The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, March 28

Episode Date: March 28, 2019

It's been four days since Attorney General Bill Barr delivered his summary of the special counsel's report to Congress. How are Democrats and Republicans pivoting now? Plus, white men running for president are questioned about their statements on gender. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political editor Domenico Montanaro, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, and Congressional correspondent Susan Davis. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, Tam, guess what? What, Scott? Big news. We're doing another live podcast on the road. We're going to be in Philadelphia. In fact, we are going to be there on April 26th to record a live podcast on stage all about the 2020 election. We just did this in Atlanta.

It was great. But here is the catch. We need your help to make sure it's the best podcast possible. And the way to do that is to head over to nprpresents.org and grab a ticket to be in the audience. That's Friday, April 26th in Philadelphia. We'll see you there. Hello, NPR politics pod squad.

This is Jess. This is Christian. And we're in Iowa City, Iowa. We just saw Tamara Keith at the Englert Theater talk about the future of politics 2020. And she looked fabulous with her shoes matching her dress. This podcast was recorded at 118 Eastern on Thursday, March 28th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. All right, here's the show.

Tam, what were you wearing? The dress was actually a hand-me-down from one of my friends. You do always have a good shoe game at the live events. You know, like if you're going to be up on stage, people are going to be looking at your feet. I feel some obligation to make it bling. Look good, feel good, Tam.

I've worn the same scuffy shoes to, I think, literally every live show we've done. Jess and Christian, thank you so much for coming. It was awesome. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

And today I'm at WGVU in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. And today I'm at WGVU in Grand Rapids, Michigan. I'm Susan Davis. I also cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. All right. We are going to talk about two major topics today. First of all, it has been four days since the attorney general submitted his key findings from the Mueller report to Congress.

And even as we wait for the actual report, both parties are making big strategic decisions about what to do next. We will get into that. We're also going to talk about the role that gender politics are playing in a sprawling presidential campaign with a record number of women running. But let's start with that report on the Mueller report. Tam, first of all, do we have any idea when we will see parts of the actual report? NPR's reporting is that Bill Barr, the Attorney General, is going through the Mueller report, trying to figure out which parts might need to be redacted, what can be sent over to Congress, and that that process is going to take weeks, not months. And the New

York Times is reporting that, you know, it might be a bit of a heavy lift because the Mueller report, according to The Times, is 300 pages long, which also raises the question of what's in there that wasn't in the four-page summary that Barr put out over the weekend? I think it's safe to say a lot. Probably. Approximately 296 pages. Good math. More than that because the four pages were – there were only like two lines quoted from the Mueller report in the bar letter. Still, though, that letter did have a big impact. Sue, how have Democrats been reacting

to this? And what have they been deciding on what to do next? Well, in so many ways, I think the Mueller report and what we are, at least what we know of the Mueller report has really deflated any kind of effort towards impeachment. And I also think it is kind of put a spotlight on Democrats and all of their efforts to continue their oversight and investigations into the administration. On that front, I think politically, they're going to try and tread a little bit more carefully, certainly focusing on other issues of oversight like health care or things not related to Russia. That said, Democrats are still unified behind getting the full release of the Mueller report. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi reiterated that again today, that a summary of the summary of the summary is not going to be good enough. Congress wants to see the whole thing. They want the public to see the whole thing. They are willing to fight for this report if the DOJ doesn't willingly turn it over. Tam, how has the White House responded to this?

The White House is not moving on, let's say. So the first thing that they did is, you know, total exoneration was the immediate response. And that has continued to be the response. Even though one of the few lines quoted said this does not completely exonerate the president. Yeah. In fact, it specifically says it did not exonerate the president on obstruction, though then Attorney General Barr decided that there was nothing to prosecute there. So what the White House has done is they are now hitting back. Like this went from total exoneration to we are going to go after everyone who's ever been against us and make it hurt very, very quickly. Domenico, do we have a sense in the we're recording on Thursday?

This letter came out on Sunday. Do we have any sense at this point whether this letter has moved public opinion? It doesn't appear it's changed people's opinions much, if at all, as far as their perception of President Trump goes. A CNN poll, for example, showed no movement and that people don't think the president is exonerated of collusion with Russia, even though that is what the Barr letter said. And a CBS poll found majorities want the full Mueller report released.

So people's views of Trump have barely changed. If you think he's doing a good job, you thought so beforehand. If you think he's been doing a bad job, you probably still think so. And tomorrow, NPR will release our own poll with Marist and the PBS NewsHour, which will have more on how people are viewing the Mueller investigation and President Trump in all this. Because this is the Trump era, I feel like we were all talking about something different by like Tuesday. And that's because President Trump made an interesting choice with how to use the political capital that he so suddenly gained, didn't he? Yes. So what happened is there had been, this is slightly complicated, but there had been

a lawsuit filed by some states that wanted to overturn part or all of the affordable care act and it was primarily going after the coverage of pre-existing conditions but then a judge some time ago ruled oh actually the entire affordable care act is invalidated and should be thrown out. And there was a deadline coming for the Trump administration to decide, do they want to agree with the judge or do they want to stick with the previous argument just about pre-existing conditions? And they decided, boom, we are going to try to invalidate the entire Affordable Care Act. Let's go all in. And so from there, the president started tweeting, saying Republicans are going to be the party of health care. Sue, I feel like Democrats were really quite OK with with the Trump administration

trying to kneecap Obamacare once again. Well, I would say this, too. So President Trump, you know, had arguably the best two days of his presidency earlier in the week, both with the Mueller report and then the news of Michael Avenatti, who had been the special or who had been the attorney for Stormy Daniels being charged with his own set of crimes. I mean, he was really that was just schadenfreude. Yeah. But talk about like a good couple of days for a White House that has on those issues has certainly been like up against the ropes for the past 22 months. And then the White House goes and does this thing on the Affordable Care Act that nobody was asking the president to do that totally took Hill Republicans by surprise, although he came up to the Hill this week to meet privately with Senate Republicans, came up with a fair amount of swagger walking through the Capitol halls, actually took some questions from reporters, again, said out loud, we're going to become the party of health care. I think that for the president, it is clearly infuriating to him that the party has never made any progress towards their goal of repealing and replacing

the Affordable Care Act. He said it in private to senators this week, that he wants a win on health care, that it's an area that he thinks the party has fallen short. And clearly, based on other reporting, there has been some divides in the White House over whether the president should have sort of encouraged this move to essentially advocate for overturning the entire law in the courts. I can say unequivocally, this is not a fight that Hill Republicans were looking forward to having again. The Republican Party still has no alternative plan to Obamacare. And in the absence of that, you now run a risk, right? Like what if what if the administration wins in court? What if the court side with the administration and the ACA is no longer the law of the land? You create havoc in the health care market. So they don't

want this problem thrown back in their lap because they know they don't have a way to fix it. The president is very focused on keeping his promises. He has been the entire time. But as reelection draws closer, President Trump is just trying to knock things off the list, keeping promise after promise after promise, even if it isn't practical, even if it isn't really a politically great idea, even if his party doesn't want it, even if national security officials say it isn't advisable, whatever, he is trying to do the things that he said he was going to do so that he can go into a rally and say, look at me, I kept the promises. And one of his main promises when he was running for president in this like hanging thing that he can't solve that he the promise he just can't keep is repeal and replace of the Affordable Care Act.

So so just like this conversation has shifted, I mean, I think it's really fair to say that Washington shifted. No, it's true. Washington shifted from all Mueller all the time to OK, now we're all talking about health care. My last question is, Domenico, do you think that when Bill Barr testifies before Congress, when we get the Mueller report released, or at least part of it, if Robert Mueller goes before Congress, does that re-rack everything back to where it was before? Or does the fact that these big picture conclusions seem to be, no, there's not a crime here, does this kind of get ratcheted down a little? I think that that's a difficult thing to predict. I think, though, that if it holds what Barr's letters summary is, that there was no collusion for President Trump or anyone in his campaign, that's obviously a big win for the president. It's the thing that the president has been talking about for two years, that there's no collusion. And when it comes to obstruction of justice, certainly there's some open question, apparently, on what Robert Mueller's level of comfort was with what President Trump's actions were. But they chose not to prosecute him. Now, if there's no underlying crime, and then there's a potential cover up or whatever that Democrats try to ply into and look into,

