Centrist taxpayer-funded outlet National Public Radio (NPR) has attacked US President Donald Trump for “defending” the shooter of three protesters in Kenosha. Trump supporters have renewed a longstanding call to defund it.
NPR tore into Trump after he “declined to condemn” the actions of the 17-year-old Illinois resident who shot three protesters – allegedly in self-defense – amid ongoing rioting in Kenosha. The news outlet jeered that Trump had claimed, “without evidence, that it appeared the gunman was acting in self-defense.”
While the president also acknowledged there was an ongoing investigation into the actions of Kyle Rittenhouse, who has been charged with six criminal counts including first-degree murder over his shooting three people during the riots in Kenosha, NPR focused on his refusal to pass judgement on the young gunman.
“He was trying to get away from them, I guess, it looks like,” Trump told reporters during a Monday press conference when asked about the shooting. “I guess he was in very big trouble. He probably would have been killed.”
NPR scornfully dismissed video from the riots that appeared to show Rittenhouse had fired on protesters who were pursuing him, claiming it “only tell[s] a partial story” and had “split onlookers on party lines.” The outlet also mischaracterized Rittenhouse’s defenders, arguing he’d been painted as a “tragic figure” due to “Democrat failures to quell violence on their streets” instead of referring to the self-defense explanation proffered by Trump and Rittenhouse’s lawyers.
The calls to #DefundNPR came hard and fast from the president’s supporters, who denounced it as “a radical leftist organization funded with your tax dollars.”
Yeah there was no evidence. Other than the videos that showed him acting in self defense. But since when are videos evidence unless they are against the police? #DefundNPR. https://t.co/NdsPu0tHdK
There is no legitimate argument for @NPR to exist as a taxpayer-funded entity. It is ridiculously leftist and biased against the right. #DefundNPRhttps://t.co/bqwyR4QqEv
The network’s defenders, however, pointed out that NPR wasn’t as government-funded as its detractors seemed to think, with just a small fraction of its cash coming from governments and the taxpayer-funded Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB).
All of the people screaming #DefundNPR crack me up. Just because it’s called “National Public Radio,” that doesn’t mean it’s federally funded. Why we’re at it, why don’t we defund the National Football League, National Geographic, and National Treasure 3? https://t.co/WUmXEXtVzGpic.twitter.com/hmIiRIQumM
So this tweet is why #DefundNPR is trending. Lucky for us the Republican base are morons. NPR isn’t federally funded. Barely 2% of their budget comes from government. It is listener funded through donations.So use this as your reason to donate today!https://t.co/RXztFkAUbOhttps://t.co/HrPOqyZwaO
Republicans have been calling for the defunding of NPR for decades, even winning a 2011 House vote to prohibit federal funding to the network and its affiliates. But the network has survived, largely due to corporate – not public – funding.
The CPB lost much of its taxpayer funding in the 1980s, and large corporations stepped in to pick up the slack, eager to ensure their coverage on trusted “public radio” would be favorable. Over the past three decades, private interests, such as currency-speculating liberal billionaire George Soros, have flooded the once-“public” NPR and its ilk with cash, even as the outlets continue to tell their audience they’re supported by “viewers like you.”
NPR even escaped Twitter and Facebook’s recent labeling blitz against state-backed media, with the platforms offering the dubious excuse that it and other outlets friendly to US geopolitical aims had “editorial independence” and thus didn’t merit a warning label.
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