The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, January 24

Episode Date: January 24, 2019

President Trump concedes to Speaker Pelosi and delays his annual State Of The Union address. Plus, with two Senate bills aimed at opening the government expected to fail, what alternatives are on the table to get the government up and running? This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, 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

Good morning. This is Kyle from Peachtree City, Georgia. It's currently 7 a.m. and I'm just now headed home after my seventh overnight shift in a row. Luckily, it's also my last. But unfortunately, like the other 800,000 federal employees, I'm also not getting paid for it because it's currently the 34th day of the government shutdown. This podcast was recorded at 1.51 p.m. on Thursday, January 24th. Things may have changed since you've heard this. All right. Here's the show.

I have a lot of neighbors in the same situation, and it's not easy for anyone and not easy, especially for the people, you know, not at the top of the totem pole in a lot of those places. We're talking about interns, janitors who are having a difficult time. That's totally true. And we're going to talk more about the government shutdown in just a bit. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. The State of the Union has been postponed. The president conceded to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

So could that be a sign that we're getting closer to the end of the government shutdown? I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Aisha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Monsignor, political editor. And I'm Mara Liid, political reporter. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Monsignor, political editor. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. So, you know, for a minute, it seemed like there was a lot of uncertainty about what was going to happen with the State of the Union.

But now it has been officially delayed. So let's walk through how this all played out. Ayesha, do you want to start with a letter that Donald Trump put out yesterday? Yes. So yesterday, President Trump sent this letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi about the State of the Union. And this is after she had sent a letter a little while back saying that we need to reschedule because of the shutdown. And basically what he says is, I'm going to fulfill my constitutional duty and I'm going to deliver this State of the Union in the chamber of the House of Representatives, just so you're clear. And it would be very sad if this doesn't happen. So he basically kind of called her bluff.

He called her bluff and presumably he thought that she'd back down, but she didn't. She informed him that the House was not going to officially invite him because the government is shut down. She wrote a counter letter saying that, you know, the State of the Union could happen in the future when the government was open. But she wasn't budging. And so Trump actually heard about this letter. He seemed to hear about this letter during a photo op. And he kind of responded saying, I'm not surprised. We just found out that she's canceled it.

I think that's a great blotch on the incredible country that we all love. It's a great, great, horrible mark. I don't believe it's ever happened before. And it's always good to be part of history. But this is a very negative part of history. This is where people are afraid to open up and say what's going on. So it's a very, very negative part of history.

But he also said that we're going to come up with an alternative and we'll let you know, basically in the coming days, what we're going to do. But we'll have an alternative. And then a little after 11 p.m. last night, the president took to Twitter and he had this to say. As the shutdown was going on, Nancy Pelosi asked me to give the State of the Union address. I agreed.

She then changed her mind because of the shutdown, suggesting a later date. This is her prerogative. I will do the address when the shutdown is over. I am not looking for an alternative venue for the State of the Union address because there is no venue that can compete with the history, tradition, and importance of the House chamber. I look forward to giving a, quote, great State of the Union address in the near future, exclamation mark. This was the first face-off of divided government. Two co-equal branches, Donald Trump versus Nancy Pelosi. He blinked. And in the end, although the White House had considered taking up the invitation of state

legislatures in Michigan or West Virginia, or maybe giving the speech in the Senate or giving the speech somewhere, he decided as an old real estate guy, location, location, location was really important. And he said, as you just read, nothing can compete with the history, tradition and importance of the house chamber. He's a reality TV producer. He cared about the set. He wanted to do it in the house chamber. She had something he wanted and she wouldn't give it to him. You know, a lot of this is wrapped up in the shutdown, of course, because that's really the premise here that Nancy Pelosi was saying, don't do this until the government is reopened. And the president agreed essentially in that tweet saying that he

