← PBS Washington Week with The Atlantic - Full Show
PBS Washington Week with The Atlantic - Full Show
Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, 4/24/26
00:23:53
Full Washington Week with the Atlantic broadcast from April 24, 2026.
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- [00:01]
Jeffrey Goldberg
These are not the best of times for President Trump or the party he leads. Iran is in the driver's seat in the Gulf. The president's economic approval ratings are dropping faster than gas prices. The Democratic Party seems poised to come out on top in the redistricting fight that Trump and the Republicans themselves started. And some of his MAGA allies are abandoning him tonight. Why? President Trump's boundary pushing, foreign adventurism and bluster may make November a very difficult month for his party.
- [00:30]
Producer/Moderator
Next.
- [00:34]
Jeffrey Goldberg
This is Washington Week with the Atlantic. Good evening and welcome to Washington Week. The New York Times polling average shows that 58% of Americans disapprove of President Trump's job performance, a new high that can be largely attributed to voters economic concerns. Can the president manage the Strait of Hormuz and his sagging approval ratings at the same time? Joining us tonight to discuss this and more, Annie Lynske is a White House reporter at the Wall Street Journal. Seung Min Kim is a White House reporter for the Associated Press. Tyler Pager is a White House correspondent at the New York Times. And Yvonne Wingett Sanchez is a staff writer at the Atlantic. I bet you're jealous that you're not a White House correspondent. We can make your White House correspondent.
- [01:18]
Annie Lynske
You can make me anything you want.
- [01:19]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Yeah. Yvonne actually is visiting us from Phoenix. She lives in America and is going to talk to us about what she sees actually in America. So that's very exc. Let me start with you. The approval ratings, especially on the economy, they're slipping fairly quickly into really red zone territory. So you're, well, all of you are in the White House every day talking to them. What's the level of worry?
- [01:45]
Tyler Pager
I mean, there's obviously concern publicly. They're trying to downplay that concern and say there's months till the midterms. Voters are not locking in until the summer. And their hope is that the president gets this conflict under control and prices start to go down. But we've seen time and time again, voters 1, 2, 3, concern is the economy, that Donald Trump came back to the White House on a message about lowering prices. And we're seeing the exact opposite happening. So there is clearly concern and we're seeing that in the body language of Donald Trump, the way that he is talking about this. And for as much as they are trying to tamp it down publicly, it's obviously dictating the way in which he's behaving because Republicans don't want to lose control of Congress. And I think there was a lot of optimism that Democrats could take back the House. But these numbers are putting the Senate in play as well.
- [02:37]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Something that they really have months. I mean, this idea that people don't lock in until the summer. What's getting locked in now is the perception that gas cost too much, food cost too much at the Iran war is not being won.
- [02:50]
Seung Min Kim
Yeah, particularly when you have his top cabinet officials talking about how gas prices may not go down for a long time, even if President Trump disagrees with that assessment from the Energy Secretary, Chris Wright. But there is certainly a lot of concern, you know, throughout Washington, Republicans about their prospects in the midterms. And I would point to just what we saw on Tuesday with the Virginia redistricting referendum. You know, we still have to wait to see what the local courts say about that map, whether it's constitutional under Virginia law. But if that map stands, I mean, that could be the game on its own in terms of, in terms of Democrats gaining the House majority. You know, we're talking about sentiments from the White House. James Blair, the former deputy chief of staff now leading the midterm effort, said on CNN this week that it's too soon to declare defeat. But I do think that is an acknowledgement.
- [03:38]
Jeffrey Goldberg
It's really not.
- [03:40]
Seung Min Kim
That is a challenge there. I think Republicans know they have a really big uphill hurdle.
