JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Mike Johnson keeps the speaker's gavel after Donald Trump convinces House Republican holdouts to switch their vote.

And we are just days away from witnessing something remarkable, Vice President Kamala Harris presiding over Congress' certification of Trump's reelection, next.

Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

This coming Monday, January 6th to be exact, Kamala Harris will preside over Congress as it ratifies the election of Donald Trump.

Two weeks later, Trump takes the oath of office and immediately plans to implement his agenda, but he'll also confront a long list of preexisting challenges, including, as we saw this week in New Orleans, the continued salience of the Islamic State terror group.

Joining me tonight to discuss these issues and more, Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times, Leigh Ann Caldwell is an anchor for Washington Post Live and a co-author of The Early Brief, Francesca Chambers is a White House correspondent for USA Today and David Ignatius is a columnist for The Washington Post.

Thank you very much, all of you.

Happy New Year to all of you.

Thank you for being here.

Very serious opening days of this year, I have to say.

I want to turn -- before we get to New Orleans and the attack, I want to talk about the action on the Hill today.

Leigh Ann, why don't you give us a little understanding about how Mike Johnson managed to become speaker again despite a lot of tempestuous emotions in the Republican Caucus?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, Anchor, Washington Post Live: Yes, so ultimately it was not necessarily a repeat of two years ago, the four days and 15 rounds of Kevin McCarthy trying to win the speaker's gavel, but it was still dramatic.

He did it on the first round, but, ultimately, it came down to Donald Trump.

There were some holdouts, people who didn't want to vote for Mike Johnson, voted for someone else.

And those people got on the -- Donald Trump got on the phone with those people and ultimately negotiated and worked out a path forward.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: What did they want?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: So, it was -- generally speaking, what they wanted and what they got is a commitment from Mike Johnson, which he says there was no deal, but in a reaffirmation, Johnson says, to reduce spending, and also to give more power to committees and the rank and file members rather than leadership negotiating all sorts of big bills instead of spending bills.

And even Mike Johnson says that that a large factor had to do with Donald Trump.

I asked him that tonight.

I said, what role did Trump play?

And he said, Donald Trump has been -- is perhaps the most powerful president in the country's history, he says, or most influential, and that he absolutely played a major factor in Mike Johnson winning the speaker's battle tonight.

So, there was a lot of cajoling.

There's still a divided Republican conference, but, ultimately, Trump was able to, before the vote, turn a lot of members in favor of Johnson.

And then in the most ultimately dire times of today where Johnson didn't have the votes, Donald Trump was able to get them there.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: FDR might want to have a word with Mike Johnson on the question of who's the most powerful, but we'll put that aside.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: I guess influential is what he said.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: We can have that argument another time.

David, I'm curious, this is interesting because Trump chose stability over chaos in this case.

DAVID IGNATIUS, Columnist, The Washington Post: Momentarily.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, no.

But, I mean, what do you take from Johnson's success?

DAVID IGNATIUS: I thought that today's events were a piece of political theater.

The right got to flex its muscles.

Trump got to show everybody I'm in charge.

I can make it happen.

I think the interesting question, Jeff, is whether Trump really wants to set about being the leader of a governing party.

He's shown ways that he's trying to be pragmatic, push the extreme right in his party down on the question of the H-1B visas, on questions of an abortion mandate, on some other cultural issues.

He's been pushing the right away and saying I'm going to govern myself, and I think he has the ambition to govern the whole country.

He keeps saying that, you know, this is a movement, there's never been a president who can solve problems the way I can.

I keep coming back to the question with Trump, whether he is about trying to build the country or seek revenge for the things that he feels were done to him.

You see both of them -- saw both of them today actually in a strange tweet in the very early morning hours as a kind of American carnage, and then this effort to rally the Congress around his chosen candidate as speaker.

Which Trump is going to prevail after inauguration day?

I couldn't say.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Peter, do you know which Trump is going to prevail after inauguration day?

Let us know.

PETER BAKER, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Yes, no, but if past is prologue, I think we should not expect the unifying leader that he sometimes pretends he wants to be.

