Shields and Brooks – PBS NewsHour

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JUDY WOODRUFF: But first to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentlemen.

So, Mark, welcome back.

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Thank you, Judy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We missed you last week.

The Donald Trump Jr. story. We have now learned that he had a meeting a year ago, Trump Tower, with a lawyer who had some connection to the Russian government. How does this change our understanding of the Russia collusion allegation?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I think it’s fair to say, Judy, that the White House lost any benefit of the doubt that it could claim on this story.

The shoes continue to drop, like it’s a Zappos warehouse or Imelda Marcos’ closet. I mean, it just — each time, they’re amending their story, they’re appending or extending their story.

And so I just think the fact that there were such denials and accusations of a Democratic plot, all of those are gone, and they stand naked and they stand exposed as shams.

I mean, they were actively engaged, at least welcoming Russian involvement in the 2016 election, in behalf of Donald Trump against Hillary Clinton.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David, does this change your assessment of what may have been going on?

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: Yes.

My colleague Ross Douthat wrote that any time you give Donald Trump the benefit of the doubt, he always lets you down.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: And that’s true. That’s true for his business clients and it’s true for those of us who thought, they couldn’t have been some stupid, to walk right into collusion with the Russian meetings.

And yet they were not only that stupid, but I think what is striking to me is the complete amorality of it, that Donald Trump Jr. gets an e-mail saying the Russian government is offering you this, and he says, “I love it.”

And it reminded me so much of some of the e-mails that came out of the Jack Abramoff scandal, that came out of the financial crisis scandal, where they’re just — they’re like frat boys who are gleefully going against the law and are going against all morality. And they’re not even overcoming any scruples to do this.

They’re just having fun with it. And then, in the days since, we have had on — Donald Jr. on Sean Hannity’s show, again, I did nothing wrong, just incapable of seeing that there might have been something wrong about colluding with a foreign power who is hostile with you.

And then Donald Trump himself saying, he’s a wonderful guy, again, not seeing anything wrong, and then even last day lying about how many people were in the meeting, a completely inconsequential lie.

And so we’re trapped in the zone just beyond any ethical scruple, where it’s all about winning.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Beyond any ethical scruple, Mark, is that where we are?

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, I think it’s fair to say that Donald Trump was born without the embarrassment gene or the moral reservation gene.

He just — he doesn’t — when he says that most people would take that meeting, Judy, I mean, this is not — I have been around for a while, and been to the Dallas Fair twice, and all the rest of it. People wouldn’t do that.

In 2000, Al Gore’s campaign got ahold of, was delivered George Bush’s briefing book. They turned it over to the FBI. That’s what you do when you’re honorable in politics.

This isn’t a meeting with a foreign power. This isn’t Canada or the Swiss Family Robinson. This is Russia. This is a country that has supported, propped up the worst of anti-democratic regimes in the Middle East, that has practiced — mistreated its own press, mistreated its own civil society, and economic intimidation of its neighbors, including invasion of its neighbors.

I mean, this is the one country on the face of the earth with the capacity to obliterate the United States. This is serious stuff. And to do it so casually and, as David said, without moral reservation, is — I guess it should be stunning, but, sadly, it isn’t.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But some of the Trump team, David, in their response to this are sounding almost offended that people would even think that they were doing something wrong.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, well, they just don’t — they don’t get it.

My pal Mike Gerson had a good line in his column today. If you make losing a sin, you make cheating a sacrament. And that is true. If it’s all win-loss, then you do whatever you can to win and to make money and to beat the deal.

And so I do think you have entered the zone where they don’t quite see what they have done wrong. But cheating with a foreign company — country is — as Mark keeps saying, is a grave sin.

And then there’s just the scandal management of it, of letting it drip out, letting it drip out today and today and today. And then there is almost just a cluelessness like a color blindness about how the rest of the world is going to go react to this.

And this has been a leitmotif for the Trump administration.

JUDY WOODRUFF: It is the case, Mark, that there was one version we heard over the weekend, and then, on Monday, there was a little bit more, and then Tuesday, Wednesday, then today still another.

MARK SHIELDS: Mm-hmm. No, it is, Judy.

And I don’t know what to think. I mean, drip, drip, drip, comes a downpour at some point. How about the disparaging of the United States intelligence agencies and professionals by President Trump, candidate Trump and now President Trump, whether Russia — you know, I can’t be sure Russia was involved. Yes, probably, but not for sure.

I mean, here they are, the Trump Tower with the people, their names approved on the visitors list for the meeting in the Trump Tower, and pretending they didn’t know it.

So, no, it’s — David is right. In a management sense, it’s just been incredible, Judy. Apparently, it’s hit the president or someone has gotten to the president, because his statement about his son was so sort of homogenized, he’s a quality person.

JUDY WOODRUFF: He said he’s a good boy.

MARK SHIELDS: Good boy, and praised him for his transparency, which is a little bit like, as I’m about to be indicted for tax evasion, say, well, I want to make something clear. I failed to pay my taxes.

DAVID BROOKS: It does open up a bunch of questions, like what were the — this — as the intelligence experts keep saying, this looked like a Russian feeler operation. They just wanted to see what kind of reaction they could get from Donald Jr.

And if they — how do they respond to the signal? And so what else did they do? There must have been other things they did.

The second, was it connected? Donald Trump, as others have cited, gave a speech in which he said, we’re about to have a big set of revelations about Hillary Clinton. Did that flow out of this meeting? And what was the timing of that? Who else was in this meeting? What actually was said in the meeting?

We still really — we have some testimonies, but what documents were brought to the meeting? It means there’s another several weeks of questions. And it gives Bob Mueller a new channel to walk down. It’s just expanding.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The special counsel.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

MARK SHIELDS: I would just say one thing about Mr. Mueller.

He has an advantage and a power that nobody else, that none of us in the press has. He has the power of subpoena. And he has the power of a grand jury. And he has the alternative of indictment for perjury.

So, you just can’t keep changing these stories. I mean, Jared Kushner now has amended, as John Yang pointed out at the beginning of the show, point, his number of contacts with foreign individuals and interests, 100. Three times, he’s now had to do so.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Added names.

MARK SHIELDS: And it raises the question, who leaked these e-mails on Donald Trump — I mean, on Donald Trump Jr.?

Did they — is there mistrust? There is distrust, I know, in the White House whether it was Kushner or Kushner’s people, saying that we had to get this out.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, meantime, one thing, David, the president is saying that he wants the Senate to get done is health care reform.

So, we now — a few days ago, we saw this newest, newer version of health care reform that Leader McConnell is saying that he really, really wants his troops to come together behind. But they still aren’t there.

What does it look like?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, it’s interesting when you see the reaction to this latest bill.

Some people say, oh, it shifted to the right. Some people say, oh, no, it shifted to the left. In reality, it short of shifted both ways. It keeps some of the taxes on the rich, which some of the moderates want. It includes some deregulation of the insurance markets, which Ted Cruz and Mike Lee and some of the conservatives want.

So, it sort of moves in both direction. And I give Mitch McConnell credit. This is an incredibly unpopular bill. And it probably couldn’t survive a set of public hearings and scrutiny. And yet he’s got to the point where he’s kind of close to getting it. I don’t know if we will get there. I sort of would bet against it.

But, as an act of legislative craftsmanship, if your only goal is to pass something, then I would say Mitch McConnell has done about as well as you can do by pushing a lot of different buttons and bringing people at least within the ballpark, especially given how unpopular this is.

I still think it’s a bad bill because it does so much to punish Medicaid among a population that can afford it least. But just as a set of legislative craftsmanship, I would say McConnell is like turning all the knobs and getting people sort of close. I would say maybe 40 percent chance that he actually passes something this summer.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you think it will go over the top?

MARK SHIELDS: I don’t, Judy.

But I would just point out Affordable Care Act was being fought for 18 months in the Congress. There was always a public case you could make for it. There was much criticism of it, but the public case included that women wouldn’t be charged more than men, that nobody could be denied coverage, that the preexisting condition, people would be guaranteed insurance and access to health care.

There is — and the inside part was done by Harry Reid in the Senate and Nancy Pelosi in the House.

This is all inside. There is no public argument.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Behind closed doors.

MARK SHIELDS: There is no public case that can — Mitch McConnell can make. There’s no public case addressing the — you have two minutes to address the American people, why is this better? Why will this Republican plan be better for Americans? Why will it be better for those who don’t have health care? Why will it be better for the elderly, for the poor, for the quality of health care in the country?

There is no case to be made. It’s all inside baseball. Can you get Dean Heller by leaning on Governor Sandoval in Nevada?

I mean, that is what it has come down to. And, to me, that is a terrible failing. If somehow they do wrangle vote, what have they got? They have got an incredibly unpopular piece of legislation.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is anybody, David, making a positive case for this?

DAVID BROOKS: Not really. They say the insurance markets are failing, the Obamacare markets are failing, which is somewhat true.

They want — they say we have to have a more market-driven system to shove down costs, which is somewhat true. And so I think there is a public case that could be made. I don’t think they’re particularly making it, which is why it’s so unpopular.

But if we had public scrutiny — say the insurance markets — this thing called the Cruz amendments gives the insurance companies a chance to charge less for some people if they give a fuller benefit for another.

And what that will do is, let’s put the insurance markets into two different systems.

MARK SHIELDS: Exactly.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Right.

DAVID BROOKS: And so the people who are healthy will be paying a low fee. And then the people who are sick would be paying much more.

And so whether you agree or not with the principle, these things actually have to work. And I’m not sure that the way this is written, this will actually even just work as functioning way to run a market, as the health insurance companies have been strongly saying, like Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

MARK SHIELDS: We’re waiting to find out now whether it’s going to be 19 million or 24 million people who are going to …

JUDY WOODRUFF: Knocked off.

MARK SHIELDS: Knocked off health insurance.

I mean, what everyone says about the Affordable Care Act, 20 million Americans who didn’t have it then did have health care coverage.

And, Judy, let’s be very blunt; 12 million of them came through the extension of Medicaid. And this is the starvation of Medicaid, seven years, 2024, and the federal support on the extension of Medicaid disappears.

And so they can talk about money and everything else, but implicit in the Republican bill is there’s a difference in those who are on Medicaid. Somehow, they are takers. Somehow, they are freeloaders. They’re not our fellow Americans who are struggling to get by.

JUDY WOODRUFF: We are going to have to leave it there on that note.

Mark Shields, David Brooks, thank you both.

The post Shields and Brooks on fallout from Donald Trump Jr.’s emails, GOP health care reform appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, another look at the major news of this week, both foreign and domestic, from today’s pivotal meeting between two presidents, to new developments with the Senate GOP’s health care plan.

Here to provide analysis of all that and more is Brooks and Marcus. That’s New York Times columnist David Brooks and Ruth Marcus, deputy editorial page editor for The Washington Post. Mark Shields is away this week.

Welcome to you on both.

So, the lead story today, of course, President Trump meets President Putin.

David, all eyes on this meeting, the body language, what did they say. And then we have these conflicting reports coming out afterwards. What do we make of it?

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: Well, it was sort of normal for a Trump administration event. He did raise the meddling issue, which is a good thing.

And so it seemed a little like, from the talking points, they hit Syria, they hit all the prints a U.S. president would talk to with a Russian president. It seemed a bit like a normal meeting, which is a good thing.

