PBS NewsHour full episode Aug. 18, 2017

HARI SREENIVASAN: Good evening.
I'm Hari Sreenivasan.
Judy Woodruff is away.
On tonight's "PBS NewsHour": Steve Bannon is out.
We discuss the latest White House shakeup, as President Trump removes his controversial
chief strategist.
And unraveling a terror plot in Spain.
Four suspects are in custody and a massive manhunt under way after multiple attacks leave
at least 14 dead and 100 wounded.
Also ahead: As Uganda's schools fill up with refugee children, former refugees are returning
to help provide more educational opportunities at the school they attended.
FAVOURITE REGINA, Teacher: We feel like coming back to our communities and helping the other
people grow, it's very important, so that we come together as a collective community.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All that and more on tonight's "PBS NewsHour."
(BREAK)
HARI SREENIVASAN: Two major stories tonight: the fall of Steve Bannon and the fallout in
Barcelona.
We begin with the news that Bannon's tenure as White House chief strategist is over.
It came three days after President Trump praised him, but left his fate in doubt.
DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States: I like Mr. Bannon.
He's a friend of mine.
But Mr. Bannon came on very late.
You know that.
And I like him.
He's a good man.
He is not a racist, I can tell you that.
He's a good person.
He actually gets a very unfair press in that regard.
But we will see what happens with Mr. Bannon.
But he's a good person, and I think the press treats him, frankly, very unfairly.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Joining me now to discuss the ouster of President Trump's chief strategist
is Robert Costa, national political reporter with The Washington Post and host of "Washington
Week."
What happened?
ROBERT COSTA: This was a long, simmering problem inside of the White House, at least according
to my sources there.
Bannon was someone who came in, like President Trump, as an outsider, and working in the
federal government, inside the confines of the West Wing just was never a fit for this
populist, nationalist hard-liner who wanted to disrupt the entire system.
HARI SREENIVASAN: What were the camps that were solidifying, considering, just in the
last four weeks, how many different factions of influence have disappeared?
ROBERT COSTA: One of the main reasons Bannon is departing the White House tonight is because
of General Kelly, the new chief of staff.
He's tried to implement this new system of order, make sure that people like Bannon even
at the senior level in the White House are not outside of their lanes.
HARI SREENIVASAN: What happens after, when he leaves?
It seems that there are people who leave the White House, but still retain some influence
with President Trump.
ROBERT COSTA: You asked about these factions.
And there are many factions within the White House, the Jared Kushner wing, which is the
more moderate side, the Bannon wing, which was the hard-core Trump nationalist wing.
They are going to continue their fights even if Bannon is outside of the White House.
Bannon's been already talking to his billionaire ally Robert Mercer about starting maybe a
new media venture.
And Bannon is furious, I'm told by his friends today, because he thinks he represents the
Trump base, he represents the spirit of what the Trump campaign was.
And he thinks General Kelly, even though he respects General Kelly, Jared Kushner and
others are bringing the president in the wrong direction.
HARI SREENIVASAN: When you see some of the alt-right or at least the hard conservatives,
they use #War, that this is on now.
Is President Trump now going to be basically seeing enemy fire from the far right and the
left?
ROBERT COSTA: So far, many Bannon associates are trying to separate their support of President
Trump from their dislike of the moderates inside the White House.
There is a fear in the Trump base that, because Gary Cohn, the national economic director,
former president of Goldman Sachs, is a Democrat, you have Jared Kushner, who is a former Democrat,
and these different voices are around the president who aren't like -- who aren't Breitbart
readers, aren't people from the conservative movement, that maybe the president will go
in a more centrist direction.
That alarms the Bannon crowd.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Did he feel like he wasn't having enough influence?
Because a lot of people look back at the events after Charlottesville and say, well, that's
Steve Bannon's influence on President Trump.
ROBERT COSTA: It wasn't really about Bannon's influence on President Trump.
President Trump's always governed and led on his own instincts.
Bannon was an echo of Trump's instincts.
That's what he always was inside the administration.
That's why he had power.
It wasn't because he had this grand strategy to win over President Trump.
He was with President Trump in spirit.
That's why he remained so long, even as others fell away.
HARI SREENIVASAN: What about the point of view that Bannon represents?
Just because he's gone doesn't mean that the White House is clear of it.
ROBERT COSTA: Well, President Trump remains there, and he's a Bannon-style Republican.
And you still have Stephen Miller, the former aide to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, writing
the speeches for President Trump, so that element remains.
But John Kelly, the new general command, 45-year Marine, he's a non-ideological figure.
So, I think Bannon's -- based on my reporting, Bannon's grip on the ideology of the Trump
administration may start to fade away as he goes away.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And, finally, whose idea was it?
We have seen reports that the registration was handed in maybe a week or two ago?
ROBERT COSTA: The timeline is a bit fuzzy.
Bannon's known he's been on thin ice for a long time.
The decision came down to President Trump.
But it's worth noting that a lot of people close to President Trump said part of the
reason Bannon is gone, he took too many away from President Trump when it came to the campaign
last year, this new bestselling book by Josh Green.
There's a lot of talk among those who are close to President Trump that he's frustrated
that Bannon's profile just got too high.
HARI SREENIVASAN: OK.
You're going to talk about this and much more on "Washington Week" tonight.
What else you got?
ROBERT COSTA: We're going to start off with the Bannon discussion, but I really want to
dive in to Charlottesville and race in America.
That, to me, is the defining issue of the week.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, "Washington Week" on most PBS stations right after this.
Thanks so much, Robert.
ROBERT COSTA: Thank you.
HARI SREENIVASAN: And now to the terror in Spain.
As of tonight, there are 14 dead, including one American, in Thursday's attacks on Barcelona
and a coastal town.
Both attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group.
Jack Parrock is in Barcelona, and filed this report.
JACK PARROCK: A minute of silence, then a chant of defiance, "I am not afraid" in Catalan.
