Brendan Carr Wants To Yank Licenses From Stations That Won't Make Dear Leader’s Iran War Look Good

This is America!

Mar 16, 2026

Carr testifying Jan 14 2026 before the House Communications and Technology subcommittee (screengrab)

Donald Trump’s and Israel’s preemptive war-attack on Iran has been a disaster on some level for every country in the world. Except Russia and China, it’s been a big gift with a bow to them! But otherwise, the lack of pre-planning for the attack/operation/whatever, and the Trump regime’s incompetence carrying it out is mindboggling on a scale we’ve never seen before. If the Department of WAR was planning and trying its damndest to humiliate the US with a full military failure, it would not look any different from this.

Welcome to the Crusades as re-LARPed by Pete Hegseth’s (allegedly apparently!) booze-rotted brain! Finally, the whole Holy Land shall be ruled by the whites, after Alpha Jesus comes back to annihilate all his fellow Jews who did not believe in Him, and rewards true believers like Pete Hegseth with 40 virgins, a mule and a case of Dewar’s! Or something!

Speaking of True Believers, on Saturday here came Trump’s Federal Communications Chair, Heritage Foundation alum, Project 2025 Mandate-chapter author and lipless unfuckable Brendan Carr, riding to the rescue of Trump’s doomed war by doing exactly what Project 2025 said he would: giving the Holy Executive power to silence all dissent at the platform level and punish any network that dares commit the crime of aggravated Being Mean To MAGA.

Brendan Carr Named King Of Making The Internet And TV Be Nice To Donald Trump

Marcie Jones

November 19, 2024

Read full story

Swing voters who believed Trump when he said he never heard of Project 2025, No New Wars, etc., you got had. Again!

Brendan Carr on Twitter: “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions - also known as the fake news - have a chance now to correct course before their license renewals come up. The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will lose their licenses if they do not. And frankly, changing course is in their own business interests since trust in legacy media has now fallen to an all time low of just 9% and are ratings disasters. The American people have subsidized broadcasters to the tune of billions of dollars by providing free access to the nation’s airwaves. It is very important to bring trust back into media, which has earned itself the label of fake news. When a political candidate is able to win a landslide election victory after in the face of hoaxes and distortions, there is something very wrong. It means the public has lost faith and confidence in the media. And we can’t allow that to happen. Time for change!” Repost of a Truth Social post from Trump: “Yet again, an intentionally misleading headline by the Fake News Media about the five tanker planes that were supposedly struck down at an Airport in Saudi Arabia, and of no further use. In actuality, the Base was hit a few days ago, but the planes were not “struck” or “destroyed.” Four of the five had virtually no damage, and are already back in service. One had slightly more damage, but will be in the air shortly. None were destroyed, or close to that, as the Fake News said in headlines. The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal (in particular), and other Lowlife “Papers” and Media actually want us to lose the War. Their terrible reporting is the exact opposite of the actual facts! They are truly sick and demented people that have no idea the damage they cause the United States of America. Fortunately, as proven by our Great and Conclusive Election Win in 2024, the People of our Country understand what is happening far better than the Fake News Media! President DONALD J. TRUMP”

You lost, loser, and it’s war. Pretty hard to put a Pollyanna fucking spin on more than 1,200 civilians killed and 13 US servicemembers coming back in flag-draped coffins.

The government inserting itself in networks’ ratings and censoring their content over “the public interest” is textbook authoritarian capitalism, and all these screeds could have come right off a Beijing typewriter.

And no, what Carr is threatening is NOT LEGAL, for whatever it matters anymore. On its own website, the FCC says the “First Amendment and the Communications Act expressly prohibit the Commission from censoring broadcast matter” and that the commission’s role in overseeing content on the airwaves “is very limited.” But that is OLDTHINK and OLDLAW!

Constitutional law 101: “No one has a First Amendment right to a license or to monopolize a radio frequency; to deny a station license because ‘the public interest’ requires it ‘is not a denial of free speech.’” Supreme Court in Red Lion quoting NBC v. United States, 319 U. S. 227 (1943). Quote Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren · 21h Constitutional law 101: it’s illegal for the government to censor free speech it just doesn’t like about Trump’s Iran war. This threat is straight out of the authoritarian playbook.

LIZ WARREN, YA BRENDAN-ED!

As if anybody could ever have a monopoly on hating Donald John Trump and pointing out his many, many fuckups. (Though if anyone is coming close to a media monopoly in the actual real-world sense of the term, it’s the One Nepo Baby to end them all, David Ellison.) Shit, even GOP Senator Ron Johnson AKA “QAnon Ron” knows this threat is a step too far. “I am a big supporter of the First Amendment,” he told Fox News’s The Sunday Briefing. “I do not like the heavy-handed government, no matter who is wielding it. [...] I would rather the federal government stay out of the private sector as much as possible.”

And it doesn’t get much more textbook unconstitutional or definition-of-fascist than the government using all its might to silence dissent. Even to the point of death, as we’ve seen with ICE killing Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota for looking at them funny.