The abnormal part to me is how small it was, that there are only four people and then the two translators in the room, no H.R. McMaster, no national security adviser, which is an oddity. And that gives them maximum flexibility to say whatever they want in the room and not have it reported out of the room.

And that’s what makes the point about what they were saying about the meddling or anything else totally mysterious. Apparently, there were no note-takers in the room. And so it leaves a big void in what they actually said and whether Trump really accepted the fact that Putin claims he didn’t meddle.

And so it’s just a big void that wouldn’t exist if you had the normal complement of people in the room and the normal note-takers in the room, and you had some actual look into what sort of what was happening in there.

JUDY WOODRUFF: A long meeting, Ruth, but a lot of questions.

RUTH MARCUS, The Washington Post: Long meeting, a lot of questions.

And normal is not the way I would describe it. And I think I should start by the way President Trump started with Vladimir Putin, which is, it’s an honor to be here with both of you. That is a true honor.

I thought for President Trump to say — and I understand we have diplomatic niceties — it wasn’t an honor to be with someone who has attacked and jailed dissidents and killed dissidents in his country, who has invaded other countries, and who has tried to interfere in an American election.

And I think that simply to accept that, oh, it’s great, at least he raised the question of Russian interference, but we don’t know — and never will probably — precisely what he said, is really defining the presidency down.

That should have been a given that he was going to raise that. And that it wasn’t a given, they left but on tenterhooks, and that the day before, he was still saying, well, nobody really knows for sure what happened, and seemed more eager to blame President Obama for not doing enough, to question whether the intelligence community gets it right, to tweet today about John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, and say, why didn’t he turn over the server, just really underscores to me the abnormality of the situation.

DAVID BROOKS: I have successfully defined deviancy so far down …

(LAUGHTER)

(CROSSTALK)

RUTH MARCUS: Well, that’s the point of normalizing, right?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Well, that’s fair.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, David, was using the term honor going too far?

DAVID BROOKS: I think no normal person would say that.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: But, on the other hand, I’m willing to give diplomatic latitude to that. There are a lot of people in a lot of diplomatic circumstances.

And I’m sure, if we went back and looked at how other presidents speak, you’re trying to establish a relationship with a bad guy. Now, and you say things. And so I give latitude toward that.

The question is whether Donald Trump recognizes that Vladimir Putin is a bad guy. That’s the larger question here than whether he used the word honor. And I guess there’s no indication that he regards Putin as in any way a bad guy.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Does it matter, Ruth, whether the president accepted Putin’s denials? Or are we just — we’re going to be left wondering about this forever.

RUTH MARCUS: Well, Secretary of State Tillerson said that they basically agreed it didn’t make sense to relitigate this, actually one of my favorite words. And maybe that’s true.

The important point is that, since before the election, Donald Trump has been denying that this happened. He has seemed entirely unconcerned with figuring out whether it happened and with expressing the outrage that any American president should be expressing that it did happen.

And now I think we’re supposed to be satisfied that there is this joint working group on cyber-security. So, I have a modest proposal.

(LAUGHTER)

RUTH MARCUS: If we’re going to have a joint working group on cyber-security, let’s combine that with the election fraud commission, and we can really get to the bottom of everything.

DAVID BROOKS: Say we had a normal president. It’s actually an interesting political problem. What do you do with Russia?

Do you say, you interfered with our elections, you’re interfering with all these elections across Europe, we’re not dealing with you until you behave by some standards of normalcy? And that’s a morally satisfying position that, as a columnist, would be fun.

But there are actually a lot of issues you have got to deal with Russia on. And so this is perpetually the problem with rogue regimes. You have got to — you deal with them and then you don’t deal with them. And even if we had a normal administration, it would be tough to know how to treat Vladimir Putin.

RUTH MARCUS: And this is my time to now say that David has a fair point.

And so, sure, whenever you’re dealing with somebody who is an adversary — and Russia is an adversary — you are going to have to calibrate, because there are things that we need their help on. We need their help on Syria. We need their help on North Korea.

And so you don’t want to let one little attack on your democracy and your election system blow everything up.

(LAUGHTER)

RUTH MARCUS: But you do need to assert yourself in a way that we haven’t seen him do publicly and that we’re going to still have questions about whether he did privately.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, speaking of our democracy, yesterday, in Poland, David, the president made a speech to the Polish people.

And he talked about Western civilization and how it’s under siege, and how it’s going to matter right now whether we have the will to survive the siege that we are under.

Does this ring true? Does it feel like Western civilization is under siege right now?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, I think — I 80 percent liked the speech.

There was this famous clash of civilization thesis from Samuel Huntington, a political theorist. And the idea was that Western civilization is at war with Islam and maybe some of the other civilizations around the world.

And I don’t agree with that. But I do think there is such a thing as Western civilization. I think it starts with the Greeks and the Romans. Then it goes through the Enlightenment — or the Reformation, the Enlightenment. It goes through the scientific age.

And it somewhat defines some of the cultures and mores of Europe and North America and some other countries. And it’s obviously absorbed a lot of immigrants and it’s absorbed a lot of ideas and had exchange with Asia and other civilizations. But it’s a thing.

And I like the fact that he appealed to that, especially when he’s trying to, I hope, reunify the Western alliance, which has been a powerful force for good in the world over the last 70 years. And, to his credit, he appealed to some of the things that are finest about Western civilization, artistic creativity, rights of minorities, equality for woman.

He ran down the list. Whether the guy actually lives by those standards is another matter, but at least he appealed to them. And I think it’s a big mistake any time anybody makes an appeal to the West or to America, to patriotism to think, oh, he’s excluding.

It’s an identity formation. And we need our identity formations. And I think he did it, in the speech at least, reasonably well.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you read that?

RUTH MARCUS: Well, I’m not at 80 percent. Surprise.

But there are things to like about the speech. One thing to like about the speech is that, unlike the last time he was in Europe, he was — and cut the words out of the speech, we learned later, he was able to at least read from the teleprompter that he supports Article 5, the fundamental provision of NATO for common self-defense.

On the other hand, last time, when he was in Saudi Arabia, he was able to not say the words radical Islamic terrorism. I will give you Article 5, but I need my radical Islamic terrorism.

I think it was very nice to hear the summoning of the importance of a free press and all those things. A little hard to take from somebody who had just tweeted out that CNN beat-up wrestling video.

And so that brings me to my fundamental concern, which is, which are we paying attention to, teleprompter Trump or off-the-cuff tweeter Trump? Both matter, right, his willingness to say things. I was a little more put off by the Western part of the invocation of common values and democratic values that we should all live by.

But teleprompter Trump is one thing. But I think, when we see the real Trump, it’s a lot more nervous-making, to say the least.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Do we know which one is the real Trump?

DAVID BROOKS: No.

I take Ruth’s point. But you remember Angela Merkel had given this — made this comment about Europe has to go it alone, because we don’t about this guy. And so this appeal to a Western cohesion to me was a valuable thing.

The second thing is — and this is something Trump does better than a lot of his critics — he understands sense of belonging. And a lot of people think globalization, any time you make any particularity, you’re sort of offending some other group.

And a lot of people in this country think they belong to America anymore, and he at least appeals to some sense of belonging. I like the idea that we belong to Western traditions, so I’m glad he appeals to that sort of thing.

JUDY WOODRUFF: All right. We’re going to — we could talk about this for a long time.

But I do want to bring us back to something that we heard Lisa Desjardins reporting on, Ruth, and that is the health care, Republican health care plan. She — by her reporting, it sounds like that Republicans are having a tougher time than ever now getting the votes they need to get something through.

RUTH MARCUS: Well, Senate Majority Mitch McConnell has been talking about this as a Rubik’s Cube. But with the Rubik’s Cube, you know there’s a solution.

(LAUGHTER)

RUTH MARCUS: With this one, not so clear.

And what I loved this week was that McConnell, who is I think absolutely dedicated to trying to find the votes, and — which wasn’t totally clear. Maybe he just wanted to get this put aside, so we can move on to tax cuts, which they really care about.

And no one discounts his ability. If anybody could do it, he can. But he brought out the big guns this week, threatening the ultimate sanction, bipartisanship.

(LAUGHTER)

RUTH MARCUS: If you guys don’t go along, I’m going to have to work with Democrats, and then you will see how unhappy you will be with the result.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. What’s the opposite of a nuclear option?

(LAUGHTER)

RUTH MARCUS: It’s the talking option.

DAVID BROOKS: Like, we will do something good, right? We will do something good.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Oh, my God, we may have to work together.

What does it look like?

DAVID BROOKS: I agree with Ruth on this. It looks dead.

It just like — not only have you begun to see the burbling concerns, and then out in some of the few town halls that have been out there, you have seen those concerns. But you’re beginning to see all these members come freelancing off in different elections.

Ted Cruz is freelancing from that direction. Mike Lee is staking out a position that will be completely unacceptable to a lot of people. And then the moderates are staking out their position. So, not only is it hard to piece together this together. They’re all going further apart.

And so they’re all defending themselves. And it’s just — the party is not cohesive enough, so I think there’s no solution. It’s super hard to take away a benefit that is pretty deeply embedded now, no matter what your ideology is.

And to me — and it’s a genuine question — what do we do? McConnell made the correct point that you can’t just do nothing, because the markets, the insurance markets are struggling. And so something has to be done, some normal repair at least has to be done. How do we do that?

Can we really imagine a bipartisan solution? Frankly, I cannot.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And the conservatives can’t imagine it would go along with shoring up the current system.

RUTH MARCUS: Well, it’s going to take a long time to get to a bipartisan solution.

And I want to kind of lay out the possibility that there are ways in which you could cobble this together. You say, OK, some of these tax cuts for the rich don’t have to go. There’s all sorts of other things. But that’s going to have to fail.

There are people working, Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins. Democrats are working with them on this that — and there are ways to shore up the markets. We have had a learning curve on the Affordable Care Act, which kind of suggests two things. People like it, and it needs some tinkering that are most — that’s mostly around the edges.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, we want to leave this on a positive note, so we’re going to stop right there. And by next Friday, we will know more.

Ruth Marcus, David Brooks, thank you both.

RUTH MARCUS: Thanks.

DAVID BROOKS: Thank you.

The post Brooks and Marcus on Trump meeting Putin, Republicans diverging on health care appeared first on PBS NewsHour.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentlemen.

David is joining us from the Rocky Mountains, Aspen, Colorado.

So, let’s start, both of you, by talking about health care.

Mark, we just heard a little while ago on the program Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri saying it’s going to be hard, he said, to get to 50 votes. What are you hearing?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: It’s an understatement by Senator Blunt, a masterpiece of understatement.

Judy, never say never. I think it’s about time to say never. I mean, this is not being put together. Quite frankly, the motion to proceed, not to get inside baseball, but that’s when the majority leader — means bringing up a bill. And I have never seen a motion to proceed, which is just asking that the bill be brought up for debate, fail.

And Mitch McConnell’s reputation as an inside player has taken a big hit. But there is not — there is not majority on what to do. And it’s not there.

And I will just back to one Republican has spoken the absolute abject truth on this subject. And he said, “In the 25 years I have served in the Congress, Republicans have never, not one time ever agreed on a health care plan.”

That was Speaker John Boehner this year. And I think it remains true.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David, what are you picking up?

