- Hello and welcome to the Washington Week Extra,
I'm Gwen Ifill.
Guess what?
Congress is not shutting down!
At least not before December 9th.
While you were paying attention to the election,
lawmakers were also trying to figure out
how to provide emergency aid for Zika,
and for Flint Michigan,
and it looks like they got a deal.
How did that happen Ailsa?
- It took weeks to pass a two month deal,
Ashley, you should recall, she covered the hill with me,
and don't you miss covering these sexy battles?
- [Ashley] Not really (laughing)
First the obstacle was should the Zika aid package
contain language that would affect whether that funding
goes to help providers affiliated
with Planned Parenthood in Puerto Rico,
Democrats wanted that language out
because it would restrict funding to Planned Parenthood,
Republicans wanted that in,
they finally agreed that that language would come out.
We thought, "Oh that was the hard part.
"Now they're gonna pass this bill."
There was even talk two to three weeks ago
about the Senate actually leaving for break early,
and then the whole issue was,
was the Senate gonna jam the House
and the House would just have to swallow
whatever spending bill the Senate passes?
- Right.
- Turns out no, the Senate did not finish it early.
They were there for a couple weeks more,
because the next hurdle was if there's gonna be aid
for flood victims in Louisiana and other states.
Democrats said then you have to have aid for Flint Michigan,
and not to get too in the weeds,
but Republicans said no, this continuing resolution
or government spending bill is not the right place
to put Flint aid, that goes in a water infrastructure bill,
so this whole fight was which bill
should the Flint aid land in.
- They all agreed they couldn't go home
without these two key things taken care of.
- [Ailsa] Exactly.
- Addressed in some way.
- Exactly, just like figuring out what bucket to put it in.,
and on Tuesday, late Tuesday,
House Speaker Paul Ryan and Democratic Leader
Nancy Pelosi agreed that yes, Flint money would go
in the water infrastructure bill,
and that opened the pathway for a compromise
across both chambers on the government spending bill.
That was the big drama after the veto rover ride.
All they had to do all month on the hill
was to pass a government spending bill,
everything came together in one day.
On Wednesday.
- Boy that never happens, that they wait
till the last minute to get things done on Capitol Hill,
but at least they got it done.
- [Ailsa] Yes, that's true!
- Which is saying something.
- And I'm not on Capitol Hill tonight
waiting for a government spending bill to drop.
- Not like that's ever happened.
Well since we're online let's talk about something
that you wrote online this week Ashley,
about the two Donald Trumps, which I'm really curious,
I wanna share that with our streaming viewers.
Tell me what you mean by that.
- Sure, so right when I started covering Donald Trump
he held this press conference in Mar-a-Lago
where he sort of said,
"You know I think there's two Donald Trumps."
And then moments later the second Donald Trump
said there's only one Donald Trump.
(laughing)
I mean that actually happened.
But for those of us who have covered him
as I wrote in this piece there's actually sort of
like a Rubix Cube worth of Donald Trumps
and we see all these different personalities of him
on display and he can be, as you've seen,
he can be a bully, he can be cruel,
he can be dismissive, he can be cutting,
he can also be very charismatic, he can be compassionate,
and so I wrote this piece kind of watching to see
which Donald Trump would show up at the debate,
and it was one we rarely see which was,
as we were talking about in the show,
for the first 20 minutes he was actually
sort of teleprompter Trump, he was kind of subdued,
even a little bit disciplined
and then it was interesting was as the debate wore on
you sort of got to see the more true Donald Trump.
The one who talked over Hillary Clinton and the moderator
and interrupted, but he didn't do it with
all of the trademark relish he does on the campaign trail.
So sort of the worst of both worlds for him
was all of the things many voters find negative,
but without the kind of relish and pure id that makes
voters say, "We love that he tells it like it is."
- And that he enjoys the most clearly.
- [Ashley] Clearly.
- In fact it seemed to me during the debate,
couple times he was waiting for applause that didn't come,
because that's not the kind of debate this was.
- Yes and that's the other thing you learn
covering Donald Trump is that he very much,
more so than other candidates,
feeds off of his crowds, feeds off of the energy,
and those crowds they come primed.
They know when to shout Mexico in response to
"Who's gonna build the wall?"
They know all these lines and they can mouth them
and there's a real interplay between him and his crowds
and I think you're exactly right.
In the debate where the audience had been admonished,
don't applaud, be quiet, he almost seemed sort of lost
without that instant gratification and affirmation
and the first time he seemed to really hit his stride
was when the audience broke decorum
and clapped briefly for him.
