Two of Wyoming’s legislators and current congressional candidates are calling for an end to federal funding for National Public Radio and other public media.
Both Sen. Anthony Bouchard, R-Cheyenne, and Rep. Chuck Gray, R-Casper, called for defunding NPR on Monday.
“Public Media needs to be defunded! #DefundNPR #DefundTheLeft” Bouchard wrote on social media.
He added that Wyoming Republicans didn’t listen to the “liberal blather” on NPR.
Bouchard campaign spokeswoman April Poley told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday that the senator made the post after being sent an article by state Rep. Bob Wharff, R-Evanston, from NPR quoting an author who maintains the Second Amendment is based in racist principles.
The article in question was a June 2 interview with historian Carol Anderson about her book “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America,” which traces the roots of the Second Amendment and potential racist ties.
“One of the things that I argue throughout this book is that it is just being Black that is the threat. And so when you mix that being Black as the threat with bearing arms, it’s an exponential fear,” Anderson said in the interview. “This isn’t an anti-gun or a pro-gun book. This is a book about African Americans’ rights.”
Anderson was inspired to write the book after the 2016 shooting of Philando Castile, a Black man who had a license to carry a concealed weapon but was killed by police during a traffic stop. Castile’s girlfriend posted the aftermath of the shooting on social media, causing a frenzy online.
Poley pointed out that Gray posted a similar message about defunding NPR about four hours after Bouchard’s post.
“#DefundNPR,” Gray wrote on Twitter Monday morning.
Gray told Cowboy State Daily on Tuesday afternoon that he saw an article from Fox News that claimed NPR described the Declaration of Independence as a document with “flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies.”
“The radical left-wing NPR does not hold our values and should be immediately defunded,” the representative said.
