Jeffrey Goldberg: Good evening, and welcome to Washington Week.

We're coming to you tonight from Austin PBS in front of a live studio audience.

Early voting begins here in Texas on Monday, and the outcome of the race between State Representative James Talarico and Attorney General Ken Paxton could determine which party controls the Senate in the final two years of Donald Trump's presidency.

The biggest questions are on the table tonight.

Is there a blue wave coming?

What would the Democrats do if they managed to take control of one or both chambers of Congress?

And how will Donald Trump rule in the last two years of his presidency should he find himself living down the street from a Democratic-controlled Capitol?

There's an even more immediate question before the country.

Will Trump or his supporters challenge the election results in conventional or unconventionally dangerous ways should they lose the House or the Senate?

And there's one more question.

I call it the World War III question.

How will Donald Trump manage a destabilized world, one in which America's support for its allies can no longer be assumed?

We have a great panel to discuss all of this tonight.

Mark Leibovich is a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of, among other bestsellers, "This Town".

He is a former reporter for The New York Times and The Washington Post, and is known as the foremost anthropologist of Washington.

Ashley Parker covers The White House for The Atlantic and is a multiple Pulitzer Prize winner.

She previously served as White House Bureau Chief for The Washington Post.

Vivian Salama covers national security for The Atlantic and previously covered global affairs in The White House for The Wall Street Journal.

And Evan Smith is the managing director for events at The Atlantic and also hosts Overheard on PBS right here in this studio.

He is the founding editor of The Texas Tribune, and he's something of a local legend.

Thank you all for -- and he's the next governor of Texas, right?

Yes.

You haven't announced yet, but we're just -- I'm just assuming that the early polls are good.

Evan, thank you for being here and hosting us in your home studio.

We're very glad to be with such a great audience.

We have a lot to get to tonight.

And before we talk about the midterms, you know, the world intrudes, as it tends to do.

We just saw a dramatic U-turn -- I guess it's another dramatic U-turn, in President Trump's attitude toward Ukraine and Russia.

Last week, he decided to buy billions of dollars in diesel from Russia, which makes Putin much richer at a time when he needs the money.

And President Trump has spent the week deriding President Zelenskyy of Ukraine.

He told an interviewer this week that he feels - - well, this is Zelenskyy talking about Trump, but he feels betrayed by the powering down of Starlink, that's the communications that we've been using.

And he feels betrayed by the diesel deal when he said, quote, It's a pity that we're losing a strong partner.

I was really struck by how final that sounds.

But, Vivian, give us a sense of what's happening, why it's happening, and what it means.

Vivian Salama, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Oh, well, there's a difficult question.

But I will try.

So -- Jeffrey Goldberg: And you have 12 seconds to do it.

Vivian Salama: And I have exactly 12 seconds.

You know, President Trump has never shied away from the fact that he's been skeptical of Ukraine, its leadership, and this dates back to his first term.

Remember, in the first term, you had the so-called perfect call with Zelenskyy when he first took office that ultimately led to the first impeachment because he asked President Zelenskyy to investigate his political rivals.

And so, you know, since then, President Trump has sort of had a grievance.

He also has an affinity for Vladimir Putin.

He likes the way that he runs his country.

It's sort of this all-powerful way where he can kind of, you know, put down journalists and political dissidents and kind of rule with an iron fist, and it has been very appealing to him.

He sees him as a strong man, and that's something that appeals to him.

And so when Russia launched its war, first of all, its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, President Trump, A, insisted that that would have never happened on his watch, that Putin respects him too much to have done that.

But then, secondly, he also decided that he would resolve this conflict overnight.

He hasn't managed to do that, and he sort of tried partially because he had a lot of people around him pushing him in the direction of Ukraine.

Ukraine is an ally.

It's, you know, the doorstep of Europe.

You have to help.

And so he's entertained that idea for the first year of his presidency.

But over time, he increasingly believed that the only guy he needed to talk to, the only guy who matters in this is Vladimir Putin.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Vivian Salama: Because he's more powerful.

He's the one who's going to change things.

And so he's really kind of leaned in on that.

And as a result, it's come at a, a price for Ukraine, both in terms of the deals he is making with Russia and the deals he is willing to kind of pull back on with Ukraine.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.

Ashley, you have a PhD in Trump's behavioral patterns.

U.T.

Austin, I think.

Okay, great.

Ashley Parker, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Yes.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.

The question is -- we periodically go through these phases where he seems supportive of Zelenskyy, but from your perspective, does Trump ever change?

In other words the impulses that he has seem to -- there's a little bit of a sine curve, a rollercoaster maybe, but he always comes back to the same ideas.

Ashley Parker: Yes.

On his -- I mean, there's a sense that Donald Trump is not particularly ideological, which is both true and not true.

Which is to say that on his core set of beliefs, he's sort of frozen in amber in the 1980s, and the views he held then being hard line and kind of nativist on immigration, the views he had on trade, frankly, the views he had on Iran, those are very unchangeable.

You know, in the margins, he is often swayed by charismatic personalities, by what he lasts on T.V., by the last person to call him on the phone or leave the Oval Office.

But on these big things, he fundamentally doesn't change, which, when it comes to geopolitics, one of the things, as Vivian just mentioned, that he likes strong men.

He likes strength and power.

When he was first elected to the presidency, he thought that it was a bit more like a monarchy, right?

He was kind of genuinely befuddled that Congress had to sign off on laws, and he couldn't just dictate these things.

And so there -- Jeffrey Goldberg: I think Congress might be befuddled about that too.

Ashley Parker: Yes.

Everyone's deeply confused, yes.

And so at the end of the day, he sort of believes, as he said famously in that Oval Office blowup, that Zelenskyy doesn't have the cards.

Zelenskyy is operating from the weaker position, and Trump, who is desperate, desperate, desperate for a Nobel Peace Prize and wants this deal, in his ideal view, he would get the deal by Zelenskyy just capitulating with his, quote/unquote, mediocre cards.

Jeffrey Goldberg: One question before I go to Mark on a question about history.

When you - - you talk about these patterns being set in the 1980s.

I'm not asking this as a joke, but what was the key year?

Was it '79, the Iran hostage?

No, because it's really remarkable that there's this level of multi-decade consistency in his views.

What he thought about Iran in 1979 is what he thinks today.

What he thought about trade in 1982 is what he thinks today.

Was there like a -- was there a moment when something coalesced in him where he developed his worldview?

Ashley Parker: I mean, I can't pinpoint it to a particular year or a particular month, though that would make a great oral history, but I would -- Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, you could just say June 13th, 1981, and I'd believe you, you know?

It's like -- Ashley Parker: And but I would say kind of the '80s as he's -- coming up as, you know, the boy from the outer borough made good.

I mean, even some of those other things are still there within him, and these are not policy things, but there was this sense that he had finally gotten to Manhattan.

But he was not taken seriously by the -- he was sort of gauche and a little crude.

And even that sense of outsiderness is something in the chip on his shoulder that you see.

But I mean, A, that's how he relates to his base in certain ways.

But it's something that is still with him.

I mean, people joke or half say seriously that maybe one of the reasons he ran for the presidency was because he was so embarrassed by Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.

Who -- you know, who knows if that's an origin story, but it does get to those pathologies that were formed as a young man in the '80s.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I mean, some of us were there and Trump did not look happy at that moment actually.

Mark, let me ask you this about Trump and Trumpism.

It's a very deliberately oversimplified question, but is there anyone in American politics like Trump in his ability to just sort of plow through things phenomena that, that would sink any other political leader?

Mark Leibovich, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Oh, not even close.

No.

I mean, I think that we've seen this again and again, I mean, you know, in many categories, one being things that other politicians w- would end their career.

You know, we've seen from the beginning, I mean, that doesn't apply to Donald Trump.

And I think that that's going to inform the very messy, I think, succession to him in the Republican Party because, you know, J.D.

Vance, whoever, you know, tries to be the heir apparent is going to find that those rules do not apply to him or her.

And I think so that will -- Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, go back.

It's almost the tenth anniversary of Trump's first term in office.

Go back and with everything that you know now, what are the qualities of Donald Trump that made him this unique, gravity-defying candidate?

Mark Leibovich: I mean, I think one of the superpowers is just the shamelessness, just his inability to be sort of confined by the rules of embarrassment, by the rules of norms, by the rules of, you know, what will history think of me.

I mean, I remember during the end of his first term there was all this kind of Pollyannish talk about, well, Mr.

President, don't you worry about how you'll be remembered in history.

And he, like and others around him, like, you know, Rudy Giuliani and others, would say, No, I'll be dead, or, you know, I'll be remembered as a loser.

I mean, it was very black and white.

But it's also very much -- I mean, you do realize that the check and balance of the White House begins with the conscience and the character of the president, him or herself.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Before we jump, and we'll talk about the Trump legacy a little bit, and before we jump to Texas and national politics, I want to ask one more question about some news of this week.

Vivian, you've been covering the controversy over the execution of Nidal Hasan, the convicted terrorist who carried out the Fort Hood massacre.

Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, wanted to televise that execution.

That was too much for Donald Trump.

He just said no to that.

Can you tell us what happened inside the White House?

Vivian Salama: So, Pete Hegseth sort of surprised everyone, including people at the White House, when he came out and -- Jeffrey Goldberg: He had not cleared that with President Trump?

Vivian Salama: Well, the people that we talked to, the sources we talked to say that they were blindsided by it.

And even if he did consult with President Trump, he may have sort of processed the idea that there was going to be a firing squad execution, but not that it was going to be televised with the president, that that didn't really kind of sink in.

And so when the president sort of realized it, partly because Pete Hegseth announced it last week, he was taken aback.

He was getting -- he was inundated by calls, including from Republicans, including even from people in his inner circle, Speaker Mike Johnson very wary about the whole idea.

And this concept of, you know, a public execution of a paraplegic, an old man who is a paraplegic, just did not sit well with the president.

And, of course, people -- Jeffrey Goldberg: Even though the paraplegic was a mass murderer.

Vivian Salama: Even though the paraplegic was a mass murderer.

And, eventually, when the president revealed that he would pull back on this live-streaming, he, you know, started with the idea that this man is a terrorist and deserves to die, in his view, but live-streaming it will not happen.

Jeffrey Goldberg: This obviously raises questions about Pete Hegseth.

It also raises questions about his management of the Department of Defense.

It also raises questions about his future political judgment.

I mean, he is one of many people.

We obviously have Marco Rubio and J.D.

Vance in the first two.

Just conventional wisdom says that they're the two most likely nominees at the moment.

But Hegseth has expressed a great deal of interest in electoral politics.

Does this hurt Hegseth, either in his current role or in his future?

Vivian Salama: I mean, there's been so many episodes in which Pete Hegseth has sort of, you know, kind of hit rock bottom, and then somehow, you know -- Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, I'm aware of that.

I was involved in one.

Vivian Salama: There you go.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.

Vivian Salama: And somehow he comes back from it, in part because he almost knows how to speak President Trump's language.

He's very good at sort of putting himself out there on television and making these sort of campy videos with -- of shows of military bravado and insulting -- Jeffrey Goldberg: The performance parts of -- Vivian Salama: The performance parts, and insulting journalists and things like that.

And that resonates with the president, even if literally everyone around the president kind of soured on him at one point or another.

And that's been pretty consistent.

President Trump, for some reason, has just continuously believed that he is effective, in part because he takes orders.