PBS News Hour : KQED : July 12, 2024 6:00pm-7:01pm PDT : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive (2024)

wow, you get to watch all your favorite stuff. it's to die for. now you won't miss a thing. this is the way. xfinity internet. made for streaming. amna: good evening i'm amna nawaz. geoff: and i'm geoff bennett. president biden's news conference fails to quell his democratic doubters who are uneasy about his prospects. a new poll shows potential replacements might not fare better. amna: a look behind the campaign -- trump campaign's strategy. >> the viral internet videos, they are all designed around joe

biden. geoff: the struggle sweltering s heat after hurricane beryl. >> major funding for the pbs has been provided by. the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions and friends of the newshour including jim and nancy build their and the robert and virginia schiller foundation. the judy and peter blum cove flare foundation. strengthening democracies at home and abroad. >> the john s and james l night foundation, fostering an and engaged communities. >> and with the ongoing support

of these individuals and institutions. and friends of the newshour. 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 biden is facing more calls from democratic lawmakers to step aside as the parties nominee since his thursday night press conference. amna: five house democrats have all issued statements asking for the president to step down. they joined 15 other congressional democrats who have made similar calls earlier this week.

our white house correspondent has the latest. >> thank you. >> with all eyes on his high-stakes press conference. >> are not in this for my legacy. >> president died in played defense thursday night trying to prove that he is still fit to run for reelection. >> a lot can happen. but i believe i'm the best qualified govern and i think i'm the best qualified to win. >> and while there were gaps and slip-ups. >> what concern do you have about vice president harris ability to beat trump? >> i wouldn't have picked vice president trump to be vice president if i didn't think she was qualified to be president. >> he gave detailed answers on foreign-policy policy and national security. >> china has to understand that

if they are supplying russia with capacity along with working with north korea and others to help russia in armament that they are not going to benefit economically as a consequence of that. >> and went after donald trump on his plans for a second turn. >> based on project 2025? do you think he means what he says when he says he's going to do away with civil service? we've never been here before. that's the other reason i didn't hand off to another generation. i've got to finish this job. >> it wasn't enough to stop some democrats from urging him to step aside as the nominee. after the press conference, connecticut representative jim himes issued a statement calling on biden to step away from the presidential race and urged democrats to act fast. >> this is not about one press

conference or debate. one speech. this is about the presidency. this needs to be resolved in the next five to seven days. we just went 10 days where the story was not donald trump promising totalitarianism, it was how is joe biden going to do in the big boy press conference? >> despite the growing number of democrats: for biden to drop out of the race, longtime allies like jim clyburn and reaffirmed support for the president. >> i would hope that we would focus on the substance of this man rather than these sometimes miss spoken and phrases. and how he has run this country. i'm riding with biden. i'm with joe biden. if he were to change his mind, i will just answer the question that i would be all in for the

vice president. >> as democrats figure out what to do about their nominee, hakeem jeffries said he met with the president after thursday's press conference. he said he directly expressed the full breadth of insight, heartfelt perspectives and conclusions about the path forward the caucus has shared. bided himself virtually met friday with some members of the congressional hispanic caucus and the congressional asian pacific american caucus and plans to speak with more hill democrats over the weekend. for now the president has no plans to step aside unless his advisers say otherwise. >> unless they came back and said there's no way you can win. no one is saying that. there are other people who could beat trump, two. it's hard to start from scratch. >> members of the president's

inner circle say yesterday's press conference are reason enough to end the freak out and unite behind biden. hitting the campaign trail today, the president showed no signs of backing down. his next test, another news interview on monday and campaign stops next week. amna: despite democratic concerns about biden's candidacy , new polling shows the state of the race has not drastically changed since the debate. as more lawmakers are calling for him to step aside, the question has been how voters look at this. the later not -- latest numbers show mr. biden is now leading trump 50-48 in a head-to-head matchup. when third parties are factored in, he slips slightly it is still a statistical dead heat.

what stands out to you about those numbers? >> it's been a marginal race the entire time. not much has changed. we still have to take into consideration that there is humongous antipathy toward donald trump. you can see more than half the country does not want donald trump to be president again. but it's really less joe biden versus donald trump and more joe biden versus the couch. amna: do retake these numbers to mean that voters don't have the same concerns about biden as the democratic lawmakers? >> not exactly. the other question is what are their choices? two thirds of respondents of the survey said that biden does not have the mental fitness to be president but character may matter more. 68% said it's more concerning to have a president who doesn't tell the truth than one who

might be too old to do the job. pretty remarkable numbers and i think that really says something about these candidates and what people think is important. we saw two thirds of people saying biden lacks the mental acuity. at the same time if you think someone doesn't have the character to serve, we are seeing that biden has more points for character and honesty. amna: some of his critic's say a younger candidate could more easily beat donald trump. >> we tested four people. trump, harris, gretchen whitmer and gavin newsom. everybody did about exactly the same. maybe that's because they are generic democrat and they sort of test that way. there are slight nuanced differences between each of the candidates. newsom does a little bit better with independents.

vice president harris is much better than president biden with nonwhite voters and younger voters. gen z and millenials, she does 12 points better. and with nonwhite voters, 10 points better. something to consider about who has electoral prowess or not. if these candidates were to replace president biden, then they get to make the case for themselves or they get a lot more media scrutiny. amna: viewers will have seen amy walter of the cook political report walking us through some of their polling at the state level. she showed six states that were previously tossup's or likely democratic move closer to trump after the debate including the battleground states of arizona, georgia and nevada. how do you square that with what

we are seeing in these polls? >> not that surprising to be honest. national polls reflect with the country feels at large. the popular vote doesn't determine who the president is. one in five and votes come from california and new york. if you have that kind of concentration and you don't have the democratic votes spread out into the swing areas, the swing states are slightly more conservative. president biden has had this sort of lead with trump. a two point lead for a democrat nationally is not that good for a democrat like biden because it needs to be bigger than that to translate to electoral vote success. amna: i want to get your take on what president biden himself had to say. >> how accurate does anybody think the polls are these days? i can show you a series of poles

where you have likely voters me versus trump where i win all the time. when the unlikely voters vote, he wins sometimes. the bottom line is all the polling data. it's premature because the campaign hasn't started. >> the campaign has been going on for two years. those who say they are definitely voting are doing better for biden. politicians always say that the polls are wrong when they are not good for them. amna: always great to see you. thank you. geoff: let's shift our focus to the trump campaign. a new piece in the atlantic offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at donald trump's reelection effort. staff writer tim alberta embedded with the campaign and spoke with trump campaign

comanagers for a piece titled trump is planning for a landslide win. thanks for being with us. >> my pleasure. >> when you write the donald trump and his campaign are planning for a landslide, what accounts for that level of confidence? >> a couple of things. the context matters quite a bit. when you think about the past two presidential elections. funny 16 won very narrowly by donald trump. we are talking about a difference of 77,700 44 votes. that was his margin of victory in 20 16. in 2020 it was even tighter. joe biden won and we have had these consecutive nailbiter's in the electoral college. trump campaign lawyer's at 24 in that context.

they are now running a campaign it is far more sophisticated come professional with its money and professional from the top down. they also believe they are running against the weakest candidate in any of those three elections. the confidence is not rooted in donald trump, is it -- it is rooted in joe biden. the trump campaign believes that biden is a fundamentally flawed candidate and they are building a campaign specifically designed to draw out and exacerbate his key weaknesses as an opponent. to be clear, all of this was well before the debate in late june has the democrats wondering whether biden should even be the nominee. geoff: you are reporting the trump campaign is optimized to win a very specific campaign against joe biden.

president biden says he's not stepping aside. >> i think there pretty anxious about it. to be clear, the trump campaign lawyer tell you that they are happy to run against anyone, that any democratic replacement would inherit joe biden's flaws and weaknesses, but that's not true. they recognize that this is a campaign that has been designed around beating one very specific opponent and everything they have been doing, the targeting of voters, the advertising they are cutting, the fundraising ploys they are making, the viral internet videos. they are all designed around joe biden. if he were suddenly replaced at the top of the ticket, in many ways it's back to square one for the trump campaign. they recognize this and i think they are deeply unnerved why the possibility of a switcheroo at the top of the democratic ticket.

