How Trump’s FCC chair Brendan Carr is rattling media giants

Amid President Trump’s fusillades against the media, a recent strike stood out:

Trump-appointed Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr took aim this month at cable giant Comcast, which owns NBC and liberal-skewing MSNBC, in a message on X over the tilt of the news coverage on its TV channels.

Carr accused Comcast of twisting its reporting on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an immigrant who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Trump has alleged Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 gang member (which he denies) and the president’s lieutenants have defied a judge’s order to return him to the U.S., putting the administration increasingly at odds with federal courts.

“Comcast outlets spent days misleading the American public — implying that Abrego Garcia was merely a law abiding U.S. citizen, just a regular ‘Maryland man,’” Carr wrote in a recent post. “News distortion doesn’t cut it.”

Within days, a conservative legal group echoed Carr’s words in a petition asking the FCC, which governs broadcast licenses, to investigate whether coverage of Abrego Garcia on NBC, ABC and CBS distorted facts.

The case is yet another example of Carr’s dramatic transformation from a low-key communications policy wonk into one of Trump’s staunchest cultural warriors.

Since becoming FCC chairman in late January, Carr has repeatedly poked the corporate owners of ABC, CBS and NBC — networks the president dislikes. Last fall, Trump sued CBS over edits to a pre-election “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has demanded $20 billion, alleging the interview was doctored to make Harris look better. CBS should lose its licenses, Trump has said.

Carr opened an FCC inquiry into whether the “60 Minutes” edits rose to the level of news distortion.

President Trump in March.

(Andrew Harnik / Getty Images)

He ordered CBS to turn over raw footage of the Harris interview. CBS complied and outtakes showed Harris was quoted accurately, bolstering CBS’ account that it had not manipulated the interview. But the issue has roiled CBS owner Paramount Global and stalled the company’s proposed sale to David Ellison’s Skydance Media.

Last week, the chief of “60 Minutes” quit, citing corporate pressure that crushed his editorial independence.

Paramount, in a statement, said it considers the FCC review and Trump’s lawsuit as separate issues. The company declined further comment. The FCC and a Carr representative did not respond to interview requests.

Conservatives have said they believe major networks suffer from extreme liberal bias and an intolerance toward opposing points of view. That has harmed America and resulted in a plummeting public trust in national news outlets, they assert, adding that FCC intervention may be justified.

“The FCC over the last decade or so has walked away from enforcing [its] public interest obligations on broadcasters,” Carr said in a March interview with the D.C.-centric Punchbowl News. He wants to restore the agency’s teeth.

“If a broadcaster has a problem with that ... the FCC address is 45 L Street, Northeast,” Carr said. “They can give us their licenses back.”

Carr’s critics, however, said that dangling the FCC’s enforcement authority over broadcasters in the name of protecting free speech does just the opposite.

“Here’s the question for Brendan Carr: Are you now the person who’s deciding what news should cover and what it shouldn’t cover?” asked analyst and former FCC staff member Blair Levin. “Because I don’t see that in the law.”

Congress established the FCC in 1934 as an independent regulator of phone service and spectrum — airwaves used by broadcasters. The panel was meant to be bipartisan with three commissioners from the sitting president’s party and two from the opposition. (The fifth commissioner, a Trump nominee, is awaiting Senate confirmation.)

Commissioners have worked together this year on key issues, including curbing robocalls and promoting spectrum-sharing among satellite systems. Other issues are far more partisan.

The 46-year-old chairman has a strong conservative pedigree. He grew up in the Washington, D.C., area, where his late father worked as an attorney who specialized in white-collar crime and once represented President Nixon.

Carr graduated from Georgetown University, then earned his law degree at Catholic University, where he met his wife, Machalagh, who went on to serve as chief of staff for Kevin McCarthy when the California Republican was House speaker.

They are among D.C.‘s power couples. Earlier this year, she joined billionaire Peter Thiel’s data analytics firm, Palantir Technologies, as its head of global policy.

Brendan Carr boosted his profile two years ago by writing the FCC chapter in Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a second Trump term.

He devoted much of his 15 pages to his long-standing priorities, including “reining in Big Tech,” “promoting national security,” “unleashing economic prosperity” and “ensuring FCC accountability and good governance.”

There was no mention of news bias.

Instead, Carr stressed making electromagnetic spectrum available for commercial use through public auctions, a program that had largely stalled under President Biden. Carr wants to make it easier for low-Earth-orbiting satellites to deliver high-speed internet, a priority he shares with billionaire SpaceX founder Elon Musk to support the Starlink satellite fleet.

As FCC chairman, Carr has left no doubt he’s on Team Trump. He was part of a VIP delegation with Trump and Musk to watch a SpaceX rocket launch in Texas in November. He’s spent time at Mar-a-Lago, flown on Air Force One and, in a recent photo, he sported a walnut-size gold-colored lapel pin in the shape of Trump’s head.

Carr has advocated for Congress to slash funding for public radio and TV stations.

He made abolishing diversity, equity and inclusion programs his first task as chairman, sending strongly worded letters to Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger, Comcast Chairman Brian L. Roberts and Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg over their companies’ internal programs.

He opened investigations into the DEI initiatives of those companies. The companies declined to comment.

Carr has threatened to block mergers unless firms dismantle DEI initiatives. Verizon is seeking approval for its $9.6-billion purchase of Frontier Communications.

“He’s making these very powerful companies jump,” said Gigi Sohn, a former FCC lawyer and senior fellow at the Benton Institute for Broadband & Society. “They are hard-pressed to push back on the FCC for fear that the agency will punish them later on.”

As justification, Carr consistently points to the low tide of public trust. In a December letter to Disney’s Iger, Carr accused ABC of being part of the problem.

“More Americans trust gas station sushi than the legacy national media,” Carr wrote on X.

Hollywood Inc.

In Trump’s first week, FCC chair signals headaches ahead for media giants

The action by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr shines a spotlight on fears that President Trump will use his power to threaten media outlets that don’t support him.

Jan. 24, 2025

Carr hasn’t always been so politically strident.

Shortly after becoming a commissioner during Trump’s first term, Carr touted his time at the FCC under Republican and Democrat leadership. “These experiences have instilled in me an appreciation for the importance of bipartisan consensus and working toward common ground,” he told a House subcommittee in October 2017.

In early 2021, Carr denounced Democrats who called for Fox News to be dropped from cable bundles after the Jan. 6, 2021, violent insurrection at the Capitol.

“A newsroom’s decision about what stories to cover and how to frame them should be beyond the reach of any government official, not targeted by them,” Carr said in a statement at the time.

Carr has acknowledged “a pretty hard-charging” start to his FCC term. At a Free State Foundation conference this spring, Carr explained that was because chairmanships are typically fleeting. He said he wants to accomplish a great deal so he can leave with no regrets.

Some FCC watchers speculate that Carr will accelerate remaking the agency after the third Republican, Olivia Trusty, wins Senate confirmation. Another former chairman, Tom Wheeler, said he sees an artful strategy by Carr to create turbulence with little recourse.

“Brendan Carr is incredibly talented, very bright [and] politically savvy,” Wheeler said. “He’s using those skills deftly to avoid any judicial review.”

The FCC is supposed to operate independently and have great authority. In a recent editorial, Wheeler wrote Carr’s actions “appear designed to evade judicial review” because they were taken under his authority as chairman, but without a full commission vote.

“He is accomplishing [his objectives] by investigations, pronouncements and threats,” Wheeler said.

A group of Senate Democrats has introduced legislation to reaffirm the FCC’s role as an independent agency and forbid it from using its authority “to suppress certain viewpoints or intimidate broadcast licensees into aligning with any political agenda.”

But recent court rulings suggest that Carr’s power to “punish” Trump’s rivals could be limited. This month, an appeals court struck down a $57-million fine the previous FCC chair had imposed on AT&T, finding the FCC had overstepped.

Complaints about NBC’s coverage of the El Salvador immigrant, Abrego Garcia, don’t fit the legal definition of news distortion, said FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, a Democrat.

“It’s all part of the pattern of bullying and harassing in order to control and censor,” Gomez said. “What I’m hopeful is that the FCC will return to its core mission, because right now the actions that you’re seeing not only are contrary to the 1st Amendment but they also violate our statutes.”