The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, August 3

Episode Date: August 3, 2017

The President's private calls with world leaders leak, while the White House focuses on the party base. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. 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

Hey there, Paula Poundstone here. When you're done listening to this podcast, check out my new show, Live from the Poundstone Institute. I mean, you could try listening to this show and my show at the same time, but that might drive you insane. Find Live from the Poundstone Institute on Apple Podcasts or the NPR One app. So things have usually changed by the time you listen to the podcast, but every once in a while, things have changed before we've even posted the podcast. And that is the case today. We recorded the weekly roundup around one o'clock. But later in the afternoon, word broke that special counsel Robert Mueller is now using a Washington, D.C. grand jury in connection with his investigation. This is a significant step in any sort of criminal investigation, but it probably shouldn't be read as a major game-changing development, just a sign that the investigation

is pretty serious. In response to the news, the White House has released a statement from Ty Cobb, the new special counsel to the president. He says, quote, Grand jury matters are typically secret. The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly. The White House favors anything that accelerates the conclusion of his work fairly. The White House is committed to fully cooperating with Mr. Mueller. And the White House statement adds that former FBI Director Jim Comey said three times the president is not under investigation, and we have no reason to believe that has changed. A spokesman for Mueller declined to comment to NPR. So there you go. And now here's the rest of the show, which again, we recorded around one o'clock on Thursday.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news. It's been a relatively quiet few days in the White House, at least compared to the standard set last week. High bar. How much of that has to do with new chief of staff, John Kelly? We'll talk about that. Plus, how Congress has clearly moved on from health care for now. And we'll look at all the ways President Trump has been trying to appeal to his base lately. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. I don't usually like to shush, but that was necessary. Was that you shushing? Yeah, it was me. I'm not a shusher and I don't like shushers. And yet you shushed. I did, but we were trying not to jinx it. Knock on wood. Is that better? Yeah, knock on wood. And we will now have to do five

more podcasts between now and Monday. All right. All right. So let's start this off with the White House. John Kelly comes in. Anthony Scaramucci gets the boot. We talked about that last episode. But what are the other sides we've seen or heard about how Kelly is changing things at the White House? office and is trying to control and seemingly succeeding thus far. Now it is only Thursday at sort of controlling the information flow to the president. He's also made some staffing changes, not just the mooch. The mooch being Anthony Scaramucci, who for a beautiful 10 days held the position of White House communications director. But also there are a couple of people on the National Security Council staff who had been rumored to be people that the national security adviser wanted to get rid of for a very long time, but that the president and Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner wanted to keep. Who may have been involved in funneling information to Devin Nunes, right, who was the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. Go back to the story arc from six or seven pods in March for that whole saga. Oh, God.

I just, let's not bring it back. But the National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, military guy, knows Kelly from that. Seems like he might be getting more empowered under Kelly. Well, Kelly clearly has control over staffing. And McMaster has wanted to sort of shape the National Security Council to fit him because these people had been brought in by the previous National Security Council to fit him because these people had been brought in by the previous national security advisor. And Kelly shows up and suddenly they're out. You also mentioned information flow. That matters because we've seen so many instances

where President Trump tweets something from Fox News or repeats something he got from like Breitbart. There have been several instances of somebody getting faulty information, incomplete information to the president and that causing problems for them. We haven't seen any of that lately. And this week, the president's tweets, I don't know, I think you could say they have been slightly more tame, though maybe not totally. Again, last week is a hard bar for a lot of things. Yes, yes. Well, there is that. So I had this thing that I just keep thinking about with this relates to this. John Kelly is coming in. There is only so much he can

do. And I don't remember who it was that said this, but there was advice that was given to chiefs of staff that you can either worry about the chief or you can worry about the staff. And Kelly is clearly focusing on the staff. Yeah. And one thing that I've been thinking about is we have seen early signs and again, less than a week. So big grain of salt that he is kind of professionalizing. He is streamlining. He is keeping staff in a more controlled way. But it seems like there is a track record of there being a ceiling for success for a Trump aide and that if you're too successful and if you get too much credit, Trump quickly turns on you. So I wonder if there's a ceiling to how well Kelly can do in turning around the White House before he gets undermined. He should certainly stay off the cover of Time magazine.

