EMILY: This is Emily (ph) in Hillsboro, N.C., and I’m celebrating my Friday birthday with coffee and pastries at my favorite downtown bakery, which is pretty much how I start every Friday because I believe we should treat every Friday like it’s our birthday Friday. This podcast…
CLAUDIA GRISALES, BYLINE: Aw.
SUSAN DAVIS, HOST:
Wow.
EMILY: …Was recorded at…
DAVIS: 12:39 p.m. on Friday, April 19.
EMILY: Things might have changed by the time you hear it, but I’ll be enjoying life as a 50-year-old.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
GRISALES: Oh, great.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: Aw.
DAVIS: Happy birthday. That’s a big one.
GRISALES: Join the club.
DAVIS: Every Friday is birthday Friday.
GRISALES: (Laughter).
DAVIS: New rule. Hey there. It’s the NPR POLITICS PODCAST. I’m Susan Davis. I cover politics.
GRISALES: I’m Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress.
MONTANARO: And I’m Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
DAVIS: And it has been a week on Capitol Hill. So Claudia, this is basically just going to be a rapid-fire round because we have a lot to talk about to wrap up the week. Let’s start here – impeachment. The Senate quickly dismissed the articles of impeachment against Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Why didn’t they ultimately decide to put it to trial?
GRISALES: You know, it’s going to be up to the party that controls the chamber. And that’s Democrats, and they didn’t want to spend much time on it. So truly, with everything going on at the Capitol this week – and I laugh when we say this week ’cause it really felt like a year of news squeezed into a week – they wanted to move on. And there was discussion to allow some debate. We saw Mitt Romney, the moderate Republican from Utah. He’s in his last term, and he was the last voice to jump in for Republicans, adding to the more conservative members to say, let’s have some debate. And so that started a series of negotiations before it began – before this trial or dismissal for the trial began, ultimately. And Republicans and Democrats could not reach a deal by the time members were sworn in as jurors. Instead, they took a series of wasted procedural votes, and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democrats got their wish to move on and dismiss this trial.
DAVIS: Domenico, politically, you know, this is the third impeachment proceeding in the House in recent years, and it kind of came and went without much public attention. It almost seems like, politically, this doesn’t really carry much weight with the public anymore. They’ve sort of tuned it out.
MONTANARO: And they want this issue to be front and center.
DAVIS: Right.
MONTANARO: I mean, this is what former President Trump is running on, mostly. Immigration and inflation are sort of the two big issues that he’s running on. And this really has always been at the heart of Republicans, as you know, firing them up culturally when it comes to this issue. But a procedure like impeachment does seem to go too far for a significant portion of the country when, you know, a cabinet secretary essentially serves at the pleasure of the president…
DAVIS: Yeah.
MONTANARO: …Which – I’ve heard other Republicans say that, you know, if you have some issue, take it up with the president, whose policies are the things that, essentially, Mayorkas is implementing.
DAVIS: And to be clear, there was a lot of constitutional scholars that said that this didn’t actually meet the constitutional threshold for impeachment – that, essentially, it boiled down to a policy disagreement or basically someone just not doing their job very well, which doesn’t meet the same threshold for impeachment.
GRISALES: Right. House Republicans even barely got this impeachment over. They had to try twice.
DAVIS: That’s true. I forgot about that.
GRISALES: And they did it by a one-member margin…
MONTANARO: Right.
GRISALES: …To push it over. So this is as close as they could get, and it just didn’t have a lot of substance to it.
MONTANARO: And what are they getting out of it? You know what I mean?
GRISALES: Yeah.
MONTANARO: Like, do they go back home, and people go, you know, really good job – it’s too bad the Senate didn’t take that up?
GRISALES: Right.
MONTANARO: Or is this just a feel-good thing for them? I don’t know.
DAVIS: Yeah.
GRISALES: Right.
DAVIS: Well, all of this happened and probably didn’t get as much attention because so much of the attention has been over in the House, which is still trying to pass a foreign aid package that includes money for Israel and Ukraine. Claudia, Speaker Johnson had to take yet another extraordinary step this week. He had to get Democratic votes to support the rule to bring the bill to the floor. The rule is basically what sets the terms of debate, and it’s almost always…
GRISALES: Right.
