JUDY WOODRUFF: Good evening.
I'm Judy Woodruff.
On the "NewsHour" tonight, we take a deep dive into the many questions about connections
between Russian officials and the Trump campaign, as investigations move forward and new revelations
surface.
Then, we visit the Midwest to find out what Trump supporters in Michigan are saying about
his first two months in office.
THERESA JOHNS, Trump Supporter: What he has said is the truth.
And I don't think that he has reason to lie.
What does he have to gain by lying?
Nothing.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Also ahead, in the final part of our series exploring new PTSD research:
how explosions from battle may have a direct link to the causes of PTSD.
DR.
DANIEL PERL, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences: When the explosion
goes off, it forms what's called a blast wave.
And so here you have a high -- high-pressure pulse blasting through this delicate instrument
called the brain.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And it's Friday.
Mark Shields and David Brooks are here to analyze the week's news.
All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."
(BREAK)
JUDY WOODRUFF: The request for legal immunity from President Trump's former national security
adviser drew sharply different responses today.
Michael Flynn said he will cooperate with congressional Russia probes, but only if he's
spared from the possibility of prosecution.
Mr. Trump tweeted Flynn should ask for immunity because -- quote -- "This is a witch-hunt
by the media and Democrats."
But Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said it's too early
to consider such a deal.
We will take a closer look at the investigations right after the news summary.
President Trump moved to reshape American trade policy today, signing a pair of executive
orders.
One initiates a review of U.S. trade deficits.
The other looks to increase the collection of duties on imports.
Mr. Trump said the orders -- quote -- "set the stage for a great revival of American
manufacturing."
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson today warned NATO allies to boost their defense spending
within the next two months.
During Tillerson's first meeting with his alliance counterparts in Brussels, he said
Washington is contributing a -- quote -- "disproportionate share" to defense.
But Germany's foreign minister, Sigmar Gabriel, balked at the call, saying that NATO's spending
targets are neither -- quote -- "reachable nor desirable."
There's word that the European Union may be open to talks later this year on its future
relationship with Britain.
But draft guidelines issued today say that the British -- quote -- "disentanglement"
from the bloc must be settled first.
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May wanted talks on a future trade deal with the E.U.
to start quickly.
But in Malta today, the president of the European council, Donald Tusk, said that won't happen.
DONALD TUSK, European Council President: Once, and only once we have achieved sufficient
progress on the withdrawal can we discuss the framework for our future relationship.
Starting parallel talks on all issues at the same time, as suggested by some in the U.K.,
will not happen.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Meanwhile, Scotland's first minister has formally requested a second popular
referendum on its independence from the U.K. Britain's government has said that it will
deny the request.
In Venezuela, violence erupted today amid the country's deepening political crisis.
It followed the Supreme Court's move to dissolve the country's opposition-led congress, a move
widely condemned as a power grab.
In the capital, Caracas, scores of students squared off against police in riot gear, who
retaliated with batons and buckshot.
A number of people were arrested.
In Pakistan, a suicide car bomb near a Shiite mosque today killed at least 24 people.
It happened in a key northwest town near the country's border with Afghanistan.
The powerful explosion damaged vehicles and nearby shops.
More than 100 people were wounded.
A breakaway Taliban faction claimed responsibility.
The Trump administration imposed a new round of sanctions on North Korea today.
They targeted 11 North Korean individuals and one company that helped to finance or
develop weapons of mass destruction.
The Treasury Department said the people were working as agents of the North Korean regime
in Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cuba.
Back in this country, traffic was snarled for miles in Atlanta today, after a fire brought
caused the collapse of part of heavily traveled Interstate 85.
Officials are still trying to determine how yesterday's fire started.
Authorities closed the section before it collapsed, and there were no injuries.
But commuters in this densely populated area will likely have to find new routes for months.
On Wall Street, stocks ended the month on a down note.
The Dow Jones industrial average lost 65 points to close at 20663.
The Nasdaq fell more than two, and the S&P 500 slipped five.
For the week, both the Dow and the S&P 500 gained a fraction of a percent.
The Nasdaq rose more than a percent.
The private company SpaceX made history last night by successfully launching and retrieving
its first recycled rocket.
Rocket boosters normally drop into the Atlantic Ocean after liftoff and are not retrieved.
This was the Falcon 9 booster's second trip into orbit, launching from Cape Canaveral,
Florida.
It landed on the bullseye of an ocean platform and it could be used a third time.
And a rare photo of Harriet Tubman has been acquired at auction by the Library of Congress
and the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture.
It shows a younger seated Tubman.
Most photos of the Underground Railroad hero were taken later in her life.
It was part of an album that sold for more than $160,000.
Still to come on the "NewsHour": what do we know and don't know about Russia's influence
in the 2016 election?; the potential human toll of the U.S. loosening restrictions on
military airstrikes; Trump supporters grade the president on his first months in office;
and much more.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It seems every day, sometimes every hour, there are new developments in
the inquiry into connections between President Trump, his associates and Russia.
It's hard to keep it all straight.
But, because it's important, we're going to give it a try.
Here to talk through what we know, and what we don't, are correspondents John Yang and
Lisa Desjardins.
And thank you both for being here to do this.
Lisa, I'm going to start with you.
Remind us, where did all this come from?
What was the origin of Russia's interest in our elections?
LISA DESJARDINS: Let's start with 2011.
That's when Hillary Clinton, the then secretary of state, spoke out criticizing Russian elections.
Vladimir Putin, president of Russia, then reacted, saying that she was interfering and
she was helping protesters, and she was trying to have an impact on the Russian election.
Then we can flash forward to last summer.
