The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, March 8

Episode Date: March 8, 2018

President Trump announced tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, despite strong objections from fellow Republicans. Economic adviser Gary Cohn became the latest Trump administration official to resign, adding to a record breaking rate of turnover in this White House. Stormy Daniels, the porn star who allegedly had an affair with Trump years ago, has filed suit against him. And in California, a high level of excitement among Democrats has led to very crowded primaries that could actually pose problems for the party. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, and editor correspondent Ron Elving. 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

Bonjour à tous, this is Ronnie calling from Ottawa, Canada, where the parliamentary interns are eagerly preparing for our upcoming study tour to Washington, D.C. This podcast was recorded at 1.50 p.m. on Thursday, the 8th of March. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage on NPR.org, on the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. All right, here's the show. A bientot. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news. And there is a lot to round up. President Trump is moving to impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum. Economic advisor Gary Cohn became the latest Trump administration official to resign, adding to a record-breaking rate of turnover in this White House.

And we are going to talk through the curious case of Stormy Daniels, the porn star who allegedly had an affair with President Trump years ago and now is suing him. Plus, Scott Detrow is on a reporting trip in California, and he's going to dial in to tell us what he's learned. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent.

I think it's funny that we're going to have to charge an extra 25% on that timestamp. I actually met this young man on Monday afternoon, and he told me that he had phoned in a timestamp, and I encouraged him but told him that I could have absolutely nothing to do in choosing him as the timestamper of the week. And yet he became the timestamper of the week. My hands are clean. I did absolutely nothing. All right. This afternoon, President Trump will sign an order imposing new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, but it's not going to be the blanket order that he implied it would be late last week when he first made the announcement. This is how he described it earlier today in a cabinet meeting. Sticking with 10 and 25 initially. I'll have a right to go up

or down, depending on the country, and I'll have a right to drop out countries or add countries. We just want fairness because we have not been treated fairly by other countries. All right. So, Scott, you have been in a briefing with a senior administration official who was involved in crafting this plan. Can you please just translate what the president just said into English for us? Well, he says that the rates of the tariff are going to be 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum, which is what he had hinted at last week. That's actually more than the Commerce Department had recommended. But the important thing that we learned today is that there will be an exemption, at least

temporarily, for Canada, which is the number one supplier of imported steel and aluminum to the U.S., as well as our neighbor to the south, Mexico. But that would be, in theory, temporary. We just don't know how temporary? We don't know how temporary. It's sort of open-ended. It's kind of contingent on the ongoing negotiations over the North American Free Trade Agreement, although it's not necessarily tied to that. So it's still a little squishy. But for now, steel and aluminum from Canada and Mexico will be exempt from these steep tariffs. However, steel and aluminum from our trading partners in Asia and the European Union will be hit, at least initially. The tariffs are supposed to take effect in 15 days.

There is a process where other countries can apply to be exempted from these tariffs. But in the meantime, it's the strongest action this president has taken to date to make good on his sort of protectionist platform to stand up for blue-collar workers in this country. At least those that make steel and aluminum, not necessarily those that work for industries that use steel and aluminum. Yeah, I was going to say, aren't most blue-collar workers not steel and aluminum workers? That's right. There are about 140,000 people working in this country in the steel and aluminum mills and smelters. And there are six and a half million people working in industries that use those metals. And in the same sense that there are not that many coal miners left in the United States relative to the total workforce. And yet many people are impacted by the issue of coal. And yet the president,

for a long time, has symbolized the coal industry as representative of what he feels has been done to America and to its energy resources by too much regulation and by not protecting certain industries against foreign competition. So again, we have chosen a symbolic, if you will, victim for the economy, and the president is going to come to their aid as their symbolic, if you will, victim for the economy. And the president is going to come to their aid as their champion, as their hero. And he's going to do good things for them. And we'll see what effects it may have on everyone else. Going off of what Scott was just saying, he was really getting at the importance of these tariffs, which go beyond just those 140,000 people who work in aluminum and steel smelting, for example.

America's beer makers have said that this would increase the costs of the cans that they use. This could increase the cost of cans that the Campbell's Soup Company uses. I mean, those are two small examples, and they sound picayune, but they're not. I mean, because you have— I love the word picayune. I know. Beer is never picayune. Fair.

