Brooks: Trump ‘Embodying’ the ‘Ethos’ that U.S. Only Cares About Money

On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks predicted that the US will probably react to the death of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi by pretending to be angry, and then going back to normal. He further stated that the idea that the US is only about money “is pretty much the ethos that Trump is embodying in a quite unembarrassed way.”

Brooks said, “In the Middle East, people understand you go through periods where people have to pretend to be mad at you, and then they go back to normal affairs. And I suspect that’s what the Trump administration is going to do with Saudi Arabia.”

He later added, “I guess this is why I’m a little mystified that the Democrats are not going after this issue more, why they’re going after health care and other policy issues. To me, this is the big issue of the election, that if — frankly, if Donald — if the Republicans keep the House and the Senate, then Donald Trump will feel unleashed. … And so, to me, that’s the core issue. How do we see ourselves as a country? What kind of country do we say? Are we strictly a money country? We sometimes look like that to outsiders. I don’t think that’s true. But that is pretty much the ethos that Trump is embodying in a quite unembarrassed way.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett