The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, March 16

Episode Date: March 17, 2017

President Trump releases a preliminary budget proposal the same day his new travel ban was supposed to go into effect. This episode: host/congressional reporter Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. More coverage at nprpolitics.org. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Before we get to the show, a quick recommendation for another NPR podcast, Embedded. The show is hosted by Kelly McEvers and they do deep dive stories on topics from the news. Right now, they're looking at videos of police encounters. This week, they have the story of a cop who got shot and how the video of the incident had a strange and unpredictable afterlife. Find Embedded now on the NPR One app or at npr.org slash podcasts. Hi, this is Ms. Lemon's eighth grade social studies class in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. This podcast was recorded at Thursday, March 16th at 3 45 p.m. Things may change by the time you hear it. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at npr.org or on the NPR One app and on your

local public radio station. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here to talk about some of the week's political news. President Trump unveiled a budget blueprint proposing deep cuts to a lot of federal agencies. The budget came out on the day his new travel ban was supposed to go into effect, emphasis on supposed to, and a day before a big diplomatic visit from German Chancellor Angela Merkel. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Mara Liason. I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. How's everybody doing? Guten tag. Wie geht es dir, Mara? Oh, very good. I'll just say I'm doing fine. Okay.

Thank you. Back from Pittsburgh. I'm happy that I get to visit the station out there, WESA. A lot of good folks. I used to kind of work for WESA. They had a lot of nice things to say about you, Scott. All right. Well, I miss them. This is one of those weeks where there's so much going on.

We can only cover so much of it here. So in addition to the podcast, make sure you're keeping up with all of our coverage on NPR.org, on your actual real life radio, and on our Twitter feed, NPR Politics. And there's even more on tap next week. If you thought this week was busy, wait until next week. We are already planning three episodes, one on Monday, one on Tuesday, one on Friday. And who knows? There could be more. So stay tuned for all of that next week.

We'll see. So today, let's dig into the first big story, and that's the budget. This morning, the White House released what it's calling an America First budget. The takeaway from this budget proposal seems to be more money for defense and big cuts almost everywhere else. Tamara, do you want to kind of walk us through some of the highlights in terms of what departments are winners and what departments are losers? Yeah. So $54 billion more to defense spending, also more money for border security and for veterans. If you are not any of those three things, you are going to be cut potentially by a lot. The State Department is cut by about 28 percent. The EPA is cut by 31 percent. Agriculture and labor departments cut by about 21 percent.

And a lot of programs cut. So there are 19 independent agencies that they would zero out funding for and dozens of programs that just would have all funding eliminated. So, Mara, this is the White House's proposal. What happens next? This is the White House's wish list. Generally, presidents' budgets are dead on arrival because presidents don't spend money. Congress does. Congress has the power of the purse. But what this is, is this is a budget that is a pretty perfect expression of what Donald Trump ran on. As the budget director described it, he said it was a hard power budget, not a soft power budget, cuts the State Department, cuts all sorts of programs, climate change. Instead, it's focused on defense, law enforcement, and it leaves 60% of the federal budget untouched. And that 60% are those entitlement programs that in the past, conservative Republicans really believed

that you had to cut in order to reduce the deficit. But Donald Trump does not agree. The budget director, Mick Mulvaney, said that basically what he did in constructing this budget was take the things that Donald Trump has said on the campaign trail and as president and put it into numbers. So this this is Donald Trump's message in the form of a budget document. So I have a question just about this whole process, because I spent a lot of time before I came here covering state government. And in a state house, the budget is a pretty straightforward thing where the governor says, I want to spend this much money in these places. And the legislature takes that and they amend it. They put back their proposals.

And in the end, there is one bill that is signed. It has to be signed by a certain day. It has to equal the amount spent and the amount coming in. And if they don't pass it, it's a problem. If they pass it, it funds the government for a year. A straightforward process. This does not seem to be how the federal government rolls. Mara, you said that Trump's plan was dead on arrival coming to Congress.

