Paula Kerger, the president and CEO of PBS, said she wishes she knew why the Trump administration has proposed to eliminate funding for the network for a third year in a row.

“I wish I knew,” Kerger told Politico’s "Women Rule" podcast in an interview released on Wednesday. “I don’t understand why we seem to be perennially in this fight.”

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“I see the impact our local stations have in communities; red states, blue states. I see the work that our stations are doing for advancing civil conversation,” she said. “I am in places where local journalism has really collapsed, and our local radio and TV stations really are the local media presence.”

Kerger told the publication that she’s worried that Trump’s proposed cuts could lead to more media deserts in the United States.

“When you look at the entire economy of public broadcasting, about 15 percent of the funding for our stations comes from federal appropriations — but that’s an aggregate number,” Kerger said on the podcast. “For some of our stations in rural parts of the country — so Cookeville, Tennessee, for example, it’s probably about 40 percent.”

“When public broadcasting was created, the federal appropriation was going to be particularly critical to ensure universal access, particularly to those that live in parts of the country that either have less people or that don’t have an economic base to support a local media organization,” said Kerger.

Her comments come as Trump calls for eliminating the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which helps fund stations such as PBS and NPR, and the National Endowment for the Arts, in his 2020 budget proposal.

He also proposed eliminating the programs in his last two budgets. Congress ignored his suggestions each time.

Kerger says she is hoping on a similar result this time.

"We have very strong support in the House and the Senate [on] both sides of the aisle,” she said. “I’m very sympathetic. [There are] very hard decisions to be made about where federal money should be spent. I don’t think it’s inappropriate to scrutinize it every year, but to be in this battle every year is really disappointing.”