The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, August 22

Episode Date: August 22, 2019

President Trump had lots to say about the economy this week. Two 2020 candidates drop out of the race and one of them decides to run for Senate. Plus, the president doubled down on remarks that Jewish voters who support Democrats are disloyal to Israel. This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, chief economics correspondent Scott Horsley, political correspondent Scott Detrow, political editor Domenico Montanaro and White House correspondent Tamara Keith. 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

Hey everybody, before we start the show, I want to let you in on something really exciting. We are taking the podcast on the road. We'll be in Boulder, Colorado on September 20th and Washington, D.C. on November 8th. We'll be taping a podcast live on stage so you can see how all this magic happens. Get a ticket at nprpresents.org. Hi, this is Jonathan. And Jeremy. And we've traveled from New Jersey to Des Moines to try to see as many Democratic candidates as we can.

This podcast was recorded at 9.36 a.m. on Thursday, August 22nd. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show. They have the same vacation idea that I did. Tim, I don't know if that speaks volumes about you or the folks that does the timestamp. Well, hey there, it is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the 2020 campaign. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And joining us is a very special guest and longtime friend of the podcast,

Chief Economics Correspondent Scott Horslake. Welcome back, Scott. Great to be with y'all. Feels like you never left us. Well, you are currently in an airport, is that right? Yes, I'm at the Baltimore Airport on my way up to New Hampshire to take part in a panel discussion with some of the candidates about the economy and fiscal matters. Take part in? You're moderating it.

That's right. I'm not running for president. Scott is so modest. Well, Scott, you are with us because you know all things about the economy. And there has been a sense recently that while some of the economic indicators are really healthy looking, there's also been some jitters and concerns possibly about the overall health of the economy. So talk to us a bit about what exactly is happening. That's right. I think what we can say is that the economy is decelerating. It's still growing, but it's not growing as fast as it was, say, a year ago. Some parts of the economy are still doing fairly well. Consumers

are still feeling pretty good and they're spending a lot of money and consumers make up more than two-thirds of all the economic activity in the country, so that's very important. But we are seeing a slowdown, particularly in manufacturing. Factories tend to be particularly sensitive to what's going on in the rest of the world, and we're seeing slowing growth around the world, so that's affecting factories. And they're also being affected by the trade war, which disrupts supply lines and causes some uncertainty. And so we are seeing some fall out there. The economy grew last year at a rate of about two and a half percent. This year, it looks like it's growing closer to two percent, still growing, but just not as quickly. And Tam, the

president speaks very frequently about the economy. What has he been saying about what Scott's describing? The president says there is nothing to see here. Everything is just fine. He sees no recession on the horizon. There is nothing to worry about. Keep spending your money. However, he also at the same time has been badgering his own handpicked Fed chairman to lower interest rates, which would boost the economy potentially. And he is also talking at the White House. They've been talking about this. And then there's been a fair bit of back and forth about it, about potential tax cuts. Now, you know, when Scott talks about the president's trade policy affecting the economy, there are any number of studies from JPMorgan Chase to the

Congressional Budget Office. There are all kinds of reports saying that these tariffs, this trade war stuff has a very real possibility and already is affecting U.S. consumers? Oh, absolutely. I mean, JPMorgan Chase said this week that if all the China tariffs take effect, it's going to cost the typical family a thousand dollars a year. That's serious. The Congressional Budget Office said this week that the economy will be three tenths of a point smaller next year as a result of the trade war than it would have otherwise been. What you see from President Trump and why I think you see him kind of all over the place on whether we're in the strong economy, whether it's the greatest economy, whether it's someone else's fault for potentially going into a recession,

is that he's laying the groundwork for politically blaming others if there is a recession. And this is something he's done repeatedly. It's why he goes after mainstream news organizations to say that what you're hearing from them, from us, is fake news, because he wants to be able to spin out whatever it is that he can say, especially to his base, to at least retain a floor of political support. But hey guys, the president has made it very clear that in his view, presidents of the past never dealt with China and that somebody had to do this. Somebody had to do it. I am the chosen one. Somebody had to do it. So I'm taking on China. I'm taking on China on trade. And you know what? We're winning because

