In light of President Donald Trump's recent budget blueprint that would cut funding from PBS, a clip of an episode of Sesame Street from the 1980s has been given new life on the internet and has gone viral.
The clip, from an episode that originally aired on January 14, 1988, features a muppet grouch named "Ronald Grump" who offers Oscar the Grouch a real estate deal in order to build "Grump Tower." Oscar takes the deal, against the wishes and advice of his neighbors, and then begins to panic when Ronald Grump tells him that his pets are not allowed in the "can-dominium." To break the lease and move the tower, Grump said, Oscar would have to produce 40 bags of trash. Eventually, the neighbors pitch in to help Oscar acquire the necessary amount of trash to oust Grump and the Grump Tower, and the neighborhood children learn how to count to 40.
(Personally, I think this was more of a lesson on the importance of thoroughly reading a contract, but I understand that this may have gone over the heads of Sesame Street's target audience.)
Trump was also parodied in 2005 as "Donald Grump," an orange-haired, suit-clad grouch who bragged about having more trash than anyone else.
Granted, these kinds of celebrity impersonations aren't unprecedented nor uncalled for on Sesame Street. Part of the appeal of the program is that it is written so that there are certain jokes that kids won't entirely understand, but that their parents will find entertaining. This is a prime example of that. Obviously, I don't think anyone anticipated Trump ever becoming president--certainly not in 1988. I don't think he'd be parodied this brutally today (or at least I hope not).
While this probably isn't the source of Trump's motivation for cutting funding to PBS (especially since Republicans have been discussing this for the past five-plus years), it certainly does add a rather humorous layer to the whole thing.
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