Full Episode: Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, 11/17/23

Jeffrey Goldberg: Former President Donald Trump's rhetoric gets more extreme with each passing week.

Donald Trump, Former U.S. President: We will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.

Jeffrey Goldberg: And Trump isn't the only angry Republican on the Hill this week.

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY): The House Republican civil war rages on, including apparently acts of physical violence.

Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC): There are dumb days on Capitol Hill and there are dumber days on Capitol Hill, and this is one of the dumbest I've seen in quite a long time.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Next.

Good evening and welcome to the anger management edition of WASHINGTON WEEK.

Donald Trump has never been modulated in rhetoric or really anything else, but there's a sense out there that as he comes under increasing legal pressure, he's become more apocalyptic.

We're going to discuss this and other issues tonight with Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, Leigh Ann Caldwell, the co-author of The Washington Post's early 202 Newsletter and an anchor for Washington Post Live, Idrees Kahloon is the Washington bureau chief for The Economist, and Elaina Plott Calabro, my colleague and staff writer at The Atlantic.

All right, so we're not going to get angry at each other tonight, right, because I don't want to like use my Bernie Sanders voice to -- Idrees, welcome to the show, first time on the show. You don't get to yell at anybody.

I want to go right at this question of the way Donald Trump is presenting himself to the world. Obviously, he started in 2015 not, as I said, a modulated guy, angry, a lot of invective, but something is -- something seems to be shifting further as he deals with all this kind of chaos around him.

I wanted to read you a quote from my colleague, Tom Nichols. And Tom is somebody who previously had been very hesitant to use the word fascist to describe the ideology or the presentation of Donald Trump. But this is what he wrote yesterday: “His presence in our public life has become normalized and he continues to be treated as just another major party candidate by a hesitant media, an inattentive public and terrified GOP officials. This is the path to disaster.

The original fascists and other right-wing dictators of Europe succeeded by allying with scared elites in the face of public disorder and then once they had seized the levers of government, driving those elites from power and in many cases from existence on this planet.”

Peter, is there something new in Trump that you're witnessing?

Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: I wouldn't say it's new but I would say it's accelerated or exacerbated, right? I wrote a front-page story in The New York Times in May 2016: “Is Trump a Fascist?” So we have been having this debate now for so many years.

Jeffrey Goldberg: How would you put a question mark on it?

Peter Baker: Well there was a question mark at the time, it was a debate. Our friend, Bob Kagan, wrote a smart piece in The Washington Post that raised the issue, a number of other people raised the issue back then. But people like Tom, I think, and a lot of others were unwilling to go that far, said, “Let's not get too carried away. Authoritarian maybe? Autocratic, sure. But fascist has such a powerful –

Jeffrey Goldberg: Historical resonance.

Peter Baker: Connotation and historical resonance. So, do you want to go that far?”

But he seemed to be encouraging, he seemed to be almost welcoming it, right? He knows the language he's using is, in fact, reminiscent of these historical --

Jeffrey Goldberg: But does he know that?

Peter Baker: I think he does because he's been told it and he uses it again and again. Look at the phrase, “enemies of the people” that he used again and again about the media. He knew certainly by the third or 31st or 85th time he used it, that it had been a Stalinist phrase used to send people to the gulag and he kept using it anyway.

He knew when he used “America First,” maybe not the first time, but it was a reference to a pre-World War II Nazi-sympathizing movement in America, and he used it anyway. He said, I don't care.

I remember he used a quote in 2016 that was a Mussolini quote. And he was confronted about that. Are you really wanting to quote Mussolini? “Yes, it's just a good quote.” So, he doesn't mind flirting with that.

But I think you're right. The quote, the passage you just showed on that clip, he is more and more and more --

Jeffrey Goldberg: The vermin quote.

Peter Baker:  Yes, it's very, very, very, very --

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes. Idrees, are we -- how do you calibrate this, this question of how to present to your readers the level, like authoritarian, autocratic, fascist? Is there a danger of people in the media sort of overemphasizing the what you might call historically abnormal aspects of his presentation?

Idrees Kahloon, Washington Bureau Chief, The Economist: Yes, I think there's a risk that if we've been having these debates for seven years, that people perceive it as the media crying wolf, particularly if the rhetoric does become more hard line, as I think you've seen that it has, right?

