Today, the White House physician was supposed to answer questions from Congress about why
he is the right guy to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Well, that hearing has been postponed indefinitely.
Lawmakers are chasing allegations about Doctor Ronny Jackson's behavior in the workplace
- the workplace, in this case, being the White House.
Montana Senator Jon Tester is the top Democrat on the Veterans' Affairs Committee, and he
tells Ari Shapiro of our own program All Things Considered that the allegations against Jackson
include improperly dispensing prescription drugs while traveling, and being drunk while
on duty traveling with the president and creating a toxic work environment.
Tester said more than 20 current and former members of the military who worked with Jackson
came forward.
Talking with reporters, President Trump said he supports Jackson and even at one point
said that he wishes he was Jackson, but he does not know why Jackson would put up with
the criticism.
OK, let's ask a couple of people who might know the answer to that - we'll see - NPR
Veterans Affairs correspondent Quil Lawrence and national political correspondent Mara
Liasson.
Hey, Mara.
Hi, Quil.
Good morning, Rachel.
Good morning, Rachel.
Good morning, Steve.
All right, Quil, I'm going to start with you first.
What more do we know at this point about the allegations against Jackson?
Well, those - the drug prescriptions - it sounds like he was liberally handing out sleeping
pills - the kind of things that help with jet lag, like Ambien - maybe handing them
out a little too casually on some of the oversea trips - overseas trips he took over a dozen
years at the White House.
The alleged drunkenness also sounds like these incidents allegedly happened while he was
on these long trips.
The last category of allegations, really, is that he has an explosive temper, that he
made his subordinates feel on edge.
Now, I should say, I spoke to another former White House physician from the Clinton administration,
also a Navy vet, Dr. Robert Darling.
He's known Jackson for decades.
He says he thought these charges are not at all credible.
He thought they were made up maybe by disgruntled employees.
But Republicans and Democrats on the - in the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee have
asked the White House to explain all these allegations, which, as you say, Tester said
came from 20 sources who approached the committee.
Right.
Jackson has said he intends to fight.
So Mara, I mean, we got to point out that Jackson has served as physician in the White
House under three presidents, as chief White House doctor under Barack Obama, so why didn't
any of these concerns come up before now if they're legit?
These concerns didn't come up because mostly, we've heard from Dr. Jackson's patients.
White House staffs current and previous really liked him.
These complaints are coming from people who worked with and for Jackson.
And, you know, yesterday, President Trump made it absolutely clear he still supports
Jackson, met with him in the Oval Office.
President Trump chose Jackson because of how much he liked him.
He often chooses people...
Personally just likes the guy.
Yes - often chooses people he's comfortable with, even though yesterday, in a press conference,
he admitted that Jackson had a, quote, "experience problem," although, he added, no one has the
experience to run such a huge agency as the VA.
And in that press conference, he said several times, if it were me, I wouldn't go through
with this; the decision is up to Jackson, but why do you need this?
I wouldn't continue.
Right.
It sounded like he was trying to give him a way to save face.
Yes, he was...
...By bowing out.
It sounded like he was practically inviting him to withdraw.
But later in the day, the two of them met.
Jackson said he wanted to continue the nomination.
The president said, fine; I support you.
And by the evening, White House officials were releasing a lot of supporting documents
showing that Jackson had gotten glowing reviews from not just President Trump, but President
Obama, and a statement saying they believe he is being railroaded by a bitter ex-colleague.
But as - well, a bitter ex-colleague singular, but we heard about 20 different statements.
As to why now, we don't really know the motivations of the reported 20 people, but this is how
it happens, isn't it?
When someone is in a prominent position and then is going for a more prominent position,
it tends to bring concerns out.
And there were already concerns about whether Jackson was right for the job.
Yes, but if they had vetted him carefully, you'd think that they would have known about
this before.
Sure.
Which raises the bigger questions.
I mean, this is not the first time that the Trump administration has gotten into some
hot water here with people who they want to serve in their administration.
There's something going on in the vetting system.
Right.
And there are two issues here.
There is all these allegations that - according to the Veterans' Affairs Committee, they were
approached by these people who were concerned.
But besides that, there was already a concern just about Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson's ability
to run an organization like the VA, which has 360,000 employees.
People were not talking about any issues with his character or behavior before.
This guy is an Iraq vet.
He's a combat surgeon.
