Why FCC Chair Brendan Carr Is a Dangerous Moron

21:32got into power. He wielded it to try to revoke the broadcast licenses of a few large stations and shows, right? What is the actual mechanism by which he can enforce this? Is there an enforcement mechanism or is what they're going for more of a chilling effect on the speech of people? Sometimes I can't tell with this administration when they're just bullying people for a, you know, a chilling effect versus when they're actually trying to fundamentally change the system. Which one do you think it is in this case? Yeah, I mean, I think there are absolutely real sanctions associated with some of the threats that Brendan Carr and other administration officials are making.

22:09I mean, just to take one example, withholding approval for a merger can have billion-dollar implications. And that's a very real sanction. Now, I wouldn't separate that from the chilling effect. The chilling effect is a result of the fact that at the end of this process, there might be a real sanction. But the chilling effect is much, much broader than, you know, goes much further than just the institutions that are directly targeted. You know, when Brendan Carr targets, you know, Paramount or Skydance, you know, other media organizations are watching very carefully because they know that they could be next.

22:44And the chilling effect results in, you know, people deciding, you know, sometimes this is called anticipatory obedience, like even without the threat, people deciding, you know what, maybe it's better if we don't air Jimmy Kimmel or we don't air Stephen Colbert. And they just decided on their own without anybody needing to make the threat. And that's the real risk, I think, that we're getting into this situation where we're censoring ourselves.

23:07Kara Swisher:Right. All right. Commissioner Gomez? Yeah, I've been saying all along that it's the threats that are the point. Nobody wants to get dragged before the FCC in an investigation over the content of their broadcast. You know, I started a tour of the country where I go to local communities and I talk about the threats to the First Amendment from this administration. And every single stop, every single one, there's a broadcaster there that says, what am I allowed to say? And what I always say to them is, it is not my job to tell you that. My job is to ensure that you have the platform to give us a viewpoint.

23:43And we want diverse viewpoints. But this administration is pushing toward, in a lot of ways, including through these mergers, having one viewpoint that the public sees and hears. And that in and of itself is a First Amendment violation. It's a First Amendment violation of viewers and listeners not being able to see and hear the content of their choice. Right.

24:02Kara Swisher:And in that case, the sanctions are not because in this case, Disney's pushing back. Right. And probably they'll win in court. They will absolutely win. And that's why I say the FCC is a paper tiger, because if challenged, If this goes to court, the FCC will lose because the First Amendment prohibits us from censoring content. And the Communications Act, which is our authorizing vehicle, which I realize is kind of boring and wonky, specifically has a section that says you can't censor. And so they'll lose, but it'll take time for Disney to do so. And sometimes it's not a thing. Neelai? Brendan Carr is not using magic word like statutory interpretation to regulate broadcast because he really cares about broadcast.

24:42He's using this like bad lawyering dummy approach to the law to threaten Google, to threaten Verizon, right? These are the actual distribution points of the content people actually watch. And Google is a defense contractor, right? There's a lot of ways a unified Trump administration can threaten Google into changing the YouTube algorithm. And this stuff, which seems removed from most Americans, which is about television most people aren't watching, which is about radio stations most people aren't listening to. It is just a test balloon for, hey, how can we pressure Verizon or AT &T into throttling content we don't like on their networks, into picking networks we do like, into making sure video on X loads more crisply and clearly than video on TikTok or whatever, which is, if you recall, 100 years ago, people were warriors for net neutrality because that was the biggest threat to free speech on the internet, that the carriers would pick and choose.

25:39So here we are, you have an FCC threatening media distribution platforms, broadcast television and radio stations with the power they have in a capricious way that may not survive legal challenge but will certainly cost a lot of money. And the best choice might just to cave. And Kara, you know this better than anyone. Our tech titans do not have spines. If they have to pick between lucrative defense contracts and throttling content on their platforms, what do you think they're going to pick? Oh, absolutely. No question. This is why I sent the letter to Disney, because Disney has, in fact, now shown courage.

26:14And Disney has stood up in the past for First Amendment rights and won. And I think that they need to get credit for that. And we need to encourage that kind of behavior because it is only through pushing back that we're going to make sure that this doesn't actually get any more legs. Tara, what do you think of the new guy?

26:31Kara Swisher:I don't know him. I don't know. But I was pretty pleased that he did this. Like, I think he's, you know, about had it. I think they all see the end, I suppose. And so what's the difference? And at some point, you know, Brandon Carr is going to end up a, you know, a contestant on Dancing with the Stars, I guess. And that'll be that. But I think it was a good first move. It was an indicator. That said, as you said, what they're really going for is something else. I do think, Commissioner Gomez, you're correct that they're a paper tiger, but they can still cause problems elsewhere, right? It's a message, even if they have no real power.

