Washington Week with The Atlantic

ASHLEY PARKER: President Trump is forced out of his political comfort zone and into the role of consoler-in-chief as he tours flood-ravaged Central Texas.

Meanwhile, in a remarkable policy shift, Trump resumes weapon shipments to Ukraine after changing his tune on Russia's president.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. President: I'm not happy with Putin.

He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.

ASHLEY PARKER: Tonight, how a national tragedy and a defiant Putin are threatening President Trump's agenda and exposing growing tensions with his base, next.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

I'm Ashley Parker in tonight for Jeffrey Goldberg.

President Trump has wrapped up his tour of Central Texas where he met with state officials and those affected by last week's devastating floods.

It's a side of Trump that we don't often see, that of consoler-in-chief.

But we also saw another side of the president this week, one who seems to be fed up with Vladimir Putin.

Joining me tonight to discuss all things Trump are Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent at The New York Times, Tarini Parti is a White House reporter at the Wall Street Journal, Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent at The New York Times, and Nancy Youssef is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Thank you guys all for being here, and let's just jump right in.

I am actually old enough to remember George W. Bush comforting the first responders at Ground Zero after September 11th and Barack Obama spontaneously breaking into Amazing Grace after the deadly shooting at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

I also remember President Trump throwing paper towels when touring hurricane damage in Puerto Rico during his first term.

And, Peter, you're even older than I am.

PETER BAKER, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: A little bit.

ASHLEY PARKER: You have.

Unfortunately, just a little.

But, yes, you have covered six presidencies starting with Bill Clinton.

How does President Trump compare to his predecessors in this role as consoler-in-chief?

PETER BAKER: Yes.

This is not his strength, right?

President Trump has a lot of strengths, but consoling people, not one of them, empathy, not one of them.

You're right, I've been covering president's going to disaster zones since President Clinton.

I remember traveling with him to a big giant flood in Grand Forks, North Dakota, is my first one.

And what presidents from Clinton on have always done, of course, is to find ways to connect with people on the ground, to show that they're there, that they not only are going to bring resources to the federal government, but they understand their plight and that's just not where Trump is.

He is sometimes very good at mobilizing resources, but he is not good, I think, at connecting people who are in pain.

ASHLEY PARKER: Although today in Texas, we did see a version of him doing this.

Let's watch.

DONALD TRUMP: I've gone to a lot of hurricanes, a lot of tornadoes.

I've never seen anything like this.

This is a bad one.

We just visited with incredible families that -- I mean, look, they've been devastated.

They lost their child or two children and just hard to believe what -- I've never seen anything like it.

ASHLEY PARKER: I mean, so, no paper towels this time.

Tarini, is this a side of the president?

We just don't see?

Is he growing into the role?

TARINI PARTI, White House Reporter, The Wall Street Journal: He was more empathetic than we've seen him in the past.

And what we saw in the last few days is Secretary Kristi Noem talking to him, telling him stories about what she had seen on the ground.

And you could tell he had been, you know, moved by the tragedies at the camp in particular and he brought that up today.

So, it was a different side of him.

But he also wanted to, of course, tout his administration's response, which is different from what we've seen how other administrations have handled it.

It's been a very scaled back federal response.

They're relying more on state and local officials, and he also tried to make that point, that even though they're doing things differently, that, in his view, this has been a success even though there are still a lot of people missing and search and rescue teams are still looking for them.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, White House Correspondent, The New York Times: There's almost like two sort of wings to a president's response when it comes to a disaster, the rhetoric and the empathizer-in-chief, but then also you mentioned mobilizing resources.

That's the other part of it, and I think we have to look at President Trump's record with FEMA in its entirety in this second term.

I traveled with him to North Carolina and then he went to California and his first week in office and, yes, he had some of those moments of empathy and interacting with some of these people who were suffering.

He also mused about shuttering the nation's disaster relief agency, in his time in office, in the second term, a large portion of workers from FEMA have also lost their jobs at this point.

The Department of Homeland Security, we wrote we wrote a story that they were reviewing grants ranging from police - - supporting police departments to disaster resilience and basically reviewing whether localities were aligned with the administration's DEI and immigration agenda in order to continue giving out those grants.

Kristi Noem is facing a lot of criticism right now for a new rule in which grants above $100,000 she actually needs to review when people are citing that new rule in basically claiming a slowed down response.

