NPR CEO Katherine Maher expressed regret during a congressional hearing Wednesday over past statements from her calling President Donald Trump a “fascist” and “deranged racist sociopath.”
The NPR chief also admitted during her testimony in front of the newly formed House Oversight Subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency that the taxpayer-funded outlet made mistakes in its coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story and the origins of COVID-19.
The posts, which were made before Maher took over as NPR’s chief, were brought up during the hearing reviewing NPR and PBS’s use of federal funds.
“Let me ask you, why did you call President Trump a fascist and a deranged racist sociopath in 2020?” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) asked Maher.
“I regret those tweets,” Maher said during the hearing. “I wouldn’t tweet them again today. They represented a time when I was reflecting on something that the president had said rather than who he is.”
However, the retractions of her statements did not mean much to the GOP members Maher was testifying in front of.
“This is a woman who made atrocious, hard-left statements, continuously, publicly on her own social media,” Greene told the Washington Examiner. “Her retraction today wasn’t really acceptable, I don’t think, and nor was it an apology, and NPR seems to not care either.”
The fiery hearing, which featured testimony from Maher, PBS President Paula Kerger, and Heritage Foundation Senior Fellow Angeles T. Arredondo, was led by Chairwoman Marjorie Tayor Greene (R-GA), who claimed that PBS “actively uses taxpayer funds to push some of the most radical left positions.”
Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) blasted NPR, claiming that listeners of the outlet are “totally misinformed.”
“I have a problem with that because you get federal funds,” Comer said.
But the hearing also dug into past decisions from NPR’s editorial staff, before Maher was instated as NPR’s CEO, not to pursue an investigation into the Hunter Biden laptop scandal.
“I do want to say that NPR acknowledges we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner,” Maher said in response to questioning.
And on the outlet’s coverage of the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, Maher said NPR recognizes “that we were reporting at the time but we acknowledge that the new CIA evidence is worthy of coverage and have covered it.”
The hearing comes as the Trump administration looks for new ways to slash federal funding and dismantle federal agencies. As part of the 1967 Public Broadcasting Act, federal grants were used to “establish to aid the operation of educational broadcasting facilities” and to “authorize comprehensive study of instructional television and radio.”
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting received $535 million from the government this year, spending most of it on public radio and TV stations across the country. Some of these funds go directly to NPR and PBS. The GOP is looking to eliminate funding that came from the 1967 law, claiming these media public networks show institutional bias.
Freshman GOP firebrand Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) pointedly listed many of Maher’s previous posts before she took the position at NPR, where she then said she does not agree with the statements she made in her past anymore.
“I believe that I tweeted that, and as I said earlier, I believe much of my thinking has evolved over the last half-decade,” Maher said.
Gill continued to hammer Maher during his allotted five minutes to question the witnesses, concluding that he would go to great lengths to ensure that NPR does not get federal funding.
“I’ll spend all of my time doing everything I can to ensure you guys never get another dollar of taxpayer funding,” Gill said in the hearing. “This is complete garbage.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), who is not part of the committee but was waved on to ask questions, raised the point that only 0.01% of the federal budget goes toward public broadcasting. He then pointed to the reason these programs are funded, saying people have forgotten that some things are more valuable than money.
“When you make programming for children to help their social and emotional development, it costs so much money to do, and it’s a public good that not everything has to be about profit,” Khanna said in the hearing.
Other Democrats demonstrated another way of pushing back in the hearing, bringing in a sign that reads, “Fire Elon, save Elmo.”
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“Miss Piggy hasn’t been caught funneling billions of dollars in government contracts to herself but Elon Musk has,” progressive Rep. Greg Casar (D-TX) said in the hearing.
Casar called the hearing a “scapegoat” to “distract from the fact Trump and Musk are robbing people,” pointing out that government funding for public broadcasting is just one-sixth the amount that Musk’s companies make off the government.