The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, November 29

Episode Date: November 30, 2018

Donald Trump's former longtime lawyer Michael Cohen admitted on Thursday that he and others working for Trump negotiated with important Russians over a possible Trump Tower in Moscow well into the presidential campaign in 2016. Meanwhile, in response to a killing of a journalist, Senate Republicans back a bill that would curb the president's power. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, White House correspondent Tamara Keith, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, and political reporter Tim Mak. 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, Tam. Hey, Scott. So I cover Congress, you cover the White House. But before we both did that, we were both member station reporters. Where we covered politics. I started at KQED. I was at WOSU in Ohio, KPCC. And I also worked at KQED.

And before that, I was at WITF in Pennsylvania, both places I was covering the statehouse. Okay, so all year we've talked a lot on the podcast about state politics. And sometimes we would bring on reporters from local stations onto the podcast. But even when we didn't, the very first thing that we at NPR do every time there's something interesting going on local level is check out what the local member station is reporting on it. And because of the way that the whole public radio network is set up, NPR is in communities what the local member station is reporting on it. And because of the way that the whole public radio network is set up, NPR is in communities across the country at the local level, in the city hall, in the state capitol. Which is pretty cool if you think about it.

It is. So all of that is to say that if you were to go out and support your local public radio station, which we really want you to do, then you're also, by extension, supporting the NPR Politics Podcast and everything that we do. But even aside from that, it's such a great thing to support because you are supporting fact-based public service journalism that keeps you informed about the community that you live in.

And you can do that, support the podcast and support your local station, all in one place. And that is donate.npr.org slash politics. Donate.npr.org slash politics. Donate.npr.org slash politics. We can't achieve what we do. We can't achieve this mission without you. And now, here's the show. Hi, this is Michael calling from Bloomington, Minnesota, where I just learned that Minnesota's third congressional district, where I live,

had the highest voter turnout in the midterms out of any district in the entire country. This podcast was recorded at 2.30 Eastern on Thursday, November 29th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. President Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, says he lied to Congress in a way that's pretty important for the Russia investigation. We'll talk about that, plus a growing conflict between the White House and Congress about Saudi Arabia. I'm Scott Detrow, I cover Congress. I'm Tamara Keith, I cover the White House. I'm Ryan Lucas, I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. Before we get to the news, it's yet another international pod.

Tamara San Diego, where are you today? I am in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I am awaiting the president of the United States who will be coming here for the G20. As we speak, he is flying there. He made some news getting into the airplane, which we'll talk about in a moment. But first, Ryan, let's start with you and walk through what exactly Michael Cohen pleaded to today. Well, it was a surprise appearance, in fact, in the federal court in lower Manhattan. Michael Cohen shows up, pleads guilty to lying to Congress about efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. There are a number of things that he said in court

that provide details as to what exactly he lied about. And there are kind of three buckets. One is timing and extent of the discussions. He told Congress that the Trump Tower discussions for Moscow ended in January of 2016, and they weren't really discussed within the Trump organization. Turns out that was not true. That was a lie. What he says now is that work on Trump Tower Moscow ran as late as June of 2016. He says that he discussed the project with Trump on more than three occasions and also briefed members of the Trump family about it kind of ongoing. That sounds pretty significant given the investigation is into possible collusion between the Trump orbit and Russia. So I'm sure we'll get back to that. But what else was there?

Well, the timing aspect of this is important because it means that talks about having a Trump building a Trump Tower in Moscow continued well into the presidential race, into June of 2016. And that's when he was the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party. Exactly. And also at the same time, of course, this is when Russian operatives were hacking into the Democratic National Committee's computer servers, stealing emails, and when Russian operatives were also carrying out this very. One of them is June 9th, 2016. That is the day that, according to the filings, a contact of Michael Cohen's who had been communicating with Russia reached out to him and said, Hey, we've got to lock down this trip you're going to make to Russia. That happens also to be the date of the now infamous Trump Tower meeting where Donald Trump Jr., Paul Manafort,

Jared Kushner, they met at Trump Tower with Russians with the premise of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton. Now they say the dirt wasn't forthcoming, but June 9th is now a day with a couple of things that happened on that date. The talk of a trip to Russia brings me back to two other aspects in this filing that are important about what he lied about. And one is Cohen told Congress that he never agreed to travel to Russia to talk about the Moscow project, and he never considered asking Trump to travel to Moscow. Turns out those are both lies. Cohen repeatedly discussed traveling to Russia to talk about building a Trump Tower there, And he talked with Trump about Trump going.

