It was a Jeffrey Goldberg double feature on PBS over the weekend, as the Atlantic editor in chief and host of the Friday night political roundtable Washington Week with The Atlantic guided his six journalist guests (three of them affiliated with The Atlantic) through an America’s 250th-anniversary themed discussion, in front of the unusual setting of studio audience.
Moderator Jeffrey Goldberg: Steve [Hayes], jumping off something that Susan said, I've used this before on this show and elsewhere, but it the question that plagues me is this. Are we experiencing, in America, at 250 -- is this a head cold, a nervous breakdown, a midlife crisis, or a terminal illness?
Ashley Parker, Goldberg’s colleague at The Atlantic, extended the psychiatric metaphor. Trump induced PTSD, and Biden was a return to normalcy:
Ashley Parker, The Atlantic: I think after Trump's first term, when then Biden won, there was a sense from our allies around the world that “Trump One” was sort of like a fever dream that they could PTSD-blackout, right? And we could go back to being the flawed, complicated, but like America that they had known for almost 250 years. And Biden reinforced that, right?
Besides guiding the Trump-fear and loathing, Goldberg also provided it himself in a taped interview with PBS host (and yet another employee of Goldberg’s Atlantic empire) Evan Smith, who hosts the Austin-based talk show Overheard with Evan Smith.
Parker usually takes a light-hearted attitude toward his disparate group of guests, but not this week. First, Goldberg propped up both Washington Week and The Atlantic itself, bragging that “Our goal on the show, our goal in the magazine, the goal of any quality journalism operation these days should be to put as much truth into the universe as possible.”
Atlantic editor Goldberg on Trump: "If this were a different period, this would be a president saying....'I'm gonna break into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist's office and steal his medical records'...I don't understand the enthusiastic, almost lip-smacking embrace of indecency." pic.twitter.com/w1lronwDzD
— Clay Waters 🇮🇱 (@claywaters44) June 15, 2026
After that he went after Trump as a symbol of the rising “indecency” that has infected public life, as Smith rotely agreed.
Goldberg: “Imagine you worked for 30 years to make sure, doing something unsexy, like making sure that bids on big government contracts were organized not according to who's your friend or how much you pay off someone, but based on, oh that's a product that we should buy, based on the merits. And then the whole system gets thrown overboard like that [snaps his fingers] and you feel like you're living in a banana republic.
Smith: How can it be?
Goldberg: How can it be? can people say the things that they say?
Smith: Right. But isn't it the part... I mean, it's not just that it's happening, but it's happening out in the open. There's a--
Goldberg: Well that's the genius of it.
Smith: There's a brazenness to it that is breathtaking.
Goldberg: The genius of this is-
Smith: Right?
Goldberg: The genius of this is, if this were a different period, this would be a president saying, "You know, tomorrow I'm gonna break into the Democratic National Headquarters and I'm gonna break into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist's office and steal his medical records."
Smith: Right.
Goldberg: "Oh, you can't do that!" “Oh, watch me."
Smith: Watch me.
Goldberg: And then people go like, "Oh, yeah, he just did it."
Goldberg confessed himself gob-smacked that Trump’s political career survived after insulting Sen. John McCain’s time in P.O.W. camps during the Vietnam War.
Goldberg: I don't understand the enthusiastic, almost lip-smacking embrace of indecency.
Later he repeated the idea.
Goldberg: I don't understand the rush to indecency, the joy, the joy that people feel--
Smith: Yep.
Goldberg: --in being sadistic and indecent toward not just fellow humans, but fellow Americans.
