Washington Week with The Atlantic

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Donald Trump is under a lot of pressure these days, Jeffrey Epstein, the Economy, Jeffrey Epstein, declining poll numbers, Jeffrey Epstein, and he's lashing out in fairly unprecedented ways, even for him.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S.

President: Quiet, Piggy.

But I blew my stack at these people.

You're a terrible person and a terrible reporter.

I'd love to fire his (BLEEP).

He should be fired.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And then he called for the execution of Democratic members of Congress.

Tonight, Donald Trump's unmanaged anger, next.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

In ordinary times, a reminder to America's men and women in uniform that it is their responsibility to disobey illegal orders would pass without much comment from anyone.

Indeed, in our armed forces, the armed forces of a democracy, it is common to be reminded of this basic obvious, and until recently, non-controversial demand because it's so utterly foundational.

But when six Democratic lawmakers, all veterans of the military and intelligence agencies, issued this general reminder the other day, Trump accused them of sedition and suggested that they be executed.

Now, maybe if he had been having a better week, he wouldn't have acted this way, or maybe not.

I'll talk about the president's behavior tonight with my panel, Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent at The New York Times, Leigh Ann Caldwell is the chief Washington correspondent for Puck News, Jonathan Karl is the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News and the author of Retribution, Donald Trump and the Campaign That Changed America, and Toluse Olorunnipa is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Thank you all for joining me.

I appreciate it.

Jon, you've been the target of Trump's anger before.

JONATHAN KARL, Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News: A couple of times.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So have I. It's a pretty big club actually.

It's not really a -- it's not really exclusive.

But this week felt a little bit different somehow, the -- more intense, the anger was more sustained.

JONATHAN KARL: Yes.

I mean, he had been doing this for a long time.

Obviously, he called the press the enemy of the people, but it did feel more intense the way he went after Catherine Lucy of Bloomberg on Air Force One calling her Piggy, and then the display with my colleague, Mary Bruce, in the Oval Office was over the top.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Both great reporters, by the way.

JONATHAN KARL: Both excellent reporters.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Our official position at Washington Week is both great reporters.

JONATHAN KARL: No, I mean, they truly are both great reporters.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, absolutely.

JONATHAN KARL: And they both didn't take the bait.

I mean, they didn't like engage with him on this and -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: They were incredibly professional.

JONATHAN KARL: They were very professional and respectful in their questions and also ignoring the personal taunts, which are -- it's not easy.

You're in the Oval Office and the president is calling you a terrible person.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: and you know that everybody's seeing this also.

JONATHAN KARL: Yes.

And it's all playing out.

And he's sitting next to a guy that allegedly, you know, executed or ordered the execution -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Possibly bone sawed a journalist.

JONATHAN KARL: This is -- but Mary was completely steady and then came back with a question later on about the Epstein files that really needed to be asked.

These were all like the questions you knew needed to be asked and Trump went off.

What I took from it is, my sense is that he's rattled.

I think he was rattled by something we haven't seen this term, and we really didn't see to this degree in his first term the defeat he faced at the hands of Republicans in Congress, Republicans who have been entirely supplicant to him suddenly standing up and going in a different direction on the release of the Epstein files.

And I think he was frankly rattled and that was part of what was going on.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Toluse, the backdrop here is very important.

There's been a bunch of stuff that hasn't gone his way, about the Virginia, New Jersey elections, for starters.

Give us a sense of where he is in popularity and it just seems like the wind is not at his back.

TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Yes.

November is a really tough month for Trump.

We're thinking about a year ago, he was at the peak of his political power returning to office, winning this landslide election in his mind, in terms of having the biggest comeback in political history and all the great things that people were talking about when he beat Kamala Harris to return to the White House.

And his first ten months in office were pretty much signs that there was very little that can be done to stop him.

He was steamrolling through his opponents.

He was pushing forward executive orders.

But then we had the elections in the first part of this month and he was defeated very soundly in New Jersey, in Virginia, and across the political map.

Republicans lost significantly because of what Trump is doing.

It was pretty clear that the country sent a message to him.

And he also lost in the Supreme Court in terms of how his tariff policy is being viewed.

We haven't seen the final, you know, ruling on that.

