Agreement on moving away from principles

NPR's tiny desk can't come to you. I mean it's a desk, but the tiny desk contest tour can New York City join NPR's tiny desk contest winner, Cure for Paranoia at Warsaw this july ninth. It's all the NPR Tiny Dk ennerergy minus the office furniture Get your tickets now at tinydesktour. org All right, you may have heard America is celebrating its two hundred fiftieth birthday this year B sounds like A unifying patriotic occasion, right? Well likeike almost everything these days, it has become partartisan. Let's get into it It's the NPR Politics podcast. I'm Miles Parks. I cover voting. I'm Danielle Kurtzlain. I cover the White House. And I'm Tamara Keeith, senior political correspondent Okay, so it's this july fourth weekend, birthday two hundred fifty for the country, Tam. There's a lot of events and celebrations going on. Can you walk us through just kind of everything that we're watching for this weekend? There are a lot of things planned, not just in Washington, DC, but all over the country. There's going to be massive fireworks in New York City Also, Taylor Swift is getting married. There is a huge event happening actually tomorrow at Mount Rushmore. And then the big event is on the National Mall for the Fourth of July, a concert featuring sort of a mega group of military bands and choruses flyovers happening all day with aerial tricks being performed. actuallyctually, the rehearsals were happening today and we heard all I mean, wow, that was loud. And then a a record breaking or at least that's the plan to have a world record breaking fireworks spectacular here in Washington, DC, which will be immediately preceded by a Trump rally President Trump is going to give a speech and yesterday, he gave a little bit of a preview. O' july fourth It's going to be Approximately one hundred and seven degrees out And I'm going to go and I'm going to make a really long speech justust to show that I can do anything I just want to interject and add that as he was giving that speech, I was there. This was in a place called Midora, North Dakota, where he was there to dedicate and open the Teddy Roosevelt Memorial Library. He gave that speech In the like full sun, it was you know eighty five ninety c, which I know not hot by current DC oven standards, but as he was saying that, I was thinking, Gods spepeed man, we're like I was already just dying. I don't know how that's gonna work, but let's see how it goes. And he's wearing a full suit No kidding. Yeah. I will just say as the Florian on the podcast here Gring up in one hundred degree weather. It's a little less impressive to me, but the full suit does put him over the edge. But ye drill down a little bit on what exactly is happening because I'm a little confused, Tam heard the term America two hundred fifty and also Freedom two hundred fifty related to different events associated with the celebration. Can you explain that a little bit Let me try. So many years ago, actually, Congress created the America two hundred fifty Commission, which was supposed to be bipartisan and would plan celebrations of America's semi quincententenial all over the country And then President Trump was elected and he didn't like what they were doing, didn't think it was good enough, wanted to do his own thing. And so he bigfooted and created Freedom two hundred fifty, which actually pulled some of the funding and has been putting on these very big events, including the UFC fight on the South laawn of the White House And something called the Great American State Fair on the National Mall. That is ongoing right now. It has been plagued by all kinds of problems, including power outages, the weather's very hot, notot a lot of people are showing up. And immediately, when it was announced that there would be a concert series attached to it Artists started pulling out no sooner were their names announced, saying they didn't realize that this was actually a partisan thing that was associated with Trump And the only artist that really stuck it out was Vanilla Ice, who was supposed to perform last Friday and then his concert was canceled because of inclement weather. This whole thing has turned into sort of a partisan Rorschach test where Either you look at, say, the Great American State Fair and say, this is an awesome idea, or you look at it and say, oh my gosh, this is partisan, this is a potemkin village that is lightly attended and everything is terrible. and Trump put his face all over it. Right. And to add to that, it's not as if America two hundred fifty disappeared. America two hundred fifty is still having events What has happened is that President Trump and Freedom two hundred fifty have most definitely, as Tam put it, big foooted, everything in the Washington DC area, most definitely. America two hundred fifty is still having events in other parts of the nation. They still have a what they're calling a block party, a big concert in Los Angeles, for example One in Philadelphia, one presumes weather permitting because Philadelphia is under this heat dome Yeah, so that is still happening, but