27:04Kara Swisher:But they do. and it's a messaging situation.

27:10Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

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29:24Kara Swisher:Let's talk about this guy, about Brendan Carr's path to the FCC chairman and how the agency is changing. Carr began his career as a D.C. attorney at a firm representing telecom clients, including AT &T and Verizon. In 2012, he joined the FCC as a staff attorney. Former chairman Ajit Pai promoted Carr to be the agency's general counsel at the start of Trump's first term in 2017. And then when he became that, he was quite thirsty to get on my podcast, I recall. And I didn't usually do individuals, especially I just didn't have them on very much. But compare the FCC of Trump's first term to the current one.

30:00Kara Swisher:And how did Carr evolve into what former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler has described as an activist chairman? Because I recall he was somewhat of an irritant, but not really. He was sort of a, I don't know, a regular Republican, I suppose. Go ahead, Jamil. I mean, I guess, you know, part of what's happened is that the second Trump administration is very different from the first Trump administration, not just about Brendan Carr, right? Now we have this sort of all-government assault on free speech, again, in the name of free speech. And at the United States, we have this case where we're representing technology researchers who have been threatened with deportation because they are criticizing the major social media platforms' content moderation policies.

30:45And it's this crazy, crazy policy that the Trump administration has put in place, again, in the name of free speech. They want to deport these tech researchers for what they're saying in their research. But I think that that's kind of, that reflects the sort of larger philosophy that the Trump administration is trying to put in place across the board. It's not just the FCC. There's this effort to – there's this sense, I think, among MAGA types, or let me just say the Trump administration at least, there's a sense that we are being silenced. Our people are being silenced. And when they say silenced, what they really mean is other people are criticizing us.

31:26Other people are disagreeing with us. And they are trying to shut all of that speech down. And that's what you see with the FCC and the broadcasters. But you also see it with the Trump administration and legacy news media, you know, the Associated Press being expelled from the White House press pool or all of the newspapers. Yeah, the Federal Trade Commission's gone after content moderation and the advertising companies that refuse to put their clients' ads in certain places they don't want to. platforms.

31:56Kara Swisher:Before Eli answers, can you explain how the commission works so people understand? Like he came to the chairmanship and some chairmen try to get some sort of comedy between all of you and others don't. But explain how it works. You're this single Democrat. Is that correct? Yes. Normally there's five commissioners and there would be, there can't be more than three of the same party. So there would be two minority commissioners. But right now we only have three commissioners. So we have two Republicans and me. And, you know, on a day-to-day basis, we actually... And why is that? Why aren't there a full five?

32:28Well, one Republican and one Democrat resigned last year. And there has been no other... The way that it works is, of course, the president nominates the commissioners and the Senate confirms them. And there's been no nomination from this White House since. So we've been operating with a two to one, I'm the one, majority for the last year. And Neil, why has he shifted like this? You and I both know he was not this way, not this way. He was a deregulatory Republican during Trump one. And now he's a MAGA warrior. And I think he's just like a political animal. I think he sees his lucrative podcast paid for by illegal supplements in the future.

33:10And that's going to be a great exit ramp for him if he can be one of these characters and whatever comes next. The thing I'd point out is I've known a lot of various commissioners of the FCC over the past 15 years running the verge. And they're mostly – sorry, Commissioner Gomez. Pretty technocratic, right? Like we're doing spectrum policy. We want to make sure Americans have cheaper, faster broadband, especially in rural places. And that's what they all talk about. And you have them on your podcast and no one listens because it's pretty boring, which is why I think you didn't have Brendan on your podcast in the past.

33:43The shift here into content regulation, into saying we're going to go after the platforms who do content moderation in ways we don't like and we're going to go after broadcasters for speech they don't like is all-encompassing in the Trump administration. It is direct from Project 2025. Brennan Carr wrote the FCC chapter in Project 2025. Project 2025, taken as a whole, I don't know if anyone wants to rewind their brain, was not a coherent document. It was self-contradictory in many places, but the one through line was, we will exert power over this nation, and we will make sure people say what we want them to say and punish them when they say what we don't want them to say.

