Why PragerU Doesn’t Belong in the White House
When propaganda gets a presidential platform, historical truth pays the price.
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This article is part of a year-long series called "Conscience of the State".
The White House has announced a partnership with Prager University (PragerU) as part of its official commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
Here’s why that’s a problem.
PragerU describes itself as “the leading hub for pro-American content online.”
It boasts over 10 billion lifetime views and millions of daily views across platforms.
It produces slick, bite-sized media—5-minute explainer videos, podcasts, children’s cartoons, books, and even full lesson plans—geared toward shaping the worldview of young Americans.
Beneath this bland description lurks a disturbing reality: PragerU is not an educational institution. It is an engine of right-wing historical revisionism, built to indoctrinate rather than to inform.
Despite the word “university” in its name, PragerU openly states that it is “proudly not an accredited university.”
Its mission is “Pro-American, Pro-Capitalism, and Pro-Family Values”—a euphemistic way of saying it promotes a conservative, often Christian nationalist, worldview.
Its founder, conservative radio host Dennis Prager, made the stakes clear in PragerU’s 2024 annual report:
“Everything the left touches it destroys. That includes our shared vision of America… We can’t let this happen. We can’t let up. There is too much at stake.”
Although PragerU is a nonprofit, it is flush with cash. Between 2018–2022, it raised nearly $200 million, including from conservative megadonors such as the Wilks brothers and the Devos Foundation.
What started as a digital propaganda outlet is now infiltrating public school classrooms in states like Florida, Oklahoma, and Arizona.
And now, it’s in the White House.
The Founders Museum: History, Sanitized
As part of the America 250 initiative, PragerU is producing “The Founders Museum: Road to Liberty”—a curated collection of talking portraits of the 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence, displayed on the first floor of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
Visitors scan QR codes to hear AI-generated videos of these figures come to life.
But the history presented is carefully curated…and conveniently cleansed.
Take the video of Thomas Jefferson. There is no mention of the hundreds of people he enslaved, or of Sally Hemmings, the enslaved woman with whom he fathered multiple children.
Instead, the AI-generated Jefferson praises the “empire of liberty” created by the Louisiana Purchase—ignoring the First Nations already living there and the forced removals that followed.
He concludes with this line:
“We must guard liberty with learning—for freedom depends not on force, but on the cultivation of an enlightened mind.”
The irony is thick.
Far from enlightening minds, this White House is banning books, whitewashing history, and promoting partisan propaganda.
The Historical Propagandizing Goes Much Further
One PragerU video, titled “Are We Living on Stolen Land?”, blatantly deflects the genocide of Indigenous peoples.
Host Jeff Fynn-Paul claims:
“The narrative of the ‘stolen country’ or ‘Native American genocide’ does not stand up to scrutiny by any honest historian.”
He argues that Native Americans would’ve mostly died anyway, that European conquest was morally normal, and that Western Europeans’ guilt is the only reason we even question the morality of conquest.
Another video, “What Made George Washington Great?”, mythologizes the first president without mentioning the fact that he enslaved over 100 people at Mount Vernon.
The video repeatedly casts Washington as the embodiment of “republican heroism” and a moral architect of freedom—while erasing the lives of the people he held in bondage.
A third video, “Why the Three-Fifths Compromise Was Anti-Slavery”, recasts one of the most morally troubling compromises in the U.S. Constitution as a strategic virtue.
The narrator, a Black woman named Carol Swain, argues that the compromise was “necessary” and “had nothing to do with human worth”—a framing that strips away the racial violence of dehumanization and implies political expediency was a moral good.
The Real Danger
PragerU videos reduce history to partisan caricature:
The Democrats were always the bad guys.
The Founders were unimpeachable moral heroes.
Slavery is overblown.
Indigenous dispossession is exaggerated.
Inequality is due to cultural deficiencies in BIPOC groups, not racism.
This is not history according to the standards of the academic discipline and accurate truth-telling.
It is ideology in costume.
And now it is being given the imprimatur of the presidency.
Why This Matters
When the White House partners with PragerU, it gives a megaphone to misinformation and a presidential seal to propaganda.
It sends a message that history is not about truth, but about utility—about reinforcing a preferred narrative at the expense of complexity, pain, and accountability.
We don’t just remember the past for its own sake. We remember it to shape what comes next.
A White House that rewrites the nation’s origins cannot be trusted with its future.
I have been aware of Praeger for a while, but did not know it was moving into the White House. This is very disturbing and thank you for sharing. This kind of indoctrination is frightening. It is a modern version of the books I bought in Berlin after the wall fell, which are pure indoctrination and not facts.
Re-writing or burying real history us reprehensible. It is especially true when it comes to kids since they have to be the curious sort to be willing to challenge what they are being taught or willing to un-learn what they were taught when they become adults. As a lifelong learner, I have unearned a lot!
Truly disgusting development.