WASHINGTON
— President Trump threatened on Wednesday to use the federal
government’s power to license television airwaves to target NBC in
response to a report by the network’s news division that he contemplated
a dramatic increase in the nation’s nuclear arsenal.
In a story
aired and posted online Wednesday morning, NBC reported that Mr. Trump
said during a meeting in July that he wanted what amounted to a nearly
tenfold increase in the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, stunning
some members of his national security team. It was after this meeting
that Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson reportedly said Mr. Trump was a
“moron.”
Mr.
Trump objected to the report in two messages on Twitter later Wednesday
and threatened to use the authority of the federal government to
retaliate.
He
repeated his complaint later in the day, when reporters arrived in the
Oval Office to cover his meeting with the Canadian prime minister,
Justin Trudeau. “It’s frankly disgusting the way the press is able to
write whatever they want to write and people should look into it,” Mr. Trump said.
Asked if he favored limits on what the media can say, he answered, “No. The press should speak more honestly.”
For
Mr. Trump, attacks on what he calls the “fake news” industry have been
one of the primary metiers of his presidency, a way to ventilate his
deep sense of grievance over news coverage of his tenure while
energizing a political base that itself is largely hostile to the
mainstream media. At one point, he labeled some outlets “the enemy of the American people.”
Although
the networks themselves do not hold federal licenses, their individual
television stations do. His threat to target NBC drew immediate concerns
that he was undermining the First Amendment.
“Broadcast
licenses are a public trust,” said Tom Wheeler, who until January was
chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, appointed by
President Barack Obama. “They’re not a political toy, which is what he’s
trying to do here.”
In
suggesting that a broadcast network be targeted because of its
coverage, Mr. Trump evoked the Watergate era, during which President
Richard M. Nixon told advisers to make it difficult for The Washington
Post to renew the F.C.C. license for a Florida television station it
owned. A businessman with ties to Mr. Nixon filed paperwork to challenge
The Post’s ownership of the station. The Justice Department under Mr.
Nixon also filed antitrust charges against the three major television
networks.
In
Mr. Trump’s case, it may just be an idle threat, the sort of bluster
that he has regularly used to keep perceived adversaries off balance.
Just a day earlier, he suggested
using federal tax law to punish the National Football League as part of
his campaign against players who kneel during the national anthem, only
to have a spokeswoman later say he was just making a point.
But
Mr. Wheeler said it could also be taken as instruction to supporters
who could act on his behalf. “This sounds to me like another dog whistle
for folks to file against the license renewals,” he said. “Clearly it
would be a bridge too far for the Trump F.C.C. to move on their own
initiative. But if some conservative groups were to take this as their
marching orders, it would be an interesting situation to see what the
Trump F.C.C. did.”
Shortly
after the tweets, Senator Edward J. Markey, a Democrat from
Massachusetts, wrote a letter to Ajit Pai, the current F.C.C. chairman,
urging him to protect First Amendment rights. “I ask for your commitment
to resist the president’s request and call on you to publicly refuse to
challenge the license of any broadcaster because the president dislikes
its coverage,” Mr. Markey wrote.
Mr.
Pai, who was designated chairman by Mr. Trump, did not respond to a
request for comment about the president’s tweet, nor did the White
House.
The
NBC story said that Mr. Trump raised the idea of increasing the nuclear
arsenal during a July 20 meeting at the Pentagon. Shown briefing slides
illustrating the reduction of nuclear weapons since the 1960s, the
president said he wanted a major buildup instead.
National
security officials, said to have been surprised by the president’s
suggestion, explained that such a move would contravene decades of
efforts to curb nuclear weapons and violate several treaties signed by
the United States under Republican and Democratic presidents.
The
network cited three officials who were in the room but did not identify
them. As the meeting broke up, Mr. Tillerson was heard making his
“moron” comment, NBC said. Mr. Tillerson did not deny
using the word when asked by reporters last week, but later sent out a
spokeswoman to deny it on his behalf. In an interview posted on Tuesday,
Mr. Trump said he considered that “fake news” — but also said that, if
it were true, he could beat Mr. Tillerson in an I.Q. contest.
Speaking
with reporters on Wednesday, Mr. Trump expressed satisfaction with the
current size of the nuclear arsenal, if not its condition. “We won’t
need an increase,” he said. “But I want modernization and I want total
rehabilitation. It’s got to be in tiptop shape.”
Defense
Secretary Jim Mattis issued a statement of his own disputing the NBC
story. “Recent reports that the president called for an increase in the
U.S. nuclear arsenal are absolutely false,” he said. “This kind of
erroneous reporting is irresponsible.”
While
its members are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate,
the F.C.C. is a separate agency mandated to act independently from the
White House. Mr. Trump’s tweet suggested a potential misunderstanding of
how television licenses work.
NBC,
like ABC, CBS, Fox and CNN, are television networks that do not license
spectrum. But NBC’s parent company, Comcast, does own television
stations that do license airwaves from the F.C.C., as do CBS and Walt
Disney, which is ABC’s parent company.
The president’s tweets stoked strong pushback from activist groups that said the threat to NBC was clear.
“This
is not just a huge issue from a First Amendment standpoint, it is at
best a weird way to go at it and nonetheless very problematic,” said
Matt Wood, policy director at Free Press, an advocacy group on
communications issues before the F.C.C. “The message is clear, you don’t
have to work hard to see how those words are chilling.”
Alexandra
Ellerbeck, the North America program coordinator for the Committee to
Protect Journalists, said authoritarian countries such as Russia,
Azerbaijan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey license news outlets based on
coverage. “Donald Trump’s assertion that NBC’s license could be
challenged not only puts him in unfavorable company but emboldens other
governments to embrace authoritarian tendencies,” she said.
Mr.
Trump’s threat was hardly the first time a president has sought to
stifle the media. “Trump is following in one of our more sordid
presidential traditions,” said John A. Farrell, author of “Richard
Nixon: The Life.”
He
noted that President John F. Kennedy tried to pressure The New York
Times to pull its reporter, David Halberstam, out of Vietnam because of
his critical reporting on the war, and President Lyndon B. Johnson
harassed Frank Stanton, the president of CBS, over the network’s
reporting from that war zone. The Nixon White House “carried the
campaign against the press to considerable length,” Mr. Farrell said,
including eavesdropping on reporters.
Mark
Feldstein, a longtime award-winning network reporter who now teaches
journalism at the University of Maryland, said that so far Mr. Trump’s
campaign against the media has been more bark than bite — but that it
may still intimidate journalists or their bosses.
“Whether
he follows through on his threat or not, he sends out an unmistakable
message to every broadcast outlet in the country: Watch what you say —
or else,” Mr. Feldstein said. “Network executives may pretend not to
care and take public umbrage, but it has a chilling effect anyway.”