I mean, just where does this go? Because it seems like there's like dozens of budget bills for different amounts of times. And it's very confusing. Well, it is an important political statement. That's what president's budgets are. They're a statement of priorities. He gave us a little preview a couple of weeks ago. Now this is the skinny budget. He's going to have more in a couple more weeks. But there are budget experts who say, don't look at this as a balance sheet. Look at this as a campaign statement. This budget says, I meant what I said during the campaign. I want to starve the federal government, as Steve Bannon said, deconstruct the administrative

state. What I think are the most important things that government can do are keep people safe at home, safe abroad, and protect the promises we made to the elderly. So what happens is a president proposes a budget. I got that. And then it goes thud, basically. I mean, members of Congress could look at it and say, oh, that's the president's priority. But the president's budget really has nothing to do with the budgeting process that happens up on Capitol Hill.

So there's the president's budget, which the president is required to do, which typically doesn't even get a vote in Congress. And if it does, what happens next is that the House produces a budget and that through the budget, through the Budget Committee. Through the Budget Committee. And that document is also kind of sort of a message document because the way money actually gets allocated is through the appropriations process. And so in theory, the budget that Congress produces is like the guiding document for the appropriations bills. And there are like a dozen appropriations bills and each of those has to pass. But almost every year that doesn't happen. So in the end, you get this emergency scramble and what is called an omnibus appropriations bill that basically combines everything

and gets negotiated behind closed doors. And then boom, you do it. So I missed the state house. So this convoluted process is kind of why you don't often have budgets that get passed. You know, when you talk about the omnibus, which basically just means, you know, omni, all encompassing. Right. It takes everything into effect, into account and figures all the regular spending. And then what winds up passing is this thing called the continuing resolution that a lot of people wind up calling the CR. But getting back to this actual document that came out today and kind of the big picture preferences, priorities in it.

You know, the Trump administration is talking about this is a hard power Congress, including the majority leader, Mitch McConnell in the Senate, who believe that diplomacy is actually important. Yeah, I mean, soft power is always the first line of defense, frankly. You know, you want to be able to start diplomacy, start talks, and military option is always the last option. is the message that we've gotten for quite some time now, identifying climate change as a national security threat because it increases instability in certain regions that become desertified and you have big refugee flows. But spending money on climate change is a waste of your money, is what Mick Mulvaney said today. Okay, one more point to make

while we talk about the budget. Of course, we do have to mention that President Trump is proposing eliminating funding for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, as well as the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which funds public broadcasting across the country, including a major chunk of most local stations operating budgets. NPR's funding sources include the program fees those stations pay. NPR receives less than 2% of its budget directly from the CPB. Okay, so today the budget came out. Today was also supposed to be the day when President Trump's second travel ban went into effect. But around seven o'clock last night, a federal judge in Hawaii halted that ban from going into effect. And since then, a federal judge in Maryland has issued a similar ruling. This travel ban was supposed to be different. It did not affect green card holders,

visa holders, those already in transit. There was a delay. There was no religious test language. So why did this judge in Hawaii still block it? Because he's not convinced this isn't a religious test. It seems like he was focusing on the Establishment Clause issues. The White House feels confident that it's at least solved the due process problems, getting rid of green card holders. But whether or not this constitutes a religious test is now what the courts are going to have to determine. In other words, is it a Muslim ban or not? Right. So language aside about whether Christians get priorities over Muslims in terms of refugee access, it's the bigger picture question of how did this proposal begin?

So this judgment referenced Trump's past statements and statements by his surrogates, including his infamous announcement in 2015. Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on. So the basic argument seems to be this executive order didn't come from a vacuum. It came from a process that said we want to ban Muslims from this country. How do we do that? You know, initial travel ban to this travel ban.

Yeah. And then last night, President Trump was at a rally and he came out and he talked about the order. Remember this. I wasn't thrilled. But the lawyers all said, oh, let's tailor it. This is a watered down version of the first one. This is a watered down version. And let me tell you something. I think we ought to go back to the first one and go all the way, which is what I wanted to do in the first place.

Mara, that's not exactly so-called judge like we saw the first time around, but that is interesting language. Well, it's interesting language if the court is going to pay a lot of attention to what Donald Trump has said about this effort in the past and what he continues to say about it. I'm also struck by the fact that he sounds so frustrated. He sounds angry. You know, I mean, this is not a campaign. Like you win a campaign, you try to become president, and then you have to govern. And governing is really difficult because you have all these checks on the power of the presidency. You know, the president can really affect two things very strongly, foreign policy and judges.

