• Tuesday marked 1,000 days since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, plunging the European continent into its largest and deadliest conflict since World War II. The milestone was marked by yet another major escalation of violence, when Ukraine launched U.S.-made long-range missiles into Russia for the first time. Russian President Vladimir Putin responded by issuing a new nuclear doctrine to lower the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons. It all comes at a tense time for Europe, as leaders prepare for the return of President-elect Donald Trump, who campaigned on a promise to wind down U.S. support for Ukraine. McKay Coppins, senior staff writer at The Atlantic, explains how Europe is preparing for Trump’s return to the White House.
• And in headlines: South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace introduced a resolution to ban transgender women from female bathrooms in the Capitol, Trump picked Dr. Oz to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, and the White House says this year’s Christmas tree will come from North Carolina.

• Check out McKay’s piece – https://tinyurl.com/2u862wvf
• Support relief efforts for Hurricanes Helene and Milton – https://tinyurl.com/bdfc8j38
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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Wednesday, November 20th. I’m Jane Coaston. And this is What a Day. The show where we’re feeling um a little sick thinking about two federal health agencies run by RFK Jr. And Dr. Oz. Which department will Dr. Phil get? Is our government secretly being run by Oprah? Is Judge Judy about to get a life changing call? [music break] On today’s show, a South Carolina congresswoman introduces a resolution targeting a freshman member, and Trump is truthing marching orders to Senate Republicans. Let’s get into it. Tuesday marked 1000 days since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine. The start of the war plunged the European continent into its largest and deadliest conflict since World War Two. And since then, hundreds of thousands of people have died and more than six million Ukrainians are living as refugees abroad. The thousand day milestone was marked by another major escalation of violence. On Tuesday, Ukraine launched US made long range missiles known as atacms in to Russia for the first time. That’s after President Joe Biden gave Ukraine the green light to use the missiles earlier this week. A major policy reversal just as he prepares to leave office. In response to Ukraine’s attack, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a new nuclear doctrine, lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons, which is very, very bad. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t confirm or deny shooting the atacms deep into Russia, but during a video speech at the European Parliament Tuesday, he urged European leaders to keep up the fight against Russia. 

[clip of Volodymyr Zelenskyy] While some European leaders think about, you know, some elections or something like this at Ukraine’s expense, Putin is focused on winning this war. He will not stop on his own. The more time he has, the worse the conditions become. 

Jane Coaston: And unlike those European leaders, Putin doesn’t have to worry about elections. To be clear, our European allies are scared about what President elect Donald Trump’s win means for the future of the war in Ukraine, broader Russian aggression and NATO’s existence. McKay Coppins is a senior staff writer at The Atlantic. We had him on the show back in June for a big piece he wrote about how Europe was worried about the potential for a second Trump presidency. We invited him back to talk about how our allies abroad are now preparing for Trump’s return to the White House. McKay, welcome back to What a Day. 

McKay Coppins: Thanks for having me, Jane. 

Jane Coaston: So it happened. Trump won reelection. What’s been the reaction from European leaders and diplomats, both publicly and privately? 

McKay Coppins: You know, it’s interesting. The reaction is different whether they’re on the record or off the record. I spoke to one European official shortly after Trump won and asked him, you know, what do you make of this? And his initial answer was, you know, on the record, we’re totally calm. We look forward to fostering trans-Atlantic cooperation with our new partners in Washington, da da da da da. All the kind of diplomatic speak. And then he said, can I talk on background? And I said, sure. And he said, Obviously a million things could go wrong. And I think that kind of captures the general mood in Europe. I mean, I was reporting there earlier this year. I talked to a lot of elected leaders, NATO, officials, diplomats, and all of them at the time were obsessively following the presidential election. And all of them basically said the stakes for Europe are existential. So, you know, it’s no surprise that there’s a certain amount of dread from European leaders, but at the same time, they realize that there’s nothing they can really do about it at this point other than try to cozy up to him and his allies, try to flatter him and hopefully get him on their side. 

Jane Coaston: Yeah, we had you on to talk about that earlier piece. So how are European leaders planning to deal with this? What’s the short term approach to trying to mitigate the potential damage?

