It seems that every Friday night, the PBS NewsHour pundits are savaging President Trump, and always suggesting his presidency is unraveling. In this turn, New York Times columnist David Brooks said “we’re moving left” and “that’s the reality.” He complained about the president’s “authoritarian line of domination” and a “dangerous contagion” of “mental brutalism.”
WOODRUFF: David, I do want to ask you both about the president and bring in the use of the military. But, just quickly, do you think there will be real change coming out of what we’re seeing?
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I look at the polls. And we never used to get polls where it was 50 — where it was above 55 percent for anything. We were completely an evenly divided country. And now we had a poll, PBS/Marist poll, 67 percent disapproving of the way Donald Trump is reacting to this moment, 67 percent reaction to the lockdown. We had 67, 77 percent. Again and over the course of the last three months, we have had polls in the 60s and 70s. It looks to me like we’re a less divided country than they were, Joe Biden opening up now an eight-point lead on the average polls.
So, I mean, the dumb thing to say is, we’re moving left. And the pandemic and this event have just underlined the inequalities in America. And whether you like it or not, I just think that’s the reality, if you look at the evidence.
Woodruff underlined there was controversy over clearing Lafayette Park for a photo-op in front of a church, and the military men bashing Trump. “Is this a moment of turn for this president, do you think?” Brooks said Trump’s always been a bully….and Brooks said anything about looting and violence in the streets.
BROOKS: I think what mystifies me — and it goes back to what you were talking about with Mayor Garcetti — is, you have a president who’s taken this authoritarian line of domination, be dominant, unleash vicious dogs and dangerous weapons.
And that’s not only just talk anymore. And it swings through the Republican Party and Senator Tom Cotton’s tweets about no quarter given. We’re going to dominate our fellow citizens, as if they are enemy.
And then I think it bleeds down to the police and the videos we have already seen tonight. It’s a theme that is coming from the top, from the White House, a theme of brutalism, of mental brutalism. And it affects people. And what we have seen coming out of the White House has been a more dangerous contagion than even with all the outrages of the past.
PS: I was tempted to write on Brooks last week, when he was furious with Biden’s PBS interview, for sounding too “moderate.”
BROOKS: I want to see more outrage. I want to see outrage at a president who’s grown more contemptible by the day, including his tweets about what happened in Minneapolis. I want to see somebody addressing the underlying issues that lead to the inequalities in places like Minneapolis and all around the country. I just want to see a more aggressive Democratic challenger, who’s really got broad arguments for collective change, structural change. I want to see a candidate who is as angry as he ought to be, to be honest.