After ABC and NBC declined to carry his July 16 primetime election address on their broadcast networks, limiting it to their streaming platforms while CBS, Fox, and the CW aired it, Trump called the decision “fraud” and said it should cost the networks their broadcast licenses.
The sole Democrat on the Federal Communications Commission said the demand is unconstitutional. The president has no authority to compel any outlet to air his speech, and the First Amendment forbids punishing one for declining. The threat also fails on its own mechanics: ABC and NBC do not hold broadcast licenses; their local affiliates do, and most affiliates are owned by companies other than the networks.
What makes the threat more than bluster is the machinery behind it. This tracker documents FCC Chair Brendan Carr threatening broadcasters over content, the Disney license review after a Kimmel joke, the Paramount merger approved by commissioners who then accepted the company's gala hospitality, and Trump's prior demands that the FCC act against unfavorable coverage. A president demanding license revocation as retribution for editorial judgment, to an agency whose chair has shown willingness to oblige, is a press-freedom threat with an enforcement arm attached (see Trump's Primetime Address Claims China and the 'Deep State' Rigged 2020. His Own Declassified Documents Show Russia Was the One Helping Him, Trump's FCC Chairman Demands 'Pro-America Programming,' Declares 'Fake News' Loses Legal Protections, and Moves to Eliminate Media Ownership Caps, The FCC Orders Early License Reviews of All Disney TV Stations Days After Trump Demanded Kimmel Be Fired for a Melania Joke and The FCC Commissioner Who Cast the Deciding Vote for Paramount's Merger Took $12,000 in Gala Tickets From Paramount; the Chair Sat in Its $125,000 Skybox).
The chair then made the threat concrete. On July 22, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr confirmed that ABC's decision not to air the speech live would factor into the agency's ongoing early review of eight Disney-owned ABC station licenses, in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Fresno, San Francisco, Raleigh-Durham, Houston, and Philadelphia. “When you have the president of the United States standing inside the White House delivering an important speech, I think that's something that broadcasters should be carrying,” Carr said. FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez called it pressure on protected editorial choices. A federal regulator openly weighing a broadcaster's licenses against its decision not to air the president is the retribution Trump demanded, now moving through the machinery of the FCC.