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PBS News Hour - Brooks and Capehart

Brooks and Capehart on Trump’s faceoff with the courts

PBS News Hour - Brooks and Capehart

PBS NewsHour

News, Politics

4.51.2K Ratings

🗓️ 18 April 2025

⏱️ 11 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post associate editor Jonathan Capehart join William Brangham to discuss the week in politics, including President Trump's continued faceoff with the courts, if Republicans will begin pushing back against the president and Harvard rejecting Trump's demands. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Transcript

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0:00.0

Trump's continued face-off with the courts has some questioning whether the U.S. has reached the point of a

0:06.8

constitutional crisis. On that and more, we turn to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart. That's New York

0:13.2

Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart, Associate Editor of the Washington Post. Good evening,

0:19.6

gentlemen. Nice to have you both. I want to talk about

0:22.8

President Trump and the courts. I mean, the president has wielded his authority in, I think,

0:28.8

by any measure, in an extraordinary way. Slashing budgets and jobs across the federal government,

0:33.8

targeting billions of dollars at colleges and universities, threatening major law firms

0:38.3

on immigration, we've all been following that remarkable process.

0:43.3

But the courts, David, in many instances, have stood up to the president.

0:48.3

Do you think that they are doing their appropriate role of check and balance?

0:53.3

Yeah, I think they are.

0:55.0

The question is whether Trump pays any attention to the courts.

0:58.0

And so to me, watching the Trump administration,

1:00.0

just like the question administration say, you know,

1:02.0

we've decided stoplights don't apply to us.

1:04.0

Yellow lines down the middle of don't apply.

1:06.0

We're just going to roll over it, and you stop us.

1:09.0

And when you think constitutional crisis, you think, like like two sides facing off on the barricades.

1:14.7

But I've actually lived through a constitutional crisis.

1:16.8

When I was at the Wall Street Journal, I covered the end of the Soviet Union.

1:19.7

And it was obviously very different in many ways.

1:21.5

But one thing was interesting, the mental adjustment I had to make.

...

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