Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, 2/16/24

FRANKLIN FOER: President Biden lashes out of Russia after Putin's top critic dies in jail.

JOE BIDEN, U.S. President: Putin is responsible for Navalny's death.

Putin is responsible.

FRANKLIN FOER: And calls on House Republicans to pass critical funding for Ukraine.

JOE BIDEN: History is watching.

History is watching the House of Representatives.

The failure to support Ukraine at this critical moment will never be forgotten.

FRANKLIN FOER: All of this comes days after former President Donald Trump's criticism of NATO sparks panic in Europe, next.

Good evening, and welcome to WASHINGTON WEEK.

I'm Frank Foer in tonight for Jeffrey Goldberg.

The death of outspoken Putin critic and opposition leader Alexey Navalny arrives at a pivotal moment.

World leaders are meeting at the Munich Security Conference to discuss, among other things, the war in Ukraine.

For the first time in over a year, Kyiv is poised to lose ground to Russia, and crucial funding for its military campaign is stalled in Congress.

We have a lot to get to tonight, including former President Donald Trump's back-to-back legal blows.

Joining me tonight are Laura Barron-Lopez, the White House correspondent for PBS NewsHour, Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, Perry Stein is a Justice Department reporter and the co-author of the Trump Trials newsletter at The Washington Post, and Nancy Youssef is a national security correspondent with the Wall Street Journal.

Hello, my eminences.

Only yesterday, Alexey Navalny was standing trial.

He was gaunt but still alive.

Today, at age 47, he's reportedly dead.

I just want to pause for a small and I'm sure in the scheme of things, inconsequential moment just to remember Alexey Navalny.

Nancy, how will history think of this man?

NANCY YOUSSEF, National Security Correspondent, The Wall Street Journal: Well, he was the most popular opposition leader in Russia.

And both when he was out of prison and in prison, he really symbolized a different future for Russia.

And he did it through defiance.

And I thought The Economist described it beautifully, that he pointed out time and time again that Putin was basically two things.

He ran on fear and greed, and Navalny creatively and innovatively pointed that out through YouTube videos showing his fancy houses, through his own course of action and his willingness to come back knowing that this was a possible outcome for him.

And so we started to see today in the streets of Moscow, as people were putting flowers in their own silent protests at monuments that were there for wrongly imprisoned, that he continued to symbolize a potential different future for Russia.

If you believed in Navalny, you might not have as much hope and feel that was lost, but long-term, he has the potential to keep that message going for future opposition leaders.

FRANKLIN FOER: Do you think there's any chance that -- I mean, Putin, of course, stands poised for reelection.

Is there any way in which there could be some sort of ripple effect from this that resounds through Russian politics?

NANCY YOUSSEF: So, I think short-term, probably not.

The elections are on March 17th.

The concern is that other dissidents are killed in prison now or die in prison because of what happened to Navalny.

What I'm curious about is if there are opposition leaders that we don't quite know about or who are emerging out of the war in Ukraine who might use this as a stepping stone to sort of creating their own generation of leadership.

FRANKLIN FOER: And, Laura, how is this going to resonate in American foreign policy?

President Biden today talked about responses, but he was pretty unclear about what those responses would be, just given how we're already sanctioning Russia.

And so where does this go?

What are the ripple effects in American policy?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, White House Correspondent, PBS NewsHour: Yes.

I spoke to a veteran U.S.

Diplomat who said that there's not much more that President Biden can do, sanction-wise, that would really be felt by Russia, but that clearly the president is trying to create this contrast with Republicans and with his opponent in the election, former President Donald Trump.

I mean, right now he's trying to say that this moment, Navalny's death, this tragedy, shows the stakes, which is that at this time, the U.S. needs to really be behind Ukraine, needs to be getting that aid through Congress.

And he pinpointed it on Republicans saying, I can't believe that you left at this moment for two weeks when we need to get this aid through.

And in terms of like any type of plan B for Ukraine, I mean, right now, there isn't really a plan B in terms of being able to get the type of resources that the U.S. has been sending to them in terms of weapons and at the scale that we have.

And that's why the president really wants to see that money go through Congress.

FRANKLIN FOER: Well, of course, this arrives in a great deal of context and other things that have happened, including President Donald Trump's remarks last week where he was talking about NATO and essentially giving permission for Russia to move westward.