But my point is that you can, you know, there are going to be all sorts of knock on, potential knock on effects from this. So this won't just potentially affect steel and aluminum smelters. It will affect people who buy consumer goods. It will affect U.S. industries that buy imported aluminum and steel, for example. It will raise prices for them. And there are even further out ripples. There was a great AP story, I believe it was by Josh Boak, that I was reading about how these tariffs can create problems in these towns that are built around these factories. It hurts

the white-collar workers there because when you start to depress the town or the city that has all of the blue-collar workers who are hurt by the steel tariff, then you hurt the other workers in that town or city as well. So there are lots of far-reaching potential consequences. This is not the first time that the U.S. has imposed tariffs on steel. During the Bush administration and the George W. Bush administration, they did it and it lasted for a very short period of time. Scott, do you know the backstory on that? Well, it was not that short. It lasted about 18 months.

They were supposed to last three years. But the Bush administration was forced to sort of back down when foreign governments protested at the World Trade Organization and then responded with their own retaliatory tariffs on U.S. goods. There's a threat that foreign countries will do the same in this instance. I think general economic consensus is that there were gains for steel workers and bigger losses for everybody else in the economy when that was tried back in 2002, 2003. There is no question that winners and losers are created every time you mess with trade policy, especially if you do it in a broad sort of blunderbuss fashion. And also, I think people are going to notice the president is saying,

I may raise them, I may lower them, I may exempt countries, I may add countries, I may do this or that, but we're going to get fairness. And somebody might be beginning to wonder, gee, does the president really have that much power over tariffs all by himself? And the answer is, if you're invoking national security under a law that's more than 50 years old, the president can seemingly do these things in Congress, no matter how much it hates it. And no matter how much the Republican majority hates it, House and Senate can't really do anything unless they're willing to pass another law over his veto. Right. And there's no question as well that there

are problems in the global steel market, right? That China does this thing that trade experts call dumping. China props up its steel and aluminum industries, which means they produce a whole bunch of steel and aluminum more than they would if they were a straight up market based economy. And all of that steel and aluminum goes out into the world, lowering prices on the global market. That is a problem. So you'll hear a lot of people saying in this debate, the U.S. really doesn't import that much steel and aluminum from China. That is totally true. And China, by the way, is the bugaboo that Trump invokes every time he talks about trade. Right. But there is a problem out there and the world has been trying

for years to figure out how to deal with it. The question is whether these kinds of tariffs will put any pressure on China to change that. And one could reasonably guess that they wouldn't. One reason we don't import a lot of steel and aluminum from China is because the U.S. already has targeted tariffs directed at the companies that have been found to be dumping or found to be artificially subsidized by the Chinese. Do we know right now when this is going to be fully laid out and signed? It's going to be signed this afternoon. By the time you hear this, it's probably already been signed in a White House ceremony with a lot of steel and aluminum workers. I'm imagining there will be hardhats.

I don't know for sure yet, but I'm going to guess. The optics directors here at the White House decided it would be better to have steel and aluminum workers as opposed to suit-wearing steel and aluminum executives, as the president signs this today. And then it's supposed to take effect in 15 days. Okay, so at the end of the podcast yesterday, Asma asked you guys to send in any questions that you had about tariffs and trade. And we got some. And now we are going to pose them to our favorite trade nerds, Scott and Danielle. And Ron, you can talk too. It's cool. I'm just not putting you in the category of trade nerd.

Thank you. And you don't seem insulted. I can live with it. It's an esteemed society. I can live with it. It's an esteemed society. I can live with it. Yeah. All right. So Elliot from Burbank, California writes, is a tariff a form of tax increase to help certain sectors or industries?

Yes. Yeah. Uh-huh. Boom. Tariff equals tax. Next question. Is that really it? Well, actually, as a matter of fact, tariffs were the main way that we supported

the federal government for a very long time in the country's history before we got the income tax. All right. Moving on to the next question. It comes from Malin from Georgia or Malin. All right. The question is, do the new tariffs on steel and aluminum apply to goods made of those materials or just the raw materials themselves. I work for a German company that imports machinery. If our U.S. competitors have to pay more for steel, we will have an advantage. I fail to see how this will help U.S. manufacturers. These tariffs only apply to the raw materials.

