FCC Chair Brendan Carr details his tenure since 2012, arguing that legacy media giants like Disney and Comcast weaponized local stations for ideological agendas. He highlights an investigation into "The View" for failing equal time standards and critiques Google Gemini's bias alongside NFL antitrust exemptions that inflate sports costs. Carr emphasizes undoing the Biden administration's alleged "weaponization" of the FCC regarding Sinclair and Starstarlink, while advocating for a gold standard free from AI bias and protectionist European rules. Ultimately, he asserts that restoring fair enforcement and long-term policy success outweighs short-term media criticism. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Uncovering Big Tech Censorship00:14:53
There was a real partnership between the Biden administration and big tech, Twitter under prior leadership, to censor the speech of everyday Americans.
Did you see that while you were here?
And have you since uncovered documents that prove that point?
Yeah, there's efforts going on both at the FCC and government wide right now to uncover a lot of this and some of the litigation, Missouri versus Biden, also led to some of that evidence.
And we were in a really dark place there.
Do you find that concern growing with the usage of AI in terms of what the big tech?
Censorship look like and what the future of AI could look like if not in the correct hands?
Yeah, I mean, some of those early AI models in particular, I think Google Gemini very famously decided to roll out AI models that were deeply embedded with ideological bias.
That's why it's so important.
President Trump came in and he said, We are restoring gold standard AI, that America is going to lead the way.
It's not going to be embedded with ideological bias.
So when The View hasn't had anybody on, you're like, Damn, I've been successful.
Well, we have an investigation going on right now into The View and we've raised serious questions.
You think that's gaslighting, though?
There's no way anyone thinks The View is bona fide news.
I think there's a lot of questions that have been raised about that.
Okay.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of the Katie Miller podcast.
We're in Washington, D.C. at the FCC with Brendan Carr.
Thanks for joining.
Yeah, so good to be with you.
Great to be on the show.
So you've been at the FCC since 2012.
What's been the biggest difference from the Obama administration to Trump to Biden back to Trump and especially now being chairman?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So I started here, as you noted, all the way back in 2012.
I've had the chance to serve in many, many different jobs here.
I was an aide to a commissioner.
I was then general counsel of the agency and I was a commissioner in the minority during the Biden years, commissioner in the minority during Trump 45. and now chair.
And yeah, each one of those is unique.
And one thing I think is different today is the pace and cadence of action.
Again, all this flows ultimately from President Trump in the energy he brings.
He tells everyone in the administration, you know, go big, swing for the fences.
And you're certainly seeing that.
The pace of work that we're doing, we're cutting through backlogs.
We're doing newer, bigger, bolder, more aggressive actions.
And I think that's one of the biggest changes at the FCC.
And you see us maybe getting more attention in traditional media than the agency has before.
We've certainly reinvigorated our approach in the broadcast media sector in particular.
But we're also moving hard on space economy, on combating fraud, on robocalls.
Every sector the FCC does, I think there's just a new level of energy going into our work.
You've been criticized pretty heavily for being vocal, not only on X, but in the legacy media about going after equal time and other facets of FCC rules that previously haven't been enforced so rigorously.
Why are you choosing to do that, and why is that so important to you?
One of the things the FC does is it regulates the traditional broadcast media space.
What most people don't understand is you can sort of divide that area into two main players.
On the one hand, you have what we call the national programmers.
So that's Paramount, Disney, Comcast, Fox.
And then you have these thousands of individual TV stations that are licensed to serve local communities.
And they effectively run the shows from the national programmers.
And historically, those local TV stations stood on their own two feet.
They served their local community.
They did gumshoe reporting.
And over the last 12, 20 some odd years, we've lost the balance.
And now these national programmers running out of New York and Hollywood are effectively using local TV stations as their own mouthpieces to push this New York and Hollywood foie gras all across the country.
And that's not how it's supposed to be.
Again, broadcast is fundamentally different than any other means of distributing news and information.
It's not a podcast.
It's not a cable channel.
It's not a soapbox.
You're licensed by the FCC.
And that license means you get free access to a scarce public resource, the airwaves, and you have to operate in the public interest.
Over the last 20 years, the FCC and broadcasters, I think, have assumed that there isn't a public interest standard anymore.
You can be just like a cable channel.
You can do whatever you want and you can get the license.
And we've been telling people that's not what the law says.
That's not what the FCC's precedent says.
And we are going to reinvigorate the FCC's approach.
And I think it's important because you look at trust in national legacy media, it is at an all-time low.
I mean, more people trust gas station sushi now than they do the legacy media.
In the statute, it's something like 9% of people have a great deal of trust in the legacy media.
So, for the layman, what you've essentially done is say to CBS, NBC, ABC, that says if you're going to have certain political people on your air, you have to have one from the Republican side and one from the Democrat side, equal representation.