we're the piggy bank. We're the one that all these countries, including the European Union, wants to rob and takes advantage of. Saying that he's the chosen one, that he has to do this, is in some ways acknowledging that, yes, there is pain. He won't admit that there's pain, but he feels like he has to do it anyway, even if there are consequences, which there are. And there are even potential political consequences if this keeps dragging out and it doesn't seem like it's going to help and the economy drags. And let's be clear, there's general agreement that China has some bad behaviors, intellectual property theft, forced tech transfer that need to be addressed. That's not really in dispute. There is plenty of dispute about whether the trade war that the president has sparked is the right way to go about changing China's behavior,

especially since the president has also picked trade fights with our European allies, with our neighbors in Canada and Mexico, with countries like Japan. Instead of rallying the rest of the world to America's side in this competition with China, he has basically alienated lots of trading partners who would be natural allies with the U.S. and contributed to trade uncertainty, not just with China, but with Europe, with North America, with trading partners around the globe. Let's just be really explicit about the politics here. And we know that President Trump always thinks through a political prism. The politics are you do not want to run for reelection if you are facing a recession or if there is deceleration or if you've promised three and four percent economic growth as far as the eye can see. And now it's at two and a half percent or maybe two percent. And so part of what's happening here is President Trump. Part of the reason he's badgering his Fed chairman is because

he wants to be able to say, I've got this stellar economic growth. And the reality is there's not that much a president can do to make that happen on his own. And Tim, you mentioned badgering his own Fed chair. I feel like you need to listen to what he actually said to fully comprehend the degree to which the president is, I don't know if interfering is the right word, but certainly perhaps putting pressure in a very public spotlight on the Fed chair.

If you look at what's happening around the world, Jay Powell and the Federal Reserve have totally missed the call. I was right. And just about everybody admits that. I was right. I just feel like we need to say that it is not normal for a president of the United States to try to that the Federal Reserve is supposed to be insulated from this kind of political pressure is that in order to do its job effectively, to fight inflation and to maximize employment,

the Fed sometimes has to do unpopular things. The Fed has to make the kind of choices politicians habitually avoid making. And that's why the central bank was set up to be insulated from political pressure. Scott, to clarify, when he says, I was right and everybody admits I was right, I don't get the sense that economists agree with that. Well, the president is criticizing the Federal Reserve for raising interest rates in 2018 and being slow to lower interest rates in 2019. The Fed did raise interest rates last year. That's sort of a normal thing to do when you think the economy is more or less approaching full employment. The Fed has sort of reconsidered, and they did cut interest rates by a quarter percentage point last month.

In that sense, you could say that the Fed has come around to agreeing with the president on which direction interest rates ought to be moving in. But the president is calling for really dramatic cuts in interest rates ought to be moving in. But the president is calling for really dramatic cuts in interest rates. This week, he tweeted that the Fed should slash interest rates by a full percentage point, basically cut interest rates, which are already low, in half. And that's the kind of thing you would do when the economy is going off a cliff. That's not the kind of tweaking of the knobs that the Fed is pursuing. That is break glass and pull the fire alarm. That's serious stuff. And it's kind of typical of the

other things we've heard the president talking about this week. Tam mentioned the very mixed message we've been getting from the White House. Earlier this week, the Washington Post broke the story that the White House was weighing a payroll tax cut. At first, the officials said, no, that's not on the table. Then the president said, yes, it is something we're looking at. Then the president himself did a 180 and said, no, we're not looking at that. They can't seem to decide whether they want to say the economy is in great shape, the best it's ever been, or this is an economy that needs a rescue. Scott, remind us what the payroll tax is.

