Full Episode: Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, 11/24/23

Lisa Desjardins: As pressure builds on Speaker Mike Johnson and some anger as well, a top Freedom Caucus member puts him on notice.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX): I want my Republican colleagues to give me one thing, one material, meaningful, significant thing the Republican majority has done when we come back from Thanksgiving.

I am hearing lots of promises about what we will do. Well, let me just lay down a marker and lay down a gauntlet here. We better damn well do it.

Lisa Desjardins: The uphill battle ahead when Congress returns, next.

Good evening and welcome to WASHINGTON WEEK. I'm Lisa Desjardins. Jeffrey Goldberg is away.

Representative Mike Johnson has been the speaker of the House for a month, and it seems the honeymoon may be over. Anger and frustration are growing from some hard right members in his caucus over government spending. And with Republicans holding a razor-thin majority in the House, every GOP vote matters.

When Congress returns to Washington in the coming days, Speaker Johnson's to-do list is long and his moves will be closely scrutinized by Republicans and Democrats alike.

To preview what's ahead, we're joined by Nikole Killion, a congressional correspondent for CBS News, and here with me in studio, Carl Hulse, the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, Toluse Olorunnipa is the White House bureau chief for The Washington Post, and Susan Page, the Washington bureau chief at USA Today.

What a gathering of people. Carl, I want to start with you. Speaker Johnson, this is some kind of on-the-job training that you can't really prepare for, but how do you think he's doing? What is he getting right and where is he not stepping right?

Carl Hulse, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Well, it depends what party you're in. If you were a Democrat, you're looking at him saying, well, he agreed and we were able to get a short-term continuing resolution, stopgap spending through and into next year.

But if you're Chip Roy, who was ranting there on the floor, part of the Freedom Caucus, you're thinking, Mike Johnson, he's supposed to be one of us. What happened to you, Mike? We hardly knew you, right? He made this deal that has them very unhappy.

There's a lot of work on spending to be done. He's going to be really tested in these next few weeks into next year. And he said himself that he won't do any more short-term deals. That was a tough pledge that he made there. And he may find at some point he has to walk that back.

I think that he -- the conservatives are looking at him saying, we've given you a little leeway, but you don't have much.

Lisa Desjardins: We're going to come back to this situation he's created for himself in just a few minutes. But, Nikole, I want to ask you, Representative Mike Johnson just two months ago voted no on a continuing resolution, just like the one that he shepherded through as speaker.

So, Nikole, I want to ask you, is this a road to Damascus conversion here, or is this just he will be different as speaker as he was as representative? How do you see what's happened with Mike Johnson?

Nikole Killion, Congressional Correspondent, CBS News: I think he has to face the political realities of the makeup of the House of representatives. I mean, it's clear that, you know, in order to pass that temporary spending bill, the bottom line is he needed Democratic support, and so he had to make some concessions to get there.

You know, one thing I think is interesting is that when I first asked him about his plans for government spending a couple of weeks back, that's when we first heard this notion of a laddered C.R., which ultimately was the step that he ended up going with, even though, you know, they dropped that ladder term and just called it a two-step or two-prong extension.

But that being said, you know, I think it just shows how much Speaker Mike Johnson has to thread the needle here, because that was an idea that was introduced by a more conservative member of the conference. But, again, at the end of the day, it took overwhelmingly Democratic votes to get that passed.

And so, you know, how he navigates those dynamics, particularly with a narrow majority. I mean, he basically kind of is in the same predicament that Kevin McCarthy was. And I think that is also interesting because, you know, as you mentioned, it's still maybe kind of this honeymoon period for Mike Johnson where he is getting a little bit of a grace period from members, maybe who didn't like the fact that he took this step. But that honeymoon period may be running out.

Lisa Desjardins: I don't know. I'm calling it a step ladder. I'm not sure we're even going to talk about that again.

