JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Despite the red carpet, B-2 flyover, the burst of diplomatic activity and President Trump's large promises -- DONALD TRUMP, U.S. President: Progress is being made, very substantial progress.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: -- there's actually been no progress in ending Russia's war against Ukraine.

At home, Trump has, in fact, just done Vladimir Putin a favor, firing many of the U.S. intelligence officials whose expertise includes Russian election interference, next.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

It was a startling moment on the tarmac in Alaska a week ago when Donald Trump catching his first glimpse of Vladimir Putin started applauding.

It's not impossible to imagine that this was the moment that the president of France, the chancellor of Germany and the prime ministers of Italy and the United Kingdom thought to themselves, maybe now is a good moment to pop over to Washington.

These leaders formed a phalanx around the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his White House meeting this week, and so far, at least Trump hasn't turned on Zelenskyy, as he has in the past.

But what's next for Trump as he pursues a settlement in Ukraine and a Nobel Peace Prize?

Joining me tonight to discuss this and more, Laura Barron-Lopez, a White House correspondent for the network, soon to be formerly known as MSNBC, Jonathan Karl is the chief Washington correspondent in ABC News, which is keeping its name, Michael Scherer is a staff writer at The Atlantic, no joke there, and Matt Viser is the White House bureau chief at The Washington Post.

Thank you all for joining me.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ, White House Correspondent, MSNBC: You couldn't help -- you couldn't stop yourself.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I can't stop myself.

I'm sorry.

M.S.

not yet now.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Not yet now.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: M.S.

not yet now.

Jon, let me start with you.

Ukraine, a very busy week in diplomacy that adds up to what?

JONATHAN KARL, Chief Washington Correspondent, ABC News: Well, it's hard to -- it was seven days ago.

It was one week ago exactly that they had that great meeting up in Alaska.

Going into the meeting, President Trump was saying that he was going to seek a ceasefire and he'd be very upset if he didn't have a ceasefire by the end of the meeting.

That didn't happen.

But afterwards they said that there would be a one-on-one meeting with Zelenskyy and Putin.

The White House said that Putin had promised to do that.

Well, now, it appears that is not going to happen, at least no time soon.

And they also said that there was an agreement that there would be security guarantees, Article 5-like security guarantees for Ukraine.

And now, we have the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, saying that, effectively, Russia would have a veto over such security guarantees, which is a little problematic, because, remember, the security guarantees are to protect Ukraine from a Russian invasion, another Russian invasion.

So, it looks right now like we are actually maybe even further back than we were going into the summit.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Laura, you agree?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I do.

I think that very little, if anything, has changed.

And, essentially, that meeting in Alaska required the European leaders to rush here to essentially make sure that President Trump and Vladimir Putin were not giving away, that President Trump was not giving away too much.

They were very -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: that felt literally like an Oval -- like, oh, we can't have a bad thing happen in the Oval Office, we better go position ourselves almost between these two men.

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Not just positioning themselves, but also I think it was a bit of a show of force on their part.

Look, they understand that there has to be flattery at play, and, yes, they wanted to ensure that things went well between the Ukrainian president and President Trump.

But I think it was also them saying, we are going to show that we are very united with Ukraine and what we believe needs to be done in order to protect Ukraine.

And they did not want to see President Trump essentially give away territory or give away things to Russia that they were not prepared to be aligned with at all.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Matt, in the White House, how are they casting this and is the way they're casting it correspond to reality as you understand it?

MATT VISER, WHITE HOUSE BUREAU CHIEF, THE WASHINGTON POST: No.

I mean, a lot of times, Trump throughout this has said something that has turned out not to be true.

I mean, he has said that, as Jon was pointing out, the security guarantees were part of this.

It turns out that the Russians have a different interpretation of that.

Same thing with Zelenskyy and the land swaps, the Ukrainians have a different interpretation.

But I think Trump seems to be approaching this almost in reverse of how we often see diplomacy, where there's a lot of spade work that happens and then the principals get together in the final push, in the final culmination.

Trump is approaching this almost just he wants the principals to get together and then see what happens.

