The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, August 31

Episode Date: August 31, 2017

The President took two trips this week: one to Houston to see the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey; another to Missouri where he rallied for a tax overhaul. Plus, Congress returns. This episode: host/White House Correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional reporter Scott Detrow, Congressional reporter Susan Davis, and White House correspondent Scott Horsley. For information on how to help people affected by Harvey, visit https://n.pr/2wiX1bS. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

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with authors, filmmakers, directors, and more. You can find It's Been a Minute on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Annika from Brooklyn, New York. This podcast was recorded at 1.15 p.m. on August 31st, Thursday. Things may have changed by the time you listen to this. To keep up with the latest NPR news, check out NPR.org, download the NPR One app, or listen to your local radio station.

Okay, enjoy the show. It's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news. Texas and Louisiana are still feeling the effects of Hurricane Harvey. President Trump flew in to assess the damage and the response. And Congress returns to Washington next week. And funding for Harvey relief will be at the top and the response. And Congress returns to Washington next week. And funding for Harvey relief will be at the top of the agenda. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Scott Tetreault. I cover Congress. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Scott Horslake. I also cover the White House. All right. Hello, guys.

Hey. It's like doubles tennis today. Congress team versus White House team. Oh, I think we're going to win this one. I have a good overhand game. I just work the refs. Okay, but the big story of the day is very serious, which is Hurricane, now Tropical Depression Harvey, and the flooding from that storm. It's been the biggest story all week and will likely continue to be. And before we get to the politics of hurricane relief, I just

want to take a minute to talk about stories that over the last week as distant observers, the stories that really hit us most. Scott Horsley? Well, it was actually a phrase that was in one of John Burnett's reports on Morning Edition, where he talked about this citizen-led navy of rescue boats that have come to the aid of so many people plucking folks off their rooftops in some cases. And John said, it's like Dunkirk on the bayou. And John always has a way with a phrase, but that one really struck with me. I just saw the movie Dunkirk not too long ago. And one of the things that makes that such a historic episode in British history or war history in general is the fact that it was not necessarily the government that was leading that effort. It was a whole lot of ordinary folks.

And we're seeing that in Texas as well and in Louisiana. We've seen it before with the Cajun Navy, and we're seeing it in this case. Yeah, I feel like I've been thinking about that, too, because, you know, when I saw Dunkirk, I don't think I was the only one to have this reaction. I came out of the theater thinking like, wow, that's such a big undertaking. Like, could modern day America ever pull something off like that? And then you see something like that happening in Houston. And what stuck with me this week is a story that NPR's David Green did where he just spent some time on a boat with two guys who just decided to go and start rescuing people. And among the other scenes there was the fact that they were realizing only at the last second a couple times that their boat was about to go over a parked car, just to give you a sense of the scope and the scale of the flooding that's just erasing all street-level things in these neighborhoods. The thing that I've been thinking a lot about is just when you hear these interviews with the people that are being evacuated, and I heard an interview with one woman, I can't remember where because I've

just been listening to a lot of these interviews, but how when you're not given a lot of time to evacuate and they're taking you out, you can't take a lot with you. And she was a woman who had lived in a house for 30 years. And she's like, you can bring one bag and a backpack. What do you bring? And the things you think about when you're forced to make those decisions and that a lot of these people that have been forced out of their homes might not be able to get back there for days and weeks. And that anxiety of not having any idea what you're coming home to is really profound. And just in terms of the scope of this, my husband and I were talking about this last night, just in the different ways that people have been trying to illustrate how much water has fallen. And the one that he said that really stuck out in his mind is they said if the equivalent of water had fallen just within the boundaries of the District of Columbia, which is obviously a very small city state, that it would have been the equivalent of the Empire State Building. Like it would be as high as the Empire State Building if all of that rain had just fallen within the boundaries of the District of Columbia.