34:20Kara Swisher:So for people who don't know, Carr wrote the chapter, as Neil, I said, on the FCC for the Conservative Policy Agenda Project 2025, which Trump said he didn't know anything about but seems to be following rather closely. He focused on, in his part, focused on reigning in big tech, banning TikTok, and calling out what he viewed as censorship of conservatives on social media. So to what extent the policy goals he outlined have shifted, but they've shifted in some way, more so. Again, again. You think he's doing it the back door to get to social media. I think we're running test balloons using the power that's there to regulate content on broadcast networks, which is a very loose power.

34:59Again, I think they'll lose if they take these to court. But you at least have this notion that the FCC has some authority over broadcast stations, right? And you can go point at them and poke at them really hard. There's not any statutory equivalent to social media. There's not any statutory equivalent to Google search. But there's lots of power the government can exert over those companies.

35:21Kara Swisher:In other places, right? In other places. So linking. And you can run at, boy, we're going to ban TikTok. It would be horrible if we took TikTok away from the American people unless Larry Ellison showed up to buy it and run the algorithm his way. And we're going to force the Chinese government into some kind of deal, which to my knowledge, no one quite understands yet, that turns TikTok over to some entity that has some connection to the Trump administration. And you can just see, oh, we're running this playbook. We're running an all-of-government speech-control playbook. And Brendan Carr, his personality is whatever Donald Trump to some extent, but whatever Russ Vot wants him to do, because that is actually the architect of the playbook.

35:59Kara Swisher:He also seems to light the limelight. So the FCC historically has been independent and relatively quiet, I would say. Obviously, Carr's behavior, including wearing a gold lapel pin depicting Trump's silhouette once last year, called that into question. The agency's independence also came up last December when Carr was questioned by New Mexico Democratic Senator Ben Ray Lujan during the Senate Oversight Committee hearing. Let's hear an excerpt of that. Chairman Carr, yes or no, and please yes or no, is the FCC an independent agency? Senator, thanks for that question. Yes or no is all we need, sir.

36:34Yes or no, is it independent? Well, there's a test for this in the law, in the key portion of that test. Yes or no, Brendan? Brendan? The key portion of that test is... Okay, I'm going to go to Commissioner Trustee. So just so you know, Brendan, on your website, it just simply says, man, the FCC is independent. This isn't a trick question. Okay, the FCC is not... Is it yes or no? Is not. Okay. Is not... So is your website wrong? Is your website lying? Possibly. The FCC is not an independent agency. Okay, can I read this to you? The FCC's mission on the homepage of the FCC, man, an independent U.S.

37:05government agency overseen by Congress. Is that factual or is that a lie? The FC is not formally an independent agency. Is this true or is this a lie? I'm happy to answer your question. Okay. The synchuanon of independence is being removable by the president. Chairman, I have a little bit of time. I'll get back to you. The FC is not an independent agency, formally speaking.

37:24Kara Swisher:Soon after Carr said that the FCC removed the word independent from its website, Jamil, why are the agencies like the FCC created to be independent? And how does the politicization of the SEC fit into the broader shift of the role of agencies under the Trump administration? Yeah, well, so I mean, I think we're seeing exactly why these kinds of agencies should be, you know, independent. You know, the alternative is the agencies are partisan and are suppressing the kind of speech that the president wants them to suppress and answerable in this very political, immediate political sense to the president.

37:57But the Supreme Court is very quickly making it clear that they don't believe in independent agencies. They believe in a unitary executive in which the president is essentially the decider for any agency in the executive branch and that the leaders of those agencies are removable at the whim of the president. That's the Supreme Court's current view. And I think that, you know, you can trace some of what's going on now in the FCC to that particular vision. But, you know, one thing that I think is really important, and we focus a little bit, I think, justifiably on Disney's decision to push back.

38:35But Disney's decision is actually an outlier, right? There's so many of these media organizations that have not pushed back. And you can blame a lot of this on Brendan Carr and on the Trump administration, and you should blame a lot of it on Brendan Carr and the Trump administration. But the other side of it is media organizations have First Amendment rights that, to a large extent, they are failing to assert. And, you know, Disney is an exception. I would say the Associated Press is another exception, but those exceptions are few and far between. Go ahead, Commissioner Gomez. I think it's important to remember why we're an independent agency.

39:14When Congress was looking at creating what was our predecessor, the Federal Radio Commission, it thought about putting it in the executive branch in the Commerce Department. And it was actually the Commerce Secretary at the time who said that was not a good idea, that it was dangerous to have the most powerful regulator of the broadcast media, which at the time was radio, subject to the whims of one person. And that is why Congress created the then FRC, then the FCC, as a multi-member, bipartisan or multi-partisan, I guess it doesn't have to be bipartisan, agency, so that it would be an expert agency not subject to partisan whims, as Jamil noted.

