The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, September 6

Episode Date: September 6, 2018

The White House has denounced a scathing op-ed column about the president in the New York Times that is allegedly written by a senior official in the Trump administration. And, on the third day of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation hearing, Democrats attempt to release classified documents. This episode: Congressional correspondent Scott Detrow, national political correspondent Mara Liasson, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, White House correspondent Scott Horsley, 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

Hi, this is Mr. Benson on the first day of chemistry class at Stevens Point, Wisconsin High School. I'm here with my second hour class, Hey, I'm ER! where we just finished a discussion on the importance of finding reliable sources of credible information. This podcast was recorded at... There's deep irony here because I almost failed high school chemistry. It is 304 Eastern on Thursday, September 6th. Things may have changed by the time you hear it.

All right, here's the show and... Go Panders! That's great. It was my two-year-old's first day of nursery school. Oh man, chemistry class is just around the corner. Exactly. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast, here with our weekly roundup of the week's biggest political stories. We've been following Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh's hearings all week. In the middle of all that, a senior official in the Trump administration, that's how this person is being referred to by the New York Times, published an op-ed in the paper, scathingly critiquing the president and saying people are working from within the administration to contain President Trump. I'm Scott Detrow, I cover Congress.

I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent. I'm Aisha Roscoe, I cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. So we got to walk through step by step this op-ed, but does this take the award so far for the most out there shocking story that has suddenly happened? Or is that still up in the air? I mean, there's a lot of contenders, but this is in the conversation.

Well, maybe that has suddenly happened. I mean, I don't know about last week. It's up there. I think it's hard with this time that we're in to kind of say. I think we're going to have to rank those at the end of all this, whatever point in the future, with some distance. You know, it's really unusual. I mean, it's not something that's ever been done before where you have an administration official, a senior administration official. Even though I know there are many of them within the administration, we have no clues about this, right? We have no idea if this is someone who works directly with

the president in the White House. We have no idea if this is somebody who works at one of the multitude of agencies around the city. The thing about this is it was a surprise. In other words, people have known that Michael Cohen was being looked at by investigators. People knew Bob Woodward was writing a book. Nobody knew this was going to happen yesterday. But it is of a piece with the narrative that is forming around the Trump presidency. There was a joke early on in the Trump administration about the so-called Committee to Save America, these top administration officials who are going to make sure that Donald Trump didn't start World War III or something like that. The Woodward book mines these same themes. So the content wasn't surprising. The format and the timing was. And we should say the Bob Woodward book is called Fear. It's supposed to be out next week. And it's basically a look at the Trump White House the first month, year and a half or so. It's supposed to be based on interviews with people within the West Wing and former officials. It's in line with the op-ed, basically, that certain people would try to steal documents off of President Trump's desk to make sure he wouldn't kill the NAFTA deal

or kill the trade agreement with South Korea. So it's all in line. Let's take a step back because as we're recording, this has been out for about a day now, but just to give the full context, Wednesday evening, the New York Times suddenly publishes this opinion piece by an anonymous author who is characterized as a senior official in the Trump administration. Let's all pick a section of this op-ed and read it out loud just to get the context of it. I'll start off. They go through the problems President Trump is facing. The dilemma, which he does not fully grasp, is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently

from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations. I would know I am one of them. Well, just picking up on that self-serving theme here, one of the reactions to the op-ed, of course, has been how self-serving it was. Kind of, you know, don't worry, conservatives, we've got the mad king under control and you'll still get your conservative judges and tax cuts. So in that line, my favorite section was this. The erotic behavior would be more concerning if it weren't for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Like me. Like me. Some of his, we're annotating it. Well, they're unsung because they're anonymous. Yeah, well, they're not anonymous anymore. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media, but in private, they've gone to great

lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the White House, though clearly they're not always successful. It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era. Ooh, a lot of alliteration. What did they used to say about that? Alliteration is the sign of a small mind. But Americans should know that there are adults in the room. So this is just full of self-serving cliches. Though it does have some pretty harsh characterizations, especially coming from an ally of President Trump.ving cliches. Though it does have some pretty harsh

characterizations, especially coming from an ally of President Trump. Well, supposedly. When I read this, I could only think of certain, I was trying to think

of adjectives when I was kind of writing this up. And all I could think is that this is really damning. This was a scathing assessment of President Trump. So this struck me,

this sentence. The root of the problem is the president's amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not more to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making. So you're saying that the president, the person who you work for, is amoral. And anti-democratic. And unstable. And erratic. Yeah, I mean, that amorality line was definitely one that really stood out, I thought. The other part of it that stood out to me when I was reading it was how much this person talked about John McCain and seemed to kind of come from the establishment Republican doctrinaire class. He writes, he or she writes, Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter.

