican who cares about debts and deficits and fiscal responsibility, this might reasonably worry you. And if you are a Democrat worried about the rich benefiting or about President Trump himself

personally benefiting, then there are a lot of things in this that could potentially give you heartburn. And there's one other thing. This morning, Stephen Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, was making the rounds on television and he was asked, can you guarantee that lower income and middle income families will not see a tax increase? And he was like, well, that is our goal. But we can't be certain. It's hard to guarantee. It's hard to guarantee. All right.

All right. If you are listening to this podcast and still have questions, I am hosting this podcast and I still have questions. So that's OK. We do do a lot of question episodes. This tax thing is going to take a long time to work its way through. We're going to have like a year probably to keep... Yeah, nprpolitics at npr.org

is where we ask you to send your questions. We could do like an entire series of listener mail questions on this very topic. We could and we should. Get Scott Horsley. All right.

No kidding. Thank you for letting me spout at you about taxes for quite a while. No problem. We can do this again with energy efficiency and I can repay the favor. Let's not. One other not complicated at all thing happening in Congress right now is health care. It's back. We've talked a lot about how these various versions of zombie Obamacare repeal have happened

and not happen and why it's in the Republicans' interest to keep them going. But this week, it started to look a lot more real, if not anywhere near as serious as it was before that vote got pulled. But still, things are happening. Amendments are actually being introduced. Tam, what has happened that makes us need to pay attention more? So Congressman Tom MacArthur is a moderate Republican from New Jersey. He happens to have a history of working in the insurance industry. And he was negotiating with the Freedom Caucus people during the congressional recess. And the Freedom Caucus are the more far-right Republicans who had been staunchly opposed to the bill, the repeal and replace bill. And basically were responsible for it being pulled last time because they didn't support it.

Except for also all the moderates. But we'll get to that in a second. Yes. So MacArthur has come up with an amendment that the Freedom Caucus likes. And the Freedom Caucus actually endorsed that amendment. And now the Freedom Caucus, many of their members say that they will support this. The amendment hasn't been attached yet, but it will be attached soon. And basically what it does is it says states you can change the rules of the Affordable Care Act. You can change what has to be covered. You can. But what has to be covered is like a key part of the Affordable Care Act. In fact, it is sort of the centerpiece of the Affordable Care Act. But so what it does is it

does allow states to get a waiver from the various protections and coverage requirements of the Affordable Care Act. This is something that the Freedom Caucus likes. However, moderate Republicans who are also important people who would need to vote for this, this hasn't really changed their position as far as I can tell. A bunch of them have even come out and said this doesn't make it any better and they still don't support it. Because, you know, we saw last time around, especially when it came to moderate Republicans, they were really concerned about voting on something that could be framed in a way as voted to take away, you know, your right to maternity care, to mental health care, things like that. Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader, talked about the political danger of this vote for Republicans today, and she did so in the soundbite of the week. What you see in the GOP haste to pass the bill and Trump trying to cram it down in the last 100 days, I think President Trump is really making fools of the

members of Congress, of his own party. He's asking them to vote for a bill that is wildly unpopular in the country, is the wrong thing to do first and foremost, is going to be doo-doo stuck to their shoe for a long time to come. Do-doo stuck on their shoe. So here's the thing about this. Wait, can we just like pause on that for a second? Okay, we paused. Moving on. Those things you were describing, those particular benefits you were describing, that's part

of what's called an essential health benefit package. And if they are allowed to get a waiver to be released from having to provide that, that essentially guts the whole idea. And then number two, there's guaranteed issue. There is even if you have a preexisting condition, you can still get insurance. If they can get a waiver from that, that clearly guts the whole idea. And to say, oh, we're preserving the things you want, but the states that want to have lower premiums, well, duh, if you don't do those kinds of benefits and those kinds of guaranteed coverage for people with preexisting conditions, of course, their premiums are going to be lower. So there are going to be states that do that. You're essentially allowing them to opt out of the system. So one thing that I'm confused, though, is that Republicans always talk about one of their problems with health care is that it's such a segmented market. They say that, you know, we need to make health care more like car insurance where there's a national playing field, there's national competition, and it's much more similar.