geoff: trump's previous campaigns were not as well organized or well disciplined. what do susie and chris bring to the 2024 effort? >> you have to realize that in politics there are people who are practitioners, there are folks who will latch onto campaigns and offer some advice on polling or speechwriting. then there are a select class of people who are truly the brains behind in operation. the people who can really run campaigns at a tactical mechanical level in a way that few others can and susie wiles in particular has earned that reputation over a number of years. i mostly point to the fact that florida which had for decades been regarded as the nation's

top electoral prize is no longer even on the table. democrats have conceded the state of florida in this election. they are not even playing there. you wonder why, the answer is susie wiles. she had engineered campaigns on behalf of republicans in florida that effectively made the state not competitive anymore for democrats because republicans were winning so many nonwhite voters in those elections. she has taken some of that same modeling and put it into practice in this trump 2024 campaign and then her partner chrysalis aveda is best known as the ad maker who created the swift boat veterans for truth campaign that really devastated john kerry in 2004 and he is best understood as a shrewd and ruthless operative who really understands how to target an opponent's weaknesses and that

is really the combination, these unique skill sets. they are two of the most feared operators i have ever been around in politics. they have really streamlined the trump operation and i think they have streamlined donald trump a little bit. i think they have been able to bring him into alignment with their goals as a campaign in ways no one else has been able to. geoff: what is their preferred path to victory? the biden campaign put out a memo that said there are multiple pathways to 270 electoral votes. right now winning the blue wall states is the clearest pathway. does the trump seem -- team see a path that is equally narrow? >> both campaigns would agree at this point that biden's path to 270 has gotten smaller and smaller and what the polling has

shown is that michigan, wisconsin and pennsylvania, the three states that trump flipped in 2016 and that biden flipped back in 2020, those three states really are the pathway for joe biden to get reelected and that any one of those three states is taken off the board by trump, the math becomes pretty much unworkable for the democrats. geoff: thank you. we appreciate it. >> i'm vanessa ruiz with news hour west. here are the latest headlines. the lingering impact of hurricane beryl starts the days other headlines. more than 800,000 customers in the metro of houston area still

do not have power during a blistering heat wave this week. >> with no power and no air conditioning and none before next week, residents in and around houston are reaching their own boiling points. >> how can it take almost a week and then you're talking until saturday, maybe next week? >> centerpoint, the primary electric utility in the era -- area, said that more than 400,000 homes and businesses might not have electricity even by early next week. many are struggling to find refuge from the sweltering heat or have access to food and water in some cases. >> i'm about to lose the resources and all the energy i have to survive. >> i have been here since 2000 something. i went through read a and eich,

in meld and harvey. my complex has lost power. >> many houston-area hospitals and emergency rooms have been jampacked for days since many patients could not be released home safely. centerpoint says it has restored power to over 1.4 one million customers. it also says it shall restore power to 80% of those affected sunday night. >> i know it's hot. thankful for the rain to cool things off. we will continue to work around the clock to get everyone restored as quickly as possible. >> the company is getting heavy criticism from his mrs. and lawmakers who argue it should have been better prepared. the acting lieutenant governor says he plans to hold

centerpoint accountable for their mistakes. >> i want every person at centerpoint to have one job. get the power back on. >> hurricane beryl is the latest in a number of stores -- storms that have wreaked havoc in the houston area. a series of winter storms in 2021 also crippled the energy grid and left millions of people without heat or power for weeks. professor of energy resources says climate change is accelerating the problems in texas and for the national energy grid. >> a lot of our grid was built up decades ago when the weather was milder. the weather is becoming more intense with its storms. we have to build the grid of the future. >> centerpoint is proposing a 2 billion-dollar resiliency plan to improve the grid.

