Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP A Morin's Landscaping employee builds a stone wall around one of several trees that the company's owner, Tom Morin, and downtown restaurant owner Mike Buckley donated to help spruce up areas around the various expanded dining areas along Main Street. Work continued Monday, after some Morin's employees were assailed Friday by right-wing radio show host Dianna Ploss for speaking Spanish.

NASHUA – The owners of the broadcasting group that operates Nashua’s WSMN radio station moved swiftly over the weekend to sever ties with a right-wing talk show host who used air time she purchased to harass a landscaping crew for speaking Spanish while working on a project on Main Street.

The host, Dianna Ploss, 55, an avid supporter of President Trump who founded MA 4 Trump, a Massachusetts based movement backing Trump’s reelection campaign, approached a crew from Morin’s Landscaping Friday as they worked on a project to improve the aesthetics of downtown Nashua’s expanded dining areas.

“This is America … speak English!” Ploss shrieks at some of the crew members while capturing the episode on camera. She repeats the phrase several times before demanding to know whether the workers “are here (in the U.S.) illegally,” according to the footage that Ploss posted on Facebook as well as her YouTube channel.

The videos and related comments on social media went viral over the weekend, prompting Bartis-Russell Broadcasting LLC, the owner of WSMN, to assure listeners and residents in general that Ploss “is no longer associated, or affiliated in any way with, WSMN or Bartis-Russell Broadcasting.”

Principals Bob Bartis and George Russell explained that Ploss is not an employee of WSMN, but one of several clients who pay for air time on the station to host their shows.

Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP Crews from Morin's Landscaping, some of whom were assailed on Friday by a right-wing radio host for speaking Spanish rather than English, continued their landscaping work Monday along Main Street, where they brought in trees and built stone walls around them.

“We at WSMN value freedom of speech, freedom of expression and assembly … (but) we will not tolerate discrimination, racism or hatred,” Bartis and Russell wrote in the message posted on the cover of their Website.

“We continue to present and offer on air opportunities for discussion, education and the exchange of opinions and ideas,” they wrote.

Ploss, whose Website and YouTube channel feature some of her archived shows, is seen in the Friday video both in the WSMN studio and walking along Main Street in the area of Surf restaurant, where the Morin’s crews were placing trees in the expanded-dining sections and encircling them with granite blocks.

Michael Buckley, who owns Surf as well as MT’s Local across Main Street, and Tom Morin, owner of Morin’s, supplied the materials and labor for the project. No city funds or taxpayer dollars were used, officials said, noting their only role was to OK the project.

The information was apparently lost on Ploss, whose rants included insisting that state and local taxpayer dollars were paying for the work, despite being told it was a private company doing the work at no cost to taxpayers.

Telegraph photo by DEAN SHALHOUP Two landscapers with Morin's Landscaping work on a stone wall encircling one of several trees brought in to help spruce up the expanded dining areas along Main Street. Some crew members were assailed Friday by a right-wing radio host, who criticized them for speaking Spanish – and accused them of being "illegals."

Ploss is heard on the video urging listeners to call Morin’s “to complain” because “this is what’s going on right here in ‘Commie central,’ downtown Nashua, New Hampshire.”

Not only did Ploss take umbrage with the landscapers speaking Spanish, she appeared to be outraged that a crew foreman was “showing these workers what to do in Spanish,” presumably meaning he was giving them instructions in Spanish, which she called “treason.”

Ploss also insisted her rants weren’t based on the fact the workers she attacked speak Spanish.

“If they were speaking Russian, or speaking Chinese, I still would have asked them,” she said, apparently referring to whether they were in this country legally.

“What’s wrong with me asking that?” Ploss said, referring to the Spanish-speaking question. “Maybe that company does hire illegals. Are we not supposed to call (them) out?”

Back in the studio – where a life-size cardboard cutout of Trump was propped up behind Ploss – she wondered aloud “why ‘they’ have (work) Visas when we have people not working.”

Ploss, who is based in the Boston area, indicated she’s currently a resident of the North Shore, where, she said on the air, a close friend “lost his job because of all these illegal Guatemalans.”

And, she added, “my brother is losing his job … our country is burning.”

Attempts to contact Ploss have been unsuccessful. Russell, the WSMN co-owner, said Ploss has been contracting with the station for roughly two years, purchasing about 10 hours of airtime per week.

The entertainment Website TMZ.com was among several national outlets to comment on Ploss’s Friday rants, calling the scene “almost unbelievable.

“Her ignorance is breathtaking,” TMZ states. “She assumes (the landscapers) are working for the state of New Hampshire, as if that would justify her comments.”

The outlet I Heart Radio said on iheart.com that Ploss “went on a vile, racist tirade against a group of workers doing their job … because they spoke Spanish.”

By early Tuesday, one related Facebook thread had drawn more than 300 comments, just about all of which called her out as an unabashed racist whose hateful, uninformed rancor is not welcome in Greater Nashua. Ploss, who earlier vowed “I am not backing down” in a Facebook post, later dug her heels in, issuing a subsequent post in which she was unapologetic.

“Here’s what I have to say to those who have attacked me: Blank you. Blank you,” she wrote. “Now get out of my way because I have a country to save.”

On Monday, Buckley, the restaurant owner, said he’s putting the incident behind him.

“She’s just ignorant, that’s all,” Buckley said. “There’s no room for her in my world.”

Dean Shalhoup may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.