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

Episode Date: February 8, 2019

President Trump tests out potential campaign slogans in his State Of The Union address. Plus, Democrats are struggling with how to address issues of sex, race, and identity. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Asma Khalid, political editor Domenico Montanaro, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. 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

Hi, this is Katlyn and Kim, and we're in the airport in San Francisco, California. We met and became friends in the fifth grade. We graduated high school together. Saw each other through three marriages and two divorces. Yep, do the math, NPR dudes, I'm still single. We raised great kids, and I just became a grandma twice. Now we're off to Thailand celebrating our 50th birthdays. This podcast was recorded at 3 53 p.m. on Thursday, February 7th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this,

but we'll still be best friends. And having a Thai-rific time in Thailand, it's going to be more fun than our fifth grade camp. All right, here's the show. And they come in stereo. And they are single. Wow. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. When President Trump gave his State of the Union, he hinted at what his 2020 campaign will be about. And Democrats at the national and state level are struggling with issues of sex, race, and identity. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent.

We have been talking a lot about Democrats running for president in 2020, in part because it seems like there is a new one announcing that they're running like every 75 seconds or so. But on the other side of the aisle, President Trump has technically been running for reelection for two years. And thanks to a State of the Union address, we now have a little bit better idea of what maybe his campaign slogan might be. We must choose between greatness or gridlock, results or resistance, vision or vengeance, incredible progress or pointless destruction. Tonight, I ask you to choose greatness. You know, nothing's more closely tied to the president than this idea of greatness, right? I mean, what's on those hats?

Make America great again. And resistance, obviously, having to do with Democrats. Now, those are things that we were able to pick up on. It's not clear that everybody at home necessarily sees that. And he was able to sort of couch this unity message around what were these kind of divisive points. And if everyone watching at home didn't pick up on it at the beginning, he brought it up again towards the end of his speech. I am asking you to choose greatness. No matter the trials we face, no matter the challenges to come, we must go forward together. We must keep America first in our hearts. So is that the F capitalized or not in this case?

It's a good question because America first, of course, is President Trump's sort of view on foreign policy and and immigration and a lot of things is sort of America first, America first, America first, make America great again. Now he's saying, choose greatness. I saw this speech as the beginning of the Trump 2020 themes. We learned a lot about exactly how he plans to brand and identify Democrats. Here in the United States, we are alarmed by the new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence and not government coercion, domination, and control. We are born free and we will stay free. He spent a lot of time in the speech identifying Democrats as the party of socialism, late-term abortion, open borders. And despite the president's low approval ratings,

I think that a lot of Democrats feel that it is now incumbent upon them to explain where they stand on abortion, where they used to describe abortion as something they wanted to be safe, legal, and rare. What they mean when they talk about socialism, they don't mean taking over the means of production or becoming like Venezuela. They really mean having a strong social safety net, but I don't think they've explained that. And the same thing with borders. What do the Democrats mean when they talk about border security? And what I have heard from moderate Democrats, as well as analysts on this, is that Democrats have sometimes struggled to define what they are for when it comes to border security, right? Like they've prioritized so much of this idea of legalization and a humane immigration system that when it comes to specifically the border issue, it's a little bit murkier in terms of what they actually stand for. And they haven't necessarily had to define themselves as much. And it looks like Donald Trump

is trying to set up this idea of defining everything for them. Well, and what he has right now is he is the Republican running for president. And there are a whole bunch of Democrats with a whole bunch of ideas. And they are sort of in the early stages of battling out what the Democratic Party stands for. And there is no single leader of the Democratic Party at this moment. So he's out there trying to define Democrats as extremists, trying to make them seem scary. The other thing that's in his advantage right now is that the Democratic field, as it is currently constituted, does tilt left. And the media, like moths to a flame, give tremendous media coverage to the more left wing voices in the Democratic Party Party like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Over time, that might change as different people get into the field and Democrats litigate this amongst

themselves. But right now, he has a fertile field to plow. And if you think the mainstream media is giving a lot of attention to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, check out the right-wing media, where she is a favored boogeyman. Well, absolutely. And Republicans did this on the, you know, on the in the run up to the 2018 midterm elections. Also, you know, they talk about Nancy Pelosi cycle after cycle as a San Francisco liberal. They talk about how Democrats want to abolish ICE because some on the left have talked about that. But it's not a mainstream view within the party. And it really was a clever inversion from the president trying to paint Democrats as extremists when he's the one who gets billed and painted as a hardline extremist, especially when it comes to immigration.

