Washington Week with The Atlantic

I want to play something else.

This is a compilation of Trump's statements from that night on a particularly dark theme.

DONALD TRUMP: Our country is being lost.

We're a failing nation.

If she's president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now.

We're playing with World War III and we have a president that we don't even know if he's -- where is our president?

We're a failing nation.

We're a nation that's in serious decline.

This is the most divisive presidency in the history of our country.

There's never been anything like it.

They're destroying our country.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, on the general theme of I'm old enough to remember X, I'm old enough to remember Ronald Reagan, morning in America, Ronald Reagan as this sunny Republican antidote to the malaise and the moroseness of the Carter years.

And, you know, the Republicans are traditionally the party that says you know, it's all sunny uplands, America is a great place.

It's the party that in recent years has embraced visible change signs of patriotism.

This is dark.

I mean, this is really, really dark.

Ashley, what's going on here in his mind?

Maybe nothing new.

He's just harked back to American carnage, but I was really struck by this, this view of America, as this dystopia.

ASHLEY PARKER: Well, if you've been paying attention to his rallies, his posts on social media his interviews, he, for a while now, has been painting this incredibly vivid, sort of grotesque caricature, dark, dystopian, and generally utterly fictitious of America.

And so, for instance, I mean, I could take the whole show, but I'll be quick, he talks about transgender kids going to school.

You send little Johnny off to school in the morning and they come home from school having undergone gender reassignment surgery, is one.

He talks about how you can't go out to get a loaf of bread without getting raped, mugged, or shot.

He talks about how people are aborting kids after birth, which is actually infanticide and illegal.

And he talks about, I apologize for bringing this up here, but immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating cats and dogs.

And that is just the image of the nation that he is painting.

He thinks it will work to his political benefit, clearly.

But some of those are just so caricatured.

I mean, there's parents who send their kids to school and can't get them to come home doing basic math, right?

The idea that surgeries are going on in elementary schools is just absurdist.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, go on with that theme.

The question I have, maybe this is his -- maybe this is a strategy?

I mean, it's not a strategy for expanding the base necessarily, but it's a strategy for keeping the base -- ASMA KHALID: I think it's his familiar place.

It's his familiar place, right?

Like, I feel like even when you saw in 2020 -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Are you saying that dystopia is his happy place?

ASMA KHALID: I think dystopia is his comfortable place, right?

I mean, you go back to, what, 2015, 2016, that cycle, when he first announced he was going to run for president, it was these allegations about Mexicans sending not their best into the country, some of them are rapists.

I mean, that is his familiar line.

I think what is unusual and maybe different this time to me, particularly with the allegations about what's not true going on in Springfield, Ohio, is that he pinpointed a specific community, and as has been reported, I mean, that community is facing repercussions.

They're -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right, schools are being closed out of danger.

The -- JERUSALEM DEMSAS: Also a sense of it, you know, he is someone who excels when people feel like it's a change election, right?

Like there's a reason why he did not do well in a reelection race where he has to say, let's talk about how great I just did for four years.

Like, you know, even if there were things he was pointing to around the economy that he thought were specific achievements, he couldn't inspire a sense of pride in America.

I mean, obviously it was a dark time.

There was COVID in the country, so it's hard to do that.

But he really does well when he inspires fear in the electorate.

And his goal is to say, I'm here to be your champion against these dark forces that are amassing.

And when he can't play that role and, in some ways, Harris is precluding him from doing that by not representing the previous administration, and she's kind of a new, fresh face, but for him, he wants to be a change candidate, he wants to be someone who's talking about how dark things are.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

One of the most remarkable moments in the debate came when Trump was asked if he wanted Ukraine to win in its war against, Russia, Russia's war against Ukraine, I should say, and the remarkable thing is he didn't say, yes, which would be the easiest, most bipartisan thing for an American politician to say, yes, I want Ukraine to win.

And I want to play something for you.

This is his running mate, J.D.

Vance, talking at greater length about their view of this war.

So, listen to this.

SEN. J.D.

VANCE (R-OH), Vice Presidential Nominee: So, I think what this looks like is Trump sits down, he says to the Russians, the Ukrainians, the Europeans, you guys need to figure out what does a peaceful settlement look like.

And what it probably looks like is something like the current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine that becomes like a demilitarized zone.

It's heavily fortified so the Russians don't invade again.

Ukraine remains its independent sovereignty.

Russia gets the guarantee of neutrality from Ukraine.

It doesn't join NATO.

It doesn't join, you know, some of these sort of allied institutions.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, Jerusalem, what's going on here?

JERUSALEM DEMSAS: When, well, we saw post, you know, the Iraq war, that the whole country's mood towards intervention really turned, right, like Democrats, Republicans across the board.

But there was still a sense in most of the foreign policy establishment, most of the leadership of both the Democratic and Republican Party, that, you know, we have allies in the world, and there are people you should fortify with, and there are people that you stand against, and liberalism is still a thing that people stand for.

But Trump has always been very outside of that sort of dynamic, right?

He doesn't view the rest of the world that way.

He sees strong men that he allies with, people like Putin, people like Xi and people like Netanyahu.

