Trump Takes Action Against NBC Reporter
President Donald Trump has opened another front in his long-running battle with the news media, and this time NBC’s Kristen Welker and the Federal Communications Commission are right in the middle of it.
Trump went after the “Meet the Press” moderator Sunday after Welker described his record of candidate endorsements in Republican primaries as having produced “mixed results.” That apparently hit a nerve.
Writing on Truth Social, Trump called Welker the “unpopular ‘hostess’ of the once great Meet the Press” and disputed her description of his endorsement record. According to Trump, candidates receiving his backing have won somewhere between 98 percent and 100 percent of the time.
But he didn’t stop at complaining about the coverage.
Trump said that “because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.”
Yes, punishment.
And that is where what could have been another Sunday morning argument over political statistics became a much more serious dispute about presidential power, federal regulators and the press.
Welker made the remarks while speaking to a local NBC affiliate earlier Sunday. She predicted that Trump would “loom large over these midterms” before turning to his endorsement record.
“He had some mixed results,” Welker said, while noting that his recent endorsement of Senator Darline Graham had been successful in her primary contest.
Trump rejected that characterization outright.
“Unfortunately, she is not the only one,” he wrote. “The Radical Left News is going out of their way to harass, demean, and libel anything ‘TRUMP.’”
NBC quickly came to Welker’s defense. An NBC News spokesperson, speaking anonymously to AFP, called her “one of the best in the business” and said the network stands behind her.
Now, stay with me, because the numbers are part of this story.
Trump’s endorsements have generally been valuable to Republicans seeking statewide office. But they have not produced a perfect record. According to a Ballotpedia tally cited in the source material, at least 10 Trump-backed candidates have lost during the current election cycle. That group includes four candidates for the U.S. House and six gubernatorial candidates, including Mike Lindell in Minnesota.
So there is a factual dispute over how Trump’s endorsement record should be characterized. But there is another question sitting on top of it: What exactly can the FCC do about a journalist saying something the president considers inaccurate?
The FCC regulates interstate and international communications and oversees licenses associated with television and radio broadcasting. Trump specifically called upon FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to get involved.
“I hope that Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously,” Trump wrote.