[FEMALE NARRATOR] Funding
for Overheard with Evan Smith
is provided in part by
Hillco Partners, a Texas
government affairs consultancy.
The Alice Kleberg
Reynolds Foundation.
Claire and Carl
Stuart, and by Entergy.
[EVAN SMITH] I'm Evan Smith,
they're senior
writers for Politico
and the coauthors of its must
read Playbook newsletters.
Their first book,
instantly a best seller,
is "The Hill to Die On:
The Battle for Congress
and the Future of
Trump's America".
They're Anna Palmer
and Jake Sherman.
This is Overheard.
Let's be honest, is this
about the ability to learn
or is this about the experience
of not having been
taught properly?
How have you avoided what
has befallen other nations
in Africa? You could say
that he made his own bed
but you caused him
to sleep in it.
You saw a problem and
over time took it on
Let's start with
the sizzle before
we get to the steak.
Are you gonna run for President?
I think I just got an
F from you, actually.
This is Overheard.
(audience cheering)
[SMITH] Jake, Anna, welcome.
[ANNA PALMER and JAKE
SHERMAN] Thanks for having us.
[SMITH] Congratulations, I'm
so happy to see you succeed.
It's good when good
people succeed.
[SHERMAN] We'll take
that as a compliment.
[SMITH] I don't like it so
much when bad people succeed,
which happens. This book was
26 months of reporting, right?
Did you know, did you
know 26 months ago,
did you know when you
decided to write this book
that Congress was going
to be so off the rails?
[PALMER] I don't think we knew
how crazy it was going to get.
I think we knew it was
going to be interesting.
[SMITH] You're in the position
of praying for crazy, right?
We've got a book,
we hope it's crazy.
Bad for the country,
good for us.
[PALMER] I mean, I think
what really is true though,
is you had Donald
Trump, change candidate,
change election saying
he's gonna up end
the way Washington works.
You had Republicans
controlling everything
for the first time
in a long time,
salivating, trying to think
about what deals
they could get done.
And you knew there was
gonna be a lot of drama,
because Republicans are
probably gonna lose the House.
[SMITH] Donald Trump may
have told 10,000 lies
but "I'm gonna up end
everything" was true.
[SHERMAN] Yeah it was, but
remember there was another
candidate who said
he was gonna do that.
And it was Barack Obama,
and Washington is a city
much like Austin or any
kind of power center
that doesn't change so easily.
[SMITH] Resistant to change.
[SHERMAN] Right, and what
we didn't know though,
was that in that period,
from Election Day 2016
'til 2018, crazy
stuff would happen.
We didn't know that
because of Donald Trump.
We knew that because
we had covered Congress
for a decade and we
had written about
the craziest things
we'd ever imagined.
[SMITH] Except, it
exceeded expectations.
[SHERMAN] Yes, right.
[PALMER] I mean, there were
things that happened, whether
it was Brett Kavanaugh,
I don't think we would
have ever said and thought,
oh, we're gonna have a Supreme
Court nomination chapter.
Or all the sexual harassment
stuff that happened
and really permeated
Capitol Hill
for several of the months,
and then the shut down
and the immigration
fight I think,
was crazier than anybody,
way more dramatic
than anybody would have thought.
[SHERMAN] But we did know we
had a Speaker of the House,
Paul Ryan, who not
hated the president,
but during the campaign,
certainly didn't
see eye to eye with the
president or with the candidate
at the time. And we had
Nancy Pelosi who was
trying to get power again.
And we had Mitch McConnell
who would be able to
try to use the president
to try to achieve his
ends, so we had a mix
of power, people who were
in positions of power
who were gonna benefit
from Donald Trump.
[SMITH] Well, the key
element to any good story
is great characters,
and you had the absolute
best characters, probably
more than you could
have ever hoped for.
[PALMER] We had some really good
advice early on which was
saying, you really need
to pick the characters
and follow them.
And so you had the
kind of the characters
that you thought for
sure right, Donald Trump,
Nancy Pelosi, mentioned
Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell.
But then you had the Freedom
Caucus, which is just
ripe for you know --
[SMITH] If you're a political
journalist, the Freedom
Caucus is Christmas every day.
Isn't it?
