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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. This may seem incomprehensible to most people in our core listening area, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, but President Biden's approval rating in two new polls is down around where the chronically unpopular President Trump's were after the same amount of time in office. Just 38% in a Quinnipiac poll, 42% in the Yahoo News YouGov poll. The Quinnipiac poll finds the president gets pretty high approval for his handling of the coronavirus, but much less so on the economy as commander in chief and on immigration.

Mostly he has kept the supportive democrats but cratered with independents, who went from around 60% approval at the start of his administration to 38% today, according to Quinnipiac.

Here's the paradox that the YouGov poll suggests. Biden's approval rating is declining, even as the policies he's struggling to get through Congress are popular. Most centrally, here's one of the specific questions. You ever want to know, how do they actually ask these questions in a poll? Here's an example that YouGov released. It was whether people support, "A $3.5 trillion plan that would do more to address climate change, while also supporting working families with childcare subsidies, national paid family leave, and universal Pre K." That was the question.

The result was a plus 16, with 48% in favor, just 32% opposed. When scaled down a little bit to $2 trillion, it won approval by nearly 30 points and still, no Republicans are expected to vote for it, even if that's where it winds up. There is also a new Senate report and new senate hearings about just how much Donald Trump tried to pressure the Justice Department to overturn the election results at the last minute in January. The report also singles out one specific member of Congress, who was especially active in trying to subvert the real election results. We'll get more now from POLITICO congressional correspondent Nicholas Wu. Thanks for coming on Nicholas. Welcome back to WNYC.

Nicholas Wu: Thanks, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Let's begin with the Senate Judiciary Committee report released yesterday, which tells the story of some real drama three days before the January 6th insurrection and certification of the election, where Trump discussed replacing the acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who would not try to overturn the election results with his deputy or with another Justice Department official, I should say, Jeffrey Clark, who would have. Have you read that part of the report?

Nicholas Wu: I have.

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Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. Do you want to go into it?

Nicholas Wu: The interesting thing with this report is it sheds light on quite how much turmoil there was at the Justice Department. Trump had wanted to replaced Clark-- Sorry, to replace the acting Attorney General with Clark, because he saw him as being potentially more sympathetic to these false claims of election fraud but ultimately, that didn't happen.

Brian Lehrer: The reports says Trump was told by Justice Department officials that if he replaced Rosen with Clark as attorney general, there would be in mass resignation of Deputy Attorneys General and likely of US attorneys from districts around the country. Is it clear what Trump would have had a compliant Attorney General actually do?

Nicholas Wu: What Trump really wanted at this point was for the Justice Department to put its finger on the scale and investigate what he saw as these wild claims of election fraud that were unfounded all in states that he lost. Some key swing states that he lost, most notably Georgia. He certainly saw Clark as being more sympathetic to these claims. The interesting thing I found here was that Clark had actually been introduced to Trump by a member of Congress, Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, and so the report really ended up narrowing in on the role that this congressman played too, in introducing Trump to this figure and trying to figure out how Trump could get his way with the Justice Department.

Brian Lehrer: This would have been a last-ditch effort, with Trump having lost like 80 times in court and Congress on the verge of certifying Biden as the winner on January 6th. Why didn't he install Jeffrey Clark anyway, despite these threats of mass resignations, by Justice Department officials and take his chances as his last remaining hope?

Nicholas Wu: I think that's exactly what it was. It was these threats of mass resignations from Justice Department officials and other officials who cautioned the president against trying to go through with it, that ultimately talked him down from that ledge. We saw the Democratic chairman of the committee really praise the officials who had stood up on this case, and then saying that they helped to prevent a constitutional crisis.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, I want to open up the phones on what we're going to get to in a few minutes with Nicholas Wu from POLITICO, and that is Biden's approval ratings and the approval ratings of his policies. Listeners you want to weigh in, how well do you think President Biden is doing compared to what you thought on day one back in January, or what you thought a month or two ago? These polls come out constantly, and there are enough of them that the trend line is clear. I think we can't just dismiss these polls showing around a 40% approval rating as just, "Oh, polls, polls get everything wrong," because there are enough of them showing the same trend lines.

