Why FCC Chair Brendan Carr Is a Dangerous Moron

Kara is joined by FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, Knight First Amendment Institute executive director Jameel Jaffer, and The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel to discuss FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s escalating campaign against media companies, broadcasters and speech President Trump dislikes. They discuss Carr’s threats against ABC/Disney, his attempts to revive old rules around “equal time” and “news distortion,” and the Trump administration's broader push to control federal agencies. They also explain how Carr's actions create a chilling effect on free speech, and why media companies must fight back. Plus: Why Nilay says Carr's actions towards broadcasters are a "test balloon" for future internet regulation. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kara Swisher?

  Why has he shifted like this? You and I both know he was not this way, not this

• 0:05Speaker 01

  way. He was a deregulatory Republican during Trump won.

• 0:08Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  And now he's a MAGA warrior. And I think he's, he's just like a political animal. I think he sees his lucrative podcast paid for by, you know, illegal supplements in the future, and that's going to be a great exit ramp for him.

• 0:31Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. My guests today are FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez, Jameel Jaffer, Executive Director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, and Neelai Patel, Editor-in-Chief of The Verge and host of the Decoder Podcast and The Vergecast. I gather them for a long-awaited episode about FCC Chairman Brendan Carr and his moronic behavior and his problematic actions. And they go hand in hand, just for people who don't know, specifically how he's weaponized the formerly-independent federal regulatory agency and turned it essentially into a propaganda arm of the Trump administration. This is not just my opinion. The stuff he has done is really egregious, and I wanted

• 1:16Kara Swisher?

  to talk about it. Earlier this week, the Legal Accountability Center, a bipartisan watchdog, filed complaints in Washington DC and Maryland against Carr and asked for an investigation stating that he, quote, "violated his ethical obligations as a licensed attorney." In response, Carr ever-moronically told Status News's Oliver Darcy, quote, "I'm going to keep doing my job, whatever activist groups like this think, notwithstanding, I'm just going to keep filing ahead," end quote. I don't even know what that means. And most things with Brendan Carr seem moronic, but actually, they're quite focused on quashing free speech for media companies who do not toe the Trump line. And so I really want to talk about

• 1:58Kara Swisher?

  it. Commissioner Gomez is the sole Democratic Commissioner at the FCC, and she's been an outspoken critic of Carr's attempts to pressure broadcasters for political purposes. Jamil Jaffer and the Knight Institute- have condemned, among other things, Carr's use of the FCC's public interest standard as a tool to target viewpoints the Trump administration disagrees with. Neelai Patel has been closely tracking Carr's moves since the early days of his appointment. He has a recurring segment on The Verge cast called Brendan Carr is a Dummy. Stay tuned through the credits to hear a Brendan inspired song from a fan. As I said, it's important to talk about this right now because this is an agency that's being used as a cudgel by the Trump administration as outlined in Project 2025.

• 2:42Kara Swisher?

  And the chapter that Brendan Carr wrote was about the FCC and now he's running it. Our expert question today comes from Adam Mockler, a YouTuber, podcast host and reporter at Midas Touch. Stick around.

• 3:08Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from The Guardian and their new show, Stateside, where journalists Kai Wright and Carter Sherman use the entire independent reporting resources of The Guardian to slow down the news and wrestle with the questions we all have about what is actually happening in the world. Join Kai and Carter three times a week as they utilize all the reporting resources The Guardian has across news, international coverage, climate, culture, wellness, and more. And The Guardian's not owned by a billionaire. They fearlessly report the facts without interference. Go to theguardian.com/stateside to learn more and listen wherever you get your podcasts or watch on YouTube. That's theguardian.com/stateside.

• 3:52Speaker 02

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• 4:23Speaker 03

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• 4:42Speaker 03

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• 5:01Kara Swisher?

  Commissioner Gomez, Jamil and Neelai, thanks for coming on ON. I appreciate it.

• 5:06Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  Thank you. Thanks for having us.

• 5:08Kara Swisher?

  This is a topic Neelai and I have been discussing a lot. I called Brendan Carr a moron and he calls him dumb, I believe.

• 5:15Speaker 01

  Yes, this is the, this is the biggest beef in tech media, I think, is whether he's a moron or a dummy.

• 5:19Kara Swisher?

  Right, exactly. We're having a beef about that. But actually, I want to get to a really substantive discussion of what's happening here because, you know, there have been FCC chairman who have been controversial, but this guy is sort of winning the prize. So I'd like you to pick the most egregious thing Carr has done so far and explain why it concerns you. We're going to get into more detail as we go. So maybe keep it higher level. Let's start with you, Commissioner Gomez, and then Jamil and Neelai.

• 5:44Speaker 06

  Well, again, thank you for having me here. Let me tell you that this is not just the FCC. Of course, we've seen that this is an administration-wide campaign of censorship and control is what I call it. And the FCC is one of the weapons that this administration uses because licensees want something out of the FCC. And so there's a lot of bullying that's happening. But the most egregious thing this FCC has done to date has been calling up the local licenses that Disney has for renewal. That is just a direct assault on the First Amendment. You know, there's nothing more important to a broadcaster than their license. It is their

• 6:25Speaker 06

  lifeblood. And this was directly meant to threaten Disney.

• 6:32Kara Swisher?

  Absolutely.

• 6:32Speaker 06

  Because it's not about the local stations, right? It's about, they don't like Jimmy Kimmel. They don't like The View. And

• 6:39Kara Swisher?

  Explain what the local, so people who don't understand, this is something that comes up every, and they're local. ABC has affiliates, correct? So explain that for people who don't understand.

• 6:49Speaker 06

  Yes, that's right. So There's hundreds of ABC affiliates throughout the country. Disney only owns itself and operates eight of them.

• 6:59Kara Swisher?

  Key markets and key, key big markets usually.

• 7:02Speaker 06

  Yes, they're, they're in very good markets. And so the FCC does not license the networks. The FCC only licenses the local broadcast stations because it licenses the airwaves over which these stations operate, their stations. And it is that, it is using that leverage to get at content that it doesn't like. And so the reason this is the most outrageous thing, and the FCC has done a lot against the First Amendment and to try to pressure companies into changing either what they broadcast, how they broadcast it, or even their diversity, equity and inclusion policies, which to me also have a First Amendment component to them. But the reason this is the most egregious is because it is so unprecedented.

• 7:47Speaker 06

  It is directly tied to content that they don't like and it's dangerous. All right, Jimmy.

• 7:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, I'm, I'm not actually sure how to choose between all these terrible things that Brendan Carr is doing. It's, it's like the opposite of having to choose between my children. But, you know, I actually think that one of the most outrageous features of this assault on free speech is that it's being conducted in the name of free speech. You know, when Brendan Carr tries to justify all of these actions against broadcasters and against media organizations more broadly, you know, he points to free speech. He says, you know, I'm doing this to ensure that Americans' voices are heard and that nobody is silenced.

• 8:33Speaker 05

  And that is really just an outrageous reversal or sort of funhouse mirror image of what's actually going on. You know, what Brendan Carr is engaged in is censorship. You know, he is chilling speech. He's suppressing speech directly. He's using government power to silence voices that are supposed to be, you know, free. Media organizations in the United States are supposed to get to decide within extremely broad parameters what kinds of news. They cover how they cover it, what kinds of commentary they offer, which voices they they platform. Like, all of those things are left to private individuals and organizations to decide. That's a, you know, that's a feature of the First Amendment.

