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- [00:01]
A
Welcome back to the Pod Force One podcast. I'm Miranda Devine. Today we are with FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr. Brendan Carr, thanks very much for joining Pod Force One.
- [00:12]
B
Yeah, so good to be with you. I've been a big fan of the show, so it's great to be on with you.
- [00:15]
A
Thank you. And you've been doing amazing work since you've been at the fcc. And I think Donald Trump is pleased. He keeps on tweeting about what a great job you're doing. And you've been called the media pit bull by the Hollywood. And the Guardian is up in arms about your. Well, he's calling, they're calling it Trump's war against the media. And he's winning largely in large part because of some of the stuff that you're doing. So what are you doing and what's your kind of overall strategy?
- [00:50]
B
Well, I think if you step back, you know, trust in legacy mainstream media is in an absolute decline. I mean, right now, more people trust gas station sushi than legacy media. And it's not just, you know, a talk, it's actually true. You know, trust in legacy media is down to 9% right now. And there's a lot of reasons for that. If you step back, there's probably three or four core reasons why trust in media is at such a low. One is the news media is just completely out of touch with where the American people are. I mean, I'll go back to the recent super bowl in California, and the Washington Post had a editor that wrote a piece that said the most important person in this super bowl is Colin Kaepernick, someone who hasn't been on a football field in about a dozen years or so. You had the USA men's hockey team with a thrilling Olympic victory. And you had reporters, I think, even at ABC saying that they missed the cultural moment by going to visit the president of the United States in the Oval Office. So there's one piece where the media is just so wildly out of touch. And the number two, as you know very well, the legacy media just pushes one hoax after the other, whether it was Hunter Biden laptop being Russian disinformation, which you're familiar with, or Biden being sharp as attack, mostly peaceful protest. Covington Catholic, Juicy Smollett, you know, the list goes on. Russiagate, Russiagate as well. And you also have issues where, you know, these traditional news reporters that want you to think that they're, you know, unbiased down the middle, once they eventually lose their job or get fired, the mask falls and they show themselves to be the partisan actors that they've always been, whether it's Jim Acosta or Don Lamond, you know, the list goes on and on. John Dickerson.
- [02:32]
A
But also fundamentally didn't change my.
- [02:34]
B
Yeah, exactly, exactly. There's, there's something that just showed you who they were from the get go. But also the American public has access now to real news and information, including through social media, through podcasts. So that gatekeeping role is starting to fall apart. So you put all those things together and trust immediate is an all time low. But what's really key here is President Trump is fundamentally reshaping the entire media ecosystem, and he's doing it in ways that people don't even understand. The core way he's doing it is just rejecting the idea that legacy media gets to set the narrative. For decades, politicians would just get bowled over by the questioning and the narratives set by a small number of media gatekeepers. But President Trump was strong enough to push through that, take his message directly to the people and have it resonate fake news. That's right. And that's made all the difference. And it's sort of an emperor has no clothes moment for the legacy media because they can't control the narrative. Again, and it's thanks to President Trump, but for reasons that people don't really understand.
- [03:34]
A
And I mean, you talk about social media and cable news, I mean, none of that podcast, you don't really have any control over that, do you?
- [03:42]
B
That's right. So fundamentally, broadcast television is different than any other form of distributing news or information. And the reason for that is broadcasters have a license by the federal government to operate. And for decades, they've had an obligation to operate in the public interest. Now, to be fair, where we're here, the FCC walked away from enforcing the public interest requirement on broadcasters decades ago. And we are simply reminding people that that still exists. We're going to hold them accountable to that. And, and the reason why they have this unique license is because the government has effectively been picking winners and losers here. So when the government says you get a broadcast license, that necessarily means that someone else doesn't. And so broadcast is really what we call a public trustee model. Whereas unlike a podcast or a cable show or a soapbox, where all you have to look out for is your own interest in what you want to cover. Broadcasters are supposed to look out for the interests of the entire community that they're licensed to, including the people that were denied the ability to have that license microphone. So we're reinforcing the public interest standard. There's all sorts of other rules that come out of it that we can talk about. Equal time rule, prohibition on broadcast hoaxes, prohibition on news distortion. And people don't like that. That's language, profanity. Exactly. That's regulated by the fcc. You can do all of that, but you can't do it on the broadcast airwaves. You can take it to social media, you can take it to a podcast, you can take it to your soapbox. But if you want to use that one unique medium, you have to comply with the rules of the road. And people have sort of lost track of that. But I think it's a good thing that we're enforcing that for the first time in a while.
- [05:16]
A
It's sort of a shrinking market though, isn't it? And they're, they have all these rules applied to them and yet they're now not the big wolf on the, on the block. Are there any changes that you're going to make to reflect the changed media environment where the big broadcasters, the CBSs and the ABCs, have lost market share?
- [05:36]
B
The other thing to keep in mind here to your point is when you think about media, I think divided as you're doing, into two separate buckets. So on the one hand you have what we call the fcc, the national programmers. So that's Comcast, Disney, Paramount and Fox. They're not licensed by the FCC in that capacity, but they're the ones that actually create almost all of the daytime and nighttime shows and programming that people are used to. The national programmers then distribute that programming by affiliating with thousands of local TV stations. So most likely your local ABC or CBS station isn't actually owned by Comcast or Disney. They're owned by some other independent owner. Okay. Over the years we had a great balance of power between those local TV stations licensed by the FCC to serve their community and the national programs. On the one hand, where if the national programmers push something out that wasn't a good fit for a particular community.
