As President Trump and Elon Musk cut federal programs, they often equate political and policy differences with corruption.
When President Trump talks about the “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” that Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team has uncovered in the federal government, he sometimes singles out one program with particular scorn.
“Twenty million dollars for the Arab ‘Sesame Street’ in the Middle East,” the president told a joint session of Congress this month, as he laid out the case for a smaller, more efficient government free of what Republicans call “woke” ideology.
But the Arabic-language version of “Sesame Street” was not just the purview of progressives. It has been supported, in its various iterations over the years, by members of both parties, including Andrew S. Natsios, a conservative Republican who led the U.S. Agency for International Development under President George W. Bush.
“The biggest weapon against Al Qaeda and Islamic extremism is ‘Sesame Street,’” Mr. Natsios said in an interview, recounting how successful the show had been in Egypt when the American government helped fund it during his term in office. Children would watch the show in the morning before breakfast, he said, helping them adopt more positive attitudes toward the West.
The show is a textbook case of what is known as soft power, the kind of noncoercive, long-term diplomacy designed to build good will and influence around the world, a strategy Mr. Trump has largely cast aside in favor of more transactional, strong-arm tactics.
As Mr. Trump and Mr. Musk slash their way through the federal work force, their claims of fraud are often differences of opinion about policy — not examples of criminal wrongdoing or corruption.