President Donald Trump endorsed Federal Communications Commission chairman Brendan Carr’s weekend threat to pull broadcast networks’ licenses over their coverage of the Iran War, calling various news outlets “corrupt and highly unpatriotic.”
“I am so thrilled to see Brendan Carr, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic ‘News’ Organizations,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday. “They get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in News and almost all of their Shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible Ratings, and never get, as I used to say in ‘The Apprentice,’ ‘FIRED.’”
Carr on Saturday continued the administration’s criticism of news outlets scrutinizing the U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran and suggested unspecified news outlets that ran with “hoaxes and news distortions” still “have a chance now to correct course” before their license renewals come up. He said broadcasters “must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not.”
“The American people have subsidized broadcasters to the tune of billions of dollars by providing free access to the nation’s airwaves,” he wrote. “It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news.”
Additionally, Trump suggested that news organizations should be “brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information” after criticizing coverage of military operations in Iran.
Carr’s comments came after Trump criticized headlines in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times over damage to U.S. Air Force refueling planes at a base in Saudi Arabia, refuting their reports in a Truth Social post. Trump has long called for networks to lose their broadcast licenses over unfavorable coverage.
The FCC chair’s threat subsequently drew widespread scrutiny from free speech and press freedom advocates. The Radio Television Digital News Association, which represents local TV news executives and personnel across the country, called Carr a “bully with a briefcase,” while the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression called the threat “outrageous.”
“When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,” it wrote in an X post.
