The collapse of the Democrats, climate agenda, the connection between
Trump and right wing extremism and the debate over abortion after
the fall of Roe, It is all contributed to another very busy week
here in Washington, and that brings us to the analysis of Brooks
and K part
That's New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart,
associate editor for the Washington Post. Gentlemen. Good evening.
Thank you both for being here here, Jonathan Joe Manchin today said.
I'm done with all of this back and forth and offer you a ticket to
the dance, and they never show up the climate agenda that the president
had hoped would in some way get across the finish line.
Has fallen apart.
Is it your sense that the US is just not going to act on climate
change for a couple of years? Um, in the short answer is yes, as
long as there's a 50 50 split in the Senate.
And Joe Manchin is the deciding vote for everything. The answer to
that question is, yes, there is a late breaking news that the president
has said has taken the deals. Look, We'll do the narrow thing. Get
it to my desk before you go on August recess, American people can't
wait.
So climate is going to have to wait. But in the long run, if if we're
going to do anything on climate, anything on criminal justice, reform
anything on voting rights, anything to codify row any of the other
things that a majority of assault weapons banned something on gun
safety.
Things that the American people want.
The only way those are going to happen is if
The Democrats get two more seats in the Senate.
And that's why the president keeps hammering away. Give me two more
seats. It's not just to quantify road it's to get his agenda through
in the last half of his term.
I mean, David, this
is Jonathan is saying it is a 50 50 Senate and Joe Manchin says inflation
is really terrible. I'm not going to do anything about it. And they're
even worse some progressive Democrats this week saying inflation
really is terrible and
In a way making mansions case for him. But still to this point, it
does mean that the US that one of the major actors on the climate
front is stepping back.
So I'm going to do something that's never been done in a major American
TV studio, which praised Joe Manchin, Uh, you know, I went back and
looked at some of the new stories from a year ago, and Joe Manchin
was warning about inflation back then.
And there are always stories. Economists alone in the wilderness.
Anonymous, Dismissed Mansion Inflation clears well, you turned out
to be 100% right and, frankly, a lot of us, including me, but all
the other Democrats turned out to be 100% wrong.
And you could argue that Joe Manchin stopping the big build back
better bill, which was trillions of dollars. If we had ported that
additional trillions of dollars in the economy a lot of it unfunded
that inflation would be truly terrible.
And so you could argue Joe Manchin saved the country in the Democratic
Party of very bad policy disaster. And so I think he deserves some
credit for being right about that and for being super attuned to
the inflation fears, which are the number one issue in the country
right now.
The one part I'll disagree with him is just because there's inflation
doesn't mean you can't have government policy. Right? And so if you
pay for if you take some money out of the economy through taxes and
then pay for it for, you know, climate change legislation. It's not
necessarily inflationary.
But for some of the people who are now bashing him should be thanking
him for some of the things he did earlier to warn us about this and
to forestall worse in place.
Only on the news hour. Are we getting that great? Um Jonathan, that
the January 6th hearing that we saw this week
Again made
A fairly compelling case, trying to tie President Trump's rhetoric
towards those people who stormed the capital and engaged in that
horrendous hand to hand combat with police officers.
Do you think that they have made a good case that Trump's language
Trump's rhetoric?
Stirred that horrible day.
Yes, Yes, they did. Look, we have to remember that the January 6th
Select committee is a court. But it's playing to the court of public
opinion and between you know the documents and the tweets and everything
that they showed to make their case.
Plus the two witnesses there. Who's that? One who said what the president
said, said brought me to Washington. And then you had a former spokesperson
for and I always get inside of the oath. Keepers of the proud boys,
But who? Who said Yeah.
You know we were We were there. We heard the call. We heard the column.
We were. We were part of operationalized that so? Yes, I think the
committee has made the connection and I don't think it's a mystery
to the American people.
The the issue becomes when he when you start talking about is their
criminal liability here, should the justice will the Justice Department
make that make that leap And when you're talking about the court
of the Court of Law
The the level of, you know, evidentiary proof that you have to have
is incredibly high. Necessarily. That's getting way down the road,
But I do think
After 78 hearings. The Select Committee has done an excellent job
of telling the American people and showing the American people what
was done on January 6th how horrible it was.
And between the hearing on Tuesday in the hearing that's coming up
next Thursday. We're going to see with
Frightening clarity how the president of the United States just allowed
it to happen.
What do you think about that? Do you think that they made that case
and there was an unexpected for me, But I think unexpected. Why?
I didn't think. Well, I didn't think they had organized. It didn't
think Trump had organized January six. I thought it was just like
Him being a shambolic self, But there was clearly a lot more planning.
