Full Episode: Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, 9/22/23

Jeffrey Goldberg: The speaker and extremists, can Kevin McCarthy gain control of the House?

Reporter: You believe the government is going to shut down?

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL): Yes, and it's Kevin McCarthy's fault.

Jeffrey Goldberg: A very strange and dysfunctional week on Capitol Hill as Republicans fight among themselves about government funding and many other things as well.

Then --

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY): Ukraine will be yet another endless quagmire funded by the American taxpayer.

Jeffrey Goldberg: -- Ukraine's president visits Capitol Hill looking for weapons and support, but some people aren't buying his arguments.

Plus --

Unidentified Female: The nomination is confirmed.

Jeffrey Goldberg: -- the Pentagon is finally allowed to fill key positions, but only because the Senate has figured out a temporary way around Tommy Tuberville's chokehold, next.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

So, the question on my mind this week, or one question at least, is this. Why would anyone want to be the speaker of the House? I get it, there's great health and dental, and you never have to look for a parking spot, which in Washington is a big deal, actually. But the job sounds like pure misery.

For instance, here's what the former speaker, John Boehner, looks like in retirement, and here's what Kevin McCarthy looks like. So, I think you get my point.

Capitol Hill unhappiness, unhappiness that's rooted in rules and behavior so arcane that most normal people have a hard time understanding what's happening, means that the government might lose its funding soon, and it also means that great matters of war and peace, including Ukraine's attempt to defeat Vladimir Putin get caught in the grinding gears of legislative branch dysfunction.

So many questions. To give us the answers, I have three very smart people here with me. Steve Inskeep is the host of NPR's morning edition, and the author of the forthcoming book, Differ We Must, How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America, Vivian Salama, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal, and Manu Raju is CNN's chief congressional correspondent, and starting this weekend, the new host of Inside Politics Sunday. Congratulations on the --

Manu Raju, Chief Congressional Correspondent, CNN: Thank you.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Listen, if you need advice on hosting a show, I've been doing this for five weeks. And so I am here --

Manu Raju: It's going great.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I'm here for you. I got a lot of accumulated knowledge.

Manu, I want to start with you, but before we even start, I want you to watch a brief video clip of war correspondent in action. Let's put that up.

Manu Raju: I'm curious, why change your position?

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA): I never change my position.

Manu Raju: You don't play (INAUDIBLE).

Kevin McCarthy: You know what's interesting to me, so you don't care about any of the answers?

Manu Raju: I'm just asking about your words, why did you change your words?

Kevin McCarthy: Okay. Well, let me answer your question, because I answered it every single day, if you could answer me every single day.

Jeffrey Goldberg: So --

Manu Raju: That's a daily occurrence.

Jeffrey Goldberg: You guys seemed close.

Manu Raju: Yes, that's what I heard.

Jeffrey Goldberg: So, first of all, what was that about?

Manu Raju: Yes.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Second, am I wrong or am I overstating the case when I think that Kevin McCarthy is just having a pretty miserable time trying to be speaker of the House?

Manu Raju: It's very difficult right now. That specific interaction was actually -- I believe it was last week's story, although it's kind of all blurred together when they moved forward on the impeachment inquiry. Remember, just days earlier, he had said publicly they would actually have a vote to actually initiate the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, and he changed his mind. He didn't have a vote and he wouldn't explain why.

So, I was trying to ask him why you changed your mind and he just simply wouldn't do it --

Jeffrey Goldberg: The temerity.

Manu Raju: Exactly, exactly.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.

Manu Raju: But, look, this has been the story of this Congress for Kevin McCarthy and this is why they spent so much money to try to get in the big majority in the last midterm elections, and they failed to get a big majority. Now, if he loses votes, four votes or five, you can only afford to lose four Republican votes, and any party line votes, those five members who want to give him fits can give him fits.

And the problem is being a Republican House speaker in particular is that those members on the far right, they don't care what their leadership says. They march to their own beat. And as a result, you're seeing them tie him up in knots as they are pushing a whole host of measures on the spending fight.

And McCarthy has made the calculated decision. He needs to keep the government open by getting Republicans on board and passing a Republican-only bill out of the House to try to force his way with the Senate and negotiations with the Senate, rather than moving on a bipartisan approach in the House where he can get Democratic support. Why? Because one of those members, if he goes to the Democratic route, could seek a vote for his ouster and push him out as speaker. And that is really what's driving his calculations here as he struggles to keep the government open.

Jeffrey Goldberg: A quick follow-up for you. Does Kevin McCarthy make it a full year as speaker?

