The Friday night roundtable with David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart on the PBS News Hour was mostly the usual slog through how terrible things are under Donald Trump, like in Ukraine, for starters.
But at the very end, anchor Amna Nawaz asked the two pundits to "make a bit of a prediction in terms of what's ahead in terms of the big stories you think we will be paying most attention to or one we don't even see coming around the corner just yet."
Capehart said he's a perennial optimist -- that's not what he sounds like to us -- but he's optimistic the Democrats will retake the House "to not just rein in this president, but to also exercise their powers as a co-equal branch of government."
Then Brooks really opened wide the door to optimism about American healing -- but might all the positive social trends listed have anything to do with Trump? Or is it happening in spite of him?
PBS News Hour pundit David Brooks sees social healing (under TRUMP?). We see suicide deaths down, violent crimes down, opioid addiction down, obesity down, social isolation down, social media use down. Longevity was going down, now it's up again. "America's socially healing." pic.twitter.com/jpmCgAgqR8
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) January 3, 2026
DAVID BROOKS: I agree with Jonathan, the Democrats will take the House. But I would say the thing I'm most interested in and most excited about is that 2025 was a pretty bad year for those of us who sit around talking about politics, but it was okay for the economy. The last quarter three growth rate was 4.3 percent.
But socially it was a very good year. So we saw suicide deaths down. We saw violent crimes down. We see opioid addiction down. We see obesity down. We see social isolation down, social media use down. So a lot of the damage that happened to the fabric of American society over the last 10 years, people are beginning to respond, and they're beginning to figure stuff out.
So longevity was going down. Now longevity is going back up again. And so I think America is socially healing. And those are the things you can extrapolate from, because those trends are not just blips. Those trends, I think, are longstanding. And we could see 2026 as a year of more political depression. Don't get too cheered up.
Brooks is all about preaching about "social healing." But it's weird to find positive social trends and not see a Trump factor, when on PBS it seems that everything that's terrible about America is Trump's fault.