wouldn't do it until the government was back open, which was backing down. And he's been facing a ton of political pressure. Just yesterday, there were a trio of polls from the Associated Press, CBS News and Fox News, importantly, because it's something that President Trump watches with bad news for the president when it comes to the shutdown and his stance on this issue. And usually in shutdowns, one party or the other reaches their pain threshold first. And it seems like the Republicans and Donald Trump have been getting to theirs faster than the Democrats. His approval ratings have fallen. People blame him by big margins for causing the shutdown. And he has tried with all the tools at his disposal, an Oval Office address, a visit to the border. You know, he has tried to make this argument and nothing has worked. Yeah. And I think that for this president in particular, he is very caught up on the power of the Oval Office, the trappings of the presidency. And if he had went out to like the West Virginia State House, you're just not going to get the

imagery that you're going to get being in the House of Representatives with the Democrats kind of forced to sit there and listen to you too. Like you have this captive audience of not just your supporters, but also kind of at times the way it seems they can be viewed as your opponents, but the other party and you get to kind of give your message and they have to kind of sit there and listen to it, that's a powerful scene that you don't get by going someplace else. And so it always seemed kind of sketchy to me whether he would really consider going to another place. And you can't just, the State of the Union isn't a rally. You know, you can't just throw it someplace. So I'm curious how big of a deal this is that the State of the Union has been postponed. Domenico, I know you've looked a lot at the history, right, of the State of the Union

as a whole. Do we have a sense of how rare this is? It's very rare for this to occur. I mean, the last State of the Union that was delayed was in 1986, which was when the Challenger happened, and Ronald Reagan decided that it wouldn't be appropriate to give the speech at that moment. That was his call, not the Speaker of the House, to reject him. Now, at the same time, all that said, the Speaker of the House and Congress have the final say here. So Trump didn't have the leverage to be able to say, I'm going to go anyway. So one of the things, you know, we've heard from the Trump administration is that this is part of their constitutional duty. Is that accurate? Well, you know, it's a little bit of a twist because there's no requirement for them to have to do it in person at the Capitol on

television for millions of people to see. In fact, there's no requirement to actually even do them every year. It's a constitutional requirement to deliver periodic updates. So what the Constitution actually says in Article 2, Section 3, if you want to follow along at home, he shall from time to time give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their consideration and measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient. So in other words, he can come forward and say, I want you to do stuff. Nobody has to do any of that stuff.

He has to tell them what's going on once in a while, but not all the time. He could do it in a tweet. He could do it in a letter. Series of tweets. I've heard threading is a thing now. Yeah. All right.

Anything. A fax. So 90s. All right. Well, we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about the latest on the government shutdown. CNET, The Wirecutter, and PCMag have all named SimpliSafe an editor's choice for home security. And SimpliSafe protects over 2 million people every day. Learn more about SimpliSafe and how to protect your home and family with their home security systems at SimpliSafe.com slash NPR politics.

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Don't Tell Me. If you're a normal Wait, Wait listener, you shout out the answers to all the questions, and then you get frustrated that no one can tell how smart you are. Here's the solution, the Wait, Wait quiz, available now on your smart speaker. Just ask your smart speaker to open the Wait, Wait quiz. Finally, your genius shall be recognized. And we're back. And today, Congress is set to vote on two bills that would potentially reopen the government. So, Domenico, why don't you give us a quick recap of just what's actually in them and whether we actually expect them to be successful? Yeah, so one is based on what the president said Saturday in his speech, which is essentially $5.7 billion in wall funding for temporary protections for immigrants. So that would be essentially what they're voting on. That's expected to fail.

