The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, May 17

Episode Date: May 17, 2018

As Republicans break off from their party leaders, an immigration vote edges closer to the House floor. Democrats get a rare win on the Senate floor. Plus, President Trump's plans for a summit with North Korea grow sour. This episode: Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, 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

Hey, this is Steve Everett, and I'm a touring singer-songwriter out of Nashville, Tennessee. I depend on NPR Politics to keep me updated and informed while I'm out on the road. I also depend on Ron Elving for dad jokes to tell in between songs in my set. This podcast was recorded at... 11.51 a.m. on Thursday, May 17th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it, but you can keep up with all things political at npr.org or on your local public radio station. Holy buckets. It's time for the show. Ronna, I don't want to put you on the spot, but do you have any dad jokes you'd like to

share with the class today? All my jokes are dad jokes. All right. Hey there, everybody. It is the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news. This week, Republicans are looking for another round in the immigration fight and Democrats finally got a win on the Senate floor. Over at the White House, President Trump's talks with North Korea went south. I think that might be a little bit of a dad joke. While Chinese relations maybe, maybe got a little bit warmer. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House.

And I'm Ron Elving, editor, dad and correspondent. Let's start with immigration this week, because I think this is a issue where we kind of thought that the battle was over for the year and it seems to be reperculating up this week. We'll start at the White House, where President Trump spoke about his long-running frustration about the immigration system. We have the worst laws anywhere in the world for illegal immigration. There's no place in the world that has laws like we do.

Now, Congress tried and failed to do immigration legislation this year, but the White House doesn't seem to be ready to give up this fight. No, they have continued to push Congress for action and they continue to complain that Congress just hasn't done enough. And they are saying that they're hamstrung by these laws. And even yesterday, President Trump was blaming the Democrats and saying, if we have to separate families, it's because of the Democrats. And Aisha, in the meeting you were covering yesterday, he was once again speaking about those who cross the border illegally in really harsh pejorative terms. Interesting, because just

a week or so ago, his chief of staff, John Kelly, in an interview with John Burnett of NPR, said, look, most of the people crossing the border illegally are not bad people. They're not criminals. They're not a threat. Although he went on to say they might not assimilate easily into our society. But when President Trump talks about this, he continues to put it in sort of the most frightening, physically threatening terms. Ron, do you think that politically speaking, does the White House want the fight in this election year? Or is it better to solve the problem? They want the stance and perhaps the fight as well.

But the stance that we are in a crisis, that we are somehow being inundated with people crossing the border, some of them extremely undesirable in the president's view, that is still a stance that the administration wants to keep. You know, it's tricky because there is a coalition of people that want to get something done on immigration. But I think every time they think they get close, the president's political opponents, Democrats, point to the rhetoric of the president as something that makes it very hard to cut a deal with the White House. I think there was another good example of that this week

in which he made some comments about MS-13, which is a Central American gang that has become sort of a shorthand statement, both specifically for the gang but for criminal elements in the country. You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people. These are animals. And we're taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that's never happened before. Aisha, you were at this event, right?

Yes. Yeah, I was there. policies and who are not supportive of California's sanctuary cities, laws or protections for people who are in the country illegally. Can you give a little context to this animal statement? Because it's gotten a lot of attention and I think is being both distorted and maybe not represented exactly in what he was trying to say. So the context is that right before he was talking about this or made that comment, there was a sheriff who was saying there could be an MS-13 member that I know about. And if they don't reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it. So that's what the sheriff said. And then President Trump interjected and made the comment about these people are animals. So you can definitely say that he seemed to be talking about MS-13. Stepping back the entire

meeting, you're talking about illegal immigration and you're talking about dangerous criminals and you're talking about examples where, you know, someone was in the country illegally and then they committed a horrible crime. I think that it all gets very loose at a certain point. If you're sitting back at home and you're hearing these statements, I don't know that you're going to be able to pick out, well, most people that come into this country illegally are not MS-13 and they're not killing people. And I think MS-13 last year, the Justice Department said there were about 10,000 members. There are 11 million people in this country who don't have proper paperwork or not. So there's a huge difference. But I think that what critics

