Charlie Kirk, host of The Charlie Kirk Show, recently wrote that National Public Radio should “lose all public funding” for what he called a “hit piece” on the Gadsden flag and Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL).
NRP’s Scott Neuman reported a story earlier this week about Florida’s push to create a license plate patterned after the famous “Don’t Tread On Me” flag. Critics of the initiative said the flag represents “dangerous far-right extremist ideology”.
DeSantis said creating a license plate based on the flag would send “a clear message to out-of-state cars” accompanied with a link on how to presale purchase a plate, followed by an example of what the plate would look like.
Neuman’s story quotes Rachel Carroll Rivas, who works for the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center as the deputy director of research and analysis. She said it was clear the DeSantis administration couldn’t pretend they didn’t know what the flag represented to a certain portion of the population, noting it had been use for some “really awful” causes, notably the January 6th Insurrection.
Kirk later called Carroll Rivas a “conservative-hating leftist expert” before saying “NPR should lose all public funding and then see if the outlet can stand on its own. It is pathetic that a taxpayer-supported ‘media’ outlet can so casually insult more than half the country”.
NPR receives no direct federal funding but does receive grants from the Department of Education and the Department of Commerce which equates to 2% of the organization’s annual revenues.
