The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, June 6

Episode Date: June 6, 2019

President Trump is threatening to place tariffs on Mexico to try to stop the flow of migrants across the border, but Congressional Republicans question how that will help stop the influx. Plus, Congress puts big tech companies on notice. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez, and political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben. 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 Kiki from Lawrence, Kansas, and I figured this would be the best way to wish my poli-sci professor husband a happy five-year anniversary. This podcast was recorded at 1255 p.m. on Thursday, June 6th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Here's the show. Happy anniversary, guys. So many love connections here on the Politics Pod. Absolutely. We love our love connections. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Franco Ordonez, and I also cover the White House. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And there was a new voice in there who also covers the White House. Franco, welcome to the NPR Politics Podcast. It is great to be here. And welcome to NPR.

So excited that you're here. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, so tell our audience a little bit about yourself. Well, what can I say? I was born in New York, grew up in Atlanta. I got two great kids. I live here in Washington, D.C. I like to run a lot. And also, I've been covering the White House for the last two years. Previously for McClatchy, I focused a lot on immigration and foreign policy. And now I'm here. So Star Trek or Star Wars? That's a great question, but definitely Star Wars. That is also the right answer. Okay, you can be... Lucky for you, because you'd never be asked that otherwise. You've passed the first test.

Franco, it is convenient that you are here this week on your first week because the news this week is all in your wheelhouse. Right now, there are negotiations happening between the U.S. government and the Mexican government to try to avert tariffs from going into effect. Can you explain why we're here, how we got here, what's going on? By tweet, of course. I mean, isn't that how all the big announcements happen? You know, Trump used his favorite bullhorn, Twitter, and he announced that he was going to start imposing 5% tariffs on all Mexican imports. Those tariffs would gradually increase up to 25% to October. And the idea was they would continue until Mexico stopped the flow of illegal immigration. So these tariffs that the president is proposing, the question was,

what will they be tariffs on? The answer is absolutely everything. And everything that is traded with Mexico, this could be auto parts that passed across the border multiple times. It could be avocados. It could be tequila. It could be dishwashers. Literally everything would have a 5 percent tariff put on it if it comes into the United States. And then it only escalates from there. Once a month, right? It goes up 5%. To 25% in October. Right. Mara, what do tariffs have to do with immigration? Well, if you had talked to economists or some Republicans in Congress, they said they have nothing to do with them, except if you put tariffs on Mexico, maybe you'd increase the flow of illegal immigrants because it would hurt the economy. Okay, well, that's not the president's goal. No, that's not the president's goal. He sees tariffs, he calls himself a tariff man. He sees tariffs as an all-purpose tool to punish anyone and use it as leverage to get them to do what he wants. He

hasn't been successful up until now, but he's trying again. Economists will tell you tariffs are a tax. They are not paid by Mexico. They are paid by American companies and consumers when they purchase Mexican products. So Mara landed on something that I heard from Republicans a lot, particularly Senate Republicans, and that their interpretation of what's happening here is that the president sees tariffs as a thing that has worked for him in the past, particularly with China. They think that the president believes he was able to move forward and put pressure on China effectively using tariffs, and he's trying to recreate that to get completely unrelated outcomes from Mexico. The problem is they're also trying to get a trade deal with Mexico, and it is complicating things in a pretty dramatic way.

Yeah. And so Republicans in Congress, many of them, I mean, I guess they're a little bit divided, but there's a lot of not happiness coming out of the Republicans, particularly in the Senate. Yeah. There was a weekly party lunch where some lawyers from the White House came and talked to Republicans about these tariffs. And I was told that not a single person stood up to say that they really liked the tariffs. And in fact, a bunch of Republicans went into the meeting saying that they were kind of with the president or that they understood why the president wanted to do this or why the president wanted to put pressure on Mexico. And those people who were kind of in the president's corner before the lunch came out completely silent or came out and were softening in their support for the president. There were a lot of people who came out and so large and so strong right now that it can withstand whatever economic hit tariffs cause. But there is a limit to that. I will say I was I was very interested that Marco Rubio did come out in support of the tariffs. And

