
Brooks and Capehart on Trump, Vance clashing with Pope Leo
Clip: 4/17/2026 | 11m 28sVideo has Closed Captions
Brooks and Capehart on Trump and Vance clashing with Pope Leo
David Brooks of The Atlantic and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including President Trump claiming Iran has “agreed to everything” in talks with the U.S. and is suspending its nuclear program, Trump publicly feuding with Pope Leo and two lawmakers resigning from Congress amid sexual misconduct allegations.
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Brooks and Capehart on Trump, Vance clashing with Pope Leo
Clip: 4/17/2026 | 11m 28sVideo has Closed Captions
David Brooks of The Atlantic and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW join Amna Nawaz to discuss the week in politics, including President Trump claiming Iran has “agreed to everything” in talks with the U.S. and is suspending its nuclear program, Trump publicly feuding with Pope Leo and two lawmakers resigning from Congress amid sexual misconduct allegations.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorshipAMNA NAWAZ: President Trump claims that Iran has agreed to everything in talks with the U.S., including suspending its nuclear program.
That comes at the end of a week in which he feuded with the pope and two lawmakers suddenly resigned from Congress.
For all of that and more, we turn now to the analysis of Brooks and Capehart.
That is "The Atlantic"'s David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW.
It's great to see you both.
Let's start overseas, because there are a couple big headlines with the wars there, Jonathan, as you saw, a cease-fire earlier in the week with Lebanon to stop the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah, and then the U.S.
and Iran announcing the Strait of Hormuz is open, though evidence is suggesting otherwise.
There's also this, that the president says Iran says it's going to suspend its nuclear program, it's going to stop backing Hezbollah and Hamas, continuing to say the war is nearly over.
Do you believe that's happening?
JONATHAN CAPEHART: No.
I mean, this has been my issue with this war from the very beginning.
I have a hard time trusting what the administration says and certainly what the president says, just given how he brought the country into this war to begin with.
And we have seen him make very definitive statements, only to see action on the ground say otherwise.
And, also, I can't get over the fact that all of these things that we're talking about, the Strait of Hormuz has been reopened.
Well, it was open before the war even started.
Or things being talked about, about the plutonium.
Well, there was an agreement.
It's called the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, that he ripped up when he came into office the first go-round.
So, sure, great.
I hope the president is right that the war is nearing an end, but until it actually ends, I will believe it when I see it.
AMNA NAWAZ: David, what about you?
Trump's saying that Iran has agreed to everything in the talks.
Do you buy that?
DAVID BROOKS: No, that's not credible.
I mean, the Iranians are more likely to convert to Christianity.
I do think that the entire world, except for maybe Bibi Netanyahu, wants this war to be over.
The American people clearly want it to be over, looking at the polls.
The Europeans do.
The Chinese do.
The Gulf states do.
I think the Iranians do.
I think they have taken some brutal assault, and the blockade of Iranian trade seems to be working.
And so I do think people want to be over.
But I don't think the Iranians are in any position where they think they have to give up everything, because they feel they sort of won this war.
And so the question will be over the next week, who can exert leverage to get at least as much as they can?
And, to me, I'd shrink the war aims.
Can we get the Iranian uranium, that's hard to say, in exchange for maybe releasing some of their funds?
And that would be fine.
At this stage, to do that would be something of an achievement to salvage from this war.
AMNA NAWAZ: I want to ask you also about something we reported on earlier, which is the president somehow feuding with Pope Leo.
Jonathan, we heard Liz reporting on it earlier as well.
In the way of background, Pope Leo issued a pretty strong statement rebuking the war in Iran.
Trump then unloaded on him online.
Vice President Vance jumped in to criticize him as well, telling him to be careful on matters of theology.
Is it smart for the president to be getting into it with the pope?
What does he stand to gain from that?
JONATHAN CAPEHART: No, it's not smart at all to be getting into it with the pope, to be fighting with the pope, even though the president says, I'm not fighting with the pope.
Yes, you are, and over something where it's like the president is taking the words from the pope very, very seriously, when any pope, Pope Leo, Pope Francis, Pope John Paul, would have been saying the same thing, because this is about life and death.
This is about right and wrong.
And it's something big that's happening in the world that has commanded the pope's attention.
The thing that I have that -- and so I'm not Catholic.
I went to Catholic school.
But I can understand Catholics in America, but around the world, being very offended by how the president has talked about the pope, talked to the pope, put images of himself as a pope.
And then just one other thing.
The vice president of the United States converted to Catholicism nine years ago.
For him to tell the vicar of Christ, who's been a priest for 34 years, that he needs to -- quote -- "be careful" about how he talks about theology is one of the most insulting things I think I could possibly ever hear being said, one, to the pontiff, but, two, from the vice president of the United States.
All of this is maddening and surreal.
AMNA NAWAZ: David, what do you think of this?
I mean, the way the president criticized the pope and then for Vice President Vance to speak of him the way that he did, what are you taking away from this?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, the president was sacrilegious.
