Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

Here's something that I think is reasonable to state.

In previous presidencies, the weekend host of a cable television news and entertainment show might very well be offered an interview with the Secretary of Defense.

But it's hard to imagine that he would be offered the job of Secretary of Defense.

But this is what Donald Trump did when he chose Pete Hexith for the role.

As you know, by the way, Hexith has demanded to be called Secretary of War, hearkening back to the title used in World War II and earlier.

But until Congress authorizes the name change, we will use the statutory title.

Hexad has instituted so many other radical changes to the way the most powerful and lethal military in the history of the planet is run that it is hard sometimes to rank these changes in terms of their lasting impact.

But we'll try tonight with my guests.

Helen Cooper, a national security correspondent at the New York Times.

Jonathan Carl is the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News.

Missy Ryan covers the Pentagon for the Atlantic.

and Vivian Salama is a national security correspondent at the Atlantic.

Thank you all for joining me.

Um I want to start actually on domestic politics because there's been obviously a lot of action this week.

Just spend a couple of minutes on this.

Vivian, there are a bunch of contradictory signals about President Trump's political strength.

On the one hand, his poll numbers are in the basement.

On the other, he still has the power to punish his Republican enemies as he just did with Thomas Massie of Kentucky.

In which way is all this trending?

He's trying to knock out Senator John Cornin now, much to the chagrin of Cornin's many Republican allies in the Senate.

Where is this heading?

If anything, the last month has proven to us that President Trump still has juice within the party.

Even as his poll numbers um go lower to the lowest that they've ever been, even as he struggles to um implement his domestic agenda, his foreign policy agenda, he still does have that juice.

And we've seen it in recent weeks with regard to a number of different primaries.

Earlier this month, Indiana was particularly noteworthy because five or six six challengers that President Trump endorsed um all won the GOP primary there and that was simply because they supported his redistricting push.

Now, there were all eyes were on Thomas Massie in Kentucky in particular because he's been so outspoken against President Trump in recent years.

He has gone after him on everything from Trump really did not like that guy and he did not like that guy.

He's he has criticized him left, right, and center, but Massie was one of the leading voices in the GOP with regard to releasing the Epstein files.

He was very critical on uh the president's policies about Israel.

And so all of that kind of culminated with this this primary um a former Navy Seal who challenged Massie was supported not only by the president, but you even had the secretary of defense Pete Heg go out there and support him, which is very unprecedented.

um and ultimately he lost.

Now, was it because of the fact that he had been so outspoken or is it again part of this trend?

We're going to we're going to really know that going forward with regard to Texas next week, John.

So, so, so, so look, but but a couple of things here.

First of all, uh Trump does have still the control over the party.

I mean, there's just no question about this.

Um this is something that we also saw though in 2022.

If you remember, he was in exile, out of power, uh kind of like written off as as as as a spent force, and he went around and started endorsing in primaries, and he won in race after race after race.

And what happened in the fall?

Well, Republicans suffered um significant losses.

uh they they uh were up against you running in a situation where you had President Biden with low approval rating, high inflation, all the conditions for a big red wave and it didn't materialize in part because many of those candidates, particularly Senate candidates that Trump had either recruited or endorsed, uh ended up losing.

So winning in primaries doesn't necessarily mean that he has the power that's going to come uh in the fall.

But one other thing is you have this phenomenon in Congress now because he's gone after not just um uh you know not just Cornin, he went after Cassidy and Cassidy lost his primary.

Uh he's uh you know he he he ran Marjgery Taylor Green out of the house.

He's now saying he wants a primary challenge against uh against Lauren Boowbert.

He's going after Republicans who are insufficiently loyal in his term, including people that have been amazingly loyal to Donald Trump.

And it's created this phenomenon where a lot of those uh where at least some of those people now have renewed courage to to challenge him.

It's amazing the courage of the lame duck.

Maybe we need like a new term like the brave duck.

But Cassidy secret, you know, Cassidy who end who voted to confirm Bobby Kennedy against where he wanted to go.

Cassidy comes out and defies Trump on war powers and suddenly he's got an issue on his hands.

Brave Duck would be a great name for a Capitol Hill restaurant.

Brave Duck, if we ever if journalism doesn't work out for us, we might want to Tom Tillis.

Look at him.

I mean, Tom, these these they don't have to worry about them anymore because they're not running anymore.

There's one more underlying theme really quickly, though, and that's the redistricting opposition that some of these um candidates have put up there.

And in Indiana in particular, most of those candidates who won supported the president's midterm mid midcycle redistricting push.

That could really remake the map.

And that's a significant significant effort by the