00:02 David Plotz Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gab Fest for July 19th, 2018, the double negative edition. 00:09 We are live in front of a rowdy crowd at the Keswick Theater in Glenside, Pennsylvania, just north of the city of Philadelphia. 00:21 Thank you. 00:26 I'm David Plotz. 00:28 Emily Bazelon You know how to make noise in Philadelphia. 00:30 David Plotz You do. 00:30 You sure do. 00:31 John Dickerson You know, that's the kind of enthusiasm that wins you Super Bowls. 00:41 David Plotz A lot of pandering already. 00:42 I'm David Plotz of Atlas Obscura. 00:45 To my left is favorite daughter of the state of Pennsylvania, city of Philadelphia, Emily Bazelon of the New York Times Magazine. 00:53 Thank you. 00:57 And to Emily's left is John Dickerson of CBS This Morning. 01:09 When I said I would hate to do a show in Pennsylvania, I meant I would not hate to do a show in Pennsylvania. 01:18 So this is, we're in the city of brotherly love, but in fact it's sisterly love here because we have both a Bazelon sister and a Dickerson sister. 01:25 In the House tonight, which is great. 01:27 Emily Bazelon This is like family night, live show family night. 01:31 David Plotz On this week's GabFest, the bizarre and catastrophic spectacle of the American president kowtowing and toadying to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki and disavowing his own country's intelligence work. 01:44 Will it have any consequence... 01:47 Then the indictment of 12 Russian agents, plus a curious, gun-loving Russian spy, has put more pep in the step of the Mueller investigation. 01:56 We'll talk about that. 01:57 And then the 2020 presidential campaign seems to have gotten started this week. 02:01 Who are the front-runners, the side-runners, who are the dark horses? 02:05 And, of course, we're going to have cocktail chatter. 02:09 Thank you. 02:14 In a Trump era of horrifying and path-breaking misbehavior, I have now, I feel like I've identified five events that are extraordinary even by Trump standards. 02:25 So there was the grab-them-by-the-pussy moment in October 2016 because that was the moment when his most debased private behavior was made evident and was then excused. 02:37 The second was his firing of James Comey. 02:39 to stop the Russia investigation, or perhaps to stop the Russia investigation, which revealed that he would turn government inside out to stop any restraint on him. 02:48 The third was his good people on both sides moment after Charlottesville, which exposed overt and shocking racism that was surprising. 02:58 The fourth was the separation of migrant families, which revealed a willingness to commit 03:04 unspeakable cruelty in the name of political gain. 03:08 And now the press conference with Vladimir Putin, I think, is the fifth one of these. 03:13 He's accepted President Putin's denials of Russian election meddling. 03:18 He denigrated American intelligence agencies. 03:20 He slavishly took the Russian president's side in every way that mattered. 03:26 So that is what happened early in the week. 03:29 So the question... 03:31 John, is this was denounced initially even by his dearest allies. 03:36 Even Newt Gingrich denounced what President Trump had done. 03:42 And yet we kind of know that nothing will change. 03:46 John Dickerson We're already at nothing will change. 03:47 David Plotz I don't know. 03:48 I'm setting you up, dude. 03:50 Emily Bazelon Well, no. 03:53 John Dickerson Shouldn't we chew over what actually happened a little before we get to the nothing will change? 03:57 Because so much has changed since this happened, including all the president's positions. 04:03 So. 04:08 So just on that narrow point, so yesterday there was the press conference at which he talked about would versus wouldn't. 04:16 So the idea was that he said in talking about this question of meddling in the election or interfering, I should say, not meddling, meddling is too benign a word. 04:26 So he said, I don't see any reason why it would be, which is to say why Russia would be involved in interfering in the election. 04:34 He said he meant wouldn't. 04:35 So that was yesterday. 04:36 Then, let's see, how do we, can we follow all the different balls bouncing? 04:41 He was asked in a press, a momentary press spray today, whether he believed not just about the past, but Russian interference ongoing, which the... Is Russian still targeting the United States... 04:52 Which the director of national intelligence says is still going on, which his CIA says is still going on, which senior administration official I talked to said he gets intelligence briefings at the highest level every day about what the Russians are doing. 