The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday May 11

Episode Date: May 12, 2017

Fallout from the firing of FBI Director Comey continues, and congressional reporter Scott Detrow calls in from the road after a tense town hall. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Geoff Bennett, 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

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and on your local public radio station. Okay, here's the show. It's the NPR Politics Podcast, here to talk about a wild week of political news in the days that have followed President Donald Trump's firing of FBI Director James Comey. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Jeff Bennett. I cover Congress. I'm Mara Liason, the national political correspondent. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor.

All right, guys, I'm exhausted. How y'all doing? Not the same. Jeff ran over here out of breath to find no one in the studio. And I didn't run anywhere. Yes, we should say that, Mara, you are at the White House in our spacious basement studio booth, whatever you want to call it, because you just walked out of the White House press briefing a few minutes ago. Another tension-packed White House briefing. We'll get to that in a second. But first, the episode behind this one in your podcast feed was recorded the night of the Comey news.

So that episode contains the facts as we knew them at the time. And they've changed. Our knowledge has changed. So at the time, the White House was saying that the president had fired Comey on the recommendation of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. They said Comey had improperly handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails. And since then, so much has happened, not least of which today there was an interview that President Donald Trump did with Lester Holt of NBC News, where he seemed to directly contradict the talking points of his own administration. Here's Trump. He's speaking about Comey. He's a showboat. He's a grandstander. The FBI has been

in turmoil. You know that. I know that. Everybody knows that. You take a look at the FBI a year ago. It was in virtual turmoil less than a year ago it hasn't recovered from that monday you met with the deputy attorney general rob rosenstein right did you ask for a recommendation uh... what i did is i was going to fire home in my decision it was not you made the decision before they came i i was going to fight on

uh... i there's no good time to do it by the way uh... they didn't you let letter you said, I accepted their recommendation. So you had already made the decision. Oh, I was going to fire him regardless of recommendation. So there wasn't really a problem. He made a recommendation. He's highly respected. Very good guy. Very smart guy. The Democrats like him. The Republicans like him. He made a recommendation. But regardless of recommendation, I was going to fire Comey.

Let me ask you about your – When James Comey was fired on Tuesday, the letter that President Trump sent, the backup documents that the White House sent, the words grandstander and showboat were not in that letter. There was speculation that part of the problem here was that Comey had gotten too big, that he was on TV too much. He could command the spotlight too much. And that was confirmed in what Donald Trump said to Lester Holt in that interview on NBC News and also by Sarah Sanders at the White House briefing today when she said that the straw that pushed Donald Trump was James Comey's testimony last Wednesday on May 3rd. After watching Director Comey's testimony last Wednesday, the president was strongly inclined to remove him. And in that testimony, remember, he said that he'd felt mildly nauseous

about the fact that he could have swung the election. Look, this was terrible. It makes me mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election. But honestly, it wouldn't change the decision. So I want to just play another little piece of audio because this is really remarkable. The president of the United States gave the reason, said he had decided well before that he got these recommendations. That contradicts what Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday morning. The deputy attorney general provides the oversight to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. While the deputy attorney general was confirmed just a few short weeks ago by the United States Senate,

when he brought the recommendation to the president that the director of the FBI should be removed, President Trump provided the kind of strong and decisive leadership the American people have come to be accustomed from him. And you've really had a lot of contradictions between the vice president and the deputy press secretary saying that he merely followed the recommendations of the acting, the deputy attorney general. And by the way, vice president Pence said that, I think, seven times yesterday in different interviews because he is nothing if not disciplined and sticking to the talking points. But today, the president totally contradicted them and said, I was going to fire him anyway. And you also had this incredible disconnect between acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who was testifying on Capitol Hill today, and what the White House has been saying about morale at the FBI. The White House insisted that

Comey had lost the faith of the agents at the FBI. Bipartisan members of Congress made it clear that they had lost confidence in Director Comey. And most importantly, the rank and file of the FBI had lost confidence in their director. Whereas McCain said absolutely the opposite. Is it accurate that the rank and file no longer supported Director Comey? No, sir, That is not accurate.

You know, he had a deep positive connection. I can tell you also that Director Comey enjoyed broad support within the FBI and still does to this day. Jeff, you were watching that hearing. And it's not just McCabe who said that in the hearing after that, the leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner of Virginia and Richard Burr of North Carolina, were asked about Donald Trump's comments to Lester Holt in real time because it had just come out. And they said the exact opposite. They basically said what McCabe said, that they found him to be cooperative, to be upstanding, to be basically doing the duties of an FBI director without any sort of partisan influence.