the controversy around Freedom two hundred fifty just keeps rolling on. I mean, there were all of these discussions around the UFC fight about the fact that first of all you couldn't even watch it if you didn't have a paramount plus subscription. So okay, I don't know, is this supposedly two hundred fiftieth anniversary thing just a profit making enterprise and also a way for Trump to cozy up to his buddies like the head of UFC. But not only that, there was just a report put out by congressional Democrats alleging all sorts of malfeasance around freedom two hundred fifty. Now I should, again, stress alleging But they are saying that Freedom two fifty, their words, may have conducted wire fraud. by luring donors to send their money to places they didn't mean to. They also alleged that President Trump was selling access to people willing to pay for it, that sort of thing. So you can imagine that throughout the rest of this year, those sorts of allegations are going to keep flying around Now we should also add that we reached out to Freedom two hundred fifty and their spokesperson, Danielle Alvarez responded, quote This so called report is nothing more than a partisan smear. and she also called it categorically false. I totally see what you mean about the political Rorschak test Tam because I think the UFC fight is a great example. Like that also like had the highest ratings of any UFC event they announced after the fact. So I feel like that is like if you were in favor of that, you would say, wow, this was a huge success, But to Danielle's point Also a subscribers only event for the nation's anniversary. I don't know, that is fascinating I guess I'm curious about how much of this devolving into pure partisanship is specifically related to how President Trump has branded this whole thing. I mean, he looking ahead to the event on july fourth, he wrote on social media that At the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument on july fourth, in beautiful and safe Washington, D.C, we're going to host the most spectacular Trump rally of them all, a quote tribute to America I mean, even the idea of having a Trump rally as part of this celebration feels Like he himself is kind of adding this partisan layer. I mean, it couldn't get more blatant than that, right? I think yes, he's making it partisan. And Trump is the Republican Party right now. So I mean, that it's just kind of by the transit of property. Yeahah, it's part is it because it's about Trump But I mean, to me, what's been fascinating about so much of this is that The White House keeps making these sort of motions toward nonpisanship, trying to put up some sort of a veneer that it's not. For example, around the UFC fights you heard President Trump and people in the administration saying, well It's on flag dayay. It just happens to be on President Trump's eightieth birthday, but it's not about him. This is for Freedom two hundred fifty It was on President Trump's birthday. So you hear these words, but then you see what's happening. and it's really sort of some cognitive dissonance going on. Freedom two hundred fifty has become a figlyf for inserting President Trump and his image and likeness in places where ordinarily you wouldn't see the president of the United States likeike passports. There is a special Freedom two hundred fifty, two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America passport with a portrait of President Trump inside of the passport. There are pictures of him, giant banners hanging from buildings all over Washington, DC. And then he has also said that all of these renovation projects that have been happening, including the American flag bllue and the reflecting pool All of these changes are according to him related to the celebration of America's two hundred fiftieth birthday And we should say there are more events that are planned. For example, there are Patriot games. These are going to be athletic competitions here in the nation's capitol and also an indie car race around the streets of DC. So still more to come. And let me just add a little bit of contrast here ed speeches that then President Gerald Ford gave back in nineteen seventy six for America's bicentennial. America really did it up for that birthday. events all over the country. It was a big thing Ford was very careful about making it non partartisan keeping partisan politics out of it. And I should note that it was a presidential election year. He was going to be on the ballot. He could have had a personal interest in inserting himself into these celebrations But he didn't if you go back through his remarks Well as long as we're talking about contrasts, when I was reporting on the UFC fight a couple of weeks ago, I talked to a professor of presidential history, Julian Zelzer, he's from Princeton And he was saying that there's just this obvious contrast between now and nineteen seventy six, which is that so many of the events in seventy six were about America fittingly. You know, you had President Ford speaking in Philadelphia and doing all of these speeches at these historical