Manu Raju:  You know, it is a day by day for him right now. It really is. And this is the thing. I expect a vote as soon as next week initiated by Matt Gaetz to call for his ouster. At that same point, five members, they vote no, they can kick him out. But he says he's not going to go anywhere. He's going to grind it out like he did in January. Can he win? We'll see.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Is Matt Gaetz actually in charge of America right now?

Steve Inskeep, Host, Morning Edition, NPR: I'm just marveling at the timing of that vote. Is anything else going on in the next few days that Congress needs to do rather than decide who is speaker of the House? I don't think Matt Gaetz is in control of anything particularly, but he has a lot of media attention and in this circumstance he has leverage.

I mean, the simple thing that -- I mean, it's a simple truth that apparently is alluding people in politics you need a majority. In Congress you need a majority. McCarthy has not accumulated one. Manu has pointed to the place where you would go to get it. You would have to go to Democrats, but has decided that the price is too high for him, I guess, at the moment.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes. Vivian, I mean, the question is, are we definitely heading toward a government shutdown?

Vivian Salama, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal: Well, as we sit here, lawmakers have packed up and are heading home for the weekend. They will not be back until Tuesday. They have only a few more days left to negotiate. If by midnight on October 1st, the parts of the government that need appropriations bills do not have approval, we're going for a shutdown. And right now, I mean, based on everything Manu just said, it's not looking good.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Manu, come back to this question. I'm just so interested in this. The speaker's job in better circumstances, if he had a bigger majority, would be doable, or is there some culture shift that is permanent?

Manu Raju: Yes. I mean, look, I think after the 2010 midterms that really ushered in this new Tea Party wave of members in the Republican conference, those were the members who simply had a much different view of government. As McCarthy himself said this week, these are some of the members who want to burn the place down. They simply don't believe in the institutions. They don't care what their leadership says. And they're the ones who drove John Boehner from the speakership by making that same threat, a motion to actually kick him out of the speakership, which is why he resigned in 2015.

Now with that narrow majority, it's much very, very difficult because those members that he needs to keep in line are just not going to listen to him here.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Is there anything he could do to get them to listen?

Manu Raju: He's tried everything. I mean, he has really tried -- I mean, he has tried to keep the government open with a short-term spending bill for a month that includes everything they asked for. But there are a handful of members who say they're just not going to vote for a short-term bill to keep the government open no matter what.

So, he said there are about seven of those. So, he can only lose those four if he goes along party lines. And therein lies his conundrum.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. And correct me if I'm wrong, but there's no --

Steve Inskeep: I'm happy to do that all the time.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, and you have him to past, so I'm sure we'll continue. The Senate is not going to buy whatever the Congress winds of selling them anyway.

Steve Inskeep: There's no way. Of course, Senators are talking -- Manu has reported about this. Senators are talking about passing their own resolution first. Normally they would wait for the House to act first, but they're not going to accept whatever the House passes. This is, in a way, symbolic. Even if they passed a bill, it's not going to be the law.

Manu Raju: That's absolutely right. They're going to spend all this time on a bill that's going nowhere. And the Senate, the challenge for the Senate, is such a slow-moving body, one member can slow it down. Rand Paul, who you showed earlier, is planning to slow it down if it includes Ukraine aid. So, it could take all week next week just to pass the Senate bill, and then they got to figure out how to get it through the House, and that is a huge, huge question.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Steve raises a point that's kind of infused with a bit of existential ennui. If it's not going to go anywhere, and it doesn't mean anything, why are we even talking about it?

Steve Inskeep: Is that the question you're putting?

Jeffrey Goldberg: I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. That's for our second hour.

Steve Inskeep: I guess you can say as part of the process, I mean, even a bill that doesn't become law maybe sets the parameters for negotiation, but that presumes then that you're willing to negotiate.

Manu Raju: Yes, and it's a political argument, because they can say, we passed a bill, passed our bill, keep the government open, and you scream at Schumer, Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, they're not passing a bill.

So, it is, but if they don't pass anything, then it's very clearly they're at fault of a government shutdown.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Vivian, let's talk for a minute about another aspect of Capitol Hill dysfunction, Tommy Tuberville's holds on Pentagon nominations or Pentagon promotions. This week, kind of figured out a little bit of a maneuver to get a couple of folks, some of the key personnel, in their permanent jobs. But give us a sort of state of play. Where is this right now? And why does Tommy Tuberville, a freshman senator from Alabama, why does he have so much power over the entire promotion system for flag officers, for general officers in the military?

