Full Episode: Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, 12/13/24

Lisa Desjardins: In just over one month, President-elect Donald Trump will be sworn into office again. He and his congressional allies want to hit the ground running in January. But as they move toward taking control of government, Republican lawmakers are quickly confronting divides over where to start, as well as how and when to pass Trump's ambitious agenda, next.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week. I'm Lisa Desjardins. Jeffrey Goldberg is away.

President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans on Capitol Hill are unified on the big picture ahead, eagerly backing the Trump agenda on key issues like the border, taxes, and energy, but that's the easy part. Now, the hard part. Thanks to their razor thin majority in the House and being far short of the 60 votes needed in the Senate to pass bills at will, a split has emerged among GOP leaders over how and when to turn Trump's legislative wish list into law. And, by the way, what exactly is his wish list?

Joining me tonight to take a closer look at Trump's promises and the reality of the present are Peter Baker, The New York Times' chief Washington correspondent, Hans Nichols, a political reporter at Axios and the author of The Hill Leader's Newsletter, Toluse Olorunnipa is the White House bureau chief at The Washington Post, and Ali Vitali is a Capitol Hill correspondent for NBC News, and we're happy to say the newly named next anchor of MSNBC's Way Too Early. Welcome back to all of you. This is a very quality cast of people tonight.

Peter, I want to start with you, and I want to start with a quote in one of your stories from this week. This is what you wrote. You wrote, as he prepares to move back into the White House, President-elect Trump's penchant for extravagant, ungrounded claims will challenge his ability to translate bravado into reality. We are at that moment of both bravado and reality.

What do we know about the exact shape of Trump's agenda going into January and how ready is it for action?

Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Yes, it's a good question. Look, they've had some time to prepare, right? And as much as he tried to distance himself from the 2025 Project, obviously there's a blueprint there if he chooses to use it, a lot of the people who authored that blueprint now joining his administration.

If you watch the interview he gave to NBC and Meet the Press this week, or read the one in Time Magazine, what you see is a person ready to move on all fronts all at once, right? It's like the movie, Everything All at Once.

And what's unclear is how he actually manages that because, in fact, after four years in office, he ought to know that Washington doesn't actually work that way. There's a certain bandwidth beyond which you cannot take that much action. But he says on his first day, he's going to pardon January 6th rioters. He's going to move on energy. He's going to move on the border. He's going to move on the economy. He's going to do all these things right out of the gate.

And what he's looking to do are things that doesn't require -- don't require a lot of action from Congress right away because I think he does believe that will slow things up. He wants to demonstrate action.

Lisa Desjardins: Let me get to the Congress part, Ali. You and I know these Republicans have been waiting, salivating for years for this kind of opportunity, and they do want to do everything, tax cuts, energy, apparently, now daylight savings is on the board as part of the agenda. But help us with what's really feasible here from what you see.

Ali Vitali, Capitol Hill Correspondent, NBC News: Well, look, they're doing a lot of this through a process called reconciliation. But the key point of this is that everything's got to point back to having a tax incentive or a tax piece to it in order to actually be relevant to a reconciliation bill. So, that means you can't actually do everything everywhere all at once. You have to do things by the parliamentarian's rules.

We've actually just been through this two years ago when we looked at the way the Biden administration tried to leverage the fact that it had both houses of Congress and it wanted to do everything all at once, and we kept waiting for the parliamentarian to say, no, you can't do it this way. Yes, you can do it this way. And then, of course, Manchin and Sinema put their imprimatur on it, and we watched the way that one or two members could really shape the way that this legislation looked.

That's what we're looking at in the Senate, of course, always, but also in the House when you recognize the fact that these very slim margins that they have means that every House member really does get the ability to stand up and say, well, if I don't go for this, or one or two of us don't go for this, then suddenly it becomes very difficult to do.

Hans Nichols, Political Reporter, Axios: Yes. It's really just a question of whether or not there's an individual member of the House that decides that he wants to look and sound and act like Joe Manchin. And if an individual member of the House, or two, depending on the margins, depending on when people leave, they're going to be able to throw a wrench into President Donald Trump's plan.

