Transcript:
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIG TOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
SAM SANDERS, HOST:
And Sue was taking a selfie (laughter). I’m sorry.
SUSAN DAVIS, BYLINE: It was a Snapchat.
S SANDERS: (Laughter) You’re with the youths.
Hey, y’all. It’s the NPR POLITICS PODCAST here with our wrap of the week’s political news. Donald Trump now looks like the official GOP nominee according to a new delegate count. We’ll talk about that. We’ll also talk about Hillary Clinton’s emails – why they won’t go away. And we’ll explain to our younger listeners what Whitewater was and why you’re hearing about it now. Of course, we’ll round the show out with listener mail and what we can’t let go this week.
I’m Sam Sanders, campaign reporter.
SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: I’m Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign.
DAVIS: I’m Susan Davis. I cover Congress.
MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: And I’m Mara Liasson, national political correspondent.
S SANDERS: Before we get started, I want to ask you guys to do us a quick favor. If you like this show, take a second to rate it on iTunes. That helps other folks find us, which helps us keep doing the show, OK? All right, so Donald Trump has the magic number as of this afternoon.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
DONALD TRUMP: I was coming out of my building this morning, and there was a big newsflash that Donald Trump had won the nomination. And…
(APPLAUSE)
TRUMP: And I said, what happened? I thought I had to wait a couple of more weeks.
S SANDERS: Does this actually change anything? We’ve known for a few weeks now that this was going to happen, right? Why did it happen today?
DETROW: Right. So what happened today was The Associated Press, who – most news organizations, including NPR, follow their guidance on delegate official totals – called around to unpledged delegates, and they found enough unpledged delegates who said, yes, I will be voting for Donald Trump on the first ballot to get Donald Trump over that majority total, which was 1,237. That’s the number we said more than any other number on the podcast this year. We thought that Trump would not be able to get there until that last day of primaries, June 7, which includes California. But now, because more and more unpledged delegates are saying, yeah, he’s the only guy left, he’s going to be the nominee, I’m going to vote for him, he’s already there.
S SANDERS: So…
DAVIS: And what it changes, too, is if – it affects the media a lot in one way because if you’ve listened to us or you – and you read stories, we have these tortured ways of describing Donald Trump.
S SANDERS: Because we can’t say that he is it.
DAVIS: We are not allowed to call him the presumptive nominee because that’s actually a title you get when you get that magic number of 1,237 or above. Now that he has it, you’re going to be hearing him called the presumptive nominee a lot more. He will not just be called the nominee until after he formally gets the nomination in Cleveland this July.
DETROW: Presumptive nominee. I don’t know what’s more awkward, that or president-elect, just in terms of, like, clunky, long titles.
S SANDERS: Oh, yeah.
DAVIS: Yeah, and words that real people don’t use.
DETROW: Yeah.
S SANDERS: Exactly. So in other news, there was another Trump rally in Albuquerque, N.M., this week with some major scuffles with protesters – some shattered glass. He also said at that rally in New Mexico that the governor of New Mexico isn’t doing the job…
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TRUMP: Since 2000, the number of people on food stamps in New Mexico has tripled. We have to get your governor to get going. She’s got to do a better job, OK? Your governor has got to do a better job. She’s not doing the job.
S SANDERS: …Even though she is the highest-ranking Hispanic Republican in the country and the chairman of the GOP Governors Association. All of this is stuff that probably won’t hurt Trump, at least not in the short term. But does this mean that he’s just not going to pivot…
LIASSON: Well, it…
S SANDERS: …And not become a candidate for the general?
LIASSON: It sure sounds like it. She’s not just the highest-ranking Hispanic Republican; she’s the only female Latina governor in the United States. And she’s a woman. She’s a Latino. Those are the two groups he really needs. But he gratuitously insulted her.
S SANDERS: Yeah, and, like…
LIASSON: And it’s incredible to me. This is the week that he crossed the threshold. He got the 1,237. You’d think he’d be in the mood to be magnanimous, but he’s lashing out at anyone who he thinks snubs him. She didn’t show up at his rally. She said she was really, really busy.
DAVIS: She was…
LIASSON: Sounds like, I have to wash my hair.
DAVIS: She was also a name that had been rumored – or thought about as potentially being a vice presidential contender because she’s a Latina, because she’s a woman and because a lot of people see her as someone that they’d like to see on the ticket. After this rally in New Mexico and those comments, House Speaker Paul Ryan this week, who has still not endorsed Donald Trump, defended Susana Martinez and says he knows her, he works with her, that she’s a great governor and that she has the support of a lot of Republicans in the party.
DETROW: And this comes after a stretch where I think we’ve all been surprised at how quickly the entire leadership of the Republican Party is coalescing around Donald Trump, with a few notable exceptions like Paul Ryan. But more and more people, including people like Lindsey Graham, who had some of the most, like, blunt, concerned, outraged things to say about Donald Trump of anybody, now we’ve seen reports that he’s quietly telling people, yeah, we should support Donald Trump.
S SANDERS: So can we talk about Trump making an appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel” last night? I want to set this up. In part of their conversation, he was asked about this story from about two weeks ago now about audio of someone claiming to be Trump’s spokesman, John Miller, who had a phone call with a reporter in 1991. Lots of media outlets said that was actually Trump posing as John Miller. Trump said, actually, that was not me. We have some audio of it.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
JOHN MILLER: He treated his wife well, and he treated – and he will treat Mona well. You know, he’s somebody that has a lot of options. And frankly, you know, he gets called by everybody. He gets called by everybody in the book, in terms of women.
