During the Biden era’s final installment of Brooks and Capehart on Friday’s PBS News Hour, Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart sought to rebut New York Times columnist David Brooks’s assertion that Donald Trump’s election shows Joe Biden failed to protect democracy. Instead, Capehart argued it was the voters who “gave up on democracy” and wanted to “try this authoritarianism.”
Brooks had been making a decent point on how Biden had omitted that most billionaires support Democrats during his speech about how Trump has formed an "oligarchy." However, he then moved onto what he considered Biden’s legacy, “The thing about Biden is, we go around the country, we have followed him for decades now. He's done a wonderful job over the course of his career, just a wonderful job. And I go around the country in New York State or Ohio, and there are manufacturing jobs coming back.”
Whatever success Biden supposedly had on the economy pales in comparison, Brooks argued, to his failure to prevent Trumps’s return to presidency, “But as Frank Foer wrote in The Atlantic today, his job was to end — to fight authoritarianism. The whole thing was to preserve democracy. And the election of Donald Trump suggested to some large degree he failed at that large mission. And so, at some sense, a wonderful guy, he's been a great public service, but there's a sadness and a tragedy at the end of it.”
Capehart did not want to blame Biden; instead, he attacked the voters for not listening:
I don't know if it's so much that he failed, because he did try. And lots of people criticized him for talking about it, including those of — some of us in the media. But I go back to a question that I asked, I believe around the table when we were here for the marathon election night coverage, that I just wonder if, with these results, the American people just sort of gave up on democracy, or wanting to, hey, let's try this authoritarianism, this guy who has told us what he wants to do. Let's give that a shot. That's the thing that concerns me the most.
Or, perhaps, the voters did not feel whatever success Brooks was talking about and voted accordingly while viewing Capehart-like warnings about authoritarianism as typical political mudslinging. There will be another presidential election in 2028, but don’t expect Capehart to admit he was wrong when it rolls around.
Here is a transcript for the January 17 show:
PBS News Hour
1/17/2025
7:44 PM ET
DAVID BROOKS: The thing about Biden is, we go around the country, we have followed him for decades now. He's done a wonderful job over the course of his career, just a wonderful job. And I go around the country in New York State or Ohio, and there are manufacturing jobs coming back.
But as Frank Foer wrote in The Atlantic today, his job was to end — to fight authoritarianism. The whole thing was to preserve democracy. And the election of Donald Trump suggested to some large degree he failed at that large mission.
And so, at some sense, a wonderful guy, he's been a great public service, but there's a sadness and a tragedy at the end of it.
JONATHAN CAPEHART: I don't know if it's so much that he failed, because he did try. And lots of people criticized him for talking about it, including those of — some of us in the media.
But I go back to a question that I asked, I believe around the table when we were here for the marathon election night coverage, that I just wonder if, with these results, the American people just sort of gave up on democracy, or wanting to, hey, let's try this authoritarianism, this guy who has told us what he wants to do. Let's give that a shot. That's the thing that concerns me the most.
