Vivian Salama: Good evening, and welcome to Washington Week.

I'm Vivian Salama in tonight for Jeffrey Goldberg.

$40 trillion, that's 13 zeros if you're counting.

That's the staggering new high that the national debt has soared to this week as the United States racks up debt at a pace that is increasingly difficult to ignore.

President Trump, who campaigned on reducing the nation's debt, faces a fiscal picture that has continued to deteriorate.

All the while, the president has seemed preoccupied with helipads and ballrooms and flagpoles and landscaping.

Joining me tonight to discuss this and more, Zolan Kanno-Youngs is a White House correspondent for The New York Times, Mary Louise Kelly is a host of NPR's All Things Considered, Michelle Price is a White House reporter for the Associated Press, and Matt Viser is a staff writer for The Atlantic.

Thank you all so much for joining me.

So, this week, we basically had a split screen going on, where on the one hand, we learned that the national debt had reached this new high of $40 trillion, and on the other hand, President Trump seemed to take the press on an impromptu tour of the White House to showcase some of his latest renovations.

And, obviously you know, we want to be clear this money is coming from different places.

But the optics and the timing, especially in this midterm election year where people are really struggling to pay, you know, groceries and gas, that's been noticeable.

So, Michelle, I want to start with you.

Let's just focus on the debt first.

What should Americans understand from this new figure, the $40 trillion debt that was announced?

Michelle Price, White House Reporter, The Associated Press: Sure.

Well, there's a couple things to understand.

First of all, this has been going over several administrations, but the short of it is that the U.S.

has been spending more than it's taking in, and that is just continuing to exacerbate as costs are rising and politicians for political reasons are not really willing to make some of the deeper cuts that they need to kind of rein this in.

And at the same time, we've had a series of tax cut packages over the years that has reduced how much revenue we are taking in.

Now, we've heard the president, he does not seem -- I mean, the White House can do multiple things at once, the administration, like you can do renovations.

But the way the president speaks about this, he does not seem to treat this like it is an urgent concern.

He was asked about it today, and he said, well, you know, we'll solve it with some growth.

We have not really heard a really detailed plan from the administration on what kind of probably painful cuts they might make to kind of address this issue.

Vivian Salama: And I definitely want to circle back to that and the president's comments today.

But psychologically, Zolan, $40 trillion is a massive number.

What does it mean for the president politically at this stage?

Zolan Kanno-Youngs, White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Well, let's t- step back and remember that it's something that he very much campaigned on addressing, right?

During his political rise, there were numerous moments where he talked -- where he criticized his predecessors for not doing enough to address the nation's debt.

Vivian Salama: And I actually want to stop you because we have some of those clips here looking back at some of the president's comments about the debt.

So, why don't we play that?

Donald Trump: I think it's catastrophic that we owe $15 trillion.

We have $19 trillion in debt.

It's going to be very soon $21 trillion, not billion, $21 trillion in debt.

And I will tell you, we are sitting on a time bomb.

We have $21 trillion in debt, a number that is, you know, unthinkable.

But that will go down very quickly.

We have $34 trillion in debt, we got to pay it off, and we don't want to do anything stupid.

Vivian Salama: So, to your point -- Zolan Kanno-Youngs: Right.

So this is emblematic of something broader, right?

The president, overall, has campaigned on addressing the nation's economy and the cost of living of everyday Americans.

How many times did we see in the 2024 election him talk about the Biden administration not doing enough to lower consumer prices?

Since he's been in office, we've seen that inflation remains staggering.

We've seen economic anxieties among Americans remaining a top concern, including among his own base, too.

And instead of going out and talking about things like Trump Accounts and sort of the tax cuts and having a focus on that, which I know many Republicans would like him to talk about more, we're seeing him more often leading reporters on a tour of sort of these legacy projects, right?

And then you ask yourself, does this now speak to a break between the priorities of a president focusing on his own legacy and a party that has their eyes on the November elections and the future as well?

Vivian Salama: Absolutely, and we're going to get more into that question in a moment.

But, Mary Louise, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent says this isn't a magic number.

He -- both he and the president, as Michelle just said, say that we can grow our way out of this debt.

And so are they right?

And why haven't they done so if that's the case?

Mary Louise Kelly, Host, NPR: They're certainly right that growth would be helpful.