The Easter texts were vulgar and crude on Easter, and then the Jesus image was legitimately sacrilegious.
And so I think one of the great cons that Donald Trump has pulled off is the idea that he's a man of faith.
And I think, after the last few days, even a lot of Trump supporters are acknowledging, well, he's not a person of faith, he's not a man of God, because nobody acts that way.
I agree with Jonathan that you shouldn't -- J.D.
Vance shouldn't be questioning the pope after being Catholic for 9.5 minutes.
But I do think what you see here is the contrast between the way Trump has gone into this war, which is cavalier in the extreme, and Catholic just war theory, which traced back to Augustine and Aquinas, which is intellectually rigorous.
And you have -- to be a just war, you have to clear a series of hurdles that make sure you're doing the thing right and you have thought about this carefully.
And in some ways, I do think they have cleared some of the hurdles.
There has to be just cause, it has to be morally righteous.
I think that's arguable.
But some of the other hurdles, it is clearly not a cause.
Is there right intention?
Donald Trump has not explained what our goals and intentions are.
So there's no right intention.
Is it last resort?
Have we given diplomacy every rule?
Well, obviously not.
Is there a probability of success?
Well, there was no clear probability of success, because it wasn't carefully calculated.
So one of the things you see with what the pope is doing, he's trying to put an intellectual, rigorous process on how you evaluate a very deadly policy.
And the Trump administration is completely incapable of thinking in these terms.
AMNA NAWAZ: Can I ask you both to weigh in quickly?
Because you both mentioned the images.
I want to remind people what those images were.
These were posted by President Trump, an A.I.
image of himself being held by Jesus, another one of him as Jesus, which he says he thought showed him as a doctor and he later deleted.
And then there's the one at the end there, which is him as the pope, which is from back in 2025.
Just very quickly, Jonathan, for people who previously said this is the president just posting jokes, do you think this is different?
JONATHAN CAPEHART: Which part of it?
I mean, the president -- they can say the president was just making a joke.
This is the excuse they use every time the president does something and then gets criticized for it.
But these images that he's been showing, to use the word that David used before, sacrilegious, blasphemous -- the idea that evangelicals, leaders of faith, Catholic leaders have not come out en masse and forcefully denounced the president for doing this is a bit mystifying to me.
I hope that that changes.
But he shouldn't be doing it.
And there should be other leaders, political leaders in his party who would have should have the guts to go to him and say, Mr.
President, perhaps you should be focused on lowering gas prices, figuring out affordability and health care than staying up in the middle of the night and generating means.
AMNA NAWAZ: David, briefly on the images, do people in his base, in particular, do you think that hurts him?
DAVID BROOKS: The Catholics who support Trump that I know were more offended, frankly, by the Easter texts or the TRUTH Social posts than by the images, because here was the day commemorating the risen Christ, and he was doing vulgar, profane, bloodthirsty texts on a day that shows he had no reflection of what this day was all about.
And I think that was shocking to some of his supporters, even more than the images, which could have been a joke, but tasteless.
AMNA NAWAZ: I do want to ask you about events on Capitol Hill, because we saw two resignations amid sexual misconduct allegations, one a Republican congressman, Tony Gonzales, and the other a Democrat, Eric Swalwell, who also, we should note, faces rape accusations, which he denies, and whose fall from grace, Jonathan, it's fair to say, was very, very swift.
Why do you think it was so fast and there was a bipartisan push in this moment?
JONATHAN CAPEHART: Well, I think when it comes to Congressman Swalwell, the accusations were very serious.
A big signal to me about the seriousness of the allegations against him was when Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi went on the record saying: As I have discussed with the congressman, perhaps he should deal with this outside of a run for office.
And so his gubernatorial campaign, to me, was on borrowed time.
And I also wondered if he would be forced to resign from Congress.
But then women started coming forward.
And we talk about the meteoric rise of people.
I don't think we have a corresponding word for the precipitous decline.
He was out within 48 hours or so of the original -- the original accusation.
That's been surprising.
But when it comes to Congressman Gonzales, we have been talking about that.
That's been a story in Washington for a long time now.
The fact that the two of them resigned and left Congress at the same time, I'm sure there's some politics involved.
I'm sure there's some House math involved because of the slim majority of Republicans.
But, either way, the focus should be on the accusers and their stories when it comes to Congressman Swalwell and the young woman who took her life who was involved with Congressman Gonzales.
AMNA NAWAZ: David, the final word here to you in the last 30 seconds or so.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I think this was so swift because of shifts in the culture over the last 10 or 15 years.
You start with the MeToo movement.
You go on to the Epstein case and the number of people who are willing to pal around with him.
And then you have these cases.
And I think it's become clear that the tolerance, the public tolerance, for monstrous behavior is low and that women know that there will be a support network for them.
And so this is a sign of moral progress that we're able to dismiss these cases with the speed which we just saw.
AMNA NAWAZ: We will take a sign of moral progress wherever we can get it.
David Brooks, Jonathan Capehart, thank you so much to you both.
JONATHAN CAPEHART: Thanks, Amna.
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