The NPR Politics Podcast
Roundup: Kash Patel Confirmed As FBI Chief; China Sees Opportunity As USAID Gets Cut
Fri, 21 Feb 2025
Kash Patel was confirmed as the new FBI director yesterday despite questions about his qualifications. The vote was the narrowest in recent memory with two Republicans joining the Democrats in voting "no." Then, Donald Trump is undertaking efforts to slash federal government spending, which includes international pro-democracy and human rights groups. Is China moving in to fill the vacuum the U.S. leaves behind? This episode: political correspondents Ashley Lopez and Susan Davis, justice correspondent Ryan Lucas, international correspondent Emily Feng, and senior editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro. The podcast is produced by Bria Suggs & Kelli Wessinger, and edited by Casey Morell. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy
Chapter 1: Who is Kash Patel and why is his FBI appointment controversial?
I'm Ryan Lucas. I cover the Justice Department.
And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent.
Kash Patel was confirmed as the new FBI director yesterday. Despite questions about his qualifications, Ryan, this was a pretty tight vote, even though it seemed like his confirmation was never really in doubt, right?
No, it wasn't really in doubt. Republicans did, for the most part, kind of unite and lockstep behind it. But this vote came out to 51 to 49. There are two Republican senators who voted against confirming Patel. That would be Maine's Susan Collins and Alaska's Lisa Murkowski. And if you look at the three directors immediately before Patel, they all received at least 92 votes in favor.
So that gives you a sense of how controversial a nominee Patel is to lead the FBI, which, to remind people, is a really big job. The FBI is responsible for investigating counterterrorism, bank robberies, cybersecurity, all sorts of things across the spectrum. And there's a lot of crime going on. And a lot of this comes down to the FBI to fight. So this is a very big job.
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Chapter 2: What were the concerns about Kash Patel's confirmation as FBI director?
And there are a lot of people, whether they be Democrats and also former national security officials, who have concerns about Patel, about his qualifications, about his experience, his temperament, and whether he's really the right man for this job.
Yeah. Can you talk to me more about what concerns people had going into his confirmation process?
Well, there are a whole bunch of them. There's the fact that he's a very close ally of President Trump. There are concerns about whether he can be independent from the White House or whether he's somebody who's going to do exactly what President Trump wants him to do. Traditionally, the FBI is independent, and it's something that has been very important historically.
There's also just the fact that he's made a lot of inflammatory comments over the years He's talked about wanting to root out the deep state. He's called public servants, law enforcement officials who investigated Trump gangsters. He says that people who stormed the Capitol on January 6th, who fought with police, he says that they are political prisoners.
That's, of course, echoing the sort of comments that we've heard from the president. And more broadly, he's just a very... fierce critic of the FBI itself. He has said on a bunch of podcast appearances that he wants to shut down FBI headquarters on day one. He wants to turn it into a museum to the deep state.
Lawmakers, certainly Democrats, asked him about a lot of these things during his confirmation hearing. Patel tried to push back on them. He said that he would not politicize the FBI, that he wants to take politics out of the FBI. He wants to focus on traditional crime fighting. But those comments did little to assuage the concerns that Democrats have.
And that just simply wasn't who Kash Patel was before he was at that Senate hearing.
This is somebody who was known for being provocative, who wrote a book not just about the government gangsters, as he noted in the book title, but he wrote a children's book called The Plot Against the King that seemed to depict someone with blonde hair as the king, looked like maybe President Trump, and somebody who looked like Nancy Pelosi as one of the people who was engaging in the plot against and
Someone who maybe looked like Kash Patel, who seemed to be the sorcerer behind the king. So it's one thing when you're trying to sell books and get yourself on podcasts. It's another thing when you want to run the FBI, which is one of the most important structures in this country for fighting crime.
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Chapter 3: How might Kash Patel's leadership impact the FBI?
Yeah. Well, Ryan, thank you so much for being here today.
Thank you.
OK, let's take a quick break. And when we come back, how China is responding to the cuts at USAID.
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And we're back. And we're now joined by international correspondent Emily Fang. Hi, Emily. Hey, Ashley. So Donald Trump is undertaking efforts to slash spending at the federal government level, which includes a lot of international pro-democracy and human rights groups. Emily, can you just start with the basics here? Why did the U.S. start funding these programs to begin with?
It began really in the early 1980s in the middle of the Cold War under President Ronald Reagan. At the time, the U.S. was competing with the Soviet Union both for political influence but also in the ideological sphere. And so Reagan gave a speech in 1982 where he spoke about funding what he called the infrastructure of democracy.