Spain's king and prime minister joined thousands of mourners at Barcelona's Plaza de Cataluna.
The historic pedestrian boulevard Las Ramblas was strewn with flowers and signs in memory
of the victims.
Yesterday, it was a scene of carnage, after a van plowed through the tourist-packed promenade,
leaving 13 dead and more than 100 injured.
Cell phone video captured crowds running, and the van, abandoned at the end of its rampage.
MAN: I heard this crashing noise.
I heard screams and I turned around and looked, and it just looked like avalanche of hundreds
of people starting to run.
So, instinctively, I started to run.
JACK PARROCK: Early this morning, a second attack, in the resort town of Cambrils, some
60 miles outside Barcelona.
A car drove through a security checkpoint and into a crowd of pedestrians, killing one
woman and injuring several others.
Five men with knives and what appeared to be suicide belts jumped from the car.
All were shot dead by police in a gun battle captured by club-goers at a nearby bar.
Spanish media reported one of the five was the driver of the van in the first attack.
The explosive belts turned out to be fakes, a ploy used by terrorists in another van attack
that killed eight people on London Bridge in June.
Four other suspects have now been arrested in the Barcelona attack, three Moroccans and
a Spanish national.
None were on the radar of authorities, but one was a man injured in an explosion a day
earlier in the nearby town of Alcanar.
MAN (through translator): We are working under the belief that this attack or attacks had
been prepared for a while at that house in Alcanar by a group, the size of which is yet
to be determined, and they had been preparing one or several attacks in Barcelona.
JACK PARROCK: In Barcelona, locals and tourists alike are trying to come to grips with a new
reality, as the latest European city to be struck by a terrorist behind the wheel of
a vehicle.
The mood today was mostly calm, but somber.
MAN: Every city, big city is attacked now.
It's hard for me, though, to be here.
It was really terrifying.
But I don't think it's going to stop me to be here.
WOMAN: There's police, obviously, everywhere.
And it's comforting in a way, because you feel safe when you're walking down the street.
And I think it's amazing how many people there actually are today.
I thought everybody was going to be scared on the Ramblas was going to be closed.
JACK PARROCK: And Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy agreed terrorism is now the main problem facing
Europe.
MARIANO RAJOY, Spanish Prime Minister (through translator): This is what is concerning people
the most in Europe today, and this is justified in the wake of the attacks we have witnessed
in cities around us, like Paris, Nice, London, Berlin, and Sweden.
JACK PARROCK: It's all calm here on the Plaza Cataluna now, but when there were demonstrations
earlier and far-right protesters flared up against anti-fascist demonstrators, people
were running for their lives, and there was real terror in their eyes.
For the "PBS NewsHour," I'm Jack Parrock.
HARI SREENIVASAN: In the day's other news: Violence erupted in Finland when a man stabbed
two people to death and wounded six others.
It happened in the Western city of Turku, about 95 miles outside Helsinki, the Finnish
capital.
The attacker was shot in the leg and captured.
There was no word on his identity, and police said it's too early to know if the attack
is linked to international terrorism.
In Virginia today, another funeral in the wake of the Charlottesville violence.
State Trooper Berke Bates and a second officer died in a helicopter crash last Saturday,
after monitoring a white nationalist rally.
Bates' funeral was held in Richmond, where the governor and other speakers remembered
him as a devoted family man and proud officer.
Separately, the mother of Heather Heyer insisted she will not speak with President Trump.
Her daughter was killed Saturday when a car rammed counterprotesters.
SUSAN BRO, Mother of Heather Heyer: I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference
equating the protesters like Ms. Heyer with the KKK and the white supremacists.
You can't wash this one away by shaking my hand and saying, I'm sorry.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Meanwhile, Charlottesville Mayor Mike Signer urged state lawmakers to
allow removal of the Robert E. Lee statue that sparked Saturday's rally.
And before dawn today, officials in Maryland removed the statue of former U.S. Supreme
Court Chief Justice Roger Taney from the statehouse grounds.
In 1857, he authored the Dred Scott decision that upheld slavery.
The CEO of 21st Century FOX, James Murdoch, is criticizing President Trump's comments
on Charlottesville.
In an e-mail to friends, he says -- quote -- "Standing up to Nazis is essential.
There are no good Nazis."
He also pledges $1 million for the Anti-Defamation League.
Murdoch's company is parent to the FOX News Channel.
President Trump convened his national security team today to focus on a new strategy in Afghanistan.
Mr. Trump flew from Bedminster, New Jersey, to Hagerstown, Maryland and traveled to Camp
David for the afternoon gathering.
And the Pentagon announced joint military exercises with South Korea will begin Monday,
amid sharply higher tensions with North Korea.
In Sierra Leone, authorities now say the toll from Monday's mudslide disaster is approaching
450 dead.
Flooding that triggered the slide continues after heavy rain.
Meanwhile, survivors are burying the victims in hurriedly dug mass graves, and they're
struggling with daily life.
WOMAN (through translator): I cannot locate the house where we used to live, more than
just pointing in that area.
Since we came here, even to have water is a problem.
To wash my baby, I had to beg a neighbor for water, and they even had to give me clothes
to dress him.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Some residents are evacuating the region, fearing another mudslide.
Venezuela's political crisis took a dramatic new turn today.
The newly installed pro-government assembly voted to give itself full authority to pass
laws and override the opposition-led Congress.
Opposition lawmakers charged it moves President Nicolas Maduro one step closer to dictator
status.
The U.S. Navy is dismissing sailors on a destroyer involved in a fatal collision off Japan.
Seven American sailors died when the U.S. Fitzgerald was struck by a commercial container
ship in June.
A Navy statement blames poor seamanship and flaws in keeping watch.
The destroyer's captain and two other top officers will be removed, and more than a
dozen others will also be punished.
And on Wall Street, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 76 points to close at 21674.
The Nasdaq fell five points, and the S&P 500 slipped four.
