The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, August 29

Episode Date: August 29, 2019

The Democratic debate stage has been cut in half for a one night showdown in September, with less moderate voices than in previous debates. Former FBI Director James Comey was found to have violated official policy in the way he handled memos detailing his exchanges with President Trump, an investigation concluded. Plus, a majority of House Democrats are now publicly backing an impeachment inquiry into the president. This episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow, political reporter Tim Mak, political editor Domenico Montanaro and congressional editor Deirdre Walsh. 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, my name is Sarah, and I'm in my first week of grad school at Sacred Heart University to get my master's in occupational therapy. I currently have about 100 pages of reading to do on the U.S. healthcare system. This podcast was recorded at... Best of luck.

Do it in 20-page bursts, I feel like, is the way to do that. It is 1.40 Eastern on Thursday, August 29th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Hopefully, I'll have finished my reading. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign.

I'm Tim Mack, political reporter. I'm Domenica Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Deirdre Walsh, congressional editor. Deirdre, it is your first time on the podcast. It is, and I'm very excited to be here. Congratulations. Thanks. So let's start out with some 2020 news.

The deadline came and went for the next debate, which will be September 12th. Domenico, we had talked a lot about how it was going to be harder to qualify for this debate. Who made it? Who didn't? What happened? Well, first of all, we shrunk the debate field essentially in half. It was 20 candidates over two different nights. Now we're at 10. And just to run through quickly, Vice President Joe Biden, Senators Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kamala Harris of California, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, and Bernie Sanders, as well as Elizabeth Warren, as well as Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Julian Castro, Beto O'Rourke,

who has recently rebooted his campaign after the mass shooting in El Paso, where he's from, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang. We had talked about how some candidates who didn't qualify might drop out of the race. We saw that over the last few weeks with Jay Inslee and John Hickenlooper. And last night, just before the deadline, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand ended her campaign. I think we also lost another candidate since the last podcast, and that was Massachusetts Congressman Seth Moulton, who had not qualified for any of these debates. But Deirdre, you pointed out something interesting about who did make the stage and who didn't make the stage because several candidates who didn't

make the cut are staying in the race. And it's that a lot of the moderates are going to be on the outside looking in. I think you're going to see a lot of incoming for Vice President Joe Biden. I mean, he will be occupying that moderate lane without people like former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, former Montana Governor Steve Bullock, Michael Bennett from Colorado, the senator. I mean, those people were the ones warning against the rest of the progressive field pulling the party too much to the left. And without them on the stage, it will be Joe Biden mostly responding to those concerns. And I'm guessing he'll talk a lot about the fact that pulling the party too far to the left jeopardizes their ability to beat Trump. I mean, it's kind of a familiar position for Biden to be in. He's been right in the middle of all of these debates, right in center stage, because he's continued

to lead in the polls, despite his pretty shaky first debate. He had an OK next debate. And, you know, he's again going to be right in the center of it. We saw for the first time, I think, as Deirdre's pointing out, having the moderates in the party kind of gang up on Warren and Sanders. That's not going to be the case this time. So what I'm curious about, Domenico, is whether there's a lot of growth potential for Joe Biden in the polls, right? That he's been so dominant in these early stages and early months. Is he a second choice for a lot of folks or has he kind of reached his kind of core and there's not a lot of room for growth? His campaign will second choice for a lot of folks? Or has he kind of reached his kind of core, and there's not a lot of room for growth? His campaign will point out that a lot of people

do say as a second choice, they do like Joe Biden. Also, one thing in his favor is that he has very high favorability ratings when it comes to the Democratic candidates and amongst Democratic activists. He does well with African Americans. He does well with almost every group except for people under 35. And I would say there's kind of a flip side of that, too. And one reason why you've seen so many other candidates go after Joe Biden on the debate stage is obviously he's the front runner. But I think that, you know, I talk to campaign after campaign after campaign and even some of the more progressive sides say that they feel like there's a lot of Biden voters who, if Biden were to lose a lot of steam or, you know, not be in the race at some point, they feel like they can get his voters, which is interesting. And, you know, and that's one reason why you don't see the Bernie Sanders versus Elizabeth Warren,

because they both feel like they can get support from Joe Biden. And they're not the only one. Well, it's one reason why Beto O'Rourke recast his campaign as being focused on Donald Trump, because it was a lane being left essentially all to Vice President Biden. And also, isn't there a big incentive for Democrats on this stage with Biden to try to poke at him? I mean, we saw what happened with Kamala Harris in the first debate in Miami and how her interaction with Biden actually gave her a big bump. And there's been a lot of reports in the recent weeks about some things that Joe Biden has said, sort of sloppy rhetoric, things that aren't entirely true, exaggerations. And I think there's an opening for some of these other Democrats on the stage to try to mix it up with Biden

