The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, November 1

Episode Date: November 1, 2018

President Trump signaled in a speech at the White House that he wants to make changes to the asylum policy, but offers no concrete plan. Plus, a new NPR poll finds that eighty-percent of voters believe incivility in politics will lead to violence, but they are split on whose responsibility it is. This episode: political reporter Asma Khalid, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, political editor Domenico Montanaro, 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

Hi, this is Julie and Annie. That noise you just heard is the sound of democracy. We're printing our absentee ballots here in Vienna, Austria, to make sure our vote counts on November 6th. This podcast was recorded at 5.06 p.m. on Thursday, November 1st. Things may have changed. Annie, who are we kidding? Things will have definitely changed. By the time you hear this, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of the week's biggest political stories. President Trump gave a White House speech on immigration just days before the midterm elections, and an NPR poll found that 80% of Americans think incivility in our politics will lead to violence. But who do they

blame? I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. And I'm Scott Horslake. I also cover the White House. So, Scott, let's start with you. You're there at the White House. The president gave this speech this afternoon, right around, what, 4.15 in the afternoon. It was televised on a lot of places, billed as an immigration speech. But did we get a sense of if there's sort of anything new in this speech? There wasn't a lot new. This was nominally a speech directed at that caravan of Central American migrants slowly making its way through Mexico. And the president said, turn around, go back, you're wasting your time. But what this was really aimed at was the red meat base of the Republican

Party, the people in Donald Trump's base who are most concerned about illegal immigration and to whom he has really tailored his message in these final days of the 2018 midterm election campaign. And not just the people who care about it. He wants to make more of his supporters care about this because he believes that this is something that will motivate them to come out. And I was waiting to hear, is he going to do away with asylum? There had been reports that he would do that. He certainly wants to make it harder. He told us that next week he'll have an executive order that will flesh out the details of this. But to me, I was at the rally last night in Florida, and this speech was very, very similar to what he said at the rally. He says, once these people arrive, the Democrat Party's vision is to offer them free health care and the right to vote. This was essentially like a campaign speech given in the lens of the White House. And

you've got to wonder the optics about this, then. Is this because he wanted to reach an audience that maybe he can't always reach? I think he's frustrated and he feels this is the issue that's going to help Republicans. He wants to get more coverage for it. And maybe he feels the rallies aren't enough. But he decided to use the venue of the White House to press this idea that these criminals are coming there. It's an invasion is the word he used. And we have to stop them. So there is a certain seriousness that comes with a White House speech with a podium. This isn't the president in front of a crowd at a rally. This isn't the president on the lawn of the White House shouting over the helicopter. By doing it in this setting, he was saying, hey, pay attention. There's going to be a serious policy discussion here. Or that's the signal that they sent to the media that made CNN

carry it live, whereas CNN and even Fox has not been carrying his rallies live on TV anymore. This did get carried live. But there was a little bait and switch there because underneath the rhetoric, there was very little actual substance. The president talked about finalizing a plan to maybe tweak the way the United States deals with asylum seekers. He talked about maybe indefinitely detaining migrant families while their asylum claims are being processed. He talked about things that are sure to face legal challenges if he ever actually does them, and which probably are facing legal challenges within the White House itself.

He's probably got some smart lawyers who are telling him, Mr. President, you can't do that. He's frustrated. He wants to say something. He wants to throw some red meat to the base. And that's why we got what we got today. To some degree, though, we have seen that immigration does play very well with his base. In fact, I was just looking at some research from Google, which has been tracking, you know, sort of an uptick in search trends and whatnot. And they they say that they've seen an uptick. And I think it was about 25 percent of house districts are seeing sort of an increase in search around immigration. So, I mean, look, it's one metric, but perhaps it does seem to be working with a potential sector of his base. asking voters, what is your number one issue? And among Republican voters, the thing that ranked

the highest that got the most people saying, this is my number one issue, was immigration. With independent voters and with Democratic voters, it was way down on the list. It wasn't anywhere near as important as it is for Republican voters. And in fact, it may be a turnoff for some of those independent voters and some of the suburban voters in those kinds of districts where the House races may be decided. This is the big bet that Donald Trump is making, that he can juice up his base with this kind of argument that's based on immigration, race, crime, fear, and he's willing to take the risk of turning off independent voters, turning off college educated women. This is a real risk. I mean, he could win in the short term, boost some turnout among his base. But over the long term, he is chipping away, I think, at the Republican Party's appeal.

