The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, January 17

Episode Date: January 17, 2019

The showdown over the government shutdown makes little headway as Trump's support from his base wanes. Plus, more names have been added to the list of who will run for president in 2020. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, political reporter Asma Khalid, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. 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, I'm Mary Lynn. And I'm Katie. And we're at Disney World about to run our first marathon. This podcast was recorded at 2.22 p.m. on the 27th day of the partial government shutdown, also known as January 17th. Things might have changed by the time you hear it. Like hopefully we're no longer running. But the government is.

Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast with the partial government shutdown dragging on. The president is losing ground with key groups in his base. Plus, more candidates have put their names in the ring for 2020. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Susan Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. All right, let's start with the government shutdown, which has officially earned the title of the longest shutdown in modern history. We could be having this conversation a week ago

or two weeks ago or three weeks ago based on the way President Trump is talking and the way Speaker Pelosi are talking? I think we've said this before, and we can say it again, there doesn't seem to be much progress in the talks to actually end the shutdown. What there has been progress in is sort of escalating the tension between the speaker and the president. Earlier this week, the speaker, Nancy Pelosi, essentially delayed the State of the Union in a letter to the president saying that she didn't think it was appropriate for him to offer a primetime address when the government is shut down and that the State of the Union needs to be staffed by so many Secret Service agents not getting paid. The ultimate burns, she suggested he could just offer

it in writing instead of getting the TV time. And then today, the President responded in kind, announcing that it would not be appropriate for her to use military aircraft to take an overseas trip to visit Afghanistan, Brussels and Egypt. And he adds, obviously, if you would like to make your journey by flying commercial, that would certainly be your prerogative. Also, maybe the ultimate burn back. So I don't think that this is really a policy argument that they're having. This is clearly a very personal argument. You take away my big TV stage. I'm going to take away your all expenses paid trip to Afghanistan.

I'm not sure that's an entirely fair exchange. Not quite the same. And par for the course for, I think, how the shutdown negotiations have been going so far. And reiterates the point that there really isn't an end in sight and certainly not an obvious way out. Yeah, the thing that is remarkable to me about this and Sue and Scott and Aisha, we've all covered government shutdowns before. And there was urgency and there was shuttle diplomacy. And there were briefings at the White House every day trying to, you know, prove why they were right. And there were rumors of possible compromises.

And there's just like none of that. We went two days this week without even seeing the president of the United States. It's in some ways it's business as usual, but it's not business as usual for all the people affected by this. And just as a reminder, there are 800,000 federal employees who are either on furlough and not getting paid or working and not getting paid. And on top of that, whether it's federal parks or just government workers who come and eat in their restaurants or taxi drivers whose clientele is based on people visiting the government or businesses that serve tourists around government offices in the Smithsonian Museum. Lots of people who are sort of collateral damage in this standoff.

Scott, I want to get to the possible economic impacts or actual economic impacts. But Aisha, you mentioned that, you know, like it's kind of like business as usual in some ways. You've been looking into like how the administration has handled this shutdown and sort of the minimization effort that's been underway from the Trump administration. Can you dive into that for us? Yeah. So basically what the administration has been trying to do, and they've said this, is just try to make this as painless as possible. And so what that has meant is certain things like food stamps, that federal program has continued. They also are going to do the tax refunds. They're going to start processing that on time,

even though much of the IRS was furloughed. So instead, what they're doing is they're bringing people back. But what they're trying to do is they're trying to either find extra money that somehow existed before that they can use, or they're trying to do kind of a justification under the law, which is very strict about because all operations are supposed to shut down other than protecting human life and property. They try to find these legal justifications and they argue that it is legally justified, for instance, for them to bring back workers from the IRS to do tax refunds. Some experts disagree and say that they're kind of

stretching the limits of the law and not really adhering to it. And some of these moves are obviously in service of sort of the Trump agenda. They've brought back a number of Interior Department workers in order to prepare for an auction of oil and gas drilling leases in the Gulf of Mexico that isn't supposed to happen until March, but that's obviously something that the administration puts a priority on. They want to be ready for it. So there is a little bit of a stretch here in what services are considered essential. But certainly things like tax refunds,