There was a lot of discussions about timing on that. Cohen discussed going before the Republican National Committee convention. Trump, of course, was going to travel afterwards once he had become the actual nominee. Those trips never happened. But another thing that Cohen lied about to Congress. And then the third one is very important, and that is contacts with Russians. Cohen told Congress that he emailed the Russian press secretary's office about getting help to build this project, move it forward. He said he never heard back.

Turns out that was also a lie. That was not true. Cohen did receive a response from the Russian press secretary's office. He spoke to a member of that office about the project, spoke for 20 minutes on the phone, asked for help moving it forward, securing land, financing. Court papers say that the Russian assistant took notes, said she would follow up. And the next day, Cohen received an email from a business associate who said the Russians had contacted him asking for a call. It's about the president of Russia. They called today. And that's where the court papers are.

Ryan, so you're saying that Michael Cohen was negotiating with Russian government officials, Putin's press secretary, not just private developers in Moscow. He was in talks. He was contacting the press secretary's office, who was actually a fairly senior member of President Putin's kind of inner circle, a man by the name of Dmitry Peskov, and was in contact with them, as you said, trying to get their help to move this project forward. Again, not just business developers. This had moved into contact with the Russian government. Although maybe that's how every business development in Moscow happens with Putin's

approval. I don't know. But this seems kind of unusual. Mara. Or maybe totally usual in terms of doing business in Russia. But like, if you then if you know all of this, if you know that President Trump's business was trying to do a deal in Russia all the way through the primaries into at least the middle of June 2016, then all of the things that President Trump said during the campaign, during the debates, the Republican debates about wanting to have great relations with Russia, all of these things that he said that seems so out of sync with all of the other Republican candidates, it just casts a different light on all of that. And it's worth pointing out that the original line from President Trump and all of his spokespeople were there was absolutely no collusion, no conversation, nothing at all.

And that's changed over time. It has indeed. And actually, court papers say that Cohen made these false statements to Congress about the Moscow real estate project for two reasons. One was to minimize links between this project and Donald Trump. And the second was to give the false impression that the Moscow project ended before the Iowa caucus, before the first primaries, in order to limit the ongoing Russia investigation. Wow. So this all happens unexpectedly in federal court in New York this morning. Mara, about that time, President Trump is making his way out to the White House lawn to helicopter away to Air Force One to fly to Argentina. What happened to the White House? Well, we all rushed outside to the South Lawn,

hoping to ask the president a question. I wedged myself into a holly bush right up in front. Sean Spicer style? Turns out it was successful because I was able to ask him something. But he came out loaded for bear. And before we could ask any questions, he made a very lengthy statement that Michael Cohen was a liar, that he was a weak person, that he'd made this plea deal to get a shorter sentence for the other crimes that he has pled to. He said that Michael Cohen was lying about a project that everyone knew about. It was very public. He decided ultimately not to do the project. There was nothing wrong with him exploring this project while he was a presidential candidate, which is interesting because he called Michael Cohen a liar, but he corroborated the very thing that Michael Cohen is saying, is testifying to today, which is that, yes, he was negotiating or trying to negotiate a Trump Tower in Moscow, which he said he ultimately decided not to go forward with. But now we know that during the summer of 2016, Donald Trump was trying to cut a business deal with Russia while he was on the campaign trail, attacking NATO, praising Putin, asking Russia to hack Hillary's emails. And at the same time, as his son and other senior campaign staffers were meeting in secret with Russian government intermediaries, what we

don't know is what did he say about these negotiations in his written answers to Robert Mueller, if anything. And I think one thing that is worth just flagging and pointing out as President Trump repeatedly calling Michael Cohen a liar today is that according to the last update from if anything. And I think one thing that is worth just flagging and pointing out as President Trump repeatedly calling Michael Cohen a liar today is that according to the last update from the Washington Post, which has been tracking this the whole time, President Trump has made more than 6,400 false or misleading claims as president. There's one thing to bear in mind as you kind of digest the news of today and what Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty to and what he says did indeed transpire. And that is, this is certainly not everything that he has told the special counsel's

