Tuesday, April 18, 2023

Truth Or Consequences?

 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump suggested challenging licenses for NBC and other broadcast news networks following reports by NBC News that his secretary of state had called him a “moron” after a discussion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

“With all of the Fake News coming out of NBC and the Networks, at what point is it appropriate to challenge their License? Bad for country!” Trump, a Republican, wrote in a post on Twitter on Wednesday.

Trump and his supporters have repeatedly used the term “fake news” to cast doubt on media reports critical of his administration, often without providing any evidence to support their case that the reports were untrue.

Trump kept up his criticism of the media in an appearance with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, saying: “It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write.”

In a tweet late on Wednesday, Trump said: “Network news has become so partisan, distorted and fake that licenses must be challenged and, if appropriate, revoked. Not fair to public!”

Well, that's not the standard for licensure revocation.  And there's a more fundamental problem:

The Federal Communications Commission, an independent federal agency, does not license broadcast networks, but issues them to individual broadcast stations that are renewed on a staggered basis for eight-year periods.

Even re-elected President Trump wouldn't be able to tell the FCC what to do. 

The guy spent four years in the White House and he's still impervious to how government actually works. For example, the civil service are not his employees (and you can't ask employees their political preferences anyway): What he said is just sheer gibberish. This, on the other hand:
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