PBS News Hour - Full Show - November 7, 2025 – PBS News Hour full episode

Episode Date: November 8, 2025

Friday on the News Hour, flights are canceled amid the longest-ever government shutdown, while SNAP food benefits remain in legal limbo. As President Trump targets the agency in charge of jobs reports, we examine what other labor market data says about unemployment. Plus, Tucker Carlson hosts white nationalist and antisemite Nick Fuentes on his show, causing a rift in the Republican Party. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Good evening. I'm Amna Nawaz. Jeff Bennett is away. On the news hour tonight, more than a thousand flights are canceled across the U.S. amid the longest-ever government shutdown while SNAP food benefits remain in legal limbo. As President Trump targets the agency in charge of jobs reports, we examine what other labor market data says about unemployment in the U.S. One number is never going to tell you everything you want to know, but there is value in having a headline number that everybody understands. And Tucker Carlson hosts white nationalist and anti-Semite Nick Fuentes on his show, causing a rift in the Republican Party. Welcome to the NewsHour. U.S. Airlines began cutting flights at major airports today as the longest government shut down in U.S. history continues.

More than 1,000 flights at 40 airports were canceled by early evening. And the Trump administration battled in court over in order to start paying food aid immediately. Lisa Desjardin reports all of this comes as Congress and the president remain deadlocked over a way out. Today, a government-ordered nationwide scaleback of flights and a new question mark for travelers. Nobody want to travel and then you end up getting stuck. So that's definitely a concern for a lot of us, for sure. As the government shutdown enters its 38th day. I think the shutdown is terrible and it's affected my travel and then I woke up this morning not knowing whether or not I could take my flight.

Meanwhile, over a million federal workers have been without. pay for at least a month, many forced to stay on the job. And many air traffic controllers and TSA workers are calling out sick. TSA agent and mother of two, Maggie Sabatino, is watching her pantry closely, staying home for a specific reason. When I call out, I tell them the truth. Can't afford child care. This is enough to hold over for maybe another week. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy addressed reporters at Ronald Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C. today. Blaming the Senate and most of all, Democrats for not acting with enough urgency.

They should be here every day, every weekend, every week trying to find a deal so we can open the government back up. At an event later in the day, Duffy warned flight reductions could go as high as 20 percent if the government shutdown drags on through the holiday season. Senate Democrats said the cancellations were political and on the Senate floor made an offer for ending the shutdown centered around a one-year extension of the Affordable Care Act subsidies. But Republicans want more debate about that. They're frustrated at Democrats' tactics and seem unlikely to accept.

This is Senate Majority Leader John Thune told reporters he expects the Senate to stay at least part of this weekend. Meanwhile, it's been seven days since SNAP, the largest food assistance program in the country, was frozen in the shutdown. We are in a food crisis. Food banks across the country say they're struggling as courts wrestle over the program. Yesterday, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration must pay full snap benefits for the month immediately. Judge John McConnell found that the administration actually had political reasons for the pause and wrote, not making payments for even another day is simply unacceptable. The Trump administration immediately appealed that.

Yesterday, Vice President J.D. Vance called that ruling absurd and seemed to question the court's power. We can't have a federal court telling the president how he has to triage the situation. We're not going to do it under the orders of a federal judge. We're going to do it according to what we think we have to do to comply with the law, of course. Senate Democrats railed at the Trump administration for that. It's not a game. I don't see this as leverage. Now, a president who refuses to release SNAP funds to feed people,

now that is what is irresponsible and irreprehensible leverage. Concern keeps rising at food banks. We're the only food source for people. I just don't know how these kids and elderly and disabled, I don't know what they can do. In Ohio, this mother of four says she's been skipping meals to help feed her children. For the last three days, I have not eaten anything, you know, to make sure they were fed. I'd rather starve, rather see them go hungry. The length of the shutdown grows and quickly, so do its own.

effects. As travelers brace for mass disruptions at airports and SNAP recipients await the return of benefits. For the PBS News Hour, I'm Lisa Desjardin. Let's look deeper now into the latest on food assistance and the impact of the shutdown on families who rely on that aid. For that, I'm joined by Eric Mitchell. He's president of the Alliance to End Hunger. Thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. Can we just start with this legal back and forth and all the confusion? Is it even clear to you when those funds will be dispersed? The shut answer is no. I mean, they're still building this plane as they take off.

We just heard that there has been guidance issued to the states by the USDA. I'm unclear on what the specifics of those guidance are. I know there are states who are trying to figure it out as we speak. All we know is that right now you have 42 million people hanging in a balance trying to figure out how they're going to put food on table. So there's a legal political fight and families caught in the crossfire. You heard some of them there in the report from Lisa. Tell me about what you're hearing from people about what kind of

decisions they're making right now, how they're getting by. When we talk to our partners who are working with folks on the ground, you're hearing stories that are similar to what you just saw on the screen. You know, moms trying to figure out what type of food they're going to be able to afford for their kids, some having to sacrifice, you know, eating so that way they have enough to eat. Also, you know, keep in mind that this is like a thread, you know, attached to a sweater. When a person can't afford to buy food or when those benefits are going away, they have to replace that with something else.