What is it for you? Is it different? I wonder for you if you see yourself as a different kind of voter for Biden. If you consider yourself a Progressive Democrat, would you give him an overall approval rating if it was just thumbs up or thumbs down? Progressive Democrats, would you give him a thumbs up today? 646-435-7280, if you see yourself as a more moderate Democrat in the way that those divides are generally characterized these days, would you as well? 646-435-7280.

Also, what about those of you who consider yourself independents, and I'll ask our guest in a little while, what do you think independent means in a poll, because there could be independents to the left of the Democratic Party, there could be independents to the right of the Democratic Party. I think it's usually taken to mean people who are centrist swing voters as the main block of independents, but if you're an independent, if you have voted either way in elections, or if you're another type of independent, the polls show that Biden had about 60% approval at the beginning, down around 40% now.

If you're an independent voter in that kind of way, 646-435-7280, what changed for you? 646-435-7280.

If you're one of those people who supports the policies, as the YouGov poll found, but still gives Biden a thumbs-down approval rating, how does that make sense? Explain it to us if you're one of those people. 646-435-7280 or tweet @BrianLehrer, and we'll get to those calls in a few minutes with Nicolas Wu, congressional correspondent for POLITICO.

Nicholas back to the Senate Judiciary Committee report and hearings about Trump's last-minute attempts to overturn the election. You mentioned that the Judiciary Committee document places one member of congress, Republican Congressman Scott Perry of Pennsylvania, at the center of efforts to help Trump overturn the true results. Who is Scott Perry, and what role did the Judiciary Committee find that he played?

Nicholas Wu: Scott Perry is a conservative member of Congress from Pennsylvania. He'd been part of some of these efforts to try to question the election results. He'd signed on to the amicus brief that quite a few members of Congress signed attempting to get the Supreme Court to intervene in the election, all of which ended up being tossed out by different levels of courts. What the report really found was that there were a series of phone calls and meetings in the final weeks of the Trump administration, and one that I found particularly interesting was were in one of the last days of December 2020, Trump actually asked the second-in-command at the Justice Department to give him his cell phone number, so that lawmakers concerned about the election, like Perry could call him.

Perry ends up calling the second-in-command at the Justice Department, raising these false election claims telling him there were things going on in Pennsylvania, and sending him all these documents. Perry ended up not making a ton of headway there but the fact that he got involved in the process, which I found particularly interesting, and it looks like the committee is going to continue its attempt to investigate this aspect as well, and actually go so far as to make recommendations for the select panel in the House investigating the January 6th attack to take a look at Perry and a few other figures from this period who the Senate investigators thought could help shed more light on the situation.

Brian Lehrer: Perry was a leader, but the report also found, as you've been reporting, that a larger context in which Perry existed was the so-called House Freedom Caucus, very conservative Trump-aligned Republicans who took an active role as a group. Can you tell us more about that context?

Nicholas Wu: Yes. The Freedom Caucus was definitely a very large part of this at the time. This was this group of, like you said, hard-lined conservatives, they had close ties to Trump, and they really took a very active role in these last few weeks of the administration, helping Trump think about ways to undercut Biden's victory. Whether or not any of these members will end up complying with any further investigation remains to be seen. The select panel over in the House could end up asking for testimony from some of these lawmakers, but this really gets us into uncharted territory, with really any of these kinds of congressional investigations. Subpoenaing a fellow member of Congress to testify gets them into incredibly uncharted territory. We'll have to see how this plays out in the next few months.

Brian Lehrer: You also reported on the Senate hearing intended to get at some of this, but which you report the Biden administration was shielding some former Trump officials from having to answer all the questions. Can you explain that?

Nicholas Wu: Something I wanted to clarify is that these interviews that the committee held actually weren't public. These were closed-door interviews. Reporters knew and heard bits and pieces about these interviews at the time, but these were all behind closed doors until the interviews finally were transcribed and released along with this whole report. The interesting thing here is looking at how the Justice Department helped actually shield some questions from Senate investigators who were asking questions of ex-Justice Department officials in the course of this investigation really trying to limit the topics that they were allowed to discuss.

Brian Lehrer: Still, as your article points out, it was extraordinary to be calling former justice officials as witnesses at all. What are they requiring?

