The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, July 13

Episode Date: July 13, 2017

Senate Republicans revise their health care bill, Donald Trump Jr's emails continue to dog the White House, and the President heads to Paris. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Geoff Bennett, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. 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 there, Paula Poundstone here. I hate to interrupt, but maybe you might like to listen to my new show, live from the Poundstone Institute, where I talk to researchers about interesting studies. It's like Hidden Brain, except our brains are really well hidden. Find it now on the NPR One app and wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey y'all, this is Emily in West Nile, Uganda. This podcast was recorded at 2.15 on Thursday, the 13th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. So keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at NPR.org, on the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. All right, here's the show.

It's the NPR Politics Podcast here to discuss the latest on the Donald Trump Jr. email story, confirmation hearings for the new FBI director, the Senate GOP and health care, and the president's trip to France. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Jeff Bennett and I cover Congress. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. OK, so we are going to be taping the show a little bit out of order today. Think of it as your politics podcast does Pulp Fiction. Sue, who is on the hill right now in a little radio booth, will be here for health care and then she will go away. We will talk about Don Jr. and Kerry Johnson will be here for that.

But then Sue will be back for Can't Let It Go. And I can't wait. OK, so let's start with health care, since that's the big news of the day. Republican leadership in the Senate is out with a revised version of their Better Care Reconciliation Act. Sue, they basically couldn't vote on a previous version. They spent a couple of weeks working on this. What does it do? What's changed? You know, the fundamental core of the bill is still the same. It still repeals most, but now not all, of the taxes in the Affordable Care Act. It completely revamps the Medicaid program, and it would make it easier for insurance companies to offer less comprehensive plans. The changes that they have added into it are no surprises.

We've been hearing about this in about the past week when they've been negotiating these changes. The most significant ones, I would say, as you've reported on, Tam, there's additional money in there to combat the opioid epidemic. It's about $45 billion. That was a big ask for senators from states that have been hit particularly hard by the epidemic. Notably, they're going to keep in place existing taxes on the wealthiest of Americans. Now, these were the taxes that were imposed under the Affordable Care Act to help pay for the health care bill. And this is interesting because the initial bill got rid of all the taxes. And there were actually quite a few Republicans who were like, hey, this doesn't look good. Well, right. So the House passed bill and the initial version of the Senate bill repealed all the taxes because the Republican Party doesn't support these taxes. But it turns out when you're actually trying to find ways to pay for health care, you need revenue. And so there was some really interesting voices in the party, including Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Bob Corker of Tennessee, among others, who were

saying it's going to be really hard to go home and say we cut taxes on the wealthy to reduce health care coverage for the poor. That's just not a winning message. And so there was a critical mass of Republicans who said, look, we need to keep some of these taxes in place in order to pay for the things we want to do. Part of that is it includes more, about $70 billion more to help states stabilize their markets. And it also includes a new provision that would say people that have health savings accounts for the first time could use money in that account to help pay for their premiums. Currently, you can't do that. So fundamentally, the bill has not changed. These tweaks to the bill has not changed.

These tweaks to the bill were put in there essentially to try and thread this needle to be able to get enough conservatives and moderates on board to get those 50 votes McConnell needs to bring it to the floor and ultimately vote on it. I could see how some of these things could be somewhat more appealing, but the moderates have been pretty loud and clear, especially the ones coming from states that have opioid problems or that have expanded Medicaid and seen their Medicaid rolls vastly increase, that the cuts envisioned in this bill for Medicaid are just like a nonstarter for them. So did they get anything out of this? Well, you know, this is this is the hard part that McConnell faces. Already today, they dropped this new version of the bill, and we still have two hard no's on the procedural vote to begin debate on the bill. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Susan Collins of Maine today said they are no's on that vote,

which means that if only one more Republican says that they are a firm no on motion to proceed, this is all over. They don't even get to bring up the bill. There is no debate. Health care is dead in the Senate. An extra no could be Dean Heller from Nevada, because remember, one of the reasons why he was opposed to the initial Senate bill was because of the pushback he was getting from his own governor, Brian Sandoval.

About Medicaid. About Medicaid. And there's some 20-plus states across the country, some of them represented by Republican governors. And those governors have real issues about not only the cuts to Medicaid, but they don't want to be responsible for paying for some of the older and disabled folks who will be effectively pushed off the health care roll. So I think one of the people to look for is to see what he does and some other senators who represent these states. Dean Heller is absolutely at the top of that list. I would also put in that orbit of the people to watch are Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Rob Portman of Ohio, and maybe even some surprises like Jerry Moran of Kansas.

