Trump confronts his lame duck era

0:00This message comes from Mattress Firm. Restless partner keeping you up? Mattress Firm sleep experts can match you with a Tempur-Pedic that absorbs motion. Save up to$1 ,000 on select Tempur-Pedic Split King sleep systems during the Black Friday sale. They make sleep easy. We know Democrats won big in last week's midterms, but President Trump isn't going anywhere. So what can we expect for the next two years of divided government? We're getting some clues. And hint, they're not consistent.

0:33It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover politics. I'm Danielle Kurtzleben. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. So on last Friday's podcast, I said that it seemed like President Trump had skipped all of the stages of grief with these midterms and had moved straight to acceptance. And clearly I spoke too soon. Now it seems like he may be working backwards. Danielle, he is casting doubt on the election's results now. What is he saying? Yeah. Inconsistent messaging from this White House? What? Yeah. So today in a post on Truth Social, President Trump wrote the following.

1:14Does anybody really believe that this election, in scare quotes, was honest? How could the polls be so wrong? Some early voting dumps were so large that it was impossible to win no matter how many people went to vote. It's all about the machines, which are far more important than the voter, signed President DJT. So clearly here doing something that he's done many times before casting doubt on an election and really seems to be giving his supporters sort of a permission structure to believe any sort of thing they want about why Republicans lost. He's just asking questions. Absolutely. Mara, my question for you.

1:47Is this surprising? No, it was surprising that he didn't contest the election right on election night. He was certainly putting the machinery in place to do that. He had election observers. He had plowed the ground talking about conspiracy theories about rigged votes for months, if not years. But right away on election night, he said he would accept the results. That was the surprise. I think this post today is pretty insignificant. I mean, if he wants to actually file a suit to try to stop certification of an election, he can do that. But it's not going to change the outcome, the balance of power in the House or Senate.

2:23Yeah. And senators-elect and representatives-elect are in Washington as we speak, getting orientation, getting, you know, like it's happening. I do want to talk a little bit more about the president, though, because he has been all over the place in recent days. First, he was saying he could work with Democrats. Then he was calling himself Mr. Veto. He said in a 60 Minutes interview that aired on Sunday that his administration's immigration tactics went too far. And maybe that's part of why they lost in the midterms. Then he promoted the architect of those policies to chief of staff. So let's just dig in on this post-shellacking shakeup in the White House.

3:02Susie Wiles is out as chief of staff. Stephen Miller is in. Danielle, for those who are not familiar, remind us who Stephen Miller is. Sure. So people who have been paying attention to Donald Trump since the beginning have probably heard of Stephen Miller and heard of him many times. Stephen Miller has been with Donald Trump since the start of his 2015 campaign or right around the start of it. And Stephen Miller is considered a true believer very much of Donald Trump's. He is one of the few that have been in the Trump operation in both White Houses the whole time thus far. And really, one of the things that I find most interesting about Stephen Miller is just how clearly he isn't the kind of person who seems to shapeshift.

3:50Like in reading up on him, realizing that he, before working for Donald Trump, he worked for Minnesota Representative Michelle Bachman. He worked for Alabama GOP Senator Jeff Sessions. He also, and this is by now ancient political history, but you may remember in 2014, there was an effort to primary House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, a Republican representative from Virginia. Well, Stephen Miller advised the Dave Bratt campaign. Dave Bratt undertook a successful primary campaign against Eric Cantor, and that was seen as a huge upset at the time. And when you mentioned 2014, I thought you were going to mention that there was this bipartisan immigration reform effort in the Senate.

4:32That too. That Stephen Miller personally tanked. Yeah. And I mean, like, so if you think about the Trump administration's hardline immigration policies, you think about family separation in term one, you think about the mass deportations, the confrontations between federal agents and protesters in U.S. cities, you have Stephen Miller out there cheerleading them the whole time. Yeah. And the deal that almost got done was some kind of a deal that would allow DACA recipients, those are young people brought here illegally when they were, some of them, infants. But that was scuttled. And I don't think anything like that is on the horizon, even though Donald Trump has been suggesting that it might be.

5:16Yeah. You know, the other thing about Stephen Miller is that during that period when President Trump was in the wilderness after January 6th, Stephen Miller stayed close to Trump and he started something called the America First Legal Organization, which essentially was a shadow second Trump administration. He was working through all the things where they came up against legal barriers in the first term and was working out the plans so that in the second term, President Trump could exert far more executive power, figuring out all the ways to do whatever they wanted to do if they did return to power.

6:02And of course, they did then return to power. And many of the things that Stephen Miller worked on were signed as executive orders. Right. And so just to close the circle on this, why does this matter? Because, you know, he's going to be chief of staff. He's replacing Susie Wiles. And the chief of staff is kind of a gatekeeper for the president, has power over who the president sees, how the president spends their time, what the president hears. And so now he is Donald Trump's like even more of his right hand man than he may have been before. But it also tells you that Donald Trump, despite what he says, we should look at what he does.

6:36And by elevating Stephen Miller, he signaled that he is ready for a very confrontational next couple of years. Roger Stone, one of his longtime supporters, said that Stephen Miller is in effect a wartime consigliere. And if you want to fight with Congress, if you want to fight, fight, fight, as Donald Trump would say, you pick someone like Stephen Miller as your chief of staff. Yeah, this this means combat, not compromise for the next two years. Right. Yeah. And another thing that I think is notable about him is he's not just a policy guy, even though he has very much been a policy aide to the president.

7:10Stephen Miller is very much a mouthpiece. That's understating it. You know, Stephen Miller, after the killing of Charlie Kirk, he went on the Charlie Kirk podcast, which J.D. Vance guest hosted. He said the administration should go after left-leaning NGOs that, in Miller's opinion, foment violence. You know, after the killing of Alex Preddy in Minneapolis by federal agents, Stephen Miller called Preddy initially a domestic terrorist and an assassin. He is just such a bomb thrower. And so that really signals that it's fighting time for this White House. And I think it's also worth noting that the person he's replacing was seen as a steadying force, someone who was actually able to tell the president no, though didn't do it often.

7:56But she had that ability. Miller never wants to say no, as far as I can tell. Now, Miller is like President Trump's id. I mean, I think there are going to be two big fronts in the fight between the White House and Congress. One of them is clearly going to be immigration. Stephen Miller was not just the architect of mass deportations. He also was key in revoking the temporary protected status of immigrants here legally like Haitians. But also, he is the biggest believer in the White House of the unitary executive theory of the unchecked powers of the president. And you're going to see a lot of conflicts about that that the Supreme Court, I think, is going to have to resolve.

8:39We're going to talk more about that after a quick break. Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Synchrony Bank, who wants to inspire you to keep dreaming and saving smart to make those dreams real. Open an account and dream on at synchrony.com slash NPR. Member FDIC. This message comes from Mint Mobile. Unwrap huge savings this season. All plans, even unlimited, are$15 for new customers. Go to mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three-month,$90 for six-month, or$180 for 12-month plan required,$15 per month equivalent.

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9:58Visit BetterHelp.com slash NPR. Cost and coverage may vary. Discount cannot be combined with insurance. Welcome back. And Mara, President Trump is staring down having divided government in his final years in office. Congress will not be client. It will not be the rubber stamp that it has been thus far in his term. But this is already a president who we've discussed believes in the power of executive action rather than going through Congress. So how is this power balance change going to impact governance in the next couple of years? I think that now that we have divided government, you will see Congress all of a sudden rediscovering its Article I powers, something that the Republican Congress didn't exercise much in the first two years of Trump's second term.

10:48And I think you're going to see the president do, as you said, what he's been doing all along, which is sign a lot of executive orders. Those are basically temporary measures. They last as long as that president is in office. He doesn't have a big legislative agenda. He kind of passed what he wanted to pass in the first two years, but he can veto. And to the extent that the Democratic Congress sends him a lot of bills, and that is their intention. Even if they can't override his veto, they want to tell a story to the American people about the kind of things they would enact into law if in 2028 they got a Democratic president.

11:21So you're going to see a lot of vetoes. You're going to see a lot of fighting. And I think in terms of executive action, I think that he will be challenged at every step of the way by congressional Democrats, And the courts are going to have to work this out. What I think is really important to watch is how Republicans in Congress treat him. Up until now, very, very wary of crossing Trump, criticizing Trump publicly because they're afraid of what he might say that will hurt them in the next primary. But Donald Trump became an official lame duck on Election Day. And every single day since then, he's become a lamer duck.

12:00I have an honest question about the powers of Congress in the next session because let's say President Trump puts out there an executive order that says, you know, 150 percent tariffs on Canadian goods. Game this out for me. Congress can't do anything about that, can they? Congress should pass a law somehow curtailing the president's powers and the Supreme Court would have to decide if it's constitutional or not. There are a lot of different trade acts that the president has put tariffs on. And when one of them is struck down by the courts, he generally tries to use another. I think that's the kind of thing that you'll be seeing.

12:37But if they passed a law, he could veto it, right? Yes, and then it would go nowhere. I see. Yeah. Now, the big question, like I said, watch Republicans. How many Republicans are worried enough about the negative effects of Donald Trump that they're willing to break with him, especially in swing states or districts? And after last Tuesday, we know that we have a whole new definition of what is a swing state or district. Sometimes it's one that Donald Trump won by double digits, which we would have never called a swing district in the past. I mean, if you're wondering about, OK, where can they find common ground?

13:12Great question. One thing that we are going to see coming up in December, so before the new Congress is seated, is that funding runs out for the government on December 11th. And so this Congress currently up on the Hill right now is going to lame duck Congress. It's the ones that lost and some that will be sticking around, mostly Democrats. Exactly. Are going to have to figure out how to fund the government. And so depending on how long they fund the government for, at some point, the new Congress will have to presumably work to fund the government again. How well do they work together? I have no idea.

13:49Yeah, and one of the other things to watch for is how popularism works for Democrats or not. Democrats say they want to pass bills that have big majority support. And we know from polls that there are a bunch of things that over 60 percent of Americans are for. So that means a lot of Republicans, too. A cap on credit card interest rates, raising taxes on billionaires, all sorts of things to make health care and housing and education more affordable. So if Republicans do break with the president, that'll make it even harder for him to veto bills if they pass bills that are popular. Just to take a stroll down memory lane and to talk about the government funding, I regret to inform you of what happened after the last midterms in Trump's first term when Republicans lost the House but held on to the Senate.

14:37There was all of this debate over building a border wall with Mexico and Congress went back and forth with the president about what that could look like. And long story short, no funding bill got passed and the government shut down from just before Christmas 2018 until almost the end of January. That was the longest shutdown in history until, of course, the one that just happened last fall. So I think it's fair to say that nobody really knows what's going to happen next. I just don't predict anything in Washington anymore. Like, I'm always wrong, like, not to make this about me, but I'm just saying, like, with Donald Trump in the White House, like we're saying, he says one thing, his actions are another thing.

15:21And it's just going to be another stretch, I think, of just watch and see because we can't guess. OK, so with all of this, what are you both going to be looking for as the new Congress comes in? Investigations, because one of the first notable responses that I can remember seeing from Democrats on election night this past midterms was from California Democratic House member Robert Garcia, the soon to be presumably the head of the House Oversight Dems. He had a statement that was sent out that said, lawyer up. The idea being that we're going to investigate any number of things about Donald Trump and his businesses, his family, that sort of thing.

16:00And then we watch to see how many subpoenas will actually be honored. I would guess it will be about zero. We have a history of this. We know that Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro went to jail rather than honor a subpoena from Congress. So you're going to have a big standoff there. And the investigations, Democrats say, are meant to lay out a narrative, tell a story about corruption and how corruption is connected to higher prices. And hopefully each of these investigations are also connected to some kind of a bill that would remedy that. All right. We are going to leave it there for today. I'm Tamara Keith.

16:35I cover politics. I'm Danielle Kurtzlaven. I cover the White House. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.

16:51Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors. This message comes from Rinse. Your dog believes you are magnificent, capable of anything. Your dog has watched you spend hours a week moving fabric between machines and has never once lost faith. The question was never whether you could become the person your dog thinks you are. It's what's in the way. Turns out, just the laundry. Not anymore. Rinse picks up your laundry, cleans it expertly, and delivers it back while you get on with being magnificent. Sign up today at Rinse.com. Rinse. It's time to be great. Oh, Kevin, it feels good to be back.

17:32It sure does, Casey. And what a time the world is talking about AI and what's going on in Silicon Valley. And we are here with a new show to tell you all about it. That's right, Kevin, on our new show, Machine Gods, twice a week, we'll be bringing you the biggest news in tech and bring you unmatched access to the real titans of this industry. You can find Machine Gods from NPR on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.