All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation. And goes on to say, we may no longer have Senator McCain, but we will always have his example, a Lode star for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. If that wasn't a finger right in the eye of Donald Trump, I don't know what is. That was designed to get his goat. Well, if you don't know what that was, the next sentence was, Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them. So if they didn't get the message the first time. They drove it home then. They drove it home. And the New York Times has indicated that this was in the works before the cycle of revelations from Bob Woodward's book. So I wonder if the McCain funeral proceedings were what triggered this, because it didn't seem to be stories about

a dysfunctional White House coming out in a new Bob Woodward book. I wanted to linger for a second on that word lodestar because that sent the Internet on fire with suspecting who it might be. And a lot of people pointed to Mike Pence, the vice president, because it's a word that he's happened to use in public before. So people were cross checking that word with various senior administration official speeches. I didn't realize this was an uncommon word. So I went to NPR.org, typed in Lodestar. One person who appears on our podcast semi-regularly has had this word pop up in multiple stories.

Do you guys want to guess who has written Lodestar more than any of us? Ron Elvin. Ron Elvin. Yeah, yeah. So, okay. Ron has used Lodestar, so maybe it's him. But, you know, this is part of the game, right?

I mean, people are just cross-checking. They're trying to see. There are no clues within this article about exactly who this person would be. And the Times has been very careful not to give anything away on who this individual is. But you can pretty much guarantee that people are trying to root them out, not only people who are reporters, but within the White House. There have been reports of the president, you know, kind of in a mode here where they're trying to root out not only who the person is who wrote

this, but as Aisha alluded to, who were the sources in the Woodward book? The president tweeted, he said, for national security purposes, the New York Times should identify this person and hand him over to the government right away. So it's so interesting how this story has basically underlined everything we already knew about reporting what life in the White House is like. We already know that Donald Trump's instincts around the rule of law are generally to see it as rule of man. In other words, this follows by just days him excoriating Jeff Sessions as attorney general and saying he shouldn't be investigating Republican congressmen before the midterm elections. Let me push back on all of this. And I'm interested what all of you have to say on

this, because obviously there are really damning details here. This op-ed mentions at one point that staffers talked about invoking the 25th Amendment, where the cabinet can remove the president of the United States. But couldn't you argue that this is a great development for President Trump in the way that he likes to frame things, in the way that he likes to rally his supporters? He constantly says the deep state is out to get him. He constantly says the media is out to get him. And here, an anonymous person within his administration writes in The New York Times, of all places, that they're trying to undermine him. Well, you know, this is why you have seen criticisms of this op-ed from people who are against Donald Trump. As a matter of fact, I had a White House official say to me today, you can't call him paranoid anymore. You know, the phrase even paranoids have enemies.

Well, this just totally corroborates his feeling that everyone in Washington is out to get him. And if the purpose of these patriotic, whatever he called it in the op ed, steady staters was to save the country, the result could be that they, yes, unsung heroes, the result could be that they just make the president more angry and paranoid exactly the behavior they? Were they trying to stick a thumb in Trump's eye and say, we're here, putting it out to the newspaper that Trump loves and hates the most with the biggest platform in the entire country? What is the point? You know, what is it that this person's trying to accomplish? Couldn't it just sort of make Trump even more, you know, emotive? Is this intended to provoke him, I wonder? Yeah. And, you know, one of the other theories was that it's a message to Republicans. Don't worry, you don't have to abandon ship. We've got the mad king under control. You're still going to get your tax cuts and your conservative judges. Since we don't know the person's motives, I think that what we can say is that this makes President Trump's management style, whatever it is, something's

not working right. Not when you have people talking to Bob Woodward about taking documents off desks, when you have someone writing an op-ed saying you're amoral and you don't know who it is. So the president of the United States, you're supposed to be leading the executive branch and the Department of Defense, and you're supposed to be able to track down terrorists and do all these things, and you have people in your own ranks who you don't know what they're writing,

what they're talking, whether they're working against you. It's the quote that Reince Priebus had in this Woodward book. When you put a snake and a rat and a falcon and a rabbit and a shark and a seal in a zoo without walls, things start getting nasty and bloody. But what happens to the snake and the falcon and the shark in round two?

