JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The Iowa caucuses are just around the corner, and the Republican frontrunner is setting a pattern for the year moving between the campaign trail -- DONALD TRUMP: We're winning tremendously here.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: -- and the courthouse.
DONALD TRUMP: I don't know that we're going to get a fair ruling.
This is a sham.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: As Trump manages a flood of personal legal challenges, the current president is dealing with the rest of the world struggling to thwart Iran's ambitions and Russia's and China's as well.
JOHN KIRBY, Coordinator for Strategic Communications, National Security Council: Everything we've done diplomatically and militarily has been designed to keep the tensions down.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Next.
Good evening, and welcome to Washington Week.
We're going to range far and wide tonight from courtrooms in D.C. and New York to Iowa caucus halls and rebel camps in Yemen.
Joining me to make sense of the world, Josh Gerstein is the senior legal affairs reporter at Politico, Steve Inskeep is the host of NPR's Morning Edition and the author of Differ We Must, How Lincoln Succeeded in a Divided America, Nicole Killian is the congressional correspondent for CBS News, and my colleague Adrienne LaFrance, our highly esteemed executive editor at The Atlantic, highly esteemed.
That's in lieu of a raise, right?
Thank you all for being here.
There's a lot going on from Iowa to the Houthis.
The stories have not commingled yet, but who knows what can happen.
I want to start with the strikes in Yemen.
Steve, what does the U.S. hope to achieve with these strikes?
STEVE INSKEEP, Host, NPR's Morning Edition: The United States says its goal is to avoid essentially what is happening, by which I mean the United States would like to avoid a broader regional war.
And so the answer for now is a sort of very, very, very slow-moving war, something short of a full blown war.
There are a couple of illuminating interviews on NPR this morning.
My colleague, Leila Fadel, spoke with the military spokesperson, General Pat Ryder, who talked this through, said the idea was to deter the Houthi rebels from continuing to fire on merchant shipping.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Houthis don't seem very deterrable.
STEVE INSKEEP: They don't seem very determined.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: They're not really interested in deterrence.
STEVE INSKEEP: And so Ryder had to add something else and say, if that doesn't work, at least we are degrading their capability with these dozens of strikes across the region.
There's another perspective, though.
Gerald Feierstein, who was a former U.S. ambassador to Yemen, who's been thinking about this situation, argues that the Houthis are gaining something from being attacked by the United States, from confronting the United States.
They get to stand on the world stage.
They get to say they're standing up for Palestinians.
And we'll just remind people that is what this is connected to is the Israel-Hamas War.
They also get to say they're standing up to the United States.
They get a benefit from this.
The goal of the United States, which Feierstein is skeptical about at the moment, is to change the cost calculus for the Houthis to get them to slow this down and avoid something bigger than what we've seen so far.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
So, Adrienne, President Biden said today that this is not a proxy war with Iran, but the Houthis are sponsored by Iran.
Hezbollah in Lebanon is sponsored by Iran.
Various Iraqi factions, Shia factions, are sponsored by Iran.
Hamas, of course, is a close ally of Iran.
So, it really does seem like Iran knows that this is a proxy war.
I mean, why is Joe Biden downplaying the idea that Iran is actually the center of this?
ADRIENNE LAFRANCE, Executive Director, The Atlantic: Well, I think, you know, in general, we can't count on presidents to tell the American public the truth.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Oh, hardcore, went hardcore right away.
Okay.
ADRIENNE LAFRANCE: Call it like it is.
And not only that, but it's in his interest to try to balance escalation versus at least the perception of containment.
And so the question I think, which Steve has alluded to is this, is this now slow, creeping war that we've anticipated since October 7th, frankly, including the Iranian involvement.
And so the question that I have right now, and actually would be curious what you think about this, is what does containment look like and is it containable?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Are you asking me a question?
Well, I will answer your question.
It's very hard to contain people who don't want to be contained.
I think Steve makes an excellent point that the Houthis are -- unless you actually truly degrade their capabilities, what you're doing is saying the greatest superpower on the planet is now our enemy.
And you saw their speeches today.
It doesn't seem like this will be the last strike if the goal is containment without escalation is kind of a hard thing to (INAUDIBLE).
STEVE INSKEEP: Now, with that said, we've talked about this on the program before, nations act out of their interests, what they see as their interest.
The United States doesn't see an interest in a wider war if they can get away without it.