That's when the FBI became aware of hacking into the Democratic National Committee, then
to October.
Then we have a conclusion from the director of national intelligence that Russian officials
were in fact trying to interfere with our election.
And then just this month, we heard from FBI Director Comey about their investigation,
making this rare public statement:
JAMES COMEY, FBI Director: The FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating
the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
And that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated
with the Trump campaign and the Russian government.
LISA DESJARDINS: A very rare statement in the middle of an investigation.
Bottom line, Judy, we know that our intelligence on the U.S. side has concluded that Russia
tried to interfere with the election.
And that includes now they're investigating things like trying to send fake news to particular
states like Michigan and Pennsylvania.
The biggest question now seems to be, was the Trump -- were any Trump associates, any
Trump campaign officials involved, did they know about this, did they collude with Russia
at all?
JUDY WOODRUFF: And, John, what is known about any links, any connections between Trump,
Trump's campaign and Russian officials?
JOHN YANG: It is a spider web, Judy.
You have got campaign officials who either had or have business relations with Russia
like former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, adviser Carter Page.
You had others in the campaign who were in contact with the Russian ambassador to the
United States either during the campaign or during the transition, adviser J.D. Gordon,
his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, and Attorney
General Jeff Sessions, Sessions, of course, who's recused himself from this investigation
because of that contact.
And then there's Roger Stone, who somehow got advanced word about these hacked Hillary
Clinton e-mails, e-mails that the -- our United States intelligence says came from the Russian
intelligence, was hacked by the Russian intelligence.
Now, could this all be a coincidence?
Sure, but a lot of these people have been less than forthcoming about these contacts.
I mean, just last month, Judy, you asked Carter Page whether he had met any Russian official
during the campaign.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Did you have any meetings?
I'll ask again.
Did you have any meetings last year with Russian officials in Russia, outside Russia, anywhere?
CARTER PAGE, Former Trump Campaign Foreign Policy Adviser: I had no meetings, no meetings.
JOHN YANG: And, of course, eventually, he acknowledged that wasn't true.
He met the ambassador at the Republican Convention.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And he said that after he had told me just the opposite.
But, Lisa, what about financial connections between the president, people around him and
Russia?
LISA DESJARDINS: The president was, for so much of his life, the CEO of the Trump Organization.
So, let's look at the business side of the Trump Organization here to Russia.
The White House stresses that there are few direct connections.
One, the president has sold some real estate to a few Russians.
But, two, probably the connection most people know about is that Mr. Trump hosted the Miss
Universe Pageant in Moscow.
That was in 2013.
But there's more to it than that, some more indirect kind of connections.
We know that among the other business ties, Donald J. Trump Jr. said in 2008 that, of
their businesses all across the board, that Russians were pouring in money.
He thought that the Russians were among their most important clients at that time.
Now, Russia was emerging as an important economy then.
So, make of that what you will.
But, second, the Trumps have looked into real estate deals in Russia going back to 1987.
Donald Trump visited Russia in 1996.
And then on that 2013 trip, he also looked for potential sites for a Trump Hotel in Moscow.
That never came to bear.
Finally, last summer, it's a story people paid attention to that adds to the confusion
here.
We know there are reports from CNN and others that investigators looked into a Russian bank
repeatedly trying to contact servers in Trump Organization.
The Trump Organization says they didn't know anything about that.
And it's not clear if that was for business reasons or what was going on there.
It was a one-way connection, but many of them from a Russian bank to the Trump Organization.
One final connection, Judy, family businesses?
The Kushners also have a family business, Kushner Properties.
JUDY WOODRUFF: That's the son-in-law.
LISA DESJARDINS: That's Jared Kushner, the son-in-law, that we have heard about from
John.
And he -- Jared Kushner, in addition to meeting with the Russian ambassador, also in December
met with the head of a Russian bank which is under sanctions right now.
The White House says that was a diplomatic meeting, but the Russian bank says it was
for business reasons.
So, it's something to look at.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, John, the other -- one of the other names you mentioned, of course,
Michael Flynn, so much attention around him.
He was briefly the president's national security adviser.
Then he stepped down.
What's known about his role in all this?
JOHN YANG: Well, right now, he of course has asked -- or told the Senate Intelligence Committee
that he's willing to testify if he gets immunity.
The committee rejected that request for now.
They said it's too early, that they generally like to find out what they can without immunity
first.
He was a surrogate and an adviser in the campaign.
He became well-known for both attacking Hillary Clinton in the campaign and advocating closer
ties with Russia.
And, as you say, he was very briefly the national security adviser.
He had to resign after it turned out he had misled White House officials about some of
his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the transition.
Now, his attorney says he certainly has quite a story to tell.
But it's not quite clear what that story is or who it's about.
This morning, the president tweeted that he thought that Flynn should get immunity and
should testify.
This afternoon at the White House briefing, Sean Spicer was asked if the president had
anything to fear from that testimony.
Sean Spicer had a one-word answer: "Nope."
JUDY WOODRUFF: All right, well, so much to follow.
Where does this go from here, though, Lisa?
LISA DESJARDINS: All right, let's look forward a little bit.
We know there are three investigations under way right now that we know.
That is FBI investigation, the House Intelligence investigation and the Senate Intelligence
investigation.
We expect all of those to take months, maybe many months.
And that brings us, I think, to our final name of this look at the who's who in this
Russia situation.
That's Devin Nunes.
The congressman from California chairs the House Intelligence Committee and their Russian
investigation.
In the past two weeks, he said he was made aware of intelligence from a source that he's
not naming that U.S. spy agencies somehow caught surveillance of some Trump associates
and some Trump White House officials potentially inadvertently.
