Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, 1/26/24

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Donald Trump this week all but secured the GOP presidential nomination and laid down the law with his fellow Republicans.

But even as he dominates his party, he's learning that juries are more than willing to sit in judgment of him, next.

Good evening and welcome to WASHINGTON WEEK.

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.

Laura, you've covered the White House.

What is -- what did Joe Biden learning from this last week about Trump and how to deal with Trump?

What are Biden's advisers learning?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, Joe Biden actually was another person that was trying to get under Trump's skin this week.

And in recent weeks, I mean, on the stump, he has started calling Trump a loser, saying he's a loser, a big loser, he lost in 2020.

And that is an attempt to get under Donald Trump's skin, to see him get distracted and go after Biden.

And so I think that we can expect to see President Biden deploy those types of tactics more often.

Just today, he tweeted out, his account tweeted out, that he was basically owning this strategy of, yes, I'm going to try to get under his skin, because they think that it works.

I mean, right now also, the president is trying to focus more on just really creating this contrast between him and Trump, that it is all about him and Donald Trump, that there is no Nikki Haley in the race, and that he is the Republican standard bearer.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Chuck, stay on this subject for a minute.

Is that going to be an effective tactic?

Can Joe Biden throw Donald Trump, the master of the low road tactic?

Can he throw Donald Trump off his game?

CHUCK TODD: He could, but there's always this fine line because, you know, if Joe Biden does something that is considered, like take the DNC's statement, trash talking Asa Hutchinson, right, and it was sort of like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, don't, you know, there's always this line that the public will, in some ways, punish Biden if he or punish anybody that tries to behave like Trump.

ASHLEY PARKER: Like Rubio in 2016.

CHUCK TODD: I was thinking Rubio -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Rubio trying to go low.

He didn't go low enough.

CHUCK TODD: I think there is getting under his skin, but it's sort of like he's still got to be the grown up, right, like he's got to do it while also staying the grown up.

I will say this about Biden.

Like I said, I think this has been the best week he's had in a long time, both the consumer sentiment.

I think there was proof here that there isn't -- I mean, New Hampshire could have been a disaster, right?

First in the nation, grumpy New Hampshire Democrats, and he took it away.

Gaza is something that's unpopular with progressives, right?

This could have easily been turned into something that would have hung him out to dry politically.

And it was just the opposite.

So, I think he's shown real strength.

I'll say this.

If he's, poll numbers have improved by April 1, then I do think you'll have another round of hand-wringing.

ASHLEY PARKER: And one very brief point on one challenge, at some point, there will actually be an official Republican nominee, same with the Democratic nominee.

But one challenge for Biden now is that the nation sort of still collectively cannot believe that we are going to have a rerun of 2020 with these same two guys, like Democrats cannot imagine.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Can the nation believed that or is the nation not fully focused?

CHUCK TODD: I mean, I think they're in the stages of -- they're not an acceptance.

ASHLEY PARKER: Yes, they're not an acceptance.

And so Democrats like cannot imagine that Trump will actually bring themselves to imagine that Trump will actually be the Republican nominee again and Republicans truly cannot imagine that Democrats would put up Biden.

And so one challenge for Biden now is, as Laura was saying, he wants to make it all about Trump, not about Nikki Haley, because he thinks when it's a one-on-one contest, he wins.

We'll see if that's the case.

But it is hard to make it one-on-one against Trump when the nation is like, isn't there just something like a little more energetic, guys?

CHUCK TODD: Guess who's not going to complain if media decides to put Trump rallies on T.V.

all the time, the Biden campaign.

They want Trump platformed and front and center all the time.

They think the agitation helps them.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That, in other words, all of the court cases combined with these new strategies of more Trump's under the skin strategy, more Trump is better.

But that sounds like - CHUCK TODD: Risky, I think.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, because last time, they put Trump on T.V.

quite a bit and then Trump became president.

TOM NICHOLS: But when he was president and he was going on every afternoon supposedly to do briefings about COVID and he would go into these kind of freeform, you know, tone poems of grievance and anger, his number started to drop.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Wait, I want to write that, freeform tone poems of grievance and anger.