DAVID BROOKS, New York Times: Yes, I’m hearing negative vibes, but not quite as negative as Mark. I still think there’s a chance.

What you hear is frustration over, one, it’s hard to take away a benefit people have already been given by law. Two, the Republicans are more ideologically divided than they thought they were. Three, it’s very hard to pass a bill without a White House.

And the president basically ineffective here, and the vice president barely more so. And so they’re trying to do it without him. And I think what they’re beginning to hear, as the calls come in, is that this is a proposal that hits a lot of Republicans really hard.

If you’re a 60-year-old white male in Ohio, this can be devastating to you, both in the coverage loss and in the deductibles and the out-of-pocket expenses, so the calls are coming into the offices. And that’s making people skittish.

I think it’s an uphill fight. I don’t think it’s quite as impossible maybe.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I was struck, Mark, that Senator Blunt was saying the more the senators learn about what’s in here, the harder it gets.

MARK SHIELDS: That’s right. Yes. No, that’s absolutely — and I would just add to it, Judy, there is no public argument, a case to be made for this.

Senator Blunt answered your specific questions well, but there is no — there is not a rallying cry for, whether it’s preexisting condition or, you know, that everybody’s child can be on until the age of 26. The Obamacare, the Affordable Care Act, they could make a public case for it, that everybody is in, that rates will not be higher.

There’s none here. And I think that’s a real problem. David’s point about there is no political air cover from the White House. Quite the opposite. I mean, the White House has been a liability. The president has been unhelpful, uninformed, and this morning tweeting, let’s repeal, which, CBO, the Congressional Budget Office, has a score on, would put 26 million people uninsured immediately, so, you know, off of insurance.

So, this is not a recipe for success.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David, that’s right. I mean, the president did tweet this morning, well, if they can’t agree, they should repeal now and replace it later.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, it’s the definition of bad leadership.

He had a more sensible position not too long ago, which is you do both things at the same time. If you repeal in the fantasy that you’re going to replace later, when you can’t replace now, that’s just not a realistic way to make policy.

I think Senator Blunt made a good point, that, we got a piece of legislation. If you can’t agree on this, there’s not some mythical future piece of legislation out there that’s going to pass.

The basic problem is that this is a bill that massively redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich. And there are a lot of senators, including Bob Corker of Tennessee and Portman of Ohio and Susan Collins of Maine, who are just uncomfortable with the level of upward redistribution that this bill entails.

And then there are other senators on the right, the Ted Cruzes, who just want to get rid of what they call job-killing taxes. And that’s just a diverse party. And McConnell is trying super hard to find some formula that will please both sides, but it just may be an unsolvable problem.

MARK SHIELDS: I will just add one thing, Judy.

You had an interview earlier this week with Senator John Thune of South Dakota, ranking Republican. And you asked him about one little mishap, which was that Dean Heller, the most vulnerable Republican incumbent in the country, up in Nevada next year, in the only state where Republicans running for reelection that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016, expressed his own reservations, misgivings, doubts, opposition to the bill as proposed last Friday.

And what happened? Joining the state’s governor, who pointed out that the rate of uninsured children in the state had been cut by one-half under Obamacare because of the Medicaid extension. And he back — he hollered backed at the governor, at which point the president’s own political action committee, staffed by the president’s own political aides and apparatchiks, organized a $1 million, expressed attack ad series on him, Heller, which Senator Thune objected to, that Senator McConnell opposed.

This is the political equivalent of coming down from the hills and shooting the wounded. And so they had to back off. And so you talk about White House-congressional relations. I mean, this is just — it’s more than counterproductive. It’s stupid.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You’re right. Senator Thune — David, Senator Thune’s comment, that wouldn’t be a good time to go after members of your own party.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

Yes. No, it’s — the relations are — it’s interesting to watch even the reactions to the tweets and everything else. They can’t get away from this guy. And what’s been interesting, talking to members of Congress, is, it would be one thing if he would just sort of disappear, but they have to spend so much of their time just reacting.

And it’s just very hard to make policy, aside from the problem of just making policy from Capitol Hill, which is difficult to start with.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, speaking of the tweets, David, we have seen some eyebrow-raisers. We have heard some gasps. But I guess the president’s tweet yesterday morning about the “Morning Joe” MSNBC cable hosts, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, where the president tweeted very personal insults, low I.Q., face-lift, and so forth, it seemed to reach a new low.

Do we learn anything new about this president at this point?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, one of the nice things, if we can find a silver lining here, is, it’s possible for everybody to be freshly appalled, that we are not inured to savage, misogynistic behavior of this sort.

And I saw a lot of people around. And I certainly felt in myself a freshness, a freshness of outrage.

And I must say, when I hear Roy Blunt say it’s unhelpful to himself, well, that’s true, but it’s more than unhelpful to Donald Trump to tweet in this way. It’s morally objectionable. And I do wish more senators would say that. Lindsey Graham and Ben Sasse have said it, but a lot of others, oh, it’s just not helpful.

It’s more than that. And the issue here is the corruption of our public sphere. And that’s what Donald Trump does with these things. And it makes it harder for us, our country, to ever get back to normal, when these things are corrosive to just the way people talk to each other.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Corruption of the public sphere, Mark.

MARK SHIELDS: I think David is guilty of understatement.

No, I think he put it very well. This is hateful and it’s hurtful. Judy, I don’t know what a parent or a grandparent is supposed to say to a 10-year-old or a 12-year-old who said anything comparable to this and was sent — banished to their room or whatever else for it, I mean, that the president of the United States can talk this way, and there are no consequences.

The irony is that he’s more engaged on the back-and-forth with Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski on this than he has been on health care or any other issue. He obviously — this is what matters to him. And it’s just that classic — not to be sectionally biased, but it’s sort of a New York bully approach to life, I mean, that you say anything, you do anything, because the important thing is winning.

And I just — you know, I don’t know what else there is to say, other than you want to put yourself through a car wash after you listen to the president talk this way.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Are there consequences, David? I mean, I heard what you said about some senators are just saying, well, it’s not helpful, but other senators are going further and saying, this is really wrong.

But are there ever consequences? Do we just go on like this?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. Well, we will see if people eventually get disappointed and get tired.

I do think if it — one of the things that may begin to offend people is potential mafioso behavior. One of the things we heard this morning in the op-ed piece in The Washington Post by the two hosts was that the White House sort of threatened sort of extortion, that, if the show becomes more Trump-friendly, then a National Enquirer investigation into their relationship will be spiked.

And that’s sort of mafioso, extortion behavior. That’s beyond normal White House behavior. It’s beyond political hardball. It’s sort of using your media allies, The National Enquirer and the Trump administration, to take down enemies. And that’s not something we have seen in America since maybe Nixon, or maybe never.

JUDY WOODRUFF: It’s true, Mark, we haven’t seen anything like this in a while.

MARK SHIELDS: We haven’t.

But I think David’s point about extortion certainly strengthens the position of James Comey, that threats and extortion or a hint of extortion is part of the modus operandi.

To Republicans …

JUDY WOODRUFF: I mean, we should say the White House is denying it.

MARK SHIELDS: The White House is denying it. Jared Kushner, I guess, is denying it, or perhaps somebody else through him is denying it.

But the fact that there’s negotiations going back and forth or communications on this subject, you do this and we won’t print an injurious and harmful article in The National Enquirer, one of the great publications of our time.

But, Judy, I remember when Republicans used to get upset and angry at Bill Clinton because he didn’t wear a suit and tie in the Oval Office. And Donald Trump, who is supposed to be this great deal-maker, I mean, Joe and Mika Brzezinski have a morning show which is a show that watched very much in this area, but it doesn’t have a great national audience, and probably 1 percent of the people.

And he just made them a national — everybody now knows about this show. It’s probably increased their ratings, juiced them up. So I don’t understand where — if anything, it’s but counterproductive in every sense.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, it is true, David, that this is — it’s hard to find you said there may be a silver lining in fresh outrage, but beyond that, I’m not sure where it is.

DAVID BROOKS: No.

And, you know, the big question for me is, do we snapback? Do the norms that used to govern politics reestablish themselves after the Trump administration, or are we here forever?

And I hope, from the level of outrage, that we have a snap back. But the politics is broken up and down. And Trump may emerge from a reality TV world that is much more powerful than we think. And there is the prospect that this is where we are, which is an horrific thought.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Horrific thought.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, it is that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark Shields, David Brooks, we thank you both.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you, Judy.

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HARI SREENIVASAN: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

David, let me start with you.

Let’s start talking about the health care plan that the Senate rolled out this week. You surprised at what is different, what’s the same between the House bill?

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: I’m a little surprised.

First, it’s sort of Obamacare-lite. It’s not going to work. It’s functionally nonoperational, because it will encourage, when they’re healthy, to exit the system and then go back into the system when they’re sick. And that’s a recipe for a death spiral in a lot of places.

So I think, functionally, it’s not going to work. Politically, I have to say, it’s kind of canny. Mitch McConnell had these two wings of his party. And I think he steered as well as is possible to steer down the middle to give the right, the Ted Cruz folks the cuts in Medicaid and Medicare and stuff like that.

He gave the center basically the structure of Obamacare with some of the rules about preexisting conditions. So, I think, politically, it’s an act of skill. And as I look forward, is this thing going to pass, I still think probably not because I don’t think you can get the whole Republican Party behind this thing, but I’m reminded not to underestimate Mitch McConnell.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Have the Republicans made the case that this is something better or just that this is not Obamacare?

DAVID BROOKS: It’s not Obamacare.

What it does — you ought to start with, what kind of country are we in? We’re in a country where — widening inequality. And so I think it’s possible to be a conservative and to support market mechanisms basically to redistribute wealth down to those who are suffering.

This bill doesn’t do that. It goes the other way. So, I think, fundamentally, it doesn’t solve the basic problem our country has, which is a lot of people are extremely vulnerable. And so I do think, as a solution any the range of health care problems, I don’t think it’s it. I don’t even think repealing Obamacare. It’s a cheaper version of Obamacare.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Mark?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Two things hit me, first of all.

We know there’s been no debate, no hearings, so that’s been a cry. But it’s interesting, because there is no public case to be made for the Republican plan, none. I mean, at least with the Obamacare, Affordable Care Act, you could say, no lifetime limit, a children — children could stay on their parents’ plan until the age of 26, no preexisting condition will deny you coverage, no lifetime illness will knock you off.

There was a case. You could argue against the case.

There is no public case that has been made in either the House or the Senate. So, they hold no hearings, and there is no public debate, because they don’t want to take the time to make the case for it because they don’t have a case. And they don’t want to give the other — opposition a case to make — the time to make the case against it.

And what it is, the only thing that the House and the Senate are consistently faithful on is that it’s a major tax cut. It is a redistribution.

Obama, who was, you know, if anything, overly moderate for many tastes, did, in fact, lay it on the most advantaged among us to pay, to cover people who couldn’t afford it in his plan. And a 3.8 percent tax on unearned income for those earning over a quarter of a million dollars became the rallying cry, the organizing principle for the opposition.

And that’s the one constant that has been through it all. Warren Buffett, to his everlasting credit, pointed out that he will get a tax cut under the Republican plan this year of $630,000. That’s the redistribution.

