In July 2025, per PBS, Donald Trump signed a bill that canceled more than $1 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting funds, part of which was planned to go toward PBS. Because the network is free for everyone to access, it relies on federal funding for the bulk of its income. Now, according to MSNBC, Trump is paving the way for a new kind of source of content called Prager University, or PragerU.
PragerU was around before Trump essentially defunded PBS. It offers education content for children and adults, though it is not an accredited university in any way. Its website states that PragerU is “the leading hub for pro-American content online.” PragerU Kids offers the same kind of content, partly based on religion, but for children.
Now, a Christopher Columbus video from PragerU Kids has made the rounds online, and in a way, it previews what the potential PBS replacement has to offer.
The Trump-backed PragerU Christopher Columbus cartoon about slavery has caused an uproar.
@couriernewsroom Trump wants to replace PBS with a fake university that makes "educational" videos downplaying slavery
♬ original sound – COURIER
Multiple media outlets and social media users, including The Courier, shared clips of the Columbus video on TikTok, but the full video is available to watch on the official PragerU Kids YouTube page.
In the video, which shows an animated brother and sister traveling in time to learn about colonization from Columbus, the Italian explorer brings up slavery and suggests that Americans of the present not judge their ancestors from hundreds of years ago.
To back up his argument, Columbus says that, although he is thankful for the ancient Greek people, “They permitted lifestyles and worshiped gods that, as a Christian, I think is very bad.”
The portion of the cartoon that is going viral, though, is when Columbus directly references slavery.
“Slavery is as old as time and has taken place in every corner of the world, even amongst the people I just left, ” he says in the cartoon. “Being taken as a slave is better than being killed, no? I don’t see the problem.”
Columbus agrees that it’s great that “humanity has reached such a time” where people don’t agree with slavery. Elsewhere in the cartoon, Columbus admits that he was not a perfect person when he was alive. But, he adds, only his “Lord and savior Jesus Christ is perfect.”
Although the YouTube account for PragerU Kids has the comments disabled on the Columbus video, when The Courier shared a clip on TikTok, the comment section was flooded with those who were shocked to see the content of what could replace PBS. One user flat-out refereed to the PragerU Kids video as “propaganda.”
Someone else pointed out, “Mind you, Christopher Columbus was criticized during his time too.”
“What a dystopian world we live in,” someone else wrote under the clip on TikTok.
Others wrote that they can’t believe the clip is real. But, given the full video on the official YouTube page for PragerU Kids, we can confirm that it is very real.
And when someone commented, “Christopher Columbus was arrested and brought back to Spain forcefully in chains bc of the horrid stuff he did. They stripped him of all titles and accumulated wealth,” another person responded to share the similarities with how they see the United States government at present.
The commenter replied, “That tracks, we often idolize criminals.”
