The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, August 17

Episode Date: August 18, 2017

Charlottesville — and the President's reaction — dominated the week. This episode: host/editor/correspondent Ron Elving, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, White House reporter Geoff Bennett, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, and White House correspondent Scott Horsley. 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

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Hi, this is Jordan. This is John. And we are calling from the Midway at the Iowa State Fair, where John has just finished a deep fried cheesy enchilada funnel cake. This podcast was recorded at 1.12 p.m. Things might have changed by the time you hear it. You can keep up with NPR's politics coverage at npr.org on the NPR One app or by listening to your local NPR station. All right, here's the show. It's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news.

Last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, a white nationalist protest turned violent. A counter-protester was killed and the nation was left reeling. The president has wobbled in his response to the events. Plus, the Senate race in Alabama has offered the president an unlikely partnership. I'm Ron Elving, editor-correspondent. I'm Jeff Bennett. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. We should say that Scott and Tam are both away this week and someone has left me in charge. Let me add that we are following at this hour the developments from Barcelona, Spain, where a van was driven into a crowd, a number of people apparently killed. We will be following

this on npr.org and also on our radio programs tonight and tomorrow morning. So, last weekend in Charlottesville, a long-planned gathering of white nationalists turned violent, dozens were injured, and one woman, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, was killed when a man drove into a crowd of marchers. That man has been charged with murder, and two Virginia State police troopers, H.J. Cullen and Burke M.M. Bates, who were investigating the day's events, also died in a helicopter crash. And this all began as a protest over the planned removal of a Confederate statue of Robert E. Lee in downtown Charlottesville. Let's hear a little bit of the first remarks that President Trump made

on Saturday within the first hour or so after we all began realizing how badly things were going in Charlottesville. But we're closely following the terrible events unfolding in Charlottesville, Virginia. We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. On many sides. Now, that statement left a lot of people dissatisfied, even outraged, because they wanted the president to condemn the racist and white supremacist groups specifically. The marchers on Friday night or the general idea of these people marching to take over a park. He was seemingly equating the two sides even then.

So a couple of days later, on Monday, the president did put out not just another written statement, which the White House had already done, but he succumbed to some of this pressure and went public and said this. Racism is evil. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans. That seemed more to be the kind of traditional presidential statement that people might have been expecting. But then on Tuesday, the president was back in front of the microphone, this time in the lobby of the Trump Tower in Manhattan. And he made some remarks at an event that was initially supposed to be about infrastructure.

And again, he was using that both sides blame worthy construction. I think there's blame on both sides. You look at both sides. I think there's blame on both sides. And I have no doubt about it. And you don't have any doubt about it either. So that then devolved into a shouting match between the president and the presidential press corps. Jeff, you were there. You were there on Tuesday in Trump Tower. You were part of that group of reporters who were confronting the president at that particular moment. What was the mood? What was the sense of what was going on among the reporters? Well, the sense was that even though, yes, this event was organized to talk about the president's new infrastructure push, that the questions, of course, were going to focus on the news of the day.

And the news of the day was Charlottesville. And one question was all it took for the president to make it clear that his original remarks, the ones he gave on Saturday, were the ones that he intended to give all along. We later learned that he didn't appreciate the fact that the dressed up statement that he delivered Monday under great pressure from key Republicans and even members of his own staff, that that wasn't enough, and it wasn't received in the way that everyone told him it would have been. But in any case, in the room, I thought it was pretty telling that General John Kelly, the president's new chief of staff, he stood there with his arms crossed and for most of the time stared down at the floor. And then the other thing that I think didn't get much

coverage is that after that press conference ended, the president walked sort of toward the ropes where members of the press were, and it continued. And someone asked if he was going to visit Charlottesville, and he wouldn't say, but he did endorse his winery, which is nearby Charlottesville. At the risk of stating the obvious, I just feel like the thing that seems to have stunned everybody, and just to kind of put words around it, is that, you know, this is the leader of the nation, a nation, you know, that has as its founding principle all people being created equal. You had white supremacists walking through the streets saying things like Jews will not replace us, and that the president's immediate knee-jerk reaction was not to say, hey, these hate groups,

