The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, August 10

Episode Date: August 10, 2017

North Korea dominated the news this week, so NPR International Editor Will Dobson joins the podcast, with host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Geoff Bennett, and editor/correspondent Ron Elving. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Gregory Warner here to tell you about NPR's new international podcast. It's called Rough Translation. Each week, we're going to take you to a different country to hear a story that reflects back on something that we are talking about here in the United States. Maybe get a perspective shift. Travel with us. Rough Translation is on NPR One or wherever you get your podcasts. Hafa adai, everyone. This is Ron from the island of Guahan. This podcast was recorded at 1.10 p.m. on Thursday, the 10th of August. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. So keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at NPR.org, the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. Okay, here's the show.

It's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news. Tensions are high between the U.S. and North Korea. North Korea is closer than ever to becoming a fully realized nuclear power. Meanwhile, President Trump is threatening to rain down fire and fury. And Paul Manafort's home was raided by the FBI. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. And I'm Ron Elbing, editor correspondent. So, Scott. Yes. Earlier this week.

Yes. You said something about it being a slow news week. Yes. And I have a message for all the haters out there. Yes. With just one exception, it was a very slow news week. Congress was gone. The president was on vacation. Just one exception affecting people like our friend Ron in Guam.

This one thing that was kind of big news. Well, we require a little bit of assistance. So we have brought Will Dobson into the studio. He is, wow, you run NPR's international desk. Yeah. Okay. So North Korea had nuclear ambitions for a very long time. They have been doing some tests for some that has changed or is different is that it was reported this week, first by The Washington Post, that North Korea has successfully produced a miniaturized nuclear warhead that can fit atop its missiles. And most importantly, from the point of view of the United States, its intercontinental ballistic missiles or ICBMs that have the capability of reaching the U.S. mainland. So those two things, plus the revelation that they may have more warheads than previously understood, makes it a real game changer. So President Trump's reaction is obviously something we're going to talk about and obviously

something that changed the dynamic here. But am I wrong to think that no matter who was president right now, any person sitting in the White House would be reacting very seriously to this news that North Korea has advanced its nuclear program this way? Yes, I think that if you want to say that anyone reacted that it was a serious situation, absolutely. And let's hear those words just really quickly. This is what President Trump said earlier this week when asked about the news that North Korea had this warhead capability now. North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen. So the president says they'd best not make any threats or fire and fury.

And then like, I don't know, five minutes later, how quickly did North Korea made a threat? What was that threat? Well, that threat was to strike the U.S. territory of Guam. It's U.S. territory with about 160,000 people, and it is the home to U.S. military bases that are critical for our deterrence in the Pacific. I mean, the thing that's sort of incredible about the President's statement is that he really tied his promise of retaliation to the issuance of a threat from North Korea, which is a surprising thing because threats is really how the North Koreans

communicate. So, I mean, if there was anything that was almost certain to happen in the wake of his statement was a North Korean threat to follow. And, of course, it did. I read a lot of responses to this where people said that the words that President Trump used sounded like the types of things that Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong-il have said before, not what an American president has said. That's right. I mean, they've literally used the phrase sea of fire to describe what the North Koreans would do to Seoul. So, Will, is it fair to say and this is Ron in D.C. as opposed to Ron in Guam. I would say I would say maybe it is a moment to step back and ask, is Donald Trump on to something by using rhetoric that has been used in the past by these antagonists of ours in an attempt to get them to take more seriously the threat from the United States and change his behavior. Yeah. I mean, I think that's an interesting point. I mean, you could argue that,

look, we've tried a lot of other things, right? And if the North Koreans are to believe that the president of the United States is unpredictable and erratic, that that may change or somehow affect their own calculations. Or maybe if that's not true, it will affect or change the calculations of the Chinese who have the best avenue to actually putting greater leverage on North Korea. So will the Chinese now approach this differently and say, you know, in the past, we've made promises to enforce sanctions. Maybe now we actually need to follow through. I want to ask you about the characters involved here, because we know President Trump relatively well. What about the other person who is making threats here?

Yeah. So Kim Jong-un, he came to power in late 2011, December 2011, with the death of his father, Kim Jong-il. So Kim Jong-un is the third ruler that North Korea has had, the first being his grandfather. So you have a hereditary dictatorship here. And this is the key difference, or maybe there are two key differences about Kim Jong-un as opposed to, say, his father. The first is that when he was thrust into this role of being North Korea's leader, he was a very, very young man. We don't know his exact age, but he was in his late 20s. He had not had time to be groomed or prepared for this role. So he found himself immediately on day one in a rather insecure situation, which might explain why he reacted with such brutal efficiency. Most of the pallbearers at his father's funeral are no longer alive.