39:59And what we are seeing today is exactly what happens when we are controlled by the whims of one person.

40:09Kara Swisher:We'll be back in a minute.

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42:21Kara Swisher:Let's talk about what else Brendan has on his agenda at the behest of President Trump, clearly. Paramount's planned acquisition of Warner Brothers is one of the latest mega-mergers moving forward under the Trump administration. Kinshera Gomez, why don't you start? You recently called for a review of the foreign ownership interests in the deal. First, explain the FCC's role in reviewing mergers like Paramount, Warner Brothers. It can go lots of places. It can go to the FTC, the Justice Department. Are you concerned the merger won't get adequate review under CAR? We actually have a limited role in the Warner Brothers transaction because there are no licenses being transferred here.

42:55Normally, like in the next Artegna merger that we talked about earlier, the FCC approves that transfer of the licenses and it looks at, you know, how does this affect competition and viewpoint diversity, or at least we normally do. But I call what happens with this administration is there's this thing called the billionaire buddy bypass, where we actually don't have a rigorous review of any of these transactions. And instead, they get approved, not at the commission level, so I don't get to vote on them in the dark of night. But with regard to Warner Brothers, the only thing we look at is the foreign ownership.

43:28And that is because it will alter CBS's foreign ownership. In this case, you know, what really concerns me about this, and it is true that the FCC very often waives the statutory limit on foreign ownership of broadcast stations, what really worries me here is the fact that these are not just, you know, some Italian company. These are foreign wealth funds controlled by the governments that are not themselves terribly friendly to the press and to the freedom of speech. And not only that, but Paramount has requested a waiver of up to 100 % of indirect ownership. It's a technicality. And we know that Tencent, which is a Chinese company, which means it's also controlled by the government, pulled out so that it wouldn't draw too much attention, but has said, you know, Bloomberg has reported that they're now back in.

44:22And if the FCC says, sure, you can be owned 100 % by foreign-controlled, foreign-government-controlled companies, then what we are doing to our content is unimaginable. So I did call. I called for it to be very transparent. I called for the DOJ. We have a thing called Team Telecom, which is the security agency's review of foreign ownership, that the FCC actually takes their recommendations very seriously in how to handle these types of things. But again, I'm worried this is just going to be another billionaire buddy bypass.

44:57Kara Swisher:So the FCC approved the$6 billion merger of Tegna and Nexter, which would create the country's largest television broadcaster. A federal judge recently blocked the merger, as Neal, I noted. Neal, give us some more context for the deal, why it happened, what's the consequences, and how it will impact consumers. Yeah. There's this longstanding rule, I'm sure Commissioner Gomez can explain it in more detail, that no company should own more than 39 % of the broadcasters in a given region, right? So if you're just a regular person 30 years ago and you get all of your content from broadcast television, radio, the same person shouldn't own all of it.

45:31And this, in terms of government regulation, is pretty good, right? Like you can say, okay, not one person shouldn't own all the media that you're being fed. There should be competition for viewpoint, for entertainment, whatever. And so we're going to make sure that there's diversity in what you're getting over the airways. This is a pretty good rule. The argument here is that what doesn't matter because Mark Zuckerberg owns everything that you watch anyway and you should allow these companies to get even bigger so they can compete. This is Brendan's argument. Where I think this fails, that was Brendan's argument.

46:00And so he's allowing Tegna and Nextdoor to merge and they're going to own significantly more than 39 % in almost every region that counts. Like in some cases, almost all of it. And maybe you say, well, they have to compete with Meta. But they don't actually have the distribution. Right? What they own is a bunch of local news stations. And so what you're going to get in all of these places is your local news. The most impactful news to most Americans will be under control of one company with one allegiance to the president. And there will be no other competition because as we all well know, there is not a lot of competition or money in local news.

46:35So all of these local state governments that are corrupt in the mega era, all these local county governments that are signing corrupt deals to build data centers, they will not have the force of local journalism pushing back on them to inform their communities. Instead, what we're going to get is a bunch of Facebook groups and a bunch of really weird local journalism that advances the interest of the administration. And I think that is just straightforwardly dangerous. I'm not sure there's a regulatory approach to that. Like, it is true that most people open their phone and get all of their content from TikTok and meta.

47:06Sure.

47:07Kara Swisher:But the idea behind it is sound, is what you're saying, is the idea that one— Yes, the idea that particularly the operators of your local news stations should be in competition with one another, and that will create better local news. Even if it should be left out, the Mark Zuckerberg part should be left out of this. So let's not make them stronger. Maybe you should tax Mark Zuckerberg and make him fund a bunch of local news. Like, there's a lot of other ideas you could have. But the idea that you're going to let these two companies, which have clear allegiance to the president, get bigger to compete with Mark Zuckerberg.

