tv PBS News Hour PBS April 25, 2023 6:00pm-7:00pm PDT
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amna: good evening. i'm amna nawaz. geoff: and i'm geoff bennett. on the newshour tonight. president biden makes his re-election campaign official -- betting his accomplishments and vision for the country will negate concerns about his age. amna: the humanitarian situation in sudan deteriorates further amid an uneasy cease-fire. geoff: and singer, actor and activist billy porter on his return to music and on becoming unapologet.lficalse him >> you know, art creates critical thinkers. and critical thinkers are leaders, not followers. ♪ >> major funding for the pbs
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education, democratic engagement, and the advancement of international peace and security at carnegie.org. and with the ongoing support of these institutions. this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ geoff: welcome to the newshour. president joe biden formally announced today that he is running for a second term. that message came in a three-minute video that contrasts his agenda on issues like reproductive rights and the economy with his potential republican opponents. amna: the video comes four years to the day from when he announced his 2020 presidential run. in today's announcement, president biden echoed familiar themes from that campaign. he said the country is still in a battle for the soul of the nation and that democracy is at stake in 2024.
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>> freedom. personal freedom is fundamental to who we are as americans. there is nothing more important. nothing more sacred. that has been the work of my first term -- to fight for our democracy. but you know around the country, maga extremists are lining up to take those bedrock freedoms. cutting social security that you've paid for your entire life while cutting taxes for the very wealthy. dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books. amna: at 80 years old, mr. biden is already the oldest president in history and enters the race underwater with many voters. our pbs newshour/npr/marist poll out today shows his approval rating at 41% -- with 50% disapproval. to dive into what comes next for the president and his campaign, our white house correspondent laura barron-lopez joins us now from the white house. laura, good to see you.
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president biden has a record to run on from the early years of his presidency, but the message was much more focused on what was at stake, not what he has done so far. is that going to be a core campaign message going forward? laura: the campaign message will be two pronged. sources said they wanted this announcement video to be forward-looking, to be presenting a choice rather than a referendum on the president and a key element of this of course we know is about the threats to democracy. in 2020, when biden launched his campaign he used images from the neo-nazi march in charlottesville virginia. this time around using imagery from the january 6 insurrection and arguing that rather than moving more toward the center, republicans, along with leading candidate former president donald trump, are moving more toward extremes. particularly on lgbtq, transgender issues, on abortion,
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guns, and bracing -- embracing political violence. that does not mean the president will not run on his record. he will very much be talking about the big infrastructure law, prescription drug reform, as well as climate change. amna: you know there has been a lot of speculation about when he would announce, he is now officially in the race. what can we expect in the way of a campaign schedule? laura: in the short-term, not much is going to change. the president will be going out in his presidential capacity across thekeo uilding c. today. we now have to finish the job. there is more to do and you are leading the way, shovels and the ground, cranes in the air, and all of those jobs being created. folks, we have created more than 12 million new jobs, more jobs
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than any president created in a four year term, because of you. laura: the president was making the economic case for his we aren't going to be seeing many other stops, including fundraising events, but the big campaign events and rallies they will not be holding until 2024. amna: you mentioned vice president harris. she was featured pretty prominently in that announcement video today. what do we know about her role in that campaign? laura: she will be featured very prominently. we have seen that she has taken a leading role for the white house on abortion rights. that is a really important voting block for the president
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because i've talked to a number of democrats including pollsters. amna: that is our white house correspondent reporting for us tonight. thank you. geoff: for more on president biden's reelection effort, we are joined by two democratic party strategists. the president of lake research partners and a pollster who worked with joe biden's campaign in 2020. president biden's announcement video suggests he will run less on his record in office and more on what he perceives as republican mega extremism. is that enough to counter voters' concerns about his age? there is this nbc news poll that asked whether he should run for office. 70% of all respondents said no.
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that number among democrats stands at 51%. >> first of all, that is the most foolish pulling question out there because a lot of people that say no want to protect information very hard road ahead, but if age is the worst thing they have to say about joe biden against donald is in the same age, we are in great shape. he did lay out a very powerful contrast today. it was very related to his theme about the soul of a nation. the idea that the republicans are taking away our freedom is a very powerful contrast. i think in the campaign, every day he runs on his record. setting up this contrast, talking about the alternative. is a very important goal. that is how he wanted 2022 and that is how he will win in 2024. geoff: what about that?
