JUDY WOODRUFF: At the end of
another week jam-packed with
news from Washington, it's

time for Shields and Brooks.

That's syndicated columnist
Mark Shields and New York
Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentleman.

So, what is there to talk about,
Mark, but yesterday's climate
change decision, the president's

announcement that the United
States will pull out of
the Paris climate accord?

What did you make of it?

MARK SHIELDS: In immediate
impact, Judy, it probably means
less in the American environment

than the rules and
regulations already repealed
by his administration
and by his EPA that

were put in force, emissions
controlled by President Obama.

But, in a larger sense,
it belies and reveals
that president's
sense about the world.

The world is a dangerous,
sinister place.

There's conspiracies.

Other countries are not
our friends, are partners.

Everything is transactional.

There are no fixed values.

We saw that, I thought most
dramatically, at NATO, where
the president showed an absolute

absence of any historical
understanding of
American exceptionalism.

And, as one who frankly
subscribes to it that
three times in the
20th century the United

States saved the world from
totalitarianism, twice in World
Wars, once in the Cold War,

and 124,965 American graves
around the world in cemeteries,
and 94,000 still missing.

And I just don't understand.

The president knows
that it was for values.

And when NATO has made
mistakes, we have made mistakes.

We have been guilty of hubris.

But the world is a much
better place because of the
United States' leadership.

And this was an example of
the United States working with
other nations for a common good

to preserve our planet.

And he just turned
his back on it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What did you make
of the president's decision and
his argument for why he did it?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, well,
I sort of agree with Mark.

It was nice to have
an American century.

We were a superpower once.

And now we're headed
the way of Portugal.

No, it was --
environmentally, I can't
get super excited about it.

I think it was a
setback for the cause of
addressing global warming.

But, as we have heard
many times, it was a
voluntary agreement.

And so this -- and we have done
a very good job, because of
natural gas and fracking and

other things, of reducing
emissions over the
last five years or so.

And I presume the market
will still work and the
emissions will still come down.

And so we -- Donald Trump could
have addressed his concerns
about coal workers and stayed

in the Paris accords.

There is nothing block.

It was totally voluntary.

So this wasn't about
global warming.

This wasn't about
the environment.

This was about sticking a thumb
in the eye of polite society,
the elites, the globalists.

This was a Steve Bannon-led
thing designed to change
America's role in the world.

And so, to me, the
effect is much worse
on the global diplomacy
and the idea of a world

order than it is, at
least in the short-term,
about climate change.

And the effects, I
think, are ruinous.

You can't lead the world
and stick your thumb in
the eye of the world.

People -- if you act extremely
selfishly to other people, they
will start acting extremely

selfishly to you.

And that is about to happen.

And so as the idea that America
could lead the world and
should influence the world and

should have friendship with
other powerful nations in the
world, that's an idea that

took a big hit this week.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, as
we famously heard him
say, yesterday, Mark,
the president said,

I'm here to represent the
people of Pittsburgh, and
not the people of Paris.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, no, it
was a nice alliterative
line that didn't have
much relevance in reality,

Pittsburgh having supported
Hillary Clinton and
basically being a green city.

And I think it was a
political statement.

One can say, in defense
of the president, I
guess, he kept his word.

He hasn't been known as
a truth-teller always.

No one has confused him with
George Washington on veracity.

But he kept his word
on the Trans-Pacific
treaty, trade treaty.

He kept his word on NATO and
that he was going to belittle
it, or at least diminish it.

And he kept his word here.

And I think that was probably
the strongest argument inside.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

Yes, I'm just struck by the fact
that his is an administration
driven solely by resentment.

He will side with the Steve
Bannon side if that position
will alienate the people he

feels resentful for.

He will side with the
regular Republican side
and the budgetary, the
more free market side

if that will offend
elite opinion.

It seems to be all based on
some sense of resentment, a
sense of social inferiority,

a sense of fragile ego, him
just wanting to stick the eye
in the people he is resenting.

And I -- more than any other
time -- we have talked about
Trump not telling the truth a

lot over the last year.

But that global warming speech
to me set new standards of
just being irrelevant to the

facts.

We devote our lives to
talking about the evidence.

We write these wonky
columns about exciting
things and this and that.

And what Donald Trump said about
the Paris accord is -- just
has no engagement with reality.

The fact that somehow we're
bound by this, somehow that
we would be under some sort of

legal liability if we didn't
abide by the Paris accords,
the fact that the Chinese are

given permission by Paris to
do this and we're not, all that
has no contact reality, and

it doesn't seem like
Donald Trump knows that.

MARK SHIELDS: He doesn't.

DAVID BROOKS: As a number
of commentators made, it
doesn't seem like lying.

It just seems like willful
ignorance and disinterest.

And we have had a lot
of presidents with a
lot of disagreements,
but there has been an

attachment to some sort of
basic research, some basic
contact with reality, which it

seems there has just
been a failure of
intellectual virtue here.

And because there is some
underlying psychological
issues which is he is
working out, and whatever

he needs to do that, the facts
have to fit that lower reality.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

I would just add to that, Judy,
what compounds it is not --
if you are on the other side

of the argument, you are not
wrong, you are not mistaken,
your facts aren't incorrect.

