The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, April 5

Episode Date: April 5, 2018

After days of railing against "weak" immigration laws and border security, President Trump is deploying National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. China is hitting back at the U.S. with tariffs of its own, largely targeted at Trump country. And with CEO Mark Zuckerberg preparing to testify before Congress next week, Facebook is now saying that some 87 million users — not 50 million, as had previously been said — had their data shared with political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter Tim Mak and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. 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

Hi, this is Alex from central Nebraska, and I just finished loading the dishwasher, which I never do because my wife doesn't like the way that I do it. I also just finished listening to the NPR Politics podcast, where Danielle Kurtzleben's Can't Let It Go was about a couple disagreeing about loading the dishwasher. It was epic. Now you get to listen to a new episode of the podcast, which was recorded at 2.44pm onm. on Thursday, April 5th. Let's face it. Things have probably changed by the time you hear this. So keep up with all of NPR's political coverage on the NPR One app, NPR.org, and your local station. Now let's get on with the show.

Danielle was literally dancing. A joy dance. Yes, that's true. I like this guy. He's Midwestern to boot. This is the NPR Politics Podcast, and we're here with our weekly roundup of political news. President Trump is deploying National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. It's not technically a trade war yet, more like a trade skirmish. But China is hitting back at the U.S. with tariffs of its own, targeted at Trump country. And with CEO Mark Zuckerberg preparing to testify before Congress next week, Facebook is now saying that some 87 million people had their data harvested and shared

with the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. That's a lot, and it's also a lot more than Facebook originally said. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. I just want you guys to know that this week, for the first time ever, I loaded my dishwasher handles down. And how was it? Forks are so much cleaner. My life has changed. You know, black is wide up as doubt. Food tastes better.

Yeah, absolutely. Without the little food scraps from last night's dinner left in them. And dear listeners, I have stopped putting wooden spoons in the dishwasher as a result of some scolding I received. All right. So we talked about this a bit on the podcast on Tuesday, but President Trump has been back to railing about immigration and border security a lot in the past few days, mostly on Twitter. But it has exited Twitter and come into the real world. And yesterday he signed a memorandum to deploy National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen made the announcement

yesterday at the White House press briefing. We continue to see unacceptable levels of illegal drugs, dangerous gang activity, transnational criminal organizations, and illegal immigration flow across our border. This threatens not only the safety of our communities and children, but also our very rule of law. flow across our border. This threatens not only the safety of our communities and children, but also our very rule of law. And although they announced it, there are still a lot of questions about exactly how this would work. And they seem to be questions that Nielsen and the White House are having trouble answering at this point. What I'd like to hear from the governors is what it is that they want. That's not anything that we have proposed, but we want to get to border security. So I think what we're saying here is we're going

to do everything we plan to do it until and when Congress acts. Mara, what can you say about what the plan is? The plan right now, according to DHS Secretary Nielsen, is that she's going to be talking with governors of the border states to figure out how many National Guard troops they would need and the ways that they could be the most helpful. You know, National Guard troops act as backups. They free up Border Patrol officers. But the backdrop for all of this is that immigration has become the number one election year issue for the White House. And the president, just as we started this podcast, was in West Virginia giving a speech that was supposed to be about tax reform, but it actually was a lot about immigration, describing in great gory detail how MS-13,

which is a gang, how they kill and maim their victims and all the horrible things that are happening because of immigration. They believe this is an issue that does fire up the Trump base. Firing up the base is very important. It's number one political strategy for the White House, keep their base energized, get them out to the polls in a tough midterm election. But there's also something else going on, which is the president has been very frustrated that he hasn't been able to get full funding for his wall. And as a matter of fact, when he called for National Guard troops to go down to the border,

he said they'll stay there until the wall is built. He got some pushback from his conservative base when he signed a big omnibus spending bill that did not include full funding for the wall. This is the first time he's ever done anything really that caused this much grumbling from his conservative base. And he wants to show them that he's being tough. And even though he can't get the wall built, he's doing something else. And that was the impetus for this new policy. Now, technically, politics cannot be the official impetus. It can be the unofficial impetus. But there has to be, in theory, a reason why this is happening. And Scott, the White House and the Department of Homeland Security says there is a reason.

