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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. We'll take calls from doctors today on the much read New York Times Magazine article from the weekend describing that many doctors in this country are experiencing themselves as being in a state of moral crisis. The crisis comes from the business model of medicine these days, what the article calls the corporatization of medicine these days in which doctors are, more often than you might imagine, employees, salaried employees of health care companies, not independent practitioners in the old fashion MD sense.

Being measured on their productivity like any other laborer in a way from any other job and having to not fully take care of their patients as a result. The moral crisis of America's doctors with the writer of the article, and doctors, your calls coming up this morning in about an hour. Little after eleven o'clock we'll do that segment. Also with voting taking place this week in the New York primary, we will focus today on the interesting Democratic primary for mayor of Yonkers, where the incumbent is vying for a fourth term after getting the term limits law in the city extended, but he has two challengers. The Yonkers mayoral primary coming up.

We'll have some fun at the end of the show with your calls on the topic of TGIW. It's not TGIF anymore for bars and restaurants that have happy hours in the New York City business districts according to Crain's. It's TGIW because this is a day when more people are more likely to be in the office and go out for happy-hour drinks. We'll have a call-in for bar owners and office workers on business districts social life now. We'll start here. This has been an eventful week so far for criminal charges against people named Trump and Biden.

As we mentioned yesterday, just as it was breaking, the US attorney appointed by Donald Trump to investigate Hunter Biden has concluded a plea deal with Hunter Biden guilty to two misdemeanor tax evasion charges plus a so-called diversion agreement to resolve a gun charge. The Trump-appointed prosecutor David Weiss found nothing else on which to charge anyone named Biden, but says his five-year investigation is ongoing. We'll try to figure out what ongoing means, what is he still looking into after five years and after this plea agreement. Donald Trump may have further incriminated himself in the classified documents case in answers he gave to Fox News anchor Bret Baier in a televised interview. Answers like.

Donald Trump: These boxes were interspersed with all sorts of things: golf shirts, clothing, pants, shoes. There were many things.

Brian Lehrer: We'll explain Trump's new golf shirts defense. More now with Washington Post national politics columnist Philip Bump. Hi, Philip. Always great to have you on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Philip Bump: Good morning, sir. Happy to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Let's start with the Hunter Biden case and refresh our memories. This official Justice Department investigation went on for five years before they settled on these fairly minor charges. What took so long to get to this point?

Philip Bump: It's a great question. Justice Department investigations operate in the dark for a very good reason seeing how the public is not privy to them, generally speaking. It's not really clear why it took so long. Obviously, there was a transition of leadership, the Justice Department that was intended to actually influence things, but we don't really know. It seems pretty obvious, though, that for example, you had in 2020, two years into the investigation, this release of this material that was alleged to have come from Hunter Biden's laptop that undoubtedly spurred some new considerations and so on, so forth that may have helped extend the timeline there, but the short answer is it's not entirely clear.

Brian Lehrer: Who is David Weiss? If people generally these days know who Jack Smith is, the special counsel investigating Trump, who is David Weiss, the prosecutor in this case, and how did he wind up in that role with Hunter Biden?

Philip Bump: He's the US attorney who was actually appointed by Trump. The Biden probe was being undertaken in Delaware and that's why it's his territory. There are processes even in unusual cases that the Justice Department employs in order to determine what case goes where, and so this ended up in Weiss's lap.

Brian Lehrer: He didn't have special counsel status like Jack Smith, but he was a Trump appointee.

Philip Bump: That's right.

Brian Lehrer: President Biden, therefore, had the power technically to remove Weiss once Biden took office, but he didn't do that.

Philip Bump: Yes, exactly. Look, it was pretty obvious fairly early on that Hunter Biden had done things that were unsavory broadly and likely had violated income tax laws. There were reports well before this week that Hunter Biden had failed to pay his taxes and had actually repaid the government for what he owed and that that's the charge. It's likely we also knew that when he had obtained this handgun that he obtained, that he had misrepresented his addiction status. That essentially, there were laws about your use of illegal drugs and owning a firearm, and he had misrepresented that.

We've known this for some time, and in fact, this has been something that Republicans have been hammering on for some time. How is Hunter Biden escaping any punishment for having done these things that basically everyone knows that he did? This week, we saw the culmination of that.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, your questions or comments about the Hunter Biden and Donald Trump criminal cases or anything related for Philip Bump from The Washington Post, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Philip, also the author of the recent book The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America, which just came out this year. Weiss says the investigation is ongoing. Investigation of what?