What does that look like in reality, say, for shows like Stephen Colbert or The View, who The View hasn't had anyone on politically, I think, in either direction since you have become more aggressive?
Yeah, this is a law that.
Congress actually passed many decades ago, and the idea is that Congress didn't want media gatekeepers to decide the outcomes of elections.
They wanted individual voters to decide for themselves.
So they passed a law that said if you have one candidate on a broadcast television show, again, it doesn't apply to cable, then you have to provide equal opportunity to all other legally qualified candidates.
And again, broadcasters effectively thought the FCC walked away from that requirement.
We've reminded them that's not the case.
So if you want to go on Kimmel or you want to go on The View, that could trigger an obligation to provide equal time to other candidates.
So when The View hasn't had anybody on, you're like, damn, I've been successful.
Well, we have an investigation going on right now into The View, and we've raised serious questions with them.
They are asserting that The View is what the statute calls a bona fide news program.
And if you're a bona fide news program under the law, you actually don't have to comply with equal time requirements.
So they're asserting that they're bona fide news just like, I don't know, Meet the Press used to be or something like that.
There's obviously questions that have been raised about whether they are in fact bona fide news, and we've asked them to file a petition at the FCC to try to get some clarification on that, and we'll see where that goes.
But I think if you think that's gaslighting, though.
There's no way anyone thinks the view is bona fide news.
I think there's a lot of questions that have been raised about that.
Okay.
Just to be clear, that feels like gaslighting to me.
Yeah.
Okay.
What surprised you most since becoming chairman and taking this role?
Is it the amount of calls you get from various news organizations?
Are you privately having dinner with these people?
What's it look like?
This is such an interesting job, particularly the FCC, an agency of this size.
On the one hand, you can be meeting with the president, you can be doing interviews, and the next moment, you can be dealing with mundane HR issues inside of this building.
So what I love about being the chair of this particular agency is the breadth of different work you do.
The other thing that's so interesting is you get a different perspective.
So the media will focus narrowly on one thing we're doing.
Usually it has to do with the media because the media loves to talk about the media.
But we're doing so many other interesting things in space and combating fraud and driving down prices for consumers.
And we're taking actions that are going to pay off for the American consumers, sometimes in months, sometimes in years.
You can watch this mismatch between the media coverage of what your agency is doing and what you know is really going to be legacy setting reforms that the leadership here right now is getting done.
And so seeing that mismatch is so interesting.
But I just love coming to the office every day.
There's new challenges, there's new problems.
We deal with law, we deal with policy, we deal with Capitol Hill, and just bringing so many different skill sets to bear.
And again, someone that's been here since 2012, you kind of know where the bodies are buried.
It's a lot of fun to get to be in this position now.
You've recently launched an investigation into sports broadcasting and the NFL for.
I did the math on this.
It's over $1,000 if you wanted to watch a full season of the NFL between all the different streamers because they're not on one streamer, plus all the broadcast, et cetera, et cetera.
What is your goal in terms of bringing the NFL to the table?
Well, historically, sports leagues and broadcasters have had a really great relationship.
It's been mutually beneficial, and consumers have benefited as well.
You come home, you turn on your TV, you're used to being able to very quickly find the game you want to watch, either for free over the air or part of your basic cable.
That experience for consumers has become very frustrating in recent years, and to your point, it's become more expensive as well.
Part of why the NFL and other leagues are in this situation is there's this Sports Broadcasting Act passed by Congress decades ago.
When you find these things, do someone bring it to you, or are you watching NFL at home and you're like, this is bullshit?
I can't watch the game.
The NFL one in particular, I was particularly frustrated during the playoffs last year when you had to sign up for a particular streaming service to watch one of the playoff games, and then I had to set a reminder for myself to cancel it in 30 days so I could take advantage of the free 30 day window.
Personally, did not appreciate this.
You're personally victimized.
Exactly.
So that's one reason this came on my radar.
But the NFL has been benefiting from this antitrust exemption that Congress passed.
And the exemption is limited to antitrust exemption when their programming goes over what the statute says is sponsored telecast, which basically means TV.
So there's a point at which, a tipping point, where the NFL is putting too many games behind a paywall that they're really undermining their right to that particular exemption.
From my perspective at the FCC, I care about this because ultimately we care about the health of local broadcast TV market.
And right now, the profitability of a lot of these local TV stations outside the big markets Is questionable in part because so much money is getting pulled out of those local markets ultimately to go to the NFL and other sports leagues.
So, if you want a healthy local broadcast TV market where you have local news, local reporters that are trusted, not the legacy national, but trusted local, we have to have a healthy broadcast market.
But don't you think, and you said this earlier, that some of the trust in legacy media is broken even at the local levels because some of those reporters are woke and radical as well.