office. There's most likely a lot more in there that we don't know yet. And with time, we may find out. So none of this is happening in a vacuum. We have just learned that the back and forth, the contacts between Trump's orbit and Vladimir Putin's orbit went on for a lot longer than we thought in 2016. We happen to learn this as the president is flying to a summit where Vladimir Putin will be. And, Tam, how is the president handling this? Because the last time he and Putin met after there was a big revelation in the Mueller investigation, didn't go too well. No. So this was a really wild thing. And I feel like Mara can start the story and I can finish it. Well, as I was wedged in the holly bush, I asked President Trump, who had recently in the last couple of days suggested that he might not meet with Vladimir Putin at the G20.

I said, are you going to meet with Vladimir Putin? And he went ahead and said, yes, he probably will go ahead. He said he thinks it's a very good time to have a meeting. And then he got on the helicopter and went to Air Force One. Not an hour went by. Hot off of Twitter, President Trump says the meeting is canceled. Now, why is the meeting canceled? Well, he is blaming Russian aggression in the Black Sea against Ukraine. There was an attack over the weekend on some Ukrainian vessels. Some Ukrainian sailors were captured, others injured. And President Trump is saying they haven't released the sailors, so we can't go forward with the meeting. Now, he knew all of that an hour earlier, but the White House insists that

when he got on Air Force One, he got a briefing from the Secretary of State and the Chief of Staff and others and made the decision at that point. There's an argument that a lot of Russia experts have been making in recent days that the idea of President Trump going forward, continuing with this meeting, even with this Russian aggression, would basically send the message to Putin and Russia that we can continue to have a relationship even if you're doing things that our country, other leaders in our country condemn. Right. And then there also is the coincidental aspect of this that we just found out that he was negotiating to build a tower in Russia

while he was campaigning and praising Putin. So last question here, circling back to the Mueller investigation itself. Ryan, does today's news about Cohen change anything? It is certainly a big development. I don't want to underplay that. But this is not the end of the Russia investigation. This is certainly a step forward for Mueller and his team. But they have had a couple of setbacks in the past week or so. Of course, the cooperation agreement that they had with President Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, has unraveled quite spectacularly. It also turns out that Manafort's legal team was sharing information with the president's legal team even after

Manafort pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate. That's not illegal, but it is very rare. Generally, when an individual agrees to cooperate with prosecutors, they break off any sort of joint defense agreement that they have with other defense attorneys. So it's been a step forward for Mueller's team, as well as a couple of setbacks. But we're not done here. All right, Tam and Ryan, we're going to let you go. Thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. And Mara, stick around. When we get back, Republican senators slap the president's hand. This week on Ask Me Another, we have comedian Michelle Wolf, and she shares her opinion about the White House's recent decision to not have a comedian at this year's Correspondents Dinner.

They want to make a case for the First Amendment, which, first of all, if you have to make a case for the First Amendment, you're losing. Yeah, it's not happening. And you know that won't be all on NPR's Hour of Puzzles, Word Games, and Trivia. And we are back, and now we've got Tim Mack and Scott Horsley with us. Hey, guys. Good to be with you. Hey. So a really interesting thing happened in the Senate this week. The Senate advanced a bill

by a pretty wide bipartisan margin that would curb President Trump's war power abilities in Yemen. It was a big brushback to the White House from the Senate. And it ties into a lot of different things. So let's start by rewinding a little bit and get and draw the line from this action in the Senate this week to the recent controversial killing of a Saudi journalist. Tim, can you walk us through everything that's happened so far on this? So Jamal Khashoggi was a Saudi dissident. He was a journalist for the Washington Post. And he was living in the United States. And he disappeared after visiting the Saudi consulate in Turkey in early October. What we've learned since then suggests he was brutally killed in that consulate.

