ELLISVILLE — Jesse Traw was surprised at what he found in his mailbox.
OK, surprised is the wrong word. He was flabbergasted. He was appalled. He was angry.
Traw and his wife, Kathryn, have two boys, 2 and 5. They like to get magazines in the mail, such as Highlights and National Geographic for Kids.
Last month, Traw found another kids magazine, , in the mail. It had a Halloween theme. Traw was pretty sure he had seen a magazine from that company before.
But then he grabbed another item in the mailbox. It was titled: “The Kids Guide to President Trump.”
“I cannot believe anybody would push any sort of political ideology like this on kids,” Traw said.
People are also reading…
Traw suspected his father was the source. Some time ago, his father wanted to order some subscriptions for the grandchildren and asked what kinds of magazines they liked. Like many families, there is a political split these days that creates tension. His father is a fan of Trump. Traw does everything he can to avoid the subject, so he hasn’t asked whether his father ordered the Trump magazine on purpose.
The magazine showed up in his mailbox the same week that the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol issued a subpoena to the former president. The committee’s most recent hearing aired even more damning evidence that Trump and the Secret Service knew the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys, among others, were going to violently attack the Capitol.
None of that, of course, appears in the magazine, which is directed at introducing young children to the world of political propaganda. Traw is no fan of the former president, but he doesn’t want his children introduced to propaganda of any kind, no matter whether it’s about Trump or former Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
The magazine addressed to his son was no remake of , teaching nonpartisan civics. It was an introduction to the MAGA world. The magazine shows children wearing red MAGA hats, exaggerates the former president’s record and compares Trump to “war heroes” like George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower. It suggests “faith in God” shaped each moment of American history.
It turns out the Trump magazine and the seemingly harmless Halloween magazine from EverBright Kids come from the same company. It’s called Espired, and it was founded by a former Republican candidate for president, Mike Huckabee. The preacher-turned-politician developed the Florida-based company with another investor in 2011. It publishes educational material for home-schoolers. Some of the magazines contain Halloween arts and crafts ideas, for instance, and others, like the Trump one, are clearly propaganda.
According to the , there have been more than a dozen complaints about the company. Some, like Traw, were disappointed to discover the partisan and religious agenda. Others complained about being charged monthly fees when they thought they were just ordering one magazine or, for instance, the “patriotic bundle.” The company has responded to many of those complaints online, saying its terms are “clearly presented” at the time of purchase.
The Huckabee-founded company is a prolific advertiser on Facebook. In fact, an ad for the kids magazines showed up on my Facebook feed within five minutes of performing a Google search about the company. I came across a from 2020 quoting numerous parents upset after they ordered what they thought were educational magazines before they realized how partisan and religious some of them were.
Then there was the piece published a year ago by Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist John Brummett of Gov. Asa Hutchinson for signing a $500,000 contract, using pandemic money, for Huckabee’s company to produce a COVID-19 pamphlet for kids. The pamphlet had to be corrected after it was produced with wrong information about masking.
Brummett referred to Huckabee’s company as “Consolidated Right-Wing Claptrap Incorporated.” Seems about right.
The company didn’t return emails seeking comment for this column.
Traw has written the company to ask them to stop sending magazines. He and his wife want their boys to be able to make their own decisions when it comes to religion and politics, and to rely on reason, research and empathy.
“I don’t care if it’s Barack Obama or Joe Biden or Trump,” Traw says. “No 5-year-old needs to be reading political propaganda.”