moving some power lines underground may be necessary. to do that, he says voters and politicians have to acknowledge and confront the realities of climate change in a state where that's not always popular. >> the investments cost billions of dollars but they save lives and we have to choose between money up front to make the system better or later when the system fails. >> after thunderstorms this weekend, to preachers are expected to return to the 90's. >> the lasting effects of hurricane beryl are also being felt in vermont work cleanup has started after devastating and deadly flash floods. hurricane beryl dumped rain. at least two people died when their cars were submerged in floods. entire neighborhoods are still underwater. roadways had fallen into

sinkholes and communities were caked in mud. vermont was hit by flooding at this time last year. >> anybody that denies climate change can get a dose of this. >> roughly 42 million people remain under heat alerts as high temperatures continue in the western u.s.. the suspected heat related deaths in oregon reached 16 today. in santa clara county in california, more than 19 potential heat related deaths have occurred since the start of the month. israeli forces have pulled back from gaza city, leaving behind scenes of destruction. fires were still burning as palestinians returned home to check the damage. dozens of bodies were found on the streets. earlier in the week, israel ordered all palestinians to leave the area. most of gaza city's population fled earlier in the war but the

yuan estimates some 300,000 people remain in the surrounding area. at&t said today a security breach in 2022 affected nearly all of its cellular customers and many users of its landline and wireless networks. the company says 100 9 million customers accounts were affected. the compromised data includes records of phone calls and texts. but it does not involve social security numbers. in new mexico, the judge in alec baldwin's involuntary manslaughter trial dismissed the case against him today. baldwin's defense team had alleged prosecutors hid evidence about the ammunition that killed the cinematographer on the film rust in 2020 one. baldwin, who was holding the gun when it went off, pled not guilty, claiming he was unaware of the live round. at news of the dismissal, baldwin openly wept.

officials in tulsa home have announced details of the latest person identified from the tulsa race massacre. c.l. daniel was a world war i veteran who was passing through tulsa at the time of the attack. forensic experts have collected dna from 30 sets of remains from the more than 120 graves found during searches that started in 20 20. as many as 300 people were killed when a white mob destroyed what was then known as black wall street. city officials hope today's announcement will bring some comfort to his family. >> as a parent, i can't help think about his mom, mrs. daniel , who knew her brave son had been killed, but never knew what became of his remains. today i hope this generation of

tellson's -- tulsans and appreciate that you helped this family find his relative missing for 103 years. >> gayle wilensky has died. wilensky oversaw the medicare and medicaid programs during george h w bush's administration and she appeared many times on this program, including this clip from 2009 with judy woodruff. she would join us to discuss the affordable care act, medicaid expansion and more. gayle wilensky was 81 years old. still to come, the murder of a black man by security officers in milwaukee draws comparisons to george floyd. brooks and capehart way in on biden's. and the concert celebrates nato's anniversary of music from its member nations.

>> this is the news hour from weta studios in washington and in the west from the walter cronkite school of journalism. amna: police have referred felony murder charges in a case involving a black man who died last month after being held down by security guards outside of milwaukee hotel. 43-year-old d'vontaye mitchell entered the hyatt regency and "caused a disturbance. a warning, this disturbing video was taken by bystanders and shows what happened next. four individuals restrained mitchell outside while he was lying prone on the concrete and shouting repeatedly for help. at least one man can be seen with his knee on mitchell's back. police say he was unresponsive when they arrived and was later pronounced dead. this week, his widow spoke at a

rally outside the county courthouse. >> to see them beat him repeatedly over and over and over again. i didn't stop. they could have stopped. they could have let him go and they didn't. to do him like that and to embarrass him like that. to destroy his character. to take away his dignity. it was so wrong of them to do. amna: for more, we are joined by the attorney representing the mitchell family and to montaigne mitchell -- davon tema -- and by his sister. i want to begin by asking, how are you doing? >> i wanted to say thank you for that. it's been rough. it's been hard. it's been a hard weekend a half

since it happened. it's been a lot going on. it's exhausting. my brothers gone. we no longer have him with us, with the family. his kids no longer have their father. my mother no longer has her son. it's been rough. there are going to be some adjustments here for us all. right now we're just trying to get through this. we are going to keep on moving forward and we are not going to rest. amna: i understand that you and members of the family have had a chance to review some security camera video from inside the hotel, which is showing you more than has been publicly released so far. does it any of that offer you any insight into how this began in the first place? >> it's a heartbreaking video from the security cameras inside the hotel. it starts with him being chased.