So they may have to make choices that are hard to figure out. For example, how are they going to pay rent? How are they going to cover their medical bills? These are all the things that they are now having to figure out how to piece together now that they don't have the benefits to be able to purchase food. Food banks, food pantries have always been the place people rely on to help fill the void. The need has gone up. How are they managing this moment?

Food banks were already stretched in just based on the economy and food prices going. up and what have you and this just compounds that i mean you're going to have now you know there are longer lines that you're seeing across certain communities when you go to communities for example right outside of the dc area because of the furlough you're having more families who are having to rely on food banks and food pantries and then you put on top of that the fact that you know you have families who are not receiving the snap benefits that they once we're receiving that's just makes it even even further so the food banks are stretched out just like everyone else in the communities. Can I ask you what the Department of Justice is saying? Because they've

argued, their lawyers argued, even today, quote, there's no lawful basis for an order that directs USDA to somehow find $4 billion in the metaphorical couch cushions. How do you respond to that? Do you think the administration has some obligation here? The administration definitely has obligation. In fact, that is contrary to what they were saying in the beginning of October and when the shutdown was starting. They actually said that it's Congress is in. intent for USA to provide the benefits and provide funding for SNAP benefits when there's a lapse in coverage as a result of the shutdown. That's what they said October 1st.

They changed their mind a few weeks later and said that they were not going to be providing benefits in November, and now they're kind of walking back from there. So yes, they have legal authority, plus, you know, with the court decisions yesterday, I would say the legal authority is very clear that it's the intent for them to not only fund SNAP, to fully fund snaps so that people are able to receive their benefits. So how do you look at why this is happening? You heard in the report, Judge Collins, saying there's a political reason President Trump has posted, the shutdown will end, or the snap benefits will be paid when the shutdown ends.

Do you think this is a political decision or a financial one? You know, I never try to get into the mind or try to speculate what people's intentions are. I will say that, yes, the shutdown is part of the reason why we are in this situation. You know, the shutdown definitely needs to end. But there is a contingency fund to be able to provide resources for SNAP benefits while they're negotiating the shutdown. So in the long term, yes, the shutdown needs the end so that we don't have to revisit this conversation again in December. But, you know, I'm not going to say what the administration's views are. This is D.C., so all things can be political.

Well, let me ask you about what we've seen, this patchwork of efforts, states stepping in to fill the void, public and private efforts to do so. long can that last? Look, all this is really a temporary band-aid for a larger problem. I mean, states, private sector, they all are stepping up to the plate. I applaud the work that they're doing to step up to the plate. But the reality is, is that the federal government really has to be able to provide those resources. For every one meal that is given at a food bank, nine meals is given based on federal government resources. And so you cannot replace what the role and responsibility that the government has. Even with state and local governments, their budgets can only go bust so far. And this is another unnecessary burden

that the states are now having to figure out how to make work. All right. Eric Mitchell, president of the Alliance to End Hunger. Thank you for being here today. Thank you. In the day's other headlines, Cornell University announced a $60 million deal with the Trump administration to restore federal funding and stop investigations into the school. The Ivy League University will pay $30 million directly to the government and another $30 million toward research to support American farmers. Earlier this year, the administration withheld $250 million in federal research funding amid claims of civil rights violations. Cornell joins a handful of other schools to make deals with the Trump administration, including Columbia, Brown, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of Virginia.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban says his country has received an exemption from U.S. sanctions on Russian energy, though the White House has not commented. Orban is a reliable advocate for Russia in the European Union, and his landlocked country relies heavily on Russian oil. Orban announced the exemption after meeting with President Trump at the White House today. The two men are longtime allies, and earlier today, Trump acknowledged the realities of Hungary's reliance on Russia. It's very difficult for him to get the oil and gas from other areas. As you know, they don't have the advantage of having sea. It's a great country. It's a big country, but they don't have sea.

They don't have the ports. And so they have a difficult problem. The White House meeting comes a day after a bipartisan group of U.S. senators introduced a resolution to urge Hungary to stop using Russian oil and gas. Sudan's ambassador to the U.S. says his government is studying a humanitarian truce put forward by the U.S. and other countries aimed at ending the country's civil war. The paramilitary group known as the RSF agreed to the truce yesterday. But Ambassador Mohamed Abdelah Idris says the group is not serious about the deal. Instead, he claims the RSF targeted Sudan's capital of Khartoum today, nearly two weeks after it seized the provincial capital of Al-Fashir in North Darfur.

Those who were forced to flee, Al-Fashir described horrific killings carried out by the RSF. 50 or 60 people in a single street, 10 or 20 people, they kill them, bang, bang, bang. That's the massacre I saw in front of me. Sudan's military has said it will agree to the proposed cease. fire only if the RSF withdraws from civilian areas and gives up its weapons. In Vietnam, Typhoon Kalmeghi left at least five people dead and thousands of homes damaged before weakening into a tropical storm. This storm was a very strong one.

