The Daily Blast: Trump’s Angry Tirade at Media Goes Haywire, Exposing a Dark MAGA Truth

I'm your host, Greg Sargent. Donald Trump is very angry with the news media for not treating his war against Iran as a series of world historical triumphs. So he's got his federal communications commission chairman, Brendan Carr out there, threatening to use government power against media companies to keep them in line.

Trump just let out a rambling tirade about this, hailing Carr's work and in effect praising him for undertaking grotesque abuses of power. Truthfully, Trump's whole authoritarian project would not be possible without underlings like Carr to help advance it for him.

“So what are the prospects for accountability for this sort of public misconduct later?”

We're talking about this with new Republic staff writer Matt Ford, who has a great new piece laying out what a real reckoning for Trump and his accomplices should look like after this is all over. Matt, great to have you on, man. Thanks for having me.

Okay, so this started when FCC chair Brendan Carr put out a tweet recently threatening broadcasters. He said they must course correct or potentially not get their broadcast licenses renewed. He insisted that the law dictates that they must operate in the public interest or lose their licenses.

This not coincidentally came right after Trump attacked the media coverage of his war. Matt, this is confusing, but it's really the local networks that have licenses. The big companies do have to worry about the locals losing licenses, but can you explain

“the basic legal case that Brendan Carr thinks he's making here and why it's so absurd?”

Sure, I mean, what he's arguing here is that he will use the FCC's power to regulate the airwaves, to block license renewals for broadcast stations. There's really no precedent for that in American history. It's certainly not for the sensorious nature of what he's calling for. But like you say, I mean, it's a common misconception that ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, the Bay actually

own these stations themselves, what they are instead are affiliates. And the stations are often known by other companies, like Sinclair companies, like next are they are the ones who own it and each of these licenses is held by an individual station. So a station in New York City has a different one than a station in Albany or Washington, DC or Boston.

So it would be a process to go by and revoke these licenses one by one. That's the bare mechanics.

We can get into the first amendment thing a bit later, but that's the structural thing

about words, it's not as simple as rolling up to ABC and saying, hey, you wear Jimmy Kimmel too many times, hand over your license in the law. There is a public interest clause, but that's sort of been interpreted expansively. I'm not aware of any cases where they've really dug into that where the FCC has really gone to the map to try and deny a license on the grounds that it would be against the public

interest. This is typically a much more performer process and for car, it would introduce a lot of regulatory and legal uncertainty into a thing that's been pretty normalized over the years. Well, I want to get into that in a bit about the public interest, but first let's listen

to Trump talk about Brendan Carr for a little bit.

I also want to thank FCC Chairman, Brendan Carr, perhaps the most powerful man in this

room. You are doing some job, he's trying to keep the fake news, trying to make the fake news real and respect it again, which is not an easy job, but you're doing a really amazing job. First time that's happened in 25 years so I congratulate you and everybody in the room.

Everybody in this whole country is watching what you're doing and we appreciate it. Matt, that's quite something everybody in this whole country supports government bullying of networks to turn them into propaganda outlets on Trump's behalf, according to Trump. But seriously, know how Trump says car is doing a great job. As far as I can tell, none of his threats have resulted in any real changes in coverage

or any licenses lost, have they?

“No, and I think we've seen that from the Jimmy Kimmel example.”

What he has as FCC chair is a powerful perch.

He can say things that get public attention and that draw a lot of scrutiny. But directly, he doesn't have much power to do anything with the flip of a switch. And the Jimmy Kimmel example is a great example of that for another reason.

He didn't sort of go down to the Walt Disney company and say, "Hey, yank this guy off the stations." The affiliates like Sinclair declined to broadcast it and they eventually relented a mid-public pressure and a lot of the backlash. So car can't really do what he's doing without the cooperation of the corporations that

control these stations on an individual level. So let's listen to a bit more of Trump on this. Here he's explaining why the news organizations are not operating in the public interest. We have to have a press that's respective.