- [06:28]
A
Like Jimmy Kimmel.
- [06:30]
B
Like Jimmy Kimmel, we can get into that. The local broadcaster could preempt, could not run and say this isn't a good fit for my community right now. And that system worked. It was a feedback loop. There was preemption of programming. Entire seasons of different shows didn't even run in certain communities. But over the last, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years, those national programmers, Comcast and Disney, have amassed enormous, enormous power.
- [06:53]
A
Why?
- [06:54]
B
Because they are opening up new ways of getting revenue streams are going direct to consumer through streaming services, for instance, as opposed to just relying on the ad revenue generated from the traditional TV side. So they've amassed a tremendous amount of power and they've effectively turned those local TV stations into mouthpieces for the foie gras, oftentimes that they're producing in New York and Hollywood. So one of the north stars of the policies we're pushing here at the FCC is to rebalance that. We want to empower those local TV stations to actually stand up for their local communities. And if New York or Hollywood is pushing programming that they don't think is a good fit, then they can take action. In fact, that is what happened in the Kimmel episode where you had owners of those local TV stations. That said right now, in the wake of the Charlie Kirk assassination, we have stations in Utah, stations in other places around the U.S. we don't wanna run that right now. So they didn't. And so actually I think that was a, a really good thing. It was the first sign in many, many years of a local TV station actually pushing back on New York and Hollywood. And we want to see a lot more of that.
- [07:56]
A
So Jimmy Kimmel came out with an off color joke about Charlie Kirk.
- [08:01]
B
Jimmy Kimmel, off color. I'm shocked here.
- [08:04]
A
But it was also a fake news because he pretended that it was a MAGA person who shot Charlie Kirk, which was the opposite of the truth. But was that what offended you or was that what caused you to write a warning letter?
- [08:19]
B
Well, I don't know about offended, but you're right, this was part honestly of a political campaign. So you saw at the end of the week leading into that Kimmel episode, Eric Swalwell and others were pushing this talking point that Charlie Kirk's assassin was somehow MAGA affiliated. And then on that night, what happened was Jimmy Kimmel told what I don't even think can be really characterized as a joke per se, or not that even matters from my perspective, but left people with the impression that the motives of one of the most significant political assassinations of our time was completely different than what it was suggesting, that he somehow had MAGA motivations. And look, the FCC does have a policy in place against what we call news distortion. And we simply reminded broadcasters that that exists. And that's for in the first place, the national programmer like Disney and the local TV stations to work that issue out amongst themselves. That can take place relatively quickly or they can bring it to the fcc. And it's a longer process, but we'll deal with it.
- [09:20]
A
And I mean, Jimmy Kimmel became a martyr over that and of course and sort of got a new lease of life. What, what would you have done? Say, if you'd been around when the Covington Catholic hoax happened or the Russia Gate hoax happened, what could you have done?
- [09:37]
B
Well, a lot of that stuff takes place on cable news for which, you know, we don't have the same type of jurisdiction. We don't have the same type of news distortion policies. But again, I think it's very simple of reminding broadcasters that they're in a very unique position. They have a public interest standard they have to meet. They have a news distortion prohibition that they can't cross. There's prohibitions on broadcast hoaxes.
- [09:56]
A
So there's did that with the Iran war, some misreporting on that.
- [10:00]
B
Yeah, President Trump has spoken out very clearly on some, you know, very misleading reporting that was out there and he's addressed that. And frankly though, there's just a business interest for these media outlets to want to do this. I mean, when your trust is at 9%, 9% of the population has a great deal of trust and legacy. There's every reason separate apart from the FCC and including these entities that aren't even regulated by the FCC to correct course here because eyeballs and listenership is just shifting to more trusted platforms, to podcasts. And I think they should just course correct for their own business reasons.
- [10:34]
A
But what levers can you pull to sort of guard against those hoaxes and are you willing to do that?
- [10:42]
B
Well, there's a lot that we're doing. We're running several proceedings right now. We've looked at a number of transactions, for instance, that come before the fcc, Paramount, cbs, for instance, as part of their transaction with the fcc, they agreed to make a return to fact based objective reporting. As other transactions come before the fcc, again, I think you're going to see commitments to return to that objective fast based reporting. And at its core, President Trump is succeeding in really reshaping the entire media ecosystem. There's more work to be done, but I think we're heading in the right direction.
- [11:17]
A
So for instance, you said with the Paramount deal that CNN is part of that. So how can you hold them to a promise that they've made, which is pretty nefarious, like it's up in the sky, that they're going to be fair and balanced.
- [11:35]
B
Well, I think what they're doing under new ownership over there at CBS is really good. I think they've made some positive changes with respect to this new deal that's coming forward where they're looking to buy Warner Brothers, including the CNN properties. Ultimately that will by and large be a transaction that's been reviewed by DOJ as opposed to the fcc, because as CNN being cabled, there's not gonna be a transfer of very many FCC licenses. And so we'll see how that transaction plays out. But as a general matter, I think they're, they're moving in the right direction. That's good.
- [12:03]
A
Right. So you see yourself more as sort of prodding and implied threat rather than any legal action.
- [12:10]
B
Well, there's a lot that we're doing. You know, again, we have these transactions that we're looking at where we've imposed conditions.
- [12:14]
A
We are moving conditions for fair, accurate reporting.
- [12:19]
B
We've imposed conditions where they've promised to return more to fact based reporting.
- [12:23]
A
And how do you enforce that?
