The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, May 9

Episode Date: May 9, 2019

The White House and Congress continue their standoff over whether or not members of the Trump administration will testify before committees. Plus, to celebrate 500 episodes, the crew looks back on key political moments. This episode: White House correspondent Tamara Keith, Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, Congressional correspondent Susan Davis, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, political reporter Tim Mak, political reporter Asma Khalid, 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, y'all. Sam Sanders here. And Sarah McCammon. And we are both currently in Mason City, Iowa, where we just covered a presidential campaign event. Because it's that time again. It's almost caucus time. Well, not soon enough, right? Yeah. We still got months and months to go. But being here reminds us of our wonderful time on the NPR Politics team and on the NPR Politics podcast. We just want to say, from Mason City, Iowa, over a plate of tater tot casserole.

Seriously. Which is delicious, by the way. So delicious. I want to say congrats on 500 episodes, and here's to many, many more. We are so proud that we were a part of the original NPR Politics Podcast team. We are such fans of you guys,

and thank you to all the listeners who have made this what it is. Congratulations, guys. We love y'all. All right, you're going to hear me now take a bite of this tater tot casserole because it's really good. It's outrageous. I still haven't had lunch. It's so nice to hear their voices. Yeah.

Congratulations. Bye. Bye-bye. What's the difference between a tater tot casserole and a potato casserole? Both are delicious, Mara. But the tater tot is fried first and then tater tot casserole and a potato casserole? Both are delicious, Mara. But the tater tot is fried first and then put into the casserole. I don't know. But I will tell you, Sam and Sarah, it was so nice to hear your voices.

I feel like a little nostalgic just listening to those guys. And they're also already in Iowa again, which I don't know what they're doing there now. They never left Iowa. That is the secret. They secretly never left. We never let them leave. All podcast alumni are sentenced to a service in Iowa. That is the secret. We never let them leave. All podcast alumni are sentenced to a service in Iowa after they leave the podcast. All right. Well, it is

3.20 p.m. on Thursday, the 9th of May. And this is the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. I'm Tim Mack, political reporter. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And this is our 501st episode. Yippee! Yay! Woo! And the party is so good that we decided to just keep it going into this episode. We are going to spend a lot of time talking about the last three and a half years and all the podcasts and how we got here.

You know, the serious stuff and also the fun stuff. They can't let it goes. But first, we are going to start this podcast the way we always do with political news. And this week's big story was actually a bunch of small stories about the collision between the executive branch and the legislative branch when it came to oversight. Let's start with the newest news. Tim, you have confirmed that Donald Trump Jr. was issued a subpoena by the Senate Intelligence Committee. Yeah, it's an extremely unusual development. We've talked a lot in this podcast about Democratic committees making various demands of the White House or trying to bring in people for interviews, even issuing subpoenas. But what's really unusual about this is this is a Republican-led committee that's trying to subpoena the president's son. It's a very unusual confrontation between what

is led by Republicans and a member of the president's own family. It's almost kind of personal. But I do think politically the timing of this news was so interesting because it came a day after or two days after, right, a day after Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made a point to go to the Senate floor on Tuesday and give this stem winder of a speech backing up the president saying the Mueller report has vindicated him and it's time to move on. Case closed. Case closed. This ought to be good news for everyone. But my Democratic colleagues seem to be publicly working through the five stages of grief. But as we've learned, it's not over. Many investigations continue, including the Senate Intelligence Committee. Presumably, Tim, the reason they want him back is because other testimony they collected contradict things that he said. other committees in that year. And at that point, he was kind of downplaying his knowledge of any proposed Trump Tower project in Russia. But in the intervening time, what we saw was that former Trump confidant Michael Cohen has testified in open session saying he repeatedly briefed Trump