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he defined it by who he is not, donald trump, is that sufficient when you are asking voters for a second term in office? >> to win, the most important thing you have is a big contrast. democrats want to pretend they are going to have another barack obama walk out of the woodwork and the truth is joe biden is going to be the nominee, he should be the nominee. he's been a very successful president and we have to stay focused on donald trump. it looks like the republicans are going to be crazy enough to nominate donald trump. we need a clear contrast. the second piece is we have to have a forward-looking message about the future. i love the video today because we talk about freedom, we talk about words republicans have tried to have on their own. freedom, women's rights, other
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things that put republican squarely on the defense and set us up for the contrast we have to have. amna: can i ask you more broadly about the democratic party and what this says right now? in 2020, then candidate biden sold himself as a bridge to the next generation of leadership. you know there are a lot of other senior democrats out there that do have aspirations for the presidency. what does this say about the bench? does it say that they do not believe anyone else could win in 2024? >> know, but we have a really good president to already be . in the middle-he e are going to have a tond alreadn governorships, in the vice presidential office. we have a very strong bench. amna: jim, i want to get your take because i do wonder if you
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think this undercuts some of the other up-and-coming, the bench and waiting, the reelection leaders. on in the next five or 10 or 15 years. does this say there is no other general to lead this battle right now? >> no, it just says democrats want to win. with the exception of 1988, in the last 40 years, when a president hasn't won for reelection, the other party has won. democrats say joe biden has already beaten donald trump, he can beat him again, he's been a very successful president, let's develop that bench. in the cabinet is a great place to be on the bench. no one is going to go anywhere and in four years, everyone and their dog can run, we can run, but right now the party is going to be unified behind joe biden. geoff: i want to draw on your experience working in the obama
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reelection office. they say this effort will mirror what president obama did in 2012 and there might not be any rallies until the new year until republicans have settled on a presumptive nominee and that the white house intends to use official events to get out the president's message. how can president biden best leverage the office of the presidency and the bully pulpit that comes with it? >> by doing exactly what he is doing, by doing his day job to the best of his abilities. the white house is on a 31-city tour right now. they are talking about the things joe biden has done to build manufacturing. that is what he should do, he should do his day job. let the republicans have their crazy primary, and tear go straight at it. right now, just be the president
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and stay laser focused on your job. >> i think he is most vulnerable as is the party on the economy. the direction of the economy is the single most important thing we need to focus on. that is why he's going to be working on the economy every day. he's been a record great president, but it is not good enough until everybody has the freedom to thrive in their families, as well as to make their own personal decisions. amna: lots more to talk about and we thank both of you for joining us. that is belinda lake and jim messina. ♪ stephanie: i'm stephanie sy with newshour west, here are the latest headlines. washington state became the country's tenth state to ban a number of semi-automatic rifles -- including ar-15's, the weapon used in many mass shootings.
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democratic governor jay inslee signed the bill today and said inaction in the face of gun violence is unacceptable. >> these weapons of war of assault weapons have no reason other than mass murder. their only purpose is to kill humans as rapidly as possible in large numbers. and i will say this -- ar-15's should not be idolized. they should be prohibited. and that's what we're doing today. stephanie: two gun rights groups immediately filed legal challenges to the new law in federal court. a state investigator in alabama testified today that a barrage of 89 bullets killed four young people at a birthday party this month. the gunfire erupted at a dance studio in dadeville, as a sweet 16 celebration was under way. the investigator said at least 7 guns were fired. the testimony came at a hearing
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for three of the 6 suspects charged with murder. a new danger has emerged in the fighting and chaos in sudan. the world health organization reports one of the factions has seized a national lab holding virus samples. it warned of a huge biological risk, if the germs get loose. meantime, the latest cease-fire has largely failed, and people in khartoum waited to board buses to flee the city. others said they have no hope of leaving. >> there's no water, no power -- nothing essential for people to use. we've been sitting here in the street, like this, for four days. there have been unbelievable amounts of people rushing to board buses. the fighting has also spread into the western darfur region. afghanistan's taliban rulers have killed the organizer of the
