President Trump is forced out of his political comfort zone and into the role of consoler in chief as he tore his flood ravaged central Texas.

Meanwhile, in a remarkable policy shift, Trump resumes weapon shipments to Ukraine after changing his tune on Russia's president.

I'm not happy with Putin.

It's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless tonight how a national tragedy in a defiant Putin are threatening President Trump's agenda and exposing growing tensions with his base.

Next.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

I'm Ashley Parker in tonight for Jeffrey Goldberg.

President Trump has wrapped up his tour of central Texas, where he met with state officials and those affected by last week's devastating floods.

It's a side of Trump that we don't often see, that of consoler in chief, but we also saw another side of the president this week, one who seems to be fed up with Vladimir Putin.

Joining me tonight to discuss all things Trump are.

Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent at The New York Times.

Torrini Pardi is a White House reporter at The Wall Street Journal.

Zolanino Youngs is a White House correspondent at The New York Times and Nancy Yousef is a staff writer at The Atlantic.

Thank you guys all for being here and let's just jump right in.

I am actually old enough to remember George W. Bush comforting the first responders at Ground Zero after September 11th, and Barack Obama spontaneously breaking into Amazing Grace after the deadly shooting at Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

I also remember President Trump throwing Paper towels when touring hurricane damage in Puerto Rico during his first term.

And Peter, you're even older than I am a little bit unfortunately just a little, but yes, um, you have covered 6 presidencies starting with Bill Clinton.

How does President Trump compare to his predecessors in this role as consoler in chief.

Yeah, this is not his strength, right?

President Trump has a lot of strengths, consoling people, not one of them.

Empathy, not one of them.

Um, you're right, I've been covering presidents going to disaster zones since President Clinton, I remember traveling with him to a big giant flood in Grand Forks, North Dakota is my first one.

And what presidents from Clinton on have always done, of course, is to find ways to connect with people on the ground to show that they're there, that they not only are going to bring resources to the federal government, but they understand their plight, and that's just not where Trump is.

He is sometimes very good at mobilizing resources, but he is not good, I think, at connecting people who are in pain.

Although today in Texas, we did see a version of him doing this.

Let's watch.

I've gone to a lot of hurricanes, a lot of tornadoes.

I've never seen anything like this.

This is a There's a bad one.

We just visited with incredible families.

That I mean, look, they've been devastated.

They lost their child or two children and uh just hard to believe what I've never seen anything like it.

I mean, so no paper towels this time.

Torrini, is this a side of the president we just don't see is he growing into the role?

He was more empathetic than we've seen him in the past, and what we saw in the last few days is Secretary Christi Noem talking to him, telling him stories about what she had seen on the ground, and you could tell he had been, you know, moved by the tragedies that the, the camp in particular, and he brought that up today.

So it was a different side of him, but he also wanted to, of course, tout his administration's response, which is Different from what we've seen, um, other, how other administrations have handled it.

It's been a very scaled back federal response.

They're relying more on state and local officials, and he also tried to make that point that even though they're doing things differently, that in his view, this has been a success even though there are still a lot of people missing in search and rescue teams are still looking for them.

There's almost like two sort of wings to a president's response when it comes to a disaster.

The rhetoric and the, the empathizer and chief.

But then also you mentioned mobilizing resources.

That's the other part of it.

And I think we have to look at President Trump's record with FEMA and its entirety in this second term.

I traveled with him to North Carolina, um, and then he went to California and his first week in office, and yeah, he had some of those moments of empathy and, uh, and interacting with some of these people who are suffering.

He also mused about shuttering the nation's disaster relief agency.

In his time in office in the 2nd term, a large portion of workers from FEMA have also lost their jobs at this point.

The Department of Homeland Security, we wrote, uh, we wrote a story that they were reviewing grants ranging from police supporting police departments to disaster resilience and basically reviewing whether localities were aligned with the administration's DEI and immigration agenda in order to continue giving out those grants.

Christi Noem is facing a lot of criticism right now for a new rule in which grants above $100,000 she actually needs to review when people are citing that new rule in basically claiming.

A slowed down response here.

