Brooks and Capehart on Trump’s ‘anti-institutionalist’ Cabinet

Amna Nawaz:

President-elect Donald Trump faced a momentary setback this week when his initial pick to serve as attorney general backed out of consideration. The moment cast a spotlight on the controversy surrounding Trump's potential Cabinet.

On that, 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.

Great to see you both.

Let's start with the latest on this Trump transition.

And, Jonathan, I want to ask you about Matt Gaetz dropping out last evening, Pam Bondi being named as his replacement not long after. Jonathan, there were so many questions and concerns around Gaetz, even from Republicans. Was his dropping out really inevitable?

Jonathan Capehart:

Yes. In normal political times, Matt Gaetz wouldn't have been nominated in the first place. In these times that we're in, especially with Republican senators actually taking a stand and saying, we don't think this — we could vote for this guy, yes, it was inevitable.

I mean, the way he got the nomination, quite honestly, reflected sort of the chaos of the first Trump administration. But I think that Gaetz dropping out and Pam Bondi being selected as Donald Trump's new pick for attorney general to me says that Trump 2.0 is more organized chaos, because you can't make that selection that quickly if you hadn't been planning — scenario-planning ahead of time.

Amna Nawaz:

David, what do you make of that?

David Brooks:

Yes, I think the one of the good news stories or comforting news stories for those of us who are not big fans of President Trump is that he was elected by — in the primary vote, as my colleague David French put it, 17 million Republicans voted for him.

In the general election, 70-odd-million voted for him. And David makes the point that those 17 million, the primary voters, are hardcore Trump people. Those are MAGA people. A lot of the 70 million, they just want the economy of 2019 back. They're not supporting the whole MAGA thing.

And so there's some hope that, as Trump does MAGA-type stuff, like appointing Matt Gaetz, then a lot of the people who are his supporters, but not really on board for the whole circus, will pull back and he will begin losing popularity.

And Trump wants nothing more than to preserve his popularity, and he will hear the voices of the Republicans who are pulling back and he will do some U-turns. And that's one sort of comforting way to think about how this administration is going to play out.

The less comforting version of that is Matt Gaetz was so uniquely hated by Republicans on Capitol Hill that they were happy to walk away from that guy.

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

David Brooks:

But they may not feel the same way about RFK Jr. or any of the others.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, there is the point I want to ask you about with Pam Bondi, because she is known as a loyalist.

The Washington Post is now reporting tonight, citing two sources close to Trump's transition, that he plans to fire the entire team behind special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two federal prosecutions against him, and then use the Department of Justice to probe the 2020 election.

Does having someone like Bondi in place mean he can use the DOJ like that?

David Brooks:

Yes. These are anti-institutionalists. That's the theme of the whole group of people.

And so many have scandals because they are outside the pale of polite society. So there are not going to be a lot of the Trump appointees like Jim Mattis, who want to be liked, who want to do a responsible job for the government. When you pick somebody who has a sex scandal or a financial scandal, they are totally on your side, because they have no other route to a career in their lives.

So they are going to be total Trump loyalists. And their mission is to disrupt the institutions. Now, some of the — I happen to think a lot of our institutions need some disrupting. We have got a lot of, like, why can't we make — why can't we build subways in this country? Why can't we build fighter planes in this country?

A lot of these institutions have gone creaky. And so they need reform, but they don't need a blowtorch. And especially in the attorney general's office, what we're talking about is not reforming the Justice Department. That's not cleaning out the bureaucracy. That's taking a blowtorch to the neutral institutions of justice.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, Jonathan, back on the Trump transition here, because there's still a lot of questions around the nominee for secretary of defense. That is Pete Hegseth, some questions about allegations of sexual assault and some troubling details that came out in a recently released police report related to that.

We saw a number of senators voice concerns over Gaetz and the allegations that he was facing. Do you expect those senators to stand up and voice the same concerns about Hegseth?

Jonathan Capehart:

Yes, I expect them to do that. Do I actually think they will do that? I'm not sure.

I haven't heard much from the senators when it comes to the nomination of Hegseth in the way that we saw with former Congressman Gaetz. And to just jump on something that David was saying, I'm all for disrupting the bureaucracy and disrupting sleepy agencies. But with all of these — with most of these appointments that we have seen, these folks aren't just about disruption.

They're about destruction. And that's what I'm most worried about, that the blowtorch that David is hopeful won't happen, I think that they're off to the sideline flicking the match, trying to get the blowtorch to work in time for them to take their places in the administration once he's inaugurated on January 20.

