The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, July 12

Episode Date: July 12, 2018

Reversing the harsh criticisms he has leveled at NATO, President Trump says the alliance is very strong. Embattled FBI Agent Peter Strzok clashed with GOP lawmakers in hearings today. And days after the president nominated Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, we break down what we have learned. This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, political reporter Tim Mak, and editor correspondent Ron Elving. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey y'all, this is Kevin Fogg outside Blenheim Palace in Oxford, where President Trump is coming for a black-tie dinner with British Prime Minister Theresa May. This podcast was recorded at 2.46pm on Thursday, July 12th. Things may have changed by the time y'all hear this. Keep up with all the news and great analysis, we here in Oxford are all about serious analysis, at NPR.org, on the NPR One app, or by listening to y'all's local NPR station. All right, here's the show. Can I just say I love that we have a call-in from the UK who says y'all.

Yeah, I didn't know they said y'all in Oxford. Well, hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, and we are here with our weekly roundup of the week's biggest political stories. The president's contentious NPR Politics Podcast, and we are here with our weekly roundup of the week's biggest political stories. The president's contentious meeting with NATO allies, and what it tells us about his foreign policy. Plus, what we know about Trump's pick for the Supreme Court. I'm Asma Khalid, I cover national politics. I'm Ron Elbing, editor-correspondent. I'm Tim Mack, I cover national security.

And I'm Ayesha Roscoe, I cover the White House. So, Ayesha, let's start with the latest news, which is that this morning, President Trump seems to have suggested that he has fixed NATO. So I think we're going to be ultimately treated fairly on trade. We'll see what happens. But I can tell you that NATO now is really a fine-tuned machine. People are paying money that they never paid before. They're happy to do it. And the United States is being treated much more fairly. So where are we at? Because I recall many, many times previously where President Trump has suggested that NATO was an obsolete relationship. So President Trump likes to keep us on our toes.

And today he had a surprise press conference at NATO. And he said that NATO has basically turned around in the past two days of this summit, and that now they are going to spend more on the military and on defense, and that he's basically kind of fixed his problem with NATO, which was that they were not, that the other members were not doing their fair share when it comes to military spending. So we'll get more into what these actual concessions were that President Trump wanted and whether or not they were met by some of the European allies. But Ron, can you tell us a little bit historically about what NATO is?

You know, it seems like it's a relationship, I believe, that began in the 1940s. But what it is and why it has been historically so important to previous U.S. presidents? NATO is an organization. It is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and it dates back to World War II. It's an extension of the Western allies who had fought against the Axis powers. And there are 29 countries in it today, and it has been in place for 70-some years now. And the point of it is not only to foster cooperation between them and put a kind of umbrella of protection over them all, but also to act as a deterrent for the forces that came from the Soviet Union after World War II and occupied much of Eastern Europe, now many of those countries have joined NATO and rely on NATO as really their defense against any future aggression from the East, from Russia. But the NATO alliance hasn't just been used in order to serve as a counterbalance to Russia.

In modern years, especially post 9-11, it's banded together for the collective security of the member states, for example, the mission in Afghanistan. Thousands and thousands of soldiers have been agreed to be sent to Afghanistan as part of the US-led coalition and the NATO-led coalition there. And so it has had this really important historical Cold War context, but in modern times is kind of a bulwark against both Russia and other threats to the collective security of the member states of NATO. So Ayesha, let's talk about what happened at this summit, because prior to President Trump suggesting, well, let's say reaffirming his commitment to the alliance today,

there was a lot of tension. And I would argue that many times even prior to this summit, I had heard President Trump on the campaign trail describing NATO as being obsolete. In fact, it was a pretty consistent message on the campaign trail to bash NATO. So what have his main concerns been with some of the allies? Well, so during the campaign, he was saying that he felt like NATO was obsolete. But if you remember, he did kind of walk that back once he was president. And he kind of said that he had gotten them to focus on some of the things he was concerned about, terrorism and other things. These days, he hasn't been talking so much about NATO being obsolete, but he feels like NATO is taking advantage of the U.S. or really the other members of NATO have been taking advantage of the U.S. because they are GDP on their own individual defense. Now, they set that goal for by 2024. And so what President Trump has said is that that, first of all, that that goal is too far out in the

future, and that people need to be meeting that 2% goal now, Only six countries have met that 2% goal. And so he says that is not good enough. The U.S. is shouldering too much of the burden. Do we have any clarity specifically on that issue, the defense budget spending? I think that what's so striking about today is when you hear President Trump talk today, he really kind of celebrated and said, we fixed NATO. They're stronger. They've they're going to spend more. But it's not actually clear that anything has changed over the past two days at that press conference. President Trump was asked repeatedly, what did these countries agree to? And he was very vague. He didn't say that they had agreed to spend more by a certain date. He didn't say how much they were going to spend. He just said they're going to get to two percent and it will be faster.

