LISA DESJARDINS: President Biden unites NATO leaders as Republicans complicate critical defense funding at home.
JOE BIDEN, U.S. President: Our alliance is more united than ever.
We're stronger.
NATO makes the entire world stronger.
LISA DESJARDINS: President Biden notches significant wins at a historic NATO summit, negotiating a deal that expands the alliance and smoothing over tensions surrounding Ukraine's future paths to membership.
Plus -- REP. KEVIN MCCARTHY (R-CA): A military cannot defend themselves if you train them in woke.
We don't want Disneyland to train our military.
LISA DESJARDINS: -- House Speaker Kevin McCarthy navigates a turbulent week after right wing Republicans add culture war issues to typically bipartisan legislation.
The result could spell problems for the future of the musk pass defense bill, next.
Good evening, and welcome to WASHINGTON WEEK.
I'm Lisa Desjardins.
Tonight, President Biden is back in the country after a historic trip to Europe.
He recorded some potentially legacy-building wins, including the expansion of NATO and increased support for Ukraine.
On Thursday, he wrapped up his three country swing in Helsinki.
JOE BIDEN: This week, we affirmed how Finland and United States, together with allies and partners, are working in lockstep to set us on a stronger, safer and more secure path, not just for Europe, not just for NATO, but for the world.
LISA DESJARDINS: The President helped change the NATO map, welcoming Finland as a full member and convincing Turkey's president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to allow Sweden to join as well.
But Biden left Ukraine and its president wanting, refusing to push for NATO membership for them now, but reaffirming a pledge that Ukraine will eventually be invited to join the alliance.
Joining me to discuss this and more, Leigh Ann Caldwell, Anchor at Washington Post Live and co-author of The Post's Early 202, Francesca Chambers, White House Correspondent for USA Today, Nia-Malika Henderson, Senior Political Analyst at CNN, and Scott Wong, Senior Congressional Reporter for NBC News.
Let's jump right into this whole what's going on with NATO.
I want to ask you, Francesca, since you were kind enough, you might still be in the other time zone to join us tonight after just flying back, can you tell us, take us into the summit exactly and how important was this, both for NATO and for President Biden?
FRANCESCA CHAMBERS, White House Correspondent, USA Today: So, just as the NATO summit was beginning you saw President Zelenskyy of Ukraine send out this tweet.
He was very frustrated because he had gotten word that what NATO allies were agreeing to was not membership for Ukraine or even an invitation to membership for Ukraine.
Now, we had known before this that they were not going to be invited to join NATO at the summit but he had said if they didn't get some strong signals on that front that he may not even come.
So, he sends this tweet saying that he's on his way because he doesn't want this to be discussed with him not in the room.
He gets there and he finds out from G7 members that they're coming up with this alternative long-term security guarantees that President Biden and the U.S. have really been spearheading.
But as you noted, that's not what he wanted.
They hoped to get the NATO membership invitation that they can use in the future to help deter Russian aggression.
Instead what they got were these individual security guarantees from the U.S. and other nations.
LISA DESJARDINS: Sticking with you, the Biden administration is touting bringing in Sweden negotiating kind of a three-dimensional chess game there with Turkey and Greece and a lot of sort of long-held difficult dynamics, that was a win for them.
But was that really them underpromising and overdelivering or was that really a surprise from the summit?
FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: So, last year there had already been an agreement for both Sweden and Finland to be able to join, Finland was able to move forward.
And then you didn't see that for Sweden until the eve of the summit leading up to that.
President Biden on his way to Europe had more than hour-long conversation with Erdogan.
You also saw the NATO secretary-general having conversations on the eve of the summit, really trying to get this deal done and get it out of the way leading into it.
You also saw other U.S. officials talking to their counterparts too.
It really went down to the wire right before the NATO summit, though.
LISA DESJARDINS: So much drama.
Leigh Ann, what do you think was the legacy of this NATO summit for President Biden?
LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, Anchor, Washington Post Live: So, I think for President Biden it was a really good summit for him.
I think it was a good week for President Biden.
I think even heading in, even though there was a lot of drama regarding Sweden, heading into it being on Capitol Hill, members and people were very skeptical that Sweden -- that he was going to be able to get it done with Turkey and Sweden.
And he was, we think, able to do it.
We'll see if the plane actually lands there.
But I think that what this does is that it re-solidifies President Biden as being able to manage this international crisis.