And those are the people, if you know anything about TV journalism, right, you start in a smaller one.
Go bigger and bigger and bigger, right?
So you're at like in the top tens, and then you eventually get over to a bigger network, right?
CBS National, NBC National, et cetera.
And if you're saying that those reporters as well suck, which I think most, you think you could make that assertion, that part of the reason why these local networks are losing money is not just because the NFL and sports, it's because of how bad their news is.
There's some of that.
In the main, though, those local news reporters are more trusted.
than sort of the legacy national.
If you look at legacy national, I mean, to your point, trust is just absolutely cratering.
I think it's for a couple of reasons.
I've thought about this.
So one, I think the legacy media is just wildly out of touch with where the American people are.
So for instance, after the American Olympic hockey team won the gold medal, not surprising, they went and visited the president in the Oval Office.
And you had, I think it was an ABC reporter saying that they really missed the cultural moment by spending time with the president of the United States.
And you had another national outlet, I think Time Magazine, before the Olympics, rather than highlighting a U.S. bigger skater or other athlete, had a CCP skater on there.
So they're wildly out of touch.
And then I guess the other example is on the Sunday of the most recent Super Bowl, you had a reporter come out and say, the most important person to the Super Bowl is Colin Kaepernick.
Someone who hasn't stepped on a football field in a decade, but was known for advocating for the CCP.
So you watch a log in Legacy News, is what I've got from this conversation.
Or a lot of clips on X, one or the other, one or the other.
But you think this legacy media that's just wildly out of touch.
And I think, second of all, you see all these legacy reporters that once they ultimately lose their job because of bad ratings and the mask drops, they show you who they are.
And they're not these neutral, straight news reporters.
You've got people that go on and show you who they are, whether it's Jim Acosta or Don Lamont.
The list goes on and on.
Dan Rather, that once they finally get off the network, they show you who they are.
And it's really just a story.
Are traditional broadcast rules made for the current media ecosystem that predominantly lives online?
Yes and no.
I think you could make the argument. that with all these new sources of news and information, the internet, cable, YouTube, why should we bother to enforce these rules that are unique as to broadcasters?
And I say that trend actually means we should.
Because if you don't want to comply with our rules that apply to broadcasters, if you don't want to meet the public interest standard, if you don't want to provide equal time, if you don't want to not run broadcast hoaxes, then move over to cable or move over to streaming and turn in your broadcast license.
Again, it's valuable public resource, the spectrum.
We can give it to someone else.
So, in today's day and age, you can get your news and information out there, but if you want to use the unique medium of broadcast TV, you should be complying with FCC regulations.
And we're going to be enforcing that, even if people think the FCC and prior administrations has walked away from it.
Do you think your ability to go viral and say punchy things that are probably a little bit on the edge has helped these media companies get in line?
Well, we've reminded people that the public interest standard is there, and we expect their conduct to change.
We're working through sort of a ladder of regulatory options.
Who's on the edge right now?
Well, we've got some investigations going.
We have a DEI investigation into Disney.
Who's your worst offender in this area?
Netflix has a history.
I mean, you remember a couple years ago, there was that program Cuties that they were running that was sexualizing young children.
Again, I think Disney is a big proponent of a lot of these issues, and so we've been looking at that too.
The sexualization of children?
Yeah.
Are we in a better or worse media environment than we were 10 years ago, and how do you think we got here?
Well, I think we are in the midst of a changing media environment, and I think it is starting to change for the good.
It's a big ship to turn.
Ultimately, I think President Trump has taken on the legacy fake news media, and he's winning.
And he's not winning in ways that people think.
I say that and people think, oh, do you mean you and Trump are calling people up and getting people fired?
No, you're fundamentally misunderstanding the point.
When Trump ran for office, he ran straight to fake news media, and he said, you don't get to decide. the narrative anymore.
And most politicians either don't have a big enough megaphone to do that or are intimidated.
But once he did that, it was sort of an emperor has no clothes moment for the legacy media.
And all of a sudden, people started realizing that they have to stand their own two feet as a business model.
And all sorts of changes are now taking place.
So look at the changes over the last couple of years that I think are attributable to Trump running at the fake news media.
Risks of AI Narrative Control00:04:31
You've got NPR defunded.
You've got PBS defunded.
You've got CBS having new ownership.
CNN is getting New ownership.
You've got Jewelry out at MSNBC.
Don Lamont is gone.
Jim Acosta's gone.
Colbert is leaving.
You have all of these changes taking place.
And again, to me, it's because Trump just fractured that facade that they get to control the narrative.
Now you've got many other positive changes happening in this ecosystem.
So it's a big ship to turn, but I think things are heading in the right direction.
You've criticized what you call the censorship cartel among big tech platforms.
What specific problems do you see with how social media companies moderate content today, and how should the FCC get involved?