Well, that was already an agreement. And so he didn't lay out any timeline. So it's not really clear what changed. He does. Now he's taking credit for countries spending more because they have in all of the countries in NATO have increased their spending when it comes to the military. And at the summit, President Trump suggested even further that he expected some countries ought to be paying 4 percent. Right. I mean, he made those comments. And so he's walking back now with essentially you're saying what was already an established precedent. Well, he said he did say that he suggested that all the countries should move to 4 percent. And for him, that's still on the table. What he said today was they need to meet the 2 percent first and then we're going to look at them moving to do more.

And that more should be 4 percent. Now, it has taken years and a lot of work to even try to get countries to the 2 percent. So to get to 4 percent, which the U.S. isn't even spending 4 percent of its GDP on defense this year, is a huge ask. Ron, to what degree do you see all of this tension that was built in Europe really catering to a domestic audience? There was a lot of public shaming of specific European allies there. Yes. In fact, the president at one point said, oh, well, Germany is totally controlled by Russia because Russia is sending them natural gas that they really need. And he greatly exaggerated the degree of dependency between Germany and Russia

in making that point. And this was part of his negotiating style, if you will, or technique. For example, saying, we're going to have a wall with Mexico, it's going to run from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico, and it's going to be paid for by Mexico. Mexico is going to pay for it. Well, of course, the wall hasn't been built, and Mexico is most certainly not going to pay for any portion of it. And that has only moved further away since he became president. But he will say, and his defenders and his supporters will say, but we're moving towards greater border security because the president put it on the table, because the president said we're going to have this, we're going to have something that's better than what we had before.

And in this particular case, he comes in saying 4%. He says at some point or another, maybe the United States ought to just go at it alone, suggesting that maybe we don't need to protect Europe and Canada and the rest of the NATO alliance anymore. It all interlocks. And it makes a case that obviously appeals to a lot of Americans who feel as though we have been taken advantage of even by our closest allies and partners. So all of this comes just a lot of Americans who feel as though we have been taken advantage of even by our closest allies and partners. So all of this comes just a couple of days before President Trump is slated to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland. And there have been a lot of questions, I would argue, from, you know, from Democrats as well as from traditional U.S.

allies about the relationship that Trump and Putin have had. And I'm curious, from your perspective, Tim, if the way that the NATO summit was handled, you feel like kind of alleviates some of those concerns as we're heading into this Trump-Putin summit. I think President Trump's view and his strategy has always been to create a lot of chaos, whether that is embracing traditional adversaries or challenging traditional allies. And that's one of the big issues that has arisen in this NATO summit, but it's been around. I mean, you can look at the G7 summit or his position on NAFTA. He has traditionally liked to negotiate by taking a very aggressive position. And perhaps the outcome is not that aggressive

position, but it may be in the direction he's seeking. And you the outcome is not that aggressive position, but it may be in the direction he's seeking. And you can see that on trade, and you can see that on foreign affairs and alliances. But alliances only work if there is this sense of synergy, that there's this sense of specialization. Country A will specialize in military specialty X, and country B will specialize in Y. And they can do that because they know that at the end of the day, if there is a military conflict, you can combine your forces and they'll work together. And if you can't trust your allies to defend you, then you start duplicating spending in areas that both countries will need to spend money on. And I think this is a long roundabout way of saying that essentially alliances aren't

just based on raw figures. It's about trust. It's about diplomacy. And it's about cooperation. So on that note, Ron, did Trump deliver to the allies in terms of reaffirming that trust? There seemed to have been two meetings, two summits here, two NATO conferences, one in which there was a certain reading of the minds. There was a document produced. There was signed by everyone, including the president. He did not sign the document coming out of the G7 meeting earlier this year. So in that sense, it should have been a calming kind of event.

And in many ways, it probably was for a lot of our European allies and others in the NATO alliance. Because he signed the document. Well, and also because when there were no cameras present and there were no microphones present, it appears from what we can learn that he was being much more cooperative with our allies and with these other foreign leaders than he was when the bright lights came on and cameras came in. And at that point, he would start saying things like, you're dependent on Russia. And he would start saying things like, you guys haven't been pulling your own weight. And do we really want all these countries? And maybe we should just walk away. And that appears to have been largely for public consumption.

