SUMMARY:Friday at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., family, friends and colleagues of the late Secretary of State Colin Powell gathered to memorialize him. Presidents Biden, Obama and Bush, and another Secretary of StateHillary Clinton, were among the guests. His loved ones reflected on who he was as a statesman, friend and father.
WATCH LIVE: Colin Powell's funeral at the Washington National Cathedral (3:27:04)
SUMMARY:The Pentagon announced new rules Wednesday allowing transgender military members to serve openly. It fulfills an early pledge from President Joe Biden, restoring an Obama-era policy that was overturned by President Donald Trump. Ali Rogin spoke to transgender service members who have been waiting for this day.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including polling on President Trump’s job performance, the federal response to a surging coronavirus pandemic, the administration’s effort to strike down the Affordable Care Act, congressional divergence on police reform and whether Washington, D.C., will become a state.
Judy Woodruff (NewsHour): And now we turn to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
So good to see both of you. Thank you for being here this Friday.
So, let's start with some interesting poll numbers. They show not only President Trump running somewhere between eight, 12, even 14 points behind Joe Biden, but the President's disapproval ratings are at record highs.
This is from the new Marist poll the "NewsHour" does with NPR and Marist, 58 percent disapproval for President Trump, the highest it has ever been. And then you see on this second graph his ratings, disapproval ratings higher than President Obama at his — at this stage of his presidency or President Bush 43 at this point in their first term in office.
David, how significant is this?
David Brooks, New York Times: Oh, pretty significant.
The numbers are devastating for the President. But, you know, big things have happened. We're looking at possible really serious and long economic recession or depression. We're losing the battle against COVID. We're having a racial reckoning.
And a lot of white Americans are learning what daily life is like for African Americans. These are just gigantic things that are happening in the country. And on each one of them, Donald Trump is considered an inadequate leader by a lot of people. So he's losing college-educated women. He's losing some high school-educated white men, just across the board.
In our New York Times poll this week, Biden was winning by 14 percentage points. These are — there's no way, other than to say that some seismic shift is happening in the electorate right now, and a lot of people want to fire Donald Trump.
Judy Woodruff: Mark, what do you see in these numbers, and how significant do you think they are?
Mark Shields, syndicated columnist: Well, I think they're encouraging for the Democrats.
But, at the same time, Judy, for those who want to put the champagne on ice, I would remind them of the wisdom of Ann Richards, the late governor of Texas, who said, July results do not make a November election.
And, you know, this is not the first time that Democrats have had a large lead in the summer, and not managed to win in November.
But I think for Donald — I think David's absolutely right about Donald Trump. He — right now, this election is a referendum on him. And he is failing that test on virtually every major ground.
There's only two times it's good to be a United States President, one, when things are going so swimmingly, prosperity, and there's peace in the world, and you get to that — bask in that warmth of the era of good feeling.
The second time is, strangely enough, when there's a catastrophe not of your making, an earthquake or a pandemic, as we're having now. And that's when a President can console and lead and comfort a nation and be really a figure who brings everybody together. Donald Trump has failed that, and failed it miserably, and I don't see a recovery.
Judy Woodruff: And, David, the President, though, is having his first rallies. He was out in Tulsa last weekend. He was in Arizona a few days ago getting thousands of people to show up, in Tulsa, what is it, 6,000.
He's dismissing, if you will, the COVID virus, though. I mean, he's saying that, if more testing — if there were more testing done, there wouldn't be a virus. He is trying play to his base.
David Brooks: To some part of his base.
There's some of the base that likes him. They like the showmanship of the rallies. They like the jokes. They like him spending 20 minutes talking about walking down a ramp, which he did in Tulsa.
But there's a part of his base — and these are people who have supported him in the past — who hate all that stuff. They vote for him for judges or for some other issue, or because they think he's decent on the economy. But now he's not decent on the economy.
And they really don't like the idea of voting for a President who seems racist. And so they might be with him on other issues, but — so you're seeing him — people flake away from him for really serious issues, for really serious reasons, not for some temporary tweet.