And I think that it comes at a time where you look two years ago in the withdrawal of Afghanistan as one of the lowest points of President Biden's presidencies.
And I think that this is on the other side when it comes to international affairs.
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON, Senior Political Analyst, CNN: And I think if you look back a few months ago when the GOP took over the House, there was a sense of whether or not there would be a sort of declining support among the GOP and among just the general public, declining support for this Ukrainian war effort.
And if you look at polls, there's broad support for this effort.
It's something like 60 percent, even though there's billions and billions of dollars going into that.
So, I think being strong at home also, I think, helps him his hand abroad, being able to go to the NATO members and really bolster this case that NATO has to stand strong with Ukraine.
So, listen, if you look back to why people wanted Biden to be president, one of the reasons was that he was strong on foreign policy.
It's one of the reasons Obama wanted him to be his vice president.
LISA DESJARDINS: It's how he got the gig.
HENDERSON: Exactly.
It's how he got the vice presidential gig.
And then I think the presidential gig as well.
And so there, I think, if you're the White House, you're looking at a pretty successful summit.
But, in fact, he didn't make any real mistakes, right?
Because there have been times when he's been overseas where there are sort of gaffes or maybe what could be construed as senior moments.
You didn't have that with this.
LISA DESJARDINS: Is that the bar, though, no mistakes?
That's how we are?
Scott, we talk to House Democrats all the time on the Hill.
And behind the scenes, they're really not quite sure about Biden.
Some of them are, some of them aren't.
But what did this summit do for your Hill sources, Democrats, do you think?
SCOTT WONG, Senior Congressional Reporter, NBC News: As you know, Lisa, there has been grumbling among Senate and House Democrats about Biden's age, does he have the stamina to be president for another four years.
He's 80 years old.
And so I think what this week showed is that he can deliver.
I talked to a number of Democrats on the Hill, Veronica Escobar, who serves on armed service.
She called it an overwhelming success.
She said, look, there's something to the fact that this man is a seasoned leader.
He was able to close a deal and help get, you know, Sweden and Finland part of NATO and really grow NATO.
Dick Durbin said, look, NATO is bigger and stronger now and this is a bad week for Vladimir Putin.
LISA DESJARDINS: Zelenskyy, he obviously -- this is an existential question for him.
How much support can President Biden deliver for him, to use Scott's words?
And there is divide on the Hill.
You were one of the few reporters that was able to ask questions of President Zelenskyy there at the summit.
How is he trying to convince skeptics here in America that we should continue to invest in supporting Ukraine?
FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: So, after that initial tweet, where, again, he was very, very frustrated and said that, you know, it was unprecedented for them not to issue this invitation.
We heard him talking much softer tone once he got to the NATO summit, very, very grateful to the American people for all of their support.
And he expressed that again when he talked to President Biden.
And when I had the exchange with him at that news conference, he defended the use of cluster munitions because those have been controversial because of their tendency to cause civilian casualties and said that Russia had been using them all along.
They had been using them going back to 2014 when they invaded Crimea.
And that, basically, they want fairness that he said, quote, we are defending ourselves here.
But it has created some controversy in the United States because the people who are coming out against it primarily are Democrats, progressives within President Biden's own party.
You have many Republicans actually siding with President Biden.
They have said all along that they think he's getting weapons to Ukraine too slowly.
They would like to see him send more aggressive weaponry.
This was one of the things that President Zelenskyy said he would be talking to President Biden about in the meeting is getting more of the long range weapons as well.
LISA DESJARDINS: These are some strange dynamics here, yes, Leigh Ann.
LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: So, I was just going to jump in on and say, on the one hand, those Republicans who are on Biden's side on that issue, but then you see over the past couple of days they were debating the National Defense Authorization Act and you saw amendments where Republicans were trying to strip all sorts of support for Ukraine and we got the clearest sense yet how big that coalition is.
There were 70 Republicans who voted to stop helping Ukraine.
And, of course, it's not a majority, but that's still significant.
And so it's going to continue to be a challenge, especially since with the security agreement they promised to continue to help Ukraine, humanitarian, military aid and that has to go through Congress.
LISA DESJARDINS: Nia, how did we get to this point where now we have many Republicans who do not want to support sort of what would usually be a cold war move against Russia, a former adversary, continued adversary, versus there's Democrats who do support more military, with some exceptions, with the cluster bomb exception.
But how did this dynamic fall (ph).
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON: Yes.
I think the answer is Donald Trump.