From what I've seen, going back to what Tim was talking about when it comes to this issue of trust is that President Trump sends out very mixed messages. And I think that must be disorienting for the people who have to try to figure out how to plan policy out in the time of Trump. And so even though at times it seems like he's just saying things and not really backing it up, when I talked to some former U.S. officials who had worked in this area, what they said was made this time different with this NATO summit is that now that President Trump has issued these like tariffs and is basically kind of getting into a trade war that people last year didn't think he was going to do it, that he would hold back, that he was just kind of bluffing now they think sometimes what if president trump does follow through if they don't significantly increase their spending will president trump then say oh they haven't done enough now i'm going to do something uh so it's kind of like this game of chicken is he going to is he just talking is he just bluffing? Or is he serious? And it does seem to be working in the sense that European allies are spending more, partly because they

are saying, we don't know where the U.S. is going to be, and we don't know if they'll always be reliable. So we have to start looking out for ourselves. All right, we're going to turn now to some domestic news. Peter Strzok, an FBI agent, was summoned to Capitol Hill. And you might remember him because Peter was one of the FBI agents removed from the Russia probe because of anti-Trump text messages he sent during the 2016 election. Tim, you were watching what happened today on the Hill. Explain to us actually why he was there. Why had he even been asked to come to the Hill to testify? So the Department of Justice Inspector General was looking into, hey, what happened behind the scenes in the Hillary Clinton emails and investigations and in the Russia probe that

has now become the special counsel investigation into possible Russia-Trump campaign ties. And as part of this, they found these texts that Peter Strzok sent to another FBI employee with whom he had an affair. Can you remind people just what are some of these texts? Yeah, these texts include disparaging things about Donald Trump during the campaign. They include statements like, will, quote, stop him from being elected and also disparaging things about Trump voters that he said he apparently ran into in Virginia. in the House who are interested in perhaps undercutting whatever conclusions the eventual Mueller investigation will lead to. So, Tim, what was the actual goal of this all? I mean, I saw a portion of the hearing and at points it just felt like a lot of political theater. It certainly was theatrical. There were, you know, points of order, parliamentary inquiry,

just Democrats trying to gum up the works and Republicans going after Peter Strzok. In our justice system, we give law enforcement officers incredible powers. The power to investigate, to search, to seize, to stop. The power to allege and accuse. The power to eavesdrop and intercept private communications, the power to look through bank records, the power to look through phone records, the power to even check what books you checked out of the library. These are all some powers that must be used responsibly because those powers affect reputations and freedom. But what he says, look, he acknowledges that he sent those texts. What he

argues, though, is that he left his personal opinions at home. Here's him at the hearing talking about that difference. In terms of the text that we will stop it, you need to understand that that was written late at night, off the cuff, and it was in response to a series of events that included then-candidate Trump insulting the immigrant family of a fallen war hero. And my presumption, based on that horrible, disgusting behavior, that the American population would not elect somebody demonstrating that behavior to be president of the United States. It was in no way unequivocally any suggestion that me, the FBI, would take any action whatsoever to improperly impact the electoral process for any candidate. So I take great offense and I take great disagreement to your assertion of what that was or wasn't. As to the 100 million to one, that was clearly a statement made in jest and using hyperbole. I, of course, recognize that millions of Americans were likely to vote for candidate Trump.

I acknowledge that is absolutely their right. That is what makes our democracy such a vibrant process that it is. But to suggest somehow that we can parse down the words of shorthand textual conversations like there's some contract for a car is simply not consistent with my or most people's use of text messaging. I can assure you. Peter Strzok claims that all of this is playing into Putin's hands. But, Tim, you've actually been looking into some real Russian interference. Really solid reporting that I found fascinating about some stuff that happened during the 2016 election that essentially was an effort, it seems, to exploit trust in local news. Talk to us about that. I found it utterly fascinating.

Well, it's really interesting because what happened was in the months and the years since the 2016 election, Twitter has been identifying accounts linked to this Russian troll farm in St. Petersburg, the Internet Research Agency. And it's given the House Intelligence Committee thousands of Twitter account names that it says is linked to the Internet Research Agency. So NPR looked through them and we found dozens of them were basically trying to be fake local news sites. Like give us some examples. We identified 48 such accounts and they've got names like El Paso Top News, Milwaukee Voice, Camden City News, Seattle Post. We're talking about whether it's California or Texas. They're smaller towns, not New York City, but, they are trying to pretend to be local news.

And what does that mean? Like, why is that important? There's also such a void of local news. So, gosh, that's interesting, too. But we also trust local news in a way that maybe we trust national news a little less. And surveys show that 82% of Americans say that they trust local news a lot, or at least some. And basically what the Internet Research Agency-linked accounts would do is they would create these fake local news sites. One example is Chicago Daily News.

That's actually the name of a real newspaper that shuttered in 1978. They started it in May 2014, and they just posted real local news headlines, and they accumulated 19,000 followers by mid-2016. So what does this tell us? It tells us a couple things. It tells us that the Russian effort was a years-long campaign starting back in 2014. It also tells us that maybe they didn't perhaps know exactly how they'd use this accumulated trust. And what it finally tells us is that the Russian government knew about American vulnerability. They knew that we viewed local news outlets with greater trust, and they sought to exploit that gap. It's so sophisticated in some ways.