He was one of the senators who came out and said he was opposed to the last version of the bill. And that sort of came out of nowhere. You know, a Republican from Kansas was seen as sort of a reliable vote on this. So it shows you how tough of a vote this is for a lot of Republicans. But Sue, McConnell was always counting on two no's. In other words, that was all he could have. And there were kind of two permission slips that he could give out. And Rand and Susan have taken them. Right. But we haven't heard about any more hard no's. So you could look at this and say

that he has a chance to get this through with the 50 votes that he's always needed. Exactly. And two things. One is, you know, everybody focuses on the exchanges. Only 7 percent of Americans get their health care through the individual insurance market. Twenty percent of Americans get their insurance on Medicaid. And one of the problems that some of the moderates have is not just what the bill does to the Medicaid expansion under Obamacare. It obviously rolls it back. But what it does to the fundamental nature of Medicaid as a program. This has nothing

to do with the Affordable Care Act at all. It transforms Medicaid in the future from an entitlement, an open-ended entitlement, into a block grant. That is a much bigger, more profound piece of social policy than anything else this bill does to Obamacare. And I think it's kind of getting lost in the shuffle. And the other thing that I've heard from political people, Republican political operatives, is they feel that the political price of not passing this is so much higher than the price Republicans would pay for passing any piece of legislation. Their message is just pass it. Anything, pass anything. Yes. And I would also say in the short term, this has been the majority leader's argument to Republicans about voting on that procedural vote to just begin debate. His message is,

just let us have the debate. We have to start. We have to have this fight. Now, they could get on the bill and it could still fail in the end. But there's also a view that says, if they can't even get the votes for the motion to proceed to start the debate, that's politically even worse for Republicans. Because the takeaway from that is, the Republican Party would not even agree to start debate on a bill to repeal and replace Obamacare. And if your strictly political concern is letting down your party's base, that's a heck of a way to do it. But the obverse is true because Democrats see the motion to commit as the best and possibly only way to stop this. Because once you get past that, you can amend the bill in all sorts of ways and in effect buy off people who have doubts and they get their amendment in there and then they can say, OK, that's the reason I'm going to

vote for this. That's totally true. I have one other. No, I have a lot of other questions. But here's my here's my latest question. In the last week or so, we've been hearing a lot about Ted Cruz and Mike Lee. These are two conservative senators who were offering some sort of new thing that would be part of the bill that, Sue, can you explain it or Jeff? Yeah, so effectively, the amendment that Cruz and Lee were floating would allow insurers to sell plans in a state that did not meet the Affordable Care Act mandates, as long as they sold at least one that did. And so the people who were opposed to it said that it would essentially bifurcate the insurance market, that you would have younger, healthier people go towards the cheaper, non-Obamacare plans,

and then that would effectively push all the older and sicker people into the plans that would force them to pay more for their care. And that would just bring on the death spiral in theory. Yeah, essentially. And Cruz has even admitted to the fact that it would have effectively split the health care market into two. So what happened with that, Sue? Is that part of this? It is. I mean, there's a version. The concept of that idea is in this bill. And so Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, who's the co-sponsor of this plan,

have also submitted their own language to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office as sort of a separate track. But the concept is in this bill. And Ted Cruz told reporters today, if the final version of the bill is similar to the draft we have today, he will vote for it. And that was not an insignificant moment today either, because Ted Cruz has sort of been the figurehead on the conservative end of the spectrum as someone who, if he's opposed to this bill, it's likely going down. And he came out today sounding the most positive he has been about this bill and saying he thinks that they're going to be able to get there. So that also suggests that the pressure point now is more on the moderate wing. If Ted Cruz is behind something, it probably means the conservative activists are behind things. It means other conservatives will get on board. So that pushes the pressure towards the Dean Hellers, the Lisa

