The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, June 29

Episode Date: June 29, 2017

The Senate delays, the President tweets. Note: we'll be back after the 4th of July. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional correspondent Susan Davis, political editor Domenico Montanaro, and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey y'all, Sam Sanders here. These days I feel like I can't make sense of the news until I've talked it out with my friends. So, I made a new show where we do that every week. It's called, It's Been a Minute. That's my way of saying, let's catch up. Find It's Been a Minute now on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks. Hi there. This is Abigail Hines from Leander, Texas. My dad is always making me listen to this podcast in the car. This podcast was recorded at 2.39 p.m. on Thursday, the 29th of June. Things may have changed by the time you are hearing it. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at npr.org,

on the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. Okay, let's hear about some politics. Oh my God, Abigail, I love you. You know that our listenership has to be bigger than what it actually comes through as because Nielsen can't pick up, you know, forced children listening. Yeah, I mean, there are some serious forced children listening. It's the NPR Politics Podcast, here to talk about a week of ups and downs for the Senate health care bill, new criteria for the Trump administration's travel ban, and yes, the president's vulgar tweets. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Welcome, guys. Hey there. Let's start where we have for the last several episodes, which is health care. This week, unable to gather enough support for the Better Care Reconciliation Act or BICRA? BICRA.

Republican leadership in the Senate delayed a vote on the bill. That was after the Congressional Budget Office came out with an estimate that said 22 million fewer people would have health insurance come 2026 under this bill as compared to current law. And, of course, after a lot of talk about the bill's dramatic cuts to Medicaid. So, Sue, we have been covering zombie health care bills before. We have seen health care bills snatched from the jaws of defeat and to go on to victory. Where is this one? That is a great question, Tam. And I think I would refer back to our timestamp, noting that when you're hearing this podcast, this could change because this is moving very quickly and moving very fast and is sort of unwieldy process right now. Senators are quite literally still meeting in Mitch McConnell's office as we're talking in this podcast.

And he's the Senate majority. leader who's trying to sort of cobble together this deal. You know, the CBO report that came out this week was not great, but they were sort of anticipating it wasn't going to be great. But it was the thing that gave a lot of senators the reason to point to to say, I can't support this bill. And so where what they're doing now is Mitch McConnell and essentially one on one meetings with the senators who have objections is pulling them into his office and saying, what do you need? What can I give you? What can you use to get there? And again, remember, there's only 52 Republicans in the Senate. This is a process that they only need to pass with the majority. So Democrats aren't playing a role. 50 because Mike Pence, the vice president, would break the tie. So how they get to 50, when they get to 50, I can't reasonably game out for you how they do that. But I can tell you that everyone is in the boat rowing in the same

direction and that they are trying very hard to come up with something that can pass. And, you know, I can tell you that I was at the White House all week and they are cautiously optimistic because they say we've been through this before. This happened in the House. The bill had to be pulled. It came back at what, a couple weeks later with these kinds of deals embedded in it, which bought off just enough moderates and just enough conservatives, kind of the same thing that Mitch McConnell is trying to do magic powers. He's supposed to be the most skilled legislator of his generation. And he always has he can pull a rabbit out of the hat and he always has another card up his sleeve. Is he, though? But that's what I want to ask Sue. What I want to ask Sue is that reputation, is that magic power reputation justified? I think if you ask Senate Republicans if it's justified, they will say yes. You know, what McConnell is, is a closer.

You know, the thing that I've heard about McConnell that's kind of joked about is that part of his skill is that what you can't underestimate in the Senate is how much his members trust him. And I joked with the senators before about sort of everyone has a friend in life that if you had to call them at 2 a.m. and say, can you help me get rid of this body? Who is the friend that you would call? Sort of who is that person you trust more than anyone else? And I think Mitch McConnell, if you ask most Senate Republicans who among your colleagues you trust more than anyone else here, they would say Mitch McConnell. And that is the source of his power. But Sue, Mitch McConnell's original thinking was that it wasn't a good idea to let this go over the July 4th break. He wanted it done before members went home and talked to their constituents, who, as we know from the polling, don't think very

