The Opinions - David Brooks, E.J. Dionne and Robert Siegel Take Stock of 2025

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

The Conversation convenes this week with the Opinion columnist David Brooks, the contributing Opinion writer E.J. Dionne Jr. and the former host of NPR’s “All Things Considered” Robert Siegel to unpack a week of turbulent news across the globe, including the state of the Trump presidency, economic anxiety in America and the president’s approach to national security.Thoughts? Email us at [e-mail] episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Derek Arthur. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker and Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. The director of Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is The Opinions, a show that brings you a mix of voices from New York Times opinion. You've heard the news. Here's what to make of it. Hi, I'm Robert Siegel. It's been a couple of months since I got to hear what my two old friends have to say about politics. And a lot has happened since then, the longest government shot down ever, the elections, the demolition of the east wing of the White House, and hints that public support for Donald Trump, who led the Republicans to, a sweep of both houses of Congress and the White House might be weakening. Lots to talk about with New York Times columnist David Brooks. Good to be with you, Robert. Good to see you again.

And Times opinion contributor, writer E.J. Dion. Great to be with you both. Thank you. And let's start with an appraisal of where Donald Trump stands nearly a year into his second administration. David, why don't you start us off? We're at the 532nd episode of Donald Trump is finished. And so a lot of people are seeing some things that are really bad for Donald Trump. His polls are down slightly.

The Republicans have lost every major election in the last year. There was the Indiana representative standing up to him with impunity, hanging together. And to me, one of the most interesting facts is that 20% of Trump voters think Donald Trump is responsible for the economy. And so E.J. is about to talk more about this if he's consistent with his column in the Times the other day. I'll think I'll contradict myself. But, you know, there are people who are flaking off.

But is it something pivotal? Are we at a pivotal moment? Don't think so. If you asked people a couple months ago, who was a better president, Donald Trump or Joe Biden, there was still a healthy majority that said Donald Trump. And finally, is Donald Trump is not a man to be inhibited by opposition or by rules. And so he is the president of my lifetime, I think all our lifetimes, who has exercised power more freely while ignoring restraints. And I think he'll continue to do that. But flaking off is a measured statement. So decay, but not fracture. Not fracture. E.J., you have written about Donald Trump losing what you call the reasonable majority. Is there a reasonable majority? I think there is a reasonable majority in the country.

One of the reasons I use that phrase is because a lot of people out there who voted for Trump were not part of the MAGA base, were not kind of fooled in quotes by Donald Trump. There were people who were mad about the cost of. living, in some cases, angry about immigration, particularly what was happening at the southern border. They weren't necessarily sold on Trump. And most of those people have taken a look at what has happened in the last year, and they have just moved away. They've said, this is not what we voted for. He ignores the primary issue that pushed him their way, which is the cost of living, and a billionaire regularly mocking affordability. And by the way, surrounding himself with billionaires, It's not someone who's going to appeal to that constituency.

They seem distracted by personal obsessions. You mentioned even the destruction of the East Wing of the White House. And overreach, where even when they agreed with him on immigration, huge majorities dislike many aspects of what he's doing. So I think people looked at this, reasoned their way to opposition. And I think this is a little bigger than David's analysis, suggest, you know, some of the polls Gallup, AP Norck,

having down at 36 percent, and that up to a quarter of his own voters, if the high measures are right, have moved away from him. And the last couple of months feel like that Afghanistan moment for Joe Biden. If you remember,

Biden, you know, after the chaos in Afghanistan, Biden never recovered from his, you know, the sharp drop in the polls he had then. Now, David's right. He could come back. And it's certainly true that Trump is willing to exercise power in a way, in many cases.

And the view of some of us, illegally in a way, no other president has been willing to. And so he's going to keep doing that. But I think there's pushback. And, you know, I just don't think those Indiana Republicans are a one-off. There are a lot of reasons to think there was something special about that state. You're speaking of the Republicans who would not do a redistricting that Trump. Right, who refused a majority of Senate Republicans in Indiana. State senators rejected the midterm redistricting.

And I just think something is happening. There's a shift here. And we'll find out in a few months which one of us is right about that. I just say one thing actually to pile on for EJ's case to be for it, which is I think Donald Trump's reaction to the last months have been pretty terrible. Symptomatic of that is when he says, well, you should get by with two pencils. You don't need $32. You only need $2. That is demonstrating a casual indifference to the economic pain people feel.