And so I agree with Mark. This is not the time to celebrate. But we have had such a stable set of polls over the last three years, where Trump has just hung basically solid vis-a-vis other people. And now things look different. And they look different because big things are happening.
Judy Woodruff: Mark, I mean, could his arguments about the virus appeal to enough people to somehow persuade them that he's got the right argument going here?
Mark Shields: I doubt it, Judy.
He [Trump] has not been a national leader on this issue. I mean, in fact, he's been a sniper on the sidelines too much, criticizing governors in Michigan and Minnesota and Virginia for taking measures to — in their states to lead to a lockdown, in hopes of curtailing it.
Somehow, there seems to have emerged a choice between public health and a strong economy. And Donald Trump says, well, I'm for a strong economy. Open up that economy.
But the reality is, we will not have a strong economy without restored public health. I mean, that's the route and the road to it. And I just think that he's going down a dead end. And it shows terrible indifference to the people who are his most loyal supporters.
Those 3,000 kids in Arizona without masks, without any social distancing, that's a — that's a terrible prospect of illness forthcoming.
Judy Woodruff: And that's the image that the administration's projecting, David.
The vice President today defending those rallies, saying there's a First Amendment right to assembly, people have a right to go out and support the candidate of their choice.
David Brooks: Well, I sort of have some sympathy for that.
If we're going to have the George Floyd protests, which I think we should have had, you can't say to one group of people, you can protest, but, to another, you can't, obviously, once that precedent was set.
Judy Woodruff: Right.
David Brooks: Though, you know, the more I think about this whole administration, there was a crucial moment, when the President basically chose Jared Kushner over Steve Bannon.
And what's interesting about the Bannon populist wing is, they were very quick on this COVID situation. They were saying, this is a major crisis way back in February. They were: Let's take this seriously. Let's be the side of order. Let's be the side of the health hawks, if you want to put them that way.
And Trump went the other way early in his administration, away from the populists, and toward more Wall Street people. And he said: No, it's nothing, because I don't want to hurt the market.
And that shift in the administration, looking back on it, was one of the pivotal shifts in the administration. And I hate to be a praiser of Steve Bannon, but I think, frankly, the President would be a — in better shape, both substantively and politically, if he had listened to people on that wing.
Judy Woodruff: Interesting. We have forgotten about that.
And, Mark, on top — to top it all off, it's what we talked about early in the program, the administration going to the Supreme Court to try to yet again do away with the Affordable Care Act.
Is this something that's likely to win him friends and admirers at this stage of his reelection effort?
Mark Shields: No, Judy.
John Boehner, the former Republican Speaker of the House, was very candid on this subject, said, 25 years as a Republican in the House, not once, never once did Republicans ever agree on a health care plan. And he was absolutely right.
There's never been a Republican health care plan. They're trying to repeal, replace the — the Affordable Care Act, but at a time when 20 million people are turning to it, having lost their jobs, and at a time when it is more popular than it ever was when Barack Obama was President, and with every health care group of any significance and hospitals and doctors and — except the American Nurses Association — opposing the administration this.
What happens if they win and there is no Affordable Care Act, and there is no preexisting condition coverage? And I just — it's an absolute political folly.
Judy Woodruff: I want to ask you about that, David. And then — and then I have got two or three other things I want to ask.
So, go ahead, if you want to comment — comment for us on the Affordable Care Act and the administration trying to — yet again to get rid of it.
David Brooks:Well, just quickly, if you're a Republican Senate candidate in Arizona or Georgia or wherever these close races are, suddenly, you have got to defend the idea of taking away this insurance for preexisting conditions, at a moment when having had COVID-19 could become a preexisting condition.
It's political poison for any Republican Senate candidate in a close race.
Judy Woodruff: David, I'm going to stay with you.
Police reform. After all these rallies around the country, it's clear there's a lot of sentiment for looking at ways to improve policing in this country, the House and the Senate completely — Republicans and Democrats completely at odds over this. What's going on?
David Brooks: On this one, I blame the Democrats, frankly.
I think Tom (sic) Scott, the Republican from South Carolina, who was the Republican sponsor, put together a good-faith bill. It had not everything the Democrats wanted, obviously, but it had some stuff. It had the — making lynching a federal hate crime. It had — against choke holds, more transparency for police misconduct.