highly of this bill. So why do you think he miscalculated and couldn't get it done before the date that he originally thought was the drop-dead date. You know, I mean, he's not infallible. He's wrong sometimes. They overshoot sometimes. They've already overshot on health care, which is something that they wanted to be signed by the president back in April. So they're already so far past this deadline. I think part of why he created this deadline and was trying to push members towards there is you kind of have to create the pressure cooker to get people to act. And so you increasingly have to put the pressure on to say July 4th or August 1 or whatever the deadline is that keeps moving. But you always

need a deadline to force action. The reason the thing that I think is interesting and the reason why they didn't hold the vote this week tells me that they really do want to get a bill. If you were right if you knew you weren't going to get the votes and you were ready to move on, then you put it on the floor, you let it fail, and you just say, Obamacare is the law of the land. We need a bipartisan solution. Let's move on to tax reform. And the fact that they're not doing that, I think, actually has increased, has had a de facto reaction of creating an even greater pressure cooker over here, where they're really turning the screws, not just on McConnell, but on members to say, you know, this is what you came here for. reaction of creating an even greater pressure cooker over here where they're really turning

the screws not just on McConnell but on members to say, you know, this is what you came here for. You need to vote on this. Tell us what you need. Can we talk about policy a little bit? Like, what are the changes that could be made to this bill? To get them there? To get them there. Well, here's the things that we're hearing in the latest rounds. One, Tam, is you've reported on this this week, but any number of senators want more money to combat the opioid addiction or the opioid epidemic. That's a pretty solvable problem. They have a group of senators. Bob Corker of Tennessee is one. Mike Rounds, former Governor Mike Rounds, who's now a senator, is another who don't want to repeal all of the taxes in Obamacare. Which seemed like sort of the point of this legislation, at least for a while.

But if you are now having a conversation where Republican senators are saying they don't want to repeal taxes, and I got to tell you, that's not a conversation you hear a lot. That's surprising. But the reason, let's talk about Medicaid, because that's kind of the big gorilla in the room here. And everybody seems to focus on the exchanges and the individual marketplace. But the biggest expansion of insured people under Obamacare came from people who got Medicaid who weren't able to get it before. And one of the reasons they're now looking at clawing back some of those tax cuts for wealthy people is because the politics of saying we are going to cut Medicaid for the poorest people, low-income, working-class people while we are giving a big tax cut to super-rich people was just becoming untenable. And that's why somebody like Corker is saying we have to claw back some of these tax hikes for the rich, because we can't sell those at the same time we are curtailing Medicaid. But Warren Buffett would get a tax cut.

Yeah, but Warren Buffett would get a tax cut. That is completely right. I mean, the fact that senators like Corker are so candid about that, that the politics of that are terrible, that they don't want to go home and say they knocked some people off of Medicaid so wealthy people could get a tax cut. I mean, that and senators have a more macro view of this than a lot of House members do. Right. They they they have bigger constituencies. They represent whole states. And, you know, senators like Corker saying we've got to protect these revenue so we can pay for things like Medicaid. But you keep that in there. And senators like Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania

are saying, I didn't come here to keep taxes in place. If we don't repeal the taxes, I might not vote for it. And other senators saying, I came here to curtail entitlements. Entitlement reform has been the holy grail for Republicans for a generation. And Mitch McConnell, we have talked about this before, when he was selling the previous version of the House plan, said the reason Republicans should vote for this is because it has tax cuts, deficit reduction, and entitlement reform. He never mentioned the word healthcare. There is a fundamental conflict, though, between that conservatism of wanting to cut entitlements and Trump's populism. Absolutely. You know, Trump said that he was going to make, quote, no cuts to Medicaid or Medicare or Social Security. And this bill is off by 26 percent, more than a quarter of what the spending would be projected to be. Something like $800 billion cut from Medicaid.