But there is this notion that was not only included in that letter, but Donald Trump even said it again in this interview with Lester Holt, this notion that he met with Comey three times. And on each occasion, he told him that he was not subject to an FBI investigation. In one case, I called him. In one case, he called me. And did you ask, am I under investigation? I actually asked him, yes. I said, if it's possible, will you let me know, am I under investigation? He said, you are not under investigation. But he's given sworn testimony that there is an ongoing investigation into the Trump

campaign and possible collusion with the Russian government. You were the centerpiece of the Trump campaign. Well, all I can tell you is, I know that I'm not under investigation, me personally. the Russian government. You were the centerpiece of the Trump campaign. So was he being truthful when he says you were under investigation? I know that I'm not under investigation, me personally. First of all, it's wildly inappropriate for the president of the United States to ask that of an FBI director. And it's equally inappropriate for the FBI director to give any sort of indication to a president. Right. And this whole account of Comey reassuring the president that he wasn't the subject of an investigation has been rejected by FBI officials, former prosecutors, just saying it doesn't pass the smell test.

And even McCabe today said it's not standard practice to do that. But Sarah Sanders, when asked today at the White House, said she didn't think it was inappropriate for the president to ask if he was the subject of an investigation, that it was not interference or a conflict. I don't see that as a conflict of interest, and neither do the many legal scholars and others that have been commenting on it for the last hour. So no, I don't see that as an issue. You know, the only other point to make is that this is a story that has moved so fast, and this is one of the most momentous decisions and actions that the president has ever taken, and he took it with almost no preparation or plan or strategy for how he was going to communicate it. That when Sarah Sanders today said, why did you say something different yesterday than you're saying today? She said, I hadn't had a chance to ask the president. And now I've asked him, and he's told me that he'd already made the decision before he got the

recommendations from Ron Rosenstein. I hadn't had a chance to have the conversation directly with the president to say. I'd had several conversations with him, but I didn't ask that question directly. Had you already made that decision? I went off of the information that I had when I answered your question. To Mara's point, I can't even keep count anymore of the numbers of times that members of Congress and the Senate particularly were being informed about things happening at the White House by reporters. And they only found out because we were asking questions of, you know, trying to get their response. And they would say, really, that just happened? That happened with Chuck Grassley. He seemed really confused yesterday. Yeah, yeah. Wait, I missed that. What happened?

We were asking him a question about whether or not he thought that McCabe should be the head of the FBI. And he said, really? That's happening? How do you know that? Is that true? And it was like, yes, interim. He's acting. He's not the formal head. But yeah, that's a thing. that Domenico and I had been looking at yesterday, which is that the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, is out interviewing people, or was yesterday, interviewing people to serve as the interim FBI director. Now, there is a normal line of succession, and that's how McCabe is in that job. But the attorney general is now trying to find someone to serve on a short-term basis who isn't the guy who automatically gets the job. And this brings up another issue, which is Jeff Sessions had promised to recuse himself from anything involving Russian interference in the presidential election. And he said in any way, in any way that it could possibly be related.

We should also point out a couple of things. To Mara's point about the context of this and just how big a decision it is for any president to fire an FBI director, it's only happened once before in American history that a president fired an FBI director. It was William Sessions when Bill Clinton fired him. And that was after Clinton had asked Sessions to step aside because of ethical issues. He refused to do so. And it took the White House some six months to build a strategy to think about how they were going to do that before they actually pulled the trigger and did fire William Sessions. And, Mara, you were around covering back then. Yeah, and another point about that is that was after an inspector general's investigation and report. There was a process that unfolded and it didn't become a partisan firestorm exactly for this reason. And apropos of nothing, William Sessions was a Republican. And when the president is getting ready to replace FBI Director Comey, he is going to be under a lot of pressure to pick someone who is either a Democrat or has nonpartisan credentials.

The decision now to replace Comey is so much more fraught than it would have been had he done this in a more traditional manner. No one disputes his right to fire Comey for any reason or no reason. He might not have liked the way Comey combed his hair one morning. That's enough. But because he did it in this way, the Republicans that I've talked to are just gnashing their teeth. And as one person said, this is a real shoulder slump because if he had run this through traps, lined up Republican support on the Hill, maybe even had Comey's successor lined up, this wouldn't have unfolded in the way it did. I was talking to a Republican senator today and I was like,

you know, I just want to get your comments on the Comey thing. And he was like, OK, I am happy to talk about it, but I don't know more than you do. He was basically saying, like, I have a ton of questions. The American people have a ton of questions. And to have this is a Republican senator basically saying, I, which is what Democrats and maybe John McCain and Justin Amash have been calling for. One or two Republicans, that's it. You are not seeing Republicans breaking with the president in any major way. And we won't see that until his poll numbers among his base start to tank. I was speaking with a Republican pollster earlier this week, and he made the point that so much should have torpedoed Donald Trump during the campaign, and he withstood all of it. And so now Republicans realize that there really is no political gravity here.

There's no upside. Yeah, and no one wants to be on the wrong side of Donald Trump for a great many reasons. The entire, and particularly in the House, the entire House is up for reelection next year. So this is something that people will take very seriously. And so far, I mean, in the Senate, we have not seen yet, anyway, anyone seriously try to exert some pressure here. I want to get back to the context that we were talking about. This was allegedly about Jim Comey's handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. And we went back into the

archives and pulled some audio because if you go back in time to when the Comey letter came out, and this is the letter at the end of the campaign where Comey said, oh gosh, we found some stuff on Anthony Weiner's computer and we're going to have to sort of reopen the Clinton email investigation. Donald Trump, the candidate, was mighty happy back then. And it took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they're trying to protect her from criminal prosecution. You know that. It took a lot of guts. I really disagreed with him. I was not his fan. But I'll tell you what, what he did, he brought back his reputation.

And Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was a close ally of Trump's on the campaign, here's what he said around that time. There's some serious allegations here that the American people need to know are fully investigated. And, you know, FBI Director Comey did the right thing. When he found new evidence, he had no choice but the report to the American Congress where he had under oath testified the investigation was over. He had to correct that and say this investigation is ongoing now. And I'm sure it's significant or he wouldn't have announced that. Mara, you know, in the last 24 hours, that argument has almost, the argument that we're firing

him because he was mean to Hillary Clinton has almost completely disappeared. They're really not pushing that anymore because it didn't pass the smell test. On the other hand, let's point out how controversial James Comey was. Democrats were absolutely furious with him for the very thing that you just heard Sessions and Trump praising him for, for reopening the investigation into Hillary Clinton's emails 11 days before Election Day. And there were Democrats who said he should step down or be fired or said they lost faith in him. And that is one of the things that really rankles the White House. First of all, they miscalculated. They thought when Comey was fired, Democrats couldn't say anything to criticize the president because they'd said so

many things critical of Comey. But it turns out that now is a different time and James Comey is investigating the Trump campaign. But one of the things you hear from the White House, and they have plenty of evidence to back this up, is the Democrats are being hypocritical because they have been such harsh critics of Comey all along. But that rings pretty hollow, Mara. As a reason to fire him, yes. As a reason to fire him, yes. As a reason to fire him, yes. And they've dropped that. Right. Because if we think about the idea, that was pretty convenient reasoning, right?

I mean, the idea that this president, after saying that Jim Comey had guts to come out days before the election to say that he was reopening the Clinton investigation, that suddenly Donald Trump was upset with his handling of the Clinton investigation because he'd gone around protocols. It seemed really convenient that he had this memo in hand from the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein, which was very well reasoned. And plenty of Democrats agreed with the reasoning in it. It just wasn't Donald Trump's reasoning. No. And that was one of the biggest missteps they've made, is to put forward a rationale that was so obviously not true. Now, since that rally, when Donald Trump said he has guts, after Donald Trump has become president, he's also complained

about Comey for letting Hillary Clinton off, not indicting her. And he's grown to be unhappy with Comey. He just went to a rally that said, lock her up. Yes, that's right. They were chanting, lock her up. But he's also become, look, the president became very disenchanted with Comey for a number of reasons. And I think it's important to make sure we know what they are. First of all, Comey never picked up on Trump's accusation. It had no evidence that President Obama tapped his phones. As a matter of fact, he said publicly there was no evidence.

He contradicted the president. He contradicted the president. He contradicted the president. He showed no loyalty to a president for whom loyalty is the number one attribute in an employee. He also did not pursue an investigation of leaks. And that's what Trump has said over and over and over again was the most important thing. And that's what he wanted investigated. So there were a lot of things that Comey did since Donald Trump was the president that he didn't like at all. So, Domenico, you mentioned this Rosenstein memo, and it is this very carefully crafted memo that builds a case for,

well, it doesn't actually call for firing James Comey. It walks right up to the edge. It talks about all of the things that James Comey did that were out of line with precedent. But it is fascinating to me that if you read that letter very carefully, that memo very carefully, he never says, and I recommend that you fire James Comey. You know, and we should also point out that there's supposed to be a wall between the White House and the Department of Justice. You know, FBI directors and presidents are very clear to try to avoid even appearances of impropriety. For example, Jim Comey is six foot eight. Right. And why that matters is because President Obama, you might remember, used to set up all these basketball games around town and they would play at the Department of the Interior and other places.

And Comey made a point of it being known that he would never play basketball with the president because he didn't even want to show the appearance of collusion or impropriety. This is totally blown out of the water with what Trump has done. This is the thing about norms. They're not laws. You know, what do we say? Checks and balances is a metaphor, not a mechanism. In other words, there's not a law that says a president should not inquire, interfere with an investigation. It's just standard practice that it's not done.

Now, the thing about the FBI director, as we're all learning now, look, the Trump administration is one huge crash course in democracy and democratic institutions. Who knew? We knew the FBI director is appointed by the president. He does answer to the attorney general. However, he has a 10-year term, which is supposed to shield him, insulate him from partisan pressures. The president of the United States just fired the only senior official in the government that he did not appoint and someone who is supposed to operate with a fair amount of independence, especially when they're investigating the administration they serve in. You know, Tam, there may be a reason why Jeff Sessions is performing these interviews so

quickly. You know, during the campaign, President Trump was highly critical of Andrew McCabe, who is now the acting FBI director. He happened to say that McCabe's wife, he had criticized McCabe and his wife because his wife had taken money from Terry McAuliffe and his PAC when he was governor in Virginia because the Democrats in Virginia were trying to recruit her to run for the state Senate when they were trying to take back the Senate. Now, this was in 2015. This was like way before the election. When they were recruiting her to run. And Terry McAuliffe is, you know, very close with the Clintons.

