Full Episode: Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, 12/6/24

Jeffrey Goldberg: Will Pete Hegseth and his mom convince key Republican senators that he's a changed man? Donald Trump is standing by his choice for secretary of defense, but is there an expiration date on this nomination?

Tonight, the nonstop drama around Trump's cabinet picks as a former Republican standard bearer says goodbye to Washington, next.

Good evening, and welcome to Washington Week.

Somewhat miraculously, Pete Hegseth, the Fox Morning host chosen by President-elect Trump to lead the world's most powerful military, is still in the game tonight after a week of stunning revelations about his private life and personal demons. The drama around Hegseth has diverted attention from Trump's choice to run the FBI, Kash Patel, the most loyal of loyalists, who appears ready to use his power to prosecute Trump's enemies.

Joining me tonight to discuss all this, McKay Coppins, my colleague and a staff writer at The Atlantic, he's also the author of Romney, A Reckoning, Jane Mayer is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and Tarini Parti is a national politics reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Thank you all for joining me tonight. I appreciate it.

Let's start with the Washington that was. This week, Mitt Romney said goodbye to the Senate.

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT): There are some today who would tear at our unity, who would replace love with hate, who deride our foundation of virtue, or who debase the values upon which the blessings of heaven depend.

I will leave this chamber with a sense of achievement, but in truth, I will also leave with the recognition that I did not achieve everything I had hoped.

Jeffrey Goldberg: McKay, you're Romney's biographer. What was his last week like for him in a Senate where he has actually very few friends in his own party?

McKay Coppins, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: I think it really underscored just how much He's leaving Washington almost worse off than he found it. And I don't think it's his own fault. But you have to remember when he ran for Senate in 2018, it was in the early years of Trump's first term. And there was still space in the party for Trump critics like him. And he had this strong belief that he could get to the Senate and steer the Republican Party away from what he considered the toxic elements of Trumpism.

And he got to the Senate, very quickly learned that all the political incentives flowed in the opposite direction, that while many of his colleagues would privately say that they agreed with him, they wouldn't join him publicly. And he kind of became this lone voice in the wilderness.

And I think that this last week, as the Senate is fighting over these, by many accounts, pretty extreme nominees for Trump's second term, it really shows just how much his project kind of failed to save the Republican Party.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I'm really struck by the fact, and this is something that Senator Romney said to you. Well, you tell us what Senator Romney said to you about J.D. Vance, the now vice president-elect of the United States.

McKay Coppins: Yes. Well, at the time when I was writing my book I was talking to him about J.D. Vance, who was then running for Senate, and he was kind of in the midst of his MAGA makeover, remaking his public persona, becoming much more belligerent and controversial and towing the Trump line. And Romney actually said to me, it would be hard for me to disrespect somebody more than J.D. Vance.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes. And now, Tarini, we're watching Romney leave and J.D. Vance about to be sworn in as vice president of the United States. The Republican Party in Washington, wholly owned subsidiary of Donald Trump, is that fair at this point, more than any time even in the first term?

Tarini Parti, White House Reporter, The Wall Street Journal: Definitely. I mean, it is Trump's party, and there is going to be this big vacuum that Romney's leaving behind, and it'll be a test for Senate Republicans to see if there's going to be anyone willing to get even close to filling that vacuum. It seems unlikely.

There are a few senators who have expressed some concerns about some of the nominations that Trump has put forward, but the type of, you know, not just vocal criticism of Trump, but the fact that Romney, you know, voted to impeach him twice, taking that extra step, I think we'll see very few Republicans making those moves.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Jane, how big a variable -- and I want to get to Pete Hegseth in a second, but how big a variable is this idea of a newly liberated Mitch McConnell, not in leadership anymore, obviously, in the twilight years of his Senate career, how likely does it seem to you, as a veteran Washington observer, that he's going to be unleashed and play not the Romney role or the Liz Cheney role, but play more of a role of saying that's too much, we're not doing that?

Jane Mayer, Staff Writer, The New Yorker: Well, I actually got a chance to talk to him about it recently. And he was looking very happy at the idea that he is liberated and that he can push back a little bit more. He thinks against Trump. And as you know, I mean --

Jeffrey Goldberg: Certainly, they don't like each other.

