Donald Trump has battled mainstream news outlets since the beginning of his presidential campaign. Now that he sits in the White House, he’s only doubled down on his “fake news” accusations… and he just issued a warning that will make liberals lose their minds.
The president is claiming that NBC News blatantly made up a claim against him, and hinted that it might be time to start pulling the federal broadcast licenses that give the big media corporations their platform.
Early Wednesday morning, NBC published a report that stated that Trump “wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the U.S. nuclear arsenal” during a July meeting.
The network also claimed that based on that tense meeting, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared that Trump was a “moron” — a quote which both the president and Tillerson have denied.
Trump pushed back hard against NBC in his usual blunt fashion, and used Twitter to call out the network for what he says is blatantly false reporting.
“Fake NBC News made up a story that I wanted a ‘tenfold’ increase in our U.S. nuclear arsenal,” the president wrote. “Pure fiction, made up to demean. NBC = CNN!”
“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!”
“Challenge their license” no doubt referred to the FCC broadcast license that all over-the-air television stations must carry. The license regulates many technical aspects of a television signal, as well as holds the broadcaster to a list of requirements, including honest reporting.
“As public trustees, broadcasters may not intentionally distort the news. The FCC has stated publicly that ‘rigging or slanting the news is a most heinous act against the public interest,’” the federal agency explains in a statement on its website.
“The FCC may issue penalties for knowingly broadcasting false information.”
Ironically, the entire basis of Trump’s challenge to big broadcasters like NBC is based on one thing: Government over-regulation.
The same bloated, overreaching government that liberals — including NBC executives — constantly push is exactly what Trump is now using to make media think twice about their actions.
The reality is that a large and powerful FCC doesn’t make sense in the 21st century, where media is dispersed over thousands of channels and Internet streams. That federal agency is worn out and tired, but has been propped up by big-government addicts who want Washington to control everything.
Free speech shouldn’t be regulated and meddled with by bureaucrats — no matter what their politics are.
The more power we hand to a centralized government, the more control it has over our lives. This is exactly what Americans have seen on health care, business, and now media broadcasting.
Regardless of whether Trump’s suggestion is smart, it’s decades of big government and centralized power in the United States that allowed him to make it.
Liberals kept feeding a junkyard dog as it grew bigger and stronger… until one day it was the one that was in control. They wanted big government, and now it’s threatening to bite them.
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