Exploring claim Trump admin wants to replace PBS with PragerU

Jack Izzo
Fri, August 15, 2025 


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On July 18, 2025, U.S. Congress approved a plan from President Donald Trump's administration that eliminated all government funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), the organization that funds NPR and PBS stations around the country.

In the weeks following the announcement, posts appeared on social media claiming that the Trump administration wanted to replace PBS with Prager University (colloquially called PragerU), a conservative, non-profit group known for producing videos containing misleading and incorrect information about history, race and science. The posts were generally paired with a PragerU video about Christopher Columbus that critics said downplayed the horrors of slavery.

However, Snopes found the claim that spread on social media was an exaggerated version of reports from the left-leaning publications Vox and MSNBC. Those reports warned that PragerU, which MSNBC's story called a "propaganda outlet," could capitalize on the defunding of PBS, but did not state that the Trump administration was planning on replacing PBS with PragerU, or placing PragerU programming on PBS.

We reached out to PragerU and to the Trump administration for comment, but had not heard back from either at the time of publishing.

PragerU was founded as a collaboration between conservative talk show host Dennis Prager and screenwriter Allen Estrin in 2009. According to its website, the organization aims to "promote American values through the creative use of digital media, technology and edu-tainment."

The original idea, according to a 2018 article in BuzzFeed News, was to "condens[e] Prager's ideas into short, digestible videos, as counter-programming for young people marooned in liberal US universities." In other words, the two believed the education system had a liberal bias and wanted to provide a conservative alternative.

Their plan worked. The organization's FAQ page claims its videos are now "watched 5 million times each and every day," and the list of "featured presenters" reads as a who's who of conservative pundits and politicians — Larry Elder (radio host), Ben Shapiro (podcaster), Tim Pool (podcaster), Jordan Peterson (psychologist) are on the front page, but the full list of presenters also includes: U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Prime Minister of Hungary Victor Orban, U.S. Education Secretary Linda McMahon, British politician Nigel Farage and businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, along with all the following pundits: Dinesh D'Souza, Charlie Kirk, Dave Rubin, Tucker Carlson, Glenn Beck, James Lindsay, Stephen Crowder, Riley Gaines, Candace Owens, Chaya Raichik (LibsOfTikTok) and Christopher Rufo.

Since its founding, the organization's videos have been criticized for being misleading or containing incorrect information — for instance, denying or downplaying the threat of climate change. Snopes previously fact-checked claims made in a 2020 PragerU video about the existence of white privilege.

In 2021, PragerU expanded into kids programming, launching the PragerU kids YouTube channel. The video about Christopher Columbus often featured alongside the claim was produced for "3rd - 6th graders," according to PragerU's website, and the video's description says it "teaches elementary students not to judge events of the past by the standards of today."

PragerU content is currently approved for use in 9 different states, including Florida, Texas and Louisiana.

Although there's no evidence the Trump administration has partnered with PragerU as a potential "replacement" for PBS or its programming, the organization recently partnered with the White House and the Department of Education to produce "The Road To Liberty," a series of videos for the nation's 250th anniversary.

404Media reported that the videos were "clearly AI-generated," and that one of them featured President John Adams saying "facts do not care about our feelings," a phrase associated with the conservative pundit mentioned above, Ben Shapiro. The videos featured the following line at the end: "This partnership does not constitute or imply U.S. Government or U.S. Department of Education endorsement of PragerU."
Sources:

Bernstein, Joseph. "How PragerU Quietly Became One Of The Right's Loudest VoicesHow PragerU Is Winning The Right Wing Culture War Without Donald Trump." BuzzFeed News, 3 Mar. 2018, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/josephbernstein/prager-university.

Cole ·, Samantha. "White House Partners With PragerU to Make AI-Slopified Founding Fathers." 404 Media, 18 Jul. 2025, https://www.404media.co/white-house-partners-with-prageru-to-make-ai-slopified-founding-fathers/.

Kasprak, Alex. "Ex-Cop Brandon Tatum's Success Doesn't Disprove White Privilege." Snopes, 17 Jun. 2020, https://www.snopes.com//news/2020/06/17/brandon-tatum-white-privilege/.

Neuman, Scott. "Congress Rolls Back $9 Billion in Public Media Funding and Foreign Aid." NPR, 18 Jul. 2025. NPR, https://www.npr.org/2025/07/18/nx-s1-5469912/npr-congress-rescission-funding-trump.

Presenters | PragerU. https://www.prageru.com/presenters. Accessed 15 Aug. 2025.

"Propaganda Platform PragerU Is Primed to Capitalize on Trump's PBS Cuts." MSNBC.Com, 18 Jul. 2025, https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/prageru-pbs-cuts-john-adams-video-trump-rcna219645.

Rameswaram, Sean. "The White House Has a Preferred Alternative to PBS. It May Already Be in Countless Classrooms." Vox, 8 Aug. 2025, https://www.vox.com/today-explained-podcast/422812/prageru-education-pbs-npr-cpb-defunding.

State Announcements | PragerU. https://www.prageru.com/state-announcements. Accessed 15 Aug. 2025.

The Road to Liberty | PragerU. https://www.prageru.com/shows/the-road-to-liberty. Accessed 15 Aug. 2025.