Still to come on the "NewsHour": Boston on alert for protests and counter-protests this
weekend in the wake of Charlottesville; E.J. Dionne and Ramesh Ponnuru analyze political
fallout from one of the most fraught weeks of the Trump presidency; a refugee giving
back in the country he fled to. and much more.
And now to the analysis of Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne -- he's also co-author
of the upcoming book "One Nation After Trump" -- and "National Review" senior editor Ramesh
Ponnuru.
Mark Shields and David Brooks are away.
Let's start with the big news first, your reactions to the ouster of Steve Bannon.
RAMESH PONNURU, Senior Editor, "The National Review": Well, it's been rumored to be happening
for several weeks now.
And I think this is just another example of the volatility and turnover in this administration,
much of it based on petty jealousy and resentment of people who are getting, in President Trump's
view, too much press.
HARI SREENIVASAN: E.J.?
E.J.
DIONNE, Columnist, The Washington Post: I think that's all true.
I also think it's the case a lot of this talk about Trump as populist was always phony,
that Bannon was the one guy in there who on economic issues represented the kind of populism.
And his being pushed out, I think means that the Trump administration becomes much more
of a kind of corporate Republican place.
He was also obviously radioactive on racial questions because of the alt-right's -- Breitbart's
history of kind of ethno-nationalism.
And so I think the two forces came together to force him out of there.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Does this change anything at the White House?
We have already had reports tonight that he's headed back to Breitbart, that there could
be a way where he ends up forcing more change in the White House from the outside than the
inside.
RAMESH PONNURU: One of the interesting things, although E.J. was talking about this corporate
Republican Party, you see the corporate side of this White House, it doesn't have much
institutional Republican presence.
Of course, Trump is a fairly recent Republican himself.
Reince Priebus, the chief of staff, former chief of staff, who had been chairman of the
RNC, was pushed out.
And one of the really interesting things here is that how many New York Democrats are now
influential in this administration?
Where it goes from now, it all depends on Trump, all of this.
You know, we all obsess in Washington too much about the personnel.
He's the person who sets the tone.
He's the person who sets the policies.
E.J.
DIONNE: Ramesh has just come up with a brilliant Republican strategy.
Blame the Democrats for Donald Trump.
(LAUGHTER)
E.J.
DIONNE: I think that you will see some change, but not a lot of change.
If you really want to change the Trump administration, you have to change the guy at the top.
And that's not happening anytime soon.
But, again, where I do think where you will see some movement is on this economic side,
where I suspect, for example, this is a victory for China, because Trump was -- I mean, Bannon
was the hawk on China trade.
And as he said in that interview with Bob Kuttner -- and, by the way, a Trump administration
official will never again give an interview to a liberal columnist -- is that he was fighting
Gary Cohn, the chief economic adviser, great victory for him -- he was fighting the Treasury
Department.
And so I think that's an area where you will see change.
And I think, by the way, it's obviously a victory for John Kelly, who wanted to impose
order, and Bannon was clearly a threat to order in the White House.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Let's talk a little bit about the reactions after Charlottesville.
They have been coming from all over.
It sparked another national conversation.
When you look at, for example, the magazine covers "The New Yorker," and "TIME," and even
"The Economist," they are covers that are about President Trump's reaction to this,
not necessarily the entire conversation.
We just put those up on screen.
If you were designing the cover today, your thoughts?
RAMESH PONNURU: Well, look, I think that my cover would be the incredible shrinking presidency,
that the White House is smaller than it used to be.
For decades, people right, left, and center complained that the presidency is too powerful.
This administration is shrinking the presidency.
This president has less and less influence over Congress.
This president is not fulfilling the usual role of the president in being the moral leader
and the spokesman for the country.
He's just not being looked to for leadership.
HARI SREENIVASAN: E.J., speaking of leadership here, we have a rare occasion where the military
leadership in unison on their private social accounts say, you know, we stand for tolerance
and not for racism.
You have got entire swathes of CEOs on his different economic and business councils abandoning
him completely.
How isolated is the president?
E.J.
DIONNE: I think in sort of this moral equivalence about the KKK and neo-Nazis and those opposed
to him, he really is isolated.
But I think you're seeing different behavior at different sectors.
The U.S. military has probably done a better job than any other American institution at
integrating itself racially, at guaranteeing equal opportunity.
And the American military wasn't going to let a president's statement get in the way
of that.
They needed to send a message.
CEOs appeal to a very broad audience.
The companies sell their products to all Americans.
They were not going to alienate African-Americans and Asians, people of color of all kinds,
as well as the people who are white who really hated what President Trump said.
The Republicans, on the other hand, have a very different audience that they're thinking
about.
They're thinking about their primary electorate.
And with some exceptions -- and a notable one this week with Senator Corker, who really
went after Donald Trump -- they are still too worried about losing primaries to take
him on.
So, on the one side, you have the military and CEOs responding forcefully.
On the other hand, you still have Republicans very reluctant to take on Trump.
RAMESH PONNURU: One thing, though, that I think President Trump has been very shrewd
about is seizing on this issue of the Confederate statues, Confederate memorials and so forth.
All the polling suggests that Robert E. Lee is more popular than Donald Trump is right
now.
(CROSSTALK)
E.J.
DIONNE: You and I might be more popular than Donald Trump.
RAMESH PONNURU: But he's in a much stronger position defending those statues and saying
they shouldn't be taken down than he is appearing to defend neo-Nazis and the KKK.
E.J.
DIONNE: Although it's interesting you raise that, because I think the cause of keeping
those statues up suffered a huge blow this week.
There is now more support for taking those statues down.
The mayor of Baltimore arranged at nighttime to have them take all the ones that were in
Baltimore taken down.
And I think many more people now realize that those statues aren't about the Civil War past.
They were put up for political reasons to support Jim Crow, and so I think...
(CROSSTALK)
RAMESH PONNURU: Look, I think, in the long run, that's right, but I think the short-term
politics of this do work for President Trump, and they work for the neo-Nazis.