It's really hard to look at his behavior and see anything other than someone who's acting ruthlessly rational, which leads to the other way that he's different, which is that he, unlike his father, approached their nuclear arsenal as something that could be bargained away. It was something that could bring other people to the table, other nations to the table, and that he could win concessions for when the regime needed it most. He seems to have taken a completely different calculation, which is that he needed these weapons in order to ensure his survival. And so since 2014, we saw a real uptick in the number of missile tests. There were two nuclear detonations last year. He was trying to accomplish the twin goals of both getting an ICBM so he could strike the United States and be able to miniaturize. And that's a long range missile. Exactly. Something that could travel that distance all the way to the U.S. heartland

and be able to fit atop it a miniaturized device, which, according to the reporting this week, he may have just achieved. And the argument that you keep hearing and reading is that this is not about wanting to destroy California, but rather prevent the U.S. from invading. And I guess from North Korea's perspective, I see the logic of that because every 15 years or so, the United States has come in in one way or another, overthrown a regime in one part of the world that it didn't like or had problems with Iraq, Libya, you can go on. And having a nuclear weapon is certainly a pretty good way to keep the US from invading or indirectly forcing you out.

Right. And if he were, and we don't know that he intends to, but if he were to actually go to the table to negotiate at some point, he would now be approaching it with maximum leverage, You know, so much so that you could argue that he would see no reason in the world to ever denuclearize now. That window, that opportunity has closed. He's learned the lesson, many say, of others that have gone before him, particularly Libya's Gaddafi, which, you know, what the lesson was, don't trade your nukes. You need those. That's your ultimate insurance policy. Because Gaddafi ended up being killed. Right. So President Trump says this thing about fire and fury. And then we hear something very different from Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, who was actually in Guam to refuel his plane on the way home from a trip to Asia. What the president was just reaffirming is the United States has the capability

to fully defend itself from any attack and defend our allies, and we will do so. And so the American people should sleep well at night. Sleep well. So here's my immediate reaction to what Secretary of State Tillerson said. There have been so many moments in this young administration

where Tillerson has done something or said something and then been immediately undercut by President Trump. Is this like good cop, bad cop? Well, I mean, it's dick. Yeah, I mean, that again, to take the devil's advocate, that sort of presumes that there's a strategy. And so if there is a strategy, yes, perhaps they are playing this role. You know, look, the State Department, Rex Tillerson have been made the point person on this. It's something that they're supposed to try to solve first before the Pentagon becomes involved. So Tillerson is our nation's chief diplomat, and so he's seeking a diplomatic solution. And then the defense secretary, General Mattis, comes out and sounds more like President Trump, saying basically like, hey, North Korea, you don't really want to do this because you don't want to be destroyed, do you?

Look, as the leader of the Pentagon, he is going to be the person who's and has drawn up the plans for military strikes on North Korea. The thing about it is, and the reason why this is wrestled with Tillerson, is that the military options are absolutely awful. Like all of them. All of them absolutely awful. Like all of them. All of them are awful. You know, I mean, no one seriously believes that the United States could have a high degree of confidence that a first strike could eliminate all of North Korea's nuclear arsenal. Are you really going to strike a regime that then can strike back? Two, limited options, which is something people talk about, just raises the possibility of military escalation, except for now the North Koreans

have the upper hand because they have an opportunity to respond. You've got Seoul 35 miles away from the border, which tens of thousands of people would die in the initial hours of fighting. And that doesn't even have to require nuclear weapons to be true. So when you get to this, you realize that those options could the United States, what's different between the United States and North Korea and the United States and the Soviet Union is that in that instance, that both sides could eliminate each other completely. In this case, no, the Pentagon is correct. And if it says that the United States could win, quote unquote, win a nuclear war with North Korea, a protracted conflict is one that the United States would have the advantage in. But the costs are just

unimaginable, which then leads to sort of the ultimate conclusion that maybe what the United States has to do and what what the Trump administration has to do is face the most sort of the biggest psychological hurdle of all, which is accepting that North Korea has this capability. We've talked about the military options, which sound all terrible and not very good. Are there any good diplomatic options? I mean, like, what is the option here? Well, I mean, I think your best options are to try to get to the table and begin to find out what Kim wants. We don't know that right now. I mean, like, it's very difficult at the very outset to even say, like, what is the actual actual goal? Is it just nuclear deterrence or is it now that they have this capability, do they have an ask? And then what would you be looking for? You'd be looking for freezes of their program. You'd be looking for limiting its development going forward. It strikes, I think, a lot of people as unrealistic to think that it could actually ever be put back in the bottle. Why would Kim