That's right. And remember, the president spent a lot of last year bragging about how much he and his get-tough stance on border policing had done to depress the number of illegal border crossings. And in fact, if you look at the numbers from the Department of Homeland Security, we did see a dramatic drop in the number of illegal border crossers last year. That was called the Trump effect. But we sort of saw the illegal border crossings sort of bottomed out about this time last year, and they've slowly begun creeping up again. And just this week, we got the numbers for the March border crossings, and it was a pretty dramatic spike. They were up 37 percent in March from February, and they were three times as high in March of 2018

as they were in March of 2017. Remember, March of 2017, we were at peak Trump effect. So it's kind of bouncing back off of an artificially low floor. And what we're really seeing is illegal border crossings returning to sort of the kind of normal level that they've been at for the last five or six years. But it is a substantial increase from where we were a year ago. And that's what the White House is hanging its hat on here. This is not the first time that a recent president of the United States has sent in the National Guard to help along the border. How do the current numbers, even the spiked numbers, compare to what it was like when George W. Bush was sending people in or when President Obama sent in something like 1,500 National Guard troops? Back in 2006, just before the recession, we saw illegal immigration was really at kind of a long-time peak.

And in those days, we were seeing more than a million illegal border crossers every year. Even if we were to see the border crossings we saw in March sustained for this whole year, it would be way below that, be maybe the neighborhood of 400,000. So less than half of what we saw in 2006 when President Bush sent in the National Guard. Because like then the recession happened and people didn't want to come here. When the recession happened, we actually saw a net out migration. A lot of folks who had come here for economic reasons to try to find work weren't finding work. And so they went home. We've also seen a change in the composition of the migrants. And it's fewer Mexicans now coming for work, and it's a lot more Central Americans coming,

often fleeing violence or oppression in their home countries. More children, more families. And while in the president's mind, and we heard this yesterday from the Homeland Security Secretary, too, this is also conflated with illegal drugs and gangs and a national security threat. There's really no hard evidence that links this recent flow of immigrants, again, about a third of them children and families, to those kinds of criminal problems that the White House and the DHS are talking about. Right. Absolutely. And so you can sort of see what Trump's strategy here is then, as opposed to in the past, if there has been a crisis, the president said, a crisis of some sort, the president has said, okay, let's put these,

let's send in these National Guard troops. Trump is painting a crisis, a crisis of violence and of drug dealers coming in across the border. Now, everybody, let me send these National Guard troops. One other thing I wanted to add, though, in terms of context, in terms of people in the country illegally is it's really easy to focus on people crossing the border illegally. But a large share of people who are in the U.S. illegally did not cross the border illegally. They came here legally and they overstayed their visas. They flew in on vacation. They came as a worker of some kind. Especially as workers. Yes. And so it's one key thing to keep in mind that it's this is not

Trump has a big problem with undocumented immigrants, but it's not just about getting tough on the border. And this is why during the 2016 campaign, you saw a lot of the Republican candidates in particular talk not just about amping up the border, which is, of course, what Trump talks a lot about, but finding some other way of tracking visa overstays. talk about young people or these unaccompanied minors or families coming in. The way the Trump administration is presenting that is that they are sort of abusing the current laws, that they are coming in and they're not saying we're coming for work. They're saying we're coming because we're afraid. And because of that, the law treats them differently than if they were just like a dude who said, I'm coming for work. There is a big increase in the number of people who've come across the border and say they've come because they have a legitimate fear of something going on back home. The Trump administration describes that as folks taking advantage of the system. Could also mean that there's a lot

going on back home that they are afraid of. But it is true that the law requires the government to treat young people who come by themselves and also families differently than they would, say, a single man coming over for economic reasons. Families can only be held for 20 days. Young people, if they're coming from Central America, generally have to be turned over to sponsors in this country, often family members, as opposed to being sent quickly back home. So there is a legal framework that makes young people and families from Central America a bigger challenge for immigration authorities than historical border crossers. You know, this is what the president and the administration calls catch and release, and that they are forced by law to release certain immigrants, undocumented immigrants, from detention in advance of their court dates. And today the president was talking about how and then they disappear and they don't show up for their court date. And they are proposing, they say, the White House, a legislative package that would correct these loopholes and would put an end to this catch and release effect. The chances of Congress passing that this year, I think, are next to zero. But yesterday, a senior White House official said that the politics of this are good for them in an

election year because he said, how long can Democrats filibuster in favor of illegal immigrants. That's going to be very unpopular, this unnamed White House official said. And I think that as much as I cover politics, but I'm extremely interested in policy, the policy here is so unimportant. This is really not, this didn't come from a kind of policy wellspring. This is a political initiative. And go back to the summer of 2015 when Donald Trump rode down the escalator and talked about Mexicans sending drug dealers and rapists across the border. A lot of people wrote off his candidacy on that day, but he obviously tapped into some vein of American politics and wrote it all the way to the White House.