[SHERMAN] Yes, but you know
they're actually, they're
close to the president,
but they couldn't
be more media savvy.
I mean, I spent so much
time with Jim Jordan
and Mark Meadows, I
traveled with them.
I went to visit Jim Jordan
at his home in Ohio.
They are really people who
respect what the press does.
And it might sound
ironic, because they are
close allies of the
president, but they give a lot
of access to reporters
and really try to explain
what they're up to.
[SMITH] Does writing a book
like this today, when
everything is being told to us
Anna, in real time, we are
watching the events play out
at a kind of microsecond
level, as never before.
In the old days you
know, you'd write a book
that was about the
political campaign.
The sort of standard
deal where we're not
gonna report any
of the stuff until
after the campaign
and it would hold.
You say in the book
that you did interviews
over the course of all
this, and you had certain
conditions that
people you talked to
agreed to, who were gonna
not report some of the stuff
until afterwards but,
how does this stuff hold
in this era for
as long as it did?
[PALMER] I think it was kind
of terrifying as first time
reporters that were doing
this, but I do think
upon reflection, we
benefited from the fact
that the media is always
moving on to the next story
and that Donald Trump,
the president, takes up
so much oxygen in Washington.
And this is really
a book about Congress
in the era of Trump.
And so, people really
gave us a lot of access
because we were
reconstructing things,
and it wasn't gonna
impact the election
or the next vote the next
day. They knew that they had
months, even over a year
before it was gonna come out.
[SMITH] The idea that we're
being distracted, Jake,
as much as we are by events,
I mean things happen today
and in the old days they
would have had hang time
on the front page of a paper
or on the evening news.
One day, two days, three days,
literally five minutes pass,
something else pushes
a major story off
of the front page. You benefit
from that sort of, don't you?
[SHERMAN] Huge, I mean
I watch good reporters,
great reporters, reporters
that should be sinking their
teeth into meaty issues
and projects like this
on Capitol Hill be chasing
members of Congress
around saying "What do you
think of the president's
most recent tweet? What
do you think of this?"
And we were able to, to an
extent, step back and say,
"Okay, well, while this is
happening, I'm gonna go meet
with Mark Meadows about
what his conversations were
with his friends,
with his colleagues,
what he thinks
about the president.
We weren't asking them
to reflect backward,
we were asking them
to say, in the moment,
what are you thinking right
now? And just by showing
an interest in their
work, they had a buy-in
in it too, I think,
was part of the --
[PALMER] You know I totally
agree, and I think the other
thing that we really
benefited from
is because members of Congress,
I mean they feel like they
have a great story to tell.
They are working for longer,
decades in Washington
where a president comes in
four years, eight years.
And most of the time, there's
so much more attention
the press plays on
the White House,
that we were saying
no, we want your story.
[SMITH] Right, well the
president is, as a general rule,
temporary and we,
including Congress,
the institution, are permanent.
But this president is
not just any president.
And in fact, you got an
opportunity to talk to him
for this book, and basically,
as you say in the book,
he wants everything
to be about him.
The interview you did
with him about Congress
and about this here, he
basically turned everything
back on him.
[SHERMAN] He did. I think
the thing about him that
we found most interesting,
a few things, he's much
more personally engaging --
[SMITH] Yeah yeah, talk about
that, because most of us
out in the world think
we have a sense of what
he's like up close, but you
actually have been up close.
So what's --
[SHERMAN] And we're not
experts on him, but I can
tell you our reflections
from our experience.
[SMITH] You've been in the room
though, yeah.
[SHERMAN] He's very interested
in people. He's very
interested in talking shop.
And you wouldn't expect
that because this is a guy
who wasn't involved in
politics for a long time.
And he expects
backbreaking loyalty.
And we write this in the
book, but doesn't return any.
He expects people to jump
off proverbial bridges
for him. Yet when it
comes time to return that
he's not always there
for that person.
And even those members
of Congress who expect
that loyalty from
him don't get it.
[PALMER] Yeah, I think we also,
I think if given the opportunity
he would spend
multiple hours a day
talking to reporters, he
likes talking to reporters.
He's very media savvy, he's
done it for a really long time.
[SMITH] Even out of the
news organizations that he
takes out after on Twitter,
the failing New York Times.
