OPINION - Brooks and Capehart 2/19/2021

"Brooks and Capehart on President Biden’s first month in office and Rush Limbaugh’s legacy" PBS NewsHour 2/19/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including Republican infighting, the legacy of Rush Limbaugh and President Biden's first month in office.

Judy Woodruff (NewsHour):  And now we turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart.  That's New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, columnist for The Washington Post.

So good to see both of you on this Friday night.

It's the first time we have seen you since the impeachment trial last week, ended last Saturday, President Trump.

Jonathan, it seems almost every day this past week, though, we have been hearing from different Republican state officials about how they were going to punish or censure Republican senators who voted to convict, whether it was Senator Cassidy in Louisiana, Senator Toomey in Pennsylvania.  There's talk that he will be censured.

How deep is the animosity toward these lawmakers who voted against former President Trump?

Jonathan Capehart, Washington Post:  I think the animosity is deep, very deep.

I mean, these state party chairs, one might be responding in their own capacity, these state parties in their own capacity, but they are reflection of the Republican Party base.

You know, Judy, when I interviewed former RNC Chairman Michael Steele back in August of 2016, and I talked to him about the candidacy then of Donald Trump, running for President, being the nominee, and he told me then that he thought that the nomination of Donald Trump would hasten the conversation that the Republican Party needed to have about who they are, what they value, and certainly about the role of race within the party.

Fast-forward, Donald Trump becomes President, Donald Trump loses an election.  But, in the process, Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party into one that is completely loyal to him.  And so people who voted for his impeachment, people who voted for him, voted guilty, wanted him to be convicted in the last go-round with this impeachment trial, they — those are the folks who are riling up this super loyal base within the Republican Party that is loyal to Donald Trump.

And I think what we're going to see down the road is, whether these censure votes, whether these reprimands of these Republicans, who I think voted their conscience, whether those actually have any political power, meaning bumping them from office in that way.

Judy Woodruff:  David, how do you see this animosity, division inside the Republican Party?

David Brooks, New York Times:  Well, Trump is popular.

And when Democrats in the media seem to be attacking Donald Trump, the Republicans sure rally around; 78 percent of Republicans say right now they want Donald Trump to play an important role in the future of the party.

Underneath that, there are divisions.  And they show up between the normal Republicans and the Trump Republicans.  And you can ask, do you feel more loyal to, the party or Donald Trump?  And there, it's about 50/50.  And then there's an important split when you ask Republicans, should we work with Democrats?

And there again, you see the regular Republicans vs. the Trump Republicans.  The regular Republicans, who seem to be a slight majority, want to work with Democrats.  The Trump Republicans do not.

I think the party leaders have decided, we can't have this fight over Donald Trump.  We have to displace Trump with policy-making.  And so, today — this week, Tom Cotton and Mitt Romney began to work together to create a bill that would raise the minimum wage and fix enforcement of immigration on the border.

And they're trying to make the party a regular party, so it's not just a media party, but a party that actually does legislation.  And I think that's a pretty promising way to try to displace Trumpism.

Judy Woodruff:  But, meantime, Jonathan, you had President — former President Trump coming out this week, appearing on three different, I guess, conservative TV channels, still talking about how the election was stolen, attacking Mitch McConnell.

Does — is McConnell hurt by this?  I mean, I guess I'm asking, how lasting is this damage the former President is still trying to level?

Jonathan Capehart:  Look, in a battle between Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, I would put my money on Mitch McConnell.

Senator McConnell is worried about two things, one of which he has succeeded.  Judges was the first one.  But the most important thing is power.  He lost the Senate majority, primarily because of what then President Trump did that allowed those two Georgia seats to flip to the two Democrats, Warnock and Ossoff.

But, also, Senator McConnell wants that majority back.  And so that's why I think we saw him on the one hand vote for the acquittal of Donald Trump, but then, after that vote, excoriate Donald Trump, lay the blame right at his feet.  And, in doing that, what I think Mitch McConnell is doing is creating an environment for his — for his caucus and those Republicans running for the Senate in 2022 and 2024, giving them the room to be able to run races that would give them the best chance at winning.

And when it comes to Donald Trump, it's all about him.  It's not about the party.  It's not about policy, as David was talking about.  It's about him and loyalty to him.  And so, if you're Mitch McConnell, and you are about power, but you're also about doing things that advance the Republican Party, you're going to do whatever it takes to push Trump to the side and make it possible for those candidates to come to the fore.

Judy Woodruff:  So, David, who's got more muscle, Mitch McConnell or Donald Trump?

And I do want to ask you both about Rush Limbaugh, but McConnell first.

David Brooks:  Yes, I was — I questioned McConnell's strategy last Saturday, doing that acquittal vote and then excoriating, as Jonathan said.

Napoleon said, if you're going to take Vienna, take Vienna.  But maybe Jonathan is right it sets the Republicans up for a good run in 2022.  And let's face it.  You would have to think it's likely the Republicans will take the House and Senate.  That's just the way — what happens in midterm elections.  The opposition party does very well.

And I think McConnell's main goal is to keep really extreme Trumpians from getting Republican nominations in these Senate races and House races.  And so maybe he's playing that game, just trying to ride this thing out and not try to fire everybody up and fire up the Trumpian base.

Judy Woodruff:  And, David, in just a few words, the legacy of Rush Limbaugh.

David Brooks:  Well, he changed media.  He changed AM radio.  Before Rush Limbaugh, hosts tended to be not too opinionated.  After Rush Limbaugh, on left and right, hosts are super opinionated.

He changed conservatism from George F. Will and William F. Buckley to what we have today.  So, he had a big positive effect on media, I think, or — and a pretty negative effect on American conservatism.

Judy Woodruff:  Jonathan, it was on the media, as David says.  It was also on the Republican Party and on conservatism broadly.

Jonathan Capehart:  Right.

My relationship when it comes to Rush Limbaugh is more than complicated, as someone who was attacked by him many times when he was on the radio.  I mourn for his family.  I mourn for his family and the people who loved him.

But I — I, quite honestly, do not, simply because of the corrosive nature of his radio programming and what he did with the power that he had, the corrosive nature that he had on American politics, on American political discourse.

And legacies can be good and legacies can be bad.  And I think, for me, personally, Rush Limbaugh's legacy is one that has harmed the country.

Judy Woodruff:  All right, President Biden, first month in office, after tomorrow.

David, what are you seeing so far?  And before you answer that, let me ask you both to respond to something President Biden said at the CNN town hall on Wednesday night, reminding us that he's not comfortable yet in this new job.  Let's listen.

Pres. Joe Biden:  I was raised in a way that you didn't look for anybody to wait on you.  And it's — we're — I find myself extremely self-conscious.  There are wonderful people that work at the White House.

But someone is standing there and making sure I — hands me my suit coat.

Judy Woodruff:  So, David, I guess I should have said not comfortable with the trappings of the office yet.

David Brooks:  Yes.

I mean, it's so weird being President.  Every president talks about this.  You're never alone.  They — Secret Service knows when you go to the bathroom.  They know when you're in the elevator.  George W. Bush would ride his motorbike — or his bike, his mountain bike, up at a training center, a Secret Service training center in Maryland, and he would try to ride in front of the agents, because he said that was the only time of his week when there weren't people in front of him, and he could look out and sort of be alone.

And so it's just very weird being President and I think very hard.

As for President Biden, I think he's doing a lot of sense of sensible things on his own.

What's different from the Obama start — and Obama had a bigger Senate majority — Obama passed some big legislation right away, Lilly Ledbetter week one, children's health care week two, the stimulus package week three.  So, there was a lot of legislative action.

There hasn't been as much from President Biden.

Judy Woodruff:  Jonathan, how do you see these first 30 days?