I strongly condemn them, that his knee-jerk reaction was not to do that is stunning to see how, really how odd that response was in light of the events that happened. That's right. For the president to appear sympathetic to men who marched in Charlottesville, the imagery and the intentions, I think, were fairly transparent. Here you have a large group of white men carrying torches on a hot night in the South, some of whom, as Danielle points out, were shouting Nazi slogans and giving the Nazis salute. For them to be characterized as fine people, I think, is unsettling. Because the president said at one point there were fine people on both sides.

He was not condemning everyone who turned out in public on Saturday in Charlottesville. He was saying there were lots of violent people on both sides, and then he said there were very fine people on both sides. And you had some very bad people in that group. But you also had people that were very fine people on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me. Excuse me.

I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue. And you had the Republican congressman who heads the GOP's Congressional Re-election Committee, you know, tweeting out, I don't get what's so hard about this. I mean, it shouldn't be a huge stretch for even a novice politician to condemn neo-Nazis and Klansmen. That's not a big reach. Let's be clear that many Republicans were taking that same tack. Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House, said this, we must be clear white supremacy is repulsive. This bigotry is counter to all this country

stands for. There can be no moral ambiguity. And John McCain said there's no moral equivalency between racists and Americans standing up to defy hate and bigotry. The president of the United States should say so. Right. And, you know, to get to a thing that I've written about a fair amount and that I know I've talked about on this podcast before, but the president just keeps doing it, which is, of course, what about ism? This idea that, you know, you can lay blame at this group, but what about that group? That group isn't perfect either. And if you reduce that down to its basic components, the basic idea behind it is, as long as any group, anyone is imperfect in some way, and there was violence from some of the leftist protesters last weekend, but as long as somehow anyone, any group screws up in some way,

then everybody is on the same level. Everybody is somehow equally bad. There is no ambiguity. There is no nuance there. And it really gives you sort of an insight into this worldview. The idea is that, you know, we're all kind of that, you can see where that moral equivalency comes from. And there's a rich history in the civil rights era, for example, of, you, of freedom riders being called troublemakers or outside agitators, Martin Luther King being labeled an agitator. So this even-handed blame has a rich and tragic history. Right. Okay. So we're accustomed really to having a certain amount of back and forth between the president and certain elements of the Republican Party,

Mitch McConnell, sometimes Jeff Sessions, some of these people we were just quoting. But many of the Republicans, certainly in polls, we see most Republicans still support the president. And many Republicans in Congress are still very eager to pursue the president's agenda. What does all this do with Congress coming back in a couple of weeks to take on such an enormous burden of legislation in September? Well, there are a couple of things they have to such an enormous burden of legislation in September. Well, there are a couple of things they have to do. They have to raise the debt limit. They have to pass a budget. So one can imagine that the usual brinkmanship that's involved in that will happen again. But for all the things that the president wants to do that he'll need definitely

Democrats for, I mean, to talk about the infrastructure push that he was originally supposed to talk about on Tuesday, you know, I doubt that there are Democrats who are willing now to sort of paper over the political and moral real divide that is left in the wake of the president's aligning himself or his support for the white nationalists who were there in Charlottesville. Let's not forget that the business president, the CEO president this week was abandoned by CEOs, by business people, the people on his manufacturing council who were starting to leave him. It sure seemed like there were going to be a bunch more who left. And so he decided to disband the council himself. So these people who, you know, one would think would be on his side in terms of regulation and tax reform and that sort of stuff.