Now, inside the Trump transition, they're convinced that they can just roll these members and that Donald Trump has a magic wand to force House Republicans in the line. I'm not so sure, but I've been wrong on things in the past.

Toluse Olorunnipa, White House Bureau Chief, The Washington Post: I think that's part of the reason they're focusing so much on the cabinet selection and trying to force some of these senators that are on the fence about some of these controversial picks not to bow down to this pressure that they're facing from the Senate. Because they realize that if Trump allows some of these senators, who are pretty powerful and are pretty well respected in their own states, to buck him on a number of things, then it's going to give leeway to a number of House members and other senators to block him on other things.

So, they are trying to force their hands. They're putting a lot of pressure on some of these senators. There's a whole social media campaign denigrating some of these senators just for asking questions about Trump's nominees.

Hans Nichols: That's interesting, because you seem like, it's like the cabinet process is horse-braking. They're like they're trying to housebreak the senators. And once these senators are broken, according to that theory, then they will be much more pliant to do what the president says.

On all of this, though, there's an enormous amount of things President Donald Trump can do administratively. If he wants to actually have it be durable and have it be lasting, as we've learned from the Biden presidency, you need Congress to come along.

So, yes, you can have a bunch of short-term gains, short-term wins, feel great, it's a sugar high, and after four years, it's not there. When you talk to Trump officials, they want it to be durable, and they want it to be lasting. And for that, they need the votes. And, again, it's unclear if they have them.

Lisa Desjardins: Peter, how much of the Trump agenda, from where you sit is bravado and how much of it is he serious about? And then do other Republicans know the difference?

Peter Baker: Well, it's interesting, right, because he says these things and we don't take them seriously, because they're not serious in some cases, right? He says, I'm going to solve the Ukraine war in 24 hours, and I'll do it before the inauguration. Really? He hasn't told us how he's going to do that, and there doesn't seem to be any move to actually do that.

And in the interview with Time, he began to seem like he was backing away, saying, well, maybe they'll wait until I get in office. So, did anybody actually take that seriously? Are we going to hold him accountable for not doing what we didn't think he was ever going to do in the first place? That's a really interesting question.

A couple other examples, deporting all 11 million people in the country illegally. Keep in mind, during his entire four-year tenure, he only deported less than a million, right? And that was less, by the way, than either Obama or Bush did in a comparable amount of time.

The other one is cutting the federal budget by $2 trillion out of $6.8 trillion a year. We remember how hard it is for John Boehner, for Barack Obama, for any of these guys to cut a few tens of billions of dollars. There's no chance anybody thinks they're going to get $2 trillion out of this budget. And yet we don't take it seriously, but, you know, we expect him to make an effort.

Ali Vitali: But Trump has always gotten the benefit of his words being water. And that's actually something that in my conversations with Democratic sources, especially on Capitol Hill, they recognize the power of being able to kind of play in that nebulous policy space because Trump is not necessarily wed to one policy idea. Certainly, if you're one of the last people who has a conversation with him, which is why the behind the scenes, in the room reporting that all of you all do so well, is so important. You get to know who is influencing him.

And certainly, Republicans are aware of that, but Democrats are very much aware of that too. And I think we'll see them, and we've already seen tempering of their reactions and responses. We were talking about this earlier. It's a little bit less hair on fire than it was a few years ago. But at the same time, they are watching with more knowledge now and they plan to use it.

Lisa Desjardins: So, talking about sort of Trump versus Trump I want to talk about the time, something else that came up in the Time Magazine story and also the Meet the Press interview. As you know, Trump on the campaign trail railed about inflation a lot. This was an issue that Republicans up and down the ballot talked about a lot.

So, I want to play a sound bite from his interview this weekend on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker about this, about specifically grocery prices.

Donald Trump, U.S. President-Elect: I went on groceries. It's a very simple word, groceries. Like almost, you know, who uses the word? I started using the word, the groceries. When you buy apples, when you buy bacon, when you buy eggs, they would double and triple the price over a short period of time. And I won an election based on that. We're going to bring those prices way down.