- Exactly.
Actually I was looking up clips today,
and the audience also broke decorum during the debate
with Lloyd Bentsen where he said, "You're no Jack Kennedy.
"I know Jack Kennedy."
They burst out laughing during that one as well.
So sometimes they break decorum
even when they're supposed to.
I wanna talk to you about another interesting thing
that unfolded this week Karen which is
endorsements and a new word that USA Today coined,
a disendorsement.
(laughing)
All the sudden a lot of newspapers
who have never endorsed a Democrat before,
suddenly endorse Hillary Clinton
saying Donald Trump was a bad idea,
and then the USA Today said they weren't
gonna endorse Hillary Clinton but they really thought
Donald Trump was a really, really, bad idea,
and they called it a disendorsement.
- Yeah I thought it was more of nondorsement but...
(laughing)
- [Gwen] If we're coining terms.
- And basically what they said was that
Donald Trump is unfit to be president.
So that is, but why they wouldn't go then
all the way over and say then vote for Hillary Clinton,
I don't know because it's like,
there are of course a couple of,
Jill Stein, there's Gary Johnson,
but the fact is what they are saying
is vote for Hillary Clinton.
So I wondered what kind of conversation went on
in this editorial board to sort of leave themselves
hanging half out there, but overall,
and you have seen papers like the Dallas Morning News,
very, very conservative newspapers have endorsed
Hillary Clinton which--
- Arizona Republic, the Houston Chronicle I think.
- So you're seeing, and they're seeing
subscriptions canceled as a result of this.
For these newspaper editorial boards
this is a very brave thing to be doing.
My question is what difference it'll make.
- [Gwen] That was my question too.
- Because I think we have now entered an era,
these two candidates, there is really not lot more to learn
about them and I would love to find some of these
truly undecided voters and what in the world more
do you need to know about these people?
I think newspaper endorsements are more important
in things like local races where people
don't really understand who's running for what
on the school board, I think these were more
about these newspapers, it was almost like an assertion of--
- For the historical record they wanted it to be said.
Well let's talk about who these tiny
little slivers of voters are who they're going after.
This week it got lost in all of the Miss Universe stuff
but we saw Hillary Clinton in particular
going after Millennials, she sent Michelle Obama out
on her behalf, Bernie Sanders,
she went to University of New Hampshire,
and trying to snatch them back from third party candidates
to the extent that they're considering
Gary Johnson or Jill Stein, is that really,
is there any progress being made in that?
- Well look, this is a real problem for Hillary Clinton.
It's not that she's not winning young voters, she is,
but she's not winning them by the kind of decisive
sweeping margin that President Barack Obama won them.
I think there was a sense that Democrats had
and even some in the White House had
that these voters would just automatically go to Clinton,
that Trump would be unpalatable to them,
and they're right about half of that.
They don't like Trump,
but these aren't the Obama young voters.
Those voters are now not young.
These are their younger siblings, the Millennials,
and the Millennials came of age
in a really different time, right?
Of political partisanship, of a slow economy.
So they're really not into political parties,
they haven't seen political parties get a lot done,
they have a lot of questions about Hillary Clinton,
and so a lot of them are turning to Jill Stein,
to Gary Johnson, that's why you see
those two candidates in part hitting around
20% total in some of the polls and that's a sizable margin.
Clinton's campaign needs to find a way to get them back.
They're hoping Bernie Sanders can get the job done.
Along with President Obama
and Michelle Obama. - Even though it should be
said at the conventions Bernie Sanders
couldn't exactly deliver his voters to anybody.
- And it's also such a weird situation.
'Cause you have the country's most prominent Independent,
trashing third parties and telling people
not to vote third party.
I mean this is Donald Trump's political world right?
Where up is down and left is right.
So it's really-- - Uh oh.
You're taking me back to Al Gore.
(laughing) - Sorry, sorry.
So it's a weird, it's definitely a weird situation
and we'll see if she has success.
Certainly things like the Miss Universe thing
that happened this week help her.
I mean not only is that seen as sexist,
but Millennials don't like the fat shaming
and what they see as the slut shaming,
those are big sort of buzzwords in their universe.
So this could help.
- I'm so sad we didn't get to use the word
fat shaming or slut shaming on the regular program.
That's right, we're online and that's what
Millennials are watching right?
(laughing)
Lisa Lerer, Ashley Parker, Karen Tumulty and Ailsa Chang,
thank you all.
We'll see you again on the next Washington Week Extra.
(jazzy saxophone music)