But, Susan, I want to ask you about this. We heard the word concessions there, but Jeffery called it last week, the anger caucus, the Republicans. How does Mike Johnson deal with that anger caucus? And I especially want to ask you about the roots of that. Freedom Caucus is relatively new, but where does this go back to and how does that help Johnson in facing it?

Susan Page, Washington Bureau Chief, USA Today: You know, I think this group of Republicans who are very conservative, not just conservative, but willing to blow things up, not so interested in governing, more interested in making a point. It goes back to 1994 and Newt Gingrich winning control of the House of Representatives for the Republicans for the first time in decades.

And since then, we have seen different iterations of this group with the Tea Party and now with the Freedom Caucus. But the dilemma for Republican leaders is that their highest priority is not what most of Washington thinks of as the fundamentals of government, like keeping the government doors open. Their fundamentals are more making a political point regardless of the cost.

And when you have a margin like Speaker Johnson has, that is really a tough job. He can now only lose four Republican votes to get a majority in the House without any Democratic support. And, you know, if they kick out George Santos next week, like we think they might, that would be down to three, three Republicans. If four Republicans desert him, he has lost that unless he lines up Democrats.

Lisa Desjardins: Toluse, what does this mean for the Biden administration? Because this is a White House that does want to govern, but there is also a political upside to them for chaos in the House and Republicans. How do they navigate this world? What do they want from Mike Johnson?

Toluse Olorunnipa, White House Bureau Chief, The Washington Post: Yes, you said it exactly correct. They have the political side, which they are focusing on the chaos in the Republican caucus. They're focusing on the fact that we've had all of this turbulence over the past several months in which Republicans defenestrated one of their speakers, took a long time to get another speaker in, and then now haven't been able to figure out how to govern.

And so they want to point to the Republicans and say, if you go back to a Republican candidate for president, this is what you're going to get, a lot of chaos, a lot of the Trump-era chaos that we had four years ago. But at the same time, like you said, they do need to govern. They do need to pass bills to keep the government open. They do need to pass bills to sort of fund some of these priorities, especially when it comes to foreign policy, the war that we see going on in Gaza right now, also the war in Ukraine.

They have a lot of things that they need, Republicans, to get behind, but they are taking advantage of the fact that the politics favor the Democrats in this situation.

Lisa Desjardins: I want to come back to that test that it seems Speaker Johnson set up for himself and also play sort of how he has responded to fellow Republicans like Chip Roy who say, hey, you surrendered here over this first funding bill. Here's what he said to us about that responding.

Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA): We're not surrendering. We're fighting. But you have to be wise about choosing the fights. You've got to fight fights that you can win.

It took decades to get into this mess.

I can't turn an aircraft carrier overnight.

Lisa Desjardins: Aircraft carriers might be easier to turn than the House, right?

Carl Hulse: Yes.

Lisa Desjardins: I mean, I don't really understand this chess move of saying no more temporary funding, but did he just sort of checkmate himself? How does this work?

Carl Hulse: Yes, he's put a lot of pressure on himself. Obviously, he's trying to say, hey, don't blame me. This was created by a lot of other people. And we're talking about the laddered C.R., which is a funny term. But, really, what he did is basically just funded the government at the Democratic levels for the next six weeks, say.

So, he's got himself in a fix. But he -- I don't know how he is going to actually resolve this, because you just have people on the right who aren't going to vote for anything that the Democrats and the Senate are willing to vote for and I don't think the Democrats in the House are going to be able to take some of those deals either. There is this automatic 1 percent cut that kicks in if they can't get a deal. And I think we all better start thinking a lot more about that.

Susan Page: You know, you talked about Republicans being surprised by this, taking a second look at this laddered C.R. and was enough maybe to get a couple of them on board. Democrats were surprised by it. And, you know, the initial reaction from Democrats was to see a trap there. Senator Patty Murray called it the stupidest thing she had ever heard. But then Democrats looked at it and they saw it had no spending cuts. So, it was exactly what they were -- had been seeking. So, they voted for it.

