Trump's Rumble on Sesame Street

President Donald Trump has fought plenty of political heavyweights, but now he's up against a foe far tougher than Hillary Clinton or Kamala Harris: Big Bird.

The president is ordering federal agencies and the taxpayer-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting to stop supporting National Public Radio and the Public Broadcasting Service.

His May 1 executive order is titled "Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media."

How biased are NPR and PBS?

They mostly appeal to members of one political party, according to Pew Research.

Thirty-two percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning respondents surveyed say they regularly get news from NPR, and a similar number — 31% — say the same about PBS.

Only 11% of Republicans and GOP-leaners report they get news from PBS, and the figure for NPR — 9% — is even worse.

Something about NPR is three times more agreeable to Democrats than Republicans.

Should everyone be taxed to pay for radio and TV programming that caters primarily to Democrats?

Public radio and TV executives hide behind yellow feathers whenever they're criticized.

"Big Bird Taken Off Death Row," announced a Washington Post headline in June 1995 when Newt Gingrich, the first Republican speaker of the House of Representatives in 40 years, backed down from attempts to defund CPB.

"Sesame Street" was just too popular with parents.

Today's face of public broadcasting, however, isn't Big Bird or Elmo — it's Katherine Maher, NPR's outspokenly progressive CEO.

"America is addicted to white supremacy," Maher — who is white — claimed on Twitter in 2020.

But she didn't make NPR woke — just the opposite: Maher's in charge because she perfectly represents NPR's preexisting institutional bias.

Before Maher, NPR was already appending "trigger warnings" to readings from the Declaration of Independence, with disclaimers appearing not only on items newly published on its website after the 2020 George Floyd riots but applied retroactively as well.

"The audio of this story quotes the U.S. Declaration of Independence — a document that contains offensive language about Native Americans, including a racial slur," warns the note prefixed to "The Declaration: What Does It Mean to You?" a "Morning Edition" story from July 4, 2013.

Maher recently testified to Congress that "much of my thinking has evolved over the last half decade" since she characterized other Americans as white-supremacy addicts.

Before her evolution, Maher also called President Trump a "deranged racist sociopath" and "fascist."

She was executive director and CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, publisher of Wikipedia, at the time. Before that, she was the foundation's chief communications officer.

If Maher has "evolved" only in the past five years, she's hardly cut out to run any media organization, let alone a taxpayer-funded one.

But if she really does think the president's fascist and America's racist, and is now lying about these inconvenient convictions, what does that say about her character?

Whatever the answer, she has no business leading any organization that claims to be nonpartisan. (Maher's mother, as it happens, is a Connecticut state senator — a Democrat.)

She can't have it both ways, insisting America is in the grip of fascism one moment, then soliciting government support the next — who'd want to be funded by a fascist's government?

Shouldn't it be a point of pride for people like Maher to accept no money from fascists or racists?

NPR's leader is an ideologue but also an opportunist, and her public statements reveal not just her animosity toward the Republican president but her nihilistically relativist worldview.

"Our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that is getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done," she mused in a 2022 TED Talk, adding, "We all have different truths. They are based on things like where we come from, how we were raised, and how other people perceive us."

This might sound like mush, but it means that objective truth— truthful truth, one might say — is too divisive a standard and instead "truth" must derive from identity, and identity politics.

NPR's programming and practices reflect that philosophy as much as its choice of CEO.

When someone does speak up for a true truth at NPR, he can expect to be punished.

That was the experience of Uri Berliner, a senior editor with 25 years' experience at NPR, who was suspended without pay after he wrote an essay for The Free Press last year exposing the "lack of viewpoint diversity" inside the broadcaster.

PBS isn't as egregiously slanted as NPR, but that's not saying much.

"Public broadcasting" is simply a misnomer: these corporations are "public-private partnerships," which means in practice they take public money to promote private beliefs that align with one party's left wing.

Big Bird's popular enough to thrive without subsidies.

