Last week in Columbus, Ohio, a dozen or so people marched through the city waving Nazi flags and yelling racial epithets.

Disturbing, to be sure, and a grim sign of the times.

But almost as troubling was the reaction from CNN anchor Dana Bash. After airing a video of the march on Monday’s edition of “Inside Politics,” she said it was unclear “which side of the aisle” these white nationalists came from.

“A group of neo-Nazis paraded through that city wearing, waving swastikas, covering their faces,” Bash said during the segment with Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio). “This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened in Ohio in particular. And, of course, it’s continuing to spread. We don’t know what side of the aisle this comes from. I mean, typically neo-Nazis are from the far right,” she said before noting that Landsman, who is Jewish, had “far left” protests outside his house.

Conflating neo-Nazis with protesters for Palestinian human rights is in itself problematic, but blurring the hard right’s direct connection to white nationalism with “let’s be fair to both sides” comments was inexcusable.

Basic rule: Nazis should never be given the benefit of the doubt, or any leeway for that matter. Neither should the political movements that empower them.

Bash wasn’t the only media personality to shy away from condemning the people and parties that embolden fascism. “Morning Joe” hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, frequent critics of Donald Trump, revealed Monday that they’d recently visited the president-elect and members of his team at Mar-a-Lago to “restart communications.”

Brzezinski preempted questions about their decision with another question: “For those asking why we would go speak to the president-elect during such fraught times, especially between us, I guess I would ask back, why wouldn’t we?”

By the time the “Daily Show” aired that evening, host Jon Stewart had an answer: “Uh, because you said he was Hitler.”

The about-face of news anchors who as recently as last month voiced concerns about the future of the country under a second Trump term sparked plenty of criticism. Ratings plunged after the segment, with some detractors accusing the couple of obeying the president-elect in advance for fear of retaliation once he’s back in the White House. If true, their concern wouldn’t be unfounded. Trump has waged war on the media from Day One, referring to them often as “fake,” “crooked” and an “enemy of the state.”

I’d like to believe that these media figures aren’t folding like cheap suits, but maybe that’s wishful thinking. There’s a lot of that going around these days. Democratic leaders have been throwing pennies in a well since 2016, repeating the mantra, “This is not who we are. This is not who we are.” At least it put a rosier sheen on the rising tide of bigotry and violence unleashed by MAGA.

Aspirational thinking is healthy and admirable, but not in all cases. And in this case, it’s also not particularly accurate, because as the election results attest, this is who we are. Trump’s retribution approach resonated more with voters than Kamala Harris’ promises of a united future. Trump voters may not have fully agreed with his torrent of hate speech, “Access Hollywood” grab ‘em comments or labeling of fellow Americans as “the enemy within,” but they also weren’t bothered enough by it all to not vote for him.

And let me be clear, I’m not conflating the majority of Trump voters with those idiots marching in Ohio. What I am saying is that when news personalities like Bash and the “Morning Joe” crew operate on the unspoken premise that there are two sides to the story and we should give fascism a chance, it serves no one but the aspiring strongman.

Ignoring the obvious seemed to be what Bash was doing. But her viewers probably could discern which side those neo-Nazis were aligned with when they paraded through Columbus.

Journalists across social media were immediately on the case. Nick Martin, who runs the Informant, a publication covering hate and extremism in the U.S., posted a response to her comments. It was a selfie of a founder of the neo-Nazi groups in question, taken at a Trump rally.

Other examples of MAGA’s ties with white power were so fresh they were reported in the same news cycle.

Trump’s pick to lead the Pentagon, former Fox News host Pete Hegseth, was one of 12 National Guard members removed from security duty for President Biden’s 2021 inauguration over his potential extremist ties. Hegseth has tattoos associated with white nationalist movements, including a symbol popular with Christian nationalists referred to as a Jerusalem cross.

On the campaign trail, Trump repeatedly parroted propaganda used in Nazi Germany when pledging to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical-left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”

Commentary in the Hill revealed that when he spoke that line at a 2023 rally in New Hampshire, he barely modified from its original 1930s Nazi form. The previous year he dined with prominent white supremacist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago.

And we all remember when during his first term he defended violent white nationalists who marched in Charlottesville, Va., in 2017, saying they included “some very fine people.”

Trump wants you to believe that. But we don’t have to. It’s time we admitted that we aren’t all that good, and that we need to be better.

Fred Harris, a self-described populist Democrat from Oklahoma who served eight years in the U.S. Senate before an unsuccessful campaign for president in 1976, has died. He was 94.

Harris’ wife, Margaret Elliston, confirmed his death to the Associated Press in a text message on Saturday, writing: “Fred Harris passed peacefully early this morning of natural causes. He was 94. He was a wonderful and beloved man. His memory is a blessing.”

Harris, who was living in New Mexico, died in a hospital in Albuquerque, Elliston told The New York Times.

Harris first served for eight years in the Oklahoma State Senate after winning election in 1956. He then launched his career in national politics in 1964 when he won a Senate race to fill the vacancy left by Sen. Robert S. Kerr, who died in January 1963.

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“I’ve always called myself a populist or progressive,” Harris said in a 1998 interview. “I’m against concentrated power. I don’t like the power of money in politics. I think we ought to have programs for the middle class and working class.”

As a U.S. senator, Harris was a member of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, the so-called Kerner Commission, appointed by then-President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the urban riots of the late 1960s.

Sen. Fred Harris of Oklahoma served in the U.S. Senate for eight years. (AP Photo, File)

The commission released its report in 1968, declaring, “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal.”