It is reasonable to ask how the Houthis see their interests.
What is in it for them?
They're not purely going to do what Iran tells them to do.
They clearly like this role.
But they may conclude that something is going too far, in the same way that the Iranians, frankly, while they've pushed all these buttons and pulled all these levers through the region, seem to be aware of the fact that there is a line that should not cross.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I would note two things.
One is that Hamas didn't necessarily tell.
Intelligence is suggesting that Hamas didn't tell Iran that it was going to launch its attack on October 7th.
The Iranians are like, okay, guys, you do your thing.
And the other thing that we're hearing is that the Houthis are considered by the Iranians to be semi-unmanageable.
Obviously, Iran supplies them with weapons, but they're not necessarily responsive to the overarching Iranian anti-American strategy.
STEVE INSKEEP: They revolt against their own government because they like to do what people tell them to do.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right, right, exactly.
Nicole, I want to ask you this.
I mean, this is now noticeable on Capitol Hill.
It's noticeable in Washington whenever members of the opposite party agree with -- let's say, in this case, the House and Senate Republican leadership agreeing with Joe Biden that these strikes were necessary.
Can you give us, just on your own reporting, was this a source of any contention within the Republican caucuses on the Hill?
And I'm wondering how this develops, how long before the speaker and Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, before they start criticizing Joe Biden's response in some way.
NICOLE KILLION, Congressional Correspondent, CBS News: Yes.
Well, I mean, I think, by and large, we saw Congress come out pretty unequivocally in support of these strikes.
I mean, certainly there were some progressives who felt, oh, well, the White House should have sought congressional authorization.
But to your point, yes, we saw the speaker, Leader McConnell, come out very strongly in support, welcoming these strikes, also saying that they believe this indicates a true shift, in the words of Speaker Johnson, an enduring shift, in the words of leader McConnell, in the Biden administration's approach to Iran.
But, again, we heard the White House and the president made clear again today that Iran does not want a war with us.
They don't want to get involved in any kind of proxy war with Iran.
But, certainly, at least for once, it appears that everyone appears to be on the same side.
I think what I'm watching on the Hill more specifically is whether or not this moves the needle with respect to the national security supplemental, because, once again, this kind of renews the focus on all of these conflicts that are happening overseas, whether it's Israel and Hamas.
We have the elections in Taiwan this weekend.
Of course, the issue of Ukraine still remains unresolved.
So, does this push lawmakers any closer to trying to reach a deal on the border so that they can fund some of these foreign priorities?
And that is still an open question.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, this is actually fascinating because you have a situation in which the speaker and the Senate minority leader might soon be arguing for more strikes on Iranian targets, Houthi targets, et cetera, right, but they also seem pretty uninterested in providing the Biden administration, the executive branch, with the tools and the money necessary to actually lead the kind of robust attacks.
Josh, I'm curious, you've been watching Washington for a long time.
What are the chances that this gets caught up very quickly back into partisan bickering in a way that limits the Pentagon's ability to do what many Republicans want them to do?
JOSH GERSTEIN, Senior Legal Affairs Reporter, Politico: Well, I think there's a good chance of that, especially around the funding issues that we've already seen play out with the question of whether we're going to see money sent for Israel, whether we're not going to see money sent for Israel, whether it's linked to every other Republican priority or not.
But on the other hand, the president still in our system has a huge amount of discretion.
As you know, the Pentagon budget is pretty big, and he can almost always find a way to come up with some money, as we've seen in the Ukraine situation, happen again and again and again.
When Congress was slow, suddenly the administration finds a pot of money sitting around that they can tap for it.
So, I don't think there'll be an acute showdown anytime soon.
But I wouldn't be at all surprised as we see budget measures move along in the course of the next year to see these kinds of stresses play out.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I mean, also sort of I picture President Zelenskyy on the sidelines waving his arm, saying, over here, remember this.
I mean, you talk about the Taiwan election, the Ukraine war is intensifying in some way.
It seems like -- by the way, it seems like a tough time for the defense secretary to disappear for a week.
And I want to ask you this question, Josh and Nicole, I want you to come in on this.
It was a very strange week in Washington.
It was a week in which we found, among other things, Hunter Biden and Marjorie Taylor Greene in the same room, at least for a few minutes.
But maybe the strangest thing, at least to me about this past week, were the revelations that the secretary of defense was in the hospital for a week or for several days before the president, before his immediate boss, the president of the United States, even knew about it.
