The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, October 5

Episode Date: October 5, 2017

In the aftermath of the massacre in Las Vegas, there seems to be one narrow area of possible consensus emerging on gun control: regulating or banning bump stocks. Two weeks after Hurricane Maria, the majority of Puerto Rico is still without power and drinking water. And Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a press conference to address reports he called President Trump a moron and considered resigning. This episode: host/White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Scott Detrow, political reporter Danielle Kurtzleben and editor correspondent Ron Elving. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hey, I'm Kelly McEvers, and Embedded is back. President Donald Trump has no record of public service, but he does have a record in business and on TV. In our latest round of stories, we introduce you to the people who were there as he built an empire and a name. Listen on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Mike Hanson, recording this in London in the studios of another great public broadcasting institution, the British Broadcasting Corporation. This podcast was recorded at 1247 p.m. on Thursday, October 5th. Things might have, let's face it, things will have changed by the time you hear this. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage at npr.org,

on the NPR One app, and on 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. In the aftermath of the massacre in Las Vegas, there seems to be one narrow area of possible consensus emerging on gun control. In Puerto Rico, the majority of the island is still without power and drinking water more than two weeks after Hurricane Maria. President Trump went there this week and gave the federal response glowing reviews. In Texas and in Florida, we get an A-plus. And I'll tell you what, I think we've done just as good in Puerto Rico,

and it's actually a much tougher situation. And Secretary of State Rex Tillerson held a rare press conference yesterday to say he isn't resigning and hadn't considered it. Yep, that's where we are. And finally, can't let it go. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Ron Elving, editor correspondent. Okay, let's start with Las Vegas. The president and

first lady traveled there yesterday and met with survivors of the shooting, met with medical professionals and first responders, police and firefighters, paramedics, as well as civilians who jumped into the fray and were out there trying to rescue people. I was there on that trip as part of the pool that was following President Trump as he went to these various events. And one of the things we asked him is what message he had for survivors of this shooting. Well, I think the only message I can say is that we're with you 100 percent. We are. In fact, I invited a lot of them over to the White House. I said, have you ever heard Washington come on over to the Oval Office? And they're all saying, we want to do it. How do we do it? And believe me, I'll be there for them. But the message that I have is we have a great country and we are there for you. And and they're there for us. Actually, the White House press secretary, Sarah Sanders, later was telling us that he really did invite basically everyone he met to the White House,

like medical professionals, survivors, everybody. And she's pretty sure at some point there's gonna be a whole lot of people coming to visit the White House. This was President Trump in the position of being consoler in chief? It's a role that other presidents have played, too. You know, you had Bill Clinton after Columbine, George W. Bush after Virginia Tech, President Obama after Aurora and Sandy Hook and the Pulse nightclub shooting. And President Trump now joining that sort of grim ritual of going to a place that has been through a terrible trauma. In the months ahead, we will all have to wrestle with the horror of what has unfolded this week.

But we will struggle through it together. We will endure the pain together and we will overcome together as Americans. Ron, what is your reflection on this? Here's a thought. The president is really the national first responder. He is the person who is called upon to speak to the tragedy in moments such as this, as no one else really can or could be called upon to do. David Shribman basically said that in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this week, a longtime political observer and writer before he was editor of that newspaper.

The president has this responsibility. And in this particular instance, the president had the right words to say. He had good words to say. He was there. He was empathetic. He was present in the moment. And he played the first responder well. He was very somber, very focused on the victims and also on the first responders who he said the world was watching, that they were heroes, that it was a miracle, that they got there soon enough that they saved lives. Right. And I mean, what's really kind of stunning to me, if a bit obvious, after any of these mass shootings, and the fact that I have to say any of these mass shootings is in and of itself really kind of horrific, is that these all bring everybody, I mean, a very polarized country,

into one spot, which is it is uniformly seen as a terrible event that happened. Everybody looks at it and goes, yes, absolutely, this is a tragedy. And then everybody immediately starts running in different directions because everybody has different points of view on guns. I mean, Americans have drastically different points of view on guns. And the way that we look at them, whether it's, you know, as a hobby or as machines of death, depends on where you stand. And so then that second step after any mass shooting really is the big one that exposes, you know, all of the divides in America. One element of the president's performance in Las Vegas was that he did not go into any kind of a tirade or a diatribe about foreign terrorism. There does not seem to be a foreign terrorism component in this tragedy. He did not go on about any kind of a policy issue. He did not

