GEOFF BENNETT: From the fallout over a controversial boat strike to growing fractures inside the House GOP, lots to discuss tonight with Brooks and Capehart.

That's New York Times columnist David Brooks and Jonathan Capehart of MS NOW.

Good evening, gentlemen.

It's great to see you both.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Hey, Geoff.

DAVID BROOKS: Good to see you.

GEOFF BENNETT: So Washington has been consumed this past week with a debate over a series of strikes that killed two survivors of an initial attack on a suspected Venezuelan drug boat back in September.

And, Jonathan, the administration says that strike and others like it are necessary to protect U.S.

interests.

When you look at all that exists in the public realm right now, does that rationale withstand scrutiny?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: No, it doesn't.

It would help if the president and the defense secretary, this administration, would show us the evidence.

You keep saying that these people are drug runners.

So -- and you know who they are.

So tell us.

You keep saying that they are shipping these drugs, that's what's in those boats.

Well, show us.

Show us the evidence.

But we don't have the evidence.

And then the other thing is, those two people who were killed in that second strike, since then, there have been others and there have been survivors.

If this is such a war on drugs to protect the American people, why aren't those survivors in U.S.

federal custody and not repatriated to their countries?

There are so many questions here that go well beyond what we have been talking about this week.

And that's not to diminish the importance of why we're talking about this.

GEOFF BENNETT: And, David, to that point, I mean, is the U.S.

in your view carrying out a counternarcotics mission in the Caribbean?

Or is this a show of force mission?

And does the administration itself seem clear on the difference?

DAVID BROOKS: Well, it's more the latter than the former, but, frankly, to be a little crude, if you remember 2016, Donald Trump and Marco Rubio got in a fight into a presidential debate about who had bigger hands.

This is the direct descendant of that of who's the bigger man.

Somebody's been watching too many Dirty Harry movies or Charles Bronson and "Death Wish," where they blow away the bad guys.

And this is a video image of, we're blowing away the bad guys.

The main source of the drugs comes over land through Mexico.

If they cared about doing the drugs, they would focus on that.

If they cared about doing the drugs, they would not be blowing up the evidence.

They'd be interrogating the guys they caught.

If they cared about doing the drugs, they would try to work with our allies, not -- and not alienate our allies.

And so this to me is just a TV show.

And I think what appalls me most of all about it is what they're posting, both Trump and Hegseth, on social media.

You look at the pictures of Abraham Lincoln at the end of the Civil War.

You look at the pictures of Franklin Roosevelt at the end of World War II.

The burden of sending human beings into battle and causing death and suffering on both sides was something they bore with incredible heaviness.

And Hegseth treats it like it's a video game.

And it's just like a -- it's just morally offensive.

GEOFF BENNETT: We also learned this week that the Pentagon inspector general found that Secretary Hegseth's use of an unsecure messaging app, Signal, during active operations put U.S.

personnel at risk and that Hegseth did not fully cooperate with investigators.

Jonathan, what do you see as the takeaways here?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: It's breathtaking.

If this were a normal administration, one, Pete Hegseth would never be anywhere near the Pentagon.

But let's say Pete Hegseth had gotten in and this had happened.

That person would have been fired.

There would have been multiple hearings on the Hill, not just of the defense secretary, but of all the other Defense Department officials who were on that Signal chain to get to the bottom of this.

I -- and the idea that the secretary didn't participate in this investigation, between Signalgate and video gaming off of the coast of Venezuela, they are stretching the bounds of decency, the bounds of legality, the bounds of our Constitution in ways where -- I mean, I agree with David.

This is offensive on so many levels.

But we have got all those -- the video of Hegseth talking about the fog of war.

I know I'm going back to Venezuela, instead of Signalgate, but there is a rot at the Pentagon.

And the president of the United States does not seem to care.

GEOFF BENNETT: What about that?

I mean, administrations come and go, but the rules that govern secure communications are supposed to endure.

What does it say that the Cabinet secretary, the defense secretary, could disregard those rules with so little apparent consequence?

DAVID BROOKS: Yes, I would love to know if they ever had a conversation after Jeff Goldberg's story came out and where they said, should we just admit that we screwed up?

I think a normal human being would say, yes, we screwed up.

But then I remember Hegseth got off a plane or a helicopter, and instead of saying the obvious, which actually would have earned him a little credibility, given what -- the story he was stuck with, he went after Jeff, and then he didn't cooperate with this investigation.

And when the investigation comes out saying explicitly in black and white that he endangered U.S.

troops, he said, oh, totally exonerated.

