The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, December 7

Episode Date: December 7, 2017

Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) announced he's resigning, after multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct. Congress and the president are trying to work out a deal to fund the government. There are protests in Gaza and the West Bank after Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. And FBI Director Christopher Wray testified before Congress. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson and editor correspondent Ron Elving. 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, it's Scott Detrow. And I'm Tamara Keith. And before we get to the show, we just want to let you know that we are doing a live show here in D.C. in January. It's at the Warner Theater and it's called President Trump One Year In. If you're in town, if you're nearby, we'd love for you to join us. You'll want to be indoors in January watching us do our live podcast. It's true. Last time we did it, it was a nice, warm, cozy environment. Great time.

And what could possibly be a better holiday gift than hanging out with us? You can learn more and get tickets at nprpresents.org. That's nprpresents, all one word,.org. It's going to be a lot of fun. We'll all be there. We'd love for you to be there, too. This is Tim at the Chatham, Massachusetts, Fish Pier, waiting for Santa to arrive on an antique Coast Guard boat.

This podcast was recorded at 113 Eastern on Thursday, December 7th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at npr.org, the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. Oh, here comes Santa. So here's the show. Ho, ho, ho. That was good doc street cred with the seagulls and everything. Hey there, it's the NPR politics podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news. Minnesota Senator Al Franken is resigning. He announced today he'll step down in the coming weeks. That's after

multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct and after nearly three dozen of his Democratic colleagues came out yesterday and said it was time to step down. Congress and the president have one day left as we speak to agree to a funding deal to keep the government open. And today there are protests in Gaza and the West Bank. That's after President Trump officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. All of that news, plus can't let it go. Up ahead, I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. I'm Scott Horsley. I cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elving, editor, correspondent. How's everybody doing? Well, I didn't know there was doc cred until today. There is when you've got the seagulls and the squeaking boats in the background. That one was really good. It was

excellent. Yeah. Yeah. Next week, the International Space Station. So much news happening. Let's dive in with something that happened on the Senate floor just about an hour ago. And that was Minnesota Democrat Al Franken saying that he is resigning from the Senate. That'll take effect in the next few weeks, he said. This is three weeks after Franken was first accused of sexual misconduct and one day after a majority of his fellow Democratic senators, led notably by many of the women in the caucus, said he should go. Serving in the United States Senate has been the great honor of my life.

I know in my heart that nothing I have done as a senator, nothing, has brought this honor on this institution. And I am confident that the Ethics Committee would agree. Nevertheless, today I am announcing that in the coming weeks, I will be resigning as a member of the United States Senate. Kelsey, as much as we hate it to be true, so much news happens on Twitter these days. And I feel like this is one of those moments yesterday that just staring at my Twitter feed was just representative of the news, because all of a sudden you see fly by a statement from Kirsten Gillibrand saying it's time for Franken to resign. A moment later, as we're emailing, Gillibrand's calling him to resign. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii says the same thing.

Then Claire McCaskill, then Maggie Hassan, then then Patty Murray, then over and over and over. Just this this tidal wave of Democrats, mostly women at first, saying Franken should resign. What was it that put them over the edge? Yeah, it really did feel like a tidal wave when this started happening. And they, many of the women, credit a Politico story that pointed out another accuser who said that Franken tried to forcibly kiss her in 2006. And there was a sense, I think, in talking to particularly women in the Senate that they were growing increasingly uncomfortable having this conversation about Franken and coming up with ways to explain that this should be handled through the Ethics Committee. I think that it was interesting to watch because there had been some speculation

for a number of weeks about when Democrats were going to start talking about their party identity as being the party of women, being elected by women, of supporting women. And this felt like one of those moments where the party stood up and said, we're going to put the women forward and kind of let them run this conversation. Yeah. Ron, I want to ask you about something that Franken pointed out during his speech. I, of all people, am aware that there is some irony in the fact that I am leaving while a man who has bragged on tape about his history of sexual assault sits in the Oval Office, and a man who has repeatedly preyed on young girls' campaigns for the Senate with the full support of his party. What do you make of that? Well, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, on the Access Hollywood tape

spoke of a number of moments in which he had done things with women that sounded a lot like assault. There were a number of women who came forward subsequently to identify themselves as people who felt they had been assaulted by the president. And yet, with the extreme unction that comes from being actually elected by the voters in November, from that time on, the Republicans and the president have said, after all, the voters have said it's okay by them. And we should say Trump has repeatedly denied those allegations as well. And Scott, I'm going to ask you about that in a second. But Kelsey, does it seem like part of the thinking on the Democratic side is,