try to make this into something of a political moment. But of course, as Daniel says, many others will. How can you not? If you have a strong feeling about the issue of guns and their availability, here we have an individual who had scores of guns, who brought many, many, many guns to this hotel suite from which he was going to spring this ambush, who was apparently on some kind of bizarre buying binge in terms of not only semi-automatic weapons, but as we'll talk about, weapons that could be modified in such a way in their using that they could be considered fully automatic. That kind of behavior is exactly what makes people who are gun control advocates crazy to somehow get people's attention about regulating these firearms. And the other thing that is unique about this moment is that we are four days out from this

shooting. And at the time of the taping of this podcast, there is no sense of the motive. There is no explanation. There is, you know, it isn't foreign terrorism. So you can't blame that. There is no at the at the current time, no obvious signs of mental illness, you know, aside from the choice to kill 59 people, including himself. So there isn't something for people to key in on. Which makes it kind of harder to deal with. I sometimes find in situations like this, like I just have a gut reaction of frustration and anger often when you find out that the shooter has killed him or herself and you just never are going to understand what actually happened.

I don't know if that's rational or not, but that's just a gut feeling that I get in situations like this. It really is rational because, I mean, if you can't find a cause, then there's no way to point to a solution at all. I mean, there are a few things you can draw from this, but one of them is that, like, you will never pick out the shooter beforehand, and then what do you do? How do you stop it? Of course, and plenty of people have ideas on how to stop it. And that is deal with the guns, which we will get to that. But as far as stop the shooters themselves, who knows? This gives you, it can really impart a pretty hopeless feeling. So yeah, that does sound rational. And at the same time, the Dillon Roof

trial certainly did not give us any more answers than we had than some of these other shootings. Even when there's an explanation, it's not ever going to be satisfying. Right. This kind of it's always going to be senseless. It is senseless, even if there is some sort of motive or explanation. So President Trump, you know, after after talking about the victims that he met and he stayed longer at the hospital than he was planning to, met more survivors and families than he had been scheduled to meet.

In this Q&A with reporters afterwards, one of the reporters brought up policy. Like, where do we go from here? Does America have a gun violence problem? We're not going to talk about that today. We won't talk about that. Does America have a gun violence problem, he said. And President Trump says, we're not going to talk about that today. Which is a sort of common response after these shootings, especially from gun advocates.

You know, the idea of let's not talk about politics today is not politicize this. Let's save that for another day. approach to these moments for the National Rifle Association and other gun advocates, who basically just don't see any point in being out there and being fingered at a particular moment such as this. They would much rather wait for there to be some time, some healing, for another story to come along. And at that point, then they will begin again to make their case as they have so effectively in the past. So although the president and the White House may not be ready to have that conversation yet, that conversation, Scott, has begun on Capitol Hill and you're covering that. It has begun. And the fact that it has begun is kind of startling. Let's do this

chronologically. The shooting happens the next day. Myself and many other reporters are trying to get a sense of, will there be a conversation at all? You know, that was the question, because there hasn't really been a serious push at some sort of gun control in Congress since 2013 in the wake of the Sandy Hook shootings, when Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, and Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, teamed up to push for some minor changes, the most high profile of which would be expanding background checks to gun shows and internet sales of guns. That didn't pass. It got more than 50 votes in the Senate, but not the 60 it needed to clear a filibuster. And ever since then, conversations have just gone nowhere because there's a deep Republican resistance to pass any sort of gun

control measure. And that seemed to be where things were going to stay here. Dianne Feinstein yesterday morning, Wednesday morning, has a press conference rolling out a bill that would ban these bump stocks. This is an alteration to a rifle that allows it to fire almost as if it were an automatic weapon. And just given the fact that these conversations have gone nowhere at all, most of the questions came down to why do you have any hope that you would get any support on this measure, given the way things typically go with these conversations? After Columbine, I thought we would act. After Virginia Tech, I thought we would act. After Tucson, when one of our colleagues was shot in the head and nearly killed, I thought we would

act. After Aurora, that horrible thing in the movie theater, I thought we would act. And particularly after Sandy Hook, when 21st graders were slaughtered, I thought for sure we would act. After Orlando, I thought we would act. And now after Las Vegas, I hope senators will finally summon the political courage to stand up and say enough is enough. So what she is looking to do is to ban this thing called a bump stock or similar devices because there are a bunch of devices. And the gunmen in Las Vegas use them. What they do is they take a semi-automatic rifle. They use the energy of the recoil of the gun. So when it shoots, it pops back and it uses that energy to pull the trigger in rapid succession. Right. This sort of rapid burst that replicates the speed