Here we won't know really the grade of the federal government's response to this disaster for some time.

It's still very soon.

But all of these reasons are why the administration might be facing more questions and scrutiny than usual.

It's the president's comments before the disaster, as well as what we saw today.

ASHLEY PARKER: Great.

Oh, sorry.

It looks like you're going to say something.

PETER BAKER: No, I was going to -- NANCY YOUSSEF, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: I was going to say, you know, you're right.

I mean.

The administration can't stop a flood but this was a failure of preparedness.

And what struck me this week is how much we've been talking about response by government, not only on the federal level, but at the local level, starting all the way from when the camp built these new facilities using this $5 million grant a few years ago, even though it was in floodplains, local officials not willing to answer questions about the systems they had in place to respond to this and whether they were adequate on the state level, and as you point out, on the federal level.

And what's been interesting to me in watching the coverages, people mentioning actually names of people who could have made a difference.

The National Weather Service, for example, Paul Yura, who is in charge of sort of responsiveness for that area, had retired just last year after 32 years in service.

And so it's been striking to me how much we've been looking at responsiveness across government and not able to really get at what level the system broke down and what needs to be done going forward to make those fixes.

ASHLEY PARKER: Well, and in a moment where Trump has talked about abolishing FEMA, this would certainly seem to call for FEMA to, at the very least, exist.

Peter, is there any change of thinking in the White House about the role of FEMA at all?

PETER BAKER: Yes.

You saw them backing off that, right?

So, the president had said he would phase it out, that was his phrase, by the end of the year.

Now, they're not talking about that so much.

Russ Vought, the director of the Office of Management Budget, told reporters today, no, we just make a reform it.

We're not going to get rid of it.

We're going to make it better.

Okay, well, fine.

That's a different story.

But it reminds us that FEMA has a role.

And it is true that conservatives historically believe the best government is the government that is at the closest to the people, right, state and local governments, but FEMA is one of the agencies that Republican governors like a lot, just like Democratic governors.

Every disaster I've ever been to with those presidents, I've seen governors on the ground and both parties really glad that FEMA was there.

They don't want less FEMA.

They want more FEMA.

And maybe it doesn't work all the way they want it to, but they don't want it to go away because FEMA can do things the federal government can do things that states and localities can't.

ASHLEY PARKER: Right.

And, in some ways, FEMA coordinates with their state partners.

On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem spoke in a cabinet meeting where she outlined what she tried to describe as a new sort of FEMA.

Let's take a listen.

KRISTI NOEM, Secretary of Homeland Security: But as soon as you signed the major disaster declaration we were able to get them resources and dollars right away, just like you envisioned through state block grants to help them with cleanup, and FEMA's been deployed.

And we're cutting through the paperwork of the old FEMA, streamlining it, much like your vision of how FEMA should operate, and it's been a much better response to help these families get through this terrible situation.

ASHLEY PARKER: But, Tarini, in some ways, when I hear that, isn't she just describing old FEMA?

TARINI PARTI: She is, and she's actually leaving out what actually happened.

So, based on our reporting, we know that at DHS, there was widespread confusion about how they should respond, how they should move resources in part because of that rule that Zolan mentioned where Kristi Noem has to review any spending over $100,000.

They also didn't pre-position assets close to the impacted area, as they have done in past disasters.

So, they weren't able to quickly move assets and resources in, they didn't have search and rescue teams out until Monday.

This was three days after the flooding had started.

And so there are concerns within the agency about the slowing down effect.

And even if we didn't see the gaps so much in this case because it was a small area, because this wasn't, you know, a major hurricane as we might see in the coming weeks and months, that it didn't show as much.

And also Texas is one of the states that has sort of a more bolstered state emergency response system.

So, other states might not have the types of resources that Texas does.

So, in this case, you know, we might - - we didn't see maybe some of the gaps that Kristi Noem was trying to tout but we might in the future.

ASHLEY PARKER: And Texas has that infrastructure.

It's a big state, it's a red state.

And even with that Texas Governor Greg Abbott almost immediately called in FEMA, right?

So, it makes you wonder how would a smaller state fare, Zolan, or even, or perhaps most especially a blue state.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: Sure.

No, absolutely.

I mean, this is a state -- I did a -- we did a FOIA project, a Freedom of Information Act project, where we got a lot of documents in 2019 and actually compared how FEMA's response was to U.S. territories compared to a place like Texas.