yes, there is increasingly zero tolerance for this, and they want to make that clear, with no exceptions for, but you've had a good career, with no exceptions for, but you're a great colleague. But is there also a political calculation that if they're going to hammer Republicans for this, they need to not be making excuses? Absolutely. I think there is a sense that they need to maintain some sort of moral high ground going into the midterm elections. They need to be able to say, not only do we hold these values, we take action on our values. And they need to be able to point to Roy Moore or point to the accusations against the president and say, our party doesn't stand for that.

And if you don't stand for that, you should be with us. And that's been kind of an evolution for the party, right? I mean, they didn't come to that conclusion right out of the gate. Right. There was a real resistance to fully call for for Franken to resign until the accusations kept piling up. Let's listen to something that that Kirsten Gillibrand, who, again, was the very first senator to publicly call on Franken to resign. This is something that she said at an event hosted by Politico, I believe just a day before that she finally came out and called for him to resign. Yeah, it was the day before. You know, I have to tell you, I'm so troubled by the allegations against Senator Franken. I believe the women. I believe that what they said happened

happened. And I think there is a reckoning and I think there needs to be accountability and it needs to happen now. I don't want this investigation and this ethics committee to be somehow a shield, but we need accountability and it's wrong. And I just think that kind of behavior can't be tolerated anywhere. So you can hear there how serious she is about this issue. But when she's pressed, should Franken resign, here's what she says. Is that a yes? I'm telling you, I am so angry and frustrated, and I'm not going to say that today. But it is something that I'm very troubled about.

And then she went, and the next day, when another accusation came out, she did say that, Scott, it because he lost in a primary to Roy Moore, who has been accused of very serious allegations of approaching underage girls, teenage girls for relationships, for sexual encounters. He's denied it. He has stayed in the race that's next week, and President Trump has endorsed him. How has the White House navigated this climate of increased focus, increased listening to people who are making allegations? Well, one thing we can point out is that the allegations against Roy Moore came out after the primary. So the voters who cast their ballots for Roy Moore hadn't had that information. If they cast their ballots for Roy Moore again next Tuesday with knowing what they'll know, then you'll sort of have a parallel to the situation we had with President Trump. The White House position has been, look, all these claims about Donald Trump were in the public, were available to voters,

and they still elected Donald Trump president. That wasn't the case with Al Franken. When the people of Minnesota elected and reelected Al Franken, they didn't have this information. It's come out more recently. But this is something our colleague Tamara Keith has talked about. You know, in many cases, the axe has fallen much more swiftly on entertainers and people in the news media than politicians. And one reason for that is it is difficult to say to someone who was elected by a popular vote or even an electoral vote, that person should go because of charges, especially if those charges were out there at the time the vote was held. Kelsey, you were at the Capitol today. We're here at NPR. What was the feeling like in and

around the Senate chamber as Franken came out and made this announcement, especially among his Democratic colleagues? There's no joy, I think, in anybody, from anybody in this. They feel sad about it. They feel sad that this happened, that this is a part of what their conversation is. One thing I think is maybe important to remember here is that Democrats were going into this upcoming election trying to get away from being part of just a culture conversation. That was something they were criticized for during the presidential election, is that voters said they felt like Democrats cared more about social issues than they did about economic issues. And Democrats wanted this conversation going into 2018 to be about their economic message. And now, again, they find themselves having a conversation about protecting women, about social issues and about where they stand on big culture moving conversations.

And this just isn't what they want to be doing, leaving aside the fact that they don't want to be saying goodbye to somebody who they think has been a good soldier for democratic causes and saying goodbye to him in a situation where they genuinely believe that he did something so wrong that he has to go. Ron, one thing I keep thinking about is just how quickly the ground can shift in politics, both for a person and both for an election and a political climate. And over the last day especially, I've been thinking about this one moment very early on this year, just after President Trump put in that first travel ban, when a lot of Democrats thought that all of their worst fears about the Trump administration were being realized, and there were protests. But I was standing in the Capitol, waiting for all the Democratic senators to walk out of the