They listened to his comments and they said, no way we won't be associated with this. And business people are not in the habit of making political waves. I mean, that's not something they do lightly. These are executives who wanted a seat at the table. They wanted a voice in policymaking decisions at the White House. But they felt like either because their customers or their employees were demanding that they distance themselves from this president, that they take this step. And so the president has squandered political capital on Capitol Hill, political capital with his business constituency, that he didn't need to squander, and he's going to need that capital to advance his agenda. You know, we should note that this began over the weekend when a number of CEOs and business leaders announced they would get off

of one of these business councils. And it began with the CEO of Merck, the pharmaceutical giant, Ken Frazier, who is African-American. And he put out a statement saying, I'm resigning from the President's American Manufacturing Council. America's leaders must honor our fundamental values by clearly rejecting expressions of hatred, bigotry, and group supremacy that run counter to the American ideal that all people are created equal. So that opened the floodgates and made it a question of do you stand with Ken Frazier of Merck or do you stand with the president? And Frazier's resignation came after the initial statement from the president. The president then very quickly lashed out at Ken Frazier and talked about Merck being charging ripoff prices for their drugs. That probably scared some executives saying, do I really want to pick a

fight with this president? Do I want to be subject my company and my business line to his Twitter feed? But after Tuesday's statement, that's when you really saw the rush for the exits. Absolutely. And I mean, you know, that sort of staggered thing where you had the first announcement, then the second one, it left a lot of people, you know, watching it and saying, all right, what is the line for these people? What line does President Trump have to cross for this person, that person, et cetera, to leave the council? And as it turns out, Tuesday was enough for at least some of them, not even all of them, though, it seemed. But you know what? Even as some of the business leaders stepped aside, what I think is interesting is that none of the president's evangelical advisors have broken away from him. And those folks are far more aligned politically with Trump's base than, you know, would be the head of Merck or the head of Intel. And I think that is particularly

telling because, as we've said before, the rules of political gravity have not, and for whatever reason, do not seem to apply to this president. And that is why Republicans have been so reluctant, if not entirely, you know, refuse, frankly, to break from President Trump over issues like this. Scott, you have in your background many years of business reporting. How much do you think these advisory councils to the president really matter? Does he take their advice or are they more useful to the president in terms of selling his agenda? Well, you know, Richard Trumka, the head of the AFL-CIO, who was one of the business community leaders, the labor leaders leaving the manufacturing council, said, look, the council hardly met. They never manufactured anything other than a letterhead. So a skeptic would say these

were really just window dressing. They served as sort of a backdrop when the president wanted to bring the TV cameras into the Roosevelt Room or something to give a statement. But over the long haul, had these councils remained in effect, you know, perhaps they would have had the presidency here. And there's nothing to say that these executives still can't make a phone call and perhaps have the presidency here, although he may be a little less likely to take their call after this spat and vice versa. And Jeff, we know that they are important in terms of tax reform, which is the big hope for Republicans now that Obamacare seems to be in place for a little while longer, at least that they really would like to pivot to tax reform. Does this make a

difference there? It may. Republicans, the thinking is, are probably closer together on how to address tax reform than they ever were, you know, regarding health care. But still, some of the divisions, I think, will still come to the fore as that debate plays out. The president, who was asked by Senate Republican leadership to take a lesser role in the health care debate, one can imagine will also be asked to take a lesser role in this tax reform debate because there's so much toxicity around the White House now. And, you know, we should say, again today, the president has been doubling down on the remarks from Tuesday that you heard there in New York, Jeff.

And he's been putting out tweets saying things such as, sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments. You can't change history, but you can learn it. Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson. So who's change history, but you can learn it. Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson. So who's next? Washington, Jefferson, so foolish.

Also, the beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns, and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced. He's pivoting to statues because that puts him on safer ground politically. There's a poll, a new NPR NewsHour Marist poll, that finds that 62% of those polled believe that Confederate statues should remain in place as compared to 27% who believe they should go. But what he's doing here is suggesting that the violence in Charlottesville was fundamentally about a statue, and that's not the case. It's not as if white supremacists from around the country convened on a college town just to protest that statue. And that's not the case. It's not as if white supremacists from around the country convened on a college town just to protest that statue. I mean, it was a pretext for a rally about

expressing white supremacist views. Danielle, you have been tracing a lot of these statements the president has made on white nationalism. What have you found? Really, what I found is that, you know, you have a long history of, I mean, for lack of a better word, ambiguity. I mean, you know, you go back to the 90s and up to 2000. And back then, not President Donald Trump was quite willing to denounce, for example, David Duke, who is, of course, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan. So in a 2000 interview with Matt Lauer of NBC, here's what he said. Well, you've got David Duke just joined.