will say is that President Trump at times seems to conflate MS-13 and every person in this country illegally. Yeah, that the president seems to focus more on the criminal element and Democrats always seem to focus on the more aspirational element, the so-called dreamers, other people like that that have integrated into society. Yeah. And it's a question of who do you want people to think about when they think of illegal immigration? Do you want people to think MS-13 or do you want people to think this person who was brought here when they were two and now they graduated at the top of their class? And so and it's not that these aren't very serious issues if you have people coming into the country and committing crimes. Scott. Well, and Sue, it looks as if we may actually see this issue come up again in the House. Yeah. Despite the

best efforts of the House leadership. If the president wants to fight, he might get one, because I think there are an increasing number of Republicans and Democrats in the House who feel the same way. something called a discharge petition, which is a very rarely used legislative tactic that if you can get a whole majority, it has to be the number 218 of signatures, you can force a House vote on a measure or several measures. Leadership doesn't like this because leadership likes to control the floor. And a successful discharge petition means essentially the inmates have taken over the prison. They only need 25 Republicans because if every Democrat signs on, there's 193 Democrats. That gets them their magic number.

They're at 20. They are in striking distance of this discharge petition, which is why I think this week we see House Republican leaders scrambling, openly talking about the fact that they are telling their members not to sign this petition. And Scott and Aisha, Paul Ryan and Kevin McCarthy went to the White House this week to meet with the president to try and get leadership all on the same page to say, this isn't a very good idea. I'm not convinced that the rank and file believe the Republican leaders that it's not a good idea. Paul Ryan's a lame duck speaker.

And I'm not convinced President Trump isn't on the side of the people that want to sign the discharge petition. And if it comes to the floor, we're talking about a free-for-all, right? There's going to be competing immigration measures that would be taken up? It's yes and no. It's a free-for-all in that what the discharge petition outlines is they would vote on four competing measures. One would be similar to the DREAM Act, which would provide a path to citizenship for people who are brought here legally as children. One is a very conservative bill written by Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte that is sort of the conservative vision of what immigration reform should look like. They leave a placeholder for Paul Ryan to offer any bill that he would like. That's sort of the nod to the leadership.

And then I believe the fourth option is, remember the original kind of deal they tried to reach that was money for the wall for a pathway to citizenship, sort of the bare bones agreement. And then they would just vote on them all. And whichever one got the majority would be the bill that the House passes. There is also the prospect, and Kevin McCarthy, who is the House majority leader, the number two leader, and aspires to being the number one leader after Paul Ryan retires this winter, next winter, he would like very much not to have this be the big featured thing that the House does between now and the end of 2018. He is afraid that while they're trying to grind through appropriations and they're trying to do their housekeeping, all the attention is going to go to a divisive and difficult discussion of immigration that some of his Republican members, whose votes he has to value, all like and want to have, and others, perhaps the

majority, clearly the majority at this moment, feel is problematic and puts the emphasis on the wrong, most divisive thing and costs them votes in November. So all of these individual House members, as well as leadership, are wondering about their own reelection in November. Absolutely. That's what's driving the division because they have different definitions of what's good for them in their districts. And part of what the concern of Republican leaders are is if you get this magic number on a discharge petition, it's governed by a lot of complicated procedural rules. So right in the thick of this election season, they would have to turn the floor over to what could be a pretty ugly, politically charged immigration debate that I think Republican leaders see themselves as trying to protect their members from. But their members are saying to them,

no, we kind of we kind of want to have this fight. And meanwhile, Sue, on the other side of the Capitol, on the Senate side, Democrats are flexing their muscle a little bit, working with Republicans to take action on net neutrality. Yeah, a really interesting week in a Republican-controlled Congress where the minority is usually pretty insignificant or ignored. And this week, able to exert a little bit of muscle. Senate Democrats this week were able to use a process to force a vote in the Senate to affecting net neutrality. So back in December, the Federal Communications Commission repealed Obama-era rules on net neutrality. And I got to interrupt. Whenever I hear net neutrality, my eyes start to glaze over a little

