PBS doesn’t allow a debate about funding for PBS on the airwaves of PBS. Instead, you only get the pro-PBS side. On Tuesday’s News Hour, co-host Amna Nawaz tossed softballs at PBS CEO Paula Kerger about how wonderful they are and how defunding them is an existential threat for some PBS stations. Their overwhelming bias was not challenged. 

What is your sense of the effort to rescind those funds? Is it a done deal at this point?…

I know you’re meeting with lawmakers, speaking to them to make the case. What is the argument you’re laying out to them and what are you hearing in response?…

We should note there’s been Republicans who have long sought to cut funding for public media. So is there something different about this effort this time around?

On the last question there, Kerger claimed PBS has always had “bipartisan support,” and “for many of our stations…this would be an existential crisis,” something that couldn’t be fixed if Democrats restored the funding when they regained power.

 

This is the closest Nawaz came to liberal bias, but she pitched it as conservatives don’t like certain issues — and NOT how those issues are tremendously tilted:

There’s also a couple of arguments we have heard from the administration as they look to cut those funds. They argue that, by covering issues like race in America and gender issues, that public media is broadly engaging in what they call cultural indoctrination.

They also cite, among other things, the former NPR editor Uri Berliner’s accusations that he said his network pushed progressive viewpoints. That was at NPR, which is not PBS, to be clear. But do you worry about that? And what’s your response to that accusation?

Like a politician, Kerger claimed “I think we work very hard, and I’m proud of this broadcast of its focus on bringing the most important stories forward.” And then she said news was just 10 percent of what PBS does — the objectionable 10 percent! — and pivoted as usual to kiddie shows like Sesame Street and the defunct Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, that PBS is somehow crucial to pre-kindergarten education: “We’re parents’ first partners. We’re deeply involved in providing content for classrooms.”

Nawaz finished with a polling question, that a Pew poll found 43 percent favor continued funding, 24 percent favor defunding, and 33 percent are unsure. “So that means about 57 percent of Americans are either not sure or don’t want to see federal funds continue for public media. What does that say to you?”

Kerger referred to internal PBS polling, claiming bizarrely that 65 percent of Trump voters love PBS. Wouldn’t it be something to see those polling questions, and who they sampled? 

Days after its sister newscast NBC Nightly News bemoaned tariffs hitting Chinese slave labor-linked shopping apps Temu and Shein, NBC’s Today sent Beijing-based correspondent Janis Mackey Frayer to gallivant around Vietnam for the communist regime’s propaganda parade marking the 50th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, a shameful scar on the country that’d be repeated in 2021 with Afghanistan.

The networks have done this in the past, but there was no mention of the millions dead at the hands communist dictator Ho Chi Minh — either in camps, executions, or while at sea trying to flee — after the U.S. evacuated remaining forces and personnel when the North Vietnamese army crashed through the gates of the South Vietnamese presidential palace on April 30, 1975.

 

 

Instead, it was mostly hunky dory. Co-host Craig Melvin had the first of two teases: “Coming up on a very busy Wednesday morning, we’re going to look back on the fall of Saigon and the end of the Vietnam War some 50 years later. A live report from Ho Chi Minh City just ahead.”

Co-host Savannah Guthrie had the other, saying in-between a soundbite from a 1975 news report: “Plus, 50 years later, we look back at the fall of Saigon…The historic milestone marking the end of the Vietnam War, and we are there live.”

Later, Melvin tossed to Frayer like this was something to celebrate: “Meanwhile this morning, Vietnam is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the end of the war and they’re celebrating with a military parade and a focus on a peaceful future. The fall of Saigon marked the end of a Vietnam that was divided between the Communist north and U.S.-allied south.”

Frayer kept the triumphant mood going:

It was here on April 30, 1975 that North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops rolled into this city as the last Americans were being air-lifted out and the Vietnam war came to an end. 50 years after the fall of Saigon, a victory parade where spectators waited overnight to witness history. Every year, Liberation Day — as it’s called here — is marked with celebration and this is their biggest yet to commemorate not only the communists’ victory in Vietnam, but America’s defeat. The events included helicopters and jets over the palace where, 50 years ago, a tank smashing the gate ended the war that killed millions of Vietnamese and 50,000 U.S. troops. For the U.S., the fighting came down to a last desperate airlift from the U.S. Embassy here.

She then met with a South Vietnamese Army veteran who doubled as a U.S. interpreter, saying he “wasn’t able to escape” after the war and “now blind.” No word on why he’s blind or what his life was like in the 50 years since!

The only thing we did learn? That he requested Frayer and the NBC crew bring him a can of Coca-Cola because he had not had one in 40 years.

Once she admitted the country is “still changing” since “most of the country’s population born after the fighting stopped,” Frayer saved the only negative comments for….the United States of America:

FRAYER: After serving here in the 1970s, reconciliation lured U.S. veteran Matthew Keenan to come back. He volunteers at a center for victims of Agent Orange, a chemical sprayed by U.S. forces here that he believes caused his own cancer.