So, the White House is still pushing to have Zelenskyy and Putin in a meeting, almost hoping that something comes of that without kind of creating the groundwork for something to actually come.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Michael, to take Trump's side on that methodology for a minute, diplomacy done traditionally, frequently, doesn't work.

What's the issue with Trump trying to sort of like everybody let's get together and we're just going to chat and see what happens?

MICHAEL SCHERER, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Yes.

I'm old enough to remember the 2008 Democratic primary in which Obama got in a fight with Clinton about whether president should be talking with their adversaries or not.

So, I don't think like on the surface, rolling out the red carpet is not going to be consequential.

What we're seeing here is the takeover of American foreign policy by New York real estate dealmakers.

The two people put this together are Steve Wikoff and Donald Trump.

I've been told by people who've been in the room with them that when they talk to each other about this stuff, they're almost talking their own language.

Like other people are trying to keep up with them.

This isn't a diplomatic conversation.

They have like a deep, long lasting friendship, enormous trust between each other.

And they have a view of the world that comes out of the business deals they made when they were younger in their lives, and they think they can apply here.

And what that means is you wine and dine, you treat people great, you get them in a room, you see what happens and you try and make these personal connections.

And, you know, Witkoff came to the White House a couple weeks ago and said, I think we have an opportunity here.

It wasn't clear exactly what that opportunity was.

He never really got stuff on paper.

You know, the Article 5-like promises from Russia is not clear what that is.

I mean, but I think in if you're working in, you know, a development on in Brooklyn, maybe that kind of early conversation makes sense, and we don't know how it's going to end.

JONATHAN KARL: And it has to be said the previous approach was a total failure.

I mean, we've had a horrible war in Ukraine.

It's Russia's fault.

It's not Zelenskyy fault.

It's not Biden's fault.

He's the one that invaded.

But all efforts to try to, you know, help.

Zelenskyy, help Ukraine repel that invasion have not been helpful.

We've had an incredible loss of life.

It hadn't worked.

The approach had not worked.

So, the idea of trying a different approach isn't necessarily problematic.

It reminds me of what he did -- what Trump did with Kim Jong-un.

I mean, first of all, you know, fire and fury.

He was going to really threaten little rocket man with God knows what.

And then they ended up having the warm embrace.

He walked away from that second summit in Vietnam.

He knows how to walk away and not agree to something that will be horrific.

And he has this amazing ability, a faith in his own ability to convince whoever is in the room with him.

It hasn't worked yet, but the previous approach in both cases hadn't worked yet.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But you're an expert on Trump's thinking.

Talk about this, the real estate approach to international deeply felt, historically rooted conflict.

I mean, as we're talking about this, I'm reminded of this notion that if the Middle East were actually a real estate dispute, it'd be over by now.

JONATHAN KARL: Yes.

I mean -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Because real estate problems are just real estate problems.

Ukraine is not a real estate problem.

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, listen, now he talks about Gaza.

It's like why did the Israeli -- this is beachfront property.

I mean, why did the Israelis give this up in the first place?

So, it's not a deep understanding -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Is that posturing or does he actually think that?

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, I think he sees things quite visually and I think that he does see Gaza as a beachfront strip.

I think that part of his conversations with Kim Jong-un were, my God, you've got all this wonderful coastline.

Think about what you could be doing if the world was open up to you.

So, I think there -- I don't think it's all.

But I think that with the real estate -- part of it is that real estate approach that we can make a deal, I'm going to treat you right, you're going to treat me right, that's going to work for all of us, that's certainly the approach.

But there's an added element, which is the threat.

And that's what he had, you know, with North Korea and that's what he talks about, these severe consequences.

The big question is, is he actually going to follow through on the threat, I mean, now that the Russians have basically said, no go?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, Laura, there's two questions for you.

One is, is this extreme transactionalist approach to human interaction and human business?

Does that work in a situation where people have deep beliefs?

Putin seems to believe, he tells the world, that Ukraine should not exist as a country.

You can't -- that's not just a real estate issue.