You are evil, you are
part of a conspiracy.

And whatever one thinks, we
are all, all of us, all human
beings, are passengers on this

little spaceship of
ours with very precious
supplies, vulnerable
supplies of air and water

and soil.

And, you know, any attempt
to make it rational, to
make it just, to help
human -- make people

more safe and secure and
healthy is to be commended.

And he's all of a sudden
really did regard this as
selling out the United States.

And to cede to China the
leadership in the green
industry, is an abdication.

He accused Barack Obama,
and so did many Republicans,
of leading from the rear.

And this is retweeting to the
rear at every possible level.

And I just cannot overstate
the NATO -- NATO brought a
sustained period of peace, more

sustained than any time
since the French Revolution,
to the continent of Europe.

I mean, that is an achievement
of such historical magnitude.

And to just dismiss it.

He is not even aware of it.

I don't think he understands it.

JUDY WOODRUFF: From a purely
political standpoint, David, the
president, one assumes he think

this is a smart thing to do.

I mean, is it a smart
thing for him to do?

DAVID BROOKS: I think so.

Yes, I do think so.

Environment has never
driven political
voters, I do not think.

I can't remember a time
when environmental issues
really rose to that level.

And any time you can pit the
economy vs. the environment,
say I'm siding with the economy,

politically -- again, not on
the merits, not what I think
of it -- I think it is probably

a winning issue.

Then, finally, just remember,
this is an administration
who is polling and whose
interest is focused

on about 12 states.

And that's a lot
of coal country.

And so if people in that
part of the world, with some
justice, some minor justice, see

Donald Trump as their
savior against the
elites in Paris, then,
politically -- taking aside

the merits, politically,
I think it is probably
a good move for him.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you agree
it's winning politically?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I thought
Governor Jerry Brown made a
case last night in his interview

with you, pointed out
that California has
the toughest, greenest
standards of the country,

far more draconian by Trump's
standard, measure, than
anything, environmentally.

Two million new jobs, a gross
domestic product grown 40
percent fastest than the nation,

in spite of, because
of the greenness.

So, I think a case can be made.

But I just think
-- I don't know.

I just think there is a limit
to the isolation and this sort
of -- this defensive paranoid,

whatever you call
it, nationalism.

It isn't even nationalism.

It is just sort of everybody,
all strangers, they are all
-- you know, they are all bad.

They wish us no well.

JUDY WOODRUFF: An us vs. them.

MARK SHIELDS: On every matter.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, but do you
notice how what used to be
substantive disagreements turn

into cultural wars?

It's like the gun issue.

It used to be the gun issue,
gun control was about which kind
of guns we should have floating

around in our society.

But then it became
rural vs. urban.

And the substance didn't
actually matter that much.

And one has the sense with
global warming it's a not
about substance anymore.

It is about what culture
-- in our cultural divide,
which culture are you on?

And so he aligned with
one culture, a rural
culture, which is his base.

And that is why I think, from
his point of view, it solidifies
that, which he needs to

survive.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it seems
like a long time ago, but it
was just -- really just really

a couple of days ago, Mark, that
we were hearing reports about
the White House in disarray,

the president planning to fire
or rearrange - - fire people,
rearrange the staff in an

attempt to get beyond
the focus on the Russia
investigation, everything else.

You couple that with the Paris
announcement, do you see this
White House in any sense getting

beyond, getting its hands
around the dysfunction that
appears to be gripping...

MARK SHIELDS: I really don't.

I really don't, Judy.

I mean, just imagine
yourself, you are Reince
Priebus, you are the chief
of staff, and complained

to a friend, look, said he
hadn't been able to spend time
with his children for the past

four months.

And what does he read
every day in the paper?

The president called him
Reincy, refers to him as Reincy.

He's going to be
ambassador to Greece.

They are going to get him out.

They're going to replace him.

Who is going to replace him?

You can't be thrive, you can't
be productive in that kind
of an environment, where you

are looking over your shoulder
at who is conspiring over
here and what faction?

Are you Kushner
or are you Bannon?

And it just -- Judy, they
work long hours, they work
hard, and they're uncertain.

They're being sniped at.

There is no appreciation,
there's no sense
of shared mission.

And the reward is when
you tell the president
what he wants to hear.

It's the antithesis of Jim
Baker and Ronald Reagan, where
a president was secure enough

and confident enough to ask a
chief of staff for advice that
he didn't want to hear, that

was tough.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Does
all this matter, David,
quickly or inside baseball?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, it
matters if we don't have an
effective administration.

Reince Priebus has the ultimate
job security right now, because
nobody else wants the job,

so they can't get rid
of him, because somebody
has got to do it.

But I do think it makes the
prospect of a functional White
House very remote, because

you can't get new people
because they don't want it.

The current people are in some
sort of war with each other.

And every time we hear
about something internal,
whether it was the
decision-making over global

warming, or the shambolic
attempt to get an FBI
director, it just sounds
like disorganization.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And more reports
tonight about investigations
with the Mueller probe.

David Brooks, Mark
Shields, thank you both.