of an actually automatic weapon. Right. And so, you know, sort of to tack on to that, the way it works is it attaches to, you know, what you might call the butt of the gun, the part of the gun that you would hold against your shoulder. And it allows it to sort of bump back and forth, hence bump stock. And what it sounds like, Scott, is there are some Republicans who are open to legislation about this, right? So, yeah, so that's where things were. This seemed like a proposal that a lot of Democrats would co-sponsor, and that would be the end of that. But then a couple hours after this press conference, there was a surprising break in that several Republicans said, yeah, this might make sense. One of them, Ron Johnson, a Senate Republican from Wisconsin, he said automatic weapons

are illegal. To me, this is part of that same type of process. So I have no problem banning those. You've heard other Republicans say this, too. I would caution that there is not exactly like a bipartisan swarm for this at the moment. There's a lot of just general confusion from Republicans saying they had never heard of these before and saying maybe it makes sense to have that conversation. So, yeah, there does seem to be a bit of a bipartisan opening here, but it's not like at this point in time, there's a bill that's going to be rushed to the floor in the coming weeks. One of those Republicans is House Speaker Paul Ryan, who was interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, the conservative talk show host, who also has a show on MSNBC.

John Cornyn has said he wants to have hearings on bump stocks, open to a vote. Are you open to a vote on bump stocks? Yeah, look, I don't even know what they were until this week. And I'm an avid sportsman. So I think we're quickly coming up to speed with what this is. Fully automatic weapons have been banned for a long time. Apparently, this allows you to take a semi-automatic, turn it into fully automatic. So clearly, that's something we need to look into. So here's the thing about bump stocks, which many of us had never heard of before this incident. Right.

Dianne Feinstein was asking, why would anybody want this? And the only reason to modify a gun is to kill as many people as possible in as short a time as possible. But there are other reasons for this. There are a lot of people who own semi-automatic weapons and who might be interested in having the opportunity to bump that up to a functioning automatic, even though it's not an automatic weapon in and of itself, for the same reasons that they own the gun in the first place. They like to go out and target shoot. They like to feel as though they have a powerful weapon to defend themselves. They want to go out with other people who have such guns and pursue it as a sport.

They are not intending to kill a lot of people as can be done with these bump stocks. So it's the same basic impulse only taken to a point that could be arguably portrayed as breaking the law. can suddenly get a consensus of a lot of people who would certainly not line up to ban semi-automatic weapons or guns in general, but who might be willing to say the bump stock makes it an automatic weapon, therefore it is now illegal. And automatic weapons, just Danielle, what is the law on automatic weapons? So you cannot buy or sell a new one right now. I mean, automatic weapons were banned in the United States in 1986. So if an automatic gun was made before the ban, it is still around in the United States. And you can still buy and sell those, you know, presumably, you know, in private sales, for example. At a very high price.

Right. I mean, so they, right. High price, definitely. They are pretty rare, but they are still around. However, you can't go to the store and buy an automatic weapon in America right now. And it seems as though there's not a lot of people that are anywhere arguing, yes, we should have automatic weapons. Right. This is another thing where there's such a state-to-state difference in laws and accessibility and things like this. I remember having a conversation with some Australians a couple of years ago, right on the border of California and Nevada. And they were visiting

and saying, hey, we really want to shoot some guns. I just came up to a conversation with them and said, we really want to shoot some guns and gun ranges. Any idea where to go? And I said, you might want to go east into Nevada for that, as opposed to west into California, because those are two states with polar opposite gun laws. And, you know, that's part of the gun control conversation, too. Absolutely. In this period of time where we've seen all these high profile mass shootings and nothing has happened federally, you've seen a ton of action on the state level in Democratic

controlled states. California, New York and Connecticut especially have passed really strict gun laws in the last decade on top of existing strict laws. But, you know, people say, hey, California passed all these laws on the books and San Bernardino happened there. So this is not necessarily a one to one solution to stopping this stuff from happening. Right. Which is a relatively black and white argument that is often brought out after a mass shooting like this. For example, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, when a reporter asked her in the press briefing, hey, so, you know, what is the president thinking of doing on gun control? Here's what she said. I think one of the things that we don't want to do is try to create laws that won't create or stop these types of things from happening. I think if you look to Chicago,

where you had over 4,000 victims of gun-related crimes last year, they have the strictest gun laws in the country. That certainly hasn't helped there. So I think we have to, when that time comes for those conversations to take place, then I think we need to look at things that may actually have that real impact. Right. So, I mean, like you were saying, Scott, California borders on Nevada. And, you know, as you guys may know, you can easily drive over a border without anything happening. So Chicago, likewise, borders on Indiana. Illinois has much tougher gun laws than Indiana does. Chicago isn't technically the strictest in the country, probably. But, you know, it's it is up there. This is true. So a lot of the guns that are used in crimes in Chicago come from Indiana. Wisconsin, likewise, is nearby. It also has looser gun laws. guns on a city, municipal level, or even a state level when it's so easy to cross between states