I've lived here all my life, and I've never been so scared like last night. Locals were left searching for basic supplies, with some using a small waterfall to collect drinking water. Heavy winds and rain brought down trees and power lines, leaving more than 1.6 million households without power. Earlier this week, it ripped through the Philippines, where the death toll has risen to at least 188. Another 135 people are still missing, and the country is bracing for another typhoon due early next week. Denmark's government announced a plan today that would ban social media access for anyone under the age of 15. It's one of the most dramatic steps taken by a European country to address concerns about the impact of harmful content on kids. But officials haven't laid out exactly how the plan would be enforced,

and they acknowledge it could take months to get the relevant legislation passed. Denmark's announcement follows Australia's ban on new social media accounts for anyone under 16, which takes effect next month. On Wall Street today, stocks crawled back from earlier losses to end the day mixed. The Dow Jones Industrial average added about 75 points on the day. The NASDAQ slipped by about 50 points. The S&P 500 closed out the week with a modest gain. And the world's tallest teenager is setting new records, becoming the tallest player in college basketball history.

This is as loud as it's been all night. Seven foot nine, Olivier Rieu took the court last night to thunderous applause for the defending national champion, Florida Gators. The towering redshirt freshman from Canada played the last two minutes of his team's blowout win against North Florida. He received more attention than action, though, never even touching the ball. And by the way, the players in this photo next to Rio are as tall as six foot nine, just to put that into perspective. And from sports now to science, and the passing of James Watson, who helped to discover the double helix shape of DNA. Watson shared the 1962 Nobel Prize with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for discovering that DNA is shaped like a gently twisting ladder.

That breakthrough led to genetic engineering and gene therapy, along with techniques for identifying human remains and tracing family trees, among others. But Watson was also a controversial figure, ruffling feathers among his peers and shocking many with his racist comments later in life. His passing was announced by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he worked for men. many years. James Watson was 97 years old. Still to come, on the news hour, Tucker Carlson's interview with anti-Semite Nick Puentes creates a rift among Republicans. Jonathan Capehart and Matt Gorman weigh in on the potential impact of the Democrats' election sweep. And former diplomat Mike McFaul discusses his new book on the global fight between autocracy and democracy. hour from the David M. Rubinstein studio at W.E.T.A. in Washington. And in the west from the Walter

Cronkite School of Journalism at Arizona State University. And an update to our lead story. Late this evening, a U.S. appeals court refused to pause a federal judge's order requiring the Trump administration to fully fund SNAP food aid benefits during the government shutdown. Meanwhile, if the government were not shut down, we would have received the latest official report today on jobs and unemployment. Instead, it's the second straight missing report, leaving employers, workers, and policymakers trying to understand the labor picture without crucial data. One thing seems clear. The labor market may not be cratering, but it doesn't look very strong. This week, one private report found 42,000 new jobs

were created last month, then a separate report found that more than 150,000 jobs were cut in October, the highest in over two decades, and tied in part to the AI. boom. Paul Salman has been looking into the most recent official unemployment numbers and questions over whether the government's own measurements are outdated. Our first year president. Joe Biden. I know some wanted to see a larger number today, and so did I. George W. Bush. The fundamentals are strong. We're just in a rough patch. Barack Obama. It's a reminder that we're still in the middle of a very deep recession. Donald Trump is not the first recent president vexed by a dreary number of jobs created. But he is

the first to declare war on the data. We're doing so well, I believe the numbers were phonyed, so you know what I did? I fired her. And you know what? I did the right thing. Which her, Erica McIntarfer, then commissioner of the BLS, the Bureau of Labor Statistics. In August, hours after a BLS report showing slow job growth and large downward revisions for previous months, Trump candor, claiming she'd rigged the totals to make him look bad. These numbers just came out. Now, few outside the White House think the BLS ever cooks the books, but plenty of Americans might agree that something seems wrong with the other BLS number that comes out every month tracking the job market, the unemployment rate.

It's barely 4%, less than the average of every decade since the 1960s. Yet two-thirds of U.S. workers now report living paycheck to paycheck. The job, you know, search has been rough. Like 33-year-old marketing pro Shelby Glover. laid off in 2023. She now works three jobs to make ends meet. I don't remember a time, even when I was in my early 20s, where it has felt this difficult. Producing numbers, headline numbers that are reported every month that produce a rosier picture than is in fact lived reality, misleads the American people and misleads policymakers, and it has very serious

implications. Former controller of the currency Eugene Ludwig says the problem is how the BLS defines unemployment. When we think of as employed, right? We think of somebody having at least enough of a job that they can eat and have a roof over their head. But when we put out these numbers and say, hey, only 4.3% of the American people are unemployed, we think of a world that is quite different than the reality that people are facing. The headline unemployment rate measures the percentage of Americans looking for work who can't find any. Each month, the BLS calls some 60,000 household, and they ask about a recent week, says Erica Groshen, who ran the BLS from 2013 to 2017. During that one week, did you work for at least one hour for pay or