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deadly kabul airport bombing. thirteen u.s. troops and some 170 afghans died in the attack, during the u.s. withdrawal in august 2021. the associated press reports the islamic state member was killed in a taliban ground assault this month, citing u.s. officials. a japanese startup said their spacecraft likely crashed into the moon today, as it tried to land. ground controllers in tokyo watched a live animation of the unmanned lander descending. but they lost contact when it was just 33 feet from the lunar surface. i-space was attempting the first moon landing by a private company. toy company mattel revealed today a barbie doll representing a person with down syndrome. the doll's dress -- blue and yellow with butterflies -- are symbols of down syndrome awareness. the barbie's features were designed in collaboration with the national down syndrome awareness society. still to come on the newshour. former president trump faces trial in a rape and defamation case brought by author e. jean carroll. a comprehensive review of how the u.s. handled the pandemic lays out the lessons learned
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and we remember the life of legendary performer and activist harry belafonte. >> this is the pbs newshour from weta studios in washington and in the west from the walter cronkite school of journalism is arizona state university. amna: hundreds of thousands of sudanese are fleeing to neighboring countries to escape violence that has killed more than 400 in the last week and a half. and, as nick schifrin tells us, aid agencies are warning the humanitarian situation is increasingly dire, because of a political fight that has been brewing for years. nick: today, the u.n. agency that coordinates humanitarian affairs warned it had to pull back from parts of sudan as a country of 45 million copes with shortages of water, food, and access to medicine. the u.s. and others are trying to end the fighting, between
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gen. abdel fattah al-burhan, thd tary rapid support forces, comprised of former litias that committed the genocide in western sudan's darfur region that killed more than 2 million. the two men were supposed to help return the country to cilian rule demanded by the 2019 pro-democracy popular uprising. one of those who participated in that uprising is writer muzan alneel, who joins me now from khartoum. thank you very much, welcome back to the newshour. there is a humanitarian crisis. what are the conditions that you, your neighbors, and millions of the sudanese face. >> for 11 days, we have been under heavy fighting. and there are around 10 million people living in this city, most of them under the poverty line, most of them without any stable access to electricity or water . the electricity network is falling apart. the e-banking system that many depend on to get food or be able to evacuate their families from khartoum, it has also fell apart.
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the telecommunications has fallen apart. people are just trying to survive this. we see sudanese people restoring to popular and mutual aid, which is the only thing that they have. warning some of the health centers that are impossible to meet right now. nick: those popular efforts are led by the resistance committees. right? >> to have mutual aid to be able to evacuate ourselves, and even help provide food and medicine to people. the concept of mutual aid is about sustaining the people. it is not about the diplomats.
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nick: the last time we spoke, our segment was followed by an interview we did with that then u.s. special envoy to the region who argued that the generals who are fighting in the streets right now had to be at the table, part of the negotiation process. do you think the u.s., the international community accommodated leading them to the violence. >> giving them the platform that they needed to have all of their international deals and stronger ties with the region, we were asked to be realistic and i think we will be asked to be realistic after a war. they want to bring back whatever kind of political process they call it. to bring back the same old
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agreement that we are going through right now. nick: what has been your response as you have seen special operations forces fly into the capital to evacuate u.s. diplomats? we have seen the u.n. have to pull back other countries spend time to pull out civilians as millions and sudan face these dire humanitarian conditions? >> my priority are the people most in need and those are the poor sudanese people. they are getting help from themselves and for mutual aid and from neighbor networks. that is what i focus on. when i think about whatever evacuation efforts that are happening, good for them. flee out of a war zone. it is not good if your country is turned into a war zone and you have nowhere else to run, but the fact that they didn't consider to bring any s medical su them, any sort of medical equipment or medicines that are in dire need,
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they were sending airplanes and not even sending medicines. it is absurd to even follow what they are doing. it is decentralized and everyone is trying to figure out what is happening in their neighborhood. there is no you and agency that is here to support. there is no international organization here to support. we are supporting ourselves. use all the moves you have two stop the war. nick: thank you very much. >> thank you. ♪ amna: a civil trial is underway over a magazine columnist's allegation that former president donald trump raped her more than two decades ago. political correspondent lisa desjardins takes a look at the lawsuit and the assault allegations against the former president. and a warning -- this story
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contains details of those sexual violence allegations. lisa: it's the latest legal battle involving former president trump. e. jean carroll, a magazine advice columnist, has accused trump of raping her in the mid 1990. in a civil lawsuit filed in new york, carroll is seeking unspecified damages for the alleged assault. she also accuses trump of defaming her character. the trial is expected to last for one or two weeks.nsroom iide bergdorf goodman, a new york department store. here is how she described it to cnn in 2019. >> people down my tights -- he pulled down my tights and it was a fight. i want women to know that i did not stand there or freezer was paralyzed, which is a reaction i could have had because it is so shocking. no, i phot. and it was over very quickly.