• 9:15Speaker 05

  That's sort of the core idea of the First Amendment is that those things are for individuals and not the government.

• 9:21Kara Swisher?

  Right. And so he's using it saying there, there has to be equal voices. He was, he's doing, we'll get to the equal time rule in a second. Eli?

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Well, I certainly agree with Commissioner Gorniz that going after Disney in a particular way he's going after it. That company calling in the licenses early, which just hasn't been done in forever. That's by far the most egregious. But I, you know, we do a segment on on our show, The Vergecast, every week called Brendan Carr is a dummy. Because every week there's something and we can just pull it out of the ether. And what I would say, and what I'm trying to communicate to our audience is he's not a sophisticated actor. This is a blunt instrument. And actually, maybe it's because I'm not a member of the DC bar and I don't have to be polite. He's also a bad lawyer. Like, the way he's going about imposing chilling effects by pulling random words out of statutes, by inverting the idea of free speech, it's so stupid. Like, maybe that bothers me the most.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Like, you don't have to figure it out. You can just say, oh, he, the president doesn't like Jimmy Kimmel. The broadcast licenses have been pulled up for renewal. It's obvious what he's doing and trying to wrap it in the language of statutory interpretation or saying that the airwaves are meant for the public interest, or pretending that Tegna and Nextar are just small, local broadcasters who just need some help against the big bads.

• 10:38Kara Swisher?

  Explain who Tegna and Nextar are. They're two local.

• 10:40Speaker 01

  Tegna and Nextar are the owners of most of the local TV stations in the United States. And now they're merging. And in fact, they pushed their merger ahead, assuming they would get regulatory approval, that they had begun merging even before they were told to stop by the courts because they haven't actually gotten all the approvals. That is the level of quid pro quo we see in the Trump administration. So you just see Brendan is using the language that's meant to protect speech. He's using the language that, from a statutory perspective, is meant To slow down regulatory processes and make sure they're rigorous and correct. And instead, like a dummy, he's just pulling words and saying, oh, I can use these words and I can redefine them in order to attack speech the president doesn't like.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  And I don't think it matters what your political persuasion is. If you just care how it works, you look at that, you say, that's horrible. That means-

• 11:32Kara Swisher?

  Because a Democrat could do it, presumably a Democratic.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  A Democrat could do it. At this point, I sort of hope some Democrats start doing it so everybody understands how dangerous it is, right? A Democrat wielding the power of what's called unitary executive theory might be good for our country, right? If we get to that point, because I think everyone would understand, oh, our system is meant to have checks and balances. And Brendan, in particular, is an example of what happens when there are no checks and balances.

• 11:59Kara Swisher?

  Absolutely. So let's get to the news around this, The View and its network, ABC, and the parent company, Disney. And let's add Kimmel to that, because that's been, you know, an ongoing issue for President Trump, because he doesn't have a sense of humor. As we said, the FCC has been investigating The View for months, and it recently called for a review of the licenses of eight of Disney's ABC local stations years before they expire, as you noted, Commissioner Gomez. Now Disney's actually fighting back because Disney slash ABC, it's the owner of ABC, accusing the FCC of violating its free speech rights. Last week, Commissioner Gomez, you sent a letter to Disney CEO Josh Demoro, he's the new CEO, stating that ABC was a victim of, quote, "a sustained coordinated campaign of censorship and control by the Trump administration."

• 12:43Kara Swisher?

  Talk about why you sent the letter and what's the significance of the network's pushback? Because they had been relatively quiet under Bob Iger and had made some payoffs previously related to George Stephanopoulos, that was a different thing. But talk a little bit about why you sent the letter.

• 13:01Speaker 06

  Yes, so I have been calling out this administration for its First Amendment violations for quite some time now. But with this letter, I've taken the fight directly to these companies. And I'm sending a message directly to them, saying, you know, grow a spine, understand that the rules and the facts are in your favor. And I'm very happy to see that Disney appears to have grown a spine and is in fact pushing back because it does have the facts, the public, and the First Amendment behind it.

• 13:32Speaker 06

  And you know, Disney's filing with us was very interesting. And in fact, it was kind of shocking because if you read their filing, well, let's start with the fact that the filing is brilliantly written. It is really a legal brief in defense of the First Amendment. And it told us some shocking things that Disney claims in its response to the FCC's investigation into The View. The FCC apparently went to the other ABC stations in the market because the complaint is, on the investigation, is only against the ABC station.

• 14:04Kara Swisher?

  Mm-hmm.

• 14:05Speaker 06

  The FCC told them to file the paperwork on the candidate appearance, which was James Taylor-Rico.

• 14:10Kara Swisher?

  I'll get to that, yeah. Let me just see. For people to know, the FCC is looking into whether The View violated old federal rules requiring equal airtime to rival political candidates. Back in January, Carr issued guidance essentially reminding broadcasters, but the rule hadn't been enforced in decades. Let me play this clip of Brendan Carr in February talking about equal time and The View on Fox.

• 14:29Speaker 07

  Disney has a program called The View, and they've been asserting the position that The View is what's known as bona fide news in the statute. If you're bona fide news, you don't have to give candidates equal airtime. But Disney and The View have not established that that program is in fact bona fide news. We've started an enforcement proceeding, taken a look at that. And again, we're going to hold broadcasters accountable. The days that these legacy media broadcasters get to decide what we can say, what we can think, who we can vote for are over. And I think President Trump played a key role in just smashing the facade that they still get to decide the narrative.

• 15:04Kara Swisher?

  All right, continue, Commissioner Gomez. And then I want Neelai to weigh in on what he's attempting to do by enforcing the rule. Go ahead, Commissioner Gomez.

• 15:12Speaker 06

  So what the FCC did was it went to the affiliates that are not owned by ABC and told them, you need to file the paperwork on the James Taylor-Rico appearance. And apparently, according to Disney, told them they would not get in trouble for filing late because no one had filed that appearance. Then it turned around and it used the fact that those stations that it forced to file these appearances as evidence against Disney's station.

• 15:42Kara Swisher?

  Right, so it asked them to do it.

• 15:44Speaker 06

  It asked them to do it, and it did not reach out to Disney in the same way.

• 15:49Kara Swisher?

  Even though they have affiliates.

• 15:50Speaker 06

  If that's true.

• 15:50Kara Swisher?

  Right, owned and operated.

• 15:52Speaker 06

  Yeah, if that's true, to me, that's a setup. It's a form of entrapment. And that is also part of this outrageous actions that the FCC is taking against Disney.

• 16:03Kara Swisher?

  So, Neel, I break that down. What is he attempting to do by enforcing this rule? This is, this is, it is a news program. It interviews people, it talks about the news by any stretch of cable or anything else. It's a news program, but break it down. What's he attempting to do by enforcing the rule? And why is he wrong?