Right. Tara McAuliffe had been a fundraiser for the Clintons. And Trump was saying this in October of 2016, drawing a very misleading line to say that McCabe himself was somehow unable to, what he said, oversee the FBI investigation of Clinton's emails. Now, there's so much wrong with actually that chain of events because McCabe didn't actually even have any oversight of the investigation until three months after his wife lost that state Senate race. You know, that was one of the most interesting side dramas today when you saw Andrew McCabe sitting there at the hearing knowing everything that Domenico has just described. And when he absolutely outright contradicted what the White House has said about how FBI agents feel about Comey. You just could tell this is a guy who doesn't expect to have a job much longer. And so at the hearing today, Senator Marco Rubio, who is a Republican, was asking McCabe about the investigation.

Has the dismissal of Mr. Comey in any way impeded, interrupted, stopped, or negatively impacted any of the work, any investigation, or any ongoing projects at the Federal Bureau of Investigations? As you know, Senator, the work of the men and women of the FBI continues despite any changes in circumstance, any decisions. So there has been no effort to impede our investigation to date. Quite simply put, sir, you cannot stop the men and women of the FBI from doing the right thing, protecting the American people and upholding the Constitution. And that message struck me as much as a message for the members of the committee, as much as it was a rallying call for the men and the women of the FBI who just feel like they've just been put upon for the last three months, particularly this last week. And, you know, this is just another chapter in the president's ongoing battles with the entire intelligence

community. First, it was the CIA who he compared to Nazi Germany. Now it's the FBI who he says it was a complete mess and Comey was terrible. And you have to wonder, these are people who are investigating the president. They know a lot of things. What comes next? There's a lot of push for a special prosecutor from Democrats. Yeah. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has rejected it out of hand on the Senate floor yesterday. He almost, well, he did.

He mocked Democratic outrage over the firing of Jim Comey. But here's the thing. I spoke with a Democratic staffer who said that during Rod Rosenstein's confirmation hearing, Democrats were very careful to get him on the record saying that he would call for appointing a special prosecutor if the circumstances warranted it. And then yesterday, what did we see? We saw Chuck Schumer on the Senate floor reading a transcript of that exchange on the Senate floor. And then he said, if there was ever a time when circumstances warranted a special prosecutor, it's right now.

And he pointed out that Rosenstein doesn't need congressional authorization to do it. He should just do it on his own volition. Is it true that Rod Rosenstein could tomorrow appoint a special prosecutor? It is true. He could do it, but there's no indication that he will. And there is certainly not an appetite for it on the Republican end of the upper chamber. All right, we are going to take a quick break.

And when we come back, some interesting photos that emerged from the Oval Office yesterday and quite the raucous town hall. Town Hall. Harry's is so confident in the quality of their blades, they'll send you a five-blade razor and shave gel for free. Just pay for shipping when you sign up. To redeem your free trial offer, go to harrys.com slash NPR politics. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Tucker. When searching for the perfect blouse,

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than two of the people who work on it. So how are we celebrating? By doing more shows. You can find our podcast on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening. Donald Trump, right? You know, like the morning after firing James Comey, President Trump had one thing on his public schedule, and that was a meeting in the Oval Office with the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov. It turns out that the Russian ambassador, Sergei Kislyak, also showed up. So there were a couple of Sergeis. Mara, this is so incredible because the day after he fired the guy who was investigating Russian connections with possible Russian connections with his campaign, he meets with the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador, who was the guy who talked to

Mike Flynn, and that caused Mike Flynn to be fired. And the White House didn't plan to make available any documentation of this meeting, but they let in the Russian official photographer who took a picture of Trump with Lavrov and Kislyak. And that is what you're seeing on every single national newspaper in the United States of America today. Can someone please describe that picture? They're having fun. They're laughing. And every time Donald Trump gets mad about the Russian investigation and tries to put it to rest, move on, change the subject, he keeps on bringing more attention to Russia. attacked by Democrats for being Nixonian and firing Comey just the way Nixon fired the special prosecutor. Turns out, who does he have a picture taken with right after he met with Lavrov? But Henry Kissinger, who was Nixon's national security advisor and secretary of state.

So lots of connections there if you choose to make them. It's either comical bad timing or they're trolling us or both. Right. And speaking of trolling, by the way, when Lavrov was asked if he had heard about James Comey being fired and if he had any reaction, he said, was he fired? You're kidding. And he and he just shook his head and shrugged his shoulders and walked off with Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state. Another thing that happened at the White House, this was today, is that this afternoon, President Trump did something that he said he would do back in January, and that is that he signed an executive order creating a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity,

a.k.a. he has created the commission to look for the voter fraud that he started to allege right after the election. Just to be very perfectly clear here, the White House and Trump advisers have not ever been able to produce any evidence of those so-called illegal votes. No, but now they have a whole commission that will help them find them. And Democrats are absolutely incensed by this because they think this is a cover to push all sorts of voter suppression laws and rules around the country, because that's generally what the voter fraud argument has been a predicate for when it's been used in states that have clamped down and made voting harder for people. You know, we should say there was a commission, actually, that was led by the Bush administration where they only found a few instances of voter fraud or people who voted twice and things like that.