McKay Coppins: In the short term the discussions have revolved a lot around how do we flatter Trump? Right. Like they recognize this guy is a man who is very susceptible to flattery, to obsequiousness. One idea that’s being circulated among European officials is to plan a big state visit in some European capital in France or Italy, Spain. Have him come, roll out the red carpet, really try to, you know, make him feel loved. And their thought is that between that and working various back channels to people like Marco Rubio, who most of the people I spoke to were pretty relieved to see is the choice for State Department. Uh. They think between those two things, maybe they can kind of convince him to continue to fund the war in Ukraine, to continue to, uh you know, support allies and NATO. But they also recognize that they’re facing political headwinds domestically because people in Europe, the average voter in Europe, hates Donald Trump. Right. They think he’s kind of like a caricature of America that represents all the worst things about about America. And, you know, Wolfgang Ischinger, who’s a veteran German diplomat, said to me, you know, I would be worried about planning one of these big state visits in a European capital because there could be really big, ugly, potentially violent anti-Trump protests. And if Trump sees that, it could end up backfiring. 

Jane Coaston: But Europe’s been dealing with its own explosion of right wing populism or whatever it is Trumpism is. What does Trump’s win mean for those movements in countries like France and Italy and the United Kingdom, where we keep seeing people who keep sounding like Trump? I think even like in the Netherlands, for example. 

McKay Coppins: Well, that’s the interesting thing. Most people in Europe don’t see Trump as this like black swan event, like a lot of Americans uh kind of treated him that it was this total fluke, an accident of history that he won. In 2020 he lost and that kind of set things back to normal. In Europe, the brand of politics that he represents, this kind of right wing populism, merged with nationalism, merged with kind of anti-immigrant attitudes, xenophobia. That stuff has been upending European politics most of this century. Right. It’s how you got Brexit in the UK. It’s how you got Marine Le Pen as a major figure in France. I spoke to one political scientist in Italy who’s been an adviser to the EU and she said that Trump’s win is going to be galvanizing to these far right movements and parties. Right. Like these, these people are going to see Trump getting reelected as a huge bump in momentum to their cause. And as as this one source put it, she said, you know, how can you say that when you see someone like Trump win in the heart of liberal democracy, America, how can you then turn and make the argument and say, oh but we can’t do it in Europe? 

Jane Coaston: With Trump running the government for the next four years at least. What are the immediate threats our European allies see coming down the pipeline? 

McKay Coppins: The very first thing everybody’s going to be watching is what he does in Ukraine. Right. Uh. Trump has said that he could end the war in Ukraine on day one. Um.

Jane Coaston: Of course he could. Of course he could. 

McKay Coppins: Well, you know, I I spoke to somebody in Ukraine, actually, and she kind of said it’s possible that what he means by that is he makes some major territorial concession to Russia and basically tells Ukraine and NATO, we’re going to cut off all funding and support for the war unless you take this deal. Right. So it’s possible. And what a lot of Europeans fear is that ending the war means basically letting Vladimir Putin win. Um. In the medium term, there are questions about NATO, right? You know, it’s funny. I feel like sometimes when I talk about NATO on on shows like this or just in general, people’s eyes kind of glaze over because it is kind of this like wonky, you know, alphabet soup thing. But it really does matter, it’s the most powerful military alliance in– 

Jane Coaston: Not here, not on this program. 

McKay Coppins: –history, no. I know you–

Jane Coaston: This is a NATO–

McKay Coppins: I know you like it. 

Jane Coaston: –respecter. 

McKay Coppins: Right. And look, it matters a lot like, the you know, this alliance has basically maintained peace on the European continent for, you know, 70 years at this point, that the war in Ukraine has tested NATO, because the fear is that if if Vladimir Putin comes away from that experience feeling like he won, like it was worth it. There’s the next front is going to be to challenge NATO. Putin has made it very clear that he doesn’t want that alliance to exist anymore. And if he sees kind of a weakening of American will on this front, whether from Trump or from somebody else, he’s probably going to try to exploit it. And the question is, does Donald Trump stay committed to this alliance? Does he keep America committed to it or does he throw up his hands and say, I’m not going to risk, you know, American blood and treasure for some village in Estonia that I’ve never heard of.

Jane Coaston: What does NATO look like without the United States? 