and he is chased through the hotel. he runs into the gift shop and then he runs into the ladies bathroom. and the two women that were in the bathroom said he wasn't trying to harm them or anything. it was as if he was afraid. he was scared. he was trying to get away from somebody. we now know that was the security apparently that was chasing him. they went into the bathroom and they drug him out. while they were doing so, the video shows him being punched and kicked while he's on the ground in drag. and it's just heartbreaking to have -- one of the security guards is hitting him. it looks like he's hitting him in the head. why would you do that?

it's just heartbreaking when you think about george floyd. was in that prone position with knees on his back and on his neck for nine minutes and 29 seconds. d'vontaye mitchell was in that prone position for at least eight, we believe as long as 10 minutes with a knee on his back and at times on his neck. and you had all the punching and kicking and the baton. which makes his tragic video as outrageous as george floyd's video. amna: mr. crump has said previously this raises so many questions about the use of force and particularly in the case of people having a mental health emergency of some kind. what should we understand about what you know about your late brother's mental health or his condition at the time? >> we really don't know what was happening and what was going on

at the time he was down at the hyatt. as far as mental issues go, my brother did suffer from having depression. i'm not exactly sure what was happening down at the hyatt. if they are saying that he was in there causing a disturbance, that's where i come in and say maybe he was having a breakdown. whatever he was running from, whatever caused this to happen, we still don't know. we are trying to find out why he was running. we learned he was running from the security guards, but why? as far as mental health, for the most part he was suffering from depression. amna: can i get your reaction to this latest news? we know police have referred felony murder charges to the district attorney.

the das office is investigating as a homicide. is that what you want at this point? >> we want the state attorney to bring the charges to the state attorney. we know from history that until they charge them and until they are convicted, african-americans can never take for granted that we are going to have equal justice play out when it's a dead black person laying on the ground. we've got too many examples of them doing the bait and switch. we have to keep vigilant and keep focused. before last week, they weren't even investigating this matter as a criminal investigation. it wasn't until the family was saying, did you see the video?

how can you say they shouldn't be held accountable. it's a first step, but we have to continue to keep pressing forward. too many cases of the police getting away with unjustly killing our children. amna: i think one of the reasons this video has resonated so deeply is because of how hauntingly similar it is to george floyd. i know you represented him for years ago. i wonder how it strikes you that you are having to have this conversation again in such similar cases for years apart. >> it's very personal. we watched the george floyd tragic torture video 10,000 times. now with having to break this video of the killing of d'vontaye mitchell frame by frame. it does remind you at times, of

george floyd and the inhumanity of the situation. a man who is begging until his very last breath, please help me. and none of them would help him. that's what we have to learn, america. how many more times to black men in prone position's having breathing problems have to plead for their life before america hears them? how many more times? it was eric garner. it was george floyd. it was frank tyson in ohio. and now it's d'vontaye mitchell. when you look at all these videos, they are black men in prone position's with law enforcement on their backs with their knees on them and all of them die. how many more? amna: attorney ben crump and

sister of the late d'vontaye mitchell, thank you for being here. >> thanks for having us. geoff: on the week's major political stories from president biden's struggles within his own party to the republican national convention next week, we turn to the analysis of david brooks and jonathan capehart. thank you both for being here. president biden's press conference last night might have reassured some democrats, but it has not come close to ending this ongoing conversation about whether or not he should withdraw from the race. how do you assess this current moment? >> we don't have enough time for me to climb up on my soap box and climb back down. ever since that disastrous

debate performance two weeks ago last night, democrats have been tearing their hair out, self immolating and saying what they need to see from the president to make them assured that he is up to the task. he needs to show some life and vigor. he does rally the very next day. he needs to sit down with the press and do an in-depth interview. he sits down with george stephanopoulos a week ago. he is sitting down with lester holt at nbc on monday. he needs to be extemporaneous. he goes to the afl-cio, speaks with them, no teleprompter. he did it again today in michigan. he needs to talk to the press. he's been ignoring us. 59 minutes last night, he answered questions. particularly an impressive question from your colleague david sanger at the new york times. i'm sure he didn't do this on

purpose, but was devious and the question he asked. a multipart very complex foreign relations question that the president answered to the point where the press conference got boring because it got so deep in the weeds. i raise all of these things because people keep putting up these goal posts, he meets them. clearly people are not satisfied. they want someone else as if they are living in some aaron sorkin fantasyland but everything will work itself out in the end with one really great candidate at the end of the hour. this is real life and real life is scary. geoff: what about that, that the democrats critical of biden are saying what they want to see? and is he on track to losing the white house? >> the press conference reminded