And, you know, in the richest nation in the history of the world, it is a terrible indictment, a sad commentary that the most vulnerable among us, the least — the least among us are really tossed off as a political statement.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Well, what’s the Democratic counter to this? I realize that they support Obamacare at is core, but what about the things that they can agree on that need improvements? Why not come up with some sort of a counter and a fix and propose that?

MARK SHIELDS: Good question.

That’s one of the reasons there has been no debate is threat at there hasn’t been the opportunity for debate. They have foreclosed it. But, no, the Democrats have chosen to focus all attention on the other.

I think it’s one of the problems the Democrats have. I think they learned this week in the Georgia 6 that there are limits to being against Donald Trump, although Donald Trump expands the limits on a regular basis. There are limits to being against him as a political strategy and to have political relevance to voters. You have to be for.

HARI SREENIVASAN: What do you think about the likelihood of passage?

MARK SHIELDS: You know, I am not sure.

Mitch McConnell is a master inside player. He’s a terrible outside player. He doesn’t make a public case for it. But, inside, he knows the Senate well. And, what, we have had now five Senate say that they would have problems with it, which is sort of the opening negotiation.

And Dean Heller, who we saw earlier in Nevada, is in real trouble. He’s up for reelection in a tough state, in a state that has expanded Medicaid.

I mean, Medicaid, Hari, I think, is health care for poorer Americans. And what this plan does is essentially starve Medicaid. The Senate does it slower. The House does it faster.

HARI SREENIVASAN: He brought up the special elections. We have had five now. The Republicans seem to be holding, if not winning.

Is this trouble for the Democrats?

DAVID BROOKS: I think so.

I think the Georgia loss is a big loss. I don’t think it’s, oh, this is always a Republican district, it’s not such a big deal. If the Democrats are going to pick up seats, it is going to be in upscale, highly educated suburban seats.

And this was tailor-made for that, a seat that Trump barely won. And so if after all that’s happened in the last four or five months, they can’t pick up the seat, that to me is an indictment.

It’s first a sign that there are limits to being anti-Trump, second, that the Trump phenomenon was not just a fluke, that it’s based on some deep structural things in the economy that are driving people to support the Republicans, some deep structural things in the country, that people are extremely distrustful of government and extremely distrustful of Washington.

There’s also a sign that the Republicans, despite all that’s happened, are still considered the party of change. And if they want change, they’re still likely to go to the Republicans. And, finally, it’s a sign the Democratic Party is too coherent.

They have got a Bernie Sanders, which is strong and coherent, but that’s not the kind of wing that’s going to work in this district. And the Democratic center, aside from the one candidate they had down there, is meager. And without that, there are going to be just a lot of districts you’re not going to do so great in.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Mark, he had a four-point answer.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: He did. But I will cut it down to two. OK?

No, politics isn’t like the Olympics. In the Olympics, you get a silver medal, you get a bronze medal. There’s only one winner. And David’s right. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades and slow-dancing.

Coming in second, and even a good second and a close second, doesn’t do it. Winning is coming in first. And the Republicans did win. And, yes, it’s a district that Mitt Romney carried by 24 points and John McCain carried by 19 points.

But one of the things that turned out was, when you spend that much money — and give the Republicans credit. They turned out the Republican vote. When you spend that much money, then the intensity and the passion of the opposition, who were the Democrats in this case, is kind of neutralized by the turnout.

There were 260,000 people who voted Tuesday in a special election, which is 50,000 more than voted in the 2014 general election. So, I mean, it was a remarkable turnout. And you can’t argue that, gee, if we just had two more days, it would have been a — I think the Democrats have to come up with what they are for, what is it, rather than simply being against Donald Trump, which is…

DAVID BROOKS: I do think — I would be curious to hear Mark’s view on this — I do think, on net, Nancy Pelosi can be a very masterful leader again inside, but I do think she’s become a central liability for people around the country.

Now, the question will be, OK, if they got rid of Nancy Pelosi as party leader, would the next person be just as unpopular? And, potentially, but I think potentially not. And I do think, if you’re a Democrat, you do have to think about, who is currently the face of our party?

HARI SREENIVASAN: Pelosi says she’s worth the cost.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, Nancy Pelosi, I have said before, was the most effective House speaker in my time in Washington.

What she did — we talk about the Affordable Care Act. Barack Obama didn’t pass the Affordable Care Act. Nancy Pelosi passed the Affordable Care Act. She passed it three times through the House of Representatives. She has raised $141 million last cycle for Democrats.

Sadly, tragically, money does matter. Paul Ryan’s political action committee, with unnamed donors, spent $7 million in this special election. So, I think, you know, Republicans have been running since 1984, when Jeane Kirkpatrick gave the keynote address at the convention, against San Francisco Democrats.

And, you know, maybe Nancy Pelosi, not a dress designer, and buy off the rack or whatever else, but I don’t think it’s going to change. And I don’t think she will be the determining factor on the ballot in voters’ minds in 2018.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Finally, some of the statements that have been coming out of the White House, more specifically from Donald Trump, yesterday saying he didn’t know that there were any tapes or any recordings, that he didn’t make any, this follows a dozen false statements at the rally that he had in Iowa this week.

And then you kind of just go right back to how President Obama bugged Trump Tower or the millions of illegal votes for Hillary or the size of the crowd at the inauguration.

Any structural consequence to the office of this? Because it doesn’t seem to be having an impact on him.

DAVID BROOKS: Right.

And I wonder, what’s going to happen to our debate? After Trump leaves, whenever that is, do we snap back to what we consider the normal standards of honesty, or is this the new norm?

And that’s why, even though it doesn’t seem like Trump to point out, as my paper did, in a long list today, the definitive guide to the lies of Donald Trump, I think it’s still worth making that case, because a lot — the thing we have to fear most is essentially a plague of intellectual laziness, a plague of incuriosity, a plague of apathy about honesty.

And once the whole political system gets affected by that, then we’re really sunk. And so I do think keeping his feet on the fire, no matter how little he pays a price for it, is still worth doing.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I would say this. He’s paying a price, in the sense The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll asked voters, whom do you believe, James Comey or Donald Trump? And by a 2-1 margin, voters believe James Comey, who, until a month ago, was a villain to so many Democrats because of the Hillary Clinton race.

Overwhelmingly, Americans do not believe that he’s honest, or he’s trustworthy, he’s knowledgeable, he’s experienced or he has the right temperament. By a 48-16 margin, they believe the opposite. And that is a real liability for anybody who wants to lead a country.

HARI SREENIVASAN: But in that same poll, you see that it’s 78 percent of Dems, 26 percent of Republicans who have that trust in that case.

So, Mark Shields, David Brooks, we will leave it there. Thank you.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

So, gentlemen, it’s been another tumultuous week, on top of several others. We have had the attorney general of the United States testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee. And then we learned, I guess in the last 48 hours, Mark, that the investigation by the special counsel into the Russia meddling in the election has been expanded to include whether or not the president committed obstruction of justice.

Is this a one-alarm crisis, two-alarm? Are we making too big a deal of this?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: Well, based on what the president — how the president’s reacting, Judy, I don’t think we’re making too big a deal of it.

I mean, the president, having acted briefly presidential after the tragedy of the shooting of Steve Scalise and the others at the baseball field, has reverted to form and gone back to, as you reported at the outset, now the man who told me to fire the FBI director is after me because — is investigating me because of firing of the FBI director, which is totally contradictory to what the president said to Lester Holt on NBC, that the recommendation of Rod Rosenstein had nothing to do with his decision to fire James Comey as FBI director, that it was based solely on Donald Trump’s desire, as he expressed to the Russians the next day in the Oval Office, to get the Russian investigation behind him.

And so I just think that he is behaving like a man who really wants to fire Robert Mueller and, you know, who didn’t live through October 20, 1973, when President Nixon ordered Elliot Richardson to fire Archibald Cox and the independent counsel, and he refused and resigned. And William Rucklehaus, his deputy, resigned.

And we had a constitutional crisis. And it led to impeachment hearings.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The president is calling it a witch-hunt, David.

The White House is saying he didn’t — isn’t going to fire the special counsel. But it isn’t clear. There have been reports out about that.

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: Yes, it may be a witch-hunt, but he’s acting like a witch.

(LAUGHTER)

DAVID BROOKS: To me, we have had this — the idea that there has been collusion between the Russians and the Trump campaign has been investigated for a long time. And so far, we have had no really serious evidence that they did collude, and everything else seems to be leaking out.

So, I begin to be a little suspicious — and maybe I’m wrong — we will see over the long term — whether there was any actual act of collusion. There were certainly conversations maybe about some building and some investment, but so far, no evidence of an underlying crime.

But this, to me, is not a criminal story. It is a psychological story. And it’s a story about a president who seems to be under more pressure, under more threat, lashing out in ways that are painfully self-destructive, but also extremely disturbing to anybody around him.

And so whether it’s the North Korean Cabinet hearing that he held recently, where they all had to praise him, or the tweets as late as this morning, this is not a president who is projecting mental stability.

And the idea that he will fire somebody, whether it’s Mueller or anybody else, seems very plausible. And so, to me, if there is something really damaging here, it’s something that has not yet happened caused by the psychological pressure that he apparently feels.

JUDY WOODRUFF: It is. People are referring, are reflecting back, Mark, to the Whitewater investigation, the Watergate investigation, that what happened after the original alleged crime made whatever happened in the first place much worse.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, the two iron rules of Washington scandals, Judy, is, it’s never the act itself. Rule one, it’s always the cover-up. And rule two is, everybody always forgets rule one.

And that’s — but I think we have got — I’m not ready for the clean bill of health yet. We have got the transition to go through and The New York Times’ Matt Apuzzo and Michael Schmidt’s story this week that suggested that Robert Mueller was looking at money laundering, that this would have been the way, through the Russians, that had been — the beneficiaries had received their payments through offshore banks.

This kind of opened up a new avenue that’s reported in The New York Times. And so I just think that, Judy, the abject lack, absence of curiosity on the part of the president in his nine conversations with the FBI correct or any other — anybody else, and with the attorney general before the Senate Intelligence Committee, abject lack of curiosity in how the Russians did it.

I mean, you would come in and you say 17 intelligence agencies have concluded the Russians tried to sabotage the American electoral process, and there’s not a single question about, what did they do, how did they do it, how can we avoid it, what can we do in the future?

Geez, no, let’s go, let’s find the three million people who were illegally voting in California instead. We will appoint a commission for that.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I mean, Mark does have a point, David, that when the attorney general was asked about the — a number of things, one of the things he said was that he had not been briefed at all on the Russia meddling.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. And that’s in part why it’s a psychological issue.

Every contact we know where Donald Trump had conversations about the Russia thing, he saw through the prism of his own victory and would he get credit for the victory. And it’s perfectly plausible for a normal human being to think, well, I won the presidency, but the Russians also did seriously endanger interests, the American political system, and, therefore, I’m going to go after that.

And so he — but he’s incapable of seeing that second part. It’s just, am I getting full credit for what I think I achieved? And so it’s the intellectual insecurity that I think is overshadowing all else.

And that, by definition, can spill — this is why it’s a little different than Whitewater and Watergate. Nixon has his own psychological complexities, but he was someone who acted at least maybe in Machiavellian ways, but in straightforward, linear ways. And, certainly, that was true of Clinton.