A bigot, a racist, a problem. I mean, this is not exactly the people you want in your party. Trump was explaining why he would not seek the nomination of the Reform Party, which David Duke was a member of. Trump wanted to distance himself from Duke, and he believed the Reform Party should also. But then, you know, in the intervening years before he became a politician, Donald Trump joined on to the birther movement. And by the time he became president, he sort of did what one source told me was called to me an odd footsie with some of these groups. You know, like, for example, David Duke just keeps popping up here. David Duke seemed, you know, was kind

of rooting for Trump during the campaign. And at one point, first Trump told Jake Tapper, you know, I don't know what you're talking about. He sort of seemed to say, you know, like, I don't even know who David Duke is. I want to ask you about the Anti-Defamation League, which this week called on you to publicly condemn unequivocally the racism of former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke, who recently said that voting against you at this point would be treason to your heritage. Will you unequivocally condemn David Duke and say that you don't want his vote or that of other white supremacists in this election? Well, just so you understand, I don't know anything about David Duke, OK? I don't know anything about what you're even talking about with white supremacy or white supremacists. So I don't know. I mean, I don't know. Did he endorse me or what's going on?

Because, you know, I know nothing about David Duke. I know nothing about white supremacists. And so you're asking me a question that I'm supposed to be talking about people that I know nothing about. Of course, we know that's not true. He had talked about David Duke back in the day and denounced him. So, I mean, you had a fair amount of going back and forth and not quite being willing to be clear on this. Here's the thing. In talking with some of what I believe, you know, Trump supporters would brand as establishment Republicans here today on the Hill, the real fear is that what the president is doing, as Danielle puts it, playing footsie with fringe supremacist elements in the party, that it risks branding the party as a whole as being tolerant

of racism, frankly, and white supremacy, more than anything policy related that the president could do, whether it's, you know, cutting legal immigration in half or the travel ban itself, or looking into voter fraud, as some Democrats see as a way that is aimed at, you know, essentially suppressing the vote, that this tripling down and aligning himself with elements of the party that, as we've said before, it's a really easy thing to do to denounce white supremacists, that it risks stamping the GOP as a whole as the party of racial intolerance. I don't know about you guys. I just keep thinking lately about the autopsy that was done after 2012, after Mitt Romney lost the presidential election that year.

The Republican Party said, you know, we need to broaden our reach. We need to reach out to Hispanics, for example. We need to reach out to other minority groups. And just think about how far at this point they have strayed from that. Of course, Donald Trump's election itself was a repudiation of that autopsy. The theme of the autopsy was we have to do more to reach out to non-white voters. Donald racial identity, that the Trump wing of the party will always win that debate. And so what we see is that the Trump administration, or the president himself rather, is willing to take this racially polarizing position, even at the risk of elevating

and energizing white supremacist groups, because it's good politics for him. I have to note that today is August 17th, and it is the one-year anniversary of Steve Bannon taking over as the chairman of the Donald Trump campaign for president one year ago. And there have been people in the last 48, 72 hours saying, watch out, Steve Bannon's on his way out at the White House. And the president, when asked about this, said, well, we'll see, we'll see, we'll see. Not exactly the world's greatest endorsement. At the same time, people have said this before, Steve Bannon is still with us one year today. And the message I'm getting is that if he sticks around after these two interviews he gave, one to the American Prospect and a shorter one to The New York Times, that it suggests his power center within the White House only grows. All right. There's still much to discuss on these topics and more. We're going

to take a quick break here and we'll be right back. Support for this podcast and the following message come from ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter is committed to helping employers build great companies by making it easy to find and hire top talent. Using advanced matching technology, 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 also comes from Morgan Stanley. For over 80 years, Morgan Stanley has offered financial wisdom to its clients.