So, Mara, I have a question for you. If you're saying that his vision, at least what we can see so far in terms of how he might run in 2020, is to point out how radical Democrats are, right, to attack Democrats. Is that his thinking? Is that that is essentially going to be his message moving on? And he doesn't need to really show substantive gains. You know, when we talk about trade, when we talk about economic policy, these big things that he ran on in 2016. I think the president absolutely needs an affirmative argument for himself. He needs the economy to continue being good. He needs some legislative accomplishments to show. But first and foremost, he believes in defining his opponent and he's getting a head start on that. But yes, I don't think that painting the Democrats as extremists

can be the be all and end all of his campaign. He has to have a positive message, too. But when you are at 40 percent in the polls, generally the smartest thing you can do and the most effective thing you can do is bring the other guy down to your level. So, you know, I get that this is essentially Trump's campaign message at this point. But, Tam, tell us a little bit about what you think he's actually going to do in terms of how he's going to run. Well, so he has a rally on Monday. It is his first of 2019. It is being put on by his campaign, as all the rallies of his entire presidency have been. But they are starting to staff up. Many of these people are actually in northern Virginia and not New York. They're bringing in political advisors. They've pulled a couple of people that were in the White House over to the campaign. So in terms of like the actual campaign

infrastructure itself, it is starting to become a thing in a way that for the first two years of the president's reelection campaign, it was not really fully fleshed out. And he's raised more money than any other president at this point in this cycle. $129 million plus. With a lot of small dollars because they are fundraising a lot and quite successfully at that. All right. We are going to leave this part of a conversation here. And when we come back, we're going to talk about Democrats who are running in 2020 and how they are going to deal with issues around identity. We'll be right back. Easy-to-use business banking with mobile deposits, bank-to-bank payments, and built-in invoicing.

Learn more at azlo.com slash NPR. Every day on her way to and from work, Laura Bates, like millions of women around the world, suffered indignities, big and small. It just made me sit down and ask myself, why is this normal? She launched a website called Everyday Sexism, and thousands of women and even some men started to share their stories, too. Ideas around gender and power on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. And we're back. And let's start this conversation with Elizabeth Warren, who this week had to once again answer for why she had years ago identified as

American Indian. Asma, can you walk us through what happened this week? Yeah, so I just want to catch up to speed real quick on something that happened towards the end of last week. And that is that Elizabeth Warren called the chief of the Cherokee Nation and did apologize for taking a DNA test, which she says may have confused people about tribal citizenship versus ancestry and kind of family lore. So she did that towards the end of last week. And then this week, the Washington Post, through a general kind of open records request, found this card, a registration card that she had filled out for the Texas State Bar Association. And on it, she had listed American Indian as her race. And so this was kind of a new piece of evidence. And it raised again questions about how and to what extent she had defined herself this way and how,

if at all, it may have helped her in any of her jobs. So we should just go back quickly to that DNA test because it found that she had negligible amounts of Native American ancestry. Well, she had a Native American ancestry. It was just very small. Yeah, it seems to be very small. Yeah. So she found herself in the hallway in the U.S. Capitol building doing something that she rarely does. She doesn't usually do interviews, but it was sort of an impromptu press gaggle with a bunch of reporters asking her about this card. I'm not a tribal citizen and I should have been more just more mindful of the distinction. Yeah. And look, this is something that she had previously said that

she didn't try to use or wasn't something that enabled her to help get her job, for example, at Harvard, at the law school there. So the fact that she had done this brings this back up again in a way that could be potentially detrimental to her campaign. Now, I, for one, am curious just how broad this would be in the campaign where she's one of the candidates with probably one of the best, if not the best case to make for why she's running. So does the whole campaign get derailed by something like this? Or will it return to her talk of billionaires, corporations and income inequality? I don't know that we know the answer to that. I mean, I know one thing I will say, though,