You know, it's a lot. And the president's trying to bill it as not a change, that it's actually increasing. The spending is increasing, but not what it would be on the current trajectory. And when you look at just the kind of class warfare that goes on with this, you know, you saw Kellyanne Conway on a Sunday show talking about she's a White House counselor, that able bod work full time but can't afford health care or their employer doesn't provide it, that they could then get it. And then people who have who get Medicaid, many of them are employed. But as you said, they don't get insurance through their employer because they're working in a parking lot or a fast food restaurant or they have or they have three part time jobs. Yeah. Can we just go back to one thing that we talked about, but we just sort of brushed over, which is this idea that either it's a cut to Medicaid or it's a cut to the growth in Medicaid. Sue, do you want to just try to explain that? Sure. So when they talk about Medicaid cuts,

and this is cuts is a very politicized term, is that Republicans are some Republicans are saying that it's not a cut. It's that basically we're just telling the federal government that they're not going to spend as much over time as was originally planned. So you sort of slow the growth of spending, but you don't ultimately cut spending. It's always going to go up. Entitlements, you know, the trajectory of entitlement spending keeps going up and up and up. They're saying if you just make it go up a little slower, then you'll save money. Though you aren't slowing the rate of growth of health care costs. You're just slowing the rate of growth of what the federal government spends on it. But what this bill does is it gets rid of the Medicaid guarantee. And that guarantee is states have a partnership

with the federal government where they say, these are the services we absolutely cover. And the state covers X amount. And the federal government always fills in that gap. So states aren't left with budget gaps. This stops the guarantee. It changes the way you fund Medicaid so the states would get a more hard sum of money.

And then that puts the burden onto the states if they have Medicaid needs that they don't, if the federal government isn't guaranteeing to cover, that puts that burden onto the state. And why that really can crunch states in budget situations is a lot of states have statutory balanced budget laws that they by law have to balance the budget. So if you come up with a $200 million shortfall that you have to spend on Medicaid, that money's got to come from somewhere. And that's why I think you see governors like Nevada's Brian Sandoval and John Kasich of Ohio and other senators and governors who have been really wary of this because they see the real life impact would be you might have to knock people off of Medicaid.

And people on Medicaid are the people who need the government's help the most. And 25 percent of the residents of Ohio are on Medicaid. Medicaid is really big. In Ohio, 700,000 people are part of the Medicaid expansion, which is phasing out. And the reason I know that statistic is because Senator Rob Portman, the Republican senator from Ohio, has talked about that statistic. Right. And that's why the question I have for Sue is Mitch McConnell has these little side deals, some more money for opioid abuse, maybe some flexibility for the conservatives, you know, what Ted Cruz wants. But what a lot of these senators are concerned about are these massive Medicaid cuts to the future amount. Maybe not right now.

So I wonder how he's going to solve that problem. Yeah. And two senators that are exactly that are Susan Collins of Maine and Dean Heller of Nevada, who have come out. And when we go to this debate over whether it's a cut or not, the thing I always say is, you know, Dean Heller and Susan Collins call it a cut. And that's what matters. You want to debate if it's a cut or not. The thing I always say is, you know, Dean Heller and Susan Collins call it a cut. And that's what matters. You want to debate if it's a cut or not a cut. Susan Collins says it's a cut to Medicaid. Dean Heller says it's a cut to Medicaid.

And their voices matter more in this debate. You know, something that Domenico said, which I think is really important, he was talking about this clash inside the Republican Party between, you know between traditional conservatives who want to cut taxes and cut entitlements and then Trump, who promised many times he would never cut entitlements. He boasted that he was the only Republican who was going to protect them. And he promised a pretty populist Trumpian vision of health care, lower deductibles, better coverage, and no entitlement cuts. What's so interesting to me about what's happened to health care is that Trumpism has totally disappeared. There is no more Trumpian agenda for health care. He has totally subcontracted out health care policy to the hill.