You saw him trying to get, you know, Neil Gorsuch through and he's going to have his hearing next week. It's Trump's new Supreme Court nominee. And he may very well pass. He's got plenty of sterling credentials. But when you talk about domestic policy, there's a lot of difficulty and a lot of things that a president has to go through to make sure that that happens. So Trump tried to fit himself in to what, you know, everyone was telling him he needed to be like. And now because he's being stopped at various passes, you frustrated here, just wait till he gets to all those other areas. And that's the argument he tries to make. If I've got all this power, why can't I just do what I want? Now, when President Trump attacked the federal judges last time around, calling one judge a so-called judge and then basically saying, if there's a terrorist attack in this country, the judges are to blame. There's a lot of criticism of that. And Neil Gorsuch actually said that Trump was wrong.

So I wonder if another round of criticizing federal judges on the eve of Gorsuch's hearing could kind of change the conversation when Gorsuch is sitting in front of a bunch of senators next week. There's no way he's not asked about it. Right. Yeah, he's going to have to- What did he say? It was demoralizing and disheartening?

Yeah. Well, you know, he's going to- There's also something weird about brothers in robes, but yeah yeah, he's clearly going to have to be asked about this. I mean, it's going to be again, just like we saw with a lot of those cabinet officials who Trump nominated that they had to separate themselves from comments that Donald Trump made because they could never have been confirmed had they upheld some of the beliefs that Donald Trump had. So you're going to see Neil Gorsuch have to answer some of these questions. And also Donald Trump alluded in that Nashville rally to saying, hey, maybe we should just take this to the Supreme Court. I think his thinking is if he can get Gorsuch through, they've got a 5-4 court. But what if Gorsuch and John Roberts, for example, vote against this thing? That would make his head explode.

There's no guarantee on this that they would be with him or not. There's also a lot of Democrats who think they should hold up Gorsuch as long as possible because then you keep the 4-4 split on the court for exactly for issues like this. But, you know, if Donald Trump was supposed to be a stress test for Democratic institutions and the independent judiciary, first and foremost, little d, the independent judiciary was the number one institution that he has taken many, many swipes at, including last night at the rally where he said, do you think they did this for political reasons? Talking about judges.

He has not defied the federal judiciary. He has abided by their rulings, and he is frustrated because he is working within our constitutional democratic system. Right. And rhetorically going after democratic institutions, small d, is one thing, but actually defying them is another. And another institution he's going to be frustrated with pretty soon is Congress. And we're going to talk about that right after this break. This podcast and the following message are made possible by LearnVest, an online financial advice company that believes you should focus the same attention you give to

the health of your mind and body to your finances. LearnVest believes in wellness in all forms, and they can help you sleep better at night knowing your financial future is secure. LearnVest, it's wellness for your wallet. Get a $50 credit when you sign up today or schedule a call and see how they can help you at learnvest.com slash NPR politics. Support for this podcast and the following message come from SimpliSafe Home Security, who believes protecting your home shouldn't be a hassle, not when there are over 2 million Support for this podcast and the following message come from SimpliSafe Home Security, who believes protecting your home shouldn't be a hassle, not when there are over 2 million burglaries in the U.S. each year.

That's why SimpliSafe makes protecting your home a breeze. Go online today and in just a few clicks, you'll be the owner of a professionally monitored security system. Plus, you'll enjoy free shipping and a 60-day money-back guarantee. Get 10% off now by going to simplysafeNPR.com. Okay, we're back. Let's talk about Russia. It's meddling in the 2016 election. Next week is going to be a big week for that story. So far, the House and Senate committees investigating it have been doing most of their work behind closed doors in secure rooms. But on Monday, the House Intelligence Committee holds its first public hearing. FBI Director James Comey and NSA Director Admiral Mike Rogers will testify. And Comey is going to get a lot of attention in particular because it's a safe bet he'll be asked about Trump's claim that President Obama ordered a wiretap on Trump Tower. That's something that Republicans in Congress just

aren't backing Trump up on. Here was House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes earlier this week. President Obama wouldn't physically go over and wiretap Trump Tower. So now you have to decide, as I mentioned to you last week, are you going to take the tweets literally? And if you are, then clearly the president was wrong. But if you're not going to take the tweets literally, and if there's a concern that the president has about other people, other surveillance activities, looking at him or his associates, either appropriately or inappropriately, we want to find we want to find that out. I think it's all in the interpretation of what you believe.