Philip Bump: It's a fair question. We know from interviews with and a statement from Hunter Biden's lawyer that the attorneys were under the impression that this resolved all of the outstanding legal issues. It's not clear what Weiss is referring to when he talks about an investigation being ongoing. It's not clear if it means there are other things that Hunter Biden is alleged to have done that are being looked at, if, for example, he has business partners. We're not sure if it's Hunter Biden-related or the activities related because, again, the Justice Department operates in the dark for a good reason.

We don't know, but his attorneys, at the very least, we're making public presentations that they didn't know that there was anything else out there, so it's not clear what that might entail.

Brian Lehrer: Of course, we know investigations like these can find things they weren't initially looking for. The Whitewater real estate investigation of Bill Clinton, while he was president wound up following the breadcrumbs to his affair with Monica Lewinsky and all that flowed from that. Could it be anything that unrelated?

Philip Bump: It's hard to say. We have very little information about what the Justice Department is looking at. Again, we had Hunter Biden's laptop come out. There are all sorts of things on there that certainly Biden's critics have pointed to as being things that are suspicious. Obviously, the standard that the Justice Department applies to illegality is different than people writing to Fox News, but we simply don't know. We don't know what it might be. The Republicans in the House are very actively hyping this idea that there was this bribe paid to Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.

There's no evidence that it's that, but it is a good example of things which had been presented to the FBI at some point in time that could have led to investigations that are ongoing and may ultimately lead nowhere.

Brian Lehrer: Let me follow up on that because as a lot of listeners have heard, but probably a lot of listeners haven't heard, the Republican-led House of representatives is continuing its investigation still hoping to turn up something incriminating about Joe Biden before next year's election. Here's a clip of Speaker Kevin McCarthy after yesterday's Hunter Biden plea deal announcement. House Republicans have been talking a lot about some kind of alleged bribery tape involving Joe Biden that so far they can't produce and McCarthy here appears to refer to that.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy: We've found out, lo and behold, even though the FBI tried to hold from us, that in a 1023 form, that people have said that they had to pay the president's family money for favors.

Brian Lehrer: Philip, is that chatter or spin or something wholly made up? Because it's not something they've proved even exists, right? Can you explain that claim?

Philip Bump: Yes. What Kevin McCarthy said there is just flatly not true. There are all these ways in which you use verbiage that implies things are bigger. The Republicans always talk about the Biden family receiving money by which they mean two particular people in the Biden family who don't happen to be the president. He there said you have people who are doing it. You don't have people, we have one person who apparently spoke with an informant to the FBI years ago. This is apparently an executive at Burisma, this Ukrainian energy company, who told this informant, "Hey, I either tried to pay a bribe to or did pay a bribe of $5 million apiece to Jill Biden and Hunter Biden.

I have audio recordings of my conversations with them that I'm using as security for myself," if you will. This informant then in June of 2020 went to the FBI and said, "Yes, this person told me this thing." That's literally it. The informant apparently is credible and they've talked to the informant in the past. The informant was told this by this executive. That is literally all the evidence. Again, house oversight has subpoenaed all sorts of bank records from Hunter Biden. There's no evidence there was any $5 million payment. Even Republicans had to admit they don't know if these purported tapes exist.

As a counterpoint, particularly to the Hunter Biden issue or the Trump documents case, it's really, really weak. There is nothing about it that is known beyond that one person made one allegation to one informant years ago and that the Justice Department considered this in 2020 when Donald Trump was up for reelection against Joe Biden, and by August of that year had determined, according to how Democrats who had spoken to the FBI, they've decided not to pursue an investigation.

Brian Lehrer: If that's all there is, why is this the number one topic on the conservative media hit parade this week?

Philip Bump: Two reasons. The first is that it serves as juxtaposition to Donald Trump, that they're able to say, as the cover of the New York Post did a while ago, "Hey, Trump did this, but what about what the Bidens did?" You collapse the extent to which people understand the egregiousness of the actions. If you just say, "Well, Trump did a thing and Biden did a thing," you lose the important detail of the intense documentation of what Trump did versus the very light documentation of what Biden did. Fundamentally, the reason this is all over Fox News is because there's not much else to do.

