Full Episode: Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, 1/10/25

Jeffrey Goldberg: One of Donald Trump's most controversial cabinet picks will try to win over the Senate next week when confirmation hearings begin. For the national security nominees, their hearings come at an awkward moment, just as Trump is threatening allies and friends from Denmark to Panama, giving new meaning to the term, America First, next.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week. Next week's going to be a busy one when Senate confirmation hearings for some of Donald Trump's cabinet picks begin. But the biggest news this week are the wildfires in Southern California.

Joining me at the table to discuss all of this, Laura Barrón-López, the White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent at The New York Times, Tom Nichols is my colleague and a staff writer at The Atlantic, and Vivian Salama is a national politics reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Thank you all for being here.

I want to talk a little bit about the terrible, terrible fires in Los Angeles and around Los Angeles, and I want to talk about it in the context of Washington politics and national politics for a moment. So, in ordinary times, a president or a president-elect will show support for local leadership while they're dealing with an actual emergency in the hour of need, as it were.

But this is what President-elect Trump wrote recently on Truth Social his platform. As of this moment, Gavin Newscum and his Los Angeles crew have contained exactly zero percent of the fire. It is burning at levels that even surpassed last night. This is not government. I can't wait till January 20th.

Put aside, if we can, the insult against the California governor, the cheap insult against the California governor, I'm interested in the implied promise in these posts that come January 20th, government will work and that presumably wildfires like this will be contained.

Laura, is there any anxiety on the Trump team about the number of promises that are being made in that kind of way? I mean, it's very hard to hide your failure to contain a wildfire for any official of any party.

Laura Barrón-López, White House Correspondent, PBS News Hour: No, I mean, there's no sense that I'm getting from the people close to the transition, inside the transition, that are going to enter the administration, any concern about the promises that the president-elect has made, and especially the promises that he said he will just try to carry out on day one, which there is a hefty list.

You're right that wildfires are obvious and people can see them, and I'm from Southern California, and I've dealt with wildfires my entire life when I lived there, but the president-elect's team, you know, ultimately revises history whenever they want to. And they did it with January 6 and more people voted for him in 2024 than they did in 2020.

So, when you take all of these things that people see in front of their eyes, you know, Trump supporters and voters who supported him ultimately believe him over even what we report and believe him over the fact.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Carl, I mean, is there any consequence for making that kind of promise?

Carl Hulse, Chief Washington Correspondent, The New York Times: I think one thing that's going to be different this time is that the Democrats are really keeping track of these promises. They are getting -- they're ready and they're going to say, you know, when's -- why is the Ukraine war not over? Why are eggs still costing this much?

And, you know, there's a practical consequence for the Trump administration of these fires and it's money. They're in this big negotiation about, we need to cut spending, we need to do all this stuff. There's going to be a huge price tag attached to this for the federal government to pay for some of this stuff. You know, that's part of being president. All of a sudden, something you didn't plan for is really on your agenda.

I also think that it never is great to be playing the blame game in the middle of the disaster and, you know, some of that.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, well, I mean, that that's the political norm throughout. I mean, really, any presidency is while the fire is raging literally or figuratively, you know, you -- I mean remember Governor Christie and Barack Obama and hurricanes and there are many, many examples, but this is a very different scenario.

Tom, Carl mentioned Ukraine. I think of all the promises that Donald Trump has made and that we're cataloging, I will end the war in Ukraine on day one has to be the biggest. Do you get any sense? And I'm asking this not in a sardonic way at all, but have you seen proof that they have a plan, whether it -- put aside whether it could work or not, is there serious planning for that or is this just rhetorical excess?

Tom Nichols, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Well, again, there's never any consequence for it. So, if the war is not over on January 21st, we'll go from Biden couldn't stop the war to Trump's doing his best. And it will be shifted on to Putin or someone else.

If you look at some of the things that his envoy, the people that he's chosen, his national security adviser and his envoy to Ukraine have written, there's a plan, which is to tell Putin to make peace or we'll send more arms to Ukraine if you don't come to the table. That doesn't really mean anything. I mean, Putin could simply say, okay, fine, I'll come to the table.