So Malin is exactly right. There is now going to be, instead of buying your finished aluminum or steel good from a manufacturer in the U.S. who had to pay the higher price for raw materials, you might be better off buying the finished good from a foreign manufacturer. So this absolutely has the potential to put not American steel and aluminum makers, but the manufacturers that use steel and aluminum, at a competitive disadvantage to their counterparts overseas. Does this actually encourage more manufacturing outside of America's borders? It certainly has the potential to do that, yes. The defenders of this policy would say the way to get around that is don't use imported steel and aluminum. Use steel and aluminum made right here in the U.S. of A.

Okay. Phil from Boston, Massachusetts writes, Some scholars say the last world war was caused in part by lots of tariffs and authoritarians taking advantage of the strife they caused. What are the chances that these tariffs cause a trade war? And what are the chances that such a trade war eventually spirals into a real war as we are seeing a rise of strongmen globally? right, is that you spark a back and forth of, well, I'm going to put tariffs on, you know, your thing. I'm going to put tariffs on your thing. So the U.S. puts tariffs on brie from the EU and the EU puts tariffs on corn from the U.S. I don't know. I'm making this up. But the point is that this could spiral and have more and more of those knock-on effects that I was

talking about and with the very real possibility of affecting far more people than just the people in industry A, B, or C, but of really creating, you know, economic slowdowns is the fear. Okay, so as for real wars, all I know comes from episode one of Star Wars, where there was a trade war that led to a real war, like a clone war. That would not seem to be a great precedent for answering this question. Any chance that the subject of Star Wars could be brought in in relevance to the podcast will be seized upon by our current host. Absolutely. And we're getting John Williams to score our next episode, actually.

I don't believe it. I know. Okay, but let's answer Phil's question. So a lot of our biggest countries that we import steel and aluminum from happen to be our allies. So I don't know about causing a shooting war with them. But it does seem to many critics of these new tariffs, it does seem like an unwise thing to potentially anger our allies, you know, countries like South Korea, for example, that send a fair amount of steel and or aluminum our way,

or, you know, European countries that also do. It's probably extreme to think it's going to lead to a shooting war. But in the macro level, countries that trade freely back and forth are less likely to go to war with one another. That was part of the whole rationale for the international economic order that the U.S. helped to build after the Second World War was to prevent a third world war. And to the extent that the U.S. is now dismantling a piece of that international economic order. It's making the world a little bit more hostile place. I guess I'm wondering, what are the domestic politics around this? Is this all about President Trump's base? I've seen some people speculating that he is making this announcement now because there's a hotly contested special election in Pennsylvania and that he wants to make those people happy

to potentially help the Republican candidate. I'm not sure that I buy that, but what are the drivers behind this? All right. So, I mean, I can't get into the president's head, but there is a degree to which if you live in Detroit or Western Pennsylvania or a manufacturing town in general, your town kind of identifies with that industry. There's a certain degree to which one might argue that trade, like many other issues, is a sort of identity issue. We talked about this with guns the other week, but people do identify with these industries that prop up their towns. No question. There's a sense to which people identify with them, and Trump has picked up on that, and he has used that to his advantage.

You know, there was a time when the New York Times was interviewing candidate Donald Trump in 2016, and they said, Mr. Trump, you keep talking about making America great again. When was America last great? A great question. And Donald Trump's response was, after some moments of thought, late 1950s. And so when people talk about what he is trying to do, it's not just about a special election in Pennsylvania next week. He is really being true to what has been his political impulse practically from the beginning, even before he left television celebrityhood to be an out-and-out political candidate. And that is to restore an America as it was in the late 1950s, which he thinks was truly great, and that what has come since then is at least less so. All right, we are going to take a quick break, and when we come back, the record-breaking staff shake-ups at the White House

