The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, October 19

Episode Date: October 19, 2017

Former president George W. Bush gave a speech that everybody seems to be talking about, plus the controversy surrounding Trump's communication with gold star families and...of course...health care. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Scott Detrow, and political editor Domenico Montanaro. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, I'm Kelly McEvers, and Embedded is back. And we recently realized it's hard to assess a politician who has virtually no political record. But with Donald Trump, we tried anyway. And we wound up with stories and lessons from the record he does have in business and on TV. Listen on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, this is Soren, hanging out with some mountain goats at Lake of the Angels in Olympic National Park. This podcast was recorded at 4.09 p.m. on Thursday, the 19th of October. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. To keep up with all of NPR's political coverage,

check out NPR.org, download the NPR One app, or listen to your local public radio station. Okay, here's the show. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast here with our weekly roundup of political news. Former President George W. Bush gave a speech that everyone seems to be talking about, plus the festering controversy over presidential communication with the families of fallen service members. There's a bipartisan bill to shore up the Affordable Care Act, at least in the short term. But what are its prospects in Congress and beyond? And of course, can't let it go. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor.

All right. So it's not every day that we start the podcast with a speech by a former president. But the fact that former President George W. Bush is on the public stage and talking about the current president is news in itself. But what he said and how he said it is also notable. You might say that George W. Bush wants to make America great again. Someone wrote that. Domenico. You know, it's really remarkable. You had President George W. Bush take to the lectern at the George W. Bush Institute, and they had a forum that they're holding in New York

this week. You know, the thing is with President Bush, he's somebody who left office very unpopular. He pretty much stayed out of the spotlight. He didn't really criticize or go after President Obama, even though President Obama won largely as the anti-Bush. You didn't see George W. Bush out there. Now you see him taking a different kind of tack. He went after kind of the worldview of President Trump without naming Trump. Let's hear. It's kind of a long clip, but it's just worth listening to. Bigotry seems emboldened. Our politics seems more vulnerable to conspiracy theories and outright fabrication.

There are some signs that the intensity of support for democracy itself has waned, especially among the young, who never experienced the galvanizing moral clarity of the Cold War, or never focused on the ruin of entire nations by socialist central planning. Some have called this democratic deconsolidation. Really, it seems to be a combination of weariness, frayed tempers, and forgetfulness. We've seen our discourse degraded by casual cruelty. At times, it can seem like the forces pulling us apart are stronger than the forces binding us together. Argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates into dehumanization. Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves by our best intentions. Forgetting

the image of God we should see in each other. We've seen nationalism distorted into nativism. We've forgotten the dynamism that immigration has always brought to America. We see a fading confidence in the value of free markets and international trade, forgetting that conflict, instability, and poverty follow in the wake of protectionism. So President Bush was clearly talking in a lot of moments here about President Trump, but he didn't actually say President Trump. But one thing that Bush said really struck me, he said a combination of weariness and other things.

Weariness struck to me because this is a week, and I know we're going to talk about it later on in the show, but I think it applies here as well. This is a week where President Trump stands in the Rose Garden and says something that is demonstrably false about his predecessors. And once again, he politicizes the personal suffering of military families. unremarkable that was because in one way or another, there's an episode like that seemingly every few weeks now. And I think it just leaves anyone who follows our politics or covers our politics or is engaged in our politics weary and kind of almost beaten down by having to have that conversation and having to cover that story. And I've often rolled my eyes at the idea of normalization, but it does feel like in one way or another, President Trump repeatedly saying things that just aren't true or behaving in ways that are outside the bounds nationalism in sort of a similar way. Does that change anything? Is there a conversation that's happening? Or is this just like a couple of dudes

who are kind of just getting up and saying things without actually naming names? I think unquestionably, we're seeing a fracturing of our American politics. I mean, we're standing at a moment right now when no one is quite sure where politics is headed. I kind of see us as looking at four political parties right now. We're looking at this kind of conservative populism that President Trump was fueled to win by, which was based on – in part on nativism and white grievance and some economic issues, but a lot of cultural baggage. Then there's the liberal populism, the strain that George W. Bush is also speaking against when he talks about socialist central planning and how that gave rise to Bernie Sanders.

