The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, July 20

Episode Date: July 20, 2017

Senator John McCain's diagnosis, the GOP and health care, and the President's news-making interview. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Geoff Bennett, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. 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

Yo, yo, yo, everybody. It's Stretch Armstrong. And my name is Bobbito Garcia, aka CoolBobLove. If you love this podcast you are listening to, you should check out our new show, What's Good with Stretch and Bobbito. This is not your average interview show. We're going to be telling stories that you're not going to hear anywhere else.

Find it on Apple Podcasts, the NPR One app, or however you find your podcasts. It's What's Good. This is Zoe calling from a quick trip in Omaha, Nebraska, where I'm visiting family. This podcast was recorded at 1 0 8 p.m. on Thursday, July 20th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at NPR.org, on the NPR One app, or your local public radio station. All right, here's the show. It's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news.

We're talking about Senator John McCain's diagnosis of brain cancer, the GOP and health care, and what the president had to say about his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, in an interview this week with the New York Times. 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 Domenico Montanaro, political editor. All right, let's start with the news we got last night about Senator John McCain. He's a Republican from Arizona. We knew that he had had surgery to have a blood clot removed. It turns out that he has brain cancer, a kind of tumor called a glioblastoma, which, you know, it's not like there's a good kind

of brain cancer, but this is a bad kind of brain cancer. And just a reminder, McCain is 80 years old. So when this news came out, the response was immediate. Okay, so the news broke late Wednesday night, and on Capitol Hill, reporters were gathered in the Dirksen office building staking out a meeting on health care. So almost simultaneously, people start getting their breaking news alerts on their phones. And there was just sort of this reaction among the crowd, among reporters, because, you know, it's really shocked one, his fellow colleagues in the Senate, where he is beloved across the aisle, even among senators who he has battled with over the years. And McCain is pretty much battled with everyone who served with him and the nation. You know, McCain has been a fixture in American politics for a generation, and it's just a very sad story for him and his family.

It's also, you know, McCain's just one of those people that you kind of always feel like is going to live for forever. His mother, Roberta McCain, is still alive, and she's in her 100s. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, I mean, to Sue's point, he's 80 years old. And I keep remembering, you know, back when he ran for president, he really resisted until even when he was named the nominee, he resisted Secret Service protection because he sort of relished personal contact with people on the trail. And every time I have the chance to interview him in the hallways, I always think of that like this guy was almost president. And here he is just, you know, in the hallway accessible to pretty much anyone or any reporter who wants to ask him a question. And his, you know, his campaign

collapsed in July of 2007. They ran out of money. All they had was McCain doing town halls and talking to the media on his what was dubbed the straight talk express. He at one point joked, all I've got left is my base. That's you guys. And he was joking to the reporters. His best friend. I don't think that there's any other way to describe this relationship. A bromance?

Yeah, it's just like his buddy. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina senator, also one-time presidential candidate, was interviewed by reporters in the hallway last night. Talked to John. Said, yeah, I'm going to have to stay here a little bit longer, take some treatments, and I'll be back. And we talked about five minutes. You know, it's going to be a tough way forward. But he says, I've been through worse. So pray.

I don't know. God knows how this ends, not me. But I do know this. This disease has never had a more worthy opponent. I mean, he sounds appropriately. I mean, he's sad. Well mean, he's he's sad. Well, and he said John McCain said he's been through worse. I mean, let's just pause on that for a second. He's probably America's most famous prisoner of war. So somebody who got shot down

over Vietnam when his bomber was flying a mission and wound up. The story behind this is so amazing. He wound up in a lake and is pulled ash shore by enemy soldiers who then proceeded to like beat him and torture him for the next like two years to the point where he had written that every time he got hit, he went unconscious. So that's why he's walked with a noticeable limp the rest of his life. He can't lift one of his arms above his shoulder. And he's survived cancer once before. So this is somebody who is a definitely a very tough individual, whether or not you agree with his politics or not. He's been through some stuff. His daughter, Meghan McCain, who I think a lot of people might know because she's on TV a lot and sort of has her own media profile. But she tweeted out a statement last night. And it's it was really thoughtful and eloquent. But the way she described her father, which I think is such a good phrase to me, she described him at this stage as a warrior at dusk.

