Brendan Carr

FCC Chair Threatens Media Outlets That Don't Report Good Iran War News

Brendan Carr, who relishes his role as Trump's "media pit bull," sent a threatening X post while visiting the president at Mar-a-Lago.

Joe Lancaster | 3.16.2026 1:45 PM

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(Aaron Schwartz/Sipa USA/Newscom)

Amid a war in the Middle East that is, despite his assurances, still very much unresolved, President Donald Trump spent a substantial portion of the weekend posting on social media, including complaints about the news coverage that the war is getting.

"Yet again, an intentionally misleading headline by the Fake News Media," Trump groused in a Truth Social post over the weekend. He singled out reports that U.S. refueling planes were hit at an air base in Saudi Arabia, which he called "the exact opposite of the actual facts" and said the reporters were "truly sick and demented people that have no idea the damage they cause the United States of America."

But as Reason's Matthew Petti notes, "Trump acknowledged the report was true, and he took issue with something it didn't actually say." Indeed, The Wall Street Journal reported the planes "were struck and damaged," and Trump's post complained that "the planes were not 'struck' or 'destroyed.'" (The Journal report uses the word destroyed in a later paragraph, referring to all refueling planes that have been damaged since the war began.)

But instead of this being just another of Trump's many misinformed social media missives, we've become numb to over the years, a high-ranking member of Trump's administration jumped in to back up Trump's gripes with more explicit threats.

"Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions—also known as the fake news—have a chance........

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