The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, March 15

Episode Date: March 15, 2018

The Trump administration announced new sanctions against Russia on Wednesday over its meddling in the 2016 election. Democrat Conor Lamb appears to have won a special election in Pennsylvania. The next election on the calendar is the Illinois primary next week, which may have some interesting clues for Democrats for the fall. Thousands of students walked out of school across the country on Tuesday — the one month anniversary of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — to protest gun violence. And the Senate voted to roll back Dodd-Frank, the banking regulations created in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, congressional reporter Kelsey Snell, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas and national political correspondent Mara Liasson. 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

Hello, this is Tyler Abrams and Alexandria Hammons calling from our apartment on Mission Bay in San Diego, California. Of course I said yes. We're engaged. This podcast was recorded at 1.15 p.m. Thursday, March 15th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Keep up with all the political coverage at NPR.org. Your NPR One app or local radio station. Enjoy the show. Aw. I'm so happy.

That's her story. Nice. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, and we are here with our weekly roundup of political news. Thousands of students walked out of school yesterday to protest gun violence. The walkouts marked the one-month anniversary of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. Also, news today that the Treasury Department is imposing new sanctions against Russia over its meddling in the 2016 election. And in 2018 election news, Democrat Conor Lamb appears to have won a special election in Pennsylvania. Now, all eyes are on the Illinois primary coming up next week.

I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. All right. Can we just acknowledge that that was a lovely timestamp? It would have been real awkward if it hadn't worked out. That was so great. And they sent us photos and the photos are so cute. It was very cute. Very cute. Oh, congratulations to them. We're really happy. And thank you for sending us photos. We're

glad to have played, you know, a minor, but like I would like to say important role in that engagement process. So now on to Russia. The Trump administration today imposed new sanctions on Russia for cyber attacks, including specifically interfering in the 2016 presidential campaign. This is the biggest action the U.S. has taken against Russia since President Trump took office. So, Ryan, you are our resident Russia expert. Can you please explain why now? Well, the specific reason for now is not entirely clear. What has happened recently that they kind of tied this into is the poisoning of the former Russian spy in the UK, Sergei Skripal, his daughter as well. They were poisoned with a nerve agent that the British government has said ties back to Russia, that only Russia produces

that and has blamed Russia for the attack. And the US came out with other NATO allies today and also said that they think that it's very highly likely that this was indeed Russia who was behind that. Now, as for the sanctions, they tie this into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. But they also say that this is part of a response to broader Russian efforts to conduct cyber attacks in the U.S., which they say are malicious, destructive. And so it's a response to that. Now, what it ties attacks in the U.S., which they say are malicious, destructive. And so it's a response to that. Now, what it ties into in the election sense is that it's most of the people who are sanctioned in these, and there are 19 individuals and five entities that are sanctioned.

Thirteen of the 19 individuals who are sanctioned today were indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller over their roles, their alleged roles in Russia's interference campaign during the 2016 election. There is also an entity, the Internet Research Agency, which is what the Mueller indictment says was kind of the main organization carrying out cyber attacks against the DNC and the propaganda campaign, disinformation on social media, ties that back into the Internet Research Agency. It was sanctioned as well today. They also, sanctions target the two main Russian intelligence agencies, one's the FSB, the other's the GRU, the GRU being the military intelligence agency. And they press sanctions against six individuals who are high-ranking officials in the GRU.

The reaction on Capitol Hill has been a lot of relief because they did vote for some sanctions to be put on to Russian actors that the White House had been dragging their feet and had been reluctant to enact. And so when I talk to people up here, they say, well, finally, we've been asking the White House to do this for some time. And there's a sense, particularly among Democrats, that this is not enough and that new things have to be done. And I think they have to the White House should go further in letting Russia know that the U.S. won't stand for this kind of thing. And Ryan, you said that obviously this comes on the same day that the White House has joined its NATO allies in condemning this nerve agent attack in Great Britain, saying that it was a clear violation of the Chemical Weapons Convention, the first offensive use of a nerve agent in Europe since World War II. That's a really big deal. And today you heard the president say he does agree with Great Britain that it was Russia. I guess