But then he calls Maggie
Haberman, or the Bezos
Amazon Washington Post,
and he calls Bob Costa.
[PALMER] I mean I would venture,
I don't have his chronicle,
but I would venture that
this president has given
more interviews in the
two and a half years
that he's been president,
to the New York Times,
than Barack Obama
did for all eight.
[SMITH] And probably broadly
more accessible to the press
than Obama was in
the sense that he may
not be doing formal press
conferences, but under
the helicopter blades,
or this gaggle, right?
[PALMER] Absolutely, I
mean he is unlike anything
we've ever seen in terms of
one, you have that access,
but then you also have a real
time with his Twitter feed
how he is feeling in the
moment, which is really
something that
reporters never get
at a principle of that level.
[SMITH] Do you consider
his Twitter feed, Jake,
to be legitimate as
a source of news?
[SHERMAN] Yeah I find
the argument befuddling
that it's not.
I don't think it's an
unbiased and unvarnished
source of truth.
[SMITH] But he's the president,
he said it, it's news, period.
[SHERMAN] Yes, 100 percent.
Just to follow up
on what Anna said,
I think that the interesting
thing about the president
is that he is always in
search of elite approval.
Approval from the
New York Times.
Approval from big networks.
[SMITH] He's still a kid
who grew up in Queens
and he had sort of,
bridge, bus, and tunnel
envy of the big city.
[SHERMAN] Exactly. And
he says that, he says,
"Can't I get a good story out of
my hometown paper
once in a while?
I'm a kid from Queens."
I mean, he said this.
You can go back and
look at the transcripts
of the interviews of
the New York Times.
Which people, when I tell
some of my conservative
friends this, they just
are like, what is he doing?
Why does he care so much
about what the Times says?
They wanna take him down.
[SMITH] Because he's who
he always was. He was
the kid from Queens.
[SHERMAN] Exactly, exactly.
[SMITH] Is he nice?
[PALMER] Oh, I think he is
very personable, you
can tell he was in the
hospitality industry
for his entire career.
That comes across, I think he
seems genuinely interested,
whether he is or not.
I mean, he'd talk about
golf courses with Jake
or different things
like that, yeah.
I think he tries to find a
commonality and a connection
with people.
[SHERMAN] I'll take you behind
the curtain for one
second, it was interesting.
So we had a few questions
we were able to ask
for Politico, for daily
consumption, but 99 percent
of our interview, or 90
percent is for the book.
And we, at a certain point,
one of his handlers said,
"All right Mr. President,
that was all for the book.
Now are the questions that
could be used at any time."
Kind of like warning
him what the story was.
And he said, "I don't
care, they could use
all of this right now."
It's funny how he's
just, he loves the back
and forth with reporters.
And especially because
we weren't there
to get into a fight
with him. We were there
to ask him about his
view of other people
and people that
he interacts with.
[SMITH] So on the subject
of his view of other people,
I wonder if he's not his
own worst enemy sometimes,
in terms of how he takes
after people he needs.
So Paul Ryan is a great example.
Paul Ryan is as much
an important character
in this book as any
character in this book is.
And the president at
various points was pretty
unkind publicly and
privately to Paul Ryan.
Who after all was
Speaker of the House,
the Republican leader in one
of two chambers of Congress.
He needed Paul Ryan
to be on the same page
with him to a large degree,
to get anything accomplished.
And yet he felt perfectly
comfortable taking
out after him.
[PALMER] I just think
you have to realize that
as Jake mentioned earlier,
in the beginning, Paul
Ryan was not with him
on the campaign trail. [SMITH]
He was still Speaker though.
[PALMER] Yes, he was still
Speaker, but there was not even
a single photo of the two
of them during the entire
campaign season. Paul Ryan
was the Chairman of the
Republican Convention,
and this is your nominee.
There's not a single photo
of the two of them together.
I also think that
you have to realize
that Paul Ryan let the
president down early,
very early, he came
up to Trump Tower
right after the election
saying "This is what I
wanna do, we're gonna do
healthcare, that's gonna make
room for tax reform and
then we're gonna do this,
we're gonna get all this
passed." And he had this whole
kind of process laid
out, healthcare --
[SMITH] Didn't happen.