He took that information and talked -- spoke to the president about it, but didn't share
that with his own Intelligence Committee.
That is raising questions, especially from Democrats, who are calling for him to recuse
himself.
JUDY WOODRUFF: But he said it didn't have to do with Russia, right?
LISA DESJARDINS: That's right.
That's right.
But because he's chairing this Russia investigation, the question is, is he too close to the president,
who's he watching out for the most?
Democrats say he has a conflict of interests.
And, of course, Mr. Nunes said to me and to other reporters that, no, he feels like he
can chair this investigation.
JOHN YANG: And now, of course, this has embroiled the White House in the suspicions that the
administration was the source of this information for Congressman Nunes.
This afternoon, Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, went to the
White House to look at documents that the White House says they have uncovered that
relates to this coincidental or incidental surveillance.
It's not clear yet whether or not this is the same material that Chairman Nunes was
shown.
LISA DESJARDINS: And, again, the material might not be about Russia.
It's a question of the man leading the Russia investigation.
JUDY WOODRUFF: There are so many strands in this story to follow.
The two of you are on the case.
We thank you.
And I feel like we have brought our audience up to date.
Thank you very much.
Lisa Desjardins, John Yang, thank you.
During the presidential campaign, candidate Trump promised to give the U.S. military more
freedom to attack terrorist targets around the world.
Yesterday, it was announced that President Trump made good on that promise.
Hari Sreenivasan has the story.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Among the countries where the U.S. is fighting terrorism are Iraq, Yemen
and Somalia.
Now the president has approved the Pentagon's plan to beef up its targeting of Al-Shabaab
in Somalia, giving the military greater latitude to decide when and where to strike.
For more on all of this, we turn to Sarah Sewall.
She served as undersecretary of state for civilian security, democracy and human rights
during the Obama administration.
She's written extensively about military operations and civilian casualties.
She's now at Johns Hopkins University.
Ms. Sewall, I want to first ask -- just walk us through what the changes are that the Pentagon
just announced.
SARAH SEWALL, Former State Department Official: Well, essentially, President Obama had created
two categories for thinking about the use of force in the context of the war on terror.
One was more like targeted killing with more restricted types of targets that you could
both choose and were forced to identify, and it controlled the effects of those uses of
force more closely.
The other is more like what Americans would understand as war, general hostilities.
And what has happened is, the president -- the current president has now moved, according
to reports, moved the Somalia engagement of U.S. forces from the category of more targeted
uses of force to that of general hostilities.
HARI SREENIVASAN: It says that the new rules says it's OK to kill civilians if necessary
and proportionate.
What does that mean?
In the past, it used to be if they were threatening Americans.
That doesn't seem the case now.
SARAH SEWALL: Sure.
That's what I mean by the kinds of targets that are chosen.
The former category required that only those who were a direct threat to Americans could
be targeted.
Now they can be targeted if they're members of an organization that's an associated force
with the perpetrators of 9/11.
It has huge impacts for civilian casualties, because the former standard of using the use
of targeting according to a near certainty of not killing civilians has now been relaxed.
But, of course, the laws of war still apply, so uses of force still have to be proportional
and they still have to be discriminate.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The military has complained for quite some time, even through the Obama
administration, that there was too much red tape between when they actually found the
target and the amount of hoops that they had to jump through to try to take action on it.
SARAH SEWALL: That's right, Hari.
I think it is fair to say that the U.S. military, like most militaries, will always seek greater
latitude for the use of force.
It's the role of civilian authorities to make sure that America's broader strategic interests
are balanced against tactical possibilities for gain.
And here is where I think President Obama's decision to make sure that the uses of force
didn't have blowback, either by virtue of killing civilians unnecessarily, or by feeding
into the ISIS narrative that the U.S. was seeking to fight a war against Islam, or by
allowing a slippery slope for the use of military force, which is, I think, a legitimate concern
that we should be asking about in the context of moving toward general hostilities for engagement
in Somalia.
HARI SREENIVASAN: The U.S. military is also going to say, listen, we go out of our way
more than anybody else to try to minimize civilian casualties, so what's the harm in
giving them a little bit more leeway if they are going to follow the same protocols?
SARAH SEWALL: Well, they are not going to follow the same protocols.
The protocols are very different, Hari.
And, yes, the U.S. military is better than almost anyone else at avoiding civilian harm.
But we need to only look at the use of airstrikes in Mosul in Iraq to see that there are huge
potentials for backlash that come when you relax those protocols.
And we can do extremely well, we have done extremely well at different periods in our
history.
We know how to be discriminating in the use of airpower.
And part of what President Obama's original intent was to keep those standards high as
much as possible.
So, we should be asking tough questions when the standards are relaxed.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Does the use of or the ability to use more force make our troops any safer?
SARAH SEWALL: Well, I did a study in Afghanistan in 2010, and there was no correlation between
the kinds of standards that protected civilians and the protection that our forces enjoyed.
What changed was the way we went about pursuing our objectives.
Sometimes, we took more time.
Sometimes, we took an indirect route.
But the U.S. military can do a phenomenal job at avoiding civilian harm.
But it does require civilian leadership to emphasize that as a matter of a priority.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Sarah Sewall with Johns Hopkins, thanks so much.
SARAH SEWALL: Thank you.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Stay with us.
Coming up on the "NewsHour": Mark Shields and David Brooks analyze the week's news;
the search for what triggers PTSD; and a doctor's take on why affirmative action could be hurting
Asian Americans.
But first: The fallout from last week's failed Republican effort to repeal the Obama health
care is still being felt across the political landscape nationally.
President Trump's approval rating now hovers around 40 percent in tracking polls.
In Michigan, a state he won, Trump supporters whom William Brangham spoke to offered their
own assessments of the president's first two months in office.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Sixty-four-year-old Randall Shelton is a self-described independent and
angry white man.
For him, Trump's election wasn't a surprise, even though Trump wasn't Shelton's first choice.
RANDALL SHELTON, Trump Voter: Well, I wish there had been other candidates, but I chose
the one that I believe was going to do the right thing.
I thought he was going to do and I still believe he's going to do the right thing.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Shelton lives in Allen Park, a blue-collar suburb of Detroit.
Twelve years ago, he got hurt working at the local General Motors plant, and he's been
on disability and off work ever since.
He thinks Democrats and Republicans are blocking the very things Trump was elected to do, like
bringing back jobs and fixing immigration.
But Shelton says the president is also partly to blame for some of his early failures.
RANDALL SHELTON: It seems like, once he got in there, all he wants to do is play golf
and take vacations and tweet.
If he'd shut up and just do what he said he's going to do and stay off the Twitter, and
take care of business in Washington, he would probably be a whole lot better off.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Thirty miles away in Novi, Michigan, we found a small, ardent group of
supporters who remain totally committed to the president.
DON EBBEN, Trump Supporter: I have been completely blown away, completely surprised.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In a good way?
DON EBBEN: In a good way.
MAN: I still find him a little bit of abrasive.
But I'm willing to forgive it.
I'm willing to look past it, because he's the president of the United States.
He's leading the direction from whence we have come.
And that's important to me.
MESHAWN MADDOCK, Trump Supporter: We were Trump before Trump was Trump here in Michigan.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Meshawn Maddock helped organize this gathering.
She ran a Facebook group called Michigan Women For Trump.
MESHAWN MADDOCK: It was when he talked about getting rid of the people within our own party
that are the problem.
That was what motivated me.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Maddock likes that Trump is disrupting what she sees as a broken political
system and that he's using social media in a way that no president has ever done before.
MESHAWN MADDOCK: I don't believe anybody is monitoring him on Twitter.
It's all him.
And what I love about is that there is no middle man anymore.
So I think he's completely changing how the media is going to work and serve the people.
And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Theresa Johns originally wanted Ted Cruz, but later came around to
the Trump camp, even though a recent Quinnipiac poll.
Showed that six in 10 Americans say the president is dishonest, Johns is not one of them.
THERESA JOHNS, Trump Supporter: Trump has never, ever said anything that has not come
to pass.
It's not.
He's always said -- what he has said is the truth.
And I don't think that he has reason to lie.
What does he have to gain by lying?
Nothing.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: We also asked about the various allegations surrounding Russia, that
Russia seems to have tried to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign and that members of the
Trump campaign may have close ties to Russia.
Does that bother you at all?
MESHAWN MADDOCK: I hate to say it but it doesn't bother me.
I don't want to focus on Russia.
I just think it's smoke and mirrors.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: So you don't think there's any of these allegations?
MESHAWN MADDOCK: I don't think there's anything to it.
I think it's just they -- they are going to try to do anything they can to try to bring
this man down.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Few expected President Trump to win here in Michigan, but it was the last
state he visited on the campaign trail and one of the first he came back to after he
was elected.
DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: Thank you to the incredible people of Michigan.
LINDA BRANDIS, Trump Supporter: This is the type of guy that is crude and he's loud and
he is not politically correct.
But he says everything we think.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: In Commerce, Michigan, Linda Brandis, who's an active member of the state's
Tea Party, remains thankful the president won.
But she also just reached out directly to him about some growing concerns she has.
LINDA BRANDIS: I sent him an e-mail last night.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: What did it say?
LINDA BRANDIS: It said, I voted for you because I'm concerned about health care.
And I wanted to remind him that it was the grassroots that put him in the White House,
and it can be the grassroots that takes him out of the White House.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Brandis was disappointed that Trump didn't push initially for a full
repeal of Obamacare, and then, when the Republican-led Congress couldn't pass their bill, the president
just seemed to move onto other priorities.
LINDA BRANDIS: In his mind, he really thought, oh, I can go in and I'm just going to fix
this.
And it's not that easy a problem to fix.
And I don't appreciate the childish attitude of, it's my way or the highway.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Guy Gordon hosts the afternoon talk show on WJR in Detroit.
His show follows Rush Limbaugh's.
We were there the afternoon the Republican health care bill collapsed, and the phones
lit up with callers, like Beth from Macomb County.
WOMAN: I'm disgusted with the conservative Republicans.
They need to get their heads out of their you-know-where.
GUY GORDON, Radio Talk Show Host: There is a heartland here in America that feels overlooked,
disrespected, mocked for their beliefs.
They have also seen their jobs leave.
And there's no greater window into that than Macomb County.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Macomb County is famous in political circles, because, for decades,
this area voted overwhelmingly for Democrats.
But then in the 1980s, Ronald Reagan campaigned here and he turned those Democratic voters
to the Republican side.
This area became known as the home of the Reagan Democrats.
JACK BRANDENBURG (R), Michigan State Senator: You are right now, at this moment, sitting
in the birthplace of the Reagan Democrats.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: State Senator Jack Brandenburg says he was the first elected official in
Michigan to formally endorse Donald Trump.
And he believes that following Reagan's path through Macomb County, which had gone to President
Obama in both 2008 and 2012, was key to Trump's success.
Trump won Macomb County by more than 48,000 votes, but carried the entire state by less
than 12,000.
JACK BRANDENBURG: If you do the math, Macomb County put him over the top in Michigan and
quite possibly gave him the presidency.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Closer to downtown Detroit, the lingering scars of the area's economic
crisis are everywhere.