There is a reason why they chose this issue.
They chose an issue that would have somewhat wider appeal than they themselves normally
would.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, let me just interrupt here.
Even if you succeeded in taking every statue and putting it into a museum, right -- I mean,
we had a black nationalist and a South Carolina secessionist on the program sitting next to
each other.
And one of the things that he actually said was, listen, we had that South Carolina Confederate
Flag thing resolved a couple years ago.
Where did that get us?
Does the conversation about the statues paper over the deeper underlying issues of race
and class that still are unaddressed?
E.J.
DIONNE: Well, if you're asking does taking down a statue down solve deep inequalities
in the country, of course that won't happen, and that we need much more fundamental action
on both the fronts of race and class, inequality.
On the other hand, symbols matter, symbols teach, symbols represent how we think about
both our past an our future.
And so, I agree, I don't want politics to be all about symbols.
I want politics to be about action, but I think the debate we're having around these
symbols can sometimes propel action in the right direction.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Speaking of action, what do Republicans do?
Right now, it seems that they are very good at marking out, hey, here's my tweet, I'm
not a racist, OK?
It's on the record.
I said it this day.
And this is also recess.
When they come back, is there some action that they can take to show the country, this
is actually where I stand, this is actually what I support?
RAMESH PONNURU: I think what you're more likely to see is the Republicans starting more and
more to ignore President Trump.
I think they have realized -- it's taken a while, but I think a lot of them have realized
there isn't going to be a change, he is who he is, there's not going to be some pivot
or some growing in office, and they have to deal with that.
I don't think they have come together to figure out how exactly they move forward, but I think
they are at least beginning to get a grip on the problem.
E.J.
DIONNE: I think they could send a really powerful signal by passing the Voting Rights Act.
Voting Rights Act was gutted by the Supreme Court.
There was talk in the last Congress among some leading Republicans that they were going
to restore the Voting Rights Act.
That's something they could do.
I think they could stop these voter suppression efforts and challenge President Trump's commission,
which I think is much more about voter suppression than voter fraud.
There are concrete steps they could take if they wanted to put real policy behind these
claims that they have put out there.
I welcome the fact that they're against the KKK and the Nazis, but I think they need to
do more.
HARI SREENIVASAN: One of the things that now Breitbart's Steve Bannon has said repeatedly
when he was in the White House in different interviews is that, you know what?
The left in its frenzy right now to talk about identity politics and about race, that is
great, that is a winning strategy for us, because we will talk about economic nationalism.
E.J.
DIONNE: Right.
And I think if -- I think that he is trying to encourage and Trump is trying to encourage
the left to split on this, that you're either about identity politics or you're about economics.
The fact is, if you look at the broad, progressive movement since the 1960s, progressives have
always been committed to equal rights for people of color.
They can't back away from that.
They shouldn't back away from that.
At the same time, they have been committed to greater economic equality, and we have
had a long period of growing economic inequality.
And I think on the progressive side you have to pursue both agendas simultaneously.
You can't just cast one against the other, but I think that's very much what Trump and
the Republicans would like to have happen.
RAMESH PONNURU: He's not wrong, Steve Bannon, in suggesting the Democrats could well overreach
on some of these symbolic questions.
The problem is with the other side of the equation.
This administration is not going to be able to move toward a working-class agenda on economics,
mostly because it's underdeveloped.
They don't really have much of a sense of what they want to do for working-class people.
Their protectionism is only going to take them so far, and, as E.J. noted, it's something
that divides the administration internally.
E.J.
DIONNE: And I think underscores what Dinesh -- what Ramesh said is that the Republicans
didn't know what to do about health care.
Their failure on health care reflects the fact that they really weren't willing to take
the steps to help working-class people get health care.
They cut away health coverage.
And that proved to be very unpopular among parts of their own base.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Does this conversation delay or completely derail the agenda that is still
on the docket when they come back?
RAMESH PONNURU: So, people talk about this Republican agenda.
Why is it having so much trouble getting through?
What's the obstacle to it?
And the basic problem is, there isn't an agenda.
There is no consensus of the Republican Party on what the basic outlines of the policies
ought to look like.
They are in favor of tax reform, as long as you just call it tax reform.
When you actually spell out what it's going to involve piece by piece, they are nowhere
near where they need to be to actually pass something.
HARI SREENIVASAN: All right, Ramesh Ponnuru from "The National Review," E.J. Dionne from
The Washington Post, thank you both.
E.J.
DIONNE: Delight to be with you.
Thanks.
RAMESH PONNURU: Thanks.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Echoes of last weekend's protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, continued
to reverberate today.
Counterprotesters took to the streets in Durham, North Carolina, even before a rumored white
supremacist march got under way there.
And in Boston, police and city officials are preparing the city for a self-titled free
speech demonstration slated for tomorrow.
John Yang takes it from here.
JOHN YANG: Thanks, Hari.
To talk about how Boston authorities plan to deal with tomorrow's rally, I'm joined
from Boston by Phillip Martin, a senior investigative reporter at PBS station WGBH.
Phillip, thanks for joining us.
First of all, help us understand this.
Is there any connection between the people organizing tomorrow's event in Boston and
the people who organized last week's event in Charlottesville?
PHILLIP MARTIN, WGBH: Well, the people who are organizing tomorrow's event
would like to say there's no connection.
They call themselves the Free Speech Coalition.
And I can talk about that later, what the Southern Poverty Law Center says about the
Free Speech Coalition.
But some of the same speakers, some who have now been disinvited or dropped out altogether,
are some of the same people who are connected to the Charlottesville rally.
We're talking about people like Augustus Invictus, a renowned white supremacist, someone who
believes that there should be a second civil war, and a fellow named Joe Biggs, notorious
also within extreme right circles who also has an association with what many call the
alt-right, what others simply call white supremacists.
JOHN YANG: So, given that, what are Boston police and others doing to try to -- or what
lessons do you think they have learned from Charlottesville?