As you said, glowing reviews from three presidents - but who was qualified...
No management experience, Quil?
Yeah, he had run the White House medical staff of several dozen.
Now we're talking about an organization that has a budget of $187 billion.
It's eaten up three VA secretaries in the last four years, and those were people who
had run large organizations.
And the stakes really couldn't be higher for the 9 million veterans who use the VA, not
to mention every congressperson involved in this because everyone has a veteran in their
district.
What's going on at the VA right now?
I mean, what - let's assume Ronny Jackson - that there is some path to confirmation
for him.
What kind of - what's the state of the agency he'd assume?
Well, it's been in limbo, really, since January when the previous VA secretary, David Shulkin,
lost White House support and was later let go.
There are huge issues waiting on Capitol Hill.
Some of them have ready-to-go, bipartisan solutions that are just waiting for a new
VA secretary to sign, things like streamlining the way the VA pays for private care outside
the VA system.
And that sounds like mumbo-jumbo, but I'm talking about - you're talking about veterans
who are waiting for care.
Sometimes they're in pain waiting for this care.
And this is a fix that's waiting for new leadership just to push it through.
Mara, in - real quick, does he have a chance?
I think he has a chance.
These allegations haven't been proven.
They're going to get a fair hearing.
The president says he's going to fight for him.
But there's no doubt that his nomination is in trouble.
NPR's Mara Liasson and NPR's Quil Lawrence for us this morning.
Hey, thanks so much, you two.
We appreciate it.
Thank you.
Thank you.
All right, we're going to turn now to the president's travel ban, which goes before
the U.S. Supreme Court today.
Yeah, it's a challenge to the third version of the president's efforts to keep out travelers
from certain countries.
This all grows out of a campaign promise to ban all Muslim travelers.
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the
United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.
So after he was inaugurated, twice, the president imposed a ban on majority-Muslim countries
- seven of them.
And twice, courts have blocked this.
A third, revised version of the ban is now in effect.
In some recent reporting, we've met people fleeing the war in Yemen who'd been handed
papers saying they were denied U.S. visas because of this ban.
It is in effect.
Now the court considers Presidential Proclamation 9645 and whether it's legal and constitutional.
OK, Amy Howe is a reporter who covers the Supreme Court, and she's with us now to help
unpack this very significant case.
Hey, Amy.
Thanks for being here.
Good morning, and thanks for having me.
Explain the central question that the court is going to have to grapple with in this.
The central question really is, can the president do this?
Can he do it?
Is this something that federal immigration law allows him to do, and is it something
that the Constitution allows him to do?
How are both sides expected to address this in their arguments?
I mean, as I understand it, this is about whether or not the president's statements
in the campaign - when he explicitly said, hey, we should ban Muslims from coming into
the U.S. - whether or not that can be taken as the intent behind this ban.
That is a question that is lurking.
And it's really the first time that the Supreme Court has had to deal so directly with president
that - a president's comments on social media.
The government is likely to argue that this is not a knee-jerk reaction, that this is
about national security.
The government is going to point to a process that it's described at length in its brief.
It says that we had several different federal agencies study - undertake a study to decide
whether or not we're getting enough information from foreign governments to allow us to make
good decisions about whether or not we should allow nationals from that country to come
to the United States, and we decided we weren't getting enough information from the eight
countries that are listed in the president's September 2017 order, and so the president
decided that it was in the best interest of national security to put a halt to travel
to the United States from people - by people from those countries.
The challenger's argument is that the president has a lot of authority under federal immigration
law, but this just goes too far.
It suspends 150 - it prohibits 150 million people from coming to the country indefinitely,
and it singles out Muslims.
What - you know, this is essentially old wine in new bottles.
The president has repeatedly said that he wants to block Muslims from coming into the
United States, and that's the intent behind this, even if it doesn't do so directly.
What are you going to be watching for to give you a sign as to how the court might rule?
We're going to be watching - of course, you know, it's a bit of a cliche - Justice Anthony
Kennedy, who's often the swing vote on these issues.
We're going to be looking at what the justices say about social media.
Remember that this is a historic case, but they're also making laws that are going to
govern future cases, and so they're going to want to be able to draw a line to look
at things that are really, really important but not go back, you know, 10 years to what
someone said when they were in college.
Right.
Reporter Amy Howe of the site Howe on the Court.
Amy, thank you so much.