And then Scott said, we're going to let you vote on amendments. And so maybe — and he said that maybe I'd support some of these amendments.
And so he had a pretty open process. I'm a big believer, if you can take half a cake, take half a cake. And then, if Democrats win November, they can get the whole cake. I think they should have compromised on this and accepted half a cake. It would have been a step forward to a better police force.
Judy Woodruff: Mark, should the Democrats have tried to sit down with Tim Scott or any of the other Republicans?
Mark Shields: Well, I think Tim Scott (R-S.C.)— I think Tim Scott, who is an authentic figure on this and absolutely a man of reality, talked about his own personal experience of being stopped seven times by Capitol Hill Police, he, a United States senator, and being asked for identification and papers.
And so he showed a sensitivity to it. But I think there was a skepticism about how much he could deliver.
But I did honestly think there was a chance. I thought that — for legislative compromise on this. I'm less confident of that today than I was last week. It's an election year. The Senate is about to take two weeks off. The closer we get to election, the less chance there is.
OR 'No one has the right to challenge the Orange King.'
Excerpt
SUMMARY:President Trump has fired three Inspectors General recently [6 weeks], including State Department watchdog Steve Linick on Friday. Two Democratic lawmakers say Linick was investigating a Saudi arms deal the White House fast-tracked. Yamiche Alcindor talks to Joel Brenner, a former National Security Inspector General and Director of National Intelligence, about how politicizing the IG role is “all wrong.”
The paranoid obsession by Trump and Republicans concerning Obama which I have come to believe is actually "A black man in the White House?! It's the WHITE House, damn it!"
Excerpt
SUMMARY:NPR’s Tamara Keith and Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report join Judy Woodruff to discuss the latest political news, including the escalating rhetorical war between President Trump and former President Obama, former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign strategy, and polarization and conspiracy theories related to the coronavirus pandemic.
SUMMARY:In a blockbuster story representing the culmination of several years of investigation and pursuit of government documents, The Washington Post reports that U.S. officials have been misleading the American public about the war in Afghanistan for the past 18 years. John Yang talks to The Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock, lead reporter on the story, about what the classified document trove revealed.
SUMMARY: For nearly two decades, the United States’ military engagement in Afghanistan has been plagued by strategic missteps, according to The Washington Post's bombshell report. The investigation examined thousands of pages of previously unpublished notes and interviews from the U.S. government’s Lessons Learned Project analyzing the war. Nick Schifrin talks to retired Army Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute.
SUMMARY: On Tuesday, the Supreme Court will hear arguments that could decide the fate of some 700,000 “Dreamers,” members of a younger generation of undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children. They are currently protected from deportation by an executive order that President Barack Obama put in place in 2012, but that President Donald Trump has sought to cancel. Amna Nawaz reports.
SUMMARY:The Supreme Court heard arguments Tuesday on President Trump’s move to end protections for migrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children. The Obama-era program, known as DACA, currently blocks some 660,000 people from deportation.National Law Journal’s Marcia Coyle and Bipartisan Policy Center’s Theresa Cardinal Brown join Amna Nawaz to discuss the legal considerations and potential fallout.
SUMMARY: More than a month after a controversial U.S. Special Operations raid in Yemen -- during which Navy SEAL Ryan Owens was killed -- there are still questions about how the mission was authorized, what it accomplished and more. Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner looks at competing claims and Judy Woodruff (NewsHour) gets the perspective of Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to President Trump.
COMMENT: Very smart discussion, from both views Obama vs Trump.
Excerpt
SUMMARY: What level of planning did the Obama administration take on ahead of a deadly U.S. military raid in Yemen carried out under President Trump? Hari Sreenivasan talks to former Defense Department official Andrew Exum, and Colin Kahl former National Security Advisor to the Vice President [Joe Biden], two men with intimate knowledge of the Obama administration's process for authorizing the use of military force.
SUMMARY: Can an ex-President have fun? Atlantic writer Barbara Bradley Hagerty examined the lives of modern Presidents to see how they fared in the real world after leaving office in middle age. As part of a collaboration with The Atlantic, Hagerty tells Judy Woodruff that Jimmy Carter was the trailblazer, Bill Clinton the moneymaker, George W. Bush the laid-back painter. So what's next for Barack Obama?
BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY, The Atlantic: Well, generally, Presidents — and let's refer throughout history — unless Presidents were wealthy, they generally had to work.
So, George Washington became the largest whiskey distiller. And, you know, William Howard Taft became the Supreme Court chief justice. So, they had to work.
But, more recently, what I was interested in seeing is that Presidents are living so long now. And when a President leaves in midlife, at the peak of his game, what does he do then? What does he do for an encore?
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): So, over time, the idea of what to do and the amount of time has changed. Take us back to modern Presidents. I mean, you looked at Jimmy Carter.
BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY:Jimmy Carter, he had a rough landing after his Presidency, which is not atypical.
So, Jimmy Carter loses to — in a landslide — to Ronald Reagan, and he comes home to Plains, Georgia, and there he finds that his business, his peanut business, is a million dollars in debt, that his house is in need of repair, and, literally, the forest has come right up to his back step, their back step.
And it was kind of this metaphor for Jimmy Carter's life. How does he navigate through the thicket? How does he have meaning in his life, after he was a one-term, relatively unpopular President? And so that was his challenge.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And he was in his mid-50s.
BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY: He was. He was 56.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, how did he go about figuring out what he would do?
BARBARA BRADLEY HAGERTY:When you look at Carter, what you saw was a man who was — his personality, he was very smart, very ambitious, and he had a kind of biblical ethos.
In fact, Walter Mondale told me that Jimmy Carter said, “You know, when this is all over, I want to be a missionary.”
So there's that. And then there was his Presidency. And what you saw in the Presidency, it was a rough Presidency, but he had this one defining area, right, Camp David, peace between Israel and Egypt.
SUMMARY: It was a packed week of congressional hearings for President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet nominees, with inauguration days away. Judy Woodruff speaks with syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks about the Russian intrigue in U.S. politics, the future of Mr. Trump's relationship to his business and saying goodbye to President Obama.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Now to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
And welcome to you both. There is so much to talk about, but let's start with talking about the president-elect and Russia.
We had the news today — on top of all the confirmation that the Russians interfered in the U.S. election, today, we learned — and we talked about earlier it on the show — David, that General Michael Flynn had phone conversations with the Russian ambassador in December, several of them.
Tonight, we're learning that the Senate Intelligence Committee is going to expand what was already an investigation into the Russian interference into in election to look at any contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russians and the Clinton campaign, although the main focus is Donald Trump.
What do we make of all this?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times:I was first struck by David Ignatius' comment earlier in the program that they just could be trying to be destabilize the United States across the board. And that's a — I hadn't heard that thought before and it's a live possibility.
Putin is someone who has been undermining the norms of what we consider the world order since he got into power and in increasing success. What's interesting about the Trump administration is how bitterly divided they are in their attitudes towards Putin.
Steve Bannon and General Flynn have warm feelings. Putin has been — and with a lot of the groups, the conservative groups, the more extreme conservative groups that underlie Trump, he's a bit of a hero because he speaks for traditional values, he's against the global institutions.
They see him as someone who has been on the defensive from an aggressive E.U., an aggressive NATO. And there is a lot of sympathy there, actually.
And then, if you look at the more establishment Republicans, they see him as what I just described, subversive of the world order. And so to me the question will be, will Trump and Bannon control policy toward the foreign policy, or will everyone else basically?
And my money is on everyone else, because I think Trump's attention span is super low. I don't think he has the expertise to actually run a foreign policy. And at the end of the day — and I think this is a major story of the Trump administration — he's going to want the affirmation of the establishment, as he always has.
The reason he had Clintons at his wedding because he wants that affirmation. When he gets the chance to have it, I think he will bend gradually in that direction.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How are you looking at all this?
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: Donald Trump is to traditional values what I am to marathon running.
(LAUGHTER)
MARK SHIELDS: It just doesn't — it doesn't fit.