my question is, one of the things that you hear people say is the reason why Putin did what he did, if in fact he was behind this nerve agent attack, is because he wants to see what the West's reaction is. And if the West's reaction is tepid, as the United States' reaction to Russian interference in the election has been, then it shows him he's got a free hand to do more. Well, the other thing is that taking action as a united front, as united Western powers, as France, UK, Germany, US, acting together takes a lot of effort, a lot of coordination. And sometimes there has to be sacrifice on a part of one country. And in the case of sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, you certainly had countries

like Germany that weren't thrilled with the sanctions that were imposed on Russia because German businesses suffered from that. And if you can make Western countries have to make a choice between their own interests and broader Western values and countries start opting instead for their own interests over broader Western values, then Putin can point to the fact that, you know, all these Western values that people talk about aren't nearly as important as one's own personal interests. And it starts to kind of chip away at this Western sense of community. Sort of like Germany first. Germany first. America first. America first.

About the sanctions themselves. So, Ryan, is there a sense that you have that these are actually practical at achieving any sort of diplomatic goal or are they just largely symbolic? Well, the two intelligence agencies that were sanctioned, the FSB and the GRU, sure, they're not going to have access to their Bank of America accounts or their Chase Manhattan accounts, but are they really using Bank of America and Chase Manhattan to begin with? No. Does this have a major impact on them? Are senior officers in the GRU, do they have accounts or mutual funds in the U.S.? Not really. Is a lot of this kind of symbolic? Largely so, yes. So, Ryan, what does this mean about the upcoming

election? Does we have any sense that this is putting Russia on notice or that this is an effort to push back and try to prevent them from meddling in the election we have in just a few months? I think the stronger sanctions and measures that the Obama administration took in December didn't change Russia's behavior and they're going to continue to meddle as U.S. intelligence officials say that they are ahead of the 2018 midterms, there's no reason to think that the sanctions today are going to change Russian behavior at all. OK, we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back a month after Parkland, where are we on guns?

Support for this podcast and the following message come from AT&T on behalf of Audience Network and their new original series, Condor. Based on the cult classic film, Three Days of the Condor, this modern-day spy thriller stars Max Irons, William Hurt, and Mira Sorvino. Condor premieres Wednesday, June 6th at 10 p.m. on Audience. Watch it on DirecTV Channel 239 and streaming on DirecTV Now. All right, we're back. And of all the news this week, and there has certainly been a lot of it,

what was perhaps one of the most visually powerful moments was the image of thousands of students walking out of school yesterday at 10 a.m. to protest gun violence. It was a coordinated nationwide action led entirely by students. This time will be different because the people who are deeply affected by the shooting, the people who saw it, are the people speaking out. Every time that there's an unexpected fire alarm, every time there's a drill we didn't know about, we think it's real. The message about the NRA is that gun reform is coming and we're going to bring it. This could happen anywhere. This could happen to any student. How is it a learning environment when I'm afraid I'm going to get killed. That was Cameron Kasky, a survivor of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, Maya Steinhardt, a student in Sacramento, Amina Bergam-Khaliq, a student in Detroit,

and Maeve Deller, a student in San Francisco. So this feels sort of different than other moments of activism we've seen, I would say, from folks, particularly from students. I mean, I can't recall the last time I saw such a massive coordinated student movement like this. Well, according to people who study this, this is the biggest expression of activism by high school students ever. Ever. High school students. Yeah. One of the things I have heard people discussing is that it feels different in part because you

are seeing the people who are experiencing this being activists for themselves and stepping up and kind of taking control of the message as young people. And it's a little bit different, I think, than what you would have seen in other situations or other shootings where the population was much more disparate. This is really concentrated to kids who are having political awakenings. And that's what I think is really interesting, right, is that we often talk, I would say, around elections about when people first became engaged in politics, their moment of political awakening. It's, I presume, different for each generation. But, Bomara, I mean, it sticks with you, right? Like that moment of political awakening. Oh, it definitely sticks with you. And

the interesting thing to me is when you hear the messages coming out of these protests, first of all, they are all about guns. They seem to be united around background checks and some kind of a ban on certain kinds of assault weapons. But they also talk about voting, voting, voting over and over again. Even though they're not old enough. Well, some of them are going to be old enough in November, and all of them have parents. Yeah. Some of them are going to be old enough in November, and all of them have parents. And one thing you did see, and I remember this distinctly in 2008, that Obama became a cause celeb for young people. And there were many videos made about how I called my grandma in Florida, and this is something I'm watching for, that could're still trying to figure out what that what that looks like and referred me to the RNC. But the DCCC said that, yes, this is something that they are doing and have big plans to expand. So, Kelsey, I mean, even though we know that this is certainly