Senate down out of the Supreme Court to have this big rally just in the immediate wake. And Franken and Joe Brand were standing there in a hall just joking. And Franken was telling this like extended joke to her that had her like double it over laughing. I think he was like replaying this idea of someone on his deathbed trying to unregister himself from the voter rolls. But just like they had a close relationship. Franken had a close relationship with so many of his colleagues. And then they said, you know what, we just can't tolerate you anymore. And it doesn't matter that you were a rising star and you were starting to be thought about as a possible presidential candidate. And I imagine a great number of them feel bad on a personal level for exactly that reason. But here's the deal. If you follow the Twitter feeds on all of these people, what you essentially see are people rallying around their hero, rallying around either Al Franken on one hand or around the women who had come out and

asked that he resign, called on him to resign. Because each of these people has an identification with that particular position, and that's what moves them to get involved in social media and respond to all these factors. But the Democrats know this. Their voters who come to them because of their positions on social issues will desert them if they do not stand with those positions, if they're not true to those stated positions. I think the Republican Party is taking a somewhat more sophisticated view of this. They're saying, well, a lot of our voters are offended, perhaps, by the accusations against Roy Moore, but they're willing to vote for him anyway.

And that makes the onus on a Republican individual somewhat different, somewhat less life and death. for him anyway. And that makes the onus on a Republican individual somewhat different, somewhat less life and death. But the Democrats are saying, if you lose our faith on something such as harassment of women, we are going to turn on you. The party brand for Republicans is not caught up in being the party of women the way it is for the Democrats. And we should say, the polls are showing from Alabama, and I'm not just talking about the horse race polls, but the questioning, the discussion polls. People are saying in some cases, well, we simply don't believe these women. These stories are too old, and we think that it's all politically motivated. So we still like Roy Moore. There are other people saying, we find some validity in these accusations. We don't want to disbelieve

these women. But we can accept that and still say, we can't have a Democrat in that seat in the Senate. Therefore, we'll vote for Moore. Kelsey, how much of all of this do you think you have to take into account the fact that there are just far more women in the Democratic caucus than the Republican caucus in both chambers? It is not an insignificant portion of this. There just are far more women who are elected as Democrats. They took the lead in all of this in calling for Franken to step down. And it's a part of, as we've been talking about, party identity for Democrats. And this was a really important moment for them to say that that party identity is not something that they're willing to compromise. Can I just inject some crass politics here? That would be shocking here in the politics podcast, Scott.

The Senate is closely divided. The Republicans have a two-vote majority. Minnesota has a Democratic governor who will appoint Al Franken's successor in the near term, but there will be a special election in 2018. This is not a risk-free move for the Democrats. And they maybe will be getting a woman to be filling that seat. Tina Smith, the lieutenant governor. And, in fact, Al Franken seemed to be hinting at to be filling that seat. Tina Smith, the lieutenant governor.

And in fact, Al Franken seemed to be hinting at that in his departure statement. And he did because he used a female pronoun. But there are other women as well as Tina Smith who are also in the frame for that appointment. I just want to say in the House of Representatives, the majority of the Democrats are either women or members of minority groups or both. Yes. That is the first time that's ever been true in history, and it's only been true for the last couple, three Congresses. Over on the Republican side in the House, it's mostly white males. It's overwhelmingly white males. And if you go over to the Senate side, it's not quite as stark,

but it's still pretty stark. It's not hard to tell which side you're looking at when you go to something like the State of the Union speech and you're trying to figure out where the Democrats and Republicans are. It's quite visible. So this is a watershed in our history. And this is just one more step in this transformation that we're going through. They're calling it a day of reckoning, an hour, a moment of reckoning, and that it surely is. Last point on all this, Al Franken in 1999 wrote a book called Why Not Me? And the book was about his run for office and the fact that he had to resign in disgrace once he took that office. In the book, he runs for president, is elected president, and is forced from office. But, you know, a decade before he actually ran for Senate, worth pointing out.

If you thought that this was a thorny and nuanced and complicated conversation, just wait till after the break when we talk about the Middle Eastern peace process. Be right back. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Google Home. There are things you need to know in the morning, like the weather, your calendar, or the news. A personal assistant can just tell you those things, like the one built into every Google Home. Just say, hey Google, good morning, and the Google Assistant will tell you the latest forecast, traffic on your way to work, and even the headlines. It's a personalized briefing from an assistant that knows you best. It's a little help at home, like only Google can.