MATTHEW KEENAN: They cannot explain why they have a problem they can’t explain about toxic chemicals. I can, and I do that for them.

Only towards the end did Frayer arrive at a more apt view: “While old wounds still linger, today Vietnam and Americans here are no longer enemies. The war pushing further into history.”

Back live, she gushed that “[t]here were several U.S. veterans who were are the parade today, as well as journalists who covered the war back in the day and there were U.S. diplomats spotted on this stage” despite the Trump administration’s ask they not go.

Whether it was the AP falsely claiming Ho Chi Minh was inspired by Thomas Jefferson in leading Vietnam (with an iron fist), taxpayer-funded NPR touting a Time magazine war correspondent being a communist spy, the broadcast networks fawning over Barack Obama’s 2016 visit, or the endless lionizing of the era’s (liberal) legacy journalists (like here and here), the liberal media will always have a soft spot for the war that tore America apart.

To see the relevant NBC transcript from April 30, click here.

On Tuesday afternoon, CNN climate correspondent Bill Weir declared that the Donald Trump administration is in an “all-out assault on science,” and compared global warming to a burning theater that the administration is forcing people to stay inside. His assessment came during a segment about the administration firing researchers who were working on a regular report on the climate. 

At the top of the 3:00 p.m. hour of CNN News Central, co-host Boris Sanchez teased: “And also, scientists agree that climate change is a threat, but the government under President Trump may soon know far less about it. This is after the White House dismisses all the researchers working on a key new report.”

About 3:33 p.m., Sanchez returned to the story and informed viewers of the firing of scientists in charge of putting together the National Climate Assessment report, which is due every five years. Weir noted that a law was passed in 2000 requiring that the report be done, and then recalled:

In 2018, it was a really blunt assessment and with a prediction that 10 percent of the global economy could disappear by the end of the century as a result of an overheating Earth — too much fossil fuel pollution. The Trump administration then buried it. They released it on Black Friday — the shopping day after Thanksgiving.

After noting that there was a report released in 2023, he added:

…this next one, which is supposed to come out in 2028, was just killed in the cradle. Like, they’re working on it right now, and it is a law that they have to deliver something. So the fear is that they’re just going to deliver pseudoscience and ideology — the kind of stuff we’re seeing in all these environmental and climate-related press releases — executive orders coming out of the White House right now. But this is yet another blow, Boris, in the first 100 days of just an all-out assault on science across every agency. Anything with a hint of climate change attached to it or even ground-level pollution

Which side of this debate — which the Left refuses to acknowledge as a debate — has been delivering “pseudoscience and ideology”? Way back in 1992, CNN ran a scare special called The People Bomb saying the world was overpopulated, and they wouldn’t allow any air time to scientists who disagreed with their doom-saying (and anti-humanitarian) viewpoint.

As he concluded his analysis, Weir took a hyperbolic shot at the Trump administration:

So, right now, everybody is hurting on the front of this story, and it remains to be seen what becomes of this assessment, the people working on it. If they can do one, do they release it to the public? Who knows? But, once again, really hiding the science, telling people essentially to stay seated in a burning theater and removing the exit signs as well.

Wrapping up, Sanchez echoed him: “Staying seated in a burning theater — what a way to put it. Bill Weir, thanks so much for the reporting. Appreciate it.”

Transcript follows:

CNN News Central

April 29, 2024

3:00 p.m. Eastern

BORIS SANCHEZ:  And also, scientists agree that climate change is a threat, but the government under President Trump may soon know far less about it. This is after the White House dismisses all the researchers working on a key new report.

(…)

3:33 p.m.

SANCHEZ: President Trump marked the end of his 100 days — his first 100 days of his second term by firing hundreds of people in charge of a critical report on how climate change is affecting the country. CNN obtained an email sent last night confirming the dismissal of scientists and authors tasked with putting together the National Climate Assessment. Scientists say the report is a valuable resource for officials dealing with extreme weather events at the regional, state and local levels. Let’s get more from CNN chief climate correspondent Bill Weir. So, Bill, what is the goal here by eliminating these scientists?

BILL WEIR, CNN CHIEF CLIMATE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bill, it’s to eliminate the science that is the underpinning of many lawsuits — that could be a main sort of motive. We saw that in the Project 2025 sort of layout there. But, just to set some perspective here, in 2000, Congress passed a law that, every few years, the best Earth scientists in the country — about 400 of them — would put together a comprehensive assessment that would inform local governments, states, even private industries, about what’s happening when the — to the country — water supplies, energy supplies, to farms and fisheries — every aspects of the economy, and let them know, just no holds barred, so we could better prepare.