And, you know, people say that they didn't, that his supporters didn't really expect him to build the wall. They took him seriously, but not literally. It turns out they took him seriously and literally. And some of the loudest voices on the right are saying, if you don't build the wall, why did we vote for you? And, you know, the president has felt very frustrated about this, that he hasn't gotten the wall. And what's so interesting about this week in particular, one day the president talks about, tweets about lax border laws and that he wants those things fixed. And about he seizes on this news story of a caravan. Which has been stopped. Which has been stopped.

But he seizes on this news story. Look, there's a caravan traveling through Mexico to our border, and the White House scrambles, catches up, holds a briefing about all of the loopholes, which they called catch and release, in the law that they'd like fixed. Not a single word about the National Guard or militarizing the border. The next day, the president, seemingly impromptu, says, we're going to send the military to the border, okay? And they have to scramble and catch up for that, come up with some kind of policy, have briefings, have the Department of Homeland Secretary come out to say this is happening. I mean, this is how policy is made in this White House. But as far as what prompted this, I mean, aside from watching a Fox News story about caravans,

and I'm not suggesting that that prompted this whole policy rollout, you might call it. What I'm wondering is what did prompt this then? Because even though Trump's base may have been upset at that omnibus that didn't include a big giant border wall, I mean, what did prompt this? Because we haven't seen his base abandoning him since then. No, no, he has very high approval ratings among Republicans. But I think that the president acts as if he is in constant fear of losing his base. I know that he's being told by some of his advisors in and out of the White House that if he doesn't deliver on the wall, if he doesn't double down on being tough on undocumented immigration, that he's in danger of not so much losing his base, but that they would be less enthusiastic at coming out in a

midterm election when he's not on the ballot. Don't forget, he has to try to transfer his popularity to other Republican candidates, which doesn't always work. Just ask Barack Obama in 2010 and 2014. So I think that it was a number of things. It was the omnibus. It was his frustration, worry about the midterm elections, and then a return, as Scott just said, to the number one core issue that he wrote to the White House, and that's illegal immigration. All right, we are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, China retaliates against President Trump's new tariffs.

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Twice a week, we give you the lowdown on what's worth your time and what's not. Find Pop Culture Happy Hour on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back. And so are fears of a possible trade war with China. In response to President Trump's recent decision to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, China has announced that it, too, will be imposing tariffs on certain U.S. products. Scott or Danielle, open floor here. Can you please explain where we are in this tit for tat? Sure. Well, let me just start with what happened this week.

So it started on Monday when China imposed tariffs on $3 billion worth of American goods, it was 128 products in total, including, for example, a lot of fruit, a lot of nuts grown in the U.S., and a lot of pork raised in the U.S. And that was in response to tariffs that the U.S. had imposed. So then on Tuesday, Trump announced tariffs on 1,300 Chinese products. Now, that was not a volley back at those tariffs that Beijing imposed. Rather, this was sort of fulfilling a thing that the United States had announced a couple of weeks ago. A couple weeks ago, we said, we're going to come out with a list of stuff. And this was our list of stuff, 1,300 different products, around $50 billion worth. And so in response, the next day, China said, all right, we have $50 billion worth. And so in response, the next day,

China said, all right, we have $50 billion worth of stuff. So neither of those last two things, those $50 billion rounds of threats, they have not been imposed imposed yet. They've just been threatened. We're waiting until those actually come into effect. So some of the tariffs that we've been talking about are already in place, the steel and aluminum tariffs, for example, although a lot of the big suppliers of those metals have gotten an exemption. And then China's shot across the bow at pork producers and almond growers. That's in effect. And we've seen a dramatic drop in the price of lean hogs. And we've seen almond growers worried about what's going to happen to their market, and pistachio growers in the Central Valley of California. But the really big second

round of tariffs, the whack at China over its handling of intellectual property, and then the pushback by China against soybeans and commercial aircraft, which are a couple of big exports in the United States, those are in abeyance for the time being. And we had Larry Kudlow, the new economic advisor at the White House, go on cable TV and say, you know, those are in abeyance for the time being. And we had Larry Kudlow, the new economic advisor at the White House, go on cable TV and say, you know, those might never go into effect. That's really just a bargaining chip. We've put that out on the table, and now we're going to see if we can make a deal. And the stock market breathed a big sigh of relief when they heard Kudlow say that. No, I don't think it's a trade war. I think there's going to be intense negotiations on both

sides. But look, when you look at this whole picture, blame China. Don't blame President Trump. Trump's the solution. Well, and what Kudlow has been saying is like President Trump is this incredible negotiator. We've thrown this out here. Now let's go negotiate this thing, which is also a way of saying, you know, Larry Kudlow, who came to the administration from CNBC, the cable news network for people who care about what's happening with the markets.

