In justifying cuts to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which includes PBS, NPR and an alphabet soup of other educational institutions — Mick Mulvaney, President Donald J. Trump’s new Mack the Knife, alias budget director, framed it as a Trumpian zero sum game:

“I put myself in the shoes of that steelworker in Ohio,” Mulvaney said. “The coal miner — the coal-mining family in West Virginia. The mother of two in Detroit. And I’m saying, ‘O.K., I have to go ask these folks for money and I have to tell them where I’m going to spend it.’ Can I really go to those folks, look them in the eye, and say, ‘Look, I want to take money from you and I want to give it to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’? ”

Not since another budget director, David Stockman under Ronald Reagan, deemed ketchup a worthy vegetable for school lunches has an argument been so specious. ...