Jeffrey Goldberg: I'm going to pivot now to landscape design, if you will.

So, yesterday, ABC's Rachel Scott, who accompanied the president on this visit to the Reflecting Pool between the Lincoln and the Washington Monument, asked Trump, you're here against the backdrop of the war in Iran.

Why focus on all these projects right now?

By projects, she meant fixing the Kennedy Center, building an arch near the Arlington Cemetery and repainting the base of the Reflecting Pool.

And then the president insulted Scott in very nasty terms, but the question remains.

And all of us who cover him know this very well.

He seems much more engaged in architecture, interior design, exterior design, landscaping, hardscaping, than he is in managing the globe.

What's going on?

Jonathan Lemire: Well, he's a developer at heart.

But I think it's more just his eye towards legacy, that he does feel like -- he's looking beyond the midterms.

He's looking beyond the election.

He's looking for the history books, and I think that is in part connected to Iran.

He's trying to redraw the world's maps.

Greenland was like that, Venezuela.

Hey, maybe Cuba next.

But here in Washington, he's trying to leave his physical imprint.

That is what he cares about, the arch, the ballroom now perhaps costing the taxpayers a billion dollars.

And, yes, and that's why he's so sensitive to it because it's not just reporters' questions.

There are Republicans who have raised the same issues.

You've taken your eye off the ball, sir, they say with tears in their eyes, to say, this is not what got you and all of us elected last time around.

You've misplaced what Americans care about.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Amna Nawaz: There's two things going on here.

Can I just point out, one is the president has a tendency to attack female reporters in a particularly brutal way, black female reporters in particular.

Rachel Scott, as we all know, is a fabulous reporter and a wonderful person, and doesn't deserve that.

No one does.

The other, to Jonathan's point -- Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes, it was particularly nasty.

Amna Nawaz: It was.

To Jonathan's point, there's two ways you can create legacy as a president, right?

One is through policy.

The president ran on changing the American economy.

That is not going well.

It seems like he's leaning into the part that he can control, which is this idea of monument to self, build an Oval Office, paved over Rose Garden, his name on buildings.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I want to stay along this theme about the president and the way he's evolving in this term.

There was this very odd encounter in the White House this week.

It was an event about youth fitness.

And the president had this to say to a group of young people.

Just watch this.

Donald Trump, U.S.

President: We would have had an Iran with a nuclear weapon, and maybe we wouldn't all be here right now.

I can tell you, the Middle East would've been gone, Israel would've been gone, and they would have trained their sights on Europe first and then us, because they're sick people.

These are sick people.

And we're not going to let lunatics have a nuclear weapon.

The power of a nuclear weapon is something I don't even want to talk about.

But it's not going to happen.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Vivian, the sense of appropriateness is interesting here.

I want to ask you about it, but I want to read something that Peter wrote last month, and you can comment on it.

Vivian Salama: I love that.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I know.

You get the chance to like comment on Peter.

Peter wrote, Democrats who have long challenged Mr.

Trump's psychological fitness have issued a fresh chorus of calls to invoke the 25th Amendment to remove the president from power for disability.

But it is not just a concern voiced by partisans on the left, late night comics, or mental health professionals making long-distance diagnoses.

It can be heard now among retired generals, diplomats, and foreign officials.

And most strikingly, it can be heard now on the political right among one-time allies of the president.

That was Peter writing last month.

You watched the -- Vivian Salama: Peter is always right.

Jeffrey Goldberg: You watched the -- that's not true.

Well, that'll be the subject of our next episode.

But I want -- talk about that particular episode.

It's the sense of appropriateness, of place of being totally discordant of talking about nuclear destruction with a group of eight-year-olds.

What are we seeing these days?

Vivian Salama: Most of us have been in the room with the president where we see that he tends to kind of drift into his own thoughts oftentimes often out loud, regardless of who's in the room.

He goes on tangents.

He has questioned the existence of Santa Claus in front of children visiting the White House, so this is not particularly surprising.

But you could see it is definitely a good window into his thought process.

Not only was he talking about the Iran war and potentially, you know, nuclear war as a result of the Iran war, he also went into a riff about how he made peace in eight different countries, and yet he was deprived of the Nobel Peace Prize.

All the while, these children were looking around the room, completely distracted, A, by the grandeur of the Oval Office, the gold grandeur of the Oval Office, and also just the fact that they had no idea what he was talking about.

And it's just a frame of mind at this point.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Are we seeing, yes a difference in the quality of thinking or appropriateness?

Jonathan Lemire: He also asked one of the kids if he thought he could take him in a fight.

I mean, that's where this was.

He -- whether it's changed or not, I'm not sure.

It's -- certainly, people do think it has.

But at the very least, he's even less burdened, not that he ever was burdened, to like keep a thought to himself.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Yes.

Jonathan Lemire: You know, he, wherever he is, he feels like, I'm in charge.

I can say what I want.

I don't care who's here.

And I also think he doesn't suffer any sort of consequences.

He doesn't even have an aide afterwards telling him, I'm sure you shouldn't have said that.

Like that just doesn't happen.

Peter Baker: Yes.

You could find episodes, obviously, in his first term.

You could find plenty you know, to raise questions about stability.

