AMNA NAWAZ: We're now nearly a
week on from the two tragedies
in El Paso, Texas, and Dayton,

Ohio.

But the grave questions
that have been raised
in the aftermath remain,
and likely will remain

for some time.

How, if at all, will
American politics and
American society respond?

That brings us to
Brooks and Capehart.

That's New York Times columnist
David Brooks and Washington Post
columnist Jonathan Capehart.

Mark Shields is away this week.

Welcome to you both.

Thanks for being here.

Let's jump into the big
topic for this week.

Obviously, gun violence was
a big topic of conversation.

I want to go right to a poll.

We heard President Trump mention
earlier today that Leader
McConnell is totally on board

with background checks.

That would bring him in line
with the rest of the country.

This is broken down by
party support for universal
background checks.

The floor there, David Brooks,
is 84 percent for Republicans.

Do you see this as the moment
that this legislation passes?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, of course,
logically, you want to say
yes, but we have been here

so many times since Newtown
and all -- Parkland and all the
shootings, that we haven't quite

got there.

And so how can something with
that kind of support even
among Republicans not pass?

First, the NRA has a zero
compromise policy, that we won't
accept any compromise at all.

We're just holding the line.

And so far, for 20 or 30
years, that has sort of
been working for them.

Second, it's low salient issue.

People care about guns on
the week after something
like this happens.

And then you ask them, rank
the issues you care about,
guns start dropping down.

And then the third, it's turned
into a culture war, where,
for a lot of people, it's not

about guns at all.

It's about my culture
vs. your culture.

And if you want to control my
guns, which are part of my gun
clubs, part of my community,

you're just a bunch of coastal
elites coming after me.

And so I hope this is a week
when that changes, but we have a
right to be a little skeptical.

And the one opportunity -- and
this is a perverse way to put
it -- is that we might not have

- - we might have the same gun
debate over and over again,
but what's become new this

week is, it's a terrorism issue
as well, in that the people,
especially in El Paso, but

in a lot of these other
shootings, they are killing on
behalf of an ideology that is a

little like the ISIS
ideology in some ways.

And we could -- if we had a
discussion, what do we do to
combat domestic terrorism, that,

we might be able to have a
different kind of conversation
and pass some of the things

we couldn't pass any other way.

AMNA NAWAZ: The threat might
be different there, you think.

DAVID BROOKS: You might
rearrange the political
alliances, because the
gun issue, people are

pretty baked in.

AMNA NAWAZ: Jonathan,
what do you think?

I mean, we do have this
conversation again and again.

It's usually right after one
of these mass public events.

You remember, back in
2012, after kindergartners
were murdered...

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Yes.

AMNA NAWAZ: ... we thought,
OK, this is the moment.

And then it wasn't.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Right.

If the slaughter of 20
children in their elementary
school wasn't enough
to move the Senate, to

move the U.S. Congress to
pass even just background
checks -- it failed by
six votes -- then nothing

will move them.

To David's point about, a
week we will be talking about,
we will move on, but I think

the momentum in this case
will dissipate greatly
because the president
just left for vacation.

Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell is
already on vacation.

He's already said the
Senate's not coming back.

And so by the time they come
back in September, God forbid
we're not talking about another

mass shooting, but it might not
be until another mass shooting
that you get the kind of energy

and momentum that's
needed to push such a
heavy rock up the hill.

AMNA NAWAZ: Do you think if
they face -- members of Congress
are in their home districts.

If they're getting questions
about it, that could help
add to some momentum?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I mean, look,
again, going back to Newtown,
the national outrage over

what happened wasn't enough
to blunt the power of the NRA.

So I don't know how much a
town hall is going to -- or
successive town halls will be to

change the momentum.

DAVID BROOKS: The cultural
issue cannot be underestimated.

I have always loved Mayor
Bloomberg, but it wasn't good
for the gun issue that the guy

spending all the money around
the country and becoming a
spokesperson for the movement

was the mayor of New York City.

This has to be led by a group
of red state people who are
rock-ribbed Republicans who

say, I'm very Republican, I
love to shoot, guns are part
of my culture, but we got to

change.

And until you can get red
state leaders doing that, it's
going to be a tougher issue.

AMNA NAWAZ: Let me ask
you about something else.