bit. Oh, that's not true, Scott. You love stories like that. You love these subjects. What is interesting to me, and you mentioned this this week, is this is actually a big search term in congressional districts. This is something that actually motivates a lot of voters. People care about net neutrality in a way, even if they're not entirely clear on what it means, it's a big issue for a lot of people. Yeah, this was a big deal this week, not because of tech policy, but because of the politics behind the way people feel about this term net neutrality. And explain what the term means while my eyes reopen. Before everybody, very quickly, net neutrality is essentially the principle that your internet service provider can't charge you more or less or block access to websites. The common way people

talk about it is creating a fast lane and a slow lane for the internet. And it was Obama-era rules that basically said your internet service providers have to give everybody an equal playing field. So they made the Internet, made the cable companies and the phone companies that provide the Internet service kind of common carriers. They got to treat everybody the same. Think of it like a government utility, which is also the way that Republicans have described it. And who opposes this? Because what you described, it sounds good, right? That you'll protect everybody and make sure everybody's treated fairly. So who doesn't like net neutrality? Republicans overwhelmingly support the repeal of net neutrality rules.

But I talked to one congressman, Scott Taylor of Virginia, who I think echoed the way a lot of Republicans feel is that they've just kind of seeded the message war on this. The Democrats are out there really hammering this message and Republicans have sort of taken a back seat. They've shrugged and they've not explained their side of it. And their side of it has been, one, there were not net neutrality rules for a long time and the internet operated just fine, that Democrats are kind of scaremongering about what repealing these rules will do. And also their argument is that Washington has had a very hands-off regulatory approach towards the internet and tech, and that's generally been a good thing. And that if you look at repealing net neutrality is they're rolling back the federal government's role in regulating the internet. And that as a philosophical principle, Republicans are like,

yeah, that's a good thing. The free market principle, the advocates of the free market, and a lot of populists on the right, if you want to call it that. But people who are libertarian, in some cases, see this as an example of government versus free market principle. And that's one where Republicans are going to line up in the latter category. So the Republican-controlled FCC repealed these rulings. Democrats were able to force a vote on a resolution that would have reversed the repeal. Now, why are we still talking about this issue of net neutrality? And why are Democrats trying talking about this issue of net neutrality? And why are Democrats trying to make this issue of net neutrality clearly an election year issue? It's not going to go any further in Congress. It doesn't have the support in the House. The president wouldn't sign

it. Democrats see net neutrality as sort of, they look at policy questions affecting the internet. When they look at and test how voters feel about issues, this is something that people feel very strongly about. And I think there is a disconnect between the conversation we have in Washington about these policy issues on a legislative policy level and the way they're being interpreted by voters. And they see voters looking at this issue and their concern is, are my internet costs going to go up? And which voters? Here's a little list of the people that one of the Democratic senators pressing this said they were doing this for. These are the constituents they're concerned about, quote, the grandparents, the gamers, the gearheads, the geeks, the gift makers, the generations X, Y, and Z. This movement to save net neutrality is made up of every walk of American life. Now, you may not feel that that list I just read includes your walk of American life, but that is an interesting group of voters

because all of those people are pretty likely to be voters when they feel motivated by an issue that affects them personally. It might be health care. In this case, right behind health care in those searches you were talking about, Sue, comes net neutrality. People are interested in this issue. They think that their own interests are involved. And we don't know which way this is going to go yet, but I think 2018 is a good test year. The repeal of the rules go into effect June 11th. So how voters interpret anything that might change about their internet access or their cable bill or if it goes up and how they feel about that, Democrats are making a bet that voters are going to fall on their side and that this is not just that they

agree with them, but that it's a motivating issue, that it's going to be a thing that gets you to show up and vote this year. I don't know if that's going to be true, but that is the bet that Democrats are making. Well, if someone slows down my Netflix, you know, my kids need it. They need to watch Moana. I can't take. Hell hath been no fury than a Netflix user buffering, buffering, buffering. No, no. That's the argument.

Maybe the reason my eyes glaze over, I'm still getting my Netflix in a red envelope by U.S. Post Office. You probably do. You probably still have dial-up, Horsley. As long as it's still 44 cents for everybody. Your dial-up for your AOL.com account is still working just fine. Right. Okay. We are going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we're going to talk about North Korea and China. But before we go, I want to remind everyone that the NPR Politics Podcast is hitting

the road. There will be a live show in Charlotte, North Carolina on June 1st. If you're going to be around and you want to buy tickets, go to nprpresents.org. Okay, we'll be right back. Support for this podcast and the following message come from AT&T on behalf of Audience Network and their new original series, Condor. Based on the cult classic film, Three Days of the Condor, this modern-day spy thriller stars Max Irons, Mira Sorvino, and Brendan Fraser. Condor premieres Wednesday, June 6th at 10 p.m. on Audience. Watch it on DirecTV Channel 239 and streaming on DirecTV Now. Hey everyone, I'm Robin Hilton with All Songs Considered, NPR's weekly music discovery podcast.

We know it's hard to keep up with all the great albums coming out each week, so every Friday we do a quick run through the most essential releases. Get new music Friday from All Songs Considered in the NPR One app or wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're back. I want to talk about North Korea, because I have been up on the Hill this week covering other issues. And I thought everything with the North Korea summit coming up next month was going really well. There was a date set. There was an optimistic tone and posture coming out of the White House. North Korea had released these prisoners.

Yes. And it just feels like things took a weird turn this week. Ayesha, what is what is happening? Yes. Well, everything was going well. And last week you had President Trump saying really nice things about Kim and they set the date for the meetings in Singapore, June 12th. At a destination summit. Yes. So they were going to do this. But then North Korea called off these talks that had been set with South Korea because they objected to these joint military exercises that were being held between South Korea and the U.S. And they felt that that was a provocation. And they also after they pulled I guess, during the George W. Bush administration. And they had not nice words to say about him. But they were saying, look, we're not going to give in and we're not going to be Libya. John Bowden had made these comments that maybe we could do a Libya-style agreement where Libya gave up its nuclear weapons program very quickly to get concessions on economic sanctions. The odd thing about this is, you know, John Bolton had made those comments about Libya,

not this week, but a couple of weeks ago. And this idea that the military exercises were an irritant for North Korea, back at the time that this summit was initially broached, North Korea said, we understand that the United States and South Korea will conduct these military exercises, and we will not raise objections to that. In fact, the Trump administration had touted that as sort of one of the concessions that Pyongyang had made in setting up this summit. So neither of these rationales that were offered for North Korea make a whole lot of sense, except that this is how North Korea typically operates. There's a little bit of bait and switch. There's a long history of that. John Bolton says there's also a long history of them insulting him. He talked about that this week on Fox Radio. You know, it's nothing new from my perspective. Back in 2003, when we were going through the six-party talks in the Bush administration, the North Koreans objected to my characterization of Kim Jong-il.

Kim Jong-un's father is a dictator and other things. They called me human scum. They called me a bloodsucker. They said I was a very ugly fellow. So I kind of get used to it. It's what the North Koreans do. Is there a sense of what happened this week? Is this really a setback or is this sort of the tough guy posturing that we've seen go back and forth between the U.S. and North Korea sort of setting the stage for talks that people still think will happen? I don't think we know the answer to that,

but right now the White House is sort of operating as if it's the latter. They're still proceeding as if this summit is going to take place, that this is just posturing. They talk about conversations still going on and preparations being made. So they're basically operating as if the summit meeting is still on, the save the date cards are in the mail, heading for Singapore. And this is just tactical maneuvering by the North. And there's something a bit predictable about the moment that we find ourselves in right now, because both of these two principles, both Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, have made their reputation for being unpredictable, for creating a certain amount of uncertainty in their opponents and among their friends. And they have a kind of chaos agent style. They both do.