and try to have their Kamala Harris moment. Deirdre, before we talk a little bit more about the debate, we mentioned in passing that Kirsten Gillibrand dropped out of the race. You've been covering Congress and editing congressional coverage for a long time. What did you make in the end of the fact that Kirsten Gillibrand never really got more than 1% support? I mean, to me, this is one of the biggest surprises of the first few months of the presidential campaign. I think you're right, too. It did surprise a lot of people because I think when she got in, she came in at a moment where the Me Too movement was such a big topic of conversation and so much of her record in Congress taking on Al Franken, former Minnesota positioned her as sort of one of the leading voices. She also ran unapologetically as a mom, as a woman, trying to more personalize the focus on women and the focus on that it was now time for a woman and a younger woman to be part of the campaign. So I think that a lot of people who wanted to see a woman succeed in the field are disappointed that she didn't. But I think the other thing that hurt her is that there are some other people with other qualities like Kamala Harris that have sort of overshadowed her and had a much better big launch that sort of put her onto a national stage where Gillibrand's just didn't. It was almost like the Jay Inslee problem of I'm the climate candidate. Like, cool, there are six other people talking about climate. You know, Kirsten Gillibrand talking about the importance of a woman running, talking about women's issues.

And again, she would agree it's a great thing, but it was hard to stand out when there are so many other women running in the race as well, including Elizabeth Warren, who's been getting so much attention lately. I kept wondering what kind of profile would she have if she ran as the candidate who ran in 2006 for her upstate New York House seat? You know, people should remember that Kirsten Gillibrand was not always this, you know, very progressive liberal candidate. She had to win in upstate New York where her family has lots of roots and she was a very centrist candidate. And that's not who she ran as. Right. And when she started off, the whole beginning of her campaign was like, why was she such a big flip-flopper on every issue from guns to abortion, etc.? And that became a big question about her candidacy right off the bat. Well, I think if Kirsten Gillibrand had been running on her 2006 immigration platform, she would have not been too popular with Democratic voters.

I mean, on that note, Tim, the last debate, immigration and health care were really high profile topics. What do you expect to hear in a Democratic primaries, that since the last debate, we had these shootings in Texas and Ohio that have appeared at least for some time to galvanize the Democratic base on the issue of gun legislation. Will Democrats seize on this to make it a political issue and a major part of their agenda? And Domenico, one last thing to flag before we shift gears is that candidates who didn't qualify for this debate next month still ran that campaign to sort of impeach President Trump and also ran an environmental activist group. He spent $12 million on advertisements to try to get his name ID up. He just missed getting on the debate stage or stages for this debate.

And he'll have another opportunity to see if he can get one more poll where he's at at least 2 percent in a state or national poll. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about some news that happened today about former FBI director James Comey. Support for this NPR podcast and the following message come from BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers licensed professional counselors who specialize in issues such as depression, stress, anxiety and more. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment at your convenience. Get help at your own time and your own pace. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist. Visit betterhelp.com slash politics to learn more and get 10% off your first month.

It might be hard to pin down what makes a friendship really work. I feel like we're like the Michael Jordan of friendships. Like you can't ask Jordan. You can't ask Jordan how he does what he does. He's a freak of nature. But clearly some people know how to do it. Check out Life Kit's new guide from NPR on navigating the highs and lows of friendship or subscribe to Life Kitt All Guides for all of our episodes all in one place. And we are back and let's start with some

news that just happened. The Department of Justice Inspector General has been conducting an investigation. Some of the actions of former FBI Director James Comey that today the findings were announced. Tim, what was this about? So the IG report says that Comey violated official policy in the way he handled his memos describing his conversations with President Trump. The DOJ ultimately declined to prosecute him for that, however. And it's been 800 years in news cycles since these memos were front and center in the news. Can you remind us about what exactly was in them and why they mattered. Comey began recording details about his conversations with Trump almost as soon as they met for a national security briefing in New York City. Comey was the FBI director at the time, as you'll remember, and he briefed the president