a lot of Americans are out there waiting for their tax refunds. On the one hand, you could argue it's good that the administration is trying to minimize the fallout from this shutdown. On the other hand, as long as for most Americans it's at most an inconvenience or even an invisible shutdown, there's no real pressure on either the White House or the Congress to end this. Scott, in terms of the economy, this week the top economist of the White House came out and said, oh, wow, this is going to be worse than we thought. That's right. You know, early on, not only Kevin Hassett, the White House

economist, but a lot of private forecasters were basically saying that the effects of a partial shutdown of the federal government would be almost trivial as long as it didn't last very long. And the assumption was that it wouldn't last very long. And if it doesn't last very long, then you're really looking at sort of timing effects. Maybe somebody doesn't get paid one week, but they get paid the next week. Those kinds of things can be inconvenient, but don't really affect the macro economy. But the longer it drags on, then you really do start to see effects. And as a result, I think a lot of economists have taken out their sharper pencils now and taken a little bit closer look at this, included some of those spillover effects that

maybe they hadn't considered at first. So it starts to be a meaningful effect. Now, some of that you'll make up when the government eventually reopens and all those government workers eventually get their paychecks. Some of that growth is gone for good. People aren't going to go out and eat the meals in restaurants that they missed during this four-week period. They're not going to take the metro rides or the taxi rides that they missed during this four-week period. They're not going to take the metro rides or the taxi rides that they missed during this four-week period. So some of that's just deadweight loss. Sue, we got news that President Trump yesterday signed a bill that will provide back pay for federal workers who are affected by the shutdown. So I don't think there's ever been any doubt that federal workers would get

back pay because we've had several shutdowns in recent years in which there's a model for this. And Congress reliably and in a very bipartisan fashion always approves legislation to give those workers back pay paychecks when they when the government reopens. They front loaded that effort this time. You know, this bill that's been signed into law guarantees what was probably already a guaranteed outcome. But I think it was in some regards an effort to give those people assurances that you will be getting this money eventually. I think to Scott's point and to other points, you know, there's a lot of workers out there feeling a lot of pain. And one of those first pressure points was January 11th, which was the first missed paycheck, major big pay schedule missed. You know, we're coming up on a second one. I talked to several members today. I've talked to Debbie Dingell, who's a Democrat from Michigan, who was saying how they're hearing more and more from their constituents saying, you know, I can't pay my mortgage. I can't pay my car payments, you know, starting to feel significant economic crunch. And, you know, a lot of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. And even if you have a little bit of a cushion, even more Americans don't have more

than two paychecks worth of a cushion. I don't know what the breaking point is. I don't know how much they're willing to let people suffer before they say, OK, uncle, relent, and we got to get the government up and running. Well, and part of it is not how much they're willing to let people suffer, but how much people are willing to suffer. Because if people start marching or just not showing up to work or saying they're not going to do this anymore. Now, that's complicated by the ideas that people pretty much need their jobs. And so it's kind of hard to just turn your back on your job. But at a certain point, it seems like that's what people will do. We've already seen protests. But when does it get to

a scale where it really stops? Where it becomes a crisis. If you really grounded the air travel in this country for 24 hours, I think this thing would be over. If you really were showing the results of what happens when the government isn't doing its job, as opposed to kind of going through the motions with unpaid federal workers, then this thing would have been over three plus weeks ago. Although I do think this is why a lot of Republicans in particular, I talked to one today, Chris Collins, a House Republican from New York, a top ally of the president's, who still believe the only way out of this is for the president to declare a national emergency ultimately, that there are a lot of lawmakers who just don't think there is a legislative solution,

that they are encouraging the president to invoke presidential powers to say, I'm building the wall regardless and fight it out in the courts. This is, though, starting to take a toll in the polls on the president of the United States, at least. We have a new out today NPR PBS NewsHour Marist poll that found that the president's approval is down. That's right. And one of the most interesting things is he's starting to show some erosion in support among his most rock-solid base of supporters. If you look at, for example, white blue-collar workers, he's seen a seven-point decline in his overall favorability rating. Among evangelical voters, white evangelical voters, he's seen a 13-point erosion in his approval rating. And among the Republicans, he's seen a decline. Now,

his support in all those groups is still pretty strong. He's gone from a 90% approval among Republicans to an 83%. So it's not a fatal decline, but it's meaningful. And these are some of the people who've stuck with this president through thick and thin for the last two years. And do we know if this is because of the shutdown? Or are we thinking that this erosion is happening because of the shutdown? It's timed with the shutdown, right, Scott? It certainly is. Lee Meringoff, who conducted the poll for the Marist Institute, says he's not sure if this is all about the shutdown and just a temporary effect of that,