In 2018, it was a really blunt assessment and with a prediction that 10 percent of the global economy could disappear by the end of the century as a result of an overheating Earth — too much fossil fuel pollution. The Trump administration then buried it. They released it on Black Friday — the shopping day after Thanksgiving. I still remember this — I was in Paradise, California, covering that epic wildfire there, and nobody really paid attention. In 2023, under Biden, a new one came out, but this next one, which is supposed to come out in 2028, was just killed in the cradle.

Like, they’re working on it right now, and it is a law that they have to deliver something. So the fear is that they’re just going to deliver pseudoscience and ideology — the kind of stuff we’re seeing in all these environmental and climate-related press releases — executive orders coming out of the White House right now. But this is yet another blow, Boris, in the first 100 days of just an all-out assault on science across every agency. Anything with a hint of climate change attached to it or even ground-level pollution — PFAs, plastics, these sorts of things.

Lee Zeldin just announced they’re going to tackle microplastics, these sorts — but with no real policy plan in place. Meanwhile, laying off the best and brightest scientists really in the world at a time is creating, as you can imagine, incredible angst in this space right now. But, at the same time,  the price of oil is about 50 bucks a barrel, which is a huge money loser for all the oil executives that Donald Trump promised to help with deregulation. So, right now, everybody is hurting on the front of this story, and it remains to be seen what becomes of this assessment, the people working on it. If they can do one, do they release it to the public? Who knows? But, once again, really hiding the science, telling people essentially to stay seated in a burning theater and removing the exit signs as well.

SANCHEZ: Staying seated in a burning theater — what a way to put it. Bill Weir, thanks so much for the reporting. Appreciate it.

President Donald Trump’s approval declined after he announced broad tariffs not just on China but on trading partners who, in his opinion, take advantage of America with their tariffs on American goods. But how quickly those rooting for Trump’s failure forget the mood of the country during the Biden administration.

In September 2024, NBC News wrote: “Two in 3 voters say the country is on the ‘wrong track’ as voters weigh whether Vice President Kamala Harris or former President Donald Trump would be better able to change that less than two months from Election Day.” Not exactly a tough act to follow.

Critics call Trump 2.0 an “imperial” presidency careening toward a “constitutional crisis,” meaning Trump intends to ignore lower court rulings that thwart his agenda. Yet most sat silently when one of the Democrat stars, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-N.Y.,) demanded that President Joe Biden ignore a 2023 lower court ruling to ban the so-called abortion pill. AOC called the ruling a “mockery of our democracy and a mockery of our law.”

When the Supreme Court ruled the Biden student debt forgiveness program unconstitutional, Biden insisted the ruling left him undeterred. He said, “The Supreme Court tried to block me from relieving student debt. But they didn’t stop me.”

Trump has secured the southern border and is fulfilling his promise to deport the estimated 15 million illegal aliens — prioritizing violent criminals — intentionally admitted into the country by Biden. Former First Lady Michelle Obama recently fretted: “I worry for people of color all over this country. … And that makes me — that frightens me. It keeps me up at night.”

Michelle Obama must not have gotten much sleep during her husband’s administration, when even Democrats derisively referred to President Barack Obama as “deporter-in-chief.” In January 2024, PolitiFact wrote: “Under Trump, from fiscal year 2017 to fiscal year 2020, the Department of Homeland Security recorded 2 million deportations … During Obama’s first term, fiscal year 2009 to fiscal year 2012, there were 3.2 million deportations (removals and returns).”

Suddenly, Democrats are pro-“insurrection.” Democrat Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker recently called for “mass protests” against Trump: “It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once. Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now.”

“Fight everywhere and all at once”? The governor will no doubt claim he means “fight” peacefully. But when Trump, on Jan. 6, 2021, urged his supporters to “fight like hell,” his critics described this as the equivalent of ordering his supporters to set the country on fire. Never mind Trump also said, “I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.”

Suddenly, “mocking” one’s disability isn’t such a bad thing after all. An August 2016 Bloomberg poll of likely voters found what most bothered them about then-candidate Trump was that he supposedly “mocked” a disabled reporter, something Trump has denied doing. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Trump supporter, has since 1984 been paralyzed from the waist down. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) in March, at a California Human Rights campaign event, elicited laughter when she said: “Y’all know we got Governor Hot Wheels down there. Come on now. And the only thing hot about him is that he is a hot a– mess.” Crickets from most Democrats.

Polls show a majority of Americans support Trump’s border wall and a plurality support his goal of mass deportation. Democrats therefore find themselves thrashing about to decide on an effective anti-Trump attack strategy. What’s their message? Waste, fraud and abuse are to be protected? Illegal alien MS-13 gang member Kilmar Abrego Garcia is the equivalent of a political prisoner? Teslas are bad — so much for climate change?

Democrats continue to claim that only the very rich stand to benefit from extending the Trump tax cuts. Biden in his first major speech since leaving office repeated the nonsense that Trump wants to “cut and gut” social security. So, there’s that.

