President Donald Trump said NBC’s Kristen Welker “will be reported” to the Federal Communications Commission for “rebuke or punishment” after she reported that the president has had mixed results with his endorsements in races this cycle.
Welker, the host of NBC’s “Meet the Press,” said in a pretaped segment before her Sunday show that the candidates the president has backed have had varying levels of success.
“How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves?” Trump said on Truth Social, arguing that he has a “99% SUCCESS Rate” with endorsements. “Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment. Unfortunately, she is not the only one. The Radical Left News is going out of their way to harass, demean, and libel anything ‘TRUMP.’”
Trump added that he would like FCC Chair Brendan Carr and other commissioners to take the “Threat to our Country very seriously.”
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The FCC controls licenses for public airwaves, but has no authority over individual journalists or non-broadcast news outlets.
In a subsequent post, Trump lashed out at “fake polls” and said the FCC should investigate. “THE FAKE POLLS USED BY OUR CROOKED MEDIA ARE OUT OF CONTROL, AND SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT. FCC TO THE RESCUE!” he wrote.
NBC, which wrote this month about Trump’s endorsement record, defended Welker.
“Kristen is one of the best in the business and we stand by her,” an NBC spokesperson wrote in a statement to NOTUS.
Welker and Trump have sparred before, with the president walking out of an interview with the host after a tense exchange over Trump’s claims that the 2020 election was rigged. It is also not the first time Trump has threatened the media — last summer, he suggested major broadcast networks should be fined or taken off the air for what he deemed to be unfavorable coverage of Republicans.
Carr has followed Trump’s directive to go after media organizations as well, ordering ABC’s parent company Disney to file for early renewal of its licenses; the company sued this month, accusing the FCC of political retaliation. Carr also issued a warning to broadcasters over their coverage of the Iran war for news coverage he deemed to be “fake.”
In the past year, the president and his team have attacked numerous female journalists, including CNN’s Kaitlan Collins and Kristen Holmes, Fox News’ Shannon Bream and The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman. Back in November, when Bloomberg’s Catherine Lucey asked the president about the Epstein files, he told her to be “quiet, piggy.”
This story has been updated with a statement from NBC.
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