David Brooks: Trump’s Foreign Policy Is “We In The West Have To Fight Off The Hordes From The Rest Of The World”
PBS NEWSHOUR: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including how President Trump’s string of seeming disappointments this week is raising some doubts about his grip on the Republican Party and his ability to govern in his second term.
AMNA NAWAZ, PBS NEWSHOUR: I want to take a step back and look at some of the bigger trends we saw this week, because there’s the president’s frustration over the Indiana map. We saw a grand jury again refuse to indict Letitia James. We know the Department of Justice is facing a deadline to release the Epstein files. We’re seeing bipartisan concern over the president’s alleged drug boat strikes in the Caribbean. So there’s mounting frustration on a number of fronts. At the same time, we’re seeing a ramping up of the president’s overtly racist rhetoric. That affordability speech in Pennsylvania just devolved into an anti-immigrant, racist rant. David, are those things related? DAVID BROOKS, NEW YORK TIMES: Unclear. It could be just he’s getting crankier and older. He’s not – he’s always talked about certain kind of countries when referring to certain developing world countries. That was first term. He’s always used this kind of language. Is he using it more nastily? Yes. Is it tied to his falling approvals? I’m not sure. I think there’s been a shift in the mind-set of the administration compared to Trump one. And we saw it not only in what he says in some random speech. We saw it in the most important event of the week, which was the release of the national security strategy, where they talked about civilizational erasure. This is taking some of that idea that we’re – we in the West have to fight off the hordes from the rest of the world. That’s not only in a speech. That is the official foreign policy of the United States of America. And so that culture war mind-set is now from maybe back of mind or medium of mind, now it’s front of mind, both in random rhetoric, but also in policy.
