NPR and its CEO Katherine Maher have come under relentless fire since the publication of Uri Berliner’s explosive exposé revealed the degree to which woke culture has infected the radio network. Maher has been particularly skewered for her remarks attacking the First Amendment, calling it the “number one challenge” in American journalism and blaming those freedoms for making it “a little tricky to address some of the real challenges of where bad information comes from.”

It’s a ludicrous position for the head of a news-gathering organization, let alone one that accepts funding from the US government.

But reporting by Jordan Conradson at the Gateway Pundit suggests that Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, a Republican, shares a nearly identical point of view.

According to Conradson, Richer submitted a manuscript to National Review magazine that included attacks on the First Amendment even more troubling than Maher’s.

Richer, who oversaw the highly controversial and still contested 2022 election in the state’s most populous county, allegedly wrote that the First Amendment is “the biggest threat to elections and Democracy,” and suggested “it may be time to revisit our First Amendment jurisprudence.” Having run himself in 2020 on a promise to clean up elections, Richer goes on to characterize those who declined to accept the gospel of Biden’s 2020 victory as “gullible,” “crazies,” and “idiots.”

Perhaps it is not surprising that this particular Republican maps so closely to a laughingstock Democrat.

After all, Richer belongs to that peculiar class of Republican who seems to value the approbation of elites in the mainstream media more than the respect of local conservatives.

In March, he went on MSNBC to say, “Unfortunately, it has become something of a litmus test in some quarters. Many of those candidates who won their primary based off of the big lie, that didn’t carry over to the median Arizona voter. It’s a losing strategy. It lost in ’23. It lost in ’22. It lost in ’21. It lost in ’20, but more than that, it’s immoral and people know better and leaders need to stop.”

That appearance on America’s pre-eminent liberal network was celebrated on, you guessed it, NPR, where the show On the Point praised his courage for speaking out. Such bravery to utter truths that get you loving airtime on liberal media!

There’s a certain type of Arizona Republican who is besotted with the idea of being a darling of the liberal media. His mindset is that abandoning conservative principals makes him a “maverick” and he’ll be toasted by coastal elites as “brave.” Obviously, the model for this archetype is John McCain, who valued praise from the New York Times like salt loves meat.

And the love affair goes both ways.

Liberal media outlets value nothing more than an appearance by a Republican who’s willing to criticize his fellow Republicans. Not only does that enable them to fill their air with negative messages about Republicans, which more and more is the reason these networks exist. But it also allows them to create the delusion that they take seriously opinions from all sides.

But it is a delusion.

They host Democrats who criticize Republicans and Republicans who criticize Republicans. But never anyone who praises Republicans, and seldom anyone who criticizes Democrats. They value the illusion of fairness, and as Berliner’s earthshaking reporting reveals, the 87 registered Democrats and zero registered Republicans at NPR solicited not even a shrug when he presented his findings to the corporate bosses. Their reaction was identical to what it would have been had he told them he discovered that there were 87 Earthlings on staff, but no Martians. They don’t know any conservatives, they don’t respect them, and they certainly don’t want to work with them. It’s like they don’t exist.

The fact that Stephen Richer is right now suing his own party’s de facto nominee for US Senate tells you all you need to know about his priorities. Electing a US senator from his party—not to mention while the Senate is tied and she’s currently ahead by a few points in the polls—isn’t as important to him as the criticism he’s leveling, which gets him invited onto the network that made a star out of Rachel Maddow. If NPR, led by Katherine Maher, promotes that appearance, all the better.