- [12:24]
B
Well, we have it in our record, it's a license condition. And in the CBS case, for instance, they've got a bias ombudsman that they put in place that reports directly to the president of cbs. And we're looking at a lot of other steps as well. We've got the equal time regulation that again, sort of, I think people viewed as having fallen by the wayside at the FCC many years ago. And we've reinvigorated the idea here is it's pretty interesting. So Congress many years ago put in place a requirement that if a broadcaster is going to put a legally qualified candidate office on air, they have to offer comparable time to all other legally qualified candidates. But there's been an exception. There's an exception over the years in the statute for what's called a bona fide news program. And most people have just assumed that the exception has swallowed the rule that every single program now qualifies as a bona fide news program. And that takes us to things like the View. So Disney has the View and Disney is actually taking the position right now that the View is a bonafide news program and therefore exempt from the equal time regulation. Now.
- [13:27]
A
And they're all journalists.
- [13:28]
B
Yeah, the bonafide news program exception was originally designed for things like Meet the Press, you know, real hard hitting shows. And so we right now have an enforcement investigation going on the View for their claim that they are a bonafide news program because our position is they have not demonstrated that yet. And so.
- [13:45]
A
So if they invite Joe Biden and Jill Biden on, they have to invite Donald Trump and Melania Trump. Is that how it works?
- [13:52]
B
Well, the rule is narrow in the sense that it's legally qualified candidates for office.
- [13:56]
A
Okay.
- [13:57]
B
And so for instance, when the View had James Talarico was running in a Democrat Senate primary, that triggered an equal time obligation for the other candidates in that primary. So that would have been Jasmine Crock and I think one other legally qualified candidate. So in the primaries that's where it applies. But as we move into general election season, if you have two candidates, Republican and Democrat, that are running, then that means you have to provide comparable time and placement to both of them. And the core idea here is pretty simple, which is Congress wanted to empower individual voters to make the decision about who should win elections. They didn't want media gatekeepers being able to put their thumb on the scale for one particular candidate or one particular party.
- [14:36]
A
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- [15:59]
C
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- [17:02]
A
your father, I believe, was an attorney for President Nixon. And I wonder if, you know, I see that. And I think people are now reassessing Nixon and Watergate. And that is almost like ground zero of when the media tasted its first drop of blood of a conservative president or a conservative politician or leader. And from then on, it's been open season on Republicans, on conservatives, from the media. Did you see it that way? Was that something that informed your view? Now, because you're unusual as a bureaucrat, most FCC commissioners are faceless, faceless men who do powerful things behind the scenes.
- [17:51]
B
Well, the 1970s was really the high watermark for trust in media. I think it was as high as something like 70% of Americans had a great deal of trust. And the media has managed to drive that number down to 9% over the years. And for me, this job is really, you know, a lifetime opportunity. And I'm having the time of my life. I started here at the agency all the way back in 2012, and I came in as a line attorney working in the office of General Counsel. I then had the chance to work for a commissioner. That commissioner got to be chair, and I was then made general counsel of the fcc. I was a nominee from there to be a commissioner by President Trump. So I've been a commissioner in the minority, in the majority. I've sat on every single seat on this dais here. This is where we have our monthly commission meetings. And so I really know how this place operates, and I want to use my time as chair to make a difference. We have a strong idea of what we want to do again. We want to re empower those local broadcast TV stations. We want to constrain the power of those national programs. We want to make sure that broadcasters have the chance to do their own good work to restore trust. We're working outside of media as well. We're doing a tremendous amount of on the space economy. We're Doing a lot on national security, we're doing a lot on deregulation. We've now launched the largest deregulatory initiative in the agency's history. We've already gotten rid of something like 300 pages of regulations. I think 130,000 words have been removed from the code of regulations here. So we're making a lot of good progress.
- [19:16]
A
So I want to get to all of those other things that you're doing. You've got a fingers in a lot of pies, but just trying to figure out what gives you this sort of impetus. What is your worldview? And did your father's experience as Nixon's attorney have any impact on you when you were young? And what did he feel about how Nixon had been treated?
- [19:38]
B
You know, I don't think it came up that much. You know, I was pretty young at the time, wasn't alive back then. But I think for me, what matters most is President Trump. President Trump has walked through so many different things and come out the other side because he's been tough, because he's never given up, because he's kept fighting. I think for those of us, particularly in this administration, across the board, we all see that. His level of energy, his commitment to delivering results, his doing it in the face of whatever the headline is, I think that's an inspiration for all of us that we can take an example for. You know, we know what the right thing is to do. We know what the North Star is. But your point? I think over the years, so many people, whether it's at regulatory agencies or in the administration itself, held back and just weren't tough enough. When you look at what President Trump is doing, I think it inspires all of us to push hard and frankly, just to keep pushing even harder. And that's what we're going to keep doing.
- [20:31]
A
And are you concerned about blowback? You know, Donald Trump is term limited. He'll be done in 2028. If the Democrats take back over, can you see them reversing all the good that you've done and then turbocharging the march to the left?
- [20:49]
B
Well, this is one thing that I've heard is that we gotta be careful when we have gavels here. And I think it's an interesting thing. And here's how I think about it. For many, many years, some Republicans, when they would get the gavels at agencies or committees, they would take their gavels and they would go to the farthest flung corners of the world and they would take their gavel and they would Bury it in the sand. And they would say, we can't use this gavel right now because when a Democrat comes in power, they're gonna use the gavel to do bad things. And my view is simple. We don't need to weaponize the gavel when we get it, but let's apply it. So let's remind people about the public interest standard, about broadcast hoax, about news distortion. And you have to remember too that Democrats absolutely weaponized agencies, including the FCC under the Biden years. I don't mean to sort of break news here, but they're going to do it again. When Democrats get back in power and get gavels again, they're going to go wholehearted.
