Judy Woodruff discusses takeaways from the Crossroads town hall in Wisconsin

PBS News senior correspondent Judy Woodruff was in Milwaukee this past week for her ongoing series, America at a Crossroads, where she met with more than 50 Wisconsin residents from across the political spectrum for a frank conversation about the challenges the U.S. faces as a country. John Yang speaks with Woodruff about what she heard from participants.
John Yang:
For the past year and a half, Judy Woodruff has been exploring the ways our country’s political divisions have affected our personal lives, creating rifts between family, friends and communities, as part of that series called America at a Crossroads. In Milwaukee, this past week, Judy met with more than 50 Wisconsin residents from across the political spectrum for a frank discussion about the challenges we face as a country. Here’s a bit of that discussion.
Penny Pietruszynski, Supports Trump:
I have family members that want to, you know, throw the racist card at me, and I want to let people know, as a Trump supporter, I am not racist, and I don’t believe that Trump is either.
Antoine Carter, Supports Harris:
As a black man, the only thing that he tries to identify with is my struggle, not me being a parent, not me being a person trying to work and pay bills and buy a home and things like that.
John Yang:
That’s part of a PBS special that airs tomorrow night called Crossroads, a Conversation with America, and the leader of that conversation, Judy Woodruff is here now. Judy, those sentiments, people feeling that political division, personally, how common was that?
Judy Woodruff:
We heard it from a number of people. John, as you as you just said, it’s more than 50 Wisconsin residents. We heard several people who are Trump supporters saying that they have family members who won’t have anything to do with them. You just heard that woman say she’s — it’s really hurt her in what’s happened in her family. We had another woman tell us that she’d lost customers once — this is a woman who owned both a shooting range, interestingly, and a beauty salon. And she said when her customers, some of them heard that she learned that she was supporting Donald Trump, it affected them, and they stopped doing business. They stopped patronizing her business.
On the other hand, we heard people who are very much Democrat supporting Kamala Harris or Joe Biden before her saying that it had caused deep splits in their families as well. So we know now this is and we hear this. We’ve heard this across the country over the last year and a half.
John Yang:
You touch on a lot of difficult subjects here. We heard some of it. Did anything in the discussion surprise you?
Judy Woodruff:
Well, a lot of things surprised me. I mean, for example, we asked people you know about specific issues that were the reason they mainly support either Trump or Harris. We had a Trump supporter talk about her family. She said, we’re a family of immigrants, but we believe in coming across the border and doing it by the books being legal, and we don’t believe in allowing people to come into the country, and take jobs and, frankly, take the place of people who have who’ve paid their dues.
I think if you ask — if you’re asking me, what surprised me after the conversations, and we talked and we talked to another gentleman who, by the way, is a DACA recipient. He was desert. He came with his parents undocumented, so he’s now a successful business person. Still is not able to vote, still doesn’t have citizenship status.
So after the session, we saw him talking with the woman who had said, I don’t like people coming across the border and taking up space in our country, we saw the same thing around reproductive rights, two people who had different points of view talking to one another. So there is the possibility of common ground. It’s just that you don’t hear much space for it. John in the public space out there.
John Yang:
That’s interesting. Did you come away from this more hopeful, less hopeful about the political discourse in America?
Judy Woodruff:
You’re not going to like this answer, but if both. I mean, I clearly am you, you can’t help but be discouraged when some people express very strong feelings on one side or another, and they all — most people in that room told us — that they wanted that they believe compromise is a good idea, that we should be seeking common ground.
But they also said there are things that I don’t want, I don’t want to compromise on. I also think, John, frankly, many of these people were on good behavior. They knew that we were filming this, and we probably got the best answers that they were going to give. We had a political science professor from the University of Wisconsin joining us who said, I think maybe when some people go home, they’re going to they may be more candid.
But I have to say on the other hand, you know, in traveling around the country and in Milwaukee Monday night, you did get this sense that people are tired of this division. Yes, they’re — yes, they have strong feelings, yes, they have strong principles, but they want to be able to function as a society, as a people and there was just a, I mean, to me, there was a sense that that they’d like to see us figure out a way through this.
John Yang:
Sounds like a fascinating conversation. Judy Woodruff, thank you very much.
Judy Woodruff:
Thank you. Thank you, John.
John Yang:
And Crossroads: A Conversation with America airs tomorrow night on PBS at 9:00 p.m. Eastern, 8:00 Central.