Night Two of coverage of the Republican National Convention was “Make America Safe Once Again,” with politicians and ordinary Americans making speeches relaying stories about crime and the illegal immigration that causes some of that crime. PBS reporters and anchors sounded the alarm from the start, warning that Republicans are trying to instill unwarranted fear and anxiety in voters.
At 7:08 p.m. (ET), Lisa Desjardins, PBS’s sole reporter on the convention floor, warned viewers of the PBS News Hour, with a tone of dismissal and disapproval, to watch out for the Republicans setting a dark tone and spreading fear, and that smart journalists know better.
Co-host Geoff Bennett: The theme tonight, Lisa, is “Make America Safe Again” [sic], help us understand what the party is trying to convey with that messaging tonight.
Lisa Desjardins: This will be a darker tone tonight. This will be a night where Republicans will try to convince the public that President Biden has led to a country full of crime, where undocumented immigrants have been causing problems for communities across this country. We know of course that violent crime in this country has gone down in the last couple of years. There are some communities where that’s different. But tonight, we have to pay very careful attention to how this tone goes, because this is trying to present kind of an atmosphere of fear, many of these delegates believe there is a reason to fear. We know the statistics say otherwise. So we have to watch it carefully.
And they did. Soon after PBS’s convention coverage proper began, PBS News Hour co-anchor Amna Nawaz asked analyst David Brooks around the 8:04 p.m. mark.
Amna Nawaz: We have seen though, we should note, Republican rhetoric veer into outright racism, echoing some white supremacist notions as well. Do you think that will be avoided here tonight?”
David Brooks, a New York Times columnist that supposedly holds up the right on the PBS News Hour’s Friday evening political roundtable, didn’t exactly make a conservative defense, instead bashing conservative controversialist Tucker Carlson.
David Brooks: Well I hope so, but you know, Tucker Carlson was sitting next to Donald Trump the other night, and he did some replacement, serious replacement theory, in the course of his – that’s the idea that non-white people are replacing white people -- and so he’s still sitting there with Donald Trump, so who knows.
Nawaz: Who knows.
Brooks would stick to that pattern of dismissing conservatives all night, letting the unbridled voice of Jonathan Capehart of the Washington Post, his liberal counterpart dominate.
At 9:25 pm anchor Nawaz, while talking to North Dakota’s Republican Gov. Doug Burgum, returned to the issue of racist Republican rhetoric.
Nawaz: We know we’re living in a different era, we’ve all been talking about this in the last few days about, after the assassination attempt on former President Trump’s life, this seems to be a moment, people say, maybe we’ll hear something different from him, but they all agree this is the time to lower the political temperature.
I’m curious what your message would be to some of your fellow Republicans we’ve seen on stage who haven’t seem to got--get that menu, there are still incredibly incendiary remarks being made, some vilification of certain communities. If you believe that that kind of rhetoric can fuel actual real-world violence as we’ve seen in the past what’s your message to your fellow Republicans about their language?
Part of that “vilification” was presumably the word “illegals” to describe people the media now demand be called “undocumented immigrants.” At 8:05 p.m. Capehart was aghast that speaker Bernie Moreno, an Ohio Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, used the term “illegals” when talking about undocumented migrants.
Jonathan Capehart: It’s one thing to present a kinder, gentler version of the Republican Party and they might veer into outright racist or dog-whistling or bull-horning. But you also have to pay attention to who’s sitting in the room, Tucker Carlson, who’s taking the stage and the language that they’re using. Bernie Moreno, who’s running for Senate in Ohio, used the term “illegals” when talking about undocumented migrants coming over the border.”
At 10:02 p.m. Desjardins asked a California delegate what she thought of the use of word “illegals.”
Desjardins: We’ve seen this influx, we know, we just heard Chad Wolf talking on our program at the numbers changing. The rhetoric, does it matter to you? We’ve heard the term “illegals” used here, are panelists been talking about that, what do you think of that word?
Her response: “I think it’s just a word….”