And Texas historically got more support faster than many other places in the United States.

And if they had questions, at this point, you have to, again, wonder how a small community would fare that's going to rely on this federal agency more.

You know, also the president has -- usually disaster response for a president use -- there's some unwritten rules.

The partisanship goes away.

The support is there without strings attached.

But there have been times where if you looked at the president's comments, even from his first term, where you see that transactional approach also through a lens of disaster relief, a sense of this support is coming your way, but also what do you owe me.

Again, first week when he's in office, he goes to California, a place where he had previously threatened no relief for their wildfire response.

And he goes and he says, the federal government will be here for you.

I also want these immigration actions to take place.

I also want this and that.

I want, you know, you to turn over -- I want you to adopt my agenda in a way.

So, you know, will we see that?

We'll have to see.

But, again, to Tarini's point, this is going to keep coming up.

The administration has pushed back on reporters asking questions and interrogating this response.

Well, part of the reason for that is also it's hurricane season, right?

And we're going to see this happen more and more.

ASHLEY PARKER: And, Peter, I want to be careful about not implying causation between the DOGEing of the federal government and the tragedy we saw in Central Texas.

But is -- again, is there a world in which this changes their thinking, or if not, what do these massive cuts sort of throughout the bureaucracy portend for future disasters?

PETER BAKER: I mean, it raise all kinds of questions.

National Weather Service, obviously, National Oceanographic Association Agency -- Atmospheric Agency that predicts climate change patterns and so forth, and whether it had anything to do with this one or not, people will give us a better account of that in the days and weeks to come.

But you can see in the future why that might be something of concern for people because they did know that there were potential flood disaster happening here, and yet despite that, didn't have the preparation, didn't have the warning systems and all that.

And if you have a FEMA that's already one quarter smaller that's right than it was a couple months ago, you know, some cuts may be perfectly good in terms of efficiency of waste, but one quarter is a large chunk out of a federal agency that you want to do more, not less.

ASHLEY PARKER: Right.

And, Tarini, you mentioned some of these gaps that were not as acute because Texas was better prepared, but you've done a lot of reporting on FEMA.

Can you take us through a scenario where these gaps might be more pronounced?

And as much as Kristi Noam did describe a FEMA as it exists, they are trying to make some changes, and can you explain to us what that will actually look like?

TARINI PARTI: Yes.

They're trying to make a lot of changes and staffing in particular has been a big focus.

But this $100,000 review that we keep bringing up over and over again is a big deal because during a major hurricane, we've been told you can spend -- you know, the government spends hundreds of millions of dollars in such a short amount of time.

You can spend a billion within days.

And so getting approval for every little thing that the government spends money on could really, you know, potentially cause lives in this type of situation.

What they've also gotten rid of is door-to-door services, where FEMA staff goes to an impacted area and knocks on doors and tries to help survivors.

So that has been taken away.

We also don't know if they're going to be doing what I described earlier as pre-positioning of these assets, which was something that came out of Hurricane Katrina as sort of a big lesson learned, which is to go big and go quickly and early as much as possible to try to be as prepared.

Even if it costs the government more money, those resources are there in case the state and local officials need them.

ASHLEY PARKER: And another surprise out of the White House this week was Trump changing his tone on Russia and specifically really changing his tone on President Putin.

I mean, it was not even -- it feels like years ago, but it was not even five months ago that Trump got so upset with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, that he essentially threw him out of the White House before he had time to eat his scheduled lunch.

So, let's just take a quick trip down memory lane.

DONALD TRUMP: You're not in a good position.

You don't have the cards right now.

With us, you start having cards.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN President: I'm not playing cards.

DONALD TRUMP: Right now, you don't your playing cards.

VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY; I'm very serious, Mr. President.

I'm very serious.

DONALD TRUMP: You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.

You are gambling with World War III.

ASHLEY PARKER: But on Tuesday, Trump had this to say about Putin.

DONALD TRUMP: We get a lot of (BLEEP) thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth?

He's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.

ASHLEY PARKER: So, Peter, what has changed?

Has Trump come around to Zelenskyy?

Has he soured on Putin?

Is it something we can't even fathom yet?

PETER BAKER: Yes, it's really fascinating.

You know why Zelenskyy got under Trump's skin at that thing a few months ago?

Because he was telling him Putin is going to shovel a lot of B.S.

your way, that you cannot trust Putin.