SUE CARSWELL: Like who?
MILLER: Well, he gets called by a lot of people.
CARSWELL: Yeah.
S SANDERS: He gets called by all the women.
DAVIS: That is, like, so clearly Donald Trump.
S SANDERS: But Trump said it wasn’t him. But then last night…
DAVIS: That’s the first time I’ve heard that audio.
S SANDERS: Oh, it’s – man, it’s something. But Kimmel asked Trump about this last night.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!”)
TRUMP: To me, that didn’t sound like my voice.
JIMMY KIMMEL: It didn’t? Yeah, well nobody sounds like themselves when they hear themselves.
TRUMP: Maybe. Maybe.
KIMMEL: You go, oh, that’s me. But to me, it sounded just like you.
TRUMP: Really?
KIMMEL: Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
TRUMP: Is that right?
KIMMEL: It did.
TRUMP: 30 years. 30 years.
KIMMEL: And if it was you, I think it was a very funny thing to do, to call a guy and take him through the wringer like that.
TRUMP: Well, you know, over the years, I’ve used alias. And when I’m in real estate, and especially when I was out in Brooklyn with my father and I’d want to buy something and – honestly, nobody knew who Trump was at that time.
KIMMEL: Yeah.
TRUMP: Nobody knew me. So it wasn’t so much so important. But I would never want to use my name because you had to pay more money for the land. If you’re trying to buy land, you use different names.
S SANDERS: So he claims that he used aliases as a business tactic. But we have another Trump answer to a question that’s kind of a non-answer. What’s up with that?
LIASSON: Well, he, at the time – the People magazine reporter said that he called her two weeks later to say that was a prank that went awry. We don’t have a tape of that, but it sounded like he was fessing up. Look. What he does is highly entertaining. It’s always outrageous. But at some point, does the Hillary Clinton campaign find a way to turn all of these things into a crushing case for why he’s not to be trusted with the United States’ nuclear codes?
S SANDERS: But he seems like Teflon. So there’s this other weird moment in the interview when Kimmel points out to Trump that he’s previously said that Clinton would be a great president. So he calls him on it, and then Kimmel asks a pretty pointed question of Trump and his flip-flop on whether he likes Hillary.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!”)
TRUMP: She’s wonderful. Everybody’s wonderful. And that’s the way it is, and – including contributions. They ask me for contributions. I give contributions.
KIMMEL: So you were full of [expletive] when you said that?
TRUMP: A little bit.
(APPLAUSE)
S SANDERS: If you hear after Kimmel asks that, Trump says, a little bit.
DAVIS: Yeah.
S SANDERS: And the crowd applauds.
DAVIS: Well, isn’t this, like – one of the things you hear from Trump supporters is that they feel like he’s honest.
S SANDERS: But that’s – he actually just said, I’m a little bit BS.
DAVIS: Right. But he was honest about being…
S SANDERS: BS (laughter).
DAVIS: BSing. And that there is something about his candor and his – that style, that brash style of his, that – the people that like Trump, that is, like, a characteristic of him that they love about him.
LIASSON: The people who like Trump like that. They’re very loyal. The big question is, can Hillary Clinton tell all those people who haven’t decided yet that this is not the right temperament or character to be president?
DAVIS: Right. Like, if you like Trump, nothing’s going to change your mind. The question is, if your mind isn’t made up yet…
S SANDERS: Yeah.
DAVIS: …Can she win that argument?
DETROW: But I think, going back to the Miller thing, this is a good example of how Trump has been able to game the system so well in that, you know, news outlets who report on this have to put high up in the story the fact that Donald Trump says that this is not him. Donald Trump denies X. Donald Trump denies Y. But we sit here and listen to that tape, and it so clearly sounds like Donald Trump.
And this is something he’s done over and over again that previous politicians, certainly most nominees, just didn’t do, which is, you know – I never supported the Iraq War. Well, here’s a tape of you saying you supported the Iraq War. I never supported the Iraq War. But just the way that he’s able to kind of buck the typical system of denying stories by just saying things that can be very clearly contradicted, but you still have his point of view, the spin that he wants to put on the story, up top.
S SANDERS: Yeah.
DAVIS: He is singularly the hardest politician to fact-check…
S SANDERS: Oh, yeah.
DAVIS: …That I have ever encountered.
S SANDERS: Yeah. You know, the other thing that happened on “Jimmy Kimmel” last night – Bernie Sanders is going to be on “Kimmel” tonight. And apparently, Bernie Sanders sent a question for Donald Trump through Jimmy Kimmel, which Kimmel read to Trump.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!”)
KIMMEL: OK. So here’s the question from Bernie. He asked, (reading) Hillary Clinton backed out of an – (as Bernie Sanders) Hillary Clinton backed out of an agreement…
(LAUGHTER)
KIMMEL: (Reading) …To debate me in California before the June 7 primary.
TRUMP: Right.
KIMMEL: (Reading) Are you prepared to debate the major issues facing our largest state and the country before the California primary, yes or no?
He wants to know if you will debate him.
TRUMP: Yes, I am. How much is he going to pay me?