But it was pretty clear that the Supreme Court justices were not in favor of what he's doing on tariffs.

And he had to move away from his tariff policy by removing some tariffs because people are worried about affordability and the economy, and he is not winning on that issue, as he has in the past.

And so he is really focused on all of the areas where he's starting to lose ground.

And most importantly, he's realizing that he's going to be a lame duck very soon.

And people within his own party are starting to look past him, and that's his biggest reason why he's concerned.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And, Peter, Epstein, there's -- PETER BAKER, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Go.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Epstein.

Yes, go.

PETER BAKER: Go, yes.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The thing he can't shake the thing.

PETER BAKER: The thing he can't shake.

The House of Representatives literally went out of session, Leigh Ann, as well as I did, for probably a record amount of time, certainly in modern times, six to eight weeks, because they didn't want to have to deal with this question and he got this handed to him, so much so he had to get in front of the train and give permission to all the Republicans to vote for it so they wouldn't be crosswise with the MAGA base.

Huge setback in the sense of momentum, in the sense of changing the conversation, he does not want to be talking about this.

We don't know what's in these files, obviously, and we'll see where they actually get released.

They did include a clause in the bill, which we should remember saying they'll be released unless they get in the way of an ongoing investigation.

Well, there wasn't an ongoing investigation until, oh, wait a second, a few days ago when the president ordered Pam Bondi to make a new investigation into Democrats.

And so we'll see whether they actually follow through on releasing everything or try to redact some things and we don't know what's in them.

But if there was a prosecutable crime in there against Donald Trump, it seems likely to think that the Merrick Garland Justice Department would've already pursued that.

So, we're talking about is probably something embarrassing.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That wasn't the most aggressive Justice Department in the history of Justice Departments.

PETER BAKER: They did indict him a couple times.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: True.

PETER BAKER: And that, you know, which hadn't happened before with any other president.

So, I mean, yes, I understand what you're saying, but if there's something in there, I don't think Pam Bondi is going to be prosecuting him.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Leigh Ann, the files, everybody's talking about the files.

No one knows what's in the files.

Do you think we're ever going to have a complete understanding or something close to a complete understanding of the depth of Epstein's connections to Trump?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, Chief White House Correspondent, Puck: We'll see, I don't know.

I mean, Peter laid out a way that Donald Trump can prevent the release of these files.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Does that sound realistic to you, like that's a move that they would make?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: Yes, absolutely.

I mean, there's something Donald Trump does not want these files out.

Why -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Wait, can I just ask, do we think that Donald Trump even knows what's in the files at all, or is it just he can't remember what he might have done or not done?

No, I'm serious.

Like what does he know?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: It feels like he's protecting someone or something.

Not that there's necessarily a -- maybe he's protecting himself.

I don't know if there's a crime.

It doesn't -- like you said, it doesn't seem like there is, but there's someone that -- or something that he seems to be protecting that he doesn't want out there.

But I think that with the files, Donald Trump has lost a tremendous amount of trust on this issue, regardless of if these files are released.

The way that this has been progressing, people think that it has been covered up over and over and over again, and Donald Trump is now complicit in the cover-up.

And so even if all these files are released, it's going to be very hard for some people to believe that that is all that there is.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Jon, you would've thought -- JONATHAN KARL: Well, and, look, first of all, DOJ is going to control this process.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Department of Justice.

JONATHAN KARL: Department of Justice will control the release of the files.

So, keep that in mind.

This is the Department of Justice that has basically been functioning as Trump's law firm.

I mean, this is a -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It has no independence anymore in the way that we think of the Justice Department.

JONATHAN KARL: But I don't know if Trump knows what's in the files, and I've heard no indication that there's something in there that's going to incriminate him more than what's already come out.

I mean, we know that he had a longtime friendship with Epstein.

We know that they had a falling out.

We've seen all the video of them together.

I mean, who knows what more could be there, but I have no indication there's any blockbuster there.

But we do know this.

When Pam Bondi promised that she was going to release everything and she brought in -- you remember, she said, I'm bringing in 1,000 FBI agents to review everything and to get everything ready for release.

We know that when she briefed Trump about what they had, that they told him that his name comes up repeatedly in the files.