energizing a lot of these folks, even though we know that this is certainly energizing a lot of these folks, even though they may be too young to vote, a lot of them have been talking about specific gun legislation that they want. I mean, I spoke actually a few weeks ago with some folks who are in high school, and they told me very vividly they remember doing active shooter drill lockdowns starting in first grade. And that has frightened them. And they want concrete action on gun legislation. And yet what's interesting to me is despite this protest movement, it doesn't seem like we've seen much on the legislative front. We absolutely haven't. And the most concrete thing, the thing that seems to be moving forward or has the most momentum is what they're calling fixnix, which is a change to federal gun registration to make it so that the reporting requirements are much more uniform

and that there would be punishment for the military or for local governments or whatever jurisdiction if they don't report crimes to the gun database. Now, that was sponsored in the Senate by Senator John Cornyn, and that bill picked up a ton of support in the past few weeks. It is above 60, which is the threshold that they need to get to in order for anything to pass without a filibuster or without being blocked here in the Senate. But we have no guarantee that it will actually be scheduled for a vote. The majority leader's office has not committed to anything. But there's a lot of rumbling in the past few days that it could maybe get tucked inside of this big omnibus spending bill that has to pass by the end of next week. Now, there are no guarantees there. And doing that is risky because sending a spending bill to the House, which is far more conservative than the Senate, that includes some changes to the gun registration, could make it harder for Speaker Ryan to convince the most conservative members of his party to vote for this spending

bill. But it's important to remember that a lot of these people who are more conservative and would probably vote against a spending bill with gun language in it also don't usually vote for spending bills. So it could maybe actually get passed that way. And, you know, we should point out the NRA is for this. So that is really important. And it makes the existing gun registration system more efficient. It gives basically states incentives to comply with the law, which they should already be complying with. What happened to the what's called constitutional carry provision in the House version of this, where you could have a concealed carry weapon anywhere in the country? Is that still in there? That is not in there. And that is part of the controversy in the

House is that if this comes over from the Senate without concealed carry, are people going to vote for it? Now, putting it inside of a spending bill, and I feel like we've been saying this a lot over the past few months, putting smaller provisions that could maybe get a mixture of Democrats and Republicans to get something passed or even get it passed with a lot of Democratic support is one way to skirt the difficult politics of Republicans not wanting to put up individual standalone bills that fail to get the majority of Republicans. So that might be part of the gamble here. Now, Kelsey, I want to make clear if I heard correctly or not, but there's very little chance of any other gun legislation getting through anytime soon. Right. Other than Fixnix. Other than Fixnix. There basically isn't anything else out there that has nearly the amount of support that Fixnix has.

And to be clear, Fixnix is narrow and it doesn't meet a lot of the demands that we're hearing from these kids who are out there protesting and who will be coming back to Washington to protest again later this month. Look, the House did overwhelmingly pass a bill yesterday aimed at school safety. It would help set up systems to report threats and to conduct training to prevent violence. But, you know, that kind of legislation is not what most of these kids who are protesting are talking about. You know, we've talked a lot about how this is a generation, the generation of high school students that's really kind of had its moment of political awakening. And that may all be true. But the difficulty, the political realities of getting gun control legislation through have not changed. No, they have not.

And, you know, I was watching the there was a hearing at the Senate Judiciary Committee No, they have not. What was fascinating to me was to sit there and listen to people talk. And if you watch that hearing, both Republicans and Democrats went to their usual corners. Democrats were talking about a ban on semi-automatic weapons and other gun control measures. Republicans were talking about the problems that law enforcement had, the missteps that they made that allowed crews to fall through the cracks and still be able to carry out the shooting. It wasn't a problem of guns. It was the problem of law enforcement or a certain individual. And then you had the teacher and the parent who were just sitting there saying, can we get something through? There are spots where Republicans and Democrats can agree,

make those changes now, achieve something, and then you can deal with the well-worn Second Amendment debate later. But that message was not even really received by anyone. It wasn't received by anyone. And frankly, when it was a multiple panel hearing and when it was the teacher and the parent, and there was somebody from the social media companies as well, there was only one Republican in the room for that part of the hearing. And that was Chairman Chuck Grassley. Yeah, the people who were hearing that message were Democrats who are going to be making political ads for the upcoming primaries and the upcoming election in November. Because the argument that I'm already hearing people make is, I understand that these high school students are making a push and that they are being heard. But

