After Donald Trump threatened to strip ABC’s broadcast license and compelled the community right into a $15 million settlement, the president-elect’s decide to guide the Federal Communications Fee warned its mother or father firm that Individuals “not belief the nationwide information media to report totally, precisely, and pretty.”

In a letter to Disney’s CEO Bob Iger, Brendan Carr lamented the “erosion in public belief” in information media, and steered ABC was partially responsible.

Carr — who wrote Challenge 2025’s chapter on the FCC — mentioned the company could be “monitoring” ABC’s negotiations with native tv stations that carry its programming.

The letter, which was obtained by CNN, seems to be utilizing the difficulty of community affiliate agreements as a method to goal media shops — signaling how Trump’s incoming FCC will likely be going after a press he has lengthy demonized and litigated in opposition to.

It’s unclear whether or not Carr issued letters to different networks.

The Unbiased has requested remark from ABC and Trump’s transition staff.

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Carr steered ABC is trying to “extract onerous monetary and operational concessions” from native broadcasters underneath the specter of “terminating” their agreements, “which might end in blackouts and different harms to native shoppers of broadcast information and content material,” based on Carr.

“I need you to know that I will likely be monitoring the result of your ongoing discussions with native broadcast TV stations to make sure that these negotiations allow native broadcast TV stations to satisfy their federal obligations to serve the wants of their native communities. A good settlement would just do that,” Carr wrote.

The letter dated December 21 was despatched days after Trump and ABC agreed to settle his defamation lawsuit in opposition to the community and anchor George Stephanopoulos, who was sued for stating that Trump was discovered “accountable for rape by a jury” throughout a phase that aired in March.

The $15 million settlement goes in direction of Trump’s presidential library.

Stephanopoulos mischaracterized the jury’s exact findings in a long-running authorized battle involving allegations that Trump sexually assaulted E Jean Carroll in a division retailer in New York within the Nineties, after which defamed her by saying she was mendacity about it. A jury discovered Trump accountable for sexual abuse, not “rape” underneath the definition in New York’s penal regulation, although the federal choose overseeing the case had argued that the distinction is essentially a semantic one.

Trump’s years-long marketing campaign in opposition to the press, regardless of counting on media shops to raise his model and political profile, has escalated into litigation throughout the nation whereas pressuring lawmakers to “kill” press freedom protections.

He has steered that journalists and publishers needs to be jailed for shielding their sources, repeatedly threatened to yank TV broadcast licenses, and filed a number of unsuccessful lawsuits taking goal at First Modification protections enshrined by the Supreme Courtroom’s long-standing precedent in New York Instances v Sullivan.

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Days earlier than Election Day, Trump sued CBS for $10 billion. Final week, he filed a lawsuit accusing a longtime pollster and her writer interfered within the 2024 election.

Kash Patel, Trump’s decide to guide the FBI, has brazenly fantasized about prosecuting journalists.

“Sure, we’re going to come back after the folks within the media who lied about Americans, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections — we’re going to come back after you,” he informed Steve Bannon final yr. “Whether or not it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll determine that out.”

Final month, Carr criticized the looks of Vice President Kamala Harris on NBC’s Saturday Night time Dwell, calling her pre-election cameo “a transparent and blatant effort to evade the FCC’s Equal Time rule.” NBC later aired a message from Trump.

He additionally just lately despatched a letter to the chief executives of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple, accusing the businesses of being members of a “censorship cartel” that included “promoting, advertising, and so-called ‘fact-checking’ organizations in addition to the Biden-Harris Administration itself.” He has known as fact-checking group NewsGuard “Orwellian.”