• 16:18Speaker 01

  I think he's attempting to impose speech controls on the rest of Disney's content.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  One of the reasons that I think this is so dumb is that it kind of doesn't matter if eight broadcast stations go away, that people aren't watching them. They're watching TikTok, they're watching Disney Plus. Brendan is using the statutory power he has over broadcast stations, which are important and matter to quite a few people, but they're not important to everyone. So he's using the power he has over the broadcast stations to pressure Disney into adjusting the content that it distributes over channels where the FCC has no authority, like Disney Plus, like YouTube, like the internet. And you can see the connection very clearly. This all started with NBC back during the election when Kamala Harris was on Saturday Night Live. Saturday Night Live is maybe the only program in America that actually understands the

• 17:06Speaker 01

  equal time rule, because they do have political figures on that show all the time, they have for years, and there's no chance they're going to get the news exception, right? They can't even pretend. So Kamala Harris showed up on Saturday Night Live, the right wing went crazy, Brendan started fulminating about it, but of course NBC had filed the paperwork. And I think that he's been looking for an excuse to do this ever since, so that the rest of the content, which he cannot regulate, somehow comes under his control. He will threaten your business, which is even in decline, which honestly, most young Americans do not care about.

• 17:39Speaker 01

  So that you can affect the business that maybe is in growth, that young Americans do care about.

• 17:45Kara Swisher?

  So Carr regularly invokes the FCC's news distortion policy and often brings it up as the agency's public interest standard. Here, he is speaking with right wing podcaster Benny Johnson last September, just hours before Jimmy Kimmel's temporary suspension from ABC.

• 18:00Speaker 07

  And they have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest. And we can get into some ways that we've been trying to reinvigorate the public interest and some changes that we've seen. But frankly, when you see stuff like this, I mean, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, to take action, frankly, on Kimmel, or, you know, there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.

• 18:28Kara Swisher?

  Okay, hard way or easy way, because he's such a scary figure. In a March post on X, Carr also threatened to deny or revoke broadcast licenses from broadcasters that are, quote, "running hoaxes and news distortions," also known as the fake news. This is a response to critical coverage of the Iran war that Trump disliked. Jamil, from a legal perspective, what is exactly news distortion? How does Carr attempting to use it as policy chill free speech? Because it's obvious, it's kind of a claudish attempt with claudish language, but it's pretty clear what he's trying to do.

• 19:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, so news distortion is supposed to be this very, you know, narrow rule that prohibits deliberate and material distortion of the news by media organizations, senior leadership. But this is a power that has not been used in generations.

• 19:17Kara Swisher?

  So it's distortion, meaning you're putting out what is actually fake news, correct?

• 19:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, one thing that's really important for people to understand is that, you know, the Supreme Court has sometimes suggested, sometimes said, that the government has broader authority to regulate broadcasters because broadcasters are relying on government-issued monopolies over spectrum. And there's a limited amount of spectrum, and so, you know, there's a certain amount of Prioritizing that the government has to do and they can prioritize with the public interest in mind. And that is a kind of framework that applies only to broadcasts and not to other, you know, on other media. But whatever, you know, and there's been this debate for a long time about what is the scope of the government's power to

• 20:06Speaker 05

  regulate broadcasters, you know, how does that differ from the scope of the government's power to regulate other forms of media? But whatever the answers to that question, I, I don't think there's, you know, any arguments at all that the government has the power, that the FCC has the power to regulate on the basis of viewpoint. The Supreme Court has never suggested that and to the contrary, even in cases like, there's a case called Red Lion from the 1970s, which upheld what was called the fairness doctrine. Even in that case, which is sort of the broadest articulation of the government's power to regulate broadcast. Even in that case, the court emphasized that the government doesn't have the authority to restrict speech on the basis of viewpoint, but that is precisely what Brendan Carr is engaged in on a, you know, almost daily basis.

• 20:52Kara Swisher?

  So every episode we get an ex, a question from an outside expert. Here's yours.

• 20:57Speaker 07

  Hey, Adam Mochler here with the expert question. I may not look like or be an expert on this topic, but I do run a political YouTube channel with a few million followers where we talk about American politics. So freedom of speech and the chilling effect on the press is something I oftentimes think about. My question to Commissioner Gomez, to Mr. Patel and Mr. Jaffar would be the following. Brendan Carr has built this entire career as this free speech warrior, but right when he got into power, he wielded it to try to revoke the broadcast licenses of a few large stations and shows, right? What is the actual mechanism by which he can enforce this? Is there an enforcement mechanism or is what they're going for more of a chilling effect on the speech of people?

• 21:38Speaker 07

  Sometimes I can't tell with this administration when they're just bullying people for a, you know, a chilling effect. Versus when they're actually trying to fundamentally change the system. Which one do you think it is in this case?

• 21:49Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think there are absolutely real sanctions associated with some of the threats that Brendan Carr and other administration officials are making. I mean, just to take one example, withholding approval for a merger can, you know, can have billion-dollar implications. And that's a very real sanction. Now, I wouldn't separate that from the chilling effect. The chilling effect is a result of the fact that at the end of this process, there might be a real sanction. But the chilling effect is much, much broader than, you know, goes much further than just the institutions who are, that are directly targeted. You know, when Brendan Carr targets, you know, Paramount or Skydance, you know, other media organizations are watching very carefully because they know that they could be next.

• 22:34Speaker 05

  And the chilling effect results in, you know, people deciding, you know, sometimes this is called anticipatory obedience, like even without the threat, people deciding, you know what, maybe it's better if we don't air Jimmy Kimmel or we don't air Stephen Colbert. And they just decided on their own without anybody needing to make the threat. And that's the real risk, I think, that we're getting into the situation where we're censoring ourselves.

• 22:56Kara Swisher?

  Right, all right. Commissioner Gomez?

• 22:58Speaker 06

  Yeah, I've been saying all along that it's the threats that are the point. Nobody wants to get dragged before the FCC in an investigation over the content of their broadcast. You know, I started a tour of the country where I go to local communities and I talk about the threats to the First Amendment from this administration. And I, every single stop, every single one, there's a broadcaster there that says, what am I allowed to say? And what I always say to them is, it is not my job to tell you that. My job is to ensure that you have the platform to give us a viewpoint. And we want diverse viewpoints. But this administration is pushing toward, in a lot of ways, including through these mergers, having one viewpoint that the public sees and hears.

• 23:42Speaker 06

  And that in and of itself is a First Amendment violation. It's a First Amendment violation of viewers and listeners not being able to see and hear the content of their choice.

• 23:51Kara Swisher?

  Right, and in that case, the sanctions are not, because then this- In this case, Disney's pushing back, right? And probably they'll win in court.

• 23:58Speaker 06

  They will absolutely win. And that's why I say the FCC is a paper tiger. Because if challenged, if this goes to court, the FCC will lose. Because the First Amendment prohibits us from censoring content. And the Communications Act, which is our authorizing vehicle, which I realize is kind of boring and wonky, specifically has a section that says you can't censor.

• 24:18Kara Swisher?

  And so they'll lose, but it'll take time for Disney to do so. And sometimes it's not a thing. Neil, I?

