Washington Week with The Atlantic full episode, May 8, 2026

0:01 Tonight, big questions.

0:03 Is the United States still at war with Iran?

0:05 Is Iran still at war with the United States?

0:08 Does President Trump think the war is over?

0:10 Does the Supreme Leader of Iran think the war is over?

0:13 Is the Supreme Leader even alive?

0:16 If the war is over, who won?

0:18 And who actually controls the straight of Hermuz now?

0:21 Next,

0:25 this is Washington Week with the Atlantic.

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1:44 editor-inchief of The Atlantic and moderator Jeffrey Goldberg.

1:49 Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

1:52 The Iran war is in a kind of state of suspended animation.

1:55 On Thursday, US forces actually struck Iranian targets after

1:59 two US destroyers were attacked in the straight of Hormuz.

2:02 But President Trump called this US response a quote love tap and said

2:06 that the exchange of fire did not represent a break in the ceasefire.

2:10 Even though ceasefires in general don't include

2:13 two waring parties firing missiles at each other,

2:15 what we can take away from this episode is that Trump,

2:18 who initiated the latest round of fighting

2:20 in the 47year-old war between Iran and the US, would like to do something else.

2:24 Now, I'll talk about this confusing situation as well

2:27 as some large domestic political developments with Peter Baker,

2:31 the chief White House correspondent at the New York Times.

2:34 Jonathan Lamir is a staff writer at The Atlantic

2:36 and a co-host of Morning Joe on MS Now.

2:39 Amna Nas is a co-anchor and co-managing editor of the PBS

2:43 NewsHour and Vivian Salama is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

2:48 Thank you all for joining me.

2:49 Amna, thank you for staying up late.

2:51 I appreciate it.

2:53 You're outing me as an old person.

2:54 I'm not outing you as an old person.

2:56 I just think we, you know, the NewsHour audience needs you to be rested.

2:59 That's right.

3:00 Um so I appreciate you being here.

3:01 So let me start with you, give you the first question.

3:04 Great.

3:04 Um uh the So am I wrong to say that the Iranian regime has won this war?

3:10 First by surviving and second by maintaining more

3:14 or less control over the straight of Hormuz.

3:17 I mean that is their main leverage point right now.

3:19 And I think it depends on who you ask who's winning or who's losing.

3:22 Certainly you can't say the United States has

3:24 won the war as President Trump has said.

3:27 And look, the president has become sort

3:28 of an unreliable narrator to all of this.

3:31 Right.

3:32 As you mentioned, he calls these strikes a love tap.

3:34 He said it's a diversion, a military incursion.

3:38 We are at war.

3:39 And I think we need to be clear about

3:40 that in whatever this state of a ceasefire actually is.

3:44 And I think we need to look at what we've actually

3:46 seen happen rather than what the president says is going to happen,

3:49 which was a punishing US bombardment.

3:52 The Ayatollah killed, his successor put into place,

3:55 and the Iranian foreign minister told me as a continuation of the Ayat Kamei.

4:01 So, that wasn't really a regime change,

4:03 but we've also seen a throttling of the Iranian economy.

4:05 The president says it's going to them soon.

4:08 And now we have a new analysis that suggests that the regime could actually

4:11 last months in this new phase of sanctions and the blockade on their economy.

4:16 So, Vivian, if if it does la it does only last for months

4:20 and Trump has the staying power to see

4:22 through the throttling of the oil economy,

4:25 wouldn't that then count as a victory for the United States?

4:29 It depends how you measure victory, right?

4:31 I mean, politically he is suffering.

4:33 The longer this war goes on, the more that he and sensibly the GOP suffers.

4:39 Um, you have midterm elections later this year,

4:41 and they could really take a shellacking if they do

4:43 not uh have the ability to uh lower oil prices,

4:47 lower gas prices specifically, and just uh moderate the the impact of this war.

4:52 But even just the depletion of uh assets, military assets,

4:57 um the the sort of mental state of the country in terms

5:00 of having to go to war at a time where a number of people,

5:03 especially some many of Trump's supporters did not support this war.

5:07 All of that has a cost ultimately and so

5:10 President Trump is and the GOP will have

5:12 to reckon with that moving forward regardless of whether

5:14 or not there is an end date to this war.

5:17 So the question here is is staying power.

5:19 John, uh, you just wrote in the Atlantic today,

5:22 quote, "Trump is left with a vexing question.

