Conservative David Brooks Calls President Trump A Sociopath

[PoliTalker]

Jonathan Capehart goes further and calls him a racist:

David Brooks calls Trump a sociopath on PBS NewsHour August 9th 2019

"Amna Nawaz:

Let me ask you about something else.

The president did, obviously, make a visit to those affected communities. And his team put out what's basically a highly produced edited video of his visit on the ground in El Paso. You're watching a clip of it right there.

There was a contrast there between some of the reports we heard on the ground from journalists and then another video. It was cell phone video that emerged after the visit. It showed the president on the ground in El Paso talking about his crowd size at a rally back in February and comparing it to Beto O'Rourke's.

Take a quick listen to what he said.

Donald Trump:

That was some crowd.

Woman:

Thank you.

Donald Trump:

And we had twice the number outside. And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had like 400 people in a parking lot. They said his crowd was wonderful.

Amna Nawaz:

Jonathan, there is kind of a tale of two narratives there. In the moment, you don't really know which one to pay attention to.

Jonathan Capehart:

Well, the narrative here is consistent.

President Trump is at the center of that narrative, whether it's that highly produced campaign-style-like video of his visits to El Paso Dayton, or it's that cell phone video where he's talking about one of the things that is part of his greatest hits, crowd size.

He has talked about crowd size since the day of his inauguration. And, for him, that is a marker of popularity.

But, in that moment, what I would expect the people of El Paso and Dayton, the people in Ohio, the American people who are grieving — and also Texas — people who are grieving, what they want to see from a president is comfort. They want to see someone consoling them.

I was in New York on 9/11. And President George W. Bush was president of the United States, and I had lots of disagreements with the policies of President George W. Bush. But when he stood on that rubble at ground zero and talked to those workers, and talked to the city, and talked to the nation, that's exactly what we needed to hear then.

When President Obama went to Charleston and impromptu sang "Amazing Grace" at the eulogy for Clementa Pinckney, a state senator who was murdered with eight other people in Mother Emanuel Church, in that moment, he channeled the grief of a church, of a city, of a community, and of a nation.

We didn't get that with President Trump.

Amna Nawaz:

David, how do you look at this, really? He's such a divisive figure anyway. There is the standard of the consoler in chief. He hasn't done it yet. It's not who he is. Right?

David Brooks:

Yes.

Well, there's a photo, a still from that visit where he's with the orphan baby and two family members, with his wife. And Melania is holding the child. And he's got this grin and the thumb up.

And when I looked at that photo, I thought, the Democrats are having a debate: Is he a racist? Is he a white supremacist?

And I look at that photo, I think, well, he's a sociopath. He's incapable of experiencing or showing empathy.

And, politically, it's helpful for him to target that lack of empathy and fellow feeling toward people of color. But how much have we seen him show empathy for anybody?

And so I look at that as someone who is unloved and made himself unlovable and whose subject is himself, is his own competitive greatness. And so he doesn't do the consoler in chief just because he doesn't do that emotional range.

And that's a burden and a cost for any of us.



Amna Nawaz:

You mentioned the white supremacy line there. We have obviously been talking about that a lot in 2019 now.

And Lisa Desjardins was reporting earlier too on the ground in Iowa there. Candidates are being asked about that: Do you think this president is a white supremacist?

Is that sort of a litmus test now for candidates moving forward?

David Brooks:

It's an easy emotional inflation, it seems to me.

I thought Biden's answer and Kamala Harris' was pretty good, which is, I don't know, but he's certainly enabling them. And he's certainly speaking the language. He uses the language of invasion when talking about immigration.

Now, I read a lot of the manifestos this week and those who have actually killed in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso. They start with invasion. They go many more steps. They believe that racial mixing really is a cancer. And they have this deep separatism.

I don't know if Trump has that. But he has certainly set an atmosphere where it's easier to talk about human beings as an invasion.

Amna Nawaz:

What do you make of all this right now, Jonathan? It's a big topic. This is nothing new in America. And yet it's new in terms of how prevalent it is.

Jonathan Capehart:

Right, because — and it pains me to say this, but we're talking about it because the president of the United States is a racist with a white supremacist policy agenda.

He began his political career questioning the legitimacy of the first African-American president. He started his campaign within the first two minutes saying that Mexicans were — quote — "rapists."

He called for a complete and total ban on Muslims entering the United States after the San Bernardino attack during the campaign in December 2016. He's used words on the campaign trail from the midterm elections and continued, invasion, caravans, infestation, animals, to what David was talking about.