Murkowskis, the Rob Portmans. And, you know, Rob Portman may not be considered a moderate, but on Medicaid, he's more moderate than Ted Cruz. And so that is sort of the political orbit to really be watching. And that is exactly what happened in the House. The bill moved to the conservatives and the moderates came along, as they always do. And setting aside the politics for a moment, on the policy, the leading health insurance lobbying group, it's called America's Health Insurance Plans, they criticize the idea that underlies the Cruz and Lee Amendment for the very reasons we just talked about. Well, because it would be a huge problem for them, too. Okay. Timeline. Let's talk about timeline. Do we, Sue, we don't yet have a Congressional Budget Office score for this. We don't know what the changes to this bill would do for both the deficit and the number of Americans covered. Is that right? Right. The updated CBO

score is expected out on Monday. It could come Tuesday, but everybody today was saying that they expect it on Monday. There's not an expectation that the next CBO score is going to be radically different than the previous CBO score on the bill. But Senate rules do require a CBO score before they can do the motion to proceed. So the timeline that the majority leaders laid out is if the score comes in the early part of the week, they'll probably have a day or two to absorb that. And then his plan is to move on that critical procedural vote in the latter part of next week. And there's no indication today that he's going to pull it again. I think, you know, I talked to some senior leadership aides saying, like, what if you don't have the votes? And their attitude was sort of like, well, we'll find out next week.

Yeah. And just as a reminder, the previous Congressional Budget Office score found that 22 million fewer people would have insurance as a result of that legislation. So, Sue, you know, I was talking to a Trump supporter who I check in with on a semi-regular basis who was saying, yeah, you know, I want them to do something, but why do they have to move so fast? Like, why couldn't they take their time and get this right? So what's the rush? Well, you know, there's a couple arguments to that. One, there's some Republicans say they're not rushing. This is the thing they've been talking about doing for seven years.

So it's time to make good on that promise. This is also a debate that has eaten up this entire legislative year so far. Congress really hasn't been able to move on any other major legislative acts because health care has sort of log jammed the entire agenda. And then third, they're using a process called reconciliation, which is a special budget process that lets Republicans skirt the normal legislative routes to bring things to the floor and gets around that annoying little thing called the filibuster. So they can do it with only 51 votes in the Senate. And there's a time clock on this. In theory, although, you know, there's always there's always a way time is a flat circle in the Senate. So there's always ways to sort of smooth it out.

But it moves much quicker on Thursday. Right. But the fiscal year ends on September 30th. So reasonable people have agreed that if they don't act on this before they leave for the August break, when you come back in September, you know, reconciliation turns into a pumpkin on October 1st. So the process they have created to do this bill has a deadline on it. Although I would note that in the beginning of the year, House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had hoped that President Trump would have signed this bill back in April. And, you know, this week they'd be signing tax reform by now. So from their own timelines, Republicans are already way behind schedule. And I would just add this and not to be too cynical about it, but we know the longer this

bill sees the light of day, the more grief Republican senators get for it. And so that's another reason why I think that there's a push to just get this out of their lives and move on. Okay, before we go to a break, very quickly, Sue, there is some fashion. There's a development as relates to fashion and the Congress. Is this right? You know, this story, this mini scandal, this Twitter scandal erupted when I was on vacation last week. And I came back thinking, oh, I'm so glad I was gone and didn't have to deal with that crazy Twitter faux controversy about dress codes in the Capitol. And it had kind of gone away and simmered down, and nobody's really talking about it inside the building.

And then today at his weekly press conference, House Speaker Paul Ryan, without prompting from a reporter, he brought this up on his own, said that he has asked the sergeant at arms, which is sort of the policing unit of the Capitol, to reassess and update the dress codes for the building. A little bit of backstory on this, there was a story written over the break, which is sort of like a slow week recess story, that got into the dress codes of the U.S. Capitol. There really isn't much dress code in the U.S. Capitol. In one very narrow part of the Capitol called the Speaker's Lobby, which is one hallway off the floor of the House, there is a dress code. And that dress code requires men to wear jackets and ties and women can't wear sleeveless or low-cut or midriff or modest dress.

And we have to wear closed-toed shoes. Yeah, although that rule's fuzzy. That rule gets broken a lot. If you have a good pedicure, it's okay. If you're wearing, yeah, open-toed shoes is a much more lax rule. It's really the sleeveless tank top kind of rule. Well, I got caught up in this dress code business a couple of years ago because I was wearing the sort of uniform that a lot of guy reporters wear,

where it's like the blue blazer and the khaki pants and the blue shirt. And the khaki pants were not allowed. I was told I had to have a suit on. Oh, that's interesting. They claim, I saw somebody getting in trouble with one of the sergeant at arms guys, and they were claiming that khaki is a derivative of jeans and jeans are not allowed. Yeah, I've definitely seen people get kicked out for trying to wear denim in there. You know, it's not as hyper enforced as I think the Twitter controversy would have you believe. Yes, like women do have to wear a blazer or a sweater and they tend to also because it's freezing in there a lot of times.