And that raised the hackles of a lot of the Republicans who do not want to have deals that involve Democratic support, and that is the dilemma that he faces.

Carl Hulse: And also he was saying that, well, look, I did this to get us past Christmas and the usual omnibus crunch. Okay. Well, you did that, but it's really just into January. So, I mean, he was making a lot of explanations for what he did. But in the end, what he did was really cave to the Democrats.

Lisa Desjardins: Now, we have this funding fight. We have a very serious situation ahead of us in January and February. But right now, we also have two allies at war. We have got Israel, Ukraine, neither funded. We hear -- we know many of our sources, the White House, and on Capitol Hill, demanding that funding, saying we need it as soon as possible.

Nikole, I want to ask you how you see this going ahead for Speaker Johnson. Do you think he is committed to funding both? Does he have to pick one? December could be do or die for funding for both of these sets of allies.

Nikole Killion: I think the speaker is going to continue to tell the fact that the House did pass that standalone bill to fund Israel at some $14 billion. And he has expressed support for continuing aid to Ukraine but with conditions and likely tying this to border security in some fashion.

And so we know over in the Senate there have been similar discussions where we know there's been a bipartisan group of senators that have kind of been working to craft something, because, ideally, of course, this will ultimately involve the Senate as well. And we know Leader Schumer even this week reiterated that it is important to pass a humanitarian package not only to assist those in Israel and Gaza but also to deal with some of these other issues.

So, I think we'll kind of have to look to the Senate first to see how things go there if they're able to bundle Israel, if they're able to bundle Ukraine and border security in a way that's palatable to House Republicans. But as we know, Lisa, that is a very uphill climb for both chambers. I think it really casts things in doubt, especially since there is no hard deadline for this too. And we know Congress always works best when they have a deadline.

Lisa Desjardins: There are a lot of layers to all of this. There's divide on the Republican side over this, but there's also issues for President Biden when we talk about these aid packages.

Toluse, you were someone who won a Pulitzer Prize, good opportunity to mention, for your coverage of race in this country with your book, His Name is George Floyd. And I want to ask you about how the Biden administration is seeing this rise in pushback at them over their Middle Eastern policy and then also over issues here about identity.

Toluse Olorunnipa: Yes, identity is a key word in part because, you know, President Biden staked a lot of his 2020 campaign on this idea of, you know, bringing Americans together, restoring the soul of the nation.

At the same time, now that he is facing not only wars abroad, but also some of these political battles here at home, he's seeing the coalition that he built in 2020 start to crack a little bit. We're starting to see a number of coalitions, a number of members of the coalition start to say that they are losing faith in President Biden's foreign policy, in part because of how Arab-Americans feel like they have been, you know, castigated and not taken -- like they have been taken for granted in this Democratic Party and the coalition that President Biden has built.

And so he is having a very difficult time of trying to speak to a number of different members of a very diverse coalition, including Jewish-Americans, including Arab-Americans, to show that his foreign policy is not taking sides in a negative way, is not allowing people to feel like they're being taken for granted. And it's a very difficult part of how he's trying to campaign for 2024.

Susan Page: I think that the Biden team has been surprised by what's happened with the Israel-Hamas war and the way there is such empathy for the Palestinians, especially among younger Democrats, younger voters, in general, including younger Democrats.

You know, typically, a war doesn't inflame U.S. public opinion unless U.S. troops are involved. That's not the case this time. This has really torn the Democratic Party in half over the attack on Israel and Israel's action against Gaza.

There was a poll out this week that showed that Donald Trump now leads narrowly among voters under 35. Now, that's a voter group that Biden carried by 20 percentage points last time around. It is an important group to have not only on your side but energized for you so they turn out to vote.

And I think this war in the Middle East is a big part of the problem that you're having and a surprising one to some Democrats.

Lisa Desjardins: What do you see, Carl, ahead for these two issues? We don't have much time.

