Geoff Bennett:
This week, President Trump attempted to address his sinking approval ratings on the economy.
For analysis on that and more, we turn now to Brooks and Capehart. That’s New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW.
Good evening, gentlemen.
Jonathan Capehart:
Geoff.
Geoff Bennett:
So, President Trump is taking on affordability after initially saying it was a hoax perpetrated by Democrats. He addressed drug prices today. He’s taking that message on the road to battleground North Carolina. And, of course, he delivered that speech to the nation on Wednesday night.
And, Jonathan, this speech comes at a moment when the president’s approval ratings on the economy are soft. If the goal was to reset the political narrative heading into 2026, is this the way to do it?
Jonathan Capehart:
No. No, it’s not.
He literally screamed at the American people for, what, 18 minutes, almost 20 minutes. And I wondered, was — by screaming, is he trying to convince the American people that what he’s saying is true or is he trying to convince himself?
There are a raft of polls that we have talked about on many Fridays that show that the American people think the country is going in one direction, while the president of the United States insists that everything is great and will be greater still if you bought fewer pencils and fewer dolls for your children.
So I don’t think he will succeed in convincing the American people that his policies are the way to go to make their lives better, no matter how many speeches he gives, no matter how much barnstorming he does, because, when he does these things, invariably, if the topic is affordability, if that’s the prescribed topic, he meanders into other areas that completely muddy his message.
Geoff Bennett:
Well, David, what would move skeptical voters?
David Brooks:
Lower prices.
(Laughter)
David Brooks:
I ran into a CEO who said, when a customer complains to me, and I take it to my team, and they say, no, the customers are wrong, that’s just an anecdote, we have data, the CEO said, I always believe the anecdote, because you can’t argue people out of their experience.
And you go to the grocery store, and you think you bought nothing, it’s $140, like, that’s real. Everybody feels that. And so that — rhetoric can only do so much. People were struck by the anger. Like, Peggy Noonan wrote in The Wall Street Journal, it felt like he was angry at his words.
And I don’t think he’s panicked. Some people think he senses decline and panic. If you look at his overall approval rating, it’s at 42 right now, which is like normal territory for him. I just think he’s getting a lot more bellicose with age or with something, with stress. He’s just a level of bellicosity at everybody and everything, including us, the American people.
Geoff Bennett:
Well, let’s talk more about that, because Republicans spent years telling voters to trust their eyes when it came to former President Biden’s age and mental acuity.
Are Democrats now justified in applying that same standard to President Trump? You referred to his bellicosity. There is certainly this growing disinhibition. You look at the TRUTH Social post after Rob Reiner passed away. You look at the way that he verbally abuses some women reporters. How do you see it?
Jonathan Capehart:
I have said many times at this table, even with — to questions that had nothing to do with his mental acuity, what about his mental acuity? If any other president had said what he had said or done what he had done, they would have been hauled out on the carpet, people asking questions, where are the doctors? Let’s see his medical records.
And yet he goes on and does things like this. What he said in that TRUTH Social post and then before cameras about the murder of Rob Reiner was a low that I didn’t even think he could reach. And yet he’s proven me wrong in trying to think that he has even — just even a scintilla of a moral core.
We should be asking about the president’s mental acuity. We should be asking, because he’s 79 years old, is he up for the job? And you just listen to what he says, the policies that he’s pursuing, just tariffs, in particular, and no one seems to be bothered by it. But I will keep asking the question until more people start asking the question and we get answers from the White House.
Geoff Bennett:
David, on that point, if this were a corporate CEO, a military commander, the expectations — for of transparency, the expectations about transparency for one’s capacity would be higher than they are for a president of the United States.
David Brooks:
Well, that’s been true since 2017 or 2016.
Yes, I worry about his moral acuity. I mean, he is a narcissist. But the Rob Reiner tweet was — and I’d say the events of the whole week, to be honest, he takes his narcissism, which is normally at 10, and he moves up to 15 this week.
And so the Rob Reiner tweet was — to take a man who was murdered, maybe by his son, and to write a tweet all by yourself, he just cannot contemplate the pain of another family. And that’s a mental problem. It’s certainly a moral problem.
Geoff Bennett:
Let’s shift our focus to the Justice Department, which has started to publish documents from the Epstein files, all the files and its possession about the life, the death, the criminal investigation into the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Jonathan, now that these files are starting to be released, we expect them to be pushed out over a matter of weeks, do you expect this to finally put to rest the questions, the conspiracy theories about this case, or is there something particular about this that is resistant to closure?