With this team, no. And then the second thing to be said is, Clinton had very competent people around him, and so did Richard Nixon. That’s not the case here.

And you talked to the people in the Clinton White House, it was hell to be in that White House. They tried to build these Chinese walls, so they could do their jobs while the investigation was going on, and it was super tough for them.

I imagine, especially when you have got tweetstorms coming out, it’s near impossible to do your job right now in any corner of the Trump administration.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Tweetstorms from the president.

MARK SHIELDS: Just two quick points, Judy.

And that is, Richard Nixon was no Donald Trump. I mean, Richard Nixon had served four years in the United States Navy as an officer, 14 years in the House and the Senate, eight years as vice president, and was a constant reader of history and biography, may have been the best-prepared president in terms of experience in the history of the nation, and has a record of achievement that — amply documented character defects and criminal activity, but a historic record of achievement, whether it’s OSHA or EPA or whatever else.

The two things that David’s mentioned, of that Cabinet meeting, it was the most awkward event I have seen in 50 years.

JUDY WOODRUFF: This is when he went around the table and asked each Cabinet member…

MARK SHIELDS: To tell how wonderful you were, not what I did — not only what I did on my vacation, but how wonderful you are.

And there wasn’t a single member of that Cabinet, with the exception of Jim Mattis, the secretary of defense, who escaped with his or her self-respect intact.

I mean, it was: You’re wonderful. They love you in Mississippi. You’re doing a great job. Everybody’s better. The economy is better. Everything is terrific.

I mean, this was just — this was scary. And the final thing was, yesterday, he goes after Hillary Clinton again, crooked Hillary. I mean, he’s trying to rerun that 2016 election.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, all this takes place, David, in a week when, as you both have mentioned, the shooting happened. Republicans are practicing for their annual baseball game against the Democrats in Congress, and this man comes into town from Illinois.

He ends up being killed, grievously wounds Congressman Steve Scalise, still in the hospital in critical condition. After this, we see a coming together of the parties. I wanted to show a picture. This is from the baseball game last night, where you had — or two nights ago — where you had the four leaders of Congress there for once — I don’t think we have ever seen a picture like this — coming together looking like they at least can tolerate each other.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

And the thing that’s symptomatic of me — for me is, I used to think polarization was a Washington phenomenon, that the people on Capitol Hill were polarized, but the country was sort of still a moderate nation.

But I think there is little evidence to support that now. This is a polarized country. And most of the politicians I know, members of Congress, hate the system they’re in. They’re stuck in a much more polarized world than they wish they were in.

And it’s out of the country. And that doesn’t say the shooter is any way symptomatic. If anything, he’s an atypical nutcase. But it is a sign on the fringes.

We have seen a ratcheting up of violence. We saw it, I thought, at the conventions on both sides. We saw it at the Trump rallies on both sides. And the people on the fringes of society, we have just seen a ratcheting up in their feeling of justification that they can resort to violent means.

And this guy apparently had a list of people, according to what’s being reported this afternoon, of people he wanted to shoot. And so that’s weaponizing mentally disordered people through the process of political extremism.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Is this coming together at all, Mark? Do you see any enduring — any endurance of that, or is that just — is it just going to be a blip?

MARK SHIELDS: You hope, Judy, but to David’s point, both parties — according to Pew Research, in both parties, what drives the most activist wing is not support and energy and advocacy of their own side. It’s loathing of the other side.

That’s the gauge as to whether you’re going to be politically involved, you’re going to vote, and whether you’re going to contribute, how much do you loathe the other party, how much do you hate them.

And there was a time, I will be very blunt, when I came to Washington, when the legitimacy of your opponent was never questioned. You questioned their judgment. You questioned their opinions or their arguments, but you never their legitimacy.

And that changed. And it changed. And one of the reasons it changed is that a man was elected from the state of Georgia who ran on the book, and the book was, you use these words. You use sick. You refer pathetic, traitor, liar, corrupt, shame, enemy of normal Americans.

This was Newt Gingrich’s bible. It wasn’t an idea of a policy. It wasn’t a program. He used it and he became successful. He became speaker of the House.

Donald Trump is a clone of Newt Gingrich. Donald Trump used, Donald Trump, lying Ted, and lightweight Bobby Jindal, and Mitt Romney choked like a dog, and used that language.

And you’re right. The left has used similar language and there has been a response and almost a premium on going after Trump in the same sort of language. But there’s been no punishment. There’s no political downside for this tactic.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Just 45 seconds.

Is one side more responsible than another? And are we going to see any of this coming together last, or is it…

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, to me, in 1970, people were asked, would you mind it if your son or daughter married someone of the opposing party? And 5 percent would mind.

Now 40 percent mind, because people think your political affiliation is a sign of your worth, your values, your philosophy, your culture, your lifestyle. It’s everything. All of a sudden, we have been reduced to politics and we have made politics into the ultimate source of our souls.

And that’s — it’s just — that’s not what it should be about. It’s just about arguments about tax rates. It’s not everything.

MARK SHIELDS: That’s a good point.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David Brooks, Mark Shields, thank you both.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentlemen.

So, let’s continue the conversation about James Comey.

David, we heard today what the president thinks of it. He said he thought the former FBI director vindicated him, but he also was telling lies. What did you think?

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: I thought Trump actually had some points.

I think one of the things we heard on the criminal side, it wasn’t a bad, not a terrible day for Donald Trump. James Comey seemed to suggest that there was no — maybe — cast some doubt at least the idea there was a lot of collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign or even a lot of conversations.

I think what Trump did to James Comey, clearing the room and asking him to lay off on Flynn, was scandalous, I think terrible, but probably not something that would rise to the level of impeachment in any normal presidency.

So, to me, on the criminal front, not a disastrous testimony for Donald Trump. On the cultural front, on the moral front, kind of disastrous. The thought that he lied is pretty strong. We do know, because of what Comey said yesterday, there’s going to be a lot more investigations.

And every time there’s some sort of independent or special investigation into the White House, it can swallow a White House up not only for months, but for years. The Whitewater investigation went on for seven years.

And so I think what’s going to happen is, you are going to have a continued administration that’s dysfunctional, that is under investigation, that is distrustful, and a president who’s obsessed, not with policy, not with anything constructive, but with this sort of warfare.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What did you make of James Comey and what he had to say?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: I thought James Comey was believable.

I thought he was compelling, in large part because, Judy, he admitted his flaws. He did not present himself as Galahad or some profile in courage. He acknowledged the fact that the pressure of being one-on-one with the president just in the White House, that he had not said to the president it was inappropriate. He said he hadn’t been strong enough.

But what was most revealing to me of all the hearings, Republicans — and I do want the say one word to the senators. I mean, they didn’t do soliloquies. They didn’t do seven-minute statements followed by a question, do you agree? I thought — and they didn’t show rank partisanship, I felt, and that there was a seriousness led by Chairman Burr and Co-Chair Warner.

But what impressed me most of all was that, while Republican senators were willing to come to the defense of the president, a point David made, that there wasn’t obstruction of justice on his part or whatever, none of them challenged Director Comey’s direct statements the president lied and that he was a liar, and that that is why he had to memorialize each meeting with the president, each conversation with the president, because he feared that the president would lie.

And nobody said, no, wait a minute, this is George Washington. This is a man, a total — he does have a reputation for exaggeration, hyping, and some would say not a totally consistent relationship with the truth and reality.

And I think that’s a real problem for him. The fact he wasn’t under investigation is significant, but, ironically, nobody asked him, and Director Comey didn’t volunteer, whether, as a consequence of what happened in his meetings at the White House, that he may now have opened himself up to some investigation, he, the president.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Yes. And, as we reported earlier, David, the president said today he sure — he would be glad to or would be willing to speak under oath to the special counsel, Robert Mueller, about what happened.

But given what you and Mark are saying, does Comey now come out with his credibility intact?

DAVID BROOKS: I think so. I think he’s a careful witness. He was a very believable witness, as Mark said.

And I think what we saw in the Comey testimony was really a clash of cultures. James Comey is an institutional man. He serves the FBI. He believes in a government of laws. He believes in following the procedures and norms that really govern any organization.

We are a nation of laws. Donald Trump lives in an entirely different cultural universe. He is more clannist, believing in clan, believing in family, believing in loyalty, not recognizing objective law, not recognizing the procedures that is really how modern government operates.

So when Paul Ryan and other Republicans say, well, Donald Trump just didn’t know the rules because he’s an innocent at this, he’s a newbie at this, that’s insufficient. It’s not only that he doesn’t know the rules, but at all along and throughout his presidency, he has sort of trampled on the rules almost as a matter of policy, as a matter of character, because he doesn’t believe in that kind of relationships.

It’s all personal loyalty, not about laws and norms and standards. And I do think, eventually, down the road, that is going to be a continual source of problem for him, that he’s continually violating the way we do our government.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Mark, what about the — David brought it up.

Speaker Paul Ryan said — essentially gives the president a pass, saying, well, he’s new to Washington, doesn’t know how government works, he’s not a man of government.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, he’s an enormous child, and we just — we don’t have the same rules for him.

It was less than fatuous. It was dishonest and misleading on the part of the speaker. And you cannot say that. This man has been running for president. He is president. If you have any — he is a graduate of Wharton, although I would like to see the director of admissions at some point come forward and explain his knowledge of American government from his experience at the University of Pennsylvania.

But you can’t use these kind of excuses, Judy.

Just picking up on what David was saying, what is fascinating about the Comey testimony, if you listened to it — I listened to every word of it — is that Donald Trump — David mentions loyalty. Loyalty to Donald Trump is one way. Every one of the co-authors who has worked with him on any of his books has agreed on one thing. He is a man without any friends.

He could not name a friend. The one person that he’s shown any sense of loyalty to — he shows none to the people around him — is General Mike Flynn. And it’s curious. What is it about that relationship? What was it that Mike Flynn did or was doing or that Donald Trump is concerned that he might say?

And he said, in the course of the conversation, other satellites, referring to people who worked with him on his campaign other satellites, if they were involved, go after them. You know, that’s OK. But could you go easy on Mike?

And the idea of clearing out the room, clearing out the — the attorney general of the United States walking out. I mean, Jeff Sessions had a terrible day yesterday, and so did Reince Priebus, the chief of staff of the White House, when it was revealed that they left the president alone, left the FBI director one-on-one with the president and, for, obviously, purpose that the president wanted special favors.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, he was saying go easy on — lay off of Mike Flynn and tell the world that I’m in the clear.

MARK SHIELDS: I’m in the clear. That’s right.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, David, so it comes down to he said vs. he said, and you were saying a minute ago, this could drag on for years.

How much damage has been done? You’re talking — I hear you referring to the culture. How much damage is being done to this president?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I think modest damage around the country. As we just heard, around the country, it wasn’t as big a story as it was in Washington.

I was at O’Hare Airport trying to watch it on TV. I couldn’t find any TVs that had the hearings on. They were all on sports channels. So, I’m not sure, politically, immediately.

But I do think the scandal here, the fact Trump will probably be investigated for obstruction, and maybe Sessions will be investigated, and once these investigations started, they go on forever. The Whitewater started as a land deal. And then, when it started, Monica Lewinsky was an unknown person in college.

And then it turned into the Monica Lewinsky scandal. They go on for years and they spread out. And what happens within the administration is, nobody knows who’s being investigated. Nobody knows who is saying what under oath.