Thanks for having me.
President Trump's choice to lead the Department of Veterans Affairs faces another day of allegations
about his conduct in his current job.
Yeah, the charges are laid out in a two-page list that was released by Senator Jon Tester.
He's the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee.
And he says these allegations were based on accounts from more than 20 of Ronny Jackson's
past and present colleagues from his current job as White House physician.
One claim is that White House doctor Jackson wrecked a government vehicle while he was
driving drunk.
Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat of Ohio, told NPR yesterday that all of this highlights
problems with the administration's vetting process.
That's just unbelievable to me that that many people are willing to come forward and almost
zero of them - or almost none of them were approached by the White House before they
sent the name up.
You don't hire the person at your front desk without checking some references.
Jackson is accused of mishandling drugs, creating a hostile work environment and wrecking a
government vehicle while intoxicated.
Speaking briefly with reporters yesterday, Jackson said, quote, "I have not wrecked a
car."
NPR's Quil Lawrence has been following this story.
He covers veterans.
Hey there, Quil.
Good morning.
So what strikes you when reading this document from Jon Tester?
Well, you know, we'd heard that the charges came in these three categories - that he had
been loose with prescription drugs, that he had a drinking problem and that he had a toxic
work environment.
But when you read the actual descriptions of these things, it seems much more damning
- that he was very loose with dispensing opiate drugs like Percocet, not just sleeping aids
like Ambien; that he was prescribing for himself or that he was not keeping track of these
powerful drugs; that he was drunk while he should have been attending the president;
that he was drunk driving.
So - and these are coming from 23 current and former military who worked with Jackson
and who approached the Senate Veterans' Affairs Committee.
They didn't go looking for all these people.
They approached 'cause they were concerned.
And the quotes say that he was one of the worst officers that they ever served with.
So the real question is how his security clearances - many of them - and FBI investigations could
have missed this.
OK.
So he said, I've not wrecked a car.
And he specifically denied that because, he said, that should be easy to check.
Is it also easy to check something like whether a lot of Percocet went missing?
Don't doctors' offices have to really keep track of that sort of thing?
Well, yeah, many things you'd think there would be a paper trail on.
What's confusing, really, about this is that whereas you have all of these 23 people who
came forward with varying allegations, you have other people who worked with Jackson
for years, including President Obama, President George W. Bush and now President Trump and
people on his staff, who say they just cannot believe these charges at all.
So if it weren't 23 different sources, according to Senator Tester on the Veterans' Affairs
Committee, it would really be hard to sort of credit these.
Right.
I mean, the White House right now is retweeting and putting out there an actual form that
Barack Obama signed saying this guy was great, great doctor - trying to validate his character.
It's real cognitive dissonance, but it does seem like they failed to get this stuff in
the vetting process.
And that is really frustrating the senators involved in this.
They are used to unanimously confirming VA nominees.
And the fact that all of this stuff is coming out now, when it could have come out quietly
in a background check and never gone public, is really frustrating and depressing people
in the veterans space because they don't want to have a nasty, party-line vote where they
get...
On veterans, yeah.
...All partisan on an issue like veterans.
Exactly.
NPR's Quil Lawrence, thanks very much.
EPA director Scott Pruitt appears before two House subcommittees today, officially to discuss
his agency's 2019 budget proposal.
Yeah.
But instead, he's likely going to face questions about his personal conduct and spending practices.
The New York Times reported last week that there are currently 10 federal inquiries into
Pruitt's behavior.
Yesterday, we had the deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley on the program.
And when I asked him if President Trump still wants Pruitt on the job, this is how he answered.
I can tell you that the president and the White House are aware of these issues and
these stories.
They raise some serious concerns.
There's no question about that.
Big acknowledgment there.
Domenico Montanaro is following this story for NPR.
He's on our Politics team.
Hey there, Domenico.
Good morning, Steve.
OK.
So what do we expect lawmakers to be asking about?
Well, first of all, get the popcorn ready.
It's a scandal day here on Up First.
Yeah?
But, you know, these are going to be pretty feisty hearings.
You know, quickly, some of Pruitt's ethics troubles have been, just ticking them off
- flying first class; paying for close aides' raises that the White House had rejected;
demoting a driver who refused to put on emergency lights to get through D.C. traffic, as well
as others who questioned him at the EPA; a home he rented from a friend whose wife was
a lobbyist with business ties before the EPA - got it for a discounted rate; an expansive
security detail that accompanied him to personal events like the Rose Bowl and Disneyland;
and some $43,000 for a soundproof booth he had installed at the EPA.