if you want their message to go from being heard to being acted upon, you need to go out and vote. And you need to put Democrats into office and you need Democrats to take over the House. And I would expect that the shrewd politicians making the campaign commercials and Internet ads that you're going to see are going to make that case over the next several months. And I mean, in some ways, this is sort of the realist political civic lesson you could really get. I mean, a lot of these students have pushed for certain changes. They did this in Florida, where they actually were effective at convincing the state legislature to raise the age to buy an

assault weapon to 21. The Republican governor did sign that into law. And then very shortly thereafter, we saw the NRA questioning its constitutionality. I mean, I think that's sort of how politics works and they're seeing it all in real time. And that's why this gun issue is one of the wild cards in this election cycle, because will it prompt just enough people to get involved and energized people who are going to vote Democratic? And you saw what happened after this shooting. The president was motivated to say he was going to fight the NRA. He convened lots of meetings at the White House. They were on television saying, you know, talking about doing all sorts of things that did not end up being legislative reality. President Trump acted for a moment,

at least, as if he thought that the political tides on this issue were shifting. Then it seems like he had a change of heart. It seems like the question now, and this is a question that is so familiar to Democrats this cycle, is can this movement stay engaged and will they show up at the polls? We have that question about the resist movement. We have that question about student activists on guns. We have that question on people who just want to vote Trump out of office and all Republicans who support him. And Democrats are really going to be put to the test about whether or not they can get those people to show up and vote. All right. We're going to take another quick break. But, Ryan, you have to leave us.

I got to run. Goodbye, Ryan. Bye, Ryan. Nobody's going to miss me. Ryan and I spend a lot of time together in studios. Bye, Ryan. Nobody's gonna miss me. Ryan and I spend a lot of time together in studios. Bye, Ryan. We'll miss you. Bye. And when we

come back, the next stop on the midterm election road. This week on Invisibilia, we ask, what's the best way to lose? We look for clues in beekeeping, grammar, and in my 74-year-old mom's desire to jump out of an airplane. All right, guys, I'm going to start getting load one trained up.

I'm so excited. I'm Hannah Rosen. Join us. And we're back. Okay, so for anyone who missed out on our podcast yesterday, I want to flag that we did a whole episode with analysis on the results of the special House election in Pennsylvania. But if you didn't catch that, a quick newsflash. The Democrat, Conor Lamb, appears to have won. He has an insurmountable lead, but the Republican still hasn't officially conceded. Anyhow, a Lamb victory is a huge upset, considering this is a solidly Republican district,

which Trump won by about 20 points in 2016. And a lot of folks have been wondering what that might tell us about the midterms and the enthusiasm among Democrats. We might get some clues from the next election on the calendar. That's in Illinois next Tuesday, March 20th. It's the second primary of this midterm election year. And fun fact, Illinois is Kelsey Snell's home state. And Kelsey, you're just back from a trip there. So tell us any signs that this Democratic enthusiasm is contagious. Is it like palpable in Illinois?

It's absolutely palpable. And it's kind of funny because you think about primaries as being this time when it's hard to get voters engaged. But this is one of those primaries where voters I talked to, just random people at train stops and out at parades, said they knew all about this primary. And that's in part because there's a gubernatorial primary happening, too. But people were pretty darn well informed about this. Was there a specific race you were looking at there, a specific congressional race? Yeah. So I'm looking at the Illinois 3rd congressional race. It's the seat currently held by Dan Lipinski, and it was held by his father before him.

They have been in office in that area, despite some redistricting, since around 1993. And that's a really long time. And I'm looking at this because he is facing a primary challenge from Marie Newman. She is a marketing executive from the wealthier suburbs on the southwest side of the city. And she is running far to Lipinski's left. And that's kind of not hard to do because he is one of the most conservative Democrats in all of Congress. What makes him so conservative? Well, he is one of the last three Democrats in Congress who is against abortion rights.

