In a remarkable plot twist that absolutely no one predicted (except everyone), President Trump has decided he doesn’t want the FCC to lift the national broadcast ownership cap after all. This is awkward, because his own FCC chair, Brendan “Deregulate Everything” Carr, has been practically vibrating with excitement for years at the idea of unleashing mega-mergers and letting broadcasters swallow each other like Pac-Man on bath salts.
The National Association of Broadcasters—basically the Avengers of corporate media—also wants the cap gone. But Newsmax and a few smaller conservative outlets are screaming “nooooo” because they’re terrified that if Sinclair and Nexstar get any bigger, they’ll be squeezed out of the outrage economy. And that little emotional tantrum worked: Trump suddenly changed his tune, posting on Truth Social that lifting the cap would allow the “Radical Left Networks” to get bigger. You know, the same ABC and NBC that conservatives say are dying, failing, irrelevant, and somehow also enormous mind-control machines. Pick a lane.
Meanwhile, Carr is quietly sweating bullets because he’s spent years arguing that local broadcasters need mergers to “compete with Big Tech.” His big moment was supposed to be this huge deregulatory victory lap. Instead, he’s stuck trying to look supportive while Trump tosses his entire policy agenda into a wood chipper to keep Newsmax happy.
At this point, Lubbock viewers have fewer programming options than a gas station TV in East New Mexico. But don’t worry—Trump says the real danger is networks getting “bigger,” not the conglomerates already big enough to preempt national programming just because they feel like it. Everything’s fine. Totally normal. Nothing contradictory happening here at all.
If media consolidation is such a huge threat, why is the loudest panic coming from the people who helped build the monster?
