♪♪ Jeffrey: To step down as Republican leader marks not just the end of an era but captures the reality that Donald Trump completely dominates the GOP. Tonight we will assess trump's electoral strengths and weaknesses. We will look at president Biden's vulnerabilities and advantages as well, next. >> This is Washington week with the atlantic. Corporate funding provided by -- consumer cellular. Additional funding is provided by Koo and Patricia Yuen within the Yuen foundation, committed to bridgi
ng cultural differences in our communities. Sandra and Carl delay Magnuson. Rose hirschel and Andy Shreeves. The corporation for public broadcasting. Robert and Susan Rosenbaum. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. Once again, from Washington, editor-in-chief of the atlantic and moderator, Jeffrey Goldberg. Jeffrey: Good evening and welcome to Washington week. Mitch Mcconnell threw Washington for a loop this week but his decision should not have surprised an
yone. For several years he has fought to contain the influence over Donald Trump over the party loves. It seems like Mcconnell would win January 6, but Mcconnell has clawed his way back and we will look at trump's look troll chances and Joe Biden -- electo ral chances and Joe Biden's as well. Leigh Ann Caldwell is an anchor for Washington post live. Adam Harris is my colleague and a staff writer at the atlantic. Ed o'keefe is the senior white house correspondent for CBS news. And Nancy Youssef i
s a national security correspondent at the Wall Street journal. Thank you all. Mitch Mcconnell, first subject. What happened? What does it mean? Leigh Ann: The shot that surprised everyone in Washington. On a random Wednesday, February 28, Mitch Mcconnell announced he would not run again for Republican leader. What it means is that Mcconnell was the final backstop against the complete trumpification of the senate, kind of like the last man standing, which is odd considering when Donald Trump was
president they were very close. But what this means is that Donald Trump's grip on the party is very strong. This is a pivotal moment for the senate, and if the trump wing of the party is going to grab hold of its next leader that it chooses. The people running to replace Mcconnell, you can see them subtly or not so subtly trying to hug trump, knowing he is extremely important in the party. A lot will matter what happens in the election. If Donald Trump does not win the election, then it won't
matter, but until then trump is very critical. Jeffrey: What is Mcconnell's legacy? Ed: The supreme court, in three words. We had the right quest court -- the rain quest court. We have a Mcconnell court for at least the next 10 years or so. His decision in February of 2016 to hold the Scalia seat open until after the election changed the course of American history in so many ways. At the time it was a really tough decision to make and to fathom, but it has paid off dividends certainly for the co
nservative judicial movement. They may suffer politically for it this year, given that it led to the repeal of roe V. Wade. Jeffrey: Sort of a 30 year investment. Ed: My installing Gorsuch -- by installing Gorsuch, Cavanaugh and Barrett, plus the other hundreds of federal judges put under the court under his watch, it leaves an enormous legacy. That, plus him and Harry Reid in their prime centralized everything in the senate. The days of committee chairman having that much influence are gone. Es
sentially the floor leader decides what is up with their partisan contemporary. That may change in the coming years in addition to the politics of the place. It may not. Those two things will certainly be what he's remembered for. Jeffrey: How does this affect the big fight over Ukraine funding? Nancy: Despite trump's objections, senator Mcconnell forcefully pushed for Ukraine funding. He was a key reason why we saw the aid package passed earlier this year. While he will still be in the senate,
he will not have that level of influence to shape policy at a time when there are real questions about what kind of funding Ukraine will get and whether it will be in time for the challenges on the battlefield now. Two of the senators named as potential successors also voted for that. I think it will be an interesting metric for those who succeed him in terms of how much they're willing to push against trump when it comes to Ukraine. Jeffrey: If you are president zelenskyy, you see this as a bad