Jane Mayer: Trump calls him the old crow. I think that's what his --

Jeffrey Goldberg: And so that's an insult. I just want to be clear.

Jane Mayer: And you know, I mean, and one of the things that that McConnell has said recently is that, absolutely, there will be no recess appointments. As you know, Trump has said he was going to put his people in recess appointments, skip the role of the Senate, which is, you know, to advise and consent and have confirmation hearings. Trump thought he could just do away with that and McConnell has said there will be no recess appointments.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. So, I mean, it might be somewhat satisfying.

Jane Mayer: They're somewhat at each other, you know, but the truth is, I mean, well, we'll talk about these nominees. I mean, really, what we're looking at is a test of the Senate's power, really.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Well, let's move to Pete Hegseth, the highly unorthodox -- that's a nice euphemism -- highly unorthodox nominee for defense secretary. Still in the game as we talk. Here's what Donald Trump just told Kristen Welker about Hegseth's alcohol issues. Let's just watch this for a second.

Kristen Welker, Anchor, NBC News: How concerned are you that the person who you picked for this top job at the Defense Department? At least according to those who've worked with him, has struggled with drinking.

Donald Trump, U.S. President-Elect: But I've spoken to people that know him very well, and they say he does not have a drinking problem.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, that's not -- that doesn't clear you, obviously. I mean, there's been a lot of reporting and a lot of testimony about the drinking.

Jane, you've done a great deal of the original reporting on Hegseth's troubles, reporting, I should note, that's been confirmed by numerous other reporters subsequent to your reporting. Here's a bit of what you wrote about a report from a veterans group, Concerned Veterans for America, about some of his problems when he was at that group.

The detailed seven-page report, which was compiled by multiple former CVA employees and sent to the organization's senior management in February 2015 states that, at one point, Hegseth had to be restrained while drunk from joining the dancers on the stage of a Louisiana strip club where he had brought his team.

So, Jane, can you spend a little while talking about what you discovered and how it fits in to the broader concerns about Hegseth's character and qualifications for this job?

Jane Mayer: Sure. I mean, and what this is is a whistleblower report by, as you say, a number of employees who worked in the veterans group in the years, I guess it's 2013 through about 2016, those years are recounted in this report. And what they said about him was jaw-dropping, basically. I mean, and it might not matter so much for many other jobs, but I think it's caused for great concern about somebody that might be in charge of the Pentagon.

And so -- and what they describe is just incident after incident after incident of Pete Hegseth getting so drunk that he had to be carried out literally, physically by other people on his staff and put in bed and, you know, on hotels. He was on a tour that lasted a long time that went across the country. So, there were many hotels, many incidents and they're described in this report.

Now, I should say, and I think, you know, we need to say that his lawyer has basically said, you know, oh, this isn't true, but they did have an opportunity to refute the specific allegations in this report, and they didn't take that opportunity. They didn't refute a single fact in it.

And then, as you say, many other news organizations have since carried this reporting on past 2016. So, we've seen, and NBC has done reporting saying that Pete Hegseth, who went on to work at Fox News as a talk show host, was also cited for having all kinds of drinking problems at Fox as well.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Wait, I wanted to play Hegseth talking about the charges, his muscular denunciation of all of the reporting. Let's listen to him for a second here.

Pete Hegseth, Nominated for Defense Secretary: It is the classic art of the smear. Take whatever tiny kernels of truth, and there are tiny ones in there, and blow them up into a masquerade of a narrative about somebody that I am definitely not.

Jeffrey Goldberg: You know, Jane, I mentioned his mother because she, according to reporting, sent him a very, very harsh email about his personal behavior vis-a-vis women, with women, his then wife, I mean, he's been married several times, obviously, as we all know. You know, talk about where we were in 1989, when Senator Tower --

Jane Mayer: Well, I mean, and this is really what is so interesting, in that the issues that have come up about Pete Hegseth's behavior would have been and were totally disqualifying for a previous Defense Department nominee, and that was John Tower in 1989. And he was voted down by his own colleagues in Senate because of the allegations of drinking and womanizing.

And, really, the descriptions -- I actually spoke to somebody who was involved in that this week. The descriptions of his behavior were mild compared with what these people are saying about Pete Hagseth. I mean, Pete Hagseth has -- what got me going on this story in the first place is he has been charged with -- he's been accused of raping a woman. And then there was a report.