5:25 How do you end a war when your opponent

5:26 won't budge?" And while Trump grasps for an exit,

5:29 the hardliners in Tran have used the war to tighten their grip on power.

5:32 Iran seems hellbent on pulling off something it's historically done well,

5:36 humiliating an American president.

5:39 So to win here, does Iran just have

5:41 to outlast a person with an historically limited attention span?

5:47 Yeah.

5:47 And President Trump is very ready to turn the page.

5:51 As one former adviser told me,

5:53 he's bored of this conflict, but also because it's not,

5:55 the word they use was literally bored.

5:57 Bored in part because it's not going the way he thought it would.

6:00 He thought this matter of days, a matter of weeks at most,

6:03 and it would be a resounding victory like he says we saw in Venezuela.

6:06 That has not been the case.

6:07 And instead, he's been made to look sort of weak on the global stage.

6:11 already Iran has even if the war were to end tomorrow, which it will not,

6:14 that Iran has more control of the trade of moves

6:16 now than it did at the start of the conflict.

6:18 They have shown they can shut at any time

6:19 and the pain that would accompany that to the global economy.

6:22 As Vivian said, the president is in a tough political situation here at home.

6:26 Gas prices are up.

6:27 His poll numbers uh are down.

6:29 Very few of the US military goals

6:31 have actually been accomplished there in Thrron.

6:34 And the president is looking for desperately for an off-ramp,

6:39 some sort of deal here.

6:40 And that's why in part we see him continuing to extend

6:43 the ceasefire even with incidents like this week where clearly,

6:47 you know, there was hostilities, but he won't escalate.

6:49 He keeps pushing it further on.

6:50 Right.

6:50 I'm I'm very interested in how Iran

6:52 is responding to his idiosyncratic methodology here,

6:56 but I'm also interested in in understanding how China is understanding this.

7:01 China's clearly watching this very closely, right?

7:03 And you're talking about how the Iranian economy continues to chug

7:06 along while there's other countries like China continuing to buy that oil.

7:09 This also really complicates the president's upcoming visit to China.

7:12 There's a lot of other conflicting narratives and issues that they

7:16 have to deal with at a time that the US

7:17 and China have other things that they need to be

7:19 talking about that deal directly with the US economy.

7:22 That's a real challenge for the president.

7:24 Right.

7:24 And Vivian, from a defense standpoint,

7:26 obviously the US is uh depleting its stocks

7:30 of weapons that could be used theoretically to defend Taiwan.

7:34 So China has to be looking at that.

7:37 China is definitely looking at that.

7:38 Um realizing also military assets that had

7:41 been stationed in the Asia- Pacific that had

7:43 been shifted to the Middle East so that it could support the war effort in Iran.

7:47 a number of um you know just diverted interests that China sees

7:51 as a door opening and its intense interest in securing its position in Taiwan.

7:56 Um especially since President Trump has not been

7:59 sort of orthodox about wanting to outwardly defend

8:03 the sovereignty of Taiwan even though officials tell

8:05 me that privately the administration's policy hasn't changed.

8:08 He hasn't really been bullish on that because

8:10 he's so keen to maintain good relations with China,

8:13 perhaps um extend some sort of a trade deal with China.

8:16 And so he's looking at the economic the trans transactional opportunities

8:19 with China less so than say the future of Taiwan all

8:25 the while this war in Iran is going on and it really

8:27 opens the door for China to do what it wants to do.

8:30 Peter stipulating that go anyway and that Iran

8:32 could collapse tomorrow and and etc.

8:34 The the story is not done.

8:37 stipulating all that u who in the White House now has a realist

8:45 view of what's going on or realistic view of what's going on in terms

8:50 of the the the duration the impact on America's global standing the weapon

8:56 the the the the depletion of assets etc what's the fight inside the White House

9:01 well I mean you'd have to believe Dan Kaine the chairman

9:02 of the joint chiefs has a pretty realistic view of this thing

9:04 he told them from the beginning it wouldn't be as easy

9:06 as the president said it was he he's getting the numbers.

9:08 He's the he's getting the numbers and he's the one who told the president even

9:11 before the started that the Iran could take

9:13 the straight of horm moves and create problems.

9:14 The president brushed it off according to reports saying well that won't happen.

9:18 They'll collapse before that happens and even if

9:20 they do you guys can take care of it.

9:21 Obviously that's not the case.

9:23 You have to look at JD Vance who

9:24 said from the beginning he didn't want this war.

9:26 He didn't think it was a good idea.

