Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

So back in the day, N. Gingrich understood something that Donald Trump doesn't understand.

Gingrich's speakership was short and tumultuous and ultimately unsuccessful.

But he knew that there was more than one flavor of Republican Congress.

And so he famously gave moderate and progressive Republicans some running room and some forgiveness when they disagreed with him.

But President Trump values only loyalty.

And Senators Tom Tillis, Bill Cassidy, and John Cornin apparently didn't give him enough of that.

Now they're on the way out of the Senate and they owe nothing, less than nothing really, to the president.

Already they've been showing signs of defiance.

Joining me tonight to discuss this and more, Steven Hayes, the CEO and editor of the Dispatch.

Annie Linsky is a White House reporter at the Wall Street Journal.

Michael Sheer is a staff writer and a White House correspondent at The Atlantic.

Makes you sound very busy.

And Nancy Ysef is a staff writer and a Pentagon correspondent at The Atlantic.

Also very busy.

Thank you all for joining me.

We're going to do this is going to be like one of those Jeopardy poperri.

It's going to be a lot of stuff.

So, we're going to get to a lot of stuff tonight.

Um Steve, let's start with you.

The president got his immigration bill through, but he's having more and more trouble uh keeping Republican senators in in line.

What gives?

Well, I mean, the first point that has to be made and that we've discussed on this very show many times, this is not this is not new frustration with Donald Trump.

It's emerging frustration with Donald Trump.

A lot of these Republicans who are now voicing their frustration and willing to speak out have been frustrated with him behind the scenes in some cases for a decade.

They're now just more willing to talk about I think there are two primary reasons.

One, they're deeply offended by Trump's choice to endorse Ken Paxton in Texas over John Cornin.

They like John Cornin.

They raised money for John Cornin.

They've known him for years and they think he was going to win.

They're worried about Ken Paxton.

They know that it makes it less likely that Republicans will keep the Senate because that money is going to be flowing to other states.

It's going to be sucked to Texas instead of flowing to other states.

And then the second thing is he's asking them to publicly defend more and more preposterous things.

this, you know, whether it's the ballroom and the changing of funding in the ballroom, firing the parliamentarian, whether it's um the the slush fund, $1.776 billion dollar of a slush fund that they know was going to go at least in part to the people who attacked the capital and tried to attack them on January 6th.

Nobody wants to defend that.

They're sick of it.

They're done.

So, between those two things, I think they're sort of let's let's go.

Let's done.

I mean, Annie, what what does Dunn look like in the next six months?

How far do these YOLO guys go?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, one thing I will say is one major thing that changed is three of those members, three of those Republicans that have suddenly become quite eager to voice publicly and vote against the president in some cases have been pushed out by the president.

And that's a group that, you know, some people are in DC called the Yolo Caucus.

It turns out um in the Senate they call themselves the Wounded Bear Caucus.

Dangerous.

Wounded bear is very dangerous.

A wounded bear is very dangerous.

I call him the Janice Joplain.

Oh, okay.

Caucus.

Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.

Oh, I love it.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

But they're they're they have, you know, the next six months they're they have the ability to make life difficult for Donald Trump, particularly around his nominations.

I mean, he may want to replace some cabinet members.

In fact, he has wanted to replace some cabinet members and they suddenly have a um sort of more they can be a little more uh demanding in what they want.

What else can they do?

Michael, when the president put out budget this year uh for 2027, there was $10 billion for the Interior Department for DC beautifification.

10 billion with a B. When the House just referred the bill up, the appropriators, they had zero for that.

I mean, there's a lot of spending stuff that's going to be happening.

Um, and it like we saw with the with the uh uh the fund for the Justice Department.

I think Cassidy and Cornin know the Senate.

They know the rules.

We haven't mentioned Mitch McConnell who's on his way out knows it better than anybody else.

He's a permanent yolo now, right?

We have Susan Collins.

We have Lisa Marowski.

We have Ran Paul on foreign policy.

