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

Episode Date: June 13, 2019

President Trump says he might be open to taking information from a foreign government in a future election, calling it a part of politics. But the law draws a distinction when foreigners are involved. Plus, the Democratic National Committee announced Thursday the final list of presidential candidates who will take the stage at the first primary debates. This episode: Congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, political ediotr Domenico Montanaro, political reporter Tim Mak, and national security editor Phil Ewing. 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

Hi, this is Kathy in beautiful Pebble Beach, California, where I will experience my very first U.S. Open golf tournament. Will Brooks Kapka win his third in a row, or perhaps Rory win his second week in a row? I, for one, am rooting for my fellow Southern California native, Tiger Woods, to win his 82nd PGA golf tournament. Go Tiger! This show was recorded at 2.42 p.m. on Thursday, June 13th. Things may have changed by the time you listen. Okay, it's tee-off time. Here's the show.

All right, I know what some of those words meant. I understand Tiger Woods. Do we have any golf fans in the room? No. They're great. Different Tiger. All right. Hey, there's the NPR politics podcast. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Tim Mack, political reporter. I'm Phil Ewing, national security editor. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. All right. And today we have a lot to talk about. I'm especially looking forward to everything we know about who's going to be on stage at the first Democratic debates. But before we get to that, we need to talk about what the president said last night on ABC. He was doing an interview with George Stephanopoulos, and they were talking about the 2016 election, 2020 going forward,

and what the president would do if he was offered some sort of information about an opponent by a foreign government. It's not an interference. They have information. I think I'd take it. If I thought there was something wrong, I'd go maybe to the FBI if I thought there was something wrong. But when somebody comes up with oppo research, right, they come up with oppo research. Oh, let's call the FBI. The FBI doesn't have enough agents to take care of it. But you go and talk honestly to congressmen. They all do it. They always have.

And that's the way it is. It's called oppo research. First reaction, Mara, what are you hearing? What I'm hearing is someone saying that if a foreign actor came with him with some stolen emails that were hacked, he'd look at them. And this is just weeks after Bob Mueller said that every American should be concerned about Russia's systemic sweeping interference in the election. And this is not the first top Trump official who said this. Rudy Giuliani said there's nothing wrong with taking information from Russians. Jared Kushner said that he wouldn't say whether he would go to the FBI if he was presented with this kind of information.

The FBI director, Chris Wray, recently told Congress that if anyone on a campaign is approached by a foreign actor with information that might influence a campaign, he wants them to go to the FBI. If any public official or member of any campaign is contacted by any nation state or anybody acting on behalf of a nation state about influencing or interfering with our election, then that's something that the FBI would want to know about. The president was asked about that in this interview, and he said the FBI director is wrong. This is somebody that said we have information on your opponent. Oh, let me call the FBI. Give me a break. Life doesn't work that way.

The FBI director says that's what should happen. The FBI director is wrong. So this is pretty stunning. But I also think that if Russia isn't getting the message, it's because they're not listening. I mean, it's pretty clear that the president would welcome this kind of help again, as Mueller said he did in 2016. This is the president himself saying that he would essentially accept what sounds a lot like election interference. Is that right, Tim?

Well, so after two years of saying no collusion, no collusion, what the president is saying is, well, if there were to be some sort of collusion offered to me, some sort of information offered to me, some sort of foreign interference offered to me, there certainly is nothing wrong if I had done it or if I would do it in the future. Yeah. And he used a term there and used it a couple of times, to find out things about their opponents that they want to make known for their own benefit. So let's say that I was running against Tim in a political campaign and I employed an investigator who found out that Tim had done some shady things in the past or he had taken a political position separate and different from the one that he was taking now. I might arrange for you, Kelsey, to find this out without you attributing it to me, or maybe you would, and you to do a story on NPR saying County Commissioner candidate Tim Mack actually opposed the County Commission when he was on the city council, and this would jam him up and cause political problems for my benefit. But that presumably is based on public information. Oppo research in 2016 were hacked emails.

Right. And stolen emails. And the president was not describing what exactly he was talking about. Precisely, Maura. Let's foot stomp that for just a moment here, because that is a critical and very important distinction. Oppo research is legal gamesmanship between and among political campaigns for the benefit or the detriment of those campaigns. Based on public information.