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And I want to go back in time to Tuesday afternoon. President Trump was at a press conference with the Swedish prime minister and got a question about whether he was looking to make some changes, like maybe get rid of his attorney general. That was the question. And Trump said he wasn't going to get into individual cases. And then he said this. I like conflict. I like having two people with different points of view. And I certainly have that. And then I make a decision. But I like watching it. I like seeing it. And I think it's the best way to go. I like different points of view. But the White House has a tremendous energy and we have tremendous talent. Yeah, there'll be people. I'm not going to be specific, but there'll be people that change. They always change. So people, people, they might change. They might want to go do other things like, oh, I don't know, about 90 minutes later when the White House announced that Trump's top economic advisor, Gary Cohn, had resigned. He hasn't left yet, but he has submitted his papers. So it seems the president was doing some very serious

foreshadowing there. Scott, do we know why exactly Gary Cohn is leaving now? No, we don't know exactly why, although we do know he was on the losing end of the battle over the tariffs we were just talking about. But not only did he sort of lose the argument, but the whole debate was kind of hijacked. We've talked in the past about Rob Porter, the former staff secretary who was forced to leave the White House after it came out that two of his ex-wives had accused him of spousal abuse. He was kind of running the organized discussion about these trade tariffs for most of the last year. And when he left, the process kind of broke down and you had various trade advisors sort of vying for the president's time and getting his ear and helping to sort of reinforce the most protectionist tendencies that Donald Trump has. So the process

that Gary Cohn also helped to sort of oversee as head of the National Economic Council had really kind of broken down. So I think that maybe contributed to it. Also, Gary Cohn was kind of the White House point person on the big tax cut. That was done. So it didn't look like infrastructure, which is another item in his portfolio, was going anywhere. So there were certainly other reasons why he might have decided this was time to hang it up. Well, and in the past, just other examples of Gary Cohn being on the losing end, he was a proponent of staying in the Paris Climate Accord and had been sort of pushing and lobbying the president on that. And president announced he's pulling out of that kind of a similar situation where you had Cohn and the globalists who are arguing one course of action and the president ultimately siding with the nationalists in the White House and going the opposite way. He has the nickname around the White House, if I'm correct, Globalist Gary. Globalist not necessarily being a compliment in the Trump White House.

Well, so actually today, President Trump talked about that, and here you go. He may be a globalist, but I still like him. He is seriously a globalist, there's no question. But you know what, in his own way, he's a nationalist because he loves our country. And, uh, where is Gary? You love our country. This is a cabinet meeting. Now there's applause in the cabinet meeting. And then this is a good part. This is fun. And he's gonna go out and make another couple of hundred million.

And then he's going to maybe come back. He might come back. Right. We'll be here. Absolutely. Another seven years, hopefully. And that's a long time. But I have a feeling you'll be back.

Yeah, he might be back because odds are there are going to be some more vacancies. What are we at? About 40 percent of the positions in the White House have changed hands since they were initially filled by President Trump a year ago. Yeah. So there's a researcher named Catherine Tempest at the Brookings Institution, and she has done this sort of apples to apples comparison, which arguably undercounts the level of turnover, 43 percent of positions in this White House have seen turnover in just this 13 and a half month period. And to put it in some perspective, I went and looked in her data and presidents George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Clinton, Obama, all of them, after two full years, had a lower level of turnover than Trump has had in 13 months.

I want to just talk about that clip we played of the president to hear input from people who disagree and to get all sides. You know, the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion early in the Kennedy administration was blamed on a lack of covered all the bases and really encouraging conflict, liking to see conflict for its own sake in a sort of reality TV drama. And I think the president is just unusually comfortable with the kind of cage match atmosphere that goes on in reality TV. And that may not be so healthy in a White House atmosphere. All right. So also this week, there is one other White House related story to talk about, and that is the saga of Stormy Daniels. Her real name is Stephanie Clifford. She is the porn star or adult film actress, whatever you want to call it, who allegedly had an affair with Donald Trump back when he was just a businessman in 2006. And 2007.

Yeah, and into 2007. And we now know that she got a $130,000 payment that was facilitated by Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. This came right near the end of the presidential campaign in October of 2016. And that payment came along with a nondisclosure agreement, basically said, Stormy Daniels, whatever it is that you had going with Mr. Trump, and Mr. Trump does deny it firmly, you can't talk about it. So this week, Daniels filed suit against the president saying that Trump never signed the nondisclosure agreement. So therefore, Journal reported on that. And ultimately, just a couple of weeks ago, Michael Cohen conceded that he did make the payment. And Stormy Daniels and her attorneys argue that in making that statement, Michael Cohen voided the nondisclosure agreement. There's still considerable back and forth over that.

