Robert Reich Should Never Start His Arguments by Posing With an Elmo Puppet!

Tim Graham on Jul 16, 2025

When former Labor Secretary Robert Reich can muster equal enthusiasm for radical leftist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and for PBS, that might help people locate precisely where PBS is on the political spectrum.

In a new video, Reich began by posing with an Elmo puppet. Doesn't every leftist begin their PBS argument with Elmo? Supposedly, President Donald Trump opposes "Sesame Street" because they once made a puppet called "Donald Grump." I'm sure he loved that parody when it happened ... 20 years ago.

Reich asked: "Why is Trump so hell-bent on defunding PBS? It's part of a larger plan -- one where he can control not just what we do, but what we think." It's a conspiracy theory: "Trump is waging a war on the American mind!"

Once again, Trump is painted as a dictator. Reich claimed: "Throughout history, tyrants have understood that their major enemy is an educated public. Slaveholders prohibited enslaved people from learning how to read. The Third Reich burned books. The Khmer Rouge banned music. Stalin and Pinochet censored the media."

"Fact-checkers" could ask: How is Trump just like slaveholders, Hitler, Stalin, Pinochet and the Khmer Rouge? Where has Trump prevented people from reading, burned books, banned music or censored the media? And how is taking taxpayer subsidies away from PBS anything like book banning or reading prevention?

"The Left" always associates itself with education. Reich said Trump believes, as they say in Orwell's novel "1984," that "ignorance is strength." Reich claimed Trump favors teaching children "our country has never been wrong." That's what they claimed about the Florida education standards under Gov. Ron DeSantis.

"Leftists" are firmly in control of universities and suppress all dissent. But Reich pretended the opposite: "As a professor, I know firsthand how education empowers young people's minds. We can't have a functioning democracy if people cannot deliberate critically about it. That's why authoritarians replace education with indoctrination. Instead of teaching students to think for themselves, authoritarians seek to instill blind allegiance and to suppress dissent."

In 2022, a poll found more than 80% of Harvard faculty respondents characterized their political leanings as "liberal" or "very liberal." Only 1% of respondents stated they are "conservative," and no respondents identified as "very conservative."

Just like PBS, most universities seek to prevent any conservative from speaking as an authority. They equate conservatism with ignorance and misinformation. That results in "blind allegiance," "indoctrination" and the opposite of a "functioning democracy" of minds.

"The Left" associates a "functioning democracy" with Democrat Party control. When Republicans win, we live in frightening "authoritarian" times.

Reich conflated Trump's lawsuits against ABC and CBS and defunding "public" broadcasting with "suppressing" the media. Trump is "trying to silence major news sources." Calling them out for "fake news" is suppression. Isn't that fascinating? Attacking the leftist press is not "dissent." It's not "authoritarian" for PBS to suppress the conservative view on taxpayer-funded television.

Reich lectured: "A free press exists to question authority and help the public question it as well." But how did these "major news sources" perform in questioning authority in the Biden administration?

Look no further than their propagandistic coverage of Biden's mental state. They denied there was any problem and suppressed all "functioning democracy" with the so-called Democratic Party until it could no longer be ignored. Ignorance wasn't strength.

"The Left" objects to defunding PBS because it objects to any diminution of its indoctrinating power. "The Left" objects to adding any conservative narratives to education and the culture for the same reason. Conservatives exist to foist our brand of democracy upon them.

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Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Tim Graham and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.