it's fascinating because Marco Rubio, he's known as like the Latino whisperer. You know, he's kind of an unofficial advisor to President Trump on Latin American issues. And he gave out a series of tweets yesterday talking about how he is basically calling on his Republican colleagues and saying, hey, guys, what else are we going to do? He's also interesting because he and I would say maybe a couple other people like Senator Tim Scott from South Carolina are a little bit of a bellwether of whether or not the Senate, Senate Republicans are going to tip in favor of something the president wants or away from it. And as long as Marco Rubio is going to stand with the president and Tim Scott is also standing with the president, it makes it hard to see how they're ever going to actually take a vote

and stand up to the president. And they certainly don't have enough votes to override a veto if it came to that. But I have a question for Franco. Oh, what else are they going to do? That assumes that Mexico can turn off the spigot, can stop Central American migrants from coming, can stop the drugs from flowing. I mean, already the president has done the opposite of what some people have thought was a solution. Let's address the root causes in these countries like Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador that's causing people to leave. He's cut off a lot of that.

He has cut off a lot of that. And that's the issue that most foreign policy people will talk about. When I talk to foreign policy experts in those countries, in Central America, they will tell me, look, you are not going to stop our residents, our communities from going to the United States as long as they know there are jobs there, as long as they have family members who love them there and who want to reconnect, and as long as there's still lack of jobs and options here in our countries. One question about this is, why is this happening now? Why is President Trump so upset that he is taking this action potentially against Mexico? And part of it has to be what's been happening at the border. Just yesterday, Franco, we got some new numbers out of the Department of Homeland Security that show a

pretty stunning number of migrants being taken into custody at the U.S. border. Yeah, there's 144,000 immigrants were apprehended at the border just in May. The administration is really calling this an emergency. Trump sees this as an emergency. And to be clear, this is the third month in a row that there has been more than 100,000 apprehensions out at the border. Well, yeah. And so you have a president who is frustrated or whatever, whatever you want to call it. He has not gotten the wall, though he did declare a national emergency and he is working to get a wall that way. He has not been able to get Congress to do anything that he wants them to do. There was just a new proposal that was like laughed off offstage. Yeah, I mean, he shut down the government

to get a wall and didn't get it. Yeah, a couple of things that are happening that people might forget about that may relate in the president's mind when it comes to walls and immigration is that the House just passed a disaster aid bill that he wanted to have include money for a wall. That didn't happen. The leaders in the House and Senate are working on a deal to increase spending. They call it a spending caps deal. That will likely, if Democrats are getting their way, not include money for a wall. And they have a spending negotiation coming where Democrats are already saying there won't be money for a wall. So there's a lot of indication coming

from Capitol Hill that he's not getting what he wants. Okay, so he can't get what he wants from Congress. And so he's trying to get what he wants from Mexico. And is he going to be able to get what he wants from Mexico? That's the million dollar question. Can he get what he wants from Mexico? And what does he want? Well, what he wants are, you know, very specific things. He wants the Mexican government to enforce their immigration laws to do more what they do. He's saying that he's arguing that the Mexican immigration laws are stronger than the United States laws, and they are very strong. He's also pointing out that the border with Guatemala, the Mexican border with Guatemala, is much shorter and easier to patrol. That's the Trump administration's position. They also want the Mexican government to accept all of the asylum seekers to be the third party country where all the asylum seekers sit

or wait until their cases are heard in U.S. courts. And the Mexican government has already said that they're not going to do that. The Mexican government does seem to be open to talks. There's no question that the Trump administration has gotten the Mexican government's attention, hence why we're having these discussions. But, you know, what actually comes out today is a is a big question. There's a huge deadline impending. And Trump says, you know, deal or tariffs. So, Kelsey, the deadline, the real that, you know, the beginning of tariffs is supposed to be Monday. Let's say there is no deal and the president signs whatever he has to sign to make these tariffs start on Monday.

Yeah. As we were coming into the studio, Richard Neal, who's the Democrat in charge of the Ways and Means Committee in the House, he said that if the tariffs go into effect, that the House is going to start a process of voting to disapprove of those tariffs. Now, if they take that vote, then it will force the Senate to also take that vote. The real question now is, can they get a veto-proof majority in either the House or the Senate or both? At this point, it does not look like they can get that in the House. And there are some Republicans in the Senate who are saying that theoretically, there are enough Republicans to oppose this president. But there have been theoretically enough Republicans to oppose the president on an issue many times before, and it has really never

come to fruition. Right. I mean, the chorus of opposition voices is getting louder, particularly on trade, but it never gets loud enough to sustain a veto override. I mean, because there are political consequences there. If Republicans vote to override a veto, they really worry about what that's going to do for them when they are up for reelection. Republicans in the House and the Senate are terrified of defying the president because they think that their voters will turn against them. And they probably will. All right. We are going to leave it there for now. Franco, you survived your first time in the Thunderdome. I mean, the NPR politics podcast. I am so thankful to have been able to survive this. I just want to thank my-