(LAUGHTER)
KIMMEL: You would do it for a price? What would the price be?
TRUMP: Yeah, because if I debated him, we would have such high ratings. And I think I should give – take that money and give it to some worthy charity.
KIMMEL: So if it was done for charity…
(CHEERING)
S SANDERS: OK. So…
DAVIS: OK. I’m sorry. I have a point to make.
S SANDERS: I want you to make – I want us to make all the points. Because Nothing about what just happened there makes any sense to me. Is it going to happen?
DAVIS: I would be shocked if it happened, partly because – well, you know, Bernie Sanders is not necessarily looking for Democratic Party approval on this. But I would imagine that forces in the Democratic Party would be very against him debating Donald Trump because it would also create a possibility where you would have Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump…
S SANDERS: Bashing Hillary Clinton.
DAVIS: …Together, attacking Hillary Clinton. I mean, what other outcome could a debate like that…
LIASSON: Well, my only thought is that Bernie is thinking that he would demonstrate in person the thing he’s been saying for months, which is, I do better against Donald Trump than Hillary. There are some polls that show that. So he wants to be mano a mano with him. I think it’s a total setup and a trap for Sanders because he’d be on the stage, agreeing with Donald Trump’s criticisms of Hillary Clinton. And that would cause a huge furor.
DETROW: Yeah.
DAVIS: And hugely risky for Bernie Sanders…
LIASSON: Yeah, hugely risky.
DAVIS: …If he did poorly in that debate.
LIASSON: Yes.
DAVIS: It would be – it would just be gutting.
LIASSON: Right, if he calls him a crazy communist.
DAVIS: Yeah.
LIASSON: Yeah.
DETROW: But do you think – I don’t think Trump would go after Sanders. I think he would just, like we said, use the both of them to kind of take shots at Hillary Clinton the whole time.
LIASSON: Sure, just like you said about Hillary, I agree.
DETROW: Right.
LIASSON: She’s corrupt.
DAVIS: Yeah, which would just infuriate every corner of the Democratic party.
LIASSON: Including many Sanders supporters.
S SANDERS: In the same interview, though, Trump also said that he could probably beat Sanders more easily than he could be Clinton.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV SHOW, “JIMMY KIMMEL LIVE!”)
KIMMEL: Who do you like more, Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton?
TRUMP: Well, I actually think that Bernie would be easier to beat, even though he shows up a little bit better in the polls. And I may be wrong. But what I do like about Bernie is that when he loses, it’s because the system is rigged against him, totally, just like it was rigged against me.
S SANDERS: So I just don’t understand any of this.
DAVIS: But isn’t that a little bit – to me, that’s, like, the dark arts of politics, where you endorse the – you just – you support the one that would be easier to beat. I mean, another thing this week is American Crossroads, which is a Republican super PAC headed up by Karl Rove, endorsed Debbie Wasserman Schultz…
(LAUGHTER)
DAVIS: …A Democrat from Florida, in her primary. I mean, it’s sort of that you elevate the opponent…
S SANDERS: Yeah.
DAVIS: …You want to be running against.
S SANDERS: Also, sidebar – how is Karl Rove still around?
DAVIS: You know, he’s still in it.
S SANDERS: Yeah.
DAVIS: Can we also just back up for a second…
S SANDERS: Let’s back up.
DAVIS: …To – something we should also draw attention to is that – what made me think of it was Donald Trump saying, you know, pay me. We’ll give the money to charity. Another story…
S SANDERS: There’s questions over charity this week, right?
DAVIS: Yes. But as we go back to fact-checking Donald Trump, if you remember earlier this year when he didn’t get involved in that Fox debate, and he had his own rally, his sort of counterprogramming in Iowa…
S SANDERS: For the veterans.
DAVIS: …For the veterans. And the Washington Post investigated this. At the time, he said he was going to give $1 million of his own money to veterans. And The Washington Post followed up on that and followed up on that, and it turned out he never did it. And…
S SANDERS: Like, no money, or some money?
DAVIS: He never wrote the check. And The Washington Post, after, like, doggedly going after him about this, he finally cut the check. So…
S SANDERS: Oh. So he did give it.
DAVIS: Yes, he did now, but, you know, only after multiple inquiries and scrutiny from the media did he write that check. So the promise to send the money to charity if he debates Bernie would probably need some follow-up on that.
S SANDERS: Yeah.
DETROW: And that whole charity thing gave an opening to the Clinton campaign and other Democrats who’ve been hammering the tax issue, saying, you know how it’d be easy to know how much money you gave to charity, Donald Trump? If you’d release your tax returns.
S SANDERS: You know. Is that going to happen, though?
LIASSON: No. He has been adamant about that. He’s given about 10 different excuses – the first one, I’m being audited – the second one, that there’s nothing interesting in there – and the third one, which I think is the best and most definitive; it’s none of your business.
S SANDERS: Let’s talk more about those tax returns. Usually, nominees for both parties release them.
LIASSON: Every time.
S SANDERS: Every time. There are several theories as to why he won’t do it. One of them, which interests me, is that the tax returns might prove that he isn’t as wealthy as he says he is.
LIASSON: Or that he doesn’t pay any taxes at all. We know that the only time he ever did release his tax returns when he was having a application for a casino license in New Jersey, he showed that he paid zero for a year or two. And then there’s the thing that Scott just raised – maybe doesn’t give any money to charity.