And one thing people really detest is that. But the second point I'd like to make, this goes back to something we talked about in one of our earlier conversations about my pet peeve, about hating the way the word fight is used in politics. We need to fight, fight. To me, that's, you know, we need to scream louder and pump up our base. But politics is about persuasion not fighting. And I think E.J.'s numbers demonstrate that Trump voters, like all voters, are basically reasonable. and you can persuade them if you're willing to meet them where they are. There have been presidents who, by virtue of personality or the way their political message is framed,

fill people with optimism and excitement. I think of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan as people who had that power. This optimism and excitement are not words I would use to describe the mood of the country right now. The more common word is anxiety. Yes? No, I think that's right. It's interesting. You say that a friend of mine was talking to a CEO.

He works with, and the CEO said, you know, besides Trump, of course, giving himself a plus, plus, plus, plus on the economy, he doesn't inspire people to feel that things are great, that things are good. He tends to have very angry, negative rhetoric that I think actually hurts. I think there's enormous anxiety in the country, and some of it, and David has written about this quite a lot about, there's a lot of loneliness, social isolation in the country. but I also think that there's an economic component. David Wallace Wells of the Times wrote a really excellent piece, I thought, back in July, about where did Mamdani come from?

And it wasn't about the proletariat. He talked about an emergent coalition of the precariet, which I think is going to be one of those words along with affordability, a word of the year. And these are folks who, yes, definitely weren't class people, but really can extend higher up the income class. mad about affordability, they're enrage about inequality, corruption, and what they see as the entitlement and impunity, as David put it, of the very wealthy. And I think there is just an unease. And lastly, there's technology. Rahm Emanuel can be very quippy, the former mayor of Chicago.

And he said, a lot of Americans are going to have to choose, do they want their kids to be raised by parents or an algorithm? And I think that's one of the kinds of anxieties along with anxieties about employment that technology is racing. To be fair, but Donald Trump built his career on American Carnage, on Darkness. He didn't invent it. He played on what was already out there. There's a thing called Google Ngrams, which measures all the words and usage in the English language across newspapers, magazines, and books. And you can go to databases stretching all the way back to the 1850s and discover what words were used. Most of the words used in the English language were positive words, words of positive emotion. We were an optimistic people.

And that's stretched through the civil war. It's stretched through the world wars. It stretched through the Great Depression. And now our negative words are used much more often than positive words. So we're in the most pessimistic darkest cultural atmosphere in American history, at least stretching back to 1850. And so I will say this level of disgust with the future, I think is very alien to the American cultural DNA. And, you know, it's important in history turns. People reject the old But they get sick of the old show, and they want a new show. So if you would run for president 2020 or 2024 or 2016 on Reagan-esque optimism, you would get crushed. But maybe by 2028, 2032, I would not be surprised if this cycle has turned.

Just to a quick point, you mentioned the elections in the fall. And it struck me after the elections that when you looked at Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, the Democratic got elected governor. If you look at Mikey Sherrill in New Jersey who got elected. And to a significant degree, Mamdani in New York, Azaramam Dani, they all ran on anger at the status quo and prices, but they all conveyed a kind of a sense of empathy, solidarity, mutual respect. And I think if I were to guess the kind of Democrat who is going to win the nomination is someone who can play on two tracks at the same time to express, certainly the anger Democrats feel about Trump and inequality and all those. problems, but marry that to a sense of a hopeful future. And I think there's still a big market for empathy and solidarity out there. I'd just like to note before we move on to talking about

the economy more broadly, the strange situation we're in with respect to artificial intelligence. We're waiting for this technology to mature and to be adapted. It's the most Ballyhooed technological change I can think of in my life, unless we go back to a time. energy in the 1950s, it's going to change everything. We're paying huge electricity bills because of it, and we're also seeing the stock market being supported by it. And yet, it's not clear whether people are hopeful about this, want us to be the nation that scores the best with artificial intelligence, or whether they're terrified of it. Yeah, well, you know, I've interviewed dozens of AI experts and engineers, and some of them are Dumers. They think it's going to turn to

into paper clips and destroy civilization. And some of them think it's the greatest thing we're going to expand GDP by 600,000% and productivity by, and their view has nothing to do with the evidence in front of them. Their view has entirely to do with the nature of their temperament. Their temperament. It's their DNA. And so optimistic people think it's going to be great and pessimistic people think it's going to be terrible.

I think it's going to be like the railroads. It's a very powerful technology which will produce a short-term series of bubbles as everybody leaps into it, and then a long term, it'll be okay. I think we should ask AI what the future is going to be under AI, and then maybe AI will tell us. I think both views are there, and I think both views are true. That's the problem with talking about AI. I think the wonder and the fear are sort of are twins, in a way.

