President Trump’s latest rampage against “fake news” on Tuesday took aim at “dying” newspapers and magazines as well as a multitude of TV news operations.
“So much Fake News being put in dying magazines and newspapers,” Trump tweeted Tuesday. “Only place worse may be @NBCNews, @CBSNews, @ABC and @CNN. Fiction writers!”
Any increase in ObamaCare premiums is the fault of the Democrats for giving us a “product” that never had a chance of working.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 17, 2017
Trump rebuked NBC News last week in response to a report about him once saying he wanted to beef up the U.S. nuclear arsenal tenfold. “It’s frankly disgusting the way the press is able to write whatever they want to write,” he retorted.
Trump echoed similar disdain and also retaliatory threats on Twitter, suggesting last week to challenge or removal of broadcast licenses of news networks that he deemed “fake news.”
“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!” he tweeted last week. Experts were skeptical Trump even has the power to do this, as broadcast networks are handed out by the Federal Communications Commission to local TV stations and not nationwide ones like NBC.
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai affirmed his commitment to upholding the First Amendment on Tuesday and said the FCC will not revoke a broadcaster’s license based on content produced.