And if Donald Trump is really willing 100 percent to testify under oath, he’s very naive about what that process means, about what happens when you start shifting your stories, what happens when you start talking the way Donald Trump normally talks, which is imprecise, at best.

And that sort of thing is bound to get an administration in trouble. And I think that will become the rising tide that will not destroy this administration, but it’s going to be a long, slow entanglement in the culture of crisis and the culture of scandal.

MARK SHIELDS: Let me give you an immediate problem that they have, Judy.

There’s a gubernatorial race in Virginia. Virginia, New Jersey have off-year elections. And Tuesday is the primary in Virginia. And the lieutenant governor, a rather mild-mannered pediatric doctor, surgeon, is running on a slogan and a TV ad that says, do not let this narcissistic maniac, Donald Trump, which tells you two things.

One, sort of where — we have debased the dialogue and debate in America. Why is he doing it, though? He’s running it because he’s challenged by a former congressman, Tom Perriello, who is backed by an awful lot of Obama people, in Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren.

And why is he running this way? Because, in Virginia, among Democratic voters, according to the Quinnipiac poll, Donald Trump is 95 percent unfavorable and 3 percent favorable. So that’s what Republicans are facing right now. They cannot embrace him, because he’s going to be Typhoid Mary in November of 2018.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, David, as you and Mark just heard in Hari’s interview with those reporters from Nevada and Indiana and West Virginia, they’re saying, you know, a lot of people are going about their lives and a lot of people who voted for Donald Trump are just not paying much attention.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I think that’s generally true.

There has been slippage among Republicans since he was inaugurated. Republican support is down 7 percent. Among those who are really strongly supporting him, it’s down a little more. And so there’s been some slippage. It’s a slow erosion.

I think, right now, he can only — he is at 39, or whatever it is, percent approval rating.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Right.

That is bad, but it’s not cataclysmic, especially among his base. So the problem is right now not a mass public erosion of support. Right now, the problem is in Washington, where he actually has to govern. The senators, as Mark said, did a very good job. But there is a huge wall of difference between a lot of those Republican senators and the Trump administration. And they are not going to be getting any closer.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: Just, Judy, one point David made about the interest.

The Nielsen ratings just came out. There were 19.5 million people who watched that daytime. It began 7:00 on the West Coast. All right? That’s a big audience, Judy. Compare it, there were 20 million who watched Sunday night’s NBA final between the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Golden State Warriors. That’s a turnout.

And a lot more people obviously saw the news and the clips and the reports and this show. And so I think, you know, it’s not the same thing as, you know, war coverage or whatever, but there is real interest in this.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, David, I hear — just quickly, I hear both of you saying it’s right now mainly in Washington, but that’s going to filter down, that’s going to have an eventual effect on how people view this.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

We could have had a day where the Trump administration really was in like Titanic-like peril, if there had been some testimony about collusion, if there had been some really strong, repeated push for him to obstruct justice. But we didn’t have that. And so we’re looking more long-term now.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David Brooks, Mark Shields, see you next Friday. Have a great weekend.

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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, Syndicated Columnist: 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, The New York Times: 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.

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HARI SREENIVASAN: But first to the analysis of Shields and Brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

All right, let’s start this week on the foreign front. The president met potentates, presidents, prime ministers and a pope. There were magical orbs.

(LAUGHTER)

HARI SREENIVASAN: There were tweet-sized messages stuck into a Wailing Wall. How did he do?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: B-plus. No.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: Well, I’m not going to grade him. I grade him on the curve.

I would say the visual highlight was with the pope when he said, you know, the pope is a very humble man, much like me, which he had tweeted earlier, and that’s why I like him so much.

But just sort of they’re polar opposites, of the two, one a champion of immigrants and refugees and almost disdainful of opulence and excessive wealth, and the other sort of the embodiment of it.

But I thought, quite frankly, the first part of the trip, he laid down the policy, and the policy is that we will stand on the side of Sunni autocrats against terrorism, and no questions asked.

And here, in addition, is a major weapons, a huge weapons sale that — and we’re not going to ask how you use it or where you use it, and if people are killed in Yemen, and they’re — made in the USA is on the weapon that kills them, and it’s done indiscriminately, that’s their business and not ours, because the operating and organizing principle of foreign policy is opposition to terrorism under Donald Trump.

DAVID BROOKS, The New York Times: Yes, I thought Melania had a very good week. I thought a lot of good moments for her. There was a lot of good judgments, actually.

He, by the standards of some of the competence of the previous week, I would say you would have to say the trip was, by competence standards, a success. He did what he wanted to do in Saudi Arabia, at NATO, at various other places.

I do think, as Mark suggested, the chief oddity of the entire trip is that we seem to be mean to our friends and kind to our foes. And so, Saudi Arabia — Fareed Zakaria had a very good column on this — we’re supposed to be against terrorism, and Trump loves to talk about Iranians — Iran’s influence on terrorism, but the main source of terror funding for both the ideas and sometimes the organizations is Saudi Arabia. It’s not Iran.

And so — but, somehow, we’re super nice to Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile, we’re super mean to Germany and France and some of our NATO allies. And so there’s just been a perversion of American foreign policy, which is sort of based on the idea that character doesn’t matter, and you can — whether the leaders from Russia or the Philippines or Saudi Arabia, that people of bad character are people we can ally with.

And, somehow, I think there is a consistency between the government here and some of the governments the Trump administration likes around the world.

HARI SREENIVASAN: There was a bit of that we just saw …

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. I’m sorry?

HARI SREENIVASAN: There was a bit of that we just saw in the conversation that Judy had.

MARK SHIELDS: That’s exactly right.

I would just say that the NATO part of the visit, I found particularly disturbing, because there was nothing about the principles and values. There was nothing about values and what we share and what animates us and what we respect and revere, whether it’s individual rights or democracy.

That just seemed to be unimportant. And all the criticism that the president had was stored up, as David pointed out, for these folks for somehow being welfare cheats or something.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes. And that’s pure demagoguery.

He spoke as if we — they owe us money because they haven’t been paying their dues, which is not true.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: That’s not the way that the — the problem is that they sort of pledged to gradually get to 2 percent of GDP in defense spending.

MARK SHIELDS: That’s right.

DAVID BROOKS: And some of the countries have, and a lot of the countries have not. And that’s a legitimate issue.

But he portrayed it as if we’re bailing them out, and they owe us money, and they haven’t paid their bills, which is just actually untrue.

HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, let’s shift gears to the budget.

What do you make of the priorities that were set forth in this? It’s a political document, but it kind of lets you know what you think is important.

MARK SHIELDS: That’s right.

We don’t pass a budget, but I think it’s fair to say it was mean—spirited and dishonest were the two words that come quickest to mind, again, coming back to the visit with the pope, who has sort of made himself the pope of the poor, unlike a number of his predecessors, who seemed to enjoy the opulence of Vatican City.

And Donald Trump, at that very meeting, his budget, which he is distanced from, he’s not even in town as it’s released, is, I think fair to say, an orthodox Republican document in the worst sense, in that it is tax cuts for the most advantaged among us, and saving the character of those Americans who are struggling, who depend upon school lunches, who depend upon supplemental food, who depend upon Medicaid — there are more people in the United States on Medicaid than there are on Medicare.

And half of the people on Medicaid get — work every day. And we’re talking about elderly poor. And, I mean, all of this is being cut, for what purpose? To provide an enormous tax cut for those who are best-off.

HARI SREENIVASAN: David, doesn’t some of this go right at the base of supporters that Donald Trump have, the poor working class that came to him? And it seems, as Mark is pointing out, that some of the programs that are being cut are going to affect them first.

DAVID BROOKS: Well, you look at the food stamps program, and that has radically expanded over the last 10 years.

And so the question is, has it expanded maybe for some of the reasons Social Security disability expanded, just because it’s become sort of welfare through the backdoor? Is it illegitimate?

Well, if you look into the food stamp program, the reason it’s expanded is because a lot of people are now near poor and because of economic changes. It’s not because of some illegitimate explosion of the welfare state. It’s because of the underlying structure of society has disadvantaged a lot of people, and they need some help.

And so it’s — as Donald Trump’s own secretary of agriculture said, it’s a successful program, and yet it’s getting savagely cut. And I think that’s — and that, as you say, goes right at the Trump voters, because the lower-middle-class voters in rural areas are getting a lot of those benefits.

To me, the most egregious, two egregious things about the budget is, as Mark said, it hurts the poor and helps the rich, but it also hurts the young and helps the old, and that whether it’s food stamps or a lot the other programs, if you believe in human capital, that we’re investing in the future with a lot these programs, then that’s the good kind of spending, even if you’re kind of conservative.

And, to me, we should cut some of the money that goes to affluent elderly people and give more money to young, struggling people. But Donald Trump does the reverse.

And the second thing is just the almost in-your-face dishonesty of it. Some of it is — just it’s assuming there will be 3 percent growth, which is not going to happen, given our demographics. But Larry Summers pointed out that this made the most elementary budget calculating error of any administration in 40 years.

They took the same revenue source, and they counted it twice, in order to cover. And that’s just — everybody had the to catch that error, but they were just going to do it anyway, and they didn’t care what anybody said.

HARI SREENIVASAN: Larry Summers, the former treasury secretary.

I mean, what about the president coming back and saying, hey, you know what, I made these promises, I said I wasn’t going to touch aid to the elderly?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, he said he wouldn’t cut Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid. That was the promise he made in one of his campaign tweets, that I’m the only candidate. He made that point.

And he has not. He has not touched Social Security. He’s cutting SSI, Social Security — the Supplemental Social Security, for people who are disabled and elderly, but he’s not cutting Social Security payments to the elderly. He’s not means-testing it in any way, and nor is he touching Medicare.

But Medicaid, having promised not to, he is. He is, in fact. It’s almost — cutting Medicaid, proposed to cut it in half, the spending. Federal spending would be cut in half. And the food stamps will be cut by one-quarter.

And I don’t know how you justify this when, in the same week, Hari, the Congressional Budget Office, the Republican selected chief economist, but very respected nonpartisan, says 23 million people are going to lose the health coverage insurance that they already have under the Republican-passed plan.

I will say this unequivocally. Tonight, three weeks after the House passed that health care bill, there is not a single member of the House who regrets having voted against it.

HARI SREENIVASAN: What about members of the Senate? What do they do going forward?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, well, they’re going to have trouble.

First, it was kind of surprising they went through all the change of rewriting the thing, and they basically got the same CBO number as they got last time. And I can’t believe — I couldn’t believe they got so many House people to vote for this thing, because it’s going to be a killer issue for a lot of people.

In the Senate, they’re doing everything in secret right now.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes.

DAVID BROOKS: And so we don’t exactly know what’s happening. They’re talking with each other. But we do know they’re divided almost down the middle on some of the Medicaid cuts, on some oft other issues, on some of the preexisting conditions. And passage in the Senate, you wouldn’t want to bet on that, not by a long shot.

HARI SREENIVASAN: And whatever gets through the Senate, there’s a good chance it wouldn’t get passed in the House.

DAVID BROOKS: Right. It wouldn’t get passed.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes. I think that, in order to make it acceptable — the pledge to repeal Obamacare was great as a political rallying cry. It’s terrible policy. And it’s not — it won’t pass.