The House oversight Republicans had tried for a long time to impugn Joe Biden through Hunter Biden. They failed to do that. They had this big report that came out earlier this year that was basically nothing big and didn't show any connection to Joe Biden. This is something new that they have seized upon, that they've known about for a long time. They settled on it recently, but it doesn't seem to be any attraction.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call. Tom in Sea Bright, you’re on WNYC. Hi, Tom.

Tom: Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. What I'm most interested in, and it's probably completely widespread, is whether or not Hunter Biden was a drug addict or a hoemaster, so many politicians, relatives, spouses, children trade on their family name to get positions and jobs that they were otherwise not qualified for. I was wondering if someone could just go through every member of Congress and see where their spouses work or where their kids work. The other problem is the Supreme Court pretty much gutted the honest services law back when that Virginia governor was convicted a few years ago. You almost have to have a contract to prove bribery.

Now we just heard yesterday that Alito took a hundred thousand-dollar trip to go fishing in Alaska and he said the laws grew clear. I wasn't sure what can be done about the appearance of corruption. They shouldn't be allowed to do it.

Brian Lehrer: It's a really interesting question, Tom, putting it in a pretty broad perspective. In fact, our next segment, which is going to be on the Yonkers Democratic mayoral primary will include recent reporting from Lohud that how many members of Mayor Spanos family are on the Yonkers city payroll in some way or another? 15. We will get to that, but I don't think anybody's yet saying that a crime was committed. What do you say to Tom who puts the issue in that broader perspective, Phil?

Philip Bump: Yes, it's totally fair. Hunter Biden is very clearly trading on his family name. Look, I don't know Hunter Biden, I'm not going to make assessments of it, but yes, we've seen this lots of times. Jared Kushner walked out of the White House and got a $2 billion deal with Saudi Arabia. These things happen regularly, and historically, because these are not government officials, it's very hard to mandate what they are doing as private citizens. You depend instead upon the enforcement through guilt of the public officials themselves that the honor of the public official trying to lean on their family members, if you will, and get them to behave properly or within certain bounds.

It's very easy to slip outside of those bounds. This has been a problem for a long time. People point to Jimmy Carter's brother who was doing some sketchy stuff. We've seen this for a long time. It's not clear what the solution is because you can't hold private citizens to the standards that you would apply to government officials because they're not government officials.

Brian Lehrer: Republicans, we should say, are calling the plea deal a sweetheart deal and a slap on the wrist. The implication is that because he's the president's son, they went easy on him, but does the fact that this was Trump's handpick guy investigating the family member of his biggest political rival disprove that, or can we say there was any Joe Biden or Merrick Garland fingerprints on this?

Philip Bump: I would be very surprised if there were Joe Biden fingerprints on it. I think this is one of those things that Joe Biden probably be pretty assiduous about staying as far away from as possible given the precariousness of it. I would also be surprised if Merrick Garland weren't aware of the steps that were being taken with the investigation. I doubt though that Merrick Garland was saying, "Hey, let's go easy on this guy." We have seen that happen in the past with attorneys general. We saw, for example, Bill Barr weigh in on how Roger Stone should face punishment during the Trump administration.

I don't know that we have any evidence of that here. Barr is fairly public about the way in which he did that. This seems like the thing that happens when you have white collar defendants. That the laws were broken and it ends with a plea deal. This seems like fairly familiar lack of intense repercussions in situations like this that we've seen before. This is so unique a circumstance that it's hard to draw even comparisons with other things.

Brian Lehrer: Next, we're going to get into these developments this week in the classified documents case and the political implications for the Republican presidential primary as we continue with Philip Bump from the Washington Post and you, 212-433-WNYC. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC as we continue with some Wednesday morning politics talking about Hunter Biden and Donald Trump and related things with Philip Bump, national columnist for The Washington Post and author of the Aftermath: The Last Days of The Baby Boom and The Future of Power in America. Philip, let's turn to the classified documents, charges against Trump. At least two developments in that already this week. Judge Aileen Cannon has set a trial date of August 14th, which everyone seems to think will eventually be delayed by a lot. There is Trump's Fox News interview with anchor Bret Baier, which some say further incriminate Trump.

Here is a clip from the interview after Baier asks Trump why he didn't return classified documents after they were requested by the National Archives, which Trump refers to here by its acronym, NARA.

Donald Trump: Because I had boxes. I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out. I don't want to hand that over to NARA yet and I was very busy as you've seen.