What are they doing to make sure there isn't another Charlottesville?
PHILLIP MARTIN: Well, they are intent on guaranteeing that there's not another Charlottesville.
You could start with the deployment.
We're talking about 500 police officers tomorrow.
None of them will simply be sitting around, which is what they believe is one of the lessons
from Charlottesville, not that they were super critical of what happened in Charlottesville,
but they're aware of it.
And so they're talking about blocking off streets, the entire perimeter that borders
the Boston Commons.
So, you won't see cars driving into a crowd.
They're very much aware of what happened in Virginia and very much aware of what happened
in Spain, in Barcelona, the use of cars as weapons.
You will also see a huge deployment of state police officers playing a secondary role.
And what you won't see are undercover police officers who will be dispersed throughout
the crowd ready to take away sticks that might be -- were attached to placards, ready to
take away bottles, ready to take away spray cans.
Anything that might be used as a weapon or construed as a weapon will be taken away by
police officers.
They're also working with the Joint Terrorism Task Force.
They have been looking at the organization, again, that's sponsoring this, a coalition
of actually young people who call themselves libertarian, but whose speakers roster and
some of their rhetoric reflects some of the extreme right-wing events that we have seen
around the country, including in Virginia.
JOHN YANG: Phillip Martin from WGBH in Boston, thanks so much for helping us out understand
what's going to happen tomorrow.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Stay with us.
Coming up on the "NewsHour": from Ebola to Zika, scientists are taking stock of recent
outbreaks and preparing for the next big threat; from our "NewsHour" Bookshelf, a film critic
teaches us how to watch movies; and one woman's campaign to give math a better reputation.
But first: trying to meet the education needs of refugee children in a resource-poor country
overwhelmed by new arrivals.
Just yesterday, the United Nations announced one million South Sudanese refugees had arrived
in Uganda over the past year.
Many have ended up here at the Bidi Bidi camp, the largest in the world.
Special correspondent Fred de Sam Lazaro reports, part of his series Agents for Change.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It's not often you will find a school in Africa that provides meals
to its students.
JOSEPH MUNYAMBANZA, Educational Entrepreneur: We give them breakfast and lunch.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: You didn't get this when you went to school?
JOSEPH MUNYAMBANZA: No.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: It not only helps students focus on learning, but this simple plate of
corn, or maize, and beans may also be the reason many show up at all.
The school's 30-year-old founder remembers packed classrooms when he started primary
school, but they didn't stay that way for long.
JOSEPH MUNYAMBANZA: Over 150 children, but I remember, by the time I was in primary seven,
we had about 15 children left.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Lots of children drop out?
JOSEPH MUNYAMBANZA: They drop out, and the problem is connected to food.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Joseph Munyambanza was born in the Democratic Republic of Congo,
but his parents, like tens of thousands of others, fled to Uganda when he was 6.
For decades, Uganda has welcomed refugees from its war-torn neighbors, but even with
United Nations' help, its resources are very limited.
Rwanda?
Congo?
Last year, I visited a school in Nakivale, a refugee settlement in southern Uganda.
No lunch here, and not much learning, in classrooms crammed on average with 120 children.
Few of the hundreds of thousands of refugee children in Uganda make it into high school,
for which they must pass a national entrance test.
Joseph Munyambanza was one of those few.
He completed high school, and received a scholarship to the prestigious African Leadership Academy
in South Africa founded by a group of Stanford alumni.
Another scholarship from the MasterCard Foundation got him to Westminster College in Missouri,
where he got a degree in biochemistry.
It was a heady journey, far from his humble beginnings, but he says, he never forgot them.
JOSEPH MUNYAMBANZA: When I finished my degree, I already had my ticket to come back, and
most kids say, you're crazy.
You're not serious, because that standard is, you go there, you finish your degree,
and you get a job and start getting money.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: One big reason he returned was an organization he'd founded while still
in high school with a few friends.
They volunteered to mentor and tutor younger refugee school children.
And as Munyambanza traveled in the West, he was able to network with donors, raising funds
for their group, called Coburwas, and for a primary school it runs in the refugee settlement
of Kyangwali.
The 433 students are urged to think critically, in a country where rote learning is the norm.
And they're taught farming on land adjacent to the school.
In Uganda, refugees are provided small plots of land and school parents also contribute
produce.
JOSEPH MUNYAMBANZA: We raise around five tons of maize, and part of it has to be eaten,
but a bit part of it has to be sold to bring money to support the projects.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: So far, Coburwas has helped some 1,600 students pass the high school entrance
exam, and placed many of them in better-resourced high schools, away from their refugee settlements,
where they now attend alongside Ugandan children.
Coburwas pays their tuition room and board.
We visited this school in the town of Hoima, about two hours from the refugee camp, and
talked with Coburwas scholars about their goals.
STUDENT: I would like to be a genetic engineer.
STUDENT: A civil engineer.
STUDENT: I would like to become a doctor, because I have seen people suffering a lot.
STUDENT: I would like to be a lawyer.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: A lawyer?
One of their biggest problems, they said, is the stigma of being refugees, often taunted
that they are freeloaders.
STUDENT: Some of them also don't feel well when they see us studying, yet we are not
Ugandans.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: So they feel somewhat resentful that you are being paid for, supported,
and Ugandans are not?
STUDENT: Yes.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Joseph Munyambanza says he faced the same problem when he went to
school.
That's why a Coburwas counselor is always on hand.
WOMAN: We have a big vision for you.
We do this because we believe you are the leaders of Africa tomorrow.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: Several alums have been launched toward leadership roles, attending
universities across Uganda and as far away as Arizona State and Munyambanza's alma mater
in Missouri.
Twenty-three-year-old Favourite Regina just received her degree in development studies
from the United States International University in Nairobi, Kenya, a stint that took her to
France and could have landed a well-paid job in a lot of places.
But she returned home to teach at the Coburwas primary school.