You didn't just survive, you thrived. I want to thank my family for their support for me attending this ball. All right. We will have you back very soon. We're going to take a quick break. And when we return, Congress takes on the big tech companies. Support for this podcast and the following message come from ExxonMobil, the company that believes that carbon capture technologies are critical for lowering global CO2 emissions. And more and more scientists agree. As a leader in capturing emissions in its own operations, ExxonMobil is working on ways to make this technology more efficient and affordable for other industries as well. That's the unexpected

energy of ExxonMobil. Find out more at energyfactor.com. Support also comes from Google. Veteran Mitch Hoyt founded Skinny Sticks Maple Syrup, and he's showing that small businesses can do big things. Mitch started making syrup from a few trees in his Wisconsin backyard and now is connecting with customers worldwide with help from Google tools. Skinny Sticks is one of millions of small businesses using Google to grow. Learn how Google is helping businesses in your state at google.com slash economic impact. Mitch McConnell has become a champion for conservatives. But back in the day, he once got support from groups like labor unions. I've marked it down as one of the worst things

I've done in my life. So you thought about it over the years? I still think about it every time I see his face. Mitch McConnell, a new series from Embedded. Subscribe now. And we are back. And Danielle Kurtzleben is here with us. Hello, Danielle. Hey, Tam. So this week, the four big tech companies, Google, Facebook, Apple and Amazon were put on notice. The Justice Department is reportedly taking up potential antitrust investigations with Apple and Google. And the Federal Trade Commission is looking into Facebook and Amazon. So that's like something. Yeah, that's a very big something. And it's not the only thing that's happening, because at the same time, the House announced that they're going to start having hearings on antitrust and on these on the big tech companies and what to do about it.

They're kind of a nebulous set of hearings. We don't know who they're going to call or when they're going to happen. But they want to get started on trying to tackle this really big question that is is much larger than just are the companies too big. Well, so Nancy Pelosi, I think it was about a week ago, said something that I think sort of sums up the shift in, you know, these companies have had sort of an easy, an easy ride, you could say. Yeah, Pelosi was reacting to this video that made her appear drunk. And that was actually retweeted by people close to the president. And she was quite upset about it because Facebook wouldn't take it down. And she said, Facebook knows that this is false. They know that this is false. And yet they've decided to go. Now, we have said all along, oh, poor Facebook. They were unwittingly exploited by the Russians.

I think wittingly, because right now they're willing to put something on that they know to be false. She then said, I think they've proven by not taking down something they know is false that they were willing enablers of Russian interference in our election. Pretty harsh. Yeah. Right. Wow. So all of that leads to this growing conversation in the political bloodstream about what, if anything, is going to be done about these very big, very powerful companies that have reach into all of our lives. It feels like it's a conversation about a conversation that they might have a conversation about right now because nobody seems to know how to even start that.

But it's the beginning. And also a couple decades too late. Well, no, but it's the beginning of a big debate about bigness. We threw out this word antitrust, and everybody's talking about antitrust. Mara, what is it? Where does it come from? And how does it apply here? Antitrust is the body of law that says when a company or a corporation or a conspiring group

of companies either get too big or they conspire too much and they set prices unfairly, that prices go up. It hurts consumers because this one company is too big, has too much control. The modern debate about antitrust is these companies are too big, but they're not raising prices. They're doing other things. They're invading our privacy. They're stealing our data. They're trafficking in misinformation. They're letting the Russians interfere in our elections, all sorts of other things. So we are at the beginning of this debate about bigness. And lawmakers haven't even decided, are some of these companies like public utilities that need to be regulated or do they need to be broken up? We're at the very beginning of this.