05:08 And the president said, no, it's not still going on. 05:10 He then amended that through his press secretary. 05:13 And then in an interview with Jeff Glor on the CBS Evening News tonight, he said, yes, it's still going on and it better not continue. 05:21 And he said he told Putin in their private meeting that he better knock it off. 05:28 Emily Bazelon First we've heard of that. 05:29 John Dickerson That's the first we've heard of that. 05:30 Emily Bazelon That's not something that they had brought out or emphasized. 05:33 John Dickerson Right. 05:33 In his previous two interviews, because he's done interviews with Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson. 05:38 And also it's obviously something he didn't bring up at the press conference itself. 05:43 So I think that accounts for all the things he's said since the press conference. 05:50 But I think we should talk about the press conference itself and before we get to the weather, it will... 05:55 whether anything will change. 05:56 Emily Bazelon So here's a question I have about the press conference. 05:59 So I like your list. 06:00 This is the first international incident on your list, though I also think that we should probably fold in NATO earlier this week and G7 to this sort of sense that Trump on the international stage is shaming the country and scrambling who our allies and our adversaries are. 06:19 So for me, there's something in some ways more unsettling about having him do these large, florid moves outside the country, because it feels like whatever he does inside the country is like our family fight we're having. 06:36 This is not our family anymore. 06:37 It's like the big world stage. 06:39 And other countries are going to change their behavior, change how they rely on the United States, change lots of aspects of their economic and military thinking because of what the United Presidents say. 06:53 Or will they? 06:54 Or are we looking at a moment in which what Trump said was, you know, upsetting and denigrating and problematic, but he didn't do the bad policy things that some Russia experts were worried about. 07:11 He didn't 07:11 tell Russia it was all fine that Russia invaded Crimea. 07:16 He didn't talk about inviting Russia back into the G7. 07:19 So there's this way in which I still struggle with Trump's words versus deeds. 07:25 And while I don't believe in any of the amending that went on this week, I mean, it seemed like he said what he believes at that press conference. 07:33 That seemed very from the heart, not to mention later that night on Fox. 07:37 It does just make me wonder how much we should care about these words, even on the international stage, even though part of me thinks it's like crazy when the American president goes and has a press conference with the president of Russia in Helsinki at a summit. 07:52 That's one moment where words should matter, right? 07:55 John Dickerson Yeah, it is. 07:57 I think... 08:01 But I'm a huge fan of your underlying point, which is that we want to measure, if you look at what the U.S. policy is relative to the Russians, and we talked about this on the show last week, there's a lot of tough action being taken against the Russians, kicking out diplomats, giving stingers to the Ukrainians. 08:18 supporting NATO, asking for NATO to raise more money, increasing the U.S. budget, defense budget, all of which is militaristic activity the Russians can't possibly like. 08:28 So there is activity, moving troops or adding military assistance onto the Russian border. 08:35 But I think the actions here, there's a... 08:38 a couple of ways in which they're a challenge. 08:41 First of all, in these summits, having spent a lot of time thinking about Khrushchev and Kennedy in Vienna in 1961, Kennedy goes and basically gets his hat handed to him. 08:51 He just gets... 08:53 It's a disaster. 08:54 And it's so bad that a future diplomat who was in the Kennedy administration who teaches a course on what happened at Vienna entitles the course Little Boy Blue Meets Al Capone. 09:05 LAUGHTER 09:06 Jack Kennedy was the little boy blue. 09:08 Al Capone was Nikita Khrushchev. 09:11 The argument that people make about Vienna is that Kennedy got so badly beaten that he then has to respond, and essentially Vietnam is the response. 09:21 There's this global ideological struggle. 09:23 He is... 09:23 caught up with this idea of U.S. prestige, and to make up for getting beaten in Vienna, he has to be stronger and tougher in other places in the global ideological fight between communism and capitalism, and it leads him to be more aggressive in Vietnam than he would have been. 09:38 It's a theory. 