elect on the existence of that unverified Russia dossier. OK, so Trump's conduct in the meeting kind of led Comey to begin typing up his account of what happened after he left the meeting. And he did that over and over again after he had successive exchanges with Trump, including one where you remember he invited Comey over for the conversation he had with Trump, where Trump asked him to let go, quote unquote, let go of the investigation into Flynn, Michael Flynn. Flynn, of course, was an aid to Trump during the campaign, and he was the original pick to be his national security advisor once he entered the White House. So these were a big part of Comey's testimony before Congress. They ended up being a big part of the narrative of the Mueller report. And Comey was saying so often that he was following protocol by sitting down and writing his

notes. Like, what was the problem here? What did he do wrong? Well, what the IG found was that he arranged for a friend to disclose the contents of those memos to a New York Times reporter, that he decided to keep these memos at home and discuss them with his lawyers, but he didn't tell the FBI what he was doing or that he was revealing the contents of that information. But ultimately, the IG concluded he did not leak classified information to the public. So Comey will not be prosecuted with anything. But Deirdre, I feel like when Congress is back in a few weeks, when various House committees continue doing their investigating, this feels to me like something that maybe House Republicans will be mentioning once or twice. Right. They're not going to let this go. I mean,

we've already heard from Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham today, who called this a stunning report from the inspector general and said that he expected more from the Justice Department about other people who acted at the FBI and their handling of this Russia investigation. I think the other thing about this whole Comey episode that strikes me is that the FBI used to be one of those institutions on Capitol Hill that both parties revered. I mean, Comey was a registered Republican and was viewed as a straight shooter. But sort of in the aftermath of the 2016 election and the middle of the election, you're right. The handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, clearly, and then obviously this episode with the Russia investigation.

It's really the FBI has just been really kind of a punching bag for both sides. And I think it's one of those institutions that's really kind of suffered and lost a lot of credibility, probably with the public. You know, Hillary Clinton has previously tweeted, but my emails when it came to some things related to James Comey and the fact that he had used personal email, for example, she doesn't tweet anything about this today. But you know that that's something that really impacted the 2016 campaign and that her team was really irritated about and still is. And beyond irritated, many feel like that is the specific reason she's not president right now. Right.

You know, it was weird, though. I was noticing today that Comey didn't exactly have the take you had, Tim, in what you focused on. He was sort of doing a victory lap of sorts. He was saying that he was vindicated right? He basically he quoted the IG report saying that they found no evidence that he released any classified information to the public and he said

quote I don't need a public apology from those who defamed me but a quick message with a sorry we lied about you would be nice. Isn't that an apology? Like, whatever. Two things. One, your Canadian flared a little.

Sorry. I'm going to point that out. What's wrong with that? Sorry is not how we Americans pronounce it. You just sounded like you're from north of the border. How do you guys say it? Sorry. Sorry.

What did I say? Sorry. Sorry. Sorry for saying sorry. Sorry about not aligning with your expectations, eh? Well, I guess the last thing I'll say about James Comey is here is that a decision not to prosecute, but with lots of editorial commentary about conduct, sure sounds like a familiar place for James Comey to be in. So, Deirdre, Congress has been gone doing its recess thing, having some

town halls. But we have been closely following for a while the number of House Democrats in favor of impeachment. And while they've been gone, that hit an important mark. Right. I mean, the impeachment advocates and outside groups who've been trying to pressure more Democrats to publicly come out for impeachment have been trying to get to a number of a majority of House Democrats publicly supporting impeachment. They did hit that marker at the beginning of August. That's sort of a notable number. Now, there's around 130 or so House Democrats who have publicly said they're for an impeachment inquiry. But the one person who hasn't come out and whose position hasn't changed is the one that matters the most. And that's House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. And we learned last week that she had a conference call with her caucus. They've been doing these regular calls

over the break. And she basically told her members, look, the public's not there yet, and reiterated her position and said, you know, while some of you want to go out there and push for this, you know, we need to continue to build the case against the president, and we don't want to make this a partisan thing. So she basically stayed where she's been. Yeah, I mean, in Pelosi's view, it's sort of like, if polling, which is showing that only about a third or slightly more than that are saying, you know, yes, go ahead with impeachment proceedings, or that the president should be impeached or not. Why would you go that direction when he's not going to be removed from office anyway, because the Senate's not going to vote to remove him from office?

Well, so advocates of impeachment will say, look, the polling shouldn't lead Congress, Congress should lead the polling. And they'll say, and they'll point out that, you know, if you look at the Watergate-gate Nixon precedent, that in early 1973, just 19% of the public thought that they should launch an impeachment process for President Nixon. But by the summer of 1974, when Nixon actually resigned, support had climbed to the high 50s, in part due to these ongoing congressional investigations that had been taking place this entire time. To me, it sounds like a lot of semantics, to be totally honest, because Democrats already launched a whole bunch of investigations.