or if maybe this is more a cumulative effect of what we've seen over the last two years. But certainly the timing would suggest that it has a lot to do with what we've been seeing every night on the news for the last three plus weeks. And you have a president who ran saying, I'm a business guy. I'm a dealmaker. I'm going to be the guy that can get the deals done. And we're now 27 days into no deal getting done, not even any sign of a possible deal, just nothing. Now, the flip side of this, we don't know what kind of erosion the president might be seeing with his base had he simply signed off on the funding bill that was on the table back before Christmas that would have kept the government operating but wouldn't have provided funding for his wall. Would he have seen real erosion among

his core supporters then? I don't know. Certainly some of the president's political advisors think he needed to put this fight up or he would have seen a bigger decline in the support among his base. And certainly he's behaving in a way that would indicate that he's more afraid of losing people by losing on the wall than he is of losing people by not making a deal or by letting this thing drag on forever. Which is kind of an odd position for the guy who said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and nobody would walk away. Okay, we are going to leave this conversation here. Obviously, if there is any movement that would indicate the government reopening or a deal actually happening, we will run back into the studio and do the update. But for now, I'm going

to kick you guys out of the studio. No, no, no, no. Let me say this differently. I'm going to gently ask you to leave for a little bit so that we can have another conversation about 2020 after the break. See you soon. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Gelmar, maker of CLR. For some of life's mucky moments, there's CLR. From soap scum to bicycle rust, CLR gets rid of household grime using natural ingredients, not harsh chemicals. It even carries the EPA's Safer Choice Seal. Use it to dissolve calcium, lime, and rust all around your house. Go to clrbrands.com today to learn more about how to keep your piece of the planet muck-free. CLR, making the world a little cleaner.

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But there are a lot of people behind that cup of coffee. And A.J. Jacobs set out to thank all of them. It doesn't just take a village to make a cup of coffee. It takes the world. Ideas around appreciation on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. And we're back and we've got a whole new crew for this little bit. Asma Khalid, Mara Liason and Domenico Montanaro. Welcome all. Hi there. Hey, Tim. Hey there. So it has been two weeks since on this podcast we talked about Elizabeth Warren deciding to run for president. And now she is no longer alone, not by a long shot. Asma, do you want to go through in what order? I don't know, chronological,

alphabetical, reverse alphabetical. Well, why don't we start by the person who's officially in, in terms of officially announcing a candidacy, and that's Julian Castro. He was the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration. He that's Julian Castro. He was the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration. He's from San Antonio. He's a former mayor there of San Antonio, Texas. And so he's officially announced that he is now in this race. Yeah, I mean, the key thing with Julian Castro is making his announcement from San Antonio and in a bilingual way. He was talking about how he's a candidate for president. He said, yo soy un candidato. And I heard from a lot of people, a lot of Latinos.

Good accent, Domenico. For an Italian. I always used to get in trouble with my Spanish teachers because my accent was more Italian than Spanish. So, you know, we'll see if that passed muster. But him saying those words in Spanish that he is a candidate really resonated with a lot of Latinos. And he talks about his personal story, this kind of American story of immigration, his family, not directly him, but his family immigrated from Mexico. And he sees this as a repudiation of President Trump, just his existence being a repudiation of how the president has spoken about Latinos and immigration as a whole.

Let's go back to your list, Asma. Maybe Tulsi Gabbard? So Tulsi Gabbard has said that she is running for president. She has not had the official announcement yet, but she did make this remark on CNN over the weekend. Tulsi Gabbard is a representative, a Democratic representative from the state of Hawaii. She, you know, I think sort of largely kind of came to fame a couple of years ago, not just because of her own politics, but because she resigned from her position at the DNC in order to support Bernie Sanders in his bid for the presidency in 2016. And she's been pretty closely

aligned to him, seen as a pretty, you know, strong surrogate of his. And now she's been pretty closely allied to him, seen as a pretty strong surrogate of his. And now she's saying she's going to run for president on her own. Yeah. And she comes with a lot of baggage. I mean, the fact that she had met with President Assad in Syria, some of her past views on same-sex marriage and on gay rights. You know, there's a lot there. I think the most significant thing about her is the fact that she backed Bernie Sanders and now just deciding that she can run against him. All right. And another name, Kirsten Gillibrand, senator. Yes, the senator from New York state who actually took the spot that Hillary Clinton had formerly when she was the senator from New York. Kirsten Gillibrand has announced that she is forming an exploratory committee for president, which is essentially the same stage that Elizabeth Warren is in at this point.