We won't know and really the grade of the federal government's response to this disaster for some time.

It's still very soon, but all of these reasons are why the administration might be facing more questions and scrutiny than usual.

It's the president's comments before the disaster, as well as what we saw today.

Right.

Oh sorry, it looks like you're going to say something.

No, it was good.

I was going to say, you know, you're right.

I mean, the, the administration can't stop a flood, but it, but this was a failure of preparedness and what struck me this week is how much we've been talking about response by government not only on the federal level but at the local level starting all the way from um when the camp built these new facilities using this $5 million grant a few years ago, even though it was in floodplains.

Local officials not willing to answer questions about the systems they had in place to respond to this and whether they were adequate on the state level and as You point out on the federal level and what's been interesting to me in watching the coverages, people mention actually names of people who could have made a difference.

The national um Weather Service, for example, Paul Urea, who is in charge of sort of responsiveness for that that area had retired just um, just last year after 32 years in service and so it's been striking to me how much we've been looking at responsiveness across government and not able to really get at what level um the system broke.

Down and what needs to be done going forward to make those fixes.

Well, and in a moment where Trump has talked about abolishing FEMA, this would certainly seem to call for FEMA to, at the very least, exist.

Uh, Peter, is there any change of thinking in the White House about the role of FEMA at all them backing off that, right?

So the president had said he would phase it out.

That was his phrase by the end of the year, now they're not talking about that so much rush the, the director of the Office of Management Budget told reporters today, no, we're just We could reform it.

We're not going to get rid of it.

We're going to make it better.

OK, well, fine, that's a different story, but it reminds us that FEMA has a role and it's true the conservatives historically believed the best government is the government that is at the closest to the people, right, state and local governments, but FEMA is one of the agencies that Republican governors like a lot, just like Democratic governors.

Every disaster I've ever been to with those presidents, I've seen governors on the ground, both parties really glad that FEMA was there.

They don't want less FEMA.

They want more FEMA and maybe it doesn't work all the way they want it to, but they don't want to go away because FEMA can do things the federal government can do things that states and localities can't, right?

And in some ways FEMA coordinates with their state partners on Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Christine Om spoke in a cabinet meeting where she outlined what she tried to describe as a new sort of FEMA.

Let's take a listen.

But as soon as you signed uh the major disaster declaration, uh, we were able to get them resources and dollars right away, just like you envisioned through state block grants to help them with clean up and FEMA's been deployed and we're cutting through the paperwork of the old FEMA streamlining it much like your vision of how FEMA should operate, and it's been a much better response to help these families get through this terrible situation.

But Trini, in some ways when I hear that, isn't she just describing.

Old FEMA, she is, and she's actually leaving out what actually happened.

So based on our reporting, we know that at DHS there was widespread confusion about how they should respond, how they should move resources, in part because of that, that, um, that rule that Zolan mentioned where Christine Noem has to review any spending over $100,000.

They also didn't preposition assets close to the impacted area as they have done in past disasters, so they weren't able to quickly move um assets and resources and uh they didn't have.

search and rescue teams out until Monday.

This was 3 days after the flooding had started, and so there, there are concerns within the agency about the slowing down effect and even if we didn't see the gaps so much in this case because it was a small area, um, because this wasn't, you know, a major hurricane as we might see in the coming weeks and months, um, that it, it didn't show as much and also Texas is one of the states that has sort of a more bolstered state emergency response system.

So other states might not have the types of resources that Texas does.

So in, in this case, you know, we might, we didn't see maybe some of the gaps that that Christine O was was trying to tout, but we might in the future.

Right?

And and Texas has that infrastructure.

It's a big state.

It's a red state, and even with that, Texas Governor Greg Abbott almost immediately called in FEMA, right, so it makes you wonder how would a smaller state fair Zolen or even or perhaps most especially a blue state.

Sure, sure, sure.

No, absolutely.

I mean, Uh, this is a state I did a, uh, we did a FOIA project, a Freedom of Information Act project where we got a lot of documents in 2019 and actually compared how FEMA's response was to US territories compared to a place like Texas.

In Texas historically got more support faster than many other places in the United States.

