If it had started to seem that CNN couldn’t stoop any lower, they proved that wrong Thursday. That afternoon, the network exploited the memory of one of American television’s most beloved figures as a plug for the taxpayer-subsidized left-wing propaganda machines PBS and NPR as the Trump administration threatened to pull the plug on their funds.
Host Omar Jimenez opened up by quoting a post from Trump in which he called for the immediate defunding of the two platforms, calling them “horrible and completely biased.” He then turned to a video clip from 1969 where Fred Rogers, who for decades hosted the delightful and much beloved children’s TV show Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, testified before Congress in support of PBS. For countless people who had seen Mister Rogers’ show as children, the clip definitely would have pulled some heartstrings, but Jimenez completely ignored the fact that a lot had changed between 1969 and 2025.
Jimenez then introduced Rogers’ nephew Daniel Crozier, a music professor at Rollins College. Jimenez asked Crozier, of his uncle’s testimony, “what does it mean to you now hearing that?”