Brooks and Capehart on Biden’s handling of the war in Ukraine, Supreme Court hearings

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• Judy Woodruff:

  The White House was again juggling major foreign and domestic priorities this week, as President Biden met with allies in Europe, while, in Washington, his Supreme Court nominee was in the hot seat.

  To discuss another busy week, we turn to Brooks and Capehart. That is New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, columnist for The Washington Post.

  Hello to both of you.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Judy.

• Judy Woodruff:

  So good to see you here on this Friday night.

  A lot to talk about, Jonathan, but let's start with Ukraine. The Ukrainians more than holding their own on a number of fronts, but the Russians just keep pounding away. In general, how do you think the West is doing in standing up to what's going on?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Well, I think the West is doing a good job.

  I mean, they have been making it very clear — excuse me — they have been making it very clear that, if Putin hits a NATO nation, that NATO will hit back. The alliance has been continuing to funnel weapons and things to the Ukrainians to aid in their fight.

  And with the president in Brussels and also in Poland, but especially in Brussels, with those back-to-back-to-back meetings, NATO, E.U. and other meetings, the signal being sent by the president and by the West to Vladimir Putin is, we are united, we are strong, and you will have to contend not just with the Ukrainians, but with us collectively, if you go even farther than that.

  And I think it's symbolic, but symbols matter in a conflict like this.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Is it an effective response to what's going on, David?

• David Brooks:

  Yes, I think so.

  I mean, if you think for where we were last week sitting here, humanity's worse off than last week. More people have been killed. More buildings have been destroyed. So that's one reality.

  The second reality is, Russia is a lot worse off, economically, but particularly on the battlefield. There was a good piece by Elliot Ackerman in "The Atlantic" from Kyiv talking people who were actually doing the fighting.

  And they made three key points. First, we may be leaving the tank era. The anti-tank weapons now are very powerful at destroying tanks, in the way they didn't used to be. And Russia is a tank-based military. Second, apparently, the Russian tactics, they're not a learning organization, the way we thought they were. They're so top-down. The commanders on the ground and even local — the soldiers on the ground don't have the choice to make choices, to adapt to circumstances.

  So they go from A to B, and it's very easy for the Ukrainians to raid them. And then, finally, morale. There's that famous Napoleon saying that morale is to the physical as 3-1. And it's pretty clear by now the Ukrainians have pretty high morale.

  So, like I said last week, it's time to trust the policy. And we have been ramping it up. But you look at what the Russians said today, which you talked about earlier in the program, who knows where that will lead? But it certainly seems like a plausible out to me, if they want to take that out, do what they used to say we should have done in Vietnam, which is declare victory and go home.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Well, it's hard to be patient when we're watching these kinds of pictures…

• David Brooks:

  Absolutely.

• Judy Woodruff:

  … these stories that we're hearing.

  I do want to ask you both about the — how President Biden himself is doing.

  And, Jonathan, there was a poll out today, the respected Ann Selzer, a Grinnell College poll. It shows disapproval, 48 percent — by 11 points people disapprove of his handling, compared to 37 percent approve.

  But when you ask people what about the specifics of the administration's policy, namely, should we be sending armed forces, 70 percent say no. That's the president's policy. Should we provide weapons? Seventy-two percent say yes. That's the president's policy. Enforce the no-fly zone; 52 percent, small majority, say no. That's the president's policy.

  So there is a contradiction.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Right.

• Judy Woodruff:

  What do we make of all this?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  So this is what drives me crazy about public opinion polls which go beyond just tell me what you think about the president's overall job approval rating.

  When you get into specific things about, how's he doing with the war, folks aren't following the war and specific policy things like we are. So I discount, how are you handling the war?

  What is more important are the specifics that you just pointed out, asking specific questions, troops, weapons, and other things. And it shows that the American people are with the president, and the president has his finger on the pulse of where the American people want to be with — on the war with Ukraine.

  And all of this will change if Putin does the unthinkable, chemical weapons or use a nuclear device.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Yes. All bets are off if that happens.

• David Brooks:

  Yes.

  My view is, if you ask American people, what do you think of President Biden's policy toward beautiful sunsets…

  (LAUGHTER)

• David Brooks:

  … 85 percent of American people will say, no, I really disapprove of President Biden's policy toward beautiful sunsets.

  We live in a partisan era.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Yes.

• David Brooks:

  When you attach the name Biden or Trump or Republican or Democrat to anything, and you get instant opposition. So it's nothing more than a measure of partisanship.

  The question is, if we were really in trouble, as Jonathan mentioned something, we get to a next step in this war, could we unify? After 9/11, if I'm remembering this correctly, George W. Bush's approval rating was like 92 percent. It was something insanely high.

  Could we ever imagine that again? It's very hard to imagine that. And that means we're just not as resilient a country as we were when you could get beyond party labels.

• Judy Woodruff:

  But it is — it is notable that there is agreement with the policy, just, as you say, not when you attach President Biden's name to it.

  The Supreme Court confirmation hearings this week, it was almost, Jonathan, a tale of two — it was as if two nominees were sitting there, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. To listen to the Democratic senators, you would think this was a supremely qualified woman who'd served for almost a decade on — in the federal courts. To listen to Republican, she's soft on crime, she tends to give lenient sentences to people who've engaged in child abuse.

  What did you make of the senators, of the process, of the nominee?

