Donald Trump has publicly called for the government to disassociate from NPR and PBS as he labeled the media outlets radical left “monster” who “so badly hurt our country!” But who are these so-called monsters?
The president took to X to decry both channels. This comes after a hearing last week which saw Republicans pushing for public broadcasting channels to be dismantled and have their funding cut as part of the government’s initiative to slash spending. According to ABC News, Trump said he would “love to” see federal funding taken away from the public broadcasting system, meanwhile, Marjorie Taylor Greene said “We believe that you all can hate us on your own dime.”
It seems the Trump administration has taken issue with the political leanings of channels like PBS and, in an effort to cut federal spending, is looking into cutting them off.
Who are the “radical left monsters” Trump spoke of?
On X people mocked Trump with one person posting a picture of popular characters from the much loved PBS children’s show, Sesame Street.
So the cast of Sesame Street are apparently “radical” leftists it would seem — I always knew there was a reason I liked those guys. Count von Count always struck me as more of a right-leaning capitalist, (maybe it was because of the castle and the monocle) but I guess not. Now this old tweet from Trump makes so much more sense!
Clearly Donald Trump has been trying to warn us all about these monsters for a long long time, we just didn’t realize.
Do PBS and NPR even need federal funding?
All jokes aside, Trump’s war against media outlets that criticize him is disturbing, but it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s the end of these channels. As the Anonymous group pointed out in response to the president’s unhinged X post, “NPR is 99% publicly funded and 1% funded by the government, PBS is funded by the public also but gets about 15% of it’s funding from the government.” PBS confirmed as such in a piece written back in February while NPR claimed the 1% claim is “an accurate but incomplete description.”
Either way, these outlets are popular with people across the U.S. According to a poll from pewresearch.org 43% of Americans think that NPR and PBS should continue to receive federal funding compared to 24% who thought it should be taken away, (33% were unsure).
This is just another example of Trump pushing another unpopular policy that will likely only further tank his approval ratings. Either way, public broadcasting is important in any democracy and so is Sesame Street.
Published: Apr 2, 2025 11:14 am