Brian Lehrer: Phillip, is that a legal defense, I was too busy to return classified documents?

Philip Bump: [chuckles] It is not or at least it is not a particularly robust one. I would be very surprised if his lawyers in court should come to that to raise that as somehow exonerating. That is fundamentally. First of all, we should point out that it is an absolutely ridiculous excuse. Donald Trump had already gone through a number of these boxes. He had these things for months. There's all sorts of reports of him playing golf or DJing at Mar-a-Lago. Times that maybe he could have used to try and respond to the subpoena received from the government.

He also had this box of highly classified documents that he kept in his office in a special leather-bound box, that there's no report that there's anything else in there. He didn't have shirts in with that box, he had that in his office. He very clearly knew that those documents were there, those never got handed over, so that submarines his argument from the first place. Donald Trump is not making a legal argument. He's making a political argument in part because that's the terrain on which he feels comfortable and in part because that's where he actually probably has a better chance of winning.

If he is able to be elected president again, immediately the federal prosecution of him stops by the standards that have been set by the Justice Department and he could potentially pardon himself, which is something that we talked about a lot during his administration. It seems pretty likely to me that he understands that if he gets elected president, he is able to wriggle out of this net and that he knows much better how to win the presidency than he does how to win a criminal court case.

Brian Lehrer: Which turns one of his defenses in the public relations realm on its head. He keeps saying they're going after me because I'm running for president, but you could say he's running for president because they're going after me because the classified documents investigation was already ongoing and well known when Trump decided to declare that he would run for president again. At least there's one motivation to run for president he gets out of this and the other criminal charges that have already been filed that might be filed if he's reelected.

Philip Bump: Yes, he's absolutely taking advantage of this very weird way in which we consider when presidential campaigns are underway. I wrote a couple of years ago about a kid who filed to run in the 2040 presidential race. Is he running for president right now? If he gets pulled over for speeding tickets, we should say, "Oh, you're just pulling him over because he's a presidential candidate." It's ludicrous to try and use this as an excuse. You're right that it is very much the case that Donald Trump has been very energetic about saying, "Oh, they're only doing this to me because I'm leading Biden in the polls," which he's not, but they're doing this as an act of election interference. That's been his argument.

Again, all Donald Trump has been trying to do literally immediately after he won the 2016 election is convince his supporters that everyone's trying to take him down. Of course, there are certainly people trying to take him down in part because that's the nature of politics, but these allegations that this is somehow a banana republic president who's acting against him because he fears his opponent is just ludicrous particularly given the evidence that's shown in the indictment.

Brian Lehrer: In a minute, we'll play another clip of Trump from the Bret Baier interview on Fox that a lot of people are citing as perhaps Trump further incriminating himself. Before we get too far away from the Hunter Biden deal, I want to take a call that looks interesting on that from Trish in Pelham Gardens. Trish, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Trish: Yes. I wanted to say about the pre-trial diversion program. I don't think he should be afforded that at 50 years old or whatever age he is. A kid in The Bronx, 18, 17, or maybe LA, Detroit picks up a gun, his first arrest, they're not offering him pre-trial diversion. That's what pre-trial diversion is. To keep you away, you're young, steer you the right way, and we are living in New York City where kids go to jail every day. They're on Rikers for years they're sentenced. I don't see it as political, Republican, Democrat, I see it really as a privilege because of his wealth, because of his race, and no one's addressing that portion. That's my comment.

Brian Lehrer: Trish, it's such a great thing to point out when you take a step back from Hunter Biden, take it out of the Trump versus Biden, Biden versus Trump context, and look at it in the broad swath of the justice system in the United States. Phillip, has anybody else

brought this up to your knowledge?

Philip Bump: Yes, I have seen it reported, and obviously, the caller's exactly right. That the circumstance here involving the son of a president who happens to be wealthy and who's failing to report millions of dollars he was earning to the IRS. This is why when we were first discussing, I was very pointedly saying this is the standard response of white collar crime. It is not how criminals broadly are treated and it absolutely is the case that. Again, not to impute on Hunter Biden unfairly, but the very fact that he was able to make so much money because his last name was Biden is an example of privilege that's hard to shake and that it manifests in other ways I think is not surprising however disconcerting.