09:39 There are a lot of people who believe in it, but the idea is that these things don't happen just in the two days in Helsinki, that they create these reverberations. 09:46 So the president tonight has said much more tougher language about Putin. 09:52 That may change. 09:53 It may have changed by now. 09:57 But to the extent that things reverberate and the extent that prestige gets wrapped up in this, and this is a president who said that if he had been president, Putin never would have gone into Crimea. 10:06 So he's very invested in this idea of strength. 10:09 And that's why this question of if there's an attack going on right now, I think you can make a case that it's more of an attack against America when you directly attack America through cyber espionage than when you move into Crimea in terms of a response an American president should give. 10:24 So that's just one way in which I think this does, I think there are other ways too, but I've been going on too long. 10:29 David Plotz I mean, Emily, I think your notion that this really is only words, I do think on Crimea and on Syria, he doesn't seem to have given away the store. 10:40 But if you think about all these trade sanctions on Europe, that is a way. 10:45 And in fact, the denigration of NATO and the denigration of the EU and the pushing for hard Brexit, all of those are things which absolutely advance the Russia project, which is to undermine Russia. 10:55 John Dickerson The West. 10:56 David Plotz The West and undermine the Atlantic Alliance. 10:59 And Trump has pursued those deeds very vigorously and with great success in his eyes. 11:05 John Dickerson We also don't know what he did or didn't do because there were only the two of them and their two translators. 11:09 So we don't know. 11:10 He could have been tough as hell or he could have said Crimea, it's yours. 11:15 We actually don't know. 11:16 And... 11:19 Emily Bazelon Do you think we will know? 11:20 I mean, that also I feel weird about. 11:23 Like, they spent that two hours together, and we're going to find out what exactly about it. 11:27 John Dickerson Well, it depends. 11:28 The Khrushchev-Kennedy transcripts didn't come out until 1990 or 93. 11:32 Emily Bazelon That's a long wait. 11:34 John Dickerson So that's not good. 11:36 But things get pretty leaky these days, so... 11:40 And you never know the Russians might leak it. 11:44 The Russians might very well leak it. 11:46 But to your point, David, about the Russian project is to basically say that the West and democracy and all of these liberal ideas America has been trying to force on you, the rest of the globe, it's all hypocrisy. 11:59 And there is no moral superiority of the West. 12:01 And so when the American president says about both his intelligence agents and the Russians... 12:06 He says, I have confidence in both parties. 12:09 Then when he's directly asked, what did Russia do wrong? 12:11 And he said, both sides have done things wrong. 12:14 And when he tweets something about the witch hunt in America getting in the way of Russia relations and the Russian government retweets it, that is, I think, supports David's argument that this is helping with the Russian project. 12:30 Emily Bazelon I really love the, sorry, the contrast to Putin said something like, don't believe, no one tells the truth, right? 12:37 So it was sort of the reverse of Trump, where you can't trust either of us. 12:41 He's looking out for America's interests, maybe. 12:44 I'm looking out for the Russian Federation's interests. 12:46 There is no, right? 12:47 So, but they're both making equivalences. 12:51 It's just Putin's is the, you know, grimmer, sober person. 12:55 John Dickerson And Putin's fine for equivalence. 12:57 We're the, you know, cause he's getting the upgrade. 12:59 Yeah. 13:00 And, and, and I think that, you know, one of the other things I think that was missed and what's interesting about this is because when I've talked to the president, he's talked about wanting to be a cheerleader for America. 13:11 Um, and he is a marketer for sure. 13:13 Who's been successful. 13:14 David Plotz He wasn't assault a cheerleader for me. 13:16 He went, what's that rope a cheerleader for America. 13:22 John Dickerson That's not what I think of him. 13:25 You know, he wants to change the colors of Air Force One to red, white, and blue. 13:30 That's so important. 13:31 Emily Bazelon I'm really glad he's thinking about that. 13:33 John Dickerson What happens at a summit like this is the American president has a chance with the entire world watching. 13:39 Somebody was watching the French celebration of the World Cup and even French television switched to Helsinki for the press conference. 13:46 The entire world is watching. 13:48 And if he wanted to not talk about, you know, he doesn't want to challenge the Russian president in person on TV about interfering in the election. 13:55 OK, that's fine. 13:57 But he knows he's going to get blowback. 13:58 And in these moments, an American president can talk about... 14:01 American exceptionalism and the, you know, why we have free and fair elections and why his election against somebody who, you know, he was a person nobody ever thought would get elected, but he was the voice of a people who felt they'd been shut out of the democratic process. 14:15 And in America, we have open elections, not like you do in Russia. 14:18 You know, I hate the press, but they're allowed to ask their questions and they don't get killed the way they do in Russia. 14:24 He could have done all of that and sort of sung the song of America. 14:28 It would have cost him nothing. 14:29 It would have been a cheerleading of America, and it would have at least given some counterbalance to the inevitable criticism, which then came even from his own side, who said... 14:39 Here you were with the Russian president suggesting there was a moral equivalence between our countries. 14:44 And that's not something we expect from an American president on the world stage. 14:47 Emily Bazelon So the script you just laid out seems inconceivable to me coming from Trump. 14:52 That idea, because it would be critical of Russia. 14:55 I mean, I think he's a person who doesn't like to criticize other people in front of them. 14:59 There's a right of that to start with. 15:02 But also I don't think he sees American exceptionalism in those terms. 15:06 I think he sees his own election is about himself, not the virtues of our system, and that his admiration for Putin, whatever its source, is overweening. 15:16 David Plotz So there's... 15:19 There was a very interesting Ross Douthat column, typically clear-headed Ross Douthat column today. 15:24 That was not ironic. 15:26 That was dead serious. 15:27 Ross is an incredibly clear, smart person. 15:30 And he said there are three theories that you can entertain about Trump's behavior. 15:36 One, the first one is that he genuinely admires Putin. 15:40 And it's the most innocent explanation. 15:43 He admires Putin. 15:43 He admires strongmen. 15:44 And because he's such a defensive, insecure person, he cannot stand any possible implication that his election was not legitimate, and therefore he bristles and just can't contemplate it, and that's what caused him to behave this way. 15:58 That's theory one. 15:59 Theory two is there's an actual act of collusion that's been going on that... 16:04 back to the election and Trump doesn't want to admit that but knows that it's the case and the third is a collusion by some people involved in Trump world and the third is that Trump himself is a Russian mole he's a Russian plant who's been worked over and and I think Ross has sort of says it's like you know the vast majority of truth is like most likely is the first theory there's some possibility the second and there's a infinitesimally 16:28 possibility of the third. 16:29 Emily, did you come out of this thinking, man, this is Trump really trying to cover something up? 16:34 Or do you think that this is just Trump is so insecure that he has to act this way? 16:38 Emily Bazelon I mean, I feel agnostic about this and I think it's important not to jump to conclusions. 16:43 So I started the week feeling like, 16:47 feeling that there was more plausibility to the third unspeakable, unthinkable option than I had thought before, feeling deeply unsettled by that, and then deciding that it was important to wait for the facts to catch up. 17:00 Since it's such a haunting, huge accusation, I am not ready to level it without more evidence. 17:08 But what is so... 17:12 Odd. 17:13 I mean, it's entirely possible that this is ego-driven and about his insecurity about the election. 17:19 And it was interesting to realize, more than I had before, that if he concedes that the Russians interfered and actually helped determine the course of the election, that that is a problem. 17:29 right i mean i have been thinking all along like well you're the president and that's how it goes and so just admit it and move on but i actually think maybe because he's had so much trouble admitting it that now it is questioning the whole presidency in a larger way and that actually like that's something he's right to be concerned about um anyway wait i i lost you at the yeah well 17:53 Well, forget the problem of how much the campaign helped and spurred this along. 