This seems like if state A can have these types of plans and state B can have drastically different plans, this seems like a step in the other direction. Well, that's actually a step in the direction of what it was like before the Affordable Care Act. Exactly. And let's just ask, what would happen if, for example, you would have allowed states under the Voting Rights Act to have a waiver? If they wanted a different policy, fine. You're not subject to the Voting Rights Act or the Civil Rights Act. Would there have been any states that chose to opt out? I just want to add amid all of this, and Margo Sanger-Katz at the New York Times has done some great reporting on this. Obamacare, you know, the CBO did say it's

not exactly imploding. However, there are a few big questions out there right now concerning these exchanges. You know, you have some areas of the country that right now have one insurer. Now, should those insurers decide to pull out, as many insurers have pulled out of various states or various areas, then the question is what happens next? So it's not clear at this point whether the votes are really there for this. I think it is kind of clear, though, because we know the White House really wanted this to happen to Friday or Saturday for that 100 days mark. Right. That they don't care about.

Right. Which is artificial in Donald Trump's words. Yeah. And ridiculous. It's ridiculous. And the thing that Paul Ryan's office keeps saying is, you know, we'll hold the vote when we have the votes. There's an idea. And they're not holding a vote.

Therefore, sounds like they don't have the vote at the moment. That sounds kind of ipso facto to me. Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, this seems more brought back to life than it was before, though, in the bottom line. Is that fair to say? At least it's not possible to dismiss it. And it certainly looks better and sounds better to be talking about this as a prospect for either this week or next week or perhaps a little later on down the road than it would be to say, well, you know, we tried in March. We didn't get it done. So we're moving

on. All right. So we are going to take a quick break when we come back. A beef with Canada over milk and a few of your questions. Was that a pun? It was. I think that sort of works. Support for NPR Politics comes from CNN. With the new season of United Shades of America, comedian W. Kamau Bell believes that uncomfortable conversations can create change. From gun control to violence in Chicago to immigration, Kamau travels across America to visit the communities and people at the heart of the national conversation. The CNN original series United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell returns Sunday night, April 30th at 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on CNN. Support also comes 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 And we're back. To redeem your free trial offer, go to harrys.com slash NPR politics. And we're back. So one other thing happened this week. Suddenly we're fighting with Canada over milk and timber. What is going on? Right. So, yeah, a lot of Trump's problems with NAFTA thus far have involved, you know, Mexico, of course. But now we are hearing all about trade

disputes with Canada. This week, Trump threatened a 20 percent tariff on Canadian softwood lumber imports. I know he also took issue with some Canadian regulations regarding dairy. I mean, we're not going to get into the Byzantine ins and outs of all this, but this is nothing new. These are disputes that America has had with Canada for quite some time, for decades at least. And that Canada has had with us. Well, absolutely, yes. Canada does not have disputes with other countries. I'm being very Ameri-centric here, I realize.

They're so polite. So you can see this as part of his, you know, 100-day big finish, so to speak, because trade was and is his big thing, you know. And railing on NAFTA has been a very powerful political tool. Right. so to speak, because trade was and is his big thing, you know, and. And railing on NAFTA has been a very powerful political tool. Right. Not just tool, something that like a lot of voters responded to. They feel like this is a trade deal that really led to a loss of jobs. Absolutely.

Both with him and Bernie Sanders. So the milk complaining happened and this has been going on before, but I think it seemed to take Canada by surprise that it was so sudden and vocal. I was with Trump in Wisconsin when he brought this up for the first time. Big cheers in Wisconsin for going after this Canadian dairy business. Excellent point. Excellent point. Because after the Wisconsin trip, this suddenly leaped to the fore. The big picture storyline here is that dairy farmers in Wisconsin and other places feel like they've been abruptly shut out of the Canadian milk market recently. Canada disagrees with that. But Trump first brought this up on a visit to Kenosha, Wisconsin.