And for the last few weeks, they've been offering financial wisdom on a brand new podcast. The Morgan Stanley Ideas Podcast will answer some questions you've wondered about for years and others you didn't even know you had. Find out on the Morgan Stanley Ideas Podcast available from your favorite podcast directory. Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC. Members SIPC. And we are back and we are joined now by our justice correspondent, Carrie Johnson. Carrie, welcome to the podcast. Thanks, Ron.

It is good to have you here. And we've been talking, obviously, about Charlottesville. We've been talking about the hate groups and domestic terrorism. And these are terms that are thrown around kind of loosely. And we like to bring you in to tighten up the language and tighten up our understanding of what we really have at stake here. Sure. has launched a civil rights investigation into the car attack that was deadly, and they're focusing on the driver, James Fields. So what do we know about him, and what will investigators be looking for? He's a 20-year-old man. He was attending the rally, and there were some video images capturing him taking part in the rally earlier before he allegedly rammed into people in the street. He's detained on bond on state charges now,

including second-degree murder and hit-and-run, among other charges. We haven't heard from him since his being taken into custody, but there's an ongoing state and federal investigation now that involves the FBI, the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department, and the U.S. Attorney in the Western District of Virginia. So presumably there may be federal charges coming on top of the state charges. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has had this to say about the attack. Well, it does meet the definition of domestic terrorism in our statute. Kerry, what is the definition for domestic terrorism? And could Fields actually be looking at that kind of charge? You know, the Attorney General misspoke ever so slightly. There is something called domestic terrorism in federal law, but it's not a crime for which you

can charge someone under federal law as it exists now. Now, during the Obama administration, after that terrible, deadly incident in Charleston, South Carolina, at the Emanuel AME Church, where nine parishioners were killed. DOJ thought about seeking to ask Congress to create such a domestic terrorism offense, but it never got over the finish line. So there is no domestic terrorism charge proper under federal law now. What about this phrase, hate crime? So there are hate crime charges under federal law now. What about this phrase, hate crime? So there are hate crime charges under federal law. They make it a crime to target somebody because of their race, ethnicity, religion. And under the Obama administration in 2009, Congress added sexual orientation

to that list after the Matthew Shepard attack. You may remember his name. So there are federal hate crime statutes out there. Dylan Roof, the man who perpetrated that attack in Charleston, South Carolina, has actually been convicted on federal hate crimes charges, and he is facing the death penalty. Because of the added, if you will, valence of it being a hate crime? Well, he was convicted of several murders, but murders, prosecutors proved to a jury that were committed because of the victim's race and religious targeting too, since they were actually in a prayer group at the time. So is that going to have an impact on the James Fields case? Okay. So James Fields is facing Virginia state charges now. The federal government is

still investigating whether he may have violated federal civil rights laws or hate crimes laws. Attorney General Sessions says they're in no rush to bring those charges since he's already in custody under state charges. And in fact, the stating investigation continues, it's possible local authorities say that he could be facing new charges. And under Virginia law, he could potentially face charges that carry capital punishment. So the federal government may decide either to charge him under federal law and wait till the state proceeding ends, or defer to state prosecutors who have the option of pursuing capital punishment against him. This is a little bit premature. We're going a little bit far.