And I'm wondering, please, I'll jump in this because everybody has been talking about this, is Lloyd Austin's credibility so damaged now that he'll find it hard to be an effective secretary of defense or are people going to say, you know what, he's dealing with prostate cancer, give him some space, give him some room to deal with this?
JOSH GERSTEIN: I mean, I think it is going to be difficult for him because people are really questioning his judgment in connection with this episode.
Obviously, that kind of a diagnosis can be traumatic for anyone.
But we've seen this happen with presidents, with vice presidents, with other figures.
We have an incredibly aging gerontocracy that governs most of this city.
Austin is not that old, but these are the issues that come up increasingly frequently when you're governed by such old people.
And to have this situation where he was sort of off the grid for days, where people were having conversations with him and didn't realize that he was in the hospital, where he was missing from meetings, a lot of other senior people at the Pentagon had no idea where he was or why, it's very strange for people that often, I'm sure you've been in these planes, fly around in these doomsday planes, where the whole idea is that in a moment's notice you could be in the nuclear chain of command, to go off the grid is very strange.
STEVE INSKEEP: Part of this that's strange is we know that Austin has taken responsibility, but we don't really know how this happened.
We don't know the mechanics.
Did someone consciously decide cover this up?
Did someone really not know they needed to tell this?
The flipside for Austin, though, is that if you get rid of him, you have to have a confirmation hearing for a replacement.
And Democrats still do have their majority in the Senate.
But it would be one more thing for an overloaded Senate.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And we know, Nicole, that Joe Biden is very loyal to his people and he's shown no interest whatsoever in getting rid of Lloyd Austin.
But I'm wondering what you're hearing on the Hill about Lloyd Austin's credibility.
NICOLE KILLION: Well, I mean, I think you're seeing a divide once again on party lines on this.
I mean, for the most part, we're seeing Democrats back him up.
Yes, there is some concern about how this matter was handled.
And we know obviously there's going to be a review in place.
But Democrats by and large believe he should stay in his job.
Republicans, on the other hand, you have some calling for him to be impeached, others who believe that he should resign.
But I will say, I don't know if I would call it a situation of being off the grid.
I mean, in the sense that if he is suffering from prostate cancer, which is, by the way, something that disproportionately affects African-American men, we know the secretary is pretty private about it.
That's not to excuse his behavior about it, you know, I think you have to look more broadly.
And even covering Congress, we have seen many lawmakers, whether it's Mitch McConnell with those freezing episodes, we still don't know really all the details behind that, beyond the few details that he has shared.
In the case of the late Senator Feinstein, it took a long time before we learned the extent of her shingles diagnosis.
So, whether or not, to a certain extent, this is a generational thing, one may wonder.
But, yes, the protocol does need to be addressed, and that's certainly the main concern, I think, what you're hearing from lawmakers on both sides.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It is interesting.
It's a very flummoxing situation, especially regarding the nuclear chain of command, but it's also a very human problem.
And I imagine that he's going to survive this political episode because he's a 70-year-old man dealing with a serious problem.
And he's a retired four-star general who's held in high esteem generally.
I want to move us to Iowa as quickly as possible.
So, Chris Christie is out.
Nikki Haley is polling at 20 percent.
DeSantis is at 13, and Asa Hutchinson, by the way, is at 1.
STEVE INSKEEP: Is there somebody else in the polling?
I'm trying to remember.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: No, I'm going to get there.
But I do want to invoke the possibility of Asa Mania coming up.
I do.
I've been thinking a lot about Asa Mania lately.
But, yes, Donald Trump is at 54 and Haley is moving, but it's sort of like a secretariat is over here and there's a bunch of other horses that are also pretty fast, but nothing near it.
So, are we coming to the moment when we can finally just say Donald Trump is the nominee?
Like how far away are we from that moment?
STEVE INSKEEP: I'm going to wait for people to vote, to be perfectly honest with you.
I've seen the same polls you just described.
I understand the situation.
I understand the odds, but I'm going to wait.
Surprises happen in Iowa.
Surprises happen in New Hampshire.
The thing that I, as a citizen, hope happens over the coming weeks and months is that people think through the consequences of the choice that they are making.
There is a lot of sound and fury around former President Trump.
There is a lot of support for former President Trump.