I want to listen to those remarks and to President Biden's response to them.

DONALD TRUMP, Former U.S. President: One of the presidents of a big country stood up, said, well, sir, if we don't pay and we're attacked by Russia, will you protect us?

I said, you didn't pay, you're delinquent?

He said, yes, let's say that happened.

No, I would not protect you.

In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.

You got to pay.

You got to pay your bills.

JOE BIDEN: Can you imagine a former president of the United States saying that?

The whole world heard it.

The worst thing is he means it.

No other president in our history has ever bowed down to a Russian dictator.

For God's sake, it's dumb.

It's shameful.

It's dangerous.

It's un-American.

FRANKLIN FOER: A lot of Europeans are extremely terrified about this election.

I think some of them are even more frightened than most Americans are about the consequences of this election.

Are they right to be?

Are they right to be worried that the collective security architecture that emerged in the post-cold war is about to crumble before our eyes?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I think that they are.

I mean, the veteran U.S. diplomat I spoke to, a former ambassador to NATO I spoke to, both of them say that, yes, that European allies should be looking for plan B, that Europeans should start building up their own defense security in a way that we haven't seen since World War II.

Because there's no guarantee that if former President Donald Trump is re-elected that the U.S. will be there in the way that we have in the past.

And this former NATO ambassador that I spoke to said that after Trump made those comments, his phone was blinking red.

He was getting all these emails from former counterparts that he had overseas.

And they're really frightened because they're now considering the unthinkable, which is that the U.S. will no longer be this leading actor in the European security order.

FRANKLIN FOER: Nancy, is there -- can Europe survive without an American partner being there?

I mean, the fear that they have is that Russia is going to just keep rolling westward.

And I think sitting here in Washington, maybe that feels like an empty fear or an overstated fear, but that's certainly what they're experiencing there.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, I guess it depends on the threat.

But we're seeing this play out in real time right now in Ukraine, where we've seen what happens when the U.S. is able and willing to support in a real way and provide billions of dollars in weapons and other support.

And when that's not happening, it's actually led to a fundamental change in the war there.

You're seeing soldiers on the ground at the beginning, they would just fire the ammunition like it was never going to end, and now they're hoarding that ammunition.

We're seeing it change the battlefield dynamics.

We're hearing about whether Kyiv could be in danger at some point because there aren't enough Patriot missiles to defend it.

And so we actually have a real world example if it gets to the point of a full scale invasion, right?

And what it is is it's a different kind of war and it's a different kind of assurance that the war will come out favorably to what the U.S. and western allies say they want, which is a Russia that doesn't feel that it can just go into any country and reset borders as it sees it.

FRANKLIN FOER: I want to talk about the funding for the war first, but just before I do that, can you just give us a click of context about where the war stands now.

You started to invoke just kind of the perilousness of this, where Kyiv itself is kind of starting to think, well, maybe they don't have the stuff to protect their survival.

Where are we now in the Russian offensive?

NANCY YOUSSEF: So, this was an interesting week because we heard from the White House podium that a city in Donetsk called Avdiivka, hopefully I pronounced that right, is in jeopardy.

And if it falls, it will be the first city since Bakhmut to fall.

And in terms of tactics and how the war plays out militarily, it's not a huge change on the battlefield but it's symbolic.

It gives Russia full control over the Donetsk, and it comes at a time when Zelenskyy is in Europe saying, essentially, I'm not sure that the United States is going to be there asking Germany, asking France, securing multi-year defense security packs.

The problem is he needs to get through the next few months.

And we started to hear from U.S. officials it could be by this summer that Ukraine is in real danger.

They've actually started to put a timeline on it.

And I thought that was an important development.

FRANKLIN FOER: Carl, so Navalny's death, does it do anything to change the situation up on Capitol Hill?

CARL HULSE, Chief Washington Correspondent, The New York Times: I think it does.

I think it provides this rallying cry.

It's almost like Putin, if he was watching our domestic politics, he made a big mistake here because the money is stuck in the House, past the Senate with a split among Republicans.

But everyone today has come out and said this is the evidence that we need to help Ukraine.

And it's also coming at this time where the conference is ongoing in Munich, where everyone is gathered there and there can build some momentum for that.

