Washington Week with The Atlantic

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: On Sunday, President Trump faced another assassination attempt.

On Monday, he was blaming Democrats, hoping to energize his supporters.

Also this week, Vice President Harris, still neck-and-neck with Trump in the most crucial swing states, continued to pursue unconvinced black and Latino voters.

And back here in Washington, Republican leaders scrambled to avoid yet another government shutdown after the House failed to pass a funding bill on Wednesday, next.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

So, I made a promise to myself not to use the term continuing resolution on this show until absolutely necessary.

It's kind of like the Ambien of congressional legislation.

But we're looking at the prospect of another government shutdown and renewed questions about Speaker Mike Johnson's ability to keep his caucus in line.

We'll talk about this tonight, and we'll also talk about yet another tumultuous week in the presidential race, including the fallout for one unfortunate Ohio town after Trump and J.D.

Vance, his running mate, spread false claims that immigrants there were eating pets.

Also, we'll discuss the term black Nazi, believe it or not.

Joining me tonight at the table, Leigh Ann Caldwell, anchor of Washington Post Live and co-author of the Post's Early Brief, Caitlin Dickerson, my colleague at The Atlantic, and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her coverage of immigration, Zolan Kanno-Youngs, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, and McKay Coppins, an Atlantic staff writer and author of Romney, A Reckoning.

Welcome to all of you.

Thank you for being here.

Leigh Ann, you're up.

You're one of the eight people I know who knows what a continuing resolution even is.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, Anchor, Washington Post Live: Yes, unfortunately.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Give us the latest on the threat of a government shutdown.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: So, the government is poised to run out of money a week from Monday.

We are once again, year-after-year, up against the deadline.

So, what happened this past week is Speaker Mike Johnson, he put forward a bill, a conservative bill, that would fund the government just for six months alongside a very potent political issue for Republicans.

And that is a bill that would require proof of citizenship to register to vote.

This is something that Donald Trump has talked about.

This was an ask from him.

So, he put this bill forward knowing it was going to fail.

He did not have the support of enough Republicans in his party for a multitude of reasons.

It failed, as expected.

Now, Speaker Johnson is coming back saying to other leaders of Congress, look, I tried blaming members of his party.

They weren't able to go along with it.

And so now there are negotiations happening.

There's expected to be a bipartisan supported bill that perhaps comes out as early as this weekend.

No one wants the government to shut down.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell this week said that Republicans will get blamed if the government shuts down and that's the overwhelming thought on Capitol Hill.

But the reality is -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: His analysis is correct, Republicans will get blamed?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: And Republicans know that they're going to get blamed as Speaker Johnson made this move.

And one thing I want to say about that is Speaker Johnson put forward this plan that was not popular even with Republicans.

They thought it was a gimmick, a ploy.

There's multitude of reasons.

But he did it because he got a lot of pressure from the ultra conservative portion of his conference, the Freedom Caucus.

And he did it because he has his own concerns in mind.

He wants to remain speaker of the House or leader of the Republican Party.

So, he's continuously trying to appease that group even though he's wasted two weeks with this idea that was going absolutely nowhere.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, Zolan, is his speakership under threat.

I mean, he's done a pretty good job partially thanks to Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader, coming to the rescue a few months ago.

But is his speakership under threat again?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS, White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Yes.

I mean, even if they pass, you know, a three-month clean bill and they avoid a government shutdown, his political headaches aren't going away.

At that point you then need to answer also to somebody else who may want a government shutdown if they don't pass these immigration restrictions that he's looking for, and that being the former president.

You have to basically face the pressure from the former president.

And this is not the first time that he has tried to basically use Congress, pull the strings in Congress, in order to benefit himself when it comes to the presidential election.

And if Mike Johnson is able to, you know, do something that Democrats and Republicans want here, which is to avoid a government shutdown, he will still face that pressure from somebody who still holds a grip over his party.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I'm assuming that Leader Jeffries doesn't come to the rescue this time.

There's no particular reason, right?