The second one, and Jon brings up a very, very salient point, is, does Donald Trump have the ability to sit still through months of negotiation about very specific issues and carry through, or does he just sort of lose interest about -- lose interest in Ukraine and Russia in a couple weeks?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I don't know that he's going to lose interest in this, especially because there are a variety of reasons why the president has in the past said, oh, maybe there's something to be gained from Ukraine in all of this.

And he's talked about different deals that can be had if they were able to negotiate a ceasefire or a peace deal.

To your first part, Jeff, I haven't -- I mean, have we seen any proof that this transactional dealing is working, whether it's between Gaza and Israel, or whether it's between Ukraine and Russia?

So far, there's been little evidence because we all just said that we seem to agree that they ended kind of where they started before these sets of meetings.

The question I have is, at what point do European leaders, and I think they are beginning to think about this, do they consider their options about moving forward without the U.S.?

Which is do they consider NATO operations that don't necessarily rely on the U.S. in order to try to deter and push back Russia?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Well, Matt, is that possible?

MATT VISER: I don't know.

I mean, I think you need the U.S. in involved in some way in this military capacity and otherwise weapons.

The other thing that I found quite interesting was on Thursday this week.

Trump had a social media post talking about this almost as a sports fan, watching two teams where he talked about Ukraine as a team that -- as a great team that's always on the defensive side and never allowed to go on offense.

And that was interesting for multiple reasons.

I mean, the first of which is a president kind of comparing a bloody war to a sporting event.

But, secondly, it was also him kind of seeing things through Ukrainian eyes that they need to push back on Russia in some way.

But he's kind of a dispassionate observer in that not taking account of the U.S. has a lot of impact on whether Ukraine can go on offense or not.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You've hit on something really important, and I can't get a grip on this particular subject.

Sometimes, when he is talking about providing air cover for Ukraine, he sounds like he's seeing things through Ukrainian eyes, which is surprising to a lot of us given his predisposition toward Putin.

And sometimes it seems like he's blaming Ukraine for the war and takes, you know, Putin's view.

I mean, Michael, like is it possible to get a handle on where he where he sits, or is this just a person who contains multitudes and those multitudes include a pro-Ukrainian Trump and a pro-Russian Trump?

MICHAEL SCHERER: He would argue that his agility in negotiations is an advantage, so he can, you know, move one way or the other.

I thought it was notable that, I mean, clearly, the Europeans came bearing gifts and praise and they, you know, tried to butter up him while they were here.

But it's also true that he made a point of not distancing himself from them.

And we've ended this period where maybe Putin has bought a delay in sanctions.

Like if we assume that Putin is not in this for legitimate reasons.

He's going to walk away from the table eventually.

He's buying himself time.

He's buying himself some international legitimacy.

But Trump isn't giving him much more.

And I think Trump came out of Alaska, came out of this week, making clear that the U.S. still stands with its European partners, making clear that the U.S. still believes Ukraine gets to make these decisions.

Like the U.S. is not going to impose lines on Ukraine.

That's not the U.S. position right now.

So -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: There was a very interesting hot mic moment when these European leaders came.

Just listen to this for one second.

DONALD TRUMP: I think he wants to make a deal for me.

Do you understand that?

As crazy as it sounds.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Crazy, Jon, or crazy confident?

JONATHAN KARL: I mean it sounds a little crazy.

But, no, again, this is Trump's faith in his own deal making ability.

And he thinks Putin coming in, ride in the presidential limo, in The Beast, that great greeting on the red carpet, he thinks that, you know, Putin really wants to make him happy because he -- but, you know, look, I thought just on, on the point of the vacillation from one view to the other, I mean, there was a period for almost 24 hours where the White House didn't rule out the idea of U.S. troops on the ground in Ukraine, which is something that was not even under consideration in any level under Biden.

Now, he has since made it clear no American troops, but we'll support the Europeans.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

JONATHAN KARL: But it is remarkable how he has gone from sounding like he is echoing Kremlin talking points to sounding like he's ready to go to war on Ukraine's behalf.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And who knows what next week will bring.

MICHAEL SCHERER: Yes.

I think the telling that quote is, for me, he wants to make a deal for me.

And that's Trump's whole theory of his leadership, that he's a great man, the great man does great things.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I admire that confidence.

I really admire that.