9:28 He has stuck to that even as he has been

9:30 publicly supportive of the president and participated in these peace talks.

9:33 But I think that his point of view looks a little

9:36 stronger in some of these internal uh discussions than this point.

9:39 But he doesn't have an out for them either.

9:41 I don't think that any of them has the clear path

9:44 to a resolution of the war that allows the president to claim

9:47 victory given the things that Jonathan

9:49 just outlined given the intelligent reports

9:51 we've seen saying that they still have most of their ballistic missiles.

9:54 They're still as close to a nuclear weapon as they were when

9:56 the war started and they have increased control over the street of Hormuz.

9:59 What does that look like?

10:00 Right, John?

10:00 When did the president decide that he was done?

10:03 He's been done for a few weeks now.

10:04 I mean, I I mean, the war has only even been gone on for a few weeks.

10:07 Well, the, as you say, a legendary short attention span.

10:09 He thought this would be days.

10:11 Um I mean, he's looking for a deal even now.

10:13 Washington awaits a response to a from Iran on a one-page memorandum,

10:17 which at best is like kicking the can down the road.

10:20 It just extends the ceasefire further.

10:22 They're they're nowhere near any sort of negotiation.

10:24 And it's not clear that Iran is incentivized to deal with him right now.

10:27 That they think, yes, maybe there will be economic pain.

10:30 Maybe the people will suffer.

10:31 Well, the the IRGC running the place don't really care about that.

10:34 They feel like this is a moment to make a stand

10:36 and they are making the president of the United States look weak.

10:40 And Jonathan and I have actually written together that uh you know,

10:43 President Trump explored an off-ramp weeks ago,

10:46 but of Gulf allies in particular had been

10:49 extremely alarmed at the situation that he would have

10:51 been leaving behind had he pulled out a few

10:54 weeks ago because it's right on their doorstep.

10:56 Stay on that.

10:56 if if he continues in the pattern that he's he's going in in the direction

11:00 he's going which is finding any reason in the world not to re-engage

11:06 and even when he has to re-engage calling it a love tap uh

11:09 where does that leave Saudi Arabia United

11:13 Arab Emirates Qatar Israel for that matter

11:16 all of them have been shown the very harsh

11:19 realities of their vulnerabilities with the closure of the straight

11:21 of Hormuz and the inability for them to export oil

11:24 which is their the primary uh generate a fund generator

11:28 for their for their economies and so this has

11:30 been an eye-opening experience for them but beyond that even

11:33 if the straight of Hormuse were to open tomorrow they

11:36 still have to reckon with the fact that Iran's nuclear

11:39 program is still an open question and that is

11:42 not going to be solved anytime soon there could be

11:44 a migrant flow at any moment because of the battering

11:47 that Iran has taken they're right there on their doorstep

11:50 Bahrain is less than 60 kilometers from Iran they have

11:54 a very real the a very harsh reality in front

11:57 of them after this war ends of what the future

12:00 of Iran looks like in the region as a whole.

12:02 One more question on this, Peter.

12:03 I assume this is the subject of your next book in 2029 or whatever,

12:06 but you try to answer it now.

12:08 Pre-order now, but pre-order it.

12:10 Yeah.

12:10 Uh uh but uh h how did this happen given and answer it in 12 seconds if you can.

12:18 How did this happen in the sense that

12:22 Iran is very good over the last four decades?

12:26 decades of messing with American presidents,

12:30 the Iraq war, which was extremely well planned compared to this.

12:36 How how do they just drive right into this

12:41 culde-sac?

12:40 I think what you see here in in his second term is a president who feels

12:44 more comfortable with power and bolden to do

12:46 the things he didn't do in the first term.

12:48 Remember in the first term he launched a strike

12:49 against Iran over a relatively modest uh incident

12:53 and then pulled back 10 minutes before the bombs

12:55 were to hit because he just felt uncomfortable about it.

12:57 This time he feels comfortable.

12:58 He's emboldened by Venezuela.

12:59 He thinks that worked out really well.

13:01 He's emboldened by the strikes last June which did seem to work out pretty well.

13:05 He did it for 12 days.

13:06 No damage much damage anyway to America or its allies.

13:10 And in theory, according to him,

13:11 he obliterated the nuclear program that we now had to go back in and do again.

13:14 So I think he felt emboldened.

13:16 I think he felt um empowered and I think they obviously misjudged

13:20 the the total cost of how this was going to work out.