And Trump took offense at that.

He says, no, that's just not true.

In effect, what he's saying is, I've been through so much with my friend, Vladimir Putin.

We went through the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax together, you know, blah, blah, blah.

And now what Trump has discovered is what Zelenskyy told him is basically right.

You cannot assume that Trump - - that Putin is your friend, you kind of assume that he wants a peace deal because he doesn't.

He's made that very clear.

Now, you know, it's striking to hear Trump say what he said this week because of ten years of bromance between the two, right, which is still seemingly inexplicable to a lot of people.

Why would Trump be so favorable toward Putin for so long?

Has he come around to believe what everybody else already believed, which is that Putin is not his friend?

ASHLEY PARKER: Which his in own intelligence services had been telling him since his first term for the better part of a decade.

PETER BAKER: And his friends, like Lindsey Graham and other Republicans, would tell him, you know, Marco Rubio used to be a hawk, he would have -- the old Senator Rubio would've told him that, I don't know about Secretary Rubio.

Now, does that mean that they'll stay, you know, estranged?

We've seen with Trump before.

Of course, he has -- you know, he goes in and out with people, right?

He gets mad at people and then they're back into his orbit.

So, if they had a deal next week of some sort that Trump could tout, he would suddenly be friends again, probably with Putin.

But it is interesting that he's learned that Putin is not the guy he thought he was.

And it is important to remember that Trump thought they were so close that he could snap his fingers and have a peace deal within 24 hours.

He told everybody, not even after his inauguration, he said he could do it before his inauguration, and he has discovered otherwise.

ASHLEY PARKER: Right.

And, Nancy, I mean, one thing that was striking was Trump says this, but this week after Trump's comments, Russia and Putin ramped up their attacks on Ukraine.

I mean, can you take us through why Putin still seems to feel so emboldened?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Well, so what's happening on the ground is we've seen a huge uptick of the use of drones and missiles on the capital, killing at least 14, literally hundreds of drones.

And then today, we saw an attack on a maternity hospital in Kharkiv.

And this is -- when I give you a sense of sort of the level, the ramp up, we've seen more drones used in some cases in one day than all of last year by Russia.

And what that does is really overwhelm the air defense system of Ukraine at a time when the U.S. has withheld the air defense missiles that would protect the capital in other parts of the country.

And I think he's doing this in part because he sees a Ukraine that is increasingly vulnerable because it's drawing down on the U.S.-provided air defense missiles and potentially sees a divide between the United States and Ukraine in terms of the promise of enduring support, that these attacks have happened more on the capital have been so aggressive and have really forced Ukraine to make big decisions about what air defense capability they're going to use to try to protect the capital has been challenging.

ASHLEY PARKER: You mentioned those defensive weapons, which Trump just sort of reauthorized the shipment of, but those had been stopped briefly by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, it is worth noting, without telling Trump what he was doing.

They're now back on, but this sort of on again, off again defensive weapons dance, I mean, what does that reveal about fissures between the President and Hegseth, fissures in the administration?

Nancy, just let's stick with you for a second.

Explain what we should take away from that.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Just a little background, under the Biden administration, there was a promise of consistent weapon shipments to Ukraine, and those were supposed to run out about the summer.

And so this was one of those shipments in which, and it included things like Patriot missiles, Hellfires, GMLRS, key weapons systems and missiles for Ukraine.

And so we heard at the start of the month that the secretary of defense had suspended those seemingly without telling the president.

The president said he didn't know.

It's not even clear whether the whole shipment was suspended.

When you ask at the Pentagon, shockingly, you can't get a clear answer on what was suspended, why and what is resuming now.

So, then we heard from the president, I don't know, but I want to resume them.

He gave an interview to NBC, in which he said, we are actually going to resume this shipment of defensive weapons and NATO's going to pay for it.

Now, technically NATO can't pay for it, but NATO members could.

And so we're looking now to see if that's going to happen and what that package looks like.

The problem is so many people focus on the shipment and what Hegseth said to me, what's critical is once you start turning weapons systems on and shipments on and off, it is very hard for Ukrainian military planners to defend themselves.

You know, when you turn off a missile system, there's a lot of logistical changes that happen.

Ukraine might move a system from one part of the country to the other, when two days later, the U.S. turns it back on, those systems are still on trains.

They're having to reconfigure their battlefield to this on and off approach to U.S. shipments.