me of when i used to watch reagan. i would watch the press conferences through closed -- with my hands up. what's he going to say. when you look at the judgments he made about world history, in my view reagan's judgments were sound about the soviet union. he is not what he was a year ago. i think the biden we saw at the presser is the one who is there. a little mentally slow. a little cumbersome in his articulation but basically with sound judgment. will this get him out of the woods? he has to show some way to win this thing. that's getting harder and harder to see. when you have swing states that should not be swing states like minnesota. democrats in new york state panicking, that's pretty bad. to me it's less about how he

performs on any given day but what's the plausible strategy to victory and i just don't see that out of the biden campaign right now. geoff: our new poll, 55 percent of voters want joe biden out of the race. in some ways that has been the story of the election cycle where the majority of americans have said they do not want to see a trump-biden matchup. how does the white house focus their attention on donald trump and his agenda? >> one, start talking about donald trump and his agenda for the country. everyone is focused on the number that shows how many people want him out of the race, how may people think he's too old and doesn't have the mental acuity that he had 10 years ago had not focused on the other numbers in the polls? for instance, the npr poll that we are talking about, biden is up 50-48.

in the washington post poll that was released yesterday, this poll was conducted after that. despite that, donald trump and president biden are tied. if this race is lost, if it is so disastrous, why don't these polls that i just talked about, why haven't they cratered? that's the thing that's driving me absolutely crazy. these scaredy-cat's out there screaming that the house is on fire and we are going to lose everything, we have two national polls who don't reflect that reality. i want the people saying he should get out of the race, please tell me what are the numbers you are using? what do you see that the rest of us don't see? because if you can backup your conjecture that we are going to lose the white house, the senate and the house, show me the

numbers and then maybe i will set my hair on fire, too. geoff: i want to get your take on the national conversation and our coverage of it. i was talking to a top democrat this morning who said there is too much focus on performance and not enough on substance and that we in the media have basically failed to learn the lesson of 2016 and that when president biden was giving that press conference at nato, donald trump was in mar-a-lago alongside the hungarian president who is an antidemocracy icon of the far-right. there is no focus on that, just on whether joe biden should have a neurological test. >> there is some credence to that. all of us in the media have one thing in common. smooth articulation is important to us because we are in the communication business. when we see joe biden not smoothly articulating, we assume it's an indictment of his

cognitive abilities. i think that's overstretched. the biden we saw at the press conference is an adequate president. but nobody is worried about 2024. they are worried about 2025, 2026 and 2027. often the decline is gradually, gradually, all at once. we are paying attention to whether the president of the united states has the ability to do with the entire world. >> i'm worried about 2020 5, 20 26 and 2027 as well. worried if donald trump is president of the united states. if president biden is reelected with kamala harris and god forbid something were to happen to the president, the nation would be in good hands with vice

president harris if she were to have to step in and become president of the united states. that's the other thing driving me crazy about this conversation. people are acting like there is no succession plan. they are right there. it's the president and the vice president. i have interviewed president biden october of 22. i interviewed him this past march. that man we saw at the press conference yesterday is the same person i talked to both those times. i'm not worried about him, his abilities, his performance or his mental acuity. geoff: let's look forward to the republican national convention next week. who is donald trump going to pick as his vice presidential nominee? the reported finalists include j.d. vance, doug burgum and marco rubio of florida. who has the greatest shot?

>> we had tim albert on the show earlier. the trump campaign kept talking about we are going to run a visual campaign. it's got to look pretty. we know biden -- or trump. now i'm doing the biden thing. he wants somebody to look the part i think doug burgum looks the part of a business executive who is going to give you a strong economy so i'm going with the guy from the dakotas. >> he's cribbing my notes. i think of the three, it is governor burgum. the other thing he has is seeming ambition for the job themselves and senator rubio ran for the job himself. senator vance i'm sure has aspirations especially if he gets chosen. governor burgum is a wealthy man. he's doing this apparently out

of public service. maybe he will have ambition but david is right and quoting me from a while back. geoff: nikki haley has released her delegates to donald trump but she will not be at the convention because she wasn't invited. was that an unforced error of the trump team? >> kindergarten level politics as you try to unite your party. i am mystified by how well -- i think the republicans are just sitting pretty in the feeling it. god is good, omniscient and omnipotent and somehow he wants donald trump to be elected. there are a string of events lining up for him whether it's desantis being a bad candidate, the democrats imploding in the middle of the convention. trump. geoff: david brooks and jonathan capehart, we will see you in milwaukee.