There isn't enough Democratic support to get that over the line. And the second one is simply a few-week delay, reopen the government, and then start negotiations. So that is just a very plain bill, continuing resolution, as they call it, to just temporarily get the government going. That's also expected to fail. But what I think is going to be notable to watch is how many Republicans deviate on one or the other. So if these are both expected to fail, what are the next steps at this point? Well, the next step is to have a real negotiation. You know, the president made the first step when he offered in his Oval Office address a kind of compromise solution. He said,

okay, I still want my $5.7 billion for the wall, but I'm willing to talk about deportation relief for DREAMers and for another class of immigrants. But, Mara, he didn't really negotiate that. He didn't. But that was interesting. He laid that out. He spoke the language of compromise. But then, mysteriously, he didn't invite any Democrats to the White House. He has been talking with Republicans all week. So it seems like what they wanted to do was wait till today, keep Republicans together, and then presumably both sides will begin to talk. Now, Democrats, who have not made a official counterproposal to what

the president laid out in the Oval Office have said, several of them, that everything is up for negotiation, including a barrier, not a wall, except the shutdown. In other words, they're not going to budge on negotiating with him while the government is shut down because they feel that that's setting a terrible precedent. Every time he doesn't get what he wants, he'll shut the government down. Ayesha, is there a strategy in the White House right now? Because one of the things that is very curious to me is we do know what Donald Trump himself put forth, right, over the weekend. But then you also hear that there was an immigration meeting today with members of, say, the Libra Initiative, a conservative group, but also LULAC, which is sort of a much more

mainstream Latino immigration group. I don't understand entirely what's going on. So, yes, Tamara Keith, our Tamara Keith, is reporting that there are discussions kind of in the background about possibly a larger immigration bill. This is something that's being floated by Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law and his senior advisor in the White House. There have been some listening sessions at the White House about this, but we don't know where the president is on that. But talking to people at the White House, they're throwing it back into the court of the Democrats and basically saying we made an offer. Now they need to come and make us a counteroffer. But as Mara talked about, the Democrats are saying they will not negotiate at

all until the government is reopened. But in the past, when we've had these government shutdowns, usually they come up with some solution where the government is opened on a week-to-by-week basis while they have negotiations and that every week they get a chance to either close it or keep it open. And that means that you still have the leverage of shutting down the government. The problem for the president is that the shutdown has become less and less popular. And it's long. It's so long at this point. It's long. And he's being blamed for it. And you have people like the Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who said this morning he doesn't understand why federal workers on furlough have to go to food banks. Why can't they just go take out a loan? Yeah. And here's Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross on CNBC this morning.

There are reports that there are some federal workers who are going to homeless shelters to get food. Well, I know they are, and I don't really quite understand why, because as I mentioned before, the obligations that they would undertake, say a borrowing from a bank or a credit union, are in effect federally guaranteed. So the 30 days of pay that some people will be out, there's no real reason why they shouldn't be able to get a loan against it. A loan that presumably would come with interest. It does come with interest. It also takes time to get a loan. And why should they have to take a loan? Right. I mean, you know, it's not everyone can qualify. Not everyone has good credit for a lot of different reasons. And it can be hard to get a loan. And that was a big fat

target for Democrats who in the past, Nancy Pelosi has already said, what does Donald Trump think these federal workers are going to do? Just take a loan out from their daddy. But the Fox News poll, which has had pretty bad news for the president this week, asked a question, how many paychecks could you miss before you wouldn't be able to pay your bills? Fifty four percent of people said two. And that's the number of paychecks that federal workers are about to miss. That's what's coming tomorrow. And, you know, it's just an easy political punching bag for Democrats. And by the way, right up the 2020 Democrats messaging alley to be able to say, look at these billionaires, these folks who are out of touch, they don't get it. They all work for Trump. They're not looking out for you. It's easy political messaging, especially at a

time when Republicans and President Trump have their backs against the wall in this shutdown. It couldn't come at a worse time to have him say, make a comment like that for the president. And I think that this didn't ring well with people because even for those who greatly support the president, they, I think there is sympathy for people who cannot get paid and who aren't getting paid and cannot feed their families and can't pay their mortgage and all these things that most people can relate to that they would have a hard time if they were missing multiple paychecks or even missing one paycheck. And, you know, another viral moment this week was the Coast