DAVIS: …Historically passed on party lines. It has been approved, but does this mean that this foreign aid bill is now basically on a glidepath to pass the House?
GRISALES: It is on a path. It might be really rocky. There might be a lot of gravel…
(LAUGHTER)
GRISALES: …And it may be very bumpy. But it could pass out of the chamber by the end of the day tomorrow. But Johnson does have a lot of issues ahead of him because of this. As you mentioned, the Rules Committee had to push it out with Democratic votes. We have members such as Thomas Massie in the House, a Republican from Kentucky. We have Rand Paul, also from Kentucky, the U.S. senator, calling now Johnson the head of the uniparty, saying it’s just one party that Johnson is leading. So it’s really ramping up the pressure for this so-called motion to vacate and possibly another attempt to ouster yet another speaker because he’s working on this bipartisan legislation.
MONTANARO: You would think, in theory, using the other party’s votes, you know, to reflect a majority of what the House does should be something that a majority of the country would probably think is a good idea.
DAVIS: It’s arguably what people say they want from Congress when you ask them.
GRISALES: Right.
DAVIS: I just want them to work together…
GRISALES: Yeah.
DAVIS: …To get things done.
MONTANARO: Right, because people will often say, well, I don’t understand why you would have to have 218 votes from just your party to be able to get something through. It’s almost unanimity, as opposed to…
GRISALES: Right.
MONTANARO: …Even a majority of your own conference to be able to push things through. But we know that this has sort of been a major, you know, red flag for a lot of speakers in the Republican Party. I can think back to John Boehner, you know, working with Democrats for funding agreements, and that was essentially what wound up leading to his resignation. You know, and this has happened repeatedly with Republicans. And you wonder how sustained…
GRISALES: Right.
MONTANARO: …They can be to continue to swap out people…
GRISALES: Right.
MONTANARO: …When they had such a problem the last time in putting somebody else into this position in the first place?
GRISALES: Exactly. And in an election year, it’s really unclear what kind of chaos members could see if the small group pushes forward to oust Johnson. But in the face of all this, this was a really strong week for him. He used to be against aid for Ukraine, and we thought at one moment he would never bring this to the floor. But we heard Michael McCaul – this is the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committees – the member from Texas, talking about spending time with Johnson the night before he made this decision on Ukraine aid, that he had gotten down on his knees and prayed, and he wanted to do the right thing. He wanted to be on the right side of history, no matter the cost. It may cost him his job in the end.
DAVIS: Yeah. I mean, it’s possible that there could be a confrontation over that as early as this weekend, right?
GRISALES: Right, exactly. We’re looking at, potentially now, three members who have signed on to this motion to vacate. So Marjorie Taylor Greene – this is the Georgia Republican – started the initial steps for a motion to vacate for Johnson. But she needed more support, and she was waiting to see if he would put the Ukraine aid on the floor. This was a red line for her. In the meantime, she had Massie join forces with her, and today, Paul Gosar of Arizona. I was told he was targeted by the two to join them, released a statement saying he is on board for this motion to vacate. So if it’s just Republicans, they have the votes they need to move forward to try and force him out unless Democrats step in to save him.
DAVIS: You know, it is notable to me that Speaker Johnson this week referred to himself and says he sees himself as a wartime speaker, which sort of just speaks to how contentious the politics are on the Hill right now. All right, Claudia, you obviously have a lot more work to do, so get back to it. Thanks for this.
GRISALES: Will do. Thanks.
DAVIS: All right. Let’s take a quick break. And when we get back, we’ll talk about what’s happening on the presidential campaign trail this week.
And we’re back with political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben. Hello, my friend.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Hey, Sue Davis.
DAVIS: Earlier in the week, we were talking about Donald Trump’s trial in New York that was just beginning in the jury selection process. And, Domenico, when we talked about it, we were like, wow, this could take a while. It might be hard to find jurors in this case. And that was quick.
MONTANARO: Yeah. They look like they might be able to start oral arguments on Monday. They already picked the 12 jurors. They are looking to pick the rest of the alternates. You know, you’ve had some people dismissed on a lot of different grounds, but you had 500 people come in. You still have a significant number of people who haven’t even been talked to yet, and they’ve been able to basically seat a jury.