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Brendan Carr is not using magic word, like statutory interpretation to regulate broadcast because he really cares about broadcast. He's using this like bad lawyering dummy approach to the law to threaten Google, to threaten Verizon, right? These are the actual distribution points of the content people actually watch. And Google is a defense contractor, right? There's a lot of ways a unified Trump administration can threaten Google into changing the YouTube algorithm. And this stuff, which seems removed from most Americans, which is about television, most people aren't watching, which are our radio stations, most people aren't listening to. It is just a test balloon for, hey, how can we pressure Verizon or AT&T

• 25:08Speaker 01

  into throttling content we don't like on their networks? Into picking networks we do like and to making sure video on X loads more crisply and clearly than video on TikTok or whatever. Which is, if you recall, you know, 100 years ago, people were warriors for net neutrality because that was the biggest threat to free speech on the internet, that the carriers would pick and choose. So here we are, you have an FCC threatening media distribution platforms, broadcast television and radio stations with the power they have in a capricious way that may not survive legal challenge, but will certainly cost a lot of money. And the best choice might to just to cave. And Kara, you know this better than anyone. Our tech titans do not have spines. If they have to pick between lucrative

• 25:51Speaker 01

  defense contracts and throttling content on their platforms,

• 25:54Kara Swisher?

  Oh.

• 25:54Speaker 01

  what do you think they're going to pick?

• 25:55Kara Swisher?

  Oh, absolutely. No question.

• 25:57Speaker 06

  But this is why I sent the letter to Disney. Because Disney has, in fact, now shown courage. And Disney has stood up in the past for First Amendment rights and won. And I think that they need to get credit for that. And we need to encourage that kind of behavior because it is only through pushing back that we're going to make sure that this doesn't actually get any more legs.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Tara, what do you think of the new guy?

• 26:20Kara Swisher?

  Uh, I don't know him. I don't know. But I was pretty pleased that he did this. Like, I think he's, you know, about had it. I think they all see the end, I suppose. And so what's the difference? And at some point, you know, Brandon Carr is going to end up, you know, a contestant on Dancing with the Stars, I guess. And that'll be that. But I think it was a good first move. It was an indicator. That said, as you said, what they're really going for is something else. I do think, Commissioner Gomez, you're correct that they're a paper tiger, but they can still cause problems elsewhere, right? It's a message, even if they have no real power. But they do, and it's a messaging situation.

• 27:00Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 27:13Kara Swisher?

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• 29:30Kara Swisher?

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• 30:38Kara Swisher?

  Let's talk about this guy, about Brendan Carr's path to the FCC chairman and how the agency is changing. Carr began his career as a DC attorney at a firm representing telecom clients, including AT&T and Verizon. In 2012, he joined the FCC as a staff attorney. Former chairman Ajit Pai promoted Carr to be the agency's general counsel at the start of Trump's first term in 2017. And then, when he became that, he was quite thirsty to get on my podcast, I recall, and I didn't usually do individual, especially, I just didn't have them on very much. But compare the FCC of Trump's first term to the current one, and how did Carr evolve into what former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has described as an activist chairman?

• 31:19Kara Swisher?

  Because I recall he was somewhat of an irritant, but not really. He was sort of a, I don't know, a regular Republican, I suppose. Go ahead, Jamil.

• 31:29Speaker 05

  I mean, I guess, you know, part of what's happened is that the second Trump administration is very different from the first Trump administration, not just about Brendan Carr, right? Now, now we have this sort of all-government assault on free speech, again, in the name of free speech. And at the NIGC, we have this case where we're representing technology researchers who have been threatened with deportation because they are criticizing the major social media platforms' content moderation policies. And it's this crazy, crazy policy that the Trump administration has put in place, again, in the name of free speech. They want to deport these tech researchers for what they're saying in their research.

• 32:09Speaker 05

  But I think that that's kind of, that reflects the sort of larger philosophy that the Trump administration is trying to put in place across the board. It's not just the FCC. There's this effort to, there's this sense, I think, among MAGA types, or let me just say, the Trump administration at least, there's a sense that, you know, we are being silenced, our people are being silenced. And when they say silenced, what they really mean is, you know, other people are criticizing us, other people are disagreeing with us, and they are trying to shut all of that speech down. And that's what you see. With the FCC and the broadcasters, but you also see it with the Trump administration

• 32:50Speaker 05

  and legacy news media, you know, the Associated Press being expelled from the White House press pool or all of the newspapers.

• 32:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, the Federal Trade Commission's gone after content moderation and the advertising companies that refuse to put their clients' ads in certain

• 33:06Kara Swisher?

  Places they don't want to.

• 33:07Speaker 06

  Platforms.

• 33:08Kara Swisher?

  Can before any answers, can you explain how the commission works so people understand? Like, he came to the chairmanship and some chairman tried to get some sort of comedy between all of you and others don't, but explain how it works. You're the single Democrat, is that correct?

• 33:24Speaker 06

  Yes, normally there's five commissioners and there would be, there can't be more than three of the same party, so there would be two minority commissioners. But right now, we only have three commissioners, so we have two Republicans and me. And, you know, on a day-to-day basis, we actually

• 33:39Kara Swisher?

  And why is that, why aren't there a full five?

• 33:41Speaker 06

  Well, one Republican and one Democrat resigned last year and there has been no other, the way that it works is, of course, the president nominates the commissioners and the Senate confirms them. And there's been no nomination from this White House since. So we've been operating with a two-to-one, I'm the one, majority for the last year.

• 34:04Kara Swisher?

  And Neil, why has he shifted like this? You and I both know he was not this way, not this way.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  He was a deregulatory Republican during Trump one.

• 34:13Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  And now he's a MAGA warrior. And I think he's, he's just like a political animal. I think he sees his lucrative podcast paid for by, you know, illegal supplements in the future, and that's going to be a great exit ramp for him if he can be one of these characters and whatever comes next. The thing I'd point out is I've known a lot of various commissioners, the FCC, over the past 15 years running The Verge, and they're mostly, sorry, Commissioner Gomez, pretty technocratic.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Right, like, we're doing spectrum policy. We want to make sure Americans have cheaper, faster broadband, especially in rural places. And that's what they all talk about. And you have them on your podcast and no one listens, because it's pretty boring, which is why I think you didn't have Brendan on your podcast in the past. The shift here into content regulation, into saying, we're gonna go after the platforms who do content moderation in ways we don't like, and we're gonna go after broadcasters for speech they don't like, is all encompassing in the Trump administration. It is direct from Project 2025. Brendan Carr wrote the FCC chapter in Project 2025. Project 2025, taken as a whole, I don't know if anyone wants to rewind their brain, was not a coherent document. It was self contradictory

• 35:23Speaker 01

  in many places, but the one through line was, we will exert power over this nation, and we will make sure people say what we want them to say and punish them when they say what we don't want them to say.

• 35:33Kara Swisher?

  So for people who don't know, Carr wrote the chapter, as Neil said, on the FCC for the conservative policy agenda, Project 2025, which is, which Trump said he didn't know anything about, but seems to be following rather closely. He focused on, in his part, focused on reining in big tech, banning TikTok, and calling out what he viewed as censorship of conservatives on social media. So to what extent the policy goals he outlined have shifted, but they've shifted in some way, more so.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Again.

• 36:01Kara Swisher?

  You think he's doing it the back door to get to social media?

• 36:04Speaker 01

  I think we're running test balloons, using the power that's there to regulate content on broadcast networks, which is a very loose power. Again, I think they'll lose if they take these to court. But you at least have this notion that the FCC has some authority over broadcast stations, right? And you can go point at them and poke at them really hard. There's not any statutory equivalent to social media. There's not any statutory equivalent to Google search. But there's lots of power the government can exert over those.

• 36:34Kara Swisher?

  In other places, right.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  In other places.

• 36:36Kara Swisher?

  So linking.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  And you can run at, boy, we're going to ban TikTok. It would be horrible if we took TikTok away from the American people unless Larry Ellison showed up to buy it and run the algorithm his way. And we're going to force the Chinese government into some kind of deal, which, to my knowledge, no one quite understands yet, that turns TikTok over to some entity that has some connection to the Trump administration. And you can just see, oh, we're running this playbook. We're running an all-of-government, speech-controlled playbook. And Brendan Carr, his personality is whatever Donald Trump, to some extent, but whatever Russ Vought wants him to do, because that is actually the architect of the playbook.

• 37:12Kara Swisher?

  Well, he also seems to like the limelight. So the FCC historically has been independent and relatively quiet, I would say. Obviously, Carr's behavior, including wearing a gold lapel pin depicting Trump's silhouette once last year, called that into question. The agency's independence also came up last December when Carr was questioned by New Mexico Democratic Senator Ben Ray Lujan during the Senate Oversight Committee hearing. Let's hear an excerpt of that.

• 37:37Speaker 07

  Chairman Carr, yes or no, and please, yes or no, is the FCC an independent agency?

• 37:44Speaker 07

  Senator, thanks for that question. I think the. Yes or no is all we need, sir. Yes or no, is it independent? Well, there's a test for this in the law, in the key portion of that test. Yes or no, Brendan? The key portion of that test is. Okay, I'm going to go to Commissioner Trustee. So just so you know, Brendan, on your website, it just simply says, man, the FCC is independent. This isn't a trick question. Okay, the FCC is not. Yes or no? Is not. Okay. Is not. So is your website wrong? Is your website lying? Possibly. The FCC is not an independent agency. Okay, can I read this to you? The FCC's mission on the homepage of the FCC, man, an independent US government agency overseen by Congress. Is that factual or is that a lie? The FCC is not formally an independent agency. Is this true or is this a lie? I can, I'm happy to answer your question. Okay.

• 38:29Speaker 07

  The sine qua non of independence is being removable by the president. Chairman, I have a little bit of a time. I'll get back to you. The FCC is not an independent agency.

• 38:36Kara Swisher?

  Soon after Carr said that the FCC removed the word independent from its website, Jamil, why are the agencies like the FCC created to be independent? And how does the politicization of the SEC fit into the broader shift of the role of agencies under the Trump administration?

• 38:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, so I mean, I think we're seeing exactly why these kinds of agencies should be, you know, independent. You know, the alternative is the agencies are partisan and are suppressing the kind of speech that the president wants them to suppress and answerable in this very political, immediate political sense to the president. But the Supreme Court is very quickly making it clear that they don't believe in independent agencies. They believe in a unitary executive in which the president is essentially the decider for any agency in the executive branch and that the leaders of those agencies are removable at the whim of the president. That's the Supreme Court's current view.

• 39:33Speaker 05

  And I think that, you know, you can trace some of what's going on now in the FCC to that, you know, that particular vision. But, you know, one thing that I think is really important, and, you know, we focus a little bit, I think justifiably, on Disney's decision to push back. But Disney's decision is actually an outlier, right? There's so many of these media organizations that have not pushed back. And you can blame a lot of this on Brendan Carr and on the Trump administration, and you should blame a lot of it on Brendan Carr and the Trump administration. But the other side of it is, media organizations have First Amendment rights that, to a large extent, they are failing to assert. And, you know, Disney is an exception.

• 40:17Speaker 05

  I would say the Associated Press is another exception. But those exceptions are few and far between.

• 40:22Kara Swisher?

  Go ahead, Commissioner Gomez.

• 40:23Speaker 06

  I think it's important to remember why we're an independent agency. When Congress was looking at creating what was our predecessor, the Federal Radio Commission, it thought about putting it in the executive branch, in the Commerce Department. And it was actually the Commerce Secretary at the time who said that was not a good idea, that it was dangerous to have the most powerful regulator ...of the broadcast media, which at the time was radio, subject to the whims of one person. And that is why Congress created the then FRC, then the FCC, as a multi-member bipartisan or multi-partisan, I guess. It doesn't have to be bipartisan, agency. So that it would be an expert agency,

• 41:08Speaker 06

  not subject to partisan whims, as Jamil noted. And what we are seeing today is exactly what happens when we are controlled by the whims of one person.

• 41:23Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 41:37Kara Swisher?

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• 42:48Kara Swisher?

  I'm Kara Swisher, and I like people who say the quiet part out loud. In fact, I love it. That's Tiger Sisters, a new podcast that recently joined the Vox Media Podcast Network. Cherie Brooke Lu and Jean Lu are real sisters who built their careers at LinkedIn and Goldman Sachs. On their weekly podcast, they're giving the next generation practical tips on how to get ahead, how to write emails people actually answer, how to make your LinkedIn profile stand out, and how to keep learning as an adult. It's straight talk about money, career, and relationships every Monday. Follow Tiger Sisters wherever you get your podcasts.

• 43:24Kara Swisher?

  Let's talk about what else Brendan has on his agenda at the behest of President Trump, clearly. Paramount's planned acquisition of Warner Brothers is one of the latest mega-mergers moving forward under the Trump administration. Kinsher Gomez, why don't you start? You recently called for a review of the foreign ownership interests in the deal. First, explain the FCC's role in reviewing mergers like Paramount/Warner Brothers. It can go lots of places, go the FTC, the Justice Department. Are you concerned the merger won't get adequate review under CAR?

• 43:50Speaker 06

  We actually have a limited role in the Warner Brothers transaction because there are no licenses being transferred here. Normally, like in the next Artegna merger that we talked about earlier, the FCC approves that transfer of the licenses, and it looks at, you know, how does this affect competition and viewpoint diversity, or at least we normally do. But I call what happens with this administration is there's this thing called the billionaire buddy bypass, where we actually don't have a rigorous review of any of these transactions, and instead they get approved, not at the commission level, so I don't get to vote on them, in the dark of night. But with regard to Warner Brothers, the only thing we look at is the foreign ownership,

• 44:31Speaker 06

  and that is because it will alter CBS's foreign ownership. In this case, you know, what really concerns me about this, and it is true that the FCC very often waives the statutory limit on foreign ownership of broadcast stations, what really worries me here is the fact that these are not just, you know, some Italian company. These are foreign wealth funds controlled by the Governments that are not themselves terribly friendly to the press and to the freedom of speech. And not only that, but Paramount has requested a waiver of up to 100% of indirect ownership. It's a technicality.

• 45:13Speaker 06

  And we know that Tencent, which is a Chinese company, which means it's also controlled by the government, pulled out so that it wouldn't draw too much attention, but has said, you know, Bloomberg has reported that they're now back in. And if the FCC says, sure, you can be owned 100% by foreign controlled, foreign government controlled companies, then what we are doing to our content is unimaginable. So I did call, I called for it to be very transparent. I called for the DOJ. We have a thing called Team Telecom, which is the security agency's review of foreign ownership that the FCC actually takes their recommendations very seriously in how to handle these types of things.

