As the broadcasters’ defenders say, the defunding of public media represents a “drop in the bucket” of what must be done to reach fiscal sanity. But it also needs to be noted that by cutting NPR and PBS off taxpayer funding, President Donald Trump accomplished a feat of historic proportions.

Every Republican president and Congress since LBJ signed the Public Broadcasting Act authorizing the creation of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in 1967 has tried to rein in, reform, or defund the CPB. They have all failed.