This is no longer just Trump attacking the press.
On August 30, after NBC’s Kristen Welker said his midterm endorsements had produced “some mixed results,” Trump said she would be reported to the FCC for “rebuke or punishment.”
Then he invoked FCC Chair Brendan Carr by name and later posted:
“FCC TO THE RESCUE!”
That is the signal.
The FCC is a federal regulator. It is not supposed to function as the president’s personal enforcement arm against journalists whose coverage irritates him.
And this fits the pattern we have been watching:
DHS: Trump’s image beneath “DID YOU REMAIN LOYAL?”
Education Department: campaign-style Trump hype content on an official government account.
Now Trump: explicitly calling on a federal regulator to punish a journalist over unfavorable political coverage.
The progression matters:
Government agencies glorify the leader.
Loyalty language enters official messaging.
Institutions that resist are described as obstructive.
Now regulatory power is publicly summoned against a critic.
Trump has always attacked journalists.
What is different is the increasingly explicit effort to connect those personal grievances to the coercive power of the state.
That is where this stops being merely ugly political rhetoric and becomes an institutional warning.
The leftist press is beyond personally irritating to Trump. These are longstanding coordinated attacks on the founding principles of the American nation. Kristen Welker is free to spew whatever fake news comes to mind in any private publication. She is not entitled to use public infrastructure to do so. This is how it's always worked.
The state right now is only being coercive to people who are themselves coercive, and are jealous of state power. They would have exploited it to the fullest extent and in a manner much harsher and capricious if they had won the election.
Ok, Putin. You just made my point.
What's the point? Sucks to lose?
No. The point is you just argued that winning gives you the right to use state power against dissenters.
Not the right, just the ability. Who's idea was it to put the goverrnment in charge of television?
Look at it this way,
That's the same thing. You can't have one without the other. If you create a federal agency that has some level of authority over things, then you have given the ruling party a political weapon. It's not suddenly being weaponized now. This is what the FCC was designed to do. It's inherent in the nature of federal regulators to serve the state. And in a democracy, if I win, that means my guy.
Exactly. Chief Enabler Roberts helped constitutionalize that “ability” you speak of: official presidential acts can be immune from criminal prosecution. And in the ballroom case Roberts himself wrote, “That construction is likely unlawful,” yet it continues. Now Trump wants the FCC to punish unfavorable journalism; if the FCC does that, it runs straight into 47 U.S.C. §326, which bars FCC censorship and interference with broadcast free speech. “My guy won” is: my guy is above the law.
This isn't censorship of unfavorable opinions. The FCC would be acting well within established law by cracking down on deliberate news distortion on limited, state-regulated airwaves.
The ballroom has to be understood in the context of foreign-backed enemies of the nation mindlessly obstructing upgrades to security for the sole purpose of making it easier to kill the president and allied visitors.
my ass. She said “mixed results.” Ten Trump-endorsed candidates had already lost primaries—including one to a guy who’d dropped out. Trump’s approval: 33%.
I agree, Trump is a s****y president
Maybe the FCC just needs a Yelp page so presidents can leave one-star reviews like everybody else.