Kudlow is trying to put up like a big bat sign that says, just chill. This could not, this could not actually happen, maybe. And the stock market breathed a big sigh of relief when they heard that the market, which opened about 500 points down on Wednesday, came back at the end of the day plus 200. But it's not that there are no repercussions here, right? I mean, we have been careful here at NPR and a lot of news organizations have been to say, you know, listen, this hasn't got into effect yet. Larry Kudlow, you know, really stressed that. But there are still results in the market. For example, the soybean market, the price of soybeans dropped around 4% all at once.

And that has soybean growers very worried. As a resident Iowan, I can tell you that, you know, suddenly closes even a bit like that's going to be very, very bad for a lot of people who, by the way, voted for our president. And soybeans were on the list that came from China. Sure. Soybeans go make tofu, right? Mara, they do a lot more than make tofu and soy sauce. It turns out they also feed hogs. And the Chinese with a growing middle class have been eating a lot more American meat, by the way. But aside from that, one thing I want to add here is like this whole idea of us wanting to retaliate against China for unfair trade practices. I mean, a lot of economists will say, like, you know, we're not wrong.

Trump isn't wrong to say that they're stealing our intellectual property, that there's forced technology transfers, anything like that. It's just that tariffs might not be a, are not a good way to solve this, is what a lot of economists would say. Yeah, lots of business groups appreciate the president's goal here. They're just questioning his means to that end. And while there's at least temporary reassurance from Larry Kudlow that this is all just a bargain ship, Larry Kudlow's track record of predictions on big economic issues is not all that great. He's got a record of getting things

wrong and again and again and again. But, you know, what's interesting to me, and this goes into the unpredictability or the suspense that's involved with every single Trump policy initiative, is if you look at the headlines on the Washington Post, it says Trump defiant as China adds trade penalties. The big headline on the New York Times, White House edges back from brink of trade war. So we don't know if there's going to be a trade war or not. What I think is so interesting is that just as we were all, the conventional wisdom was congealing around this idea that Trump's second year in office was going to be about more isolationist, more protectionist. He was going to have fewer advisors who are going to push back against him. Along comes Larry Kudlow, who wrote famously an op-ed piece saying that tariffs were taxes when President Trump first raised these, then got

hired to be his top economic advisor. And as Scott said, he was out there yesterday sending a message to the markets, calm down. This is just a negotiating tactic. It's not going to really end up with these tariffs that are going to harm us. And we don't know how this is going to come out. I want to just turn back to our resident Iowan here, Danielle, because this is not abstract. No. If you're a soybean farmer in Iowa. Right. And you happen to maybe, I don't know, be related to a soybean farmer in Iowa. I just might be. Yeah. There are decisions that are being made. Absolutely. As a farmer. Right. Now, this is happening, interestingly, just as farmers in Iowa and I imagine in other places are ramping up to plant

soybeans for the year. So, you know, if you are a farmer in Iowa, Illinois, southern Minnesota, wherever, you have a choice to make. What do you want to plant in your field? Do you want to plant soybeans? Do you want to plant corn is often the alternative. Well, if I'm a farmer and I look around and I see that the soybean price is depressed, I might very well decide, well, I'm not going to plant soybeans. I'm going to plant corn this year or plant something else. So like what you might end up with is a glut of corn yields come this fall. So, I mean, really, very... And we should say, both corn and bean prices have been depressed for a couple of years now,

several years now. So, farm income has been down for the last four years. This is a really tough time for farm country to be hit with these kinds of trade wars. And corn prices dropped a bit this week as well. Not as much as soybeans did, if I'm right on that. But they did drop. So, I mean, this is definitely something that farmers are quite worried about. I mean, this is something that would make farmers, farm voters and farm country think differently about Donald Trump. I don't know the answer to that. Maybe their belief in him really transcends these kind of issues. But, you know, the other thing that goes into the category of wrong answer to the right question is this is the only issue that I can think of where you have had such a loud chorus of Republicans in Congress disagreeing with the president. I can't think of anything else where you've had this pushback against tariffs. And as a matter of fact, when you think about the

political fallout from this, even though this is something he ran on, this is going to go under the promise fulfilled column for Donald Trump, the people who are happiest about these tariffs are Rust Belt Democrats running for reelection. Yeah. And that's what's so interesting. I mean, he you know, he is helping Sherrod Brown in Ohio with these tariffs. No doubt about it. By the way, I mean, Trump does have someone very close to him in this fight who knows the impact this could have on Iowans. And that's a guy named Terry Branstad, who was a longtime governor of Iowa. Now he is the U.S. ambassador to China and who is buddies with President Xi Jinping of China. So Terry Branstad this week was saying, you know, he was saying the company line on, you know, listen, China really has been a bad actor in trade and so on. But Terry Branstad is also very intimately aware of the potential repercussions of what should happen if we did impose a whole bunch of tariffs on China or if China imposed a bunch of tariffs the right question, if China really is a cheater and China is stealing our intellectual property,

