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PBS Lies About George H.W. Bush's 1992 Supermarket Scanner Encounter
On Monday’s PBS News Hour, co-anchor Geoff Bennett used a discussion of President Trump’s upcoming State of the Union address to dredge up a hoary piece of liberal media mythology that helped doom the re-election chances of Republican President George H.W. Bush in 1992.
The falsehood originated with liberal hack Andrew Rosenthal of the New York Times, who got an entire front-page story (“Bush Encounters the Supermarket, Amazed”) out of the false claim that Bush was “amazed” watching a supermarket scanner in action at a grocer’s convention in Orlando, in order to portray Bush as out of touch with the voters.
And the anti-Republican myth is still chugging along today, used as a media weapon to portray Republican presidents as out of touch with ordinary shoppers, as shown during a discussion led by Bennett regarding Trump’s tariff struggle.
Co-anchor Geoff Bennett: And there's a risk here for President Trump being cast as out of touch when you have the American people by and large saying that they're not -- they don't support these tariffs. I remember, back in the early 90s, I think it was 1992, then-President George H.W. Bush was cast as being out of touch because he went to a grocers convention and there was one of those bar code scanners. And he said something like, oh, that's cool, I have never seen anything like that before. And people were like, how could you not know what a bar code scanner is in the supermarket? That was what passed for scandal and controversy back then. And here you have pluralities, majorities of the American public saying that they don't want these tariffs. And the president is saying, OK, fine, 15 percent tariffs.
Neither one of Bennett’s panelists, Tamara Keith of NPR or Jasmine Wright of NOTUS, corrected Bennett’s misinformation -- let's guess because they're too young to remember this old whopper.
Even the liberal-leaning myth-busting site Snopes strongly criticized the Times’ partisan mythmaking in “Was President George H.W. Bush 'Amazed' by a Grocery Scanner?”
….Andrew Rosenthal of The New York Times hadn't even been present at the grocers' convention. He based his article on a two-paragraph report filed by the lone pool newspaperman allowed to cover the event, Gregg McDonald of the Houston Chronicle, who merely wrote that Bush had a "look of wonder" on his face and didn't find the event significant enough to mention in his own story. Moreover, Bush had good reason to express wonder: He wasn't being shown then-standard scanner technology, but a new type of scanner that could weigh groceries and read mangled and torn bar codes.
A transcript is available, click “Expand.”
PBS News Hour
2/23/26
7:29:44 p.m. (ET)
Geoff Bennett: And, Jasmine, another thing that stands out in this poll, 53 percent of respondents say President Trump's policies have had a negative impact on them personally.
That is different than abstract disapproval. This is people speaking about their direct experience.
Jasmine Wright, NOTUS: And I think that is reflected in a lot of people's discomfort with the tariffs. Obviously, we know that those were just struck down the way that he was using them by the Supreme Court.
But we have heard people be really frustrated about the tariffs, frustrated about high prices, frustrated about the economy not being as good as they have heard the president say, and also frustrated with the president's immigration agenda. I think, if you look at some of the more recent polls, you have seen people being broadly accepting of the idea that more people should be deported, but not happy with the tactics.
And so the president is facing strong headwinds kind of across the board when it comes to how people are responding to his individual policies, which is not just about his personality.
Geoff Bennett: Let's talk more about the tariffs, because, just today, the president said: "As president, I do not have to go back to Congress to get approval of tariffs. It's already been gotten," he says, "in many forms a long time ago."
He is really just brushing past the Supreme Court here, Tam. And tariffs were already unpopular. In many ways, this was an off-ramp that he could have taken, but he's not.
Tamara Keith: He is not taking the off-ramp. He is doubling down. He is claiming to continue to have massive powers.
The reality is that there are a whole bunch of three-digit number options that the president can use, and none of them are as powerful as IEEPA. None of them are that Swiss army knife that he was using IEEPA as. But, obviously, the Supreme Court found that he was using it in a way that wasn't legal.
For a lot of voters, the tariffs, as Jasmine said, are a problem. They see things getting more expensive. Now you see major corporations and companies people have heard of are asking for refunds for the tariffs, which is another indication that it wasn't foreign companies that were paying it.
But President Trump, this is a core belief for him. This is something that he has been talking about at least since the 1980s and probably before then. He -- it is his favorite word, he likes to say. It is his favorite policy prescription for everything from foreign policy to the economy to trying to get world peace.
And so he is not giving this up easily, and he's not creating any separation for Republicans in Congress, who are going to have to explain this in the coming months.
Geoff Bennett: Jasmine, say more about that, because, to Tam's point, FedEx today, the international shipping company, filed suit in the International Trade Court seeking a refund. This is a story that is really breaking through.
Based on your reporting, how are Republicans thinking about this in terms of the messaging and the policy?
Jasmine Wright: Yes, and you're going to have more of these companies and perhaps individual small businesses coming out and saying that, based on the ruling, we want a refund.
Now, the White House has been clear that is going to be settled later on in litigation. But, still, that is going to be a thing. I think that this is fundamentally important, because, so far, Congress has not necessarily been receptive to the president's tariffs, particularly Republicans.
And in votes that they have taken against tariffs, particularly that Canadian tariffs vote to revoke those, six Republicans joined Democrats to remove those tariffs from Canada. That was a symbolic vote, because, even if it did pass in it, which it likely is not, it would still need to be veto-proof for the president.
Now, if he does in fact decide to go to Congress, which he says he won't -- but if he wants to continue those Section 122 tariffs, he will have to go to Congress. If he does, that vote becomes not symbolic, but serious. And it means that Republicans are going to have to be on the record in support or against these tariffs.
And that, of course, puts them potentially in hot water with their constituents, who may not like tariffs. But then on the other side, if they don't vote for tariffs, it puts them in hot water with the president, who has shown that he will primary just about anybody that goes against him.
Geoff Bennett: And there's a risk here for President Trump being cast as out of touch when you have the American people by and large saying that they're not -- they don't support these tariffs.
I remember, back in the early 90s, I think it was 1992, then-President George H.W. Bush was cast as being out of touch because he went to a grocers convention and there was one of those bar code scanners. And he said something like, oh, that's cool, I have never seen anything like that before.
And people were like, how could you not know what a bar code scanner is in the supermarket? That was what passed for scandal and controversy back then. And here you have pluralities, majorities of the American public saying that they don't want these tariffs. And the president is saying, OK, fine, 15 percent tariffs.
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