- [21:39]
A
Is there anything you can do to weaponize it? Fireproof it?
- [21:42]
B
Well, I think what we can do is we can at least do the right thing when we're in office and not weaponize, not be biased in how we approach it. Give everybody a fair shot, but actually apply the laws passed by Congress. And that's what we've been doing again during the Biden years. Just look at what they did. So, for instance, there's a local Fox TV station that came up for renewal at the fcc. Very routine. But the FCC saw comment on not renewing, effectively pulling the license of a local Fox TV station. Nobody cared. There were no letters coming from Congress at the time. In fact, the letters that were coming from Congress were the opposite.
- [22:16]
A
Where was it?
- [22:16]
B
So you had ins, you had in Philadelphia. Philadelphia. You had Senator Markey, Senator Blumenthal and others that wrote letters to the FCC pressuring it to take action against Sinclair, which they view as a conservative owner of local TV stations for news distortion. They pushed the FCC to do that actually during Trump 45. And when Biden FCC came in, that letter paid dividends. There were hundreds of routine license renewals for Sinclair TV stations that came up during the Biden years that were not renewed by the fcc.
- [22:48]
A
Really?
- [22:49]
B
That is unprecedented. Never happened before. Or take a look at Elon Musk when he was speaking his mind about things like free speech on X. The entire Biden administration was weaponized against him, including here at the FCC. He won a large contract, I think it was $850 million to provide high speed Internet access all across the country. And the Biden FCC revoked it for what in my view was purely partisan political reasons. Or you had members of Congress that wrote a letter to cable companies, which we don't even regulate in the same way, pushing them to drop Fox News, OAN and Newsmax because they didn't like the decision the news were making and those decisions paid dividends. A lot of those channels were actually dropped. And so the history here is very clear. When Democrats are in charge, they're not just applying the law in an open handed way, they're weaponizing it. And when they get gavels back again, again, you know, not to break news, they are going to weaponize it again. And my view is that we should just at least apply the law passed by Congress in a fair and equal way. And your point? A lot of people say, you know, what's going to happen in the future at the FCC or what's going happen to your future employment, for better or worse? I do not care. My job right now is to look at President Trump and see the energy that he's bringing to the job and bring that same type of energy and then apply the law as written by Congress in an evenhanded way. Regardless of the headlines, regardless of the letters that we're getting from Congress that are threatening us with different investigations, we're just going to keep on doing this.
- [24:19]
A
And the news distortions, so called, that Richard Blumenthal et al were complaining about in that Philadelphia Fox station, what were they? Well, just not following the Democrat narrative.
- [24:32]
B
The Blumenthal letter was on the Sinclair TV stations, but in the Fox Philly station it was really interesting. So it was a group of activists that weren't happy with the content on Fox News Cable. And therefore they said don't renew this separate Fox broadcast channel for content that aired supposedly on Fox News cable. Again, that transition had never taken place before. It was a very easy call for the FCC to dismiss that political effort.
- [25:00]
A
And you were a commissioner then.
- [25:03]
B
I was a commissioner at the time.
- [25:03]
A
And the FCC did not, in the
- [25:05]
B
Democrat leadership on the fcc, rather than dismissing it, sought public comment for it. In fact, they kept that proceeding open for something like 18 months all during the election cycle as a sort of Damocles hanging over. Yes, Fox. Now the Democrat FCC did ultimately dismiss it, but it was something like In January of 2025, after the election was, was long gone. So the Democrats of the fcc, the Democrats across the Biden administration engaged in massive weaponization. They're going to do it again. We don't need to do that. We don't stoop to that level.
- [25:33]
A
They know how to use power. Democrats.
- [25:35]
B
Yeah, but we should at least apply the law when we're here and not let our fear of what Democrats are going to do stop us from doing the right thing today.
- [25:43]
A
And it's not just weaponization, it's also imposing their sort of boutique interests like dei. I know you.
- [25:50]
B
Oh, my gosh.
- [25:51]
A
Yeah, you've been talking about that and trying to do something about it. Tell us, what were they? What was the fcc? What role did they have in trying to impose diversity, inclusion, et cetera?
- [26:02]
B
Well, when I took over, the FCC had promoting DEI listed as our second highest strategic priority.
- [26:09]
A
What was number one?
- [26:10]
B
I think it was trying to connect people to high speed Internet, which is our actual job. So we're. We're the pipes and tubes. People were supposed to be doing that. But they listed promoting DEI is number two strategic priority. They were putting millions and millions of dollars into promoting dei. And we just simply taken our eye off the ball, and that had real practical consequences. So day one, we came in, we ended the FC's promotion of DEI.
- [26:31]
A
But how did they impose that?
- [26:33]
B
Through lots of rules. So, for instance, they passed a regulation called the Digital Discrimination rules, which is if you took any action as a regulated entity of the fcc, that the FCC view had a disparate impact, so a negative impact on some protected class, then you were potentially liable for losing licenses, for massive fines. There was a lot of things the agency was doing. We're unwinding all of that.
- [26:55]
A
Are there any examples of that?
- [26:57]
B
We haven't seen it. That was part of the problem is they were putting in place these regulations to prohibit, effectively, racism. But when you looked at the record, there was already civil rights laws in place, There were already regulations in place to prohibit that. We weren't seeing that type of conduct in our regulated space. But nonetheless, the FC was going down that path, so we eliminated that.