Absolutely. John Kelly is also much more naturally suited to the job of White House chief of staff than Reince Priebus ever was. You know, I think that people forget that Reince Priebus coming in and being White House chief of staff was sort of the best guy at the time for the job, but not someone who had prior to that had a resume that anyone would have otherwise thought this was going to be someone who would be a White House chief of staff. You know, if any other Republican had won, Reince Priebus was not going to be the White House chief of staff. So Kelly brings a sort of sense of establishment sort of qualifications to the job. He has management experience.

He has deep, long-running relationships with Congress. He understands sort of holistic 360 policy arguments. And one issue coming up in the White House I'm really interested to see what kind of impact he has. We're still waiting for the White House to unveil their Afghanistan strategy, which was already supposed to be out, is still not out, and is one of those issues because of his military background that I'm curious to see how he sort of guides the president there. And he had a limited political background, but he did work as a top Pentagon aide. He did, you know, run the Homeland Security Department for six months. And I have a friend in the Navy who said to me a bunch of times that anybody who gets to admiral rank or general rank is a professional full-time politician. That is a political job. That is a political job.

All right. So one of the White House's biggest problems, one of the things Kelly's dealing with the most or trying to clamp down on is leaks. Internal information, either policy, staff conflict, everything else making its way to the press. Kelly clearly wanted to turn that around. But today, this morning, a huge leak, verbatim transcripts of calls that President Trump had with leaders of Mexico and Australia. What did we learn from reading these transcripts and what is the White House saying about this? Well, we sort of knew already that these transcripts exist and that there was, you know, some not so politic talk between President Trump and other world leaders. Now we have, through the Washington Post, the full transcripts. And it's fascinating stuff. I mean, you have the president of the

United States telling the prime minister of Australia, I had a much better conversation with Vladimir Putin. And we should point out at the time those reports initially came out, Trump said it was fake news, that the media was lying. Here's the transcripts. Right. And then also in his conversations with Mexican President Peña Nieto, he basically says, you've got to stop saying you're not going to pay for the wall. This is politically killing me.

But then basically acknowledges that Mexico is not going to pay for the wall. Sue Domenico, any quotes that jumped out to you from this? I mean, as a political reporter and political editor, him saying to the Mexican president that he won New Hampshire because it is a, quote, drug infested den. I'm not sure how that's going to go over in the next round of elections. And he won the New Hampshire primary. However, in the general election, he did not win New Hampshire. Correct. Anything for you, Sue? You know, I think the White House has a point when they complain about leaks. And I think that we should differentiate between there's a difference between stories they don't like that is the product of

reporting. But the White House has a point when you say these private conversations between world leaders being leaked, there should be an expectation by the president that he can have a conversation with a world leader and it not be sort of leaked out there. I do think it raises sort of – they have a point here that this is not good for any president to be having his personal calls with world leaders being reported on. Yeah. Not reported on, being leaked. I think you're right. There's different levels of stuff. I mean I think it's always going to get out when two senior staffers scream at each other in a hallway or whatever. Yes. But like leaks, there's lots of shades of

gray about leaks. And the White House is saying that they can't confirm or deny that these are authentic. And the other thing to keep in mind is that these were basically President Trump's first calls with these leaders. These calls happened, you know, in early January, January 27th and January 26th. They're around those times. And a lot has changed since then. He's met in person with these leaders. The relationships have improved and changed. And he's just starter job for this president. Like he hadn't been a politician before. He had not been in the military before. He had run a real estate and branding business before. I think it's true that the White House should be concerned that there is a concerted effort going on to try to make him look bad. And there are somebody or some people who have access to this kind of sensitive information and is willing to share it with reporters. And this feels like more like a shot across the bow by whoever did it than anything else. That said, if this person who leaked it felt that what the president was communicating was hypocritical, that he's saying one thing in public and another behind closed doors. And the wall is a great example of that. This transcript doesn't necessarily show him to be somebody who's so forthcoming as a truth teller as opposed to somebody who's trying to make political maneuvers. So as all this is happening, we're also seeing a lot of policy proposals coming out of the White House that seem laser targeted at the president's base.