Yeah, so that he could have private phone conversations, he said, with the president.
So Domenico, if you look back over the last - I don't know - month, several weeks anyway
of this Cabinet secretary, maybe not every single day has been a tsunami of bad news.
But many of them have been.
Now he, I guess, has an opportunity to respond.
Any idea what he's going to say for himself?
Well, it's certainly all added up for sure.
He's expected to tout his repeal of those regulations at the EPA that had been put in
place by the Obama administration - so targeting Republicans.
But when it comes to those ethics scandals, he's likely to blame others.
His opening statement that went out this morning makes no mention of the scandals, only what
he's done at the EPA.
But there's a lot of work going on behind the scenes for him to try and work up some
talking points to respond to some of these things.
For example, on those first-class flights, he'll say that changes have already begun,
that he's started to fly coach; that the former head of his security detail who'd recommended
those measures has taken early retirement.
On those pay raises, we've heard him before blame others for this.
But he hasn't been very specific.
And perhaps the most important work he's been doing in his defense has been before the hearing.
He's been reaching out to Republican members, got in touch with the chairman of both committees.
And he's been telling them, apparently, that their districts had received agency grants
to clean up industrial sites known as brownfields as The Washington Post reports.
Wow.
OK.
Domenico, thank you very much.
You're welcome, sir.
That's NPR's Domenico Montanaro.
Leaders of the two Koreas are set to make history tomorrow.
Yeah, North Korea's Kim Jong Un and South Korea's Moon Jae-in are meeting at their shared
border for a summit.
It's going to be the first meeting like this between the Korean leaders in more than a
decade.
Kim Jong Un is actually planning to walk over the military demarcation line that's divided
the peninsula since 1953.
He will be the first North Korean leader to do that.
And NPR's Elise Hu is covering this story from Seoul.
Hi, Elise.
Hey, there.
So OK, they meet.
This is a big deal.
But what are they going to talk about?
Well, there are three main items on the agenda.
One is denuclearization, which is a fuzzy word because definitions of that really...
Yeah.
...Vary depending on who you ask; also is a peace framework of some sort, since the
Korean War is technically not over; and the third item - improving inter-Korean ties and
how to get there.
Kim and Moon will greet each other on the border at 9:30 in the morning Korea time.
They're going to meet all day and then have a dinner banquet together at night.
So it's going to be a full-day schedule.
Is this something of an awkward meeting?
Not just because of the tensions between the two countries - because fundamentally these
two leaders sit down and each of them, the official goal of their country is to unify
the country by putting the other guy out of business.
That is true.
However, both sides have been so choreographed in what they're going to be doing tomorrow.
There's a lot of agreement on coming out with some sort of peace framework and some sort
of objectives when it comes to improving inter-Korean ties that actually, you know, in this flurry
of diplomacy over the past few months, both sides have gotten along quite well.
And so what does the choreography look like?
What is the pomp and circumstance going to be?
OK.
Well, inside the DMZ, there's a shared security area between the two Koreas.
There is the iconic blue huts, which you've probably seen on TV or in photos.
And what's going to happen is the two leaders are set to meet at a concrete curb, a raised
concrete line that marks the military demarcation line there separating North and South, right
between the two blue huts.
They're going to shake hands there and then walk over to the southern side together, all
while cameras are streaming this whole thing.
And then they're going to walk together into a three-story gray stone structure with a
balcony on top.
That's known as the Peace House.
And on the second floor is where their meeting room is set up.
And that meeting room has been completely renovated to look like a traditional Korean
house, a hanok.
And then they've also put up a giant painting of a North Korean mountain called Mount Kumgang.
And together, they will meet there before having a highly, highly symbolic banquet dinner
with all sorts of menu items with foods from various leaders' - or both those leaders'
past lives.
It sounds like every second of this, someone has given thought to the symbolic importance.
In every gesture and every visual that we will see, somebody has thought about it.
It sure seems like it, Steve.
Elise, thanks very much.
You're welcome.
That's NPR's Elise Hu preparing for a summit of the leaders of North and South Korea.
The leaders of North and South Korea are making history at the DMZ.