47:35Like I said, he's not sophisticated. You roll that up to anyone in America and say, is that going to work? And I say, no, that's stupid.

47:41Kara Swisher:So let's shift to DEI, one of Brandon's biggest bugaboos since taking office. Here he is at a news conference. I really enjoy playing these because he's such a moron. Following the April Open Commission meeting, he's responding to a question about the FCC's investigation into Comcast DEI policy. and whether NBC, which is owned by Comcast, could face calls for early license renewal. And again, I want people to hear what he's saying in a group so you understand what he's at. We've been very consistent across the board about what we view as invidious forms of DEI discrimination. As deals have come before the FCC, we have required people to look at their policies and make sure they don't have what we think is invidious forms of DEI.

48:21Look, in ways, DEI is a tough concept because some people look at DEI and they view it as sort of just traditional non-discrimination. There's other ways that you can do DEI policies that we view as the opposite of that, which is actually discrimination. So when you have debates over DEI, you can really be talking about two different things. When we talk about DEI, we talk about using protected characteristics, race and gender, to discriminate against people based on that. And so this idea that we care about invidious forms of DEI discrimination isn't new, isn't limited even to the broadcast segment.

48:56We've done it with Verizon's made commitments, Charter's made commitments. Other broadcasters do it. We're doing it across the board.

49:03Kara Swisher:Could DEI be interpreted as actual discrimination? And are the FCC probes into companies' DEI policies within the agency's remit? This doesn't seem to be his job. It's a Trump administration thing for sure, but it's not his job. It's definitely a Trump administration. I think this is extremely cynical and dishonest. Nobody who has spent any time paying attention to this can possibly think that this is a good faith effort to enforce the civil rights laws. What's really going on is that the administration here and in many other contexts is weaponizing the civil rights laws to achieve the kinds of censorship that we've been talking about.

49:44That's what's going on with universities around the country. It's what's going on with the law firms too. The Trump administration imposed these sanctions on law firms that represented people whom Trump sees as political enemies. And in order to impose those sanctions, they weaponized the civil rights laws. And the same thing with the universities, they're saying, you know, it's because of universities' violation of civil rights laws that we're canceling hundreds of millions of dollars in grants. But really, it's just a lever, you know, it's a lever to get these important knowledge producing or free speech institutions to change their editorial decisions, editorial decisions in sort of the broadest sense, you know, so that universities stop teaching particular classes or stop hiring particular kinds of people or stop admitting particular kinds of people so that law firms stop representing people who Trump doesn't like and so that media organizations stop, you know, platforming Stephen Colbert.

50:42That's what all of this is really about. I think that the invocation of of discrimination here is transparently protectual. Wait, can I just point out his mention there of Verizon? Yeah. That's some of the most dangerous stuff that he's talking about. I know we're very focused on media companies and free speech and the actual content regulation, but Verizon killed all of its DEI policies in order to win merger approval to buy Frontier. T-Mobile killed all of its DEI policies in order to win merger approval to buy Lumos. Now, these are tiny telecom deals, and I know most people don't care about telecom deals, and they're all the most boring people in the world, but this is just naked corruption.

51:16Right. These are companies that operate physical plants in the United States. Right. They have big networks. They have to hire lots of workers. They got to send people to your house. This is where DEI helps, actually. Right. You want a big, diverse workforce to go service your big, diverse customer base across the country. And we're getting rid of the programs in order to secure merger approval so we can further financialize our economy and all this. Like you can just see how bad it is. It's not First Amendment and maybe in this context, but it's bad. Right, right.

51:44Kara Swisher:So I'm going to shift again to another recent area of interest. The NFL is facing scrutiny from the FCC and the DOJ over its antitrust exemption. Carr recently said, however, the inquiry may not lead to any action. I'm not sure what he's doing here. First, Commissioner Gomez, why? And then, Nilay or Jamil, why? Like, what is the reasoning? This is obviously being pushed by Rupert Murdoch and other broadcasters are trying to get it, you know, up on the tech companies. First you, Commissioner Gomez. I think the intent behind the public notice, I mean, I wasn't part of it, but there is a lot of concern about the health of local broadcasting.

52:19They are losing advertising dollars to streamers, and they are losing a lot of money when they lose the NFL in their local broadcasts. broadcasts. So it's trying to understand the market and what levers there are. And again, I think this one, I agree. I don't know that there's any action the FCC can take other than shining a light on the fact that there is a problem here for the local broadcasters if they lose such an important source of funding.