Carl Hulse: Well, I think December is do or die in some ways. And there is a possibility that's hard to imagine, even a few months ago, that there would be no aid for Ukraine. I think, and now it is tied up, as you know, in border security. So, this has become the issue.

Mitch McConnell, who has been probably the biggest advocate on Capitol Hill, honestly, in some ways for aid to Ukraine, has said he's read his caucus and the House. And so we have to have border security tied to this money.

So, as we all know, fixing immigration has not been easy in Congress over the last decade. Now, they're going to be asked to do something significant beyond funding within the next few weeks. How do you get that deal?

However, one thing that's actually working kind of in the favor of getting some border agreement is Democrats are starting to realize that would be good for them, too. They need to be seen, and the White House as well needs to be seen as doing something about what's going on at the southern border.

But how do you get there? This has just defied all solution for, you know, 10, 15 years. Hard to see how it comes together.

Lisa Desjardins: We know there are some sour moods in Washington, but I think the mood of the voters is even worse. Susan pointed out to me earlier the poll, the NBC poll that showed now only 19 percent of Americans, I believe, think that the next generation will have it better than they do.

So, Toluse, I want to ask you, because I think this is something that is a factor for any speaker, especially a new one like Mike Johnson. Where is the American psyche right now?

Toluse Olorunnipa: It's turbulent. There's a sense of foreboding. There's a sense that the next year is going to be a very dark period. We're going to get into these political classes that we get into every presidential year.

But it's not going to be sort of the morning in America kind of battle. It's going to be a very dark battle with one side saying, if the other side wins, democracy is over. The other side saying, if my opponent wins, then the country is going to go up in smoke.

And so that kind of dark political messaging that we're seeing, along with the potential for clashes and violence, that is sort of overwhelming the American psyche right now, the sense that things could get much worse before they get better, the sense that we are in the midst of a political crisis, even as we're in the midst of wars and other challenges that are making it very hard for people to have faith in the democratic experience.

So, I do think that there's a real sense of foreboding in the country, and neither party, neither candidate is really speaking to that right now.

Carl Hulse:  Well, I just -- isn't that the problem for President Biden? The White House says the economy is good. We see all this in the economy, by a lot of measurements, is good, but people aren't feeling it, you know, and I think how they overcome that, that's going to be their real challenge.

Lisa Desjardins: Idrees Kahloon at this table last week said something that I took note of. He said dehumanizing the other side is the most powerful force in American politics.

Nikole, you are in Georgia right now, and you have covered the races there. And I wonder what's your sense of the psyche of voters and campaigns from what you've seen.

Nikole Killion: Well, I think to a certain extent, there's also fatigue there, right? Because I think if you look at some of the polling, it also suggests a majority of Americans don't necessarily want a potential rematch between President Biden and former President Trump, and yet all signs seem to indicate that that will likely happen.

And so, you know, it goes to the issue of how do you motivate these voters to come out. Is it the politics of fear, you know, as kind of Toluse was outlining in terms of making that argument of democracy is at stake and which party is better positioned to, you know, save the day, if you will.

But, you know, there's still a lot of real issues out there, whether it's the economy, as you discussed immigration, you know, so many concerns that people have. And I think, you know, it's really incumbent probably on both candidates maybe to speak to those issues a little bit more instead of so much of the mudslinging that we have already experienced, not just in this past cycle of 2020 and 2022.

But, you know, I think people are hoping for a more optimistic message, whether or not they get that this cycle, I think, remains to be seen.

Lisa Desjardins: I do notice that in all this discussion, immigration, many divides, talking about Israel, talking about Ukraine, talking about spending. Speaker Mike Johnson, Carl, I noticed, has not talked about abortion. He hasn't talked about social issues, like LGBTQ, and talking about dehumanizing. In the past, he has dehumanized the LGBTQ population in this country. Is this something a speaker that he's just putting off? Do you think he's deciding pragmatically he shouldn't be talking about? Should we expect him to go back to that kind of Mike Johnson?