• 45:56Speaker 06

  But again, I'm worried this is just going to be another billionaire buddy bypass.

• 46:00Kara Swisher?

  Bypass. So the FCC approved a $6 billion merger of Tegna and Nextar, which would create the country's largest television broadcaster. A federal judge recently blocked the merger, as Neil I noted. Neil, give us some more context for the deal, why it happened, what's the consequences and how it will impact consumers?

• 46:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's this longstanding rule, I'm sure Commissioner Gomis can explain it in more detail, that no company should own more than 39% of the broadcasters in a given region. Right? So you're just a regular person, you know, 30 years ago, and you get all of your content from broadcast television, radio. The same person shouldn't own all of it. And this, in terms of government regulation, is pretty good. Right? Like you can say, okay, not one person shouldn't own all the media that you're being fed. There should be competition for viewpoint, for entertainment, whatever. And so we're going to make sure that there's diversity in what you're getting over the airways. This is a pretty good rule. The argument here is that what doesn't matter, because Mark Zuckerberg owns everything that you watch anyway, and you should allow these companies to get even bigger so they can compete. This is Brendan's argument.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Where I think this fails, that was Brendan's argument. And so he's allowing Tegna and Nextar to merge, and they're going to own significantly more than 39% in almost every region that counts. Like in some cases, almost all of it. And maybe you say, well, they have to compete with Meta, but they don't actually have the distribution, right? What they own is a bunch of local news stations. And so what you're going to get in all of these places is your local news, the most impactful news to most Americans, will be under control of one company with one allegiance to the president. And there will be no other competition because as we all well know, there's not a lot of competition or money in local news. So all of these local state governments that are corrupt in the mega era,

• 47:42Speaker 01

  all these local county governments that are signing corrupt deals to build data centers, they will not have the force of local journalism pushing back on them to inform their communities. Instead, we're going to get is a bunch of Facebook groups and a bunch of really weird local journalism that advances the interests of the administration. And I think that is just straightforwardly dangerous. I'm not sure there's a regulatory approach to that. Like, it is true that most people open their phone and get all of their content from TikTok and Meta.

• 48:09Kara Swisher?

  Sure, but the idea behind it is sound, is what you're saying, is the idea that one-

• 48:14Speaker 01

  Yes, the idea that particularly the operators of your local news stations should be in competition with one another, and that will create better local news.

• 48:22Kara Swisher?

  Even if it should be left out, the Mark Zuckerberg part should be left out of this. So let's not make them stronger.

• 48:28Speaker 01

  Maybe you should tax Mark Zuckerberg or make him fund a bunch of local news. Like, there's a lot of other ideas you could have, but the idea that you're going to let these two companies, which have clear allegiance to the president, get bigger to compete with Mark Zuckerberg, like I said, he's not sophisticated. You roll that up to anyone in America and say, is that going to work? And they say, no, that's stupid.

• 48:44Kara Swisher?

  So let's shift to DEI, one of Brandon's biggest bugaboos since taking office. Here he is at a news conference. I really enjoy playing these because he's such a moron. Following the April Open Commission meeting, he's responding to a question about the FCC's investigation into Comcast DEI policies and whether NBC, which is owned by Comcast, could face calls for early license renewal. And again, I want people to hear what he's saying in a group so you understand what he's at.

• 49:11Speaker 07

  We've been very consistent across the board about what we view as invidious forms of DEI discrimination. As deals have come before the FCC, we have required people to look at their policies and make sure they don't have what we think is invidious forms of DEI. Look, in ways, DEI is a tough concept because some people look at DEI and they view it as sort of just traditional non-discrimination. But there's other ways that you can do DEI policies that we view as the opposite of that, which is actually discrimination. So when you have debates over DEI, you can really be talking about two different things. When we talk about DEI, we talk about using protected characteristics, race and gender, to discriminate against people based on that. And so this idea that

• 49:51Speaker 07

  we care about invidious forms of DEI discrimination isn't new, isn't limited even to the broadcast segment. We've done it with Verizon's made commitments, Charter's made commitments, other broadcasters do it. We're doing it across the board.

• 50:06Kara Swisher?

  Could DEI be interpreted as actual discrimination? And are the FCC probes into companies' DEI policies within the agency's remit? This doesn't seem to be his job. It's a Trump administration thing, for sure, but it's not his job.

• 50:22Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a Trump administration. I think this is extremely cynical and dishonest. Nobody who has spent any time paying attention to this can possibly think that this is a good faith effort to enforce the civil rights laws. What's really going on is that the administration here and in many other contexts is weaponizing the civil rights laws to achieve the kinds of censorship that we've been, you know, talking about. That's what's going on with universities around the country. It's what's going on with the law firms, too. You know, the Trump administration imposed these sanctions on law firms that represented people whom Trump sees as political enemies. And in order to impose those sanctions, they weaponized the civil rights laws. And the same thing

• 51:07Speaker 05

  with the universities. They're saying, you know, that it's because of universities' violations of civil rights laws that we're canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in grants. But really, it's just a lever. You know, it's a lever to get these important knowledge-producing or- Free speech institutions to change their editorial decisions. Editorial decisions in sort of the broadest sense, you know, so that universities stop teaching particular classes or stop hiring particular kinds of people or stop admitting particular kinds of people so that law firms stop representing people who Trump doesn't like. And so that media organizations stop, you know, platforming Stephen Colbert. That that's what all of this is really about. I think that the the invocation of discrimination

• 51:50Speaker 05

  here is transparently pretextual.

• 51:53Speaker 01

  Wait, can I just point out his mention there of Verizon?

• 51:56Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  That's some of the most dangerous stuff that he's talking about. I know we're very focused on media companies and free speech and the actual content regulation, but Verizon killed all of its DEI policies in order to win merger approval to buy Frontier. T-Mobile killed all of its DEI policies in order to win merger approval to buy Lumos. Now, these are tiny telecom deals, and I know most people don't care about telecom deals, and they're all the most boring people in the world, but this is just naked corruption. Right? These are companies that operate physical plants in the United States, right? They have big networks. They have to hire lots of workers. They got to send people to your house. This is where DEI helps, actually, right? You want a big diverse workforce to go service your big diverse customer base across the country, and we're getting rid of the programs in order to secure merger approval so we can further financialize our

• 52:40Speaker 01

  economy and all this. Like, you can just see how bad it is. It's not First Amendment, and maybe in this context, but it's bad.

• 52:46Kara Swisher?

  Right, right. So I'm going to shift again to the another recent area of interest. The NFL is facing scrutiny from the FCC and the DOJ over its antitrust exemption. Carr recently said, however, the inquiry may not lead to any action. I'm not sure what he's doing here. First, Commissioner Gomez, why? And then, Neelai or Jamil, why? Like, what is the reasoning? This is obviously being pushed by Rupert Murdoch and others. Other broadcasters are trying to get, you know, up on the tech companies. First you, Commissioner Gomez.

• 53:14Speaker 06

  I think the intent behind the public notice, I mean, I wasn't part of it, but there is a lot of concern about the health of local broadcasting. They are losing advertising dollars to streamers and they are losing a lot of money when they lose the NFL in their local broadcasts. So it's trying to understand the market and what levers there are. And again, I think this one, I agree. I don't know that there's any action the FCC can take other than shining a light on the fact that there is a problem here for the local broadcasters if they lose such an important source of funding.

