Brooks and Capehart on Trump and Vance clash with Pope Leo

Amna Nawaz:

President Trump claims that Iran agreed to everything in talks with the United States, including suspending its nuclear program. This comes at the end of a week that witnessed a dispute with the Pope and the sudden resignation of two lawmakers from Congress.

For all this and more, we now turn to Brooks and Capehart’s analysis. These are The Atlantic’s David Brooks and MS NOW’s Jonathan Capehart.

It’s great to see you both.

Jonathan Capehart:

Hey, safe.

Amna Nawaz:

Let’s start outside, because there are some headlines related to the wars there, Jonathan, as you saw, the ceasefire earlier in the week with Lebanon to stop the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, and then the US and Iran declaring that the Strait of Hormuz is open, even though the evidence suggests otherwise.

There’s also the president saying that Iran says it will suspend its nuclear program, stop supporting Hezbollah and Hamas, and continues to say the war is about to end. Can you believe this is happening?

Jonathan Capehart:

no.

(He laughed)

Jonathan Capehart:

I mean, that’s been my problem with this war from the beginning.

I have a hard time trusting what the administration says, and certainly what the president says, given the way he got the country into this war to begin with. We have seen him make very decisive statements, only to see action on the ground say otherwise.

And also, I can’t get over the fact that all of these things we’re talking about, in the Strait of Hormuz, have reopened. Well, it was open even before the war started. Or the things that are being talked about, about plutonium. Well, there was an agreement. It’s the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iran nuclear deal, that he tore up when he took office in the first round.

Sure, great. I hope the President is right that the war is coming to an end, but until it actually ends, I’ll believe it when I see it.

Amna Nawaz:

David, what about you? Trump said Iran agreed to everything in the talks. Do you buy that?

David Brooks:

No, this is not credible. I mean, Iranians are more likely to convert to Christianity.

I think the whole world, except perhaps Bibi Netanyahu, wants this war to end. The American people clearly want it to be over, given the polls. Europeans do. The Chinese do. The Gulf countries do this. I think the Iranians do that. I believe they were brutally attacked, and the blockade of Iranian trade appears to be working.

And so I think people want it to be over. But I don’t think the Iranians are in any position where they think they have to give everything up, because they feel like they’ve kind of won this war. So the question for next week is: Who can exert influence to get at least as much of it as possible?

As for me, I will reduce the war goals. Can we get Iranian uranium, which is difficult to say, in exchange for perhaps releasing some of their money? And that would be good. At this point, doing so would be tantamount to saving from this war.

Amna Nawaz:

I also want to ask you about something we reported previously, which is the dispute between the president and Pope Leo. Jonathan, we heard Liz talk about this earlier as well.

Against the background, Pope Leo issued a very strong statement rebuking the war in Iran. Then Trump unloaded on him online. Vice President Vance chimed in to criticize him as well, telling him to be careful on theological matters.

Is it smart for the president to get into this matter with the pope? What’s in it for him?

Jonathan Capehart:

No, it’s not at all smart to get into a fight with the Pope, or fight with the Pope, even though the President says, I’m not fighting with the Pope.

Yes, you are, and the president seems to be taking the Pope’s words seriously, whereas any pope, Pope Leo, Pope Francis, Pope John Paul, would have said the same thing, because it’s about life and death. This is about right and wrong. This is a big thing happening in the world and it has caught the Pope’s attention.

The thing I have is that I’m not Catholic. I went to catholic school. But I can understand Catholics in America, but around the world, who were very offended by the way the president talked about the pope, talked to the pope, and put up pictures of himself as the pope.

And then one more thing. The Vice President of the United States converted to Catholicism nine years ago. For him to say to the Vicar of Christ, who has been a priest for 34 years, that he needs to – quote – “be careful” about the way he talks about theology is one of the most insulting things I think I could ever hear said, first, to a Pope, and second, from a Vice President of the United States.

It’s all crazy and surreal.

Amna Nawaz:

David, what do you think about this? I mean, the way the President criticized the Pope and then Vice President Vance talked about him the way he did, what do you take away from that?

David Brooks:

Well, the boss was sacred.

The Easter texts were vulgar and crude at Easter, so the image of Jesus was legitimate desecration. And so I think one of the big negatives that Donald Trump has succeeded in is the idea that he is a man of faith. And I think, after the last few days, even a lot of Trump’s supporters are admitting that he’s not a person of faith, he’s not a man of God, because no one acts that way.