Brian Lehrer: It goes to the whole attempt to discredit the justice system in the United States that the Republicans are now engaging in. They're saying the justice system is biased against conservatives or people with an R before their name if they're actually in politics, but of course, we hear from criminal justice reform advocates all the time that the criminal justice system is very flawed because it's biased against especially low-income people of color. They are as opposite groups in the context of American socioeconomics, Republican politicians, people who statue in the country as of Donald Trump, for example, and the kinds of people who Trish is calling about comparing Hunter Biden to, right?

Philip Bump: Yes, exactly. We saw this last year after the search at Mar-a-Lago, these calls to defund the FBI. Or we saw when the new funding was added to the IRS to have agents who could pursue tax evasion by very wealthy Americans. "The IRS is getting these Gestapo troops to come after us." It really is this fascinating mirror-image echo of defund the police. In which case concerns about the activities of police and often demonstrated systemic racism on parts of police were triggering these calls to reform how the police were acting because these communities understood that they were at unique risk from those police. We see the same thing here.

We see calls to defund the FBI and the IRS because communities that are at risk, in this case, wealthier, and at least in their perception, conservative Americans, view themselves as being under threat.

Brian Lehrer: While you maybe take a drink of water, we'll take a phone call from Regina in East Chester. You're on WNYC. Hi, Regina.

Regina: Hi. I have a question about why criminal charges were brought at all in the tax case. I know I'm not alone in having failed to file my returns for quite a few years in a row. The IRS then sends out letters demanding payment, and if you ignore them, they start withholding from your salary. As far as I know, I was never criminally investigated. Was it just the amount that he supposedly owed or what was it that made this into a criminal case?

Brian Lehrer: Great question. Phillip, do you know? Because as the Republicans are saying, this was a sweetheart deal and he got off with a slap on the wrist. Somebody might say, like Regina just said, other people who committed the same level of not paying their taxes, I don't know if tax evasion is the technical term, have never been criminally charged, just pursued to get the money back.

Philip Bump: There was a very pointed mention in the court documents that came out yesterday that he had earned in excess of $1.5 million in each of those years. I think it was the scale of the earnings that had been documented that he had paid on. He did actually pay the money back according to his attorneys and by all public reports. I think that is part of the reason why he's put on probation, but beyond that, he's not facing any punishment.

Brian Lehrer: Here's another moment from the Fox News anchor, Bret Baier's interview with Trump that's making news. It relates to the tape that the indictment says it has with Trump telling a writer that he has a still classified document there, that there's his Bedminster Golf Club in New Jersey that details potential war plans reportedly against Iran. The indictment has a taped transcript that has Trump showing the writer the document and saying, "Look, look at this," and that he couldn't declassify it because he's not president anymore, but he got it from the military. When Brett Baer asked him about that, it went like this.

Donald Trump: Bret, there was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. It may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document. I didn't have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories, and articles.

Brian Lehrer: Philip, Trump appears to be contradicting himself if the indictments tape transcript is accurate, where he says, "Look, look at this. I couldn't declassify this." Here he's saying there was no document.

Philip Bump: Look, Donald Trump lies a lot, so that's not terribly surprising. It is important to recognize, though, that, again, Donald Trump is making a political case here. He is giving his base of support something to say. He's very good at that. He's very good at if there's something percolating out there as a criticism of them, he gives them a way to talk about it that seems feasible. Like, "Oh, of course, he didn't have time to go through his boxes, that makes sense." "Oh, of course, it was just a stack of newspapers and stuff, that makes sense." His basic steps that they then will say it back whenever this is presented.

It's important to consider that in the context of this criminal case, though, because, obviously, the Justice Department has a copy of that recording. They undoubtedly have spoken to the people that were in the room with Donald Trump at that point in time. These writers that were working on this book for his former chief of staff, they were sitting in the room. He had staff members in the room as well. There is zero chance that they do not currently have an affidavit or other testimony from those people saying exactly what happened, what was in Donald Trump's hands, and so on and so forth. For Donald Trump, it doesn't matter. He can lie now. He's not under oath.

The voters are not a jury who are hearing only certain evidence under certain conditions. He can say whatever he wants to the American public and he has shown a willingness to do that. In the courtroom, though, I think it'll very quickly be revealed should it come to this, that that argument will not hold up.

Brian Lehrer: However, from what I've read, Trump's lawyers do in fact say they cannot find the document that Trump appears to refer to on the tape. Now we have Trump saying on TV that there is no document, even though he seemed to refer to one on the tape, but in a certain respect, there is no document. What are the implications for the case if they cannot produce the physical document, but they have Trump on tape saying he is in the act of showing it to a writer?