• 53:51Kara Swisher?

  Right. I mean, I sort of agree. At the same time, I'm like, oh, well, you should have run your businesses better kind of thing, like on some, but local broadcasters are different than Rupert Murdoch or something else. Neelai or Jamil?

• 54:03Speaker 01

  I think this is one of those moments where mega populism kind of runs into reality. And it's like, oh, that we should use some government power to make sure that we've given sports leagues this antitrust exemption so they can all bargain collectively, all these rich owners can bargain collectively and get the best deal from all these streamers and broadcasters. And actually, regular Americans have to pay thousands of dollars to watch every game that their local teams and their local communities that they pay usually huge tax incentives to build the stadiums for. And then even to watch the games, you're priced out and the tickets are getting more expensive. There's something to be done there, but in the context of how Carr operates, how this DOJ operates, I don't think shaking down the NFL is going to work. I think you're actually going to run up against a very motivated billionaires.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  We're all pretty Republican in posture and they're just going to call the president and say, don't you like Tom Brady? And it's going to go away.

• 54:55Kara Swisher?

  Depends on the billionaires he's talking to. So let's talk about the end game. The FCC regulates broadcast is becoming increasingly irrelevant, as Neelai has pointed out correctly. According to Nielsen, broadcast television accounted for about 20% of US total viewing, which is amazing, with streaming overtaking both broadcast and cable. The rules that Carr has resurrected date back to a time when broadcast spectrum was scarce and it was important to have it. Neelai, you've made the case that Carr wants to get the FCC to start regulating the internet. Earlier, you said his actions so far was a test balloon for this. Is there a legitimate argument for doing that since it's primarily how content is distributed today?

• 55:30Speaker 01

  I'm smiling because the last time Janelle and I talked was five years ago on the Decoder podcast, and we, our debate was whether the tech platforms shield themselves in the First Amendment to avoid all regulation and whether that had gone too far. And I'm still of the opinion that all governments' future regulations are bad. And I, you know, I'm a journalist, like, I'm allergic to them. I think that you should have a diversity of viewpoints and voices, and they, we should all fight it out. And the challenge to that is the tech platforms algorithmically control all the media that people consume. And so, you know, I've always joked that Mark Zuckerberg just has a dial in his office, and he's like, make Instagram more MAGA, and then it's more MAGA. And we all have to hear the song about wanting a

• 56:14Speaker 01

  guy who's 6'5" with blue eyes for a month before the election. And maybe you believe that that's a conspiracy, and maybe you don't. But there's no transparency into what happened there. And I really think that this government is putting pressure on a bunch of big tech companies who are all uniformly turning into defense contractors right now through AI, and saying, hey, make sure people like us. And the pushback I give is, maybe it's not working. Maybe young people actually still hate AI. I think The Times released a poll as we're speaking, that the president's approval rating is lower than it's ever been in his second term. And the idea that social media is actually providing pushback, that people are actually seeing what's happening in their lives and are talking about it, and they can overcome these algorithms, I think you have to be a little too optimistic to believe

• 56:59Speaker 01

  it, right? There's still ways for all of that to change. But that's the dynamic that I'm paying a lot of attention to.

• 57:06Kara Swisher?

  So Commissioner Groves, does that make what you're doing irrelevant? How do you look at that, even though this is being used as a tool to deliver us into that future that Neela is talking about?

• 57:17Speaker 06

  No, I think the FCC still plays a very important role. You know, when you see a lot of news on your TikTok feed, that is actually being written by local journalists. So, local broadcasters matter very much. And I would also just like to point out that on top of all the issues that we're having with local broadcasting and the health of local broadcasting, we defunded public media. They seem to be surviving, thank goodness. But there are pockets of this country that only get broadcasts through public media. There's no other provider. So that's, that's not good, even during times of disasters. So my point is, there's still an important role for the FCC. There's still an important role for broadcasters, but we do need to be very cognizant of the

• 58:00Speaker 06

  fact that we no longer have just three broadcasters. We have media everywhere, producing content everywhere. And so we need to take that into account as we think about what we do. I think it's important to have, for example, consumers, viewers, listeners to know when political ads are using AI. And that's something the FCC, in fact, did propose to do. Now, that is content regulation, but it's a very targeted, very specific, it's not telling them they can't do it, it's just saying, you need to have something that says this is generated by AI. Much like political ads also say, you know, they have that end that says, my name is such and such, and I approve this message, that's actually an FCC rule.

• 58:44Speaker 06

  So I do think there's still an important role. But we don't regulate streaming. We don't regulate the internet. We regulate cable to a very limited extent. We do not regulate content, except for maybe a couple of things about, about political advertising. So, you know, we need to evolve into where we are today technologically and understand that the rules that mattered when there were only three voices that this country listened to have been thrown out the window because of all the alternative content people can access.

• 59:16Kara Swisher?

  Right. So I just have two more questions, one for Jamil and then one for all of you. President Reagan's repeal of the fairness doctrine in 1987 is credited with helping pave the way for the rise of Rush Limbaugh and the modern partisan media. Now, Carr is invoking news distortion, as we noted, a relic of the fairness doctrine era as a regulatory tool to police broadcasters' speech. Looking ahead to the midterm elections, Jamil, how could the FCC's policies impact political coverage that the commissioner was just talking about?

• 59:42Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I do worry that the FCC's threats to broadcasters and more broadly, the Trump administration's threats that directed at all sorts of media organizations will have an effect on not just what news organizations cover over the next few months, but how they cover those things as well. And I mentioned this earlier in this conversation, but at this point, I'm not even sure that the Trump administration has to make the threats explicitly in order for media organizations to sort of adapt their editorial decision-making to the perception of what the Trump administration wants. And I think that's a very dangerous

• 1:00:23Speaker 05

  situation. But, Karik, I don't want to reopen this debate I had with Neelai five years ago.

• 1:00:28Kara Swisher?

  Please do.

• 1:00:28Speaker 05

  But I just want to point out that they're different. I share Neelai's sort of instinctive opposition to media regulation, but I also think there are different kinds of media regulation. And Neelai itself was defending the 39% rule just a few minutes ago. And I think there are all sorts of structural regulation that wouldn't give government officials the ability to intervene at the level of viewpoint or even content, but would be sort of structural regulation that would change what all of us know about the social media platforms' decision-making, for example, or what all of us know about how AI models work, or would change diversity of, sort of, diversity rules and like how many news

• 1:01:12Speaker 05

  sources we have in any particular environment. And those kinds of structural rules are, I think, worth spending, you know, those are worth thinking more about. And we should be open to those, even if we are, for good reasons, sort of allergic to the idea of the government deciding whose voices get heard.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  We should set up like a five-member bipartisan commission.

• 1:01:33Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:34Speaker 01

  Experts.

• 1:01:34Speaker 05

  An independent agency.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  In public.