52:48Kara Swisher:Right. I mean, I sort of agree. At the same time, I'm like, oh, well, you should have run your businesses better kind of thing. But local broadcasters are different than a Rupert Murdoch or something else. Neelai or Jamil? I think this is one of those moments where mega populism kind of runs into reality. And it's like, oh, we should use some government power to make sure that we've given sports leagues this antitrust exemption so they can all bargain collectively. All these rich owners can bargain collectively and get the best deal from all these streamers and broadcasters. And actually regular Americans have to pay thousands of dollars to watch every game that their local teams and their local communities that they pay usually huge tax incentives to build the stadiums for, and then even to watch the games.

53:30You're priced out, and the tickets are getting more expensive. There's something to be done there. But in the context of how CAR operates, how this DOJ operates, I don't think shaking down the NFL is going to work. I think you're actually going to run up against very motivated billionaires. We're all pretty Republican in posture, and they're just going to call the president and say, don't you like Tom Brady? And it's going to go away.

53:52Kara Swisher:It depends on the billionaires he's talking to. So let's talk about the endgame. The FCC regulates broadcast is becoming increasingly irrelevant, as Neil has pointed out correctly. According to Nielsen, broadcast television accounted for about 20 percent of U.S. total viewing, which is amazing, with streaming overtaking both broadcast and cable. The rules that Carr has resurrected date back to a time when broadcast spectrum was scarce and it was important to have it. And Neela, you've made the case that CAR wants to get the FCD to start regulating the internet. Earlier you said his actions so far was a test balloon for this.

54:22Kara Swisher:Is there a legitimate argument for doing that since it's primarily how content is distributed today? I'm smiling because the last time Jamil and I talked was five years ago on the Decoder podcast. And our debate was whether the tech platforms shield themselves in the First Amendment to avoid all regulation and whether that had gone too far. And I'm still of the opinion that all government speech regulations are bad. And I'm a journalist. Like I'm allergic to them. I think that you should have a diversity of viewpoints and voices and we should all fight it out. And the challenge to that is the tech platforms algorithmically control all the media that people consume.

55:02And so I've always joked that Mark Zuckerberg just has a dial in his office and he's like, make Instagram more mega. And then it's more mega. And we all have to hear the song about wanting a guy who's 6 '5 with blue eyes for a month before the election. And maybe you believe that that's a conspiracy or maybe you don't. But there's no transparency into what happened there. And I really think that this government is putting pressure on a bunch of big tech companies who are all uniformly turning into defense contractors right now through AI and saying, hey, make sure people like us. And the pushback I give is maybe it's not working.

55:37Maybe young people actually still hate AI. I think the Times released a poll as we're speaking that the president's approval rating is lower than it's ever been in his second term. And the idea that social media is actually providing pushback, that people are actually seeing what's happening in their lives and are talking about it and they can overcome these algorithms. I think you have to be a little too optimistic to believe it. Right? There's still ways for all of that to change. But that's the dynamic that I'm paying a lot of attention to. So Commissioner Gross, does that make what you're doing irrelevant?

56:06Kara Swisher:Well, then, how do you look at that, even though this is being used as a tool to deliver us into that future that Neela is talking about? No, I think the FCC still plays a very important role. You know, when you see a lot of news on your TikTok feed, that is actually being written by local journalists. So local broadcasters matter very much. And I would also just like to point out that on top of all the issues that we're having with local broadcasting and the health of local broadcasting, we defunded public media. They seem to be surviving, thank goodness. But there are pockets of this country that only get broadcast through public media.

56:43There's no other provider. So that's not good, even during times of disasters. So my point is, there's still an important role for the FCC. There's still an important role for broadcasters. But we do need to be very cognizant of the fact that we no longer have just three broadcasters. We have media everywhere, producing content everywhere. And so we need to take that into account as we think about what we do. I think it's important to have, for example, consumers, viewers, listeners to know when political ads are using AI. And that's something the FCC, in fact, did propose to do. Now, that is content regulation, but it's a very targeted, very specific.

57:28It's not telling them they can't do it. It's just saying you need to have something that says this is generated by AI. Much like political ads also say, you know, they have that end that says, my name is such and such and I approve this message. That's actually an FCC rule. So I do think there's still an important role. But we don't regulate streaming. We don't regulate the internet. We regulate cable to a very limited extent. We do not regulate content, except for maybe a couple things about political advertising. So, you know, we need to evolve into where we are today technologically and understand that the rules that mattered when there were only three voices that this country listened to have been thrown out the window because of all the alternative content people can access.

