Re: Donald Trump running for President.
Posted: Wed Oct 11, 2017 12:33 pm
I can't make it through the 3+ years until the end of his term.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/us/p ... .html?_r=0
Trump Threatens NBC Over Nuclear Weapons Report
By PETER BAKER and CECILIA KANGOCT. 11, 2017
WASHINGTON — President Trump threatened on Wednesday to use the federal government’s power to license television airwaves to target NBC in response to a report by the network’s news division that he contemplated a dramatic increase in the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
In a story aired and posted online Wednesday morning, NBC reported that Mr. Trump said during a meeting last summer that he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, stunning some members of his national security team. It was after this meeting that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson reportedly said Mr. Trump was a “moron.”
Mr. Trump objected to the report in two messages on Twitter later Wednesday and threatened to use the authority of the federal government to retaliate.
He repeated his complaint later in the day when reporters arrived to cover his meeting with the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau. “It is frankly disgusting the press is able to write whatever it wants to write,” Mr. Trump said.
The comments immediately drew criticism that the president was using his office to undermine First Amendment guarantees of free speech and free press. And, in fact, the networks themselves — and their news departments — do not hold federal licenses, though individual affiliates do.
“Broadcast licenses are a public trust,” said Tom Wheeler, who until January was chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, appointed by President Barack Obama. “They’re not a political toy, which is what he’s trying to do here.”
In suggesting that a broadcast network’s license be targeted because of its coverage, Mr. Trump once again evoked the Watergate era when President Richard M. Nixon told advisers to make it difficult for The Washington Post to renew the F.C.C. license for a Florida television station it owned. A businessman with ties to Mr. Nixon filed paperwork to challenge The Post’s ownership of the station. The Justice Department under Mr. Nixon also filed antitrust charges against the three major television networks.
In Mr. Trump’s case, it may just be an idle threat, the sort of bluster that he has regularly used to keep news organizations and other individuals and institutions he perceives to be rivals off balance. Just a day earlier, he went on Twitter to suggest using federal tax law to punish the National Football League as part of his campaign against players who kneel during the national anthem, only to have a spokeswoman later say he was only making a point.
But Mr. Wheeler said it could also be taken as instruction by his supporters who could act on his behalf. “This sounds to me like another dog whistle for folks to file against the license renewals,” he said. “Clearly it would be a bridge too far for the Trump F.C.C. to move on their own initiative. But if some conservative groups were to take this as their marching orders, it would be an interesting situation to see what the Trump F.C.C. did.”
...
While its members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate, the F.C.C. is a separate agency mandated to act independently from the White House. Mr. Trump’s tweet suggested a potential misunderstanding of how television licenses work.
NBC, like ABC, CBS, Fox and CNN, are television networks that do not license spectrum. Therefore, there are no licenses held directly by networks that create programs, which are then pushed out to television stations to run over airwaves and into American homes.
But NBC’s parent company, Comcast, does own television stations that do license airwaves from the F.C.C., as do CBS and ABC’s parent company, Walt Disney. But the networks themselves, and NBC News in particular, do not license airwaves.
The president’s tweets stoked strong pushback from consumer groups that said the threat to NBC was clear.
“This is not just a huge issue from a First Amendment standpoint, it is at best a weird way to go at it and nonetheless very problematic,” said Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press, an advocacy group on communications issues before the F.C.C. “The message is clear, you don’t have to work hard to see how those words are chilling.”
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Mr. Trump’s threat was hardly the first time a president has sought to stifle the media. “Trump is following in one of our more sordid presidential traditions,” said John A. Farrell, author of “Richard Nixon: The Life.”
He noted that President John F. Kennedy pressured The New York Times to pull its reporter, David Halberstam, out of Vietnam because of his critical reporting on the war, and President Lyndon B. Johnson harassed Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, over the network’s reporting from that war zone.
The Nixon White House “carried the campaign against the press to considerable length,” Mr. Farrell said, including bugging reporters and infiltrating the press corps with dirty tricksters.
He cited a 1971 discussion, captured on Mr. Nixon’s secret tapes, in which Charles Colson tells the president that the threat of an antitrust suit “gives us one hell of a club” to hold over the networks. “Our game here is solely political,” Mr. Nixon replied. “As far as screwing them is concerned, I am very glad to do it.”