If Trump is proven right on his tariff strategy and our trading partners cut deals that eventually turbocharge the economy, what’s left for the Democrats? Apart from mass suicide, there’s always the Trump’s a “racist/fascist/Nazi” card. It’s better than nothing.

Pro-lifers have been warning the public that the abortion pill hurts women for years. Here’s why Big Tech and its fact-checkers have much to answer for. 

A massive study published on Monday found that around 11.2% of 154,554 women underwent a “serious adverse event” after taking the abortion pill. This percentage is 22 times higher than the less than 0.5% statistic pushed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) that loosened restrictions on the abortion pill during the Biden administration. The Foundation for the Restoration of America commissioned the study. And while this study is not the first to show that over one in ten women who take the pill are seriously harmed, social media platforms and fact-checkers have censored criticism of the abortion pill for years. 

[Story Continues on MRC Free Speech America] 

After having taped on Monday and a small excerpt shown Tuesday about two illegal immigrants being the alleged suspects in her purse having been stolen, Wednesday’s CBS Mornings finally unspooled co-host Tony Dokoupil’s interview with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and, while the interview itself wasn’t as hostile as, say, ABC’s Terry Moran with President Trump, it had plenty of bias with analysis afterward.

Most notably, there was this from co-host Gayle King:

To make sure things ended on a positive note, Dokoupil quickly interjected that he wanted to “thank the Secretary for bringing us down there” for “an interesting conversation.” King dropped her pathetic high horse bit and admitted Noem “was very candid with you” and “answered everything you asked her.”

Going back to the beginning, Dokoupil started with a largely positive picture for Trump, a rare move in the liberal media:

President Trump won back the White House promising tighter border security and a crackdown on illegal immigration, and those things have happened. Border Patrol apprehended nearly 138,000 people at the southern border illegally in March of last year, and that number fell to 7,000 just a year later, it’s a decrease of about 95 percent in 12 months. Deportation numbers, though, have been slower to change.

The voice-overs started off positive as well with the ATV vehicles convoy to the border that, along with being “shadowed by Mexican forces across the Rio Grande,” they saw “little more than sunshine and dust in a region where federal data shows more than 55,000 people cross the border illegally in just one month under the Biden administration.”

He first asked her about her forward-facing strategy of going on ride-alongs with immigration officials and going down to the El Salvadoran prison CECOT and if those are all meant to convey a message of “self-deport now or this could be you.”

 

 

Next, he posed to her the case of the Honduran illegal immigrant who chose to take her American child with her.

Noem said she rejects the notion the administration deported an American citizen. In a follow-up Dokoupil wondered if this is “hardness” of America on display (click “expand”):

NOEM: I fundamentally disagree with that. I’m sure that these judges will continue to challenge every single thing that this administration does. We have several activist judges across the country that have made claims such as this, but that mother made a choice for her child and wanted to keep her child with her, so —

DOKOUPIL: So, if a relative here in the U.S. wants that child back, and the mother agrees, the child will come back.

NOEM: — yes, absolutely, and that’s the process. You know, this mother gave us documentation and fully said she wanted her child with her, and we honored that.

DOKOUPIL: Is harshness part of the message when it comes to the removal of mothers who have American children?

NOEM: No, I think that with that, with families, we recognize that families can stay together, and so these mothers get the option to take their children with them, which I think is absolutely where President Trump’s heart is.

DOKOUPIL: Should those non-American mothers have that option, or should the American children have a right to stay here?

NOEM: I think the mothers should have the option to have their children with them, and then if those mothers do leave and choose to register and self-deport, them and their children can come back, or if they want to have their child cared for by somebody else in the United States, that’s an option that they can pursue, too.

Following some training footage of Border Patrol special operations forces, Dokoupil insisted to Noem no one is opposed to deporting bad hombres:

Nobody wants would-be terrorists or gang members in the country or violent criminals of any kind. Nobody — nobody forgets or discounts the pain of families who have lost loved ones to those people. How do they know that those people on the flights in the chains are actually terrorists and gang members?

Noem calmly hit back that “[w]e have spent hours and hours building cases against them” with “the victims that speak up that they have perpetuated crimes against.”

Dokoupil continued to belabor the point with the liberal media’s beloved buzzword of “due process.”

The rest the show aired consisted of — wait for it — Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Dokoupil wondered “what have you done…to help facilitate his return to the U.S.” and, if not, why not.

 

 

Back live, Dokoupil claimed unaired portions made him “wonder, actually, about whether there was any softer side to the Secretary and the administration” (click “expand”):

DOKOUPIL: So you can hear what’s tough to discern, because on the one hand, she says it’s President Trump’s decision what to do with Garcia, but on the other hand, she’s saying that they’re listening to the courts, but those statements can’t both be true —

NATE BURLESON: Because there’s some confliction there.

DOKOUPIL: They’re in conflict. Yes, the courts are asking the Trump administration to do some things that they’ve yet to do or yet to talk about doing. So, you know, all of this tough talk made me wonder, actually, about whether there was any softer side to the Secretary and to the administration. I did ask about the role of heart in all of this, and it was interesting what she said.