You remember the New Yorker cartoon a few years ago, two dogs talking. One has got his paw up on a computer keyboard and says, you know, on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a Russian troll farm. And as a result, millions of people were exposed to all kinds of messages that were coming to them through social media and through what appeared to be legitimate news outlets, such as you just described, Tim. And they didn't know, but that what they were seeing was just as legitimate as what they might see in an actual newspaper or watching an actual news operation. They didn't have any immediate way of telling the difference. And Tim, do you know exactly what they were trying to do? It was

just disruption, just kind of pushing false narratives here and there? Or what was the goal? Here's the interesting thing. They never, ever tweeted out fake news. They didn't tweet out false information. They hadn't been operationalized yet. What they were doing was tweeting out real news and accumulating followers and accumulating trust for some future event that they never ultimately were able to do. They weren't ultimately used. But it gives us insight into the nature of the Russian information warfare operation, right? And this is something that lawmakers and on both sides of the aisle, Republicans and Democrats and people in the intelligence community say continues to this day, this information warfare that the Russians are engaged in. This is something that they will

continue until dissuaded to do so, and they haven't been dissuaded to do so. So President Trump was asked today about his meeting with President Putin, and he said that he's going and President Trump said that he is going to ask Putin about election meddling once again. And he said, I'm going basically, I'm going to ask him about it. He may deny it again. And then if he does, what can you do? And so I think that's an interesting approach, especially when you compare that where when President Trump talks about NATO and the allies, he doesn't say in trade. He doesn't say, well, you know, if they if they say they won't make changes, what can you do? He makes it very clear they're going to face consequences. But in this situation, he didn't use that type of language when it came to Putin. So I thought that was interesting.

All right. We're going to leave that there. Tim, I know you've got some reporting to do, so we're going to let you go for now. Of course. Thank you. OK, we're going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we'll talk about what we know thus far about Brett Kavanaugh. That's Donald Trump's pick for the Supreme Court. Support for NPR Politics and the following message come from Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans. Rocket Mortgage gives you confidence when it comes to buying a new home or refinancing your existing home loan. With Rocket Mortgage, you can apply simply and understand all

the details so you can mortgage confidently. To get started, go to rocketmortgage.com slash NPR politics. Equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states. NMLSconsumeraccess.org number 3030. When the Supreme Court heard the travel ban case this spring. Donald Trump, president of the United States versus Hawaii. One family story came up in oral arguments. This is a 10-year-old daughter in Yemen with cerebral palsy who wants to come to the United States to save her life. What happens to that girl and her family? On the next Embedded, on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hey, we're back and we're joined by NPR's justice correspondent, Carrie Johnson. Hey, Carrie. Hey there. It has been a few days since President Trump announced Brett Kavanaugh as his pick for the Supreme Court. We've been able to learn a little bit more just about who Brett Kavanaugh is. So before we actually just dive into the conversation, I'm curious what you all thought has been kind of just the most interesting little nugget that we've gleaned. I'll start by saying, and we can talk about this more later, that I have discovered the man quite loves baseball, it seems. Yes, he does.

Enough to buy tickets sometimes on his credit card, even if his credit card is maxed out. Is that the problem? Is that the issue? But he does love the Nats, and he does love to watch them at a place called Chevy Chase Lounge, where he has been seen quite oftentimes, and where the bartender, Tim Higgins, has just learned in the last several days that this kind of regular customer that he just knows as Brett, who comes in and watches the Nats games and has a Bud and a burger, is actually Trump's nominee to the United States Supreme Court. He didn't even know he was a lawyer. Ah, there you have it. When you get a famous

customer and you didn't even know. Yeah, he doesn't apparently wear it on his sleeve. Just his affection for the Nats. Something that I learned about Kavanaugh is that he went to this prep school, Georgetown Prep, and that's the same high school that Neil Gorsuch went to. So maybe people already knew that. But that was news to me. I mean, obviously, when you go to these elite schools, I don't know how unusual it is that you end up going to more elite spaces. But I mean, that's kind of a bit of a coincidence. So what I learned is that Brett Kavanaugh spent some time with his church, which happens to be Catholic, along with many other current members of the Supreme Court, and that yesterday, after a long day of meeting with senators, Brett Kavanaugh

put on some shorts and he showed up to feed the homeless a hot meal in the middle of his confirmation process. And somebody managed to take a picture and post it on Twitter so everybody like us could learn that here was the Supreme Court nominee doing some good in the world. So, Carrie, I want to have you explain specifically to us more about Brett Kavanaugh's record, because that's something that in the immediate moments was hard to dig into because he just has such a long record. He's a federal appeals court judge who's just been on the bench for a number of years. So talk to us about what you have found to be some of the more interesting opinions he's made over the years. Yeah, sure. So if he's confirmed, he'd be replacing Anthony Kennedy, the man for whom he clerked many years ago. But Kavanaugh is more conservative in some ways than