Sure. The payroll tax is what you see on your pay stub is FICA. It's what goes for Social Security and Medicare. The federal government did give a temporary break in the payroll tax back in 2011 when the country was trying to kind of claw its way out of the recession. It is a quick way you can put money in consumers' pockets. At the same time, it adds to the deficit. And as I mentioned, consumer spending is not really the weak spot in the economy. What we've seen is a decline in

business investment. So it's a kind of an unusual fix. What's more, it would take an act of Congress to cut the payroll taxes. And it's hard to see the Democrats in Congress doing the president any favors between now and next November, unless the economy really sends signals that it's in much more dire shape than what we're seeing so far. All right. Well, Scott, we are going to say goodbye to you so that you can get on that plane that you need to take. And all right. Take care. Great talking to you. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll discuss a 2020 update and comments the president has made about Jewish voters. Support for NPR and the following message come from ExxonMobil, a 2020 update and comments the president has made about Jewish voters. Experts agree that it will also play a critical role in reducing global carbon emissions. Find out more at energyfactor.com. Support also comes from BetterHelp.

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Every Tuesday on It's Been a Minute from NPR. And we're back and joining us now is the other Scott. Scott Detrow. Hello.

How's it going? Do you like my Scott jokes? I just missed Scott Horsley. Oh, man. Aw. Like, are you the same person? I don't know. People you can't be in the same place at the same time. We do both wear glasses. So it's not quite like a Superman situation. One of my favorite stories is when you first

met Stacey Abrams and she asked him, which Scott are you? It's true. She did. She wanted to distinguish between Scott Horsley and Scott Detrow. We're going to talk now about comments the president has made about Jewish voters recently. Here he is speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Tuesday. And I think any Jewish people that vote for a Democrat, I think it shows either a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty. He doubled down on that language Wednesday outside of the White House. In my opinion, you vote for a Democrat, you're being very disloyal to Jewish people, and you're being very disloyal to Israel.

And only weak people would say anything other than that. So, Tim, let's talk about that language, specifically when the president uses the word loyalty. What does that imply? That term, when used to talk about Jewish people, is very strongly associated with anti-Semitism. And here's why. Throughout much of the history of the Jewish people, they have not had their own land. Jewish people have lived in other countries. Jewish people lived in Germany. They live in America. And there is an idea that is used against Jewish people that they have dual loyalty, that they aren't really loyal to the country that they are citizens of. And that idea has been used to justify violence

against Jewish people going back centuries. And to that point, that is one of the comments that Representative Ilhan Omar made, though she said it in a slightly different way, that got her a lot of criticism for being anti-Semitic. And that's something she apologized for after she said that. We recognize that the phrasing the president used is problematic. But I guess I have questions also about even how accurate the idea is of where Jewish voters' partisanship lies. Because my understanding is, right, Domenico, that Jewish voters have been overwhelmingly voting Democratic. Yeah. And first of all, this idea of loyalty that President Trump brings up completely misses the point of how American Jewish voters actually vote, because they aren't voting Israel first. You know, they're voting as a Democrat or a Republican.

Their partisanship, their partisan identification is more of an indicator of how they vote. They care about things like social justice and the welfare of immigrants, and they don't necessarily agree with President Trump on his policies toward Israel. And by the way, overall, they have overwhelmingly supported Democratic presidential candidates. Since 1968, they voted on average 71% for Democrats. Barack Obama, who certainly faced lots of criticism from Republicans for his policy toward Iran, for criticizing Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, for Israeli settlement expansion. He still won 70 plus percent of the Jewish vote in 2008 and 69 percent of the Jewish vote in 2012. So here's the thing with President Trump. He seems to confuse

or conflate or just combine what he sees as the interests of Israel with what he assumes must be the interests of Jewish people in America. And those things are not one in the same. And to your point, Tim, he recently made comments that explicitly talked about what he'd done for Israel as if that was supposed to validate his comments. So I have been responsible for a lot of great things for Israel. One of them was moving the embassy to Jerusalem, making Jerusalem the capital of Israel. One of them was the Golan Heights. One of them, frankly, is Iran. Iran is a very far weakened nation right now, much different. Hopefully something works out. We'll see if it happens. It happens. Wait a minute. Wait, wait. No president has ever done anywhere close to what I've done.