58:13Right.

58:13Kara Swisher:So I just have two more questions, one for Jamil and then one for all of you. President Reagan's repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 is credited with helping pave the way for the rise of rush limbo and the modern partisan media. Now Carr is invoking news distortion, as we noted, a relic of the Fairness Doctrine era as a regulatory tool to police broadcasters' feet. Looking ahead to the midterm elections, Jamil, how could the FCC's policies impact political coverage that the commissioner was just talking about? Yeah, I mean, I do worry that the FCC's threats to broadcasters and more broadly, the Trump administration's threats that, you know, directed at all sorts of media organizations will have an effect on not just, you know, what news organizations cover over the next few months, but how they cover those things as well.

59:00And, you know, I mentioned this earlier in this conversation, but, you know, at this point, I'm not even sure that the Trump administration has to make the threats explicitly in order for media organizations to sort of adapt their editorial decision making to, you know, the perception of what the Trump administration wants. And I think that's a very dangerous situation. But, Kara, I don't want to reopen this debate I had with Nilay five years ago. Please do. But I just want to point out that they're different. I share, Neil, a sort of instinctive opposition to media regulation, but I also think there are different kinds of media regulation.

59:37And Neil himself was defending the 39 % rule just a few minutes ago. And I think there are all sorts of structural regulation that wouldn't give government officials the ability to intervene at the level of viewpoint or even content, but would be sort of structural regulation that would change, you know, what all of us know about the social media platforms decision making, for example, or what all of us know about how AI models work, or would change diversity of, you know, sort of diversity rules and like how many news sources we have in any particular environment. And those kinds of structural rules are, I think, worth spending.

1:00:15You know, those are worth thinking more about. And we should be open to those even if we are, for good reasons, sort of allergic to the idea of the government deciding, you know, whose voices get heard. We should set up like a five-member bipartisan commission. Yeah. Yeah, five. Yeah, independent agency. In public.

1:00:33Kara Swisher:Yeah, yeah. That would be a great thing. So, Commissioner Gomez, you wrote on X, quote, the days of the FCC as a paper tiger will come to an end. There's a chance that Carr's probes will amount to nothing and that his reign is ultimately temporary. He even reflected on his legacy in a recent interview with the Financial Times saying, quote, I got my time, I got my shot, I took my shot. This man needs to stop seeing movies and quoting from him, he just really needs to stop. But what are the potential lasting consequences of his actions at the FCC, besides being an irritant, and what changes could be permanent?

1:01:07Kara Swisher:Let's start with you, Commissioner Gomez, and then Nilay and Jamil. You get the last word. Well, first of all, I absolutely agree with everything Jamil just said. The one thing I would like to point out, by the way, is that the 39 % cap is statutory. It is not an FCC rule, and it is not for the FCC to let companies violate that. But that's not what you just asked me. You know, I really do worry about the effect on the psyche of broadcasters in the long term, where they will always be more afraid now of the FCC and what FCC actions, how they may harm them. Even Wall Street is looking at these early renewals that the FCC is doing because it lessens the value of the licenses.

1:01:50And that, in the end, harms the finances of these local broadcasters. So I do believe this will come to an end. I'm glad Disney is suing because if they—or I shouldn't say I'm glad they're suing. I'm glad it looks like they're going to sue because if they do, they will win, and hopefully that'll put an end to what we're seeing.

1:02:08Kara Swisher:What you're saying. But the most lasting thing is the psyche and bringing the prices down, that it's not as valuable. It's already a declining asset. Neelai? I think it's two things. One, again, he's such a dummy. There's stuff he's done that we haven't even talked about that has made the FCC appear more capricious and more poorly run and more useless than ever before. He issued an order banning all of the routers that weren't made in the United States. Oh, the routers. I forgot the routers. Right. All the Wi-Fi routers. If you don't make them in the United States, it can't be sold anymore. Well, none of the routers are made in the United States.

1:02:38And then Netgear and Eero, which is owned by Amazon, magically got waivers. And there's some process. I've done some reporting. Some process occurred and some statements were made by those companies of government that said they're promised to build the routers in the United States in the future. But that's nothing, right? Like nothing actually occurred. We did not actually protect the safety of Americans from supply chain attacks on the Wi-Fi routers. We just did some stuff to do something that looked like corruption. And that for the FCC, that legacy of corruption, that's going to be what Brendan leaves behind.