I mean, he sort of, I think, scrambled the decks in terms of Republican stance on Russia, on Putin, on foreign policy, on foreign intervention and war.
I mean, his rhetoric about Putin often suggested that he wanted to be best friends with Putin.
Even when this started, he seemed to sort of side with Putin in terms of the invasion of Ukraine.
And so you have people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and even at sometimes presidential candidates saying, well, this is just a territorial dispute.
America needs to focus on its own border.
We don't need to be sending money to Ukraine to protect their border.
So, I think this sort of starts with Donald Trump's rhetoric in 2016 and his rhetoric in office about foreign engagement, about international alliances as well.
He's very skeptical of NATO.
And so this is what we have.
LISA DESJARDINS: We're about to talk more about House Republicans, but, Scott, one more question on this front.
What do you think are the prospects on the Hill for Ukraine support?
Senators seem to think a supplemental will happen.
The House thinks, no way.
SCOTT WONG: Yes.
One of the more fascinating aspects of the Ukraine's angle is that Marjorie Taylor Greene was leading the charge, trying to block funding for Ukraine.
Kevin McCarthy just named her as a member of the negotiating committee between the House and the Senate on this big defense policy bill, which is going to set policy on Ukraine.
She's going to have a big voice in that room as they negotiate Ukraine funding in the future.
LISA DESJARDINS: That will make it easier.
FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: And just what I was going to say one brief thing.
Senator Thom Tillis, who was at the NATO summit, told me that he thinks there will need to be another supplemental bill on Ukraine if they're going to have the money to be able to fight in this counteroffensive.
But I think it was really important to note, there was a bipartisan group of senators who was at the NATO summit, and one of the things that they pushed was to get more U.S. allies to pay up more money.
They think that that will help to get more of these House Republicans on board.
LISA DESJARDINS: All right.
Well, back in Washington, there was a win for members of the hard line House Freedom Caucus after they pressured Speaker McCarthy to add controversial amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act.
That gets mentioned a lot tonight.
McCarthy again proved he can pass big bills with close margins and so far keep rebellion at bay.
KEVIN MCCARTHY: Radical programs that are forced our troops at the expense of a readiness are now eliminated.
LISA DESJARDINS: The bill includes bans on racial diversity programs at the Pentagon and the military paying for gender affirming care or to cover travel for any service member seeking an abortion.
Most House Democrats are furious.
REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): MAGA Republicans have hijacked a bipartisan bill that is essential to our national security in order to jam their extreme right wing ideology down the throats of the American people.
LISA DESJARDINS: The Senate version will be very different.
What McCarthy may have gained with the right could jeopardize the defense bill's ultimate passage.
Leigh Ann why do we talk so much about this bill, the NDAA?
Why is it so important?
LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: It's a great question, because I feel like when we write about it, we don't even explain what it is.
It is this massive bill.
It doesn't directly fund the government, but it sets the policy.
It touches every single member or every single aspect of a service member's life and their families.
It's about war preparation, weapons of systems.
It's about health care.
It's about housing.
It's about everything that encompasses the military.
And so it's an extremely important bill.
And so this sets a policy so that when they go to fund the government, they know what they're actually funding.
LISA DESJARDINS: Now, Scott, we were all watching this bill very closely.
It did pass, narrowly, 219 votes.
It got -- there were some party switchers, a few, on both sides.
But what did this whole week tell you about Speaker McCarthy and the relative power of the Freedom Caucus or the part of the Freedom Caucus that is negotiating?
SCOTT WONG: Well, they are able -- the Freedom Caucus and the conservative hardliners are able to dictate to McCarthy what they want in these House Republican packages.
We saw this with the debt ceiling.
They were able to attach a number of provisions to the debt ceiling package and pass that through the House.
It's happening here.
It happened here with the Defense Authorization Act.
And it will happen later this year when we deal with the spending fight because those same House conservatives are demanding steep, steep cuts, pre-COVID level spending, as they struggle to fund the government and avert a shutdown.
And so it's the exact same dynamic we've seen time and time again.
How McCarthy has responded is by sort of punting the hard issues down the road in order to survive as speaker of the House.
And he has done this.
He had a perilous way of getting to the speakership initially, and he is constantly under threat of losing that speakership.
And so his sort of strategy is to push all those difficult issues down the road and to live another day.
LISA DESJARDINS: It's not just the speaker's identity, too.
It's sort of the American identity was intertwined with this debate as well, Republicans pushing against what they call woke mindset they see from Democrats.
