Special: Clinton and Comey relive 2016 campaign, Pence serves as health care power broker

ROBERT COSTA: Hello. I’m Robert Costa. And this is Washington Week Extra, where we pick up online where we left off on the broadcast.

It’s been six months since the presidential election, yet the 2016 race continues to loom large over Washington. Hillary Rodham Clinton spoke candidly about her defeat this week, admitting she made mistakes. But she also blamed WikiLeaks for posting hacked emails, Russia for interfering in the race, and FBI Director James Comey for reopening the investigation into her server in the closing days of the election.

FORMER SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON: (From video.) But I was on the way to winning until the combination of Jim Comey’s letter on October 28th and Russian WikiLeaks raised doubts in the minds of people who were inclined to vote for me but got scared off.

You know, if the election had been on October 27th, I’d be your president.

MR. COSTA: Comey defended his actions during congressional hearings, saying he would make the same decision again, then went on to warn about Russian interference in future elections.

FBI DIRECTOR JAMES COMEY: (From video.) I think one of the lessons that particularly the Russians may have drawn from this is that this works. And so, as I said a month or so ago, I expect to see them back in 2018, especially in 2020.

MR. COSTA: What do you make of all of this? Secretary Clinton back on the scene, Molly.

MOLLY BALL: Yeah, it’s very interesting. She has not held back in a lot of these appearances since the election. And I’m not sure if we mentioned this, but she also announced that she’s going to – or it was leaked that she’s going to be forming a new political group. So she clearly – and I think, you know, we’ve all heard from people in the Clinton orbit, and indeed seen on Twitter from some former members of her circle, that there’s still a lot of raw feelings on the Democratic side from the election, and from Hillary herself it seems that the final stage of grief has not yet been reached. And so we continue to litigate this. We continue to, in part, investigate this, right? And so there’s just still so much that is hanging out there from – as you said, from November.

PETER BAKER: Well, and of course, nobody is more, you know, invested in this than President Trump, who continues to relitigate the election himself week after week basically, often through Twitter, partly because he sees, I think, the Russia probe as a way of delegitimizing his election, and so he, of course constantly mentions his Electoral College victory and reminds us the Democrats ran a bad campaign. He tweeted – he says, why can’t it just be that Donald Trump ran a good campaign? Well, he did run a good campaign because he won, but obviously other factors were involved too. But he – it’s interesting that we can’t let go of 2016 on either side of the equation.

ED O’KEEFE: And it’s fascinating that she is going to launch some kind of a super PAC to fund the campaigns of Democrats she wants to support. And all I can think to myself is, this race is going to be run in some of the most closely divided parts of the country; which Democrat wants to be accepting money from her next year in a tight race where you’re running against a Republican incumbent, where if word comes out that that’s happening the president may show up himself to try to take you down? I just wonder what the calculation is there and whether they’ve really thought that through.

The other thing is Comey said the Russians figured this out, they’re going to have success with it elsewhere. It happened tonight in France, where Macron, who’s on his way, conceivably, to winning the presidency, announces there’s a massive email hack, and all of his emails have been released now – his campaign’s emails. They have a different rule over there, where you can’t say anything now for the next 48 hours ahead of the election, so you wonder what impact that could have. But it’s proof that somebody is trying to meddle in another election.

MR. COSTA: Erica, are we learning anything new from Director Comey when he keeps coming to Capitol Hill?

ERICA WERNER: Well, you know, there’s nothing that he can say to satisfy Democrats, who will never forgive him for that letter 10 days or whatever before the election. Each time he comes to the Hill, though, he seems to show a little more leg as to why he did it, explain a little bit more fully his thinking, his feelings even, the little bit nauseous feeling that he apparently felt, the notion that he had no good choice, that he would do it again. So, you know, incrementally we are getting a bigger picture into his state of mind, but I don’t think we’ve learned a whole lot new. He’s very careful, obviously, in what he says.

MR. COSTA: There’s been a lot of attention, as well, on President Trump’s first 100-plus days in office. But what about Vice President Pence? This week he spent lots of time on Capitol Hill behind closed doors negotiating the health care plan. But I really wonder, what is his role shaping up to be, Ed?

MR. O’KEEFE: Well, you know, he has an office now, obviously, in the Senate, because as president of the Senate you get one. But he has carved out some space on the first floor on the House side, over by Steny Hoyer, and it’s become a spot now that reporters have to keep an eye on because you get a sense of who’s coming in and out and who he’s really talking to. He has become, and he was in some respects, a closer for the administration this week. He is also one of its top defenders. He took a tongue-lashing from Rush Limbaugh, of all people, shortly after the budget agreement this week, where Limbaugh walked him through it and said how is it that you cannot get the border money and you’re still funding sanctuary cities, but, you know, you’re going to sign this thing? And Pence was sent there to essentially explain to the nation’s most popular radio talk-show host that this is a good deal, and stay patient, we’re going to try to fight this again. So he, in many ways, I think is probably the most effective spokesperson for the president, not necessarily to the general public but to very important constituencies politically and here in Washington.

