Watching ABC submit to Donald Trump over his defamation lawsuit in opposition to the community—giving him $15 million for his presidential library and one other $1 million in authorized charges to settle the case—didn’t really feel nice. However there’s extra the place that got here from, and Trump is about to weaponize the federal government to settle his scores with the media.
Trump nonetheless has a lawsuit pending in opposition to CBS, alleging that the community dedicated election interference by deceptively modifying a “60 Minutes” interview with Vice President Kamala Harris to make her look higher. He judge-shopped that case to the Northern District of Texas, the place there’s only one judge, Trump appointee Matthew Kacsmaryk, who routinely rules in favor of conservatives.
However Trump could not have to pursue that case very diligently, provided that he’s bringing in Brendan Carr as head of the Federal Communications Fee. Carr is a present FCC commissioner, and he’s full MAGA. He’s made clear that he sees his job as going after Trump’s enemies. On condition that the FCC controls broadcast licenses, he can maintain CBS stations within the crosshairs.
The FCC doesn’t license networks like ABC, CBS, or NBC, however it does have authority over broadcast stations owned by the networks. Andrew Jay Schwartzman, senior counsel for the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society, explained to Ars Technica that the administration can nonetheless use the FCC to “trouble the dwelling daylights out of broadcasters or different media retailers in annoying methods,” single some broadcast stations out, and slow-walk functions or block mergers.
Trump doesn’t appear to know this and thinks that the networks can simply be worn out. He has called for CBS to lose its license over October’s “60 Minutes” interview, for NBC and CNN to lose their licenses for not airing his victory speech after the Iowa main in January, and for ABC to lose its license for “unfair” fact-checking throughout his September debate with Harris.
Although Carr, as a sitting FCC commissioner and former telecommunications lawyer, is aware of full nicely that the FCC can’t simply yank a community off the air, he nonetheless began complaining concerning the networks even earlier than getting tapped to run the company. After Harris appeared on “Saturday Evening Stay” simply earlier than the election, Carr ran to Fox Enterprise to threaten NBC. His logic? That NBC violated the “equal time” rule by not giving Trump the identical air time. Certain, besides that NBC truly adopted the equal time rule and gave Trump free airtime that weekend throughout a NASCAR race and “Sunday Evening Soccer.” Someway, in accordance with Carr, this nonetheless warranted FCC investigation, with penalties that might embody revoking NBC’s broadcast licenses.
Now that Carr has been provided the highest job, he’s already said that he’d not solely contemplate Trump’s laughable criticism in opposition to CBS. He may use it as the premise to dam a merger between Skydance and Paramount, which includes the switch of CBS-owned native stations. Carr instructed Fox Information that he was “fairly assured” that Trump’s criticism about “60 Minutes” “is one thing that’s more likely to come up within the context of the FCC’s evaluate of that transaction.” So basically if Carr finds the “60 Minutes” interview wanting, he’ll use it to mess with CBS on a wholly completely different factor.
Placing Carr atop the FCC doesn’t simply permit Trump to assault broadcast networks. Carr has already proven he’s desirous to be Trump’s all-purpose assault canine. Only a few days after the 2024 election, Carr wrote to the heads of Alphabet (aka Google), Microsoft, Meta, and Apple, saying these firms performed a big function in “an unprecedented surge in censorship” by doing issues like fact-checking. His menace to Large Tech was under no circumstances delicate, saying that he was assured that when Trump and the brand new Congress take workplace, they may take motion to revive First Modification rights—and that such motion might embody a evaluate of firm actions and third-party organizations that Carr additionally thinks have violated the First Modification.
Enjoyable reality: The FCC doesn’t actually have jurisdiction over social media platforms or different related net companies. However Carr, who authored the Venture 2025 chapter on the FCC, is keen to increase the company’s authority and needs to intestine Part 230, which at present supplies broad immunity to social networks for materials revealed on their web site. Below Carr, the FCC would get to decide whether or not social media firms are moderating “in good religion.”
All you must learn about Carr’s ideology may be gleaned from the omission of 1 social media firm from his threatening letter: X, the cesspool previously generally known as Twitter. Carr loves X. It’s the place he goes to submit about dismantling the “censorship cartel,” to threaten CBS some more, and to insult the Federal Aviation Affiliation for having the temerity to look at the environmental influence of a proposal by X proprietor Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
Carr can be very keen to provide his pal Musk much more taxpayer {dollars}, complaining that it was “regulatory lawfare in opposition to one of many left’s high targets” when the FCC revoked an $885 million grant to Musk’s Starlink when it couldn’t present it will attain sufficient rural properties.
So that is what the FCC will appear like beneath Carr through the second Trump administration: a weapon for use in opposition to any firm Trump doesn’t like, whether or not the FCC has the authority or not.
As a bonus, it’s additionally probably that Carr’s FCC will shovel money towards the world’s richest man, who occurs to run a social media firm that’s hemorrhaging users as a result of folks don’t need to hang around with white nationalists and Nazis.
Certainly, if you’d like a imaginative and prescient of the long run Carr and Trump crave, it just about would appear like X. Musk, ostensibly a “free speech warrior,” the dumb moniker Trump has applied to Carr as nicely, has suspended accounts of journalists who displease him and sued firms that reported on the rampant hate speech on the platform.
Musk and Trump have beforehand needed to spend their very own cash to threaten journalists and suppress speech, however beneath Carr, the federal government will do it for them.