Lisa Desjardins: I can verify apples have been pricier than I'd like. But I want to compare that to what he said in the Time Magazine interview also on grocery prices. This was the quote there. He said, I'd like to bring them down. It's hard to bring things down once they're up. You know, it's very hard.

Hans, what do you think behind these comments to Time? Again, this is an issue of what is he serious about? What is he backpedaling on?

Hans Nichols: Well, you can verify apples. I can verify the bacon and eggs. Those are also up. I don't think that's controversial to say, but I'm glad we have our lanes defined.

Look, Donald Trump is going to make a lot of promises then he's going to walk them back. And then he's going to try to find the space for a deal. I don't think anyone back to sort of a magical wand he may or may not have. There's nothing he can do to lower prices from where they are. He can slow the rate of incline, but if prices actually go down, we're in a deflationary situation and that is much more scary for the economy and that is much more devastating for growth, for people's prosperities, for people's futures.

So, I hear him saying there, and he's like, you know, especially in the time magazine interview, he's giving himself a safety valve. And he's giving himself a lot of safety valves.

Now, I don't know how many, to sort of torture my metaphor and switch it, I don't know how many parachutes he's going to have, right? But he is clearly packing a few. And, Peter, save me from my bad, right? Be my editor.

Lisa Desjardins: Parachutes with safety valves.

Hans Nichols: Yes, it's fine.

Lisa Desjardins: You can't have too much safety. I don't know.

Toluse, I want to ask you immigration. You know, when I think about covering the Trump campaign, what is it that Trump himself cares about the most? That's what it is, right? And that's -- as Peter mentioned, he has some ambitious things he says he wants to do.

You've covered three presidents trying to do big things. What do you think is actually feasible in terms of immigration and how much of Biden's move to the right on that policy, specifically making asylum tougher to get do you think that Trump might keep?

Toluse Olorunnipa: I think it's important to note that Trump has sort of moderated his language or rolled back some of his promises on other issues, like inflation and even on transgender issues. But when it comes to the border --

Lisa Desjardins: Just -- but this week?

Toluse Olorunnipa: Yes, just this week.

Lisa Desjardins: Just this week. We'll see, yes.

Toluse Olorunnipa: You know, changed his tune. But on the border for the past four years, eight years, he has had a singular tune. He's talked about people coming into the country, making the country worse and saying that we need to get them out. He tried to do a lot of it in his first term. He ran into the family separation situation that he, his administration, put forward. There was a lot of outcry. He had to roll that back.

I think this time around, he's not worried as much about the outcry. He is determined to do what he can do. I don't think there is going to be a big immigration bill under his administration, no kind of comprehensive immigration bill, at least they may get something for the wall or something like that. But I think on day one, he's going to try to do what he can do with executive power.

Now, he is going to run up against the limits of executive power. You cannot have the military operating as an internal immigration force because there are laws against that. And so he's going to try to do as much as he can and it's going to disrupt some things, but he's going to be running up against the limits of his power and Congress is going to be a bulwark against him as well.

Peter Baker: Here's one of the paradoxes of Trump taking over at this time, and Toluse and Hans referenced it in effect. He said he would fight inflation. He said he would seal the border. He said he would bring down crime. All three of those are actually already fixed, more or less. Inflation is back to normal. Prices haven't come down, and you don't actually want prices to come down from where they are now because it gets you to deflation. But inflation --

Lisa Desjardins: But people are still feeling that. There is still a problem.

Peter Baker: It is a problem, but the problem is you can't -- the solution to actually bring prices down is not actually what any economist would advocate you do. They would want you to moderate the inflation rate, which has happened, and make wages go up, which is actually happening, right? The border crossings now are at a low point to where they were when Trump left office. And crime, which he says is sky high and he's going to fix, is actually at a years-long low.

So, he actually, in some ways, is inheriting a situation very adverse to what he said he was going to be fixing because it's already at a place where he needs to fix. So, therefore, he has to demonstrate progress. So, he can do what he wants on building the wall, but he's not going to bring those border numbers down a whole lot further. So, he has to go after people who are already in the country. That's why you hear him focus on deportation. Because the border itself actually right now, after Biden's belated, you know, policy changes, has actually kind of been tightened at this point.