18:02 If Trump admits that the Russians had a material effect on the election and could have determined the outcome, 18:10 John Dickerson And it does materially undermine his presidency. 18:13 David Plotz But don't you, I mean, there's an original, if he had simply admitted, if he simply said this back in December 2016, there'd be no problem. 18:20 He could have gotten past it. 18:21 He would have said, we're going to do a vigorous investigation. 18:23 We're going to harden our systems. 18:24 We're going to investigate what Facebook is doing. 18:26 Emily Bazelon and that would have that would have this thing would have gone well and that's the alternative path it's a sort of open-hearted presidency in which it's a big tent i welcome hillary supporters i know this was a close election i want to be everyone's president i mean this is like it just remember that idea you were accusing me earlier of saying things that were impossible um 18:51 John Dickerson No, that's a that's a that was a cheap joke. 18:54 No, that was the promise. 18:55 And in fact, it could. 18:56 Anyway, we don't need to go to a couple of other things before we move on. 19:01 And because I feel like we're about to we've talked about this idea that Ross and a lot of people have written about the fact that really what this was, was the president just cannot separate the idea of collusion from Russian interference, that any time you hear somebody talk about Russian interference, he thinks they're challenging the legitimacy of his presidency. 19:19 So that feels right. 19:21 But the thing about that is, and we talk a lot about habits of mind of presidents. 19:26 So one of the key, if not maybe you could argue, the key challenge in a presidency is you basically have to learn to sublimate your wishes and desires in most cases. 19:37 to either the greater good of the country, the greater good of the moment, the wisdom of your staff who's had a chance to go and figure all this stuff out because you're a president and you're awfully busy and you can't go figure it all out. 19:49 And that that sense of restraint and self-control is one that presidents always wrestle with. 19:54 And so to the extent that you have it or don't have it on specific issues of crucial national importance, that's a challenge, a big challenge for a presidency. 20:04 And so this diagnosis is more than just what was happening in the moment. 20:09 It's a challenge to all of his decision making when he comes up against somebody who says you must do something else and he wants to do what he wants to do. 20:18 That's a problem for all presidents, but it seems to be particularly acute for him. 20:22 And that's a problem. 20:23 That's a real problem in presidencies. 20:25 The other thing that I think we should take note of is the explanation about how he misspoke. 20:31 It's not plausible if you look at what he said. 20:33 No. 20:37 David Plotz Yeah. 20:42 John Dickerson And I think it bears just a tiny minute of looking at what he actually said. 20:46 It's hard to do without putting the words on the screen. 20:48 But when he was speaking, he said that, I will say this, I don't see any reason why it would be. 20:55 So it would be why basically the Russians would interfere in the election. 21:00 But then he goes on, talks about the server, and then he says, I have confidence in both parties. 21:04 So he amended that to say what he really meant is I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be, which is to say, sure, it's basically I accept the idea the Russians were involved in the election interference. 21:15 So if that's his baseline position and he merely misspoke, why then would he say I have confidence in both parties? 21:21 If it's his baseline view that the Russians interfered in the election, then the guy he just met with for two hours lied to his face. 21:29 If your baseline assumption is Al Capone is going to rob banks, and then every cop in the city tells you Al Capone has robbed the bank, and then you meet Al Capone and you say, you know, you're a bank robber, and Al Capone says, no, I'm not, your response shouldn't be, I have confidence in you and the cops. 21:48 David Plotz That was an A-plus analogy, John. 21:53 Emily Bazelon Yeah, that was good. 21:54 David Plotz That was really good. 21:59 John Dickerson That was the second Al Capone, and I didn't know whether it was going to... 22:02 David Plotz He wasn't a bank robber, but it was still really good. 22:05 John Dickerson I knew when I started it, it might not land. 22:09 But I don't think that's an unfair reading of what he's asking us to believe. 