Jonathan Capehart:  Well, I see them as terrific, if only because we have a President of the United States who's focused on governing, who's focused on doing things on behalf of the American people, but who is also not focused on being in our faces 24 hours a day, seven days a week with all manner of vitriol and nastiness towards his political opponents or even regular citizens.

Judy, what I love about that clip you showed of President Biden talking about his not being comfortable with the trappings of the presidency is, that's the man the American people voted for.

It's a person who — for whom service, public service, the emphasis is on the service, but it's also the public, someone other than himself.  He is that boy from Scranton whose family had hard times, and he worked his way up to the highest office in the land.

And the idea that with this office comes someone who hands him his suit coat in the morning, or, to David's point, he and his family now are never alone, I think it resonates with the American people, because this is someone for whom power is something that's part of the job.  It wasn't anything that he strove for just for power's sake.

For him, being President of the United States is about helping people.

Judy Woodruff:  And, David, less than a minute, but your thoughts on whether he's getting people behind him?  I mean, is it your sense that he's building the kind of public support he's going to need?

David Brooks:  Yes, I think he is, actually.

He's amazingly done very well at holding the Democratic Party together, which was not natural.  I think he's done that extremely skillfully, his approval rating.  There really have been not so many flaws — not so many errors, one little error about — how when schools are going to reopen, but, pretty much else, it's a professional organization, just as it was a professional campaign.

Judy Woodruff:  All right.  It's only been a month.  We will do this every month, every week.  We will keep asking.

(LAUGHTER)

Judy Woodruff:  How's he doing?  How's he doing?

(LAUGHTER)

Judy Woodruff:  Very good to see both of you.  Have a good weekend.

(CROSSTALK)

David Brooks:  Good to see you too.

Judy Woodruff:  David Brooks, Jonathan Capehart, thank you both.

THE INSURRECTION - Congressional Response

IMHO:  There are Republican members of Congress who are traitors, some even cheering on the Insurrectionists, who should be removed from Congress and tired as traitors.

"How Congress is addressing the Jan.  6 insurrection" PBS NewsHour 1/31/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Former President Donald Trump, charged with inciting the January 6 insurrection, is facing his second impeachment trial amid ongoing investigations by Congressional committees and federal agencies into the events that led to the attack.  New York University School of Law Professor and Co-Editor-in-chief of Just Security Ryan Goodman joins Hari Sreenivasan to discuss.

OPINION - Brooks and Capehart 1/29/2021

"Brooks and Capehart on Biden’s first full week and the state of the Republican Party" PBS NewsHour 1/29/2021

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Jonathan Capehart join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week in politics, including President Biden's use of executive actions, Biden's $1.9 trillion relief package, and the state of the Republican Party after former President Trump.

Judy Woodruff (NewsHour):  And now it's time for our Friday analysis with Brooks and Capehart.  That is New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, columnist for The Washington Post.

Very good, as always, to see both of you on this Friday night.

David, I'm going to start with you.

President Biden's been in office, what, all of nine days now, maybe nine-and-a-half.  A flurry of executive orders, almost several a day.  What do you make of all this?  What stands out to you the most about what's happened so far?

David Brooks, New York Times:  I'm sort of struck by the fact that Donald Trump didn't do a lot of legislating.  And so he did a lot of stuff by executive order, leaving the Paris climate accord, the Keystone pipeline, a lot of stuff on the border.

And Biden has pretty much rolled it back.  And so what Trump signed in, Biden is signing out.  And, to me, it strikes me this is — mostly, it's standard Democratic policy.  Some of it, I think, is quite good, the racial equity stuff that he's put throughout the government.

I was struck, though, that my newspaper, my colleagues on the editorial board, which I'm not part of, wrote an Friday editorial saying they were over relying on the executive orders, and they should ease up a little.

And I noticed every single member of the Biden administration, down to the people who opened the door, went on Twitter to argue back against the editorial.  And I think they were thrilled to be accused of moving too fast.

(LAUGHTER)

David Brooks:  And so they wanted — they loved having that fight.  That was my impression.