Jeffrey Goldberg: No charges were filed.

Jane Mayer: And no, no criminal charges were filed. There was an investigation done, but she accused him of raping her. And then she -- he basically, in a civil settlement, paid her to sign an, a nondisclosure agreement and keep this under wraps, and none of that was disclosed to the Trump transition.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Tarini, let's stay on this subject for a second. I mean, what's so interesting is the discourse this week and about this nomination or whether it'll survive centers on alcohol use mainly and sexual indiscretion, at least. But what's so -- and that's relevant when you're the secretary of defense and the primary military adviser to the president United States, and you are the primary adviser on matters of life and death, including the use -- potential use of nuclear weapons, true. But unlike Senator Tower who had personal problems, he was also a true defense intellectual and true leader.

What I don't understand is Republicans on the Hill who take defense matters very, very seriously are coming out and saying, well, this guy deserves a hearing at least, or if not outright endorsing him, but he has no actual experience at top levels of the military. Talk about that in the context of what the Republicans might do.

Tarini Parti: Right. So, as Jane mentioned, he has ran a veterans group for a while. He's since been on Fox News. He doesn't have the type of experience that usually a defense secretary would. And we're seeing concern from --

Jeffrey Goldberg: He is a veteran, to be clear, but as a captain.

Tarini Parti: Right. And the concern, you're right, has focused mostly on personal conduct, sexual misconduct, drinking allegations of drinking on the job. But if this goes to a confirmation hearing, we could expect some Senators, potentially, to go, you know, and question him on his background, if it even gets to that point.

But, at this point, with other names already floating, as my colleagues at the Journal have reported, Ron DeSantis potentially being a contender for the job, you're seeing Trump, although he's publicly defending him, he's already kind of looking at other possible options in case this goes south.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Wait, McKay, can I just pause on the idea of Ron DeSantis possibly replacing, and you covered the Republicans, and you covered the nomination process? Trump hates DeSantis, DeSantis hates Trump. I'm not -- I'm literally not tracking why Trump is floating that idea. And I'm certainly not tracking why you would give up the governorship of one of the largest states of the union to take a job where your potential half life is pretty short.

McKay Coppins: It's pretty short, yes. I mean, look, there are theories that Trump is not actually serious about this, that perhaps he's even dangling the job in front of DeSantis to kind of humiliate him the way that, you know, a lot of people think he did with Mitt Romney and secretary of state back in 2016, 2017. But, look --

Jeffrey Goldberg: Their famous dinner.

McKay Coppins: But this is the problem with Trump staffing his new administration, is that serious people have seen what happened in the first term to those who joined his administration. They spent years, you know, getting publicly humiliated, getting heavily scrutinized. Many of them were fired, unceremoniously were pushed out. They spent the next several years, you know, getting indicted or complying with subpoenas, or, you know, dealing with a lot of personal fallout and career fallout.

And so if you're a serious person with a political future, like Ron DeSantis clearly believes he has, you'd have to wonder if he thinks that's a wise move for him to go into that administration, knowing that he very well may flame out within a year.

Jeffrey Goldberg: He did the most disloyal thing one could do in Trump's mind, which is run against Trump. I mean, and correct me if I'm wrong, Jane, but loyalty is the salient characteristic in these nominations.

Jane Mayer: The number one characteristic, definitely, across the board. I mean, it'd be hard to find anything else you could say that they all have in common. It's such an unusual collection of people. But they are all Trump loyalists.

McKay Coppins: Can I just, though, add quickly that when Donald Trump tried to get Mitt Romney to take the secretary of state job, part of what was going on there and the conversations they had behind the scenes, Romney told me later, kind of circulated around, Romney had to come out and disown everything he had ever said about Donald Trump.

And the point wasn't really -- it was partly humiliation, but it was really to show his domination, right? And so I do wonder if part of the reason to kind of float DeSantis is, I'm going to make DeSantis bring him to heel and kind of as a message to the rest of the party show that if you want to have a future, you have to do this for me,

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Before I move on to Kash Patel, I do want to share a clip of Senator Cramer saying something that I find -- I found this remarkable. Maybe you'll agree with me. Maybe you'll disagree. But just watch this for a second.

Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND):  My commitment I was looking for was that he won't drink you won't touch alcohol and that he'd be ready for a phone call at 3:00 in the afternoon or 3:00 in the morning and every hour in between, which I thought was a good way.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I mean, I just -- I'm staying on this point because it seems borderline irresponsible to assume that somebody who has an alcohol problem can suddenly clean up in a very, very high pressure job. And I guess I'm just confessing that I find this a bit unreal.

Jane Mayer: I mean, you're not alone. I mean, this is the issue, from what I've been able to tell that Republican senators have. They were much less concerned about the sexual assault allegations, maybe less concerned about the fact that he's not ever managed an organization well before, but they are concerned about the drinking. I mean, and everybody could see the risk.

Jeffrey Goldberg: As they should be.

Jane Mayer: As they should be, right.

McKay Coppins: Well, Trump himself does not drink. He has talked about his own brother having his life destroyed by alcoholism.

So, this is an issue that whatever Trump is saying publicly does resonate with him, and I wonder how that might play a role in the coming days,

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. In the few minutes that we have left, I want to -- there's a lot going on this week. We haven't even gotten to pardons, although I have a feeling that we will be discussing the issue of pardons on coming weeks.

But, you know, one thing that we've all noticed in covering this last month is that it's very hard to keep track with the velocity of these nominations and the unusual quality of so many of them, you know, Matt Gaetz, obviously, and he withdrew from consideration as attorney general. And while he was in the hunt for that job, it diverted attention from Hegseth, and now Hegseth, in my opinion, is diverting attention from Kash Patel, who was nominated on the Saturday night of Thanksgiving probably just to make reporters work Saturday night. It was very -- I found that amusing. But --

McKay Coppins: The reporters on your staff probably --

Jeffrey Goldberg: I guess they didn't find it that amusing. But it's not getting the level of scrutiny because of the Hegseth conversation. Tarini, talk about the unusual qualities of the Kash Patel.

Tarini Parti: Yes. Kash Patel is actually someone who Trump's own advisers told him not to nominate for this position. They advised him to go with sort of a more usual Republican and he went against them and just wanted a loyal figure. This is someone who has said he is against -- you know, he's going to go after the deep state. He has an enemies list. He's going to go after reporters.

So, the fact that Republicans aren't yet really raising any concerns about him and are so focused on Hegseth, I mean, we'll see if that continues. But for now, it seems that all the scrutiny is on one candidate and it's not just Kash Patel, it's, you know, Tulsi Gabbard, it's RFK Jr. There's so many others who could face similar scrutiny.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. And, Jane, this does relate to pardons, the idea that Joe Biden might prospectively pardon people who are on lists made of Trump's enemies by people including Kash Patel. I mean, he was one of the people who organizes these. Talk about that for a second.

Jane Mayer: I mean, Kash Patel has a list. He has a book that he wrote called, I think it's Gangster Government or Government Gangsters. And it includes an appendix of 60 people that he considers the enemies his enemies and enemies of the state.

And so there's basically a playbook that's been laid out of people that he wants to go after. And it's extensive, you know, everybody from Hillary Clinton to, you know, Liz Cheney to -- you know, it just goes on and on and on.

And, basically, I guess Biden is looking at this from what we understand and saying, you know, why should we just let these people go be prosecuted? On the other hand, Biden supposedly, when he ran, was going to be reinstating norms and traditions in Washington and the integrity of the Justice Department and just blanket pardons to such a big group of people prospectively has never been done.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. McKay, last word to you on this. You've covered Donald Trump most of your professional life. I'm asking you to take a guess based on past performance. Will he be the retribution president come January 20th? Is this something that Democrats, the media, everyone else really has to worry about?

McKay Coppins: I would say that it would not be farfetched to worry about. I think that Trump has shown a proclivity for vengeance. He has shown an obsessiveness about it. And while I think that there is also true that he's undisciplined and incompetent, I think that the people around him, if they're serious about it, they will make it happen.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, obviously more to come on that subject, but, unfortunately, we need to leave it there for now. I want to thank our panelists for being here and for sharing their reporting. And to our viewers at home, thank you for joining us.

Please visit theatlantic.com for McKay's recent article on NATO's concerns about the incoming Trump administration.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg. Good night from Washington.