Jr. on that project. And that also showed up in the Mueller report, the idea that people, and also in court documents, that people in the Trump orbit were repeatedly briefed. And this raises the enduring mystery, why, if so far no crimes were committed or at least uncovered, why is there so much lying, dissembling, forgetting about Russia? This is just a constant theme. There is lying for purposes of hiding illegality, and there's lying possibly for hiding purposes of immorality, right? If you did something that you felt you're embarrassed about, you may not have necessarily broken the law. No one suggests, for example, that Donald Trump can't go to Russia and set up a Moscow project. It's just that it would have been embarrassing if this came out during the campaign or in the early stages of the Trump administration. Since he insisted over and over

and over again, he had absolutely no business dealings with Russia. All of this has to do with why were there lies? Why was there this sense that we get that there is some sort of cover up and it could be laws were broken. But now it looks more like there was they're trying to cover up embarrassing events. One thing I think is interesting to remember about the Senate Intel Committee, too, especially as the Russia investigation has gotten so partisan and so polarized, is it is one of the last bipartisan inquiries into what happened there. So only not only was it it's a Republican led committee because Republicans control the majority, but the two top senators on that committee, Richard Burr of North Carolina and Mark Warner of Virginia, have been working pretty well and hand in hand on this investigation. So I also think that speaks to the substance of the subpoena, that it's not just a partisan thing. Well, and the fact that they got to the point of a subpoena

seems to be notable. And that seems to be the point that Warner and others on the committee are making without officially saying it. So Mark Warner was at this Christian Science Monitor event this morning, and he was asked about the subpoena and he said, you know, I won't comment on any witnesses before the committee, but let me just say this. And the committee has been very clear with everyone that we reserve the right to bring witnesses back if we have further questions or there's inconsistencies. And I've been pleased with the fact that many folks affiliated with Trump, maybe even other family members, have come back to our committee and honored those commitments. So you might be forgiven for thinking, OK, the Mueller report is out. Why are there still investigations on the Russia issue?

So I want to zoom in on what Mark Warner was really telling me there with that quote. Read between the lines for us, Tim Mack. That he mentioned inconsistencies. So is this really about Russia or is it about the idea that they may have caught Trump Jr. misleading the committee in the course of their investigation? Which is why Michael Cohen is in jail. In other words, lying to Congress is a crime. Also, what's interesting about Don Jr. is unlike so many of the other names in the news this week, he has never been an employee of the White House. He is not protected by executive privilege. So he does not have the benefit of the president trying to exert something to protect him from having to testify because he's just a public citizen like everybody else. He can take the fifth. That is true. That is his

recourse, right? The only recourse he has is to take the fifth. He does not have any executive privilege protections. And convenient that you would bring up executive privilege. I was hoping to do that. That gets us to the next item that occurred this week, which is there was this day-long hearing on Wednesday where, in the end, the House Judiciary Committee found the Attorney General Bill Barr in contempt of Congress. Part of why he was in contempt of Congress is that in the process of an argument between the Justice Department and the House Judiciary Committee, the White House invoked executive privilege over the Mueller report. Can you explain how we got to that? Sure. So since the redacted version of the Mueller report. Can you explain how we got to that?

Sure. So since the redacted version of the Mueller report was released to the public, Chairman Jerry Nadler has been in a protracted fight with the Justice Department over what Democrats in the House want. They want the full unredacted report and they want all the underlying documents that Mueller used to draw his conclusions. DOJ has not really been willing to entirely play ball on that. There's certain things that they can't turn over to Congress, things like grand jury testimony that he's prevented by law. But they've been in this back and forth negotiation over who gets to set the terms of who gets to see what. They had been negotiating, but the last best offer from the Justice Department wasn't good enough. The best we know it, the last best offer included things like allowing a wider circle of members of Congress and aides to view the unredacted report at the Judiciary Committee, but they

couldn't take notes and they couldn't talk about what they said. And it was all being defined by the Justice Department's terms by which Congress can view this report. And Congress's point is, you don't get to tell us how we get to conduct our oversight. So ultimately, this was a bit of a power play and a leverage play to hold the attorney general in contempt, because it gives Democrats a pathway into the court system to get a judge to rule that they do indeed have access to this information. So those are the competing equities here. This is what they mean by a separation of powers battle. So you've got Congress, who has the right

to investigate the executive branch because they are responsible for legislation. The executive branch has the right to say certain things should be kept confidential. And now we're going to have this clash. Most legal experts say that in these clashes, the separation of powers confrontations, Congress usually wins. It might take many, many years. But, you know, the politics of this is that Donald Trump gets to delay this, which is helpful politically. He gets to show his base that he's fighting those horrible Democrats in Congress about this stupid witch hunt. And he has always used the courts, lawsuits. You know, he is a litigious guy. This is kind of his M.O., either to wear down his opponents or just to drag things out. And you've got that combined

with his attorney general, who is a big believer in executive power and the unitary executive power, Congress's power to oversee the executive should be as minimal as possible. And that's kind of the elements of this huge clash. I would also say the other political point is that the president is increasingly boxing Democrats into a corner in which House Speaker Pelosi and other top Democrats have said, we don't want to go down the impeachment path. But as this confrontation escalates, the question becomes, does he give them no choice? She said he's goading us into impeaching him. Of course he is.