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wow, you guys are talking about a lot of different complicated news stories this week. We are. And it seems like more and more every week is like that. We want to keep doing this and keep doing this as best as we can. And to do that, we need your help. We're asking you to go to donate.npr.org slash politics and make a contribution. No matter the amount, it helps the NPR Politics podcast. And just as importantly, it helps your local public radio station report the rest of the

news you care about. That's donate.npr.org slash politics. And when you do contribute, tell everybody why with the hashtag Why Public Radio. Thanks. Now back to the show. All right, we are back. And there are protests in the West Bank and Gaza today over President Trump's announcement yesterday that he's officially recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Today, we finally acknowledge the obvious, that Jerusalem is Israel's capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality.

It is also the right thing to do. It's something that has to be done. Scott, what did President Trump mean by that, that this is a recognition of reality? Well, the White House has taken the position that, look, the seat of government for Israel is in Jerusalem. It's also the biblical capital of Israel, and that they're simply facing up to that fact. Michael Anton, a spokesman for the National Security Council, described it as a polite fiction that the United States has been engaged in up until now, that we don't know where the capital of Israel is. That's true. There are a lot of polite fictions that are engaged in in diplomacy, and this is a polite fiction that

all the other countries in the world have also gone along with. So in recognizing reality, the White House is also changing reality. And they think they're doing so in a way that could be positive to the peace process. Most of the advice the president was getting from allies is that this is a negative in terms of the peace process. Including Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, right? According to many reports? That has certainly been the report. It looks as if Rex Tillerson actually played a pretty minimal role in this whole thing, which is characteristic for the man with the title of the top diplomat in the country. Their concerns were more around security. And we have seen now the State

Department putting out worldwide bulletins that U.S. security forces and government personnel and even just tourists should be careful where they travel in anticipation of a possible hostile reaction to this. So, Ron, when President Trump made this announcement, he repeatedly went back to the fact that he was delivering on a promise and that many other people had run for president promising this and never done it. So it goes back to a law passed 22 years ago authorizing the president to do this. What has taken so long? Why has this not happened already? Yes, that's right. That law was passed in 1995, which was, of course, the first year Republicans had control over the House and Senate in 40 years after 40 years of being in the wilderness. And ever since that law

was passed in 1995, presidents have repeatedly signed waivers on national security grounds so that they never had to recognize Jerusalem as the official capital or move the U.S. embassy. So in the short term, this seems to be riling tensions in the region. But President Trump said yesterday that the administration remains committed to the peace process, something that he's actually charged his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, with trying to facilitate. The United States remains deeply committed to helping facilitate a peace agreement that is acceptable to both sides. I intend to do everything in my power to help forge such an agreement. Without question,

Jerusalem is one of the most sensitive issues in those talks. What is the progress report on Middle Eastern peace 10 months, 11 months into the Trump administration? If there's been a great deal of progress made, it's been kept largely under wraps. It's not clear that any progress has been made. And of course, Jared Kushner has had some talks with some people. I don't know how much anyone took seriously the promise that he was going to spearhead this. But he's also had some distractions and is very much in the frame as the investigations of relationships between the Trump campaign and the Russian government go forward. So it may just be that he has not had enough time to accomplish what his father-in-law had set out for him. Now, one of the arguments the White House has made is, look,

there's been not much progress in the Middle East peace for the last two decades, at least. So why not try something new? That's not a bad, at least rhetorical argument. But we'll see if it actually produces any results. All right. Shifting gears here in about an hour or so, President Trump is going to meet at the White House with congressional leaders, top Republicans, top Democrats. This time, the Democrats do not seem to be canceling. This is all ahead of a deadline. Tomorrow, the government runs out of funding. Kelsey, what is the current dynamic here in terms of what's going to happen or not happen over the next day or so? They do not want a government shutdown. House Speaker Paul Ryan said that they'd be voting later today on a short-term spending bill that would give them another two weeks to work out a spending deal. But there's kind of a problem in between. In these next two weeks, Democrats and Republicans need to work out a pretty big agreement

on some issues that have divided them for quite a long time. They have to work out an immigration agreement, something that they all say that they want. They need to work out a deal on some other little things that they agree on, like funding the Children's Health Insurance Program. But then there are also these disagreements about the cost share and reduction payments that were supposed to be agreed to at some point in time to make sure that the markets don't implode for health care. So there's a lot that needs to get done. And there's really not a lot of time. So we've talked a lot about the leverage issue of do Democrats withhold their votes in order to force something through some of

the things you mentioned, like stabilizing the health care markets or some sort of immigration policy. But I don't know if we've dug in as much on what the actual government funding dynamics are. What's the big picture tension point there between what Republicans and Democrats want? on domestic programs. And that has been the way they have done government funding for a long time. But they did that mostly under President Obama and when Democrats were in charge of at least one side of Congress. And now it's all Republican control. The only thing, as we've talked about before, that Democrats can bring to the table is votes. And so they are hoping to use that leverage that they have by saying that they can deny the votes to get a bigger package of agreements. But so complicating things is that Speaker Ryan says that they don't have time to write a big spending bill. So if they can't write a big spending bill, they're going to have to somehow get a let's trust us agreement going.

