Is it the PBS NewsHour or the DNC NewsHour? Many nights, you couldn't tell the difference. Co-host Amna Nawaz interviewed Liz Cheney on Thursday, and she was just like NPR's Leila Fadel in merely facilitating all of Cheney's Republican-ripping talking points from her new book. Republican tax dollars are used to trash Republicans on "public" broadcasting.
The segment's online headline was just a PR echo: Liz Cheney’s ‘Oath and Honor’ spotlights dangers of a potential 2nd Trump presidency. Nawaz's questions were fluffy softballs:
1. What would another Trump presidency mean for America?
2. Do you think he would be more dangerous in a second term, because he understands the system better?
3. You document the role Kevin McCarthy, in particular, played in working to overturn that 2020 election. He announced this week that he will be leaving Congress at the end of the year, before his term is up. He's saying that he will serve America in new ways. Does his departure surprise you?
4. Almost three years after the January 6 attack, it's fair to say accountability and the work to hold people accountable is still very much going on. We have the rioters still being prosecuted, fake electors this week indicted in Nevada,. Another group of fake electors in Wisconsin settled a lawsuit acknowledging that Mr. Biden did win. You talk about other people being held accountable. I wonder, what about members of Congress? Do you believe there should be accountability there, and what does that look like?
5. This week, we also saw Speaker Mike Johnson say that he would release the January 6 security tapes, but blur faces. Does that kind of thing, in your view, get in the way of accountability?
6. What message do you think it sends when he says, we're going to blur the faces?
This may be the most challenging question, and it's complaining that she didn't tell more about evil Republicans in her "tell all" book:
You name some of your former colleagues in the book, in terms of what they were saying privately versus what they were saying publicly. There's a story you tell about what happens in the Cloakroom, with people signing an objection letter to the election results. And you name Mark Green as sighing and saying the things, "We do for orange Jesus," referring to then-President Trump.
There's others that you don't name, though. You talk about one senior Republican congressman who refused to speak out, you say because of political consequences, but he says to you: "Liz, surviving is all that matters." And I just wonder if you think people, enablers, as you call them, should be held accountable, why not name them in the book?
Cheney said she withheld names of colleagues who were afraid for their own security. But then she suggested they should quit if they can't handle the threat.
I say in the book, though, although I understood very much his fear about security, that I thought perhaps he needed to be in another line of work, that,if you come to a point where, as a member of Congress, you're not willing to cast your vote the way you think you should, especially on something as important as impeachment, then you really — you need to rethink both sort of where we are as a country, but also whether or not you're the right person in that position.
Neither Nawaz nor Cheney was going to explore how there were ten House Republicans who voted for the second impeachment of Trump days before he left office. Only two of them are still in the House. Some of them left to make big book deals and draw love on PBS.
PBS NewsHour was brought to you in part by Consumer Cellular and their new "Freedom Calls" campaign.
