Trump 'thrilled' as FCC chair warns news organizations to correct course or lose licenses
President Donald Trump said on Truth Social on Sunday that he is "thrilled" to see Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Brendan Carr look into the licenses of some news organizations that he called "corrupt and highly unpatriotic ‘news’ organizations."
Trump also said in the post, "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.’"
This comes after Carr issued a warning to the media on Saturday calling on networks to "correct course" before their license renewals come up.
"Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up," he wrote on X, in response to a Truth Social post from Trump about coverage of the war in Iran.
"The law is clear," he said. "Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not."
In his Sunday post, the president took issue with the reporting of the conflict in Iran.
"For instance," Trump wrote, "Iran, working in close coordination with the Fake News Media, shows our great USS Abraham Lincoln Aircraft Carrier, one of the largest and most prestigious Ships in the World, burning uncontrollably in the Ocean. Not only was it not burning, it was not even shot at — Iran knows better than to do that! The story was knowingly FAKE and, in a certain way, you can say that those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information!"
The president went on to say that "Iran is being decimated" and "the only battles they ‘win’ are those that they create through AI, and are distributed by Corrupt Media Outlets."
Carr appeared to reference the controversy surrounding CBS and Stephen Colbert in his statement on X. Colbert interviewed Democratic Texas Senate candidate James Talarico on "The Late Show" and it did not make it on the air, citing pushback from CBS.
"When a political candidate is able to win a landslide election victory after in the face of hoaxes and distortions, there is something very wrong. It means the public has lost faith and confidence in the media. And we can’t allow that to happen," Carr wrote in his post.
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CBS pushed back and said that it did not stop Colbert from airing the Talarico interview and said the show just needed to offer equal time to Talarico's then-opponent, U.S. Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas. Crockett placed the blame on CBS and Colbert, who she said did not offer equal time, rather than the government.
Talarico defeated Crockett in the Democratic primary after raising millions following the Colbert interview.