I think — as I said last week, I don't love executive orders.  Nobody does, because what gets signed in can get signed out.  But, so far, it seems they're mostly doing what any Democratic President would do right now.

Judy Woodruff:  Jonathan, over-relying on executive orders and executive actions?

Jonathan Capehart, The Washington Post:  I don't think so.

I think President Biden made a lot of promises about what he was going to do on day one, two, three, and now nine or 10.  And he's following through.  I agree 100 percent with David.  What President Biden is doing is basically canceling out the executive actions and orders that were put in place by President Trump.

But in a perfect world, or, actually, in a functioning world, Congress would be making laws.  And one of the things I took issue with, with the New York Times editorial saying that the President should ease up on executive orders is, they use the example of DACA.

And what I found interesting is that they didn't go the extra step of saying why President Obama used executive action in the first place.  It was because years of trying to work with Congress, work with Republicans in Congress to get comprehensive immigration reform done failed.

And so, with people in the immigrant community, Latino community saying, hey, do something, use executive action, and President Obama coming back and saying, no, I can't do that, and then, in 2012, doing it, and then trying to do it again in 2014, that's what got that particular ball rolling.

If the House and the Senate were to actually start legislating, then chief executives, whether it's President Trump or President Biden, wouldn't have to rely, to use that word, on executive actions to actually do something to help the American people.

Judy Woodruff:  Well, speaking of legislating, David, we're hearing today from President Trump (sic) — and I was just speaking with Brian Deese, who runs the national — chairs the National Economic Council.

They are — it looks as if they're prepared to move ahead on their big COVID relief package, $1.9 trillion, through this, without getting into the weeds, budget reconciliation, basically meaning they do it with — they could do it without Republican votes, if necessary.

Is that — are they giving up too soon?  What do you think?

David Brooks:  It's hard to read.

There are certainly a lot of Republicans who like a lot of parts of what's in there.  There are probably no Republicans who like the $1.9 trillion price tag.

I do think he [Biden] ran a unity campaign.  And I think, if that means anything, he has to give it every single shot.

But part of what they're doing is just threatening Republicans, saying, hey, we're leaving without you if you're not on board.  So, you work.

What strikes me about shaping the Democratic Party on this is how much the echo of 2009 is here.  A lot of Democrats look back on the Obama stimulus, and they think Obama paid too much attention to deficits, he worked — tried to work too much with Republicans, and he didn't go big enough.

And so what they're going to do is, they're going to go big.  And it's a gigantic fiscal experiment.  Economists have always worried about overheating the economy, pumping too much federal money in, so you get — you overheat the economy, you get inflation, you may spur — spark an up and then a crash.

And they have decided that those rules, that too much fiscal stimulus will create inflationary pressure, they have decided those rules are off.  And maybe they're right.  Jerome Powell, the Fed chairman, seems to think they're right.

But it is a gigantic fiscal experiment, where I don't really trust anybody actually knows what's going to happen if we spend this much, on top of $900 billion from December.

Judy Woodruff:  How do you see this, Jonathan?  How risky is what they're doing, do you think?

Jonathan Capehart:  Well, I take two things from the interview with Mr. Deese.

One, I think that the Biden administration is working under the pressure of deadlines in March when it comes to unemployment insurance and also moratoriums on evictions.  And so that is a forcing mechanism.

The other thing that I take away from this, in terms of not ruling out using reconciliation, it goes back to a conversation that we all had last week about whether President Biden was ready to or willing to fight, whether he had it in him to fight to get things done.

And I think, by dangling, as David said, threatening Republicans, by using the reconciliation tactic, that is showing that President Biden is — unity and kumbaya and working together will only take you so far.  And so when you take the willingness to fight and the pressure of the March deadline that's there for millions of American people, I think that is what's pushing and driving the Biden administration to at least not take reconciliation off the table.

Judy Woodruff:  Well, meanwhile, let's talk for just a few minutes, David, about the Republicans and what's happened to your party.

President Trump's been out of office, what, nine or 10 days.  You have already seen the House minority leader fly down to Palm Beach, apparently to make nice, the president — former President Trump invited to speak at the Republican National Committee coming up.