But we also heard one of the Republicans on the floor use the term colored people.
He said he misspoke.
It was stricken from the record.
But, Nia, I noticed this week you wrote about Senator Tommy Tuberville in the Senate side and who this week, after repeatedly saying white nationalists are Americans and stopping there, he did say white nationalists are racist.
It was after continued questioning.
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON: Yes.
LISA DESJARDINS: But what do all of these kind of lines tell you about the direction of the Republican Party right now and their agenda?
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON: I think this tells us that in 2024, we're going to have a Republican Party that runs very fiercely on culture war issues, which I think that's sort of a euphemism.
They're sort of really about rights and equality in sort of civil rights war is really what it is.
You're going to have a party that, in 2024, runs much further to the right on LGBTQ issues than they did in 2016, right?
And you see some of this rhetoric, I think, in this NDAA bill around transgender folks and whether or not they should have a right to get care, whether or not women should have equal access to abortion if they're in a southern state.
So, I think that's what it tells us.
I mean, if you even think about somebody like Donald Trump, I mean, he was fairly moderate, I think, on issues of LGBTQ in 2016.
And now he's someplace different.
Partly he was pushed there by people like Ron DeSantis, people who we heard from today on this NDAA bill.
So, these issues of race and identity, of whiteness and blackness and LGBTQ identity, they're going to be front and center for 2024 among Republicans.
They think this is an issue that they can really win on.
LISA DESJARDINS: Francesca something else House Republicans have been trying to run on is the idea of oversight, and that includes a lot of investigations.
We saw the FBI director on the Hill this week.
I sat in that hearing.
I didn't really hear a lot.
That was new there.
Republicans, though, say they're very serious about these efforts, including maybe impeaching the secretary of Homeland Security.
Does the White House take this seriously?
How does the White House see this kind of move by Republicans?
FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: Well, and they've been saying that they were running on that in the last election.
So that's not especially, I think, surprising to the White House.
And they have been responding to some of what's going on the Hill by - - actually, by not responding to it this week.
Indeed, they wanted the spotlight to be on President Biden and on his accomplishments on this trip.
Part of it is, in some ways, because there weren't the typical White House press briefings where you'd hear these issues come up on the domestic side.
But it was intentional this week that the White House didn't talk about some of the things that you saw happening on the Hill with the legislation.
They also think that there's time that you're going to go into August recess.
There's probably not going to be an agreement on the NDAA bill.
You're going to come back from that.
And, yes, there's a very short amount of time, potentially, after lawmakers come back after the August recess.
But there is time.
So, essentially, they're not sweating some of these things quite yet.
LISA DESJARDINS: That makes sense.
Scott, everyone, we are at the sixth month mark for this House Republican McCarthy era, the era that he's thought of for so long.
Scott, how would you look at the way they have governed and sort of the pledge that they said that we will govern?
How has it turned out?
SCOTT WONG: I think there were very low expectations for Kevin McCarthy heading into this.
There were a lot of people that didn't even think he could secure the Speaker's gavel.
He did it.
There were a lot of people that thought he would fail at raising the debt ceiling, at passing a number of their energy bill, their immigration bill.
He has hit the mark every single time by cobbling together his very fragile majority conservatives, moderates, bringing everyone together.
It has not always ended up the final product and a lot of those things have not always ended up where the conservatives like them.
And that's what I was sort of alluding to before, is that at some point, the rubber is going to meet the road, and he's going to have a major showdown with those same conservatives that were trying to block him from the speakership initially.
It likely will come with this government funding fight in September and heading into the fall.
Right now, he's enjoying himself.
He's loving being speaker of the House.
But, again -- LISA DESJARDINS: I know you said we've both seen him.
He loves taking photos of tourists.
SCOTT WONG: Exactly.
And he was doing that yesterday.
In fact, he had created sort of a selfie line allowing tourists to come get your photo with the speaker of the House.
So, it was very strange and bizarre.
But he is living in the speakership day by day.
LISA DESJARDINS: We're going to come right back to that idea of the spending battle ahead.
But, Leigh Ann, I want to get to Marjorie Taylor Greene and where she fits into the Kevin McCarthy sort of plotline here.
As Scott reported, she will be, we believe, on the conference committee for the Defense Authorization bill.
She's not in the Freedom Caucus anymore.
She is now with Kevin McCarthy.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, an establishment Republican, like what's happening?
LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: Not only is she in the establishment Republican, but this week, Kevin McCarthy also hosted a fundraiser for her.