Well, we were really in some dark times there, right around 2020 and beyond.
And there was a real partnership between the Biden administration and big tech, Twitter under prior leadership, to censor the speech of everyday Americans.
Did you see that while you were here?
And have you since uncovered documents that prove that point?
Yeah, there are efforts going on both at the FCC and government wide right now to uncover a lot of this.
And some of the litigation, Missouri versus Biden, also led to some of that evidence.
And we were in a really dark place there.
I think the tide has turned.
It started, I think, when Elon Musk bought X and restored free speech there.
You then saw Zuckerberg at Facebook, maybe belatedly, start to embrace more of a free speech in that platform.
Hopefully he sticks with it.
And so I think social media is a lot better off now.
Ultimately, my view on social media and censorship is that individual users should be empowered to make their own decisions.
We don't want the government deciding what you can see or do on social media.
And frankly, I don't really want the social media companies doing it.
But give individual users the power to block or mute.
Users or not follow people.
I think that's the best approach.
Do you find that concern growing with the usage of AI and how some of these companies are pre programming them in ways that maybe censor speech, shape speech, and it being what was, how we were behind, I say we as conservatives were behind in 2020 in terms of what the big tech censorship looked like and what the future of AI could look like if not in the correct hands?
Yeah, I mean, some of those early AI models in particular, I think Google Gemini very famously decided to roll out a AI models that were deeply embedded with ideological bias.
That's why it's so important.
President Trump came in and he said, we are restoring gold standard AI, that America is going to lead the way.
It's not going to be embedded with ideological bias.
And you can see others, parts of the globe that don't agree with that.
China is developing their own versions of AI.
It's deeply embedded with ideological bias.
If you ask DeepSeek what happened in Tiananmen Square, they'd say nothing.
If you ask them how the Uyghurs are doing, they say they're doing great.
They're getting a nice education in a camp-like setting.
And frankly, Europe is at a bit of a crossroads.
You know, are they going to follow America down the path of gold standard AI?
We welcome them to do that.
Are they going to follow the Chinese model?
They're going to try to develop something else.
But the U.S. is really leading the way here.
But the key is, you know, President Trump saying we have to, you know, get these things going without ideological bias.
I'm sure you've seen the news reports of Anthropic's new model, Mythos, and how they gave it to five different banks, JP Morgan included, would have thousands of employees to test the model for cybersecurity risks.
That could potentially lead to telecom failures and telecom cybersecurity risks.
But yet, not one employee that they gave it to had a national security clearance, or we weren't guaranteed that they would give it to China or Iran when they handed it over.
What risk does that present to you as the regulator of telecom here in the United States?
Well, we see a lot of, just more broadly, even cybersecurity threats, and we have whole work streams standing up on that.
But with AI in particular, you can sit AI on a telecom network, and in a matter of seconds, it can effectively do the work.
That previously, other cyber attacks would have taken weeks or months of sitting on the network to be able to figure out.
So, there is a real risk in terms of how some of that stuff is deployed, and there are a lot of concerns around some of the models that you've flagged.
How concerned should Americans be about the risks of AI, whether that be what they're streaming?
You see a lot of AI generative content, TV content.
Is that something that the FCC wants to get into regulating specifically to understand what is truth versus fiction, or is they're going to use it in movies?
Satellite Politics and FCC Action00:06:53
Well, we've got to strike. a right balance here.
There is a role for the FCC, so as part of one of President Trump's executive orders, it calls on the FCC to look at some state regulations that may be overly regulating AI, not in the ways that we've sort of spoken about here, but that are substantively regulating AI in a way that is going to hold back its development.
And so the FCC is looking at that right now.
Potentially there could be First Amendment issues with some of the disclosure requirements that states are looking to impose.
So we have to have a balance here to make sure that U.S. does lead the way.
Recently, Amazon indicated that it would not meet the number of satellites it deployed in low Earth orbit as required under its FCC license.
I think they were supposed to deploy half by now, and it seems like they will miss by a lot.
How do you deal with something like that?
Yeah, this is a really interesting one.
So historically, when you've had a situation like this, whether it's satellite or terrestrial mobile wireless, and someone hasn't met their build-out obligations, the FCC effectively looks the other way and takes no action.
And we've been trying to take a different approach.
So we're working through those issues with Amazon right now.
I don't expect that the FCC will move forward without taking some sort of action that matches the consequence of their failure to meet the milestone and we'll see where that goes.
But we'll see that on the mobile wireless side as well.
So, for instance, we have big providers that effectively warrant me their build-out obligations, and we've reminded them that you have to do this, you have to build out.
And so we're going to be holding folks accountable.
The Biden administration engaged in a lot of, I would say, political one-sidedness here at the FCC, even with Starlink.
How have you undone some of what they've caused damage to this agency?
