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Once again, Trump wants the FCC to put a bandage on his thin skin | Tom Wheeler

Will the FCC chairperson again abuse his authority over broadcast licenses to put a Band-Aid on Donald Trump’s thin skin?

Since the opening days of the Trump presidency, Brendan Carr has acted as the president’s attack dog to coerce broadcasters to say things that please his client. Only days after taking office in January 2025, Carr revived a previously dismissed complaint against CBS for the editing of 60 Minutes that tracked candidate Trump’s specious lawsuit on the matter. At the time, the FCC was considering the transfer of CBS licenses to Skydance, a decision that did not come until after CBS agreed to pay $16m to settle with Trump. In September, after Jimmy Kimmel’s remarks about Charlie Kirk, Carr urged broadcasters to take action, saying “we can do this the easy way or the hard way” – an attack even the senator Ted Cruz said sounded “right out of Goodfellas”. In March 2026, he threatened broadcasters over their coverage of the Iran war after the president complained on Truth Social. In April, he ordered Disney’s eight ABC-owned television stations to submit their licenses for premature review, even though most aren’t even halfway through their license term (Disney, ABC and the stations are suing).

On Sunday, as the morning talk shows aired, the president posted on Truth Social that Kristen Welker, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press, “will be reported” for her claim that his primary endorsements yielded “mixed results.” “I hope that Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously,” the post instructed. NBC is owned by Comcast, a company that has long been in the president’s crosshairs.

Putting aside the question of whether an interpretation of primary results is a “Threat to our Country”, as a former FCC chair, I almost feel sorry for Brendan Carr. Once again, the president has said “jump”, and Carr will be judged by his audience of one on how high he goes.

The FCC was created by Congress as an independent commission. Early in his term, Trump issued an executive order that brought the FCC and other formerly independent agencies under White House supervision. Now, before taking any significant action, the agency must get approval from the White House. It appears that also includes following White House orders to initiate action.

Enforcing his total control, in March, the president fired both Democratic commissioners (whose positions were mandated by Congress) from another formerly independent agency, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). When the commissioner, Rebecca Slaughter, sued, the supreme court sided with the president.

For almost a century, the FCC has followed the statute that the five-member commission have a 3-2 majority in favor of the president’s party. Today there are two Republicans and only one Democrat on the FCC, Anna Gomez, because Trump won’t appoint another. Trump has nominated another Republican to the commission. Many fear that as soon as that appointment is confirmed by the Senate, the president will be able to fire Gomez and eliminate her effective voice while maintaining the required three-person quorum.

There is a parallelism here. Trump wants the FCC to control what broadcasters say, while he controls what it can do.

As chair of the FCC, Brendan Carr has immense authority to set the agenda and the decisions of the agency. Thus far he has wielded that power against journalism the president dislikes. The first amendment, however, does not have an exception for Donald Trump’s thin skin.

Carr’s 2019 comments as a sitting commissioner should be his answer to what President Trump is asking him to do. At that time he took a firm stand: “The FCC does not have a roving mandate to police speech in the name of the ‘public interest.’” Hopefully, the chairperson will tire of doing the opposite and once again stand for the principle of free speech.