S SANDERS: How in the world could it be possible for a man with millions of dollars at least to pay no taxes?
DAVIS: Well, it’s not that hard.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVIS: There’s lots of ways that wealthy people don’t have to pay their taxes. Part of it is charitable giving, which is one of the questions, is can you write off those taxes? Part of it is his complicated – his business filings and, a lot of times, what you call an effective tax rate and how much they’re paying that way and the different deductions that people get to use, different ways they get to claim it. I mean, if you have a good accountant, you can – there’s many workarounds the system.
And I think, you know, the average middle-class tax rate is around 28%. So I often think that sometimes, if you’re paying almost no taxes or low taxes, it’s obviously very easy to make a political issue that you’re not paying as much, as particularly someone who has said that he thinks wealthier people, including himself, should maybe pay a little bit more in taxes.
LIASSON: You know, the corollary to that is that there was an old quote unearthed where Donald Trump said that he’s looking forward to the real estate crash because he could make a lot of money. And the Clinton campaign jumped on this en masse, thinking they’d found a really good line of attack. And Trump had a very ready answer for this, which I’m assuming would apply to his low tax rate, if he has one, which is, I’m a businessman. This is what I do. I try to pay as little in taxes as possible. He’s actually said that in the past. And in terms of the housing crash, I always look for opportunities to make money. That’s what a businessman does. I wasn’t a politician back then. He…
DAVIS: And the…
LIASSON: Yeah.
DAVIS: I was going to say, the argument that a lot of – that you hear a lot from people that pay lower effective tax rates, is that they use that money, and they’re job creators. That is the argument for lower taxes. And I think Donald Trump has made that argument, that I – the money I make creates jobs.
S SANDERS: All right. Taking a quick break. We’ll be back to talk about the Democrats.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
S SANDERS: All right. We are back. For the Democrats this week, one big story was Hillary Clinton’s emails. We all can recall this.
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BERNIE SANDERS: I think the secretary is right, and that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.
(APPLAUSE)
HILLARY CLINTON: Thank you. Me, too. Me, too.
S SANDERS: But investigators are not tired of her emails. That was uttered at a Dem debate in October. Why are we still hearing about Clinton’s emails right now? Catch us up on this whole thing because the more that I read about it, the more confused I get, Scott.
DETROW: So the basic thing that’s been an ongoing campaign issue for more than a year now is that when she was secretary of state, instead of using a government email address, Hillary Clinton used a private email address. And what’s more is that she housed it on a private server.
S SANDERS: In her house.
DETROW: Yes. So this has been an ongoing issue dogging the Clinton campaign. It’s been a part of the congressional hearings into what happened in Benghazi. It’s been part of attacks on the campaign trail. There is an FBI investigation into what happened here.
S SANDERS: It’s still going on.
DETROW: It’s still going on. But what happened this week was that the State Department’s inspector general released a report that had been in the works for more than a year. The final report was nearly 80 pages long, and it was very critical to Hillary Clinton. It found that she violated the rules of the State Department by using this private email address and private server. It says that she never sought permission to do this. And if she had asked, the State Department would’ve said no.
S SANDERS: No. But she has said, and the report also says, that previous secretaries of state have used their own personal email addresses, right?
DETROW: That’s right. That’s what the Clinton campaign was responding with this week, saying that, you know, Colin Powell used a private email address. I believed he used an AOL email address (laughter)…
S SANDERS: Really?
DETROW: …When he was secretary of state. That is true. The report does say that, and it has broad critiques of department-wide practices. But what’s also true is that the rules got tighter when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state…
S SANDERS: Yeah.
DETROW: …Compared to previous secretaries of state. And there was one passage of this report that really struck me as something that Republicans could make hay with – was that at one point, apparently, open records officials within the State Department raised this concern with Clinton’s top staffer, saying, hey, you know, this makes it harder to comply with freedom of information laws and things like that. And they were told, never bring this up again.
LIASSON: There’s no doubt that her terrible numbers on trustworthiness and honesty stem in large part from the email controversy. When she left the secretary of state’s job, she had astronomically high approval rating…
S SANDERS: It was like 69%, right?
LIASSON: …Sixty-nine percent. And they’ve been on a pretty steady trajectory down. And the big thing that happened was not just that she became a politician and was running for president – that probably knocks a certain number of points off your favorability rating right there – but because of the emails and because she’s never really been able to explain why she did it. She said she did it for convenience, yet there was an email released in the IG’s report where she talks about, I want to make sure the personal emails are protected and are not disclosed.
DAVIS: We should also say, too, that this is their – these are dual tracks. So what came out this week was the State Department internal review – more about protocols and were protocols followed. The FBI is investigating whether there was any laws broken in this process. We know that people that have been involved in setting up the server and staffers have been interviewed by the FBI. It’s likely that Clinton herself will be interviewed by the FBI. The timing on that is not certain. And then it raises the question of, you know, was there a criminal act here, which is the question we still don’t know the answer to.
S SANDERS: And if she gets charged in the midst of an election…
LIASSON: That’s a game-changer.
S SANDERS: …Should she be the nominee, what happens?
LIASSON: Oh, man.
DETROW: Well, we should say that our colleague Carrie Johnson’s done a lot of reporting on this, and she has reported several times that sources in the Justice Department have told her that as of right now, the information that the investigation has right now, the likelihood of criminal charges against Hillary Clinton herself are very, very unlikely.