It's just not his metier, to use a word I heard recently around this table, that's not the way he rolls.

He does have moments where he wants a little stability over chaos, where he feels it will benefit him.

But let's face it, he's working with one party, not two, right?

He's not trying to work across the aisle.

He's not having any conversations that we know of with Democrats to talk about their priorities or how to have joint priorities.

They actually could come to deals on some really important things.

There are immigration deals, for instance, to be had.

If he wanted to have them on DACA, you know, with some border stuff, that kind of thing, he has indicated no interest in that.

And his appointments of, or his choice of people like Kash Patel for the FBI and Pete Hegseth for the defense indicates to me that retribution is high on the list, whether it also comes along with building some policies or not.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But on the other hand, I mean, to go back to David's point, just to follow this, is this an indication that there's a learning curve here, that he's learned some lessons from the first term and is trying to apply the normal rules of politics and, you know, trying to marginalized to some degree the extreme right?

I mean, is there -- DAVID IGNATIUS: Remember just a couple weeks ago, and we uncovered this, you know, he tried to blow up a spending deal that had just been sealed off by Mike Johnson, and it was 40 Republicans who said, no, we're not going along with you on your decision to try to punt the debt ceiling off until later in the presidency.

So, they rebelled against him and maybe he's learned from that a little bit.

But I would be cautious about overstating how far he's changed.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Francesca, let's talk about this House Republicans, 218 to 215, it's about as close as you can get.

You know, and this is what Thomas Massie, who I think Johnson's, at least at the moment, most ferocious opponent, had to say before the vote on the Matt Gaetz show on the One America Network, yes, that Matt Gaetz now has a television show.

Things move really quickly these days, don't they?

Anyway, this is what Massie said.

He said you could pull all my fingernails out.

You can shove bamboo up in them.

You can start cutting off my fingers.

I am not voting for Mike Johnson tomorrow.

And you could take that to the bank.

That's -- if Mike Johnson had a comfortable buffer, that's one thing, but he has no buffer, whatsoever.

So, how stable is this group of Republicans who are now for the moment backing Mike Johnson?

Is he going to be speaker, in other words, at the end of the year?

FRANCESCA CHAMBERS, White House Correspondent, USA Today: Well, it partly comes down to what is the other option, and that's what they ran into this week.

If you don't want Mike Johnson, then who else do you want?

And how do you get a majority of Republicans behind that person?

We saw Donald Trump come in and help to save him.

You mentioned his own self-interest.

I mean, he wants to come in.

He wants to be able to get his agenda done.

He has four years to do so.

He doesn't have an eight-year term that he can look forward to here.

He has the four years to get things done.

And we've already seen him start to make aggressive moves in that direction.

But as you pointed out with Massie, Trump's influences, even within this new Republican Party, is sometimes limited.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

Peter, I'm not asking for predictions, but how stable is this majority?

PETER BAKER: Well, it's not stable at all, obviously.

I mean, to your point, the second they come back to this economic question in March, the financial stuff they're going to have to do in March, you're going to see the same nine people.

There were nine people who tried to flex their muscle today, you know, trying to enforce on Johnson commitments they believe he's made about spending.

That would probably be impractical.

And Johnson's going to have to talk with the Democrats probably if he wants to pass some.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: And that number nine that were held out today is important, because that number is very important.

Because number nine is now the number of Republicans it takes to vacate the chair for speakership.

During Kevin McCarthy last Congress, he got in trouble because it just took one Republican.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

He agreed to like his own poison pill.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: Yes, exactly, but now that number has been lifted to nine.

And so that was a very purposeful symbolic moment on the House floor today from these critics of Mike Johnson to tell Johnson, we are watching you and we have the numbers if you do not get spending under control, if you negotiate with Democrats, if you don't enact our agenda.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Are there more than nine?

In other words, is there some zone of comfort for those punitive rebels?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: It depends on how bad it gets.

But, yes, there's three dozen members in the far right Freedom Caucus, and so there could potentially be a lot more than nine.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Peter, let me change the subject to something historic.