Now, Marjorie Taylor Greene usually raises money from the rebels, the small dollar donors.
She was in Washington, D.C. with some of the biggest donors and people -- the swamp.
LISA DESJARDINS: The swamp.
LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: She is now officially part of The Swamp, and she has done that strategically in order to gain prominence, gain power within the conference, and become an ally of Kevin McCarthy.
It's a similar path to what Jim Jordan did, and we saw how that was a mutually beneficial relationship.
Kevin McCarthy and Marjorie Taylor Greene's relationship is also mutually beneficial.
Marjorie Taylor Greene is not riling up the troops against Kevin McCarthy at this point.
She has lost her seat in the Freedom Caucus because of it.
But I think she feels like she's much more important with a seat next to Kevin McCarthy.
And so the fact that she has a seat on this conference committee, it is going to be fascinating, because what happens in this NDAA conference committee, nothing gets added into this bill.
This is the final product after the House passes theirs and the Senate passes theirs, unless the two top -- the Republican and Democrat from the House and Senate Armed Services Committees can agree.
And so I don't know how much sway Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to have in this conference committee.
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON: Yes.
But, I mean, one of the things her ascent means is that her ideas become sort of mainstream and establishment, too, right?
I mean, if you think about Marjorie Taylor Greene, somebody who is essentially a fringe figure, kind of a conspiracy theorist, and the fact that she's sort of working hand in glove now with Kevin McCarthy in the establishment, I think, suggests that some of these ideas also might have more sway as well.
LISA DESJARDINS: All right.
In the last minute, we have left or two that, I want to talk about the Road ahead, because it looks perilous to me, to use Scott's word from earlier if the Defense Authorization bill is really necessary in order to help appropriators get the spending bills going, and we know that there are a great deal of ropes tied to this particular spending process right now.
So, I want to ask, first of all, each of you, I'm just going to go around quickly, do you think that we could be facing a government shutdown?
Because, increasingly, my sources think that they will.
Nia?
NIA-MALIKA HENDERSON: Yes, I think so, given the makeup of the House GOP and the different sort of factions in Kevin McCarthy's tenuous grip on power, absolutely, I think this could happen.
LISA DESJARDINS: Francesca, is the White House feeling worried?
FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: The White House's line at this point is that they expect them to meet the commitments in the debt deal.
LISA DESJARDINS: I left it with the congressional reporters, because we've seen a lot of these fights.
What is your sense about where we are with a possible shutdown?
SCOTT WONG: Well, I think there's going to be a shutdown, and that's based on the fact that we have seen several shutdowns over the past decade, and everyone knows that the world didn't blow up.
The sun still rose the next day.
And so they may have a shutdown.
Whether it's days or weeks, we don't know yet.
LISA DESJARDINS: Do you think in October?
SCOTT WONG: Yes.
I think heading into this next deadline, right after -- LEIGN ANN CALDWELL: Well, Kevin McCarthy has a choice to make.
Is he going to govern and fund the government and not concede to the far right, which he has done over and over again throughout his speakership, or is he going to concede to them?
And if he does, then there will be a government shutdown.
LISA DESJARDINS: Right, because you can't square that circle.
What he would give to them is nothing that would pass the Senate or get the president's signature.
There's no way in that.
So, yes.
Does that end up being good for the president possibly?
That's what we're looking for.
We're looking for that circle.
That's what the House, what he would give to them is nothing that would pass the Senate or get the president signature.
There's no way in that.
That's right.
Yes.
Does that end up being good for the president possibly, do you think a shutdown, quickly?
FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: I don't know that a government shutdown -- it's definitely not good for America.
I don't know that it's good for the -- LISA DESJARDINS: But if Republicans were blamed, politically?
FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: I don't know that -- yes.
I don't know that we're at the point yet.
We're having that discussion now, but, certainly, it would be an opportunity for Republicans to be able to re-litigate many of the things that they were unable to get into in the debt deal the first time.
LISA DESJARDINS: Okay.
And I had to plug in the center to tell me, maybe two shutdowns.
So, anyway, and, unfortunately, we have to leave it there for now.
But thank you to this fantastic panel for joining us and for sharing all of your great reporting.
And thank you to all of you for joining us as well.
On Saturday's PBS News Weekend, as extreme heat sweeps across the country, we look at our prisons and people incarcerated in sweltering facilities.
I'm Lisa Desjardins.
Good night from Washington.
