PBS NEWSHOUR: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join Geoff Bennett to discuss the week in politics, including the clash between President Trump and Elon Musk, Trump’s latest comments about Putin’s war in Ukraine and the Democrats’ big problem and how to fix it.

GEOFF BENNETT, PBS NEWSHOUR: Let’s shift our focus to foreign policy. We had that astonishing attack this week by Ukraine on Russian bombers deep inside Russia, by some accounts wiping out more than a third of their long-range bomber fleet. And then you had President Trump in the Oval Office with this response: Donald Trump, President of the United States: Sometimes, you see two young children fighting like crazy. They hate each other and they’re fighting in a park. And you try and pull them apart. They don’t want to be pulled. Sometimes, you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart. And I gave that analogy to Putin yesterday. Comparing the war in Ukraine to two children fighting in a park, what does that tell you about the way the president sees this conflict? DAVID BROOKS, NEW YORK TIMES: Well, he is an amoralist. He just doesn’t get moral sensibility. And so these were not two children fighting in the park. This was one dictatorship invading a democracy. So there’s just a moral difference, but he’s obtusely unaware of it. Second, it turns out winning a Nobel Peace Prize is harder than it looks. And you actually have to do stuff. And the one thing he has to do to Vladimir Putin is to raise the cost of continuing this war. And so, if he wants peace, it’s not two children. You raise the cost for Vladimir Putin. You have more sanctions. You give Ukraine more aid. You welcome Ukraine into NATO. You do the things that Vladimir Putin doesn’t want you to do. But Donald Trump will never do that because he doesn’t actually do that kind of diplomacy, where you impose costs on people to get them to do what you want to do. And that leads to the thing which may be the theme of our two first subjects. Narcissists cannot understand what’s going on in other people’s minds. And whether it’s Musk or Trump or Musk v. Putin, none of these three guys can understand how another person is thinking. And you can’t do a negotiation, broker a deal between two warring parties if you can’t put yourself in other people’s shoes. So, on multiple levels, Trump is just whiffing on his Russia policy.

RealClearPolitics Videos