They have both had a fair degree of success with it, let us say. And in terms of bringing this particular relationship to a new phase, they've had a certain amount of success with it, let us say. And in terms of bringing this particular relationship to a new phase, they've had a certain amount of success with it. So we probably shouldn't expect either side to suddenly become terribly placid and terribly full of simple friendship for the other side. I think we should probably expect some curveballs before we're done. It sounds like, though, in the past, when there has been these escalations, Trump has taken a very harsh tone. I think what calling him Little Rocket Man when they were in this insult exchange. The response from the White House to me this time seems a little bit more passive or not as strong.

And maybe that's an interpretation that they do want these talks to still happen. I definitely think so. When you look at the way President Trump responded, he did not respond as toughly as he could have. Yeah. And he did say, well, we'll see. He was asked about whether the summit will happen and whether he thought Kim was bluffing. And he said, time will tell.

So it was a very kind of reserved response. I think that President Trump has put a lot into this meeting. Yeah. You know, he was complimenting Kim not long ago. He was saying they said they were going to dismantle their nuclear site. This is what he was tweeting. Thank you. A very smart and gracious gesture. I mean, he was, you know, really talking up this summit. And even though he would kind of follow it up with, well, maybe it won't happen, it would kind of be like, well, we'll probably get world peace. But, you know, maybe not. But so it was just he was building up expectations, even, you know, even though he would try to put caveats on it. Aisha, you were in the Oval Office when the president made those comments about we'll see what happens? Did it look to you as if he was having to kind of bite his tongue that he wanted to lash out? Or was he

just being a little bit passive and sort of say, well, whichever way the wind blows, that's the way we'll go? Well, as you know, Scott, because he does this often, he usually will say, we'll see when issues are tough. That's kind of his go- to. We'll see. We'll see what happens, which doesn't really tell you much. I didn't feel like he was holding back, but I feel like he was not sounding as confident as he was sounding last week. Let's stay on Asia politics for a minute, because also this week there is still these ongoing talks with the Trump administration and China on trade. China also obviously playing sort of a key pivotal role in these North Korea talks. Scott, what was the news of this week on China? Well, and Donald Trump has drawn this linkage where he has said explicitly he would be willing to strike a deal on trade that's more favorable to China in exchange for Beijing's cooperation in dealing

with North Korea. And so the geopolitical situation with North Korea is always kind of the backdrop when trade negotiations are going on between the U.S. and China. On the one hand, the U.S. and China have both taken pretty tough positions against one another. They've threatened to go after each other with tens of billions of dollars in tariffs. Right now, they've just got limited tariffs. The U.S. has limited tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum exports. China has limited tariffs on pork and some other agricultural exports from the U.S. But much bigger tariffs are out there looming and sort of saber-rattling. There are meetings going on in Washington this week to see if they can maybe avoid that kind of full-on trade war.

We did see a conciliatory gesture from President Trump this week. On Sunday, he surprised I think everyone in his administration when he suggested that he would be willing to go easier on this company called ZTE, a Chinese telecom company that had been really given kind of a death sentence by the Commerce Department when last month Commerce said no U.S. suppliers can sell components to ZTE. That effectively put ZTE almost out of business. Ayesha, that ZTE tweet was so strange. It was sort of a record scratch tweet for me from the president because so much of his tweets when it comes to talking about jobs in China is about American jobs,

America first. And then he was tweeting about protecting jobs in China. And I'm still not sure I understand what the strategy was behind that tweet. Well, he says that people have kind of gotten this wrong or blown out of proportion, that they haven't actually made any deals yet. He tweeted earlier this week that they were still waiting to see China's demands, but they were willing to work out something to try to come to a deal with China. And he's saying the U.S. is not going to give a lot because China has already gotten so much. But but so he did. There has been some attempt to kind of walk this back and then to say that commerce is still looking at this issue. So commerce hasn't changed its position on ZTE. So it seems like this is something that President Trump has dangled and said, OK, maybe this is something that I can give to China to get this deal. We have often said in referring to people from this White House and this administration that they are giving a speech or making a statement for an audience of one, meaning they're trying to please Donald Trump.

