Panelists discuss what a military parade in Beijing reveals about the future of American diplomacy, and more.
Courtesy of Washington Week With The Atlantic
September 6, 2025, 9:28 AM ET
Editor’s Note: Washington Week With The Atlantic is a partnership between NewsHour Productions, WETA, and The Atlantic airing every Friday on PBS stations nationwide. Check your local listings, watch full episodes here, or listen to the weekly podcast here.
The leaders of Russia, China, and North Korea gathered in Beijing this week in a show of force that highlighted their strengthening alliance. On Washington Week With The Atlantic, panelists joined to discuss this and more.
“If you look at this gathering earlier this week, you had America’s foremost adversaries declaring that their goal was to bring an end to the rules-based, post-war international order” that was “created and driven by the United States for our own benefit,” Stephen Hayes, the editor of The Dispatch, explained last night. Yet, he continued, it’s as if the Trump administration “is looking at them doing this” and saying, in effect, “How can we help?” Donald Trump is “picking fights with our allies and accommodating our enemies,” Hayes argued.
Meanwhile, in a contentious hearing this week, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended his moves as secretary of health and human services before the Senate. The panel discussed how Kennedy’s policies, including his anti-vaccine agenda, became popular with the MAGA base—and what it could mean for the future of American public health.
Joining the editor in chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, to discuss this and more: Elisabeth Bumiller, a writer at large at The New York Times; Leigh Ann Caldwell, the chief Washington correspondent at Puck; Stephen Hayes, the editor of The Dispatch; and Vivian Salama, a staff writer at The Atlantic.
Watch the full episode here.