Former CNN Host Says Who He’d Give ‘Billions Of Dollars’ To; It Isn’t His Old Network

Former CNN anchor Jim Acosta told PBS White House correspondent Geoff Bennett Friday that he’d give “public broadcasting” massive funding if he were in charge.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) shut down Sept. 30 after Congress passed a rescissions bill that clawed back funding. Acosta claimed that the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) provided “quality programs.”

“There are so many front-line, there are so many quality programs on PBS. I tell people all the time, if I could wave a magic wand, I would send billions of dollars to public broadcasting,” Acosta, left CNN in January 2025 after refusing to move his show to midnight Eastern Time as part of a planned change in schedule, said during the episode of “The Jim Acosta Show.”

WATCH:

“Yeah. And I gotta say, it’s really heartening to see the ways in which our viewers have stepped up post-defunding. And the philanthropy is terrific, but really, it’s the individual viewers who are standing in the gap and deeply appreciate it,” Bennett claimed.

Republicans have accused PBS and National Public Radio (NPR) of left-wing bias in their news coverage. A fact sheet released by the White House in May 2025 noted that over a six-month period, PBS news reports used the term “far right” 162 times as opposed to only six uses of the term “far left,” according