Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, Aug. 11, 2023

Aug 12, 2023

Jeffrey Goldberg: Growing challenges for President Biden peril for Donald Trump.

Merrick Garland, Attorney General: I'm here today to announce the appointment of David Weiss as a special counsel.

Jeffrey Goldberg: The attorney general appoints a special counsel in the Hunter Biden probe, giving Republicans new ammunition against the president.

Plus --

Donald Trump, Former U.S. President: I won't be able to go to Iowa because I'm sitting in a courtroom on (BLEEP) because his attorney general charged me with something.

Jeffrey Goldberg: -- 2024 GOP frontrunner Donald Trump rails against the Biden administration on the campaign trail as his lawyers battle it out with Special Counsel Jack Smith's team in federal court.

Unidentified Male: Well, I think we need an impeachment inquiry. It's time for Congress to do it.

Jeffrey Goldberg: But here in Washington, some House Republicans issue an ominous threat, seeking to even the score ahead of the next election, next.

Good evening, and welcome to WASHINGTON WEEK with The Atlantic.

Before we get to this week's news, a word about why I'm here. WASHINGTON WEEK is joining forces with The Atlantic, and you'll find me in this chair most weeks. I hope you stick around, and I definitely hope you stick around tonight, not only because we have an excellent panel, but because this is my first time hosting the show and you never know what might happen.

It was a thrill to be asked to moderate WASHINGTON WEEK, which is a bastion of smart conversation on television. I follow an impressive group of people who previously hosted this show, among them, my most recent predecessors, Yamiche Alcindor and Robert Costa.

And it's very important for me to say a word about the person who preceded them, the legend herself, Gwen Ifill. In addition to being a mentor and role model for me and for countless other journalists, Gwen was also my friend. I miss her every day, and it is one of the great honors of my life to be sitting in her chair.

Now to the news. Today, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David Weiss as special counsel investigating President Biden's son, Hunter. At the announcement, Garland explained his decision.

Merrick Garland: Mr. Weiss has the authority he needs to conduct a thorough investigation and to continue to take the steps he deems appropriate, independently, based only on the facts and the law.

Jeffrey Goldberg: President Biden already faces unsubstantiated allegations that he is entangled in his son's foreign business misadventures. House Republicans are weighing whether to hold an impeachment inquiry this fall.

Meanwhile, as several candidates for the GOP nomination descend on the Iowa State Fair, the big question looming over the race and the country is this exceedingly strange one, will Donald Trump, the current Republican frontrunner, win the presidency, go to prison, or both?

Last week, Trump was indicted on charges that he conspired to hold on to power after losing the 2020 election. On Thursday, Special Counsel Jack Smith proposed a January 2nd start date for the trial. If approved by the judge, this could mean Trump may be off the campaign trail and in a courtroom at the start of the primaries.

Joining us to discuss this and more, Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent of The New York Times, Laura Barron-Lopez, White House correspondent of the PBS NewsHour, and Adam Harris, a staff writer at The Atlantic.

So, let's just talk about Hunter Biden right away. I have two big questions. What does it mean legally and what does it mean politically? Laura, why don't you jump in on the legal question first? What does this mean for Hunter Biden? What does it mean for Joe Biden legally?

Laura Barron-Lopez, White House Correspondent, PBS NewsHour: So, legally, I spoke to a number of former federal prosecutors today, and they said that, look, we don't know yet if Weiss is going to bring any additional charges in addition to the ones that we're aware of the tax, the federal tax evasion charges, as well as the gun felony charge that they were willing to take off the table in the original plea deal, which has since been totally killed essentially.

Now, David Weiss sent a filing today to Delaware and said that I want to take the charges off the table in Delaware and I want to move this to another jurisdiction, which is a power that he has now as special counsel. Although A.G. Merrick Garland has said repeatedly that Weiss could have at any point brought charges in a different jurisdiction if he wanted to, he already had that power.

So, ultimately, practically not much has changed in terms of what Weiss is going to be able to do, what he's going to be able to investigate, according to the former prosecutor --

Jeffrey Goldberg: It doesn't necessarily mean that they've discovered some big new --

Laura Barron-Lopez: No, it doesn't. It doesn't mean that there's some big new evidence and some new charge could be brought. He could very well decide to bring the exact same charges in a different jurisdiction.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Peter, what does it mean politically for the president?

Peter Baker, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Well, part of what it means, of course, will depend on whether it is, in fact, just recasting these same charges or if, in fact, the investigation is widening to cover more of the foreign business dealings.