Michael Cohen had an arbitrator who said, no, that doesn't void the agreement. You still can't talk about it. But in filing this suit, Stormy Daniels and her legal team have basically managed to put all the facts or their side of the facts out there in public for the mainstream news media to report on it. And folks who might have been a little squeamish about reporting on this can now just quote the legal papers and say, here is what's being alleged in this lawsuit. And now it's sort of a legal story as opposed to just a sex story. I have pages of legal documents here that include the agreement signed between Stephanie Clifford, a.k.a. Stormy Daniels, a.k.a. Peggy Peterson, because they used these aliases to try to create even more separation. So it was an agreement between Peggy Peterson and David Dennison, David Dennison being allegedly Donald Trump and a third party essential consultants, which is the consulting firm that President Trump's lawyer created seemingly for the sole purpose of signing on to this nondisclosure agreement and giving

Stormy Daniels $130,000 to go away. If you look at the documents, they are signed by Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels or Stephanie Clifford and not David Dennison, a.k.a. blank. And yet, as I understand it, Sarah Sanders in her briefing on Wednesday characterized the arbitration decision as having been made in the president's favor. So where does the president come in? You said repeatedly that we've addressed our feelings on that situation in regards to the Stormy Daniels payment. But specifically, can I ask, did the president approve of the payment that was made in October of 2016 by his longtime lawyer and advisor, Michael Cohen? Look, the president has addressed these directly and made very well clear that none of these allegations are true. This case has already been won in arbitration and anything beyond that, I would refer you to

the president's outside counsel. When did the president address specifically the cash payment that was made in October of 2016? The president has denied the allegations against him. And again, this case has already been won in arbitration. Anything beyond that, I would refer you to outside counsel. You said that there's arbitration that's already been won by whom and when? By the president's personal attorneys. And for details on that, I would refer you to them. But you're aware of them.

So what more can you share with us? I can share that the arbitration was won in the president's favor. And I would refer you to the president's out-cut counsel on any details beyond that. So that's an oopsie. Yeah, yeah. You know that phrase, mistakes were made? Well, and in this particular case, arbitration was won. Well, if it was won, somebody won, somebody lost. Right. And in this case, Sarah Sanders had to concede that it was determined in the president's favor, which means the president is a party, which means the president has to be D.D. The two initials we see in the agreement.

Yeah. We have the spokesperson for the president of the United States essentially acknowledging that President Trump is a party to this. And the arbitration that's being discussed was a temporary restraining order that was issued to try to prevent Stormy Daniels from filing that lawsuit that made all of these documents come available for all of us to see. And they may not be the last documents that become available for us all to see, because we could be, we could be, we don't know yet, but we could be heading down a road of further discovery in further legal proceedings, in which case questions will be asked and questions will need to be answered. And this is how something that did not seem like a very big deal for a long time, embarrassing perhaps, just totally deniable on another level, might stick around for a while and be an irritant and a Access Hollywood tape where the president is captured on tape making lewd comments and describing his own boorish or worse conduct towards women. We had multiple women came out and made allegations of improper sexual conduct by the president. All of that in advance of the election, and Donald Trump was nevertheless elected to be president of the

United States. The White House position has basically been, all of this is priced in. The American people knew what they were getting, and they decided that he should still be the president of the United States. So they figure there's no reason for anyone to keep talking about this stuff. There obviously was a group of voters for whom Donald Trump's personal character was disqualifying for the presidency. There was a similar size group of voters for whom it was not disqualifying. Has anything we've learned about Stormy Daniels moved someone from the not disqualifying camp into the disqualifying camp? Not that we've seen evidence of, I would say. I just got a poll in my inbox today from Marist with the president's approval rating,

and I believe it was 42 percent, which is pretty good for him. So it doesn't seem as if he's seen any precipitous drop off in his approval, for example, since the release of this. One serious flag that has been raised, though, surrounding the Stormy Daniels allegations, however, and especially the $130,000 payment related to those allegations, is there stuff he is hiding that could make the president blackmailable? That is, so even while, as Ron was saying, this story just seemed like an embarrassment for a while, one serious question I have seen raised surrounding Story Daniels is their compromising information and how much on the president. governor of Arkansas as opposed to being president, brought forward and merged with a series of other accusations about him from other people and eventually become part of what led to his impeachment because of his own reaction to it, because of committing perjury and things of that nature. So we can sometimes see a case that had seemed to be buried in the past and to have been