And if they had questions at this point, you have to again wonder how a small community would fare that's going to rely on this federal agency more.

You know, also, the president has Usually disaster response for a president, there's some unwritten rules, the partisanship goes away.

The support is there without strings attached.

But there have been times where if you looked at the president's comments, even from his first term, where you see that transactional approach also through a lens of disaster relief, a sense of this support is coming your way, but also what do you owe me?

Again, first week when he's in office, he goes to California, a place where he had previously threatened no relief for their wildfires.

response, and he goes and he says the federal government will be here for you.

I also want these immigration actions to take place.

I also want this and that.

I want, you know, you to turn over, uh, uh, I want you to adopt my agenda in a way.

So, you know, will we see that?

We'll have to see.

But again, to Torrini's point, this is going to keep coming up.

The administration has pushed back on reporters asking questions and interrogating this response.

Well, part of the reason for that is also it's hurricane season, right?

And we're going to see this happen more and more, right?

And Peter, I want to be careful about not implying causation between the doing of the federal government and the tragedy we saw in central Texas, but it's again, is there a world in which this changes their thinking, or if not, what did these massive cuts sort of throughout the bureaucracy portend for future disasters.

I mean it raises all kinds of questions.

National Weather Service, obviously nationalceangraphic Association, uh agency, um, atmospheric agency that predicts climate change patterns and so forth.

And whether it had anything to do with this one or not, people will will give us a better account of that in the days and weeks to come, but you can see in the future why that might be something of concern for people because they they did know that there were potential flood disaster happening here and yet despite that didn't have the preparation, didn't have the warning systems and and all that.

And if you have a FEMA that's already 1 25% smaller than it was a couple of months ago.

That's, you know, some cuts may be perfectly good in terms of.

efficiency waste, but one quarter is a large chunk out of a federal agency that you want to do more, not less, right?

And and Trina, you mentioned some of these gaps that were not as acute because Texas was better prepared, but you've done a lot of reporting on FEMA, um, can you take us through a scenario where these gaps might be more pronounced and as much as Christine Oha did describe a FEMA as it exists.

They are trying to make some changes and and can you explain to us what that will actually look like.

Yeah, they, they're trying to make a lot of changes and staff.

in particular has been a big focus, but this $100,000 review that we keep bringing up over and over again is a big deal because during a major hurricane, we've been told you can spend, you know, the government spends hundreds of millions of dollars in such a short amount of time you can spend a billion within days and so getting approval for every little thing that the government spends money on could really, you know, potentially cause lives in this type of situation, um, what they've also gotten rid of.

um door to door services where FEMA staff goes to an impacted area and knocks on doors and tries to help survivors, um, so that has been, you know, taken away.

Um, we also don't know if they're going to be doing what I described earlier as prepositioning of these assets which um was something that came out of Hurricane Katrina as sort of a big lesson learned, which is to go big and go quickly and early as much as possible to, to try to be as prepared, even if it costs government more money, those resources are there in case the state and local officials need them.

And another surprise out of the White House this week was Trump changing his tone on Russia and specifically really changing his tone on President Putin.

I mean it was not even, it feels like years ago, but it was not even 5 months ago that Trump got so upset with Ukrainian President Zelinsky that he essentially threw him out of the White House before he had time to eat his scheduled lunch.

So let's just take a quick trip down memory lane.

You're not in a good position.

You don't have the cards right now.

With us, you start having cars right now you don't have.

You're gambling with the lives of millions of people.

You're gambling with World War II.

But on Tuesday, Trump had this to say about Putin.

We get a lot of thrown at us by Putin for you want to know the truth.

It's very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.

So, Peter, what has changed?

Has Trump come around to Zelinsky?

Has he soured on Putin?

Is it something we can't even fathom yet.

Yeah, it's really fascinating.

You know why Zelensky got under Trump's skin at that thing a few months ago because he was telling him Putin is going to shovel a lot of BS your way that you cannot trust Putin and Trump took offense at that.

He says, no, that's just not true.

In fact, what he's saying is I've been through so much with my friend Vladimir Putin.

