Brooks and Marcus on the House’s impeachment inquiry and its impact on Biden

Amna Nawaz:

Senators put an aid and border mega-deal atop their holiday wish list, the House takes a formal step toward impeaching the president, and the caucus kickoff to 2024's race for the presidency is less than 30 days away.

That brings us to the analysis of Brooks and Marcus. That is New York Times columnist David Brooks and Ruth Marcus, columnist for The Washington Post. Jonathan Capehart is away.

It's great to see you both.

Ruth Marcus, Columnist, The Washington Post:

Hi.

Amna Nawaz:

Let's start with the news late today. I just want to get your reaction that Rudy Giuliani has been ordered to pay Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman almost $150 million for defamation.

David, what do you make of that?

David Brooks:

It's deserved. I mean, he ripped their lives to shreds with the tweet and with all the lies that went on.

And so I think these big penalties are meant to send a message and they are sending a message. You can't lie and destroy people's lives when you're in a position of authority.

The largest story is, whatever happened to Rudy Giuliani? When he was mayor, I covered him. I traveled around the city with him. He was smart. He was calm. He had — believe me, he had quirks. He was gladiatorial, but he was not the guy we see now. And it's one of the most remarkable transformations I have ever seen in public, in journalism.

And it's like what gets rotted when you're desperate for relevance? I was once having lunch decades ago now with a friend of mine named Michael Kelly, who was editing "The Atlantic." And there were two former officials across the restaurant and. He pointed to them and said, look, a powerless lunch.

(Laughter)

David Brooks:

And they had formerly held power, and now they had no power.

And I think that's what ate Giuliani's soul to shreds. And so he deserves what he's gotten.

Amna Nawaz:

Ruth, what about you?

Ruth Marcus:

Couldn't agree more.

But he did have power. He had the power to destroy their lives. I wish he could be summoned to pay the $150 million. That amount is going to be reduced. He doesn't have it. No amount of money can make up for what they suffered.

He's not — he is so shameless, he continues — continued to defame them outside the court even as the trial was going on. He is not going to have a comfortable retirement, and he shouldn't. And couldn't happen to a nicer guy. And I mean that sarcastically, for anybody who might get that wrong.

Amna Nawaz:

And we should note this is happening at a time of rising threats against election workers, many of them leaving their roles because they don't want to deal with it anymore. More to come on that.

Meanwhile, let's turn to the Hill, because we know Senate negotiators are working to pass this foreign aid bill that includes billions for Ukraine and for Israel held up on those border policy talks. Senator Schumer saying that the Senate will come back next week. They will hold a vote.

Look, Democrats are clearly incentivized to get this across the finish line. Are Republicans equally incentivized?

David Brooks:

Nope, nope. No, because a lot of them would — they're fine — some of the Republicans would — they don't worry if we don't have Ukraine aid, and they love having the immigration issue. And so they have less urgency.

I still somehow think it's going to get done. It just makes so much sense. Everybody gets something important they want, that what's happening on the border has to be addressed. The Democrats absolutely have to address it. It's a super important issue, and Democrats are getting hammered on it. And then Ukraine has to happen. We can't let Vladimir Putin win that war.

It just seems to be so obvious. The hard part is, this is not — sometimes, when you get 60 votes in the Senate, you get 51 votes in one party, and then you try to get nine others from the other party. That's not going to happen here. You're going to — it's going to be a 30-30. You're going to get 30 Republicans and 30 Democrats.

Both sides are going to lose a lot of people. And doing that kind of deal — and we have seen bipartisan deals before, but doing a 30-30 deal when you get the majority of both parties, that's super hard to do, let alone immigration, the issue that we have not made progress on since 1986.

Amna Nawaz:

That's correct, yes.

David Brooks:

And so it's going to be a tough — but it just — the logic behind this deal is so strong to me that I suspect they will eventually get it done.

But you don't hear a lot of optimism right now on the Hill.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, what about the logic behind the Biden position this? Because he is taking a lot of heat from the progressive wing, in particular, for many of these proposed immigration concessions. Is he going to lose many of the same members of the coalition that put him into office?

Ruth Marcus:

Yes, but I think there's actually logic on both sides.

I think, on the Republican side, I have a slightly different answer than David gave, because I think that many Republicans, and particularly Senate Republicans, the majority of them, are well — are very incentivized to get the Ukraine funding, including Senator McConnell.

And they know that border security has to be a piece of this. On the House — the problem is getting it through the House. In order to get it through the House, you have to convince House Republicans that Democrats were dragged to this kicking and screaming. And that — and so, to a certain extent, the administration and advocates of getting this across the line benefit from the yelps you're hearing from the left right now.

They can calm them down later. And House — but House Republicans have very mixed motives, right? They like border security as an issue perhaps more than they like border security as a solution. Now, from the president's point of view, this will be my last thing, this gives — he has a problem on the left and people will be yelling at the end of this process if it — if this all comes together.

People from the left will be yelling, but he has a bigger political problem, which is border security is a very motivating issue for voters that he has to get on his side in order to get reelected. So this, to some way, gives him a little bit of an excuse to do something that he wouldn't have the political freedom to do otherwise, and to say, I took steps to help solve this.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, David, I want to get your reaction to something Ruth said there, because it was President Biden that linked that border policy to this foreign aid package.

If it does get addressed in these ways, does that take it away from Republicans as a political cudgel next year?

David Brooks:

It's not — we're not going to totally solve the border, but maybe we won't have 10,000 asylum seekers crossing the border every — and I would say, remember, Joe Biden was the — in 2020, a lot of the activist groups and a lot of the Democratic politicians were on the primary debate stage basically wanted to decriminalize the border.

