President Donald Trump suggested referring NBC News anchor Kristen Welker for possible punishment by the Federal Communications Commission after the “Meet the Press” moderator made innocuous remarks about candidates the President has backed in the run-up to the nation’s midterm elections later this year.
Trump’s chilling diatribe, released via Truth Social, appeared to be misinformed. During a local segment in which Welker previewed her program with anchors on NBC’s Washington, D.C. station, WRC, she said that Trump had enjoyed “mixed results,” with some of the Republican candidates he’s backed losing in primaries, but also noted that Trump is “going to loom large over these midterms. There’s no doubt about that.”
Trump called for Welker to be “reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment.” The Commission can’t directly mete out condemnation to individual journalists, but it can put bumps in the path of the company that owns the station as well as NBC News. That would be NBCUniversal, currently a unit of Comcast that is slated to be spun off from its parent over the next several months.
NBC News did not respond immediately to a query seeking comment. Welker did not utter any of the remarks that angered Trump during NBC’s actual broadcast of “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