“When you, when you can win an election, where they say that I got 94% bad press, I think”

with the other side, I got 94% good press. And they can get 94% and you win in a landslide. That means the press is not respected. People have no confidence in saying, "You're doing a fantastic job."

So that's really something first.

It isn't true that Trump was opposed by the media to the degree that he claims. And second, it's just a really insane way to determine whether the media is trusted or not. What do you make of that? I mean, it's legally and constitutionally gibberish. The media is not supposed to support the president.

Whether it imposes the president is up to the media, but this idea that that's the spectrum on which the media is judged is simply not true. The media is there to present information, especially the news media. And the first amendment protects that to a very significant degree, especially when the government tries to compel broadcast networks and broadcast affiliates to an opposite certain viewpoints.

So what Trump is arguing for here is something that really has no basis in America law or constitutional practice. It's unclear exactly what he's arguing for.

Is it basically bread and car needs to go out and yank the licenses of any affiliates of

“networks that don't engage in propaganda about my war? Is that what he's saying?”

It appears to be and, you know, it goes back to this mentality we've seen throughout Trump's second term where he's acting like he sort of owns the country now that all these institutions harvard TV networks, newspapers, everything under the sun is supposed to answer to him personally that he's in charge of it. Let's not really have a country work, even if you take an expansive view of presidential

powers, there's no reason that ABC or NBC or CBS should care what Trump says unless of course they do something defamatory, in case that he would probably lose. Well I think there's a paradox at work here as well, which is that Brendan Carr can't really accomplish anything real with his threats, yet at the same time the mere threats themselves constitute serious abuses of power. I mean, is Brendan Carr allowed by law to openly threaten

to revoke the licenses or to actually revoke the licenses of news organizations to punish

“them for not being sufficiently praised where the Trump is that allowed?”

You know, it's a tricky question because the first amendment case law that we have doesn't really imagine something like this, we don't really have many examples in modern American history especially of a president or his underlying sort of applying this pressure to media outlets in ways to violate the first amendment. But at the same time, I mean, every

indication is that the answer is no. The first amendment gives broadcasters broad latitude

to air programs that are political in nature, that are social in nature, that express certain viewpoints and certain opinions. The idea that the president can just order them or that the FCC even can just order them not to do that would run into severe legal trouble if it were ever tested in the court of law. And I think that goes back to what we were saying earlier, there's a reason that Carr isn't actually trying to put Penn to paper on any

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Use code DSR26 for 25% off discount on sign up at the DSR network.com. That's code in DSR26 at the DSR network.com/buy. Thank you and enjoy the show. Yes, that's a really fascinating dimension to it. It's the threats themselves in the public arena that are the thing. It's not the actual carrying them out, in any sense. I want to ask you about what the term public interest actually means in legal terms. Trump seems

to be openly conflating the public interest with what's good for Trump. Brendan Carr,

the chair of the FCC also seems to be conflating the public interest with what's good

for Trump. And yet the gray area arises because I guess Brendan Carr could say something like, "Okay, well, we won the election. Trump entrusted me with this position of authority. I'm determining what's in the public interest and what isn't." Right? I mean, isn't that the essence of it? What does serve the public interest actually mean in legal terms here?

Well, the FCC has traditionally used it in sort of a more classically civic sense. A local station is supposed to air things that are in the local interest. It's supposed to provide valuable information, it's supposed to provide useful programming, not simply defamatory information, not simply obscene or unlawful information. You know, things inciting eminent lawless action, things of that nature. It's supposed to be a civic good. It's supposed

to inform enlightened and enhance people's quality of life. That gets conflated in what they're talking about here where the public interest is Trump's interest. They treat Trump as some sort of omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent avatar of the public will because they won one election by a few percentage points. And as a result, they believe that every other institution in America and life must bow to him. They do not believe in

pluralism. They do not believe in multipolar democracy. They don't believe in the autonomy

“of civic institutions. And I think this really reflects that, which is ironic because, you”

know, the term comes from a desire to have a lot of different viewpoints out there. Right. The core point you're getting at is that Trump fundamentally differs from the constitutional model that you and I think is a good thing. Right. In the sense that we think having a lot of independent institutions out there and the push and pull and the tug of these institutions against each other and against power produces things that are better

than having everything controlled by one man. Trump does not think that Brendan Card does not think that. Isn't that the essence of the difference? Yeah, I would say so. I mean, I think the core theme of all American political philosophy is that power has to be divided. It can't

“be concentrated in one man or one institution. That's why we have three branches of government.”