Guard. Top officials from the Coast Guard recorded a video where they were just scathing about their disgust at both sides for letting this shutdown go on because the Coast Guard is the rare branch of the military that is under the Department of Homeland Security and they are not being paid. You as members of the armed forces should not be expected to shoulder this burden. I remain heartened by assistance available to you within the lifelines and by the outpouring of support from local communities across the nation. But ultimately, I find it unacceptable that Coast Guard men and women have to rely on food pantries and donations to get through day-to-day life as service members. Well, if you've got to go out to sea for five months and do a lot of the interdictions and

actually the work along the border, you know, that President Trump talks about trying to stop drugs, who's stopping drugs? It's the Coast Guard. Right. I mean, they're the ones doing a lot of that kind of work. So, yeah. Look, this is going to cause a lot of pain. It's already caused a lot of pain for a lot of people. There are people. Yes, they're going to food pantries. There are people who are, you know, needing donations of diapers, you know, supplies, you know, things like that that are that touch on the core fiber of what we all know. I mean, think about your own situation and whether or not you could make the mortgage or the rent if you missed a paycheck, let alone two. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, can't let it go.

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happening in the news. That's what Up First is for. It's the morning news podcast from NPR, the news you need to take on the day. In just about 10 minutes, listen to Up First on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. And it is now time to end the show like we do every week by talking about the one thing, politics or otherwise, that we just cannot stop thinking about. Dominica, would you like to go first? I would. And, you know, what's interesting is this is completely out of politics here. And I saw this kind of being passed around on Twitter a little bit. And then I decided to go read this interview with Rolling Stone and Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter himself, as this

was heading around Twitter. And he was talking somewhat middle to down, like further down in the story about this weird dinner he had with Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. And they asked him, like, what's the most memorable encounter you had with Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook. And they asked him, like, what did you, what's the most memorable encounter you had with Mark Zuckerberg? And he said, well, there was a year when apparently Mark Zuckerberg was only eating what he killed. Mark Zuckerberg, the hunter. You know, he said that he made goat for him for dinner and he killed the goat. And they were like.

In California, he like found a goat. He went in the backyard and killed the little baby goat pet. Well, he said he didn't kill it in front of him. Okay. But he said that he killed it with a laser gun. The story just keeps getting weirder. And then the knife. I find that hard to believe.

Laser gun? But they do laser. They stun. He stunned him. That was what they wound up coming to, that it was a stun gun. But the best part of it here was that apparently he sent it off to the butcher. And then he says, what else are we eating? And he says, salad.

Then he said, where's the goat? It's in the oven. Then we waited for about 30 minutes. This is from the article. He's like, I think it's done now. Zuckerberg. Yeah. You can't cook a goat.

A whole goat. I don't know if it was filleted or what, but. This shows that Mark Zuckerberg is not running for president. Well, thanks, Mara. Mara's a one-track mind. So he's like, I think it's done now. We go in the dining room. He puts the goat down.

It was cold. Oh, my God. Ew. He said, that was memorable. I don't know if it went back in the oven. I just ate my salad. So you stun it and then you take a knife to it? That just seems cruel.

No, if you're going to kosher it, that's what you would do. Yeah, I've heard this. Oh, is this to be kosher? Yeah, you have to slit its throat. Oh, okay. Mara's only done it twice. I've heard this, actually. Mark Zuckerberg, who has so, who has, anyway, let's not even get started on Mark Zuckerberg.

So how many times have you killed an animal or anything? Well, I can tell you that my freezer is full of wild boar that my son and husband kill, or sometimes it's filled with fish that they caught in Alaska. Most of my protein does come from my family members. Look at that. Every so often, maybe once a year, I'll buy a chicken. On the bottom shelf, though, in the back of Mara's freezer is the hearts and souls of every pundit who tried to challenge her. God, that's dark, Domenico.