and from one suburb into the city. You have to do it on a federal level, which I assume is not what Sarah Sanders favors. Well, and she's also basically arguing that gun control doesn't work. I mean, that's her larger argument. And this was an argument that you heard following Sandy Hook, which was Democrats are proposing these gun controls, but the things that they're proposing wouldn't have prevented that attack. But here's the thing about that argument is we cannot know what is being prevented right now by current gun laws that are in place. So like, for example, if Illinois did not have tough gun laws, if criminals in Chicago did not have to cross into Indiana, for example, or go out in

suburbs or wherever to get their guns, then how many more shootings would there have been in Chicago? Would it have been more than 4,000? Perhaps. We don't know. But do you want to get rid of those gun laws and find out, I mean, is the big question here. One thing I do want to add on here, though, that I think is always important to remember when you're thinking about the gun debate in America is, in my head, I compare this to tax policy. When you hear Congress talking about tax policy, like, I do not strongly identify with my tax bracket. But Americans very, very strongly, many Americans, gun owners, strongly identify as gun owners. It is a part of their culture. It's who they are in their heads. So there is, for example, a very big rural-urban divide on this, which we have seen in many other

political contexts. One other thing that I found interesting is in a 2014 Pew report, 19% of Americans say they would be unhappy if someone in their immediate family married a gun owner. On the furthest liberal end of the spectrum, it was 31%. 31% of consistent liberals said it would make them unhappy if someone in their family married a gun owner, which just shows just how strongly people feel about this, that your son or daughter may have found everlasting happiness with a nice spouse, but they own a rifle. What do you do? You know.

So the bottom line on this is that it seems we are going to be shocked enough by Las Vegas as opposed to some of the other mass shootings that we have had. Which were pretty shocking. Which were terrible. But this one is apparently going to have some effect on Capitol Hill. It appears that there's already a consensus, not only the Speaker of the House, but also Mark Meadows of North Carolina, who heads up the House Freedom Caucus, have said they're open to the idea of considering some kind of limitation on these bump stocks. So that tells me, in some respect or another, the fix is in. This is going to be what Congress does. I don't know if I would bank on that just yet, though, because I did notice, even from yesterday to today, a softening of the Republican conversation on bump stocks from

we should get rid of them to today. It was by and large. I haven't heard about these before, and we need to look into it more. I think there's a possibility that some of this has already been discussed and that some of this has already been to some degree negotiated and adjudicated within conservative circles. And there will be opposition for certain, but it's a wonderful way to relieve the pressure and say we did something. An off ramp. An off ramp. And we're going to take our own off ramp right now.

We are taking a quick break. And when we come back, President Trump's visit to Puerto Rico. And what's up with Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State? Is it Rex-it or is it not? Support for NPR Politics also comes from Rocket Mortgage by Quicken Loans. Rocket Mortgage gives you confidence when it comes 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. Hey y'all, Sam Sanders here. Want to tell you about the only NPR show where you can hear about the latest White House drama and the return of TRL to MTV. The show is called It's Been a Minute. Every Friday, we catch up on the week of news and culture, everything. And every Tuesday, I sit down for some long interviews with authors, filmmakers, directors, and more.

You can find It's Been a Minute on the NPR One app or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. You know, the shooting in Las Vegas this weekend has largely overshadowed another major ongoing crisis in Puerto Rico. President Trump visited the island on Tuesday, just about two weeks after Hurricane Maria hit. Well, thank you very much. It was a great trip and a beautiful place. I've been to Puerto Rico many times, as I think most of you have known, and I've always loved it. And your weather is second to none, but every once in a while you get hit.

And you really got hit. There's no question about it. Hit with Hurricane Maria, which basically knocked out all the power on the island, all the communications and most of the drinking water. Still, about 90 percent of people on the island do not have power and about 45 percent are without drinking water. So that tape came from President Trump basically immediately after arriving in Puerto Rico, before he had seen any of the damage or met seen any of the damage or met with any of the residents who were coping with the aftermath of the storm. He basically sat

down for a briefing with first responders, FEMA, the military and local leaders. He said this. Now, I hate to tell you, Puerto Rico, but you've thrown our budget a little out of whack because we've spent a lot of money on Puerto Rico and that's fine. We've saved a lot of lives. If you look at the... Every death is a horror. But if you look at a real catastrophe like Katrina, and you look at the tremendous hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people that died,

and you look at what happened here with really a storm that was just totally overpowering. Nobody's ever seen anything like this. What is your death count as of this moment? He's asking the governor. 16 people certified. 16 people versus in the thousands. The certified death toll almost immediately after that went up to 34 and is expected to rise.