That's what I want to know. The question is what happens after this? Where do we go from here? And how can, President, if they don't find out soon who this person is, how do you function knowing that someone within your ranks was able to do this and get away with it? And does it embolden other people within the administration who may feel like they can undermine the president

to do more stuff like this? I have one last thing I want to flag, and then I have one last question for Mara on all this. But I think this kind of funny outcome of this is that it's almost like a who's who in Washington now of not just guessing, but people feeling the need to say, you know, it wasn't me. I don't know what to do. So it wasn't you. All right.

Oh, that was definitely the headline today. The headline today was, it wasn't me. And I'll tell you something. Ben Carson wants you to know he did not write it. If you look at the list, CNN has compiled the list of people who issued statements saying it wasn't them. It wasn't me. For the of people who issued statements saying it wasn't them. Dan Coats, Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Pompeo, Jim Mattis, Ben Carson, Steve Mnuchin, Nikki Haley. I mean, it goes on and on. Perry, Perry, Perdue, Wilkie, Mulvaney, Sessions.

It's incredible. But also, do we know that those people are telling the truth? No, we don't. If you were the writer, would you admit it? Would you say it's true? You'd say that person should be fired. They shouldn't even be part of this administration anymore. They're a coward. And this administration has leaked very badly. So this has been an administration where people

are known for stabbing each other in the back and going after each other. So this is kind of par for that course. So Mara, here's the question I had for you. You've covered several administrations that have been knocked on their heels by a Bob Woodward book. Certainly the details in this one are beyond some of the previous details. But have you ever covered anything like this? No, but you can say that every single day in the Trump administration. It's a good question, though, each time it happens. No, no. And as a matter of fact, today I felt that the White House was pretty tense and unhappy, but it's often that way. And there is a kind of battle weariness where people were saying, look,

this might be a new forum, but this kind of thing has been covered by anonymous quotes in 10 or 15 New York Times articles. So, you know, it was ever thus. And I'll tell you something. I mean, we talked about how this just underlines all the themes we already know about the Trump White House. The other thing it underlines is that for a president who prizes loyalty to him above all, he has had a lot of betrayals in a very short period of time. Michael Cohen, Omarosa, the Woodward sources, and now this op-ed. Who can he trust? Ivanka? Jared Kushner? What if it was Ivanka

or Jared? That would be the twist. She hasn't put out a statement. She hasn't. We will certainly be following up on this if anything new comes out. But we're going to take a quick break and we're going to come back and get to that other story that, you know, could affect the United States for the next 40 years or so. The ongoing confirmation hearings of Judge Brett Kavanaugh. days while you shop. To get started, go to rocketmortgage.com slash NPR politics. Rate shield approval only valid on certain 30-year purchase transactions. Additional conditions or exclusions may apply. Based on Quicken Loans data in comparison to public data records, equal housing lender, licensed in all 50 states. NMLSconsumeraccess.org number 3030. Support also comes from ZipRecruiter.

Hiring is challenging, but ZipRecruiter can make it simple, smart, and fast. ZipRecruiter sends your job to over 100 job boards with one click. Then it scans thousands of resumes to find people with the right experience and invites them to apply to your job. Try it for free at ziprecruiter.com slash weekly. ZipRecruiter, the smartest way to hire. Sam Sanders here. You listen to my friends here on the Politics Podcast, which means that you know covering the White House has maybe never been more interesting. This week on my show, I sit down with two White House reporters to hear them reflect on all of that. Join us on It's Been a Minute from NPR. And we are back, and the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings have been ongoing today.

Domenico, Scott, you two have been keeping an especially close eye on these hearings. Let's pick up with something that was pretty dramatic, and it was pretty confusing this morning. New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker and other Democrats have been frustrated all week with these documents that they haven't been able to see or documents that they've been able to see but have been remained classified within the committee. They decided to just change that themselves. What happened? That's right. And the story picked up this morning pretty close to where it left off last night. Senator Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, had been quizzing Judge Kavanaugh about some emails that he had written and also replied to when he was working in the Bush White House back in the last decade.