profit? There are other questions, but yes, one hour in a week, and the BLS says you're employed. These definitions were established in the 1930s, and it was much more typical for somebody either to have a job, factory job or whatever, or not to have one. Our gig economy, where we have a high percentage of the population with short-term gigs, is a different world. And the statistical resources in the government haven't accommodated to that. So claims Ludwig, the unemployment numbers ignore millions of Americans who either can't find as much work as they want

or don't earn more than $25,000 a year. functionally unemployed, he calls them. People like Brian Box, a forester in Athens, Georgia. Do you consider yourself employed? I don't consider myself fully employed. I can definitely work a heck of a lot more than I am now. Box hasn't actually cashed a paycheck in months while doing prep work for next season. But anyone who works for themselves one hour in the reference week,

even if for zero or negative income is employed. and are you making enough to live? Right now, the only way my finances make sense are because of my family helping me out. It's really, really tough. I hate being, you know, I hate feeling like I'm a burden to others. Shelby Glover is struggling too. I have put in dozens and dozens of lesbys,

and maybe once or twice made it to an actual interview. When you see the headline numbers of low unemployment, for example, just barely over 4%. What's your reaction? It is a little hard to believe. I mean, right now at this point, I am employed, but I'm not fully employed. In fact, more than a quarter of the labor force now does gig jobs, says the workers' lab at Johns Hopkins, driving for Uber, pet sitting, etc. And for about one in ten of us, gig work is the primary source of income.

Thus concludes Ludwig, the more that we have part-time work where people really want to have a full-time job and the more that we don't pay people a living wage, our calculation would show that in fact as a practical matter in terms of a functional matter, they're really unemployed. So what do you calculate the real functional unemployment rate to be? The functional unemployment rate is between 24 and 25 percent today, moving closer to 25 percent. Former BLS head Erica Groshen doesn't dispute the math,

but she thinks the agency's headline number is the standard for a reason. One number is never going to tell you everything you want to know if you care about the labor market. but there is value in having a headline number that everybody understands. Now, the BLS does report a broader unemployment number, known as U for Unemployment Six, which includes many, though not all of us, who've stopped looking for work. They almost double the headline rate to 8.1%. Add in everyone who says they want a job, around 11.5%. But you never even hear about U.S. 6.

Seems like an increasingly jarring disjunction between the headline number and the reality for most Americans. It's not up to the BLS to make that case itself, right? BLS is not a political or advocacy organization. In the meantime, says Ludwig, 25% of the American people right now are functionally unemployed. If you don't say that, 4.3% makes you feel, hey, you know, you're doing pretty well. It paints a much rosier picture, and it's, you know, it causes policymakers not to take the

problem as seriously as it really is. One presidential candidate who did tap into that idea back in 2016 was Donald Trump, who spoke about it after a primary win in New Hampshire. Don't believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5% unemployment. The number is probably 28, 29, as high as 35. If we had 5% unemployment, do you really think we'd have these gatherings? Nearly nine years later, President Trump has, well, changed his mind. For the PBS News Hour, Paul Salman.

A task force dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism reportedly decided to sever ties with the Conservative Heritage Foundation. It comes after the think tank's president, Kevin Roberts, defended Tucker Carlson's interview with a far-right anti-Semitic activists. This infighting has laid bare a growing schism within conservative circles over how to address anti-Semitism. William Brangham reports. Nick Fuentes, thank you for doing this. Yeah, thank you for having me. I wanted to meet you. The interview, which lasted over two hours, was posted late last month and has been seen over 20 million times.

The conservative commentator Tucker Carlson interviewing Nick Fuentes, the 27-year-old hard-right influencer with millions of followers known as Groyper's. Fuentes is known for his open racism. White people have a special heritage here as Americans. His misogyny, like when he wrote, Your Body, My Choice, after the 2025. election. The whole political system is just based around women never being accountable for any of their choices. And his overt anti-Semitism ranging from Holocaust denial to his belief in a global Jewish conspiracy. A big challenge to that is organized jury in America. I don't think the interview with Carlson drew quick, sharp condemnation from many in the conservative movement.

capable of that. Ben Shapiro, editor of the conservative Daily Wire, wrote, no to the groipers, no to the cowards like Tucker Carlson, who normalized their trash. Christians can critique the state of Israel without being anti-Semitic. But Kevin Roberts, head of the Heritage Foundation, defended Carlson. Heritage is the influential conservative think tank behind Project 2025, and which has long supported Israel and America's support for it. Roberts argued attacking Carlson was a distraction. The venomous coalition attacking him or sowing division.

Their attempt to cancel him will fail. Most importantly, the American people expect us to be focusing on our political adversaries on the left, not attacking our friends on the right. Roberts faced a strong backlash, including from staffers within heritage and calls for his resignation. He later apologized and denounced Nick Fuentes specifically. But the controversy has revealed the ongoing challenge of balancing different factions within the MAGA base. For the PBS News Hour, I'm William Brangham. For more on this, we're joined by Arno Rosenfeld. He's an enterprise reporter with The Forward, that's a Jewish news outlet, where he writes the anti-Semitism decoded newsletter.