They’ve been really fascinating to listen to some of these folks, because, you know, a lot of New Yorkers, you know, Trump was concerned about whether he could get a fair trial. The issue is not whether people are Democrats but whether or not they can be impartial. And most people said that they can be impartial despite their feelings of Trump. And one juror said, ’cause feelings aren’t facts.
DAVIS: Hey, can we just, like, take a time out? Because I feel like Domenico and I are often the harbingers of cynicism and doom in this podcast. And we were saying, like, it’s kind of…
KURTZLEBEN: It’s so nice.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN AND DOMENICO MONTANARO: I know.
DAVIS: …Reaffirming, right? Like, the jury system is supposed to work that way. People take their civic duty seriously. People are committed to being impartial in a jury. Like, OK, let’s just feel good about one element of the American system today.
MONTANARO: I literally, like, have tingles.
KURTZLEBEN: I mean – well, let me bring in some negativity because…
DAVIS: Thank you, Danielle.
MONTANARO: Ah, Danielle.
DAVIS: OK, bring it back level set for us now.
MONTANARO: And you’re the Midwesterner. Supposed to have the sunny optimism.
KURTZLEBEN: Don’t box me in with these stereotypes. I’m just as negative as the rest of you. No. I mean, like, look, what really struck me is reading these transcripts of the jurors from this week. Like, on the one hand, there were some cute and funny quotes. There was a guy who referred to himself as a repost king regarding his social media habits. I really loved that. But this is a case where the judge was reading aloud negative social media posts from these people about the president. And apparently Trump did not look pleased.
I mean, it’s just a sign of just the anger, the vitriol for all the people who said they could be fair and impartial. I believe Thursday morning about half of the prospective jurors said, no, I can’t. And honestly, not surprising. Who in this country does not have a set opinion about Donald Trump? Maybe they can be fair and impartial about the law, but it is extraordinary that the jurors were picked this fast.
MONTANARO: Well, when you bring in 500 people, let’s hope they could get 18.
DAVIS: Yeah.
MONTANARO: Yeah.
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah. Fair.
DAVIS: Although, you know, again, to bring it back to some negativity about the case, I mean, Donald Trump has already been warned by the judge about how he talks about this case publicly, about he talks about potential witnesses in the case. And already, you know, there’s a real danger of these jurors becoming targets of public attack because of how deeply political so many people view this trial.
MONTANARO: And there’s already concern about that because of a Truth Social post that Trump put up where he reposted a comment from a Fox host who was essentially saying that these jurors, many of them are undercover liberals and going down conspiracy rabbit holes already. And we saw Kari Lake, the Senate candidate in Arizona, sort of saying the same thing. And, you know, that is a potentially very dangerous place to be.
KURTZLEBEN: Well, we had one juror this week who had been seated, who the next day came back and said, you know what? You should boot me. I can’t do this anymore – because she had concerns that her identity had been revealed. She said that she had friends, she had family who came to her, and said that she had essentially been outed as a potential juror. And the judge said, yeah, absolutely, you can leave. And reiterated to the media in the room, apparently, that you shouldn’t mention what jurors look like, among other things.
DAVIS: Danielle, it also means that for the next several weeks, Donald Trump is going to be largely confined to a courtroom in New York when otherwise a presidential candidate would be on the campaign trail. But he is still campaigning. It just looks really different than it normally would look like.
KURTZLEBEN: Right. Absolutely. So he is in trial for four days a week – Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday – with Wednesdays off so the judge can work on other cases. What he is doing to campaign is very different. For example, one night this week, he went to a bodega in New York. Trump saw this as an opportunity to talk about one of his big issues, which is getting tough on crime. So he’s trying to find nearby opportunities, apparently to campaign. Just yesterday, he announced that he’s going to be doing a rally in New Jersey, which is not a far hop from New York City.
DAVIS: Although not a regular swing state we talk about on the podcast either.
KURTZLEBEN: Totally. Yeah. I mean, even if he’s in a Republican part of New Jersey, it’s still blue New Jersey, so it’ll be interesting to see where else he attempts to campaign.
DAVIS: Domenico, there was also something on the campaign trail that happened this week that was low-key but sort of extraordinary in that the Trump campaign released a letter to other Republican campaigns, people who are running for office this year, essentially saying, if you intend to use Donald Trump’s likeness in your own campaign fundraising, essentially they want a cut of it now.