And while he was doing this, Republicans kept jumping in and saying, well, why don't you show the judge the email? So he's not having to sort of respond to this blindly. And Cory Booker didn't do that at the time because this is one of those documents that was turned over to the committee in sort of a confidential batch that senators were allowed to look at, but were not allowed to share with the public. And that sort of stood during the night. And when the hearing opened this morning, the Democrats, beginning with Booker, were really in open revolt about this. These restrictions on the documents have been a source of frustration to them for throughout the hearing and even before that. And it kind of boiled over this morning. Sir, I come from a long line, as all of us do as Americans, and understand what that kind of civil disobedience is and I understand the consequences. So I am right now, before your process is finished,

I'm going to release the email about racial profiling. And I understand that the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate. And then you had other Democrats jumping in and saying, well, we're going to release documents too. We're all going to take the plunge and we're just going to ignore these rules that we've been so frustrated by. I concur with what you are doing. And let's jump into this pit together. I hope my other colleagues will join me. So if there is going to be some retribution against the senator from New Jersey, count me in. But Domenico, this all took a twist as the day went on then. It certainly did. I mean, these were called, you know, committee confidential documents. And, you know, something like 7% of all of

Kavanaugh's emails and documents from his time related to being in the Bush White House had been released to the Judiciary Committee, as Democrats would say. Only about 4% of all of that has been released publicly. And this has been part of the sticking point with Democrats. And Booker decided that he was going to kind of make this scene this morning. Democrats, as Scott notes, went along with it, saying that they're going to jump into the pit with him. But as the onions started to peel back during the day, things started to get a little trickier. And we were surprised to learn that apparently these documents had been approved overnight after Booker's questioning of Kavanaugh last night. And it wasn't clear who knew about that. They were apparently approved at 350 in the morning,

according to Senator Grassley's office, that lawyers from senators were notified that their requests had been honored, which is what Grassley's office is saying. from senators were notified that their requests had been honored, which is what Grassley's office is saying. But it didn't appear that at the early morning session that even Republicans or Grassley himself knew about that. Yeah. During the theatrics this morning, no one seemed to be suggesting that these had been approved for release. But was there anything substantial in them once they were released? That's the thing. These documents, there's no huge surprise, no huge smoking gun in these documents. Substantial in them once they were released? profiling by national security apparatus in the wake of the September 11th attacks. Now, in the case of racial profiling, Judge Kavanaugh wrote that ultimately they should

adopt security measures that were race neutral, although he conceded that might take some time. When it came to some of the affirmative action programs that the Department of Transportation was practicing, he did raise reservations about that. Not really a surprise for a conservative judge to express those. This is interesting because this is the kind of issue that could come before the Supreme Court in, say, an affirmative action college admissions case. There are some of those percolating. And it could be that if Judge Kavanaugh becomes Justice Kavanaugh, he could tip the balance and move the bar on where the Supreme Court stands on that.

So why why were these documents being withheld from the public to begin with, if, as you say, they're not really that surprising are annoyed about. He'd early on had said that a lot of these emails had to do with deliberations between a president and his staff, and that that should be constitutionally privileged, because that's not the kind of information you want out there, at least he's saying. Otherwise, then why would a president have open back and forth with his staff? At the same time, Democrats that are basically criticizing Republicans for saying that they're trying to hide information because there were emails, for example, today that were released by The New York Times or leaked to The New York Times about Kavanaugh's position on potential position on abortion and Roe v. Wade. Yeah, let's get to that because, you know, we're talking about these documents that senators were putting at themselves. Separately, the New York Times obtained some information, some emails from the same source of documents. And Senator Dianne Feinstein quickly asked Kavanaugh about some of those emails in the hearing. Once again, tell us why you believe Roe is settled law. And if you could, do you believe it is correctly settled? So thank you, Senator Feinstein. In that draft letter,

it was referring to the views of legal scholars. And I think my comment in the email is that might be overstating the position of legal scholars and so it wasn't a technically accurate description in the letter of what legal scholars thought. At that time, I believe Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Scalia were still on the court at that time, but the broader point was simply that I think it was overstating something about legal scholars, and I'm always concerned with accuracy. So this is something Kavanaugh did really throughout the week during these hearings, is to sort of summarize the state of legal scholarship or Supreme Court precedents