DAVID BROOKS: But they could — if they could get — they could have another way to give people health insurance through health savings accounts and tax credits and things like that, if they guaranteed the same level of coverage that Obama is doing.

And I think that would be a completely legitimate approach. Maybe introduce some more competition into the system. That is not what they’re doing.

HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, lastly, in the last two minutes we have here, a new member of the House of — Republicans — during a special election in Montana, Greg Gianforte beats his opponents, but body-slams a reporter on the way to getting there.

What does this say about — you know, and the thing that I heard this morning on NPR is, one of the reporters was talking to some of his supporters, saying, you know what, that guy had it coming.

I mean, the extent of hostility toward the press and how it’s manifesting itself in different ways in the past couple of months.

MARK SHIELDS: I don’t think there is any question. I think it was legitimized in part by President Trump’s campaign, which included this and sort of rhetorical excesses and singling out members of the press.

But Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, who was the pollster for the Contract With America, Newt Gingrich, said, if you check the party affiliation of someone who commits assault before deciding how you feel about it, you’re what’s wrong with America.

And that’s really what it’s become. I think the seminal moment in contemporary American politics was when President Obama was addressing the joint session of Congress on health care, and Joe Wilson of South Carolina stood up and said, “You lie,” unprecedented in its rudeness and boorishness, and he raised a million dollars in the next week in funds.

And I think that polarization was rewarded.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

I would say two things are true. The climate of ugliness is no doubt ratcheting up and giving some permission to this. In this case, I’m willing to give the guy a break. He did apologize. And he could have just lost his temper. We will see what his career is like.

But I’m willing to — if a leader is at least willing to apologize, that’s frankly a step up from what we have seen on the presidential level.

HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, New York Times columnist David Brooks, syndicated columnist Mark Shields, thank you both.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you, Hari.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: Now back to the swirl of news surrounding the White House, the FBI’s Russia probe, and more, with the analysis of Shields and brooks. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.

Welcome, gentlemen. So much to talk about. What a week. I don’t even know where to begin.

I will mention that CNN has just been reporting in the last few minutes that they have from several sources that White House lawyers are beginning to at least research the mechanism of impeachment. They don’t have reason to believe, the story says, that anything like that is going to happen soon, but they are looking into it.

But, David, this week, again, there is so much to talk about, but let’s talk about the appointment of a special counsel, Robert Mueller, the former FBI director, in the midst of this, all this speculation about the Russia connection. What does this do to the cloud hanging over the White House?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, it’s interesting that after a year spent campaigning against the insiders, the swamp, the Beltway establishment, that when you get a big crisis, everyone wants somebody with some experience and some credibility.

And so this appointment has been greeted I think by Republicans in Congress, by Democrats, by most of the country as a sign of, OK, fine we’re going to get some straight answers.

And it strikes me as absolutely necessary. I mean, today’s story from my newspaper that he told the Russians that he got rid of Comey to relieve pressure, we used to have a better class of criminal, where if you obstructed justice, you tried to hide it.

And he’s going around bragging on national TV and then bragging to our adversaries that he is obstructing justice. So, whether or not he’s obstructed justice, he certainly seems to be acting like he did. And that certainly justifies a special counsel.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you make of the special counsel pick?

MARK SHIELDS: I think it’s a lifesaver for Republicans. I really do.

I think — and it’s a call for congressional inquiries. We went through the Iran-Contra hearings. And Ollie North, who was one of the central figures, he was convicted of three felonies. And, in fact, that was overturned because of immunity had been given to witnesses and that that testimony had compromised his own defense, Ollie North’s own defense.

So, ever since then, there has been an apprehension, a leeriness about in any way affecting or shaping a criminal investigation, national security investigation, the kind that Robert Mueller, very respected former FBI director, 13 years, is about to launch.

So I think there will be — we won’t see Paul Manafort, we won’t see Roger Stone, we won’t see Carter Page in the public, I doubt very much. I think the hearings will go forward, but not…

JUDY WOODRUFF: In the Senate?

MARK SHIELDS: In the Senate and the House, but not with the same kind of intensity, perhaps, just passion that we have had.

And, for Republicans, it takes it off the front page, and it guarantees that there’s going to be an investigation. But there’s no timetable.

And let’s be very frank. I mean, Bob Mueller is a consensus all-American choice here. He really is. I think it’s hard to criticize him.

DAVID BROOKS: I disagree with one thing.

MARK SHIELDS: OK.

DAVID BROOKS: I don’t think it’s going to go off the front page.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, not if we continue to have the president telling the Russians something that, 16 hours earlier, his people had told the American people they did it because of Hillary Clinton’s e-mails, and Comey…

JUDY WOODRUFF: With the Comey firing.

MARK SHIELDS: With the Comey firing, and then, 16 hours later, he privately tells the Russians where there’s no American press around.

DAVID BROOKS: I think what’s — a couple of things happened this week.

One is the special counsel, coupled with the Russian thing. There’s an investigation of a person of interest. But to me, the most interesting thing is that the White House staff and the people under Donald Trump, at least some portion of them, some large portion of them, seem to have turned against Donald Trump.

I have not talked to our reporters who broke this story, but if I read it correctly, some senior administration official with top-secret clearance read the readout to a reporter. That’s breaking the law.

And that is doing it in a way because you think you need to be Deep Throat, you need to undermine this guy, you need to tell — get the truth out about this guy.

And in the Nixon administration, there were a couple Deep Throats. There was a guy off in the FBI who was willing to leak. But in this administration, they seem to be in every closet and behind every desk. I’m exaggerating a little. But there are squads of Deep Throats.

And so that means this story’s not only a legal investigation. It is a dissolution of an administration.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Mark, talking about — not only talking about what the president had to say about Comey, but also sharing the fact that the president shared intelligence with the Russians.

MARK SHIELDS: Shared intelligence with the Russians.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Which is a remarkable story, in and of itself.

MARK SHIELDS: I could not agree with you more, Judy.

And what looked like a generous offer by Vladimir Putin, that I will make available to you the minutes of the meeting, turns out really to be a veiled threat, because the revelation of the minutes of that meeting are devastating. They’re devastating to the administration.

Picking up on what David said, I don’t think there is any question that this is a body blow to this administration. I won’t say it’s dead man walking, but you cannot pass a legislative program on Capitol Hill, especially when it’s controversial, with a president who has absolutely no attention span, no clout, no credibility.

And his is diminished, to the point where there is just nothing believable that’s coming out of this White House.

DAVID BROOKS: Substantively, that’s sort of what’s happened.

We have had administrations that have had big scandals before, but the Nixon administration, by the time their scandal hit, they had a very qualified White House staff and all these agencies. Same with Clinton. Same with Reagan.

With this administration, they have imploded before they have had time to staff up. And, therefore, they do not have people in the jobs to do the normal work of administration. And at this point, who’s going to want to go into those jobs? No one is going to want to go into those jobs.

So, whatever happens to the investigation, we are looking at an administration that will be poorly staffed or un-staffed trying to run the country.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, Mark, you mentioned, how do you get anything done?

Although I will say, I heard Paul Ryan talk — give a talk last night. And he said, this is all what he called white noise. He said, we’re going to focus on the business of the country. We’re going to work on getting health care done and we’re going to do tax reform done later this year.

MARK SHIELDS: And tax reform bill is? OK. And, oh, I guess it’s with the infrastructure bill.

And we are approaching Memorial Day, Judy. And if there isn’t a health care bill out of the Senate, that’s on life support, perhaps even beyond. So, then you’re a Republican and you’re running. And Paul Ryan, and he’s a lovely man, but you are running in 2018.

And now it’s going to be nothing a referendum on Donald Trump. You won’t even have a legislative program to be able to go back and talk about.

I cannot overstate how unbelievable, literally, this administration has become. I mean, it was said that George Washington was the president who could never tell a lie, and Richard Nixon was the president who could never tell the truth. Donald Trump is truly the president who can’t tell the difference.

I mean, he changes his story, as he did last week on the Russian meeting and on the firing of Jim Comey, depending upon whom he’s talking to, whether it’s NBC or whether it’s his own staff.

And picking up on David’s point about the staff, Judy, the morale is just absolutely at low ebb. You are now facing legal fees. I remember Maggie Williams, who was Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff, facing over $300,000 in legal fees.

Everybody is lawyering up. You’re sitting in a meeting now. Is David talking to somebody else? It’s just distrust. It’s an awful situation.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, to add a little fuel to the fire, I’m being told right now by our executive producer, Sara Just, that there is a report that the Senate Intelligence Committee chair and vice chair, Richard Burr of North Carolina, Mark Warner of Virginia, are announcing that Jim Comey, the fired FBI director, has agreed to testify in open session.

I think I’m hearing that correctly. I don’t have who it’s coming from. I gather it’s coming from the Senate.

So that will be something everybody will be listening to.

DAVID BROOKS: That will be — well, we just heard Ben Wittes earlier in the program with his interpretation of what Comey thinks. To hear it directly from Comey would be a cinematic Cecil B. DeMille moment.

JUDY WOODRUFF: The Wittes comments about how he — about how Comey felt about the president pulling him over, pulling into a hug.

MARK SHIELDS: Yes, and the contemporaneous notes that he obviously kept from those experiences and interactions with the president.

And remember this, Judy. Jim Comey, as FBI director, there are whole subject areas he couldn’t discuss before the Intelligence Committee. Now Donald Trump has opened up. Donald Trump has made it possible. He is no longer the FBI director.

And all he’s doing is responding to charges, unsubstantiated, according to Jim Comey, that Donald Trump has made about him. So, this is a — if in fact the Senate Intelligence Committee hearings are open and Jim Comey is there, it will be a ratings bonanza.

DAVID BROOKS: Could it be a coincidence that Donald Trump, we learned, called him a nutjob a few hours ago, and now this comes out?

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: But, David, this is just — as we said, the president has just taken off on this big nine-day first trip overseas. He’s going to the Middle East. He’s meeting with the leaders of so many European countries.

Does life go on in some way, respects in this country, in this city, while all this is happening?

DAVID BROOKS: In my contacts with the Trump people, compartmentalization is high. And guys are good at it. I don’t know. Maybe — but they would like to pretend this is not happening.

But, as Mark said, they can’t, in their heart of hearts, be sanguine about it, because they’re — a lot of them are leaking. A lot of them don’t know who’s going to write the memoir against each another. A lot of them are going to be under investigation. Some of them, there’s a target of interest in the White House right now, according to The Washington Post, in the Russia inquiry.

And so they can’t ignore all that. But they are trying to pretend that all is normal. And I think that’s the pretense that they are trying to pull off.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark, you have been in this city for a long time, almost as long as I have.

MARK SHIELDS: Well, no, Judy.

(CROSSTALK)

MARK SHIELDS: But I do — I remember Hamilton, yes.

(LAUGHTER)

JUDY WOODRUFF: How does this city deal with a situation and how does the country deal with a situation like this?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, we have never had one like this.

There is — first of all, there’s no reservoir of shared experiences with this president. We have shared values. They have been through — there is no accomplishment you can point to and say, well, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt. So that’s missing.

But, as far as the White House staff — and I have great sympathy for people who work in the White House. They work long hours. They miss birthday parties. They miss children’s recitals.