MONTANARO: It’s amazing. I mean, we’ve never seen that before. And, you know, we’ve talked about the power of Trump’s endorsement in Republican primaries and how he’s been able to get a lot of people over the finish line. There’s been a lot of people sort of kissing the ring, so to speak, to try to get his endorsement. And now I don’t know if he’s, like, influenced by the name, image, likeness stuff in college basketball…
DAVIS: Sure.
MONTANARO: …And he, like, wants a cut, or if he’s really struggling financially or if he’s just replicating his licensing style from when he was a businessman in New York, where most of the things that had Trump’s name on it weren’t actually things he owned; they just licensed out his name.
DAVIS: It’s also not something that there’s any sort of legal framework for. There’s no precedent for this. It’s basically just saying, like, you’re basically kind of – Danielle, he’s kind of firing a warning shot to other campaigns to say, like, if you want Trump to support you, you better support Trump. Like, there was – it was vaguely threatening…
KURTZLEBEN: Yes.
DAVIS: …To be frank.
KURTZLEBEN: And so let me just add that I talked to the Trump campaign about this to confirm this and ask what their argument is. Their argument – this comes from campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez – is that this is about protecting small-dollar donors, that if candidate John Smith – let’s just make one up – sends out an email that is entirely Trump photos and says, hey, don’t you love President Trump? Donate – and then the money goes to John Smith, that then you’re misleading voters, and Trump’s image is so powerful that he should get a cut.
But it struck me what it implies about Trump’s party loyalty because he’s not saying, I am happy to help you win an election. He is not saying I am happy to help the party any way I can. Instead, he’s saying, in fact, I might penalize you for using me in helping you win your election just ’cause I would like the money. That’s at least how it reads to me.
DAVIS: Domenico, we can’t end the week without talking about the fact that the storied Kennedy family came out with an endorsement this week, and it was notably not a member of their own family – Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who’s running as an independent. They made a point to endorse President Biden.
MONTANARO: Yeah. And Kerry Kennedy, who is Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s sister went on “Good Morning America” to talk about this on ABC. And I thought it was really interesting because George Stephanopoulos asked her if you can get together still at dinner, you know, for family events. And she said, you know, you have to love everybody in your family. You don’t have to like them.
DAVIS: That’s true.
MONTANARO: That was interesting. Although she did go on to say that she still likes Bobby, but she thinks that Joe Biden is the only choice to take on Donald Trump. So kind of fascinating diss from sis there.
DAVIS: But Kennedy, like, he is a real factor in this race because other things…
MONTANARO: Yeah.
DAVIS: …happened this week. Like, he’s expected to appear on the ballot in Michigan under the Natural Law Party – Michigan a must-win state for Joe Biden. He could be a spoiler in a state like Michigan.
MONTANARO: No question about it. He’s getting…
DAVIS: Sure.
MONTANARO: …Double digits in a lot of polling, and it’s not really clear who he pulls from. Although we know, as we’ve talked about, the Kennedy campaign certainly seems to be running quite a bit on a lot of liberal priorities.
DAVIS: All right. Let’s take a break. And when we get back, time for Can’t Let It Go.
And we’re back, and it’s time for Can’t Let It Go, the part of the podcast where we talk about the things we can’t stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Danielle, what can’t you let go of this week?
KURTZLEBEN: I am obsessed with trial sketch artists, the ones at the Trump trial in particular. And I want to point everybody to – when you get out of the podcast or stop listening to it, there is a great article at ABC News. In the business, we refer to this as reporting the bejesus out of a story.
(LAUGHTER)
KURTZLEBEN: This is by a guy named Peter Charalambous. Peter, I am really sorry. As a fellow person with an unpronounceable name, I know I’m getting that wrong, and I apologize. But there are great things in the story. This guy interviewed the three women who are courtroom sketch artists for the Trump trial for various news organizations, and he talked to them about their art. I would like to read you a few of their quotes. He’s got some very pretty qualities. I like the way his eyes have a kind of cat-like slant. I like his bushy eyebrows that are like caterpillars. I like that little pouty thing he does.
This other one talks about his New York arraignment. She says he had that pissed-off look – I’m mad; I can’t believe they’re doing this; how could they? And I think I caught it. But they also talk about how one of them was the artist for a John Gotti trial, and she said that he went so far as to send men to ask courtroom artists to reduce the appearance of his double chin.