Right. They haven't launched an impeachment inquiry, quote unquote. But if the investigations were to pull out something like Nixon tapes, certainly I think that's something that Nancy Pelosi would then say, great, we've got a case that we can lock down that both parties should be in on. And that would move public opinion. But they don't have anything like that at this point. Public opinion, though, does matter politically. That's one of Nancy Pelosi's favorite quotes. Public sentiment is everything. It's her mantra when it comes to this.

Every time she's asked. Yeah. is everything is her mantra when it comes to this every time she's asked yeah i mean i and i think she also the other thing she always says about this is we have all these committees doing these investigations and it's their job to build the case the issue for the proponents of impeachment is they really haven't found much new they continue to add things that they're looking at you know this week they announced that they were going to look into President Trump's public discussions when he was talking about hosting the next G7 at his Doral resort in Florida as a potential violation of the emoluments clause and whether that is a potential impeachable offense. But it just shows you that they don't have anything yet. And so they just keep heaping more issues onto the pile of things they're going to investigation in the hopes that the public will respond and push for it. Tim, you were doing some reporting in Illinois on the

public push to try and pressure Democrats to come around on this. What did you find? So we wanted to zoom in on one battleground district. We looked at Illinois' 14th congressional district represented by Congresswoman Lauren Underwood. It's a district outside of Chicago. It runs from rural areas outside of the city to the city suburbs. So to illustrate that, I spent some time trying to track down some cows in the district. Cows didn't weigh in on whether or not they thought the inquiry should go forward, but I assume- They didn't weigh in on this. But what's really interesting is it's a swing district. It's a battleground district.

Trump won it by four percentage points in 2016. So it was kind of politically disadvantageous for her to support impeachment. Here's what she said about impeachment just a few weeks ago on a Vox podcast. If I act unilaterally or what's perceived as unilaterally and leave my community behind, then it looks like a power grab. A power grab. That's how she described what would happen if she decided to support impeachment. So it was a real big surprise when last week she came out in support of an impeachment inquiry. We went to the district and we tried to ask her about this

apparent change in her thinking. But here's what she said when I asked her about it. I mean, you can ask them. I'm just not going to answer it. So what this really is, is an interesting case study in the tightrope that Democrats have to walk on this impeachment issue. On the one hand, they don't want to alienate moderates or center-right folks who might support Trump. On the other hand, they want to kind of support the Democrats in their district that have been pushing for impeachment. Yeah, I mean, look, it's a high-risk gamble. I mean, because if you're making the bet that we're going to find something, Democrats are saying, that will move Republicans, remember, because frankly, some would argue that plenty of what President Trump has done already in plain sight, in their view, are already impeachable offenses.

Particularly the various obstruction of justice instances in the Mueller report. Kind of laid out in the Mueller report where Mueller said, you know, look, they made a decision not to prosecute the president on this or try for an indictment because that's Department of Justice policy. That doesn't mean that Congress couldn't take it up, which was also hinted in the report. Last question I have on all of this is just a practical timing question. We're about five months at this point, a little bit more from the Iowa caucuses. We're just a few months from the year 2020, the last year of President Trump's term. I mean, it seems like we're in the stalemate that's not going to move. But if it did start to move, like what is the latest practical point for the House to start moving forward with this before you're having like an impeachment trial on whether or not to remove the president with like a month left in terms of like whether or not they would go forward. But if you think about what that would do to Congress, I mean, it would paralyze Congress. I mean, Pelosi and the

Democrats need to go into the 2020 election with some kind of accomplishments in terms of things that they've gotten through and signed, like a prescription drug bill, infrastructure bill, any kind of thing that they can show that they once they came to power, they got something done. If they shift to impeachment, and that's all that they can do, it would just really change the conversation. And Domenico talked about polls earlier. I mean, the independents that we see in the polls are largely against impeachment. And in districts like Lauren Underwood's district that Tim visited and other red leaning or swing districts around the country that Democrats need to hold to keep control of the House, there isn't that

kind of support for impeachment. Yeah, I should point out, I mean, the latest poll that talked about impeachment or looked at it was the Monmouth poll from last week. When you look at Democrats, 69% of Democrats were in favor of impeachment, and yet only 2% of Republicans, 94% against it, and just 30% of independents. There was a huge gender gap too. I mean, 70% of men said don't pursue impeachment, and it was split among women. And I think the same poll is one in five basically said they didn't even think it would lead to impeachment, even if you launched an impeachment. So even people who may support it really don't think it's politically feasible anyway. All right, we're going to take one more quick break. And when we come back, time for Can't Let It Go. Support for this podcast and the

following. J.K. Rowling wrote the final chapters of the Harry Potter series while sequestered in a hotel room. It's a strategy lots of artists and thinkers use. They go somewhere physically isolated and different where they can, without distraction, think deeply. Quieting the distractions on the latest of our U2.0 series on Hidden Brain from NPR. All right, we are back and it is time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, where we talk about one thing we just can't let go of, politics or otherwise. Domenico, you get to go first. Oh, I just can't let go of a Popeye's chicken sandwich. Oh, yeah.

That I have actually not been able to get my hands on. So I can't exactly say I can't let go of it because I haven't gotten it. But, you know, and we've done looking around for it. I know, Scott, you went on your own quest for it. You know what tripped me up? Yeah. I thought there was a Popeye's beer here, and it was a Bojangles. It was a Bojangles.

But I passed a Popeye's. There was a little bit of a line. I was taking my kids to a birthday party. I tweeted at Sam Sanders because he did a unique piece on Morning Edition, taping himself standing in line trying to get a Popeye's chicken sandwich and couldn't get one. So I don't know if anyone's actually eaten one. You can let us know if you have. Someone had tweeted at me that they tried it and it wasn't that good.

And that actually convinced me not to try to wait in line for one. What is supposed to be so spectacular about this chicken sandwich? I haven't even heard about this chicken sandwich. There are thousands and thousands of articles on the internet to tell you, including like all of these high level food critics who've just decided to take on the chicken sandwich. He's not a high level food critic, but I will note that Steve Scalise, who's the House Republican whip, who's from Louisiana, which is where Popeyes is from, actually must have a really smart digital strategy person in his office because he taped a little taste test and put it on Twitter, basically showing him eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich and a Popeye's sandwich. Shocking. The Popeye's sandwich won. Which happens to be headquartered in his district in Louisiana.

That is actually really interesting because he had to be sort of conflicted about that. He said he was. The thing I appreciated was that everyone highlighted how the pickles really made the sandwich. And this has been like the summer of pickles for me. Like I came to realize how much I love pickles on sandwiches in a way that it wasn't fully clear to me until the summer. So this was like further validation that pickles often bring a sandwich from like average to above average. Welcome to the community of pickles. Are you a pickle fan? I love pickles.

All right. I will go next. And this is something um great twitter account is letters of note i don't know if you guys are familiar with it no letters of note i've been following it for a while uh they just post letters letters of note it's historical letters uh some more recent some are from a long time ago. And this is a memo from 1992 that President George H.W. Bush sent to the White House staff. And I'll just read some of it. It's kind of like cartoonishly long. Once you hear the topic memo, important announcement. This is an all points bulletin from the president.

Subject, my dog Ranger. Recently, Ranger was put on a weight reduction program. Either that program succeeds or we enter Ranger in the Houston Fat Stock Show as a prime Hereford. All offices should take a formal pledge that reads as follows. We agree not to feed Ranger. We will not give him biscuits. We will not give him food of any kind. And it goes on and on. Apparently, too many people in the White House were feeding his dog.

His dog got fat and he was very concerned. This goes on our mailman theme. My dog had a weight problem after too many treats from the mailman. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. This is why puppy eyes is a term that we use all the time. You cannot deny a dog treats. You have to. But I mean, if you work at the White House, don't you want

to give the president's dog a treat? I think so. That's what happened. Towards the end, Ranger has been asked to wear a Do Not Feed Me badge in addition to his ID. I will, of course the end, Ranger has been asked to wear a Do Not Feed Me badge in addition to his ID. I will, of course, report on Ranger's fight against obesity. Right now, he looks like a blimp, a nice, friendly, appealing blimp, but a blimp. So some fat shaming, to be honest. Poor President Bush.

This is clearly a tragedy of the comments issue, right? Like, it's not my dog, and I love the feeling I get from feeding this treat to this lovely dog. It's someone else's problem to deal with the dog's health issues. So I'm going to go ahead. What happened to personal responsibility, George Bush? George H.W. Bush, actually, like there is an entire book of notes and memos that he wrote. And he's a very funny letter writer. He was big into writing letters.

