Four weeks into the second term of President Trump, it's painfully clear that the "Public Broadcasting Service" loathes Trump and his "government efficiency" czar, billionaire Elon Musk. They don't say the reason out loud, but Musk has made clear he thinks "public" broadcasting should be defunded. He's Public Broadcasting Enemy #1.
On Presidents' Day, their nine-minute lead story on the PBS News Hour carried an online headline designed to unsettle the public:
‘Chaos and confusion’ as Trump’s mass firings impact the basic functions of government
Reporter Laura Barron-Lopez promoted (unlabeled) leftist "protests across the country, pushing back against President Trump's first month in office and what organizers say are his antidemocratic and illegal actions." The prose can't contain the loathing:
BARRON-LOPEZ: As the White House battles in the courts, billionaire Elon Musk's government takeover grows. Musk's team, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, is seeking unlimited access to highly sensitive Internal Revenue Service systems that hold taxpayer data for millions of Americans.
The PBS anchors routinely described Musk in hostile terms.
On February 14, Amna Nawaz declared: "We also saw this week a remarkable scene, Jonathan, in Washington, D.C., in the Oval Office, in which a private citizen, an unelected billionaire in Elon Musk, essentially just held court in the Oval Office with a number of reporters while President Trump sat silently by. We're now seeing Mr. Musk and the DOGE teams kind of slashing and burning their way through the federal government work force."
No one elected PBS, so it's funny when they lament "unelected billionaires." The media are unelected influencers of our democracy, often employing anonymous unelected sources to spread a partisan Democrat narrative.
One repetitive theme is the word "guardrails" from the PBS panic squad.
-- February 12:
GEOFF BENNETT: Are there any guardrails, any constraints for Elon Musk, apart from President Trump potentially saying he`s had enough?
LAURA BARRON-LOPEZ: Well, there don't appear to be any guardrails, Geoff. And standing next to President Trump in the Oval Office yesterday, Elon Musk suggested that he and his team will figure out for themselves if there are potential conflicts of interest…. But one of the main guardrails was weakened. And that`s the firing of inspectors general across the board,
-- February 7:
GEOFF BENNETT: What about the question Democrats are raising, Jonathan? Where are the guardrails? Who's going to stop any of this? Democrats in Congress obviously don`t have any power. Republicans in Congress are moving in lockstep with this administration. The courts have stepped in where they deem appropriate, but obviously can`t keep up with the velocity of the Trump administration. Is there any guard against his instinct to wield, to really claim and wield expansive power?
-- February 6:
AMNA NAWAZ: Bart, if lawmakers, and specifically Republican lawmakers, aren't acting as the guardrails you expected to see, the courts themselves will take a while to play out here in terms of those cases. Are there other guardrails that you saw in your exercises or expected to see in real life that you haven't yet?
-- February 3:
BARRON-LOPEZ: There's a pattern here, Amna, that suggests that there`s little to no guardrails around Elon Musk and DOGE, and that`s what we`re hearing from a number of sources across the federal government.
Musk is just too radical for the News Hour crew. Amna Nawaz complained: “It's sort of more of a sledgehammer than a scalpel approach.” Earlier, Geoff Bennett said “this approach of using a hammer, instead of a scalpel.” But leftists like PBS don't even support spending cuts with a scalpel!