Speaker Mike Johnson, who has not wanted to do anything with this money and has said he won't take up the Senate bill, put out a statement and said we need to unify and we need to do what we can.

No commitment there to putting the bill on the floor.

But I think the pressure is going to be pretty intense now, although in reference to something Laura said, they left for two weeks and, you know, momentum can fade fast in Washington.

Memories are short.

But I do think that this really gave some new ammunition to that and the report this week about the space weapon that the Russians were sort of developing now that may have leaked because to put pressure on this question.

But this is a moment for the Republican Party.

I think it's a really important moment.

They have an actual divide and it's one of the deepest public divides I've seen in my time here between, I would call it, the McConnell wing sort of the Senate who are Reaganite Republicans and, you know, very strong supporters of NATO, so strong that they put into law that the president couldn't unilaterally withdraw from NATO defending against a future Trump presidency, and this wing that's more prevalent in the House but also in the Senate that wants nothing to do with this kind of intervention.

And it's such a dramatic departure from what we're sort of used to with the Republicans.

So, they need to they need to resolve that divide.

I can't say for sure that the money is going to be approved but I do think there's real pressure on that.

FRANKLIN FOER: Just color me a little bit pessimistic here because I think all along everybody said, the Senate said this is going to happen, that the stakes were too high, enough futzing around.

So, how do we get from here to there?

What's the scenario by which this law -- CARL HULSE: We may learn a lot about discharge petitions and defeating the previous question, because these are sort of the procedural moves that could be made to do this.

A discharge petition is you have to get a majority to sign it, and it requires a bill come out.

I'm not even getting into defeating the previous question.

FRANKLIN FOER: The viewers, thank you.

CARL HULSE: So, there's been Republicans who have said, if Mike Johnson puts this bill on the floor, they will move to McCarthy him, for a better word, motion to vacate.

So, some of this could happen without his fingerprints, and maybe it moves that way.

There's a bipartisan group that's coming up with a smaller bill that would have less money for Ukraine, take out some of the humanitarian aid that is sort of an issue.

I think there's going to be a lot of maneuvering around this.

FRANKLIN FOER: Just to dwell on this a little bit further, so what does Mike Johnson actually want in his heart of hearts, if you could tell, and if he goes forward with this?

You invoked the specter of Kevin McCarthy.

Does it mean that he's done for if he allows this to happen?

CARL HULSE: I think that his statement today, you know, Mike Johnson is kind of changing by the minute on every issue.

So, it's kind of hard to pin him down.

I think his statement today, he seemed, you know, rally against Putin without this commitment.

I think that he can be convinced to allow something to happen.

I personally don't think the Republicans can afford another motion to vacate.

Their majority is very tenuous.

They lost a seat this week.

You know, the Democrats are right there.

There actually is no majority in some ways in the House.

There's no working majority, which is Mike Johnson's problem.

So, I mean, I've honestly been with you through much of this saying, I don't know that this money is going to go.

I do think something like this can provide the impetus and maybe move some people say, you know what?

All these arguments that we're looking at pre-World War II situation in Europe, maybe and that we need to step in.

So, we'll see though.

It's got a ways to go.

FRANKLIN FOER: Just President Biden, as you said, was trying to connect this to the presidential campaign pretty clearly and pretty legitimately.

Do you think that this is something, and maybe just the sclerosis in Congress in general around this issue, is something that will resonate with the electorate?

Does this actually have meaningful consequences for the presidential risks?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Ukraine itself, probably not.

I mean, a lot of times, American voters tend to make their decisions based on domestic issues, especially since we don't have troops engaged in this fight, and President Biden has no plans to have troops engaged in this fight.

But on the border, the fact that there was a lot of fighting amongst Republicans and that they first said that they wanted this border deal, then they said, never mind, we don't want it, then they said they wanted it again, I mean, they went all over the place.

And we saw that in the special election this week in New York 3rd, the Democrat won.

He was an incumbent, yes.

But he made this argument around immigration and really hammered Republicans for the fact that they weren't willing to pass anything and they weren't willing to work with the Democrats.

And so there's this larger argument that we see President Biden and other Democrats starting to make, essentially saying Republicans aren't willing to govern at all and they're not willing to do anything for the betterment of the country.

