Carr Tells Podcast Trump is Reshaping Media
FCC Chair Brendan Carr appeared on the “Pod Force One” podcast Wednesday, declaring that President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the media ecosystem. “And he’s doing it in ways people don’t understand. The core way he’s doing it is just rejecting the idea that legacy media gets to set the narrative,” Carr told host and New York Post columnist Miranda Devine. “For decades, politicians would just get bowled over by the questioning and narratives set by a small number of media gatekeepers, but President Trump was strong enough to push through that and take his message directly to the people… It’s sort of an emperor-has-no-clothes moment for legacy media because they can’t control the narrative.”
Under Carr, the FCC is threatening broadcasters’ licenses by enforcing the public interest standard for, in his words, “the first time in a while.” The nearly hour-long podcast delved into the national broadcast network programmers vs. local broadcast station owners, with the Chairman complaining that the networks have amassed so much power that they’ve effectively turned local stations into “mouthpieces for the foie gras, oftentimes that they’re producing in New York or Hollywood.” Foie gras. Not gas station sushi, which Carr once again repeated that Americans trust more than legacy media.
He touted Paramount Skydance’s commitment to “return to fact-based, objective reporting” as part of their merger agreement, adding that he expects to see more of that. “President Trump is succeeding in really reshaping the entire media ecosystem,” he said. “There’s more work to be done, but I think we’re heading in the right direction.”
Devine tried to get the FCC chief to reflect on his father Tom Carr’s career, which included representing Richard Nixon, but Carr quickly steered the conversation back to Trump. “President Trump has walked through so many different things and come out the other side because he’s been tough, because he’s never given up, because he’s kept fighting,” Carr said. He repeatedly praised the president during the nearly hour-long interview, calling him “the alpha in every single realm.”
As for what happens if the Dems take back the White House in 2028, Carr said he refuses to subscribe to the theory that he can’t use the gavel because of what the other side will do when in power. He sees his job as applying the law as written by Congress. “We don’t need to weaponize the gavel when we get it, but let’s apply it,” he said. “Let’s remind people about the public interest standard, about broadcast hoax, about news distortion. And you have to remember that Democrats absolutely weaponized agencies, including the FCC, under the Biden years. I don’t mean to break news here, but they’re going to do it again.”
He pointed to DEI rules under the previous administration as an example, highlighting how the FCC has been unwinding those. He applauded Verizon, T-Mobile, AT&T, Charter and Cox for ending “their forms of invidious discrimination,” and said the Commission is investigating Disney’s DEI practices, warning that it “could get bad” for the company, depending on what the facts show. “There’s evidence that suggests that they were creating internal promotions, internal working groups, but again, siloing and dividing people based on race and gender. The evidence indicates, and there may be counter evidence out there, that you had promotion opportunities or you were judged on how much you were promoting people based on skin color. That’s something that is really invidious that I had thought as a country, we had stopped doing, you know, 60, 70, 80 years ago,” he said, adding that he’s glad companies are returning to a merit approach.