Full Episode: Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, 8/25/23

Laura Barron-Lopez: Donald Trump surrenders in Georgia after skipping the first GOP debate.

Donald Trump, Former U.S. President: We did nothing wrong, I did nothing wrong and everybody knows it.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Former President Trump is arrested and released on a $200,000 bond, this time for his attempts to overturn Georgia's 2020 presidential election results.

Vivek Ramaswamy, Republican Presidential Candidate: That on day one you would pardon Donald Trump. I'm the only candidate on the stage who had the courage to actually say it.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Meanwhile, in Milwaukee, Trump's rivals denounced but mostly defend the former president, next.

Good evening and welcome to WASHINGTON WEEK with The Atlantic. I'm Laura Barron-Lopez. Jeffrey Goldberg is away.

Tonight, the country is facing a stunning situation. A former president is preparing to stand trial for 91 felony charges across four criminal cases. And that same defendant is also the leading Republican contender for the White House.

On Thursday, Donald Trump was booked at Georgia's Fulton County Jail. Trump's arrest was bookended by the surrender of his 18 co-defendants, all on charges connected to their alleged criminal conspiracy to overturn Georgia's 2020 presidential election.

Before traveling to Georgia, Trump suggested the charges against him could lead to violence.

Donald Trump: I can say this. There's a level of passion that I've never seen. There's a level of hatred that I've never seen. And that's probably a bad combination.

Laura Barron-Lopez: That interview was streamed at the same time as the GOP debate Wednesday night.

Trump was, as one moderator put it, the elephant not in the room.

Nikki Haley, Republican Presidential Candidate: And we have to face the fact that Trump is the most disliked politician in America. We can't win a general election that way.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Joining me to discuss this and more, Daniella Diaz, Congressional Reporter for Politico. Domenico Montanaro, he's the senior political editor and correspondent at NPR, Toluse Olurunnipa, White House Bureau Chief for The Washington Post, and Todd Zwillich, Deputy D.C. Bureau Chief at Vice News and author of the Breaking the Vote newsletter. Thank you all for being here tonight.

Todd, I want to start with you. So, Trump's mug shot is getting a lot of attention, but there were a few moving parts this week in the Georgia case. What exactly happened and why does it matter?

Todd Zwillich, Deputy D.C. Bureau Chief, Vice News: Yes, the mug shot is stunning. It's just the mug shot, but let's acknowledge that a former president and potential wannabe future president, getting his mug shot at 901 Rice Street in the Fulton County Jail is just a sight to behold.

But it is the least important thing that has gone on this week, because behind the scenes with the actual case, the actual indictment, interests are starting to diverge now. Ken Cheseboro is one of the Trump's co-defendants. He's indicted in the alleged criminal conspiracy, the RICO conspiracy. He's a Trump campaign lawyer. And he has filed for a speedy trial under Georgia's speedy trial statute. And when I say speedy, fast, fast, he's now been granted a trial date on October 23rd.

Sidney Powell, you've heard of her, the crack-in lawyer, conspiracy theorist, also indicted. She's applied for a speedy trial.

Now, I talked to a bunch of former prosecutors today. Nobody can quite figure out why these co-defendants are doing this now. They have their own interests with their own lawyers. There's advantages and disadvantages though for Trump. One key advantage for Donald Trump is his co-defendants go on trial very early, October 23rd, November, right away, they're all alleged to be in the same conspiracy.

So, Trump's lawyers can watch that case. They can see the evidence coming out. They can look for holes in the strategy and try to plan their defense. They can sit courtside, literally, and try to plot a strategy. But there's a huge disadvantage. We all know what Donald Trump wants to do here. He wants to delay. He wants this entire episode to be after the election.

His trial may be after the election but all the facts are going to come out in Ken Cheseboro's trial, in Sidney Powell's trial. These are all facts that are going to apply to Donald Trump. He doesn't want them aired on television, and they're going to be. So, that's a disadvantage.

And the final thing I'll say just about this, what's important here, interests are starting to diverge. The key part about this, prosecutors tell me, this is Donald Trump losing control of this process. He has 18 co-defendants. This one is getting an early trial. That one wants an early trial. That one wants to go to federal court. This one might flip. He doesn't have control of this process, and that's something he's not comfortable with.

Laura Barron-Lopez: And definitely could impact him in the general election more than in the primary.

Domenico, as you heard, Trump suggested that his supporters could very well turn to violence due to these charges. And in response to this fourth arrest in Georgia, Sarah Palin also threatened violence.