• Jonathan Capehart:

  How much time do we have, Judy?

  (LAUGHTER)

• Jonathan Capehart:

  I know we don't have — don't have a lot of time.

  It was as if we were watching, yes, the Supreme Court nomination hearings of Ketanji Brown Jackson, but also a relitigation of the Supreme Court confirmation hearings for Justice Kavanaugh on one level.

  Democrats doing their level best to remind people of just how qualified Judge Jackson, Judge Brown Jackson, is, how qualified, beyond qualified, she is to serve on the High Court. And the Republicans did everything they could to tear her down, belittle her experience, call her everything but a child of God.

  Telling a mother that she is not just soft on crime, but is fine with people peddling in child pornography, it was just appalling.

  And I think that what Senator Booker, who is even more loquacious than I am, his oration that made her cry, I would have cried if my in-laws and my mother weren't also sitting in the living room as we watched this. When I saw her wiping away the tears, I felt that in my bones, because I understood where that emotion was coming from.

  In the Black community, we call everyone brother and sister, that brother over there, that sister over there. And it really wasn't until watching that that I really understood what that meant. I'm about three years older than Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. I'm an only child. I don't know her. I have never met her.

  But watching her sit there — so, we're looking at that picture right now — I felt as if I was looking — I was watching a relative go through hell. And to have Senator Booker remind her, but remind the country of why she's there, how hard she worked, how qualified she is, and to not let anyone robbed her of her joy, how important that was.

  She loves her country. She's interviewing for a job she's always wanted. And yet we had people there just trashing her in ways. We work so hard, as African Americans, to get to these spots and to stay in these spots. And to have to jump through these hoops and be questioned by people who aren't even at our level, but yet that's what we have to do to get in the tent, get a seat at the table, and then to keep that seat.

• Judy Woodruff:

  What did you make of it?

• David Brooks:

  Yes, well, I'm so moved by that.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Yes.

• David Brooks:

  We have a group of Republican senators who are not really senators. They're cable TV hosts.

  And they use these hearings as an occasion to drag up whatever issue is popular with Tucker. And so whether it's what is a woman or whatever it's going to be, they're going to ask her about that. They're not going to ask her about judicial philosophy. They're not going to ask about temperament. They're just going to ask about whatever the issue of the moment is.

  And it reached its apogee with Ted Cruz, who I spoke about nicely last week.

  (LAUGHTER)

• David Brooks:

  Going back to being a schmuck this week.

• Judy Woodruff:

  We don't remember that.

  (LAUGHTER)

• David Brooks:

  Yes.

  He makes a big kerfuffle, and then leans back and checks out how he's doing on Twitter. It's like the perfect cycle of Narcissus. And so these are not hearings.

  On the child pornography issue, Andy McCarthy, who's a conservative writer for "National Review" who happened to be a prosecutor for 20 years, says her position that there should not be mandatory minimums for people who simply possess some child pornography is absolutely the right position. And this is the standard position because, some people are — they're stupid, and they do something terrible, but they shouldn't get a five-year minimum, because they're not fundamentally criminals.

  And so this is McCarthy's case. And that's her case.

  But Hawley, Josh Hawley, treats her like she's soft on child abuse. And so that's just a distortion of the record.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Well, we let that sink in, as we turn finally to the interview that Lisa Desjardins just had with Jane Mayer.

  And that is connected to the Supreme Court, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, Ginni Thomas, new information, texts that she shared with the White House chief of staff, Mark Meadows, urging the White House to overturn — work to overturn the election.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Overturn a free and fair election.

  And this revelation comes after she granted that interview where she said that she was at the January 6 rally. She was at the rally. I think that the January 6 Committee needs to call her in, have her come in and testify about these things.

  And I say that because, yes, she's married to Justice Thomas, but it's not Justice Thomas who's sending these text messages. It's not Justice Thomas who was at the January 6 rally. So we need to remember that the spouse is not the — is not the principal.

  But the spouse should be called in. Ginni Thomas should be called in to explain, what are these text messages? What's this about?

  Jane Mayer is the preeminent expert on this. And when she said that she talked to folks who said that Ginni Thomas and Justice Thomas crossed a line, I want to know how far that line — how far over that line they have gone.

• Judy Woodruff:

  How do you see it?

• David Brooks:

  Yes, there are codes of decorum that hold up the legitimacy of our system.

  And in the Trump area, we have seen those codes be trashed. And I would say Ginni Thomas trashed those codes, just how a justice's wife should behave, or a husband, whatever it is, because it implicates.

  Did it go over the line? I want to — Jane is the expert on all this, but I would want to ask Jane, you can't — when your spouse has an interest, you have got to recuse. But does that word interest, does that mean financial interest or psychological interest?

  Because, in this case, it seems to me Thomas has a psychological interest. But we all have psychological interests on right to life cases, on civil rights cases. So there's a lot of interests.

  So, I would want to ask Jane that question about whether it really went over the line.

• Judy Woodruff:

  And that's a question we don't have the chance to ask.

  (CROSSTALK)

  (LAUGHTER)

• Judy Woodruff:

  We're going to have to wait a few days to look at that.

  But we will try to figure it out in the next few days.

  David Brooks, Jonathan Capehart, so much to think about this week. Thank you both.

• Jonathan Capehart:

  Thanks, Judy.

• Judy Woodruff:

  Thank you.