The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, July 19

Episode Date: July 19, 2018

The White House spent the week walking back and clarifying statements made by the president at his summit with Russia's president Vladimir Putin. Congress voted in an apparent backlash against the president's summit. Plus, we take a look at the press secretary's role in White House communication crises. This episode: reporter Sarah McCammon, justice correspondent Carrie Johnson, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, and White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe. 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

This is Mom and Mark setting up at San Diego Comic-Con where doors are set to open in a few hours. This podcast was recorded at 3.18 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, July 19th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. All right, here's the show. You're listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. This week's weekly roundup, we'll look at a lot of news from Russia this week and we'll talk about that Russian operative who went to jail. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover the White House. I'm Carrie Johnson. I cover the Justice Department. I'm Mara Liason,

national political correspondent. And I'm Scott Horsley, Comic-Con correspondent. An occasional White House correspondent as well. Kind of the same thing. So we broke down President Trump's remarks earlier this week on the podcast at the Helsinki summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. First of all, he said, I don't have any reason to believe it would be Russia, meaning who interfered in the 2016 election. Next day, we did a podcast looking at his reversal on that when he said, I meant to say, I don't see any reason it wouldn't be Russia. But that is far from the only thing the White House has had to say, I don't see any reason it wouldn't be Russia. But that is far from the only thing the White House has had to clarify, clean up, walk back this week. A lot of things along those lines. We're going to talk about those and what we know about what Trump and Putin

might have said behind closed doors. So let's start there, because today Congress took a vote related to that. Mara, explain to us, what do we know? And what was the Senate voting on? The Senate voted on a non-binding resolution 98 to 0, that the United States should not make former diplomats available for interrogation in Russia by the Russian government. And the reason that they felt they had to pass that was that in the press conference on Monday between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, Trump said twice, he referenced an, quote, incredible offer that Putin had made. And the offer was that Putin would make available these 12 indicted GRU officers so that Mueller could come over to Russia and question them. But in return,

Putin wanted to be able to question Bill Browder and Michael McFaul, former Russian ambassador from the United States to Russia. Browder is an investment hedge fund owner who helped pass the Magnitsky Act, which has been a huge thorn in Putin's side ever since. It sounded like behind closed doors in their private meeting, they discussed a kind of quid pro quo. Let us talk to your guys. You can talk to our guys. And the president called it an incredible offer. OK, so if I'm getting this right, Mara, so basically the president suggested that what Vladimir Putin was offering was basically you give us some of some of your guys that we want to talk to. We'll give you some of our guys kind of like a swap kind of thing.

I mean, does this kind of thing happen with countries like Russia? No. And there was an incredible pushback to this. This is something where people said if he goes through with this, the entire State Department would resign. I mean, you can't diplomats have immunity. You can't you don't do that. And yesterday, when Sarah Sanders was asked about this, she said, well, it's something that the president is going to discuss with his team. And the fact that the president didn't dismiss this out of hand just automatically without thinking, of course, you can't have access to a former diplomat, that caused a lot of controversy. So Congress stepped in, decided it would push back, pass this resolution. And today, Sarah Sanders said, while the offer was made by Putin, sincerely, the president doesn't agree with it.

So this was just minutes before the Senate was going to vote. Yeah, but Mara, it's bizarre that it took the White House this long to get to that position. Because yesterday from the State Department, the Donald Trump State Department, the spokeswoman there said this whole idea was absurd. There was no evidence that the former ambassador, Michael McFaul, did anything wrong. So the whole prospect of turning him over to Putin and the military or law enforcement apparatus in Moscow is crazy. And the Justice Department has called the whole idea of a tit for tat, like getting Mueller access to these GRU folks in exchange for Putin getting access to our folks, ridiculous or laughable. So why didn't the White House recognize immediately that this was

a no-go? Well, you know, it might have taken this long because the White House was preoccupied cleaning up other messes that it made during that news conference. This has been a clean up on aisle one, two and three kind of week for the White House. And they they're just getting around to aisle number three. Where are the mobs? I want to come back to that in a second. But just I just want to put a finer point on this for a second. I mean, what would it mean for American diplomacy if diplomats thought that there was a real life possibility that that the Trump administration might sign off or even appear to sign off on something like this. How could any diplomat do their job? The whole idea of diplomatic immunity is you represent the interests of your country and you don't think you're going to be jailed by the