Well, not necessarily, because I could employ an investigator to dig up some stuff about Tim in my example, who isn't a journalist, who is someone that I pay as a specialist to do this for me. He could do the same thing to me. We're running against each other

for the water commission, you know, down in Wakulla County, Florida, or whatever. These are the types of games that get played. They don't often appear this way to the public because when campaigns work with reporters, the condition for using the information often is you didn't hear this from me, but candidate Mack actually opposes water. And now he wants to be on the Wakulla County Water Commission. Isn't that hypocritical? If I'm sitting at home, I'm hearing a whole lot of stuff that sounds like house of cards and it sounds like, you know, like you said, the dark arts, the kind of stuff that people think is everything that is wrong with Washington. But we should be clear here. There is a difference between opposition research like you're talking about here, which is legal and which is within the bounds of what is commonly accepted for the way that people get information in politics.

And the idea of accepting information from a foreign government, which to be very clear, is not legal. And what the president is also doing is conflating those two things as though there's no difference between them, when in fact there is a big difference, as we've been discussing. And the foreign influence that he's describing, that we've been describing, is expressly prohibited by law. A campaign may not take money or any other thing of value, in the words of the law, from a foreign government, because Congress, when it wrote this law, tried to keep those foreign governments from influencing American elections in this way. And one of the key Trump ticks or M.O.'s is to say everyone does it. He says, oh, any congressman come somebody would come to them with this. They

take it. Actually, that's not true. And now every member of Congress is going to be asked this question. And they are. Yeah. I mean, to be clear, they are being asked. And that actually came up today at a press conference that the Republican House leader, Kevin McCarthy, had, where reporters repeatedly asked him what he would do in this situation and whether or not he would vote for a bill that Democrats want to put forward that would state that political campaigns have to report any kind of contact. What did he say? Would he tell the FBI? He said that he personally would, but then he also kept flipping it around saying, you know, well, Democrats, they also did bad things in 2016. And there's a lot of finger pointing going on here. Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner were willing to accept information from a Russian source at that infamous Trump Tower meeting. That what he's saying now is consistent with how his campaign in the past

has operated. Tim's description is very helpful, but let me pick up the story with some legal complexities from the Mueller investigation report. What investigators said was, in order to violate this law, you must know at the time you are violating it that what you are about to do is wrong. In other words, if Donald Trump Jr. had gone willingly and knowingly into this meeting and known that he was going to take some stuff from the Russians, that would have amounted to a violation and he could have been prosecuted. Because he didn't know that, prosecutors concluded he didn't face any charges. I mean, he didn't know it was illegal when he was offered, quote, dirt on Hillary Clinton.

That's correct. He didn't know, but they know now. Correct. So we're talking about the difference between knowing what's legal and what's not. What can Congress do to kind of clarify that? What can they do to step in? Well, Congress can try to pass a law. I can't imagine the Republican Senate passing any kind of law that would stop Donald Trump from doing what he wants to do in the 2020 campaign. I mean, Lindsey Graham, one of his greatest supporters said, I believe that it

should be practice for all public officials who are contacted by a foreign government with an offer of assistance to inform the FBI and reject the offer. But I don't think that's going to happen. Do you think that'll be enough for voters to hear Republicans saying, you know, making commitments on their own saying that I wouldn't accept this information, we might not need a law to address this, I'm going to tell you right now that I won't do it? Is it enough for voters? I think the question is preceding that. Will voters take what President Trump just said as something that they consider to be unethical, unseemly, unpatriotic, before they even get to what Republican members of Congress are saying. The vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Mark Warner, he's proposed a number of things. He would mandate new restrictions for social media companies inside the United States. He wants there to be a paper record for every vote cast

in the United States because there are some areas where people only use electronic systems. And he also wants to mandate that any campaign that's in contact with a foreign operative would be required to report that to authorities. Right now, that's not the case. And so as we saw in 2016, the campaign chairman for Donald Trump, Paul Manafort, was able to talk with a person who's been linked with Russian intelligence. There are many other contacts, and there was no obligation at that time to report that to the FBI. What Warder wants to do is require that in new legislation going forward. That is a lot. And that's really difficult to kind of envision how that will get through Congress in such

a short amount of time before the 2020 election is basically already upon us. Right. There's no consensus in the House about what Democrats want to do. And we don't even know whether the Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is going to bring up any election security legislation this year. What does this mean for the 2020 election? Well, I think it means that Russia, Iran, every bad actor out there knows that the President of the United States would welcome their interference. We have had a number of Democratic candidates say, as a matter of policy, that they will refuse to accept any help, as if that has to be stated, but that they've said, my campaign will not accept any help if it's offered. I called the Trump campaign today to say, does the Trump campaign have a policy about this? And the only response I got was, Hillary Clinton took help from the Russians in 2016. So in other words, they will not say that they will refuse help from foreign actors.