Fmr. Gov. Sarah Palin (R-AK): Those who are conducting this travesty and creating this two-tier system of justice, I want to ask them, what the heck? Do you want us to be in civil war? Because that's what's going to happen.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Domenico, is this reflective of the base?

Domenico Montanaro, Senior Political Editor/Correspondent, NPR: Well, first of all, I haven't heard Sarah Palin's voice in a while. And I'm like having these flashbacks to the 2009 campaign -- the 2008 campaign, you know, in covering that. And, you know, I would argue, frankly, that Sarah Palin really started a lot of this movement where we're seeing this Republican Party having changed.

You know, I remember people ripping off the McCain part of the bumper sticker for McCain/Palin, and it was just Palin because she really had a lot of the heart and guts of the Republican Party. And then the Tea Party rose, and then we have someone like Donald Trump. It really didn't come out of nowhere if you were covering the Tea Party at that time.

So, look, I think that the violence thing is something that is always going to be a danger. We had January 6th. That was something I think a lot of people thought. If you saw that on television happening, that you couldn't then dismiss it, and yet where are we, right?

And we've seen that over and over again. A lot of Trump's base just doesn't buy these charges. They think that they're made up. They think that they're politically motivated despite the 91 counts, despite four different cases, despite the fact that you have New York and Georgia and two federal cases. That's what we've seen.

You know, when we pulled on this starting in March and whether or not Trump did anything illegal, one area that it is sort of taking a toll on Trump is with Independents. Because back then, about 41 percent of people in the NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll said that they thought Trump had done something illegal. When we polled on this, this past month, it was up to 52 percent now.

So, yes, his base still doesn't buy it. They're totally on board with Trump. He's got a huge lead in the primaries, but he's just made himself even more and more toxic for a general election.

Laura Barron-Lopez: On that, Daniella, you talked to House Republicans a lot, and, yes, they've been away the past -- for these last two indictments related to the 2020 election. But are they admitting at all that this might be harmful to their general election prospects?

Daniella Diaz, Congressional Reporter, Politico: No, that's not what they're saying right now. And we're seeing this flat out what's happening even just this week. Even though they're gone from Washington, Laura, Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, subpoenaed information from Fani Willis on her communication with the Department of Justice Communication Federal Funds because he continues to be the dominant arm in Congress to defend Donald Trump. And he is kind of the voice of what these House Republicans believe needs to happen to defend Donald Trump.

And they're using -- you know, they have the majority, they have subpoena power, and they're going to go forward and try to defend him in this way, of course, arguing that the Department of Justice should be defunded, using this as a tactic to even shut down the government when they come back in just a week. But what we're going to see and continue to see is Trump's strongest supporters in Congress, you know, the Marjorie Taylor Greenes, the Jim Jordans, a lot of the House Freedom Caucus members, the very loud members defend him and continue to say that this only makes him stronger.

And even Trump's detractors say that. You know, I spoke to Thomas Massie, who endorsed DeSantis for president. And he said, you know, if only DeSantis would get indicted, he would become much stronger in the primary, should that happen, because it really is adding fuel to the fire for Trump in his base.

But, of course, adding to what Domenico said earlier, there is a base that is looking for an alternative, not that may be the dominant of a Republican Party, but that's who is watching the debate on Wednesday with Trump not being in the room and seeing who do I want to support. And, you know, we clearly saw some winners.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Yes, I've talked to a few disenchanted Republicans who are certainly looking for someone like a Chris Christie or a Nikki Haley to emerge but don't have strong hopes that they will.

Toluse, President Biden hasn't uttered a word about the indictments. There seems to be somewhat of a debate among Democrats about whether or not he should. Is that going to change at all anytime soon?

Toluse Olurunnipa, White House Bureau Chief, The Washington Post: I don't expect it to change. The president is running a Rose Garden strategy. He wants to be seen as president. He wants to be seen carrying out the duties of his office while the Republicans are in sort of the circus mode of indictments and debates that are chaotic and having people call each other names.

And so he wants that split screen to work out for him, and that's what he's been doing. He doesn't want to touch these indictments with a ten-foot pole in part because Republicans are accusing him and his administration of weaponizing the Department of Justice and going after his political enemies with arrests and indictments.

And so he wants to be focused on just doing the job as president, showing what he's done over the past couple of years and proving to the American people that if you stay with me, there's not going to be the chaos that we have for four years under Trump, indictments and people being charged and people going to jail and people having to testify and grand juries and all the things that we've seen over the past several years with Trump.