He calls himself a pro-life Democrat. And he is, you know, he's very unique in that way. He also voted against the Affordable Care Act, has been against some protections for the LGBT community, and he's also voted for some restrictions on immigration. So that puts him in a place that is not exactly at the center of where the Democratic Party is right now. It seems like it's kind of this internal battle that we've been hearing about within the Democratic Party is kind of playing out specifically in Illinois. Yeah, absolutely. In this district in particular, it is heavily Democratic. It went by more than 15 points for Hillary Clinton in 2016. This is a big Democratic district that is reckoning with a lot of the big themes that we're seeing across the country. Do they want to be moving further to the left? How do they feel about abortion? How do they feel about immigration? Do they want to be a party that raises money over lots and lots of people in small dollar amounts and works at the grassroots level? Or are they part of the bigger picture, the long-term history of Democrats being supported

by big unions? And it's a really interesting tension that we'll have an answer to in just a couple days. Kelsey, I have a question about this, especially after the results in Pennsylvania 18 the other day, where we saw a real lamb slide. I've been dying to use that bad pun, and now I got to use it. Yay! But I wanted to ask you, this is the kind of primary that doesn't matter. As you said, it's a Democratic district. And I'm wondering if this is only going to happen in the places where Democrats have the luxury to have this kind of internal intramural battle. And elsewhere, they're really focused on nominating people like Conor Lamb, who fit their district and could defeat a Republican. Right. I talked to some people, particularly some folks who are in the Democratic establishment,

who said that this is kind of about a moment where they have so many candidates for the first time in a really long time that they're able to fit candidates more closely to the district. It's not just choosing between Democrat A and Republican. It's choosing between Democrat A, B, and C and maybe a Republican. We're going to see this play out similar themes playing out in places like California and in a lot of the suburbs where Democrats have recruited a whole range of ideologies within the Democratic umbrella. Including a lot of military vets and a lot of people who kind of look like Conor Lamb. Because if you listen to Republicans, they say whenever the Democrats have a primary, they nominate a left-wing candidate. And the Democrats

are moving too far to the left. And I'm wondering if that's just a talking point, or are the Democrats really coming to the understanding that they have to nominate people who fit the district, even if that's someone like Conor Lamb, who is relatively pro-gun and more conservative than Nancy Pelosi. He said he wouldn't even vote for her as leader. Yeah, I mean, that's a tension that I think is frustrating Lipinski in particular. I talked to him about that, and I talked to him about kind of where the party is heading. And I think we have some tape of him talking about what he's seen the Democratic Party do for people who identify like him as pro-life. I have seen the Democratic Party, unfortunately, push pro-life voters out of the party. And I've seen that here. And I've had people come up to

me who tell me I used to be a Democrat, but because of the life issue, I can't be a Democrat anymore. Yeah. And then on the other hand, you have people like Congressman Luis Gutierrez, who is from a district, one district over from Lipinski, who's retiring. But I caught up with him at an event in his district, and this is how he described Lipinski. He's just a dinosaur. Shouldn't be there. Should be a relic in some museum. This was the Democratic Party, you know, 1980. It's a crazy tension that Democrats really haven't figured out. And they may be winning right now, but if they can't come up with some sort of central vision for who they are,

it may make things difficult, even if they do retake the House. Kelsey, do you have a sense of which way the winds are blowing at this point in that district? Well, the latest poll has Lipinski polling at 43 and Newman at 41. But that is within the statistical margin of error. And we really, really, really don't know. OK, so before we wrap up, we've got to talk quickly about another big story this week. We are 10 years on since the start of the Great Recession. And yesterday, the Senate voted overwhelmingly to roll back a portion of Dodd-Frank. That's the famous banking regulation legislation that was passed in 2010 in the wake of the financial

crisis. So Kelsey, remind us what Dodd-Frank does. It was the law that passed to prevent another major financial meltdown like the one that happened in 2008. And the part that we're really most concerned about here this week is a part that had these stress tests for banks to make sure that what are called systemically important banks don't fail and drag the entire banking system down. So what passed in the Senate this week was a measure that would roll back some of those regulations for smaller banks. And it would leave only 12 banks within that umbrella of systemically important banks that get these really, really rigorous tests every single year. And those would just

be the bigger banks, right? The too big to fail banks. Right. And the people who support this bill that passed this week say that the rules were too strict on small banks and community banks that serve rural areas and really just don't have the same kind of risks to the system as, say, a big bank like, oh, I don't know, Bank of America or Wells Fargo does. So it would make it easier for these banks to operate and keep lending in these communities where they are most prevalent. Hey, Kelsey, since the theme of this podcast seems to be divisions among Democrats, I wanted to ask you, this was notable because it was the first time that so many Democrats broke in the Senate to vote for something that was supported by the Trump administration.