last night, a symphony orchestra at the library of congress commemorated nato's anniversary with an evening of music from its member countries. songs symbolizing hope and solidarity in a trying time. here's a look and listen for our arts and culture series, canvas. >> ♪ hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah ♪ >> concert by the american pops orchestra, organized in part by the atlantic council, featured professional members playing alongside students, composers and singers hailing from the 32 nato countries. the founder and conductor of the american pops orchestra conceived of the idea himself

and shared why he gathered these student artists. >> all too often we forget to include younger members of our culture in foreign policy, especially those who are not in government space. when you marry those ideas together, it all came together into this nato symphony orchestra. >> tell me about the students. >> they are getting an experience unlike every other not only in exposure to this diplomatic community but also in the musical breadth and depth. it's quite the experience for many of these students who will never get the chance to do that otherwise. >> what do you hope they take away from this experience?

>> i hope they know if they are playing a pivotal role in the future of our world. that by sitting in that orchestral section, there helping bridge the divides among so many people in this world and helping make this world a better place. >> this repertoire is an incredible range of music in terms of style and origin from chopin to the weekend. what message were you trying to convey in choosing that selection of songs? >> i want to make sure we are representing the breath and depth of music in our world. so many of these students are use to a very strict conservatory training. my whole background was classical music, and i love it. we want to make sure we are making crowns a music -- classical music relevant to new

generations by pairing it with popular music and creating a musical dialogue. >> the musical dialogue was on display during the rendition of the hit, dancing queen. which followed this traditional slovenian folksong. >> i know from my own experience having played in orchestra when i was a student, there is always one song that everyone loves to perform the most. what is that for this group? >> what's fascinating is one of the pieces the students are responding the most to, one is a

beautiful operatic piece. and the other is whitney houston's greatest love of all. i love we have a group of students who are open and able to cover so many styles of music and be inspired by. >> why is it important in your view for a momentous occasion like this working the 75th

anniversary of the most successful alliance in history to have music at its core? >> i think one of the best examples the diplomatic immunity can learn from is the musical community. so many times we have to come together from many different walks of life. they are coming from all over the world for just two days of her herself to bring themselves to a common musical purpose. what i find so inspiring as the conductor is to bring all these backgrounds together and say look what we can do even in our own musical space. if we can take a lesson from the students, that's how we can start bridging these divides. geoff: thanks to maestro luke frazier. his american pops orchestra has been featured in 30 national

broadcasts here on pbs. we sure to tune into washington week with the atlantic tonight for a look at biden's fight to stay atop his party's financial ticket. amna: how extreme heat is warping train tracks and causing drawbridge is to get stuck, causing major travel woes. geoff: next week, republicans are holding their national convention in milwaukee. we will be there covering it all. >> the 2024 campaign heats up. >> we are going to make america great again. >> can former president trump convince voters to send him back to the white house? how will he take on the challenges facing america at home and abroad? coverage begins on monday, july 15 at 8:00 p.m. eastern. amna: we hope you will tune in and join us. that is the newshour. i'm amna nawaz.

geoff: and i'm geoff bennett. thanks for spending part of your evening with us. have a great weekend. >> major funding for the pbs news hour has been provided by. and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions and friends of the news hour including kathy and paul anderson and camilla and george smith. the walton family foundation. working for solutions to protect water during climate change so people and nature can thrive together. the william and flora hewlett foundation. for more than 50 years, working to promote a better world at hewlett.org. and with the ongoing support of these individuals and institutions. and friends of the news hour.

this program was made possible by the corporation for public broadcasting and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. ♪ this is pbs news hour west, from weta studios in washington and from our bureau at the walter cronkite school of journalism at arizona state university. ♪

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