That's why we have 50 states in a federal government, neither of whom enjoy absolute power

inherently trust any concentration of power with their public or private and our system of

government is designed to first all that. Well, let's just imagine that something like this

did go into core. Let's just say Brendan Card actually went ahead and started revoking the licenses of a bunch of the affiliates of a network that said something, you know, not perfect about Trump's war, right? So what it would then turn on is Brendan Card declaring that the public interest had been violated and that is that how the legal battle would unfold then? Well, I want to start off with a caveat that it would depend heavily on the facts of the specific case. I don't want to say

with absolute certainty. The courts would do one thing or another when they approach this. But I'll give a broad answer that I think will help. The Roberts Court has done a lot of things that have frustrated and aggravated liberals. I could go on for, you know, the rest of this podcast about all things they've done. And, you know, I have done that past podcast. One thing that the

Roberts Court has not done is really chip away or undermine at nation's first amendment legal

presence. Things that developed in the 1950s, the 1960s and the 1970s, under the war in court,

“that protect freedom of speech and expression as we probably know it today. I think that's important”

because if we have to assume that's going to be the baseline in future legal challenges that the Roberts Court will look at something and say, hey, you know, this would be violating the first amendments prohibition on, you know, viewpoint restrictions by the government. There are areas where the government can regulate speech, you know, if something is obscene, if it's eminently lawless or violent, but this wouldn't fall into those exceptions. And so as long as they maintain that framework,

I would be highly optimistic if I were a broadcaster and I was staring down the barrel of a legal threat from Trump's FCC. Brendan Carr really is abusing his powers by simply making these threats, even though he can't actually carry them out. Like he's perverting the law to try to bully news organizations into into functioning as propaganda outlets for Trump, essentially, or suppressing negative information about Trump, even though he can't actually win it in court. And that's a

serious abuse power. And Matt, one of the points he make in your great piece is that Trump's subordinates have helped him push the country towards fascism and oligarchy. It seems like what Carr is doing is a really good example of that, but we're kind of in the situation where he can abuse his powers this way, and just skirt running a foul of any laws himself, making accountability harder,

“is there any hope for accountability for someone like Brendan Carr? Well, I think that, you know,”

if there is, it will have to come from private actors, it will have to come from society's ability to shun and express its displeasure towards people who act in immoral and unconstitutional ways. Certainly, nothing that I've seen has been linked to any allegations of criminal activity.

You know, you never know this administration. I'll just say that I haven't seen any allegations

seriously made yet, but I think one area of the law where intervention might be justified is when it comes to antitrust regulation. One of the key mechanisms that the Trump administration has used to sort of support and bully favorable media outlets in its mind set places like Paramount, run by the elephants, and they also on now CBS News, they're trying to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery, places like Sim Claire, what they've tried to do is use their ability to approve or just

“approve mergers to steer them in a friendly direction. And that, that knife cuts both ways. I think”

that what you see, if the mergers completed by the time the next Democratic president takes over, I think that there is a strong chance there that you could see a challenge on antitrust grounds to combine Dellison Media Empire for controlling, you know, two of America's major film studios, a whole raft of broadcast networks, CNN, CBS, things like that. I think you can see a strong antitrust case made there. I know that they're currently seeking regulatory approval from the

Justice Department, the high-to-sig regulatory approval I believe in the European Union as well. So that's one grounds that can be used to sort of ensure that people who participated in

your big piece. I mean, what we're seeing here from Trump and Brendan Carr is like an urban

organization of the, of the, of the news media sort of a similar playbook that other dictators and authoritarians have used, in which they kind of leverage state power and whatever way they can to try and control whatever institution is in their sights at any moment. You did a sort of 3,000 foot view of how all the stuff is moving the country into fascism and oligarchy and talked about the ways Trump can be held accountable down the line. But it looks to me like the

“accomplices are not going to be held accountable and that's a pretty serious problem. Is it not?”