Wow. And that image kind of drove home to me just how bad this is and how bad sort of the secondary damage is even going to be once the floodwaters recede. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just afraid it gets a lot worse when the waters recede and you find out what actually and the damage left behind. Yeah. The damage, the people, what's left behind.

And we want to send good thoughts to all of our listeners in Texas and Louisiana and the Gulf Coast area hit by the storm. If you'd like to donate to those relief efforts, we'll put a link in the episode data of this episode to a big write up from NPR's two way blog on how to do that. So in our last podcast, we talked about the responses that past presidents have had to disasters like this one. And since then, President Trump has gone to Texas to talk to officials on the ground about relief efforts. Here's President Trump talking with first responders. I will tell you, this is historic. It's epic what happened. But you know what? It happened in Texas and Texas can handle anything. Thank you all, folks. Thank you.

Scott, can you sort of describe what President Trump's reaction was? This was really the first natural disaster that we've had an opportunity to watch this president respond to. So many of the challenges that the White House has had to wrestle with have been of their own making. But this was the president responding to an external force. And in many ways, he did and said all the right things in terms of, you know, the American people are with you. We're going to be here today, tomorrow, as long as this takes. He offered solace and also strength and reassurance that the government is not going to forget the people who've been affected by this storm. There were also some sort of uniquely Trumpian moments in his visit where he walked out of the firehouse and saw some people who'd gathered around to witness it and acted like it was a campaign rally and said, what a crowd. Check out this turnout. That's Donald Trump being Donald Trump. And I guess we're getting used to that. He also joked about how his FEMA administrator is getting to be famous on TV. We know this is a president who's very focused on television images. I describe this

on the radio as an opportunity for this president who has in many ways been divisive and polarizing to play a unifier in chief. And I think the country always sort of looks for its presidents to do that at a moment like this. I mean, there's the ceremonial almost role of the president coming to put a face to the damage, to interact with the people who have been hurt. But the bigger thing is the way that the federal government is reacting to it. And I think, you know, going back to 2005, President Bush got knocked for not doing the consular in chief well, but it was more so the federal response. And so far, about a week into this, it does look like the federal government in chief well, but it was more so the federal response. And so far, about a week

into this, it does look like the federal government, state government, local government are working together much better than we've seen in some of these other previous disasters. Again, so far, it's early. This is going to be a recovery that plays out over the course of years. And as I think we're going to talk about later on, Money is going to be a big question mark. One thing that did stand out to me about the president's trip to Texas was that he did not, and reporters who were there with him have sort of verified this, he did not witness the worst of this storm firsthand. He didn't actually talk to any victims of the storm. In part, that's because he couldn't go into Houston. I mean, they were rescuing people. The victims of the storm. In part, that's because he couldn't go into Houston. I mean, they were rescuing people. The president of the United States takes a huge amount of resources

when he goes anywhere. So he went to Corpus Christi. He did get some pushback, though, because he tweeted after witnessing firsthand the horror and devastation caused by Hurricane Harvey. You're right. Some of the reporters who accompanied him said, I would in no way suggest that I had witnessed anything firsthand. I heard secondhand accounts from first responders and officials and that sort of thing. Again, that may in some ways be kind of a sign of a president who's not particularly touchy feely, who's not a hugger. It also seems like I remember part of what got Bush into trouble was the image of him looking at Katrina from the airplane or the helicopter. From Air Force One.

Was it Air Force One? It was the image of the president looking down at the damage. And I think since then, in these natural disasters, there's always a need to at least put your feet on the ground and talk to local governors and officials and disaster response to show engagement. And we know that Trump wanted to be there in short order. He was there on Tuesday. If he'd had his druthers, he might have been there Monday or Sunday. He was anxious to play that role very early on. Again, it's part of the sort of trappings and the appearance of the president. And we know that those are things that this president values highly. I think there's another aspect of it, which is this is a president who can be very motivated by the personal story, can be very motivated by seeing images. Like, look at what