CORON BENTLEY, Trump Supporter: Just about everybody in this neighborhood has basically
voted Democrat, but I tell people all the time, what has 50-plus years of Democratic
policies done for our communities?
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Fewer than 5 percent of voters in Detroit picked President Trump,
but Coron Bentley, who works for Ford Motor Company, supported him.
He says he gets a lot of grief from friends and family for being a black Republican, but
he's glad to have voted for the president, and he says it's already paying off.
CORON BENTLEY: There was talk of them building a brand-new $700 million plant in Mexico,
but, instead, they decided to invest that money in the plant that I work at.
As Herbert Hoover once said of all people, prosperity is right around the corner.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Bentley says that optimism stems from Ford's recent decision to reinvest
more than a billion dollars into three Michigan plants.
President Trump applauded the announcement on Twitter earlier this week, saying car company
jobs are coming back to the U.S.
However, Ford said much of the plan had been in the works long before the election.
Back in Allen Park, Randall Shelton wants the president to refocus on cracking down
on illegal immigration and to start acting a little more presidential.
RANDALL SHELTON: So, you're supposed to be the president of the United States.
Act like the president of the United States.
Don't act like some braggart, some spoiled little rich kid, which you are, and start
doing what you're supposed to be doing.
WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Shelton says, in the end, he's still glad he voted for the president
and hopes he will start turning things around in the weeks and months ahead.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm William Brangham in Detroit.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And that brings us to the analysis of Shields and Brooks.
That's syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Gentlemen, great report from William Brangham from Michigan.
David, a lot of these voters, they still like Donald Trump.
It's been a rough two months, but they're looking past that.
DAVID BROOKS: Yes, he's got still 80 percent approval rating among Republicans.
And that's the bind that a lot of Republicans in the House and the Senate face, which is
that, if they cross Donald Trump, that they face some immediate heat back at home.
I'm not sure he can go out and defeat them in two years, as he's threatened to do.
But he's a popular guy still in Republican circles, but 35 percent, 40 percent approval
nationally.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What did you make of that?
MARK SHIELDS: I think it was a terrific piece by William.
But I think, Judy, we have to understand, having missed that story last November myself,
that Donald Trump...
JUDY WOODRUFF: Most of us did.
MARK SHIELDS: Donald Trump felt the pain of these people.
That's what he communicated to them.
He acknowledged their existence.
He acknowledged what they had been through, and that, while the great -- big numbers in
the country were great, the stock market, the unemployment, that these were people who
felt themselves and experienced being left behind.
And he said, I would stand up for you.
And I think they are still giving him very much the benefit of the doubt.
DAVID BROOKS: Imagine how popular he would be if he actually had some policies to help
those people.
MARK SHIELDS: Right, as opposed to a health care policy which would have taken 24 million
people off health care.
JUDY WOODRUFF: So, David, we heard one of the women who voted for him in Michigan say
she just thought this Russia story, all the tentacles of it, she said it doesn't really
add up to anything for her.
And, yet, this week, it just didn't seem to stop.
You have got two sides of the Congress, both houses of Congress, going after it, the FBI.
Now we learn more about what was going on inside the White House.
How damaging is this?
How much of a problem is it for the president?
DAVID BROOKS: I really don't know.
We have a tendency to get a little overhyped to some of the Trump scandals.
We go to outrage level 11 at every moment.
And I think the Russia -- the case is still out how serious it is, whether there's actual
ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, which I think is the core of it, where Paul
Manafort came from, whether there was any money laundering, and things like that.
There is a lot we don't know.
And I'm trying to not prejudge it.
What we do know is, there's high levels of incompetence.
And we have a president who tweeted this wiretapping tweet which was completely wrong.
That's incompetence.
We have this young man in the National Security Agency whose his boss tried to get rid of,
Trump was preserved by Steve Bannon, who was involved in giving information to Nunes, Chairman
Nunes.
We have Nunes himself, who is behaving incompetently.
Forget he's too close to the Trump campaign.
There is a way to conduct an investigation.
And it's not to cancel hearings willy-nilly.
It's not to go brief the guy you're supposed to be investigating.
It's not to create a civil war within your own committee.
And so we have just levels and levels and levels of just incompetence, of people who
do not know how to play this game.
And when that happens, you never know what's going to happen next.
And so I don't know if it's a scandal in the class of Watergate scandal, but it's not inspiring
to see what we have been seeing.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark, whether it's incompetence or something more than that, how much is it
hurting the president?
MARK SHIELDS: It's hurting the president, Judy.
Everything in politics is a poll.
If you want the ultimate poll, forget Gallup, forget NBC, Wall Street Journal or anything
else.
On Monday, April 3, the baseball season begins in Washington, D.C.
And Donald Trump, former baseball player, proudly proclaiming his athletic ability,
will not be there.
Why will he not be there?
Because he would be booed.
He would be booed loudly, he would be booed long.
And it would be would be seen all over the world, and it would be seen time and time
again.
So, that's what it's done.
That's what it's doing.
That's what his presidency -- David's right.
This is a White House that prizes loyalty above ability, imagination, experience, judgment.
And so, what do they do to the one loyal supporter, acolyte, apologist they have in the entire
Congress and part of the Intelligence Committees, Devin Nunes, inspector Nunes of California?
They bring him down to the White House under the cover of darkness on a secret mission,
show him these documents that he discovers.
And then he goes and reveals them to the president of the United States, even though these documents
are shown to him by people who work in the White House for the president of the United
States, including one of his former employees.
They take his loyalty, turn him into an absolute butt of jokes.
