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Memphis is a good town. Good place to go to college. We
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there, it's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Susan
1:00
Davis. I cover politics. I'm Ryan Lucas.
1:02
I cover the Justice Department. And I'm Domenico
1:04
Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And
1:06
President Biden's son Hunter is on trial in
1:09
Wilmington, Delaware. He's charged with lying about his
1:11
drug use when he filled out federal forms
1:13
to buy a firearm back in 2018. Ryan,
1:16
you're in Delaware. You're outside the courthouse right now. You've
1:18
been covering the trial all week. So I'll just put
1:20
it to you this way. What have been the key
1:23
moments that you think are worth highlighting? There
1:25
are key legal moments and then there are kind of
1:27
these very difficult emotional moments. And one of those just
1:29
happened right before we came out for the lunch break
1:31
today. Naomi Biden, Hunter
1:33
Biden's daughter, was called to the
1:35
stand to testify for
1:38
the defense. She was on the
1:40
stand for about an hour, maybe a
1:42
little less. And, you know, she
1:44
said at one point she was nervous. You had
1:46
family members, Biden family members in the front row.
1:48
First Lady Jill Biden's in the front row. Joe
1:51
Biden's sister's in the front row as well. Hunter Biden's
1:53
wife. You could see them trying to kind of
1:55
wipe away tears. So a
1:57
difficult family moment as she's up there testifying
1:59
about this. her relationship with her father and
2:01
how difficult that was at times. In
2:04
terms of the legal side of this, it's
2:06
been interesting watching the government try to build
2:08
this case. They've used text
2:11
messages in which Hunter talks about his drug
2:13
use, extensive drug use, his addiction to crack
2:15
cocaine. They played long
2:17
episodes from his memoir that he himself
2:19
narrates talking about this downward spiral into
2:21
drug use that he had over several
2:23
years. And
2:25
then we heard from three
2:29
women who had romantic relationships with him,
2:31
including his ex-wife, Katherine Buell, former
2:33
girlfriend Zoe Kestin, and then his
2:36
brother's widow, Hallie
2:40
Biden, about how they
2:42
witnessed his drug use. And
2:44
we got kind of an inside look at the toll that
2:46
this had on the family and how difficult it was for
2:49
them. There was testimony about
2:51
seeing him smoke crack cocaine, about seeing him buy
2:53
crack cocaine. Brennan
2:55
talked about watching him cook crack cocaine on
2:57
his own. And so we've
3:00
seen the toll that this has taken on his family. There
3:02
are some key facts here that Hunter Biden does
3:04
not dispute. He does not dispute his history of
3:07
addiction and that things happen when he was faced
3:09
with addiction that he now regrets. One
3:11
hundred percent. And his attorney, Abby Lowell,
3:14
has said exactly that in court several
3:16
times, saying there's no argument that Hunter
3:19
struggled with addiction. What
3:21
he has tried to do, what Abby Lowell has tried
3:23
to do is take all the
3:25
testimony that the government has given documenting
3:28
the drug use and
3:30
say, let's focus on the specific time period
3:32
when Hunter bought and owned the gun. Because
3:35
that's what those charges revolve around is, was
3:37
he a drug user when he bought the gun? And
3:41
then did he lie on the forms about
3:43
it? And so what he's
3:45
done is he's taken all this government testimony and
3:47
he's asked the three women that I mentioned whether
3:50
they ever saw him use drugs over the
3:52
specific period that he owned the gun. And
3:55
each one said, no, they did not. So
3:57
that's kind of what he's trying to base
3:59
this defense on. But there's one problem with
4:01
that, and that's something that the
4:03
prosecution keeps on coming back to, is there
4:05
are two text messages that Hunter Biden sent
4:09
a day after and then two days after he bought the gun
4:11
in October of 2018. In one,
4:13