A bigger thing happened with Canada, though, and that's that earlier this week, the White House very briefly floated the idea of entirely pulling out of NAFTA altogether. But then a couple hours later, that wasn't the case. And the White House said, hey, actually, President Trump was on the phone with the president of Mexico, the prime minister of Canada today, assuring them that, no, the U.S. is not pulling out of NAFTA, but that the U.S. would like to renegotiate. And if that renegotiation does not reach our standards, that the Trump administration would consider completely pulling out of NAFTA. So we still have the stick, but we're not hitting them with it at the moment. We're going to use it as a go to further negotiation. Right. So, yeah, he had two tweets that said, yeah, we're going to negotiate, except we might not. We might just pull out, which, long story short, just seems to be all options are open. This seems like sort of a classic Trump negotiating tactic where he goes for the big thing,

at least floats the idea of something that sounds very big and very extreme, and then either walks it back or agrees to something else. So like there was the thing where he said, well, maybe I won't acknowledge the one China policy. And then suddenly he was acknowledging the one China policy, but he got President Xi to call him. And in this case, the administration was floating the idea that they would pull out of NAFTA. And then what do you know, the leaders of Canada and Mexico call and say, yeah, we'd love to talk to you about NAFTA, which actually had been their position before. I mean, they were not opposed to the idea of revisiting this trade agreement. So this is a thing and not a thing.

The theatrics of it, I think, are important because this has worked and worked well for Donald Trump throughout his career. Certainly for his career in politics, it has worked well. And oftentimes, although not always, it worked for him in business. You know, maybe I'm going to put up a big building here or maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm going to buy that building for this. Maybe I'm going to sell this building for that. Maybe I'm not. And, you know, it's sometimes called the madman theory of negotiation.

If people are really unsure of what you might do and anything seems possible, it does give you a certain amount of leverage. And whatever he gets here, if he keeps the ball aloft long enough to get some concessions from the Mexicans and the Canadians that keep the good parts of NAFTA that a lot of our agriculture industry would like to see kept. And if he can then portray that, which I believe he can, as a big victory for the United States, then why isn't it one? Right. And I would add here, you know, I harp on this all the time. Trump is all about looking tough. He's all about looking like he's in control. So whether or not however much leverage this does or does not give him the fact that he can write this tweet that says the heads of Canada and Mexico reached out to me like they came begging to me to talk about this. That is his thing is just showing that he's the man in charge here. So one last note, Saturday, as we have mentioned a few times in this podcast, is Trump's 100th day in office. It is also the White House Correspondents Dinner. But President Trump will not be there. He will be in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, holding a rally.

He is holding it at the Farm Show Complex. The Pennsylvania Farm Show is a wonderful annual thing in January. It's like an indoor state fair. It has the best milkshakes in the world. And when I went there this year, I saw tiny baby ducks sliding down a slide. That sounds so adorable. Wow, that's like the Peabody Hotel, only better.

I have no idea what you're talking about. Farm Show Complex, great place. Trump will be there Saturday. So I think that he is a master of counter-programming, of setting up the split screen. He has thought about how he is going to maneuver around and against the White House press corps a lot. And this seems to have the potential to work for him very well. We're going to have the Washington establishment wearing ball gowns and tuxedos, laughing and having rubber chicken dinners and doing the like the elite Washington thing. And the president of the United States will be in a farm center talking about the concerns of,

you know, the American people and the forgotten men and women. And President Trump and Steve Bannon, his advisor, want the media to be the opposition party. And he is setting up a split screen to make it look just like that. Well, and I seem to remember him doing this on the campaign trail, right? Holding a giant rally right when something else big was happening. It was a debate. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Nobody had any questions for me about the farm show. How long was the slide? The slide, it was like a little... So what they did is the ducklings had just been hatched and they had... Two very young, young ducklings. Yeah, just like hours old. And what they did is they hung some like food up so that they would kind of waddle up to the top.

And in trying to reach the food, they'd go down the slide and into a little pond. That doesn't seem nice. That's pretty funny. Ducklings were happy. They kept doing it over and over again. That's a good sign they liked it. Yeah, and they got some food out of it. No ducklings were harmed.

You had mastered the art of distraction. I would actually watch that on split screen rather than the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Well, there you go. All right. One more thing happened this week. We heard from former President Barack Obama. So, uh, what's been going on while I've been gone?

