FCC chairman Brendan Carr raged at Comcast Wednesday evening and asserted it was guilty of “news distortion” because its cable news channel MSNBC didn’t carry a White House press briefing that featured the administration continuing to defend its decision to wrongfully deport a Maryland man.
Donald Trump’s hand-picked FCC commissioner’s suggestion that the NBC parent may have violated its broadcasting licenses over the way its networks covered the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia piggybacked on the White House calling CNN and MSNBC “shameful” for declining to air the presser.
This is also just the latest example of Carr and the Trump administration attacking media outlets over their editorial direction while threatening them with investigations and punishment.
“Comcast outlets spent days misleading the American public—implying that Abrego Garcia was merely a law abiding U.S. citizen, just a regular ‘Maryland man.’ When the truth comes out, they ignore it,” Carr tweeted on Wednesday night.
“Comcast knows that federal law requires its licensed operations to serve the public interest. News distortion doesn’t cut it,” he continued. “Abrego Garcia came to America illegally from El Salvador, was validated as a member of the violent MS13 gang—a transnational criminal organization—and was denied bond by an immigration court for failure to show he would not pose a danger to others.”
Carr concluded by wondering why Comcast was ignoring “these facts of obvious public interest.”
His remarks were in reaction to White House communications director Steven Cheung blasting cable news channels for not airing Wednesday’s press briefing, which featured the mother of a woman murdered by a Salvadoran gang member to blunt criticism of the administration defying a court order to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return.
“SHAMEFUL that @CNN and @MSNBC refuses to take Angel Mom Patty Morin as she recounts the terrible tragedy of how an illegal killed her sweet daughter, Rachel,” Cheung fumed.
Throughout the briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt bashed the mainstream media and Democrats for describing Abrego Garcia as a “Maryland father” while repeating the administration’s largely unsupported claim that he is an “MS-13 gang member and foreign terrorist.”
She also explicitly took a swipe at Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) for traveling to El Salvador to try to obtain information on the status and welfare of Abrego Garcia, who is currently locked up in the country’s notorious CECOT megaprison after the administration admittedly shipped him there – without due process – because of an “administrative error.”
“Nothing will change the fact that Abrego Garcia will never be a Maryland father. He will never live in the United States of America again,” the press secretary exclaimed while simultaneously misstating the Supreme Court’s ruling that the administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release and return.
“It's appalling and sad that Senator Van Hollen and the Democrats applauding his trip to El Salvador today are incapable of having any shred of common sense or empathy for their own constituents and our citizens,” Leavitt continued.
While the administration refuses to seek Abrego Garcia’s return and publicly accuses him of being an MS-13 “leader” and member of a “foreign terrorist organization” who is “involved in human trafficking,” the government’s attorneys have yet to make these claims in court and they haven’t been supported by any evidence presented.
Carr’s direct attack on Comcast comes a day after Trump ripped into the media giant and its chairman Brian Roberts, claiming that the company was spinning off MSNBC and its cable assets because it was worried the network’s news coverage would bring legal action.
“Wow! Fake News MSNBC has REALLY BAD RATINGS, in fact, not much better than the broken broadcasting disaster known as CNN. Comcast, which also has the ailing network known as NBC, is trying to stay away from lawsuits by disassociating NBC from MSNBC, but it won’t work,” Trump posted on Truth Social. “Comcast, the owner of both, and it’s Chairman, Brian Roberts, are a disgrace to the integrity of Broadcasting!!!”
The president has ramped up his media attacks since returning to the White House, and has enlisted Carr as something of an attack dog in his mission to seek retribution against news organizations he feels have unfairly covered him.
Earlier this week, for instance, Trump once again called for CBS to lose its license because he was upset about two segments aired on 60 Minutes, warning that the network would “pay a big price” for the broadcast. Trump, of course, is also suing the network for $20 billion over his allegations that 60 Minutes engaged in election interference for its “deceitful editing” of a Kamala Harris interview, a case that most legal experts feel is meritless. Still, due to a pending merger between CBS parent company Paramount and Skydance, a settlement with the president is in discussion.
Carr has also ordered a probe into Comcast over its diversity, equity and inclusion programs. “I want to ensure that your companies are not promoting invidious forms of discrimination in violation of FCC regulations and civil rights laws,” Carr said in a letter in February.
Meanwhile, as Deadline reported this week, “cable networks like MSNBC are ‘outside of the FCC’s jurisdiction with respect to news distortion’” and NBC News – which does fall under the FCC’s authority – led its Nightly News broadcast with Leavitt’s claims that Abrego Garcia is an MS-13 member, along with his family’s denials. Additionally, the FCC, by its own admission, has a very “narrow” authority over news content.
As far as this latest attack by Carr, media journalist Oliver Darcy noted that “it’s just one more example of how the Trump administration is weaponizing their powers to bully critics. That’s not free speech; it’s an attempt at censorship.”
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