The actual war is in Gaza, but you wouldn't know it from news coverage this week of American campuses.

In the old days, when someone talked about chaos in Columbia, you would immediately think of Medellin.

Joe Biden and Donald Trump are each trying to address Middle East conflict and campus unrest, and I'll talk about this tonight with Eric Cortellessa, a staff writer at the TIME, who just conducted two epic interviews with Donald Trump, Franklin Foer, my colleague and a staff writer at The Atlantic, is just back from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel, Asma Khalid is a White House correspondent for NPR and the co-host of the NPR Politics Podcast, and Nancy Youssef is a national security correspondent at The Wall Street Journal.

Thank you all for joining me.

It's been a challenging week for Joe Biden, among other people, mostly university presidents and world leaders.

I want to read something to you that David Graham wrote in The Atlantic about Biden's speech on anti-Semitism.

He wrote today -- this is yesterday.

He wrote, today, Biden's patience ran out.

In brief remarks at the White House, he affirmed the importance of free speech, but mostly seemed intent on delivering a message of law and order.

And let's listen to Biden's speech a little bit here.

JOE BIDEN, U.S. President: I understand people have strong feelings and deep convictions.

In America, we respect the right and protect the right for them to express that.

But it doesn't mean anything goes.

It needs to be done without violence, without destruction, without hate, and within the law.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Asma, in some ways, Joe Biden is sort of addressing the near future, meaning August in Chicago.

That's what it seemed to me, at least.

ASMA KHALID, White House Correspondent, NPR: Yes.

And you're speaking about the Democratic convention, right, that's going to be held -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: What he doesn't want is what Hubert Humphrey got in 1968.

ASMA KHALID: And he will have these memories right of 1968, and there was violence there.

Look, I mean I will say that I think Chicago and I've long felt this is certainly a viability.

There's a lot of elements that could certainly lead to unpredictability there.

It has the largest Palestinian-American population in Cook County.

It's a real progressive base of a city, not to mention the fact that my understanding is all the protests have been permitted for Grant Park, which is about three miles away from United Center, where the convention will be held.

Chicago P.D.

may not let them out.

I mean, there's a whole lot of elements that are right for this.

But I do think one thing about what Biden said that's interesting is he certainly was speaking to this issue of law and order.

His comments also came after Donald Trump spoke and they came after, frankly, days of public silence.

I mean, many of us reporters in the press briefing were asking repeatedly about the protests, about concerns of use of police excessive force.

And one thing that's notable is he didn't mention the police response at all in his public remarks.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Well, you know, Frank, you're a student of Joe Biden, a biographer of Joe Biden, in fact.

It's sort of like this moment reminded me of 2020, summer of 2020, when Joe Biden and many Democrats are under pressure to align themselves with abolish the police.

And Joe Biden, to his credit, I mean, he won in part because he wasn't listening to the Twitter left so much as the kind of the broad center, including in the black community, Jim Clyburn and all the rest, and many people who are saying, you know, we're not going to abolish the police.

We need better policing.

This is kind of the same vibe, at least.

He's saying, you know what, you've gone too far.

FRANKLIN FOER, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Yes.

On culture war issues, he's lived through so many battles in the past, and he has very hardened instincts when they come to them, and his instinct is always going to be to decide on the issue of law and order.

He was the author of the crime bill, and that's just his fundamental instincts.

And he's torn to some extent between these elements in the base of the party, the progressive wing of the party, that have tried to elevate this into a dominant issue.

And then he looks at the other parts of the polls, and he looks at the voters that he needs in the middle, and he sees that they believe that the college campuses are not being treated harshly enough.

And he sees Trump, and he sees the ways that Republicans are trying to -- crime was a primary issue for them.

It's disappeared.

They've replaced it with the campus protest.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Eric, you practically live at Mar-a-Lago now.

I just want to know for the record that you don't actually live at Mar-a-Lago, in case anybody tweets on that.

But you're very, very tied into what they're saying right now down in Florida, not only Trump but the campaign.

How do you expect them to try to exploit this moment?

ERIC CORTELLESSA, Staff Writer, TIME: Well, I think Donald Trump is going to try to exploit it as much as he can.

I think he sees it as a real vulnerability for Donald Trump.

And he sees this as a way to sort of fracture the Democratic coalition in a way that could work to his advantage in a few key swing states, particularly Michigan.

And so this is where Donald Trump wants to keep the focus in the coming months.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Chaos?

ERIC CORTELLESSA: Absolutely.

And the fact that it's sort of a Democrats in disarray narrative that he's going to really try to capitalize on.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

If he weren't running against Donald Trump, would Joe Biden be so keen on seeing an end to these demonstrations?

FRANKLIN FOER: No.

I mean, we got to remember that this is also tied in with the larger policy that he's trying to conduct in the Middle East, and people in the Middle East are watching these protests and it's affecting their calculations, and it's complicating in different ways in his ability to end the war.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Nancy, let's talk about the actual war.

Give us the state of play at the moment, and we'll talk to Frank about the trip he was on with the secretary of state.

But it seems that there's a lot of pieces in motion right now.

Where are we?

NANCY YOUSSEF, National Security Correspondent, The Wall Street Journal: So, this week started optimistically that we would see some progress on the peace deal and it has three elements.

It attempts to get a six-week ceasefire.

It attempts to get a partial release of hostages, 33 Israelis for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners.

And it seeks what it describes as a permanent calm.

The challenge is we heard from Bibi Netanyahu that the Rafah operation would continue regardless of whether there was a peace deal or not.

And so you have both sides now trying to reach an agreement that potentially puts them in danger.

For Israel, the question becomes, will they accept a peace agreement that does not allow them to go into Rafah, and in doing so, not achieve the total victory that they've promised -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: When you say, peace agreement, you're talking more of a permanent - - semi-permanent ceasefire?

NANCY YOUSSEF: That's right.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, okay.

NANCY YOUSSEF: And Hamas' sort of challenge is, would they give up their strongest bargaining chip, Israeli soldiers, and not -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The kidnapped soldiers?

NANCY YOUSSEF: That's right, those hostages, and not secure a permanent peace.

And so what you're seeing now is this sort of discussion of what that permanent calm looks like.

How do you define it?

And is there an agreement that you can reach that allows both sides to come to the table and give up really key parts and strengths and demands from their coalitions, and in the case of Hamas, their survival.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: How optimistic should we be that there's going to be progress?

NANCY YOUSSEF: I think it's really hard to say because it's so vague right now, the description of what happens after six weeks, and there's so much at stake for both sides.

We haven't seen anything right now that says that it's imminent.

Having said that, so much of the deal has been worked out, that this is the last thing that really has to be ironed out, it's the most complex part of the deal to be ironed out because it really gets at the potential end of the war, or if not, what does something short of a Rafah operation look like that allows Israel to say that it has secured its nation from the Hamas threat.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Frank, you are on the trip.

Talk about the role of Saudi Arabia in all of this.

FRANKLIN FOER: Right.

So what's happening right now is we're trying to get to this pause in the war.

The administration is essentially trying to wedge its arm into the door to buy a little bit of calm and to let things go from there.

At the end -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And they're trying to do that with Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister.

That is the main object of the lobbying.

FRANKLIN FOER: No.

So, right now, the main object is Sinwar, the head of Hamas in Gaza, is the person who has the ultimate veto power of the deal right now.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But the U.S. has no influence over Sinwar.

FRANKLIN FOER: No.

Nobody has any influence over him, which is part of the problem.

The Qatari, who housed the political wing of Hamas in Doha, have pressured them, and they've essentially signed off on this piece of the deal.

And so there's nothing that they can do to influence this guy who's sitting in a tunnel, who they describe as being kind of erratic, who's in the middle of a war, who's surrounded by hostages.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: He has hostages literally as human shields.

FRANKLIN FOER: Human shields, exactly.