13:22 Jeff, I'll say one more thing because a former

13:23 US negotiator with Iran put it to me this way.

13:26 There's two different pain right in Iran.

13:28 They are fine to cause pain to their own population.

13:31 That's not an issue for the regime.

13:32 Here the president has to deal with surging energy prices,

13:35 low approval numbers, and midterms.

13:36 In fact, it's interesting.

13:37 Our definition of pain is gas at $450 or $5 a gallon.

13:41 Their definition of pain is mass death.

13:43 But even there,

13:45 the regime does not care about mass death on the part of their their people.

13:48 I'm going to pivot now to landscape design, if you will.

13:53 Um, so yesterday, ABC's Rachel Scott,

13:56 who accompanied the president on this visit to the reflecting

13:59 pool between the Lincoln and the and the Washington Monument,

14:02 asked Trump, uh, you were here against the backdrop of the war in Iran.

14:06 Why focus on all these projects right now?

14:08 projects.

14:08 She meant the fixing the Kennedy Center,

14:12 building an arch near the Arlington Cemetery and and re

14:16 uh repainting the the base of the reflecting pool.

14:20 And then the president insulted Scott in very nasty terms,

14:23 but the question remains, and all of us who cover him know this very well,

14:28 he seems much more engaged in um architecture,

14:33 interior design, exterior design, landscaping, heartscaping.

14:37 um than he is in managing the globe.

14:42 Yeah.

14:42 What what's going on?

14:43 Well, he's a developer at heart.

14:45 Um but I think it's more just his eye towards

14:47 legacy that he does feel like he's looking beyond the midterms.

14:50 He's looking beyond the election.

14:51 He's looking for the history books.

14:53 And I think that is in part connected to Iran.

14:55 He's trying to redraw the world's maps.

14:57 Greenland was like that.

14:58 Venezuela, hey, maybe Cuba next.

15:00 But here in Washington, he's trying to leave his physical imprint.

15:03 That is what he cares about.

15:05 the arch, the ballroom,

15:07 uh now perhaps uh costing the taxpayers a billion dollars.

15:10 Uh and yes, and that's why he's he's so

15:12 sensitive to it because it's not just reporters questions.

15:14 There are Republicans who have raised the same issues.

15:17 You've taken your eye off the ball, uh sir,

15:19 would they say with tears in their eyes,

15:21 uh to say this is not what got you and all of us elected last time around.

15:25 You've you you've misplace what Americans care about.

15:29 Right.

15:28 There's two things going on here.

15:29 Can I just point out one is the president has

15:31 a tendency to attack female reporters in a particularly brutal way.

15:36 Black female reporters in particular.

15:38 Rachel Scott as we all know is a fabulous

15:40 reporter and a wonderful person and doesn't deserve that.

15:42 No one does.

15:43 The other to Jonathan it was particularly nasty.

15:45 It was to Jonathan's point there's two ways

15:48 you can create legacy as a president, right?

15:49 One is through policy.

15:50 President ran on changing the American economy.

15:53 That is not going well.

15:54 seems like he's leaning into the part that he can control,

15:57 which is this idea of monument to self with a build oval office,

16:01 a paved over rose garden, his name on buildings.

16:04 I want to I want to stay along this theme about

16:06 the president and and the way he's evolving uh in this term.

16:11 There was this very odd encounter in the White House this week.

16:13 It was an event about youth fitness.

16:15 Um and the president had this to say to a group of young people.

16:20 Just watch this.

16:21 We would have had a ran an Iran with a nuclear

16:25 weapon and maybe we wouldn't all be here right now.

16:28 I can tell you the Middle East would have been gone.

16:30 Israel would have been gone and they would have trade

16:33 their sights on Europe first and then us because they're sick people.

16:38 These are sick people.

16:39 And we're not going to let lunatics have a nuclear weapon.

16:43 The power of a nuclear weapon is something I don't even want to talk about.

16:48 It's not going to happen.

16:51 Vivian, the the sense of appropriateness is is is interesting here.

16:55 Um, I want to ask you about it, but I I want to read something that Peter

17:01 wrote last month, and you could comment on it.

17:03 I love that.

17:04 I know you get the chance to like comment on Peter.

17:06 Peter wrote Peter wrote, "Democrats who have long challenged Mr.

17:10 Trump's psychological fitness have issued a fresh fresh chorus of calls

17:13 to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from power for disability.

17:17 But it is not just a concern voiced by partisans on the left,

17:19 late night comics, or mental health professionals making long-distant diagnosis.