Jeffrey Goldberg: You're actually a -- it's an antique term, but you're a Kremlinologist. I mean, that was your training and you taught for 30 years at the Naval War College these very issues. Just because you want to say something to Putin doesn't mean he's going to do it. Is there any proof that Trump has more sway over Putin than Joe Biden?

Tom Nichols: No, it's probably the other way around. I mean, throughout his first term, Trump seemed genuinely intimidated by Putin. Now, supposedly there have been phone conversations that haven't gone well, that Putin's not happy about, but, you know, you never know with what you're hearing from the Kremlin side of it about how much of this is a kind of a faint or, you know, a kind of double game of trying to flummox the western press.

I don't see what Trump thinks is going to happen other than it's just something that he said that he can call up Putin and Putin will say, yes, I'll help you out.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Putin has some momentum on the battlefield, correct?

Tom Nichols: Yes, although the Ukrainians are actually mounting some counterattacks. I mean, the Russians are paying a seriously high price even now, and the Ukrainians are counterattacking again in this part of Russia that they're actually holding in the Kursk region. Again, something if you had said to me three years ago that, you know, we'd still be here three years later and the Ukrainians actually be holding Russian territory would have seemed utterly fantastic, but I don't think that he has -- they have much leverage right now.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Vivian, you're a Trumpologist sitting next to our Kremlinologist, among other ologies that you study. Does Trump believe that he has sway over Vladimir Putin, that he can call Putin and say, look, let's just cut a deal and that will happen, or is this again pre-inaugural posturing?

Vivian Salama National Politics Reporter, The Wall Street Journal: And we've seen that he believes not only that he has sway over Putin, but that he has sway at a negotiating table in general. He's very pleased with his abilities to negotiate whether or not it's actually produced any real outcome. He believes that it's one of his biggest strengths.

And so that is why during the campaign, he repeatedly said that he could get a deal on day one, that he would talk to Putin. He, in fact, criticized Joe Biden for not picking up the phone and calling Putin more often, saying that he would have been on the phone with him to negotiate. We do not -- they still have not confirmed whether or not they've spoken. The Kremlin has completely dodged that and denied it.

And at this point, we do not see any indication that we are going to get a deal by January 20th, quite the opposite, actually. We are quite far away from any real breakthroughs. Because, you know, it's one thing -- we're not campaigning anymore and governing is hard, and they're learning that in real time just as they learned that in '16.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I guess I just find it -- I mean, if I said to you that in two weeks time, I'm going to have Beyonce and Taylor Swift on this panel, you would watch in two weeks to see if I had Beyonce and Taylor Swift on this panel. You can't just say, I'm going to solve the Ukraine war and then not solve it. At what point does he pay a political price for making these kind of promises?

Vivian Salama: The wheels are definitely in motion. He has a team, and like Tom was saying, there is a team that is trying to work out some sort of understanding by talking to the Ukrainians, presumably talking to the Russians as well at some point, to be able to get them to the negotiating table. But it's a lot easier said than done. This is a conflict that has roots going back centuries, literally. And it is not so easy to kind of come in and wave a magic wand. We're talking about territorial integrity here and a war that has killed tens of thousands of people. And so it is not something that can be fixed overnight, but they do have a genuine interest in achieving a goal.

Laura Barrón-López: We've been talking about political consequences since he first took office in 2016. I mean, you know, when it comes to Ukraine, I think that maybe it's not necessarily that Trump would face political consequences, but come the midterms, come 2026, if he doesn't make good on a number of his promises, whether it's Ukraine or lowering prices, then that's where Republicans, the larger party will feel the pain.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, no, I mean, I'm always waiting for the consequence to hit. By the way, no one has asked me if Beyonce and Taylor Swift are actually coming on the show.

Vivian Salama: I don't believe that they will come.

Laura Barrón-López: Yes, I believe you.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, I mean, you know what? Keep hope alive, all right? Just bear with me on that.

I want to talk about something that Trump did this week that was less than highly partisan. We saw the state funeral yesterday of President Jimmy Carter. And at the funeral, we saw President Trump, A, show up, which is not a given, given past behavior at these sorts of events, and we saw him chatting amiably with among others, President Obama. Obviously, people are trying to figure out what they were talking about.