[PALMER] Inflamed, and so all
of a sudden, he's getting
killed in the first
couple months of his
presidency, and it's because
this guy promised
him, the Speaker,
that he was gonna be the guy
that was gonna get the job done.
[SHERMAN] I have a lot
of thoughts about this.
And so does Anna,
as you can tell.
Donald Trump ran
a family company
where he didn't need anyone's
approval to do anything.
[SMTIH] People think that the
Trump organization was big.
It was actually
pretty small, right?
[SHERMAN] And he was the
sole deciding factor,
from what we know. [SMITH]
Right, everything we think.
[SHERMAN] Couldn't speak
to his corporate structure.
[SMITH] I think it's all
Eric. We're gonna discover
in the last scene of the
movie, it was Eric all along.
[SHERMAN] Right, and Donald's
a robot or something.
So I think when he
came to Washington
and had to deal with
Congressional committees
and the Speaker of the House.
[PALMER] Process.
[SHERMAN] In Washington --
[SMITH] He thought he was
running the America
Organization, didn't he?
[SHERMAN] Exactly, and
there's this amazing scene
we have in our book where
Jared Kushner is in a room
with all of, a bunch of
Republican leadership aides
and he says, they're talking
about the committee process.
The process by which
Congress has been operating
for you know, 150, 200
years, and Jared says,
that sounds inefficient,
we'll get to that later.
As if he felt like, this
was something where he could
change the process --
[SMITH] Wave a wand
and everything fixes. [SHERMAN]
And it, but by the way,
this isn't so far removed
from Barack Obama,
who also thought, who
had similar kind of,
who had been in Washington
but his administration
didn't like the
slow pace either.
[SMITH] Right. The upside
of having an outsider
as president is that
the person is not bound
by what's always been.
The downside of having
an outsider as president,
is that the person
is not bound by what's
always been, right?
I mean, there's an
upside to a downside,
downside to the upside.
[PALMER] Yeah, I mean,
I think we've seen that
to the fits and starts
of his first two and
a half years, right?
In some ways the
audacity of tax reform
and thinking that
they could get it done
as fast as they
could get it done
would never have happened
for most politicians
who would say, "No,
that's gonna take,
you know, at least two
years, four years, you know.
We're gonna have to have
all the committees."
This president pushed
that along in a way
and believed that
it could happen.
Where most people who
were steeped in politics
would say, "Oh that's,
we just can't do that.
[SMITH] Do you think that
in the end, Jake, Anna,
whatever happens next,
whether it's after 2020
or after 2024 that we
go back to something
that looks more
normal? [SHERMAN] I
don't know it's tough
to say. We keep saying
to people that we
don't know how
long this tale is.
And we did an event
with Maggie Haberman
as you mentioned in
New York, where we got
a similar question,
and it was very,
we kind of struggled
with that answer.
We don't know. I don't
think everything will
go back to being
normal, or won't go back
to being as it was
before. It's impossible
to say what's normal,
and it's impossible
to say how the next president
will use social media.
[SMITH] Well, but
you know what I mean.
So if Mitt Romney had
been elected in 2012,
or Jeb Bush, low energy Jeb,
had been elected in 2016,
we would have seen something
that looked more normal.
You had disagreements
within normal parameters,
right, as opposed to
this complete abrogation
of every bit of normal
behavior in approach
to governing, right?
[PALMER] I don't know though.
I push back a little bit on that
because when you look at
some of these new members
that are coming, the freshmen
that have been elected,
I think they are
much more comfortable
and authentic in terms
of using Twitter,
and they are much less
beholden to, both sides,
much less beholden to
the party structure.
In the same way that
Nancy Pelosi has a lot
of problems on her
hands because she's got
a lot of members that
haven't spent their entire
career in politics.
[SMITH] So in some ways
the elimination of
what we think of
as normal behavior is a
little bit on the president,
but it's also on AOC.
[SHERMAN] Sure.
Right, and some would argue
that that's a response,
obviously, and that's
a direct response.
Don't know the answer to that.
I do think though,
when you mentioned Jeb,
and you mentioned Mitt
Romney, what a lot of
Republicans tell us
behind the scenes is,
ignore the noise,
ignore all of that,
and look at what he's
done, is it different
than anything Mitt Romney
or Jeb Bush would have done?