First, we had that – I'm putting it in quotes here and we'll explain why – ban on transgender individuals serving in the military. This week, we have a bill supported by the president cutting legal immigration to the U.S. virtually in half. Again, that's a Senate bill. It's not going anywhere anytime soon. And then we got word that the Justice Department is looking to take on affirmative action in college admissions. So what's the big picture trend of all of these announcements we're getting, Domenico? I think it's unquestionable that after the healthcare failure, that President Trump and the Trump White House is making a concerted effort to make the culture wars a big piece of trying to fire up his base. You've seen his polling numbers decline rapidly, no matter what poll you look at. The Quinnipiac poll that was just out on Wednesday showed President Trump at 33 percent approval.

That has never before happened for a president this early in their term. And that only happens if you have some slippage with your own party. And a telling statistic that a Republican operative pointed me to was back in June, the Quinnipiac poll had 63% of Republicans strongly approving of Trump. Now that's down to 53% strongly approving of Trump. So that's a softening of that enthusiasm and that hardcore base. We already saw in the PBS NewsHour Marist poll that independents had dropped in approval by 17 points since February. That's a group that Donald Trump won in the presidential election. And just real quick, Sue, we're going to get to Congress more later, but do poll shifts like that have an impact on legislation trying to get passed?

Is there like a one-to-one comparison or is it more kind of a closely related, not really related? It's a dot in the universe, right? I mean, it's certainly not good when the president's approval rating falls under 40 percent. So in any situation. So and the fact that they haven't been able to stack up a lot of legislative victories to sort of make up for failings elsewhere is, you know, things aren't going really great. There's something about back to the transgender thing that I think is worth lingering on one in the way it was rolled out. Just the fact that the president would do policy on that level in a tweet and also that he way over course corrected the words used particularly about serving in any capacity got really swift blowback from a lot of Republicans in Congress, including people like Orrin Hatch, a conservative Mormon from Utah. The chiefs of the military branches had to come out and assure people serving and made comments saying this is not going to happen. So the way the fact that it had to be walked back and was so poorly rolled out from the commander in chief

was really stunning. But on the political level and the political motivations behind this and White House officials being quoted on background saying, you know, let's see Democrats defend these things in states like Wisconsin and Ohio in the midterm elections. And the presumption there is that these blue-collar, white working class voters are intolerant. And you're using probably the most vulnerable minority group in the country as a political prop in that point. Yeah. And, you know, look, I know that it's difficult to talk about, but this happened during the election. And part of how Trump won was by firing up grievance.

And you hear Donald Trump talk about this over and over again and has been able to use it as something to fire up his base and help him politically. All right. I want to follow up on that and dive into the specifics of some of these policies we're talking about. But first, we're going to take a real quick break. So we'll be right back. Support for this podcast and the following message come from ZipRecruiter. If you're looking for top talent with ZipRecruiter.com, you can post your job to 100 plus job sites with just one click. Let ZipRecruiter's powerful technology match your job to the right candidates and use their simple dashboard to find the right hire. That's why 80% of jobs on ZipRecruiter get a qualified candidate in just one day. Try ZipRecruiter for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash weekly roundup. 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 and Co LLC members civic. All right, we are back in Domenico right before the break. You were talking about the big picture issue of grievance as political motivations and factors. A couple of specific policies that came into play here. Let's walk through them one at a time. Domenico, can you bring us up to speed to what

exactly the Department of Justice is thinking about doing when it comes to affirmative action? Yeah, this kind of got overshadowed a little bit this week, but the New York Times on Tuesday night, late Tuesday night, had broken this lead. They said, the Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate, get this, against white applicants, according to a document obtained by the New York Times. The Department of Justice pushed back against that story and called it, quote, inaccurate. A statement from spokeswoman Sarah Isgor Flores issued a statement calling the press reports inaccurate.