(LAUGHTER)
KURTZLEBEN: Like, can you imagine? I love it. Great reporting. A-plus. I really can’t let it go.
DAVIS: Domenico, what about you? What can’t you let go of?
MONTANARO: I can’t let go of a man named Gary Cooper. Not the actor.
DAVIS: OK.
MONTANARO: But is 67-year-old Gary Cooper, who is from Savannah. He was a minor league ball player back in 1980, and he got a call-up in 1980 to the Atlanta Braves, to the big show, went to Pittsburgh, played, was on the roster for a short time for 42 days. I had no idea that this rule existed, but apparently, he needed to be on the roster one more day to get a Major League Baseball pension.
DAVIS: Oh.
MONTANARO: And this is something that Georgia Public Broadcasting had posted a story on. I thought it was really kind of fascinating. And there’s now a Change.Org petition to try to get him on the roster for one more day…
DAVIS: So he can get a pension?
MONTANARO: …With the Atlanta Braves so that he can get a pension because he was already denied by Major League Baseball to include one rain date, ’cause he was on the team and the game was rained out. But the game was never made up, so they don’t count that day. So they’re maybe trying to appeal to get him to be an outfield coach. He’s saying, I can’t run.
DAVIS: For a single day?
MONTANARO: For a single day. He’s like, I can’t run like I used to, but I still got all my faculties, basically.
DAVIS: He’s going to get it because the Major…
KURTZLEBEN: Yeah.
DAVIS: …MLB cannot be dumb enough to not see the good PR that this story would be to give Gary his pension. So it’s hard for me to believe that this is what billion-dollar industry is going to fight a public relations war over.
KURTZLEBEN: All right, Sue, what can’t you let go of?
DAVIS: My Can’t Let It Go for the week has the maturity of an 8-year-old boy. So I just want to…
KURTZLEBEN: Ooh.
DAVIS: …Warn you of that. As we talked about earlier in the pod, it’s been a very contentious week on the Hill. And at one point, a crack team of members of the House Freedom Caucus had concerns that some element of Speaker Johnson or his allies would try to bring a motion to the floor to change the motion to vacate, to make it harder to remove him from office. So they came up with an idea that someone should be on the floor at all times in case anybody tried any shenanigans or could object to any unanimous consent requests. And they decided to call themselves the Floor Action Response Team.
MONTANARO: Oh, yeah. I see where you’re going.
DAVIS: AKA FART.
MONTANARO: Oh, that’s great.
(LAUGHTER)
MONTANARO: And wasn’t there some description that also lent to them knowing what the acronym meant?
DAVIS: I mean, you would think that yes, some of which we cannot say on this podcast, but, I mean, when it comes to branding, which matters a lot – you know, members think a lot about the – you know, the acronyms that they make their bills…
MONTANARO: Yeah.
DAVIS: …The DISCLOSE Act and this act.
KURTZLEBEN: Right.
DAVIS: They called themselves FART. I mean, come on.
KURTZLEBEN: Right. So OK, do we know if this group has actually accomplished anything yet, or is this all just hot air?
DAVIS: It was all…
MONTANARO: Ah.
DAVIS: …Just hot air because they were…
MONTANARO: It’s quite the gas.
KURTZLEBEN: This group just doesn’t cut the mustard, I don’t think.
DAVIS: No.
MONTANARO: No.
DAVIS: They’re not – they’re cutting something. But it is not…
MONTANARO: My real question is, was this a response to something? Who’s the…
DAVIS: Who’s the branding artist?
MONTANARO: Who dealt it?
(LAUGHTER)
DAVIS: And that is it for us.
KURTZLEBEN: Come on, we can go on, Sue. Come on.
DAVIS: We can go on all day.
MONTANARO: Hey, you did it.
KURTZLEBEN: I’m done.
DAVIS: I’m done. We’re done. And that is it for us this week. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Our editor is Eric McDaniel. Our producers are Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell and Kelli Wessinger. Special thanks to Andrew Sussman. I’m Susan Davis. I cover politics.
KURTZLEBEN: I’m Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the presidential campaign.
MONTANARO: And I’m Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
DAVIS: And thanks for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIGTOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
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