This was his first public appearance since he left office. He had been, you know, kite surfing or whatever with Richard Branson. What else had he been doing? He had been on a yacht with Oprah and Tom Hanks. He had been living it up in ways that someone who's not running for office again gets to do. But, Tam, you were there in Chicago. What was this about? The point of this was for President Obama to begin the conversation that he says will occupy his post-presidency, which is trying to encourage the next generation of civic leaders. The single most important thing I can do is to help in any way I can prepare the next generation

of leadership to take up the baton and to take their own crack at changing the world. So he was on stage with six young people who are involved in their communities in one way or another. His whole purpose was to not make any news at all. And he didn't. He did not criticize anything specifically about Donald Trump. Is that correct? Indeed, it was almost eloquent in a sense, if you want to think of it that way, that he was so far away from being in any sense taking on the current president and in any way trying to make any sort of a riposte or a rebuttal to any of the things that have been said from the current White House about him. He did not go there at all. And by not going there at all, perhaps drew the strongest contrast that he possibly could have drawn. It seems like a lot of Democrats are actually frustrated with Obama for not getting engaged, but that Obama is very deliberate about this.

One, because he's trying to give Democrats room to do their own thing, too, because he's just kind of tired after eight years of being president. But three, it seems I've seen a lot of indications that Obama is aware that he kind of has one or two cards to play in terms of getting involved. And he wants to wait for the moment where it could be more effective as opposed to just, you know, getting out in front of a camera at every moment to criticize President Trump. Scarcity increases your value. Though he is doing one engagement that created some controversy in September. He will speak at a conference run by Cantor Fitzgerald, the trading and investment firm,

for a cool $400,000. Wall Street speeches for a lot of money. I feel like that's something we heard about before. Yeah, but there was a thing you said earlier about how he's not running for office again. I mean, that seems important here, right? He was already president. It won't hurt his campaign. I mean, you can take whatever moral position you want on this, and I'm not going to begrudge anybody anything. But also, like, the question is, those cards that he has to play that you mentioned,

does him accepting $400,000 for a speech endanger that? Just for context, the speech Ronald Reagan gave after he left the presidency in 1989 was for $1 million. All true. But I spent. Wait, $1988? Really? Was that, didn't go to Japan for that?

Holy cow. And it was in Japan. So. Wow. Everything everybody said is true. But I just spent two weeks on the road covering a lot about kind of what Democrats are thinking about their future. And it's increasingly a central part of the party, like the idea of income inequality and taking on Wall Street and doing things like that. And this is a symbol that would probably make a lot of the base of something.

Listen, I am not going to disagree with you. We're being so polite here. No, purely to play devil's advocate. I mean, is Obama the head of his party still? I don't think he should be. While he was the head of his party, they lost a massive number of seats in every legislative body and statehouse in America. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm wondering. Well, not 30 out of 50. Okay, sorry.

Not in California. 30 out of 50. I mean, should those people be looking to Obama anyway to be some sort of an example? Well, I think you've circled around a big problem the Democrats don't have the answer to right now. That's very true. All right. I mean, should those people be looking to Obama anyway to be some sort of an example? I think you've circled around a big problem the Democrats don't have the answer to. That's very true. All right. We've got a couple questions from you guys.

Listener mail. Here is one from Shashank at Emory University. Dear NPR politics podcast crew. Recently, Marine Le Pen qualified for the French runoffs with Emmanuel Macron. Liberals seem to breathe a sigh of relief because Macron performed better and polled better. But why? Since Trump was lagging behind in the polls, too, but ended up winning. Best regards, Shashank.

OK, so Marine Le Pen, let me just very quickly fill everybody in. Marine Le Pen is the nationalist far right candidate in the runoff. She came in second, just behind Emmanuel Macron. I apologize for my pronunciation here. Macron is a centrist candidate, head of the En Marche party. A totally new party he just made up. Right. Yeah. Why not? It has the same initials.

It's been working well. Good for him. It has the same initials as his own. I just realized that. Okay. So at any rate, you have these two running against each other, and they came in quite close to each other. About two points apart. Right. Except now they are polling 20 points apart. One interesting thing happened after the runoff.