There's an enormous, enormous spotlight on this issue right now. I can't imagine the kinds of approaches that the Russians used in 2016 being employed in 2020 saying, oh, well, this information is a result of the ongoing support the Russian government has for the Trump campaign. That sort of overt approach, I can't imagine that being successful in 2020. No, they're not going to knock on the door and say, hi, Mr. Candidate, look at this stuff I have. They all but did that in 2016. to the Russians and anyone else who wants to do this, go ahead, hack my opponent's emails, you know, disseminate them on social media. You don't have to call me for a meeting. That's not necessary. But what he is saying is the door is open. Speaking of less overt ways that foreign governments could interfere in the selection, Tim, you have been following something slightly related here, right? You've been following this

conversation about deep fakes. Can you tell us what that is? So deep fakes are when people use artificial intelligence and machine learning in order to create images and video and audio that sound and look like other people saying things they never actually said. Can you give us an example? So one example is this deep fake that surfaced this week. It was created by an artist in the UK and it was posted on Instagram. It shows Mark Zuckerberg. It looks like a Facebook office. It looks like Mark Zuckerberg giving an interview and it looks like his mouth is moving along with the words, but it's not Mark Zuckerberg. Imagine this for a second. One man with total control of billions of people's stolen data, all their secrets,

their lives, their futures. The amount of harm that can come as a result of these fake videos and fake audios, which look and sound real, is immense. And the implications for our society really, really troubling. And Phil, can you tell us a little bit about how this functions as part of national security? Is this something that people should be really worried about for this election? 2020 is going to be a big test for this deepfix technology that Tim's been talking about. If you can imagine seeing an actor on Saturday Night Live who's dressed in a costume to make her look like Elizabeth Warren, for example, but then digitally take Elizabeth Warren's real face and put it on that actress.

You could have someone making gestures and moving their mouth in a way that Elizabeth Warren never did. But as Tim just described, make it appear as though she's saying things that she didn't actually say. And in a critical time, that could mean a crisis or it could also jam up a presidential campaign. If at a critical time in an election, for example, before a primary, before the general, something came out that made it appear something was taking place that really wasn't happening, it would get rowed back. People might figure it out in the way that we've had to deal with a few of these altered videos in the past couple of months. But in those critical hours before something important happens, as Tim just described, there's a lot of concerns here. I have a question for Phil and Tim, which is, once again, we had the president not just throw

the intelligence community under the bus, as he did in Helsinki, but he said the FBI is wrong. In other words, when Chris Wray says, come to me with reports of this, he said, no, I don't want you to. The president is now on record saying that many different things, the Russian interference never happened. It's fine if it did. It's fine if it happens again. What does the intelligence community do and our national security establishment do in 2020 when they are completely at odds with the president on this? What they've been doing are the things they've said they would do short of dealing with him. The intelligence community has begun briefing all the 2020

campaigns, even the primary ones from what we understand about cyber hygiene, about foreign outreach, about the way they need to behave. This is taking place much earlier in the cycle than traditionally those types of preventative briefings used to take place in the past. And there's lots of clandestine things taking place behind the things that we don't see. But as you described, Mara, we're living in a world in which the national security and intelligence infrastructure of the United States is leaning one way on this issue, working behind the scenes. But the commander in chief himself, the leader of this infrastructure, is leaning the other.

And every time he comes out and makes these remarks, it makes their lives all the more awkward. So what it sounds like there is this is a really good argument for being as vigilant as possible when you're looking at videos online and kind of there's an opportunity here for people to kind of do a lot more careful research when they're consuming any kind of news. So we're going to leave it right there because I know that Tim and Phil need to go out and get more work done. Tim, you're working on a piece for All Things Considered. So we're going to let you go. Thank you guys for coming. Thank you. Thank you. And when we get back, the Democratic National Committee says who's going to be allowed on the debate stage.

We'll be right back. slash politics to learn more and get 10% off your first month. A language was about to die. Once it gets wiped out, that's it. We will have nothing in our language to pass to our children. And the people trying to save it were still learning how to speak it. And we had to hurry up. Time was working against us. We were like 100 years late, you know. It's code switch.

E ola ka'u la'o fa'i. Listen and subscribe. And we're back. And we've got Domenico Montanaro and Danielle Kurtz-Laben with us. Hi, guys. Hello. Hey there. And you guys are here because we are going to talk about the Democratic National Committee

and their plan to release the names of the Democratic candidates who meet the threshold to get on the debate stage. So exciting. I know, but that's a debate that's coming in like two weeks. It is. Which I think probably signals the most real start of the primary season. I know we've been campaigning for a while, but when you got a debate, things are really happening. Two day, four hour extravaganza. I mean, this will be people's first introduction for pollsters to try to do, you know, head to head matchups is because so so much of what we've seen so far, really, when you have this big a field is about name identification.

And Joe Biden's obviously been the biggest name. Bernie Sanders ran last time. So people know them. It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be the nominee. And in fact, there's a lot of pressure on both of them to perform very well in these next several debates. Well, you just named some of the people that people already know, but we're talking about 20 people on the debate stage. Right. We kind of already know who they're going to be, right? Can we kind of give listeners an idea of who we expect to actually get to the debate? All 20 of them? Go, Danielle, it's a quiz. Oh, okay, quick.

Alphabetical or not. Yeah, I mean, so of the 23 people that we list as candidates, let me start with the three who won't. Yes, that's probably a good place to start. That's the easier way to do this. So you have Seth Moulton, representative from Massachusetts. You have Wayne Messam. He is mayor of Miramar, Florida. And you have Steve Bullock, who is the governor of Montana. Now, Bullock seems to be in a different kind of camp than the other two, right? Can you explain that to me? So Bullock is arguing with the DNC right now because there were two criteria, one of which you had to meet to make this debate. Some candidates have met both, some have only met one. And here's what they are, is that you have to get 65,000 people to donate to you, and they have to be across a certain number of states, a certain number of people

from a certain number of states, or you have to hit 1% in each of three polls. And those polls can be early state polls or national polls, and they have to be from a list of reputable polling sources. Now, the thing is this, is that Steve Bullock did get 1 percent in three polls. But one of those polls, the DNC is saying, does not count. Why does it not count? This is a great question. So this is a poll from February. It was from The Washington Post and ABC.

And what the DNC is saying is that in this poll, the pollsters just asked, OK, who would you pick to be the next president? They did not give people a list of candidates. They left it open ended. Which is what the DNC set out in the original criteria. What the Bullock campaign argues, and pretty valid way, is that it's kind of harder to get somebody to name you. Yes, that's a higher bar. Yeah. So they threw that poll out. And Bullock also has the disadvantage of having jumped in kind of later, right? So he has fewer polls where his name could have even been an option. Right.

He jumped in on May 14th. He came in after the Montana legislature finished work for the year. So he, yeah, didn't have as much time to get onto the radar, to get all of that fundraising done, all that. And Mara... Assuming he doesn't get on, there are plenty of Democrats who hope that that will convince him to go back to Montana and run for Senate, right? Well, that is, yeah. The fight over who should be running for president and who should be running for Senate rages within the Democratic Party. I mean, there's a small danger in leaving him off the stage, which is that, you know, he's got less access to a lot of donors because he's not from a big state. He's from one of those box states that, you know, he's got less access to a lot of donors because he's not from

a big state. He's from one of those box states that, you know, conservatives criticize liberals for saying is flyover country. He won in a state where Trump won. And by a technicality, he's essentially left off the stage. And, you know, it plays into this narrative that the Democratic Party is not as concerned about the middle of the country. And that brings up a question that I've been hearing from people on Twitter a lot, is they're asking, well, what's the difference between 20 and 23? When you're already letting 20 people debate, why not just let everybody go? Well, and you also might ask, what's the difference between getting 1% in a poll and not getting the asterisk that we couldn't measure it in a poll because at that point.

Margin of error. Well, yeah. I mean, yeah. Well, I mean, you land on something there that I think is really important is that these debates have different stakes for different people. We've seen before a situation where there are a ton of people on a debate stage. I'm thinking particularly about the Republican primary debates the last time around. So what's... Where Trump always had that middle spot. Right.

And not only was he driving the narrative because that's his M.O. so that other candidates were asked about things he said, he also was standing there in the middle. But also it was a situation where Republicans did it where there was like the kiddie table, as they called it. Right. The Democrats are not doing that. They're not doing that. But what is at stake to be in a debate? Right. Well, the significance of that is that instead of having the kiddie table, the low polling candidates on one night or in a different hour versus the major candidates, this time they're going to be all mixed together. We don't know who's going to stand next to Joe Biden. We don't know if Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are going to be in the same debate or not.

They're competing for the progressive lane. So I think we're going to know soon. But right now, we don't know the configuration. And that really will matter a lot. We'll know tomorrow afternoon. And I think we should point out one thing that they were very concerned about there being a lottery where you wound up where the balls all bounced for a varsity team and a JV debate. And what they wound up saying instead was that we're going to have we're going to split the top eight candidates. So automatically, you're going to have four of the top polling contenders in one debate and four of the top polling contenders.

And the rest are by lottery. And the rest are by lottery. Yeah. So, I mean, then the question is, who is going to be that person who was like President Trump during those debates where he was the guy that everybody else was talking about? Maybe it won't happen right now. Maybe it'll take a couple of things that the other candidates can all pile on and attack him for. But he is leading by far. He has a long record that the other candidates have criticized him for. And especially, I would bet, if I had to put money on it, you know, Sanders and Warren, you know, being the two of the next highest polling candidates who are also, yeah, in that progressive lane that Mara has mentioned. The question is, if they're on the stage with him,

I can imagine them in particular taking a few things. Well, is that what they want to do or do they want to attack each other? Because right now the Warren Sanders competition is for who is going to own the progressive lane and be the competitor to Biden because they are second and third to him right now. Except they don't want to alienate each other's supporters. It's very complex in a multi-candidate feed how you attack and who benefits from that. It's kind of like that. I keep thinking of that riddle where you can only cross the river with two animals in your boat. And if you leave the two on the shore, they'll eat each other. So it really depends on who is on the stage with each other.

What this all boils down to is that we're talking about Democrats standing on a stage trying to say what the Democratic Party is for, who they are. So what do we expect people to talk about? What are the issues that they're going to identify as ways to say this is who we are as a party and this is who I am in that party? I think that one of the big issues that's been an obvious, you know, controversy has been abortion and the Hyde Amendment, you know, because Joe Biden has flipped his position on supporting the Hyde Amendment, which says loosely that the federal government can't pay for health care services that pay for abortions. The other candidates attacked him, saying that that hurts low income and women of color. And he wound up flipping his position on that. He's made some

other comments on the campaign trail when it comes to dealing with his past treatment of Anita Hill, for example, when he was judiciary chairman and she was testifying about sexual harassment allegations against Clarence Thomas when he was up to be Supreme Court nominee and China. Right. Joe Biden had said China wasn't that much of a threat. Now he's saying it is a threat. So those three things at least are going to be places for moderators and other candidates to attack Biden on. So and it'll be interesting that the Democrats have a lot of policy proposals. They can talk about health care and climate change and corruption.

But to me, one thing I'm watching for is what percentage of the debate is devoted to talking about Donald Trump. All right. Well, we will know more about how those lineups and faceoffs are going to shape up tomorrow. And you can head over to NPR.org when that happens to learn about who is facing who. So we're going to take another quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. I'm Gregory Warner. On Rough Translation, we follow a rescue mission in real time. After an Iraqi photojournalist goes missing on the front lines.