And when you look at polling on where young people stand on socialism as compared to older Americans who lived through the Cold War, that word socialism doesn't have the same resonance with younger voters, the kinds of people who fueled Bernie Sanders' rise. Then the other two parties that I kind of see are this right and left of center pragmatism, pragmatic group. Establishment. Well, they're the establishment because that's the way the post-World Warorker's of the world, the senator from Tennessee was come out and criticized President Trump, George W. Bush, Jeb Bush. These are the kinds of Republicans. There's probably nobody right now in the Trump era who have been more alienated, more isolated, more lost in the world as far as what they want, you know, and who used to be in control. Then this right of center, pragmatic Republican, you know, people on the left,

Democrats are used to fighting against conservatism or Republicans. They've got the resistance. But what are the Republicans have? Right. And they're never Trump kind of attitude didn't work in the primaries. Their campaigns were frustrated because they couldn't take down the piece of the titanium pie that they saw with President Trump and candidate Trump and now President Trump. So where they go, they feel very much lost in the wilderness. And people like that are now starting to, even in muted ways, come out to try to talk against President Trump. But, Tam, you asked where does this go?

Yeah. And I think we've seen the roadmap for where it goes. We saw it with Corker last week, and I talked about this a couple podcasts ago, that often when somebody brings a substantial concern about President Trump into the public, especially someone from his own party, Trump often responds by tweeting some sort of personal insult, and then the entire thing becomes boiled down to, oh, it's another feud. And any sort of criticism that started the conversation gets pushed out of the way that it's talked about and covered in cable news and other

parts. And it just becomes, it's another Trump feud. And it's another Trump feud is where the president loves to be, where he's being proactive and he's looking tough. And the initial criticism, like, I'm worried this guy's going to start World War III, gets lost. Which was what Bob Corker said. Yeah. All right. Well, let's move on to the latest Trump feud. But I think it's important to go back to where this began, because this isn't just the latest Trump feud. This is something that became that but started out somewhere very different. So on October 4th, four U.S. Green

Berets were killed in an ambush in Niger. This is the deadliest combat incident since President Trump took office. That day, the White House said that President Trump had been briefed. The next day, October 5th, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders said this from the White House press briefing room. Names are being withheld at this time as part of the next of kin notification process. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the fallen service members who made the ultimate sacrifice in defense of the freedoms we hold so dear. So the next day at the next White House press briefing, a reporter asked, President Trump tweets about everything. Why hasn't he said anything about this? And Sarah said, I made a statement on behalf of the administration yesterday in the opening. Obviously, any time one of the members of our great military are injured, wounded,

or killed in action, that is certainly something that we take very seriously. Our thoughts and prayers are with those individuals. We're continuing to review and look into this. And as we have more details, we'll certainly let you guys know. So fast forward, it is now Monday of this week. President Trump still hasn't tweeted, still hasn't made a public statement or put out a written statement. And he held this press conference in the Rose Garden at the White House. And one of the reporters asked him why he still hadn't said anything about the four service members killed in Niger. And this was his response. I've written them personal letters. They've been sent or they're going out tonight, but they were written during the weekend.

I will at some point during the period of time call the parents and the families, because I have done that traditionally. And then he turned and seemed to make it about why he was doing things better than past presidents had. The traditional way, if you look at President Obama and other presidents, most of them didn't make calls. A lot of them didn't make calls. I like to call when it's appropriate, when I think I'm able to do it. So then later in the press conference, and I know this is going on for a long time, but it's good to just get it all out there. Later in the press conference, Trump then sort of walked back that statement saying this.

Earlier you said that President Obama never called the families of fallen soldiers. How can you make that clear? I don't know if he did. No, no, no. I was told that he didn't often, and a lot of presidents don't know if he did. No, no, no. I was I was told that he didn't often and a lot of presidents don't. They write letters. I do. Excuse me, Peter. I do a combination of both. Sometimes it's it's a very difficult thing to do, but I do a combination of both. You know, it's interesting to hear him talk about how other for some reason needing to bring

in what other presidents did. But again, it's always it's always in relation to other presidents, specifically Obama. Like, oh, well, I'm doing this differently than Obama or I'm doing this better than Obama. And the other thing that I noticed that happened there that happens a lot is when President Trump says something and is called out and said what you said isn't true, he often immediately walks back to, well, that's what I was told. I was told this by somebody. There's that immediate semi-retreat. So let's pick up where we left off.