Is this a sign of a deep ideological rift in the Democratic Party, or is this more regional Democrats from states that are more rural, that have smaller banks, feel that this just had to be adjusted? That's a really good question. And it's something that we're going to be watching pretty closely. For now, it seems like it's the latter. It's contained. And the people who voted for the 13 Democrats who voted for this are largely people who are running in reddish purplish states and are trying to kind of stay alive. There are people like Senator Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota and John Tester in Montana. And they say that this is really about a parochial regional type issue. But like you said,

it is one of the first times that Democrats have agreed to vote against something that is central to Obama's legacy. And Mara, you you were around covering all these kinds of things when this passed. And you remember how big of a deal this was, right? Oh, yeah. This was a huge deal. And the question is, of course, the people who are against this revision, they're saying, wait till the next financial crisis. We're going to have the same problems we had before. But it doesn't overturn Dodd-Frank, but it certainly reduces the standards on all banks except for those big 12.

Asma, you are out with a lot of like Bernie Sanders rallies and things like that during the 2016 election. Did you hear about banking regulation and Dodd-Frank and stuff like that? I mean, I think it's a really common refrain that you often hear from progressives that there's this deep concern that the economy, the way it is right now, is just not successful enough for everyone, right? That goes down to whether or not people feel like there's too much money in politics, whether or not they feel like corporations should not be treated like people. And certainly, you know, a part of that is the idea that these banking regulations they believe help because of the fact that the financial crisis really did trickle down. I mean, we look at it as these banks that were these mega banks that in some ways needed to be bailed out. But ultimately, a lot of the repercussions of the financial crisis rippled out for years and

years after 2008. One thing that I think might kind of save this from being too big of an issue, and we do have people like Bernie Sanders and Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts all very much against the rollbacks this week. But there are plenty of people, including Barney Frank, who helped write Dodd-Frank, who said that some of these changes might need to happen in the future. And there might be a way for Democrats to kind of pitch this as a narrow and surgical change to a law that doesn't really upend Obama's legacy. But I'm not sure if people who are out there voting care about this right now or if it's even on the radar. So, Kelsey, there's a version of this also in the House and now presumably they have to

reconcile. Yeah, we haven't heard what the House is going to do with this bill yet, but it was pretty important that the White House said that they support this and they want the House to see if they need to make any changes and that the president wants to sign something. Often that's an important cue for the House that the president will sign something. They're more willing to pick it up if they know that it's headed for an actual signature. All right. We're going to take one more speedy break. And when we come back, can't let it go. Ever get to Friday, look back on the week and say to yourself, what just happened? I'm Sam Sanders. Check out my podcast. It's been a minute where every Friday we catch up on the news and the culture of the week and try to make sense of it all.

Listen on the NPR one app or wherever you get your podcast. We are back and it is time to end the show as we always do with Can't Let It Go, when we all share one thing that we cannot stop thinking about this week, politics or otherwise. So, Mara, you want to go first? Yes. So this goes under the general heading of the president's relationship to facts. He gave a speech at a fundraiser in St. Louis on Wednesday where he talked about Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister of Canada, coming to see him. And he said to Trudeau that Canada has a trade surplus with the United States. And Trudeau said, no, no, no, we have a trade deficit with you, not a surplus.

And he said, he basically said, I had no idea whether we had one or not, but I just said to Justin Trudeau, you're wrong. And he proudly proclaimed that although he had no idea whether we had a trade deficit or not, he said that in his meeting with Justin Trudeau. What was interesting is, of course, that sent every reporter scrambling to the USTR who posts these things. And it turns out that the US has a $12.5 billion goods and services surplus with Canada. But once again, we learned about the president's obsession with the trade deficit. He looks at it like a scorecard, a kind of zero-sum game, not an indication of comparative advantage. And what I can't let go is what he tweeted later, where he said, we do have a trade deficit with Canada.

They almost all do. And that's how I know. Because he said so. And that was what I have been mulling about since Wednesday. There are so many things that I know are true because I said so. What he just said. They do. He's a very good guy. I feel like that's the line your mother uses when you're like four years old. I was just going to say. Yeah. He says, we do have a trade deficit with Canada, as we do with almost all countries. Justin Trudeau saying Canada has a surplus, but they do.