Your possibility of believing that a veteran KGB operative wants to please you is from the stuff of interesting fictions, speculative fiction.

JONATHAN KARL: When you go from being, facing the real possibility of spending the rest of your life in prison and having your company bankrupted to being more fabulously wealthy than he has ever been and becoming president of the United States again, you probably have some confidence.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: No, he's a lucky man.

We all know that.

I want to stay on the subject of Putin in a way.

Trump's director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, this week, removed the security clearances for 37 former and current intelligence officials.

Obviously, we know that they've been firing a lot of people across the national security complex, especially people who have knowledge or involvement in monitoring Russian, Putin directed interference in American elections and other things.

We just saw John Bolton, the former national security adviser who turned against Trump, we saw his home being raided.

Give us a sense, Matt, to start, give us a sense of what's going on here.

Why are they seem to be cleaning house of people who are very suspicious of Russia?

MATT VISER: I mean, a lot of it is -- you know, Tulsi Gabbard came in early on talking about trying to depoliticize the intelligence community.

But this action among others sort of gives a sense of political retribution, that they're taking things out on agents, on the intelligence community who came to some conclusions around Russia's involvement in the 2016 election, she's mischaracterized some of that intelligence in some of this as well.

But I think it's aimed at political opponents or who Trump perceives as his political opponent.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Laura, are we seeing the next phase of the I am your retribution presidency?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: I think we are.

I think today, seeing the fact that they raided and search John Bolton's house in Maryland is a step that we had not seen them take to this point, which is them going and taking an action very aggressively against someone that has been one of the most public in terms of speaking out against the actions taken by this administration and someone who was a part of the first administration.

But he, John Bolton, has not shied away from criticizing the administration and the actions that they've been taking.

And so it does look -- I mean, the pattern across all of it is retribution and it appears as though they're not going to stop with this.

They've taken actions against D.C. and they could very well take actions against other Democratic-led cities.

And a part of that is that retribution.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

I want to come to what's going on in our city in a moment.

Jon, just stay on this subject.

What are the consequences of these actions being taken against intelligence officials?

JONATHAN KARL: Look I think that the threat of international terror is not over.

If America gets hit at some point again with another terror attack, I think there will be a lot of looking back at were we paying attention, not only the people that were fired.

And, by the way let's also mention earlier in the administration when basically the entire National Security Division of the Justice Department was cleared out, also the top ranks of the FBI.

The fact that you had -- as we talked about weeks ago on this program, you had some 1,000 personnel at the FBI and the DOJ spending a matter of months going through the Epstein files, who is kind of at the helm trying to anticipate what attacks America may be facing in the future?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: That's an incredibly important point that I just want to add to, because there are so many of these officials, be it FBI, be it people who need to track terrorism prevention within the Department of Homeland Security, who have either been entirely gutted, these task force have been gutted and gotten rid of, or they have all been moved over to work on civil immigration enforcement.

And that is something that we're increasingly seeing where they're working on that instead of what they were originally tasked with.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Go ahead.

MICHAEL SCHERER: There's one other thing I think that's happening in the office of director of National Intelligence.

It's not the Department of Education.

But there were discussions during the transition in which Trump was making clear that he wasn't sure ODNI made sense.

It wasn't clear what it did.

And that -- it's been sort of a controversial agency for more than 20 years now.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, it's a post-9/11 creation that people think is kind of a Frankensteinian -- MICHAEL SCHERER: And no one's really known what to do with it.

It's had different roles over time.

Whether it does a good job -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The CIA doesn't like it, obviously.

The C takes the central in Central -- MICHAEL SCHERER: So, I do think that what happened this week is also that, in that case, I think there is a way in which Tulsi Gabbard was chosen for that job to wind down parts of her own domain in the way that Linda McMahon is doing at the Department of Education.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And firing all the Russia experts is a pretty specific way of doing it.

MATT VISER: Yes.

And I think that gets at so much of Trump where there may be a problem that he's identified that people can agree needs to change, but they don't necessarily agree with his prescription for how he's carrying it out, which gets to the D.C. point as well.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Two more things I want to get to Jon.