The challenge, as our chief economics correspondent, Scott Horsley, was explaining it on air today, was, is you need the growth to outpace the growth of the debt, as you were outlining, Michelle.

And right now, we have the economy growing at an annual rate of give or take 2 percent.

You have the debt piling on at an annual rate of closer to 6 percent.

It's hard to square those numbers and see that as a healthy recipe for fiscal growth and stability.

I think the -- Vivian Salama: Especially when what's driving it are some things that are just necessary, you know?

Obviously, some shocks to the economy like COVID cannot be helped, but you also have an aging population in the United States where healthcare costs for Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security drive a lot of that debt.

How do you escape that?

It's almost impossible.

Mary Louise Kelly: Absolutely, and I think the adjacent question of what's the trajectory?

Like $41 -- $40 trillion is a staggering number.

But the question is, is it moving in the right direction?

Is there a trajectory where it will change?

And the consensus appears to be no.

The government needs to bring in more money.

The easiest, obvious way to do that is raise taxes.

That's a hard sell at any moment, and it's a really hard sell when one of the knock-off effects of this is inflation.

Groceries are costing more.

Gas is costing more.

Paying your mortgage, taking on credit card debt, all of those things, you want to raise taxes too?

That's a very hard sell for Congress.

It's a very hard sell for the White House particularly in an election year.

Vivian Salama: And so, Matt, we just played that montage of the president over the years talking about, you know, the catastrophic effects of a growing national debt.

Other Republicans have spoken about it too.

They've called it existential threat.

They've linked it to national security.

And so, you know, the Republican Party used to be the -- essentially the sound of the debt alarm.

What has happened there?

Matt Viser, Staff Writer, The Atlantic: Yes, I mean, I, as long as I've been covering politics, that has been a core part of the DNA for the Republican Party.

It was a big part of the Tea Party movement and the rise of that, and it forced Barack Obama to create a whole commission on reducing the debt with Erskine Bowles and Al Simpson trying to come up with different solutions.

But like so much of our politics, Trump has changed a lot of it.

And I think you -- right now, you have control of Washington for Republican -- Republicans control the House, the Senate, and the presidency.

The one piece of legislation that Trump pushed through and sort of his signature piece, the big, beautiful bill, added $4 to $5 trillion to the debt.

So, they've had their opportunity now, controlling all levers of power, and haven't really put a major focus on it.

I think the question is whether voters -- whether this still resonates with voters, whether there's going to be a political price to pay.

And I think Trump is kind of banking on no, this is not resonating.

And so they can sort of get away with adding to the debt because it's off in the future.

It's hard to imagine.

It's not tangible.

Vivian Salama: And so much of it is messaging, right, where if the president can kind of message it and be like, we're taking care of it, a lot of voters will believe it because it's not something that's so tangible as, you know, the price of gas, and especially if they've kind of decoupled them, right?

Matt Viser: Yes.

It's future generations, and they're not voting you know, right now.

So, I think that's kind of, you know, the, the gamble that Trump and Republicans are taking.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs: It's hard to decouple -- Mary Louise Kelly: I noticed that you cited the -- sorry, you cited the how many zeros is on that figure.

Vivian Salama: 13.

Mary Louise Kelly: It's -- your eyes glaze over about seven digits in, and you just can't compute.

Well, I mean, what's another trillion between here?

Zolan Kanno-Youngs: It's hard to decouple this, though.

I mean, when you have people that are seeing sort of their gas prices go up and seeing the price at the grocery store, and then you even see it headlined with this big of a number, maybe if you -- you struggle to understand like what that actually means, the deficit.

But it does send a message of, okay, things are out of control.

To your point, too, on this administration moving away from that traditional stance on the Republican Party, when that bill was being negotiated last year, at one point, there were concerns from fiscal Republican hawks.

The White House sends down Stephen Miller, and him and Lindsey Graham basically say, we're going to pass this bill despite the concerns that you have.

The priority is on getting this funding for the immigration agenda.

Michelle Price: And this is not just a far-off the road impact, and we saw this week, the bond market getting very shaky about these numbers and that was one of the drivers of it.

And when those bond yields get high, that increases borrowing costs for all Americans.

So, there are immediate impacts, too, as those concerns about the debt and kind of a lack of a serious plan to address it start to ripple out.