sign. Nancy: Zelenskyy thanked Mcconnell when the funding came through, so that signaled how much he thought senator Mcconnell was key to the funding. It is upper carious situation for Ukraine on the battlefield and -- it is a precarious situation for Ukraine on the battlefield and in Washington for funding. Jeffrey: The supreme court this week cut Donald Trump a pretty good break by taking on the immunity case. They will hear it in April and probably not rule until June. This is a legacy of Mc
connell. What does it mean for the many different criminal charges that Donald Trump could be facing before the election? Adam: There are the multiple cases working their way through, but effectively the court has delayed this process as long as it technically could. For the former president, it is a gift. People have consistently told pollsters that they would be more willing to vote for the former president if it was just an indictment rather than a full on conviction. By delaying this process
there is the real chance that none of these cases are decided by November. If he's on the ballot and not a convicted former president but just indicted former president -- Jeffrey: I think that used to be called the soft bigotry of low expectations or something. [Laughter] Stay on this point for a second. How do you assess the chances? Obviously president trump is trying to avoid being a convicted felon in November. Ed: Right. Significant chance now that he manages to avoid that? Ed: Yeah, but
he will spend so many weeks or months potentially in courtrooms over the next several months. We don't know what that starts to do to improve his public perception. He's got this case starting at the end of this month. There's still the classified documents case, which based on the special counsel's request could start as early as July, so maybe after the supreme court decision they go to Florida to start that one. There is the January 6 one, the biggest and now the most delayed. What I don't un
derstand is how logistically, physically, financially can he go week to week from a courtroom to a battleground state and back in the same night and keep that up and somehow maintain momentum, raise money and maintain control of the Republican party, while dealing with the emotional and mental and financial costs of being in that courtroom every day, dealing with whatever judges are throwing at him. Jeffrey: Isn't the theory that he will be able to come out of the courtroom every day at 5:00 and
capture the national media attention for a full hour, just sit there and use the courthouse steps as the campaign platform and get plenty of attention through that? Leigh Ann: That has been his strategy so far. That has worked. We are also in a Republican primary and it has worked. That helped to embolden his base. This has played into those politics. How it works in a general election when people start to tune into the presidential, that is still unclear. Especially as he has to be in the cour
troom much more often, it could become more logistically complicated. You mentioned the finances. He is spending a lot of money on lawyer bills right now. A lot of that money is coming from his campaign. We will see if donors want to contribute to a campaign for his legal fees, and running a $1 billion campaign while he's also fighting these charges in court. Jeffrey: Ordinarily we get to say let's look to history to see how this might play out, but there is no history. This is wholly new. I wan
t to talk for a minute about -- we will talk about the weakness and strength of each of these men into the general election, but I want to start by playing a clip of Joe Biden yesterday at the border. You are watching him there. He's the nice gentleman in the hat. A lot of people are talking about this and other images of Biden to talk about a pretty serious age problem and frailty problem. I also however want to play a clip of Donald Trump at the border yesterday. Just listen to this statement.
Mr. Trump: Nobody explained to me how allowing millions of people from places unknown, from countries unknown, who don't speak like witches -- we have languages coming into our country, people don't even speak those leg which is. They are truly foreign languages. Nobody speaks them. Jeffrey: Truly foreign-language is, unlike Spanish I guess is what he meant. That one really struck me for some reason. So Republicans look at Joe Biden and say he is frail. If Donald Trump walked the way Biden walk
ed, I am sure many Democrats would say that man is pretty old and he should not be president, but I also believe deeply that if Joe Biden said the things that Donald Trump says, one example just there, the Republicans would say he is full on dementia, or does not have his mental faculties anymore. This is becoming once again kind of an acute challenge for our profession. Adam, maybe you can pick this up. I wonder how you think about this. It's like, you have a man with physical frailties who is
obviously very old. Cannot hide that. You also have a candidate, Donald Trump, who says things no one has ever said in the context of a presidential election in the modern era. Leigh Ann: Adam: The way that I look at it is this is a difference of kind than degree. Yes, they are both older men. The special counsel reports Biden is an elderly man with a poor memory. People talked about that he has to bring notecards into his meetings to remember different things. What the former president does and
says from the beginning of his campaigning, you talked about the ways it is unprecedented. He is saying things that are fundamentally outside the bounds of normal conversation. If a Democrat was making those sorts of errors. That betray their sensibilities, people would rightly be turned off. For him, it is baked into who he is as a candidate. Jeffrey: So that is normalization. Adam: It is normalization. Jeffrey: Ed, you were just down there. How do you think about the difference between the tw
o of them? Ed: The special counsel said whate said, but his doctor said he is a perfectly healthy old man that has arthritis issues that give him that stiff walk. In my brief interactions with him, being around the place on a regular basis, he's on top of things. Is he great at stagecraft? No. They could be doing much more to push back against the perception that he is this old man by showing us or reminding the country that he works out every morning, or bring us into the room more often in the
way he thinks. They for whatever reason don't want to do that or don't want to do it yet. Why that is, I don't know. They seem to think they can win this thing differently, but it is adding up. You talk to members of his party and they are concerned about it. The other thing that was telling yesterday was you saw Donald Trump with the governor of Texas standing in front of humvees and Texas National Guard uniforms. You saw the current president with customs border protections officials in their
green uniforms and a TV -- and atv's and smaller boats that go through the Rio grande. The contrast of militarization versus handling the situation, the substantive briefing at the president got from agency officials versus the "Here's what we are doing to fight the federal government." The contrast there on the stylistic level was quite stark. You had both border towns saying y'all have come too late, you are over blowing this. If anything, you should be visiting Arizona where border crossings
have increased. Leigh Ann: You mentioned stagecraft and how the president's team does not seem to care about it and is not very good at it. They put president Biden in situations that make him look older. You know who is good at stagecraft? The man who starred on a reality TV show for years and his entire brand is stagecraft and marketing. He is excellent at it. He's three, four years younger than president Biden. Jeffrey: Are you saying words don't matter? You heard what he said about foreign
languages that no one speaks coming into this country. Do words not matter? Leigh Ann: They absolutely matter, but this is what made Donald Trump so popular. We as journalists report those words, but it is up to the American people to decide. And the American people did decide in 2016 that that is what they liked. He called Mexicans rapists on his first day running for office. Donald Trump still has a following. We will see how big it is in November. Nancy: The journal had a piece earlier this w
eek about world leaders and how they are all getting older. What was interesting is so many of them, XI, Putin, have been around for a decade. It seems to be this trend of older leaders staying. Part of that is the shift in the world toward autocracy, but also you are seeing names repeat themselves in the electorate, not just in the U.S. But around the world. Jeffrey: It seems like erdogan has been president of Turkey since the 19th century. [Laughter] Ed: There are popes and kings with cancer t
hat end up in the hospital for a few weeks. We are used to it. Jeffrey: Michigan was an interesting place where I think we saw strengths and weaknesses on both of these candidates. Can you in a telescoped way talk about Michigan? Nancy: I live there, so it is interesting to me -- Jeffrey: Thank you for acknowledging your bias. [Laughter] Leigh Ann: Michigan is a truly purple state. In both cases you see people not enthusiastic about either candidate. 100,000 uncommitted votes for Joe Biden, pick
ing up 80%, and 30% going for Haley. I thought it was the most illuminating window into how some parts of the electorate in a key state are frustrated with the choices before them. How that manifests itself on election day is yet to be seen. It was a demonstrative display that we are not excited about either one of these candidates. Jeffrey: Is that Arab American, Muslim American noncommittal posture going to be a true disadvantage for Biden going forward? Leigh Ann: It is a key state. In 2020 h
e won it by a bigger margin but Hillary Clinton lost it by a very small margin. When I talked to arab-americans in my community, there is a real frustration about gaza. The debate is, do I not show up at all? Do I show up for trump as a protest vote? Or do I have to base that deception -- that decision on election day? Given how narrow the gap is on where the state could go, every vote counts. It seems frustrated voters are becoming their own electoral block that have to be considered. Ed: We we
re there in late November and December when this started to expose itself. In the last few days there were a lot of people signaling, I am voting this way uncommitted now in the hope that it drives the president to change his ways. I understand there is a binary choice between him and trump, who says all those terrible things about migrants, I am willing to give him a few more months to correct it. Just today he announces humanitarian drops. He is pushing it harder than ever. He now sees he has
real political pressure. The other refreshing thing about this week, here we had a conversation about foreign policy driven by people in an early primary state in the midwest. It is exactly what the democratic national committee invited by changing the calendar the way they did. This is the change in timing that forced a change in the debate that is now possibly changing policy at the white house. Jeffrey: Tell us what you think Biden's biggest advantage is going into the general. It is not even
super Tuesday yet but we know what is going to happen. You can talk about what you think trump's biggest advantages are. Adam: Biden's biggest advantage is he is not trump. I think Nikki Haley has a pretty good point when she says I'm staying in this race because he's lost about 40% of these primary votes in primary states. If you are not winning that in your own Republican primary, it will be difficult for you to make it November and animate those folks who are supporting me, that know I am go
ing to lose. Trump's ceiling is lower. I think Biden has the opportunity. Think about black voters. If you ask black voters consistently in focus groups, they will say I am a little bit less -- a bit more lukewarm on the president at the moment, more ambivalent. If you ask what they think about president trump, unprovoked they will say he is a racist. It is not that black voters will immediately turn and say we will go to trump, it is saying, well, if we get to November, the president has aligne
d closer to our policy priorities, if I start to see things on the shelves that are less expensive, that practical effect on my life, then I will go back to the president. Jeffrey: Trump? Leigh Ann: Advantages or disadvantages? Jeffrey: Advantages. Well, you can do both what you have to do it in two minutes. Leigh Ann: Advantages, he has a core base that will support him no matter what. And that is good to motivate voters to come out on election day. That is going to benefit him. His advantages
are immigration. That is why he and the president -- Jeffrey: He has bigger trucks. [Laughter] He stands in front of bigger trucks. Leigh Ann: There is polling this week that shows for the first time immigration is the top issue that voters care about. That is an an advantage for Donald Trump. He has disadvantages. He's going to be in the courtroom a lot during this campaign, and perhaps he will be indicted before election day. I was talking to a Republican yesterday who said they have never bee
n in a situation where the two leading candidates have such high unfavorables that they don't know how that is going to play out. There is nothing historically that they can point to. It will be a really fascinating, unique election. Jeffrey: Let me close with you in the few seconds we have left. We have never seen this high a negative. Is the enemy of both these candidates apathy? Ed: Yes, absolutely. Apathy, discussed, concern -- disgust, concern, fear, anger. I would say real quick the presid
ent has raised gob smacked sums of money. The former president is struggling to do it. The president has his party behind him. There are battleground state fights breaking out over who is in charge. It is important to remember that could be a real problem for trump. Jeffrey: This is a conversation that will continue but we have to leave it there for now. I want to thank our panelists for sharing the reporting. For more on Mitch Mcconnell and Donald Trump's tumultuous relationship and the visit t
he atlantic.com. Tune in Saturday to pbs news weekend for a look at the rise in crisis pregnancy centers. >> Corporate funding for Washington week with the atlantic is provided by -- >> Consumer cellular, how may I help you? This is a pocket dial. Well, somebody's pocket, thought I would let you know with consumer cellular you get nationwide coverage with no contract. That is kind of our thing. Have a nice day. >> Additional funding is provided by, Koo and patrician Yuen with the Yuen foundation
, committed to bridging cultural differences in our communities. Sandra and Carl delayed Magnuson. Rose hirschel and Andy Shreeves. Robert and Susan Rosenbaum. The corporation for public broadcasting. And by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. Thank you. ♪♪ ♪♪ >>
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