Yeah.
Kim Jong Un became the first North Korean leader to walk across the line into South
Korea.
After years of raising tensions and testing nuclear weapons, Kim shook hands with his
South Korean counterpart and said he hoped for a new history of peace.
Kim is saying there that this summit should be just a start, and that he hopes the people's
wishes for peace will be satisfied to a degree.
To a degree.
So NPR's Elise Hu covers the Korean Peninsula for us.
She joins us from very close to the summit, where, I understand, Elise, the two leaders
have actually just signed some kind of symbolic agreement?
What's going on?
That's right.
This news is actually breaking right now.
And the voice you hear behind me is the voice of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, who
is, astonishingly, standing at a podium before the press, the South Korean and North Korean
press, next to Moon Jae-in, giving a prepared statement following this day-long summit in
which the two leaders have met and come to some sort of joint declaration, joint agreement.
We haven't seen the content of that agreement yet, but it will be parsed over in the minutes
and hours and days to come.
I mean do we assume, Elise, that any of this agreement, that it speaks to the substance
of what the tension is about, which is what the South would like, which is the denuclearization
of the North?
We already understand from the Blue House, the South's presidential administration, that
denuclearization was talked about during this day-long summit.
So that was an agenda item.
The two leaders did discuss it.
But what sort of actual substantive agreement they came to on this is going to be step by
step.
It will largely be piecemeal, is what my sources expect.
So again, it's going to require some time to take a closer look at what happened today.
I mean, it is remarkable.
We should just pause to say the fact that this is even transpiring at this moment is
something for the history books.
I mean, when Kim Jong Un stepped foot on South Korea's soil, I mean, every step is symbolic.
But you were tweeting about this, actually, that the symbolism wasn't lost on him, either,
and so he kind of cajoled the South Korean leader to step back over the border?
That's right.
So they were shaking hands for a long time and smiling for cameras.
They chit chatted about the journey down to the border before Kim then in an unscripted
move invited the South's Moon to step over to the Northern side just for a few moments,
you know, as a symbolic gesture before then crossing back over that concrete curb that
separates the two countries.
They did that hand-in-hand before going to their summit.
And as you're describing this, of course, we're learning more about these different
announcements, these steps to reduce tension, one of them apparently being a later summit
where South Korea's president will go to the North, according to the Associated Press,
and the Koreas agreeing to high-level military talks to continue to reduce tensions.
So clearly this is just the beginning.
I mean, Elise, how are Koreans feeling about this?
Do they believe that this can actually be the beginning of a new chapter in relations
between the two Koreas?
There have been tries before that have failed, but South Koreans are approaching this with
a cautious optimism, Rachel.
All right.
NPR's Elise Hu speaking to us from near where the summit is taking place.
The voice of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un there in the background.
Elise, thank you so much.
You're welcome.
He was one of the world's best-known entertainers.
A comedian, a TV star, the Jell-O Pudding guy, Cliff Huxtable.
Now Bill Cosby has been found guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, and
he could spend the rest of his life in prison.
Gloria Allred, who represents a number of Bill Cosby's accusers - and there are many
- spoke after the verdict.
Finally we can say women are believed, and not only on hashtag #MeToo but in a court
of law.
The specific charges here stem from a 2004 sexual assault.
They initially went to trial in 2017, and that trial ended with a mistrial.
Yesterday a jury in the retrial found Cosby guilty of drugging and assaulting Andrea Constand
at his suburban Pennsylvania home.
Cosby's lawyer says he's going to appeal.
All right.
We've got NPR TV critic Eric Deggans with us this morning.
He has covered Cosby's career for a very long time.
Hey, Eric.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Let's start with the obvious.
This verdict comes at a very different moment than when the initial allegations against
Cosby really started to get a lot of attention.
This was about three years ago, right?
It was about four years ago.
That's right.
In the space of about four years, we've gone from a situation where people have sort of
barely acknowledged the past allegations of sexual assault against Bill Cosby to more
than 50 women coming forward to accuse him of sexual misconduct, including many saying
that he drugged and sexually assaulted them.
And now we've got this conviction for the assault that was originally committed in 2004.
It's a stunning sign of how much has changed in terms of how much the public believes women
who come forward with allegations of sexual assault.
And it seems to have removed this word, allegedly, from future biographies or news stories about
Bill Cosby.
