President Donald Trump took to Truth Social on Sunday to threaten NBC journalist Kristen Welker with “rebuke or punishment” from the Federal Communications Commission, or FCC, after she accurately reported that his endorsement had netted “mixed” results for Republican candidates this election cycle.
In a second post on Sunday, Trump also lashed out against reported polling results, writing, “THE FAKE POLLS USED BY OUR CROOKED MEDIA ARE OUT OF CONTROL, AND SOMETHING MUST BE DONE ABOUT IT. FCC TO THE RESCUE!”
“Trump, like all authoritarians, wants to silence those who disagree with him,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on social media in response. “Now he’s trying to punish an NBC journalist for reporting on his mixed endorsement record. Sorry, Mr. President. In America, we believe in democracy and the First Amendment. FIGHT BACK.”
Welker made the remarks that enraged Trump during a pre-“Meet the Press” promotion on NBC’s Washington, DC affiliate station. They were backed up by NBC reporting that six candidates Trump endorsed for House and governor had lost their Republican primary races in August.
“Trump makes clear that he thinks it’s the government’s role to go after journalists who anger him.”
“Kristen Welker, the Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of the once great Meet the Press, now considered Meet the Fake Press, just stated that Donald Trump has ‘mixed results’ on his Endorsements of Candidates, when the recent WINS of Darline Graham and Mike Mazzei, stand at 100% for the US Senate, and 98% for the US House, recently and over the longterm. How can anyone be allowed to say this, working for freely given Public Airwaves? Results are attached. Because of this purposeful inaccuracy, she will be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment,” Trump wrote.
He also appealed to the head of the FCC directly, saying, “I hope that Chairman Brendan Carr, and the fine people of his Commission, will take this Threat to our Country very seriously.”
“Trump is getting more explicit about weaponizing the FCC,” CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter noted in a thread on social media. While he pointed out that the FCC cannot legally punish Welker and has limited power by design, its chair Carr “has been responsive to Trump’s posts in the past…”
Indeed, Carr has a history of targeting Trump critics.
In September of 2025, he pressured ABC into briefly removing Jimmy Kimmel from the air following remarks he made surrounding the Trump administration’s response to conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s death.
In March, Carr wrote a post on social media that appeared to threaten to revoke the broadcasting licenses of news outlets that criticized Trump’s war on Iran, responding directly to Trump’s own social media rant against war coverage.
In April, he ordered Disney’s eight ABC stations to file their broadcast renewal requests years early, prompting ABC and Disney to file a First Amendment lawsuit against the FCC earlier this month. The renewal requests, which Carr denies were retaliatory, came a day after Trump again criticized Kimmel for making jokes about First Lady Melania Trump.
Stelter concluded: “Trump invoked Carr’s name, complimented the ‘fine people’ of the FCC, and said he hopes the commission will ‘take this Threat to our Country very seriously.’ ABC is already in court fighting the FCC’s unprecedented actions; it’s reasonable to think NBC will be targeted next.”
Chief White House correspondent for The New York Times Pete Baker wrote on social media that, with his threats against Welker, “Trump makes clear that he thinks it’s the government’s role to go after journalists who anger him.”
“Are there really any Americans left who think this man is paying any attention to any problem any person in the United States is having right now,” Trump biographer Seth Abramson wrote on social media in response to Trump’s tirade. “As far as I can tell there’s not a single second of his day taken up by anything but what personally interests and enriches him.”
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