We don't believe it. I don't believe it. He leaves his family and his friends to try to save him. When he said, who is this? Like, who are you? They respond, we are the Islamic state. From NPR's Rough Translation, listen and subscribe. And we're

back, and it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, where we talk about one thing, politics or otherwise, that we just can't stop thinking about this week. And because mine's a little bit emotional, I'm going to kick things off. So earlier this week, Jon Stewart, who was the former host of The Daily Show on Comedy Central, came up to Capitol Hill to advocate for 9-11 first responders. This is something that he has been doing since well before he left television. And he was addressing

a House committee about a bill that is still in the works to replenish the 9-11 Victims Fund. And this is how he started things. As I sit here today, I can't help but think what an incredible metaphor this room is for the entire process that getting health care and benefits for 9-11 first responders has come to. Behind me, a filled room of 9-11 first responders. And in front of me, a nearly empty Congress. To be clear, it is not uncommon for it being a subcommittee and for it being a hearing in general that there are not a lot of people there. But the point he was trying to make and the broader point he's trying to make here is that this is something that has come up over and over and over again. And Congress has repeatedly struggled to actually get this money approved. And he says, as part of his statement, that it should be one of those things that Congress can do unanimously, but things just aren't really working that way.

And to his point, you know, Congress is having a hard time getting anything that costs money done. And it was a moment for, I think, a lot of the people in that room to kind of take stock of why it takes so much work to do things that most people agree on. Yeah. I mean, who is against replenishing this fund? That's the thing is they do expect that this will get passed. We don't know exactly what the pathway forward is, but it was a it was a moment of kind of reminding Congress of why are you there? All right, Domenico, do you have something lighter for us? I think so. The thing that I couldn't let go of was this weekend in Iowa was the Hall of Fame dinner, which you had almost all of the candidates there for the Democrats.

Some 19 candidates were there. Former Vice President Joe Biden was a notable absence. But the thing that really stuck out for me and for a lot of us when we were talking about this in the newsroom was their walk up songs. Yes. What you choose to walk up with really happened to say a lot about these candidates. And frankly, who's good and who's not. I'll let you make those decisions.

Do you have favorites? It's not about DJ. I mean, the candidate, you know, makes the decision, right? But the song that personifies you, it gets people pumped up. So, okay, you know, let's just play a little game here. Okay. I've got three songs. I'm going to play each of them for you

and I want you to try to guess who you think this, whose walk-up song this is. Oh, these are not good odds because three out of, what, 23? Yeah, but I think you'll get, I think you'll get a couple. So let's call this,

Whose Song Is It? Okay. All right, I'm ready. All right, you ready? Whose song is it? I know a lot of these anyway, so. Omar, are you ready? Song Is It? Okay? All right. I'm ready. All right. You ready? Whose song is it? I know a lot of these anyway.

Omar, are you ready? I'll sit down. Yes, I'm ready. All right. First song. I'm going to go and say not Beto. Not Beto. Not Beto.

Not Beto. Do you know who the artist is here? This is Lizzo. Lizzo. Lizzo, yeah. Yeah, good as hell. Any guesses? It's not Beto. I know who the artist is here? This is Lizzo. Lizzo. Lizzo, yeah. Yeah, good as hell. Any guesses?

It's not Beto. I know who it is. I'm going to guess Kamala Harris. I was going to guess Kamala Harris. I was going to guess Kamala. Not Kamala. Who is it? Amy Klobuchar. It is Kirsten Gillibrand.

Oh. All right. And I saw a mild. Female, you know. And I will just say I saw mild looks of disappointment in here when I revealed that name. No, that was actually going to be my second guess because she's kind of, you know, younger, wants to convey that she's with it. Also, she's the feminist candidate. Yeah, very much the feminism-centric candidate of the launch.

All right, let's move on to number two. Cut two. Here we go. We all know this song. And yes, the face that Kelsey is making is all of our faces. Because none of us in here, I suspect, would pick Good Life by One Republic as our walk-up song. Oh, gosh. Would we?

Anybody? No. I know what my song is. Thoughts? Who might it be? Who's living a good life in kind of a chill way? Pete Buttigieg. No. song oh would we anybody no i know who is it i know what my song is thoughts who might who might it be who's living a good life and kind of a chill way no i was gonna say the person living probably the best life is maybe howard schultz with all of his starbucks money now that he's gotten out of the race he might be living a good life no this is john hickenlooper oh okay like okay i feel like i need to make a dad joke or something. Yes. Is One Republic a Colorado band?

No. Is that like a connection? I'm just trying to give them an out here. It's just like a sunny kind of, you know. All right, all right, okay. Walk the dog, I don't know. All right. Anyway.