He doesn't seem to be either interested in injecting those ideas, those promises into this. He did say that the health care bill in the House was too mean. He talked about something being more generous, spend more money. But he hasn't really tried to shape it in his populist image. Well, he can't if he wants Republicans to vote for it. Well, he hasn't even tried. I was going to say, though, but that is the fundamental thing that Tam is talking about. The fact is, you can have a Republican president, you know, who's more populist if you've got people in Congress who are more traditional conservatives, if you've got people in Congress who are more traditional conservatives,

if you go at them with the stuff that Donald Trump wants and his populism that he campaigned on, it's going to face a lot of pushback unless he's willing to find some kind of middle ground and work with Democrats. Okay. One last question on this topic. Mitch McConnell this week said, quote, either Republicans will agree and change the status quo or will have to sit down with Chuck Schumer. Horror of horrors. OK, so I mean, this is like a down the road situation. But if Republicans can't pass this thing, then Obamacare, although it is not in a death spiral, is not exactly working for everybody. On the exchanges. Right. I mean, there are senators who have voiced some preference towards the Chuck Schumer solution, right?

Lindsey Graham has been pushing that for months. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin. Again, Susan Collins of Maine. I mean, the reason why that is, you know, policy wise, you could probably get there. This isn't really a policy problem. This is a political problem. And the political problem is in order to get enough of that coalition of the willing to the table, you probably need enough Republicans to say the words, Obamacare is the law of the land, which is a really hard statement for Republicans to say.

Just like Paul Ryan said briefly after they failed it. And you need Democrats to say, and there's a lot of problems with it. And you need both sides to sort of concede that they both have a critical failing in death. There's a thumb on the scale. Yes, there's a thumb on the scale because the political price to pay for failure is so great. The base of the Republican Party will be demoralized, furious. This was their number one promise for the last seven years. They wanted to repeal Obamacare. A lot of them just wanted to repeal Obama, but they promised to repeal Obamacare. I've talked to a lot of Republicans this week, and that's the thing I've been asking them is what are the consequences of failure? And to the member, they say that failure is not an option, that if they fail on this, it could fundamentally weaken their ability to get anything

done, that it would infuriate the base, that it would weaken them even further going into the midterms. And that's why I lean towards they get something done, and they may not think it's wonderful policy, but the political pressure on them to deliver is immense. You know, and that's in line with a lot of other polling that we've seen. People don't approve of how Republicans have handled this. But when you look at, you know, the ratings on who they blame, yes, Republicans get more of the blame, but not by a bad information for him. It's a warning sign that Democrats can't just necessarily hang 2018 on the fact that Donald Trump is unpopular. He hasn't dropped that far since Election Day. Yeah, right. Exactly. He's remarkably stable, unpopular, but stable. He ran in a campaign where his approval rating was record low. He's governing as someone whose approval rating is record low for a first year. So can he win reelection as somebody who has a record low approval rating in their presidency?

We'll see. Are we talking about 2020? Really? Well, you could. But the thing is there is a warning sign for the president, too, when it comes to independence. Independence seemed to be moving away from him, and they've dipped a significant amount since February. They were willing to give him a chance, it seems, and now they've gone by the wayside. All right. We've got to take a quick break.

But when we come back, we will talk about the travel ban and, yes, the president's tweets. Okay, we're back. Make sure you listen to the last episode, the one from Monday, for more on Supreme Court action this week, also more on health policy. The Supreme Court earlier this week allowed the Trump administration to implement parts of its revised travel ban that's been locked up in the courts for the last few months. So the new miniature portion of the travel ban is being put into effect today, tonight. Domenico, what's happening? How's this going to work? Well, the difference here, you noted that this travel ban has been tied up in the courts, but the Supreme Court did rule on Monday that a modified ban could go into effect. And this is from those six countries that the administration has deemed to be

potential terrorist threat, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen, and that there's a potential loophole where people can come in if they have a, quote, credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States. Now, a bona fide relationship, how do you define that? That's up to the administration to have to put down. And what the administration has said is that they'll allow travelers from those six countries if they have close family ties. And those ties are defined as a parent, parents-in-law, mothers-in-law, father-in-law, spouses, children, adult sons or daughters. That also includes son-in-laws or daughter-in-laws, siblings, so your brothers or sister, and half and step-siblings. What it does not include, grandparents, interestingly.

