On Friday’s “PBS NewsHour,” New York Times columnist David Brooks responded to the Stormy Daniels revelations by stating that the “main fact” is that we’ve reached a point where the president paying a porn star to keep quiet “seems normal.” He also argued that sometimes people overemphasize scandals and “lose sight” of other important issues.

Brooks said, “I mean, the headline here is that the president of the United States allegedly paid hush money to a porn star. I mean, what else do we need for the scandal? That sort of covers it for me. And so, if people are willing to tolerate that in their president, then whether the campaign — whether the money counts as a campaign donation or not…it’s tertiary or something else. The main fact is, we have come to this point in our country where that seems normal.”

He added, “I do think the norms that he’s violated and the way he’s degraded public debate in the nation are a serious thing. We have talked about that for three years. And yet, when you think the important things that have happened this week, probably the China-US trade talks were a very big deal. The North Korea-South Korea thing is promising all of a sudden. The economy is going great.”

Brooks further stated, “And so, apparently a lot of people have made the calculation, you know, he’s got always a bunch of scandals that those people in Washington care about, but when you think the big substantive things, things seem to be going fine. And that’s the calculation a lot of people are making. And there are times when I think we get a little overhyped up about whatever Rudy Giuliani said this morning, and we do lose sight in Washington of things like the China trade talks.”

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