what would be the answer? And most people will tell you, well, the answer, instead of these tariffs, would be to work in concert with a whole bunch of other countries to force China to change. Guess what? There used to be something called the TPP, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which excluded China and excluded China for exactly this purpose, to try to correct some of these problems. And, you know, Trump famously canceled that. Right. That was both the W. Bush and Obama long game on this. And so the Trump team, I guess, is trying a new strategy. One more thing before we take a quick break that may or may not be completely blown out of the water by whatever happens next.

Scott Pruitt, the EPA administrator, we talked about him on the last podcast. He continues to be in sort of a, what do you call it, cabinet purgatory, where it's not clear what his fate might be, though the president today did, when asked if he had confidence in him, the president said, I do. I do. Although sometimes when Trump says I do, he only means for a little while. Scott Pruitt is a skeptic of the science surrounding climate change, but he is certainly feeling the heat himself right now from a mounting array of ethical challenges. And it sounds as if the White House is, whatever

confidence the president still has in his EPA administrator, the White House is putting some distance. We heard a White House spokesman asked about him today, and he just totally declined to come to Scott Pruitt's defense. Right. Because earlier this week, didn't President Trump say something like, I hope... I hope he's going to be great. Right. It's not a thing to say about somebody who's been in office for over a year. That is not the definition of a full throated endorsement. And then Sarah Sanders went on to be when she was asked, is Trump OK with Pruitt's living arrangements? She said he's not OK and that they were taking the controversies very seriously. Everything I've heard at the White House this week has been that Pruitt is on very thin ice.

And not for anything he's done as the EPA administrator. No, certainly not. They like the way he's rolling back fuel economy standards, rolling back the Clean Power Plan. That's all very consistent with the Trump agenda. But he has created a spectacle of himself in all the wrong ways. And this is the kind of thing that Trump doesn't like because it goes against his brand that he's draining the swamp. And as a matter of fact, in that Fox News interview, when Pruitt was asked a question about this, gee, you know, what do you think about this? And Trump promised to drain the swamp. He said that was a very inappropriate question. All right. We are

going to take another quick break. And Scott, you are leaving us. Making way for my better male counterpart. Aw. Tim Mack is coming after the break, and we're going to talk about Facebook and breaches. I had to get out before you talked about Facebook. Yes, well, we can't have two people on this podcast who've never been on Facebook before.

All right, thank you, Scott. So weird. We'll be right back. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Stamps.com. With Stamps.com, you can access all the amazing services of the post office right from your home or office. Buy and print real U.S. postage for any letter or package using your computer and printer. And the mail carrier picks it up. It's so convenient.

For a four-week trial, including postage in a digital scale, go to stamps.com, click on the microphone at the top of the homepage, and type in politics. Fifty years ago this week, two civil rights leaders were killed. One you know, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and one you may not. This week on Code Switch, the final days of the lives of two men devoted to fighting for justice. Find it on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back and we have a new friend in the studio. Hello, Tim Mack. Hello.

Hi, Tim. And we just bring you here when Facebook is in trouble, basically. I do a lot of other things. I know you do really interesting reporting. I don't actually. But I have other talents and other beats. We're going to have our fact checker cut that out, you know. So last time you were here, you were talking about Facebook and the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. Cambridge Analytica did work for the Trump campaign, among many others. And how Cambridge Analytica had gotten its hands somewhat questionably on the data of some 50 million Facebook users. Well, we are having you

back as Facebook announces that, oopsie doops, it was actually maybe more like 87 million. Right. So Facebook has revised its estimates. It's saying, hey, we are using the maximum projection we can to figure out exactly how many people's information was taken through this scandal that's evolved with Cambridge Analytica. And now they're saying, hey, it's 87 million. It's not 50 million, as we has previously said. Do we have any idea of how they were off by a factor of, what, 75 percent? Well, this is the major problem with this whole Facebook scandal, right? It's the idea that Facebook has put out all of this information, and it doesn't have any sort of definitive way to track precisely each of these pieces of data, where it goes, what happens to it, and what people use it

for. So they are merely making an estimation about how many people were potentially affected. And that could change. And they can't get it back. Like it's gone. That's the nature of information. If I tell you something and you tell three other people and they tell four other people, that information is out there in the world and you can't retrieve that, nor can I ever figure out how many people actually saw it. What would that information be used for? You know, it's interesting. You could use it for a number of ways.