Nicholas Wu: There was this guidance put out earlier in the year by the Justice Department that actually allowed former officials to testify, but potentially limited the topics they were allowed to discuss. Unlike under the Trump administration where they almost entirely attempted to stonewall congressional investigations, they're at least somewhat closer to being on the same page now.

Brian Lehrer: You know what? Let's take a break and then we're going to turn to these polls regarding Biden's approval rating. Quinnipiac finds he's lost more than 20 points of support among independents and some of the other findings. I'm particularly interested because these things are getting so much national attention in the corporate media. I think they only look at the top line which is the overall approval rating going down to around where Trump's was for most of his presidency and was at about this point in his presidency around 40%.

The paradox which I think we've seen in presidencies before doesn't get much discussed that the policies are pretty much popular, certainly the big Build Back Better agenda that Biden is trying to get through Congress. I'll be curious to get your take on that and callers will hear from you too on that, as we talk some national politics here at the beginning of the show today. 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280, or tweet at @BrianLehrer. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC with POLITICO congressional correspondent, Nicholas Wu. Nicholas, these polls regarding Biden's approval rating, they're just polls. We don't talk much about polls on this show because they're just polls and they're often wrong, but the trend lines are what they are. They're important, I think, only as much as they indicate what the president or any other elected official might do in response to them or how they may affect the ability of important agenda items like Build Back Better to pass.

Quinnipiac finds he lost more than 20 points of support among independents since he started his presidency. Those are independents who voted for him. Does that mean among centrists or what does independents mean there as far as you could tell?

Nicholas Wu: It depends exactly on the poll that's being asked, but usually, with these sorts of things, it's people that just don't check Republican or Democrat on however they identify demographically. We're definitely seeing some trendlines here going down on losing support among independents and Republicans, but he's remaining relatively steady among Democrats. It's a testament, in part, to the partisanship that we do see in today's politics.

Brian Lehrer: I mentioned earlier the paradoxical findings in the YouGov poll especially, that Biden might be down around 40% approval, but his agenda remains popular including what's usually reported as the $3.5 trillion or Build Back Better plan that is centered on climate change, prevention, and help for families with children. How is it that the policy agenda, the thing that's considered the most controversial part of the policy agenda that the media picks at and picks at and picks at, and I've talked many times on this show about how I think it's mischaracterized by using its top-line expense rather than talking about what's in it as the main way shorthand that it's identified? Even when they ask the question that way, "Do you support the $3.5 trillion plan that is designed to help prevent climate change and help families with children?" It won by 16 points. How is it that the policy agenda could be that popular, but the man be going down?

Nicholas Wu: I think it really speaks to some level of partisanship in American politics. What was it with the Affordable Care Act and Obamacare? Affordable Care Act would always pull very well whereas Obamacare would be relatively underwater in polls. I think we see a lot of the same dynamic here. People might have sticker shock with the overall top line, whereas when you pull people about individual components of this kind of package, it might pull better. It is worth noting that there's just so much of this package in flux, that it is something relatively hard to talk about in shorthand because as we talked about the top line is still being negotiated. The actual components are still being negotiated, and so it does make it relatively difficult to talk about at times.

Brian Lehrer: There's an equal and opposite-- I don't know if it's equal, but it's opposite thing from history. When Ronald Reagan was president, people did not like his conservative agenda by and large. When you went down the polls from that era of the policy items, people did not like some of the right-wing changes that he was making, and yet he generally polled well. This happens, right? There's something either in Reagan's case, maybe more about his personality, in Biden's case, maybe it's the media environment today where he's so constantly getting ripped in a conservative media ecosystem that didn't exist in Reagan's day in the same way. It's interesting that these things can happen, that the approval ratings can go one direction on the person and the other direction on the policies in either direction.

Nicholas Wu: Yes. That's certainly a dynamic that we see in politics. The interesting thing here is that, if you talk to Democrats about it, some of these declining poll numbers are precisely why they see it as so important to pass these elements of Biden's agenda because as a lot of Democrats see it, that'll be something that they can use to gain momentum and really turn around these declining poll numbers and this narrative and give them something to run on next year.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take a phone call from Rich in Westchester who has an analysis of why this may be happening. Rich, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Rich: Sure. Thanks for taking my call. Yes, I was registered as an independent before the 2016 election and I switched to Democrats to try to get the best candidate possible, which I thought we did not, but she still won the popular vote. With 45 we had a president for four years that had an incredible spin machine. Everything that happened that was good during his presidency, if you could argue that there were good things that happened, were championed by his side, whether he had anything to do with it or not and people swallowed it hook line or sinker.