Thanks for being here, Arnau. Thanks for having me. So this interview for Tucker Carlson, who's a former Fox host, a mainstay of conservative media, to invite a known Holocaust denier or a white. white supremacist and Nick Fuentes onto his show for an objectively friendly interview. What does that moment represent? Why would he do that? So I think a few things are going on here, because in addition to being all the things that you described about Nick Fuentes, he's also an incredibly influential pundit in a certain

corner of the conservative movement. He has many, you know, hundreds of thousands of people tune into his live streams. He has millions of followers online. And I think Carlson recognized that Fuentes is growing in influence. And Carlson wanted to harness that influence. In this case, he was really trying to get Fuentes to align with him on trying to get the MAGA movement to withdraw support for Israel. And as part of that, he was trying to convince Fuentes to back away from some of his more inflammatory rhetoric around Jews because Carlson thought that was bad for the larger goal that they shared of trying to reduce American support for Israel. So that's why Carlson had Fuentes on.

It wasn't just about giving him a platform, but it was about trying to sort of win him over or build an alliance. And I think that's what worried a lot of people because Carlson has a lot more mainstream credibility than Fuentes does. And so if they're joining forces, that's concerning to a lot of people. Is that shift? Is that illustrative of a larger split or divide within conservatives? Absolutely. I mean, Trump has historically supported Israel. But there is a real dividing line there. And we're starting to see some breakways in Congress, too, folks like Marjorie Taylor Green, becoming more hostile to American aid for Israel. But on the right, especially, folks like Carlson, certainly people like Fuentes, join that, hostility toward support for Israel with just overt anti-Semitism, tropes, conspiracy theories about Jews.

So then you have the statement from the president of the Heritage Foundation, right, stepping in to defend Carlson. What do you make of that? So I think it was sort of, in some respects, an unforced error on the part of the Heritage Foundation. Nobody was actually asking them to weigh in here. And so the fact that Roberts would go out of his way to defend Carlson, not just as a friend, but as a legitimate voice in the conservative movement and his decision to interview Fuentes as a legitimate political decision alarmed a lot of people because I think there are folks who recognize that Fuentes might be growing in influence, but he's on these dark corners of the internet, and you can't really police those very well.

Carlson was booted from Fox News. He's also independent right now. But Heritage is still a very influential gatekeeper and policy voice within the MAGA movement in Washington, D.C. And so if it's not just Carlson as a more mainstream voice than Fuentes, bringing Fuentes along, but then it's heritage giving their stamp of approval to Carlson, I think that's what scared a lot of people. They started thinking, oh my gosh, where are the gatekeepers who's going to stop this open anti-Semitism and animosity toward Jews from entering the political mainstream? So what about that? What about the keepers of that, that firewall, as it were? Because you have seen people like Mitch McConnell and Ted Cruz and Ben Shapiro come out against Nick Fuentes. unequivocally. But now you have him being hosted on a show with Tucker Carlson. Is he existing

in the dark corners, or is that force and that voice more ascendant among conservative circles? You know, I think what Carlson realized, and I think the reason that Carlson, and he said this in the conversation with Fuentes, brought Fuentes on, is because those gatekeepers have not been able to stop Fuentes's rise. One thing that Fuentes talked about in that interview was his longstanding feud with Ben Shapiro, who he said for years has been trying to keep him out of the mainstream. And it hasn't worked. we did see, I mean, the backlash was strong, and it does seem like, you know, Roberts had to apologize. Heritage has walked a little bit of this back. They've, they've certainly been receptive

to the criticism, but the fact that it would even happen in the first place is a sign of how much the discourse has moved. I also want to point out, President Trump has met with Nick Fuentes before at Mar-a-Lago. He said he didn't know who he was or what he stood for, but he also met with Kanye West, who has been anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler in some of his remarks. That was years ago, though. Is there something different about this moment? I think that is a part of how we got to this moment. So I think this is the culmination of years of these trends. I mean, Donald Trump in 2016, I think, really called the bluff of a lot of Republican politicians

who'd been hinting at various things but hadn't said them openly about immigrants, for example. And Fuentes, I think, has called the bluff of conservative media who have hinted at globalists, for example. And Fuentes just comes out and says, no, we're talking about Jews. And so I think that they're very like-minded in that sense of saying, you know, we don't have to talk around this stuff, we don't have to use euphemisms, we can just say it. And, you know, Trump came back to office, Fuentes got a bigger platform. So it's really a culmination more than a shift, I think. But what does all the rhetoric mean in the real world?

We know there's a connection between what is said when it comes to anti-Semitism and real-world violence against Jews. How are American Jews looking at this? You know, I think what's really scary for a lot of American Jews. and one thing that American Jews have cared a lot about are the maintenance of liberal democratic norms, not a partisan thing so much as maintaining gatekeepers of sort of polite society, maintaining the ability to say, you know,

this rhetoric is beyond the pale, we can't tolerate this. And so as those things break down, it's less that there's a one-to-one somebody watches that interview and goes out and commits an act of anti-Semitism, that may happen here or there. It's more of the sense that if you're a young person

online a lot, watching folks like Fuentes, you start to think that this rhetoric is okay. And so I think the idea that this is going to become something that folks in Congress believe, that folks in the more mainstream media believe, I think that's what's most alarming in this moment. Arno Rosenfeld of the foreword, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Thank you. Negotiations to reopen the federal government teetered this week as the shutdown became the longest in U.S. history. In the meantime, Tuesday's elections brought resounding wins for Democrats across several states.

For analysis of all this and more, we turn now to Capehart and Gorman. That is Jonathan Capehart of MSNBC and Republican strategist Matt Gorman. David Brooks is away. Good to see you. Good to see you. All right, let's start off with some of the takeaways from those elections. We heard President Trump earlier this week articulate the concern, Jonathan, that this party lost some of those key elections because they're being blamed for the shutdown.

Democrats, meanwhile, riding this wave of wins. Do you feel like both sides are taking away the right message? Should Democrats dig in right now? I don't know if they should dig in. I understand the impulse to do that. Maybe dig in because the president's out there saying out loud, much to Republicans' consternation, The shutdowns hurting us, affordability, a lot of things that the Republicans did not talk about in these elections running up.

I do think that I don't understand why Republicans, and I'm thinking of Senator, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, why they are not working really hard, sitting down with Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, calling in Jeffries, calling in the president, and saying, hey, let's get, let's get this done because it hurt us on Tuesday, but more importantly, it's hurting the American people right now in real time. Matt, should Republicans be doing that, especially after what we saw in the election? When I first saw him, President Trump, talk about the shutdown as the reason for this, I immediately clocked it as it was there was breadcrumbs, so to speak, before even the results came out that he was preparing to really pressure Republicans on the filibuster. There was a story in Axios came out about 6 o'clock on election night,

saying he was going to hold Republicans to account to pressure them to undo the filibuster. And I saw that as an extension of the strategy. By the exit polling, it doesn't seem to shut down in and of itself as opposed to say the economy was really what the cause of Tuesday night was. But it was away from him to advance that. Now, certainly, as we see now with airlines, it's about to get real for a broader swat the American public than before. Not just folks on SNAP and not just folks who have in charge. on the exchanges. So, Jonathan, to that point, we reported earlier

or a thousand flights canceled so far, right? The last longest shutdown that we had, it was air traffic and those disruptions that were the pressure point that brought it to a close. Do you feel like the same thing could happen this time? I mean, maybe, but I think there are several pressure points, and I'm one of those people who has been affected by a canceled flight.

I might have another canceled flight, might have to jump a train, and nothing wrong with the train. But it could be a pressure point, but I do think Republicans, there are a much multiple pressure points here that precede the air traffic controllers. The exchanges, they opened up. The health care exchanges, folks are finding out right now how much their health premiums are going to shoot through the roof at the beginning of the year. There's the SNAP benefits issue, which the administration, thankfully, apparently just before we went on air,

a federal judge said, no, Mr. President, we are not going to hear your case. The lower court ruling stands, it just, to me, it seems like there is a, there's a meanness and a, and a cruelty here when you put all of these things together, using the shutdown, using these things to, pressure Democrats to come to the table and come up with a deal. But again, I would argue the president should call in all the leaders, lock them in a room, and so what are we going to do? And I think that Thune, correct me if I'm wrong that, but maybe that's something that Thune and Speaker Johnson don't want to have happen because the president probably would make a deal with Schumer and Jeffries, particularly on health care.

Matt, how do you look at that? I think both leaders on the Republican side are very leery of doing any preconditions to opening the government beforehand. I think we saw this back when I was at the NRC in 2013 when Ted Cruz shut down the government over Obamacare. Obama had this thing. We will not hold hostage reopening the government. And I think Republicans now on the other side of this have held that same standard because

there will inevitably be another CR, whether it's January, whether it's December, whether it's next year. And setting down this path of now we can negotiate what we need to do to just simply keep the government open is a very, very tough path to hoe. So if Democrats are offering now one-year extension on those health care subsidies they've been asking for, you would not advise Republican leaders to take that deal. It's a total on start because we're right back into this right before the midterm elections next year. And I think many Republicans see a lot of danger in having that sort of thing happen. And even the leader Jeffries said on the other end, that was non-starter as well. So in that case, I have to ask, where's the off-ram?