- [27:17]
A
Was that also interfering in the internal workings of the companies that you regulate in terms of their board representation or who they hired, or was it just what they pumped out?
- [27:28]
B
Of course, one of the things the FCC did was it put back in place something called a race and gender scorecard. So every single entity regulated by the FCC had to fill out literally a scorecard with race, gender, sexual orientation and publicly disclose it. Now, why did you have to publicly disclose it? Because the Democrats understood that they can then put third parties in place to put pressure on companies to align their hiring with the right type of scorecard. So that was concerning. And we've, you know, been walking away from and reversing obviously all those decisions, but it really sidetracked the whole administration. If you step back, you'll remember that President Biden put Vice President Harris in charge of a $42 billion plan to provide high Speed Internet to millions of Americans.
- [28:14]
A
Yeah.
- [28:14]
B
And after more than a thousand days, not a single person was connected, not a single shovel's worth of dirt was turned. There's lots of reasons for that, but one is that program was riddled with DEI requirements. And so rather than focusing on quickly connecting people, there was all this red tape and forms that people had to do just to demonstrate that they were DEI compliant. With the Biden administration, we've been clear invidious forms of DEI discrimination are actually not prohibited or not allowed by FCC regulation. And so you've seen numerous businesses regulated by the FCC coming forward over the last several months saying that they have ended their forms of invidious discrimination. You've seen Verizon, T Mobile, AT&T Charter Cox. And we expect all the entities regulated by the FCC to stop any. In various forms of discrimination. There's some still out there. Disney, which owns abc, there's been some really true believers. Yeah. There's been some really concerning evidence that has come to light, like Disney's DEI practice, that they effectively were discriminating against people based on race and gender. And we're still looking at that. We'll allow them to make their case. We have an open mind on it. But we do have an investigation going right now into Disney's DEI practices. And it could get bad for Disney, depending on what the facts show.
- [29:28]
A
In what way could it get bad?
- [29:30]
B
Well, we're running an investigation right now, and all potential remedies are on the table depending on what the facts show about, you know, their level of discrimination. But that could fundamentally go to your
- [29:40]
A
character and character in terms of that you're not of good character enough to hold a license.
- [29:47]
B
Yeah.
- [29:48]
A
And in Disney's case, what sort of. Are there any good examples? Is it just who they hire or what they put on air?
- [29:55]
B
Well, there's evidence that suggests that they were creating, you know, internal promotions, internal work groups, but again, siloing and dividing people based on race and gender. And the evidence indicates, and there may be counter evidence out there that you had promotion opportunities or you were judged on how much you were promoting people based on skin color. And that's something that is really invidious that I had thought as a country we had stopped doing, you know, 60, 70, 80 years ago. And I'm glad that we're getting back to treating everybody, regardless of skin color, regardless of any other protected characteristics based on their merit. That's how it should be.
- [30:29]
A
And why is Disney like that? Why is it so gung ho?
- [30:33]
B
I don't know, you know, I don't know if, if Disney was sort of downstream from the entire Woke movement or there's evidence suggesting that in fact Disney was upstream. It was helping to push a lot of this invidious Woke ideology all across the country. And to be honest, looks like they've taken a pretty big hit at the box office. See them pushing some of that stuff, it's just not resonating with people again. It's, it's sort of a symptom. What I view of the broader media ecosystem being fundamentally out of place. Like people love, you know, great pro America stories, pro America content. If you look at the box office numbers, that stuff does phenomenally well. In fact, we're trying to encourage broadcasters to do more of that. We recently launched sort of in honor of the country's 250th, a Pledge America campaign. We're inviting broadcasters to, you know, once again highlight the great wins of the country and to run patriotic programming. Maybe starting off with pledge of Allegiance, which we used to do, but just lots of ways that you can run pro America content. We think that'd be a great thing for broadcasters to do, particularly this year.
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A
why do you think these broadcasters lost their way in the way that they have and have become, as you say, almost like anti American? I mean, Disney in particular was made a lot of money from clean, wholesome family fare and it's gone the opposite way. You think they just would want to make money? That's a surefire way of doing it. Why have they gone down this niche kind of sorted route?
- [33:59]
B
Well, New York and Hollywood have never been known for really having the pulse of the cross section of the country. But it got worse. In the late 20 teens and into the early 2000s, we saw this just significant explosion of DEI and woke ideology and it was just fully embraced hook, line and sinker by New York and Hollywood. I think as a, as a country, as a general matter, you're seeing course correction again. You see the businesses regulated by the FCC abandoning some of that invidious form of DEI discrimination. So I think we're going through a much needed course correction. But New York and Hollywood were part and parcel of, you know, a really weird bent in this country for a number of, a number of years there.
- [34:38]
A
And how did you, I keep on asking you this, but how are you immune? Because, you know, you're a child of Washington D.C. you pretty much grew up in the surrounds, your dad was a Washington attorney. Why, why did you not succumb to that left wing group think?
- [34:59]
B
Well, look, I think President Trump is truly the inspiration. Look what he's gone through.
- [35:04]
A
But he wasn't around when you were well at university.
- [35:07]
B
But I mean in terms of right now, when you look at, you know, what he goes through with Russia, collusion, hoax, you know, the sort of, the fake impeachments that were against him, the criminal trials, trying to put him in jail, being shot at, and you see that he just keeps charging ahead. I think that's inspiration for all of us to keep doing it.
