Trump’s Media Pit Bull Is “Off the Leash”

Ever since Donald Trump bumped Brendan Carr up to chair of the Federal Communications Commission in November 2024 (after naming him a commissioner during his first term), Chairman Carr has attacked the country’s media, entertainment and even tech giants with a cool fury, threatening their business and, critics say, attempting to bully them into more favorable coverage of the President. Historically concerned with the sundry matters of broadcast licenses and station fines, the FCC hardly would seem like the centerpiece of a major media-suppression effort. Nor would a conservative former lawyer who has spent his entire adult life in DC—and who was so incensed by the Obama administration’s comparatively minor intervention on net neutrality that he railed against “government control over [Americans’] lives”—seem like the man to commandeer it. Yet Chairman Carr has done just that, reading signals from a media-bashing Donald Trump and mercilessly carrying out his will in ways even the President might not have called for.