And what resulted is billions of dollars in foreign assistance funding through agencies like USAID, through the State Department, and then the creation of other foundations like the National Endowment of Democracy.
And when the Cold War ended, all that funding evolved into going to support humanitarian work abroad, civil society work around the world, especially in countries that are authoritarian or were devastated by war. So think countries like Iran or China or now Ukraine.
Yeah. And why is it that the Trump administration is reversing this long held position of the U.S. when it comes to diplomacy abroad?
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Chapter 4: Why is the U.S. cutting international aid and what are the potential consequences?
And Domenico, I wonder what you think this means for sort of having the end of quote-unquote soft power in U.S. foreign policy, what this sort of means going forward.
Well, I mean, the idea that the U.S. would walk back from the idea of soft power really kind of flies in the face of decades of what was American foreign policy following World War II and then the ascent in the 1960s and into the 80s and early 90s of the Cold War against Russia. Really, the idea was to counter communism and what Russia was trying to do around the world. And now the U.S.
has a different sort of calculation to make, which is China, because China is in places like Africa trying to build infrastructure projects and try to, by the way, also mine in places where they're helping those countries out. to try to take some of those natural resources from those places, but also try to win over some of those populations in some of those countries to try to win allies.
And it's a really America-first sort of approach, but one that a lot of critics believe is really short-sighted And not and something that's too transactional for the long term success and power of the United States.
Yeah. And Emily, I think it's worth mentioning like a good portion of this funding has actually supported Chinese dissidents. I wonder how China is seeing this. Is this welcome to them?
Yeah. U.S. funding was supporting basically the last remaining traces of Chinese civil society. And with the cuts, China has not said very much publicly because, honestly, they could just sit back and do nothing to reap the benefits of this U.S. retreat and funding soft power.
Because the groups that are seeing their funding cut are the ones that really were a long-term nuisance to China I'm talking about. labor rights organizations, civil society groups, human rights investigation organizations. A lot of them had been forced to flee from China, given the political controls there. And that's why they needed funding from the U.S.
And I talked to seven of these groups focused on China, but now based in the U.S. Because they don't have funding anymore, they are already furloughing or laying off their employees. And a lot of them have paused their programs. Now, there's evidence that China's moving in already to fill this U.S. funding gap in just the last few weeks. Big caveat, funding soft power is not China's strong suit.
They're often really heavy handed about it or inefficient, but they're making an effort. And I actually managed to talk directly with a Chinese state representative here in D.C. who answers to the government and China. They requested anonymity when meeting because they're not authorized to speak publicly. But they're here in the U.S.
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Chapter 5: How is China responding to the U.S. cuts in foreign aid?
You know, I was going to talk about something else this week, but then before the podcast, I saw a hot take that got me literally so hot. It is now the thing that I can't let go. And it is a column in Time magazine in which someone defends voice notes in a column entitled, We Should All Send More Voice Notes.
Now, if you don't know what that is, it's when someone will literally on their phone, like record themselves talking to you and then like text it to you. And I cannot tell you. how much I disagree with this sentiment. I'm sorry if either of you are voice note people, but please don't send voice notes. This is not something that, this is a social contagion. I need to stop here at this podcast.
I think I only get them from younger, maybe Gen Z folks, but also just some people who have like, they're really bought into it. Like they refuse to text any other way. And I do talk to those folks less because it's too much for me to, it takes too much of your time.
I think it's super annoying. I agree with you. I mean, and I've always been a little confused by it because this is kind of like going backwards in time. I don't know. I can't understand anything anymore. Frankly, I get a voice note and I'm like, now I have to listen to this. I got to make my phone quieter. Just text me what you want to say.
Also, it helps you think about what you want to say first before you just spit it out.
Also, if you want to leave a message, just do a voicemail because the thing I appreciate, and also don't leave a voicemail, just text me. But if you do leave a voicemail, at least your phone now will transcribe the voicemail so you can look at what they said really quickly. Like a voice note sent to you is diabolical.
And anytime someone sends me a voice note, I'm not lying, I delete it and text them and say, what do you want to tell me?
That's a confusing thing because I thought the voicemail was going out of style. I'm so confused.
What's old is new again. I will say, I think we're the wrong audience for this because we have to deal with audio forms of people's voices all day, and other people maybe just want to hear actual people's voices, but not us, clearly.
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