22:15 Emily Bazelon You don't think it's an unfair reading? 22:16 You're in double negative land, too! 22:19 We all end up there. 22:20 John Dickerson I mean, it's the eye of confidence in both parties that swallows the new interpretation. 22:25 And so what's my point? 22:27 My point is that he's asking us to buy this. 22:31 It's not the hurly-burly of a press conference in which you've got to give some accommodation, but this is a thought-out, written-down, read-from statement. 22:39 And so that compounds the seriousness of the moment in terms of being able to trust the president when he tells you things. 22:46 Emily Bazelon So can we talk about Congress for a moment, and perhaps the voters? 22:51 You know, the Republicans in Congress reacted in some way. 22:54 They tried not to criticize Trump by name, for the most part, with a couple of exceptions. 23:00 Was this a missed opportunity, not just by them, but also by the Democrats, to ask for one strong response, like protect our next election? 23:09 Something that, you know, is... 23:11 It's attainable, something that we should have that matters deeply for the future. 23:15 I sort of felt like everyone bumbled it as they were just like gawking at the spectacle. 23:20 David Plotz Well, there was this very funny New York Times headline, which was like a dam broke with Republicans. 23:25 And then you read that it was a quote. 23:27 That was a quote from one. 23:29 There was one Republican, Bob Corker, who was retiring from the Senate, who said this time a dam broke. 23:33 And then you're like, you read this article and there are literally no quotes from anybody who's an active legislator saying anything actually critical of the president. 23:42 And you're by name is a good point because they desperately do not want to be on record saying anything. 23:47 Right. 23:47 Emily Bazelon So, you know, they say Russia's not our friend in this very banal way. 23:52 David Plotz Emily, I have a procedural question, which is, if there is a Democratic House majority, they can subpoena Trump's tax records immediately? 24:03 Can they do that and then look at them? 24:07 Emily Bazelon right? 24:08 They have subpoena power. 24:09 There'd be a huge legal fight. 24:11 David Plotz What would the legal fight be? 24:12 It would end in the Supreme Court. 24:13 Yeah, exactly. 24:14 What's the... 24:15 I mean, it's Congress... 24:17 Emily Bazelon It would be about... 24:18 I mean, it's... See, I mean, it would be about the president's... 24:21 I'm not sure how you invoke privilege for this because it's 24:25 tax returns that were generated before the presidency but it does seem like the case for asking for them got stronger and that was another thing I wasn't really did I miss Schumer making a big deal about that or did he not talk about that with a lot he had like a long list I felt like he got lost in a lot of different well strategically you could imagine that if you're Democrats you want to let me while the other while Republicans are being critical of the president you don't want to get in their way so I guess so they weren't that critical they could have gotten in the way 24:56 So do we think that nothing is going to change, that this is like an episode, that the poll numbers won't really be altered? 25:02 Will it have an effect on the election in November? 25:04 No. 25:05 John Dickerson Oh, God, no, no. 25:07 I don't think... No, because we're going to be... Because something... Well, I think... 25:13 I mean, I do kind of believe this ripples business, which is that this will now... 25:20 The effect of all of this and the cleaning up and the not cleaning up and the reaction and all that is a thing now to which and around which the president and his national security team now have to operate. 25:30 And I think that can cause... And also, by the way... 25:35 in the previous instances with Russian leaders, it causes, it encourages adventurism on the part of the Russians. 25:44 Who knows in what context that will manifest itself this time. 25:47 And I think NATO certainly doesn't know what to think about 25:50 You know, the individual members, by the way, when you're asked to list your foes and Europe is the first on the list, considering I mean, that's that also is causing some some people. 26:01 People make other choices now based on this stuff. 26:04 So I think it will matter, but it might not matter in US politics. 26:08 David Plotz So Slate Plus members, you get bonus segments on the GabFest and on other Slate podcasts. 26:15 And our Slate Plus bonus segment today is going to be the Q&A from our live show here in Glenside, PA. 26:22 So go to slate.com slash GabFest Plus to become a member.