It used to be that Trump had a sort of joking relationship with the media in addition to castigating it. But I think now there's a harder edge. You see, obviously, the vermin quote recalls the speeches that were given to Nazi Germany or Mussolini. And I think people are looking at that for no coincidental reason.

I was reading “The Anatomy of Fascism” today by Robert Paxton and looking at the definitions there. And I think that there are differences. There's a military edge to fascist movements that I think you could point to the Proud Boys and whatnot, but I think it's not quite at the level of the brown shirts and the black shirts. And then there isn't Trump for all of his sins is not a territorial expansionist. He avoids war. He doesn't have the tendencies towards internal cleansing that I think you've seen otherwise.

So, I'm personally quite trepidatious about using that word. I think, you know, illiberal democracy like Viktor Orban is something that we could safely use authoritarian tendencies, particularly if you look at his plans for what he will do if he's elected. But my trepidation remains.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. It's interesting. He certainly doesn't -- not only does he not want to invade Poland, he wants to actually leave Poland and much of Europe, which, of course, creates its own stability and opportunities for autocrats.

Elaina, talk about your own view here. You've obviously watched Trump and Trumpism for quite a while. What are the factors that are going into this ramped up language?

Elaina Plott Calabro, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: I mean, I think it's instructive to look at the Trump of 2016, who very much seemed like a candidate who was under the assumption that he was playing with house money, sort of. And there, to him, was an air of levity. He's sort of enjoying the showmanship aspect of it, and you don't get that now at all. This is about retribution now.

I've found that aspect of his presentation now to be quite striking. I mean, this is someone who genuinely believes the election was stolen from him, and that a number of people contributed to the downfall of a presidency that otherwise he believes all of America wanted to continue.

And for him becoming president now, it's not just sort of a joking, winking proposition. It's something he genuinely wants to assume that kind of power in the White House and exact revenge on enemies.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Is that because if he gets to the White House, he thinks he can solve his legal problems, or is it just a kind of a revenge play, or is it some kind of amalgamation?

Peter Baker: It's darker, and I think Elaina is right to use the word retribution. That's his word. He has said this campaign is about retribution.

The other word he's used, by the way, that we should remember as we think about his campaign is termination. He used that word in reference to the Constitution. He believed that we should terminate the Constitution in order to evict Joe Biden right now and put him right back in office without an election.

Now, a lot of people didn't pay much attention to that because, obviously, it was nonsense. It wasn't going to happen. He's just being provocative, right? But I think when somebody tells you that they want to terminate the Constitution, and they are the frontrunner for one of the two parties for president. We ought to take that kind of seriously.

And we see in our reporting from his presidency time and time again where he seemed to flirt with that. He tells John Kelly, his second chief of staff, why aren't you generals like the German generals? What do you mean by that, he says. The German generals during World War II, you mean Hitler's generals? Yes, they were very loyal to him. Well, you know, they tried to kill him three times. This is not somebody who doesn't find -- who finds fascism offensive. He's actually flirting with it.

Leigh Ann Caldwell, Co-Author, The Washington Post's Early 202: And that's actually the difference now. It's not just the rhetoric and the sharpness of the rhetoric, but it's also what he says he's going to do. He says that in his first term, he put in place people who didn't agree with him, who he wanted to go further and they stopped him, like John Kelly, like General Milley, et cetera, and he says he won't make that mistake again. And so it's beyond the rhetoric and how he's actually proposing what a second term would look like.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Idrees, we have a general understanding, because he provides that understanding that he wants to go after certain people. He's talked about General Milley, for instance, as somebody he wants to prosecute, for what he doesn't say. But are there mechanisms in place that would prevent Trump from actually doing that, should he win the presidency?

Kahloon: Well, he's already released plans saying that he doesn't think the Department of Justice is independent. He would break that norm. I mean, when you look at what the constraints are on the American president, and you see Congress, obviously you have the MAGA wing there is incredibly powerful. We see that within the House of Representatives as well.

So, that constraint might not be as binding as it once was. The senators who opposed Donald Trump, and there still remain some, but they're going away by attrition. I think that you will see the courts basically be the final, basically, check on his authority. Even those that have been appointed by him have been willing to step in. They turned away, for example, his election fraud claims. That will be some of the last lines of defense in American democracy.