We're now all the way to Tuesday. And in an appearance on Fox News Radio, President Trump takes it one step further. To the best of my knowledge, I think I've called every family of somebody that's died. And it's the hardest call to make. And I said it very loud and clear yesterday. The hardest thing for me to do is do that. Now, as far as other representatives, I don't know. I mean,

you could ask General Kelly, did he get a call from Obama? You could ask other people. I don't know what Obama's policy was. I write letters and I also call. Okay. So President Trump mentions General Kelly there. That's his chief of staff, who is also a gold star father. His son died in Afghanistan in 2010. We're going to get to that in a second. all of the families of the fallen, and that included Sergeant LaDavid Johnson's family. And while the family got the call, they were, I guess, in a car together. Congresswoman Frederica Wilson was also in the car with them. She is a Democratic congresswoman from Florida, and she was on CNN describing the call. He feels no pity or sympathy for anyone. This is a grieving widow, a grieving widow who is six months pregnant. This is a young woman. She's only 24 years old.

She weighs maybe 110 pounds. And she has two other kids, two years old and six years old. And when she actually hung up the phone, she looked at me and said, he didn't even know his name. Can I just say why we're even talking about this in the first place makes me feel very uncomfortable. You know, this is a very difficult situation for any of these families to be going through. And the fact that we're talking about it on a podcast, the fact that it's plastered all over cable TV, the fact that a Democratic congresswoman

who doesn't like President Trump has decided to spill details of what should be a private conversation, nothing looks good in any of this. And it's very frustrating to have to cover something that you feel like is not really where we should be at in our politics. Earlier, we heard tape of President Trump saying that you could ask General Kelly if he got a call from Obama after Kelly's son was killed. This afternoon, General Kelly came to the White House press briefing room for what was I don't know, how would you guys describe it? I mean, it was it was a stunning. It was emotional. It was emotional. It was it was really heavy to talk about. Sort of give the full context of how we got here from from where he stands and also to take the congresswoman to task.

But let's start at the beginning. Let's start where Kelly started, describing what happens after a service member dies. Their buddies wrap them up in whatever passes as a shroud, puts them on a helicopter as a routine and sends them home. Their first stop along the way is when they're packed in ice, typically at the airhead, and then they're flown to usually Europe, where they're then packed in ice again and flown to Dover Air Force Base, where Dover takes care of the remains, embalms them, meticulously dresses them in their uniform with the medals that they've earned, the emblems of their service, and then puts them on another airplane linked up with a casualty officer escort that takes them home. And he said that while that is happening, sort of a parallel process is happening with the families. Typically the only phone calls the family receives are the most important

phone calls they can imagine and that is from their buddies. In my case, hours after my son was killed his friends were calling us from Afghanistan telling us what a great guy he was. Those are the only phone calls that really matter. And yeah, the letters count to a degree, but there's not much that really can take the edge off what a family member is going through. So some presidents have elected to call. All presidents, I believe, have elected to send letters. If you elect to call a family like this, it is about the most difficult thing you could imagine. There's no perfect way to make that phone call.

When I took this job and talked to President Trump about how to do it, my first recommendation was he not do it. Because it's not the phone call that parents, family members are looking forward to. It's nice to do, in my opinion, in any event. My first recommendation was that he not do it. And I found that instinct on his part to be really interesting because look at where we are. I mean this game of telephone has gotten so far out of control where the president goes and tries to say – tries to translate what John Kelly is telling him with all his emotion and everything that – and all of his years of service to a president who is clearly uncomfortable making this call but wants to do it.

So President Trump's coming at a place with maybe the best of intentions here, wanting to comfort these family members, wanting to be able to do something that he thinks is meaningful. But Kelly's warning him, this is really tricky stuff. This is really complicated. And your best bet's probably not to do this because this is really tricky stuff. This is really complicated. And your best bet's probably not to do this because this is very hard. Yeah, I mean, I think you could tell in Kelly's voice how disgusted he was about the entire politicization of the process.