FAVOURITE REGINA, Teacher: We feel like coming back to our communities and helping the other
people grow, it's very important, so that we come together as a collective community.
JOSEPH MUNYAMBANZA: Those who are given, those who are trusted, much more is expected from
them.
FRED DE SAM LAZARO: He says improving the education system is the first step in rebuilding
communities defined and created by war, to open the eyes of children who have known little
more than life in a refugee settlement.
For the "PBS NewsHour," this is Fred de Sam Lazaro, in Kyangwali, Uganda.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Fred's reporting is a partnership with the Under-Told Stories Project at University
of St. Thomas in Minnesota.
Next: After the containment of the Ebola outbreak, scientists are looking around the corner for
the next serious threat to global threat.
Judy Woodruff recently sat down with Liberian-Born Dr. Raj Panjabi at Spotlight Health in Aspen,
Colorado, to discuss the challenges of preventing the next pandemic.
Warning: Some of the images in this report may be disturbing.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Dr. Raj Panjabi, thank you very much for joining us.
What do you think the world learned from the last Ebola outbreak of just a couple of years
ago, and do you think we're ready, the world is ready for the next one?
DR.
RAJ PANJABI, Last Mile Health: You know, I think there are many lessons that have been
learned from the crisis and still are, but probably one of the most central, fundamental
lessons is this basic notion that illness is universal and access to care isn't, and
that that actually places all of us at greater risk.
We have known this from even the first boy who died in the Ebola crisis, Emile, a 2-year-old
in the rain forest in Guinea.
He died after having vomiting, fever and diarrhea in December of 2013.
It took three months for the world to realize that this was an outbreak.
He lived in a forest community that -- in rural parts of West Africa where the forest
is dense, but health workers are sparse.
And so the virus spread during that time out of control, led to tens of thousands of people
dying.
JUDY WOODRUFF: One of the things you did was employ what you call community health workers
to go out and do what you're talking about.
What exactly did they do?
DR.
RAJ PANJABI: Well, community health workers are people from villages like Emile's where
a middle- to high school-educated person would be trained for a matter of months and equipped
to provide medical care door to door to their neighbors.
Those workers are critical, in addition to nurses and doctors, because nurses and doctors
are concentrated in cities.
They don't reach rural areas.
When I first came back, I grew up in Liberia.
I fled during the civil war.
I came back as a medical student.
And what I found is that there were just 51 doctors for four million people.
It would be like the city of San Francisco having just 10 physicians for the entire city.
So, if you got sick in the city, you might stand a chance.
But, in rural areas, you didn't.
So, community health workers have been critical to providing health care, where doctors don't
reach, and linking patients to care.
What we did, for instance, when an outbreak happened in a rural part of the country, was
to train and equip health workers from those communities to go door to door to work with
doctors and nurses to find the sick and get them into treatment units.
JUDY WOODRUFF: We have been hearing about community health workers for a long time.
What's different about how they work now, the role that they play?
DR.
RAJ PANJABI: I think what's new now is a recognition that this is perhaps one of the most undervalued
labor assets in the health work force.
Long-term, they have been treated as volunteers.
So, in other words, they don't get paid to do their work.
Most are underequipped and many have been barely trained.
What's different now is the recognition, as in the case of Liberia, after the Ebola crisis,
taking a former volunteer community health work force and upgrading it, hiring those
workers, employing them, training them, equipping them with the right gear and medicines to
go door to door and provide health care.
JUDY WOODRUFF: A larger question of epidemic pandemics.
It seems we pay a lot of attention to them when we're in the middle of the crisis and
it's on everybody's mind, people are dying.
It's a very visual thing.
But then we quickly forget.
We move on.
Our attention span is short.
How confident are you that the world is truly prepared for the next pandemic and the one
after that?
DR.
RAJ PANJABI: Well, we have done more to become prepared after the Ebola crisis.
We're not yet close to where we need to be to be prepared for the next epidemic.
The data shows this.
We know that the cost of inaction is larger than the cost of action; $6 trillion is the
estimated potential economic loss of a pandemic.
But we're only spending 50 cents per person per year in providing surveillance and preparedness
against preventing the next epidemic.
JUDY WOODRUFF: We know that this is one of the things that funding by the United States
can make a big difference, as to your point.
DR.
RAJ PANJABI: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: The legislation that is moving through the Congress right now, or what appears
to be moving through the Congress, could make some significant cuts in that area.
DR.
RAJ PANJABI: Yes.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What effect would that have?
DR.
RAJ PANJABI: Well, I think, make no mistake, the cuts would be devastating.
And one of the untold stories of U.S. foreign aid is that it's had such a dramatic impact,
largely because of investments in health care systems like Liberia's and poor countries.
If there had not been an effort to invest U.S. foreign aid before, during and now after
the Ebola crisis, you wouldn't have been able to surge front-line local health workers who
went door to door to find the sick and get them into care.
At that very moment when the CDC told us that there could be as many as 1.4 million cases
of Ebola in Liberia and Sierra Leone, in the country I grew up and the one next to it,
that very week, in Dallas, Texas, America diagnosed its first case of Ebola.
So it's not a theory that epidemics that happen to people across the world can impact us at
home quite literally.
So I think this is the real story about foreign aid is, it's actually not aid.
It's investment.
It's a win-win.
It saves lives abroad and it keeps us safer at home in America.
And that's something we should all be proud of, actually, as Americans.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Dr. Raj Panjabi with Last Mile Health, thank you very much.
DR.
RAJ PANJABI: Thank you, Judy.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Next: Jeffrey Brown picks the brain of a lifelong movie critic on how
to get the most out of the moviegoing experience.
It's the latest installment of the "NewsHour" Bookshelf.
JEFFREY BROWN: A movie will teach you how to watch it, and while you can always eat
your popcorn and enjoy the show, those lessons can be illuminating, entertaining, rewarding.
That's the guiding spirit of a new book called "Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies."