We had very high level
people tell us that
in interviews that we had.
[SMITH] It was substantive?
[SHERMAN] Substantively. [SMITH]
Look, Trump, on the judges,
what Conservatives will
say is, "I might not like
his tweets, I might not
like the way he deals
with people, but how could
I not like the judges?
How can I not like
the tax cuts?"
[SHERMAN] Right and the
regulation-- [SMITH] Regulation.
[SHERMAN] --cut back,
and all those things.
There's a point to that,
but that's like you know,
eating a dish that you
don't like and saying,
"Well, at least there
was bread in it,
and you like bread."
You know what I mean?
It doesn't make
sense on the whole.
[SMITH] So Speaker Pelosi's
name has come up, Anna,
and the return of Nancy
Pelosi to the Speakership
is another significant
narrative thread in this book.
And you gotta admire
her, whether you like her
or don't like her, whether
you agree with everything
that she says or does or you
don't, she's a survivor, right?
[PALMER] Absolutely, I mean, I
covered her first Speakership
out of the depths
of the minority,
and I think truly if they
had not won the majority back
she was done. She is
somebody who we said
this about her and
Mitch McConnell a lot,
but I think it holds so
true, she picks something,
her goal at the end point,
so does Mitch McConnell.
And they steadfastly
work towards that goal
and wait to get
people towards it.
She said she was
gonna become Speaker,
she outworked it, I mean
there was a lot of noise,
people wanted a lot of
things and she got it.
And I think, even when you
look at how the president
reacts to her, in our
interview with her,
he has a real sort of
reverence about her ability
to get things done and
keep Democrats together.
[SMITH] Yeah, I mean in some
ways, Jake, the thought was,
the best thing that could
happen to the president
is that Nancy Pelosi
become Speaker again.
He would at least have a
foil. But there's kind of
an inverse to that, which is
that she's not afraid of him,
she's not cowed by
him, she's not bending.
She's a lot tougher
versus the president,
than Paul Ryan ever was
or would have been, right?
[SHERMAN] It's a
very complicated
relationship and dynamic.
The White House, in the
lead up to the election,
made the case to
everybody in Washington,
that it's okay if
Democrats take the House.
Republicans are too complicated.
We can't get anything through --
[SMITH] Right, well
the president said
he admired the fact
that at least Democrats
hold together, our guys
don't hold together,
but they hold together.
[SHERMAN] He said
that, and he also said,
"Now I can just say
go get me a bill
and I'll see if I'll sign it."
Obviously, over simplification
of the legislative
process, and now he has all
these investigations, but
yes he does have a foil.
But as you said, I mean
Pelosi just has no problem
looking him in the eye
and saying "No. This is
where I am, and you're not
gonna get what you want to get."
And if you're a
Republican or a Democrat,
as you said, you have
to admire Pelosi because
she's able to get things done.
You might not like what
she's able to get done.
But she has an incredible savvy
of the legislative process.
[SMITH] At least so far,
since she was put back into
the Speaker's office, she
has been pretty effective,
in terms of slowing
the president's
agenda and effectively
everything in this
administration to a crawl
if not a halt.
[PALMER] Yeah, I mean, I think
we would both believe that
she's the most powerful person
in Washington right now,
things do not happen
unless she--
[SMITH] But for her.
[PALMER] But for her. [SMITH]
Elections have consequences.
[SHERMAN] Big time.
[SMITH] The oldest song
in the world, right?
[SHERMAN] I think also
there's a dynamic, the
dynamic that you spoke of
which is, she's able to
keep her troops together,
and nobody else can, and
Donald Trump is like,
why don't I have somebody
like that, who can keep
their people together?
And I also think,
to be honest, she
is a powerful woman,
and that is a
dynamic in Washington
that a lot of people
have been thrown off by,
in her caucus too, right,
I mean big newcomers
to her caucus have been
thrown off by that at times.
[PALMER] Yeah, she also benefits
from having Donald Trump
as a foil. If there's
one thing that Democrats
can agree on, is that
they don't like--
[SMITH] America's fun couple.