Right. And it's not just about even to even add on to that. It's not even just about privacy or prices or that sort of thing. Some of it is about information, like a couple of companies that have taken aim at Google are TripAdvisor and Yelp. Because what they are saying is that when I go in and look in Google and Google good restaurants around the NPR building, what I'm not getting at the top is necessarily a Yelp review. What I'm getting are Google reviews or whatever. So and granted, the Yelp people aren't necessarily concerned that I, Danielle Kurtz, labor are getting the right information. They're concerned that their their pages are not popping up. But the point here is that it's not just about Standard Oil owning 90 percent of the oil refineries here.

This is about Google having its own review service and then potentially putting its own review service above everyone else. But information is their product. Yes, absolutely. And information is money in this economy. And they're keeping other people's products off the shelf, just like old-fashioned monopolies used to do. And by the same token, privacy is monetizable as well. Your information, what you do on the Internet, is money to these companies. You are the product.

Right. And so it's not in the same way. And this is part of the problem, right, is Congress really doesn't know how to wrap its head around this. I did some interviews yesterday about kind of whether or not Congress is ready for all of this. And the thing I heard over and over and over again is there just really aren't tech experts on the Hill.

There are a lot of reasons. I mean, one reason is it's hard to compete with the salaries of Silicon Valley and attract people to come work in Congress. Some of it is that they made cuts to the information systems. There used to be a part of Congress that advised members and staff on technology specifically. That's been done away with. But all of those things come together to create a situation where you have the people who are making these major decisions for millions of people just don't really understand what they're talking about. Allow me to put the cart before the horse here as well, because let's say Congress can figure out, can get their tech experts and can figure out, okay, what is good behavior? What is bad behavior?

You know, what has anyone done wrong, if anything, et cetera, et cetera. Then they have to figure out what do you do about it? Because you have a few options. You can regulate, you can break up a company, you can fine. The European Union has fined Google more than once in the last few years, but opponents say it hasn't really changed Google's practices enough. So what exactly do you do? This just like we are so at the beginning of this. It's so hard to see how it turns out. And I just want to make a big plug for Kelsey's story yesterday, which was so great for many reasons. But one of them was that she played this famous cut of tape of Orrin Hatch, no longer in

the Senate, old guy, you know, asking Mark Zuckerberg. So how do you sustain a business model in which users don't pay for your service? Senator, we run ads. And the thing that was so amazing about that moment was the obvious follow up was, oh, you take all of this personal information from your users and monetize it and sell it to advertisers, which is exactly what they do. And you're saying that follow up didn't happen. The thing is, that's what I kept hearing over and over yesterday was that Congress doesn't know what they don't know. So they can't ask the right questions. And that puts them at a really it makes it really hard to decide about the questions

Danielle is raising if they don't even know where to start. Danielle, you have been covering the Democrats running for president and many of their policy ideas. And some of them have policy ideas as relates to these very big tech companies. Right. Totally. And I mean, the person that it is impossible to ignore on this is Elizabeth Warren, because she has the biggest policy on this and the one that our listeners have probably heard the most about, which is her call to break up big tech companies in it. She took aim, dead aim at companies like Facebook. Amazon is a really big one. You know, she tends to say things like, you know, there are two problems. One is that, you know, a company like Google has too much control over search. It's just too big in its market. But aside from that,

she doesn't like that Amazon, for example, has its own selling platform, but also can muscle out other people in selling its own products on that platform. Making its own product. Yeah. So it's a vertical. It's a vertical problem as well as a horizontal problem. Google is a horizontal problem. Amazon is a vertical problem. Oh, great.

Explain horizontal and vertical. Well, horizontal is you control the whole market for one thing. Vertical is where you're involved in every step of production, marketing, selling. You own the factory and the stores and the trains and everything from beginning to end. So to give you a 30,000-foot view, yes, you have Elizabeth Warren with her plan, which really has set the stakes for the debate in a big way because then you have all the other candidates being asked, do you support this plan to break up big tech? Some people like Bernie Sanders and Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard have said yes, absolutely. But then you have other candidates, including from across the spectrum. You have Joe Biden.

You have Kamala Harris. You have Pete Buttigieg. They may be open to breaking up big tech. They don't flat out say, yes, let's do that. But what they do say is something is wrong. Maybe we'll have to regulate. There seems to be, at the very least, some pretty big consensus, at least among the top tier candidates of, all right, something is very amiss in this industry. We have to do

something. Things are bad. And this might be a fine point to say that NPR receives sponsorship from many of these outlets that we just talked about. Yeah, and you know who else does? Every single member of Congress, basically. And a lot of these campaigns. And so this is a complicated situation. Tech companies donate a lot of money to politics. They are the standard oil of the modern era and the railroads.