But the political aspect of this, right, is to develop profiles of people, to be able to target individuals politically with advertising, with get out the vote efforts and so on and so forth, based on information that they've taken from Facebook profiles, whether that's where you live, what your political party is, whether you prefer certain types of television shows, whether you have children. All these things can be used to better target political advertising towards you. Or propaganda, depending on your point of view. Depending on where you stand. So next week, and this is pretty big news and will be a big deal next week. Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO and creator of Facebook, will testify on Capitol Hill.

He'll be there for two days, a bunch of a couple of different hearings, a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce Committees, followed by the House Energy and Commerce Committee. And it almost feels like this week they're doing cleanup on aisle. I'm about to have to testify before Congress. They've got. OK, so this is not just limited to the Cambridge Analytica problem. They've got a number of different issues ranging from how Russia used Facebook as a platform during the 2016 election to influence the American political process. And they just announced something on that too. Yeah. This week, Facebook announced that it had shut down hundreds of Facebook and Instagram

accounts that were used by Russia's Internet Research Agency. This is that troll farm, that company that was actively trying to create divides in the American electorate, trying to incite the left, trying to incite the right, creating fake accounts on Facebook and Twitter to provoke people and to ultimately boost the campaigns of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump and harm Hillary Clinton's candidacy. They were indicted as part of the Mueller probe, as part of the Russian investigation, and also have been targeted by sanctions from the Trump administration. That's correct. But ultimately, it gets to a deeper problem in the American political system, which is how do we know what kind of information we're providing to Facebook and powerful tech companies? What do they do with it?

And how do we know what information they're providing back to us in the form of advertising? Who controls the level of transparency that Facebook must provide us when we see information. Wait, so next week, Zuckerberg is going to go before this congressional committee and they're all going to grandstand at him for a while. And he's probably going to have to wear a suit and not a hoodie. This is the most important part of this. But the next most important part is about like they're going to ask him all these questions. But do we have a sense of what kinds of policies, has anybody proposed anything in terms of how do we prevent this in the future?

Like, is it all about transparency? Is it about like what data they take or don't take? Well, there are a couple of major issues here. One is that the Internet Research Agency, as an example, they spent tens of thousands of dollars putting forward advertisements on Facebook and other social media platforms. And there was no accountability or transparency about where that money came from. So there are proposed regulations that would require, just like on television, when you see a political advertisement, it says it's sponsored by some political candidate or some sort of political action. Sponsored by the Patriotic Americans of America.

Exactly. I mean, what does that mean? Mom and apple pie. And freedom. But at least if it's sponsored by the Patriotic Americans of America, that is a committee that's registered. You could look up where is it. Oh, they would have to actually register. Yeah.

Well, theoretically, that would be the only reason for this kind of regulation, right? That you would need to have a chain of accountability behind whatever it is, you know. So if you get an advertisement on Facebook right now, there's not a regulation that says, hey, you must tell people where this money is coming from, who's funding this campaign. Well, let me ask you a broader question about Congress, because I've heard Congress, members of Congress describe Facebook in a lot of different ways. Do you think there's a consensus that Facebook is either a giant unregulated utility, the most powerful publisher on the planet, a pipeline for Russian

propaganda or some kind of consumer surveillance tool? I mean, how do members of Congress see Facebook now? Look, there's a wide variety of views on the Hill from left to right. But ultimately, we have to see Facebook for what it is, which is that it is taking our personal information as part of its business model and selling it to advertisers. So we are the product. Absolutely. We are the product. If the service is free or the product. That Facebook makes money basically by trying to figure out who we are and the particulars of our lives and then selling that customization to advertisers. If advertisers want to find people who live in Washington, D.C. who own two cats and they really like a particular book, that's the level of specificity that Facebook can offer advertisers. So advertisers,

in turn, need to pay less to reach the individuals they want to target. So you're saying, Tim, that the biggest or the most urgent issue seems to be the privacy issue. Well, yes. More than Russia used Facebook to corrupt American democracy. I don't want to rank these problems because they're both major problems. You know, there's the privacy problem and there's the accountability problem. On the privacy side, the EU, for example, has regulations that say you have a right to know what kind of data that tech companies collect on you. And you have a to be to be shown what that data is and to request that it be deleted if you ask for it.