Thirty years later, Harris co-wrote a report that concluded the commission’s “prophecy has come to pass,” stating that “the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer and minorities are suffering disproportionately.”

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In 1976, Harris ran a failed bid to earn the Democratic presidential nomination, bowing out of the race after poor showings in early contests. The more moderate Jimmy Carter went on to win the presidency.

Harris moved to New Mexico that year and became a political science professor at the University of New Mexico. He wrote and edited more than a dozen books, mostly on politics and Congress. In 1999, he broadened his writings with a mystery set in Depression-era Oklahoma.

Former Oklahoma Sen. Fred Harris stands outside his Corrales, N.M., home, Friday, July 23, 2004. Harris died Saturday at a hospital in Albuquerque, his wife said. He was 94. (AP Photo/Jake Schoellkopf, File)

Harris was born Nov. 13, 1930, in a two-room farmhouse near Walters, in southwestern Oklahoma. The home had no electricity, indoor toilet or running water. He worked on the farm starting at age 5, driving a horse in circles to supply a hay bailer with power – earning 10 cents a day.

He later worked part-time as a janitor and printer’s assistant to help pay for his education at the University of Oklahoma, where he earned a law degree in 1954. He practiced law in Lawton before beginning his career in politics.

Harris married his high school sweetheart, LaDonna Vita Crawford, in 1949, and had three children, Kathryn, Byron and Laura. After the couple divorced, Harris married Margaret Elliston in 1983. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Donald Trump had the right idea about education during his first administration: Judge potential employees by their skills and experience, not their degrees. Open up a world of bright futures to people who don’t have a bachelor’s degree but crave training and work hard.

In fact, aside from starting up Operation Warp Speed to accelerate the development of a COVID-19 vaccine, Trump’s most worthwhile official act was probably signing the rule that federal jobs should not require a bachelor’s degree unless it’s really needed.

Trump and other Republicans saw that the education vision President Obama had pushed — consisting of a vague Common Core public school curriculum followed by “college for all” — had alienated working-class Americans. Well-paid manufacturing jobs had all but disappeared, and people were looking for a new middle-class future.

The growth of tech indicated to Obama’s education advisors that success would depend on a university education, preferably in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, fields. But that wasn’t a message that many working-class people wanted to hear. It struck them as an elitist judgment that they’re nothing without a four-year degree.

Obama was right to some extent: The greatest growth in well-paid jobs will be among those that require a college degree. But Trump was right too: 45% of those holding a bachelor’s are underemployed even a decade after they graduate, working in jobs that don’t require a degree, and 28% of people with a two-year associate’s degree earn more than the average four-year-college graduate. More than a third of college students, meanwhile, don’t complete a degree within six years, and almost none of those students ever finish their education.

The problem is that high schools have become so college-focused that students who don’t plan on higher education usually get little to no guidance on what careers they might consider, according to a recent Gallup poll. There is a wide and rapidly expanding variety of possibilities.

So although Trump’s opening of federal jobs to more people without degrees was a start, schools can do far more to prepare young people to be both citizens and members of the workforce. That would be a far more productive path for Trump to take on education during his second administration than the issues he’s been batting around lately — especially because he will have some trouble realizing his ambitions even with a compliant Congress.

Shutting the U.S. Education Department, as the president-elect has threatened to do, would require congressional approval, and eliminating a Cabinet-level agency would be tough to get past even some Republican lawmakers. Its responsibilities could be returned to the Interior Department — where they originated before the Education Department was created, in 1979 — but what would be the point? The laws requiring equal treatment of girls and women in education would still have to be administered; college financial aid applications would still have to be processed; Pell Grants and student loans would still have to be overseen. No matter where the necessary personnel are placed, the work would need to be done.

Even as Trump vows to get the federal government out of the schools — though really, now that the No Child Left Behind Act is dead and gone, the Education Department does little to interfere with public education — he wants to meddle more by pulling funding from any schools that teach about LGBTQ+ issues or “critical race theory.” While these subjects make for provocative talking points, they’re not a major part of learning in most districts. These are decisions to be made at the state and local levels, and voters who don’t like what their school board decides can throw its members out at the next election. They very rarely do so.

Another pillar of Trump’s platform, school choice, appears to be facing public resistance. All three statewide votes on the subject this fall went against choice, two of them in conservative states. Nebraska voters overturned an earlier state decision to spend taxpayer dollars to enable parents to send their children to private schools. Parents rely on and support their local schools more than elected Republicans might understand.

Trump tends to favor disruption over constructive policymaking, but he has already made non-college pathways a signature education statement, and the idea has become popular with both parties. Now is the perfect time to take advantage of that. His administration could use corporate tax credits and public-private partnerships to help create apprenticeships, landing young people in white-collar jobs with a future, as Switzerland has done for years. Instead of deconstructing education, his education appointees could rebuild it through more relevant and exciting curricula with practical applications.

The president-elect’s pick for Education secretary, former pro wrestling executive Linda McMahon, has so far remained quiet about her priorities, though vouchers are likely to be among them. But just before her appointment was announced, she praised Switzerland’s system of white-collar apprenticeships for high school students, which lead to executive and professional jobs. I’ve long thought the United States should emulate the model; a small but very successful program in Denver does so.

Both Presidents George W. Bush and Obama saw education as an important part of their administrations but stumbled on the issue because of sometimes harsh and unrealistic policies. No Child Left Behind and Race to the Top ultimately did very little to improve learning, excite students or close achievement gaps. Trump has a chance to build on what he has already said he believes and become a true education president.