Anthony Kennedy is. Take a look, for instance, at his dissent in 2011. Washington, D.C. used to have some pretty strict gun regulations. And the federal appeals court on which Kavanaugh sits upheld a gun regulation. But in 2011, Brett Kavanaugh dissented. He said the Second Amendment and Supreme Court precedent meant that D.C.'s ban on certain kinds of semi-automatic weapons should be invalidated. And Kavanaugh said, basically, these semi-automatic weapons are in common use, everyday use, for people who want to defend themselves in their homes or even go hunting. And he said, listen, I grew up in the Washington, D.C. area. I know that there's a bad history of violence in this area, but we got to follow the precedent from the Supreme Court. We got to follow

the Second Amendment. And Brett Kavanaugh would have struck down this local D.C. ordinance against semi-automatic weapons. So, Carrie, it sounds like what you're saying is that Justice Kennedy was perhaps a swing vote when it came to guns issues, but we can expect that if confirmed, Brett Kavanaugh will be significantly to the right on this. We don't want to draw too many conclusions from one dissent in one case with one specific set of facts based in D.C. That said, Brett Kavanaugh's jurisprudence, as it exists right now on the books, suggests that he has a pretty fulsome view of the Second Amendment and that if a gun case comes to the Supreme Court, he might act on those

views. Remember that Clarence Thomas, who's currently on the Supreme Court, has been beating up his fellow justices for a couple of terms now because in his view, there are a whole bunch of really good gun rights cases that have been teed up to get to the high court. And for whatever reason, the justices are not accepting them. They're not hearing those cases. And it only takes four to hear a case, correct? That's exactly right. So Brett Kavanaugh, if he gets confirmed onto the Supreme Court, may want to hear some of these challenges which supporters of guns would like the Supreme Court to get to. And if people are wondering why suddenly the court's docket has lots more of those cases, after Kavanaugh is confirmed, if he's confirmed, that will be the reason.

And so when you talk about there's these cases that gun rights supporters want to be before the Supreme Court, what are some things that they're looking for or hoping that the Supreme Court might overturn or uphold? Yeah, there's one big one. There's one big issue in particular. And that is that people seem to agree, the court seems to agree, that you have the Second Amendment right to self-defense in your home. So you could keep your gun in your home. No problem. There's a big question about taking your gun outside the home and whether there's an actual right to carry your weapon outside the house for self-defense.

And gun rights groups very much want the Supreme Court to make a powerful statement on that issue, which would communicate a big message to states like California, which have a lot of gun regulations on the books. The Supreme Court has not gone that far. It has not accepted that invitation to date. With a new member on the court, with Brett Kavanaugh on the court, the court may decide to hear that kind of case and make a much bolder statement than this court has decided it wants to make so far. Carrie, there's another part of Brett Kavanaugh's record that's been getting a lot of attention that I'd love to have you explain to us. My understanding is that, you know, Brett Kavanaugh wrote a law review article in which he, in a nutshell, broadly supported leeway for a sitting president under an investigation.

What I found kind of remarkable is that this came after he himself had worked under the Ken Starr investigation, investigating former President Bill Clinton in the 1990s. Wrote a lot of it, wrote a lot of what eventually became the case to impeach Bill Clinton. So how does he square that? Two things. Brett Kavanaugh did in fact serve as a lawyer working for Ken Starr, investigated the death of Vince Foster, a close aide to Bill Clinton, wrote a lot of the legal arguments in the Starr, investigated the death of Vince Foster, a close aide to Bill Clinton, wrote a lot of illegal arguments in the Starr report about impeachment, as Ron just said. But Brett Kavanaugh had another interesting and informative biographical tidbit, which is that after he worked for Ken Starr, Brett Kavanaugh went into the George W. Bush White House and worked there for five years or more. And in one of the jobs that he had in the Bush White House,

he touched virtually every piece of paper President Bush ever saw or signed. And Kavanaugh says in these law review articles that that informed his experience of how busy a president is and whether a president should be bothered or inconvenienced with civil lawsuits or, God forbid, even a criminal investigation. So Kavanaugh came out and said in this 2009 Law Review article in the Minnesota Law Review, that in his view, a president should be insulated from both civil lawsuits and criminal investigations until after he leaves office. Now,