Hans Nichols: So, he can also just declare victory, right?

Peter Baker: Yes.

Hans Nichols: I mean, like, yes, like, you know, the progress is important. And you and I will be writing stories that say, actually, you know, number of boarding crosses it. But like the easier -- if all these challenges and problems are truly fixed, as Peter suggests, I might take a slightly different view on inflation, like the prince this week gave a little bit of concern, but that's just the economist nerd in me.

If all the problems are truly solved, he can just declare victory and say it was because of me. And I don't think anyone at this table would disagree with Donald Trump as a -- he has a pretty easy time declaring victory, whether or not victory is right for him to declare.

Lisa Desjardins: I think that's something his voters like about him, actually, right, that they want that sense of that something good is happening. I mean, so I've got to guarantee whether or not whatever is real on the ground, I'm hearing this.

Hans Nichols: I think when you look at Trump's theory of the case on how and why he won, it is inflation and it's immigration. And if inflation, he's powerless and he's giving himself a little bit of leeway there, that's going to put more pressure on him to do something real on immigration.

Now, yes, crossings are down, but I think for when you talk to sort of core Republican voters, especially on the Hill, they're talking about a whole basket of issues when they talk about immigration, crime gets folded into that. And so they get to this sort of really messy question of how you're going to do deportations. And what does success look like there and what's progress look like.

Ali Vitali: But this is also where -- I'm sorry Lisa. This is where when you see Trump ratcheting up and darkening his rhetoric consistently over the course of this campaign, and certainly some of his most brutal rhetoric has been around immigrants who come to this country illegally, we've seen it only continue.

You make the point rightly that he can't, for many reasons, use the military to do a deportation system, but in that Time interview he says, well, it's an invasion. We should be able to use. And so we're watching him and it's always constantly watching him shift that Overton window where people are talking about things that are unfathomable and then you come back five years later and suddenly he's put it into the ether so much that it's sort of become common speak.

That's I think what we're watching him do here. And Republicans have been priming on this over the course of the last several years in legislation they know is never going to get passed. But, quite frankly, I'm just waiting for the moment that the Senate bill that was so bipartisanly negotiated, that Democrats really gave so many things to Republicans on and Donald Trump ultimately killed in the Senate, I'm just waiting for that to come back around and for Trump to say, it's a great bill, I'm ready to do it now.

Lisa Desjardins: And Kirsten Sinema will be watching that with a martini.

Ali Vitali: From the wings.

Lisa Desjardins: I think something behind that bill.

Toluse, I want to ask you about this sort of this idea going forward that we're in this sort of -- we're seeing some darker rhetoric from Trump. We're seeing this kind of intensity. But Democrats, what is their plan right now for dealing with Trump 2.0, and especially on immigration? That's something that they care about, obviously, as well.

Toluse Olorunnipa: Ali said it pretty clearly. They're not putting their hair on fire for every little thing that Trump says or says that he's going to do. They're watching and waiting, not focusing as much on his rhetoric, not responding every time he tweets or said something that's out of the mainstream, but watching for him to do things and really picking their spots, I think, on immigration, on areas that could impact vulnerable communities. Those are the areas they're going to stand up and try to block Trump or at least call him out on some of his more extreme actions.

I think some of the other areas, they're going to work. They're going to say they're working with him. They're going to try to show that they're working with him. We saw Tammy Baldwin, the senator from Wisconsin, today or earlier this week say that she was going to support one of Trump's cabinet nominees. You saw John Fetterman, the senator from Pennsylvania, meeting with cabinet nominees from Trump's side as well.

And so they're going to try to show that they're working with him on certain issues so that when they do block him, it sounds like they are taking the measure of the actual issue and not just blocking him just because his name is Trump.

Hans Nichols: Yes. The Democratic Party has moved to the right on immigration. They've moved a lot towards Trump on immigration. We've kind of hinted that. They've done the same with China. Both of those are sort of the big things that were sort of --

Lisa Desjardins: And even more on China.