But I don't -- you know, without over reading this, Carl, you know, what are we to make of -- what do we make of Donald Trump playing within the norms of Washington behavior?

Carl Hulse: These tableaus are always like really studied, you know, for historical reasons.

Jeffrey Goldberg: We saw Dan Quayle for the first time in quite a while.

Carl Hulse: I had actually seen him at the Capitol recently.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Oh, really?

Carl Hulse: But the -- it's a big stage. Donald Trump knows that everyone was watching this, you know, so he wanted to show up, make an impact. And he also wants to show that he's an acceptable part of the president's club, right? Right ex-president's club and now president again club, which a even more exclusive club. And I think you know, he wanted to -- it's a stature thing with him.

And I think -- who knows what he and President Obama, who was laughing as Trump talked to him. I mean, I would love to know exactly what they were talking about. Was he saying, you know, hey, I didn't really mean it about that, birth certificate stuff, you know, that wasn't really serious.

Tom Nichols: Are there any lip readers?

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, no. I -- yes, I think there must be lip reading going on.

Carl Hulse: But there was the moment of Mike -- Karen Pence.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, no, there was that was quite a different moment, which is also interesting to study again back to criminology, Karen Pence sitting next to Mike Pence. Mike Pence gets up and shakes the hand of Donald Trump. And Karen Pence, and we have sort of a play by play video, you could actually see, Karen Pence not interested in acknowledging Donald Trump's existence.

Tom, what do you make of that?

Tom Nichols: Can't really blame her for holding a grudge. You know, considering that there were people that wanted to hang her husband. And, you know, that seemed to me a perfectly rational response from someone who isn't a politician. It just is a family member, and wasn't going to stand up and make nice. I mean, everybody else does what they have to do because that's Washington and that's what you do at a funeral, you know, the other political figures, but, you know, Mrs. Pence, I think, just said not doing it.

Jeffrey Goldberg: But let me ask a -- Vivian, let me ask a purposely naive question. Why does Mike Pence have to make nice to Donald Trump after Donald Trump basically, I don't know how -- was suggested that he should be hanged?

Vivian Salama: I mean, he has come out and actually said that he is the leader of the party and that he's going to sort of support that. He didn't endorse him.

Jeffrey Goldberg: But he didn't endorse him, yes.

Vivian Salama: He did not endorse him, but he would sort of, you know, support the party and support the president of the United States, whoever he or she may be. And so, you know, that was something that -- you know, he's a politician and he's playing politics. And it was very clear that, you know, Mike Pence still wants to be in the game. And so, you know, he has to make nice for (INAUDIBLE).

Carl Hulse: I mean, I've known Mike Pence for years and years. It would totally not be in his nature to sit there. You know, his slogan used to be, I'm conservative, but I'm not angry about it. I mean, he's just that guy, and he's going to stand up, even though --

Jeffrey Goldberg: If I'm not wrong, Karen Pence, based on the old reporting back from the 2016 period, Karen Pence was always dubious about Trump.

Carl Hulse: I think that's correct.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. But I guess you're right. It's just this is the guy who threatened my husband, and that's that.

And, again, I don't want to overread Donald Trump sitting with Democrats, and also George W. Bush, Laura Bush, at the funeral. I'm reading too much about -- reading into normalcy that much. After all, he just did call the governor of California Newscum, you know, the day before. But is there -- again, maybe purposely naive question, is there proof that there's going to be any proof at all that there's going to be a learning curve about behavior, effective behavior, the second term around, the second time around? Have you seen anything that suggests that he's going to be more effective at reaching across the aisle in any way, shape or form?

Vivian Salama: Not really. In fact, if anything, I think he --

Jeffrey Goldberg: Do you want to think about that answer for a second?

Vivian Salama: No, not really. I mean, you know, Donald Trump, for all intents and purposes, like he does know when to play nice when he wants to, but the question is, does he want to, does he need to, you know, with the Republicans now holding both chambers in Congress. Like , he doesn't necessarily need to reach out across the aisle to Democrats at this point, he needs to work on Republican support.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, he doesn't have enough of that.

Vivian Salama: Which is going to be an issue.