Philip Bump: Again, when you're in a courtroom, everything is offered through witness testimony. You'll have, for example, one of the authors on the stand, you'll have potentially an affidavit to sign. They will ask him what was he holding? What was written across the top? You have Trump's own words in that moment. Then, of course, you come down to reasonable doubt. I think the interesting aspect of your question, of course, is are there other documents that have been secured somewhere in some other facility, some other home? Donald Trump we know did not want his lawyers going through his stuff and figuring out what was there.

This is demonstrated, the indictment according to reporting so that they were unable to find something I think is probably more indicative of his having done a better job of hiding it than it not existing.

Brian Lehrer: The whole classified records indictment, does it even matter to the future of the country? After Watergate, Nixon resigned and he was so discredited and his party discredited by extension that Democrats swept the next two election cycles, 1974 and 1976. Clinton–Lewinsky, I think we can say helped George W Bush get elected because Al Gore couldn't campaign on "Look, I was part of this really successful administration." The scary thing here for people worried about Trumpism leading to fascism, and that's a real concern on the part of a lot of people concerned about democracy in this country is that even a conviction might not end it.

In fact, judging from Kevin McCarthy's and other Republicans' responses might promote them to weaken the independent justice system explicitly if a Republican president gets into power in the next election cycle. Does a verdict in this case really even matter that much to democracy in America?

Philip Bump: Obviously, it's a fair question, and it gets to the broader question, which is, is there any point at which Donald Trump will be held to accountability to the extent that his base of support understands the ways in which he undermined the system? He has done a very good job with the energetic assistance of his party of keeping his base convinced that they are in the moral rights against the deep state and the elites who are out to get all of them. He's done a very good job of that, and he has done a very good job of holding that power to the extent that Republicans feel they have to go along with him.

If he were convicted of this, does he then lose some of the support of his base? Does he lose the support of other Republicans who now feel as though he's too toxic? I don't know. He's already set the stage for this whole thing to be seen as a witch hunt and for himself to be treated as a martyr. He doesn't want to go to jail, but I think if he were to go to jail, I don't think that those sentiments would erode. The question is in a post-Trump era, which will eventually survive, will Republicans still feel as though these same appeals make sense or will they feel as though the appeals to honor the stability of the American system and the processes and norms that guide Washington are the way to go?

I think one of the shocks to the Republican system, Republican capital R, Republican system in 2016 was that they assumed that the base was operating in the same way that they were with the same respect for the norms and institutions as they did. They found out given Donald Trump's elevation of conspiracy theories and Fox News and Breitbart that they were wrong and that the base didn't care about that and the base saw them as elites in a more direct way than I think they understood.

I don't know if there is a way in which they can thread the needle between being part of an established system with norms and processes and appealing to a base which loathes the elites and the system and sees it all as toxic. I don't know if there's a way between those two things.

Brian Lehrer: I think I hear more Republican primary candidates saying this is a serious set of charges even if Republicans in the house who are not running against Trump are mostly all in on calling it a witch hunt, do you think?

Philip Bump: Yes, they're very attuned to what response they're seeing in the polls, I'm sure. CNN just had a poll that came out yesterday that showed Donald Trump's favorability rating softening a bit with likely Republican primary voters. I think they're probably seeing that in their internal polls as well, and so they're very cautiously testing this message that he went too far. It'll be interesting to see if the momentum continues on that.

Brian Lehrer: One more call as we talk about criminal cases this week involving Donald Trump and Hunter Biden. CJ in Port Washington you're on WNYC with Philip Bump from The Washington Post. Hi, CJ. CJ, are you there?

CJ: Oh, thank you for taking my call.

Brian Lehrer: Hi.

CJ: Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, we got you.

CJ: Oh, thank you for thanking my call. No, I just wanted to say I've been listening to your show for over 15, I don't know, 20 years and NPR in general. That's where I get my news every day. I do find that this conversation is a good example of why people are going to alternative news sources. Just hearing about when Trump was elected, hearing about the dossier and the golden showers and all the outrage about that and taking it seriously at first, and then realizing it was all smoke and mirrors. If that was Donald Trump Jr, most media would've led with white privilege with him getting off like Trish, the earlier caller, was saying. It's kind of disappointing.