- [03:47]
Jeffrey Goldberg
I want to come back to the gerrymandering issue. We're going to do a 40 minute slide deck presentation for our viewers on gerrymandering. But I want to stay on the gas prices and Iran for the moment. Annie, you wrote this week a pretty remarkable story with Josh Dawsey about the president's unease with the way things are going in Iran. I want to read this one passage. Trump has since marveled at the ease with which the strait was closed. A guy with a drone can shut it down. Trump has said to people expressing belated irritation at the key word Waterway was so vulnerable. He has publicly oscillated between demanding support from allies to help open it and insisting that the US doesn't need or want military assistance. He was told obviously in the lead up to this war that that is the choke point. I mean, so is he really surprised? Was he not paying attention to the briefings?
- [04:42]
Annie Lynske
Yes. First of all, he was told this was a briefing that he received. His top generals and war planners came to him and said, sir, one of the first things that will happen is the Strait of Hormuz will be closed. Now, the president believed that the US Bombing campaign would topple the regime before they had the chance to do that. He was aware when he ordered.
- [05:08]
Jeffrey Goldberg
This is what Netanyahu said, what Heg said. Other more enthusiastic.
- [05:15]
Annie Lynske
And we have reported that this was the sentiment within the White House that the president was told, this will shut down, this strait will shut. And look, I mean, did the president order. The president was aware that his belief could be inaccurate. I mean, he didn't order the bombing purely thinking that the strait wouldn't close. There was an awareness that the strait would close. But I think the other part that was interesting is the there wasn't as much of an awareness that the strait would close so fast, that boats would be so easily coerced into not passing through because there wasn't some big battle for the Strait of Hormuz. You know, the Iranians said, we're going to shoot. We're going to sink any boat that goes through. And companies said, ok, we will stop sending our boats through. And so there was a disconnect there also with people advising the president, people around the president. But look, Trump believed that the regime would fall first, and that turned out to be wrong. Now, look, and this remains the choke point and remains the issue that he's gonna have to wrestle with as we contend in the next few days with whether this bombing campaign starts again.
- [06:24]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Right. Yvonne, there's something so interesting here. Politically. You watched presidencies, as we all have since Jimmy Carter. Iran has destroyed a couple of presidencies, certainly undermined other presidencies. Maybe when we look back on this period, we'll say that the height of confidence that the Trump administration was experiencing came right after the Maduro operation. And that led them to. To kind of lose their balance and think, oh, we are going to deal with Iran in a different way than any president since, I mean, looking at the arc of history, this is all predictable.
- [07:14]
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
I mean, when you go out and you talk to how this is, you talk to people you like, really try to suss out how this is playing with everyday Americans, whether political operatives like it or not. Like, voters are locked in right now. They are locked in not because
- [07:32]
Tyler Pager
they
- [07:33]
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
think that Trump is any sort of badass for, like, going and doing, you know, the Venezuela, pulling it off in Venezuela, they are feeling maximum pain. That's why they are locked in. They're not paying attention, really, to what is happening in foreign countries, what our foreign policy is. They are looking at their checkbooks every day and they're looking at how much money is going.
- [07:53]
Jeffrey Goldberg
But, Tyler, that's an interesting point. Is there a chance that if he had done this In Iran, everything was the same, except gas prices remain the same. Do you think that this would not be a crisis for the White House?
- [08:06]
Tyler Pager
I mean, if he had been successful in taking out the regime and then, you know, I mean, I think when you look at the big picture, to your point, I absolutely agree with you that Maduro was the high point. When you listen to Trump talk about his foreign policy, he lists off his accomplishments as if it's a laundry list of success. He talks about Soleimani from the first term. He talks about the. The Operation Midnight Hammer from this summer where they dropped bombs on Iran and he said they obliterated their nuclear program. That's not fully true. You know, he talks about the Maduro operation. And so I think he wants to think of himself on this pedestal, of a president who has brought peace to the world, and he sees these various operations as doing so. I think if this operation in Iran had been successful in the sense that he was able to replace the regime with people who were more willing to cut a deal with him like he had done in Venezuela, absolutely. I don't think there would have been some political pain, because the economy, there are other factors contributing to rising costs, not just the war with Iran. But I do think that he overestimated and compared the Venezuela situation to Iran. And if you talk to any experts or any foreign policy analysts, they could not be more different.