That's where this comes down to. There has to be some magical path. I don't know what it is yet, where Schumer and Democrats can go to their base and say, hey, look, we got a pound of flesh, but in the White House and Republicans say, hey, we didn't cave either. That is a mystical tightrope to walk. Indeed. I see you want to move on to another topic. If we're waiting Magic. I'm not sure how long we're going to be waiting. I do want to ask you about something else this week, which is big news in Congress. And that was Nancy Pelosi announcing that she is not going to run for re-election. This is talking about a woman 85 years old now, who has been a force for four decades on Capitol Hill. Among the reactions, though, I have to say,

to her announcement was this from New York Times columnist Michelle Goldberg, who wrote, quote, she's right to retire now, setting an example for a party with a serious gerontocracy problem. Jonathan, what do you make of that? Should more Democrats follow her lead? I'll leave it to them. You know, sure, there are a lot of old people in Congress. There are a lot of old people in Congress on both sides of the aisle. Whenever folks are talking about the gerontocracy problem,

I wonder, are they talking about the fact that they're old, or is it cover for they're old and they're not pushing the ideas to move the party forward? I don't hear anyone. hear anyone demanding that Senator Bernie Sanders quit the Senate. No one's talking about him quitting the Senate. But he and Nancy Pelosi are on opposite sides of a whole lot of issues. So whether Senator Schumer should retire or other people should retire, I leave it to them. But, you know, we're talking about the retirement of Speaker of Meriton, Nancy Pelosi.

I've interviewed her several times. We've all probably in an interview. She interviewed her many times. She is indefatigable. She is constantly working, constantly fundraising for Democrats, constantly trying to hold the line, whether it was President Trump, or trying to get the president's agenda through when it was President Obama, passing Obamacare without a single Republican vote. And she was very proud of that. And whenever I asked her any question about counting votes, she would always go to that. I passed an Affordable Care Act without a single Republican vote. She is consequential. So whether other old, old people in the Senate should retire or in Congress should retire. Whatever, Nancy Pelosi deserves her due. She also is very notable in pushing another old Democrat out in Joe Biden last summer. It was, you know, when that was starting to abate a little bit, you think maybe can Joe Biden can get through this terrible debate in the week's aftermath. She went on mourning Joe almost out of nowhere and really stuck the proverbial knife in his

political career. But she's been effective for both parties. Look, certainly, you know, with Jonathan, for Democrats, a ton of accomplishments of all the 25 years of legislative accomplishments for them. But candidly for us as well, you know, we have numerous times put her in political ads when we wanted to win back the House. And she was a very effective boogeyman for our party as well. But let's be honest with both her and Mitch McConnell leaving the scene in 2026, 2027, those sorts of dealmakers, especially, for example, when we had the fiscal cliff back in 2010 or that whole thing. Those are the deal makers. Those are the people that could get in a room with a Joe Biden and hammer a deal out.

There's no one there this time. Serious legislators. I do feel compelled to point that Officer President Trump was the oldest president ever inaugurated. So is there an age problem on the Republican side as well? Again, but who's effective? You look in the debate stage in CNN. There's quite a difference between Trump and Biden. I do worry about the current president's mental acuity and a whole host of issues.

We're going to save this for another conversation. Well, when we have more time, I do want to get both of you to weigh in if we can on the passing of Dick Cheney, arguably the most consequential vice president in American history. How do you look at his legacy, Jonathan? Sure, he was consequential for some bad things, you know, bad intelligence that got the United States into war in Iraq. But I do think as part of his, part of his obituary has to be what he did in his final years. And that was to do something that far too many Republicans still in this town refused to do.

That was to stand up to Donald Trump when he was offending the Constitution and the rights of the American people. And for that, for that, I applaud him. Matt? I remember an old story. Him and Dan Quail, the former vice president, were talking. Quayle was telling him what the vice presidency is like. This is before Cheney took office.

And Quail said, really, it's pretty much pretty ceremonial. And Cheney and his trademark kind of dower, he's like, the president and I have a different understanding. And isn't that the understatement of probably the decade? He changed that role, whether you're Joe Biden or J.D. Vance, certainly gave a path for them to follow and really could, was able to pull levers in the administrative state that I think no one else since him has been able to do. Complicated legacy, like so many leaders, consequential for sure. And of course, our thoughts are with his family. Matt Gorman, Jonathan Capehart. Great to see you vote. Thank you so much. Thank you.

The former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFall, has been analyzing the rise of autocracies around the globe and the threats they pose to small D democracy for decades. He chronicles these challenges and prescribes policy to deal with them in a new book. autocrats versus Democrats, China, Russia, America, and the new global disorder. We spoke recently, and I asked him if the U.S. is in a new Cold War with China. Yes. And no. And that's one of the hypotheses that I wanted to wrestle with in the book. So let's take China for a minute. Two global powers, superpowers? Yes. They're ahead of everybody else. Ideological conflict? Yes. The book's called Autocrats for. versus Democrats. Do they have global aspirations? Both countries do, just like the Soviets and the

Americans did during the Cold War. So that's on the similarity side. The differences, I think, are probably even more important. One, our economies are intertwined between China and the United States in a way that the Soviet and American economies never were. That's different, and that requires a different strategy for dealing with China. In addition, China is integrated into the global economy in a way that the Soviet economy never was. And if we think our Cold War strategies are going to work with that, we're wrong. Second, yes, there's an ideological conflict,

but I don't think it's as acute, as it was during the Cold War. But third, the biggest difference is us. We are more isolationist today in both parties, not just the Republican Party, than at any time during the Cold War. And we're more polarized today as a society than we were at any time during the Cold War, those are big differences.