KING: And she said what?

DOKOUPIL: She said, “There’s heart in all of our immigration conversation. It’s about families and it’s about people,” I followed up by wondering, are we still a welcoming country for legal immigration? And her message was yes, absolutely. The idea that the administration has is they have to get through this tough period now, clean up what they see as a big mess from years gone by, and then the door will open again.

CBS Mornings Plus featured more of the interview. After Dokoupil made sure to reiterate the administration’s 95 percent drop in crossings from the same time last year under Joe Biden, he asked her about comments from the acting director of ICE that he said showed the comparison being made between deportations and delivering Amazon packages. 

Noem disputed this, saying she “wouldn’t do that,” but DHS and its agencies are nonetheless “a professional organization that upholds the law and law enforcement officers and — but we do need to make sure that we don’t want people to be here and be in detention centers for long periods of time.”

Back live, Dokoupil told co-host Adriana Diaz that what the administration wants is “make things feel uncomfortable, unwelcome, and insecure for people here illegally or who crossed illegally and here without documentation, because their hope is that they will self-deport rather than wait to get rounded up in some sort of raid.”

Asked what else surprised him among topics that didn’t make the air, Dokoupil opined he was “surpris[ed]” by “the degree to which they realize they don’t have the resources for deportations to find, detain, and then go through the process of pushing people out.”

To see the relevant CBS transcript from April 30, click here (for CBS Mornings) and here (for CBS Mornings Plus).

Just over a year ago, in April 2024, ABC News’s The View announced that they had “stopped asking” President Trump to be on the show and said they had banned election deniers. But what if the moderator of the show was an election denier? During Thursday’s opening segment, Whoopi Goldberg suggested that Trump had rigged the 2024 presidential election.

Bitter about Trump posting on social media bragging about investors predicting he would win the election, and trying to gaslight about the Biden economy, Goldberg scolded Trump and warned him to stop lest someone poke around and discover insider knowledge of his impending victory:

I want to remind people that he took credit for Biden’s economy – BOOMING economy, claiming investors knew he was going to win. I think he should stop saying that because you’re going to make somebody investigate how investigators would know you were going to win. I’m just putting that out there. You know.

What triggered Goldberg’s election denialism was a January 29, 2024 Truth Social from Trump where he bombastically declared in all caps: “THIS IS THE TRUMP STOCK MARKET BECAUSE MY POLL AGAINST BIDEN ARE SO GOOD THAT INVESTORS ARE PROJECTING THAT I WILL WIN…”

Goldberg asked the rest of the cast how long the American people were going to put up with Trump as president since “the economy was great when he came in.” Joy Behar agreed by writing off average Americans upset at inflation by arguing that all the “every important person in the economy said” Bidenomics were great.

 

 

Further in the segment, Goldberg suggested that Trump “came in with a good [economy]” from Obama during his first term; sentiment shared by an irritated Sunny Hostin, who asserted that Trump had twice “inherited” good economies and tried to falsely give credit to Biden for the post-COVID bounce back:

HOSTIN: I think that Whoopi’s point is very important. Trump inherited Obama’s economy. So, let’s never forget that! And then, he then inherited Biden’s economy. And I know we’re going to have the former president come and talk about his legacy, but I want to mention that his economic legacy historic wage gains, investment in job growth, marred by inflation, of course, but numbers don’t lie. His economy was strong, Trump’s tariffs killed it. The nation’s GDP growth under Biden was impressive; rose at a solid 3.1 percent rate at the end of his term.

BEHAR: Unemployment very low.

HOSTIN: I was going to say, he was the president to oversee monthly job gains for the entirety of his presidency.

“What good has [Trump] done to the economy?! What kind of businessman is that?! A bad one!” Hostin shouted.

Seemingly denying the fact that Trump won the popular vote in 2024, Goldberg suggested that Trump’s economic policies were revenge on the American people. “I think he’s angry at the country because I think he feels that Americans didn’t support him, he feels our allies didn’t support him, and now he’s getting even,” she  

“[T]here’s no other reason to do what he’s doing. It doesn’t make sense to me,” Goldberg proclaimed.

The transcript is below. Click “expand” to read:

ABC’s The View
May 1, 2025
11:03:36 a.m. Eastern

(…)

WHOOPI GOLDBERG: I want to remind people that he took credit for Biden’s economy – BOOMING economy, claiming investors knew he was going to win. I think he should stop saying that because you’re going to make somebody investigate how investigators would know you were going to win. I’m just putting that out there. You know.

Now, how long are people going to put up with this because, you know, the economy was great when he came in?

SUNNY HOSTIN: Yeah.

SARA HAINES: Yeah.

JOY BEHAR: That’s what every important person in the economy said, yeah.