adjudicated. And yes, yes, we all knew about Bill Clinton. But as it turned out, it became a very serious problem for him in terms of dealing with an impeachment proceeding in the House. There is no such proceeding at this time. We have no reason to expect that there will be an impeachment proceeding in the future. But if there ever were one, all of this could be, in a sense, grist for the mill. All right, we are going to take one more quick break. And when we come back, Scott Detrow calls in from California and can't let it go. Support for NPR Politics and the following message come from Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans. Rocket Mortgage gives you confidence when it comes to buying a home or refinancing your existing home loan.

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Hello, other Scott. Scott Detrow. Hello. How's it going? Well, you know, you're probably doing better than us because you've probably had some burritos or something delicious in California. Well, Tam, let me tell you where I am. I am in a studio that is very familiar to you and to myself as well. I'm at the KQED

Sacramento Bureau, where we both have spent a lot of time. Where we have both worked. This is awesome. Yep. Well, Scott, there has been some news that is of national significance that's been happening right there in Sacramento this week. On Wednesday, the Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave a big speech going after state and local officials for so-called sanctuary city or sanctuary state policies. And he announced that the Justice Department is suing California. What can you tell us about this? Yeah, I was out here doing a story on the fact that Democrats have really focused in on Southern California as one of the key places to win back a lot of Republican seats. And as I was out there, this happened with Jeff Sessions. And it plays into a broader

pattern that we've seen for two years now, where Democrats in California really feel like they're at war with the Trump administration on so many different points. You've got immigration, you've got environmental policy, you've got trade policy. If you go down so many of the big things, the tax bill that that President Trump pushed for so many of the things that the Trump administration is the sanctuary city policies and basically applying them to the entire state. So Jeff Sessions came out here, announced that the Trump administration is suing California over this and got a pretty rowdy welcome in Sacramento. He gave a speech to, I think it was a police organization announcing this, but there were a ton of protests outside. And California Governor Jerry Brown and Attorney General Javier Becerra really lit into Sessions and Trump at a press conference right after that speech. This is really unprecedented for the chief law enforcement of the United States to come

out to California and act more like Fox News than a law enforcement officer. This is a political stunt. Brown went on to really weaponize the Mueller investigation, saying, look, Jeff Sessions is under a lot of pressure from the president because of the fact that he recused himself. And and he's just trying to score points with his boss here. Yeah. And I think Jerry Brown also said this lawsuit is going to take longer than the administration is going to last. Like this was this was, you know, as a longtime California observer, this is the governor and the attorney general of the state of California who have painted themselves and really worked hard to make themselves like they are the champions of the resistance.

And they're taking the Trump administration to court and to have Jeff Sessions come to town was almost like a gift to them. It was like, thank you very much. Game on. So, Scott, you're actually out there working on a story about another issue in California related to congressional races. California has this very interesting top two primary system, which means that two Democrats could win a primary, two Republicans could win a primary, and there might be some unintended consequences of Democratic energy. Is that right? Yes.

So usually, as Ron, I'm sure you would agree, usually a very crowded primary is a good thing and one of the many indications of a wave year, right? It shows that there's a lot of energy in the party's base. They have the enthusiasm. So, Ron, usually it's pretty good, right? Yeah, sure. Because usually you would think it's going to produce somebody who's your strongest candidate and that person is going to get on the ballot. But here's the problem. Here's the problem. California has this top two system where no matter how many Democrats or Republicans run, it's only the top two finishers go along. So there are a couple open districts, though. Daryl Issa has decided not to run again. Ed Royce has decided not to run again in San Diego and Orange County. And there is so much Democratic

enthusiasm for Democrats running in Isis District, eight running in Royce's District, that there is real concern among the party that the Democrats are all going to end up kind of bumper cars in each other, splitting the support of Democratic voters. And two Republicans are going to scoot through into the general election in districts that otherwise Democrats feel pretty good about being able to pick up. So speaking of enthusiasm, Scott, I'm curious. I know that in that ISA district, you have Sarah Jacobs, who, if elected, would be the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. And we all know that women have shown a lot of the enthusiasm on the Democratic side.