January 6th is coming.

It's exactly four years since the insurrection, the violent insurrection of January 6th.

We're about to witness Kamala Harris, Democratic vice president, presidential candidate, losing presidential candidate, oversee the ratification of Donald Trump's election.

Going back four years, we all covered this, some of us, very up close.

It's hard to imagine that we're here.

Given the way much of the country felt about Donald Trump in the immediate aftermath of the insurrection, the idea that Donald Trump is about to be peacefully ratified as the next president is striking.

I just love to hear your analysis of how we got here.

PETER BAKER: If you woke up on January 7th of 2021 with the glass still shattered on the floor of the Capitol and the smoke rising and the troops are surrounding the building and you had said that Donald Trump will be president in four years, nobody would have believed that.

Anybody who says that today is not telling you the truth.

We weren't a hundred percent sure he was going to make it out two more weeks, right?

There was talk that day about whether he might be impeached immediately, whether he would be forced out by Mike Pence in the cabinet in some sort of 25th Amendment thing, whether something would happen that we couldn't trust him for two more weeks with power.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: The Senate was infuriated.

PETER BAKER: Senate was infuriated.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: House was infuriated.

PETER BAKER: Of course they were.

Lindsey Graham said he was done with him, right?

Well, it turns out he wasn't.

And the Republican caucus wasn't done with him either.

And the Republican electorate wasn't done with him.

That's the most important thing, right?

How did he come back?

Well, Kevin McCarthy, of course, gave him a new lease on life by going down to Mar-a-Lago and essentially exonerating him almost.

Mitch McConnell decided not to try to force conviction in the trial that followed the impeachment that happened in the House.

But broadly speaking, it turned out that his electorate still wanted him, and that held power over the elected officials who didn't.

And that's the real story here, is that they were not -- they did not find what he did on January 6th to be disqualifying.

And therefore, the Congress and the elected officials went along with it.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

I want to talk about the cabinet, the incoming cabinet.

We're heading into the thick of confirmation hearings soon.

Francesca, who is the cabinet pick right now who's in the most danger of not getting confirmed?

FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: So, this is not going to be that exciting, but everything basically remains the same as it did before we went away.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Okay, you're right.

That's not exciting.

FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: I'm sorry.

I know.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Let's move on to sports.

FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: No.

But, I mean, realistically, that's what happened, right?

You had the questions about Pete Hegseth going into the winter break.

I mean, the Senate, the House, they've been out for a little bit the last couple of weeks.

Of course, there have been questions about Kash Patel.

There have been questions about, of course, Kash Patel and the FBI as well.

But now the Trump team is making this argument in light of the terrorist attack in New Orleans, that they need his national security nominees.

They need them right away.

And so they've been making this really big push to try and get them confirmed before or rather the week of when he takes office.

Now, this is key because that is where the most contentious fights are going to be is over his national security nominees.

And so now, though, you can expect the Senate to try and take those up first earlier in terms of who's the most in danger.

It also depends on do they do these on the same day.

Do they split these up into different days?

They want to get them in on January 20th.

Is that even possible -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Shock and awe, just do it all at once.

Flood the zone.

FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: I mean, that could be a strategy that they employ.

They have not announced yet, other than Pete Hegseth says on the 14th, when those will be.

They have to give seven days notice, so we should know by Monday or Tuesday if they plan to have any other ones earlier in the week.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: David, let me reframe the question.

Any of these nominees in danger from your perspective?

DAVID IGNATIUS: So, I would think Tulsi Gabbard as director of National Intelligence is very unlikely.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Unlikely?

DAVID IGNATIUS: Yes.

I think the -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: What are you hearing on the Hill?

DAVID IGNATIUS: I think the Senate Intelligence Committee is taking a very careful look.

I think they've got a lot of material to look at.

I think there are significant questions concerns people have about her.

I think Bashar al Assad, the person she went to pay court to, getting deposed in Syria didn't help her nomination.

So, I'd be surprised if she got through.