And then there are people who he thinks are weak.

And that's his vision of the world.

He doesn't really see value in investing in his allies.

He sees NATO as, you not a place where American strength can be found and can be built and allyship can be found, but a place where they're taking advantage of us, right?

They're making us -- EUGENE DANIELS: He's transactional.

JERUSALEM DEMSAS: Exactly.

And they need to pay in more and are not doing enough.

ASMA KHALID: I do think he's also found, though, that there's domestic appetite for, okay, enough is enough, right, with sort of endless support for Ukraine because, you know, this is an argument, it's an argument you'll hear when you go out and talk to voters in certain parts of the country that they feel like the roads aren't being built or that their schools aren't sufficient or that they don't have enough money for groceries.

Now, whether these things, I'm not saying if you stopped sending money to Ukraine and weapons, you would suddenly have money to build, you know, state of the art schools, but there is a frustration with high costs of things here and people see that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But it seems, and maybe this is a failure on the Biden administration's part to explain something, but the money that's going to Ukraine is in the form of weapons that are built, made in America, in American factories by American workers, paid for by the U.S. government.

But, , I mean not to put it in a cynical sense, but it's also a jobs program.

So, it doesn't say -- ASMA KHALID: We heard this at one point from the United Nations.

EUGENE DANIELS: And that's the thing.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: They did that for a while.

EUGENE DANIELS: I was so confused that didn't keep harping on that, right?

Like it is such an easy, to me, and maybe you guys disagree, but like easier to tell the American people, we're selling this, you guys don't understand, but we're sending these because we're also doing the jobs here.

Everything we're sending over there, we're replacing here.

The job -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And we're not sending troops.

EUGENE DANIELS: And we're sending troops, your daughters and sons are not going to -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The signal difference between this and that.

ASMA KHALID: But that message does not seem to have resonated.

EUGENE DANIELS: Well, they didn't do it for very long, right?

It popped up in a couple of speeches and then they just moved on from it.

And to this day, it's probably one of the best arguments they have for continuing to send it for those who have issue with it.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

I want to ask a question about a controversy involving something that Kamala Harris has said.

Donald Trump brought it up in the debate.

He said that she supports transgender surgery for immigrants being held in federal prison.

There was a lot of back and forth, oh, you know, she doesn't believe that.

But, in fact, she did tell the ACLU in 2019, I think it was 2019, there was a question on a questionnaire that she supported taxpayer funding for gender transition surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners.

So far as I know, the campaign has not said, or she has certainly not said if she still believes in this or if she's shifting her position on this.

Eugene, Asma, what's going on with that particular issue?

EUGENE DANIELS: I mean, she hasn't talked about it since, right?

It's not been an issue that she has talked about.

There's a few issues that she's kind of changed her position on now after three and a half years as vice president.

I think largely, what's happening with kind of the different vice president -- the different Senator Harris in 2019 and now is that at the time, there was a Democratic Party that was kind of chasing itself to the left.

And you had all of these, what was it, 20 people who were on stage, almost other than Joe Biden, who were saying, I'm going to chase Bernie Sanders.

I think the party is a Bernie Sanders party.

They learned the hard way that that's not the case.

And so they had these different types of positions, whether it's that one, or fracking, or all of these others that she held at the time.

I think, you know -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: She's running as a prosecutor.

EUGENE DANIELS: And now she's running as something completely different.

ASHLEY PARKER: And I think if and when we see her campaign address this, if they're forced to, it will fall into the, my values have not changed bucket, right?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

My values have not changed, but policy-wise.

ASHLEY PARKER: My positions have, but my values have not changed.

EUGENE DANIELS: What she said about immigration when she kind of came out with some different ideas on immigration is that the last three and a half years watching and dealing with immigration has kind of influenced her decision, which is, I think, you know, most Americans probably will give them credit for that, but she hasn't said that about the other issues.

JERUSALEM DEMSAS: And I think it's worth like thinking about the dynamics of a primary too, right?

Because the way that this policy position came out is that the ACLU sent a questionnaire to candidates, and people had to respond to it.

And, you know, that dynamic does not exist in -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

First rule of Fight Club, never respond to a question.

In the minute that we have left, I was going to ask about Laura Loomer, but I kind of feel like just saving it for next week and maybe that issue won't be around.

I'm going to go and give you 50 seconds, Jerusalem, to talk about your book in the context of the campaign, housing crisis.

How does it relate to the immigration crisis?

JERUSALEM DEMSAS: Yes.

I mean, this has been a big talking point for J.D.

Vance and Donald Trump.

They're looking for an answer because, you know, the Harris campaign has been very clear that they're going to be focusing on policies, like building more housing and providing down payment assistance.

And there has to be an answer to that that plays into this sort of populist rhetoric.

And so they've decided to focus on the fact that, you know, immigrants have come into this country and are contributing to demand for those houses.

There's not good evidence for this.

We know that actually the majority of home price appreciation happened because of Americans seeking houses and remote work demand shifts.

But, you know, you can read more about it in my book.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That was a perfect, enlightened, self-serving pivot.

I appreciate it very much, but, unfortunately, we need to leave it there for now.

Do read her book.

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