Up First from NPR - U.S. Presidential Debates, Arms Transfer to Israel, Assassination Attempt in Slovakia

Episode Date: May 16, 2024

President Biden and former President Donald Trump have agreed to a pair of unusually early debates. The Biden administration is moving ahead with a $1 billion arms transfer to Israel a week after pausing a separate shipment of bombs to the country. And officials in Slovakia say that after hours of surgery following an assassination attempt, the country's Prime Minister Robert Fico is in stable but serious condition. Want more comprehensive analysis of the most important news of the day, plus a little fun? Subscribe to the Up First newsletter.Today's episode of Up First was edited by Megan Pratz, Roberta Rampton, Miguel Macias, Lisa Thomson and Claudia Peschiutta. It was produced by Ziad Buchh, Ben Abrams and Kaity Kline. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent. And our technical director is Zac Coleman. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

President Biden said he'd take up former President Trump's call for a debate. Make my day, pal. Then within hours, the leading candidates agreed to unusually early meetings. The first comes June 27th. How did this come to be? I'm Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News. The United States is moving ahead with a billion-dollar arms sale to Israel. We are continuing to send military assistance,

and we will ensure that Israel receives the full amount provided in the supplemental. How, if at all, does that match up with a separate shipment of bombs the U.S. paused? Also, the prime minister of Slovakia was shaking hands in a crowd when someone shot him. How does that shooting of a pro-Russian figure affect Europe as elections approach? Stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your day. Now Our Change will honour 100 years of the Royal Canadian Air Force

and their dedicated service to communities at home and abroad. From the skies to our change, this $2 commemorative circulation coin marks their storied past and promising future. Find the limited edition Royal Canadian Air Force $2 coin today. Presidential debates, a custom of the fall election season, are now part of the election summer. President Biden and former President Trump agreed to a pair of unusually early debates the first coming June 27th, long before early voting begins. They plan a second debate in September. NPR's Franco Ardonis

covers the presidential campaign and is always early or on time. Franco, good morning. Good morning, Steve. He's in our Studio 31 here this morning. Okay, so we started yesterday morning with no debates on the calendar, no idea what might happen, if anything, and now there are two. How did this happen? Yeah, I mean, for a long time, there were many questions whether the two would actually square off at all.

But more recently, the two have been kind of talking about a debate. Trump and his team, of course, have been challenging Biden to a showdown for a week, even calling him like the worst debater or saying anytime, anywhere, anyplace. They even had signs with that slogan and they put up a fake debate stage at some rallies. Wow, this is like WWE events. Exactly. Go on, go on. Well, I mean, Biden yesterday agreed and he released a video.

Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hadn't shown up for debate. Now he's acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal. I'll even do it twice. So let's pick the dates, Donald. I hear you're free on Wednesdays. More WWE there, I'd say. You know, Wednesdays, of course, are the day that Trump has off from his criminal trial in New York. So a little trolling there and some more trolling from Biden, actually writing on social media, quote, as you said, anytime, any place. So why did they choose this particular time? Why so soon? June 27th for the first one. Well, I mean, it's important because,

you know, this is the earliest that it has ever been held, But this will be so early because they really want to make a difference between the two candidates. They want to separate, kind of distinguish who they are. For Biden, it's really about highlighting that this is a choice between the two candidates. The polls are so close. Biden is suffering from low approval numbers. You know, there are concerns about how he's handling issues like the economy and immigration. But his team really feels like, you know, that American public simply hasn't dialed into the election very much. For Trump, you know, he's very confident in his debate skills and feels that Biden is just not as quick as he used to be. And it really highlights those age questions. Yeah, I'm thinking about Biden saying that he said for years, it's not a choice between me and the Almighty. It's a choice between me and

the alternative. He apparently feels by getting the two of them together, you can highlight the alternative or he can highlight the alternative. But are there any particular terms or conditions of these debates as they've been negotiated so far? Yeah, Biden has a bunch of conditions. He really wants a more controlled environment, less interruptions, no big live audience. Biden is also pressed against having a third-party candidate on the stage who the campaign says didn't have any prospects of becoming president. RFK Jr. has been complaining about this. Exactly, exactly.

You know, when Trump agreed to some of those terms, the first debate will be held at CNN Studios without an audience. You know, and Trump agreed to some of those terms. The first debate will be held at CNN studios without an audience. I mean, it's really significant. Trump, of course, feeds on the stage spectacle, the energy of the crowds, and he hasn't given up holding more of them, actually. His campaign is suggesting the candidates debate once a month between June and September. You know, in the campaign words, they want maximum exposure. Okay, but nothing like a WWE wrestling crowd, however. Franco, thanks so much. Thank you, Steve.

That's in Paris, Franco Ordonez. Okay, the Biden administration is moving ahead with an arms transfer to Israel worth $1 billion. Just a week ago, the White House paused a separate shipment of bombs to the country over concerns that Israel would use such weapons for an offensive in the crowded city of Rafah. This story touches U.S. foreign policy, national security, and also domestic politics, since the president has faced criticism both for supporting Israel and for not supporting it enough. So we've brought in NPR's senior national political correspondent, Mara Elias. And Mara,

good morning. Hi, Steve. How does the White House explain going ahead with this shipment while pausing the other one? Yeah, it sounds confusing, and the White House has been trying to explain this. The argument is that President Biden is just trying to do what former President Ronald Reagan did in the early 80s when he delayed shipments of F-16 fighter jets to Israel because of concerns about how Israel was using those weapons in Lebanon. So now the president says we're not going to give one shipment of 2,000 pound bombs that could be used to flatten whole neighborhoods. But the White House has tried to make the distinction that other military aid, like the ones you just described, will continue. The problem is that it's unlikely that holding up just one shipment of weapons will influence

the Netanyahu government to change its conduct of the war. Okay, some symbolic moves here, some substantive moves here. What do these decisions say about the president's support for Israel? Well, the president has insisted before and since October 7th, the Hamas attacks on Israel, that his support for Israel is ironclad. His theory was that if he staunchly supported Israel in public, he could get some clout to influence Israel in private. He's tried to convince Prime Minister Netanyahu to do two things.