So the reality here is they may find some instances of voter fraud and some of that has been discussed and talked about. But Republican secretaries of state have said that this is not something that's widespread. But don't forget. Don't forget what the White House says is voter fraud is something very different from what most people consider voter fraud. They're also talking about anybody who's on the rolls that might be dead or on the rolls improperly. That's not voter fraud. And that's not voter fraud. But what Democrats are worried about is that this would be a pretext to do wholesale purges of voter registration rolls and all sorts of people would be kicked off who are actually legitimately registered.

I was just going to put a button on it and say, thinking back to one of the last press conferences that former President Barack Obama gave, he said, all this talk about voter fraud, that's fake news. And we'll just say that this commission is going to be headed up by Vice President Mike Pence and also Kansas Secretary of State Chris Kobach. He is an interesting person. He is, you know, one of the people out there who has been on the leading edge of things like voter I.D. laws and other things like that, that, you know, Republicans have said are, you know, all about protecting the vote and that Democrats feel very strongly is about suppressing the votes of people of color.

Yes. And that's going to be the naming of him to this commission is going to be huge irritant to Democrats. Mara Eliason, we know that you have to be on the actual radio very soon. So we are going to cut you loose. Thank you for joining the pod today. Thanks for having me. And we have now created space in our virtual studio to bring in another friend, Scott Detrow. You do. Scott's awake!

Oh wow. I'm here. Are you still driving? Did you guys pull over to the side of the road? Do you want to guess where I am? Are you at Wawa? You're at a Wawa, that's right. In Newark, Delaware. I will tell you, I am with an eye shot of a Wawa. Producer Barbara Sprunt thought we had stopped at too many Wawas at this point, so we are now in a Wegmans parking lot.

Wawa makes the best soft pretzels. Oh, Wegmans. Nice. Wegmans is great. In what part of the country? We are somewhere in Maryland now, but I will tell you, when I was in southern New Jersey, I went to, did we go to two or three Wawas? Two different Wawas. How many meals have you needed? Though I have to say, as someone who lived in Pennsylvania for a while, if I went to, did we go to two or three Wawa's? Two different Wawa's.

How many meals have you needed? Though I have to say, as someone who lived in Pennsylvania for a while, if I had to pick between Wawa and Sheetz, I'm still team Sheetz. Oh. No. Wawa's cleaner. See, we had bonding, and now it just went away. Sorry, Scott.

All right. So, Scott, why are you in a parking lot near a Wawa somewhere in Maryland? Tell us why you've come to us. Actually, I know, but tell us anyway. Because I am on my way back from a crazy town hall meeting that I covered last night and actually earlier this morning in the end in southern New Jersey. It was in the district of Tom MacArthur. He's the House Republican who you might remember from playing a key role in resuscitating the Republican effort to to repeal key parts of Obamacare. He's the one who put together that amendment that got enough House Republicans on board to to pass the bill.

So he had previously scheduled this town hall in a Democratic part of his district. And it was wild and literally lasted five hours. Wait, so when you said you were working until early in the morning, like, did the town hall actually last past midnight? It ended at 11 o'clock hour, but we were getting closer and closer to midnight. It just kept going and going because the crowd was really hostile. He pointed out early on, this is a town, Willingboro, that he won 12% of the vote last year. We are here for a reason. I'm in this town for a reason tonight, because I recognize there's a lot of anxiety in the country. There's a lot of anger. And and I represent everybody in this district. And it seemed like

if he had 12 percent of that room on his side, that was that was a positive assessment of the situation. And people were just they came ready to yell, ready to argue. You know, I think the best indication early on of what kind of night this was going to be was in the opening minutes when MacArthur was kind of introducing himself, giving the typical, you know, I'm a politician. Here's my spiel thing. And he started talking about his family history and why he cares about health care and talked about the fact that his daughter died at age 11 from serious medical conditions. And he started to get heckled. I want to go back to my daughter. Just for a moment. Shame. I will say, I will say shame on you right now, actually.