Mara, you and I were watching this video that President Trump tweeted out yesterday. It has this man, this convicted murderer who killed police in California. And it has all of this. He's like laughing about killing police. And then it has this imagery of the caravan and people pulling on fences. This is very violent imagery in this video. And clearly the president is trying to build up that fear. Right. And with the Chiron, Democrats led him into the country. You know, that video that we've been talking about, it's been pinned to Donald Trump's Twitter account. So clearly he's banking on the fact that this is a successful strategy for him. And maybe his calculation is that he just wants to focus on the Senate and that he will help Republicans maintain control of the Senate, maybe do well with a few governor's races. And that maybe for him is considered a win to some degree. And that's why he's focused so much on immigration, despite the fact, like Mara said, you said that this is not necessarily a winning strategy in a number of these contested House races.

Right. And over the long term for Republicans. But look, the Senate battleground is Trump is Trump states. It's where he can go. It's where he has some ability to move voters. And that's where he's been focusing. All right. We're going to leave that there. Thank you so much, Mara, Tam and Scott. You're welcome. And we are going to let you go. And when we come back, we're going to have a new crew and we'll be talking all about how scared people are about the culture of incivility in this country. The company was founded by an electrical engineer whose friends were burglarized. They wanted home security, but most systems were too complicated and too expensive. So he built SimpliSafe. Now they protect over 2 million people. And with SimpliSafe, there are no annual contracts. Learn more about SimpliSafe today at simplisafe.com slash NPR politics.

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Based on Quicken Loans data and comparison to public data records, Equal Housing Lender, licensed in all 50 states. NMLSconsumeraccess.org number 3030. Florida is one of only three states that don't let ex-felons vote. I'm 73 years old. I don't have no more criminal background. I work. I pay taxes.

I'm a good person. Why can't they let me vote? Hear why that might change on Embedded. And we're back. And joining me now is Ayesha Roscoe, Ron Elving and Domenico Montanaro. Hey, guys. Good to be here. Hello. Hey.

All right. Well, let us just take a minute to take stock, I would say, of the past two weeks, because I think they have felt rather turbulent for a lot of people between the mail bombs that were sent to Democratic leaders and then the mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue. Domenico, I know you've been reporting about a new NPR PBS Marist poll that focuses on this question of civility. And one sort of top line result from that I found somewhat startling, but also really intriguing. And this is that 80 percent of voters say they are concerned that the lack of civility will lead to violence. You know, it's the one thing that in the poll, people actually across ideological lines agree on that they say that they're concerned that that tone can lead to violence. And some would argue it already has, right? So the but the issue here is who do they blame, right? And who and that is starkly divided. And frankly, you know, I was going to say a lot of people are just in their corners, very polarized. I mean, but if we look at who people say they blame, more people blame President Trump than Democrats and Republicans bickering or the media for how it's reported on some of this stuff. How many? Like how large of a percentage?

So overall, about 40% of Americans say that they blame President Trump. When you look at the media, 29% of people say they blame the media for the lack of civility and tone. In the poll, do we also have a sense of whether or not people are aspiring to a different tone or if they do want this civility to be different than what it looks like right now? Well, what they do say is that the tone, three quarters of people say that the tone has gotten worse under President Trump. And that's significant because it's far higher than when Barack Obama was president. President Trump is a different president, a different politician than what the U.S. has seen in modern history. And he is someone who is known for name-calling, insulting his opponents in very personal ways.

And when he talks about immigration, illegal immigration is crime, and these criminals are going to come into the U.S. and hurt people. And that is what he is feeding to the people that support him, to his supporters. And so they're getting worked up because they're being told the Democrats love crime. And if you vote for Democrats, crime is coming. Those are very stark terms. Those aren't terms where we're all going to come together. That language is just not going to do that. But isn't it that perennial

question, though, that people have been asking about Trump ever since he came into office, which is whether he created these conditions or whether he tapped into pre-existing conditions that were already apparent in this country? Listening to the poll and who's to blame, one thing is not in there is the American people, which we are all Americans. Like, some of this is just a reflection of the people who were answering the poll. I'm not saying that they're bad. What I'm saying is, as human beings, when these people are elected, if you don't like the politicians, they are elected by American people.