One is to minimize harm to civilians, to use surgical strikes on Hamas rather than dropping those big bombs. And the second thing, he wants Israel to come up with a plan for the end of the war, a strategic endgame, a political diplomatic solution. Who runs Gaza after Hamas? But Israel has yet to do either of those things. And it looks like the United States, Israel's number one ally, biggest arms supplier, has very little clout with the Netanyahu government.

How could that be? Well, this is not the first time that Benjamin Netanyahu has frustrated an American administration. He has his own set of political interests. He wants to stay in power, and that doesn't necessarily jive with doing what the United States wants him to do. Okay, so that's Israeli domestic politics, and we think that is a factor here. How do American politics factor into this? What does this mean politically for the president at home? Well, the war in Gaza is causing deep divisions inside the Democratic Party. The left of the party says Biden isn't doing enough to

restrain Israel. Young voters, Arab Americans, and battleground states like Michigan are upset. Meanwhile, there are Democratic donors who are worried about the pause in the bomb shipments and about anti-Semitism on campuses. And of course, Republicans are doing their best to southern border, on Ukraine, the war in the Middle East, all that hurts the incumbent. And President Biden was elected to keep things calm and return them to normal. And this just plays into Donald Trump's bigger argument, which is the world is out of control. Biden isn't in command. You need a strong man like me to restore order. So for Biden, there's really no political upside unless this war ends. Mara, thanks very much. It's good to hear your voice and appreciate your insights.

You're welcome. That's NPR's Mara Eliason. Officials in Slovakia say that after hours of surgery, the prime minister, Robert Fico, is in stable but serious condition. He was shot several times at a political event yesterday while meeting supporters. Police have a suspect in custody and say this assassination attempt was politically motivated. NPR's Rob Schmitz is covering this story from Berlin. Hey there, Rob. Morning, Steve. Okay, what happened and how is the Prime Minister doing? Well, after around five hours of surgery last night, Robert Fico is now in stable condition,

serious condition, and he is conscious. And that was after arriving to the hospital in a helicopter in critical condition yesterday afternoon from being shot in the abdomen and left hand at an event in the central Slovak town of Handlova. Fico was shaking hands with supporters when a man approached with a pistol and fired five shots before being tackled by security. The suspect is a 71-year-old man described by local news as a poet who is a critic of Fico's government. You know, I'm thinking about when a president is attacked in the United States, the whole country comes to a pause. Ronald Reagan being shot in 1981 is something that happened in my lifetime. Everybody's focused on that for a vile attack that has no place in a democratic country like Slovakia. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the attack appalling.

A reaction inside Slovakia has carried a similar tone, albeit with a tinge of politics, given the tense political atmosphere in the country. At a press conference at the hospital where Fritsche was last night, Slovakia's Defense Minister Robert Kalinac denounced the political environment that he said led up to this event. Here is Kalinac insisting that the assassination attempt was purely about politics. And he seemed to blame the opposition parties in parliament for stoking this, saying we were not the ones who talked about revenge, saying it's time to look in the mirror. But, you know, many political observers here say it's Fico's party that has created this political environment. Okay, so if this is about politics, let's understand what the politics are. Who is Robert Fico and the party he represents? Robert Fico is 59 years old. He's been a fixture of Slovak politics for two decades, serving as a populist prime minister three times.

His party is a left-wing nationalist party, and he is friends with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Hungarian strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Fico has pushed for state control over Slovakia's free press, and he's been plagued by corruption scandals. In 2018, he was forced to step down after protests against him following the murders of a Slovak investigative journalist and his fiancée. The journalist had been working on stories about connections between the Italian mafia and members of Fico's inner circle. Fico later faced criminal charges for creating an organized crime group, but a prosecutor close to Fico's party then throughout the indictment. Fico is, as you can tell from what I'm saying here, a very controversial figure, both in Slovakia and throughout the EU for his pro-Russia and illiberal political stance. I can hear strands of that that are very specific to

Slovakia and other things that maybe resonate farther across Europe. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting, you know, this gets to a bigger issue throughout Europe at the moment, the rise of nationalist populist political figures and the stark political divisions that are being fought on the ground. You know, the European Parliament elections are coming up in a few weeks and we see those very divisions in the campaigns for office. It's a really tense political time in Europe and beyond. Glad you're there covering it, Rob. Thanks so much. Thank you. That's NPR's Rob Schmitz in Berlin.

And that's up first for this Thursday, May 16th. I'm Steve Inskeep. For your next listen, consider this from NPR News. Former President Trump has accused non-citizens of voter fraud over and over without evidence. And now as November approaches, rhetoric about non-citizens is again taking hold. Listen to consider this. Today's Up First was edited by Megan Prats, Roberta Rampton, Miguel Macias, Lisa Thompson, and Claudia Pascuta. It was produced by Ziad Butch, Ben Abrams, and Katie Klein. We get engineering support from Arthur Laurent and our technical director, Zach Coleman. Join us tomorrow. you