Author Ann Hornaday is chief film critic at The Washington Post.
She's joined me often here to help us watch current movies.
And she's back to talk pictures.
Hello, Ann.
ANN HORNADAY, Author, "Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies": Hello.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, we can watch for fun.
Right?
ANN HORNADAY: Absolutely.
JEFFREY BROWN: We can just enjoy.
But what is this?
What are you trying to offer us?
ANN HORNADAY: Well, we live in an age of instant movie reviews, with social media and Web sites
and aggregators.
Everybody -- literally, everybody is a critic.
JEFFREY BROWN: We all are.
ANN HORNADAY: We all are.
And everyone loves to weigh in.
And that's a lot of fun.
And this book is really designed for those people who are casual viewers and who do have
a lot of fun weighing in, but might want to take their game up a notch.
And so what I have done with the book, I hope, is to guide readers through my process in
evaluating a movie as a professional critic.
JEFFREY BROWN: The way you think about it as a critic.
Right?
ANN HORNADAY: Exactly.
As I explain it in the book, I didn't start out as a movie buff.
I kind of came to this sideways as a freelance writer.
So I have actually learned to watch movies sort of on the job.
And in many cases, that means through my interviews with filmmakers like writers, directors, and
actors and different craftspeople.
And they have really taught me a great deal about this medium and how to appreciate it.
And so a lot of their wisdom is included in the book.
JEFFREY BROWN: OK, so the fun of this -- and we're going to have some fun with this.
ANN HORNADAY: Oh, yes.
JEFFREY BROWN: Is go through the categories of filmmaking.
I asked you to pick a few examples.
We are going to start with screenwriting.
This is the great opening scene from the 2007 film "Michael Clayton."
OK?
Let's take a look.
ANN HORNADAY: Yes.
ACTOR: Two weeks ago, I came out of a building, OK?
I'm running across Sixth Avenue.
There's a car waiting.
I have got exactly 38 minutes to get to the airport, and I'm dictating.
There's this panicked associate sprinting along beside me, scribbling in a notepad.
And suddenly she starts screaming.
And I realize we're standing in the middle of the street, the lights change, and there's
this wall of traffic, serious traffic spinning towards us.
And I freeze.
I can't move.
And I'm suddenly consumed with the overwhelming sensation that I'm covered with some sort
of film.
And it's in my hair, my face.
It's like a glaze.
JEFFREY BROWN: So, that's how a film opens, right, an unseen character, monologue, empty
building.
ANN HORNADAY: Exactly.
It's just incredible.
It's one of the great scenes of recent memory.
What I say in the book is, a movie -- as you said, a movie teaches us how to watch it really
within those first few moments.
That's when we're hooked.
That's when we know where we are, we're oriented, we're in an environment, we're in a world.
We have no idea how that voice-over narration relates to that scene that we're watching,
but we have such a strong idea of the environment and the atmosphere.
And we want to know more.
And that's the great Tony Gilroy, the great screenwriter, making his directing debut with
that movie.
And it was -- it kept up that pace and that degree of intensity all the way through.
JEFFREY BROWN: All right, our second example, I'm going to call this section visual storytelling,
but it's about cinematography and design.
This is from 1976, "All The President's Men."
Now, this is Robert Redford as reporter Bob Woodward.
And it's a very subtle -- you can -- let's watch and you will explain it, but subtle.
ANN HORNADAY: Yes, one of my favorite scenes.
Yes.
JEFFREY BROWN: OK.
Here it is.
ROBERT REDFORD, Actor: This is Bob Woodward of The Washington Post.
ACTOR: Yes?
ROBERT REDFORD: About that $25,000 check deposited in the bank account of one of the Watergate
burglars, Mr. Bernard Barker.
As you know, sir, the check has your name on it.
We were doing a story on this, and I was wondering if you would care to comment or explain.
ACTOR: I turned all my money over to the committee.
ROBERT REDFORD: What committee is that, sir, the Committee to Reelect?
JEFFREY BROWN: It's an almost imperceptible push into Redford.
Right?
ANN HORNADAY: Exactly.
Think about...
JEFFREY BROWN: But something is happening.
ANN HORNADAY: Something is definitely happening.
That is such a masterful shot, for many reasons.
One is that the filmmakers, Alan Pakula, and Gordon Willis, his cinematographer, you know,
if you think of a guy on a phone making a phone call, what could be more boring, what
could be more static and more inert, right?
And so what they have done is, they pull back to get a sense of that environment, that highly
charged environment in the newsroom.
And they use..
JEFFREY BROWN: All those people on the left.
ANN HORNADAY: Exactly, who are in perfect focus, by the way.
So, we can see them.
And we see what they're doing and that they're reacting to what's on the news on television.
They did that by a way of split diopter.
It's very technical.
But they remain a very deep focus to take in that environment and that sense of tension.
And then, like you said, they just push in bit by bit in the course of this phone call.
And it's followed by another one, where the tension is ratcheted up, as it starts to zoom
in on Redford's face.
So, it's just a masterful example of how a very finely detailed production design, such
as that was for "All the President's Men," where they literally reproduced The Post newsroom
on an L.A. set, how a production design interacts with an actor and his performance to create
-- and then a camera move like that just to create this amazing sense of tension.
JEFFREY BROWN: The category that gets most attention usually is acting.
Right?
ANN HORNADAY: Indeed.
JEFFREY BROWN: And so I want to watch a scene that is even from last year, and it's one
I did on this program, "Manchester By the Sea."
It's written and directed by Kenneth Lonergan.
And this is Casey Affleck and Michelle Williams.
Let's take a look.
MICHELLE WILLIAMS, Actress: We couldn't have lunch?
CASEY AFFLECK, Actor: I'm really sorry.
I don't think so.
But thank you for saying everything that you said.
MICHELLE WILLIAMS: You can't just die.
CASEY AFFLECK: I'm not.
I'm not.
I'm not.
And I'm...