We went through the Russia, Russia, Russia folks together, you know, blah blah, blah.

Uh.

And now what Trump has discovered is what Zelensky told him is basically right.

You cannot assume that Trump, Putin is your friend.

You kind of assume that he wants a peace deal because he doesn't.

He's made that very clear.

Now, you know, it's striking to hear Trump say what he said this week because of 10 years of bromance between the two, right, which is still seemingly on inexplicable to a lot of people, why would Trump be so favorable toward Putin for so long.

Has he come around to believe what everybody else already believed, which is that Putin is not his friend, his own intelligence services have been telling him since his first term for the better part of a decade and his friends like Lindsey Graham and other Republicans would tell him, you know, Marco Rubio used to be a hawk.

He would tell the old senator Rubio would have told him that.

I don't know about Secretary Rubio.

Now, does that mean that they'll stay, you know, estranged.

We've seen with Trump before, of course, he has, you know, he goes in and out with people, right?

He gets mad at people and then they're back in.

his orbit.

So if they had a deal next week of some sort that Trump could tout, he would suddenly be friends again, probably with Putin, but it is interesting that he has learned that Putin is not the guy he thought he was because and it's important to remember that Trump thought they were so close that he could snap his fingers and have a peace deal within 24 hours, he told everybody, not even after his inauguration, he said he could do it before his inauguration and he's discovered otherwise, and Nancy, I mean, one thing that was striking was Trump says this, but this week after Trump's comments, Russia Putin ramp up their attacks on Ukraine, I mean, can you take us through why Putin still seems to feel so emboldened.

Well, so what's happening on the on the ground is we've seen a huge uptick of the use of drones and missiles, um, on the Capitol, killing at least 14, literally hundreds of drones.

And then today we saw an attack on a maternity hospital in Kharkiv, and this is when I give you a sense of sort of the level, the ramp up.

We've seen more drones used in some cases In one day, then all of last year by Russia and what that does is really overwhelm the the air defense system of Ukraine at a time when the US has withheld the air defense missiles that would that would protect the capital and other parts of the country, and I think he's doing this in part because he sees a Ukraine that is increasingly vulnerable because it's drawing down on the US provided air defense missiles and potentially seize a divide between the United States and Ukraine in terms of uh the promise of enduring support.

that these attacks have happened more on the Capitol, have been so aggressive and have really forced Ukraine to make big decisions about what air defense capability they're going to use to try to protect the capital has been challenging defensive weapons which Trump just sort of reauthorized the shipment of, but those had been stopped briefly by Defense Secretary Pete Hague says it is worth noting, without telling Trump what he was doing.

They're now back on, but this sort of on again, off again, uh offensive weapons dance.

I mean, what does that reveal about fissures between the president and Hegseth.

Fissure is in the administration.

Nancy, let's stick with you for a second.

Explain what we should take away from that.

So just a little background, under the Biden administration, there was a promise of consistent weapon shipments to Ukraine, and those were supposed to run out about the summer.

And so this is one of those shipments in which, and it included things like patriot missiles, Hellfires, gimmlers, um, key weapons systems and missiles for Ukraine.

And so we heard at the start of the month that the Secretary of Defense had suspended those, seemingly without telling the president, the president said he didn't know.

It's not even clear whether the whole shipment was suspended when you ask if the Pentagon, shockingly, you can't get a clear answer on what was suspended, why, and, and what is resuming now.

So then we heard from the president, I don't know, but I want to resume them.

He gave an interview to NBC in which he said, um, we are actually going to resume this shipment of.

offensive weapons and NATO is going to pay for it.

Now technically, NATO can't pay for it, but NATO members could.

And so we're looking now to see if that's going to happen and what that package looks like.

The problem is so many people focus on the shipment and what he had said to me what's critical is once you start turning weapon systems on and shipments on and off.

It is very hard for Ukrainian military planners to defend themselves, you know, when you turn off a missile system.

There's a lot of logistical changes that happened.

Ukraine might move a system from one part of the country to the other when two days later the US turns it back on, those systems are still on trains.