I think the country is fairly split on whether or not they want to go in that direction and continue down that path, or whether they think Democrats should be more focused on kitchen table issues, and Republicans too, for that matter. But Sue, one positive of having hundreds of members of Congress is that Democrats can prioritize other stuff and still keep all these other investigations ongoing over the next year and a half. Absolutely. And I think in some ways, you know, there are certainly an element of Democrats. I think no matter what, you'd always have 50 to 60 Democrats who would vote for impeachment on any given day up here. Right. Like that. There is definitely always going to be that voice within the Democratic Party. Although I talked to a lot of Democrats this week, too, who kind of would say that the Mueller report is also in political terms, also a gift in some ways. If you didn't want to spend the next two years making 2020 about a referendum on impeachment, but would rather it be about issues like health care or guns or budgets

or any other kind of issue, then we are going back to just having a more traditional election in terms of policies and ideas and not the tougher question that was really divisive, as Domenico said, to the country. So, you know, I always think that 2020 was going to be competitive across the board before the Mueller report came out. And I still tend to believe that all that reality is still the same. It's just what it's going to be litigated on has shifted. I mean, Democrats are gonna have to figure out how to balance saying that they want the report released, and that they have an obligation to do oversight, while at the same time overcoming what

this narrative has been with this four page letter that went out. All right, so we're gonna have to ask you to leave the podcast now. I'll miss you guys. Thanks to You will not leave the podcast now. I'll miss you guys. Thanks, Sue. That sounded so serious. You will not be getting a rose. You've been over-served. All right. Thanks, Sue. We'll talk to you again soon. Sue's going to leave. Danielle Kurtzleben is going to come in and we are going to talk all about gender and 2020 when we come back.

See you guys later. 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 ZipRecruiter. Hiring used to be hard. Multiple job sites, stacks of resumes. But today, hiring can be easy and you only have to go to one place to get it done. ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter sends your job to over a hundred of the web's leading job boards. Then ZipRecruiter scans thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience and invites them to apply to your job. Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash weekly.

What does what you eat or don't eat say about who you are and where you fit in? It's the memories and the feelings of nostalgia that is what connects you to your family. It's not chicken or beef or pork. This is Gene Demby of NPR's Code Switch. This week on the menu, food and family. All right, we are back.

Sue is gone and Danielle is here. Hello, Danielle. Hello. So you just wrote a really interesting story about gender dynamics and the 2020 race and the fact that, first of all, there's so many women running. But secondly, we are in this point where the male candidates and especially the white male candidates have to answer questions about the fact that they're white males, which is wild compared to, you know,

the last 200 years of presidential politics. Totally right. I mean, this is just pretty much the basic premise of my story is that for the first time, or at least for the first time in a really big across the field and mass way, the men are having to grapple with their gender and particularly the white men are having to grapple with their gender and race comes into this too, in a way that white men candidates haven't always had to. So let's, before we talk about that, hear three different examples of white men being defensive about that fact in one way or another. Beto O'Rourke, John Hickenlooper, and then Joe Biden. I just got a call from my wife, Amy, who's back in El Paso, Texas,

where she is raising, sometimes with my help, Ulysses, who's 12 years old. How come we're not asking more often the women, would you be willing to put a man on the ticket? A white man's culture, it's got to change. It's got to change. And in the candidate's defense, Beto O'Rourke is not quite being defensive there. And he did apologize for that later. And he has, and I'm sure we'll talk about this, acknowledged, you know, a white male privilege on the campaign trail multiple times since then. But these sorts of statements have created in some voters an uproar. You know, the people asking Beto O'Rourke, hey, you know, it very much reflects traditional

gender roles for you to run around the campaign trail chasing your political dreams while your wife stays home and watches the kids, which is what had been done for quite a while with male presidential candidates since time immemorial. And obviously, Beto O'Rourke is acknowledging that, right, which is the difference between him and past candidates. I mean, you think about any past male candidate with a wife and children at home, obviously, their wives were the ones taking care of the kids, and they didn't even seem to even acknowledge that as a thing. Right. So, I mean, one way to look at this is this,

is that I went back and looked at a debate transcript from 2007 where Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, two mold-breaking candidates in their own rights, were being asked questions, and it was a CNN debate, and they were asked questions. You it was a CNN debate. And they were asked questions. Barack Obama had to answer questions about people perceiving him as being, quote, unquote, authentically black. And Hillary Clinton had questions to answer about being this high profile woman running for a major party candidacy. And the thing that we're seeing now

that is so interesting, and for a variety of reasons, for example, that men are no longer the default. We have so many women running. We have so many people of color running. White men are also being asked, oh, by the way, hey, you have a gender. Why don't you talk about that? You have a race. Why don't you talk about that? And it was definitely not a thing for John Edwards. Right. In 2007 to have to be asked, you know, what do you think about being a white man running in this election? Or for Joe Biden, any of the times he ran for president before. So, Danielle, you just ticked off some of the reasons, and there's a lot of layers here.

There is the fact there's a lot of women running. There's the fact that we have a president who really leans into the masculinity, to put it. To say the least. To say the least. Yes. We're going to get back to that. But before we dig into that, Tam, Hillary Clinton was a woman who ran for president. In fact, she was. She was the first woman to be the major nominee of a party. How did she

approach this fact when she was campaigning? And how did that change between 2008 and 2016? It was a pretty dramatic shift. So in 2008, she ran in some ways as, you know, this tough defense hawk, like she was, she didn't run as a woman. She just ran as, she didn't really acknowledge her gender that much. And when she ran in 2016, she leaned into it more. She talked about being a grandmother. There was more talking about potentially making history of all the cracks in the glass ceiling. And of course, on election night, had she won, there would have been shattered glass confetti. But she did not win. And this gets to something really important, which is that because white straight men have for so long been the main template for presidential candidates, this very particular type of toughness of masculinity has been just sort of the derigger on the campaign trail. You know, think about 2004 when John Kerry and George W. Bush were kind of trying to outdude each other.

There was, you know, there were footballs being thrown. There was windsurfing. There was cowboying. There was all of that, you know, and this has gone on for decades and decades and decades and decades. So then Hillary Clinton's sort of shift away from trying to be tough and not talking about her gender and sort of acknowledging it really is a mark of this whole complex of masculinity loosening its grip a bit. Yeah. I mean, she was making jokes about her hair in 2016. Right.

Yeah. So, Danielle, you've laid out all of the stuff happening on the Democratic side, but of course, President Trump running for reelection. How does he affect this conversation? He tries to embody this very particular type of straight masculinity. You know, he compliments the wives of world leaders on their looks. He, you know, he talked, of course, there was the locker room talk tape. He, you know, tries to be quite macho and manly. He likes to pose with construction helmets on or in the cab of a big truck, that sort of thing. But I mean, yeah, I think that depending on the voter you're looking at, I mean, it depends on how much the voter cares about that, whether it's consciously or not consciously, because it is

quite possible that after decades and decades and decades of seeing white men run for president, that just seems normal. And you had a lot of candidates always try to out macho each other. Most definitely. And I think the difference this time around is the makeup of the Democratic Party and its base. And that's why this stands out so much, because, you know, you didn't see that previously in what you have with Democrats now as a younger, more diverse base of voters who feel very differently about identity as compared to Republicans who to the polls and primaries and more often than not, elected women over men in the primaries. But still, Domenico, amidst all this, amidst this push toward more diversity and inclusion of the Democratic Party, who is topping the early polls? The white male candidates. Right. Absolutely. And Danielle made that point in her piece that you've got the two top candidates. One isn't even in the race with Joe Biden and Beto O'Rourke, who just got in and doesn't even have a job. Three top candidates, Biden, O'Rourke and Sanders in the latest Quinnipiac poll.

You have three white men at the top of the ticket, which also highlights one important thing is that race also factors into that race and gender. It's very hard to disentangle them in all of this. Really good story that Danielle wrote. You can read it at NPR.org. We're going to take a quick break and come back and do 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. Planet Money tip number 17. A great analogy doesn't have to make sense. Busier than a one-legged bobcat covering up his own crap on a frozen pond. Didn't you just make that up?