He was earlier this year speaking to the Republican Jewish Coalition, which is an American group, a conservative pro-Israel group meeting in Las Vegas. And he said this. But I stood with your prime minister at the White House to recognize Israeli sovereignty. Your prime minister. They are Americans. The Republican Jewish Coalition strongly is supporting President Trump in his latest remarks. And I think it is worth flagging that both President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu are both in varying degrees kind of under siege politically within their own countries. I think Netanyahu much more acutely than President Trump right now. He's facing another election. He wasn't able to form a government.

He's facing an indictment right now. And they have both made a strategic decision to lock arms with each other, to give each other what each other wants, and use that to bolster their own political bases within their own countries. And I think the example last week of Netanyahu not allowing two American members of Congress into the country initially at the urging of President Trump is a real clear example of that. And just to show one example of the fact that the president doesn't really understand the American Jewish voting electorate was his again, insistence that, hey, look at all the things I've done, like moving the embassy to Jerusalem. The fact is, he did that before the 2018 midterm elections. And the percentage for Jewish voters voting for

Democrats went up in the 2018 midterms than it was even prior in the 2016 election, where Hillary Clinton got 71% of the Jewish vote in 2018. It was 79% of the Jewish vote went for Democrats. As President Trump has used this language about Jewish voters, has sort of hammered on, look at how great I've been for Israel. You should vote for me as sort of the implication. And I've been very confused by that because of the makeup of the Jewish electorate and all this. What is he up to? I've been very confused. I talked to someone at a sort of progressive Jewish group called J Street, Jeremy Ben-Ami, and he explained it this way. Israel is an issue not simply for the Jewish community. It's an issue now in very much what constitutes the base of Donald Trump.

It is an evangelical issue. It's an issue in many red states. And it is comparable as a cultural divide on things like guns, abortion, and other culture war issues. So like, in a way, this may not be about Jewish voters at all, but maybe more about evangelical voters or white voters, which would be similar to the pitch to black voters. But that sort of makes sense. You see, when you look at the polling numbers, when you look at, you know, sympathy with Israel, when that question is polled, the Pew Research Center has looked at it from 1978, all the way up to 2018. And you've seen that back in the 70s, Democrats and Republicans,

this was a fairly bipartisan support issue. You've seen over the years a 30 percent change amongst Republicans being more supportive. And during that time period, you've also seen the Republican Party embrace evangelicals to a greater degree. For evangelicals, Israel is sort of tied to a lot of what they believe, and they want to see a president who is strongly supportive of Israel, and it fires them up, certainly more than it does even American Jews. Now, if it peels off American Jewish voters, then that's great for President Trump and his view. But if it doesn't, or they stay home, that's fine, too. I mean, the fact of the matter here is, too, though, you have a very strong vocal minority of very hardline pro-Israel conservatives who do a lot to support the Republican Party. And you have lots of Republican donors who are Jewish.

I think of someone like Sheldon Adelson, who are strongly pro-Israel, anti-Iran, and who are also a thorn in President Obama's side for quite some time as well. Yeah. And like the Republican Party's embrace of Benjamin Netanyahu and Benjamin Netanyahu's embrace of the Republican Party in America, coming at the invitation of John Boehner to speak to Congress in opposition to President Obama. Over the last five plus years, basically Israel has become a more partisan issue because of the way Netanyahu has tied himself very closely to Republicans and because more liberal Democrats have also connected themselves to the Palestinians and movements to try to force Israel to take different positions as relates to the Palestinians, something called boycott, divestiture and sanctions BDS. And I think that that has been an interesting tension point within

the Democratic Party, because you have a lot of high profile Democrats becoming increasingly critical of Israel's treatment towards Palestinians, especially, I think, Bernie Sanders, independent, running for president as a Democrat. Put that out there so people don't tweet at me about it. This is another issue where he has kind of taken a firm line and you've seen many other candidates follow suit. But at the same time, you know, I'm thinking of Speaker Pelosi. I'm thinking of a lot of other Democratic leaders. There is an embedded support for Israel, reaffirming support for Israel going back decades. And I think a lot of leaders of the party are really trying to thread that line right now. Okay, so to shift gears before we take a quick break, let's talk a little bit about two