If you look at the Biden years, again, I was here as a commissioner in the minority, there was just a tremendous amount. of weaponization at this agency.
You had, for instance, members of Congress and the Senate that wrote the FC letters, actually the letters came in during Trump 45, pressuring the agency to investigate Sinclair, which was a broadcaster that Democrats thought was too conservative.
Democrats come in during the Biden years and they picked right up on that and they failed to renew the licenses for almost any Sinclair TV station, which had never been done before.
There was zero reporting about that.
You then had members of Congress write letters to cable companies.
pressured them to drop Fox News, OAN, and Newsmax because they thought they were too conservative, and that effort bore fruit.
Some of those channels were, in fact, dropped.
During the midterms in 2022, there was a sale of a Spanish-language radio station to what was perceived as conservative buyers in South Florida.
The DNC and Democrats weighed in with the FCC and said we had to block that sale, otherwise the midterms could be lost.
That sale was ultimately abandoned.
You had a Fox Broadcast TV, again, not Fox News cable, but Fox Broadcast TV in Philadelphia that was up for renewal during the Biden years.
And the FCC then took the unprecedented step of putting it out for comment to see if we should not renew the license because of content that was broadcast on a cable channel.
And the list of weaponization during the Biden years just goes on and on and on.
It includes Starlink.
Again, the FCC during Trump 45 provided an award to Starlink, $885 million, to ensure that millions of Americans would get access to high-speed Internet very quickly.
And the Biden administration revoked it in what my view was plainly a move designed at retribution for Elon Musk deciding to embrace free speech on social media.
And so what we saw is a history of weaponization.
And when I come in, my view is that we should apply the law in a fair and even-handed manner.
It's a really interesting debate because I think a lot of Republicans historically would come to agencies like this or they would get gavels in committees in Congress and they would say, we can't do anything because if we do something, then when Democrats come in again, they're going to weaponize the actions.
And my view is, you know, we can't take the gavels and run to the farthest flung corners of the country and bury them in the sand out of fear of what Democrats are going to do because Democrats weaponized the gas industry.
They already did it, and then nobody covered it.
No one covered it.
They're going to do it again.
Are they going to blame me when they do it again?
Like, okay, sure, fine.
But you seem like you don't give a shit what anyone has to say about you.
My job here is to take the gavel, apply the law in a fair and even way.
Again, I think it comes from Trump.
I mean, if you look at what he's done, what he's gone through, he's a happy warrior.
He's hard charging.
He brings a lot of energy.
I mean, the New York Times, I'm sure, has already written my obituary, and it's not positive, so it doesn't matter what else I do.
The rules surrounding international spectrum use from space seem pretty outdated.
They were written at a time when there was no low Earth orbit constellations and only satellites in GEO.
How do you plan to address things like the power flux density at the national level and where this translates internationally?
Yeah, this is a really interesting issue.
So historically, you'd have one or two satellites in orbit.
They were way, way up there.
They provided not very great connectivity.
We now have this entirely new generation of low Earth orbit satellites.
Starlink is among them.
Amazon hopefully is going to get some more satellites up there soon.
But they're providing really great connectivity.
Now, we had rules on the books that was artificially constraining the power they could operate on because there were rules designed for those bigger satellites operating in far Earth orbit.
So at the FCC we're voting this month to modernize those rules and it could increase the capacity of these low Earth orbit systems by up to sevenfold.
A lot of our countries abroad aren't joining us in that effort.
We're going to try to persuade them a little bit.
But at least for Americans, How do you react when these international bodies like the EU have a different set of rules for American companies versus their own?
I think it's outrageous.
I mean, look, there's an old line about how America innovates, China imitates, and Europe regulates, and I think you see that a lot in the satellite space.
So most people are used to the fact that Europe is very protectionist in the technology sector in general, right?
They are penalizing and punishing successful U.S. technology companies simply for being successful U.S. technology companies.
We see that.
In the satellite space as well.
So, for instance, unlike big tech, where Europe has no national champions or significant number of companies, it's asymmetric.
But satellites aren't asymmetric.
Do you think Europe's right to fine our big tech companies for speech on their platforms?
No, they're effectively over regulating their own industries and they're fining US businesses to subsidize their own lack of economic growth.
In the satellite space, they're doing the same thing.
They're imposing regulations that favor European satellite providers, because unlike technology companies, there are European satellite providers.
So they're favoring European satellite providers and effectively trying to keep U.S. satellite providers out of Europe.
But again, reciprocity, those European satellite providers want to do business in America.
Overregulating US Industries00:13:37
And so we started a proceeding at the FCC to make sure that there's reciprocal treatment.
And effectively, the ball is in Europe's court.
If they want to shut out U.S. providers from Europe, we're going to make sure there's reciprocal treatment here in America.
