Today, Explained - The Replacements

Episode Date: December 11, 2018

President Trump is looking to fill some key positions. One pick is a former attorney general, another comes from "Fox & Friends". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The brush starts at $25 and the first set of refills is free. It's the end of the year. Time to tie up loose ends. Think about those resolutions. And if you're President Donald Trump, maybe fill all those vacant positions in your cabinet. A couple of key vacancies here are being filled as the administration approaches the halfway point of Mr. Trump's term. Starting with Attorney General. Who is it? The new pick for the president's attorney general is someone by the name of William Barr. A terrific man, a terrific person, a brilliant man.

I did not know him until recently when I went through the process of looking at people. And he was my first choice from day one. In the world of Washington, D.C. lawyers, Bill Barr is a very well-known figure. He was the attorney general more than 25 years ago, and he's a well-known Republican lawyer in town ever since. And he's, you know, very much a known quantity to the Washington, D.C. legal bar, which is why a lot of Republicans and even some Democrats were comforted, frankly, to hear his name mentioned as the candidate. Devlin Barrett covers the Justice Department and the FBI for The Washington Post. I think what's interesting about this pick is that a lot of people who were talking to the president urged him to pick Barr.

And the president seemed convinced by his own accounting of the conversations fairly early on in the discussions. But it was Barr who seemed to take more convincing that, you know, it was the right idea for him to go back to a job he'd already had once before. Yeah. That it was the right idea for him to go into this administration. Over time, I'm told what happened was Barr came to listen to the folks who are telling him they're offering you this job because, you know, you're needed right now. You're the type of person that is needed in the department. And I think that message ended up resonating with him. Does he have an easy road to confirmation? I don't think anyone who's nominated for the attorney general right now would have an easy

road. I think even with some relief in some quarters that Bill Barr is the choice, this will be a very tough confirmation hearing because both parties are going to want Barr to make very explicit promises about what he will or won't do. But the GOP, of course, has the votes, right? The Republicans have the votes. It shouldn't be that much of a cliffhanger. But you know, these hearings can get contentious even when votes themselves aren't in doubt. And there's always a chance that Barr could give an answer or a set of answers to questions that give real pause to someone on either side of the aisle,

and that can change the math. So early next year, when we do get to the point of confirmation hearings, what issues are likely to come up? First and foremost will be the question of what is his view of the Mueller investigation? When Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was asked at Congress, and for a long time Rosenstein has been overseeing that investigation, he was asked, would you fire Bob Mueller if you were ordered to? And what Rosenstein said was he hasn't seen any good cause to fire Bob Mueller, and he would have to see something like good cause to even consider that. So I very much expect Barr will get a similar question as, you know, what would be your standard for firing the special counsel? And that answer carries some pretty big consequences

in either direction. So what do we know about how Barr feels about the Mueller investigation? Has he spoken on it at all? Well, early on, in the first three days after then FBI director James Comey was fired, Barr wrote a long op-ed saying that the president was entitled to fire him. And a lot of folks at the time and since have challenged that argument and said it suggests Barr doesn't really understand the significance of what's going on here. So has he said or written anything since that? On that subject, no. But he has said that maybe some issues related to Clinton when she was Secretary of State deserved more investigation than the whole question of Russian collusion. Like what? Well, for example, there was an old, what's generally referred to as the Uranium One deal, which was a corporate merger involving a Russian firm and an uranium company. And a bunch of conservatives have argued that that deal looks dirty because it was approved

ultimately by the State Department. Conservatives have raised questions about that and demanded to know why the Justice Department didn't investigate that further. To be clear, the Justice Department, in fact, did investigate that, prosecuted someone, and then closed the case. The argument against this whole thing is that maybe the Justice Department, in fact, did investigate that, prosecuted someone, and then closed the case. The argument against this whole thing is that maybe the Justice Department wasn't thorough enough. And I think some Democrats are concerned that Barr voicing even partial support to that notion is alarming to them. Barr and Mueller have both been around for a long time.

Have these guys ever crossed paths, worked together? Yeah, absolutely. Mueller used to work for Barr. And they worked together on one of the biggest terrorism cases of the 80s and 90s, which was the downing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie. Mueller was essentially, you know, acted in the role of almost the lead prosecutor on that case. And he answered to Barr. Do we have any idea what their relationship was like? I was told it was a fairly professional and respectful relationship. Barr was Mueller's boss.