GOLDBERG: Everybody was saying, yes. So, I’m not sure. And I don’t know why suddenly now he said we’re going to have billions and billions and billions. You’re going to get billions and now he’s talking about no dolls on the shelf. I don’t know what to do.

(…)

11:06:13 a.m. Eastern

BEHAR: Alyssa, wasn’t that because he had people around who controlled him?

GOLDBERG: And he came in with a good – He came in from Obama’s economy.

[Crosstalk]

ALYSSA FARAH GRIFFIN: He had sound economic policy and he had advisers who talked to him about the consequences about across-the-board tariffs. If you want to target some things in China, fine, but work with our European allies, work with our pacific allies. That’s actually how you out China and strengthen America.

BEHAR: Why doesn’t he do that?

[Applause]

HOSTIN: I think that Whoopi’s point is very important. Trump inherited Obama’s economy. So, let’s never forget that! And then, he then inherited Biden’s economy. And I know we’re going to have the former president come and talk about his legacy, but I want to mention that his economic legacy historic wage gains, investment in job growth, marred by inflation, of course, but numbers don’t lie. His economy was strong, Trump’s tariffs killed it. The nation’s GDP growth under Biden was impressive; rose at a solid 3.1 percent rate at the end of his term.

BEHAR: Unemployment very low.

HOSTIN: I was going to say, he was the president to oversee monthly job gains for the entirety of his presidency. And the U.S. – And get this, Donald Trump is supposed to be a builder, right? He’s the best builder ever. Well, the U.S. added 16.6 million jobs during Biden’s presidency, more than any during any four-year term of any previous president. That is what Donald Trump got.

What we got now, especially in his second quarter, stock market demolished, 401(K)s demolished, Department of Education demolished, DOGE demolishing things, federal government jobs gone. What good has he done to the economy?! What kind of businessman is that?! A bad one!

[Applause]

BEHAR: The way you describe it. Sounds like he wants — he’s like a nihilist, some body who wants to destroy everything.  

GOLDBERG: I think he’s angry at the country because I think he feels that Americans didn’t support him, he feels our allies didn’t support him and now he’s getting even. That’s how — because there’s no other reason to do what he’s doing. It doesn’t make sense to me.

(…)

CNN’s host of The Lead, Jake Tapper, tried to shame GOP Rep. Brandon Gill on Wednesday for trying to defund PBS and NPR by claiming, “PBS really helps little kids,” citing himself learning how to read by watching Sesame Street as an example. However, Tapper’s days in school were not complete as Gill informed him that the real issue is PBS’s “left-wing propaganda,” whether that be in its newsrooms or on Tapper’s beloved children’s programming.

Towards the end of their interview, Tapper wondered why Gill thinks PBS is such a big deal, “Speaker Johnson has said he would additionally like to cut funding for public broadcasting, PBS, which does receive some support from the federal government. I just — it’s interesting. I just have to say, on a personal level, I learned to read by watching Sesame Street and Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and The Electric Company. That’s literally how I learned to read as a kid. Why do you not think PBS is important?”

 

 

Gill answered the question in two ways. First, he stood up for the basic principle that the government should not be funding media outlets, “One of those that we found, which Republicans and conservatives have talked about for decades, is state-sponsored media in the United States. China and North Korea have state-sponsored media. The United States does not need state-sponsored media. Listen, if Fox News or any other conservative news organization came to me and asked for taxpayer money, I would tell them no.”

Second, Gill brought the attention back to the actual news organization, “I certainly don’t think we should be funding left-wing propaganda outlets, like NPR or PBS. I had a hearing just a couple weeks ago where I got to question the head of NPR and asked her about some of the wild, outrageous things that she had been posting on the internet for the whole world to see, and she had no answer for that. The American people are sick of funding institutions who promote values that they find repugnant, and that’s what we’re doing with NPR and PBS.”

Tapper wasn’t convinced, “Okay. But Sesame Street, I mean, Daniel the Tiger, Wild Kratts, I mean, you have little kids, I know, and I’m sure you, you and your wife can bring them great educational programming. But a lot of kids might not have access to cable, and I didn’t when I was little because cable didn’t exist. But I mean, PBS really helps little kids. I mean, I’m talking specifically about kids learning how to read through Sesame Street in similar programming.”

Of course, Tapper undermined his own argument by illustrating how the media has changed since he was a child, but Gill also informed him Sesame Street isn’t purely a PBS property anymore, “Well, they’ve already spun off Sesame Street to HBO [Max], so that’s not with PBS anymore.”

It should be said that in December, Max announced it would no longer be producing new episodes of the series following the conclusion of its current season, but the point is that Sesame Street could still get picked up by another private entity such as Apple TV+, Amazon, or Netflix. Currently, one can watch Sesame Street on Max for $10 per month nine months before it airs on PBS.

