Taxpayer-funded PBS may seem in all its public relations as a bland and civil oasis on public affairs programming, when in reality it’s just another red-hot anti-Trump channel like the rest. When the leftists at The Atlantic magazine gained editorial control of the longtime PBS Friday night show Washington Week, it turned more intensely into a leftist hootenanny.
So now you can turn to PBS for bitter former Trump administration employees to denounce him as a brainless Hitler fan whose second term would be devastating to America.
CNN host Jim Sciutto has a new book out called Return of the Great Powers, and he was allowed to promote the book on PBS on Friday night’s show. The book carries a promotional quote by a “Republican,” former congressman Adam Kinzinger. So it’s not surprising that Sciutto is touting the tales of “lifelong Republicans” who are delighting PBS and The Atlantic (not to mention CNN).
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: But, Jim, you also spoke to multiple former Trump officials for your book, including retired Marine General John Kelly, who was also former chief of staff to then-President Trump. And Kelly told you that a second Trump — a second term with him, speaking about Trump, particularly when he would not be worrying about re-election, it would be fundamentally a catastrophe for us.
What are the stakes of a second Trump term?
JIM SCIUTTO: Think of this. He served 40 years as a Marine general. He’s a Gold Star father. This is a serious man who loves his country, and, by the way, largely [?] a lifelong Republican saying Trump is unfit for office, fundamentally a catastrophe. That’s a remarkable appraisal to hear from a former chief of staff to a former U.S. president.
John Bolton told me, and, again, I’m quoting from him directly here, that ‘Trump doesn’t have enough of a brain,’ his words, to articulate a China policy.
You couple that with former Vice President Pence saying today he cannot, in good conscience, endorse him.
These are people who worked with him for four years, advised him at the highest levels, were in the room with them as he was making consequential decisions about this country, and they judged that decision-making and his priorities to be fundamentally problematic for this country, it’s remarkable. And I don’t think there’s any precedent for that.
So, when — you know, those appraisals are not coming from journalists, they’re not coming folks on the left or the Democratic Party or RINOs or whatever. They’re coming for folks who served in the Trump administration. And we should take pause. We should pause.
If you weren’t convinced John Kelly wanted to help Sciutto damage Trump, the hits kept coming:
SCIUTTO: John Kelly, by the way, also described to me multiple instances where Trump expressed praise for Adolf Hitler, which is just a remarkable thing to be discussing in the 21st century.
BARRON-LOPEZ: Right, praised Adolf Hitler, praised a number of other dictators.
SCIUTTO: Putin, Kim, Xi Jinping, you name it.
Sciutto left his job at ABC News and revolved into the government in 2011, and spent a year and half in the Obama administration as chief of staff to Gary Locke, a former Democrat governor who became the U.S. Ambassador to China. So no one should be shocked that he’s earnestly helping his old Obama colleague Joe Biden keep his job.
PS: Barron-Lopez then turned to what she called the “developments that we saw this week across Trump’s criminal cases.” CBS congressional correspondent Scott MacFarlane lamented “One thing is consistent. The clock is ticking in all of them and they don’t seem to be getting anywhere.” He seemed especially fond of a Trump trial on the January 6 riot.
On PBS, CBS January 6-obsessing reporter Scott MacFarlane wants that Trump trial this year: “There is something CATHARTIC for Americans and the victims among Capitol Police and congressional staff to just see a trial.” The trial “resonates.” We’re “viscerally connected” to it. pic.twitter.com/4lz7bhMzy4
— Tim Graham (@TimJGraham) March 17, 2024