And in this particular instance, it felt almost from the beginning as though that tweet had an audience of one. That one is either the Chinese or their autocratic leader, President Xi, who is looking at a wide variety of awfully important things, awfully important to Donald Trump as well as to President Xi. And if he could be convinced to Donald Trump, as well as to President Xi. And if he could be convinced that Donald Trump really is sensitive to the things that Xi needs to care about, which includes ZTE, big time, that is a huge issue for them, then that might have been one

reason that he would cross everybody else up on this side of the Pacific and put out that tweet on Sunday. When it comes to trade, though, it seems to me that there's a lot of noise right now, but not a lot of substance, because there's also similar talks about ongoing about trade policy in renegotiating NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement. I mean, that's been a very buzzy conversation, but both renegotiating trade with China and NAFTA, as much as the White House seems to want to do these things, is there any discernible, real, tangible progress to that end, Scott? Well, there's not a deal on either of those things. There has been movement. There have been conversations. And there's never a deal

till there's a deal. But they are both kind of coming to a head this week, or at least they're both coming to a sort of an important moment this week. On China, you have that country's number one economic official here in Washington for direct talks with his U.S. counterparts. On NAFTA, you have, once again, Paul Ryan trying to set a timetable. He had created a quote-unquote deadline of today to say if the NAFTA negotiations weren't finished by today, there wouldn't be enough time for Congress to review it and vote on any agreement this year, meaning this Congress, and that it would maybe have to fall into 2019 and a Congress that could look very different depending on the outcome of the midterm elections. And if you read between the lines on that, that's a speaker also saying he's very happy to not be having this trade fight right now, too.

That's right, because frankly, the Republicans aren't all that thrilled with the way that the Trump administration is trying to reshape NAFTA. It would do away with some things that Republicans like a lot. In fact, this White House might have a more favorable Congress a year from now if the Democrats took control of the House in dealing with NAFTA. But one question there is, if they don't make a deal on a new NAFTA, if the U.S., Mexico, and Canada can't agree on an updated North American free trade agreement, what happens then? The Republicans, the Canadians are basically operating on the assumption that, well, the old NAFTA that's now almost a quarter century old just stays in place. It's more or less status quo, which they're OK with.

The president has threatened to unplug old NAFTA and have no free trade agreement between the North American countries. As much as the Republican Party, I think, is unified behind Donald Trump, trade still does seem to be the issue with the most tension between the White House and the traditional GOP establishment. You hear Republicans being pretty outspoken in their criticism of the administration on this in ways that even in areas where they might disagree with them, they tend to kind of bite their tongue. On trade, Republicans tend to be pretty outspoken and say, we don't think that's a good idea what you're doing. And that has a lot to do with agriculture now in the Republican Party. But let's go back just for a moment to remember how NAFTA came to be. 1993, 1994, the first two years that Bill Clinton was president, he was trying to hold together a Democratic coalition that was then holding Congress up briefly.

And he was also hoping to expand it and have kind of a centrist agreement on trade. So here we had this North American free trade agreement with Canada, the United States, and Mexico, where there were hopes, there were dreams of expanding it for the whole Western Hemisphere. It was going to compete with the European Union, which was looking very strong at that time, looking like a big economic challenger. And it was going to be a tremendously successful thing for, well, not everybody in the American economy, because it was going to restrain a lot of the things that had made us dominant in terms of manufacturing. And so it was possibly going to be part of what was disenfranchising a lot of American workers, people who had had

very high paying jobs with moderate level skills. And that has to some degree come to pass. And it did not expand the appeal of the Democratic Party the way Bill Clinton might have hoped. And what it did was it divided a lot of the old, if you will, sort And here we are at the other end of that quarter century. And Donald Trump is trying to peel this back in one way or another, or possibly even unplug it. And here you're seeing the tensions on the Republican side, where this begins to divide some of the elements of their base. All right, we need to take a break. But when we come back, we'll talk about the one thing we just can't let go this week. delivers more, more context, more solutions, and greater understanding of the people and events that shape our world. Learn more at newsy.com slash watch. There's nothing like a movie theater on a hot day, and there's nothing like a good show you can binge watch with a cold

glass of lemonade. Summer is the perfect time to find your next favorite thing, and Pop Culture Happy Hour is here to help. Find us on the NPR One app or wherever you get podcasts. OK, now it's time to end the show, as we always do, with the one thing we just can't let go this week, politics or otherwise. Since I am in the host chair this week, I'm going to invoke host privileges and go first. Although I think if you were paying attention to what was popular in the culture this week, you might be able to guess what my Can't Let It Go is. Before we get into it, what do you hear? Laurel, obviously.

Ron? Oh, it's Laurel. Scott? Well, it's funny. I'm hearing Laurel now, but I was Oh, it's Laurel. Scott? Well, it's funny. I'm hearing Laurel now, but I was hearing Yanny before. Okay. Have you somehow isolated the Laurel? I think she's put the thumb on the scale.

If you somehow were in a coma this week and just woke up this morning, there was this thing that went viral on Twitter in which somebody played and asked the question, do you hear Yanni or Laurel? If you remember, I think it was a couple of years ago now, there was a similar viral sensation in which people saw a dress that was black or blue or white and gold, and it tore the internet apart. The thing about this moment, what I thought was so funny is not just that we've had this like what do people hear people feel very strongly about it but I was joking uh about it earlier how quickly now even memes come and go like Tuesday night this was like the thing it was like have you heard this

have you heard this it's Thursday morning and we're already at like are we still talking about this oh it's so Laurel and I feel like the pace of the news cycle has like now just translated to even things that are like cool and catchy. Like if you weren't paying very close attention to the Internet this week, you're already like way behind the times and don't know what's cool anymore. And also one sign that we knew it was not cool anymore is that it even made it all the way up to the top of Capitol Hill yesterday. And we have a little tape of House Speaker Paul Ryan. I'd like to declare something that is just so obvious. It is Laurel and not Yanny. All right. And that is how you know a meme is officially over. Paul Ryan is already making a joke about

it less than 24 hours after it's even been unveiled. The meme is officially over. It was about the same time. We need to move on and find something else to debate about on the Internet. Scott Horsley, what can't you let go this week? Well, I recently bought a bus in anticipation of a summer vacation trip, and so I have been rereading the electric Kool-Aid acid test. And so I just want to take a moment to remember Tom Wolfe, who passed away this week at age 88. If you haven't read Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test or some of his other nonfiction, The Right Stuff, I certainly encourage you to do so. And, of course, his great fiction is worth picking up again,

or if you haven't read it before, certainly Bonfire of the Vanities is a great portrait of New York City in the 1980s that spawned Donald Trump. And shortly after that book came out, Wolf spoke at a college graduation and he paraphrased Philip Roth about just how challenging it is to be a fiction writer in this day and age, when every day you're humbled by what you see in the daily newspaper. And that was true in the 1980s. It's even more true today. I mean, what a sprawling novel you can find every morning in the pages of the Washington Post, The New York Times, with larger-than-life characters and unbelievable plot twists. And I only wish we had Tom Wolfe to help us make sense of it all.

Can you also just go back to something you said? You bought a bus? I bought a bus. The No Pie Refused cycling team has a new bus, which we're going to be using for RAGBRAI this summer. And we're painting it up in sort of electric Kool-Aid style. And it'll be accompanying us on our bike trip across Iowa in late July. Scott, I think that's called burying the lead. He knew someone would ask. He knew someone would ask. Ron, what can't you let go this week? Let's listen to something that was said at one of the many graduations around the country in the last few days. Let's just listen and think about who might be saying this. If our leaders seek to conceal the

truth or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom. Okay, so you know that's not Ronan Farrow. The Texas accent would eliminate that possibility. But it's not Bill Moyers either. This was Rex Tillerson, former chairman of Exxon Oil Company, very well known as the Secretary of State of the United States under President Trump, who appointed him, and of course, also let him go. But he gave this speech, not on some television talk show, but in front of the Virginia Military Institute's graduating class. That is a classic place for people to make statements in the general neighborhood of national security and foreign policy. And for these remarks to come from the

man who has served in the highest position by most measures in the United States Cabinet is a remarkable set of observations and judgments about the current administration. I don't think there's any way to interpret it differently. But that's Rex Tillerson talking just this week at the Virginia Military Institute. I mean, we knew he had what would be the professional equivalent of a bad breakup with the Trump administration. But I also think when you hear him talk, it does make you realize that he just sounds really bitter about it and frustrated. I mean, the words were really striking in terms of just the anger, I think, and attitude towards American policy right now from a very recent Secretary of State. I had thought that we'd have to wait for the book. Yeah. But apparently not. Well, and some people were calling this subtweeting of the Trump

administration. You do have to wonder, though, how much Tillerson did to fight against what he thought of as this alternative reality while he was in office. What was he doing as Secretary of State? And was not a very popular Secretary of State inside the building. That's part of the reason why the Trump administration decided to cut him loose. Either building, either the White House or the State Department itself, where he left many, many positions vacant, where he did not seem to be particularly interested in making the department function well, but much more interested in either reducing its costs or reducing its footprint in the world of Washington policymaking.

It's like a D.C. version of a bad breakup. But certainly the sentiment there that facts matter, truth matters, that there is a reality that we can't just pick and choose is one that a lot of journalists would subscribe to. And very much echoes another scorned former government employee, James Comey, who has made that same point as he's been on this whirlwind book tour about facts mattering and alternative truth. So I'm sensing a theme. Aisha, best for last. What can't you let go this week? I don't know if it's the best, but it is something that's certainly close to my heart and what I can't let go of this week.

And that's the royal wedding. I'm with you, girl. And that's the royal wedding. I'm with you, girl. I am with you on this. I'm probably not. I'm not going to watch it live or anything like that. I'm going to a watch party. I'm not going to go that far.

But I'm going to be looking to see what her dress is and how she's going to look. I mean, I love when Kate got married to, you know, William. How soon they forget. They're all interchangeable. When they got married, I just thought she looked so beautiful and so regal. And I just want to see, like, what they're going to be wearing. And the bridesmaids and the page boys have been picked. And so you're going to have Princess Charlotte and Prince George, Harry's niece and nephew. So it's going to be really cute. I'm with you. I feel like as Americans, we should not feel so gushy about a

British royal wedding. But I love it. And I watched, I got up early. I watched Princess Di's wedding as a kid. I got up and went to a watch party for Prince William and Princess Kate's wedding. And I'm going to a party Saturday morning that starts at 6.30 in the morning to watch this royal wedding. And I'm not ashamed about it. You shouldn't be. Are they going to serve English muffins? I'm going to make pink champagne cake.

That sounds awesome. I know it's not everybody's cup of tea, but I think it's great. And if you want to come to this party with me, Aisha, you're welcome to come. 6.30 might be a little early. I mean, I have a seven-month-old, so... You'll be up anyway.

Okay. I think that is a wrap for us this week. We'll be back in your feed very soon. Keep up with our coverage on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook, and of course, on your local public radio station. And if you like the show, please, please leave us a review on iTunes. It helps other people find the podcast. Okay. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.