What part of all this WINNING does Carr not want anyone to talk about? Dear Leader clarified it on Sunday night in a screed epic even for him. Let’s not sanewash that asshole by selectivelyquoting him, you really gotta look at the whole massive block of text! Der “Furor” must have had serious constipation during the Oscar pre-shows:

Iran has long been known as a Master of Media Manipulation and Public Relations. They are Militarily ineffective and weak, but are really good at “feeding” the very appreciative Fake News Media false information. Now, A.I. has become another Disinformation weapon that Iran uses, quite well, considering they are being annihilated by the day. They showed phony “Kamikaze Boats,” shooting at various Ships at Sea, which looks wonderful, powerful, and vicious, but these Boats don’t exist — It’s all false information to show how “tough” their already defeated Military is! The five U.S. Refueling Planes that were supposedly struck down and badly damaged, according to The Wall Street Journal’s false reporting, and others, are all in service, with the exception of one, which will soon be flying the skies. Buildings and Ships that are shown to be on fire are not — It’s FAKE NEWS, generated by A.I. For instance, Iran, working in close coordination with the Fake News Media, shows our great USS Abraham Lincoln Aircraft Carrier, one of the largest and most prestigious Ships in the World, burning uncontrollably in the Ocean. Not only was it not burning, it was not even shot at — Iran knows better than to do that! The story was knowingly FAKE and, in a certain way, you can say that those Media Outlets that generated it should be brought up on Charges for TREASON for the dissemination of false information! The fact is, Iran is being decimated, and the only battles they “win” are those that they create through AI, and are distributed by Corrupt Media Outlets. The Radical Leftwing Press knows this full well, but continues to go forward with false stories and LIES. That’s why their Approval Rating is so low, and I can win a Presidential Election, IN A LANDSLIDE, getting only 5% positive Press — They have no credibility! I am so thrilled to see Brendan Carr, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), looking at the licenses of some of these Corrupt and Highly Unpatriotic “News” Organizations. They get Billions of Dollars of FREE American Airwaves, and use it to perpetuate LIES, both in News and almost all of their Shows, including the Late Night Morons, who get gigantic Salaries for horrible Ratings, and never get, as I used to say in The Apprentice, “FIRED.” Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Oh, the levels of irony. IRAN-Y! Yes, this is the same man who’s been screaming that no man ought to make laws to infringe upon the unleashing of AI, and has published plenty of AI slop his very own self, including, for instance, fake videos of himself dumping diarrhea on his citizens, and the Obamas as singing apes. Senate Republicans have posted AI deepfakes of candidate James Talarico. The White House even posted more AI crap Monday morning:

And “annihiliated by the day”? Just like how last June Pete Hegseth completely destroyed Iran’s nuclear capabilities, and is also going to war to re-destroy them, Malkovich Malkovich?

Reputable news sources have not been using AI videos, and the Wall Street Journal has not published any AI videos. Though some AI videos of such have been circulating, which are quite obviously fake.

And hold up, in all of Trump’s mess there, there’s a buried admission that at least one US refueling plane has been totaled. Meanwhile the WSJ is standing by its reporting that five planes were struck, and seven have been destroyed, including two that ran into each other by accident. There sure have been a lot of fatal accidents so far under Hegseth!

Th Wall Street Journal has been reporting a lot of things Dear Leader does not like, such as that the US went to war low on munitions.

Here are some news videos from reliable sources that are real, that Pete Hegseth would not like you to see!

And they must be quickly recited every time, the litany of fuckups: How Trump made the feeble nuclear proliferation justification for this war himself out of whole cloth, starting with tearing up the Iran nuclear deal that Barack Obama signed, which would have allowed Trump to have everything he is demanding right now, instead of blaming Iran for violating a treaty he’s chosen not to be a party to.

How in Trump 2.0, how WARFIGHTING without diplomacy brought us here. Like dismantling diplomacy and leaving some 85 ambassadorship posts open.

Gutting the Pentagon of some 60,000 civilian workers, with a goal of slashing five percent of the workforce. Pete Hegseth running the Department of WAR with a culture of fear, and degrading morale in the troops by going on full-throated attack against all non-white cis male MAGA servicemembers.

Then there was excusing hitting a girls’ primary school with the claim of using 15-year-old intelligence to do bombings, an insultingly feeble excuse given the school is right there on Google maps and has had a web presence for years.

And yeah, somehow the US and Israel are already running out of interceptor drones, fewer than three weeks into the conflict/war/operation.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy’s got more.

You should probably just read the whole thread. And Lemon, it’s only Monday.

And for up to the minute failures, here is a late-breaking list of all the countries that have so far told Trump to fuck off with his demands that they come to his rescue and clean up his mess in the Strait of Hormuz:

In short and in conclusion, the US is not winning the war, Wonkette is and continues to be on the BADTHINK list, and maybe we will be at war forever.

The end!

[Politico / BBC archive link / NPR]

Spare change?