Yeah. And just one more thing. McCain tweeted this morning. He says, I greatly appreciate the outpouring of support. Unfortunately for my sparring partners in Congress, I'll be back soon. So stand by. And, you know, with McCain out indefinitely now, you know, there is the crass political part of this, which is the fact that as they were trying to pass a health care bill, now the Republican window has gotten even narrower. I mean, they could only lose two votes before. Now that's down to one. So why don't we just move on to that political conversation? The Senate is in theory supposed

to vote next week on a health care bill or at least vote on a motion to proceed to begin debate on a health care bill. But what the heck health care bill are we talking about? I'm so confused at this point. You and everybody else, Tam. The short answer is we don't know what they're going to vote on next week. The argument that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is making and has been making has been saying we just need 50 votes on that motion to proceed, which you said. Now, this is a bit of boring Senate procedure, but it is absolutely critical to understanding what is happening in the Senate next week. The motion to proceed is the procedural vote that just says, hey, Senate, we're going to start debating health care. We're going to move to this. It's not a vote on a bill. It's not a vote on a

policy. It is a procedural vote that lets the Senate begin debate. Now, the whole reason why the Republican Party is using the budget reconciliation process to do this bill is because that vote only needs 50 votes. The tie-breaking vote would be Vice President Mike Pence. They did it this way to avoid the filibuster, to only need a simple majority. But the health care bill is in such flux and in such difficult shape that even getting 50 Republicans to move forward on this is a very open question. We do not know if they are going to get the votes to get there. If they don't get there, it's done.

There's no health care debate in the Senate. They're going to have to move on to other issues, at least in the very short term. So essentially what's happening is that repeal and replace is now repeal and delay. That is one of the primary backup plan that Senate Republican leaders are trying to push. The problem is they don't even have the votes for that. And so as it stands right now, it appears there's no way forward. And this is a perfect sort of Senate catch-22 in that the leadership is arguing, vote yes on this procedural vote so we can get on the bill and we'll fight it out on the floor. You can have amendments. We'll have debate and we'll just figure out a bill as we go along and we'll see

what the end product is. That's the only way we can get there. Let's build the plane in the air. But then you have senators saying, well, I don't want to vote on a motion to proceed until I know what the bill is that we're trying to amend. And that's exactly what the majority whip, John Cornyn, said yesterday in the hallways, that the only way they're going to move forward is if they give these holdouts some assurances about what's in the final bill. But no one knows what's in the final bill yet. And Lisa Murkowski said in the hallway yesterday, she says, I know we're going to vote on something. That's all I know. I'm not exactly sure what. And the other thing that's so bizarre is that we keep getting congressional budget office scores,

it feels like every day, like we have like a new bill. That's why we're like, what bill is actually going to be voted on? You know, the CBO used to be, you know, you send your bill to the CBO. That's like the thing that's been marked up. That's the bill that everyone's going to vote on. And then the CBO issues one thing that's neutral. Now it's like, you know, if Republicans liked it, they should have put a ring on it. Sorry. That was a hell of a setup.

That was a long, long wind up to get to Beyonce. Well done, my friend. Gotta keep people listening to CBO. And speaking of Beyonce, Sue, actually, you just make me think of Beyonce. Good. I appreciate that association in your mind, Tam. Thank you. It's all the flashing lights.

That wind machine she brings with her to the studio. That I keep at my desk. It's really loud. But you've covered Mitch McConnell for a long time. What does this current quandary, this current situation say about his leadership and also about the Senate's ability to do anything else going forward? I think a couple of things. I think, one, the 2016 election results papered over the underlying problem that the Republican Party is still really divided,

that the problems that they had before the election weren't solved just because they took control of the House, Senate, and the White House. And those ideological divides are really hard to reconcile when you have a very narrow majority, when you only have 52 votes and now you're down practically to 51 with the absence of John McCain. And then you throw into this the Trump administration. I mean, President Trump is just an absolute wildcard. He is inconsistent on policy. He's personally fairly disengaged on the specifics. And he's not a particularly strong public advocate for what they're trying to do. You know, I mean, he's if you compare it and the comparisons are not apples to apples, but if you compare it to the Affordable Care Act, President Obama made a tremendous public sell for this bill. They had rallies, they had town halls. And the interesting thing in all of this this week, too, is this sort of subtext of the president's comments and

