Trump says NBC’s Kristen Welker should face ‘punishment’ from FCC

# Trump says NBC’s Kristen Welker should face ‘punishment’ from FCC

Trump’s threat comes after host described success record of candidates whom president had endorsed as ‘mixed’

Donald Trump on Sunday said NBC’s Kristen Welker – host of Meet the Press – should face “rebuke or punishment” from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Welker, during a live segment for a local Washington DC affiliate, described the success record of political candidates whom the president had endorsed as “mixed”. The segment aired before Sunday’s edition of Meet the Press.

Trump “is going to loom large over these midterms”, Welker remarked on that live shot. “He, of course, has endorsed a slate of candidates in the primaries. He’s had some mixed results.”

But Welker went on to mention Trump’s endorsement of the appointed interim US senator Darline Graham, sister of her late predecessor Lindsey Graham, who was successful in her primary battle.

Nonetheless, the president then took verbal aim at Welker with a social media post deriding her as the “Unpopular ‘Hostess’ of … Meet the Fake Press,” accused her of “purposeful inaccuracy” and warned that she would “be reported to the FCC for rebuke or punishment”.

The post also said that Trump hoped his appointed FCC chair, Brendan Carr – and Carr’s colleagues on the commission – “take this Threat to our Country very seriously”.

Once Meet the Press actually started on Sunday, a guest analyst on the show said “the single most important factor in who the Republican nominee will be in [the presidential election of] 2028 will be who Donald Trump endorses”.

Trump is estimated to have made more than 300 endorsements that resulted in the recipient winning. In the election cycle leading up to November’s midterms, 214 of the 218 House candidates he endorsed winning their primaries, including all 24 Republican Senate primaries.

Meanwhile, in gubernatorial primaries, five of the 21 candidates he endorsed lost their primaries, among them Mike Lindell – who finished a distant second in Minnesota to the state house speaker, Lisa Demuth.

The state’s supreme court on Saturday effectively confirmed Lindell’s 11-percentage-point defeat by rejecting his bid for a recount.

“My Endorsements are stronger than ever,” Trump nonetheless maintained in a 23 August social media post. “There has never been anything close!”

When taking aim at Welker on Sunday, beside touting Darline Graham’s victory, he mentioned the Oklahoma gubernatorial hopeful Mike Mazzei’s Republican primary win.

He had said days earlier that any of his endorsed candidates who lost were already faced with “impossible” races – but they had earned his support “out of loyalty”.

How much power Trump’s endorsement carries has been a touchy issue for the president. On Friday, the HBO Max talkshow host Bill Maher apologized to Trump for claiming that the president was winning “almost none of” his endorsements. Trump had sent Maher statistics making the president’s case that the talkshow host was wrong.

Welker and Trump have a contentious relationship. In June, he walked out of an hour-long interview with the host after being asked, among other unpleasant topics for him, about having pledged “no new wars” during his successful run for a second presidency.

He started a war in Iran in late February alongside Israel, and Trump denied guaranteeing there would no wars if he were returned to the Oval Office.

“You’re a one-sided crooked network,” Trump said at the time. “Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.”

He added: “You ought to straighten out your press. A country can never be great with a dishonest press.”

NBC on Sunday issued a statement saying: “Kristen is one of the best in the business, and we stand by her.”

NBC News on 19 August had published an article examining Trump’s endorsement record, saying in the story’s headline that the president’s “endorsement record takes a hit at the end of primary season”.

Trump’s comments on Sunday about Welker were only the latest instance of him or his administration seeking to bring the weight of the FCC down on media outlets with whom he has become cross.

In September 2025, Carr – appointed by Trump – reportedly put pressure on television station groups to pre-empt Jimmy Kimmel’s show as punishment for a comment that the ABC host, a frequent critic of the president, made in the wake of the assassination of the conservative influencer Charlie Kirk. Two conservative-friendly broadcast groups, Sinclair and Nexstar, did so. And ABC opted to “indefinitely” pull Kimmel’s show before he ultimately returned to the air a week later.

Trump has also won private settlements from ABC and CBS totaling more than $30m during his second presidency.

Earlier in August, ABC sued the FCC, arguing that it was being illegally targeted by the regulator after being forced to apply early to renew its eight local broadcast licenses. Among Republicans’ complaints about ABC are that its candidates are not given equal airtime on the daytime talkshow The View.

“Acting through the Federal Communications Commission, the Administration has waged a retaliatory campaign against ABC for a single reason: it disapproves of what ABC broadcasts,” the network said in its lawsuit.

NBC is licensed by the FCC to directly operate 11 local stations.

Involving itself in broadcast outlets’ editorial decisions and constitutionally protected speech is beyond the mandate of the FCC, which was established in 1934.

The CNN media reporter and commentator Brian Stelter, who on Sunday first found the clip of Welker mentioning Trump’s “mixed record”, wrote that the FCC “can’t punish Welker” because it has “limited power … by design”.

But Stelter noted that Carr had been “responsive” to Trump in the past – and “it’s reasonable to think NBC will be targeted next”.