ASHLEY PARKER: Right.

And you're giving us an explanation of us now seven months into this conflict in Trump's term, but Peter had mentioned that Trump had said he was going to do this on day one.

And, Zolan, I'm curious, I know you had some reporting on this.

Trump actually believed this.

Can you just explain why he believed this?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: I mean, I don't know about the 24 hours.

To have talked to people who really think that Trump did think that his close -- that his relationship with Putin, that Putin's -- that the fact that Putin favored him over other candidates, that he could use, that leverage, his deal-making leverage, to get a deal here.

And what he has found out is that embracing Vladimir Putin comes with few results, right?

It comes with few actual, productive results here.

And it's something that, yes, you know, he was saying to those around him, but his Republican allies, you know, were also telling him in recent weeks that they could all be getting played.

This was something that Senator Graham said as well, who's put forth a sanctions bill that we still don't really know if the White House supports at this point, it would impose sanctions on Russia.

So, you know, he has had reminders that Putin could be playing him this entire time, and now you're starting to see the frustration really bubble up to the surface after a lot of the hyperbolic rhetoric that we saw during the campaign.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Zolan, I'm so glad you brought up the sanctions bill, because I think despite what we heard from the president to me, we will not know if there's a real shift unless two things happen.

One, we actually see weapons and defensive systems going to Ukraine and the president signs that sanctions bill.

That is a tangible example of the president saying, I am fed up of Putin.

Words are one thing.

But those are the two things on the table right now that would signal that actually the U.S. is shifting its position.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: And after he posted on true social.

That Putin had gone crazy after or lost his mind after one of Russia's aggressive attacks on Ukraine, I asked him outside of Air Force One if he supported his own allies' sanctions bill, and at that point he did not say one way or the other.

He said, I after read it.

I'm not sure.

He didn't answer the affirmative.

He's been asked since then as well.

Still, we have not had that outright support for the bill.

PETER BAKER: Well, that sanctions bill has a cost, because what it does is it tries to cut off the oil supply to places like China.

It doesn't want other people to buy Russian oil.

That's fine.

But if you take that oil off the market, it means prices go up.

And that's why Biden's administration wasn't willing to do that.

They did a whole lot of other sanctions, but they weren't willing to take all the Russian oil off the market because of the price at the gas pump.

And Trump is very sensitive to the price of the gas pump and bragging in recent days about how it's lower than it had been.

To sign that bill and then effectuate those sanctions as a risk for his domestic support.

TARINI PARTI: He has signaled that there might be a big announcement coming next week.

So, I think the early indications are that he might actually support the sanctions bill and, well, that remains to be seen, but maybe he's made that calculation that, you know, it's worth the risk.

PETER BAKER: There is a waiver in the bill.

He couldn't because he may go and sign it and use it as leverage maybe to get Putin back to the table, but -- NANCY YOUSSEF: And there's a political cost as well, right?

There are 86 signatories to the bill.

This issue, the support for Ukraine, has become a bipartisan issue.

He has faced criticisms from within his own parties.

So, you're right, there's an economic cost, but he's also facing a political one.

PETER BAKER: That's right.

ASHLEY PARKER: And, Peter, beyond the sanctions bill, right, it feels like Russia has been by the United States given the ability not to lose but not the ability to actually win.

What would be required to actually allow Ukraine to win if that's what Trump even wants to happen?

PETER BAKER: I mean, the truth is United States provided tens of billions of dollars worth of weapons under Biden who's willing and wanted to help Ukraine, and still, as you say, didn't go as far as some people thought they should go.

The idea that Trump and this Republican Congress is going to go further than that seems unlikely, which is what Putin is gambling on.

Putin is gambling that, that Trump is going to walk away, that Trump doesn't really care about Ukraine, that Trump actually has other fish to fry with China and trade and tariffs.

And that's why he thinks that he can continue to stiff Trump because then he will have the upper hand in Ukraine.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: Particularly on foreign policy too, is when we see that the president wants to lean into issues that are a win, not intractable.

ASHLEY PARKER: Exactly.

There's a lot to discuss, but unfortunately we have to leave it here.

Thank you all for joining me, to our guests.

And thank you to our viewers at home for watching us.

For more on the U.S. weapon shipments to Ukraine, be sure to check out Nancy's fantastic reporting at theatlantic.com.

I'm Ashley Parker.

Goodnight from Washington.

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