he tells Hallie Biden that he's waiting to
4:15
meet a drug dealer named Mookie. And
4:18
in the other one, he texts her
4:20
that I was sleeping on a car
4:22
smoking crack at 4th and Rodney. And
4:25
those are two that the
4:27
defense is trying to find a way to bat
4:29
a side. They've tried to say that, you know,
4:31
nobody knows whether he was actually doing that. Hallie
4:34
Biden said sometimes Hunter would lie about what he was doing. It's
4:37
just a totally messy thing. Obviously has
4:39
political implications because this is the first
4:41
family we're talking about. A
4:44
week or so after, we were seeing
4:46
a former first family dragged into court
4:48
because the principal, former
4:51
President Donald Trump, was convicted
4:55
on a business falsification felony charge in
4:57
New York. So, you
4:59
know, it's a weird time in politics because it's
5:01
not a thing that you normally see for families
5:04
of those who are running for president. I
5:06
do think the politics of this are interesting, strictly
5:09
through the political lens for Joe Biden, because so
5:11
much of the story of his son's addiction and
5:13
his fatherhood and all of that has been very
5:15
public. And this has been
5:17
litigated in some ways in the 2020 election as well. The
5:21
president has often seemed like a sympathetic figure
5:24
to Americans because the things about drug use
5:26
and addiction and families is, quite frankly, not
5:28
uncommon in this country. Probably
5:31
Joe Biden's best moment in the 2020
5:33
campaign was the debate where Donald Trump
5:35
tried to corner him and say your
5:37
son is a cocaine addict. And
5:40
he was like, there's lots of other Americans
5:42
who've dealt with these kinds of issues with
5:44
their family, with their kids. And
5:47
I'm proud of my son for having gone through that and
5:49
from coming out the other side of it. You
5:51
know, I think the real key here is
5:54
whether or not Republicans can do what they've
5:56
been trying to do and have been unsuccessful
5:58
in doing and somehow tying. Hunter's
6:00
troubles to Joe Biden, which they've not
6:02
been able to do at all, but
6:05
continue to sort of use Hunter Biden as
6:07
a way to try to undermine Joe. Sure.
6:10
I mean, Domenico, there's also the politics
6:12
here of, and you referenced the Trump
6:14
verdict last week, you know, Donald Trump
6:16
and his allies have blamed Joe Biden
6:18
for that guilty verdict, suggesting that it's
6:20
somehow the result of, you
6:22
know, Democratic politics, and he's been a puppet
6:24
master in the justice system. But
6:26
yet his own son is on trial in the
6:28
very same justice system, which would seem to undermine
6:31
the notion that somehow Joe Biden has any control
6:33
over what the court system is doing in
6:35
this country. Yeah, and this is a federal case,
6:37
which the president would have more control over than
6:39
a state case like Donald Trump was convicted on
6:42
in New York. Ryan, what's the timeline here? Do
6:44
you have a sense of how much more testimony the
6:46
jury needs to hear when there might be a verdict?
6:49
Well, Hunter's attorney said he planned to
6:51
call two or three witnesses. We've already
6:53
heard from two. We'll see what happens
6:55
in the afternoon. Lowell said
6:57
that he expects by Monday at the latest
6:59
will be done with defense testimony.
7:01
The government would then have a chance to put
7:03
on a short rebuttal. And
7:06
then this case will be sent to the jury. All
7:09
right, we're going to leave it there for today. Ryan, I know you
7:11
have to get back in the courthouse. So thanks so much. Thank
7:13
you. All right, let's take a quick break. And when we get
7:15
back, we'll talk about the latest from the campaign trail. This
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at shopify.com/NPR. And
8:38
we're back and Claudia Grisales joins us now. Hello,
8:40
friend. Hey there. And
8:42
the 2024 presidential primary season, such as it
8:44
was, is almost over. Guam and the US
8:47
Virgin Islands are holding their contest this weekend.
8:49
But Domenico, let's take a step back here.