So about this question of whether Obama called Kelly, Kelly presented it in sort of a different way than Trump had presented it? Yeah. He asked me about previous presidents. And I said, I can tell you that President Obama, who was my commander in chief when I was on active duty, did not call my family. That was not a criticism.

That was just to simply say, I don't believe President Obama called. That's not a negative thing. I don't believe President Bush called in all cases. I don't believe any president, particularly when the casualty rates are very, very high, that presidents call. But I believe they all write. But just like Domenico said, a message can sound different coming from John Kelly than than President Trump. I think that's a good example of it right there, because the way Trump said, go ask General Kelly if if Obama called him. It sounded like competitive and a slight and an insult, as opposed to Kelly saying he didn't call me.

That was fine. He did other things. And I didn't want the call. And here's the call. intentions with these military families that maybe the tone comes off differently. And maybe it's also in the ear of the beholder, right? I mean, if you're a member of the media and there's a certain narrative about Donald Trump and he says it in a certain way and it plays into a narrative, then people go to a conclusion that maybe is not what President Trump actually meant. Yeah. And that gets us to the actual phone call that President Trump made to Sergeant David Johnson's widow. And Kelly said that Trump asked him before he made these calls, like, what do I say?

And I think Trump acknowledged, like, I haven't served. I haven't had a loss like this. What do I say? And Kelly said, well, this is what I would say. This is what the man who told me about my son's death said to me. And he said to me, what do I say? I said to him, sir, there's nothing you can do to lighten the burden on these families. But let me tell you what I tell them. And let me tell you what my best friend Joe Dunford told me, because he was my casualty officer. He said, Kel, he was doing exactly what he wanted to do when he was killed. He knew what he was getting into by joining that 1%. He knew what the possibilities were because we're at war.

And when he died, in the four cases we're talking about, in Asia, my son's case in Afghanistan, when he died, he was surrounded by the best men on this earth, his friends. That's what the president tried to say to four families the other day. That's what the president tried to say. Essentially, President Trump did say this, but it's all- Even though President Trump denied it. Well, so this is actually like a side thing that I find kind of interesting. President Trump, immediately after Congresswoman Wilson went, and we can discuss whether or not it was appropriate for her to go and reveal the pieces of this conversation and her interpretation of it.

But, you know, she goes out and does that. And then President Trump immediately tweets, this is fabricated. And I have proof. Well, right. And the thing is, essentially, John Kelly is saying, no, that's exactly what the president said. So Kelly is like basically coming in, trying to add this context, trying to explain why the White House says that the president wasn't being inappropriate. Yeah, and you could tell that Kelly was just bothered by this entire thing, start to finish. And as he was especially bothered by the fact that Congresswoman Wilson went on TV earlier this week to criticize Trump and that phone call, and also to give details of that phone call, which she was in the car for as it happened. I was stunned when I came to work

yesterday morning and brokenhearted at what I saw a member of Congress doing. A member of Congress who listened in on a phone call from the President of the United States to a young wife and in his way tried to express that opinion. He's a brave man, a fallen hero. He knew what he was getting himself into because he enlisted. There's no reason to enlist. He enlisted. And he was where he wanted to be, exactly where he wanted to be with exactly the people

he wanted to be with when his life was taken. That was the message. That was the message that was transmitted. It stuns me that a member of Congress would have listened in on that conversation. And Kelly went on to say that he was so upset by all of this that he yesterday went to Arlington National Cemetery and just spent an hour walking around there by himself. And he tried to say, can't we keep this sacred? Like, this is the one thing that, you know, that he was kind of hoping could stay sacred with an American life.

I mean, I think he was clearly passionate feeling that way. And I think a lot of people on all sides of the equation feel that way as well. But I think Kelly was missing one big factor in why things like this keep happening. And that's the fact that that his boss, the president, often begins these news cycles, begins these conversations. And yet the conversation is somehow going to continue focusing on a feud. Yep. But there you go. All right. It is time to buying a home or refinancing your existing home loan. With Rocket Mortgage, you can apply simply and understand all the details so you can mortgage confidently.