MICHELLE WILLIAMS: Honey...
CASEY AFFLECK: I want you to be happy.
MICHELLE WILLIAMS: Honey, I see you walking around here, and I just want to tell you...
CASEY AFFLECK: I would want to talk to you...
(CROSSTALK)
MICHELLE WILLIAMS: Please.
CASEY AFFLECK: Please, I -- I...
(CROSSTALK)
MICHELLE WILLIAMS: You have got to -- I don't know what...
(CROSSTALK)
MICHELLE WILLIAMS: I don't want to torture you.
CASEY AFFLECK: You're not torturing me.
MICHELLE WILLIAMS: I just want to tell you that I was wrong.
CASEY AFFLECK: No.
No.
No.
You understand there's nothing -- there's nothing there.
ANN HORNADAY: Oh, my gosh.
JEFFREY BROWN: There's very few words even spoken in this film.
ANN HORNADAY: Exactly.
JEFFREY BROWN: In that scene, I don't think anybody finishes a sentence.
Right?
ANN HORNADAY: That's right.
And that's by design.
I actually -- you interviewed Kenny Lonergan.
And I interviewed Casey and Michelle about him as a writer, saying, what is it about
his screenplays that makes them different?
And they said, he spells everything out, including all of those um's and uh's out.
What people are saying on the surface is just surface.
And it's really the tip of a very, very deep and fraught emotional iceberg.
And so he's giving those actors something to play that, in the hands of a good actor,
they can invest all that subtext in.
And so that's just a great example of screen acting at its finest, which is really all
about just honesty and truth in the moment and playing that subtext.
JEFFREY BROWN: Pulling all of this together, of course, is the director.
How did you come to see the director's role?
ANN HORNADAY: Well, in interviewing the filmmakers that I did over the years, the two words that
kept coming up were taste and tone.
So, if we go back to that screenplay as the founding document of a movie, it's the director's
job to realize that to its fullest potential.
So, when you mention somebody like a Kathryn Bigelow, the way that she tells the story
of the Algiers Motel incident in the movie "Detroit" is very unique to her.
I don't think any other filmmaker would have approached the story quite the way that she
does in this film.
And you can say the same about Patty Jenkins.
Her vision for "Wonder Woman" was very much, I think, a product of her personal taste and
her predilections.
And, in both those cases, they work wonderfully well.
"Dunkirk" is another great example.
I mean, we could go on and on.
JEFFREY BROWN: We could go on and on.
ANN HORNADAY: It's been a good summer for directors, I will say.
(LAUGHTER)
JEFFREY BROWN: The new book is "Talking Pictures: How to Watch Movies."
Ann Hornaday, thank you very much.
ANN HORNADAY: Thank you.
HARI SREENIVASAN: Why is it that people have no qualms about confessing, I'm terrible at
math, yet you rarely hear anyone saying, I'm awful at English?
Eugenia Cheng is the scientist in residence at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago,
and author, whose latest book is "Beyond Infinity."
Tonight, we hear her Humble Opinion on why math is in need of a makeover.
EUGENIA CHENG, Author, "Beyond Infinity": Hi.
I would like you to meet a friend of mine.
He's really useful.
Wait.
That doesn't make him sound very interesting, does it?
Or fun.
Wouldn't it be better to say, hi, I would like you to meet a friend of mine, she's amazing.
she's brilliant?
We'd never introduce a friend by saying they're useful.
So, why are we doing that to math?
Why do we keep going on about how important it is for everyone to learn math because it's
useful?
Has that ever got a young person interested in anything?
I think math is fascinating and fun.
Otherwise, I wouldn't be a mathematician.
Some math began life without any sign of practicality.
Like, babies, they're not exactly useful.
For example, Internet cryptography.
It means we can do online shopping, online banking, and send e-mails.
This comes from some number theory that existed just for its own sake 300 years ago.
Most of engineering, medicine, lab science, weather forecasts and technology depends on
calculus.
Calculus depends on irrational numbers that the Egyptians started wondering about thousands
of years ago.
The icosahedron is a satisfyingly symmetrical shape that was dreamt up by ancient Greek
mathematicians.
Two thousand years later, it was finally applied to the study of viruses and the structure
of carbon and designing soccer balls.
But imagine if we only did math that was directly applicable, rather than stimulated by sheer
curiosity.
We'd still be building houses by hand and communicating on paper delivered on horseback
and dying of the Plague.
The usefulness of math is a burden, and we're perpetuating this burden in a cycle.
We require elementary school teachers to teach everything, but what if math wasn't their
favorite subject at school?
Math-y people are more likely to be specialist math teachers at higher levels.
So, if elementary school teachers remember math as important, but not fun, they're likely
to teach it as important, but not fun.
And the cycle goes on.
We need to break it.
Some elementary schools have specialist teachers for art, music or languages.
Let's have specialist elementary math teachers too.
Let's allow them to teach math in imaginative and creative ways.
Let's teach children how to think, rather than just how to pass standardized tests.
I think math is fun and exhilarating.
I enjoy understanding things.
I enjoy thinking clearly.
That's what math is about.
HARI SREENIVASAN: On the "NewsHour" online right now: Michigan's Battle Creek Sanitarium
became a world-renowned destination of healing thanks to its charismatic director, Dr. John
Harvey Kellogg, who helped revolutionize modern ideas of wellness and healthy living.
Medical historian Dr. Howard Markel details Kellogg's life in a new book, and he shares
some of that story on our Web site, PBS.org/NewsHour.
And we will be right back here on Monday.
Remember to watch our live-stream of the solar eclipse on our Facebook page.
Miles O'Brien will have a wrap-up on the "NewsHour," followed by a "NOVA" special, "Eclipse Over
America."
That's the "NewsHour" for tonight.
I'm Hari Sreenivasan.
See you tomorrow night on "PBS NewsHour Weekend."
Thank you.
See you soon.

PBS NewsHour full episode Aug. 18, 2017

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