Laura Barrón-López: There's also a pattern this past week that shows, that answers your question, Jeff, which is that -- and basically since the New Year, which is that in response to a terror attack in New Orleans, Donald Trump sent out disinformation, basically saying that it was the result of an open border and that implied that migrants were the cause of this terror attack.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, there was there an open border between Texas and Louisiana, yes.

Laura Barrón-López: It was an American citizen that carried out that terror attack.

In response to the wildfires, he also pushed out more disinformation, not just calling Newsom Newscum, he also lied about Gavin Newsom's handling of the wildfires. He and Republicans are saying, and his son is saying, that it's a result of DEI hires across fire departments, that that's what made wildfires worse.

So, no, there's no evidence that the president-elect is going to operate any different.

Carl Hulse: I mean, he's entering the White House as a newly convicted felon. I think he thinks he can pretty much do what he wants to do.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. He is a former -- as of today, he's a formally convicted felon, first time in American history, worth noting, obviously.

I want to pivot to the most important geopolitical issue of the moment, which is the future of Greenland, obviously. And, you know, the president-elect has spent a lot of time in the last week or two trolling or criticizing some allies and friends, including Canada, Panama, and Denmark, obviously, the ruler, the sovereign over Greenland, which Donald Trump has made very clear he wants to buy on behalf of the United States.

Tom, allow me to quote from a famous play set in Denmark. Though this be madness, yet there is method in it. So, is there method to this? Is there something that we're not understanding or is this just Donald Trump having some fun?

Tom Nichols: Well, some of it's always Donald Trump just having some fun, doing it because he, to quote another famous work of literature, the turn of the screw, the young boy in it who says, why do you do these terrible things? He says, because I can. But I also think there is a little bit of strategy. Because think about all the -- I mean, we're talking about things that are never going to happen, right? We're not going to war with Denmark over Greenland. We're not going to seize the Panama Canal. We're not talking about the fact that Pete Hegseth is going to the Hill next week. We're not talking about Tulsi Gabbard. We're not talking about RFK.

I mean, this whole strange foreign policy fandango has kind of obliterated a lot of other discussions that I think were really --

Jeffrey Goldberg: Is that purposeful?

Tom Nichols: You know, I'm always worried about ascribing too much purpose Donald Trump at any given moment. But it could be --

Laura Barrón-López: I think it is. I mean, some people who have worked for him said that he does -- say that he does this on purpose. If he feels as though the press is not paying attention to him or paying attention to something that he wants, if he's bored by the news cycle, he jumps in and he tries to seize control of it. And that's what he did this week, when everyone was focused on Jimmy Carter's funeral, when people were preparing for the sentencing today in the New York hush money trial and potentially covering that. He goes out there and says, I may use military force against Greenland and the Panama Canal. And what happens? The press jumps in response to it.

Vivian Salama: He's the master of distraction.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Vivian, let me ask you this. Tom is sure that we're not invading Denmark or Panama. Are we 100 percent sure that this is just for fun or is there a chance that NATO has to sit there and go, wait, what do we do if he is somehow aggressive against Greenland?

Vivian Salama: Donald Trump is so unpredictable that NATO is already doing that, just to be clear. They're already asking those questions. But does anyone on his staff that I've talked to think that he's actually going to invade Greenland or invade Canada or try to forcefully take the Panama Canal? No, but he is going to use very aggressive, coercive behavior, threaten economic tariffs if he can and otherwise just to get his way. He does not like to be told no.

And that's what's happened here, is that in every one of these cases, he's been told no, you cannot have it. And that is making him want it even more and get more aggressive with his rhetoric. But there is some national security strategy behind this. And we've been talking about this since '16 -- I mean, since '19, when the story broke, is that, you know, they want Western Hemisphere dominance. This is an old Republican obsession about Western Hemisphere dominance and fortifying us positions in the Arctic across the Western Hemisphere.

And so this is --

Jeffrey Goldberg: These are legitimate issues that American national security --

Vivian Salama: They're legitimate issues that have unfortunately gotten, you know, conflated with sort of the blurry rhetoric of Donald Trump talking about buying Greenland and invading Panama,

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right?