McKay Coppins: Well, you know, it’s significantly weakened, like the United States not only provides the entire so-called nuclear umbrella under which Europe exists, basically, uh America’s nuclear arsenal is what deters Russia from ever using its nuclear arsenal in Europe. Um. It also provides an enormous amount of funding, uh intelligence gathering capabilities, ballistic missile capabilities. 85,000 U.S. troops are currently stationed in Europe, which is more than many European countries combined. And all of which is to say you take America away from NATO. The alliance basically collapses. Now, that’s not to say that there wouldn’t be some different European alliance that comes into into existence after that, but it would be much weaker and it would be much harder for Europe to deter Russian aggression without America as its partner. 

Jane Coaston: I have to ask about President Biden. Why do you think he is potentially escalating the war in Ukraine on his way out the door? Do you think he would be as aggressive if this was a Harris administration coming in? 

McKay Coppins: It’s a good question. And I don’t know. I wonder if he basically sees a very short window before Trump takes office and, you know, potentially just withdraws U.S. support for the war in Ukraine. So he wants to give Ukraine whatever advantages they have right now while he can. You could also look at it as a kind of a like negotiating tactic, right. Like if Trump is uh is determined to come in, deal with Putin and make some kind of concessions, uh if the long use of American long range missiles, for example, is on the table, Trump could offer to pull those back instead of, you know, making some other concession to Putin that he doesn’t to. It’s you know, at this point, it’s hard to say exactly what the strategic thinking is other than the fact that Biden wants Ukraine to win this war. And so he’s trying to use his last months in office to make that happen. 

Jane Coaston: We had you on a few months ago to talk about European fears of a second Trump presidency. And at the time, we asked you who Europeans blamed for what they saw as the inevitability of a second Trump presidency. And you said it was kind of a mixed bag. Has that changed now, now that it’s actually happened? 

McKay Coppins: Mmm. Well, you know, at the time, everybody I talked to in Europe was certain that Trump was going to win. And at the time, Joe Biden was the nominee. And they all couldn’t wrap their heads around why he was the nominee. Um. Talking to Europeans now, the thing that they will say they kind of grumble about on background is that if Biden had just done the obvious thing that he needed to do two years ago, announce that he wasn’t running and opened up the Democratic Party to to field the best candidate, uh that, you know, there might have been a different result. I did speak to one person in Ukraine who said what happens in this country is going to be the responsibility of Joe Biden in the end. So she was she was pretty mad at Biden. And I think that that sentiment is pretty widely shared at this point in Europe. 

Jane Coaston: McKay, thank you so much. You are always welcome to talk about NATO with me. 

McKay Coppins: Thanks for having me. 

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with McKay Coppins, senior staff writer at The Atlantic. We’ll link to his piece about how Europe is preparing for a second Trump presidency in our show notes. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment. But if you like the show, make sure to subscribe. Leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts. Watch us on YouTube and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

[AD BREAK]

Jane Coaston: And now the news. 

[sung] Headlines. 

[clip of unspecified news reporter] Is this effort in response to Congresswoman McBride coming to Congress?

[clip of Representative Nancy Mace] Yes, and absolutely and then some. 

Jane Coaston: South Carolina Representative Nancy Mace introduced a resolution to ban transgender women from female bathrooms in the U.S. Capitol on Monday. Why? Because two weeks ago, Delaware Democrat Sarah McBride became the first openly transgender person elected to U.S. Congress. Mace was elected in 2020 and is the first woman to represent South Carolina in Congress. She worked on Trump’s 2016 campaign, but distanced herself from Trump after the January 6th insurrection. She was viewed by some as a less MAGA politician supporting both the Respect for Marriage Act and talking about her opposition to abortion bans, with no exceptions. But her district has moved to the right since 2020, and apparently so has she. Here she is speaking with another reporter, doubling down on her stance. 

[clip of unspecified news reporter 2] With your piece of legislation about banning women from using. 

[clip of Representative Nancy Mace] 100%. Yes. 

[clip of unspecified news reporter 2] Uh. My question to you is– 

[clip of Representative Nancy Mace] And it doesn’t go far enough. 

[clip of unspecified news reporter 2] You–

[clip of Representative Nancy Mace] I’ll be filing more bills. 

[clip of unspecified news reporter 2] You have said that it was created in response to congresswoman elect McBride. 

