JEFFREY GOLDBERG: President Trump returns to Washington with not much to show for his two-day summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Despite Trump's praise for Xi and the big, not at all spontaneous display of unity and warmth in Beijing, it's clear that China will not be using its leverage to help Trump in the Middle East.

Tonight, how did America become so boxed in, next.

Good evening, and welcome to Washington Week.

On his way back from China, President Trump told reporters, we've settled a lot of different problems that other people wouldn't have been able to settle.

One thing that wasn't settled was China's support for Iran.

Another unsettled issue, American arms sales to Taiwan, and more broadly, American support for Taiwan.

Just as Trump's backing of America's European allies is an open question, so too is his support for Taiwanese freedom.

Joining me tonight to discuss the future of the planet, Peter Baker, the chief White House correspondent at The New York Times, Susan Glasser is a staff writer at The New Yorker, Mark Mazzetti is a Washington correspondent at The New York Times, and Nancy Youssef is a Pentagon correspondent and staff writer at The Atlantic.

Thank you all for joining me.

The future of the planet will be discussed tonight.

Peter, it seems like Xi Jinping got what he wanted out of the summit.

That fair?

PETER BAKER, Chief White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Well, he was the host.

He was the dominant figure here, right?

Trump was the supplicant in a way coming to his territory, to his turf.

And he didn't give anything away, as far as we know, right now.

You never know if there are secretive agreements that we don't yet understand.

But, certainly, Trump did not get a breakthrough out of it, did not get any cooperation on the Strait of Hormuz, did not get any large trade deal.

And Xi got at least something of what he wanted in terms of Taiwan, some ambivalence at the very least on the part of the president.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

What could China do in the Strait of Hormuz?

PETER BAKER: Well, they have a little impact on Iran, obviously.

They, over the years, have been one of Iran's bigger customers and they could, in fact, play it either way.

They could pressure Iran to come to the table and make some concessions, or they could in fact supply them with weapons to help them fight the war against us, and that's the question there.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You point to Mark Mazzetti like he's the weapons supplier.

PETER BAKER: He's the weapons guy.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: We'll get to that question in a minute of weapons supplier.

But, Nancy, let me ask you, so playing on this, if you're Taiwan's government right now, how are you feeling about America's commitment to your security?

NANCY YOUSSEF, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: I think uneasy for a couple reasons.

One of the things that emerged from this was the president was unwilling to even talk about Taiwan until he was on the plane headed home.

They've been waiting for months for this $14 billion arms package, and we saw more ambivalence from the president about funding that, and the unwillingness to sort of definitively say that the U.S.

is ready to stand by its policy.

President Xi was willing to definitively say that any involvement by the United States would lead to a clash.

It was not reciprocated by the United States in its willingness to equally say that it would continue to defend its position.

So, I think if you're in Taipei right now, there's reason to be nervous.

In addition, militarily, the United States has moved a lot of its naval resources to the Middle East.

And so some of the defenses that we have had in the region, some of our commitment militarily has shifted towards the Middle East.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And the U.S.

has also spent down some of the stockpiles of the missiles fired by these weapons systems, correct?

NANCY YOUSSEF: That's right.

So a lot of the air defense systems that we kept in places like South Korea, that we kept in the region, were moved over to the Middle East for the war in Iran.

And it'll take years to rebuild those stockpiles.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, Susan, let me ask you about two even more important allies in Asia, South Korea and Japan, and you're watching Donald Trump, not just these last two days, but watching Trump's general performance and demeanor when it comes to Asia.

What are you thinking right now?

SUSAN GLASSER, Staff Writer, The New Yorker: Yes, I mean, you know, I think there was an enormous amount of trepidation looking in advance of the summit on the part of America's allies.

They've seen how Donald Trump has treated Europe.

Nancy mentioned the air defense.

South Korea paid a large amount of money to be stationed with THAAD air missile defense system.

Donald Trump had already, even before the summit, had to pull it out because of the war in the Middle East.