They're part of a sensible reaction to AI. Well, moving on to the economy more broadly, something you've both alluded to, we have this an unusual political divide in the country right now, which is Democrats acknowledge an affordability crisis, and they have lots of schemes to deal with it, to do away with Trump's tariffs, to restore these subsidies for health care that you, health insurance you buy on the, on the exchanges. And the Republicans, rather than having a competing agenda to cope with the crisis, President Trump says there is no crisis. It's a hoax. It's a Democratic con job. Is he reenacting Joe Biden's mistake of telling people who are hurting, who are experiencing, in that case,

inflation for the first time in their lives, most of them? It's all in your head? Yes. He's doing exactly the same thing. You're seeing the same thing. You're seeing there on the Oval Office. Your advisors are saying, look at the data, Mr. President. And the data is there. They're not wrong. Median wages at their highest point now than at any point in American history. Inflation's around 3%. Real wages are whising, which means people are getting, things overall are getting more affordable. You look at the data, it looks pretty good, and then you look at what's unaffordable.

Most things are getting more affordable. Most material products like TVs are getting more affordable. What's getting less affordable? The biggies are healthcare and housing, and especially housing in blue areas. And so it's hitting people in the housing piece of their lives, which is a major piece of their life. And so the thing I'd tell Donald Trump,

if I had to talk to him, was something I heard from a CEO. And he said, I have customers coming to me with complaints. And then I go to my team and say, are these complaints valid? And the team says, no, not valid. We have the data. And the CEO said to me, when that happens, I believe the anecdote and I don't believe the data. And I think that's right.

I think you, because people are not fools about their own circumstance. I believe Newt Gingrich said of the question of the affordability crisis. If the public thinks there's an affordability crisis, there's an affordability crisis. That's the way you have to do it. Customer is never wrong. But I do think there are some real things. You mentioned the data centers driving up the cost of electricity. Cheryl in New Jersey ran on promise to freeze electricity prices for a while while they got a handle on it.

That's real. I think housing in, especially in the big metros, which tend to be blue, is a real problem. But child care, health care, and in some cases, transportation, that is a real problem. The price of cars is a real problem. education and higher ed has been. And so I think that while it's true that we had high inflation for about a year and then it started to dissipate, but prices tend not to go down on a lot of things. And so these are real concerns and they are things that I think are potentially responsive to policy and to political arguments. And you're seeing, you know, as I say,

Cheryl talking about putting a freeze on. You're talking about these fights over the data centers, which I think is going to be a really big issue in American politics. Spanberger's talking about using alternative energy, which can actually bring down prices. So I think we're going to have actually a real debate over what might plausibly be done about affordability. Of course, you know, what's interesting is that what you're both saying is that the iconic costs of the last election, which were a dozen eggs and a gallon of gasoline, just aren't what what we're talking about when we're talking about an affordability crisis. We were, we were discussing consumer prices is what we were discussing. Right. And that was real inflation on things like eggs.

But housing is like it is a central thing. And one of the things that's happened over the last generation or two is that people's standards have changed. And so Madaglacius wrote a good substack on this, which is the median income, as I said, is now about $88,000 bucks a year. And if you take that median income and put it in the median city, that family of four, say, can afford to buy the home that families afford were content to buy in 1965. And so it might have one bathroom and people are sharing bedrooms. But nobody wants to live that way anymore. And furthermore, many fewer people are married.

Many people are living alone. And so that puts up demand on housing, especially in the big metros where people are more likely to be single. And so there's been a creep in our expectations of how we're going to live. And I think that has added to some of the unhappiness because people are not living up to their expectations. There's a flip side to that as well, which is people aren't getting married and aren't having children because they are anxious about being able to afford them. And more than that, putting aside money, Bill Galston in the Wall Street Journal wrote a couple weeks ago about this

whole natalism argument, our birth rates tend to go up when people are broadly optimistic about the future. And we certainly, we baby boomers, exist because of that optimism. And that is quite the opposite of what people are feeling now. And, you know, Dave Winston, the Republican Post, had a good piece. I think looking forward, you're going to have to look at both the prices and whether wages are rising to meet them. And, you know, a lot of people sense that compared to the very rich, there's a lot of sense of relative deprivation, their wages still haven't risen compared to what's happened at the very top. And I think that's on people's minds. Well, let's turn to foreign policy right now.

in particular the remarkable document issued by the Trump administration, its national security strategy. I was struck most by what it said about Europe. Usually in the past when people said, I think Europe ought to be spending more in its own defense, it was in the context of they're rich. You know, it's no longer the post-war, 1948 in Europe. These countries are thriving, especially Germany, and they can do more and pay for their their own defense.

