New York Times columnist David Brooks and Kimberly Atkins Stohr of the Boston Globe join William Brangham to discuss the year in politics, including President Trump’s return to the White House and the significant changes from his first term.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM, PBS NEWSHOUR: David, one of the biggest questions at the starting of this year is what Trump 2.0 was going to look like compared to the first version. And we have now seen a year of it, an incredibly aggressive flexing of executive authority. When you look back on this year, what really stands out to you? DAVID BROOKS, NEW YORK TIMES: Yes, I tell two stories. The first is that since 1945, the American establishment, if you want to put it that way, has built a series of institutions, things like the Western alliance, NATO, the Department of Justice, USAID, and all of those things have been hollowed out over the last year. And so we have seen a great decline in state capacity. You have to worry about if we’re a nation in decline, because China is investing in science, they’re investing in technologies, they’re kicking our butts. And so they tell the decline. This has been a tragedy, an error of historic proportions. The other story is that, since 1945, the American establishment has lost touch with American workers. And they have passed trade and immigration policies that immigration workers didn’t like. They have — frankly, in the cultural institutions, the media, the universities, they have kicked working-class and conservative voices out. And so a lot of people feel, I’m invisible to these people. And then… BRANGHAM: And, ergo, we get Trump. BROOKS: And so we get Trump. And so I think both those stories are true. And so, as much as we lament the horror of what’s happened over the last year, it’s much more horrible than I anticipated, for people like me, we have to ask ourselves, what do we do to bring this about? And I think both those stories are true. BRANGHAM: What do you think? KIMBERLY ATKINS STOHR, BOSTON GLOBE: Yes, two things really jumped out at me. And one is the erosion of the rule of law. And I see the Trumpification of the Department of Justice, for example, as a key role in that right alongside the White House. He came in pardoning the January 6 rioters, everyone who participated in that horrific day, but, at the same time, weaponizing the Department of Justice to go after his political enemies. I mean, just today, when he was posting on TRUTH Social about the Epstein files, he’s directing people just to look at the Democrats that are in these files and not the Republicans, because everything about what the Democrats are tagging is a hoax, and that he has an attorney general now and an FBI director that are willing to go along with that. As an attorney, this is not how I learned in law school that the rule of law is supposed to be implemented. Another thing I think you see a great through line, whether it’s its immigration policies or the decimation of the federal government with the purging of workers to the attacks on universities, is a through line of race. It is this idea that people within the country who are Black or Latino or also Muslim, the Islamophobic aspect of it, or immigrants, it’s only those that are deemed the ones that are a danger to the country. We will open white South Africans — open our arms to white South Africans, but at the same time, the denigration of other countries as Third World, as less than, as hellholes and worse. You see this real idea that there is a white Christian nationalism that has taken over the federal government in a way that I never thought I’d see in my lifetime.

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