I think Pete Hegseth's nomination is going to be difficult.

It's striking after the New Orleans terrorist attack, which we're going to talk about, how we all turn to the FBI, the CIA, our national security institutions.

You know, we need them and people feel that deeply.

And I'd be surprised if there isn't a deeper discussion in the Senate about these nominees.

It really matters who's head of the Pentagon's hardest management job in government.

Is Pete Hegseth really ready to do that?

Is Kash Patel really ready to lead an FBI, which we're going to need desperately to deal with counterterrorism issues?

So, I'd be amazed if the Senate didn't really take those issues up.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Peter, any chance from your perspective that Kash Patel doesn't get through because people realize that, oh, you know what, maybe we need somebody with a broad investigative and antiterrorism experience?

PETER BAKER: A chance?

Yes.

It's a question of whether Trump does have the ability to discipline and impose his will on the Senate.

Now, the Senate is different than the House, right?

You have individuals there who won't be running again while Donald Trump is president.

They have six-year terms.

They have a little bit more sense of independence and a sense of their own importance.

And so there are opportunities, I think, for picking off three, four, possibly, members that would say, no, this is too much.

Kash Patel may be a fine candidate.

Political hatchet man, but putting him in charge of the nation's premier law enforcement agency at a time when 15 people are being run down in New Orleans may not be the best idea.

But they're not going to say that right away.

They're going to see how these pairings play out.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Leigh Ann, RFK Jr. in any danger?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: So, I get a lot of mixed, mixed responses from Republican senators about RFK Jr.

I like asked these senators to rank who's in the most trouble, and some said RFK is at the top of their list.

Others say that he's going to be totally fine.

So, it's really hard to tell.

But I will say one of the challenges for RFK Jr. is not about his, you know, vaccine skepticism or his, you know, unorthodox views on health.

It's from Republicans the abortion issue.

And so he, I am told, has been asked a lot of questions in his private meetings about the issue of abortion and what he's going to do about that, running these health agencies.

And I am told that his response is that he will do what Donald Trump's will is.

But what's important with not only RFK Jr., but all of these nominees is there's going to be public hearings, and every single senator is going to have to make a public determination in large part based on these hearings and how the public responds to those two.

These nominees could totally bomb in these hearings or they could just pass through with flying colors.

FRANCESCA CHAMBERS: And, Peter, and you brought up the six year terms, but there are a few key senators who will be up in 2026, such as Susan Collins, who has announced that she plans to run for reelection.

And she is someone who we all have our eye on to determine how she might vote.

So, some of the people won't necessarily be there for the next six years.

But as you were talking, Leigh Ann, about the hearings, I mean, that's what I was hearing from senators as well.

They really -- even the Republicans, they take their advice and consent role very seriously.

Even if they are inclined, the Republicans, to end up approving Donald Trump's cabinet nominees, they do want to see the hearings.

They do want to ask questions.

And then, you know, even some of the people who have called holdouts so far might end up coming around his side, but they're not going to do that.

We're not going to hear how Republicans plan to vote until after these hearings take place.

DAVID IGNATIUS: Don't forget that the Republican caucus in secret voted against Trump's desire to have Senator Thune as the majority leader.

That was a significant statement, I think, by Senate Republicans.

PETER BAKER: But in secret.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: In secret.

PETER BAKER: True, in secret.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And they did it.

And in secret, they probably will vote not to have Trump as president after January 6th either.

But that would be in secret.

PETER BAKER: By the way, David's point and Leigh Ann's point is right about Gabbard and RFK Jr. Because they're Democrats or were Democrats or whatever they are now, it gives a slightly different lane for Republicans to say, no, I can't go along with that.

They're not one of us.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Let me talk about New Orleans.

David what does this attack, this deadly attack, say to you about the nature of the ISIS threat to America?

DAVID IGNATIUS: So, ISIS continues as an idea.

I've walked the streets of Raqqa, the ISIS capital in Syria.

It was obliterated.

It looked like Gaza.

Every building had been destroyed, damaged.

