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With his approval ratings tanking, the crucial midterm elections looming, and his war with Iran turning into a quagmire, Donald Trump has entered full freak-out mode.
It’s not hard to tell. Just look at what happened this week when he lashed out at Kristen Welker, the well-respected host of NBC’s Meet the Press, and one of the best-known journalists in the nation.
Welker observed recently that Trump – while having significant influence – has a “mixed record” on making successful endorsements this year. An innocuous statement, made in advance of the Sunday show during her analytical comments to a network affiliate station in Washington.
But not harmless in Trump’s opinion.
Furious, he called on the Federal Communications Commission to go after Welker, saying she “will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment”.
In fact, as the Hill newspaper reported this week, while Trump “boasts a 100 percent record in Senate Republican primary contests this election cycle, several of his high-profile gubernatorial picks have lost.”
That sounds like a mixed record, doesn’t it? Not to Trump, who called Welker’s comments “purposeful inaccuracy”.
“The Press is a Disgrace to our Nation, and I hope that Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously,” he wrote on Truth Social. He later added: “FCC to the rescue.”
The threat is absurd. It would seem even more so if Trump had not already been using the agency as a weapon in his long-running campaign against the reality-based press.
Carr is a partisan, fully devoted to Trump’s mission, and he has shown himself more than willing to do the bidding of the president who appointed him during this second presidential term.
The FCC is intended to be bipartisan and independent but under Trump, it has skewed heavily Maga – and clearly political.
Carr himself seems to embrace without embarrassment the role of Trump’s media attack dog. He has warned that he would use the FCC’s power to issue broadcast licenses to go after what he and his boss call “fake news”.
The skirmishes are widespread. ABC has sued the FCC, charging that the agency’s early review of eight local broadcast licenses violates the First Amendment.
The FCC is supposed to adhere to First Amendment restrictions in dealing with broadcast licenses or in any punitive measures at all. “While the FCC has the limited ability to revoke stations’ broadcast licenses, it has no done so in over 40 years and its powers do not include revoking licenses because of a disagreement over a viewpoint expressed on the station,” the Washington Post noted this week.
It’s no surprise that Trump has singled out Welker for this unwarranted attack. He has a long and shameful history of going after female journalists and seems to particularly relish criticizing female journalists of color. In his first term, his targets included Yamiche Alcindor, then of PBS, April Ryan of American Urban Radio, and Abby Phillip of CNN.
In one particularly vicious moment, he went after Welker herself during an interview earlier this year, saying: “You’re either crooked or you’re stupid.”
This new attack on Welker brings together some of his favorite techniques – trashing a Black female journalist, cracking down on free speech in apparent violation of First Amendment protections, and using what should be an independent government body (including, of course, the justice department) to carry out his retaliation efforts.
Although this new chapter is part of a well-established pattern, it feels especially desperate when seen in context.
In recent days, Trump’s efforts to control the media through threats and punishment have ramped up. The administration has barred reporters from three major news organizations from covering the G20 meetings, even as top journalists at Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper with a long history of independence, have been fired.
Trump’s reality has turned sour, so he certainly doesn’t want that reality reflected in the news media.
Threatening Kristin Welker – like so much of what he’s doing – is obvious over-reach.
If the the FCC does somehow attempt to punish her or her network, there’s a solid First Amendment case to be made in response. NBC, which has staunchly defended Welker, is likely to make it.
Welker did nothing wrong, not in terms of the facts and not in terms of her journalistic role.
As for Trump, his attacks against the mainstream media will continue.
Pointless and misguided as his media revenge tour is, it seems to be all he knows how to do.
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Margaret Sullivan is a Guardian US columnist writing on media, politics and culture