Yeah, because politically, the president sees impeachment, which he believes will end in acquittal in the Senate, as something that would be good for him going into an election. Because remember, impeachment is not the end of the process. As long as the Senate is in Republican hands, probably acquittal would be the end of the process. And acquittal is a powerful weapon for the president to take into an election. Stay tuned to the next 500 episodes of this podcast. But Mara and Tim. And it might take 500 for this to be resolved.

Mara and Tim, I'm going to say goodbye to you now. And Sue, we will see you again real soon. Okay. Support for NPR and the following message come from the American Beverage Association. America's beverage companies are working together to support families as they 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 Rothy's. Rothy's are the everyday flats for life on the go. Stylish, versatile, fully machine washable, and they go with everything from yoga pants to dresses and skirts.

Best of all, there's zero break-in period thanks to their woven design seamlessly crafted from recycled water bottles. Plus, Rothy's always come with free shipping and free returns and exchanges. Find out why BuzzFeed called them their forever shoes at rothys.com slash weekly. Dollar stores thrived during the recession, but what happened after the economy recovered? The indicator from Planet Money finds out and goes on a little shopping trip. It's a package of six Groucho Marx nose glasses. Right, with the mustache and everything. Six of them for a dollar.

And we're back, and we've got Ron Elving and Asma Khalid joining us now. Hey, guys. Hey. Hey there. I know it's been a while. I don't know if everyone knows. I know you all know. I had a baby.

So I've been gone. Baby Suleiman, and he's wonderful. So I've been out on I've been gone. Baby Suleiman. And he's wonderful. So I've been out on maternity leave. Welcome, Suleiman. And we are so grateful that you have taken a little time away from him to be with us to reflect on our first 500 episodes to help us celebrate. And to do that, we wanted to take a minute and look back at everything that has happened since we started this podcast and what we've learned in that time. We premiered on November 13th, 2015. Acapella.

Oh, are we actually going to? Get closer. What's happening? What is happening? All right. We all ready? And we were so not ready for everything that was about to happen. It's crazy to look back and to think that within a week of our first podcast, that deadly terrorist attack in Paris happened.

And then there was San Bernardino. And that was really the backdrop heading into the 2016 primaries. So fast forward a few months and it is the night of the Indiana primary. Ted Cruz is one of the remaining Republicans. And the governor of Indiana, Mike Pence, endorsed Ted Cruz in that primary. I remember this was so surreal. I remember going to this rally at a basketball gym in classic Indiana with Ted Cruz. And it all just seemed so surreal because people thought maybe he could actually pull this thing through. And and then, you know, after the Indiana primary, it kind of became inevitable the way things were going to go. So this moment that I have not been able to forget

ever since it happened was we were in the studio in Washington, D.C. Scott Detrow was hosting, Sam Sanders was at Ted Cruz headquarters. I was in the studio as well. And then Ted Cruz got up a little bit of wind up and he announced that he was dropping out of the race. I've said that I would continue on as long as there was a viable path to victory. Tonight, I'm sorry to say. No! Tonight, I'm sorry to say, it appears that path has been foreclosed. I remember those no's.

And you just have to hear this clip of Sam Sanders, who was at Ted Cruz headquarters that night. You heard an audible gasp when he said it. People began to scream, no, no, no. People are still here crying. There were so many tears. I passed so many people who were consoling each other. This is one of the saddest rooms in the country tonight. And all of a sudden, in that moment, Donald Trump was essentially the Republican nominee. I mean, there were more races, there was more to come, but that was it. That was the moment when really Donald Trump became the Republican nominee for president. But what's so remarkable, though, is how quickly the Republican Party has essentially rallied around the president. That almost seems like folklore right at this point to me, because we have a really different situation with the Republican Party now as we're heading into 2020. Right. I mean, there was some talk of like, oh, maybe there'll be a primary challenge for the president. And, you know, Bill Weld, he's out there. But the reality is that the Republican Party is President Trump's party and there is no question about it. So, Tam, you were talking about, you know, we started this podcast on November 13th.