[clip of Representative Nancy Mace] Absolutely 100% and it–

[clip of unspecified news reporter 2] But should legislation be created, targeted at one specific person? 

[clip of Representative Nancy Mace] But it doesn’t it doesn’t mention anyone in the legislation, but I’m not going–

[clip of unspecified news reporter 2] But you have said it was aimed at her. 

[clip of Representative Nancy Mace] No, I have said it’s a result of this. 

Jane Coaston: Sarah McBride responded to the resolution with a statement. Quote, “This is a blatant attempt from far right wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing.” I also have a statement for Nancy Mace. Go to hell. Donald Trump continues to rollout TV personality nominations for his administration. And this one you may recognize. Dr. Mehmet Oz was named Tuesday to run the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Yes, that Dr. Oz, the daytime talk show host, failed Pennsylvania Senate candidate, purveyor of Covid misinformation. Lover of raspberry ketones available for the low, low price of $21.68. And just a general quack. And the one who said this to Sean Hannity last week about Robert F Kennedy Jr., who would be Dr. Oz’s boss if they’re both confirmed. 

[clip of Dr. Mehmet Oz] I think President Trump is wise in the recommendation of RFK Jr. I know him personally. I have for a while. I understand exactly what he’s getting at. 

Jane Coaston: The centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services operates and oversees programs that provide health care coverage to almost half of Americans, including Obamacare. Trump said in the statement, quote, “There may be no physician more qualified and capable than Dr. Oz to make America healthy again.” Which isn’t true because I’m pretty sure Dr. Seuss would be more qualified and capable. On Tuesday, Trump laid out the blueprint for Senate Republicans to block President Biden’s judicial picks during the last few weeks of his presidency in a post on Truth Social, he wrote, quote, “The Democrats are trying to stack the courts with radical left judges on their way out the door. Republican senators need to show up and hold the line. No more judges confirmed before Inauguration Day.” First of all, I wish they were stacking the courts. Biden has nominated 261 federal judges, according to a November 8th White House press release. 216 of those have been confirmed by the Senate, and there are 45 vacancies still open. Less than half as many as when Trump was inaugurated in 2017. Luckily, since the Democrats control the Senate for at least a few more weeks, the Republicans shouldn’t be able to block the nominees entirely and can only slow them down. Barring absences from Democratic senators. So don’t get sick Democratic senators, stay well. The White House has selected this year’s Christmas tree from North Carolina. The tree comes from a farm in Avery County, which was devastated by Hurricane Helene in September. The Cartner family has owned their family Christmas tree farm for decades and were chosen as the source for the White House’s tree last year. Sam Cartner, Jr, one of the owners of the farm, spoke to the Associated Press about what his parents would think of the honor. 

[clip of Sam Cartner Jr.] Here in the western North Carolina where we’ve experienced these this horrific hurricane and flood, they would they would want this tree to represent the uh faith and hope and love and joy and family and generosity. 

Jane Coaston: During the storm. The Cartners lost at least 5000 trees to a mudslide while another Christmas tree farm nearby lost 60,000. Some farmers in the region will have to bulldoze their lands and start from scratch. North Carolina was one of the hardest hit regions, and Asheville just got drinkable tap water back after 53 days. If you want to support the relief efforts in North Carolina, we’ll link you in our show notes. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. As you might know, Donald Trump has spent a lot of the last few years in court. There are four criminal probes of the former and future president, and all four are still pending. In May of this year, Trump was convicted on charges relating to hush money payments made to an adult film actress. He was indicted in 2023 on federal charges based on his efforts to interfere in the 2020 election. Remember the whole riot thing? Also, in 2023, he was indicted in Georgia for his efforts to find more than 11,000 votes in an attempt to steal the election. And then there is the classified documents case where Trump was charged in 2023 by Special Counsel Jack Smith for having more than 100 classified documents at his home, Mar-a-Lago. But the Supreme Court ruled in July that Trump could only be prosecuted for non-official acts, throwing all of the federal cases against him into total chaos. And on Tuesday, the prosecutors in this hush money case asked for a delay in the proceedings. Given that while Trump has been convicted, he’s also won the 2024 presidential election. And while no one exactly knows what that means for his sentencing, which was scheduled for November 26th. I will not lie to you. While I have seen pretty much every episode of Law and Order released before 2008. I did not actually go to law school, so I called up our good friend Norm Eisen. He served as special counsel to the House Judiciary Committee majority during the impeachment proceedings against Trump in 2019 and 2020. Norm, welcome back to What a Day.