I have to say, Judy, I am perplexed, and I think an increasing number of Republicans are perplexed and actually nervous about Donald Trump and Russia, nervous in the sense that he is gratuitously giving Democrats the national security advantage, that they're standing up for the country.
We have testimony of General Mattis, the nominee for secretary of defense, asserting that the objective, the stated objective and the mission of Vladimir Putin's Russia is to destabilize the North Atlantic Alliance, and he, who believes in NATO and believes it's been one of the great alliances in modern history, that Putin represents a threat to this, that "Russia Today" is nothing but a propaganda arm, that General Flynn went to celebrate its anniversary, sitting at Putin's table for money, paid to show up.
So, I mean, these questions, essentially, they have just given it to the Democrats to stand up and say, wait a minute, where do you believe in this country, plus the suspicions, and real, about in fact the involvement of Russia in this election.
The question, the real moment of truth is going to arrive very shortly, a couple of weeks, when sanctions arrive on Donald Trump's — President Donald Trump's desk passed by a Republican Congress. Is he going to oppose those sanctions? What's he going to do?
I just think it's inexplicable and irrational, his policy on Russia. ----- JUDY WOODRUFF: Two more major things I want to ask both of you about.
The first one is what Donald Trump said, Mark, this week about his business interests. He said he’s basically turning everything over to his sons, that it will be a kind of a blind trust. Did he go far enough?
MARK SHIELDS: Of course he didn’t, Judy.
He said after eight years, he will grade his sons, and if they didn’t perform well, they’re fired, sort of an offhand line, but showing that he did have a continuing interest.
There’s never been a sense of public service about this man. And I don’t think there is in this alleged arrangement. It’s anything but a blind trust. It’s a seeing-eye trust.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes.
It’s a blind trust. I’m giving it to my closest relatives.
MARK SHIELDS: Yes.
DAVID BROOKS: It’s not really serious.
JUDY WOODRUFF: He said he’s not going to talk to them about it.
DAVID BROOKS: Yeah, right. (sarcastically)
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS: He has a different model.
I mean, most — the way the laws are envisioned, they are for people who work in the government — or work in a private sector, and then they cut it offer and they go to public service. And that’s how you’re supposed to do it.
But he has a pre-modern monarchic family structure. His business is a monarchy with family members all around. His administration is a monarchy with family members all around. So the laws are just not going to apply to him. And he will wind up with some corruption problems, probably.
SUMMARY: Outgoing Secretary of State John Kerry joined other Obama administration officials for an event Tuesday at the U.S. Institute of Peace focusing on the importance of a smooth political transition. Judy Woodruff sat down with him to ask about the Trump transition and the problems the world faces today.
JOHN KERRY, Secretary of State: What troubles me a little bit is that people are not separating a remarkable transformation that is taking place globally [and] naturally, from things that we’re really responsible for.
Let me give you an example, Arab Spring. We didn’t start the Arab Spring. We couldn’t have stopped the Arab Spring, particularly with respect to Syria. And I think there are some things that might have been able to have been done.
But that had nothing to do with the red line. And let’s make that absolutely clear, folks. President Obama never retreated from his red line. He never changed his mind about his readiness to bomb Assad to make it clear, you don’t use chemical weapons, never. There’s a mythology that’s grown up around this.
One of the greatest challenges we all face right now, not just America, but every country in the world, is, we are living in a factless political environment. And every country in the world better stop and start worrying about authoritarian populism and the absence of substance in our dialogue, if you call it that.
SUMMARY: President Obama will deliver a farewell address to the nation in Chicago on Tuesday evening. Why do presidents give goodbye remarks? Judy Woodruff gets historical context on past speeches and the shaping of political legacy from presidential historian Michael Beschloss and Annette Gordon-Reed of Harvard University Law School.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): President Obama will deliver his farewell address to the nation this evening before a room full of supporters in Chicago.
We discuss a little of the Obama legacy and look ahead to tonight's speech with two historians, NewsHour regular Michael Beschloss, and Annette Gordon-Reed of Harvard University.
And we welcome both of you back to the NewsHour.
Michael, let me start with you.