• 1:01:36Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, that would be a great thing. So Commissioner Gomez, you wrote on X, quote, "The days of the FCC as a paper tiger will come to an end. There's a chance that Carr's probes will amount to nothing and that his reign is ultimately temporary, even reflected on his legacy." Oh, God, in a recent interview. ...with the Financial Times saying, quote, "I got my time. I got my shot. I took my shot." This man needs to stop seeing movies and quoting, he just really needs to stop. But what are the potential lasting consequences of his actions at the FCC besides being an irritant? And what changes could be permanent? Let's start with you, Commissioner Gomez, and then Neelai and Jamil. You get the last word.

• 1:02:16Speaker 06

  Well, first of all, I absolutely agree with everything Jamil just said. The one thing I would like to point out, by the way, is that the 39% cap is statutory. It is not an FCC rule, and it is not for the FCC to let companies violate that. But that's not what you just asked me. You know, I really do worry about the effect on the psyche of broadcasters in the long term, where they will always be more afraid now of the FCC and what FCC actions, how they may harm them. Even Wall Street is looking at these early renewals that the FCC is doing because it lessens the value of the licenses. And that, in the end, harms the finances of these local broadcasters. So I do believe this will come to an end.

• 1:03:01Speaker 06

  I'm glad Disney is suing because if they, or I shouldn't say I'm glad they're suing. I'm glad it looks like they're going to sue because if they do, they will win and hopefully that'll put an end to what we're seeing.

• 1:03:11Kara Swisher?

  What you're seeing, but the most lasting thing is the psyche and bringing the prices down, that it's not as valuable. It's already a declining asset. Neelai?

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  I think it's two things. One, again, he's such a dummy. There's stuff he's done that we haven't even talked about that has made the FCC appear more capricious and more poorly run and more useless than ever before. He issued an order banning all of the routers that weren't made in the United States.

• 1:03:36Kara Swisher?

  Oh, the routers, I forgot the routers.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Right, all the Wi-Fi routers. If you don't make them in the United States, it can't be sold anymore. Well, none of the routers are made in the United States. And then Netgear and Eero, which is owned by Amazon, magically got waivers. And there's some process, I've done some reporting, some process occurred and some, you know, statements were made by those companies, the government that said they're promised to build the routers in the United States in the future. But that's nothing, right? Like, nothing actually occurred.

• 1:03:59Kara Swisher?

  No, it's nonsense.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  We did not actually protect the safety of Americans

• 1:04:01Kara Swisher?

  No.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  from supply chain attacks on the Wi-Fi routers. We just did some stuff to do something that looked like corruption. And that for the FCC, that legacy of corruption, that's gonna be the, that's gonna be what Brendan leaves behind. This is a corrupt agency that operates through bribes and kickbacks and does what the president wants. And Brendan can own that, and I think he's done it so, so bluntly and so stupidly that you can just look at it and say, that's the legacy. You don't, you don't have to dance through it. More broadly, and it has come up several times in this conversation from all of us, the notion of the unitary executive, that the president just controls the country, and he can just do whatever he wants by firing, hiring and firing these agency officials, by fulminating about what he wants and issuing an executive order, and the agencies are gonna do it. That's gonna last for a long time.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  And I, again, I started out by saying this. I really hope that the next Democrat who comes into power just goes full tilt at it, that we don't have this Joe Biden return to normalcy style, attempt to reset the country, that we actually see what it looks like for the other side to run at it this hard, so that both sides understand this is a danger. And to reset it, we need to rethink how all these agencies work. Maybe we need to empower the FCC to make more structural changes to protect speech, to protect the local news. But fundamentally, what we need to do is restore some independence to the parts of our government that need to think long term and not just for political gain in a short cycle. And I hope, optimistically, Brendan running around like a bull in a china shop, spouting movie quotes

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  whenever he can to Benny Johnson, is gonna create the conditions for that change.

• 1:05:35Kara Swisher?

  Okay. All right, Jimmy, that's an excellent argument.

• 1:05:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, I mean, I think that the longer term effect that I'm most concerned about is, it has to do with democratic culture. Like, it doesn't have to do with the power of the agency or First Amendment doctrine, which I actually think First Amendment doctrine has held up pretty well in this particular context. The, the longer term effect that I'm worried about is Comes out of the failure of so many media organizations to stand up, you know, for their First Amendment rights. And I think that this creates a kind of, it's not a legal precedent. Like, if you don't stand up for your rights, you don't create a legal precedent, but you create a kind of factual precedent that, you know, ABC, for example, had this lawsuit, that Trump filed this lawsuit against ABC over, you know, something that George Stephanopoulos said on the air. He said that, you know, Trump had been found liable for rape, when in fact,

• 1:06:23Speaker 05

  Trump had been found liable for sexual assault. And Trump sued ABC for millions of dollars, sixteen million dollars or something. And they got a settlement from ABC. And there's no legal decision there. There's no judicial opinion saying that ABC violated the First Amendment, or that, you know, ABC doesn't have the right to say this particular thing. But there is this factual precedent of a major media organization handing over obscene sums of money to the president in response to, I wouldn't say it was a frivolous lawsuit, but a very weak lawsuit. And then we saw the same thing with, you know, CBS settling a case with Trump. Meta settled a case with Trump. You know, one after another, all of

• 1:07:05Speaker 05

  these nominally powerful media organizations settled these weak or frivolous cases with the, with the president and just turned over huge sums of money to him. And I really worry about that set of factual precedents and what it's going to mean the next time government officials try to exercise this kind of power.

• 1:07:23Kara Swisher?

  Right. That's a really good point. I mean, the companies really ultimately are at fault here.

• 1:07:27Speaker 05

  Yeah. That's why the Disney Let's Hope lawsuit is so important.

• 1:07:33Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I would agree. Anyway, this has been really great. I just want to say I really appreciate it, because I think people should understand what's happening here. And also, Brendan, you're invited. I think you're a moron. Prove me wrong. You're, you're welcome to come on, as I've said many times, for equal time, even though I'm not bound by that, but I certainly would. And you may not use any movie quotes. I mean, you can, I guess, free speech, whatever. If you want to look like more of a moron, you could do it. In any case, I invite you on. But I really appreciate this. And Commissioner Gomez, I appreciate a lot of what you're doing there as the lonely commissioner. And Neelai, of course, has done an amazing job. And Jamil, as usual, you're all terrific, and I really appreciate it.

• 1:08:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I just want to call out, we do a segment on The Vergecast called Brendan Carr's Dummy every week. We call it America's Favorite Podcast Within a Podcast. It has now infected this podcast, which is very exciting. And our listeners write us theme songs. And we play different theme songs every week for Brendan Carr's Dummy. So this is one we like so much that we actually bought. It's by Viola de Gumba. It is a Gregorian chant.

• 1:08:31Kara Swisher?

  Fantastic.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  Let's listen to it.

• 1:08:37Kara Swisher?

  Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it.

• 1:08:39Speaker 06

  Thanks, Carol. Thank you.

• 1:08:40Speaker 05

  Thank you, Carol.

• 1:08:46Kara Swisher?

  Today's show was produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Michelle Aloy, Catherine Millsap, Megan Burney, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Madeline LaPlante-Duby, Eamon Whelan, and Julia Sharp Levine. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. That song you're hearing now is called "Dumb Car." It was sent to The Vergecast by Billy in Santa Fe. If you're already following the show, you are not a moron like Brendan Carr. If not, you are one. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New

• 1:09:29Kara Swisher?

  York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.