NPR and PBS have become megaphones for messages like Maher's, and it's high time taxpayers stopped being forced to pay for them.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Previously:
• 04/15/25: Is UnitedHealthcare CEO's murderer the Left's Donald Trump?
• 04/01/25: Lawfare Isn't Beaten -- In France or America
• 03/25/25: Will Trump Turn Nationalism Against America?
• 03/18/25: The Dems' Civil War
• 03/11/25: Can Donald Trump Win a Trade War?
• 03/04/25: Europe's Decline Was a Choice
• 02/25/25: How Trump Makes Europe Stronger
• 02/20/25: Tax-payers funding a sham of democracy
• 02/11/25: What Kind of a Populist Is Elon Musk?
• 02/03/25: Can Trump Win Trade Wars Before They Start?
• 01/21/25: Trump Inaugurates a New Era
• 01/14/25: Dems Aren't Democracy's Party
• 01/07/25: Donald Trump's Worldwide Election
• 12/31/24: Harmless self-deception?
• 12/17/24: Communism thriving, including HERE
• 12/10/24: Birthright Citizenship Is a Breach in the Border
• 12/03/24: Identity Politics, Not Biden, Cost Dems the Election
• 11/19/24: Why Dems Are Losing Tomorrow's Elections Today
• 11/12/24: Dems Are at a Dead End, Unless They Learn From Trump
• 10/29/24: Harris Targets Married Women
• 10/22/24: Vibes Turn Bad for Kamala Harris
• 10/15/24: Why Veterans Are Voting for Trump
• 10/08/24: How Donald Trump Can Win the Popular Vote
• 10/01/24: Iran Targets America's Elections -- and Trump
• 09/24/24: Trump's Would-Be Assassin's Explanation
• 09/17/24: When Character Assassination Becomes the Real Thing
• 09/10/24: Kamala Harris Runs Like a Republican -- and Misleads
• 09/04/24: Where Trump Is Moderate -- While Kam Is Maximalist
• 08/27/24: Donald Trump Is Reagan's Heir
• 08/20/24: Will Voters Settle for Joe Biden's Wing(wo)man?
• 08/13/24: Trump Has to Run Like It's 2016 Again
• 08/07/24: Is Trump Running Against Harris -- or Donald Trump?
• 07/30/24: Kamala Harris' 'Mean Girls' Election
• 07/23/24: Kamala Harris Is the Opponent Donald Trump Wants
• 07/16/24: Ready for Biden's Counterattack?
• 07/09/24: Biden Faces Richard Nixon's Choice
• 07/02/24: Should Biden Drop Out -- or Resign?
• 06/18/24: Separate Sexual Identity and State
• 06/18/24: Nigel Farage Makes the Trump Moment Permanent
• 06/04/24: State that's long eluded GOP turns toward Trump
• 05/21/24: Trump's Sun Belt Hopes and Rust Belt Needs
• 05/14/24: What Trump Sees in Doug Burgum
• 05/07/24: The Vietnam Era Never Ended for Biden's Party
• 05/06/24: Nationalists of the World, Unite?
• 04/25/24: Foreign Policy Splits
• 04/16/24: How pro-lifers stand to lose everything gained in overturning Roe
• 04/02/24: PBS Misremembers William F. Buckley Jr.
• 04/02/24: Who Wants to Be House Speaker?
• 03/26/24: Trump Hunts for a VP Close to Home
• 03/19/24: Princess Kate and Democracy's Discontents
• 03/12/24: Can Biden Buy the Voters?
• 03/05/24: Veepstakes Give Trump an Edge
• 02/20/24: Do Americans Trust Either Party?
• 02/13/24: Vladimir Putin -- A Passive Aggressor
• 01/23/24: Will 'Lawfare' Take Trump Off the Ballot?
• 01/16/24: Will Africa Save America?
• 01/09/24:'The Sopranos' at 25: A new world tragedy
• 01/02/24: Trump, Biden and a Fight for the Heart
• 12/12/23: What Happened to Ron DeSantis?
• 12/12/23: Biden Looks Doomed -- But Is He?
• 12/05/23: A Test for Trump and His Rivals
• 11/21/23: When Inequality Is Fatal for Men
• 11/14/23: Nevermind, The Battle's Over
• 11/07/23: War in the Dem Party -- and at the Opera
• 10/24/23: Israel's Lesson for 2024: A Lib Crackup
• 10/17/23: Libs' Dilemma: Immigration or Israel?
• 10/10/23: Why Bidenflation Defines Bidenomics
• 10/03/23: Will Gavin Newsom Copy Trump?
• 09/26/23: Biden's a Loser -- but Dems Can't Ditch Him
• 09/19/23: Do Sex Scandals Matter?
• 09/12/23: Cornel West Spells Doom for Biden
• 09/05/23: What Trump Does for Democracy
• 08/2/23: Ramaswamy: A Trump Versus Trump?
• 08/22/23: Take 'Rich Men North of Richmond' Seriously
• 08/16/23: How America Kills Its Own
• 08/08/23: The Biden Pardon That Can Spare America
• 08/01/23: Harding, a consevative for the ages
• 07/25/23: Demography Destiny, for Us and China
• 07/18/23: The Frontrunner Who Looks Like a Loser Is Biden
• 07/11/23: Britain's Bad Example for American Conservatives
• 07/05/23: Could We Still Win a Revolutionary War?
• 06/27/23: Civilizations Clash -- in Ukraine and at Home
• 06/20/23: China Comes for the Caribbean
• 06/13/23: Fertility, Family and Bio-Socialism
• 06/06/23: From American Dream to Orwell's Nightmare
• 05/23/23: Ukraine war is an existential struggle --- for the West
• 05/23/23: Learn the Right Midterm Lessons -- or Lose in 2024
• 05/16/23: Feinstein Today Is Biden Tomorrow
• 05/09/23: Trump, DeSantis and Political Courtship
• 05/02/23: RFK Jr.'s Threat to Biden
• 04/25/23: Biden's Lost Generation
• 04/25/23: Who's In Charge of Clarence Thomas?
• 04/11/23: Beyond AI, Our Cyborg Future
• 04/04/23: 2024: 3 Leaders, 1 Way to Win
• 03/28/23: Climate Science Makes a Bad Religion
• 03/21/23: All the Conspiracy That's Fit to Print