certainly in his tweets, where he always seems to talk about Republicans as if they're in a separate political party than he is. The Republicans need to get this done. They need to do this. I think that underneath the surface here, there is still a party you. You know, I'll campaign for you. We'll raise money for you. You have to do this. And Trump's kind of doing it in a different way, right? You know, like look at the way he is approaching senators like Dean Heller and Jeff Flake, which is essentially threatening them and saying, if you don't vote for this, I'm going to primary you. I mean, for a president to be doing that to a member of his own party, that just doesn't happen. Yeah. I won one Republican I was talking to yesterday said, you know, Republicans have been trying to talking about repealing and replacing Obamacare since before Donald Trump was a Republican, or at least since before Donald Trump stopped giving money to Democrats. Wow. In fairness, you know, Donald Trump has said that he's a Republican for

a long time. But, you know, he is definitely somebody who's trying to fit in a faction of the Republican Party and of conservatives who kind of helped Republicans, frankly, into power in the House in 2010, and now have to figure out how to work with more of these establishmentarians. And it's not going so well. I would I would add this just in the president's defense quickly. I think President Trump has a much heavier lift than President Obama had. One, because if he were to sell the merits of this health care bill as it currently is written, it's still a very unpopular bill that essentially takes what is perceived to be an entitlement away from people. And then you have the other issues that conservatives, just by virtue of their very ideology, don't believe that the government has a role in helping people access health care or,

you know, far be it, pay for it. So I think that's, you know, it speaks to a lot of what we're seeing here that, you know, Republicans, they don't want to have to vote on this bill and they don't want to have to talk about it and they just want it out of their lives. You guys know this better than I do, but three words, numbers, numbers, numbers. President Obama had 60 votes. Republicans don't have that. But they don't need it either. Well, that's true. They don't even have 50 votes. Well, there's that. All right. We're going to take a break here. And when we come back, we will talk about the president's interview with The New York Times

and that clown car of people with ties to Russia that was spilling out of a meeting last year with Donald Trump Jr. We're back. So yesterday, right after the meeting where the president met with the Republican senators about health care and right before an event about Made in America Week, he sat down for about 50 minutes with three New York Times reporters in the Oval Office. And it was obviously all about Made in America Week, right? Because that's what you do in a policy rollout. Yeah, I don't think that is what they talked about. Actually, what they talked about was the president's feelings, among other things, about his attorney general, Jeff Sessions, and how he thinks that he shouldn't have recused himself from the Russia investigation. So Jeff Sessions takes the job. And this is the New York Times audio.

Gets into the job, recuses himself. I then have, which, which frankly, I think it's very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, thanks, Jeff, but I can't, you know, I'm not going to take it. It's extremely unfair. And that's a mild word to the president. Okay. First of all, it's not the whole job that he's recusing himself from. He's recused himself from a piece of the attorney general's job, which is having to do with the Russia investigation. As the DOJ rules make clear. But in the president's mind,

Sessions' recusal was the original sin. He definitely had very strong criticism for, like, basically his entire Justice Department and former Justice Department and... And the city of Baltimore, no less. We'll get to that in a second. Can we though, just if we could just set aside, and this is hard to do, but for one second, just the legal questions that this has raised. What's so amazing to me about his comments about Jeff Sessions is that there is arguably no one in Washington who has displayed more friendship and unity behind Donald Trump, the candidate,

and Donald Trump, the president, than former Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. He was his early and enthusiastic supporter in this campaign. Much of the Sessions' political operation transferred not only into the Trump campaign, but is working in the Trump White House. So to hear the president kind of turn on Sessions and be so critical of him, that was what just what surprised me the most about that interview is just how willing he is to turn on even the people that have shown the most loyalty to him. about this actually this really big bust of a cyber criminal dark web website. Really interesting stuff. Look it up. But the only questions he got were about, are you going to resign? How can you function as attorney general when the president has made this very public vote of no confidence? And here's part of what he said. I have the honor of serving as attorney general. It's something that goes beyond any thought I

