In his latest attack on the media, former President Donald Trump called ABC anchors’ fact-checking “unfair” and said the network should lose its broadcast license.
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Former President Donald Trump called ABC “dishonest” for the way its moderators conducted Tuesday night’s presidential debate and said ABC should be punished.
During an appearance on “Fox & Friends” Wednesday morning, Trump said the “unfair debate” was “a set-up” and suggested that ABC anchors Linsey Davis and David Muir were only fact-checking him, essentially taking the side of Vice President Kamala Harris.
“It was three against one,” he said.
After the debate, Trump had already complained on his social media portal Truth Social that the moderators had been biased against him and had turned the contest into a “three against one.”
Harris was ahead of Trump in most polls, but the former president said polls showed his campaign winning by an “80 to 20” margin. Still, Trump said Thursday he would not debate Harris again.
Trump continued to tell ABC on the show “Fox and Friends”: “To be honest, it’s a news organization that needs a license. For the way they’ve done it, they should revoke their license.”
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This is not the first time Trump has threatened television networks, although ABC is often the target of his attacks, noted media reporter Dominick Mastrangelo of the news site The Hill.
Earlier this year, Trump said of CNN and NBC, “Frankly, they should have their licenses or whatever they’ve been stripped of,” when the networks decided not to broadcast his live address after winning the Iowa caucuses, wrote Steve Benen, editor of the MaddowBlog on MSNBC.com.
Benen also noted that as president in 2017, Trump wrote on social media: “Given all the fake news coming out of NBC and the networks, when is it appropriate to challenge their license? Bad for the country!” Those comments came after NBC reported that Trump wanted to increase the U.S. nuclear arsenal.
Last year, Trump posted on Truth Social that Comcast, the parent company of NBC and MSNBC, should be investigated because the networks’ “endless coverage of the now completely debunked hoax known as Russia, Russia, Russia and much more is one big campaign contribution to the Radical Left Democratic Party.”
CBS was also Trump’s target on Truth Social for a “60 Minutes” interview with President Biden in October 2023. “Why should CBS get free public airtime for this highly partisan ‘show,'” he posted.
Trump’s attacks should be cause for concern because cracking down on the free press is a “central and radical part” of his “authoritarian vision and agenda,” Benen wrote.
FCC Chairman: Authority will not revoke licenses if candidate ‘does not like content’
The Federal Communications Commission does not grant licenses to major broadcast networks like ABC, but it does to some local stations, Mastrangelo said. The stations were originally given fixed channels, but over the decades they were sold and exchanged for digital channels.
FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel told the Washington Post in a statement that the agency “does not simply revoke broadcasters’ licenses because a political candidate disagrees or dislikes their content or coverage.”
Still, political observers warned that Trump’s attacks on media companies could lead to violence against journalists, Mastrangelo said.
“The entire media – and anyone who cares about free speech – should take this as a warning about what could happen in a second Trump term,” The New Republic said.
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