How often do Presidents give farewell addresses?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS, Presidential Historian:Well, George Washington began the tradition, but it's really been more a thing of modern times begun by Harry Truman, who did one from the Oval Office when he retired in 1953.
But they don't always work. The ones that really work are when you have the sense that the President is sort of leveling with you in a way that perhaps he wasn't able to during his four or eight years in office. So, he's saying something that you haven't heard before with new candor.
And the other thing is that when he says something that sounds as if it's a lesson he's learned that perhaps he didn't know before. The best example of this, Eisenhower in 1961, said, worry about the military industrial complex.
It was something that he had been increasingly worried about for a long time, but this was the first time he said it to the public.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Annette Gordon-Reed, of course, it's speculation, but why do you think President Obama wants to do this?
ANNETTE GORDON-REED, Harvard University Law School: Well, he's in an interesting position.
The election didn't turn out the way he probably thought it was going to turn out. This is a chance to cement his legacy and talk about the kinds of things that he wanted to do as President. And he is facing a situation where people might try to undo a good amount of that.
So, I think this is a good way for him to sort of lay a template, perhaps, for historians later on, even though that's almost an impossible thing to do. But I think it's a way for him to talk about his legacy, to sort of say to the American people what was important to him, what he thinks he accomplished as President.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Michael, there is some reporting over the last few days that the president may be rethinking how he wants to spend his post-presidency, given the outcome of the election. Could this be part of that?
MICHAEL BESCHLOSS: Might very well be. He might spend a lot more time replying and criticizing things that Donald Trump may be doing as President.
And if that's true, he's got to have some kind of foreshadowing of that in this speech tonight. One thing everyone will be wondering is, what is his current thinking about Trump? Right after the election, he seemed quite moderate about it, hoping perhaps to coax Donald Trump to make more moderate appointments and more moderate policies than he was expecting to.
But that's all over now. So, if Barack Obama gets through this speech and there's not some, you know, genuine statement from him saying, you know, the country has to worry a little bit about what the new President is doing and, you know, perhaps think about a different direction, then I think we may not feel that he's really leveling with us in the way that other Presidents have.
SUMMARY: President Obama has commuted the sentences of more federal prisoners than any other president, and he's on track to leave far fewer federal inmates in federal prison since the 1960s. Hari Sreenivasan offers a look through the life of a former prisoner. Then William Brangham gets an assessment from Wesley Lowery of The Washington Post and former Florida attorney general Bill McCullum.
SUMMARY: President Obama is passionate, and vocal, about combating climate change. As his tenure draws to a close, science correspondent Miles O'Brien reviews the administration's environmental policy -- from the 2009 “cap-and-trade” climate bill, to the 2015 Paris Accord, to executive orders on greenhouse gas emissions -- in assessing the President's legacy.
SUMMARY: What is President Obama's economic legacy? Did his efforts to turn the country around after the 2008 financial crisis constitute a robust recovery, or too little, too late? Economics correspondent Paul Solman assembled a panel of economic experts to discuss employment across racial groups, the types of jobs created and the obstacles the President faced in enacting his economic agenda.
SUMMARY: President-elect Donald Trump made headlines this week for his reference to a possible arms race and his involvement in U.S. foreign policy prior to taking office. Judy Woodruff speaks with syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks about whether Mr. Trump's strategy is to keep people “off balance,” as well as potential conflicts of interest within his Cabinet.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That is syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Gentlemen, welcome.
So let's start out talking about two major foreign policy waves, I guess you could say, that Donald Trump is making today, David. He directly intervened with the White House as they were deciding how to handle this U.N. resolution on Israel. There is now an open rift with President Obama. This is different, isn't it, from the way we see a transition normally work?
DAVID BROOKS, New York Times:Certainly, the country can't have two Presidents at once, so the tradition has been to hang back if you're the president-elect and wait for your time in office. Trump is not a hang-back kind of guy.
And he has shifted — President Obama has shifted American policy in a much more critical way in Israel with the settlements than the previous Presidents. But we're about to get a head-snapping shift the other way. President-elect Trump's Ambassador to Israel is further to the right than almost anyone in Israel, further to the right than Bibi Netanyahu on the settlements, and almost opposes the two-state solution, does in fact.