I mean, Elon Musk, I guess, told us that a while ago.

It's not a surprise.

We know that he's been on the plane.

The flight logs have been out there before Epstein's plane.

We know that he was in Epstein's address book.

That had already been out there.

So, I don't know that there was anything new, but he was told by DOJ, by the Justice Department that his name was going to appear in these files, and that's when he pulled the plug and said, no, we're not going to release it.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Leigh Ann, let's go to this issue of the relationship between Trump and the press.

It's not hard to notice that while he can express contempt and anger toward male reporters, he seems to be bothered, especially by female reporters here.

Watch just a couple of moments of this with me.

TRUMP: Quiet.

Quiet, Piggy.

I think you are a terrible reporter.

It's the way you ask these questions.

You start off with a man who's highly respected, asking him a horrible, insubordinate and just a terrible question.

You're a terrible person and a terrible reporter.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: What is going on here, do you think with him?

Is it just pure misogyny where he has a double standard, that he believes that reporters should not behave in a subordinate way?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: Yes.

I mean, the word, insubordinate, just speaks so broadly about how he thinks.

So -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But go into that a little bit.

What do you mean?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: Well, Donald Trump wants reporters in the press to, to praise him and to give him good coverage and do what he wants.

And that's why you see in a lot of the scrums in the Oval Office a lot more and more of the reporters are friendly reporters from conservative outlets, not reporters who have -- you know, are not from those outlets.

But I will say on woman -- on the female thing, women reporters notice this.

It is a topic of conversation among me and my friends constantly about how he treats female reporters.

I will say, if you speak to someone like Kellyanne Conway, who says Donald Trump is great to women, look, she was the first female campaign manager, first female chief of staff, that there's high level women all around him, but those are women who are not challenging him.

Those are women who are there to support him.

And reporters are there to challenge the president, and that's what he doesn't like.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It's this insubordinate/subordinate spectrum.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: Yes.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Toluse, you are a former White House bureau chief for The Washington Post.

OLORUNNIPA: That would be among the other chiefs.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: A lot of chiefs, yes.

It's all chiefs.

It's all chiefs.

The -- is it that unusual for a president to get upset with insubordinate reporters?

What's unusual about this for people who don't understand the ins and outs of our profession?

OLORUNNIPA: Well, the president has always sort of taken these attacks against the press as part of what he thinks is a shtick.

And, Jon, you wrote a book called The Front Row at the Trump Show.

The president sees this in a way as a show.

He sees the reporters as his foils.

And a lot of times after he attacks reporters, he'll bring them up and, you know, act really nicely to them and sort of try to play host with them when the cameras are off because he does see this as a show.

So, some of this is a little bit of a give and take, but what is a little bit different about what we're seeing this week is the president seems to have like real animosity behind some of these attacks.

And he's, you know, having some of these really direct attacks that are steeped in misogyny and also seem really personal in part because of all of the things that he's going through and what we've experienced in terms of how tough this month has been for him, how he's up against the ropes politically.

And instead of it being a show in a give and take, he really seems rattled and he really seems to be lashing out.

PETER BAKER: And here's the consequence, if I can add.

Here's the consequence of the White House taking over control of the White House press pool, which no other president, Republican or Democrat, had ever done.

They now control who is in that room.

And what that means is that there are fewer mainstream journalism outlets, or whatever phrase we want use, and a lot more of these outlets that are frankly propaganda or politically, ideologically in favor.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: What are their names just so people at home know what we're talking about?

PETER BAKER: Well, I mean, obviously, Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend is in there.

And I remember the scene -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That's the name of the network, Marjorie Taylor Green's boyfriend television network.

PETER BAKER: I'll let the networks speak for themselves.

JONATHAN KARL: Michael Lindell's network.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Michael Lindel, the pillow guy, yes.

PETER BAKER: So, the other day, not that long ago, the president says in this exchange with one of them is like, well, you know, I won the election in 2020.

Yes, sir, you did.

And then he says, aha, media, media, meaning, see, the media in his presentation of this has just somehow validated him.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

PETER BAKER: He's blurred the line between actual reporters and people who are propagandists or supporters.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, Sean Spicer was in the press poll a couple weeks ago.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Congratulations to Sean on that promotion.