Amna Nawaz:

David, there is the point in all of this, especially with Hegseth, as we're speaking about, when Gaetz was still running, there were four people who had been named to key posts by Mr. Trump, who all had some kind of sexual assault or misconduct allegation that they'd faced or were facing, not even counting Mr. Trump himself.

It begs the question, is it that hard to find qualified candidates who haven't faced some of these allegations?

David Brooks:

Yes, well, narcissists like to appoint people like themselves. So maybe that's a tie.

But, like I said, the fact that they're scandal-ridden makes them super valuable for Trump, because it proves they're permanent outsiders. The thing — the Hegseth nomination is one that alarms me almost as much as any, because we're in a very complicated moment in defense history, where the drone technology is here.

It's making our traditional weapons systems ranging from tanks to aircraft carriers not obsolete, but really much less important. So we need a secretary of defense who can adjust from the kind of weapons systems and the kind of military we have had for decades to something completely different. And so a whole series of incredibly important decisions have to be made about how we handle energy information flow, how we do the signals that come across the 5G systems, do we have an efficient 5G systems.

All these things are super technical decisions that have to be made by the secretary of defense. And a guy without long experience is just not going to be able to make them competently. And facing the Chinese and God knows what's going to happen there over the next two years, it's tremendously alarming to have basically a novice.

And, in general, I worry about incompetence more than authoritarianism from this group.

Amna Nawaz:

Jonathan, meanwhile we know votes in this election are still being counted, right? We have been reporting over the last two weeks.

We know Trump, of course, won the electoral count. But we were also saying that it was likely he would win the popular vote and be the first Republican to do so since 2004. When you look at the latest AP figures now, they show that Trump received 76.8 million votes, right, about 50 percent of voters. Harris received about 74.2 million votes. That's 48.4 percent of the electorate.

We have seen Mr. Trump repeatedly say he won in a landslide, that he has a mandate now as he steps into govern. His margin of victory is the smallest popular vote margin since 2000. Do you see this as a mandate for him?

Jonathan Capehart:

No, I don't see it as a mandate, but I see how he thinks it is.

Also, I remember President George W. Bush. Republican presidents always say that they have a mandate simply because they have been elected. But when looking at Donald Trump's victory, again, as you pointed out, it's the smallest victory in about 20 years. Some news outlets are reporting that he — when all the votes are counted, he will be below 50 percent.

But they say that they have a mandate simply because he won the White House, Republicans held onto the majority in the House, and they retook the majority and have 53 seats in the Senate. And so a governing trifecta in Washington, I think, is fueling this idea that they have a mandate.

But what we're going to see once he comes into office and starts acting on all of the things he told us he was going to do, we will see whether the American people believe he has a mandate to do all the things he's promised, including mass deportations on day one.

Amna Nawaz:

David, is it a mandate?

David Brooks:

It's — a mandate, it's what you make of it. And presidents always overread…

Amna Nawaz:

It's a mandate if you call it a mandate? Is that the rule?

David Brooks:

I mean, I don't even know what a mandate is.

But Joe Biden overread his mandate. I assume Donald Trump will overread his mandate. Biden won a pretty close election. He decided it was time for New Deal 2. And he ended up losing because some of the policies he enacted were overreaching.

And I fully expect Donald Trump will overreach. He doesn't care about the middle. And I expect there will be some blowback. And we should say, in the midterms, one of the things we have learned about the midterm elections is that college-educated voters really vote in them, and high school educated voters vote less frequently.

So the Democrats have a natural advantage in the midterms. And so there's likely to be some blowback here before short — long.

Amna Nawaz:

Jonathan, I have less than a minute, but I have to ask you, because I know you have been talking to your sources when Democrats are in their postelection postmortem.

Have they reached any consensus about a way forward?

Jonathan Capehart:

No, because Democrats are going to Democrat.

Look, my — no, they have not reached a consensus. But what I would say to them is, it's only been almost three weeks. It's not enough time to understand and fully internalize the results of this election. And what they should do is take a page out of what President Clinton told me in the interview on Wednesday, and that is to go across the country, talk to people, listen to them, and then figure out how you best can reach them in the next election.

Amna Nawaz:

We will see if they take your advice.

That is Jonathan Capehart and David Brooks. Always great to see you both. Thank you.

David Brooks:

Thank you.

Jonathan Capehart:

Thanks.