happened with the gas attack in Syria. And he saw those images of those babies that were killed, and it moved him to action. And I think part of this was like taking him to a situation where he would be moved. from cable news. And he gives the speech and you have the very predictable cable news setup of a split screen of President Trump talking taxes with people being rescued from their houses and big hurricane maps. Yeah, we'll get to more of that later. But I genuinely do not understand why Wednesday was time to talk about taxes. I don't get it. One thing I will be curious to see is whether this disaster and the government's response to it in any way sands off some of the rough edges of rhetoric about the role of government in this country. This White House, this administration, and the Republican-controlled Congress have generally been pretty critical of the function of government, seeing government as

an overreaching, nanny state, too much regulation, too much meddling in people's lives. When you have a disaster like this, I think people see another side of government, which is at least potentially the Coast Guard plucking someone off the roof of their house, or FEMA writing checks to help people pay their bills until they can get back into their houses. I don't expect that's going to completely change the budget fights ahead of us, but I do wonder if it'll maybe soften the rhetoric a little bit. When Ronald Reagan famously said the scariest words were, I'm from the government and I'm here to help. I think this was a week when some people heard that in a different light.

Although I think you can look at it in two different ways is one sort of your macro view of the government, but on the micro view of on the state and local level, where part of the compounding problem of Houston is that it has no zoning regulations and that some of this flooding is made worse because of the lack of regulations. Although you talk to Texans and they'd say that's part of the sort of joie de vivre of being a Texan is the lack of government regulation. And they're proud of that. So I think in the more immediate on the ground,

it'll be more curious to see if the localities start to change the way they think of these things. And we should say that President Trump, that was not his last trip to Texas. He is scheduled to return to the areas affected by the storm on Saturday and will get a chance in theory to meet folks who have been affected. And we need to take a quick break. And when we come back, we will talk about emergency funding and what it means for Congress. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Helix, where one test can provide a lifetime of personal insights from nutrition and fitness to family planning and entertainment. At Helix.com, discover a marketplace of DNA-powered products and find out what your DNA can tell you. Helix. Crack your code.

You can hear more of our political coverage on another NPR podcast, Up First, the morning news podcast from NPR. Up First is about 10 minutes, produced and posted at 6 a.m. every weekday. Make it a part of your morning routine. You can listen on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Next week, Congress will also be back from recess. And, Scott? I just always get excited when the lawmakers come back.

I guess this is the White House team versus the Congress team here. Those of us on this side of the table had a nice vacation. Loving the recess. So they are back. And the top thing probably on their agenda, which is a very big agenda with not many days to deal with any of it, is going to be getting emergency funding to relief efforts in Texas. The president has called for a bipartisan effort. What is Congress thinking on this? Where does this stand? Where does this go? It's probably all going to get approved, but there's a lot of tricky political dynamics to work through. So I talked to somebody

named Edward Richards from Louisiana State University, who's an expert in this part of the world. And he described the federal response to big natural disasters as a three pronged wave. The first wave is immediate FEMA action and immediate FEMA grants that they give to people and businesses, short term grants just to get you through the next few weeks. And that's already happening. That's already happening. But here's the political dynamic. President Trump had proposed cutting FEMA's budget. So that's something that several people are pointing out, saying, hey, looks like FEMA does a lot of good

work. Oh, how would this have gone with an 11 percent cut? Wave number two is the National Flood Insurance Program, which has been controversial in the past. There are a lot of big picture questions about whether it incentivizes people to live in places that maybe you shouldn't have houses. But the fact is, if you live in a floodplain, you're probably insured through the National Flood Insurance Program. And in big floods like this. If you're insured at all. If you're insured at all, which is a whole other problem. But if you're insured, the National Flood Insurance Program is going to be paying out billions of dollars in claims after this. But here's the thing. It expires September 30th as of right now. So Congress