country you happen to be serving in. And one of the themes of this whole week since the trip to Helsinki has been the huge disconnect between the president and his own administration. He is a party of one on his eagerness to be deferential and helpful to Vladimir Putin. So does this vote by Congress, I mean, it was unanimous aside from a couple of people who did not vote. I mean, how big of a pushback is that against this administration? Pretty big, pretty big. We saw this kind of vote when they put sanctions on Russia for meddling in the election and taking Crimea. That was another huge, lopsided, almost unanimous vote. And the president had to sign that bill over his objections. He didn't want to, but he did. So yes, every so often Congress pushes back. It's pretty rare, but sometimes they do. Do we have any sense of why it did take so long to get a clarification on this or what the thinking from the White House was about this?

Well, part of it is that they're still cleaning up messes that the president keeps making. Just Wednesday during a cabinet meeting, the president was asked by a reporter if Russia is still targeting the U.S. That is, is the 2018 election subject to the same kind of Russian interference that we saw in 2016? The president said no, which appeared to put him at odds with his own intelligence community, which says the warning lights are blinking red that the Russians are getting ready to target the 2018 election or maybe doing so already. Although spokeswoman Sarah Sanders later said no, his no didn't mean no, we're not being targeted. His no meant no questions.

We don't have the audio of him saying no, but we do have a transcript of the ABC reporter, Cecilia Vega, saying, is Russia still targeting the U.S., Mr. President? Trump says, thank you very much, which means please get out of here. And then he says no and shakes his head. The reporter says again, no, you don't believe that to be the case. And he again says no. It's pretty clear that he was saying Russia is not targeting the U.S. in the present tense. To me, he would never want to say that Putin, after he met with him and had such a successful summit and forged such a good friendship with him, or at least a working relationship, that they're still targeting the U.S. And even in the interview that he did with CBS's Jeff Glor, when Glor asked

him, do you hold Putin responsible? Do you hold him personally responsible? Well, I would because he's in charge of the country, just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country. So certainly, as the leader of a country, you would have to hold him responsible. Yes. What he has been reluctant to do is criticize Putin directly. And James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, says that Donald Trump has seen the intelligence that shows that Putin directly ordered this activity. You know, Cecilia Vega, the ABC News reporter who asked Trump that question yesterday, has tweeted and said on the air that the president looked at her, clearly heard her question in her view, looked at her and said no.

She asked a follow-up question. He looked at her again and said no. So she doesn't believe there's any doubt about whether he heard the question and answered it directly. And this is a pattern we've seen again and again from Donald Trump. I mean, really dating back to the campaign that he'll say something. I saw it several times this week. He'll say something that seems inflammatory, offensive, egregious, way over the line. And then and then he finds a way to walk it back, whether by saying you misunderstood me. That's not what I said. That's not what I meant. It's hard.

It's very hard to ultimately pin this down. But they don't say it immediately. It takes them a while to get their story straight, and then they come out. Sometimes it takes an awfully long time. And to me, what it means is that the original message was still communicating. The original message is, no, I am not willing to say that Russia is still currently in the present tense targeting us, even though my current DNI, Dan Coats, said that the lights are flashing red and the attacks on our electrical grid and all sorts of other cyber warfare is still going on. He's not willing to criticize Putin to his face. So those original messages still stand. And he seems to feel like if he acknowledges Russia interfered in the 2016 election, he would be acknowledging collusion.