DAVIS: Yeah.
S SANDERS: So in other Clinton news, a very old Clinton scandal resurfaced almost out of nowhere this week. It’s called Whitewater. Mara, you covered that. Tell us what happened.
LIASSON: Whitewater was a failed land deal that the Clintons were involved in before they became – came to the White House. And it was…
S SANDERS: Before they became president (laughter).
LIASSON: They became president. And it was investigated. And this week, the Trump campaign wrote an email to the RNC asking for some information on it because they wanted to talk about it. And the Trump aide who wrote the email was named Michael Caputo. But at the RNC, when they responded to his email, by mistake, the RNC staffer typed in Marc Caputo, who’s the reporter from Politico.
S SANDERS: Oh, my.
(LAUGHTER)
LIASSON: And that’s – talking about a leak falling in your lap without even having to do anything. That’s how we know that the Trump campaign is interested in pursuing Whitewater, but we already knew that they’re interested in pursuing all sorts of things from the ’90s. Trump himself has raised Vince Foster. He’s talked about the sex scandal.
S SANDERS: No, no, no. Not all of our listeners know who Vince Foster is.
LIASSON: Oh, OK. Oh, Vince Foster was a White House aide who committed suicide back in the ’90s. There’s a lot of conspiracy theories that he was murdered. Trump himself said to The Washington Post this week, well, I don’t want to bring up that she was involved in his murder; that would be unfair. But many investigations – I think five or six at the time – concluded that Foster was a suicide. So there’s no evidence for that. Trump didn’t provide any. But he did inject it into the media bloodstream again.
S SANDERS: In the Whitewater investigations, did they find wrongdoing on the Clintons?
DAVIS: No.
LIASSON: No. But that was the billing records.
DETROW: Right.
LIASSON: And that was another case where it seemed she was hiding something. All of a sudden, the billing records miraculously appear after she couldn’t find them for a while. I don’t think the Whitewater rises to the level of a hugely damaging 1990s-era Clinton scandal. But it was out there this week because the Trump campaign is interested in it.
DETROW: And it kind of became shorthand for everything else…
DAVIS: Yeah.
DETROW: …Because the investigation that was launched to look into this real estate deal looked into what happened with Vince Foster and, ultimately, most damagingly for Clinton, pivoted to look at Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky and what was said under oath and who was told to say what under oath at what time. And, of course, that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment.
DAVIS: What’s so interesting, too, is that the Vince Foster – his suicide is also one thing that – as we’re reliving the ’90s in so much of this election, is that there was also so many conspiracy theories around the Clintons. And the Vince Foster suicide was, I think, probably the apex of that in the ’90s – was thinking that – the accusations that they were somehow involved in his death.
And what is so interesting now is that, you know, those are accusations that mainstream Republicans have pretty much shied away from, that it was really more in the conspiracy wing of the party. And what’s so interesting about Donald Trump is he is not, you know, distancing himself from those theories. He’s embracing them. He’s campaigning on them. And if you think about other conspiracy theories – which is, you know, in 2008, when Barack Obama was running for president, the birth certificate, whether he was Muslim or not. His opponent, John McCain, the senator of Arizona – whenever it came up on the campaign trail, he would say these are not true. He’s an American. He was born here. You know, he would take the high road. And Donald Trump seems very willing to play in that…
LIASSON: Not just very willing – Trump was the original big birther.
DAVIS: Yeah.
LIASSON: He was the birther movement.
DAVIS: Good point.
LIASSON: He led it.
S SANDERS: But here’s the thing that I feel like lets all the conspiracy theory talk linger with Hillary Clinton more than with other candidates – because it always seems like there’s these tidbits of her hiding something.
LIASSON: Yeah.
S SANDERS: And I think the server gets to that. The private server is indicative of that worse image of Clinton and Bill, where they’re always trying to hide something.
DAVIS: Right.
LIASSON: This is what Donald Trump said this week. He said, quote, “there’s always a mess with Hillary.” And that’s what is going to be, I think, underpinning a lot of these arguments. They’re too corrupt. It’s a mess. You don’t want to go through this again.
DAVIS: A lot of it’s self-inflicted. It’s like I think, you know, regular voters will look at the Clintons and say, like, you know, if you have nothing to hide, why do you act like people that have something to hide?
S SANDERS: Something to hide.
DAVIS: And, you know, there is something to be said about the fact that they have been political targets for the past 30 to 40 years.
S SANDERS: Yes.
DAVIS: So people like that tend to – you know, carry themselves with more privacy and, you know, that you take care of your – you are more aware of the fact that you’re a public figure. But they also hurt themselves.
S SANDERS: And it just seems like this cycle of continued investigation and digging and then continued paranoia on the side of the Clintons where they just keep private servering (ph) their stuff, and it’s just weird.
DAVIS: Yeah.
LIASSON: Well, and don’t forget the shoe will be on the other foot because this is the argument the Clintons used against Trump on his tax returns. Why not release them unless you have something to hide?
DAVIS: Yeah.
S SANDERS: So before we go to break, Hillary Clinton could clinch the Democratic nomination, according to our friend Domenico Montanaro and his #math, on June 5, Sunday. That’s the same day as a caucus in Puerto Rico. So, Mara, what does that mean?