It could be the name of your autobiography.

Yes.

TOM NICHOLS: That was my college cars tribute.

But, you know, they finally -- his own staff came to him and said, please stop talking to the country every day, because they knew how damaging it was.

And I think the Biden campaign -- I think I've always believed the more you put Trump on T.V., the more people seek Trump and say, oh, wow, I didn't realize, you know, or I'd forgotten that's what he really sounds like.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Let me step back because I don't want to -- I mean not that WASHINGTON WEEK on its own can declare a winner of the Republican primary.

We're almost there, but we're not quite there yet.

Nikki Haley pretty strong, looks pretty strong, and she's obviously moving into a whole new mode of behavior.

I want to play this clip for you to show you a little bit of evidence of that.

NIKKI HALEY, Republican Presidential Candidate: Election night, Trump gets on stage, he throws an absolute temper tantrum talking about revenge.

Then he goes and says that he's going to ban anyone from MAGA that donates to me.

I mean, he's totally unhinged.

But at the end of the day, our focus is still on the American people.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Unhinged.

That's kind of like a -- that's not a word you can walk back when you're trying to position yourself to be his vice presidential nominee.

I mean, is she unleashed in a kind of way now?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: She's definitely offering harsher criticisms of Trump than she ever has.

Each time she speaks, it seems as though as the contests have been ongoing, she says something that is more of a direct attack on him.

But still, even today in response to the verdict, the $83 million or so verdict, that she still only said, this is a distraction.

She didn't talk about the substance of it.

She only said, this is a distraction and didn't address his character.

And, again, she might be saying he's unhinged, but she's not talking about the substance of anything when it comes to the 91 felony counts against the former president.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: What's the calculation in the Haley camp?

CHUCK TODD: Well, I think it's all going to be to me about what does she want?

What is her ambition?

Does she go the Ted Cruz route?

Ted Cruz in '16 made a bet and thought it was pretty good bet.

I'm not going to endorse Trump.

I'm going to be the I told you so conservative when he loses.

Oops, right?

He won Cruz has been spending eight years groveling to get back into his good graces.

Does she do this?

Does she be a planter flag and essentially, you know get 25 to 45 percent through all the primaries, acquire a few delegates sort of be the person that says I'm the I told you so, rebuild the Republican Party.

The downside to that is Trump is going to make her life miserable.

Does she have the spine to handle it?

ASHLEY PARKER: I mean, part of the calculation for her and her team is that she's trying to win a Republican primary.

So, sort of the never-Trumper stuff is not going to peel off those voters.

So, a lot of Republican voters who were talking about - - who were willing, who voted for Trump twice, but are willing to consider someone else, they sort of feel like he was a pretty good president.

I liked a lot of the policies.

I'm sick of the chaos.

As a suburban woman, I'm sick of having to explain to my daughter why this woman is getting $83 million, right?

I don't want to have that breakfast table conversation.

And so her calculation is to win them.

You can't just absolutely trash him.

You kind of try to make it -- it's nothing personal.

It's just too much chaos.

But she has certainly ratcheted it up to the sort of unhinged, temper tantrum, toddler, senior moment stage of this campaign.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Is there any chance, Tom, that Nikki Haley can pull something out or is it his?

TOM NICHOLS: Once again, I'm being asked to make a prediction that could well blow up in my face, but I will say, no.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Don't listen to her.

Don't listen.

TOM NICHOLS: And I think that, I wonder if she knows that, and I wonder if this is positioning for four years from now when all this dust has settled, no matter who's been elected, whether it's Trump or Biden, for her to say, okay, now that we have a kind of Republican open field again, remember that I'm the person who didn't bend the knee.

I'm the person that raised these issues, that, you know -- so, I mean -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That's a big bet that MAGA and Trump are synonymous.

CHUCK TODD: Okay.

But what future does she have in MAGA Republican Party?

I mean, I think that's the point.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, that's the sort of the question, could she have calibrated this?

CHUCK TODD: It's too late.