To get started, go to rocketmortgage.com slash NPR politics. Equal housing lender, licensed in all 50 states. NMLSconsumeraccess.org number 3030. Before we get to healthcare, President Trump today met in the Oval Office with Puerto Rico's Governor Ricardo Rossello. He came into Washington to ask for more help. And by way of an update, just 21 percent of the territory has power restored and 28 percent of people still lack clean drinking water, which is a significant improvement. But it has been a month since Hurricane Maria hit. President Trump gave his own assessment of the federal government's performance. I'd say it was a 10. I'd say it was probably the most difficult when you talk about relief, when you talk

about search, when you talk about all of the different levels, and even when you talk about lives saved, you look at the number. I mean, this was, I think it was worse than Katrina. It was in many ways worse than anything people have ever seen. And then later during this media availability in the Oval Office, he turned to Governor Rossello and asked him to weigh in. Did the United States, did our government, when we came in, did we do a great job? Military, first responders, FEMA, did we do a great job? You responded immediately, sir, and you did so. You know, Tom and Brock, they have been on the phone with me essentially every day since the disaster. So Rossello also said that, you know, several times that the president's commitment,

that the president was committed that the federal government would be there for the long term, which is different than President Trump having basically said that, you know, the U.S. government couldn't be there forever, couldn't keep troops there for the long term. But this is going to be a long term recovery. OK, now to be a long-term recovery. OK, now to health care. Senators Lamar Alexander and Patty Murray have introduced a bill that would for the next couple of years stabilize the insurance markets under the Affordable Care Act. Alexander is a Republican, Murray is a Democrat, and the bill has some things in it that Republicans have been after, and it has some things that Democrats want. But the headline is that it would continue funding something known as cost sharing reduction payments. These would be the very subsidies that last week President Trump announced he was going

to stop paying. So, Scott. Yes. What's up with this bill? Well, I can tell you about the bill, but put a giant asterisk on everything I say for something we're going to talk to in the moment. And that's where the White House stands on this bill. Yeah, let's get to that in a second. Because that's an important factor and it's changed a lot over the course of the week. But to the bill itself and what's going on in Congress, Alexander and Murray have been working on this for a while. And it's been a back burner thing that every time the Republicans thought they were close to actually outright repealing Obamacare, this would lose momentum. And then when a repeal effort would fail, this would start being talked about again.

It's a bipartisan move to stabilize the markets by extending those subsidies for two years, same subsidies that President Trump last week said he was going to get rid of. But this also provides some flexibility, which is one of the things Republicans have wanted all along. It's all within the scope of Obamacare, but. And would it also broaden the pool of people who can apply for really bare bones, catastrophic plans, like a plan that covers you if you fall off a building or something like that, but otherwise, yeah. Not if you get cancer or strep throat. Yeah. But, you know, if you're a young, healthy person who needs a bridge between jobs or something like that, it's something that might make sense for you. So anyway, those are the gives and the takes. There's a bipartisan buy-in to this bill. In fact, just a few moments ago, they announced co-sponsors. And this is pretty

significant because 12 Democrats and 12 Republicans have signed on to this bill saying that they co-sponsor it, they support it. It's not an overwhelming number, but it's a pretty substantial number of co-sponsors from both parties and signifies that this would have support moving forward in the Senate, even though, and here's where it gets confusing, Republican leadership, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, other top Republicans have been a little bit lukewarm to the idea. And President Trump, I would ask you, Tam, how would you describe how President Trump views this bill? What time is it? Let's just let's just go to where he ended up, which was earlier today. He was asked about it in the Oval Office during that press availability that he had

with the governor of Puerto Rico. And this seems to be at the moment where President Trump has landed. I respect very much the two senators you're talking about. I love that they're working on it. I want them to be careful with respect to the insurance companies. Insurance companies are extremely good at making money, extremely talented at making money. And I want them to be careful with respect to the insurance companies. Insurance companies are extremely good at making money, extremely talented at making money. And I want them to be careful with that. We will probably like a very short term solution until we hit the block grants, until that all kicks in. In other words, it doesn't just kick in the following day. There's a transition period. And if they can do something like that, I'm open to it. But I don't want it to be at the expense of the people. I want to take care of our people. I don't want to take care of our insurance companies. So let me just translate what he's saying there.