8:51
I mean, this primary season, it almost felt
8:53
like it happened, but it didn't
8:55
because it felt pretty much ordained from the
8:58
start. Yeah. Look, I think
9:00
that this was almost preordained, despite the fact
9:02
that many voters didn't actually think it was
9:04
going to happen. Having a
9:06
Biden-Trump rematch, I think some people are
9:08
still sort of like not
9:11
paying attention to politics. You know,
9:13
they've stepped away from it a little bit
9:15
because they don't like their choices and they
9:17
haven't quite come around to the reality of
9:19
what this is. I mean, maybe it'll happen
9:21
after the conventions. Maybe it'll happen at the
9:24
conventions. Maybe it'll happen just as people are
9:26
going into the ballot boxes. But, you know,
9:28
everything's trending closer to a lower
9:30
turnout election than 2020 because of
9:33
all of that. Also just
9:35
because of the fact that there is
9:37
not universal mail-in voting everywhere. So
9:40
you know, I think the primary season, we
9:42
all kind of knew, was front loaded, that
9:44
by March or so, mid-March, we would know
9:46
who the nominee on the Republican side would
9:48
be. And that's exactly
9:50
what happened. Donald Trump, with these
9:53
indictments, has been able to really
9:55
consolidate the Republican base, announced his
9:57
election effort a week after the 2020 election.
12:00
And they really believe this. And Vegas was
12:02
one of those places that was so
12:04
hard hit during the pandemic. This was
12:06
their tourism industry that was shut down.
12:08
And they're still building, rebuilding and
12:10
trying to get past that. And this kind
12:12
of aligns with what polling is telling us
12:15
in Nevada, Domenico, that Trump has
12:17
been leading a lot of polls there. And Nevada is
12:19
historically always a state that's decided
12:21
by really tight margins. And down the ballot
12:23
in Nevada next week on June 11th, they're
12:25
going to have their congressional primaries. The Republican
12:28
Sam Brown is expected to win the nomination
12:30
there to take on Democratic incumbent Jackie
12:32
Rosen. Our most recent
12:34
NPR PBS NewsHour Marist Polling, when
12:37
it's asked that congressional ballot question, the broad, which
12:39
party would you like to control Congress? It does
12:41
illuminate that all of this stuff is really tight
12:43
right now. It is very tight. I
12:45
mean, 4545 was in our in our
12:47
poll, whether or not you preferred a
12:49
Democratic control Congress or Republican control Congress.
12:52
That may seem like a tie.
12:55
And it is by all me
12:57
by all standards. But except for
12:59
whether or not it actually means
13:01
you will control Congress because Republicans
13:03
control so many more seats
13:06
and the way that they're drawn, that
13:08
Democrats need actually a much larger margin
13:11
in their favor to be able to control
13:13
Congress. So in some ways, the
13:15
4545 does put Democrats even more on
13:18
their back foot than the tie would
13:20
appear to show. Are there
13:22
any races coming up that you're watching
13:24
that might tell us something about either the
13:26
primaries or the parties or which way things
13:28
are going? Yeah, one pattern you raised this
13:31
early in the election season when we talk
13:33
about revenge politics that seems to be playing
13:36
a big role in elections this year.
13:38
We just saw Tony Gonzalez in one
13:40
of Texas's largest districts, one of the
13:43
largest in the country, eke out a
13:45
win pretty much by about 400 votes
13:47
against a challenger that was being supported by one
13:50
of his colleagues in his own party, Matt
13:52
Gaetz of Florida, who is facing
13:54
his own opponent as well. And so
13:56
it's interesting in terms of that
13:58
theme. One other. person
14:00
in that group, there's many, but to
14:02
point out, is Nancy Mace of South
14:05
Carolina, who was one of the eight
14:07
who voted to oust House Speaker Kevin
14:09
McCarthy. Now on his own revenge tour.
14:11
Exactly! And he has his fingerprints on
14:14
a lot of these races. And so
14:16
it's gonna be interesting to see if
14:18
she can pull this out. She's really
14:21
on the defense, for example, in terms
14:23
of trying to fend off this challenge.
14:25
She's done very well in the past
14:27
in terms of facing these tough races.
14:30
She's been on the opposite side of
14:32
former President Donald Trump and she has
14:34
prevailed. And now she has his endorsement!
