PBS’s coverage of Night One of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee got off to a bad start during an interview with Senator Ron Johnson, Republican of Wisconsin, who’d just delivered an early speech to the convention delegates.
At 8:07 ET, News Hour co-anchor Geoff Bennett, who was hosting the network’s taxpayer-funded convention coverage along with fellow News Hour co-anchor Amna Nawaz, challenged Johnson on the ability of Donald Trump to change the tone after his near-assassination, attacking Trump with three accusations, one ridiculous, one false.
What responsibility do you think Donald Trump has himself to turn down the temperature? Because he in the past, he’s called his political enemies ‘vermin,’ he’s called some undocumented immigrants ‘animals,’ he’s said there’ll be a ‘bloodbath’ if he’s not elected in November.”
So, one out of three ain’t bad? Trump did indeed call the “undocumented immigrants” known as the deadly gang MS-13 “animals.” So?
As for “bloodbath,” Bennett was repeating the same ridiculous liberal whopper that he told back on the News Hour in March 2024, after Trump made comments at a campaign rally in Ohio. Trump was talking about tariffs, saying that if he didn’t get elected it would be a “bloodbath” for the American auto industry. Back then Bennett said, “Extremism experts say it's the latest example of Donald Trump using violent rhetoric to appeal to his supporters.”
But perhaps the most awkward and sharpest exchange of the night came, after all things, a speech from social media influencer Amber Rose at 10:21 p.m. ET, in the third and final hour, when Capehart sparred with Bennett over the host stating accurately that the left has “vilified” Donald Trump.
BENNETT: “Jonathan Capehart [laughs] that look you just gave me.
CAPEHART: Gotta give me a heads up! [laughs]
[Crosstalk]
NAWAZ: Jonathan Capehart, your thoughts?
BENNETT: “It strikes me, when she says, the left told me to hate Trump, but when you cut through the lies you’ll realize that life was better under him. That’s a resonant argument for a lot of people, now of course you have to discount the fact that there was a hundred-year pandemic and everything that resulted from that. But if you clip that and put it on Instagram, among, you know, the people that follow her, that could pick up a lot of traction, that resonates with folks.
Capehart, a PBS News Hour regular holding up the liberal side alongside “conservative” voice David Brooks on Friday evenings, often seems unable to process the occasional discordant non-liberal views from the hosts. His reply carried a petulant tone:
CAPEHART: Sure, and I would love to ask her, what lies? It’s one thing, you can say, when I cut through the lies, what lies are those? And then please tell me, how do you counter those lies you’re talking about with the actual data that’s there. We can talk about the emotions, because economics are emotional, and if people don’t feel it I get it--
BENNETT: In fairness, the left has vilified Donald Trump.
A snotty, defensive Capehart demanded: “I’m sorry, define vilified.”
After an awkward two-second pause, Bennett repeated his accusation.
BENNETT: You can argue the merits, but in fairness, the left has vilified Donald Trump. Threat to democracy, that he’s a proto-fascist--
Capehart: --is that a vilification, is that a vilification, I don’t mean to argue with you, Geoff, I disagree with this notion that the left has vilified Donald Trump. The left has pointed out multiple things as president, has said as president, as a candidate for the presidency again, that deserve to be pointed out, deserve to be criticized, that’s not vilification, that is acknowledging what is there for everyone to see. Now, if someone had called him all sorts of names in addition to that, the name-calling I would say is vilification, but the substance of what people are talking about, you can’t call that vilification when you’re hammering the guy on his, on what he proposes for the country and to do to the country.
So calling Trump a “fascist” and comparing him to Adolf Hitler, as the left and pockets of the media has done for years, is somehow not vilification?