Okay, third song we're going to try to do better. Here we go. Oh, I love this song. Oh, Elizabeth Warren? Yeah. Two beats in, Mara got it. Nine. Oh, Elizabeth Warren? Yeah. Two beats in, Mara got it. Nine to five, Elizabeth Warren. Has there been a...

Totally on message. Has there been a... Totally on message. Excellent song choice. Has there been a better song choice, frankly, for a candidate matched up, you know, in the last 20 years? This is the kind of song you wouldn't get tired of hearing

three times a day. She is the Dolly Parton and Lily Tomlin of this race. I mean, every candidate whose run has had, when I think of Barack Obama, I think of Signed, Sealed, Delivered. Or City of Flinding Lights. Sure. Yeah. Right? But every candidate's got to have that signature song.

You know, Bill Clinton, Mara? Don't stop. Don't stop thinking about tomorrow. Right. I've always thought that, I've thought about this in the context of baseball walk-up songs. Oh, yes. And my walk-up song has always been Barracuda by heart. Oh, sure.

You know what's so interesting? Donald Trump has You Can't Always Get What You Want. Yeah, which is really interesting. It's a very good choice also. Didn't you put out a call out for some of the worst potential walk-up songs? All right, so this is my can't let it go. Since everybody was obsessed with this list, I said, Twitter, tell me, what is the worst possible walk-up song?

I got, I believe, thousands of responses. So I've winnowed this down. There are a few categories. The main category is songs that have lyrics that are bad, that are, in the literal sense. Like you read the lyrics and you go, oh, bad. So like Loser by Beck or Creep. Intuitively a wrong choice.

Yes, or Creep by Radiohead. Also intuitively a wrong choice. I'm a creep, I'm a weirdo. It's the end of the world as we know it. Dirty Deeds, done dirt cheap. 433 by John Cage, the classical song that is just four minutes and 33 seconds of silence. That's a clever choice. There is also the inappropriate category, most of which I can't say on a family podcast. Fair enough. I do want to single out a couple. There is a very just

random category of people just being absurdist. So Baby Shark, for example, would be a terrible choice. That's really good. I've never heard the sound of my two favorite ones. Angel by Sarah McLachlan, someone suggested. Just slow tempo and inappropriate and reminds everybody of troubled animals. I was just going to say, all I'm picturing right now is a PETA commercial. But number one that made me laugh out loud at my desk

was Yakety Sax. Someone suggested. Oh, can we just let this keep playing until Mara goes into hers? That would be for a candidate with a real sense of humor. Would you assign that to the candidates on this list? No, let's leave it at that. Oh, Mara, what can you not let go? Okay, what I can't let go is the can't let it go that never lets go.

It's the third time I've talked about cocaine and shrimp in this section of the podcast. So if you remember, one of my can't let it goes in the past was that researchers had found levels, high levels of cocaine and shrimp in waterways in England. Okay. Yes. I think I was in that pod. Yes. And we got a letter from a listener, David McConnell.

Thank you, David, for writing in. He said, hope you are hungry. According to the calculation of my eldest child and drug research scientist for the NIH. Helps to have a child who's a drug research scientist for the NIH. You would need to consume 26 US tons of shrimp to get enough cocaine to have an effect. Tons? I asked tons. That's a lot of shrimp.

I had asked in a previous Can't Let It Go after the first one, don't forget this is number three, whether eating the shrimp would affect you. He said, I believe it would have to be raw shrimp as cooking and boiling may reduce the effect. You would also have to eat your 26 tons rather quickly or the cocaine will be metabolized or excreted before a sufficient amount can build up. Yours signed David P.S. He loves the show. Thank you very much.

So I can't just have three shrimp cocktails and go out and rock the town? I mean, does it give you a little buzz? Apparently not. Okay. Well, I think we all in this room have one more thing that we can't let go of, and that is that it's Mara's birthday. Happy birthday, Mara. Happy birthday. Thank you very much.

Mara, you know what I got you? Our favorite Gemini in the room. No, what did you get me? Cocaine shrimp. Oh. Is it breaded or how does that work? Raw. Not to be confused with cocaine Mitch.

Oh, Lord. All right, that's a wrap for today. We'll be back as soon as there's political news you need to know about. Until then, follow us on your favorite social media platform. Just search for NPR Politics. And don't forget to head to npr.org slash politics newsletter to subscribe to a roundup of our best online analysis. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter.

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