Don't tell me what I'm using. I'm going to tell you because this affects my perspective. So, yes, emotions were high. Yes, it got hostile. But I think the concern for many people in the room and person after person shared really detailed stories about their own health struggles was that they're genuinely terrified that by allowing states to opt out of these Obamacare protections like the essential health benefits, by kind of steering people with serious pre-existing conditions into high-risk pools, they're worried that this amendment that MacArthur authored is going to knock the legs out from under them and take away their health care. Without this Medicaid, I wouldn't be where I'm at today. It's not easy to stay clean. And with the help that I received and Medicaid, it kept me clean for this long. And I feel for the women and other men that are struggling with this addiction. And, you know, we heard before MacArthur's kind of response to this. He went back to the several

points saying, you know, I don't want to take away health care. I'm just concerned that the cost of health care in America is getting more and more out of control. And one reason why Republicans are pushing to curb spending on Medicaid is that we want to bring states to the table to kind of play an active role in lowering costs through tort reform and things like that. But this is not a room that wanted to hear in theory about tort reform. They wanted to talk about their serious medical concerns and their worries that that this Republican effort could blow up the Affordable Care Act. But, Scott, this came like right after the firing of James Comey. Did that come up at this town hall as well? Yes. For more than two hours of the town hall,

the only questions were either about health care or Russia, and they seemed to pop back and forth. It was really interesting to watch. There were two key questions I want to play. One, a woman just directly asked about the fact that James Comey had been fired the day before. I have a question in regards to Russia. We seem to have a pattern that most people who are investigating it seem to be getting fired. Do you support an independent group investigating Russia's ties into the 2016 election? And what was his response?

The answer is no, not yet. Not yet. Not yet, MacArthur says, because he wants the House and Senate investigations to keep going. That was he said they were bipartisan. The room basically laughed at him literally when he said that. But he pointed to the fact of the news that also happened last night that somebody actually told him about in a question that the Senate Intelligence Committee had just issued subpoenas to Michael Flynn. So he said, look, they're taking this seriously. He also kept saying that he didn't see a special prosecutor, an independent counsel as a magic bullet. He said, look, this is someone that still would be appointed by the Justice Department, which is run by Jeff Sessions, who was confirmed by Donald Trump. So this would not solve all of the problems. There was another question that I think would be interesting to hear from because it got to a lot of the pushback. A woman said, you know, what will it take for you

to get more aggressive when it comes to Russia? This week we listened to a subcommittee hearing in which most of the Republicans could not bring themselves to ask even one question about Russia. And now we have Comey fired. If that isn't enough to convince you that the legislature cannot do this on its own, what specifically do you need to see before you'll back up? He said he is a Republican, but that his ultimate responsibility is to the Constitution. And he said if any of these investigations do turn up something that indicates that there was something that undermined American democracy that went against the Constitution. He would stand up. But the room was pretty skeptical, saying they're not seeing much independence from Republicans right now.

What Scott really is describing here is something is a scene that we've seen play out across the country. I mean, people are fired up. They're dug in. And it's really coming to a head at a lot of these town halls. You know, it reminds me and I think a lot of people of what we saw with the Tea Party in 2010 when people were pushing against the Obama administration and Democrats when it came to health care. And now the shoe is on the other foot. You know, it's really indicative, though, of the partisanship that we've seen across the country. It's hard to find moderates in these districts, Scott, right? I probably doubt that you found a lot of people who were in the middle of this. And I think part of that is because civility doesn't really make change and people are feeling like civility is not what's getting rewarded in these districts. Yeah. And he has an interesting district because

it is more ideologically split than most districts. It is a relatively speaking swing district, but there's a geographic split too. This was on the west side of the state, right outside of Philadelphia. And he kept saying, look, no one in this room agrees with me. That's fine. But if you drive through the Pine Barrens

to the east side of the state near the shore, it's very conservative. He kept mentioning the Pine Barrens and I'm going to just make a Sopranos reference here. And if nobody gets it, that's their fault because it's a great show. I used to live in the Pine Barrens, and I'm going to just make a Sopranos reference here, and if nobody gets it, that's their fault, because it's a great show. I used to live in the Pine Barrens. You used to live in the Pine Barrens, so he kept talking about the Pine Barrens.

You lived in the Pine Barrens? Yes. Are the Pine Barrens where the bodies go? Did you come out of a trunk? Yeah, exactly. Is the Pine Barrens where they take the dead people? Well, there's this classic Sopranos episode where they take a Russian mobster to the Pine Barrens to kill him, but then he escapes.

And the big question was, did the Russian live? And given that Russia was in the news and that he kept talking about the Pine Barrens, that's all I could think about. Oh, my gosh. That's amazing. I guess you think of things in a five-hour town hall. That's true. You do. You have a lot of time to think, Domenico.

I feel like you have to hand it to him. Like, he just stood there and he took it for five hours. And, you know, there are so many members of Congress who, you know for arresting a reporter who asked a question in West Virginia that was not in a press conference. And he said- He was chasing him down a hallway. Yeah. He said that man was asking a question outside of a press conference. I think most of our bosses would say, hey, that's like- That's the job. Okay. I have a big picture question and it's for all of you, which is I'm not sure whether Tom MacArthur is in a marginal district or whether he's considered an at risk Republican or congressperson.

But 2018 is a long way off, but it's also not a long way off. Is health care does this health care thing become an albatross for members of Congress? Do these really heated, energized town halls, are they an indicator of something? I think it really all depends on the implementation date. And that's the thing that I think lawmakers are talking about a lot privately, because if it's before the midterms, then obviously there's a bigger issue here. Though the implementation date for Obamacare was like 2013, and it didn't help. It certainly didn't help Democrats in 2010. You know, since 1980, we've seen an average 29 percent drop off between presidential years and midterms.