[SHERMAN] I would argue,
that she benefits from--
[SMITH] Benefits from her.
[SHERMAN] Because she
has much more knowhow.
[SMITH] On this question of
the Democrats being able to
hold their folks together
and the Republicans not,
let me now push
back gently and say,
where are the Republicans
breaking with this president
as evidence of the Republicans
not holding their guys together?
Does he have to literally, as
he said during the campaign,
shoot somebody in the
middle of 5th Avenue
for a Republican
senator to cross him?
I mean, he really
has benefited from
a unanimity of support
among Republicans
in the Senate, in a
way that I don't know
that anybody could
have imagined.
What does he have to
do that is out of sync
with our expectations,
or with what's normal
for one of these
guys to cross him?
[PALMER] I would say
a couple of things.
I think one, there
have been some moments,
whether it was the
national emergency.
[SMITH] John McCain.
[PALMER] John McCain.
You also had started to
see on the Federal Reserve,
when he put up some of the
nominees that they didn't like.
But I also think, when
we travel for this book,
what you really see is, if
you're a Republican in Congress
and you go back home, you are
not getting the conversation
you just had, it is, why
are you not defending
this president more. They
love him, he's a rock star.
So I think there's a real
friction there between
what people like
yourself are saying
and then what they're
getting back home.
[SMITH] I mean, but of course
if it takes Steve Moore
and Herman Caine for
the Republicans to break
with this president, that's
an extreme case, is it not?
[SHERMAN] It is, but they broke
with him on foreign policy,
on some of the wars
in the Middle East.
They've broken with him on--
[SMITH] They haven't sustained
a veto though have they?
[SHERMAN] They've not.
And that's a numbers problem,
more than an ideological
problem, I would
argue, but Anna's point
is the overwhelming thing that
we've learned in this book,
one of the overwhelming
lessons is that
members of Congress go
home, and they couldn't
be close enough
to this president.
[SMITH] They're voting
with their districts.
[SHERMAN] Oh my god, and I know
a couple members of Congress,
I mean, there were
a lot of retirements
this cycle, in the
House of Representatives
among Republicans. One
member who retired said,
"My district is very red,
I can't live with myself
going home and having
to be with him as much
as I have to be with him to win
election." This person left.
So I think it's a, I think
people tend to not remember
how popular he is
in some districts,
in our gerrymandered country.
[SMITH] Right.
We just have a
couple minutes left.
We did the last 26
months of reporting.
I want you to look at the
next 26 months of reporting.
Who is the Democratic nominee
for president gonna be?
(audience laughing)
[SHERMAN] Anna Palmer.
[PALMER] Yeah, right.
[SMITH] Palmer, Sherman,
yay. [PALMER] Take a
ticket in for fall.
No, I mean, I think, maybe
I'll speak for both of us,
but I'll definitely
speak for myself.
After the 2016 election--
[SMITH] Don't predict.
[PALMER] Reporters should get
out of the prediction business.
[SMITH] Yeah, but
do you have a sense,
let me rephrase. After
the last election,
are the Democrats stupid
enough to put two white men
on the ticket? [SHERMAN]
I remember, by the way,
some of our editors at
Politico saying in 2012
there would never be two
white people on the ticket.
I would have to imagine
that there's always a chance
but it doesn't seem to be
the most appealing option--
[SMITH] How about,
let me, two white men?
Will there be a woman on the
ticket this next election?
[PALMER] I would think so.
[SMITH] And is that because they
ought to or because they
know that they have no choice
but to.
[PALMER] It's partially
a numbers game, you also
look at who are the people
that are running for
president, and there's a number
of women who are
running and are--
[SMITH] More than
qualified to serve
as Vice President or President.
[SHERMAN] Here's my
big question, the
president won in part
because voters in my estimation,
believed that he was
uniquely qualified
to unlock a city that was
mired in gridlock for,
choose however many number
of years you wanna say.
Do those voters
believe that again?
[SMITH] Has he
done it, you think?
[SHERMAN] I think
in some ways he has,
in many ways he has not.
Like every presidency
it's a mixed bag, and this
bag is more mixed than others.
[SMITH] But you know,
Anna, what I see is,
there's still gridlock,
the swamp is full,
but also, the country
added 236,000 jobs
in the month of April,
and the unemployment rate
right now is 3.6%.
[SHERMAN] 46-year low.
[SMITH] If he can just
keep his mouth shut,
and run on the economy,
the next election
might be very different.
[PALMER] He was tweeting today
"Jobs, jobs, jobs." I
mean, I think you see him
return to that, but he
also is very savvy--
[SMITH] Yeah, but later it
will be "Lou Dobbs, Lou Dobbs,
Lou Dobbs." I mean,
that's it, right?
[PALMER] I think we
underestimate him.
I think people think he's just
sitting there and going off
and not really
having a strategy.
I actually think he does
believe in what he's doing
whether it's going against
Mueller, whether it's
what he's tweeting about.
He thinks he's smarter
than all of us, at the
@Twitter, and at keeping
his base together.
[SMITH] Hard to argue with him
at this point, honestly, right?
[SHERMAN] It is, and if you
talk to Kevin McCarthy, the
number one House Republican,
he says, "It's like Bill
Clinton in 1998. Good economy,
under siege by the opposition
party. Some believe
that they will overreach.
He believes that's a recipe
for reelection." Those two
things which Bill Clinton had.
[SMITH] Will there be
impeachment proceedings?
[SHERMAN] Doesn't matter to
me, because it shouldn't matter
to Democrats either,
because what Democrats
are doing now is just as
damaging to the president
in that, constant
investigations, no matter
if you call it impeachment
or not, has the same
political risk for Donald Trump
and dominates the news cycle.
[PALMER] I think Democrats
are gonna turn their fire on
Attorney General Bill Barr.
I think that--
[SHERMAN] For the moment.
[PALMER] For the moment,
but you can see contempt,
you can see impeachment, I
think when they are able to
train, Democratic leadership
is much more comfortable
training their attention
on that then the president.
[SMITH] But you know, a year
ago there was a question
in the middle of the
Mueller investigation,
would this president even
be on the ticket in 2020?
That seems assured
at this point.
[SHERMAN] Yes.
[PALMER] I think that was
people's wishful thinking.
[SMITH] But nonetheless,
you know, if you don't have
dreams, you have nightmares,
for a lot of people,
the thought of the
president somehow
being ensnared by Mueller
was a present thought
or possibility and now,
he really does seem
to have gotten on the other
side of that, hasn't he?
[PALMER] I think so.
[SHERMAN] And he's got
the headline he wants, which is,
no collusion from Bob Mueller.
[SMITH] Total exoneration,
whatever he wants,
whether it turns out to be
legitimately the case or not,
he's kind of survived that--
[PALMER] And that ran on
newspapers across the country.
[SHERMAN] I think one of the
geniuses of Donald Trump
that history will notice
is that he just talks
about whatever he wants
the story to be, no
matter what the story is
to other people,
or to news outlets,
he'll go out into a
rally and say whatever
he wants and just plow ahead,
and it sets the narrative
in a more firm way than I think
almost any politician
we've ever seen.
[SMITH] Well yeah, it's an
extraordinary moment
to be doing this.
And what an extraordinary
moment to read this book
and to get the back story,
and to read you all every day.
You guys are telling
us every single day
what we need to know.
[SHERMAN] Thanks, Evan.
[SMITH] Thank you
Jake, Anna, good luck.
Give them a big hand. Jake
Sherman and Anna Palmer.
(applause)
[SMITH] We'd love to have
you join us in the studio.
Visit our website at
klru.org/overheard
to find invitations
to interviews, Q&As
with our audience and
guests and an archive
of past episodes.
[SHERMAN] Republicans held
Eric Holder in contempt in 2012.
[PALMER] Over Fast and Furious.
[SHERMAN] Over the Fast and
furious gun running probe.
And Eric Holder
didn't leave office,
and neither will Bill Barr.
And a court eventually
told the Department of
Justice that they needed
to fork over documents to
Congress, and Congress won.
[NARRATOR] Funding for
Overheard with Evan Smith
is provided in part
by Hillco Partners,
a Texas government
affairs consultancy,
the Alice Kleberg
Reynolds Foundation,
Claire and Carl
Stuart, and by Entergy.
(bells chiming)