Deirdre, what about you? Well, the thing I can't let go of this week is actually dog related, too. I didn't realize that we were both going to be talking about dog related click but mine is the story in the washington post about the infamous chevy chase dog park and the fight between oh is that where this was the very powerful uh residents of chevy chase it's a very sort of only in washington story one disclosure is i am a dog owner, and I am also an owner of a golden retriever. And the golden retriever in the Washington Post story, Chubbs, is the beginning of the story. So basically what happened... Is that your dog?

It's not my dog. The story basically goes that this neighborhood in Chevy Chase, which is a nice suburb right across the border between Maryland and DC, the neighbors bought this tract of land and turned it into a dog park. They fenced it in. But it grew into a neighborhood problem when residents of the neighborhood who didn't have dogs didn't appreciate the loud dogs barking, namely Chubbs and some other dogs in the dog park. And as it happens only in Washington, the residents of this neighborhood and the person who had to deal with this problem was a woman named Alyssa Leonard, who turns out is the wife of the Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell. So she's the head of the village board who has to hear out all the complaints.

Was she pro or anti Chubbs? I was just going to ask. She sounds like she's trying to be a responsible board person and hearing out all sides for chubs all right it turns out she has a dog but she doesn't walk the dog at the dog park according to the washington post story but other people at the dog park include the former maryland attorney general doug gansler who's a dog owner so as you would imagine only in washington it turns into a story of people talking about dueling lawsuits, an upcoming meeting. There's now a Facebook group trying to protect the dog park, lobbying on both sides.

Has anybody picketed the dog park yet? That feels like the final D.C. step. No, but there are complaints from some of the Chevy Chase residents. Chevy Chase is not a picketing type neighborhood. These residents are hiring high-powered lobbyists to impact the outcome of this local issue. Well, they actually hired an epidemiologist to study the dogs coming to the park. Whoa. And they also tracked.

If you have a problem with a golden retriever, I think you should take a deep look at yourself. I will just say that. Can you control your dog from barking? That's a question I have. Me? No, I had a beagle, which I could not control doing most things, but I also didn't take her to a dog park because she didn't really like dog parks or other dogs. Or other dogs.

Or other dogs. Well, I will note there is a September 9th meeting in the neighborhood, so the dog park may or may not survive based on that meeting. They may just take down the fence and turn it back to a regular park. This feels like that meeting will be fully covered based on the amount that we've seen this. Tim, is your Can't Let It Go dog related? It's not, but it's chicken related. Wow, we have chicken and dogs.

We got two duo. We don't coordinate these Can't Let It Goes ahead of time. So this is a total coincidence. So KFC will soon be serving vegan fried chicken with Beyond Meat's help. Okay, so that's... Wait a second. You had not heard about the Popeye's sandwich, but you were up on this vegan fried chicken. There's a twist here.

There's a twist here. Okay, so first sentence, I'm reading a report from CNBC about KFC and this new offering. They're saying, first sentence, oh, they're serving vegan fried chicken. Second sentence, they're going to try this in Atlanta. Third sentence, this makes KFC the first national fast food chain to introduce a Beyond Chicken item.

Fourth paragraph, the Beyond Fried Chicken will be cooked in the same fryers with chicken, which might not adhere to strict vegetarian or vegan diets. I feel like that's a little twist there. This puts new which might not adhere to strict vegetarian or vegan diets. Yeah. I feel like that's a little twist there.

This puts new meaning to... In the form Haragasin, if you didn't read through it, that if you're eating this fried chicken, which is marketed as quote-unquote vegan fried chicken, it's being fried in chicken meat. Well, I guess we know why it tastes like chicken. And CNBC says it might not adhere to strict vegetarianism. It might not. It does not.

This screams as Kentucky Fried Chicken trying to get in on the Popeye's chicken sandwich. So I guess maybe people are really trying to get healthier. But, you know, this whole concept gets away from the vegan or vegetarian elements of it because it's fried with chicken. And it gets away from the vegan or vegetarian elements of it because it's fried with chicken.

And it gets away from the healthier stuff because it's fried. So it's a really very narrow market. I mean, I'd be willing to try it at a KFC, but I don't know if it really exists as more than just a novelty. If you're going for healthy food, are you really going to KFC for it? Wait, is coleslaw not healthy? I don't think so. All right. That is a wrap for today. We'll be back as soon as there's political news you need to know about. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign. I'm Tim Mack, political reporter. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor.

I'm Deirdre Walsh, Congress editor. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.