would have ever had for myself. We love this job. We love this department. And I plan to continue to do so as long as that is appropriate. Key phrase there, as long as that is appropriate. It does raise the question, you know, how can he do his work when the president has undermined him in such a specific and such a public way? What I found completely stunning about this interview is usually what happens is that a president wants to stay as far away from any kind of investigation or legal issue, even so that there's no taint of him doing anything mildly to influence the investigation or anything whatsoever that could optically look bad. Instead, you had a president of the United States who decided that he was going to lash out at everybody who could potentially

touch this investigation in ways that were not necessarily backed up by any evidence to lash out and say that James Comey, the fired FBI director, was using potentially the Steele dossier, this dossier that was supposedly had compromising information that the Russians had put together about Donald Trump, that the reason Comey in retrospect must have told him about that was so that he could pressure Trump to keep his job. And he says, in retrospect, yeah, that's what it must have been. Well, and just to put the reality to it, under oath testimony from everyone who went to Trump Tower to brief the president on the Russian meddling in the election and the intelligence community's conclusions, that they decided Comey should go and more discreetly discuss this Steele dossier with him so that he would know about it because they were concerned that it was about to come out in the press. And then to accuse Robert Mueller, the former FBI director, who's now the special counsel in charge of the Russia investigation, saying that, yeah, you know what, I think it would be

a red line if he looks into my finances. So what do you think the FBI is going to do? Like, of course, the FBI is not exactly going to just say, oh, the president said don't look into his finances. Let me just get pulled over and the cop says, how are you doing? And you say, I'm great. Just don't look in my trunk. That works every time. And just to push back ever so slightly, the New York Times reporters, Trump didn't bring that up on his own. The New York Times reporters actually asked him, would it be a red line if Mueller was investigating something like your family's finances? And in that moment, he started to think about it and said, yeah, it would be. Yeah.

The takeaways for me from reading that interview were two things, the loyalty issue that Sue mentioned, and then the fact that Emmanuel Macron seems to be the only Western leader that has cracked the code of how to appeal to Donald Trump. Because he mentioned the handshake at least three times in the interview. So it became clear that Donald Trump was really taken by that huge display, the military parade, the jets flying across the sky, the whole thing that he laid out for him in France last week. He loves holding my hand. Yeah. Right.

And just to close the loop on Baltimore, President Trump said that he had problems with Rod Rosenstein, who's the deputy attorney general. He also is the guy who decided to appoint Mueller, that Mueller needed to be appointed to be the special counsel. But he was like, nobody told me Rod Rosenstein was from Baltimore. There aren't any Republicans from Baltimore. But Rosenstein, for the record, grew up in Pennsylvania. And you know what other city has a lot of Democrats in it? Manhattan. He was a U.S. attorney appointed under President Bush for the district that includes Baltimore

and then stayed on under Obama. he is somebody who has been long considered not partisan at all. I mean, if you can survive through a Republican administration and a Democratic administration, that says something. And Trump praised him. Well, he praised him before he criticized him. And the White House wasn't besmirching Rosenstein's credentials when they tried to pin the firing of James Comey on that memo that he wrote. But that's also like the Baltimore statement is also hugely problematic because it is also the president of the United States suggesting that your political loyalties should come above the rule of law. That the fact that he is from Baltimore, which is suggesting he might

not be a loyal Republican, is a reason why he maybe should not be in that job. And that is a very problematic statement. One thing on this Donald Trump interview with The New York Times, one of our listeners was tweeting at us asking about this one section and wanted us to sort of tease it out. So I'm going to read this part of the interview where he talks about the way President Trump thinks the FBI works. He says, when Nixon came along out of courtesy, the FBI started reporting to the Department of Justice. But there was nothing official. There was nothing from Congress.