He still wants to repeal and replace Obamacare. He thinks the best way to do it would be something called block grants to basically give states a bunch of money and say, you figure it out. We talked a lot about block grants when we talked about Graham-Cassidy. Exactly. But that couldn't go into effect right away. So in the interim, because he still thinks that they're going to be able to repeal and replace Obamacare eventually. In the interim, he's open to something that is like this, but he and it's a very big but he does not want the insurance companies bailed out. And this is the key, because think about the messaging that President Trump tried with Make

America Great Again. It's very black and white. It's something you can understand. It's very plain language. If someone were to say President Trump is trying to bail out insurance companies, that is very plain language. And he's trying to say, I'm not bailing out insurance companies. This money goes to insurance companies and I don't like it. I don't like that the money goes to insurance companies which have lower favorability ratings than the media. He's working on it, though. Maybe eventually will be worse. But so like President Trump doesn't want to be tagged in that way and he doesn't want it to, you know, be money that has to be used, you know, for insurance companies profits. But here's the key. The Murray Alexander bill has language in it and Lamar Alexander stressed this that says that the money has to go toward reducing people's premiums. And while we're having this semantic back and forth on whether or not the money goes to insurance companies or whether it will go to reduce premiums, people will be affected if this stands and Congress doesn't make a fix and President Trump got rid of those subsidy payments. And the Congressional Budget Office says that by next year,

people who have been relying on these subsidies will see their premiums go up 20 percent or more. I think the big picture thing here is that Congress has no idea how to negotiate with, how to work with the White House when the president keeps changing his mind. And that's frustration for Republicans. They're less willing to talk about it publicly than Democrats. But when this happened, when Trump changed his mind and after seeming to support this deal, came out against it, Chuck Schumer held an impromptu press conference where he talked about the fact that Trump has now done this with with Marie Alexander. But he also did it with

DACA. And Schumer seemed visibly frustrated because he had thought on DACA and then this as well, that Democrats had had gotten some sort of big picture agreement with Trump. So here's what he said about that. This president cannot govern if whenever the hard right frightens him and says jump, he says how high. We saw this in the DACA agreement. Nancy Pelosi and I met with the president in front of all his staff. And we agreed that we would support the Durbin-Graham bill, and we would work on border security. And it was agreed to. The Freedom Caucus was iffy.

The right-wing Koch brothers, Heritage Foundation, all opposed it. So yesterday he says it's a good deal, and today he's saying it's not a good deal. You cannot govern if you let the hard right run things. They're far away from where the American people are. They're not even where the Republican Party is. And let's just be clear that the right probably doesn't like this deal. The far right in the House certainly is not going to like this deal. It's not clear whether leadership in either the House or the Senate is really all that interested in bringing this up. They want a tax system overhaul. And not to spoil my can't let it go, but kind of to spoil my can't

let it go, we're going to have to see what happens. And now it's time to end the show as we always do with Can't Let It Go, where we all share one thing we cannot stop talking about this week, politics or otherwise. Who wants to go first? OK, well, I can go. OK, Domenica. You know, I mean, President Trump, we've been talking about this week, had sort of implicitly criticized President Obama for, you know, not calling families of service members who had died. But we know that that wasn't true, that the president had actually done that. But there was this story that may tell you a little bit as to what President Obama actually valued, and that was writing letters,

because the letters that were revealed this week were love letters that President Obama had written to his college girlfriend at Occidental College sometime between 1982 and 1984. This was before email or text. It was before email and before Michelle, we should say. Yes, right. The headline on a couple stories is, my love is rich and plentiful. Fun fact about Occidental College. You know, that's where they taped 90210. You know what else they taped?

Star Trek 3, The Search for Spock. Seriously? Yep. At Occidental College? Wow. When they reanimate Spock, it's anyway. They make it incredibly nerdy, Scott Detrow. He said, it seems we will ever want what we cannot have.

That's what binds us. That's what keeps us apart. So he was questioning their relationship with a woman named Alexandra McNear. And he was during a trip to Indonesia in the summer of 1983. And the letters were gotten by Emory University, the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript Archives and Rare Book Library, which is in possession of this. So if you want to read more of them, you can go there. Two thoughts.

One, I feel like few people in the world would want to be confronted with love letters they wrote in their teens or early 20s. Two, early 20s Obama, every indication is, was just as serious as president of the United States in his early 50s Obama. But it fits being president much more than being like an early 20s. Was he fun to hang out with? Like, I don't know. Well, I mean. He was part of the Choom gang.