Hans Nichols: Big things that were -- I mean, Donald Trump basically convinced Joe Biden to re-impose the very tariffs that everyone in this town thought were sort of completely unprecedented. Biden not only re-imposed them but amped them up a little bit, and now Trump wants to go even further on the dial.

To me, on the sort of congressional angle of immigration, vulnerable Democrats, and you saw this in that special election, and I believe it was New York 3 or 4, the George Santos seat, or Tom Suozzi, right? Suozzi ran to the right on immigration, and that's the template. A Democrat from Long Island, for those of us that don't speak fluent, like, sort of, you know, New York 3, what that means, sort of a district that was traditionally Democratic but got a little Trumpy.

And the template for Democrats in tough Trump districts, and remember, there are going to be 13 or 14 of them in this kind of House Democrats, they're going to be representing districts that were won by Donald Trump. Their pathway is to ape and to mimic his language and support him on immigration, and that's going to be a fascinating dynamic to watch play out.

Lisa Desjardins: Got to acknowledge my Hudson Valley girl over here, Ali, we're talking about New York.

Ali Vitali: But it's absolutely right, right? I mean, you even look further north in the Pat Ryan district, and even where Mike Lawler, my hometown district, was running for re-election. Democrats -- Lawler, of course, a Republican, but Democrats were talking about the immigration issue in large part because it is no longer a theoretical issue in New York. The fact that migrants had been bused to New York City, that this is a key thing that Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, is consistently dealing with. He is having active meetings with Tom Homan and other key members of the Trump administration. It's no longer theoretical. And that's why I think Democrats are going to use places like New York as a template.

The only Democrats who feel good, and it's not all of them, but it's some of them, are House Democrats, because they look at the fact that they have, what, 215 seats now. That is way more than they had at the outset of the last Trump administration. They won seats back in places like New York, and they are going to be looking to replicate it, especially because it is a game of little baby inches for them to actually get the majority. And that is the thing that Hakeem Jeffries wants more than anything.

Lisa Desjardins: And let me say out loud, the Democrats would be in the majority at the House if it weren't for redistricting in North Carolina, actually, when you do the math together.

All right, Peter, let me bring it back to Trump and what's going on with his agenda. Let's talk about his agenda. Let's talk about his advisers. You know, Stephen Miller is someone who's prominent. He's been part of this discussion of do you do two bills or one bill in the Senate and the House, which is going to be a risky, difficult decision. But how do you see the inner circle around Trump right now? What do the tribes look like of influence?

Peter Baker: Yes. It's different than last time, right? The last time, obviously, you had these three main tribes. You had the Bannon, you know, warriors on the far right. You had the establishment folks represented by Reince Priebus, the former RNC chair, became chief of staff. And you had this sort of family, right? Jared Kushner, Ivanka, Trump, who represented their own sort of fiefdom within the White House.

This time around, people say, well, they aren't those same kind of tribes because there aren't any ideologically diverse people. They're all kind of on the far right. He's gotten rid of the establishment, the conventional Republicans. He's not going with any John Kellys and H.R. McMasters and Jim Mattis. And that's true to a point, but they're still tribes. It just means -- I think it's more personality based, right? You've got Elon Musk out there and you've got Boris Epshteyn and you've got all of them playing their own games to some extent and often at odds with each other underneath the carpet.

And Trump doesn't necessarily mind that. He is a chaos agent. He likes them to kind of mix it up. But then there are moments when he gets tired of he thinks somebody's trying to profit off him, and that's when their heads get chopped off.

So, I think that right now, it doesn't look the same as last time, but there will be tribal warfare that will play.

Hans Nichols: Are there real policy differences?

Peter Baker: I don't think so. I mean yes, but not in the same way, right? I mean, you do have like -- so it's interesting that he chose to go with the fire breathers on, say, Justice Department, FBI, DNI, HHS, but he didn't on Treasury, right? He went with a more conventional choice, who was acceptable to Wall Street. He went with a more acceptable choice to the State Department in Marco Rubio, who'd reassure people. So, he does still have some people in there who are not of the MAGA -- you know, the MAGA-born crowd, but we know who's in charge here.