It is and I will say that it depends on the accomplice. If I were Greg Bavino or some of the other

people at CBP or ICE, if I was former secretary, Christy Nome, or if I was nominee, Mark Wayne Mullen,

who's about to take over that hornets nest as well, I would certainly worry about legal ramifications that could arise. You know, I think one thing that we have to note here is that because the presidential immunity decision, short of a sudden change in the Supreme Court's membership and perhaps size, that ruling isn't going away. So that won't be the primary vector for accountability in the next democratic administration. But as I pointed out, there are other ways to hold people accountable.

Democrats are set to take over the house and potentially the Senate after this year's midterms. Obviously, a lot can happen between now and then, but if you're a Democrat, you're probably pretty happy about what trajectory the polling impeachment is viable to. It's one that has a lot of power and a lot of promise, even if it doesn't secure a conviction. I think that car will be a natural target for oversight. I don't I will withhold judgment on impeachment. But certainly in

“impeachment, you know, we think about that mainly in the presidential sense, because that's what we're”

most familiar with, but you can impeach any federal official. Just to circle back to kind of where we started, Donald Trump is out there praising Brendan Carr for doing this fabulous job of keeping the media in line. And yet at the same time, Brendan Carr is actually not doing anything except

making a bunch of public threats that he never acts on, which may or may not be having some sort

of chilling effect, but certainly aren't having anything close to the effect that Trump would actually like. So, so here's the question that. Can I just say at one point, point there, I don't think we fully touch on this. But Brendan Carr isn't actually doing a good job of that at this moment. It's it's not like it's not like CNN and NBC are reporting that the Hormous Strait is open and gas prices are going down. And that Trump has won the greatest war in the history of wars,

and that Iran is a Jeffersonian democracy. They're not doing that. Brendan Carr hasn't managed

“to bully anyone into doing anything. And so I think that that underscores Trump's detachment of”

reality, but it also underscores, you know, I don't know how car sits there and here is somebody say that he's done all these great things that he hasn't done. On some level that has to create some sort of psychic fusion in him. You'd think. But I think that actually gets at the point I want to close on, which is Carr isn't actually having the impact Trump claims. And so it sort of seems like this is really about putting on a show for this weird kind of mega audience out there that

wants to think Trump is knocking the heads of institutions into each other and owning the lives in every way and crushing every enemy that's in this path, especially the news media, wants to believe that. But it isn't actually happening. So is this just a show for those people or is the fact that Brendan Carr is making these threats such an abuse of power in and of itself that this actually is kind of part of this drift into authoritarianism that we're talking about.

But, you know, we could spend another hour on the sort of interplay between Trumpism and reality. You know, in a lot of cases they are very, there are very real consequences to what Trumpism is doing. I think a siege of Minneapolis is the prime example of that. And in a lot of cases, they seem to just be making it up out of thin air. And I think a lot of this falls into the latter, but at the same time, just because it's not real doesn't mean it doesn't matter. It's deeply concerning to see

any public officials, people paid by our tax dollars, to act in our best interest, carrying out these wins and trying to enforce some sort of ideological vision upon the rest of the country through these broadcasts. Now, I think it is important to note that they don't seem to be

very disturbing and very scandalous. I couldn't agree more. You really captured the

“hall of mirrors atmosphere to all this. Folks, if you enjoy this discussion, make sure to check”

out Matt Ford's great piece. It's called, there will be no post-presidential piece for Donald Trump.

Matt, thanks for coming on, Matt. Great to talk to you. Thanks so much for having me.

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