JONATHAN KARL: So, the public, of course, doesn't see a difference it doesn't understand.

And the fewer and fewer actual reporters in there challenging him, like Mary Bruce, the more and more he gets angry about that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: By the way, the Pentagon now has completely removed what we would think of mainstream, from Fox to ABC, to everybody.

JONATHAN KARL: To Newsmax.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: To Newsmax, and has a -- I don't know what you would call them -- a captive press or some of these types of outlets.

Is the White House moving in that direction itself?

JONATHAN KARL: Well, the White House Communications Office actually wasn't thrilled with how the Pentagon played out.

So, I don't think -- I think that -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: They couldn't have stopped Pete Hegseth from doing that?

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, they weren't that upset to stop Pete Hegseth, but they weren't thrilled with what he was doing.

And I think that, you know, what we said here about Trump likes to have, you know, the show and he needs a foil, and he also loves the mainstream television coverage.

So, I don't -- I mean, God only knows, we're only a year into this, where this will go, but he is not likely to completely throw out, you know, mainstream news organizations because he wants somebody to yell at, at one point, and he also wants those cameras there to broadcast to, you know, the television networks.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: One thing I just want to get back to about his really bad months is that before the election, so early November, end of October, maybe even, when Trump was challenging Republicans to get rid of the filibuster to end the government shutdown, and Republicans in the Senate were kind of pushing back, a Republican source of mine said, reminded me, remember, the more Trump feels like he is losing control, the more out of control he gets.

And so that just -- I just keep coming back to this in this timeframe right now that Trump feels like he's losing control.

Things aren't going well for him and he acts out in those moments.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Prices, I mean, things that are beyond the president's control create an instability in him.

I want to move to this question of sedition.

Watch just for a moment this video that some of these Democrats put out the other day.

SEN.

MARK KELLY (D-AZ): You can refuse illegal orders.

SEN.

ELISSA SLOTKIN (D-MI): You can refuse illegal orders.

REP.

JASON CROW (D-CO): You must refuse illegal orders.

ELISSA SLOTKIN: No one has to carry out orders that violate the law.

REP.

CHRISSY HOULAHAN (D-PA): Or our Constitution.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, obviously, there's two issues here.

There's the why the Democrats -- why these particular Democrats put this video out now, and then there's Trump's response.

Why did the Democrats do this and were they justified in doing so?

JONATHAN KARL: Well, I won't make a judgment going to justify, but I will say the reasoning behind this is there is growing concern, I've directly heard it from senior military officers, both on duty and retired, about the politicization of the military.

You know, obviously, you have the concerns over what's happening in the Caribbean, the targeting of the Venezuelan alleged drug boats, whether or not that is legal.

You had the head of Southern -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And you had to note the head of all U.S.

operations in South America, Latin America, essentially quit or forced out -- JONATHAN KARL: Retired, yes.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: -- and avoid this subject.

JONATHAN KARL: Yes.

And then you had when Pete Hegseth brought in all of the commanders from around the world for that very strange, you know, speech at Quantico, Donald Trump in that speech said that maybe we should use the streets of American cities as training ground for the U.S.

military.

So, there's a lot of concern about will they be ordered to go into the streets of Chicago and to fire on protesters?

What's going to happen next with the Venezuelan action?

There are concerns, and I think that's what those members of Congress were reacting to.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Toluse, the interesting thing here, one interesting thing to me, is that this was eminently ignorable by the president.

He didn't have to say anything, but he said a lot.

Again, part of the -- what Peter's talking about -- maybe the spinning out of control part, I mean, to go from zero to these Democratic elected lawmakers, who are veterans, should be executed, it's quite a journey.

OLORUNNIPA: Right.

And it's not like he just said it once.

He reposted, multiple posts about it.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

OLORUNNIPA: He said they should be hanged.

He said, punishable by death.

It was very clear that he was trying to get this message across.

And to Leigh Ann's point, it gets through the sense that he is spinning out of control in part because he realizes, and that's what was at the heart of this message, that some politicians and lawmakers, even within his own party, are looking past him.

They're looking at him as not the ultimate, most powerful person who's going to continue to be in power forever and ever.

