Brooks and Capehart on Trump’s latest legal battle and the growing presidential field

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• Amna Nawaz:

  For reaction on the growing presidential field and former President Trump's latest legal battle, we turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart.

  That is New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post.

  Gentlemen, good to see you.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Hi, Amna.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Every time we get together, there's new presidential candidates to discuss.

  (LAUGHTER)

• Amna Nawaz:

  So, let's jump in.

  David, it strikes me there are other moderate Republicans, Chris Sununu, Larry Hogan, who said, I'm not going to jump into this field.

  Francis Suarez is. Is there — are there enough primary voters to propel him forward?

• David Brooks:

  I thought so once upon a time. Maybe six months ago, I thought there were. There would seem to be deflection. And there was a — there was — the Republican Party up through Mitt Romney, you would think that would still exist somewhere.

  And I think it does to some degree. And Sununu, I thought, would be a strong candidate. I thought Brian Kemp, the governor of Georgia, not quite as moderate. But this guy's a genuine moderate. I mean, he's sort of gesturing in that interview toward a comprehensive immigration plan, which he supported in the past.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Right, which you don't hear often.

• David Brooks:

  And on climate change. There are some other issues where he's a genuine moderate. He has a fantastic story to tell in Miami. I think he's going to have to get a lot more polished as a question-answerer, frankly.

  But I still think, in theory, there's room for one person who's not Donald Trump, and it could be him. It could be Tim Scott. I think, in theory, there's room for that person. That person will get a bump at some point.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Jonathan, I want to revisit some of the poll numbers we reported on earlier.

  This is the context into which he's stepping in. When look at Mr. Trump's support, it has grown among Republicans. He had an eight-point favorability jump since February. And when you ask Republican and GOP leaning voters, only a third of them say they will support someone else other than Donald Trump.

  So, do you see any of this changing?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  No. No.

  And Mayor Suarez has a story to tell. Unfortunately, no one wants to hear it. Those numbers show that no one really wants to hear about anyone else, except for Donald Trump. And if there are more indictments that come down the road for the former president, I fully expect his numbers to keep going up.

  This is part of Donald Trump's story, his political story. And he could spend pretty much all of 2024 in a courtroom, instead of on the campaign trail. But, for Donald Trump, the courtroom will be the campaign trail, and his poll numbers will go up, and his fund-raising will go up.

• Amna Nawaz:

  David, we have to remind people this bump in favorability, this is all happening, yes, after this latest indictment, but also after the indictment in New York, after he was found liable for sexually abusing and defaming writer E. Jean Carroll.

  And now you have candidates like Vivek Ramaswamy saying, "I will pardon him," and Francis Suarez not ruling it out. What kind of precedent does that set?

• David Brooks:

  Yes, well, Trump's core narrative and the core narrative of the Republican Party these days is: They're out to get us, and they're out to attack our faith. They're out to attack our values. They're changing our country.

  And this — he — this can be spun into a part of that narrative: They're out to get us, and this is just another attempt of they being out to get us.

  And so it resonates with people. And there's been a clear rallying around.

  I think what's interesting to me about the Republican voters is that a clear majority of them think this is all political. It's Joe Biden's — but then, If you ask them, do you think did something wrong, a significant chunk think he did something wrong.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Right.

• David Brooks:

  And so they're a little cross-pressured more than in previous stories, I would say. And I'm not sure it's going to change, but we will see.

  I was struck. FOX News, Jonathan Turley, some of their analysts have been very harsh, Bill Barr. And so if there's a chance that some elite opinion is shifting against him, that will lead to other opinions shifting against him. Maybe there's a little crack in the window, but I probably think another indictment, he's up to 150 percent.

  (LAUGHTER)

• Amna Nawaz:

  Do you agree with that, crack in the window that could shift things down the road?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Yes, sure, it's a crack in the window because, unlike, say, the Mueller investigation, this is really easy to understand.

  It's easy to understand, a la — in the same way that the January 6 hearings was easy for the American people to understand. Classified documents with national security secrets belong to the U.S. government, and you're not supposed to take them.

  And then you see the photos of bathrooms and storage rooms and ballrooms and the nation's national security secrets just spilled about everywhere. The American people see that. And, like, that's not exact — that's not cool. That's not right. And you should be held accountable for that.

• Amna Nawaz:

  I mean, you talk about the consequences of the ramping up of the attacks against President Biden, for sure, also, this language that this is all part of a weaponization of government agencies.

  I want to ask you about that, because Greg Sargent actually wrote about this in a piece in The Washington Post today, an opinion piece. And this is part of just what he said in terms of the other GOP candidates echoing that message.

• He wrote:

  "By endorsing this idea that mass victimization is real, Trump's rivals could help feed a widespread yearning for mass retaliation under the next GOP president."