So the conservative candidate, Francois Fillon, who came in third and therefore was eliminated, said afterwards that he would vote for Emmanuel Macron. And when Fillon's supporters were polled, more of them said they would end up voting for Macron than Le Pen. So things are looking pretty good for Macron right now. Like I said, he's up in the last poll I looked at by roughly 20 points, maybe a little less. And the final election is on May 7th. I think Tam and I were about to say the same thing here, though, that I think, Shank, you're not wrong, because in mid-October, in late October, we were talking about the real possibility of a blowout historic Hillary Clinton win. She was campaigning in Arizona. We know how that ended. someone who has been reading some French Twitter, not in French, but following people who are following the election over here. I think Macron has actually gotten, I'm not suggesting the race

is totally close again, but Macron has gotten a whole lot of bad headlines in the last few days since the runoff. And Le Pen is going after him really aggressively. And weren't there some headlines about him being hacked by Russia? Pot, that's also a thing. Potentially. So we will probably talk about that election. Also, wait, wait, one more thing about that election. They have a two-week general election. The runoff happened. The general election's two weeks later.

Do we want a two-week general election? How do we feel about that? I would have gained like 10 fewer pounds. We would not have jobs if that was the case. How about a two-week general election after a, say, six-week primary election? Right. I mean, I believe Canada had an 11-week election

relatively recently, and people in Canada were upset that it was so long. Right. One more question. John in Dayton, Ohio, which he proudly calls the birthplace of aviation. I don't know. I think Kitty Hawk, I don't know.

But they built it in Ohio. Yeah. They built it in Ohio. That is a big aviation controversy. Oh, I don't know. But they built it in Ohio. Yeah. They built it in Ohio. That is a big aviation controversy. Oh, yes. It is, but Ohio has put it on their license plates. But so has North Carolina. It says first in flight.

First in flight. And they put the emphasis on flight. A controversy we will not be able to. Also, this is a side tangent, but in the Olympics last year, I learned this whole other thing that Brazil thinks that America lied about the Wright brothers and that Brazil actually invented aviation. So, John, birthplace of aviation, and I'm going to put an asterisk for our Brazilian and North Carolinian listeners. Hey, guys, I was just wondering, how has Donald Trump changed over his first hundred days?

Is he still the same guy who was a businessman on TV and the wild card of the Republican ticket? Or has he settled into his new position and started acting more like a politician? Thanks, John. I feel like we've answered that in our last 50 podcasts, but I don't know, just kind of directly answering that question. What do you guys think? He's been a politician for some while. I don't think you run for president of the United States for two years without being a politician. You can be a highly unconventional politician, a new kind of politician, for many a breath of fresh air, but you're running for office, you're a politician. And as president of the United States, particularly one who is kind of, you know, backing and forthing about a lot of different issues,

and we're going to do this, and now we're going to do that, and maybe we're not going to do the first thing, but maybe we will, maybe we won't. That sounds a lot like a politician. But, you know, I did analyze some of his tweets this week with David Eades of the NPR visuals team. And, you know, one thing we did find is that he is tweeting less. In January, he tweeted quite a bit more than he did in February. It fell off again in March. It appears that it still could in April. I didn't look at the latest numbers.

Though there were like eight of them today. Yeah, so that might have put him up there with March. But the point being, it's fallen off a bit. Perhaps he's a bit busy with his new demanding job. So in terms of conventionality, like, Twitter is so new. This is only the second president we've seen on Twitter. But he uses it phenomenally differently from the way President Obama used it. I mean, I talked with Steve Inskeep this week about this, and I asked him, can you remember a single Obama tweet at all? Yeah, the one that wasn't from him personally, but him and Michelle hugging. That's literally the only one I can remember. Okay, fair enough. Yes. But I mean, Trump has many memorable tweets. I mean, he shows us or at least appears to show

us, purports to show us what's going on in his brain or what's going on on cable TV while he is sitting there with his phone in hand. It's in real time. I just keep thinking, imagine having that kind of real time window into any other president's life, any other president's head, or at least insofar as we think it's a view into his head. It's really astounding how far we have gotten from fireside chats to this. It blows my mind that I keep thinking about my children, my grandchildren, or what have you, like when they are taking their civics courses, their American history courses, having, you know, in college, having a bound compendium of Donald Trump's tweets, which will all have to be footnoted to some degree or annotated as we've been doing in NPR because they require so much

context and yet they give you so much insight into this guy's personality. Yeah. Thank you, John. Thank you for those questions. And to all of you who write us, we get too many to answer. We do read them, and it really helps us to know what you're curious about. All right. One more quick break. We will come back with Can't Let It Go. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Amazon Studios and Bleeker Street.

Presenting the new movie, The Lost City of Z. Experience the best-selling true story and official selection of the New York and Berlin film festivals. Starring Charlie Hunnam as explorer Percy Fawcett. Also starring Robert Pattinson, Sienna Miller, and Tom Holland. Based on the book by David Grand. Written for the screen and directed by James Gray. The Lost City of Z, now playing in theaters everywhere. Before we get back to the show, one more request to fill out a survey NPR is doing in partnership with the Knight Foundation to find out more about how you spend time with this podcast and others, the survey is anonymous. It takes less than 10 minutes. It's at npr.podcastingsurvey.com.

That link is in the episode data for this episode. Thanks to all of you who have filled it out already. I don't know if I'm allowed to say this, but I think the politics podcast listeners have the highest response rate so far. Because we're A students. Boom. Keep that going. Keep voting, folks. Keep voting. I don't think it's a vote. It's not American Idol. Vote early and often. Why not? No, it's more like the voice. We're taking up first down. All right. American Idols.

All right. Back to the show. All right. We're back. Before we get to Can't Let It Go, we do have one correction. In last week's roundup, we said that Planned Parenthood is one of the largest provider of mammograms in this country. While Planned Parenthood does do breast cancer screenings and makes referrals for mammograms, Planned Parenthood does not do mammograms at its clinics. All right, time to end the show the way we do every week with Can't Let It Go, when we all share one thing we cannot stop thinking about this week, politics or otherwise. Tamara. Yeah, mine is politics. Okay. Today is a very special anniversary. I am pleased to introduce to you. That would be Ted Cruz speaking, former presidential candidate. An extraordinary leader. Oh, I know what this is. My friend and the next vice president of the United States, Carly Fiorina.

For those who don't remember, we were headed into the Indiana primary. It was sort of Ted Cruz's last ditch effort to win something and knock Donald Trump off of his path to the nomination. And he did something wild. He announced that he was going to have a running mate. A little presumptuous. But I think in the hopes of like bringing on just a few more voters. Carly Fiorina had been a candidate who dropped out earlier. She had been campaigning with his family a little bit. And I want to take you guys back down memory lane to our podcast one year ago when we were talking about this very event, the voices you will hear are Sarah McCammon, Sam Sanders, me, and Mara Liason. At that announcement, Carly Fiorina did something unusual. Can we just pause to play a little tape from that press conference?

Can we please? But we've been traveling around the country, and I've come to know Ted and Heidi and Caroline and Catherine. I know two girls that I just adore. What? I'm so happy I can see them more. Cause we travel on the bus all day. We get

to play. We get to play. I won't bore you with any more of the song. But they have four verses. That's it. Shut it all down. I won't bore you with any more of the song. That's it. Shut it all down. I'm out. I quit. What is going on? To me, this felt like, and I cannot see into her mind, but it felt

like an effort to position her as a softer female candidate. Who was she singing to? She was singing to Ted Cruz's two daughters, Caroline and Catherine, who are very cute. Was that an original song she just wrote for the kids? I don't know. Sounds like it. Alright, we're back

in 2017 now. Carly Fiorina also, didn't she fall off a stage during her one week as a vice presidential candidate? Yes. This whole thing just reminds me of how we've been living in dog years. I mean, that does not feel like it was a year ago. That feels like it was 10 years ago.

At one point, Detro and I were talking about doing a one shining moment retrospective of the 2016 camp just because there were so many moments that made you go, what just happened? All right. Thank you for that magical flashback. I'm here for you. Ron, what can you not let go besides that?

Yes, I had not really anticipated thinking about that ever again, but now of course I won't be able to stop. I would say this very day, we won't go back in time, this very day we saw an incredibly heartwarming moment, perhaps the most heartwarming moment thus far in 2017

and in the current Congress when at the end of his regular news conference, which was filled with wonderful news for the House Republicans, Paul Ryan called up the children, the sons and daughters on Take Your Child to Work Day who were there on Capitol Hill, the sons and daughters of a number of different kinds of people. They were members of Congress. They were reporters, quite a few reporters whose kids were there. And he said, suffer the children to come unto me. And they came up and they climbed all over Speaker Ryan. And it was really kind of touching. He is a family man. He is well known for it. And it was a heartwarming moment.