In policy and in rhetoric, he is feeding into this environment, this atmosphere, where people such as the shooter in El Paso who has — we have seen the affidavit. He's confessed in doing what he's done, and confessed to targeting — quote — "Mexicans."

That — these things don't happen in a vacuum. Did the president order this person to do this? No. But that person heard in that rhetoric — and we have seen it from New Zealand, around the world, but particularly here, where we are dealing with a domestic terrorism problem, where the primary people committing these terrorist acts are white supremacists.

We're dealing with a situation here where the president of the United States is feeding into it with the rhetoric that's coming out of his mouth, whether it's from a podium at the White House or from a podium at a campaign rally somewhere in the country.

David Brooks:

Yes.

I hear you talking, and I think I basically agree with it. Then I — my next question is, well, how do we then do democracy for the next 16 months? Like, there is a presumption that we're all Americans together. There's a presumption of goodwill, that we can have a conversation.

And maybe Donald Trump — but how do we address ourselves to Donald Trump supporters, many of whom are very realistic and are supporters of him for good reasons having to do with their own lives and the dissolution of their own communities.

It's going to be hard to have a conversation once the president has been declared sort of really beneath contempt. And I'm not saying I disagree with you. I'm just saying this is a problem we have to deal with as we try to have a national conversation over this election."

[Cinnabar]

Jonathan Capehart goes further and calls him a racist:

David Brooks calls Trump a sociopath on PBS NewsHour August 9th 2019

"Amna Nawaz:

Let me ask you about something else.

The president did, obviously, make a visit to those affected communities. And his team put out what's basically a highly produced edited video of his visit on the ground in El Paso. You're watching a clip of it right there.

There was a contrast there between some of the reports we heard on the ground from journalists and then another video. It was cell phone video that emerged after the visit. It showed the president on the ground in El Paso talking about his crowd size at a rally back in February and comparing it to Beto O'Rourke's.

Take a quick listen to what he said.

Donald Trump:

That was some crowd.

Woman:

Thank you.

Donald Trump:

And we had twice the number outside. And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had like 400 people in a parking lot. They said his crowd was wonderful.

Amna Nawaz:

Jonathan, there is kind of a tale of two narratives there. In the moment, you don't really know which one to pay attention to.

Jonathan Capehart:

Well, the narrative here is consistent.

President Trump is at the center of that narrative, whether it's that highly produced campaign-style-like video of his visits to El Paso Dayton, or it's that cell phone video where he's talking about one of the things that is part of his greatest hits, crowd size.

He has talked about crowd size since the day of his inauguration. And, for him, that is a marker of popularity.

But, in that moment, what I would expect the people of El Paso and Dayton, the people in Ohio, the American people who are grieving — and also Texas — people who are grieving, what they want to see from a president is comfort. They want to see someone consoling them.

I was in New York on 9/11. And President George W. Bush was president of the United States, and I had lots of disagreements with the policies of President George W. Bush. But when he stood on that rubble at ground zero and talked to those workers, and talked to the city, and talked to the nation, that's exactly what we needed to hear then.

When President Obama went to Charleston and impromptu sang "Amazing Grace" at the eulogy for Clementa Pinckney, a state senator who was murdered with eight other people in Mother Emanuel Church, in that moment, he channeled the grief of a church, of a city, of a community, and of a nation.

We didn't get that with President Trump.

Amna Nawaz:

David, how do you look at this, really? He's such a divisive figure anyway. There is the standard of the consoler in chief. He hasn't done it yet. It's not who he is. Right?

David Brooks:

Yes.

Well, there's a photo, a still from that visit where he's with the orphan baby and two family members, with his wife. And Melania is holding the child. And he's got this grin and the thumb up.

And when I looked at that photo, I thought, the Democrats are having a debate: Is he a racist? Is he a white supremacist?

And I look at that photo, I think, well, he's a sociopath. He's incapable of experiencing or showing empathy.

And, politically, it's helpful for him to target that lack of empathy and fellow feeling toward people of color. But how much have we seen him show empathy for anybody?

And so I look at that as someone who is unloved and made himself unlovable and whose subject is himself, is his own competitive greatness. And so he doesn't do the consoler in chief just because he doesn't do that emotional range.

And that's a burden and a cost for any of us.



Amna Nawaz:

You mentioned the white supremacy line there. We have obviously been talking about that a lot in 2019 now.

And Lisa Desjardins was reporting earlier too on the ground in Iowa there. Candidates are being asked about that: Do you think this president is a white supremacist?