We learned even from the Overstock CEO that they had arranged that
he was spontaneously going to call for him to go to the but that
was all pre arranged.
And then, as Jonathan said, the fact that the A lot of the guys up
there were so carefully paying attention to trump so carefully saying
We're going to do what he tells us to do, and so fully expected that
he would meet them up at the Capitol.
That's all a progression and then what we heard last or two weeks
ago about the him wanting to take up the magnetometers, so these
armed guys could have access. That's all a very strong evidentiary
chain.
And so to me, the accumulation is quite powerful.
It's interesting how it's affected Trump. The word now is that he's
moving up when he'll announce his campaign for president. I think
he's doing that to make the indictment harder. He's doing that, presenting
that as a done deal. You think he's definitely going to run?
He seems to have told people that he's going to run
and so I will see when we walked down the elevator escalator, whatever
it is, but But I do think he's going to run. I think he's going to
announce pretty soon.
In part to make the indictment harder, in part to make other challengers
more hesitant about getting in, and he's going to fail at that. The
New York Times Sienna poll has struck me as very important this week.
That roughly half of Republicans one of wanting to pass and they
want to go for another guy, That's just a huge number and that cannot
be unrelated to these hearings.
I want to switch Jonathan to this issue of the continued fallout
of the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.
And Democrats seem to believe that this could be one of the things
that might give them at least some trace of a fighting chance in
the midterms.
And we saw this week this sort of horrendous case of a young 10 year
old girl who had been raped.
She got pregnant. She was then had to leave her state and go to another
state where abortion would still be allowed, and
GOP officials tried to make hay of it. They doubted that that story
really existed. The local A G said. We're going to go after the doctor
that performed this.
Do you think that that issue in the extremity of the way that this
is being handled will actually benefit Democrats?
It should.
I mean, we're the idea that we're talking about violence against
aid child.
And then being forced by the state.
To give birth to this child.
Going to another state so she can terminate that pregnancy and then
being persecuted and prosecuted by the state.
For doing that. I mean, this is you know, William during the trump
years, I started watching the Handmaid's tale because I thought I
need my imagination to be open to see just how bad things could get.
In a fictional fictional setting, and I had to stop watching when
real life under the Trump administration started to mirror what was
happening in Handmaid's tale, and I was I was a few seasons behind.
Um we are in Handmaid's tale, um, territory here we are turning into
Gilead. And if there are people out there who are upset by the Supreme
Court decision by what Republican legislators around the country
and states and localities are doing
To further
restrictions and bans on abortion.
It.
I don't know what else could push people to the polls more than not
just being stripped of our constitutional right, But having your
your right to
Right to freedom right to privacy, right to liberty and not just
taken away. But local officials doing everything they can to ensure
that you don't have autonomy over your own body.
If that doesn't get people out to the polls, I don't know what will
David this was an incredibly extreme case in some ways crystallized
The sharpness and the horribleness of this division in this country.
Do you think it will, uh, redound to the Democrats benefit?
A little, but frankly, not much now.
Abortion rights defenders. They should pursue their cause with the
passion that they're bringing to it. And so I don't want nothing
I say should just wait anybody from pursuing that cause, But there's
just a giant gap.
Between what a lot of Democrats want to talk about and what the whole
rest of the country wants to talk about. And if you ask people what's
the most important issues, progressives want to talk about abortion
and guns?
The entire rest of the country. Independents, conservatives unaffiliated
people, They won't talk about the economy and for them, the economy
is way up here. Jobs are number one. Inflation's number two.
And so why is Joe Biden at 33% approval in the latest times whole,
it's the economy. Why, in the in the in the same poll
do half of Hispanics
Support the Republicans. Now the economy that these are I mean, I
think earthquake type numbers. I think that's probably a little outlier.
But we've had a whole series of polls showing a lot of Hispanic movement
moving over to the
The Republican Party and turning it into really a multiracial, working
class party. And so if people you know they should pursue their passions,
and they should pursue these issues.
But if Democrats if they're not talking about economic policy
Every day. Then they're just not talking about that policy that is
clearly ranking number one with the vast majority of voters. And
yet, William 30 seconds left. Sorry. And yet when you look at the
generic ballot in the same polls, it's evenly split. When people
are asked, who do you want to have control of Congress, Democrats
or Republicans?
Inflation is big. The economy is big, and yet the generic ballot
is still evenly split. So people have a problem with the president
and think things are going in the wrong direction, but they don't
trust Republicans to run the country.
This is why we're seeing, of course, the president Saudi Arabia to
trying to do everything he can across the pond to get the gas prices
down.
David Brooks. Jonathan Capehart. Great to see you both. Thank you.