There was really nothing left in the center of town.

So, that enormous military power was brought to bear against ISIS.

But you can't destroy an idea.

And the ISIS idea remains powerful online.

I'm told that ISIS's influence in Africa is increasing.

An ISIS spinoff, ISIS-K, that came out of Afghanistan, attacked Iran, killed scores of people in Iran, attacked Russia, killed scores of people in Russia.

So, what I hear from counterterrorism professionals is this sense that the inspired homegrown violent extremist, which is what Shamsud-Din Jabbar is, there's no evidence of a connection other than virtually online to a network.

Those people can do enormous damage.

The technique that he used, vehicle ramming.

The head of the National Center for Counterterrorism was talking about that two months ago.

Nobody paid any attention.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It's a more common technique in the Middle East than it is here.

DAVID IGNATIUS: In Europe, I mean, so, anyway, the problem is there.

It's different.

But the problem, you can't kill an idea.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

I want to remind everyone around the table of Trump's confidence, President-elect Trump's confidence that he had defeated the Islamic State.

Let's listen to this for one second.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. President-Elect: I defeated 100 percent of the ISIS caliphate.

Everyone said that couldn't be done, and I did it in a matter of weeks.

All of the presidents before me failed for 20 years.

I defeated ISIS in just a matter of weeks.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

So, that's a lot of confidence.

That's in 2023.

That's a lot of confidence.

Peter, talk about what they actually can do, especially as it relates to the defeat of an idea.

PETER BAKER: Yes.

I mean, I think, look, if he's talking about defeating the caliphate, you know, the territorial control that ISIS had in Syria and Iraq, he can claim, obviously, some credit there.

Obviously, they did not control what they did eight years ago.

But as David just said, I mean, that doesn't mean that they've gone away, or people like them.

And I think that it's one of these things where America has gotten a little contented that we haven't faced this at home in a while.

It's been 23 years now since 9/11.

We thought that we'd be seeing this all the time.

We really didn't, and we especially haven't seen it in the last number of eight, ten years here at home.

And so it only takes one guy, one, you know, radicalized guy to suddenly pick up a truck and it doesn't -- it's really hard to defeat that.

So, the intelligence networks have done a remarkable job of actually finding plenty of plots and stopping them in advance.

But are you going to be able to be 100 percent successful all the time?

That's it.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And, Leigh Ann, quickly, do you see any sense yet from the president-elect's transition team that they have answers for homegrown but foreign-inspired terrorism?

Are we -- or is this something that they're even been talking about before this New Orleans attack?

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: There's still mostly blaming this attack on people crossing the border.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Which this was not.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL: Which this was not.

And so, no, there is no indication of that.

They are blaming -- placing all the blame on President Biden, unable to keep the country safe, the borders are open.

And so, no, we have not heard much from the transition.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: It's interesting because you really do set yourself up as president if you promise the level of security that Trump is promising.

DAVID IGNATIUS: So, you know, an interesting problem for -- the FBI depends on cooperation from the Muslim communities in America.

You know, the sheikh in the mosque, who says, you know, so and so has been acting strange recently.

Those people have been cooperating since 9/11.

It's one reason that there's been relatively, you know, limited domestic terrorism.

You can see -- you saw in the vote in Michigan, the anger that is in the Muslim communities in America now.

Gaza has changed the way people feel.

A county official said to me, Gaza put a jolt into the jihadist movement that's going to last for a generation.

That anger is going to persist.

And if you're the FBI trying to get that sheikh in Detroit to tell you who's acting strange, it's going to be much harder now, and that's Trump's problem.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

And we're going to see in the coming days and weeks the degree to which the Trump administration wants to focus on, the FBI's alleged sins against Trump versus this whole range of national security and criminal threats.

But that's -- we're going to -- after January 20th, we might have a better sense of it.

Unfortunately, we do need to leave it there for now.

I do want to thank our panelists for being here.

And to our viewers at home, thank you.

For more on the war against ISIS, please visit theatlantic.com.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

Goodnight from Washington.