- [35:24]
A
President Trump was your epiphany.
- [35:25]
B
Well, I think, you know, right now, being in this job, you look at the challenge ahead, how President Trump has just pushed through the fake news, how he's pushed through the lawfare and he just keeps on winning. I think it's a, it's a permission structure for other people to say if he can do it. You know, there's much smaller battles that we go through and the much smaller bad headlines. We can do it too. And I absolutely love every single day in this job and you've got to be hard charged and you got to keep pushing forward. But again, you know, I've been here for a long time. I've seen, I don't know, six, seven, eight different chairs of the fcc. And at the end of the day, every single one, when they get to the last two or three months of their time in office, whenever that is, they always feel like they wish they had done more, they wish they had gone harder or faster. And for me, it was so important from day one to take that mindset and put it in place. We've run an exceptionally aggressive agenda over the last year. Again, media's been a big focus for a lot of people, but it's across the board on so many different issues. The agency's staff is phenomenal. We're doing more, we're doing more with less people. We're being highly productive. And to me, you just have to keep that high cadence of action. And the team here is just doing great work.
- [36:38]
A
So let's talk about some of the offbeat things or off piste things that people might not consider on the front
- [36:44]
B
page of the headlines at least.
- [36:45]
A
Yeah, that's right. Well, I mean, call centers, Indian call centers, I think everyone's sick of. How do you have an impact on that?
- [36:54]
B
We're doing a couple of things. So, so many Americans get frustrated when they have an issue with a business and the call gets transferred to some call center abroad. And there's all sorts of difficulty resolving the problem. There's a communications barrier. Even just culturally, it can be difficult to signal what your problem is. There can be language issues and also
- [37:14]
A
the quality of the call is also impossible.
- [37:17]
B
Yeah, communications issues across the board. And so we're taking a look right now at ways that the FCC can help facilitate and encourage companies to bring their call centers back to the country. For those that have to remain or do remain for whatever reason abroad, we're looking at putting in place, you know, standard English proficiency requirements to try to help there. And we're already seeing results. For instance, Charter Cox, when they did this transaction before us recently, big cable companies, they agreed as part of that transaction to bring all of the call centers that were in the company they were buying back to this country. And I think we're going to open up and have other businesses be able to pledge to bring their call centers back home. It's, I think it's good for jobs here, but it's also, it's good for these businesses. I think this experiment with offshore and call centers and frustration from customers, I don't, I don't think that's been a good thing.
- [38:06]
A
Where do you get that idea for doing that? Do people write into you or is it just something that's annoyed you personally?
- [38:13]
B
Well, things that annoy me personally do tend to get to the front of the line here at the fcc. One of those is robocalls. I am annoyed by robocalls as much as the next person, trust me. And we've tried something different here at the fcc. So historically on robocalls, what the FCC would do is you would do lengthy investigations. You would find individuals that were a high producer of illegal robocalls. You would find them over a hundred million dollars. Now, they were judgment proof. You could never collect it. And you got a good headline out of it, but nothing really changed. And we're doing something different. So on robocalls, what we're doing is we're looking at every single portion of the life cycle of an illegal robocall and making it harder for the bad actors succeed. So we are making it harder to get access to phone numbers in the first place. We're making it harder to stay connected to the US telephone network. So, for instance, to deliver any traffic in this country, you have to be in what's called a robocall mitigation database. We've been kicking providers out of that database on a scope and scale never before seen. Over a thousand providers were kicked out at one point in time.
- [39:14]
A
So do you think there are fewer robocalls now that we're getting?
- [39:17]
B
Robocalls is never an area where you're going to raise the mission accomplished flag.
- [39:22]
A
It's like cockroaches, isn't it?
- [39:23]
B
Right. But we are systematically going at it, including overseas robocalls, to make it harder for those to get into the US in the first place. And so I can assure you it is a top consumer complaint. It is top of the list for us at the fcc. We are taking a new approach to it that we think is starting to bear some fruit. But if you're still getting robocalls, which a lot of people obviously are, you know, the proof is in the pudding for you. But I can assure you that we are doing something different. And we're working across the administration to try to further crack down on this
- [39:52]
A
drones is another interesting thing that you have some sort of power over and why do you want them made in America?
- [40:00]
B
You know, President Trump has been clear that we're going to have American drone dominance. And drones are so critical, obviously not just economically, but militarily. We're seeing all across the globe right now our own national security. So we're doing a couple things. One, we are addressing the security threats that come from drones made abroad. So the end of the last year the administration made the decision that foreign produced drones represent a national security threat and therefore they had foreign produced drones put on what's known as the FC's covered list. So there's no piece of electronics at all that can be brought in or sold or used in the US without approval from the fcc. We can ban devices by putting on what's known as our covered list, like
- [40:40]
A
robots or toys or anything.
- [40:42]
B
Most people may remember things like Huawei gear, ZTE gear. Those are some of the first things we put on this covered list. But now foreign produced drones are also on the covered list as well.
- [40:52]
A
So why is that? What's the danger with drones?
- [40:54]
B
There's significant concerns that come from foreign produced drones, particularly ones by foreign adversary nations. We have a long history, China of looking at devices like Huawei, which was effectively CCP spy gear getting into our network. And so we had a ban it and we're in a process right now of actually ripping that gear out of our network. And a lot of these drones could effectively be Huawei on wings. So we need to make sure that we are protected against that.
- [41:20]
A
So spying, but also maybe they could attack.