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it was against my will 100%. lisa: carroll revealed the story 20 years after she says it happened in her 2019 memoir. she can go to court now because new york lawmakers passed a new state law allowing victims of abuse to file civil lawsuits against attackers -- even if the statute of limitations has run out. the former president has repeatedly denied that he raped carroll and accused her of lying. in an interview with the hill, he said she was quote not my type. he also previously claimed that he had never met carroll -- but her attorneys have provided the court of a picture of them sault haeecln event inis notxpe jessica leeds alleged trump groped her on a flight in 1979. and people magazine writer are fabricated and accused himoa mid-1990's and
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two close friends, and kept it a secret for decades because she was terrified that trump could ruin her life and ruin her career. at the time, he was a very prominent real estate professional and obviously his profile has only risen since then. trump's attorney says this entire thing was made up and that carol and her two friends actually colluded to come up with this story because of a full of coal -- a political vendetta against him once he was elected. >> the judges known for being no-nonsense. help us understand the jge and jury including how the judge is keeping the jury safe and how do you pick a jury that is neutral about donald trump? shayna: not even the judge knows their identities. they are known only by their
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assigned juror number. there was not much biographical information made public during the process. they will also be picked up off-site by courthouse staff and driven to the courthouse, so that they don't even have any chance of interacting with anyone outside the building or in the hallway. they are really very, very protected from any possible interaction with someone they are not supposed to see or speak to. and again not even the judge has their identities in front of him . it is basically as private a process as it could possibly be. on the question of neutrality, i saw that jurors were asked if they have been to rallies, that kind of thing. that how they did that? shayna: yes, it was posed to the entire room of potential jurors
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and instead of going one by one and asking that, aboboo a rallyn affiliation really with sort of a more extreme group on the spectrum, both left and right. some of the names that thrown out or proud boys, oath keepers, cumin in, antifa. they were asked if you are a member of or affiliated with any of these groups and i believe nobody raised their hand to that question. if they had a, i would imagine they would have been dismissed. >> what does ms. carroll need to show in the civil trial to be successful in her lawsuit? shayna: e. jean carroll, she has to prove a preponderance of the evidence, which essentially means more likely then not that she was, that she suffered harm
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as a result of this, emotional harm, and that her career and her livelihood was damaged, that she suffered reputational damage as a result of what donald trump said. really though specifically just what he said last year in a social media post, which mirrored comments he made to reporters in 2019 this first came out. it is sort of like a duplicate set of defamation charges. there is a separate lawsuit still pending in an appellate court for the older defamation claims from this trial does contain defamation and battery allegations related to the alleged assault. >> the former president has given some testimony in
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deposition. he's not expected to be a live witness, but do we know if you will be in the courtroom? >>'s attorney has not, last i saw, i did leave a little bit before the proceeding ended, but last i saw and heard, his attorney has not fully committed either way. he did tell the jury that he expected they would hear his videotaped deposition from last year. all indications are that he is not going to testify. still lves enhe possibility that he might appear in the courtrosically tn thbut we have not heard any definitive thing that would lead us to believe he will beininadl. >>
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examined by a national covid-19 commission. but that commission was never launched. iam ant william: there are still so many questions about america's response to covid. could the u.s. have better contained the virus in the very bunesses h chigh? investigative report from a consortium of public health and scientific experts, does credit the fast development of life-saving vaccines, it also points to many tragic failures. one example, it notes that if the u.s.'s death rate was
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similar to other european nations in the first two years of the outbreak, an estimated the report is titled lessons from the covid war: an investigative report. phillip zelikow was one of the leads. he is currently a professor of history at the university of virginia. he was executive director of the 9/11 commission. welcome back to the newshour. near the top of report, you write this was a war the u.s. fought without an army how is that possible. >> we passed programs, we appropriate money, you have suppose someone comes into the emergency room and they are gasping for air and you don't know what to do and then someone textbook and someone says, here is $10,000 if you will save this
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person's life. would you really want is than to tell you what to do and train you to do it and give you the tools to do it. >> and let's hopefully have spent that money to buy the supplies earlier. >> if you are not ready at that moment, bad things will happen. we had a national emergency and we were not prepared. a lot of countries were more prepared than we were. a lot of countries organize for emergencies different than we do. we are the country that prided ourselves on where the practical problem solvers, we know how to get tngs done. berlin airlifts, marshall plan, d-day, then here we are once again finding kind of a collective national incompetence at practical problem solving. that is why we wrote this report. pl wil understand from origins to warp speed, they will actually see
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that this is fixable. it doesn't have to be like this. there is all kinds of low hanging fruit about ways we could be better prepared and rebuild trust in government instead of losing it. >> are there specific things you would point to that you think were real problems for us? >> we were flying blind all through the pandemic. even though we have magnificent health records reond guble. we flew blind unnecessarily. china has more gene sequencers than we do. take the example of testing. everybody has heard the story that cdc botched the test.
