Trump announced on Truth Social that Kristen Welker will be reported to the FCC after she described his primary endorsement record as mixed results.
Page A11From§Eachthe supper edition — 30 August 2026
NY prosecutor told to dig dirt on Trump allies; Trump vows to report NBC anchor to FCC.
As it ran on the front
Every White House gets frustrated with an interview edit here and there. What matters is the process, and the process here is straightforward: if a network broadcasts something the President's team considers a purposeful inaccuracy, there is a regulatory body whose entire job is to look at exactly that question, and referring it there is not intimidation, it's using the system as designed. I want to be clear about that before anyone calls it retaliation. It is retaliation. I mean — it is the system responding to a grievance, which the system is built to do, regardless of who files it.
Now, on the other side of the ledger this week, there's a claim out of a state Attorney General's office that a prosecutor was directed to go looking for material on the President's associates. The administration's position is that political opponents using their offices to build files on the other side is exactly the kind of institutional overreach that erodes public trust, and that position doesn't change just because it's inconvenient that the same criticism applies to referring a news anchor to a federal regulator over how she asked a question. It's not the same thing. I recognize it sounds like the same thing. It is functionally the same thing. But intent matters, and I can tell you the intent on our side is accuracy, whereas the intent on their side is clearly political.…
…(cont) Here's what I'd ask people to focus on instead: neither of these is really about power, they're about standards. One office wants accurate broadcasts. Another office, allegedly, wanted opposition research. Only one of those is written into a federal charter. That's not a talking point, that's just — okay, it is a talking point, but it's also true, which is rarer than you'd think in this line of work.
So no, I don't think it's fair to call this a pattern of officials on every side reaching for the government's tools against their critics the moment those critics become inconvenient. I think it's two unrelated stories that happen to be running the same week, about the same instinct. Coincidence. That's my final answer, and I'm sticking to it, mostly.
“Doesn't matter which office is holding the badge — a state AG's shop, the FCC, whatever's handy — the move is always the same: use the government's own machinery on whoever's inconvenient that week. One office gets accused of digging up dirt, the other guy's threatening a news anchor's network license over an interview he didn't like. That's not law enforcement, that's leverage.”
“The FCC referral is about broadcast accuracy, full stop, that's a legitimate regulatory function, nothing to do with the interview content specifically — well, it's entirely about the interview content, I'll grant that, but accuracy matters, and if a network gets it wrong there should be a process, yes, a process, that's what I meant.”
The receipts
A former Brooklyn prosecutor in the state attorney general's office accused Letitia James of wasting taxpayer dollars on a personal vendetta.
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.