Vivian Salama: This has been a thorn on the side of the administration since day one, but particularly in the last few months, where you do have Tuberville essentially trying to push back and hold out. This is something that has happened in the past also with other lawmakers, including Ted Cruz, who have pushed nominees.

Jeffrey Goldberg: But never with uniformed officers, right?

Vivian Salama: But never with uniformed officers. And this is something now that the administration has been going out there and really trying to attack him to say, you are endangering the national security of our country.

So, right now, we are at a point where the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Mark Milley, is on the verge of retirement. And, finally, they were able to push forward partially because Chuck Schumer and others were said, enough is enough, we need to make this happen.

And so they are going to push forward with at least C. Q. Brown, who you showed earlier. He was the head of the Air Force and now he's the presumptive next chairman of the Joint Chiefs. But there are still dozens and dozens.

Manu Raju: There's about 300.

Vivian Salama:  Yes, hundreds, thank you, thank you, hundreds more that are still up and waiting. And there doesn't seem to be any movement on that.

Jeffrey Goldberg: But it doesn't seem like the administration is gripped by this as a primary concern. There seems to be somewhat of a lackadaisical effort to try to move Tuberville off this.

Steve Inskeep: Well, you have to ask what the administration can do. I think this White House likes to approach problems that they can actually deal with, and they also do try to do things behind the scenes. But self-interest, in a way, works against them, because Tuberville is using a power of holding nominations that all senators have. It's a tradition, it's a custom. Any senator can stop a nomination for a period of time or, apparently, forever.

And if they were to overcome that in Tuberville's case, they would be losing their own -- they'd be throwing away their own power to do that at some point.

Manu Raju: And I've asked Tuberville many times about what will it take for you to back off. And it's really one thing. He wants Pentagon to change his policy to provide reimbursements for personnel who seek abortions out of state if their procedure is banned in that particular state. It's really nothing short of that.

And, in some ways, Schumer's hands was forced this week by Tuberville, who was going to use a rare parliamentary procedure to try to schedule the votes on these individual nominations himself. Schumer had resisted having those individual votes because he believed giving in -- doing that, would be giving into Tuberville, wanting to simply approve all of them in one block.

But because Tuberville took that maneuver, Schumer preempted him and moved forward with those handful of nominees here. So, the question is what's going to happen for the other few hundred.

Vivian Salama: And he got some flak for that, because they said, why did it take you so long then to move forward into that?

Jeffrey Goldberg: Can you, Vivian, just stay on the subject for one more turn. What is the impact on military readiness of Tuberville's actions?

Vivian Salama: Extraordinary. You know, it's not just about military readiness. It's about the impact on the families of these military families who don't know where they're moving to next month. They have to put their kids in school. The school year just started and they don't know where their next posting is going to be. I mean, the list goes on and on.

Obviously, military readiness is something that is very, very important in terms of putting people in certain bases and, you know, essentially executing military policy in that way. But the impact on the families is so significant. And that is something that weighs heavily on the military as well.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. And correct me if I'm wrong, but these officers, uniformed officers, aren't the people who make these policies that Tuberville is objecting to in any case.

Vivian Salama: Of course not.

Jeffrey Goldberg: It's a Biden administration policy.

Vivian Salama: They're very much victimized by the whole back and forth.

Steve Inskeep: That's got to be part of the frustration. How would you like to be stuck in this way and know that you had nothing to do with it to begin with?

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Steve --

Steve Inskeep: Yes.

Jeffrey Goldberg: To be fair, I did try to book Abraham Lincoln on tonight. He wasn't available, so we got the next best thing. This is your book and it's absolutely fascinating.

Steve Inskeep: Thank you.

Jeffrey Goldberg: The question for you is, and I asked this in seriousness, you spent a lot of time studying how Lincoln, in a very polarized Washington, got people to compromise and got people to agree with him when they disagreed. What would Lincoln say if he were the speaker in the House? And, by the way, this is non-refutable. You could say anything you want, because he's not going to comment.

Steve Inskeep: It's a counterfactual. It's hypothetical. I think there are a few things that I learned from studying Lincoln that do apply. One is what I said before, a majority matters. You need to build a majority. And Lincoln was not practicing the kind of politics that I think we recognize today, base politics, playing to your base, playing to your most extreme members, trying to grow the extreme wing of your party. He was reaching over to other people to try to build a majority.

He wasn't trying to agree with everybody. He ended up being the president who fought a war against another part of the country. So he wasn't getting everybody onto his side. But he was trying to keep a majority on his side. And he sometimes crossed party lines to do that. He changed parties himself at one point to do that. He also -- this is pertinent to McCarthy's situation, was willing to step aside for the good of the cause. 

There was a Senate race in 1855 where it was a vote in a legislature to be the next senator. And he realized he could not do it for his side. He couldn't get the majority for his side but another guy on his side could. And he stepped back and let that other guy become senator. That's a thing that you can do. I don't know that McCarthy actually can do that. Who else would be speaker? That may not actually be a relevant question here.

McCarthy might be the most reasonable, the best possible choice to be speaker right now, for all we know, given that we don't know what the alternative would be.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right, right. What are the -- when Abraham Lincoln did that sort of selfless act, selfless political act, was that more common in that age or was he just uncommon?

Steve Inskeep: Oh, no, plenty of selfishness in that age.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I understood that. But was that an extraordinary manifestation of this man's character?

Steve Inskeep: It was impressive. He also was a far-thinking guy. He was just getting engaged in building this new party, the Republican Party, incidentally, which was anti-slavery party. He wasn't even formally a Republican at that point. And he was, in stepping back, getting a win for the cause, defeating his rival who was on the other side in that particular battle. And he was also building up credit for himself in the future. He was running for the Senate. He lost that seat. He gave it to somebody else. But then he became the party's nominee the next time around.

And he was aware that people acted out of interest and self-interest, and that he had self-interest as well. But he tried to align that with a higher cause, which is something that he did in that case.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Let's talk about somebody who we all know, I think all of us have interviewed him, president of Ukraine, President Zelenskyy, who actually admires Abraham Lincoln quite a bit. And I'm sure he said that.

Steve Inskeep: We didn't discuss that. I would have handed in the book.

Jeffrey Goldberg: You know, you could have missed an opportunity there.

Steve Inskeep: I seriously thought about that.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, no, you should.

Steve Inskeep: I'll send it to him.

Jeffrey Goldberg: You should, yes, send it to Kyiv.

President Zelenskyy shows up in Washington. It's not like the last time. There's no joint session of Congress. There are people who aren't as interested in funding the Ukraine wars there used to be.

Vivian, let's start with the visit itself. Was it from President Zelenskyy's perspective successful? 

Vivian Salama: Well, it was the day after, if you will, because today, on Friday, it was announced that he was going to get ATACMS. The ATACMS are these long-range missile systems that he has been asking for all along and saying that is going to be -- yes, exactly.

Jeffrey Goldberg: They spend a lot of time coming up with it, yes, with those ATACMS.

Vivian Salama: Exactly. And so on Friday, it seemed apparent that the Biden administration, after months and months of hesitation, was finally going to agree to that. And that, for President Zelenskyy, was a win because that was something he believes would break this stalemate, essentially, that is occurring on the battlefield right now in Ukraine. So, for that reason, it was.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Vivian Salama: But also, enthusiasm in Washington is waning, and that was very apparent. And that, for him, is something that's alarming because this war is not ending anytime soon and he needs to know, he wanted to leave here with assurances that he was still going to have America having his back.

Jeffrey Goldberg: One quick thing about these processes that we've now witnessed for quite a while, the administration starts by saying, the Ukrainians are never going to get X, and then the next week, they get X. Could you explain why we've seen this over and over again?

Vivian Salama: On one of my visits to Ukraine, I had a very senior general who would tell me, you know, the Americans are really slow to respond, but when they do, it's like lightning. And that is something that they have seen versus the British government, for example, that just sends and sends, reacts very quickly, and a couple of others.

But the U.S. weapons systems are essentially the best. There's nothing better than them. The U.S. has given more weapons than any other country, and so they can't afford to alienate the United States. But there is frustration, and especially because the big offensive that we've been waiting for this entire year is really moving slowly, there's a high rate of attrition, and they're taking back very little territory. We still have the Russians holding a land bridge over the Black Sea, and that's very dangerous for them.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Manu, how popular is the Ukraine cause on the Hill?

Manu Raju: Yes. I think it still has wide support. The question is does it have enough support, the right support, meaning the speaker of the House. It's really that's what it is. Because if you put it on for a vote in the Senate, you're probably getting 75 votes, maybe 80 votes. It's going to pass easily. You saw the bipartisan showing with Schumer and McConnell next to Zelenskyy walking through the Capitol. That was very obvious. On the House side, it was not McCarthy and Hakeem Jeffries walking along with Zelenskyy. It was just Jeffries.