I'm curious, how is she playing out there? Do you sense a lot of enthusiasm amongst women in the ISA district? So I talked to her and she said, you know, look, Democrats really need to rely on the enthusiasm and engagement of women voters and younger voters. So we should give them an opportunity to vote for a candidate that would excite them, a nontraditional candidate, someone like me, who's a younger woman who can really relate to these voters. And I talked to her on Tuesday as the results from Texas were starting to trickle in. And what she said did really kind of bear out in a lot of the Texas primaries, where a lot of women did much better than expected, because it seems like a lot of voters are just eager to come to the polls and vote for women.

Well, and also speaking of Texas, efforts made by the Democratic Party back in Washington to put a thumb on the scale in favor of candidates they thought would be the best candidates in November. It's something that they were sort of trying out, perhaps with an eye towards California to rationalize the situation you described, did not turn out so well. In fact, they seem to have backfired. So, Scott Detrow, how do they get out of this? Like, what's the solution to this embarrassment of Roach's? A lot of the campaigns have been telling me that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the DCCC, has been having a lot of behind closed doors conversations with all the candidates saying these are your strengths, these are your weaknesses. But the party has not taken any public steps to try to clear the field. And it seems after Texas that they might not be doing that anytime soon. Because if they come out and

say, hey, this is the candidate we prefer, or hey, you know, this is why you should drop out of the race. We saw in Texas that candidates immediately can raise a lot of money from other outside groups because it used to be the party was the only game in town. But now you have the ability to raise money online. You have competing progressive groups and it's much harder to clear a field than it used to be. So I think what they're doing is just hoping people drop out of the race. All right. So the exciting thing is that you are here and we are doing Can't Let It Go, where we all talk about that one thing that we cannot stop thinking about this week, politics or otherwise. Detro, do you want to go first?

Let me tell you about the best part of my trip. I was in San Diego getting breakfast one morning at a quirky establishment that had gotten some good reviews. I'm sitting there eating huevos rancheros at the bar, and I look up, and what do I see on the wall of this establishment but the headshot of a stunning, dashing, much younger KPBS reporter, Scott Horsley. On the wall, autographed Scott Horsley headshot on the wall staring at me. He's a cuter too. I've seen this picture.

To be clear, Scott Horsley is still stunning and dashing. Scott, what, how? How did it come to be that you even have a headshot? Did you sign autographs when you went to this place? Or like, what was going on? It's not just my picture. You were at the famous Big Kitchen, which is a landmark in San Diego. Lots of folks have come through there. And Whoopi Goldberg worked there for a while, so there's a big picture of Whoopi Goldberg there. I never slung eggs there or hashed there,

but I ate plenty of hash browns and a lot of Damien's burritos. And Judy the Beauty on Duty, who's the proprietress there, I think she had actually criticized me about a story that I had done or a story that I didn't scribbled across the bottom about making sure that every young woman had a chance to grow up to be whatever she wanted to be. But I was a little dismayed, Scott. You put this picture up on Twitter, and you called it a vintage picture. I think I look just the same. I hardly – it was like looking in a mirror. I could shave by it, actually. But I was referring to the picture itself, physically looked aged and warped. Nothing about you in the picture.

Scott, you haven't changed a bit. The Sharpie was faded. I see, I see. It's a daguerreotype, I think, actually, wasn't it? As I often say, Scott Horsley never changed. And he never has. And I never do. And you have trendier glasses these days.

But that picture got a whole lot more action on Twitter than any of my little missives about the trade policy this week, much to my surprise. Stonishing. Oh, Ron. Misplaced priorities. All right. I don't think I really, I'm not sure I really believe in heroes. But if I did, my intellectual hero would be a man named Daniel Kahneman, who is originally an Israeli and a psychologist, and has written a brilliant book called Thinking Fast and Slow, which has meant a great deal to a lot of people who have trouble with both kinds of thinking. And he was here in this building on Tuesday night to record the 100th podcast of Hidden Brain with Shankar Vandantam.

And I couldn't go. And I can't let that go. But don't you miss it. It drops as a podcast on Monday, March 12th. Be there. That's the convenient thing about podcasts is that they're available for listening later. They live forever. Like that picture.