MR. COSTA: But when you look at the idea of Pence being a closer, all the tick-tocks on the health care bill this week, including the one we wrote at the Post, it was about Tom MacArthur, the moderate congressman from New Jersey; Mark Meadows, the hardliner from North Carolina; and it seemed like the White House is working more through these individual congressmen than relying on Pence. So he’s the closer, I guess, in a big way, but Erica, how do lawmakers see Pence? Is he the closer, or is he more someone who just – as Ed said, is he someone who they’re comfortable with, they know?

MS. WERNER: Well, I think it’ll be interesting to watch how that plays out in the Senate as health care moves forward because in my understanding Senator McConnell does not talk a lot directly with President Trump. He does talk a lot with Pence. Pence has been hosting weekly dinners for senators at the Naval Observatory. So it may be that Pence plays a bigger role in the Senate on the health care bill. McConnell is very comfortable with him. Pence makes a point to give out his cellphone number to lawmakers. So it remains to be seen. Certainly, though, Pence is someone that members have a great comfort level with. He’s a person who’s consistent and predictable, unlike the president. So that makes him a good person for lawmakers to deal with.

MR. O’KEEFE: Her name is escaping me, and I hate that it is, but the woman who now runs the Center for Medicare and Medicaid –

MS. WERNER: Seema –

MR. O’KEEFE: – yes, at Health and Human Services – worked with Pence in Indiana. She has been deployed repeatedly to the Hill, sometimes at Pence’s request, to talk to individual skeptics. Susan Collins detailed a 45-minute meeting she had with her where they went through the House bill as it stood about a week ago, and Collins said to her I don’t like this, I don’t like this, we got to think about remaking this. She’s collecting these concerns and bringing it back to the administration and saying these are the things we’re going to have to think about in the Senate. So if it’s not Pence, it’s certainly people close to him. And they understand that the more they listen, the more Republicans will come along.

MR. COSTA: President Trump announced that he will make his first overseas trip later this month, visiting Saudi Arabia, Israel and the Vatican. Peter, what’s the main goal of this overseas jaunt?

MR. BAKER: Well, part of it is to hit the centers of three major religions, right? He’s going to meet with the pope, he’s going to go to the place that – the custodian of the two major mosques of Islam, and he’s going to go, obviously, to Jerusalem. And you know, the message you heard from the White House is we’re going to unify people in a battle against intolerance, meaning extremism.

You know, it’s interesting that he chose Saudi Arabia as his first stop overseas. He hadn’t always been very favorable towards Saudi Arabia in the past, but he’s made some good contacts with the leadership there. He’s talked with the king by phone, met with his son. Israel too, of course, obviously the center of his Middle East peacemaking ideas. He had President Abbas of the Palestinians at the White House this week. He said this whole peacemaking thing isn’t probably as difficult as people thought it was. (Laughter.) We will see about that.

And, you know, but it’s interesting, he did not choose to go to Mexico or Canada for his first overseas trip. That’s what every president since Reagan has done because, of course, he’s not really on great terms right now with either of them.

MR. COSTA: He seems to be having a trade war with both them.

MR. BAKER: Yeah, with each of them. So it may not be the best place for him to go. Saudi Arabia, he’s not going to see a lot of protestors. But he’s going to have a busy trip. This is eight or nine or almost 10 days. He’s going to meet a lot of people. In Riyadh he’s going to meet all of the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council. Those are the Arab states around the Persian Gulf. And then, other Muslim leaders are going to come in as well. He’s got two summits in Europe – one in Brussels for NATO, which is no longer obsolete, and another in Sicily for the G-7, which no longer has Russia. So it’s going to be a busy week for him and a real test for a – for a new president on the international stage.

MR. COSTA: What about his meeting with the pope? What do you expect to see?

MR. BAKER: Well, that’s going to be so interesting. (Laughs.) Because they’re such different people, right? And they have very different priorities and different sensibilities about the world. But, you know, I suspect it will respectful and he’ll probably come out of there and tweet really well about the pope.

MS. BALL: Anybody remember when Trump and the pope went at it during the campaign?

MR. BAKER: They did, you’re right about that.

MS. BALL: That was right before the South Carolina primary. And there were too many of these moments in that primary to count when you’re just – your jaw dropped on the floor, and you went: I can’t believe this is happening. But that was certainly one of them when, you know, the pope said something that seemed to –

MR. BAKER: About walls.

MS. BALL: – obliquely perhaps – it wasn’t a condemnation and it didn’t mention Trump. But it was, you know, walls are not nice.

MR. BAKER: Build bridges not walls or something, yeah.

MS. BALL: And, you know, Donald Trump went off on the pope. And you thought, oh my God, is this real – is someone really going to try to win an election by going after the pope? And I particular this pope, who is quite popular not just with Catholics. And he did it.

MR. COSTA: He did. I remember Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager at the time – who is a Catholic – he had a philosophy with the campaign which was let Trump be Trump. He rarely every raised a question about his boss’ decisions or his boss’ behavior. But when then-candidate Trump clashed with the pope, I remember Lewandowski went to then-candidate Trump and said, maybe this isn’t the best idea. Maybe you shouldn’t be fighting with the pope. And then-candidate Trump still fought with the pope.