And he's desperate not to acknowledge any collusion. And he can't seem to make that distinction. He also seemed to think the notion of Russian interference in the election somehow threatens the legitimacy of his presidency. Yeah, even when he was walking it back and stating in that meeting on Tuesday, yes, Russian interfered, he had to look up from his scripted remarks and add, could have been some other people too. He certainly did. Yeah. Scott, you know, again and again, the president and his administration and his allies have said that he's tough on Russia. So whatever, you know, conciliatory rhetoric we hear from him toward Vladimir Putin, there are those who say the actual policy of the White House is tough on Russia. You've been looking at that. That's right. The president declared this week that no president's been

tougher on Russia than he has been. And you might discount that as sort of Trumpian hyperbole, but there are data points that his supporters can cite to suggest that, in fact, this administration has in some ways been tough on Russia. They've sent lethal weapons to Ukraine, something that the Obama administration was reluctant to do. They've loosened the rules of engagement for U.S. forces in Syria, which has enabled them to engage with Russian troops that are on the ground there. The White House has sanctioned dozens of Russian oligarchs and government officials. Now, some of these moves have been dictated by Congress, but some of them are things that the administration has done on its own. On the other side of the ledger, though, you have to look at the president's rhetoric when he talks about, for example,

inviting Russia back to the G7 when they were suspended over the illegal annexation of Crimea. So there is a real disconnect between, on the one hand, some of the policies the administration has pursued, and on the other hand, the president's own attitudes. And the other big mystery is that we're waiting to get a readout from the White House as to what they discussed. And Russia says they talked about lots of major issues, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Syria, and the White House so far isn't providing a lot of clarity on that. And it's possible that the president's own top officials still don't know what he discussed with Putin privately. We're not done talking about Russia.

But first, I want to talk about something else that happened in Congress today or didn't happen. Carrie, a judicial nomination got pulled back, right? What happened? Well, I got to tell you, earlier today, I tweeted that President Trump's judicial picks were marching towards success. And I tweeted too soon because Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader in the Senate, actually had to withdraw one of President Trump's judge nominees today. A big deal. This guy is named Ryan Bounds. He's a federal prosecutor in Oregon. And over the course of his confirmation, it came out that he had written a lot of incendiary things when he was a student at Stanford. He actually apologized at his Senate Judiciary hearing in May for mocking multiculturalism and some overheated rhetoric, what he called it.

What exactly did Ryan Bowne say or write that was so incendiary? These writings happened while he was a student at Stanford University. He wrote about strident racial factions in the student body. He talked about students as being Oreos, Twinkies, coconuts, and the like. He also made some incendiary remarks about sexual assault and raising questions about whether students accused credibly of sexual assault should be expelled. He seemed to think that the U.S. justice system was the place for those people, not expulsion. And he also was pretty critical of sensitivity programs for racial minorities and LGBTQ people. When push came to shove, some Republican senators raised doubts.

Republican senators like Tim Scuffy, only African-American Republican senator in Congress, who said, After talking with the nominee last night and meeting with him today, I had unanswered questions that led to me being unable to support him. And as a result, because the margin is so thin in the Senate right now with John McCain out sick, that one defection by Tim Scott, the one demand for more information or more time, led Mitch McConnell to pull this nominee. It's kind of a big deal, you know, because Trump has managed to get something like 23 federal appeals court judges on the bench since his inauguration. That's an incredible pace, incredible record, more to come. And these people serve for life. Yeah, this is a real exception. And as you point out, Carrie, the president's been very successful at putting his imprint on the federal bench early on. I mean, we're only a year and a

half into the Trump administration. And this is partly because he and his White House counsel have been aggressive about filling those jobs. But it's also because the Republican-controlled Senate, going back to 2014, was very aggressive in holding those vacancies open and preventing the Obama administration from filling judge ships. So when Trump came into office, there were more than twice as many vacancies waiting for him to fill as Obama found when he got to the White House in 2009. And speaking of vacancies, there's a big one on the Supreme Court coming up. President Trump has nominated appeals court judge Brett Kavanaugh for that vacancy. And immediately after McConnell withdrew this

Ryan Bounds nomination, Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the Senate, put out a statement saying Republicans just sunk the Bounds nomination based on his college writings. After all of that, how can we proceed with the Judge Kavanaugh nomination without seeing all the papers that Judge Kavanaugh touched when he was in the George W. Bush White House. This is going to be a big issue on the Hill next week because Democrats and Republicans are fighting about how much material they need to see about Brett Kavanaugh before they can schedule a confirmation hearing for him. And Kavanaugh was staff secretary, so he touched every paper in the Bush White House. I mean, how valid of a comparison is that? I mean, does this, so we saw one GOP senator can potentially sink a nomination at this point. I mean,

is this potentially analogous for Kavanaugh? Well, Republicans do have a winning margin in the Senate if a slim one. The question and the point that Democrats are trying to make is, how do we know what's in the record if we can't see the record? And that's kind of a useful rhetorical point to make, if nothing else, especially given what came out about Ryan Bounds. I should also point out that Ryan Bounds only disclosed some of these inflammatory writings from Stanford after his initial round of paperwork. In other words, this material was withheld intentionally or not, and it only came out later. So Democrats are very wary of rushing to judgment on Brett Kavanaugh only to find something come out of the record later on. Before we take a break, I promised we would go back to talking about Russia, and we are.

