PBS News Hour

LISA DESJARDINS: If you're not sorry to say goodbye to 2024 and its turbulent politics, you are far from alone.

New polling shows that Americans are feeling deeply fatigued.

To take a look back at this week's news and the political year, we turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart.

That's New York Times columnist David Brooks, and Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post.

Gentlemen, thank you.

A pleasure to be here with you.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Hello, Lisa.

LISA DESJARDINS: Let's start with the clemency by President Biden earlier this week.

He reverted the sentences on death row, of 37 death row inmates.

They will now be serving life in prison.

David, at one point, you were a defender of the death penalty.

How do you see this particular clemency?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I was a supporter because I used to be a police reporter and the families of the victims that I covered wanted it.

And I thought they should get the satisfaction of the justice.

But I have since become an opponent, in part because so many cases of wrongful conviction.

And there was this "Texas Monthly" story that showed that a case where somebody had been executed for a homicide arson, it was probably wrongly convicted.

So I just thought, we just don't know enough.

And so I'm glad President Biden did what he did about the ending of the death row.

I'm generally glad about the clemencies, though I think it was a little broad.

There are some cases in there, one of the worst judicial scandals in Pennsylvania of a guy who took bribes from for-profit prisons and then sentenced juveniles to earn revenue for those prisons.

That was one of the worst scandals.

And he got at clemency, which I don't think is deserved.

But, in general, I think Biden did the right thing.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: No, I agree.

And the one thing people should understand is, particularly with President Biden pulling people off death row, he did not set them free.

They are still in jail for life without the possibility of parole.

So it's still -- they're still enduring a harsh sentence for the crimes they committed.

LISA DESJARDINS: Now I want to turn to something we saw in the last couple of days.

We have had a big conversation obviously this year about immigration.

This is now a conversation within the Trump universe, as we saw one of Trump's inner circle members, Vivek Ramaswamy, took to social media in a post talking about immigrant values, the values of his family and defending them and saying that they were better in fact some of the other American values.

He's saying the work ethic is there for immigrants.

Now, this took off.

This lit a fire in the MAGA community over immigration.

David, is this -- this is an example of Republican Party at crossroads still.You said last week that you think Trump has some good instincts on immigration, but what does this say about the party?

Is the party shifting or is Ramaswamy going to have to shift?

DAVID BROOKS: No, this is the core tension in the MAGA movement.

Basically, Trump took a party which was a dynamist party, free markets, capitalism, lots of technology, lots of progress, lots of immigration, the free movement of free people and free products, and he imposed upon it a reactionary, let's take care of ourselves.

So there are these two intellectual tendencies within the party, which is, we need immigrants because we want to have the best companies in the world, but we also have to take care of ourselves.

And a lot of the people who voted for Trump have been left behind by the go-go change the last 20 years.

And so you see these two tendencies within the party.

And so I think we're going to see this kind of tension not only on immigration, but on trade, on tariffs, on housing policy, economic regulation.

This is the central split.

And I'm more on the Ramaswamy-Elon Musk side.

But I have to say they're unbelievably condescending in the way they express themselves, by calling people ignorant, Ramaswamy saying you people don't know how to raise your kids, basically, and making the cardinal error, which always triggers me.

In his little tweet, he said, more math tutors, less sleepovers.

If you want to give your kids something cognitively demanding, don't send them to a math tutor.

Send them to sleepover with 12-year-old kids.

That's cognitively demanding.

LISA DESJARDINS: Are you going to defend Vivek Ramaswamy?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I'm not going to defend him, but I will say that what, he has done he has ignited, I think, a bigger conversation, even bigger than what David is talking about.

There's that.

But there's also this.

I think what he's -- what's erupted is a conversation about experts and expertise.

For the longest time, we have seen those two things, experts and expertise, downgraded.

And it reminded me of something that President Clinton told me when I interviewed him last month.

He said politics is the only business in which you can prove your authenticity by not knowing anything.

And so, if Vivek has a problem with where our culture is right now, perhaps he should look in the mirror he's holding up that his own party is looking at now at war with each other.

Maybe the way to solve some of the problems that he's talking about is that if they actually start talking more genuinely from a policy perspective about the issues facing the country.

And the country does need the experts and their expertise who come to this country, get a solid education, and then, because of our broken immigration system, have to take all that knowledge that they learned here and bring it back home.

LISA DESJARDINS: Jonathan, you just said this sparks an even bigger conversation.

What do you mean by that?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Well, the bigger conversation, leave aside the cultural issue, but also -- but immigration.

Like, we need to have more people in this country who are able to do the jobs that are here, but who also bring the values that reinforce American values.

LISA DESJARDINS: How did we get here to a point where we have a labor shortage, we have declining birth rates, and yet we have this even kind of this force that's opposed to even legal immigration?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes.

Well we have had record numbers of immigrations for 20 or 30 years.

And... LISA DESJARDINS: And that's what -- you think that's what it is, just the... DAVID BROOKS: I think, if you want to have an American populace that supports immigration, you have to control your borders.

We have seen that in Germany.

We have seen that all around the world.

And so the fact that it seems out of control to people, a lot of people say, what's going on here?

And then we have had, frankly, immigration policies that allow those of us in the educated class to have cheap labor, but a lot of people who are working and competing for those people for those jobs, they feel we are ignoring the plight of them as other people come in and take their jobs.

And so there's a class angle here.

But -- so you have got to secure the border if you want the American people to support immigration.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: And I hear that.

But what we're about to see, if you listen to Tom Homan, the incoming border czar for Donald Trump, part of that solution is separating families again, deporting families if they don't want to be separated.

That's not where we should be going as a country.

LISA DESJARDINS: He's saying he would give them the choice, either you are in detention together or you would have to choose to separate.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: That's no -- but that's no choice.

That's no choice at all, not for those families.

That's why they're living in fear right now.

LISA DESJARDINS: This is a difficult discussion after a turbulent year for conversation Americans have been having.

And, as I referenced, we had an Associated Press poll, Associated Press/NORC poll that found, you will be shocked, two-thirds of Americans are downshifting and moving away from how much attention they're paying to political news right now.

Jonathan Capehart, you are not only an important broadcaster on this desk, but you also happen to host your own show on MSNBC.

What do you think this means?

Is this a change in how people may approach Trump 2.0 or is this just sort of a normal post-election mental health break?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Well, let me tell you, Lisa, as an expert in this who -- we all saw this coming.

We have been through it.

We went through it in '16.

We went through it in '20.

So we knew that, after the election, no matter what happened, our ratings would fall.

Mine have fallen.

I am not ashamed to say that.

And we chalk that up to exhaustion.

It's been a long two years.

We chalk that up to people just needing a break, to your point.

People need a break.

They will come back after Inauguration Day.

That is guaranteed because there's going to be a lot happening in this country that is going to demand their attention and they're going to want to know.

They will come back.

LISA DESJARDINS: You know -- and you said it.

I also have a newsletter called "Here's the Deal."

We asked the political word of the year.

Overwhelmingly, the choice was exhaustion.

So I want to ask the two of you, what do you think the political word is for you as we look back as -- in our last few minutes?

DAVID BROOKS: I have to say, I'm thrilled by the decline in viewership for political news.

We're over politicized in this country.

People go to politics for a sense of belonging, for a sense of righteousness.

You should go to other -- you should go to your friends for those things.

You're asking more of politics than politics can bear.

My word for the year is chastened.

For those of us who oppose Donald Trump, we should be chastened because of the plurality of the American people thought we were wrong.

If you're a worshiper of the European social welfare model, you should be chastened, because that's falling apart.

If you hated Bibi Netanyahu, you should be a little chastened, because he took down Hamas and Hezbollah and Assad.

So there's a lot of reason for humility at the end of this year.

LISA DESJARDINS: Jonathan.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I have no word because there are too many words.

So I will just leave it at that.

LISA DESJARDINS: You can give us several.

We have got a minute remaining.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Well, I mean, humility, which I have used a couple of election nights, to say we need to be humble, those of us in our profession, because we don't know what the voters have to say.

I have to say that, after this past election, not - - I'm not wild about what the voters have to say, but chastened is a good word.

Exhausted is a good word.

There's so many good words.

LISA DESJARDINS: You know, we gave our readers a choice.

Exhaustion was one.

Shift was another.

And I toyed around with another, men, because I think we talked a lot about men as a voting group, different types of men, Black men, Hispanic men, men in a way we hadn't before.

But I think, in the end, I am not shocked, as you would not be, I think, that exhaustion was in fact where our readers ended up.

But no one's exhausted from this conversation.

(LAUGHTER) LISA DESJARDINS: Thank you all for joining us.

And I really hope that you have a wonderful rest of your holidays, David Brooks, Jonathan Capehart.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Thanks.

Same to you.

DAVID BROOKS: Nine minutes of us every week is enough.

(LAUGHTER) LISA DESJARDINS: Oh, we need more.

More.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: That's a word, enough.