And lawmakers, U.S. lawmakers, have said that the intelligence indicates that the crown prince of Saudi Arabia was ultimately responsible for the death. And Scott Horsley, what would you say the best way to describe President Trump's response to all of this has been? Not just the initial news, but all of the drips and drops of increased intelligence about it. It has been hesitant at best, I would say. The White House has been slow to respond to the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, and in particular, slow to respond to the assessment by the CIA that the Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman personally approved that killing. Now, to understand that, it's helpful to know that the Trump administration has placed a very big bet on Saudi Arabia and on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in particular. Obviously, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have a longstanding alliance, a longstanding security relationship. But the Trump administration has really underscored that

and taken the Saudi side, not only in conflicts with the mutual enemy of Iran, for example, but in Saudi Arabia's regional conflict with Qatar. And Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, in particular, has formed sort of a personal bond with the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. They're both young men in their 30s, both sort of brash, both very ambitious. And so the president and his son-in-law have been very reluctant to cut ties to the crown prince, to sever ties with Saudi Arabia, or even to do anything very dramatic in terms of punishing Saudi Arabia for this killing of Jamal Khashoggi. And Mara, all of this came to a head on the White House side of things over Thanksgiving weekend when President Trump delivered a pretty blunt statement that parts have boiled down to,

you know, who cares about human rights violations? We live in a quid pro quo world. Saudi Arabia does stuff for us, and we need to defend our allies. On one hand, a lot of that is in line with how the United States has looked the other way on all sorts of human rights abuses from Saudi Arabia. But on the other hand, just walking away from the moral authority that the U.S. tries to bring to the world. That was the most significant part about it. You know, I always ask myself, is Trump different in degree or kind from past presidents? Is he just a ruder, cruder version of a conservative Republican president? And yes, we have done business with dictators throughout

history. But usually we at least pay lip service to the fact that America stands for something bigger than our own crass economic interests. Trump dispenses with all that. And the statement that he released, which was dictated by him, including lots and lots of exclamation points, was basically the world is a tough and vicious place. Maybe the crown prince ordered it. Maybe he didn't. Maybe we'll never know. But they buy our arms. So we got to work with them. And that's the way it should be. And they help to keep oil cheap. And they help keep oil cheap, even though he keeps on saying we're becoming energy independent. And, you know, we're now a huge energy producer.

But there's no doubt that for whatever reason, Donald Trump is not going to break with the crown prince, period. And even some of the president's own political allies in this country, Republican lawmakers, took issue with this statement. And this week, they decided to sort of make their displeasure known on Capitol Hill. Yeah, there has been blunt bipartisan response to this for a while, going back to those initial reports. But after that statement from the president this week, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell in the Senate called the killing ad hoc and said that there needs to be some sort of response. So, Tim, lawmakers from both parties are upset.

They demand answers from the White House. Walk us through what happened on that front on Wednesday. So there are two prongs of this, right? So firstly, there's a briefing in the Senate in which top administration officials, including the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense, went to brief senators on the war in Yemen and the circumstances of Khashoggi's death. At the same time, the Senate, members of the Senate, a bipartisan coalition stretching from Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders to very conservative

Republican Mike Lee, joined together to make a bill that would essentially make the United States pull back from its current role in the war in Yemen. And the war in Yemen is a proxy battle between Saudi Arabia and Iran. You've got the Houthi rebels who overthrew the government in Yemen. They're backed by Iran. You've got the Saudis who are backing the government forces in Yemen. And what is the U.S. role here? The United States is siding with the Saudis. I don't think out of any great love for the Saudi cause there or the Yemeni government, but we've sided with the Saudis because the Trump administration takes the Saudi side in any battle with Iran. And this is where everything starts to merge because you have some Democrats in the Senate,

Chris Murphy from Connecticut and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont, especially have been banging the drum for a long time saying the U.S. needs to pull out of this. This is a disaster. It hadn't really gotten a lot of attention. But this killing has really brought a focus onto what Saudi Arabia is doing and other fronts as well. So, Tim, that brings us to this bill, which had been tried before and didn't have enough votes to go forward. There's long been a push that Congress needs to use its war powers to assert itself and just not let the White House do whatever it wants when it comes to military action.