This analysis, more or less described Europe as so rock. as not being worth defending. It described the Europeans facing, quote, the stark prospect of civilizational and erasure, which it attributes to immigration and the encroachment of the EU on national government. What's going on here, David? I mean, this document could have called for reducing U.S. commitments to Europe or expecting the Europeans to do more without insulting them all as being a civilization in rotten decline. Yeah, the Trump people say they were attacking the EU and the ruling elites, but not the parties that are actually leading in the polls, which are the AFD and the French conservatives and Nigel Farage in the UK. But I think what was interesting to me about the document is that it's a foreign policy document written as if culture matters more than realpolitik.

And there's a study that has haunted me for years. It's done by the World Value Survey, and they survey people all around the world on their values. And it turns out most people around the world, and the key factor is, are you an individualistic culture or are you a communal culture? And then they draw a helpful map to help you visualize the results. And on this map, most of the cultures of the world, Confucianism, Africa, Southeast Asia, they're all in a clump. And then there's a little thing like Florida or Italy sticking out.

And that thing sticking out is America and Western Europe. our cultures are vastly more individualistic than cultures of any place else around the world. Our cultures are vastly less traditionalist than everywhere around the world. And along comes Trump and they feel this. I'm not sure they've seen the World Value Survey. And they think those modernists are destroying traditional values. And we're going to be for traditional values, whether it's Vladimir Putin or Xi Jinping, and not those commies in Stockholm.

And so it's a weird document in that it's culture first, but it does point to a real problem that there's a culture gap between us and a lot of parts of the world. You know, I think my friend David gives it a lot more credit when he says culture because I read that thing very carefully. I agree it's a weird document and an interesting document. Business matters more than culture there. What was really striking going through it was how much this was about a fairly narrow view of business. interest. Yeah, some nice stuff about the working class here and there, but it was really about making deals. But the other thing that was so disconcerting is in the Cold War, the United States sub-Rosa, they didn't really want it to be explicit, supported parties of the center left and

center-right in Europe. We were on the side of democracy. This document explicitly is supporting parties of the far-right in Europe. And yeah, some of that's about culture. It's an obsession with immigration and identity. It's a deeply identitarian document. And there's something just so odd to me about the United States of America, which was built on immigration. All three of us at this table are here because we were an immigrant welcoming country. And this document says Europe is falling apart now because it is welcoming immigrants.

And of course, there are subtext here. It's really about race. Europe is becoming less European. What exactly does that mean? That sounds like it's about the immigration of Muslims to Europe and it has something to do with race. But it's a very disconcerting view compared to how we have thought. And I don't mean we elites. I mean we Americans have thought of ourselves.

We are talking today after some horrible shootings over the weekend. Two students were killed and nine injured at Brown University. And overseas, at least 15 people were killed at Bondi. Beach in Sydney, Australia. As of now, the motive behind the Brown shooting is unclear as of the time when we sat down to record this conversation. But in Australia, there's no lack of clarity. The point of the shooting was to kill Jews. I'm curious, since this is in keeping with a trend, which is a trend of rising anti-Semitism and rising anti-Semitic violence in the world, what you make of it. I mean, whatever you, however you react to it. I mean, first, one part of it is not a trend, these two shootings. It is not true that mass shootings are rising. So in 2025, we at least with a few weeks left, have the lowest number of mass shootings in 20 years. So that's a good sign.

I'm not sure how we explain that, but maybe just random distribution. But what is the trend, as he say, is rising anti-Semitism? And I think that's been true in all our lives, or Jews. It's in through and direct experience. And I think the troubling thing, there's a piece in the Atlantic by Yarrow Rosenberg, quoting a guy named Tim Miller who says, the more I'm around young people, the more terrified I get. And there's a fair bit of evidence that we used to think bigotry is on,

old people are bigoted. But now there's more of gigatry among young people. 25% of young adults say they have an unfavorable opinion of Jewish people. 20% say that Jews have too much power. And this is not about Israel. They're not saying Israelis have too much power. And so they're saying Jews have too much power. So somehow they're in online spaces, and my son tells me about this all the time, that are just rabidly anti-Semitic.

And it becomes a norm. And that's become a norm. And I think just about the Bondi Beach shooting, I think a lot of people, and this is controversial, have said, well, you use the phrase, globalized the indifada. That's what it looks like. And I have to say, I agree with that. Some words take on historical baggage. If you use the word states rights, and when you're earning for office in the South, that has historical baggage. When people say they don't believe the Holocaust happened, it's not they didn't believe big bonfires didn't happen.