There was nothing anything. But the FBI person really reports directly to the president of the United States, which is interesting, you know, which is interesting. And I think we're going to have a great new FBI director. OK, so I thought that the FBI director reported to like the deputy attorney general. Both kind of. You know, the president of the United States can hire and fire the FBI director, as he did with James Comey. But at the same time, the funding for the FBI comes through the Department of Justice. It's also housed within that hierarchy within the Department of Justice. But they are within the Department of Justice. It's also housed within that hierarchy within the Department of Justice. But they are within the Department of Justice. They report through that

chain of command like we talked about. But the director of the FBI does serve at the pleasure of the president in the way that the attorney general or any other cabinet head, for example, does. However, the FBI director is not required to be loyal to the president, should not be talking to the president about investigations generally speaking. Well, I mean, of course, I mean, the idea, the norm has been, and Trump, of course, has gone in and blown up all the norms, but the norm has been that the FBI director, the attorney general are supposed to act independently of the White House. It's always been something

that, you know, has been a standard operating procedure, a standard question in Congress, that when someone goes for their Senate confirmation hearing, whether they're the director of the FBI or the Attorney General or the Agriculture Secretary, can you be independent of this president is always the question that's asked. And they're supposed to say, especially at the Department of Justice, yes. One other thing to talk about about this interview is that they asked President Trump what he discussed with Vladimir Putin in that second conversation that they had at the G20, the conversation that they had at a dinner that we didn't find out about until this week.

And what the president said is that it was mostly pleasantries and small talk, and maybe it only lasted about 15 minutes. But he adds that they talked about adoptions, which he then says is interesting because it was part of the conversation that Don had in that meeting. Tam, you mean they talked about sanctions? Let's just be clear. No, I mean, let's be blunt. Like, adoptions are a big piece of the sanctions that were put in place because of a retaliatory effort by the Kremlin to say that they were upset with the United States over the Magnitsky Act, which has to do with outlawing and banning people from Russia who

the United States sees as human rights abusers. Which is why Senate Republicans in particular say the sanctions bill that's currently held up in the House is so important because it would keep the White House from unilaterally lifting sanctions. The issue is that we know White House officials are lobbying members of the House to change that bill. And so now it's stuck in the legislative process. Speaking of that Don Jr. meeting in Russia, we got a little bit, you know, like every day, we get a tiny little bit more about that meeting. Jeff, you've been following this. Can we just talk through, at first, we thought it was just a meeting with like

three Trump campaign officials and one Russian lawyer. Now, it's like eight people? Eight people. So we learned the identity this week of a man named Irakli or Ike Kavalatsa. He immigrated to the U.S. in 1991 from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. He now lives in Los Angeles. He's vice president of a real estate development company that is owned by the Agalarovs. That name sounds familiar. It's because they figured into this whole thing because they had previously done business with the Trumps. Miss Universe. About the Miss Universe pageant. And so we know that Aras Agalarov,

the patriarch of that family, has ties to Vladimir Putin. And so the sequence of events, now that we understand it, goes something like this. Russia's top federal prosecutor reaches out to Aras Agalarov. Aras then contacts his son, the Russian pop star, Emin Agalarov. Emin then contacts Rob Goldstone, his publicist. Goldstone then contacts Donald Trump Jr. to set up this meeting with the promise and Jared Kushner with him. They have this meeting and then we learn about it later. But then Donald Trump Jr. only really lets on to the fact that there was this Russian government lawyer there. We learn then after the fact that there were at least at this point eight people in the room, three Americans, five Russians or Russian advocates. Yes. You have the lawyer Veselnitskaya, Rob Goldstone, the music promoter dude. You have a translator who was in there and a Russian-American lobbyist. And then also this other... Ike.

Ike. So there you go. And so now congressional investigators want to talk with Donald Trump Jr. And they are going to, at least they've extended an official invitation. Chuck Grassley, who's the Republican chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter requesting that Paul Manafort and Donald Trump Jr. appear before the committee. He says if they don't appear willingly, he could subpoena them if necessary. And so that hearing is scheduled for next Wednesday. Though there was a hearing scheduled for this week and then that got pushed. It was put off in part to allow time for this and to gather more documents.