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we didn't have enough tests, they weren't produced at scale. suppose we had enough tests and warehouses. we have no strategy for how to use the tests. do you use them for biomedical surveillance? do you use them to open up 10 thousand drive-through centers? do you use them for point-of-care testing. do you use them to reopen schools? for every one of those things, howany need? coordinated with the fda. even if 10 million tests are in the warehouse, if you don't have a strategy for what to do, you are going to fail again. >> help me put former president trump's role in this. how do you see his role?
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>> comorbidity as a condition that increases the risk of death or illness. trumps executive leadership made things worse. there is no denying it. the key point of our report is this is not just another book about the back-and-forth and shouting of the trump administration. the core problems one to much deeper. we went into a 21st century pandemic where the health system was fundamentally designed in the 19th health -- 19th century. we have hundreds of different state and local entities designed for a different era, for different kinds of problems. in all sorts of ways we were not ready no matter who was the president. >> your report really documents this terrible culture clash we went through as a nation, which
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was trust the science, follow the science versus the libertarian open everything up, you argue that culture clash didn't have to occur. that it was largely the result of poor leadership that led us to that schism. explain. >> a lot of people think that everything was so partisan and polarized and that is why we failed. mainly the story was just the opposite. even the public health authorities thought they would be closing things for a few weeks. because folks didn't know what to do. because there was this void, all the toxic politics flows in. that is what invited and aggravated the polarization.
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follow the science wasn't really a guide for what to do. what you need are practical toolkits to reopen schools and make people safe. we closed schools much longer than most other countries in the world because we never developed a practical toolkit to reopen them, which should have been available by the fall of 2020. >> this book is full of so many lessons we could implement, low hanging fruit. do you think there is any real appetite to do those things, to fix those things? it does seem that neither political party is interested in doing that. >> one of our members was telling me that she really found reading, rereading the book empowering because you go into this, you feel this is dismal and hopeless. you begin to get into a fatalistic mindset. let's put this behind us as if
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this was a bad storm. when you read the book, it is empowering. the reason we are not doing these things is because no one has done the analysis. no one has really shown the way. here is what we can do and developed an agenda. there is no movement to do anything to make our health system stronger coming out of the pandemic. that is not because people don't care about it. it is because people don't know what the public agenda should be. we wrote this report with a tremendous group of people who joined me in doing this. >> the report is called lessons from the covid war: an investigative report. >> thank you. geoff: billy porter is an
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unforgettable presence on stage and on screen. he's playing james baldwin in an upcoming biopic. he's also returning to his musical roots and embarking on his first nationwide headlining tour. we look at his journey to this moment with our arts and culture series canvas. ♪ >> billy porter is a multi-hyphenate artist who won an emmy for his portrayal of ballroom mc pray tell on the groundbreaking series pose, a tony and a grammy for best actor in a musical for his role as lola in kinky boots. he is in rare company of those who have earned three of the egot awards -- emmy, grammy, oscar, and tony. and he's emerged as an lgbtq activist known for never holding back. >> art is political inherently. historically, as artists, we get to speak truth to power always.