So, we are about to see a tremendous shift in American policy toward the Middle East.
JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you see this, Mark? Are there consequences of this or is this going to be something we look back on and say, well, that's what happened?
MARK SHIELDS, syndicated columnist: No, I mean, I think Donald Trump is sui generis. I mean, he is acting by president or tradition. He's not acting as Donald Trump has throughout his entire public career of, what, a year and a half, and that is to be impulsive, be spontaneous, keep his opponents or adversaries off balance. That's his approach. He is not into nuance, that is not his strength.
And the President (Obama) said this week, he's (Trump) entitled to his own policies and but just hope that it's deliberate and thoughtful. And this strikes me as anything but.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, in addition to Israel, what we were sitting here talking about nuclear policy because Donald Trump tweeted, as far as we can tell, out of the blue yesterday, David, that the United States needs to beef up its nuclear arsenal. He did an interview with Mika Brzezinski of NBC this morning and I’m just reading the quote here. He said, “Let it be an arms race, we will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
So, what does this say?
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, one of the things I think about with Donald Trump is what are his words actually attached to? With a normal President like President Obama, he says a word, and that’s because there has been some thought that he’s done and there had been policy papers and there’s been aides and there’s been advisors and then there is a connection to an actual set of policies. And so, the words like have roots into actual stuff.
With Trump, I’m not sure the words have roots. They are emanations of his psyche, but has he thought it through? Is there an argument, is there a policy implication?
Even in this nuclear thing, he says we should be stronger and expand. What does that mean? So, what is concrete in what he’s saying?
And I think as we interpret him and frankly as the world learns to interpret Donald Trump, are these just words that are enigmatic things floating on air or are they actually shifts in policy and will they change moment by moment, day by day without any underlying connection to the actual stuff of governance? I don’t know.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark, we’re talking about nuclear arms policy. This is something that in the past, it was something that people spent time thinking about before statements were made. You know, you said a minute ago, you think he’s keeping everybody off balance. Is this a deliberate strategy?
MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think that’s part of it. The points David make I think really deserve reflection and consideration. I think Donald Trump, we have to understand, has not had experiences like any other President we’ve ever had. He’s never been accountable to anybody, save Donald Trump.
I mean, he has no investors. He has — he has debtors, but he doesn’t have a board of directors. He doesn’t have a corporate structure he’s had to answer to. So he’s been able to kind of wing it at every stage.
I just don’t think he understands — the point David was making is when a President makes a statement, Judy, it is studied around the world, the nuance and was there an emphasis here, and what was in the last statement that’s missing — perhaps overly done, maybe overly analyzed. But because the President’s words are pretentious, they really carry with them enormous significance and are usually reflective of great consideration and even arguments within, that one side is wanted, one particular paragraph or sentence, while the other said, no, that shouldn’t be in there.
So, I just think that Trump — he has not made the transition, it seems to me, from candidate to even President in waiting. He has been a sore winner. He continues to in his rallies to berate Hillary Clinton. That sense of gracious, generosity or larger vision has eluded him so far.
SUMMARY: At the White House, President Obama handed out the Medal of Freedom to twenty-one notable American figures; from Kareem Abdul Jabbar, to Bill and Melinda Gates, Diana Ross, Michael Jordan, Vin Scully, Bruce Springsteen, Robert Redford, and many others.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Twenty-one people received the Presidential Medal of Freedom this year, from artists and entertainers, to philanthropists and scientists.
President Obama handed out the medals at the White House this afternoon.
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Extraordinary Americans who have lifted our spirits, strengthened our union, pushed us towards progress.
These two have donated more money to charitable causes than anyone ever.
Many years ago, Melinda's mom told her an old saying: To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, that is success.
By this and just about any other measure, few in human history have been more successful than these two impatient optimists.
(APPLAUSE)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Ellen DeGeneres has a way of making you laugh about some thing, rather than at someone, except when I danced on her show. She laughed at me.
(LAUGHTER)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: But that's OK.
It's easy to forget now, when we have come so far, where now marriage is equal under the law, just how much courage was required for Ellen to come out on the most public of stages almost 20 years ago.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Now, every journalist in the room, every media knows the phrase Newt Minow coined: the vast wasteland.