It used to be the case that election workers, right? That was a very kind of nonpartisan, technocratic position by nominating people who believe the way that the election was stolen and by putting people in the state parties who are amenable to that. I think that guardrail has slipped away. So, the constraints, they're there but they're slipping.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Any chance that he can't pull off -- this is assuming that he wins the nomination, wins the election -- any chance that it's more bluster than real? Is there any chance that he couldn't find even the people to try to pull off these plans?

Peter Baker: Yes. I mean, look, he said a lot of things he never followed up on, right? I think that kind of assuaged a lot of people saying, “He just likes to say provocative things. He likes to get our dander up. He likes to get people like us talking about it on T.V. and he likes to get people worked up.” And it's true, a lot of things he talked about that were pretty outrageous, he never pursued.

But part of the reason he didn't pursue is because, as Leigh Ann said, there were the people around him who won't be around him next time and I think he will find people who will happily, you know, work toward those goals and he won't have the same checks next time.

What will impeachment do? Nothing. That's no longer a check on a president -- even, any president -- especially when he's already been impeached twice. He won't be able to run for re-election unless somehow he manages to get rid of the 22nd Amendment. We haven't heard him say that one yet, but who knows. So, there's not an election as a check. And Congress has made clear that there are limits to how much they're willing to check him or able to check him.

Jeffrey Goldberg: All of you spend a lot of time talking to senators, members of the House, including and especially on the Republican side. I'm wondering what you're hearing over the last two, three, four weeks. Obviously, they've been obsessed with, as we're going to about to talk about, elbowing each other in the kidneys and whatever, but are they noticing a change in Trump and does it make even the performatively MAGA representatives, senators, does it -- is anything giving anybody pause here?

Elaina Plott Calabro: No. And, to me, I think this is the biggest story --

Jeffrey Goldberg: She didn't wait very long to jump on that one. She was like “No, what are you talking about?”

Elaina Plott Calabro: I think this is the biggest story of the moment we're in right now, which is not so much what Trump wants to do, but what Congress will continue to allow him to do by watching main Republicans in Congress. Peter mentioned that there are people who will happily go along with Trump's plans. A lot of Republicans in Congress will go along with Trump's plans, even though they're quite unhappy about it.

Republicans in Congress face not so much a Trump problem but a Trump voter problem. They're terrified of their constituents. That relationship, I think, has fueled so much of where we find ourselves right now, which is to say that I think Republicans, the moment they get the sense that their constituents are off board with Trump, they will jump ship immediately.

This is not them sort of clinging to a last gasp, hoping that this man they perceive as a hero comes into office. It's not wanting to upset voters.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Let me -- you kind of provide an opening for an interesting -- a question that's become to me at least newly interesting in the last week or so. Their polling now is showing that Nikki Haley is kind of inching up in the public's mind, in the Republican base's mind. I mean, the numbers aren't. In the latest poll, the CNN poll, the University of New Hampshire presidential primary voters, Trump is at 42 percent, Nikki Haley at 20 percent. It's not nothing. I mean, it's not -- It doesn't say juggernaut, but it also doesn't say -- it shows movement.

And so my question is this: is this like a situation we're in right now when -- as soon as Barack Obama proved to Democratic primary voters that he was a credible candidate, there was a wave. There was this movement toward him. Is there a chance that in the Republican primary, among Republican primary voters, especially in early states, a kind of if there's just somebody who is credible, I'll jump? Anybody seeing that?

Leigh Ann Caldwell: Well, I think that beyond Trump, the voter base is fractured. So, say, let's do hypotheticals here, Ron DeSantis drops out, Chris Christie drops out in New Hampshire, and then you might actually have a real race between Nikki Haley and Donald Trump, maybe, maybe. But it doesn't seem like that's going to happen.

What I'm also watching is the donors. You have donors who are talking about coming off the sidelines, going to Nikki Haley. In 2016, I covered the Republican race, but I covered the grassroots and the donors. The donors were the last to come along to Donald Trump. The grassroots were there immediately. The donors were last. And now in 2020, I don't know if the donors maybe have the power to move the party away from Trump. And that's something that I'm going to be watching.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Idrees, am I kidding myself?

Idrees Kahloon: I mean, you know, if you look at the national polls, Trump has a 60 percent average of Republican primary voters. And in New Hampshire, obviously, she's had some momentum, but the average shows in the last month she's gone from 7 percent to 9 percent. I mean, that's something. That's positive direction.