There's nothing of existential importance, like the Ukraine bill, for instance.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: Right, there's not as much leverage, really, at this point, you know, for Mike Johnson or something like Ukraine that would cause Democrats to immediately come to the table for something beyond politics.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So we'll be talking about this next week.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: Well, that's what I was going to say, yes, we have next Friday.

So, hopefully -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Oh, great, yes, this is what I want to say, continuing resolution over and over again, yes.

But let's turn to the opposite of continuing resolution in terms of the sort of the adrenaline behind it is the term black Nazi.

And I want to talk about the North Carolina race kind of upended.

It's not as if Mark Robinson, the Republican nominee, until this week, was thought of as a judicious, thoughtful -- I mean, he's been anti-Semitic and misogynistic and all sorts of other -- all sorts of bad things, but, McKay, it's your job to tell us what black Nazi means in the context of this race and what it means for the race.

MCKAY COPPINS, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: It's not an ideology I've spent a lot of time studying, but -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Understood.

MCKAY COPPINS: Well, I think it's important to give some context to who Mark Robinson is before this story came out from CNN, right?

Even before this, he has a long history of comments.

I wrote down just some of them.

He's denied the Holocaust.

He's called Sandy Hook shooting victims media prostitots.

He has called women who have abortions murderers.

He has a long history -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Prostitots?

MCKAY COPPINS: Prostitots.

I didn't actually know if I could say that on PBS.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You probably can't.

I mean, I've never even heard it before.

MCKAY COPPINS: But these are -- this is -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But he is the nominee of the Republican party of North Carolina for governorship.

MCKAY COPPINS: That's right.

And everybody in the state and the Republican Party knew that he had said these things.

He doesn't actually have a lot of fans in the establishment Republican wing of this party, but they are also powerless to stop him.

When he ran in the primary, in the gubernatorial Republican primary, Republicans came out, they tried to stop him.

There was a lot of money spent on ads against him.

Sitting officeholders endorsed his opponent.

It went nowhere.

He rode a kind of populist Trumpian wave into the nomination.

And then you have the CNN story dropped this week that he has apparently on a pornography website's message board made a series of further inflammatory, you know, I don't think -- let's not be euphemistic, you know, anti-Semitic, racist comments.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Referring to himself as a -- MCKAY COPPINS: Black Nazi, right?

He's also, you know, said a lot of other things that probably are not worth discussing on PBS.

But my point is, what's interesting is that when this story was about to break, you had what looked like a pretty concerted leak campaign by Republican operatives and other Republicans in the state that looked - - designed to try to push him out.

They were hoping that he would drop out.

He said he -- first of all, he denied that he made these comments on this message board, but he also said he's not dropping out.

And I think that you see kind of in this story, it's kind of a microcosm of a few different forces that have been at work in the Republican Party in the Trump era.

One is that Donald Trump, as a national figure, has had this kind of mass desensitizing effect on the electorate and especially on Republican primary voters, where comments that would have been disqualifying, you know, ten years ago are just not anymore.

People have a much lower -- or a much higher tolerance for inflammatory, incendiary rhetoric.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: They kind of write it off and say, it's just -- MCKAY COPPINS: The media is making too big of a deal about this.

He's not politically correct.

Who cares?

I mean, denying the Holocaust should -- you know, in another era would have been disqualifying of either party.

The other thing that's happening, though, is that the institutional party is -- it's just been enfeebled.

It's weakened, right.

They're hollowed out.

They don't have the power that they use to.

And I think there's a third thing which is, you know, a lot of people talk about, and I think it's kind of euphemistic, this being a candidate quality problem that the Republicans are having, and I think that that's true.

But I think what's really happening is there's kind of a brain drain that's happened in the Republican Party.

There are a lot of reasonable, smart, competent, patriotic people who are conservatives in this country.

Good luck trying to get them to run for office in the Trump era.

It's not that they don't still have conservative views, but they don't want to be associated with this version of the Republican Party.

You've seen a huge number of them leave Congress, retire in recent years, and I think that's what's -- Mark Robinson is a symptom of that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Zolan, just to follow up on that.