Yeah. And my friend's son, Max, is about one year old. And she ran up and just handed Max to Speaker Ryan and then bopped off stage. And he was just holding her son, who is adorable. And this year was a success on Take Your Child to Work Day at NPR because last year on Take Your Child to Work Day at NPR, a child accidentally caused 10 seconds of dead air on our national broadcast by pressing the exact sequence of buttons on the control board to do that. So as far as I know, that did not happen in NPR this year. So we're making improvements. That's right.

And that young man is now, what is he, the deputy director of operations at NPR? Something like that. He's on his way up. All right. I'll go next. I'm also bringing us back to 2016 a little. The Miami Marlins are for sale. Their owner, Jeffrey Loria, wants to sell them.

I have a lot of personal thoughts about the Miami Marlins that I will not share here. We should just clarify that they are a ball sport team. They are a professional baseball team. They play in the weirdest looking stadium in Major League Baseball. They should not have won the 2003 World Series. No, the Chicago Cubs should have done that. Well, yeah. Anyone but them should have. But here we are more than a decade later, more than a decade later. And the bidding process has been interestingly political.

At one point, a group of bidders involving members of the Kushner family were interested in bidding on the team. At another time, a group that include Tag Romney, Mitt Romney's son was interested. But do you know who came out on top, according to the Miami Herald and ESPN? It's not final yet, but it looks like this one person is going to come out on top and win. The certain guy who used to have an exclamation point

after his name? Jeb! Jeb did it! Jeb is going to buy, allegedly, the Miami Marlins, and not only that, Jeb is going to have the winningest of winners as his ownership partner. And that is one Derek Jeter, former shortstop of the New York Yankees. So good for Jeb. Marlins!

Exclamation point! Marlins! And while George W. Bush became president, and Jeb Bush did not, Jeb Bush will now own a baseball team that has won two World Series. While the baseball team that W. owned, the Texas Rangers team that has won two World Series. Well, the baseball team that W owned. The Texas Rangers. The Texas Rangers have never won a World Series. Well, there you go. Please clap.

All right, Danielle, you are last. So, hey, now, this week I was, you know, scouting around on the Internet. And I came across something related to some news we got from Fox News recently. Bill O'Reilly, of course, is leaving the channel. We will not go into all the controversy surrounding that. But let me inject a little levity into your week, everybody, because Twitter user Christopher Price posted something that just made my week. So first, he took Bill O'Reilly's voice from the show. I am Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly. And then he mashed it up with a pop music masterpiece.

Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly. Bill O'Reilly. So this is all him saying his name? Yes. Yes. They just plug it into a keyboard and you just go to town. And dear listeners, you could not see Danielle dancing, but it was a thing of beauty. I got to say, I am also an addict of a Reddit board called Reddit slash r slash smashups, which is all mashups of Smash Mouth songs.

This is a thing? Yeah. Wow. Yeah. So this is just grand. It delights me. It makes me giggle. So that is why I can't let it go. In honor of all that is going on, can we have this song play us out?

We can't do it live. So yeah, it should play us out. One more announcement. All right, tomorrow on Up First, NPR's morning news podcast, Steve Inskeep is going to be talking about an interview he recorded late today with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Tillerson has not sat down for a lot of interviews. In fact, he's gotten a lot of criticism for avoiding the media.

So this will be an interesting conversation. You can find it by 6 a.m. in your podcast feed tomorrow. I will also be on Up First tomorrow. You talk to the media more frequently than Rex Tillerson. Oh, I talk to the media. Oh, wait, I am the media. As for us, we will be back on Monday. As always, thanks for supporting the podcast by supporting your local public radio station. Go to npr.org slash stations to find yours and donate. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Ron Elbing, editor correspondent.

And because it is Take Your Child to Work Day, we have a special guest in the studio, Jack Montanaro, son of Domenico. Hey, Jack. You can say hi. Hi. Hi. Can you end the show for us? Yes. All right. Thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. All right. Thank you.

Thank you, Jack. Thank you, Jack. Bye, Jack. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. And we'll talk to you again next week.