Now we have a president who's actually being treated at the president. Trump was never treated as a president or a person doing service to the country like every other president, town councilmen, everybody. He was never treated that way. He was always treated as a celebrity, which got him elected, and also his approval rating at 38 or 40, whatever it was, it was probably much lower if you didn't have his spin machine. He's a horrible individual, horrible man, and 72 million people were duped-- 74 million into thinking that he should be elected again.

Brian Lehrer: Rich, I'm going to leave it there before we go too far into analysis of whether Trump voters were duped to keep it focused on the present. The comparison that he makes, Nicholas, is interesting that Trump, if he was a master at anything, he was a master of spin. When he was president, he had this PR machine well-cranked up, and Biden doesn't have anything like that.

I'm curious for you covering Washington. I realize you're covering Congress not explicitly the White House, but is there any comparison that you can make that might shed light on anything with respect to the way Trump's press office worked or spin machine in general? It doesn't just take place in the White House Press Office and how Biden is doing that.

Nicholas Wu: To be honest, Brian, I haven't had a whole lot of interaction with the press office in the Biden administration or the Trump administration as someone who covers Congress. I don't know how much I can add there, although I will say that as a reporter, we very much strive to keep people accountable on both sides of the aisle, regardless of who's in power.

Brian Lehrer: All right. Let's take a call from Laura in Warren, New Jersey. Laura around WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Laura: Oh, hi. Thanks for taking my call. Yes, I'm a independent. I was a prior Republican, but that was frustrated with Republican Party over the past 20 years or so. I contributed to Biden and voted for him because I thought Trump was horrible. What I'm frustrated with now is linking the two infrastructure bills. I really was happy that he was fine to make things work again and have things that are voted on by both Republicans and Democrats come to fruition. I think he had a chance to do that with the, "traditional infrastructure bill", and now I feel like it's being held hostage and not moving forward. I find that very frustrating.

Brian Lehrer: Let me ask you this, along the lines of the paradox we were talking about in the poll results. Do you personally support the Build Back Better part of the bill and not the physical infrastructure, the $3.5 trillion human infrastructure part? Do you actually support that bill?

Laura: Yes, I do, but I don't like the other part being held hostage by the two boats being linked together. I feel the same way about the Afghanistan War. I'm glad we're out of the war, but I think it wasn't done very-- It was going to be lousy anyway, but no matter how you do it, but maybe it was lousier than could have been. I'm frustrated by how these things are being handled, I guess, is how I would put it, even though I agree with overall gist of things.

Brian Lehrer: Sure. Let me dig one level deeper on Build Back Better. If you support the bill and the Progressive's argument is they won't be able to get it passed if they pass the infrastructure bill by itself first because there won't be enough leverage on people like Joe Manchin, then linking it is the politically pragmatic thing to do so that second plan, which you said you support, could get through. You know what I'm asking? If that is seen as the best way to get passage of this thing that you support, rather than let it die, why would you object to that?

Laura: Because maybe I'm a more risk-averse person than they are. I think they're running a risk of passing absolutely nothing. Then they would deserve to get voted out because we said, "You've got the presidency, you've got both houses of Congress, and you did absolutely nothing." I think we're taking the risks of not getting anything through. I think that's too big of a risk.

Brian Lehrer: Laura, thank you so much for your call. Call us again. Let's go to Suraya in Manhattan. Suraya you're on WNYC. Hi there.

Suraya: Hi, Brian. I love your show and thanks for taking my call. My reading is a little different from your previous callers. I am a Democrat and I voted for Biden. He wasn't my first choice, but I obviously voted for him, but I think he's showing a lot of weakness. I think he is not doing very much about the filibuster, which is very important to get rid of, for his plan and his programs to get passed.

He's also is signaling to the Justice Department as I read if the reports are correct, that they should not go too close to anything that's happened during Trump, even though they're calling it today, sedition. I think those are big mistakes and I am one of those that like the programs that he's proposing, but I don't like the weakness he is showing. That's my case.