What? I know. Why? I don't know why. I mean, this is just one of those things. No grandparents, grandchildren, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, cousins, brothers-in-law, sister-in-law, fiancés. So clearly this is the kind of thing that is going to be, you know, hashed over and debated for a while. And this is not the end of the story.

I mean, this is going to be a very temporary thing. No. So, like, the Supreme Court hasn't actually ruled on the merits of the case yet. They've just decided to let part of the travel ban go into place until they can actually hear the case in the fall. And if I were a betting person, which I'm not, I would also bet that someone is going to go to court and argue that grandparents or grandchildren or some aspect of this is arbitrary and not fair. Yeah. And look, we should also note refugees is another part of this where refugees are going to be banned for at least 120 days. They can enter if they can show a bona fide relationship, quote unquote, with one of those folks who's allowed to come. But this is going to be a very strict thing that the Department of Homeland Security and TSA are going to have to monitor very closely. Yeah. And a bona fide relationship for a refugee is not a refugee agency that you've been working

with to bring you into the country. It's not having a host family. Yeah. Okay. And one more thing before we go to can't let it go is something that the president clearly cannot let go. Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. Do we have to talk about this? Yes, I think we do, especially because think of everybody that's weighed in on it. I know we have to. So Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough from MSNBC's Morning Joe. They have sort of a complicated relationship with the president. They attended a New Year's Eve party that the president threw at Mar-a-Lago this year. But apparently things

have gone south from there. This morning, the president turned to Twitter to make a statement about their relationship or how he feels about them. He said, quote, Wait, if you're always reading tweets, do you want me to read the tweets? Oh, yeah, why don't you... I can stay below my 10% threshold. We should hear it in a man's voice. Yes, let's hear it in a man's voice, Domenico. I'll give you some queens. I heard poorly rated at-morning Joe speaks badly of me.

Don't watch anymore. Then how come low-IQ crazy Mika, along with psycho Joe, came to Mar-a-Lago three nights in a row around New Year's Eve and insisted on joining me? She was bleeding badly from a facelift. I said no. Exclamation point. Exclamation mark. What's the bleeding from a face?

Like what does that have to do with anything? It's just gross. But also what is that? He's linked. Is he saying I didn't let her stay because I really don't get what he's actually saying. What he's saying is he's denigrating her, as he has done many times in the past to women. This is of a piece with many comments during the campaign. This is not the first woman on cable who he has criticized for bleeding from her face, in fact.

Megyn Kelly, this is a thing with him. And that actually happened to be when Megan Kelly had been asking him about denigrating things he'd said about women, ironically. So something that the show said on Morning Joe were, oops, he doesn't watch anymore. Something someone told him they said, he's asking for a friend. You know, something that was on the show made him upset. Well, and so we have some clips from the show. We don't know for certain if this is what set the president off. Earlier this morning, before he tweeted, they were talking about the Washington

Post story from earlier this week that said that there was a fake Time magazine cover that has been put on display at numerous Trump venues, golf clubs, various other things. That's just like not an actual real time magazine cover, but is a fake Time magazine cover where the president is sort of there. He's not the president yet. It was in 2009. And he has sort of his hands folded under his arms. Nothing makes a man feel better than making a fake cover of a magazine about himself lying every day and destroying the country. It's a good feeling. Enough about me. Where are your hands in that photo? Well, he's covering his hands here because they're teensy. The other crazy thing about that, not to belabor this story. I was talking about Trump.

Donald Trump actually was on the cover of Time magazine 14 times. Right. That wasn't enough. One of those up there. I don't know. That wasn't enough, was it? Exclamation point. Always needs more.