But really, it's just not an issue. It's not ever something that ever comes up inside the building. But on Twitter, it became this like controversy about sexism in the Capitol and Speaker Paul Ryan's anti-woman dress codes, although these dress codes have been in place as long as I've been in the building and as far as as long back as I know anyone who's covered Congress in this building. And so it's just one of those things that that totally spiraled out of control. And the people that work here who are affected by it, including myself, are a little bit puzzled by all of the outrage. Well, we will keep collectively rolling our eyes. But, Sue, we're going to let you go. You will be back later. And when the rest of us come back, we will talk about Donald Trump Jr.

and his emails and also the guy who could be the next FBI director. We are back. Sue Davis returns later. But now we have Kerry Johnson, our justice correspondent here in the booth. Hello, Kerry. Hey, happy to be here. We have two episodes behind this one, all starring Kerry Johnson and Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting that he had with a Russian lawyer back in June of 2016 on the premise that that lawyer might be delivering dirt on Hillary Clinton. That dirt was not forthcoming, at least according to Donald Trump Jr. and Donald Trump, the president. And President Trump was asked about all of this on Thursday afternoon, this afternoon, in a joint press conference with the French President Macron. And here is what President Trump said. I do think this, I think from a practical standpoint, most people would have taken that meeting. It's called opposition research or even research into your opponent.

I've had many people, I have only been in politics for two years, but I've had many people call up, oh, gee, we have information on this factor or this person or, frankly, Hillary. That's very standard in politics. Politics is not the nicest business in the world, but it's very standard where they have information and you take the information. Carrie? No, not standard when the other party is a foreign government or a person from a foreign

country that's had an adversarial relationship with the U.S. In fact, I think we're going to get into this later, but the FBI director nominee was asked by Senator Lindsey Graham this week, are we friends with Russia? Is Russia our friend or our enemy? Senator, I think Russia is a foreign nation that we have to deal with very warily. You think they're an adversary of the United States? In some situations, yes. You think in the situation of trying to compromise our election, that's an adversarial move on their part?

Yes. That is not the message we heard today from President Trump or President Trump's son, for that matter. And President Trump today also seemed to suggest that maybe this was all President Obama's fault, the Obama administration's fault, and maybe even Attorney General at the time, Loretta Lynch, because they let that Russian lawyer into the country. Here's a little bit of that. Somebody said that her visa or her passport to come into the country was approved by Attorney General Lynch. Now, maybe that's wrong. I just heard that a little while ago, but I was a little surprised to hear that. So she was here because of Lynch. Yeah. So, Carrie, do you know the backstory on this?

There is some sense that this Russian lawyer was let into the U.S. in 2015 to do some legal work on behalf of one of her clients, ensnared in a case here in the United States, in New York, in fact, and that she was allowed to stay in the country up until January 2016 under this extraordinary circumstances permission, this legal work she had done. It's not clear what the president is referring to when he's pointing the finger at blame at Attorney General Loretta Lynch. In fact, on Twitter today, Lynch's former spokeswoman, Melanie Newman, pointed out that the Department of Homeland Security is in charge of visas, not the Justice Department.

And this is a formulation we've heard from President Trump before. Some people are saying, I'm not saying, I'm just saying, some people are saying. Well, he heard it on Fox News. It was a Fox News story that said Loretta Lynch allowed her in after her visa had expired. So he picked that up to say she was here because of Lynch. The thing that was the most extraordinary thing about this answer was I have never seen the president this defensive and really peddling as fast as he can. In other words, he said this was very standard, which we all know from many, many oppo research people that it wasn't.

But putting that aside, if it's very standard, he says you take the meeting, you take the info, most people would have done it. If that's true, why does he have to blame it on Loretta Lynch, say it was a short meeting? It was a short meeting. Say that she was a private Russian lawyer, not a government lawyer. Not a government lawyer, but a Russian lawyer. Even though the email setting up the meeting called her a Russian government attorney. Went very, very quickly, very fast. And say that Jared Kushner left after a couple minutes.

I guess one of them left almost immediately and the other one was. And Paul Manafort wasn't paying much attention. Not really focused on the meeting. If it's standard and OK, why all the defensiveness about this? And also Chuck Grassley, who is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, today sent a letter to Donald Trump Jr.'s attorney and Donald Trump Jr. asking Donald Trump Jr. to come testify in an open session as soon as next week. Now, I've asked Trump Jr.'s attorney about this. He hasn't gotten back to me yet. But Donald Trump Jr. is now very much in the fire on this. And I spoke with Senator Grassley

about that earlier today, about this letter that he sent. He is not happy with the lack of information that he's getting from the White House about this Russia question. The White House has not at all been forthcoming, not only to his committee, but the other two committees investigating this whole thing. That's the House Intelligence Committee and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Both of those two panels are also vying for Donald Trump Jr.'s time. They want to speak with him about, actually him and everyone connected to that meeting back in 2016, about, you know, how it transpired. And not only that, they're trying to figure out if that was the beginning of a larger conversation. And you can imagine that the special counsel is also... Or if that was was the beginning of a larger conversation. And you can imagine that the special counsel is also probably—

Or if that was not the beginning of a larger conversation. It was in the middle of a longer conversation. We don't know. He did not seem to be surprised at this in any way, shape, or form. Great. Love it. Let's have a meeting. What preceded this?

We've only seen a tiny snapshot of an email exchange. We don't know what preceded it. We don't know what happened after it. Don't forget, he originally said this was a meeting about adoption. And then when Donald Trump Jr. found out that the emails were going to be published by The New York Times, he put them out. Even in the comments today, President Trump said they were discussing adoption. Adoption is a code word for sanctions. Yes. Adoption is a code word for sanctions because Vladimir Putin shut off American adoptions of Russian babies in retaliation for sanctions that the U.S. Congress put on Russia. And this Russian lawyer was working hard to get her clients out from under the sanctions and using adoption as the kind of feel-good argument for why they should be lifted. and certainly a federal grand jury. And these emails that we now have in the public sphere, thanks to the New York Times and Donald Trump Jr.,

could provide the basis for some of those subpoenas. Adam Schiff said yesterday he's the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. What he said on the record, I thought, was really extraordinary. He said it's entirely consistent with Russian intelligence tradecraft to try to reach out to the Trump campaign, or any campaign for that matter, but to the Trump campaign in particular through people that they had done business with previously. And so we saw that with the family of that pop star. And then he said it's also consistent that they would use a person who was not directly connected to the Kremlin so that they would have some plausible deniability.

And one could assume that that would be that Russian lawyer. And so the idea here, at least according to Schiff, was to first test their willingness to engage. And so that's one of the things that he really wants to figure out. They certainly did engage. They certainly engaged. The other thing is there were two other people in that meeting, Paul Manafort, who is under investigation, former campaign chairman, no longer works for the Trumps, and Jared Kushner, who does. He's a top advisor to the president. He has some kind of a interim security clearance that, of course, Democrats have been saying he shouldn't have.

So there are people that are going to be looked at, too. The other thing that's interesting about this is the only question he got asked at the press conference today because he only called on one American reporter. He was given two questions, and the second reporter he called on was a Chinese reporter, which was very curious. So he only got one question about this, and the question focused on the meeting. What he hasn't been asked yet is, did he know the contents of the email that Donald Trump Jr. got and responded to enthusiastically? Because Donald Trump Jr. responded to the email on June 7th, agreeing to a meeting. And the email, of course, as we all know now, said that the Russian government is supporting Trump. They're sending this lawyer.

They have sensitive, high-level information that's going to implicate Hillary Clinton. And on the evening of June 7th, Donald Trump gets up and says, I am going to give a major speech documenting the corrupt dealings between Hillary Clinton and other countries, including Russia. Now, he never gave the speech. I don't know if there's any connection between what Donald Trump said that evening and the email that had come in earlier. We know that Donald Trump runs a tight ship, small, closely held organizations. You know, he's usually a micromanager. We don't know if there's any connection between those two things. But I do think in the future, he will be asked about the email. Did he know about the content of the email, not just the meeting? attacking Hillary Clinton didn't happen. We think that something that was sort of billed as that

speech happened later on June 22nd, but it's not clear whether that really was what he was talking about or not. I have been working on a big piece about the timeline, and there are a lot of things that in light of the Donald Trump Jr. emails look very different. So that story will be on the NPR Politics Facebook page this weekend. Let's move on to Chris Wray. He is the person who Donald Trump has picked to be the new FBI director. He replaces or would replace Jim Comey, who was, as we might remember, fired by the president. Kerry, you've covered him off and on for a very long time. Introduce us to him first, and then let's talk about his Senate hearing.