Norm Eisen: Thank you, Jane. Glad to be back with you. 

Jane Coaston: So New York prosecutors told the judge in Trump’s hush money case that the sentencing should be postponed while they file the paperwork to get the case dismissed. What exactly does that mean? 

Norm Eisen: The decision of New York prosecutors, Manhattan D.A. Alvin Bragg was kind of a glass half full or half empty, depending how you look at it. What Trump wanted was the whole case to be stayed. He wants to try to get the things thrown out because he claims he’s immune under Supreme Court decision, Trump v U.S.. The D.A. said it’s okay to postpone the sentencing. We can wait on sentencing. But the D.A. wants to brief this question, is Trump immune or not? He set a schedule where the briefing will move at a pretty brisk pace by December. I would have liked to have seen the D.A. say let’s surge ahead with sentencing, but at least the D.A. didn’t give up. 

Jane Coaston: Is there any chance that this goes anywhere now that Trump is going to be president again? What’s next? 

Norm Eisen: UHh. A jury of regular Americans. Trump’s peers found him guilty, 34 counts of election interference in 2016 by paying this money and then of covering it up by falsifying his business records. Let’s not throw that out. That’s very important. So I think we need to hang on to that verdict. We’re now going to have some litigation about whether immunity applies, and that’s going to go up on appeal. I think the Supreme Court is ultimately if they apply the test that they announced in Trump v US in their own case, they’re going to have to say, wait a minute, only official conduct is immune. How can this be official conduct? The guy did this before he was president, paying this hush money, interfering with the election, deceiving voters. That is an advantage of what Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan D.A., did today. He’s not throwing in the towel, unlike some of the other prosecutions. He wants to continue to proceed with the briefing. 

Jane Coaston: And there has been an update in the election interference case against president elect in Georgia. A federal appeals court canceled oral arguments in the case. What does that mean for the future of that case? 

Norm Eisen: In the Georgia case, that’s the Georgia state case where there was supposed to be an argument in the Georgia appellate courts about the, whethber or not the D.A. had a conflict there, because the D.A. had a relationship and the judge held no conflict. But it’s up on appeal. The argument has been canceled. That’s a worse situation than in New York. It’s probably a sign that that court is dubious about whether the Georgia case can proceed against Trump. But remember, in Georgia, separately, in a case where Trump is not a defendant in Arizona and in other courts around the country, the alleged coconspirators have been charged. False electors have been charged all over the country. So those other conspirators, the cases should continue to move. 

Jane Coaston: Last time Trump was president, it felt like there were these constant legal threats that had people all excited and convinced that he was like one step away from going to jail as part of some Hail Mary to remove him from the presidency. But obviously that didn’t happen. Is this all the same thing? Are we getting excited over nothing? What’s happening here? 

Norm Eisen: This has been a tough year for legal accountability, Ja ne. That doesn’t mean that Trump will never be held accountable. It doesn’t mean we should stop pressing. I was there in court throughout the trial, and seeing him being held accountable by those jurors is still an important moment in the annals of 2024 and in American history. We have to protect that verdict. And that is what Alvin Bragg is moving to do. So even if he’s not pushing for this sentencing, given that Trump likely would not be able to serve a criminal sentence while in the White House, the best thing to do is protect that verdict. And that’s what Bragg is doing. The Trump administration was litigious. There was a tremendous amount of litigation, and he lost a lot of that litigation. And the courts are going to hold accountable in that fashion if he breaks the rules once again. 

Jane Coaston: Norm, thank you so much for your time and thanks for coming back on. 

Norm Eisen: Have me any time. 

Jane Coaston: [AD BREA]

Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe. Leave a review. I share his new memoir because, man, what a life that must have been. And tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading and not just about Donald Trump assembling a worst hits of daytime television for his cabinet, like me, What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston. And you know what you did Oprah. [music break] What a D ay is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producer is Raven Yamamoto. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Tyler Hill, Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka.