JOHN YANG: It has been
quite a week in Washington
And here to analyze it all
are Shields and Brooks.
That's syndicated columnist
Mark Shields and New York
Times columnist David Brooks.
Gentlemen, welcome.
It has been quite a week.
We saw this unusual coalition
of opposition to the president's
policy on the border, the
president digging in, defending
it, and then changing course.
David, what have we
learned this week?
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS: Chaos.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS: Chaos reigns.
If you have an administration
-- usually, when you go into
a White House, you say, well,
why didn't you guys do this?
And they say, well, how
exactly would that work?
And they try to walk
you through the details.
It seems nobody is
asking that question.
And so how we do take
kids away from parents?
How do we reunify?
No one is asking the
practical questions.
It's just -- this is
what you have when you
have government by tweet.
What is infuriating about
it is, the Republican Party
exists for a few reasons.
One of them is to understand
that government is at its most
abhorrent when it can't see
human beings as human beings,
and when it treats them as mere
data points or as something
in a bureaucratic game.
And that's what we have
seen this whole policy.
It's not treating the
people as the human beings.
It's treating them as just
sort of pawns in some sort
of larger protest movement.
And that's what happens.
When government does that, you
get horrific pain and suffering.
And that's what we're seeing.
JOHN YANG: Mark?
MARK SHIELDS: Every
administration is inevitably
a mirror reflection
of the man at the top.
Sadly, in this case, the
Republican Party has become a
reflection of the man at the
top.
It is a combination of
malice and incompetence.
It is shameful
beyond description.
The idea of separating children,
anybody who's been a parent
or a child or a sibling and
knows the pain, the
inconsolable pain of
homesickness when a child is
separated from the mother,
even sometimes for a brief
period, to do this as a matter
of policy is unthinkable.
The one bright light to me,
quite honestly, in a dark,
dark picture has been organized
religion speaking up
and speaking out, with
the exception of some
of the president's most
ardent followers in the
evangelical community.
Give credit to the
Southern Baptists, the
Protestant denominations,
to Catholic Bishops,
across the board.
Cardinal Cupich of
Chicago put it so well.
He said, this is not moral, this
is not American, this is cruel,
and it is a shame on all of
us that it is done in our name.
And I just think
that's where it is.
Beyond the political,
which I think is a disaster
for the Republicans,
for the reasons, many
of which David has spoken
of, is just immeasurable.
JOHN YANG: But, David, the
president seems to want the
make this the center point of
the midterm election campaign.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, the
Republicans are having a debate.
Normally, you go
with your strength.
And the Republicans
have a clear advantage.
The country trusts the
Republicans on the economy.
And so, on the normal thing,
you would play up the economy.
Trump says, no, immigration
is going to be our issue.
And the data point that backs
him up -- I doubt he's seen
this data point -- is that
if you ask voters what issue
is top most on your mind, right
now, it's immigration first
and health care second.
And so he can say, listen, the
people care about immigration.
I think it's what his people
care about or what he thinks
his people care about.
But the broader trend here is
worth pointing out, that over
the last two years and over
the past 10 years, support
for immigration in principle
has been rising, not falling.
The number of people who say
immigrants are good for the
country, we should have more
immigrants been rising.
The number of people say
we have fewer immigrants,
that's been falling.
And so this is not
the rise of nativism.
It's the rise of Donald
Trump mobilizing a certain
portion of the electorate.
JOHN YANG: And yet you say
the support for immigration
is rising, but Congress can't
figure out what to do.
They have punted again this --
a vote on a bill in the House.
MARK SHIELDS: No, it's
actually -- David's right.
It's 17 years it's
been improving.
In fact, there's a 6 percent
drop just from last year in
the Americans who think that
we ought to cut immigration.
It's down to 29
percent, which is a low.
So, Americans really are, if
anything, more welcoming, more
enlightened, more acknowledging
of the value and importance
of immigrants to our country.
But, in Congress, it's
been a political failure.
There's been no public
common consensus
established on this issue.
It's been a failure.
President Bush tried.
President George W. Bush tried.
President Obama tried.
They failed.
And President Trump has
been like an arsonist in a
gasoline station on this issue.
The only people who really
want action right now,
heading in November, are
suburban Republicans,
who are in districts
where their constituents
are more enlightened,
more welcoming, more
humane on immigration, and
oppose the Republican Party.
And they want to see some
action to be able to go back.
But there isn't.
I mean, Democrats have been
excluded from the process,
and they're not playing.
And the mainstream Republicans
really don't give a damn.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes.
But it's interesting.
It's been a failure
on three ways.
And there's been sort of the
ultra-hawkish side on the
Republican side who wants to cut
legal and illegal
immigration and build a
wall and all the rest.
There's another part, we will
call them moderate Republicans,
though that may be stretching
the term, who mostly care about
just enforcing the laws and
want to give dreamers a path.
And the realities of the people
that are here, they want to
give them a path to citizenship.
And those two can't get
along, so you can't get
a Republican policy.
And then there is the Democrats,
who say, we aren't going to
play at any of these games,
because we can't be
getting rid of families, we
can't be building a wall.
And so we have -- we have --
we're going to be -- in three
weeks, we're going to be exactly
where we were today.
And so Andrew Sullivan in "New
York Magazine" wrote a piece
which I have some sympathy for.
It said, give the guy his wall.