The last time we talked, Maria Butina, the Russian operative, was headed to court. What's happened since then? Yeah, I spent most of yesterday afternoon at the courthouse where a magistrate judge has determined Maria Putina is an extreme flight risk and ordered her detained pending her trial. Remember, Putina has been in the D.C. jail since her arrest over the weekend, and she's now accused of conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent of Russia. Prosecutors disclosed yesterday in kind of a blockbuster motion that they believe she has ties to the FSB, which is the successor organization of the KGB. And she may have been planning to move out of state or maybe even out of the country.

Some of her efforts were allegedly funded by a Russian oligarch. And she was all over the place in terms of Republican political circles at meetings hosted by the National Rifle Association, the National Prayer Breakfast and a whole bunch of other things, too. So Maria Butina is due back in court next week. But for now, she is going to be detained in Washington, D.C. And in case this doesn't already read enough like a spy novel, there's also some intrigue in the court filings, right, about her relationship with a U.S. political operative, a conservative political operative? So this was a little bit of a low blow by the government here. The government claims that it brought up her personal relationship because it was evidence of her duplicity. But Maria Butina has been in a personal relationship with a 56-year-old Republican political operative named Paul Erickson. And Boutina was allegedly preparing to move to South Dakota to live with Paul Erickson.

But the prosecutors say the court should not rely on that relationship as evidence of her strong ties to the U.S. because they claim she had offered to have sex with somebody else in exchange for a job earlier. And that was maybe not so nice to throw into a motion, but it came out in court. And the court document, I think, explicitly mentioned that she had expressed, what, disdain for the person she lived with. She didn't say kind things about Paul Erickson, even though the Justice Department said he did her homework for her in her international relations program at American University,

which is sad, man. Oh, boy. So this is like Red Sparrow meets Boris and Natasha. Well, there you go. Yeah. My favorite tweet about this this week came from Tara Isabella Burton, who writes for Vox. She says, so whenever I read these stories about Russian lady spies getting targets to fall in love with them, all I can think about is how much worse waiting for a dude to text you back would be if you feared the Russian government would be mad if you failed. Worse than an editor. Yeah, sure enough. On that note, we're going to take a break in a second here.

But first, Carrie, thanks so much for being with us. Happy to be here. And when we get back, we're going to talk about the important and challenging role of the White House press secretary in the Trump administration. Did you know you can set your Amazon Echo to give you the news every morning? Just say enable up first. Then tomorrow, say what's the news and start your day with up first. And we're back and joining us now is Ayesha Roscoe, who covers the White House. Hi, Ayesha. Hi. So, guys, we just talked about Russia and everything that played out this week. And the people whose job it was to clean that up more than once was the White House communications team.

They have a big job and they certainly had a big job this week. And just this week, Mara talked to Sean Spicer, former White House press secretary. I've been profiling Sarah Sanders, the current press secretary. So we're just going to take a minute and talk about that role, what's involved in being the White House press secretary in the Trump administration. Really, the administration had a huge communications crisis this week. This was the biggest communications crisis of the administration since the very, since Trump was elected. and that is the president's comments in a press conference with Vladimir Putin, where he seemed to take Vladimir Putin's side, or at least made him equivalent to the conclusions of his own intelligence agencies.