  In other words, David, it's not necessarily about 2024, but this is about the future as well.

• David Brooks:

  Yes.

  I mean, there's a subterranean culture war going on in the race. And Trumpism stands for a couple of ideas. One is that people are basically selfish and we should grab what you can while you can, two, that all of our institutions are fundamentally corrupt. It's political and it's corrupt all the way down.

  Now, I personally don't agree with that. I have covered this town. We all have — and I would say our institutions are frail and faltering, but worthy of respect. And a lot of the people who are prosecutors in the Department of Justice or serving in the Department of Education or whatever, they just want to do their jobs.

  And the idea that it's corruption all the way down is just fundamentally not true. But I have found it's very hard to persuade a lot of people in this country of that fact.

• Amna Nawaz:

  It is striking, Jonathan, that a lot of the language is working to undermine many of the same agencies that these folks are running, are asking people to let them be in charge of, as president of the United States, right?

  And how do you see the long-term potential consequences of something like that? Can that go back in a bottle?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  I don't know.

  We're living in the middle of it now. The people who are now in Washington, part of the new — this new Republican majority in the House, they were elected to come to Washington and break it. And so whether it's Donald Trump or another Republican president, the folks who vote for them hope that these people come here and break this town, because they think it deserves to be broken, because they think it's rigged.

  And a lot of the language that comes out of former President Trump and a lot of Republicans is all about projection, the weaponization of the DOJ, just that — the term weaponization. Well, we know because Donald Trump has promised, if he's reelected, he will — he said: I will be your retribution. I will go after the people who are coming after me, because, if they're coming after me, that's a proxy for them coming after you.

  That kind of language is incredibly dangerous, not just for our institutions, but also for our just national political discourse, how we talk about each other, but also, to David's point, the respect we should have for these institutions, because, without these institutions, where is America?

• Amna Nawaz:

  In the few minutes we have left, I do want to ask you about something we reported on earlier, which was the passing of Daniel Ellsberg, of course, a military analyst who was so deeply disturbed by the lies being told to the American public about the Vietnam War that he leaked the so-called Pentagon Papers and changed the course of history.

  I just want to play a little bit, so we can hear him in his own words. This is him from a 2017 "NewsHour" interview.

• Daniel Ellsberg, Former State Department Official:

  The system that puts everything on the decisions of one man is crazy. And when I held that piece of paper in my hand, the word in my mind was evil, evil. This should not exist.

  This was the operational plan annually for the Joint Chiefs of Staff that had been approved by General Eisenhower. And I thought, there shouldn't be anything in the world that corresponds to this. But there has been then and ever since.

• Amna Nawaz:

  David, what it must have taken to arrive at that decision, then to stand by that, even as your own president at the time calls you a traitor.

• David Brooks:

  Yes.

  Well, we have just spent several minutes talking about classified documents should not be taken out of where they belong in the Donald Trump context. And I generally agree with that. I think most leakers are wrong. I thought Edward Snowden was terrible.

  But Daniel Ellsberg shows that you can do it right. And so he did it over many years. He tried to go up the normal chain of command to show documents to senators and other things. And so it was — he went through all the hoops you should go through to prove that it's not just you being an egomaniac; it's you with a legitimate cause.

  And then, when he finally leaked those 7,000 documents to The Times, and then eventually The Post, you could at least say, well, he, A, went through all the hoops, B, did it with the full expectation he'd spend the rest of his life in jail. And so that, to me, is doing it the right way, a thing that probably should almost never be done, except in extreme circumstances, which he was in.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Jonathan, how do you think he will be remembered?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  I think he will be remembered as a hero, someone who stood up for principle, someone who had a strong belief and then tried to do something about it.

  I agree with David. I would add one more thing, because you mentioned the name Edward Snowden. And a lot of people were comparing the two when Snowden leaked all of those documents, saying he's the modern-day Ellsberg. And I wrote a column then, 10 years ago this week, that said, no, he's not, because while they both leaked documents, Daniel Ellsberg did something Edward Snowden didn't do.

  He stayed in this country, he turned himself in, and he allowed himself to be held accountable, something Edward Snowden still refuses to do. And, in that regard, that's why I say someone like Daniel Ellsberg should be considered a hero, because he did something that stood up for his — for his beliefs and his value system and then suffered the consequences.

• Amna Nawaz:

  His family said in a statement today that — quote — "He was not in pain and was surrounded by loving family, even joking in the end, in his final days."

  He said: "If I'd known dying would be like this, I would have done it sooner."

  (LAUGHTER)

• Amna Nawaz:

  Of course, our thoughts are with the family of Daniel Ellsberg.

  Thank you to you both, David Brooks, Jonathan Capehart. Good to see you.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Thanks, Amna.

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