No, that's a good one. I like that. All right. Well, I'll go next. Mine is political. So what I cannot let go of this week are millennials like me. So this week, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, his name is Pete Buttigieg. I believe it's a little bit difficult for me to pronounce his last name, but Buttigieg. And his husband had actually tweeted out a bunch of different pronouncers. So you could sort of like go in a million or a few different directions. He has on his site, Buttig, edge, boot edge, edge, I guess, bootage, edge, and then sort of booted judge,

like a few different ways. Well, Mayor Pete announced he's running for president and he's joining, you know, what, more than half a dozen other Democrats who've also officially declared their intentions to run. But what I find really interesting about him, you know, he's a mayor. He's a mayor of a pretty mid-sized city in Indiana, South Bend. I don't even know how many folks have heard of it. Where the University of Notre Dame is. Exactly. But he's really sort of pitching his agenda in running as being this candidate who represents intergenerational change. And, you know, he talks in this video ad that he had about how Washington's a mess, but we can't look for greatness in the past and that that's what too many politicians have been doing. I belong to a generation that is stepping forward right now. We're the generation that

lived through school shootings, that served in the wars after 9-11. And we're the generation that stands to be the first to make less than our parents unless we do something different. So there you have it. Millennials, we're finally running for office. We might be poorer than our parents. We might be way older moms than our moms because we can't afford to have children. But hey, you know, now he's ready to be president. But you can accomplish a lot. He's, you know, he's 37. He's a mayor and he served in Afghanistan. Like this is, you know, he's gay and married. Yeah. I mean, I think him highlighting that generational change message is something that's underlying so much of what we hear about, whether it's on Capitol Hill with the sort of like restive Democratic activist base, not really liking what they see with Democratic leadership all the time and their age.

And on the campaign trail, frankly, you know, as Mara knows, the party has changed quite a bit. This is not Bill Clinton's party anymore. And, you know, it really does seem to belong a little bit more to this more youthful activist base. Well, this is where the Democrats are strongest. I mean, they have tremendous support among not just millennials, but the generation after that. And this is obviously a selling point for young candidates like Buttigieg or Beto O'Rourke. But it's also something that Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders, should they run, will have to answer for. All right. Well, Mara, do you want to go next?

I want to go next. Mine is a political, very topical, can't let it go. I have been thinking a lot about what Donald Trump said about Nancy Pelosi in one of his photo ops yesterday. And here he is. Nancy Pelosi, or Nancy as I call her. The reason I love that so much is that his nicknaming superpowers failed him in the face of the speaker. He couldn't come up with a derogatory, belittling, diminishing nickname for her. Or as I call her, Nancy. Nancy, as I call her. That's as good as you can do.

You notice there was a pause there. The wheels were turning. There was some stuff that he was thinking but didn't want to have to go there. No, I just think that the fact that he hasn't made up a nickname for her, and he certainly has for Chuck Schumer, shows you that he's either intimidated, he's befuddled, doesn't quite know what to do about her, or maybe he respects her. We're not quite sure. But what we do know is that for me, that little moment summed up what we saw this week, which was the first true clash

of divided government, Nancy Pelosi versus Donald Trump. And even though it was just about the State of the Union address, he blinked. She didn't. All right. That was great. Aisha, why don't you wrap things up? Yes. So my can't let it go this week is the Oscars.

And I like the movies, but I don't get to the movies very much because I got them kids and stuff. So I don't get to the movies. But I made a point last year. I noticed The Incredibles 2 didn't make it. It didn't. Although I like that movie. It was pretty. Yeah.

So, but one movie I did make a point to go see because I never get out to go to the movies is The Black Panther. And I love that movie. I felt like out to go to the movies is the Black Panther. And I love that movie. I felt like it lived up to the hype. Some people may disagree, but I love that movie. And it is nominated for a Best Picture. And it is the first. I didn't even realize this, that it was the first superhero movie to be nominated for Best Picture. I thought The Dark Knight had been nominated for best picture, but it had not been.

So as a superhero lover in my core, I am very happy that superhero movies are finally getting recognized. All right, well, that's it for today. We'll be back as soon as there is more political news that you need to know about. And we have exciting news. The podcast team will be hitting the road. We'll be in Atlanta, Georgia for a live show on Friday, March 8th. You can head to NPRPresents.org for tickets. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Ayesha Roscoe.

I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. you