The Federal Communications Commission under the Trump administration has sought to target news organizations for spreading “fake” news.
Published August 30, 2026
President Donald Trump has announced that he will report a prominent NBC television journalist to the federal agency responsible for regulating broadcast news organizations for “reprimand or punishment.”
In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, President Trump took issue with Kristen Welker’s description of her support for candidates in the November primary as “mixed results.”
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“How can someone who works for our freely given public airwaves be allowed to say things like this?” Trump wrote. He also posted a graph showing that 98 percent of the candidates he supported won the election, without saying where he got the data.
“Due to this intentional inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC,” the Federal Communications Commission said.
Welker moderated the 2020 presidential debate between Trump and former President Joe Biden and is currently the host of NBC’s weekly news show “Meet the Press.”
“Distorted network”
Welker’s one-on-one meeting with Trump in June ended in a heated exchange as he pressed the Republican president to continue claiming that Democrats rigged the 2020 presidential election, which Biden defeated Trump.
“Your election is skewed, and you’re skewed. Meet the Press is skewed, and ABC, CBS, and CNN are skewed. You’re one-sided, skewed networks,” Trump said just before removing his microphone and leaving the interview.
President Trump has long had a fractious relationship with these U.S. television news networks, and has increasingly threatened to use the FCC to target what he claims is fake news.
This month, Disney, the owner of ABC News, sued the FCC in “retaliation” for the network’s early licensing review of eight of its stations. ABC said the FCC is seeking “media industries that cannot freely report the news for fear of regulatory retaliation.”
The review followed a spat between the network and the FCC after President Trump and first lady Melania Trump asked the network to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over a joke he made about him.
President Trump has also filed multibillion-dollar civil lawsuits against news organizations for alleged defamation. Last year, he filed a $10 billion lawsuit against the BBC for allegedly unfairly editing footage of his speech shortly before his supporters stormed the Houses of Parliament on January 6, 2021, to appear as if he were calling for violence.
President Trump sued the New York Times for $15 billion and the Wall Street Journal for $10 billion for defamation over reporting on issues such as how he made his fortune and his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. A judge has dismissed the lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal. Trump filed suit against the New York Times again after a judge dismissed the original complaint against the Times last year.
Attempts to force reporters to reveal their sources
Trump’s warning also comes as his administration has taken the unusual step of using the courts to pressure journalists to turn over confidential sources for stories that have accused them of wrongdoing.
This month, The New York Times reported that in February, FBI agents showed up at the home of one of its reporters and delivered a subpoena asking him to cooperate in an investigation into an article that revealed how a secret U.S. Navy SEAL mission in North Korea opened fire on a North Korean boat.
In July, the U.S. Department of Justice also sought to subpoena three other reporters from the paper who reported on safety concerns about the president’s new Air Force One jet. Investigators had sought the journalists’ phone records, but dropped the request after a federal judge struck down the tactic in court as violating the First Amendment, which protects freedom of the press.
Journalists from the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post have also been subpoenaed in recent months for national security reporting for reporting on internal Pentagon warnings about the U.S.-Israel war on Iran.
Press freedom groups such as the Committee to Protect Journalists have criticized the Trump administration for targeting critical media outlets. In April, Reporters Without Borders announced that the United States had fallen to a “historic low” in its annual ranking of global press freedom, dropping from 57th to 64th in the world.