Gill continued, “But what I don’t think the government should be doing is funding these institutions that are radically left-wing and are oftentimes even in their cartoon shows, geared towards young children, promoting far-left ideologies that are not teaching children how to read but are teaching them the trans agenda and other things that large portions of our country do not agree with. Our tax dollars should not be funding institutions and ideologies that are promoting values that many people, including the people of Texas 26, that I represent, find repulsive.”

Between the amount of money it makes from potential streaming partners, its presence at theme parks, and merchandise, Sesame Street will survive. The question for Tapper is why should half of America be forced to subsidize a media organization that acts like it is part of the opposition?

Sign the petition to help us defund another CNN in PBS and NPR at defundpbsnpr.org.

Here is a transcript for the April 30 show:

CNN The Lead with Jake Tapper

4/30/2025

6:10 PM ET

JAKE TAPPER: Speaker Johnson has said he would additionally like to cut funding for public broadcasting, PBS, which does receive some support from the federal government. I just — it’s interesting. I just have to say, on a personal level, I learned to read by watching Sesame Street and Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood and The Electric Company. That’s literally how I learned to read as a kid. Why do you not think PBS is important?

BRANDON GILL: Well, listen, we were — I’m a member of the DOGE Subcommittee of Oversight. We were tasked with finding waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal government and highlighting it. And one of those that we found, which Republicans and conservatives have talked about for decades, is state-sponsored media in the United States. China and North Korea have state-sponsored media. The United States does not need state-sponsored media.

Listen, if Fox News or any other conservative news organization came to me and asked for taxpayer money, I would tell them no. And I certainly don’t think we should be funding left-wing propaganda outlets, like NPR or PBS. I had a hearing just a couple weeks ago where I got to question the head of NPR and asked her about some of the wild, outrageous things that she had been posting on the internet for the whole world to see, and she had no answer for that.

The American people are sick of funding institutions who promote values that they find repugnant, and that’s what we’re doing with NPR and PBS. And that’s what we are hopefully soon, via a rescission bill, going to pull those funds back.

TAPPER: Okay. But Sesame Street, I mean, Daniel the Tiger, Wild Kratts, I mean, you have little kids, I know, and I’m sure you, you and your wife can bring them great educational programming. But a lot of kids might not have access to cable, and I didn’t when I was little because cable didn’t exist. But I mean, PBS really helps little kids. I mean, I’m talking specifically about kids learning how to read through Sesame Street in similar programming.

GILL: Well, they’ve already spun off Sesame Street to HBO, so that’s not with PBS anymore. But what I don’t think the government should be doing is funding these institutions that are radically left-wing and are oftentimes even in their cartoon shows, geared towards young children, promoting far-left ideologies that are not teaching children how to read but are teaching them the trans agenda and other things that large portions of our country do not agree with. Our tax dollars should not be funding institutions and ideologies that are promoting values that many people, including the people of Texas 26, that I represent, find repulsive.

TAPPER: All right. Congressman Brandon Gill, thanks so much. Good to see you, sir.

Government makes most things worse.

Lyndon Johnson launched a War on Poverty; Richard Nixon a War on Drugs.

Both had good intentions, but their “wars” do more harm than good.

I believed the War on Poverty would lift people out of poverty.

At the time I was a naive Princeton student who believed my professors when they said, “It’s wrong that in this rich country, people are poor, so government should fix that. Targeted programs will lift people out of poverty.”

Have they?

We’ve spent more than $30 trillion so far. Some people were helped.

When welfare began, the poverty rate dropped … dropped for seven years.

But then progress stopped. Since the 1970s, the number of Americans living in poverty rose and fell, but the initial success hasn’t repeated.

That’s because the handouts encourage people to become dependent. Welfare even discouraged marriage because a single parent gets a bigger check.

As a result, welfare created something never seen before in America: a permanent “underclass” — generations raised without fathers, generations who stay poor and passive.

It’s happened because people “are basically told, ‘you can’t take care of yourself’… It doesn’t encourage them to be ambitious,” says Yaron Brook, head of the Ayn Rand Institute, in my new video.

“Once you start paying people not to work … they don’t expect to take responsibility for their own lives.”

The War on Drugs also had unintended consequences.

“When you launch a war on drugs … you create huge profits for cartels because there’s so much at stake,” says Brook.

That led to more illegal drugs, and “massive corruption among police.”

I ask, just “let everybody take whatever poison they want?”

“Yes,” says Brook, echoing Ayn Rand, who said it is “the responsibility of the individual not to take the kind of things … which destroy his mind.”

Brook and I disagree about how to protect the environment. It’s one area where I think we do need government. Our air and water are cleaner now because the Environmental Protection Agency set some rules.

Brook says we could have accomplished that without the EPA, if individuals filed lawsuits.

“You pollute in some way that is clearly making me sick, we have legal redress to deal with that … But once you give it into the hands of bureaucrats … they want to regulate and control every activity that we’re engaged in.”

He cites California’s wildfires and water shortages as an example of “government gone wild.” (That’s also the title of my new book.)

