Special: President Trump faces a steep learning curve, as the GOP faces tough races

ROBERT COSTA: Hello. I’m Robert Costa. And this is Washington Week Extra, where we pick up online where we left off on the broadcast.

For any first-time president, learning the job is no easy task. But, Peter, you wrote a story about why the learning curve is particularly steep for this president.

PETER BAKER: Yeah, this is – Donald Trump, of course, is the first president in American history who has no experience whatsoever in government or military. It really is a steep learning curve. It’s small things and big things, right? I mean, every president has to come in and get the intelligence briefings for the first time and understand what our capabilities are and what the secret information we don’t know. I assume they all go straight for the Roswell file. (Laughter.)

But, you know, in this case he didn’t clearly understand things like congressional procedures. Why did he have to go for health care before tax reform? He didn’t understand, as he said, how health care was so complicated. Who knew it was so complicated, he said. This week he told The Wall Street Journal that he has this idea that China could simply tell North Korea to knock off its behavior. And then he listened to the Chinese president for 10 minutes and he says, well, now I know it’s not so easy. So it is a process. It would be a process with anybody, but it does seem particularly stark in this case.

MR. COSTA: As I read your article, Peter, I thought of former Secretary of State James Baker. You and your wife, I believe, are working on a biography of Baker. And President Trump doesn’t seem to have a Baker type around him.

MR. BAKER: No, he really doesn’t. Baker was somebody who worked for Ronald Reagan, who he had run not one, but two campaigns against. Imagine that. He had run Ford’s campaign and George Bush’s campaign in 1980, and Reagan brought him in because he knew he needed somebody who understood Washington, he needed somebody to translate his agenda to a city that he didn’t know himself. And Baker did that. He was the Reagan whisperer. He got a lot of criticism from conservatives who thought he was too pragmatic, too moderate, but he made Ronald Reagan’s first term successful. And right now, Donald Trump doesn’t have somebody like that.

MR. COSTA: We’re going to have to see if the president has any other advisors who emerge in this possible shakeup.

Turning to a different front, President Trump inherited the war in Afghanistan when he took office, but didn’t address the 15-year-old war until this week, when the U.S. dropped a bomb on ISIS targets there. Vivian, you were Baghdad bureau chief for the Associated Press until last year, and you know the region very well. What’s the situation on the ground with ISIS, not only in Afghanistan but in Iraq?

VIVIAN SALAMA: Well, Afghanistan, it’s sort of been an emerging threat with ISIS, that you’ve had the Taliban for many years – we’ve been fighting the Taliban for 15, 16 years now – but ISIS is sort of this emerging force. And they’re a little bit contrary to what Taliban stands for. This is a big misconception that a lot of people have, is that a lot of these groups are sort of in line ideologically. They’re not. They have very different views. And so the Taliban (sic; ISIS) has been growing in Afghanistan. Of course, they’ve been in Iraq and Syria for a long time, and they’ve been spreading across North Africa. This has been a major concern because from North Africa a lot of times they’re kind of making their way to Europe, and this has been an issue.

As far as the fight goes, President Trump has, you know, a big fight on his hand. He made it very clear that one of the things he wanted to do in his presidency was eliminate ISIS. Not so easy, he’s finding out very, very quickly. You have the fight in Iraq, which, you know, they would like to say they’re winning, and it seems to be wrapping up. Mosul is close to liberation, and so that is a big win for both the Iraqis and the Americans. However, you still have Syria. The operation in Raqqa, the largest stronghold for ISIS, has not even begun. And now we have the second military, you know, operation going on when we’re targeting Assad. And so it’s going to be very interesting to see specifically in Syria how that plays out when you have on the one hand the military targeting Assad whenever he kind of goes out of line, but on the other hand we’re also going to try to move in and recapture Raqqa, which is not going to be easy and it’s going to take a long time. So that’s where we are now, and it’s going to be an uphill battle for sure.

MR. COSTA: When I read your reporting and others around the Mother Of All Bombs being dropped, I wondered, will this administration, this president, be willing to send ground troops into Syria, into other parts of the Middle East to fight ISIS? Is that, do you think, a possibility?

MS. SALAMA: It’s always been a possibility. But, you know, President Trump has made very clear that he does not want to get involved in any of these wars overseas. Well, apparently he is willing to do that if – you know, if someone crosses the line and if it needs be. He’s also listening very much to his generals, who, you know, recommend certain things. And it’s up to him, I guess, if he wants to comply and listen to what their advice is. And so it remains to be seen.

With Syria, a lot of people say that it’s going to need more force if we’re going to recapture Raqqa and help ground forces there. And so it’s going to be very interesting to see sort of the dilemma that he faces with regard to sending more American troops there. I think it’s not what he wants to do whatsoever, but you know, his hands may be tied at some point.

MR. COSTA: Turning to the Cabinet, one of the quietest figures in the president’s Cabinet was Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, but not so quiet anymore. He met with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow this week, and from all accounts it was a contentious meeting. Michael, you wrote about the stark differences between these two diplomats.

MICHAEL CROWLEY: Yeah, this is going to be a really fun relationship to watch. Rex Tillerson has no formal diplomatic history. His defenders are very quick to say the guy ran ExxonMobil, was running a kind of small nation of his own, this enormous multinational corporation that did deals all over the world. Fair enough, we’ll grant him that. But no formal diplomatic history versus John Kerry, who had been chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and kind of a foreign policy geek all his life, served in Vietnam. So Tillerson comes in fresh.