Yeah. And then shortly after the president tweeted, Mika Brzezinski shot back with a photograph showing a Cheerios box. And the text on that box said, made for little hands. So this is altogether unpleasant. And it's the kind of snark that goes on almost every day, if not every day on that show. But, you know, Donald Trump's president of the United States, and he decides that he has to weigh in on something that seems to be getting under his skin when he doesn't need to. And he's decided in the bigger picture here,

you know, he has been looking around at various media outlets. CNN had to retract a story. Three people were resigned from CNN because of that story. And he has decided to go after CNN, the Washington Post and others, and now MSNBC and Morning Joe and trying to build this narrative and push this narrative that the media is fake. They get things wrong, that they're petty, and he's going to see if he can overcome all of it and get his supporters fired up against him. And even more, they're after him and he is, as his spokesman said today, the president has been attacked mercilessly. He's going to fight back. People wanted a tough, smart fighter, not going to let the liberal media and the Hollywood elites, you know, push him around or bully him. And this is the way the president has bonded with his supporters throughout the campaign and since by sharing a common bond of humiliation and grievance against elites. But the other thing that's so interesting to me about how people responded is you had all three women senators, Republican

senators, whose votes are needed for health care, Susan Collins, Shelley Moore Capito, and Lisa Murkowski tweeting condemnation of his tweets. You even had Sean Hannity, his number one biggest booster in the media, saying it was in his best interest not to do it, in my humble opinion. I was really surprised by how much people, particularly on The Hill and elsewhere, came out against the president on this tweet. And maybe I'm becoming too callous towards these things, but the president has tweeted many offensive things towards women or other people. Or said them. Why? I don't know why this particular tweet struck such a nerve with people today. It is deeply personal, though, to talk about, like, I don't know whether she had had surgery or not, but to, like, talk about someone having surgery and saying basically that she was gross.

Like, that's airing something that shouldn't be aired. And coming from the president, it's just – it seems to throw everybody's morning off. Can I offer a theory of maybe why this happened, this kind of reaction happened today? We always forget what happened just a couple of weeks ago, which was that a Republican baseball practice for a baseball game was attacked by a shooter and people were grievously wounded. And today, Senator James Lankford, who you don't think of as a Trump critic, tweeted, I just chaired a meeting with the U.S. Capitol Police about safety and the June 14th shooting. He says national and local leaders, including our president, should model civility, honor, and respect in our political rhetoric.

The president's tweets today don't help our political or national discourse, do not provide a positive role model for our national dialogue. Now, this was a moment, that shooting, where a lot of people said maybe this can be a tipping point. We can dial the political rhetoric down. We can have the outrage machine kind of turned off for a moment. And maybe that's why. You know, I don't think it's something, I don't know about you guys, but it's not something I tell my kids to say, when they go low, we go lower. It's just not a thing. But that's the president's motto. If you come after me, I'm going to come after you worse.

Turn the other cheek is not in his vocabulary. Orrin Hatch, who's the Republican senator from Utah, who's the president pro tem of the Senate, also wrote an op ed for Time magazine this week. I think it was published yesterday, but along the same lines as Senator Lankford's comment that he called for renewed commitment to civility and personally recommitted himself to not engaging in any kind of personal attacks or negative attacks and trying to elevate this debate. So there's two very different conversations happening on Capitol Hill and in the White House when it comes to civility. And you know, the other theory of the case, why now? Why a reaction now since he's said and done so many things like this in the past? Maybe it's because the reservoir of goodwill that he has among Republicans on Capitol Hill is getting really low. There's a lot of exasperation with him and frustration, his comments about the health care bill.

Republicans not sure if he has their back, if he's going to throw them under the bus. When you hear Ben Sasse and Lindsey Graham criticize the president, that's normal. But when you hear all these other people, that's something different. The also just side point about I would make about Mika and Morning Joe is just a cultural point from The Hill. Lawmakers love Morning Joe. It is like the unofficial show of Capitol Hill. It's what they watch in the gym, right? It's what they watch in the gym because it's the show that Republicans and Democrats can agree to watch because they both like it.

They both go on it. I think they all want to go on it. So part of why I wonder if there was such a reaction to this is because they know the show, they watch the show, and they like the host. OK, well, no doubt the president will tweet again and no doubt people will be outraged again and no doubt the cycle will repeat itself. But it is now time for something that we can't let go of ourselves. Can't let it go. The part of our show where we talk about one thing we cannot stop thinking about this week, politics or otherwise. And they don't have to do with his tweets.