LIASSON: It means that if she clinches after Puerto Rico and before California, it doesn’t matter if Bernie Sanders wins California because she will have gotten the number of delegates she needs. Now, at that point, Bernie Sanders will say, well, she only got there because she has the support of superdelegates. So he will be left with his argument that the superdelegates should override the will of the people and leave Hillary Clinton and flock to him.
S SANDERS: But California would be a big spiritual victory for Bernie Sanders.
LIASSON: Yes, yes, yes.
S SANDERS: It’s already neck and neck. If he wins it by a hair…
LIASSON: Yes.
S SANDERS: …He finishes the primaries in a much better spot…
LIASSON: Yes.
S SANDERS: …Than anyone ever thought he’d be in.
LIASSON: No doubt. No doubt.
DETROW: And that’s why I think you see Hillary Clinton investing money in ads in California – very expensive state. This is not something the Clinton campaign wanted to do, but they’re now pushing because, exactly like you said, Sam, it’s embarrassing for them to lose the primary season in the largest state in the country with a loss to Bernie Sanders. And it’s only a 2-point race, according to the latest statewide poll.
S SANDERS: All right, y’all – one more quick break. We’ll be right back with listener mail and Can’t Let It Go.
All right, let’s hit the mailbag. Lianne (ph) wrote to ask, quote, “what would it take for either party to scrap the delegate system, superdelegates, caucuses and all, and just use the popular vote directly?” Massive protest, ballot measures, the rapture – I don’t know.
DAVIS: It might take the rapture.
DETROW: It would take a lot because every state makes its own electoral decisions. That being said, I think you are going to see this summer a big push on both the Democratic and Republican side to change the way primaries operate. Bernie Sanders has said that he does not like closed primaries. He wants everybody to be able to vote, independents to be able to vote in Democratic primaries, and it looks like he’s going to make a push to change that system. On the Republican side, a lot of people who are allies of Ted Cruz want just the opposite because they blame open primaries for allowing Donald Trump to win primaries with independent votes. So I think this is going to be a push – change the primary voting system – at both conventions. But again, it’d be really, really tough. Maybe the parties could say, OK, if you want to be awarded delegates next time around, you need to change your system by then. But this is expensive. States don’t want to mess with their primary system. It costs a lot of money. And it could take years to get voters used to new systems.
S SANDERS: How much control will the national party at a convention have over making every state party change their individual contests?
DETROW: They could basically threaten them. Like, the example that I just said was that they could say, if you want to have a full amount of delegates that your state can award, you need to have this system by this date.
S SANDERS: Got you.
DAVIS: But remember, the DNC is made up from…
S SANDERS: States, right.
DAVIS: …Activists in all 50 states. And if – we see – we hear this fight a lot every four years, particularly from states like Iowa and New Hampshire, when people want to mess with the calendar or change the Iowa caucus, that the fight – the states throw down over these fights. So the idea that individual states would be willing to completely change their process and all do it the same way is politically inconceivable, even if it is technically possible.
DETROW: You see about 100 bills a year to change state’s primary systems across the country.
S SANDERS: One hundred.
DETROW: About a hundred. I looked it up recently.
S SANDERS: OK.
DETROW: And the only state legislature in, like, the last decade that has changed – that has voted to change its system is Idaho, and they went from open to closed primary.
S SANDERS: OK. All right, we got a great email from Abby (ph) in Pittsburgh. Have to note that Abby was actually 4 years old in the year 2000 – so know that as I read her question. She says, dear NPR POLITICS crew, I was listening to the quick take from last week, and I heard the term butterfly ballot. What is a butterfly ballot? And can you discuss the problems with Florida and the election of 2000? Oh.
DAVIS: It’s not as cute as you think it’s going to be.
S SANDERS: That requires, like, three quick takes.
LIASSON: Dear Abby…
(LAUGHTER)
LIASSON: …The butterfly ballot sounds beautiful, but actually, they didn’t fly around like butterflies; they were just in the shape of a butterfly. And when the Florida election of 2000 was contested between George W. Bush and Al Gore, some of the ballots, including some butterflies, had to be recounted. And that’s why we heard a lot about butterfly ballots. Tune in next time when we discuss hanging chads.
(LAUGHTER)
S SANDERS: The counting butterfly sounds like a children’s book.
DAVIS: Yeah.
DETROW: The main problem with this butterfly ballot, which was in a big Florida county, was that a lot of people who wanted to vote for Al Gore, the way the ballot was set up, actually voted for Pat Buchanan, who does not agree with Al Gore on many issues at all. And that became an issue because George Bush carried the state by less than 600 votes.
S SANDERS: If Abby wants to read up on the crazy election from 2000, what book would be good for her? Anything come to mind?
DETROW: There’s a good Kevin Spacey HBO movie called “Recount.”
DAVIS: That’s pretty good.
S SANDERS: Oh, yeah. Check that out, Abby. OK. Also, shout-out to Matt DeRosa (ph) and his middle school social studies class in Portland, Ore. Hi, Matt. Hi, class. Matt was wondering if we could give his students some advice about following this election and making sense of it all if you are in middle school or around that age. So first point is there is no sense in this election that I can find (laughter).
DAVIS: I would say – ’cause I think middle-schoolers are very well versed in Facebook and social media and Snapchat, and that’s how they get a lot of their information, if they really wanted to follow the election, if I could give them one piece of advice, it would be still read a newspaper every day.
