It's been a busy week and a clarifying one.
Donald Trump has done something that very few candidates for their party's presidential nomination have done.
He has more or less wrapped things up by January, which means, among other things, that we're looking at the longest general election season in memory.
But it's a campaign that will play out to a great degree in courtrooms, as it just did earlier today in New York, where a jury awarded E. Jean Carroll more than $83 million for defaming her.
Joining me tonight to discuss all of this, Laura Barron-Lopez, the White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, Tom Nichols, my colleague and a staff writer at The Atlantic, Ashley Parker is the senior national political correspondent for The Washington Post, and Chuck Todd is the chief political analyst at NBC News.
Okay, good.
But I'm glad that you're all here, because we got a lot to talk about.
That's very important that you're all here.
E. Jean Carroll, Ashley, what does it mean?
ASHLEY PARKER, Senior Political Correspondent, The Washington Post: It's a good question because on the one hand, everything about Trump is baked in voters, frankly, when they went to vote for him or to vote against him in 2016 knew how he treated women.
They knew again when they went to the polls in 2020.
But I will say in talking to some voters who voted for Trump in 2016, voted for him in 2020, the sort of closest they came to popping off that support where they would say, you know, I think the media is after him.
I think the deep state is after him.
But, you know, it's all witch hunts, but they wanted a few less witches hunting him.
And this is the sort of thing, $83 million, when a jury has already decided he sexually abused her is a thing that makes the Haley argument.
I don't know if it's successful for Haley, but it makes the Haley argument.
There's just too much chaos.
It makes it resonate.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Laura, witch hunt fatigue, is it possible that we're hitting a moment?
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, White House Correspondent, PBS NewsHour: Not necessarily.
I think that amongst the Republican base, that they -- that a ruling like this doesn't bother them, that this case, you know only feeds into their frustrations and then their beliefs that Trump has told them that the entire justice system is weaponized against him.
So, is it going to hurt him with the Republican base?
I don't think so.
But could it hurt him with general election voters?
Yes, I think it could because there are a number of, you know, independents and Republicans that aren't happy with their party anymore who see a ruling like that and they say this is another reason why I can't vote for this person based on his character.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Chuck, what's it do to his head?
CHUCK TODD, Chief Political Analyst, NBC News: Well, that's right.
It messes with his head.
He takes -- he soaks all this in.
And we saw it even on Tuesday night.
He did not like what Nikki Haley said.
And all of a sudden, he turned what should have been an obvious moment of ignoring her and start focusing on the general election and he couldn't do it.
He let her get under his skin.
We know this will get under his skin.
And this is sort of the worst of all worlds for the Republican Party, because all of these verdicts deepen.
In some ways, the Republican base almost tightens its grip, or Trump tightens his grip on the base, and it pushes away those very voters who've been with him.
There was a massive gender gap between Haley and Trump in the New Hampshire primary.
This doesn't help it.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Tom, the $83 million verdict, because he couldn't stop talking about a person who had already won a court case against him, he was careful, relatively speaking, in his statement tonight.
Can he have the discipline?
Does he have any reserve of discipline?
Or are we going to start seeing him on the campaign trail tomorrow talking about E. Jean Carroll again?
TOM NICHOLS, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: I'm sort of -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I'm asking you to predict the future right now.
TOM NICHOLS: Yes, I'm trying to countdown until the middle of the night tonight, because this has happened before where something like this, like the first verdict, where he kind of says, okay, I'm going to listen to my lawyers, I'm going to put the phone down and can't do it.
But I think -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But the lawyers are not there in the pit of the night.
TOM NICHOLS: Well, right, they can't post a guard by his phone all night.
But I think what's interesting about this is that it's going to -- you know, so many Trump supporters, it won't affect them, but so many Trump supporters kind of on the outer margin say things like, I didn't hear about this or I don't follow that news.
An $83 million verdict, that's going to break through to voters who normally wouldn't pay attention to this and that's going to get under his skin and he's going to end up -- I think he'll have to talk about it at rallies because he won't be able to help himself.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right, right.
Let's pivot a little bit to his dominance of the Republican Party.
I want to start by playing you -- this is exciting, this is a montage.
We have a montage.
I want to play this montage and you're going to enjoy it a lot.
Let's go.
SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): I am proud to endorse Donald Trump for president of the United States.
VIVEK RAMASWAMY, Republican Presidential Candidate: God bless you, Donald J. Trump.
Vote Trump USA.
GOV.
RON DESANTIS (R-FL): He has my endorsement.
SEN. JOHN CORNYN (R-TX): I called for Republicans to get behind a single candidate, President Trump.
SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): I believe he's going to win.
He's going to be our next president.
SEN. TIM SCOTT (R-SC): I just love you.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: First, let me just put it on the table.
I love all of you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you.
I love you the way Tim Scott loves Donald Trump, but even more.
Okay, so that was -- I mean, the Tim Scott one was the one that got the most attention for sort of obvious Baroque reasons, but people are falling into place, right?
I mean, is he solid as a rock with Republican elected officials now, Laura?
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I think so, yes.
I mean, so many within the Republican Party leadership, from the House to the Senate, the chairs of the campaign arms in both chambers, they are behind him and they support him.
And some have been behind him a lot earlier than he showed that he would actually win Iowa and New Hampshire.
So, no, the party is squarely behind him, despite the fact that you see like some not so great figures for him coming out of New Hampshire and Iowa.
Yes, did he improve his numbers slightly with college educated voters, a little bit, but he still has a weakness there.
Also, 35 percent of New Hampshire GOP voters said that they wouldn't vote for him in November, if he is the nominee.
So, there are still key segments of people who identify as Republicans, people who identify as center-right independents who say that they aren't going to necessarily support him in November, and yet the party has coalesced behind him.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Chuck, weaker than we think?
CHUCK TODD: Yes.
If he were the incumbent, 54 percent would be an incredibly poor showing in New Hampshire, right?
He's kind of a quasi-incumbent.
But if you look at Joe Biden and what they pulled off with the rioting, and supposedly his weakness in his party, and Dean Phillips couldn't cross 25 percent.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Dean Phillips, nobody knows his name.
CHUCK TODD: But he spent real money up there.
So, no, no, no, I think like he had a real clean shot at this, and it went nowhere.
Donald Trump only got 54.
You know, he's got a rock solid 50 to 55 percent.
So, it's impossible to take the nomination away from him.
But he's got real problems with his coalition.
And there is no evidence that he has gotten any new voters from 2020.
For whatever voters he has gained of working class Hispanics, working class African-Americans, he's lost among women.
Because we are seeing women move away from the party ever since Dobbs.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Tom, let's talk about complicity a little bit.
Are you seeing -- well, you know, here, this is a kind of a stunning quote from - - just from 2021, I want to read this to you, Mitch McConnell.
He told Jonathan Martin right after January 6th, quote, I feel exhilarated by the fact that this fellow, meaning Trump, finally totally discredited himself, right?
I think that was a common view -- by the way, he looks totally happy in that photo.
This was the most common view in the world.
It is kind of astonishing how the party has moved -- the party leadership, I should say, has moved over to him.
Is it a case where he's superficially, at least, more popular with Republican-electeds than he is with the Republican base?
TOM NICHOLS: I suspect that most Republican-electeds hate him.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Superficially?
I mean, superficially, they're for him?
TOM NICHOLS: But, superficially, they're for him because they fear their own primary voters, and they don't want to have to deal with that.
And they were hoping they would never have to deal with this again, but now that it's here, they have said, okay, one more round of compromises, one more round of doubling down, we're going to have to do this one more time.
And, I mean, their hearts - - that montage was great, by the way.
It needed a survivor soundtrack.
It needed Eye of the Tiger.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Next week.
TOM NICHOLS: But you can almost see them sort of trying to work up that enthusiasm and say, no, I really mean it.
I'm really supporting Donald Trump because I think they just were hoping they were never going to have to do this again.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Let me come back to Ashley for a second because you were just up in New Hampshire and you were at Trump's headquarters during the -- ASHLEY PARKER: His election night party.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: His election night party.
What was the sense of enthusiasm there on the two levels, on the electeds level and on the supporters, on the rank and file supporters?
ASHLEY PARKER: Well, the most fascinating enthusiasm or sort of lack thereof was from Trump himself, which is he sort of you're watching him and he could not believe that Nikki Haley had lost and had essentially gone on stage before him.
And to be clear, she did acknowledge he lost and she acknowledged he won very briefly, but that Nikki Haley had taken a page from his playbook, had lost an election, had gone on stage and taken a victory lap, and he could not believe it.
He was frustrated.
He kept on returning to it.
I mean, as I wrote it, my piece was sort of like game recognized game and it made game grumpy.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Can I read a quote from your piece?
ASHLEY PARKER: I'd love that, yes.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Who wouldn't love that?
Who wouldn't love that?
Trump has long deployed a form of, I'm rubber, you're glue projection, accusing rivals and perceived enemies of the very thing of which he is guilty, wielding shamelessness as a superpower.
So, Nikki Haley really got under his skin by doing what Trump does.
ASHLEY PARKER: Yes, she absolutely did.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Why is Trump surprised that this late stage of the game, that people might try to deploy Trumpist tactics against him?
ASHLEY PARKER: Well, I mean, it has been since 2015 that no one really has managed that degree of shamelessness.
And to be fair, neither did Nikki Haley, right?
She acknowledged the law.
She -- you know, there wasn't a deadly insurrection based on her election denialism.
But there's something there's something about that and there's something also about strong women challenging him that gets under his skin.
And someone made the point to me that they weren't surprised, actually, that when he confused her with Nancy Pelosi, they said, I totally understand how those two women are interchangeable in his mind because they're two very strong, powerful women who are going up against him and really irking him.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, he can't believe it that a woman would behave that way or a woman would treat him -- ASHLEY PARKER: The nerve.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The nerve.
ASHLEY PARKER: But in that particular case, he doesn't like being challenged by strong women, but in that particular case, it was that losing elections and claiming he won them, that's his thing.
That's not Nikki Haley's thing.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That's his signature move.