This guy has not been convicted of anything. But all of these things are on the table right now. So what is the timeline for something like this? Look in terms of, you know, what happens to James Fields next? It could take weeks, months, or even longer than that to finish the legal process. As you know, people are entitled to a defense and they may choose to mount one, which can take a long time in the state courts. And then you introduce this notion that the federal authorities may want to get involved too. Now, that's happened in the past where somebody has been charged in a state system and a federal

system and been convicted in both systems. It just depends on the way the federal government wants to go here and whether the Attorney General Jeff Sessions wants to defer to local authorities in Virginia. Remember, in the Dylann Roof case in Charleston, South Carolina, then Attorney General Loretta Lynch felt very strongly about sending a national message charging this guy with federal hate crimes violations and winning a capital sentence against him in the federal system. Jeff Sessions has been somewhat more deferential to state authorities in his rhetoric this week, but it's early days and we're not sure where he's going to land. Kerry, is there some incentive for the Trump

administration to pursue this case pretty aggressively to kind of make up for what some see as the shortcomings in the administration's response to the larger circumstances in Charlottesville? That's a really interesting insight. And in fact, you saw on the day of this car attack, the White House evening after 11 p.m., the attorney general and the U.S. attorney in the Western District of Virginia and the FBI had run out to announce the launching of a federal investigation. They had been getting a lot of pressure from the civil rights community, from protest groups shows nationally to try to convey the message that the Trump Justice Department cared about this and was on the case. Sessions described scores of federal officials and investigators being detailed to this investigation. They are trying to show force here, in part, you could argue, because of the initial insensitivity of the White House messaging. All those things worth remembering. And I'm afraid, of course, we'll be remembering Charlottesville

for weeks and months to come as this case makes its way through the courts. Thank you, Carrie, for helping us through all that thicket. We'll let you get back to work. My pleasure. So we're just talking about Jeff Sessions as the Attorney General. Of course, he took over that job earlier this year when appointed by President Trump. That meant he had to give up his seat in the United States Senate. And that seat has only been temporarily filled. And that person is named Luther Strange, and he has been filling in as the appointee of the former governor of Alabama, Robert Bentley, who exited under some

highly adverse circumstances and a scandal there and basically being put out the door by the legislature. And who appointed Luther Strange while Luther Strange was the attorney general of the state while Bentley was being investigated by him, which raised some eyebrows. All of which is an elaborate introduction to Luther Strange, but is exactly the nature of his problem. Because normally, whoever had been appointed out of Alabama would probably be a respectably popular political figure and would be able to be easily confirmed by the voters later in the year. However, because of all the aforementioned, plus the fact that some people in Alabama just don't feel that Luther Strange is sufficiently supportive of Donald Trump,

who is an enormously popular figure in Alabama. For all those reasons, Luther Strange did not finish first in the first round of voting for the Republican nominee to hold this seat permanently, which just happened this week. He came in second to a gentleman named Judge Roy Moore. The Ten Commandments judge. Jeff, I think you've struck upon at least one of the things everybody remembers about Judge Roy Moore, and of course, what's the other one? Well, right, that he hung a wooden Ten Commandments plaque on the wall of his courtroom in the 1990s.

And then he refused to remove a 5,000-pound granite Ten Commandments monument, if I'm remembering this correctly. Yes, if he's not going to lift off the wooden version, he's highly unlikely to movepound granite Ten Commandments monument, if I'm remembering this correctly. Yes, if he's not going to lift off the wooden version, he's highly unlikely to move the granite one. But that actually cost him his job back in 2003. That did. And then later on, a year ago, he was suspended because he didn't want to issue marriage certificates to same-sex couples. He actually said, you know, here in Alabama, we have a same-sex marriage ban, and we have a right to have that. And I don't really care what the U.S. Supreme Court said in the Obergefell

case that made same-sex marriage legal across the country. And his defiance there, again, got him in trouble with the Alabama Court of the Judiciary. And they once again suspended him. He appealed that. They turned down the appeal, and he resigned just this April, just in time to run for the United States Senate. And all this scuffle with the Supreme Court on both these issues has endeared him to the evangelical community in Alabama. And that's probably why he finished number one in the Republican primary. That's right. There were three candidates. And the third one, Mo Brooks, is a member of the House Freedom Caucus and probably, you know, would be the guy who aligned