You know, that's not necessarily something that the that Congress is totally on board with. But, you know, Mark Zuckerberg has said that's the spirit, the general idea of regulations that that Facebook would move towards or would be more supportive of. Do we have a sense of how big of a priority this is, not for lawmakers, but for Americans themselves, right? I mean, I know I've seen polling that Democrats' favorability of Facebook has fallen by more than it has for Republicans. But in general, how worried are Americans? Are people giving up their Facebook accounts left and right? Zuckerberg himself has said, look, this is not something that has this campaign to delete Facebook hasn't had a substantial impact on the number of users. And most people aren't paying that that much attention. You know, the folks here who a lot of the folks here listening to the pod right now, aren't going to ultimately

delete their Facebook accounts. The thing about this is that it's an incredibly useful social tool that I use it all the time to figure out what my friends are up to, what they're doing, who likes what, and what's interesting amongst the people whose views I care about. And we can't forget, we can't just abandon or forget about that in the context of this conversation. People will keep Facebook as long as they believe that the benefits of that social connection that you create with your family and your friends outweighs any loss of privacy. I mean, all sorts of things that we do in our modern life now have costs in terms of losing our privacy, whether it's, you know, I'm going for a run and my Fitbit is going to track my route, you know, or or, you know, I'm going to use a diet app and I'm going to track a number of calories that I'm using.

And that's a social thing for some reason. Or I use Venmo. And for some reason, I need to broadcast to all my friends exactly why I'm doing the financial transactions I'm doing. Yes, all of my friends know every time I run because it posts on Facebook. Oh, my goodness. I appreciate it, actually. All right, dear listeners, the good news for you is we will be talking even more about Facebook. We are going to have a podcast that will come out after that first hearing. So, I mean, look for it in your feed probably Wednesday morning is what I would guess. Or if you're a night owl, Tuesday night. And now it is time for that thing that we do at the end of the show called Can't Let It Go, where we talk about one thing we cannot stop thinking about this week, politics or otherwise.

Tim, this is your first time in the Can't Let It Go chair. The spotlight is on. And I think we should start with you as a result. So the thing I can't let go is, you know, I had a story this week about the evolving technologies behind the creation of fake audio, that we can now create people, audio clips of people saying things they never said. You know, there's this Montreal startup, it's called Lyrebird. And basically you feed it. Lyrebird. Lyrebird. L-Y-R-E. Lyrebird. And they, you basically feed them a minute of someone talking, whether that's you or me or a politician like Barack Obama or Donald Trump.

You feed them a minute of someone speaking. Then you type some text. And the next thing you know, you have been able to mimic that person speaking. You've created a fake audio clip of them saying something. And this is deep, deep repercussions for American society and politics, whether we can trust what we're hearing, whether news is legitimate or illegitimate. And it could be used both to create audio that or quotes that never happen, or it can be used because this technology exists for politicians to say, oh, well, I never actually said that that was fake through technology.

Well, so I first learned about this technology after Rogue One, the Star Wars movie, came out because I know, I know, I know. It all comes back to Star Wars. Your brand is strong. Well, because my mind was blown with how they had created all of this video that looked just like the actors who were no longer living. And I called my brother and he was like, oh yeah, you think that's crazy? They can do the audio too. And I've been freaking out for like,

how long has it been since Rogue One came out? And now I never even thought to connect it to politics and you're connecting it to politics and it's scary. Yeah, the technology has evolved in such a dramatic way. I think we have a clip on that. Hi, everybody. This night I am happy to share with you a small announcement about a cool startup called Wirebird. They launched today their website where you can create a digital copy of your voice.

They only need you to record one minute of audio. This is just the beginning, and they are working hard to improve their results. It's like a combination of Obama and a speak and spell. Yeah, well, it's not perfect, but that was their original effort when they first launched the beta early on a year ago or more than a year ago. And here's the thing, the technology is only going to get better. There are only so many specific sounds in the human voice. And so basically they use artificial intelligence to identify how each individual says these sounds, combines them together and smooths it out to mimic real speech.

Whoa, how far are we away from video being able to be manufactured? We're pretty much there. We're pretty much there in the sense that you could create a video. That audio clip we just heard was that there is an accompanying video of Barack Obama's lips moving along with that audio clip. So we're at a place where it could soon be that we can't trust our eyes, can't trust our ears when we see and hear things from disreputable sources. Gee. Okay. That's depressing. Mind blown. Danielle, what can't you let go of? I'm going to uncurl from the ball that I'm in. Yeah, seriously.

I don't know if we can bring you back. I'm scared. Yeah, me too. Let me try. So I wanted to talk to you guys. I have a movie recommendation. It's from my favorite fantasy movie from the 1990s. I happened to cross it last night on Amazon,

and I thought, I have to watch this again. And it's a movie called Dave. That's not a new movie. No one's ever heard of it. No, no. So that is not true. Mara, have you heard of Dave? Of course.

I love Dave. It was a great movie with Kevin Kline, who was the accidental president. Right. For people who are listening in, this is a movie that came out in 1992. Three. 1993.

