The Friday night pundits on the PBS News Hour worried out loud about how Kamala Harris is slipping, and David Brooks upset Jonathan Capehart by saying it was a “major mistake” for Harris to say she’d do nothing differently than Biden. But at the end, they came back around to screaming about hurricane disinformation from the Republicans.
Anchor Geoff Bennett touted a “great piece” on misinformation attacking the Republicans. Bennett began with a bizarre tweet from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene implying nefarious people can control the weather:
GEOFF BENNETT: And we have seen how the response has been hampered by just a torrent of misinformation and disinformation from Donald Trump and others, to include Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican from Georgia, who claimed the federal government can control the weather.
You know, Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic has a great piece, where he says, this isn’t just a misinformation crisis. It’s something darker. It’s a cultural assault on institutions and individuals that operate in reality. How do you see this moment that we’re living in?
It’s only natural that PBS would tout The Atlantic, since PBS agreed to let the Atlantic take over its Washington Week show, and The Atlantic just endorsed Kamala for President. Warzel argues there are the good guys — scientists, journalists, people who deal in reality — and the bad guys — MAGA. They’re just mad Kamala is losing, and blame reality deniers. Warzel wrote:
Misinformation is too technical, too freighted, and, after almost a decade of Trump, too political. Nor does it explain what is really happening, which is nothing less than a cultural assault on any person or institution that operates in reality. If you are a weatherperson, you’re a target. The same goes for journalists, election workers, scientists, doctors, and first responders.
Bennett threw a softball to Jonathan Capehart so he could go Full Stelter: “Well, one, let’s just call it what it is. I will call it what it is. It’s not just misinformation and disinformation. It’s lies. Lies that are putting people’s lives at risk, that is tearing apart communities, people who are in danger, who are at the most stressful point in their lives trying to outrun a hurricane and being told that your government is not — where you pay taxes, your government’s not coming to help you, your government is giving money away to other people?”
Capehart demanded the Republicans rebuke their own for questioning FEMA’s response. Everyone should just acknowledge Team Biden has done well: “I give the governors of Georgia and Florida, the Republican governors of Georgia and Florida credit for saying the Biden administration has been very helpful, pushing back against the misinformation. But I want Republicans to be more direct in saying, who’s feeding the — who’s feeding the disinformation and the lies and to hold that person accountable.”
PBS pretends only strange Republicans tout weather-control conspiracies, when right in Washington DC, they never noticed in 2018 when Democrat city councilman Trayon White warning during a snowfall of the “climate control” of the Rothschilds (Jewish bankers). If PBS had an actual conservative pundit, they could point out Democrat disinformation, or rebut Warzel. But you have two pundits who just want to bash Trump and MTG the Weather Girl all day and into the weekend.
BENNETT: Is there any way back from this, when we have this ecosystem that exists where people actually believe that the federal government can control the weather, something as nonsensical as that, seriously? I mean, it’s an indictment of our time.
DAVID BROOKS: Well, each party has to police their own side, and Republicans have failed at that big time since 2015.
I think the larger question for me is, the rise of Donald Trump shows it’s an advantage to have no conscience, that you can rise and succeed in America, both in his business career and in now in his political career,if you actually have no conception of right or wrong, you only have a conception of yourself. And that’s sort of a disturbing lesson for a generation to come.
PBS sounds like MSNBC. But we pay for it.