Government has grown wildly. Even with DOGE cuts, it will still grow. It always does.

The EPA once imposed useful rules, but regulators always want more. Today, EPA should stand for Enough Protection Already!

“Northern California has plenty of water,” says Brook. “In the old days, they used to move massive amounts of water from the north to south. … These days, there’s still a lot of water available in the north that cannot be moved south because of some tiny little fish.”

That’s the delta smelt, protected by the Endangered Species Act.

“In the name of some little fish, they’re willing to shut down huge improvements to human life.”

If it’s not the smelt, it’s an endangered plant. Power companies wanted to install fire-resistant metal poles.

“They can’t widen fire lanes because there’s some plant that they had to uproot,”

“They were shut down by environmentalists because of this crazy plant … (also) they can’t widen fire lanes. The consequence, of course, is the burning down of thousands of homes. … When you place the value of a plant above the value of human life, that leads to destruction of human life.”

Brook’s point is not that people shouldn’t try to help the poor, the addicted, and the planet; it’s that individuals do it better than government ever will.

“All these government programs that regulate and control, they institutionalize mediocrity at best.”

On Thursday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt held yet another unusual morning press briefing, but this time, her guest was Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller to provide barn-burning remarks on what the administration called President Trump’s first 100 days of “Restoring Common Sense.”

Miller repeatedly took the liberal media — living in safe, wealthy confines — to task, particularly for choosing dangerous illegal immigrants over American citizens.

He hit his crescendo in torching the leftist press when CBS’s Weijia Jiang asked whether the U.S. was doing anything to help bring home (alleged MS-13 gang member) Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Miller first said diplomatic discussions are not for public consumption and then thanked El Salvador for its willingness to take dangerous illegal immigrants out the U.S. But from there, he turned up the heat with a case of bias by omission:

You may have seen recently an FBI assessment that was unclassified, that said that the Maduro regime is using and planning to use Tren de Aragua terrorists to carry out assassination plots on American soil. Now, very few in this room covered that. I’ll let you all ask yourselves why you didn’t cover it, and why your editors didn’t assign that story to you. That’s something I think you should think about on your own, but this is a Earth-shattering piece of news.

As for Abrego Garcia, he went through the facts about Abrego Garcia the liberal media have ignored because they’re too busy “obsessively try[ing] to shill for this MS-13 terrorist.”

Miller next struck at the heart of the liberal media’s obsession with “due process” for illegal immigrants by pointing out the victims of crimes by illegals weren’t granted any mercy. All the while, the liberal media coddle illegal immigrants from their luxurious and safe homes:

Miller led off the proceedings with a series of remarks about areas in which he said President Trump has restored common sense. After highlighting Trump stopping “the wave of racial discrimination, so-called diversity, equity, in exclusion policies,” and far-left academia, he arrived at the issue of transgenderism (and then immigration).

Watch Miller’s remarks below and you’ll see in the caption that this was greeted by the liberal press corps with crickets as nearly all the questions concerned tariffs:

Once he finished extolling the administration’s work on illegal immigration, Leavitt kicked off the Q&A with the “new media seat”:

Jiang’s first question concerned Amazon’s embarrassing faceplant when, prior to pushback from President Trump, considered putting a graphic on its Amazon Haul site to show added costs due to the new tariffs.

Miller blasted this failed proposal by noting they never did this with the burdensome regulations imposed by California (click “expand”):

JIANG: This administration has stressed the need for price transparency for things like health care bills and concert tickets. So why is it a political and hostile act for Amazon to display price transparency on consumer goods?

MILLER: Well, I think it’s the wrong way of looking at it, which is why would — first of all, that proposal is gone now. But why would Amazon, of all the different things that go into a theoretical price input — right — for example, does Amazon list the cost of California’s regulations on everything made in California? Anything you make in California, you have a massive price increase because of the health care regulations that are unworkable in that state, because of the labor regulations that are unworkable in that state, because of the subsidies that go to illegal aliens in that state, because of all the bureaucracy. So, anything being produced in California has a massive built in price hike. So, why wouldn’t Amazon have a list saying if you purchase it in California instead of in Alabama, this is the premium that you pay, that you pay? This is a clear attempt by whoever proposed it originally. I don’t know, because Amazon says they’re never going to do it to try to undermine our trade negotiations with China. I make another important point on this, which is that there have been many complaints about the fact that there are a lot of products that are sold on Amazon that are actually rip offs of American products that are then stolen by China, and that they take our IP and they put them into products to try to undersell our manufacturers, so to the extent that we are engaged in labeling issues on Amazon, I would say that would be the most significant one to fix is making sure we’re not undercutting American consumers.

It was left to Real America’s Voice’s Brian Glenn to not only close the briefing, but the only one to seek White House comment about former Vice President Kamala Harris’s speech from the night prior:

To see the relevant transcript from the May 1 briefing, click here.