Now, McCarthy is because he is facing pressure from his right flank, folks who don't want to spend a dime more, the same people we were just talking about. And that is what is driving his handling of this. And if he doesn't want to put this on the floor, it won't get on the floor.

Jeffrey Goldberg: What would McCarthy do if he were just following his conscience?

Manu Raju: I think he would get behind Ukraine. He was there, and he was very supportive of this. Look, this could be a big flashpoint in the government shutdown fight. Chuck Schumer told me yesterday that he wants to add it to the bill to keep the government open by the end of this month. That wouldn't force McCarthy to make a decision on this issue.

Vivian Salama: And, by the way, Jeff, I don't think that -- you know, we talk about Donald Trump and whether or not he would come back and that alarms the Ukrainians. I'm not entirely convinced that Donald Trump would reject sending more aid to Ukraine. It could just be political rhetoric.

Remember, Donald Trump was the one who approved Javelins another kind of weapons system that the Ukrainians were desperate for when the Obama administration said no.

Steve Inskeep: I feel that one way to read McCarthy, and you'll correct me, is that he is trying to bring support behind the cause of Ukraine. And there was a kind of drama in the last several days where he says, I have questions, I have serious questions for Zelenskyy. And then he met Zelenskyy and walked out and said, oh, he answered all my questions. And that can be part of a process of building support.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Speaking of which, you've interviewed Zelenskyy this week. Did he answer all your questions?

Steve Inskeep: He responded to all my questions, yes, which is a slightly different thing, but I enjoyed the conversation.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Tell us the highlights and answer specifically, specifically, how worried is he about Congress?

Steve Inskeep: He is worried about Congress. And, in fact, it's related to the story we just told. McCarthy had questions about how U.S. money has been spent. Zelenskyy, of course, is over in Ukraine and is aware that there are these concerns in Congress that this is one of the questions that's going to be raised. How are they spending American money?

And this first time there was a whiff of corruption in their defense ministry, they let go of the defense minister, who was very powerful, and Vivian knows all about this, and got rid of a number of top people, other top people in the defense ministry. Zelenskyy then comes to the United States and is able to tell Kevin McCarthy that. McCarthy walks out of the meeting with Zelenskyy and says, hey, he's really on top of things here. He got rid of all these defense ministry officials.

In our interview, in talking about that specific incident, Zelenskyy said, one reason we have to be on top of corruption immediately is because otherwise we will lose the support of our partners. So, he's changing personnel in Kyiv with a mind to keep Congress on board.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. I want to just read a quick quote from Mark Milley, who I interviewed quite a bit over the last several months. It's a fascinating quote about the centrality of the Ukraine cause.

We the Americans are the primary authors of the basic rules of the road, and these rules are under stress and they're fraying at the edges. That's why Ukraine is so important. President Putin has made a mockery of those rules. He's making a mockery of everything. He is making a direct frontal assault on the rules that were written in 1945.

Based on all of your assessment of where the Republicans are, or for that matter, many people in the Democratic Party, do you think that the Ukraine cause can be sustained over the long term? Because as you note, and you've been plenty of time in the battlefields in Ukraine, going on offense is hard, and it could be a long slog. Give me your -- in the last minute we have, give me your very quick assessments of the staying power of this issue.

Steve Inskeep: Zelenskyy said he thought the hardest part of the war was over. My feeling is closer to yours, that it's hard to see how the hardest could be over at this time.

Manu Raju: And, look, I think that on the Hill that the question is how much more money will the U.S. have to commit to this, and that is one area of concern that this $24 billion, even if it is improved, how many more tranches of cash will the U.S. ask for to help Ukraine, can that get approved, all huge questions.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Vivian, last word to you on this.

Vivian Salama: One of the things I hear from Europeans all the time is that we don't know what the future is going to be for Ukraine. And so right now we want to help them, but we also fear for the future there could be a government change, something could happen that could really change the face of Eastern Europe.

And so there's a lot of eyes on the situation, but it's going to take a long time.

Jeffrey Goldberg: It is a fascinating conversation, very, very smart people. Thank you very much for doing this. Unfortunately, we have to leave it there. But I want to thank our panelists for joining us and sharing all of your reporting.

You can read excerpts of Steve's new book, Differ We Must, How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America. And, actually, you can read it on theatlantic.com this Monday. And also thanks to all of you for joining us.

On tomorrow's PBS News Weekend, driverless taxis, are they the way of the future or a dangerous idea?

I am Jeffrey Goldberg. Good night from Washington.