Fox News’ Andy McCarthy Pours Cold Water on Trump’s ‘Dubious’ Attempt to Defund PBS and NPR

Fox News’ Andy McCarthy poured cold water on President Donald Trump’s “dubious” attempt at unilaterally defunding NPR and PBS on Wednesday.

During an appearance on America’s Newsroom, anchor Bill Hemmer asked McCarthy to analyze both NPR’s argument that it’s “protected by the First Amendment” and Team Trump’s argument that “if you’re taking federal money, you’re not free to do what you want.”

“Well, you know, extortionate practices by the government is a kind of a fuzzy area. You know, on the one hand, they’re not supposed to engage in viewpoint discrimination so that if you put out this political message, we’ll reel back your money,” replied McCarthy. “On the other hand, when I was a prosecutor, I would say to somebody, you either plead guilty to one count of the indictment, or I’m going to supersede the indictments, add 15 more counts and you’ll be looking at, you know, goo gobs of time in prison. Was that extortionate? Sure, but the way the law interprets that is you’re rewarding somebody who pleads guilty and doesn’t put the system through the burden.”

“So, you know, some government practices that have an extortionate tinge are upheld by the courts, some are not,” he concluded. “I think here, the best argument the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has is the structure of the Constitution. It’s really a creature of Congress. And while Congress can attach strings to the funding, the proposition that the president can is a lot more dubious.”

On May 1, Trump signed an executive order to end “the taxpayer subsidization of National Public Radio (NPR) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS).”

“NPR and PBS have fueled partisanship and left-wing propaganda with taxpayer dollars, which is highly inappropriate and an improper use of taxpayers’ money, as President Trump has stated,” submitted the White House in its fact sheet on the order.

Watch above via Fox News.