I mean, how -- obviously, or let's not say complete, but it seems fairly obvious that Josh Stein, the Democratic nominee, is going to win this race.

For the last several cycles, the Republicans, or the establishment of the Republican Party, has bemoaned the quality of recruitment.

I mean, any lessons learned?

Is this cycle at all better than previous cycles?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: Well, I mean, I feel like we heard some of those same questions and same sort of bemoaning from establishment Republicans during the midterms as well.

And, you know, we -- and before that too.

I mean, we continue to see, though, you know, a couple of weeks after the midterms, once again fall in line and start to support candidates that, you know, present Trumpism, that do present, you know, defamatory comments and are able to, you know, stoke divisions and energize Trump's base.

So, I think we've heard that a little bit before, and I'm not sure unless, you know, depending on really the results of the presidential election.

As long as Trump is still the leading candidate, you know, for the Republican Party and still the leader of the Republican Party.

I'm just - - if you look at the past couple years, I don't think that we've seen that sort of that criticism around candidates and sort of Trump's picked candidates not being sort of up to win, you know, those criticisms haven't hold weight.

It hasn't really, especially when you put it up against what the former president wants.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: Well, one thing that's interesting is there's all this talk about candidate quality and that Trump-like candidates, like Mark Robinson, who Trump endorsed, but then -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Trump actually called him Martin Luther King on steroids.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: Better than Martin Luther King.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: Well, which we now know that Mark Robinson despised Martin Luther King.

But, anyway, so in the Senate, down ballot in the Senate, McConnell wanted good quality candidates to take back the Senate.

He thought he had that this year.

And now, all of these more traditional Republican candidates who are running in a lot of these battleground states are running far behind Trump.

And so you might have a candidate quality problem of people who can't get elected in a more general election on the Republican side because they are too close to Trump, but then you have Republicans who are more mainstream who also aren't getting elected because they are not in line with the Republican base.

MCKAY COPPINS: Well, and I would just add quickly that, you know, when I talk to Republicans, the thing that they're -- they've written off the North Carolina governorship.

They don't think they're going to win.

The thing that they're afraid of is a reverse coattails effect in North Carolina, where Robinson being on the ballot will actually drag down Trump -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And Kamala Harris.

MCKAY COPPINS: In a crucial swing state.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, a better shot.

I want to move to immigration.

We have Caitlin with us, the leading immigration reporter in the country, if I do say so.

And I want to talk about Springfield, Ohio, and the dogs and cats issue over the last week or so.

But I want to talk about it in the context of the larger debate, if you can even call it a debate at this point.

Trump's language about immigration has become even harsher lately.

And I want you all to listen to something that he said at a rally in New York on Wednesday.

DONALD TRUMP (R), Former U.S. President, 2024 Presidential Nominee: A lot of people coming from jails out of the Congo in Africa.

Where do you come from?

The Congo.

We're in the Congo.

We come from jail.

What did you do?

We will not tell you.

They're coming from the Congo.

They're coming from Africa.

They're coming from the Middle East.

They're coming from all over the world, Asia, a lot of it coming from Asia.

And what's happening to our country is we're just destroying the fabric of life in our country and we're not going to take it any longer and you got to get rid of these people.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, Caitlin, and you have tracked more than anyone I know Trump policies, the Trump record during his term in office, and the ideological leanings, or the language used to talk about immigration and immigrants, starting with Donald Trump, but to Stephen Miller, and, of course, the whole coterie of people around them who focused on immigration.

I'm wondering if that language that you heard strikes you as harsher than what we've heard before.

And I do acknowledge that he started his campaign, first campaign in 2015, by talking about Mexican rapists coming over the border.

So, he didn't exactly start as Mr. Rogers, but -- CAITLIN DICKERSON, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Harsh, I want to say, isn't even strong enough.

It's not -- this isn't a spectrum of escalation about becoming harsher against immigration in a punitive way.

I think, really, it's a transformation toward very bald expressions of racism and xenophobia.

I mean, I think that tape was Trump all but saying, when he points to people from the Congo, the Middle East and Asia, and then says they're destroying the fabric of our country, what is that?

What is the fabric meant to, refer to?

It refers to whiteness, right?

And not only that, he's obviously said on the campaign trail, as you know, immigrants are poisoning the blood of America, that they're animals, that they're not human.

I mean this is the territory of fascist neo-Nazi groups.

These stories in this country, they're 200 years old, but it's a big deal that they're in mainstream national politics and it's especially a big deal in this election where immigration is of increasing concern to Americans.

We've got a very complicated situation on our hands.

And Springfield is such a good example of that, right, because Springfield recruited, you know, actively welcomed immigrants from Haiti.

They've revitalized the local economy by working in factories.

People talk about them having revitalized churches.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes, they filled the churches, is what a lot of people in the city say.

CAITLIN DICKERSON: And it's been challenging in the short-term on schools and hospitals.

And there's no reason to pretend that's not the case.

I think it's important that the fact-based pushback that locals in Springfield have put have said, you know, in challenging the lies that began with J.D.

Vance telling the country that immigrants in Haiti were eating house pets, which they obviously weren't doing.

It's important that the pushback has included this nuance and this complexity and it really calls for a debate and it calls for policymaking, the hard work of redoing our immigration system.

And, obviously, none of that is happening when you have a debate that's devolving in this way.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I want to ask you something.

I was hearing something in your answer.

I think you're suggesting that Trump, in these last weeks of the election, is moving closer to articulating the Great Replacement Theory, the so-called Great Replacement Theory, that there's a plot, and, obviously, sometimes it's considered a Jewish plot, sometimes it's just sort of a general plot, to literally replace the whites of America with brown and black people.

CAITLIN DICKERSON: That's exactly right.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I mean, do you -- is that what you're hearing, like we're moving toward, which is of course, not a right wing position, it's kind of an authoritarian?

CAITLIN DICKERSON: That's exactly what I'm saying, and why I think harsh is not a strong enough word to describe the language that Trump is using.

I mean, so the Great Replacement Theory has always been on the scene in Trump's political career.

You remember images of Hillary Clinton circulating with the Star of David above her, saying that she was a globalist, I mean, that these paranoid images and language that, again, is typically and historically, in recent history, the territory of neo Nazi and fascist groups on the fringe.

They've always been present.

But to say it so baldly at a campaign rally, a nationally televised debate, I mean, that is a significant shift.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, Zolan, you cover - - you write a lot about Trump and the campaign.

He's -- we'll get 45 or so days, 46 days until the election.

He's under a lot of pressure, obviously, the polls about which we're not going to speak because they drive me crazy.

And the polls show that it's a toss-up.

As he becomes under more and more pressure not to lose, internal pressure and external pressure, do you see his language becoming even more extreme and his embrace of some of these ideas that Caitlin is describing becoming more apparent?

I mean, what are the trend lines that you're seeing?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: Yes, I mean, absolutely.

You know, when the former president feels that he is - - that when he hears about the fact that the vice president is gaining momentum and he gets on his heels, you hear more of this language come out.

I was four rows back at the National Association of Black Journalists when he questioned the vice president's race and questioned whether she had suddenly become black.

That is not something that his that his advisers were telling him -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Do you think that his shift, because I have -- I mean, I don't track this like Caitlin does, but I listen and I haven't heard him mention the Congo before in these talks.

Do you think that he's bringing up African migrants and Haitian migrants very specifically because he's now running against a black person?

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: I mean, I don't know if you could connect it to the vice president and his current competition.

I will say, he has had a specific obsession, you know, in private, in closed doors, with certain countries going back to when he was in office.

2017, he surprises his top administration officials, including the then Homeland Security secretary, when they were talking about different pathways for Haitians, and he made a remark that don't they all have AIDS as well.

You move on to 2021 after the assassination of the then Haitian leader and people were talking about the country was grappling with opening up legal pathways for Haitians, and he said in an interview that would be a death wish for the country to welcome more migrants.