Brian Lehrer: Suraya, thank you very much. What would be strong? What would look strong to you? It sounds like you're more from what's generally called the progressive camp. These labels are imperfect, but it sounds like what a lot of people from the so-called progressive camp are saying that they want him to be stronger. What would be stronger? He has now come out and linked those two bills, for example, as the progressives wanted. What would be strength to you?

Suraya: He should really insist on, if he's the president of the United States, you should get to two people that supposedly disagree with any change in the filibuster to really convince them or force them if it's necessary to agree. It's inconceivable to me that 48 senators would be very much for Biden programs and two, or perhaps even just one Sinema. They cannot get into the picture. I just don't know how presidents are supposed to talk to the senators that are obstructionists, and I think Sinema is. Manchin, I'm not very sure about.

Brian Lehrer: Suraya. Thank you very much. Nicholas Wu, from POLITICO for you, as a congressional correspondent, how has the president been trying to exert influence on Manchin and Sinema and what leverage does he have? Well, let me ask you reflecting the caller. What leverage does he have that he might not be using? Did we lose, Robert? I mean, Nicholas, did we lose--

Nicholas Wu: Oh, I'm sorry.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, there you go. Sorry.

Nicholas Wu: It was muted but I think it's a little hard to tell exactly what's not being done sometimes, but what we can see that's being done is that Biden has been meeting fairly regularly with both of them, White House staff have been dispatched to the Hill to go and meet with the two of them in their offices. They've brought in the majority leader and are trying to keep open lines of communication here on exactly what everyone wants.

It's certainly a contrast from the Trump administration where if you remember, the Trump administration went so far as to basically threaten certain Republican senators that were on the fence about a certain Trump administration priorities, and that entirely backfired on them when it went public. It's a much more diplomatic approach here so to speak.

Brian Lehrer: Before you go, Nicholas some news from yesterday on something that Congress did come to some kind of an agreement on, it seems tentative and I'm not sure what to make of it. Probably a lot of people listening right now don't either. They did agree to avoid the government defaulting on its debts this month with a short-term extension of the debt ceiling until December. What exactly did Chuck Schumer and Mitch McConnell agree on that allowed the Senate to do this?

Nicholas Wu: What they agreed to do was basically to kick the can until December. This was, in essence, one of the few options available to Democrats, given the current political realities of the 5050 Senate. Republicans were only going to allow them to do an extension so short and they didn't have many options beyond that to try to extend the debt ceiling. That's why we ended up with a two-month extension, not a longer one or an outright abolition as some Democrats have called for.

Brian Lehrer: There's going to be this high stakes, "We might fall off the cliff of defaulting on our debts as the federal government," again in two months?

Nicholas Wu: Exactly, we're just going to do it all over again in two months.

Brian Lehrer: Is that why Senator Schumer said this? I'm going to play a clip that he's getting widely criticized for even by some Democrats who think that after a deal was made with McConnell after they negotiated and did come to Yes, that there wasn't enough grace in this reply by Schumer after that.

Chuck Schumer: Despite immense opposition from Leader McConnell and members of his conference, our caucus held together and we pulled our country back from the cliff's edge that Republicans tried to push us over.

Brian Lehrer: Why is that controversial this morning? Do you think it has any practical ramifications?

Nicholas Wu: We'll have to see what exactly happens in the next few months. Members of Congress tend to pull out these deals at the last minute. They've done it before and if past precedent holds, very few members of Congress actually want to push over a cliff. That all depends on what Republicans are going to let them do.

Brian Lehrer: You don't think because Biden took a shot at the obstructionism that they were engaging in until yesterday that that's going to actually motivate them to let the government's finances fall off a cliff?

Nicholas Wu: By the standards of Senate speeches, Schumer's speech and Biden's shot at obstructionist Republicans were fairly tame. The adverse response last night to that from a lot of Republicans was quite surprising. It's unlikely that would be something to push the country to default and push enough Republicans in the direction in which they would vote against another debt ceiling increase, but then again, stranger things have happened in Congress.

Brian Lehrer: All right, sounds like a tempest in a teapot. Nicholas Wu, congressional correspondent for POLITICO, thank you very much.

Nicholas Wu: Thanks so much for having me on.

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