needs to vote to reauthorize it in the coming weeks. So those two things are going to happen. House Speaker Paul Ryan says the program will be reauthorized. The last thing, though, is supplemental individual bills for disaster relief and the political dynamic. Is there a better word than dynamic here? Friction? Friction. The political friction is that a lot of Republican lawmakers who represent Texas voted no for this exact type of bill for Sandy in 2012 and 2013, including Texas Senator Ted Cruz. So a lot of people who have been urgently talking about the need for emergency relief are having to answer for a vote from several years ago where they went in the opposite direction. And what they're saying is, well, there was a bunch of other stuff piled

onto that Sandy legislation. And the fact checkers have checked that out and said, not so much. Not so much. It's not only that they argue that there was extraneous spending that didn't have to be in there, but there has also been increasingly, and I'd say particularly in the past 10 or so years, a viewpoint that you should have to pay for the spending, that to continue to throw money at problems or spend money without any offsets or with any ways to make up for it is fiscally irresponsible. Can we just spell out what you mean by pay for it? So when you when we hear the word emergency spending, what that means in Washington terms is that it's not subject to budget rules. Emergency spending is an actual characterization of spending that allows you to spend as much as you want. The money that we spend on war efforts

is emergency spending. It's considered off budget spending. When the president asked for an emergency supplemental to handle things like this, it's off-book. So there's no restrictions on how it could be offset or any kind of budget dynamics. Now, the reason behind that is like pretty much any household budget, if you have an emergency spending, you just put it on the credit card. You don't have an option. You don't debate whether you should do it or not. You just do it. And historically, this hasn't really been a debate. Generally speaking, when states or places face huge disasters, they were often moments for bipartisan unity. As sort of the budget fights of and the fiscal conservative split in the Republican Party rose throughout the late 90s and early aughts, there was this argument that that was just irresponsible. And particularly as our debt and deficit continue to go up and up and up and up with no plan to pay it down. So Congress doesn't decide how much money it's going to spend. The administration is going to make a request. And they are going to wait for the White House

to ask for whatever the initial amount of money is. And that, we are told, could be coming as soon as next week. Is it possible, though, that this emergency spending becomes the sort of, you know, Category 4 must-pass piece of legislation that then pulls along a lot of the other stuff that... Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. Okay. That's an excellent point, Scott Horsley. All the things nobody really wants to do, like raise the debt limit, they can hold their nose, attach that to a popular bill like the Houston Relief Act of 2017.

That would be much less popular to vote against. So bottom line, you're probably going to see an initial emergency funding bill from Congress in the next couple weeks with larger bills down the line. The question is, how much time does Congress devote to Harvey when they have a lot of other must-do things in the next few weeks? They, like reporters, are deadline-oriented individuals, and they have some deadlines. Okay, so let's go through that agenda. What does Congress have to deal with, and the president, just in the month of September alone?

Congress has to address both a pending vote to raise the debt limit, which is, think of it as the nation's credit card, and we have to up the limit. And they have to agree on either annual spending bills or stop gap measure to keep the government running by the end of the fiscal year, which is September 30th. So we have once again set up sort of an artificial fiscal cliff at the end of September, which will likely see a month of complaining and a flurry of action at the very end of the month that will most likely get a bill done. Now, prior to Harvey, the big question was how willing is President Trump to fight over funding for the border wall? And he had telegraphed that he would potentially be willing to veto a bill if it did not include money for that wall. He said he was willing to shut the

government down to get funding for the wall. And that would mean vetoing whatever the spending bill is that winds up on his desk. The question now, and as Scott alluded to, is does Harvey change that dynamic? And if they send him something that includes emergency funding that he will have asked Congress to pass, does that bind his hands and make it impossible to veto a bill while Americans are quite literally suffering and in need? And the thing I've said in previous podcasts, and I will probably say bind his hands and make it impossible to veto a bill while Americans are quite literally suffering and in need. And the thing I've said in previous podcasts, and I will probably say in future podcasts, is that my biggest question is how seriously does Congress take President Trump's veto threat? Because he has made numerous threats at numerous points on numerous levels and basically

backed away from every single one of them. The most recent being, he said to Congress, if you don't stick with trying to repeal Obamacare, I'm going to take away the special the special way that that that congressional staffers and lawmakers fit into Obamacare. And you're going to have to pay more for health care. Congress moved on. He never changed that. I guess there's still time. I mean, he could in the future, but it just seems to me that each time President Trump makes a big threat to Congress, it reverberates a little less and less. Well, yesterday, President Trump was in Missouri and he was there to talk about taxes. And he had a message for Congress.