The media, they may not be hired by, but the media is a reflection. If you don't like it, you won't read it. You won't look at it. You can't take the personal responsibility out of that. This is a reflection of America as a whole. Yeah, I mean, voters, it's a great point that Ayesha is making

because voters do not reward bipartisanship. You mean, voters, it's a great point that Ayesha is making because voters do not reward bipartisanship. You know, the fact of the matter is the more bipartisan you are, the more that you're seen as reaching across the aisle and being friends with somebody or giving them a hug or whatever, that image is what goes around in primaries in particular. And these people wind up getting voted out of office. You know, it's funny, people will say that they want compromise, but really what they want is people to compromise to their position. And I think it's fair to say, though, that if everyone in the country voted, there is a better chance that some degree of bipartisanship and cooperation would be rewarded. But that's not the case. The people who do vote, especially in primaries, but also in

November, tend to be the people who care the most. And the people who tend to care the most are not in favor of cooperation and bipartisanship. So that's the portion of the electorate that actually gets out there and gets the job done. And that's then the reason we have the politicians we have and the kind of politics that we have. I mean, one of the things you see in a lot of polls is that people have a sense of anxiety, in part because of impending demographic change that that folks see is inevitable. Right. I was looking at the American Value Survey that PRRI does every year, and they ask this question about the impact of the U.S. becoming majority nonwhite by 2045. And you see that about two thirds of Republicans see that as a negative change. And yet a very small percentage, maybe 19% of Democrats see that as negative. And it falls clearly along partisan lines. But it's got me thinking a lot about this is something that is

like an inevitable demographic reality that is very hard to reverse at this point. And it seems to be exacerbating the way that people feel. I don't think there's any question about it. This is what is different from other periods of turmoil in our politics. We had great racial strife in 1968. We had riots in many of our major cities. And what is different about this is that there was no question in 1968 what the relative size of the races was going to be in the future. There was no question in 1968 what the relative size of the races was going to be in the future. There was no question that the white people of America were going to be the majority. But now we are literally talking about a very different looking country, a demographically transformed country, much more diverse, many more people speaking Spanish. And that has changed the attitude of a lot of folks who used to think of themselves as, you know, kind of tolerant,

kind of fine. But now they don't feel the same way. And these ideas of a lot of folks who used to think of themselves as, you know, kind of tolerant, kind of fine. But now they don't feel the same way. And these ideas of a country in which their kind, their Anglo personality is no longer dominant, but actually maybe only a plurality or something like California where it's less than 40 percent. And people find that upsetting. They don't like it, perhaps. And even if they don't find it upsetting, it's a little unsettling. You know, Asma, you've brought up before the fact that the majority of kindergartners are already non-white.

So even if you put up a wall and add some fence to it and, you know, add a biodome over the United States so that nobody can get in or any planes or anything, it's already at the point where it's going to be that way because the majority of kindergartners are already non-white. Exactly, yeah. And I do think that that concerns people, but it also to me kind of heightens this feeling that people have a very tribal politics. For a long time, we had seen African-American voters vote more Democratic,

but I think what we are seeing is increasingly also Latinos and Asian-Americans vote more Democratic since the 1990s, right? And so increasingly, we are in this situation where your race, you could argue your religion as well, kind of, I don't want to say is a predictor, because who knows what's the cause or the effect, but it aligns with your party politics. Well, right now, after this election in November of this year, more than 80%, something like 85% or more of the Republicans in the House of Representatives are going to be white males. More than 85% of the Republicans in the House of Representatives are going to be white males. How many white males are there among the Democratic caucus in the same body in

the House of Representatives? That number is going to fall below 40%. I also find it fascinating that we have kind of two things going on in this country when it comes to place. You know, there's this urbanization, where you have a lot of young people moving to cities and moving to urban areas, while at the same time, we have a lot of older voters who are exactly the kinds of people who moved out of cities during the race riots. And you have all this white flight. I grew up in a place where you have already have multiple languages on on ballots, where, you know, there are queens in Queens in Flushing, Queens, particular. I mean, you know what, it's a huge South Asian population. There are very few

