Special: Obama's YouTube Moment, Harry Reid's Return and Upheaval in Ukraine

ANNOUNCER: This is the WASHINGTON WEEK Webcast Extra.

GWEN IFILL, "WASHINGTON WEEK" MODERATOR: Hello and welcome.

We had so much to talk about on the regular broadcast that we had to stick around a little bit longer.

Joining me: Michael Crowley of "Politico", Ed O’Keefe of "The Washington Post", and Alexis Simendinger of "Real Clear Politics".

Just when reporters thought we were maybe getting to be a little beside the point with this White House, they decided to rub it in -- inviting three YouTube stars generally known for the number of hits they generate, more than for their news savvy, to the White House to interview the president. Then, they managed to ask about Cuba, and abortion and actual real things.

What was behind this new digital approach, Alexis?

ALEXIS SIMENDINGER, REAL CLEAR POLITICS: Well, one of the things that the president and his team were concerned about is that a normal, every day, routine State of the Union address, the numbers of viewers on television had gone down. He got about 32 million viewers.

But they’re the new, you know, media White House, and so, they wanted to make it State of the Union month as much as possible. And this has included all kinds of events to roll out all kinds of social media efforts. I mean, using medium and Vine and Facebook videos, et cetera, and the YouTube celebrities, we call them at the White House, were invited to interview the president two days after the speech. And that included a very --

IFILL: We’re watching them taking a selfie. Go ahead.

SIMENDINGER: Very wonky gentleman named Hank Green, a very established comedian named Glozell, with the green lipstick, and then a young woman who’s known for shopping. She makes apparently half a million dollars by shopping and taking videos of herself shopping. And these three people were brought in by the White House under the auspices of Google. In the past years, the president has been interviewed under the auspices of a Google hang out, or they organized it.

So, supposedly, these were unscripted questions, although we did hear a Google handler burst out with a reply when Glozell asked the president about the Castro brothers and why the president wanted to normalize relationships with Cuba because -- I can’t say this on a television show because --

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is a webcast.

IFILL: Webcast.

(CROSSTALK)

SIMENDINGER: She had a play on words with the word "dictator". Let’s just put it that way. And the president had a startled look on his face and the Google burst out, that was not in the script, behind the scenes.

So, anyway, Glozell is -- she has 3.3 million followers on YouTube.

IFILL: Do we have any evidence to support the notion however that the people -- the 3.3 million people who clicked on Glozell or the shopping lady, or the nerd guy, that they care about policy or care about the president or care about any of the stuff?

SIMENDINGER: This is an excellent question, and what I was expecting to do -- the president to do was used these three appearances to really hit home on -- and bringing the conversation back to free community college --

IFILL: Right.

SIMENDINGER: -- which he did. But he got asked a question about legalization of pot, or he got asked about -- and he tried to do that. But you’re asking the point that I tried to raise in the story I wrote, which is engagement -- that’s the term, engagement – with influencers, is a different thing than persuasion.

IFILL: Sure.

SIMENDINGER: Right? And so, the president is trying to reach this audience and to what end, right?

IFILL: We have come a long way since boxers or briefs on the MTV question to Bill Clinton. That was the first time.

SIMENDINGER: Or Arsenio Hall, right?

IFILL: Yes. But that was just playing music. Boxers or briefs got Bill Clinton jumbled (ph) for years.

SIMENDINGER: Yes.

IFILL: OK. Let’s go back to Capitol Hill where we got to -- I squirmed a little bit watching, Ed -- I mean, you’re Ed, watching Harry Reid, the Senate minority leader, make his return to Capitol Hill after this awful, awful accident he suffered where -- we don’t know if he’s going to lose his eyesight. He’s got bones broken around his face. And he just looked horrible.

ED O’KEEFE, THE WASHINGTON POST: Yes. Remember, this is a guy who was a boxer, who’s had a few bones broken before. He was the target of a failed car bombing. I mean, this is a guy who -- because he was like a Las Vegas gambling. I mean, things

IFILL: This is long time ago.

O’KEEFE: Long time ago, back in ‘80s.

But -- so, he’s had adversities like this before. But this one really was quite a stumble. He was exercising with this so-called exercise bands. He’s a man who doesn’t walk very confidently anymore, and he lost his balance. And if you see him walking, you could understand that he fell, severely injured his right eye. There’s a bone essentially touching his eyeball that is causing doctors some uncertainty about whether or not he’s going to be able to see again.

He has surgery Monday scheduled. His four ribs are healing. He has a bruised right jaw. But he was there this week and he took questions on Thursday and he insisted that this does nothing to stop him from running for reelection in 2016.

Notably, things have been running quite well on the floor of the Senate in his absence. Dick Durbin of Illinois, his number two, has been dealing with the Republicans, and Chuck Schumer has been running things behind closed doors, which is ironic because he likes to run things outside the doors.

(LAUGHTER)

O’KEEFE: And the two of them had been sort of -- many might say they don’t want to talk about it this way, but in a sense, they’re probably auditioning for one day taking his job.

IFILL: No! No!

O’KEEFE: And probably relishing it to some extent, too.

IFILL: That’s a sure sign that Harry Reid will come back as quickly as he can.

O’KEEFE: Right.

IFILL: I want to talk about Ukraine before we go tonight, because as we talk in the regular show about things blowing up every which way, it seems that things that the deal that everybody thought was being cut, the ceasefire deal, the dividing line deal, in Ukraine, is just crumbling before our eyes.

MICHAEL CROWLEY, POLITICO: It is. And with all the other problems that are going on, you know, you think about how dire it seemed when Vladimir Putin annexed Crimea and it became clear that he was supporting military -- kind of a military insurgency in Eastern Ukraine. I mean, this was blaring front page, kind of freak out news for several weeks earlier this year.

And now, a lot of people aren’t even aware that it’s happening because there’s so much turmoil elsewhere. But this low-grade conflict has gone. Putin has not stepped back. And in fact, now, we have 5,000 people dead in Eastern Ukraine, 1 million people displaced. I mean, are really serious, gaping wound that is --

IFILL: And we still -- do we still see evidence of Russian convoys, Russian troops on the ground in Donetsk or?

CROWLEY: Yes. No, no, there’s no sign that Putin has withdrawn his support for these rebels.

And I think the larger point here that’s interesting is, you know, the president took a bit of a victory lap in his State of the Union speech when it came to Russia and Vladimir Putin and he was kind of doing an "I told you so" with his critics who said that he wasn’t standing up strong enough, and that Putin was the more manly man and that he gotten the best of Obama.

And Obama said in his State of the Union, "Look at the Russian economy, it’s in tatters, the ruble has plunged, it’s going into a recession, and Russia is also diplomatically isolated. I told you so. I handled this right. These sanctions that we applied had really done severe damage."

Well, there’s a lot of debate about the role of those sanctions played. And, frankly, I think most experts would tell you that it’s the plunge in oil prices that have really sucked it to Putin. But the key point here is, it has had basically no effect on Putin’s policy toward Crimea, you -- toward Ukraine. Crimea is still annexed.

IFILL: Right.

CROWLEY: And the rebels in Eastern Ukraine supported by Russia are still doing their thing, and Putin is not backing down.

IFILL: Boy, no problems actually go away. They just seemed to keep bubbling out there.

Thank you all very much.

And thank you as well. For more of the inside skinny, stay online and read "Gwen’s Take", my report on the real faces of the immigration debate.

And we’ll see you next time on the WASHINGTON WEEK Webcast Extra.