- [09:24]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Seung Min, this is a really kind of interesting moment to study his ambitions, because we've gotten the sense that from Cuba to Venezuela to Iran, he wants to change their governments, and he wants the credit for bringing democracy to these places. The same reason he looks at maps and says, I want to own Greenland. He wants to change the way things look. We know that in Washington because he wants to build an enormous arch, you know, right across from the Lincoln Memorial. He redecorates the White House. And I want to talk about the redecorating and King Charles's upcoming visit to the Oval Office. King Charles, an architecture expert, by the way. But is he being thrown off his game now? He had these ambitions of changing the world, and now the world is saying it's not so easy.
- [10:18]
Seung Min Kim
Well, clearly. I mean, when you are at war with another country, the other country gets a say. And I think that's the. I mean, it's a basic fact. But that is the complicating factor for the president right now. And his ambitions are not something that's easily explainable to the voter who is looking at the gas tank, who is looking at the price tag when they fill up their cars. You know, when the President gets pressed about the gas issue, he says, well, you know, it's a small price to pay, particularly if it means Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon for the future. And he may be right on that point. But I'm not sure how much that matters to the voter who's now paying 50, 60, $80 for a tank. And I mean, we all covered the Biden admin administration. Remember how obsessive Ron Klain was, the former White House chief of staff with gas prices because it is kind of the one consumer product where you see the price tag, the sticker price all over town, wherever you go. So that is ingrained in voters mind so much more in a way than like perhaps egg prices or milk or clothing or whatnot. And that's why it is so politically potent. And the White House knows that.
- [11:22]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Right.
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Tyler Pager
And just, I mean, just to add onto that, when the President asks for short term pain, for some sort of elusive goal that voters didn't even know they were working toward, that's a big ask. It's like to take the Biden administration back to it. They use the word transitory, that rising prices were just a transitory phenomenon that doesn't really hit when as Seungmin said, you're going to the gas price and it's just more expensive. I don't think a lot of voters are making the calculation that it's okay because we're winning a war in Iran when by all accounts it doesn't feel like we're winning a war with Iran.
- [11:55]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Right. Well, let me go to this, that direct point. I want you to listen to something that Trump just said. He believes that he has, well, he says he believes that he has all the time in the world to confront Iran. But here he is comparing a possible timeline to a notably unsuccessful American war. Listen to this.
- [12:15]
Producer/Moderator
So we were in Vietnam like for 18 years. We were in Iraq for many, many years. We're in for all the, I don't like to say World War II because that was a biggie, but we were four and a half, almost five years in World War II. We were in the Korean War for seven years. I've been doing this for six weeks.
- [12:36]
Jeffrey Goldberg
I will agree that World War II was a biggie. It was one of the biggiest wars that we ever had. But it just seems like, I mean, here's a man with very good political instincts, Yvonne, and he, and he's invoking Vietnam, the most notably unsuccessful devastating war in the country. You said earlier that voters are fixed on gas prices and not these foreign adventures from Venezuela to Iran. But they hear him invoking Vietnam as a promise. It's got to affect the mindset of people.
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Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
It is terrifying to a lot of people. For a lot of people, this just came out of nowhere. They have no idea what we're doing, why we're there. This is a president who promised that he would not do this, he would only bring peace. They're paying more at the pump. They're canceling their summer vacations. They can't afford to take their wives and families out for dinner. I mean, there's a huge disconnect between what is happening out in the real world and how people are absorbing this moment and his decisions and how they may view this playing out by the time the midterms actually roll around.
- [13:48]
Annie Lynske
I just have to put a point on it. I mean, there are two promises that President Trump ran on. One was to tackle inflation and another was to stay out of foreign wars and foreign entanglements. And those are two areas which, you know, that is not what people are seeing transpire. So we are also hearing that same concern from voters. And the White House is tearing it, too. I mean, Trump is seeing this polling numbers, he's seeing internal polling numbers from his political team. They are showing it to him. But in his mind, his calculation is that this has been a problem that I believe seven other presidents have wrestled with. I mean, Iran has been a nettlesome issue, you know, for 47 years. And he has been hearing from other people around him that, look, you can do something that no other president was able to do. And I think that that was quite enticing to him. And we still will see what will happen. I mean, there is a scenario where this can wrap that. There's a scenario where he gets out of this in not his four to six week timeframe, but more of a sort of two month to two and a half month time.
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Seung Min Kim
Frank.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
Surprising, though, that he has Vietnam on his mind.
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Tyler Pager
I mean, just to build on that, I mean, he has said all these former presidents have called him and said, you did something that I could never do. There's no evidence that that is true. But it's to Andy's point that he wanted to do something he thought his predecessors couldn't. And also just on that front, he is petrified of comparisons to the jcpoa,
- [15:24]
Jeffrey Goldberg
the deal that Obama, the Obama Iran deal, Iran deal.
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Tyler Pager
He does not want any comparison to that deal. He's always said he could do better and that's why he ripped it up in his first term. So he's caught between wanting to get out of this war. That's why we keep seeing him extending the cease fire with no time limit. He's not eager to continue to drop bombs on Iran and also trying to get a deal that is better than Obama's deal, in his words. But Iran now has leverage in a different way than they had before.
- [15:52]
Jeffrey Goldberg
It strikes me that he would rather perhaps have an Iranian toll booth on the Strait of Hormuz than go back to an active shooting war with Iran, given where we are in the 2026 cycle.
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Seung Min Kim
Right. And it just all shows the complications again of war. I mean, for example, he was pressed on the four to six, four to six week timeline that he had said several times when he was, when he, when he was holding an Oval Office event earlier this week. And when a reporter asked him about that, he said, well, you know, I destroyed the military in four weeks. So that that's kind of the time frame now it working out. So he's changing the goalposts there a little bit. But the fact remains that we're on, I believe week eight, eight now. So that is far that is beyond the initial time frame that he gave to the American people. And also another important thing to remember is the War Powers act, there's a 60 day time limit by which, you know, Congress is going to have to get their say under this law that 60 days is coming up fairly soon next week.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
On the other hand, Congress is not the most active of the three main
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Seung Min Kim
branches of government by in theory, that's what the law would allow.
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Annie Lynske
I would just say also though the Iranians are feeling pain too and their oil reserves on Karg island are about to fill up. They're at the almost at capacity because they haven't been able to run the US Blockade and get oil out. And so they're going to, they're in a position where they're going to have to stop pumping oil, which is leverage for them.
- [17:22]
Jeffrey Goldberg
Right. We can forget in these conversations that the United States is the superpower. Iran is a third tier power. They have choke point. Obviously, they're also a brutal, terrible regime, wildly unpopular with their own population. And we also sometimes forget that Donald Trump has had luck throughout his career. But I want to talk to something that a little bit unlucky for Donald Trump. Ivan, you've spent a lot of time crisscrossing Arizona and other states talking to Trump supporters. And what you've heard has really surprised you let me read this one observation you made in the Atlantic earlier this week. Midterm elections are typically rough for an incumbent president's party, but this year threatens to be brutal. Trump's approval is lower right now than it was at this point ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. What are you, what have you been hearing in the last couple of weeks? Last few weeks from MAGA voters?
- [18:14]
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
Yeah. I mean, it is the sacrifices that they are having to make within their own homes and within their own households to be able to afford this environment. And this is very much to a lot of people, this feels like Covid era prices. It feels like psychologically they feel like they are in a really bad economic spot. They're pre buying electronics, they are cutting back on, like I said, the family vacations. They feel like they are having to make sacrifices for someone that they didn't want.
- [18:48]
Jeffrey Goldberg
But when you say they, you mean specifically people who had voted for Trump?
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Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
Trump, yes.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
What are they saying about him? Specifically? When you're asking like he hasn't kept his promises, what are they?
- [18:59]
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
He hasn't kept his promises. They don't trust him because he promised no new wars. They are poorer today than they were before he took office. Their wages have not kept up with growth or with inflation. They're paying more at the pump, obviously, especially working class rural voters who pay for diesel every day at six bucks a gallon.
- [19:23]
Jeffrey Goldberg
In Arizona, Look, Arizona's red, obviously. But do you think that the Democrats have any chance at all in the midterms in a state like Arizona?
- [19:32]
Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
I do. There are two toss up House seats, one held by Representative David Schweikart. Scottsdale based wealthy voters there are livid. They are very tuned in. This is a lot of independent voters, centrist Republicans who have just had it down south in the Tucson based congressional district held by Representative Juan Suskamani, a Republican that has narrowly flipped back and forth over the last several cycles. And that is a seat the Democrats think that they can, they can flip. They can pick up two seats in Arizona easily, possibly a third.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
Right. Are the Democrats, Annie, are they maybe getting a little bit ahead of themselves in Washington? I mean, we're in this. Yeah. No, no, no, no. We're in a little bit of a hubris roller coaster on the part of both parties where they both think that they're doing better sometimes than they actually are.
- [20:25]
Annie Lynske
You know, I have spent quite a lot of time running into Democrats this week. It's been a busy week in Washington and I have run into quite a lot of overjoyed, very excited Democrats. The words that I heard recently that have been ringing in my head was from one Democrat who said they will take the House back and there will be a subpoena cannon focused at the White House. So they are getting ready for investigation. I know.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
I've been to those basketball games with the subpoena cannon. Those are exciting.
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Yvonne Wingett Sanchez
Yeah.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
I think a T shirt's coming. All of a sudden you're in court. We'll see. I mean, it's a long time between now and November, but I do think that the prices get fixed in people's minds and they don't loosen up mentally for a long time.
- [21:13]
Annie Lynske
Even if gas prices come down, it's very hard to turn the gas prices around so quickly. Like, it does take a long time to get some of this supply, you know, through the Gulf and through the system. So once it shuts off, it does take a while. It's like an oil tanker takes a while to move.
- [21:31]
Jeffrey Goldberg
There are two big events coming up in Washington. The lesser of the two, the White House Correspondent's Dinner, where the President will celebrate the First Amendment and the Free Press. I'll leave my commentary for after the show.
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Tyler Pager
The
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Jeffrey Goldberg
big event, King Charles and Queen Camilla will be in Washington starting on Monday to celebrate the 250th anniversary of us beating them in their family, at least in a war. Andy, they're a weird combination, King Charles and Donald Trump.
- [22:07]
Annie Lynske
Yes, yes. Well, I mean, they have some potential similarities. They both care a lot about architecture and building. They might have different styles, but they do. You could imagine them talking about this, having this in common. But look, this is a moment for the King. The relationship right now between the US and the UK feels to me at least as fraught as it's been in many, many years. And the President regularly mocks Keir Starmer behind his back to aides. He's even tweeted jokes about him on his Truth Social account. But the King is somebody that the President has really, really respects and really, in a way that there wasn't this relationship with Biden, who was Irish and had this sort of disdain for the. I want to say disdain, but he didn't have the same kind of love of the modern.
- [22:56]
Jeffrey Goldberg
He doesn't Roman. He didn't romanticize it.
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Annie Lynske
Thank you so much. So it is a kind of interesting dynamic and moment for the King to do something that play a very real role on the world stage.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
Right. Tyler, last few seconds. The Oval Office tour is going to be something.
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Tyler Pager
It's going to be remarkable. But I think Annie's really right. Like, Trump reveres royalty, and he loved the state visit that he had in the United Kingdom. And, and I think this is an opportunity. The Brits see this as an opportunity to reestablish a good relationship with Trump because they know how much he reveres the king. The queen.
- [23:33]
Annie Lynske
Right.
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Jeffrey Goldberg
Well, we'll see how that goes. It's going to be an interesting moment. That's all the time we do have for tonight. However, I want to thank our guests for joining me. I want to thank you at home for watching us. For more of Ivan's reporting on why President Trump's MAGA base is shrinking, please visit theatlantic.com I'm Jeffrey Goldberg. Good night from Washington.