And what you get really is a sense that, I’m involved in something larger. There’s a sense of a psychic income. But now you have got a boss who has absolutely no loyalty, who is disparaging his staff, who is abusing his staff, according to reports in major papers.

So, this is just — this, again, saps all morale and leads to, I don’t care if I go to the meeting. In fact, I would rather not be in the meeting, instead of, please let me in the meeting.

So, I don’t see how it continues. I really don’t. Everybody who has been associated with this man has been diminished, has had his own reputation, whether it’s Rosenstein or General McMaster. Whoever it is, they are a smaller person for their association and identification with Donald Trump.

JUDY WOODRUFF: But just quickly, David, we started this conversation talking about how the appointment of Bob Mueller, Robert Mueller, as the special counsel has somewhat calmed the waters.

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, but I don’t think too much.

I think this is — now there’s a reality TV show. And the people — everybody in this town, they just want — they’re going to want to write the book, going to want to leak the memo, going to want to get their own self-preservation out there. And so the reality TV show involves a public unwinding, not a private investigation.

JUDY WOODRUFF: David Brooks, Mark Shields, thank you both.

MARK SHIELDS: Thank you, Judy.

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JUDY WOODRUFF: And now back to the dominant story of the week, the FBI director’s firing and the fallout from it, with the analysis of Shields and Ramesh Ponnuru. That’s syndicated columnist Mark Shields and National Review senior editor Ramesh Ponnuru. David Brooks is away.

And welcome, gentlemen. Welcome to both of you.

So, Mark, any question that the president was within his authority to fire James Comey?

MARK SHIELDS, Syndicated Columnist: No. It was within his authority, Judy.

But this wasn’t amateur hour. This was an incomprehensibly incompetent, inept amateur week, beginning and ending with the president. Other people came out with eggs of all sorts on their faces. Everybody associated with them is diminished, sullied, stained in some way.

But this was Donald Trump’s total miscalculation. The man who made a national reputation by saying “You’re fired” didn’t have the decency to call the FBI director in person, and publicly humiliated him and embarrassed him by severing him, announcing it on cable television as he was speaking to FBI colleagues in Los Angeles.

And he has thus insured that this will be, with this Russian investigation, is now a permanent part of our political landscape. It will affect and influence and be an outline of the 2018 election, and perhaps even beyond.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Total miscalculation, Ramesh?

RAMESH PONNURU, National Review: The administration combined two of its hallmarks, reacting to these events with disorganized dishonesty.

They began by saying that the firing was a response to the FBI director’s handling of the Clinton e-mail story and the analysis of that handling by the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. But, by the end of the week, President Trump himself was saying it really wasn’t about those things. He had made his decision before the memo, and the decision was really motivated by the fact that Comey wasn’t shutting down the Russia investigation, the investigation into the administration and the campaign’s ties to Russia, and thus exploded everything that people had been saying in the administration’s defense earlier in the week.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And so, Mark, they have given several different explanations over the course of a few days. What do you believe was behind this?

MARK SHIELDS: Donald Trump.

Judy, think about this. Robert Mueller was the predecessor at the FBI before James Comey. He was there from 2001 to 2013 under President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama. I don’t know how often they had dinner or how often they met privately.

But can you imagine Robert Mueller being asked by George W. Bush or Barack Obama, not once, not twice, but three times, am I the subject of a criminal investigation by your department, by your agency? It’s unthinkable.

And this is — obviously, he wants this to go away. He, the president, wants this whole investigation to go away. And he has guaranteed — he has guaranteed the following. James Comey was enormously popular among the FBI workers. He was somebody who was thoughtful and supportive of his employees and colleagues.

And they liked him. And he was would take one for a team. He was willing to take criticism for the FBI, and in spite of the decision he made on Hillary Clinton and the handling of that, which a lot of people disagreed it.

He’s guaranteed, Donald Trump has, that everybody associated with the FBI is going to make one more call, follow up on one more lead, and work one hour harder every day on the pursuit of this case. It’s not going to go away. He has guaranteed that it’s going to be more pursued even more arduously, intently, passionately, and professionally by the bureau.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you see as a fallout, Ramesh?

RAMESH PONNURU: Well, I think that this may be the beginning of an effort by the administration to push a lot of congressional Republicans somewhere they don’t want to go.

The prevailing line from Republicans, even those who are well-disposed towards President Trump, has been, of course the FBI and of course the congressional Intelligence Committee investigations need to continue.

What is coming out of Trump world right now is, no, these investigations are an attempt to cast doubt on the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency. It’s a taxpayer-funded charade. If you believe that, these things need to end.

Is that something that congressional Republicans are really going to accept? That’s not something that I think they’re going to want to try to sell to the American people.

JUDY WOODRUFF: How do you see Congress moving on this?

MARK SHIELDS: I think Congress is under tremendous pressure now. The committees have to perform, because any foot-dragging on this at this point, at any point, the administration, the White House will be seen as somehow hiding something, that there is something here to hide.

I mean, the president boasting that, three times, you exculpated me in the letter that says I’m firing you, I think it puts pressure there. I think it guarantees that any appropriations by an investigating agency will be fast-lined and will be available. Nobody wants to be seen on that other side.

Judy, there are 241 Republican House seats right now. In 2018, they’re all on the ballot; 175 of those members of the 241 have never run for reelection with a Republican president in the White House. They’re used to being on the offensive in midterm elections, running against — or for repeal Obamacare, or against the administration.

They’re going to have to decide, and a lot of them. They’re looking right now at losing three dozen House seats, by historical standards. They have to decide right now, are they going to establish daylight and independence from this toxic administration?

This administration this week was so absolutely misleading, dishonest in its handling of this, that the White House right now at this point doesn’t even believe its own leaks. It is that bad. It’s really reached that point.

So, if you are a Republican, you cannot be seen on the side of trying to slow this down, cover it up, hide things.

RAMESH PONNURU: You do have to wonder whether the Senate is capable of confirming anybody to the FBI director position.

If that person doesn’t have a demonstrated record of independence and integrity, I think it’s going to be very hard for them to get the requisite votes.

(CROSSTALK)

MARK SHIELDS: You think Rudy Giuliani is a good choice at this point?

(LAUGHTER)

RAMESH PONNURU: There is a narrow Senate margin. And I think you are going to be not looking for political figures.

MARK SHIELDS: Absolutely.

RAMESH PONNURU: I think you’re going to be looking for people like Judge Silberman, people like Michael Chertoff, people who are respected across the aisle.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Ramesh, what about Mark’s larger point here that this is really a turning point for this administration, a turning point in terms of how Congress sees the administration?

We don’t know yet about the public. We haven’t seen any public opinion polls yet, significant ones. But what about the Congress?

RAMESH PONNURU: Well, look, I do think that this story right now is a topic of consuming interest in Washington, D.C. I don’t know that it is in the country at large.

But I do think this is running the risk of isolating this president politically. There’s a reason why congressional Republicans have not felt it was in their interest to just say, these investigations are all legitimate.

There’s a reason why the administration’s first instinct was to come up with a pretext for dismissing Comey and not tie it to the Russia investigation. And so I think it’s going to be really hard for them to sustain this, particularly when you consider that President Trump remains somebody who, for this early in his presidency, is pretty unpopular.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You mean because now it’s out in the open that the rationale was the Russia investigation?

RAMESH PONNURU: That’s right, and because Trump seems inclined to want to push this argument further, and he seems to want his surrogates to be making this argument.

JUDY WOODRUFF: So, Mark, have we learned something new about the president in all of this? Is this the coming together of everything that we already believed? I mean, how do you see this moment?

MARK SHIELDS: Well, you see that the president thinks and acts in very short time frames.

Judy, if you wanted to get rid of the FBI director, there is an established way of doing these things. You get a mutual friend to go to him and say, the president wants your resignation, and we will do it on your terms, and we will exchange letters, and there will be a Rose Garden ceremony, and we will introduce your successor, and you will leave with a great tribute and great — and it’s not Donald Trump.

Either he’s scared, or anxious or whatever, but he had to do it in a hurry. And he did it in his way. He did it to the point where he’s totally discredited, if not disabled, his own press secretary. And he’s totally discredited or partially discredited Mike Pence, his vice president, who his reputation is based on his earnestness and his decency, not on his great imagination or great vision, but he’s a solid guy. He is a guy you can trust.

He got caught in a total lie, pretending that Rod Rosenstein, two weeks on the job as deputy attorney general, somehow barreled into the White House and said, take this, Mr. President, you have got to do it.

Now think about Rod Rosenstein. What does he do? He is a man who has earned a reputation, a deserved reputation, bipartisan respect as being a straight shooter. He’s been used as a pawn in this thing. He was advanced as the reason, when he knew he wasn’t the reason. And now he’s got to prove his independence, if he’s going to be in charge of this investigation.

So, he’s not going to be — no pressure can be applied to him. If it appears to be, again, it’s going to be redound to the detriment of the White House and the president.

JUDY WOODRUFF: I have seen some analysis this week, Ramesh, that people are watching moderate Republicans, especially in the Senate, to see how they react.

What is their calculus? What do they look for as they decide how to respond to this and what to do?

RAMESH PONNURU: Well, I think that they are going to be nervous.

They’re not going to want to go out on a limb and defend the administration, particularly when the line for the administration keeps changing. And you go out on the limb, the administration might saw that limb out right from behind you.

The political pressures on them are going to be intense. They’re going to want to look for ways to get out from those political pressures. And it could be that the end result of this is that it has strengthened the case for a special prosecutor, an independent commission or a select committee of Congress.

JUDY WOODRUFF: And Mark said — I want to ask you about — I think, Mark, you said, what, three — you think three dozen Republican …

MARK SHIELDS: House seats that right now …

(CROSSTALK)

JUDY WOODRUFF: … are in jeopardy.

MARK SHIELDS: Historically, presidents under 50 — this president is going to be under 40 percent favorable.

Just Ramesh’s point is, I think, a very good one that bears — it bears reflection on, that the idea, Judy, that The Wall Street Journal editorial page leads its endorsement of firing Comey by quoting, the president had reacted to the deputy attorney general’s initiative in doing it.

So, they’re supporting Donald Trump, and they have got egg all over there. They have got a poultry farm on their face.

(LAUGHTER)

MARK SHIELDS: I mean, let’s be honest about it.

And to be — have him say, have — how about being accused of being a showboat by Donald Trump? Now, that is tantamount to being called ugly by a frog. I mean, Donald Trump has never been a shrinking violet before. I didn’t know grandstanding was a mortal sin in his lexicon.

JUDY WOODRUFF: What do you look for in the days to come to see where this goes, Ramesh?

RAMESH PONNURU: I think I would start looking for the congressional Republican reactions.

I don’t think that a lot of people today have been very vocal in response to President Trump’s tweeting about tapes of …

(CROSSTALK)

JUDY WOODRUFF: And, by the way, we don’t know whether there is a recording system in the White House.

RAMESH PONNURU: Right.

But I think — but the question is, do they just try to ride this out, or do they start criticizing the president?

JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark?

MARK SHIELDS: I think, Judy, I think that it’s going to be every man and woman for him or her self, and they’re going to realize that their fate, fortune and future is not going to be well-served being tied to this president.

JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, a week that won’t be forgotten anytime soon.

Mark Shields, Ramesh Ponnuru, thank you.

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