give up that capability having achieved it? And from the point of view of South Koreans and Japanese, how do you live with this new North Korea? Do the sort of threats of military action coming from Washington and maybe the unpredictability that's being projected, does that do anything to help bring North Korea to the table? No. What about those threats, given the capability that the North Koreans have, makes them do anything necessarily? I mean, that's sort of the point of achieving this sort of technological breakthrough is that they don't have to be concerned about these threats. They have the ultimate insurance policies. What probably more likely changes their behavior is a willingness from the United States and others to recognize

what they've achieved and to begin to talk to them on some sort of more equal footing. Does this make China more willing to come to the table? Or is China at a place of sort of not listening to the words either? Well, I mean, China's at a very interesting moment right now, because from China's standpoint, their ultimate goal is the status quo. They don't want a unified Korean peninsula. But at the same time, they don't want the North Korean regime to fall. So they're sort of trying to allow just enough pressure to keep Kim in place. And if that means applying pressure to him to keep him from

increasing the likelihood of war, then they will do that, which is why they might actually begin to enforce sanctions. Okay, so I want to go back to where we started, which is, how much should people be freaking out? And how much should Ron and Guam be freaking out, if at all? And have we been here before, at least in terms of like very high tensions with North Korea? Yeah, I mean, we have been here before. I mean, the Clinton administration seriously considered a strike on North Korea and walked that back. Ultimately, there have been many periods of crisis with the North Korean regime for large periods of time. And it's exactly that kind of crisis that the North Koreans have benefited from and fed off of. So it can be walked back. And the other thing here, too,

is what's different? From the point of view of the region, the capability of the North Korean regime to rain destruction on millions of people in a matter of minutes is actually not anything new. This is true for Seoul. This is true for Tokyo. Their world didn't just change. The reason we're having this conversation is because it just changed for the United States. So basically, get over yourself, America. Will Dobson, international editor for NPR. Thank you for brightening our studio today. Have a great weekend. All right. We need to take a quick break. And when we come back, a different kind of feud. This one between President Donald Trump and the majority leader of the Senate, Mitch McConnell. From nutrition and fitness to family planning and entertainment. At Helix.com, discover a marketplace of DNA-powered products and find out what your DNA can tell you. Helix. Crack your code. Support for NPR Politics also comes from Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans.

Rocket Mortgage gives you confidence when it comes to buying a home or refinancing your existing home loan. With Rocket Mortgage, you can apply simply and understand all the details so you can mortgage confidently. To get started, go to rocketmortgage.com slash NPR politics. Equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states. NMLSconsumeraccess.org number 3030. President Trump plans to deport millions. So this week, Latino USA dives deep into the agency that has to fulfill his promise, ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We follow

someone buying his own plane ticket to get deported and hear from a city suing its own state over immigration. Find Latino USA on the NPR One app and on npr.org slash podcast. All right, we are back. And while Will Dobson has left us, we have been joined by a friend who we've been missing. It's been like... I missed you all as well. It's been several days since you've been on a podcast. Hello, Jeff Bennett. Hello, hello. Normally, you would say, Jeff Bennett, I cover Congress.

That's right. Yeah, but I'm moving up on Pennsylvania Avenue, joining you and Scott Horsley and Mara Lyson at the White House, covering the White House. And convenient that you're here because what we're going to talk about next straddles Pennsylvania Avenue. It is a feud between President Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell and a feud that has escalated basically as we've sat here in the studio. Breaking news from Twitter. President Trump put out a statement on Twitter saying, quote, Mitch, get back to work and put repeal and replace tax reform and cuts and a great infrastructure bill on my desk for signing. You can do it! Exclamation point. Now, this is sort of actually the nice version of a tweet that President Trump sent earlier today around waking up time where he says, quote, Can you believe that Mitch McConnell, who has screamed repeal and replace for seven years, couldn't get it done? Must repeal and replace Obamacare! Good Trump tweet reading as always, Tam. Thank you.

I think you captured the essence of the tone. So there's a lot to unpack here. What were the specific things that Trump ticked off in the tweet that just happened while we were in the studio? Tax cuts. Tax cuts, infrastructure. Tax cuts. Yeah, and repeal and replace. And tax cuts.

