Why Is PBS Allowed to Be Mangle-MAGA TV?

Nothing underlines the partisan nature of PBS right now more than The Atlantic magazine being allowed to take over the long-running “Washington Week” program in August 2023. This was not a hostile takeover but a deeper branding of what PBS is—taxpayer-funded mangle-MAGA TV.

Four years ago, The Atlantic tried to take Donald Trump down with anonymous sources claiming he called the American war dead “suckers” and “losers” on a European trip (which was strongly rebuked by Team Trump). In 2024, they did it again with anonymous sources claiming that after pledging to pay for a funeral for a murdered Mexican American soldier, Trump raged: “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f—ing Mexican!”

All their anonymous sources sound like rhetorical assassins. Now, they have a PBS platform to promote this—on “Washington Week with The Atlantic” and on other PBS shows like “NewsHour.”

How partisan is this gang? Let’s make a list:

1. The Atlantic has endorsed Trump’s opponent in three straight cycles. This year, they typically proclaimed him “manifestly unstable and incompetent” and “one of the most personally malignant and politically dangerous candidates in American history.”

2. Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg, who has railed against Trump for those three cycles, was very tight with President Barack Obama. He was granted hours of interviews with Obama to promote his “Obama Doctrine” and went on NPR in 2016 gushing that Obama was “the greatest terrorist hunter in the history of the American presidency.”

3. This year, Goldberg did a round of interviews promoting his new partisan book (of old essays) titled “On Heroism: McCain, Milley, Mattis, and the Cowardice of Donald Trump.” The promotional text said Goldberg explores “Donald Trump’s trenchant disdain for military personnel, a preoccupation that reveals the extent to which Trump is grossly unfit to serve. … Goldberg paints a portrait of a president whose impulse is to dismiss acts of heroism in pursuit of dangerously undemocratic processes and ideals.”

4. Laurene Powell Jobs, the multibillionaire widow of Apple founder Steve Jobs who bought a majority share in The Atlantic in 2017, celebrated Hillary Clinton in Time magazine in 2015 as “one of America’s greatest modern creations.” In 2016, Jobs donated $2 million to the Priorities USA super PAC via her nonprofit and hosted a $200,000-a-plate fundraiser that raised more than $4 million.

5. In the 2020 cycle, Jobs donated the individual maximum contribution of $2,800 to eight different Democratic presidential contenders, not just Joe Biden but Michael Bennet, Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Tom Steyer, Andrew Yang … and Kamala Harris. After Biden became the nominee, she donated $600,000 toward Biden’s election and donated $70,800 to the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee.

6. In 2023, Jobs donated $10,000 to the Democratic Party apparatus in 49 states and the District of Columbia. She threw another $288,500 at the Democratic National Committee. There were no donations to Republicans.

7. Jobs is a close friend of Kamala Harris. Semafor reported when Harris abruptly secured the Democratic nomination, Jobs made no secret of her delight. “She’s overjoyed,” said Susie Tompkins Buell, the major San Francisco Democratic donor who has known both women for decades.

Republicans in Congress should be asking in the new year why the Trump-supporting half of America is forced to subsidize The Atlantic’s blatant and vicious partisanship on supposedly civilized “public” television.

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