But President Trump seemed to be saying, hey, it could have been much, much worse. I mean, trying to put a silver lining on a situation that it seems pretty hard to put a silver lining onto. And of course, it was much worse on some parts of the island than on the part of the island that President Trump chose to visit and have his photo op. The idea of going there and telling people you should be proud, it could have been worse, telling people they have great weather except for that one unfortunate hurricane. This was not his finest hour as a first responder. He did much better in Las Vegas. He did better in terms of handling Houston and Florida. But he has seemed

off his game throughout the Puerto Rico crisis. And something that I think gets lost in a lot of this is that even before this hurricane hit, Puerto Rico was not having the sunniest time in the first place, right? They declared bankruptcy in May, or they declared a form of bankruptcy in May. They have been economically depressed for, I believe, a decade. I mean, they really have been having tough times. The Obama administration had even warned of some sort of a humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico if they did not get help with their debt. And now they have another humanitarian crisis happening right now that is much more imminent. So there was some pushback to the way that Trump repeatedly referenced those broader term problems on Twitter, among other places, in a way that he didn't with Texas or Florida. You know, Trump wasn't saying things are terrible in Houston, but man, they really should have had a plan for those refineries to deal with the hurricane.

Or they should have had better city planning. Right. Yeah. I mean, it seemed like he was adding on almost excuses for the challenges in a way that he didn't with the other hurricane responses. So after that first meeting, he went to a neighborhood and talked to some people who didn't have power. And then he went to the Calvary Chapel Church where people had shown up seeking relief. And he did this thing where he was like passing out relief, like I've got canned goods and then I've got paper towels. And he was like tossing the paper towels like you'd toss like a basketball sort of. They throw T-shirts at a ballgame where they shoot them out of a cannon so that everybody gets a souvenir T-shirt. It did seem a little off putting and inappropriate.

But this gets to something that we've talked about before on this podcast about President Trump, his sort of fundamental ideology of looking at the positive side. Now, there's some self-interest in looking at the positive side of the response to Hurricane Maria, given how poorly things went, especially in the early going. But President Trump is doing the power of positive thinking thing all over Puerto Rico. You guys are doing great. Everything's going to be great. You're going to recover. It's perfect. Everything's going to be great. One thing I think we have to remember is that this is deeply philosophical for Donald Trump. It goes all the way back to his youthful attachment to Norman Vincent Peale and his belief in the positive thinking. Exactly. And he really does try to put a happy face on virtually anything. I think we saw the limits

of that this week. But he certainly was still trying to do that, even in the face of disaster in Puerto Rico. There was another person putting on a happy face this week, Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, yesterday holds this press conference. It's sort of like a press conference that was not expected, came out of nowhere. And all of a sudden, all of cable was focused on the empty lectern waiting for Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State, to come out. Now, why did Rex Tillerson feel that he needed to call a press conference? Well, because there was an NBC article that went around that said, among other things, that Tillerson had considered resigning over the summer and had to be talked out of it, and that he had called the president of the United States a moron. And Rex Tillerson came out to that lectern and explained that he supported

the president, agreed with the president's approach to foreign policy, that there wasn't any daylight between them. Everything was fine. And the focus on the coverage was he didn't deny calling him a moron. You addressed the main headline of this story that you called the president a moron. And if not, where do you think these reports are? I'm not going to deal with petty stuff like that. I mean, this is what I don't understand about Washington. Again, you know, I'm not from this place, but the places I come from, we don't deal with that kind of petty nonsense. And it is intended to do nothing but divide people. There's a lot to talk about here. This reported friction between the Secretary of State and the President and the Secretary of State allegedly having major concerns about the

President's knowledge of foreign policy is a huge topic. But just right here, I think that one reason Rex Tillerson has really struggled at Secretary of State is his perception of the importance of public engagement in that position. Clearly, any politician would know giving a statement, you're going to be asked, did you call the president a moron? And the fact that he chose not to answer left the perception that he wasn't saying it was wrong. Now, later, a spokeswoman said he didn't call the president a moron, but it seems like he might not have thought if I do A, then B will happen. And if I do B, then C will happen, which is a big part of press relations. I mean, I feel like I can see the calculus And if I do B, then C will happen, which is a big part of press relations.

I mean, I feel like I can see the calculus he made in his head, right? I mean, just I'm not going to dignify this. I'm going to try to make. I don't know. I just feel like saying I did not call the president a moron is one hell of a quote to have. That's true. Also, that's true. I mean, I guess he could have. I guess he could have.

Nixon was saying he wasn't a crook. What's the problem? How about saying how about just saying, no, I did not. Right. No, I did not. But I mean, but he didn't. But he didn't. And there may be a reason for that. I mean, there was already sort of a running storyline of there being friction between Rex Tillerson and the White House. Correct. Oh, long standing. I mean, this term Rexit is not a new term that I invented today. Right. Right. It's the idea that Rex might exit at any moment. Right, absolutely.

And forgive me, but when this blew up... I forgive you. Thank you. I kind of shrugged a little bit. I don't know. The fact that a few months ago he thought about quitting and he didn't, and that he insulted the president. I mean, that it took over the news cycle for as long as it did.

Am I crazy that I think this is a little bit too overblown? I get what you're saying, but I think it's newsy in that it shows that even if Tillerson is lobbying behind the scenes, maybe it doesn't matter if their relationship is that fraught. The president watched the press conference on Air Force One. And then in Las Vegas, reporters, we asked him about it. Yeah, I'm very honored by his comments. It was fake news. It was a totally phony story. Thank you very much. It was made up. It was made up by NBC. They just made it up. Thank you all. Thank you. Total confidence in Rex. I have total confidence. Thank you very much, everybody.

And two things here. One, we should point out NBC says it sticks by its reporting. But two, Tam, do you remember last week on the podcast when we were talking about Bob Corker, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair, how he's going to not run for reelection and said that that would free him up to be more independent? I think I know where you're going with this. He is flexing those independent muscles, having a bit of a Bulworth moment in the Senate. I mean, Corker has been a pretty blunt critic of some aspects of the Trump administration for a while this year. But he raised eyebrows is the way that people always write about it in stories.

But he got the attention of a lot of reporters when he talked about the role that he thinks Tillerson plays within the Trump administration. I think Secretary Tillerson, Secretary Mattis, and Chief of Staff Kelly are those people that help separate our country from chaos. And I support them very much. So wait, that's fire. So if he's saying those people are separating the country from chaos. Who's chaos? Scott, I want to take us back to last week's podcast as well. We were talking about the Health and Human Services Secretary, Tom Price.

Yes. That was your can't let it go. Flying on private jets to get to events. And something changed by the time people listen to that podcast. Indeed, something did change. And then the next day, something really changed because the president was asked whether he had confidence in Tom Price and did not give such a strong answer. Tom Price resigned Friday afternoon. And this brings us to another idea that we just have to consider here, which is that there are now two empty seats on President Trump's cabinet. You have the Homeland Security Secretary. It used to be General John Kelly. Now he had to move into the position of chief of staff. And now you also have

the empty position of health and human services secretary. Those are two significant positions at a significant time that now have interim people in the post. These will require Senate confirmation. And oh, guess what? The president hasn't even nominated replacements yet. Right. And Homeland Security is in charge of FEMA. We just went through this horrific stretch of hurricanes without a Homeland Security secretary. Yeah. And open enrollment for Obamacare or for the Affordable Care Act plans starts November 1st. And although the website will be down during large chunks of time, as the HHS department announced a few weeks ago. There

could be some troubles for people signing up. I mean, we are only 10 months into this administration. Not even 10. Right. Not even 10. It's nine. And you already have two cabinet positions that have been filled and need to be filled again. And everyone is talking about how long Secretary of State Rex Tillerson will actually stay on the job. Right. And we have to say that this year of the Trump presidency has posed a lot of problems and question marks for foreign leaders all over the world trying to figure out what the

new footing is. Where is the United States? Are we excited about being in NATO or are we making noises about getting out of NATO? What exactly is our policy with Korea? What exactly is our policy with China? A lot of question marks about Russia. So in that moment, you look to the Secretary of State to give you a solid footing to say this is where the United States is. And I'm going to be the Secretary of State indefinitely so you can rely on me. But there's no sense that Rex Tillerson speaks for President Trump. Not anymore. Evidenced by tweets at various times. And Jared Kushner meeting with world

leaders and not seeming to tell Rex Tillerson. And let's remember that all of this was prompted by a tweet from Donald Trump a week ago or last weekend, we should say, in which he responded to Rex Tillerson saying we were talking to North Korea, that we had opened lines of communication with him by saying, don't bother, Rex. Don't waste your time. We'll take care of it. We don't really need any of that diplomacy. We're going to do the right thing. Don't worry about it. Let's also look at these two holes in Trump's cabinet, HHS and Homeland Security. These are departments that are central to the kinds of policies that Trump is trying to implement. I mean, things he's trying to do. HHS, by the way, is in charge of health care, as we all

know. And, you know, this president really, really, really wants to dismantle Obamacare. So aside from just the whole rigmarole of having to nominate people and all the time that that takes up, he's nominating people to departments that really matter to this president. You know, he doesn't have any major HUD policies that he's pushing, but he's pushing a lot of health care and a lot of immigration stuff. All right. And coming up, can't let it go. But first, a break. Support for this podcast and the following message come from ZipRecruiter. ZipRecruiter is committed to helping employers build great companies by making it easy to find and hire top talent. Using advanced matching technology, ZipRecruiter actively connects employers with qualified candidates in any

city or industry nationwide. In fact, 80% of jobs on ZipRecruiter get a qualified candidate in just one day. Try it for free. Go to ZipRecruiter.com slash weekly. And now it's time to end the show as we always do with Can't Let It Go. When we all share one thing, we can't stop thinking about politics or otherwise. But first, real quick before we do that, we want to tell you about a podcast some colleagues of ours here at NPR are working on. It's called Embedded. Their new season is out today. It's a five episode series all about what President Trump and his closest advisors were doing before they got to the White House. Because when you think about it, President Trump is in this unique position of having lived his life in front of cameras and microphones for decades before he

ever got into politics. So the Embedded crew has done a ton of detailed reporting to uncover some stories from those days, including his time on The Apprentice, for instance. Don't want to spoil anything, but it's definitely worth a listen. So check out Embedded wherever you get your podcasts or on the NPR One app. And now, no more false starts. It really is time for Can't Let It Go. Danielle, what can't you let go of? All right. So here's what I can't let go this week. What I can't let go are 12 magical minutes on NPR's Facebook account this week. Twelve magical minutes when America was introduced, not America, the world. The world was introduced to Ramona. One of our NPR editors, Christopher Hopkins, you know, did something that those of us with the keys to a public Twitter account, you know, or a Facebook

account, all fear, and accidentally posted something personal on the NPR account. However, this is the best possible social media fail I think that one can imagine. So here's what he wrote. He was writing about his very young, his toddler, I believe, daughter named Ramona. He wrote, Ramona is given new toy. Smiles, examines for 20 seconds, discards. Ramona gets a hug, hug acquiesces momentarily squirms to be put down ramona sees three cats 30 feet away immediately possessed by shrieking spasmodic joy that continues after cats flee for their lives like which is amusing enough i imagine if you're on if you see this whiz by in your feed from chris hopkins but when you see it whiz by from npr like

the big official nPR Facebook account. It gives it the weight of a cabinet announcement or something. It's imprimatur. We lend our imprimatur. Yeah, and so, you know, NPR seemed to take it a good stride. We put up a blog post about it. But what really made me happy about this was, aside from, you know, a small child shrieking at cats, is that, like,

think about terrible social media fails you've seen. Like, Ask J.P. Morgan back in 2013 and, like, all the other terrible ones. This, no consequences, no one hurt, no one offended. Well, Ramona was suddenly trending. She was a star. And people were like, who is Ramona? Is Ramona human or is Ramona cat? I don't understand that.

How did you get that she, how do you get from that that she's a cat? She could have been a cat. She could have been a cat. She could have been a goldfish. It could have been some sort of bot that was actually invading our cyberspace and forcing us to watch this and giving us a completely wrong impression of life in America. Anyway, there was a lot of darkness and this was some light. It really was. So that is what I can't let go. Good job, NPR.

But as official NPR, we apologize for any cuteness. True. Totally true. Can't have any cuteness. Any cuteness or amusement is unintentional. Scott Detrow, what can't you let go of? All right. So this actually just happened over the last 40 minutes.

I can't let it go. So I'll stick with that for this, especially given the topic of the news this week. A little bit ironically, we ended the podcast last week with a really nice moment in the Capitol where Majority Whip Steve Scalise came back for the first time since nearly being killed in the last high profile mass shooting. That was when a gunman attacked congressional Republicans on a baseball field in June. So it was a really great moment. He walked across part of the Capitol. He spoke in front of the House. He's now back full time, but he is mostly getting around on a scooter,

which a scooter has been equipped with LSU bumper stickers and a little Vanity Louisiana license plate like you have for little kids and their bicycles. But he I was standing in the hallway waiting to do interviews. And Steve Scalise went roaring by on the scooter at top speed with a huge grin on his face, looking like he was loving the scooter. And he has a security detail. And they were basically they were almost it was like a power walk, almost a jog, jogging alongside it like like the Secret Service jogs alongside the president's limousine. And he looked like he was having so much fun on the scooter. It was it was something that made me laugh in the middle of covering yet another ongoing upsetting story. That's very. Yeah, it's fun. Although it makes it harder for you to catch up with him if you need to ask him a question. I guess if you're a politician, that's another benefit. You can

outrun the reporters trying to get a quote from you. Ron. The national pastime, Tamara. The national pastime is still baseball, even if football and maybe basketball are more popular. It's still the national pastime. It's a very traditional time of year, October. We have finally gotten to October, which is the time when we have the Fall Classic, the World Series. But first, now, we have the NLDS and the ALDS and then the Championship Series in both leagues. And so it's very exciting. We've got a lot of traditional teams in the World Series hunt this year. We've got the New York Yankees who won their wildcard game. Yeah, they did. Scott, are you a Yankee fan? I'm not going to stomp on your can't let it go, but I have some follow-up thoughts once you're done, Ron. Danielle, you seem a little upset about this victory. I mean,

insofar as I care about a sports team, I care about the Minnesota Twins. Well, sorry. You sound sorry. You sound super sorry. Reclaiming my time, this is my Can't Let It Go. The New York Yankees. We also have the Dodgers. Now, I didn't say Los Angeles Dodgers, but if you really want to be a World Series fan, you have to go back to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Oh, come on. So anyway, I'm just saying we've got the classic teams. You're not that old, Ron.

I do remember the Brooklyn Dodgers. I'm sorry. And we have another classic team here. We have the Chicago Cubs, who are not what you would call a fixture in October baseball, but they did win the World Series last year. And that other team that was built on the basis of cybermetrics by Theo Epstein, the Red Sox, are also in the hunt. And then the Cleveland Indians, who are a classic baseball contender as well, although usually a bridesmaid. This could be their year. They're looking very strong. And then a couple of Sunbelt teams in the Houston Astros and the Diamondbacks

from Arizona. And finally, finally, and finally, my new favorite team, since they've only been around since 2005, the Washington Nationals. And I'm a lifelong Cubs fan and they're playing the Nationals. So this is either the worst of all worlds or the best of all worlds. I think I'll go with the positive and say, what a fabulous game to go see. It's the Ron series. Exactly. Tam, what can you not let go of?

Arnold Schwarzenegger. Nice. Very nice. I don't know. Not bad. Very nice. I don't know. Not bad. The governor was here in Washington, D.C. this week. He spoke on the steps of the Supreme Court. The court was hearing a case related to partisan gerrymandering in Wisconsin.

Very interesting case. But the fun part is that Arnold Schwarzenegger was there to argue against partisan gerrymandering, at least on the steps of the Supreme Court, in the way that only Arnold Schwarzenegger can. So I say it is time to say hasta la vista to gerrymandering. And it is time to terminate g cherrymandering. Thank you very much. Tam, I have a question for you about this. Yes. This is kind of his his M.O. as governor. You you got to cover him as governor. I didn't roll into Sacramento until post Arnold days.

Did that ever get old? Because I feel like maybe it got old. But to me, I would have been laughing at movie references in year seven of his governorship. So I covered him even in his campaign to be governor during the recall. And he was like, we are going to terminate the car tax. I mean, there were so many movie lines that were part of every campaign speech. And then he came- It's not a tumor. It's a bad proposal.

I don't know if he did that ever. But I think there was even at times a reference to like Kindergarten Cop. Nobody saw Kindergarten Cop. What? I did. Are you kidding me? Oh, really? Kindergarten Cop is great. It's a classic.

Someone needs to take you by the hand when you go in a theater complex. Oh, see, Ron, you have just been overruled by three people. Maybe we can go to a Brooklyn Dodgers game later. Oh, good lord. I think that's the podcast for today. And we will 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. Some member of our team is always on Up First, the podcast produced by Morning Edition every weekday morning. And for those of you in Chicago, we are coming to town and we would love to see you. We'll be live at the Athenaeum Theater on Sunday, October 22nd.

For tickets and more information, go to wbez.org slash events. And that's not all, folks. Tell us more, Tam. We will also be doing another live show in D.C. at the Warner Theater in January. You can find tickets for that. It's in partnership with our local station here, WAMU. Tickets are available at nprpresentsalloneword.org. I'm Tamara Keith.

I cover the White House for NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben, political reporter. And I'm Ron Elbing, editor-correspondent. Thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.