Biden wants to say, I'm not doing that. I'm focusing on the work of the American people. I'm dealing with foreign policy. I'm dealing with world leaders. And that's what we're going to see for the next several months.

Now, other Democrats will point out the fact that, you know, Trump is indicted for undermining democracy and, you know, sparking what happened on January 6th. That is the big part of the campaign message for Democrats in 2024, defending democracy. And so they'll engage with this, but the White House and the president are not going to touch this.

Todd Zwillich: And Biden even ran an ad, right? And he ran a national ad during indictment coverage. Look, I saw a lot of hard hats and a lot of union people in that ad. I'm not sure what else it was about except jobs.

Domenico Montanaro: They were also driving around billboards in Milwaukee. And it was really kind of trolling the Republican Party, because not only were they using this dark branded meme with Biden with his lasers in his eyes that conservatives had sort of used as a meme to try to undercut Biden and the DNC sort of, you know, leaning into that Democratic National Committee.

But those ads that they were driving around, we're talking about Social Security. You know, all of these sort of issues that were, you know, very strong for a general election while Republicans were talking about these issues that were really pushing them more and more to the right.

You know, Biden is not talking about this. Of course, the Democratic Party for the most part wants Biden to look different than Trump in not interfering with the Justice Department. He did comment today when he was asked about whether he'd seen Trump's mug shot. And he said, yes, I saw it on TV. What a handsome guy.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Todd, there was another development this week in another indictment, the Mar-a-Lago documents case for Trump. And what happened there was that prosecutors disclosed that a former security aide at Mar-a-Lago had switched lawyers and changed his testimony. Is that significant for Trump?

Todd Zwillich: It is. I mean, while we were all looking the other way, and rightfully so, there was a pretty important development down in Mar-a-Lago. So, the person you're talking about is Yuscil Taveras. He's Employee 4, if you go back and read the indictment.

And what we learned this week was that, originally, when Taveras was questioned about the part of the indictment, hey, the boss wants you to delete the security footage, the cover-up of the cover-up is the chapter of this indictment that I'm talking about.

Taveras originally, initially lied when he was asked about it. He said he didn't know anything about it. At the time, he was represented by Stanley Woodward, who's a Trump-funded lawyer funded by the Save America PAC and representing other defendants in the Mar-a-Lago case.

Well, once Mr. Taveras found out that he was being investigated and was a target for perjury, he got rid of that lawyer. And he got a new lawyer and decided to tell the truth. Now, he's Employee 4. He's not indicted. He's not a defendant.

And so now the question is the other defendants, the valet, Walt Nauta, and the maintenance director, Mr. De Oliveira, who are both co-defendants allegedly at Donald Trump's direction to delete that footage, they might be looking over at their buddy from work and saying, why, you know, he's sitting at home, scot-free. He's not charged. I'm in the dock. Maybe my lawyers, in fact, don't have my best interest in heart.

Now, they may not be thinking that, but this is now the dynamic of the case. And, in fact, Jack Smith is pursuing hearings within that case to present to them, hey, are you aware that your lawyers might have divided loyalties, might have conflict of interest? You better be aware of it and decide if you want to keep that lawyer, because if you don't, you can't appeal it later. And so they might be looking at who's defending their interests and looking at this guy they work with and saying, he's doing a lot better than I am, or maybe they're just saying, I'm sticking with Trump and he'll pardon me. We don't know.

Laura Barron-Lopez: So, there could be people potentially in the future who may decide to flip.

But from Mar-a-Lago to Georgia, Trump has used the indictments, Toluse, to fundraise, and we saw that immediately in the last 24 hours after the mug shots, you know, after the mug shot. I mean, what anyone would consider a pretty low point, he now is using as a branding mechanism.

Toluse Olurunnipa: Yes, it's the difference between the primary election and the general election. What works in the primary, this grievance campaign focusing on being a victim of the weaponization of the Department of Justice, it works really well with the Republican base, with Trump's base.

We saw him return to Twitter or X and post his mug shot as his first post in the last couple of years, and it worked for him. He's gotten, you know, millions of views, millions of dollars going into his campaign coffers from the people who believe that he's being persecuted by the Biden Department of Justice.

Now, when you transition from a primary, if he's able to win the primary, into a general election, then you have to think about Independent voters. And do Independent voters want to have to deal with all the drama that we saw during the Trump years with the idea that we're going to have an indicted person coming into the White House who's been indicted and charged with 91 different counts.