And I think, you know, most people who've worked with Mueller tend to have a lot of respect for him. And I think, frankly, most people who've worked with Barr tend to have a lot of respect for him. And I've always heard that about those two men in the time that they work together. What do we know about how Barr looks at, say, executive power or presidential pardons, things that are certainly going to play into this Mueller investigation pretty prominently? Right. It's really interesting because when Barr was the attorney general, the sort of big political criminal drama of the time was the Iran-Contra scandal. One of the biggest scandals to rock

American politics. It went down during the Reagan administration and involved the U.S. selling weapons to Iran and funneling money to rebels in Nicaragua. And there was a special counsel that was investigating Iran-Contra and won convictions in Iran-Contra. And so I think it'll be interesting to see, having held that view 25 years ago about a different special counsel, will he have that view about this special counsel? So what else do we know about Barr from his time as attorney general in the early 90s? Is there anything to be said for how he might approach things like criminal justice as attorney general from his first term? There is actually. In fact, at Barr's time as attorney general the first time, he faced a peak in crime around the country. A lot of it traced to the drug trade. And both Barr

and the Bush administration believe very strongly that the answer was to lock more people up. Here's a bit of the president's nominee on political issues. In his words. In the 60s and 70s, we didn't build prisons. We didn't put people in prison. And when we did put people in prison, they served short sentences. We have to have aggressive steps to suppress the criminals of today who are wreaking havoc today on the streets. In Barr's terms, repeat offenders who do so much of the worst crime in communities need to be sent to prison for a long time. That was Barr's solution then. It's certainly a common view among a lot of conservatives. But in the 25 years since, there's been a lot of

questions raised by both liberals and conservatives that what they call mass incarceration has not really made much of a difference either way as far as crime goes, and in fact has made some communities measurably worse by locking people up for long prison sentences for nonviolent offenses. I'm very curious to see, has Barr's view of that question changed at all in 25 years? Or is he still a general in the war on drugs, which is what he was back then? Right. There was just this bipartisan effort to change mandatory minimum sentences. Did Barr speak out on that? He didn't speak out on that. And one of the interesting things about that debate is that it splits conservatives more than it splits liberals.

What you've seen on that debate is recently the White House has come around to a sentencing reform bill. Some conservatives oppose that, including, frankly, Jeff Sessions, the recently departed former Attorney General. So it is an interesting debate going on in the Congress. It is an interesting debate going on among Republicans. And we know where Bill Barr stood on that issue years ago. We don't really have a good sense of where he stands on it right now. What about immigration? I mean, Jeff Sessions was probably most effective as Attorney General with regard to immigration. Do we know how Barr might feel about asylum seekers at the border from his time as AG? Well, Barr was part of an administration that was fairly hardline when it came to asylum seekers and immigration issues.

But, you know, the debates that are going on now are different than the ones that went on then. And there's in some ways a greater intensity on the conservative side on that issue than there was then and it would be hard for Barr to get to the right of Jeff Sessions on immigration but I also doubt he will be too far from Jeff Sessions on immigration. It felt like the president and Jeff Sessions had such a fractured relationship that they weren't even talking I mean it felt like the president and Jeff Sessions had such a fractured relationship that they weren't even talking. I mean, it felt like the president addressed Jeff Sessions via Twitterently that Sessions often wasn't even in the room with Trump when important things were being discussed. In theory, if we have a new attorney general in Bill Barr, we will probably see at least a temporary return to the natural order of things, which is that a president speaks directly to his attorney general on a regular basis. But look, there are a lot of tough issues here that divide the White House from the Justice Department in some ways. Mueller is one of them, but there are others.

And I think there will be tensions there no matter who is the attorney general. And one of the big challenges, I think, for Barr, if he's confirmed as the attorney general, is he's going to have to navigate those tensions and he's going to have to manage that relationship in a way that Jeff Sessions wasn't able to do. Up next, from the DOJ to the UN, President Trump's next ambassador to the United Nations. He found her on Fox News. hello hey courtney hi hey it's sean how's it going courtney you're you're a designer here at vox and you mentioned to me on the slacks that um that you have a quip yeah i do i think people have started to think that like everyone at vox who has a quip yeah i do i think people have started to think that like everyone at vox who has a quip has one because like i got it for them but i want to like full

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Wow, that is one actually all year making these Quip ads. I haven't heard yet. So thanks for bringing that to my attention. Definitely. Before we go, a quick shout out to the Pivot podcast hosted by a badass of all badass tech journalists, Kara Swisher and NYU professor Scott Galloway. Recent episodes run the gamut. You got Facebook controversies. One I'm really interested in, why is Microsoft more valuable than Apple again? Do you know the answer? I have no idea. I'm going to listen.

Pivot, wherever you find your podcasts, it's two very smart tech people talking to some key voices from tech. Check it out. Jen Kirby, you report on national security for Vox. Nikki Haley was a known quantity, a former governor. Who is Heather Nauert, President Trump's pick to replace her as U.N. ambassador? Heather Nauert is currently serving as the spokesperson for the State Department, and she's been there for about 19 months so far. Hi, everyone. How are you today? Always look forward to our chats together. She comes to the State Department from the president's favorite television network, Fox, including being a former Fox & Friends host.

Anything else going on? Heather, what's more valuable? Would you rather have the beer or the baseball? I'd rather have the beer, actually. But the next day, you'd rather have the ball. If my kids were with me, then I'd take the ball. And before that, she worked in journalism a bit. She had a stint as a correspondent for ABC,

but doesn't have a vast background of foreign policy experience that you'd expect for someone who's about to be UN ambassador. Right, like give us like a best of. Who's been UN ambassador in the past? There's been some big shots. Richard Holbrook, who is probably best known for helping to organize peace in the Balkans after the Bosnian War in the 90s. Despite its many problems and failures, I still believe in the importance, indeed the necessity, of the United Nations.