He came back. He tried to walk it back. He tended to walk back the walk back. And now it's almost every single day, the press operation at the White House and Sarah Sanders, the press secretary, had to try to explain, reinterpret, convince people that he didn't mean what he said. And this went on and on all week long. And the reason we talked with Sean Spicer is because he has a new book out. Mara, you talked to him. What was that conversation like? Sean Spicer has written a book called The Briefing. And although he has says he has some regrets about his first turn at the podium with the inaugural size debate, he said he would have liked to do over for that one. He said some pretty interesting things. He was asked

what happens when the president tweets something that's not true? He said, well, that's when I say the tweet speaks for itself. We've all heard. So wait, every time he says the tweet speaks for itself, that means it's not true? No. Because he says that a lot. Well, Sarah Sanders says the same thing. It means he says my job is not to be a referee. In other words, you're on your own, guys.

The tweet speaks for itself. They're not going to try to defend it. They're not going to try to correct it. The tweet speaks for itself. And one of the things that he said was different and unusual in working for this president than working for other principals or other presidents is that this is a president who cares not just about getting his message across, but the exact words you use, the tone you use. The clothes you wear while you're delivering. The clothes you wear. And because this president, of course, was a reality TV celebrity.

And he said that is something that Sarah Sanders, the current press secretary, really gets that he had trouble getting at the beginning. It's not just go and clear your talking points with the president. It's something much more detailed and granular and deep. And Sarah does seem to be more kind of even keeled than Sean Spicer, who became kind of a caricature of himself by the end, like with this and Saturday Night Live stuff. I think that Sean Spicer was more just you never knew what you were going to get when you sat down in those briefings and just go off the handle. That's what you guys should be writing and covering. That this, instead of sowing division about tweets and false narratives, the president is committed to unifying our country. And that was the focus of his inaugural address. This kind of dishonesty in the media, the challenging that bringing about our nation together is making it

more difficult. There's been a lot of talk in the media about the responsibility to hold Donald Trump accountable. And I'm here to tell you that it goes two ways. And Sarah has been more, I would say she's kept her cool more, but she still gets her digs in against the press. And I think that's what Trump likes. I think that he wants her to get those digs in. Her digs tend to be snarkier, though, and not really as agitated. The thing with Sean Spicer is you could sort of feel his blood pressure rising from the moment he stepped behind the lectern during the briefing. And reporters' blood pressure tended to rise in a corresponding way. It tends to be a little bit more even-keeled or professional with Sarah at the lectern, although there's plenty of snark

back and forth as well. And one of the other signal features of this administration compared to other ones I've covered is that all administrations complain about the media and the press covers that they get. But we've never had a president who has chosen to make the media, the mainstream media, a... We've never had a president who has chosen to make the mainstream media his foil. In other words, it's part of his political strategy to downgrade and undermine the mainstream media. He calls us fake news, enemies of the people. That has never happened before. So Sarah Sanders isn't out there with her job, number one, to communicate the White House's policies to the press. Her job is to try to show us to be in the worst light possible, because that's what Trump wants.

And that's what we were seeing this week, like in the aftermath of everything that happened with the Helsinki press conference, is that President Trump has gone back to the press is the real enemy. We're not talking about Putin is the enemy. No, it's the press. It's the American press. They are the enemy. And that's what they've fallen back on. And even yes, and even Sarah Sanders, when asked about some of this, she focused on maybe some missteps by the media and saying, oh, you guys need to step back. You guys are making mistakes and all of this. We do make mistakes. We do.

And we correct them. And that flows to the relationship between Sarah Sanders and the reporters. You know, I've been working on a piece this week profiling Sarah Sanders because this weekend marks one year since she was named press secretary. She'd been a deputy press secretary before that, as you know. But she's been in this role now about a year. And everyone I've talked to for this piece, including Sean Spicer, who talked to you, Mara, has said essentially that, you know, the president sets the tone and the press secretary, and particularly Sarah Sanders, has been very good at this, adopts that same tone and sort of takes that same pose. And that's a lot of people think what has made her successful or, you know, effective at her job by certain measures

anyway, is that she sort of takes what the president says, his approach to the press. And you see that. You see her sparring with specific reporters, including reporters from news organizations that the president has clashed with. And, you know, it's often said that the president cares more about his press coverage than any other president because he is a creature of the media. You know, he was a reality TV celebrity and he does seem to have as one of his metrics for success, dominance of the media narrative. As long as people are talking about him, as long as he's kind of sucked all the oxygen out of the room, then he's winning, even if it's not all positive. And there have been some questions raised about how the White House press corps deals with this. Some folks have said that if the president refuses to call on one reporter, all the other