And that's been hard to sell to Democrats. Scott, what has President Trump been saying about all this this week? The president has said that if there is a government shutdown, it's going to be on the Democrats' hands. And he has characterized Democrats as being in support of runaway illegal immigration, weak borders, weak on crime, the same kinds of things that caused Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer to boycott last week's powwow. Before his cabinet meeting again this week, he was once again sort of trying to paint Democrats into a corner. Now, Democrats say that's a very big mischaracterization of their

position. For example, they do want protection for people living in the country illegally who were brought here as children. They say that's very different than, you know, just supporting open borders or runaway illegal immigration. Naturally, they object to being painted as soft on crime or weak on military or things like that. You know, and Democrats are quick to point out that they also are supporting something that a lot of the country supports. So those protections for the undocumented children of immigrants, they're called DREAMers. The DREAMers have a lot of support in public polls. So Democrats think that they are on the right side of polling and the general sentiment of the country on this.

So they're hoping that that kind of pressures Republicans to cut a deal. And even the president has said he wants a fix for the DREAMers. He loves the DREAMers. Although he himself created the bind here by terminating the executive order that former President Obama had put in place. So in effect, he has lit the fuse on this, what has now become a political time bomb. Ron, last question about all of this. I don't know how many times this year we've talked in a podcast about some sort of deadline is approaching, some sort of agreement has been reached. There's a big picture agreement to, if not, this is the solution, but we're going to

deal with X problem on that deadline. And then the deadline comes. And then we have a conversation about how the deadline has been punted a little bit. We'll do this all over again. And it seems like a lot of the stuff never actually gets done. Which is why people tune us out. It's why people tune out the media. They tune out the representatives in Congress, they tune out even the president when they talk about deadlines and they talk about budgets. But in fact, what we're talking about for December 8th tomorrow is a kickover from September 30th, which is the end of the fiscal year when it's all supposed to be done. And they load things onto this because they know in the end they're going to have to do it sooner or later. And then they push it up against some real deadline, such as Christmas.

My travel plans. Exactly. Every member of Congress has a family and has family plans that will get blown up if they don't get out of here by December 24th. And of course, they'd like to get out of here a lot sooner than that. So watch the likelihood here at this point is we're going to push this deadline past December 8th, closer to December 25th, which has been a deadline for many other things in the past. We got a lot of Obamacare done back in 2009 using Christmas as a cudgel to pound the Republicans into submission. You know, Cokie Roberts was on Morning Edition this week giving some historical perspective. And this deadline drive of lawmakers, I guess, goes back to the very first Congresses in the 1790s. Today's phrase is, it's the smell of jet fumes that focuses the attention of lawmakers.

It's the smell of horse stables or whatever. I don't know. That was exactly my thought. Yes. We're going to take one more quick break. When we come back, FBI Director Christopher Wray is testifying before the house judiciary committee. We will ask Carrie Johnson how that's going. Support for this NPR podcast and the following message come from away, away bags and accessories make for the perfect gift with their lifetime

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hidden fees. Get a special 10% discount when you order today at SimpliSafeNPR.com. And we are back. FBI Director Christopher Wray is testifying today before the House Judiciary Committee. It's interesting timing given that a few days ago, President Trump said the FBI was in tatters. Justice Correspondent Kerry Johnson is here now. Hey, Kerry. Hey, Scott. Well, first of all, how did how did Ray deal with that accusation from the president? What did he say about that? Well, Chris Ray said that he had full confidence in the men and women of the FBI. He said he respected their professionalism and integrity. Let me start by saying that it is for me the honor of a lifetime to be here representing the men and women of the FBI.