Carl Hulse: I think one thing that's occurred is I don't think they had any expectation about how deep people were going to go into his record. And I've heard this from people around him. They're just surprised. But everyone has found all these things he has said. And then he says, well, I don't even remember saying some of those things. Well, unfortunately for him, he said them on tape and were --

Susan Page: And in op-eds, yes.

Carl Hulse: And on paper. I think that he is trying to steer clear of it right now. But this is clearly who he is. He is a deeply, deeply religious conservative. And I think he's going to have a hard time not discussing this at some point.

But abortion, as we saw in the elections here earlier this month, is just a big issue for Democrats and how he handles this is going to be a big part of his persona going forward.

Susan Page: You talked about on-the-job training in your very first comments here. Well, here's -- he's got true on-the-job training. He hasn't chaired a committee before. He hasn't taken a senior leadership role. There are things you learn as you come up the ranks, and he has to learn it all in a flash as one of the most powerful people in Washington, as the face of his party.

And you have got to get him some credit. He negotiated so that we are here able to celebrate holidays without having to shut down, which we had all predicted -

Lisa Desjardins: And it's different. Yes, exactly.

Susan Page: It was going to happen. So, he managed to negotiate that. But, man, the tough times are going to be right ahead and they're going to come at him in the next six weeks. We're going to find out if he's a smart, effective, fresh face or if he's an inexperienced guy who's not up to the job.

Lisa Desjardins: Quickly, Toluse, I take it, the White House wouldn't mind him showing more of those conservative stripes. They see him as extreme, and they think that helps them.

Toluse Olorunnipa: For sure. When he was first appointed speaker, they decided to talk about his record, to talk about his record, specifically on abortion, because they have seen how that issue has been such a winner for them at a time when they haven't had a lot of consistent wins on specific issues the way they have had on abortion. And so they have talked about his past positions on abortion, and I expect that to continue for the weeks ahead.

Lisa Desjardins: Viewers who've seen me in the chair before know I like to do a wrap-up question where I ask everybody this. And this is the week where Merriam Webster is announcing, has announced their word of the year. I'm interested, as I wrote about in a newsletter this week, here's the deal. I'm interested in the political word of the year. So, I want to go around, we've got about a minute or so, tell me your political word of the year and a little bit on why. Susan?

Susan Page: Okay. I'm stealing this from you, but my political word of the year is MTV. And to the rest of the world, it means something else. To the people in Washington, it means motion to vacate, which is the sort of Damocles that is hanging over Mike Johnson's head, as it did with the others. A single member of his caucus can call for a vote on whether he continues as speaker.

Lisa Desjardins: I think it might be a word next year too, yes. Toluse.

Toluse Olorunnipa: My word is a word that you'll see in a number of different political stories. I use it in the stories I write quite a bit, the word fraught, in part, because we talk about that word over and over again when we talk about the politics of abortion, the politics of foreign policy. And we'll expect to see that word in many more political stories ahead.

Lisa Desjardins: Nikole?

Nikole Killion: You know, I would go with surreal. I think you and I know Lisa, when we started this year with a very intense speaker battle, I don't think we knew we were getting a sequel, and we did. And it was even longer and more protracted and more unpredictable. And that really is, I think, at least on Capitol Hill.

Lisa Desjardins: Okay. I go to Carl.

Carl Hulse: I'm going with chaos, because that's what we've been experiencing and I think we'll experience more.

Lisa Desjardins: And I'll say my word is circus, which is very similar to your word.

So, unfortunately, we need to leave it there for now, but thanks to all of our panelists for joining us and for sharing all of your reporting and thoughts.

And on PBS News Weekend tomorrow, a look at the controversial legacy of Charles Curtis, the only Native American to serve as U.S. vice president.

I'm Lisa Desjardins. Good night from Washington.