President Donald Trump’s threats against television broadcasting licenses are suddenly no laughing matter for the media world and more dangerous.
of Trumpbroadcast Thursday night against NBC and ABCit was the latest incident in the past nine years in which he has been called upon to revoke the licenses of television stations that offend him, this time after the two networks refused to air his State House speech on election security.
“Such fraud should mean the cancellation of their licenses,” he said Thursday.
But unlike Trump’s first term, when Republican leaders in the Federal Communications Commissionhe refused such revengeCurrent chairman Brendan Carr has repeatedly opened investigations and inquiries into the same TV networks that have drawn the president’s ire. And that has some policy veterans worried that the FCC could act this time, setting off a constitutional fight.
“We’ve never had a law in this country that allows for a royal command for broadcasting,” said Robert Corn-Revere, a former FCC chief who is now general counsel for the Foundation for Civil Rights and Freedom of Expression. “If you transparently link the licensing process and if the networks are airing ads that the president wants covered, then any legitimacy those cases might have is automatically diluted if you link them.”
Spokesmen for Carr did not respond to a request for comment Friday, and the FCC chairman has yet to weigh in on X, where he has considerable power.
But he has already begun to investigatevarious practicesat NBC’s parent company Comcast andnetwork connectionand other TV channel owners. He has also called for the licenses of eight television stations owned by the ABC network to be renewed early, a move that could lead to their cancellation.
Trump’s conservative allies have done just thathe urged the FCC to go ahead and deny the license. Others updated the call Thursday after ABC and NBC said they would not carry Trump’s speech live.
“Shut up,” Steve Bannon, the chief White House strategist during Trump’s first term, said on his podcast Thursday. “Let’s see who the tough guys are when you do that.”
Trump’s latest threats came during a prime-time speech in which heit aired the long-held claim that US elections are dangerousfor fraud and foreign fraud.
The networks have generally had the discretion to air the president’s remarks live and have often refused to do so by presidents of both parties. Trump, however, accused “fake news” networks of skipping the broadcast “because of the fact that they don’t like the topic, because they know how corrupt our system is and they don’t want to expose it.”
“They and others in the media are part of a conspiracy. They want to perpetuate this fraud for whatever reason — they want to perpetuate it, they want to protect the radical left,” Trump said.
Although the FCC does not license the networks themselves, ABC and NBC own licensed television stations that may be at risk.
NBC declined to comment, and ABC did not respond to a request for comment.
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a veteran public interest lawyer, said it would be legally dangerous for Carr to directly include Trump’s complaint in the case.
“The obvious legal and constitutional questions that are raised if Brendan Carr does something because the president said so in a public speech raises all kinds of First Amendment concerns about opinion discrimination that would be impossible to overcome,” Schwartzman said.
Carr, who has beenan avid Trump supporterover the past year and a half, he made it clear that he was paying attention to Trump’s speech on Thursday night.
Carr retweeted the White House live stream, and shortly before it began, hehe wrote on social media“Incoming news” using TV and eyeball emojis.
The chairman has also rejected the idea that the FCC is an independent agency that should be independent of the direction of the White House, breaking the tradition followed by Trump’s first term as FCC chairman and agency leaders from both parties for decades. A Supreme Court ruling last month upheld Trump’s authority to fire the agency’s leaders, which many believe will curtail their independence.
Democrats were quick to reject Trump’s latest calls.
“It’s ridiculous to ask broadcasters to lose their licenses just for making the same editorial decisions they’ve made under presidents of both parties,” Anna Gomez, the FCC’s only Democratic commissioner, said in a statement Friday. “Such editorial decisions are protected by the First Amendment, and the FCC has no authority to punish a station for refusing to air overtly political speech. This is a blatant attempt to bully broadcasters, and the FCC should not participate in it.”
Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), the ranking Democrat on the Energy and Commerce telecommunications subcommittee, expressed concern over Carr’s recent investigation.
“Given Chairman Carr’s record of welcoming politically motivated complaints against broadcasters, President Trump’s threats to revoke broadcasting licenses must be taken seriously and rejected,” Matsui told POLITICO. “Chairman Carr should make it clear that he will not address such threats or allow the FCC to be used as a weapon of retaliation.”
Spokesmen for Carr did not respond to a separate request for comment on Matsui’s statement. Carrhas maintainedhe applies the law impartially.
The head of the FCCit sparked mutual concernwhen it first entered Disney’s eight lucrative ABC television stations to reviews this spring, years ahead of schedule. None were due to expire until 2028 at the earliest. He attributed the decision to a long-term investigation of diversity, although criticshe questioned for a whiledue to Trump’s recent outbursts against hosts such as Jimmy Kimmel.
The TV network has fiercely fought the Carr investigation and urged its viewers and community leaders to contact the agency offering support for the company, prompting tens of thousands of comments to pour in in recent weeks. While license revocation is on the table, it may be too far away. The ABC will have until August 5 to respond to recent conservative requests to revoke its licenses, after which Carr will have to decide whether to send the matter to a management hearing. Carr may decide to bring NBC-owned channel licenses up for pretrial review, too.
Stuart Benjamin, co-director of the Center for Innovative Policy at Duke Law School, ultimately doubts that the courts would side with Carr if he tries to pursue the license, whether or not he brings Trump’s complaint to trial.
“I would think the documents will go as far as the legal direction he can, although we will all know the real source of this,” Benjamin said. “And I think the judge who reviews it will have no doubt about that.”