And again, I think it flows from President Trump, which is a core principle of his is reciprocal treatment, right?
We're not going to get taken advantage of.
Anymore.
So I think the viewers now know a little bit what's going on here at the FCC.
What's a typical day like for Brendan Carr?
Okay, typical day is my littlest kid first jumps into the bed.
How old are your kids?
So I got three boys.
They're 12, nine, and six.
So the six year old is first.
Do you wish you had more kids?
Yeah, I think it's awesome.
I think the more you can have, the better.
I start kind of late.
We do personal questions here.
Yeah, you can look at me, I'm a little old at this point, but I'd love to have more.
The dog is the second one in the bed.
Okay.
And then, you know, we get the family going, and I drop the three kids off at school.
We come in.
And the day could be anything from speaking at an event to just meeting with teams inside, making policy decisions, and then ultimately get home.
Sometimes I get home in time for it's Little League season right now.
So all three of my boys are in different baseball and T-ball teams.
So I can get home in time to catch part of their games.
That's always a lot of fun as well.
Who's your closest friends in the administration?
Gosh, I probably look across other agencies.
So Andrew Ferguson is probably the closest to the FCC in terms of what he's doing at the FTC.
So that might be one.
President Trump called you the most important man in the room at a recent EO signing.
What's your relationship like with the president?
Look, I think President Trump is the political colossus of our time.
He is one of one.
And getting a chance to spend time with him, it's energizing.
It's also tiring.
After spending a day or so with him, it always takes a little bit of time to recover from that.
But just being around him, his level of energy, again, seeing everything he's walked through and his commitment to just keep on fighting, I think it inspires everyone across the administration.
I think you just have this great, I wouldn't even call it competition across agency heads, but everyone is working so hard to deliver results for him.
And it's a lot of fun.
How often do you guys speak?
I don't know, every week or so we end up bumping each other, either at an event or otherwise.
What's your favorite story with President Trump?
Everyone's got one of something crazy.
Well, look, I think I've had the chance to play golf with President Trump, and he's just a lot of fun on the golf course, really entertaining.
I'd say as a personal matter, it's always a little bit intimidating.
One, when you're playing golf, you're on the first tee.
There's always like first tee jitters as a general matter.
But then you're, one, standing next to the President of the United States.
Two, there's Secret Service there.
Three, you've got snipers with the tripods around.
And then four, you can hear the drone sort of hovering overhead.
And so sort of going through and living through that life experience is interesting and a lot of fun.
So, you have three kids that are elementary age.
What do they think you do?
Well, one of my kids, you recently made me a piece of artwork over here that says KFC chairman.
So, I think maybe one of them thinks I'm the chairman of KFC.
We eat some KFC on occasion on the weekend.
Don't tell Secretary Kennedy that we do that.
But I think they do generally understand that I work here.
They're big fans of baseball, as I said, with T ball.
And so, I got to throw out the first pitch last year at a Yankees game and took them to that.
So, I think that part of the job is pretty interesting.
Do you pitch yourself to go deliver the first pitch?
Sometimes you got to work the ref a little bit to get there, but sometimes the invites come your way.
How do you handle being present with your family when you have such a high demanding job?
It's hard.
It's really the toughest part.
I mean, you're sort of always on your phone.
You're always on call.
You know, is the president going to call?
Is someone in the building going to call?
And so you always have to, you know, have that nearby.
But anytime that you get, you know, away from here with the kids, it's, you know, that's the best.
That's what it's all about.
I mean, the more time you can spend with family, the better.
If they can go to events with you, the better.
But, you know, these jobs are time limited, right?
I mean, The most important thing that we have in government is time because at some point it will be time to move on for this job.
And I guess being at the FCC, watching lots of chairs before me, invariably when they leave, they wish they had another month or two.
And I try to take that mindset from the get-go and just every single day grind as hard as we can.
And so you don't get the great work-life balance per se.
You do the best you can.
But this is a very limited window and the vast majority of my life will be looking back.
And I just don't want to regret that I didn't get one or two more things done.
You really elevated a sub cabinet role to what is a predominant player, at least in this administration, in terms of its importance and the prioritization here, and you've done it unafraid.
Why do you think you've behaved like that?
Is it that you don't care what the legacy media thinks because you know you're not going to have them on your side?
Because you don't want to win the support of your building?
Those are kind of frequent refrains you hear from others that they want to win the support of those people in the building.
What's that for you?
Well, one is that you have to.
Live through some news cycles to realize that long term it simply doesn't matter.
So I was here during Trump 45 when you may remember the great net neutrality repeal when everyone said it was the end of the internet as we know it.
I'm going to be honest, I still don't understand net neutrality, even if you paid me.
CNN had this banner headline that literally said, end of the internet, and people were protesting in the streets.
And I knew at the time that it was the right policy, it was the right call, and what's happened since then?