They're just following Donald Trump and his positions against Ukraine and his position saying, don't do anything on the border because I want it as an election issue.

CARL HULSE: Republicans had a major advantage on immigration in the border and they managed to entangle themselves right out of that.

So -- NANCY YOUSSEF: Can I tell you as a national security correspondent, election years were the years I got to take off because nobody cared about us, and I've been struck by how much Russia has been a part of the discourse around the election.

I mean, just this week alone, we're talking about space-powered nuclear weapons, potentially, and that's why Representative Turner felt the need to come forward.

We're talking about aid to Ukraine.

We're talking about whether the U.S. will come to NATO's defense in the face of a Russian invasion.

And it strikes me how much this election is about, what kind of threat Russia poses to U.S. national security interests.

It's just been striking to me because I haven't been able to take the time off because we're -- FRANKLIN FOER: It's good to feel needed, Nancy.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Yes, that's right.

FRANKLIN FOER: But I want to pivot to the other very consequential news as it relates to the presidential election, which is, of course, the many legal travails of former President Donald Trump.

Perry, you've been deeply immersed in this.

Can you just step back and give us a sense of the landscape right now?

Because I admit, it looks to me as if this was not a great week for Donald Trump, the first criminal trial of a former president supposed to begin.

He's now on the hook, apparently, for more than $300 million in damage to the civil suit.

But Axios the other day ran a piece saying that it wasn't as bad as it looks.

What's your view?

PERRY STEIN, Justice Department Reporter, The Washington Post: Yes, it has certainly been a big week this week for all these.

There're four criminal trials.

I think that there is an argument to make that it could have been worse for Trump, depending on what he wants.

I mean, one of his goals, right, is we know one of his tactics has been to delay these trials.

He wants them to go after the presidential election.

Georgia, we're seeing kind of a sideshow right now as Trump and some of his other co-defendants are trying to get the prosecutors disqualified over what they say is an improper relationship.

Now, that took multiple days or hasn't even been closing arguments.

It's played out like a mini trial in and of itself.

So, if he succeeds in that, like that election will be delayed.

And even if he doesn't, there's a lot of now people may view the prosecutors differently.

New York, we know now that's the criminal state trial dealing with the Stormy Daniel payments, alleged hush money payments.

Now, that is going to trial, March 25th, they say.

Now, he probably, ideally doesn't want any trials to go before the election.

But if he had to get one -- I mean, I think legal experts that I've spoken to say, hey, this is the one.

I've heard someone call it the runt of the cases, the runt of the litters.

Why?

Because it's, I mean, when you're talking about a presidential candidate who's facing election interference charges, mishandling of classified documents and hush money, alleged hush money payments from many years ago.

I mean, I think this one may look better.

And we know that when those charges came, they were the first ones.

They rallied the Republican base around him.

FRANKLIN FOER: Can you just -- you've done fascinating reporting about Trump's legal team, because the memory that I have of Trump's lawyers is that there were people who are now being charged in Georgia, that there were conspiracy theorists, there were people who were, you would consider, top-drawer lawyers.

But that's not, I think, what you found when you started to look at the team that's now representing him.

PERRY STEIN: Yes, that's the question.

I've been really curious.

Like are his lawyers good?

Who are these people?

I mean, these are some of the most consequential trials, definitely some of the most high-profile ones of our time.

And what I found is he's got a solid legal team.

They're veteran lawyers.

I mean, they're well-respected lawyers.

I think many people, not just Trump, would want them as their defense attorneys.

I mean, some of them have worked for -- Todd Blanche has worked for SDNY for a lot of years high up there.

So, he's worked on some pretty big cases.

And I think what you saw was -- I mean, look at Georgia.

A lot of Trump's former lawyers have been charged.

I mean, they're part of this MAGA world.

They're people that have sometimes boosted in some of his conspiracy theories.

A lot of those people, though, there's still some, have been weeded out and kind of shoot off center stage.

So, what you're having now is, I mean, I think he has a solid legal team.

FRANKLIN FOER: So, just give a sense of the broad legal strategy that he's pursuing.

I mean, you've mentioned delay is one of the primary tactics.

And how does that strategy, the legal strategy, correlate to the political strategy?

Are they working symbiotically or is there any way, in which they're at cross-purposes?