Well, yeah. Planet Money, a poetic podcast about the economy. We are back, and we're going to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the one thing, politics or otherwise, that we cannot stop thinking about. Domenico, you have the honor of going first. Lovely. Well, this week in Ohio, it's testing week for kids in high school.

You remember when you took like state exams and stuff like that? Yeah. Right. So in Toledo, WTOL decided to have a little fun with this, a local TV station. They decided to have a little fun with this, the local TV station. They decided to, you know, they're always trying to appeal to a younger audience. So let's take a listen to how they decided to do that in this segment. Good morning, TPS students.

It is testing week, and it's time to slay all day. Stay woke, be on fleek, and get that Gucci breakfast. Goals. Say bye, Felicia and get that Gucci breakfast. Goals! Say bye, Felicia, to that testing stress. Weather's going to be turnt, right, Chris? Yes! Toledo weather going to be lit during testing week. A hundo P, chance of success.

What is hundo P? 100%. 100%. We look at Ocrr. Better than Ocrr. We're talking turnt. What? Won't be an issue. No traffic problems around any TPS. Better than OCR. We're talking turn. What? Won't be an issue.

No traffic problems around any TPS. That's not great. I feel like I got about 65% of those references. Feel okay with that? I'm proud. I just think it's a reminder. There's something I was reading about as you're getting older and heading toward age milestones, that it's probably a good idea to, you know, dress your age, act your age, because otherwise you just become an old head on what looks like a young body.

So you're saying we shouldn't refer to this week's political notes as turnt? Well, I've got a lot of edits to do. Now you've just got about 30 years older. I have nothing else to say about this. Tam, what about you? Is your can't let it go on fleek? Turn it up. I don't think I can use that in a sentence.

My can't let it go is Bagelgate. Oh, I know where you're going with this. A man on Twitter tweeted out. His name is Alec Krautman. He tweeted out, Today I introduced my coworkers to the St. Louis secret of ordering bagels bread sliced. It was a hit! Exclamation point.

It was a disaster on the internet once he did that. Wait, what did he do with the bagel? Bread sliced. So have you ever been to Panera? Yes. So you get it, you put the bagel in the bread slicer and so you get these tiny little slices of bagel, which is more like a sample.

Like if you were getting a bagel sample, it would look like that. Domenico has drawn a diagram here. Yes, I didn't really understand what it meant when I saw it written. Was everyone mean to him then? Yes. Oh, and here's my political tie-in. One Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, tweeted,

on behalf of the New York delegation, St. Louis, forget about it. Wait, is Chuck Schumer from New York and are bagels New York-based? I didn't know either of those things. Yeah. Wow. Wait, is Chuck Schumer from New York and are bagels New York based? I didn't know either of those things. Yeah. But it gets better because Chief Dermot F. Shea, who is the NYPD chief of detectives, tweeted out, Thank you for reporting this crime, but we only serve New York City where this would never happen. It was a crime against bagels.

Danielle, let's move on from the seven different layers of bagel dynamics going on here. Okay. What can you not let go? All right. This is a story from the campaign trail. It's a few things. It's a campaign trail story. It's a public apology.

And it's a moral dilemma all in one. Oh. So here we go. So last week, I was on the campaign trail. I was in New Hampshire. I was following Beto O'Rourke around. So you're apologizing here. I am. I have a bit of an apology to do. So here we go. So I don't know if you guys have ever been in the situation.

This was one of those situations where the campaign stops and the driving times are tightly sandwiched. Right. Where you you finish a campaign stop. You got to get in your rental car. You got to go because you only have like an hour to get to the next event, which starts in an hour. So you just get in and you drive. So I pull into, I believe it was Durham, New Hampshire, where the University of New Hampshire is, Beto O'Rourke was about to speak there. And I pull into town and I'm looking for a parking spot that is relatively close to the place where he is going to speak. So I'm looking around, I'm looking around, I can't find one. And I see this parking lot. It is a campus parking lot, one of those pay ones. And I pull in and I see one open spot. And I was going, yes. So I pull in, I'm about to pull into the

spot. And I believe I'm remembering this right. The guy in the car next to the open spot gets out of his car on the driver's side, stands in the spot, waves his hands, and I see him saying something to me. So I roll down my window. It looks like a young fellow. I figured he was a college kid, but I didn't know. And he goes, hey, hey, hey, can you go over there? And I said, I don't know if there's a spot over there. And he said, well, I'm saving this for a friend. And I... Too bad, bro. Well, I did get a little... The most radio- friendly word I can think of is snooty with him. And I said, is that a thing?