Speeds are up, prices are down.
So you just have to believe firmly in the.
What you're doing is the right policy call.
Understand that these political moments are going to come and go, and long term, you know, you're doing the right thing.
You just have to not worry about the news cycle of the day at all.
What's the worst deep state, deep stater you found here, or something that you fired, someone you fired who was just completely undermining you?
You know, we're sort of lucky at the FCC.
I think it's different than perhaps either DOJ or other agencies.
It's a place where when the leadership says to go left, they go left.
When the leadership says to go right, they go right.
You think they work as fast as you'd like them to on specific issues?
We're really getting there.
So, again, we're right now at the lowest level of FCC staff since 1957.
Wow.
So, we engaged in our own Doge efforts right off the bat.
We did the fork in the road.
The FCC back then, when I started, had promoting DEI listed as our second highest strategic priority.
We got rid of that.
We got rid of the DEI advisory committee, so we cut a lot of that out.
And beyond that, the staff is really oriented around the top priorities that we've set, and we just don't have the deep state resistance problem that perhaps others do.
What's the worst DEI you found at a company, and how do you attack that outside of the FCC of some of these private corporations?
Well, we're still looking at it, but up to now, Evidence that Disney has been pretty bad.
There's evidence suggesting that Disney literally was dividing and categorizing employees based on race and gender, and potentially, we'll see what the evidence establishes ultimately, giving different opportunities to people based on their race or gender or other protected class.
And we're going to get some more discovery from Disney on that, but that could raise character questions about the company long term.
What would happen next?
Let's pretend that they did that, and it's very obvious to anybody who, I guess, has eyes that.
Likely happened.
And I know you can't prejudge your predetermined outcome.
I understand that.
What would happen as the next step after that?
Well, in terms of process, there's lots of options.
You have a license, the licenses come due every so often.
You can accelerate when a license comes due and say, hey, we have significant concerns about you conducting your operations.
We want to review your license now and decide if you're in the public interest.
If we find that a broadcaster hasn't been doing that, then the statute requires us to issue a hearing designation order.
And that's a multi month process then to go through a hearing.
Decide whether you get to keep your license or not.
And those are all remedies that are on the table.
I mean, ultimately, whether we pull a license for a big broadcaster like that will be decided by their own conduct.
I'd be surprised if we ultimately don't go down the path of license revocation for some, but it will be up to them in their own conduct.
On every pod, we play a game of would you rather?
Would you rather fix nationwide rural broadband or eliminate all spam robocalls forever?
Gosh, I would say spam robocalls, which May sound like a weird answer because we're sort of like the pipes and tubes people, but we're really starting to make progress on its own on rural broadband.
I think Starlink solves rural broadband.
Starlink does a lot.
President Trump is doing a lot with this $42 billion bead program, but Robocalls is our top consumer complaint.
We're actually doing a lot on it, but that would be the one I would pick of those two.
Why does everyone hate the bead program?
Well, the bead program was established originally during the Biden years.
It was $42 billion.
Vice President Harris was put in charge of it, and it went nowhere.
Not a single shovel's worth of dirt was turned, no one was connected.
Trump has come in, Secretary Lutnick has come in.
They fundamentally reformed it.
Maybe some people don't like that they reformed it.
They've saved people money, and you're going to start to see the shovels and the dirt turning soon on that program.
I think it's going to be a good win.
Would you rather have every NFL game on broadcast TV, but only in standard definition, or have every game in 4K, but behind 12 subscriptions?
Yeah, it's got to be over the air.
I mean, it's just so frustrating when you have to remember what you signed up for and having to pay more money for it.
I think sports should be free over the air.
Would you rather deal with one massive nationwide outage per year or small local outages every week?
Oh my gosh.
That's a bad choice between the two, but I guess that's what makes it a good choice.
I'd probably say a single one because then we could sort of deal with it, get over it, and move on.
This question's funny.
Would you rather explain net neutrality to a group of fifth graders or have fifth graders teach you a viral TikTok dance?
Oh my gosh.
Yeah, probably the viral TikTok dance.
I mean, we're past the 6'7 stage, thankfully, so it wouldn't be that much.
Were your kids into 6'7?
Oh, yeah, yeah, they would.
I still don't get six, seven.
Yeah, no, I don't know.
Would you rather have to personally approve every new streaming service or every new social media app?
Gosh, probably streaming service, again, just given our sort of interest at this point in time and, you know, the sports rights issues.
How often do you have to reset your passwords?
Well, probably too many times, ultimately, but it's a lot.
Where do you get your news?
So I'm big on social media.
It may be a surprise to you that I'm fairly online as a person.
Are you chronically online?
Yeah, no, unfortunately.
So a lot of X, I use it as a newsfeed, podcasts.
I listen to podcasts.