reporters should sort of team up and support that reporter. We haven't seen that happen in general, although occasionally you will see a reporter yield his or her spot to somebody else. I would say that that is a big question that I think people have, is why don't the White House press reporters all get together and come up with a strategy for these things? I think what people don't understand is that we all work for different outlets, with different audiences, with different strategies. We're all trying to get at the truth, but we all have different interests. And ultimately, we're also competitors. So it's kind of a tricky situation. Yeah. And you know, the other thing is that it's, of course, it's easy for us to say at National Public Radio about this, but when the press briefings became televised, they really changed.

The nature of them changed because all of a sudden everybody can be on camera asking a question. And there even used to be a hybrid where the first couple of minutes were televised and the rest was on the record but not on camera. And that made for a much less contentious briefing. I cannot imagine the Trump administration wanting to adopt something like that. Well, as we've noted, every administration is different. And speaking of different administrations, our most recent president, Obama, gave a speech this week. One of his most high profile appearances in a while. He was in South Africa to commemorate Nelson Mandela.

It's tempting right now to give in to cynicism. To believe that recent shifts in global politics are too powerful to push back. That the pendulum has swung permanently. And just as people spoke about the triumph of democracy in the 90s, now you're hearing people talk about the end of democracy and the triumph of tribalism and the strong man. We have to resist that cynicism. You know, this was a speech with some sweep to it. The former president joked at the outset that this was billed as the Nelson Mandela lecture.

And, of course, Obama was often criticized when he was in the White House for lecturing instead of just talking. But this was an opportunity for him to deliver a lecture. He took it. He spoke for over an hour. And he talked about a lot of progress that was made over the last century and a sort of symbolic moment when Nelson Mandela finally walked out of prison free after 27 years behind bars. That was in 1990, just a few months after the Berlin Wall fell. And Obama talked about the sort of spirit of hope and opportunity and possibility that accompanied that moment in our history. And then he talked about more recent history when he

said, you know, globalization and technology had also contributed to a rise in inequality and insecurity and a sort of political backlash, a politics of fear that he said is now on the move. Unfortunately, too much of politics today seems to reject the very concept of objective truth. People just make stuff up. They just make stuff up. We see it in the growth of state-sponsored propaganda. We see it in Internet-driven fabrications. We see it in the blurring of lines between news and entertainment. We see the utter loss of shame among political leaders where they're caught in a lie and they just double down and they lie some more? It used to... look let me say politicians have always lied but it

used to be if you caught them lying they'd be like oh man. Now they just keep on lying Aisha this speech was this was he sub-tweeting somebody there I think there there I was obviously some he had to have uh President Trump in mind a little bit did not mention Trump by name uh but that would be seeing the tribalism that that would be seeming to make reference to this current administration. as a dynamic and inclusive and positive force. And he highlighted the French soccer team that just won the World Cup, saying, you know, those guys don't all look like Gauls to me, but they're all French. And, of course, that got a huge cheer from his audience there in Johannesburg. What will be really interesting to me is when President Obama does raise his profile, assuming he does in the fall and starts going out on the campaign trail,

how does President Trump deal with him? He has loved to make Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton into foils. He's come up with denigrating nicknames. He does the same thing for Elizabeth Warren. And although he has made a policy out of whatever it is that Obama did, he wants to do the opposite. So he's really tried to negate and obliterate Obama's legacy. He hasn't gone after Obama personally. He hasn't come up with a denigrating nickname, hasn't, you know, he's blamed him for everything, Crimea, Russian meddling, etc. But he hasn't gone after him personally. And I wonder if that'll change. Not recently, of course, because he did say he was

sick when about the tap. Right. Right. Yeah, I think that will be an interesting dynamic, because if anyone gets President Trump worked up other than Hillary Clinton, it's the shadow of Obama and what he and and wanting to not be Obama. So how does he react, especially if former President Obama is out there getting big crowds. Oh, yeah. I mean, Trump is very defensive about this. That's why that first day with Sean Spicer was so important to the president. They make that preposterous claim about the size of Trump's inaugural crowd, something that's really trivial to most people, but obviously matters a great deal to this president. Trump would hate it if people start pointing out that more jobs were added in Obama's watch than on Trump's watch. They're going to hate it if those comparisons are made.