17:23 It can be heard now among retired generals, diplomats, and foreign officials.

17:27 And most strikingly, it can be heard now on the political

17:29 right among one-time allies of the president.

17:33 Um that was Peter writing uh last month.

17:38 You watch is always right.

17:39 You watch the that's not true.

17:41 Um but well, that'll be the subject of our next episode.

17:43 Um, but I want I I I I talk about that particular episode.

17:49 It's this the sense of appropriateness of place of of being

17:53 totally discordant of talking about nuclear

17:56 destruction with a group of eight-year-olds.

17:57 What What are we seeing these days?

18:00 Most of us have been in the room with the president where we see that he tends

18:03 to kind of drift into his own thoughts oftentimes

18:06 um often out loud regardless of who's in the room.

18:09 Um he goes on tangents.

18:11 He has questioned the existence of Santa Claus

18:14 in front of children uh visiting the White House.

18:16 So, this is not particularly surprising,

18:18 but you could see it is definitely um a good uh window into his thought process.

18:24 Not only was he talking about the Iran war and potentially,

18:27 you know, nuclear uh war as a result of the Iran war,

18:31 he also um went into a riff about how he um made peace

18:36 in eight different countries and yet he was deprived of the Nobel Peace Prize.

18:39 All the while these children were looking around the room

18:42 completely distracted a by the grandeur of the Oval Office,

18:45 the gold grandeur of the Oval Office and also um just the fact that they had

18:49 no idea what he was talking about and it's just a frame of mind at this point,

18:52 right?

18:53 Seeing a yeah a difference in in in the quality of thinking or appropriateness.

18:58 He also asked one of the kids if he thought he could take him in a fight.

19:00 Uh I mean that that's where this was.

19:02 He whether it's changed or not, I'm not sure.

19:05 It's may have certainly people do think he has,

19:07 but at the very least he's even less burdened.

19:10 Not that he ever was burdened to like keep a thought to himself.

19:12 Yeah.

19:13 Uh you know, wherever he is, he feels like I'm in charge.

19:16 I can say what I want.

19:17 I don't care who's here.

19:18 And I also think he doesn't suffer any sort of consequence.

19:20 He doesn't even have an aid afterwards telling him, "Sure,

19:22 you shouldn't have said that." Like that just doesn't happen.

19:24 Yeah.

19:24 You could find episodes obviously in his first term,

19:26 you could find plenty, you know, to to raise questions about stability.

19:30 But I think what is uh striking is it happening more and more, right?

19:34 I every week seems to bring another example of people look

19:36 at that and they they scratch their head and say my goodness what

19:39 is that because of decline or because there's no John Kelly or Jim Madison

19:42 it could be both right but there's a clearly a lack

19:45 of inhibition right you know in fact none of us

19:47 is a medical professional but there is a term called

19:49 disinhibition which increases with age and you see other things uh

19:52 that have increased in the second term more use of profanity

19:55 he speaks longer uh and obviously he is less uh

20:00 uh inhibited from doing some of the things he talked

20:02 about doing the first term but didn't actually follow through on.

20:04 Now he's following through on them.

20:06 Maybe because he doesn't have a John Kelly or a Jim Mattis or an HR McMaster.

20:10 Maybe because he's looking at his legacy and thinking

20:12 about uh what history will remember about him, right?

20:14 His 80th birthday is a month away, right?

20:16 Um I I want to pivot to I mean maybe

20:19 this is a dissentition question in a in a kind of way,

20:22 but you know there's always drama around uh his cabinet, his top officials.

20:28 Uh, as you all know, The Atlantic has been reporting on Cash Patel,

20:31 the head of the FBI for the past several weeks, raising concerns.

20:34 Uh, people around Patel,

20:35 people in the FBI raising concerns about erratic behavior,

20:38 about excessive drinking charges he's denied.

20:41 Obviously, he's also filed suit against us.

20:43 Um, and and this week,

20:45 our reporter Sarah Fitzpatrick reported that Patel um has been

20:48 commissioning and distributing cash uh cash Patel branded uh bourbon bottles.

20:55 Um and uh here's here's one of them actually.

20:59 Uh this is something that uh we acquired.

21:02 This is the first use of a prop

21:04 on Washington week in approximately 60 years by the way.

21:07 I can give you his

21:08 uh No, we are not discussing where this came from, but it is real.

21:11 It is absolutely real.