with Donald Trump as closely as anyone else on many, many issues. But he came out third in a three-team league and Donald Trump endorsed. Luther Strange by tweet. Well, let me tack something on about Mo Brooks here, though. Mo Brooks, member of the Freedom Caucus, like you said, but he had criticized Donald Trump during the campaign. And as a result, you got this really fascinating campaign ad that came out where Luther Strange was comparing Mo Brooks to Nancy Pelosi, which is... I often get them confused. Mel Brooks, Nancy. Right. You know, a guy who is not liberal by any stretch of the imagination. But I mean, this both speaks to a how big of a supervillain Nancy Pelosi is to Republicans. But also that, you know, this was a race where, you know, being aligned with Donald Trump was really a big deal, apparently. A long memory of the president. And of course, Trump's endorsement of Luther Strange was interesting because it came at the same time he was publicly undercutting Mitch McConnell, suggesting that Mitch McConnell might want to give up his Senate majority leadership position over the health care defeat. So that was all sort of political theater when ultimately the president was really doing Mitch McConnell a huge favor in endorsing his preferred candidate.

Because Luther Strange is also Mitch McConnell's preferred candidate. That's right. Very much so. And millions of dollars of funds that are controlled by Mitch McConnell for campaigns were directed to Luther Strange, who is seen to be a good supportive vote for Mitch McConnell, should he get here. The question, though, is whether he can, between now and September 26th, overhaul the legend of Roy Moore and the

fanatical support that he has among the people who care most about him. All right, so we should mention now, in fairness, that there is a Democratic candidate for this Senate seat as well. His name is Doug Jones. He is a U.S. attorney, and he easily outdistanced a large field of Democratic wannabes. He got something like 64% of the vote. But whether he can keep that rolling when we get to the actual final vote, which, believe it or not, is not until December, we'll have to see. Most eyes will be on that September 26 Republican runoff between Moore and Strange. Okay, we've got to take one more quick break. And when we get back, what can't we let go? 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. and challenging bias to bring facts, not speculation, to its video news coverage. Visit Newsy.com slash watch for the latest. I'm Linda Holmes. And I'm Stephen Thompson. There's more stuff to watch and read these days than any one person can get to. That's why we make Pop Culture Happy Hour. Twice a week, we sort through the nonsense, share reactions,

and give you the lowdown on what's worth your precious time and what's not. Find Pop Culture Happy Hour on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay, now it's time to end the show as we always do with Can't Let It Go, when we all share one thing we cannot stop thinking about this week, politics or otherwise. I am going to begin. We've had rather a grim week in terms of much of the news, and so we wanted to go out with something a little more joyful. I'm going to make reference to something that is now officially the most liked tweet in the history of Twitter. It is not the most retweeted, but it is the most liked, and that came from former President Obama, who put out a picture, in addition to a quotation from Nelson Mandela, this obviously in reaction to the Charlottesville events we've been talking about. He said, no one is born hating another person because of the color

of his skin or his background or his religion. People must learn to hate. And if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love. For love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. Scott, what can you not let go? Well, my clig is a little bit lighter. It concerns the movie actor Robert Pattinson, best known probably for his portrayal of Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter franchise. Is that what he's best known for? Yeah. Not being a sparkly vampire?

Not that? franchise. Is that what he's best known for? Yeah, well, I also saw him recently in a kind of an arthouse film where he plays a photographer for Life magazine, which was quite good, called Life. Yeah, I understand he did make some vampire movies too. I didn't see those. They also were arthouse. They didn't get much buzz. In 2012, though, Pattinson and his on and off girlfriend, Kristen Stewart, was the subject of sort of an obsession for Donald Trump. Trump tweeted a lot about them in 2012, and he basically advised Robert Pattinson he should dump Kristen Stewart. He tweeted about this quite a lot.