very new 2020 campaign developments. First, Scott, John Hickenlooper. John Hickenlooper, to the surprise of no one, is running for the United States Senate. He had been under a ton of pressure, like several other presidential candidates, to drop out of the race and run for Senate. He dropped out of the race and is now running for Senate. And that is despite repeatedly protesting the idea of running for Senate before, saying, I just don't see myself as a senator. I wouldn't be a good senator. I'm more interested in being executive. John Hickenlooper now running for Senate. And that matters nationally because Colorado is probably the top pickup target that Democrats have for the Senate map next year. They feel like Cory Gardner,

the Republican incumbent, is very vulnerable. They need to win back that seat if there's going to be any chance whatsoever of a Democratic Senate in 2021. And if Hickenlooper is elected, he could join the craft beer caucus in Congress. And the former governor caucus of senators who always love to tell you their former governors and just how pragmatic governors are. It is a little bit of a thing. Yes. And how they can't stand the Senate because nothing gets done. And another development. Last night, Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who was also running for president, said that he is withdrawing from the race.

Yes, we lost Governor Jay Inslee last night from the presidential campaign. A surprise announcement actually on MSNBC that he's dropping out of the race. And Inslee did it in a little bit of a weird way. He was, like, bragging about the fact that, yes, we got 130,000 donors. That was one of the requirements. Thanks for donating to my campaign. I'm now ending my campaign. Well, because you also need four polls, and he couldn't break one percent.

And to be clear, we're talking about qualifying for the next Democratic debate. There were these two thresholds and he met one of them, but it didn't look like he was going to make the other. Yeah. And we had talked about the September debates being an impetus for people leaving the race. We've now seen two candidates leave the race. And I think it's really notable that it's two governors, a former governor and a current governor of Western states who have dropped out of the race. You know, we had talked early on that traditionally governors do well. Voters gravitate towards governors and their executive experience, the fact they're D.C. outsiders. That just didn't seem to be the case this year.

And I think it's really interesting that it's just a different dynamic in terms of what voters want and how supercharged a primary is that a candidate who might not have that national experience to begin with, with, I guess, the exception of Pete Buttigieg, doesn't really have the lane to build that track record. And Inslee focused his entire campaign on climate change, which is an issue that ostensibly we see in polling that Democratic primary voters say repeatedly is one of their top issues, if not their top issue for a lot of those voters. But he was never able to kind of get the kind of traction that he needed to stand out in a field with almost two dozen people in it. If Jay Inslee is looking at this as someone who wants to further

the progress of addressing climate change, this is a success. He was one of several aggressive plans. If he was looking for it as a way to be the only candidate taking it seriously, it didn't work out. And now, according to reports, he wants to run for another term as governor instead. All right. Well, we're going to take a quick break. And when we return, it is time for Can't Let It Go. While you're sleeping, a whole bunch of news is happening around the world. Up First is the NPR News podcast that gets you caught up on the big news in a small amount of time. Spend about 10 minutes with Up First on weekday mornings from NPR News. And we're back.

And it is now time, as it is every week, for us to wrap up the show by talking about the one thing that we cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Scott, why don't you start us off? So I feel like I have to talk about greenland and i feel like i feel like it's just it just gets to the trump presidency in so many different ways of like this thing that is like riding on the line of like is this a joke is this serious is this a farce are we all yeah are we being sarcastic and then it ends up having like international consequences. And here is the story. The Wall Street Journal kicks this off, writing an article about the fact that Trump has repeatedly mused in several different meetings and several different conversations as he does. Hey, what would you think about the United States trying to buy Greenland from Denmark? What do you think about that? He thinks in a real estate mindset.

He thinks in a what can I do that other presidents haven't done mindset and buying Greenland apparently checks both those boxes. This was something that, yes, in the past has been kind of strategically talked about the United States, maybe trying, you know, in a way that in previous centuries we bought Alaska, right? You know, the Louisiana purchase Purchase. That got Thomas Jefferson on Mount Rushmore. So anyway, the article comes out. People tweet about it. It becomes a meme.