The first is something that Laura mentioned, the National Guard and all these federal law enforcement agencies flooding Washington, D.C., or at least flooding the area around Union Station, our train station.

JONATHAN KARL: And the Washington Monument.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And the Washington Monument, high crime scene, obviously.

The trying to understand it, and I'm trying to understand whether this is actually just a pretty large ICE raid in disguise.

What's the motivation here?

JONATHAN KARL: I mean, it seems that right now it is largely for show.

I mean, that's why you see the National Guard humvees at Union Station and in front of the National Monument.

But there's been a serious stepped up activity.

The one category of steps of activity that we've actually really seen since this has started are the ICE raids in Washington.

That's not the way this has been sold.

It's been sold as, you know, this has become the most dangerous city in the world, and we need to get crime under control.

Now, Trump bragged that we haven't had a murder in a week in Washington, D.C., something he's not sure has ever happened before.

But, look, a lot of this is about show and it's about him getting ready for the 250th anniversary of America's founding.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Laura, what are they feeling inside the White House?

Like this is just the first city?

LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Yes, I think that they are, and they said that this week.

The president forecasted it again, so did Vice President J.D.

Vance.

They repeatedly said that D.C. could potentially become a model for other cities.

And one of the easiest ways for the president to do this to potentially replicate where he's able to put National Guard in cities, like Baltimore or Philadelphia or Boston, is to invoke the Insurrection Act.

That would be one of the easiest ways for him to do it, because it gives him such wide latitude to say, oh, people are protesting around a federal government building, I can send in National Guard troops.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

JONATHAN KARL: But as of now, they're not actually doing much, which is the thing.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Well, they're not in the areas where there's a high murder rate, for one thing.

I want to do one more subject before we have to go, and it concerns this phenomenon in American political life called Laura Loomer.

Michael, you are the table's reigning expert on Laura Loomer.

You just wrote a profile of her.

Explain who she is and how she has so much power in American politics.

MICHAEL SCHERER: Well, who she is is changing.

So, ten years ago, Laura Loomer was an online troll, conservative activist who had been eventually was kicked off all the major social media platforms for hate speech violations.

She said a number of very objectable things.

She continues to say things that are very offensive to many people.

But Trump adopted her during the last campaign as an outside adviser who would fight for him and who he could use to get the rest of his staff to do things.

And that's what -- she's sort of taken that place now.

She's responsible for dozens of people being pushed out of the administration, policy changes, you know, taking away Secret Service protection for Biden's children.

And she does it mainly through her Twitter account.

I mean, she talks regularly with the president.

She's met with him a couple times.

She talks regularly with senior staff.

There's a lot of distrust and dislike of her in the White House.

They would rather she go away, but they know they don't control that because she answers to the president, they answer to the president.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Do you consider her a genuinely important political player in Washington?

MICHAEL SCHERER: I think she has a -- yes, I think it's the position she holds.

She right now is the person that any industry group, political activist organization, deputy undersecretary at some agency can feed information to.

And if she decides that it's worthy of putting out to get rid of somebody, to get someone who fired to, you know, end a career, she puts it out and she can get action from it.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

MICHAEL SCHERER: And so she has -- MATT VISER: She's powerful.

MICHAEL SCHERER: She's become an institution at the moment.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Tell us -- you interviewed her in the last few days.

Tell us one of the remarkable things that she told you.

MICHAEL SCHERER: I mean, she was going after Earl Matthews, one of the highest ranking African Americans of the Pentagon.

She opposed his nomination.

I said, but, you know, he was confirmed anyway.

And she said, well, I don't listen to anything he says.

Everything he says is just Ebonics, even though Earl Matthew speaks like anybody else speaks.

So, it was basically just a racial -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, just straight up racism.

MICHAEL SCHERER: Yes.

You know, she -- yes, I could go on with others, but, yes.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, I'm going to encourage people in five seconds to read your profile, so it's going to be great.

I wish that we can go on.

It's a great conversation, but we're going to have to leave it there.

I do want to thank our guests for joining me.

I want to thank you at home for watching all of us.

And you can read Michael Scherer's profile of Laura Loomer at theatlantic.com.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

Goodnight from Washington.