On Friday’s “NewsHour” on PBS, New York Times columnist David Brooks criticized the president’s “political tone deafness” in its handling of the Bowe Bergdahl prisoner swap. Brooks stated that the White House’s handling of the exchange “as if it was just going to be the “Oprah show” and everyone was going to applaud” as “weird” and “mind-boggling.”
While Brooks said that he couldn’t explain the administration’s failure to anticipate the controversy over the release of five Guantanamo Bay detainees, he did argue that the swap was beneficial because the danger of “tearing up the national fabric” by telling a soldier “we’re cutting you off” outweighed the risks of releasing any inmates at Guantanamo Bay.
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