He said, Everybody knows I'm right. Robert Pattinson should dump Kristen Stewart. In a couple of years, he'll thank me. Be smart, Robert. He repeated this. He said, Everyone's asking me to speak more on Robert and Kristen. I don't have time except to say, Robert, drop her. She cheated

on you and she will again. Now, I stumbled on these ancient tweets this morning when I was looking up some of the president's more recent ones, and I discovered that Robert Pattinson, now five years after the fact, has given an interview to Entertainment Weekly where he was asked about these tweets. And as often happens with these celebrity interviews, what he said was not as interesting as the fact that he said something. But there were lots of headlines. Robert Pattinson finally responds to President Trump's tweets five years later. He said when he said that, it didn't really mean anything. It's kind of interesting, I guess. I don't know.

This could be why people get annoyed with me. But the point is, Lindsey Graham and Jeff Flake, five years from now, this will all be over. I like the finally in that headline you mentioned. You know, as if we were all sitting here just, you know, twisting our fingers. When is Pattinson going to talk? I know. Like, when are we going to hear from him? Now we have. Actually, during our coverage of the North Korea crisis last week, I found myself sitting in a studio wondering about Robert Pattinson and when

he would weigh in on what President Trump said. Jeff, now that we've scratched that itch, perhaps you could direct our gaze skyward. That's a very nice segue and a very nice setup, Ron Elving. So the thing that I cannot let go of this week really has to do with what's happening next week. On Monday, it's the big eclipse that we've talked a lot about here on NPR. So the moon's going to completely eclipse the sun. It's the first, apparently it's the first coast-to-coast solar eclipse in 99 years. There was a partial one that some people saw back in 1979. So I have literally had on my list of things to do, research the eclipse for the last two or three weeks. I haven't had any

time to do it. When I was in New York this past week to cover President Trump at Trump Tower, on my way out of the city, I passed by a glasses store, Warby Parker, and they had a sign on the window that said, come in for your free eclipse glasses. Now, most of the glasses I'd understood were either completely unavailable or totally sold out. So I went in, figured I could only take one because it's New York and there's a lot of demand. The guy in the store said I could take as many as I want. So it was a small victory, folks. I have about 10 free eclipse glasses from Warby Parker.

So if you need a pair, I'm the guy to see. And for those of you keeping score, that is not the first plug Warby Parker has had on this podcast. But now that we're all elevated, Danielle, take us out. All right. So speaking of researching the eclipse, I, like Jeff, wish I had researched it earlier because I wish I had found out about this earlier. The total eclipse cruise, which is being put on by Royal Caribbean, on which the main act will be Bonnie Tyler. And if you don't remember, she is the person who performed the greatest karaoke song of all time, Total Eclipse of the Heart. Turn around.

That's the right song, right? Oh, absolutely. Keep it up. Those are the only words I know. At the time of totality, she apparently will be singing her hits, you know, just to coincide and create the grandest moment ever. The song will last longer than the eclipse. So I was reading about this. Like, the song is pretty long.

In Time magazine, she said that the eclipse lasts two minutes and 40 seconds. And the quote is, unlike my song, it had to be chopped about because it was so long. Yeah, so they're going to slim the song down. And I don't know, maybe only cut it to 240. I'm not sure. Okay. It just delights me so much. So much thought is being put into this.

After some consideration, we have decided not to have the entire podcast crew sing the song in its entirety. You'll just have to imagine that. Okay, that's a wrap for us this week. We'll be back in your feed on Monday. And a lot of you write us to say, hey, can you guys talk about this story on the podcast? And we have to say we don't always have time to do that. But we do cover this stuff every single day. Check out NPRpolitics.org or our NPR Politics Facebook page for

links to all the stuff we're writing on the web. And of course, you can listen to our radio stories on your local public radio station or on NPR One. And if you like the show, leave us a review on iTunes. That helps other people find the podcast. Okay. I'm your guest host, Ron Elbing, Editor-Correspondent. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, Political Reporter. I'm Jeff Bennett. I cover the White House. And I'm Scott Horslake, and I also cover the White House. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. I don't know what to do and I'm always in the There's nothing I can do

A total eclipse of the heart