So mark your calendars. Don't necessarily clear your schedule. That's right. OK, we're going to take one more quick break and we'll be right back to end the show with Can't Let It Go. Real quick before Can't Let It Go, one more story to discuss. And it is the first public meeting of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity. It took place at the White House yesterday. This is the commission that was basically born out of a tweet from President Trump last year

where he claimed that he actually won the popular vote in last year's election if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally. All right. So as we often say, there is no evidence of that or that President Trump won the popular vote. But that's not what matters because the Electoral College is the system that we use. It's moot. But all of that is to say that the commission had its first meeting yesterday and President Trump showed up to give them a few words. This issue is very important to me because throughout the campaign and even after it, people would come up to me and express their concerns about voter inconsistencies and irregularities, which they saw. In some cases having to do with very large numbers of people in certain states.

All public officials have a profound responsibility to protect the integrity of the vote. And so while there has been no evidence produced thus far of widespread voter fraud of the kind that President Trump talks about, Sean Spicer, the press secretary, has said on many occasions that this is something that the president believes. Now, a reminder, this is the commission that requested a whole bunch of voter data from every state in the country. Some states refused to comply. Some states are partially complying. There are some lawsuits pending over that. And the president addressed that as well. I'm pleased that more than 30 states have already agreed to share the information with the commission and the other states that information will be forthcoming. If any state does not want to share this information, one has to

wonder what they're worried about. And I asked the vice president, I asked the commission, what are they worried about? There's something. There always is. All right, guys, what could they be worried about? That their personal information is going to be stored on a White House server, which I think is the plan right now, right? So for all these states to submit personal information about voters that would either not be handled correctly or would be used for some nefarious political purpose. And let's not forget the Chris Kobach letter that he sent to the states. Chris Kobach runs the Voter Commission. He's the secretary of state from Kansas. Well, Chris Kobach, as you mentioned, he was actually on MSNBC yesterday with Katie Turr, and they had an exchange that is pretty remarkable. He said, quote, we may never know if Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the 2016 election.

I don't know the answer to that question. How do you say we may never know the answer to that question? Really? You really believe that? Well, what I'm saying is, let's suppose that the commission determined that there were a certain number of votes cast by ineligible voters. You still won't know whether those people who are ineligible voted for Trump or for Clinton or for somebody else. And so it's impossible to ever know exactly if you took out all the ineligible votes what the final tally would be in that election. You can obviously, based on the data, you can make some very educated guesses. So are the votes for Donald Trump that led him to win the election in doubt as well?

Absolutely. If there are ineligible voters in an election, people who are non-citizens, people who are felons who shouldn't be voting, according to the laws of that state, you don't know. So is our democratic process completely broken? Are we not, should we not be confident that when we cast a ballot

that anyone we're voting for is actually going to get elected? That's exactly the reason the commission exists. I mean, this is... Yeah, I think this speaks to the president's unwillingness to accept anything that undermines his legitimacy, whether it's the fact that he lost the popular vote or Russia meddled in the election, anything that sort of undermines his standing as president, he just doesn't accept. And remember, President Obama's last press conference, he said this stuff about voter fraud.

He said that's fake news, that the real story is voter suppression across the South, North Carolina, in Texas, in places where this is being litigated, even at the Supreme Court, that the real story is voter suppression, not voter fraud. Can I read a lead to you from The New York Times from 10 years ago? Sure. April 11, 2007. Five years after the Bush administration began a crackdown on voter fraud, the Justice Department has turned up virtually no evidence of any organized effort to skew federal elections, according to court records and interviews. They turned up something like 120 people who were charged and 86 who were convicted of voter fraud that year. That was a five-year effort by the Bush administration from 2002 to 2007 to see what they could find on voter fraud. This has already been done by the federal government, and they're doing it again. So when you look at those numbers, that does not even come close to quote somebody who may have run for president? Because Trump won the electoral college. The election is over, Domenico. We are never going to be done litigating the 2016 presidential election.

