The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, May 23

Episode Date: May 23, 2019

A growing number of states are passing laws banning abortion in the early stages of pregnancy. The team talks about the politics surrounding the issue. Plus a 2020 campaign update including former Vice President Joe Biden's rally in Philadelphia. This episode: political correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, national political correspondent Mara Liasson and political editor Domenico Montanaro. 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

Hi, this is Brittany calling from New York, New York, where I'm getting ready to go to my university's commencement ceremony, where I'll be finally getting my Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School. This podcast was recorded at... It is Thursday, May 23rd at 1140 Eastern. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage on npr.org, on the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station. All right, here's the show. Congratulations. Very exciting. I have a high school graduate.

It's really exciting to have a graduate. Aw. She should send in a podcast timestamp, Mara. She should. But I can't get her to do anything. Why can't I get her to do that? Well, she graduated, though. Congratulations to everyone graduating right now who's been sending in timestamps.

Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenica Montanaro, political editor. And I always bring up the rear. I'm Mara Elias, a national political correspondent. I've noticed that. Well, that's because you like say you didn't today, but you say national political correspondent with such flourish that we want to end on it. It's an emphasis. It's been a newsy week. We had a whole lot of news in Wednesday's podcast feed.

And today we're going to start out by talking about these new abortion laws. Last week, of course, we walked through the details of the new law in Alabama, which is the most restrictive law in the country now, as well as several other states. But this has continued to reverberate in national politics. And we're going to talk about that for a little bit. So, Tam, let's start with the president. Good place to start. President Trump, of course, made overturning Roe v. Wade a key part of his 2016 campaign. He has gotten a whole bunch of federal judges on the bench and he's continued to tout this issue. How has he responded to these new laws? Right. And his list of judges was part of probably how he got elected. He came out and said, these are the people I would put on the court. And that helped sway some voters,

conservative voters who were a little reticent about him. So over the weekend, President Trump tweeted and he said, as most people know, and for those of you who would like to know, I am strongly pro-life with the three exceptions, rape, incest and protecting the life of the mother. He goes on to say, hey, Republicans, we need were going to be running against extreme Democrats and extreme laws that allow abortion throughout the course of a pregnancy. Are there any particular laws or is it just. talk in Virginia. There was a bill that came up and then the governor of Virginia said some things that set off a huge amount of controversy and got people talking about infanticide. And then everybody was distracted by other issues he had and moved away from that. Is President Trump reflective of most national Republicans here putting these new laws at arm's length or a lot of Republicans embracing them as part of their pro-life agenda?

Many evangelicals and members of the president's base are embracing them, but plenty of prominent Republicans are doing exactly what he's doing. They think that these laws go too far for where the country is on abortion. We've had decades of public opinion polling about where people are on abortion. They believe abortion should be legal, but they agree with some restrictions. In fact, what we've seen is about two-thirds to three-quarters of voters saying that they think that Roe should remain in place, Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that made abortion legal in the United States. But also gave states the ability to regulate abortion in the second and third trimester. Right. Some people want some restrictions put in place within that, but they do not want the entire

Supreme Court case thrown out. Views on abortion are pretty nuanced when you look at polling. You know, you have, according to the latest Pew poll from October, said that about 58 percent of people think that it should be legal in all or most cases. 37% say that it should be illegal in all or most cases. But when you look at the numbers of people who identify, self-identify as pro-life, anti-abortion rights, or people who identify as pro-choice in their words or pro-abortion rights, it's split 48-48. So you have a lot of crossover within the kinds of people who think to what degree abortion should remain legal or not. And the purpose of the state laws was to test Roe. And some of the legislators, state legislators in these states have said so, is that now that you have a 5-4 majority on the court, they feel it's time to see what they could do to Roe. Now, I don't think that's going to happen before the election, but you are going to see Roe undermined, chipped away. In many states, abortion is, if not statutorily illegal, it's impossible to get. And, you know, there's so

many different policy areas, cultural areas where there's just this increasingly large split between Democratic clusters of people and Republican clusters of people. And I think this is one area where that's particularly the case. I was looking at a couple of different state by state graphics of abortion laws and whether they've gotten more permissive or more restrictive in recent years. And it's just such a hard divide. You can see, you know, the northeastern states, they move one direction, southern states, they move another direction. And any sort of middle ground on this, which is a very tough issue to have middle ground to begin with, has just totally evaporated. And it's going to be really interesting to see, you know,

the goal of a political campaign is to paint the other guy as an as extreme. The president constantly talks about Democrats who want to rip babies from the womb and kill them, you know, that they're the party of infanticide. Now you're going to hear Democrats talking about Republicans want an 11-year-old who's been raped to carry her rapist's baby to term. And you know what? What Republican strategists are saying is that this Alabama law is something that could be potentially problematic for them when it comes to the presidential election, because they are saying that if rape and incest and those exceptions become the thing that get the most attention and that's what they're arguing over, then

they feel like that's a losing argument for them rather than infanticide or this. Which is false, by the way. There is no such infanticide is illegal, of course. But when we're talking about the narrative that they create, they'd rather frame it that way than be able then be on their back foot and say that somehow they have to argue in favor of a position of being against having rape or incest as exceptions. Which is why you have some leading Republicans like the president or like minority leader Kevin McCarthy coming out and saying that these laws don't really reflect the Republican position. Yeah, let's hear what McCarthy had to say about the Alabama law. And let's remind everybody this Alabama law, which doesn't take effect for several more months, prohibits abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

There's exceptions for the life of the mother, but not for anything else. It goes further than I believe, yes. I believe in it. First of all, I believe the most precious gift God gives us is life. And I defend my pro-life position for my whole political career. But in my whole political career, I also believed in rape, incest, or life of the mother. And I think this whole thing has really accelerated other conversations that have been happening politically as well. I was listening to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi talk yesterday, and she said this is just one of many issues where she

looks at her caucus, she looks at the Republican caucus, and Pelosi's pretty blunt about it. She says, you see them on the floor, it's white men, it's white men, it's white men, it's white men. It's both the Democrats who've gotten increasingly diverse, a ton of women on the Democratic caucus, and there is a real gender split in the House. Scott, we've been talking a lot about the Republican approach to this. You have been following all of the Democratic candidates who have been staking out a lot of positions on this Alabama law as well. What are you seeing there? Yeah, this has really animated the Democratic field. There was a big protest outside the

Supreme Court earlier this week where multiple presidential candidates made sure they had to be at. You've seen a lot of candidates make a point to going to some of these states that have passed these laws. Kirsten Gillibrand, especially, she's a New York senator. She has been really struggling in this crowded field, polling at 1% or even 0% in a lot of national polls. But all along, her campaign has been centered around, you know, running, really being out front about being a woman candidate, running on talking about women's issues, trying to court women voters. And this is something that she has really just focused on in the last couple of weeks. This is nothing short of an all out assault on women's reproductive freedom, an effort

to take away our basic human rights and civil rights. And basically every other Democrat running has made a point to really talk about this. Here's Elizabeth Warren. When I was a little girl, it was a time when back alley abortions killed people. And when young women, girls really, killed themselves rather than face an unplanned pregnancy, we are not going back. Not now, not ever. I don't think it's a surprise that Democrats are focusing on this so much. But what has been interesting is that some specific new policies have come out of this. You've had several candidates call for codifying Roe versus Wade's protections in actual federal law, passing laws that do what the Supreme Court

rulings have put in place in case the Supreme Court rulings ever change. And you've also had candidates like Kirsten Gillibrand, like Bernie Sanders, say that they would explicitly make sure that any federal judges they appoint, anyone they appoint to the Supreme Court, would basically promise to uphold Roe v. Wade, which is something that has always been kind of implied and not directly talked about. And I think that's one of the many ways that Donald Trump may have just permanently changed the presidency because he's been, you know, of course, even though Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch did not say as much during their Senate confirmation hearings, Trump said, this is a litmus test for me. This is something I'll talk to judges about.

So much more honest. I mean, every president had this as a litmus test. Yeah. On either side. But they pretended they didn't. A Democratic president is going to nominate people who will uphold Roe and Republicans going to do the opposite. You know what's so interesting to me when you hear the Democrats talk about this? Something you don't hear anymore is what you used to hear a lot from Democrats. The three words, safe, legal and rare. And that used to be the formulation. They wanted abortion to be safe, legal and rare, which is pretty much the sweet spot of where Americans

are, the majority of American voters are. They wanted to be legal and safe. No back alley abortions. You just heard Elizabeth Warren conjure up that image. And want it to be legal and safe. No back alley abortions. You just heard Elizabeth Warren conjure up that image. And they want it to be rare, meaning they're OK with some restrictions on certain late term abortions. And I'm wondering if there is going to be a Democratic candidate who will return to that position. Well, you know, and you wonder because you've had all these candidates who've come out with plans to say that you have to overall protect women's rights. I mean, even Joe Biden, you know, who has had sort of middle of the ground positions. Well, very early in his career, he voted for a constitutional amendment to to make abortion illegal.

Right. And because of some of his weaknesses this time around with women, in particular women under 50, he's had a very different tune. Yeah. All right. We're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll check in on some of the other things that have been happening over the past week on the campaign trail. reduce the sugar in their diets. Coke, Dr. Pepper, and Pepsi are providing more great tasting options with less sugar or no sugar at all. Smaller portion sizes, clear calorie labels, and reminders to think balance. More choices, smaller portions, less sugar. Learn more about how they're working together at balanceus.org.

Support also comes from Google. Veteran Mitch Hoyt founded Skinny Sticks Maple Syrup, and he's showing that small businesses can do big things. Mitch started making syrup from a few trees in his Wisconsin backyard and now is connecting with customers worldwide with help from Google tools. Skinny Sticks is one of millions of small businesses using Google to grow. Learn how Google is helping businesses in your state at google.com slash economic impact. James Reeb was fatally beaten on Selma Street in 1965. His death would galvanize the nation. But in a courtroom nine months later, a not guilty verdict was handed down. In episode two, the trial and the birth of a conspiracy theory. From NPR, it's White Lies. Listen and subscribe now. We are back. conspiracy theory. From NPR, it's we can get. Yeah. But it's been another busy stretch. Domenico, you were our reporter on the ground for one of the biggest things that happened this week.

And that was Joe Biden climbing the Rocky Steps, pumping his fists in the way. No, that didn't happen. He did not do that. He did have a rally. The campaign wanted to make sure that wasn't too on the nose. I even asked them if they were considering playing Eye of the Tiger because they were right in front of the Philadelphia Art Museum where the Rocky statue is and where he ran up the steps in the movie. And they were like, yeah, that would be a little too on the nose. So Biden's not jogging through South Philadelphia before the event.

No, but he did jog onto stage. He did kind of jog onto the stage to show that he was fit. Well, I suspect we've probably pushed the limit of making rocky references here. But why don't you walk us through the main points of the speech? Because we've seen Biden do this rollout in early states and keep coming back to this message of I'm the guy who could bring the country together. I'm the guy who could defeat Donald Trump. Was that the tone of the speech? Yeah, it was.

And, you know, if it wasn't obvious what his message was, he came out to big signs behind him that said united. It was not a like airline commercial or anything, which a lot of Republicans joked about. But it was the idea that he was saying that a lot of people think that Democrats are angry and they want somebody who's angry and that's the only way you can win. He's making a governing message. He's saying that you need to unify. You need to be united. Now, a lot of people were not happy with that. Young liberals, thinkers, intellectuals on the liberal side of the spectrum were saying that there are good reasons why people are angry. Inequities in American life,

Donald Trump in the White House, and they want someone who can channel that anger. And I really think that that unity versus anger, this sort of restoration project that he's pushing Biden versus the revolution of, say, like a Bernie Sanders type. That's the real core debate within the Democratic Party right now. And, you know, it's going to come into sharper focus when Joe Biden starts to lay out some actual policies, which he will do. And we'll find out, does the Democratic Party want to get rid of Obamacare and put Medicare for All in its place? Or does it want to, as Biden will propose, add a public option to Obamacare? I mean, there are a whole lot of things that he will lay out. And we're going to

see where the Democratic Party is. One thing that everybody has been surprised about is how well Biden has done. People thought his first day would be his best day, and that just hasn't been the case. And Tam, one thing that's been interesting to me is that if there's anybody who's taking up space in President Trump's brain more than Nancy Pelosi, it seems to be Joe Biden. Like, again, 23 candidates to choose from. Trump sure talks about Biden more than anyone else. He does. He does. And in part, you know, they early on had sort of this back and forth about, you know, who has the energy, who's the most vital man in their 70s. There must be something more going on there. And in fact, there is, which is that Trump's people are most concerned at this point about Biden, in part because Biden has thus far avoided taking policy positions that could easily be branded as socialist, which had been Trump's plan all along to just brand everybody as a socialist.

Well, you know, it's interesting to me because I've had these conversations with Trump people about Biden for now two years, and the early ones were always, well, Biden is the only Democrat we worry about, but he could never get the nomination. The party's too far left. Then that morphed into, well, anybody who gets the nomination, including Biden, will have to move so far to the left that we will be able to brand them as a socialist. That is an assumption that remains to be proved. Well, and taking up space in Joe Biden's brain was another man in his 70s. It's like a dwelling triangle of three men in their 70s. And that man was Bernie Sanders,

because he's the closest person in the polls right now to Joe Biden. And they have very different philosophies on how to run the country and how to win this nomination. In fact, there was a protester who was taken out of the Biden rally, even though Biden said that he wouldn't speak ill of another Democrat, which was odd that he was talking about speaking ill of another Democrat. He had no idea who this protester was. He invoked Democrats. And it was pretty clear that he was thinking of Bernie Sanders because there was this incessant whistle that was happening in the background also as sort of a protest.

And listen to how, to who Biden winds up talking about with that whistle. That's why the world has always looked at us. That must be Bernie or somebody. I don't know who that is. So that was completely off script moment. In fact, when I brought it up to the campaign later saying, hey, you're pretty comfortable talking about Bernie Sanders like that, that openly. And they're like, what are you talking about? He didn't mention Bernie. Like they didn't even realize what he had done. But the reporters didn't notice. He did. In fact, the second time he didn't talk about Bernie,

but he essentially, in taking that whistle guy, he pushes him to the side and is trying to make this argument that in order to govern, people have to come together. And then he talks about the whistle guy again and makes him a laugh line. Here's this. Above all, to have a president, a president who measures his or her days by the people he brings together rather than the division that he sows.

Look, folks, you all know as well as I do, you wouldn't be here. You know there's serious work that has to be done. But it's not being done by a president who wakes up in the middle of the night and wages a war intruder or like the guy in the whistle back there. So he's taking Bernie Sanders, somebody who's obviously has a serious platform, who has, you know, moved the party to the left, frankly. And here comes Joe Biden from a different era, from the Obama-Biden era, and he's dismissing him as somebody who could be just a

kooky guy with a whistle. But Sanders himself responded to some of this on Meet the Press the next day, because one of the things that Joe Biden also talked about was that you have to beat Trump. Like that's the number one thing is beating Trump. And Bernie Sanders is saying that's not enough. Beating Trump is not good enough. You got to beat the fossil fuel industry. You have to take on all of those forces of the status quo who do not want to move this country to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. You got to hand it to Bernie Sanders. He has never changed his message. He wants a revolution. That's what he campaigned on in 2016. And he's doing it again. And the thing

that's been so interesting is to watch the Democratic Party, which if you just are on Twitter, you would think has lurched completely and utterly to the left since Joe Biden got in. And I know these early polls are relatively meaningless. Sanders has gone down. Biden has gone up. I want to give one stat about this idea about Twitter, because if you read Twitter, Mara's absolutely right. You would think Joe Biden has no chance. Right. But let's understand that only 22 percent of the country is on Twitter. And within Twitter, only 10 percent of Twitter users are creating 80 percent of the content, according to the Pew Research Center. And the rest of them are talking about Game of Thrones. Well, nothing wrong with that last point. But, I mean, we've all been dwelling on this research.

And honestly, it has gotten to the point where I'm purposely checking Twitter less frequently because of that and trying to talk more to real human beings. One more thing on the great theme of electability, which is like the theme of 2019, I think, in this podcast. I'm working on a story about the California primary. I'm going to be out in San Francisco next week because it's very early in the process. And a lot of campaigns, not all campaigns, but a lot of campaigns are viewing it as important as Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina for a lot of reasons. But I was talking to some California Democrats about this electability issue. And I was surprised at how much some really prominent Democrats out there really embrace

this idea. Barbara Boxer, longtime senator from California, said, yeah, that's the most important thing. And Eric Garcetti, the mayor of Los Angeles, who has really been courting candidates, having tacos with some of them, trying to play a role of a power broker in this primary. He said that he has no problem with I mean, a lot of issues are important to him. But he said, yep, electability is critical here. Oh, it's it's I think everything. I'm proud of Democrats are finally pulling more about electability for president than having to be exactly the same positions that you hold. Republicans have known that for a long time. This is a national emergency. This isn't just about finding the perfect candidate. This is about replacing the current occupant in the White House. Secondly, then it's about what agenda we bring to bear after that. But if we don't have the White

House, who cares? So we can be very starry-eyed and find somebody who suits our particular political beliefs and maybe have four more years where we're locked out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. It's not like there's this huge civil war in the Democratic Party about the agenda, where one side wants to lurch to the center and the other side wants to lurch to the left. There's a tremendous amount of agreement on policies. There's a lot of nuance. How are you going to provide universal health care? But what's so interesting to me about electability, you really got to unpack it a little bit, because what does electability mean? It means somebody who can appeal to Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. I mean, it doesn't, you know, every, right now in the

head-to-head matchups, every, almost every major Democratic candidate beats Trump. But that doesn't necessarily mean appealing to white, moderate, and conservative voters in those states. You can have a lot of paths to appealing to those states. No, it means generating the kind of turnout that Hillary Clinton failed to get among young people and African Americans in those states. And everybody I talk to on the Democratic side assumes that the ticket that they want and the ticket that will happen is somebody who appeals to those four states plus a woman slash minority in some configuration. That's what they want. The voters that I've spoken to in Iowa and New Hampshire, which are the first two states

to go and are also overwhelmingly white, when they're talking about electability, they are thinking about the white working class dude in the upper Midwest. That is definitely the impression that I get in those conversations. I want to put us in a time machine for just a second because 15 years ago, 15 years ago, this exact same debate was happening between Howard Dean supporters and John Kerry supporters. And Democrats, pragmatic, went with the guy who they thought was most electable with John Kerry. They desperately wanted to beat George W. Bush, who before Donald Trump was public enemy number one for Democrats because of the Iraq war. And guess what? John Kerry lost. Doesn't mean that Howard Dean would have won.

Right. But this idea of what is electable, who is most electable, it's very hard to quantify. But it's also impossible to say that the guy you didn't choose would have beaten him. That's true. I mean, my theory would be that Howard Dean would have lost by more than John Kerry. It's possible. I mean, this is look, can we just come back to some fundamentals? Incumbents are really, really hard to defeat unless there's a war or a recession. We're in a very unusual situation where even though the economy is very good and people think it's good, Donald Trump is super underperforming for somebody who has a good economy. I was realizing that there is a decent chance that the Democratic nominee will not be decided until like a year from right around now. So we've got a lot of times to have this exact same conversation in many different flavors over the coming months.

We're going to take a quick break and come back with Can't Let It Go. Support also comes from ZipRecruiter. Hiring used to be hard. Multiple job sites, stacks of resumes. But today, hiring can be easy and you only have to go to one place to get it done. ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter sends your job to over 100 of the web's leading job boards. Then ZipRecruiter scans thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience

and invites them to apply to your job. Try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash weekly. Today, China is a world superpower. But just over a century ago, the country was in complete turmoil. This week on ThruLine, we find out how China's response to that turmoil created a nationalist movement that reshaped the country into what it is today. ThruLine from NPR, the podcast where we go back in time to understand the present.

All right, we are back and it is time to end the show like we always do with that one thing we cannot let go, politics or otherwise. Domenico, I feel like it's going to be hard to meet the bar of last week

where you and I just like laughed the entire time. We'll try. Yeah, and this is less funny, but I did find it to be interesting and clever. You know, I was at the Biden rally on Saturday, like we talked about. And one thing that a lot of people started to sort of notice a little

bit was Jill Biden beforehand, who comes out and is a really good, you know, person to sort of humanize her husband and all of that. She's wearing this jacket. And it's a beautiful day in Philadelphia, not a cloud in the sky. She makes this impassioned speech. Her Philly accent comes out, the whole thing, right? And then she turns around to greet her husband and there's a message on her jacket. And it says, love.

And a lot of people raised their eyebrows a little bit and wondered if that was a little bit of a pushback to Melania Trump's. I don't really care. Do you, Jacket? And considering Joe Biden came out and he says, hi, I'm Joe Biden and I'm Jill's husband. You know, he does this at like every event. It was clear that he was calling back to her. He was noting that she would be a great first lady. So all of the theatrics were there. The campaign's goal was to make him look like a potential nominee so you could see what a nominee would look like. And by the way, this is what your first lady could look like. Did she also get her jacket from H&M? I have no idea. I did not do the further investigation on this. I just read the message.

I'm up next. Clearly, I cannot let go Game of Thrones. I will keep this quick so everyone can move on with their lives and do it. Spoiler, Domenico, do you need to go get some water or something? I do not. Oh, wait. I don't know. Are you a hater on the show?

No, I like Game of Thrones. Oh, okay. I'm a big Game of Thrones watcher. I've never seen it. Not that I don't want to see it eventually, but I've never seen it. And I have obvious thoughts on it. Oh, okay. So go for it. Not that I don't want to see it eventually, but I've never seen it. And I have obvious thoughts on this. Oh, okay. Okay. I underestimated you.