She said the posting sought volunteers to investigate one administrative complaint filed by a coalition of 64 Asian-American associations in May 2015 that the prior administration left unresolved. She said the complaint alleges racial discrimination against Asian Americans in a university's admissions policy and practices. This Department of Justice has not received or issued any directive, memorandum, initiative, or policy related to university admissions in general. And she went on, the Department of Justice is committed to protecting all Americans from all forms of illegal race-based discrimination. So we should clarify here, the New York Times obtained a job posting looking to hire attorneys to investigate, quote, intentional race-based discrimination here. Okay, so I'm confused. Is the New York Times article accurate?

Like, is the Justice Department looking into affirmative action and going after it in some way, or is it not? So they appear to be two sides of the same coin, because it looks like what the New York Times lead is, there are no quotes there. What that lead had to do with was an interpretation by the Times after reading this document and how this would be more advantageous to them. And we should just point out here that the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the general idea of affirmative action in college admissions as long as it's not a hard quota type system. Part of a holistic view of how you do admissions. It's fair to look at it as a factor. was going to scale back civil rights investigations or efforts on a lot of different fronts, including being aggressive in being in touch with local police departments, including protections of the workplace for gay employees. This does send a message that really lines up

with what you were talking about before in terms of the grievance politics. Yeah. And if there's any question about why Jeff Sessions would stay on the job, it is because he is able to push forward policies that are things that he's been trying to do for a very long time. And we're about to get to it. But the immigration legislation that the president backed yesterday is something that Senator Jeff Sessions strongly favors. That's right. And Sue, could you catch us up to speed on this bill? Because this is a bill that was actually introduced by Tom Cotton from Arkansas a while ago. So Tom Cotton is a senator from Arkansas and David Perdue is a Republican from Georgia. And earlier this year, they introduced legislation to crack down on legal immigration. These are two senators who I think are trying to sort of fill the role that Jeff Sessions held in the Senate on immigration. They're trying to take over sort of his platform and then some. And the goal of

the legislation is to essentially cut legal immigration into the country in half and then change the standards by which people who are allowed to come here legally essentially raise the bar, that people would have to be able to speak English, they would have to bring a certain set of skills, there would be tougher standards. It's kind of come out of nowhere because there's just not a lot of support for this kind of legislation. So that's when it goes back to sort of base politics and grievance. There's no votes to pass this in Congress. And if anything, it really kind of is legislation that the establishment core of the Republican Party in terms of sort

of the chamber of commerce and business world of the Republican Party actively opposes this legislation. A couple of things. First of all, in the bill, we should say that it does big things like reorder the way that you would accept people into the country, prioritizing skills, but also English language speaking. But, you know, I was there last year for a lot of the big Trump immigration tentpole speeches, and it was always interesting to me how immigration was framed as a you versus them argument. This immigrant is coming into the country to take your job. This immigrant getting a job means you don't get a job and you don't get a job. It's a very us versus them versus

them argument and conversation. Although Stephen Miller has a point when he talks about U.S. policy on immigration and the fact that historically immigration has been really tough and oftentimes, and he might not want to use these words, but oftentimes really discriminatory towards different races and ethnicities. I mean, Irish need not apply what the Japanese discrimination during World War II, particularly in responses to global crisis. So he is not historically wrong that the U.S. has often taken tough stances on immigration and defended those policies. So I just have one personal point as I was watching this briefing and, you know, watching Jim Acosta from CNN sort of get into this back and forth with Stephen Miller and how Stephen Miller sort of dismissed the poem on the Statue of Liberty that says, bring us your tired, your huddled masses and that whole and said, oh, that was just, you know, put there later. That was a late ad question. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, he said that was put there later. That wasn't part of the original statue. And it really kind of struck home a little bit for me because I'm first generation American.

