Democratic Texas Rep. Greg Casar used his questioning time during a Wednesday House Oversight Subcommittee hearing to attack President Donald Trump and Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) head Elon Musk by contrasting their behavior with PBS children’s characters.
The hearing titled, “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable” featured NPR CEO Katherine Maher and PBS CEO Paula Kerger and was intended to focus on alleged bias at the publicly-funded outlets. However, Casar evaded the committee’s intended focus and compared Trump and Musk to PBS children’s characters instead in an attempt to suggest the president and his adviser are corrupt.
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“Mr. [Heritage Foundation senior fellow] Mike Gonzalez, you wrote the proposal to defund NPR, PBS and public broadcasting for Project 2025,” Casar said. “Can you answer a few questions for me? How many millions of dollars a month do taxpayers spend for Daniel Tiger to play golf?”
Gonzalez began to answer with confusion, before Casar cut him off.
“The answer is none. To your knowledge, has Miss Piggy ever been caught trying to funnel billions of dollars in government contracts to herself and to her companies?” Casar followed up.
Gonzalez described Casar’s analogy as “silly.”
Casar continued his analogy, comparing Trump’s alleged misuse of taxpayer funds and Musk’s behavior to children’s characters.
“The answer is no. How about Arthur the aardvark? Has he ever fired independent government watchdogs who are investigating his companies? The answer is no. Madam chair, I’m told we’re here to talk about government efficiency, but Daniel Tiger has not blown 10 million dollars of taxpayer money to play golf with his friends, but Donald Trump has, just at the beginning of his administration,” Casar continued. “Miss Piggy hasn’t been caught funneling billions of dollars in government contracts to herself, but Elon Musk has. And Arthur has not fired independent government watchdogs investigating him and his companies, but Elon Musk has fired at least five.”
The Texas representative further criticized his Republican colleagues for using PBS and NPR as scapegoats, claiming they were distracting from what he saw as greater issues involving Trump and Musk.
“So once again, my Republican colleagues are dragging in a scapegoat, this time PBS and NPR to try to distract from the fact that Trump and Musk are robbing working people. It’s Sesame Street that’s making things expensive. It’s Mister Rogers that’s blowing taxpayer money,” he added. “It’s listeners like you. It’s absurd. The total funding for public broadcasting is just one sixth the amount that Elon Musk’s companies make off of the government every single year, But, you will not see Elon Musk being grilled by this committee. I’ve seen a lot, but pointing the finger at Elmo to cover for Elon Musk might be a new low for Miss Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee.”
PBS gets 16% of its money from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, NPR reported.
“Here’s what I think we should be having a hearing about: after Trump and Musk took over the government, reporters noticed that the State Department was trying to funnel four hundred million taxpayer dollars to Tesla,” Casar said. “The State Department said it’s an old contract, no news here, but because of a brave whistleblower and an NPR reporter, they exposed the corruption and the lies. Madam chairwoman, if we want to look into waste, fraud and abuse, why not look into that?”
“Elon Musk, who’s running cabinet meetings, who’s running the White House, was trying to funnel money to himself. So, let’s stop investigating Cookie Monster and start investigating how the Trump Administration lied about this and was trying to funnel money to their biggest political supporter,” he continued. “Maybe you’re trying to defund NPR because they expose this kind of corruption. And if Republicans were serious about investigating waste, fraud and abuse. My colleagues would admit that Big Bird is not the problem. Big Tech is. Big Pharma is. Big insurance companies are.”
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