She, you know, interestingly made this announcement on The Colbert Show. And to me, that just sort of speaks volumes of sort of how people are engaging with like late night shows and the way that they make these announcements and these rollouts. Just the fact that that was her big announcement itself. You know, she she has not been timid at all so far. I mean, she's talked about the fact that President Trump is essentially tearing apart, ripping apart the moral fabric of this country. And she sees him as a sort of existential moral threat. And she's been saying that shutting down the government is hurting people right now.

He's doing it because he wants his way. If you're going to do something like that, you better be fighting for other people, not for yourself. You know, I think the real challenge for Kirsten Gillibrand is that she has to differentiate herself. What is the reason why a female candidate from New York State should be the nominee who so far doesn't have a real agenda item that she owns? I mean, gender equality, I think, is something and the

Me Too movement is something that every single Democratic candidate running in the primary is going to subscribe to. So I think she's got a lot of hurdles to overcome. Two other names, people we have been hearing a lot from recently. They are not officially running yet, but they are out doing a lot of interviews talking about if they did run, what they would be talking about. Let's start with Kamala Harris, senator from California. Yeah. So Kamala Harris has been on a book tour. She put out a memoir, which is something a lot of candidates do when they're thinking about running for president. And she's been going on this book tour, essentially talking about some

of this, but inevitably politics comes up, right, at some of these book tours, in terms of how she would want to govern or how she would sort of take on Trump. She has not officially announced a candidacy. But you talk to people in early voting states, they're very excited about her. And she is definitely looking at making hires. OK, and then Sherrod Brown, he is the Ohio senator just reelected in 2018 by a pretty good margin and in a state that President Trump won. He is not running for president yet, but he is going to Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina and maybe even Nevada. I'm sorry, what state did you say he's from? Ohio.

What state again? O-H-I-O. You know, the fact is, it was really interesting. Stephen's Keep on Morning Edition asked Sherrod Brown when he was on the other day, you know, why, you know, can you distinguish yourself from some of these other potential candidates like Beto O'Rourke or Kamala Harris or some of these other people? And he's like, no, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm from Ohio, though, and I won in Ohio. And, you know, I think that President Trump won Ohio and I won Ohio. So I don't know. Leave that for what it's worth.

Yeah. Well, no, I have talked to people in Ohio who thinks that he could carry Ohio and Ohio is a state that used to be a swing state and now is considered a red state. But Sherrod Brown, I think, has something to offer that's very specific. He is from the Midwest. He has been a populist, but a progressive populist, for his whole career. He talks about the dignity of work. He actually has a message. He could connect with a lot of voters that the Democrats lost last time around, white working class voters who used to vote Democratic. I think that he'll be taken very seriously if he gets in. He is somebody who in Ohio proved that he could both connect with the white working class voters that Hillary Clinton just couldn't connect with, but also with people

of color. And that's something that I think is really important. And you hear that a lot from voters in Ohio. I spent some time there. I remember immediately after the 2016 election and Sherrod Brown's name was the most frequently mentioned name I heard from both African-American voters in Cleveland, as well as, you know, working class white voters in the Mahoning Valley. People feel like he's been able to build a coalition in that state. And it's a coalition that, look, if you can win in Ohio, his argument is Ohio is leaning more Republican than Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. And so arguably he could win in those other states. One thing Democrats do have to do is transcend identity politics. Sherrod Brown offers a way to do that because what the Democrats learned in 2016 is when it comes to identity politics, Trumpian white identity politics will win.

You have to have something that transcends identity politics and has some kind of shared values, shared beliefs that bring people together. You know, this isn't a policy point, but this is a mechanics of running for president point. There are going to be a ton more people getting in. This is such an early stage. It is. And when you talk to people, they'll say, like, we haven't seen a primary Democratic primary like this in a very long time. Some people will say it's entirely unprecedented. And so much of this is going to be about mechanics and the kind of work that they do and the kind of sort of X factor that they bring to the table, because there's not going to be a huge separation when it comes to policy for a lot of these candidates. Now, we know that there's going to $15 an hour. Having Medicare for all or some version of protecting the ACA and

depending how far you go on that for the Affordable Care Act and otherwise. Healthcare obviously was a big issue in the 2018 election. Campaign finance is going to be a big piece of this where a lot of Democrats feel like you shouldn't take any corporate or PAC money. And some candidates, obviously very wealthy candidates who want to get in might have a tougher time because of that. And climate change. You know, these are all things that most Democrats agree with. They feel strongly about. But varying candidates are going to emphasize those things more so than others. In the past, we've sort of thought about this as or talked about this as progressive candidates versus more moderate

candidates. Yeah. And it's not necessarily progressive versus moderate. You know, in fact, it's more pugilist versus pragmatist, if we want to think about it that way. More, you know, someone people looking for compromise or people who are looking for confrontation. Right. And more so what I'm hearing from some Democratic strategists is that the Democratic base this time around really wants to fall in love with its candidate. They want to feel like they're going to die on that hill for whoever it is that they're going to get into this race with because the overarching theme is they want to be able to beat President Trump. And they feel like because President Trump has such a loyal following and loyal base that

they need somebody who's maybe a bit more pugilistic, somebody who really fires them up, who they feel like is going to fight and can stand toe to toe with the president. And, you know, that is a new version of the old cliche that Democrats want to fall in love with their candidates, whereas Republicans just fall in line with the guy whose turn it is. But what's really interesting about the head versus heart dilemma that every Democrat has, they want to nominate someone who can beat Donald Trump. And if they feel their candidate can, then they're going to be really passionate about them. The other thing is that the Democratic Party is wrestling with is do they want to be the left

wing version of Donald Trump? Do they want a candidate who fights just like him? The most common thing I hear from people when you ask what they want, they want somebody who will beat Donald Trump. And when you parse that down, I don't know that everybody has yet determined what that means. But for some people, it's coming down to authenticity. And I heard from a lot of people, even folks who voted for Hillary Clinton, they did not feel that she was an authentic candidate. And so they're looking for somebody who's willing to take on Donald Trump. I don't know that that means you got to fight back with him in the exact same style, but somebody who is going to seriously at least stand up to him. Domenico, you have a new poll, a new PBS NewsHour Marist poll out this morning. And as part of that poll, you guys were asking Democrats about various

potential presidential candidates. So what we wanted to do was figure out how the Democratic Party activist base feels about these folks, sort of the temperature thermometer. Let's look at them and their favorability ratings, fave on fave. And we can also then see how known or unknown some of these candidates are, because for a lot of us who cover this stuff, we know all their names. But for most people outside the Beltway, you find way more often than not that a huge number of people don't even know who they are. OK, so what are your sort of standout? Who is it? Maybe in tiers? Is there like sort of a top tier of people who are who

are known and liked? Well, the tier that stands apart is the Joe Biden tier, because right now he is not only the most widely known, but 76 percent of the Democratic base has has very has a favorable rating of Biden. Only 12 percent have a negative opinion of Biden. And what our pollster said that stood out to her on this was that this is somebody who's been around for so long in Washington that usually people who are around that long have some built up negative feelings, even within their own party. And also given his age and the activist younger base, maybe not necessarily wanting a candidate of his age, but at the same time,

very warm feelings toward Biden. And if he's looking at this and thinking about getting in, this is the kind of thing that is encouraging for him. You know, it's interesting to hear you say, Domenico, that Biden is seen so favorably. And he is a name I've definitely heard from people about, you know, somebody they're looking at, that they would be curious to see if he gets in the race. But yesterday I spent some time talking to folks in New Hampshire. And one thing I heard from them is a real concern that Biden, not just Biden, but say someone like Bernie Sanders, is their age. You know, they point to the fact that the Democratic Party has so rarely nominated just an older candidate who's won. I mean, you look at it, it's been Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, JFK. But you know, the thing about those historical rules,

they only work till they stop working. But it is true that Bloomberg, Biden and Bernie Sanders are all older than Donald Trump. That's a challenge for them. They would have to answer that question. They'd have to come up with a pretty good story about how, because I'm old, because I'm from the, you know, whatever, the baby boom generation, I owe it to the, they would have to come up with some rationale. Why are they doing this? It's a challenge. And don't forget, Joe Biden isn't merely in his mid-70s. He's had health issues. All right. So there are a lot of names of people who might run. And when they do run, we will talk about it here on this podcast. So inevitably, this is the beginning of a very long conversation that we're about to have for the next 22 months or so. But for now, I am going to kick all of you out of the studio.