MS. BALL: That’s right.

MR. COSTA: So, speaking of President Trump, he signed an executive order Thursday to vigorously promote religious liberty by allowing churches and other faith organizations to be more politically active. Trump said the United States will never stand for religious discrimination, which seems out of step with the travel ban on mostly Muslim nations, doesn’t it?

MS. BALL: Well, that’s – yes, but all it is, is a piece of rhetoric. And the interesting thing about this executive order is that both the proponents and opponents of the religious liberty debate that had been happening were – saw it as a bit of a bait and switch. You had a lot of – so, there was a draft leaked a few months ago that was very sweeping, had been drafted with the help of some religious right organizations, and that had put a lot of particularly LGBT organizations on edge because it would, in their view, enable discrimination on religious grounds against a lot of LGBT people. So they were expecting that kind of a religious liberty executive order.

Instead, what they got was an executive order that doesn’t do that at all. The principal thing it is does is says that the IRS, the Treasury, will not enforce the Johnson Amendment, which is the completely toothless and already unenforced provision that says members of the clergy cannot endorse political candidates from the pulpit. Trump is obsessed with this for some reason. He got it into his head during the campaign as something Evangelicals wanted, talked about it over and over again. Of course, it helps him politically probably if more pastors can talk about – or feel free to talk about politics to their congregations. But the stuff about religious liberty that the religious right thought they were getting wasn’t in there, and that the LGBT community and others were afraid of.

And so you had the ACLU sort of hilariously trolling Trump with this tweet that said: We said we were going to sue Trump over this executive order. But now that we’ve read it, it doesn’t actually do anything. So we don’t need to sue the guy – (laughter) – which is pretty amazing, right? And so – because, you know, I think the ACLU would sue a ham sandwich. (Laughter.) So you have – you know, you have – Donald Trump has a lot of fans in the Evangelical community. And while there was some criticism, a lot of them are saying: OK. We still feel we have a bite at the apple. This could still – we could still get what we want. But there was no concealing their disappointment that this didn’t go as far as they expected.

MR. COSTA: Who’s running the gut check of this administration, Peter? Is it Vice President Pence and the religious conservatives within the administration and the White House, or is it the New York crowd, the more moderate wing of the White House, led by Jared Kushner, son-in-law?

MR. BAKER: Yeah. That’s a great question. And I think this is one of these issues where you see, you know, these kind of conflicting issues. Mike Pence obviously, as close to religious conservatives as anybody in that White House. Personally very conservative in his Christianity. But didn’t get what he wanted, I think, out of this. And they didn’t get the restrictions on Planned Parenthood in the budget, although they now are trying to get them through the health care law.

Look, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, they’re from a New York milieu. Their friends are Democrats. Gary Cohn, the national economic advisor, it’s a socially liberal part of the White House. And they’re telling the president: Don’t go too far. And it’s OK to, you know, say these things. But there’s a limit to how far you can go. And so far they’ve won. The White House today said it’s not over, though. We have other opportunities to make changes. We’ll see whether they do that.

MR. COSTA: And last thing, I just want to – for Erica and Ed – as these lawmakers head to recess and back to their districts and states, when you were at the Capitol this week, did you hear anything about how they’re preparing for the town halls, or maybe not even having a town hall on health care?

MS. WERNER: Well, there definitely are concerns among lawmakers about how they’ll be greeted by their constituencies. I would say you have to hand it to those that still are having town halls. MacArthur actually is one – Tom MacArthur, that we’ve been talking about, that was central to this debate, is one that will be having a town hall meeting. I think that reactions will be very interesting to see. We don’t know if they will be rewarded by the base, or whether the Indivisible group that’s been so effective and out in force will be completely swamping them. Certainly if Nancy Pelosi gets her way, that’s what will happen. She’s told them that they’re – I think – what did she say?

MR. O’KEEFE: They’re going to glow in the dark.

MS. WERNER: They’re going to glow in the dark. They’re going to be radioactive over this vote.

MR. O’KEEFE: I would – you know, it doesn’t look like there are many. And remember, it’s just the House that’s on recess this week. The Senate will be here.

MS. WERNER: Right.

MR. O’KEEFE: I’m more interested in what happens in a reliably Republican district, whether they face, be it at the grocery store or at a town hall meeting, the ire of concerned or confused constituents and whether they start hearing from people who, as Molly said during the broadcast, you know, may come forth who have been on their side before, and just raise concerns about either how this was done or what’s actually in that bill, if the member actually has bothered to read it.

MR. COSTA: I may have to go home to my hometown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. That’s always a swing district. It’s always telling you where the country seems to be going, at least sometimes.

That’s it for this edition of the Washington Week Extra. While you’re online, take the Washington Week-ly News Quiz to test your knowledge of some of the stories that have made headlines this week.

I’m Robert Costa, and we’ll see you next time.