Special: Electoral College votes Monday and Trump selects hard-liner as ambassador to Israel and Obama

PETE WILLIAMS: I’m Pete Williams, and this is the Washington Week Extra , where we pick up online where we left off on air.

The members of the Electoral College will meet on Monday to seal Donald Trump’s victory, or at least that’s what he hopes they’ll do, as the 45 ^th president. But some “never Trump” voters are hoping for a revolt. Kimberly, are you on tenterhooks waiting to see how this comes out?

KIMBERLY ATKINS: Not exactly. I don’t think that President-elect Trump has a lot to worry about. Yes, there have been a lot of folks ringing the phones and emailing the Republican electors in the Electoral College, hoping that they will cause a revolt and get somehow 37 of them to vote against Donald Trump.

MR. WILLIAMS: That’s how many would have to flip?

MS. ATKINS: Exactly, that’s how many would have to defect to keep him from getting to 270 votes. So far one has committed, so I don’t think that that’s a big fly in the ointment for him right now, although I’m sure he will tweet his disappointment if he does not get the full 306 votes.

MR. WILLIAMS: The president was asked today about the Electoral College and whether maybe we should change it in light of the president and the popular vote not going along with it, but he didn’t seem to bite on this, did he?

JULIET EILPERIN: Yeah, he said, you know, it’s a vestige of an old system and maybe there are ways in which he – it disadvantages Democrats. He took a swipe at Wyoming, easy to do. But –

MR. WILLIAMS: No it’s not. That’s my home state, and there will be none of that. (Laughter.)

MS. EILPERIN: Well, I’m saying it was like, you know – I think that could – I think that could backfire against him. (Laughter.) But that said, he basically said, you know what, we’ve got to be smarter, we’ve got to go everywhere, we’ve got to compete, and that’s the way we’re going to get better.

MR. WILLIAMS: But the point here, civics fans, is that the fact is that, despite some relatively weak state laws that bind electors to vote as their state did, they really don’t have to. They can be faithless, although it’s never affected a presidential election.

ROBERT COSTA: It’s been a great civics lesson this week to see alarmed Democrats revive a whole civic conversation about the Electoral College.

DAVID SANGER: There have not been this many people in Washington, D.C. who have gone back to read Federalist 68 – (laughter) – it’s the one that deals with the most with this – I think in probably 200 years.

MR. WILLIAMS: But this is – this is Hamilton’s time.

MS. ATKINS: Exactly.

MS. EILPERIN: Exactly. It really fits.

MR. SANGER: This is – you know, it’s really its moment. And we forget that nobody was better at squeezing electors than Hamilton himself. (Laughter.)

MR. WILLIAMS: Well, President-elect Trump’s decision to appoint David Friedman to be the U.S. ambassador to Israel has sparked another controversy. He’s a bankruptcy lawyer, David, who has represented the president there. But what are – what are his credentials in terms of the Middle East?

MR. SANGER: He has been an extremely – to say that he is pro-Israel understates it. He has been in favor of expanding the settlements. He has not been at all an endorser of a two-state solution, which has basically been the wording that you’ve heard from President Clinton through President Bush and President Obama. His view has basically been a unitary state in which you’d have to assume that Arab rights would be somewhat restricted because he’s been quite concerned that the Arab population would become the dominant population, or the largest population. So he was described in Haaretz , the Israeli newspaper, this morning as significantly to the right of Bibi Netanyahu. Now, it takes work – (laughter) – to get to the right of Bibi Netanyahu. That may actually turn out to be problematic for Mr. Netanyahu, who at various points likes to contain his own right wing by saying Washington won’t let us do this. If you looked at the announcement that the Trump campaign put out yesterday, the Trump transition office put out, it talked about returning the capital to Jerusalem.

MR. WILLIAMS: Well, but does this – what does this tell us, though? Does it tell us that they like his views about Israel, or they like the fact that he’s a friend of Donald Trump and these views come extra?

MR. SANGER: We don’t know. I mean, I assume that they like the fact that he seems close to Donald Trump. But the question is, is this for show or does this become policy? And if this becomes policy, what does that do in any – of any hope to reach an agreement with the Palestinians?

MR. WILLIAMS: Any potential confirmation problems here, given that Congress has some pretty strong views on Israel?

MS. ATKINS: Well, I think it’ll make for some explosive moments during the confirmation hearings. But I think by and large the Democrats also want to pick their battles. And I think as they’re sort of laying out and looking at the landscape of nominees so far, this may not be the one that they want to pick.

MR. WILLIAMS: Do you think he’ll have trouble?

MR. COSTA: I don’t think so. I think the Republican leadership in both chambers, while they may not be as conservative on some of these issues, they’re generally in the Netanyahu direction. In fact, they of course welcomed Netanyahu to the Capitol.

An interesting figure in these discussions is Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, who Trump repeatedly has said he’d like to see involved in some kind of peace negotiations in the Middle East. We’ll have to see what his role is with the new ambassador, should the ambassador be confirmed.

MR. WILLIAMS: Juliet, you made a point today about the president during his news conference talking about a lack of faith in democratic institutions, citing the support that many Republicans have for Putin. What did you take from that?

MS. EILPERIN: That, you know, this president, who has tried to be optimistic throughout his presidency, is losing a little of his optimism at the end, and that in fact, I mean, he really cited a range of things, whether he – you know, whether it’s elected officials, whether it’s the press – he chastised reporters for how they handled the election – even citizens themselves. You know, he has gone in the wake of terrorist shootings and said the only thing that will let us be vulnerable to the terrorists is if we change our values, and today he said that we are in fact vulnerable to foreign influence in part because we’re losing who we stand for. That’s pretty striking.

MR. WILLIAMS: But didn’t he also say we’re giving the Russians more due than what they deserve, that they’re – you know, they don’t make anything anybody wants, they don’t innovate?

MR. SANGER: I thought this – this was a really fascinating part of the press conference, I thought, because he was essentially saying: before you get all spun up, remember that the Russians are overdependent on oil, that their population is shrinking, that they can’t innovate, and nobody is particularly interested in doing business with them except for fossil fuels. And I took that as a subtle message to President-elect Trump to say, keep your eye on the ball. And the ball here is China, the rising power, not Russia, the declining power.

MR. WILLIAMS: What did you make of the president’s comments on these points, Robert, about this – the whole thing about losing faith in institutions?

MR. COSTA: Well, I think what you saw the president do in his press conference is embrace the institutions himself. I mean, he has, I think, said something about his character and his leadership in how he’s handled this post-election period. As his party has been at times almost apocalyptic about the rise of Donald Trump, President Obama has been exceedingly calm and continues to reiterate the importance of continuity and the importance of these institutions of democracy.

MR. WILLIAMS: All right. Thank you all very much. That’s going to do it for us.

There’s more online, including this week’s Washington Week-ly News Quiz. Be sure to check that out. And we’ll see you on the next Washington Week Extra .