All right. Speaking of things we can't let go, it is time for Can't Let It Go, where we talk about one thing we can't stop thinking about this week, politics or otherwise. Jeff. I guess you could file this one under the header of is nothing sacred. This week we learned that the Muppets, the Henson family, and the studio that owns the Muppets is beefing in public with the guy who did the voicing, has done the voicing for Kermit for some 27 years. His name is Steve Whitmire. And apparently he was fired over the creative direction behind the Muppets. And apparently they had a show that was on ABC. It was like a primetime show, a short-lived primetime show. Didn't do very well. And it was panned fairly widely. And Whitmire had some ideas about how that show should have gone, the way the Muppets should have been portrayed.

And he was fired. He was let go. And Brian and Lisa Henson, the kids of Jim Henson, the founder of the Muppets, said that he was difficult to work with. And then Whitmire ended up going on the Today Show and saying that they parted ways over the creative direction, over the Muppets, and that, you know, the whole thing is just essentially really, really sad for anyone that, you know, grew up with the Muppets and really just is sad to see this thing end this way. Anybody have any favorite Muppets? Yeah. Waldorf and, is it Waldorf and Statler?

Oh, they're great. The old grumpy old men that sit in the balcony and criticize everything. I didn't know they had names. I just called them the old guys in the balcony. Yeah, they were always my favorite Muppets, even as kids. And they kind of all look like members of Congress. They're all, they're both kind of. Older white guys in suits. I feel like one of them is Carl Levin.

I don't know. I think as Donald Trump would say, they're kind of crusty. Aw. Mine was, mine was Kermit. Oh. I used to like watching his standups. Remember he had like his little like, he used to sort of do sports reports and stuff. And you wanted to be a sports reporter.

I just thought Kermit was, you know, Kermit was always struggling. You know, I guess I was more of an animal gal myself. Oh, animal, yeah. Now Fozzie was funny. Yeah, Fozzie burst. I like Fozzie. All right, Sue. It's not like the Kermit, it's not like the Muppets are going away.

We should not talk about them in the past tense. No, not in the past tense. It's just sad to see, you know, this sort of vitriol even hit the Muppets. Even the Muppets are going away. No. We should not talk about them in the past tense. No, not in the past tense. It's just sad to see, you know, this sort of vitriol even hit the Muppets. Even the Muppets. Adults ruin everything. Sue, what can't you let go of? My Can't Let It Go this week is about the Iowa State Fair. Now, normally, if we were talking about the Iowa State Fair in the NPR Politics podcast,

you would think we were talking about politicians. People who run for president famously like to go to the fair every four years. Good chance to meet Iowans. Oh, they don't like to go. They have to go. And they like to go. It is sort of a pilgrimage for anyone who wants to run for president and then the reporters who follow them there. But the fair happens every year.

So it's not always about presidential politics. For most Iowans, it's about food. And this week, the Iowa State Fair, every year, they have new food entries at the fair. And then they had a contest for the best new food entries. This is so gross. And there's three finalists were announced this week. And then you can vote online for the People's Choice Award. And I went down this sort of gastronomical food spiral on the internet of outlining all the new foods that are going to be available at the Iowa State Fair. The three finalists this year is my favorite name is the Pork Almighty.

Another one is Iowa's Big Pork Leg, which is just a pork leg. Oh, my God. But that's like a lot bigger than like a turkey leg or a chicken leg, no? Yes. Like pigs are big creatures. And it's only $9. Oh. And an Applewood smoked chicken salad wrap are the three finalists that people can vote on. But there's like dozens of other entries.

And you can go look. And there's pictures of a lot of them on the Iowa State Fair food site. Okay. The one that grossed me out, though, Sue, the picture of the cheese-covered enchilada funnel cake. Amazing. That's disgusting. My favorite thing, the description is it's a cornmeal-battered flavored funnel cake with enchilada spices topped with chorizo and queso. And in parentheses it says, this is not dessert.

I mean, what is it? It's savory. It's sweet. It's confused. It's like a savory funnel cake. The other one I liked just for the simplicity of the title was pancake taco. That was gross. Yes, but you know.

Just a folded over pancake with eggs and cheese and stuff. With eggs and bacon in it with maple syrup on top of it. Coming soon to an IHOP near you. I'd take a bite of it and we know you all would too. Oh my God. Domenico will not stop making this like sour face. Yeah. So if anyone is, if any of our listeners actually go to the Iowa State Fair, it starts next month. Oh, my God. Domenico will not stop making this sour face. Yeah. So if any of our listeners actually go to the Iowa State Fair, it starts next month.