Just about every, I mean, maybe not every, but so often when Trump speaks, whether he's outlining a policy goal or talking about something his administration is doing, he says, you know, the people before me didn't do this right or they didn't fix this. And now I'm going to fix this. And of course, that's been a theme of his for forever. The one question I have, though, heading into the midterms is, is Obama, is he an asset for the Democrats or how much of an asset is he is bringing him out since he has been, you know, in the past a target of Trump? Is that a double-edged sword? I don't think it's a double-edged sword. If Trump wants to call attention to Obama,

I think that the Democrats will take that. I think that, you know, Obama's ability to rally the Democratic base and boost Democratic turnout when he himself is not on the ballot is pretty poor, as we saw in 2010 and 2014. That being said, he's somebody that is absolutely beloved in the Democratic Party. And when he goes out there, he might help. In certain races, he might make a difference. You know, in 2014, a lot of Democrats did sort of run away from Obama. They didn't want to campaign with Obama. And they still were saddled. For the people that didn't like Obama, that shadow still hung over those Democratic candidates. And yet they didn't get the benefit of Obama's motivating force for the Democratic base. Trump recognizes that. And that's why he is out there campaigning for Republicans, even though he comes with liabilities

too. He knows that Republicans are going to be saddled with Trump in November. So they might as well at least get the advantage of having Trump rally his base. All right, we're going to take a quick break. But when we get back, we're going to talk about the one thing each of us can't let go of. Hannah Gadsby's Netflix comedy special Nanette is a cultural phenomenon and Pop Culture Happy Hour is talking about it with special guest Kumail Nanjiani, who knows his stuff when it comes to comedy. Hear the episode wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back and we're going to end the show like we do every week by sharing the one thing, politics or otherwise, that we just can't let go of. Ayesha, you're first.

So what I can't let go of this week is basically, I've talked about Beyonce maybe a little bit on this podcast. I don't know. People might have heard it. But basically, there was a concert in Paris. Put your hands up, ladies and gentlemen. Put your hands up. And there were two very famous mothers there. They've done more than be mothers.

But for the purpose of what I'm talking about, I looked at them as mothers dancing. And that was none other than Michelle Obama and Tina Knowles were at the Beyonce and Jay-Z concert in Paris. And there is the cutest video of them dancing. Michelle Obama is out there living her best life, enjoying Paris and doing mom dances to Beyonce and Jay-Z. The video is with Jay-Z and I just thought it was really nice and I liked her outfit. It was white shorts and I really liked it. Some people disagree with me but I really like that outfit. And who needs to get away and dance more than a mom? Sometimes.

Exactly. It just shows that you can still have fun like you can be a mom or even with tina a grandmother and you're still out there just enjoying life still got it so i enjoyed it really really really cute and you know the thing about the beyonce and the obamas they have a real bond. She sang at their inauguration, of course, at last. Yes. The first dance. Yes. Please welcome Beyonce.

And the Obamas really did a lot to bring culture of all types into the White House. And that's been a big change since they've left. Because the Trumps don't seem to place as high a priority on that. And laugh And laugh has largely been eradicated in the United States of America. They said the war on poverty is largely over and a success, which came as a big surprise to me since for years and years I've heard conservatives and Republicans say how horrible all these programs are. Now they're saying that they've worked. And poverty is no longer a problem, a big problem in the United States. But are they saying those programs have worked or that the economy is so great now?

Both. Well, they're saying the programs have worked. They said the war on poverty is largely over and a success. In other words, the war on poverty worked. Therefore, there's no poverty. Now, to me, the critics of this say that's completely Orwellian because it's just an excuse to get rid of all of these programs that help low-income people, which the Trump administration is working to do. But this got a huge pushback from editorial boards all around the country, including the Portland Press-Herald in Maine, who said this would come as a big surprise to all those people in Maine who are living below the poverty line.