is that she has repeatedly apologized now in the last week or so. Right. And it's sort of I mean, not to make light of it, but it's almost like this apology tour, which you don't think is what she wants to be doing ahead of what is expected to be her official campaign launch this weekend. And so, you know, this is not necessarily what they want to be talking about. I will say when you go out with her and you see her campaign in Iowa, her message around a sort of fledgling middle class and the need to fix the situation economically in this country is something that resonates a lot with people. It is a very strong, compelling kind of argument that she has. And I think she has a very, very clear, compelling case in that way to run. People know why she's running. People know what she stands for. And what's so ironic about this is that you could have identity politics and the botched

way she's approached this undermining her campaign. She is one of the candidates who, as Domenico said, has a real message, a lifetime of advocacy for consumers and for what she would call properly regulated capitalism. She's not running based on her story or her ancestry or her representation of diversity. And that's what's so ironic about this. The way it might hurt her is if when Democrats want somebody who can beat Donald Trump and evaluate each of the candidates for electability, is this something that's going to make her seem damaged or handicapped? Well, especially after a campaign in 2016, where you had a candidate at

the top of the ticket who was seen as inauthentic. Well, and my question, which will go unanswered, is, is this Native American heritage thing, Elizabeth Warren's, what about her emails? Is this just going to be the thing that comes back again and again and again? But we're not done talking about very challenging issues because the state of Virginia is in the midst of this roiling situation with the governor having admitted to being in blackface, the lieutenant governor being accused of sexual assault, and you have the attorney general who would be third in line now coming forward and admitting that in 1980 he dressed up as a rapper and wore brown makeup as part of that costume. So, again, blackface.

I mean, it's a total disaster in the state of Virginia for the Democratic Party, you know, but I think it does highlight the changing politics of the state and the changing dynamics. You know, this was the capital of the Confederacy. You had a lot of Democrats, a lot of Southern Democrats who culturally were a lot different than what you might see for Democrats who are north of the Mason-Dixon line. And those two things have converged when you look at this story. But Domenico, I don't know that I fully agree that it's just Democrats north or south of the Mason-Dixon line. I think culturally in this country, you know, as uncomfortable as it may be for folks to acknowledge and specifically for Democrats who I think have kind of changed culturally on this issue, you can look at limited public opinion polling from just a couple of years

ago. I think I was looking at some stuff from 2015 that YouGov did. And it showed that a majority of white Americans thought it was okay to wear, to dress up as blackface for Halloween. I mean, that's not very long ago at all. That's just a couple of years ago. And so I do think that culturally the country has changed. And the Democrats have recently embraced this kind of zero tolerance policy, you could argue, around things like this. In part, you could argue in opposition to what they've seen pop up amongst, you know, not just Donald Trump and what they've heard from him, but amongst other Republicans in the party around racial issues. And look, although I have to say zero tolerance from the Democratic Party, they want to say it's zero tolerance. But I put that in air quotes, because they're having a

really difficult time trying to figure out what they want to do, for example, with the accusations against the lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, of a sexual assault. And, you know, where they were very quick to say you have to believe the woman in all cases, in especially the Brett Kavanaugh case that Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, when she brought her case forward, that Democrats said, no, you know, he should not be allowed to be on the Supreme Court because of this. Believe her, right? Well, what do we see in Virginia? You see a lot of Democrats, frankly, stiff arming this and saying, well, we're concerned about the governorship right now. We're not necessarily talking about that. Or maybe Democrats are coming to their senses and saying, we believe in due process. I think senses is a subjective thing because there are going to be a lot of people who think that coming to your senses is finally believing women.

Well, OK, but believe women in every situation. Therefore, the accused should lose their job. Don't facts matter? Every one of these situations is different. Don't you want to look into them? I think the logical conclusion to believe women no matter what means that any accuser can force a Democratic officeholder to step down because that's the Democratic standard. And that's the precarious position they've put themselves in. But that's what they've put themselves in. Exactly. And that's what I was going to say.