And what you mean in voter turnout and voter turnout. And what that means is that in those off years, in those midterm elections, activists dominate. That means that when the enthusiasm is on one side or the other, those are the people who usually win in midterm elections. It happened in 2010, where Democrats wound up losing 63 seats. It happened in 2006, when Democrats wound up taking over the House because the Iraq Civil War was raging. Right now, they're the ones with the momentum on their side because they do have a lot of the enthusiasm at these town halls that have turned into basically Facebook comment posts. Yeah, to Domenico's point, that's what Nancy Pelosi essentially said last week on the House floor, that this whole thing is a great civics lesson

because if people didn't know who their member of Congress was before, they certainly know now. Scott, do you have time to stick around for Can't Let It Go? Yeah, yeah. I can delay my appointment with the Wawa for a few more minutes. Okay, awesome. Because right now it is time for Can't Let It Go, the thing that we do each week where we talk about something we can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Who wants to go first? I'll go first. Jeff. The thing I cannot stop thinking about this week is the fact that Sinclair, which is the country's largest owner of local TV stations, is about to get even larger. This week said they were going to buy Tribune Media. People in Chicago probably know Tribune

because of WGN. It's a superstation. It's aired all across the country. The thing about Sinclair is that it has conservative political leanings. But of that number, 50 percent rely on local TV stations. And so what happens at the local TV level when there's this kind of consolidation, it's not as if all of these stations hire a D.C. reporter and a state capital reporter. What they do is they have a small team based in Washington that does, you know, stories throughout the day that they send everywhere. And so what ends up happening is you have these homogenized, sometimes partisan, not always partisan, view of politics that people see across the country. It's not a good thing for democracy, I don't think. And you worked in local television, or you were one of those guys in a box who was like, hi, Jim. And then so great to be with you here in St. Louis, Oakland, California.

Is that a Jeff interpretation? No, that's just like my interpretation. No, to your point, what happens is a lot, and I was one of these reporters, you get, sometimes you'll get a list of names. And what ends up happening is you say the same thing 15 to 20 times. All you do is change out the name. Do it, do it, do it. Okay. In three, two, one.

That's right, Tammy. It's been a crazy day here on Capitol Hill. And, you know, that's the guy. See, I gave you a TV name, Tammy. That was a very TV name. I don't go by Tammy. I know. Tam, don't do that. Anyway, but that's not to say most I would say most local TV news outlets do have, I'd say, a fair amount of editorial latitude. Sinclair is a special case. Domenico, what can't you let go of? I cannot let go this week of Preet's tweets.

Preet's tweets. Preet's tweets. Preet Bharara was one of the people who Donald Trump let go. Some people might remember earlier this year, he was the U.S. attorney from New York. I saw a retweeted tweet of Preet's, and I had to go and look up what has he been tweeting about because it seemed kind of odd. This is a former U.S. attorney who, you know, had some there were some word that he had been looking into parts of Trump world. And he's been tweeting up a storm about Comey's firing and about Michael Flynn and the Sally

Yates hearing on Monday. It was kind of surprising. And he had this one tweet. I'll just read. Whatever one's opinion of Comey, does anyone still believe that the stated reason for Comey's firing was the actual reason? Anyone? That was yesterday. So the thing is here, when you fire somebody with that kind of access and that kind of knowledge of information, they can become something of an enemy. You know, keep your friends closer, enemies closer. That is not what this White House is doing. And maybe you guys talked about this before, but my well, not my biggest question, because I have a billion questions on what's happening with the FBI is what does Jim Comey do now? Does he stay quiet or does he make the media rounds and become a big public critic or a big vocal voice on anything? And there's some evidence that he

may, Jeff, right, actually go and testify before Congress again? Well, we don't know that he's accepted the invitation, but the Senate Intelligence Committee has asked him to appear next Tuesday in a closed briefing. And today, Richard Burr said that they hadn't heard back from him. I can't imagine he wouldn't show up. Yeah. Now, the real question, though, is will Jim Comey get a Twitter account? I put in a recording. He has a Twitter account. He has a secret Twitter account.

But I have the name. The Twitter name I would have for him is Comey Don't Play That. No, Domenico, I hate to say Ron did use that joke in the podcast to create a claim. He probably stole it from me. He sits close to me. All right. Can I go next? Or Scott, do you want to go? Yeah, I can go. Just one more thing on the town hall. And it was like the town hall carnival ephemera outside of it, because there was there were so many different things. But three quick things to highlight was there was a guy in a giant paper mache bobblehead, big Trump head who had a golf club and a big golf ball that he was hitting.