Right. So there's this bipartisan push, and the folks who support this legislation say, we don't need to be involved in this conflict. It's also a humanitarian disaster, and there's not a national security interest in it for the United States. So how did anger from the hearing translate to support for this bill over the last day or so? Well, so this goes back to CIA Director Gina Haspel not being brought up to the Hill to brief people on exactly what happened. I think a lot of lawmakers were seeking to express their frustration about how the Trump administration hasn't been forthcoming with the intelligence and their dissatisfaction with the Trump administration response, whether they've

been aggressive enough in punishing or rebuking Saudi Arabia for its role in this killing. Mara, what did you make of this? Because there's been so many different instances where you know Republican senators are angry at the White House, but they make a comment in the hallway or put out a statement and move on with their lives. Right. Well, my first reaction was, wow, you know, maybe this is a side effect of the election results that Republicans are feeling less beholden to Trump, or that they feel freer to be more independent of him. But just because they went this far with this bill doesn't mean that they're going to break with him on foreign policy or demand that he'd put

sanctions on Saudi Arabia more than he has. We have seen them in the past stand up for NATO when he was undermining NATO. We've seen them push back with Russia sanctions when he didn't want to put any on. So occasionally Republicans in the Senate do beginning of his candidacy for president, hasn't been a mainstream on the issues of Republican foreign policy. He did not echo the views of people like your Mitt Romney's or your Marco Rubio's or your Jeb Bush's. He just didn't believe that America had the same role that those other candidates believed. So what do we think it was about this particular issue that caused these votes to shift? Because just looking around at things in the news this week, they're angry at the president

on his tariff policy, but they don't seem inclined to do anything about it. Most Senate Republicans are very adamant that the president not fire Bob Mueller, but they have no interest in calling a bill to deal with that up for a vote. But this, you saw votes and action and a bill moving forward in a way you haven't before. Yeah, there's a transpartisan consensus that even though Saudi Arabia is a strategic ally, countries who we work with cannot be allowed to get away with killing a journalist and face no consequences. That's something that I think the vast majority of the Senate can agree on. And that's what really flipped from when they had the vote on this very issue in the spring and it failed to today when they had this vote and it

passed with overwhelming support. All right. Well, that was a lot of things. It was a lot of complicated issues and it was a lot of honestly pretty depressing issues. So we are going to take a quick break right now and we're going to come back, reset and end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go. Hey there. We're going to get back to the show in a second. But I wanted to give you another reminder that if you like what you hear, you can support this podcast by supporting your local public radio station. Just go to donate.npr.org slash politics to support fact-based journalism. Okay, back to the show. And we are back. It is now the end of the show.

So, of course, that means what we do every week, the one thing we can't let go of, politics or otherwise. Scott Horsley, you are up first. 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. Well, wait, I want to know, are the sausages free? Yes, you get them. 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. You know, this is something I can really get behind, the incorporation of food into democracy. And, you know, actually, it's starting to take hold in the United States, too. I don't know if you've heard about this pizza to the polls initiative. You tweet at this Twitter account. This happened during the midterms when I was waiting in line at the polls. You tweet at this Twitter account, and people send you pizzas while you're waiting in line. You know, I actually tweeted back to one of those Australian guys correcting us, and I said,

if you send us sausages and an invoice, we will correct this on the pod. So we have now lived up to our end of the bargain, and I am waiting for the sausages and an invoice. I will wheel my grill to NPR to grill the sausages. And it's not just sausages. We should say there are vegan sausages for the Green Party and also a number of pastries, which often carry funny names like the Malcolm Turnover for Malcolm Turnbull. But the correction is sausages are not free. Freedom never is. And that is an important lesson for all of us.

Mara, you're up next. Okay, I'm up next. And my can't let it go this week is the red Christmas trees at the White House. And Melania Trump is in charge of decorating the White House for Christmas as all first ladies are. And she put up a kind of allay of trees down the hallway where you come into the White House. They were all red and conical, very stark. They're the red of the red velvet cupcake. Yeah, red velvet cupcake or blood red, as some people saw them. First, there was the, this is why God invented Photoshop. First, there was the Handmaid's Tale iteration where there were white bonnets put on these trees. Then there was the Shining version where the two creepy twins appeared in the midst of these red trees. Those are the ones I saw.

Yeah. And then the other iteration I saw was somebody said, this looks like a communist car wash. Also, it got a lot less attention, but our Barbara Sprunt was there looking at these decorations and pointed out and took pictures that they had wreaths made of Be Best pencils. Be Best, still a thing. Oh, Be Best is still a thing. But one more thing I want to add to this, our own Glenn Weldon. From the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast. Right. Had a lot of really twisted takes on some Christmas carols to go along with the red trees.