My father was born in Italy and came to the U.S., didn't speak English. He was 11 years old. His father came to the U.S., also didn't speak English. Did he have skills to help the U.S. economy? I suppose if you consider the fact that he helped build a lot of the bridges and infrastructure of New York when he got here. But I'm not sure that he had a lot of the – he wasn't a computer programmer. He didn't have a lot of the traditional skills you would think. He wasn't a trained carpenter.

He was just escaping poverty in Italy and trying to make a better life for his family. And he did. And he did. And there are a lot of people in this country that is the American dream. Can you accomplish, you know, a middle class life, have a house and two cars and be able to put your kids through school, whether or not you come from lots of money and have lots of skills or whether you come from nothing or and speak no English like my dad, who, by the way, speaks perfect English now, aside from a little bit of a New York accent.

And, you know, he loves this country. All right. We're going to take one more quick break. And when we come back, we are going to talk about that other co-equal branch of government, which has been making that point a little more loudly than usual lately in a moment. So we'll be right back to talk Congress. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Bombas. When you think socks, think Bombas.

Made from premium cotton, Bombas stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. And every pair comes with a built-in blister tab, innovative arch support, stay-up technology, and a seamless toe. With many colors, patterns, lengths, and styles, Bombas look and feel great wherever you go. And for every purchase you make, Bombas donates a pair to someone in need. Get 20% off your first purchase at bombas.com slash politics. Hey y'all, Sam Sanders here. My new podcast is called It's Been a Minute. That's another way of saying let's catch up.

Every Friday, I'll sit down with two guests, smart talkers from inside and outside NPR, to catch up on the week of news and culture, everything. If you can't stop watching the news, but you're also exhausted by doing that, this show is for you. Don't miss out. Find It's Been a Minute now on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcast. Thanks. All right, we are back. And the week in Congress started really interestingly to me, because you have over the weekend, and then again on Monday, President Trump tweets that Congress needs to keep the focus on repeal and replace Obamacare. And if Congress stops working on that, he may just may take away their health care subsidies. Big threat from President Trump. Congress all comes back. They fly back in Monday

night. And Sue, the response was a resounding shoulder shrug. And then what did Congress do? They moved on from Obamacare. Yeah, you know, I don't the president's tweets about Congress get a lot of media attention, but they don't really land on the Hill. I just think the calluses are getting thicker on Capitol Hill when it comes to the president's tweets. They're just they happen all the time on all different subjects and they don't really move the needle. You know, he might do it. We don't know. I think they saw it sort of as an idle threat. I don't think that they believe the president will ultimately do it because the people that you would really punish if he were to make that policy or to make that decision is the thousands of people that work on Capitol Hill. And the 10 second explanation, it's a little more complicated than this. But just just to explain, it's basically an executive branch designation that that first of all, Congress members of Congress and their staffers have to be on the Obamacare exchanges. But that would have meant they had to pay a lot more money because they don't qualify for subsidies.

So there was a ruling that basically allowed them to continue that 25 percent employee share that they had under the old system, even though they're on the exchanges. So he technically could change that. But that aside, what is Congress doing on health care now? Nothing. Next? Yeah. Because there were some headlines about hearings happening in September. Yeah. I mean, in the short term, nothing. They've moved on. They don't have a health care bill and they don't have anything that has 50 votes. And up until they do,

then this is an issue that's just going back to the committee. What happened this week was the Senate Health Committee, which is led by Republican Lamar Alexander and Democrat Patty Murray, said that they're going to move forward with bipartisan hearings and see if there is some bipartisan health care legislation that they can agree on. We don't know if they can. If they do, it would be the first bipartisan legislation about the Affordable Care Act. Everything that has been done in relation to that law to date has been partisan legislation. And the attitude, I think, from leadership is like, have at it. And if you can come if you can come up with something, you know, come back and talk to us. But the clock is ticking on this. And if they are moving forward with bipartisan legislation, it means they are moving past trying to use this reconciliation process, that special budget process that would let them get around Democrats.

And it is admitting defeat in a serious way. And it means you shouldn't hold your breath for this to happen soon. You know, Congress only really does big bipartisan things when there's broad agreement or there's a crisis. And we don't have either one of those yet. So we may have a crisis in health care this fall if the administration decides to stop spending money to supplement health insurance costs for poor Americans. We could have a crisis then that would be a self-inflicted crisis. And so, you know, it's still it's still on the agenda. But the urgency behind it and the willingness of Republicans to sort of go it alone has clearly sort of evaporated. Yeah, there's this sort of remarkable talking about Trump tweets. He also tweeted, the Senate needs to change the rules. The 60 vote thing is just not working. We need a 51 vote margin for everything. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch now the health care bill couldn't get 51 votes. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, now the health care bill couldn't get 51 votes. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell comes back and is basically like, yeah, I've been telling the president this privately and publicly, but we're not going to do it. We don't have the support to do that. We don't have the desire to do that. We're not changing the rules. But it was sort of this weird thing to have the majority leader saying, I've been trying to tell the president this. And just as the Democrats changing the nominee, filibuster rules a while back came

to bite them in the butt the moment they were in the minority. That could really happen even more so if Republicans ever did change the filibuster rules for bills, right? They could, although he's right when he says they don't have the votes enough. As 61, I believe it was, senators sent letters to leadership earlier this year saying they don't support the rules change. So they do not have the votes to do it. I think that the erosion of the filibuster is an ongoing story and it may happen one day. But in the very as far as we can see into the future now, it's not on. It's not going to happen. It was another shruggy from Congress.

Yeah. So so they shrug at that. What they did do this week was confirm an FBI director and a couple other nominees. I guess the biggest thing that happened on the congressional front this week was President Trump signs a substantial bill into law on Russia's sanctions. But, Tam, the first big bill he's signing into law really hamstrings him, doesn't it? Yeah. So there was no celebration. There was no spiking of football. There was no signing ceremony because President Trump really does not like this piece of legislation. But his hands were

tied. Congress passed this sanctions bill that applies sanctions to North Korea, Russia and Iran, but then also constrains the president's power when it comes to lifting sanctions on Russia. They passed that with an overwhelming bipartisan veto proof majority between the House and Senate combined. Only five people voted against it. So the president really had no choice. And in the face of that, he put out a signing statement saying that he has concerns with a bunch of different areas of it. I spoke with a congressional aide who says that the president's signing statement might have a lot of bluster, but there's nothing in it that would appear to inhibit the execution and implementation of the legislation. You know, Congress has been,

in terms of Russia, a fairly sturdy check on the president so far. And I don't think that Republicans want to talk about it in that terms. But the overwhelming message from Congress is, if you're not going to be tough on Russia, we will. And if you try to mess with this Russia investigation, you're going to have a problem with us. And the three biggest ways you've seen that is one, imposing new sanctions like this. Yeah. Two, continually insisting, no, Russia did meddle with the election. That is a fact. This is not open for debate. You hear that from both parties.

Also, after he fired Comey, remember there was this moment where they were talking about who the FBI director would be. And the Senate exerted itself, including Mitch McConnell, to say it's got to be someone above board. It's got to be a career officer. They shot down the idea of it being a politician or somebody with a political background. And you have new bipartisan legislation out this week that, you know, it might have some legs in Congress that would give a special counsel, I don't know, maybe someone like Robert Mueller, if he was fired, sort of a chance for judicial review to fight a firing, which is just one more little stick in the eye towards the administration about don't mess with this Russia stuff. And you regularly hear from

Senate Republicans in very blunt terms that if Trump did fire Mueller for straying too far one way or the other, that would be consequences. Yeah, yeah. They would not accept that. They would respond to that. And the Senate intelligence investigation is very much underway. And while Congress is adjourning this week, a lot of that work is continuing throughout the summer. So Congress is working on a lot of burners on Russia. And I think it frustrates the administration. But the administration opposition has not done anything to stop Congress from laying down a marker on there. All right. This has been a particularly dense conversation today, I feel like.

So let's let's shift gears and end the show like we always do with Can't Let It Go, where we all share one thing we can't stop thinking about this week, politics or otherwise. Tam, politics or otherwise? Politics. All right. Basically, I can't get over last week. I just like by Friday, I literally could not remember what had happened on Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday because or even earlier on Friday because it was such a blur. And so coming to the rescue, the Washington Post style section has an oral history of the Scaramucci era. And it is just a thing. It is a beautiful thing.

They talk to people who are there witnessing these events as they unfolded, including some Boy Scouts who were at the president's speech at the Boy Scouts jamboree. And one of the scouts even discusses what was possibly a fight breaking out between different troops, some of whom were happy, some of whom were not. I didn't read this. Oh, it's beautiful. It's Monica Hess. Yeah. Yeah. Monica Hess, Ben Terrace and Dan Zak. And I'm a big Ben Terrace fan. But I will say, Tam, that I also saw something in the Washington Post that they did that I found was sort of related to this.

Did you see they did a reenactment of the Scaramucci phone call to Ryan Lizza, the New Yorker? Yeah, it was epic. And the actual audio is now posted on the New Yorker. Like the real audio. Yeah, yeah. With bleeps. They did bleep it because the New Yorker Radio Hour, I guess, is a family-friendly podcast. But the magazine is for the trash. All right. With bleeps. They did bleep it because the New Yorker Radio Hour, I guess, is a family-friendly podcast.

But the magazine is for the trash. All right. So, yeah, an oral history of the Scaramucci era. Highly recommend it. Sue, what about you? So I have to go back to the Mooch because I miss him. I miss his style. I miss his flair. And I think that the Mooch, who flamed out in a rather rather spectacular fashion also got a little bit of redemption this week where it was leaked that the communications memo that he had written that was going to be sort of his governing document for the White House press office was leaked out. And it's a pretty lengthy six or seven page memo. And I've read it.

I think some of you guys have read it, too. And I got to say, I think it was really smart. He had some good points. Yeah. And all of the things in it are things that is the constant criticisms you've heard about the White House. He kind of acknowledges them and is talking about, you know, one of the things he says is we have to foster better working relationships. We should leave old grudges behind, but never forget we should meet regularly with cabinet communications staff. Reporters should always be treated professionally and respectfully. And have their emails and calls returned, he said. Yes, that would be a dream.

Wouldn't that be nice, Tam? So I think, you know, Mooch had a very amazing 10 days in Washington. But I think you have to give credit where credit's due. By the words on this page, he had created a pretty savvy communications plan. We'll just never know what the Mujahid might have brought. He was a man for his time. Do we think that he wrote this before or after he got fired? Either way, he should have taken his own advice. Yes. Domenico, what can you not let go?

Well, unfortunately, it's politics as well, which basically shows you I have no life, but the reality. But we knew that already. But this has to do with the phone calls, the phantom phone calls of Donald Trump. And it really is one of these things I can't let go. I'm sure there are people here who would rather I don't talk about it. But the fact is, like, Donald Trump apparently made up a story about how the head of the Boy Scouts called him. And OK, look, I'll give him a little bit of a pass on the Mexico call thing, because he said that the head of Mexico called him to tell him something. And Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said that that was actually on the sidelines at the G20. That was face to face. But there's zero evidence, none

at all, that the head of the Boy Scouts, the president of the Boy Scouts, called Donald Trump to tell him it was the greatest speech ever. In fact, the head of the Boy Scouts said this call never took place. And as we know, scouts are trustworthy. Says the scout. And the head of the scouts apologized to anyone who might have been offended by the president politicizing the jamboree. A lot of those Boy Scouts apologized to anyone who might have been offended by the president politicizing the jamboree. A lot of those Boy Scouts at that speech probably became men that day, though, with that speech. They heard all kinds of things they had never heard before. True story. As someone with fond memories of the 2001 Boy Scout jamboree,