And so there's just a history of not only a little lie.

Like, don't - - they didn't bend the truth.

They broke it, stepped on it, burned it, and buried it in the ground.

And so I would love to know if they even have a consciousness, maybe we should tell the truth that we messed up.

GEOFF BENNETT: Yes.

You know, we spend a lot of time on this program looking at the political divide and the toxic discourse fueled by conspiracy theories and misinformation.

And, last night, there was this admission that really caught our attention.

Dan Bongino, who was once this prominent right-wing influencer who trafficked in conspiracy theories, he explained why he pushed those narratives.

And we should explain to our audience he's now the number two official at the FBI.

And he promoted years ago false claims about the January 6 pipe bomb case, even suggesting that it was an inside job.

Here's what he said to Sean Hannity last night.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX News Anchor: You put a post on X right after this happened.

And you said: "There's a massive cover-up because the person that planted those pipe bombs, they don't want you to know who it is because it's either a connected anti-Trump insider or an inside job."

DAN BONGINO, Deputy FBI Director: You know, listen, I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions.

That's clear.

And, one day, I will be back in that space.

But that's not what I'm paid for now.

I'm paid to be your deputy director.

And we base investigations on facts.

GEOFF BENNETT: Have you ever heard a clearer admission of the incentives that are warping our political discourse, Bongino saying, yes, I said all that stuff, but I was paid to say it?

JONATHAN CAPEHART: I -- this whole segment is breathtaking.

(LAUGHTER) JONATHAN CAPEHART: The topics that we're talking about.

And I just want to say it's great to have proof of life of Dan Bongino, that he's actually still in the number two job after saying he was going to quit.

The incentive structures are wildly perverse.

So he was paid to spin conspiracy theories.

Now he's being paid to be the number two at the FBI.

Why would any law enforcement agency out in the country, why would any American citizen trust anything that comes out of the FBI,between Director Kash Patel, who was part of all of this, to this guy?

I mean, we are in -- we are in a deep mess being run by a cadre of fools who shouldn't be in the jobs that they're in.

DAVID BROOKS: Before I answer, could you tell me what you're paying me to do?

(LAUGHTER) DAVID BROOKS: Do you want the conspiracies or do you want the truth?

I just... GEOFF BENNETT: Truth.

Nothing but the truth.

DAVID BROOKS: You know, what -- I mean, it is -- it illustrates how much of it is a circus, how much it is a performance.

Well, you see -- I worked with Tucker Carlson for nine years at "The Weekly Standard."

We helped co-found the magazine together.

And I had a wonderful time with Tucker.

But I watched him and I watched other people who have gone on to those kinds of careers get captured by the audience.

The audience, they feel the visceral rise of the audience when they do something edgy and crazy.

And then, once you give them that, the dose has to keep going up and up and up.

And they are just captured by it, and they get charade to wherever the audience wants them to go.

And they become, in Tucker's case - - I don't know Mr.

Bongino.

But he is a different human being than the one I knew.

And I think it is this seductive process of populist sort of drug dealing, basically, intellectual drug dealing.

GEOFF BENNETT: What's to be done about it?

I mean, the suspect in the January 6 pipe bomber case reportedly said that he believed the conspiracy and the false claims that Trump didn't win the election.

There are clear consequences to this misinformation and these conspiracy theories.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Are there?

We have just seen more than 1,000 people who participated in the riot of the Capitol on January 6, were held accountable in courts of law, only to be pardoned by the president of the United States.

So, at this point, great.

You found the bomber.

Should we start the countdown clock on when that person gets pardoned?

GEOFF BENNETT: David?

DAVID BROOKS: I just think there should be more shame for conspiracy thinking.

If you think January 6 was an inside job, if you think 9/11 was an inside job, you are spreading the kind of acidic disinformation that destroys all our institutions.

And just to ride my hobbyhorse for a little bit, if you think the FBI and Joe Biden's Justice Department were hiding some massive conspiracy about Jeffrey Epstein, you are defaming the men and women of the FBI and the DOJ.

And it's an attempt at dehumanization.

And people spin these conspiracy theories, and so I'm just -- questions are being asked.

It's all dishonorable inference.

But it has clear corrosive effects on democracy that, if we can't trust the institutions of our government, then we do not have a democracy.

And conspiracy thinking is a kind of acidic kind of mental disease that undermines that.

GEOFF BENNETT: Indeed.

David Brooks, Jonathan Capehart.

my thanks to you both.

JONATHAN CAPEHART: Thanks, Geoff.

DAVID BROOKS: Thank you.