sites. And Zelazar asked the rhetorical question, what does the UFC have to do with American history Does a decCar race have to do with that? Now, I mean, you could argue, well, it's just for fun, sure. But there is most certainly a very heavy contrast. I also think that we're in a moment where there's a really big disagreement about how to tell American history without President Trump Having very specific ideas? Yeah, exactly. I was gonna to say it just feels hard not to think about that same battle Tam. All right, that seems like a good place to leave it for now. moreore on all of us in just a moment As America marks two hundred and fifty years, remember, we the people make a free press possible. Together, we hold the powerful to account with reporting for the public funded by the public at plus. npr. org This week on Shorewave, working from home is popular. No commute, sweatpants. People who do it say it makes them happier. And the data suggests they're probably wrong about that. On average, at least. We unpack a new study about the social isolation of remote work and what it means for your health This week on Shortwave, NPR science podcast, listen daily on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts Hi, it's me Peter Segl, host of Waitwit Don't Me. It'smmer and if you want to turn your pool party into a nerd fest, check out our news quiz. We've got comedians, we' got celebrities, we got games to help you laugh about the week's news. Yeah, that news. It'll be just like we're all hanging out at your backyard barbecue. Listen every week to Wait Wait Don't tellell me On the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts and we're back. So On this celebration of America's two hundred fiftieth, I want to turn now to how Americans feel about the United States. NPR has some new polling out this week in partnership with PBS News and with Marist where people were asked how proud they are to be American. And the answers were really interesting, specifically along partisan lines. ninety three percent of Republicans said they're proud to be American compared with just sixty one percent of independence and only forty five percent of Democrats Danielle, what do you make of those results Well, it's not terribly surprising first of all, because we see on any number of metrics that there's this kind of a partisan divide, for example, on how's the economy doing? Well Wh Trump is president or any Republican is president these days, Republicans tend to see it with rosier colored glasses than Democrats do So yeah, if there were a Democratic president right now, I do believe that Democrats would maybe be a little more proud and Republicans maybe less. But that all said I think there's also something much deeper going on here, which is that And I'm speaking very broadly here, traditional symbols of patriotism in the U. S, especially in recent decades, maybe post nine eleven, especially have become right wing cOed. You drive through Trump country or red states, rural areas, you're going to see more flags, God bless the USA, support the troops. That's a very particular expression of patriotism. You're going to see a lot more of that overt expression of patriotism than maybe you'll see in a more left leaning part of the country. Now The wrinkle here is that it's not that Democrats and leftists aren't patriotic, but it's that the two parties seem to have very, very different thoughts about how to express patriotism, especially right now. I mean, On the right, especially with Trump as president, you have a lot less complicated proclamations. It's just, I'm proud to be an American. and then you play the Lee Greenwood song On the Democratic side Expressions of patriotism seem to have more criticism. They reckon with America's very imperfect past and present. I imagine if you go to No Kings' protests, or if you went to other protests, which I did, you know, women's marches occupy You could find people who would say yes, I'm patriotic, Yes, I love my country and also There's plenty of stuff wrong with it. It's kind of the I'm going to paraphrase James Baldwin here, but it's that quote he had of I love America, and that's why I feel the right to criticize her. I think that you see a bit more of that attitude on the left than on the right. And One more thing is that this isn't new In twenty twelve, you think about how Republicans criticized Obama for going on a quote unquote apology tour when he went around the world and talked to other leaders. You see a bit you've long seen this divide over how we think of and tell America's story. Yeah. And just to build on this, I have been working on this project called Swing Shift, where I talk to voters from swing states who have voted for both parties So everyone who I spoke to for this project has voted for President Trump at some point along the way, many of them in the most recent election. And I ask them the same question, are you proud to be an American And I think that the result came back. Both yes and with nuance. Yes, I am and always have been proud to be an American. I would still say yes here, but with