They're having to reconfigure their battlefield to this on and off, um, approach to US shipments and you're giving us an explanation of us now 7 months into this conflict in Trump's term, but Peter had mentioned that Trump had said he was going to do this on day one, and Zolin, I'm curious, I know you had some reporting on this.

Trump actually believed this.

Can, can you just explain why he believes this.

I mean, I, I don't know about the 24 hours.

I have talked to people who really think that Trump did think that his close rel that his relationship with Putin, that Putin's, that the fact that Putin favored him over other candidates that he could use that leverage.

His dealmaking leverage to get a deal here.

And what he has found out is that embracing Vladimir Putin comes with few results.

It comes with few actual productive results here and it's something that, yes, you know, he was saying to those around him, but his Republican allies, you know, were also telling him in, uh, in recent weeks.

They, they could all be getting played.

This was something that Senator Graham said as well, who's put forth a sanctions bill that we still don't really know if the White House supports at this point, would impose sanctions on Russia.

Um, so So, you know, he has had reminders that Putin could be playing him this entire time, and now you're starting to see the frustration really bubble up to the surface, um, after a lot of the hyperbolic rhetoric that we saw during the campaign.

I'm so glad you brought up the sanctions bill because I think despite what we heard from the president, to me, we will not know if there's a real shift unless two things happen.

One, we actually see weapons and defensive systems going to Ukraine and the president signs that sanctions bill.

That is.

a tangible example of the president saying I am fed up with Putin.

Words are one thing, but those are the two things on the table right now that would signal that actually the US is shifting its position and after he posted on True Social that Putin had gone crazy after or lost his mind after one of Russia's aggressive attacks on Ukraine.

I asked him outside of Air Force One, if he supported, uh, his own allies' sanctions bill, and at that point, he did not say one way or the other.

He said, I have to read it.

I'm not sure.

He didn't answer the affirmative.

He's been asked since then as well.

Still, we have not had that outright support for them.

Well, that that sanctions bill has a cost because what it does is it tries to cut off the oil supply in places like China.

It doesn't want other people to buy Russian oil.

That's fine.

If you take that oil off the market, it means prices go up.

And that's why Biden's administration wasn't willing to do that.

They did a whole lot of other sanctions, but they weren't willing to take all the Russian oil off the market because of the price at the gas pump, and Trump is very sensitive to the price of the gas pump and bragging in recent days about how it's lower than it had been to to sign that bill and then and then effectuate those sanctions as a risk for his domestic support.

He has signaled that there might be a big announcement coming next week, so I think the, the, the early indications are that there he might actually support the sanctions bill, and well, that remains to be seen, but maybe he's made that calculation that, uh, you know, it's worth the risk and there is a waiver in the bill and sign it and use it as leverage maybe to get food back to the table, but And there's a political cost as well, right?

There are 86 signatories to the bill.

This issue, the support for Ukraine has become a bipartisan issue.

He has faced criticisms from within his own party, so you're right, there's an economic cost, but he's also facing a political one and Peter, beyond the sanctions bill, right, it feels like Russia has been by the United States given the ability not to lose, but not the ability to actually win.

um, what, what would be required to actually allow Ukraine to win, if that's what Trump even wants to have.

I mean, the truth is.

United States provided tens of billions of dollars' worth of weapons under Biden, who's willing and and wanted to help Ukraine and still, as you say, didn't go as far as some people thought they should go.

The idea that Trump and this Republican Congress is going to go further than that.

It seems unlikely, which is what Putin is gambling on.

Putin is gambling that Trump is going to walk away, that Trump doesn't really care about Ukraine, that Trump actually has other fish to fry with China and trade and tariffs, and that's why he thinks that he can continue to stiff Trump because then he will have the upper hand in Ukraine.

Particularly on foreign policy too is when we see that the president wants to lean into issues that are a win, not intractable.

Exactly.

There's a lot to discuss, but unfortunately we have to leave it here.

um, thank you all for joining me to our guests and thank you to our viewers at home for watching us.

For more on the US weapons shipments to Ukraine, be sure to check out Nancy's fantastic reporting at the Atlantic.com.

I'm Ashley Parker.

Good night from Washington.