21:13 Um and John, let's talk about um how this sort of behavior

21:19 and these kind of stories in another kind of administration would be dealt with.

21:22 Oh, I mean he would have been gone long ago.

21:24 I mean for the and not just well beyond we got to this particular

21:27 moment and it is a magnificent prop there in front of you Jeeoff.

21:30 Thank you very much.

21:31 Um you know but even in Trump 1.0

21:34 he probably wouldn't have had patience for this.

21:36 We know was prone to a lot of turnover.

21:39 This time we have seen a few dismissals just in the last couple

21:41 of months but his first year was very much the no scalps policy.

21:45 Don't let the media get a win.

21:46 Don't let Democrats say you should fire this person and then do so.

21:50 Um, and I think with Cash Patel, though we should be clear,

21:52 there's not exactly been a viciferous defense

21:54 from the president for the FBI director,

21:57 but he also still has his job despite questions about about his job performance,

22:02 including raised within the ranks of the FBI.

22:05 Right.

22:05 Right.

22:06 Omna, um, give us your sense of this tension

22:10 in the White House between no scalps, I'm not firing anyone,

22:14 versus people who are highly controversial and diversionary.

22:19 Well, I think that's a calculation the president

22:21 has to make person by person, right?

22:23 The the folks along the way where he has changed path on immigration,

22:27 for example, at DHS,

22:28 pulling Gregory Bo from the field and replacing him with Tom Holman,

22:32 the the effort to have Mr.

22:34 Bovina out in front was a very aggressive sort of messaging

22:37 machismo sort of take no prisoners approach to immigration enforcement.

22:41 When that backfired and that he faced backlash from the public in particular,

22:45 there was a replacement there.

22:47 And so I think in some ways if there is

22:49 a line to be drawn or one we should be looking

22:51 for, it's when there is that kind of backlash and more

22:53 of a public sentiment shift that the president is responsive.

22:56 I want to shift to another topic although I'm going to leave

22:59 the bottle here because it goes so well with the table.

23:01 Uh the the Virginia Supreme Court struck down a congressional

23:05 map that would have added four Democratic seats in Congress.

23:08 It's obviously a big win for the Republicans.

23:11 Uh John, 2026 is really turning into the hunger games of redistricting.

23:16 Yeah, started with the president asking Texas to do so.

23:19 Uh we saw Democrats respond with California and then it's been tit for tat.

23:24 It is an arms race if you will.

23:26 Um and this was a de Democrats were

23:28 really invested both financially but also psychologically in Virginia.

23:32 So that was seen as a real blow today uh for that.

23:35 And then you on top of that we of course have a decision

23:37 from the Supreme Court last week which has now given a green light

23:40 to seemingly most of the South to suddenly try to redistrict uh all

23:44 all of their congressions as well from Alabama to to Florida and beyond.

23:48 Right.

23:48 Uh Vivian in Indiana Trump just had a big victory in the primaries.

23:52 He wanted to knock off some state senators,

23:56 Republican state senators who did not go along with the redistricting map.

23:59 And and that seems to show us that he's got some juice.

24:04 Yeah, he's still got some juice within

24:05 the party for for sure and especially in certain

24:07 parts of the country where they do

24:09 believe that Trump's support is the ultimate support.

24:12 And so for them, you know,

24:14 siding with Trump's chosen candidates against who those who

24:18 have supported his agenda was a priority regardless

24:21 of whether or not in some cases you

24:23 had these lawmakers that were there for for decades.

24:25 Um they they did not fare as well and it's

24:29 because they spoke out against redistricting other political priorities.

24:32 What Peter, last word to you.

24:34 What what does uh what does 2026 or 2028

24:37 look like if this trend continues in terms of polarization?

24:40 Yeah, I mean you can understand why Democrats decided to respond to Republicans,

24:44 but basically the bottom line of this is

24:46 we have made Jerry mandering even worse.

24:49 The polarization that has been afflicting our politics now for some

24:52 years will only get worse because you're going to have seats

24:55 that are all uh conservative or all liberal and you're not

24:58 going to have people having any incentive to move to the middle.

25:01 Well, fascinating conversation.

25:03 We are going to have to leave it there for now.

25:05 Thank you for joining me at the Woodford Reserve.

25:07 Uh, thank you to our guests for joining me

25:09 and thank you at home for for watching us.

25:11 For more on what the president really thinks of the Iran War,

25:14 please read John's story at theat atlantic.com.

25:17 I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

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