Former President George H.W. Bush was U.N. ambassador. One basic tenet of our foreign policy is that the U.S. firmly supports the right of all peoples to emigrate. Samantha Powers was also U.N. ambassador under the Obama administration. We have convened the Security Council today because the Russian Federation and the Assad regime have launched an all-out air and ground offensive against eastern Aleppo and its 275,000 civilians. And even John Bolton, Trump's current national security advisor, was a U.N. ambassador under the second Bush presidency, even though he really hated the U.N. Yeah, right. I recall that.

One of the reasons I said over 20 years ago that if you lost 10 stories of the UN building in New York, it wouldn't make a bit of difference is because that's 10 stories less of bureaucrats. Heather Nauert will be nominated. She's going to work with Nikki Haley to replace Nikki at the United Nations. She'll be ambassador to the United Nations. What has the president said about her? Why did he choose her? The president seems to really like her.

And by all accounts, she's done a pretty good job at State Department as spokesperson. And she looks good on camera. So, you know, Trump has said she's very talented, very smart, very quick. And I think she's going to be respected by all. Which is pretty much the standard generic Trump praise. And in the past, she had actually been considered to replace Sarah Huckabee Sanders as White House press secretary, although now she has an even bigger promotion. What do you see as the difference between being a good spokesperson, say, at the State Department and being ambassador to the United Nations? She's not just talking about the United States.

She has to actually make policy decisions. And that's sort of unclear of, A, how she'll go about doing that and, B, how much power the administration will kind of give to her to make those decisions and do it on her own and kind of carve out the same stamp that Nikki Haley did when she served in the post. Nikki Haley and the president disagreed on certain big ticket items in her tenure as ambassador to the United Nations. Russia comes to mind. She always spoke more forcefully about sanctions against Russia, against Russian belligerence. Is there a sense that Heather Nauert might be someone who toes the line more for President Trump? That's kind of, I think, the big question that we don't quite know yet. Nikki Haley kind of elevated the post and made

it a big deal. And also you have to consider when Nikki Haley was starting out, the foreign policy, the State Department in particular, was a little bit in disarray. There was a lot of confusion under Rex Tillerson. So Nikki Haley was really able to carve out a spot. And she was able to push back sometimes against President Trump. The question is, especially now that there's a different foreign policy muscle in the administration, specifically John Bolton, the National Security Advisor and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The question is whether they'll kind of let her make those decisions or they'll be kind of tussling back in Washington to make sure she toes the line.

You talk about people who've held the position before John Bolton, Samantha Power, George H.W. Bush. These are people with real vision, ideology for how the United States and the U.N. should cooperate. Do we have any idea what Heather Nauert communicator about the administration's policies, with the exception of a couple of gaffes along the way. We don't really know what her philosophy is because she hasn't been a policymaker and hasn't really been involved in politics, at least in sort of the sense that we would consider for someone like Nikki Haley or even John Bolton. What are the gaffes along the way? Well, she got off to a bit of a rough start. Last year, there was a notable tweet in October where she said, North Korea will not obtain a nuclear capability,

seeming to forget that they already had nuclear capabilities. And over the summer, I believe, when she was talking about the Normandy invasion, she cited it as a strong example of our relationship with Germany, even though she seemed to have forgotten that we were fighting against Germany at the time. Yikes. And she also posted an Instagram picture of herself smiling in front of the Saudi Arabia royal court during a trip that was about Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian dissident journalist who was murdered by Saudi connected officials. So it really seemed to be in poor taste at that particular time. Has there ever been a less qualified nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations?

We have to look at, I guess, the big picture of the Trump administration. Trump literally goes to the U.N. General Assembly and talks about, you know, his America First policy. So there is kind of an inherent conflict between the Trump presidency and the goals and missions of the United Nations. And if you remember this year at the UN General Assembly, he bragged about how great America was doing and he got actual laughs from an audience of world leaders. So, I mean, I think one thing to keep in mind for the position of UN ambassador, and this actually might work in favor of Heather Nauert, is that a lot of what you do when Trump comes to town is kind of manage his presence at the U.N. General Assembly and make sure he has a good time.

I mean, Trump was wanted even mentioned that people wanted Ivanka to be the U.N. ambassador, which would be sending quite a message abroad. So it could have been worse. Jen Kirby reports on the world for Vox. I'm Sean Ramos from This Is Today Explained. The cabinet includes Irene Noguchi as executive producer, Bridget McCarthy as editor, Afim Shapiro as engineer, Luke Vander Ploeg and Noam Hassenfeld as producers, Catherine Wheeler as the intern, and the overqualified Breakmaster Cylinder as composer.

Today Explained is produced in association with Stitcher and we are part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Thanks again to Quip for supporting the show today. The Quip electric toothbrush starts at $25. Your first set of refills comes for free. And after that, they're $5 every three months. They come straight to your door. Getquip.com slash explained. G-E-T-Q-U-I-P.com slash explained.