I'm not sure the public is fully focused on something that you guys, in a recent issue of your magazine, tried to call attention to, which is just what would a second Trump presidency look like?
One reasonable question for critics of the former president to ask might be, would even people who support Trump's policies get Trump's policies out of Trump, or would there simply be chaos?
Would he be able to deliver a new Muslim ban that's stronger?
Would he be able to deliver a different immigration policy?
Would he be able to have a trade war with India, which is the kind of thing that he's talked about in some television interviews?
I'm not sure that the public is entirely focused on the questions of what a presidency means as opposed to who they support now.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, let's go to the big events of the week, bigger than politics.
We're in the judicial space, and, Josh, you've been covering this intensely.
So, let's just go right at it.
Give us the sequence of events this week.
There was a lot of moving parts, and maybe what you can do to help us all is to separate the wheat from the chaff.
What are the things that happened this week that are actually important, that mean something next week and next month?
JOSH GERSTEIN: Right.
So there were two big events this week, Jeff.
There was an argument before the D.C.
Circuit Court of Appeals, where you had Trump's lawyers and lawyers for Special Counsel Jack Smith squaring off, for lack of a better term, about these questions of presidential immunity that are being raised by the criminal case that was brought against him.
Both sides like to say it's unprecedented.
It's unprecedented to make these arguments of immunity.
No president has -- STEVE INSKEEP: It's unprecedented that the word unprecedented has been used so many thousands of times.
JOSH GERSTEIN: Right.
But, of course, the criminal charge against a former president is also unprecedented, so it's not terribly surprising.
So, we had that showdown, which I should mention, Jeff.
It also was a direct showdown between the former president and Jack Smith.
They were both sitting in that same room.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You were in the room?
JOSH GERSTEIN: I was sitting just a few pews behind them in the courtroom.
And it's the usual thing where people are looking to see, do they stare each other down?
It's a little bit of a mano-y-mano-type situation.
Of course, they weren't arguing the case.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Were they staring each other down?
JOSH GERSTEIN: I didn't see it at this hearing, but Trump sweeps in with his entourage.
Smith came in earlier with an even larger entourage.
So, with Trump, that's always a question of what's going on with the dynamics in the room.
And he didn't need to be there.
So, he's coming for a reason.
So, that was one showdown that took place early in the week, and I think Trump will probably lose at least that round.
And then later in the week, you had up in New York, the final arguments in this case that's been brought there by the attorney general, Letitia James, a Democrat, who's essentially trying to confiscate or badly cripple Trump's business empire on the ground that it was basically built through pervasive -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: On the ground that there is no business empire?
JOSH GERSTEIN: Right, or it was built through pervasive fraud, all kinds of chicanery over years and years and years, and it's in front of a very colorful judge.
And you had these final arguments.
Trump was told he could only participate in the final arguments if he followed specific rules.
He said he wasn't going to participate, and then he went ahead and participated and got yelled at by the judge.
We're all kind of used to that stuff.
I would say the substance of this is important, but in terms of what are the journalists who are covering it talking about constantly, it's not the substance, it's the timing, particularly the timing of these four criminal cases that Trump is facing.
It's sort of like one of those carnival games where you see the horses and people are spraying water at them, and one gets a little bit ahead, one goes a little behind.
We've got these four criminal cases after Trump, four potential trials for him that could happen sometime between now and November.
And the question is, which of those horses sort of gets to trial first, if any of them?
And that's the tea leaves that we're all trying to read.
It's not so much does the Supreme Court take this, how does presidential immunity come out, and so forth.
It's a question of the Trump team succeeded in delaying another two weeks, another three weeks.
If the Supreme Court takes it, is that a two-month delay?
Because the sense is that we have trial dates in some of these cases in March.
In the Florida classified documents case, you have it in May.
And there's a general sense that if Trump is the nominee, if that's the consensus, and that's what happens, the likelihood that you'd see a trial that would start or continue past midsummer becomes sort of hard to conceive of happening.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
JOSH GERSTEIN: So, that's the main thing.
The other key point I would make that I think a lot of people are following here that are covering this is that Trump has managed to actually make these events part of his campaign.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: This is the campaign.
JOSH GERSTEIN: Yes.
There were a big round of stories about how this is a distraction from his campaign and he's going to be diverted from the campaign trail.
And, of course, to some extent, that's true.
But he has made lemonade out of these lemons.
He has these press avails up in New York, right in the hallway outside where that civil case is taking place after the hearing here in D.C.