They mean specific genocide. And to me, the word antifada has taken on the baggage. And I was there, the second Intifada in Israel covering it, baggage of using terrorism to advance the Palestinian cause. And so I think that phrase, people should be careful about that phrase. H.J., any thoughts? Well, I think that the vast majority of people out there who are critical of Israeli policy after October 7th, who hated October 7th. There was an evil act, but really, you know, intensely opposed how long the war lasted and the damage you did in Gaza. Most of the people opposed to that policy are not anti-Semites.

And I think it's very important to make that clear. And I know you're not saying that. But I think it's important to say that at the outset, I got to say, I would say, I would say, just very, very upset by this. And I was struck by a beautiful piece that Rabbi Sharon Brous wrote in the Times that went up just shortly before we started talking. And it is particularly horrible that this happens on Hanukkah, which as she writes as the miracle of the persistence of light in dark times. And she does lift up a fruit vendor named the Ahmed al-Amed, who risked his own life to tackle one of the gunmen and probably saved lives on that beach. But

You know, I was shot, I might have. Yes, and was shot. He survived, but he took an enormous risk. Bigotry and hatred are the enemies of every free society, and anti-Semitism is one of the oldest and most destructive forms. I think there is evidence of rising anti-Semitism, and I think that it needs to be fought. And I think the more we can disentangle it from the politics in the Middle East and just face up to the fact that this is a form of bigotry.

the better off will be. Here, here. We have made a practice in these conversations of concluding on a note of joy, literally three notes of joy, one from each of us. What's brought some joy into life since last we met? David, you go first. I hope I haven't talked about the New York Mets in these joy conversations, but probably not because they don't really bring joy, but there's joy.

Sports teams are doing really well, but I won't bring that about that. There's joy in between seasons. Well, they're dismantling their team. And all the players I love are being created and let go. And the entire fan base is having conyptions. But I find it kind of amusing. And so I'm always thinking, well, they'll figure this one out. So I'm enjoying joy in the tumult.

And the tumult, E.J. So two things if I may real quick. One, this season I am a sucker for the season where in Christmas trees, menorahs, nutcracker statues, music from, you know, Galway to Sinatra to Taylor Swift. I'm a sucker for it all. But one thing has brought me great joy the last couple of weeks that I want to shout out. I am a mystery addict. I was one of those kids who loved the Hardy Boys.

And so remember my friend Dave Levick and I learnedly discussing whether footprints under the window was better than the secret of the old mill. So I continue to read these series. Michael Connolly's new Lincoln lawyer novel, The Proving Ground, is a wonderful addition to this. And it's about AI. And another group of writers I admire when they can pull it off are continuators. Some series are so popular that other writers pick them up. The writer Michael Lupica has picked up Robert B. Parker's Spencer stories as a Boston lover. I love Spencer.

His showdown and all the several others he's done is really great. And I think they have brought joy to my life. So season's greetings to both of them. Okay. And I have two experiences of theater about New York City to relate, which brought me joy, very different. One was Adam Gopnik's One Man Show. He's the New Yorker, a staff writer and essayist, and he gave a performance of his one-man show about life in New York with great emphasis on his misadventures in psychoanalysis, which was both hilarious and very wise. and then the Shakespeare Theater in Washington,

which defines Shakespearean drama very broadly, has a revival of guys and dolls on right now, which I found delightful. And it sent me back to reading more Damon Runyon stories, and it reminded me that here were two people, Damon Runyon, who wrote about gamblers and gangsters around Times Square, always in the present tense, never used the past tense. And Adam Gopnik, there are two out-of-town guys

who came to New York and fell in love with the place. Adam from Montreal and Damon Runyon some decades back was born in Manhattan, Kansas. So on that note, I hope everybody. You lift up the quality and level of every conversation, Robert. That was great. Well, it's been great seeing you guys once again, and hope to see you again in a couple of months. See you. See you soon. If you like this show, follow it on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Opinions is produced by Derek Arthur, Veshaka,

Christina Samuelski, and Jillian Weinberger. It's edited by Kari Pitkin and Alison Bruzick. Engineering, mixing, and original music by Isaac Jones, Sonia Herrero, Pat McCusker, Carol Sabro, and Afim Shapiro. Additional music by Amon Sahota. The fact check team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris. Audience Strategy by Shannon Busta and Christina Samuelski.

The director of Times Opinion Audio is Annie Rose Strasser.