Is that sort of a litmus test now for candidates moving forward?

David Brooks:

It's an easy emotional inflation, it seems to me.

I thought Biden's answer and Kamala Harris' was pretty good, which is, I don't know, but he's certainly enabling them. And he's certainly speaking the language. He uses the language of invasion when talking about immigration.

Now, I read a lot of the manifestos this week and those who have actually killed in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso. They start with invasion. They go many more steps. They believe that racial mixing really is a cancer. And they have this deep separatism.

I don't know if Trump has that. But he has certainly set an atmosphere where it's easier to talk about human beings as an invasion.

Amna Nawaz:

What do you make of all this right now, Jonathan? It's a big topic. This is nothing new in America. And yet it's new in terms of how prevalent it is.

Jonathan Capehart:

Right, because — and it pains me to say this, but we're talking about it because the president of the United States is a racist with a white supremacist policy agenda.

He began his political career questioning the legitimacy of the first African-American president. He started his campaign within the first two minutes saying that Mexicans were — quote — "rapists."

He called for a complete and total ban on Muslims entering the United States after the San Bernardino attack during the campaign in December 2016. He's used words on the campaign trail from the midterm elections and continued, invasion, caravans, infestation, animals, to what David was talking about.

In policy and in rhetoric, he is feeding into this environment, this atmosphere, where people such as the shooter in El Paso who has — we have seen the affidavit. He's confessed in doing what he's done, and confessed to targeting — quote — "Mexicans."

That — these things don't happen in a vacuum. Did the president order this person to do this? No. But that person heard in that rhetoric — and we have seen it from New Zealand, around the world, but particularly here, where we are dealing with a domestic terrorism problem, where the primary people committing these terrorist acts are white supremacists.

We're dealing with a situation here where the president of the United States is feeding into it with the rhetoric that's coming out of his mouth, whether it's from a podium at the White House or from a podium at a campaign rally somewhere in the country.

David Brooks:

Yes.

I hear you talking, and I think I basically agree with it. Then I — my next question is, well, how do we then do democracy for the next 16 months? Like, there is a presumption that we're all Americans together. There's a presumption of goodwill, that we can have a conversation.

And maybe Donald Trump — but how do we address ourselves to Donald Trump supporters, many of whom are very realistic and are supporters of him for good reasons having to do with their own lives and the dissolution of their own communities.

It's going to be hard to have a conversation once the president has been declared sort of really beneath contempt. And I'm not saying I disagree with you. I'm just saying this is a problem we have to deal with as we try to have a national conversation over this election."

As are many of his cronies and supporters. In fact, the current day GOP is comprised mostly of sociopaths. Just a look at the policies says it all.

[PoliTalker]

"A psychopath or a person with antisocial personality disorder."

"a person, as a psychopath, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience."

"A person suffering from a personality disorder that involves extreme antisocial behavior."

[canceled.2021.2]

Brooks is as much of a conservative as you are

[Tranquillus in Exile]

Regardless of his policies, do people want a person like this representing America to the world?

Brooks said it: how do you "do democracy" when the president has been declared really beneath contempt? And it could go on for another 5+ years.

[PoliTalker]

It is remarkable that any president with an economy like this would be polling at anything less than 65%.

But when you are a sociopath society is going to be uncomfortable with that. And people are going to know about it.

He has no empathy. He lives in a world of insults and ill will. It's just sad. Anything that anyone says negative about his policy, then he attacks that person. Doesn't even BOTHER to try to defend his policy. Goes right to attack.

If there is something bad that he doesn't like in the news, then he immediately creates a big distraction, usually by saying something controversial and attention-getting, often hurtful to somebody or group, in order to dominate the headlines with what he decides. He never considers the consequences of who might be hurt by what he says. That doesn't factor into his decisions. It's all about him and his name and how big the crowd size is.

And he lives in a make-believe world about crowd sizes. He can never face the reality, always has to try to inflate the number. Still thinks he had the biggest inauguration. He never had the crowd sizes he claims he did.

And I don't believe he hired any workers for the 911 response. That sounds like such BS. Not one person has ever come forward to claim they were one of the Trump workers. He has never produced any records of payments, and the numbers were all so even. It bounced between 100 and 125, and then he was bringing another 125. Where does he have these workers? How were they transported? Where are they coming from? How much were they paid? Sounds like BS to me. The better we get to know him the more I think he just stepped out in front of the cameras for name recognition with outrageous claims that he figured nobody would ever try to verify. He's a slick talking conman and he says anything he thinks he can get away with.

