Trump Endorses Nexstar/Tegna; Carr Says Trump Is 'Exactly Right'
President Donald Trump endorsed the Nexstar/Tegna deal and called national TV networks “THE ENEMY” in a social media post Saturday, which was quickly seconded by FCC Chairman Brendan Carr. “Letting Good Deals get done like Nexstar-Tegna will help knock out the Fake News because there will be more competition, and at a higher and more sophisticated level,” Trump said on Truth Social.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
“President Trump is exactly right,” Carr said on X. “The national networks like Comcast & Disney have amassed too much power ... Let’s get it done and bring real competition to them.”
Trump had previously expressed concern that lifting the national broadcast-ownership cap to allow the merger would aid national networks, a stance that was seen to be driven by Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy, who's close to Trump and a vocal opponent of the deal. Ruddy is among those set to testify Tuesday at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the issue (see 2602090061).
“Those that are opposed don’t fully understand how good the concept of this deal is for them, but they will in the future. GET THAT DEAL DONE!” Trump said in Saturday’s post. Ruddy didn’t comment Monday, but a Newsmax spokesperson shared the company's article about a poll showing that Republican primary voters are opposed to the deal.
Speaking Monday at the State of the Net conference, FCC Commissioner Anna Gomez said that while broadcasters are facing slipping ad revenue and digital platform competition, consolidation as the default solution would just speed up their decline. “Fewer owners does not just mean fewer balance sheets,” she said. “It means fewer independent editorial decisions and fewer local perspectives.”
Gomez said the commission’s focus is wrongly on deregulation to accommodate the business strategies of Big Media, rather than on serving news consumers and local communities. “Real economic pressure is treated as justification for consolidation without consideration of whether the outcome will continue to serve the public interest.” The national ownership cap was put in place “to prevent exactly the kind of dominance we are now being asked to accept,” she said. The FCC, meanwhile, is open to transactions “that would further entrench national dominance, including a potential merger between two major broadcast groups that would plainly violate Congress’s restriction,” Gomez added, seemingly referring to Nexstar/Tegna.
Center for American Rights President Daniel Suhr emailed us that he was “encouraged” by Trump's and Carr's statements. The group has campaigned against the ownership cap (see 2512150046), and Suhr said he has supported Nexstar/Tegna “since the start.” All the objections have sought to stop the deal rather than impose conditions, he noted. "Given that, I expect there will be few conditions imposed because there have been few if any conditions suggested."
In a blog post Monday, former FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly -- a former congressional staffer who worked on the statute -- said arguments from Nexstar and NAB that the FCC has authority from Congress to waive or eliminate the national TV ownership cap are “pure fantasy.” If Congress “wanted to leave discretionary authority for the agency on the issue, the body was well-versed on how to do so,” he wrote. “Broadcasters’ future path in a digital world is a difficult one. The fix, however, is not to pretend a legally crafted and enacted provision of law became magically meaningless for convenience’s sake.”