So last night, Donald Trump was on Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, and he seemed to imply that he wasn't being literal. He was saying that the tweets, they were in quote marks. Those words were in quotes. That really covers, because wiretapping is pretty old-fashioned stuff, but that really covers surveillance and many other things. And nobody ever talks about the fact that it was in quotes, but that's a very important thing. Well, I'll tell you one tweet that wasn't in quote marks. I bet a good lawyer could make a grace case out of the fact that President Obama was tapping my phones in October.

So after that, it's really notable what happened this afternoon when the Senate Intelligence Committee chairs, Republican Richard Burr and Democrat Mark Warner, released a joint statement from their committee saying, quote, based on the information available to us, we see no indications that Trump Tower was the subject of any surveillance by any element of the United States government, either before or after Election Day 2016. So this is kind of bipartisan rebuke of not only Trump's initial statement about wiretapping, but his follow up saying, no, I meant broader intelligence. I mean, how big of an effect does this have? his authority, as he communicates in his favorite method, which he talked a lot about with Tucker Carlson about how great Twitter has been and all the reach it gives him. If people are merely going to ignore what he says, I think that could hurt him down the road when he has something really important to say and he wants people to believe him. Right. And Devin Nunes and Richard Burr are

not like John McCain and Lindsey Graham who have been taking shots. No, these are Trump loyalists. Yeah. So that was interesting to me. So the whole wiretap claim has really overtaken all of the other elements of the Russia investigation. And there are so many of them. What are you guys interested in hearing about or what do you want to know more about from this committee hearing on Monday? Well, we want to know what was the extent of Russian meddling in the campaign? Was there any collusion? So far, we haven't seen any evidence that there was. What contacts were there between Russians and either campaign?

And one thing that the White House really wants to find out is when U.S. intelligence agencies surveilled Russians and incidentally, like the ambassador, and incidentally got the other end of the phone call, which happened to be an American citizen, did they protect that information appropriately or did they leak it in the way that the White House suspects to hurt the Trump administration? And I guess I have to say, although this is going to be super interesting and we hope to learn lots and lots of things, we should be prepared to not learn a ton of stuff because probably the best parts will happen in closed session. I was struck by the fact that there's so much information that has continued to come out about Mike Flynn, the

former national security advisor to Donald Trump, that if he were still the national security advisor to Trump, there would be even more attention to this. I also want to make one other point, because I think the elephant in the room here when it comes to the Russia stuff is this sort of liberal catastrophizing that's going on where they're trying to think and wonder, maybe this could lead to Donald Trump's impeachment at some point. Will he last four years? And I have to say that is, you know, you never want to say never about something, but there is a high unlikelihood that that is something that is going to short of Donald Trump being on the payroll of the Kremlin that comes out. A Republican

Congress is not going to impeach its own president. And by next year, the 2020 election will already be starting. And although there were some tweets between some people that advised the president and talking about WikiLeaks and various other things, at this point, there really has been no evidence presented of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia or the hackers or anything like that. But I do think it tells you something about Democrats' mindset to the extent that there's so many of them who think that he could be impeached or will be impeached. The fact is that Democrats, you know, really have so few tools right now. They're not settled on a strategy to

oppose him. Democrats at some point are going to have to understand that the way you defeat Donald Trump is the old fashioned way at the ballot box. Right. There was a really interesting there was a really interesting BuzzFeed article by Ben Smith, the editor in chief of BuzzFeed, that kind of gets into all of these angles and all of the ways that a lot of the the progressive base has unrealistic assumptions about things that could come out in this hearing and some sort of dramatic meeting or piece of evidence. And also an interesting thing of kind of stigmatizing even a basic conversation with the ambassador of another country, which is something that happens every day and is important.

That's not to say misleading about the fact that those conversations happened isn't a big deal. I was going to say that's the big difference. But not only that, there's a gray sliding scale. There's a lot of magical thinking. I will say, you know, it shouldn't be overlooked that this storyline does continue to put pressure on the White House and on Donald Trump. It even could put enough pressure on him to to force him to release his tax returns. What? Now you're believing something crazy. I'm not.