The president did, obviously,
make a visit to those
affected communities.

And his team put out what's
basically a highly produced
edited video of his visit on the

ground in El Paso.

You're watching a clip
of it right there.

There was a contrast
there between some of the
reports we heard on the
ground from journalists

and then another video.

It was cell phone video that
emerged after the visit.

It showed the president on
the ground in El Paso talking
about his crowd size at a rally

back in February and comparing
it to Beto O'Rourke's.

Take a quick listen
to what he said.

DONALD TRUMP, President
of the United States:
That was some crowd.

WOMAN: Thank you.

DONALD TRUMP: And we had
twice the number outside.

And then you had
this crazy Beto.

Beto had like 400
people in a parking lot.

They said his crowd
was wonderful.

AMNA NAWAZ: Jonathan,
there is kind of a tale
of two narratives there.

In the moment, you don't
really know which one
to pay attention to.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Well, the
narrative here is consistent.

President Trump is at the
center of that narrative,
whether it's that highly
produced campaign-style-like

video of his visits to El
Paso Dayton, or it's that cell
phone video where he's talking

about one of the things
that is part of his
greatest hits, crowd size.

He has talked about
crowd size since the
day of his inauguration.

And, for him, that is
a marker of popularity.

But, in that moment, what I
would expect the people of El
Paso and Dayton, the people in

Ohio, the American people who
are grieving - - and also Texas
-- people who are grieving,

what they want to see from
a president is comfort.

They want to see
someone consoling them.

I was in New York on 9/11.

And President George W. Bush was
president of the United States,
and I had lots of disagreements

with the policies of
President George W. Bush.

But when he stood on that
rubble at ground zero and talked
to those workers, and talked

to the city, and talked to
the nation, that's exactly
what we needed to hear then.

When President Obama went to
Charleston and impromptu sang
"Amazing Grace" at the eulogy

for Clementa Pinckney, a state
senator who was murdered with
eight other people in Mother

Emanuel Church, in that
moment, he channeled the
grief of a church, of
a city, of a community,

and of a nation.

We didn't get that
with President Trump.

AMNA NAWAZ: David, how do
you look at this, really?

He's such a divisive
figure anyway.

There is the standard of
the consoler in chief.

He hasn't done it yet.

It's not who he is.

Right?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

Well, there's a photo, a still
from that visit where he's with
the orphan baby and two family

members, with his wife.

And Melania is
holding the child.

And he's got this
grin and the thumb up.

And when I looked at that
photo, I thought, the Democrats
are having a debate: Is he a

racist?

Is he a white supremacist?

And I look at that photo, I
think, well, he's a sociopath.

He's incapable of experiencing
or showing empathy.

And, politically, it's helpful
for him to target that lack
of empathy and fellow feeling

toward people of color.

But how much have we seen
him show empathy for anybody?

And so I look at that as someone
who is unloved and made himself
unlovable and whose subject

is himself, is his own
competitive greatness.

And so he doesn't do the
consoler in chief just because
he doesn't do that emotional

range.

And that's a burden and
a cost for any of us.

AMNA NAWAZ: You mentioned the
white supremacy line there.

We have obviously been talking
about that a lot in 2019 now.

And Lisa Desjardins was
reporting earlier too on
the ground in Iowa there.

Candidates are being
asked about that: Do
you think this president
is a white supremacist?

Is that sort of a
litmus test now for
candidates moving forward?

DAVID BROOKS: It's
an easy emotional
inflation, it seems to me.

I thought Biden's answer and
Kamala Harris' was pretty good,
which is, I don't know, but

he's certainly enabling them.

And he's certainly
speaking the language.

He uses the language of invasion
when talking about immigration.

Now, I read a lot of the
manifestos this week and
those who have actually
killed in Christchurch,

New Zealand, and El Paso.

They start with invasion.

They go many more steps.

They believe that racial
mixing really is a cancer.

And they have this
deep separatism.

I don't know if Trump has that.

But he has certainly set an
atmosphere where it's easier
to talk about human beings as

an invasion.

AMNA NAWAZ: What do you make of
all this right now, Jonathan?

It's a big topic.

This is nothing new in America.

And yet it's new in terms
of how prevalent it is.