Yeah, and to the people down south and all those places. I think that's the idea that poverty is gone in this country, I think would be a surprise to a lot of people. The poverty line is $20,000 a year for a family of three. And according to the U.S. Census, 166,000 people in Maine meet that criteria. Not to mention that many people over the quote unquote poverty line struggle immensely. $20,000 a year for a family of three. Of course, some of this has to do with the way the government keeps these statistics, because the official poverty statistics don't count transfer payments.

That's probably one of the arguments that the White House folks are making. But I don't think any other White House would try to argue this with a straight face. No, and of course, it was Ronald Reagan who famously said the war on poverty is over and poverty won. Yeah, right, because he didn't like the programs. But they're doing something much more clever. They're saying the programs won, therefore we can get rid of all of them. Okay, well, Scott, do you have one? I do.

A few weeks ago on the podcast, I mentioned that I had recently become the part owner of a bus. We were talking about Tom Wolfe and further, the bus in his book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. My bus belongs to the No Pie Refuse team, which is going to be back in Iowa this coming week doing the Register's great bike ride across Iowa. Rag Bry. Rag Bry. And on Friday, we are going to have what I call Rhubarb Rumble 3. This is the pie-eating contest pitting the NPR team against the good folks from the Des Moines Register. And we are hoping for something of a change in fortune because in Rhubarb Rumble 1 and 2, we took home the silver medal in pie-eating. We are two-time runners-up in the pie-eating contest, and we hope to see a change in fortune this time. So if you happen to find yourself in eastern Iowa around Kalana on Friday next, drop by the Gospel Light Fellowship Church and cheer us on.

So the pie-eating contest, you're trying to eat the most rhubarb pies? It's a relay race. So it's about speed, not volume. Each team has an equal volume of pie they have to get through, and each team member has to do his or her part. So it's assumed you will get through the pie. So you get through the pie, but who can do it fastest? Exactly. And I have to confess, last year we were in the lead until we got to me, and I sort of lost the lead.

And in studying the replays, the problem seems to have been that I was using a fork. Oh, no, you can't do that. But I want to say something else about Scott. He actually can bake a pie. He can bake a really good pie. When are you going to bake one for me? My question to Scott is, are these pies better than your pies? They're very good.

They're very good. So diplomatic. Have you been practicing? Have you been, like like shoveling just food? Oh, yes. We always say you got to train for RAG Rye. That means both the cycling and the eating. Okay.

Well, don't let us down this time. Fingers crossed. We'll give you a full report when we get back. My can't let it go, oddly enough, also has to do with food. Specifically, a couple different kinds of food. So great news this week, the little boys in Thailand, the soccer players who made it out of that harrowing experience in the cave, they went home, they're home safe, they're done with that ordeal. And one little anecdote that I enjoyed about this whole thing was that the food they asked for.

I mean, they live in Thailand, first of all, which has amazing food. And what they wanted to eat. Did you guys hear this? KFC? KFC. Of course. And it's under my own heart. I understand this.

I mean, I like KFC. I like fried chicken. But I find this so relatable because I feel like I'm always trying to get my boys to eat, you know, like Thai food or something a little more original than fast food. And no, all they want is stuff like fried chicken. And apparently this is true even for boys who live in Thailand. But if you live in Thailand, Thai food would be every day. This would be like a special treat. But you know what was so funny is when they were in the cave and they were sending the messages to their parents, most of those messages were also about food, but they were in the cave and they were sending the messages to their parents. Most of those messages were also about food, but they were saying, please, could you take me to the roast pork place as soon as I get out? Or how about some of that? I can't even pronounce the names of these special

dishes. So they were dreaming about Thai food, but as soon as they got out, they wanted the KFC. Yeah. They also, I gather, asked for less homework. So fair enough. And they should be obliged. They've been through a lot. We're just so glad they're home safe. All right. Well, that's a wrap for today. We'll be back in your feed the next time there's a headline you need to know about, which will probably be soon. If you want to record one of the timestamps for the top of the podcast, record yourself on your smartphone and email that file to NPR politics at NPR dot org.

I'm Sarah McCammon. I'm covering the White House. I'm Aisha McCammon. I'm covering the White House. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I also cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And I'm Scott Horslake, White House correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.