I was really hoping the story would come and go without me having to interact with it at all. But here we are two weeks later. It is still in the news. Did George W. Bush speak at your jamboree? He didn't because there was a big rainstorm and he couldn't come. So we got a video speech from George W. Bush. Wow. Covered in mud.

Yes. What's your best like Boy Scout survival skill you still have? Can you like start a fire? His fire. His fire. I can attest his fire starting is very good. Yeah. I've got fire starting game.

I go with the log cabin. I go with the log cabin method. You can go with the teepee method or the log cabin method. I'm a big advocate of the log cabin. For your backyard fires, the log cabin method works quite well and saves you wood. So nice job, Scott. Thank you. Wow.

Scott, what can't you let go of? So good segue because Jeff Flake once, I didn't know this until this week, but Jeff Flake once spent a week on a tropical island deserted by a whale. He's done it more than once. Yes, with Martin Heinrich. That's crazy. He's a survivalist. Not only is he super buff, him and Martin Heinrich, you can go look up the pictures. The two of them, they've...

Yeah. We should say these are senators we're talking about. Yeah. So that wasn't it, though. I had no idea that this happened for Jeff Flake, Arizona Republican, until somebody retweeted this, this like years old profile from when he was a House member. And it was, it was crazy. But what I can't let go is Jeff Flake wrote a book. And apparently he did it in secret. That's what he was saying. But this book came out this week, or it's about to come out, excerpts are coming. And he just totally trashes President Trump. And more than that, really critiques Republican leaders for not standing up to President Trump and basically majorly subtweeting both Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader and House Speaker Paul Ryan for doing the what he tweeted. I don't know. I can't read all the tweets type approach, among other things. But Sue and I were talking about this. The fact that the de facto answer from all the Senate Republicans asked about it was, oh, he had a book come out. You know, I just haven't

had a chance to read it yet. I've been so busy. Oh, I didn't know he wrote a book. I'm going to read that as soon as I can. It's like the tweets. Yeah. Including Mitch McConnell, who was Mitch McConnell was asked about it. What are your response to Senator Flake's book? He's like, I haven't had a chance to read the book Very busy week in the Hill What's going on? Well, it was a busy week I guess it is more of a face-saving thing to say

I haven't read a book than I haven't read a tweet Because you've probably read the tweet Although I'm going to guess that if a fellow senator Is critiquing the majority leader in the press He's probably aware of it You don't need to read the book to know the spoiler. I have a sense none of them read each other's books. Like, let's just, you know, they might hear about-

I think they read their books when they're about them. Maybe they'll have a staffer read it. Yeah. They go to the index. They're going to go to the index and see what's said about them. Oh, yeah. That's so DC. If we had a co-worker write a tell-all book about our workplace, I would read that book

very quickly. And you would look for your name first. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, that is a wrap for this week. We'll be back in your feed on Monday. A lot of you write us to say, hey, can you guys talk about this story or that story on the podcast?

It's usually a good idea, but unless we were continuously podcasting on like a YouTube live channel, it just wouldn't happen. But the thing is, we do cover this stuff every day. You can check us out at NPRPolitics.org or on the NPR Politics Facebook page for links to all the stuff we're writing. Of course, you can listen to us on your local public radio station or on NPR One. And if you like the show, please do leave us a review on iTunes. It still does really help other folks find the podcast. All right, that is it.

I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Have a great weekend, and thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.