So this is our once-in-a-generation opportunity to deliver real tax reform for everyday hardworking Americans. And I am fully committed to working with Congress to get this job done. And I don't want to be disappointed by Congress. Do you understand me? So, Scott Horsley, you were there with the president when he gave this speech making the case for an overhaul of the U.S. tax system. Yeah, this is a president who is still frustrated by Congress's failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And so he's sort of painting this tax overhaul as a second chance, an opportunity for Congress to redeem itself in his eyes and the eyes of the country. So what does he want Congress to do? Well, he wants them to cut taxes.

Beyond that, no details. He did throw out one number yesterday, which is he wants a corporate tax rate as low as 15%. That's down from 35% today, although a lot of companies pay less than that, thanks to loopholes and the like. But really, even though the administration has been working with Congress for months to come up with a tax plan, all they've actually put forward is a two-page blueprint that says taxes ought to be lower, and we want to close some unspecified loopholes. And beyond that, we're going to leave it to the Ways and Means Committee and the Finance

Committee to fill in the details. But hey, that is one more page than the first fact sheet that the White House put out about, what, two months ago? That's true. Although the one page that they put out back in April actually had more detail, not a whole lot of detail, but it at least talked a little bit more about the nuts and bolts. But overall, this has been an administration that has not been rich in detail on tax plans. If you go back to the campaign, Donald Trump did put out a fully formed and very expensive tax plan. It would have cut trillions of dollars in federal revenue, and it would have delivered the vast majority of the savings to the top 20% or so of the income ladder.

So you've been out and about talking to people who are working on this or are paying attention very closely to what's going on. My sense is that there is a lot going on under the surface that we don't see in that two-page fact sheet coming from the White House. Do you have any sense of what's really going on? Well, we know who the main negotiators are. And I think we're going to hear the phrase the big six a lot for when they come back and through the rest of the year. The big six are the key negotiators on the tax plan. That is Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, Senior White House Economic Advisor Gary Cohn, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the two committee chairs who oversee the tax code.

That's Orrin Hatch of Utah, Kevin Brady of Texas. And they're all meeting Tuesday. And they have been meeting since inauguration. They have been having regular meetings on the tax code that various members of the administration, like Jared Kushner, like former White House advisor Steve Bannon, have also taken part in. I mean, Republicans are ostensibly on the same page. You know, the Republicans support a tax cut and they believe, particularly on the business side of the equation, that this is something that they can deliver on that will goose the economy, that will give them something to campaign on. People that tell you that doing a tax bill is easier than health care. I think there's

a lot of reasons to be skeptical about this. They're different challenges. They're unique in their own way. But still passing a tax bill by the end of the year, which is still this sort of arbitrary deadline that everyone's saying that they want it done by December, is going to be incredibly difficult. You know, this is arbitrary, but there's a reason why they want to get it done by the end of this year. I guess there's two reasons. One, President Trump has yet to sign a major piece of legislation. He is well into his first year as president and he has not somehow go the way of health care and it falls apart and doesn't happen, that they are terrified of what that could mean for the 2018 midterm election. So there's still not a lot of agreement on the fine, minute details of what this bill is

going to do. But there is widely held view that failing would be absolutely devastating. All right. We have to take one more quick break. And when we come back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. Using advanced matching technology, ZipRecruiter actively connects employers with qualified candidates in any city or industry nationwide. In fact, 80% of jobs on ZipRecruiter get a qualified candidate in just one day. Try it for free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash weekly. Okay, it is now the end of the show and the time when we do that thing we always do where we talk about what we can't let go. Politics or otherwise. Scott.