I agree with Jonathan that you shouldn’t – J.D. Vance shouldn’t question the Pope after being a Catholic for 9.5 minutes. But I think what you’re seeing here is the contrast between the way Trump went to this war, which is arrogant in the extreme, and the Catholic just war theory, which goes back to Augustine and Aquinas, which is intellectually rigorous.

And you have to–for it to be a just war, you have to remove a series of obstacles that ensure that you’re doing the thing right and that you’ve thought about this carefully. In some ways, I think they’ve removed some obstacles. There must be a just reason, and it must be morally valid. I think this is debatable.

But it is clear that some other obstacles are not a reason. Is there a correct intention? Donald Trump has not explained what our goals and intentions are. So there is no right intention. Is it a last resort? Have we given diplomacy every rule? Well, clearly not.

Is there a possibility of success? Well, there was no clear probability of success, because it had not been carefully calculated. So one of the things you see in what the Pope does is that he tries to establish a rigorous thought process about how to evaluate a policy that is so deadly.

The Trump administration is completely unable to think in these terms.

Amna Nawaz:

Can I ask you both to weigh in quickly? Because you mentioned the pictures. I want to remind people what those pictures were like. These images were posted by President Trump, an AI image of himself holding Jesus, and another image of himself as Jesus, which he says he believes shows him as a doctor, which he later deleted.

Then there’s the one at the end, the Pope, who goes back to 2025.

Real quick, Jonathan, for people who previously said this is a president who only makes jokes, do you think this is different?

Jonathan Capehart:

Which part of it?

I mean, the president… they could tell the president was just kidding. This is the excuse they use every time the president does something and then gets criticized for it. But these images that he was showing, to use a word that David had used before, sacrilegious, blasphemous — the idea that evangelicals, faith leaders, Catholic leaders didn’t come out en masse and forcefully condemn the president for doing this is a little baffling to me.

I hope that changes. But he shouldn’t do that. And there have to be other leaders, political leaders in his party who have the courage to go to him and say, Mr. President, maybe you should focus on getting gas prices down, figuring out affordability and health care instead of staying up in the middle of the night and generating means.

Amna Nawaz:

David, briefly in the pictures, do you think the people at his base, in particular, are hurting him?

David Brooks:

The Catholics I know who support Trump were more offended, frankly, by the Easter texts or Social Truth posts than by the pictures, because this was the day he commemorated the risen Christ, and he was writing vulgar, lewd, bloodthirsty texts on a day that showed he had no thought for what this day meant.

I think that was shocking to some of his supporters, even more so than the photos, which could have been a joke, but were tasteless.

Amna Nawaz:

I want to ask you about the events on Capitol Hill, because we’ve seen two resignations amid allegations of sexual misconduct, one of a Republican congressman, Tony Gonzalez, and one of a Democrat, Eric Swalwell, who we should also note is also facing rape accusations, which he denies, and it’s fair to say that Jonathan’s fall from grace has been very rapid.

Why do you think it came so quickly and there was bipartisan pressure at this point?

Jonathan Capehart:

Well, I think when it comes to Congressman Swalwell, the accusations were very serious.

The big signal to me about the seriousness of the accusations against him was when House Speaker Amerita Nancy Pelosi said publicly: As I discussed with the congressman, maybe he should deal with this outside of running for office.

And so his gubernatorial campaign, to me, was on borrowed time. She also wondered whether he would have to resign from Congress. But then women started coming forward. And we’re talking about the meteoric rise of people. I don’t think we have a word for a sharp decline.

He was out within 48 hours or so of the original accusation. That was surprising. But when it comes to Congressman Gonzalez, we’ve been talking about that. This has been a story in Washington for a long time now. The fact that they resigned and left Congress at the same time, I’m sure there was some politics involved.

I’m sure there is some calculation in the House because of the slim Republican majority. But, either way, the focus should be on the accused and their stories when it comes to Congressman Swalwell and the young woman who committed suicide who was involved with Congressman Gonzalez.

Amna Nawaz:

David, the last word here is yours in the last 30 seconds or so.

David Brooks:

Yes, I think it’s been very rapid because of the shifts in culture over the last 10 or 15 years.

You need to start with the MeToo movement. Go to the Epstein case and the number of people willing to befriend him. Then you have these cases. I think it has become clear that public tolerance for brutal behavior is low and that women know that there will be a support network for them.

It is a sign of moral progress that we are able to dismiss these issues as quickly as we have just seen.

Amna Nawaz:

We will take the sign of moral progress wherever we can get it.

David Brooks, Jonathan Capehart, thank you very much.

Jonathan Capehart:

Thanks, Amna.