There is no finer institution than the FBI and no finer people than the men and women who work there and are its very beating hard. So in the run up to this hearing, Republicans in and outside the White House have been criticizing the special counsel, Robert Mueller, who's Chris Wray's predecessor, is FBI director. Chris Wray said again today that he did not believe that Robert Mueller's investigation was a witch hunt and that he had respect for Mueller and said that the men and women of the FBI continue to respect their former leader, Robert Mueller, even as he starts to rack up criminal charges against people close to the Trump campaign last year. Yeah, let's listen to one of those criticisms from Bob Goodlatte of Virginia. And then, Kerry, I've got a question for you about a Twitter thread that you went on. So first of all, this is good lab. Even more recently, reports on the bias of some of the career agents and lawyers on current special counsel Mueller's team are also deeply troubling to a system of blind and equal justice. Investigations must not be tainted by individuals imposing their own personal political opinions. We do not know the magnitude

of this insider bias on Mr. Mueller's team, nor do we have a clear understanding of the full magnitude of bias reflected in the Russia investigation and prior Clinton email investigation. One thing is clear, though. It is absolutely unacceptable for FBI employees to permit their own political predilections to contaminate any investigation. Even the appearance of impropriety will devastate the FBI's reputation. Carrie, Mueller is being increasingly painted in a partisan negative light by Republicans in Congress. What have you made of this shift? And what's the context to view this through? A few things, Scott. As you know, I went on a bit of a Twitter tirade this morning, maybe not tirade, but just thought some context was necessary here. Here's point one. Robert Mueller is a registered Republican. He's been a registered

Republican throughout his life in Washington. He's been a registered Republican throughout his life in Washington. He's been appointed to key law enforcement posts by presidents who are both Democrats and Republicans. And the criticism of him began when he started this investigation or was appointed to lead this Russia investigation. And he started to handpick some of the top fraud, mob, and terrorism prosecutors across the country for this Russia probe. And the criticism has been renewed starting last week after Mueller extracted a guilty plea from President Trump's former national security advisor, Mike Flynn. I don't think that timing is a coincidence, to be honest with you. And one of the main targets of criticism has been all along that Mueller has hired prosecutors for his team who have contributed to Democrats in the past. What we know is at least one of those people has also contributed to Republicans,

and that under federal law, you cannot evaluate people for career jobs in law enforcement on the basis of their political contributions. It's illegal to do that. Since Kerry just gave a audio version of a Twitter thread, I will audio endorse it by retweeting it with a down arrow saying this thread. Are there any other moments or exchanges from this hearing that you think are worth listening to? You know, there was an interesting exchange between FBI Director Wray and Gerald Nadler, a Democrat from New York who just became the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee

with the ouster of John Conyers this week. In this moment, Director Wray, your responsibility is not only to defend the Bureau, but to push back against the president when he is clearly wrong, both on the facts and as a matter of principle. When he says, quote, the FBI person really reports directly to the President of the United States, unquote, it is your job to tell him that the Director of the FBI has reported to the Attorney General since the founding of the Bureau, and that Presidents should not comment on pending cases.

When he claims that you should focus on, quote, crooked Hillary, unquote, instead of his closest associates, or when my colleagues argue for a new special counsel to do the same, it is your responsibility to remind us that absent sufficient evidence of a crime, there is no investigation to which a special counsel can be assigned. And when he tells you that you need to, quote, clean house, that your agents are, quote, clean house, that your agents are, quote, phony and dishonest, and that your, quote, reputation or the reputation of the Bureau is in tatters, and quote, the worst in history, you should do more than send a private email to

your employees. Your job then is to stand up to the President of the United States. And just in terms of how the White House has been responding to all of this, we talked a lot in our Tuesday podcast about President Trump's tweets over the weekend and just how the White House is leaping at every opportunity to say this is partisan, this is a witch hunt. Trump was especially tweeting a lot about the agent who was removed from the case because of some texts he sent about Trump and Hillary Clinton. And he's also tried to kind of connect the dots between the Hillary Clinton email investigation and the FBI personnel who worked on that and the people who are now working

on the Russia investigation to suggest that this was all some big conspiracy to exonerate Hillary Clinton and implicate Donald Trump. So, Kerry, a lot of balls in the air, a lot of investigations going on. We're often surprised by the next step of news. It catches us off guard. But is there anything we know is on the horizon that we can look to in terms of what happens next with any of this? Well, next Monday, Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign chairman and his deputy, Rick Gates, are due back in court.