But I think what is striking is it happening more and more, right?

Like every week seems to bring another example of people look at that and they scratch their head and say, oh my goodness, what is up with that?

Jeffrey Goldberg: Is that because of decline or because there's no John Kelly or Jim Mattis sitting there?

Peter Baker: It could be both, right, but there's a clearly a lack of inhibition, right?

You know, in fact, none of us is a medical professional, but there is a term called disinhibition, which increases with age.

And you see other things that have increased in the second term, more use of profanity.

He speaks longer.

And, obviously, he is less inhibited from doing some of the things.

He talked about doing the first term, but didn't actually follow through on.

Now, he's following through on them.

Maybe because he doesn't have a John Kelly or a Jim Mattis or an H.R.

McMaster, maybe because he's looking at his legacy and thinking about what history will remember about him.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Vivian Salama: And his 80th birthday is a month away.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

I want to pivot to -- I mean, maybe this is a disinhibition question in a kind of way.

But, you know, there's always drama around his cabinet, his top officials.

As you all know, The Atlantic has been reporting on Kash Patel, the head of the FBI, for the past several weeks, raising concerns -- people around Patel, people in the FBI are raising concerns about erratic behavior, about excessive drinking, charges he's denied.

Obviously, he's also filed suit against us.

And this week our reporter, Sarah Fitzpatrick, reported that Patel has been commissioning and distributing Kash Patel-branded bourbon bottles.

And here's one of them actually.

This is something that we acquired.

This is the first use of a prop on Washington Week in approximately 60 years, by the way.

No, we are not discussing where this came from, but it is real.

It is absolutely real.

And, Jon, let's talk about how this sort of behavior and these kind of stories in another kind of administration would be dealt with.

Jonathan Lemire: Oh, I mean, he would've been gone long ago, I mean, for the -- and not just well beyond we got to this particular moment, and it is a magnificent prop there in front of you, Jeff.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Thank you very much.

Jonathan Lemire: You know, but even in Trump 1.0, he probably wouldn't have had patience for this.

We know he was prone to a lot of turnover.

This time, we have seen a few dismissals just in the last couple of months, but his first year was very much the no scalps policy.

Don't let the media get a win.

Don't let Democrats say you should fire this person and then do so.

And I think with Kash Patel, though, we should be clear, there's not exactly been a vociferous defense from the president for the FBI director, but he also still has his job despite questions about his job performance, including raised within the ranks of the FBI.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Amna, give us your sense of this tension in the White House between no scalps, I'm not firing anyone, versus people who are highly controversial and diversionary.

Amna Nawaz: Well, I think that's a calculation the president has to make person-by-person, right?

The folks along the way where he has changed path, on immigration, for example, at DHS, pulling Gregory Bovino from the field and replacing him with Tom Homan.

The effort to have Mr.

Bovino out in front was a very aggressive sort of messaging, machismo, sort of take no prisoners approach to immigration enforcement.

When that backfired and he faced backlash from the public in particular, there was a replacement there.

And so I think, in some ways, if there is a line to be drawn or one we should be looking for, it's when there is that kind of backlash and more of a public sentiment shift that the president is responsive.

Jeffrey Goldberg: I want to shift to another topic, although I'm going to leave the bottle here because it goes so well with the table.

The Virginia Supreme Court struck down a Congressional map that would have added four Democratic seats in Congress.

It's obviously a big win for the Republicans.

Jon, 2026 is really turning into the Hunger Games of redistricting.

Jonathan Lemire: Yes, it started with the president asking Texas to do so.

We saw Democrats respond with California, and then it's been a tit-for-tat.

It is an arms race, if you will.

And this was a -- Democrats were really invested, both financially, but also psychologically, in Virginia.

So, that was seen as a real blow today for that.

And then you, on top of that, we, of course, had the decision from the Supreme Court last week, which has now given a green light to seemingly most of the South to suddenly try to redistrict all of their Congressional as well, from Alabama to Florida and beyond.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Right.

Vivian, in Indiana, Trump just had a big victory in the primaries.

He wanted to knock off some state senators, Republican state senators, who did not go along with the redistricting map.

And that seems to show us that he's got some juice.

Vivian Salama: Yes, he's still got some juice within the party, for sure, and especially in certain parts of the country where they do believe that Trump's support is the ultimate support.

And so for them, you know, siding with Trump's chosen candidates against those who have supported his agenda was a priority, regardless of whether or not in some cases you had these lawmakers that were there for decades.

They did not fare as well, and that's because they spoke out against redistricting and other political priorities.

Jeffrey Goldberg: What -- Peter, last word to you.

What does what does 2026 or 2028 look like if this trend continues in terms of polarization?

Peter Baker: Yes, I mean, you can understand why Democrats decided to respond to Republicans, but basically the bottom line of this is we have made gerrymandering even worse.

The polarization that has been afflicting our politics now for some years will only get worse, because if you're going to have seats that are all conservative or all liberal, and you're not going to have people having any incentive to move in the middle.

Jeffrey Goldberg: Well, fascinating conversation.

We are going to have to leave it there for now.

Thank you for joining me at the Woodford Reserve.

Thank you to our guests for joining me