He's defenseless.
He's unflinchingly loyal.
And he's incompetent.
So, what they set out to do was to slow down the investigation, which suggests there is
something there.
And what they have done is highlight, spotlight and given a new energy and new urgency to
it.
The testimony of FBI agent Clint Watts before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday
was compelling.
It was compelling about the efforts and the sabotaging by Russia of the American democratic
process.
Anybody, Democrat, Republican, should listen to that and say, this is serious stuff.
JUDY WOODRUFF: And this is -- so, whether there is more there on Russia or not, David,
this is one that's going to go on.
And I think one of you mentioned health care.
When we talked last week, we had just learned that the Republicans had pulled the bill,
David, in the House of Representatives.
But, this week, you have the president criticizing the conservative Freedom Caucus members, naming
them, calling them out, singling them out by name, going after them and the Democrats.
Is this a tactic, a strategy that's likely to cause them to bring back the attempt to
repeal Obamacare successfully and get that done?
DAVID BROOKS: Well, first of all, I highly think it's unlikely they are going to bring
it back.
The core problem, which was that the Freedom Caucus and the moderates wanted a completely
opposite bill, that problem is still there.
It's a structural problem.
The Republican Party does not have a consensus position on health care.
The decision to send these tweets and to threaten people like Mark Sanford and other members
of the Freedom Caucus was amateur hour, another kindergarten mistake.
First of all, he's not going to do it.
He's not going to run people against somebody in two years.
Second, if he did, it would be highly unlikely to be successful.
Even Franklin Roosevelt, at the head of his popularity, he once tried to run against a
local person and lost all the way across the board, because people like their -- they like
their local member.
And then, meanwhile, the Freedom Caucus guys are loving this today.
They are the little guy standing up to -- the little guy representing their district.
And then their manhood has been called into question.
So, they can't back down now.
So, I found it completely counterproductive.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Mark?
MARK SHIELDS: Judy, an old friend of ours, Les Francis from California, said today, since
the collapse and the failure of the Republicans to -- that promised for four consecutive elections
to repeal and replace Obamacare as their first act, and total abject failure, that the Republicans
look more like the Donner Party than they do like the national governing party.
For those who don't remember the 19th century, the Donner Party were settlers who got caught
in the Sierra Madres at winter and ended up practicing cannibalism to survive.
And this is really -- it's been a circular firing squad ever since.
Donald Trump is attacking the Freedom Caucus.
Paul Ryan is attacking the Freedom Caucus and suggesting that the worst thing that could
happen was for the president to work with Democrats to solve a national problem.
We have never had a speaker of the House in the history of the country say that before.
To work for -- to solve a national problem, we won't work in a bipartisan way.
JUDY WOODRUFF: About the opposition.
MARK SHIELDS: Ryan has been crippled by this.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Really?
MARK SHIELDS: He has had editorial upon editorial.
His approval rating has fallen from 35 percent to 21 percent.
And he's getting battered on all sides.
I mean, Paul Ryan -- I know David has great respect and admiration for him -- but he is
like a -- philosophically, he's like a hammer.
And for the hammer, every problem is a nail.
And for Paul Ryan, his solution is invariably cutting taxes on the wealthiest Americans.
And he's tried to sell this tax -- this health care bill as a tax cut of a trillion dollars
time and again in interviews.
And it knocked 24 million people off of health care.
And Donald Trump, who had been the tribune of these people, stood by, uncuriously, uninterested,
and watched it happen.
And now he's blaming Paul Ryan.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Do you want to come to his defense, briefly?
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS: Well, no, I want to blame Trump more.
(LAUGHTER)
DAVID BROOKS: No, I think the -- well, Paul Ryan, I respect a lot of his policies, but
I do think he's a bit locked in the 1980s intellectually.
But the problem, the core problem here is still with Donald Trump.
He doesn't have a theory of what Trumpism is.
And he doesn't have a strategy for converting his populist campaign into some sort of legislative
agenda.
You could pick a right-wing agenda and get people all on the right and push through a
pretty Republican agenda.
Or you could pick a populist center-left, and not worry about the Freedom Caucus.
But he's managed to offend the right, the center and the left.
And so how many people -- how do you get to 50 percent of that?
And you don't.
And so he -- I assume that, if he -- he will sometimes figure out and say, OK, I have got
to be this kind of president or that kind of president.
But, right now, he's no kind of president.
There's no -- it's not center-right.
It's not center-left.
It's not far-right.
It's just chaos.
And so, somehow, he's got to figure out, OK, I have an actual strategy.
He doesn't have one right now.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Well, as he's criticizing the Democrats on health care, Mark, he's counting
on at least some Democrats to support his Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.
Two of them have come forward this week and said -- but there are others who you would
think the White House would be counting on who are saying they're not going to vote for
him.
What does that nomination look like right now?
MARK SHIELDS: What it looks like now is that -- I think Clarence Thomas is the only sitting
judge who was confirmed by fewer than 60 votes.
He got 52.
And Neil Gorsuch will not reach the 60 level.
And this will be, I think, a dramatic moment, when the -- they're going to impose, the Republican
majority will impose the nuclear deterrent, the nuclear solution.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The so-called nuclear rule change.
MARK SHIELDS: A majority -- a majority to confirm a Supreme Court justice.
The question is, do they do it on this one, on Gorsuch, or on the next one?
But, no, I think that Democrats -- Donald Trump has done one thing.
He may not have energized Republicans, but he has certainly energized Democrats and the
Democratic base.