They still have not reached an agreement with the government on getting out of that house arrest that they've been under since their indictment. There's been a lot of back and forth. I expect that courtroom to be packed. I can't wait to be there and see what happens myself. All right, Carrie, thank you for that update. My pleasure. We're going to move on to the part of the show where we talk about what we can't let go this week, politics or otherwise. Kelsey, how about you go first? All right. My

can't let go is the loss of Darth. He's a popular Twitter account, or she, whose avatar is a red panda in a Darth Vader costume. Darth is kind of known best for being the Internet's number one source of animal gifts. But here she is also a master Photoshopper who used to Photoshop a Santa hat onto your Twitter avatar if you asked. I went looking for the account this morning to see if I could get myself a Santa hat and he announced that he is dark. Starting on somewhere at the beginning of November, the Twitter account went away and there will be no Twitter Santa hats for anyone.

You know, it's good to take that mental health break from Twitter every once in a while, but that's kind of bad timing. Yeah, it's kind of sad. Can't someone step in and fill the void? I mean, I'm not, my Photoshop skills are pretty limited, but it doesn't seem like it'd be that hard to put on a triangular Santa hat. It's pretty hard, Ron.

Is it that hard to put on a hat? I'm terrible at Photoshop. Yeah, I'm free handing a Santa hat onto somebody's Twitter avatar. Well, how many could she do then? I mean, she can't do everyone. Ron, what about you? You know, I have to say,

today is December 7th, and it does remind us every year. It's now been 76 years. A day that will live in infamy. Of the day that will live in infamy. Or date. It does remind us of a time when the nation's fate

was very much in doubt and very much under pressure from a worldwide force and a worldwide time, so much worse than our own time. We do have a tendency to always think that we're living through difficult times and everyone has the right to feel that way. But it's a good historical study to go back and look at what the world looked like on December 7th, 1941, when we sustained that surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that everyone should know about, but which seems largely to have been forgotten. The greatest generation.

They were. Scott, how about you? Well, I thought I had let go of Kim Davis, but she has re-entered my life. She, you will remember, is the Rowan County, Kentucky clerk who had a brief notoriety back in 2015 when she defied a court order. This was in the wake of the Supreme Court legalizing same-sex marriage. But Clerk Davis declined to issue marriage licenses to people in Rowan County, Kentucky, not just to gay couples, but to all couples when she found out she couldn't exclude gay couples.

She was briefly jailed. She wound up meeting with the Pope. She attended the State of the Union Address. and she became sort of a darling of religious conservatives. She is now being challenged for the clerk's job by David Ermold, one half of the four couples who sued Clerk Davis over her job. He is running against Davis for the clerk's job in 2018. And I suspect this is going to thrust Rowan County, Kentucky back into a national spotlight, all 23,000 residents. Ermold is

an English professor who has promised to run the clerk's office efficiently, and he had to file his paperwork to campaign with none other than County Clerk Kim Davis. Awkward. Yeah, what are the polls telling us? It sounds like it was actually a very polite exchange. Carrie, what about you? What can you not let go? I cannot let go of this ripped from the headlines news from TMZ. Meghan Markle, the royal fiancee, is going to undergo some kind of hostile environment hostage training after her marriage to Prince Harry.

After her marriage. After her marriage. And she is going to get tips on key words and other signals to let law enforcement know she's under duress. I feel as if this training should happen right now as she is hounded by paparazzi and tabloids. But, hey, I'm happy she's getting it one time or another. Is this to protect her from ISIS or the royal family? That's an excellent question. Those little corgis attack. It's trouble.

It's a genuine curiosity. The corgis like her, Scott. No, no. The dogs are on board. But they didn't like Harry, apparently. Who knew? Well, little boys. Yeah. He pulled the tails. Yeah. I think The Crown comes back tomorrow.

I've talked about it enough on the show. Big fan of The Crown. Ooh, it is a great show. Me too. Can't wait. All right. Well, it's a packed booth today. We got four can't let it go.

So I will let go my can't let it go and leave it there. That is a wrap for the week. We will talk to you again next week. In the meantime, you can keep up with all of our coverage at NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and of course, on your local public radio station. And as we've been talking to you about for the last couple weeks, you can support your station and us by donating online at donate.npr.org slash politics. Let your friends know you did with the hashtag Why Public Radio. Thank you

so much for that. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress for NPR. I'm Kelsey Snell. I also cover Congress. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. I'm Scott Horsley. I cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elbing, editor correspondent. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. © transcript Emily Beynon