Because I just asked somebody else this question.
You know what I'm saying when I say Brian Johnson had sex with Kate, right?
Yeah, that was over 50% by his part.
Yeah.
100%.
See, I'm not the only chronic.
If he's chronically online, he gets it too.
Yeah.
I asked Laura Trump who was the best interview she'd done, and she said Brian Johnson.
And I said, well, Brian Johnson had sex with Kate.
And she had no idea what I was referring to.
She's not chronically online.
Right, you have to be chronically online.
A good test.
Now, I unfortunately know what that is.
So I do a lot of social media, a lot of X.
I use it as a newsfeed, podcast.
I'm on the phone a lot.
That's sort of my intake of information.
What keeps you up at night?
Not a lot, actually.
Yeah, I go to bed pretty well, and usually I'm pretty tired out from running around with the kids and everything.
What's a conspiracy theory that you believe in?
A conspiracy theory that I believe in.
Well, I mean, if you go back to net neutrality, I think ultimately that was one that was an idea completely planted by Google and others that was just a completely made-up fake issue, and they somehow created a national political movement for a number of years there, but I think it's finally over, thankfully.
What's the first app you check in the morning?
X. How long does it take you to get ready in the morning?
Not that long.
My hair is custom-made for getting up and getting ready.
How long do you have to shave it?
Every other day.
Do you really?
With a razor yourself or with clippers?
Yeah, with clippers.
And how long does it take you?
I think it lasts like four or five minutes.
There's a lot of bald guys in this administration.
I'm just saying.
Yeah, yeah.
No, it's good.
It's good.
What's your most controversial opinion?
Apparently, if you ask a lot of people in D.C., it's that broadcasters should operate in the public interest.
If they don't, they should lose their license.
But I think it's common sense.
Who's yelled at you the most?
Who's yelled at me the most?
I don't think I've had that yet, really.
No head of network has called and bitched you out?
Nope.
Are they very scared of you?
Is that what this is?
Hopefully.
What do you think success looks like in terms of reshaping the media landscape?
Ultimately, I think if the numbers of trust go up, because it's in their own business model to do that, and them realizing that they're not.
Do you think that's the job of government, though?
Well, it's the job in the sense that they're supposed to operate in the public interest.
And I think it's deviating from the public interest that's part of what the problem is.
And so if we can reorient them back to operating in the public interest, I think they will ultimately probably benefit as a business matter.
But even if they don't benefit as a business matter, they still have to operate in the public interest.
And that's what we're going to do.
What's your most liberal take?
I don't know what the most liberal take would be.
I mean, you know, we're sticking to the law.
And I mean, ultimately, the FCC.
Even personally, like outside of the FCC, like go outside of the FCC.
Come on.
Well, liberal in the traditional sense is deregulate.
I mean, we're engaging in probably like the biggest deregulatory, you know, business.
That's still a conservative take.
Like, what's the liberal opinion you have?
Gosh.
Everyone's got one.
Yeah, no, nothing really jumps mine on this one.
Like, mine's closed solar energy.
Like, that's a pretty liberal take.
What's yours?
I voted in DC once to sort of decriminalize marijuana, but that's a vote that I like deeply regret at this point.
I think that was a deep mistake.
That was probably the most, you know, one of my liberal actions that I took.
Is that because you walk around DC now and just smell weed everywhere?
It's like you smell weed everywhere.
It's disgusting.
I think more studies are out now about the negative effects on it.
So that's sort of a liberal ish action that I regret.
That one's a rough one.
Defining True Conservative Values00:01:18
Yeah.
I'm deeply sorry you said that out loud.
I don't have a no regrets tattoo on that one.
I have regrets on that one.
We will end on this question.
Yeah.
If you could host a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, who's sitting at the table and what are you eating?
Well, eating is easy.
Eating's easy?
What are you eating?
Eating is ribeye, a good sort of ribeye steak.
Gotta have it.
And I guess the first top three people that come to mind, you know, would be President Trump, Vice President, and Secretary of State.
I think that'd be a good group.
You don't go anyone back who's dead?
No, that doesn't jump to mind, no.
So you said earlier that you apologize to Bobby Kennedy because you're not Maha.
Yeah.
Is your whole house not Maha?
No, I think they're pretty good about that.
The KFC notwithstanding, I think we're pretty good.
Have you gotten onto the protein only fermented vegetable diet?
I've not done fermented vegetables yet, no.
Okay.
You know, it's like a thing though now that everyone's doing.
It's like the trendy diet amongst the people.
I haven't done it.
Okay.
Is there anything else you want to add about your success here at the FCC?
No, we're just having fun.
And every day we're just trying to get some good stuff done.
It's good.
Thank you for doing this.
Yeah, it's fun.
Thank you so much for watching this episode of the Katie Miller Podcast.