- [41:22]
B
Right, all those things. So in this entire broader work stream across the administration looking at defense from drone attacks, it's a very active work stream right now where people are taking concrete actions. But we are pushing out foreign made drones that are national security threat and we're creating opportunity for American drone manufacturers to succeed as well. So we're going faster at the FCC with our approval of US Drones with a two prong approach. Keep the foreign drones that are national security threats out and create economic opportunity for US drone makers to succeed and thrive. Fox News is now streaming live on Fox 1. When it matters most. Turn to the voices you trust. We go beyond the headlines, bringing you the stories you won't hear anywhere else. Live coverage, sharp analysis, real perspective at home or on the go. Stay connected when it counts. Stream Fox News on Fox one download today.
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- [42:58]
A
Let's go back a little bit to your childhood.
- [43:00]
B
And I feel like I should lay down on the couch at this point. So I usually get this question a lot, like, where do things go so terribly wrong in your life?
- [43:09]
A
Well, President Trump told us that he played the flute when he was a child. So. Okay, maybe we can start there. Is there any unusual hobby or talent that you have?
- [43:19]
B
Gosh, that's an interesting question. I mean, play a lot of sports growing up. A lot of, you know, soccer, baseball, lacrosse, a little bit of golf now that I'm getting older. I haven't quite adopted pickleball yet, but I played a lot of sports as a kid.
- [43:32]
A
What was your favorite?
- [43:32]
B
You learned a lot, a lot of soccer. I played goalie there. That was a lot of fun. But I just love the competitive side of it. You know, I love winning. I hate losing more than I love winning. But you just, you learned a lot from. From all of that.
- [43:44]
A
And you've got three boys now, and you do sports, so.
- [43:47]
B
Oh, my gosh. So I got three boys. They're 12, nine, and six. You know, they're the gorgeous, gorgeous about, you know, my life, my wife, my kids.
- [43:55]
A
It's.
- [43:55]
B
It's phenomenal. But, yeah, three boys. It's, you know, fist of fury in the house. It's tons of sports. We've, you know, stopped, you know, patching walls or painting walls from all the scuffs and things that hit the walls from the boys, you know, wrestling and tumbling around with each other. But they have a lot of fun. And, you know, I love when, you know, when I get the time on the weekends to just spend a lot of time with them or in the spring now. So baseball's kicking off again. My boys love baseball. One of them's on a travel team. We spent a lot of time out on the ball field. It's just so much fun being with them.
- [44:25]
A
Yeah. Sport's so important, isn't it? For boys especially, but girls as well.
- [44:28]
B
Yeah.
- [44:29]
A
And so tell us about your childhood, then, growing up. What were your parents like? I think you had one sister.
- [44:34]
B
Yeah, my dad was. Was a lawyer. As indicated, my. My mom was a psychologist. And I would grow up sometimes on the weekend, I would go with my dad to his law firm office and he would set me up in the office next to his, and he would give me one of those big, long yellow legal notepads and a pen and he would do his work and I would, you know, sketch out on the notepad and pretend that I was being a lawyer. So, you know, my dad was a white collar criminal defense lawyer. So right after I wanted to be, you know, a policeman and a fireman, the next thing I wanted to do would be a white collar criminal defense lawyer. But never went down that path, came this way instead. But it's been a lot of fun.
- [45:08]
A
You did become a lawyer, though. Did he ever talk about the Nixon Times? I mean, I just find it fascinating to the reassessment of Nixon these days politically, because, you know, Trump has been put under much more duress than Nixon was, and yet Nixon kind of bailed out. And I think Trump is acutely aware of the fact that he needs to keep alliances with Congress to make sure he doesn't meet the same fate.
- [45:33]
B
No, I wasn't aware of it. I mean, when I would go into my office with my dad on the weekend, he'd never mention it. He had a picture on the wall with him and President Nixon. So, you know, I would see that. I thought it was sort of interesting, but it wasn't, you know, a significant sort of conversation topic. But look, President Trump is, and he's set the mark. I mean, he is just, you know, the political colossus of our time. He has just charged through so many things that most ordinary politicians would have avoided or would have, you know, let them get down. But he's got a clear vision of what he wants to do with this country and he's executing on it regardless. And he's been proven right on issue after issue where people doubt him, where, you know, there's panickings across Washington, D.C. i would encourage people to trust in Trump and to stick with the plan.
- [46:14]
A
It's interesting you mentioned that you feel empowered by the fact that he's strong. And I guess that goes across the administration that people who might under weaker leadership just keep their heads down are now feeling that they can fight the battles.
- [46:33]
B
I think that's exactly right. It all comes from President Trump. I think everybody watches him. Everyone sees how he conducts himself, the energy that he brings to it, the fact that he just fights through that he's on the right side of issues. That he knows it and he stays with it, and that eventually people come back his way in terms of their coverage of him in the long run when they see exactly the wins that he's delivering. And it is an inspiration to everybody that you can actually just do things.
- [46:56]
A
Every sort of administration person I've interviewed or sort of allied official, not every, but probably three quarters of them said that there was some sort of adversity in their childhood, like a father died or the parents went bankrupt or they split up, or, you know, in Mike Johnson's case, his father had a terrible. He was a firefighter, got very badly burned, was an invalid, and so on. Is there anything, any adverse circumstances in your childhood that might fit in with that little template?
- [47:31]
B
It's fine. When I was in college, I took a course called the Psychological Assessment of Presidential Candidates. And it looked at candidates going up, I think, until the early 1990s, so not modern times. And the theory, at least looking back from the 1990s back, was, you know, to your point, to. To be at the presidential level, which is not Congress, it's not obviously, let alone here.
