There was a time in this country when the nightly news anchor was the most trusted voice in America. People over a certain age remember gathering around the television for Walter Cronkite or Peter Jennings – professionals who grasped a simple concept: your job is to report what happened, not to tell the audience how to feel about it. That era is dead and buried. Today’s network journalists have swapped objectivity for activism, and they wear their biases proudly while ducking behind the First Amendment the moment anyone dares to notice.
So what happens when a president – one who’s endured nearly a decade of relentless, one-sided coverage – decides to push back not just with words, but through the regulatory machinery of the federal government? It’s a question that deserves a serious, honest answer. Even from those of us who’ve watched the mainstream press wage open war on conservative values since 2016.
From Breitbart:
President Donald Trump on Sunday threatened a prominent NBC broadcast journalist with possible punishment by US media regulators as the Republican expressed disappointment with coverage of his candidate endorsements ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Trump took to his Truth Social platform to attack Kristen Welker as the “unpopular ‘hostess’ of the once great Meet the Press” talk show. He objected to her having said the president had had “mixed results” on his endorsement of political candidates in party primaries, insisting the races had gone his way 98 percent to 100 percent of the time.
A question of accuracy
Here’s what set the whole thing off. Welker, speaking on air, described Trump’s endorsement record as producing “mixed results” in Republican primaries. Trump fired back on Truth Social, claiming his candidates had won overwhelmingly, and announced he would report Welker to the FCC “for rebuke or punishment.”
So was Welker being straight with her audience? Ballotpedia’s tally shows at least 10 Trump-endorsed candidates lost this cycle – a group that includes House hopefuls, gubernatorial candidates, and yes, conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell in Minnesota. But here’s the part the press conveniently omits: if Trump endorsed hundreds of candidates and a handful lost, that’s not “mixed.” That’s dominant. A win rate north of 90 percent would earn standing ovations in any other context. Unless, of course, the person winning happens to be Donald Trump – in which case the media finds a way to spin gold into lead.
The frustration is legitimate. But the solution Trump proposed deserves honest scrutiny from his own side.
The FCC question
Trump called on FCC Chairman Brendan Carr to “take this Threat to our Country very seriously.” After years of what he calls “Radical Left News” working overtime to “harass, demean, and libel anything ‘TRUMP,'” the impulse to reach for every available weapon makes intuitive sense.
But this is where conservative conviction has to override conservative anger. A 2025 paper by the Yale Journal on Regulation confirmed what constitutional scholars have long maintained: the Supreme Court has held that federal law “does not grant the FCC the power to ban controversial speech.” And beyond the legal reality, there’s a principle at stake. The government muscular enough to punish NBC today is the government muscular enough to silence Fox News tomorrow. That’s not hypothetical. That’s how power works.
The conservative answer to dishonest journalism has always been more speech, not state-enforced compliance. Trump, to his enormous credit, has mastered that approach better than any politician alive. Truth Social, stadium rallies, a direct pipeline to tens of millions of voters – he’s made legacy media less relevant by the quarter. That’s the free market doing its job beautifully.
A decade of dishonesty
None of this lets the press off the hook. Not even close. The media’s anti-Trump crusade stretches back to 2016 – from the Russia collusion saga that devoured years of airtime to the deliberate distortion of his Charlottesville remarks. Every single time Trump pushes back, the headlines blare about “attacks on press freedom.” International outlets covering this very story ran with gems like “In Latest Attack On Press, Trump Demands Punishment.” Notice the framing: Trump is always the aggressor. The media is always the helpless victim. It would be laughable if it weren’t so predictable.
Americans see through it. Cratering network ratings tell that story more clearly than any endorsement scorecard.
The press absolutely retains its First Amendment protections. But rights carry obligations, and a free press that categorically refuses to be a fair press is hollowing itself out from the inside. The answer isn’t the FCC. It’s the remote control – and millions of Americans have already reached for it.
Key Takeaways
- Welker’s “mixed results” framing ignores Trump’s overwhelmingly successful endorsement record.
- The government’s use of the FCC to punish journalists sets a dangerous precedent for everyone.
- The media’s decade-long anti-Trump crusade has shattered its own credibility.
- Free-market accountability – not federal regulation – is the conservative answer to biased press.