without really giving us a window into what he thinks about these cases. And he, again, didn't answer Senator Feinstein's question there about whether he believes Roe was correctly decided. He's ducked that question throughout these hearings. And it's important because, of course, if he becomes a Supreme Court justice, he would have a vote to overturn the longstanding precedent there if he chose to do so. And I think this is the real importance of the documents because the documents reveal at least a little bit more of his personal views on these things, or at least more candid views, because he's still doing his job in talking, the constitutionality of, for example, wiretapping or the constitutionality of whether or not you should use racial profiling when someone goes through

an airport. And he was saying no in that instance. He doesn't think that that is a good idea. Do we expect more documents to come out? Is this the end of it? Are we through with the documents or could there be more? This is it. I mean, you know, there may be there may be documents that wind up being released by some Democrats on the committee for things that have already been turned over to the committee. But, you know, as far as whether or not they matter or it matters, you know, Republicans probably have the votes here to confirm Kavanaugh. And, you know, once this is once today is done with, that's it. One more thing to flag that was also a little cryptic and confusing. Late last night when Senator Kamala Harris got her chance to ask questions, it was something like 10 o'clock at night, there was this really intriguing cryptic moment that led to a lot

of questions where Harris was questioning Kavanaugh and she asked him if he had ever had a conversation about the Mueller investigation with anyone working at a law firm connected to Mark Kasowitz, who's one of President Trump's personal lawyers. And she asked the question, Kavanaugh seemed confused. Have you had this conversation with anyone about the investigation that Bob Mueller is conducting regarding Russia interference with our election or any other matter? The fact that it's ongoing, it's a topic in the news every day. I talked to fellow judges about it.

It's in the courthouse in the District of Columbia. So I guess the answer to that is yes. So the answer is yes. Okay, and did you talk with anyone at Kasowitz, Benson, and Torres? You asked me that. I need to know who works there. And she kept probing and pushing and seemed to indicate that she had some specific piece of information about a conversation Kavanaugh

had had. Let's listen to that for a moment. How can you not remember whether or not you had a conversation about Robert Mueller or his investigation with anyone at that law firm? This investigation has only been going on for so long, sir. So please answer the question. Right. I'm not sure I... I'm just trying to think, do I know anyone who works at that firm? I might know... That's not my question. My question is, have you had a conversation with anyone at that firm about that investigation? It's a really specific question. I would like to know the person you're thinking of, because what if there's... I think

you're thinking of someone and you don't want to tell us. Who did you have a conversation with? I am... Did we learn anything else about this today? Not yet because Kamala Harris is further down the list on seniority so she hasn't been able to ask questions yet today. And it really there, you heard her sound like she had the goods. We don't know if she actually did. Does she, in poker terms, she's sitting with a pair of twos? Or is Kavanaugh going to be calling her bluff? We did have some maybe tantalizing suggestions today. It's been pointed out that in one of his memos to Robert Mueller last year, Mark Kasowitz did make reference to some rather obscure language in a Kavanaugh decision. So there's certainly a question of whether that was brought to Kasowitz's attention by Kavanaugh himself, or he became aware

of it some other way. But then we also had a statement from the Kasowitz firm saying, no, nobody there ever talked to Brett Kavanaugh. And worth flagging here that we have now gotten into some high profile moments with two people on the committee who are often talked about as possible 2020 presidential candidates. That's Cory Booker and Kamala Harris. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota also in that conversation has also tried to make the most of her rounds of questioning. Oh, yeah. Amy Klobuchar was really playing the cheap seats yesterday when she went into a lengthy discussion of antitrust law. You know, she of all of the senators, she probably did the best job of the Democrats being able to bore into his decisions.

And you mean drill, not put people to sleep. Oh, yeah. Yeah, no, she tried to drill down into some of these actual cases of Kavanaugh's. And I think we did learn a little bit about his view on campaign finance, for example. So testimony continuing as we tape this podcast, expected to go for a while longer tonight. The hearings continue tomorrow with witnesses testifying both for and against Kavanaugh. We will keep you posted on how this proceeds, the committee vote, the full Senate vote, as that all happens. For now, we're going to take a quick break and come back with Can't Let It Go. Support for this podcast and the following message come from Comedy Central.