He can't have T.V.
not be without a sound bite or radio, not be without a sound bite.
So, he went over to the hotel he used to own here and had a press conference to talk about the argument he had just attended.
So, he does that -- STEVE INSKEEP: Which should be carried live in some cases.
JOSH GERSTEIN: Yes, carried live.
And then he blasts his people with emails and fundraising pitches, saying, I am being persecuted, playing the martyr and asking for money.
So, it is not a diversion from the campaign, as you say.
It is the Republican presidential campaign.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Nicole, what are the chances that we see a conviction in one of these cases in a short time period, a reasonably short time period?
You're covering the Fani Willis.
You're covering the Atlanta side of it.
NICOLE KILLION: Yes.
And that's one where a trial date has been proposed in August.
But we're just learning this week there are some allegations that the district attorney may have been involved in a proper relationship with the special prosecutor in that case.
We're waiting for the district attorney to give a more formal response there.
But that, in and of itself, could potentially delay those proceedings.
And we have seen many of those defendants try in every way possible to get that particular case squashed.
So, I really think it's a jump ball because, again, to the point of all of these different trains moving on different tracks, I think it's really hard to predict the timetable and beyond that, what will happen in each of these individual cases.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Adrienne, I have an impossible question for, which often happens.
Would a conviction affect Trump's popularity with his base?
ADRIENNE LAFRANCE: I don't think so.
I lean toward probably not so much.
I mean, Steve -- I think Steve is right that we should wait for people to vote, and speculating is dangerous and polling is largely broken.
So, who knows?
It is an impossible question.
That said, we have lots of evidence to suggest that it wouldn't necessarily make a big difference, and to your point, actually may really help because he campaigns off of it and aggravates and sort of galvanizes his base around this.
But if you just think about it in the simplest terms, you had tens of millions of Americans vote for him after the Access Hollywood tape, which at the time, as people remember, seemed like it would be a huge turning point to many people.
He was president for four years.
People experienced that.
They saw the choices he made.
You had even more people, 71 million Americans turned out to vote for him.
And we see that people are really devoted to him and his base is really, really solid.
So, yes.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Steve, is there anything that the man could do that would surprise or shock his followers?
STEVE INSKEEP: He could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Wait, I got to write that down.
STEVE INSKEEP: Yes.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: What is that?
That's one of the truest things he's ever said.
STEVE INSKEEP: It's true, and the whole thing is about the shock.
And he has made this campaign about the system that is attacking him, about the system that is prosecuting him.
And it lands with some voters, I think, because we have a national habit, but Trump engages in it of assuming the worst motivations of other people.
So, the idea that Jack Smith could be an employee of the federal government at the time, there's a Democratic president, but acting independently, which is what Jack Smith would say, what the Biden administration would say, a lot of voters just consider that fundamentally impossible.
They presume that everyone acts out of partisan politics (ph).
NICOLE KILLION: And I think that's why, too, that you're seeing President Biden, in particular, really try to take President Trump on by name, which is something he didn't really do in 2020, tried to keep his distance and let Trump be Trump and do his own thing.
But this time around, he is really trying to take the fight directly to the former president.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
Nicole, I have one final question for you in the -- just a minute that we have left.
Mike Johnson, speaker of the House, the 93rd speaker of the House we've had this year, it seems, he's already in trouble with the same people who created so much trouble for Kevin McCarthy.
How long does he last?
This is your area of expertise.
NICOLE KILLION: I mean, look, he's skating on thin ice.
But the issue comes down to math, as it was with Speaker McCarthy.
And he's probably in a more precarious position than the former speaker because now his majority is dwindling.
He's down two members.
In a week, he's going to be down to one until we start having some of the special elections.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Tell me what that is, because Kevin McCarthy, or he's already gone?
NICOLE KILLION: Because of Kevin McCarthy's exodus, George Santos.
And then you have Bill Johnson out of Ohio, who's taking a university job, who's gone in a week.
So, in terms of this funding, this really needs to be shored up before that January 19th deadline hits next week.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.
No, it's -- everything is unusual in Washington these days.
I think that's fair to say.
I wish that we had more time to talk about the Houthis and Hunter Biden and everything in between, but, unfortunately, we're just out of time and we need to leave it there for now.
But I want to thank our panelists for joining us and for sharing their reporting.
I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.
Good night from Washington.