white people and it used to be a largely white area. And now, I mean, is just not at all. I mean, there's no English on the on a lot of the business signs and in the in the downtown portion. And a lot of the people in Long Island are people who left because they didn't like what was happening with the demographic change. And now that that's sort of happening in different parts of the country, you see President Trump firing up a lot of the white grievance that some of those folks have feeling like it's getting closer to them. I do think that when we talk about that word tribalism, which a lot of people will take issues with that word, I think when you talk about people kind of dividing up and voting either we don't know whether because of race or voting along racial lines I think you you also have to take very seriously that a lot of people when

they're involved in politics and they're talking about politics they're talking about things that they feel like are threats to their lives so if you are a black person and you are concerned about police brutality and things like this, these are life or death situations. And so you feel like you are going to align with a party that is going to do the most to protect you and another party that you feel like may not be protecting you, like your life could be on the line. I think sometimes it can be minimalized like, oh, well, black people are just voting for Democrats. There are reasons and rational reasons why people may vote the way they do. And some of it is that they feel that there that there are issues that need to be addressed and have to be addressed. So, you know, one thing

that we cannot ignore is that we're living in a time with social media where we can access and see so many different points of view, but also increasingly avoid those points of view. Right. And sort of just reinforce what we already think. And I don't know that we can really have this conversation about civility without talking about social media and technology and the role that that is playing and just the overall tone of our politics. Social media heightens tensions because people get on social media and it's like you are trained to say your point of view, not care about what anyone else thinks. And basically to kind of it's so different from face to face interactions. You don't have to be polite. You can just tell someone, oh, I don't want to hear what you have to say. That's stupid or whatever. And you can block them or mute them, which you can't do that easily in real life.

Exactly. And so when you're behind a computer screen, people get really bold and talk the way they would never talk if they were facing someone in person. Many people have compared 2018 to that other tumultuous year 50 years ago, 1968. And one of the biggest issues of that year, and perhaps the overwhelming issue, was the Vietnam War, which was real to people as no war had ever been before, because television was taking us to the war every single night on the evening news. They called it the living room war. And that had a tremendous effect on the anti-war movement and on people's sense that it was futile, and the sense also just of how bloody and destructive it was for the Vietnamese, as well as, of course, for our men. And it was overwhelming the sense that technology had changed this key issue of war and peace. And now I think with the technological changes of our time, discourse, just the way we encounter politics and each other has fundamentally changed because of

technology. So Ron, you were just talking about 1968. And that was a year of our history that was really turbulent in terms of racial strife. And, you know, that was 50 years ago at this point. And so I'm curious if you have some thoughts. I mean, we inevitably as a country did move on from that point. So are there lessons learned that could maybe be instructive for where we are right now with our politics? Absolutely. That was a terrible time of tumult and racial rioting in our major cities. It was a presidential election year in which one of the candidates for president was assassinated after winning the California primary, and Martin Luther

King was assassinated in that same welter of violence that we went through in the spring of 1968. It was a terrible year in many respects. However, if you go back over what happened in the years after, you can find terrible things that happened. You can find enormously heartening things that happened. Whole lifetimes of good and bad happened after 1968. And as a body politic, we probably came to a greater understanding of each other. We probably came to at least some degree of progress with respect to all of these divisions. This is not to say they've been eradicated. And now, as we've learned, they can be brought back to the fore.

They can be excited again. They can be aggravated. And they can be agitated again. But we did learn. But it took a while, though, Rod. It took a while. And not everything got better after 1968. Not everything got worse after 1968. We went on and we, in many respects, we found our way to resolutions on many issues. You're talking about the 60s. My father, my uncle and aunt, you know, they all grew up, they grew up in Newark in the 60s. So they lived through it. So I've heard my uncle tell stories about the riots and they were in the projects tanks pointed out the projects like hearing the stories about it and how the chaos of it I was I was

shocked but I would also say that there's a sense of what we got through those times there are people that didn't get through those times and and and my uncle, he always talks about how out of his neighborhood, his friends, he's one of him and like his best friend are like one of the only ones that are left. The rest of them didn't survive. Yeah. And he's he's turning 65 this year. They did not survive. So I think that we have to be very mindful when we talk about these issues and these tough times that people go through that you don't just get through it. Some people, there are casualties, there is suffering in that. I do think that in all plausibility, even if we look at history, there is a high likelihood that things will get worse, that they could get worse before they even get better. And look, we see these demographic shifts are going to happen down the road. And you can make the argument that until these demographic shifts are actually a reality, we'll continue to see this tension because it's going to be under the surface and it's still going to keep like it's a constant simmer.