And when we come back, it is time for Can't Let It Go. Bye, Tam. Bye, Tam. See you later. Support for this podcast and the following message come from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, developing solutions to support strong families and communities to help ensure a brighter future for America's children. More information is available at AECF.org. Support also comes from Rothy's. Rothy's is the everyday flat for life on the go that comes in four fashionable styles for women. The flat, the point, the loafer, and the sneaker. Fun designs and patterns while still looking polished and professional,

with new colors launched every few weeks. Best of all, Rothy's are made from recycled plastic water bottles and completely machine washable, so you can feel good about wearing them. Go to rothys.com and enter code WEEKLY to get your flats and free shipping. This week on Ask Me Another, we've got TV's favorite muscle man, Terry Crews from Brooklyn Nine-Nine,

and he chats about his multiple talents and how he stays humble in Hollywood. It's dropping in your feeds Friday, January 18th on NPR's Hour of Puzzles, Word Games, and Trivia. And we're back, and we've got the old crew back with us in the studio. Scott Horsley, Aisha Roscoe, and Susan Davis. Welcome back, y'all. Hey, Tam. Hey.

It's like I never left. It is kind of like you never left. All right. It is time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, where we talk about the one thing we can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Scott, what can't you let go of? Well, mine is a story of politics and food and I guess a little bit of football. It dates from Monday night when President Trump was hosting the newly crowned college football champions, the Clemson Tigers, in the state dining room. There's the famous portrait of Abraham Lincoln looking on. And there on the table is the feast that he has laid out for the football teams.

And you've all seen the pictures. considerable hilarity that surrounded this because there on the silver platters were stacks and stacks of quarter pounders and Wendy's hamburgers and chicken McNuggets and pizza. Every kind of junk food you could imagine. Excuse me, every kind of quick serve restaurant product that you could imagine. Way to correct yourself. And, you know, there was a lot of sort of snickering on social media about this. And there was some snickering among the players. They were joking that their nutritionist, their team nutritionist, must be sort of appalled by this.

But the players, I thought, seemed like they were enjoying it. There was a great picture of one kind of burly ballplayer holding like six hamburger containers under his chin. And I felt like I was the only one who looked at those pictures and said, boy, that looks good. Let me add it. And this may be because of my work history. I brought in my little souvenir from my days in the quick serve industry. Scott Horsley has just put on a red apron with a small embroidered golden arch in the corner. Are you a former McDonald's employee, Scott?

I am, and also Burger King. So I'm fluent in both the frying and the flame broiling formats. But never a Wendy's, huh? Those square burgers. That's just sacrilege. I don't know what they're thinking. What was your station? Did you do the fries or the burgers or did you move around?

I was mostly on the Quarter Pounders, but I would occasionally work the fry station as well. Okay. And at Burger King, I was mostly in the specialty sandwich side of the shop. Oh, so is that like a chicken sandwich or what would be a specialty sandwich? Chicken, fish, ham and cheese. When in season, the veal parmesan. I can also fact check that Scott Horsley enjoys an unhealthy snack because I have seen those piles of chips at your desk, Scott, and I've actually spoken to you about needing to find healthier snack alternatives.

Well, you wouldn't want to walk by my desk. I did feel like I was missing the Taco Bell. If the Taco Bell had been there, it would have been the best meal ever. Sue, what can't you let go of? Well, I feel like we're going to take a sharp turn to nerd land over here on Capitol Hill, because the thing that I can't let go this week is the new app sweeping the halls of Congress, at least among the political press corps. Tinder? No? Oh, God. No.

Swipe left for Democrats democrats right for republicans i discovered a nap this week courtesy of many of my uh journalistic friends in the press corps that's called memrec oh is it a face recognizing thing yes so with every new congress comes lots of new members i don't know what the total is, but probably over 100. The turnover in Congress is pretty tremendous. And so you have all these new faces in the Capitol, and it's really hard to learn them. And that's kind of our job is to know who these people are. So there's this, I don't know if it's a new app, but it is the app that is captivating the press corps right now, where you can, and it's a great hallway time killer, where it shows you the faces of all members of Congress. And you either can

tap it if you know it or tap it if you don't know it. And it puts it into like a need to still learn them file. And it has been like the most effective way for me to learn new members of Congress in my entire time up here. And it has been how I have been filling my waiting time in the hallways up here. And if you see pictures of Capitol Hill reporters all looking at their phones, there's a good chance that a lot of us are playing MemRec right now. So it's like a game. It's not. I mean, it's kind of like a bragging rights game. Like you don't like I was doing it as we were waiting in a scrum earlier this week outside the speaker's office. And there was like four of us standing out there and we were like competing with each other over who knows the most

members. Credit to Mike DeBonis of The Washington Post, by the way. That guy, he is he is I call him the ringer in this game. He knows a lot of obscure members, but it is something that we are all using to try and figure out who all these new members are. And it's great. And you can do it by state. You can do it by chamber. You can do it with just new members. I mean, there's different ways that you can do it to help yourself learn them. I'm much better on senators. I know all the senators, the House members. I still have a little bit of a ways to go. A lot of new freshmen out there, but I'm going to learn you. There's an

app for everything. There's an app for everything. Okay, so I'm going to go next. And earlier this week, we learned that an internal federal government watchdog took a good look at the old post office building where President Trump has the Trump Hotel. And the inspector general found that the federal government GSA improperly ignored the anti-corruption clauses of the Constitution when it went to consider the lease and how it might be affected by the election of the person who owns the hotel. And it seemed a bit like they were basically saying this is kind of above our pay grade. We can't look at the Constitution and see what exactly this means. We don't know anything about this. I mean, was that the sense you got from that? Yeah. So here's a quote from the inspector general. The GSA Office of General Counsel

recognized that the president's business interest in the lease raised issues under the U.S. Constitution that might cause a breach of the lease, yet chose not to address those issues. As a result, GSA foreclosed an opportunity for an early resolution of these issues and instead certified compliance with a lease that is under a constitutional cloud. Aisha, what can't you let go of? Well, you know, mine is, it's probably a little bit more serious than yours, Tam. Oh, geez. We're just going down and down and down. No, no, really. It's not. I mean, it's very serious to me. It's Cardi B, once again. You know, I take it very seriously. so people have probably seen so i've talked about cardi b probably a lot in in like every third podcast yeah no look she she does a lot of stuff

but she has released this video talking about the shutdown hey y'all i just want to remind y'all because it's been a little bit over three weeks okay it's been a little bit over three weeks, okay? It's been a little bit over three weeks. Trump is now ordering, as in summonsing, federal government workers to go back to work without getting paid. She says some language that, you know, you probably can't, don't want your boss to hear. Now, I don't want to hear y'all motherfucking about, oh, but Obama shut down the government for 17 days. Yeah, bitch, for health care.

Basically, she's saying the shutdown is not good. It's kind of scary. These people got to, you know, go to work. They're not getting paid or people aren't getting paid. But what I thought was funny was you have these senators tweeting about it. These Democrats, Brian Schatz, he and Chris Murphy were tweeting and basically Senator Schatz was like trying to decide whether or not to retweet the Cardi B video. Then Chris Murphy tweets at him. OMG, I have the same argument with myself 30 minutes ago.

And then Schatz is like, oh, you you you do. And say retweets are not endorsements. And then Chris Murphy tweets, D-H-Y-B, which I had to look that up. But I guess it's like, don't hold your breath. And then Schatz says, well, fair enough. And then Senator Schumer, you might have heard of him. He gets his Twitter account, gets into it. And he says, guys, I'm still holding my breath. Are you going to retweet Cardi B or not?

I don't believe that Chuck Schumer knew what DYHB means. It was funny until Schumer got in. Let's be honest. You think he killed it? It was a little like, hello, fellow kids. What you up to, kid? Hello, fellow teenagers. Watch out too kid. Hello fellow teenagers. Maybe Cardi B is the pressure point to end the shutdown.

I mean everything just gets weirder and weirder so maybe it is. I feel like she could come up with a solution. I feel like if they consulted with her she would have good ideas. Bring in Cardi B. Exactly. All right. Well that is a wrap for today. We will be back as soon as there's news that you need to know about. Until then, head to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, wherever, and search NPR Politics to find us. That's a great way to keep up with what we're doing and what's going on. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. Hey, who let Sue in here? And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.