President Trump tweets memes, right? But then as it continues to be like late night fodder and thing like that, President Trump grows defensive about it, talks about it more seriously. It ends up being something, of course, the prime minister of Denmark is asked about it. She says that's ridiculous. it's not for sale and now it moves from the realm of a joke to the twitter feed to real life because then president trump says well you know what i'm canceling the state visit to denmark and here we are living in a world where this like offhand idea moved to twitter and moved to like tension with our ally.

I was surprised that it moved to become so serious as Scott was noting, because the president tweeted a picture of a fake Trump tower all in gold on Greenland, you know, oceanfront. And he said, don't worry, I won't do this to Greenland. Asma, what can you let go of? I don't know if you all read the September issue of Vogue, but... Not yet, not yet. No, not yet. Okay, well, it is usually like the big, fancy, fat edition of Vogue. And in it, there was an interview with Tom Ford, fashion designer extraordinaire. Apparently, Tom Ford is a huge fan of Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana.

And he met him at this small early lunch early on in his candidacy. And when he did, he said, you know, he noticed that Buttigieg looked kind of smaller than he had expected due to the generous cut of his suit, being that he thought that Pete Buttigieg's suit was a little baggy. Now, in me wearing this, I was thinking, well, it didn't look as baggy as President Trump's.

So, well. But nonetheless, Tom Ford thought there was something he as fashion designer extraordinaire could do to help. So he texted Pete Buttigieg's husband and offers artorial guidance. Long story short, they didn't bite. They didn't take the offer. Tom Ford says, nonetheless, he is not bothered by this. He still is apparently a fan of Pete Buttigieg. He said he knew that obviously Pete Buttigieg could not wear his clothes because they are, quote, too expensive. They're wrong. They're not made in America.

And besides, whatever he's doing is working. So does anyone need to F with it? Wow. I'll tell you this. If he wants to come and tailor my clothes, I would be more than happy. Free offer there for you, Tom Ford. All right. Well, Tam, what can you not let go of? This is a long wind up. But Scott Detrow, when you and I were on parental leave, you were in a news blackout. You were refusing to pay an aggressive news blackout. But you said, you know, in the Trump era, it is a soap opera. It is not reality TV. You know, the characters, they come back. The plot lines, they come back. Well, this week was one of those weeks because we had both Anthony Scaramucci back in our lives, the former communications director. And we now have learned that Sean Spicer,

the former press secretary, is going to be on Dancing with the Stars. Now, like everything in the Trump era, this was not without controversy. And Tom Bergeron, the longtime host. Did you know this is season 28? Sure didn't. Yeah, neither did I. The longtime host of Dancing with the Stars put out a lengthy statement on Twitter, essentially saying, I was really hoping this season we would just have no politics, no controversy. People could just escape into Dancing with the Stars. I conveyed this to the producers.

They clearly disagreed with me. He did not mention Spicer's name, but he said the show must go on. And the show will go on. There will be dancing. I wonder who his partner is going to be. Someone good, because that's what they usually do with people who have a hard time dancing. How do you know? He might be a graceful dancer, Domenico.

Okay. All right. Domenico, what can you not let go? I can't let go of the fact that Elizabeth Warren, who's somebody who takes all these selfies with people, right? She's taken over 30,000 selfies. One of the people that she encountered now is her doppelganger. And she did sort of a double take.

Stephanie Oyen from Minnesota kind of stepped up in the crowd. And apparently Warren saw her, called out to her and said that they had to talk. And when you see the pictures of them side by side, it is really uncanny. And I know some of you have actually seen some of this too. Yeah. And some of the people in the crowd

were trying to take pictures with the doppelganger. And finally she was like, I better take these glasses and jacket off because this is getting awkward. But the haircut is like spot on. Yeah, their profile was really remarkable just seeing them together. And this thing has gone so mainstream that even Inside Edition had a headline on them. Can you tell the real Elizabeth Warren from her doppelganger?

You know, that's just that is really strange when things kind of get into that realm. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. We will be back as soon as there is more political news that you need to know about. I'm Asma Khalid. I'm covering the 2020 campaign. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Scott Detrow. I also cover the campaign. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.