S SANDERS: Yeah.
LIASSON: My only piece of advice would be go to one of those websites that are political aggregators, and they give you a link to everything about politics for that day. RealClearPolitics is a pretty good example of that. Go to one of those one-stop-shopping places that will send you to all the political stories.
DETROW: And mine would be kind of going back to the last question – I think this stuff is confusing. It doesn’t make a lot of sense. But looking back at what happened in previous elections maybe makes it make a little bit more sense. So just looking up online what happened in 2000? What happened in 1996? Googling previous elections just to see where this fits in the bigger trends of what’s happening.
S SANDERS: I would say as you discuss this election, fight the urge to yell. It seems like all the grown-ups around right now are yelling about this election over and over and over again. So let’s try to keep it cool.
DAVIS: And stay in school.
(LAUGHTER)
S SANDERS: All right. That is the mail, which means it’s time for Can’t Let It Go, when we all share one thing we just can’t stop thinking about this week – politics or otherwise. Susan Davis, you’re going first.
DAVIS: OK, so my Can’t Let It Go this week involves Donald Trump and his penchant for nicknaming his political opponents.
S SANDERS: Yeah.
DAVIS: And we’ve talked a lot about this on the podcast. We talked a lot about – in the GOP primaries, it was low-energy Jeb, lying Ted, little Marco.
S SANDERS: I love little Marco.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVIS: Little Marco. You know, and I don’t know if he has one for Bernie, but for Hillary, he’s calling her…
S SANDERS: Was it crazy Bernie?
LIASSON: Crazy Bernie.
S SANDERS: Yeah.
DAVIS: Crazy Bernie. Crooked Hillary. And so someone he’s been battling with this week and increasingly lately is Elizabeth Warren…
S SANDERS: Yeah.
DAVIS: …The Democratic senator from Massachusetts, and his nickname for her is goofy.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
TRUMP: Elizabeth Warren – I call her goofy. She is – no, no, goofy. She gets less done than anybody in the United States Senate. She gets nothing done…
DAVIS: So why I can’t let it go is I think Trump has been very skilled at defining his opponents…
S SANDERS: Yeah.
DAVIS: …Or calling them the thing that you think they’re insecure about, right? Like, that’s kind of one of his skills. Goofy, to me, is just a swing and a miss.
S SANDERS: Well, also, I’m not particularly sure that I would dislike someone who is goofy.
DAVIS: Right. Like…
S SANDERS: Sometimes goofy folks are cool.
DAVIS: Yeah, like, you got to meet this guy; he’s goofy. Like, he’s really funny.
S SANDERS: (Laughter).
DAVIS: Like, one, there’s a little bit of a positive. And if you’ve ever interacted with Elizabeth Warren or watched her give a speech or know anything about her, like, goofy is probably one of the last ways she would ever be described. If anything – our colleague Ailsa Chang had a great story on Elizabeth Warren this week, and if anything, you know, her colleagues will say sometimes she’s too serious or she’s not – you know? So it just doesn’t work for me. It’s just not – it’s goofy. I think Trump has to go back to the drawing board on this one.
LIASSON: Pocahontas is his second choice.
DAVIS: Pocahontas is his second choice.
S SANDERS: Explain that. There’s a backstory here on that one.
LIASSON: She used to – the reason he calls her Pocahontas is during her Senate campaign, it was discovered that she had once checked a box on a form describing what your ancestry was, that she was Native American or part Native American, which got a lot of derision because she doesn’t look like she’s American Indian. She does have…
S SANDERS: Now, to be fair, you can be, like, 1/32nd and be it, right?
LIASSON: Yes, she has Native American ancestors. And he calls her…
DAVIS: Distant, distant.
LIASSON: Distant.
DAVIS: Distant ancestors.
LIASSON: So he calls her Pocahontas.
S SANDERS: That is so not PC. So, Mara, what can you not let go this week?
LIASSON: The Sure, Honey vote. There are…
S SANDERS: Wait, what?
LIASSON: The Sure, Honey vote.
DAVIS: (Laughter).
LIASSON: There are a lot of pollsters who are saying it’s very hard to accurately poll because within marriages, you’ve got women who can’t stand Donald Trump and their husbands are saying, sure, honey, I’ll vote for Hillary when, really, they’re going to vote for Donald Trump. And you’ve got wives who are – whose husbands are voting for Trump and are saying, sure, honey, I’ll vote for Trump, but really, they’re going to vote for Hillary.
S SANDERS: Oh.
DAVIS: You know, I think there’s something to that because I have older brothers. And except for one – they’re all married. And I would say with the exception of one, I think the Sure, Honey vote applies to a lot of them.
S SANDERS: Now, granted, a lot of people nowadays under the age of 35 or 40 are single more than ever before. So – but they also vote less than older folks.
LIASSON: But married women…
DAVIS: Yeah.
LIASSON: …Are one of the most important swing groups in this election.
S SANDERS: They are, yeah.
DAVIS: And the gender gap has been, like, one of the…
S SANDERS: Astronomical.
DAVIS: Astronomical in this election, that men are for Trump and women are for Hillary. So you think it would have to be playing out in marriages, right?
S SANDERS: Yeah.
LIASSON: Absolutely.
S SANDERS: The Sure, Honey vote. I like the sound of that.