Get your daily news fix by listening to The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Ears Edition. It's like The Daily Show, but for your ears. Studies show ears are great for listening. And who are we to deny science? Trevor Noah and the world's fakest news team tackle the biggest stories in news, politics, and pop culture. Subscribe to The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, Ears Edition, available Tuesday through Friday mornings on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your ears on a podcast. As soon as you wake up, you need the latest. That's why Up First is here. It's NPR's

morning news podcast. In just 10 minutes or so, you can start your day informed. Listen to Up First And we are back and we are going to end the show like we do every single to talk a little bit about the Facebook and Twitter hearings. But before we get to the can't let it go etude of the hearings, can you just give us a quick recap of what was going on on the Hill? So on the Hill, you had the Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, and you had a top executive from Facebook. You had Sheryl Sandberg, they were on the Hill. And so there was a hearing that was in the Senate. And that was focused on basically, kind of election security, the way that social media has been used to influence people, and that maybe Russia and other bad actors have used it to kind of influence our elections. So that's kind of what the focus of that was. And then in the House, there was a had Congressman Billy Long of Missouri who in his prior life, he owned an auction

company and he was an auctioneer. That's right. And so there was this protester who got up and was talking. Jack Dorsey is trying to influence the election. Huh? To sway the election. What'd she say? I can't understand her. What? And she was over-talked or filibustered by Billy Long doing the auctioneering.

I'm at a den, $12.50, $20 to the hand, $5.70, $30. $30 down here to the hand, $5.35, $7.40. Do we deserve a country? No, look, I think... Billy Long deserves a country, I'll tell you that much. Sold to the highest bidder. Now, look, I think... Billy Long deserves a cut. I'll tell you that much. I thought that was awesome. Sold to the highest bidder. Four and a quarter, four and a half.

Hit four and a half, four seventy-five, five hundred and five, five and a quarter, five and a half. I yield back. Well, Dominica, I think you're next, but you're such a downer right now. I'm going to bring it up a little bit. That was just, I was so confused by what was happening. It just does make me sad. Anyway, my can't let it go is I feel a little more uplifting. And, you know, I was thinking about the NFL a little bit.

And while the NFL is not necessarily the most uplifting thing generally these days because of all the political controversy with the flag. And then there's this controversy with Colin Kaepernick now in Nike commercials. I kind of wanted to, you know, not necessarily go to that. And then there's this controversy with Colin Kaepernick now in Nike commercials. I kind of wanted to, you know, not necessarily go to that. But I read this article about Shaquem Griffin. I don't know if you guys have heard of him. He plays for the Seattle Seahawks. He is a rookie this year.

He's starting for the first time. And he only has one hand. I saw that. It's kind of amazing. Yeah. He's playing deep. And what's even more crazy about this, he's going to play on the same defense as his twin brother. It's like kind of amazing. So, you know, and he's just has this great story where his hand had to be amputated from when he was a kid because of a childhood prenatal condition.

And, you know, just really kind of lives up to that idea that nothing can hold you down. This is a guy who can bench press 225 pounds 20 times with one hand. With one hand. And he uses a prosthesis for the other hand to do the bench press. He actually wasn't even invited to the Seahawks Combine, which are basically tryouts. And then there was video of him doing these bench presses, got the attention of all these coaches, and then they saw his 40 time. In other words, how fast you run 40 yard dash. He can do it in 4, 3, 8, which by the way, is one of the fastest times for a linebacker in 15 years. And the exact

same time as his twin brother. How crazy is that? How about you, Scott? What's your can't let it go this week? So last week I was out in California for a couple of days doing a story on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, talking to her about how she views Democrats' chances next year and also getting into this idea of whether or not Nancy Pelosi is facing some political challenges more than she has in the past because of the amount of newcomer candidates who say that they don't want to vote for her to be speaker if Democrats win back the House majority. So over the course of looking into reading up on Nancy Pelosi, preparing for that interview and story, somebody mentioned to me something that I found a little hard to believe.