And so I think what Donald Trump has made very clear is that no matter what's written on paper, no matter what laws are passed by Congress, there's no permanent commitments or alliances as far as he's concerned.

And I think you also have to juxtapose these things.

For the last decade, basically, Republicans as well as Democrats in Washington have been signaling to our partners in Asia, you know, now is a different moment.

We see China as a much more significant long-term threat, our only peer competitor, the major rivalry of the 21st century.

Donald Trump, in just a few days, has sort of abandoned that position.

And I think that, in some ways, we're so inured to how radical and disruptive Trump has been to American foreign policy and domestic policy that we kind of need to take a breath and say, if any other president of our recent lifetime, Democrat or Republican, had gone to China and said the things that Donald Trump has been saying, we would be having major front-page headlines saying Donald Trump reverses American foreign policy in Asia.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

Mark, it does seem like Xi accomplished one mission, which is to convince the world that the Americans see China as their peer.

Is that fair?

MARK MAZZETTI, Washington Correspondent, The New York Times: I mean, President Trump was effusive in his praise of President Xi, calling him a great leader.

President Xi reciprocated by playing YMCA by the Village People, and that made President Trump very happy.

He was -- as Peter said, it was sort of as a supplicant, and it was it was a very good show for President Xi.

And as Nancy said, he sort of cast some doubt on the question of Taiwan, right?

President Trump infused a little bit of doubt about weapons and the support of Taiwan, which is sort of this bedrock policy of the United States.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But going to this -- I want you to watch -- I want you to watch Trump talking about China.

This is on the plane ride back about deference.

REPORTER: Did you talk to him about the cyber attacks that he's done in the United States or the MSS has done?

DONALD TRUMP, U.S.

President: I did.

And he talked about attacks that we did in China.

You know, what they do, we do too.

I told him, we do a lot of stuff to you that you don't know about, and you're doing things to us that we probably do know about.

But we do plenty.

It's a double-edge sword.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You've covered intelligence for years.

Very unusual for an American president to say, yes, they do stuff to us.

We do stuff to them.

They don't even know some of the stuff that we do, wink, wink.

That's going to Susan's point, we're not -- we're still not used to seeing that kind of presidential behavior.

MARK MAZZETTI: Yes.

It's a theme over the last several weeks that the administration did not want to disrupt the summit, intelligence be damned, about what China was doing, right?

So, we reported a couple stories about how China was -- well, it's a little murky exactly how many weapons have been shipped to Iran or the extent of the weapon shipments, but there are some plausible deniability, and there were shipments of missiles that have gone to Iran from China.

The president and the administration didn't want to talk about this much.

He wanted to talk about, well, we've mostly been good on Iran, okay?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Talk about your reporting a little bit on this question.

MARK MAZZETTI: Yes.

So, we reported over the last few weeks that there is intelligence that China has tried to use third-party countries to ship at least one large shipment of shoulder-fired missiles called MANPADS that can shoot down helicopters, jets.

We saw this in Afghanistan.

And so this is China dipping their toe in the water in the military confrontation in Iran.

And then the question is, of course, well, so what does China want?

I mean, they're not -- they don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon but they don't want to bail the United States out of a mess that the United States is currently in.

So, they're going to make it hard, and as we saw the last couple days, they're not going to make it easy on President Trump to get out of this.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: China and Russia, generally speaking, enjoy when America goes on big adventures in the Middle East.

MARK MAZZETTI: Sure and they are happy if this continues for some time.

Not forever, but for some time.

And, of course, as we said, they're looking at this very, very closely with the drawdown in the munitions for what it really matters to them, which is Taiwan.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Okay.

Come back just from the perspective of an intelligence reporter.

Come back to this -- the way that Trump presents information to the world, yes, we spy on them, too.

I don't recall presidents kind of flippantly and openly talking about this kind of tit-for-tat.

It's not only revealing of information that probably shouldn't be revealed, but it also sort of goes to this, in his own mind, kind of a moral equivalence, like, yes, they do it to us, but we do it to them, so we're all pretty bad.