Ooh, passive aggressive. And he kind of went, all right, all right. And he gets into his car and I was like, cool. And so I was like, yeah, I defended my territory. And I got into the spot. I look down and I'm putting my recording stuff together, putting my headphones around my neck. Next thing I know, a look up in his car is gone. And I was like, huh?

Like he just needed to park next to his friend. Well, I keep fiddling with my stuff. And then I look up again and a gray minivan has pulled in. And you may know where I'm going with this, Detro, because who drives a gray minivan on the campaign trail? One Mr. Beto O'Rourke. Oh. What I had done was I had inadvertently stolen the candidate's parking spot. And I was like, oh.

You got there before him, though, right? No, listen. All right. So first things first. You didn't steal a candidate's parking spot. No, no, no. I know. But this is interesting, because it gets into all the moral layers.

I don't think it said Beto on the parking spot. No, it did not. But first things first, I immediately felt a wave of shame as I was like, I was just snooty to someone for no reason. And I believe what I did was I ducked my head down in my seat and quietly made a noise, something like, ah, to myself. As Beto climbs on top of the car. Well, yeah. So you didn't say, like, don't you know who I am? No, but like, okay, listen,

my apology is not because I took the candidate's parking spot. It's that I was, even if this were a local, someone not related to Beto, it would have not been nice of me for me to be kind of passive aggressive. And let me just say that I have also desperately searched for parking in that very same location four years ago.

And it is a nightmare. So I am with you. Like, it is tough in Durham. Well, either way, to that guy, the lady that was kind of a jerk to you that day, who is not terribly nice, I apologize, dude. I, you know. Well, I'm going to shift gears here. All right, one more.

Detro. All right. So this week, big Supreme Court gerrymandering case, which means the return to the Supreme Court of one former California governor slash terminator slash undercover kindergarten teacher slash many other things. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who in his post-cubitorial career has become a major crusader on the case of gerrymandering. Now, after the Supreme Court big cases, usually all of the key people come out and speak to reporters, and there is usually an understanding among the reporters that they will all stand in one spot and pull their microphones and not get into the camera shot.

Well, there is one Supreme Court reporter who doesn't play by those rules, who does her own thing, and became a viral sensation on the Internet by walking right up to Arnold Schwarzenegger and sticking her microphone right into his face. And that is, of course, our Nina Totenberg. A reporter at Slate, a podcast host at Slate, Mary Harris, made this into a GIF and said,

walk up to everyone you want to interview the way Nina Totenberg walks up to the Terminator. Arnold Schwarzenegger retweeted this saying, it wouldn't be a visit to the Supreme Court without answering a question from Nina Tottenberg. It was a joy and she clearly lives by my rule. Don't listen to the naysayers. Proud to be her co-star. That's the Conan O'Brien Schwarzenegger voice.

That was me impersonating Conan O'Brien impersonating Arnold Schwarzenegger. So I really enjoyed this back and forth. And I think I haven't had a chance to talk to Nina, but I think there's one of two questions that she was trying to ask Arnold. This is the first one she might have been trying to ask. I need your clothes, your boots, and your motorcycle. On the other hand, she might have been trying to ask this question. Who is your daddy and what does he do?

I really thought you were going to go with, have you seen this boy? So Nina tweeted later about this because that's what she does. Of course. And she said, so glad to be a Totinator to the Terminator. It was a busy day at the Supremes for all of us at SCOTUS. Oh, man. All right. That is the show. I've set myself up for it, so I'm going to just continue to be unapologetic

and say we'll be back when there's more political news. Scott's face is really deranged when he does that. I think it's a really good thing that I got to Sacramento after Arnold was gone. I would have been fired. You can keep up with all our political coverage at NPR.org. Another reminder, we will be in Philadelphia on April 26th. You can get those

tickets at NPR.org. I'm so sorry, and I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Thank you for listening to the Empire Politics Podcast. Thank you for listening to the Empire Politics Podcast.