A host at a Nashua radio station has lost her show over a racist Facebook video. WSMN radio fired Dianna Ploss after the video she posted, showing her accosting Spanish-speaking workers, went viral.
In the video, which Ploss shot and broadcast over Facebook live on Friday, she can be heard confronting the workers on a landscaping crew on Nashua’s Main Street.
“It’s English; it’s English,” Ploss says, as she paces the sidewalk. “It is America; you should be speaking English.”
She also repeatedly interrogates the crew’s foreman about the workers’ immigration status; asks where Gov. Chris Sununu is; and describes the crew's task (installing tree planters) as “Communism.”
The video shows Ploss bristling when a bystander intervenes in an effort to get her to stop harassing the workers. She also comments sarcastically on the man's wearing of a face covering.
“He’s a Black man, and he’s going to protect the brown man from this white woman,” Ploss then says into her camera.
Over the weekend, an online petition began calling for WSMN to fire Ploss from her show, which had broadcast for two-hours, three days a week. A statementposted to the WSMN website Sunday says that Ploss is “no longer associated or affiliated in any way” with the station.
“We value freedom of speech, freedom of expression and assembly,” the statement reads. “We will not tolerate discrimination, racism or hatred.”
Ploss, who lives in Massachusetts, describes herself as founder of “Massachusetts 4 Trump” on her website. In 2016, Ploss told NPR she was a lifelong Democrat before she quit her job to volunteer for the Trump campaign.
As recently as May, Ploss was leading protests at the home of Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker over COVID-19 restrictions.