They almost all do. And that's how I know. Hashtag facts. All right. Mara, I'm going to go next. So my can't let it go goes back to a love of mine when I was a teenager, and that is teen magazines. I don't know if you all ever read 17. Was that around? Teen magazine. I loved all of these. And so back in my day, at least, it was all about the best, you know, nail polish for your hair color.

Not exactly, but you get my point. It was all sort of about boys and hair color and nail polish. But I've been incredibly intrigued lately with what Teen Vogue is doing. So Teen Vogue 2018 to me feels nothing like the teen magazines of 1998. And I don't know what it all means, but I just have been incredibly intrigued by how progressive this magazine is around, you know, gun reform and gender identity. And I don't know that Teen Vogue is the representative of all of Generation Z, but it's a marker, I wonder, of where we're headed. And it seems so fundamentally different than, you know, what I was reading when I was, you know, 16 or 17 years old. It's led, it was led by this young African-American woman. Now the executive editor is an Indian-American woman who used to be the editor of culture and identity at Mike.com. It's just so fundamentally different. And it's got me thinking a lot about whether or not this young generation that's not old enough to vote is fundamentally different than even us millennials.

I don't think I'm that old. Except for because I'm an ancient person where I grew up, when I grew up, everyone was protesting the Vietnam War. And my high school years were a period of tremendous political activism. And then that did fade. But Teen Vogue is not just progressive. It's super political. And it has allied itself completely unabashedly with the resistance to Donald Trump. And I think that's pretty interesting, especially after we just saw the biggest expression of activism by high school

students in American history. You know, that's really interesting because I was in high school after 9-11. I was in high school during 9-11, actually. And then I was in early college in the early Bush years. And that was a huge time for political activism. But I don't remember magazines like that being at all willing to touch this. And I'm with you, Asma. It was like nail colors and hair color and makeup and workout ideas. I don't know. So interesting. Yeah. All right. Kelsey, what's your can't let it go? Oh, gosh, guys, I'm going to bring the silly click today. Cool. We need some of that. So a longtime obsession with mine has been the robot dog that is being built by Boston Dynamics. Oh, I know this. I saw this in real life. I was a tech

reporter last year. Oh, my gosh. Their joints are so disturbing and they are terrifying. But at the same time, they're kind of sympathetic. They open doors and go on hikes. But then you like watch them get pushed and kicked by their operators, owners, what do we call them? I don't really know. And you start to feel kind of bad for them, right? But aren't they big and spindly? Oh, yeah.

But they're amazing. But they're not like cute little bots that you see. No. They're not WALL-E. But they move fast. They move really fast. But I think they need to look more like WALL-E. Well, no.

So here's the thing. They're both, they're terrifying. If you have watched them try to open a door, that's totally scary. They reach out their little robot head and they eat. I don't know. It's crazy. In any event. So the thing I really can't let go this week is that the only thing it takes to defeat them is a banana peel.

I don't know if you've seen the video of this. There's this robot dog. Comes hopping down the hallway, turns a corner, and just totally wipes out on a bunch of banana peels. And I feel like it's crazy to me that when the robot revolution comes, all we have to do is throw some banana peels around. And the humans will be back. The humans will survive. We will. You defeat these guys with like the most unintimidating weapon in all of Mario Kart. It's like more unintimidating than the green shell, but it's effective. Like we're in Saturday morning cartoons. I don't know.

I can't let go of the idea of defeating robot dogs with bananas. But these are these really tall, long, skinny-limbed things, right? Oh, yeah. I will send you videos, Mario. They're horrible. I mean, they need to, yes. But I guess they have to have those long limbs to do stuff. Whereas we've been led to believe that robots would be cute and round like R2-D2 or WALL-E. And that was the shock of these robots. And that's my cultural download for the day. I have nothing more to add.

And that's the most cultural references I have ever put in a single utterance on NPR. That's brilliant. At one time. And that is a wrap for us this week. We'll be back in your feed soon. Sometimes we're back sooner than we expect. But in the meantime, you can keep up with all of our coverage on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and of course, on your local public radio station. Plus, you can always catch one of us on Up First every weekday morning. And if you want even more political news, since it's impossible to get everything that happens every week here on the pod, we also have a newsletter that comes out every Saturday. It includes a super handy section called In Case You Missed It.

You can sign up at npr.org backslash politics newsletter. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Kelsey Snell. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Eliason, national political correspondent. Thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.