If there were to be a scenario in which she could be competitive, it would be exactly like you outlined, you know, DeSantis dropping out, a head-to-head race. But I think even in a head-to-head race, Trump comes out ahead. Trump is still incredibly popular among Republican primary voters. They endorse his message, his philosophy for what the Republican Party ought to be. So, I mean, my feeling is that, ultimately, he does win, even if there is consolidation around Nikki Haley.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Peter Baker: Part of the problem for Nikki Haley is that the trials, the criminal trials, don't get started until March, even assuming they happen on time. That's, by that point, they have decided, right? We're heading into Super Tuesday. We'll have made up our minds, you know, as Republican voters by that point, you know, who our nominee is going to be, they won't even pick a jury until April or so.

So, you know, the idea that something would come along like a conviction would suddenly or a trial would suddenly upend the dynamics doesn't seem very likely, the timing doesn't work.

Jeffrey Goldberg: We also don't know if even a conviction would move --

Peter Baker: We don't.

Jeffrey Goldberg: -- hardcore voters.

Elaina, you've -- among other things, you just wrote an excellent profile of Kamala Harris. Talk about Nikki Haley and her chance in a general. Just give me your view.

Elaina Plott Calabro: So, Nikki Haley -- I mean, a lot of Republican candidates have sort of invoked the idea that a vote for President Biden is actually a vote for a President Kamala Harris. Nikki Haley is one who has made that pretty central to her pitch from the get-go. And, I mean, it just -- it bears out with poll after poll. Voters are concerned with President Biden's age and his ability to make it through, you know, four more years in the White House.

So, I think in a general election, Nikki Haley is someone who could probably marshal that line pretty effectively on a debate stage. But, again, the hypothetical to me is almost too far out there to even consider at that point.

Jeffrey Goldberg: That's my specialty.

Elaina Plott Calabro: I mean, to your point, when we were talking, I don't even know that a conviction at this point, were it to actually come in time or happen at all, would be enough to move enough primary voters to make something like a Nikki Haley nomination more plausible.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right, right.

Let's talk -- I want to shift focus to the Hill. And I want to show you something that happened. You've all seen this already. I assume many people at home have. I just find it hysterical, so I could watch it all day long. It's a hearing in which the senator is confronting the head of a union.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK):  You want to do it now?

Sean O’Brien, General President, Teamsters: I'd love to do it right now.

Markwayne Mullin: Well, stand your butt up then.

Sean O’Brien: You stand your butt up.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT): Hold on, stop it.

Sean O’Brien: Is that your solution to every problem?

Bernie Sanders: No, no, sit down. Sit down. You're a United States senator. Sit down, please.

Sean O’Brien: Can I respond?

Bernie Sanders: Hold it. Hold it. If we can't -- no, I have the mic. I'm sorry. Hold it. You'll have your time.

Markwayne Mullin: Okay.

Sean O’Brien: Can I respond?

Bernie Sanders: No, you can't.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Peter, you can respond.

Peter Baker: You're a United States senator.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Peter, you're not a United States senator. I mean, look, we have a lot of dignity here. We're not the United States Senate, so we're not going to do that.

But the deeper question, the serious question is, I mean, apart from like, “Oh, for God's sake, what are you guys doing over there?” Is this just a sign of the general coarsening of the discourse, as they say, or is this a sign of a particular anger moment in the Republican caucus, both on the Senate and House side. What are we watching?

Peter Baker: It's striking that happened in the Senate side. I mean, Leigh Ann knows better than I do, but this is not something that would surprise me quite so much if it happened on the House side. There are quite a few combustible figures on the House.

Elaina Plott Calabro: I thought I had misread it for a second. It had to have been a --

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes. Why is Bernie Sanders there?

Peter Baker: Right. Bernie Sanders turns out to be the calm guy. He's the guy who's the voice of reason guys, you know, don't get up there. I don't know. It just -- it is of the moment, right? Our politics today are full of performative acts of macho behavior on the part of overgrown --

Leigh Ann Caldwell: That lead to fundraising.

Peter Baker: That lead to fundraising.

Jeffrey Goldberg: That lead to fundraising.

Peter Baker: Yes. He didn't back down. He didn't apologize, didn’t he?

