Alexandra Pelosi Ventures into 'Trump Country' for New Documentary
*By Max Godnick*
Attending a Trump rally can be daunting for any self-proclaimed liberal ー even more so if your last name is Pelosi.
But an experience with her political opposites left Alexandra Pelosi, the documentarian and youngest daughter of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, feeling hopeful.
"We all need to burst out of our own bubbles and see what the other people are thinking," Pelosi said Monday in an interview on Cheddar.
Pelosi directed, produced, and shot the entire process for her new documentary "Outside the Bubble: On the Road With Alexandra Pelosi," that follows the filmmaker and her family as they leave the confines of the Manhattan echo chamber and enter the heart of Trump country.
The trip brought her to what she called "the fault lines of cultural divide" including Charlottesville, Va., the U.S.-Mexico border, and a Pennsylvania coal mine.
"My takeaway was, it's hard to hate up close," Pelosi said of making the film.
Despite Pelosi's famous last name, which she described as a "curse word," many of her interview subjects invited her to dinner, opened their homes for the night, and ended their conversations with a "big hug."
While she tackled immigration, the environment, and the #MeToo movement, among other topics in the film, Pelosi said she was struck by most Americans' fixations on a single issue: jobs.
"It's easy to sit here and say global warming is the most important issue in the world," she said. "If you don't have food to feed your family, global warming is not the most important issue."
Pelosi is particularly concerned about the importance of having a "balanced media diet."
She banned MSNBC and CNN from her household in an effort to discourage her kids from becoming "pod people."
By watching and reading a more diverse slate of news and opinions, Pelosi thinks Americans will grow smarter and more accepting of each other's differences.
"We can't just read our New Yorkers and our New York Times and think we're fully-educated people because we're not," she said.
"Outside the Bubble: On the Road With Alexandra Pelosi" debuts Monday on HBO.
For full interview [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/alexandra-pelosi-steps-outside-the-bubble-in-her-new-documentary).
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Join Cheddar News as we break down the top headlines for Thursday, May 26 including updates on the Texas school shooting, President Joe Biden's executive order on police reform, and a recount in the Pennsylvania GOP Senate primary.
Representative Morgan Griffith of Virginia rebuked words from the FDA commissioner that could have been construed as blaming parents for stockpiling baby formula exacerbating the shortage.
Cheddar News reporter Megan Pratz brings the latest from the scene of yesterday's horrific school shooting at a Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. Now the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history with 19 children and two adults killed, Pratz goes into comments by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, details about the deceased shooter, and reactions from members of the community.
The Robb Elementary School mass shooting killing 19 children and two adults in Uvalde, Texas pm Tuesday was the deadliest school shooting since the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, and came just 10 days after the grocery store shooting in Buffalo, New York. Nelson Vergara, the founder and CEO of 360 Protective Solutions, joined Cheddar’s Opening Bell to discuss. "Right now what law enforcement is concentrating on is trying to trace his steps as to what motivated the gunman to act the way he did. What it boils down to just trying to figure out what led to his motivation to do such a horrific act.”
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Judith Enck, a former regional administrator for the EPA and the president of Beyond Plastics, joined Cheddar News to talk about the role of plastics in the climate crisis and California's investigation of ExxonMobil and other oil companies for misleading the public on the ability to recycle plastics. "The reason why petrochemical companies like Exxon have gotten away with selling more and more plastic is that they've lied to the public and told us don't worry about all those negative upstream impacts and downstream impacts of plastics. Just be sure to recycle it. Well, guess what? Plastics largely are not recycled," Enck said.