Chris Wray is a guy who's as steady as it gets. This week, I've reacquainted myself with one of his friends. They met when they were five years old in kindergarten in Manhattan. They followed each other to high school, college, law school, and the Justice Department. They're now partners at the same law firm. Been friends for 45 years. Chris Ray met the woman who became his wife in the freshman dorms at Yale. He is a guy who makes commitments, keeps commitments, and more or less keeps his mouth shut.

He is the anti-Jim Comey. Jim Comey is six foot eight inches tall. He is the life of the party. He cannot help but make news every time he shows up somewhere or opens his mouth. Chris Wray shies away from the spotlight. He tries to deflect attention from himself. He could never be accused of being a showboater or a grandstander, words Donald Trump has levied against Jim Comey in an attempt to attack him. Chris Wray is going to be behind the scenes as

much as it's possible to be behind the scenes as the FBI director for this president of the United States. All right. So let's go through this hearing. And Jeff, you were also monitoring the hearing. What are the moments that stand out? Well, the thing that struck me is I've never covered a confirmation hearing where the nominee was asked to describe in such great detail and over and over again the circumstances under which he or she would quit or resign. And that came up repeatedly during this hearing. If the president asks you to do something unlawful or unethical, what do you say?

First, I would try to talk him out of it. And if that failed, I would try to talk him out of it. And if that failed, I would resign. Thank you. So that was Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, a Democrat. But the very first question from the chairman of the committee, Chuck Grassley, was about whether or not Ray would be an independent leader of the FBI and how that would show up in his work. What is your view on the independence of the FBI generally, but more importantly, as you as director head up that organization? Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I believe to my core that there's only one right way to do this job, and that is with strict independence, by the book, playing it straight, faithful to the Constitution, faithful to our laws, and faithful to the best practices of the institution. Is it normal in a confirmation hearing for an FBI director for him to be asked these kind of questions? All right. So there's always a push and pull between the White House and the Justice Department. The FBI is part of the Justice Department. They are not supposed to be talking about law enforcement matters. They are supposed to be talking about policy. And you always want the attorney general and the FBI director to say,

I'm going to be loyal to the Constitution. But the number of times that Chris Wray was asked a version of the same question by everybody under the sun for five hours yesterday was remarkable. And by the end of the hearing, I began to yell out loud at the television and the radio that, like, does everybody on the committee have to ask the same question? And the answer is yes. Yes, they did. Everybody had to have their turn. Do you think that they were reassured by the answers?

Could you get a sense of that. Yeah. By the end of the hearing, Democrats said openly that they plan to support him and they wished for the best, which means that they believe in a few cases they said so. They believe that tests are coming for this FBI director nominee in this Justice Department, and they hope he'll be able to withstand them. Even the top Democrat on the committee, Senator Dianne Feinstein, said that she would vote to confirm Chris Wray. What was interesting about this committee, the timing of it, was that very morning President Trump went on Twitter and referred to the federal investigation into this Russia question as a witch hunt. And that was a question that was put to Chris Wray. About the special counsel, Robert Mueller. You say that Mueller is a good guy, right? That's been my experience, yes. And you'll do anything necessary to protect him from being interfered with when it comes to doing his job? Absolutely. I think he's a good guy. Do you

believe that in light of the Don Jr. email and other allegations that this whole thing about Trump campaigning Russia is a witch hunt? Is that a fair description of what we're all dealing with in America? Well, Senator, I can't speak to the basis for those comments. I can tell you that my experience with Director Mueller... I'm asking you, as the future FBI director, do you consider this endeavor a witch hunt? I do not consider Director Mueller to be on a witch hunt. Thank you. And that was Lindsey Graham, South Carolina senator,

who has expressed a lot of concerns about Russian interference in the election. So following this hearing, Senator Chuck Grassley, who chairs that committee, says he wants Chris Wray confirmed by the end of the month. And then Chris Wray would start immediately then after. And there will be a lot of work to do. There's a lot of work to do. sit down with the special counsel, Robert Mueller, his friend and former mentor in some cases to find out what, if anything, Mueller needs in terms of resources to get this job done with respect to Russia. Wait, they are friends and former? Friendly. Cordial? Yeah. Is that like a what, my friend from the state of Connecticut? Or is that like a Washington friend?