I cannot let go. And the browsers on my computer was old enough to not only just know about, but understand and follow along. And I just have very graphic memories of watching that, watching how that week played out, watching that funeral. And just I can't believe it's been 20 years. And I know we have a lot of younger listeners on the show who might not quite grasp the cultural significance of this. And if that is the case for you, I would highly recommend the movie The Queen, which is a great movie. And also probably I think it's my favorite political movie. Really?

I haven't seen it. It's a great movie and it's all about, obviously Helen Mirren plays the queen, but it's all about the royal family just not quite grasping how society had changed and how the public wanted them to be vulnerable and to show emotion and how a young Tony Blair, and this all really happened. Tony Blair and his top aides were like shaking them saying, you need to give a speech. You need to get in public. You need to show that you're upset by this and not just hide behind the castle wall. Your candles burned out long before

your legend ever came. Sue, what can you not let go of? My Can't Let It Go This Week is a little scoop by America Magazine, which is a magazine for Jesuits, for Catholics, in which they had a scoop. Sean Spicer finally gets to meet the pope with photographic evidence of it. Sean Spicer, former White House press secretary, who back in May when the president took a trip to the Vatican was covered then because Spicer really wanted to meet the Pope. He's a Roman Catholic. And he had been talking about it a lot. He was excited about the trip. Meeting the Pope is obviously a very rare privilege for anyone in

life. And on that trip, Spicer did not get to meet the Pope. And it was widely covered because it was sort of seen as a shunning of Sean Spicer because they knew that this had meant so much to him. And he wasn't allowed in the room when it actually happened. Whereas other press people were like now White House communications director Hope Hicks. So America Magazine reported this week that there was a meeting at the Vatican and Sean Spicer was there. And they have a photograph of him in America Magazine this week where he is shaking hands with the pope. And not only is he meeting the pope, but over his shoulder is his mother, his wife and his two children. So the whole Spicer family got to meet the pope this week. And perhaps a nice little end to what was a very turbulent White House career for Sean Spicer.

My favorite thing about all of this is that a lot was made over the pope's pretty dour face when he posed with President Trump. But the picture of him shaking hands with Sean Spicer, Pope Francis, big smile. Scott Horsley, what can't you let go of? Well, I went with President Trump to Springfield this week when he did his tax kickoff. And he was trying to paint this as kind of a Main Street event. And so he took note of the fact that Springfield claims to be the birthplace of what was once known as the Main Street of America, or the Mother Road, Route 66. But I'm especially pleased to be here in Springfield, the birthplace of a great American icon, the legendary Route 66. Route 66 captured the American spirit.

The president talked a good deal about Route 66. All the kids are talking about it. This struck me. This is a president who often paints a sort of nostalgic picture. The whole notion of make America great again is, in a way, a throwback idea to some bygone era of supposed better times in America. But this struck me as more of a throwback than usual for Donald Trump. I'm the oldest person here in this studio. Route 66 seems way in the past even to me. And in fact,

I did some research. Route 66 was decommissioned in 1985, which was the year that Stephen Miller, who probably wrote parts of that speech, was born. So I'm not sure that was the best way to frame this for a 21st century audience. You think he should be at like a hoverboard factory? When are we going to get hoverboards? That's all I'm asking. We were promised hoverboards. I was promised hoverboards in 1986. When they cut the corporate tax rate, that could be the gateway get hoverboards? That's all I'm asking. We were promised hoverboards. I was promised hoverboards in 1986. When they cut the corporate tax rate, that could be the gateway to hoverboards for everyone. Tam, what was your thing you can't let go of this week?