But it turns out this is this has been something that Pelosi's talked about a lot. She never, when she became Speaker of the House, during the four years she was Speaker of the House, never once did she make it onto the cover of Time or Newsweek. John Boehner got on the cover of one of those magazines after he became Speaker, but she was never on the cover. And that's something she's pointed out sometimes as an indication of just sexism and culture in the media. This was a big week for Nancy Pelosi because finally she is on the cover of Time Magazine. It came out today. There's a long profile of her. She is on the cover for the very first time. And is it a flattering cover? It's a flattering cover. It's a big picture profile of her career and just gets to the fact

that she was able to get things done in her speakership that no one since her and several speakers before her weren't able to do. I mean, we've talked so much about how President Trump and Republicans control everything,

but haven't really passed big scale things except for tax cuts. And Pelosi got a lot of stuff done, including Obamacare during her speakership. And the best argument I've heard for her continued survival as the leader of Democrats is that there's just not another Democrat who has that legislative skill that she's built over the years. Wait, let me ask you a question. Nancy Pelosi was the first female Speaker of the House, right? Yeah.

And this was the first time she's on the cover of Time? Yeah. I think that's what he just said. I know. I'm just reiterating. I think that that's... It's odd. It's pretty crazy. It's unbelievable. I was shocked when I saw that she

hadn't been on a national magazine, on the cover of a national magazine. I think it has to speak to some sort of sexism. Why wouldn't you want to mark that? What was on the cover of a national magazine, I think it has to speak to some sort of sexism. Why wouldn't you want to mark that? What was on the cover of Time magazine when Nancy Pelosi became House Speaker? I pulled it up. Let me direct you, Scott,

to time.com slash vault slash year slash 2006. They have a homepage for each cover from each year, which was kind of like this flashback to what was in the news a decade ago. So in the lead up to the election, one Barack Obama is on the cover with a question, could Barack Obama be the next president? The answer to that, of course, was yes. But we'd have to wait two years to find out.

Then right before the election, it's a special report. And then after the election, when Democrats have won back control of the House and Senate, on the cover, George W. Bush. Well, yeah. The shellacking. And then- No, I'm sorry. The thumping. Yeah. All right. Scott, you are up last. What can you not let go? Well, my can't let it go. I have to tell you a story that goes all the way back to 1977. I was 11 years old and my folks took me to New York City, the big city, my first time ever there. We went to Radio City Music Hall. Still there.

I knew where I was going, radio. And we went to see the Rockettes, the famous dancing troupe from Radio City Music Hall. And I don't know if this is still the case, but in those days, if you went to see the Rockettes, they threw in a movie for free. You also got to see a movie. And it so happened that the movie that was showing at Radio City Music Hall on that summer day in 1977 was Smokey and the Bandit. And we got sad news over the CB radio just as we were getting set to come into the studio this afternoon that Burt Reynolds has died at 82. And, of course, he made a ton of movies during his long career, some of them critically acclaimed, Deliverance and Boogie Nights, but just to name a couple. But I always

associate him and Sally Field and that black Trans Am in Smokey and the Bandit. and truckin' Are we gonna do what they say can't be done We've got a long way to go And a short time to get there I'm eastbound just watch old bandit run Burt Reynolds

is eastbound and down that black transam and rest in peace. And for Mara, he might be called a mustachioed macho man since she doesn't

like alliteration apparently. Oh, wow. Well, you know, my favorite Burt Reynolds, I'm a huge Golden Girls fan, and my favorite episode of the Golden Girls has Burt Reynolds as a guest star, and Sophia, the famous line from it is,

you'll get over it, Dorothy, and if you don't, who cares? I'm going to see Burt Reynolds! Because it was all about these tickets to see Burt Reynolds. And it was great. It was my favorite. It was a great show. Yeah.

All right. That is a wrap for today. We'll be back whenever there's next major political news. Until then, you can send your timestamps for the top of the show to NPRPolitics at NPR.org. You can also write us there with any questions or comments you have. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White have. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Aisha Roscoe.

I cover the White House. I'm Scott Horsley. I also cover the White House. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, political editor. Thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. All right. Well, Mara, with that, we're going to let you go. We will talk to you again very soon.

Great. Thanks for having me. Why did I not sound enthusiastic enough? You don't sound like you're sad to leave. I could try it again. I'll try again. How about this? How about this?

Thanks for having me, Scott. I'm looking forward to coming back. Your questions were stupid. I'm out. Very soon. Okay. Let's try again. Goodbye, Mara. I'm out. Very soon. Okay, let's try again. Goodbye, Mara.

Goodbye, Scott. It's so sad to leave. What do people usually say when you say goodbye to them?