But the golf ball was the world. Oh, my. Get it. And then so I'm trying to take a picture of this guy. And then I look up and there is a plane circling overhead with an anti-Tom MacArthur message trailing from it. And then I go back to the parking lot because I realized I had left my glasses in the car. And then I'm walking back from my car, which was far away because so many people were there. And I see this guy kind of staggering down the parking lot. And he's staggering because he has hoisted into into a little like holster a Gigantic sign that was maybe eight feet wide and four feet tall He estimated it was 40 pounds and it said ditch the buffoon but the sign the letters were lit up with light bulbs and I'm asking about it and it starts to waver and I like

Backpedal because I didn't want the sign falling on my head. So you didn't even help him. You were just like, can I let it fall on me? If it was a less political sign, I would have given him a hand. That is an excellent segue to what I can't let go. Oh, yeah. The Washington Post had this absolutely beautifully crafted article by Jenna Johnson that ran Wednesday morning in the paper. Headline is pretty mundane. After Trump fired Comey, White House staff scrambled to explain why.

But it has just like this amazing description. So at first, Sean Spicer was not going to do anything. They were just going to release the statement, release those letters about Comey and be done. And then something happened, possibly based on some people's reporting. The president was watching television and didn't like the reviews and sent the cavalry out. And so Sean Spicer is doing a TV hit. Sarah Sanders is doing a TV hit. Kellyanne Conway comes out of hiding and she's doing a TV hit. But then like all these print reporters are like, hey, wait, we need to talk to this press secretary. And so a crowd apparently gathers out on what's known as Pebble Beach, which is the area where all the TV standups are set up.

And there's like this negotiation to try to get Sean Spicer to talk to the assembled mob of reporters. And I think I'll just just read a little bit here. So Spicer wrapped up his brief interview with Fox Business from the White House grounds late Tuesday night and then disappeared into the shadows, huddling with his staff near a clump of bushes and then behind a tall hedge. To get back to his office, Spicer would have to pass a swarm of reporters wanting to know why President Trump suddenly decided to fire the FBI director. And so it goes and goes and goes. After Spicer spent several minutes hidden in the darkness and among the bushes near these sets, Janet Montesi, an executive assistant in the press office,

emerged and told reporters that Spicer would answer some questions as long as he was not filmed doing so. Spicer then emerged. Just turn off the lights. Turn off the lights, he ordered. We'll take care of this. Can you just turn that light off? And then there was this editor's note that was then published, this correction that says, this story has been updated to more precisely describe White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's location late Tuesday night in the minutes before he briefed reporters, Spicer huddled with his staff among bushes, not in the bushes. Was it a correction or an editor's note? Oh, it was an editor's note. Thank you. There's a difference as somebody who writes some of those between an editor's note, a clarification and a correction, I will just say. But can you imagine being on the receiving end of a phone call from the White House

dickering about whether someone was in the bushes or among the bushes? You're already behind the eight ball when you're making that call to complain. And Scott, I think I know where you're going. And if you do this, you are going to disappoint me because I wanted to say it. But go ahead. What do you think was the biggest thing that came out of this? Okay, I bet we're going to say the same. Are you sure you don't want to say it?

Go ahead. It was so funny. Okay, the gif that's all over the internet all the time. The gif. Of Homer, just blank-faced, fading back into the bushes. Someone made that, but they photoshopped it well. Sean Spicer's head on Homer just kind of like disappearing into the bushes. Are we allowed to have empathy for Sean Spicer or no?

Yeah, of course. All right. I mean, he's an at-will employee. He could quit if he saw fit. It's a terrible moment. Or he could be fired. And for the last several days, they've said that he has been on guard duty. He is in the Navy Reserves.

He has not been doing the press briefings. And his deputy, principal deputy press secretary, Sarah Sanders, has been doing them instead, which has led to all kinds of speculation about whether she will boot him and he will no longer be the press secretary. And she's, by the way, Mike Huckabee's daughter. People may or may not know that. Yes. And she has a way with words, much like her father does. No, but I mean, I think, yeah, sure, you can have empathy for these folks. I mean, this is a long day, you know, difficult job, and especially made more difficult when you're not given clear direction or clear messages on what it is you're actually talking about.

This week was the perfect example. Sarah Sanders goes out and says, here's why Comey was fired. And Trump goes on NBC and contradicts her and gives a completely different timeline for his decision. Okay, guys, Melissa McCarthy is hosting Saturday Night Live this week. Oh, no. I suspect that the props team over at SNL has been hard at work building these bushes that Sean Spicer gaggled among.

It's kind of low-hanging fruit in the bushes, isn't it? That was a grunt. A minico. What does our editor call that? A stepdad joke, not a dad joke. I'm writing that down. I have to use that. Okay, that is a wrap for us today.

We will be back in your feed next week. You can find us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at NPR Politics or our email is NPR Politics at NPR dot org. Listen to Up First, NPR's daily news podcast. First thing Monday morning. And on a week like this, if you want to support the work we do here at NPR, support your local public radio station because that makes it all possible. There's a link in the episode data for where to do that. It's npr.org slash stations. That's where you can find your station, donate, and then please tell them that we sent you. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Jeff Bennett. I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. Somewhere in a wah-wah in Maryland.

I've really been roving America on the podcast the last few weeks. Yeah. And also thanks to Mara Liason for joining us earlier. And thanks to all of you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. © transcript Emily Beynon