I don't go out for beers. All right. We are going to take a quick break here. And, Carrie, you're going to step out and we're going to bring back Sue Davis. Thank you for doing your third podcast in this week. You get the prize. All right. Hey, what is the prize? Well, there's an edible arrangement out on the center table, but all of the fruit has been eaten. There is a large bundle of kale.

There's some NPR Post-its I think that are available. Real enticements. Bye, guys. Bye. Bye. Okay, now it is time for the part of the show where we talk about something we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Sue Davis is back. Hello, Sue.

Hey. What can you not let go of? The thing that I can't stop thinking about this week is a man named Jim. And Jim is, as far as we know, a friend of President Trump's. For years, every year during the summer, he would go to Paris. It was automatic with his wife and his family. I hadn't seen him in a while. And I said, Jim, let me ask you a question. How's Paris doing? Paris? I don't go there anymore. Paris is no longer Paris.

So the president has referenced this friend, Jim, who is now terrified of Paris. And so this week, the Associated Press, which I thought was also funny because the AP isn't necessarily known for being cheeky or being kind of funny in their headlines. And ahead of the president's visit to Paris, they published a story. And the headline was the curious case of his friend Jim, referencing that, you know, the president has talked about this friend who is he is referenced on the campaign trail and other situations as an example of how terrorism has sort of changed Europe and Paris is not a safe place to go anymore. And so the Associated Press tried to figure out who his friend Jim was. And the White House has not commented on this. There's not been any clarity about his friend Jim.

And then even today, a French reporter picked up on this and asked the president about it at the press conference in Paris. You've mentioned a friend, Jim. We told you that Paris is no longer Paris. You were implying at the time that Paris was not safe anymore. I bet Jim is a friend of John Barron, who is the quote unquote publicist that used to represent Donald Trump back in New York some decades ago, who ultimately turned out to be Donald Trump. Yeah, they're probably all hanging out together somewhere, having a drink. Or a croissant, as it were. Maybe Jim is a composite friend.

But the thing that was so delicious about this can't-let-it-go is that we know that Donald Trump, although he is divisive and very confrontational, does not like confrontations in person. And when he was asked that at the press conference, he said, oh, I'm going to come back. Paris is going to be great. You have a great leader now. You have a great president. You have a tough president. He's not going to be easy on people that are breaking the laws and people that show this tremendous violence. So I really have a feeling that you're going to have a very, very peaceful and beautiful Paris. And I'm coming back. Even though Paris has been his favorite punching bag, not just with Jim,

but with the reason he pulled out of Paris Climate Accord, because it was Paris versus Pittsburgh. Those horrible French elites, establishment globalists versus the real Americans. There was no way he was going to keep up with that anti-globalist nationalist rhetoric while he was standing with his lovely host, President Macron. And they are going to dinner tonight at the Eiffel Tower. If the president can't fall in love with Paris on this trip, he can't fall in love with Paris. The itinerary that's been laid out by the French government, as I kind of joked, was the most romantic tour of Paris I've ever heard of. It's Michelin star restaurants in the Eiffel Tower.

It's tours down the Champs-Élysées. And a military parade, which we know he wanted for his own inauguration and couldn't get. The tanks. Yeah. We'll see what Jim has to say after this trip. All right, Jeff, what can you not let go of? The thing I cannot let go of this week are the celebrities running for public office, at least one that we know of, no doubt inspired by our current president. So someone set up a campaign committee for The Rock, Dwayne The Rock Johnson. He's a wrestler? Well, he's now an actor. He's a prolific actor. I think he's the highest paid actor of current times. Oh, was he in Moana also? Yeah. So The Rock probably isn't going to

run for president, but the name of the committee is Run The Rock 2020. Remember, he was on SNL with Tom Hanks and they joked about splitting a ticket. The other member of The Rock celebrity family is Kid Rock. So he on Twitter announced that he's going to run for Michigan Senate seat. And if you go to the website, it's this really fantastic photo of Kid Rock sitting in what looks like the Oval Office. There's a taxidermy deer near him. He has a fedora, sunglasses. He has a ring on with a Detroit Tigers D logo. And then he has kids softball trophies behind him. The thing, though, is if you go to the website, you don't see any policy positions or anything. You see a link to a store where you can buy merchandise. So I think that's what this is all about. Debbie Stabenow, though, who is the current

