PBS is determined to squeeze every bit of anti-Trump animus out of a moderate Republican as they can in the weeks before the election, as demonstrated in Friday’s installment (the show airs on PBS after CNN International).
Journalist Walter Isaacson, a former Editor of Time and CNN CEO, talked to Republican Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio after guest host Bianna Golodryga opened the show with a teaser about “Haitians eating pets in Springfield,” now elevated to “dangerous lies.”
Host Bianna Golodryga: Also, confronting dangerous lies from the Republican presidential ticket. Walter Isaacson speaks with Ohio's Republican Governor Mike DeWine.
The Republican ticket can never be forgiven for amplifying complaints from the residents of Springfield, Ohio regarding the influx of Haitians into their city. Her intro to Isaacson’s actual interview with DeWine hammered the “misinformation” point:
Golodryga: Well, as the race for the White House continues, so does the conversation about disinformation. Donald Trump recently made claims that the Biden administration is diverting aid from those affected by hurricanes. Only weeks after, he made false accusations about Haitian immigrants in the State of Ohio during the presidential debate. The state's governor, Mike DeWine, has denied those claims and expressed support for Haitian migrants….
Walter Isaacson: ….we had the situation where Donald Trump and then J. D. Vance, your home state senator, started talking about the Haitians eating pets and dogs, and you stepped in and said, no. The mayor says that's not happening. You said it's not happening. But I want to talk to you personally, since you've been very involved with the Haitian community and the revival of Springfield. Tell me how you feel about all this now.
DeWine: Well, fortunately, I think that rhetoric has calmed down a little bit, and I hope it stays calmed down….
His interlocutor wasn’t satisfied.
Isaacson: Well, wait. Why would Trump and Vance say that then? Did they not know that?
The journalist brought up Springfield bomb threats.
Isaacson: Do you think some of those scares, some of them were probably foreign -- came from foreign instigators? But do you think some people were motivated by hearing Donald Trump say this about Haitians eating pets and that it caused, helped cause these problems to some extent?
DeWine: Well, we saw a lot of these threats coming from outside the United States. And I think that anytime we have people and countries, we won't name names, but you want to cause us problems. And I think when they see an opportunity they act. And that's what they saw. They saw an opportunity.
Isaacson: But I'm talking about the domestic people who did it. Do you think, in some ways, there's some responsibility on Trump and Vance for helping sort of gin these people up?
As usual, not even DeWine’s criticism of his own party’s candidates for president was good enough for PBS, who pushed him to condemn Trump-Vance in ever-stronger terms when DeWine said talking to Vance would not do any good.
Isaacson: Wait, wait. Why wouldn't it do any good?
Isaacson then tried to use DeWine as a weapon to attack Trump-Vance on other fronts like abortion and transgender rights, whatever those may be.
Isaacson: One of the other hot-button issues that's come up is transgender rights. And there was a bill that the Republican legislature in Ohio passed banning any gender-affirming care for kids who were transgender. And then you vetoed that, thinking, I assume, that we have to be more understanding and try to figure out how to deal with this. Your veto gets overridden. How would you talk to people about how we can try to find some accommodation on this issue, and what would you try to do in Ohio to overcome what your legislature did?
By the end of the interview, Isaacson was pressing DeWine to dump Trump completely especially after “the Haitian immigrant thing.”
Isaacson: Are you, in some ways, just cooling on this notion of being for Donald Trump?