some slight embarrassment. I'm proud to be an American This is the greatest country We live in the best country in the world You know, we have democracy We have freedom I do have some pride to be an American, However, I also have a lot of shame. That was Jason, Wally, Gerald, Tsa and Evan. And NPR is only using their first name so that they can speak freely about politics in these polarized times And I think that you hear that. You hear that they are both proud but they also have and feelings. I feel like I'm going to be thinking about the guy saying like Yes, I'm proud but I'm also slightly embarrassed. L that was just like, yeah, I don that encapsulates so many voters who you talk to right now. I want to ask about another poll result, which caught my eye here, which is that eighty three percent of Americans in this most recent survey said that America as a country has moved away from its founding principles. And this one caught my eye For the same reason any poll result that has more than eighty percent of people saying anything catches my eye. just having that level of agreement on something like this was like I was like, whoa, that's something to pay attention to. but I don't really know exactly what to make of it. Do you guys have thoughts? I mean, my overriding thought is Americans agree, the country is divided Americans agree that the system isn't working for everybody. Americans disagree about who's to blame. Yes. I mean, listening to you just talking about that poll question, Miles That phrase founding principles. if you were to ask the Democrats and the Republicans who answered that question, what are America's founding principles? orr what are the most important ones probably get very, very different answers. That's just an educated guess here. But I mean, you think about You think about like the preamble of the Constitution, right? whichich says in it provide for the common defense and promote the general welfare. Well, right off the top of my head, I would bet that a right wing person would be more likely to cite common defense, as a founding principle, and someone from the left might be more likely to say promote the general welfare I think that there is just such a broad interpretation of what the founding principles are and which principles you hold so dear that you think the country has absolutely lost hold of. So to me, I I feel like I'm raining on the parade, but this feels like another one of those questions, like how do you feel about the economy? Like well, well, how do I feel about how things are right now? There's just so much there. No That's a great point. It also reminds me of on my beat on the voting beat, peoplee always ask like, are you worried about the state of democracy? And Republicans and Democrats say yes,'s just for very different reasons, right? It's like voter fraud on one side and deression or any number of other interference on the other. But I do want to say though that when we say something like that, that like People on both sides have fears, people on both sides think the country has moved away from its founding principles. I think when we say stuff like that, it can sound invalidating or like, well, well everybody thinks it. Well it's people on both sides. That's not to say that there are not real questions or worries about democracy. becausecause things definitely have changed very rapidly. I mean, in the second Trump term, especially, you have had a president who has amassed more and more executive power and who is running roughshot over Congress. I mean, that things are changing. It's just a question whether you think it's a good or bad thing running rough shot over Congress with the consent of Congress. absolutely run by Republicans at this time. and also with the consent of the U. S. Supreme Court, which has again expanded the presresident's executive power Right. All right, well we can leave it there. We're going to take one more quick break and then it's time for C't Let it G go All the protests in the summer of twenty twenty? For a moment there It was utopia. One took a unique turn Somebody over there ain't seen how to use a gun This is the story of how violence came to occupy an anti violence occupation in Seattle. Listen to We Keep Us Safe, a new trrue Crime series on the emmbedded podcast from NPR Recently, cybersecurity researchers discovered a striking computer virus. seemeemingly related to the conflict between the U S and Iran over Iran's nuclear program Everything about this thing screams special A cunning cyber weapon meant to gaslight nuclear scientists. listit to plenty of money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. On NPR's Wild Card podcast, actor and director Danny McBride says he has finally aged into his looks. I'm lucky because even when I was twenty one, I looked like I was fifty years old. So now I look I look at pictures of me when I'm ne like I look older there somehow. This is weird. Watch or listen to that wild card conversation on the NPR app We' on YouTube at NPR Wildcard And we are back. And it's time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go. The