For a number of years, it could potentially be. memories that people carry. We have tried as a country to come to terms with some of the things that happened then and tried to expiate to some degree for the loss of all the people who did not survive. And among other things, Martin Luther King's birthday is now a holiday. And in the 1960s, when he was assassinated, I think is one way to put it. Martin Luther King was regarded widely in the United States as an agitator. Many in the FBI thought he was a communist. He was, in many people's view, gunned down by that attitude, by people who thought he needed to be taken out. And that was not just a fringe attitude. There were a great number of people who felt that way about him. And today he is revered among the great heroes of American life. He is honored on the National Mall

in a way that very few people are. And that shows that at least some lessons have been learned since 1968. Here's the thing that I keep coming back to, you know, when you're in this kind of era of volatility where you have two parties and people within the country feeling like they have two very different views of what it means to be an American and what they want is that we have the right to vote and our elections are happen and you have a peaceful transfer, peaceful transfer of power to from one party to another when things change. You know, when you look at the heart of democracy, that really is the heart of democracy. And when people try to talk about, you know, whether or not we're lurching toward autocracy or something different, that's we're not there. We're not some banana republic. And if people like what the direction that President Trump is taking the country, they can vote for that and continue to do so. And you have to respect that when it comes to the will of the people.

And if people don't like it in this country, you have the power to change it. Well, that brings us to election night next Tuesday. And as a heads up, you can hear NPR's live coverage of election night from your phone. You can start to hear that Tuesday night at 8 p.m. If you hit play on the NPR One app and follow the instructions to tap your screen, it'll take you to live coverage after the newscast. Many of us here on the NPR Politics podcast team will be there live with results. Okay, well, we are going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with Can't Let It Go. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Grow with Google. Digital skills are becoming more and more important in today's economy. That's why Grow with Google is providing free online training and tools to help Americans learn the skills they need to succeed.

Learn more about Grow with Google and get started by visiting google.com slash grow. Olympic gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar abused hundreds of women and girls for more than 20 years before he was caught. Hear how a team of women brought down a serial sexual predator. Believed, a new podcast for Michigan Radio and NPR. And we're back and we're going to close the show like we always do by talking about the one thing that we just cannot stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Aisha, would you like to start? Yes.

So this week was Halloween happened. And one of my favorite celebrities that people who listen to the pod will know is Beyonce. And she did different costumes. But the favorite costume. She had like a costume change. Yeah, she did some costume changes. But the one that I really like was she did tony braxton she basically she called herself phony braxton and she had like the short tony braxton hair and this was from tony braxton's first album she did

like another sad the cover of another sad love song which was tony braxton's first album which was the first album that i ever knew word for word um and i definitely know another sad love song which was Tony Braxton's first album which was the first album that I ever knew word for word um and I definitely know another sad love song but I'm not gonna sing it but first comes the strings then somebody screams have you all seen this picture by the way she looks beautiful she looks beautiful she did a pretty good job how did Beyonce manage to make herself look beautiful it was beautiful and and Tony Braxton gave her props for it and was like, you're never phony. Never. Toni Braxton owned the 90s, right?

Oh, yeah. Unbreak My Heart was like the anthem in all my high school dances. I was just like, oh, God. No, she is the legend, living legend, Toni Braxton. So I just thought it was great to see the melding of two of my favorite artists. Different generational. Yeah, different generations, different times in my life. It's a nice nod.

It's like when I went for Halloween this year as Ron. The different generations came together. It was a little strange when you came to my house. Yeah, I know. All right, that's awesome. Dominica, you want to go next? Sure. Speaking of Halloween, apparently something that one member of the Senate can't let go is the fact that people confuse him for the Zodiac Killer.