And they employ a lot of people. In a lot of districts and in a lot of states. I mean, it's a big part of, as somebody said to me over and over yesterday, it is a part of the American fabric right now. Right. We will probably be talking about this more in the months and weeks ahead. But we are going to take a quick break right now. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. Support for this NPR podcast and the following message come from BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers licensed professional counselors who specialize in issues such as depression, stress, anxiety, and more.

Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment at your convenience. Get help at your own time and your own pace. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist. Visit BetterHelp.com slash politics to learn more and get 10% off your first month. After more than 50 years of lies and silence, a witness to the attack on Jim Reeb finally tells the truth about what she saw. I didn't know whether they were going to get off or not, but I was glad when they did. Even though they were guilty and I knew they were guilty and they knew they were guilty.

It's White Lies from NPR. Listen and subscribe now. And we're back and we're going to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go. That's the part of the show where we talk about the things we cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Mara. My Can't Let It Go This Week is I've been working on a piece about the progressive primary, the intramural famously anti-immigration, anti-identity politics. He had this long commentary about Elizabeth Warren. We can navigate the changes ahead if we embrace economic patriotism and make American workers our highest priority rather than continuing to cater to the interests of companies and people with no allegiance to America. End quote.

Now let's say you regularly vote Republican. Ask yourself, what part of the statement you just heard did you disagree with? Was there a single word that seemed wrong to you? Probably not. Here's the depressing part. Nobody you voted for said that or would ever say it. Republicans in Congress can't promise to protect American industries. They wouldn't dare to do that.

It might violate some principle of Austrian economics. It might make the Koch brothers mad. It might alienate the libertarian ideologues who, to this day, fund most Republican campaigns. So no, a Republican did not say that, sadly. Instead, the words you just heard are from, and brace yourself here, Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. It's true. She sounds like Donald Trump at his best. I have two takeaways from this. Number one, sounds like Donald Trump at his best. I interpret that as sounds like the Donald Trump we were really hoping to see but didn't. The guy who sounded like an economic populist on the campaign, but since he's been in office, has governed like a pro-plutocrat Republican.

The other takeaway is maybe Elizabeth Warren made a mistake when she decided not to go on Fox. Her policies are extremely well thought out. Her political tactics sometimes too clever by half. Maybe she missed an opportunity. You know, it makes me think of the times when people would make jokes about how Rand Paul had gone so far to the right that he was coming back around to the left. And it's the same kind of idea. The ideological circle connects. Left-wing populism and right-wing populism overlap when it comes to economics. It's an interesting diagram. Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump were the closest on economics in 2016, not anymore.

Now, on the other hand, though, maybe she missed an opportunity by not going on Fox. On the other hand, it doesn't seem to have scared a Fox opinion host away from praising her. And she just got representation on Fox's air. So it all worked out. Yes, but just think what she could have done with Fox's audience. Oh, sure. Totally. Yeah. Danielle, what can't you let go of?

I can't let go of a vintage public radio clip. Oh, my. I happened to be chatting with Bob Mondello, our movie critic, this last week. And I don't know how we got on this topic, but he was like, there's an interview you have to hear. It is from, I believe, the early 80s. It is maybe it's mid 80s. It is Lynn Neary, one of our arts correspondents, interviewing Leon Redbone, the musician. Leon Redbone, who just died, who recently died. Maybe this is how this came up. Now, what's interesting about I apologize. What's interesting about this is like, you know, when you guys are doing an interview with someone and you're thinking to yourself the whole time, this is not going to work on the radio, like the person, just the way they talk, it's slow or it's one word answers. That's that feeling of dread while it's happening. So I talked to Lynn about this and she was like, yeah, that's the feeling I got during this interview. So here is the first clip of her talking to Leon Redbone.

Do you have a good time up there doing that? No, I never have a good time. You never have a good time? No, no. But I try. So he gives these sorts of answers throughout this. This is like an eight-ish minute, nine minute thing. Wait, so they put this on the air like this?

Okay, so here's the thing. So the reason that I brought this in is that it gets very surreal and meta. Because what they did was Lynn brought the tape back and said, you know, this isn't going to work. So they interspersed it with voiceovers of Lynn Neary. And they gave the voiceovers this weird reverb sort of thing. So where she's talking about, I was just thinking, like, she's talking about the thoughts that were going through her head, like, this wasn't going well. So here's her asking him a different question. Seriously, but the music that you play, I get the feeling that you really genuinely love that kind of music. Is that right? I know it was a dumb question, but I had to get him going.

What else is there? Did you grow up listening to that music? It's just... I listen to nothing else but... Something people can sing along with. Mm-hmm. The man was definitely getting the better of me. Maybe it was the sunglasses.

Anyway, eventually I managed to get a few glimpses of his personality. That is so worth pulling out of the archives. I mean, that is priceless. You know, this reminds me of the Gay Talese profile, Frank Sinatra Has a Cold. I don't know if you've ever read that. Yes. Where Frank Sinatra doesn't show up.

And you learn it in journalism school. It's one of the most famous profiles of new journalism. And it's kind of, it changed the way people thought about talking about a celebrity who just doesn't want to play ball. Yeah. So this is Lynn Neary snatching interview victory from the jaws of interview defeat. You know, you get the feeling that we maybe are not at NPR at the right time. You know, like, there was a better time when we could have self-dialogue on the air. I'm going to demand reverb for all the rest of my radio interview. And eight minutes for every story. Oh, yeah.

Well, I already do that. And no one says yes. So anyway, that's why I can't let it go. What about you, Tam? Oh, so what I cannot let go of is it's sort of related to something that we keep talking about on this podcast, which is unidentified flying objects. Of course. It's important. UFOs.

So there was something that showed up on the Doppler radar in San Diego County recently that was not a cloud. It was not. It turns out it was ladybugs. What? I love this so much. Not a cloud in the sky. It was not. It turns out it was ladybugs. What? I love this so much. Not a cloud in the sky. How big does something have to be to get on the Doppler radar?

Well, according to the L.A. Times here, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service San Diego said that the ladybug bloom appears to be about 80 miles by 80 miles. We should clarify, this is many ladybugs, not just an 80-mile ladybug. Yes. Yes, it was a cloud of ladybugs spread throughout the sky, flying at between 5,000 and 9,000 feet, with the most concentrated mass about 10 miles wide. Oh, it's so cool. Yeah.

Does this happen every year? No, this was just a freak non-meteorological situation. So if one ladybug is good luck, what is 80 miles of ladybug? I mean, what I was saying to Tam. That's a really good question. I was tweeting this at Tam, like, it's not a UFO. Maybe it's alien mind control of the ladybug. All right, Kelsey.

Well, my can't let it go is not just a can't let it go for this week, but I think kind of a lifetime can't let it go. And it's Dolly Parton. She had a worthy lifetime can't let it go. There's so many reasons to love Dolly Parton. Jolene is a fantastic song. She gives out millions of free books to kids all over the country for free. But this week she did an interview with the New York Times, a Q&A, where she was talking about new expansion of Dollywood. But a couple of things really stood out to me. Dollywood being her amusement park.

Yes, her amusement park. And the things that stood out to me is they asked her if she had good travel skin care tips. And she said her skin care tip is that she cleans her face in the morning because you never know if you're going to wreck the bus. You never know if you're going to be somewhere in a hotel where there's going to be a fire. So I leave my makeup on at night and clean my face in the morning. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Super weird.

That is a violation of everything we've ever been told. So if I have to go running out of my burning hotel at 3 a.m., the idea is that we stop. Okay, just checking. Well, I mean, she probably does not want to be photographed without her makeup on. Well, I think it's better because they ask her if she's ever been on any of the rides at Dollywood. She says she doesn't ride the rides, in part because she gets motion sickness, which I can understand. But she's also really worried about losing her wig or her shoes. And she says, I don't like to get messed up.

I'm going to have some handsome man mess me up. I don't want to ride doing it. Nice. She also says that her favorite snacks are potted meat and Tabasco sauce. So all in all, it's a really good Q&A. Dolly Parton is an A-plus person. So good. All right. That is a wrap for today. We will be back as soon as there's political news you need to know about. But before we go, a quick reminder that we've been hitting the road,

heading to Iowa and New Hampshire to interview the Democratic candidates running for president. In your podcast feeds already, you'll find conversations with Senator Cory Booker, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand. And this weekend, Scott is going to interview a couple more candidates. Next week, I have one. So join us on the campaign trail by seeking out those episodes. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.