That is something that scares a lot of Independent voters, and a lot of the people who didn't vote for Trump in 2020 are saying, we don't want the drama, and that's the challenge that Trump has. And that's the reason why, during the debate, we saw a lot of the people, including Nikki Haley, say Trump is someone that we can't afford to stake our hopes on because he's not going to be able to win a general election.

Laura Barron-Lopez: And I want to get to the debate now, because there were a number of moments there that I think are worth highlighting. One of the biggest moments of the night came when Fox moderators asked this question about Trump.

Brett Baier, Host, Fox News: If former President Trump is convicted in a court of law, would you still support him as your party's choice? Please raise your hand if you would.

Laura Barron-Lopez: So, only six out of the eight did not raise their hand or said that they would not support him. Domenico, does that sum up the state of the primary race?

Domenico Montanaro: Yes. I mean, it was only Asa Hutchinson from Arkansas and Chris Christie from New Jersey who said that they would not support him. And it does sum up the primaries, and it's been this way for a while.

We had a question that we asked in our poll about this, and I was curious to see if you support Trump now, would you continue to support him if convicted? And 63 percent of Republican voters said that they would support Trump even if he was convicted of a crime.

That's really astounding. It's really stuck that way. There is, to Daniella's point, about half of the party that seems to be open to wanting to move on. They might like Trump. They may have voted for Trump, but they feel like, you know, the chaos, the baggage that they could go with someone else.

But look at how many people were on that stage. You're talking about eight people with Trump not even there, and no one really stood out as somebody who others could go to and get enough of the people who really like Trump to be able to, you know, win them over.

I mean, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former Trump U.N. ambassador, certainly had a very strong debate, but also irritated a lot of the Trump base with some of her comments. She has to hope that Ron DeSantis, who sort of like faded into the background in this debate, that maybe some of those big donors who thought he would be the guy and be the principal alternative, maybe start migrating to Haley. But we're going to have to see over the next several weeks.

There's not a whole lot, a whole lot of time left. It's only, you know, four and a half months until the Iowa caucuses.

Laura Barron-Lopez: And I want to get to Haley, but, first, another striking moment came when Fox Host Brett Baier had to address the audience when they tried to shout out Chris Christie for talking about holding Trump accountable.

Brett Baier: So, listen, the more time we spend doing this, the less time they can talk about issues you want to talk about. So, let's just get through this section.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Todd, what did that moment say to you?

Todd Zwillich: Let's just get through this section. The moderator -- this is a crowd who absolutely does not -- they don't want to think about it. They don't want to discuss it. They don't want to know about it at all.

I mean, you've ever seen a moderator turn around and tell the crowd, just get through this. I will pull this car over, Republican base. Now, that's one -- granted, that is one auditorium. It's not the entire Republican base, but it's our anecdote for now, and let's take it for what it's worth.

It goes right to your point, I think, Toluse, which is this is a party that doesn't even want to discuss it and they're going to have to contend with the fact that their favorite, their champion, their dear leader, if I can say that, may well be a convicted felon.

NPR had a poll, Reuters, Ipsos had a poll that said 52 percent of Republicans said they wouldn't vote for Trump if he were a convicted felon. Even if it's 63 who say they would, can you win an election by losing 37 percent of your own party? You cannot come close. And that's a crowd that's not contending with that reality at all.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Speaking of someone who's trying to get Republicans to contend with reality, for the first 50 minutes of the debate, there was policy discussion about climate change and on abortion. Former Ambassador Nikki Haley took a different position than most of the people in her party.

Nikki Haley, Republican Presidential Candidate: Republican president can ban abortions any more than a Democrat president could ban all those state laws. Don't make women feel like they have to decide on this issue when you know we don't have 60 Senate votes in the House.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Daniella, that's more of a general election strategy.

Daniella Diaz: It is. And she -- I thought she really won the debate on Wednesday. She was the one that was being very rational, even criticized Trump, Trump's administration and the spending that they had with. And she had data to back up everything she said, including saying that there's not enough Senate votes to pass a federal abortion ban.

She seemed to be incredibly rational when it came to policy, when it came to anything having to do with just what her experience in foreign policy, in foreign relations. And I found her to stand out the most when it came to actually trying to separate herself from Trump and criticize his administration.

Now, is that going to work right now? Who knows?

Laura Barron-Lopez: Probably not.