Danielle, what can't you let go of? I'm a firm believer that the best hot takes are the ones that don't matter at all. And so I have a hot take that does not matter at all. And it's this. I'm tired of hearing that this White House is a reality show. I had a realization this week. This White House is a soap opera. Now, let me explain.

I was on vacation. I went on vacation with a friend who is a journalist. And I was was debating like, all right, clearly we take Twitter off the phone. Clearly we take Facebook off the phone. We take work email off. We're unplugging. And I was like, should I take the New York Times off? Like, I don't what maybe I want to keep up. So much could happen. And she said, listen, nothing is really going to change in a week and i she was like you'll be able to catch up really easy and you know i thought like you know this was right when hope hicks was leaving and i was like it's already starting the deluge of news but i came back and i realized no it's like a soap opera if you watch a soap opera once a year you can easily pick it up a lot of really really not important stuff has happened maybe some characters have been off. I don't know. Well, yes, they have. But like the point is that a couple of big things happened, like the whole tariff thing.

And you can easily catch up on them. As the world burns. I hate to break it to you. You missed the fact that Mike Pence has been replaced by Flike Mentz, his evil twin. Is he in a coma? His president. Yeah. Yes. Mike Pence is in a coma. About five, six years now. But, you know, it's going to be another couple of years before that storyline really moves. So, you know, a lot of flailing around, like soap operas have the appearance of stuff happening, but stuff just doesn't happen. It all moves slow. And this tariff thing,

which was happening in the middle of my vacation, as I understand it, it took until today for something to actually happen on it. So the next time I hear someone saying this White House is a reality show, I will just roll my eyes and go, no, it's The Young and the Restless. Tam, what can't you let go of? Well, so we have been talking a lot on this program about the musical Hamilton. It's been sort of a recurring theme of the last week and a half And then the most amazing thing happened Weird Al Yankovic came out with a polka medley of Hamilton Yes

How does a bastard orphan son of a whore and a Scotsman Drop to the middle of a forgotten spot in the Caribbean By Providence and Pulverice's waller Grow up to be a hero and a scholar The $10 founding father without a father So this is amazing. It goes on for five minutes. I would play it for five minutes. But, you know, Danielle, you'll just have to go look it up later. Marrying two of my loves in life. Weird Al and Hamilton.

I know. Like all of us. I love Weird Al so much. I didn't even know that there was a song called Bad because I just thought it was fat. And my mom would always be just like, eat it. Like my mom would get me to eat my food and sing eat it at me when I was a child. How did you avoid Michael Jackson? Weird Al.

Yeah, Tam. Tam. No, no, no. Pause. There are many Weird Al songs that eclipse the original song, for sure. That's quite common. I don't know if his Michael Jackson songs would be in that camp. Weird Al and Hamilton will be coming to your city as a double feature very shortly.

I did not actually discover this polka on my own. Scott Detrow actually told me about it. And he tweeted about it and tweeted about an article that he read where Weird Al and Lin-Manuel Miranda were interviewed together. And get this, Lin-Manuel Miranda tweeted back at Scott Detrow. He did. But not Weird Al? I immediately thought, oh, no, I hope he doesn't know that. I only checked into Hamilton three weeks ago.

And that is a wrap for us this week. We'll be back in your feed soon. Keep up with all of our coverage on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and of course on your local public radio station. You can also 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 to everything that happens every week here on the pod, we also have a newsletter that comes out every Saturday that includes a great In Case You Missed It section. You can sign up at npr.org slash politics newsletter. I'm reading fast because this polka is very, very fast.

I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow in Sacramento. I cover Congress. I'm Scott Horsley.ka is very, very fast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow in Sacramento. I cover Congress. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. Stormy weather. I'm Ron Elving, editor-in-chief correspondent.

And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. All nine hours of it. I mean you gotta put some thought into the letter, but the sooner the better to get your right hand man back. It must be nice, it must be nice, to have Washington on your side. Look back at the Bill of Rights, the ink hasn't dried. It must be nice, it must be nice to have washington on your side somebody has to stand up for the south somebody has to stand up to his mouth if there's a fire you're trying to douse you can put it out from inside the house i'm in the cabinet i am complicit in watching him grabbing his power and kissing it washington isn't gonna listen to disciplined dissidents this is the difference this kid is out how do you write like you're running out of time

every day you fight like you're running out of time like you're running out of time are you running out of time