Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on disaster response and Musk’s new party

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• Amna Nawaz:

  As we learn more about the devastating floods in Texas that have killed more than 100 people, the administration and local officials are facing questions about the effectiveness of warning systems and whether more lives have been saved.

  Joining me now to discuss this and more of the day's political news is Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

  Great to see you both.

• Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

  Hello.

• Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

  Good to be here.

• Amna Nawaz:

  So, Tam, kick us off here.

  We have seen the president and we saw Karoline Leavitt in the White House Briefing Room take a lot of questions about some of those cuts to the National Weather Service, whether more could have been done. How are they responding to some of those criticisms and questions right now?

• Tamara Keith:

  Yes, they are defending the National Weather Service. They're saying that staffing was adequate. In fact, they are quoting the union that represents National Weather Service employees, who said that staffing was adequate, though there were some unfilled positions.

  And they went through a timeline of when those alerts went out. And the alerts did go out. Part of the problem was that it happened in the middle of the night. And I think that the White House is very quick to shut down questions about President Trump's desire to wind down FEMA by the end of the year, for instance.

  They are really sidestepping those questions right now and just focusing on the disaster response, which in some ways is exactly what you want to see, is a focus on the rescue and recovery and the people who are just dealing with this absolute tragedy.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Amy, what do you think about it?

• Amy Walter:

  Yes. And I think this is going to be a conversation that unfortunately we're going to continue to have.

  This has been a horrible tragedy, but we also know we had these horrific wildfires in California. We're just starting into hurricane season. As the president had said just a month ago, he wants to wind FEMA down, any time there is a natural disaster, that question then is going to be asked. Winding down or laying off members of government, especially members of government who are responsible for dealing with natural disasters, these questions are going to get raised.

  So I do think now it is going to be part of our politics. We may not get the answers that we always want, but it is going to be part of the conversation going forward.

• Tamara Keith:

  Yes, and I think already some politicians in Texas are talking about what lessons actually could be learned.

  And I think that, rather than shutting down the conversation about lessons learned, they are looking at figuring out whether there could have been alarms or other alerts. And I think that that might be where this heads.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Yes. We will continue to follow that, of course, in the weeks ahead.

  Meanwhile, Wednesday of this week, just as a reminder, was the original deadline for the president to secure, as he and his team said, 90 deals in 90 days before tariffs on more than 50 countries take effect. We saw the president posting on social media today, though, new letters that are being sent out to a number of countries, Japan and South Korea, threatening 25 percent tariffs; 12 other countries were also sent letters.

  The deadline is now pushed to August 1, as the president sort of unfolding all this on social media.

  Tam, the fact that the deadline is pushed, that these letters are being posted, does that say negotiations aren't working?

• Tamara Keith:

  And he's signed a new executive order now really truly pushing that deadline.

  The White House says that what it means is that they're just trying to get the best deal for the American people. I think for most people watching this, it's really hard to follow the thread at this point.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Yes.

• Tamara Keith:

  And the reality is, we have a spreadsheet on our White House team at NPR, where we're tracking all of these. And the tariffs that are in these letters are very similar to the numbers that were announced on so-called liberation day.

  It's just the deadline has been pushed. They're still talking about wanting deals. But, also, President Trump has been fairly casual about it and doesn't want to seem that eager to want deals. He likes tariffs as a tool, not just as a tool to get deals, but he talks about it a lot as a way to bring revenue into the United States. It's a different kind of tax.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Amy, at the same time, tariffs are the kind of thing that actually impact people and their wallets and their budgets. How are they watching this?

• Amy Walter:

  Right.

  So I think Tam is right that your average American isn't able to put a spreadsheet together. Maybe they are. Good for them. Following all of this.

• Tamara Keith:

  Not good for your health.

• Amy Walter:

  What they do know is the uncertainty is really impacting their behavior as a consumer in terms of what they're going to actually buy, planning out for the future.

  You have a small business, You're also wary about this. So President Trump does the uncertainty of this and using it as a tool, Americans like certainty. Especially, business likes to have a certain amount of understanding of where things are going.

  And so, as this continues to play out, we're now going into August, who knows for how long, the concern among Americans will probably continue to be very, very high, as they say, not only we're worried about this, but costs, they believe, are still — they're still very cost-sensitive.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Yes.

• Amy Walter:

  So any increase in inflation, if indeed this is where some of these tariffs bring the economy, is going to be — they're already pricing that in for themselves.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Well, Amy, speaking of uncertainty and where things are going, I want to ask you about this ongoing feud between President Trump and Elon Musk, who over the weekend, Musk at least announced online that he's going to be forming a third party.

  On his platform X, he wrote: "Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom."

  In response, President Trump posted on social media, saying Musk had gone off the rails and calling him a train wreck.

  Is this a real effort to form a third party and could it hurt Republicans?

  (Crosstalk)

• Amy Walter:

  Right.

  I mean, he has definitely put his money where his mouth is when it comes to President Trump and the amount of money that he put on his behalf in that campaign. Whether a third party goes anywhere and what he does with that, it feels like this is a person who's been upset by his experience within the current political system. So he says, I'm going to take my ball, go home and then make my own party.

  The reality is, he could have much more influence on politics if he took some of his millions and billions of dollars and actually focused it on a certain number of candidates or races of candidates who felt similarly to him on many of these issues. Clearly, the fiscal issue in terms of the deficit is the one driving him in this case. But he has a lot of other policies that if he funded a candidate on the Democratic or Republican side would be really more efficient than starting another party.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Is President Trump worried about this?

• Tamara Keith:

  He's certainly posting a lot on social media, but I think that sort of the longstanding reality of American politics is lots of people are fed up with the two-party system, or at least lots of people say they are fed up with the two-party system. They want some sort of middle ground. They want the parties to work together and politicians to work together.

  And then they vote like polarized partisans. And third parties have just not been able to gain a foothold in American politics. They have not been able to break the two-party system. And I don't know if Elon Musk's billions of dollars really changes that calculation very much.

• Amna Nawaz:

  As we say so often here, we will see.

• Amy Walter:

  Yes.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, thank you so much.

• Amy Walter:

  You're welcome.