DAVIS: I like that. It’s the Sure, Honey.
S SANDERS: (Laughter) Yeah. Scott?
DETROW: Well, as we talked about this week, this was kind of a toxic week in politics. So I’m going…
S SANDERS: Yeah.
DETROW: …To take my Can’t Let It Go outside of politics and talk about the cresting wave of think pieces on the internet about “Ghostbusters.” And the movie…
S SANDERS: Oh, yeah.
DETROW: It’s become, like, a thing. I’ve read, like, a think piece and a counter think piece and another think piece. And what’s going on is they are remaking “Ghostbusters.” It’s…
S SANDERS: With all women.
DETROW: With all women. And that is the problem for a lot of people on the internet. The trailer for this new “Ghostbusters” movie…
S SANDERS: Was not good, from what I hear.
DETROW: First, it was a bad trailer, but it has also gotten, like, the lowest rating in YouTube trailer history, which I didn’t know was a thing till a couple weeks ago. Now it’s a thing.
S SANDERS: All right.
DETROW: But there is just, like, this whole swarm of people who are personally offended that – how could you remake “Ghostbusters”? This is part of my childhood. How could you do this and remake it in a different way? Which, when you think about it, we are in a moment right now where, like, every single thing that happened in the ’90s is being remade.
S SANDERS: Yeah.
DETROW: There’s a “Ninja Turtles” movie coming out next week. There’s a “Power Rangers” movie. There’s, like, nine…
S SANDERS: Wait, there’s a “Power Rangers”…
DAVIS: Oh, yeah.
DETROW: Coming out next year, yeah.
S SANDERS: Taking that day off of work.
(LAUGHTER)
DETROW: The thing is, like, everything who somebody in their early 30s now and has some sort of disposable income liked as a kid is now a movie. So the fact that, like, people are focusing their hatred and rage on this thing that just happens to be being remade with four women in the lead instead of four men seems kind of a little interesting and, I don’t know, lots of chatter on the internet.
S SANDERS: Like, I’ve seen some headlines…
DETROW: Yeah.
S SANDERS: …Basically saying, in response to the think pieces about how bad it is, it’s like, even if this new thing comes out and it’s bad, it doesn’t ruin your childhood.
DETROW: Right.
(LAUGHTER)
S SANDERS: You can still like the old movie, and the old movie can exist in its own space and be fine.
DETROW: Or you could just not go see it.
S SANDERS: There you go. In the same regard, I think that, like, Mariah Carey’s first three albums were, like, the pinnacle of pop vocal perfection. She can’t sing anymore.
LIASSON: Yeah.
S SANDERS: She can’t. It’s over. It’s done.
DAVIS: But that doesn’t mean you can’t still love old Mariah.
S SANDERS: That doesn’t – exactly. “Vision Of Love” is a classic. I’m going to always love that song regardless of how badly she screwed up at the last Rockefeller Christmas Tree Lighting. Anyway, the internet.
DAVIS: (Laughter) Sam, what you got?
DAVIS: I have a thing that actually Brent, our fearless producer, showed me a bit earlier. There is a Bernie Sanders superdelegate song…
DAVIS: Oh, good.
DAVIS: …Which Bernie tweeted out to his supporters – was it today or yesterday? I really can’t say too much about it besides – play that tape.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “SUPERDELEGATE”)
THE 99 PERCENT: (Singing) Will this world just wither and die? Or will we find the way to survive? Change your mind, superdelegate. You have to find…
DETROW: (Laughter).
DAVIS: Oh, my.
S SANDERS: But I got to say, those guitars are on it. This is a pretty good studio band.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “SUPERDELEGATE”)
THE 99 PERCENT: (Singing) You can’t be bought by…
DETROW: I can’t handle this.
S SANDERS: Do you guys see me dancing right now?
DETROW: This is worse than the Raffi Bernie Sanders song from a couple months ago.
S SANDERS: No, it’s not. No, it’s not. That was bad.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, “SUPERDELEGATE”)
THE 99 PERCENT: (Singing) Superdelegate.
(LAUGHTER)
S SANDERS: It’s giving me, like, a little poor man’s Steely Dan.
DAVIS: (Laughter).
LIASSON: I think the superdelegates would rather hear that than the threats on their voicemails.
S SANDERS: (Laughter) Yeah.
LIASSON: They’ll take the song.
S SANDERS: Yes, yes. So at your leisure, listeners, go listen to that song on repeat.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIG TOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
S SANDERS: All right. Keep jamming, y’all. That’s a wrap. As always, you can find more of our political coverage at nprpolitics.org and on your local public radio station. Scott is still laughing.
DETROW: I’m still laughing at the “Superdelegates” song.
(LAUGHTER)
S SANDERS: That – the band was all right. OK, please do us a favor and rate the show on iTunes if you like it and find us on Twitter if you want to talk. Also, email us your questions at nprpolitics@npr.org.
I’m Sam Sanders, campaign reporter
DETROW: I’m Scott Detrow. I cover the campaign.
DAVIS: I’m Susan Davis. I cover Congress.
LIASSON: And I’m Mara Liasson, national political correspondent.
S SANDERS: And thank you for listening to the NPR POLITICS PODCAST.
(SOUNDBITE OF THE BIG TOP ORCHESTRA’S “TEETER BOARD: FOLIES BERGERE (MARCH AND TWO-STEP)”)