When you look at the relationship between the U.S. and Russia, specifically a country, you know so well, you've lived there, you've represented the U.S. there as well, and you see more of a relationship between our president here in the United States and President Putin, more of a willingness to engage. Does that bode well for that competition? Does that mean less of a security risk for American prosperity and power? Yes and no, again. On the one hand, another important lesson from the Cold War, often forgotten today, is that even when we had lots of competition and we were at war, proxy wars, say, in Vietnam, with the Soviets, we learned to

cooperate on interests that were of benefit to the United States and the Soviet Union. So arms control. We did that during the Cold War. We should do that with Russia today. The New START Treaty, the last treaty we have with them, is about to expire. I think President Trump should use that relationship he has with Putin to extend that treaty. At the same time, I sometimes think the president is a bit naive about Putin's intentions. I don't think Putin wants a close relationship with the United States. He actually wants to weaken the United States and weaken more broadly the democratic world. He wants to blow up NATO and he wants to conquer Ukraine. And no amount of schmoozing is going

to stop him from pursuing those ideological pursuits. What about the approach for this administration when it comes to China? If the competition is mainly economic and not ideological in nature, does a trade war, do tariffs, do that help to contain China and the Chinese threat? Yes and no. The world's complicated. I'm sensing a trend here. That is a trend, and that's the main message in my book, is that you've got to understand

the complexity, and if we oversimplify things, we are going to make mistakes as Americans in the world. So on the one hand, I think it was a good thing that the president and chairman she met and talked. We should talk to everybody. On the other hand, I think the president eroding our alliances in Asia and Europe, terrifying our friends for no apparent reason because sometimes they run an ad that we don't like, divides the democratic world. And in this competition with China today, that's going to last for decades, we need our allies. We cannot afford to do this alone. President Trump has an affinity for coercive power.

He likes to coerce people and tell them what to do. But there are two things that are wrong about that strategy when dealing with China. One, it doesn't work with the Chinese because they have power over us, too. They have choke points over us, too. And we just learned that. You play a game of chicken with the Chinese, we back down. And that is not in our long-term national interest to look weak. And the second problem with that strategy is just because you go along with coercion doesn't

mean you like it. And I just think if we're going to compete effectively with the Chinese and the Russians and the rest of their autocratic allies, we're going to need our democratic allies on our side, and therefore we should stop coercing them. I mean, the stakes when you're talking about great power competition are great military conflicts, right? Yes. And on the horizon, is this worry about NATO?

and the Western Alliance being pulled into a ground war in Europe, as Russia continues, its war in Ukraine. And also if China invades Taiwan, how the U.S. and other nations would respond. Would the U.S. go to war with China? Right. Do you see either of those as real possibilities? Absolutely. They're the two things that worry me the most. There are lots of books about wars, lots of books about revolutions, lots of books about electoral outcomes. You don't read a lot of books about the revolution that almost was, or the war that almost was. And in the Cold War, the greatest non-event, the greatest success of diplomacy of the entire Cold War, in my opinion, was the non-event of the war over Taiwan. We now need non-events in both Europe and

Asia avoid war, and we do that through deterrence and engagement. If Putin prevails in Ukraine, that will make it more likely we might be dragged into a war with one of our NATO allies in Europe, and I think it'll make it more likely that Xi Jinping will act against Taiwan. And you know what really brought that home? I was in Taiwan just a few months ago, and there's no group of people around the world watching what's happening in Ukraine closer than the Taiwanese, because they understand this relationship very clearly. A lot of this rides on the democratic institutions here in the United States. Yes. Being protected, standing firm. They are being tested, like never before in modern history.

Are you optimistic that they'll survive? Well, I'm worried. I've seen this playbook before. This reminds me what's happening here to the early Putin years when he pushed back and he took over the media, he removed some people he didn't like. But I'm cautiously optimistic basically for two big reasons. One, our institutions, our check on executive power, are much more powerful today than they were in the early Putin era. Independent media, parliament, opposition party. I'd like to be a little bit stronger, by the way, personally. Civil society. We're We're in a better place there. And the other thing we have that the Russians didn't have in the early 2000s is we have

hundreds of years of experience with democracy. But let's make no question about it. In my lifetime, this is the biggest, hardest fight for consolidating and preserving democratic institutions in the United States of America. And it's going to be a fight. It's not going to happen just because there's a piece of paper that says you have these rights, people are going to have to fight for the things that are in that constitution. But I'm cautiously optimistic we're going to be okay.

Ambassador Michael McBall, the book is Autocrats v. Democrats, China, Russia, America, and the new global disorder. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me. Remember, there's a lot more online, including a fact check of President Trump's claims on mail-in voting. That is at pbs.org slash news hour. Be sure to watch Washington Week with The Atlantic tonight right here on PBS. Jeffrey Goldberg and his panel discussed the new reality here in the nation's capital after Tuesday's election results. And on PBS News weekend, rural hospitals are struggling to keep their doors open, but a new federal investment could help.

That's coming up Saturday on PBS News Weekend. And that is the News Hour for tonight. I'm Amna Nawaz. On behalf of the entire NewsHour team, thank you for joining us and have a great weekend.