Matt Schlapp Doubles Down on Call to Defund PBS After Sesame Street Introduces New Asian-American Muppet

Matt Schlapp doubled down Thursday on his call to defund PBS because Sesame Street introduced a new Asian-American character.

Schlapp joined Fox News’ Todd Piro Thursday morning for a segment that suggested there is something controversial about the long-running children’s television series bringing the muppet Ji-Young into the cast. He reacted to the news earlier this week by tweeting, “What race is Ernie is Bert? You are insane PBS and we should stop funding you.”

On TV Thursday, neither Piro nor Schlapp directly mentioned the fact that this outrage is over the inclusion of an Asian-American character. Piro started the segment — accompanied by a picture of Ji-Young — by telling viewers, “Some conservatives are calling on the federal government to stop funding PBS over woke content on the program for kids, including Sesame Street.”

“It’s not just that,” he added to Schlapp, “we also have Big Bird touting the vaccine, stuff that you never really saw Sesame Street get into.”

There is a 1972 episode of Sesame Street where Big Bird got the measles vaccine to teach kids the importance of getting the shot, and that’s far from the only time that the long-running children’s program has promoted vaccines or other public health messages.

“When you have hundreds of channels to choose from,” Schlapp said, “why do we have to have a special station that doesn’t have to, you know, operate in the same way all the others do? It’s time to go.”

The chairman of the American Conservative Union (which is proudly telegraphing that it’s anti-Sesame Street) continued, “Look, it’s not just the fact that they are trying to bring race into Ernie and Bert, which — I grew up watching, I’m older than you, but I grew up watching. And it wasn’t ever about race, it was about learning lessons and learning to read and learning tolerance. And they want to inject race.”

Sesame Street has, in fact, addressed race issues for decades, and, once again, this is not the first time the show has introduced new characters to teach kids about diversity.

“And by the way,” Schlapp added, “this whole question about gender and everything, one of the Muppet characters had a son and the son wanted to be a daughter. They won’t stop with their push for woke politics.”

“That’s the innocence of kids that’s being attacked earlier and earlier. First it started in college, now it’s on Sesame Street,” Piro lamented.

Here is, according to the Associated Press, part of why Sesame Street wanted to bring Ji-Young into the cast:

Some of Ji-Young’s personality comes from her puppeteer. Kathleen Kim, 41 and Korean American, got into puppetry in her 30s. In 2014, she was accepted into a “Sesame Street” workshop. That evolved into a mentorship and becoming part of the team the following year. Being a puppeteer on a show Kim watched growing up was a dream come true. But helping shape an original muppet is a whole other feat.

“I feel like I have a lot of weight that maybe I’m putting on myself to teach these lessons and to be this representative that I did not have as a kid,” Kim said…

In “See Us Coming Together,” Sesame Street is preparing for Neighbor Day where everyone shares food, music or dance from their culture. Ji-Young becomes upset after a kid, off screen, tells her “to go back home,” an insult commonly flung at Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders. But she feels empowered after Sesame Street’s other Asian American residents, guest stars and friends like Elmo assure her that she belongs as much as anyone else.

You can watch above, via Fox News.