- [47:51]
A
Yeah.
- [47:52]
B
You know, you had to have, you know, a very unique drive, and usually it came from people, you know, to your point, that had extraordinary stories. My own story, I think, is more of a Forrest Gump career. You know, I decided to, you know, went to college here at Georgetown, went to undergrad at Catholic, particularly for the telecom institute they had here. I was at a law firm. My plan was to come to the FCC for two years, really, in 2012, to leave in 2014 to go back to the law firm. And I've just had different opportunities come to me while I was here. I mean, the idea of being a commissioner was never on the radar for me. Being a general counsel of the agency was never on the radar. Being chair wasn't. But I've just had tremendous number of opportunities come my way. And each job, even within the fcc, is different. And what I really enjoy is taking on a new job, figuring out how I think the job should be done, and giving it everything I can. And I could be right, I could be wrong, but I want to give it everything I can. I want to be active, I want to do a lot of things. But again, it was more of a Forrest Gump, as opposed to maybe a typical politician who decided very early on that they wanted to get into that type of a job.
- [48:55]
A
And that course you took. What were the characteristics, was it sort of adversity in childhood that galvanized those presidents?
- [49:03]
B
Well, when you look back historically, those. I mean, one of the theories was, you know, regular level people at, you know, regular level accomplishments in life, they just don't think that they can, you know, rise to the level of being president. But, you know, among the personality traits, is there something unique that's. That's within these people that make it that far, that think they, in fact, can do it and they can fight through and make it? The other interesting thing about the course was it was said that basically every president up till then in some ways is a reaction to the weakness of the president before them. Yeah.
- [49:37]
A
Of the same party or the different party.
- [49:39]
B
Just of a different party, of the switch. That if, you know, a president is known for being weak, you get a president that's, you know, strong.
- [49:45]
A
Well, look at Trump and Biden.
- [49:46]
B
Yeah.
- [49:47]
A
And then Trump and Obama, too.
- [49:48]
B
But it's. It is. It's a bit of a. Yeah, the history was, you know, a bit of a pendulum going from Carter to Reagan.
- [49:54]
A
Yeah.
- [49:55]
B
And you look down the pattern at how different things can swing at those types of national elections and how much.
- [50:02]
A
I mean, I bumped into you at Mar a Lago in that crazy period after the election when everybody was there auditioning, I think, for their jobs. Was that your first time of meeting President Trump and what was your reaction to him in the flesh?
- [50:17]
B
Yeah, the first time I met President Trump in person was down there at Mar a Lago after the 2024 election. I get down now from time to time, partly get away from the weather in D.C. sometimes on the weekends and have a lot of fun down there, but it's. It's been great.
- [50:33]
A
And what did he tell you that he wanted done?
- [50:36]
B
One, as a general matter, I tend not to get into sort of discussions exactly with the president, but, you know, if I did, I don't think it'd be that interesting to people. He wants people to, you know, to work hard, to go big, and that's exactly what we're trying to do.
- [50:48]
A
And what was your impression of him walking into the room and seeing him? Is he a Citizen Kane type character or what was. What was. What did he look like to you?
- [50:57]
B
Yeah, I mean, as I said, I mean, he is simply the political colossus of our time. There's nothing like him. He is, you know, the alpha in every single room.
- [51:06]
A
That's true.
- [51:07]
B
In every single place all across the world. And his energy is just contagious. And when you see him and see his push and his drive, you just want to push harder and drive harder as well.
- [51:17]
A
And your mum was a psychologist. Did she ever try and psychoanalyze you guys?
- [51:22]
B
Probably, but yeah, but I don't recall right now.
- [51:25]
A
Yeah. And last question. What is the secret of success? You've been around a lot of successful people and you yourself are successful. What's one thing you would say would be the secret?
- [51:36]
B
It's a good question. I remember being in law school and I was interning here at the fcc. So this must have been all the way back in 2003, 2004. Michael Powell was the chairman at the time and he said that his dad gave him piece of advice. He said the advice was that opportunity knocks for everyone. Most people don't have their bags packed. It's a bit of a Rorschach thing. People can sort of interpret it different ways and it's something that I've used over my life, which is to say, for instance, when I was at a law firm, I could have stayed at the law firm and made partner. But I had an opportunity to come here to the FCC and for a lot of people they would have golden handcuffs and can't leave the high paying law firm job or they want to stay and make partner. There's any number of reasons to not make a change or not make a leap. But you know, I felt like I had to have my bags packed and so I made the leap and there's been a tremendous amount of opportunity that's come from that. The thing I say to people is make sure that you're in an organization where there's no artificial constraint on what you can do. When I was a law firm, I felt like there was always going to be three or four partners above me no matter, you know, what I did or how hard I worked. But I came to the FCC and it was a place where there's no artificial constraints. Again, I didn't ever envision being general counsel or commissioner or chair, but I knew it was a place where if you just worked hard and did the right thing, you'd have a lot of opportunities. I think it's important for people to make sure that they're in some sort of organization or structure where, you know, they can go as high as they're willing to work.
- [52:57]
A
Well, we're lucky that you're there. Brendan Carr, thanks very much.
- [53:00]
B
Good to be with you. Thanks so much.
- [53:02]
A
Thanks for joining podforce One. I'm Miranda Devine. Please hit the like and subscribe buttons. But more importantly, tell me what you thought thought of today's interview in the comments below. I do read them. See you next week.
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B
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