I don't know. The Choom gang thing. Yeah. But he, okay, here's another piece. I trust you know that I miss you. That my concern for you is as wide as the air, my confidence in you as deep as the sea, my love rich and plentiful. Love, Barack. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that if you found the letters that my now husband and I wrote back and forth, there was nothing nearly that poetic.

Totally. Nothing nearly that poetic. Look, we're all goofy kids and said stuff that we thought was way more important than it probably deserved to be thought of as. Let's just leave it at that. Scott, what can't you let go of? So what I can't let go of this week and what I'm staying up late at night watching is the baseball playoffs. That's why you're tired. We've talked about them before. We've continued to talk about them. There have been highs and lows.

Many of us like the Washington Nationals living in D.C. now, but many of us have the teams we grew up watching. And I am a Yankees fan, and it is very fun and surprising to see a Yankees team go this deep, but go this deep without any expectations. Domenico can tell you that the problem with being associated with the Yankees is it often comes with this self-importance and this mindset of, if we don't win the World Series, it's a terrible year. And they have had periods

where they're just not that likable because of that and because of the fact they load themselves up with free agents who come in at like age 35 and underperform and over just kind of be jerks on the team. I guess I don't know if there's a phrase for that. I mean, nobody likes a winner, right? No, it's not that. It's not that. It's that they're just so like over stuffed sometimes in some periods of the franchise. And look, here's the thing.

I'm a Mets fan. We all know this, right? And that means I have lived in the shadow of the Yankees my entire life. My brother and my dad are both big Yankees fans, whatever. But I have to say, even myself, I have been rooting for the Yankees. Really? Because, okay, I've been watching. I've been keeping an eye on it when I've been out.

And I've been seeing, okay, what is the score? How's it going? Because these guys are kind of joyful. They are actually enjoying being part of this. A lot of new guys on the team and guys who are just sort of like, they seem fun. They seem to actually enjoy playing baseball for playing baseball. And as a New Yorker,

I was kind of like, all right, go ahead. Yeah, no, it's they are all young and having fun and didn't expect to get this far. And there's like a relaxed, joyful way that a team plays when that's the case. And it doesn't happen that often with the Yankees. So I'm really enjoying it. Tam, what can you not let go? So I am working on a story about a phrase that President Trump has been using a lot. Now, we all know that he says big league a lot, and we all know that he says believe me a lot. But he also says with incredible regularity. We will see what happens pretty soon. A lot of people are guessing, but maybe there's not so much guessing. We will see what happens pretty soon. A lot of people are guessing, but maybe there's not so much guessing. We will see what happens with Iran.

So let's see what happens. We'll see what happens. It's going to be a very close vote. And I think something can happen. We'll see what happens, but something will happen. We'll see what happens. We have a big court case. We're well represented and we're going to see what happens.

And we'll see what happens. OK, well, we know something will happen. The remarkable thing is the just sheer number of things that he says we will see what happens. And sometimes it's sort of like it seems like a veiled threat. Sometimes it kind of seems like he has no idea what's going to happen. Sometimes he seems to know what is going to happen. But he's just saying, like, stay tuned until after the commercial break. Find out who gets fired. It would be a great threat, though, to pull off with your kids if you did something ominous

like that. And you're like, you know what? We'll see what happens. We'll just we'll just we'll just see what happens. OK. Remember when I was little, my parents would always say, we'll see when you ask something. And I was like, we'll see just means no. Well, you usually did. When it comes to

the Iran nuclear deal and some other things and Paris climate accord. Yeah, it just means no. All right. That is a wrap for this week. We'll be back in your feed soon. Keep up with our coverage on NPR.org, NPR Politics on Facebook and, of course, on your local public radio station. Chicago, we're coming this weekend. And there are still some tickets left this Sunday, October 22nd at the Athenaeum Theater. For tickets and more information, go to wbez.org slash events. We're all really looking forward to meeting you and seeing you and talking at you from a stage. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor.

And you know what, Tam? We'll see what happens. We know this. Something will happen. Something will have happened by the time you listen to this podcast. And we'll be there to cover it. That much we know. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.