Joe Biden was one of the few Democrats to say, no, we're not going there. If they had gone there, Donald Trump would have won that election. And so I think, for Joe Biden to do what he's doing now, and to be not quite as progressive on the border, while still being kind of progressive, it just is a political must, must.

Ruth Marcus:

And the border situation has gotten much worse since that conversation, and so he really does need to do something.

Amna Nawaz:

Meanwhile, in the House, let's talk about this.

The Republican Conference voted to open an official impeachment inquiry into President Biden. That inquiry, we should point out, in our latest poll, we have seen a slight increase in approval for them to move forward on that in the last couple of months. In October, 52 percent of Americans disapproved, 47 percent approved. By December, 48 percent disapproved, 49 percent approved.

Hunter Biden, of course, on whom Republicans are hanging many of these allegations, this week defied a Republican subpoena to testify privately. He says he wants to do so publicly. And here's what he had to say about this on Wednesday.

Hunter Biden, Son of Joe Biden: Let me state as clearly as I can, my father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer, not as a board member of Burisma, not in my partnership with a Chinese private businessman, not in my investments at home nor abroad, and certainly not as an artist.

Amna Nawaz:

David, there's no evidence linking the president to any wrongdoing yet. Why move ahead with this vote?

David Brooks:

Well, it's easy to go ahead and do an inquiry. There are a lot of Republicans who have no problem doing an inquiry, but there are a lot of Republicans who also say, well, there's no reason for impeachment. Like, there's no evidence here.

And so I do think that the inquiry was already going on. So this just continues something that was already happening. And so I think there are still a lot of Republicans who are like, OK, fine, let them have their inquiry, but unless there's some evidence…

Amna Nawaz:

When you say let them have their inquiry, you mean?

David Brooks:

Jim Jordan, basically.

And I will say one other thing. One of the virtues of being on a book tour is, you get — I have been on like 30 or 40 cities for the last two months, and I have met hundreds and hundreds of people and I have talked about Ukraine and the border and all this. How many people have asked me about Hunter Biden?

Amna Nawaz:

How many?

David Brooks:

Zero.

Amna Nawaz:

Really?

David Brooks:

Zero. And so I happen to think it's one of these issues that's just not resonating. People have bigger things to worry about than this.

Amna Nawaz:

Ruth, what's your take?

Ruth Marcus:

My take is that the Republican MAGA base is not going to David Brooks' book events.

(Laughter)

Ruth Marcus:

That's my take.

This is — I am harsher about this impeachment inquiry. You sort of make it sound like no harm, no foul. Let them go ahead with their inquiry. This is a shameful misuse of the impeachment power and the impeachment process.

Michael Gerhardt was on this program just the other night talking about how there had never been a formal impeachment inquiry in American history in the absence of credible evidence of wrongdoing. So we are looking, as you said, for — it's a hunt for high crimes and misdemeanors without evidence to do it.

And I think it threatened, because once you get this official ball rolling, then how do you stop from giving in to the demands for a vote for articles of impeachment? And then you put the 18 or so Republicans who are in Biden — districts that Biden won against Trump in a terrible position. They're either going to invite — depending on the timing, they're going to invite their base to primary them if they don't vote for it, or they're going to have their general electorate mad at them when they're trying to get reelected.

And so this does not — this — the only smart politics of this are to assuage Trump and to assuage the base. But it's not to protect your majority.

Amna Nawaz:

Well, meanwhile, 30 days to go until the Iowa caucuses, it feels like a good time to remind people about many of the candidates who are still running.

Mr. Trump is, of course, up 32 points compared to the other candidates. But also still running for the Republican nomination is Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, Chris Christie. Asa Hutchinson's campaign also continues.

David, do you see anything, anything in that field changing between now and the time the Iowa caucuses begin?

David Brooks:

No, probably not.

I — we were always waiting. Well, once campaigning starts in Iowa, then the numbers will begin to move around. And so campaigning has started, and the numbers are not moving around. If anything, Donald Trump is doing even better.

Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

David Brooks:

And so — and one of the little statistics that leapt out at me is among people, Iowans who have never been to a caucus, so political novices, basically, Trump, I saw, was winning by — them by 62 or 63 percent.

So he's like swamping people. He's bringing in new people.

Amna Nawaz:

Bringing in new folks too.

David Brooks:

And so he just looks very formidable in Iowa.

Ruth Marcus:

He's bringing in new people, and he's got an operation for how to run the caucuses that was very amateurish last time around and that is much better, last time around being 2016, when he had a contested primary.

And it's going to be much better now. It's kind of a preview of, heaven forbid, a second Trump term. He's getting smarter at doing this. And I don't think there's any reason to expect that he's not going to be — not going to win the caucuses and not going to be the Republican nominee.

Amna Nawaz:

There was a conversation we had several months ago I haven't heard in a while about eventually, if enough people wanted to stop him from becoming the nominee, they had to drop out, they had to coalesce behind a single candidate.

Has that moment come and gone, David?

David Brooks:

Well, in Iowa, he's over 50 percent, so it's sort of an academic argument.

Ruth Marcus:

Yes.

David Brooks:

I think it would be useful for Chris Christie to drop out right now and give Nikki Haley some kind of shot in New Hampshire. And it's just — somebody pointed out it's a rerun of 2016.

The other Republicans are not attacking him. They're not dropping out. It's all the collective action problems we saw in 2016. And it's just a rerun. They have learned nothing.

Amna Nawaz:

Have about 20 seconds.

Ruth Marcus:

It's a collective action problem. Politicians don't win if they drop out, and they're worrying about themselves first. And it wouldn't make a difference.

(Laughter)

Amna Nawaz:

Ruth Marcus, David Brooks, always good to see you both. Thank you so much.

Ruth Marcus:

Good to see you.