Democrats have seized on that point to say, this could tell us a lot about what Brett Kavanaugh would do with respect to the Bob Mueller investigation into Russian election interference. Brett Kavanaugh's defenders are out there saying, read the words in his law review article. What they're saying is that Brett Kavanaugh supports Congress passing legislation that would temporarily insulate the president from those kinds of probes. Not that the president has the power now, but that Congress should act and give the president that power on a temporary basis. So that in that sense, he is still supporting the idea of a separation of powers. He just thinks that Congress ought to proactively be involved if a president is going to be insulated. Carrie, I want to bring this back to

you because I guess what I'm trying to wrap my head around is why this is such a concern to some of the Democrats in Congress. Is it that they fear this is going to come up in the context of the Mueller investigation? There's a situation where Brett Kavanaugh might have to rule on some aspect of this. We've been listening to Rudy Giuliani, the president's lawyer and de facto PR guy, talking about conditions under which the president might sit for an interview with the special counsel Bob Mueller. That interview has not happened. The conditions seem to change based on the wind, based on Rudy Giuliani's mood or President Trump's mood that day. And at some point, Bob Mueller, the special counsel, is going to have to decide, are we just going to do this interviewing the president? Or might we issue a subpoena to the president of the United States? And if that happens, there could be litigation that very easily can make its way to the U.S. Supreme Court, on which Brett Kavanaugh desperately wants to sit. So there is a scenario,

pretty easy scenario, in which Kavanaugh may be called upon to answer questions about whether the president can be subpoenaed in a criminal investigation. And Democrats want to ask him that question. In fact, some Senate Democrats want Kavanaugh to acknowledge that issue and recuse himself in the course of his confirmation hearings. President Trump clearly focuses a lot on this Mueller investigation. He tweets about it all the time. We don't know that this factored into his decision with Kavanaugh at all. But this is something that has to have some resonance with President Trump. If he's looking at, well, especially since Giuliani has been making these arguments very clearly that presidents don't have to comply with subpoenas.

And there's a big question of the power that the president has in these situations. All right. Well, speaking of investigations, let's talk about Paul Manafort. Because the last time we heard about Paul Manafort, who was President Trump's former campaign chairman, he was going to jail. But, Carrie, you have a headline in a news story that I just want to read because I found the headline so funny. It says, never mind, please don't move me to jail near Washington after all. What is going on? So Paul Manafort and various filings in the Paul Manafort case have had me running around this newsroom like a chicken with my head cut off. I was like flop sweating yesterday. Every five seconds, some new development would

happen. Here's what's going on. Paul Manafort is scheduled to go to trial in Virginia on July 25th. And in advance of that trial, what lawyers do is file last minute motions back and forth, back and forth. There's a legal tug of war. And what's happened is that Paul Manafort has asked to delay the trial in Virginia. He wants to put it off till the fall. He says that he's having too hard a time reviewing his documents and talking with his lawyers because he's incarcerated in this jail, like 100 miles away from Washington, D.C., and it's a hardship. So, judge, give me some more time. Postpone the trial. So, the judge in the case in Virginia says, okay, Paul, I'm going to move you to the Alexandria Detention Center, which happens to be super close to the courthouse where you're going on trial.

And then you're not going to have any trouble and you can get ready for trial and all is good. Except except Paul Manafort's lawyers filed a motion saying, never mind. I'm happy to be kept in this jail. The Northern Neck Regional Jail in Warsaw, Virginia. Just keep me here. It's too much trouble to move me. And anyway, it's fine here. It's just fine.

There might be a shock of adjustment to a new prison venue for the prisoner, I believe, was one of the arguments. That it would be too much of an adjustment for him to make. Because he's in quite a fancy jail, right? Well, let's put a pin on this. How about a quotation mark or two around fancy? But it's a prison where he probably has a certain amount more isolation. He's not in general prison population as we understand it. Well, amidst all this back and forth between Manafort and the judge,

the special counsel team weighed in with its own rather explosive motion, which I synthesize as cut out the excuses, Paul. And in the course of this motion, the Justice Department revealed that it has been monitoring Paul Manafort's jail phone calls, which is something that DOJ authorities do on a fairly regular basis with high-profile prisoners. And it says that Paul Manafort has been telling people he is in a VIP-type situation in this jail 100 miles away from Washington, D.C. So he claims it was fancy. It's a very important prisoner, is what that, very important prisoner. And let me tell you some more things about this, because it's going to shock you. He doesn't have to wear a uniform. He has his own phone or multiple phones. He has his own laptop. It's kind of a big operation. And he gets to talk

to his lawyers and meet with his lawyers and talk with his family members. And he's been having all kind of conversations with these folks. And so DOJ basically says this guy is living pretty large for somebody who's been locked up pending trial for allegedly tampering with witnesses. And we want the judge to know that. I heard this story, to be blunt, for the first time this morning on a hip hop radio station of which their take on this was hilarious. I think that's sort of where I got this narrative of a fancy jail, because there was sort of this comic nature of, well, what kind of jail is this where you can make phone calls to whoever you want? I think they said he had his own bathroom. I don't know if that is accurate.

It's true. It's true. Yeah. And that's my question is, like, why is he being treated this way? Like, it doesn't seem like the average prisoner gets this sort of treatment. Like, why is he being treated that way? All right. To be fair, there are security concerns with respect to Paul Manafort.

And you could make an argument that he needs to be separated from the general population of the prison if somebody inside there doesn't like Paul Manafort or doesn't like the man for whom Paul Manafort once worked, Donald Trump. And so maybe he gets a little bit of a better treatment behind bars because he has to be separated from the rest of the prison. But you know what? This whole thing, this whole back and forth became moot because once the judge in Virginia learned more about the conditions under which Paul Manafort was held 100 miles away, the judge said that his ability and his need to prepare for trial trumped, this was the exact words, trumped any personal comfort for Paul Manafort. And the judge ordered he be moved to Alexandria. And that has happened. No word yet on what kinds of conditions Paul Manafort is enjoying or not enjoying in Alexandria, but maybe not as nice as Warsaw.

All right. Well, we are going to take a quick break. And when we get back, we're going to talk about the one thing that we cannot let go this week. Support for NPR and the following message come from SimpliSafe, home security done right. The New York Times Wirecutter calls SimpliSafe the best home security. SimpliSafe is thoughtfully designed so you can blanket your home with protection and never notice it. There are no contracts, and CNET, the wire cutter, and PCMag all name it their top pick for home security. Over 2 million people use it every day. Learn more about how SimpliSafe can help you today.

Go to simplisafe.com slash NPR politics. This is Peter Sagal. When we began Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, we dreamed that our rude jokes would be in the end the appropriate way to talk about the news. And look, it happened. Listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me on the NPR One app or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back and we're going to end the show like we do every week by talking about the one thing, politics or otherwise, that we just cannot let go. All right, Aisha, you're up first. Okay, so let me set the scene. I was in Brussels for the NATO summit and last night there was this big kind of reception at this art and history museum with the leaders of NATO and with their spouses. And so they did these family portraits, which they always do, which is like the leaders stand on a stage and they take pictures.

And then afterwards, all of a sudden they said, there's, you know, there's entertainment. And so we're standing, we in the press are standing there watching the leaders who've now turned to look. And through this kind of archway, we see all these guys in suits and they're playing saxophones and they're playing like techno music and they're like dancing like in a rave. You can't see Ron, but Ron's dancing. And then out of nowhere, and I'm holding my boom mic and I'm supposed to be just capturing the sound. There is a woman who is being lifted up by balloons. Picture the movie Up. And instead of a house, it's a woman in a white dress. And she's being lifted up. And was just like oh wow it totally shocked me it sounds like a circus performance well that's you know that's Brussels amazing like what happens

in Brussels usually stays so she was floating and then there was pyrotechnics so I can't let go of that because I was afraid that they were going to let go of her and she was going to go floating all the way away but they didn. They held on to the strings. And and but yeah, that was just like the one of the kind of weirdest like work things that I've seen, like in such a kind of distinguished setting. It was it was weird, but it was cool. OK, I will go next. Mine is not so funny. So I will begin by saying that.

And Carrie, I would love your insights on this. I have been fascinated by the story this morning that's being reported out that the Department of Justice has quietly reopened an investigation into the murder of Emmett Till. And we should remind folks, if you're not familiar with Emmett Till, this was about in the mid-1950s. He was a 14-year-old black boy This was about in the mid 1950s. He was a 14 year old black boy who was killed in rural Mississippi. He was accused of making sexual remarks to a white woman, possibly grabbing her as well. And not only was he killed, but there were photographs showing his gruesome body. And it was really a death that in many ways, kind of, was sort of a catalyst, you could say, for the civil rights movement.

In any case, the case was reopened a few years ago. Nothing really amounted from it. So I was intrigued to see that it is reopening this case. And it doesn't really get into the details of exactly why. It says that it's an ongoing investigation, so it can't exactly explain. But there you have it. I just thought that this is fascinating. It's been 60's an ongoing investigation, so it can't exactly explain. But there you have it. I just thought that this is fascinating. It's been 60 plus years since this all happened. It has. And, you know, members of Congress, bipartisan members of Congress,

have called at different points on the Justice Department to reinvestigate some of those civil rights era cases from the 50s and 60s, where maybe justice was not served on the people who deserved it, because local law enforcement in that era just didn't take these crimes, and they are crimes, seriously enough, or local juries just didn't want to be convinced of the weight of the evidence in front of them. And I'd also point out that one reason the Justice Department may have decided to reopen this case is that a book has come out in which the woman Emmett Till allegedly catcalled back in those days acknowledged that she was not entirely truthful at the time. And that is a bit of new evidence that has come out just in the last year or two. I recall hearing that, yeah. And that's worth reopening this case if anybody deserves justice.