PERRY STEIN: Yes, I mean, I think that, look, delaying is a strategy a lot of defendants use.

That's not just Trump, but he seems to use that a lot.

But you do -- I mean, as part of my reporting, I learned, I mean, the lawyers do talk with the campaign, not in a like necessarily sinister way, but in a way that's like, okay, he has all these gag orders.

Are his social media posts going to violate the gag orders?

Do the lawyers need to do that, but also -- read over those?

But also to, yes, see if his legal strategy is lining up with what he's saying on the campaign.

For instance, you hear him say all the time, like I am kind of a victim here.

The Justice Department, the establishment wants to go after me.

That's what he's saying on the campaign.

That's also what he's saying in part.

He has lots of filings in all of his cases, but in some of them, you are seeing that this is selective prosecution.

This is people who are going after me because, you know, he's using a lot of times.

This is the Biden administration going after me.

We know that Biden appoints Mayor Garland.

They claim that they have no coordination, but that is what Trump's claims are, both on the stump and in his legal filings.

FRANKLIN FOER: Carl, I just want to step back for a moment.

So, it's the first -- we have a trial date set.

It's going to be the first time a former president is tried in a criminal proceeding.

And it's going to happen simultaneously to a presidential campaign trial.

Just pause to reflect on this moment, because it's so unlike anything that we've seen in American history.

CARL HULSE: Yes, I mean, nothing like this, obviously, and we don't know what it's going to lead to.

Now, so far, we haven't seen any decrease in his political strength with his people, right?

The people who are on board with Trump are on board all the way through this because they believe he's a victim of a selective prosecution.

The question is going to be -- this is an election about independents in certain states, right?

So, how are they going to respond to testimony at a trial when you have an actual trial, or do people get to the end and say, if Trump were to be convicted, we can't have a convicted president?

So, I think this really has to play out.

But I will say, I don't think the people who are the hardcore Trump, that part of the Republican Party, they're not going anywhere with Trump.

This actually motivates them.

But I think because the election is going to be cited somewhere else, we have to see how that goes.

FRANKLIN FOER: But just talk for a second about the way that Donald Trump is kind of quarterbacking all of this -- the legal stuff and the way that he thinks processes it through the political lens.

I mean, it's -- one of the oddities of this is that rather than stumping, he's going to be in court for much of this period.

PERRY STEIN: And, you know, so far, right, as a criminal defendant, he has to be there when his trials are going but he doesn't really have to be there for his pre-trial proceedings.

But what you've seen, and I have to imagine, I mean, I don't know that his lawyers always want him to be there but he has been.

You know, he was at the appeals hearing for immunity.

He was in Florida, there was a closed door hearing and he was there this week.

So, he's going there and then he's going outside and talking about it.

So, he's making this a big part of his campaign.

FRANKLIN FOER: He can't resist actually being in the courtroom and inserting himself in the legal melodrama.

PERRY STEIN: Yes, I think that's right.

I mean, something that struck me, I remember at the appeals court hearing, this is over presidential immunity, afterwards nearby he did a press conference and he said, bedlam is going to break out if, you know, this goes -- you know, this happens.

And then the next couple days you saw the word bedlam in a legal filing.

So, I'm not saying that his lawyers are taking all the cues from him at all.

They seem to be good lawyers, but there is -- he is the client.

FRANKLIN FOER: Laura, do you think that there is this moment that we will reach where Trump's strategy of profiting off of his legal woes by consolidating his base, and will that -- will we reach a moment where that strategy will exhaust itself?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I think that if he is convicted of one of these crimes that he's charged with, that it could definitely impact independents, swing voters.

I've talked to plenty of them.

They've said that they don't like that he's facing these crimes.

They've said that his repeated lies about election interference and lies about the 2020 election is something that they don't want to hear from a presidential candidate.

And so they think that he poses a threat to democracy and they don't want to vote for someone like that.

FRANKLIN FOER: Unfortunately, we need to leave it there for now.

Thanks to our panelists for joining us and sharing your reporting.

For more on the death of Alexey Navalny, be sure to check out theatlantic.com.

And on Saturday's PBS News Weekend, an interview with Egypt's foreign minister on the war in neighboring Gaza and the stalled hostage negotiations.

I'm Franklin Foer.

Good night from Washington.