Trump's TV licence threats now credible as FCC chair opens probes into NBC, ABC

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President Donald Trump’s threats against broadcast television licenses are suddenly less of a laugh line to the media world and more of a real danger.

Trump’s broadsides Thursday night against NBC and ABC were just the latest occasion during the past nine years when he’s called for revoking the licenses of TV outlets that anger him, this time after the two networks declined to air his White House speech on election security.

“Fraud like this should mean a revocation of their licenses,” he said Thursday.

But unlike Trump’s first term, when Republican leaders at the Federal Communications Commission disavowed any such reprisals , current Chair Brendan Carr has repeatedly opened probes and inquiries into the same TV networks that have drawn the president’s ire. And that has some policy veterans worried that the FCC may act this time, teeing up a constitutional fight.

“We’ve never in this country had a law that permits a royal decree for news coverage,” said Robert Corn-Revere, a former top FCC who’s now chief counsel for the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression. “If you expressly link a licensing proceeding to whether or not the networks are airing coverage that the president wants covered, then whatever legitimacy that those proceedings might have had is automatically diminished if you link them.”

Carr spokespeople did not respond to a request for comment Friday, and the FCC chair has yet to weigh in on X, where he is fairly prolific.

But he has already begun scrutinizing the diversity practices at NBC parent company Comcast and the network’s relationship with other TV station owners. He has also called in the licenses for ABC’s eight network-owned TV stations for an early renewal, a move that could lead to their being revoked.

Trump’s conservative allies have urged the FCC to go ahead with denying the licenses . Some renewed that call Thursday after ABC and NBC said they wouldn’t carry Trump’s speech live.

“Pull it,” Steve Bannon, the senior White House chief strategist during part of Trump’s first term, said on his podcast Thursday. “Let’s see what tough guys they are when you do that.”

Trump’s latest threats came during a primetime address in which he aired long-running claims that U.S. elections are vulnerable to fraud and foreign tampering.

Networks have generally had discretion over whether to air a president’s remarks live and often declined to do so with presidents of both parties. Trump, however, accused the “fake news” networks of skipping the coverage “because of the fact that they don’t like the topic, because they know how corrupt our system is and they don’t want to reveal it.”

“They and others in the media are part of a plot. They want to continue this fraud for whatever reason — they want to keep it going, they want to protect the radical left,” Trump declared.

While the FCC doesn’t license the networks themselves, both ABC and NBC own licensed TV stations that could be at risk.

NBC declined to comment, and ABC didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a veteran public interest lawyer, said it would be legally risky for Carr to directly inject Trump’s complaint into the proceedings.

“The obvious legal and constitutional questions that are raised if Brendan Carr does something because the president said so in a public speech raises all sorts of First Amendment issues about viewpoint discrimination that would be insanely impossible to surmount,” Schwartzman said.

Carr, who has been an enthusiastic Trump supporter over the past year and a half, made it clear he was paying attention to Trump’s speech Thursday night.

Carr retweeted the White House’s livestream of the remarks, and shortly before they began, he wrote on social media , “News incoming” with TV and eyeball emojis.

The chair has also disavowed the idea that the FCC is an independent agency that should be free from White House direction, breaking from the tradition followed by Trump’s first-term FCC chair and agency leaders of both parties for decades. A Supreme Court ruling last month upheld Trump’s powers to fire leaders on these agencies, which many believe will erode their independence.

Democrats were quick to dismiss Trump’s latest calls.

“It is ridiculous to call for broadcasters to lose their license simply for making the same editorial decisions they’ve made under presidents of both parties,” Anna Gomez, the FCC’s lone Democratic commissioner, said in a statement Friday. “Those editorial decisions are protected by the First Amendment, and the FCC has no authority to punish a station for refusing to air a blatantly political speech. This is a naked attempt to bully broadcasters, and the FCC should have no part in it.”

Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce telecom subcommittee, voiced concern given Carr’s recent media investigations.

“Given Chairman Carr’s record of entertaining politically motivated complaints against broadcasters, President Trump’s threats to revoke broadcast licenses must be taken seriously and rejected,” Matsui told POLITICO. “Chairman Carr should make clear that he will not act on those threats or allow the FCC to be used as a weapon for political retribution.”

Carr’s spokespeople did not respond to a separate request for comment about Matsui’s statement. Carr has maintained he is applying the law impartially.

The FCC chief ignited bipartisan concern when he first hauled in Disney’s eight lucrative ABC TV stations for review this spring, years ahead of schedule. None were due to expire until 2028 at the earliest. He attributed the decision to a long-running diversity investigation, although critics questioned the timing , given Trump’s recent ire at hosts like Jimmy Kimmel.

The TV network has aggressively fought Carr’s probes and asked its viewers and community leaders to contact the agency voicing support for the company, resulting in tens of thousands of comments pouring in in recent weeks. While license revocation is on the table, it may be a long way off. ABC will have a chance to respond to the recent conservative petitions to deny its licenses by Aug. 5, and then Carr will have to decide whether to send the issue to an administrative hearing. Carr could decide to bring the NBC-owned station licenses in for early review, too.

Stuart Benjamin, co-director of the Center for Innovation Policy at Duke Law School, ultimately doubts courts would side with Carr if he attempts to go after the licenses, whether he injects Trump’s complaints into the proceedings or not.

“I would think the documents will go in as lawyerly a direction as he can, even though we’ll all know the real source of this,” Benjamin said. “And I think that a judge who reviews it won’t have much doubt about that.”