MARK MAZZETTI: Right.

Remember, recall the famous Putin meeting, right?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Helsinki.

MARK MAZZETTI: Right, in Helsinki, where he talks about the U.S.

intelligence assessment on the Russia, on the election.

So, it -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Just to remind people that's when he said he doesn't believe U.S.

-- he doesn't believe U.S.

intelligence because Putin said it didn't happen.

MARK MAZZETTI: Right.

And so Putin says it, so, you know, who are we to believe here, right?

And in this issue, now maybe, you know, there's good reason to downplay and not spill out into public some really sort of hot intelligence operations going on.

There may be some reason to do that.

But as you say, there is a kind of equivalence that he's downplaying and making it kind of seem like it's no big deal.

And we're talking about very significant cyber operations that the Chinese have been involved in.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Did Trump -- do we know if Trump brought up privately with Xi, did the administration give any indication that they brought up with Xi this movement of Chinese weapons toward Iran?

MARK MAZZETTI: Not that we know of.

And whether it was done behind the closed doors, whether it was done in other bilateral meetings or you know, in intelligence channels, we're not sure.

We certainly know they weren't trying to make a big deal of it before the summit.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

So, go back to this point, Peter.

How important is China to solving the Iran mess, for lack of a better word?

PETER BAKER: You know, I mean, I think the problem is Iran is important to solving the Iran mess, right?

We've talked about this now week after week.

But the president is in a box.

He needs to find a way to get out of it domestically in order to shore up his Republicans who are facing a pretty tough midterm year, and yet he can't stop the war in a real way without something he can call a victory.

And the Iranians aren't going to give it to him.

They've made very clear they feel like they can wait him out at this point.

They do not feel like they have lost this war.

They feel like that the time is on their side, and they're not going to simply say, yes, you're right, we're going to give up all of our nuclear program just because you want us to.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

I want to -- and, Nancy, I want to talk to you about where exactly we are in the level of crippling of Iran's capabilities.

But I have an even bigger question for the table.

It was just something that popped to mind.

China is supplying Iran with weapons to fight America.

Iran has been, in the past, fighting -- supplying drones to Russia to fight in Ukraine, a Ukraine that's supplied by Europe and America and so on.

There's this cascade.

Are we in World War III but we just don't know it, Susan?

SUSAN GLASSER: You know, it's -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: This is an essay question.

50 percent of your grade comes from this answer.

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, you know, it's one of those moments in history.

I actually wrote a column based on a conversation with Fiona Hill, the Russia expert, in September of 2022, Jeff, in which she and I were talking about this very question, and I wrote that she said it was quite possible we were already in World War III.

There was kind of a huge amount of freak-out at that moment in time.

But what she was suggesting is what you're suggesting right now, which is that the adversary alignment between Russia, Iran, China suggests a sort of, you know, call it an informal, certainly not a formalized axis aligning itself.

It's what Joe Biden -- you know, we don't talk about him anymore, but, you know, what Joe Biden used to talk about the inflection point, the confrontation between democracies and autocracies.

The difference here, Jeff, and that's why I underscored how radical Trump's rhetoric was in Beijing this week, the difference here is that it is not clear at the moment what side the United States of America is on.

And I think it's very important to underscore that, that the difference from September of 2022 when this question of World War III was already out there in the ether, is that the United States' own role in shoring up our democratic partners in the Middle East and in Asia and in Europe is no longer certain.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Maybe that's why it's not quite World War III in the sense that it might be closer to World War III if America knew what side it was on and was more vigorous in confronting this axis of fill-in-the-blank.

I'm not going to hark back 20 years, but you know what I'm thinking.

But we don't know what the president thinks about this.

SUSAN GLASSER: Well, we also don't know what America after Trump is going to be like.

I mean, you know, the United States wavered before entering World War II.

And we sort of wrote the history of that America first movement, you know, out of our collective memory, I think, because of, you know, the momentous events that followed.

And so we don't know what follows Donald Trump.

But I think the question is, were so many Republicans and Democrats wrong when they spent the last ten years telling us that a major strategic competition with China, including military, economic, all domains, that -- were they all wrong, or is that still going to be the case?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Nancy, the Iran war itself, obviously, the Trump administration believes that it has won the Iran war.

CENTCOM, the military, has more nuanced view of the various levels of degradation of Iranian armaments and defensive and offensive capabilities.

But give us your global assessment of where we are right now.

NANCY YOUSSEF: I mean, very simply, there are not any good military options on the table to resolve this conflict.

Something like an aggressive restarting of military strikes on Iran doesn't guarantee a win, because you could see Iran still carry out strikes on allies, on U.S.

interests.

A limited strike, a love tap if you were, isn't necessarily going to lead to a different outcome.

Waiting this out and just having a protracted stalemate isn't an option because of the impact on the world economic market.

So, the best outcome on the table right now is some sort of deal on the Strait of Hormuz and dealing with other issues later.

But as Peter noted, the Iranians don't have an incentive to reach that deal at this point.

According to the U.S.

intelligence community, they believe that they can hold out and suffer the blockade that the United States is putting in for several more months, all the way up until the midterms, which means, in some ways, they have checkmated the United States in terms of the timeline with which a deal can be reached.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Does the U.S.

have theoretically the capability of taking Iran, going all the way, troops, the use of troops, the use of weapons systems that we haven't used yet, or is that just not being discussed because there's no possible way that President Trump is going to deploy ground troops to create conditions for regime change?

NANCY YOUSSEF: So, ground troops don't guarantee a victorious outcome either.

And so I think what's missing in this is tying those military tactics to a clear, strategic outcome.

More force, more troops, more attacks in and of itself doesn't guarantee it.

Now, does the U.S.

have the capability?

It certainly does, but it comes with risk.

It takes a -- it's a draining of resources.

It is costly, and, politically it's risky because I don't think there's an appetite for it, particularly if the outcome leads to an extended conflict, one in which not only the U.S.

but the world economy finds itself in a stranglehold because of the ongoing hostilities.

And so that's why negotiation becomes the most palatable option.

But how you reach that deal and how much you have to concede to Iran and its hold on the strait going forward is what makes it so complicated.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, before the war, there was no Iranian hold on the strait.

Now there is, and that's what's upsetting President Trump when he's confronted with the idea that he hasn't won.

Is that fair?

NANCY YOUSSEF: Yes, because that was their nuclear option taking the Strait of Hormuz.

Remember when the United States assassinated Qasem Soleimani, the former IRGC leader in 2020?

They did not retaliate with this way.

I think one of the lessons that they've learned is that the way we do deterrence going forward, the way we prevent the United States -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: We, the Iranians?

NANCY YOUSSEF: That's right, is we hold economic leverage over the world economy, that the practices of the past were not a successful form of deterrence, which means they're not going to easily give up the, their control over the strait, because, to them, it's essential now to their security.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Trump just had -- yes.

Trump just had a pretty remarkable exchange with your colleague, David Sanger, on Air Force One on this subject.

I want you to watch this.

REPORTER: What was the use of repeating the bombing?

You did it for 38 days.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, no, we did.

REPORTER: And you did not get the political changes in Iran.

DONALD TRUMP: No, I got -- I had a total military victory.

But the fake news guys like you write incorrectly.

You're a fake guy.

I actually think it's sort of treasonous what you write, but you and The New York Times and CNN, I would say, are the worst.

Go ahead.

REPORTER: Sir, on another war -- DONALD TRUMP: And you should know better.

You know better.

Your editors tell you what to write and you write it.

You should be ashamed of yourself.

REPORTER: Mr.

President, another war -- DONALD TRUMP: I actually think it's treason.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I want to make a small point and a big point.

PETER BAKER: Yes.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: First, his editors don't tell him what to write.

PETER BAKER: They were very surprised to hear that today.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: They would like it, but they don't tell him what to write.

The larger point I want to make and please jump in on this, is that it's absolutely outrageous for Donald Trump to call David Sanger or any reporter treasonous.

That's the worst thing you could accuse a person of being.

He's a professional reporter, and he's a patriotic American.

We all know him.

And he's not obviously the first reporter to be attacked by President Trump even this week.

One of the things that makes that encounter unusual is that he used the word treason.

The other is that David Sanger is not a black female reporter, which is Trump's sometimes preferred target.

But on the exact subject that we were talking about, this obviously triggered him in some terrible way.

PETER BAKER: Well, look, he in his second term has been much more willing to go further even than he did in the first term in terms of the idea that anybody who questions him, who says something he doesn't like, who reports something he doesn't either accept or want to believe or doesn't knows is true but doesn't want anybody else to believe, is now not just a bad reporter, not somebody who's a critic or the opposition, but treasonous.

He is now using that term, treason, and the other term sedition, with increasing frequency in the last few months.

He used it about our coverage, for instance, about his health.

It's treasonous or seditious to even ask questions about his health, he said.

He used that now against politicians as well.

Obviously, he accused six members -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I think that was known in behind the Iron Curtain as the Ceausescu rule.

PETER BAKER: Exactly.

Remember, six members of Congress who dared to film a video saying to the military, do not follow illegal orders, were then not just called traitors, but actually the Trump administration tried to bring charges against them, criminal charges against them.

So, I think what we're seeing is a real escalation in this second term about going after people who they consider to be enemies and that they consider to be providing information that they don't want to be out there or views to be squelched.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

NANCY YOUSSEF: Can I just note Article 3, Section 3 was written very narrowly because the founding fathers watched British monarchies make accusations of treason against their critics in the conduct of their monarchies.

And so it's -- this was written precisely to not be used in this way.

If you read Hamilton's Federalist 84, he talks about this, that it's such a high charge that it has to meet the definition of helping enemies during war.

And that was written in the spirit of making sure that critics that the First Amendment and the press' right and responsibility to critique was protected and wasn't abused in such a way that reporters would be, or critics would be called treasonous for pointing out valid criticisms.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I want you all to watch one more quick clip of Donald Trump talking on these general subjects.

This happened or this took place immediately after he was asked how Americans' financial health might be affected by the Iran war.

DONALD TRUMP: Not even a little bit.

The only thing that matters when I'm talking about Iran, they can't have a nuclear weapon.

I don't think about Americans' financial situation.

I don't think about anybody.

I think about one thing.

We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon.

That's all.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Democratic ad makers are going to have fun with that.

He was trying to threaten Iran in a kind of way, saying, nothing's going to deter me.

But that came out in a way that I'm sure people on his team were like that's not going to help.

MARK MAZZETTI: Yes, I mean, I'm not one to try to interpret what the president says or what he meant to say.

Obviously, I think in a charitable way, you could say he was singularly determined to say, this is a national security threat and this is the reason we went to this -- went to war.

And I realize there's economic pain, but this is worth it, right?

It didn't come out that way, right?

And as you said, for political reasons, right, the opposition, the Democrats will have a field day because it cuts to the very issue with this war, which is unpopular and is causing a lot of economic pain.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Peter, last 30 seconds, it's very, very hard if you're an adversary of the United States to understand how serious Trump is about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, for one thing, or defending Taiwan, South Korea or another.

Where does that leave our credibility?

Where does that leave American credibility?

PETER BAKER: Well, this is the problem, right?

So, presidents have over the years, Republicans and Democrats, insisted on or tried to maintain a certain discipline, a certain consistency in order to avoid misunderstandings.

Because misunderstanding in some ways is the most dangerous factor in international relations, misjudgments, miscalculation about what somebody might do in X or Y situation.

And I think, in some, ways you could see how that plays out in Iran right now in terms of the miscalculations on both sides.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, it's a fascinating conversation, but we are going to have to leave it there.

I want to thank our guests for joining me, and thank you at home for watching us.

For more on how Trump's unpredictability may be making the U.S.

an unreliable ally, please visit theatlantic.com.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

Good night from Washington.