It usually runs for about two weeks. If anybody goes and tries any of these foods, I want to hear about it because I don't think any of us are going to be able to make it out there unless Don Gagne is maybe somehow somewhere in the country. And if he's anywhere near the Iowa State Fair, we know he will try and make a visit there. But if anybody tries any of these culinary delights, please let us know or at least tweet us a picture of them. All right, Domenico, what can't you let go of? Okay. Everybody knows I'm a big celebrity culture fan. Huge pop culture guy. Huge.

But what caught my attention as I was perusing the New York tabloids was a story about how Taylor Swift fans think that she was smuggling herself out of her Tribeca apartment in a suitcase to avoid the paparazzi. Now, I did a little digging to find out why they thought this was true and what the genesis of this was. Apparently, there is a celebrity photo agency called Splash, and Splash took this photo of a giant suitcase that was coming out of her apartment, and the photographer who they used captioned it that it was Taylor Swift inside the suitcase. Now,

when Splash was asked about this, they said that this is a seldom used photographer and that he didn't actually verify it himself, and that they had just gotten off the phone with Taylor Swift's people. And they were trying to, you know, put this one back in the box. Fake news.

That really is fake news. I will say, having looked at the picture, it was a fairly large suitcase. It was a big box. And Taylor Swift is a fairly small person, right? See? Yeah. The other thing I learned about this now is that Katy Perry and Taylor Swift have beef. Speaking of beef.

You just learned this. Okay. I didn't want to tell you. It's made for publicity. And it started to make me think like maybe, you know, some of her. I wonder how many of these Swifties, as they're called, were thinking maybe Katy Perry had something to do with it. Have you heard of the song Bad Blood? No, I just found out about it today.

I've heard the song, but I did not know. Like, yeah, it's all complicated. It's about background dancers. Who cares? It's all very choreographed. But wait, Domenico, are you Team Taylor or Team Katie? I don't think I know enough about this situation. I don't know.

I guess I'm Team Katie. Wait, this leaves me. I have to play this. You guys don't care, but this is my son last night. Hi, what? Ah, so he's clearly Team Katie. He's Team Katie. Clearly Team Katie.

Tam, what's the thing that you cannot let go of this week? Dogs. I, you know, I have a place in my heart, a big place in my heart for dogs. And this website, IJR, which is a relatively viral sort of Washington-focused website, is having a cutest dogs on the hill competition. They have now moved on to round two of voting. There's a wonderful little video on their website. This is Sophie Garrett. We think that she is a Jack Russell Pomeranian mix.

Rocco's full name is Rocco George. Who are these people? Are they, is it just members of Congress or is it people who live on Capitol Hill? These seem to be members' dogs, though many of the people in the video were staffers. But so this week, Tom Tillis, who is a senator from North Carolina, brought his dog. Tilly is a Boston Terrier. Tilly around. Tilly Tillis.

Tilly Tillis to lobby, to, you know, try to drum up votes for Tilly in this competition. Oh, I thought for the health care bill. Oh, no. Here, so there's a Golden Doodle. There's actually maybe two Golden Doodles. There's also Sherlock. There's Maddie, who's a chocolate lab. Riggins.

Nola, who also looks to be a bossy but more dark in tone. Some cute, cute. Oh, there's another golden. Anyway, cute dogs. I feel like IJR's dog election has lasted as long as like a presidential election. It's been going on for months, it feels like. And you know what? It is so much more joyful than a presidential election.

So let's just enjoy it. If senators want to avoid talking to reporters about health care, the best thing you can do is carry a cute dog with you. Because when Tillis was walking around with his dog, normally, you know, senators get glommed on to by reporters asking questions. But this time everyone glommed on and was like, who is this? What's his name? Everyone's taking pictures with their phones and asking about the dog. And're like kind of special. Keep up with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at NPR Politics and support the podcast and the work we do by supporting your local public radio station. Find yours and donate at the link in our episode

information. 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 Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.