And there's a sense of outrage, a continuing outrage over the fact that a mild-mannered,
widely admired person of high character and principle, Merrick Garland, the same things
they say about Neil Gorsuch, his supporters never even got a moment of a hearing, never
had the decency to -- many, meet to with him.
So there is a sense of vengeance and anger over that still brewing.
DAVID BROOKS: It's pure vengeance.
It's an eye for an eye.
It's two wrongs make -- trying to make a right.
But two wrongs do not make a right.
Neil Gorsuch, it doesn't look like he will get 60.
But that has nothing to do with Neil Gorsuch, who is completely qualified and almost a model
nominee.
And the fact the Democrats are doing this, maybe they can say, OK, well, Republicans
did it to us.
What's fair is fair.
But it's wrong in both cases.
And the Democratic arguments against Gorsuch are pathetic.
Their substance of which -- the core argument is that he's the sort of judge a Republican
candidate nominates for justice.
Well, of course.
He's -- a Republican won the White House, so that's what you're going to get.
But there is no question about his character, about the mainstream nature of his jurisprudence,
about his intelligence, about his qualifications.
There's no question about any of that.
And so to blow up the nuclear option over Gorsuch seems to be pointless partisanship,
which will have longstanding damage to the country.
We have the 60 votes, so it forces people to think about being bipartisan.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Right.
DAVID BROOKS: Once we get rid of that, you never have to worry about it again, if you're
in the majority.
JUDY WOODRUFF: It makes it a more partisan...
MARK SHIELDS: You do admit that he has not been forthcoming in -- on the question of
dark money, I mean, he has been totally...
DAVID BROOKS: We will get to that next week.
JUDY WOODRUFF: We are going to get to that next week.
MARK SHIELDS: Well, OK, but I'm just not going to let it pass like that, Judy.
(LAUGHTER)
JUDY WOODRUFF: And you're allowed to say that.
And so are you.
David Brooks, Mark Shields, thank you both.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Tonight, we conclude our series War on the Brain.
Special correspondent Soledad O'Brien reports on the efforts of researchers to find the
cause of post-traumatic stress disorder.
JACOB FADLEY, U.S. Army Veteran: Having PTSD is -- it's like being in a room where you
have no control and everything's going wrong.
There's a lot of anxiety.
It's a feeling of dread and hopelessness.
Triggers are, for me, when I'm in traffic.
There's a lot of stuff going on.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Jacob Fadley served 12 years and four tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He was a combat photographer in the Army.
He spent time close to heart-thumping blasts.
Yet he came home without a scratch -- on the outside.
Did you think you had post-traumatic stress?
JACOB FADLEY: I think, -- no, I knew I had PTSD, but I never wanted to say that, because,
when you say it, then you have to deal with it.
DR.
DANIEL PERL, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences: She's cutting very,
very thin ribbon of sections of this portion of the brain, the specimen.
She will put it in the water bath.
And it will spread out.
Look at that.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Wow.
Dr. Daniel Perl has a clue as to what's going on inside the heads of veterans like Jacob
Fadley.
He is a neuropathologist at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences,
an entity of the Department of Defense.
He is studying how blast exposure impacts the brain.
DR.
DANIEL PERL: Now, this is from an individual who had been in an automobile accident.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: He is studying the brains of people who suffered traumatic brain injuries,
one group, civilians who suffered impacts to the head, another, soldiers exposed to
blast shockwaves.
DR.
DANIEL PERL: Now let me show you the same procedure in roughly the same area of the
brain, same stain.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Oh, wow.
DR.
DANIEL PERL: This is somebody who'd been exposed to an IED, to blasts.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: And is this -- a person clearly has blast exposure.
Do they also have post-traumatic stress disorder?
DR.
DANIEL PERL: Yes.
All of the cases that we looked at had been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: While there's growing evidence of a link between traumatic brain injuries
and post-traumatic stress disorder, a connection between PTSD and blast waves has remained
elusive.
DR.
DANIEL PERL: When the explosion goes off, it forms what's called a blast wave, which
is a high-pressure pulse that expands out from the blast in all directions at the speed
of sound, approximately.
And so here you have a high -- high-pressure pulse blasting through this delicate instrument
called the brain.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: What does a concussive blast feel like?
JACOB FADLEY: It's just like a an entire force is being pushed through you, something powerful,
too.
You know it's powerful.
You freeze, that your body just kind of stops and goes, what -- what is going on?
And kind of, for me, it felt like it was rebooting itself.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Dr. Perl believes this brown scarring is a breakthrough discovery, possible
evidence that blast exposure may contribute to PTSD.
DR.
DANIEL PERL: I have been looking at brain slides for over 40 years, and I had never
seen this pattern before.
We thought, this must be something very unique and special to blast exposure.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: When you look at this picture, do you say this matches someone's reporting
on the impact of post-traumatic stress disorder?
DR.
DANIEL PERL: Sure.
It's widespread damage throughout the cortex.
And it's our belief that, in these areas with the scarring, function is compromised.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Fadley left the military in 2014, after his fourth deployment.
MAN: What's another visual component?
JACOB FADLEY: Rhythm.
MAN: Rhythm.
Rhythm.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Thirty-three and eligible for the G.I.
Bill, he thought studying film at USC would put his life back on track, but just one month
into his first semester:
JACOB FADLEY: I didn't see the train signal.
I didn't see that at all.
I made a left turn exactly as the train was coming.
I could feel blood pouring out of me.
I knew I was dying.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: L.A. news media reported on his brush with death.
REPORTER: It's hard to believe, but the man driving the silver Hyundai with Arizona plates
survived the crash that caused this Metro rail train to derail.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Fadley had driven, accidentally, into the path of an oncoming commuter train.
To this day, he avoids this intersection.
