JEFFREY GOLDBERG: I need to ask all of you this question because it's fascinating.

Is Donald Trump turning Benjamin Netanyahu into a bit of a sucker?

DAVID IGNATIUS: Well, Bibi's yesterday's man.

You know, the centrality of Israel and Netanyahu was really eclipsed this week.

That was the biggest theme, unstated was where Trump wasn't, in Israel.

You know, I think Trump got angry in February when Netanyahu came to Washington in the expectation that he could push Trump towards military action against Iran.

And my sense is that Trump felt jammed.

And ever since then, as Andrea said, he has been pushing back.

I'm just very curious whether this is going to end up costing Netanyahu in Israel.

He's no longer the Trump whisperer.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Just one quick fact is that the Sunday before this trip, Netanyahu expanded the war in Gaza and called up the reserves against half of his own population and against the interests of the hostage families and against the former people in the IDF, including the defense ministry he had fired.

So, by expanding the war, he was going up against Donald Trump's stated desire to rebuild Gaza.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

ANDREA MITCHELL: And now we are reporting tonight that they are working on a plan to move 1 million Gazans to Libya.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Peter, stay on the subject of Bibi and also answer the question.

Well, it's almost a asked and answered question.

1 million Gazans are not being moved to Libya.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Is that fair to say?

PETER BAKER: Look, I think we should learn in the last ten years not to make predictions, but it's awfully hard to see how that happens, right?

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And Libya is a failed state right now.

PETER BAKER: Absolutely.

There's -- I mean, I think Donald Trump looks at a map and he says, huh, that looks like there's a good property there, right?

I mean, it's just something as that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But we've all been to Libya, a lot of beachfront.

PETER BAKER: A lot of beach.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: A lot of beach.

ANDREA MITCHELL: But it's in exchange for unfreezing the Libyan asset.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

No, absolutely.

But it's a deal.

It's a deal.

STEPHEN HAYES: To get another deal.

Look, I think that's what we're looking at here.

Donald Trump wants to make deals.

He wants to make big deals.

He wants to be flashy.

He wants to be in the center of it all.

And he wants to be in charge.

And I think if you go back to that quote from Steve Witkoff, the word I come up with when I see that is naive, I mean, how hopelessly naive is it?

I like the ambition.

There's room for disruption.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: You know, I don't appreciate your cynicism here.

STEPHEN HAYES: I'm sorry to be cynical.

I mean, I probably should have been more cynical than I have been over the past decade, would've been right more.

But, look, I mean, I think it, it's hopelessly naive to say the kinds of things that he's saying.

And Netanyahu in this case is really only the latest of U.S. allies whom Donald Trump has sort of cast aside.

I mean, think about things that he's been saying about European leaders, about Canadians, about NATO.

I mean, longtime, decades-long allies, he's sort of cast aside in part because they don't get him the deal.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

David, it is interesting to note that yes, he didn't go to Israel, he also has no interest in going to -- taking a long, grand tour of Europe with all of our friends and allies.

DAVID IGNATIUS: He doesn't.

He wants to go to Moscow and see Vladimir Putin and end the war in Ukraine.

You know, that's - - the real showdown for Trump, I think isn't the Iran negotiation.

It's whether and how he can deliver on his promise over and over again to end the war in Ukraine.

And the big fear I have given that he has not really pressured any compromises yet from Russia is that he will go there, meet and it'll be kind of Yalta 2.

And that's -- the Ukrainians you know, are hanging tough but it would be very hard for them to do it.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: David, you're just back from Kyiv.

Have the Ukrainians figured out the puzzle that is Donald Trump?

DAVID IGNATIUS: So, I was there a week ago.

I felt that Ukraine was in much better shape, more confident, more resilient than six months before when I was last there.

They learned how to speak Trump.

Zelenskyy, when he was rebuffed in the Oval Office, came back, he was very popular, people at homes, you know, kind of rallied around him.

And the Ukrainians have realized that they are now part of Europe.

The leaders of Europe stand with them against Russia, and that means an enormous amount.

That's really what this war is about, is Ukraine becoming European.

So, I came away actually feeling a little more hopeful for.

PETER BAKER: In fact, look at who was on the phone today, right, when the president leaves the Middle East on his plane ride home.

This is the old Air Force 1.

He takes a call from Zelenskyy, who's on the line with Zelenskyy is Starmer from Britain, Duda from Poland, and Merz from Germany, his friends.

Coaching him, right, they are his validators, right?

It's not just Zelenskyy, it's his friends.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: And what's the theory of having them all on the phone?

That Trump is not going to bully Zelenskyy if all of the European leaders are on the phone?

PETER BAKER: In a way, they're tutoring Zelenskyy, okay?

They showed repeatedly, how do you deal with Trump?

Flattery?

Gratitude?

Yes, and, not, yes, but.

You know, you say you're exactly right.

And then you restate what your position is, even if it's complete opposite of what he said and you just don't try to poke at him.

And I think the solidarity there is important.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Peter, let me play devil's advocate, triangulate devil's advocacy against Steve for a second and ask you.