I did a piece on this earlier in the week. And one person I interviewed for this story said, part of the conundrum for Democrats is you look at what happened with Minnesota Senator Al Franken over allegations of inappropriate sexual behavior. He was essentially run out of his job there, right? He was not allowed to keep his job. Well, and he didn't, he didn't defend himself either. Whereas another Minnesota politician, Keith Ellison, who was accused, decided to litigate it in an election and won. And the irony- But then even if we bring up Brett Kavanaugh, it's this idea that the Democrats feel like they have to live by the very rules that they've already established.

So what we have now are a couple of Democratic candidates for president have been asked about the allegations against the lieutenant governor. And there's been some interesting word choices. Kirsten Gillibrand, who is running for president, said that she believes that women should be supported. She didn't say, I believe the women. She says women should be supported and that we should hear this out. And then Kamala Harris, who's also running for president, said that she believes that this should be heard, that this should be investigated. So it seems like there is a shift from immediately done, gone, you're out with your head to some level of this should be adjudicated somehow. But it's really hard to adjudicate these things. And also, we just have to note that false reporting, incidences of false reporting of sexual assault

allegations, studies show it's incredibly rare. I would make a prediction, which are always very risky. These three situations, Ralph Northam, Justin Fairfax, and then Mark Herring, the AG, every one of them, I believe in the end, is going to be treated individually. And each one is actually different. Ralph Northam upset a lot of people in Virginia because of the way he handled this. Mark Herring has been treated a little differently

because he got in front of the story. He issued a statement that I've heard even a lot of African-Americans in Virginia accepted. And then Justin Fairfax, who's a different case altogether because it's about sexual assault, he denies this. So far, we haven't had a full investigation. In the end, I don't think that this will be a blanket off with your head situation. Well, and there's the bonus of it's possible that Northam will just not resign,

that he'll take the Trumpian course and say, yeah, there's some things and I'm governor. Well, I mean, this is one of the bigger takeaways of the entire thing is you better get ready to get some yearbooks checked out of libraries because every single one of these candidates who's running is essentially going to have every single yearbook. Whether it was a law, I don't know if law schools have yearbooks. Who knew med schools had yearbooks? Every photo from college. Uh-huh. Yeah. And there is another generational irony here, too, by the way. Everybody had been talking about how, you know, oh, the Facebook generation of millennials are going to be the ones who are problematic. Here you have to go to the library. These are not millennials who this is happening to. We are not going to solve this right here and right now.

So we're just going to take a break. And when we come back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. Planet Money Tip number 17. Sometimes life is exactly like the movies. T minus 30 seconds. They said T minus. Planet Money, a podcast about the economy and sometimes about rocket ships. And we're back. And we're going to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, where we talk about one thing we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Domenico. Well, I still can't let go of the State of the Union where Nancy Pelosi did her

clap back, I guess maybe we can call it, of President Trump. It was an incredible photograph. And the internet took it in a million different directions. It shows her clapping, looking at him. And it has been described in many ways, but one like clapping for a kindergartner who put away their toys. Okay, now go sit down. Yeah, good for you.

Well, she looked kind of arch and wry, right? Her eyebrow was up and she sort of pursed her lips as looking at the president and clapping for him at one point as he turned and looked back toward her and Vice President Pence. The thing that struck me, though, was the day after Christine Pelosi, who is Nancy Pelosi's one of her daughters, wrote, oh, yes, that clap took me back to the teen years. She knows and she knows that, you know, and frankly, she's disappointed that you thought this would work. But here's a clap. Hashtag you tried it. Oh, wow. Yeah. I can't wait for my kids to be on Twitter.

Mara, what can't you let go of? More body language from the State of the Union. I really liked the moment with Joshua Trump, the little 11-year-old boy whose mom had said he had been bullied because his last name was Trump. He was invited by the first family to sit in the balcony two seats away from the first lady. And he was photographed snoozing with his head back on the seat, totally oblivious to everything that was going on. And honestly, what time was the speech? Nine o'clock. It was past my bedtime. Past his bedtime.