part of the podcast where we talk about things from the week that we just cannot let go of politics or otherwise. And I am going to start us off because I have a can't let it go that is related to last week's C't Let it goo. An important one that I think all listeners are probably very curious about. Last week I don't know if you heard this, Danielle, but Mara Lason had a can't let it go about this giraffe in Texas named Gracie that had escaped from where it was being held and had not been seen in two weeks. And Mara was very concerned about this giraffe. We were all Tam and I were also very concerned about this giraffe. I did not imagine the giraffe was living her best life, let's just say I don't know how to feel, but I'm on pins and needles. Well I know. we were like, I don't know that it would honestly left us all in a pretty dark place after the taping, just thinking about Gracie the girraft. I come to you with a happy update. Rracy the Giraffe has been found quote, fat and happy two weeks after escaping the ranch. That is according fat and happy the quote from in the New York Times. So she's fine. They were basically the manager of this place gotot a helicopter and spotted this giraffe in an uninhabited part of this property And she was just chomping down, hanging out. Eating the leaves. Yeah I mean what what what food source did she find that she was so into Trees. Basically what happened is she was like she seemed to be like she was she was just munching on trees. I did in the more specific. Okay. I don't have anything more specific for Danielle. I'm not a gracy No factory and she just what town Yeah I know. She I guess she like ended up in a part of this thing and we got really into some tree she found and ended up over the fence and was wandering around for two weeks And and I think they got her back. So that is that's your good news item for the day.ood. I is fine Yay, Gracy Tam, what can't you let go of? So what I can't let go of is last night's World Cup match between the U.S and Bosnia Herzegovina USA U UA USA. Like, you know, spoiler alert, we won And it was awesome. And at the end, they played country roads and it was awesome. However What I really can't let go of is that Fuller and Balligan The top scorer on the US team was Given a red card u for a I don't I I honestly Most of the soccer I watch involves eight year olds, so I can't tell you what happened exactly, but you only get sighted with the red card if you are intentionally trying to injure the other player And it was a, you know, a tough collision out there But I think that this red card was totally bunk don't think it was vid I totally agree and I feel like it was H in the moment I was like, what? I was watching the game at a bar and everyone was very confused because it just looked I mean, it looked bad. He did step on the guy's foot or leg. But then after the game, I feel like everyone's all usually mad at the moment, but after the game, I feel like they talk to all the players and all the people who are usually like kind of a little bit more distancing themselves or a little bit more like qualifying and being like, yeah, it wasn't great. But in this case everyone was I have no idea why they called the red card and it's crazy now. he's going to be he's going to have to miss the next match. Yeah It's actually almost amazing that the U. S still won after him getting booted from the game about two thirds of the way through, right? Because they had to play down a man, right? Yes. That's boggers and also I mean, look, even bigger way to go, USA. That's awesome. And what was sort of lovely is I was watching television with a third screen experience as one sometimes does and had X up on my computer. I know I know I should just not have done that. What I found was bipartisan It was amazing. You had such a wide range of American political figures who I follow on social media all agreeing for once on one thing that this red card should not have been called. That's great, but I do wonder whether there're still a little bit of a bubble because I agree with you. I was everyone around me in the bar I was in was outraged. everyveryone on the internet was outraged. but I have not heard from the Bosnians Yeah need toree The guy got his foot mashed, and I'd be curious to know if they also agree that if it was an overcall or if we have just drank too much of the USA Kool Aid. You know what? afterfter the pod we just had, I think it's okay to drink a little bit of USA Koolid.oo. US U US don't This is the first time I've heard you do the USA chan, Danielle. I like it Well, actually, I can't let it go is just chanting that for five minutes rightraight. Is that cool? You could put it on loop at your fourth of July barbecue and you could just have it play into the speakers.uys, I'm gonna to take a solo. No, okay I can't let it go. This is going to sound boring, but just hear me out is the Taylor Swift Travis Kelsey wedding. because what is boring about that? Well because I'm not bord. Because who is it pay attention to that? I get it. But like I can't let it go is the like