I mean that like it's it's a big group and we're talking about a Senate with just a a very small margin.

Then we haven't talked about the House.

the the House had a vote this week where four Republicans broke with the president, basically a symbolic vote saying that he needs an authorization for use of force in Iran if he wants to go back back to fighting that war.

But but I think it's breaking down in the House as well.

And and the amazing if you talk to Senate Republican leaders, uh they will s just be amazed at how unforced this error was.

you know, he didn't need to put himself at this sort of premature lame duck status at this point in his right.

Well, that's the point about giving people a little bit of room to maneuver, but that's not I mean, you you you both cover this guy every day.

I mean, that's not his move.

Absolute loyalty is the move, right?

Right.

I mean, he has held a grudge against Cornin for quite a while now.

and um you know he had signaled that he was going to endorse Cornin.

I think that's what makes it so much more difficult for Cornin's colleagues is what the signal was there that Cornin was going to have the endorsement and then for Trump to um go ahead and go with Paxton was just this big sort of nuclear bomb that went off in this Senate which still is collegial and that that caused just this uh you know heart hurting for days and days.

Not just those yolo members as well.

I mean, you know, John Thun, who's not going to ever go nuclear the way that Tom Tillis, for instance, did has made very clear that he's not happy with some of the things the president has done in his very understated way, like, oh, I'm just learning about this.

This is new to me.

I don't understand what the purpose of the slush fund was.

Or Tom Cotton when he was asked about this nomination of Bill Py to be the acting director of national intelligence.

Cotton, who's chairman of the intelligence committee, said, "I have no observations on this matter."

Um that he didn't say a lot.

He didn't need to go sort of nuclear, but he made very clear what he thinks.

Yeah.

Nancy, I think it's notable though on the Paxton um support that that came after it was clear that he was going to win and and a signal of Trump trying to show his continued influence on the party even though the the the the race was already going the way it ended up going.

So, it's interesting that he's both affecting.

Were we 100% sure that Paxton was going to win without that endorsement?

I don't I I think it was going Yeah.

So, he was you're just saying he was just getting on the winning horse.

Well, I just think it's interesting that he's both sort of creating these fissures within his party and at the same time trying to show that he has influence anytime he can leverage um that sort of message whether it's actually affecting the outcome of the elections or not.

But ultimately mean ultimately it means Republicans are going to have to defend you know Paxton and that is what Republicans some Republican strategists are calling it like a hundred million dollar mistake like they will have to put a lot of money into Right.

Right.

Nancy go back to the point uh being made earlier on the war powers.

U how does this loosening of loyalty affect the Iran war and whatever Cuba Greenland whatever he's planning in in the near future.

Well, Michael's right.

The vote itself was largely symbolic, but it comes at a time when the president is trying to negotiate with Iran has really struggled to reach a deal and the idea that we're starting to see fissures within his own party, I think potentially gives Iran some leverage in terms of pushing for um a deal that is more favorable to them.

What's been interesting throughout this is that we've seen the president really toggle between trying to end this war as quickly as possible and also um get some wide reaching headline grabbing um outcome out of it.

And so if you're the Iranians and you're seeing these these splits start to happen within the president's own party, they might see that as an opportunity to push for things like greater control over the straits or um greater economic relief.

Right.

Um, Annie, before I I I I jump to Iran because I want to talk about the current status of the war.

Not that anybody understands the current status of the war, but we're going to try.

Annie, I just wanted to ask you very quickly.

Um, what is what does a Trump presidency look like if the House does go Democratic or the Senate goes Democratic?

We've we've talked about this, too.

This idea of Democrats having a subpoena cannon ready to go.

I mean, those subpoenas and the investigations are coming if the Democrats win.

I mean, my sense is they are drafted and there's a very clear target list for Democrats.

So, it becomes a very different Washington for for Trump.

He's had two years of being in full control and um he's going to have a much nastier legal fights and so are his allies, which also makes things harder, right?

Um