14:36
What a world! And so it's gonna
14:39
be interesting to see the next steps
14:41
for her. She's able to win this
14:44
race as well. I'm also watching later
14:46
this month in New York the primary
14:48
there. I've done reporting on this in
14:50
the Democratic primaries, the sort of split
14:52
between the Progressive Wing and the more
14:54
centrist wing of the party over Israel-Gaza
14:56
politics. And Jamal Bowman, one
14:58
of the male members of the squad who has taken
15:00
a lot of votes against Israel in Congress, he is
15:02
a very real primary challenge. From
15:04
George Latimer, sort of an old-school New York
15:07
party boss, the polling's really tight there. And
15:09
so far in this election season, no congressional
15:11
incumbent is lost in a primary. Jamal
15:13
Bowman is one that's coming up that I think a
15:16
lot of Democrats are watching to see which way that
15:18
race could go and what those sort of Israel politics
15:20
are telling us about the Democratic Party. Yeah,
15:22
New York in particular is a place where
15:24
this kind of thing can resonate. So,
15:27
you know, I'm not sure, you know,
15:29
how that race is gonna really play out,
15:31
but we've seen there be some
15:33
push from the other side of
15:35
this because there's been so much
15:37
conversation around the protests on college
15:39
campuses and the pro-Palestinian
15:41
protests that some of the concern
15:44
from the Biden administration and the
15:46
Biden campaign on
15:48
pushing too far to show that
15:51
they're aligning with the progressive wing is
15:54
that when you look at polling, you
15:56
look at surveys, they see that there's
15:58
support for continuing. to aid Israel
16:01
when you look at voters in the middle and
16:03
older voters. And that really puts Biden's
16:06
campaign in a difficult position. And some
16:08
of these candidates are going to be
16:10
pushed now to see whether or not
16:12
there's any salience on the side
16:14
that's a little more pro-Israel. All right, let's take
16:16
another break. And when we get back, time for Can't Let It
16:18
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17:26
that sitting and swiping. Your
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body is adapting to your technology.
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Learn how and what you can do
17:33
about it. I really felt like the
17:35
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17:38
Once I started realizing what a difference
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17:42
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we're back. And
17:52
it's time for Can't Let It Go, the part
17:55
of the podcast where we talk about the things
17:57
we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise.
18:00
I'm gonna start off because there is
18:02
something that has taken hold of the
18:04
Washington desk of NPR and we need
18:06
to talk about it. And
18:08
it's a little app called Stompers. Stompers.
18:11
Stompers. It's basically
18:13
an app that allows you to connect with your
18:15
friends and then compete for the steps that you
18:17
take throughout the course of the day. Oh no,
18:19
I'm so glad I don't know about this. I'm
18:22
gonna erase this from my mind afterwards. It's
18:25
been an illuminating couple of days because I think
18:27
we're really learning a lot about each other in
18:29
terms of who's active, who's maybe a little
18:31
bit of a cheater, who you're willing to
18:33
take on. Part of the app allows
18:36
you to throw banana peels at people or hit them
18:38
with a baseball bat to knock them back. Some
18:42
of our more creative colleagues are finding ways
18:44
to work around the system. What are they doing? I'm
18:46
not gonna call out names, Eric McDaniel, but they will
18:49
do tricky things like put their phone on airplane mode
18:51
so you don't exactly know how many steps they're taking
18:53
and then they turn it back on to like vant
18:55
to the front of the pack. Wow. But
18:58
I would say it's bringing
19:00
like a new level of added stress to my
19:02
work life, but I will say my step count,
19:04
my daily step count is going up. Eric is
19:06
very smart and very savvy. He creates like
19:08
algorithms and all kinds of things. Yeah, probably
19:11
AI that's doing his steps. He's
19:13
just watching his phone around. I love that.
19:16
I love that. Domenico, what about you? What can't you
19:18
let go of? The Olympics and air conditioning. Paris
19:20
is trying to be so green about these Olympics
19:23
that they have all these sustainability things that
19:25
they're trying to do, which is laudable. But one
19:27
of the things that sort of raise a red
19:29
flag for me is no
19:32
air conditioning in the dorms where
19:35
the athletes are staying. They have
19:38
this like cooling system in the buildings
19:40
where they're running like cold water in
19:43
pipes underneath the rooms and they swear
19:46
there's no way that the rooms will get warmer than
19:48
79 degrees. Let me
19:50
tell you something. That's hot. That's hot to sleep. There's a reason they
19:52
picked 79, because it's not 80. Right?
19:56
It is not comfortable. Exactly.
19:58
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