So two of those are things that have long been on the Trump administration priority list, but they have not come together with any sort of details or put together like a serious plan to go forward other than saying we'd like to do them. So that was interesting just in terms of timeline. But the specific thing that McConnell said that irritated Trump was basically exactly that, saying that the Trump administration has these unrealistic timelines for all these legislative items. Let's hear what he said. It was at an event back home in Kentucky earlier this week. Our new president, of course, has not been in this line of work before. And I think had excessive expectations about how quickly things happen in the Democratic process. You know, I think we might also point out that there might be some unrealistic expectations about what the agenda is in September, because all those things that Donald Trump just listed off are great things that this Republican Congress would love to do and will very much

try to do in its own good time. But in September, they need to raise the debt ceiling, they need a budget resolution, and they need to pass the appropriations bills to keep the federal government from shutting down on September 30th, and they'll have only three weeks to do it. I think this is the president trying to shift the blame for the fact that this big southern border wall is yet to be built. Obamacare is still the law of the land, and he has no big ticket agenda items to show for his last six months in office. And we also know that Mitch McConnell has no real fans among the Trump base. Remember when Mitch McConnell came out at the

Republican National Convention, he got booed by Trump loyalists from the floor. I remember interviewing Mitch McConnell last year, and at the time, he said that Donald Trump was not yet a serious candidate. But what Mitch McConnell said, like, it just doesn't seem that controversial. Like, he's saying that the timelines were really tight. And by setting out these timelines, it created unrealistic expectations. But let's be fair. Let's be fair. Mitch McConnell was among those at the beginning of the year saying, here are the things we're going to get done before the August recess. That's right. And so if they were unrealistic expectations,

Mitch McConnell had as much to do with them as anyone else, because a lot of us had a lot of respect for Mitch McConnell's savvy as a leader on the floor of the Senate. And we thought if he thought it could be done, it could be done. And the president has a point. Republicans have been talking for the last seven years about repealing and replacing Obamacare. The problem is it's a very different thing to do when you're not the party in power. And when you are the party in power, just saying you want to repeal and replace Obamacare isn't enough. So two tidbits that I think add to this a little bit. One is that before Trump started going after McConnell, several people in the Trump orbit had already begun doing so, including Dan Scavino, his social media aide, and also a big influencer in Trump's orbit,

Sean Hannity of Fox News, who was going after McConnell in much harsher terms before Trump tweeted that. The other thing is that this is also an example of Twitter Trump not lining up with real Trump, even though the other thing that's relevant happened on Twitter, I guess, but that Trump actually did McConnell a big favor this week by endorsing Luther Strange, who's the Alabama senator who replaced Jeff Sessions running in a primary for a special election, has a couple challengers. And Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans did not want these other guys to

win this primary. They wanted their person, Luther Strange, to win. So Trump went out and gave a full endorsement to Strange, which is something that McConnell world really appreciated. And it was out of the blue. Yes. Yes. A lot of people thought he might lean more towards Mo Brooks, who leans more towards Trump. And then within hours, that Trump tweet endorsing Luther Strange was in a Luther Strange ad

running on television. You bet. All right. We have another story to discuss this week. Paul Manafort, this is Trump's former campaign chairman, is back in the news. We learned this week that in late July, the FBI executed a search warrant in his home in Alexandria, Virginia, early in the morning, agencies documents and other materials. So, Jeff, what were they looking for? Specifically, we don't know the answer to that yet. But from

what we understand, they were looking for financial documents and tax documents, some of which might have had nothing to do with the special counsel's ongoing Russia investigation. Because the thinking is, if there is enough evidence to tie Manafort to other potential crimes, they could then use that as leverage in the Russia investigation to essentially flip him, turn up the heat, and to get him to drop dime on people. Oh, drop dime. Casual street talk. And while we're talking, you know, in terms of procedurals,

they cannot do a pre-dawn no-knock raid just as a fishing expedition. They have to get a warrant from a court, and they need to show the court some reason to think that they've got something they're going in there to get, not just that they're going in there to see if maybe there might be something interesting. Maybe see what kind of pajamas he wears. What kind of leftovers are in the fridge. He is an interesting guy. Because he has a history of doing business with Russian oligarchs. He has a well-documented and very long lobbying and consulting career that predated his work with the Trump campaign. Working with sort of pro-Russian people in the Ukraine. That's right. And so he's the central figure in this overall Russia investigation, of which there are several, but the special counsel investigation is the primary one and could potentially be the most consequential. And let's remember that that was why it was so interesting

that the Trump campaign chose Paul Manafort to be its chairman at the time, given his pre-existing relationships with all those people. And he stepped down in August because of the potential conflict of all his work overseas, particularly with Russia. There were so many bad headlines in August about Paul Manafort and Russia. And the raid itself is significant because most of, well, all of the special counsel's work when done properly is done in private. So this was the very sort of first public sign that this investigation is moving forward with a lot of intensity. The other reason why it's significant is because Manafort, through his spokesman, he's given the indication that he's been willing to cooperate with this investigation.

And this raid suggests that there's something else out there that he has not yet turned over. I feel like we should also say it's crazy that it took this long for the news to get out. Like, especially living in an apartment building in Alexandria, where every third person is running some kind of a PAC or some kind of a campaign or some kind of a lobbying operation. And we should say this raid happened on July 26th. The day before that, Manafort spoke in private with investigators on the Senate Intelligence Committee. And we understand he handed over documents, including the contemporaneous notes he took at that infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. And then separately from that, he's now, we understand, handed over about 400 documents to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which also requested information, not just about that meeting,

but about any potential conflict he might have with Russia and Russia's attempts to influence the election. Okay, let's take one more quick break, and we will be right back with Can't Let It Go. ZipRecruiter actively connects employers with qualified candidates in any city or industry nationwide. In fact, 80% of jobs on ZipRecruiter get a qualified candidate in just one day. Try it for free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash weekly. Support for NPR and the following message come from Newsy. Newsy offers a fresh take on what's happening in the world through quick, smart, candid video news.

Newsy is passionate about context, solutions, and challenging bias to bring facts, not speculation, to its video news coverage. Visit Newsy.com slash watch for the latest. President Trump plans to deport millions. So this week, Latino USA dives deep into the agency that has to fulfill his promise, ICE, Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We follow someone buying his own plane ticket to get deported and hear from a city suing its own state over immigration. Find Latino USA on the NPR One app and on npr.org slash podcast. And we are back. And it is time to do that thing that we do each week where we talk about one thing we cannot stop thinking about,

politics or otherwise. Can I do a serious kind of grim one before we have fun? Yeah, let's do that. I am disturbed by the attack that continues on H.R. McMaster, who is, of course, the president's national security advisor, who replaced Mike Flynn, who was the first person out the door in the administration. Some of Mike Flynn's allies,

who remained on the National Security Council, have been purged on the staff of the National Security Council have been purged in recent weeks. That's probably using a harsh word. They have been let go. Ixnay on the geyser. And of course, many of the allies of Mike Flynn and many of the allies of Steve Bannon and some of the other people who have a lot of influence in the administration are disturbed by the departure of those members of the National Security Council staff. And so the war goes on between the different factions with respect to national security. conservative talk radio, Breitbart.com, many other parts of the media demanding, demanding that H.R. McMaster be fired because they want to reassert, I suppose, some degree of control of the president's foreign policy. Seems like not that big of a deal because there aren't that many foreign policy national security hotspots in the world right now to keep someone in that position. No, I mean, no, everything's pretty much calm in Asia, don't you think? I think what's been interesting about that is this had been going on, but it ramped up after John Kelly comes in as chief of staff, another military person who seemed to have strengthened McMaster's position, given him the authority to get rid of some of the people he had wanted to get rid of before and really lifted him up a little bit in the administration. Well, I mean, the remarkable thing about this is that President Trump had to put out a statement saying, I support H.R. McMaster and he's totally pro-Israel because part of the attack that had been coming is that he was not

good on Israel issues and that, you know, he doesn't fully support Israel. OK, who wants to go next? So I'll go next. So the all-encompassing nature of covering the Hill and the White House means that I can no longer enjoy shows like House of Cards and Veep. Pretty much any show that has a fictional president, I have tuned out. But the show that I have discovered is on HBO. It's called Insecure, and I cannot let it go. In its second season, it's created by Issa Rae. She's also the star of the show and also

Larry Wilmore. And it's about Issa Rae and her friends as they sort of navigate through Los Angeles and their personal lives and their professional lives. And The New Yorker wrote a review about it. And the way they capture the show, I think, is great. It says it doesn't go out of its way to translate the specificity of the world it portrays. And this defiance can be gloriously funny. HBO scheduled the show to air behind Game of Thrones. Not that the two shows have anything to do with one another, but they thought that it was important that people watch it and they're trying to spike the viewership.

So this is my little promotional moment for a show that I think is really great. All right, I will go next because I have to respond to some other tweets I was getting based on a conversation you and I had on our Monday show. Harry Potter came up. You asked me what house I was. I did not respond at the time because I think you can't respond to what Harry Potter house are you without it sounding like a humble brag.

Yeah. There were lots of people who weighed in and I would say that when pressed, I would self-identify as a Ravenclaw. Just forget that whole thing. It was a humble brag, but that's okay. Anyway. The thing I can't let go happened at a bar down the street. Actually, it is a bar close enough to the NPR that sometimes you may find members of the politics podcast there after work.

And this amazing thing happened that actually was not amazing for anyone involved, but turned into this hilarious viral moment where this one, to be kind to him, we'll call him an ambitious gentleman. Other adjectives may apply. Decided that he was going to line up several dates in a row, but all at the same place and in 45 minute intervals. So he wouldn't have to get up.

So he wouldn't have to get up, So he wouldn't have to get up. But he I think he's like, what if one of them went well? That's an expensive night. Well, this is where the problems began. The first woman who he had drinks with 45 minutes into their drinks, a second woman shows up. He introduces the first one as a friend. It gets awkward.

At a certain point, they figure out that this guy has booked dates with both of them at the same bar. Then a third woman showed up. Then a fourth woman showed up. At this point, the first three women all go across the street to hang out with themselves because they got along if none of them like this dude. But then at this point, the bartender is tipped off. Other people at the restaurant are tipped off. And the dates keep piling up. And altogether, this guy tried to go on dates with six different women all in a row at a bar.

But the women all caught on and basically turfed his plans and were in the end intercepting women as they came into the bar saying, hey, are you here to meet with this dude? Yeah, so we're all if we were over across the street. Of course, this was all live tweeted. And here's the best thing. The Washington Post tried to recreate to do like a TikTok timetable, the definitive timeline of how this all happened. And they weren't able to talk to the dude because he has signed an exclusive contract with Inside Edition. Oh, my gosh. So Deborah Norville will get the goods, but no one else will.

She was actually date number five. Okay, so what I could not let go of is our colleague Steve Inskeep from Morning Edition tweeted out an article from the Toronto Star that basically said, you know that thing that President Trump said about the fire and the fury like the world has never seen before that like the world has never seen before made it extra super duper menacing it turns out he says that all the time and as i said they will be met with fire fury and frankly power the likes of which this world has never seen before you propel to victory a grassroots movement the likes of which the world frankly has never seen before. But we're being very very strong on our southern border and I would say the likes of which this country certainly has never seen that kind of strength. That one didn't even

make sense. No it truly doesn't unless unless he's just talking about the strength of the border itself just the border. It's a very strong. Oh, actually, they've definitely deterred people from immigrating because they're afraid of being deported. The president has a couple of phrases like this. Right. He says, believe me. He says, as Tim Kaine saying, believe me, over and over in his acceptance speech, like trying to impersonate Trump. Oh, that was so bad. Yeah. He also says, and that's okay, too. At the end of a sentence, it ends with something negative. Like if they don't pass health care, that's okay, too. He

said that a couple times. He has these go-to phrases. Although this one, I guess, using it in relation to North Korea, I guess was a little dicey. And just a coda here because oh it is so wonderful the kennebec journal had this big headline about president trump's remarks but there was like a typo and so uh it referred to the fire and the furry proving why we need copy editors right you definitely that was like on the front page above the fold so that so now so if we everrentice back, we expect Donald Trump to say, you're fired and you're furry. Okay, that is a wrap for us this week. We will be back in your feed on Monday. A lot of you write us to say, hey, can you guys talk about this story on the podcast?

And to that we say, no no we talk about it on the radio all the time we don't actually have time to talk about everything but frequently we do talk about those things on your favorite NPR programs and you can also find us on NPR one and your local

public radio station but we do cover this stuff every single day at NPR politics dot org on our NPR politics Facebook local public radio station. But we do cover this stuff every single day at nprpolitics.org, on our NPR Politics Facebook page, where you can find links to everything we've been writing about. And of course, you can listen to us on the radio. And if you like the show, please leave a review in iTunes, because even though we have a lot of reviews already, it helps other people find us, and we want to be found. All fives. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Jeff Bennett. I also

cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elving. Editor, correspondent. All fives.