Daniella Diaz: Probably not. People considered her to be a winner from the debate on Wednesday. Whether that last as a long-term strategy, we'll see. She talked a lot, but so did some others on the stage who, you know, defended Trump, like Vivek Ramaswamy, who really took a lot of the oxygen from the room. And you mentioned climate change. Laura, they did ask about that. And he was the first one to say it was a hoax.

So, there was, you know, some moments that didn't feel like true discussions of policy when that was what one candidate on the stage was saying.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Just on that, Toluse, the debates about policy were somewhat substantive on abortion, on Ukraine, a little bit on climate, on deficits. But Republicans aren't really talking about that when they're out campaigning. So, what are the issues that are actually defining this primary?

Toluse Olurunnipa: Yes. It was interesting that the crowd in the auditorium seemed to say, like, move on from Trump. Let's talk more about policy. But when you talk to voters out on the trail, when you see the fact that Trump is leading by, you know, pretty significant margins, he's not talking about policy. He's talking about these culture war issues. He's talking about himself being this grievance candidate, being someone who's being persecuted. He said multiple times that I am being indicted because they want to go after you. And he's used that to great effect in the presidential primary.

And so when you look at the policies and you look at the areas that are actually motivating voters, it's Trumpism, it's, you know, these culture wars, it's this idea of grievance, it's this idea of protecting you and going after your political opponents.

And so, you know, discussion of crime and taxes and the ins and outs of climate change and different policies doesn't seem to be having as much impact as these cultural issues.

Laura Barron-Lopez: And, Domenico, you've been talking to Republican base voters quite a bit. What patterns are you hearing when you talk to them?

Domenico Montanaro: Well, you know, I mentioned earlier talking about having covered the Tea Party. And, you know, when I was out on the campaign trail and talking to Tea Party activists and whatever, people who would attend these things, sometimes they would slip and say something very offensive.

And often they'd say, oh, you know, that was off the record. You know, make sure that's that my name's not attached to that. I am not finding that to be the case anymore. Trump has won the case against political correctness. As he -- you know, we don't hear about it anymore because he's really kind of taken down that wall.

I mean, just a voter that I spoke to earlier this year, someone who had participated in one of our surveys, you know, started talking about something that really wanted to being pretty racist and was totally fine and out there and talking about it.

And I was just like, this is a total change. This is not something that is has been traditionally the way things go. This shame factor in being able to feel like we're part of polite society, and I shouldn't really feel that way, and I get it. It's just Trump has given license to a lot of people to feel a lot of ways and be able to say what they want to say. And when you hear people talk about free speech online, this is part of what they're talking about.

Laura Barron-Lopez: They're feeling more emboldened to say racist things in some cases.

Todd, before we go looking forward to next week, there are two hearings about Trump's and related to Trump's indictments. What are they and why do they matter?

Todd Zwillich: Well, things are starting to roll now. Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, he wants to remove his case to federal court. He thinks he might get a more favorable jury there. And other defendants, including Donald Trump, might try to follow him. We don't know.

He has his hearing on Monday, and we're going to learn a lot about what the evidentiary basis, about whether Mark Meadows might succeed and what that could mean for the case going forward.

And the other big hearing on Monday here in Washington, D.C., Judge Chutkan in the U.S. District Court has a scheduling hearing for the federal coup case, the four-count indictment against Donald Trump. Jack Smith wants that trial to start on January 2nd of next year. Trump's lawyers sort of say, how about never? I think April '26 is their pitch, and they're going to have a hearing to schedule that trial. And by the end of the week, we might know when that majorly important case for democracy might reach the courtroom.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Do we expect that trial to start anytime soon?

Todd Zwillich: Well, if Jack Smith gets it. Judge Chutkan has a reputation as being no-nonsense. I can't get inside of her head. There is -- prosecutors will tell you there is a chance that gets scheduled before the election, and the judge may understand the importance of scheduling that trial before the election, because it goes right to the heart of American democracy and people's choice. They want to know what kind of person they're voting for, if it's somebody who tried to overturn an election.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Yes, that's a big question, whether any of these trials will actually be completed before the election.

But we have to leave it there for now. Thank you to my panel for joining us and for sharing your reporting. And thanks to all of you for joining us as well.

Don't forget to watch "PBS NEWS WEEKEND" on Saturday for a look inside an innovative Colorado art exhibit sparking collaborations between artists and farmers.

I'm Laura Barron-Lopez. Good night from Washington.