I think she's -- you know, and she only ruined her own -- if she pulls a Chris Christie and like suddenly goes back, like, and Christie found out, you'll never fully recover from it.

TOM NICHOLS: And they wouldn't accept it.

ASHLEY PARKER: And she's not Vivek.

She is not running to be vice president.

CHUCK TODD: I believe her.

ASHLEY PARKER: Yes, she's running to be president.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right, right, right.

I mean, the question is -- it's just an interesting moment because Biden's trying to get under his skin.

The court cases, these are accelerating.

It feels like an acceleration in the court schedule.

There's more and more stuff coming down on him.

He's not younger.

He's older.

And, you know, people age and become more sensitive, I don't know, they're more unfiltered.

I'm just curious if we're actually -- CHUCK TODD: A more unfiltered Trump.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: A more -- yes, a more unfiltered Trump.

I'm just wondering if we're beginning to see a turn in this campaign where Biden has the discipline and Biden is riding Trump rather than the opposite.

I don't know, but it just seems -- TOM NICHOLS: That's kind of what happened in 2020, that, you know, Biden -- I mean, except for the glorious moment of will you shut up, man, you know, that they just stepped back.

And I think one thing that Biden has always been smart about is not mistaking the internet for the real world in the way that Trump does, and simply saying, okay, you know, stepping back from all of that stuff and letting Trump kind of own that space, I think that's what he's been doing.

CHUCK TODD: Politics of the Trump era is simple.

It's been simple.

When it's a referendum on Trump, he loses.

When it's a referendum on who he's running against, he can win, right?

'16 was a referendum on Clinton.

We all missed it.

We thought it was going to be a referendum on Trump.

'20 was a referendum on him, and Biden wants to make '24 a referendum on him.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Laura, let me ask you this question.

When you talk to voters, Democratic voters, and Democratic political leaders, obviously, Joe Biden is the oldest president we've ever had, he is the oldest candidate we've ever had.

Is there any sense you're getting that people have reconciled themselves to this and have figured out a way around this anxiety about his age, or is that going to become a dominant theme again?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I think it's certainly something that voters are anxious about.

The Democratic voters I've talked to are anxious about his age.

The Democratic lawmakers I've talked to are anxious about it.

So, they say that he needs to just be out there relentless, flooding the airwaves, creating this contrast with Trump, talking about threats to democracy, talking about abortion, which is still a very salient issue for Democratic voters and independent voters, those suburban women you were talking about, Chuck.

And so that's what they think he needs to do, to just really focus the electorate's attention on all of those issues that they think will drive out their base and get independents, and then that it can make up for the fact that he -- it is a rematch and that he is older.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

I mentioned at the beginning of the show that this is going to be the longest general, like we're already more or less, despite Nikki Haley's unwillingness to leave the race, that we are more or less in the general and it's late January.

Ashley, maybe we can close with you on this.

Give us a sense of what you think the campaign is going to look like month-to-month.

A lot of courthouses, not a lot of Biden doing six, seven events a day.

How is this going to be different from previous campaigns?

ASHLEY PARKER: Right.

Biden is not going to have the vigorous schedule that would reassure a lot of voters.

He can't, in the words of the Trump operation, hide in his basement this time.

He will be out a lot more.

His team understands he needs to be out.

He started making some jokes about his age.

There have been moments where things have happened and he's actually been on his feet quippy.

All of that helps him.

And, yes, Trump, the campaign will play out as much in the courtroom for Donald Trump, as it will on the campaign trail.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, I hope to have you all back soon to continue our coverage of the endless campaign.

Unfortunately, we have to leave it there for now.

I want to thank our panelists for joining us and for sharing their reporting.

To read more of Tom Nichols, his tone poems of grievance and anger -- what did you call it?

Tone poems of -- tone poems of despair.

You can subscribe to his newsletter, which is called The Daily, and you can find it at theatlantic.com.

It's more than this, much more than it, just despair and jokes.

And in "PBS NEWS WEEKEND" tomorrow, how a shortage of special education teachers is hurting schools across the country.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

Good night from Washington.