Brooks and Capehart on Nikki Haley announcing her support for Trump (2024)

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Amna Nawaz Amna Nawaz

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Ali Schmitz Ali Schmitz

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New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including Nikki Haley's announcement she's backing Donald Trump, how voters may react to the verdict in Trump's criminal trial and President Biden's attempt to appeal to Black and Hispanic voters as polls show Trump is gaining their support.

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Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Amna Nawaz:

After months of hammering former President Trump on the campaign trail, Nikki Haley announces she will be backing her former rival this fall.
On that and the other political stories shaping the week, we turn now to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. That is New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post.
Great to see you both here in person together.
Jonathan Capehart:

Hey, Amna.
Amna Nawaz:

Let's start here with Nikki Haley.
Since she ended her campaign, the big question has been when or if she would endorse former President Trump. This week, she answered that.
Take a listen.
Fmr. Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC):

I will be voting for Trump.
Having said that, I stand by what I said in my suspension speech. Trump would be smart to reach out to the millions of people who voted for me and continue to support me and not assume that they're just going to be with him. And I genuinely hope he does that.
Amna Nawaz:

David, she didn't have to do this, right? Chris Christie ran against him, hasn't endorsed him. Asa Hutchinson, also the same, has not endorsed him.
Why do this, and why now?
David Brooks:

Yes, I mean, if you're a Republican politician, you have two options. One, we will call the Liz Cheney option, where you take a principled stand against Donald Trump's character and you become a former politician.
Or we will call the second the Marco Rubio option, which is, you get along with the program and don't say anything and just get along with Trump world. And I assume Nikki Haley wants to continue to have career as a politician in the Republican Party and believes fundamentally in the Republican Party. And so she's gone for the Marco Rubio option.
The question I would ask her is in, most lines of work, if you think someone is a moral degenerate, you don't get to the second question of, what do you think about tax policy?
(Laughter)
David Brooks:

Like, you sort of stop there. And from what Nikki Haley said about Donald Trump, she really has serious, not only doubts, but is totally condemning of his character.
So why do we care about marginal tax rates? or even — if a guy's a bad guy, he's going to be bad to our allies. I understand she cares about America's alliances abroad, and I agree with her on most policy issues on that front. But he's not going to be good to our allies if he — he's going to betray our allies, as he betrays all his friends.
And so moral character really does matter. And it's not something you can just sort of jump over for political expedience.
Amna Nawaz:

Jonathan, this is about her political survival. Is it a V.P. play, potentially?
Jonathan Capehart:

I…
Amna Nawaz:

Yes.

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Jonathan Capehart:

Who knows?
And, quite frankly, I don't care. And I say that because for all the things that David just said. The Marco Rubio option, you, like, get with the program, you throw all of your values, all of your positions, all of your character out the window for political purposes, the Marco Rubio option is a soulless option.
And she called Trump everything but a child of God in the last — in the closing weeks of her campaign. And now she's saying, I'm going to vote for him, but?
To David's point, there is no but here, whether it's when it comes to domestic policy or foreign policy. And I wish, I wish Nikki Haley had stood by her — the conviction she showed in the final weeks of her campaign and gone the Liz Cheney route, not blow up her career, but do something bigger than craven political ambition somewhere down the road.
Amna Nawaz:

David, you say she does it for political survival. Is that political future, though, undermined by someone who, as Jonathan points out, completely 180 on her stance?
She presents herself as an alternative to Trump and now says she endorses him.
David Brooks:

There's no future for any Republican in my lifetime, or at least hopefully live a little longer than that.
(Laughter)
David Brooks:

Let's say for the next decade.
If you weren't supporting Donald Trump, this is a working-class populist party, and you better get with the Trump program, or I really don't see a future for you in the Republican Party.
Amna Nawaz:

Speaking of former President Trump, by this time next week, we could have a verdict in his criminal hush money trial up in New York which the latest polls actually show a lot of Americans have been paying attention to in some form.
Latest numbers from Quinnipiac show as the 70 percent of those polls say they are very closely or somewhat closely following the trial.
Jonathan, do you think a conviction or an acquittal changes the race at all?
Jonathan Capehart:

Yes. How could it not when you have got 70 percent of the people who are paying attention.
And if it's an acquittal, I will be curious to see how the people react. If it's a conviction, I will be curious to see how people react. But that is a great sign. I am glad that a majority of the American people are paying attention to a trial that isn't even being televised.
And before this trial started, I thought, you know what, maybe this for this year will be the January — like the January 6 Committee hearings, where not many people thought that they would have an impact, but they did because it was like a slow trickle. People paid attention. They might not have told people they were paying attention.
But how can you sit through 10 — basically 10 episodes of compelling testimony and not have it impact you? What's interesting here is, this is a trial that's not even being televised.
Amna Nawaz:

Right.
Jonathan Capehart:

It's — on cable television, they're getting live readouts on their phones from their reporters inside the courtroom, and yet people are watching. They're paying attention.
And that, to me, is a great sign for the republic.
Amna Nawaz:

What do you think about that, David?
David Brooks:

Super skeptical of that poll.
(Laughter)
David Brooks:

If you ask people, are you paying close attention to the entire election…
Amna Nawaz:

Yes.
David Brooks:

… it's like 45 or 50 percent. So that the fact that many are paying attention in the poll, super skeptical.
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Amna Nawaz:

Yes. OK.
(Laughter)
David Brooks:

Will it affect? This, I confess I'm unsure about.
Amna Nawaz:

Yes. OK.
David Brooks:

A significant number of Republican Trump supporters say it will.
Amna Nawaz:

Yes.
David Brooks:

But, to me, the crucial question is, what's this election about.
Is this election — Abraham Lincoln said every election, every transformation election is about a central question. Is this election about Donald Trump is a threat to democracy? If that's what's really at the center of people's minds, then the trial will have an effect.
But it could be the crucial question is, the elites are screwing us and our country is in decline because of it. And if that's the crucial question, then Donald Trump will not be affected by this trial, because people have bigger things on their mind.
And my revelation over the last month is that it's a mistake to look at this election in America-only terms. If you look around the world at who's doing really well, it's people like Donald Trump, whether it's in — Modi in India, in Indonesia, a Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, all around the world, right-wing populists, Portugal with the Chega Party.
They're doing phenomenal. And so this may be just that kind of year. But I'm uncertain. Which will be the central question? One of those two questions.
Amna Nawaz:

If the trial matters and if — Jonathan, if there's a conviction, so far, we have seen President Biden kind of keep it at arm's length, allowing the judicial process to play out. Do you think we will hear more from him if there's a conviction? Will he lean into it on the campaign trail?
Jonathan Capehart:

Well, put it this way.
I think we will we will hear more from him once the judicial process has played itself out, no matter what the what the verdict is. If it's a conviction, you better believe he's going to say something about it. You want a criminally convicted president of the United States? If it's an acquittal, I look forward to hearing what the message is.
But just as President Biden didn't talk about Trump by name until he was the presumptive nominee, I don't expect him to say anything until this case is done.
Amna Nawaz:

Meanwhile, we have seen both President Biden and former President Trump doing a lot of outreach to voters of color, in particular, to Black voters and Hispanic voters, specifically a group that went heavily for Mr. Biden in 2020 and have since softened their support for him.
Here is part of what President Biden had to say to the graduating class at Morehouse College.
Joe Biden, President of the United States: We know black men are going to help us lead us in the future, black men from this class, in this university.
(Cheering and applause)
Joe Biden:

But, graduates, this is what we're up against, extremist forces aligned against the meaning and message of Morehouse.
And they peddle a fiction, a caricature what being a man is about, tough talk, abusing power, bigotry. Their idea of being a man is toxic.
Amna Nawaz:

Here now is how former President Trump addressed a crowd in the Bronx last night.
Donald Trump, Former President of the United States (R) and Current U.S. Presidential Candidate: These millions and millions of people that are coming into our country, the biggest impact and the biggest negative impact is against our Black population and our Hispanic population, who are losing their jobs, losing their housing, losing everything they can lose.
Amna Nawaz:

Jonathan, those are two very different kinds of messages, and yet Mr. Trump has made inroads with some of these voters of color. Why do you think that is?
Jonathan Capehart:

In — OK, buckle up.
(Laughter)
Jonathan Capehart:

This inroads, this notion that Trump has made inroads is a result of a New York Times/Siena poll that came out in February where, shockingly, it said that Trump was getting 23 percent of Black support.
Now, when this — when I was confronted with this, I was like, do you even know the sample size, sample size? Because I don't believe that. And you ask any Black pollster, and they're like, it's not there. The sample size on that poll was 119 respondents for a national poll.
Amna Nawaz:

You think it's a false narrative?
Jonathan Capehart:

I think it's a false narrative. We go through this every four years. Will Black voters show up? Oh, the support is softening. Oh, my God.
It feels like, to lots of us, that these narratives are perpetuated so that, if the Democrat loses, no matter what race, oh, well, the African Americans didn't show up, so it's their fault.
And with the president's speech, yes, he made the moral argument about democracy and masculinity and everything, but he also talked specifics, $16 billion invested in HBCUs, cutting Black child poverty. What got the biggest applause line was student debt relief. I mean, he is combining an economic message with the moral message and knowing who his audience is.
And Donald Trump, this is not about getting Black voters to vote for him. This is not about getting Latino voters to vote for him, because there were quite a few Hispanic-Americans there at that rally in the Bronx.
Amna Nawaz:

In the Bronx last night, yes.
Jonathan Capehart:

But this isn't about courting them.
This is about a permission structure for white voters on the periphery who look and hear language like that and think, I don't like that. I don't like him. I don't like the way that sounds. But, wait, he's in the South Bronx talking to those people. Maybe he's not that bad.
That's outrageous.
Amna Nawaz:

David, I will give you the final word here. We have got a minute left.
David Brooks:

Yes, I don't think this is about one poll, even though as vaunted as The New York Times' poll.
(Laughter)
David Brooks:

Obama won white working — or non-white working class by 76 percent. Biden is up by 6 percent. The results in Texas and in California, Latino voters in 2020, those were actual results.
Those were results showing a shift. The Wall Street Journal poll showing African American men, 30 percent for Trump. So these are a whole bunch of polling results. The question is, will the polling results actually lead to voting results?
And that is not — a lot of these people are so disaffected they may not vote. But I do think it is fundamentally true that working-class voters are voting more like working-class voters no matter what other identities they may have. And I do think there's a gender gap where guys are moving.
And so how big that is, a lot of these people may register a protest with a pollster because they're upset with things, but that doesn't mean they're going to vote this way. So I leave it up to — but I do think the trend toward working-class people voting in solidarity with other working-class people, I think that's a real thing that's across a lot of elections and a lot of polls.
Amna Nawaz:

As we always say, polls are a moment in time. They are not predictive.
And, as we always say, it's great to see you both.
(Laughter)
Amna Nawaz:

Jonathan Capehart, David Brooks, thank you so much.
Jonathan Capehart:

Thanks, Amna.

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PBS NewsHour from May 24, 2024

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Amna Nawaz Amna Nawaz

Amna Nawaz serves as co-anchor of PBS NewsHour.

@IAmAmnaNawaz

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Ali Schmitz Ali Schmitz