He's got three more years left in office and he's basically a lame duck.

And he does not want people to think that they can ignore his orders or look past him, and that's part of the reason he wants to put this marker down, saying that if people ignore his orders, that they could be punishable by death.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Peter, it's not sedition obviously to articulate that.

It was also a little bit of a troll, maybe.

PETER BAKER: Yes.

Well, it's a complicated subject.

I mean, it's simple on the one hand.

What they said in the video is absolutely correct.

The law is that military service members should not, cannot, should obey an illegal order.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That's as old as time.

PETER BAKER: Right.

And in some orders that are clearly illegal, that would be fine.

The problem is, it's kind of a murky thing right now.

Because, in fact, even judges right now are disagreeing with each other about what's illegal and not legal about what the president is doing with the military.

So, how is a corporal, you know, who may not be steeped in constitutional law, supposed to make that judgment.

So, you can see why any president might find that video a little problematic because it looks like you're encouraging members of the military to decide something might be illegal and therefore disobey their commander-in-chief.

But it is the reaction of course, that as always with Trump becomes the bigger story, the idea that we're going to -- even if he's just trolling them, to suggest that the death penalty is on order for members of Congress who are themselves veterans or members of the military or the National Security establishment should be, you know, prosecuted for this is, of course, not normal and would be an illegal order by the way that that we're talking about.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

One more topic I want to get to is the substance of the meeting with MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

This is what Trump had to say about Jamal Khashoggi the journalist who was murdered by Saudi intelligence.

DONALD TRUMP: A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about.

Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happen.

But he knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that.

You don't have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Leigh Ann, I thought that the most interesting part of that statement was, you don't have to embarrass our guest.

It reminds me that people have often said this, that he treats the White House in a way like his hotel, and this is a guest in my hotel, and don't ask him these rude questions.

But we're talking about murder.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: Yes.

And there's still a large faction in this country of people who blame him in Saudi Arabia for 9/11 as well.

So, the fact that he was even in the United States at the Oval Office visiting with Donald Trump angered a lot of people.

You know, I don't think that much is very offensive these days, but I thought that was absolutely offensive.

You know, the fact that he completely dismissed American intelligence about MBS's role in the butcher, literal butcher of Jamal Khashoggi.

So, you know -- and your paper had a great story about just the conflict of interest with Donald Trump having MBS there and how much business he is doing and his family is doing with Saudi Arabia right now.

So, there's a lot of issues with that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

Jon, let me come to you with a large question that you'll have 30 seconds.

JONATHAN KARL: Yes, we'll do it all there.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But there's a theme here.

We're seeing just developing a Ukraine peace plan that obviously privileges Russia, the aggressor in this.

You saw in the Oval Office Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.

The CIA has said, approved the operation approved of the operation that led to the murder of this journalist.

Trump doesn't have a lot of sympathy for the underdog.

JONATHAN KARL: He wants -- you got to show strength.

He wants to be with a winner at all times.

It's -- I mean this -- you know, in terms of the MBS meeting, I mean, it's -- I think it's important to point out that, I mean, Saudi is an, a critical player in the region.

Obviously, the United States depends on Saudi, counterbalance to Iran, depends on next steps in Israel and Gaza.

But, you know, I mean, to see him directly give him a pass on what the CIA has found.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, what I was thinking when I watched that was the applause that Trump gave Putin in the Alaska meeting, last word to you, Peter, it just seems like the Ukraine trajectory is on the same trajectory as the Saudi trajectory in some ways, power.

PETER BAKER: He's picked sides.

He's absolutely right, strong people, not weak people.

And even this security guarantee he's supposedly offering Ukraine as a condition of part of this peace plan, an Article 5-like security guarantee, it's a good question what an Article 5-like security guarantee is valued from a guy who doesn't believe in the actual Article 5.

Remember, in NATO, he has said, I don't think I should have to protect NATO allies that don't spend enough.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Well, we'll talk about Article 5 next week, probably, or the week after, but we're going to have to leave it there for now, unfortunately.

I want to thank our guests for joining me, and I want to thank you at home for watching us.

For more on this growing rift within the Republican Party, please read Idrees Kahloon's latest piece on theatlantic.com.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

Goodnight from Washington.