senator for Michigan, who he, I think, is trying to unseat, put out a statement and says, I know we both share a love of music. She sings and plays the guitar and plays the piano. But she says, I concede he is better at playing the guitar. I'll keep doing what I do best, which is fighting for Michigan. Although that website, because I admit I clicked on it, takes you to his record label to buy the goods that could rock for Senate. So I wonder if this is just some weird sort of marketing play to sell records or promote a new album, because kids love the Senate. Potentially. Wait a minute.

What happened to Kanye 2020? Kanye 2020 is probably going to happen. I could see him mounting a run. You know, at one point I would have thought it was ridiculous to even consider the idea that someone like Kid Rock could run for the Senate. But we're living in a weird age and I don't know. You know, he's pretty on brand for a Michigan Republican primary. He might actually be able to win.

He certainly checks the box for anti-establishment. And he's been, you know, pretty active in Republican politics for several election cycles now. So he certainly has the interest in the ambition. And as Tam reminded me earlier, remember, he was at the White House with Ted Nugent and Sarah Palin not too long ago. And they had that sort of controversial pose in front of the portrait of Hillary Clinton. Oh, yeah. So he's not unfamiliar to the ways of Washington. Mara? My Can't Let It Go This Week is an appearance that Kellyanne Conway made on Fox.

And she came with a really cute little audio visual or visual device where she had two pieces of paper. And the first one said, conclusion, collusion. So I just want to review in case you run out of time, this is how I see it so far. This is to help all the people at home. What's the conclusion? Collusion? No.

We don't have that yet. I see illusion and delusion. So just so we're clear, everyone, four words. Conclusion, collusion, no. Illusion, delusion, yes. I just thought we'd have some fun with words. Sesame's Grover word of the day, perhaps, Sean. That was pretty cute. But the most significant newsworthy part of that was where she said,

we don't have collusion yet. So I thought yet was the important thing. But the really cute thing, of course, is that Twitter went nuts. And because she held up two white pieces of paper, it was really easy to use Photoshop or whatever you use. People went wild and filled in the white pieces of paper with all sorts of things they wanted. My favorite version was the hotel, motel, and then Holiday Inn. It was really cute. You win Twitter for that, whoever came up with that. My favorite was the blue dress, gold dress.

One was white and gold or is it blue and black? I also think Kellyanne is pretty media savvy. And there's a part of me that thinks she's smart enough to know that by doing that, she like could meme herself.

So there's always a part of me with Kellyanne where I'm like, did she know she was going to do this? And I don't think she wanted it to become the meme that it is. That's right. And on a friendly platform, no less. I doubt she would have done that with any other outlet.

Because it changes the conversation. Tan, what's the thing you can't let go this week? As you guys all know, about 10% of my job is reading Donald Trump tweets on the air. I don't have any special talent for it. I just sort of read them. The only thing I do that's special is I always read the exclamation point as an exclamation point. However, there are some truly talented performers out there who have begun performing Trump tweets, including the actor who plays Gollum on The Lord of the Rings. So Andy Serkis was on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and he read a recent Trump tweet.

The fake news media has never been so wrong or so dirty, purposely incorrect stories and phony sources to reach their agenda of hate. Sad. Now, he was not the first performer to do this. Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker, is also the Joker on an animated version of Batman. And at the start of this year, he began doing his own renditions of Trump tweets in the voice of the Joker, which is sort of alarming, actually. Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly, they just don't know what to do.

That's Luke Skywalker? Well, it's the Joker. But yeah, Mark Hamill is a multi-talented voice actor. So is our own Jeff Bennett. Well, I can't compete with that. Okay, that is a wrap for this week. We will be back on Monday. Make sure you're listening to us on Up First, NPR's morning news podcast, 10 minutes long, out every weekday morning. Make sure to follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at NPR Politics. And support the podcast by supporting your local public radio station. Find yours and donate at the link in our episode data.

It's npr.org slash stations. Also, birthday shout-outs this week to PodSquad member Vanessa Romo and editor Arnie Seipel. Happy birthday, guys. Happy birthday. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Jeff Bennett. I cover Congress.

I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.