Leigh Ann Caldwell: No. He's fundraising off of it. He has T-shirts now.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Leigh Ann, I want you to watch another. This is a shorter clip of Kevin McCarthy, and then you're going to be the anthropologist that explains what happened with the elbow in the kidney. But watch this for a second.

Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA): No, I did not elbow him. No, I did not elbow him. I would not hit him in the kidney.

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN): That was deliberate. It was just a cheap shot by a bully.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Can you explain what happened to the extent that anybody can explain what happened?

Leigh Ann Caldwell: Right. I mean, well, Kevin McCarthy is happy to be back at the center of attention for a moment. So, Kevin McCarthy is still extremely angry.

Tim Burchett, let's remember, is one of the eight people who voted to oust McCarthy from his job. And so McCarthy has especially hard feelings about Tim Burchett. Whenever he's asked about it, he singles not only Matt Gaetz and Nancy Mace but to Tim Burchett out.

But I will say what is happening in the Republican conference is trying there in this post-McCarthy world where even people I'm talking to who were allies of Kevin McCarthy are now out of it and saying we didn't realize how dark of a time it was. My sources say, you know, McCarthy was very good at pitting members against each other, very good at making us very tense and distrustful of each other.

And so the fact that Mike Johnson became speaker simply because he did not have an enemy is absolutely true. We've reported that, others have reported that, and it is because people were sick and tired of not liking the person who was the leader.

Jeffrey Goldberg: But the MAGA faction is already annoyed at him over his speaker-like behavior over the last couple of weeks, right? I mean, how long does it last before he becomes the target of this elbow faction or whatever you want to call it?

Elaina Plott Calabro: I mean, this has been the story ever since the Freedom Caucus was launched, right? And I think a lot of people, obviously, correctly at the time predicted that getting -- kind of allowing this motion to vacate and like limiting the threshold for what's required for that to happen was eventually going to take someone down. John Boehner resigned, of course, before it could take him.

But this was essentially we're just waiting for this moment. And it doesn't matter at this point I think who would become speaker these sorts of, you know, battle lines would just settle back into place.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Peter, is there -- not that I'm asking for an over or under but does Mike Johnson have a formula that will help keep him in power or is this anger faction, whatever you want to call it, are they just kind of chaos-makers?

Peter Baker: They are chaos-makers and he knows that. He's been part of that, obviously. But he, for the moment, is -- you know, it's on the job training. He is literally the least experienced member of Congress to serve as speaker, I think, in 140 years, and the guy 140 years ago only had like a couple more months on him. So, it really is a unique experience where he is learning as he goes.

He has goodwill because he doesn't have the enemies, and you heard people say, right, “Well, yes, he did the same thing Kevin McCarthy did, but at least he doesn't lie to us, at least we trust him.” And there is, you know, this honeymoon period he's going to have. The question is how long it lasts, and he's trying to figure it out. And, obviously, he's never been put in this position. He's never been a committee chairman, much less the chairman or head of a party.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Literally people in his own caucus barely knew him and Democrats were Googling him, famously.

Elaina Plott Calabro: That's what's required to not be an enemy. People just don't know.

Jeffrey Goldberg: People don't know you, right. Lay low and then you'll get your moment.

Idrees, I'm going to give the last word to you on this. Tie it all together in 58 seconds.

Idrees Kahloon: Sure.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I'm very curious about -- I mean, obviously we've been through periods in America of extreme anger and it's manifested itself on Capitol Hill. The 1850s come to mind, obviously. But is there is Pandora's Box been opened by the norm-breaking, the norm-busting of Donald Trump? Now obviously, there might be some gradation and difference in what Trump is doing, but this has been going on for quite some time. Is this somehow all related or are these just random, disparate events?

Idrees Kahloon: I think they're related to the general coarsening of American politics. I think that Kevin McCarthy is specifically mad about being kicked out and he's venting some spleen, I guess, in more ways than one. But then if you look overall, if you look at polling, like 25 percent of Americans say that political violence might be necessary to save democracy. And you see that in the senator's interactions, right? There's been this complete dehumanization of the other side, and that is the most powerful force, I think, in American politics.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Well, unfortunately, we need to leave it there for now but I want to thank our panelists for joining us and for sharing their reporting.

And on PBS News Weekend tomorrow, how nurse practitioners are filling a much-needed health care gap.

And check out theatlantic.com for the latest on Washington politics and the war in the Middle East.

I am Jeffrey Goldberg. Good night from Washington.