None of them. Mara, what can you not let go of? What I can't let go of this week was a story that didn't get a whole lot of coverage, but it's about how the Keystone Pipeline, which the president approved with great fanfare and said it would create thousands and thousands of jobs in America, it turns out the Keystone Pipeline is having trouble getting customers. No way. Yes, it's having trouble getting oil and gas companies to sign up for the oil that would go through the pipeline. That reminds me of what happened to the Ford Motor Company jobs that the president also announced with great fanfare

that ended up being moved to China. What is the reason the companies are saying that they don't want to partake in the pipeline? Do they not need it? They don't need it. Oil is trading at $45. It's a global supply glut. They just don't need it. That doesn't mean that in the end that TransCanada won't recoup its investment, but right now they're having trouble getting customers. Has the White House said anything about it? No. The other thing about the pipeline is that the president, when he had signed his executive order, saying, like, we are going to make these pipelines are going to move forward. It's going to happen. And I'm signing something extra to make sure that they're made with American steel.

But it turns out that it was too late to make either of the two pipelines that were in the works with American Steel. So the next ones, the next ones. This is the problem with being a journalist in an era where the news comes like water out of a fire hose, because it's hard to go back and follow up on all the claims and predictions and projections that the White House has made to see if they really panned out. Yeah. Sue, what can't you let go of? So I can't let go this week. My can't let go this week comes courtesy of a former congressman. David Jolly was a one-term House member from Florida.

He won a special election in 2014, and he did not win a re-election in 2016. He lost to former Governor Charlie Crist. And he's a bit of a cable fixture, so some people might recognize him. But he was on MSNBC this week talking about health care. And it was his health care comments that really stuck out to me. Let's just hear the tape. Lawrence, I'm going to share something with you and the American people tonight that most people probably don't know. On January 4th, I was a former member of Congress, unemployed, with no health insurance and a pre-existing condition.

And while I ultimately chose a private sector plan, I also knew in 2017 Obamacare provided an exchange that was a safety net that wasn't there before. And to be honest with you, if I had had to rely on it, I knew it was there. And that's why the politics of Obamacare in 2017 are different than 2013. Huh. So what you're hearing is a member of Congress who voted any number of times to repeal and replace Obamacare, who won an election in part on a campaign promise to be someone who would support the repeal and replacement of Obamacare, found himself unemployed after losing a congressional election with a pre-existing condition and thought, meh, maybe Obamacare, not so bad. And part of the reason why I can't let it go is I just think it is such a tight, good little lesson about politics versus reality,

that the things that you can campaign on and then the way that life really is. Yeah, like what's that internet thing? Life comes at you fast. And just the fact that he was so frank about it, you know, that rarely do politicians sort of just kind of admit they were wrong. And hearing someone who pretty much towed the line on health care policy for his time in office to be out of office not too long and realize that, hey, maybe this policy that I wanted to upend might actually be helping people. Guess he isn't planning to run for office again. What do you got, Tam? Oh, so here's what I got. This past weekend on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, the host Lulu Garcia Navarro was doing an interview with tennis legend John McEnroe,

who I mostly know as the guy who throws tennis rackets, she was asking him about something he had written in his new book where he said that Serena Williams is the best female player, tennis player in the world. Why qualify it? Oh, she's not, you mean the best player in the world, period? Yeah, best tennis player in the world. You know, why say female player? Well, because if she was a, if she played the men's circuit she'd be like 700 in the world you think so yeah that doesn't mean i don't think serena's like an incredible player i do but there's you know the reality of uh what what would happen on a given day a serena could

beat some some players i believe because she's so incredibly strong mentally but if she had to just just play the circuit, the men's circuit, that would be an entirely different story. So... That got a lot of attention. It did get a lot of attention. And eventually Serena Williams tweeted in response.

Now, Serena Williams' context here is due to have a baby soon. So here she goes. She says, Dear John, I adore and respect you, but please keep me out of your statements that are not factually based. I've never played anyone ranked there, nor do I have time. Respect me in my privacy as I'm trying to have a baby. Good day, sir. Good day. I said good day. Though I was reading a Vox article about this whole kerfuffle, and they quoted Serena Williams herself from a 2013 interview that she did on David Letterman's show.

And she says, quote, if I were to play Andy Murray, I would lose 6-0, 6-0 in five to six minutes, maybe 10 minutes. The men are a lot faster. They serve harder. They hit harder. It's a completely different game. Yes. But then from now on, people should talk about the best male player in the world when they're referring to men. That would solve this problem. The fact is, this has been a debate that's raged for a long, long time. There was that big match. Remember, Billie Jean King wound up playing against a male player whose name no one can remember because Billie Jean King was far more famous than he was. And she beat him in this

head-to-head match. Billie Jean King actually wound up weighing in on this and did note that she thinks that the top woman could not beat the top man, you know, and that no one would argue otherwise. And, you know, Andy Murray is the top-ranked tennis player now currently. Top-ranked male tennis player. Top-ranked male tennis player. Top-ranked male tennis player in the world. If we just stick to that, we can solve this problem. Yeah. Domenico, why can't you let go of?

Well, everything gets a label nowadays. So what I can't let go of is the word Xennials. Or is it Xennials? I think it's Xennials. I think Xennials might be some sort of like perennial flower. Yeah. Oh, oh, yeah. Well, Xenia. Okay. I'm pretty sure it's Xennials because it's a combination of two generations, a micro generation between Generation X, Gen X, and Millennials. And this is for anybody born between 1977 and 1983, which happens to be some of us in this room, particularly me. And me. Are you?

Oh, see, we've got three of us Xennials in here. We are a dominant generation. So it's a micro generation. This was coined by an Australian professor by the name of Dan Woodman. And his point here is, especially on technology, we're a lot different than the generation that came before us and the generation that came after. This Daily Mail piece sums it up this way. Ex-ennials grew up in a time where landline phones were used to organize catch-ups with friends, and people read the newspaper and watched the nightly news to keep up to date with

current affairs. That's true. Like, I remember not that long ago picking up an actual newspaper and reading it. I remember having a rotary phone growing up. Oh, yeah. I'm kind of surprised you don't still have a rotary phone. That seems like something you would hold on to. I like a dial tone. Oh, my goodness. Well, anyway, so our phones do have a dial tone. But anyway, I you know, anyway. So our phones do have a dial tone. But anyway, you'd have to get the long extension cord to be able to talk so that your parents couldn't hear you. I mean all of these things existed for us that the younger generation or the people in our generation technically, if we're not born before 1978 we're Millennials we are technically technically and that's why the X annual thing seems so interesting

yeah you know it's interesting because it's just there's a different kind of way about us now I will say bustle.com had a story written by a somewhat younger millennial had this to say about it. Older millennials are so salty about being millennials, they made up a new name for themselves. My two things that I always say is my dividing line for millennials or Xennials or whatever it is, is if you had email in high school, you're definitely a millennial. And if you do not have any conscious memory of Ronald Reagan as president, you are definitely a millennial. Then I am definitely not a millennial. Yeah. Because I mean, I remember I remember Ronald Reagan being president. And if you don't have any memory of that, there is like no question

that you're a millennial. Yeah. My biggest dividing line difference between me and the younger generation definitely is around technology. When I was a freshman in college, I still had to hand write in long form on paper, my term papers. I was still doing that and then typing them up because it just wasn't a part of muscle memory. It wasn't until my sophomore year in college that I really started to take notes on computers and write that way. It just wasn't as integrated in everyday life. All right, old man. I know. Speak for yourself.

I feel like our listeners are going to be like, God, I didn't realize. This is my dad's podcast. Dadcast. Okay, that is a wrap for today. We will be back next week, but not until after the 4th of July. We're taking time off. So the next episode, probably, hopefully, next Thursday. Make sure to keep up with NPR Politics on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. And make sure that you're listening to Up First, which will have new episodes on Monday and Tuesday, even if we don't. And if you're enjoying the show, do us a little favor

and leave a review on iTunes. That helps new listeners find us. Of course, you can support our work by supporting your local public radio station at the link in our episode information. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.