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>> porter and i met recently in new york city where he's rehearsing for his tour and sat down for a conversation at the republican records studio -- at the republic records studio. >> art is very trojan horsey. right. you can do things and you can say things as an artist that you can't as a politician. and it cracks open people's minds. you know, art creates critical thinkers. and critical thinkers are leaders, not followers. ♪ >> when he first hit the scene in 1997 as an r&b singer, porter says he had to hide the authenticity he has since become known for. 26 years later, you are now embarking on your first national music tour. is it fair to ask what took so long? >> well, you know what took so long. [laughter] you know, in 1997, the world and
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the music business was very homophobic, very often violently so. and i was even in that moment participating in the don't ask, don't tell policy of my life. i was showing up being as straight as i could so that i could eat. and i was made to feel like i failed at that. all these years later i go back and look at my music videos. i was actually good at it. i was good at being straight. the universe made it so that it didn't work, so that i could come back all of this time later in the fullness of myself. ♪ what took so long was that. blessedly, i have all of these other creative outlet that i
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could exist in. i leaned into all of that. 25 years later i'm one award away from an egot, i have a star on the walk of fame. i have a production company. when my first album imploded, i realized i had failed as someone else. i will never do that again, i said to myself. that is when i chose my authenticity. >> you feel vindicated now? >> i don't like vindicated because -- yes -- and vindicated has a negative connotation. redeemed. >> the culture had to catch up to you. >> the culture had to catch up to me, the world had to catch up to me. everybody told me that mike weirnes -- my queerness would be a liability. for decades it was. ♪ >> now, he is not holding back with his new album black mona
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lisa. >> now i get to come back to the mainstream music industry on my own terms. as i started working with writers and producers who listened to me and who want to help me in my vision as opposed to the first time around. ♪ >> the lead single, baby was a dancer, was a celebratory anthem meant for the dance floor. there are a couple of lines. every preacher told her she is a sinner. every teacher told her she won't make it because she moved ahead of her time. is that autobiographical? >> of course it is, the whole album is. i grew up in the church, i'm queer. they cursed me from the pulpit and set i would never be blessed. aids is an abomination. all of that stuff that comes in that space. i'm calling myself she, i'm referring to myself in the third person as she, queer people, we
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mix up the pronouns all the time. it is a pronoun world now. i'm referring to myself in the third person and even the teachers, i went to drama school at carnegie mellon and i was almost kicked out of the program in the first semester of my sophomore year because the voice and speech teacher said that my speaking voice was too high for the american stage and i would never work. that was based on what they h seen. this was 1987. we had three archetypes. the james earl jones patriarch, the denzel washington sex symbol, and the eddie murphy genius con. they were only trying to do their job. in retrospect, i have compassion because they were only trying to do their job. there aren't many spaces particularly arts education
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spaces that know how to train firsts of anything. they know how to train people to enter the market that already exists, but they don't know how to train a first. i was a first. >> also a pioneer of gender defined fashion, his red carpet works are custom defined works of art. >> the oscar dress was just me being me. and it changed the face of fashion. it is a touchdown that will go down in history. i went to the oscars and in antebellum tex ito gown as a cisgender to man. it had never happened before. since then, it has changed fashion. >> i remembered the 2020 grammys were you wear the hat with the
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motorized crystal curtain. where did the a's ideas -- these ideas originate? do you feel pressure to top what you have done? >> i don't feel pressure, i'm just being myself. what i love about the process is i have an amazing team. we come together and talk about things, we talk about ideas, best idea in the room always wins with me. i come from the theater so i'm very collaborative. i'm not a micromanager. the things show up. >> billy porter has left his mark on broadway, fashion, television, and music, building loyal, sometimes separate fan bases along the way. how do you navigate having all of those different audiences, all of those different sets of expectations? >> i'm trying to figure that out. and i think and i hope it is a
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return to the mainstream music space that will do that because music is the universal language. existing in all of the spaces, these creative artistic spaces, they don't always speak to each other. my hope is that i can wrangle them altogether through the music. >> what should people expect in a billy porter show? >> a celebration of life, love, joy, hope. it is like church, it is like gay church. [laughter] >> you were raised pentecostal, so when you say church. >> yeah. i just want to give the world a big bear hug. we have been through so much recently. this collective trauma that we have been inside of and nobody is ok. and that is ok. and my hope is that my message will be healing.
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we need a healing. i've been singing my whole life and i know that music is healing. it is really, really healing. geoff: billy porter's concert tour kicks off this saturday. ♪ amna: finally tonight, a giant in the world of performance and activism has died. we look at the breadth and impact of harry belafonte whom the president today called a groundbreaking american who used his talent, his fame, and his voice to help redeem the soul of our nation. ♪ >> it was harry belafonte's signature hit. in a long career and life defined by much more than music.
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belafonte rose to fame with the 1956 banana boat song earning him the nickname king of calypso. born in harlem to caribbean parents, he grew up in poverty during the depression, but went on to win emmy, grammy, oscar, and tony awards. ♪ singing everything from calypso to spirituals to protest songs. his third album, calypso, was the first officially certified album by a solo performer to sell more than a million copies. belafonte broke barriers on the stage and screen as well, one of few black leading men in the 1950's and unafraid of tackling taboo themes like race. even in a racially-segregated america, the handsome husky-voiced belafonte became a , sex symbol, with fans nationwide. but he grew tired of acting, eventually turning down jobs he
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described as racially neutered. by the960's, he was publicly more politically active. in 2011, 1 he spoke about that journey. >> my activism really started the day of my birth, born from immigrant parents in new york city. my mother was overwhelmed by america. she came here with hopes and ambitions that were never fulfilled. >> he recalled the spirit of 1930's america. >> there was a lot of talk about white supremacy and hitler and democracy, and america was mobilizing for this great campaign, the whole world was caught up in it. what attracted me to the arts was the fact that i saw theater as a social force, as a political force. i kind of felt that art was a powerful tool and that's what i should be doing with mine. >> belafonte lent his voice to the black lead civil rights movement marching alongside his , friend martin luther king jr. he reflected on the first moment
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he met dr. king, in this 2018 interview with newshour. >> i listened to him and i was absolutely struck with the way in which he presented his case to the black religious community condemning them for being not , more engaged in the social destiny of black people. >> as civil rights protests unfolded in 1960 eight, belafonte guest hosted the tonight show for a week -- the first black man ever to host a late-night show. his guests included dr. king and bobby kennedy. his activism new no bounds. the fight for freedom, campaigning to end apartheid, mobilizing support the end of hiv-aids and as a goodwill ambassador for unicef. he helps together global superstars to record we are the
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world. the song raised $64 million for famine relief in ethiopia. belafonte also faced criticism for meeting with leftist leaders like fidel castro of cuba and hugo chavez of venezuela. but he never stopped speaking out against racism in america. >> the struggle is still going on. the cruelty of the enemy is as great as ever. >> and he criticized democrats and republicans along the way -- in 2006, calling then-president george w. bush the greatest terrorist in the world for invading iraq. belafonte carried his mission to promote peace well into his later years, reflecting on his work and life in 2011. >> eleanor roosevelt just walked into my life and she turned it around. doctor king called me on the phone one day. malcom x knocked on the door one day. nelson mandela, he and i had an exchange of letters while he was in prison. just these things kept me emerging and each time i saw
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opportunity to become involved in what their struggle and how our struggle was about. so i felt i'd make as big of a difference as i could. >>'s publicist said he died of congestive heart failure today at his home in new york. he was 96 years old. it is like you lived many lives in the when he was given. geoff: he was as tireless as he was brilliant. successful and impactful. exceptional. remember, a lot more online including the full archival interviews with harry belafonte at pbs.org/newshour. amna: and that is the newshour for tonight. geoff: thanks for joining us and have a good evening. >> major funding for the pbs newshour has been provided by -- the ongoing support of these
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individuals and institutions. including friends of the newshour. >> the world awaits. a world of flavor, diverse destinations, and immersive experiences. a world of entertainment. and british style. all what the one star service. the john s and james l knight foundation. >> and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions.
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♪ this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs stations from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ >> this is pbs newshour west from w eta studios in washington and from our bureau at the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy.] >>
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-today is all about the art of the taco and one of my favorite tostadas. when we would just hang out at the beach, they would serve those tostadas. it is so incredibly delicious. the layering of flavors, the play of textures, the bliss of the perfect bite. whether you are leaning towards some crispy beef or the bright crunch of puerto vallarta seafood, jalisco will satisfy your taco cravings. and inspiration follows me back to my kitchen as i play with my versions of those tacos, starting with an enchanting battered shrimp taco garnished with a jicama, apple, and cucumber slaw. then the puerto vallarta classic -- a dry ceviche tostada. and i complete the series with a delicately toothsome mushroom taco. but if you're gonna make tacos, you need the things that are gonna dress up your tacos and really make them extraordiny.
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