Look, I don't I think releasing tax returns as a possibility is not as crazy as saying he would be impeached. But it's close. The whole push for the tax returns was to see if he had any business interests in Russia or exposure in terms of loans to oligarchs or Putin cronies. That was the whole push for the tax returns. All right. So we mentioned at the top of the show that we're going to have three different episodes next week. The first one on Monday is going to be all about this committee hearing. So Monday evening, check out your podcast feed to learn everything you need to know from what's

going to be a very long day of statements and grandstanding and back and forth. So, of course, the other other big news this week is the continued reaction to the Republican health care bill. Is it Trump care? Is it Ryan care? What's the latest on this? Obamacare 2.0, Obamacare light. Pick your lane. This is one of the most interesting intra-party fights that we've ever seen. You've got opposition to the Republican Obamacare replacement bill from all sorts of parts of the party. You've got small government conservatives, the House Freedom Caucus, who thinks it is Obamacare light or Obamacare 2.0. It doesn't have the kind of clean repeal that they want. You've got nervousness among senators who represent states with large numbers of rural low-income people who they feel will be hurt if

Medicaid expansion is rolled back or the subsidies are turned into less generous tax credits. And then you've got a bunch of people who feel they are the keepers of the Trumpist populist flame. And they are saying to Trump, don't fall into this Paul Ryan trap. They call it Ryan. It's a trap because it's different from what you campaigned on. You said you would have fabulous health care for everybody and that you wouldn't cut entitlements like Medicaid. And this is going to hurt you. It's going to hurt your own voters. And so he is getting pushed and pulled from all sides. But Donald Trump has been trying to thread this needle saying we're going to negotiate. He's going to arbitrate. He says he's an arbiter between all these different factions and he's going to come out with something great in the end. than voters that voted for Hillary Clinton. And Trump seemed to be trying to get as much of an arm length between himself and this bill as he possibly could.

A Bloomberg analysis showed that counties that voted for you, middle class and working class counties, would do far less well under this bill than the counties that voted for Hillary, the more affluent counties. It seems like maybe this isn't consistent with the message of the last election. No, a lot of things aren't consistent, but these are going to be negotiated. We've got to go to the Senate. We're going to see what happens in the Senate. Now, right now we have five or six. Two things on that. I do think it's worth pointing out that one of the reasons that

Obamacare stalled for so long and got in danger of passing, it took like almost two years to pass, was because the White House spent a long time trying to reach out to Republicans in this Obamacare repeal. The initial move was we're going to do this through reconciliation with just 51 votes. We're doing this with Republicans. Also, in terms of analysis of the bill, we should point out the last episode in your feed really digs into the Congressional Budget Office's review of this, which was which was a pretty bad headline for people who want this bill to pass. So I want to say two things on this. So first, I want to give a hat tip to Mara on calling the fact that this would be Ryan care until it

could be passable and then it would become Trump care, because early on, early on when the White House was asked about this, they declined to say that it was Trump care. And now you see Trump putting some arms distance between this on the CBO score on the Congressional Budget Office's score. I think the narrative on this health care bill and whether it could pass really changed after the analyses started to come out about the CBO score, because how can you sell to people? You know what? You should pay more for less coverage. That is a very difficult thing to sell to anybody. I mean, if you and I are sitting around our kitchen table and we're trying to figure out if we're going to

sign up for health care, if you see that you have to pay more for this thing that's already expensive and that you're going to get less coverage within that. Boy, that's that's a tough sell. That's much worse for the Republicans than merely saying that 24 million people are going to lose their coverage. Because the to me, the scariest thing for a Republican to read in that CBO analysis was that a typical 64 year old making twenty four thousand dollars who currently pays seventeen hundred dollars under Obamacare for his health care, would see that bill go up to $14,000. That is the profile of a Trump voter in Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky, places like that. And that is why last night on Tucker Carlson, the president said, if it hurts our people, I'm not going to sign it.