You know, there's this thing that happens where when there is some sort of a natural disaster, not just Hurricane Harvey and Tropical Storm Harvey that is still ongoing, but think back to Superstorm Sandy. And all of a sudden, Chris Christie's got a fleece and it's a governor disaster fleece. And the president has a has a pullover that is also like some sort of like this is what I wear when I'm going out to talk to people in a disaster zone. Like when politicians always literally roll up their sleeves when they want to look like they're having tough conversations. Yeah. But so Governor Abbott of Texas has, it looks kind of like a Park Ranger shirt almost,

that has like the state seal and it says Governor Abbott. And of course, then there was the president and the first lady who also made some sartorial choices. Yeah, this is the first time we'd seen Donald Trump, I think, not in either golf attire or a blue suit and a red tie. He had on khaki pants, which is unusual, and kind of work boots. So Donald Trump knows how to dress down for a disaster. And then the first lady accompanied him on his trip to Texas this week. I don't know, did anybody notice what she was wearing? I don't think anybody paid any attention. Yeah, I think that just like flew right by everybody. Kidding. So the interesting thing about that is that she had two outfits. She had the outfit that she wore walking from the White

House to Marine One and from Marine One to Air Force One. And that outfit was she wore like a green bomber jacket. The most notable part of that outfit was the four inch heels. She looked amazing. Yes. I tweeted about this, which of course I got like lots of angry. The anger continues. I got a little bit of both, but it's also like how you feel about Donald Trump also applies to everything else.

But she looked fantastic. I mean, one, Melania always looks great. I don't think she's had, in terms of like fashion faux pas, a single moment where she didn't look wonderful. It was just a striking image of seeing someone wearing stiletto heels heading to a disaster zone, which was an image that clearly this is when presidents and politicians think about optics. You know, they want to look like they're working hard. You know, the image blew up everywhere. But she switched into sneakers and a ball cap when she actually got to the ground. Not just any ball cap.

But what woman has not carried sneakers in her purse to switch into more comfortable shoes? And she also changed shirts. Oftentimes you'll see women go the other way. They have their sneakers to commute and then they put on their heels when they're at work. In this case, her heels were her commuting attire. And then she put on sneakers to do her job as First Lady. And Scott Detrow, you mentioned the hat. Yes, the FLOTUS hat and the aviator shades, which one of our editors said it looked like she had gone to a casting call for FBI agent.

I would also say that if anyone could wear four-inch stilettos in a flood situation and be able to walk through it and come out intact, it seems like Melania Trump is that kind of woman. I mean, she is a woman who knows how to wear a pair of high heels and seems very confident in them. It was just... Just crossing the South Lawn in those heels would be treacherous enough. Right, and that's why I couldn't figure out, like, how does she do it? Like, how do you walk? And it was raining in D.C. How do you walk across that grass in those four inch heels without sinking? I ask myself about that, Melania, all the time. All right. That is a wrap for this week. We will be back in your feed on Monday. And a lot of you write us to say, hey, can you guys talk about this story on the podcast? And we don't always have time to do that.

But we do actually cover this stuff every day on the radio, on the NPR Politics website, which is nprpolitics.org and our NPR Politics Facebook page. And of course, you can listen as well on NPR One. And before we go today, I just want to pause to thank Barton Girdwood, who is sitting on the other side of the glass, who has been producing this show for the last month or so, doing an awesome job. I'd say of all the key things that Barton has added to the podcast, the most important moment I had working with him was when he convinced me very aggressively, very persuasively last week that Taylor Swift's new song and video were in fact good and not bad. I'm sorry, the old Taylor can't come to the phone right now. Why? Oh, because she's dead.

Look what you made me do. Look what you made me do. And my favorite thing that he did is that when I referenced Tiny Dancer, he took it upon himself to add the music, the Elton John Tiny Dancer. He took it upon himself to add the music, the Elton John Tiny Dancer music, into the podcast. So thank you, Barton. And that is it. I am Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Scott Horslake. I also cover the White House.

And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.