It's Emmett Till and his family. Remember, his case became a catalyst because his mother decided that Emmett Till should have an open casket so the world could see what had been done to her boy. And those images, which appeared on the covers of magazines around the country, are with us to this day. If I could just add, I think the story of Emmett Till, it's so powerful because lynching in this country, it's been such a terrible stain. And the fact that even now you're still seeking justice for all these people who, even outside of Emmett Till, who never got justice for what happened to them. And it was really scarring for the people who had to grow up in that time.

Talking to my grandparents, talking to my grandmother, she would talk about how fearful she was growing up in North Carolina in the 20s and how dangerous it was. If you did anything wrong, you could face the ultimate punishment outside of what was supposed to be justice. So it's a very serious thing, and I think I will definitely follow what happens with this reopening. All right, Ron? Can't let go of this report this morning from Mike Allen of Axios, a very well-plugged-in reporter. And he has reported that Donald Trump would like to redesign Air Force One. Now, we know that he's already renegotiated with Boeing for the 747s that will be replacing the current Air Force One.

And he apparently has a new paint job in mind, wants to make some changes to the bed as well. But the thing everyone will notice around the world is that he wants to repaint it. The color currently was designed by John F. Kennedy, apparently with a lot of input from Jackie Kennedy. And it is blue and white, and it is called ultramarine, ultramarine rather than blue. So there's no red on the plane. And therefore, President Trump feels that it does not properly represent the strength of the red in the red, white, and blue of the American flag, and would like something that's a little more pronounced.

So what's his color scheme? Well, we know that it's red, white, and blue, and that there would be a strong red. Of course, Axios, which publishes Mike Allen, has given us a visual rendering of this, but that is entirely imaginary. We do not know yet what the president has in mind, except that he does not like the ultramarine. No gold? He calls it a Jackie Kennedy color. And, oh, I should add,

I should add, you said gold. There is a suggestion that he might want to add a good bit of gold to the design, as of course, we know, his favorite color. There you go. It's a signature in Trump Tower. I think the blue on the Air Force One, it's nice. It's like, you know, it's not too gaudy. It's not too out there. But it's kind of refined. Well, and that may be the problem. I love shiny things, so I love gold. But I don't know. Do you want that on Air Force One, though, is the question. Are they going to have a big eagle on it?

Well, that's another speculation is that there would be a golden eagle. But, you know, if you have seen Donald Trump's personal airplane, which he used throughout his campaign, and we saw it, of course, many places around the country during the campaign, it is enormously distinctive. You know instantly that Donald Trump is present at a particular airport or in a particular city because his plane is at the airport. And that's the kind of high impact that he sees his presence conveying in reality. And also, of course, wants that represented in his airplane. Last quick question for you, Ron. How does this actually happen? Like, is it easy to just redesign Air Force One if you are the president?

Not easy, perhaps, but John F. Kennedy did it. Everyone's kind of lived with it since. It was a tribute to him, like the naming of airports and this and that, freeways around the country. People don't, generally speaking, go back and retract that kind of tribute. But it's been 55 years. And after all, it may be, in at least this president's mind, time to move on. Time for a makeover. All right. All right, Carrie, why don't you go next? Well, I woke up this morning and I turned on the news and I thought, not for the first time this year.

Is this real life? And then I turned up the radio and it turned out my ears were working. And that NPR was reporting that Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, had been taken into custody overnight. She was arrested on misdemeanor charges at an adult entertainment establishment in Columbus, Ohio, allegedly for touching patrons, which is a violation of Ohio law. Wait, did she touch them or did the patrons touch her? You know, the details are sparse here, but there's an Ohio law on the books dating back to 2007 that says, if you're a semi-nude or fully nude entertainer, you are not supposed to be touching patrons in those establishments. And so Stephanie Clifford, also known as Stormy Daniels, has this lawyer, Michael Avenatti. You might have heard about him if you have eyes and ears in 2018. And Michael Avenatti was reporting that these charges were politically motivated and crazy. And guess what? Just before we walked in this studio, authorities in Ohio dropped these misdemeanor charges against Stormy

Daniels. So the story has a beginning, a middle and an end, and it didn't even last 24 hours, which is kind of the way things work. I was gonna say that feels like the perfect plague for 2018, or for basically our entire news cycle at this point. But Carrie, did I hear that there were like three detectives who were undercover who were touched by Stormy? And that's how the charges came. I would just like to know how often do they run these undercover stings to see if like strippers are actually touching people? That seems it seems like a weird use of police power. It's an interesting resource question. And perhaps if NPR decides to send me to Columbus, Ohio, at some point, I can fully investigate the matter then. All right. Well, that is a wrap for today. And a reminder that it is our promise to you that whenever there is a headline, we will be there to discuss it. And we have a major headline

coming Monday morning when President Trump will meet with Vladimir Putin for a summit in Helsinki. We'll be posting a podcast in your feeds that morning right after the summit ends, and it'll give you everything you need to know about what Trump and Putin discussed. All right. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Ayesha Roscoe, and I cover the White House. I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.