And I remember I was out in Florida that night. I was with a bunch of Republicans at this event called the Sunshine Summit. It's where, you know, folks kind of get together all within the Republican Party, talk to activists there. And while I was at the Sunshine Summit, the Paris attacks occurred. And I remember because you had a whole bunch of candidates start talking about what they would do in terms of their national security credentials. And as time went on, I think they were all trying to one up one another. But it was Donald Trump who came out with really, I would say, some of the strongest and maybe in the beginning sort of surreal ideas around what we would do around national security. And, you know, as time went on even further and

there were other terrorism attacks, he suggested this idea that we would ban all Muslims from entering the country. And then he sort of, you know, changed that language and determined what it would be. But this was a very early part of his campaign. And what was remarkable to me is as time went on and he became the president, I left. I actually left the political team at the inauguration. I think that was January 20th. I come home. Usually is.

Yeah. And I come home. And I know that's the one date that you should sort of have in your mind at this point. So I come home and I'm watching TV. And this is what, eight days after the inauguration. And you see all these scenes of chaos at airports because the travel ban, the so-called Muslim travel ban, has been enacted and nobody was prepared for it. And you just saw this utter chaos. And to me, what was remarkable was here was a campaign promise we had heard from the president and we saw it being enacted. And it was one of these moments for me,

in all honesty, where I was watching what was happening on TV and I had this realization of like, what the hell am I doing? Like, why am I not part of covering this story? And that was just seven, eight days after I left the beat. So I rejoined. It's like the Godfather 3 where they say you try to get out and they just keep pulling you back in. We got you, Asma. We just pulled you back in. It was this moment of realizing that this moment is not only important historically, politically, but it has really personal repercussions. And I didn't want to be on the sidelines just reading about this. I wanted to be a part of reporting the story. And so I came back and, you know, and now we have a Supreme Court that is essentially upheld a version of that travel ban.

But to me, it's it was it was sort of the beginning of realizing that there were campaign promises that President Trump made. He upheld them. And what's remarkable is in many ways, these things have become essential parts of the Republican Party agenda. Right. Like the Republican Party is is a very different party when we talk about immigration and we talk about race and cultural issues than maybe it was some decades ago. And then 2018 was another year, a different year. And while we still had much of the fallout from the Muslim ban and also from the Flynn, and then that became the Robert Mueller investigation and all the things we were talking about, there started to be different kinds of political signals coming from the country. In March of 2018, a guy named Conor Lamb, who had

not been on very many people's radar screen before this, although he had kind of a good political background and, you know, gone to Penn for undergrad and for law school. And then he'd been a Marine officer in a JG capacity, and he's still a Marine officer in the reserves. And this guy stands up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh and says, here's an open seat because a Republican had to resign for his personal scandal. And I'm going to stand for Congress and I'm going to run it. I'm going to say it's time for a new Democratic Party. And he wins. He wins, even though Donald Trump came to campaign for his Republican opponent. And that was kind of a stunner. And then. Well, and not just that a Democrat won in the special election, but that he won in a state that President Trump won in, in a state that was one of those critical states in making President Trump President Trump.

Absolutely. And a district in which the president did really well in as well. Absolutely. And that I was just going to add, a district which he's since shifted over because of the redrawing of the map in Pennsylvania, but in a district where most Democrats would have said, I can't win there. Look how well Donald Trump did. But he ran, he won, and now he's been elected in a slightly altered district. That was in March,term congressman, person high up in the leadership, some people talked about him being speaker, somebody who represented the old Democratic coalition, was defeated in his primary by someone he had outspent by yards and miles, someone no one had really written very much about, except in the alternative press. And her name was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, now pretty much universally known just as AOC. And she has become, if you will, the Twitter champion of the left.

She's a Democratic Socialist. She is now a freshman member of the Congress. And she is perhaps the most famous, the face of, if you will, the magazine cover face of the New Democratic Party and its younger members, its people of color, and its women members. First Congress with more than 100 women in the House of Representatives. It feels like we've been through such rapid change in such a short amount of time. There's a little bit of whiplash, right? There is indeed. And all of these forces, of course, are still very much going forward and

clashing with each other on a daily basis. Right. And what we don't know at this point is, was 2018 an aberration or was 2016 an aberration? Or were both of them out of the norm? Or are neither one of them out of the norms? Maybe the norm is that increasingly this sort of democratic fabric of this country is really polarized. And so maybe the future is both 2016 and 2018, right? That's right. We could see a series of elections in which everything depends on who turns out, who has the leading grievance, who has the leading emotional impetus to participate and come out.

So the one question I had for you, Ron, because you have seen so many election cycles and periods of time, is if you feel like the time period that this podcast has been alive for is an aberration or is it just sort of are we on speed compared to what we've normally? define how we think of our politics. And politics is something that only happens every other November or that just takes up 5% of your attention. That's gone. We now have pretty much 24-7, 12-month-a-year political consciousness for an enormous portion of the country. And it's taking up a great deal of our bandwidth, not saying it's a good thing or a bad thing, but saying it's our new thing. I kind of wonder how people even have time for sports anymore because politics has become the national pastime. And the national contact sport or blood sport, if you will. All right, Asma, you are supposed to be on maternity leave right now.

So we're going to let you get back to that. Thank you. But we can't wait for you to come back in July. Yes, I'll see you all then. Be well. All right, take care. And Ron, stick around because when we get back, it's time for the greatest hits from our Can't Let It Go segment.

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lie? NPR's new podcast, white lies investigates a murder in Selma, Alabama from 1965 and exposes the conspiracy that kept it unsolved until now. White lies. Start listening Tuesday. And we're back. Sue Davis is also back. And now Scott Detrow is joining us. Hello, Scott. All right. So we are going to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go. But because we are celebrating our 500th episode, we are going to talk about the things that you all couldn't let go of from what we couldn't let go of. It is very meta. We did a call out on Twitter for your favorite Can't Let It Goes from over the years. And each of us is going to bring one of them to the table.

I am going to go first. It starts with Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. He was at some sort of a cheese dip competition in the Senate. Sounds delicious. It's my favorite kind of competition. Queso is made to be scooped up with tortilla chips, dribbling down your chin and onto your shirt. So that's kind of gross. And then we had like this running thing for several episodes, which all culminated in me having the crazy idea of making a lot of queso. Today, Tamara Keith, hardest working political reporter in the business. She actually went out and bought three mini crockpots last night and made three quesos for us to try. Yes.

What are the three flavors? So I do not guarantee that I have perfectly replicated the regional variations, but I have an Arkansas cheese dip. I have a Texas queso that I've added chorizo to because some people on the Internet said to. And then I have a cheeseless vegan queso, a fake-o. Made with what? It is made with roasted eggplant and nutritional yeast. Hashtag NPR life. My memory is that that last one was not the winner.

I'm just going to say that politely. No, yes, I listened back. I think that you preferred the Texas queso. Okay. And yes, I made that eggplant thing for myself selfishly because I can't eat dairy, and it was, in fact, not great. I also remember there was a lot of crunching, and we got an email from a listener who was like, I cannot handle crunching on the radio.

This was the worst episode ever. Fingernails on the blackboard. Trigger warning. I will eat this eggplant situation because it's not really queso. It's just eggplant sauce. And I'm going to tell you what it tastes like right now. Is it hot? It's not as orange as the others.

Oh. Okay. It's fine. Yeah. It's not as orange as the others. Oh. Okay. It's fine. Yeah. It's fine. Run. Okay, we've gone down on the border. Let's go all the way down under to get a can't let it go.

You can really sink your teeth into a democracy sausage in Australia. My can't let it go is also a correction to something that we said on our Monday podcast. It started with a comment we got from Clayton, who was at his polling place in Melbourne, Australia. I've just voted in my local state election where it's compulsory voting. I get a fine if I don't show up. And everyone really just cares if they get a sausage at the sausage sizzle out the front. Wait, I want to know, are the sausages free? Yes.

You get that. Well, it turns out the sausages are not free. Come on, Tam. A number of our friendly Australian listeners pointed out one of those was David Mossop. He sent us an email. His subject line was democracy sausages. Contrary to the suggestion of your podcast, the Australian democracy sausage is not free. They're typically sold as a fundraiser at the polling places by the school or the church

or the volunteer fire department or whoever's hosting the polling place. And David referred me for more information to the Democracy Sausage Wikipedia entry. Which exists. Which is there. And of course, it's as authoritative as everything on Wikipedia. Yes. It notes that this is such an institution that in 2016, the federal election Twitter feed changed its little emoji from a picture of a ballot box to a picture of a sizzling sausage. And so far, I'm very hungry based on these first two seconds.

There is, I think I'm realizing a theme of our audience's favorite Can't Let Goes, is they do seem to be involving food. You guys need to get some snacks before you listen to the podcast, I think. We have very hangry listeners, I think. Let us also note how many of these contributions from our listeners are corrections, because our listeners do hold us to the facts. Fact checkers all. So the Can't Let It Go that I'm setting up also involves food, but in a far less pleasant way. This Can't Let It Go featured Mara Liason recounting a tale that was in the news.

I think this was 2000. It was a couple of years ago. I remember it like it was yesterday. And it's about a man who checked into a hotel and happened to have a lot of pepperoni in his hotel room, which attracted some seagulls. And this is how Mara explained it. I don't think I've ever actually heard this. Oh, my God. As he explains, pepperoni does something really horrendous to the seagulls' digestive tract. Oh, good God.

So his room was covered with chunks of pepperoni and poop and feathers, and everything was trashed. When he came in and started trying to get them out. They flew around and crashed into things and broke lamps and the coffee table. And then he says, in a moment of clarity, I grabbed a bath towel and threw it over one of the birds and then threw it out the window. But the seagull wrapped in the bath towel landed on some tourists who were arriving at this hotel for their famous high tea. He also tried to get rid of the birds by throwing one of his shoes at them. The shoe and the bird went out the window, and then he realized he had

to go to a dinner, a business dinner, and he only had one shoe. He ran out, he grabbed the shoe, he washed it off, he used a hairdryer to to dry it but then the power in the hotel went off it was like better than a Marx Brothers movie and the the cleaning lady came up and he looked at her and he just said I'm sorry and he went out to dinner he was banned he got a lifetime ban from the hotel 17 years later he wrote to the hotel to say I think I've served my time. Could I come back and be a paying guest at your hotel? And they granted him a pardon. And there is a picture of him talking to two women at the front desk of the hotel. And they are laughing and tears are streaming down their face, just like they were when I read this story.

It's really worth it. It's going to cheer you up. So when I, in honor of the 500th episode of the podcast, I tweeted out everybody on Twitter about everyone's Twitter handles and little emojis that went with them. And most of them I did people, including all of us in this room. But for Mara's emoji, I just did the fire emoji because Mara always brings the fire. But the best part is I saw Mara in NPR this morning and she saw that tweet and she was like, I saw that. I like that on the fire emoji. I thought she was going to be the seagull emoji.

She was into it. At least I didn't make her the poop emoji because she would not have appreciated that. But after that story, it might have made sense. Maybe we could use the pepperoni. And my actual, my personal thing I cannot let go from our 500 episodes is the day that I, this is not my one for the show, but my own and my deep in my heart is when I was wearing a groundhog hat on Groundhog Day. And only at the very end of the episode did Sue reveal that she thought I was wearing a poop emoji hat the whole time. The entire time. That was amazing.

That was so amazing. What I'm here to talk about today is a cautionary tale that you never know what's going to stick and you never know what's going to be the thing that people think of you for. And for me, it happens to be regional convenience stores on the East Coast. There are worse things to be known for. It's true. It was just, you know, an unexpected twist in life. And that's OK. We were this all started when I was covering a town hall in a New Jersey congressional district. And driving home the next morning, I pulled over into the parking lot of a Wawa to connect to do the podcast. I talked about Wawa.

I might have revealed my feelings about Wawa and Sheetz. Scott's awake. Oh, wow. I'm here. Are you still driving? Did you guys pull over on 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, 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. And then it just kind of took off to a point where every time I was in the road in that area, I would record a podcast from one of their parking lots. We started getting listener questions about it.

Controversy ensued. I put up a Twitter poll over the weekend. We started getting listener questions about it. Controversy ensued. I put up a Twitter poll over the weekend. 1,200 people voted in it. And the results, do you want to guess the results before I share them? I think it's just telling that 1,200 people felt impelled to weigh in. That tells you it's more than just a regional convenience store. I feel like there's a twinge of irritation in your voice. I'm going to guess that Wawa won.

You're right. Now I like Wawa. I just like Sheetz more. But Wawa won by a 62% to 38% margin. Wow. I have a question. That's like Macron. Sheetz is not Marine Le Pen here.

That is a big margin, though. We commissioned polls of which ones listeners like better. Listeners wrote questions asking, can you explain what the heck you're talking about? I think Philadelphia Magazine wrote up an article about our interest in Wawa. And it got to be the point where that's all people would tweet at me when they went to a sheets or a Wawa. I got emails from people. They were saying, oh, my God, I finally saw one of these things from the podcast. To the point where I was saying, we can't talk about sheets and Wawa anymore.

This has gone too far. Although I would say that I think it is a testament to how loyal our listeners are and how they consider so many of us their friends. And they are our friends in a weird way. We just don't always know it that we have all these friends out there. And actually coming back from the Philadelphia live show, I pulled over to get gas and realized I was driving up to the original podcast site, Wawa. I, of course, stopped.

Sadly, there is no commemorative plaque in the parking lot. Take a picture. It would have been better if you walked in and they were like, it's him. He's back. He's here. The legendary. We thought you were an urban legend. Just the man who made our lives miserable.

I think I drove some profit their way. Yeah. So this brings me to just a bonus little can't let it go, which is that we had a young couple propose. We had an engagement occur in one of our timestamps at the top of the podcast. This is Alexandria Hammons calling from Mission Beach in San Diego, California, my favorite place to watch the sunset with my boyfriend, Tyler. This podcast was recorded at 1.04 p.m. on Wednesday, the 14th of March. While political news may have changed since the time you hear this, my love for you, Tyler, is forever. Will you marry me? Wait, what? Keep up with all the political coverage on NPR.org, your NPR One app, or your local public radio station.

Enjoy the show. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Does he have to hear the podcast first? Well, what is the answer, Tyler? Oh my God, Tyler, do say yes. This is amazing. Tyler, let us know. Yeah, do let us know. The answer was yes. The wedding date is June 22nd.

I just checked back in with them. They're doing great and they informed me they are on Team Wawa. Okay, that's good. Are we invited to the wedding though? Good question. It's at that same Wawa. Well, I'm glad. Congratulations. That's going to be great. We should do a live pod show from their wedding. Absolutely. As the DJs. I'm there. Done.

We'll just play our theme song again and again and again. Oh, you guys want the trap version? Okay. All right. That is a wrap for our 500 episode celebration. We had a very special poster made to commemorate how far we've come. And you can see it on our respective Twitter feeds because we all tweeted it out.

And if you want your very own copy, you can snag one by sending us questions for the Democratic contenders in 2020. We're about to hit the road and interview as many of the 2020 candidates as we possibly can, and we might choose your question to ask. So to get a poster, record your question and email it to us at nprpolitics at npr.org. And I actually just want to add one more thing because we do this at the end of live shows, but since we're looking back so much, I think we should do it right here, and that is to say a huge thanks just to the producers who put this show

together every week, who have been up at 4 in the morning producing this show, have been up at 4am when we've done shows, you know, for news happening in Asia, and, you know, every single day they are helping us put the script on the air. Beth Donovan, Barton Girdwood, who are producing it right now. Barbara Sprunt, Brett Bachman, Samantha Fields, Neil Carruth,

Shirley Henry, Mathoni Maturi, the entire NPR Washington desk, and all of our interns past and present. Who most importantly have checked all of our facts and let us know when we've been wrong before the podcast gets posted. Except for the democracy sausage. Somebody, somebody, well, I failed myself on the democracy sausage. Whatever. Shift the blame. All right. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House.

I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. I'm Susan Davis. I cover Congress. And I'm Ron Elbing, editor correspondent. And here's to the next 500 episodes of the NPR Politics Podcast.