JACOB FADLEY: It's not comfortable.
Yes, it's -- yes, it's -- it's OK.
I mean, there's no reason to be upset with this.
I'm not -- I'm not upset.
I'm just anxious.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: It was finally enough for him to seek treatment for PTSD.
That sawdusty, brown pattern that exists across the brain in the slides that you showed me,
an MRI doesn't pick that up?
A CAT scan doesn't pick that up?
DR.
DANIEL PERL: No.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: You can't see that in a living person?
JACOB FADLEY: It's not that it isn't there.
It just doesn't have the resolution to see it.
We're going to need to use other means.
We're going to have to develop other approaches.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Dr. Perl's research is just in its infancy.
If confirmed, it would be evidence that PTSD, a psychological disorder, might partly be
the result of physical harm.
That could change the way we diagnose and treat the disorder.
Do you think you will ever be able to not only identify it, but come up with some kind
of a solution when you start working in living beings?
JACOB FADLEY: Well, that's, that's the ultimate objective.
We need to be able to find a therapy for this.
We need to be able to find a way to prevent it.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: The Veterans Administration uses the diagnosis of the American Psychiatric
Association for PTSD.
They call it a mental disorder, to be treated by drugs or therapy.
They don't consider it a physical injury.
DR.
HAROLD KUDLER, Chief Consultant for Mental Health Services, Department of Veterans Affairs:
A series of problems that happen after you have lived through an overwhelming life event.
The problems involve things intruding on you, memories, images, nightmares, flashbacks,
where you feel like you're reliving that event.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: The VA's chief mental health consultant is Dr. Harold Kudler.
DR.
HAROLD KUDLER: I think, no matter what we find in the brain, in the blood, on EEGs,
we're still going to have to have these conversations with people and talk about what trauma means
to people as part of their recovery.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Fadley's film school thesis is called "Into the Trenches" and focuses
on his struggles.
WOMAN: Depression on a scale of one to 10?
JACOB FADLEY: Three.
WOMAN: Anxiety on a scale of one to 10?
JACOB FADLEY: Seven.
WOMAN: Feeling emotionally numb or being unable to have loving feelings for those close to
you?
JACOB FADLEY: Quite a bit.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: Fadley hopes research will one day give him the comfort of knowing what's
going wrong inside his head.
JACOB FADLEY: It makes you feel like you're not crazy.
You can point to something to someone else and say, do you see this?
This thing did it.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN: For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Soledad O'Brien in Los Angeles.
JUDY WOODRUFF: There is more reporting on PTSD, including four profiles of military
veterans working through the disorder.
That's at PBS.org/"NewsHour."
Finally tonight, doctor and author Andrew Lam offers his Humble Opinion of how affirmative
action in college admissions should evolve.
DR.
ANDREW LAM, Author: There are lots of stereotypes about Asian Americans.
I probably fit some of them.
I did well in school.
I played a couple instruments.
I went to Yale and became a doctor.
I now volunteer to interview Yale applicants each year.
My ties to the college are strong, especially since my dad also went there in the 1960s.
At the time, there were only about 10 Asians in his class.
Today, Asians make up about a fifth of the students on campus.
In fact, there are now so many Asians at elite colleges that many Asians fear affirmative
action makes colleges hold them to a higher standard.
Asian students straight out ask me if being Asian will hurt their chances, or if it's
better to mark their race as other, instead of Asian.
Seriously?
We have reached the point where kids are afraid to admit their own ethnicity?
It's true.
And, sadly, it appears their concerns are not unfounded.
One study showed Asians had to score higher on the SAT than all other ethnicities to get
into top colleges.
In a recent lawsuit, Harvard was accused of using race quotas and maintaining a cap on
Asian enrollment for decades.
To me, the worst part of this isn't that some kid who looks like my son won't get into the
Ivy League.
It's that truly disadvantaged Asians get lumped in with model minority Asians.
There are economically disadvantaged students from Laotian, Cambodian and Hmong communities.
There are Pakistani and South Asian students whose parents scrape by working 100-hour weeks.
Affirmative action has the potential to hurt these individuals most of all.
But let's be fair.
Colleges' intentions are good.
They use affirmative action to craft diverse classes because we all benefit from exposure
to people of different races and backgrounds.
I strongly agree with this.
Would I have preferred to go to a Yale that was predominantly Asian?
Absolutely not.
So, I support affirmative action.
But I also know we could do it better.
We should assist students based on socioeconomic disadvantage, no matter their race.
There are rural white kids who deserve special preference, but aren't getting it.
There are affluent minority students who may not need that help to succeed.
Doing this wouldn't make sense if it reduced racial diversity.
But it doesn't have to.
A detailed study of colleges that switched to socioeconomic factors showed the majority
had stable or increased black and Hispanic enrollment.
One student I interviewed worked at a fast-food restaurant to help support her family.
Another had to care for two younger siblings, an obligation that prevented him from doing
extracurricular activities.
I could tell you their races, but should it matter?
You can't judge someone's accomplishments until you appreciate the obstacles overcome
to achieve them.
And if this could be a better way of doing affirmative action, rather than simply looking
at someone's skin color or a box they check, maybe we should give it a try.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Dr. Andrew Lam.
And an update before we go.
There are reports tonight that terrorists are developing a bomb small enough to fit
in a computer laptop.
U.S. intelligence officials told multiple news outlets that the device could get past
airport scanners.
Earlier this month, the Homeland Security Department banned devices larger than a cell
phone on certain incoming flights from international airports.
And that's the "NewsHour" for tonight.
I'm Judy Woodruff.
Have a great weekend.
Thank you, and good night.
END
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