We will take care of our people or I'm not signing it. OK, just so you understand. And that should send chills down the spine of Paul Ryan, because the fear on Capitol Hill is what if he pulls the rug out from under Paul Ryan? But should we stop and say our people versus the other party's people is an interesting way to decide where to focus cuts in health care? Yeah, but I think as Mara said earlier, he has been laser-like in appealing to his base and making sure that he follows through on his campaign promises. I think Bill Clinton had said a long time ago that the best way to tell how someone's going to govern is how they campaigned. And that's certainly been true of Trump, despite all those people who wanted to say you shouldn't take him literally. He has been about as literal

as you can be from that campaign. That was yet another example of magical thinking. All right. So amid all of this drama, this bill is expected to go to a vote on the House floor sometime next week. And we will update you as all this happens in all of next week's podcasts. So one more thing before we take a break. Tomorrow, German Chancellor Angela Merkel meeting with Donald Trump at the White House. Mara, what are the expectations for this meeting between the 2015 time person of the year and the 2016 time person of the year? This, I think, will be a really interesting meeting. Don't forget, when Donald Trump was elected, Angela Merkel sent a very strong message, pushing back against all the things he'd said about NATO and the EU, saying, we stand ready to work with you as long

as you stand up for the values of the West. Tolerance, inclusivity, all the things that she thought the Western alliance stood for. And Donald Trump had actually suggested he might not before. So that's one of the things. The other thing is that Donald Trump has been very emphatic that he wants NATO allies to pay what they're supposed to pay for their defense, which is 2 percent of their GDP. Obviously, the United States pays more than that. And right now, only four European countries pay that amount. So that's going to be one of the things you're going to hear him talk about. And a couple other things.

Trump really regularly blasted Merkel on the campaign trail, especially over the last few months of taking too many immigrants. Yeah. He called Hillary Clinton. He would always call her America's Angela Merkel. He always said Angela. He mispronounced her name. But I mean, Merkel is the polar opposite of Trump in a lot of ways. She said, you know, come one, come all, take any immigrant who wants to come. And she suffered a big backlash. Yeah. She said in retrospect, that was a big mistake, letting about a million people into the country. They should have done it more smoothly. But one thing Angela Merkel has going in her favor is that here builders just lost. Right. Because there's a big populist wave in Europe.

Domenico, do you want to catch us up to speed on what happened in the Netherlands? Well, I was just going to say that I feel like Angela Merkel may feel like she has some wind at her back in this meeting on Friday because a Trumpian-like candidate, Hirt Wilders, lost in the Netherlands. So Trumpian that he was sitting a few rows in front of NPR's booth at the Republican National Convention. Oh, really? But, you know, he hasn't wanted to admit that he's aligned with Trump. Just talking about how he's campaigned because Trump's name has even within those circles is not very popular in Europe. But Wilders was thought to maybe do a better second place showing or even possibly win. He wound up losing. The traditional center right camp wound up winning.

And it's seen as something to push back against what was thought to be a potential domino effect of this right wing nationalism and populism that could sweep through Europe. Remember, France has their election next month. And Marine Le Pen, who's another kind of right wing Trumpian candidate with some ties to Russia, heard that before, is somebody who has been polling fairly well. And then in Germany, that which follows, Angela Merkel is up for reelection. And what's so interesting is that Donald Trump was seen as the kind of leading edge of this global anti-globalization populist nationalist movement. You had Brexit, you have Marine Le Pen, you had Geert Wilders.

But what's interesting is since he's been elected, there's been an anti-Trump backlash in Europe that has helped some of these center-right parties stave off the populists. Well, we can at least say that now after what happened Wednesday. Right. But Frank Langfet from NPR spent a lot of time reporting on this election beforehand, and he reported that one theory for why builders lost support running up to the election was that people said, well, we saw the United States elect a populist and it's not going so well. So amid all of that, Trump and Merkel meet face to face. And I will be there, eager to ask a question at their press conference if I could be called on.

Hint, hint. Here's the thing. This is still a very necessary alliance for the United States. So for as much as Donald Trump and a senior aide at the White House was quoted in The Washington Post saying dismissing Merkel as a, quote, typical liberal woman. And Merkel, as Mara pointed out, you know, had pushed back against Trump. These are two countries that need each other. So despite the fact that there could be some tension on Friday, they're going to have to figure out a way to work together. During the campaign, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were asked who the world leader is that they most admire. Hillary Clinton was asked this first, and she said Angela

Merkel. And then lo and behold, even after Donald Trump had spent all of this time sort of bashing Merkel, he said Angela Merkel. Oh, well, there you go. Was the politician that he admired most, the world leader that he admired most. And I think if the bottom line is the biggest issue between them is how much Germany is going to pay into NATO, It will be a very successful meeting. All right. One more quick break.

We'll be right back with Can't Let It Go. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans. When it comes to the big decision of choosing a mortgage lender, it's important to work with someone you can trust who has your best interests in mind. With Rocket Mortgage, you'll get a transparent online process that gives you the confidence you need to make an informed decision. Skip the bank, skip the waiting, and go completely online at quickenloans.com slash NPR politics. Equal housing lender licensed in all 50 states. NMLS consumer access.org number 3030. Support for this podcast and the following message come from SimpliSafe

home security who believes protecting your home shouldn't be a hassle. Not when there are over 2 million burglaries in the U S each year. That's why SimpliSafe makes protecting your home a breeze. Go online today and in just a few clicks, you'll be the owner of a professionally monitored security system. Plus, you'll enjoy free shipping and a 60-day money-back guarantee. Get 10% off now by going to SimpliSafeNPR.com. All right, we're back. Before we get to Can't Let It Go,

let's talk about next week. Like we've been saying, a lot going on. As we mentioned, we're planning as of right now to do three episodes, one late Monday, all about the day's hearings in Congress, two big ones, the House Intelligence Committee hearing we talked about, and the start of Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. On Tuesday, it's a full day of confirmation hearings for Gorsuch, so we'll have an episode up by late Tuesday night with

special guest star NPR legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg. Totes! I wonder how many confirmations she's covered at this point. We will ask her. And because of all that, we're pushing our regular weekly roundup from Thursday to Friday. That'll be published sometime Friday evening in time for your weekend. So with all of that time to end the show the way we do every week with something each of us cannot stop thinking about politics or otherwise. All right, Domenico, you're up. Okay. So my can't let it go this week is this video of Preet Bharara, the U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York or former now who refused to resign and made Donald Trump's administration fire him when the Justice Department said that all of these dozens of U.S. attorneys would be let go or asked to resign. He refused to do so. And we should say that it's typical at the beginning of a new administration that these U.S. attorneys would be let go. They're political appointees and serve at the will of the president. And these guys were appointed by the last president. And what this video clearly was set up was him coming out of

the office and shaking hands. Can you hear the cheers behind me? These are the employees of the U.S. Attorney's Office here in the Southern District of New York. He didn't even have a coat on, okay? Downtown New York, it had to be fairly cold. Everybody else is bundled up, and he's out there shaking hands with everyone, almost like a politician. It certainly cultivates this sense of admiration for their boss, the willingness to stand out here in the cold at the end of the day to cheer him on.

You can hear the bagpipes in the background. Now, a background here with Barrera, you know, Trump had asked him to stay on. He went to Trump Tower. They met. Said he would stay on. And this was like straight out of an episode of Billions. And Billions, the show on Showtime. And what is perfect parallel here is that Billions and the Chuck Rhodes character, who happens to be the U.S. attorney from the Southern District of New York, hard charging justice, you know, avenging guy is supposed to be based on Preet. And if you believe billions as a precursor, this job is always somebody who's looking to get into politics and they do these investigations to raise their profile. And this

video certainly raised Preet Bharara's profile and the firing, you know, the potential backlash from that seems sort of silly from Trump to raise the profile of somebody who maybe now could run for the Senate or run for governor at some point and be a thorn in Donald Trump's side. And one thing to watch is for all of those fired U.S. attorneys, how many of them will be candidates in 2018 all over the country? Yeah, it's totally possible. They are a Democratic recruiting pool. And Barrara may have some access to some funds because he was the former chief counsel to Chuck Schumer, who certainly has some deep pocketed friends in New York who could help him launch a run. And of course, Schumer is the right now the Democratic minority leader in the

Senate. Postscript to all of that. A couple of days after Barrara leaves that office, the office puts out a release today saying that they are not going to pursue any charges in the investigation of Bill de Blasio, which was one of his most high profile probes. Look at that. Tamara, what can you not let go? OK, so we have been talking about how you can add NPR one functionality to your Amazon Echo, also known as Alexa. And then this led us to have a thing about jokes and Alexa and whatever. Someone tweeted at me saying, you have to ask Alexa to sing a song. Who, me? I couldn't. I hid it when my Wi-Fi left me. and I'm out in the rain.