So I'm bringing this up in part because, like, A, I rediscovered it. You should go watch it. It's a riot. It's ridiculous. It's kind of upsetting. But also, I discovered it is the 25th anniversary in just a couple of weeks here. You're just trying to make us feel old now if we've seen it. I mean, yeah, a little bit. I mean, I'm old, too, here.

But, like, watching it last night, I was live tweeting it. I was having a hell of a time because I don't have a life. And I mean, but like it's so the plot of the movie, other Kevin Klein, to go play the president and do their bidding. And as it turns out, because, you know, of the great American myth that any man would be great at being a president, that, you know, the everyman Kevin Klein strolls into the White House and does a better job than the president did, brings in his buddy CPA Charles Grodin to adjust the federal budget in truly realistic fashion and also is a better husband to the first lady and Sigourney Weaver falls in love with him, et cetera, et cetera. It's an absolute riot. And there is a cameo from Nina Totenberg in it. What? Yeah. Yeah. You should definitely go watch this. Mara, what can't you let go of? Okay, what I can't let go of is this really great story that was on the internet that everybody has to go and read about the hotel in Victoria, British Columbia, who forgave a guest

who many, many years ago, 17 years ago, had trashed one of their rooms. And when you read this Facebook post, okay, I'm giving Facebook a round of applause for this. This guy who was from Nova Scotia described how he brought a lot of special pepperoni to give to his Navy buddies in Victoria, but there wasn't a fridge in his room and he wanted to keep the meat cool. So he left it on the windowsill. It was a kind of a cold April day, just like it is today in Washington. He went out. When he came back, he found his room full of seagulls who'd been eating the pepperoni. And as he says, as he explains, pepperoni does something really horrendous to the seagulls digestive tract.

So his room was was covered with with with chunks of pepperoni and poop and feathers and everything was trashed. When he came in and started trying to get them out, they flew around and crashed into things and broke lamps and the coffee table. And then he says, in a moment of clarity, I grabbed a bath towel and threw it over one of the birds and then threw it out the window. But the seagull wrapped in the bath towel landed on some tourists who were arriving at this hotel for their famous high tea. He also tried to get rid of the birds by throwing one of his shoes at them. The shoe and the bird went out the window and then he realized he had to go to a dinner, a business dinner, and he only had one shoe.

He ran out, he grabbed the shoe, he washed it off, he used a hairdryer to dry it, but then the power in the hotel went off. It was like better than a Marx Brothers movie. And the cleaning lady came up and he looked at her and he just said, I'm sorry. And he went out to dinner. He was banned. He got a lifetime ban from the hotel. 17 years later, he wrote to the hotel to say, I think I've served my time. Could I come back and

be a paying guest at your hotel? And they granted him a pardon. And there is a picture of him talking to two women at the front desk of the hotel. And they are laughing and tears are streaming down their face, just like they were when I read this story. It's really worth it. It's going to cheer you up. I don't think I need to read it. I think you've just done it, Mara. And it was beautiful. It was the greatest thing I've read all week. My sister-in-law texted this to me. I didn't need Facebook to find it. All right. Tam, outdo that.

What can you not let go this week? Well, mine is kind of sad. Okay. So we are ending on a sad note here because our producer, Sam Fields, is leaving. And I don't want to let go of her. Oh, really? Why? That's terrible.

There was an email I know, but see, I'm trying to share it with our listeners. Get it? I'm making dramatic suspense here. I got the email. Mara's a pro. She knows what she's doing. Now you're supposed to say where she's going. Hopefully not to Facebook. VP of

Communications at Facebook. Contracting in the evenings with Cambridge Analytica. She is going to do a reporting fellowship in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. Woods Hole! And we're just like really sad. She's going to get to go hang out on the beach up in Cape Cod for what, six months. Yeah. So I'll see you in the summer. Podcast listeners, if you are like upset that the podcast is not in your feed yet, do not send nasty grams to Sam Fields. She will be on a reporting fellowship.

And can I just say that that is the very best place to start reporting? My very first job in journalism was at the Vineyard Gazette on Martha's Vineyard, which is just a little teeny fairy ride from Woods Hole. There you go. You, too, can be Mara Liason. Or Sam Fields. Exactly. All right. So that is a wrap for this week. Sam's last pod behind the wheel. We love you, Sam.

Maybe. Well, unless, you know, news breaks up. But the wheel. We love you, Sam. Maybe. Well, unless, you know, news breaks up. But we will be back in your feed soon. We're thinking Tuesday, Wednesday. Keep up with all of our coverage on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and of course, on your local public radio station. You can also always catch one of us on Up First every weekday morning. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter.

And I'm Tim Mack, political reporter. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. © BF-WATCH TV 2021