Pay him off.
Build the damn wall.
It will do nothing, but build
the wall, and then get a
normal policy given the wall.
And somehow there has to be
some solution, or else this
problem will be exactly the same
in two weeks as it
was two weeks ago.
(CROSSTALK)
JOHN YANG: Go ahead.
MARK SHIELDS: It will be, John.
But I think you have to
confront the reality.
This man is a racialist.
He really is.
The language he uses,
Donald Trump, three
years ago this week, he
announced his candidacy.
And you recall what he said.
Mexico doesn't
send us their best.
They're not our friend.
They send rapists.
They send drug carriers.
I mean, it's always been.
The Nigerians don't want
to go back to their huts.
They come from the
S-hole countries.
It's always had a
racial component.
He doesn't talk that
way about Canada.
He doesn't talk
way about France.
He talks about way about people
from the Southern Hemisphere
of a different pigmentation.
And I don't think you
can look at any of his
statements, whether it's
infecting the country,
like we're talking
about lice and vermin.
DAVID BROOKS: Infesting,
infesting, yes.
MARK SHIELDS: Yes,
infecting the country.
And so I just -- I
think -- I think this
is the breaking point.
I think this is Katrina.
I think this is a defining
moment for this presidency
and the American people.
I mean, if you could continue
to support Donald Trump on these
terms, you're accepting the
fact that he is what he is.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes,
I don't agree.
Just analytically, I agree
with the moral objection, but
I suspect there's a lot of
people who are not
anti-immigrant, not
nativist, they do want
to enforce the border.
And they think too many people
are coming here for asylum.
And then they think they can
get in if they bring kids.
And so, analytically, frankly,
I would be surprised if his
approval rating went down
more than 3 or 4 percentage
points over this, if at all.
We will see.
MARK SHIELDS: We will see.
DAVID BROOKS: We
will see in a week.
MARK SHIELDS: OK.
JOHN YANG: Mark
mentioned Katrina.
And I think that that -- the
reason why I think that was
so startling for George W.
Bush was because the Republicans
were seen as the competence,
the people of competence,
the people who could run
things and make things work.
And now we have this, as
Yamiche Alcindor was describing
earlier, total chaos in the
government, as they try to
figure out how to execute the
executive order and how to
reunite the families.
It seems like there wasn't
any thought, from which she is
reporting, when they separated
the families, of
how to reunite them.
What does that say about
the Republican Party
and where they are now?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, you
get this weird phenomenon.
Every time the government
messes up in some major way,
Donald Trump will say, see, I'm
draining the swamp.
You have got to get rid
of this government thing.
And so, the more he screws
up, the more it helps him.
And he has been testing that
proposition quite strongly
for the last year-and-a-half.
JOHN YANG: I do want to take
some time to note the passing
this week of a colleague
of ours.
I think all of us -- each
of us worked with him.
I worked with him at "TIME"
magazine in the 1980s, Charles
Krauthammer, a very thoughtful,
thought-provoking, and I
think supremely, to my view,
elegant, eloquent writer.
Mark, you worked with him
on "Inside Washington."
MARK SHIELDS: I did.
I did.
Charles and I occupied different
philosophical chairs, far
more polarized than David and
I are.
But Charles, as probably most
viewers do and readers knew,
suffered a terribly disabling
injury.
It left him a paraplegic
as a young man.
And in spite of that, a great
tribute to the human spirit.
Charles is all that you
said he was, but he had
a wicked sense of humor.
He really did.
As Gordon Peterson, the longtime
Washington anchor, wrote a
beautiful piece that I believe
is our PBS Web site about
Charles, was emcee of that show,
host of that show, noted, that
Charles just had a marvelously
devilish sense of humor, and
oftentimes at the expense of
those very conservative icons
that he was defending their
policies, while acknowledging
their infirmities of
character and personality.
But he was -- he was
really, I think, sui
generis, it's fair the say.
DAVID BROOKS: A,
super intelligent.
There's a test where you have
to recite -- people read you off
a number, a bunch of numbers,
and you have to
recite them backwards.
The average person can do five.
Charles could do 12 while
driving down the highway
at 70 miles an hour.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS: So,
that's intelligence.
Second, just he could be dry
and acerbic, but if you went
to a ball game with him, he
was like a 7-year-old boy.
He was joyful.
And the right word for
him, even despite his
intimidating persona, is sweet.
He was a sweet man,
especially at a ballpark,
around Jewish issues.
He just radiated that sweetness.
And then the final thing,
just professionally, he's
a man who did the reading.
He read through Kant.
He read through Maimonides.
He read through John Stuart
Mill and Isaiah Berlin.
And he knew his philosophical
grounding, and everything
could then grow out of that.
And so he had an
anti-romanticism.
He didn't get swept up
in sentimental passions,
but it gave him a depth
to his work that was
extraordinary for a mere
newspaper columnist.
JOHN YANG: And I should note,
David, he once - - I saw
him once, I think, on FOX.
There was a reference to you
as a conservative columnist.
And Charles said, oh, no, no,
no, I have to correct you.
David is no conservative.
DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think
he was asked, who is was your
favorite liberal columnist?
And he said me.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS: So, that was...
(CROSSTALK)
DAVID BROOKS: That was
his sense of humor.
JEFFREY BROWN: That
was his sense of humor.
David Brooks, Mark
Shields, thank you so much.