Carl Hulse: I'm not 100 percent convinced about Panama, you know, that it is something. The interesting thing to me is what the reaction is on the Hill, you know? In the House, it's pretty rah-rah, let's do what we have to do, you know, this is okay with us. In the Senate it's a little more, we're not sure exactly what this is about.

Laura Barrón-López: The reaction from foreign leaders is interesting though, and I think a little different than what it was potentially his first term, which is that there's a bit more mocking of Donald Trump.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.

Laura Barrón-López: Mexico's president was mocking him. Canadian lawmakers were mocking him.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, that's good domestic politics.

Yes, I want to note for the record that Vivian is the person who broke the Greenland story in 2019, so just noting, wonderful report.

Vivian Salama: This will be written on my tombstone.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, you broke the Greenland story.

You mentioned Pete Hegseth, we have a few minutes, I want to talk about these nominations next week. Carl, give us the state of play.

Carl Hulse: I mean, the nominations start in force on Tuesday. Pete Hegseth is going to have an extremely difficult hearing. The Democrats are loaded for bed, but they're not loaded as they want to be because they haven't seen all the documents that they want to see. That's what the fight is on the Hill right now. Are we going to see these documents?

I think how some of these other -- you know, there's going to be some that go extremely smoothly and you'll hardly notice them. But, you know, the high-profile ones are Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard, who we have not gotten to.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes. And it's your belief that Gabbard has problems?

Carl Hulse: I think she does have a problem. The Trump folks might want to upend the intelligence community of the United States. Senate Republicans don't want to do that. And certainly Republicans on the intelligence committee, including -- and I include Mitch McConnell.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, I wanted to ask you -- you're a McConnellologist. I'm going to beat this one to death. Yes, I'm just killing it. But that's one of the biggest questions of all here, is how much does Mitch McConnell stray from the Orthodox pro-Trump line in the coming weeks.

Carl Hulse: I don't think he's going to have problems doing that. And I think --

Jeffrey Goldberg: He's a free man.

Carl Hulse: -- if you look at Mitch McConnell, and you look at Tulsi Gabbard, right, she's had to turn around her criticism of one of the national security programs, and eavesdropping one. She's going to be questioned about why she wanted to pardon Edward Snowden. I think, you know, some of the things that she's advocated and done are just so contrary to what Republicans in the Senate are about when it comes to intelligence.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Vivian, what does it mean if Tulsa Gabbard becomes the director of National Intelligence?

Vivian Salama: So, there are -- I mean, the job is to oversee the intel community at large and sort of, kind of be a traffic cop for a lot of the intelligence. Is it the most significant intel job in the administration? No. The CIA director would probably be that job, but it's still a very important role and certainly at a time where Donald Trump has talked about upending the intelligence community. He has cast doubt over their own assessments, sometimes even preferring, you know, claims that Vladimir Putin makes over things that come out of the intel community. And so to have someone like that as sort of an agent and a facilitator of the intelligence is something very alarming.

But to Carl's point, what I keep on hearing from Republicans on the Hill is that she is may be grossly underqualified and it is raising concern because the intel community in particular takes their jobs very seriously. They don't want someone who they have questions about or concerns about. Are they an adversary to the United States or are they going to side with us? And so this is an issue.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Tom, in the last minute we have, you are actually a Sovietologist, a study of -- you studied Russian-American relations for 40 years. Have we ever seen anything like this, where someone who has spoken on behalf of Russian interests be nominated into a role like this?

Tom Nichols: Never. And the Democrats would never have put someone forward like that, and certainly not the Republicans. I mean, it's all the more stunning that this is coming from, you know, we always have to say it, the party of Ronald Reagan, or what was once the party of Ronald Reagan. It's literally unthinkable.

And, you know, all of the things that Vivian just brought up, on top of that, imagine our allies saying, you know, we're done sharing intelligence with you, it's just too dangerous. It's too risky to our people, to our interests. So, it could be a disaster.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I could only imagine how interesting it is to be the head of Danish intelligence right now.

And on that note, we do have to leave it there for now, but I want to thank our panelists for joining me. And next week, please join me as I interview Taylor Swift and Beyonce in Greenland. I want to thank you, our viewers at home, for watching.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg. Good night from Washington.