Abandoning All Pretense, Trump Threatens to Pull Licenses of TV Stations Simply for Criticizing Him

When the Trump administration intimidated ABC into briefly suspending Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night TV show in September, the supposed rationale was a comment made by Kimmel about Charlie Kirk. But Trump immediately pivoted to a wider complaint that it should be illegal for TV hosts to criticize him. Over the holidays, he repeated this, targeting Stephen Colbert.

CBS News reports on the case—while they are still allowed to:

President Trump said early Wednesday that TV broadcast licenses should be revoked if newscasts and late-night shows are almost entirely negative about him and the GOP.

“If Network NEWSCASTS, and their Late Night Shows, are almost 100% Negative to President Donald J. Trump, MAGA, and the Republican Party, shouldn’t their very valuable Broadcast Licenses be terminated? I say, YES!” Mr. Trump said in a post on Truth Social in the wee hours of the morning.

The post came minutes after the president criticized “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert. … “CBS should, ‘put him to sleep,’ NOW, it is the humanitarian thing to do!” …

The FCC is an agency that issues eight-year licenses to individual broadcast stations, many of which are owned and operated by television networks. Carr said during a Senate hearing earlier this month that it’s “not formally an independent agency.” Axios reported that during Carr’s testimony, the word “independent” was removed from the agency’s website.

The revocation of the independence of the FCC (and other regulatory agencies) means that any random statement by the president has to be taken as a serious threat to the freedom of speech of his targets. Notice also that he has dropped any fig leaf or rationalizations, openly declaring that he should enjoy special state protection against criticism.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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