Brian Lehrer: I don't know. Let's have a conversation. I would say that the Steele dossier in the context of the Russia investigation where there was a lot of explicit even Trump saying that he was inviting Russia's help in the election. The Steele dossier was reported, I think, as what it was. It was a piece of unverified. I think most of the media was saying unverified intelligence from somebody who was considered usually a credible source because he was in the British intelligence establishment and then the things had to be verified. Nobody ever said there was a P tape, Donald Trump did this, then they investigated it and it didn't pan out.

I think that the parallel is very interesting with this alleged bribery tape regarding Biden where the source is considered previously credible, but there's no evidence to produce it and there's no context for it really. CJ, go ahead.

CJ: We could split hairs saying that Trump said he invites Russia's help. I don't want to get into the-- You know that his tone of voice at that time was as it often is, and understand, I'm not a Trump supporter, but it's just I often find that it sounds like the reporting in most media nowadays is doing the bidding for Biden. I don't think they even want Biden perhaps. It's just that I think Trump is an existential threat and it's all guns out for whoever comes at the king who is now Biden and I have no doubt.

Like there was a podcast on NPR Trump incorporated about the Trump criminal family syndicate or whatever. I don't think I'm going to hold my breath for the Biden one and I think there's much more for what's being referred to as the big guy in the email.

Brian Lehrer: When you say Trump is an existential threat, it could be that context is different because the reality is different. Some Republicans say it for political reasons, but I don't think you believe this that Biden is out to transform America into a strong man system of governance whereas there are all these things that Trump did. There's so many things that Trump did. They're just not equivalent in terms of if you're going to have a single standard, you have to identify difference where difference exists. CJ, you get one more crack. Go ahead.

CJ: Thank you [laughs] and I do appreciate it. It's just that I guess my main call is what I feel is usually people going to bat in journalism, calling themselves journalists, and not personally against the one that you currently have from Washington Post, but I just don't feel like I'm getting the full story because there's a hesitance to completely expose this truth where I feel like they did a great job with that with Trump. I think this is also, again, why people are going to alternative media. I used to donate to NPR all the time. I will say, though, last thing, Brian, thank you again for your time, I appreciated you having Jason Riley on, which was a voice of difference.

I really, really enjoyed that conversation. Maybe just having somebody to debate with your journalists that you have on right now, different voices. I would appreciate it because I always listen to NPR. It's the only way I get my news. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: CJ, thank you very much. We do traffic in multiple points of view on this show for sure. Philip, what are you thinking as you heard that exchange with CJ?

Philip Bump: This is obviously criticism that I'm sure you and I have heard often before. I do want to say that I think one thing that members of the general public don't really understand and can't appreciate, and I don't mean this as a pejorative or disparaging in any way, but my job depends on my being accurate. I can't make stuff up, I can't be inaccurate, I can't willingly leave stuff out and not face recrimination at my job. My job is to convey the truth to the full extent that I possibly can albeit from my perspective, which is one of the things that I do as a columnist. I am held to account on that. The general public isn't.

When there are sweeping claims made about, "Oh, the media always says this," and, "Oh, this always happens," it's very easy to do that in broad strokes. When you look at the specifics and you spend a lot of time focused on the specifics as I have done with this, the house oversight allegations about bribery, I spent a lot of time listening to what's being said, reviewing the documents, seeing different interviews that people in the general public haven't done. I am better informed and you, Brian, are better informed on the details of what Donald Trump has done and what other actors have done, what Joe Biden and his family have done because it is our job to be well-versed on those things.

People gloss over that and they don't appreciate that. I understand why 100% in the same way that people don't appreciate that vaccine doctors probably know a little bit more about vaccines. I get it, but at the end of the day, it's frustrating to hear that sort of criticism because it's very, very, very easy to offer that criticism outside of the context of understanding the amount of work that we do to make sure we're getting it right.

Brian Lehrer: That's your other recent column that I hoped we would get to today, but we are out of time where you wrote about why a vaccine expert, Dr. Philip Cohasset, should not succumb to debating RFK Jr on television, but we will have to deal with that probably with different guest in another segment. We thank you for everything in this conversation. Philip Bump has been my guest, a national columnist for The Washington Post and author of the book that came out this year. you can go back and listen to our interview with him about his book, The Aftermath: The Last Days of the Baby Boom and the Future of Power in America. Philip, thanks as always.

Philip Bump: Of course. Thank you, sir.

 

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