I'm dreaming of a blood Christmas just like the ones I used to know, where chest wounds spurtle and slit throats gurgle and leech ichor in the snow. Maybe now's a good time to tell everybody about your recently released Spotify album of Christmas carols. Mara Lyson sings the classics. On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a still beating heart, freshly ripped from the chest of a virgin by moonlight as prescribed in the felt home. I feel like more moralizing memes will emerge from that just now. Oh, Christmas tree. Oh, Christmas tree. How bloody are thy branches?

Oh, Christmas tree. Ouch. Christmas tree. Wait, stop. Are these fangs? Oh, God. Oh, God. Not like this. Not like this. I know that will be edited into something that's less embarrassing to me. But you know what? I want to say something in Melania's defense. She was asked about this at an event at Liberty University, and she said, we are in the 21st century, and everybody has a different taste. I think they look fantastic.

I hope everybody will come over and visit it. All right. I'm up next. And for me personally on social media, Instagram is the one place where I hide from the news and politics. There is no politics in my Instagram feed. I am an aggressive unfollower if it comes in. That's what Twitter is for. But more and more politicians are using Instagram. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has really

popularized it and become like this viral internet sensation by doing these live videos where she's cooking at home and also talking politics. A ton of people are tuning in. Enough politicians are now on Instagram that a political scientist, David O'Connell from Dickinson College, has put together a scholarly report on the use of Instagram by members of Congress. Just what we were looking for. A couple of groups of facts that I learned from this report and I will quiz you guys on. Would a politician be more likely to be active on Instagram if they are a senator or member of the House? House.

Wrong. Senators are significantly more active on Instagram. Democrats are bigger staffers. Staffers are more active on Instagram. Democrat or... Senators. Staffers are more active on Instagram. Some senators, though. Democrat or Republican? Democrat.

Wrong again. Actually, Republicans more active. I knew these were trick questions. And this last one is definitely not a trick question. The older or younger the lawmaker is. Older. Older. Like Chuck Grassley.

Chuck Grassley is definitely the outlier. It is older members have fewer posts. I didn't answer because I didn't want to be wrong three times in a row. Alright, but this is we will be wrong again, but these stats actually made me feel sad. The median numbers of followers for a member of Congress

on Instagram, 873. The average number of likes, 55. Can they gerrymander that? on Instagram, 873. The average number of likes, 55. Aww. Can they gerrymander that? So like some have 853, but others, you know, in a rural state... Just take your likes away.

So among the things being studied these days in modern politics is the Instagram habits of members of Congress. There you go. Tim, what about you? So if you're feeling that Christmas music is starting to be played earlier every year, now you've got data to back it up. Congress. There you go. Tim, what about you? So if you're feeling that Christmas music is starting to be played earlier every year, now you've got data to back it up. And who's not

after listening to Mara? Oh, now that's mean. Seems like every year Mara starts singing those Tristed Christmas carols earlier and earlier. Mara Eliason will be in the revival of The Nightmare Before Christmas. I am The Nightmare Before Christmas. And I do believe I always say to my kids, give Thanksgiving a chance. Don't play those carols before Thanksgiving. Well, here's the thing. There's this phenomenon called Christmas creep. And The Washington Post has measured it year by year by looking at how often and how early people begin Googling Mariah Carey's All I Want for Christmas. You.

I don't want I Want for Christmas is You. That's the signature. That's the signature song. It starts as early as October. It starts to rise in about October, right? And the Post reports that it has higher interest and at an earlier time than usual this year. We're way ahead of schedule on the Mariah Carey All I Want for Christmas Is You Index.

You know, I'm fine with that. That is one Christmas song I never get tired of. It's a proxy for all the other Christmas songs, too. So we can't pick and choose, right? It's all of them together as a package. You know what the Christmas creep on the NPR politics desk was? The first love actually good or bad argument broke out like four weeks ago. It was like a 10-minute argument.

Several of us were involved way before Thanksgiving. I don't want a lot for Christmas. There is just one thing I need. All right, that is a wrap for this week. Remember, you can keep up with all of the breaking news by following us on Twitter and Facebook at NPR Politics. We'll be back in your feed the next time there is news. Until then, I'm Scott Detrow, I cover Congress. I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent.

I'm Scott Horsley, White House correspondent. And I'm Tim Mack, political reporter. Thank you for listening to the In Fair Politics Podcast.