JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Good evening and welcome to Washington Week.

Let me try to encapsulate the challenge before us tonight.

Here in Washington, no one knows for sure what President Trump wants to do about the Iranian nuclear program.

No one in Jerusalem knows if the president has truly just left Israel to fight the Houthis of Yemen alone.

In Ottawa, no one really understands why Trump keeps threatening Canada's sovereignty.

In Copenhagen, leaders are asking themselves if Trump would actually invade Greenland.

And at the Vatican, one likely subject, how will the new American pope get along with an American president not known for sharing the stage or the pope's views on poverty and immigration?

I'll try to unpack these mysteries tonight with my guests, Susan Glasser, staff writer at the New Yorker, Asma Khalid is an NPR White House correspondent and co-hosts the NPR Politics Podcast, David Sanger is a White House and national security correspondent at The New York Times, and Nancy Youssef is a national security correspondent at The Wall Street Journal.

Okay, we have to go fast because there's a lot of countries to talk about.

The first, let's talk about the biggest news of the week.

And I recognize that the election of a new pope is a matter of supreme ecclesiastical import, but this is Washington Week, so we're just going to do the politics of it.

I'm very sorry about that.

So, Pope Leo XIV is among other things an American on the world stage with far more followers than the entire MAGA movement combined.

And so one of the questions I have is how is this relationship going to work?

I mean, the president was very kind about the new pope.

He said it's such a great honor for our country to have an American pope.

I mean, what greater honor could there be?

And we were a little bit surprised and very happy.

It's just a great, absolutely great honor.

It's sort of like America won Eurovision or something, but it's -- you know, he was very generous about that.

But I also want to take note of an article that the pope, then-cardinal, recently posted.

The headline that he posted was, J.D.

Vance is wrong, Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others.

So, let me start.

David, let me start with you.

Try to look out a little bit into the future.

What do you think this relationship between the two most important Americans in the world is going to look like?

DAVID SANGER, White House Correspondent, The New York Times: Well, I think, initially, the president will probably treat him with enormous respect and -- JEFFREY GOLDBERG: There'll be a visit, a big visit coming.

DAVID SANGER: And there'll be a big visit and you know, the president's going to have to like read up on the White Sox a little bit because this is a Chicago pope after all.

But there's all that commonality.

The problem's going to be if the discussion ever turns to migration, if the discussion ever turns, as you said, to poverty issues.

And at some point, you know, Donald Trump's not a guy who tends to love to share the limelight out here.

And I think the biggest problem's going to come if he thinks the pope is beginning to talk to American voters in different ways than Donald Trump does.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

Asma, do you think that part of the motivation on the part of the College of Cardinals was to have an American counterbalance to Trump?

I mean, I know that there are people -- ASMA KHALID, White House Correspondent, NPR: I'm not in the mind of the cardinals.

Well, I'll say I very diligently listened to all of the live coverage.

It was fascinating, as the Muslim watching this all unfold.

But I will say, look, I think regardless of intention, the result will be that you have a very loud -- an American with a loud megaphone on a global stage that is not Donald Trump.

And, arguably, under any other circumstance, the American president would be the loudest, perhaps most popular American in the international arena.

And now you have another, you have a counterweight to that.

So, regardless of intention, that is the result.

And I agree with David that I don't think that Donald Trump is one to share the limelight, but I'm also really interested to see ways in which he presents an alternative vision of what it means to be an American this time (ph), because there's a lot of debate about that.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: That's interesting.

Susan, you know, I remember when Pope Francis and President Obama famously got along very, very well.

How far will President Trump go to make his displeasure known if this pope eventually starts talking about immigration in ways that, let's say, Stephen Miller disagrees with?

SUSAN GLASSER, Staff Writer, The New Yorker: I don't think you're going to have to wait too long.

Donald Trump is not a man to restrain him himself or his views, Jeff.

And I would imagine that the social media posts will be voluminous and forthcoming.

You already see, in fact, a lot of discomfort if you look in the sort of very online MAGA world, especially, you know, very conservative, very right wing Catholics in the United States.

They're not a big fan of someone who's already publicly called out the vice president of the United States on immigration views.

And, again, pointing out that in recent years, this has been a major friction point already with Pope Leo's predecessor, who has also criticized the United States and others for lack of empathy toward migrants at a time when there are more people on the move around the world than, you know, in any for decades.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

I mean, Nancy, do you see -- I mean, I think for American Catholics, especially, let's say, conservative-leaning American Catholics, it kind of puts them in an exquisitely sensitive position.

He's the leader of the church.

It's ecclesiastical role, obviously.

But his politics seem to be very, very different.

I mean, is this is a -- is this an electoral story or am I being too parochial in my questioning about this?

NANCY YOUSSEF, National Security Correspondent, The Wall Street Journal: I don't know.

Because what was interesting to me is the church introduced him as the second pope from the Americas.

They didn't introduce him as the first American pope, and I thought that was sort of interesting.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Well, he has two decades or more in Peru.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: So, he's very associated with -- NANCY YOUSSEF: He's an American polyglot.

He's an American who's really spent a lot of time, as you note, in Peru and also in Italy.

At the same time, to me, what was fascinating about it is how we speak about an American pope.

You know, just 65 years ago, there was a question about whether Kennedy could be president, whether he would answer to the pope.

We have six of our nine Supreme Court justices that are Catholic.

And so to your question in terms of the influence that'll have on the Catholic population here in the United States, I think he really personifies a church that was trying to sort of find a compromise between the vision that Francis had and some of the more conservative Catholic positions here in the United States.

And so where he fits in that and how much he's able to resonate with American Catholics, I think, is going to be very interesting.

JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Right.

It's going to be completely fascinating.

We've never seen it.

It really is historic, this decision by the church.

I mean, there's things that we used the term historic lightly, but this is really quite a week in American history and obviously the history of the church.

And it's going to be fascinating to watch these two men circle each other and size each other up and figure out how to get their way with the other to some degree.