I'll just, you know, tune out. Tam can go refill her cup. Yes, I'll tune out with Tam. We're going to get some tweets based on this. All right. I went on a previous rant about spoiler alerts. I still think they're stupid, but for the purposes of people not yelling at me, I will say that here, even though I will be vague. I like the like the show i was happy with the show i was watching since the first season i

was a book reader lots of you read the book too yeah are they good um they're a lot they're good but a lot yeah yeah it's a lot to sign up for but okay if you're going to end the show with someone being crowned king or queen i'll keep it ambiguous for spoiler purposes, based on the power of their story. Don't pick the person whose story was so boring that this character was not on the show for an entire season and then disappeared for like six episodes at a time. That doesn't really make sense to me. You know, the thing that got me with this was that, you know, dragons obviously play a prominent role in this. There was some political stuff in it that made me kind of perk my ears up a little.

There's one moment where they bring the book out, the Song of Ice and Fire, which is what this whole thing is based on. And Tyrion, who's sort of like the whisperer to kings and power and whatever, says, how am I portrayed? And they're like, oh, you're not in it. And it's this huge book. So it's like aides and advisors, you know, may help, but they don't

write history, right? It's kings and queens that are in it. Except in the Trump administration, when they get nine figure book deals and then they get, then they get ousted. But, um, but the thing that really stood out to me was the dragon at one point, and this is a spoiler, so I'm just going to spoiler alert this one, but the dragon burns down the Iron Throne and essentially saying, oh, my God, this pursuit of this Iron Throne and power makes people do terrible things. Let's get rid of it. And I loved this tweet from Helen Rosner. I have to call her out. She said, the dragon's grasp of physical metaphors way stronger than I had been led to believe. I love that because it was so on the nose.

I did love that scene. I love the imagery. I love the symbolism. That was great. All right. You're up next, Tiff. All right. So what I cannot let go of is what happened in a House hearing this week. The Housing and Urban Development Secretary, Ben Carson, brain surgeon, former presidential candidate, was being questioned by various members of Congress, including Congresswoman Katie Porter from California, who asked this. The disparity in REO rates. Do you know what an REO is? An Oreo? R, no, not an Oreo. An REO. R-E-O.

Real estate? What's the O stand for? E-organization. Owned. Real estate owned. That's what happens when a property goes to foreclosure. We call it an REO. And FHA loans have much higher REOs. So her point was about different loans having different rates of foreclosures. But the housing secretary, not knowing what an REO was or not hearing right or whatever it was,

then caused him to send a container of Oreos over to the congresswoman to, you know, make it all good. At least they were double stuff. And this is another reminder that he was a world famous pediatric brain surgeon, but didn't know anything about housing. And, you know, can I just make just one other comment about this? She has conducted some amazing witness eviscerations, I guess you'd call it. She really knows her stuff. And she's somebody who has kind of made her mark just by her sheer expertise and doggedness. Not a Twitter star, but a really important part of the new Democratic majority.

Mara, what about you? My Can't Let It Go is a reprise of a previous Can't Let It Go. I've never heard your seagull one until two weeks ago. No, no, this isn't a se go that week, about shrimp being found in the rivers and streams of England that had high levels of cocaine in their systems, which was extraordinary to me. And I just thought it was amazing. And I wondered, what happens if people eat them? What was really interesting about this is that we got a comment from a listener, Haley Zabawa, and we are thankful that she listens to the pod.

And she is finishing her master's in biomedical sciences at Midwestern University. And she said, she heard me talk about this, and that I wondered what would be the effect on people who ate this shrimp. And she says, cocaine is almost fully metabolized during its first pass in the liver, meaning it is no longer active. Therefore, ingesting these shrimp, even though the fact that they are tainted isn't good, would likely not have an effect on the person eating it. Thank you, Haley. All right, cancel the shrimp buffet.

I wonder how fast the shrimp are swimming. Shrimps swim pretty fast. This is where we insert the tape from Bernie Sanders wondering if cocaine is good or bad. So we can just laugh again. Kids ever heard of cocaine? Clearly there's nothing else to say about any of this today so that is a wrap. We will be back in your

feed as soon as there's political news that you need to know about. To keep up with all of the news in between follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just search for NPR Politics. And we are, of course, continuing to interview the presidential candidates. Tam. Yeah.

Up next is Senator Kirsten Gillibrand from New York. I am hopping a plane to Iowa in not too many hours to go interview her. And it'll be in the feed on Wednesday. All right. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, I cover politics. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Thank you for listening to the Imperial Politics Podcast. © BF-WATCH TV 2021