You have got all this — just a lot of anger and frustration, and worse than that, flying around between Democrats and Republicans over security, over Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene.

What's going on inside the Republican Party?

David Brooks:  Yes, first, if it was my party, I'd be running it a hell of a lot better than they're doing right now.

(LAUGHTER)

David Brooks:  So, what's happening is, there were a couple days after the Trump — January 6, then when Trump left, where I thought the party was really going to shake off a bit of Trump, obviously not all, but at least have two wings, at least have a wing that says, Trump was one thing, but we still have our conservative beliefs, and we're going to try to work with that other wing, and we will fight with the other wing.

But, as far as I can tell, the normal wing has collapsed.  We have a party right now where you have Mary Taylor Greene.  It's easier to be a Republican and be Mary (sic) Taylor Greene than it is to be Liz Cheney.

And so a normal Republican is — now has her [Liz Cheney] job threatened, and the other one is now taking over the publicity wing of the party.  You see the loss.  You see Matt Gaetz, the very Trumpy guy, going to Wyoming to run against Liz Cheney, where Rob Portman, who's a normal human being, a very smart human being, and, frankly, a very good human being, a senator from Ohio, decides to retire, because he can't get anything done.

Then you see — I'm forgetting his name — Madison Cawthorn, a young freshman from — a Republican, who says — he writes an e-mail to his staff saying:  I'm putting all my staff into communications, not into legislation.

And a lot of these Trumpy Republicans, they run for office so they can get on FOX News, not to pass things.

And so what we're seeing is a party that is, as one person said, on fire, and going, in my mind, in the complete opposite direction, which makes life pretty easy for Joe Biden.

Judy Woodruff:  What does it look like from where you are, Jonathan?

Jonathan Capehart:  Well, I — I don't know if it makes life easy for Joe Biden.

Sure, it does if all he wants to do is executive actions.  But in order to make lasting policy change, you have to pass legislation.  And the only way you can pass legislation is if Democrats and Republicans can work with each other to get bills passed out of their chambers and onto his desk to sign.

But when you have, as David described, the intraparty warfare among Republicans, and then with Democrats, you have lots of Democrats who feel unsafe working with some of the Republicans who are there on Capitol Hill, I wonder how anything is going to get done.

I mean, we talk all the time about partisan gridlock in Washington stymieing — being able to govern this nation.  I don't know what to call this now.  I don't know what you call it when American legislators are fighting with each other or fearful of each other.  Where does that leave governing?  Where does that leave the American people in the end?

Judy Woodruff:  David, what's it going to take to fix this?

David Brooks:  Yes, well, I'd like to see an intraparty warfare.

I — the problem is, the normal Republicans are so far just taking this lying down.  They're laying low.  I think they're — some of them are afraid of death threats.  Some of them just don't want to get in the way of the Trump train.

But you look at people like John Thune, you look at people like Susan Collins, you look people like Mitt Romney, who's been a tower of courage, by the way, over the last several months.  Somehow, that wing of the party has got to get itself together, so it can stand against the wing that is very proud and loud right now.

And if we don't have some sort of rivalry over the soul of the party, it's not only the Rob Portmans of the world who are going to leave it.  It's suburban voters.  There are a lot of voters on that side who do not like what happened on January 6, and they're not going to stay for long.

So, the survival of the party depends on the rallying of what we used to think of as normal Republicans.  And so far, they have — they have been — they have stuck their head up here and there, but there's been no rallying, no organization, not much of a caucus.

And so there has to be at least the fight to defend the party.

Judy Woodruff:  In 10 seconds, Jonathan, anything Democrats can do as all this is going on?

Jonathan Capehart:  I have no idea, other than stand back and watch.

(LAUGHTER)

Judy Woodruff:  On that note, Friday night.

Jonathan Capehart, David Brooks, thank you both.

Jonathan Capehart:  Thanks.

David Brooks:  Thank you.