But the two words Newt prefers we remember from his speech to the nation's broadcasters are these: public interest. That's been the heartbeat of his life's work.
(APPLAUSE)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: The game of baseball has a handful of signature sounds. You hear the crack of the bat. You have got the crowd singing in the seventh inning stretch. And you have got the voice of Vin Scully.
When he heard about this honor, Vin asked, with characteristic humility, “Are you sure? I'm just an old baseball announcer.”
(LAUGHTER)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: And we had to inform him that, to Americans of all ages, you are an old friend.
(CHEERING AND APPLAUSE)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA: Here's how great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was; 1967, he had spent a year dominating college basketball. The NCAA bans the dunk.
(LAUGHTER)
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA:They didn't say it was about Kareem, but it was about Kareem.
SUMMARY: At 93, Henry Kissinger is still one of the most influential -- and controversial -- foreign policy figures in America, says Jeffrey Goldberg, Atlantic editor-in-chief. The former secretary of state recently joined Goldberg for a conversation about the Obama legacy, the president-elect and more. Judy Woodruff reports as part of a collaboration between The Atlantic and the PBS NewsHour.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): Earlier this year, we reported on “Atlantic” magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg's article “The Obama Doctrine.” The lengthy piece gained widespread attention, including that of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who quietly let it be known that he'd like to share some thoughts of his own about President Obama's foreign policy.
So, Jeffrey Goldberg and Kissinger sat down to talk.
This is a report on part of an ongoing partnership between the NewsHour and The Atlantic.
JEFFREY GOLDBERG, The Atlantic: He's still really the most influential foreign policy thinker in America in a lot of ways.
And so, in my experience with him, there's always something to learn, even at the age of 93, maybe especially at the age of 93. There's always something to learn from him. And so we wound up spending hours talking about not just the Obama doctrine. We talked about the order of the world currently, and we talked a lot about the election.
He, like a lot of people, thought Hillary Clinton was going to win. We talked about both candidates. And, well, here we are.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, the news right now is the election of Donald Trump, and we're going to talk about that.
But let's go back to how your conversation with Henry Kissinger came about. What does he think about the legacy of Barack Obama's foreign policy?
JEFFREY GOLDBERG:He thinks that the President is too passive in his approach to foreign policy, that the American President has a responsibility to make more order in the world, especially as it relates to the other great powers, Russia and China in particular.
He also thinks that the President is too burdened by the alleged sins of the past — Kissinger would think of them more as alleged sins — of American behavior during the Cold War in various places, including Vietnam and Cambodia.
But, mainly, it has to do with a passivity that he sees in the present, a lack of strategic thinking, a lack of assertion. And, obviously, the President, when I was interviewing him on these subjects, Kissinger was almost sort of a specter in the room at various points, because the President would talk about the red line in Syria, for instance, and talk about how one of the worst reasons to bomb someone is to prove that you're willing to bomb someone.
And I felt as if he were addressing Henry Kissinger and Kissinger's role in Cambodia, using bombing to enhance American credibility at the negotiating table.
So, I found — it was a totally fascinating process for me, because I was moderating, non-chronologically, an argument between President Obama and the most important and most controversial foreign policy statesman of the modern era. And so — and so there was that piece.
The other piece is that Obama, in some ways, resembles Henry Kissinger. Kissinger recognizes this to some degree. I think the President recognizes it to some degree. Neither man particularly obsesses about human rights as a key issue in the way America organizes its relationship with other countries.
I am Retired U.S. Navy (22yrs) and a Vietnam Veteran. After my Navy retirement I was in the computer related industry, now retired. In 2000 I was a registered Republican and voted for George W. Bush. Six months of having Bush in the Whitehouse forced me to re-evaluate my political stance. I had always thought of myself as a Moderate Republican, but was a Republican by "default" NOT because of close examination of the GOP. Due to what has happened in America since 2000, I now consider myself a progressive, and registered as a Non-Affiliated voter.
*Anti-First Amendment policies that attempt to turn America into a theocracy by enshrining ANY religious belief as law.
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