I mean, he's now been convicted of sexual assault.
He's not just been accused of it.
And, in a way, to me this story kind of feels like the end of the beginning of the Me Too
movement.
So I mean, as you noted, there had been all these whispers, or louder, of allegations
against Cosby for so many years.
But can you remind us, what fixed the public attention on this?
Yeah.
So back in 2014, Bill Cosby was mounting something of a comeback.
And the comic Hannibal Buress told this joke in a stand-up act about Cosby being a hypocrite
for criticizing poor black people while he had these allegations of rape in his past.
And the joke was captured by a mobile phone, and it kind of became this viral video.
And the video inspired one of the women who had publicly accused Cosby in the past, Barbara
Bowman, to write an op-ed column for The Washington Post about her allegations.
And so that sparked this movement where more women seem to come forward, and then eventually
prosecutors decided to prosecute him.
And, you know, there was a sense that the accusations against Cosby were becoming public
again at a time when the public was just not that willing to overlook them.
You know, we had this whole generation of young people, especially young black people,
who didn't revere Cosby as a pioneering entertainer.
And they saw him as a hypocritical scold, and the protection that his money and fame
gave him seemed to be gone.
And now he's been convicted in a court of law.
As someone who's followed him for so long, how are you thinking about this verdict and
its significance?
Well, I'm just glad to see that we've got a resolution in a court of law.
We've got a verdict.
We've got this ending to a career that otherwise might have been shrouded in uncertainty and
allegations.
I mean, he's always going to be a pioneer in television.
He's done so many firsts.
But he's also someone now convicted of abusing his stature in the worst way.
Right.
NPR's Eric Deggans.
Thanks so much.
Thank you.
OK.
The director of the Environmental Protection Agency and his office are now the subject
of at least 10 federal inquiries.
Which is elevating questions about Scott Pruitt's job security.
If I were the president, I wouldn't want your help.
I'd just get rid of you.
Ouch.
That's Democratic Congressman Frank Pallone speaking directly to Pruitt.
He was one of several lawmakers who questioned him for hours yesterday about ethics and spending
concerns, including the EPA's purchase of a $43,000 secure phone booth, significant
raises to two staffers despite White House objections and travel expenses which have
included first-class flights.
Pruitt told lawmakers he has nothing to hide and described the allegations as politically
motivated attacks.
Let's have no illusions about what was really going on here.
Those who have attacked the EPA and attacked me are doing so because they want to attack
and derail the president's agenda and undermine this administration's priorities.
OK.
We've got NPR congressional reporter Kelsey Snell with us in the studio.
Kelsey, you watched the testimony.
What struck you?
Well, it was really striking that he was so adamant that he was not responsible for these
accusations of ethical breach.
We heard...
He conceded nothing.
Conceded nothing.
And he said that staff made the decisions when it came to the decisions about costly
flights and moving him to first class.
He said it was a security decision.
He said staff made decision about that secure phone booth.
I'm trying to remember that Harry Truman line.
What is it?
Yeah.
The buck stops here.
That was the one.
And one of the members...
OK.
Go on.
I'm sorry.
One of the members did say that it appeared that he had a policy of the buck stops nowhere.
So I imagine people on the panel were not so happy with his responses?
Predictably, Democrats were not thrilled with his responses.
And there were some Republicans who had serious questions about the ethics of his decisions.
But for the most part, Republicans in the House in general support this president, and
they were very welcoming to the explanation from Pruitt that this was a political attack
on the policies that he has put forward at the EPA, and it was quite effective for him
to defend himself that way.
Does that mean Scott Pruitt keeps his job after all of this?
Well, I spoke with some people on the Hill who thought that approach was pretty effective
for speaking directly to a president who has himself said that he likes a fighter, he like
somebody who stands up for himself.
And framing it as a political attack rather than a conversation about ethics and about
spending made it very digestible to a president who has used that line and approach often
in the past.
So while it's not assured that he will be safe in his job, it does seem as if this defense
line was well-received.
He's not any cabinet member.
They're really close.
Scott Pruitt, cues very closely to the president's overall agenda, especially on the environment.
Yeah.
Absolutely.
The White House had actually a pretty good week.
They got a lot of people confirmed, judges and a new secretary of state.
So overall, this may just fade to the background.
NPR's Kelsey Snell for us this morning.
Thanks so much, Kelsey.
Thank you.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét