David Brooks

The second thing and one of the reasons I'm not against going after these people as aggressively, you know, when they broke the law, if they break the law, they should be break the law.

George Santayana, the philosopher, said that Americans don't solve problems, they just leave them behind.

And I think what's going to happen after Trump

is that people are going to take a look at corruption in Washington on an unprecedented scale, and they're going to do what Americans did after Watergate.

They're going to want to turn the page.

And in 1976, Jimmy Carter looked like integrity.

And I actually think Gerald Ford did the right thing in pardoning Richard Nixon.

because we didn't need to wage the same war over and over again.

I thought the indictments of Trump during the Biden administration ended up helping Trump get reelected.

And so I worry that that will happen again or that will just motivate the same battle lines over and over again.

Voters who voted for him, they have real issues, real concerns, which Trump is not addressing.

The job is to win them over, not to lock them in the same battle lines as before.

I think societies move forward the same way human beings move forward for a process of rupture and repair.

Trump has ruptured our society from top to bottom.

And I think you just move on, you turn the page, and you offer something different.

After Nixon, you got something different in Carter.

After Carter, you got something different in Reagan.

After Reagan-Bush, you got something different in Clinton.

And people want to try something different.

Yeah, I mean, there's clearly a lot of weight behind your argument.