JONATHAN CAPEHART:
Right, because -- and
it pains me to say this,
but we're talking about

it because the president of
the United States is a racist
with a white supremacist policy

agenda.

He began his political career
questioning the legitimacy
of the first African-American

president.

He started his campaign within
the first two minutes saying
that Mexicans were -- quote

- - "rapists."

He called for a complete and
total ban on Muslims entering
the United States after the

San Bernardino attack during
the campaign in December 2016.

He's used words on the campaign
trail from the midterm elections
and continued, invasion,

caravans, infestation, animals,
to what David was talking about.

In policy and in rhetoric, he is
feeding into this environment,
this atmosphere, where people

such as the shooter in
El Paso who has -- we
have seen the affidavit.

He's confessed in doing
what he's done, and
confessed to targeting
-- quote -- "Mexicans."

That -- these things
don't happen in a vacuum.

Did the president order
this person to do this?

No.

But that person heard in that
rhetoric -- and we have seen
it from New Zealand, around the

world, but particularly here,
where we are dealing with a
domestic terrorism problem,

where the primary people
committing these terrorist
acts are white supremacists.

We're dealing with a situation
here where the president of
the United States is feeding

into it with the rhetoric
that's coming out of his mouth,
whether it's from a podium at

the White House or from a
podium at a campaign rally
somewhere in the country.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

I hear you talking, and I think
I basically agree with it.

Then I -- my next
question is, well, how
do we then do democracy
for the next 16 months?

Like, there is a
presumption that we're
all Americans together.

There's a presumption
of goodwill, that we
can have a conversation.

And maybe Donald Trump -- but
how do we address ourselves to
Donald Trump supporters, many

of whom are very realistic
and are supporters of him for
good reasons having to do with

their own lives and
the dissolution of
their own communities.

It's going to be hard to
have a conversation once the
president has been declared sort

of really beneath contempt.

And I'm not saying
I disagree with you.

I'm just saying this is a
problem we have to deal with
as we try to have a national

conversation over this election.

AMNA NAWAZ: Is there a
way -- and we just have
a couple minutes left.

It's a big question.

But, Jonathan, try, if you can.

Is there a way to take politics
out of this to explain why
these kinds of ideas are so

dangerous?

Obviously, they're not new.

They have been
around for a while.

They have just been mainstreamed
to some degree because they're
being spoken from the highest

office in the land.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: You
know, gosh, we have got
a minute or so left?

Thanks.

Thanks for the question.

(LAUGHTER)

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I think
what -- there's no way to
separate politics from this.

I think Vice President
Biden and Senator Cory
Booker in speeches on
the same day told the

story of America from two
different perspectives.

Vice President Biden talked
about -- talked about the
country and the problems that it

has, about America as an idea.

And Cory Booker -- or Senator
Booker talked about the same
thing, but coming at it from

the perspective of, America is
an idea, but we have deep-seated
issues that go right back

to white supremacy being woven
into our founding documents.

And we have to -- we
have to talk about that,
we have to address it,
we have to acknowledge

it.

And, once we do that,
then we can take the
steps to reconciliation.

DAVID BROOKS: And I would
say I'm a pluralist.

We're probably all pluralists,
who we see good people around
like ourselves, cool, like,

let's eat different food,
let's meet different people,
let's have wide experience.

And a lot of us are
conservatives, whether you're
on the left or on the right.

But there are a lot of people
who are anti-pluralists.

When you present them with
something different, they clam
up, they shrink in, they become

more fearful.

Just -- Conor Friedersdorf had
a piece in "The Atlantic" today.

And it was about people
being interviewed by an
African-American interviewer.

And some people, they
stopped talking, because it's
different and they're afraid.

And those people don't
see it as an adventure.

They see it as a threat.

And so we have to have a defense
of pluralism and a critique of
anti-pluralism, and, frankly,

get a lot of anti-pluralists
involved with a lot of people
unlike themselves, so they

can see it's not that scary.

But that's the big cosmic
debate I think I see here.

AMNA NAWAZ: Just the big cosmic
debate we all have to engage in.

(LAUGHTER)

AMNA NAWAZ: David
Brooks and Jonathan
Capehart, big questions.

I'm grateful to you both
for being here today.

Thank you.

DAVID BROOKS: Thank you.