1:03:10This is a corrupt agency that operates through bribes and kickbacks and does what the president wants. And Brendan can own that and I think he's done it so bluntly and so stupidly that you can just look at it and say that's the legacy. You don't have to dance through it. More broadly, and it has come up several times in this conversation from all of us, the notion of the unitary executive that the president just controls the country. and he can just do whatever he wants by hiring and firing these agency officials by fulminating about what he wants and issuing an executive order and the agencies are going to do it, that's going to last for a long time.

1:03:43And again, I started out by saying this. I really hope that the next Democrat who comes into power just goes full tilt at it, that we don't have this Joe Biden return to normalcy style attempt to reset the country, that we actually see what it looks like for the other side to run at it this hard so that both sides understand this is a danger. And to reset it, we need to rethink how all these agencies work. Maybe we need to empower the FCC to make more structural changes to protect speech, to protect the local news. But fundamentally, what we need to do is restore some independence to the parts of our government that need to think long term and not just for political gain in the short cycle.

1:04:21And I hope, optimistically, Brendan running around like a bull in a china shop spouting movie quotes whenever he can to Benny Johnson is going to create the conditions for that change.

1:04:32Kara Swisher:Okay. All right, Jameel, that's an excellent argument. Yeah. I mean, I think that the longer term effect that I'm most concerned about is it has to do with democratic culture. It doesn't have to do with the power of the agency or First Amendment doctrine, which I actually think First Amendment doctrine has held up pretty well in this particular context. The longer term effect that I'm worried about comes out of the failure of so many media organizations to stand up for their First Amendment rights. And I think that this creates a kind of, it's not a legal precedent. Like if you don't stand up for your rights, you don't create a legal precedent, but you create a kind of factual precedent that ABC, for example, had this lawsuit, Trump filed this lawsuit against ABC over something that George Stephanopoulos said on the air, he said that, you know, Trump had been found liable for rape, when in fact, Trump had been found liable for sexual assault.

1:05:22And Trump sued ABC for millions of dollars,$16 million or something. And they got a settlement from ABC. And there's no legal decision there. There's no judicial opinion saying that ABC violated the First Amendment, or that, you know, ABC doesn't have the right to say this particular thing. But there is this factual precedent of a major media organization handing over obscene sums of money to the president in response to, I wouldn't say it was a frivolous lawsuit, but a very weak lawsuit. And then we saw the same thing with CBS settling a case with Trump. Meta settled a case with Trump. One after another, all of these nominally powerful media organizations settled these weak or frivolous cases with the president and just turned over huge sums of money to him.

1:06:11And I really worry about that set of factual precedents and what it's going to mean the next time government officials try to exercise this kind of power.

1:06:20Kara Swisher:Right. That's a really good point. I mean, the companies really ultimately are at fault here. Yeah, that's why the Disney Let's Hope lawsuit is so important. Yeah, I would agree. Anyway, this has been really great. I just want to say I really appreciate it because I think people should understand what's happening here. And also, Brendan, you're invited. I think you're a moron. Prove me wrong. You're welcome to come on, as I've said many times, for equal time, even though I'm not bound by that, but I certainly would. And you may not use any movie quotes. I mean, you can, I guess, free speech, whatever.

1:06:51Kara Swisher:If you want to look like more of a moron, you could do it. In any case, I invite you on. But I really appreciate this. And Commissioner Gomez, I appreciate a lot of what you're doing there as the lonely commissioner. And Neelai, of course, has done an amazing job. And Jamil, as usual, you're all terrific. And I really appreciate it. Yeah, and I just want to call out, we do a segment on the Vergecast called Brendan Carr's Dummy every week. We call it America's Favorite Podcast Within a Podcast. It has now infected this podcast, which is very exciting. And our listeners write us theme songs. And we play different theme songs every week for Brendan Carr's Dummy.

1:07:22So this is one we like so much that we actually bought. It's by Viola de Goomba. And it is a Gregorian chant. Let's listen to it. Brendan Carr is a dummy.

1:07:34Kara Swisher:Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Kara. Thank you. Thank you, Kara. We got a dumb car. His name is Brandon Opie goes away. Today's show was produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Michelle Eloy, Catherine Millsop, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Korwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Madeline LaPlante-Duby, Eamon Whalen, and Julia Sharp-Levine. Our engineers are Fernando Arruda and Rick Kwan, and our theme music is by Trackademics. That song you're hearing now is called Dumb Car. It was sent to The Verge cast by Billy in Santa Fe. If you're already following the show, you are not a moron like Brendan Carr.

1:08:16Kara Swisher:If not, you are one. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On With Kara Swisher and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On With Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and us. We'll be back on Monday with more.