Yes, Witkoff, these statements, I mean, throwing in Armenia, Azerbaijan was sort of just like about a cherry on top, like you're not busy enough.

PETER BAKER: Yes.

If it's Tuesday, it's (INAUDIBLE).

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Yes.

But are we being overly cynical and saying, well, maybe everything is so fluid now and maybe Trump keeps everybody so unstable?

PETER BAKER: We should be skeptical.

But David's made I think a fair point, which is that Donald Trump is not locked into the old rules, right?

Steve Witkoff, as Andrea said, he can come into a meeting saying, hey, I'm sorry I'm late, I was just on the phone with Hamas, right.

Obviously, Brett McGurk couldn't have done that for Joe Biden when he was his special Middle East coordinator.

No Obama person could have talked with the Iranians.

Remember when Obama wanted to have a phone call with the Iranian president during a U.N. meeting, it was this big negotiation, oh my God, first time in three decades, any America -- and Trump doesn't care about that, and Witkoff doesn't care about that.

He may not even know what the rules are as he's violating them because he is maybe naive or innocent or whatever word we want to use.

Okay, there's an advantage of that, Nixon and China.

But Nixon was a very canny operator.

He had Kissinger at his side.

And to say that Donald Trump and Steve Witkoff are Nixon, Kissinger may be asking a lot, right?

We don't know.

ANDREA MITCHELL: When I say that Witkoff has his utility, I think his big misstep so far was in parroting Vladimir Putin's, you know, propaganda when he came back, but that was also playing up to the boss, Donald Trump.

And so maybe that was tactical.

I just think that he could be more effective as an opening act and then bringing in the experts along the way, which is what you'll have to do with the new -- DAVID IGNATIUS: They're going to need help to pull off the thing, the agenda that they've now set.

They're going to need real expertise.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: How stable is that team inside though?

If you're the secretary of State you're competing against J.D.

Vance in 2028 -- (CROSSTALKS) DAVID IGNATIUS: Stable is a word a lot -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Stable, yes.

DAVID IGNATIUS: Yes, that's a word you thought there.

There are internal deep fractures here, but between the so-called neo-cons and the MAGA group, you know?

So, that's all papered over because of the intense personal involvement of Witkoff.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That's a very interesting point, Steve, and you've covered this issue for years.

The, quote/unquote, neo-con faction in the Republican Party, even the White House is not dead, it's not gone, Mike Waltz, the defenestrated national security adviser ostensibly heading to the U.N., Marco Rubio, obviously they come from that -- Lindsey Graham came from that, we have something to tell the world about our system mode.

They're on their back foot, but I don't think that they're gone forever or are they?

STEPHEN HAYES: I mean, it's hard to tell.

Marco Rubio, remember, this week he said something about the president -- praising President Trump for moving beyond the rhetoric of 30 years of failed Washington establishment foreign policy.

I would argue that until very recently, Marco Rubio was one of the most effective advocates of that 30-year consensus, American foreign policy.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: He was one of the most important.

STEPHEN HAYES: And he's not.

He isn't any longer, not just in his public statements, which certainly huge to this sort of MAGA line, and often I think go further than President Trump in his public statements, but also behind the scenes.

I don't think Marco Rubio is sort of this bulwark of, you know, conservative internationalism or neo-conservatism any longer.

I don't think he's making those arguments.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: But speaking of cynicism, this was -- everything about this foreign policy is extremely transactional.

It's Russia -- it's not that Russia is wrong, it's just that the war has to end.

It's not that -- the fact that MBS oversaw or a ceded to the murder of a Washington Post columnist irrelevant.

There has never been less morality informing -- even hypocritical morality informing U.S. foreign policymaking.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Well, in talking to diplomats, including our closest diplomats, members of the Five Eyes, you know, that circle -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Great Britain and the English speaking countries.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Right.

The real game changer is the level of open corruption.

In the first term, Donald Trump promised to not be involved in the Trump organization and made a big show of that.

He cared about that.

There were a lot of conflicts of interest, but they were not open.

On this trip, the deal-making of the sons in the two weeks before, the cryptocurrency, selling of access to the president, the airplane, we haven't spoken about Qatar, remaking the image of Qatar.

They were apparently, according to reporting tonight, today, trying to unload this older plane because of the maintenance costs.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: We are going to talk about corruption in the weeks to come because it's pretty extraordinary.

I do have one question, one final question.

Peter, you're the unlucky soul.

Donald Trump tweeted at the tail end of his trip, has anyone noticed that since I said I hate Taylor Swift, she's no longer hot?

That's a real Truth Social tweet.

You have ten seconds to explain this, down to eight.

PETER BAKER: He was on the plane, his own plane on the way home.

Clearly, he watched something that involved Taylor Swift and it got him thinking.

He just starts -- he also did, by the way, the same thing on Bruce Springsteen went after him in the same trip.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Oh, we're going to - - we'll be talking about -- well, no, we're going to spend time next week talking about Syria and Taylor Swift, but we're going to have to leave it there for now.

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