But one thing it means is it's not over, right? Just seven weeks ago, the White House was practically celebrating the fact that they had this plea deal and they thought this was going to be in the rear view mirror. All Biden had to do was go to a courtroom, answer a few questions from the judge, sign some paperwork and this would be behind them, not that Republicans wouldn't keep going after it, but at least the prosecution danger would be behind them. And now it's all blown up.

And we're looking now at days, weeks, months ahead, possibly even a trial of the president's son. That would, of course, be distracting, embarrassing, not exactly what the White House --

Jeffrey Goldberg: It could distract us from a lot of other trials that might be going on.

Peter Baker: Imagine that there's going to be a trial backlog.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Let me just ask you this one question because it's curious to me. We live in a very fractured country right now, but it seems that there's a lot of unity around this move today. No one's happy with it.

Peter Baker: Nobody's happy with it.

Jeffrey Goldberg: What's going on there? The speaker of the House, the president, both don't like this.

Peter Baker: You can imagine the president doesn't like it, the idea his son is under investigation by a special counsel. They didn't get any heads up from the Department of Justice, we're told. But Republicans are unhappy too, because they've already decided David Weiss, even though he was appointed originally by the Trump administration, is now a lackey for the Biden administration because of that plea deal we just talked about was too much of a sweetheart deal in their terms. They've assumed that this must be some way of protecting Hunter Biden rather than actually going after him.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Adam, let me ask you know. There had been talk for at least a couple of weeks now, the speaker of the House has talked about this directly, of an impeachment inquiry, which is an inquiry designed to see if they want to have an impeachment process in the House. Does this news today make that more likely?

Adam Harris, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: I think this -- there's news today, as far as Republicans are concerned, they were going to try to find a way to impeach President Biden one way or another, right? And so you heard --

Jeffrey Goldberg: Because they can?

Adam Harris: Well, you heard Representative Lauren Boebert back in June say, I would bring an impeachment inquiry to the floor or bring an impeachment charge to the floor effectively every day if necessary in order to get this done.

Speaker McCarthy doesn't necessarily want that to happen because there are Republicans who ran in very tight races in districts that Biden won. And if American voters see this as just a politically charged thing, any time a president has a House that is of the other party, they're going to get impeached, it won't necessarily look great for the party.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. I mean, is that one of the worries here that, if that happens, we're just going to be in an endless cycle of impeachment?

Peter Baker: Yes. It becomes more like a parliamentary system where we have votes of no confidence from time to time and it's all a partisan political thing. I mean, I think we're on the edge of that as it is right now. People don't look at impeachment in the same sort momentous way that we used to prior to --

Jeffrey Goldberg: Under the price of doing business in Washington or something.

Peter Baker: Yes.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Laura, I want to ask you, based on your reporting, someone who covers the White House, I want to -- I'm fascinated by something. Joe Biden has a pretty good economy, low unemployment, inflation seems to be under control. He's got Russia on the defensive, right? He's on the side of the abortion rights issue that the majority of Americans find themselves on and so on and so on and so on. If you're president, you're thinking, you know what, things are going okay, right? And yet his numbers, his approval numbers are in the low 40s. And I'm wondering what you're hearing from inside the -- what interests me is what are they telling you inside the White House about why this is so.

Laura Barron-Lopez: They say that the reason that those good economic markers, which is wages are actually outpacing inflation now in the most recent quarters and all those other economic markers that America is among the lowest -- has among the lowest inflation out of most G7 nations. They say that the reason that the president isn't benefitting from it is because those are very recent good economic numbers and that because there hasn't been enough months of all of inflation cooling, of wages being up for the American public to actually even connect it to Biden.

And I talked to a number of Democratic pollsters this past week who actually said that in their focus groups, voters just don't credit the president for those good economic numbers. And, yes, they understand that there are more jobs that they can pick from and there's a lot of manufacturing jobs that the White House is trying to highlight, whether it's from the new semiconductors bill that he passed, the infrastructure bill that he signed, or the Inflation Reduction Act with new clean energy jobs, but that the voters aren't necessarily seeing it enough for a long period of time. There's a lag to it. And so because of that, they're not giving him credit.

Another Democrat I spoke to this week did say, like they think that the president needs to be out on the campaign trail come the end of August. Because as soon as the GOP presidential debate start, they think he also needs to be out there. And the campaign tells you that those events aren't going to really start in earnest until early next year.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I want to ask you all just one more question about this. I want to try to understand going forward, and, obviously, this is just the best guessing at a certain point. If the Hunter Biden issue, which we thought was going away, one way or the other, we thought was going away a few weeks ago, if that's going to sort of cast a -- can be a continuing problem for Biden in his re-election campaign, and also, if the age issue is something that might be suppressing the approval numbers.