Right. And it's an hour and a half, basically, the speech. I mean, you know, look, my kids are in bed by 8, 830. You know, I don't know how he would be able to stay awake. I barely did. So not only did he not get a shout out from the president, as many other guests did, he also slept through most of it. You know, it was warm in there. I mean, at least he's got photos. He's got photos, some of them showing him it was asleep, but evidence he was there nonetheless. It's late. It's warm. You've got a comfortable chair. Yeah.

Go for it, Joshua Trump. Asma, you go next. of former Arizona Senator John McCain, was apparently at the Phoenix airport where she said that she was coming home from a trip and she spotted a situation that she thought looked odd. It was a woman of a different ethnicity than the child, a little toddler. And she said, quote, something didn't click with me. So long story short, she goes over to the police. She tells them about this.

And she says that the police you know by god she was trafficking this kid this woman who had a little kid who was not of the same ethnicity as her uh turns out that's that's not exactly what happened the phoenix police are saying that you know they did check in with this woman she was not trafficking a little child cindy mccain though has not really explained what caused her to believe that she thought this was a case of human trafficking. But she does hope that it does not distract from people, you know, performing their duties, where if you see something, say something. Cindy McCain is the mother of a child of a different race than her.

Exactly. Which is what made this story all the more bizarre to me is like, why on earth would you think that if you see something, say something in that scenario where she has a little daughter, well, not a little daughter, a grown daughter now that they adopted from Bangladesh. Right. So it's really,

really strange to me. It reminded me though, of an old editor saying where, you know, not just if you see something, say something, we have this editor who always says, check yourself before you wreck yourself.

Well, and she also does a lot of work in human trafficking. It's a very odd situation. All right. I think I'm going next. A man running along a trail in Colorado was attacked by a mountain lion, and the man won. What happened with it? He strangled the mountain lion with his bare hands or something? Yes.

Is that what happened? Now, it turns out that it was a juvenile mountain lion. It was just under 70 pounds, according to this. But he was attacked, and he fought back and killed the mountain lion. How large was this man? More than 70 pounds. Well, I would hope so. And fit, because he was trail man. More than 70 pounds. Well, I would hope so. And fit because he was trail running.

But more to the point, the state of Colorado put out a statement, probably like the Parks Department, I'm not sure exactly who, but with a list of tips for how to avoid or what to do if you were being attacked by a mountain lion. And I think some of these tips are worth reading.

Are you going to read some of them? Yeah, because the top 10 from T Tam's tips to feed a mountain lion. Do not approach a mountain lion. Especially if it is feeding or with kittens. Okay, but then if you come up on a mountain lion, stay calm. Talk calmly and firmly to it. Move slowly. Never turn your back on it.

Back away slowly. Never turn your back on it. Back away slowly. If you can do it safely, running may stimulate a lion's instinct to chase and attack. I feel like this is all pieces of advice I would never follow if I was actually in this scenario. Do not run. Do not turn your back. Go against all your instincts.

I don't know. I mean, right, the not running one, I feel like it definitely... I would totally run away. I don't know. Yeah. This one got me. So do all you can to appear larger, raise your arms, open your jacket if you're wearing one. And if you have small children with you, protect them by picking them up so that they won't panic and run. Some of these tips remind me of like what my grandfather used to say when the when the plane, if a plane would go down, there's this old Italian thing where they would say, you know what you should do. And if the plane is about to crash would go down, there's this old Italian thing where they would say, you know, what you should do.

And if the plane is about to crash, you put your head between your legs and kiss your butt goodbye. But in this case, put your arms up, wave, speak firmly and use every aggressive weapon you can find, including throwing stones, branches or whatever you can get your hands on. Use your bare hands if you have to. Which I guess he did. Apparently that man couldn't let go of a mountain lion. Oh, that was good. That is a wrap for today. We will be back as soon as there's political news that you need to know about.

In the meantime, send us a timestamp like the one from the top of the show. You might just hear yourself on the podcast. Record it on your smartphone and send it via email to nprpolitics at npr.org. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent.

And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.