And, of course, everyone knows that's Ted Cruz. Not that Ted Cruz is the Zodiac killer, but he's happy to lean into into that. And he tweeted out, you know, whatever combination of coded letter, you know, that said, Happy Halloween. And he just tweeted that out. So, you know, he's trying to lean into it, but it's a little bit like my dad's on Facebook. Because it's like a joke where people are doing it because they're making fun of him. And now he's trying to embrace that. He's not known for being the most personally likable.

People complain about Ted Cruz that way. So maybe he's trying to show a lighter side of himself. He's taking himself so seriously. But he didn't tweet out the costume. I mean, was he dressed as? What does the Zodiac Killer look like? I don't know. We don't know what he looks like. Creepy.

All right. Well, I'm going to go next. And I cannot let go of Blexit. Oh, yes. It is an abbreviation. And the Blexit fallout. For folks who don't know, Blexit is an abbreviation of the phrase black exit. And we are talking about this pretty much because of one man who, if you listen to this podcast, you know that we cannot let him go because we bring him up all the time. And that is Kanye West. So Kanye tweeted out earlier this week that he did not take credit for designing these Blexit T-shirts.

So there were these T-shirts going around through Turning Points USA. It's this conservative group that had basically, the goal of it was to urge black people to leave the Democratic Party, right? That's what the theory is behind Blexit. So Kanye took to Twitter and he said, I never wanted any association with Blexit. I have nothing to do with it. But then he added a sort of more interesting tweet. He said, my eyes are now wide open and now realize I've been used to spread messages I don't believe in. I am distancing myself from politics and completely focusing

on being creative. Three exclamation marks. He's running. 2020. Kanye out is what it sounds like. I think some people were saying that the t-shirts, and they were kind of really basic and like not his style yeah the

design and so he was like i can't handle parts of that the thing that struck me isn't that amazing that that's what makes it all fall down for kanye is like a bad design on the logo yeah i don't want any parts yeah i mean the design struck me when i first looked at it i was like that the the x looks like a cross between like a really like chinatown knockoff air jordan logo yeah and like and like maybe the united way you know it was like what is this thing yeah it was this whole thing and and candace owens who was like behind that uh and so she's like taking full responsibility for this and saying that this is just about her and she's really sorry. It's not about the president. Because President Trump, we don't know if he knows about what happened with Kanye and what he tweeted, but he was asked

about Kanye yesterday and he said he's a good guy. So he doesn't seem to feel like there's a fallout. All right. Well, Ron, why don't you close things up for us? I think it's time for something really serious. If we turn our eyes to the South Shetland Islands part of Antarctica, there is a science station. You say it like it's just like we're all supposed to know where this is. Well, I've worked on this. It's the Bellinghausen Research Station. And it is actually a Russian, not a German, facility.

And the Russians who are there, you know, there's not a lot to do at the station in the South Shetlands. And so they have a library and they have books and they have a certain number of books and they read them. And apparently it's really important to the people who are reading them that they be left undisturbed. And this one particular individual, his name is Sergei, was reading books and being interrupted, in a sense, by having one of his colleagues there tell him the ending. Oh, you're reading that. Well, it turns out in the end, she is not that at all. And Sergei got a little upset about this and stabbed his colleague, Oleg. I missed this. That's a little extreme. And Oleg has been evacuated to Chile,

where he's apparently recovering in a hospital, and he's going to be okay. But Sergei turned himself in to the director of the station and has been repatriated to St. Petersburg and arrested and charged with attempted murder. So is there not an argument that he's trying to make that, you know, there is some, you know, grievance that, you know, telling, you know, spoilers suddenly are. I am not an attorney. I'm not an attorney.

This was justified. So the guy is. It's justified homicide, I think. But he didn't kill the guy. He stabbed him, but the man is still alive. No, it's attempted, though. That's right. But I think when you stab somebody, it is regarded as at least an attempt to do them harm. So if you stab them... Is it not an attempt to do me harm when you give away the ending?

That's what I'm wondering. It's a warning. Over and over and over and over again. I think it's a warning to everyone that spoiler alerts can be taken very seriously. Very seriously. Very seriously. You don't want to play around with that. All right.

Well, that is it for now. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.