Peter Baker: Yes. Look, on the Hunter Biden issue, so far, I don't think there's much evidence that that has hurt him politically, this mostly in the conservative echo chamber, right? A Reuters/Ipsos poll recently showed only about 26 percent of Americans say they would change their vote or to affect their vote because of Hunter Biden, there's probably (ph) not Joe Biden fans to begin with.

But the risk for the White House is, especially if there is a trial, that this breaks out of that conservative ecosystem and it becomes much more of a mainstream conversation. It gets out to the people they do care about, which are independents and disaffected Democrats. And that they begin to look at that and say, gosh, you know, I'm just not very excited about this president because of the Hunter thing. It's just one more scandal.

And, of course, the age thing is going to weigh him down. That's one thing he can't do anything about. He may be able to make the Hunter thing go away at some point, but he cannot get younger. And that's something that polls have shown is a big concern for even Democrats.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Adam, can the president get younger?

Adam Harris: Not that we know of yet.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Not that we know of. But how big are these two issues for you?

Adam Harris: You know, when you, if you go out on the campaign trail, when you're talking to voters, this is even something that they were talking about last election cycle, right, the fact that the president would be one of the oldest presidents, the oldest president by the time that he finished his first term in office. And so going into a second term as potentially the oldest president in American history is going to be a continuing concern for voters.

And, I mean, also, to the point about the economy, right, there are things that voters can see in their day-to-day lives, right? The price of eggs is still high. The price of gas is still high, right? And so tying some of those beneficial things that the administration has done to the administration is going to be difficult for voters kind of until they can actually see it.

Laura Barron-Lopez: If I could just add on the impeachment question, whether or not it affects those type of independent or moderate Republicans who voted Republican their whole life until 2020, and then there's some in swing states like Arizona that then said, no, I'm voting for Biden now because they weren't happy with the way Trump was running the country, and a lot of that had to do with his personality.

I spoke -- I checked in with this Republican voter in Arizona who had voted Republican his whole life until last presidential. And he said that he's going to vote for Biden again, because none of that impeachment stuff is influencing him. He feels as though none of the GOP candidates that have come forward are willing to take on the former president. And they aren't telling the truth, he says, about the Justice Department.

He could have maybe conceivably voted for someone like a Senator Tim Scott, because he does align with this voters conservative values. But because of the fact that Tim Scott, when these indictments come down on the former president, says it's a weaponization of the DOJ and rejects the evidence that's laid out, this voter says, no, I can't do it because, ultimately, democracy is the thing that I'm going to vote for.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Peter Baker: I don't think that I don't think Trump is getting new voters in the general election, certainly by his indictments. And I think that the danger for Biden is that people who did vote for him last time become discouraged and don't vote at all or decide that, you know, throw their hands up.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I want to pivot to the other guy you just mentioned, the former guy, and possibly the future guy, which is the point of my first question, which is a kind of overarching question. And I think sometimes in Washington, we don't step back and sort of look and try to understand the -- here's the thing. I've been reading you for years, and you're excellent at finding synonyms for unprecedented, but you're almost out of unprecedented. There's no way of saying unprecedented anymore except unprecedented.

But what we're looking at in 2024 is something that's possibly completely unprecedented, which is to say that the former president of the United States and right now the frontrunner for the nomination is going to be starting criminal trials in January, March and May, which, of course, is the same exact period we're having national primaries, possibly even decisive primaries.

So, the question -- I mean, it's a question for all of you. But can the country, can our systems, election systems, political systems, judicial systems, can they withstand that kind of stress? We've never done anything like the thing that we may be looking at.

Peter Baker: Yes. The New York Times actually has a style book in which we're not supposed to use the word unprecedented.

Jeffrey Goldberg: And they're correct.

Peter Baker: And they've kind of thrown the book out when it comes to Trump because so many things are unprecedented. And you're right. There's nothing to compare that to. We just can't think of a historical analogy that we can say, oh, it's a little like this. It will be obviously Eugene V. Debs ran from prison. He's socialist.

Jeffrey Goldberg: He did, and he got 3.4 percent of the vote.

Peter Baker: Probably not really.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Joe Biden would love to run against Eugene V. Debs.

Peter Baker: Exactly. But the fact of the matter is you're going to have trial, primary caucus, trial. It boggles the mind. And we don't know how it's going to work.

Now, because these primaries are Republican events, and Republicans so far have shown that they are willing to stand by him and see the trials as illegitimate and a part of a persecution, as he portrays it, he may still win primaries without even having to go campaign. It may be enough for him to show up at the courthouse every day, say something into the microphone, and that's his campaign.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I want to stay on that for a minute because I understand your point. But, again, because we've never seen this before, it's impossible to game out.

I'm wondering, Adam, if you actually believe that a person facing and actually dealing with felony indictments can actually effectively run for president. I mean, does something break within the Republican Party and they say, okay, you know what, enough? We have all these other guys over here. We got people to vote for. Can it be done what Donald Trump might have to do if he's going to get the nomination?

Adam Harris: You know, it's been interesting the way that the former president's been able to paint himself as a victim since he's effectively left office. And, you know, being under several indictments, potentially kind of facing criminal charges, it only kind of further leans into that narrative, right? You've seen even his opponent saying that his indictment, most recent indictment, just shows how politicized the Justice Department has become, right? And they're just sort of trying to run to the side of it to say that if I get into office, I will effectively try to eliminate the politicization of the Justice Department.

And so it's not out of the question, right? It is a very real possibility that he does not have to campaign that much in order to have a successful primary season.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. I want to stay on that for one more minute because I'm fascinated by this. The only two Republicans running right now, if I'm not mistaken, who are actually openly critical of Donald Trump are Chris Christie and Will Heard --

Laura Barron-Lopez: And Asa Hutchinson.

Jeffrey Goldberg: And Asa Hutchinson. But, again, these are not juggernauts. These are not juggernauts. So, I mean, does it -- who would have to jump to that side in order for you to say, oh, this is different?

Adam Harris: You know, it was interesting in the last couple of days. You did see former Vice President Pence saying some things on the campaign trail that we're here to -- I will always defend the American people and the Constitution. You saw a slight fundraising gain from that. And so he is one of the few people where it's like if he chose that lane of strictly running against the former president, he may find some success.

But you've seen where there are candidates, Senator Tim Scott, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, where they're effectively adopting the Trumpism policy platform but are still trying to woo those Trump voters.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I actually want to ask you something about Ron DeSantis or directly both of you, because you both study extremism and you both study the rhetoric of extreme politics. Ron DeSantis the other day, last week, was talking about the, quote/unquote, deep state, which, of course, has been normalized in our discourse. And I want you to listen to this because he said something really, really fascinating.

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL): We're going to have all these deep state people, we're going to start slitting throats on day one.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Slitting throats, slitting throat. If someone said this ten years ago in mainstream politics, I don't know, the reaction would be a lot different. Now, people are like, oh my goodness, how violent and then we move on to the next thing.

You've been writing a lot about the culture war that Ron DeSantis is leading. Talk about that in relationship to the rhetoric that you're hearing.

And I suppose the largest question is, can Trumpism exist without Trump? Have these guys become organically, more like Trump as this process has moved forward?

Adam Harris: Yes. Well, I mean, a couple of things. On the policy front, Ron DeSantis is effectively in Florida executing on that Trumpist policy vision, right? Whether that is in terms of how they are changing curriculums for LGBTQ students, the Don't Say Gay Bill, right, so several things about his policy apparatus have been effectively the spirit of Trumpism.

But I think on the campaign trail, he's trying to embody what he believes voters want, and that is that sort of strong man that Trump has been. But his rhetoric just exceeds, right? Trump will sort of go up to that line oftentimes and then take a step back, whereas DeSantis is just --

Jeffrey Goldberg: Is right to the slitting the throats.

Laura, let me turn to you, because you've covered extremism. Talk about the relationship between rhetoric like that and the threat of violence in our society.

Laura Barron-Lopez: Well, there's direct lines. I mean, you talk about when the former president was attacking the FBI and the DOJ, and then a shooter went to an FBI office in Ohio, the fact that a number of election officials I've talked to across the country have faced death threats, have started to put camera systems on their home that they'd never put on their home before, all because of the rhetoric of the former president and his allies around him, and Ron DeSantis is continuing that rhetoric.

And when you talk to historians, especially those who study authoritarianism, they will tell you that that is a classic tactic used by authoritarian figures, autocratic figures, to try to rally their base around them and they know exactly who they're speaking to.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Peter, a few seconds. Do you think the rhetoric goes away?

Peter Baker: Outlasts Trump? It outlasts Trump if it is successful, right? The problem for a lot of Republicans is they try to be Trump and they're not Trump, and some of them have not been able to make it work, Marco Rubio, famously, in 2016, right?

Jeffrey Goldberg: We saw that with Ted Cruz, yes.

Peter Baker: They tried to beat Trump. It didn't work for them. So, the question is whether they can make it work for them. And if they do, then, yes, they're going to continue.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right. Totally fascinating, probably not the last time we're going to be talking about this at this table. We have to leave it there for now.

I want to thank our panelists for joining us and for sharing their reporting. And thanks to all of you for joining us. I might even be back here next week, so I hope you come.

Be sure to tune into "PBS NEWS WEEKEND" on Saturday for a look at the childcare crisis afflicting families across the country.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg. Good night from Washington.