“Public” broadcasting in the United States demonstrates routinely that it cannot stand conservatives and their arguments. The spectrum of debate on their show is often from far left to liberal Democrat. This is especially comical on the NPR talk show Left Right & Center, where their October 16 show filled the “Right” side with…..Sarah Longwell, a former Republican who campaigned with and for Kamala Harris in 2024.
The show’s host, David Greene, introduced her as the right’s representative: “She is the New York Times-bestselling author of How to Eat an Elephant, One Voter at a Time. She is publisher of the Bulwark, and also hosts the Focus Group Podcast.” She was fiercely anti-Trump on this show. When they discussed the execution of Islamist mass shooter Nidal Hasan, he said Trump supporters have a "perverse bloodlust" and are "fundamentally cruel, fundamentally indecent."
This is the leading blurb for Longwell’s book: “The playbook for consigning MAGA-style politics to the ash heap of history (where it belongs).” They say she “draws on her own unlikely political journey from a lesbian Republican operative to the vanguard of the anti-MAGA movement.” Does that sound like the opposite of NPR?
And yet, in a fundraising announcement at the start of the podcast, Greene has the audacity to boast that there are “A lot of places where you could go for political news right now. A lot of takes, a lot of outrage, a lot of people who seem very, very certain that they’re right. Well, here at Left Right & Center we try do to something different. Every week, we bring people together who genuinely disagree…” Wow. Shameless.
The website where you listen also carries this false advertising: "David Greene pieces together the big picture by inviting people from the left and the right to unpack their ideological differences, not to smooth them over, and look at what’s truly at stake. The show offers a rare kind of clarity."
What's clear is that they cannot really stand a conservative counter-argument. They would much rather invite Fake Conservatives, when the show is more accurately described in this episode as Left Left & Left.
They began with Trump’s suspension of sanctions on Russian diesel deliveries, and Longwell jumped right in with conspiracy theories: “I have long wondered whether or not Trump is using the current oil crisis as a way to manufacture a pretext for getting into business with Vladimir Putin. One of the things about Trump that we all sit and stare at, but have never gotten a sufficient answer to, is what does Vladimir Putin have on Donald Trump? Is it that Donald Trump simply loves dictators so much, because we see this behavior. We see that he cozies up to Putin. He cozies up to Kim Jong Un. He has never met a murderous dictator he doesn’t want to be friends with, emulate.” Emulate??
Longwell confessed she didn’t really belong in the “Right” chair, that she left that behind: “You have me sitting on the right here, so I’m gonna put on my Republican hat from 10 or 15 years ago, and just say that the idea that Republicans would stand by while Donald Trump engages in this kind of activity with Vladimir Putin, it’s gobsmacking!”
She fussed about how Republicans should be for America as a “beacon of freedom” and not align with Russia or China. No one on NPR was going to challenge her on how the Democrats have aligned with Russia and China and Iran, just in the Clinton and Obama and Biden years.
When it came to the raid on Ilhan Omar’s home, Greene asked Longwell “Is this a step toward authoritarianism?” Longwell reacted exactly as NPR would want: “It’s not a step toward authoritarianism, like, the authoritarians are inside the gate. And I think sometimes, people don’t want to sound hysterical, and I understand why, but I often think people are under-reacting to what is happening right now.”
PS: This is just one simple recent example that the "Right" side was represented by someone who wants Democrats elected everywhere:
Then help elect Democrats. Because we all know—and have known for a long time—Republicans will do nothing about this.
— Sarah Longwell (@SarahLongwell25) October 17, 2026
