Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr is a busy boy.
Newly puffed up over his extremely successful use of the government to silence speech the government doesn’t like, a thing that used to be seen as a textbook First Amendment violation, Carr is making the rounds to tell everyone his next moves.
Spoiler alert: His next moves suck.
Talking with conservative podcaster Scott Jennings on Thursday, Carr took aim at ABC’s “The View,” saying that it may not be a “bona fide” news program discussing current events. If it isn’t, it would be subject to the equal time rule. Under that law, if a broadcast station gives airtime to any federal, state, or local candidate, it must provide all other candidates for the same office the opportunity for equal airtime.
Bona fide news programs, however, are exempt from this requirement. That distinction is both sensible and necessary. News programs wouldn’t function super well if, mid-breaking news about an election, for example, the station also had to stop and check with every other candidate in the election and offer them the same amount of airtime.
“The View” is currently considered to be a news program, meaning it is exempt, but Carr doesn’t like that.
“I think it’s worthwhile to have the FCC look into whether ‘The View,’ and some of these other programs that you have, still qualify as bona fide news programs and therefore are exempt from the equal opportunity regime that Congress has put in place.”
It’s neat that the head of a major regulatory agency now is just emboldened to go after whatever strikes his—or his boss, President Donald Trump’s—fancy.
If Carr were able to strip the bona fide news program designation from “The View”—a thing which, regrettably, the FCC can do—it would force the show to offer equal time to howler monkey MAGA candidates any time the show allows non-unhinged candidates to appear.
Normally, we could be all smug about this and say that Carr probably doesn’t want to open this door, because it would likely end the exemption for talk shows generally, bringing all of those—including Fox News shows, natch—under the equal time rule. Moreover, it would likely also kill the exemption for talk radio, and conservative talk radio will not survive if every one of those shows that features conservative candidates were also required to offer equal time to liberal ones.
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But that smugness would depend on the laws operating normally these days, which is not the case. Sure, everyone could yell and scream and sue the Trump administration when Carr decides that only liberal programs have to feature conservatives and not the other way around, but what’s going to stop him? The Supreme Court? The Republican-controlled Congress? Come on.
Think of Carr as the Christopher Rufo of destroying our media ecosystem the way Rufo attacked our education system. Just as conservative activist Rufo literally told everyone that he was going to gin up a moral panic about “critical race theory” as a way to force academic institutions to do diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives for conservatives instead, Carr has made no secret that he’s doing exactly what you think he’s doing.
On Thursday, when he wasn’t targeting “The View” on Jennings’ podcast, he was over on CNBC boasting that “we’re not done yet.” And like every other person in this misbegotten administration, he’s over on X gloating.
This is absolute garbage behavior. It’s government via trolling and grievance. This was never going to stop with getting Stephen Colbert’s show cancelled. It was never going to stop with getting Jimmy Kimmel sidelined. It’s never going to stop until someone stops Carr and Trump.