He has always had and don't forget also using choice language, I will not curse on this program, but about Haiti and other African nations as well.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: We already did the prostitots.

So, I think that was the term.

So like feel semi-free.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: But there has been a specific focus on disparaging, you know, Haiti as well as African nations for some time.

And as the weeks go on, especially if you see the vice president continue to gain momentum or polls are keeping this tight, I think that we should watch to see just how much that language escalates.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Caitlin, I want to come back to you.

Let me give you a large frame and you can answer.

So, you literally traversed the Darien Gap, one of the pathways to the United States, earlier this year with the photographer, Lynsey Addario, incredibly hard journey.

And you -- at different points you were moving with different migrant groups, talking to them and figuring out who they are.

Can you give us a sense of who is trying to get to this country right now?

CAITLIN DICKERSON: Yes.

And to just what I was going to say about the politics of where Trump is now and his evolution in language, I think it's the obsession with black immigrants, I think, is both a reflection of his views, he's being more open about them, but also what he thinks is a political winner, right?

And I wrote about that in The Atlantic, that, you know, he became obsessed with immigration in part and empowered Stephen Miller because he felt like that was exactly what was going to get him into the White House and he believes it will -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Can I just put a pause on that for one second and ask Leigh Ann, this is interesting.

These appeals don't broaden the base, don't broaden his -- I mean, what is the -- I mean, this is a very cynical question, but what is the utility of going more racist in the weeks leading up to the election?

Energizing a -- I don't know, energizing the base?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: So, part of their campaign strategy, actually, is to -- and they get out the vote era of this campaign, which is now, not necessarily those persuadable voters.

Yes, those two to a lesser extent, but they are intensely focused on the conservative-leaning voter who doesn't vote very often.

And so this is language and rhetoric that would appeal to these voters who don't vote very often, who might say, I like this guy, and then they can find them and send them to the polls.

CAITLIN DICKERSON: To basically scare them off of the couch, right?

I mean in that sense, it's a Willie Horton type -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Well, go back to the Darien Gap now.

CAITLIN DICKERSON: So, in the Darien Gap you had more than half a million people across last year And you wanted to hear what their experiences are like probably because of the caricature that we're seeing Trump talk about.

They're from all over the world.

That's important to point out.

I spent the most time with people from Venezuela because the largest number of people are coming from there.

And one thing -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Fleeing, by the way, a left wing dictatorship.

CAITLIN DICKERSON: That's right.

And I think that your viewers, you know, might be surprised to know that a lot of them are folks who are from middle class homes.

The one family I spent a lot of time with, husband and wife were college students, and, one, you know, wife was planning to become a nurse, husband was planning to become an engineer, and they had their whole lives ahead of them when the economy fell apart.

They tried to resettle elsewhere.

That's important.

So many people I met in the Darien Gap were resettling for the second, third, or fourth time.

This is a journey of last resort because of how incredibly harrowing it is.

And they couldn't make it work because the economy was so troubled in their second place that -- where they tried to resettle, that they felt they had no other option than to risk their own lives and their children's lives.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: How many people, and I'm sorry, I have to ask you to answer this quickly, but how many people coming up the Darien Gap would you put in the category of dangerous to America from a criminal standpoint or et cetera?

CAITLIN DICKERSON: So, I couldn't check people's criminal backgrounds when they were there.

You know, I did spend enough time with people to get their life stories and I didn't meet anybody who I feared for in that respect.

I mean, these were families, kids, and people who were just looking for safety.

ZOLAN KANNO-YOUNGS: And one thing I think that gets missed on this too is, you know, I went to Panama, Costa Rica, that border.

Law enforcement officials are checking and doing background checks even there, too.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I appreciate that, and I appreciate what you told us.

Unfortunately, we just do need to leave it there for now.

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

And to our viewers at home, thank you for joining us.

For more of Caitlin's reporting on the migrants risking treacherous terrain, violence, hunger and disease to travel Darien Gap on their way to the U.S., please visit theatlantic.com.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

Good night from Washington.