His counterpart is Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. Lavrov took his job in August of 2004. He was arguing about Ukraine with Secretary of State Colin Powell 13 years ago, OK? Lavrov has been around the block not once, not twice, a few hundred times. He’s argued with Condi Rice, Hillary Clinton, John Kerry. So Rex Tillerson comes in pretty green in this context against a real master on the diplomatic stage. I think it showed a little bit at their joint press conference.

You know, Tillerson is pretty taciturn. He doesn’t talk that much – also another contrast with John Kerry, who it’s impossible to get the guy to stop talking. (Laughter.) So he gave pretty short answers, whereas Lavrov is, number one, needling him for the fact that he doesn’t have a deputy, they don’t have a top Russia official, a lot of the key posts at the State Department are not filled. Lavrov made a point of saying that with Tillerson sitting next to him. You know, it was subtle, but in diplomatic terms I think it was really poking him.

And then, you know, a litany of America’s misbehavior on the world stage going back to Iraq; you overthrew the dictator of Libya, look at the problems you caused there. I think he went all the way back to the Balkans.

So it’s going to be a learning curve for Tillerson. He’s obviously a tough guy and an accomplished guy, and it may be that he will end up being an excellent secretary of state. But again, he’s up against a pretty tough adversary, and this relationship is going to be great fun, frankly, to watch.

MR. COSTA: Why the edge from Russia and Lavrov in these exchanges?

MR. CROWLEY: Well, some of it I think is personal. I mean, Lavrov is an edgy guy. He’s a scotch drinker. He’s close to a chain smoker. Doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re a tough character, but I think in this case it does – the stereotype kind of fills out. You know, he’ll curse. And I just think it’s – you know, it’s sort of the Russian diplomatic style. In a way you might even say it’s a little part of their national character. I mean, they’re pretty tough and they like to knock you off-balance, and that’s how they play the game. And I think Tillerson has a very different style, and we’re just going to have to see how those two – how those two mesh.

MR. COSTA: Back to the U.S. Special House elections in Kansas and Georgia seem to show Democrats making inroads in two traditionally conservative Republican districts. Republican State Treasurer Ron Estes won Kansas’s 4th Congressional District that became vacant after Republican Congressman Mike Pompeo stepped down to become CIA director. In Georgia, Democrats have raised more than $8 million in the first three months of this year to support their candidate, Democrat Jon Ossoff. Molly, you’ve been playing close attention. And should we expect a win for the Democrats in Georgia?

MOLLY BALL: It’s very, very hard to know. And you know, it’s basically our job in the national political media to read too much into off-year special elections – (laughter) – because we’re desperate –

MR. COSTA: Really? Is that our job?

MR. BAKER: We do a good job.

MS. BALL: – for some kind of political signal as to what’s happening out there with voters and how are they processing all of this. That being said, some very interesting tea leaves here. As you said, the seat in Kansas became vacant when Pompeo went into the administration. All of these seats are by definition Republican – former Republican seats because people went into the administration. The one in Georgia used to belong to Tom Price, now health and human services secretary. There’s another special election coming up in Montana, the at-large district that Ryan Zinke vacated to become interior secretary. That’s one that has also flown a little bit under the radar.

This one in Kansas this week was supposed to be a snooze-fest, and then at the very last minute you had Republicans throwing the kitchen sink at a safe – at what should have been a very, very safe seat, should have been a double-digit win going away, because they did see this Democratic energy at the last minute, they did see – and without the Democratic Party playing at all.

In Georgia, the requirement is it’s a jungle primary, so candidates from all parties in a single race, and there will not be a second round if one candidate gets 50 percent. Most of the polling showing the Democrat, Jon Ossoff, at – who is a young sort of generic Democratic candidate – most of the polling has shown him below 50 percent, and it’s thought that it would be much harder for him to win a one-on-one contest in a seat that is Republican but a close – but only slightly Republican. But polling is tough in a special election like this. Polling is tough in an election where you have no idea what turnout is going to be. And if we do see a surge in first-time voters, first-time Democratic voters, that’s going to prove that there is some energy on the left, there is some kind of potential backlash brewing against this administration.

MR. COSTA: But beyond the energy on the left, what’s the deal on the Republican side? Is it just a factional split, as we’ve seen nationally, playing out in the Atlanta suburbs? Or what I’ve wondered, is there a lack of intensity among these Republican voters who may have really came out to the polls to vote against Secretary Clinton last year but see health care reform as not moving on the conservative side in the Congress, maybe they’re disappointed with President Trump, so they’re not having the same fervor?

MS. BALL: That is something that we’ve heard anecdotally from reports on the ground. I have not been out there. But it’s something that I think, again, we will find out from who shows up for this primary. It is a multifaceted and confounding Republican field. The Republican who has seemed to be the most prominent is Karen Handel, who’s run for office before, who’s well-known in conservative circles, particularly pro-life circles – former Planned Parenthood – or not Planned Parenthood, sorry – Komen Foundation – opposite – president. But there’s another candidate who’s supported by the Republican senator, David Perdue. There is another candidate who’s supported by the right-wing Club for Growth, based out of Washington. Then you have a PAC supporting Trump coming in against the Club for Growth. So a lot of the previously-scheduled Republican civil war that you and I have been covering for so many years going on here. But I think in aggregate what we’re going to be looking for is, as you said, just are Republican voters still energized.

MR. COSTA: Well, I’ll be heading there on Sunday. Stop by The Varsity. It’s always fun to be in Atlanta.

That’s it for this edition of Washington Week Extra. While you’re online, find out if you missed any interesting stories this week by taking the Washington Week-ly News Quiz. By the way, there’s a question on the website about diplomacy that was served up with a piece of chocolate cake. No kidding.

I’m Robert Costa. We’ll see you next time.