Those last few answers were hard to obtain. Does it change based on like the genre that you like or? No, this is this is the song. Like, can you tell her to sing you a rap song? Why don't we try? Tune in to the next podcast. My thing that I can't let go is that wonderful BBC video of the guy getting interviewed on Skype. He was a South Korean expert and he's sitting in his home office.

And as he's talking into his computer camera, in comes his daughter. With some swag. With some swag. He's trying to shoo her off. And then the next thing you know, in comes his little son in one of those saucer walkers, like a spaceship, mini spaceships. He comes in. And then, of course, finally, his wife opens the door and grabs the kids and tries to get them out.

The reason I love that so much, I laughed until tears ran down my face. I watched it probably 100 times. And of course, it's gone viral. But as somebody who doesn't participate in Skype interviews, but certainly is on the air from home, in other words, there's no camera, but there's audio, I go to complicated and vast precautions to stop my children from coming into the room. I have two doors that I shut. However, when you have an animal at home, a dog, you have to leave the doors open

because what you don't want is your dog barking or scratching to get in or barking or scratching to get out. So there are a lot of complicated, almost military style maneuvers you have to do to make sure that there is no child or canine noise when you are on the radio live. It is anxiety producing. One more thing along these lines is during the campaign, at one point in a hotel, I was about to do a live hit with All Things Considered

and I forgot to put the Do Not Disturb so housekeeping opened the door and came in and I practically had this horrified look and like waved them off and closed the door and then I realized after the fact, housekeeping probably had a much different interpretation of what happened than I did. I'll go'll go last thing i can't stop

thinking about is a question we got from lizzie in philadelphia last week she already got a shout out from you tam earlier this week for voice memo of the year but aside from that she had a very ponderous question for us that i've actually been thinking about. She wrote, imagine it was the zombie apocalypse. What four people would you want on your team? Your answers have to include one Republican who ran for president in 2016, one Democrat who ran for president in 2016, someone from the NPR politics podcast, and someone from another politics podcast, though she amended this the next morning, saying that she actually meant another NPR podcast. So I thought it was a good question. I feel like I would pick Jim Webb from the Democratic side because he was a Marine and

seems like he's someone who could help the cause on all fronts when you're, you know, fighting zombies. Yeah, I would go with Martin O'Malley. Because he'd play you a song on his guitar? And because he'd never give up. That's true. On the Republican side, Domenico, any thoughts? It was a big field to choose from.

I like Lindsey Graham because he would make us laugh. That's true. I think there's no question about that. From the Democratic side, I think I went with O'Malley too, if not maybe for the fact that he would distract the zombies or something. With his biceps and his guitar? I don't know. But just something he would do.

I think from our podcast, I got to go with Sue Davis. I was thinking that too. I say Sue because I feel like she probably has brass knuckles somewhere hidden out. She seems like somebody who's ready to scrap. She's very resourceful. As someone who's new to the Hill and she's been there a long time, she's a very resourceful person to figure things out and tell you what's up. In other words, yes, she has brass knuckles in the drawer somewhere. And I think from another podcast,

I'd go with Shankar Vedantham from Hidden Brain because he could, you know, figure out social science behavior or something. I don't know if he studied zombies, but, you know, he could help us out that way.

I say Kelly McEvers from Embedded, longtime war correspondent. I feel like she would help the cause. Ooh, I like that. Anyone else, Mara? Any of these? Oh, don't turn to me. I feel like she would help the cause. Ooh, I like that. Anyone else, Mara? Any of these?

Don't turn to me. I'll say that Lizzie picked you from the podcast. Oh, that's so nice of her. I can't wait to see some zombies. We clearly kept Mara's attention through that can't let it go. All right. Clearly, that is all the time we have for this week. Don't forget, three episodes next week, Monday, Tuesday, Friday.

Support the podcast by supporting your local public radio station and by leaving us a review on iTunes. That helps other folks find the show, and we really appreciate it when you leave us a review. All right. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason.

I cover politics. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.