Lisa Desjardins: Toluse, it isn't all about the press, although Trump loves to talk about us. Thanks. Are you preparing for any changes in how things work at the White House when the Trump administration comes in? What are you thinking?

Toluse Olorunnipa: Well, there will be changes, but if you look at the last week, Trump has had a pretty conventional week when it comes to press. He did Meet the Press. He did a Time interview. He was the Time Person of the Year. He did a long interview with Time. Trump is someone who wants to be covered by the mainstream media.

As much as he denigrates the press, as much as he talks negatively about the press, he craves the attention of the press. He wants to be watched, he wants to be tweeted about, he wants to be written about by mainstream organizations, like The New York Times, like The Washington Post. He wants to be everywhere, even though he did a lot of podcasts during his campaign. He comes from the New York media environment, and he came up during the heyday of the mainstream media. And so he still thinks that way.

So, I imagine that there will be changes. His aides will want to try to bring more sort of right wing populist media figures into the White House. But I think Trump, his instinct is to have the main networks cover him, to have the main newspapers cover him, to be watching how the mainstream media covers the story of his second administration. And I think for that reason we'll still have access. We'll still be covering him and he'll still be engaging with reporters because he craves it. He feeds off of it. He wants to be in front of the limelight.

Lisa Desjardins: In our last two minutes here, a bigger question that might be provocative or not, I don't know, from a conversation I was having with Peter earlier, you know, it is said that we have one president at a time. However, President-elect Trump has not been scared to represent the United States in a sort of head of state kind of way around the world, including in Paris, France.

So my question to you, is he already starting the job?

Ali Vitali: Yes.

Hans Nichols: Yes, right? And he's signaling and he's forcing people to make decisions, which is the main thing a president can do, is to sort of be forced to tell you where they are. He had Justin Trudeau down to Mar-a-Lago. Tomorrow, there's a big football game, Army-Navy. I don't think the president's scheduled to attend? Who's going? Donald Trump.

Ali Vitali: But part of that is also Biden clearly ceding that space for a number of reasons that we don't have time to detail. There is also the fact that Biden's big news this week was the pardons and the clemency that he gave to thousands of people.

Hans Nichols: You're forgetting about his economic speech. How dare you?

Ali Vitali: How dare I?

Hans Nichols: How dare you tie his victory lap on the economy? How dare you?

Ali Vitali: Flog me after. But, really, I mean, Biden has ceded that space to Trump, I think, reading the mood of Washington, certainly. But, yes, Trump is keen to start.

Peter Baker: Yes. There is one president at a time, and it's Donald Trump right now. I mean, that's the honest truth. You're right, exactly. Who did he invite? He invited to his inauguration Xi Jinping. And according to reports, Xi Jinping isn't going to come. But that's a pretty unprecedented thing, too. He has already begun moving, as Hans said. And in terms of negotiating with foreign partners, he represented the United States at Notre Dame.

Hans Nichols: Or in the case of Canada, with foreign governors, right?

Peter Baker: Yes, exactly.

Lisa Desjardins: Go ahead.

Toluse Olorunnipa: Trump knows how to dominate the media cycle. Biden has struggled over the last four years with that, and we're seeing it play out.

Lisa Desjardins: Well, there's only one ambassador to Greece at a time and it is not yet, Kimberly Guilfoyle. So, there we go.

Hans Nichols: (INAUDIBLE), a great man.

Lisa Desjardins: Unfortunately, we need to leave it there for now. I have to thank you, our panelists, and all of you for sharing your reporting, especially. And to our viewers at home, thank you so much for joining us.

But before we go, on behalf of everyone here at Washington Week, we want to thank someone who has been a part of bringing you this show for years. Come on over here, our wonderful colleague, Loretta Rogers. Our Friday nights would not be the same without you. We wish you all the best as you retire after decades of incredible service.

So I have to say, I'm Lisa Desjardins. Good night from Washington.