Trump says NBC's Kristen Welker will be reported to the FCC for 'rebuke or punishment' over a broadcast segment
President Donald Trump wrote in a social media post that NBC's Kristen Welker would be "reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment" over her on-air description of his endorsement record, and named FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in the post.
What happened
Welker, the moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," said during a live segment on the network's local Washington, DC, affiliate that the president's endorsement record was "mixed." Trump responded on social media on Sunday, deriding her as the "Unpopular 'Hostess' of … Meet the Fake Press," accusing her of "purposeful inaccuracy," and writing that she would be "reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment." That post closed by saying he hoped "Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously." In a separate post he complained about "fake polls," said "something must be done about it," and added "FCC to the rescue!" CNN describes the posts as Trump's most explicit efforts yet to direct the FCC to carry out his wishes, and notes that the commission's own website states it cannot prevent the broadcast of any particular point of view. The posts extend a chain the same page records: in March Carr threatened broadcasters over their Iran war coverage after the president made a similar complaint on Truth Social; in April he opened a challenge to ABC's local station licenses one day after Trump called for comedian Jimmy Kimmel's firing; and he has an open investigation into NBC's parent company, Comcast.
The posts came while the commission was already a defendant: ABC's parent company, Disney, filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the FCC earlier that month over the early review of ABC's broadcast licences, an action Carr justified by citing his probe of Disney's diversity practices.
Why it matters
The FCC licenses local broadcast stations, including eleven that NBC operates directly, so a demand that the commission punish a named anchor is addressed to a regulator holding leverage over her employer. The president appoints the chairman he named in the post, and the same page records that chairman moving against broadcasters after an earlier public complaint of the same kind — which is what separates this from an opinion about a news segment.