Leave it to him to seize upon such a horrible event and see it as a shot at very wide free publicity.

I bet he ends up going down on fraud after investigators get a chance to go through all those financial records. Wouldn't surprise me one bit. I would not be surprised if investigators can find multiple people ready to swear that what he told them and what they got for their money did not match. Look at the settlement for Trump University. Just another con, another scam, that's the way he operates. Sociopath.

[Phantasmal]

“The Mooch” has turned on Trump now as well. It’s getting rough for Donald.

“The Mooch” said he will eventually turn on the country. I think he has already. He’s terrible policies aren’t good for us.

[dukkha]

“The Mooch” has turned on Trump now as well. It’s getting rough for Donald.

“The Mooch” said he will eventually turn on the country. I think he has already.
He’s terrible policies aren’t good for us.

peace and prosperity! oh the horrors!

[Bill]

Jonathan Capehart goes further and calls him a racist:

David Brooks calls Trump a sociopath on PBS NewsHour August 9th 2019

"Amna Nawaz:

Let me ask you about something else.

The president did, obviously, make a visit to those affected communities. And his team put out what's basically a highly produced edited video of his visit on the ground in El Paso. You're watching a clip of it right there.

There was a contrast there between some of the reports we heard on the ground from journalists and then another video. It was cell phone video that emerged after the visit. It showed the president on the ground in El Paso talking about his crowd size at a rally back in February and comparing it to Beto O'Rourke's.

Take a quick listen to what he said.

Donald Trump:

That was some crowd.

Woman:

Thank you.

Donald Trump:

And we had twice the number outside. And then you had this crazy Beto. Beto had like 400 people in a parking lot. They said his crowd was wonderful.

Amna Nawaz:

Jonathan, there is kind of a tale of two narratives there. In the moment, you don't really know which one to pay attention to.

Jonathan Capehart:

Well, the narrative here is consistent.

President Trump is at the center of that narrative, whether it's that highly produced campaign-style-like video of his visits to El Paso Dayton, or it's that cell phone video where he's talking about one of the things that is part of his greatest hits, crowd size.

He has talked about crowd size since the day of his inauguration. And, for him, that is a marker of popularity.

But, in that moment, what I would expect the people of El Paso and Dayton, the people in Ohio, the American people who are grieving — and also Texas — people who are grieving, what they want to see from a president is comfort. They want to see someone consoling them.

I was in New York on 9/11. And President George W. Bush was president of the United States, and I had lots of disagreements with the policies of President George W. Bush. But when he stood on that rubble at ground zero and talked to those workers, and talked to the city, and talked to the nation, that's exactly what we needed to hear then.

When President Obama went to Charleston and impromptu sang "Amazing Grace" at the eulogy for Clementa Pinckney, a state senator who was murdered with eight other people in Mother Emanuel Church, in that moment, he channeled the grief of a church, of a city, of a community, and of a nation.

We didn't get that with President Trump.

Amna Nawaz:

David, how do you look at this, really? He's such a divisive figure anyway. There is the standard of the consoler in chief. He hasn't done it yet. It's not who he is. Right?

David Brooks:

Yes.

Well, there's a photo, a still from that visit where he's with the orphan baby and two family members, with his wife. And Melania is holding the child. And he's got this grin and the thumb up.

And when I looked at that photo, I thought, the Democrats are having a debate: Is he a racist? Is he a white supremacist?

And I look at that photo, I think, well, he's a sociopath. He's incapable of experiencing or showing empathy.

And, politically, it's helpful for him to target that lack of empathy and fellow feeling toward people of color. But how much have we seen him show empathy for anybody?

And so I look at that as someone who is unloved and made himself unlovable and whose subject is himself, is his own competitive greatness. And so he doesn't do the consoler in chief just because he doesn't do that emotional range.

And that's a burden and a cost for any of us.



Amna Nawaz:

You mentioned the white supremacy line there. We have obviously been talking about that a lot in 2019 now.

And Lisa Desjardins was reporting earlier too on the ground in Iowa there. Candidates are being asked about that: Do you think this president is a white supremacist?

Is that sort of a litmus test now for candidates moving forward?

David Brooks:

It's an easy emotional inflation, it seems to me.

I thought Biden's answer and Kamala Harris' was pretty good, which is, I don't know, but he's certainly enabling them. And he's certainly speaking the language. He uses the language of invasion when talking about immigration.

Now, I read a lot of the manifestos this week and those who have actually killed in Christchurch, New Zealand, and El Paso. They start with invasion. They go many more steps. They believe that racial mixing really is a cancer. And they have this deep separatism.

I don't know if Trump has that. But he has certainly set an atmosphere where it's easier to talk about human beings as an invasion.

Amna Nawaz:

What do you make of all this right now, Jonathan? It's a big topic. This is nothing new in America. And yet it's new in terms of how prevalent it is.

Jonathan Capehart:

Right, because — and it pains me to say this, but we're talking about it because the president of the United States is a racist with a white supremacist policy agenda.

He began his political career questioning the legitimacy of the first African-American president. He started his campaign within the first two minutes saying that Mexicans were — quote — "rapists."

He called for a complete and total ban on Muslims entering the United States after the San Bernardino attack during the campaign in December 2016. He's used words on the campaign trail from the midterm elections and continued, invasion, caravans, infestation, animals, to what David was talking about.

In policy and in rhetoric, he is feeding into this environment, this atmosphere, where people such as the shooter in El Paso who has — we have seen the affidavit. He's confessed in doing what he's done, and confessed to targeting — quote — "Mexicans."

That — these things don't happen in a vacuum. Did the president order this person to do this? No. But that person heard in that rhetoric — and we have seen it from New Zealand, around the world, but particularly here, where we are dealing with a domestic terrorism problem, where the primary people committing these terrorist acts are white supremacists.

We're dealing with a situation here where the president of the United States is feeding into it with the rhetoric that's coming out of his mouth, whether it's from a podium at the White House or from a podium at a campaign rally somewhere in the country.

David Brooks:

Yes.

I hear you talking, and I think I basically agree with it. Then I — my next question is, well, how do we then do democracy for the next 16 months? Like, there is a presumption that we're all Americans together. There's a presumption of goodwill, that we can have a conversation.

And maybe Donald Trump — but how do we address ourselves to Donald Trump supporters, many of whom are very realistic and are supporters of him for good reasons having to do with their own lives and the dissolution of their own communities.

It's going to be hard to have a conversation once the president has been declared sort of really beneath contempt. And I'm not saying I disagree with you. I'm just saying this is a problem we have to deal with as we try to have a national conversation over this election."

Always liked Brooks... While many criticize him for not changing/going along w/ the party following trump, he is where that party has always been the last 20 years, trump & the rest are not..........

[gfm7175]

David Brooks is NOT a conservative.

[Bill]

Brooks is as much of a conservative as you are

What are your qualifications??

[PoliTalker]

HEllo gfm7175,

David Brooks is NOT a conservative.

He is sometimes called a moderate or a moderate-conservative.

Whatever he is, he is very well respected and usually spot on.

He is certainly no liberal or progressive.

[Bill]

“The Mooch” has turned on Trump now as well. It’s getting rough for Donald.

“The Mooch” said he will eventually turn on the country. I think he has already. He’s terrible policies aren’t good for us.

I agree w/ him...... Only a matter of time......

[gfm7175]

HEllo gfm7175,

He is sometimes called a moderate or a moderate-conservative.

Whatever he is, he is very well respected and usually spot on.

He is certainly no liberal or progressive.

He is a liberal. I've found much of his commentary to be quite moronic, myself. PBS puts him on just to give off the illusion that they have a "conservative" panelist mixed in with their other liberal panelists. He's really just another liberal who wants to liberally apply laws/policies.

[PoliTalker]

Hello gfm7175,

He is a liberal. I've found much of his commentary to be quite moronic, myself. PBS puts him on just to give off the illusion that they have a "conservative" panelist mixed in with their other liberal panelists. He's really just another liberal who wants to liberally apply laws/policies.

The only people who call him that are usually pretty far right.

Here's a wiki entry on his politics:

"Ideologically, Brooks has been described as a moderate,[32] a centrist,[33] a conservative,[34][35][36][37][38][39][40] and a moderate conservative.[41][42] Brooks has described himself as a "moderate",[43] and said in a 2017 interview that "[one] of [his] callings is to represent a certain moderate Republican Whig political philosophy."[44] Ottawa Citizen conservative commentator David Warren has identified Brooks as a "sophisticated pundit"; one of "those Republicans who want to 'engage with' the liberal agenda".[45] When asked what he thinks of charges that he's "not a real conservative" or "squishy", Brooks has said that "if you define conservative by support for the Republican candidate or the belief that tax cuts are the correct answer to all problems, I guess I don't fit that agenda. But I do think that I'm part of a long-standing conservative tradition that has to do with Edmund Burke ... and Alexander Hamilton."[46]"