Jonathan Capehart:
No, I don’t think it’s going to put to rest the questions or the conspiracy theories, particularly the documents that come from the Justice Department because of redactions.
The beginning of the show, you showed one particular piece of paper where the entire thing is blacked out. So whatever is behind those redactions, conspiracy theorists are always going to find a reason to keep the conspiracy alive.
And so until — unless and until the administration does a proper accounting — remember, back in the old days, when the attorney general would come before the American people and give a very sober assessment of what they found and the hard work that they put in and pledging that we will be forthcoming and transparent? We don’t have this.
Instead, what we have gone through is a lot of obfuscation. And, quite honestly, I was surprised when I got the breaking news alert that they had released the documents, because they have conditioned us to expect less and certainly expect them to ignore the law.
Geoff Bennett:
And, David, we should say there were photos of you included in the House Democrats’ release this past week, which you have addressed.
David Brooks:
Yes, I will just clear that up and then go to the larger issue.
So, in 2011, I attended the TED Conference, and there was an adjacent dinner to that conference, which, in my memory, maybe two or three dozen people, different roundtables. And I was at that dinner. And, apparently, Jeffrey Epstein was at that dinner.
As far as I know, I did not ever meet him. I never exchanged a word with him. We must have been at different tables. And, in my life — I went through all my e-mail files — I have never exchanged a word. I have never had any contact with Jeffrey Epstein. The photos are not of me and Epstein. There’s one of me alone, because nobody wants to talk to me at a party, and another with me chatting with Sergey Brin, one of the Google co-founders.
And so the bottom line is, I had no idea who Jeffrey Epstein was in 2011, so I didn’t know he was at the party, and I have had no contact with him.
On the larger issue of, when Ro Khanna was talking about all the women who want satisfaction, they want — I — obviously, we all hope they get it. I would like to know why — the FBI really did investigate this a lot. If there were 20 men who were guilty of sexual abuse, why were they not tried?
I think that’s the question I have at this moment. Why were they not even indicted? And there’s where justice needs to be served.
Geoff Bennett:
As we wind up our conversation here, I want to talk about the White House saying that President Trump has renamed — or, rather — we should say it this way — Trump appointed members to the Kennedy Center board, and that board voted, the board says unanimously, to rename the Kennedy Center, as you see there, the Donald J. Trump and John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Arts.
It’s remarkable, in that the Kennedy Center is more than just a performance space. It is a memorial to a fallen president.
Jonathan Capehart:
Right, a memorial to a slain president.
And yet — I take this to — back to the president’s mental acuity, although this isn’t him being crazy. This is him being a flat-out, full borne narcissist. He’s already done it before. It’s now the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace. He’s got an Arc de Triomphe-like thing that’s going to go on the other side of the Memorial Bridge.
He — I saw somewhere that memorials are usually done for people who have left us, either through murder or through death, who have done things that are worthy of note. We have not seen, at least I haven’t seen, a sitting president out there skipping through Washington, slapping his name on anything and everything.
This is not normal. And I’m glad you described what happened today in the way that you did. The center cannot be renamed legally by that Kennedy Center board or by the president of the United States. The fact that his name is now on the building less than 24 hours of this happening says to me that the president does not give a damn about the law on anything, whether it comes to that memorial or whether it comes to boats in the — off the coast of Venezuela or anything.
Geoff Bennett:
Are we seeing an evolution here in how President Trump publicly asserts his power?
David Brooks:
Yes, that’s well put. It is an assertion of power. You think, who else has big porches themselves all over?
Mao Tse-Tung. Stalin. Authoritarian leaders know that a certain part of the population likes it when they see the great leader idolized and venerated. I have a building right by my house on Capitol Hill, and it’s Teddy Roosevelt and Donald Trump, gigantic portraits. And it does remind you of going back to the Stalin era.
And so it is a form of psychological amassing of power to turn yourself into a demigod. And I think, as sad and pathetic as he makes it, I think that’s what he’s trying to do.
Jonathan Capehart:
Yes.
Geoff Bennett:
David Brooks, Jonathan Capehart, thank you both for your insights.
Jonathan Capehart:
Thanks, Geoff.
David Brooks:
Thank you.
